Odd, No Mention Of "Acclaimed Novelist" Or "Fucktard"

I find it very dispiriting that it took a sapphic controversy involving the former 1st Lady for the rest of the world to catch on to the dark and insidious goings-on at Parade Magazine involving Walter Scott/Edward Klein, but in the last week I've been heartened by how many other folks have delved into this sordid little passion of mine. But it wasn't until this weekend when the depth of my influence was fully recognized by the mainstream press, and in the former 1st Lady's home state of Arkansas no less. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette had this to say:

But there will always be skeptics, and we would not put them in the same category of skeptics as we would people who believe Elvis is out there somewhere alive, still wearing his girdles. On the Internet, we found a fellow Walter Scott doubter named Tod Goldberg. Once a week, Goldberg posts on his Web site what he believes to have been the dumbest question asked of Walter Scott in the Parade. One time that particularly flummoxed Goldberg was when a reader wrote in to ask Scott why nobody can find Osama bin Laden. Scott’s answer was that he is probably dead, but his answer was not Goldberg’s point.
   Goldberg’s point was: Why would anybody entrust a gossip columnist with that? Goldberg has devised what he thinks to be a quintessential Walter Scott question, and sent it in as a kind of a dare to see if it will get published. The letter went like this: "I’ve been reading a lot about the coming Apocalypse. What celebs do you think Jesus will save?" He is still waiting for his answer. Maybe Edward Klein saw through Tod Goldberg the same way that Tod Goldberg thinks he sees through Walter Scott. Either that, or Jesus doesn’t have a very good publicist.

(The full text of the article can be found after the jump.)

From the Sunday, July 3rd Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

If to gossip is human, then Walter Scott, the gadabout whose "Personality Parade" column begins each issue of Parade magazine, displays a range of gifts that are superhuman.
    You can literally not stump him. He knows where Renee Zellweger was while husband Kenny Chesney accepted a country-singing award. (In the hotel next door.) Whatever happened to the stars of The Lone Ranger. (They died.) Who's the sexy surfer on all the magazine covers these days. (Andy Irons.) Why Nicolette Sheridan doesn't wear pantyhose. (Why do you think?) While Scott's salty bread and butter has always been answering the scattershot questions that Parade readers ask, there has also existed the suspicion that what Walter Scott is really up to is answering the questions that Parade readers didn't ask, but that he wishes they had. In the 1960s, press agents claimed to have written the entire column, supplying anecdotes that flattered their clients, and working backward to arrive at the questions.
    All of which brings us to Hillary Clinton and Edward Klein. Walter Scott, you see, is really Edward Klein. And if you believe Edward Klein, Hillary Clinton is really an ice-hearted lesbian who would perform acts that would skeeve out even the producers of Fear Factor if she thought it would make her the first female president of the United States.
    From 1958 to 1991, "Walter Scott" was the nom de gossip of Lloyd Shearer. (Shearer was likewise adept at delivering whiplash by subject change; his obituary writer admired his ability to address Executive Order 9066, calling for the World War II-internment of Japanese-Americans, and Elvis' rumored girdle-wearing, both in the same issue.) Since 1991, the "Personality Parade" has been written by Klein, a former Newsweek editor. Now Klein, under his own name, has written The Truth About Hillary, a new book that concludes that because Clinton was friends with some women at Wellesley who had rather masculine qualities, she must also have been more than friends with them.
    This gives the impression that Klein's book is all about her sexuality. It is not. But it is not much more than the sum of a year's worth of "Personality Parades," if all that anybody asked Walter Scott about for the entire year was Hillary Clinton. "What do members of Hillary's inner-circle call her behind her back?" Klein pretends that someone asked. Answer: The Big Girl. "What are Hillary's chief failings as a woman?" Klein projects. Answer : "She was a mother, but she wasn't maternal. She was a wife, but she had no wifely instincts." It's all basically like that.
    The problem with this is that it will now be hard to take Klein's "Personality Parade" at face value, and it was hard enough to take the "Personality Parade" that way before. The questions are always trailed by the name of the letter-writer as well as his hometown. In that way, they present a kind of travelogue of curiosity.
    For example, the question about the surfer on all the magazine covers referenced above was sent in by Helen Boone of Memphis. It seems incredible that anyone would write in to a national publication to ask about the identity of a person they'd casually observed on magazine covers. Couldn't they much easier just buy, or even merely inspect, one of the magazines the person in question was on the cover of?
    We would have called Helen Boone in Memphis and had her settle all this once and for all, but there were 93 Boone households listed in Memphis. It was much easier to find Dee Zetak of Gardnersville, Nev., who last year wrote in to the "Personality Parade" and said: "I'm against killing animals for fur." (Letterwriters to "Personality Parade" love to preface their questions with scene-setting declarations.) "Does Jennifer Lopez use real fur in her Sweetface fashion line?" Scott answered, "She isn't called JenniFUR for nothing."
    We didn't get Dee Zetak on the phone, either, but we did get her husband. Mr. Dee Zetak said that, yes, his wife had sent in the question, and that as far as he knew it appeared in print exactly as she asked it.
    But there will always be skeptics, and we would not put them in the same category of skeptics as we would people who believe Elvis is out there somewhere alive, still wearing his girdles. On the Internet, we found a fellow Walter Scott doubter named Tod Goldberg. Once a week, Goldberg posts on his Web site what he believes to have been the dumbest question asked of Walter Scott in the Parade. One time that particularly flummoxed Goldberg was when a reader wrote in to ask Scott why nobody can find Osama bin Laden. Scott's answer was that he is probably dead, but his answer was not Goldberg's point.
    Goldberg's point was: Why would anybody entrust a gossip columnist with that? Goldberg has devised what he thinks to be a quintessential Walter Scott question, and sent it in as a kind of a dare to see if it will get published. The letter went like this: "I've been reading a lot about the coming Apocalypse. What celebs do you think Jesus will save?" He is still waiting for his answer. Maybe Edward Klein saw through Tod Goldberg the same way that Tod Goldberg thinks he sees through Walter Scott. Either that, or Jesus doesn't have a very good publicist.

Comments

[Karen Scott]

Erm... who's the Fucktard? Walter Scott?

[Jim Winter]

Walter Scott reminds me of the psuedoscience experts on those shows History and Discovery run during sweeps week.

Typical Walt response:

"Brad Pitt hasn't been able to stay with Jennifer Aniston, nor can he commit to Angelina Jolie. Clearly, Mr. Pitt is a repressed homosexual."*

Typical pseudoexpert:

"The Egyptians did not have motorized equipment to life the heavy stones for the pyramids. Clearly, this shows alien intervention."

Note the similarities. Clearly, this proves that Elvis and Jim Morrison are still alive and running a gas station in the Arizona desert.

*Simulated Walter Scott answer.

[Graham]

Ed Klein, gossipmonger, is a former editor at Newsweek? Was he *an* editor there, or was he *the* editor? Scary either way.

[Joshua]

he was there, but it was a long time ago, something like twenty years or so - he seemed to have difficulty with facts then as well, or so I was told -

[Mike Barer]

Edward Klein is probably cut from the same cloth as Bernard Goldberg (probably no relation) who is for some reason a hard core Republican writing Ann Coulteresque books attacking Liberals.