War of the Words

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but bones will eventually knit and heal. Words, in the age of the Internet, are considerably more dangerous, possessing a radioactive half-life longer than strontium 90's. In our Googlefied world, a poison-pen review, a vicious gossip-column slag or a demeaning but funny insult can replicate endlessly, a killer virus in cyberspace.

And who better to use words as a weapon than those who use words for a living? The brightest lights of the literary and media worlds—men and women of letters, members of the fourth estate—have a nasty habit of getting downright nasty. Sometimes it's to bite back at a chronic critic. Other times it's to brutalize the preposterous, the pompous, the persistently annoying. Once in a great while, it's over a point of honor.

Forget any outmoded notions of a "gentleman's profession"—these men and women can mix it up like drunken Marines. Here are some of the greatest media death matches of the modern age, five feuds that refuse to go away.

The Man In White vs. The Old Lions

Tom Wolfe vs. John Irving, John Updike and Norman Mailer

Literary lions roar! In this corner, the dandified, legendary journalist and author Tom Wolfe, who argues that his heavily researched fiction—"full-blooded realism," he calls it—is the right stuff to revivify the moribund American novel. Facing him, a tag team of John Irving, John Updike and Norman Mailer, leading men of American letters (and at least two experienced brawlers among them), who dismiss Wolfe's wildly popular novels Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full as fine entertainment for the masses but something far short of real literature.

First Blood

"Awriiighhhhhhhht!" read the title of Updike's review of A Man in Full, in the November 9, 1998 New Yorker. Updike, a reviewer of uncommon perspicacity, came on soft and silky in the first few paragraphs, offering praise for Wolfe's new novel, an instant literary sensation and best-seller. And readers had every reason to expect yet another glowing review, like the ones bestowed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. But despite the head fakes, Updike's intentions were revealed as he crept closer to the heart of the matter. While noting Wolfe's popularity and irresistibility—A Man in Full, he wrote, is "a book that defies you not to buy it"—Updike went on to ascribe the novel's appeal to its author's populist pandering: "Like a movie desperate to recoup its bankers' investment, the novel tries too hard to please." Then he went in for the kill: " A Man in Full still amounts to entertainment, not literature, even literature in a modest aspirant form."

A little more than a month later, in The New York Review of Books, Norman Mailer weighed in: "The book has gas and runs out of gas, fills up again, goes dry. It is a 742-page work that reads as if it is 1500 pages long." At every turn, Mailer undercut his faint praise ("This is, to a degree, a compliment, since it is very rich in material") with robust condescension (the book is "banal, like a long afternoon spent watching soap operas"). But then Mailer took off the gloves: "At certain points, reading the work can even be said to resemble the act of making love to a 300-pound woman. Once she gets on top, it's over. Fall in love, or be asphyxiated."

When Wolfe read these reviews, he later wrote, he was "amazed, not that the two of them didn't approve but, at this stage in their lives, they had taken the time. 'My god, those two old piles of bones,' I said. 'They're my age!' "

Mailer's review in particular was hardly a stealth attack. Bad blood between the two writers had been flowing for years. As early as 1989 Mailer had dismissed Wolfe, declaring that "there is something silly about a man who wears white all the time, especially in New York." After Wolfe responded by saying, "The lead dog is the one they always try to bite in the ass," Mailer took the bait and zinged back: "It doesn't mean you're the top dog just because your ass is bleeding."

John Irving, author of 10 novels that include The World According to Garp, was interviewed in 1999 on Hot Type, a Canadian TV show about books and literature. With merely a single question from the host, Irving went ballistic. Calling Wolfe's writing "yak," Irving said he couldn't bear to read it because it was mere "journalistic hyperbole described as fiction. He's a journalist. He can't create a character. He can't create a situation. Reading Wolfe is like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. It makes you wince." Irving added that if he were teaching "fucking freshman English," he'd carve up Wolfe sentences to help students understand bad writing.

Wolfe Strikes Back

By that time, the Man in White had appeared on the cover of Time, and more than a million copies of A Man in Full had been sold. But Irving's attack was the final indignity; for Wolfe, this was a war. He now had a trio of powerful detractors whom he dubbed—to all who would listen—the Three Stooges. "I think of the three of them now as Larry, Curly and Moe," Wolfe told the host of Hot Type.

Updike, Mailer and Irving, while each a "talented writer," Wolfe asserted, "have wasted their careers." He dismissed the three as "frightened" and later described Mailer's 1979 nonfiction novel based on Gary Gilmore's life and death, The Executioner's Song, as "the only good novel he would ever write after his first, The Naked and the Dead, back in 1948." (Mailer, it should be noted, has written nine novels since The Naked and the Dead.)

Irving, the youngest of the three, "would like to be compared to Dickens," Wolfe declared. "But what writer does he see now, the last year, constantly compared to Dickens? Not John Irving but Tom Wolfe. It must gnaw at him terribly." In an interview on Salon.com, Wolfe also took the writer to task. "Irving needs to get up off his bottom and leave that farm in Vermont or wherever it is he stays and start living again. It wouldn't be that hard. All he'd have to do is get out and take a deep breath and talk to people and see things and rediscover the fabulous and wonderfully bizarre country around him: America."

Wolfe is willing to talk about the feud, which he insists has an element of writerly sport to it. "If Irving hadn't jumped in, on impulse, really—because that TV show wasn't about me—I wouldn't have had three, and it just wouldn't have been any fun," he told Playboy. "Three is perfect. I couldn't beat that. The Two Stooges? That's not catchy. And I mean Irving—it's really quite unbelievable—he just suddenly lost it. The censor with the bleep button couldn't keep up with him."

Updike and Irving have since distanced themselves from the fracas, but Mailer doesn't concede any ground. "Tom Wolfe pouts whenever he feels he is not being sufficiently honored by his literary brothers," he says. "So I say, yes, by all means, let's honor him. He may be the best boy-novelist we have ever had."

"They felt threatened by my idea of a big return to the naturalistic novel," Wolfe says. "And I really do think it shook them up. Updike had begun doing things that really had nothing to do with the present, and Mailer had done an autobiography of Jesus Christ, and Irving had done something, but you never knew where the characters were—it was very strange."

Wolfe says he doesn't dread running into Mailer—or Irving or Updike—on the cocktail circuit. "I'd be most likely to run into Mailer because Updike lives someplace north of Boston, and Irving lives in New Hampshire or some such place. But, you know," he says, "a fistfight between an 80-year-old and a 73-year-old, that would be pretty ridiculous." He succumbs to a hearty chuckle. "I mean, we could probably blow each other over in one breath."

The Bloviator vs. Destroyer of Worlds

Alec Baldwin vs. Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson edits the New York Post's Page Six, the world's most powerful and widely read gossip page, embedded in a right-wing tabloid. Actor Alec Baldwin once rode high atop Hollywood's A-list, thanks to his fine work in films ranging from Glengarry Glen Ross to The Hunt for Red October and his passionate, volatile (now former) marriage to Kim Basinger. Baldwin, never shy about venting opinions, has morphed into a combative media figure and an outspoken champion of liberal causes who has considered running for the U.S. Senate.

First Blood

In 1999, as an equal-opportunity offender, Johnson's Page Six briefly took on the Carol Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, claiming that the charity, started by Alec's mother, was inept in its collection and disbursement of funds (Forbes later listed the fund as one of the five worst among celebrity charities in terms of efficiency—i.e., its ability to spend its money on charitable recipients rather than overhead). Baldwin responded first by going on Rosie O'Donnell's talk show, where he declared that the New York Post wasn't worthy of being used "to pick up after my dog"—and that "there's more news on a Bazooka comic." Then the fight moved to Howard Stern's radio show. Johnson was defending himself, which prompted Baldwin to call in and engage Johnson mano a mano.

"Now, Richard," Baldwin said, "I know you've got a job to do. It's a filthy, ugly, nasty job and you're very good at it, by the way. But what have you got against breast cancer research?"

Johnson, of course, replied, "Nothing," then went on to defend his piece. But Baldwin wouldn't back off: "Your job is to bring people down. Your job is to destroy. You're a destroyer and the article is a destroyer. Page Six is a hatchet job."

Johnson responded: "I mean, basically, you're just saying that we are evil, we're a force for Satan—Page Six: bad, Alec Baldwin: good."

"No, Richard," Baldwin answered, "the one thing I will say is that your article is very badly written. You're a very bad writer. That's the biggest problem I have. Other people who do what you do are just so much better at it and more clever than you."

"Am I supposed to start bringing up the bad movies you've made?" Johnson countered.

It was a scorched-earth battle, with neither man giving ground. Baldwin: "The New York Post is a piece of garbage. The editorial board of the New York Post needs to be flushed into the river. As a Christian I pray for you every night, Richard Johnson."

Johnson: "If I have Alec Baldwin praying for my soul, now I'm scared."

Rope-A-Dopes

After the Stern show, Johnson took on Baldwin-bashing as a full-time job. He devoted endless column inches to the actor's then-troubled marriage, to his physique ("overweight, bloated"), his career ("underemployed actor"), his politics (Baldwin famously promised to leave the United States if George Bush got elected; after the election, the Post couldn't stop asking, "What's he still doing here?").

But the smart bomb came in the form of a nickname. In a masterstroke, Johnson dubbed Baldwin "the Bloviator"—a Menckenesque tag that stuck as tenaciously as the Post's "Portly Pepperpot" moniker for Monica Lewinsky.

Last summer, Baldwin went on Stern's radio show again and declared that "a boxing match with Richard Johnson would be over in 60 seconds." When Stern tried to get Baldwin to commit to an actual match, Baldwin demurred: "I wouldn't want to be liable for the damages. I would beat Richard Johnson's ass so bad." Johnson responded later with, "Anytime, anywhere," and quoted an oddsmaker on Page Six who declared him favored 3-to-1 over Baldwin, though he also said, "the Bloviator is a 100-to-1 favorite to eat more corned beef at the Carnegie Deli."

Alec Baldwin: Menace to Motorists?

Even a street sighting of the actor served as an excuse for Page Six to ridicule him: "Button up your overcoat, Alec 'Bloviator' Baldwin, and watch where you're walking," read an item in January 2002. "The actor, in a long black trench coat, was lost in thought (reminiscing about Kim Basinger?) Saturday at 11:30 P.M., as he headed north through Times Square where Broadway and Seventh Avenue merge."

"I think it's all his doing," says Johnson. "He's very arrogant and has a habit of making enemies. I think it's a self-destructive thing." (Apparently, though, not a self-defense thing. Baldwin declined to reengage Johnson for this story.) The Page Six boss admits, though, to a certain grudging admiration for Baldwin's obstinacy. "Actually, I wish there were more stars out there like the Bloviator. A lot of them are too timid and afraid to say anything or do anything or have any character."

The Bane of Moguls vs. The Queen of Buzz

Michael Wolff vs. Tina Brown

Bald, curmudgeonly and hugely influential New York magazine media columnist Michael Wolff arrived on the scene four years ago as a journalistic pit bull who delights in taking big, bloody bites out of spotlight-hogging media figures. He has mixed it up with moguls like Fox chief Rupert Murdoch and USA Interactive czar Barry Diller, knocking them down to size as the merger-mad media world of the mid-Nineties to late Nineties began to unravel. (Full disclosure: I edit Wolff's column for New York magazine.) In fact, he so angered Diller that when Wolff wrote scathingly of an early encounter with the then-budding media mogul, Diller was quoted in the New York Daily News as saying to a friend, "I should have killed Wolff when I had the chance."

But of all his targets, Wolff has made Tina Brown his public enemy number one. The blonde Brit Brown is a legendary magazine editor, credited with rescuing Vanity Fair, reviving The New Yorker (purists insist she did so by cheapening it) and producing one of the most anticipated media launches of the Nineties, Talk magazine. The Vanity Fair wannabe was launched with a megawatt-celebrity island party under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty and crashed to earth after just two and a half years when its backers pulled the plug. Since then, Brown has bided time by writing her own toothy, mogul-mauling column for The Times of London.

First Blood

Even before the first issue of Talk—which Brown launched with Miramax studio chief Harvey Weinstein and the publishing conglomerate Hearst—rolled off the presses, Wolff pronounced it doomed. In a column delineating her talents as "prurience, cruelty, sycophantry and snobbery," Wolff went personal and described an encounter with a clueless-sounding Brown at her start-up magazine's offices: "She seemed, behind her desk, tightly wound, severe, nervous, wearing a dowdy banker-girl blue suit...."

Even worse, he allowed her to hoist herself on her own hot hot hot petard. Doing nothing to disabuse readers of the notion that Brown was an overrated buzz merchant, he quoted her as saying, "I believe heat is quality."

Wolff wrote, "I was surprised that she would acknowledge this," adding that he told Brown that "many people would say the problem with Tina Brown is that she believes heat is quality." He caught her off-guard in a Freudian slip, and he wasn't about to give her the benefit of the doubt—or a gracious out.

"She looked uncomprehending for a second," Wolff wrote, twisting the knife. "Then stricken. 'No!' she said. 'Quality is heat.' She seemed annoyed that I might hold her to her slip, and our talk ended shortly thereafter."

In Talk, Brown returned fire, writing in her own "Diary" column of her encounter with the "heart-stoppingly handsome" Wolff: "When Wolff came to interview me, my heart sank as soon as he sidled up and fixed me with his baleful, masturbatory glare. Evidently he was having a less-than-perfect hair day. Perhaps I was too." Wolff's retort in the press at the time: "My hair is the same every day. I just think it's hilarious. She's so full of anger." He also tried to decipher her dig about his countenance. "What is a masturbatory glare? Was I just expressing self-love? What a turn of phrase."

Not a Twit

Wolff's real opportunity for a return volley, though, came when Talk folded in early 2002. He not only ridiculed the newly downsized Brown in a New York column titled "Failure is Hot!" but he declared Brown to be something of a fraud in a front-page interview with The New York Times. "This is no ordinary failure," he told the paper of record. "She staked everything and was wiped out. She's a little Enronish." While Brown worked the media circuit to chalk up Talk's failure to the post – 9/11 downturn, friends say she seethed about Wolff's opportunistic postmortem bashing. Since then, when Wolff and Brown have been spotted at the same magazine-industry events, neither has crossed the room for an air-kiss detente.

Wolff says Brown "has always been an interesting figure of the moment, but figures of the moment, when the moment passes, seem somewhat comic. And I guess that can be wounding, especially if you don't have a larger sense of yourself. We are all of us, more or less, comic figures, especially people in the media business, which is a business that's finally about searching for the spotlight.

"Right now it would seem the better part of valor for Tina Brown to go home to England. Because I may be the last person in America to care about her."

Brown retaliates by declining to acknowledge the very existence of her nemesis, suggesting, of course, that at least one Englishwoman cares not a whit about Michael ... who?

The Staggering Genius vs. Everyone

Dave Eggers vs. The Media—and Assorted Literary Pretenders

For many in the media it was too much to bear. Dave Eggers, 32, a gifted, shaggy-haired satirist, wrote a postmodern memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, that was so well received by critics and readers (National Book Award nomination, number one spot on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller chart) he was anointed the voice of a generation. Along the way, he managed to incite a seething, worked-up mob composed of media townspeople he'd bashed, as well as any number of sweaty aspirants to his literary success, including A Million Little Pieces memoirist James Frey and Everything's Burning novelist Ian Spiegelman.

First Blood

Eggers' antagonists argue that he started it all just by being, well, Dave Eggers. Despite his great reviews and busloads of cash—$1.4 million for the paperback rights to his memoir and a couple of million more for the movie rights—Eggers has displayed a nearly psychotic touchiness about any and all media that would deign to deconstruct his makeshift literary empire, including his clubby McSweeney's literary journal and website.

In 2001, Eggers published a scathing screed on McSweeneys.net, attacking New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick for his profile of the Genius genius. Eggers exhaustively catalogued and annotated Kirkpatrick's often-obsequious e-mails (in which the Times man prostrated himself in hopes of getting an Eggers interview) in a manner so abusively over-the-top that observers squirmed and wondered if Eggers had come undone.

His distended "Clarifications Page" dissection began: "This article, by Mr. Kirkpatrick, will be made an example of for many reasons." Among (continued on page 136)Media Feuds(continued from page 86) them: "factual fabrications"—Kirkpatrick it seems, had mistakenly placed a Newark bar in Trenton. (The Times ran a brief correction for that one mistake but ignored Eggers' other quibbles.)

Eggers further insisted that Kirkpatrick failed to get his OK before using off-the-record quotes Kirkpatrick had promised to run past him before publishing his Times article. Eggers' parsing and quoting of the complete text of his e-mail correspondence with Kirkpatrick was capped by a self-righteous declaration: "I think it's important that our exchange be published. It's the only remedy commensurate with the impact you enjoyed with your original piece. I want your friends and family to see it, and to say, 'David, ew.' You have done this kind of thing to too many people, and I'm really hoping this makes you and others in your position a bit more careful and willing to keep your word and tell the whole truth, as difficult as that can be. In your correspondence you sound like a normal, even warm, person who cares about truth, who enjoys books, etc. But in your journalism your persona is very different. Where does that tone come from? How can any reasonable person speak so snidely about books? Books!"

Eggers ranted on: "You used my words out of context and used words that were never meant for public consumption, and now it has happened to you. You cast doubt on my motives, and now people can wonder about yours. It must feel strange. You probably don't think it's fair. My guess is you don't think you come off too well, and you wish you could take each person reading this aside and try to explain. Welcome to the club."

Kirkpatrick did try to explain, though his restrained self-defense on a website against Eggers' charges came in at a mere 1000 words; Eggers' original was more than 10,000 words.

For many observers, the feud was business as usual for Eggers. He'd already antagonized media outlets by either flat-out declining interview requests or by demanding that they be conducted solely by e-mail—and that the resultant Q. and A.s be published, unedited, in their entirety. Did Eggers really care so little about self-promotion? Or was he attempting to change the rules of the game? Either way, he definitely wasn't making many friends.

The UK's Observer dubbed the press-averse Eggers "the J.D. Salinger of Generation X," and media writers and former media cohorts took Eggers to task for being almost pathologically thin-skinned. David Granger, editor in chief of Esquire—a publication that Eggers briefly worked for in the Nineties and ended up skewering in a thinly veiled story about an idiotic men's magazine—said of his former charge: "At some point, he thinks it's inevitable that he'll be crucified, because he's too special to live in this world. While he does have talent, he refuses to believe that anyone can tell him how he can improve on anything he does."

Prattle and Parlor Tricks

Bring on the crucifiers! Among Eggers' eager detractors in the literary realm: tattooed tough guy James Frey, who is the author of the recently published druggie memoir A Million Little Pieces. He told The New York Observer: "The Eggers book pissed me off. Because a book that I thought was mediocre was being hailed as the best book written by the best writer of my generation. Fuck that. And fuck him and fuck anybody that says that."

Big talk, but Frey backed off when contacted for an elaboration on his comments, leaving the stage to Ian Spiegelman, part of the New York Post's Page Six gossip pack. Spiegelman gladly admits his animus up front. "I have attacked Eggers in the Post as often as I can," he says, even bragging about being the first reporter to break the truly heartbreaking story of the 2001 suicide of Eggers' sister Beth, who had publicly taken issue with her brother's portrayal of her in Genius.

When Eggers' novel You Shall Know Our Velocity was released last fall, Spiegelman was instrumental in getting a negative piece about the book published in the Post. (Eggers was taunted by plenty of other media outlets for his publishing plan for the book, which involved printing a limited edition of the hardback to be sold only through a small number of bookstores—a misbegotten marketing move that did nothing to dispel the notion, fostered by his critics, that Eggers prefers to live in an exclusionary literary biosphere of his own creation.)

Eggers, of course, isn't talking, presumably having learned his lesson about backlash. But Spiegelman defends his pummeling of Eggers on, he says, purely literary grounds. "His writing isn't just heartless," Spiegelman says, "it's bloodless. All you ever get from him are the endless prattling and parlor tricks of a person who has never trusted any of his emotions."

Even worse, Spiegelman says Eggers is having a toxic effect on today's literature. "We can thank that curly-headed goon for the current flood of insufferable memoirs by precocious twentysomethings," says Spiegelman. (For the record, James Frey is a not-so-precocious thirtysomething.)

Like Frey, Spiegelman runs the risk of appearing to be angling for notoriety by attacking obvious target Eggers. Still, he insists that it's his job as a journalist to expose the fact that Emperor Eggers doesn't wear any clothes. "Sooner or later," Spiegelman says, "people are going to realize they've been swindled by Eggers' literary con game, and they'll see that his work is just a lot of chitter-chatter and self-referential bullshit."

Pulitzer Prize – winning Los Angeles Times writer Chuck Philips believes rapper Tupac Shakur was assassinated at the direction of rival Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace. Former Los Angeles Herald Examiner columnist and Rolling Stone contributor Randall Sullivan has his own theories about Tupac's murder—and Biggie's death six months later—which he published in Rolling Stone and in his book Labyrinth, an account of extensive corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. Suffice it to say that each reporter thinks the other is full of shit.

First Blood

Sullivan, a Rolling Stone writer for more than three decades, began investigating the Los Angeles police Rampart scandal for the magazine in September 2000. In doing so, Sullivan was invading turf that the Los Angeles Times had already been covering—inconsistently. On December 9, 1999, for instance, the paper reported in a front-page story that Amir Muhammad, a friend of convicted dirty cop David Mack's, was a suspect in Biggie's murder. But on May 3, 2000, Philips, who came to crime reporting through his investigative pieces on the music business, wrote that LAPD detectives did not, in fact, consider Muhammad to be a suspect.

The Philips story represented a retreat from the front-page piece, which, it turned out, had relied in part on inside information supplied by former LAPD detective Russell Poole. With his core theory—that Biggie's murder was connected to rogue LAPD cops—rebuffed by Philips, Poole found a more sympathetic ear in Randall Sullivan. And a reporters' feud was started.

"After his piece came out," says Sullivan, "I spoke to Chuck Philips once in a very brief conversation—he seemed to feel that he didn't need to talk to me." Sullivan was exploring leads and theories that Philips had dismissed. "I got personal and I think he felt his ego had been stepped on," Sullivan says.

Philips declines to address Sullivan's specific statements about him and his reporting at the Times, except to say, "I stand by the stories I have written about Tupac Shakur."

Poole, Sullivan argues, wasn't just any source—he was a highly decorated LAPD veteran who had been a lead detective on Biggie's murder. The story that Sullivan pieced together, using documents and evidence Poole had assembled, suggests that Death Row Records head Suge Knight arranged to have Shakur killed and that dirty LAPD cops (some of whom also moonlighted as security for Death Row) may have been involved in the hit on Biggie.

Sullivan feels Philips and the Times didn't want to explore that possibility for fear of increasing racial tensions in the already divided city. Sullivan's article appeared in Rolling Stone in June 2001, but even before it came out, Sullivan says he'd heard that Philips "was telling everyone he had a story coming out that was going to totally vindicate Suge Knight, and that we were going to be completely embarrassed." But Philips' vindication of Knight did not appear in the Los Angeles Times until last September.

Bullets and Allegations Fly

Philips' story, in implicating Biggie Smalls in Shakur's murder, indicated that the triggerman was Orlando Anderson. Anderson couldn't comment; he himself had been gunned down in 1998. Philips' story also places Biggie Smalls in Las Vegas, where Shakur was killed, but his family insists Biggie was in New Jersey the night of the shooting.

Sullivan says, "I was really expecting that Philips was going to have some kind of a bombshell in his piece. But at the end of it I said, 'That's it?' I mean, does he have some substantiation other than 'Trust us, we're the Los Angeles Times and this is what happened'? There are actually only two named sources in Philips' article—one is Suge Knight. And the only people who say this is how it went down are alleged anonymous Crips gang members."

Sullivan adds that he "doesn't really hold Chuck Philips as responsible as I do the editors at the Times for letting that piece of shit in the paper. I mean, how could they not say: 'Wait, we've got to have more than this to make a story'?" Sullivan thinks the Times championed Philips' story in part "because there would be no legal exposure. Biggie and Tupac are dead—no one can sue."

Philips, in a statement supplied by e-mail, writes, "I spent many years investigating Shakur's murder and developing the many sources on which my stories are based. Randall Sullivan and his source, Russell Poole, have their own theories on the matter. I wish them the best in their pursuits."

"How can any reasonable person speak so snidely about books?" Eggers wrote. "Books!"

Why Can't We Get Along: History's Greatest Feuds

Catholics vs. Protestants

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, he triggered a schism in the Christian faith between those who believe that Jesus is truly, truly awesome and those who believe he is simply the best.

Opening salvo: Decades of tension between the two religions ignited the Thirty Years' War, in 1618, pitting the Holy Roman Empire (present-day Germany and Austria) against England, France, Denmark and Sweden, among others.

Bloodiest conflict: A one-day siege by the Catholic League in 1631 burned the German city of Magdeburg to the ground, killing nearly 25,000 people, most of them civilians.

Resolution: The Peace of Westphalia (actually a collection of several smaller treaties) ended the war in 1648, thus ending religious persecution forever and ensuring tranquillity throughout Europe for all time.

Keith Richards vs. Elton John

It's a clash of rock millionaires when the immortal Rolling Stones guitarist takes on the troll-like balladeer in a war of words that barely obscures the fact that neither has made a listenable record in years.

Opening salvo: In a diatribe directed at Princess Diana, Richards took aim at Sir Elton's rewrite of Candle in the Wind, done in her honor. "I find it jars a little," said Keef. "After all, it was written for Marilyn Monroe. This is writing songs for dead blondes."

Bloodiest conflict: "He's pathetic," Elton snapped back. "It's like a monkey with arthritis trying to go onstage and look young. The Stones would have been better if they'd thrown Keith out 15 years ago."

Resolution: Little hope for peace after Richards dubbed Elton "Sir Fucking Brown Nose." "If you're gonna slam into me," scowled the surly Stone, "say it to my face. You won't have to worry about growing hair anymore!"

North vs. South

Barely four score and five years into the history of our nation, America found itself divided along geographic lines on issues ranging from slavery to proper usage of the word y'all.

Opening salvo: Rebel general P.G.T. Beauregard ordered his troops to fire on Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. They soon captured the Union base, and Virginia seceded on May 23 of that year.

Bloodiest conflict: On September 17, 1862, the collision between Union general George McClellan and Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Antietam would leave more than 23,000 casualties in a single day—the deadliest battle in American history.

Resolution: After General Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865, the South was subjected to a crippling period of Reconstruction, a combined 78 years in office from Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms and eight seasons of Mama's Family.