T A B L E_.T A L K

Talking heads are bringing in the big bucks. Are Stone Phillips and Katie Couric really worth millions, or is this overcompensation? Throw in your 2 cents in Table Talk's Media area

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R E C E N T L Y

The autocrat of the coffee table
By James Poniewozik
TV Guide, America's favorite coaster, becomes history in spite of itself
(08/05/98)

Befriend and betray
By Tom McNichol
If journalists can't stab their sources in the back, what will fill the pages of our nation's great newspapers and magazines?
(07/31/98)

Lugging the guts into the next room
By Bruce Shapiro
Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" has sparked talk the government tried to silence -- talk of the psychic wounds inflicted on World War II vets
(07/30/98)

Chekhov, Marx and synergy
By David Rakoff
Here's some literature even Tina Brown could love
(07/27/98)

Would you buy a new car from this novelist?
By James Poniewozik
Why are Don DeLillo and David Duchovny shilling for Oldsmobile? Ask the folks at the New York Times Book Review, where yesterday's essay becomes today's ad copy!
(07/22/98)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

If elected,
___I promise more girlie shows at the state fair!

Ridiculous joke or subversive political statement? The media -- and the public -- can't decide how to treat 79-year-old farmer Fred Tuttle's bizarre campaign for the Senate
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BY PETER KURTH | Fred Tuttle would like to see more girlie shows. He said so at the first formal press conference he held after he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Tuttle -- who prefers to be called "just Fred" -- says he misses the G-strings and spinning nipple-tassels that used to liven things up at the annual Tunbridge World's Fair in Vermont.

"They went the way of the farm," sighs Fred. "We used to have about 40 farms in town. Now we have four or five."

Fred is running on an all-Vermont-issues ticket, confident that the way things used to be is the way they ought to be again. Pressed for his position on national issues, he says he doesn't care a hoot about the Clinton sex scandals -- "I think that's been going on down there for a long time" -- and has no opinion about Kosovo, the economy or partial-birth abortions. He hopes he doesn't win the election in November because it means he'd have to move to Washington. "I never hated a place so bad in my life," Fred says.

"How serious are you about running?" a reporter asked skeptically, and Fred replied, "Well, I can't run too fast."

Isn't he a little bit old for the job?

"I'm a little bit old for anything," says Fred, who is 79. "Yes. Maybe. I don't know. What was the question?"

It's a case of life imitating art, or, at least, a postmodern blurring of the lines between cinema and reality. A few years back, Fred Tuttle became famous beyond his wildest dreams when he starred in filmmaker John O'Brien's "Man With a Plan," a political "mockumentary" about a retired Vermont dairy farmer named Fred Tuttle who's done nothing but milk cows and who decides to run for Congress because the pay is good and because "it's the only job you can get with a 10th-grade education and no references."

"I've spent my whole life in the barn," says Fred in the film, "now I just want to spend a little time in the House." With his quirky wisdom, deadpan humor and indecipherable Vermont accent -- a thick French Canadian/Down Country hybrid peculiar to the region -- Fred was an instant hit with Vermonters when "Man With a Plan" premiered in 1996. Almost overnight, Fred became what director O'Brien calls "a cultural icon," a contrarian oracle and de facto state mascot with roots as deep as the Vermont soil. "Spread Fred" bumper stickers turned up on cars all over the state. At the Tunbridge Fair a "Fred Booth" was erected and mobbed by fans, while Fred himself chatted and canoodled with Vermont's most famous drag queen, Cherie Tartt.

"I feel like a genuine movie star," said Fred at the time. "I'm going to be awful bored when it's over with." A front-page story in the New York Times and an appearance on Conan O'Brien kept the party going and Fred's name in the papers until "Man With a Plan" came out on video. Now, having survived three heart attacks, prostate cancer, diabetes and knee replacement surgery that kept him hospitalized until last Saturday, Fred faces a powerful and increasingly irritated opponent in the Republican primary on Sept. 8 -- Jack McMullen, a Massachusetts businessman and multimillionaire who moved to Vermont less than a year ago with the express purpose of unseating the four-term Democratic incumbent, Patrick Leahy. McMullen has no prior roots or credentials in Vermont apart from a vacation home in Warren, and nothing to propel him in his race for the Senate but media exposure and pots of out-of-state money.

N E X T+P A G E | Unqualified and proud