Dear Tina Daunt (columnist of the Los Angeles Times):

David Geffen did not buy the Los Angeles Times. He is not your boss. You do not have to do his bidding nor kiss his ass. Yes he is a powerful, vindictive individual used to getting his own way but the press is supposed to be immune from such pressures. I guess you didn’t get this memo.

I’m writing about your most recent column about which celebrities are supporting which candidates. You wrote:

David Geffen offered sage advice to his Hollywood friends when it came to deciding whom to support in this year’s election: Follow your heart.

That is so sweet and you appear to be so taken with it that you decided to make it your lead paragraph for your story. Too bad it is such bull and you should know it.

Anyone even mildly following this election knows that Geffen was a big supporter of Bill Clinton and in fact wanted the former President to work for him. Geffen’s outsized ego deems it entirely normal and appropriate for Presidents to report to him. So it was with a great deal of incredulity that Geffen found himself unable to get Clinton to do a Presidential pardon. This infuriated Geffen, so much so that he turned not just on Bill but also on the entire Clinton clan. No doubt he despises Chelsea as well. This is classic Geffen, if he can’t attack you personally (and attacking Bill was pretty tough even for a billionaire like Geffen) then he goes after family members.

The timing and reasoning behind Geffen’s turning on the Clinton is well-documented and reported in the Washington Post, Forbes and even the LA Times. I can’t link to the times because the search function on your site is so lame that it rarely can find stories that one is looking for even if they are only a few days old–but that’s a topic for another day. Here is what Variety wrote (and republished by Forbes):

Throughout much of the 1990s, Geffen was among the Clintons’ closest donors. The President stayed at his place when he was in town, and Geffen in turn was given the privilege of overnighting in the Lincoln bedroom.

But their close relationship soured by the end of Clinton’s term, culminating in a fallout over Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich and denying one to Leonard Peltier, whom Geffen was pushing for release. Geffen has seldom spoke to the Clintons since, if at all, and largely removed himself from presidential politics until this year.

To little surprise, some of Clinton’s Hollywood supporters expressed dismay over Geffen’s comments, and characterized them as the resentments of a powerful mogul who didn’t get his way.

So let’s be clear. Geffen didn’t “follow his heart” to Obama. He was pissed at Bill and found the most credible candidate he could to use as his platform to attack the Clintons. This is vintage Geffen. Sadly your reporting of the story and mis-characterization of what happened is vintage LA Times. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if he had actually bought the paper.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 12:53 pm by Insider and is filed under Los Angeles Times, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.