Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble

by Nora Ephron

  • • •

  The Sperling Breakfast is supposed to be an informal way for politicians to meet with journalists, but it is actually a formal, ritualized, on-the-record press conference that happens to take place over breakfast. Columnists Joseph Kraft, Carl Rowan, David Broder and Robert Novak attend regularly. So do most of the bureau chiefs of the major news organizations—Mel Elfin of Newsweek, Hugh Sidey of Time, Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times, Jim Wieghart of the New York Daily News, Hedrick Smith of the New York Times, among others—and when they don’t feel like coming they send their staff members. (Women are allowed as substitutes, but there are only two female regulars; representatives of the wire services and of television are banned.) Breakfast costs six dollars per member.

  The group meets with a guest two or three mornings a week at a long oval table in a banquet room of the Sheraton Carlton Hotel. Godfrey Sperling, bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, presides. At 8 a.m., he asks the first question. He also asks the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth questions. Then he calls on other members of the group. They ask questions. Sperling asks more questions. The guest answers the questions. At three minutes to nine, Sperling calls for “one last question.” Then he calls for “the final question.” Then he calls for “the final final question.” Just after 9 a.m., the breakfast ends. If something has happened at it, the reporters from the afternoon papers run for the phones. The rest walk back to their offices, comparing notes on what the story was, and complaining about the eggs.

  Occasionally, major stories break at a Sperling Breakfast. You’ve seen them: the second sentence of the article says, “So-and-so made these remarks at a breakfast with reporters.” Bobby Kennedy agonized over whether to run for President at a breakfast with reporters; Spiro Agnew called Hubert Humphrey “soft on Communism”; Earl Butz told a dirty joke about the Pope; John Rhodes suggested that Nixon might be impeached. The breakfast is also an ideal launching pad for trial balloons. In the last days of the Nixon administration, White House aide Patrick Buchanan used a breakfast to test the strategy of conceding the House of Representatives to pro-impeachment forces; by day’s end, the story was in the papers, along with negative responses from congressional leaders; Buchanan realized the approach wouldn’t work and junked it.

  Most of the time, however, nothing happens at a Sperling Breakfast. This does not necessarily mean that no stories are written. For example, here is what happened the day Big Jim Thompson appeared:

  Governor Thompson was asked what he thought of President Carter’s performance thus far. He said it was too soon to tell. He was asked about the future of the Republican party. He said that what the Republican party really needed was candidates who could win in 1978 and 1980. He was asked if he had the Presidential bug. “Sure,” he said, “there’s nothing new in that.” Toward the end of breakfast, Warren Weaver of the New York Times turned to Andrew Glass of the Cox newspapers. “This guy is very impressive,” he said.

  Later in the day, I went to see Richard Dudman, bureau chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I got a story today,” he said. “I wrote that Governor Thompson met with the national press today and despite his disclaimers left no doubt that he’s already running for President.”

  “What disclaimers?” I asked. “He admitted it. He has always admitted it.”

  “I know it,” said Dudman. “I even called Springfield and they told me there’s nothing new in it. But it’s a story when he says it to us.”

  “You have to understand something,” Jack Nelson of the L.A. Times said. “The first time Jimmy Carter was ever taken seriously in Washington was at a Sperling Breakfast.”

  I think I understand: You cannot be taken seriously in Washington until you have done the Sperling Breakfast. The Sperling Breakfast is a screening committee. But I’m getting carried away.

  On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Blumenthal came to the breakfast. He spoke of inflation, budget underruns and the New York financial mess. After breakfast, everyone agreed that he had performed well, and the reporters for afternoon papers ran for the phones. There would be front-page stories that afternoon and next morning. I walked over to the Treasury Building with Blumenthal’s press aide, Treasury Assistant Secretary Joseph Laitin. “The session served a useful purpose for Blumenthal,” Laitin said. “He wanted to talk to a cross section of the press to get a few things out. I didn’t feel we should have a press conference because television always dominates it. You also get everybody in town, and if you don’t produce eight-column headlines it’s a letdown. We had a standing invitation from the Sperling people, so I called up and said we’d like to accept. Now about what Blumenthal said—there wasn’t anything really new, yet it was important for these guys to hear it. All the financial reporters knew about the underruns and they’ve written about them, but none of them has dramatized it. They will now. Why haven’t they before? Too unimaginative. Too lazy. Don’t have the time. It’s been out, but until now it hasn’t been packaged. That’s the word I want. Packaging.”

  Bob Strauss loves doing the Sperling Breakfast. He did nine of them as Democratic national chairman, and he invited the entire group to his home for dinner the day the five hundredth breakfast was held. Then along came the six hundredth Sperling Breakfast, and Gerald Ford invited everyone to the White House. That seemed like only yesterday, and suddenly the seven hundredth breakfast rolled around, and the eight hundredth is coming up. The members are getting grouchy; the anniversaries are getting closer and closer together; there are more and more breakfasts. No one minds getting up for somebody interesting, but the other day the group was actually asked to turn up for Senator Alan Cranston. Alan Cranston, for God’s sake. The group has gotten too big; the group is too elite; the questions are too general; the questions are too specific. (The eggs are the only subject on which there is total agreement.) Even when Godfrey Sperling leaves town, the Sperling Breakfast goes on. Roscoe Drummond plays host, or Richard Strout. “It started out,” says one of the original members, “and practically every guest was somebody you really wanted to see. But somewhere along the line it all became a Godfrey Sperling Production. He felt an obligation to serve up two guests a week, three guests a week, four guests a week. You turn out a lot of crap that way. He was producing guys you could walk up to the Hill and call off the floor at any time.”

  But I was talking about Bob Strauss, who loves doing the Sperling Breakfast. “I’ve grown very attached to it,” he says. “I’ll tell you why. I go in there with something to say and I say it. I bring in my medicine and I give it out. Some of them think it’s red medicine, and some of them think it’s blue medicine. But it tastes just fine.”

  Whenever there is a Sperling Breakfast, an announcement appears on the Sheraton Carlton bulletin board. BREAKFAST WITH GODFREY, 8 A.M., it reads. This is extremely embarrassing to Godfrey Sperling—not the announcement, you must understand, but the reference to his first name. Godfrey Sperling is not known as Godfrey. He is known as Budge. “I have two older sisters,” he explained, “and they didn’t care for the name Godfrey, and they called me Brother. Don’t ask me how, but it became Budgie. I shortened it to Budge in college. The nice thing about the name Budge is it’s informal. I never have been Godfrey. The name’s been in my family and I use it as a by-line. But in my mind I’m always Budge Sperling.”

  Sperling, sixty-one, is a pleasant, fussy man who looks like Elmer Fudd and indeed occasionally gives the impression of being thoroughly befuddled. Here, for example, is a question he asked Budget Director Lance at Friday’s breakfast: “Isn’t what you really mean is that you’re going to spend this defense money more slowly? Isn’t that what you mean? More slowly? Or is it less fastly? More slowly? You get me so doggone confused with all this. I’m just so doggone confused.” Budge Sperling really enjoys his breakfasts. “It’s a great help to me,” he says. “The self-interest just oozes in every direction. But I’ve been engulfed by the thing. I can’t tell if I’m running it or it’s running m
e. This week I didn’t want five, but I must admit I can’t say no, I can’t say no. This is a sideline that occupies me, interests me, irritates me. Sometimes it takes me over. If anyone had said to me, the thing you’ll be remembered for is your breakfast group, I would have gone into another career. A breakfast group?”

  I asked Sperling if he thought he was at all powerful. “Powerful?” he said. “I don’t know. That’s not Budge Sperling. It might be Godfrey Sperling, but not Budge. I have always felt that the Godfrey is too formal. It’s not me.”

  In the course of a week, I heard a lot of things about the Sperling Breakfast. I was told that the whole purpose of the group was to promote peer approval and a feeling of joint accomplishment. I was told that the only reason anyone goes is for protection on those infrequent occasions when something interesting happens. I was even told that Godfrey Sperling had become so powerful he was dangerous. Well, I don’t buy it. I think no one gives the Sperling Breakfast the credit it deserves. It provides a way for our politicians to get out of bed and come to show their dependence on the press; the press responds graciously by passing on exactly what the politicians come in to say. It provides a way for our politicians to pay tribute to the role of the press in the electoral process; the press reciprocates by certifying the politicians as heavyweights and contenders. It provides a way for the out-of-power party to survive those long stretches between elections; right now, while the rest of us lie around playing Scrabble, the Sperling Breakfast is doing its damnedest to find Republican candidates for 1980. It even seems possible to say that the Sperling Breakfast is single-handedly saving the two-party system in America. But I’m getting carried away.

  June, 1977

  Enough

  I started to write this column about the new special sections in the New York Times. I had a nice lead for it, and I had a funny story to tell, and I had a few points to make about the Cuisinarting of America. I went over to the Times and had an amazing interview with a Times business executive who talked about something called psychographics. “One of the biggest psychographics,” he said, “is self-improvement and self. Self is very strong.” I also had a problem with the piece. About a year ago, I wrote something about the influence of city magazines on journalism, about the you-are-what-you-buy syndrome, and I didn’t want to repeat myself. Oh, well. It really doesn’t matter, because I decided not to write that column after all.

  When I started writing a media column a couple of years ago, my primary interest was not to become a media critic—and I hope I have managed to succeed at not becoming one—but simply to find some subject to write about in order to get back into the front of Esquire magazine. I like being in the front of this magazine. It’s nice up here. The subject of media was suggested over a lunch, and it seemed like a good idea. I could write about newspapers and magazines and television, and occasionally go out and do some reporting, and it might work. The reporting was the easy part. Journalists are wonderful sources. They are wonderful sources on the record, and they are even more wonderful sources off the record.

  Those of us who work in this profession are very lucky, and we know it. I have known it ever since the day in 1963 when I walked into the New York Post city room to start work as a reporter: This is what I have always wanted, and here I am, and it’s wonderful. I think this all the time. I am giddy about working in this profession. Every so often I hear someone complaining about how movies like The Front Page have tended to romanticize journalism, and I don’t understand what they’re talking about. I grew up under the influence of a remake of The Front Page—His Girl Friday, in which Rosalind Russell played the Hildy Johnson part. I grew up wanting to be Hildy Johnson, and as it turns out, Hildy Johnson is someone worth wanting to grow up to be.

  In recent years, however, there have been some changes. One of them has to do with celebrity. Journalists are now celebrities. Part of this has been caused by the ability and willingness of journalists to promote themselves. Part of this has been caused by television: the television reporter is often more famous than anyone he interviews. And part of this has been caused by the fact that the celebrity pool has expanded in order to provide names to fill the increasing number of column inches currently devoted to gossip; this is my own pet theory, and I use it to explain all sorts of things, one of whom is Halston.

  The point, though, is that the extent to which a column like this contributes to this makes me extremely uncomfortable; what’s more, this development of celebrity has been reinforced by a parallel change in journalism, a swing from highly impersonal “objective” reporting to highly personal “subjective” reporting. Last week, while preparing for the column on the New York Times I decided not to write, I reread the last few months of the “Weekend,” “Living” and “Home” sections of the Times, and I began to overdose on the first person singular pronoun. I am tired of the first person singular pronoun. I am tired of reading about how this journalist serves her guests dinner on the bed and about how that journalist has a Shetland pony with a nervous tic. I am also tired of my own first person singular pronoun. “Self is very strong,” said the Times business executive. Yes indeed. I figure if I stop writing a column for a while, it will reduce the number of first person singular pronouns in circulation by only a hair; still, it seems like the noblest thing I can think of to do this week.

  David Eisenhower once said something that made me realize that he could not possibly be as silly as he seems. “Journalists,” he said, “aren’t nearly as interesting as they think they are.” Actually, he’s not quite right. Journalists are interesting. They just aren’t as interesting as the things they cover. It is possible to lose sight of this.

  I would like not to.

  July, 1977

  Acknowledgments

  There is really no way for me to thank the many friends and colleagues who have helped me in the course of over two years of writing about the media. But there are a few friends who were consistently there: Barbara and Richard Cohen, Helen Dudar, Delia Ephron, Marty Nolan, Liz Smith, and, at Esquire, Geoffrey Norman, Don Erickson, Lee Eisenberg, Pat Thorpe, and Michaela Williams. To my agent Lynn Nesbit and my editor Bob Gottlieb, my gratitude and love.