Category: Old Dish

“I swear that if this current bunch of supposed White House reporters were covering Adolf Hitler back in the early days of his administration, they’d be writing glowing accounts of how successful the German chancellor was in achieving his goals. “There was some concern that he’d have a difficult time convincing the country that it needed to do away with the Jews,” they’d write. “But it’s apparent that he has been able to control the agenda. It’s a crowning accomplishment of his first days in office.” – Dave Zweifel, The Capital Times, Wisconsin. Zweifel concedes his reference might be hyperbolic. He doesn’t seem to grasp that it’s obscene.

BEFORE NIGHT FALLS: Predictably, this wonderful movie about a gay man persecuted by Communist thugs has now run afoul of the European left. A simply astonishing piece in Monday’s Guardian in London includes this quote from a leftist pro-Castro academic, Steve Williamson of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign: “If Arenas even did one third of what he claims to have done in his book, he would have been locked up for life in any other country. The man was outrageous. His prison sentence was basically for having sex with young boys.” So having all-but excused the Castro regime for putting gays in concentration camps (yes, he has the obligatory caveats but now says – absurdly – that Cuba has one of the best gay rights records in Latin America), the man throws in the smear that Arenas was a pedophile. Who said that bigotry was only found on the right?

“Even the best news outlets [in Guatemala] tend to be openly ideological and there is no American- style separation of news and opinion, so the owners’ views can permeate reporting. Many publications offer only news designed to further the owners’ personal or political agenda.” – Tina Rosenberg, New York Times today.

Trying to figure out exactly why Gore Vidal has such a crush on Timothy McVeigh, I had a bit of a eureka moment with the following quote. Vidal has long been motivated in part by a slightly loopy romanticization of America as a republic, of America never really being involved in wars (Vidal is queasy about the Second World War, let alone Vietnam or Desert Storm), and maintaining her pre-imperial virginity. Along with McVeigh’s paranoid fantasies about American power at home, he is also, it turns out, an anti-interventionist abroad. “[W]hat occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time,” McVeigh explained in the London Observer, “and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel). I hope that this clarification amply addresses all questions.” It certainly addresses the question of why Vidal loves McVeigh so much.

So Gore Vidal will be one of five guests invited to personally witness the death of Timothy McVeigh. Why? Because they’re chums. He and McVeigh “share many ideas in common.” McVeigh was not a callous mass murderer but someone “with an exaggerated sense of justice.” I guess you have to remember that, in Vidal’s view, only Harry Truman was a mass-murderer who deserves condemnation. McVeigh is “very, very bright,” and he’s a “junkie of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” The fact that many, many others can say the same but Vidal is only interested in becoming friends with one who also killed scores without remorse speaks volumes about Vidal’s moral compass. In contrast, Attorney-General Ashcroft is a “nobody” and his decision against face-to-face interviews for McVeigh (Vidal will be forced to conduct his love-in by fax) is worthy of the “Third Reich.” Vidal will publish his ruminations – where else? – but in the most sickening magazine published today, Vanity Fair. In the long run, people reveal their inner selves. Could anyone trash Gore Vidal more successfully than he has now done himself?

NEW KERRY DATA: Apparently, according to Senator John Kerry, quoted in Bill Safire’s solid column today, the United States was replaced by Sudan on the U.N. Human Rights Commission because the world finds “a lack of a sense of honesty” in the new administration. As compared to what, for example? Bill Clinton?

NEW KERREY DATA: I’m not sure what to make of the latest piece of reporting on Bob Kerrey’s night in Thanh Phong. But it’s worth reading closely. What the Washington Post piece demonstrates, however, is one possibility: that there was a genuine reason for Kerrey’s unit to target the village (there were Viet Cong soldiers there) and that this is compatible with civilian atrocities. A young and barely tested leader could easily have panicked under such circumstances before he came across the enemy – or indeed some other soldier might have done the damage before Kerrey even arrived on the scene. At least this version provides some understanding of the strange grouping of civilians in the middle of the village where they were shot dead. We’ll probably never know the full truth – but these details suggest that a real investigation might dig up something important. All the more reason to get on with it.

But today’s New York Times editorial on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has to be read to be believed. I really thought this “blame America first” syndrome had died with the 1970s. But it’s alive and well at the Times. The only good news from the U.S. being kicked off the commission is that its loony left politics will be exposed more clearly for everyone to see. We’ll see if the Times will tolerate Sudan lecturing the rest of us on human rights. Maybe even they draw the line somewhere.

If you want a good reason why Entertainment Weekly is by far the best magazine right now on popular culture, check out Benjamin Svetkey’s terrific cover-essay in this week’s issue on celebrity drug addiction. He makes a good case that one of the few sub-cultures that might actually benefit from John Walters’ First World War approach to drugs is Hollywood. Stars with addiction have a virtual army of enablers desperate to keep their investments happy. Hilarious bonus: a Hollywood shrink has invented a term for Downeyitis – Acquired Situational Narcissism. No wonder Bill Clinton loved the entertainment industry so much.

AMTRAK SPECIAL: On my way to Philly today for a panel discussion on the gay rights movement. It’s part of the most impressive gay-lesbian festival of arts, sports, politics in America. The only problem is that it’s called Pridefest. I’ve always had a problem with the notion of “pride.” Yeah, yeah, I know it’s better than shame. But do we really have to link a civil rights movement with one of the deadly sins? Can you imagine SlothFest, LustFest, or AngerFest? Actually, come to think of it, they sound kinda fun.

I put on a tie today. Don’t worry. No-one’s died. David Frum and the rest of Bush’s speech-writing team invited me to an off-the-record bull session to give them reflections on the administration from the outside. I’m in august company. Leon Kass and Charles Krauthammer were the two most recent guests. We met in a shrouded room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building right next to the West Wing, where Nixon used to work when he got too paranoid about people peering through the Oval Office windows. They’re a bright and breezy bunch. Frum is a smart man, although we’ve had our disagreements. Matthew Scully and Michael Gerson are particularly impressive – thoughtful, moral, serious men. I stayed after to chat with Matthew about our mutual interest in animal welfare. He’s completing a book on the subject; I’m embarking on a long essay project. Poor guy has to get up at 4 am every day to get some work done before he has to go to the office. It was also great to see my old buddy John McConnell, a prince of a man who has soldiered on in the Republican Party for years now. From Wisconsin, he’s a sharp lawyer with an even bigger fixation on Ronald Reagan than I have. All in all, I’d say that Bush and Cheney have picked well. Clinton had his troopers too: Michael Waldman and David Shipley were decent liberals and lovely writers. But it must be much more fun writing speeches for Bush. Unlike Clinton, Bush follows the script. And unlike Clinton, it seems that a good deal of the intellectual heft behind his remarks come from outside. (No snickering in the back, please.) In some ways, it felt like I was having a chat with the president’s brain. Maybe if I meet Karl Rove, I’ll see what the central lobe is like.

TWOFER: Bob Kerrey has been accused of being a war-criminal and the New School stands by him. If he’d been accused of uttering a racial slur, do you think they would have? Great point from Ron Unz on NRO. Also a deeply satisfying piece by Michael Ledeen on the Drudge-Blumenthal spat. Cuts to the chase.

The case for Bush’s tax-cut – and the flim-flam around it. Check out TRB opposite.

SICK HUMOR PATROL: A reader sends in the following bumper sticker we’ll never see: “LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND: KERREY 2004.”

Interesting piece by Rick Berke today, channeling Clinton’s buddies about what the ex-president thinks of the new one. Some familiar complaints, but all in all, Clinton, who’s no dummie, gets Bush better than most of his fellow Democrats. “”The thing that struck me the most was he said, `Don’t underestimate President Bush; he’s a formidable force,’ ” said Llewellyn Wells, the producer of “The West Wing.”” My prediction is that the main buzz from this piece will be in Britain. What is Clinton doing still on the phone with Tony Blair? Undermining his relationship with George W. Bush?

BUSTED: I found out today that George W. Bush has installed a big bust of Dwight Eisenhower in the Oval Office. Why am I not surprised?

NO MORE CHADS: The New York Times story about Florida’s funding of a complete overhaul of its election equipment to go to a universal optical scanning system is a case-study in the paper’s sadly increasing bias. “It would also require that ballots in extremely close elections be recounted by hand – the very practice that Florida election officials and the Bush campaign had opposed so fiercely last year in their battle with Democrats who were insisting that manual recounts would tip the election to Al Gore,” the Times reporter opines. But the main reason for opposing hand-counts last time was because the standards for determining voter intent in punch-card ballots was so haphazard. Yes, some Republicans opportunistically opposed any hand-counting at all. But the bulk of the opposition was because of the subjective nature of recounting chads. The new system will eliminate that entirely. The Times can’t even resist pointing out that Jeb Bush’s statement supporting the notion that every Floridian’s vote should count “echoed the mantra of the Democrats last year, when Mr. Gore pleaded with state officials and the courts to “count every vote.”” Does Al Gore now have a copyright on clichés? It’s only deep in the piece that we get the real details of what the change will be. But not until Democratic Party propaganda is ladeled out in spoonfuls.

MONUMENTALISM: Good news from Washington that the proposed, massive, completely over-sized World War II memorial is going to be reconsidered. What a relief. The World War II generation surely deserves an important and stirring monument. But the current design would have wrecked the sightlines from the Washington monument to the Lincoln Memorial and was lugubrious and pretentious in the extreme. One of the true joys of the Mall is its open space – the green vista that sweeps down the small hill on which the Washington momument stands to the reflecting pool to Lincoln and beyond. The current plan would have been the equivalent of a nail on a chalkboard to that breath-taking view. Time for a second look.

In the short time since Matt Drudge posted his story about the media shut-out and I followed suit, guess what? Matt gets calls from both the Journal and the Times asking for his comments on the story. Maybe they were just a little tardy. Or maybe the web actually works …