The Gist Michelangelo Signorile
A Pundit's Glass Houses
Once again, Andrew Sullivan has whirled himself into a self-righteous little tizzy that even has some of the self-righteous scratching their heads-and which, yet again, exposes a hypocrisy on his part that is more conspicuous than a bearded pundit on too much testosterone. n He's railing about how unethical it is for certain columnists and editors to have taken money from Enron in the past, and appears to be saying that they need to disclose such facts each and every time they write critically about Enron, including the full dollar amounts they received. Conveniently, the most notable among these columnists and editors happen to be a liberal and others of his sparring partners. Meanwhile, Sullivan himself has been taking money from a man who is a George W. Bush buddy, a brother of a major Bush fundraiser and a covert p.r. operative who has schemed and scammed for Philip Morris and was exposed a few years ago for creating a front group for Big Tobacco. And Sullivan hasn't disclosed the cash transaction when he's written glowingly of this noted gay Republican-not to mention when he's penned endless love letters to Bush.
I know, I know: here I am once again exposing Sullivan's duplicities. But some of us have to do it-and it was satisfying to see Slate take him on last week, in a seamless piece by deputy editor Jack Shafer-as we're not going to see any criticism coming from Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz or Sullivan's other Beltway and New York media pals. Kurtz has a sharp eye and is a fine analyst; he's someone I look to quite often. But when it comes to Sullivan he has had a blind spot, puffing Sullivan up often, bypassing his sloppiness and his transgressions and, as was the case last week, jumping to Sullivan's commands like a trained beagle.
Sullivan relentlessly hammered New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who'd taken $50,000 from Enron in 1999 when he sat on an advisory board of the company. That was before he became a columnist for the Times. Krugman disclosed his relationship with Enron both when he wrote a Fortune magazine article in 1999 while on the advisory board and in a column in the Times last year. He stopped serving on the Enron advisory board when he joined the Times as a columnist. And his writings in recent weeks have excoriated the company. Sullivan criticized conservative pundits for taking money, too, like the right-wing Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol (with whom Sullivan has fiercely sparred)-though much more gingerly, even though Kristol actually seemed to have more of a problem than Krugman: he took money from Enron for sitting on the same board while he was at the Weekly Standard (though doesn't appear to have written anything about the company).
To Sullivan, full disclosure of his entire past financial relationship with Enron was required by Krugman, including full dollar amounts, within the text of any critical column about Enron. Perhaps motivating Sullivan was his bitter experience last year when some in the media raised questions after it became known that he was going to accept ads on his website from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association. The critics wanted to know if The New York Times Magazine, where Sullivan is a contributing writer, would allow Sullivan to continue to write articles in which he defended drugmakers against calls that they allow poor AIDS-ridden countries to make generic, cheaper versions of AIDS drugs. The Times released a statement noting that if Sullivan were to write on the pharmaceutical industry he would have to disclose in any such article that he's on the dole from PhRMA. Sullivan angrily declared he'd done nothing unethical. As Shafer notes on Slate, it's weird that Sullivan claimed that he was unfairly attacked but is now attacking other people for doing pretty much the same thing. Even weirder was that Sullivan, in the end, decided not to take the PhRMA ads. Why give them up if you don't think it's wrong to have them? And why now attack others for it?
Sullivan lives in a glass house within a glass house within a glass house, and as usual it is shattered by one of his own huge stones. He has a list of benefactors on his website-you have to search around to find it-and one of the people at the top of that list is Bush friend and public-relations operative Charles Francis, a man to whom Sullivan gave a glowing writeup only days after Francis appears to have given Sullivan some cold hard cash. Francis is an old Texas buddy of the President's who was one of the "Austin 12"-a group of gays who met with Bush during the election campaign after Bush had a falling out with the Log Cabin Republicans. He is also the brother of James Francis Jr., a member of the Texas Public Safety Commission (appointed by Bush) and a major Bush fundraiser.
Francis now works with DCI Group, a p.r. firm that has represented Big Tobacco and the NRA, founded by a former R.J. Reynolds tobacco company field coordinator. During the 90s, Francis had his own firm, State Affairs Company, which had Philip Morris among its clients. In 1996 SAC was exposed in The Washington Post as having created a front group for Philip Morris-a supposedly nonpartisan citizens' watchdog group that was secretly collecting data on behalf of Big Tobacco to use against trial lawyers (detailing their political contributions, etc.).
It was last December, about a week after Francis' name was listed on Sullivan's site as a Sullivan benefactor, when the pundit wrote in his "Daily Dish" on the home page how "the work of Charlie Francis is of enormous importance-not just for gay Americans but also for Republicans who want to see their party grow and breathe and unite." (Francis is a founder of the Republican Unity Coalition, a gay-straight alliance.) Francis was certainly not identified as a Big Tobacco lobbyist, nor was there any disclosure-within the text itself, as Sullivan is demanding of Krugman and others-that "Charlie" gave Sullivan a wad of cash to keep his website going; one has to go find that information where it's buried away elsewhere on his site. When you do find it, Sullivan doesn't disclose the exact dollar amount (as he also has demanded of Krugman). We are only told that Francis is a Gold Sponsor-the top donor group, comprising people who gave $1000 and up to the site.
I remember several journalist friends wondering after they saw Francis' name there if in fact The New York Times Magazine would now allow Sullivan to write about George W. Bush, the Republican Unity Coalition, Francis, gay Republicans, Big Tobacco and a lot of other issues without disclosing that he's on the take from a gay Republican Bush buddy and a Big Tobacco huckster. Now, here he is getting all moralistic about Krugman having taken cash from Enron years ago-a company Krugman now is criticizing fiercely-while Sullivan is currently taking cash from Francis and doing something much worse: writing glowingly of Francis, not to mention Bush. And Francis may be just the tip of the iceberg: there are 59 other contributors named on Sullivan's site (and then there are the ones he says don't want their names used), some of whom must have conflicting business interests according to the all-new Sullivan Standards of Journalism. As Sullivan wrote on his website to Howard Kurtz (who immediately jumped into action and wrote an item in the Post about Sullivan's attacks on Krugman, giving credibility to Sullivan's charges), "C'mon, Howie. This is an easy call."
Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at www.signorile.com.