Gabriel Sherman has a huge profile of Jared Kushner in New York magazine today, with a hefty section devoted to his father's little "Set up my brother-in-law with a hooker and secretly tape it and send the video to his family" episode, which landed him in jail. But let's start with Jared's high praise for the Observer, the paper that's been wracked by layoffs and budget cuts under his leadership:

"I found the paper unbearable to read, it was like homework," Jared tells me.

Haha. But Jared is changing that! With his powers of motivation. After he hired PR man Bob Sommer as President of the Observer, he told him, " We called it Weekend at Bernie's, because it was like dead people walking around." Good one! After the NYO's longtime editor Peter Kaplan left and severe layoffs hit the paper, Jared put it to his underpaid, beleaguered journalists straight:

At a meeting last month, Jared told his staff that the Observer needed to move on. "Kaplan is a classy guy, but he's old-school," Jared said. "If we were doing our jobs right, Gawker wouldn't have a reason to exist. Curbed wouldn't have a reason to exist.
"Every Observer writer wants to be a novelist," he went on. "But we need to be deliberate about when we are short and when we are long."

Jared, you are our reason to exist. And your writers don't want to be novelists; they have to, because you laid them off. But Jared's not the type to buy into the doom and gloom; he 's optimistic about the dying newspaper industry to a comical extent. Let's hope he's just lying to put on a happy face:

"I think we're definitely at a bottom for newspapers," he said a couple of weeks later. "Once this Russian winter is over, once the papers fail that should fail, you'll see a resurgence. I think the Observer two years from now will be a very viable entity."

He also promised to run the NYO as a "profit-making entity," which would be a pretty historic moment! Jared seems like not a terrible guy, though, considering the way he grew up—favorite son of a mogul father, who hired a PI to set up his brother-in-law, who he hated, with a hooker, and then had to be talked out of sending the video of the incident to his brother-in-law's children. Jared does not seem to be that cut throat, at least. His dad made huge donations to Harvard and then to NYU to smooth Jared's admission to those august institutions. And it's paid off; the swaggering underclassman has blossomed into a total heart throb. Ivanka Trump found his pimp game irresistible. Their steamy secret of attraction:

"Jared and I are very similar in that we're very ambitious," Ivanka tells me one morning in her office on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower. "That's what makes it so amazing to be in a relationship with someone who is supportive of that. I'm happy for him when he is in the office working late. I know how good that feels when you sit down and return e-mails."

We're fanning ourselves rapidly! Jared Kushner's made some mistakes, sure. He may not be able to run a newspaper very well (who can, these days?), but he's great material. As long as you don't work for him.
[New York Mag. Pic: Getty]

Just think: Kushner's investors thought their money was tucked securely into the rock-solid real estate market when really a tiny sliver of it was being sacrificed in a media bonfire so the Observer could investigate exactly why and how Park Slope moms would like to fuck Don Draper.

If that's somehow "wrong" in this topsy-turvy world then we don't want to be right. Honestly, the money probably fell out of Charles' pockets during a walk through the offices or something. When you buy a building numbered "666 5th Street," strange things are bound to happen!

The Closing: Charles Kushner [Real Deal]

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of the Kushners

He has now successfully gone after figures with Democratic ties, like the powerful former State Senator John Lynch and real-estate magnate Charles Kushner, as well as Republicans like former Essex County Executive James Treffinger, the G.O.P.'s top Senate prospect in 2002.

Wha? Charles Kushner? That monster? Okay, Christie's square with us: He put away a bad man.

Prosecutor Makes a Meal of N.J. Senate Race [NYO]
Earlier: Charles Kushner Back at the Office?

Kushner keeping low profile [NorthJersey]

Like many well behaved white collar criminals, he only spends weekdays at the halfway house, but on weekends, he is free to frolic at his two-acre oceanfront estate in Long Branch, NJ. His mini-mansion is fashioned in a classic Spanish style complete with stucco walls and red roof.

Kushner's sentenced to live in a halfway house and the authorities only let him roam in his mini-mansion just two days per week? It's a wonder the poor thing can walk upright after such humiliation. This might be a record for cruel and unusual punishment.

Shocker: New Observer Pub's Rich Jailbird Dad Not Breaking Rocks on Weekends [Animal]

He got 24 months? He gets 54 days off a year and gets to serve the last 10% of his time (the 100 or so days) in a halfway house, which is still under Bureau Of Prisons control. So he is free this month; no parole in the federal system, just a formula that works out for him like everybody else. He will have some period of Supervised Release which will be monitored by the Probation Office.

Inmate Locator [Federal Bureau of Prisons]

[Photo: Getty Images]