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Labia envy
By Louisa Kamps
Ladies, are you troubled by the appearance of your genitalia? Call Dr. Alter.
(03/16/98)

Leap of faith
By Jennifer New
Getting to the Promised Land with my mother-in-law
(03/13/98)

The high priestess of free love
By Suzette Lalime
Victoria Woodhull, prostitute and presidential candidate
(03/12/98)

Fat chance
By Leora Tanenbaum
A teen-book author talks about obese girls, binge-and-barf clubs and why well-meaning mothers often make things worse
(03/11/98)

Sound and sexuality
By Ros Davidson
Is lesbianism physiological?
(03/10/98)

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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A FEEL FOR A GOOD STORY | PAGE 2 OF 2

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I understand that you had a difficult time getting the story published in Rolling Stone.

The entire piece almost never ran because Don Hewitt tried to kill it and (Rolling Stone editor and publisher) Jann Wenner almost went along with him. They did emasculate the piece by taking out a lot of the damaging material. You'll see in there that there is one basic episode involving Don. There were four that I had reported.

How did Don Hewitt try to kill the piece?

Don tried to kill it by talking to Jann Wenner privately, asking, "What is this story that you've got on me?" It was a long investigation -- for four, five, maybe six months, on and off -- and I had interviewed Hewitt once or twice by then. One day, I got a call from him and he just poured five minutes of shit in my ear about how he had spoken to an editor at Rolling Stone and he had found out that I was chasing all this sexual stuff. Here he had thought of me as a serious reporter because of "On Bended Knee," and they were ready for somebody to look at "60 Minutes" on serious issues and this is just tabloid crap. And I said, "I don't know how you could know what's in this story, Don. Who did you talk to?" And he says, "To an editor." And I said, "Well, I assume you talked to Jann." Jann knew Don through Manhattan cocktail parties and all that crap. And I said, "I assume you talked to Jann." He denied it outright. He said, "No, I didn't talk to Jann." I said, "An editor, not the editor?"

Well, as soon as I got off the phone, I called Bob Wallace, who was my editor at Rolling Stone, and I told him what had happened. I said, "Did Jann talk to him?" And he said, "I'm sure he did, it happens all the time." I must say that I was grateful at the time that Jann had not read the story. But it didn't stop him from talking to Hewitt about it. A few days later, I got a call from Jann, apologizing for having done what he did, which of course was Journalism 101. Your publisher should not be talking about the content of an investigative story with the subject of the investigation. He said, "I'm sorry: Please accept my apologies."

I went ahead and turned in the story and it sat and it sat and it sat. The piece didn't run for another 12 months -- and then as a one-part piece, not the two parts it was contracted for. And I'm sure that they wouldn't have even done that if the Wall Street Journal hadn't been snooping around about it. It broke about six months before the Anita Hill thing. So at that point, there was still within the media a question as to whether this kind of behavior was really relevant.

So what did you think when you saw Hewitt taking a stand for Kathleen Willey?

It was odd to me, seeing Don quoted in the New York Times on Friday and Saturday as he was hyping Sunday's broadcast. He's talking about what happened and I just thought of that old Dylan song: "You've got a lot of nerve."

I hoped somebody would call him on it. In today's Times, Patricia Ireland, head of NOW, is quoted as saying if these charges by Ms. Willey are true, it has crossed a very important line from sexual harassment to sexual assault. And if that's the case, we have to be very serious about it. Well, the situation where Hewitt stuck his tongue down that women's throat -- that's assault. That is assault. She certainly felt like she was assaulted. She freed herself by kicking him in the balls -- which they also cut out. She runs away and then the next day, there was a fancy gala event where you have to come in evening dress and she's there and Hewitt, this son of a gun -- he's like a randy old goat -- he just could not take no for an answer. She was wearing a backless gown and suddenly she feels someone running his fingers up and down her bare back. She turns around, obviously jumpy from what had happened the day before, and sees the object of her horror -- Hewitt -- saying, "Don't be scared, I just think you're a very attractive girl." They cut that out of the article too.

There's a lot of huffing and puffing within the media about Clinton's alleged behavior, with a lot of journalists complaining about the public's so-called apathy on the subject. But in the case of men like Hewitt, it seems pretty hypocritical.

It's absolutely unmistakable -- and Hewitt is an extremely good example -- how most of the discourse about this issue involves people who have no more moral standing than this ball-point pen in my hand. And that goes not just for Hewitt, but for many of these clowns both in the media here in Washington and in the Congress. Anybody who has spent any time around Capitol Hill knows that a large number of congressmen, both in the House and in the Senate, fool around with either their young staffers or the young female staffers of their colleagues. To any reporter who had their eyes open, this is not news. So why are we all of a sudden in such high dudgeon about it?

One of the big ironies in all of this is that "60 Minutes" is one of the last TV operations that is resisting the tabloid trend, it's still the closest to doing real news. The show is one of the few places left on television that even resembles news. I appreciate the fact that Hewitt and his colleagues still do real journalism. And I'm sure that this contradiction between his commitment to exposing the president's private life and his own less-than-spotless record in this area never occurred to him. Because I would bet he's convinced himself that the incidents never occurred, which is what I suspect Clinton has done as well. When you fib so long, you essentially can't remember what's true and what's not anymore.
SALON | March 17, 1998