Word: kelley
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...party hosted by Alfred and Betsy Bloomingdale during Reagan's tenure as California Governor. Supposedly Alfred Bloomingdale went upstairs after dessert, brought down the joint and passed it around to the guests, who included the George Burnses and the Jack Bennys. "Within five minutes they all started giggling," writes Kelley, "but claimed they didn't feel a thing and said they couldn't see what the big deal...
...anecdote comes from Sheldon Davis, Bloomingdale's former executive assistant, who claims Bloomingdale related the incident in the office the following Monday. Only in the notes at the end of the book does Kelley admit she tried in vain to corroborate the story. Three friends of the Bloomingdales are quoted; all say they never heard the story. Few newspapers would print a charge on such flimsy evidence. (Betsy Bloomingdale last week called the story "unbelievable. It of course never happened...
...quotes selectively. Kelley frequently rehashes material that has been published elsewhere -- in itself no crime. But her selection of which parts to quote and which to leave out reveal her motives. For example, she describes an episode in which Nancy, after an angry encounter with her stepson Michael, then 16, callously told him he had been born out of wedlock to an army sergeant who had gone overseas and never returned. Writes Kelley: "Michael said he was rocked by the heartless way he received the news . . . 'I guess I expected Nancy to be more sympathetic,' he said years later...
...account is taken entirely from Michael Reagan's own memoir, On the Outside Looking In. Yet Kelley leaves out the sentences that show his more complex feelings about the incident. "For years I resented Nancy for telling me the truth about my blood parents," Reagan wrote. "Looking back, I really can't blame her. I had provoked and pushed her to the breaking point." Michael Reagan considers Kelley's account distorted: "She shows just one side of the story and doesn't tie it all in to what else was happening back then...
Exaggerate and oversimplify. Kelley hammers home the widespread view that Nancy Reagan wielded great power behind the scenes at the White House. Yet she damages her credibility as a political observer with hyperbole and distortions. At one point she provides a list of "Nancy-inspired firings and forced resignations" among top Reagan officials. Along with a few Nancy Reagan did indeed play a role in removing (like former chief of staff Donald Regan) are a number she had little or nothing to do with, such as former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. What's more, Kelley fails to note that...