Fear and Bloating on the Vineyard

Part 4

by Jason Gay

The Cape Cod Times is at full throttle, but both the Globe and the Herald say that this year they aren't going to go completely Bubbanutzo. This is the third vacation, it's a long stay (until September 7), and everybody's going to be low-keying the coverage.

For the Globe, low-key means just two rented houses in the town of Edgartown -- one for regional staffers, the other for the nationals. (Exclusive: the hot tub at the regional staff house is broken.) The Herald is leaner and meaner, with just one abode, also in Edgartown, and apparently it's not as nice as their island houses from previous Clinton vacations.

The two dailies have already made a game attempt to generate hard news -- both papers have flagged the potential conflict-of-interest issues raised by Clinton's acceptance of Vineyard vacation digs from developer Richard Friedman, who has a stake in projects including an Indian casino that needs federal approval.

The Herald, in particular, has hyped this angle, running a cover piece on August 14 entitled HOST WITH THE MOST. But the conflict issue quickly slid off of Clinton's Teflon, and the Hub newshounds have dispatched themselves to cover items of lesser import.

There's the potential for some old-fashioned street fighting here, a Globe versus Herald pissing contest over who reveals the juiciest news about the president's celebrity dinner guests or golfing partners. The Boston dailies are generally credited with raising the ante on presidential gossip: in Clinton vacations past, they were known to try to top each other for dinner menus and 18-hole scores.

Gayle Fee, who writes the Herald's "Inside Track" column with Laura Raposa, recalls the reaction during the Clintons' first Vineyard vacation, in '93, when she interrupted White House press briefings to ask what the president ate at Carly Simon's house. "Everyone looked at us like we were pariahs," Fee says. "But by the second vacation, they were all asking the same sorts of things."

Part 5

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.