No Reporter Coverup: Kennedy Kept Sex Secret

[kskiska]

and other stories…

Advice from a seasoned Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter to Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and other pols with a wandering eye: The next time you get the urge, pick a paramour who won't blab. And, adds retired Associated Press legend Walter Mears, don't blame the press when you get caught. Mears should know. He covered every presidential campaign from JFK to George W. Bush and reveals in his juicy memoir, Deadlines Past, that Kennedy got away with it because he kept his sex life secret, not because reporters covered up for their presidential pal. "Even if they can't prove it, reporters trade gossip," says Mears. "Even at last call in the bar, I didn't hear any," he tells us. Be assured, he adds, if reporters had the skinny on JFK and Marilyn Monroe, "it would have been nuclear." But "his affairs were secret because he saw to it," Mears says in the book, out in October. "Not so with Gary Hart or Bill Clinton--they got involved with talkative women." Sure, Mears concedes, times have changed and news has become more gossipy. But, "A story is no story unless you can prove it."

more…
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030818/whispers/18whisplead.htm

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. Kennedy was smarter than Clinton

by a hair....that and the fact there was no juicyanne goldberg around. :)

[Democat]

2. A story is no story unless you can prove it? What B.S.!

The right wing media ran every unfounded untrue rumor about Bill Clinton nonstop. They didn't care about whether they were true, just whether they hurt Democrats.

[robbedvoter]

3. Were there rewards posted for any women who slept with JFK spilling ?

the beans? I won't say the WRVC didn't exist then - they just used guns rather than investigations.

[demigoddess]

4. I have a hard time believing those stories

In all these years they have found only 2 women who admit to anything, and supposedly Kennedy had "dozens" of women. Maybe they over estimated or it wasn't really true.

[Julien Sorel]

5. This is avoidance.

First of all, I would hardly call Monroe's 'Happy Birthday' thing discreet. Second, part of the reason people were so discreet in those days was because the press didn't talk about certain things, so there was no point in 'blabbing.'

All these sex scandals recently, and this guy implies that the real reason is that the old-time politicians were smarter about it? It's refusing to address reality. If Monroe had been subpoenaed, she'd have squealed just like Lewinsky did. The difference was the era, not the people.

[aquart]

6. Meadow merde. The press prides itself on knowing the dirt.

Especially the kind they can't print because there's no real evidence or the editor won't let them.