Posted on 04/01/2004 11:13:48 AM PST by MegaSilver
MoveOn.org's political action guide is hitting bookstore shelves with contributions from a handful of liberals, including Gail Sheehy, the controversial author who has battled plagiarism charges and been accused of stretching the truth in her past work.
The book, "50 Ways to Love Your Country," is the first venture in publishing for the online activist group. Former Vice President Al Gore and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) headline the book along with Sheehy.
The political action guide includes 50 essays from MoveOn.org members who offer "real world tips about how to enact change in our communities and the world." Sheehy writes the introduction to a chapter titled "Personal Action is Political."
Sheehy is no stranger to liberal causes. Since 1999, she has given $2,250 to the abortion rights group EMILY's List and more than $2,000 to Democrats, according to federal election data.
The Vanity Fair writer created a media buzz during the 2000 presidential campaign when she opined that then-candidate George W. Bush suffered from dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder. The Bush campaign spent days defusing the charges.
But conservatives aren't Sheehy's only critics. After publishing "Hillary's Choice" in 1999, a book on then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Sheehy faced a barrage of attacks for shoddy reporting. The Washington Post even created a section called "Gail's Goof Corner" to expose the inaccuracies.
And even before her recent political work came under attack, Sheehy's journalistic methods raised eyebrows, according to a 1988 profile of her in the Washington Post.
Sheehy gained notoriety in 1971 after New York magazine published a series she wrote about prostitution called "Redpants and Sugarman." In what Sheehy attributed to an editing error, the story failed to disclose that "Redpants" wasn't a real prostitute. Sheehy told the Post she had created a "composite" character, and that explanation was edited out of the story.
Five years later, she found herself in another sticky situation, this time far more serious.
A book she wrote called "Passages" turned into a national bestseller. But Sheehy had to deal with a plagiarism lawsuit brought by Roger Gould, a psychiatrist at the University of California at Los Angeles, who accused her of stealing from his work.
According to a 1976 report in the New York Times, Gould won a settlement with Sheehy, collecting $10,000 plus 10 percent of all royalties for "Passages." Sheehy told the Post in 1988 that she settled the case because she was "young and green" at the time.
Sheehy went on to advance her writing career, penning several other books that drew from the success of "Passages."
She began to take an interest in political writing in the 1980s, using "pop psychology" to analyze presidential candidates. She also published a book on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, which Orlando Sentinel book reviewer Charley Reese called "junk journalism."
More recently, she's stirred controversy with her writings about Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush.
Despite Sheehy's liberal leanings, Clinton wanted nothing do with "Hillary's Choice," which was published in 1999. According to the New York Daily News, the White House launched a counter-attack on Sheehy, which led to the "Gail's Goof Corner" feature in the Washington Post.
The Post's gossip columnist, Lloyd Grove, wrote six stories in a two-week span about "Hillary's Choice." The book's inaccuracies ranged from Sheehy's claim that Hillary's father, Hugh Rodham, had not attended her college graduation to errors of fact, such as Sheehy's claim that Clinton friends Mack and Donna McLarty had divorced.
The Village Voice offered a scathing review of Sheehy's book. The paper's media reporter, Cynthia Cotts, wrote, "[T]he real scandal is Sheehy's reporting style. She plays fast and loose with the facts, twists quotes to fit her agenda, and allegedly violated a confidentially agreement she made with Hillary Clinton."
A year after "Hillary's Choice" made a splash Sheehy was back in the news with her assertion that Bush suffered from dyslexia, which resulted in his speech mishaps on the campaign trail.
Not only was her Vanity Fair article criticized by the Bush campaign, but it also took a drubbing in the press.
Hartford Courant staff writer Mary K. Feeney explored Sheehy's motives in a Sept. 21, 2000, story. Feeney spoke to learning-disability experts who "rejected the notion that anyone could diagnose ... from a distance" whether Bush had dyslexia or attention-deficit disorder.
And Amy Mitchell, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, told the Courant, "It's a very serious piece of information to be putting out, and once it's out there, whether it's accurate or not, it gets filtered into the news. ... And then 12 news outlets are talking about Bush's problems with dyslexia."
Franklin Foer, in a Sept. 28, 2000, column for The New Republic, wasn't nearly as kind. He took Sheehy to task, and criticized other mainstream news outlets for giving her a forum to peddle her ideas. He called Sheehy "a journalist with a world-class reputation for getting it wrong."
Despite efforts to contact Sheehy through her publicist and the person who handles her speaking engagements, she was unavailable to talk with CNSNews.com. A publicist at Inner Ocean Publishing, which is handling press inquires for MoveOn.org, said she wasn't aware of the criticism Sheehy had endured for her past work.
"We selected Gail Sheehy because she is supportive of the work of MoveOn and because she is a journalist who has chronicled emotional, social, and political trends for the last 30 years," said Katie McMillan, publicity manager for Inner Ocean Publishing.
As part of its national publicity campaign, MoveOn.org plans to host book parties across the country featuring supporters and members of the MoveOn.org team.
Think the media'll pick up on this? NAHHHH!!!
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