Very poignant comments to the article. Thanks to Dr. Detroit for this link.
I was under continual attack by the Lobby while I was in politics. Because I kept myself clean during my time of service, someone in the Lobby dug up a story designed to embarrass me by exposing my oldest son to ridicule. He was, at the time, living on an Indian reservation in South Dakota on food stamps. The Lobby got Spencer Rich, who was a political reporter for the Washington Post, to do a story on him. Rich several times called both my wife and me trying to get us to comment, but we refused. So he ran the story, headlined, “Senator’s Son Living on Food Stamps.” That set off a fire storm of criticism against the Post, and against Ben Bradlee, who was then Editor in Chief. Larry Stern, who was one of my friends, and an editor of the Post, complained bitterly to Bradlee. Senators McGovern and Ribicoff both took to the Senate Floor denouncing the article, saying the Post was trying to destroy the food stamp program.
One of the Style section writers, Tom Zito, whom I had never met, called me one day and told me the story about his protest to Bradlee over the story. Bradlee finally said, “Alright, go find some other famous people whose kids are living on food stamps and we’ll run it.” Zito told me that he had found that Bradlee’s daughter was living on Food Stamps out in Oregon, causing Bradlee to kill the story on the spot.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30640.htm
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