Intelligencer

McGreevey’s McGrievance

Ex-gov didn’t want to just read a “Top Ten List.”

By Boris Kachka
Published Oct 8, 2006

D avid Letterman’s “Top Ten Chapter Titles From Jim McGreevey’s Book” (“Politicians Who Left a Bad Taste in My Mouth”; “Why I Don’t Like Bush”) weren’t as upsetting to the former governor’s camp as Letterman’s implication that McGreevey had blown off the show. “They said, ‘Oh, no, we’re coming, don’t worry’ … and that’s the last we heard of them,” Letterman said on the air. But that was just “poetic license,” explains a source close to CBS—Regan Books had definitively said no three days before. The Confession co-writer David France says McGreevey insisted that he sit down for an interview and “not be rolled in and out like a trophy” to simply read a “Top Ten List”—though that’s all Letterman’s people say they ever offered. “I think they just got cold feet,” says the CBS source. Regan flacks chalked it up to “a scheduling conflict.” As for the list that aired, France called it a “nasty collection of sexual innuendoes” that in the end “reinforces the decision. They’re saying, ‘Here’s a fag, let’s laugh at him.’ ” But the source denies any homophobia, saying, “They’re making fun of themselves more than anybody else.”