“Ah, he’ll be a picnic,” R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. had said just a few weeks before the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, during a brief trek back to his native Chicago.
Well, last week it was as if Tyrrell, a proud raconteur and provocateur, was joyously hosting a picnic in which the wieners were exploding on the grill, ketchup bottles were flying and furious guests were racing for cover.
Tyrrell is founder and editor-in-chief of the American Spectator, an acerbic, nervy, at times all-too brazen, political monthly of conservative bent whose circulation is soaring and is assured of going even higher after inspiring the biggest bimbo eruption to engulf Bill Clinton.
It’s the publication that unveiled an 11,000-word tale, “His Cheatin’ Heart,” alleging extramarital liaisons and possible government misconduct by Clinton. It actually took precedence over the week’s other big news; the four-minute videotape that raised the question, “Just what is Michael Jackson doing with his skin?” and which gave us the rich coincidence of the president and the pop star declaring their innocence on the same day.
“It’s a moment we’re proud of. We think we’ve struck a blow for freedom, and against the vast corruption of American public life and discourse,” said Tyrrell, the son of a Pabst Brewing worker, who grew up in River Forest and Oak Park and started the publication 26 years ago as a student at Indiana University.
Tyrrell, who moved his headquarters to Arlington, Va., from Bloomington in 1985, scoffed at the fervent White House denials of impropriety (“Clinton’s latest act of dissembling”), which seemed to be largely embraced by official Washington and its solicitous press corps. The American Spectator and, in particular, the story’s author David Brock, were treated as if they were among those poor souls injected with plutonium in those wayward, belatedly-revealed government experiments of long ago.
They’re seen as members of a radioactive right, to be kept at a distance. One Washington Post pundit even called them “pathological” in their disdain for Clinton.
There was never any doubt about proceeding with the story, said Tyrrell, himself writing a book on Clinton. The only real decision was whether to abide by the wishes of the Arkansas troopers’ lawyer, a Clinton foe, who desired that the Los Angeles Times, which labored on the tale simultaneously, run it first.
The Times got cold feet, Tyrrell got tired of waiting, and so the American Spectator let loose the opus last Sunday.
The monthly’s circulation has risen to 200,000 from 40,000 just two years ago, in no small measure due to adroit, heavy advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Tyrrell has ordered the printing of 100,000 extra copies of the hot issue and, at $2.95 apiece, they’ll surely be snapped up.
Meanwhile, he plugs along with his Clinton book, which may not necessarily be blanket condemnation. “In going back over his life, I have a sense of sadness and sympathy. He went to the greatest schools, had access to some of the world’s best minds. There’s something touching about him. I’ve read letters from his youth and they are quite touching.”
Tyrrell, no stranger to self-promotion, swears that he’s not cheerily overwhelmed by the week’s events and the spotlight it’s brought.
“Whom the gods destroy, they first make famous,” he said.
“Regional” dispute
More than 150 well-wishers, including lots of current and former Chicagoans, came to a Bethesda, Md., church last Wednesday to pay their respects to Jerome Watson, the Washington bureau chief of the Sun-Times who died Sunday after a two-year struggle with a brain tumor.
Watson, 55, was a delightful, graciously competitive man of intellectual breadth, and a stellar political reporter-columnist. He was a big-time player, which is why he might gag over the roots of a curious discrepancy in his obituaries in last Monday’s Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.
Both included a statement issued by the paper in the name of Sun-Times editor and executive vice president Dennis Britton. As accurately rendered in the Tribune, it read, “He was regarded by other Washington journalists as the model regional correspondent who was equally adept describing the intricacies of an international summit as Statehouse dealings in Springfield.” But when used in the Sun-Times obituary, the sentence omitted the word “regional.”
It turns out that several Sun-Times rank-and-filers were less than pleased when apprised of the “regional correspondent” phrase. They felt it diminished the role and impact of Watson who, until a distinct narrowing of the bureau’s focus, was a distinctly national reporter with several major awards as evidence, such as one for reporting on the Reagan administration’s first year.
Winner and losers
The Tribune’s Clarence Page was among capital media luminaries who got the bad news Monday: they were losers in the Great Moderator Sweepstakes.
Paul Duke, frontman for public television’s “Washington Week in Review,” is retiring after 20 years. It’s a nice gig, with a base salary said to be in the low six-figures for handling the show and a few other public TV duties.
It also brings nicely paying lecture invitations craved by many reporters here: Duke made 36 speeches last year ($5,000 a shot might be a conservative guesstimate). As a Newsweek reporter explained the lure upon initial word of Duke’s retirement, “It’s not complicated, it’s cash and vanity.”
Page was among those interviewed but informed that the winner was Ken Bode, a former NBC correspondent who has had a comfortable situation himself: He’s both a CNN political reporter and the director of the Center for Contemporary Media at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.
It means he’s got a nice, big, modestly-priced home in Greencastle, where he lives with his wife, their two daughters and two of their 85-year-old parents. The academic duties are less than onerous and he’s commuted from nearby Indianapolis to Atlanta for his CNN chores.
Now, Bode will commute here for several days each week. He won’t leave Greencastle, he assured last week, which will surely gall some of the sweepstakes’ losing pundits.
His family loves it and, given his compensation and frequent-flyer miles, it won’t be a big problem for the family to join him here when they desire. He’ll exit CNN and keep the DePauw post, even if scaling down his role. “I have people who are under-utilized and could easily take over.”
“I didn’t know anything about this (job) opening up,” said Bode, 53. “A call came out of the blue. My wife thought this would be perfect.”
She’s probably on the mark.
Deepest condolences
The reservoir of sympathy for the economic plight of those who reside in Evanston, Winnetka and the rest of the North Shore can be limited. However, the conservative Heritage Foundation suggests the shedding of a tear might be in order, though folks on the left will greet the following with either champagne or a cheap, politically correct chardonnay:
The foundation, extracting Treasury Department statistics via a Freedom of Information Act request, has calculated that Illinois’ 10th Congressional District, represented by Republican Rep. John Porter, is the third hardest-hit in the nation by new Clinton Administration income and Medicare taxes.
Under the FOIA request, foundation senior fellow Dan Mitchell was able to learn that there are just over 19,000 individual or joint tax filers in the district who earn over $115,000 a year. He calculates that their average increased tax burden for the next five years will be $102,800. The total federal take from those folks in income and Medicare taxes will thus be $1.9 billion over the period.
Since my bosses are among those affected, I offer my deepest, deepest condolences. I really do.
I do. I swear.
