by BRUCE VanWYNGARDEN
Who was Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice having lunch with in Memphis on election day last fall? And is it any of your business? If you're like many Memphians those in certain social and political circles, anyway you probably think you know who it was. I guarantee you most people in Jackson, Mississippi, think they know. And I'd wager you the editors at The Commercial Appeal, and the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and the news directors at other media outlets in the Mid-South also think they know. I'm the editorial director of the company that publishes this newspaper, and I think I know who it was. So why haven't you read or heard about what we all think we know?
The answer is not so simple. You can't print rumors, unless you want to risk a libel suit. And in this case, even if you could prove the rumors were true, would it be legitimate news? The governor has said he was in town on "family business." And all that was established by witnesses at the Three Oaks Grill in Germantown was that the governor and a woman had lunch, held hands, drank a couple of glasses of wine, and left. This, of itself, is not news. Men and women who are not married to each other have lunch together every day. And maybe the hand-holding was familial, a comforting gesture.
But would it be news if, as rumored, the governor were having an extramarital dalliance in Memphis and by so doing had jeopardized the performance of his duties as governor? Would it further be news if the governor in question were one who regularly had espoused "family values," and who had publicly disparaged President Clinton for his alleged philandering? Yes, we concluded, this would be news. But the only way to really investigate such a charge, short of stumbling onto some Dick Morris-like photos, would be to get a confirmation or denial from the parties involved.
We called the woman in question, a longtime, and publicly acknowledged, friend of the governor. She refused to discuss with a Flyer reporter her activities on election day. That was understandable and certainly not unexpected. She is a private citizen. She has the right to have a private lunch with the governor of Mississippi, if indeed she did; and she has the right to refuse questions from the media, just as we have the responsibility to ask them. The only other person who could clear up the mystery was Governor Fordice himself.
During the governor's arduous recuperation from his car wreck, I suspect most media outlets felt the fair thing to do was to let the governor recover and then give him a chance to explain what he was doing in Memphis. However, upon his return to the public eye, the governor claimed to have amnesia about all events that had occurred that day, even those prior to the wreck. Why, the good governor couldn't even recall why he went to Memphis in the first place, except to handle some sort of now-unremembered family business. When asked by a reporter at his first post-crash news conference why a member of his family hadn't called to clear up the mystery, Fordice bristled, and in essence dared the media to investigate and print the story.
As of this writing, no local media outlet has taken the dare, probably for the same reasons we here at the Flyer haven't. Only two people know for sure what really happened that day in November, and only one is a public figure, and he isn't talking. It's beginning to look like we may never learn the truth. And sadly, in an age where hypocrisy and lying to the public by elected officials seems to be endemic, maybe that isn't news after all.
Bruce VanWyngarden is the associate publisher/editorial director for Contemporary Media, the parent company of The Memphis Flyer.