You want to know why, on some days in some ways, British journalism simply surpasses by a measure of light-years most of what you read in the American press? Read this wonderful obit in the Daily Telegraph of a largely failed journalist who drunk himself slowly to death in Soho. Here’s a classic passage:
His speciality was the extreme. In one drinking binge he went for nine days without food. At the height of his consumption, before he was frightened by epileptic fits into cutting back, he was managing two bottles of vodka a day. His face became in his own description that of a “rotten choirboy”. At lunchtime he would walk through the door of the Coach and Horses still trembling with hangover, his nose and ears blue whatever the weather. On one cold day he complained of the noise that the snow made as it landed on his bald head.
Jack Shafer pointed this out to me, for which I’m grateful. Graham Mason’s only real claim to fame was that he was Graham Mason. And some people obviously loved him. One anonymous person loved him enough to write an obit as inspired as this one.
BIBI IN D.C. Helpful blogger account of Binyamin Netanyahu’s talk last night at the American Enterprise Institute. He talks a lot of sense, it seems to me.
WAS MONTAIGNE A KINDA BLOGGER? Reflections on putting personal details into general commentary; a complaint about writers with diseases; the genius of Shakespeare; and the Bush family’s problem with oil. All this in the latest installment on the Letters Page.
SITE DU JOUR: andrewsullivan.com was named the left-wing French paper Liberation’s site of the day yesterday. Merci.
TAXCUTSFORTHERICH: That phrase, inserted almost automatically in much media coverage of the Bush tax cut, avoids one obvious fact. The wealthy now pay an astonishing proportion of this country’s tax take, and that proportion is growing at an alarming pace. In 1989, the top 5 percent paid 44 percent of federal taxes. Today, they pay 55 percent. Al Gore’s favorite “top one percent” now pay one third of all taxes, while accounting for only 19 percent of national taxable income. Bush’s tax cut – which will, in my mind, be remembered as second only to the war against terror as his greatest legacy – only arrests the pace at which this skewed and democratically dangerous imbalance accelerates. Yes, I know it partly reflects growing income inequality. But please don’t describe our current system as regressive. It’s the opposite. It’s downright punitive of success.
WOODWARD OR RICH? Who do you believe about the Bush administration’s openness to the press? The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward or the New York Times’ Frank Rich? Woodward gushed recently about the president’s handling of his job. Here’s a description of his take:
Prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Woodward planned to write a book about Mr. Bush’s first year in office. He had spoken to senior advisers but had not met the president until one day at a Connecticut university where Mr. Bush was speaking. Woodward was waiting offstage when Mr. Bush bounded toward him, filled with enthusiasm and adrenaline. When Woodward extended his hand and introduced himself, the president said: “Duhh! I know who you are.” A moment later, Mr. Bush squeezed Woodward’s head and called him “Woody.” “Nobody gives me the nickname, ‘Woody,’ ” Woodward said yesterday, as the audience chuckled. Later, after the terrorist attacks, Woodward and another reporter interviewed Mr. Bush in the Oval Office. The reporters had an hour to ask their questions. But Woodward said the president gave them 90 minutes, often speaking candidly about classified information and explaining the reasons behind some of his actions. “Certainly Richard Nixon would not have allowed reporters to question him like that. Bush’s father [former President George Bush] wouldn’t allow it. Clinton wouldn’t allow it. “As a journalist I like somebody who is straight and direct,” Woodward said.
Now here’s Rich, echoing the anti-Bush line sustained through even the most mundane of the Times’ news stories:
[T]here is still scant evidence to suggest that he condones the idea of a free press. Not since the Nixon years has an administration done as much to stymie reporters who specialize in the genre of investigative inquiry Mr. Pearl was pursuing when he was ambushed. Now as then, the administration is equally determined to thwart journalists whether they’re looking into a war abroad or into possible White House favors for a lavish campaign contributor who has fallen into legal peril (Ken Lay now, Robert Vesco then).
Maybe Frank Bruni could negotiate some via media between these two interpretations. But it certainly helps explain why the Times’ access to the Bush administration seems so constrained these days. Perhaps, it’s just projection.
BRAIN FART: Sorry, of course it’s Sweden that gives out the Nobel Prizes, not Norway. It’s just that some of the judges are from Norway and it was the Norwegian ones who have been recently regretting the Shimon Peres award.
The Dish 