Category: Old Dish

So far, the administration’s response to the inevitable avalanche of stories about the disappearing budget surplus has not exactly been encouraging. Yes, the critical rhetorical move by the president has already been made – but he needs to make it a central theme of the next few months if it is to get through. He should quickly and loudly hail the disappearance of the surplus as a critical goal for his administration. Call it the balanced budget strategy. Here’s a rough rhetorical outline: The surplus is simply the people’s money. If left in D.C., it’s at risk of being spent by the government. It should be ferried back to the people before their benighted leaders get their grubby little hands on it. Bush should criticize Republicans as well as Democrats for this, a triangulation that can only help his ratings. He should line-item veto pork – especially corporate welfare. He should point out the 8 percent increase in domestic discretionary spending in the last fiscal year as an indication of Congress’s lack of self-discipline, and ask the public whether they want the surplus to go into more government spending or back into their own pockets. Above all, he mustn’t play defense. If he does, he’ll be killed. This is the central debate of the fall, and Bush needs to get his strategy organized now.

FINALLY, A REAL INTERVIEW: Check out Mike Isikoff’s interesting dialogue with Gary Condit in Newsweek. For the first time, an interviewer seems interested in the relevant facts of the case. And for the first time, Condit makes some sort of sense. He’s an uptight guy who clearly doesn’t get today’s media culture, and who stumbled badly into a slow news summer. He still won’t say what he easily could to defend himself, by giving his account of the first police interview in which he allegedly impeded the investigation. His reason? That’s the police’s business, not the media’s. He seems to be unaware that in politics today, even cooperating with a police investigation must always be done with an eye to spin, and media strategy.

RUNNING THE NUMBERS: As to the Chung interview, a reader ran it through a computer, comparing it with Jim Lehrer’s interview with Bill Clinton when the Lewinsky scandal broke. Nothing mind-blowing in the data – but something worth thinking about nonetheless. Chung had 2,333 words of questions and interrupted Condit 27 times. Lehrer had 1,463 words in his questions and one interruption. Condit was allowed 4,040 words in response compared with Clinton’s 6,842. For every word Chung spoke, Condit got back 1.73. For every word Lehrer uttered, Clinton replied with 4.68. This is testament to the fact that the Chung interview wasn’t really an interview; it was a public execution. It’s also testament to Bill Clinton’s immensely superior political and theatrical skills. As we watch lesser mortals see their careers explode when they haven’t even been accused of anything, it’s worth remembering the amazing genius of a man who, for misdeeds far more legally and ethically serious than Condit’s, got away virtually unharmed.

MICKEY GLOATS: Mickey Kaus thinks it’s deeply embarrassing for me to have predicted “a small chance [Condit will] simply blow this non-scandal away,” in his interview Thursday night. He says it’s up there with Will Saletan’s “Bush is toast” prediction during the campaign last fall. Well, if Will Saletan had said that there was “a small chance” that Bush was toast, would anyone have remembered? (He seems to have missed my only surefire prediction about the interview: that Chung would ask Condit if he killed Chandra Levy. She did.)

Correction: you don’t all think I’m nuts. The anti-anti-Condit backlash begins.

“If he had told everything up front to the police (which he stubbornly insists that he did), if he had confessed all 90 days earlier, or 80 days, or 70, etc., etc. his wife and children would still be shielded from the consequences of his stupidity?” – Michael Graham, National Review Online. Aren’t the words in italics relevant here? Has it occurred to Graham that Condit might be telling the truth? And how does he know he isn’t? I wish someone would tell me why this obviously pertinent issue can simply be dismissed as if it doesn’t exist. Or are we in a world now where such obvious facts are irrelevant to some moral grandstanding?

You all think I’m nuts about the Condit affair. Bumper edition.

Many of you are mystified by my apparent open mind about the guilt or innocence of Gary Condit, and my belief that someone is innocent until there is even one solid piece of evidence that he is guilty. The point that you keep making is that Condit impeded the investigation. Levy’s parents make that statement again today, saying that Condit “came forward only after pressure began to build and the facts of his relationship became public.” It’s public record that Condit offered a $10,000 reward immediately he heard of Levy’s appearance, called the DC cops and tell them to take it seriously and talked to the cops for 45 minutes two days later. The only people we know impeded the investigation are the DC cops. We don’t know what Condit said to them, and the story I cite below suggests he told them in so many words the nature of his relationship with Levy. When the story leaked, Mrs. Levy complained that her daughter’s privacy was being invaded. After Levy’s complaint, Condit’s office pooh-poohed the story. The story has not been retracted by the Washington Post. So what’s the problem? The real inconsistency has come from the Levys, who first didn’t want their daughter’s active sex life made public, then blamed Condit for not making it public himself. As this investigation continued and the DC cops did their usual comic routine, the Levys needed a scapegoat. They found one. The media was willing. The trap was set. The facts be damned. Look: I have no beef for Condit. He seems a slippery worm to me. But slippery worms are exactly the people that good journalists and police should be careful not to smear. They’re the easiest to smear. And the invasion of my own privacy earlier this year is not the reason for my concern. I was just as concerned to defend Clinton’s privacy – until he compounded it with perjury and clear obstruction of justice. The discrepancy between my reaction and most of yours might be better explained by the fact that I haven’t watched any TV for three months. I haven’t been slowly poisoned against a non-suspect by the drip-drip-drip of smear promoted by cable news. Until there’s a shred of credible evidence that Condit lied to the police or has any connection with Levy’s disappearance, he will get the benefit of my doubt. If that’s nuts in today’s media world, then please escort me to the asylum.

So my sources were right. When that unprecedented question was asked, my jaw dropped open. Just when you think American television journalism cannot go any lower, a trap-door opens and you find yourself falling down into another sewer. The Chung interview was the single most disgusting hour I have ever witnessed on television. Question after question of simply outrageous inquiry into a man’s private life, into affairs that have no relevance whatsoever to any crime, questions that are put out there purely for titillation and money, and nothing else. And in between this obscenity – ads, ads, ads. Chung’s persistent inquiry into the exact sexual nature of Condit’s relationship with Levy was a particular outrage. Does she have no shame? He told us this in so many words, as he told the police in his first formal interview (see “What Lies?” below). This was an extra-legal inquisition based on exactly what such inquisitions are always based on. Condit was required to prove a negative on live television. He was required to prove his innocence against a barrage of questions based on the assumption of guilt. It was a travesty of any minimal American notions of fairness or justice. Even if he murdered Levy with his bare hands, this interview was out of bounds. No-one knows what happened. The man isn’t even a suspect. And those few questions which weren’t merely prurient were based on an implicit allegation of murder for which there is simply not a shred of credible evidence. The teasing segments about an affair with, in Chung’s phrase, “yet another woman,” made me nauseated. And that pompous pontificator, Charles Gibson, pretending to be some sort of reporter. Jeez. This wasn’t journalism. It was prostitution. And Condit wasn’t the whore.

WHAT LIES?: Here’s a classic piece of anti-Condit spin that doesn’t bear scrutiny. James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com writes the following sentence: “Condit doesn’t apologize for, or even acknowledge, lying to police about his relationship with his vanished paramour, Chandra Levy.” Hey, wait a minute. How does Taranto know that Condit lied to the police? That’s a crime. The police themselves have never said as much. No-one has access to the transcripts of the interviews between Condit and the cops. Has Taranto been talking to a psychic? Here’s what we know, taken from an excellent examination by the Daily Howler about a month ago: “Condit’s initial police interview occurred in mid-May. On June 7, the Washington Post published a story about it, citing unnamed police sources. Here’s how the story, by Allan Lengel, began: “Calif. Rep. Gary A. Condit told D.C. police that Chandra Levy has spent the night at his Adams Morgan apartment, according to law enforcement sources.” The headline: “Intern Spent Night, Condit Told Police.” Lengel gave a bit more detail: “The law enforcement sources said that although Condit told police that Levy had spent the night at his apartment, he did not say whether the two were romantically involved. He also did not specify when she had been at his apartment.” By July 7, Lengel and Petula Dvorak, probed further: “Law enforcement sources said that in his first interview, Condit said Levy had spent the night at his apartment in Adams Morgan but stopped short of discussing the relationship. One law enforcement source said that Condit told investigators to read into the relationship what they wished.”” That’s a lie? It seems to me to be an awkward attempt by someone to do all he could to help the cops while squirming under the scrutiny of an adulterous affair. Not pretty but not criminal. Maybe there’s some more information out there I don’t know of that will prove Condit’s deception. Happy if someone else has any better information. But to say on the basis of what we actually know that Condit lied to the cops is simply, er, a lie.

We don’t know the details of Congressman Gary Condit’s interviews with police, so no-one can say with any certainty whether he was evasive or untrue or uncooperative. The entire case against him seems to me based on the notion that it took three interviews for him to confess to a sexual relationship with Chandra Levy. The implication is that this sexual nature of the relationship dramatically helps the police to find the missing woman and that withholding this fact (which the cops must surely have suspected anyway) was damaging to the case. Sorry, I don’t get it. All that matters, it seems to me, is that Condit knew the woman, was a ‘good friend,’ and that he could give the cops any information about her on that basis to help with the investigation. If having sex with Chandra is such a critical piece of information, then why haven’t the media targeted every other lover Levy had, some of whom haven’t even cooperated with the cops? I’m not saying Condit shouldn’t have told the police of his sex life in this case (except, in a sane world, the cops wouldn’t divulge that information to the public, but in this nutball media circus, it’s obvious they would). I am saying I don’t see the specific relevance of this to finding Chandra. Of course, I can see the relevance of sex to boost cable show ratings and sell papers. But are we really doing all this to help Fox News or Chandra Levy?

Weird piece by David Klinghoffer in National Review. He blurts out the possibility that under-age boys who have sex with their female teachers probably don’t suffer much harm: “No indications yet as to whether these boys are getting their work done or bugging people any more than they might otherwise. Actually I’m not too worried about the minors themselves, who will enjoy dining out on hot-for-teacher stories with their buddies for years to come.” Now, isn’t this casual acceptance of pedophilia exactly what conservatives like Mary Eberstadt have been screaming from the rooftops about? In the Weekly Standard a few months ago, she laid most of the blame for an alleged outbreak of ‘pedophilia chic’ on a handful of passages she gleaned from a few obscure gay literary journals. But here’s a man from a conservative Jewish background, writing in National Review Online, saying essentially the same thing as the American Psychological Association study Dr Laura went bats over a couple of years back. Let’s see what kind of reaction there is to this piece. Then we’ll see if what’s really behind the campaign is concern for kids or simply a useful tool to further demonize gays. Specifically, Eberstadt and the Weekly Standard surely have to come out and condemn this piece. Or their credibility on this matter will be over.

MORE BREAKFAST TABLE: An all-you-can-read buffet, featuring Heidegger, Clinton administration drag-queens and – yes! – Gary Condit.

DON’T DO IT, AL!: Why Gore should never run for president again.

Now that it appears this man is going to retire, I’m afraid we’re going to get a bunch of creepy encomiums to the old bigot. Yes, I have no doubt in my mind that, in Helms’ case, that over-used word is not a smidgen too harsh. His nasty racial politics might have helped the GOP gain ascendancy for a while in the South, but it tarred Republicans for a long, long time with the stench of racism – and deservedly so. If you want to know why our politics is so racially polarized, and why Republicans still can’t get much more than ten percent of the black vote, then take a look at the career of Jesse Helms. Yes, contemporary black leadership has a large share of the blame as well. But how can you blame many African-Americans for their suspicion of Republicans when an old segregationist like Helms still held sway in the party? The way in which he routinely held up all sorts of legislation, executive appointments, and on and on, in pursuit of his own idiosyncratic and often barmy crusades also came back to haunt his party as Democrats learned obstructionism from the master. His pioneering of direct-mail campaigning poisoned politics even further, polarizing our discourse by inflammatory rhetoric. And his aloofness from open debate showed a contempt for the democratic process. See David Plotz’s excellent summary of the old man’s legacy, recycled in the current Slate, for details. Helms’s hatred of gay people was particularly acute. He never missed an opportunity to demonize them, spread vicious lies about them, de-humanize their relationships, and undermine their civil rights and human dignity. Yes, he occasionally stood up for the right thing – in his crusade against Communism and his skepticism of the United Nations. But whatever good he did, and however ‘courtly’ he was, he left this country and the world with more poison in its bloodstream than before. That is his legacy and it is almost all despicable. It is too much to hope that he would use his retirement to reflect a little on the pain he has caused and the division he has sown. But it is not too much to feel more than a little relief that this man will soon be gone.

LETTERS: A fattie writes back; straight unsafe sex; couch potatoes; etc.

THAT SYPHILIS SURGE AGAIN: Those of you who think I’m wacko to be skeptical of the Centers for Disease Control should take a look at the recent statements of one Dr. Jim Buehler, associate director of science at the CDC’s Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention. In the August 2 issue of Southern Voice, the best gay paper in the country, Buehler is quoted as saying the following: “Syphilis is coming back in the U.S. … There’s been an increase, especially in urban areas, particularly among men who have sex with men.” Today’s CDC press release on syphilis shows, according to the Associated Press, that “the reported rate of syphilis is at the lowest level since reporting began in 1941. The CDC says the unprecedented low rate of syphilis overall has created a “unique but narrow window of opportunity” for eliminating the disease in the United States.” So which is it? Is syphilis resurgent or at an historic low? The dogged AIDS trouble-maker, Michael Petrelis, found that in one city, New York, there was indeed a big jump in syphilis over the past year – but to a grand total of 155. Indianapolis seems to have had an outbreak, but in a prison population. There was a study in Seattle which also claimed such an increase among men who have sex with men, but the outbreak was restricted to a small pool of the same clients of a particular bath-house. So where’s the evidence that “syphilis is coming back in the U.S.”? It’s down by over 22 percent since 1997! You’d think Buehler would know. He’s an expert in “HIV, STC and TB Prevention.” It seems to me that his statement is one of the most incompetent from a public official I’ve ever heard. It flies in the face of his own agency’s statistics, available to anyone who wants to check them. Shouldn’t such a person simply resign for such inaccuracy? Or is there some secret log of syphilis statistics that only he has access to?