This image was lost some time after publication.

It's kind of hard not to adore James Brady's thoroughly ridiculous new media column for Forbes. It's not that we adore it because it's so well-crafted, or so interesting, or so informative — far from it. We adore it because it's so much fun to see what new and interesting ways Brady will find to serve up happy-talk pabulum about some media executive.

Today brings a great example of the form. As we ramp up to the Oscars, Brady checks in with Variety's wise, charming, accomplished, avuncular editor-in-chief, Peter Bart. And while it's true that Bart is brilliant and accomplished and all that, Brady — who recaps the man's whole life — somehow manages to avoid any mention of the famous Amy Wallace Los Angeles magazine profile of Bart from 2001, in which he's revealed to be not so much wise and avuncular as a fabricator and a bigot.

Brady even writes admiringly that in addition to his Variety duties Bart has also "written and published seven books, including a couple of novels and several bestsellers, with a new one called Boffo due out in early June" — without mentioning the screenplay he wrote pseudonymously in 1996 and sold to Paramount Pictures, a clear violation of Variety's conflict-of-interest guidelines against people who cover movie studios shopping scripts to one of them.

All this got Bart suspended from his job. Which you think might merit mentioning. But, then, we also think there's a difference between "snubbing" and "getting fired by." So what do we know?

Peter Bart: Hooray for Hollywood [Forbes]
Related: 'Variety' Honcho Suspended [E! Online]
Earlier: Out of Step With... Bonnie Fuller