Recognition and success caused her confidence to go up, though she also suffered from the classic trials of celebrity: isolation, sycophancy, exploitation.

Since I often covered parties, this was made manifest by the sycophancy of many who we mocked, which in turn, simply fed my contempt.

The writers’ conference depicted in “Country Porch Lights” is a cesspool of snobbery and sycophancy, gilded with “self-indulgent aphorisms and psycho-babble.”