Kiss and tell alert!

There must be something about the genre that appeals to the liberal mind - RAINES REAMS EX-COLLEAGUES, NEWS CULTURE AT GRAY LADY

Former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines has unleashed a blistering criticism of the paper where he worked for 25 years and of the onetime friend who ultimately fired him, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

"I felt on the day I became executive editor and on the day I drove away from West Forty-Third Street for the last time that the Times badly needs to raise the level of its journalism, and to do so quickly in order to survive and make the full transition to the digital age," Raines writes in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly - his first public comments since the days following his ouster last year.

Silly me - I just thought it would be nice if they stopped being such shameless leftoid shills. But here's the hot stuff:

Raines likens Sulzberger's efforts to thwart the paper's gossipmongers to a cartoon character known for persistence - and failure: "Every executive editor has been frustrated by the Times grapevine, and Arthur sometimes comes across as Wile E. Coyote, so elaborate and endlessly hopeful are his schemes to thwart the gossip network."

Raines also has some disparaging comments about the disparate experiences that shaped Arthur and his father, former publisher Arthur Sulzberger Sr., widely known as Punch.

"The difference between Punch and Arthur is the difference between the Marine Corps, where Punch had his formative experience, and Outward Bound, where Arthur had his," Raines writes. Both experiences teach you how to get to the top of the mountain, he notes, "but Arthur wants it to be touchy feely along the way."

Raines still refers to Arthur as his pal, but one can't help but wonder how long the chumship is going to last.