Burkle 'Sexy'? Not to 'Star' Readers

Did Star magazine bury the results of an online poll to spare its future owner embarrassment?

Last week, the New York Post reported that Yucaipa Cos. chairman Ron Burkle had been selected to figure prominently in a feature about the "sexiest billionaire bachelors," all of whom were drawn from the ranks of the Forbes billionaires list. The feature was seen internally as "a big corporate suck-up" on the part of American Media chief David Pecker, who is negotiating to merge his company with Burkle's Source Interlink, and hoping to finagle a job for himself at the merged company. (AMI's spokesman insists Pecker had nothing to do with the story.)

On Thursday night, a companion poll went live on starmagazine.com featuring the six billionaires from the magazine and 24 others, with readers asked to choose their five favorites. When I checked a few hours after it went up, Burkle was polling at under 1 percent. But by Friday night, the results page had disappeared, replaced by a "thanks for your participation" message.

It makes sense. When a guy's about to drop a billion dollars ($1.2 billion, actually), the last thing you want to do is puncture his ego.

UPDATE, 7:59 p.m.: Apparently, putting the results up online in the first place was a mistake; an AMI spokesman says the plan was, and is, to publish them in next week's issue.