Ppage 36 of the February 23 issue of U.S. News and World Report contains what must be the most vicious paragraph to appear in a news magazine this year. In 1957, U.S. News reports, Lucianne Goldberg, otherwise known as Linda Tripp's literary agent, became pregnant out of wedlock. "According to several friends," says the magazine, "she told people the baby was stillborn." Forty-one years later, U.S. News has learned differently: " records show that she put the child up for adoption."
What could this possibly have to do with President Clinton or Monica Lewinsky? Elise Ackerman, the reporter who wrote the piece, says she finds the fact of Goldberg's adopted child "very pertinent," though she refuses to say what it is pertinent to. Ackerman's editor, former Clinton administration official Steve Waldman, describes the Goldberg profile as "an important story of national significance," though he will not reveal what about it is important or significant. He does say that he is "not at all uncomfortable" about the effect the story may have had on the Goldberg family. And it has had an effect. "It was all news to me," says Goldberg's son, Jonah, who learned about his half-brother for the first time in U.S. News. "And it was a crappy place to find out."