My Old Boss, Dick Parsons

So Dick Parsons is finally leaving Time-Warner. He's a charming, beloved figure in New York. That's what happens when you're a bear of a man, avuncular and you run things like the Apollo Theatre (formerly under TW) and create a giant venue for Jazz at Lincoln Center and a Whole Foods in midtown where the chattering classes can get a bagette in midtown. But let's face it. While Gerry Levin and Steve Case take most of the blame for the AOL-Time-Warner debacle, Parsons was in the thick of it. I still have a letter from Norm Pearlstine giving me a bunch of options with a strike price of 88. (I was at Time magazine from 1999 to 2006) In fact the chart of Time Warner stock over the past decade looks like a drawing of Mont St. Michel. It spikes gothically and then retreats. It's done nothing over the past year while the Dow and S&P have ramped up close to 9 percend. The stock is uptoday on word of his departure because there's hope Bewkes wil do something. Dick Parsons, nice guy. For this one gets adulation and the life of a New York A-lister. And people talk about him as mayor? The man who helped spearhead privatizing Social Security as a co-chair of Bush's commission?