Through the Past Darkly
IT'S NO SECRET that my opinion of Andrew Sullivan's website is, on his best days, mixed. Aside from his inadvertent aping of Dick Morris' consistent political contradictions, shameless name-dropping and the self-parody of referring to people he doesn't know by their nicknames (or maybe he's met "Jerry" Bremer), Sullivan's blog is exhibit A for the argument that many industrious men and women write too fast-without the benefit of a fact-checker-and therefore compromise their work.
Sullivan really does need an editor. His shifting views on whether he'll support Bush (not likely, given the president's stand on gay marriage) or Kerry (inevitable, as he flirts with the idea that the Democrat will more resemble Tony Blair on Iraq than the "inarticulate" Bush) are more suitable to a robust barroom debate rather than the internet. That he let his mistake of referring to Charles Pickering as "Frank Pickering" remain on his blog uncorrected is another example of posting an item and never looking back.
Nevertheless, Sullivan was absolutely correct in a brief blurb on April 9 about the severe limitations of the 9/11 Commission. He writes about Condoleezza ("Condi" to Sullivan) Rice: "What is there to say? We have a frigging war on and the major networks all run this [her testimony before partisan hacks like Bob Kerrey and Richard Ben-Veniste]? I have nothing to add. Except to say: we have a war on. We used to win them before we engaged in elaborate blame-games as to who was asleep at the wheel when they broke out."
The bombardment of attention this panel has received in the media is staggering. The Baltimore Sun, for example, ran the following exaggerated headline on April 8: "For Bush, Rice's testimony could be key to re-election." Say what? When voters go to the polls in November, whatever was said about the intelligence miscues leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 will be almost entirely forgotten, as people decide whether to keep Bush or chuck him based on the economy, terrorism and the war in Iraq.
What ought to concern editorialists at pro-Kerry dailies like the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, is not the minutiae of Rice's comments last Thursday but rather the unsettling fact that the Commission's vice chairman (Democrat Lee Hamilton) appeared on Meet the Press the Sunday before Rice's appearance and suggested for a nationwide audience that the 9/11 attacks "probably" could've been prevented (stipulated, of course, with a lot of "ifs"). If that's their view, then why continue the charade of grilling Bush and Clinton officials about their knowledge, or lack thereof, about al Qaeda's plans? What's the point, aside from self-aggrandizing showboating, for calling on Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Janet Reno, Louis Freeh and, for that matter, the White House's chefs and valets, for their testimony?
The Wall Street Journal's Brendan Miniter, writing for the invaluable (and free) OpinionJournal.com on April 6, came up with this acute conclusion: "Sept. 11 was a national-security failure. But by the time of the attacks, the Bush administration was already laying the groundwork for a new layer of global defenses that is proving to be a solid foundation for conducting the war on terrorism. That's a far cry better than firing off a few cruise missiles at empty tents in the far reaches of Afghanistan."
The Globe's Jeff Jacoby (an oasis of sanity on an op-ed page that's sullied with the likes of Robert Kuttner, Ellen Goodman and Thomas Oliphant) echoed Sullivan's sentiments on April 11, in a column that called Rice's testimony as unconvincing as best-selling author Richard Clarke's. He also dug up this Kerry soundbite from a Larry King Live appearance on Sept. 11, 2001: "We have always known this could happen? I regret to say-I served on the Intelligence Committee up until last year. I can remember after the bombings of the embassies, after TWA 800, we went through this flurry of activity, talking about it-but not really doing the hard work of responding."
Mind you, that's no knock on Kerry. As Jacoby notes: "Prior to 9/11, no president from Jimmy Carter through George W. Bush properly understood the swelling danger of Islamist terrorism. None recognized that we were under attack by a ruthless enemy bent on global conquest and the destruction of Western liberty. Neither did leaders in Congress, nor elite opinion makers in the media."
It wasn't a smashing week for the Bush administration, one in which the word "quagmire" replaced the Democratic mantra of comparing the current economy under Bush to Herbert Hoover's. (I think most Americans prefer an unemployment rate under six percent to 30 percent, but maybe that's a radical view.) Let's see what the Mideast looks like in September: If Americans are still being mauled by brainwashed mobs, Kerry's got a good shot at knocking off Bush. On the other hand, relative calm in Iraq, Syria going the way of Libya and a steady economy will send Mr. Heinz back to the Senate.
The presidential election obscures the longer view that this global war doesn't have the shelf life of a tv sitcom or celebrity rape trial. This is an issue, as Bush has repeatedly stressed, that will far outlast his presidency, whether it's four or eight years.
IT'S ESSENTIAL FOR weekly newspapers (still dubbed "alternative" by lazy thinkers) to have a roster of contributors that includes at least half a dozen provocative writers. Currently, New York Press gives space to a number of such creatures, some of which, in my opinion, are terrific (Armond White, Jim Knipfel and Alexander Zaitchik), others not (Matt Taibbi and Mike Signorile), but that hardly matters. I don't agree with most of what Taibbi and Signorile, both intelligent men, offer each week, but their columns are worth reading, if only to see what passes for opinion in a parallel world.
But Mark Ames? Don't know the guy, but he can't be older than 17, at least judging by his preview last week of the film 13 Going On 30. His offensive generalizations about the difference between the genders are astonishing, and not only for their sheer stupidity. On the charge of causing offense I have no beef: Just as it's absurd that Howard Stern's been reprimanded by an election-year-conscious FCC for talking about anal sex, with juvenile fart noises in the background, let Ames sail away with his vile observations about women. Anything that gets the condescending elitists that run organizations like NOW is okay in my book.
But he ought to be challenged on his barely coherent observations of those people he's forced to acknowledge. Ames writes: "Big worked because most American men never really grow up-at least not until they've had their first stroke. Women, on the other hand, wake up to something awful by the age of 30. In 13 Going On 30, the heroine cups her great perky breasts and boasts about her 'incredible boobs.' For 99 percent of over-30 women in America [as opposed, say, to France or Argentina?], boobs are not perky and 'incredible'; they're a source of saggy shame, a disfigurement requiring corrective surgery. Their asses have widened into a ripple of elephant flesh, midriffs spilling over low-cut jeans, pelvic bones cracked and stretched? By the age of 30, woman is a horrible mess, a victim tossed overboard by God and life. That's if she's lucky. She could be married and have squatted out a kid or two-but this movie doesn't look at that."
Maybe Ames' review is satire; if so, he'd be well-advised to dabble in other forms of the written word.
Never mind his homage to the ancient Peter Pan trope that late-20th-century men "never really grow up"; I assume Ames is referring to himself and not the majority of men outside his universe that actually get jobs, pay taxes, have adult relationships and contribute to society. I'll just chalk that up to an unconscious paean to his mentor Chuck Klosterman.
Perhaps Ames doesn't choose to become a parent, which is probably fortunate, although the notion that women "squat" out children would be laughable if it didn't reveal that the writer's best friend is most likely his own right hand. To each his own, but all this jazz about "elephant flesh" and "saggy shame" is indicative of a person who's led a torturously sheltered life. One needn't be a feminist to arrive at the unremarkable conclusion that women (and men) come in a dizzying variety of shapes and sizes that are alternately beautiful, ugly, cute, scary, alluring, sultry, sad or exquisite, depending on varying points of view.
On this point, grown-ups like Taibbi and Signorile would surely agree. As for the pitiful Ames, if shock value's his game, a trip to the minors where he might perfect the art is definitely in order.
THE DAILY NEWS might be more topsy-turvy than usual these days, with owner Mort Zuckerman shifting editors again, but there remain two fine columnists who ought to consider jumping ship: Zev Chafets and Bob Raissman.
Last Sunday, for example, Chafets acknowledged the current turmoil in Iraq (and advocated a more forceful military approach from the Bush administration), but also was a voice of reason in comparison to his agenda-driven colleagues at other newspapers. He wrote: "Iraq isn't Vietnam except in the minds of Teddy Kennedy, Robert Byrd and frequent fliers on the Woodstock Time Machine? You can always scare yourself into inaction by conjuring up the ghosts of Vietnam. But the Vietcong never tried to kill a U.S. President, or blow up a train in Spain or attack downtown Manhattan. If the jihad isn't put down in Iraq-and beyond-with brutal finality, the Mother of Insurgencies may be coming to a theater near you."
Jimmy Carter, still mouthing off with anti-Israel comments to anyone who'll listen, would profit from reading Chafets.
On the lighter side, sportswriter Raissman continues his own justified jihad against the abysmal Michael Kay, George Steinbrenner's mouthpiece on YES. Reacting to the coverage of the Yanks' opener last Thursday, Raissman sounds off, quoting Kay: "'As the withered picture in the mind's photo album turns to vivid technicolor,' Kay said as the telecast opened, 'the images remain-goose-bump inducing.'
"How about vomit inducing."