Julia Phillips and Kitty Kelley

...None of this was a secret...

...She merely worshipped him...

...The HUD scandal would have been a mind-blowing case of government intervention in behalf of affluent criminality, except that its scope pales in comparison with Wall Street scams and with the transfer of S&L assets to private pockets...

...The Phillips book helps put the Kelley book in context...

...Phillips, imprinted on everyone's forehead...

...she's getting over her drug problem, but she realizes she's been in a state of "free-floating anxiety, depression, and rage" for so long that her unhappiness is as comfortable as an old bathrobe...

...The succession of sex and love experiences in her life has left no man who matters, it's harder to get any movie done, let alone a good one, and she wonders whether any of it was fun in the first place...

...and beneath her tough as nails exterior is super-sensitive, just like Nancy—but the implication is that she hasn't earned the right to be that way...

...R. lolling provocatively on the couch...

...Who the hell is she?, the movie powers retort, just as the Washington press apparatus replies to Kitty Kelley...

...But the usual form of recognition was an affectionate joke about good old Gipper dozing off at cabinet meetings...

...In brisk, serviceable prose, she connects the Reagans' attribution of personal superiority or destiny to those who collect great wealth, to Ron's policy of indifference to the poor—or worse, his serving as an accomplice to an eight-year run of public looting...

...He was full of strong convictions backed up by gems of wisdom gleaned from the Reader's Digest—or from wealthy backers or far right lobbyists or bizarre religious cultists who believed, as he did, in the imminence of Armageddon...

...Still, Nancy pushed Ronnie to go down in history as a peacemaker— when the stars were right...

...President" and usually fed him puffball questions, as he referred to a seating chart to call on them by their first names...

...Without changing expression, Phillips gets off good lines about Goldie Hawn's too-often dirty hair, or the unpredictable airs of Steven Spielberg, Redford, Newman, Tony Bill and a cast of thousands, most of whom could be interchanged from page to page...

...Nor need she hide behind the fabled credo of "respect for the office...

...But still, the point is missed...

...Two hot-selling, over-analyzed gossip books— Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again and Kitty Kelley's Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography—give pause to consider the peculiar symbiosis that exists between those who acquire power in our society and those who write about them, even critically...

...They crowded around Ron's helicopter like puppy dogs, calling questions into the noise of the propeller...

...Afterwards, she found herself thinking, "Is this all there is...

...It's FALL • 1991 • 577 Culture Notes not surprising that Nancy's guardian angels—led by the fulsome Lord Buckley and the self-inflating George Will—hit Kelley with scathing contempt...

...One learns in L.A...

...and Washington, of provoking her mother to prod her "Evil Empire" father to seek detente with the cunning protocapitalist in the Kremlin...

...She need not—unlike, say, Tom Wicker— allude to Reagan as a "great president" who conducted the metaphysical operation of restoring our national pride...

...I'm reminded of an incident on the set of The Candidate, when we filmed the speech I wrote in which would-be senator Bill McKay loses self and soul to his own rhetoric and the sudden response of the crowd...

...Kitty Kelley is another such winner, writing a book about a grander winner...

...All agree that celebrity news must be taken most seriously, and with each personal revelation or—heaven help us!—world-significant decision, the measure of public opinion must be solemnly taken and analyzed...

...As a writer, she wants to plug us into her frustration at the only game in town, where bitchy, random doings come down in a postmodern flow, as sharklike talents prowl in a fever to use, buy or screw one another...

...What they want is a display of traditional prizes: social connections, public applause, and riches...

...When Robert Redford delivered the words, our hitherto bored crowd roared its approval...

...He presided over an unprecedented bloating of corporate debt structure, and initiated fiscal policies which enabled the rich to grow vastly richer at the expense of the non-rich...

...likes to dress up and play queen bee, just like Nancy...

...Thus we have the New York Times scolding itself, in its in-house journal, for portraying a speaking tour by Bush as a set of stunts designed for TV...

...578 • DISSENT Culture Notes Despite her mainstream publishing connections, Kelley enjoys some advantages accruing to the outsider...

...He would have been content to return to his TV job, delivering corporate tablets of the law, pocketing big appearance fees, and basking in the applause of weapon-owning, abortion-hating white macho ruleofthe-stronger America...

...This is why it's a pointless tease to ask the common question about who a public figure really is...

...Nancy," Scheer tells us, "is a turn-on, with her firm butt and still-good legs...

...Ask not who is your leader, ask what you can do for him...

...that there is no story, that is, no core happening or subject or style or process, that can't be altered in respect to its value in cash, power and prestige...

...At press conferences they addressed him sonorously as "Mr...

...Maybe I'm prejudiced— the brittle, edgy, forever counterpunching tone reminded me of a hundred producers to whom a writer's script is merely a deal, open to renegotiation on every page...

...Yes, Nancy ignored, chastened and antagonized the Reagan children, but they remain mostly loyal...

...A friend or collaborator, let alone son or 576 • DISSENT Culture Notes daughter, must stand in the wings while the star grins and waves in the spotlight—and can be replaced for the next show...

...To observe via Phillips's descriptions the massive hysteria of star-making and image-servicing, is to understand what would otherwise seem like improbably petty behavior...

...R. was driven by a passion for control, revenge, and display...

...My coaching proved unnecessary...

...These ladies may be flakes and exhibitionists, but they, at least, have no "respect for office" —and certainly no respect for office boys...

...He permitted subordinates to set up secret organizations which contravened U.S...

...She divulges lots of inside stuff on her celebrated friends and enemies, but the reader is soon searching in vain for some continuity...

...In this game, the newspapers and television have a peculiar partnership with the most flatulent culture products—which goes into effect when the media sense the public is going to fall for something, or into it, and jumps on the bandwagon in time to score with a self-fulfilling prophecy...

...He got me to stand up and explain each line in advance, tell just where to laugh or applaud as McKay called for "a test of our courage, our compassion, our faith in ourselves and in our country...

...Phillips, for her part, is smart enough to sense that her real subject is the ghastly waste and pain and emptiness at the center of the fantasy industry...

...Quayle missed the point, thought he saw a how-to film where we made a watch-out one...

...She was the first woman producer to share an Oscar for Best Picture (The Sting...

...They resent Kitty Kelley for the same reason movie manufacturers resent Julia Phillips...

...She found she still has "a pretty good brain and a very fast mouth...

...All I can say is, I'm willing to give it all I've got...

...But never mind...

...He was indifferent to civil rights except in Communist nations, and had no qualms about the company of brutal dictators...

...He preferred watching old movies to reading briefing papers, and referred to his wartime screen experience as if he had really been in combat, liberated prison camps and experienced personally the ravages of World War II...

...but then she want on to produce Taxi Driver and Close Encounters, and now describes hitting a wall of frustration and self-loathing in her mid-forties...

...It was a logical move consistent with the right-wing doctrine of peace through strength...

...Of course there were larger forces in play...

...In this way, the media are more like Kelley than different from her...

...And then we have the inside-outsider Robert Scheer, in Playboy, instructing Kelley about Nancy's sexuality, recalling an exclusive interview in Governor Reagan's motel room, with Mrs...

...We were tapping a power beyond the reach of political decency or social content...

...Many wept, even out of camera-range...

...Kelley shows their expectation that the role of the world is to provide for them, and that not to get what's coming to you is a sign one is downward bound...

...Then how does it, how could it, cover politics at all...

...Still, the imperatives by which Ronnie and Nancy operate all come from the movieland power structure which dismays and rebuffs Julia Phillips...

...The press has been quick to point out Kelley's errors and exaggerations—most glaringly that Nancy apparently never slept with the dubiously connected Sinatra...

...Redford—unlike Ronnie—had the grace to be scared...

...Her portrait of her environment explains why actors are so grandiose and vague in their political pronouncements—and why they can shift positions as easily as Frank Sinatra went from Kennedy to Reagan, or as Reagan went rightward himself, returning later only to abduct the image of FDR...

...Generally, the news media reacted reasonably to Kelley's book, correcting her and placing her in the tradition of other dirt-digging scandal-mongers...

...The Times, announces the Times, does not attribute motives...

...It is left to Garry Trudeau, Jules Feiffer and a handful of other politically marginal artists to stake out techniques and points of view from which they can effectively shout, mock and laugh that the Emperors are once more wearing no clothes...

...The speech was so deliberately empty that director Michael Ritchie feared that the assortment of volunteer extras who made up McKay's audience wouldn't know how to respond...

...The truth that emerges from Kelley's funhouse picture finally amounts to a tribute to Nancy, for she inflates Nancy's power and influence at the expense not only of Ron himself but of every other force that affected his presidency...

...The sum of these three qualities is, for those with the inner eye of Ms...

...In this sense the pontificators Bill Buckley, George Will and Ted Koppel are high-ranking establishment figures, even in their criticism...

...The town in Julia Phillips's title is Hollywood...

...She offers herself as a victim, stuck like a speed freak on an endless comedown with all too indifferent companions...

...Through a hip diary intercut with flashbacks and pieces of memory that function like a montage, Phillips tries her stuff with stars, executives, directors, lovers, agents, friends, partners and family, never quite sure what is happening, except that after each failed encounter she remains hungry, dissatisfied and in terror of losing everything Loss of power over others—metered, naturally, by fading sexual command—symbolizes for her the approach of death...

...In this respect, Kitty Kelley is better than most of her critics...

...law and policy...

...Unwittingly, we had invited the audience to identify with its own applause, to empower even the mere depiction of power, even the satire of power, as they gave in to a yearning for submission deeper than anything we had imagined...

...The same scenario replayed itself in 1988, when interviews with Dan Quayle's friends revealed that young Danforth had been inspired by his first viewing of The Candidate and returned many times to study how to model himself after Bill McKay...

...He condoned raising secret funds from foreign governments, and accepted a $2 million payment from Japanese industrialists shortly after leaving office...

...Her voluminous list of sources (many of whom refused to speak to her) do not conceal her selectively venomous technique— with which she spins fact, hearsay and malice into a portrait of our self-created First Lady as Messalina...

...Yet the bulk of the coverage conceded that, despite her sleazy distortions and libels, Kitty caught the essence of Nancy's personality...

...Why, for instance, are stars like Ronnie and Nancy so often cheap, ungenerous, grudging of charity or taxes and oblivious to the impropriety of bribes...

...By sensationalizing the already sensational—the alleged affairs, abortions, cheapness, cheating and selfishness— the media did for Kelley what Phillips and other film marketers try to do for silly movies—to certify that their bloated overstatements are the central issues of our time...

...What stands out when all dubious innuendo is removed from Kelley is the account of a husband and wife team moving from show business to super-show business...

...But for magic moments the fake friendship can be better than real—which is why stars so often succeed in dictating to interviewers the terms in which they are to be seen, and are outraged when they find they've granted an audience to an ingrate who is not delighted to yield his own way of seeing...

...Strong words...

...But, like McKay, he won...

...Not that Phillips herself is pushing a claim to superiority: the offense of her book and her manner may result from her implicit insistence that her superiors in power acknowledge her equality as they exploit her brains and friendship...

...That was the most common approach, say, to Operation Desert Storm—the media as PR officers...

...Let's make a beginning...

...Time and Newsweek point out that Kelley thrives on her nerve, just like Nancy...

...Patti Davis, in fact, is credited by a reliable reporter familiar with both L.A...

...Not to mention Contragate...

...Newsweek even concluded that "Ronald Reagan and his wife had to be among the most hypocritical people ever to live in the White House...

...q FALL • 1991 • 579...

...Such a euphemism appeals to the reporter who likes to feel he is a responsible part of the establishment, basking in reflected glory and even supplying the reflectors...

...He believed in the existence of a science called "creationism," which he thought should be taught to schoolchildren...

...Yet since only the spotlight validates one's reality, no one is more alone than the star, who has no ground on which he or she can stand with others and test the basis on which he or she fakes relations with them...

...Why did the public so easily accept Ronnie's switch from movies to television, from the earnest "best friend" role to tough but decent number one American guy...

...Ronnie was called the great communicator not because of any information he instilled but because he could put on a central casting affability and give a performance of ease and confidence...

...Ronnie, in his fifth act, rose to the occasion with the flexibility of a veteran actor—as he did when Nancy pushed him out on the White House trail in 1976...

...Ronnie and Nancy are from a generation which would be embarrassed to flaunt drugs or sex and use them for image-creation...

...Does Scheer prompt us to wonder how he knows Nancy's "butt" remains firm...

...The press had a stake in letting themselves be patronized...

...She continues to run around, eat lunch, make deals...

...Bill Moyers, as far as I know, is the only national reporter to put together the obvious clips and directly, publicly demonstrate that both Reagan and Bush broke the law, defied the Constitution, secretly had money raised and channeled from wealthy principalities to corrupt foreign governments (including Iran and Iraq)—and then flatly lied about the whole thing...

...While posing herself as gracious and aristocratic, Mrs...