Presswatchl Playmates of the Month
Corry, John
Playmates of the Month by John Corry T he mob that set out to lynch Clarence Thomas this time was not as big as the one before, but certainly it was better organized. The mob sprang up from the...
...It may be, though, that the media are unable, or unwilling, to notice...
...425-2 inch...
...She asked Savage an additional question about what was hanging on Thomas's wall...
...First, the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from Strange Justice, the book by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, two Journal reporters...
...Their Washington bureaus have been run like adjuncts of the Democratic National Committee for years...
...It was all vaguely depressing, but there was one straw to cling to...
...But in the Journal, Mayer and Abramson had written this: "Ms...
...Did Thomas have a strong yen for pornography...
...IMPORTANT Allow six weeks for address change...
...Lewis E. Curlee, M.D...
...You hoped that Clarence Thomas was pleased...
...ABC obligingly called them instead...
...Only CBS was still shaky, making do with a recycled story about sexism in the military...
...Wright said she didn't see the EEOC boss's behavior as sexual harassment, because she never felt harassed by it...
...In other words, Thomas might not have gotten on the Supreme Court, and ABC was mourning the fact that he had...
...Whatever else might have been in the book, they had begun with the part that seemed most wounding to Thomas...
...If you wondered how long it took everyone to regroup, the answer was two days...
...But it was failing to mention, much less interview, any of the dozen women who had testified at the Senate hearing in The American Spectator January 1995 43 She was supported by Jourdain, who said that Thomas's behavior sometimes left Wright "in tears...
...Why wouldn't the two authors face him on television...
...Liberal columnists and commentators brayed approvingly in the next few days, and then Newsweek devoted five pages to what it called the Mayer-Abramson finding: "Basically . . . that Thomas is a liar, a sexual harasser with a strong yen for pornography...
...The other nudes had vanished...
...She did not return for some time, and when she did she was introduced by Nina Totenberg, who said that if Savage had been allowed to testify, she would have said that Thomas had a "pronounced interest in pornography...
...Cultural warfare is cruel, and.when combined with sexual politics it can be lethal...
...Along with Savage, they were Thomas's principal accusers, and if the Senate had heard their testimony, Totenberg said, it "might have changed the course of history...
...Thus the stage was set for Savage's big disclosure, the explosive information promised earlier...
...This turned out to be, anti-climactically, the single Playboy centerfold.support of Thomas...
...the next best-kept secret was that the Democrats had lost control of the House...
...I was just shocked," she said...
...They seemed to be giving away the whole game here...
...The mob sprang up from the media, and its tactics were more precise...
...You almost had to admire Abramson's chutzpah...
...When Hardnett finally returned, it was only to complain about the "atmosphere" in Thomas's office...
...The suggestion was crude and really quite graphic: A young black bachelor lives alone, with only a mattress on the floor, and all around him, even on the bathroom door, the airbrushed, pneumatic forms of naked white women...
...the producers hated to make the disclosure, but they just couldn't help it...
...I mean, I was aghast...
...T 6 6 urning Point" and "Nightline" were both cut-and-paste jobs, pretending at serious journalism, but with no other purpose than smearing Thomas...
...John Danforth correctly accused "Nighthne" and "Turning Point" of being "willing to do absolutely anything to try to destroy a human being," but Danforth wassingular...
...God only knew what the information might be...
...Hardnett appearedat the start of 'Turning Point," speaking a single line: "Well, I mean, I know that he lied...
...and may be the only person who has ever become a millionaire by being refused a visa...
...As it turned out, there were no nudes on Thomas's walls, although maybe there was one in the kitchen...
...Box 657, Mt...
...That part of the program had been set up with care...
...Liberal politicians avoid taking a stand on it whenever possible...
...Where was David Brock, who wrote The Real Anita Hill...
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...M eanwhile, the talk shows were giving Mayer and Abramson a free ride...
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...Mayer and Abramson mentioned Thomas's "pronounced interest in pornography" in television interviews all week, even though as broad-minded liberals they declined to denounce it...
...Well," Mayer answered, "it was information that would have been very, very explosive if it had ever been allowed to be aired...
...The November election repudiated the one as much as it did the other, and smug liberalism is no longer in style...
...The other women who appeared on television that night--Angela Wright, Rose Jourdain, and Sukhari Hardnett—had also turned up in the Journal excerpt that morning...
...Mayer and Abramson, as well as the Journal editors, had given it their best and most nasty shot...
...That sounded devastating...
...The best kept secret on television on election night was that no Republican incumbent was losing...
...Cultural warriors are allowed to make accusations, and then dismiss them...
...595-3 inch (maximum 3...
...Wall Street Journal readers damn well knew what to think about that...
...Advance copies of Strange Justice had been distributed so that only sympathizers had received them...
...Pre-payment required for all ads...
...Their interviews were arranged so that they did not have to face anyone who might contradict them...
...We were witnessing one of the shabbiest journalistic performances in years...
...Then, later that night, we got Koppel: "Among the things they're saying: we should have invaded Cuba not Haiti...
...We're two serious journalists," Abramson replied, adding that Brock writes for "conservative publications," while their book was "based on fact...
...That was disclosed on ABC...
...1. Please write your new address in the space provided...
...That was Helms again, of course, who was only being cranky...
...The idea was to humiliate Thomas...
...Moments later, suspense and anticipation mounting, Savage said she had been shocked, aghast, and disgusted...
...Keep in mind now Newsweek's characterization of the basic Mayer-Abramson conclusion: "that Thomas is a liar, a sexual harasser with a strong yen for pornography...
...No matter how cleverly ABC spliced and edited the film, there was still only the one centerfold in Thomas's galley kitchen...
...3. Return this form to us at the address listed below...
...ABC was intent on proving it, too...
...charity, lest some of it go to these alien bums...
...TAS Address Changes Made Easy...
...ABC had announced the day before that "Turning Point" would no longer be a weekly series...
...Wednesday was a grace night...
...Newsweek promoted the story on its cover and mentioned the nudes on the walls in the first paragraph of its article, the caption under a picture of Kaye Savage, and an excerpt from the book...
...NBC missed the Helms angle, but not the connection between the election and cancer...
...Newsweek had declared that "Mayer and Abramson, both highly regarded reporters, are being attacked by conservatives for an anti-Thomas bias," but that was not true...
...ABC wanted everyone else to conclude that, too, and in making its case it dropped all pretense of fairness, and gave us, as Thomas himself once said in another context, a hi-tech lynching...
...The American Spectator Subscriber Service P.O...
...When Savage had mentioned the lone centerfold on "Turning Point" earlier that night, she was being interviewed not by Totenberg but by Michel McQueen...
...The networks say they sat on the information because they did not want to influence the undecided races, but it is just as likely they were in shock...
...Mayer and Abramson took up the description from there: "There was only one main room, but its walls—as well as those of the little galley kitchen and even the bathroom door—were adorned with nude centerfolds...
...Was Thomas a liar...
...Aside from the fact that they are in violation of the fourth and tenth amendments, I should be able to bring anyone I damned please to visit me in my home for a few months...
...Obviously that was nonsense...
...L...
...C onsider the Wall Street Journal excerpt, the font from which all else flowed...
...For that, "Turning Point" and "Nightline" both depended on Wright, whose most damaging statement, artfully edited, was that Thomas had commented on her breasts...
...2. Attach the mailing label from your most recent issue...
...They always insist that I am going to "PUT HIM TO WORK...
...ABC led the evening news with "startling" items in the Republican agenda: Jesse Helms wants to invade Cuba, and the cigarette companies want to spread poison...
...We don't think there's anything wrong with that," Abramson said coyly on CNBC...
...Even PBS's Charlie Rose wanted to know...
...Mayer and Abramson seemed to have hung all those other centerfolds themselves to prove that Thomas had a pronounced interest in pornography...
...Mayer and Abramson had based their assault on the contention that the Senate Judiciary Committee had not called four women whose testimony would have corroborated the testimony by Anita Hill...
...Thus the assault on Thomas unfolded in one seamless piece...
...A career civil servant named Kaye Savage," Quindlen wrote in the New York Times, "visited Mr...
...Presumably they were meant to...
...His book, Resurrection, was sympathetic to Thomas, and an unctuous Arlen Specter had a more typical reaction on a Larry King special...
...Apparently, nothing that appears in a conservative publication is to be trusted, and only liberals tell the truth...
...All those nudes had disappeared, and Totenberg had been sent out to find them...
...The accusation would just hang there, never to be explained...
...Indeed, Mayer soon came back and suggested—cultural warriors are cautious about making flat statements—that Thomas had a "pronounced interest in sexually explicit materials...
...Cultural warfare has its own sanctimonious rules...
...Morris, Illinois 61054 (Please attach address label here...
...Craven television producers acceded to their demand that they be allowed to appear alone, which spared them from answering hard questions...
...Was Thomas a sexual harasser...
...It opened with the recollection of a woman named Kaye Savage, who picked up Thomas at his apartment one day in 1982, and then drove him to a store to buy running shoes...
...First, McQueen asked Jane Mayer "what kind of in42 The American Spectator January 1995 formation" about Thomas the Republicans had tried to suppress...
...On the other hand, it is unlikely that was ever its intention...
...It did not work...
...He never even mentioned Clarence Thomas...
...When it returned, Forrest Sawyer, the program's anchor, had the audacity to mention "our investigation," meaning that the investigation had been conducted by ABC...
...Savage described the apartment as still unfurnished—Thomas was recently divorced—with little more in it than a John Corry, a former New York Times media critic, is the author of My Times: Adventures in the News Trade (Grosset/G.P...
...The film that showed Savage was almost the same, although McQueen had disappeared and the interviewer now seemed to be Totenberg...
...That night, ABC ran not one, but two programs—"Turning Point" and "Nightline"—that repeated all the charges in the excerpt...
...0 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 78) visitor's permit...
...Polls this year found that the public held the press in even less esteem than it did Congress...
...State: Date of change...
...We may assume that someone at ABC saw the first version of the interview, and realized that it did not confirm what Mayer and Abramson had reported...
...The Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas dispute, they wrote in the Journal excerpt, "continues to be an active battlefront in America's culture wars...
...mattress, a stereo, and a pile of old Playboy magazines...
...The tobacco companies," it reported, "are all puffed up again...
...Anita Hill's old scourge said he "had no idea before the hearing how pervasive sexual harassment was across America...
...Koppel intimated the same thing on "Nightline...
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...continued on page 83) SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 46 The American Spectator January 1995 r The American Spectator January 1995 MOVING...
...Pornography...
...Then Savage described what had left her shocked, aghast, and disgusted on that memorable day twelve years ago: "In the galley kitchen, at the end of the kitchen, on the wall, there was a Playboy centerfold...
...Thomas's apartment and was stunned to find the walls covered with Playboy centerfolds...
...More women tell their stories," Ted Koppel said at the opening of "Nightline," and then we saw Kaye Savage...
...This was disclosed, just barely, only toward the end of the evening, even though the exit polls had been firm about it since noon...
...They are allowed to dismiss facts as well...
...But fair is fair, and it may be argued that the performance had nothing to do with journalism—a point conceded, even if inadvertently, by Abramson and Mayer...
...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...
...The mob was made up of journalists, but they were practicing cultural warfare...
...As testimony that "might have changed the course of history," none of this was persuasive...
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...Debate was being choked off wherever possible...
...Enclosed is: $ for insertions...
...This was followed by more on the carcinogenic threat—"One sure winner in the next Congress: the tobacco industry"—and a hint that Al D'Amato would now go nuts over Whitewater...
...Box 549, Arlington, Virginia 22216-0549 L 9soj PRESSWATCH (continued from page 46) The election was on a Tuesday...
...Hyde Park, Massachusetts 83 City...
...This lad is my only named heir...
...They had all disappeared down the memory hole...
...I shall not give another penny to a U.S...
...Savage disappeared then, leaving viewers to speculate about why she had been so upset...
...Putnam's Sons...
...If President Hot Pants can pass out tens of thousands of automatic visas to a petulant Castro, yet cannot spare one for a couple of months' visit by my friend and heir, then I shall spend most vigorously to change the political environment...
...continued on page 46) 0 n "Nightline," however, this was presented slightly differently...
...Immediately, then, "Turning Point" went to a station break...
...So, I shall put that money I was going to spend on bringing this lad over into political donations to effect a change in the executive branch of government...
...I was disgusted...
...You had to listen and watch closely, though, to realize how their ABC interviews were edited...
...And no question but that this worked...
...That's all there is to it...
...all the information and innuendo were coming out of the Mayer-Abramson rumination...
...I am a very strong-willed person, and at no point did I feel intimidated by him,' she said...
...Anna Quindlen, for one, got it immediately...
...Thursday was back to normal...
...We are back now to Kaye Savage, and the single Playboy centerfold...
...The walls of the apartment were clean...
Vol. 28 • January 1995 • No. 1
