I cannot be the only one to have been nauseated by the sight of the two Bushes, pere and fils, careening about on a golf-cart wearing matching baseball caps, emblazoned with the numbers “41” and “43”. That picture must have appeared in countless papers across the country, as well as television. Did Howell Raines coordinate the shoot? Nothing could be better used to depict the Bushes as smug, aristocratic, out of touch, and callow. The self-congratulation of it all is the first truly irritating moment of this presidency. And some Bushies wonder why their man seems to growing numbers of Americans as ‘out of touch’ with their lives. Gee, I wonder why.
HE’S BACK!: Tan, rested, and ready. Well, tan anyway. Thanks for giving us our biggest daily readership ever last Monday. Sorry I was on the beach. Back now for the duration.
MORE GOOD NEWS ON AIDS?: Fascinating story in the New York Times on HIV in prison. I’ve long felt that this is one of the most crucial areas for intervention. Because unprotected male sex is relatively common in prisons, because no-one will admit this, and because prisons also hold disproportionately more black and underclass people than the population in general, prisons have the potential to be the bath-houses of the next decade for HIV transmission. So it’s a surprise to me that deaths from AIDS have been plummeting in prison as well. Deaths were over 1000 in 1995 and in 1999 were down to 242. More significant is the number of people with HIV. Despite an increase of close to 20 percent in the prison population in the last four years, HIV rates have only increased by 6 percent. What the story doesn’t say is whether HIV testing is routine for all prisoners. If it is, these numbers are reassuring. If not, they mean not so much. The only thing certain is that the AIDS lobby will be furiously denying any such progress.
THE CONDIT CONUNDRUM: I haven’t mentioned the grotesque invasion of Gary Condit’s privacy by the media hounds for an obvious reason. Anything I write merely piles it on. Yes, I know his friend, Chandra Levy, is missing, presumed dead. And obviously in a matter of a very serious possible crime, chasing every possible lead is important. But the relevance of Condit’s relationship with Levy is still entirely questionable. Until Condit is charged, or even named as a suspect in Levy’s disappearance, his relationship with this young woman is entirely his business. She didn’t work for him; she was a grown woman when they met; Condit has cooperated with the police about what he may or may not know about her whereabouts. Yes, it’s suspicious in some ways – and if he’s named a suspect, all bets are off. But suspicion without evidence shouldn’t be a means to simply trample through this man’s marriage, privacy and sex life. A D.C. reporter even told me a few weeks ago that, “Trust me; her head is in his freezer.” Proof? Evidence? Never mind. This is the twenty-first century; and this is what we now call journalism.
HATHOS ALERT: “What does the Fourth mean to you, Mr. President?” was the hardball question thrown at George W. Bush this week, as he visited the Jefferson Memorial in search of ordinary citizens and a photo op. The answer: “Well, it’s an unimaginable honor to be the president during the Fourth of July of this country.” Or, as Mel Brooks might put it (and has): “It’s good to be the king.” Mr. Bush’s response was a perfect summation of the man we’ve seen in office so far: The Second Boomer President, a narcissist who can’t see past himself.” – Frank Rich, New York Times, Saturday. Huh? Just how does an expression of feeling honored to be president count as a summation of narcissism? The questioner even asked the president what the holiday meant to him. Is Frank Rich, a boomer who just wrote a book about his own childhod, trying to compare Bush to Clinton on the narcissism scale? Keep digging, Frank.
THIS BUD’S FOR THE BRITS: Odd that it should start in Britain. But in the last few weeks, you can feel a turning point coming in the West’s response to marijuana. Last year, calls by Tory spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe to toughen up prosecution of pot use was greeted with derision by many of her fellow Tories. Several former cabinet ministers said they had used the drug. Last week, a key senior conservative, Peter Lilley, said that pot should be made legal, period. Now, the Guardian reports that the Blair government has essentially instructed the police to stop searches and seizures of pot to concentrate on more hard-core drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Is sanity breaking out? Someone should alert John Walters.
NOT IN MY BACK-DUNE: A scourge is affecting the Upper Cape. People on remote dunes and beaches are pulling the Full Monty. Imagine. In Provincetown, long a haven for artists, painters, writers, hedonists, bohemians, and freaks (God bless them all), some punters have been known to be bathing nude. Two days ago, I observed two uniformed cops patrolling the furthest dunes on Herring Cove beach for any signs of nudity. This is quite an effort. It was a warm day, there are no footpaths, it can take over an hour on foot to some of the furthest beaches. But there the cops were, spending my money to chase down harmless skinny-dippers and dune-canoodlers. Meanwhile, the local morals police have delivered several “Cease and Desist” orders to a cabaret show called, “Naked Boys Singing.” This export from off-off-Broadway is at the Crown and Anchor in Ptown. The prohibition attempt was prompted by some patrons who were shocked upon entering a show called “Naked Boys Singing” when they saw naked boys singing. (Attention Mary Eberstadt: they were all well over 21.) Then on the front-page of the Cape Cod Times is yet another skirmish, waged by a couple who own a sweet little dune shack that happens to be perched near a beach recently designated okay for nude bathing. My favorite quote is from the couple’s lawyer fighting the new law: “I am a ’60s liberal. There is nothing wrong with nude sunbathing. But you don’t have to be nude in my face.” In my face? The dune shack is a whole dune away from the beach; the intervening dune is off-limits to the public for piping plover nesting; it takes two hours hiking through the National Sea Shore (all roads are closed to protect the piping plovers) to make it to the sandy den of vice. I would think a ’60s liberal might actually give any nudie who’d walked a couple of hours in the sun to get to a beach a lemonade and a joint. But what do I know? I’m just a ’90’s conservative.
The Dish 