Leave St. Chelsea Alone!

A headline screamed, “LEAVE HER ALONE.”

It was the front page of the New York Post. I don’t mean the headline was on the front page. I mean it was the front page. All of it. Except for a photo of President Clinton curling his arm around his curly-haired daughter, Chelsea.

“LEAVE HER ALONE.”

I saw those capital letters and flinched.

“Poor Chelsea,” I thought. Somebody must have done something awful to her. Hassled her. Harassed her. I thought perhaps she’d been treated badly by people known for their rudeness--like the Stanford band.

But it wasn’t those people.

It was People.

“Clintons rip People for cover story on Chelsea,” a second headline explained.

People magazine--known far and wide for its controversial stories on what kind of shampoo Cher uses and what kind of pie Oprah eats--had just had the temerity to do a story on Chelsea Clinton.

A story on the love between Chelsea and her mother.

The nerve of People!

*

My phone rang.

“Did you see the White House tried to stop that Chelsea magazine thing?” a caller asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why can’t you people leave that kid alone?”

“We people?”

“Media people.”

“Oh, us people,” I said. “Yeah. I hate us people. Did you read the story?”

“No. And I won’t!”

OK, I said. I will. I’ll see what those rotten People people did to the president’s kid.

After all, I’d been hearing how Hillary Rodham Clinton’s staff had urged People to drop the story. And how, after it came out, the Clintons issued a statement that they “are profoundly saddened” by Chelsea’s not being given the privacy “any young person needs and deserves.”

In other words:

LEAVE HER ALONE!

I wondered what People had done. Had it staked out a Stanford dorm? Had it hollered questions at Chelsea at a Palo Alto mall? Had it shot hidden-camera photographs of Chelsea at a big Stanford game, secretly cheering for Oregon State?

Inquiring minds need to know. So I went to a magazine stand, where I slipped a copy of People in between copies of U.S. News & World Report and the National Review, so that nobody would catch me buying such a mudslinging rag.

Well, what an article.

I can see why the Clintons objected. Oh, the things People reveals.

Such as in the second paragraph, when we discover that the relationship between Hillary and Chelsea is stronger than ever before. About how her daughter is the first lady’s “strongest legacy.”

Pretty mean stuff.

Oh, and the quotes! Like the first one in the story, from one of Hillary’s friends: “Chelsea has her mother’s strength.”

And the next one, from a family friend, about Chelsea greeting some well-wishers after her father’s admission of having an affair: “She was terrific. She just made everyone feel great.”

People, you swine.

And the next quote, about Chelsea’s poise. And the one from Hillary’s childhood pastor, about how “Hillary and Chelsea have this inner glow.”

Invading their privacy that way!

And then there’s the paragraph about how smart Chelsea is. And how she’s “the living embodiment of her mother’s ideas about child rearing and feminism.”

Oh, leave her alone!

I also looked at the pictures. There are 13 of them, counting the cover. Not one is of Chelsea in private. Not one was taken at school. Not one photo has Chelsea caught off guard, unless you count a baby picture and one of her at age 4, with her mom.

In fact, this young woman--she turns 19 in two weeks--whose “privacy” should be respected--is shown in nothing but photographs from election-night political rallies, Washington social functions and global travels where her parents took her along.

You know, private Chelsea in public.

*

For six years and more, the only child of the most powerful and famous man in the world has been left alone.

I don’t even know what she sounds like.

Thousands of White House events and photo ops, thousands of TV and radio programs, not a peep out of Chelsea.

Don’t invade her privacy? Hey, nobody invades Chelsea’s privacy. She’s been invaded less than anybody in White House history.

Yet here we are, at a time when her father’s family values are in part why he has become the second president in 220 years to be impeached. And a magazine’s cover story reports on the “deep bond of love” that still exists between his daughter and his wife.

The Clintons shouldn’t trash this magazine.

They should frame it.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com