Press Hooked on Sex?; Making Fun of Obama
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST (voice-over): Hooked on sex? Diane Sawyer and "People" magazine chat up the call girl who helped bring down Eliot Spitzer. Do we really need to know all about and see so much of Ashley Dupre? Sexism and the media. Tina Brown on whether the press demeans women and why she's questioning who takes care of Sarah Palin's kids. Leaky ship. The new president's courtship of Hillary and Bill as told through winks and whispers. Plus, is it too dangerous to make fun of Obama? Letterman's intrepid correspondent Andy Kindler takes his shot.</s>KURTZ: We are, you may have noticed, awash in leaks. One day it's "Newsweek" reporting that Eric Holder will be Barack Obama's attorney general. The next, it's "Roll Call" saying Tom Daschle will be the new health secretary. And a day later, CNN's scoop that Janet Napolitano will take over Homeland Security. Unnamed Obama aides griping to reporters about leaks from unnamed Clinton aides, which means the Obama side is leaking, too. From the moment that MSNBC reported that Hillary might be secretary of state, it's been a roller-coaster ride of yes, no, maybe, sure. And even now it's not quite resolved, according to sources, that is.</s>HARRY SMITH, CBS NEWS: Hillary Clinton is being considered for secretary of state.</s>SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: I want to go back to this Hillary Clinton thing.</s>WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: What's the latest on her possibly becoming the next secretary of state?</s>MATT LAUER, NBC NEWS: Let's go back to Hillary Clinton for a second.</s>DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC: Senator Hillary Clinton decided to accept the job of secretary of state.</s>ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: This is not quite a done deal yet.</s>KURTZ: And anchors and pundits love to draw the Lincoln analogy, invoking the title of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on the 16th president bringing his political opponents into his cabinet.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Obama and Hillary Clinton seem increasingly optimistic about the partnership -- a team of rivals.</s>SAM YOUNGMAN, "THE HILL": The buzz phrase lately has been "team of rivals."</s>KATIE COURIC, CBS NEWS: Will she be a part of a modern team of rivals?</s>DAVID GREGORY, MSNBC: ... team of rivals.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody keeps talking about this team of rivals.</s>KURTZ: And to help us paddle through this leaky transition, here in Washington, Michelle Cottle, senior editor at "The New Republic"; Christina Bellantoni, White House correspondent for "The Washington Times"; and in Chicago, following the president-elect, Ed Henry, White House correspondent for CNN. Christina Bellantoni, this is what you quoted a former Clinton aide as saying, that Hillary people had put out this whole secretary of state scenario prematurely and created a pickle for Obama. Why are anonymous aides sharing all these details?</s>CHRISTINA BELLANTONI, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON TIMES": I think that everybody wants to have their piece of this. It's very exciting. You've got 60 more days until we've got inauguration. So people really just want to have something to say, and everybody wants something from another reporter. So they're calling people up constantly and then telling me what's going on, and then somebody else will contradict it. It's just a wild ride.</s>KURTZ: Your phone keeps ringing. Michelle Cottle, the mood swings here are almost comical. "The New York Times" on Friday quoting an unnamed Hillary friend as saying, she decided, well, she's not going to do it. Then she decided maybe. So, is the Clinton style, or are reporters ginning this up by talking to everybody they can?</s>MICHELLE COTTLE, SR. EDITOR, "THE NEW REPUBLIC": Well, ,you know, every time the Clintons are involved there must be high drama. This is kind of the defining characteristic of the Clintons. So I'm sure on some level it's fun for Bill and Hillary to be out there, and they're the ones who are kind of like, well, playing hard to get or, or along these lines.</s>KURTZ: But Christina says her phone keeps ringing, which means that sources want to play this game with reporters, who, of course, are granting anonymity to these sources</s>COTTLE: This is as exciting as it gets. I mean, we had this huge high-drama election, and then suddenly we're in transition period. And, you know, some of the transition stuff is less -- you know, a little gray.</s>COTTLE: We have to get the rock stars in there, and they have to do their Hamlet act.</s>KURTZ: You're suggesting there's a drama deficit that we are endeavoring to fill. All right. Ed Henry, on Friday afternoon, after a week of winks and nods, "The New York Times" online says Hillary Clinton has accepted the offer of being secretary of state, but that wasn't totally -- it certainly wasn't officially confirmed. What did you do at that moment? Because you had a series of live shots.</s>HENRY: Well, we were reporting what "The New York Times" was saying. I don't think it was really a surprise to anyone though that Hillary Clinton was going to accept this job if it was officially offered. It's sort of this little dance, a kabuki dance, that goes back and forth. The bottom line is, after former President Bill Clinton laid out all this information to the Obama team, he had a team of lawyers working behind closed doors for days to sort of smooth this forward. Of course she's going to accept if it's offered. I mean, why would they go through all of that?</s>KURTZ: But Ed, you threw a little cold water on it. You came out and said it's not quite a done deal, based on your reporting.</s>HENRY: Right. Because, again, I think it's a little bit semantical, because technically it hadn't been offered yet, technically it hadn't been accepted yet. Sure, she's likely to accept it if it's offered. I mean, again, we're going back and forth. And Hillary Clinton's office itself went on the record and said, look, negotiations are moving forward, but it's not done yet. So, some of the reporting is getting ahead of it. So, I think sometimes there's a frenzy on these kind of stories to get every last detail no matter what.</s>KURTZ: Right.</s>HENRY: And sometimes you've got to take a step back and say it's not quite done yet. In terms of the leaks, you know, the Obama camp is now complaining about leaks. But remember, they promised the most open, transparent administration in history. I'm in the openness and transparency business, and we plan to keep them to that promise.</s>KURTZ: All right. Now, some of these leaks really have an impact, Christina. For example, on Friday, the word that Tim Geithner would be the -- the president of the New York Fed would be the new treasury secretary. the Dow goes up 500 points. But since the Obama campaign was known for being notoriously disciplined and tightlipped, why have there been so many leaks?</s>BELLANTONI: A lot of people -- the things that we talk about them not leaking, the vice presidential choice or some of their financial figures, not that many people knew about that information.</s>KURTZ: It was a closed circle.</s>BELLANTONI: Yes. So now you've got all of Washington back in, they're very excited, as we've been talking about, and it's a lot of old hands that want to be part of the action again. They've already got all these old reporting sources, and they're calling them up and saying, hey, I've got some word here. And it's very interesting, just the little, incremental bits of data that we're getting, and, yes, the rally was really fascinating.</s>KURTZ: And of course, Michelle, the Obama operation has to consult with people on Capitol Hill to see if so and so might be a good bet for confirmation, whether it's Bill Richardson or whoever, and that means a lot of loud mouths get in on the action and can tell people like us.</s>COTTLE: Oh, sure. You're no longer dealing with just the Obama no-drama culture. You're dealing -- and the more you bring in old Clinton hands, I mean, old Clinton hands were famous for leaking.</s>KURTZ: Right.</s>COTTLE: I mean, when you're talking about a lot of people, everybody has to be involved. People talk about how large a presidential operation is, but compared to governing, it's nothing.</s>KURTZ: And they have long-time relationships with journalists...</s>COTTLE: Exactly.</s>KURTZ: ... who they want to maintain those relationships.</s>COTTLE: So, you know, the presidential campaign is one thing, but then you get into governing, and you can't control the leaks.</s>KURTZ: Ed Henry, on Wednesday night, CNN.com put up a story that said multiple Democratic sources say billionaire Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker is Obama's choice for commerce secretary, then adding that the vetting process would be a challenge. By Thursday morning, Pritzker said she was going to take herself out of it. So, have there been cases where we have all jumped the gun here?</s>HENRY: I don't think that was jumping the gun. I think it was accurate at the time, that she was the leading contender for that job. But again, we get into some semantics about where it is in the process. That story -- I don't have it in front of me, but the story also carefully said that the vetting process still had to go forward. And as you know it yourself, it was essentially Penny Pritzker saying eventually on Thursday she didn't want to go rough that process, for various reasons. One being she's an international businesswoman, all kinds of dealing. This process has been difficult for a lot of these nominees because they have to put everything on the table. And sometimes cabinet posts or an ambassadorship sounds great in theory. But when you get down to brass tacks about not just what you have to disclose, but you have to divest some of your investments, and whatnot, they don't want to do that. So I think what we were saying on Wednesday night was that she is the leading contender for that. By Thursday, she had pulled out.</s>KURTZ: One thing I love about this process is journalists devote all this energy to finding out who is going to be the next commerce secretary, and then for the next four years we never cover the commerce secretary again. Just completely doesn't care. Now, Obama is obviously about to go into the White House bubble. Indeed, it's begun to descend on him. And there was a "New York Times" story about that he has to give up his BlackBerry for privacy reasons. And he talked about this transition, this coming transition, on "60 Minutes." Let's watch.</s>SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I mean, the loss of anonymity -- and this is not a complaint, this is part of what you sign up for. But being able to just wander around the neighborhood, I cant go to my old barbershop now. I have got to have my barber come to some undisclosed location to cut my hair.</s>KURTZ: Now, Christina, every president goes through a version of this. Why has there been so much coverage about Obama's personal transition?</s>BELLANTONI: Well, there's been so much coverage of everything Obama has done. I mean, we've been covering his haircuts at this barber in Chicago forever.</s>KURTZ: Really?</s>BELLANTONI: You know?</s>KURTZ: The barber is becoming famous?</s>BELLANTONI: Absolutely, in Hyde Park. So right now, you have so little access to him, that this trip he took to Manny's (ph) Deli, for example, on Friday became this huge story, and there were so many cameras there. And one of the things he said there was that he was not selling his Chicago home. That ended up not making any headlines until I watched the tape. CBS, they had cut it on a Web extra. And this is something we don't have access to him on the press. People are fascinated with every asset of his life. Here you go, he's telling somebody in a deli that he's not selling his home.</s>COTTLE: I think on some level, though, it's also that they're a young family with young kids. And they've talked about kind of -- they've made it an issue, kind of. They like their privacy. They like backyard barbecues, they like potluck suppers, they like to hang out with friend who have nothing to do with politics. And this does not transfer well to the White House.</s>KURTZ: Yes, exactly. But as an example of just the breathless coverage here, the "Newsweek" cover out today. Let's put it up on the screen. "The Power of Michelle." That would be Michelle Obama, of course. This is the third straight "Newsweek" cover on something having to do with Obama, the fifth in the last three months. It talks -- the article talks about her double Ivy League pedigree, her style. "Michelle has the power to change the way African-American see ourselves, our lives and our possibilities." Well, maybe, but the media coverage here has just been relentless.</s>COTTLE: Well, of course. I mean, there's a certain degree of glamour. And as everybody talks about ad nauseum, there is a historic element to this. And there's like a huge group of people out here who see them not just as individuals, but as symbols. And any time you have kind of that extra level to the story, you're going to get wild coverage.</s>BELLANTONI: And there's still a money-making element to that, too.</s>KURTZ: Absolutely.</s>BELLANTONI: Covers sell.</s>KURTZ: Those covers probably fly off the shelves, and the interviews produce big ratings. Ed Henry, I've got about 20 seconds. Going a little overboard on this transition coverage?</s>HENRY: Well, I think part of the issue though is that there is a great hunger for the information, as you're pointing out. And the president-elect himself has not really shown his face out there very much. He's been huddled behind closed doors. So we're having to go out and dig the information from other people. In fact, I even went to that barbershop and got a haircut, Howie. I've got to dig out the information any way I can.</s>KURTZ: One of the benefits of transition coverage, Ed Henry getting the haircut in Chicago. Thanks for joining us, Ed, Christina Bellantoni, and Michelle Cottle. When we come back, isn't it about time to start poking fun at Barack Obama? Dave Letterman's intrepid correspondent Andy Kindler will step on that landmine in a moment.