From what I can tell, the Leibovitz dumping Sontag for the babysitter story’s source is Page Six:
http://entertainment.excite.com/celebgossip/pgsix/id/03_09_2003_8.html
I misread it as Sontag left Leibovitz for the babysitter. Now it makes more sense, age-wise.
It’s no secret that celebrity obituaries are written long in advance, and updated periodically so they’ll be current when the time comes. Isn’t it possible that the intern most recently assigned to Sontag’s actually *asked * her and Leibovitz how their relationship should be described, and that the NYT obit reflects their wishes?
Did they update the obit? Now it says “In 1999, she wrote an essay for ‘Women,’ a compilation of portraits by her longtime companion, photographer Annie Leibovitz.” If in fact they had broken up, that would be as much a mention as is appropriate.
There’s a reason why they work with dead people.
Ha! They did indeed rewrite it since this morning’s paper. I bet I’m not the only person who complained!
I love happy endings.
I prefer to think that you did it alone, Eve. Nice win!
Well, face it, if you’re a New York Times obit writer, while waiting for somebody important enough to warrant an obit. to die (or rich enough to afford a paid obit. in the NY Times, the only plausible reason I can think of for them to run a story about an 82-year-old retired textiles-firm president who was a loyal member of Beth Horon Synagogue, left assorted children, and apparently did nothing else worthy of recalling in a synopsis of his life), you probably surf the Net – and, in passing, read the SDMB. And find that there is exactly one person in the world who actually reads the stuff you write for a living, besides the individual dearly departed’s survivors for any single given obit. And when that one person Pits you in absentia – you make amends.
I’m a TIMES subscriber and the paper I received this morning had a Sontag obit and a sort of appreciation (not the one they have in the editorial page) and neither mentioned Leibovitz–but heh, there was a nice portrait of Sontag by her (shuddup, she had her clothes on).
I did learn too that Sontag did have a brief marriage when she was young and she has a son that survives her.
Interesting…I get the (early edition) Boston Globe and there is not one single mention of the-photographer-whose-name-I-won’t-even-try-to-spell. The Globe is owned by the NYT, IIRC. A company-wide decision, perhaps?
Well, how does Ms. L feel about not being mentioned?
I’m glad the NYT changed the obit to mention Ms. L. but this thread got me to scraping my feeble memory. IIRC they were just as pointedly indirect when Jackie Onassis died. (Weren’t they?) I seem to recall only the most glancing reference to what’sisname, the married guy she lived with umpteen years.
Just mulling over how they handled ‘delicate’ situations in the past. Not that this one was all that ambiguous, IMO, but trying to psych out their reasoning is passingly interesting.
Veb
I’ve held individual Sontag essays in higher esteem than the entire Liebowitz oeuvre, I’m afraid.
Perhaps they didn’t want to draw too much attention to the fact that Susan was slumming?