For over six years, the answer was no.
I was done talking about it, people were sick of hearing me talking (and writing about it), I was focused on a new pro-freedom film festival I am organizing. I was moving on.
And then I said yes. It was a mistake. I’d forgotten that the media’s full of evil cowards who are out to hurt you and they should never be trusted. As I wrote about recently in Splice Today, last year a journalist named Cathy Alter spent over six years cajoling me to submit to a magazine profile for Washingtonian magazine. I said no twice a year every year. Then last year I said yes. I spent a week with Alter, and months before that talking on the phone.
Then, in late-March of this year, I was informed that the profile had been spiked. Alter texted me:
Hey there. I wanted to tell you as soon as I heard (in a phone call today with the editor), Washingtonian is killing the story. I’m tied up now with a list of crap to finish but I wanted to let you know. How about I take some of my kill fee and treat you to a fancy meal? I’m really sorry. And really disappointed.
Why did Washingtonian kill the story? Because I’m a conservative and Alter had made me look too human—they also no doubt had pressure from liberal elites who often advertise in the magazine. Alter had constantly emphasized that that the piece was not focused on what I’s become briefly known for many years earlier. In 2018 I was accused of being in a room in 1982 when Brett Kavanaugh, who’d go on to be nominated for the Supreme Court, sexually assaulted a girl named Christine Blasey. It was an oppo research hit job. Still, Alter assured me that that old news wasn’t the focus of the piece. She interviewed old friends and girlfriends and apparently didn’t ask them about or show interest in Kavanaugh. It was a story about a Washingtonian for Washingtonian magazine.
It was also an emotional experience. Alter asked me for art for the story—old photographs, etc. I was reliving my past, seeing faces of people who are still here but also gone. Alter was delighted when I sent her a painting my father had done in 1974. It depicts a summer court party on the street where I grew up in Potomac, Maryland. It’s full of life and color. On December 8th I got this email from Anna Marina Savvidis, the art director of Washingtonian:
December 8
Hi Mark,
My name is Anna and I am the Director of Creative at Washingtonian Magazine. Cathy Alter passed me your contact information. I'm reaching out to discuss the art for the article she's working on. I'd love to set up some time for our photographer to take pictures of you. Ideally we'd shoot this before Christmas. Do you have any travel plans that will take you out of town, or are you around and able to spend a few hours with us sometime before then? Happy to work within your schedule, just let me know what's best and I'll get a photographer locked in too.
Many thanks,
Anna
I’d turned down Alter’s requests for a profile because I didn’t want the trauma of reliving the nightmare. However, I’ve known Alter since the time we met in 1996, three decades ago, when she interviewed me for a story called “Bitch Hunt.” That piece, about the nasty, derisive nature of DC women, exploded, landing Alter on the TV circuit and establishing her as a tough and funny journalist. It showed she had courage, taking on the “girl bosses” of the modern world and their contempt for men. Alter and I were young journalists who knew and wrote for a lot of the same editors.
When the Washingtonian piece was spiked, it left me traumatized all again, although this time with the added insult that there was now a story that treated me fairly (I think) and raised important questions that I’ve never gotten the answer to about Blasey Ford and the hit put on Kavanaugh and me.
After the Washingtonian piece was killed, I heard from an editor at Quillette, the fearless website founded by Claire Lehman. The editor was looking for contact information for Cathy Alter. They’re interested in publishing the piece that Washingtonian spiked. This puts Alter in an interesting position. She pursued me and this profile for over six years. She spent weeks with me and even more time in phone interviews and in-person meetings with old friends and colleagues. She expressed disappointment that the piece was killed. Would she take the opportunity to now have it published?
Friends told me that the text Cathy sent me is insulting, the breezy tone an inappropriate reaction from a writer who spent six year pursuing a subject only to have the piece killed for political reasons. Where was the demand for an explanation, or the search for a new platform to run the piece? As one friend put it, “Her tone is such nonsense—hey sorry you had to relive all this and have your emotions churned up, but hey, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, moving along, I’ll buy you dinner, nothing to see here. The Stasi told her to buckle and she did.”
As I wrote above: I was done talking and writing about Kavanaugh, people were tired of hearing me talk about it, I’d moved on to another project. And yet, Cathy Alter hounded me for over six years. She churned up a lot of trauma and emotion all over again, and then blithely informed me they had killed their story.
Will Quillette publish the piece? Maybe Alter has the guts to take an offer, but I doubt it. Her bitch hunting days are over.