If so, it may be due to a bold but move by the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Instead of the customary seating of Democrats and Republicans on opposite sides of the table, they will now be alternating, like the boy-girl arrangement at dinner parties.
“We want the American people to see us sitting side by side as our Committee members work together to make our nation more secure,” Lieberman, the Independent from Connecticut, announced jointly with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the ranking Republican member.
As always, Lieberman is the low-rent examplar of what the late William Sloane Coffin said of George W. Bush, “Deep down, he’s shallow.”
Then again, Chairman Joe might be worrying about what the Democrats would be whispering to each other about him if they were still sitting next to one another.
Still, when it comes to Homeland Security, a little paranoia may be a good thing.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Karl Rove's Passing Interest
The President's hatchet man, Karl Rove, dodged a bullet in the Scooter Libby trial, but members of the House Judiciary may be more persisent in getting him to testify about his role in the firing of U.S. Attorneys for not being politically servile.
A White House spokesperson has conceded that Rove may have mentioned complaints about the prosecutors to the Attorney General "in passing." House Democrats will want to hear, under oath, how casual those conversations were.
A White House spokesperson has conceded that Rove may have mentioned complaints about the prosecutors to the Attorney General "in passing." House Democrats will want to hear, under oath, how casual those conversations were.
Incredibly Shrinking Administration
Republicans always favor less government, but this is probably not what they had in mind.
In less than a week, the Bush Administration has been melting down. Scooter Libby, the VP’s Chief of Staff, has been gone for a while but now definitely will be occupied elsewhere.
Today, two of the nation’s top law enforcement officers seem to be on the verge of leaving. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller are trying to explain how and why the FBI broke the law spying on Americans too zealously under the Patriot Act.
Senate Democrats have already been suggesting Mr. Gonzales find other employment for firing politically incorrect U.S. Attorneys. Director Mueller says nobody has asked him to resign--yet.
At this rate of attrition, President Bush has a shot at balancing the Federal budget before he leaves office.
In less than a week, the Bush Administration has been melting down. Scooter Libby, the VP’s Chief of Staff, has been gone for a while but now definitely will be occupied elsewhere.
Today, two of the nation’s top law enforcement officers seem to be on the verge of leaving. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller are trying to explain how and why the FBI broke the law spying on Americans too zealously under the Patriot Act.
Senate Democrats have already been suggesting Mr. Gonzales find other employment for firing politically incorrect U.S. Attorneys. Director Mueller says nobody has asked him to resign--yet.
At this rate of attrition, President Bush has a shot at balancing the Federal budget before he leaves office.
The Marrying Mayor
For the latest on the Republican frontrunner, see Andy Borowitz's report today on The Moderate Voice.
Inspiration to Us All
Few Americans admire President Bush more than I do, and it’s painful to see hear and so much criticism of what he’s been doing in Iraq, so let’s go over this once more:
1. Saddam Hussein was a bad person and had to be overthrown. Now he’s out of power and off the planet.
2. There were very bad weapons we had to find and remove. Call that a wash: We didn’t find any, but they don’t have them either.
3. We were going to give Iraqis what we hold dearest: freedom and democracy. Done. They voted and have an elected government.
4. Iraq would then inspire other countries in the region to do likewise. Inspiration did follow but took a slightly unexpected turn.
5. So now we have to stay and send in more troops to inspire them to stop killing each other and, if that doesn’t solve the problem, we may have to go into Iran and start inspiring them, too.
As the world’s only superpower, we have a moral duty to lead the rest of the world out of ignorance and chaos. What’s so hard to understand about that?
1. Saddam Hussein was a bad person and had to be overthrown. Now he’s out of power and off the planet.
2. There were very bad weapons we had to find and remove. Call that a wash: We didn’t find any, but they don’t have them either.
3. We were going to give Iraqis what we hold dearest: freedom and democracy. Done. They voted and have an elected government.
4. Iraq would then inspire other countries in the region to do likewise. Inspiration did follow but took a slightly unexpected turn.
5. So now we have to stay and send in more troops to inspire them to stop killing each other and, if that doesn’t solve the problem, we may have to go into Iran and start inspiring them, too.
As the world’s only superpower, we have a moral duty to lead the rest of the world out of ignorance and chaos. What’s so hard to understand about that?
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Playing Not to Lose Isn't a Winning Strategy
Caution has never been a Clinton hallmark, so why is her campaign thus far so close-to-the-vest and buttoned-up?
Does her brain trust really think all those campaign dollars and name-recognition chips will be enough to outlast Obama over the next year and a half?
Squeeze the smart-ass out of Dana Milbank’s recent Washington Post column, “Embracing the Trite and the True,” and you’re left with a few grains of truth about Senator Clinton bringing the “sensibility of Hallmark greeting cards to the 2008 race.”
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Martin Nolan reminds her that “Democrats don’t cotton to campaigns based on a foregone conclusion” and suggests she has been “overcoached by consultants.”
To help us recover from the damage of the Bush years, clichés just won’t cut it. Tell James Carville and the boys to go back to their smoke-filled rooms, and start showing us the sense and straight talk that qualify you to be our next President.
It isn't enough just not to be George Bush. You have to give us some idea of how you would clean up the diplomatic and Constitutional mess he is going to leave behind.
Does her brain trust really think all those campaign dollars and name-recognition chips will be enough to outlast Obama over the next year and a half?
Squeeze the smart-ass out of Dana Milbank’s recent Washington Post column, “Embracing the Trite and the True,” and you’re left with a few grains of truth about Senator Clinton bringing the “sensibility of Hallmark greeting cards to the 2008 race.”
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Martin Nolan reminds her that “Democrats don’t cotton to campaigns based on a foregone conclusion” and suggests she has been “overcoached by consultants.”
To help us recover from the damage of the Bush years, clichés just won’t cut it. Tell James Carville and the boys to go back to their smoke-filled rooms, and start showing us the sense and straight talk that qualify you to be our next President.
It isn't enough just not to be George Bush. You have to give us some idea of how you would clean up the diplomatic and Constitutional mess he is going to leave behind.
Farrakhan's Final Scenes
The last well-known actor in the last century’s media drama of Race in America is fading out. Like his life, Louis Farrakhan’s dying is a skillfully staged public event that tells us much about where we were, are and may be going.
A week ago, he emerged from cancer treatment, preaching to 50,000 followers a sermon of brotherhood and unity for all faiths. Since then, he has been telling CNN, ABC and other media outlets he has “evolved” from his earlier days of hate-filled invective, insisting his epithets were “misunderstood.”
“We’re in a time of enlightenment now,” he says and expresses admiration for Barack Obama, a child of interracial marriage, which Farrakhan always opposed and still calls “unnatural.”
But change and contradiction have been constant in his life, reflecting the social turmoil for which he became a symbol and which he helped stir up.
At 22, he gave up his birth name and promising career as a musician to join the Nation of Islam, rose quickly in its ranks and was caught up in the conflict between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad that ended with Malcolm X’s murder in 1965. Thirty years later, Farrakhan apologized to the victim’s daughter for his rhetoric that led to it. “I may have been complicit in words,” he admitted.
That was on 60 Minutes. The media was Farrakhan’s stage, and TV cameras found him irresistible. Words can hurt, and Farrakhan knew how to use them, back then with a recklessness many will never forgive. He got America’s attention with the impact of a poleax by excoriating Jews, praising Hitler and saying “White people are potential humans—they haven’t evolved yet.”
But late in life, he took a different tone, going back to his musical roots and playing Mendelssohn in a concert, organizing the Million Man March in Washington with a theme of black pride and responsibility, and now calling for reconciliation of Islam, Christianity and Judaism,
Those he wounded may never believe all this isn’t a gallows conversion, but for African Americans, the new Farrakhan is an inspiring figure. In 2005, BET’s online audience voted him Person of the Year for “the most positive impact on the Black community.”
At the same time, the old Farrakhan was claiming that the New Orleans dikes were deliberately subverted to wipe out Black neighborhoods.
No human being can read the depths of another’s heart, but Farrakhan wore his on his sleeve in a style that may be disappearing with him.
The world is changing. His grandson will soon be playing basketball for the University of Virginia. Barack Obama is running for President, every American kid with a baseball glove wants to be Derek Jeter, and other interracial role models are growing up to walk a different walk and talk a different talk.
A week ago, he emerged from cancer treatment, preaching to 50,000 followers a sermon of brotherhood and unity for all faiths. Since then, he has been telling CNN, ABC and other media outlets he has “evolved” from his earlier days of hate-filled invective, insisting his epithets were “misunderstood.”
“We’re in a time of enlightenment now,” he says and expresses admiration for Barack Obama, a child of interracial marriage, which Farrakhan always opposed and still calls “unnatural.”
But change and contradiction have been constant in his life, reflecting the social turmoil for which he became a symbol and which he helped stir up.
At 22, he gave up his birth name and promising career as a musician to join the Nation of Islam, rose quickly in its ranks and was caught up in the conflict between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad that ended with Malcolm X’s murder in 1965. Thirty years later, Farrakhan apologized to the victim’s daughter for his rhetoric that led to it. “I may have been complicit in words,” he admitted.
That was on 60 Minutes. The media was Farrakhan’s stage, and TV cameras found him irresistible. Words can hurt, and Farrakhan knew how to use them, back then with a recklessness many will never forgive. He got America’s attention with the impact of a poleax by excoriating Jews, praising Hitler and saying “White people are potential humans—they haven’t evolved yet.”
But late in life, he took a different tone, going back to his musical roots and playing Mendelssohn in a concert, organizing the Million Man March in Washington with a theme of black pride and responsibility, and now calling for reconciliation of Islam, Christianity and Judaism,
Those he wounded may never believe all this isn’t a gallows conversion, but for African Americans, the new Farrakhan is an inspiring figure. In 2005, BET’s online audience voted him Person of the Year for “the most positive impact on the Black community.”
At the same time, the old Farrakhan was claiming that the New Orleans dikes were deliberately subverted to wipe out Black neighborhoods.
No human being can read the depths of another’s heart, but Farrakhan wore his on his sleeve in a style that may be disappearing with him.
The world is changing. His grandson will soon be playing basketball for the University of Virginia. Barack Obama is running for President, every American kid with a baseball glove wants to be Derek Jeter, and other interracial role models are growing up to walk a different walk and talk a different talk.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Sex and Scandal: Party Differences
Bad news for Democrats: A Washington madam is threatening to go public with her client list in a law suit.
Half a century’s experience suggests Republicans are susceptible to scandals over money and power. Sex is more likely to be the weakness of Democrats, who take pride in being people persons.
Start with JFK, who once told British PM Harold Macmillan that he would get “terrible headaches” from going without a woman for three days and was not known to consume much aspirin. He was followed by LBJ, who tended to favor his female staffers.
Then came Nixon, who apparently was faithful to Pat and almost destroyed the Constitution. If he had had a little friend, would there have been an enemies list?
In the past decade, there was an impeachment trial over Bill Clinton’s lies about spilling his seed in the Oval Office. As far as we know, George W. Bush is spilling only blood in Iraq.
The one client named so far by the madam, Deborah Palfrey, is Dick Morris, who had to quit Clinton’s reelection campaign after letting a prostitute listen in on his calls to the President.
Federal prosecutors are seeking a gag order to keep the lady from naming names but, even if she does, after Ann Coulter’s slurs against John Edwards, there might be a small silver lining for Democrats wooing the NASCAR vote.
Half a century’s experience suggests Republicans are susceptible to scandals over money and power. Sex is more likely to be the weakness of Democrats, who take pride in being people persons.
Start with JFK, who once told British PM Harold Macmillan that he would get “terrible headaches” from going without a woman for three days and was not known to consume much aspirin. He was followed by LBJ, who tended to favor his female staffers.
Then came Nixon, who apparently was faithful to Pat and almost destroyed the Constitution. If he had had a little friend, would there have been an enemies list?
In the past decade, there was an impeachment trial over Bill Clinton’s lies about spilling his seed in the Oval Office. As far as we know, George W. Bush is spilling only blood in Iraq.
The one client named so far by the madam, Deborah Palfrey, is Dick Morris, who had to quit Clinton’s reelection campaign after letting a prostitute listen in on his calls to the President.
Federal prosecutors are seeking a gag order to keep the lady from naming names but, even if she does, after Ann Coulter’s slurs against John Edwards, there might be a small silver lining for Democrats wooing the NASCAR vote.
Friday, March 09, 2007
"Go Forth, My Son, and..."
Say this for Republican sinners: They know the value of public repentance.
Today two of them step up to confess their lapses. Newt Gingrich is telling the Rev. James Dobson on his radio show that he “had fallen short of God’s standards” by having an extra-marital affair while pushing impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about his.
Attorney General Arturo Gonzales is telling Senators he won’t oppose legislation to limit his power to anoint interim prosecutors, even as Karl Rove is defending the political firings of the White House’s own appointees as “normal and ordinary.”
Love may mean never having to say you’re sorry but, in Republican politics, it’s apparently a must.
Today two of them step up to confess their lapses. Newt Gingrich is telling the Rev. James Dobson on his radio show that he “had fallen short of God’s standards” by having an extra-marital affair while pushing impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about his.
Attorney General Arturo Gonzales is telling Senators he won’t oppose legislation to limit his power to anoint interim prosecutors, even as Karl Rove is defending the political firings of the White House’s own appointees as “normal and ordinary.”
Love may mean never having to say you’re sorry but, in Republican politics, it’s apparently a must.
The Bush Putsch
Paranoia, anyone?
Overthrowing a government doesn’t always involve violence. Edward Luttwak, who wrote the book, defines a coup d’etat, or as Adolf You-Know-Who called it, a putsch as “the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.”
Doesn't that sound like what’s been going on in Washington?
Congress and the people want to end the war in Iraq, but they are powerless to do it.
U.S. Attorneys are fired by the Justice Department for not being submissive enough to help Republican politicians retain control of Congress and then threatened if they complain about it.
Those who weren’t fired have a curious record, a new study of 375 cases finds, of investigating “seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.”
In The New York Times today, Paul Krugman cites Molly Ivins’ observation that in Texas “Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed investigations...After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”
Government secrecy, wiretapping, illegal detention and accusations of treason against opponents of the regime are rampant, just as in any other banana republic.
In the late 1960s, student protesters and the underground press ranted that Nixon and Agnew were planning to cancel the 1972 elections, an accusation dismissed as paranoid nonsense. America was too diverse and stable for anything like that to happen.
But 9/11 has made us vulnerable to a White House that claims unprecedented powers and goes about exercising them with or without the sanction of the Patriot Act.
Wasn’t this new Congress elected to put an end to that?
Overthrowing a government doesn’t always involve violence. Edward Luttwak, who wrote the book, defines a coup d’etat, or as Adolf You-Know-Who called it, a putsch as “the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.”
Doesn't that sound like what’s been going on in Washington?
Congress and the people want to end the war in Iraq, but they are powerless to do it.
U.S. Attorneys are fired by the Justice Department for not being submissive enough to help Republican politicians retain control of Congress and then threatened if they complain about it.
Those who weren’t fired have a curious record, a new study of 375 cases finds, of investigating “seven (7) times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.”
In The New York Times today, Paul Krugman cites Molly Ivins’ observation that in Texas “Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed investigations...After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”
Government secrecy, wiretapping, illegal detention and accusations of treason against opponents of the regime are rampant, just as in any other banana republic.
In the late 1960s, student protesters and the underground press ranted that Nixon and Agnew were planning to cancel the 1972 elections, an accusation dismissed as paranoid nonsense. America was too diverse and stable for anything like that to happen.
But 9/11 has made us vulnerable to a White House that claims unprecedented powers and goes about exercising them with or without the sanction of the Patriot Act.
Wasn’t this new Congress elected to put an end to that?
Madame President: A Pipedream
Hillary Clinton should take a firm stand against impeaching George Bush.
Republican Chuck Hagel is talking about removing him. After the Libby verdict, some Democrats want to unseat Dick Cheney.
If we take these fantasies to the end of the line, where are we? With frying-pan-into-the-fire logic, only a double impeachment makes sense. (Otherwise we would end up with President Cheney.)
Then, if we dispatch both Bush and Cheney, to the consternation of the Clintons, even before 2008, we would have the first woman in history to man the Oval Office: President Nancy Pelosi.
Republican Chuck Hagel is talking about removing him. After the Libby verdict, some Democrats want to unseat Dick Cheney.
If we take these fantasies to the end of the line, where are we? With frying-pan-into-the-fire logic, only a double impeachment makes sense. (Otherwise we would end up with President Cheney.)
Then, if we dispatch both Bush and Cheney, to the consternation of the Clintons, even before 2008, we would have the first woman in history to man the Oval Office: President Nancy Pelosi.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
The Bush-Nixon Axis
Overshadowed by the Libby verdict, Senate hearings about the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys are a flashback to the darkest Nixon days when the nation’s chief law enforcement officer was John Mitchell, the only Attorney General in history to go to prison.
Six prosecutors, all appointed by the Bush Administration, are telling stories of pressure by Republican lawmakers, followed by threats from the Justice Department to keep them from talking about why they were fired. One of them was replaced by a Karl Rove aide.
The Attorneys were eased out by a little-noticed provision inserted into the Patriot Act, which came as a surprise to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who had voted for it.
Nixon’s man Mitchell advocated wiretaps without court orders and preventive detention of suspects (sound familiar?) for “national security” against critics of the war in Vietnam. He left office to run Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1972 and eventually went to prison for overseeing the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
If the current A.G., Alberto Gonzales, is a student of history, he may want to think twice about endorsing his underlings’ claim that the prosecutors were fired for good cause. These Senate hearings could eventually bring the Administration and Congressional Republicans more grief than a dozen Scooter Libby trials.
Six prosecutors, all appointed by the Bush Administration, are telling stories of pressure by Republican lawmakers, followed by threats from the Justice Department to keep them from talking about why they were fired. One of them was replaced by a Karl Rove aide.
The Attorneys were eased out by a little-noticed provision inserted into the Patriot Act, which came as a surprise to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, who had voted for it.
Nixon’s man Mitchell advocated wiretaps without court orders and preventive detention of suspects (sound familiar?) for “national security” against critics of the war in Vietnam. He left office to run Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1972 and eventually went to prison for overseeing the Watergate break-in and cover-up.
If the current A.G., Alberto Gonzales, is a student of history, he may want to think twice about endorsing his underlings’ claim that the prosecutors were fired for good cause. These Senate hearings could eventually bring the Administration and Congressional Republicans more grief than a dozen Scooter Libby trials.
Man's Man
Chuck Hagel seems to save his best stuff for men’s magazines. He told GQ that the White House’s original draft of the 2002 Iraq resolution was a blank check to invade everybody before he and fellow senators rewrote it.
Now in Esquire he has uttered the dreaded “I” word. Saying that Bush is “not accountable anymore,” Hagel adds, “before this is over you might see calls for his impeachment.”
On Monday the Senator is expected to announce he is running for President, finally giving voters a Republican candidate who wants to stop the war.
A word of advice from an admirer: Think twice before giving an interview to Playboy.
Now in Esquire he has uttered the dreaded “I” word. Saying that Bush is “not accountable anymore,” Hagel adds, “before this is over you might see calls for his impeachment.”
On Monday the Senator is expected to announce he is running for President, finally giving voters a Republican candidate who wants to stop the war.
A word of advice from an admirer: Think twice before giving an interview to Playboy.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
White House Crime and Republicans
The Libby conviction, with its implication of unlawful activity by the Vice-President and Bush’s left-hand man Karl Rove, raises a larger question:
In the past century, why have so many White House crimes been committed by members of the party of law and order?
From Teapot Dome to Watergate to Iran-Contra to the not-yet-named fiasco now, it is Republicans who have been convicted of felonies and sent to prison. Do politicians who want less government feel freer to break its laws than Democrats, who believe in government power to right social wrongs? Or are they just greedier, more arrogant and dumber?
In 1929, in the Teapot Dome scandal, Warren Harding’s Secretary of Interior became the first cabinet member ever sent to jail for his actions while in office.
After Watergate in the 1960s, three of the President’s White House aides went to prison after Nixon himself became the first President to resign as Congress was starting impeachment proceedings.
In the 1980s, members of the sainted Ronald Reagan’s Administration were found guilty of illegal activities in the Iran-Contra affair, but their convictions were overturned on technicalities. His Secretary of Defense resigned, was indicted for lying and later pardoned by President Bush I.
Ah, but did someone say Clinton and Whitewater? After years of investigating a 20-year-old land deal, the best that Newt Gingrich and his merry men could manage was an impeachment attempt for lying about oral sex in the Oval Office.
It will be years before the illegal activities of the current crew are sorted out, and that won’t start until a Democratic President takes office in 2009. But the question remains: Is there some kind of lawbreaking gene in Republican DNA?
In the past century, why have so many White House crimes been committed by members of the party of law and order?
From Teapot Dome to Watergate to Iran-Contra to the not-yet-named fiasco now, it is Republicans who have been convicted of felonies and sent to prison. Do politicians who want less government feel freer to break its laws than Democrats, who believe in government power to right social wrongs? Or are they just greedier, more arrogant and dumber?
In 1929, in the Teapot Dome scandal, Warren Harding’s Secretary of Interior became the first cabinet member ever sent to jail for his actions while in office.
After Watergate in the 1960s, three of the President’s White House aides went to prison after Nixon himself became the first President to resign as Congress was starting impeachment proceedings.
In the 1980s, members of the sainted Ronald Reagan’s Administration were found guilty of illegal activities in the Iran-Contra affair, but their convictions were overturned on technicalities. His Secretary of Defense resigned, was indicted for lying and later pardoned by President Bush I.
Ah, but did someone say Clinton and Whitewater? After years of investigating a 20-year-old land deal, the best that Newt Gingrich and his merry men could manage was an impeachment attempt for lying about oral sex in the Oval Office.
It will be years before the illegal activities of the current crew are sorted out, and that won’t start until a Democratic President takes office in 2009. But the question remains: Is there some kind of lawbreaking gene in Republican DNA?
Curing Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter is in rehab. She has signed in after an intervention by the conservative talk community, arranged by Rush Limbaugh, after a week of stalking John Edwards, starting with an outburst at the Conservative Political Action Committee last Friday.
Mental health experts have diagnosed Ms. Coulter's condition as Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder--not the inability to pay attention but a pathological need to get it. Her condition is a severe case of a spreading disease that has afflicted contestants on "American Idol," participants in reality TV and politicians of all stripes.
Treatment consists of hours-long sessions in a simulated TV studio with attendants dressed as reporters taking notes. Unfortunately, there is no long-term cure.
Mental health experts have diagnosed Ms. Coulter's condition as Reverse Attention Deficit Disorder--not the inability to pay attention but a pathological need to get it. Her condition is a severe case of a spreading disease that has afflicted contestants on "American Idol," participants in reality TV and politicians of all stripes.
Treatment consists of hours-long sessions in a simulated TV studio with attendants dressed as reporters taking notes. Unfortunately, there is no long-term cure.
Cheney and Rove: The O.J. Outcome
Just as O.J. Simpson escaped conviction in his criminal trial, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have dodged the bullet in the Libby prosecution.
But just as O.J. was called to account in the Goldman family’s civil suit, the Wilsons may get similar satisfaction in their action against Cheney, Rove, Libby, Armitage and unnamed others for “intentional and malicious exposure.”
The Goldmans were awarded $8.5 million (still uncollected), but they got the satisfaction of having a jury brand O.J. as liable for their son’s death.
The Wilsons are seeking the same kind of vindication, money aside. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wilson’s $2.5 million advance for her memoir will ease the financial pain.
A haunting aspect of the case is the utter stupidity of exposing Valerie Plame. In the New York Times OpEd piece that set it all off, Wilson wrote, “In February 2002 I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report.”
If Cheney and/or Libby prompted Wilson’s trip, how on earth could exposing his wife discredit him? The sheer spite of it boggles.
But just as O.J. was called to account in the Goldman family’s civil suit, the Wilsons may get similar satisfaction in their action against Cheney, Rove, Libby, Armitage and unnamed others for “intentional and malicious exposure.”
The Goldmans were awarded $8.5 million (still uncollected), but they got the satisfaction of having a jury brand O.J. as liable for their son’s death.
The Wilsons are seeking the same kind of vindication, money aside. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wilson’s $2.5 million advance for her memoir will ease the financial pain.
A haunting aspect of the case is the utter stupidity of exposing Valerie Plame. In the New York Times OpEd piece that set it all off, Wilson wrote, “In February 2002 I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report.”
If Cheney and/or Libby prompted Wilson’s trip, how on earth could exposing his wife discredit him? The sheer spite of it boggles.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Libby: The Buck Stops Down There
Add Scooter Libby to Bush’s body count, another foot-soldier casualty of the Administration’s war on common sense, decency—and honor among thieves.
General Cheney and Colonel Rove, who ordered the outing of Valerie Plame, will sleep soundly in their bunkers tonight while Libby awaits his fate.
His political career is dead, but he will likely serve time, if his sentence isn’t suspended, in a minimum security prison with more amenities than Walter Reed Hospital. If justice were really done, those who ordered him to do it would be going with him.
General Cheney and Colonel Rove, who ordered the outing of Valerie Plame, will sleep soundly in their bunkers tonight while Libby awaits his fate.
His political career is dead, but he will likely serve time, if his sentence isn’t suspended, in a minimum security prison with more amenities than Walter Reed Hospital. If justice were really done, those who ordered him to do it would be going with him.
The Case for Obama's Ambivalence
For all the comparisons with John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama recalls another Illinois Democrat from that era--Adlai Stevenson, who once described a politician as someone who approaches every question with an open mouth.
In this either-or world, with bumper-sticker answers on every issue, Obama is shocking voters by often saying, “Yes, but...”
In the New York Times last October, David Brooks who rarely has a kind word for a Democrat, urged Obama to run: “He has a compulsive tendency to see both sides of an issue...And yet this style is surely the antidote to the politics of the past several years. It is surely true that a President who brings a deliberative style to the White House will multiply his knowledge, not divide it.”
Oddly, Maureen Dowd, who rarely has a kind word for a Republican, is urging Obama to be more decisive and aggressive. “People want to see you mix it up a little,” she recently told him.
The Wall Street Journal has already run an opinion piece saying “Barack has a long record of not taking a stand,” and more wishy-washy, flip-flopper talk is sure to follow.
Obama will likely ignore all this and go his own way. He may want to take some of Stevenson’s wisdom with him and, in a different era, it may be a winning strategy:
“Every age needs men and women who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.”
“I have tried to talk about the issues, but it’s been a lonely road because I never meet anyone coming the other way.”
“The hardest thing about any campaign is how to win without proving you’re unworthy of winning.”
“It’s harder making peace than making war.”
In this either-or world, with bumper-sticker answers on every issue, Obama is shocking voters by often saying, “Yes, but...”
In the New York Times last October, David Brooks who rarely has a kind word for a Democrat, urged Obama to run: “He has a compulsive tendency to see both sides of an issue...And yet this style is surely the antidote to the politics of the past several years. It is surely true that a President who brings a deliberative style to the White House will multiply his knowledge, not divide it.”
Oddly, Maureen Dowd, who rarely has a kind word for a Republican, is urging Obama to be more decisive and aggressive. “People want to see you mix it up a little,” she recently told him.
The Wall Street Journal has already run an opinion piece saying “Barack has a long record of not taking a stand,” and more wishy-washy, flip-flopper talk is sure to follow.
Obama will likely ignore all this and go his own way. He may want to take some of Stevenson’s wisdom with him and, in a different era, it may be a winning strategy:
“Every age needs men and women who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.”
“I have tried to talk about the issues, but it’s been a lonely road because I never meet anyone coming the other way.”
“The hardest thing about any campaign is how to win without proving you’re unworthy of winning.”
“It’s harder making peace than making war.”
For the Sake of Our Sanity, Will Someone...
Break the news to the Scooter Libby jurors that they don’t have a lifetime appointment.
Let the President know his promises to fix Walter Reed are no more reassuring than his pronouncements after Katrina.
Advise Dick Cheney that long airplane trips without getting up to snarl into TV cameras are not good for his health
Put Ann Coulter on medication.
Suggest to Barack Obama that he not tell the Clintons about his travel plans.
Tell Mitt Romney that, if he’s trying make George Bush look smart by comparison, he still has a way to go.
Find out where Congress is hiding after all that effort to pass a non-binding resolution to wag a finger over Iraq.
Let the President know his promises to fix Walter Reed are no more reassuring than his pronouncements after Katrina.
Advise Dick Cheney that long airplane trips without getting up to snarl into TV cameras are not good for his health
Put Ann Coulter on medication.
Suggest to Barack Obama that he not tell the Clintons about his travel plans.
Tell Mitt Romney that, if he’s trying make George Bush look smart by comparison, he still has a way to go.
Find out where Congress is hiding after all that effort to pass a non-binding resolution to wag a finger over Iraq.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Fact-Checking Online and Off
William Shawn, the fabled editor of The New Yorker, was fanatical about fact-checking writers down to the smallest detail. For lesser editors of his time, like me, he was a role model for demanding accuracy in reporting.
So it comes as an irony that a 24-year-old college dropout posing as a professor of religion slipped through The New Yorker’s truth screen in an article about Wikipedia, the Web’s prime source for encyclopedic knowledge, and was exposed by readers last week.
As a frequent user of Wikipedia to check names and dates, I am always been haunted by the possibility of error and, where it matters, double-check with primary sources.
But Wikipedia is a noble effort to bring coherence to the Web, and The New Yorker is still the gold standard for magazine reporting.
Let Shawn have the last word. In the only interview he ever gave (as far as I know) in Women’s Wear Daily (July 1968), he summed up his editing standards: “as close an approximation of objectivity as we could humanly manage, straightforwardness, thoroughness, fairness, clarity, truthfulness and accuracy.”
“There has been something constant, as well,” he added, “in the tone of the magazine—an attempt, perhaps, to hang on to sanity and reasonableness, no matter how turbulent or fevered or lunatic the world became.”
So it comes as an irony that a 24-year-old college dropout posing as a professor of religion slipped through The New Yorker’s truth screen in an article about Wikipedia, the Web’s prime source for encyclopedic knowledge, and was exposed by readers last week.
As a frequent user of Wikipedia to check names and dates, I am always been haunted by the possibility of error and, where it matters, double-check with primary sources.
But Wikipedia is a noble effort to bring coherence to the Web, and The New Yorker is still the gold standard for magazine reporting.
Let Shawn have the last word. In the only interview he ever gave (as far as I know) in Women’s Wear Daily (July 1968), he summed up his editing standards: “as close an approximation of objectivity as we could humanly manage, straightforwardness, thoroughness, fairness, clarity, truthfulness and accuracy.”
“There has been something constant, as well,” he added, “in the tone of the magazine—an attempt, perhaps, to hang on to sanity and reasonableness, no matter how turbulent or fevered or lunatic the world became.”
Senator Pothole's Big New Pot
Alfonse M. D’Amato, who preceded Chuck Schumer in the U.S. Senate, was affectionately known as “Senator Pothole” for his tireless efforts for constituents on a major issue of the time.
Now he is devoting himself to another--their right to lose the rent money playing poker online. As a lobbyist for the Poker Player’s Alliance, the New York Times reports, he is working to overturn a federal ban on Internet gambling.
“The poor guy at home,” Sen. D’Amato pleads, “can’t bet $50 at home because we pass this law.”
A devoted Republican hack in Nassau County, New York, he became an accidental senator in 1980 by defeating Jacob Javits in a primary. The esteemed Javits, then fatally ill, pulled a Ralph Nader by running on the Liberal Party line, allowing D’Amato to defeat his Democratic opponent by a narrow margin.
In addition to getting road cavities filled, the highlight of his eight-year career was a reprimand by the Ethics Committee for letting his brother use Senate stationery for pursuing lobbying contracts.
The urge for public service apparently never dies.
Now he is devoting himself to another--their right to lose the rent money playing poker online. As a lobbyist for the Poker Player’s Alliance, the New York Times reports, he is working to overturn a federal ban on Internet gambling.
“The poor guy at home,” Sen. D’Amato pleads, “can’t bet $50 at home because we pass this law.”
A devoted Republican hack in Nassau County, New York, he became an accidental senator in 1980 by defeating Jacob Javits in a primary. The esteemed Javits, then fatally ill, pulled a Ralph Nader by running on the Liberal Party line, allowing D’Amato to defeat his Democratic opponent by a narrow margin.
In addition to getting road cavities filled, the highlight of his eight-year career was a reprimand by the Ethics Committee for letting his brother use Senate stationery for pursuing lobbying contracts.
The urge for public service apparently never dies.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Weekend in Selma
When marchers in Selma, Alabama were being beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge in March 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. was not with them. When he heard about the brutality, Dr. King suffered an “agony of conscience” for not being there. He had stayed in Montgomery for the Sunday services of his church.
He went to Selma the next week and, in the week after that, Lyndon Johnson made a passionate speech to Congress, which led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Selma brought us a voting bill,” Dr. King later wrote.
This weekend, Hillary Clinton and Oback Barama were in Selma to commemorate that turning point in American history. They said all the right things.
But Senators Clinton and Obama should also recall what Martin Luther King did the following month. He spoke to 150,000 in New York’s Central Park denouncing the war in Vietnam against the advice of many of his supporters. Some felt his opposition to the war was diluting his efforts for civil rights. Others were so disturbed about “disreputable” protesters that Dr. King had to resign from the board of SANE, the leading anti-nuclear organization.
Back in Washington, the two Senators might reflect on that. What they do to stop the war in Iraq may not always be popular or politically profitable, but it will be as morally right as their visit to Selma.
He went to Selma the next week and, in the week after that, Lyndon Johnson made a passionate speech to Congress, which led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Selma brought us a voting bill,” Dr. King later wrote.
This weekend, Hillary Clinton and Oback Barama were in Selma to commemorate that turning point in American history. They said all the right things.
But Senators Clinton and Obama should also recall what Martin Luther King did the following month. He spoke to 150,000 in New York’s Central Park denouncing the war in Vietnam against the advice of many of his supporters. Some felt his opposition to the war was diluting his efforts for civil rights. Others were so disturbed about “disreputable” protesters that Dr. King had to resign from the board of SANE, the leading anti-nuclear organization.
Back in Washington, the two Senators might reflect on that. What they do to stop the war in Iraq may not always be popular or politically profitable, but it will be as morally right as their visit to Selma.
New York, New York...New York?
If the front-runners win nomination for ’08, New York will have its first Presidential Subway Series in history.
But a weirder scenario may be in the works--a three-way contest of New Yorkers for the White House, with Mike Bloomberg running as an Independent.
In that case, how will the shy inhabitants of the city that the Rev. Jesse Jackson once fondly called “Hymietown” react to all the national attention?
Bloomberg, positioned as a leading moderate, may see an opening between Rudy Giuliani, who Mayored his way into America’s heart after 9/11 but is now cheerleading for Bush in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton, the polarizing Chappaqua matron from Illinois, Yale and Arkansas.
New York’s current Mayor, a billionaire, is financially positioned to make a late entry early next year if voters seem to be lukewarm about his neighbors.
At the very least, this three-way race should be free of attack ads picturing opponents as latte-drinking cosmopolites who are out of tune with America’s heartland.
But a weirder scenario may be in the works--a three-way contest of New Yorkers for the White House, with Mike Bloomberg running as an Independent.
In that case, how will the shy inhabitants of the city that the Rev. Jesse Jackson once fondly called “Hymietown” react to all the national attention?
Bloomberg, positioned as a leading moderate, may see an opening between Rudy Giuliani, who Mayored his way into America’s heart after 9/11 but is now cheerleading for Bush in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton, the polarizing Chappaqua matron from Illinois, Yale and Arkansas.
New York’s current Mayor, a billionaire, is financially positioned to make a late entry early next year if voters seem to be lukewarm about his neighbors.
At the very least, this three-way race should be free of attack ads picturing opponents as latte-drinking cosmopolites who are out of tune with America’s heartland.
News: The View from 83
The odometer in my head clicked up a notch today to 83. If you count blogging, I’ve been in journalism 65 years.
Time moved slowly when I was young, and our picture of the world came from the frozen type of newspapers and grainy images of newsreels at the movie house.
Now we are drowning in sights and sounds. I get instant news from TV and the Internet, and I blog back my reactions to people everywhere.
Back then, we thought we understood everything, but there was so much we didn’t know. Now we know everything, but there is much we don’t understand.
My working life as a reporter, editor and publisher can be measured not in coffee spoons but the differences in the ways we connect to the world beyond our own senses.
As a newspaper copy boy, I groped through the smoke of a four-alarm fire, clutching a photographer’s plates so readers could see it at breakfast the next morning.
From mid-century, we experienced events not through our minds but with our eyes and ears--and in our nervous systems. We were all in Dallas that day in 1963. We took that first step on the moon with Neil Armstrong. We felt the pain of Vietnam in the pit of our stomachs every night on the network news.
The job of journalists was the same, only more so. As the flood of words and pictures swelled, it was important not just to report news but try to make sense of it. More than ever, it still is.
I read the New York Times and other news sites these days on a computer screen while wearing a bathrobe, but with information being stuffed into me from all sides, I am still starved for understanding.
Breaking news is now mostly the work of young people on camera and online. Their elders may dig out unseen meaning behind it and create some kind of context. Geezers like me try to blog connections to the past that could hold clues to the future.
The world we live in may seem depressing some days, but the view from 83 is not bad. Bring on the birthday cake.
Time moved slowly when I was young, and our picture of the world came from the frozen type of newspapers and grainy images of newsreels at the movie house.
Now we are drowning in sights and sounds. I get instant news from TV and the Internet, and I blog back my reactions to people everywhere.
Back then, we thought we understood everything, but there was so much we didn’t know. Now we know everything, but there is much we don’t understand.
My working life as a reporter, editor and publisher can be measured not in coffee spoons but the differences in the ways we connect to the world beyond our own senses.
As a newspaper copy boy, I groped through the smoke of a four-alarm fire, clutching a photographer’s plates so readers could see it at breakfast the next morning.
From mid-century, we experienced events not through our minds but with our eyes and ears--and in our nervous systems. We were all in Dallas that day in 1963. We took that first step on the moon with Neil Armstrong. We felt the pain of Vietnam in the pit of our stomachs every night on the network news.
The job of journalists was the same, only more so. As the flood of words and pictures swelled, it was important not just to report news but try to make sense of it. More than ever, it still is.
I read the New York Times and other news sites these days on a computer screen while wearing a bathrobe, but with information being stuffed into me from all sides, I am still starved for understanding.
Breaking news is now mostly the work of young people on camera and online. Their elders may dig out unseen meaning behind it and create some kind of context. Geezers like me try to blog connections to the past that could hold clues to the future.
The world we live in may seem depressing some days, but the view from 83 is not bad. Bring on the birthday cake.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
A Prayer for the Rev. Al Sharpton
Watching Al Sharpton with Jon Stewart this week was a wrenching experience. It would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the Reverend’s distress that he might be related to Sen. Strom Thurmond, a symbol of American racism.
Rev. Sharpton’s demand for DNA testing may help clear this all up, but his own history may make him wary about the reliability of medical testing.
In the 1987 case that brought him to prominence, his support of Tawana Brawley’s claim of rape by six white men, including law officers, was undercut by forensic testimony leading to a grand jury verdict that it did not occur and, a decade later, another jury’s award against Rev. Sharpton of $65,000 to one of the accused men.
This devout man may have to live with the anguish of uncertainty about his own origins, but surely he will be comforted by the sympathy of so many Americans who have shared this experience with him on every TV newscast, including the one about fake news.
Rev. Sharpton’s demand for DNA testing may help clear this all up, but his own history may make him wary about the reliability of medical testing.
In the 1987 case that brought him to prominence, his support of Tawana Brawley’s claim of rape by six white men, including law officers, was undercut by forensic testimony leading to a grand jury verdict that it did not occur and, a decade later, another jury’s award against Rev. Sharpton of $65,000 to one of the accused men.
This devout man may have to live with the anguish of uncertainty about his own origins, but surely he will be comforted by the sympathy of so many Americans who have shared this experience with him on every TV newscast, including the one about fake news.
Toughening Up Obama
As a book end to the Hillary Clinton "testosterone test," Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times relates her attempt to encourage Barack Obama to get more aggressive. It's like teaching your kid to stand up to schoolyard bullies without becoming one himself.
The Double-Dealt Generation
They’re 17, 18, 19 years old and voting for the first time in 2008. Will they go to the polls thinking Presidents always lie?
They were pre-pubescent when Bill Clinton was being impeached for lying about unzipping in the Oval Office. Presidents should tell the truth, lawmakers declaimed.
Since then these young people have known only George W. Bush who lies about everything, from the reasons for going to war in Iraq to when he knew about Hurricane Katrina.
They have learned to laugh at what the President says from Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, but who will they take seriously?
As they listen skeptically, what do they make of Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Mitt Romney et al? As some of them rally around Barack Obama, will their tentative faith be rewarded? Or have we bred a generation of cynics who won’t know the truth when they hear it?
They were pre-pubescent when Bill Clinton was being impeached for lying about unzipping in the Oval Office. Presidents should tell the truth, lawmakers declaimed.
Since then these young people have known only George W. Bush who lies about everything, from the reasons for going to war in Iraq to when he knew about Hurricane Katrina.
They have learned to laugh at what the President says from Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, but who will they take seriously?
As they listen skeptically, what do they make of Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Mitt Romney et al? As some of them rally around Barack Obama, will their tentative faith be rewarded? Or have we bred a generation of cynics who won’t know the truth when they hear it?
Friday, March 02, 2007
"Are We There Yet?"
In our impatience to get to November 2008, we’re like kids twitching in the family car on a long trip. The coloring books and sweet treats are running low, and there’s growing panic in the front seats about keeping us distracted.
They give us word games: Should McCain and Obama have said lives are being “sacrificed” not “wasted”?
They give us joke books: “Mitt Romney’s 101 Positions on Any Issue You Choose” (with pop-up hairstyles).
They give us crayons: Fill in the lines and make Rudy Giuliani look like Ronald Reagan.
Maybe we should just check into the next motel and sleep for 87 weeks.
Clyde Haberman in the New York Times has another idea: an “immediate Mega-Super-Blockbuster primary” so we can get everyone but one Republican and one Democrat off the road.
We may not get there any sooner, but the trip will seem shorter.
They give us word games: Should McCain and Obama have said lives are being “sacrificed” not “wasted”?
They give us joke books: “Mitt Romney’s 101 Positions on Any Issue You Choose” (with pop-up hairstyles).
They give us crayons: Fill in the lines and make Rudy Giuliani look like Ronald Reagan.
Maybe we should just check into the next motel and sleep for 87 weeks.
Clyde Haberman in the New York Times has another idea: an “immediate Mega-Super-Blockbuster primary” so we can get everyone but one Republican and one Democrat off the road.
We may not get there any sooner, but the trip will seem shorter.
Testosterone Test: Hillary and 9/11
Hillary Rodham Clinton would have a better chance of becoming President if 9/11 had never happened.
That trauma stalled, at least temporarily, American readiness for a woman in the Oval Office, and what Bush’s people did in 2004 pushed her problem to ugly extremes.
The swift-boating of John Kerry was less an assault on his character than his manhood. In the bizarre universe of Karl Rove & Co., the wounded war veteran was pictured as softer than the privileged rich boy who evaded combat--and as a flip-flopper to boot.
By now, voters have seen where Bush’s so-called “toughness” can lead, but his minions’ campaign to tar Kerry as weak and indecisive worked well enough to win. The pressure to appear steadfast may have something to do with Senator Clinton’s stubborn refusal now to admit her 2002 vote on Iraq was a mistake.
The unspoken “Daddy will protect us” canard goes back a long way in American politics: In the 1950s Eisenhower, the war hero, had no trouble twice defeating Adlai Stevenson, who projected more wit than machismo in those first days of nuclear fear.
Lyndon Johnson once summed it up in describing Nixon. “Not much here,” he said, pointing to his head. “Even less here,” with his hand over his heart. Then he lowered it below his belt: “But enough down there.”
We had been evolving from that kind of schoolyard stupidity--until 9/11. Without his TV exposure as a strong leader back then, would Rudy Giuliani now be heading for the nomination of a party that loathes his politics?
Republicans always try to portray Democrats as soft-hearted “weak sisters.” The terrorists have helped them make that devious strategy work, at least for a while. But they can't play on our fears forever.
That trauma stalled, at least temporarily, American readiness for a woman in the Oval Office, and what Bush’s people did in 2004 pushed her problem to ugly extremes.
The swift-boating of John Kerry was less an assault on his character than his manhood. In the bizarre universe of Karl Rove & Co., the wounded war veteran was pictured as softer than the privileged rich boy who evaded combat--and as a flip-flopper to boot.
By now, voters have seen where Bush’s so-called “toughness” can lead, but his minions’ campaign to tar Kerry as weak and indecisive worked well enough to win. The pressure to appear steadfast may have something to do with Senator Clinton’s stubborn refusal now to admit her 2002 vote on Iraq was a mistake.
The unspoken “Daddy will protect us” canard goes back a long way in American politics: In the 1950s Eisenhower, the war hero, had no trouble twice defeating Adlai Stevenson, who projected more wit than machismo in those first days of nuclear fear.
Lyndon Johnson once summed it up in describing Nixon. “Not much here,” he said, pointing to his head. “Even less here,” with his hand over his heart. Then he lowered it below his belt: “But enough down there.”
We had been evolving from that kind of schoolyard stupidity--until 9/11. Without his TV exposure as a strong leader back then, would Rudy Giuliani now be heading for the nomination of a party that loathes his politics?
Republicans always try to portray Democrats as soft-hearted “weak sisters.” The terrorists have helped them make that devious strategy work, at least for a while. But they can't play on our fears forever.
Grandparenting
There is one thing in today’s world that is not over-hyped. The bad news is that you have to wait until late in life to experience it. I speak, of course, about being a grandparent.
When the kids are little, you play with them, then go home and leave the scut work to their parents. Later on, you take them places, and they think you’re wondeful.
It’s one the few things in life that just keeps getting better. Little people begin to emerge from those adorable babies and toddlers, and they are fascinating. Everything they do and say gets replayed in your mind and, if you aren’t careful, you find yourself babbling to strangers...as I’m doing now.
Today is the eleventh birthday of Baxter and Griffin, and every minute has been pure wonder and joy. I can’t predict which of them will be President of the U.S. first. Then again it might be my sweet Quincy, who is nine and won’t be left out of anything. I’m still planning to take her to the high-school prom over any teen-age body that gets in the way.
When connecting the dots in your life becomes an imperative, the most important are generations. Some time ago, my wife and I moved out of a house we loved two hours away so we could go to the kids’ ball games and school concerts and be with them to give their parents a well-earned night out.
We haven’t regretted it for a minute. Bless you, Brett and Keith, for the gifts of our lives.
When the kids are little, you play with them, then go home and leave the scut work to their parents. Later on, you take them places, and they think you’re wondeful.
It’s one the few things in life that just keeps getting better. Little people begin to emerge from those adorable babies and toddlers, and they are fascinating. Everything they do and say gets replayed in your mind and, if you aren’t careful, you find yourself babbling to strangers...as I’m doing now.
Today is the eleventh birthday of Baxter and Griffin, and every minute has been pure wonder and joy. I can’t predict which of them will be President of the U.S. first. Then again it might be my sweet Quincy, who is nine and won’t be left out of anything. I’m still planning to take her to the high-school prom over any teen-age body that gets in the way.
When connecting the dots in your life becomes an imperative, the most important are generations. Some time ago, my wife and I moved out of a house we loved two hours away so we could go to the kids’ ball games and school concerts and be with them to give their parents a well-earned night out.
We haven’t regretted it for a minute. Bless you, Brett and Keith, for the gifts of our lives.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Free Speech?
At the end of the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee, who refused to give newspaper interviews throughout his life, was asked to write his memoirs. He refused. “I should be trading on the blood of my men,” he said.
Things have changed. Today’s political uproar is over Hillary Clinton’s ethics disclosure that her husband, the former President, earned $31 million in speaking fees during a five-year period.
Republicans are upset that some of it might end up in her campaign chest. Democrats are pointing to the $2 million Ronald Reagan earned for one speech in Japan and to the fact that Bush the Elder walked off a dais with Global Crossing stock eventually valued at $14 million.
They used to say talk is cheap.
Things have changed. Today’s political uproar is over Hillary Clinton’s ethics disclosure that her husband, the former President, earned $31 million in speaking fees during a five-year period.
Republicans are upset that some of it might end up in her campaign chest. Democrats are pointing to the $2 million Ronald Reagan earned for one speech in Japan and to the fact that Bush the Elder walked off a dais with Global Crossing stock eventually valued at $14 million.
They used to say talk is cheap.
McCain's Moment of Truth
During his pre-announcement of his pre-candidacy to David Letterman last night, John McCain said American lives have been "wasted" in Iraq.
Now the Senator is busy backpedalling to political truthiness, saying he should have said "sacrificed."
In Presidential politics, it's a gaffe when the driver of the "Straight Talk Express" actually lets the truth slip.
Now the Senator is busy backpedalling to political truthiness, saying he should have said "sacrificed."
In Presidential politics, it's a gaffe when the driver of the "Straight Talk Express" actually lets the truth slip.
Inhuman Interest on Cable
Eons ago, when I was a newspaper copy boy, they called it “human interest,” filling out the day’s happenings with little tales of quirky people and odd events.
They are still doing that on cable news, but quirky and odd have morphed into bizarre and repulsive.
Larry King, celebrating fifty years in broadcasting, is now more preoccupied with the family, friends and hangers-on of Anna Nicole Smith, the putative fathers of her baby and the “American Idol” crowd than he used to be with Bob Woodward’s revelations about Bush and Iraq.
Keith Olbermann (with his “Worst Persons)” Joe Scarborough and the rest tell us all about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton etc., then take us down to the next species sublevel by solemnly interviewing the slimy Boswells of "celebrity journalism.”
Every medium (even a blog) needs ratings, viewers, listeners and readers, but how low are we going to go and how much of our time are we going to spend there?
They are still doing that on cable news, but quirky and odd have morphed into bizarre and repulsive.
Larry King, celebrating fifty years in broadcasting, is now more preoccupied with the family, friends and hangers-on of Anna Nicole Smith, the putative fathers of her baby and the “American Idol” crowd than he used to be with Bob Woodward’s revelations about Bush and Iraq.
Keith Olbermann (with his “Worst Persons)” Joe Scarborough and the rest tell us all about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton etc., then take us down to the next species sublevel by solemnly interviewing the slimy Boswells of "celebrity journalism.”
Every medium (even a blog) needs ratings, viewers, listeners and readers, but how low are we going to go and how much of our time are we going to spend there?
Edwards' Mea Culpa Campaign
Talk about making lemonade: John Edwards is now telling reporters he is “proud” to admit his mistake in voting for the Iraq war in 2002.
In fact, admitting the mistake has become the central theme of his campaign. Running on a platform of “honesty, openness and decency,” Edwards says “There is not a single voter in America who doesn’t understand their president is human, and their president will sometimes make mistakes.”
Edwards reminds me of how Geraldo Rivera described the secret of his success: “It’s all about sincerity. Anybody can fake being sincere for five minutes.”
In fact, admitting the mistake has become the central theme of his campaign. Running on a platform of “honesty, openness and decency,” Edwards says “There is not a single voter in America who doesn’t understand their president is human, and their president will sometimes make mistakes.”
Edwards reminds me of how Geraldo Rivera described the secret of his success: “It’s all about sincerity. Anybody can fake being sincere for five minutes.”
Draft Cheney!
It’s painful to see the Grand Old Party in disarray, flirting with the liberal likes of Giuliani and McCain when the answer to its ’08 problem has been staring them in the face all this time.
Never mind all the talk about “secondary virgins,” Republicans don’t have to settle for second best: Draft Dick Cheney!
After these years of glorious apprenticeship to (some might say partnership with) George W. Bush, the Vice-President is more than ready to take it to the next level. He is only 66 years young and feisty as ever. A man who can overcome multiple heart attacks and face down Wolf Blitzer should be up for any challenge.
Starting public service as an intern in the Nixon White House, after declining to waste any of his youthful zeal in the Democrat war in Vietnam, Cheney has learned statecraft from the ground up in almost 40 years of Washington combat.
The Republican Party must persuade him to overcome his modesty and shyness to lead the nation to new heights of respect in the world. Start readying those banners and buttons that would say it all: “Dick!”
Never mind all the talk about “secondary virgins,” Republicans don’t have to settle for second best: Draft Dick Cheney!
After these years of glorious apprenticeship to (some might say partnership with) George W. Bush, the Vice-President is more than ready to take it to the next level. He is only 66 years young and feisty as ever. A man who can overcome multiple heart attacks and face down Wolf Blitzer should be up for any challenge.
Starting public service as an intern in the Nixon White House, after declining to waste any of his youthful zeal in the Democrat war in Vietnam, Cheney has learned statecraft from the ground up in almost 40 years of Washington combat.
The Republican Party must persuade him to overcome his modesty and shyness to lead the nation to new heights of respect in the world. Start readying those banners and buttons that would say it all: “Dick!”
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
No Peace for the Newsworthy 2
Speaking of posthumous (but not quite) publicity, herewith more than you want to know about your blushing blogtogenarian, written with superb journalistic accuracy and acumen by Patricia Gay of The Weston (CT) Forum. I would apologize to Jon Stewart, but I don't have his e-mail address.
No Peace for the Newsworthy
Will somebody please, please bury Anna Nicole Smith and James Brown so we can stop hearing about their posthumous real-estate problems?
All this hoo-ha is just validating the old media saw that, for some celebrities, death can be a great career move. They don't need the publicity now.
All this hoo-ha is just validating the old media saw that, for some celebrities, death can be a great career move. They don't need the publicity now.
Back to the Future
If Newt Gingrich is the Republican answer, what is the question?
As Rudy Giuliani and John McCain try to retro-fit themselves to ultra-conservative specifications, the Newtster, who hasn’t even taken off his sweat clothes, is running third in the party’s polls.
The pol who gave us a Contract with America and put one out on Bill Clinton in the late 1990s is making right-wing hearts race just by not being an untrustworthy hero-mayor or a maverick former POW. Will he be their "Secondary Virgin"?
On the other side, nostalgia is setting in, too. After Al Gore floated through the Oscars like a Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon, he gets a valentine from Maureen Dowd in today’s New York Times.
With fourteen months to go, voters already seem to be tiring of talk about Hillary Clinton’s lovability and Mitt Romney’s too-perfect hair.
Can we all just take a long nap until January 20, 2009?
As Rudy Giuliani and John McCain try to retro-fit themselves to ultra-conservative specifications, the Newtster, who hasn’t even taken off his sweat clothes, is running third in the party’s polls.
The pol who gave us a Contract with America and put one out on Bill Clinton in the late 1990s is making right-wing hearts race just by not being an untrustworthy hero-mayor or a maverick former POW. Will he be their "Secondary Virgin"?
On the other side, nostalgia is setting in, too. After Al Gore floated through the Oscars like a Macy’s Thanksgiving balloon, he gets a valentine from Maureen Dowd in today’s New York Times.
With fourteen months to go, voters already seem to be tiring of talk about Hillary Clinton’s lovability and Mitt Romney’s too-perfect hair.
Can we all just take a long nap until January 20, 2009?
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
National Nightmare
An image persists. America is in one of those jerking jalopies in an old silent movie with speeded-up film, heading for a cliff.
In the driver’s seat, George Bush is smiling confidently, waving at passersby. Next to him, hair on end, Congress is frantically trying to make him stop, gesticulating wildly, trying to grab the steering wheel and yank his leg off the gas pedal.
The approach to the cliff seems endless, but it isn’t. We’re all in the back seat, holding our breath, but the vehicle keeps bouncing toward the edge.
Won’t somebody stop the projector and turn up the lights? Nobody is laughing.
In the driver’s seat, George Bush is smiling confidently, waving at passersby. Next to him, hair on end, Congress is frantically trying to make him stop, gesticulating wildly, trying to grab the steering wheel and yank his leg off the gas pedal.
The approach to the cliff seems endless, but it isn’t. We’re all in the back seat, holding our breath, but the vehicle keeps bouncing toward the edge.
Won’t somebody stop the projector and turn up the lights? Nobody is laughing.
President, Congress Agree on Middle East
Fifty years ago, after debating Presidential policies in the Middle East, Congress approved the Eisenhower Doctrine in March 1957.
The world was different then, yet the hostility and intrigue were there. But our troops were not dying in Iraq, and no one was trying to kill our Vice President in Afghanistan.
Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser was flirting with the Soviet Union and promoting radical Arab nationalism. The U.S. moved to stop him.
Our diplomacy was not brilliant then either. “The genius of you Americans,” Nassar told a CIA agent, “is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves, which made us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them that we were missing.”
He called the Eisenhower Doctrine “one of the shrewdest mistakes ever made by a Great Power...”
The lesson for today is that we were involved even then in what came to be called “the clash of civilizations,” but we were fighting with words not blood, and we were flexible with our diplomacy.
Eisenhower liked to quote the philosopher George Santayana: “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
The world was different then, yet the hostility and intrigue were there. But our troops were not dying in Iraq, and no one was trying to kill our Vice President in Afghanistan.
Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser was flirting with the Soviet Union and promoting radical Arab nationalism. The U.S. moved to stop him.
Our diplomacy was not brilliant then either. “The genius of you Americans,” Nassar told a CIA agent, “is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves, which made us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them that we were missing.”
He called the Eisenhower Doctrine “one of the shrewdest mistakes ever made by a Great Power...”
The lesson for today is that we were involved even then in what came to be called “the clash of civilizations,” but we were fighting with words not blood, and we were flexible with our diplomacy.
Eisenhower liked to quote the philosopher George Santayana: “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
Candidates' Screen Tests
CNN asked the '08 hopefuls to name their favorite movie and got some provocative answers.
John McCain picked “Viva Zapata,” Elia Kazan’s epic with Brando as a true-blue warrior for the people who is betrayed by weak, scheming politicians of all stripes. McCain was a teen-ager in 1952, when Kazan made it, many believe, as his excuse for giving up friends to Congressional Red hunters, which left him an outcast, not a hero.
Hillary Clinton’s choice was “Casablanca,” released five years before she was born, the classic tale of renouncing love for a political Higher Cause. Earlier, she had also cited “The Wizard of Oz” but reconsidered.
Rudy Giuliani was 28, a novice prosecutor, when “The Godfather” came out, a dark tale about the interweaving of crime and politics, with eerie echoes of his own family history.
What possessed John Edwards to choose “Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is one more puzzle about an unreadable man. He was 11 when Kubrick’s savage black comedy of nuclear insanity appeared, and what feelings it stirred in a proper, bland, ambitious Southern boy are hard to fathom.
Mitt Romney was 34, embarking on a career in management consulting after being a Mormon missionary, before he could have seen his favorite, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” a hip, breakneck comedy-adventure far removed from his proper white-collar life.
Bill Richardson's choice of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," about banks robbers who go to South America but can't speak Spanish may be a reverse spin on his childhood in Mexico followed by a north-of-the-border life as a thoroughly Americanized politician.
Barack Obama’s preference is not known, which could mean (a) he is too deliberative to commit himself (b) too aware of what it might imply or (c) just not that interested in movies.
John McCain picked “Viva Zapata,” Elia Kazan’s epic with Brando as a true-blue warrior for the people who is betrayed by weak, scheming politicians of all stripes. McCain was a teen-ager in 1952, when Kazan made it, many believe, as his excuse for giving up friends to Congressional Red hunters, which left him an outcast, not a hero.
Hillary Clinton’s choice was “Casablanca,” released five years before she was born, the classic tale of renouncing love for a political Higher Cause. Earlier, she had also cited “The Wizard of Oz” but reconsidered.
Rudy Giuliani was 28, a novice prosecutor, when “The Godfather” came out, a dark tale about the interweaving of crime and politics, with eerie echoes of his own family history.
What possessed John Edwards to choose “Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is one more puzzle about an unreadable man. He was 11 when Kubrick’s savage black comedy of nuclear insanity appeared, and what feelings it stirred in a proper, bland, ambitious Southern boy are hard to fathom.
Mitt Romney was 34, embarking on a career in management consulting after being a Mormon missionary, before he could have seen his favorite, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” a hip, breakneck comedy-adventure far removed from his proper white-collar life.
Bill Richardson's choice of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," about banks robbers who go to South America but can't speak Spanish may be a reverse spin on his childhood in Mexico followed by a north-of-the-border life as a thoroughly Americanized politician.
Barack Obama’s preference is not known, which could mean (a) he is too deliberative to commit himself (b) too aware of what it might imply or (c) just not that interested in movies.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Iraq: Gone with the Wind
The man just won’t go away. Here is Joe Lieberman today, explaining why Congress is wrong to start a Civil War with the White House over Iraq.
You can’t read it online unless you pay the Wall Street Journal, so save your time and money:
With a new commander and more troops, we’re on the verge of making Baghdad snug and secure, but those bad people on Capitol Hill are just too ornery to give the new strategy a chance. If they really want to stop the war, why don’t they just stop the money? Because, Uncle Joe explains, the result would be “a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale yet unseen in Iraq.”
Never mind that nobody has proposed cutting off funds, a move that Lieberman uses as a straw man to urge that Congress shut up and wait until the end of summer to see if Gen. Patraeus can good-cop Baghdad into some version of antebellum Tara.
There seem to be only three people in Washington who will not admit that Iraq is Gone with the Wind and, for the moment, the other two are letting good old faithful Uncle Joe carry the water for them.
You can’t read it online unless you pay the Wall Street Journal, so save your time and money:
With a new commander and more troops, we’re on the verge of making Baghdad snug and secure, but those bad people on Capitol Hill are just too ornery to give the new strategy a chance. If they really want to stop the war, why don’t they just stop the money? Because, Uncle Joe explains, the result would be “a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale yet unseen in Iraq.”
Never mind that nobody has proposed cutting off funds, a move that Lieberman uses as a straw man to urge that Congress shut up and wait until the end of summer to see if Gen. Patraeus can good-cop Baghdad into some version of antebellum Tara.
There seem to be only three people in Washington who will not admit that Iraq is Gone with the Wind and, for the moment, the other two are letting good old faithful Uncle Joe carry the water for them.
Oscar Night: Coming of Age
On a night when Helen Mirren, 61 and Martin Scorcese, 64 got their statuettes, they looked like kids next to Alan Arkin, 72.
In the mid-1960s I had lunch with Arkin after he caused a ripple playing a Russian submarine commander in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.”
A serious Broadway actor-director-composer, Arkin bristled when I suggested he should get a press agent: “Why? I don’t want to promote myself."
“To protect yourself,” I said. “You’re going to be famous.”
I was half-right. He became semi-famous in such movies as “Catch-22” and “The In-laws.” Last night deleted the “semi.” It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving septuagenarian.
In the mid-1960s I had lunch with Arkin after he caused a ripple playing a Russian submarine commander in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.”
A serious Broadway actor-director-composer, Arkin bristled when I suggested he should get a press agent: “Why? I don’t want to promote myself."
“To protect yourself,” I said. “You’re going to be famous.”
I was half-right. He became semi-famous in such movies as “Catch-22” and “The In-laws.” Last night deleted the “semi.” It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving septuagenarian.
Jumping Joe Lieberman
Time to check in on the horsehair holding the Damocles Sword over Democrats' control of the Senate:
Last month Joe Lieberman announced, "I'm open to supporting a Democrat, Republican or even an Independent, if there's a strong one" in 2008. "Stay tuned," he advised.
Last week he told Time Magazine there was "a very remote possibility" he might transfer his steadfast party loyalty to the Republicans.
But on Friday he informed Reuters, "I have no desire or intention to leave the Democratic Party."
Not to belabor the equine metaphor, but "My kingdom for a horse" or any part thereof that will carry this pompous poseur out of public sight.
Last month Joe Lieberman announced, "I'm open to supporting a Democrat, Republican or even an Independent, if there's a strong one" in 2008. "Stay tuned," he advised.
Last week he told Time Magazine there was "a very remote possibility" he might transfer his steadfast party loyalty to the Republicans.
But on Friday he informed Reuters, "I have no desire or intention to leave the Democratic Party."
Not to belabor the equine metaphor, but "My kingdom for a horse" or any part thereof that will carry this pompous poseur out of public sight.
A Thrilling Compliment
A weekend post read in its entirety, "Oscar Question: If Al Gore loses, will he demand a recount?"
This prompted a big-name blogger who shall remain nameless to send me an angry e-mail: "Stop reinforcing ancient right-wing spin."
Concerned that I might be offending the humor-impaired, I edited the "he" to "we." But the thrill of being attacked as "right-wing" lingers on. In eighty years, nobody has ever called me that.
This prompted a big-name blogger who shall remain nameless to send me an angry e-mail: "Stop reinforcing ancient right-wing spin."
Concerned that I might be offending the humor-impaired, I edited the "he" to "we." But the thrill of being attacked as "right-wing" lingers on. In eighty years, nobody has ever called me that.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Desperate Sorority Sisters
Exclusion has always bugged me, to the extent of amending Groucho’s dictum, “I don’t want to belong to any club that takes people like me as members” with “or anybody else for that matter.”
But the year’s booby prize for snoot goes to the sisters of Delta Zeta at Depauw University for ousting most of their members who didn’t look like they would grow up to be eligible for the cast of “Desperate Housewives.”
Nice going, young ladies. Now you can model some lovely long white robes with hoods and masks for us.
But the year’s booby prize for snoot goes to the sisters of Delta Zeta at Depauw University for ousting most of their members who didn’t look like they would grow up to be eligible for the cast of “Desperate Housewives.”
Nice going, young ladies. Now you can model some lovely long white robes with hoods and masks for us.
"Secondary Virginity" for '08
Good news, sinners! The Christian right has decreed the fallen can be born again pure as driven snow.
The new virginity is available not only to the carnally impaired but to politicians who may have parked their shoes under the wrong ideological bed.
At their summit meeting, the guardians of American morality--Dr. James Dobson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist--examined the Republican ’08 hopefuls and found them wanting.
McCain and Giuliani were dismissed out of hand as hopeless sluts, Romney as a waverer, and even Duncan Hunter, Brownback and Huckabee may have sinned in their hearts, as Jimmy Carter used to say.
It remained for Norquist, admittedly the least ecclesiastical of the brotherhood, to discover the road to redemption by citing a movement wherein young people who have lost their chastity take vows of abstinence.
“It’s called secondary virginity,“ Norquist explained, “It’s a big movement in high school and also available for politicians.”
If only Bill Clinton had known...
The new virginity is available not only to the carnally impaired but to politicians who may have parked their shoes under the wrong ideological bed.
At their summit meeting, the guardians of American morality--Dr. James Dobson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Grover Norquist--examined the Republican ’08 hopefuls and found them wanting.
McCain and Giuliani were dismissed out of hand as hopeless sluts, Romney as a waverer, and even Duncan Hunter, Brownback and Huckabee may have sinned in their hearts, as Jimmy Carter used to say.
It remained for Norquist, admittedly the least ecclesiastical of the brotherhood, to discover the road to redemption by citing a movement wherein young people who have lost their chastity take vows of abstinence.
“It’s called secondary virginity,“ Norquist explained, “It’s a big movement in high school and also available for politicians.”
If only Bill Clinton had known...
Larder Disorder: You Are What You Hoard
It started with maple syrup. One Sunday morning I found four jugs in our pantry and two more, partly filled, in the refrigerator.
Although we seldom eat pancakes, my wife had a reasonable explanation: “You wouldn’t want to make a hot stack and find nothing to put on it, would you?”
Since then, after researching friends’ pantries and freezers, I’ve identified a new psychological condition: larder disorder. We are not only what we eat, but what we hoard. Dread of deprivation reveals our fears and desires.
My study was triggered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Los Angeles, residents stocked up at supermarkets, which ran out of toilet paper. What was behind that particular panic?
Now Homeland Security is encouraging us to load shelves with canned food, bottled water and duct tape. Yet, aside from that, with 24-hour markets and online groceries, overstocking is off the wall.
My bugaboo is bread for breakfast, going back to a teen trauma when, on my first train trip, someone at 4 A.M. was selling coffee and nothing else, which left my empty stomach churning with caffeine and separation anxiety.
Ever since, I have needed starch to ward off the queasiness lurking in morning coffee and end up tossing out enough moldy crusts every year to make bread pudding for a battalion.
If you worry about naked hamburgers, the extra ketchup and pickle slices will eventually be used, but perishables can do you in. Anxiety about fresh fruit and vegetables leads to little flies on black bananas and a crisper full of rotting produce.
To offset larder disorder, Web sites will show you how to make a decent meal out of anything. Type in what you’ve got and download 214 recipes for capers.
Which reminds me: Is there any butter? I hate dry toast for breakfast.
Although we seldom eat pancakes, my wife had a reasonable explanation: “You wouldn’t want to make a hot stack and find nothing to put on it, would you?”
Since then, after researching friends’ pantries and freezers, I’ve identified a new psychological condition: larder disorder. We are not only what we eat, but what we hoard. Dread of deprivation reveals our fears and desires.
My study was triggered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Los Angeles, residents stocked up at supermarkets, which ran out of toilet paper. What was behind that particular panic?
Now Homeland Security is encouraging us to load shelves with canned food, bottled water and duct tape. Yet, aside from that, with 24-hour markets and online groceries, overstocking is off the wall.
My bugaboo is bread for breakfast, going back to a teen trauma when, on my first train trip, someone at 4 A.M. was selling coffee and nothing else, which left my empty stomach churning with caffeine and separation anxiety.
Ever since, I have needed starch to ward off the queasiness lurking in morning coffee and end up tossing out enough moldy crusts every year to make bread pudding for a battalion.
If you worry about naked hamburgers, the extra ketchup and pickle slices will eventually be used, but perishables can do you in. Anxiety about fresh fruit and vegetables leads to little flies on black bananas and a crisper full of rotting produce.
To offset larder disorder, Web sites will show you how to make a decent meal out of anything. Type in what you’ve got and download 214 recipes for capers.
Which reminds me: Is there any butter? I hate dry toast for breakfast.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Must Reading
If 9/11 was a wake-up call, America pushed the snooze button and went back to sleep. After Katrina, we shook our heads and yawned. Now a 21st century Paul Revere is trying to shake us awake.
In his new book, “The Edge of Disaster,” Stephen Flynn is sounding the alarm and giving us cogent advice on how not to be caught napping--or dead--next time.
You won’t enjoy reading it, any more than you like paying insurance premiums. But Flynn makes an informed, persuasive case about our total lack of preparedness not only for terrorist attacks but natural disasters.
Note to George Bush and Karl Rove: If you’re still having that reading contest, put down “My Pet Goat” and start this one.
In his new book, “The Edge of Disaster,” Stephen Flynn is sounding the alarm and giving us cogent advice on how not to be caught napping--or dead--next time.
You won’t enjoy reading it, any more than you like paying insurance premiums. But Flynn makes an informed, persuasive case about our total lack of preparedness not only for terrorist attacks but natural disasters.
Note to George Bush and Karl Rove: If you’re still having that reading contest, put down “My Pet Goat” and start this one.
Ralph Nader and Cary Grant
In his last years, Cary Grant would phone me once in a while. It started when I asked him to pose for a magazine cover with his daughter. He said yes, but his former wife said no. Grant and I discussed it and finally gave up.
After that, he would call every so often, and we found ourselves discussing his opinions of journalists, working mothers, parenting and anything else that crossed his mind.
After one of those pleasant conversations, it struck me: He missed being Cary Grant. In his eighties, long retired, he was on corporate boards and surely had a busy social life but, in these calls, he was the Cary Grant he once was, a great star, sought after by editors, the object of endless interest.
Over time, we all lose our faces and bodies to age, but what keeps us going, beyond family and friends, is our sense of ourselves that tells us we are still who we were, no matter how diminished.
Most of us can avoid mirrors, but what must it be like to confront on TV a younger self or see in the eyes of strangers the cliché question, “Didn’t you used to be...?”
So we have the sad spectacle of faded figures lending their former fame to execrable movies, embarrassing commercials and tacky TV roasts to reassure themselves they still matter. By comparison, Cary Grant’s phone calls were a modest and dignified way of filling the void.
Now we have 73-year-old Ralph Nader popping up everywhere to convince himself he is still the Ralph Nader he used to be, flirting last evening with Wolf Blitzer about running against Hillary Clinton, promoting his book about his family, still defending himself against charges that he gave us George Bush and, to Blitzer’s surprise, plugging his favorite airline while blasting all the others in supporting a passenger’s bill of rights.
Attention must be paid, to quote Mrs. Willy Loman. But Ralph Nader should fight the encroachments of age by getting a talk show, writing more books or babbling on a blog (like me). He should do anything he wants to get attention but stay the hell out of Presidential politics.
After that, he would call every so often, and we found ourselves discussing his opinions of journalists, working mothers, parenting and anything else that crossed his mind.
After one of those pleasant conversations, it struck me: He missed being Cary Grant. In his eighties, long retired, he was on corporate boards and surely had a busy social life but, in these calls, he was the Cary Grant he once was, a great star, sought after by editors, the object of endless interest.
Over time, we all lose our faces and bodies to age, but what keeps us going, beyond family and friends, is our sense of ourselves that tells us we are still who we were, no matter how diminished.
Most of us can avoid mirrors, but what must it be like to confront on TV a younger self or see in the eyes of strangers the cliché question, “Didn’t you used to be...?”
So we have the sad spectacle of faded figures lending their former fame to execrable movies, embarrassing commercials and tacky TV roasts to reassure themselves they still matter. By comparison, Cary Grant’s phone calls were a modest and dignified way of filling the void.
Now we have 73-year-old Ralph Nader popping up everywhere to convince himself he is still the Ralph Nader he used to be, flirting last evening with Wolf Blitzer about running against Hillary Clinton, promoting his book about his family, still defending himself against charges that he gave us George Bush and, to Blitzer’s surprise, plugging his favorite airline while blasting all the others in supporting a passenger’s bill of rights.
Attention must be paid, to quote Mrs. Willy Loman. But Ralph Nader should fight the encroachments of age by getting a talk show, writing more books or babbling on a blog (like me). He should do anything he wants to get attention but stay the hell out of Presidential politics.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Vilsack for VP
In December I asked: "Can Competence Compete?" Apparently not.
The news that Tom Vilsack is dropping out of the '08 sweepstakes is saddening, but he should be on every other candidate's short list for VP. He was on Kerry's in 2004.
Vilsack's departure leaves my record as a political kingmaker unblemished. I urged Mario Cuomo to run in 1992. I must have an unerring instinct for people who are too decent for today's political process.
The news that Tom Vilsack is dropping out of the '08 sweepstakes is saddening, but he should be on every other candidate's short list for VP. He was on Kerry's in 2004.
Vilsack's departure leaves my record as a political kingmaker unblemished. I urged Mario Cuomo to run in 1992. I must have an unerring instinct for people who are too decent for today's political process.
No Do-Overs
Now the Senate will try to stop payment on the blank check it wrote to invade Iraq over four years ago.
But the White House is holding it in the constitutional bank along with a hard core of party loyalists and a veto pen to block any withdrawals.
The only other option would be impeachment, but that too is hopeless for the same reasons plus the national trauma that would be involved and a glaring one named Cheney.
Bite the bullets and face facts: Congress can nibble away with restrictions in appropriations but can’t micro-manage this war and does not have the power to end it.
Both houses would do well to spend time on health care reform, Social Security, immigration and other pressing issues they can do something about. Voters may soon tire of their yelling at a deaf President about the war and ask what else they have done for them lately.
Face it: We should keep protesting but, unless George W. Bush has a visitation from a Higher Power, our aching national heart and our system of government will have to find other ways to survive the next two years.
But the White House is holding it in the constitutional bank along with a hard core of party loyalists and a veto pen to block any withdrawals.
The only other option would be impeachment, but that too is hopeless for the same reasons plus the national trauma that would be involved and a glaring one named Cheney.
Bite the bullets and face facts: Congress can nibble away with restrictions in appropriations but can’t micro-manage this war and does not have the power to end it.
Both houses would do well to spend time on health care reform, Social Security, immigration and other pressing issues they can do something about. Voters may soon tire of their yelling at a deaf President about the war and ask what else they have done for them lately.
Face it: We should keep protesting but, unless George W. Bush has a visitation from a Higher Power, our aching national heart and our system of government will have to find other ways to survive the next two years.
Books for Ballots
Long ago a writer I knew wanted a new law: “Why don’t they license typewriters? You have to be tested to drive an automobile, and ideas are more dangerous than metal and rubber.”
His proposal is recalled by a New York Times piece yesterday on the flood of books by Presidential candidates.
Except for Obama’s best sellers, they are mostly extended bumper stickers, manifestoes of the vision and courage the authors may not always show in real life or memoirs that tug at our heartstrings to make us pull the right levers in the voting booth. At the very least, books prove they can read and write.
The Web has made my friend’s legislation moot, but he was right to mistrust what people put on paper. Memory is a too-forgiving editor, as I often remind myself with the Samuel Goldwyn story.
Goldwyn, the movie producer, had commissioned a script based on a classic novel. After months, one of Hollywood’s best writers gave up, telling him there was no way to make a movie out of it.
With a team of hacks, Goldwyn went ahead, made the picture and it bombed.
Years later, in a story conference, someone suggested the original writer for an assignment.
Goldwyn was adamant. “Not him. He was associated with one of my worst failures!”
His proposal is recalled by a New York Times piece yesterday on the flood of books by Presidential candidates.
Except for Obama’s best sellers, they are mostly extended bumper stickers, manifestoes of the vision and courage the authors may not always show in real life or memoirs that tug at our heartstrings to make us pull the right levers in the voting booth. At the very least, books prove they can read and write.
The Web has made my friend’s legislation moot, but he was right to mistrust what people put on paper. Memory is a too-forgiving editor, as I often remind myself with the Samuel Goldwyn story.
Goldwyn, the movie producer, had commissioned a script based on a classic novel. After months, one of Hollywood’s best writers gave up, telling him there was no way to make a movie out of it.
With a team of hacks, Goldwyn went ahead, made the picture and it bombed.
Years later, in a story conference, someone suggested the original writer for an assignment.
Goldwyn was adamant. “Not him. He was associated with one of my worst failures!”
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Groucho's Father
The most verbal of the Marx Brothers once wrote in McCalls about their father:
"The notion that Pop was a tailor was an opinion held only by him. He refused to use a tape measure, which he insisted was pure swank and utter nonsense. It might be all right for an undertaker, but not for a tailor with the unerring eye of an eagle.
"He boasted he could size up a man by just looking at him. The results were about as accurate as Al Capone's tax returns.
"Our neighborhood was full of Pop's customers, easily recognizable by one trouser leg shorter than the other or coat collars undecided where to rest.
"My father never had the same customer twice, which meant being constantly on the prowl for new business. As our neighborhood became populated with men in misfit clothing, he had to find locations where his reputation had not preceded him.
"He was forced to go further and further to snare new victims. Many weeks his carfare was larger than his income."
Luckily for us, Groucho's raw material was words, not cloth, and his lopsided creations were intentional, to our great benefit.
"The notion that Pop was a tailor was an opinion held only by him. He refused to use a tape measure, which he insisted was pure swank and utter nonsense. It might be all right for an undertaker, but not for a tailor with the unerring eye of an eagle.
"He boasted he could size up a man by just looking at him. The results were about as accurate as Al Capone's tax returns.
"Our neighborhood was full of Pop's customers, easily recognizable by one trouser leg shorter than the other or coat collars undecided where to rest.
"My father never had the same customer twice, which meant being constantly on the prowl for new business. As our neighborhood became populated with men in misfit clothing, he had to find locations where his reputation had not preceded him.
"He was forced to go further and further to snare new victims. Many weeks his carfare was larger than his income."
Luckily for us, Groucho's raw material was words, not cloth, and his lopsided creations were intentional, to our great benefit.
The Truth About Lying
My work as a magazine editor often took me to Washington and Hollywood, two places where, if you ask people the time of day, you can see them trying to figure out what time you would like it to be.
So when David Geffen, Beverly Hills mogul, calls Hillary and Bill Clinton of D.C. liars, he may simply be stating the obvious.
But we are talking here of two professions in which people have raised lying to a fine art, where words seldom visit brains before going straight from the id to the mouth. To mix biological metaphors, movie people and politicians lie from the heart.
Geffen, in his blunt way, was echoing the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senator and Harvard professor. An odd couple, but on this subject, there is barely one degree of separation between them.
Geffen’s remark that “Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling” set off a mudfight. Clinton’s Hollywood supporters demanded Obama apologize and Obama wondered why he should be responsible for what Geffen said.
If this raises a sensitive issue for the Clintons, Geffen did not invent it.
Moynihan, whom Hillary eventually replaced, was deeply troubled during Bill Clinton’s Senate trial. He voted against impeachment but backed censuring him.
“There’s a sort of absence of character which has been the quality of this administration,” he told the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin.
The sight of Hillary supporters trying to drag Barack into her perceived problem does not contradict Moynihan.
So welcome to the big leagues, Senator Obama. When they throw high, hard curves at you, keep keeping your head down.
So when David Geffen, Beverly Hills mogul, calls Hillary and Bill Clinton of D.C. liars, he may simply be stating the obvious.
But we are talking here of two professions in which people have raised lying to a fine art, where words seldom visit brains before going straight from the id to the mouth. To mix biological metaphors, movie people and politicians lie from the heart.
Geffen, in his blunt way, was echoing the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senator and Harvard professor. An odd couple, but on this subject, there is barely one degree of separation between them.
Geffen’s remark that “Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling” set off a mudfight. Clinton’s Hollywood supporters demanded Obama apologize and Obama wondered why he should be responsible for what Geffen said.
If this raises a sensitive issue for the Clintons, Geffen did not invent it.
Moynihan, whom Hillary eventually replaced, was deeply troubled during Bill Clinton’s Senate trial. He voted against impeachment but backed censuring him.
“There’s a sort of absence of character which has been the quality of this administration,” he told the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin.
The sight of Hillary supporters trying to drag Barack into her perceived problem does not contradict Moynihan.
So welcome to the big leagues, Senator Obama. When they throw high, hard curves at you, keep keeping your head down.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Screen Tests for '08
Hollywood never liked George Bush, even before he produced the “Ishtar” of American wars.
Now the movie crowd is beside itself, buzzing around Oscar candidates for ’08. The choices are delicious.
Will it be the umpteenth remake of “A Star is Born” with Barack Obama gender-bending the Streisand-Judy Garland role?
How about “Million Dollar Baby” with Hillary Clinton? But the ending of that one was a downer.
Then there’s “Cinderella Man” with Al Gore. With a nomination this year, he’s box-office again. Remember how Katharine Hepburn overcame her early bombs.
Rudy Giuliani could be another “Lethal Weapon,” but then again, maybe not.
Perhaps, after all the cynicism, it’s time to reach way back to Frank Capra. An update of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”? Tom Vilsack is out in the boondocks auditioning for the part.
Give the man a screen test. America may be ready for a fresh face.
Now the movie crowd is beside itself, buzzing around Oscar candidates for ’08. The choices are delicious.
Will it be the umpteenth remake of “A Star is Born” with Barack Obama gender-bending the Streisand-Judy Garland role?
How about “Million Dollar Baby” with Hillary Clinton? But the ending of that one was a downer.
Then there’s “Cinderella Man” with Al Gore. With a nomination this year, he’s box-office again. Remember how Katharine Hepburn overcame her early bombs.
Rudy Giuliani could be another “Lethal Weapon,” but then again, maybe not.
Perhaps, after all the cynicism, it’s time to reach way back to Frank Capra. An update of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”? Tom Vilsack is out in the boondocks auditioning for the part.
Give the man a screen test. America may be ready for a fresh face.
H.M.O.'s Secret of Success
Health care coverage is shaping up as the hot-button domestic issue for ’08. To help Presidential candidates of both parties understand what they are up against, herewith a confidential memo provided by a public-spirited insurance company insider:
TO: Claims Prevention Department
FROM: President, H.M.O
Bills are being processed and paid without full use of our avoidance procedures. Such negligence impacts your company’s bottom line, let me review our guidelines:
1. Use the response “require more information from physician” to its full extent. Some providers fill in code numbers, diagnoses and dates of treatment. But who are these people? Can we trust them with the health of our insured not knowing when and where they went to medical school, how long they have been practicing, and whether they rent or own their Lexuses?
2. Handle phone queries properly. Quick answers deprive members of full participation in their care. For the persistent, employ your half-hour hold capability and, if that fails, tell them the computer is down and promise to call back. That will keep them close to their phones and away from doctors’ offices.
3. Don’t confuse claimants with data overload. Just indicate service is not covered because of a,b,c,d,z or some combination. Our forms make definitions of a,b,c,d,z easily comprehensible with the aid of a magnifying glass and legal dictionary.
4. Use “pre-existing condition” as a disqualification. If enrollees are treated for back pain or headaches, assume they had backs and heads before signing up. Are we to pay for problems that should have been treated in the past?
5. When all else fails, deny reimbursement with “This claim has been previously considered.” By the time the patient, physician, laboratory and hospital check with one another, no one will be sure who sent or received what. We should not pay twice or, better yet, once.
We will soon have new tools to aid in your work. A revised schedule of “customary fees” will reflect the global economy by factoring in provider charges of emerging nations. And our accountants are number-crunching the promising concept of a receding deductible.
Our new non-discriminatory policy of hiring applicants regardless of IQ, education or Attention Deficit Disorder will insure better performance in the future. Remember: A claim denied or delayed is a drop of lifeblood to the health of our organization.
TO: Claims Prevention Department
FROM: President, H.M.O
Bills are being processed and paid without full use of our avoidance procedures. Such negligence impacts your company’s bottom line, let me review our guidelines:
1. Use the response “require more information from physician” to its full extent. Some providers fill in code numbers, diagnoses and dates of treatment. But who are these people? Can we trust them with the health of our insured not knowing when and where they went to medical school, how long they have been practicing, and whether they rent or own their Lexuses?
2. Handle phone queries properly. Quick answers deprive members of full participation in their care. For the persistent, employ your half-hour hold capability and, if that fails, tell them the computer is down and promise to call back. That will keep them close to their phones and away from doctors’ offices.
3. Don’t confuse claimants with data overload. Just indicate service is not covered because of a,b,c,d,z or some combination. Our forms make definitions of a,b,c,d,z easily comprehensible with the aid of a magnifying glass and legal dictionary.
4. Use “pre-existing condition” as a disqualification. If enrollees are treated for back pain or headaches, assume they had backs and heads before signing up. Are we to pay for problems that should have been treated in the past?
5. When all else fails, deny reimbursement with “This claim has been previously considered.” By the time the patient, physician, laboratory and hospital check with one another, no one will be sure who sent or received what. We should not pay twice or, better yet, once.
We will soon have new tools to aid in your work. A revised schedule of “customary fees” will reflect the global economy by factoring in provider charges of emerging nations. And our accountants are number-crunching the promising concept of a receding deductible.
Our new non-discriminatory policy of hiring applicants regardless of IQ, education or Attention Deficit Disorder will insure better performance in the future. Remember: A claim denied or delayed is a drop of lifeblood to the health of our organization.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Told You
Tonight's headline: Blair to Withdraw Some Troops from Iraq
Posted 1/18/07: Tony Blair's Vanishing Act
Posted 1/18/07: Tony Blair's Vanishing Act
More Groucho
Several times a year, as editor of McCalls, I would send Mr. Marx a box of his favorite cigars, with a note asking him to write something for us.
He always responded, but I could never find a way to make an article out of "Thanks for the cigars, Groucho."
He always responded, but I could never find a way to make an article out of "Thanks for the cigars, Groucho."
Rove v. Murtha
As John Murtha tries to set limits in Iraq, Karl Rove will be unleashing his rabid attack dogs to swift-boat the former Marine.
Rove’s method is political assassination: Don’t debate issues, destroy opponents. Murtha is only the latest on his hit list. In 2004, John McCain, John Kerry and triple amputee Senator Max Cleland were attacked with distortions and lies by an Administration of draft evaders turning men who suffered for their country into objects of suspicion and scorn.
When Rove leaves, the White House will have to be fumigated. Carrier of the worst Washington plague since Joe McCarthy, Rove is even more pernicious. The Wisconsin Senator spread fear and suspicion, the man called Bush’s Brain is deadlier.
In the shadows of the Scooter Libby trial, his fingerprints are all over the outing of Joe Wilson’s wife, but casual defamation is the least of Rove’s weapons.
Nixon brought shadowy plumbers and tricksters into the fringes of his White House. Bush has taken it further, putting the man he calls “the architect” into the heart of the Oval Office.
Those with the stomach for a fuller picture of the President’s chief of slime can start with Wikipedia and follow the links through a lifetime of rooting through opponents’ garbage, putting out fake fliers in their names, inventing new ways to slander and libel them.
Rove has outdone Joe McCarthy in damaging America. What’s needed is a latter-day Joe Welch to confront him and ask, “Have you no sense of decency at long last?”
Last summer, when Rove accused Democrats of cutting and running, Murtha noted he was “in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside saying stay the course. That’s not a plan...that’s a political statement.”
Not vintage Joe Welch, but it’s a start.
Rove’s method is political assassination: Don’t debate issues, destroy opponents. Murtha is only the latest on his hit list. In 2004, John McCain, John Kerry and triple amputee Senator Max Cleland were attacked with distortions and lies by an Administration of draft evaders turning men who suffered for their country into objects of suspicion and scorn.
When Rove leaves, the White House will have to be fumigated. Carrier of the worst Washington plague since Joe McCarthy, Rove is even more pernicious. The Wisconsin Senator spread fear and suspicion, the man called Bush’s Brain is deadlier.
In the shadows of the Scooter Libby trial, his fingerprints are all over the outing of Joe Wilson’s wife, but casual defamation is the least of Rove’s weapons.
Nixon brought shadowy plumbers and tricksters into the fringes of his White House. Bush has taken it further, putting the man he calls “the architect” into the heart of the Oval Office.
Those with the stomach for a fuller picture of the President’s chief of slime can start with Wikipedia and follow the links through a lifetime of rooting through opponents’ garbage, putting out fake fliers in their names, inventing new ways to slander and libel them.
Rove has outdone Joe McCarthy in damaging America. What’s needed is a latter-day Joe Welch to confront him and ask, “Have you no sense of decency at long last?”
Last summer, when Rove accused Democrats of cutting and running, Murtha noted he was “in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside saying stay the course. That’s not a plan...that’s a political statement.”
Not vintage Joe Welch, but it’s a start.
Monday, February 19, 2007
You Don't Have to Read This
Groucho stories are like peanuts. It's impossible to stop with just one.
In the 1930s, before air travel, in the Los Angeles train station, he ran into Oscar Levant, the melancholic pianist turned movie actor, just arriving after the three-day trip from New York, worn out, wrinkled and near-suicidal.
"Oscar," Groucho told him, "you look awful. Why don't you come out to my house for drinks, dinner and a dip in the pool?"
"That sounds wonderful," Levant said as Groucho glided away. "Where do you live?"
Over his shoulder as he disappeared, Groucho answered, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
In the 1930s, before air travel, in the Los Angeles train station, he ran into Oscar Levant, the melancholic pianist turned movie actor, just arriving after the three-day trip from New York, worn out, wrinkled and near-suicidal.
"Oscar," Groucho told him, "you look awful. Why don't you come out to my house for drinks, dinner and a dip in the pool?"
"That sounds wonderful," Levant said as Groucho glided away. "Where do you live?"
Over his shoulder as he disappeared, Groucho answered, "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Half-Way Measures
In his New York Times blog, Dick Cavett tells a Groucho Marx story about the swimming pool at a restricted country club.
“My daughter’s only half-Jewish,” Groucho said. “Can she go in up to her waist?”
Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, must have been stealing from The Master when he told of asking an Arizona golf club, “Can I play nine holes? I’m only half-Jewish.”
In any case, it may or may not have been Groucho who first said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that takes people like me as members.”
“My daughter’s only half-Jewish,” Groucho said. “Can she go in up to her waist?”
Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, must have been stealing from The Master when he told of asking an Arizona golf club, “Can I play nine holes? I’m only half-Jewish.”
In any case, it may or may not have been Groucho who first said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that takes people like me as members.”
American Disconnect
My social life is not what it used to be, so let me put this as a question: Is America, as President Bush and his apologists keep telling us, really at war?
The last time I was in a room with a group of suburban, mostly professional people, nobody was talking about Iraq or Washington, for that matter.
Last week’s Congressional disgrace was in the news, but did constituents care? Were their “public servants” hearing from them? If they were, could so many Republicans in “the people’s House” have kept parroting their absurd party line?
During Vietnam, there were massive protests, campus riots and people setting themselves on fire in front of the Pentagon: body rhetoric. Now those who care are venting on the web: words.
Vietnam, fought by draftees, was touching almost every family. Iraq, for most Americans, is being waged by some anonymous, volunteer “them.” Yet the blood is just as real.
Nobody would want that public turmoil again but, particularly on a day when we commemorate our patriotic past, the silence is eerie.
The last time I was in a room with a group of suburban, mostly professional people, nobody was talking about Iraq or Washington, for that matter.
Last week’s Congressional disgrace was in the news, but did constituents care? Were their “public servants” hearing from them? If they were, could so many Republicans in “the people’s House” have kept parroting their absurd party line?
During Vietnam, there were massive protests, campus riots and people setting themselves on fire in front of the Pentagon: body rhetoric. Now those who care are venting on the web: words.
Vietnam, fought by draftees, was touching almost every family. Iraq, for most Americans, is being waged by some anonymous, volunteer “them.” Yet the blood is just as real.
Nobody would want that public turmoil again but, particularly on a day when we commemorate our patriotic past, the silence is eerie.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Tony Snow Job
One thing President Bush has done right is upgrading his Press Secretary, from the class nerd (Ari Fleischer) and the clod who couldn’t get a date to the prom (Scott McClellan) to the cool guy on campus, the Hugh Grant of the Bridget Jones movies.
On Meet the Press today, Tony Snow was smooth-talking to explain how the top leaders in Iran are and aren’t behind the Baghdad violence, why Bush welcomes Congress’ input but won’t pay attention to it, that Iraq was a good idea but war is unpredictable.
He made Tim Russert look positively coarse.
In the last century, White House spokespeople tended toward rough-and-gruff ex-journalists like Eisenhower’s Jim Hagerty and JFK’s Pierre Salinger, a great guy now remembered for being the victim of an early web hoax--that the Navy had accidentally shot down an American airliner in 1996.
Well-tailored, wised-up Tony Snow is much too sophisticated to fall for something like that. The former Fox News flunky is better at spinning out misinformation than his current boss, just what America needs when we don’t know whether we’re coming or going in Iraq.
On Meet the Press today, Tony Snow was smooth-talking to explain how the top leaders in Iran are and aren’t behind the Baghdad violence, why Bush welcomes Congress’ input but won’t pay attention to it, that Iraq was a good idea but war is unpredictable.
He made Tim Russert look positively coarse.
In the last century, White House spokespeople tended toward rough-and-gruff ex-journalists like Eisenhower’s Jim Hagerty and JFK’s Pierre Salinger, a great guy now remembered for being the victim of an early web hoax--that the Navy had accidentally shot down an American airliner in 1996.
Well-tailored, wised-up Tony Snow is much too sophisticated to fall for something like that. The former Fox News flunky is better at spinning out misinformation than his current boss, just what America needs when we don’t know whether we’re coming or going in Iraq.
Is Bill Maher Jumping the Shark?
On his HBO season premiere this weekend, America’s Smirker-in-Chief looked lost.
Bill Maher, who can be fall-down funny offending everyone, lobbed softballs at John Edwards and actually murmured praise while passing up the chance to ask about his dustup with the Catholic League over two bloggers forced to leave his Presidential campaign.
Too sharp to have overlooked it, did Maher, who sniffs out everyone else’s selling out, agree not to ask as the price of getting Edwards to appear?
The soporific panel consisted of a bland black Republican, a deposed CEO plugging a book and a TV comic repeating a lame joke about not offending anyone until he gets his citizenship papers.
New Rules, Bill: If you want to kill the audience, forget your tired rants against Religion and keep after the Dark Forces in Washington who are killing our freedoms and our young people in Iraq.
Bill Maher, who can be fall-down funny offending everyone, lobbed softballs at John Edwards and actually murmured praise while passing up the chance to ask about his dustup with the Catholic League over two bloggers forced to leave his Presidential campaign.
Too sharp to have overlooked it, did Maher, who sniffs out everyone else’s selling out, agree not to ask as the price of getting Edwards to appear?
The soporific panel consisted of a bland black Republican, a deposed CEO plugging a book and a TV comic repeating a lame joke about not offending anyone until he gets his citizenship papers.
New Rules, Bill: If you want to kill the audience, forget your tired rants against Religion and keep after the Dark Forces in Washington who are killing our freedoms and our young people in Iraq.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Celebritydom: Marilyn to Anna Nicole
“Why,” Marilyn Monroe asked half a century ago, “do they print things about me that aren’t true?”
“Because,” I answered, “pictures of you sell magazines and newspapers and, when there’s no excuse, they’ll use rumors and gossip, anything they can get.”
I was interviewing her at a crucial point in her life, March 1955, between her marriages to two cultural icons, Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, when she had moved to New York to study at the Actor’s Studio.
Marilyn died in 1962 at the age of 36. Thirty years later, a blonde model, Anna Nicole Smith, posed nude for Playboy Magazine, which Hugh Hefner had started in 1953 by buying nude calendar photos of Marilyn.
Ms. Smith was, of course, tagged the “new Marilyn Monroe” and launched on a celebrity career, hampered by a lack of any discernible talent.
Performing at a Houston club, the 26-year-old stripper met 89-year-old billionaire, J. Howard Marshall, who married her and died thirteen months later.
Why am I telling you all this, when Anna Nicole Smith’s own death is now a flood of 24/7 media sewage about conflict over the cause, the paternity of her daughter (and the child’s inheritance) and custody of Ms. Smith’s cadaver?
This is not to harrumph about the good old days, when fame required something more than being well-known for well-knownness, in Daniel Boorstin’s phrase, but to get back to the subject of authenticity in public life I wrote about in “The X Factor for ’08.”
Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy, whose lives intersected, were, for better or worse, substantial people, unlike today’s mostly cardboard Presidential candidates and the shameless reality-show Paris Hilton-Donald Trump fame whores who pollute our consciousness today.
“Don’t make me into a joke,” Marilyn had pleaded in her last interview. With Anna Nicole Smith, is there any other choice?
“Because,” I answered, “pictures of you sell magazines and newspapers and, when there’s no excuse, they’ll use rumors and gossip, anything they can get.”
I was interviewing her at a crucial point in her life, March 1955, between her marriages to two cultural icons, Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, when she had moved to New York to study at the Actor’s Studio.
Marilyn died in 1962 at the age of 36. Thirty years later, a blonde model, Anna Nicole Smith, posed nude for Playboy Magazine, which Hugh Hefner had started in 1953 by buying nude calendar photos of Marilyn.
Ms. Smith was, of course, tagged the “new Marilyn Monroe” and launched on a celebrity career, hampered by a lack of any discernible talent.
Performing at a Houston club, the 26-year-old stripper met 89-year-old billionaire, J. Howard Marshall, who married her and died thirteen months later.
Why am I telling you all this, when Anna Nicole Smith’s own death is now a flood of 24/7 media sewage about conflict over the cause, the paternity of her daughter (and the child’s inheritance) and custody of Ms. Smith’s cadaver?
This is not to harrumph about the good old days, when fame required something more than being well-known for well-knownness, in Daniel Boorstin’s phrase, but to get back to the subject of authenticity in public life I wrote about in “The X Factor for ’08.”
Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy, whose lives intersected, were, for better or worse, substantial people, unlike today’s mostly cardboard Presidential candidates and the shameless reality-show Paris Hilton-Donald Trump fame whores who pollute our consciousness today.
“Don’t make me into a joke,” Marilyn had pleaded in her last interview. With Anna Nicole Smith, is there any other choice?
Friday, February 16, 2007
Where Have All the Grownups Gone?
The news this week--mature men and women orating like losers in a high-school elocution contest--is too much to bear.
In the House “debate” on a non-binding resolution and the Senate debate on whether to debate, our form of government is enduring the worst humiliation in memory.
Add to the Bush Administration’s long list of achievements, beyond a disastrous war and the erosion of our liberties, the reduction of our legislative branch to futility and impotence.
Even the comic relief of John Boehner’s tears is not enough to offset his loyalists’ flapdoodle about “victory” and the Democrats’ despair over groping for new ways to restate the obvious.
Do their mothers know what they do for a living?
In the House “debate” on a non-binding resolution and the Senate debate on whether to debate, our form of government is enduring the worst humiliation in memory.
Add to the Bush Administration’s long list of achievements, beyond a disastrous war and the erosion of our liberties, the reduction of our legislative branch to futility and impotence.
Even the comic relief of John Boehner’s tears is not enough to offset his loyalists’ flapdoodle about “victory” and the Democrats’ despair over groping for new ways to restate the obvious.
Do their mothers know what they do for a living?
Bashful Blogtogenarian
As any casual reader must know, my modesty is exceeded only by my technological brilliance.
So herewith, in my ninetieth post, for any reader with a craving to know more about me than any sane person would want to, my first attempt at an embedded link from the Stamford (CT) Advocate 2/15/07. If it doesn't work, you're on your own
So herewith, in my ninetieth post, for any reader with a craving to know more about me than any sane person would want to, my first attempt at an embedded link from the Stamford (CT) Advocate 2/15/07. If it doesn't work, you're on your own
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Past Forward
George Bush and Dick Cheney have made elder statesmen out of Oliver North and John Dean.
The ghosts of Iran-Contra and Watergate can now be seen regularly on cable TV, telling us where we’re going wrong in Iraq and elsewhere.
Oliver North, who never before saw a military action he didn’t like, is criticizing the Surge on Fox TV and telling us “nearly all” the troops don’t want it. As a Reagan aide in the 1980s, he was caught lying to Congress about selling missiles to Iran and using the money to buy weapons to fight the Nicaraguan Contras.
Dean, who was Nixon’s White House lawyer and went to prison for the Watergate coverup, is now an articulate critic of this “authoritarian” Administration with a book titled “Conservatives Without Conscience.”
When his former deputy, Fred Fielding, was recently appointed White House counsel, Dean called him a fine lawyer but noted “he’s been sipping some of the Kool-Aid lately so I’m not sure how he’s going to come out on this.”
Everybody, it seems, learns something from past mistakes except you-know-who.
The ghosts of Iran-Contra and Watergate can now be seen regularly on cable TV, telling us where we’re going wrong in Iraq and elsewhere.
Oliver North, who never before saw a military action he didn’t like, is criticizing the Surge on Fox TV and telling us “nearly all” the troops don’t want it. As a Reagan aide in the 1980s, he was caught lying to Congress about selling missiles to Iran and using the money to buy weapons to fight the Nicaraguan Contras.
Dean, who was Nixon’s White House lawyer and went to prison for the Watergate coverup, is now an articulate critic of this “authoritarian” Administration with a book titled “Conservatives Without Conscience.”
When his former deputy, Fred Fielding, was recently appointed White House counsel, Dean called him a fine lawyer but noted “he’s been sipping some of the Kool-Aid lately so I’m not sure how he’s going to come out on this.”
Everybody, it seems, learns something from past mistakes except you-know-who.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
For Republicans, Right Is Wrong
In the week of Lincoln’s birthday and valentines, the minority party frontrunners are puckering up to the wrong electoral backside.
Like generals fighting the last war, they don’t realize that George Bush and Karl Rove may have worn out, at least for now, the politics of hatred and division. By any measure, in 2006 Democrats closed “the God Gap” among evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics while widening their lead elsewhere.
Still, here are Giuliani and McCain lurching rightward on the flat-earth theory that The Base is vital to winning, if not the 2008 election, at least the nomination.
Unless they believe that Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee can revitalize the disheartened Bush-Rove constituency, their contortions on social issues could be damaging them more with traditional Republicans and Independents than winning over right-wing diehards.
After eight years of poisonous polarization, it’s more than the war, it’s the ultra-partisan stupidity that started it and won’t let it stop. America is ready for something else, maybe not sweetness and light, but a little sense and civility could go a long way.
Like generals fighting the last war, they don’t realize that George Bush and Karl Rove may have worn out, at least for now, the politics of hatred and division. By any measure, in 2006 Democrats closed “the God Gap” among evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics while widening their lead elsewhere.
Still, here are Giuliani and McCain lurching rightward on the flat-earth theory that The Base is vital to winning, if not the 2008 election, at least the nomination.
Unless they believe that Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee can revitalize the disheartened Bush-Rove constituency, their contortions on social issues could be damaging them more with traditional Republicans and Independents than winning over right-wing diehards.
After eight years of poisonous polarization, it’s more than the war, it’s the ultra-partisan stupidity that started it and won’t let it stop. America is ready for something else, maybe not sweetness and light, but a little sense and civility could go a long way.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Romney Legacy
Now that Mitt Romney has gone back to his ancestoral home in Michigan to make his declaration, it seems only fair to recall what the former Republican Governor of Ohio, Jim Rhodes, said about his father's 1968 somewhat erratic campaign for the same position:
"Watching George Romney run for the Presidency is like watching a duck try to make love to a football."
My memory is not what it used to be. Governor Rhodes may not have said "make love."
"Watching George Romney run for the Presidency is like watching a duck try to make love to a football."
My memory is not what it used to be. Governor Rhodes may not have said "make love."
For the VP: Forgive Me, Rodgers and Hart
Our funny valentine,
Sweet comic valentine,
You make us smile with our heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet you're our favorite work of art
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
Are you always in a pique?
Did you find the WMD you seek?
When you see a little beak, should we dart?
Why does your smile look like a glare?
When Bush calls, do you care?
Does everything you say have to be so tart?
Will you ever leave us be?
Is your term till eternity?
Can we ever be free, even when we part?
But don't change a hair for us
Not if you care for us
Stay, little valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine's
Each day is Valentine's Day
Sweet comic valentine,
You make us smile with our heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet you're our favorite work of art
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
Are you always in a pique?
Did you find the WMD you seek?
When you see a little beak, should we dart?
Why does your smile look like a glare?
When Bush calls, do you care?
Does everything you say have to be so tart?
Will you ever leave us be?
Is your term till eternity?
Can we ever be free, even when we part?
But don't change a hair for us
Not if you care for us
Stay, little valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine's
Each day is Valentine's Day
Dreamy!
Sleeping on the job is good for you. CBS Evening News reports a study showing after-lunch naps can reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke.
As a lifelong midday napper, I could have told them that. After half an hour on the couch, I would bounce up with brilliant ideas for articles, catchy cover lines and ways to solve messy office problems. Some of them even worked.
Now companies (CBS showed an ad agency) are encouraging high-tech naps in sleeping pods and reaping rewards in creativity.
Somebody should wake up our Congressmen and tell them. They might dream up a way to get us out of Iraq...
No, wait. Let me take a nap and come up with a better punchline.
As a lifelong midday napper, I could have told them that. After half an hour on the couch, I would bounce up with brilliant ideas for articles, catchy cover lines and ways to solve messy office problems. Some of them even worked.
Now companies (CBS showed an ad agency) are encouraging high-tech naps in sleeping pods and reaping rewards in creativity.
Somebody should wake up our Congressmen and tell them. They might dream up a way to get us out of Iraq...
No, wait. Let me take a nap and come up with a better punchline.
Monday, February 12, 2007
The X Factor for '08
During the 1960 campaign, John Kennedy said he sometimes felt sorry for Richard Nixon: “It must be hard getting up every morning trying to decide who you’re going to be that day.”
That could be the X Factor for 2008. Since Kennedy, few politicians have seemed so comfortable in their own skins. Ronald Reagan and Mario Cuomo come to mind, but Reagan was an actor and Cuomo refused to go through the political meat grinder in 1992.
Next year, after the longest campaign ever, voters will be starved for authenticity, the sense of a real person behind all the packaging.
Thus far, prospects are poor.
In fifteen years, has anyone seen Hillary Clinton in an uncalculated public moment?
Will John McCain stop reinventing himself before or after his party’s primaries?
What, if anything, is behind John Edwards’ eager-to-please smile?
When will Mitt Romney stop tripping over his past positions?
Who will emerge as the real Rudy Giuliani from his purloined playbook? Even this early, he is repudiating versions of his former self.
As voters puzzle over the meaning of such ink-blot candidates, will they start yearning for someone who is actually there for them to see?
That desire is part of what’s behind Obama’s early surge, but even he had to tell Tim Russert with a worried smile that his wife and friends think he’s still there behind all the hype. Can he stay? On 60 Minutes last night, he said the “attempt to airbrush your life...is exhausting.”
Earnest men like Dennis Kucinich and Tom Vilsack are trying, without much luck, to be seen and heard.
In our age of super-blather, we have time for a long, hard look at the next President in debates that go beyond catch phrases and gotchas.
We can take clues from “Honest Abe,” everybody’s favorite President this month. (Obama steeped his announcement in a Lincolnesque aura, and Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire has been comparing the Great Emancipator with, no joke, George W. Bush.)
In 2008, 150 years after the Lincoln-Douglas debates helped decide the 1860 Presidential election, we can create their equivalent for our era. Lincoln and Stephen Douglas went at it seven times for four hours each so voters could see the men behind the rhetoric.
We can insist that today’s contenders stop conning us and confront one another in comparable give-and-take.
Or will we just settle for a rerun of those “American Idol” campaigns that spewed out George W. Bush?
That could be the X Factor for 2008. Since Kennedy, few politicians have seemed so comfortable in their own skins. Ronald Reagan and Mario Cuomo come to mind, but Reagan was an actor and Cuomo refused to go through the political meat grinder in 1992.
Next year, after the longest campaign ever, voters will be starved for authenticity, the sense of a real person behind all the packaging.
Thus far, prospects are poor.
In fifteen years, has anyone seen Hillary Clinton in an uncalculated public moment?
Will John McCain stop reinventing himself before or after his party’s primaries?
What, if anything, is behind John Edwards’ eager-to-please smile?
When will Mitt Romney stop tripping over his past positions?
Who will emerge as the real Rudy Giuliani from his purloined playbook? Even this early, he is repudiating versions of his former self.
As voters puzzle over the meaning of such ink-blot candidates, will they start yearning for someone who is actually there for them to see?
That desire is part of what’s behind Obama’s early surge, but even he had to tell Tim Russert with a worried smile that his wife and friends think he’s still there behind all the hype. Can he stay? On 60 Minutes last night, he said the “attempt to airbrush your life...is exhausting.”
Earnest men like Dennis Kucinich and Tom Vilsack are trying, without much luck, to be seen and heard.
In our age of super-blather, we have time for a long, hard look at the next President in debates that go beyond catch phrases and gotchas.
We can take clues from “Honest Abe,” everybody’s favorite President this month. (Obama steeped his announcement in a Lincolnesque aura, and Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire has been comparing the Great Emancipator with, no joke, George W. Bush.)
In 2008, 150 years after the Lincoln-Douglas debates helped decide the 1860 Presidential election, we can create their equivalent for our era. Lincoln and Stephen Douglas went at it seven times for four hours each so voters could see the men behind the rhetoric.
We can insist that today’s contenders stop conning us and confront one another in comparable give-and-take.
Or will we just settle for a rerun of those “American Idol” campaigns that spewed out George W. Bush?
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Iraq: The Clash of Cliches
Politics stops at the water’s edge.
Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Bush’s opponents are rats deserting a sinking ship.
Bush’s supporters are lemmings rushing off a cliff.
Pick any platitude from any era, and somebody in Congress is uttering some variation of it right now while evading the hard work of figuring out how to stop the bloodshed in Iraq.
As Mike Nichols and Elaine May used to say in their nightclub act: “It’s really a moral problem.” “Yes, and moral problems are so much more interesting than real problems.”
But they weren't being paid to solve real problems. These jokers are.
Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Bush’s opponents are rats deserting a sinking ship.
Bush’s supporters are lemmings rushing off a cliff.
Pick any platitude from any era, and somebody in Congress is uttering some variation of it right now while evading the hard work of figuring out how to stop the bloodshed in Iraq.
As Mike Nichols and Elaine May used to say in their nightclub act: “It’s really a moral problem.” “Yes, and moral problems are so much more interesting than real problems.”
But they weren't being paid to solve real problems. These jokers are.
Pillorying Hillary
This weekend in New Hampshire, Senator Clinton again evades a yes or no answer to whether her 2002 vote to go to war was a mistake.
As a constituent then, I wrote, begging her: “Don’t give President Bush a blank check to invade Iraq.” I got back a canned letter, with a tortured rationale for the vote she eventually cast.
But enough is enough. Whatever her reasons to avoid the word “mistake,” the spectacle of her now being pilloried by John Edwards et al, who voted the same way, is disgusting.
As the first woman with a real chance to occupy the Oval Office, she is under pressure to seem as resolute as, say, George Bush. She is making a tactical mistake in not uttering mistake, but her reasons are understandable. What matters now is how forceful she will be in ending all this needless bloodshed.
Her detractors seem to be in the same league as those who wanted John F. Kennedy to assure them he wouldn’t be taking orders from the Pope. They should find subtler ways to express their prejudice.
As a constituent then, I wrote, begging her: “Don’t give President Bush a blank check to invade Iraq.” I got back a canned letter, with a tortured rationale for the vote she eventually cast.
But enough is enough. Whatever her reasons to avoid the word “mistake,” the spectacle of her now being pilloried by John Edwards et al, who voted the same way, is disgusting.
As the first woman with a real chance to occupy the Oval Office, she is under pressure to seem as resolute as, say, George Bush. She is making a tactical mistake in not uttering mistake, but her reasons are understandable. What matters now is how forceful she will be in ending all this needless bloodshed.
Her detractors seem to be in the same league as those who wanted John F. Kennedy to assure them he wouldn’t be taking orders from the Pope. They should find subtler ways to express their prejudice.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Dial M for Magic
Many Americans of a certain age (mine) would confer media knighthood on Ted Turner for giving us back our youth with those wonderful old movies on TCM.
That bizarre thought is prompted by news this week of another kind of immortality for an old friend, Frederick Knott, who wrote one of the best thrillers of all time, “Dial M for Murder.”
Knott was a spare writer but meticulous plotter, and now his notes, sketches and production papers are on view at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, CT, donated by his widow, the actress Ann Hillary.
A shy, almost reclusive man whose work reflected intellectual rigor, wit and insight, his passing in 2002 was a reminder of what is long gone from most of today’s movies. A case in painful point was a shallow, glossy remake of “Dial M” in 1998 with none of Hitchcock’s, or Knott’s, droll quality.
But no matter--thanks to Turner, we can still wallow with Grace Kelly in the 1954 original or Audrey Hepburn in Knott’s equally stunning “Wait Until Dark” of 1967.
That bizarre thought is prompted by news this week of another kind of immortality for an old friend, Frederick Knott, who wrote one of the best thrillers of all time, “Dial M for Murder.”
Knott was a spare writer but meticulous plotter, and now his notes, sketches and production papers are on view at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, CT, donated by his widow, the actress Ann Hillary.
A shy, almost reclusive man whose work reflected intellectual rigor, wit and insight, his passing in 2002 was a reminder of what is long gone from most of today’s movies. A case in painful point was a shallow, glossy remake of “Dial M” in 1998 with none of Hitchcock’s, or Knott’s, droll quality.
But no matter--thanks to Turner, we can still wallow with Grace Kelly in the 1954 original or Audrey Hepburn in Knott’s equally stunning “Wait Until Dark” of 1967.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Sick
Yeah, yeah, irresistible: A lovesick astronaut in diapers drives 900 miles...etc. etc ad nauseum.
But as inevitable as this week’s media smirkfest over Lisa Novak was, it raises a teeny question: Did any of us go into journalism planning to be as insensitive as politicians or witless as stand-up comics?
In my time, mental illness was sad. It still is, even if we coat it with hilarious headlines and sanctimonious questions about NASA’s screening standards.
But as inevitable as this week’s media smirkfest over Lisa Novak was, it raises a teeny question: Did any of us go into journalism planning to be as insensitive as politicians or witless as stand-up comics?
In my time, mental illness was sad. It still is, even if we coat it with hilarious headlines and sanctimonious questions about NASA’s screening standards.
Vilsack Revisited
At this stage of the 1976 and 1992 elections, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were little-known governors of small states with infinitesimal rankings in the Presidential polls.
That’s the slim reed to which Tom Vilsack’s 2008 hopes are lashed as the just-retired governor of Iowa makes his way, in media dimness, toward next year’s primaries.
“I’m not a rock star,” he tells you, ‘but I am rock-solid.”
Since we saw him in December, he has raised over $1.1 from admirers including Warren Buffet, made a solid impression at the Democrats’ meeting last weekend as the only candidate to call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and will soon unveil an energy plan calling for a 75 percent reduction from emissions levels of 2000.
In a small room with half a dozen suburban reporters last evening, Vilsack continued to talk sense without notes (as he did last weekend to Howard Dean’s astonishment).
“We’re at the American Idol stage of the campaign,” he told them, but is confident that voters will want answers rather than slogans while talking earnestly and persuasively of his conversation with the Prime Minister of India about the link between literacy and world hunger.
Of course, there are differences between 1992 and 2008, but if Tom Vilsack fails to emulate her husband, “the Comeback Kid,” Hillary Clinton could do a lot worse in picking a running mate to balance her own strengths.
That’s the slim reed to which Tom Vilsack’s 2008 hopes are lashed as the just-retired governor of Iowa makes his way, in media dimness, toward next year’s primaries.
“I’m not a rock star,” he tells you, ‘but I am rock-solid.”
Since we saw him in December, he has raised over $1.1 from admirers including Warren Buffet, made a solid impression at the Democrats’ meeting last weekend as the only candidate to call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and will soon unveil an energy plan calling for a 75 percent reduction from emissions levels of 2000.
In a small room with half a dozen suburban reporters last evening, Vilsack continued to talk sense without notes (as he did last weekend to Howard Dean’s astonishment).
“We’re at the American Idol stage of the campaign,” he told them, but is confident that voters will want answers rather than slogans while talking earnestly and persuasively of his conversation with the Prime Minister of India about the link between literacy and world hunger.
Of course, there are differences between 1992 and 2008, but if Tom Vilsack fails to emulate her husband, “the Comeback Kid,” Hillary Clinton could do a lot worse in picking a running mate to balance her own strengths.
Bush's Other Grandfather
On the Daily Show last night, Ralph Nader told Jon Stewart how his mother, at a reception, refused to release the President’s grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, from a handshake until he promised to look into a civic problem that was bothering her.
If this is Bush Family History Month, I should tell my story about George W’s other grandfather.
In 1953, I went to work as a junior editor for his mother's father, Marvin Pierce, who was president of the McCall Corporation, a publishing and printing company with several thousand employees.
Soon after I arrived, an elderly secretary edged me into a corner. "You're not the first Jew to work here," she said, "only the first one they know about." Years earlier, she had changed her name to get under the radar.
The company had no personnel department, but hiring was vetted by Marvin Pierce's secretary, a formidable woman named Emily Chestnutt, who grilled publishers and editors about the pedigrees of applicants.
A year later, I told a young woman I knew about a staff opening. All went well until her resume reached Ms. Chestnutt. She called Wade Nichols, the editor, to say she was worried about someone named Dorothy Weichel (suspiciously ethnic) who had worked for a trade union (politically dubious) and the United World Federalists (downright Un-American).
Nichols, who had done who-knows-what to get me on the payroll, somehow charmed Ms. Chestnutt into letting him hire Dorothy. Neither knew that her family was suburban Boston Protestant, her mother eligible to join the Daughters of the American Revolution and the First Families of Virginia .
Marvin Pierce was a genial man with a year-round golf course tan who was always pleasant and approved two promotions for me in the following years. (Redbook had won a national award for opposing McCarthyism.)
When Dorothy, the suspect DAR daughter, and I decided to marry, he even came to our office engagement party.
Before offering a toast, he asked the bride-to-be about her plans. She told him she would quit her job and stay home to take care of me.
Right then and there, George W. Bush’s grandfather made a pre-Feminist joke.
“Why,” he asked, “doesn’t he quit his job and stay home to take care of you?”
Everybody laughed.
If this is Bush Family History Month, I should tell my story about George W’s other grandfather.
In 1953, I went to work as a junior editor for his mother's father, Marvin Pierce, who was president of the McCall Corporation, a publishing and printing company with several thousand employees.
Soon after I arrived, an elderly secretary edged me into a corner. "You're not the first Jew to work here," she said, "only the first one they know about." Years earlier, she had changed her name to get under the radar.
The company had no personnel department, but hiring was vetted by Marvin Pierce's secretary, a formidable woman named Emily Chestnutt, who grilled publishers and editors about the pedigrees of applicants.
A year later, I told a young woman I knew about a staff opening. All went well until her resume reached Ms. Chestnutt. She called Wade Nichols, the editor, to say she was worried about someone named Dorothy Weichel (suspiciously ethnic) who had worked for a trade union (politically dubious) and the United World Federalists (downright Un-American).
Nichols, who had done who-knows-what to get me on the payroll, somehow charmed Ms. Chestnutt into letting him hire Dorothy. Neither knew that her family was suburban Boston Protestant, her mother eligible to join the Daughters of the American Revolution and the First Families of Virginia .
Marvin Pierce was a genial man with a year-round golf course tan who was always pleasant and approved two promotions for me in the following years. (Redbook had won a national award for opposing McCarthyism.)
When Dorothy, the suspect DAR daughter, and I decided to marry, he even came to our office engagement party.
Before offering a toast, he asked the bride-to-be about her plans. She told him she would quit her job and stay home to take care of me.
Right then and there, George W. Bush’s grandfather made a pre-Feminist joke.
“Why,” he asked, “doesn’t he quit his job and stay home to take care of you?”
Everybody laughed.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Used-War Salesmen
After all those high-tech commercials on the Super Bowl, the U.S. Senate this week is looking like an old-fashioned car lot with politicians lobbing buzz words at us--bipartisan, non-binding, compromise, deadlock, procedural, debate—-in their usual bait-and-switch games.
McCain, Lieberman and McConnell et al are still trying to palm off Bush’s repainted Baghdad jalopy on more than seventy percent of voters who aren’t buying.
Reid, Warner, Levin et al keep kicking the tires but can’t get themselves to stop giving him gas money.
Only Feingold and Byrd are muttering about getting the damn thing off the road.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis are seeing a dismal demonstration of the shiny new vehicle we promised them.
McCain, Lieberman and McConnell et al are still trying to palm off Bush’s repainted Baghdad jalopy on more than seventy percent of voters who aren’t buying.
Reid, Warner, Levin et al keep kicking the tires but can’t get themselves to stop giving him gas money.
Only Feingold and Byrd are muttering about getting the damn thing off the road.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis are seeing a dismal demonstration of the shiny new vehicle we promised them.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Comic Relief
The man who elected George Bush is thinking of running in '08.
No, not Karl Rove, who may be too busy with legal issues arising out of a national security breach.
But his best friend, Ralph Nader, tells CNN he may be available if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, whom he gallantly describes as "a flatterer and a panderer."
Who does he have in mind for us this time? Sam Brownback?
No, not Karl Rove, who may be too busy with legal issues arising out of a national security breach.
But his best friend, Ralph Nader, tells CNN he may be available if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, whom he gallantly describes as "a flatterer and a panderer."
Who does he have in mind for us this time? Sam Brownback?
Monday, February 05, 2007
Hillary vs. Bill Redux
Mrs. Clinton must be having flashes of déjà vu.
Just as she is relaxed enough to make jokes about dealing with bad boys, here comes a bargain-basement Bill Clinton 1992 look-alike nipping at her heels.
John Edwards has clearly read their playbook for beating the Bushes. His “Meet the Press” interview yesterday on Super Bowl Sunday echoed the Clintons on “60 Minutes” after the game fifteen years ago.
Both featured slippery mea culpas. “I have acknowledged wrongdoing,” Bill said then. “I have acknowledged causing pain in my marriage” as he denied a 12-year affair with Gennifer Flowers.
Yesterday Edwards used the word “wrong” a dozen times about his 2002 vote on Iraq, but whined that Bush never admits being wrong. Asked about standing by it a year and a half later, he cited pressures of the 2004 race and his wife’s breast cancer while complaining Hillary has still not admitted she was wrong and is “morally bound” to say so or defend her vote.
Between them, Bill Clinton and Bush 43 may have exhausted our patience for the campaign smarm of polite-Southern-boys-you-can-bring-home-to-your-family.
Edwards talks about trust and leadership while updating Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” with talk of “the two Americas” and a convoluted universal health care plan.
Joe Biden, in a bad week of commenting on candidates, was on the money when he said, “I don’t think John Edwards knows what he’s talking about” on Iraq. “All this stuff is just like so much Fluffernutter out there.”
Just as she is relaxed enough to make jokes about dealing with bad boys, here comes a bargain-basement Bill Clinton 1992 look-alike nipping at her heels.
John Edwards has clearly read their playbook for beating the Bushes. His “Meet the Press” interview yesterday on Super Bowl Sunday echoed the Clintons on “60 Minutes” after the game fifteen years ago.
Both featured slippery mea culpas. “I have acknowledged wrongdoing,” Bill said then. “I have acknowledged causing pain in my marriage” as he denied a 12-year affair with Gennifer Flowers.
Yesterday Edwards used the word “wrong” a dozen times about his 2002 vote on Iraq, but whined that Bush never admits being wrong. Asked about standing by it a year and a half later, he cited pressures of the 2004 race and his wife’s breast cancer while complaining Hillary has still not admitted she was wrong and is “morally bound” to say so or defend her vote.
Between them, Bill Clinton and Bush 43 may have exhausted our patience for the campaign smarm of polite-Southern-boys-you-can-bring-home-to-your-family.
Edwards talks about trust and leadership while updating Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” with talk of “the two Americas” and a convoluted universal health care plan.
Joe Biden, in a bad week of commenting on candidates, was on the money when he said, “I don’t think John Edwards knows what he’s talking about” on Iraq. “All this stuff is just like so much Fluffernutter out there.”
Saturday, February 03, 2007
2008: A Modest Proposal*
Of the many worthies seeking national leadership, one stands apart from the rest.
In these parlous times, with 30 per cent of the populace firmly behind him, his experience in presiding over wars and natural disasters is unmatched.
All and sundry know him as a uniter, not a divider, a decider who does not waver under pressure, a resolute commander who consults a Higher Power rather than mere mortals on life-and-death decisions.
Unlike some, he will never negotiate with our enemies, who are legion. He will never compromise with the Forces of Evil that besiege us. He will never hesitate to pronounce the word “nuclear.”
A sterling judge of character, he surrounds himself with the finest minds of his acquaintance. (A pox on that rapscallion, B. Maher, for japing that he nominated his cleaning lady for the Supreme Court!)
Fellow citizens, let us spare yourselves 22 months of political twaddle by lesser figures and concentrate on repealing the Twenty-Second Amendment to keep at the helm the man for our time who will lead us to new heights of moral glory, George Walker Bush!
*Note to the satire-impaired: Title from Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay on a solution to the Irish Famine: eating their babies.
In these parlous times, with 30 per cent of the populace firmly behind him, his experience in presiding over wars and natural disasters is unmatched.
All and sundry know him as a uniter, not a divider, a decider who does not waver under pressure, a resolute commander who consults a Higher Power rather than mere mortals on life-and-death decisions.
Unlike some, he will never negotiate with our enemies, who are legion. He will never compromise with the Forces of Evil that besiege us. He will never hesitate to pronounce the word “nuclear.”
A sterling judge of character, he surrounds himself with the finest minds of his acquaintance. (A pox on that rapscallion, B. Maher, for japing that he nominated his cleaning lady for the Supreme Court!)
Fellow citizens, let us spare yourselves 22 months of political twaddle by lesser figures and concentrate on repealing the Twenty-Second Amendment to keep at the helm the man for our time who will lead us to new heights of moral glory, George Walker Bush!
*Note to the satire-impaired: Title from Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay on a solution to the Irish Famine: eating their babies.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Menotti on Art and Commerce
Sixty years ago, Gian Carlo Menotti, composer of Pulitzer Prize operas and founder of the Spoleto Music Festival, who died this week at 95, came to the City College of New York to talk to a student body of second-generation European immigrants.
In lilting but imperfect English, he told of the struggles of a young artist to make his way in a commercial world.
During the question period, someone asked: "Why don't you go to Hollywood, write music for a few movies and make enough money to do your serious work for years?"
Menotti smiled. "Ah, yes," he said. "Your family is hungry, so send your sister out on the streets for a while. But when she come back, she never be the same."
In lilting but imperfect English, he told of the struggles of a young artist to make his way in a commercial world.
During the question period, someone asked: "Why don't you go to Hollywood, write music for a few movies and make enough money to do your serious work for years?"
Menotti smiled. "Ah, yes," he said. "Your family is hungry, so send your sister out on the streets for a while. But when she come back, she never be the same."
Thursday, February 01, 2007
The Cheney Charm Offensive
Karl Rove's White House may be more devious than we know.
Reading about their high-school machinations in the Scooter Libby trial raises a question: Why is Cheney out drawing so much media fire that there is talk of impeaching him rather than Bush?
Mark Shields of PBS’ News Hour and I share admiration for Jim Rhodes, a Republican governor of Ohio in the 1960s and 70s, a politician par excellence.
Rhodes had a staff member everybody hated. When supporters urged getting rid of him, Rhodes refused: “Not on your life, never take the punching bag out of the gym.”
If Cheney’s current assignment is to make Bush look lovable, he’s doing a great job at it.
Reading about their high-school machinations in the Scooter Libby trial raises a question: Why is Cheney out drawing so much media fire that there is talk of impeaching him rather than Bush?
Mark Shields of PBS’ News Hour and I share admiration for Jim Rhodes, a Republican governor of Ohio in the 1960s and 70s, a politician par excellence.
Rhodes had a staff member everybody hated. When supporters urged getting rid of him, Rhodes refused: “Not on your life, never take the punching bag out of the gym.”
If Cheney’s current assignment is to make Bush look lovable, he’s doing a great job at it.
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