Craving Taste Of Carson Pie

NY Post, Page Six, February 22, 2005 - A down and dirty fight is brewing over Johnny Carson's $450 million estate. While surviving sons Cory and Chris stand in line to inherit a bundle and Carson's widow, Alexis Maas, is expected to receive at least $200 million, nothing was left to his illegitimate granddaughter, Christal Love Carson. Christal is the teenage daughter of Chris Carson and his former paramour, Tanena Love - and she wants a piece of the substantial pie for her daughter. Love, who sued Chris Carson for paternity and child support in 1987, told the Globe: "She is a Carson by birth and she got cheated all these years. It's about time she got what she deserves. With all the millions Johnny had, you'd think he'd have given his only granddaughter something." However, proving she even knew the late-night comic king will be a challenge. The reclusive Carson never met Christal, and the cards and letters she mailed to his palatial Malibu home were all returned unopened.

--EVAN GAHR wrote this item for Page Six, which has published numerous items about his reporting and writing for the Wall Street Journal, American Spectator and the American Enterprise magazine.

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NOW HEREEEE'S JOHNNY'S ILLEGITIMATE BLACK GRANDDAUGHTER PRIMED TO JUMP INTO THE BURGEONING FAMILY FEUD OVER HIS MULTIMILLION DOLLAR ESTATE, A BROUHAHA POTENTIALLY NASTY, BRUTIS AND LONG, REMINISCENT OF THE SEEMINGLY INTERMITTENT EPIC 1980s BATTLE BETWEEN THE COMPETING PARENTS WHO BOTH LAID CLAIM TO 'BABY M.'

Are Johnny Carson's kin folks circling around his estimated $450 million estate like a pack of vultures? Giddy that they finally sniffed out fresh meat? All poised for the kill?

The Feb. 14 Globe, a supermarket tabloid, reports that 'a battle is brewing' over how to dib up the late gabmeister's riches. The most ambitious player in this incipient family feud may be his biracial granddaughter, Christal Love Carson, who the comedian's son Chris fathered out of wedlock with his steady sweetie, a brown-skinned woman named Tanena Love.

But Carsons's two surviving sons, Cory and unwed father Chris. (The third son Ricky died in a 1991 auto accident). also have quite a bit at stake.

The Carson brothers "could get as little as $40 million a piece," which would leave them at odds with Carson's fourth wife, Alexis, who has at least $200 million headed her way, even though her marriage to Carson had broken down. During Johnny's final months, she decamped to her Pittsburgh penthouse apartment and returned to her famous hubby only when his health took a serious turn for the worse.

But it's Christal Love Carson, now an 18-year-old high school senior and her mom Tanena Love, who seem best prepared for any fight because They've sued for dollars before.

Tanena Love's 1987 a paternity lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend, Chris Carson brought some meager returns. Although the junior Carson pleaded poverty, with no income source other than the $35,000 his father gives him annually, a Florida court ordered that he pay Christal $175 monthly.

Tanena Love then had Playboy magazine sued for invasion of privacy because its March 1988 story divulged financial information from the paternity suit and included a picture of Christal taken without her consent. The lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge.

Now, the stakes are much higher. "My lawyer is investigating to see if Christal has any legal rights to Johnny's money or property," Tanena Love tells the Globe. "She is a Carson by birth and she got cheated all these years. It's about time she got what she deserves.'

'With all the millions Johnny had, you'd think he'd have given his only granddaughter something."

Or maybe not. The reclusive Carson never met Christal. Her cards and letters mailed to his palatial Malibu home were all returned unopened. But the Globe says that 'the pretty teen,' an aspiring dentist, burst out crying upon learning from friends who reacher her via cell phone in church that her grandpa had just passed away.'

Poignant stuff, perhaps, but legally worth squat. Wills are successfully contested only the deceased is proved to have written his or her final instructions with 'diminished capacity.'. Irrational, unfair or even strange choices are legally irrelevant. You can leave all your money to Napoleon provided you don't think you are Napoleon, lawyers say.

But don't count the Carson women out just yet. To circumvent the legal process, Christal and her ambitious mother might try to shame the Carson estate into coughing up some big bucks, just as they tried but failed to embarrass Carson into some kind of handout when they appeared in 1996 together on the Geraldo show where they talked about the perils and irony of living in a drug and crime-infested section of Fort Lauderdale, when you're Johnny Carson's flesh and blood.

Prominent estate lawyer Paul Gordon Hoffman doubts that this time around they'll do any better if they try to mau mau the Carson estate into paying out any money to avoid unflattering publicity that a lawsuit, however legally tenuous, might bring. "Nobody has a right to inherit," he tells this writer. "So what? He has a grandchild who is African-American. How often do people leave money to their grandchildren anyway?"

The New York Times obituary on Carson inadvertently omitted the black bastard from its list of Johnny's survivors, and thus far the paper of record has steadfastly failed to issue a correction or clarification.

Timesman Bill Carter who co-wrote the Carson obit with Richard Severo says he specifically asked NBC if the late great gabmeister had any grandchildren.

He was told no. It doesn't seem there was some kind of cover-up; the omission seems part and parcel with sloppy work on NBC's part because they also misidentified one of Johnny Carson's two surviving sons (the third was killed in a 1991 car crash).

After inquiries from this reporter, Carter quickly told Chuck Strum about Carson's other blood relative.

Thus far, however, the Times has failed to issue any kind of correction or clarification. Why not? Is the paper of record, which often indulges cultural liberalism worried that any inclusion of a bastard child among lists of survivors would condone illegitimacy? That would be quite ironic given that the paper of record lists companions (both hetero and homo) as survivors. The companions, generally, have less legitimacy than Christal Love Carson whose legal standing was established by the 1997 paternity lawsuit her mother filed against Chris Carson, who was then ordered to pay child support.

Does this mean the Times is endorsing cultural conservatism. Or merely using it as an excuse to avoid admitting a rather embarrassing mistake? Whatever the reason, given that the Times has decided to deliberately withhold information about the black Christal from readers why should anybody take the paper seriously when it extols the virtues of diversity?

And "insensitivity" to minorities.

By dropping Christal Carson down the memory hole the Grey Lady harms her cause.

Obituary editor Chuck Strum and executive editor Bill Keller did not return repeated phone calls. (The two items immediately above and title "Black Bastard" have nothing to do with Page Six and are for Chimpstein.com alone. Chimpstein might look like an affront to the Creationist wing of the GOP, but he's actually a social conservative; some might even call him a knuckle-scraping reactionary. That's a joke, of course, but the Page Six disclaimer is true.)

Evan Gahr EvanGahr@aol.com has written for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Washington Jewish Week and many other publications.