Ron Burkle, special pleader

A clearer picture begins to emerge: In California, up till recently, Burkle had mostly a good-guy reputation. He was:

feted as AFL-CIO humanitarian of the year and the Los Angeles County Boy Scouts Jimmy Stewart person of the year, and … is the namesake of the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA — to mention but a few of his honors -

Thanks to his “sting” operation on Page Six and Jared Paul Stern, however, he is now

known on Gawker’s salacious Web site and on Page Six as the “greasy grocer,” “babe-loving billionaire,” “paunchy merchant prince” and, perhaps most hurtful of all, “evil rich guy.”

What indicts him in my book is the fact that he’s a thuggish, hypocritical jerk after the fact:

In a recent interview, Burkle said his confrontations with the Fourth Estate merely demonstrated his commitment to the integrity of the press.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Burkle said of the Stern sting. “But I think it actually speaks to the fact that we want to see good journalism…. If I wanted to be disingenuous, I would have worked out some kind of an arrangement [with Stern] and no one would have ever heard about the whole thing.”

And he thinks the unwritten rules of popular journalism should be rewritten just for him.

He also reiterated his oft-repeated distaste for publicity — even as his attempted entry into the news business invited more scrutiny — and insisted that he shouldn’t have to give up his friendships with the rich and famous to make the attention go away.