Salon Newsreal | Murderers, cannibals -- lesbians!

T A B L E+T A L K
Gentlemen, how does Viagra work for you? Weigh in on the impotence debate in the Science and Health area of Table Talk

D A I L Y+Q U O T E
The People vs. Larry Flynt, Part 2

R E C E N T L Y
"It's time to speak out"
By David Corn
Re: the Clinton scandals, confidential GOP memo urges Republicans to go on the attack
(04/30/98)
Gingrich's impeachment scenario
By Jonathan Broder
A veteran Washington reporter says the House Speaker visualizes the removal of both Clinton and Gore
(04/29/98)
Triumphant in death
By David J. Garrow
James Earl Ray is laughing all the way to hell, thanks to the King family's preposterous belief that he didn't kill Martin Luther King Jr.
(04/28/98)
American Spectator audit: Is the fox guarding the henhouse?
By Jonathan Broder
Theodore Olson, a close friend of Kenneth Starr's and a former attorney for David Hale, heads the embattled magazine's crucialinternal investigation
(04/27/98)
Cambodia's other madmen
By Judith Coburn and Joshua Phillips
However monstrous Pol Pot's actions, he is not the only one to have turned the country into a living hell
(04/24/98)
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MURDERERS, CANNIBALS -- LESBIANS! | PAGE 2 OF 2
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You write: "The gossip of every election is very much a product of the issues and anxieties of the moment." My reaction was, jeez, we must be really screwed up given the kind of gossip coming out of Washington right now.
A lot of it has to do with harassment of women, women in the workplace and stuff like that. That's why there's so much argument about how differently the accusations against Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton have been treated. It's clear that we have not comfortably worked out these issues. It's a real, live, churning thing.
I also think it's a great sign that we're only talking about sex now. You don't hear rumors anymore that someone's secretly a Catholic, secretly black or secretly Jewish. Roosevelt was supposed to be a secret Jew. Harding was supposed to be secretly black. Poor John Frémont, when he wasn't being a secret cannibal, was supposed to be a secret Catholic.
But now, Hillary Clinton's supposed to be a secret lesbian.
Powerful women always get gossiped about as lesbians. That's part of a very cosmic tradition.
In the book, you discuss the multitude of small presses operating in small towns across the country. At the end of the book you talk about the Internet. You write: "Gossip on the Internet really is like a transcribed version of careless back fence chatter or barroom meanderings" -- but spread much faster far beyond a small town. Are we returning to this old-time, small paper rag with the Internet?

I think that's exactly it. In the 19th century there were all these little weenie papers. In a place like Marion, Ohio, where Warren Harding came from, there would be five or 10 papers in this little bitty town. In large cities there'd be tons of newspapers. A lot of them didn't have many staff and weren't well financed, so they weren't that worried about their long-term credibility with advertisers. They were just trying to get enough attention to get through the week. I think there's a lot of that now. Whenever you have a lot of small, competitive media out there you tend to get a very loud dialogue with people shouting and trying to get attention, which is what's happening now.
That doesn't say much about the journalistic possibilities of the Internet.
I do find a lot of the chat stuff, the political chat, scary. But I also remember reading that when John Calhoun was a kid living in some plantation in the middle of nowhere he'd had one copy of one issue of a newspaper that he read over and over and over again. Whatever gossip and inaccuracies were in that one copy of the newspaper, John Calhoun took to heart and memorized. With all this different stuff coming at you on the Internet, it's probably healthier in the long run. People are not racing out mad as dogs because they heard one rumor that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster, or something.
You write that before radio and film and TV, politicians were our celebrities. Now it seems we've come back to that. You can't go a week when there isn't some movie being released with a Bill Clinton-type president in it.
The line is certainly blurred. That's because the political parties have fallen apart, so politicians have to sell themselves. They need media attention and have to do whatever it takes to get media attention. And because people are not as interested in politicians as they are in singers, actors and other entertainment celebrities, they have to put up with a lot more abuse.
Bill Clinton is a real pioneer in that. He so often resuscitates his career by going on TV and making people feel comfortable with him. But in the process of doing that, he also lost some of the dignity that politicians used to have when they were more remote. If you want to be that accessible -- talking about your underwear on MTV -- you're inevitably going to lose protection from the more outrageous forms of discourse.
You write about Grover Cleveland, who was wrongly accused of fathering and abandoning a child, and cite a Rev. Ball who kept pushing the rumors. "Behind almost every gossip-driven campaign," you write, "there lies a figure like Ball, someone who is willing to work full-time spreading and improving upon the scandal." Is Kenneth Starr a modern-day Rev. Ball?

[Laughs] I was in Pittsburgh on the book tour, where Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing guy who funds so many of these things, lives and owns a newspaper. Everybody there wanted to talk about him as the Rev. Ball. Everyone finds their own Rev. Ball in this one. There are several candidates. [Rep.] Dick Armey [R-Texas] looks like he wants to be Rev. Ball.
There are a few presidents who seem to be made of rubber. Franklin Roosevelt, for example. The press didn't report on his health problems; the press didn't report that Kennedy was screwing around and had Addison's disease.
The health thing seems to me in many ways a whole lot more serious than the sex stuff. The idea that Kennedy was in Europe, negotiating with the Russians, at a time when he was on all these drugs and in absolutely unbearable pain when he wasn't taking mood-altering painkillers, is just amazing to me. That's the kind of gossip that people really ought to know. It's just incredible to me that the media were willing to overlook it.
Is it because health was considered too private?
For a long time it was. Now it's not, although it can be pretty embarrassing. I can understand why Eisenhower was taken aback when the doctors started reporting his bowel movements to the entire nation. News: The president is regular! Now there's a much higher expectation about what you are allowed to know about the president.
How does the press choose to protect someone in office? You're covering the president, you know what he's doing --
You don't always know what he's doing. The reporters I talked to all thought Kennedy was having affairs, but they didn't know with who; it was all very vague. They certainly didn't think there was the mass screwing around that we hear about now. And the same thing happened in Clinton's first term. People speculated about whether he might be straying but you didn't hear specific allegations. When people hinted at it they were sort of scoffed at. It was only Ken Starr and Paula Jones' lawyers coming forward with legally definable events that forced this discussion out.
SALON | May 1, 1998

T A B L E+T A L K Gentlemen, how does Viagra work for you? Weigh in on the impotence debate in the Science and Health area of Table Talk D A I L Y+Q U O T E The People vs. Larry Flynt, Part 2 R E C E N T L Y "It's time to speak out" By David Corn Re: the Clinton scandals, confidential GOP memo urges Republicans to go on the attack (04/30/98) Gingrich's impeachment scenario By Jonathan Broder A veteran Washington reporter says the House Speaker visualizes the removal of both Clinton and Gore (04/29/98) Triumphant in death By David J. Garrow James Earl Ray is laughing all the way to hell, thanks to the King family's preposterous belief that he didn't kill Martin Luther King Jr. (04/28/98) American Spectator audit: Is the fox guarding the henhouse? By Jonathan Broder Theodore Olson, a close friend of Kenneth Starr's and a former attorney for David Hale, heads the embattled magazine's crucialinternal investigation (04/27/98) Cambodia's other madmen By Judith Coburn and Joshua Phillips However monstrous Pol Pot's actions, he is not the only one to have turned the country into a living hell (04/24/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		MURDERERS, CANNIBALS -- LESBIANS! \| PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - You write: "The gossip of every election is very much a product of the issues and anxieties of the moment." My reaction was, jeez, we must be really screwed up given the kind of gossip coming out of Washington right now. A lot of it has to do with harassment of women, women in the workplace and stuff like that. That's why there's so much argument about how differently the accusations against Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton have been treated. It's clear that we have not comfortably worked out these issues. It's a real, live, churning thing. I also think it's a great sign that we're only talking about sex now. You don't hear rumors anymore that someone's secretly a Catholic, secretly black or secretly Jewish. Roosevelt was supposed to be a secret Jew. Harding was supposed to be secretly black. Poor John Frémont, when he wasn't being a secret cannibal, was supposed to be a secret Catholic. But now, Hillary Clinton's supposed to be a secret lesbian. Powerful women always get gossiped about as lesbians. That's part of a very cosmic tradition. In the book, you discuss the multitude of small presses operating in small towns across the country. At the end of the book you talk about the Internet. You write: "Gossip on the Internet really is like a transcribed version of careless back fence chatter or barroom meanderings" -- but spread much faster far beyond a small town. Are we returning to this old-time, small paper rag with the Internet? I think that's exactly it. In the 19th century there were all these little weenie papers. In a place like Marion, Ohio, where Warren Harding came from, there would be five or 10 papers in this little bitty town. In large cities there'd be tons of newspapers. A lot of them didn't have many staff and weren't well financed, so they weren't that worried about their long-term credibility with advertisers. They were just trying to get enough attention to get through the week. I think there's a lot of that now. Whenever you have a lot of small, competitive media out there you tend to get a very loud dialogue with people shouting and trying to get attention, which is what's happening now. That doesn't say much about the journalistic possibilities of the Internet. I do find a lot of the chat stuff, the political chat, scary. But I also remember reading that when John Calhoun was a kid living in some plantation in the middle of nowhere he'd had one copy of one issue of a newspaper that he read over and over and over again. Whatever gossip and inaccuracies were in that one copy of the newspaper, John Calhoun took to heart and memorized. With all this different stuff coming at you on the Internet, it's probably healthier in the long run. People are not racing out mad as dogs because they heard one rumor that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster, or something. You write that before radio and film and TV, politicians were our celebrities. Now it seems we've come back to that. You can't go a week when there isn't some movie being released with a Bill Clinton-type president in it. The line is certainly blurred. That's because the political parties have fallen apart, so politicians have to sell themselves. They need media attention and have to do whatever it takes to get media attention. And because people are not as interested in politicians as they are in singers, actors and other entertainment celebrities, they have to put up with a lot more abuse. Bill Clinton is a real pioneer in that. He so often resuscitates his career by going on TV and making people feel comfortable with him. But in the process of doing that, he also lost some of the dignity that politicians used to have when they were more remote. If you want to be that accessible -- talking about your underwear on MTV -- you're inevitably going to lose protection from the more outrageous forms of discourse. You write about Grover Cleveland, who was wrongly accused of fathering and abandoning a child, and cite a Rev. Ball who kept pushing the rumors. "Behind almost every gossip-driven campaign," you write, "there lies a figure like Ball, someone who is willing to work full-time spreading and improving upon the scandal." Is Kenneth Starr a modern-day Rev. Ball? [Laughs] I was in Pittsburgh on the book tour, where Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing guy who funds so many of these things, lives and owns a newspaper. Everybody there wanted to talk about him as the Rev. Ball. Everyone finds their own Rev. Ball in this one. There are several candidates. [Rep.] Dick Armey [R-Texas] looks like he wants to be Rev. Ball. There are a few presidents who seem to be made of rubber. Franklin Roosevelt, for example. The press didn't report on his health problems; the press didn't report that Kennedy was screwing around and had Addison's disease. The health thing seems to me in many ways a whole lot more serious than the sex stuff. The idea that Kennedy was in Europe, negotiating with the Russians, at a time when he was on all these drugs and in absolutely unbearable pain when he wasn't taking mood-altering painkillers, is just amazing to me. That's the kind of gossip that people really ought to know. It's just incredible to me that the media were willing to overlook it. Is it because health was considered too private? For a long time it was. Now it's not, although it can be pretty embarrassing. I can understand why Eisenhower was taken aback when the doctors started reporting his bowel movements to the entire nation. News: The president is regular! Now there's a much higher expectation about what you are allowed to know about the president. How does the press choose to protect someone in office? You're covering the president, you know what he's doing -- You don't always know what he's doing. The reporters I talked to all thought Kennedy was having affairs, but they didn't know with who; it was all very vague. They certainly didn't think there was the mass screwing around that we hear about now. And the same thing happened in Clinton's first term. People speculated about whether he might be straying but you didn't hear specific allegations. When people hinted at it they were sort of scoffed at. It was only Ken Starr and Paula Jones' lawyers coming forward with legally definable events that forced this discussion out. SALON \| May 1, 1998