The Dish

Longtime readers will remember my noting the trip to Cuba of a bunch of media machers last February. CBS’s Leslie Moonves, Vanity Fair’s editor Graydon Carter, who has just published Gore Vidal’s pornographic defense of domestic U.S. terrorism, and MTV head Tom Freston, were among those who toasted the murderous thug Fidel Castro. They got permission from the Treasury Department before they left, but it’s not clear whether they violated the terms of their trip. The Feds, according to the Miami Herald, are now investigating. A good sign of increasingly frosty relations between Washington and Hollywood. It still staggers me how people who consider themselves liberal and enlightened could suck up to a man who dragooned homosexuals into concentration camps, outlawed any political opposition, and is responsible for the murder and imprisonment of thousands for political crimes. A good piece in Front Page magazine lately highlighted the vicious homophobia of Castro. So now we know a little about Graydon Carter’s politics: he is tolerant toward communist dictators and fascist terrorists. Oh well. It’s the buzz and white rums that count.

VILLAGE BIGOT: I posted an excerpt from James Ridgeway’s recent piece from the Village Voice where he accuses “Christers” of wanting to oppress whole classes of people and of being racists (since they only want to have white babies). (Has Ridgeway heard of something called African-American Christianity?) I assumed “Christer” was a misprint. It turns out it isn’t. It’s a retro slur against Christians originating in the 1960s. It’s basically the equivalent of calling a Jewish person a “kike,” a heterosexual person a “breeder,” or a gay person a “faggot”, except I think it’s worse than that because it also manages to use the sacred word “Christ” as a form of abuse. Can you imagine the hyper-p.c. Voice ever allowing any other religion to be abused in this way?

NETWORK REVISITED: Spent one day this weekend inside with friends watching old movies. I was really impressed by Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry.” I’d seen it before but never appreciated it fully. So completely shameless and true, it’s his best movie, I think, apart from Annie Hall. But I was really blown away by “Network.” Twenty-five years ago, this movie constructed a fantasy parody of the network news gone bad. There was a populist loud-mouth (O’Reilly?), and a full-time psychic (Zahn?). No wonder Dan Rather told viewers after Bush’s stem-cell speech to get themselves a newspaper if they want to have a chance of understanding current events. Paddy Chayevsky’s nightmare is now our banality. And who anywhere is anything close to “mad as hell”?

LETTERS: In defense of Bush’s speech; embryos in limbo; why conservatives deserve no respect; etc.

THE BIGGEST STORY OF THE YEAR: It’s rare that, in a public policy debate, you get hard evidence of the success of a certain policy in a short space of time. This isn’t true of the most significant social policy change of the 1990s: welfare reform. We’ve almost forgotten the white-knuckled battle it took to prise real welfare reform from the Clinton presidency – especially against the almost ceaseless arguments from left-liberals who fought any real change to the end. Well, guess what? The liberals were dead, flat wrong. When the New York Times is forced to run a front-page story on the clear revival of the poor black family following reform, you know the debate is all but over. When that story includes a capitulation from one of those who resigned from his position at HHS over the Clinton-Republican change, then you know this matters. Mickey Kaus, one of the few liberals to have pursued this in the 1980s and 1990s like a Jack Russell attached to a mailman’s heel, has every reason to crow. Yes, the Times does its best to minimize the news. But the lesson is clear: bad government policy can undermine social stability and order. But just as important: these mistakes can be undone. There is nothing inevitable about social chaos. All that’s needed is the will to reverse it.

WHO’S FIGHTING AIDS IN AFRICA?: Nevaripine is a drug that, in combination with others, can sharply reduce HIV transmission from mother to unborn child. Since the success rate in preventing this kind of transmission is far higher than the success rate at controlling the disease once a child has it, you’d think this would be a priority for the South African government. Are the evil drug companies standing in the way? The drug’s manufacturer, Boehringer Ingelheim, has been giving the drug away fro free for over a year in Africa. This still hasn’t prevented the usual AIDS activists from attacking the company. But it turns out the drug is hard to give away in Africa because there are so few natal and post-natal facilities through which to administer the drug, and no safe baby formula or clean water to administer it after birth. To add to this, the South African government won’t provide the free drug through its public health services. Why? Beats me. Check out this story from South Africa to see if you can see a credible answer. And check out Bob Herbert’s latest column taking Pretoria to task … Oh, well. I can always dream.

An interestingly Freudian couple of sentences in David Greenberg‘s assessment of Paul Gigot, the new Journal opinion poo-bah in Slate. Greenberg writes: “Some conservative columnists earn mainstream respect by dint of intellect, style, or originality (William F. Buckley, George Will, William Safire) while others earn it by their overtime working of sources (Fred Barnes, Robert Novak, William Safire).” Now, the question is: could this sentence ever be written about liberal columnists? What does a liberal columnist have to do to “earn mainstream respect?” The answer is nothing. Liberal columnists already have respect from the mainstream of journalism – because they’re liberals. The notion that William Safire or George Will have to earn such respect but that Bob Herbert and Anna Quindlen don’t is, of course, ludicrous. But there you are. At least David has helped clarify the state of affairs in our journalistic mainstream. Conservatives are only admitted if they seem, to the ruling liberal mind, not to be “haters,” or if they dissent in some way from conservative orthodoxy. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t buy the mother lode of conservative orthodoxy myself. But I see no reason why it shouldn’t have an unquestioned place in “mainstream” journalism, where unquestioned liberal platitudes were ensconced by divine right decades ago.

This last week is the first week we have never gone below 7,000 visitors a day. We’re now on the verge of 200,000 visitors a month. That this is happening in August is really wild. And we’re also very close to a financing breakthrough. Stay tuned.

LETTERS: Dissent on Ireland; a “massive organ” in the “Classical Review,”; Bush as Truman, etc.

Very helpful and wise column by Paul Gigot today defending Al Gore. I’m still not convinced he can run again though.

WAR IN PEACE: My take on the latest “breakthrough” in Ireland. See the TRB opposite.

“The main way to support fundamentalist Christians is to protect the institutions of patriarchy. In a Christer world, men carry out instructions from God, and women are men’s docile assistants. Their main job is to have babies, preferably white. Otherwise, they stay in the kitchen, take care of the children, speak when spoken to, and for all intents and purposes remain the property of the husband.” – James Ridgeway, The Village Voice. “Christer?” Dumber?

POSEUR ALERT: “At its most florid, which is frequently, Gore Vidal’s prose style resembles the well-oiled musings of a professional wit on the banquet circuit, who regales his moist, heavily breathing listeners with elegant postprandial tales just outré enough to stir their digestive juices.” – Gary Kamiya, Salon. (The rest of the piece is actually pretty good.)

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “What would the original Bill of Rights look like if George W. Bush and Republican leaders had been with the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention? Would they have supported freedom of speech and religion? Would they have protected Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures?” – Who else but Terry McAuliffe, last Saturday. Noticed first on Spinsanity.

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.