Ed Klein

The Daily News has some nuggets from Ed Klein's latest Unauthorized Biography. He continues to stalk powerful women in this portrait of Katie Couric, which hits bookstores a week from today.

The News writes:

The most shocking tale in author Edward Klein's unauthorized biography, "Katie: The Real Story," is that Couric's marriage to Jay Monahan was on the rocks long before he died of cancer in 1998.  read more »

• 0 comments

The Clinton administration's grave comedy of manners has been rehashed so many times now, and tossed off so many strange offspring, that any remaining, would-be Clintonian chroniclers are left staring at (ahem! Ed Klein) the bottom of the literary barrel.

There's no way left to swing it, so a troupe of eager musical theater folk have determined...to sing it. Monica! The Musical first appeared last spring. Now, a refined (errr, make that "updated") version, which premiered last night, has already sold out four of six shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. As your devoted Politicker slave, I went to see for myself.

The cast tromps all over the beaten path, from the tasteless to the clever, with an emphasis on the former. There's lots of physical comedy: Hillary is an amusingly spastic dancer, frugging her heart out, while Bill has a languid, frat-boy lope that makes him look more Animal House than White House. During a press conference, a frenzied George Stephanopoulos tries to mow down Ken Starr with a presidential podium on wheels.

Set against the slapstick backdrop, Monica dreams of someday being "Monica Rodham Clinton." "Now don't cry," Bill tells her, off in a corner at the inaugural ball."You're breaking my heart. And you're being very loud."  read more »

What else? Hillary dreams of taking over and...Well, there's that cameo by Tom Jones. He sings away sexual scruples ("Forget it! Forget it! Forgetitforgetit!") while introducing Bill, the young Rhodes scholar, to British prostitutes with lousy teeth.

Leaving the theater, this is what I was thinking: A) There's a reason I'm not a theater critic; and B) In light of the present administration, it doesn't take a musical to create nostalgia for the mildness of Clinton's missteps.

A Politicker correspondent who really ought to be getting back to his day job passes on word that Ed Klein's new Hillary book will be debuting in second place on the New York Times bestseller list to be published on July 10.

The book's success raises the question of how those of us who work in the mainstream media should react to stuff like this. An earlier generation would have just ignored it -- after all, the book contains nothing that would qualify as news -- but now even the Times feels obliged to cover whatever pops up on Drudge, if only in a "story of the story" sort of way. And for most people writing about it, there was a question of whether to repeat the particularly ugly allegations about Hillary's personal life, or just to refer to them.  read more »

The Politicker has solved this dilemma by refusing to link Klein's book in its running "story-of-the-story" coverage. That'll teach him!

So pundits can't seem to take their eyes off of Ed Klein's Hillary book, even as they dismiss it as a work of trashy fiction. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen tries a sarcastic take on Klein's real motivations for writing the book. "Klein set out to expose the right wing for the gullible nincompoops they are," Cohen writes. "He has succeeded, and vast riches await him." Here's the key passage: His book is flying off the shelves -- more than 350,000 shipped. The other day was No. 4 on Amazon's bestseller list and was sold out at my sedate neighborhood bookstore when I checked. It has become a Rorschach of conservative madness -- proof that they will buy anything, no matter how badly done, that attacks the Clintons or liberalism. Klein's book is just the most recent example. He looked at conservatives the way P.T. Barnum looked over his audience: "There's a sucker born every minute," Barnum said. Ed is nodding all the way to the bank. Okay, so let's review: Someone creates writes a Hillary expose so ridiculously slanderous that conservative columnists rush out to condemn it. The book promptly becomes a best-seller anyway, prompting liberal columnists like Cohen to dismiss it as "conservative madness." Does this strike anyone else as an instructive preview of Hillary '08, if not ‘06? Speaking of which...  read more »