As an insider at a classic media frenzy, Jonah Goldberg was hit on by more beggars than a bus station commuter.
He even heard Larry King turn mute, albeit briefly.
Goldberg, 28, is an independent television producer and son of Lucianne Goldberg, a key figure in the Monica Lewinsky mess. Lucianne is a Clinton-bashing literary agent who persuaded former Lewinsky colleague Linda Tripp to surreptitiously tape conversations with Lewinsky.
Disclosure of the tapes’ existence prompted newsies to surround Lucianne’s Manhattan apartment building. Others, such as Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel and Diane Sawyer, opted for polite phone solicitations, and some, including CBS’ “60 Minutes” and The New York Times, schmoozed the Goldbergs at A-list restaurants.
Some organizations sent flowers. Some offered gargantuan sums of money. And one famous newspaperman sent a droll, world-weary fax.
At the hubbub’s height, Jonah was at mom’s Manhattan apartment, having made the trek from Washington to help her. He took many of the estimated 125 daily media calls on the apartment’s three lines. Everybody wanted the tapes.
Jonah also is a vice president of the family Goldberg Literary Agency. He first had listened to the tapes last October when he met with Tripp and a Newsweek reporter in Jonah’s Washington apartment.
When the story broke about the tapes, “it broke so fast that everybody who was involved got flash-frozen in the story. Those of us in it can’t seem to get out. I’m just a tiny figure, a minnow in it.”
When he got to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to help his mom with the barrage, he still subscribed to a Washington-driven perception that the people at the top of the media food chain were jerks and those at the bottom far more benevolent. That changed dramatically.
“I found that the people at the top could afford to be gracious. Brokaw (who also sent a nice note) and Koppel, who called from the airport on his way back from Cuba, were utter gentlemen,” he said.
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“Then there were the people from `Hard Copy’ and New York 1 (New York City’s 24-hour all-news channel). Those guys were utterly obnoxious.”
“The guy from New York 1 just didn’t understand why we wouldn’t go with him (give him the tapes) rather than, say, `60 Minutes.’ We’d get 10 calls a day from him. He’d say, `The benefit of us is you play them for us, you really get your message out!’ “
Of course, the Goldbergs’ problem never would be getting the message out, even if they forked the tapes over to a 10-watt college radio station. Ultimately, Jonah personally brought them back to Washington and the offices of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
One tabloid show sent roses, saying it would very much like to “work out a consultancy for you, to help guide us through the scandal.”
Don Hewitt, the head honcho at “60 Minutes,” took Jonah and his mother out to the posh 21 for lunch. The top editor of Time magazine, Walter Isaacson, just happened to be dining there too. “He tried to schmooze my mom, but Hewitt said, `Get away!’ “
” `60 Minutes’ makes a pretty persuasive case that it is The New York Times of television news magazines and the one taken most seriously,” Jonah said.
As for the real New York Times, its calls were drenched in an air of entitlement. “They implied that, `Of course you will take the calls because we’re The New York Times.’ “
And they did take the calls, as well as lunch at the equally spiffy Four Seasons on a Times cultural affairs reporter, Judith Miller. But, as for everybody else, no tapes were forthcoming.
“But, hey,” Jonah said, “why not at least dine out on this stuff? I bilked CBS out of a couple of meals. I might as well eat well.”
Sawyer knew Jonah’s mom since she represented Los Angeles cop Mark Fuhrman when he wrote his O.J. Simpson book. Fuhrman was interviewed by Sawyer, who cooed into the phone about immediately hopping into a taxi and coming uptown to listen to the tapes.
Lucianne signaled that the quest was hopeless, indicating that her demand was simple: Sawyer would have to have sex with the building superintendent. (In fact, says the son, the exact wording of the tongue-in-cheek mandate was not fit for a family newspaper).
King then called with “that Florida deli drawl, saying, `Looooceey, what can I do to getcha on da show?’ “
The mom pulled his leg by saying that Sawyer had agreed to have sex with the super. “There was a long, pregnant pause,” Jonah recalls. “Then Larry King says, `Would a (particular sex act) do the trick?’ “
Meanwhile, Jonah was struck by the intense competition within individual organizations, notably TV. ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” sought the tapes, as did “20/20,” “Good Morning America” and the evening news with Peter Jennings. One show would bad-mouth another, belittling its significance and clout.
“It seemed as if 15 separate producers would call from CNN several times a day, not caring that others had called. Somebody would say, `Well, that other guy’s from the New York office.’ “
Meanwhile, print organizations tended to be smarter, assigning one of their reporters as their voices.
The supermarket tabloids offered wads of money. At one point, an Enquirer representative was downstairs in a black Cherokee on a cell phone offering to instantly cut a check for $500,000 if Jonah came immediately. The unsolicited tabloid bidding went as high as $750,000, Jonah said.
Then came a fax.
“Dear Agent,” began the handwritten missive.
“I am in my house on Broadway doing a fiction book on gangsters. Thus I have little time for hanging out like a cheap little reporter.
“But I do this column for Newsday and I have to fill space and I don’t want to go to Washington.
“If you don’t call me, I’ll bad-mouth you all over town and also have the City Council member for this area turn off your water. Jimmy Breslin.”
Said a fax from longtime Lucianne pal Dominick Dunne, “You’re so famous. I’m afraid to call you.”
Jonah feels he endured an “incredible crash course in how all this stuff works and how some common strands run through (the media).”
For starters, so many reporters affected a tone that suggested Jonah and his mom owed them something. “I had to supposedly abide by certain notions of fairness in getting out information.”
There were entreaties to take an hour here, an hour there, have lunch, have coffee as reporters sought to persuade him to play the tapes.
“Their bosses may be delighted to have them having coffee with me, but I have to take off an hour from my job,” Jonah said. “And while it is interesting and exciting to be involved, you get this psychological guilt-mongering, about how `you owe this to history’ and how `you should play the tapes for us.’
“There’s a sense of entitlement. If you don’t return a call, people think you owe them a longer call later. After a while, this love-bombing and guilt-mongering becomes both exhausting and addictive. You have to keep a level head.
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“You have to realize that none of these people will want anything to do with me in two weeks. When you realize the games they are playing, it builds resentment.”
People reflexively would plead for “just one more question.” Many would claim they recalled him when he was in diapers.
Indeed, the latter happened so often, he would turn to his mom and declare, “So and so is on line three playing the diaper card again.”