Thomasons Decry Being Cast as Villains : White House: Clinton’s TV-producer friends say they are not Hollywood types. They empathize with people like Bebe Rebozo and Bert Lance.

TV producers Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason took to the airwaves this week to complain of their “scurrilous” treatment by the press in the White House travel office flap, and to express sympathy for such former presidential intimates as C.G. (Bebe) Rebozo, Bert Lance and Alfred Bloomingdale.

As White House aides disclaimed any role in the public relations offensive, the producers of “Designing Women” told interviewers on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday morning and CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Tuesday night that they have been mischaracterized as President Clinton’s “sleazy immoral friends” since the travel office affair began on May 19. They insisted that they were not “Hollywood” producers, but decent Arkansans who had made too much money to be interested in modest travel office commissions, as some have suggested.

“I think it would be pretty ludicrous for my husband, who makes six figures a week, if he did have a charter airline company, which he doesn’t . . . to rub his hands gleefully together and to say, ‘Ooh, I’m going to take my six-figure salary and fly off to Washington and see if I can’t get those seven little guys out of that travel office in the White House,’ ” Bloodworth-Thomason told “Good Morning America.” “It’s sort of the equivalent of taking over a lemonade stand.”

She said that, as the President’s old friends, she and her husband had become the targets of the Washington press “graffiti writers, who seem to be searching for a crime for us and finally found one.

“I wish everyone in the United States could have the experience of being the President’s best friend. I’m sure that Bert Lance and Bebe Rebozo and Alfred Bloomingdale and a long line of people could tell you about their experiences.”

Lance, a close friend of former President Jimmy Carter, resigned as budget director when he came under investigation on bank fraud charges. Rebozo, a wealthy intimate of former President Richard Nixon, was investigated during the Watergate era. Bloomingdale, a wealthy business executive whose wife was a close friend of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, was the subject of intense publicity about his extramarital liaisons.

The Thomasons, among the entertainment industry’s top-paid TV producers, chafed at the descriptions of themselves as “Hollywood producers.”

“We’re not from Hollywood . . . . We’re from small towns in Arkansas and Missouri,” Bloodworth-Thomason said. “I think we are good, decent, hard-working people.” Her husband, she said, “doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. We don’t fool around on each other. We give away most of the money that we make.”

She said the couple’s connections with Cristophe, the Beverly Hills hairdresser who clipped Clinton’s hair on the runway at Los Angeles International Airport, also had been mischaracterized. The couple have never had their hair cut by Cristophe but introduced him to the Clintons because he had been used on one of their shows, she said.

Bloodworth-Thomason said the haircut by Cristophe did not cost $200 as sometimes reported. Cristophe, who has said he will open a salon in the District of Columbia, “wants to be competitive in Washington.” If a haircut in Washington is $10, she said, “he’ll charge $8.”

On “Larry King,” Thomason was asked if he thought that he had damaged the President’s interests.

“Well, if I had done anything to damage the President, then I would be terribly sorry,” he said. But he said that “in my heart, I feel I did what the President’s mandate was.”

Communications Director George Stephanopoulos said the White House had no role in the Thomasons’ decision to appear on television. “They’re private citizens,” he said.

But at least some White House aides worried that the publicity might only serve to focus more attention on public relations problems that they were eager to remove from news columns.

“Harry and Linda appearing on television is not what I’d call a smart move,” one senior aide said. “They should be keeping quiet and getting out of the way. I really don’t understand why we keep doing this sort of stuff.”

Times staff writer John Lippman in Los Angeles contributed to this story.