Surely few things in life can be as frustrating for a writer as thinking that you have written a puff piece about a politician you admire, and then having it backfire. That must explain the astonishing spectacle of Lucinda Franks's desperate explanation to the New York Times last week that her interview with Hillary Clinton didn't say what it surely did: that in Bill Clinton's childhood can be found the explanation for his misbehavior as an adult.
As soon as Marsha Berry, Hillary's spokeswoman, disputed the content of the interview -- "She did not say the president's childhood in any way caused his behavior" -- Franks got on the horn to the Times to explain that Berry was correct and Franks's own article was wrong: The first lady "never makes a connection between his chaotic childhood -- full of alcoholism, physical abuse by his stepfather toward his mother and conflict between his mother and his grandmother -- and his sexual infidelities," said Franks. "Hillary Clinton never made that connection."
But here, according to Franks's article in Talk, is what Hillary Rodham Clinton told her: Quoth Hillary, "He has become more aware of his past and what was causing this behavior."
THE SCRAPBOOK isn't sure, then, if this means that Franks doesn't understand her interview with Hillary, didn't read the article published under her byline, or merely puts no limits on the service that she is willing to render to Hillary Clinton. Probably the last.