He's a regular on Page Six and he practically lives on the Today Show, but now Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko has reached a new level of quasi-fame: His very own drive-by in this month's Vanity Fair. The just-out December issue's "Coaster Correspondence" features Zinczenko helping fictional VF contributor Ed Coaster recover from a stroke by weaning him off bourbon, putting him on a regimen of ab crunches and lat pulldowns, and administering a "marjoram enema."

While it may seem like a harmless spoof, the whole thing appears to be an oh-so-inside dig at Zinczenko's history with deceased GQ editor Art Cooper, who suffered a fatal stroke while lunching with him at the Four Seasons. Zinczenko later wrote an editor's note in Men's Health implying that Cooper's personal trainer had killed him, a move that drew an angry rebuttal from the trainer and, according to GQ insiders, was considered beyond tacky by Cooper's widow, Amy Levin Cooper, a former editor in chief of Mademoiselle.

Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, was, of course, a longtime colleague, not to say friend, of both Coopers. "Art and Graydon would have lunch together, but you could tell Graydon felt he was far superior," said one former GQ editor. More to the point, perhaps, Carter had a ringside seat for the verbal pummeling Zinczenko received at the hands of Jon Stewart last fall during a magazine-industry panel. Apparently, watching Zinczenko humiliate himself in front of an audience of his peers didn't satisfy Carter's desire to see the sloganeer-in-chief brought low.

PREVIOUSLY
• Men's Health-er Eats, Shoots, and Leaves