Want Some Class to Go With That Ego?

Why can't I stop picking on Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner this week? Perhaps because he's the kind of guy who will say something like this:

People still want to start magazines. But it will cost multi-millions of dollars. You need to get that financing, and a company knows how to publish. There's the situation, and timing, circumstances. And you need, at the center of it, some extraordinarily talented, prescient individual. Such as I was.

...without irony, humility, or even trace amounts of self-awareness.

The full Q&A with BusinessWeek's Jon Fine also includes this bit of graciousness, directed at former Men's Journal editor James Kaminsky, who left in August to edit Maxim:

I decided over a year ago that I wanted to bring Men's Journal up from being a B-level title to being an A level title....Kaminsky, honestly, god bless him, I'm glad he left. He was taking it in a direction I didn't like. Kind of an airline magazine. Little bits and pieces like Maxim. His basic experience was Maxim and Playboy. I believe this magazine should be in-depth, and quality.

No wonder no one wants to work for him. Note the logical inconsistency: He decided a year ago to make Men's Journal great, but left it in the hands of an editor whose work he supposedly considered poor. Sour grapes much?