But this isn't the first time O'Brien and Zucker have rattled sabers. The rivalry dates back to the 1980s when both were enrolled at Harvard. In an eerie parallel, Zucker edited the Crimson daily newspaper while O'Brien ran Lampoon, a humor magazine. As Fortune's Patricia Sellers explains, Zucker was once so furious with O'Brien he had him arrested by Cambridge police:
Back in the day, the staffs of the two publications often pulled pranks on each other. And in that vein, early one morning, O'Brien and his pals broke into the Crimson offices to steal that day's run of papers.
O'Brien riffed about this stunt -- proudly, in fact -- when I talked with him for a 2007 Fortune profile of Zucker, "Life imitates TV": "Jeff went nuclear right away," O'Brien recalled. "He called the police. Not the campus police, which were the kind and gentle police. He called the Cambridge police."
O'Brien soon found himself spread-eagled, cuffed, and listening to his Miranda rights -- in the hands of a Cambridge cop.
"I remember thinking that Jeff is a different species than I am," O'Brien said, of course milking the story for comic effect. "That species could easily rip my throat open."
Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments
or send an email to the author at
jhudson at theatlantic dot com.
You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
John Hudson
User Comments
Please type your comment and click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be prompted to log in or register