Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble

by Nora Ephron

  “He agreed to meet me with a lawyer. They had a tape recorder. I had a tape recorder. I asked him about this relationship with this unpaid staff worker, taped with his knowledge, and I got a strong blast at both the Detroit News and at me. He said it was a well-known fact in Washington that I had been assigned by my editor to get him. I asked him who had told him that. He refused to tell me. He said I was absolutely the worst journalist in Washington. I said, Well, if I can’t be the best, I’d just as soon be the worst. Well, he said, we all have to make a living.”

  Both Seth Kantor and Martin Hayden deny that anyone at the News was out to get Don Riegle—but somebody must have been; there’s no other way to explain the decision to run the story Kantor turned in. Written in pulp-magazine style, it’s loaded with phrases like “sex-tainted,” “provocative brunet,” “kiss-and-playback romance,” “tell-tale tapes,” “boudoir antics,” and so forth. It refers to Miss Ackerman as “Dorothy”—allegedly her code name on the tapes—and fails to mention the fact that she was paid by Robin Moore. It also leaves out something that Kantor and Hayden knew—that Miss Ackerman had been what newspaper reporters call “close” with South Korean lobbyist Tongsun Park, as well as several other congressmen. The lead of the story says that Riegle once described the affair as “more important than ‘a lousy subcommittee hearing.’ ” Later in the article, it becomes clear that Riegle used the expression in a casual, offhand way: “In one of their conversations, Riegle said he had to break away ‘to go to a lousy subcommittee hearing now.’ ” Kantor added sanctimoniously: “It is in the subcommittees that Congress does its basic legislative work.”

  The article backfired totally, of course. News columnists Lou Gordon and Fred Girard wrote columns protesting it. The Associated Press and United Press International refused to run the story the day it broke. Says AP executive editor Louis Boccardi: “We try to make a decision like this based on whether there’s some relevance to the individual’s public responsibility, and we couldn’t satisfy ourselves that was the case here.” Within days, Riegle was the recipient of a wave of sympathy; he took the offensive, attacking the News and charging the paper with conspiring with his opponent to smear him.

  Two weeks later, Saul Friedman of the Detroit Free Press wrote the other half of the story—he identified Miss Ackerman by name, linked her to Park, and revealed the financial details of her transaction with Moore. Which proved that in a healthy, competitive, two-newspaper town, the public is occasionally subjected to twice as much trash.

  When I interviewed Martin Hayden in Detroit after the election, he did not believe he had made a mistake in running the Riegle story. “Seth said that all this information was coming out in Moore’s book,” said Hayden. “What if the book came out and people said, ‘Did you know about this?’ ” Did Hayden ever consider not printing the transcript of the tapes? “Not after we had them. Without the tapes I don’t know if there would have been any story. The question was of his judgment, not his sexual morality.” Did he think the story was heavy-handed? “As a matter of fact, we went easy. Before we were through we became convinced this was not an isolated case.” Did Hayden meet with Kantor or any News editors to discuss whether the story should be printed? “No. I handled it. Whatever blame there is is mine.”

  Should Hayden have printed the story? Probably not—the fact that it would eventually be printed in a quickie paperback is hardly justification. But if he decided to go ahead, he ought to have printed the whole story—including Miss Ackerman’s name and details about her financial transactions concerning the tapes. In order to nail Riegle, the News gave up half the story.

  Was the piece justified on the grounds that, finally, Riegle’s character was revealed? No. Anyone who reads Riegle’s book, O Congress, is perfectly able to perceive his “arrogance, immaturity, cold-bloodedness and consuming political ambition.” Among other things.

  Should Hayden have used the tapes? No. I can’t make a rule about what constitutes an invasion of privacy, but I know one when I see one.

  For some time after I came back from Detroit, I wondered what all this proved. Certainly it was clear that the voters of Michigan were more sophisticated than Seth Kantor and Martin S. Hayden, but that wasn’t much of a point: so is my cat. Then, on November 7, Larry Flynt published a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post promising to pay $25,000 to any woman who would tell her story about sex with a congressman to Hustler magazine, and I looked for some way to tie that in, but I couldn’t. I’m afraid, in fact, that I can’t come up with a real point to any of this. Which may be the point. Nobody really cares. Newspaper editors have stumbled into a whole new area they’re now allowed to publish stories about, and they’re publishing ridiculous, irrelevant, hypocritical, ugly little articles that aren’t dirty enough for Hustler or relevant enough for the papers that print them. “Maybe I’m on the wrong side of the pendulum swinging,” Seth Kantor said to me. Maybe so.

  February, 1977

  The Ontario Bulletin

  Two years ago, my husband bought a cooperative in the Ontario Apartments in Washington, D.C. The Ontario is an old building as Washington apartment buildings go, turn of the century, to be imprecise, and it has high ceilings, considerable woodwork, occasional marble and views of various capital sights. It also has the Ontario Bulletin. The Ontario Bulletin is a mimeographed newsletter that arrives every month or so in the mailbox. It is supplemented by numerous urgent memos and elevator notices; many of these concern crime. The Ontario is located in what is charitably called a marginal neighborhood, and all of us who live there look for signs that it is on the verge of becoming less marginal. The fact that the local movie theater is switching from Spanish-language films to English-language films is considered a good sign. The current memo in the elevator is not: “During the past eight weeks, FIVE ONTARIO WOMEN HAVE HAD THEIR PURSES SNATCHED on the grounds or close by. Three of these events occurred this week.” This memo, written by Sue Lindgren, chairperson, Security Committee, goes on to state: “Fortunately, none of the victims was seriously injured and no building keys were lost.” We were all relieved to read this, though I suspect that Christine Turpin was primarily relieved to read the part about the keys. Mrs. Turpin was president of the Ontario during the crime wave of May, 1976, when she wrote a particularly fine example of what I think of as the Turpin School of memo writing:

  “There have been three purse snatchings at the Ontario’s front door in the last two weeks causing lock changes twice in the same period. All three incidents occurred in daylight hours; the three ‘victims’—all women—were returning from grocery stores on Columbia Road. Two of the three had ignored repeated and publicized advice: DO NOT CARRY BUILDING KEYS IN YOUR POCKETBOOKS. They also ignored other personal safety precautions. Much as we sympathize with them over their frightening experience and over the loss of their personal belongings, the fact remains that had these ‘victims’ heeded the warnings, everyone at the Ontario would have been spared the inconvenience of a second lock/key change in two weeks as well as the expenditure of $250 for replacements.”

  As far as I can tell, several of the early warnings Mrs. Turpin refers to appeared in the Ontario Bulletin, but I can hardly blame the “victims” for not noticing them. Until recently, the Ontario Bulletin was written by Mildred A. Pappas, who appears to be as blithe and good-humored as Mrs. Turpin is the opposite. Here and there Mrs. Pappas tucks in a late-breaking crime story: “As we were going to press Security Chairman Sue Lindgren called to say that the cigarette machine in the basement had been vandalized and that both cigarettes and some change were missing. There were no known suspects at the time of the call.” But Mrs. Pappas has a firm editorial philosophy which she expressed in the January, 1975, Bulletin: “Both the trivial and the important are vital in portraying a clear picture of life in the Ontario—or anywhere else.” And she has such a charming way with the trivial that her readers really ought to be forgiven their apparent tendency to skip over the important. In the
February, 1975, Bulletin, for example, Mrs. Pappas does mention the business of not putting keys into pocketbooks, but that item pales next to the report on the revival of a limp African violet at the Houseplant Clinic, and it fades into insignificance next to the tantalizing mention of the removal of a hornets’ nest from Elsie Carpenter’s dining room window.

  The information on the hornets’ nest appeared in a regular feature of the Bulletin called “News and Notes,” which includes birthdays, operations, recent houseguests and distinguished achievements of residents, as well as small bits of miscellaneous information like the announcement of the founding of the Ad Hoc Friends of the Pool Table Committee. Other regular sections of the publication are “The Travelers Return,” a list of recent trips by residents; and “Committee Reports,” summaries of the doings of the various building committees, of which there are nine. (This figure does not include the committee for the pool table, which has since disbanded, having successfully restored the table to use in the basement Green Room, which was recently and unaccountably painted yellow during the 1976 Painting Project.) The Ontario is surrounded by trees and gardens, so the Bulletin often mentions the planting of a new azalea or juniper tree, and it recently devoted an entire page to the final chapter of the eight-year controversy of the Great Red Oak, cut down on August 27, 1976, after the board of directors overruled what was known as the “wait and see” policy of the High Tree Subcommittee. Articles like these are often illustrated with simple drawings of birds and leaves. Occasionally, a photograph is used, but only on a major story like the flap over the water bill.

  Ontario residents first learned of the water-bill flap in a July, 1975, Bulletin article headlined A SHOCKING BILL FOR A SHOCKING WASTE: “Chairman Chris Turpin has just announced that a staggering (and unbudgeted) $1,660.94 water bill for the last quarter has just been received, adding that the amount is more than three times the amount for the preceding quarter. A wrong billing? No. Uncommon usage for bad water, etc.? No.… The water company has advanced the opinion that only one malfunctioning toilet allowed to run continuously can be the cause.… The chairman stated that the board will decide on a method of payment of the unprecedented bill at its July meeting, the alternatives being (1) to find the resident or residents responsible and to bill accordingly, or (2) to specially assess all residents (owners and tenants alike) approximately $10 each to settle the bill.”

  For a month, we anxiously awaited word of what was up. Would ten dollars be added to the maintenance? Or would Chairman Turpin lead the Ad Hoc Committee on the Unprecedented Water Bill through each apartment in search of the hypothetical malfunctioning toilet? Finally, the July Bulletin appeared, with a terse report suggesting that the investigation was closing in: the prime suspect turned out to be not some irresponsible resident but the building’s thirty-five-year-old water meter, which had just been removed for inspection by the water company. Meanwhile, Clarence K. Streit, a resident who was apparently unaware that human error was about to be ruled out, made a guest appearance in the Bulletin as the author of the Flask Water Dollar Saver. “It is quite practical,” he wrote, “to save three pints of water every time one flushes a toilet. We have been doing it for a couple of years.” According to Streit, if everyone in the building placed three pint flasks in his toilet tank, the Ontario could save 150,000 gallons of water a year—or, as he put it, 150,000 gallons of water a year. Mrs. Pappas urged residents who took up Streit’s suggestion to submit their names for publication in order to encourage others. No one did; at least I assume no one did from the fact that Mrs. Pappas never again referred to the Flask Water Dollar Saver Plan. In the August Bulletin, however, the water meter was definitely fingered; it turned out to be not just out of order but thoroughly obsolete. A photograph of the new water meter appeared as an illustration.

  If I have any complaint at all about the Ontario Bulletin, it is simply that its even-handed approach occasionally leaves something to be desired. Accurate reporting was simply not enough to convey the passions engendered by the paint selections of the 1976 Painting Project, nor was it adequate to describe the diabolical maneuverings of President Turpin and the Ontario board in the face of these passions. Residents who read the loving tribute in the August Bulletin to the Great Red Oak and the account of its mysterious incurable disease could hardly have been prepared for the stunning moment at the annual meeting in September when it was moved that no tree be cut down without a membership vote. Mrs. Pappas’s low-key description of the restored iron grille entrance doors—“Unfortunately, the ‘Ontario’ inscription now faces the interior of the building since it could not be relocated from its solid iron casting to the outside”—does not quite do justice to the situation.

  And I cannot imagine that Bulletin readers were in any position to judge the item in March, 1976, which announced Dr. Allan Angerio’s resignation as House Maintenance Committee Chairman. “In protest of the Board’s sanction of extensive remodeling in a neighboring apartment, Dr. Allan Angerio has resigned five months after his appointment. In a recently circulated letter to all residents Dr. Angerio states that during the extended period of renovation he was ‘unable to use my apartment for either business or pleasure.’ He also states that his letter has engendered a considerable response from the membership, many of whom have indicated interest in a proposed revision of the Bylaws and House Rules of the Corporation to preclude further extensive structural ‘modernization’ efforts in the Ontario.” This is certainly a fair summary of what happened—but it is not enough. I know. I am married to the man who hired the contractor who accidentally drilled the hole into Dr. Angerio’s bedroom wall.

  In any case, mine are small complaints. The main function of a newspaper is to let its readers know what’s going on; I doubt that there are many communities that are served as well by their local newspapers as this tiny community is by the Ontario Bulletin. And I would feel even more warmly toward the publication than I do but for the fear I have, each month, that I will pick it up to read: “The residents of 605 had a fight last Thursday night over the fact that one person in the apartment never closes her closet doors.” I like neighborhoods, you see, but I worry about neighbors. Fortunately, my husband and I also have an apartment in New York. And I was extremely pleased several weeks ago when we moved to new quarters there in an extremely unfriendly-looking brownstone on an extremely haughty block. In the course of the week’s move, we carried some garbage out of the apartment and left it on the street for the garbage collectors. Ten minutes later—ten minutes later—a memo arrived from the 74th Street Block Association concerning the block rules on refuse. I’m not going to quote from it. All I want to say is that its author, Emma Preziosi, while not in the same league with Christine Turpin, definitely shows promise.

  March, 1977

  The Revitalization of Clay Filter: Yet Another Passage

  On the surface, Clay Filter would appear to have had everything he had ever wanted. (His name is fictitious.) The ginger-haired magazine editor might not have wanted the middle-age spread that occasionally caused his shirt buttons to pop off, but otherwise he had achieved his life’s dream. He had gained his authenticity. He had spent most of his Deadline Decade dreaming of running his own magazine, and finally he had come to do so. He lived in a beautiful apartment with a double-height living room which, had it faced south, which it did not, would have reflected the city he had built a magazine to. He had spent ten years off and on with the same woman, in a relationship I would call an Off-and-On Relationship; he had served as her Mentor (see pp. 14, 27, 51–2, 54, 76–7, 85, 109, 128, 131–2, 189–90, 280, 293; see also Career Women and Mentors, pp. 128, 132–5, 225, 226, 227), and he had only two complaints about her: he worried she would write about him someday and disguise him as thinly as she disguised everyone else she wrote about; and he occasionally became irritated at her uncanny ability to predict every adult crisis that was to befall him and then say, “I told you so,” as soon as it did. Sometimes she went even further by in
sisting he had had a crisis when he thought he had merely had a bad cabdriver, but when he accused her of a priori reasoning, she simply reminded him that he was a classic wunderkind (see pp. 189–98) and that all wunderkinder tend to deny they have mid-life crises. He dozed off as she rattled on about patterns of wunderkinder: “They were afraid to admit they were not all-knowing. Afraid to let anyone come too close. Afraid to stop filling their time with external challenges they could probably surmount, for fear of glimpsing that vast and treacherous interior which seems insurmountable. Afraid that the moment they let down their guard, someone might ridicule them, expose them, move in on their weaknesses and reduce them again to the powerlessness of a little boy. It is not their wives they are afraid of. It is themselves. That part of themselves I have called the Inner Custodian, which is derivative of parents and other figures from childhood.” She paused. “Do you understand what I’m saying, darling?”

  Clay Filter snapped awake and nodded comprehendingly. The truth, though, was that he could never figure out what she was talking about when she went on in this way. He knew it sold magazines, and books, and that someone must understand it, but he knew he didn’t, and he wasn’t sure what he could do about it if he did. He had pushed himself through the Trying Twenties and the Catch Thirties and the Switch Forties. He had fought the fight between his Merger Self and his Seeker Self, giving in to his Merger Self on only two or three occasions, if you counted living arrangements. He had survived the Seesaw Years and the Pulling Up Roots Years, and now here he was, and part of the problem was that he wasn’t sure just where he was at. Years before, he had altered his birth date in Who’s Who, and he now no longer knew for certain how old he was. Freud would call this self-deception, and Jung would call this silliness, and Erikson would call this ridiculous vanity, but I call it The Refusal to Deal with the Age-Forty Crucible. The catch was that he no longer knew whether he was at the tail end of the Switch Forties or on the verge of the Fractious Fifties, and while he didn’t much care one way or the other about it, the woman he had been with for ten years in the Off-and-On Relationship cared deeply.