Oatmeal Brains
Occasionally, the still-pervasive influence of ex-editor Michael Kinsley on the website Slate is neutralized by common sense. Kinsley, who's ruined more young political journalists than Robert Christgau has rock critics, is a greater threat than noisier Democratic propagandists like Paul Begala, James Carville or pollster Stanley Greenberg, because in the eyes of media elite he's a serious thinker, not a cartoon caricature.
His Oct. 10 column (reprinted the next day in The Washington Post) claims that President Bush has lied to Americans about the danger Saddam Hussein poses not only to this country, but Mideast and European nations as well.
Parroting the long-neutered and unreliable CIA, which concluded that Hussein, if cornered like a snake, might use his weapons of mass destruction, Kinsley castigates the Bush administration for failing to request timely permission from the networks to televise his 8 p.m. speech about Iraq on Oct. 7. Never mind that CBS, NBC and ABC knew the topic of the address, and that it didn't concern Bush's current jogging time; "news" executives decided to proceed with normal programming and cede the President's explanation for a possible war to the cable stations. It was a disgraceful night for, pardon the oxymoron, tv journalism.
Rationalizing the decision, NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said, "The President is giving a speech to a group of people in Cincinnati, which is different than an address to the nation." Okay. On Sept. 11, Bush spoke before "a group of people" in New York City, commemorating the first anniversary of last year's terrorist massacre. NBC broadcast that one. Another network official said Bush's half-hour speech?the first one specifically about the threat Hussein's dictatorship poses?was a mere "pep rally," with the intention of "trying to move Congress forward."
Kinsley, who's no doubt bonded with Reps. James McDermott and Pete Stark, writes: "The Bush campaign for war against Iraq has been insulting to American citizens, not just because it's been dishonest, but because it has been unserious. A lie is insulting; an obvious lie is doubly insulting. Arguments that stumble into each other like drunks are not serious... A serious effort to take the nation into war would not hesitate to interrupt people while they're watching a sitcom."
Apparently, nothing less than the exact date that Saddam might kill 50,000 Israelis with a suitcase bomb, or give a similar weapon to some lunatic who'd similarly blast, say, London, Los Angeles or New York, is "serious" enough for Kinsley.
What more do Bros. Kinsley, McDermott and Stark want from the President? Two months ago, the self-righteous roar from the left was that Bush was a cowboy unilateralist, unwilling to engage in debate or consult our "allies," some of which actually are friends to the United States. Since then, to the Democrats' dismay, much oratory has taken place in Congress and in the media, including criticism from officials in past administrations. These notables include Brent Scowcroft, any number of retired generals, Clintonites trying to defend their own indifference to international terrorism from '93-'01, an incoherent Al Gore and Bill Clinton himself, who'll hold forth on any subject as long as the price is right. Oh, and Jimmy Carter, the Pest from Plains, who, now that he's finally received a Nobel Peace Prize (joining another Man of Peace, Yasir Arafat), might finally zip his lip and start building houses again.
Bush has appeared before the United Nations, suffering fools like Kofi Annan, to further his case. He's asked for, and received, the blessing of Congress. If he were a true unilateralist, the U.S. military would be shelling Baghdad in the midst of the World Series.
I wonder what Anglophile Kinsley thought of The Economist's lead editorial of Oct. 12, especially since he was a foreign-exchange journalist at the weekly several years ago.
The magazine's writer reasoned: "War, says Mr. Bush, is neither imminent nor inevitable. But if the Security Council fails, the threat will remain and America will feel obligated in the interests of its own security to deal with it.
"Can such an argument satisfy the war's doubters? Not in a month of Sundays. Many doubters take strong exception to the idea that any nation has the right to go to war alone, except under a U.N. mandate or in strict self-defense. Applying this principle to Iraq, they would rather allow a dangerous dictator to acquire nuclear weapons, and with them the power to kill millions of people, than allow the Security Council's prerogatives to be sullied or circumvented by the superpower. But those who think this way (The Economist, you may have guessed, doesn't) must accuse Mr. Bush of error not hypocrisy. His administration could not have done more to make it clear that it takes precisely the opposite view."
Back to Slate. On Oct. 11, William Saletan, certainly no acolyte of Bush, Rumsfeld or Cheney, directed his wrath at the feckless and election-driven Democratic senators who voted to approve the war resolution. Specifically cited are Sens. Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle and John Kerry, who justified their vote on Bush's assertion that conflict with Iraq isn't, right now, "imminent" or "unavoidable."
Saletan writes: "These senators sound like a man who has just enjoyed a night of pleasure with a woman he took home from a bar, never fully preparing himself for the possibility of fatherhood. If the woman shows up on his doorstep pregnant, he'll berate her for misleading him or not being careful enough about birth control... "Any man who inseminates a woman has signed up for the responsibilities of fatherhood. Any member of Congress who voted for the Iraq resolution has signed up for the responsibilities of war. Many senators seem to think that if Saddam calls our bluff, and the Security Council offers a watered-down resolution, and Bush says that isn't good enough, and the U.S. Air Force takes off for Iraq, they're entitled to some further say in the matter. They aren't. They had their chance to say no. They said yes. It's their baby now."
One can grimace at Saletan's prissy writing style? "a night of pleasure," "inseminates"?and argue that ambitious men like Kerry will forget their vote if the opportunity arises, but at least he got a sound judgment on the record. That's more than you can expect from Kinsley.
Bloomberg Dropped the Brown Acid
It was raining last Friday morning, about 5 or so, and I was drinking coffee and reading the Post under the awnings at Morgan's Deli, when it became impossible not to join in a conversation with a couple of fellows a few yards away. The topic was Mayor Bloomberg's obsessive mission of banning cigarettes from restaurants, bars and probably soon sidewalks, and these guys were steaming.
"The problem with Bloomberg is that he's so rich he doesn't have even a clue about how the rest of us live," one of them said. "I mean, who's going to fill the bars if you can't smoke? You'll have 30 people outside a place and then the cops will all give them tickets for loitering! What's he going to say to the people who lose their jobs when some bars go out of business?"
Hard to argue with that position, so I jumped in: "Yeah, see the Reade Street Pub across the way? In 10 months it'll be shuttered." One of the combatants quickly replied, "Nah, the Pub will make it," and then revealed, much to my embarrassment, that he owned the joint. I finished my coffee, mumbled a few words of encouragement and skedaddled back home, where I could swear at the Times editorials on my computer before the rest of the family woke up.
During testimony before the City Council's Health Committee last Thursday, Bloomberg was at his most self-righteous, a dead-ringer for mayoral opponent Mark Green. The New York Sun's Matthew Sweeney wrote: "Second-hand smoke is as deadly an occupational hazard as asbestos, Mayor Bloomberg testified yesterday in a contentious hearing on his proposal to ban smoking in bars, restaurants and nearly everywhere else that people work.
"The ban 'will almost certainly save more lives than any other proposal that will ever come before this chamber,'" the former smoker thundered.
He also said, according to a Post editorial, "The air in a smoke-filled bar is more dangerous than that in the Holland Tunnel at rush hour." The paper continued: "All of this followed up Bloomberg's earlier, equally bizarre allegation that twice as many people die in New York from the effects of second-hand smoke than are murdered these days.
"The charge is nonsense on its face: The wizards at the city Health Department did some long division on a 10-year-old study, and conjured up a conclusion meant to support the mayor's thesis."
But even nonsense usually gets a ride in the media when mayors speak in public, because mayors are supposed to know what they're talking about.
"This one conflates tobacco smoke with the Black Plague, and no one says boo."
Added the Times' Metro columnist Clyde Haberman: "There was no reason to assume [Bloomberg] understood workingmen's bars any better than the patrician Sargent Shriver did when he was running for vice president in 1972. Mr. Shriver, trying to show he was in touch with ordinary people, went to a South Boston bar and bought drinks for everyone. Then, asked what he himself would have, he said, 'Courvoisier with a twist.'"
Incredibly, Haberman's jibe at a Kennedy in-law survived the Times' copy desk, which one would've expected to insert the old saw about former President Bush's request for "just another splash" of coffee.
The real boilermaker, however, was when Bloomberg said that once his measure is enacted, business will actually improve because "If people aren't smoking, they'll probably be drinking more." Isn't that dandy? If the shortsighted Mayor has his way on this small-bore measure?as if New Yorkers don't have more to worry about, oh, like suicide-bombers?the city will have fewer smokers and more alcoholics. I wonder how the medical profession will react to that jackass statement.
The print media has criticized Bloomberg consistently for his devotion to petty issues?refusing to march in the Columbus Day parade because his invitation of two Sopranos stars caused a stir among Americans of Italian descent was the Mayor's latest, and silliest, temper tantrum?but it was an Oct. 10 New York Sun editorial that best described the city's chief executive.
The editorial concluded: "It can be debated the effect secondhand smoke has on those unwittingly or unwillingly exposed to it...but to Mother Bloomberg and his ilk this is beside the point. [Carry] Nation once told the Kansas legislature that if the legislature didn't shut down the booze joints, 'then the women of this state will.' Similarly, Mother Bloomberg has made it clear that whether it is taxes, smoking bans, or saturation broadcasting, he will beat up on the smokers. Mother Nation told the assembly, 'You refused me the vote and I had to use the rock.' We'll see what the [City] Council is made of. With alcohol, the nation eventually came to understand the folly of prohibition and the virtues of choice. We have no doubt that someday Mother Bloomberg's campaign will come to be looked upon with the kind of bemusement with which we now look upon that of his famous forbearer."
Laura Can Read!
How condescending is The New York Times' editorial page? That's a rhetorical question, of course, but on Oct. 10 one of Gail Collins' elves?perhaps the former Clinton speechwriter she recently hired??took a whack at the First Lady.
The editorial, "Laura Bush's Literary Salon," was dressed up as praise for the native Texan, but even a fourth-grader could detect the writer's upturned nose upon reading the short piece.
An excerpt: "[Mrs. Bush] has made book talk a matter of course in the East Wing, and has done so in a way that has flabbergasted many denizens of high culture who disapprove of her husband's policies. Over the past few months Mrs. Bush has staged admirably penetrating two-hour literary symposiums at the White House on Mark Twain, the Harlem Renaissance and women writers of the West. She has brought into the East Wing, among others, David Levering Lewis, one of the nation's great black historians, and Ursula Smith, a savvy chronicler of the American frontier, both of whom say they never imagined setting foot in this White House because of their objection to President Bush's Iraq policy...
"Mrs. Bush's programs suggest that she is aiming for the heart of the reading community, that enormous middle ground defined by the books that some of us begin with and others of us end with, books that we can think of as the common property of literary Americans, young and old. There can never be too much of that."
Indeed.
There can also "never be too much" of slipping in criticism of George Bush's aim to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, a goal that might just spare the lives of Collins and her colleagues at the Times in their rarefied but vulnerable midtown headquarters. And since the Times has endorsed reading, one wonders why the paper is such a staunch ally of the corrupt teachers' unions and opposes vouchers for students who'd like to read some of the same books that "denizens of high culture" do.
Slipping on a Banana
Reacting to Harry Belafonte's crude remarks about Colin Powell last week?the singer essentially said the Secretary of State, a man who could've won the presidency had he chosen to run, was an Uncle Tom?The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz said it best. Appearing on CNBC's WSJ Editorial Board with Stuart Varney last Friday night, Rabinowitz, one of the nation's finest journalists, said she was sick of aging left-wingers possessing "oatmeal for brains."
Belafonte, whose "Day-O" is part of Yankee Stadium's noise pollution problem, insisted he had no regrets about calling Powell a "slave" who served his "master" (President Bush) jes' fine. Perhaps in deference to the fact that Belafonte is also of Jamaican descent, Powell was diplomatic, saying on Larry King Live: "If Harry had wanted to attack my politics, that was fine. If he wanted to attack a particular position I hold, that was fine. But to use a slave reference, I think, is unfortunate and is a throwback to another time and place that I wish Harry had thought twice about using."
The 75-year-old entertainer, for his part, had little remorse for his attack on Powell, saying, "My analogy to the plantation existence I said without regret, and maintain that the overwhelming majority of black people in this country agree that the impending war with Iraq is a colossal mistake."
Year of the Monkey
A reader from Brooklyn e-mailed me this message: "I was surprised and a little disappointed you didn't comment on the ubiquitous whine-and-excuse-fest the collective New York baseball media has put on after the Yankees' playoff loss. Jeter depressed? What a crybaby. At the very least, he needs to go play for a team that habitually loses 90 games a year. Better yet, he ought to go volunteer for the military, get sent to Iraq, and die as a real hero, instead of the smug little humility-coached turd that he is."
Love the anti-Yank sentiment, but that's way too harsh. Besides, I happen to approve of the apparent disharmony among the Bombers. It reminds me of the late 70s when the Yanks were far more interesting, with Billy Martin, Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner blasting one another almost daily in the obliging tabloids. In Sunday's Post, Steve Serby and Kevin Kernan claim that Jeter is pissed off at the lackadaisical Bernie Williams, writing, "We have it on good authority that Derek Jeter, who takes losing as hard as George Steinbrenner, has been angrily telling confidantes that Bernie Williams does not play with passion."
No skin off my nose, but Jeter's frustration is probably more embedded in the realization that his team, staffed with senior-citizen pitchers and crummy outfielders, has lost its aura of invincibility. Playing in the weak AL East division, the Yanks will probably beat the Bosox again in 2003 (depending on Boston's offseason pick-ups and if its players can learn how to take a walk and win one-run games; Grady Little might have 93 victories in his first year, but how cool would it be if he were replaced by Willie Randolph?), but the Anaheim Angels are one starting pitcher and another slugger away from several years of dominance.
I thoroughly enjoyed the American League playoffs this year. Sure, it was swell that the Twins gave Bud Selig a black eye by reaching the postseason, but there's nothing particularly remarkable about their squad, and I'll take the Angels' rally monkeys over those damn homer hankies any day. MUGGER III kept me company during Anaheim's sensational clincher on Sunday, sorting his Ug-Gi-Uh! trading cards and singing patriotic songs while Adam Kennedy & Co. demolished the Twins during that brutal seventh inning.
Sentimental old geezer that I am, when my son sang, "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy," "God Bless America," "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "My Country 'Tis of Thee," it was a fleeting balm from the horrific terrorism in Bali and the ongoing sniper attacks in the DC metropolitan area. And the overwhelming color of red that washed over Edison Field, coupled with the on-field heroics of previous no-names like Eckstein, Erstad, Spiezio, Molina, Lackey, Percival, Glaus, etc., made the Yankees seem as irrelevant and crusty as Jimmy Carter.
I hope the Angels, having vanquished their own curse, sweep the Series in four games. Next year, maybe the Bosox will have the guts to finally kick that old Bambino in the butt and win their own world championship.