Support Ariel Sharon; George Harrison Tributes Make Me Feel Ashamed; Forward, New York Sun!; Show Some Guts, Time
The back-to-back assaults on innocent civilians in Jerusalem and Haifa by Yasir Arafat-blessed suicide bombers last weekend makes America's war on terrorism even more clear: President Bush must immediately, and vigorously, align his administration with Israel's Ariel Sharon and wipe out the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and any other Palestinian extremists who've been coddled for far too long.
As Sharon told New York Times columnist William Safire after meeting with Bush on Sunday, "You in America are in a war against terror. We in Israel are in a war against terror. It's the same war."
Bush's reaction to the escalating violence was less tepid than in the past, but still not strong enough: "Chairman Arafat must do everything in his power to find those who murdered innocent Israelis and bring them to justice." Arafat, who's had ample time to promote a peaceful solution among his followers, can't be trusted for a minute. He's finished as a leader. Bush ought to recognize that and support any action Sharon's government takes.
But what about the "coalition," pundits will cry, fearing that such decisive action will anger Pakistan, Jordan, European nations and those one-way-street allies Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It's imperative that Bush roll the dice, figuring that resolute force will command respect among those heads of state who mistakenly believe the war should be limited to Afghanistan. Times reporters Richard Berke and Thom Shanker wrote a hopeful (from the Times' point of view) front-page article on Dec. 2, citing unnamed sources, suggesting Bush might short-circuit the war in favor of concentrating on the faltering economy.
"[I]nside and outside the White House," the pair said, "many advisers to Mr. Bush have urged him to use [his] political capital to declare victory sooner rather than later and to emphasize efforts to fix the economy. The party could suffer in the midterm elections next year, they argue, if there is too much emphasis on the war at the expense of the economy."
The absurdity of this argument is breathtaking. First, Bush has staked his presidency on a lengthy, and all-encompassing, war against terrorism. If he bailed out once the Taliban and Osama bin Laden were eliminated, Americans would rightfully rebel at the voting booths. It's true that a protracted recession will hurt Republicans next year?which is why Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is purposely avoiding a meaningful stimulus bill?but it's still too early to predict what condition the economy will be in next fall.
More significantly, there's no reason why Bush can't attend to domestic concerns while waging a war that will inevitably lead to Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and even Colin Powell are resolute in their determination, along with Bush, to successfully prosecute the campaign. I do think the President needs to get more involved in partisan politics?Sen. Patrick Leahy's refusal to release judicial nominees from his holding pen must be addressed?and suspect that next year he and Dick Cheney will raise money for GOP candidates while Karl Rove maps out an election strategy. Ditching RNC chairman Jim Gilmore indicates Bush won't be as passive as his father in duking it out with the Democrats.
But as the recent bloodbath in Israel demonstrates, there's no turning back from Bush's declaration of the United States' intent to hold terrorists, and the countries that harbor them, accountable for their crimes against the civilized world. If the President retreats from that stance, he'll be correctly judged a failure and won't even deserve renomination in the 2004 presidential contest.
It's All Too Much
While reading the scores of George Harrison tributes in the last several days, I felt embarrassed?for the first time?about my status as a baby boomer. By now, anyone with a lick of perspective groans when that sullied phrase "The Greatest Generation" is bandied about: The men and women who lived, and fought, during the Great Depression/World War II years never asked Tom Brokaw, Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg to romanticize their sacrifice, courage or ability to cope during an unprecedented upheaval in American history.
But boomers, get a grip. Robert Hilburn, the washed-up Los Angeles Times music critic, typified the reaction of "The Wimpiest Generation" in his Dec. 1 piece about the sad passing of Harrison. He wrote: "Rock's greatest group arrived in America in 1964 not only with wonderful music, but also with a free, uplifting spirit that made everything seem possible and everyone feel as if they would live forever... We don't mourn just for Harrison, but also for the Beatles and our own mortality."
Michael Long, writing last weekend for the National Review's website, was equally dopey: "If Lennon's evil murder was a winter blast of mortality and fate, Harrison's passing in the night is autumnal; a reminder that Time Is Passing, that graying temples and bifocal glasses are leading to something... Today, many of us are thinking of the calendar, wondering about the clock." And the profound Erik Tarloff in Slate: "We thought we'd be young forever. We thought we'd live forever. We were wrong on both counts."
Dylan Thomas would be appalled. The Welsh poet?whose first name Bob Zimmerman, part of rock 'n' roll's trinity along with the Beatles and Stones, appropriated?inspired untold numbers with his fierce "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night." Hilburn, among other middle-age quitters, might rewrite Thomas' famous line in that poem to read "Cower, cower against the dying of the light."
Harrison, despite the attention of the world's finest doctors, died prematurely. No, he wasn't killed in early middle age like bandmate John Lennon, but his demise at a mere 58 was a relative anomaly; most of his fans, happily, will live at least two more decades than Harrison. So stiffen up, noodle-spined boomers, and take solace in the reality that the treacly "Something" will still be on your playlists in the year 2025.
Harrison will now forever be labeled the "Quiet Beatle," but I think "cool" or "aloof" is more accurate. His foray into, and subsequent immersion in, Indian culture and music certainly wasn't "quiet"; it had more influence on the Beatles, and many other bands, than his individual songs did. But like any other kid who first saw the Fab Four on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night show almost 38 years ago, I can rattle off a dozen Harrison tunes (and let's be frank, that's a fair number) that would fill a classic CD. In no particular order: "Don't Bother Me," "Taxman," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Long, Long, Long," "Piggies," "Only a Northern Song," "Think for Yourself," "Dark Horse," "Apple Scruffs," "My Sweet Lord," "I Want to Tell You" and "Love You To."
As a bonus track, I'd throw in the hilarious "Crackerbox Palace."
Most of the American dailies ran cliche-ridden obits. Perhaps the worst single line I read was in Saturday's Daily News: "George Harrison took the entire world on a magical mystery tour, and the planet is a better place for it." Allan Kozin's article in The New York Times cleared that paper's extraordinarily low bar for such writing, but his insistence on referring to McCartney as "Sir Paul" was just too precious.
My favorite article was written by 25-year-old Caitlin Moran in the Dec. 1 edition of London's Times. She said: "There's no point in pretending that George Harrison was anything other than the third-most talented Beatle. 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' may be inordinately lovely, but it didn't cause a whole generation to scream until they wet themselves and then want to invent the future, like Paul and John's songs did. But rock and roll isn't, much as Nick Hornby would have us believe, about compiling lists. It's about moments and intentions and people coping in the face of heroic stupidity, and George Harrison acquitted himself with gentlemanly aplomb in all three...
"I love that George got grumpy. Grumpiness is one of the few artistically under-explored emotions left. I find it very pleasing that one of only four Beatles the world has ever had spent the entirety of his Beatledom in a mood, and continued to be quite arsey about it until he died."
Forward, New York Sun!
The announcement last week, first reported in The New York Observer, that another daily, The New York Sun, will begin publishing early next year was a rare cause for celebration in the city this fall. The weekday broadsheet, which will be edited by Seth Lipsky (a brilliant writer who was ousted in 2000 from the Forward for his conservative political views and is currently a Wall Street Journal columnist) and Ira Stoll (whose no-frills website smartertimes.com bludgeons The New York Times every day), has been staked to a modest $15 million warchest. This has led, not surprisingly, many to predict that the project is doomed. After all, creating any new publication, no matter how much capital's been amassed, is a daunting challenge in an economy that has disproportionately affected the media.
I take a more optimistic view. Lipsky and Stoll are not commenting about their strategy for the Sun?and I have no insider knowledge, although like hundreds of others, I'd be pleased to write for the paper?but it's not hard to conjure a scenario where the daily could gain a loyal following among the growing number of New Yorkers who detest the America-Last Times.
You start with a small staff, unencumbered by unions, spend not a penny on the ephemeral advertising or lavish parties that most startups indulge in, and let the product slowly evolve. When the Sun prints its first issue it'll be the recipient of considerable media coverage?with the David vs. Goliath hook of its attempt to provide an antidote to the Times?and the first wave of potential readers will be reeled in. Advertisers will not flock to the paper?I suspect the size will be perhaps a thin 20 broadsheet pages?but if its goal of presenting news and commentary in a non-effete manner is met, momentum will build.
Skeptics are correct that $15 million is a paltry sum for a fledgling daily, but I doubt that the Sun's investors?most significantly Conrad Black, owner of London's excellent Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times and Jerusalem Post?will hesitate to dig deep into their wallets for future funding if the paper shows even a glimmer of success. Black has longed for a quality New York print vehicle for years now; he nearly bought The New York Observer two years ago until the deal crashed under mysterious circumstances.
The New York Times is an institution?a brand!?that despite its growing reputation as an outlet for aristocratic, left-wing dogma, infused not only in its editorial pages but supposedly objective front-page news stories, as well as arts criticism, still "sets the agenda" for politicians and far too many journalists throughout the country. Lipsky, Stoll and their board members aren't presumptuous enough to believe they'll knock off the Times?unfortunately, that's a dream that might come true only for the very young?but if smartertimes.com is any indication, they can provide a necessary tonic for those New Yorkers who reluctantly regard the dominant daily as a must-read. To me, the Times is an occupational hazard, and I'd gladly make do with the Journal, New York Post and, for balance, The Washington Post if not for the weekly column I write.
Right now, the Times is using Attorney General John Ashcroft as a punching bag, presenting him in editorials, op-ed pieces and news articles as an out-of-control madman who's power-drunk and attempting to dismantle the Constitution. While the paper regularly attacks President Bush, Ashcroft takes most of the abuse for two reasons: one, payback for his very confirmation earlier this year; and two, with Bush's current popularity, the paper, to its obvious chagrin, has to be careful about savaging a wartime president.
Last Sunday, the Times ran a long editorial?"Justice Deformed: War and the Constitution"?that roundly condemned the administration's declaration of possible military tribunals and expanded power of surveillance aimed at capturing and punishing terrorists who'd like to make the events of Sept. 11 a mere warm-up in their jihad against the United States. The Times apparently believes that if Osama bin Laden is apprehended he ought to be given the privilege of an ordinary criminal trial, a drawn-out spectacle on the order of Charles Manson's and O.J. Simpson's. The consequences of such a farce would be dire: no matter where the proceedings are held, bin Laden's disciples would be emboldened, creating dangerous havoc on behalf of their martyr.
The American public is not squeamish about military tribunals: a Washington Post poll published on Nov. 29 showed that 60 percent agree with the administration, and 70 percent believe "the government is doing enough to protect the civil rights of suspected terrorists." In addition, 78 percent of those polled believe the U.S. should take military action against Saddam Hussein, another difference between the Times and citizens who politicians condescendingly refer to as the "real people."
The editorialist writes: "The Bush administration appears to have no faith in the American criminal justice system's ability to try terrorists fairly and openly, despite the fact that prosecutors have successfully brought to justice the men accused of the first World Trade Center bombing and the attack on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
"Civilian courts are not as fragile as the administration fears. For one thing, long-standing federal laws make it possible to sanitize intelligence information so that it can be introduced as evidence in trials without compromising spying methods. Courts have also given greater latitude to prosecutors in bringing overseas defendants to trial even if they have not been accorded a traditional Miranda warning about their rights before they are questioned after their capture."
That the Times can even mention the phrase "Miranda warning" when there's a worldwide war going on is simply unfathomable. It's not as if these terrorists are accused of armed robbery or a random homicide in Brooklyn.
Here's an example of how out-of-touch the Times is. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, as fierce an opponent of Bush as you could corral in the mainstream media, argued in a Nov. 30 online column that while he believes the administration's controversial edict is far too broad, part of it makes sense. He writes: "At the same time, if the civil securitarians have gone too far, some civil libertarians are living in a Sept. 10th world. The sad truth is that the threat of Al Qaeda is not like that of a few 18th-century anti-Federalists or 20th-century Marxist pamphleteers. Some restrictions on the rights of detainees will be necessary for our genuine security needs. Some kind of military tribunals are clearly in order, at least for those suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan."
Kelly's Challenge
Talk about stupid debates. In a Nov. 29 Sacramento Bee article, Time's managing editor Jim Kelly sounded Teddy Roosevelt-tough as he discussed with a reporter the possibility that Osama bin Laden might be chosen as the weekly's annual "Person of the Year." He said: "What's going to be the consequence of naming this person? Might people use this by plastering his face and that cover all over a demonstration or on walls in villages thousands of miles from here? But the reaction is just something we talk about a little bit. In no year I've participated in Person of the Year has that discussion been dispositive. We're not going to pick or not pick somebody because reaction is going to be this or that."
Obviously, bin Laden is the only possible selection. Every other alternative, whether it's President Bush, Rudy Giuliani or The Firefighter, would be based on the reaction to the Sept. 11 massacre. But I don't expect today's touchy-feely Time will adhere to the original intention of one of journalism's most enduring traditions; just two years ago the cover tagline was changed to "Person of the Year." You'd think that if founder, and virulent anticommunist, Henry Luce could countenance Josef Stalin as Time's designee in both 1939 and '42, today's editors would be steely enough to name the man who was undoubtedly the biggest newsmaker of 2001.
My hunch is that Bush will "win" the title for the second year in a row, unless Time's committee gets really wishy-washy and opts for an amalgam of rescue workers or a vague concept like "The New Patriotism." Next to bin Laden, the President makes the most sense because in these past four months he's dominated the media, all because of the war that the wealthy Saudi started.
But if Time does run with bin Laden, I'll be stunned enough to name it "Magazine of the Year." That's a promise.
Dec. 3
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