Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr has a way of transforming his targets into martyrs, and he did it again in March, when he subpoenaed two Washington, D.C., bookstores for Monica Lewinsky’s buying records. Kramerbooks, a local independent bookstore, and the Georgetown branch of Barnes & Noble instantly announced they would put up a fight. When it was further reported that one of the books Lewinsky bought from Kramerbooks was Vox, Nicholson Baker’s best-selling phone-sex story, Starr came off like a Peeping Tom and the bookstores reaped volumes of sympathetic press. All of which obscured one question: What gives bookstores like Kramerbooks and Barnes & Noble the right to keep a permanent record of Lewinsky’s—or any other customer’s—credit card and check purchases?

The truth is that while bookstores don’t want to be forced to release information about their customers, they happily collect as much of it as they can for their own purposes—meaning if Kramerbooks wanted to sell Lewinsky’s book-buying history to, say, an erotic magazine looking for new subscribers, it could.

And what do they do with this information? “I have no idea,” says Kramerbooks spokesman Bob Witeck.

Barnes & Noble is even more cagey. Spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating, responding by fax, states only that “Barnes & Noble believes that the First Amendment is sacrosanct.”

Chris Finan of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression says that since there’s no law against collecting and distributing such information, discretion is purely voluntary. “Our conviction is that these records…should not be sold to anybody,” says Finan.

In the meantime, here’s a tip for Monica and other bookstore habitués: Pay cash.

—Richard Blow

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate