Category: Old Dish

The Wall Street Journal’s discovery that ex-president Bill Clinton called CBS president Leslie Moonves to nudge him to pay Harry Thomason $1 million is no huge news. Isn’t that what criminal bosses generally do for their buddies? And isn’t that the same Leslie Moonves who was recently yucking it up with Fidel Castro and Graydon Carter on a clandestine trip to Cuba? The guy clearly is a sucker for criminals with cigars. One of the differences, I guess, is that Castro throws innocent people in jail – and Clinton lets criminals out of it.

Or something like that. Hilarious piece about this website in suck.com. He calls me (and a few others) a celeblogger – celebrity web-logger. Brutal, funny and smart, it’s the kind of criticism that takes longer than ten minutes to phone in. Ahem, Mr Wolff. Suck is right about this kind of journalism. It’s a melange of diary pieces, notebook items and postcards – in a stream of e-consciousness. It’s fun. It’s immediate. But so what? I’m not pretending this is the New York Review of Books here. Anyway, more evidence, I think, that we’re onto something. If we can make it pay for itself, it really will be something.

That’s the number of visits Denise Rich made to the White House over the last few years, according to the Secret Service logs reported in the Washington Post. Beth Dozoretz’s visits were in the dozens. I have a feeling we’ll find out about the times of those visits soon as well. The timing of the last cleared visit by Ms Rich couldn’t have been more appropriate – the night before the pardon. She didn’t show, apparently. At least someone was exercising some judgment in the White House in those last crazy hours.

John Fund argues in today’s Wall Street Journal that on the fiftieth anniversary of the 22nd Amendment barring presidents from more than two full terms, we should rejoice. Why? Because it saved us from a third Clinton term. Unfortunately, I think John has it exactly the wrong way round. Many of our Clintonian problems stem from exactly the fact that we have the 22nd Amendment. What the country desperately needed in the wake of the Lewinsky matter was a clarifying vote on the 42nd president. Impeachment was a half-measure, too drastic for the issue at hand, not drastic enough for the real job of throwing a criminal president out of office. Last year’s election foisted the Clinton issue onto Gore, who only half deserved it, and rightly resented being the receptacle of our diverted rage. Part of the reason, I think, for the communal breast-beating of the last few weeks is a consequence of our never having been allowed to vent our feelings about Clinton directly at the ballot box where they belonged. I believe, despite John’s worries, that Clinton would have lost a third election; and that his loss is the only thing that would have led to a real national reckoning with the meaning of the man and the damage he has done to our culture, our law, and our politics. Elections are the core of our democratic experiment. Limiting them only pushes the pressures of democracy onto legal institutions (like independent counsels) or quasi-political institutions (like the press) which are not built to take the strain. The 22nd Amendment is one of the worst ever to have been passed. And we’re now living with the cultural and political consequences.

Terrific column in today’s Washington Post by under-rated columnist, William Raspberry. I recommend it as a tonic for those members of aggrieved ‘groups’ – aren’t we all in some way or another these days? – who don’t see anything but a bitter end-game in our celebration of victimhood. He cites a sermon by the dean of Washington’s National Cathedral, Nathan Baxter. What’s really great about the homily is the way in which Baxter uses a Christian argument for moving beyond group-think and identity-based politics. What matters is our ability to think beyond the categories and labels presented by our often complex identities – and in that lies the very possibility of universal love that Christ preached. I only read it this evening, so forgive the lateness. But this is the kind of argument that will endure.

Among other insights after an hour’s lunch with me, New York Magazine writer Michael Wolff concludes that a) I have no sense of humor; b) that I’m bad on television; c) that I’m someone who “who believes in, and only in, the passions of his own beliefs.” Okay, can someone tell me what that last thing means? Does he mean that I don’t actually believe what I say I do, but I’m merely a believer in passion? Or that I’m a real believer that one should be passionate about what one believes? Or what? Damned if I know. Also: Small word of advice to anyone giving a media interview. When they ask you who in the past you think of as a model for your work, someone you aspire to, whose example encourages and invigorates you, don’t answer. I did – mentioning Orwell, Camus, Mill, Constant, as my idols in the past. So how does the writer set the piece up? “I am gamely casting about for someone to compare Andrew Sullivan to. “Orwell,” he offers … “Not that I would compare myself to Orwell,”” How to make yourself look like an asshole? Trust a journalist. Similarly, Wolff asserts that “[Sullivan] believes that he is the most significant gay public intellectual in America today.” What’s his evidence for this assertion? Nada. Did he ask me? Nope. Would I have said yes if he had? Nope. Mind-reading as journalism. So how come he couldn’t mind-read my sense of humor?

The ex-president may be selling off the criminal justice system but Mary McGrory has her eye on the ball. “President Bush, in his first White House news conference, proudly observed that he is making progress in encouraging a more “civil discourse.” Perhaps, but more grammatical it ain’t — not when Bush is doing the talking. It’s scandalous, especially for a man who purports to be the “education president.” What happened to his own?” Good try, Mary. No score.

Turns out we’ll need just a couple more days before we can put the tip jar on top of the piano. We want to get absolutely everything right – beta-tested, designed, aligned – to make giving a donation to the site as easy and reliable as humanly possible. There will be three options – the Amazon link, a separate credit card link that will give 100 percent to the site (rather than 15 percent to Amazon), and an old-fashioned address to send old-fashioned checks to. We’re anticipating that most of you will prefer to give once a year, if at all, so don’t worry about constant badgering or PBS-style pledge weeks. And we hope to set up a page on the site for any of you who want to be recognized as major donors of over $100. (A buck a month or nothing at all is just as acceptable, if not, obviously, as welcome). Jonah Goldberg, a friend and jolly chap, predicted last week that this business model for the web wouldn’t work. We have only to wait till Wednesday to prove him wrong.

GORE LOSES DADE: No news here, except a confirmation of what the Palm Beach Post found a while back. The real news is that there is now no doubt that, if Gore had had everything go his way in the first three weeks after the election, and if the recounts in his four cherry-picked counties had been completed in full and in time along the lines adopted by the respective, Democratic canvassing boards, then Gore would still have lost. It’s still possible that a full recount of every county, using the most liberal standards available, might still eke out a Gore win in Florida. But in some ways, that’s not the salient point. The salient point is that we should shed no tears for Gore. He had a chance to be a statesman and call for recounts in every county immediately after the second recount kept Bush alive. He blew it, by adopting a Clintonian win-at-all-costs strategy of picking a few friendly counties and trying to win the Clinton way – by cutting corners. It turns out that this sneaky strategy was too sneaky by half and ended up backfiring. Too bad, Al. For me, I see a seamless link between the ethical impulses behind the Pardon Scam and the Florida Recount. To pursue a skewed recount that could never have resulted in a clear victory for either side was the summation of a Clintonian moral compass. It said in a loud voice: “We don’t care what damage this will do. We don’t care about fairness. We care about winning.” The fact that Gore lacked any sense that this kind of strategy was beneath him, that it could embroil the entire system in a crisis for the sake of a tainted victory, is a clear enough sign to me that, in the end, Gore would not have been the antidote to Clinton. He was the continuation of Clinton by other means. A once-ethical man with genuine aspirations for his country was simply another victim of Clinton’s depravity. Thank God he’s not president now.

“The Clintons may or may not be led away in handcuffs someday. But whatever happens with the criminal investigations, it’s time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose. Cold turkey. No more talk about his political genius, his fund-raising prowess, his ability to captivate audiences. He was president for eight years and the bottom line politically is this: For the first time in nearly half a century, the Republican Party controls the presidency and both houses of Congress. Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing.” – Bob Herbert, New York Times, today.