March 2, 2007
Hair Force One Posted by Alexander Burns at 10:05 AM EST At the beginning of this week, John Steele Gordon and I had an instructive exchange about presidential decorating and the periodic renovation of the White House. In part of this exchange, reference was made to President Clinton’s having gotten a “legendary” haircut in Los Angeles International Airport, supposedly shutting down the transit hub in the process. As several commenters have pointed out, this story turns out to be, well, legendary—or, to put it more simply, false. Though I have little affection for the forty-second president, this seems like an error worth correcting. On May 20, 1993, the Washington Post reported that President Clinton had held up numerous LAX flights in order to get a $200 trim from the posh stylist Cristophe. Supposedly a few flights were held up for 10 minutes, at least one was delayed by nearly a half hour, and one was forced to circle in the air for a good 17 minutes, all so that the newly inaugurated President could taste the life of a movie star. Though the White House denied that any delays had occurred, this story spread, moving from the Post’s gossip column to the front pages of other national papers. How humiliating for an administration only five months old, to have the President caught acting so recklessly. Or so it seemed. Fortunately for the Clinton Administration, and unfortunately for the Washington Post, the report was debunked in a little over a month. At the end of June Newsday reported that, based on the records of the commercial airlines and the FAA, the Post’s story was wrong. Air Force One caused no delays at LAX. President Clinton did get an overpriced haircut, which may have been embarrassing on its own, but he didn’t inconvenience any ordinary travelers in order to do so. The gossip had been published in error, and the media had run away with the story. In the end, it was not President Clinton who had behaved recklessly, but the press. We’ve talked a lot about media bias on this blog, and we’ve tended to focus on ideological bias. The greatest bias within the news media, however, is not at all ideological or partisan. It is toward the sensational and the outrageous. News outlets—and now, blogs—tend to report on stories like the LAX affair enthusiastically and, if the stories turn out to be wrong, retract them quietly and with little contrition. In July of 1993 the Washington Post ombudsman, Joann Byrd, chided her paper for doing just this. Beyond this reproach, however, the Post suffered little. Instead, the Clintons had to bear the brunt of the paper’s error. Apparently they still do.
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