CATFIGHT! Froelich, Schoeneman (inset)

Hypothetical question: If a writer is going to call someone she knows a bitch in a national magazine, does it make a difference if she gives her victim a tiny fig-leaf of a pseudonym? And can somebody claim to be the bigger person while at the same time trying to get the last word in a petty feud?

Okay, so those aren't hypothetical. The writer in question is Deborah Schoeneman, the magazine is Playboy, and the victim (or bitch, depending on your point of view) is Page Six's Paula Froelich. In an article in the April issue, Schoeneman, a former gossip writer for New York, rehashes her fraught history with Froelich under the guise of introducing readers to the new "gossip game," circa 2007—a game in which, to hear Schoeneman tell it, people like Froelich and her New York Post cohorts no longer matter.

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