_______________ SALON'S COVERAGE OF THE CLINTON CRISIS
	I would like to congratulate those of you at Salon that have had the guts to write fair and informative articles concerning the president, exposing Starr and his henchmen for the political hounds that they are. I was starting to think that journalism, a true art form, was permanently lodged in the sewer. Please keep up the great work! Make these political "scumbags" accountable! -- C. Johnson
_______________ MARTHA'S QUEST BY KEVIN KERRANE (03/12/98)
	Kevin Kerrane's worshipful report on his interviews with journalist Martha Gellhorn reminded me all too vividly of my own encounters with this dreadful woman, this Sacred Cow of combat reporting, whose insistence that no one mention her five-year marriage to Ernest Hemingway might have been merely ludicrous were it not for the mean streak running through it. Kerrane thinks Gellhorn "would have resented" seeing Hemingway's name in her obituaries when she died last month. She'd have done a lot more than that: She'd have screamed, hollered, fussed, fumed, thwarted, threatened, obstructed and, probably, put a hex on the offending reporter. I was sent to London to interview Gellhorn in 1990 by the now-defunct Lear's magazine, an interview to which Gellhorn had agreed on the condition that the name of Ernest Hemingway not be mentioned, not only anywhere in the story, but anywhere in the magazine. She demanded to have it in writing -- "In writing!" she exclaimed -- that this well-known union, this undeniable fact of history, go unreported in what was supposed to be an honest account of her career. And there were to be "no tricks" from the editor, Gellhorn warned, no "biographical boxes" to give the game away. In vain I protested that I had no interest in Hemingway at all, that I didn't give a damn about the Lost Generation, deep-sea fishing, big game, bullfights or macho rodomontade. But I had to mention the marriage, because the marriage was a fact. She canceled the story. "I do not want my name associated with his," she said. Now that Gellhorn's dead, I'm delighted to spread the news: Martha Gellhorn was married to Ernest Hemingway. To be exact, from 1940 to 1945. Her name IS associated with his and it will be for as long as either one of them is remembered. Kerrane has bought the Gellhorn line when he says that, in 1937, she went to Spain on her own, not with Hemingway, in order to report on the Spanish Civil War. How she got there is immaterial; once she did, she was whisked into the highest echelons of government and reporting thanks to her association with Hemingway and nothing else. Friends of mine who were there with them remembered that Gellhorn was "more Hemingway than he was," constantly talking about "the Front," flopping into a chair at the end of the day, saying, "Jeez, I'm pooped!" and, despite her Bryn Mawr education, dumbing down her speech so her words came out as "dem" and "doze" and "Cripes!" Indeed, to the end of her life Gellhorn liked to surround herself with the toughest of tough-guy journalists, as if she was, in fact, just one of the boys. This was the woman who once savagely attacked Lillian Hellman in the Paris Review as a "self-serving apochryphiar." Well, it's out of her control now, wherever she is. The Truth, at last, can breathe. -- Peter Kurth
_______________ SHAMELESS HUSSY FEMINISM BY SUSIE BRIGHT (03/12/98)
	Perhaps Susie Bright should stick to writing about sex and leave the political analysis to someone who can make a coherent argument. Despite the vitriol she hurls at the National Organization for Women, I finished her article utterly confused as to what, if anything, she believes about feminism, the Clinton scandals or anything else except her own status as a "shameless hussy." She attacks feminists who support Clinton as "flacks of the Democratic party," yet goes on to make several arguments that sound like they could have come straight from the Clinton camp (it's nobody's business what the Clinton's marital arrangements are, Monica Lewinsky was not a victim, Hillary Clinton should be admired for her poise). She talks about people who exploit the term "feminist" but gives almost no indication as to who these people are or what their political views are like. The only thing I did manage to grasp is that Susie Bright is the unquestioned arbiter of feminism. You do not argue with her if you want to be a true feminist. There are people who exploit the term "feminist." People like Camille Paglia, who never misses an opportunity to explain how men are oppressed today. People like Neera Sohoni, who uses her feminist label to attack Hillary Clinton for not leaving her husband. And, yes, maybe even people like Susie Bright, if I could only figure out what she really stood for. -- Julia Lipman SALON | March 17, 1998