Pee-wee's Big Story: Why Everybody's Talking : Media: Paul Reubens has denied charges of indecent exposure, but that hasn't kept the press at bay.

By DANIEL CERONE and ALAN CITRON

Aug. 1, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

On “Late Night With David Letterman” Tuesday night, comedian Robert Klein walked on stage shouting “Free Pee-wee!” He then turned to the camera and offered some friendly advice: “Pee-wee, get a VCR.”

Everybody is talking about Pee-wee Herman. In a chain reaction with all the explosiveness of a nuclear meltdown, news of actor Paul Reubens’ arrest last week in an adult movie theater on charges of indecent exposure has swirled across the nation in a blaze of tasteless humor, controversy, criticism and ill-informed man-on-the-street opinions.

The 38-year-old actor, who was arrested in his hometown of Sarasota, Fla., has denied the charges. According to his publicist, Reubens is in seclusion with friends and will not discuss the case with the press.

But that has not stopped the press’ pundits and commentators from raking the undoubtedly embarrassed Reubens through the celebrity-smashing muck. The TV shows, radio programs, tabloids and newspapers that helped to build Reubens’ dweeby Pee-wee Herman character into a 1980s pop icon are now turning him into the punchline of a 1990s sick joke.

On Monday, KCBS News used the story as a teaser throughout the evening, finally flashing the infamous mug shot of Reubens, unmasked with long hair and a beard, at the end of the 11 p.m. newscast. “A Current Affair” aired a live story that night from Sarasota with Reubens’ sixth-grade teacher.

On Tuesday morning, the New York tabloids and USA Today featured front-page photos of Reubens.

On Tuesday night, Reubens’ booking photo was intercut with live shots of bare-breasted women on the video screen at the Guns N’ Roses’ concert at the Forum.

And all throughout the week, radio talk show switchboards lit up and office FAX machines worked double-time transmitting new Pee-wee jokes.

So the question is, why all the attention? Why are so many people paying attention to the Pee-wee Herman story in a week that’s seen the presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union embrace like old friends? As police in Milwaukee and Ohio uncover the grisly evidence of a long, sickening string of murders? As Yugoslavia disintegrates?

“I think it’s the incongruity of the situation. It’s almost like Donald Duck flashing in a public park,” said KCBS anchor Michael Tuck, who delivered an impassioned commentary on-air Tuesday night, in which he called himself a “disappointed Pee-wee Herman fan.” “If anybody else would have done that, not too much would have been thought about it. But Pee-wee Herman?”

“Celebrities by definition are not real,” David Nuell, executive producer of “Entertainment Tonight,” offered to explain the curiousity into Pee-wee. “They’re bigger than life, unreal, fantasy figures. So when they do something real, unfortunately for them, something that reflects some human frailty, they become much more fascinating because their vulnerability is out there for the world to see.”

Some people point out that Reubens, who actually decided not to continue his CBS Saturday-morning series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” before CBS pulled the plug on the remaining five rerun episodes, is particularly visible because he was first a cult figure who appealed to adults, and then later moved into the children’s arena.

KABC radio talk show host Michael Jackson devoted an hour to the Reubens case on Tuesday. The subject was what to tell children about him.

“Most of the callers thought this was a man crying out for help, perhaps trying to bury Pee-wee Herman,” Jackson said. “It really took off. It occupied an entire hour, and then I had to change the subject. One of my comments was, ‘This is taking off like the Gulf War,’ because the phones went crazy. People were very passionate.”

Fox Children’s Network president Margaret Loesch, who said she’s never seen such an outcry or reaction in 20 years, called the incident with Reubens the “worst nightmare” of a children’s programmer. “He’s become a children’s television and movie celebrity,” she said, “and traditionally (such) celebrities want the image of being squeaky clean so they’re acceptable to parents and advertisers, and an appropriate role model for kids.

“This is clearly the American, rigid, puritanical taboo at work here. The whole issue of deviant sexual behavior is a taboo. And then you link that to children, you really start to scare people.”

Amid the media attention, there have been some voices coming to Reubens’ defense. The actor’s publicist, Richard Grant, says he has received hundreds of calls from supportive fans.

On Tuesday afternoon, after CBS and Disney cut off their ties with Reubens’ adolescent Pee-wee character, a celebrity force of Bill Cosby, Joan Rivers and Cyndi Lauper issued statements in Reubens’ defense. “I think they are judging the man on what he may have done, without the right of due process,” Cosby said.

On Wednesday, the Pee-wee Herman Defender’s Club surfaced. “Pee-wee only did it to take a little bit of heat off of Willie Kennedy Smith,” club organizer David Burke quipped.

“I think this case is of particular interest because here you have a guy who made his career as a performer for youngsters,” said Mike Watkiss, West Coast correspondent for “A Current Affair.” “He won an Emmy. He caters to children. He’s a nice guy we’ve allowed our children to spend Saturday morning with for years. Now he’s arrested in Sarasota, Fla., in a sleazy sex palace? Where were the signals crossed? Why have we allowed this?

“You wonder, what goes on behind the public persona with these people who represent themselves one way, and make a lot of money that way, and then reveal something so completely different?”

Burt Dubrow, executive producer of the afternoon talk show “Sally Jessy Raphael,” which seeks out provocative stories to feature, said that part of what captivated the minds of the public early on was the plain-wrap police photos of Reubens, which unmask the white-faced, cherry-lipped Pee-wee.

“It really freaked us out was when we saw the picture, because it was so opposite from what we know of him,” Dubrow said. “In 10 years we’ve never seen a picture of him out of character until today.”

John Cotter, metropolitan editor of the New York Post, said the pictures his paper ran were given such prominent display because they contrasted so sharply with the public image of Pee-wee. “The mug shots were definitely the thing that grabbed us,” Cotter said. “It was pretty startling to see him like that.”

The National Enquirer has made plans to put Pee-wee on the tabloid’s cover next week because the incident is what editor Iain Calder called a “Gee whiz” story. “When you come up with something that is totally unbelievable, but true, people go, ‘My God,’ ” Calder said. “There’s a shock value to it.”

Calder said that people like to feel as if they’ve pulled the mask off the lone ranger. “It allows them to feel superior,” Calder explained, “because some of them say, ‘Well, I knew that all along. I saw Pee-wee prancing around. I knew that there was something wrong with that guy from the start.”’

On the other side of the camp, many people are outraged that the media, like a pack of hungry wolves, seem to have pounced on Pee-wee to feed before he has been tried. Others are angered by CBS pulling five repeats of “Playhouse” and the Disney-MGM Theme Park in Florida removing a two-minute Pee-wee video from its studio tour. “I think too much is being made of this by the media,” KFI-AM talk-show host Tom Leykis said. “The reason is because who of us can say we haven’t masturbated? It’s really easy for all these people to come out and say ‘Tsk, tsk’ to Pee-wee Herman, and who are they to attack him?”

David Burke, who organized his Pee-wee Defender’s Club with 25 friends in San Francisco, said he did so because “we’re really upset about this trial by media, presuming guilt before innocence.” He called the media coverage the latest example of “mob ruled hysteria and lynch mob mentality.

“And it was a spineless maneuver by CBS, pulling reruns of the show for something he’s only been accused of,” Burke said. “The members of our club are boycotting CBS advertisers and urging people to send red bow ties to CBS as a protest. This guy made them a lot of money, then something questionable happens, and boom, he’s gone.”

KABC’s Michael Jackson, too, said he is disturbed by the reaction to the case so far. “I think CBS has rushed to judgment,” he said. “They have presumed his guilt, and taken a most Draconian approach. I don’t think any child, yet alone any adult, could look at mug shots of Paul Reubens and say, that’s Pee-wee Herman.”

“I think this whole thing is a case of typical celebrity journalism, a sleazy story luring on the press because it’s going to turn on the public,” said quality children’s TV advocate Peggy Charren. “It’s inconceivable that the story is receiving this much attention.”

KCBS’ Tuck disagreed. “I don’t think people are talking about it because we’re covering it so much, I think we continue to cover it because people are talking about it so much,” he said. “It’s stirred up far more controversy than I would have expected. If someone would have told me we were going to devote this much news time to Pee-wee Herman walking into a public place and reaching into his pants, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’ But here we are.”