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At last night's panel discussion/entertainment journalist deathmatch featuring the LAT's Jon Horn and Patrick Goldstein and the NY Times' Sharon Waxman and Laura Holson, talk inevitably turned to DreamWorks mogul/Gay Mafia potentate/Malibu beach baron David Geffen's efforts to acquire the west-coasted Times, prompting a debate between the two camps about whether LAT staffers should embrace or fear their potential Hollywood master. LA Observed recaps:

There was an interesting difference of opinion over David Geffen. The LAT men agreed that Geffen might be the best buyer for the Times, with Goldstein offering that "this is a man who has always been associated with quality work." Waxman pushed back, arguing that Geffen is a man Hollywood fears: "He holds a grudge. He gets even." Goldstein stuck to his guns, even though he acknowledged that Geffen once went five years without talking to him and "can put a lot of negative energy into people." Waxman concluded that the LAT staff is so battered by years of Tribune Company mishandling that they are looking for a knight: "They'll take a flawed knight."

We're sure that should Geffen ultimately make a successful bid for the Times, he'd never interfere with the editorial operation of the paper; while attendance at his breakfast meetings with the entertainment staff would be mandatory, the daily recitation of the list of people who'd wronged him in 1999 and whose bones he'd like to see "ground into a fine powder and scattered over the Pacific" would serve merely as helpful suggestions for that day's coverage, not as some kind of score-settling mandate.