To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People August 24, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/08/24/geow A vast left-wing conspiracy? Will Dubya get ground up in the rumor mill? A "clumsy" remark by a senator may have given birth to a brand-new bouncing baby rumor. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Are you sick of the Cocaine Question? Looking for a juicy new George W. Bush scandal to sink your sharp little teeth into? From the looks of Nothing Personal's in-box, the Washington rumor mill is apparently more than happy to oblige. Right from the start, Nothing Personal wants to make it clear that we are shocked, shocked, at those who use the mass media to spread pernicious gossip about public figures. Now let's get going. One veteran contrarian correspondent says the question Gee-Dubya is really trying to avoid is not "Did you ever use cocaine?" but "Did you ever" -- gulp -- "sell it?" Them's the kind of fighting words that'll shake a guy right down to his designer cowboy boots. (Of course, there's no actual evidence that Bush ever even used cocaine, let alone sold it.) And if that's not bad enough, now online gossipmonger-in-chief Matt Drudge is spreading rumors about a possible Bush out-of-wedlock pregnancy. On his Fox chat show this weekend, while interviewing Civilization magazine columnist Adam Goodheart about the long history of dirty political campaigns in America, Drudge tossed off a reference to "all this other stuff that may be coming out in the near future, pregnancy out of wedlock, etc." We e-mailed Drudge for a response but didn't hear back by press time. Where did Drudge's "out-of-wedlock" story come from? NP asked Salon's research department to track it down. The closest it could come was a statement Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett made to Ogden's Standard-Examiner editorial board a little more than a week ago. He said the only way Bush could lose the GOP nomination was if "some woman comes forward, let's say some black woman comes forward with an illegitimate child that he fathered within the last 18 months." Apologizing for his "clumsy" remark late last week, Bennett explained that he was referring to the book and flick "Primary Colors," part of the whisper chain that yanked President Clinton's DNA into tabloid-funded testing before the allegations were finally disproved. "I reached out for the most extreme scandal I could find," Bennett said. "One that Hollywood has put into a movie, by the way, a scandal where a white politician male takes unfair advantage of a black woman." Could Bennett, a Republican, have known that his offhanded, Bush-caressing comment would spread far and wide the very scenario he pulled out of thin air? Just like the wishful thinking we're about to put into circulation right here, right now? It comes courtesy of Drudge's first guest on this weekend's show: conservative Salon columnist David Horowitz. Horowitz tells Nothing Personal he knows nothing about these pesky George W. Bush out-of-wedlock baby rumors, but his "intuition" tells him that Al Gore has cheated on Tipper. Let the games begin. salon.com | August 24, 1999