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Press Mongering


Sure, there's no such thing as bad publicity, but even that's being tested with the withering interview of Kitty Kelley by Matt Lauer yesterday, who pressed her repeatedly on why she didn't tape the infamous Sharon Bush interview. (Bush herself later came on the show to deny the whole thing, and Doubleday responded by citing the presence of third-party Lou Colasuonno, Sharon Bush's pr rep at the time. Kelley's book, of course, comes out today.)


One snippet had Lauer pressing her on motivation.


Lauer: Why release it 50 days before what is a hotly contested, incredibly divided election?
Kelley: Why not?
Lauer: Well, I'm asking why?
Kelley: I mean, why not? It's relevant.
Lauer: Do you want people to read this and do you want it to influence their choices as they go to the polls on November 2nd?
Kelley: Matt, I want them to read this book. It's an important book. There are relevant themes here. Is it going to change an election? No. I wrote a book about Frank Sinatra; I still love his singing.
Lauer: He's an entertainer.
Kelley: I wrote a book about the British royal family. The queen still sits.
Lauer: Nobody goes to the polls to vote for them.
Kelley: I wrote a book about the Kennedy family. There's no more revered family -
Lauer: They weren't in office at the time.
Kelley: No, they weren't in office.
Lauer: Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was out of office when you wrote about him.
Kelley: True.


They eventually moved on the inevitable sourcing question, and things got even more, well, juicily Kelleyian.


Lauer: Let me ask you this: Do you think your standards for making accusations for proof for sources needs to rise?
Kelley: Excuse, no, no I won't.
Lauer: Wait, wait, excuse me. When you're dealing with the sitting president of the United States.
Kelley: My standards are my standards. I write books the same way every good reporter writes books, and that is to abide by the laws of libel and the laws of invasion of privacy. I only write about people who are alive. I only write about people who are powerful.


Lauer repeated the claim that she treats all sources equally, regardless of background or motive; Kelley responded that the book had in fact been carefully sourced and vetted.


Not that Kelley's been faring much better with reviewers; the Michiko review had not just snark but a larger cultural criticism.


"Kitty Kelley's catty new book about the Bush family is a perfect artifact of our current political culture in which unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and old questions about President Bush's National Guard service get more attention than present-day issues like the Iraq war, the economy, intelligence reform or the assault weapons ban. It is also a perfect artifact of a cultural climate in which gossip and innuendo thrive on the Internet...[in which] sheer rumor-mongering - is regarded as a be-all and end-all."


Kakutani concluded that "Ms. Kelley has always been better at dishing dirt than making sense of a subject's overall life" and so despite the "spicy allegations," many of which she says are not new anyway, the book is "tacky, voyeuristic and [contains a] petty-seeming narrative."

[Rdtf]

Gotta give Lauer credit - I saw him hammer Michael Moore in an interview too.