After a relationship of more than 30 years, Washingtonian magazine and writer Kitty Kelley are divorcing, and the terms are not amicable. Kelley is in a snit because the mag unceremoniously booted her from the masthead of its current issue, citing her controversial book "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty." In an e-mail last week, Editor Jack Limpert lashed Kelley for what he called the book's partisan timing and its irresponsible reporting about President Bush:
"We are always willing to attack the policies, and the behavior, of the President," Limpert wrote to Kelley. "But it seems to us that the office deserves respect. We don't think we should attack a President personally -- his relations with his wife and family, his use of alcohol or other drugs, things like that -- without a very solid basis for doing so. . . . We felt strongly enough that we didn't want readers to feel that your appearance on the masthead meant we endorsed the book."
The captain seems to feel that Limpert should have informed Kelley. While I certainly see his point, I tend to think that anyone willing to display that much vitrol in a book as Kelley did, to step so far out of the bounds of good taste and proper journalistic ethics that she should simply expect this sort of thing.
No matter how long standing her relationship with The Washingtonian magazine or any other publication, Kitty's long standing tradition of writing hit piece's disguised as a biographies should have prompted this type of action years ago. The fact that Limpert didn't contact her before hand I think does show a certain lack of courage on his part.
However I don't think anyone really believes that contacting her beforehand would have changed anything. I'm sure, given her track record, she will simply cry and bemoan her fate loudly and publically, and I'm equally certain that some of the more militant factions of the left wing will probably generate yet another whacko conspiracy theory about how the Bush Administration is to blame for this, and it's an attempt by them to censure poor little Kitty Kelley.
But the truth is you reap what you sow. She's had ample opportunity over the years to stop this nonsense and reform her ways, but she continues to write "biographies" that are chock full of the most outlandish rumors all attributed to unnamed sources, none of which can be checked or verified.
So I feel no pitty for the poor little Kitty, if she wants to spend all of her time in the litterbox she can hardly complain when the smell comes back to haunt her.
