'The Truth About Hillary' author frozen out
(Washington Post)
Updated: 2005-07-13 11:06

Despite the enormous hype surrounding Edward Klein's scathing and hearsay-filled book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the author has been ignored by all but two television talk shows.

A copy of Edward Klein's 'The Truth About Hillary' a book that aims to hurt a potential White House run by former first lady and now Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) stands on sale at a New York City bookstore June 21, 2005. The book, which critics have slammed as flawed muckraking, is published by Penguin's Sentinal Imprint and portrays Clinton as a ruthless and ambitious woman who will stop at nothing to become President like her husband. [Reuters]

This collective cold shoulder hasn't stopped "The Truth About Hillary" from hitting No. 2 yesterday on the coveted New York Times list. "It's the biggest example to date of how major media censorship doesn't stop a book anymore from being a bestseller," Klein declares.

Censorship is clearly the wrong word, since networks have no obligation to interview any author. The refusal to book Klein could just as easily be viewed as the drawing of a line by news organizations over a highly personal attack that has drawn fire from several conservative columnists as well as those on the left.

"It's just been a total blackout," says Klein, adding that talk radio and some Web sites, including the Drudge Report, have driven sales of the book. "I definitely think there's something organized going on here."

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines says Klein "didn't even rate a full 15 minutes of fame on national television" because the book is "full of blatant and vicious fabrications."

"There's been an effort to make sure people know about the inaccuracies," Reines says. "Anyone who has called, we've made the case: 'Why would you even give him any airtime at all?' People have editorially made the decision it doesn't warrant airtime. It's beyond the pale."

The book's tone is clear from the second page of Chapter 1: " Was it true they slept in separate beds? Were there any telltale signs on the presidential sheets that they ever had sex with each other? For that matter, did the Big Girl have any interest in sex with a man? Or, as was widely rumored, was she a lesbian?"

Klein did not get a warm reception in his two cable interviews. Fox's Sean Hannity asked whether, in questioning the former first lady's sexuality, Klein was being "too personal" and had crossed "a boundary that ought not to be crossed in political dialogue."

CNN's Lou Dobbs told Klein it was "extraordinary" that the author was "suggesting that she is a lesbian" and noted that Maura Moynihan, daughter of the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "said you were lying when you said that he despised Hillary Clinton."

Klein says that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, CNN's Paula Zahn, Fox's John Gibson and ABC's "Good Morning America" were among those who had tentatively booked or expressed strong interest in him, only to drop him like a hot potato. "I can't prove this," he says, but "the Hillary people" have told the networks "she would be mightily displeased if I got on."

"The book is uninteresting to Fox News," says spokesman Paul Schur. "We've moved on." Klein "has kind of just fallen off everybody's radar screen."

Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, said his staff "thought I'd be excited about it because it was obviously a hot booking." But when he looked at the book, "the deciding factor" was a tale in which "an unnamed guy who happened to be on vacation" at the same time as the Clintons was quoted as saying that Bill Clinton boasted he was going to "rape" his wife, and that is how Chelsea was conceived. Scarborough says he also called Reines, Clinton's spokesman, and said: "Send me everything you've got."

"I just applied the Kitty Kelley test," Scarborough says, referring to the celebrity author who published a harsh biography of George W. Bush last fall. "If it was inappropriate to have Kitty Kelley on because of unsubstantiated charges, it would be improper to have Ed Klein on." Fox's Bill O'Reilly made a similar point.

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