Buzz Bissinger, Author Of Caitlyn Jenner Cover Story, On 94WIP: 'It's Completely Genuine'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Buzz Bissinger, the author of the Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair cover story, joined Angelo Cataldi and the 94WIP Morning Show on Tuesday in his first radio interview since publishing the piece.
Bissinger was awarded "unfeathered access" of Jenner---the 1976 gold medal Olympic athlete (decathlon), formerly Bruce Jenner---for three months.
"I think it's completely genuine," Bissinger said of Jenner's sex change. "I mean look, there are easier ways to make a buck to just transform, transition into a woman. This is something that has been with him at least since he was 10 years old when he would sneak into his mother's closet and dress up in her clothing, and walk around the block. It was something with him during the Olympics, that's why his hair was long because it made him feel like a woman.
Listen: Buzz Bissinger on the 94WIP Morning Show
"Is there a financial aspect? Yeah sure," Bissinger admitted. "I mean this is America. Hilary Clinton is running for President, got ten million dollars for a book that was lousy and nobody read. He [Jenner] is doing a docuseries for E. He's being paid for it, he makes no bones about it, and he's gonna make a lot of money from it."
Many wonder why Jenner, 65, waited until now to become the most famously transgender person in the world.
"He had two young daughters, they're now 19 and 17," Bissinger explained. "They both now own their own homes. They're independent and he said, 'You know what, if I don't do it now I will have felt that I have cheated my life and I haven't lived a full life.'
"So, I think it is completely genuine."
Throughout Jenner's life, as an Olympic athlete and now a television personality, there were always diversions.
"He basically trained eight years, 365 days a year for eight hours," Bissinger explained. "And then comes the diversion of marriage, and then comes the diversion of kids. His whole life he said, 'I was lying to myself, I was lying to everybody else, and I had to find things and ways of taking my mind off.'
"Do it in the eighties? Forget it. There would have been no way. There would have been absolutely no way he could have done it in the eighties."
