WHO ELSE HELPED HIDE HARVEY WEINSTEIN? ENTERTAINMENT JOURNALISTS:

In this way, entertainment reporters are in a position similar to that of sports journalists. If you look too deeply into controversial subjects, you are barred from locker rooms, denied interviews with players, and meet resistance from coaches and management. In Hollywood, studios can deny access to the set and future projects. Anger an actor and you anger the agent, then lose out on contact with all their clients. Thus a journalist has to comport herself accordingly, or find she is cut off from the very industry she is covering.

Reading this passage in Brad Slager’s article at the Federalist, I had an immediate flashback to sportswriter Jeff Pearlman’s 2008 book, Boys Will Be Boys, his look at the insanity that surrounded the 1990s-era, Jerry Jones-owned Dallas Cowboys, including “the White House,” its infamous version of Delta House, a suburban home adjacent to their practice field, rented by wide receiver Alvin Harper, and how the Dallas sports media initially ignored the story:

“It was a frat house,” says Mike Fisher, the team’s beat writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “But most frat houses don’t specialize in hookers and cocaine.”

To visualize the White House, picture a relatively nice suburban home with a swimming pool in the back and a driveway packed with Jaguars, Bentleys, BMWs, and Ferraris. Then walk through the front door (no need to knock—it was always unlocked) and check out the enormous televisions, the pool table, the wet bar, and the prostitutes (often wearing nothing but the gold chains supplied by the residents). Oh, don’t forget the handful of video cameras hidden throughout the various bedrooms, allegedly installed by Dennis Pedini, one of Irvin’s close friends. “Everything that happened in the White House I’m assuming Pedini had on camera,” says Kevin Smith. “He didn’t tell the guys they were being filmed at the time, but—surprise!—they were.”

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The first member of the media to write of the White House was the Miami Herald’s Dan Le Batard, who merely mentioned it in passing in a larger piece about partying in the NFL. “The reality is that many teams throughout the league had places like the White House,” says Le Batard. “But the Cowboys were the biggest, baddest, best, and anything they did was vastly more magnetized.” Upon reading Le Batard’s story, the Dallas media went to work. In truth, many were well aware of the White House and its going-ons, but chose to ignore the story in the name of player-press relations. “Everyone knew about it, but what are you going to do, run a story about the guys cheating on their wives with hookers?” says Rob Geiger, a reporter for KRLD radio in Dallas. “The writers understood not to write about it, the radio and TV guys understood not to talk about it, because we’d be vilified by the fans and locked out by the team.” [Emphasis mine — Ed]

It was a gargantuan lapse in news judgment. The White House had everything one craves in a story—sex, drugs, fame, football.

When word of the White House finally broke, Jones and Switzer confessed to being shocked (shocked!) that a place of such ill repute existed. The Cowboys, after all, were a wholesome operation, made up of loyal, family-oriented men like, um, Jones and, uh, Switzer who would, eh, never, ah, dream of…cheating, uh, on, eh, a female. “Jerry Jones was chasing and f***ing the same women Michael Irvin was,” says Anthony Montoya, the gofer for Cowboy players. “He was out there just as bad as anyone else. I have no beef with that, because if you can get the p***y at that age, more power to you; I’m happy for you. But Jerry saying he didn’t know about the White House is a fucking lie. A big ***ing lie. I’d get calls from the team saying, ‘Can you get X player. We hear he’s out at the White House.’

“And usually,” says Montoya, “they were right.”

As Glenn noted, linking to his column this week in USA Today on Harvey Weinstein and Mark Halperin, “For people who keep telling us how fearlessly truthful they are, they sure have a lot of ugly ‘open secrets.’”