Yes, on rare occasions this columnist could double for one of those morons who clutter New York Times subscription pitches on television at all hours of the day.
Just last Sunday, I spent more than 30 minutes with Arthur Sulzberger Jr.’s "What, Me Worry?" daily and didn’t break a sweat, take a peashooter to the bee’s nest outside my younger son’s room or snarl at that redneck clerk at the local Royal Farms deli. In fact, I grinned from sea to shining sea after reading the ridiculous lead to the front-page story by John F. Burns and Greg Myre about the latest suicide bombing by a deranged Palestinian woman.
The reporters wrote: "A bomber charged into a crowded seaside restaurant in [Haifa] on Saturday afternoon and detonated explosives that killed at least 19 people, besides herself. At least three of the dead were children.
"The attack, which also left 50 people wounded, raised the possibility of a harsh Israeli reprisal directed at Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader."
My mirth, obviously, has nothing to do with this latest atrocity visited upon innocent Israeli citizens, but rather the even-handedness shown by a newspaper that normally feels free to run editorials masking as "objective" news stories. Why didn’t these reporters, or their editors, punch up those first two paragraphs to state the obvious: It wasn’t a possibility that Ariel Sharon would retaliate, and unmistakably, against the poisonous Nobel Peace Prize winner Arafat. It was a certainty.
And why won’t Gail Collins, editorial page editor of the Times, direct one of her chin-scratching writers to take the plunge and, rather than another opinion about democracy’s downfall in California or campaign finance reform, advocate perhaps the one act that might jumpstart the stabilization of relations between the warring Israelis and Palestinians? You know the answer, even if the Times is too dainty to acknowledge it: the immediate assassination of Arafat. I’m taking a leap here, but it’s probable that the Times would endorse such a move against Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, so why not Arafat?
Maybe the owners still, after all these years, don’t want their readers to know that they’re Jewish.
After scanning the sports section, and glossing over a story about the Yanks’ win in Minnesota–When Bush-supporter Roger Clemens travels to Iraq later this year to support the troops, the Times will condemn him?–it was on to the op-ed page, where two essays kept me occupied for at least 10 minutes.
First was Maureen Dowd, the failed Hollywood Reporter scribe who now whips up Martha Stewart-like froth twice a week in an unconscious effort to blunt Le Monde imitations of former Enron chum Paul Krugman. Dowd’s been barely readable for some time now, but once or twice a year her opinions do contain a grain of truth. And last Sunday, the column called "Win One for the Groper," while filled with weak invective aimed at Republicans, at least pointed out some "I Can See Clearly Now" truths that other Times employees refuse to admit.
Dowd began: "Well, there goes the Jewish women’s vote. Twin revelations of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s groping and goose-stepping are not going to play well with some Californians. The androgynous Gray spent the weekend hissing at Arnold’s excess testosterone, as Arnold tried a rope-a-grope strategy."
Okay, so Dowd’s prose is clearly running on empty, what with the "goose-stepping" remark, but she’s redeemed mightily by several paragraphs later in the piece, so out of sync with current Times philosophy that they’re worth repeating, if only to convince myself that they weren’t a mirage.
Truth Number One: "Even before the latest charges [leveled against Arnold in a last-minute dirty trick by the Los Angeles Times, which apparently believes Gray Davis belongs on Mt. Rushmore], Hillary Clinton, by phone, and Ann Richards and the lawyer Gloria Allard, in person, joined Governor Davis at a bristly rally in West Hollywood with 200 female activists, including contingents from NOW and Planned Parenthood, chanting about Arnold’s sins.
"At the Davis rally, Senator Clinton chose not to defend the groper who was not her husband. Ms. Richards chose not to defend the groper who was not a Democrat; in 1998, the former Texas governor shrugged off Mr. Clinton’s louche behavior: ‘If we try to retire every man from office who’s done what he did, we wouldn’t need affirmative action."
Truth Number Two: "Certainly, the bodybuilder-turned-phenom has had moments of being, to use David Letterman’s word, a lunkhead. But I find the selective outrage of feminists just as offensive.
"Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, ‘Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.’"
Dowd forgot to mention Clinton’s gal Barbra Streisand, the onetime entertainer who’s now more concerned with environmental photographers snapping shots of her Malibu estate than, well, anything else, but the Times columnist couldn’t include everyone. And besides, she had to get in a joke about Maria Shriver’s emaciated state.
I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that appearing on the same page as Dowd was the Nation’s Katha Pollitt, the feminist who has mixed feelings about the American flag, probably doesn’t wear make-up and undoubtedly, in solidarity with her French sisters, doesn’t bathe often. Pollitt, of course, sees no comparison between Schwarzenegger and Clinton, even though the latter was accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick, preferring to mention only poor Monica, who "volunteered herself."
Katha was in a lather, protesting the inequity of it all. She writes, with presumably a straight face:
"What’s going on here? If Arnold Schwarzenegger were a Democrat, the right-wing news media–the tabloids, the shock jocks, the Bill O’Reillys and the Rush Limbaughs–would have sent him back to Austria long ago. (If he were a woman, needless to say, he could never have gotten into politics in the first place.) But the so-called liberal (actually centrist) news media is either too squeamish to paint Mr. Schwarzenegger’s behavior in all its glory or too blasé and faux hip to care… [A]ggressive male chauvinism is back in style, and Mr. Schwarzenegger is its standard-bearer."
An aside, if you’ll forgive my indulgence. Pollitt’s buddy at the Nation, Edward Said-apologist Eric Alterman, wrote yet another doozy of a column in that weekly’s Oct. 20 edition. Headlined "Death and Glory," Alterman, the foie gras aficionado who shills for Bruce Springsteen in his spare time (he’s written a book on the Jersey multimillionaire), laments the passing of several pop-culture luminaries. The revisionism Alterman spoon-feeds his audience is predictable but ludicrous nonetheless.
He writes: "The premature deaths in the past year of Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer ought to be enough to make the most pious among us angry at The Man Upstairs. [The Boston Red Sox’s Trot Nixon, who, after a dramatic pinch-hit homer to beat the Oakland A’s Saturday night, gave thanks to Jesus Christ rather than his own bat, would disagree, I’m sure, if he read the Nation. But Nixon, who not only possesses an evil last name and lives in North Carolina, wouldn’t register on Alterman’s narrow radar.] In our prefabricated popular culture, these three stood out not only as artistic pioneers but also as icons of uncompromised integrity. They reached into our souls because they spoke from their own."
Pour it on thick, Rev. Eric. Zevon, who battled cancer with extraordinary grace and his trademark gallows humor, is a mere footnote in rock ’n’ roll history. Strummer, half of the songwriting team that propelled the truly remarkable Clash, died at 50 of a heart attack–just a bad ticker, apparently–had taken, in his middle-aged years to reading England’s Telegraph, the excellent and conservative daily that’s anathema to a hack like Alterman, who lies awake at night wondering how he could become as rich as Michael Moore.
As for Johnny Cash, the country/pop star who died last month, Alterman isn’t alone in eulogizing him for his alleged "Question Authority!" stands during his long, often intoxicated career. I agree that Cash was a unique and gifted performer, and his collaboration with Bob Dylan in the late 1960s, as well as his early Sun recordings, assures his place in history. But the following is too custard-filled for my blood: "Cash, who opposed the war in Iraq, was not noisily political, but his integrity forced him to speak out just the same. This symbol of American patriotism questioned the Vietnam War as he simultaneously entertained the troops in the field and told their story at home."
Cash is also cited in Bad Guy’s Quote Book (by Robert N. Singer, Avon, 1984) as saying, "We elected our man Nixon president, and if you don’t stand behind him, get the hell out of the way so that I can stand behind him."
It’s dawn on Monday as I wrap up here, so there’s no way to know if Schwarzenegger will win in California–the revulsion against both Davis and the Los Angeles Times suggests he will–or if the Red Sox will contest the Yanks for the American League pennant.
A few final observations, though, on the exhilarating first round of the playoffs. One: Who’s the bigger asshole, the Braves’ Robert Fick, for giving the Cubs’ Eric Karros a gratuitous body blow on Saturday, or Boston’s reliever Byung-Hyun Kim for giving the finger to Fenway Park’s fans when the team was introduced before Saturday night’s game?
Fick’s my choice, for pulling a Pete Rose- type stunt, but I do hope Kim isn’t on Boston’s roster next spring.
Finally, I understand the Times’ sports department is spread thin during the playoffs, but where did they dig up Pete Thamel, who writes as though he were a second-stringer on Stuyvesant High’s paper? His dumb-as-Katha-Pollitt lead sentence on Monday, after the Red Sox defeated the A’s: "In the 85 years since the Red Sox last won the World Series, fate has toyed countless times with their fans."
You just can’t find that kind of brilliant insight anywhere, save perhaps Wesley Clark’s campaign headquarters.
