During the entire Star Jones brouhaha and again during the Rosie O’Donnell drama she remained discreetly tight-lipped. I admired that about Barbara Walters, but now it appears her ability to stay mum wasn’t so much a credit to her professionalism, but rather her desire to use the material to fill pages in her new memoir.
If you haven’t already heard, legendary TV journalist Barbara Walters has written a new book Audition, which chronicles her illustrious career and includes a few other tawdry tidbits, not the least of which is her admission that she carried on an affair with U.S. Senator Edward Brooke in the 1970s.
You can learn more about what appears between the covers of Walters’ book when she spills all to Oprah Winfrey on the queen of talk’s syndicated show this Tuesday. Though if you have tuned into “The View” anytime in the last few months then you don’t really need to since Walters has spoke ad nauseam about her memoir during the daytime chatfest.
Even if you aren’t a fan of Walters the veteran journalist maintains that her book will make for good reading since it covers all 78 years of her life. A life she considers to be very “relatable.”
Relatable? Hmmm… let’s see… how many people in the country were born to club owner parents, lived in New York their entire lives, married and divorce three times, adopted a daughter, became the first female anchor of a nightly newscast and created a popular daytime talk show?
Apparently, Walters fling with Brooke, a moderate Republican from Massachusetts, who was elected to the Senate in 1966 is considered the book’s big bombshell. (Personally, I’m more interested in why Walters lied to the media to protect Jones’ departure from “The View.”)
Regarding the Brooke bomb, when reporters cornered the former lawmaker about Walters’ claim he responded with a comment that made me laugh. According to Brooke, he has “a lifetime policy and practice of not discussing my personal and private life, or the personal and private lives of others, with the notable exception of what I wrote in my recently published autobiography, ‘Bridging the Divide: My Life.'”
Slick.
Leave it to a politician to weasel out of a question and plug his book at the same time.
Interestingly, Brooke’s relationship with Walters wasn’t mentioned in his book.
I guess he just wasn’t that into her.