The Breakfast Table

McCurry, We Hardly Knew Ye

Dear Marjorie,

Yes, it’s very hot. Too hot to read hard news, and too hot for newspaper reporters to break any. Also, apparently, too hot to continue spinning the news: Mike McCurry is leaving his job as chief White House spokesman.

According to the AP, McCurry submitted his resignation to Clinton on May 29, and will be leaving in the fall. McCurry is very possibly the press’s favorite person in the Clinton administration (something that can’t often be said about presidential press secretaries), mostly because he radiates a sense of decency and has an excellent sense of humor. As portrayed in Howie Kurtz’s book Spin Cycle, he is also somewhat despairing and resentful about the preposterous crap he’s often called upon to say on the president’s behalf, especially when it has anything to do with the never-ending allegations of sexual misconduct. In the Kurtz book, he’s quoted making an extremely rude comment about Hillary Clinton’s sexual responsiveness that a rare attack of good taste prevents even me from repeating. Okay, okay, I’ll repeat it (but be warned: McCurry claims Kurtz misquoted him; Kurtz says he did not misquote him; I’m inclined to believe Kurtz).

Clinton was at a fundraiser and made a crack about a 500-year-old mummy of a teenage Incan girl then on display at the National Geographic Society. “You know,” Clinton quipped, “if I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That’s a good-looking mummy.” McCurry told Clinton afterward that this was not a smart thing for him to have said, given his reputation. Clinton got mad at McCurry. McCurry then had a drink with some reporters, one of whom asked him about the mummy joke. “Probably she does look good compared to the mummy he’s been fucking,” he said. Concludes Kurtz: “Had one of the reporters published the remark, even with the expletive deleted, McCurry’s tenure at the White House probably would have been over.” Now, not long after publication of Kurtz’s book, McCurry’s tenure at the White House is over.

I don’t know if it’s the heat or the fact that we’re winding up our Breakfast Table gig tomorrow, but I feel my last few inhibitions slipping away. Today I did something I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do: Namely, pull a cheap Howard Stern-like stunt. I phoned Ann Godoff’s office at Random House and left a message for her to call and tell me whether she’s ever read Ulysses. Can we safely assume no returned phone call means she hasn’t? If I don’t hear from her by the end of tomorrow, I’m going to assume she is Ulysses-free and will send her Kinsley’s unread copy.

Jumping to Conclusions,

Tim