Category: Old Dish

The president’s television demeanor for tonight’s stem-cell address suggests he’s getting worse at these television sit-downs, not better. He did the Bambi thing again; he seemed stiff as a post; the speech was without a single moment of grace or ease. That said, Bush’s decision strikes me as politically smart and ethically defensible. To be honest, I was unaware that the current stem-cell lines can somehow generate an inexhaustible supply of stem-cells, and I’m not even sure I understood what he was saying on this point. But if the only federally-funded research is going to be on existing stem cell lines, then I think he’s made a pretty good call under the circumstances. (I’d rather no federal funding at all, but that was perhaps politically impossible.) The appointment of Leon Kass, arch-opponent of human cloning, to head up the President’s Council on the issue, is also a good sign. The speech was a classic example of the politics of this administration: two steps away from the far-right toward the center. What beats me is why on such an important speech, Bush didn’t get one of his truly talented speech-writers to craft a statement that could truly persuade and engage. Did Karen Hughes write this, as I read today? I’m sorry but she can’t write her way out of a paper bag. You think Reagan would have relied on a bureaucrat to pen such a speech? Where’s Peggy Noonan when you need her?

So many of you asked me to say more about Michael Oakeshott that I dug up a Diarist I wrote for The New Republic after his death. I hope it presuades some of you to read him. The best place to start is probably “Rationalism In Politics,” although it can lead the new reader astray a little about the sheer ambition of his work. “On Human Conduct” is, in my opinion, the masterpiece. And his final collection, “On History,” also has some gems. Anyway, the Diarist is posted opposite. The final metaphor is Oakeshott’s own, which I also pilfered for ‘Virtually Normal.” I love the image of wildflowers. Like Oakeshott’s prose, they are often as beautiful as they are rarely noticed.

Over 400 emails later, all I can say is: STOP! What on earth was I thinking? Still, I had a good few moments of merriment at your behest. A few of you found the somewhat lurid nature of some of the titles I already posted to be a disgrace. Oh, well. So were certain aspects of a certain presidency. And the trouble with an advance of over $10 million is that you’ve got to move some product. So a little spice is probably essential. I liked the variation on an old Onion headline: “Feeling a Nation’s Pain, Breasts,” along with “The West Schwing,” and a Britney-style “Ooops, I Did It Again.” But this is Knopf. They need a little more class. Some of you were subtler. Why not just rip off Philip Roth and call it “The Human Stain,” Brett Easton Ellis and go with “American Psycho,” or Will Self with “Cock and Bull,” although I felt “Mein Knopf” was a little tough on Sonny Mehta. Then there were the slight twists to established literary titles. “Tuesdays With Monica,” has a nice ring to it. “Visible Man” is probably too intelligent to make it past the marketing department, but “War and Piece” just might, along with “As I Lay Lying.” (I always thought the Starr Report should have been titled “He Only Came Twice,” but, despite a couple of entries, it hardly does justice to the ex-president’s long career.) Some were an enjoyable stretch: “One Blew Under the President’s Desk,” and “The Importance of Seeming Earnest.”

For obvious reasons, some of your entries had a lyrical touch to them. “My Cheatin’ Heart” was perhaps the most popular entry. “Stuck Between Two Bushes – Hey, It Ain’t All That Bad” was worthy of Nashville. “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Intern” had a certain charm. So does an Elton John riff: “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word.” Then there were the movie variations: “A.I.: Ahdidnothave Intercourse,” and “Crouching Bubba, Stolen Sofa.” Even Clinton fans had a go. A liberal journalist who wisely insisted on anonymity proposed “Taking All Comers.” “Impeach This!” has a Clintonian bravado to it. So does: “Cashing In: or How I Stopped Worrying About Money and Learned to Love the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” “Harlem Globetrotter” is even better. Then there were the meta ones: “I Did Not Have Authorial Relations With The Book You Are Holding In Your Hands: A White House Memoir by William Jefferson Clinton;” “No Dope From Hope;” “I Warned You I Had A Bridge to the Twenty-First Century;” and “Sax And The City.”

Some just speak for themselves. One punster came up with a Yiddish version of Harry Truman: “The Buxom Schtupp Here.” Then there’s this clairvoyant winner: “A Mind-numbing Work Of Staggering Length,” but Sid Blumenthal already has that one under copyright. If Clinton wanted to do a short check-out counter book, he could always go for “Who Moved My Squeeze?,” “You Know You’re A Redneck When … The White House Edition,” or “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Little Rock.” “Black Like Me” doesn’t mince words. Nor does: “Blown Away: My White House Years.” Or a variation on Margaret Thatcher’s autobio: “Sociopath To Power.”

In the end, the judges (the beagle and I) were looking for concision, freshness and punch. Runner-up is a Kennedy throw-back. Let’s hear it for “Camealot.” But leaving sex as his only legacy seems a mite unfair. He was also an unusually good liar. The winner was suggested by several people with several variations. They know who they are. The title is easy: “Is” by William Jefferson Clinton. The sub-title is of course the punch-line. What could be funnier than “Non-Fiction”?

LETTERS: Blaming Bush for S.U.V.s; sicko homos; my bad pop-psych; etc.

“If the Bush administration gets its way in the Senate, my daughter will climb into my lap in a couple of years and ask me what is jingling in my pocket. I’ll draw out the pennies. I will tell her about the home of the snarling wolverine and the den of the foxes and the pond nests of the loons and the sky dance of the jaegers and the flitting song of a rare bluethroat thrush. I will tell her that George Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Young took that from her for pennies of their own.” – John Balzar, Boston Globe.

You’ve got to give me more time to sift through the Clinton book entries. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of emails. So far, they’re hilarious. I promise I’ll award the prize (with many runners-up) very soon. Front-runners so far: “It Takes A Spillage,” “Glands Across America,” and “Crouching Bubba, Hidden Intern.” And then there are the tasteless ones.

THAT BEARD: Slate magazine has just done a round-up of criticism of Al Gore’s beard. Don’t blame them. It’s August, for Pete’s sake. I enjoyed Maureen Dowd’s condescension toward it, but women, my recent issue of “Men’s Health” tells me, don’t like facial hair anyway. Or they don’t admit they do to survey-takers from “Men’s Health.” My own view is that it looks pathetic. To work, beards need to be strong, thick and dense. Gore’s looks like some wimpy piece of brushwood sparsely covering a sand-dune. It makes me realize why I’ve always suspected Gore’s testosterone-schtick, puffing his chest up, swaggering about, sticking his tongue down his wife’s throat in public, ‘Love Story’ etc. He’s got masculinity issues. And the scraggly teenage beard thing only accentuates it. What next? A beret?

LETTERS: How bad was Bork?; how sick are homosexuals?; etc.

HIV STATS: Worthwhile little statistical analysis of the CDC’s claim that HIV infections have remained stable at 40,000 a year for the last ten years. This guy is a stats wonk, has no ax to grind, and asks some obviously good questions about the basis for this statistic, which looks increasingly too pessimistic. Will the CDC answer? I doubt it. What will some AIDS activists say? If the recent past is any guide, they will simply accuse the guy of being racist, since (they claim) black men are now the most vulnerable to HIV infection. But slowly, the facts will surely come out. And the flim-flam designed to stop that will recede.

Okay, a real contest. The best title and/or sub-title for Bill Clinton’s forthcoming $10 million plus book will get a free subscription to andrewsullivan.com for … oh, never mind the prize. Let’s just have the contest. My opening bid: “I Cannot Recall – A Southern Boy’s Struggle Against Amnesia.” Send ’em in. I’ll post the best all this week.

A BIG COP: Just what are we to make of an anonymous L.A. cop’s comments, posted in National Review Online about Gary Condit? Here’s the relevant paragraph: “There was a time in America when Mr. Condit might have been brought down to the police station, where he would have been ushered into a small room for a long talk with a big cop. At the conclusion of this conversation the police would very likely have had a better idea of his involvement in Chandra’s disappearance. Or, at the very least, the congressman would be far less prone to maintaining that sickening grin of his. Alas, such methods, though effective, were found lacking in constitutional authority. Mr. Condit thus remains free to flit about and grin like a madman for the cameras.” Am I missing something or is this cop saying Condit should have been physically threatened or intimidated to get at the details of his connection with Chandra Levy? Why else is the investigator supposed to be “big.” Why else the stupid macho rhetoric of wiping the smile of someone’s face? Or the concession that such tactics are unconstitutional? The thuggery of the LAPD is no surprise to anyone – but that conservatives should now be endorsing it is truly news. I guess we now know for sure what some conservatives were really after in the Lewinsky case. They said it wasn’t about sex, but about lying. They were obviously lying. But using cops to enforce their moral code truly is a new departure.

UNFAIR TO BORK?: Several readers think I was engaging in unfair ad hominem arguments against Robert Bork by describing him as ‘sadly bitter.’ Note the ‘sadly.’ I was once a huge fan of Bork’s, wrote the first piece defending him against the jihad in his confirmation hearings, and admired his book “The Tempting of America.” But “Slouching Toward Gomorrah” was a text-book in reactionary extremism. In it, he supports government backed censorship for anything that might undermine moral values, describes modern liberalism in all its many facets as simply fascism, says American culture is in a “free-fall with no bottom in sight,” and on and on. It’s one of the most negative and bitter books about America and the American people I’ve ever read. No wonder he wants to pre-empt a federalist, democratic conversation about same-sex marriage. He has such contempt for the culture that gave rise to equal marriage rights he wants to shut down the debate immediately.

When Chandra Levy’s parents first tried to push their missing daughter to the head of the D.C. police’s to-do list, they thought using the media was a good idea. And indeed one of the constant refrains of those who justify the media excess of the last couple of months is that, whatever hideous wreckage it leaves behind in the form of people’s ruined private lives, it’s worth it if the coverage helps find a missing person. Well, guess what? The coverage has actually achieved the reverse. The cops have been deluged with bogus, false, crazy, wacko and misleading tips – and, under media pressure, been forced to check them out. This massive waste of resources – resources that could have been used to investigate an actual crime rather than a speculation about one – has yet to turn up anything useful, so far as we know. This, we are also told by the cops in the Washington Post, is very common in missing person cases. All this is why police investigation should properly be left to law enforcement – not the distressed parents of missing children and desperate editors of tabloids. The way in which personal grief has been allowed to distort and corrupt our criminal justice system is perhaps the enduring lesson of this case. We owe the Levys our sympathy. We do not owe them the abolition of a neutral and independent police force.

BORKING MARRIAGE: There is little to say about Robert Bork’s piece on same-sex marriage today. There is nothing original in it, and I presume the Journal ran it under intense pressure from the theo-conservatives. And there is nothing surprising about it. Since his horrifying treatment at the hands of the cultural left in his Supreme Court nomination hearings, Bork has become a sadly bitter man, who rages against almost anything in the modern world. But there are a couple of sentences worth parsing: “Some proponents of gay marriage, such as Jonathan Rauch, have tried to split cultural conservatives by invoking federalism. Family law, he argues, has always been governed by the states. Though that is not entirely true, it is entirely irrelevant. A constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of same-sex marriage would itself override federalism.” Note first the sly slur. He asserts that Jon Rauch’s defense of federalism in this matter is tactical, made purely as a means to “split cultural conservatives.” It doesn’t occur to Bork that Rauch may be sincere in this, or if it does occur to him, he’s not gracious enough to admit it. He then goes on to say of Rauch’s point that marriage has always been a state matter, that it “is not entirely true.” So that means it’s almost entirely true? Then Bork says it is irrelevant because the Supreme Court is poised to impose same-sex marriage on the whole country. Huh? We don’t even have same-sex marriage in a single state. We are years and probably decades away from the U.S. Supreme Court intervening in this matter, if it ever does. But this alleged emergency is the reason for this radical amendment? The real reason surely is that a faction on the right wants to shut down this debate before it has really begun because they have been slowly losing the argument – in the press and in the polls, where support for equal marriage rights is growing.

LETTERS: Guns in Seattle; media scolds and religion; etc.

GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST: David Broder, we are all taught to believe, is the dean of Washington journalism. And so he is. He still reports; he’s never shrill; he’s often very shrewd and on target. But he’s also prone to the notion that besets all those who look down on ideological zeal or hardball. His most recent column bewails the fact that George W. Bush stuck with his tax cut pledge. For Broder, Bush has made it harder for himself to spend more money on important things like a senior prescription drug benefit, or a bigger military. But has it occurred to Broder that Bush believes the tax cut is simply more important than his other objectives? Or that Bush has decided it would be better to return to deficits than to acquiesce in the massive new entitlements Democrats want to spend the surpluses on? Such a thought doesn’t seem to have crossed Broder’s mind. It is a given to many journalists that taxes are good, that government doesn’t need to get any smaller, that all our problems – from senior health-care to energy shortages – can never be simply left alone. Yesterday the Post itself went one better, excoriating Virginia for not having high enough taxes. “Virginia is a wealthy state,” the Post opines, “but much of the wealth is untaxed.” The nerve of it!

ZOE AND JIM: The best thing I could find to read all day (in journalism, that is) is Zoe Heller and Jim Wolcott chatting each other up in Slate. They are so right about the Condit-Levy story. The true joy of this summer (apart from the Elysian weather here on the Cape) has been watching all these anti-Condit pundit-scolds making complete asses of themselves. Wolcott has a beaut of a description of Larry King’s descent into Psychic News Network world: “Night after night, Larry King, looking like a shriveled astronaut strapped by his suspenders into a Mercury 7 module, led a bevy of blond conservative harpies–Hillary haters who had somehow cornered the peroxide market–and a few half-hearted dissenters in a free-association panel discussion of the Condit-Levy case that was a harlequinade of spite, wild speculation, and cheap moralizing, with Condit cast as the wolf, Chandra the naive lamb.” Man, Wolcott can write. And he’s so on target about these creepy Condit-haters trying desperately to relive their Lewinsky glory days. As if adultery were a Democratic monopoly.

“But the news about the 401(k)’s [losing value] has got me nervous. I’m delighted if it foils the plot to securitize Social Security, which strikes me as yet another instance of our becoming like post-Soviet Russia — tearing apart our common wealth to enrich our corporate oligarchs and liberating the rest of us, as someone once said, to go sleep under a bridge.”- Nelson Aldrich Jr., New York Times Magazine, August 5.

IS BUSH WORSE THAN POL POT?: More liberal charm from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

LETTERS: Hillary and little animals; the gay left attacks gay leftists now as well; etc.

Have you ever read a weirder New York Times’ “EDITOR’S NOTE” than yesterday’s? Here it is: “Readers who solve The Times’s Sunday puzzles may wish to skip this note until they have completed today’s crossword. That puzzle, on Page 64 of the magazine, is titled “Homonames.” Its principal answers are homonyms of well-known names — words pronounced like the names but spelled differently and unrelated in meaning. After advance copies of the magazine had been delivered, a few readers, perhaps prompted by the sound of the title, said they perceived allusions to gay life among the puzzle clues. Slurs involving sexual orientation would be a violation of The Times’s standards. The newspaper has requested and received assurances from the puzzle editor and the puzzle creator, a veteran Times contributor, that no such allusions — nor any suggestions about anyone’s sexual orientation — were intended.” Now take a look at the clues in the “Homonames” crossword: “Tote a narrow opening?” “Friend of Françoise?” “Add more lubricant.” “People who live next to a Y.” “__flash.” “Tiny openings.” “Scratched up leather straps?” “Reddish purple.” “Fashion designer Gernreich.” “Gob.” “Place to get a screwdriver.” “1967 Rookie of the Year.” I’m happy to take the Times’ word for it that this crossword had no conscious intent to make me fall about laughing. But has the crossword creator ever thought of having psycho-therapy?

AND NOW THEY’RE AFTER NORAH: I guess most of you know by now what gay leftists do to those gay men and women who dare to disagree with them. The apparatchiks of the Old Guard attack the dissidents, vilify them, smear them, ransack their private lives, do anything to keep them from being published or read or listened to. Norah Vincent, a young lesbian independent writer, is not the first. But the vicious attacks on her by the usual suspects are still depressing. Today in the New York Times, the Voice’s official gay lefty Richard Goldstein, goes on the attack again against her with this slur: “The liberal press needs to ask itself why they consistently promote the work of gay writers who attack other gay people.” Attack other gay people? Did Goldstein, who recently ransacked my private life for sport, say that with a straight face? Perhaps he is unaware of his ally, Charles Kaiser, who glibly says the following in the Times today: “I certainly think that Andrew [Sullivan’s] popularity, especially on the talk-show circuit has a lot to do with his own self hatred.” That’s not an attack on another gay person? To accuse someone of self-hatred is the lowest and cheapest of insults. It’s something no-one can rebut; and it strikes at the core of someone’s integrity. So too does the notion that those of us who want to offer a different future for homosexuals – integration into the wider world, the replacement of victimology with self-esteem, a free market economy where individuals can pursue their dreams regardless of sexual orientation – are somehow “attacking” gay people. Both these assertions are among the lowest smears possible upon someone’s integrity. The only thing lower is the charge of hypocrisy – a deliberate lie that has repeatedly been foisted on me as well. What are these smear-artists afraid of? That Norah and I might actually win an audience? That we might have earned some readership? That we might change some people’s minds? Ah, there’s the rub. The best answer to these hate-mongers is to keep writing and thinking and ignoring them. Their day is over, and the only thing left of it, like the smile of the Cheshire cat, is the lingering poison and envy that hovers in the air. Meanwhile, check out Norah’s new website. Yes, it’s www.norahvincent.com.

CATHOLIC DUAL LOYALTY AGAIN: Joe Conason’s work has always given me the willies, but his latest questioning of the motives of the spy Robert Hanssen was even more disturbing than usual. In his limning of Hanssen’s connections with Opus Dei, a special order for laity and clergy within the Catholic Church, Conason does more than simply veer up to the edge of an ancient and trusty anti-Catholic libel. He suggests that Hanssen wasn’t merely a traitor for the Russians, but a traitor for the Vatican, secretly waging war against leftists in the United States, using classified information. How’s that for a two-fer? Conason’s implication is that Hannsen’s treachery for the Pope was worse than his doings for Moscow, because he was ideologically motivated in his papist surveillance of American lefties, while merely financially interested in handing secrets over to the Russians. Worse, Hannsen’s emails show him to be appalled by Bill Clinton, Conason’s mentor in all things political and moral. Imagine that: a man who thinks more highly of the Pope than Bill Clinton! Conason veils his prejudice by citing liberal Catholics’ issues with Opus Dei. But his meaning is clear enough. Obviously, I’m not defending the activities of Hannsen. But I am querying the easy anti-Catholicism (especially when it comes to conservative Catholics) in the liberal media. Check it out for yourself. And ask yourself: would anyone get away with this kind of dual loyalty smear with any other group? American Jews, for example? I doubt it – and for good reason.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “Hillary just doesn’t care about battered women and their kids.” Sub-head on a piece by Richard Miniter, Wall Street Journal. Does she hate cuddly little animals as well?

LETTERS:A Hillary mystery unraveled; dumber jocks; the hell of special interest groups; etc.

CHINA’S ANTI-CHOICE POLICIES: The Daily Telegraph reports that China is going to force up to 20,000 abortions in a small province that has been bucking the neo-fascist government in Beijing. Amazing quote from a U.N. official, Sven Burmester, the United Nations Population Fund representative in Beijing: “For all the bad press, China has achieved the impossible. The country has solved its population problem.” The bad press includes the drowning of infants in rice-paddies, forced abortions for heavily pregnant women, coerced sterilizations, and on and on. Here’s a simple good faith test for feminist groups in the U.S.: take a stand against forced abortions and sterilization in China. Or is ‘choice’ for women merely a noble principle when the government is attempting to stop abortion rather than impose it?

“”The Mail on Sunday, like its sister paper the Daily Mail, occupies the middlebrow middle ground in the British press… Politically it has always hewed to a far-right agenda, from its mid-1930s sympathetic portrayal of Adolf Hitler to its mid-1980s fawning over Margaret Thatcher.” – Martin Lewis, Salon.

LETTERS: A rat’s ass in Wyoming; the Streisand rule; the brilliance of jocks, etc.