A Nose for News, From Tabs to TV

You pug, you knob, you button-head, know that I glory in this nose of mine, for a great nose indicates a great man--genial, courteous, intellectual, virile, courageous--as I am--and such as you--poor wretch--will never dare to be even in imagination.

--”Cyrano de Bergerac”

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Before and after.

When is a nose news? When it’s on the face of Paula Jones, who is deeply ingrained in pop culture as the twangy Arkansas woman who publicly claimed President Clinton propositioned her while he was that state’s governor, and whose sexual harassment lawsuit against him was dismissed but is on appeal.

Last week, her mug was everywhere.

When is a nose the butt of jokes? Same answer.

Here was Jay Leno, always on the high road, joking in his “Tonight Show” monologue on NBC, prior to Jones’ remake, about her being in the presence of Clinton during her lawsuit:

“It’s the first time any guy has gotten to see her twice, ‘cause she’s never had a second date.” Hardly more mellow, here he was Thursday night finding room for Jones amid his customary Clinton one-liners:

“Paula Jones showed her new nose last night on TV. Then she showed off her old nose on ‘This Old House.’ She’s using it to build an extension on her trailer. They’re going to put the whole patio out there.”

Her trailer?

Leno has compared Linda Tripp to a horse in his monologue. And Thursday night, he gave his impression of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno--as a super-macho palooka--as if seeing her only as tall timber to be chopped down.

I once wrote that Leno attacking Tripp’s looks was male arrogance. It reminded me of high school, when we would ridicule the looks of girls who didn’t measure up, as if we were great bargains ourselves.

Leno took umbrage at the gender reference, and he may have been right. Perhaps it wasn’t a male thing, just a nasty thing.

I believe, however, that for the pugs, knobs and button-heads who have been making fun of Jones, it’s largely a class thing.

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The irony is that Los Angeles is the globe’s cosmetic surgery dome, and Leno has sat genially on his talk show with probably countless celebrities who have been redone from top to bottom without trashing them for what they were or still are.

Leno deserves credit for making fun of his own epic chin. But that doesn’t make up for the derision he pours on others just because of the way they look.

Especially when it comes to Jones’ nose--noses having been used historically to demean Arabs and especially Jews, with Hitler’s Third Reich and the old Soviet Union using such caricatures to dehumanize and isolate an entire people. In the German weekly Der Stuemer from the 1930s, for example, you find ugly cartoon after cartoon of Jews depicted as the enemies of humanity, their most prominent feature being beak-like noses that droop almost to their thick lips.

In my case, I recall vividly how some of the older kids in my elementary school would stroke their noses when they passed me in the halls, just because a guy named Rosenberg was obviously Jewish.

I was Jewish trash; Jones is trailer trash--making us both fair game in our respective generations.

It’s a stigma she may never outlive, no matter how many times she tries to reinvent herself. And this new nose business is just another reminder, just as some of its coverage brings to mind the ever-closer ties between mainstream media and tabloids.

Paying the Tab

As everyone on the planet is aware, Jones’ new nose arrived after her new hair, new teeth and new wardrobe. That made it news for much of the mainstream media (including The Times). And for ABC’s “PrimeTime Live,” which on Wednesday night did a 90-second piece featuring mostly video excerpts of an interview with the supposedly new and improved Jones going public with her nose job.

And now, announced co-anchor Sam Donaldson about midway through the ABC News series, a “first exclusive look at the new Paula Jones, after cosmetic surgery, as shown by the National Enquirer.”

Come again?

Beyond Jones’ rhinoplasty, simply stunning here is the other before/after snapshots--the ones of mainstream media that once refused even to rub shoulders with tabloids, but now seem to be on the verge of joining hands with them like candidates at a political rally.

Local stations have routinely quoted or incorporated into their newscasts material from syndicated tabloid shows that they air, the effect of which is to deceptively promote those shows while narrowing the gap between the center and fringes of journalism. And with so much of mainstream media lasering in on celebrities, the bizarre and the tawdry, they are increasingly merging their news interests with those of tabloids.

“Definitely a blending has occurred,” Steve Koz, editor in chief of the National Enquirer, agreed by phone Friday. “Let’s go to your plastic surgery story. The [other] media, going for ratings and sales, have been going after what the Enquirer has been going after for years.”

Now comes “PrimeTime Live,” crossing a line, at least symbolically, by using material from the National Enquirer, however benign. “She’s center stage today, sporting a new nose,” reported ABC correspondent Sylvia Chase, who added her own voice-over to the Jones sound bites and pictures as a National Enquirer logo appeared in the upper right corner.

A small step? Perhaps. But like falling dominoes, one step inevitably leads to another.

Koz said the National Enquirer videotaped its Jones interview, in conjunction with its print story, as protection against it getting ripped off by other media without credit, something he says often happens. He said “PrimeTime Live” wanted some of the interview footage and was given permission to run it only after promising to burn the paper’s logo into the picture. The syndicated “Extra” also ran the logo with the excerpts it carried Thursday night.

Some individual stations plucked the interview from a satellite and ran it without crediting the National Enquirer, Koz said. Shrewd if dishonest, it’s a convenient way to use tabloid material without seeming to soil their hands.

In The Times, a brief Associated Press story, which made no mention of the National Enquirer’s role, ran Friday beneath two photos, also distributed by AP. One was a “before” shot from AP’s files, the other was an “after” shot from “PrimeTime Live” that was cropped to exclude the National Enquirer and ABC logos. (A Times news editor said the photo was cropped to fit the available space.)

Koz said the anonymous donor whom Jones says paid for her surgery is not the National Enquirer. He said he “really didn’t want to get into” whether the paper paid her for the interview, though.

Like other tabloids, the National Enquirer at times does pay for interviews. If it did pay Jones, ABC’s broadcast of some of that material violated at least the spirit of the network’s policy against paying for interviews.

“PrimeTime Live” producer Phyllis McGrady disagreed, saying Friday that even if the National Enquirer had paid Jones, she didn’t believe that ABC running the material violated network policy or crossed a line vis a vis tabloids. “Would I prefer AP owned them? Yes. But I’m not going to sit here and dis National Enquirer.”

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It’s Jones who has been getting dissed since going public with her charges against Clinton, to a large degree because of her looks.

“If you turn to a cartoon in one of the magazines and you see this,” she said in the TV interview, indicating her nose, “you know how they do. They focus on the big part--the ugly part--not the most attractive part. And they make it huge.”

Actually, Jones looked fine before her surgery, and there’s something a bit sad about her feeling compelled to transform herself to please her critics, as if she were grotesque. It’s their attitudes that are grotesque.