Tom Freston Might Have Signed His Own Death Certificate
Are we sensing some tension between Viacom co-presidents Les Moonves and Tom Freston, who are about to take control of their own fiefdoms when the conglomerate is cleaved in twain next year? Looks like the separation can't come soon enough. From today's Rush & Molloy column:
Tom Freston doesn't care that his Viacom co-chair Les Moonves has called him "laid back." "Everyone's more laid back than Les Moonves," Freston shot back Tuesday at a benefit for the Continuum Center for Health and Healing. "I wanna be more laid back!"
"Shot back" is the crucial phrase. Not "Freston laughed," nor "joshed Freston." We might be reading too much into a sound bite [Ed.note—Never!], but what seems like an innocuous writer's choice could be the difference between Moonves chuckling along with his counterpart's insouciance and papering the cage where he keeps his flesh-eating, flying monkeys with copies of Freston's headshot doused in his cologne in preparation for a homicidal rampage. We'll be keeping an eye on this simmering war of words, which threatens to soon escalate to Lohan-Duff levels.