Celebutards (13 page)

Blair seemed to be itching to get caught, and he did. In Timesian fashion, the paper commemorated his implosion with a massive report by a committee of twenty-five
Times
staffers and three outside journalists. Published on May 11, 2003, the committee’s account uncovered, among other things, that Blair claimed he traveled to Palestine, West Virginia, to interview Gregory Lynch, the father of Private First Class Jessica Lynch, rescued from captivity by U.S. forces. Lynch “choked up as he stood on his porch here overlooking the tobacco fields and cattle pastures, and declared that he remained optimistic,” Blair wrote. Trouble was, no tobacco fields or cows can be seen from Lynch’s porch. Blair, who wrote this dispatch from the Starbucks near his home in Brooklyn, sought the most clichéd description possible of what he thought West Virginia must look like.

Blair did not self-destruct without taking others down with him: Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned under pressure. As a result of Blair, the paper created the position of public editor to answer readers’ concerns, a fairly useless invention.

I wish I could say Blair’s dismissal cleaned up the paper. Far from it. If anything, its campaigns became far more strident and personal.

The case of the Duke rape fiasco remains the prime illustration for how a stubborn paper will never back down, never apologize. Not even after it sought to ruin the lives of three men who did nothing amiss, except associate with the wrong stripper.

Her name was Crystal Gail Mangum. On March 13, 2006, Mangum, age twenty-seven, a college student, and another woman, were hired to dance for members of the Duke University lacrosse team at a house in Durham. It was soon clear that Mangum, who was intoxicated and argued with her customers, was not going to do what she was paid for. Stumbling, she repaired to the bathroom. A short while later, she cried rape.

The story was irresistible, and the Durham district attorney, Mike Nifong, who was up for re-election, blasted the awful details far and wide. Here was the tale of two poor women—one African-American, the other part Asian—students from the wrong side of the tracks, reduced to stripping for privileged white men. When the party got out of hand, the story goes, Mangum was raped.

But Mangum’s tale of sexual debauchery and racism started falling apart almost immediately. She told many conflicting stories. Even factoring in confusion, two things could not be ignored: She picked the Duke players out of a photo lineup that included only white lacrosse players. This lineup did not, as United States Department of Justice guidelines insist, include “filler” photos of men who are not considered suspects. In other words, Mangum was given a “multiple-choice test in which there were no wrong answers,” defense attorneys charged.

In addition, surveillance footage from a nearby bank machine puts one of the suspects far from the house at the time of the alleged attack. No matter. The time of the attack was simply changed by Nifong.

On April 18, 2006, two lacrosse team members, Collin Finnerty, age twenty, and Reade Seligmann, age twenty, were nonetheless arrested on rape, kidnapping and sexual offense charges. They were joined in May by Duke graduate David Evans, age twenty-three.

The juicy story was just too good to be true. By late spring, nearly every major newspaper in the country had reported it as a case in trouble. Nifong, though, could not let go. And he found an ally in
The New York Times
.

The Times
weighed in on August 25, 2006, with a lengthy story based on what it called new evidence. It was a humdinger. And here is the paragraph—the so-called “nut graf”—contained in the 5,700-word Page 1 article. It said everything:

“By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong’s case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.”

This groundbreaking report was based largely on brand new, handwritten notes that sprang from the memory of Durham police investigator Robert Gottlieb. They contradicted every other investigator’s account. These notes, made at Nifong’s request, conveniently fit every theory advanced by the desperate DA. Should they be treated with suspicion?

It is stunning to see how other media fall in line when
The Times
puts its full weight behind Page 1. I watched as Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s legal analyst, regurgitated the
Times
’ conclusions—“Nifong,” he said, “certainly had more evidence, which would be revealed at trial.”

Of course, there never was a trial. And the only evidence Nifong ultimately revealed was the depths of his own depravity.

He withheld from defense attorneys and the press the fact that semen from several other men—none of them a Duke lacrosse player—was found in Mangum’s body on the night of the alleged attack. That he kept this information secret was a blow from which the DA would not recover.

On December 22, 2006, Nifong dropped rape charges against the young men. And on April 11, 2007—more than a year after the ordeal began—North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped remaining kidnapping and sexual offense charges, declaring the accused men “innocent.” Nifong was disbarred.

Times
public editor Byron Calame had an opportunity to set the record straight. Perhaps apologize. He did nothing of the kind. He smugly defended his paper’s egregious coverage, writing in his column that it was tarred by journalistic lapses—never ideological ones.

Or could it be that white students from well-to-do-families will forever be suspect in the eyes of the
Times
?

In February 2008,
The Times
published a 3,000-word front-page piece that suggested with all the breathlessness of a romance novel that Republican presidential candidate John McCain just might have had an “inappropriate relationship” with a younger, blonde “female lobbyist,” Vicki Iseman.

Here’s the “nut graf”: “A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself—instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away, and repeatedly confronting him—several people involved in the campaign said on condition of anonymity.”

The sexist language said it all. Reverse the sexes, and would
The Times
have said a “male lobbyist” behaved this way?

So had John McCain turned into Hugh Hefner—or Bill Clinton? Well,
The Times
didn’t say. It didn’t know. That did not stop the Paper of Record from printing a hatchet job about a member of a class it holds in the esteem of all rich, white men: Republicans.

Oddly, the hit piece ended up helping McCain.
The Times
received thousands of complaints, including many from Democrats and Independents. Following the piece’s publication, McCain raised more campaign contributions than ever before.

It was not the result
The New York Times
intended.

The Times
did its best to redeem itself the following March. On its Web site, it broke a damning and uncharacteriscally tabloidy story about New York’s Democratic governor who was caught with his pants down being serviced by a ring of prostitutes whose fees start at $1,000 an hour. His latest flame was just four years older than his daughter. The governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned in disgrace two days later.

Wouldn’t you know it? Some elements within the
Times
seemed embarrassed by the sexy story. As the paper prepared to run its biggest scoop of the year, executive editor Bill Keller took off for Paris.

I
HAVE A GUILTY
little secret. I genuinely like Rosie O’Donnell. Or I did.

I bonded with the foul-mouthed, overweight, lesbian mama and 9/11 denier in 2003, as she stood trial in a civil case held in the dank and dusty bowels of Manhattan Supreme Court, an old behemoth of a structure that looks grand from the outside, but inside is so dirty and depressing, you wouldn’t want to touch the banisters without preventive medication. It was here that Rosie was sued by German-owned publisher Gruner + Jahr USA for $100 million, after Rosie walked away from the editor’s job at a magazine that was once
McCall’s
, but was renamed
Rosie
in her honor.

Out of a day job at the time, Rosie countersued G+J for $125 million, and I supposed she could use all the media friends she could get. Contrary to popular belief, I do have a heart. And Rosie—unscripted, unguarded and, it seemed, refreshingly real, came to court all dolled up in bright red, in contrast to the suits trotted out by G+J, in various shades from slate to asphalt. She won my loyalty. We became buds. Looking back, I guess Rosie played me. Well, I wasn’t exactly hard to get.

Roseann Theresa O’Donnell was born March 21, 1962, in Bayside, in the borough of Queens, New York—the very place in which I also was raised, though I didn’t know this when I met her. She was the third of five children born to Edward and Roseann O’Donnell, who died of breast cancer four days before Rosie’s eleventh birthday. Rosie was raised in Commack, on Long Island, New York.

After dropping out of Boston University, Rosie began a career as a standup comedienne and actress, appearing in 1992 with Madonna and Tom Hanks in
A League of the Their Own
. Four years later, she was named host of daytime’s syndicated
The Rosie O’Donnell Show
, where she developed a reputation as “The Queen of Nice”—and even faked a mad crush on the actor Tom Cruise. But Niagara Falls-sized cracks emerged in her nice gal reputation in 1999, when actor Tom Selleck appeared as Rosie’s guest, a month after the Columbine shootings. Later, Tom said he’d been promised that the subject of gun control would not be raised during the interview. Rosie’s spokesmouth denies this.

ROSIE: We’re here with Tom Selleck who’s a member of the NRA. Three months ago you joined the NRA.

TOM: I did. I actually joined to do an ad. Because, I’ve done a lot of consensus work for like the last seven to eight years and what disturbs me and disturbs a lot of Americans is the whole idea of politics nowadays which seems to be, “If you disagree with me, you must be evil” as opposed to “If you disagree with me, you must be stupid.” That’s very American.

You know, the demonizing of a group like the NRA is very disturbing…. Reasonable people should disagree in this country; we should celebrate that, not consider it a threat.

ROSIE: Right, but I think that the reason that people are so extreme against the NRA is because the NRA has such a militant strength, especially a power in Washington to veto or to strong-hold any sensible gun law. They have been against every sensible gun law, until yesterday, including trigger locks, so that children, which there are 500 a year that die, don’t get killed.

TOM: I’m not a spokesman for the NRA. In fact, all I can tell you is, I was a member when I was a kid. I was a junior NRA member. I learned firearm safety. And from what I can see in the last three months, they don’t do a lot of the stuff that you assume that they do.

ROSIE: I don’t assume.

TOM: They are for trigger locks. The NRA is for a lot of things as long as they’re voluntary.

ROSIE: They’re against the registering of guns. We have to register cars. Why shouldn’t we register guns so that when a crime is committed we can trace who has owned it?

TOM: You know I understand how you feel. This is a really contentious issue. Probably as contentious, and potentially as troubling, as the abortion issue in this country. All I can tell you is, rushes to pass legislation at a time of national crisis or mourning, I really don’t think are proper. And more importantly, nothing in any of this legislation would have done anything to prevent that awful tragedy in Littleton….
Guns were much more accessible forty years ago. A kid could walk into a pawnshop or a hardware store and buy a high capacity magazine weapon that could kill a lot of people and they didn’t do it. The question we should be asking is, look, suicide is a tragedy. And it’s a horrible thing. But thirty or forty years ago, particularly men, and even young men, when they were suicidal, they went, and unfortunately, blew their brains out. In today’s world, someone who is suicidal sits home, nurses their grievance, develops a rage, and is just as suicidal but they take twenty people with them. There’s something changed in our culture. That’s not simple.

ROSIE: But you can’t say that guns don’t bear a responsibility. If the makers of the TEC-9 assault rifle—why wouldn’t the NRA be against assault rifles? This is a gun that can shoot five bullets in a second. This is the gun that those boys brought into the school. Why the NRA wouldn’t say as a matter of compromise, “We agree, assault weapons are not good?”

TOM: I’m not, I can’t speak for the NRA.

ROSIE: But you’re their spokesperson, Tom, so you have to be responsible for what they say.

TOM: But I’m not a spokesperson. I’m not a spokesperson for the NRA.

ROSIE: But if you put your name out and say, “I, Tom Selleck…”

TOM: (
visibly upset
) Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not a spokesperson. Remember how calm you said you’d be? Now you’re questioning my humanity.

ROSIE: No, not your humanity. I think you’re a very humane man. I’m saying that if you…

TOM: Let’s just say that I disagree with you but I think you’re being stupid.

The pair continued to joust, with Rosie interrupting Selleck, and the actor growing clearly angry. Mercifully, the clock wound down, and Rosie, finally, wrapped things up.

ROSIE: All right, well, this has not gone the way I had hoped it had gone. But I would like to thank you for appearing anyway, knowing we have differing views. I was happy that you decided to come on the show. And if you feel insulted by my questions, I apologize, because it was not a personal attack. It was meant to bring up the subject as it is in the consciousness of so many today. That was my intent. And if it was wrong, I apologize to you, on a personal level.

TOM: (
quietly
) It’s your show, and you can talk about it after I leave, too.

Rosie’s attempts to save the world through the absorption of children, a practice that’s become a celebutard staple, hit a snag in 2000, after she completed a course to become a foster mom in Florida, where she keeps a home. Rosie took in a six-year-old boy, name unknown, but returned him to the foster care system after just two weeks because she felt he posed a danger to her family. It’s a subject she discusses rarely.

Rosie quit her eponymous talk show in 2002, around the time she came out publicly as a lesbian, surprising no one, not even Tom Cruise. She announced she was in a relationship with Kelli Carpenter, a former dancer whom she “married” in San Francisco in 2004. The pair settled in Rockland County, New York, where they set out to raise three adopted kids—Parker Jaren, Chelsea Belle and Blake Christopher—plus daughter Vivienne Rose, to whom Kelli gave birth after being impregnated by a sperm donor. Rosie said she wanted to be a full-time mom. And she had a magazine to run. Well, maybe.

Once off the air, Rosie abandoned her Nice Queen schtick as quickly as one might abandon a heterosexual relationship. Called to fill in at the last minute as mistress of ceremonies for the Women in Film & Television’s holiday luncheon at the Hilton in New York in 2002, Rosie proceeded to nuke her bridges. Facing women such as Frances McDormand, Alfre Woodard, Marlo Thomas and me, Rosie, done up in a lopsided butch haircut, said actress and shoplifter Winona Ryder “has been stealing sh*t for years” and should be locked up because “her last film sucked.” She abused Michael Jackson for his extensive plastic reconstruction, and dismissed Joan Rivers as a “freak.” As the audience fidgeted nervously, Rosie claimed to be simply telling the truth. She ended her bit by complaining that she could no longer park illegally in front of her kids’ school, imitating a guard—“Your show’s off the air, move your f*cking car.”

The trial pitting magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr against Rosie O’Donnell unfolded with all the sobriety of a three-ring circus. G+J wanted to paint Rosie as poison in the editor’s chair, and to this end it had an ace in the hole: the company put on the witness stand former colleague Cindy Spengler, who tearfully testified that Rosie once told her, cruelly, that people who lie “get sick and they get cancer.” Spengler suffered from cancer.

The day Spengler took the stand, I got a behind-the-scenes peek into Planet Rosie. I sat in the courtroom, oohing and aahing over pictures of our daughters with Rosie’s partner. Kelli turned out to be refreshingly humble, gracious and cute as she doted over her love interest, fetching Rosie sandwiches and soft drinks, and rubbing her back. Man, I could use a woman like that, and I’m straight.

Kelli told me that it was she who demanded Rosie apologize to Spengler, which Rosie did. In my column, I referred to Rosie’s better half as her “wife”—which I worried might anger the couple with its stereotypical depiction of their roles. On the contrary, at trial’s end Rosie stood on the courthouse steps and called Kelli her “wife.” To adopt an expression I generally loathe—it is what it is.

Rosie may have been no peach to work with, but Gruner + Jahr was guilty of yanking Rosie’s editorial control and hiring a safe, new editor at the exact moment she came out of the closet. In the end, State Supreme Court justice Ira Gammerman called it a tie—ruling that neither party was entitled to monetary damages. It was a victory for Rosie, who stood to lose millions, and she celebrated that night at a Manhattan pub. But as well-wishers hugged her, Rosie grew increasingly glum. “In a war,” she told me, “a lot of innocent people get hurt.”

Rosie next produced the ill-fated
Taboo
on Broadway about the early life of Boy George. It was a much better show than the critics gave her credit for. Still, it flopped. I’m not certain, but the bitter disappointment may have influenced Rosie’s decision to lash out at an old friend.

In a piece she wrote for the
Advocate
about her marriage, Rosie segued into a rant about Martha Stewart’s recent conviction on charges of obstruction of justice and lying to investigators. As far as I was concerned, it couldn’t have happened to a more toxic shrew. It did not escape Rosie’s notice that I was chief among Martha’s haters. She wrote: “During my own trial, the smug
New York Post
columnist Andrea Peyser became my unlikely ally. That’s because, at forty-two, I’ve been a professional entertainer for over two decades and I know how to work a room. I spoke to everyone during breaks. I chewed gum. I was me. I won Andrea over. Martha did not.”

It stung. I never spoke to Rosie again.

Rosie would soon go off the reservation by waging a series of insane feuds, and expressing dumb theories about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that are so demonstrably loony and offensive, they should launch this micro-brained celebutard into a rubber room.

Rosie joined the cast of ABC’s
The View
in September 2006, raising the show’s ratings, but dealing it a blow from which it may never quite recover.

She took on
Live with Regis and Kelly
co-host Kelly Ripa, who objected in November 2006 when singer Clay Aiken put his hand over her mouth. “I just don’t know where that hand’s been, honey,” said Kelly. Rosie retorted, “If that was a straight man…if that was a guy that she didn’t question his sexuality, she would have said a different thing.”

To her peril, she criticized Donald Trump as a “snake-oil salesman,” after he announced he was giving Miss USA Tara Conner a second chance at saving her crown. The small-town girl had run wild in the city, drinking while under age, and enjoying an open-mouthed kiss with Miss Teen USA Katie Blair, while hanging out with the likes of Ryan Seacrest.

“Left the first wife, had an affair. Left the second wife, had an affair—but he’s the moral compass for twenty-year-olds in America!” Rosie opined.

Trump responded with a double-barrel barrage. He threatened to sue, derided Rosie’s ballooning weight, and called her “an extremely unattractive person who doesn’t understand the truth…. I think she’s a terrible person. She has failed at everything she has done.” He also promised to lure away Kelli.

I
N LATE
M
ARCH
Rosie established her credentials as a card-carrying conspiracy whack job, suggesting that 7 World Trade Center, which was leveled in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, had been purposefully imploded. Rosie said, on
The View
—“I do believe that it’s the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics that World Trade Center Tower 7—Building 7, which collapsed in on itself—it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved.” Of course, she did not mention that the building housed New York City’s emergency command bunker, and contained large fuel tanks throughout the building that fed generators by pressurized lines, as
Popular Mechanics
magazine wrote in its book,
Debunking 9/11 Myths
. But why let pesky facts get in the way of a good conspiracy?

In the coming weeks, Rosie proved incapable of shutting her lip. She became unglued in late April when she served as emcee of the Matrix Awards at the Waldorf Astoria, facing such media power houses as Rupert Murdoch, Senator Hillary Clinton, Joan Didion, Martha Stewart, Cindy Adams, seventeen high school scholarship winners, and myself.