Far from the revulsion experienced by New York Post columnist John Podhoretz as he read Ed Klein's The Truth About Hillary, my chief reaction was of tedium: at the warmed-over, thrice-told anecdotes rendered in a prose so purple that one wonders how Klein and Sentinel (the publisher) forgot to link the book's publication to the establishment of a 900 number re-enacting the lesbian panting that occurred at Wellesley in the late 1960s, which Hillary Clinton, as Klein might put, must surely have overheard and found transfixing.
But he did catch my interest from time to time. Take, for example, page 155.
It is there that he recounts an exchange between Clinton and Harold Ickes that took place in early 1999. It was a Sunday, and the two had both just watched (from separate locations) a Meet the Press episode in which her putative Senate candidacy was discussed. The first lady phoned the operative when the show ended and asked his opinion.
"Well, Hillary," Klein quotes Ickes as having said, "if you don't want to do this, don't fuck around with it. Issue a Shermanesque statement, and that'll be the end of it."
"Well," Hillary said, "that's not where I am with this."
I recognized the quote, or most of it, as having come from my own reporting, in my book Hillary's Turn. I interviewed Ickes while working on the book (Clinton didn't cooperate), and he recounted the exchange to me. I was the original source for the quote.
Sure enough, the footnotes say that the exchange is taken from page 19 of my book. But then I turned to page 19 of my book, which quotes Ickes as saying, "If you don't want to do this, don't mouse around with it."
So, from Tomasky to Klein, "mouse" somehow became "fuck." Undoubtedly, it's a better word. I wish Ickes had said "fuck" to me; it would certainly have made for a better quote. And no, I did not bowdlerize it. Unfortunately, I felt bound by the usual workaday rule of reporting what the person actually said.
So why did it change? Aside from the fact that copulation (at least of the girl-girl sort) seems to be on Klein's brain, I can't help but think that Klein decided "fuck" was preferable because it fit far better with the squalid image of Ickes that the book attempts to portray. Ickes is referred to as "the dark prince" on page 27, when he is introduced, and again on page 154, as he is reintroduced. Dark princes, as we all know, don't mouse around with words like "mouse."
OK, it may be a small thing. Mediamatters.org has done an excellent job of cataloging Klein's more serious errors. And no, I'm obviously not suing. But it's really bizarre. Did Klein think I wouldn't notice this? More importantly, if he put the dirtiest word in the English language in Harold Ickes' mouth, what else might he have put in other peoples' mouths?
Yes, a small thing, my little issue; but symbolic of the entire, pathetic project. This book isn't simply trash. It may well be libel.
I wish I could say the thought was my own, but it's the intellectual property of citizen Jake Miller, who wrote, in his one-star Amazon review: "I am a First-Amendment scholar. This book is, without a doubt, libel. By the most stringent standards, applicable to public figures, who can almost never claim libel ... this book is libel. ... Willful lies intended to defame."
So, while I won't sue, I have to say I'd have a chuckle if Hillary decided to. Yes, yes, a journalist isn't supposed to say that. New York Times v. Sullivan and all that. Our freedom to write about public figures.
Two points. First, as a journalist, I feel compelled to speak in defense only of other journalists. This book leaves Klein's status in that regard quite open to question. Second -- well, let's cut to the chase: Does New York Times v. Sullivan mean that "journalists" should be able to offer sly implications about a public person's sex life on the basis of surmise and rumor?
The problem runs deeper even than Klein. Today, with the explosion of Web sites, all sorts of propagandists and provocateurs who aren't journalists can hide behind the label when it comes to First Amendment protection. Can they write anything they please about public figures, knowing that they can print lies as long as Sullivan is in force?
As I noted, some will think these are heretical words for a journalist to produce. But mark my words: Someday, some pseudo-reporter will cross a line; a fed-up public figure will say, as it were, "Mouse the media! I've had enough!"; a different Supreme Court than the one that rendered the Sullivan decision in 1964 will overturn it.
Real, responsible journalists, burdened by the mundane rituals of respecting facts and printing what people actually said, will pay a price for this sort of Kleinian garbage. The truth will suffer, and this journalistically licentious age -- in which, interestingly enough, most of the promiscuity happens to involve writing about the Clintons -- will rightly be named as the culprit.
Hillary, call David Kendall!
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect executive editor.
