The Great Tell Alls
Ah, the tell-all. That’s what we woke up to this morning after the hangover of watching the Reds 21-year-old savior Jay Bruce go 3-for-3 in his Major League debut yesterday evening. Should we be surprised that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan decided to write a scathing memoir in the forthcoming "WHAT HAPPENED: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington?" Probably not. McClellan still probably feels burned after meeting the White House press corps day after day, where he, "stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby."
“There was one problem," he wrote, "It was not true.”
McClellan then fesses up that he had "unknowingly passed along false information" and, more important, that President George W. Bush was “not open and forthright on Iraq."
As supposed bombshells go, the actual content of McClellan’s memoir seems pedestrian. That’s because the public had already pretty much known what he was saying long before this. If he really wanted shock value, McClellan might have taken some pointers from famous or infamous tell-alls, like the one’s we’ve listed below.
-"Mommy Dearest" by Christina Crawford
This memoir by the adopted daughter of actress Joan Crawford depicts her mother as a drunk tyrant, tramp and physically abusive parent. Arguably the gold-standard for the genre, the book became the basis for a movie that provided stand-up material for Bob Hope monologues for years to come.
Most interesting thing learned: Using wire hangers instead of the good stuff when living with a complete lunatic can only lead to trouble.
-"Little Girl Lost" by Drew Barrymore
Written by that cute little girl from "E.T." who’d go on to be a Charlie’s Angel, this book chronicles her childhood drug and alcohol addiction, before getting clean at, um, 14. Yeah…..
Most interesting thing learned: On the Set of "E.T.," Barrymore used to sit down besides the puppet during lunch and talk to it about her problems. And this was *before *the drugs.
-"Juiced: Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big" by Jose Canseco
One can argue that without this book we wouldn’t have seen the crackdown on steroids in Major League Baseball. Written by a guy whose rookie cards are all pretty worthless now, Canseco names names of everyone he ever encountered doing roids with, thus explaining the exponential home run growth in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
Most interesting thing learned: There was a reason my grandmother hit for 54 dingers in her over-70 softball league in 1989. It would also explain why her head grew to the size of Pluto.
