later, a supreme court oral argument on whether police need a warrant to search the cell phone of someone under arrest. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," author and journalist myra macpherson discusses her new book, "the scarlet sisters: sex, suffrage, and scandal in the gilded age" as well as her career covering politics and culture for the washington post, new york times and other publications. >> myra macpherson, when you at theack of your career washington post, how many years were you there? >> i think it was 23 years. >> what is one of the highlights

that comes to mind? hasne of the highlights the that i was covering mets in 1969 when they finally won. they wouldn't let me in the press box because i was a girl as they said in those days. i had already covered the indianapolis 500 where i had been the only woman in the country. i found this interesting because it was a magic place to work. styleradley hired me for and it really transformed and revolutionized the paper business. it is not at all like it was then. you would do 2000-word pieces and people would read them. that business of not being able to go into the press box to -- itand file my copy struck home and read smith, the great columnist wrote aps saying, isn't it time we change

some of these rules? i felt it was a bit of moving on up for women. >> what excuse did they give? >> because i was a woman. they just didn't have women in the press box. they just to say that if a woman was on a ship, it was bad news for the ship. i have no idea, but they just banned them. there were a lot of places that banned women. the press club, the women had to sit in the back when they were interviewing somebody or somebody was giving a major speech. the cosmos club, not until the 1980's did they admit women. the discrimination laws came in. losingre more afraid of their liquor license than being a gala terry and. it was a strange mad men era for many of us. >> do you remember how old you were when you met jack

kennedy? >> 24 art 25. >> what do you remember from that? >> being scared. >> what were the circumstances? >> i was doing a column five days a week. they were on the tarmac waiting for the children to come to the white house. mr. effusive, talking to everybody. jackie kennedy was in the limousine with all-black windows. this woman that i didn't know said, let's go ask her a question. we went over and this woman said, do the children know they are moving into the white house? jackie rolls the window down t?is far and says, wha

she said caroline knows but she doesn't understand the full significance. up went to the window. that started a great friendship. i had a couple of times when i covered the press conferences and talked to him. he was very eager to talk to journalist. andoved that give and take conversation. i got ted kennedy a lot more because i covered him on health issues. >> thinking back to the days when you couldn't get in the press box, did not have -- eventually writing this book called "the scarlet sisters?" >> my first book was called "the power lovers" and it was on the affect of marriage. everything i have written comes off the news in many ways.

that book, i was watching the primary. muskie was running for president. all the male reporters said he cried in the snow after there had been this hideous editorial about his wife. i am not so sure he cried in the snow. .nyway, it came through i was in the bus and he was talking with some reporters. childrenup and saw the with a whole lot of luggage sitting around and said, what is going to happen to the children? they won't see their parents for two months. genesis of how difficult is a political marriage in the time. that was pretty much a feminist book then. i always have this desire to go back to the feminist movement.

i covered the equal rights amendment and all the issues in and 1970's. this time around, everybody in 2008 was talking about the possible year ago dream team of hillary clinton and vice president obama. there was this tiny squid that said in 1862, victoria woodhull ran with frederick douglass, an obscure third-party ticket. i had read something about her but not the whole thing about frederick douglass. ,hen i read about her sister which had been pretty much eclipsed in all the books about victoria, and decided to do a dual biography of these fascinating and outrageous women in american history. upecided i could never make -- in chapterst line

one, victoria and tennie's father -- >> they grew up in this ridiculously dickenssian world of debauchery. this family was nothing you could believe. he was sort of at the head of it all. everything he did was a scam. , the story went that he was making counterfeit money. put the sheriff came, he the money in his mouth and swallowed the evidence. he was always doing something, painting horses black and selling them before the rain came and got out of town. these two women grew up with anding but shyster tricks

not being real people. tennie was put, to work as a fake fortuneteller and sat in a dirty old hotel for 13 hours a day, selling fortunes and the father collected the money. there is a scene in the book, -- they were chasing her for manslaughter based on one of the things. they had a horrible childhood. ahead and gotten married at age 15. that wasn't looking well. everybody says, how do you think these women came from such a very low rent part -- as you know, the victorian era is so stratified.

there was the very rich, the -- the life and times of these women was in the most the near time that you can buccaneer -- most time you can think of. you had all the barons out there making a lot of money. i think it was easy for them because they had been running around with low-rent con artists. now let's go with the big boys. they were beautiful and they were tough and they were driven. they were driven both for power and individualism, but as i say they could have been quarter cortesans but they were pushing for their independence and women's independence.

they were talking about equal pay for equal work. we still don't have it. everything they pushed -- they were for free love which got them into a lot of trouble with the press and the clergy and other people. in a five-act play. how did you divide it up? >> instead of doing part one, part two, i decided their life was such a drama that i wanted to do it that way. there is the beginning, then part two is when they went to wall street and made their fortune, bankrolled by cornelius vanderbilt who was rumored to be the lover of tennie. they had used their ability as to convince him

that they could talk to his long dead mother. vanderbilt was the richest man in the world but he was incredibly superstitious. he also believed in spiritualism. them and they became the first women stockbrokers in the world. that was the beginning curve of their life. part two goes into the development of who they were, the newspaper they started, various other themes. i am forgetting which parts right now. know the trial against henry ward beecher was this high drama and the final one was the siege of london, when they left the united states and married the richest man in london. >> the victorian age, where did it get its name? and how long was it? >> queen victoria started in 1838 and it went until 2001 when

her son became the king. she lived forever. >> what did it mean? what did they call it the victorian age? >> she was considered not the virgin queen but her husband died when she was very young and there was this era that had preceded it, major debauchery. the concept of victorian is him was -- victorianism was that you have a moral fiber to life. a lot of it was hypocrisy. sex and chapter called the city circa 1861. eraconcept of the victorian was a sense of fidelity to marriage, a sense of honor, etc.

, which is just not the case. it was based on her life, living as the queen alone and ruling as the queen alone. woodhull was born what year? >> 1838. she was named for the queen. whatd her sister was born year? >> 1845. >> where were they born? >> i am not sure where but they grew up in a little town in ohio. >> what was buck doing there? >> bock was supposedly setting fire to his mill so he could get money for the insurance. teaching the girls how to become he --oyants, and then they were run out of town. the citizens in this little town didn't take kindly to someone who was fleecing them to get

money for the fire that he had started. he was always a con man. , he they got out of there had been the post office manager and they found all of these envelopes that said, money and closed. the money was gone. worldtarted this caravan of just going all over the country. spiritualism had become enormously popular. --re were something like various groups in the united states at that time were really spirit will this -- spiritualists. it is not much different from a lot of religions, the idea that there is a life after death.

he glommed onto that and said, i have got to wonderful good-looking girls. he touted them as spiritualists. he made up fake medicine. he called himself the king of cancers. all things healed by little tennie. he was a real piece of work. back to life, came haunt the sisters in a very sad way for them. their mother was a revivalist, they wanted the sisters to be with them, particularly tennie because she was very pretty and vivacious. off and women went

became these incredible becesses, not only did they the first women stockholders in , not to be repeated for 100 years, they had a radical newspaper, they became lecturers. they were celebrities. they have headlines with just their names. it is like madonna. they were very famous based on their beginnings with vanderbilt. the family just kept threatening them with blackmail. they said, we are going to expose you. the mother started this ridiculous court trial when she said that victoria's then husband wanted to put her in an essay in asylum, wanted to kill her. the press went wild and wrote about this very trashy family.

the sisters has been trying very hard to hide all that and they were inventing and reinventing themselves. they were not the least bit educated but they said they were. they were willing to wreck their whole life just to get tennie back to tell fortunes. they had some really rotten characters in the family. wifeu say that buck's annie had 10 children. how many survive? >> seven. >> you write about annie where you say, one tale describes her mother -- >> it was in a book that i read. i thought, do i use this?

i have to say unsubstantiated because i have no idea if that is truthful. it kind of sits in with who they were. notou say the mother was sane. >> their phrase was, never wholly sane. she was always a bit off. they clung to them like birds. started making money and became famous, the family would just turn up. there would be a raft of these family members that tennie called deadbeats. they were like locusts eating off of these two green stems that were upholding the whole family. to leave,afraid because they understood how much this family could do, the harm that they could do in the press. they had everybody's support.

they had susan b anthony. they were looked at as the new wave of feminists. victoria became the first woman to address any member of congress. she addressed the judiciary committee. constitutionat the , 15th amendment, everything said citizens. e, it didn'ty mald say female. the only time male was used was in the second article of the 14th amendment. males used to define black slaves versus female slaves. god forbid the female slaves could vote. argument.very strong as i said in the book, they were absolutely keen on finding the

best men who could help them. , ay had general ben butler great friend of lincoln and grant, very powerful man. he pushed all that. they were very much a part of the more liberal ring of the women's movement. when this whole family scandal broke, everybody started saying, how could susan b anthony have anything to do with these women? it really was very hard for them. >> in your own life, how often have you seen favoritism toward men versus women? >> oh dear. [laughter] >> plus a couple of examples. there were these attitudes that there were no women capable of doing the same job. year i, the first covered a presidential campaign, i covered five of them.

that was the first year. the book written about the called the boys on the bus. i have not say -- children and didn't want to be out there full-time. i remember talking to david son atabout raising your 14 or 15 and he said, i skipped that year. he had a wife at home who helped. it wastem while i was in almost completely male-dominated. examples, the question is, do you get passed over for an assignment? i talked to many women on wall street today who say it is still the frat boy system. when the sisters were on wall street, they were considered whores just because they were out there.

i don't mean to be rambling but it is hard to come up with a specific. with -- id out remember when i got out of college and i had been an editor at our state college. i thought i was really ok. i went to detroit to look for a havend the editor said, we no openings in the women's department. i said i wasn't considering the women's department. said, we have no women in the sitting room. two men with lesser credentials got reporters jobs and i got a job running copy. it was institutionalized sexism as opposed to totally being able to say i couldn't get this job because i was a woman. i think that happened a great deal. if you look at politics, the treatment of women -- hillary

clinton when she ran, it was fierce, the kind of sexism that went on. couldlong time, women never get enough upfront money to run for politics. the whole system was stacked. husband -- your first husband, what year did he die? the 1990's? >> yes, 1994. up,he reason i bring him you guys were in the same business. was he better? was he treated better because he was a man? >> yes. . have a story -- severaltable sports people.

i said something and they said, we are not interested in what you think. you are only here because of mare. concerned, all broths are a piece of raisin cake. i said something i will not repeat. i pushed out the table and walked away. shirley, this great i said,iter, he said -- let's not go. i walked in and the first thing he said was, how are you? had distinguished myself by being enough of a male to tell him off that he was respectful. you saw an awful lot of that. the baseball dinners were always

stag. ,fter we got married, i said you are just not going to do that. said, i am going to have a surprise. his keynote speaker was liz carpenter. some of the old guys were grumbling about it, really grumbling about it. it was an incredible thing. my daughter became a three-time emmy award-winning espn producer. when i meet young men and young women in sports, they are aghast. they can't believe that you couldn't get into the press box. covered the indianapolis 500, i was the only woman covering it. i couldn't get into gasoline alley, i couldn't get into the press box. now we see women covering everything, which is progress. >> you wrote a book about your

daughter. what year was that? >> i didn't write about my daughter. , she camebook called to live out loud. that was when i was at the .ospice foundation i interviewed a woman who had breast cancer. >> you lost her daughter. >> i did, 10 years later. 2010. it is emblazoned in my mind. she had given birth to her third child. she said, i am going to give up working for a while. said that shend had stage four breast cancer. there had been no indication whatsoever. fight in whichnt she wrote a website that was so popular that 60,000 people followed it. sheill can't reread it, but

was just amazing. >> how old was she? >> 43. >> what did she do that cut her into espn as a producer? was she treated equally? >> she thinks she was treated mostly equally. she had a few points where she didn't think so. she never wanted to go on air. she loved being a producer and being out there. knew john walsh, the news editor for c-span -- espn. he had been at the style section with me. she got her job through somebody that neither maury nor i knew. giveaid, john walsh didn't me the job. i did it myself. one of the assistant producers went to pick her up at the

airport. he said he was so taken with everything she said, he said, you are hired. you don't even have to go anywhere else. john said, that is myra's daughter. she was very independent. there is one hysterical story. they station her in dallas. they were covering the cowboys. line and at the center they kept moving them farther down the goalposts. they said, why? they were sitting on the cowboys side and they were behind them on the bench. her cell phone thing bothers them too much. she was playing "hail to the redskins." [laughter] as we are talking

about your previous books, i want to run some video. forwere in the audience this. tell us what you got interested in this person. >> i believe that no society is good, even if it has social welfare, free rent, where men are not free to speak their minds. in that sense, i believe very thoroughly in america and its a gallant arianism. -- its egalitarianism. i criticize its shortcomings that i have not lost faith in it. likenot an anti-democrat my poor friend socrates. therefore i will not drink the hemlock today. >> what did you think of i.f. stone? >> i quite adored him. i interviewed i quite adored him. i interviewed him and his wife at their 509sdz wedding

anniversary and he was a neighbor but i didn't know him well at all. and then when he died, my second husband who was as i say the only brain and liberal in the florida senate he sponsored the equal rights amendment said that's your next book because we both decided in many, many ys that he was the pivotal desenting voice in the 20th century that could have kept this country honest and i had written my book a long time passing about the vietnam generation and then i realized hat izzy three weeks after lyndon johnson used the governmenten as a false excuse for going into vietnam that he said this doesn't ring true. i've been reading -- he read every single document ended up saying this can't be true because there's no after

debris, no after report of debris. if they had shot our ships what is this all about? he raised the spector of it being false three weeks after. and i always thought if the rest of the press had been more interested in doing real work we might have avoided that terrible war. what would you compare him to today? what did he do back then? he didn't have the large audience but i think he said he had 70,000 -- >> and he made a lot of money because it was $5 a year. that comes 350 thoirks and they were mom and pop store. he literally carried them out and put them in his back seat. he was just fiercely -- he was fiercely a democrat. small d democrat. he was unbelieveably brave

about j edgar hufere which resulted in 5,000 pages. more courage than anybody i've ever known in the business at all. i can't compare him to anybody. >> you read all 5,000 of those pages? >> oh, yes. and -- didn't know who was saying what. and it was just incredibly silly stuff. they followed him into a cigar store and reported that he bought two cigars and -- >> what did they think he was? >> a kgb agent. and a lot of controversial books. i'm saying he definitely was not. the time frame when he knew this one man who turned out to be a kgb agent who was also the press atasha was during world war ii when russia was our allies and i found that walter litman the great establishment

sage talked to him a lot more than izzy did. and people are adding two and two and coming up with five about everything from the past with him. and he took on j edgar hoover . the 1930s and invasive of their lifestyle. and i just said he was so unbelieveably brave that he was a person who deserved a book on his own right. >> oh know he wrote books. but was most of his work done -- was it a weekly news letter? >> no. originally -- i found his early years fascinating. he was the youngest editorial writer at the new york post which was then a liberal paper and he was writing about the horrors of the possibility of hitler becoming chancellor. he real liz with you saying how bad he was. and i twin him with walter litman because walter listman was also a jew but rather much a self--hating jew and did not

cover anything about the holocaust for the longest time. but in those days izzy was a top-rate reporter. he won all kinds of scoops. he proved that businesses were still doing business with the nazis in france during the war. so his background, which a lot of people didn't know and just knew him from the weekly, happened to be amazing. and then all during the horrible years of the mccarthy period all of the liberal papers were shut down and he had no place to go so he started his own little rag and because it was -- the timing was for tutes because he was so anti-vietnam and the ant war movement began. and it became his bible. that's when everybody in campuses had to read it and pass it around and everything else. so he got very lucky there. but he wrote a brilliant book called underground to palestine which he was the first reporter

in the world to go over with holocaust survivors. they ran the british block cade to get into jerusalem and it really reads like a novel. he's sitting with a little beret in a little cafe somewhere waiting for the next person to take him to this and this. it's a really wonderfuly written book. and he was a genius. i don't think there's another journalist who could claim that. >> and it was weekly. >> yes. >> do you remember what it cost? >> i said $5 a year. >> a year? >> yes. >> times 70,000. >> 350 a year? i think i'm adding right. >> and do you remember what year he died? >> i should remember. he was 81. nd he was born in in 1907. >> so 87, 88. >> somewhere in there. >> i'm sorry.

it was right after teen man square. so that was 89. >> if somebody was interested in reading him today where would they go? >> i can tell you this they can go to the website. he's already got two different awards. one we give every year one is harvard for excellence in investigative journalism and you can now -- which i was not able to do -- you can now read the weekly on line. when i was in you had to just take stacks of it and read it and so there's a lot that's on line now. >> i want to go back to your book. to do that a lot of people have written about various aspects of what you're writing about here, although you put an emphasis on him that a lot others haven't. but styles wrote a book called

the first tikecoon and will get us back into the story. let's list ton 30 seconds of what he had to say. >> vanderbilt went outside the u.s. money market to england borrowed money bought back his own stock at reduced prices, bought back the stock at cheap prices bankrupted an opponent profitted in the stock markt got control of a major railroad that he needed and all he had to do was help cause a major financial panic. but such was his power that he was able to go in and then stop the panic by personally showing up on wall street and saying buying shares of stock very visibly and one broker said i knew it i knew it the old rat. they actually just knocked

been door and he had quite a bounder. he was not one of these men who just was faithful to his wife. and i think he was attracted to both of them and they started talking with him. and what has never been said is that in 68 they met him and they did not start their bank until 1870. and all through the period he's talking about black friday et cetera the sisters made money through knowing him. and i think probably very strongly that he did have an affair with them. his wife had died. it was a period between that and when he married another

woman. i think he was just intrigued with their ability to just go forth and do things. he thought they were witty and funny and all the stories from early days have her coming into his office and sitting on his lap and him saying you're my little sparrow and she called him the old goat or something. he felt alive with those two women. so he gave them $7,000 to start -- which is not a lot of money but it was for them a beginning. and it wasn't just his money. it was the imprimtur of vanderbilt the word was on the street that he was helping them. and everybody kind of followed suit. i have quotes in there from major financors at the time when said that vanderbilt launched these women we wanted to see what they were like and literally 2,000 people came out just to see them opening the doors and walking in and saying

we are women stock brokers. >> how many times were each of them married? >> that's hard to sell. tinny was only married twice. victoria was married three times but the question mark was always whether she really had married her second husband. because you have to understand the free love premise was that you didn't need a piece of paper if you had a horrible marriage a piece of paper didn't help it legal and if you had a wonderful relationship it didn't matter. and their attitude was you really didn't need to be married to be in love. and it was very much like many people today are living together without being married. and they strongly believed that was an ok thing at a time when no one else did.

and she i know was running around with the second husband before she got her divorce from her first one. but -- and then they went to england and they married there. so it wasn't tham husbands. they made it sound like so many. but when the family had this horrible public trial, it was disclosed that she was living with two husbands, a former and a current, in the same house. well, this was a mantion on 38th street with imnumerous beds and she tried to say she wrote to the "new york times," the sisters were always very good at writing back. and she said we were taking care of this man. he was a moir fin addict and a drunk and he was dying. and that was why he was in the house. but that didn't matter. the press just went wild. there were newspapers in the days called the sporting news and they were the equivalent of

the tabloids later. they wrote everything you could think about. these women. making up a lot. >> what is a spiritualist? how do you define that? >> somebody who believes that there is some way of communicating with somebody on the other side of the world, in other words, somebody who is dead. and has been deceased. and there are various perm youtations of that. it can be people who can feel you can talk to them. people say there is evidence of it. for a long time people were very interested in it. but because of all the ho couple and stuff that began to gravery the music, the people ay at say aunses with people talking and having the table move and all of this made it seem like there was no possibility that this could be true.

but it really was a religion even after all this was discovered there was something like 300 churches in america at the turn of the century the 19th century. and i think it was everybody's desire to believe in life after death. and that's i think that's the bullwork of all religions if you study any of them it's this idea that it's a life after of some sort. >> at the end of your book you talk about whether or not these two women were prostitutes. and i know that a lot of people say that. >> i was saying just simply -- i said it was very easy to be called a slut in those days if you were anywhere by yourself walking down the street at night you were -- you were considered -- it was just you didn't do. if you tried to divorce, you couldn't do that. i mean, there's a saying the

age of innocence which was at the same time of the sisters where aless cowants to get a divorce and her lover to be -- well he wasn't we don't know how much but the one that who cared about her said you can't have a divorce. i know it's mean and it's awful and it doesn't make sense but we can't. the family. think of the family. think of the press. think of this and that. so the rigidity was so there that as soon as the sisters did anything -- and they did a lot that was out of the norm -- they were immediately thought to be prostitutes. and then there were some articles that came out later much later saying that they had maybe run a house in cincinnati back when their father was in control. my feeling after reading everything is that they may have been occasionally prostitutes under their father's wing if you can call it a wing. and then maybe when they got

out of jail. they were jailed for -- on a false charge of obscenity when they blew the whistle on the beacher adultress affair and they were hounded by comstock who was the one man vice squad at that time who then had an enormous impact on america free speech because he managed to get a very, very stern obconstituent law passed federally. and he was against all of the great literature that was written. he drove margaret sanger out of the country for extra seppings. but his whole beginning was with the sisters. so he hounded them enormously to get press, et cetera. and then they came out and the federal agents had wrecked their printing press and everything else. they were having been in prison was enough to make them no longer valuable to the women's

movement. they felt betrayed and lost. and they still tried to keep the newspaper afloat which they did. i mean, this radical weekly six years is quite amazing. >> called weekly. >> yeah, the wood hal classland's weekly. in the did maybe -- book it's an amazing the way they get around the question of were they or were they not prostitutes. you know like how many angels are dancing on the top of a pin? they just simply could evade it without saying yes or no. and it's quite fascinating how they did. >> another author barbara goldsmith wrote about victoria. here's just a brief description that she gives. see whether or not you agree or disagree with this. >> she was a presidential candidate. she was a prostitute.

she was known as the prostitute who ran for president. she loved her children and domes citiesty but yet she preached free love. she came very under the influence of benjamin butler who believed that women should have the vote by declartri act of congress in 1872. and she presented a memorial before the joint houses of congress, the only woman ever permitted to do that. she was a mass of contradictions. >> well, first of all, i don't like to do this but i have some negative comments in the book about the goldsmith book. >> give us an example. >> there are a lot of aneck dotes that are not verified, there's no primary source. one is the one that you read about whether or not this is how she was conceived.

her comment that they were flat out prostitutes is just wrong. i mean, there were people who said that constantly. but there was no proof. there was never even the business about whether or not she ran a house of asignature nation in chicago. there were no reports, no records. and i take issue with it because i think we have to recognize even today the sexism that's there. i mean, she gave a wonderful speech which she said if a woman is called up for trial for anything, her sexual life is called into question. and this is exactly why 54% of rapes go unreported today. there is still this attitude. and for them to be so outrageously out front and everything they thought of, i mean, for example, goal smiths said she loved her children but she wanted free love. that's apples and oranges. their attitude on free love was

very strongly that the divorce laws were terrible. they were all -- the power belonged to men socially as well as legally. and women could not get divorces. and if they did get a divorce they didn't get their children. she took the concept of free love and i think exaggerated it totally. and when -- actually, the sisters tried to say that they were more moral than anybody else because their attitude was you don't marry for money. and a woman who mare eas for money is nothing more than a legalized prostitute. because you marry for love. that was their attitude. and if you did have love that was fine but if you were in a broken marriage -- you have to remember in those days many, many of the testimony presence women started out with the attitude that we have drunken males who are beating up women and men as the sisters said marriage is the only legal way

in which a man can beat a woman and force her to have sex. so their attitude was really against much of the divorce law plans. >> i want you to sort through the situation we are in the united states right now what you think should matter to people when they consider voting. we have a potential of having a woman run for president again hillary clinton. you've written some strong things about newt gingrich in the past. i want to combine these two things. let me just read what you said about newt gingrich. >> ok. >> this is the man who won the ll-time huts pa award. then i want to ask you about bill clinton and all that.

what matters do you think when we're looking at people who run for president or run in politics about the moral situation? >> well, that's a very difficult question to answer. when i did my first book i had men ter in there about and who are running for office and their sexual desires. and there have been psychiatrists who have said they think that these guys are -- the same testosterone that keeps them moving and going makes them more interested in other women. then there are other people who say they just simply get caught more because they're so well known. but it can have a disastrous effect on families, that's for sure. but you're asking a different question. you want to know what we should be looking for in a male politician or in women? >> is there anything in this business -- let's do one other thing. this is gale shee hi who

appeared on our first ladies series talking about bill clinton and hillary clinton. let's watch that. >> the night before the vote they knew they were going to lose. she and the campaign manager and his wife all got locked in a room together to find out what was really going wrong here. and hillary was giving them the third degree. and they the wife said well i even had to take bill clinton's girlfriend as my baby sitter to get her out of the way. and she turned on the campaign manager. you got bill clinton a girl? while i was away? you sob. and she started swearing and cursing and throwing things. the next thing the window was broken. it was a mail lay. and who sat through the whole thing? nobody ever mentioned him. was with the passivity of a buddha. bill clinton. and that set the mold for the way she dealt with all of those eruptions. it was never his fault.

it was always somebody else's fault. >> the reason i put those two together because as people get into this next campaign and if mrs. clinton runs this is going to come up again. >> it already has. rand paul. >> rand paul. >> actually said guilt by association. if she could stay with a man like that et cetera. hardest thing is to make this decision about what is -- where is the private life important and where isn't it? i mean, people will argue that clinton was a very good president. so does it really matter? the women who are going to run are going to get an awful lot of heat about their relationships and who they are. it's already begun. wendy davis, the treatment of her. karl rove says about her i think it's funny the sisters who were accused of being two

trashy and wendy davis was accused of not being trashy enough. karl rove went on the air and said she was only in that trailer three months. she exaggerated her poorness. i mean, the silliness that's coming out. and you have mitch mcconnell calling grimes whose running against him an empty dress as a takeoff on the empty suit concept. and i think that sexism is going to be here to stay and it's going to be very, very noticeable particularly if hillary runs. >> do you think -- not you but do people think differently about more or less based on whether or not they're for or against somebody? >> i think so. very much so. yes. i mean, i happened to be on a bus in arizona the day that ted kennedy died. and the man had a talk show on. and all these people were bringing up chap quidic over

and over. it was a clear hatred of ted kennedy. they were saying all of this. and other people were saying that he had gone into his second life toward the end of his life and had done very important legislation work and everything else. but it's truly always that way of if somebody wants to knock you in that respect, then they will. >> what about you? what do you think -- take the bill clinton thing. when you saw that, did you have any reaction to either what he did or how she handled it? >> at first i was sort of reluctant to believe it. and then when of course everything was obvious. and then his lying about it i thought was really despicable act on his part. and i felt that a lot of women were saying she ought to leave him. and then there were all these other women who are doing the stand by your man attitude.

and i think that she -- i don't know what their relationship is really like and i don't think anybody really does. but i think that there is a kind of respect intellectually for each other's work and their intelligence. and keeping she said at one point keeping it together for chelsea was important. it's hard to know she's obviously a very ambitious and i always like the fact that when a woman runs she's ambitious and when a man runs he's just out there to help the world. we have all these different adjectives for women. i thought it was despicable on his part to lie. >> do you think he will have any impact if she runs and is the candidate? >> i don't know. what do you think? >> what do you think? we only have a couple minutes left the scarlett sisters, sex, suff raj and scandal in the

guilded age. do you write your books based on how you feel about issues? >> to some degree. and almost everything i've ever written comes off of an incident like i mentioned with my first book the power lover. the vietnam book happened aferte wrote a two-part series on vietnam veterans in the early 80s. d i realized that there were so many feelings about feeling ignored on their home coming and everything. so i started interviewing all these veterans and then i interviewed the soldiers and nonsoldiers of the era many of them like 500 and put together a book that i had really started out just doing the veterans and i realized i couldn't write it in a vacuum because there were so many feelings on their part about having come home and felt betrayed. it's still there. post traumatic stress was not

even mentioned at the time when i was first doing my interviews. and i have a deep feeling of sorrow for so many of the young men who went to that war and have come back quite troubled. so, yes, it's kind of an ideological thing with me. and certainly this one, too, the women. i like to explore. i always call my job on the job training. you start with an issue you want to write about. and it always expands and explodes. and there's more here and there's more there. >> we don't have time to get to henry wood beacher, which is the reason somebody wants to get the book and read it. but just a couple quick things. you mentioned yoush second husband from florida was senator gordon. >> yes. >> is he deceased? >> he was hit by a car and killed in 2005, december of

2005. walking to our house in palm desert. it was really awful. and then my daughter got sick. >> but you do have a son. >> yes. >> who is here in town. >> he's a political -- >> michael? >> michael. >> what's he do? >> he's political. what do you say. consultant. he's a really good writer. e's a better writer than i am. he had been with madeline albright press secretary and then senate finance committee. so he's sort of followed politics and leah followed sports. >> myra mcpherson is our guest. she has a book called the scarlett sisters out. thank you for joining us. >> thank you.