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The fabulously loopy Hirschfeld has played his role to the hilt. Perhaps still smarting from a failed attempt to become New York Governor Mario Cuomo's running mate in 1986, he described the New York pol, who was trying to put together a rival buyout team for the paper, as "an idiot." Hirschfeld says his employees will have to learn to "talk with love," because when they talk with love, "they can't talk with hatred." Hamill has also risen to the occasion, describing the Post's 20-page tirade against Hirschfeld last Tuesday as "an act of journalistic courage unprecedented in this century." He then likened Post staffers to the citizens of Prague who stood up to the Soviet tanks in 1968. And he calls Hirschfeld nutty.
The ownership status of the Post remains a tangle. Hirschfeld possesses only a management contract to run the paper and must answer to a bankruptcy trustee and creditors' committee. If Hirschfeld falters, other bidders could take over the paper. No matter which buyers finally lash themselves to the Post, they will have to find some way to halt losses estimated at more than $1 million a month.
Does the Post deserve to live? Throughout the 1980s, it espoused a racist, homophobic, free-market philosophy rooted in unalloyed social Darwinism. Today the free market may very well be handing down its verdict on the Post: Only the strong survive, and you're not one of them.