The Dish

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 …

Of course, Matt Drudge is an interested party. But isn’t he absolutely right that the mainstream media – the New York Times, Wall Street Journal news pages, USA Today – should at least have reported the news of his vindication in the libel suit brought against him by Sidney Blumenthal? These papers covered his error, but are silent about his vindication. What gives? Every time the media establishment behaves this way – over Lewinsky, Kerrey, Drudge – they give Matt and the Internet more credibility. Don’t they even realize they look stupid in their obvious bias?

An amazing story from Seattle. A bill designed to clamp down on school bullying has been all but killed by some conservative Christians who fear it could lead to tolerance of homosexuality. They want to make sure that the bill does not preclude kids from expressing their disdain of gays. Now, I’m all in favor of maximizing free speech, but the bill even contains language expressly ensuring that such expressions of opinion would be protected. I’m also skeptical of attempts to ban anything but clear verbal and physical bullying, since vaguer definitions are very hard to define. But what surely shouldn’t be protected is the physical abuse of kids targeted as “faggots.” Do some Christian conservatives actually believe that such bullying and name-calling should be defended? Do they actually regard such intimidation of gays (and many straights) as an important part of their children’s education? Perhaps they know that without verbal and physical bullying of gay kids, social disapproval of homosexuality might wane. These attitudes start early, after all. But enforcing social norms by defending the bullying of children seems to me a pretty unconscionable position. By the same token, I can’t see any reason either for why some conservatives support hate crime laws protecting every conceivable minority except homosexuals. This is George Bush’s nutball position. I’m against all hate crime laws. But if you’re going to have them at all, why should they exclude the group that is one of the most likely to be targeted? This discrepancy is a signal. It’s saying subtly to thugs: “Hate crimes are bad, but we understand it if you hate homos. That’s a defensible pretext for bashing – or at least more defensible than bashing someone who’s black or Jewish or Mormon.” I can’t believe that most humane conservatives really feel that way; or even that those who sincerely oppose homosexual equality still believe it’s ok to slur, bully, attack or wound gay kids or adults. So why support policies that do just that? How about changing the tone, Mr President?

HOME NEWS: We had 142,000 unique visitors last month – a new record – up from 82,000 in January. Thanks. The Tipping Jar now has over $11,000 in it. The only downside of all this is that I can’t keep up with the mail. I used to make a point of replying to almost everyone. I can’t do that any more, or I’d have no time to do anything else. But I do read every one, even if I can’t respond individually. So don’t stop writing. The Dish’s hottest ingredients are often spiced by readers’ tips. Keep ’em coming.

As everyone knows, Hollywood is a hyper-liberal paradise, where every day, actors and directors and producers try to advance the cause of social justice. They’re particularly keen on advancing gay rights, and any other trendy social cause that pops onto the radar screen. And yet it’s still true that there isn’t a single openly gay lead actor in the business in 2001. Why? I can’t believe it’s because there isn’t one – or an aspiring one. The answer is surely that the big machers in Hollywood are scared of losing money if a romantic star – especially a man – gets a public reputation as gay. They’ll never admit this, of course. It makes them look like the discriminatory businessmen and women that they are. But every now and again, the truth gets blurted out. Here’s a quote from Tom Cruise’s lawyer as to why he’s suing a porn actor for a cool $100 million for claiming he had a relationship with Cruise: ”Losing the respect and enthusiasm of a substantial segment of the movie-going public would cost Cruise very substantial sums,” the libel suit states. ”While plaintiff believes in the right of others to follow their own sexual preference, vast numbers of the public throughout the world do not share that view and, believing that he had a homosexual affair and did so during his marriage, they will be less inclined to patronize Cruise’s films, particularly since he tends to play parts calling for heterosexual romance and action adventure.” So there you have it. I have no idea if Cruise is gay or not. He seems straight to me. But the rationale is clear enough: being gay could cost you fans and money, even if, like Cruise, you’re not exactly starving on Sunset Boulevard. This libel suit, whatever its merits, is in fact a mechanism whereby ostensibly liberal Hollywood sends a deliberate message to its gay stars and actors: Stay in the closet – or your career is toast. (And what exactly, by the way, is incompatible between being gay and “action adventure?” Is Cruise peddling stereotypes as well as urging gays in movies to stay closeted?) So next time Hollywood’s elites start prattling on about their pro-gay politics, don’t stifle a guffaw. They care about one thing only: the bottom line. That’s a defensible position. What’s indefensible is their liberal posturing at the same time.

Tony Blair refused to concede that he was basically in favor of President Bush’s National Missile Defense plan – when he was in the House of Commons yesterday. But his spin-meister, Alistair Campbell, subsequently told the press that the British government backs Bush. Why the discrepancy? Blair heads an anti-American party in which he is strangely isolated. So he mumbles in Parliament and sends his spinners out to explain to the public what he really feels. I’m with Thatcher on this one. She has immediately endorsed NMD, despite having once been a skeptic, and told Blair to stop “shilly-shallying” and to champion Bush’s “bold vision” at every international forum. God, I miss her.

“And of course I adore the charismatic Babylonian harlot who gets her pestilent comeuppance at the hands of mother nature.” Is anyone else you know capable of a sentence like that? The ‘of course’ clinches it.