Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The January 1998 issue of George magazine — featuring Pamela Anderson Lee on the cover, with major features on Dick Morris, the Clinton White House year-end review, and Eartha Kitt's 1968 Vietnam War protest — is one of the most editorially rich and historically specific issues in the publication's run, arriving at the precise moment before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke publicly. The issue's cover date is January 1998; the Lewinsky story became public on January 17, 1998 — meaning this issue was either on newsstands or arriving at newsstands at the exact moment the crisis erupted. The "1997: It's a Wrap!" year-in-review feature, the White House winners and sinners scorecard, and the Dick Morris confessions piece all engage with Clinton's presidency from the perspective of the final days before everything changed. The Morris profile is particularly charged in retrospect: Morris had been forced to resign from the Clinton campaign in August 1996 after a sex scandal involving a Washington call girl, and his January 1998 George confessions piece — on his twelve-step program, his born-again Christianity, and his new work as a Honduran presidential campaign consultant — arrived in the exact week that the Lewinsky story would transform American political life. For collectors building a focused archive through the full George magazine run, this January 1998 issue is one of the most historically saturated editions Kennedy's publication produced — a document of the Clinton era photographed from one day before the defining crisis of his presidency.
The Pamela Anderson Lee cover adds a dimension that is characteristically George in its cultural intelligence. By January 1998, Anderson had become one of the most discussed women in America: the Baywatch star whose stolen honeymoon sex tape with Tommy Lee had been circulating since 1995, whose celebrity was inseparable from the collision of entertainment, tabloid media, and the emerging internet that would define the late 1990s media landscape. Placing her on the George cover was a precise editorial statement about the relationship between celebrity, sexuality, and political power that ran through the entire issue — Dick Morris's sex scandal, the Clinton administration's ongoing exposure to exactly the kind of story that would break in January 1998, and the broader question of how American political culture processed the intersection of private behavior and public responsibility. The Eartha Kitt "eyewitness" piece — recounting her 1968 White House luncheon anti-Vietnam protest and six-year exile — connected the January 1998 issue to a longer history of women speaking uncomfortable truths to power at exactly the moment that conversation was most charged. For anyone researching Pamela Anderson's most editorially significant print appearances and the broader print record of 1998 as the year the Clinton presidency reached its defining crisis, this issue is a primary document of extraordinary historical density.
The table of contents also includes Naomi Wolf on the "dead-baby boom" media phenomenon and abortion ambivalence, Tony Blankley on campaign finance reform, and James Reston Jr. on millennium planning — confirming that this January 1998 George was operating at the full breadth of its characteristic ambition, engaging simultaneously with political scandal, celebrity culture, legislative history, and millennial anxiety in a single issue produced at one of the most consequential political moments of the decade.
About the Publication
George magazine, co-founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. and Michael Berman and launched in September 1995, built its editorial identity around the proposition that celebrity and political life were not separate conversations but a single continuous one. By January 1998, the magazine was in its third year and at the height of its editorial authority, with its Kennedy-led cover concepts and its combination of serious political journalism and celebrity culture commentary having established it as the most distinctive political magazine in American publishing. Kennedy served as editor-in-chief until his death in July 1999.
Key Highlights Inside
- Pamela Anderson Lee cover — photographed by Platon, placing one of the most discussed celebrity figures of the late 1990s on the cover of a political magazine in the week before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke, in a pairing that Kennedy's editorial sensibility recognized as making an argument about celebrity, sexuality, and political power simultaneously.
- "The True Confessions of Dick Morris" by Lisa DePaulo — a profile of the disgraced Clinton strategist on his twelve-step program, born-again Christianity, and Honduran consulting work, published in the exact week that a new White House sex scandal was about to define the Clinton presidency's final years.
- "1997: It's a Wrap!" by Peter Baker — a month-by-month chronicle of the year including "an embattled president," assembled in the final days before the Lewinsky story made the embattlement permanent and irreversible.
- "January 1968: Eartha Quake" by Eartha Kitt — the singer's first-person account of her White House anti-Vietnam protest and six-year exile, published thirty years later in an issue whose entire editorial logic connected women, political truth-telling, and consequences.
- White House winners and sinners scorecard by Claire Shipman, Naomi Wolf on media and abortion, and "If I Were President" with Lili Taylor — confirming the full editorial range of a January 1998 George that was simultaneously engaging with Clinton's presidency, celebrity culture, and American political philosophy at maximum depth.
Condition & Rarity
Surviving copies of this issue in good condition with moderate signs of age and wear, corner creases, and light surface wear present the expected profile of a twenty-seven-year-old monthly magazine that has been handled through active use before entering a collection. Good condition indicates structural integrity — covers attached, pages present and legible, spine intact — with the handling marks that characterize a copy that was read and stored over decades. The listing confirms this is a complete copy, which is the primary research criterion for an issue of this editorial density. A plastic protective sleeve confirms preservation intent. This issue is sought by Pamela Anderson memorabilia collectors, Clinton administration historians, Dick Morris political journalism researchers, George completists, and Eartha Kitt archivists simultaneously — one of the broadest convergences of collector interest in any single issue of the publication's run.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
The January 1998 George — Pamela Anderson on the cover, Dick Morris confessing, the Clinton year-in-review, and Eartha Kitt on speaking truth to power — is one of the most historically saturated issues in Kennedy's publication's run, arriving at the precise moment before the crisis that would define everything. If this issue has already found a collector, the dedicated Pamela Anderson magazines collection at OriginalMagazines.com gathers her most editorially significant print appearances. The full George magazine collection is essential for anyone building a complete run of Kennedy's publication, and the complete 1998 magazines collection offers broader context for the year the Clinton presidency reached its defining historical moment.