The all-out brawl in Times Sq. is getting bloodier by the day. With Vanity Fair and The New Yorker drawing lines in the tourist-run streets of midtown, the Condes stop at nothing in their take down of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and the New York Times.

It started with Seth Mnookin's Vanity Fair article, "Unreliable Sources", which, if you have an hour or so to read, is the only piece has come close to actually detangling all of this Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, Valerie Plame stuff. We've pulled the Pinch lines, plus rebuttle, after the jump:

Sulzberger had struggled to prove he was the right man for the job since the day he took over from his father, Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger, in 1992.

…[He] has not been so lucky. For the second time in less than three years, [Sulzberger's] being accused by his employees of being dangerously out of touch. Why, with a newsroom already so divided about Miller's behavior, did he need to wage such a public campaign on her behalf?

Ouch. But, little did the Pinchy know, that was just 4 Times Square's warm-up round. Ken Auletta's New Yorker item almost requires a bullet proof vest:

Twice in the last three years, the Times newsroom has suffered the equivalent of a nervous breakdown, and critics say that Sulzberger has managed the latest crisis as poorly as he did the episode involving the fabrications of the reporter Jayson Blair, which led, in 2003, to the firing of Howell Raines, the executive editor.

One often hears it said that Sulzberger lacks sufficient gravitas for a man in his position, which is perhaps another way of saying that he is still more a prince than a mature king. Sulzberger’s hair has begun to turn gray and to recede, and yet, like Tom Hanks in the movie “Big,” he seems to be only impersonating an older man. He is often known as Young Arthur, and, behind his back, people still call him Pinch, in contrast to his father, Punch. He tends to draw attention to himself with a loud cackle or an awkwardly offhand remark"

The Grey Lady's reaction? Lets just say, she did not stand by her man. An 'insider' tells the New York Post:

"There's a sense that The New Yorker piece is fairly accurate, that Pinch is tone deaf and not the brightest bulb," said the insider."

"The crisis right now is not a journalistic one, it is a business crisis," said another staffer yesterday. "The entire industry is being rocked, and the perception is that you have a guy at the top who may not have the chops to deal with it."

The real question, though, is: when will New York rename midtown west "Nast Square"? We really want to see a balding man staning in front of the 42nd St. sign, cackling loudly. Of course we mean Si Newhouse.

Unreliable Sources [Seth Mnookin, Vanity Fair]
THE INHERITANCE [Ken Auletta, New Yorker]
'PINCH' GETS A PUNCH [Keith J. Kelly, NYP]