James S. Brady, a former press secretary for Ronald Reagan, died today in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 73. Brady became a tireless advocate for gun control and founded the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence after getting shot by John Hinckley Jr. in an assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981.

When he interviewed celebrities, typically over lunch, longtime Parade columnist James Brady often did not take notes; he only needed three soundbites, which he memorized.

Name-dropping old man James Brady is just about the oldest old man in all the working media. He's turning 80 on Saturday, so he decided to dedicate his Forbes column to that most interesting of topics: his own career. This is a slight departure from his usual practice of reciting as many names as he can in 800 words and being shocked about this modern age. Brady's learned a mess of things in his long, long media career; but "modesty" was not one of them: He's a lover:

Hawk-faced elderly man James Brady, the name-dropping veteran of 600 media outlets who has now eased into his retirement job as Forbes' "media columnist" (ha), is primarily skilled at being befuddled about the point of things (though he hasn't lost his name-dropping talent). So faced with an early copy of former crackhead-turned Times columnist David Carr's (well-reviewed) new book-which is not, as Brady hoped, a volume of media name-dropping-Brady panics in print like the senile Uncle Junior in The Sopranos: shoot the bad man and run hide in the closet! See, Brady really wanted this book to be a recitation by Carr of media inside-baseball stuff. "What a glorious read that would be, and what a column or two I could get out of it," he writes. But no-it's full of drug shit!

Forbes columnist James Brady's review of Times columnist Maureen Dowd's review of Camelot-era historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s terrible-sounding diaries IS A LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN. The MoDo review is basically the longest blog post ever published in the Times, and Brady's LiveJournalling response is superb: "She drops in a wonderful reference to the fact in his later years he was 'perennially broke' and didn't even have a savings account. Gosh, just like most of us. Though whenever I saw Arthur out on the town (usually with his very tall, attractive and awfully pleasant wife Alexandra), he was impeccably (if tweed-ily) dressed and seemed to have cab fare." Yes. Broke, just like most of you! Anyway, adorable! I want to crawl inside this glimmering fantasy tunnel that these guys have dug into a mountain of non sequiturs and just live there all the time!

James Brady devotes an entire Forbes column to a new book that he absolutely loves which, uh, turns out to be written by his daughter. Conflict of interest? Some think so! We're going to be more charitable and suggest that maybe Jim was too senile to remember that the author was his daughter when he wrote the thing. [ETP]

James Brady is not easily shocked, but in his recent Forbes column, he admitted to surprise about the subject of George Steinbrenner's alleged senility.

One of the great pleasures of James Brady's media column for Forbes is the sweet anticipation one experiences while wondering how Brady is going to set up his full-page litany of name drops. The current edition uses the recent Peter Braunstein case—and the suggestion that working in the fashion industry drove Braunstein crazy—as its peg. As is our custom, we've provided a summarized version of the column, boiled down to its essentials and shorn of all the extraneous detail. Enjoy!

James Brady takes a look at mags for teen girls and discovers that, in the post-Atoosa era, they're all going for a less racy presentation. We're not particularly interested one way or other (the sooner tweens learn the "17 Fastest Ways To Get Him Off," the sooner they'll be prepared for middle school), but the column itself is another Brady tour de force. While the namedrops aren't as plentiful as usual, the man can set a scene: "What's the formula? I asked founding Teen Vogue publisher Gina Sanders over lunch at La Grenouille, the day before she and her family took off for a Jamaica holiday." But do we get one of those senility moments that is the hallmark of a Brady puffer?

• Can Don Imus maintain his moneymaking capabilities? 'Cause otherwise he's just some loudmouth hick in a hat. [NYT]
  

Forbes columnist James Brady is living proof that senility is no bar to name-dropping. There is also a brilliant Brady-ism in today's column: "Howard Rubenstein was there and introduced me to his son. Whom I know." That's all you need to read, so, as a service to our readers who might otherwise object to sifting through an entire column just to see which celebrities and media types Big Jim trots out this go-round, we've stripped out all the non-essential text to give you the platonic ideal of a Brady column.

It's a special edition of Gawker Explainer, the fun feature where we help you correctly pronounce names in the news so that you don't sound like an idiot when you sneak into Conde Nast parties. What's so special? Well, this edition comes to you directly from guest-explainer James Brady, Forbes media, uh, guy? Anyway, how might one go about saying Glamour EIC/ASME President Cynthia "Cindi" Leive's surname?

There's a precious moment in James Brady's most recent media column for Forbes. Jim hits up Hearst prez Cathie Black's holiday party and rubs elbows with the twiterati, running into a few old friends in the process.

We're not sure whether Dave Zinczenko likes blowjobs - Oh, who are we kidding, everyone likes blowjobs. And he's Dave Zinczenko! - but he gets one today from James Brady, in what has to be the most mortifying public display of oral attention from an elderly person ever. Brady even takes out his teeth. The piece extols Zinczenko's (or, as Brady calls him, "The Z Man" - we're as sick as you, honestly) editing prowess: Men's Health is now the biggest magazine in its category, outselling former powerhouses Esquire and GQ ("Fit," as a correspondent writes, "is the new dick."), his literary endeavors (Dave wrote both The Abs Diet and his new one, How To Touch Dave Zinczenko's Cock: A Guide For Women), even the summer house he shares with BFF Dan Abrams, which is apparently a non-stop pussy party. In fact, so disgusted were we by the fawning fellations that we almost missed the throwaway admission at the end:

This week, Forbes.com's presenile media columnist James Brady takes us to the Core Club for a casual schmoozefest in honor of Katie Couric, thrown by Hearst president Cathie Black and editorial director Ellen Levine. With a nose for news, Brady cruises the scene, gathering important information like Couric's new sleep schedule (she stays in bed until 8 AM nowadays — good to know).

Let's ignore the irony of Jim Brady's Forbes.com column focusing mostly on an old, aged media exec who increasingly doddered on, oblivious to his surroundings (you'd have no idea what that's like, right, Jim?) and instead focus on just one line, down near the end. Jim is recalling a fancy lunch on Central Park South years ago with William Randolph Hearst Jr., and he's describing the man who orchestrated the meeting:

• As expected, the Times dumps its unwatched Discovery Times channel. [Media Mob/NYO]
• Did Bill Keller's gin-heiress wife kill Boldace? Probably not, but she sure didn't help. [WWD (second item)]
• We love conflicts of interest; the Pulitzers board, not so much. [E&P]
• Forbes media kibitzer James Brady wonders, "Is Cosmo editor Kate White the smartest dame in the business?" Of course she is, Jim. Until you find someone else to slobber over next week. [Forbes]
• New Yorker fashion director Michael Roberts moves to Vanity Fair, presumably preferring a publication that does little things like fashion spreads. [Media Mob/NYO]

Forbes' agenda-setting media reporter this week catches up with an up-and-comer named Harry Evans, and he fills us in on the breaking news that Evans is married to Tina Brown, used to edit London's Times, and currently does some work for Felix Dennis's The Week. (Who knew?) We particularly like his meet-cute account of how Evans and Brown first met:

It's kind of hard not to adore James Brady's thoroughly ridiculous new media column for Forbes. It's not that we adore it because it's so well-crafted, or so interesting, or so informative — far from it. We adore it because it's so much fun to see what new and interesting ways Brady will find to serve up happy-talk pabulum about some media executive.

Last time we checked in with Forbes media columnist James Brady — the Parade celeb-swaddler, Page Six creator, and longtime Murdoch factotum — he was, rather generously, praising Bonnie Fuller's "successful" stint at AMI and spinning the time Conde Nast fired her as Bonnie's own decision to leave. This week, prompted by a Romenesko link, we were curious to see what MPA chairman Jack Kilger had done to get Brady to swallow his spiel — magazines have turned the corner! advertisers love them again! — as much as he'd bought into Bon-Bon's blather.