Today’s local community newspaper quotes my 1997 profile of Patrick McCarthy, outgoing editorial director of W and WWD. “Bite the hand that feeds you,” he told me. “Never stop biting it. And you know what? It will feed you more.” Protege of the legendary editor-publisher John Fairchild, McCarthy was famous for following that dictum, but he also protected his powerful pals right up to the end. After he punished me for letting Vogue see a copy of Model at the same time W did by cancelling a story on the book, I learned to give his publications first looks at those that followed, often winning them coverage. But last year, in the run-up to the release of Rogues’ Gallery, I heard that much as some there liked it, it would never even be so much as acknowledged because I’d dared write more than superficially about two characters in the fashion-and-society show who’d become McCarthy intimates, Annette and Oscar de la Renta. So consider this one parting tribute to McCarthy as sabre-tooth tiger. Photo from www.wmagazine.com