Sometimes I can’t figure out if the new People magazine is just stupid, reductive, or too young to research a story.
The latest is a bit about Kathie Lee Gifford, former New York morning TV media queen, who was married to football great Frank Gifford. They had two children — now grown — before the much older Gifford died at 84 in 2015.
It only came out after his death that Frank had taken too many whacks to the head with the New York Giants, and suffered from CTE. It presented like dementia. Indeed, often when I or anyone else spoke to him, that’s what we thought he had. I knew Kathie Lee — now 72 — and Frank socially. One day, after I’d seen them, Frank actually called me and accused me of “making time” with his wife.I assured him this was not true (I always did think she was cute despite being a Jew turned Jesus freak.) He was very upset. I just thought he was bran addled because of age. I didn’t know about the CTE.
Anyway. People is still harping about an “affair” poor Frank had in 1997 with a flight attendant. They’ve asked Kathie Lee about it in a new interview. They don’t seem to know the back story. Gifford was set up by tabloid magazine The Globe, who sent the woman, Suzan Johnson, to bed him. She was paid for her work. Her cousin, a New York Post writer, helped her. They were paid by the Globe to video Johnson seducing Frank. Listen, it wasn’t like he was naive. But he was old, and mentally wobbly then. They hoowinked him.
Here’s a link to the story about all this from the New York Observer.
People has now referred to this as an “affair,” like it was a clandestine romance, a couple of times. Far from it. Gifford was used by The Globe to embarrass Kathie Lee. That’s the way the tabs and the Post were back then. There were no rules. Why am I defending Frank now that he’s dead? Because he was a good guy, and a fine athlete. And every one of the websites I see employ no writers or editors over 20, or with a memory, or who do any research. (My gosh — you have Google. We had to make calls back then.)
People Magazine, get your act together. Real journalists like Dick Stolley and Pat Ryan, who made that brand famous, are rolling in their graves.
