With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Friday, Mar. 2, 2001 11:04 a.m. EST
Media Zero In on Jenna Bush; Blind to Clinton-Gore Kids' Wild Times
It wasn't first daughter Jenna Bush who was arrested after getting drunk at a Fort Worth, Texas, beer party over the weekend.
But that hasn't stopped the press from pretending that it's some sort of presidential scandal because a friend of hers apparently did - with coverage that stands in marked contrast to the way reporters covered up for the Clinton and Gore children over the last eight years.
"Bush Buddy in Beer Bust," blared the New York Daily News headline above a story about the Secret Service accompanying Jenna to pick up 18-year-old William Ashe Bridges at the county jail after he was nabbed for public intoxication.
Even the New York Times couldn't resist covering the Ashe story under the headline "Arrested Man Spoke of Bush Daughter," after police said he claimed to be Jenna's boyfriend.
Of course, no one remembers the headline "Chelsea Trashed Her Secret Service Bodyguards as 'Trained Pigs.'" That's because no such story ever appeared in the mainstream press, despite the fact that Secret Service sources gave veteran White House FBI agent Gary Aldrich that very juicy quote.
"One source reports that two Secret Service agents heard Hillary's daughter Chelsea refer to them as 'personal trained pigs' to some of her friends," Aldrich reported in his 1996 best seller, "Unlimited Access."
"The senior agent on the detail tried to scold Chelsea for such disrespect. He told her ... that her father the president would be shocked if he heard what she had just said to her friends. Chelsea's response?
"'I don't think so. That's what my parents call you.'"
Needless to say, not only did news editors ignore that story, Aldrich himself was banned from network TV news shows after Clinton-friendly media brass got wind of his Chelsea item and other juicy Clinton tidbits in his book.
Then there's Albert Gore III, son of former vice president Al Gore, who was booted from tony St. Albans prep school for smoking pot during a 1996 school dance. Though the pot bust meant young Albert had broken the law, that story never made headlines either. Here's why:
"School administrators treated it like any other infraction of discipline, with a public announcement - minus the name of the transgressor - in the dining hall," reported Bill Turque in his recent biography of the vice president, "Inventing Al Gore."
"Anonymity didn't keep word from spreading back to dinner tables throughout Washington, and eventually to the press. [Vice President] Gore called leading news organizations around Washington and asked them not to run the story, and all complied."
Stories about Gore daughter Karenna's wild partying never made the mainstream press either though, according to a recent Star magazine profile, "her former classmates say she loved pot and booze bashes."
Karenna pal Anne Garofalo told Star that "Karenna was the first person you'd go to if you needed a partner in crime."
"[Karenna] had so many speeding tickets she had to borrow her sister's baby-sitting money to pay them," Star claimed.
In a 1996 incident that did attract some coverage, Karenna's younger sister Sarah - then 16 - was nabbed by police for holding an open can of beer while sitting in a friend's car. After invoking her powerful dad's name, she was merely given a citation and sent on her way.