Let's Row Together

My interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC News This Week with George Stephanopoulis, and memories of a less happy time on national TV with Jane Pauley on the Today Show.

Usually on Fridays, I am writing my Substack.

But on this past Friday, I was at ABC News in Washington, D.C. taping a segment with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl that aired this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

A part of our 30-minute interview (condensed to 8+ minutes) that did not make the TV segment was when Jon took me back to my first-ever TV interview. It happened live on The Today Show on January 3 1977, less than a week after Time Inc. filed a gender discrimination complaint with the Southern District Court in Lower Manhattan. By the time I arrived at NBC’s studio early the next Wednesday morning to do a live six-minute interview with Jane Pauley, Major League Baseball was already hard at work successfully turning my request for equal access into a case about my morality. The male sportswriters had taken Commissioner Kuhn’s cue in putting my feminine decency up against his ballplayers’ (supposed) nudity on trial before the American public rather than treating my case as the fight for equal rights that it actually was.

In the court of public opinion, I knew I’d already lost my case.

No one at Time Inc. offered to prep me for my interview though surely those who handled the company’s public relations knew the incendiary potential of this story. Nor did anyone from Time Inc. meet me at NBC that morning, even if just to be there for my first live TV interview that would go nationwide. I was doubly glad that my roommate, Barbara Roche, a production assistant at ABC Sports, had gotten up when it was still dark outside to ride with me to NBC and stay there with me to settle my nerves.

It was also fortuitous she was there to walk out with me after my interview imploded.

Similarly, I loved having my niece Allison in the ABC studio when I talked with Jon. As she and I hung out there before Jon arrived, I kept repeating to myself, “please don’t let my brain freeze.” I might have seemed like I wasn’t nervous to Allison, but having her there with me to chat and have fun together calmed my nerves.

In Locker Room Talk, I write detail about how Jane Pauley approached her interview with me, and how at the end of it she did everything she could to throw me off stride and humiliate me in front of millions of viewers.

Here goes, from my book:

“Pauley was a year older than I was, but when she was on TV, I did not think of us as contemporaries. She was poised, extremely likeable, and so at ease that she seemed older. While still a rookie on network television, viewers said they liked her as Tom Brokaw’s co-host. I’d watched her put guests at ease with her cheerful, easy-going way that commentators had called “Midwestern nice.” In part, her personable ways quelled my fears. Maybe, I’d feel at ease around her, too. Still, I ought to have remembered that the people who liked her as a young woman with sensible Indiana roots and wholesome Midwestern friendliness would expect her to grill me about my women’s lib tendencies and maybe scold me about the nudity. But I did not fully appreciate this duality when I arrived on the set. Naively I believed she wasn’t going to turn this interview into an attack on me.

“I was wrong. Even in the early going, Pauley’s incredulity about my case was apparent. As time went on, my guard went up as I tried to articulate a strong argument to convince her and her viewers of the merit of my case. Just as I felt I was hitting my stride, a question she asked made me squirm. While she kept her poise, I lost mine. Her query had come from a throw-away line I’d said to her soon after stepping onto the set designed for our interview. Pauley had walked over from the anchor desk, and we’d shaken hands before sitting in the swivel chairs on a raised platform. On a fake wall behind us was hung a huge black-and-white photograph of Reggie Jackson in the Yankees’ locker room after the Sixth Game of the 1977 World Series. I looked at the photo as she reviewed her notes. In an attempt to sooth my nerves, I tried to engage in a brief back-and-forth with Pauley about Jackson’s photograph. The photographer’s upward angle had made Jackson’s bare chest puff out so much that is consumed most of the image. So, I said something flippant Jackson’s chest related to me not being allowed to be in the locker room that night to see him. Without looking up, she’d mumbled something back to me, which made me think she hadn’t heard what I said. I said nothing else, and then a few seconds later the red lights on both studio cameras lit up. A stage manager sliced the air with his arm, and we were underway.

“When Pauley asked me about that last game of the World Series, I started telling her about why I wasn’t able to talk with Jackson after he’d hit three homeruns to bring the championship back to the Bronx after a 14-year drought. That evening, Jackson was the player whom every sportswriter wanted to be around in the locker room that night, hoping for memorable quotes while chronicling his interactions with his teammates, the manager, and the team’s owner. That season his outsized ego and tempestuous relationships with teammates had led to the kind of drama found on soap operas. On this night – the capstone of his career – Jackson was writing another chapter in his remarkable career, and how he handled these interpersonal struggles and celebrated this ultimate victory was vital for any writer to observe.

“But before I managed to say much of anything, Pauley interrupted me to ensure her viewers that when the sportswriters encircled Jackson I was ‘in the room adjacent to the locker room,’ presumably waiting to talk with him. This wasn’t true, but heeding my friend’s advice, I didn’t interrupt, even as she parroted Kuhn’s claim about my ‘separate accommodation.’ What a great coup for Kuhn, I thought, when a trusted media star like Pauley tells Americans how well he was treating me. As she spoke, I was figuring out how best to respond. When she stopped, I leapt in with what I hoped would come across to viewers as a measured response, delivered calmly.

“‘I was not in some adjacent room. I was standing outside of the clubhouse, crushed against the wall,’ I told her. As controlled as I’d wanted to be, I felt I was displaying a hint of the anger I harbored at how I was treated that night. “I was watching people go in and out of the locker room with no credentials. I had a credential that said I could go into the clubhouse. I was standing out there and the guard at the door told me, ‘You can’t go into the clubhouse. I have orders from the Commissioner’s office. You’re not allowed.”

“When I finished, she said nothing about what I’d just said. She had no reaction to what my real circumstance had been. On we went, and with our interview nearing its end, Pauley tossed me that question that threw me off stride. She’d pieced it together from my off-camera remark about Jackson’s chest. As her question oozed out, I realized she’d scribbled notes from my earlier remark with the idea of asking me about the female gaze of the male anatomy.

“‘When you first came out here and you looked at this picture and you said, ‘Who is that?’  And I said, ‘That’s Reggie Jackson,’ and you said, “That’s Reggie’s chest!’” she said, ambushing me with her accusatory tone. She’d twisted my words into nonsense. How could I possible not recognize Jackson? I’d been around him almost daily for two seasons. In the summer of 1977, I rode with him to many games after meeting him at the ramp out of the garage under his Fifth Avenue apartment building. With me in the passenger seat, he’d drive us to the Stadium. On these trips, we talked at length, an opportunity I was denied at the Stadium. I would never have asked Pauley to identify Reggie Jackson for me.

“In mimicking what she claimed were my words, ‘That’s Reggie’s chest!,’ Pauley pushed her voice up for exaggeration. As she did this, I giggled nervously, but I was actually thinking hard about how I’d respond. ‘Now, why did you say that lest we create the impression that you are after all leering at athletic bodies?’ Pauley concluded.

“Live on national TV, my folksy host had all but accused me of filing my lawsuit so I could go into a locker room to gawk at naked men. She’d pushed me into the same corner favored by so many men. Her blindsiding accusation shocked me to the point that I felt my brain freezing. When I saw the camera’s red light point at me, I felt miserably alone, vulnerable and unjustly charged. I tried to kickstart my mind to find a hook on which to hang my answer. I summoned every ounce of clear-headedness I could muster and heard a scrabble board of words tumble out before I found the semblance of a coherent response.

 “‘No, I was just trying to get loose,’ I mumbled. ‘I was sitting here thinking, what am I going to say? And I was just trying to get loose.’ I was so nervous that I was partly chuckling as the words came out. I felt like I was treading water and trying to stay afloat until a solid thought clicked in. I had to finish strong. Then, like a miracle, the words I needed showed up, which allowed me to regain a modicum of the dignity I’d lost.

 “‘Well, it was a situation that when I walked in here, I thought, I missed that,’ I told Pauley as I felt my confidence returning. I swiveled my chair to look directly at Jackson’s photo. ‘I never saw that part of Reggie’s evening or saw Gabe Paul [the Yankees’ general manager] pouring Champagne over his head or watched Reggie Jackson drink that Champagne,’ I said, hoping these words would end the interview by reminding viewers why I’d filed this lawsuit. But Pauley cut me off again so she could end with her closing soliloquy. ‘If I could ask a rhetorical question,’ she said, looking into the camera and oblivious of me being there with her. ‘I’d like to know the sex of the camera that was allowed into the locker room to take that photograph while you weren’t allowed there. And I don’t know that anybody can answer that question’

“She didn’t look my way when she said, ‘Melissa Ludtke, thank you for being with us and we’ll be following your case.’

“With that, she tossed the show back to Brokaw. When the red lights went off, Pauley swiveled her chair back to look at me, then rose from her seat, which I did, too. She reached her hand out to shake mine. Then, without saying a word to me, she walked away.

“Back in the Green Room, Roche greeted me with a reassuring hug, then handed me my winter garments. We left the building without exchanging a word. She could tell I was upset. Back on 50^th Street, she said she was going to her office at ABC Sports, which was a few blocks north on the Avenue of the Americas. I’d done well, she told me, while at the same time urging me to let go of those final awkward moments. ‘Stay focused on how well the rest of the interview went,’ she said before she walked away.

“I blamed myself for allowing that final question to happen. If I’d been Pauley, I think I would have grabbed hold of any remark about Jackson’s chest and done as she did by putting me on the spot with a query that really was about us looking at naked men. That morning I’d learned a valuable lesson. From now on I’d guard every word and scrutinize every action I took when a writer or TV reporter was nearby. There would be no more throat-clearing remarks like whatever I’d muttered in front of Pauley before the cameras were on us. Things I said or did could – and would – be used against me in juicy headlines or salacious stories. No longer was I just me. I was a plaintiff in a notorious case that upset a lot of Americans. I had to accept I’d be ridiculed for waging this fight.

“I couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes.

 “'That morning, I told myself I wouldn’t.”

---

My Today Show live interview, January 3, 1978

Upcoming this week:

Tuesday afternoon: I tape an interview with Lisa Mullins for NPR’s Here & Now show.

Tuesday night: Jen McCaffrey, a staff writer for The Athletic who covers the Boston Red Sox moderates with members of Boston’s SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) chapter at Boston University.

Wednesday afternoon: I tape an interview with Callie Crossley, host of GBH’s Under the Radar, for play in October.

Wednesday afternoon: I tape a story with Douglas Kennedy, a correspondent for FOX News Channel, at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, where I donated my collection of Ludtke v. Kuhn papers to its archive.

Thursday night: At 7:00, I will be at my local independent bookstore, Porter Square Books, for a conversation with Boston Globe sports columnist Tara Sullivan. If you live in the area of Cambridge, please join us!!!

Friday, I rest. And write my Substack.