THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 7, 1995 TAG: 9501070026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
So Newt Gingrich, Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, doesn't think much of Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of Democratic President Bill Clinton and therefore first lady (at the least) of the nation.
So, just between you and us and a zillion others, tell us something we don't know, such as how Hillary might have described ``Newtie'' to her mom in the privacy of her own home.
Of course, Hillary's home is the White House, to which she has now graciously invited a Gingrich or two, but no Chung. Maybe a speaker of the House ought not call the wife of the president what CBS correspondent Connie Chung got Newt's mother to say her son called Hillary.
But what Newt said about Hillary - gosh knows what he might have called Connie - isn't nearly so dismaying as what CBS News President Eric Ober said about Connie's having wheedled Newt's mother into 'fessing up.
``Mrs. Gingrich volunteered an unsolicited view,'' Ober told The Wall Street Journal, ``that she said her son had expressed.''
Unsolicited? ``Why don't you just whisper it to me,'' Connie coaxed Mrs. Gingrich, ``just between you and me?'' - and the millions CBS News hoped would be watching this edition of ``Eye to Eye With Connie Chung.'' Millions did, but not as many millions as watched ``Seinfeld,'' or even ``Matlock.''
Let this be a lesson to all of America, particularly politicians' relatives, to beware that quintessentially American compulsion to answer every question asked, particularly when the questioner has a microphone.
Marvin Kalb, formerly a network correspondent and now head of a Harvard think tank on press and politics, summed up this brouhaha well.
``Mrs. Gingrich could have been much wiser,'' he said, ``and Connie Chung should have been much better.'' In the competitive ``culture of prime-time television, which seeks sensational soundbites . . . you're going to engage in lowest-common-denominator jour-nal-ism.''
Enough said, from all concerned. by CNB