Shut Up by Talk

By Walter Kirn

By Pointing fingers is risky--there's always the danger you'll poke yourself in the eye. That's what happened last week to Talk Miramax Books and its celebrity editor, Tina Brown, when pesky Internet muckraker Matt Drudge got his hands on a draft of one of the company's titles. Written by investigative reporter John Connolly and tentatively called The Insane Clown Posse, the book proposed to turn the tables on President Clinton's impeachment accusers, from Ken Starr and his staff to several anti-Clinton journalists, by exposing their secrets. The results, though, appear to exemplify the politics of personal destruction that Clinton's defenders have long claimed to abhor.

According to Drudge's copy of the manuscript, Clinton's inquisitors included "at least six gays." Literary agent Lucianne Goldberg was branded a "fag hag," Ken Starr "effeminate," and the love life of political pundit Anne Coulter was also delved into. "I was never outing anybody," counters Connolly. He says a disgruntled former assistant added the salacious material to the manuscript before leaking it.

Talk Miramax had First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams warn Drudge that he, not Miramax, would bear responsibility for airing the manuscript. But on Friday an embarrassed Brown issued a terse press release canceling the book. Connolly, a true believer in the right wing-conspiracy theory of Clinton's impeachment, called Brown "a coward" for abandoning it. Brown insisted it would have been axed anyway. The controversy is over for now, but while books on the Clinton scandal continue to pop up on the best-seller lists, the finger pointing will continue, and all involved would be wise to watch their eyes.

--By Walter Kirn. Reported by Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York