The Dish

“Bob, having Leah Rabin call is not a bad idea. The problem is how do we contact her? She died last November.” – an email from the director general of the Marc Rich Foundation to a Rich lawyer in New York, dreaming up new angles to get a pardon for their wealthy fugitive friend. Leon Wieseltier has more gems from Jack Quinn’s email trail in the new New Republic.

Am I the only journalist to be troubled by Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner’s complete conflation of journalism and lobbying in some of the pardon cases? The New York Post reports that “Clinton ended up commuting the sentences of 17 drug offenders supported by FAMM [Families Against Mandatory Minimums], which claims mandatory sentencing laws have left thousands of first-time, nonviolent drug violators languishing for years behind bars. Wenner lobbied Clinton for 14 of them. Wenner, who has donated over $30,000 to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, raised the issue with Clinton during a Rolling Stone interview in the White House family quarters in October. He later faxed Clinton and top aide Bruce Lindsey details of the cases along with a personal letter of support.” (My emphasis.) I guess we’re inured to the fact now that someone who runs a magazine like Rolling Stone has gone from counter-cultural rebel to high-level user of presidential access. And we’re no longer shocked to find that Wenner’s indebtedness to Clinton translates into fellatial coverage of the president in the pages of Rolling Stone. And this toadying to a man who expanded the drug war to new and invidious heights! But to use an actual interview to lobby for the cause of a friend seems to me a new low in principled journalism in which there is some distinction between a reporter/interviewer and political supplicant. I’m a big believer in the cause that Wenner was trying to advance. Our drug laws are way too rigid and harsh. But you shouldn’t have to trash any ounce of journalistic integrity to promote a worthwhile cause.

Some interesting developments. First, there’s a strong and immediate response to the idea that the AIDS office would be closed. Bush himself said that AIDS was a priority for his administration. We’ll see, of course. Then the Bush administration continues the Clinton policy of not pursuing sanctions against some Third World countries manufacturing generic anti-HIV meds to combat a public health emergency. To be honest, I haven’t come to a real conclusion as to what is the best compromise between keeping the financial incentives for AIDS research, while dealing with what is clearly an immediate and growing global AIDS crisis. But the Clinton-Bush compromise doesn’t seem to me to be obviously misguided – and their motives are clearly compassionate. Finally, John Ashcroft met yesterday with Log Cabin Republicans. I have to say I find this to be moving news. I’m not going to roll over and love the new AG. How could I? But his willingness to meet with LCR was welcome, constructive and good. Those left-wing critics who argued that any gay support for Bush was tantamount to Jewish support for the Nazis have so far been proven, as usual, wrong. A dialogue has begun. We need to keep it going.

I’m still waiting for the first black leader to say what should be said about the Carlos Vignali pardon. Why is Vignali free while dozens of mainly black, poor underlings in his crack-selling operation are not? Remember the canard that the FBI was secretly selling crack to inner-city black youngsters – and the African-American outrage this prompted? (The outrage was justified if the story had been true. Pity it wasn’t.) Well, now we have a pardon for someone convicted of peddling millions of dollars worth of crack into such ghettoes – thanks, in part, to the influence of Bill Clinton’s brother-in-law. Put it another way: the “first black president” singled out a non-black for a pardon, leaving dozens of black convicts in jail, and all for peddling crack to mainly black inner-city youngsters. Take it away, Jesse! Oh never mind.

A devoted reader makes the simple case that Clinton does what he does because he is a sociopath. Here’s the official American Psychiatric Association definition. Sound familiar?
(1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as
indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
(2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning
others for personal profit or pleasure
(3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
(4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights
or assaults
(5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others
(6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain
consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
(7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing
having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Diagnostic Criteria for 301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder
American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, Fourth Edition, 1994, pp. 645-650.

Just back from a dinner party at Christopher Hitchens’s – a refreshingly eclectic crowd, from David Frum to Lewis Lapham. For some unaccountable reason, Mrs. Graham didn’t invite any of us to her inaugural Georgetown dinner party for W. I’m crushed. Anyway, much glee from all sides on Rodhamscam. Hitch and I barely agree on most things, but we’re at one on Clinton. “The question to ask,” he growled mischievously by the fireplace, “is are the Clintons better off than they were eight years ago?” He told me about the 5000 square foot penthouse to be attached to Clinton’s presidential library, a detail that previous presidents had somehow overlooked in theirs’. Cocktail chatter revolved around exactly why Clinton did what he did. Bear with me. I know the obvious answer is: he’s Clinton! These are the kinds of things he does. And you’d be right. But what intrigues me is the following question: Why, when he is intent on burnishing his record, did he decide to go out in a blaze of sleaze? He must have known that these pardons would stink – that’s why they were diverted from the usual channels and sprung upon us mere hours before his term expired. I don’t buy Paul Begala’s theory that Clinton was simply tired and screwed up. So why take this simply enormous hit? I have a couple of theories, but would welcome any others you might have. The first is simple enough: he wants the money. What for? Well, maybe he just wants it. If Marc Rich, in five years’ time, invites Clinton to Switzerland to give a speech for $5 million, do you think Slick Willie would say no? It pays to pardon the rich and connected. Some would object that Clinton has never really been personally rapacious before – he’s interested in power, not money, etc etc. But now that he’s been a two-term president of the United States, don’t you think he’s smart enough to have figured out that in the power-game, he’s had it all? Why not cash in finally? And while he’s at it, why not also demonstrate his utter contempt for the media, his fellow Democrats, the pathetic toadies who bought his b.s. for so long, and the rest of the VRWC who can do nothing but splutter at the sheer brazenness of it all?

THE HILLARY ANGLE: Alternatively, another theory holds that all of this end-game sleaze is designed to butter up future contributors for his wife, Hillary. The game continues – but under a different hat. So the risks of the last-minute pardons were worth it for future campaign gold for HRC. I’m afraid I don’t buy it. Clinton will have plenty of opportunity to raise money for Hillary in the future, and by January 20, he had put his support behind Terry McAuliffe to run the Democrats anyway. Besides, Clinton’s not a fool. He must have known that the kind of pardons he granted would inevitably wound Hillary – perhaps fatally for her presidential ambitions. So here’s a thought: do you think this could be deliberate? Was this last-minute sleaze actually a clever device to sabotage his goody-goody wife for good and all? What better way than to devise a particular pardon-scandal that would deeply implicate Hillary’s own brother! That way, Bill gets his own back on Hillary’s attempt to escape his lure and taint, and reminds her how she got where she is. He also gets to vent his anger at all the humiliation his marital problems have brought upon him. I realize I’m in complete pop-psycho land here, but, after all we’ve gone through, is this scenario completely implausible? Personally, I think it’s a combination of all of the above, what my shrink calls “multi-determined.” I think Clinton did it because he could; I think he likes rewarding people who might subsequently reward him; I think he may quietly be glad Hillary is wounded just as he is deep-down thrilled that Gore didn’t win. And through all of this, Clinton gets to be in the limelight he still craves, and will do almost anything to get. Deeply, deeply pathetic, but possibly true.

Fresh from Hardball when the news broke. I’d say a few things. First, this matters more than the Rich pardon because it directly links Hillary to the sleaze. Rodham is her brother. His $200K is directly due to his familial relationship. Even if Hillary knew nothing about her brother’s shenanigans (which I doubt), nothing could more clearly taint her than her own flesh and blood. And she’s the only Clinton with a real political career left. She thought she could wrest free and start over, but she can’t. At long last, the bad karma is hurting the only person so far to survive the Clinton curse. Second, the poorly but ever-so-carefully written press release from the ex-prez concedes nothing. Read it carefully, as you have to read everything out of Clinton’s mouth or pen. Here it is in full: “Yesterday I became aware of press inquires that Hugh Rodham received a contingency fee in connection with a pardon application for Glenn Braswell and a fee for work on Carlos Vignali’s commutation application. Neither Hillary nor I had any knowledge of such payments. We are deeply disturbed by these reports and have insisted that Hugh return any moneys received.” Here’s what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that yesterday was the first time he found out about Rodham’s lobbying. He merely says that ‘yesterday, I became aware of press inquiries” about Rodham’s lobbying. Nor does Clinton say he was ever completely ignorant of Rodham’s lobbying for the crack cocaine mogul and herbal entrepreneur – or of Rodham’s being reimbursed for his work. He only denies knowledge of “such payments” – meaning the $200K success fee for Vignali and the contingency fee for Braswell. It’s perfectly possible that Clinton knew of Rodham’s work, granted the pardons as a favor, and is only embarrassed by the crass lump-sum payment from an overseas bank account that finally came to light. Prediction: Bruce Lindsey will be the one to take the fall on this. The National Enquirer is clearly becoming one of the best investigative sources in the country. And Hillary is now fighting for her political life.

I just read the transcript of Lynne Cheney’s amazing CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer. What to say? I find her as mystifying and intriguing as Eminem. As you can see below (“The Eminem Saga”), I don’t share her horror of Eminem – making me less sensitive to homophobia than she is! I guess I’m more of a let-it-all-hang-out kind of guy. But my difference with her on this doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate her inclusion of homophobia in her criticism of Eminem. If you take her view that the culture should be more effectively policed to root out and condemn prejudice, then she’s perfectly consistent in saying what she says. Can you imagine Bill Bennett being as consistent? Has he ever said a good word about homosexuals? Similarly, I loathe the idea of hate-crime laws, but if you’re going to support them, as W does, then I can’t for the life of me see why gays should be excluded. Their exclusion from such laws is essentially an assertion that hatred of homosexuals is somehow justified in a way that hatred of Jews, say, isn’t. Sorry, but I don’t buy that one – and don’t see how any civilized person can. But nothing prepared me for the following statement by Mrs. Cheney: “This certainly isn’t the first time, but Eminem is certainly, I think, the most extreme example of rock lyrics used to demean women, advocate violence against women, violence against gay people. Elton John has been good in the past about speaking out on issues of equality for gay people, on issues of being against violent language against gay people. I am quite amazed and dismayed that he would choose to perform with Eminem.” Wow. For the wife of a Republican vice-president to say this is truly ground-breaking. Thanks, Mary! And thanks, Lynne! Now leave Eminem and Elton John alone.

Please don’t expect me to excoriate Eminem. If there’s one thing worse than misogynist, violent, homophobic but brilliantly funny hip-hop, it’s humorless, tedious culture warriors of right (Lynne Cheney) or left (GLAAD’s Joan Garry) trying to shut down hideous youthful exuberance. Eminem’s lyrics are vile but they are also deliberately ironic. They have an edge when you listen to them that is truly innovative. And they’re often funny. I think Elton John is to be congratulated for agreeing to duet with Eminem on the inspired track, Stan, about a crazed fan. Engagement, involvement, interaction is far healthier than the snooty condemnation required by the gauleiters of the cultural left. Man, one of them has even wheeled out the old epithet “Uncle Tom” to describe John. Besides, I don’t think pop music should somehow be socially responsible. The point of pop music is to push cultural edges and to get exactly the kind of reaction coming from the usual suspects that Eminem has duly provoked. Don’t his huffing critics realize they are doing exactly what he wants them to do? Have they learned nothing from their endless Kulturkampfs? (By the way, the best piece I’ve read on Eminem was by the terrific writer, David Plotz, of Slate. You can read it here.) In fact, there are some real cultural silver linings to Eminem’s success. He’s a wonderful antidote to p.c. nonsense – proof that the younger generation isn’t buying p.c. liberal cant which is now the orthodoxy for MTV execs. (The other good sign is that they’re still smoking cigarettes.) He’s genuinely post-racial – a young white kid from Detroit who is the new millennium’s definitive example of what Norman Mailer once called the “white negro.” His music transcends racial categories and is therefore truly transgressive. I don’t give a hoot about his 28-year-old adolescent homophobia. I’d be a little disconcerted if the next generation of straight (or gay) adolescent males were politically correct on the issue of homosexuality. And, in fact, Eminem is so obviously, deeply, weirdly transfixed by homosexuality that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he obviously has some issues himself. So bring him on, I say. We should be able to listen to music that both offends and delights, shocks and intrigues – and that’s what Eminem does, all at once and in irrepressible, irresistible confusion.

Am I the only one to be mildly suspicious of Donna Brazile’s recent confession that she admires Clarence Thomas? In the American Spectator Online, she says that she considers Thomas to be a “role model for black Americans” just “like Jesse Jackson, Tiger Woods and Thurgood Marshall.” Yes, Marshall “had a different path” to the Supreme Court than his successor. But Brazile calls Thomas a “remarkable man with a great [life] story.” She says he is a modern-day “Booker T. Washington because he speaks to old -fashioned values.” “I admire him [Thomas] as a human being and thinker.” Forget the disconcerting equation of Jesse Jackson with Thurgood Marshall or the assertion that Tiger Woods is black when he has taken some pains to say he is post-racial. The Spectator’s Evan Gahr takes this nevertheless to be great news. It seems to me to be the first clear indication that Brazile has grander political ambitions. There are already rumors of her being interested in D.C. government. And one of her liabilities is that her extreme leftism could make her a target for rivals seeking a more moderate image in the mold of the current mayor, Anthony Williams. Brazile is a formidable political operative. No-one should take away from her her organizational skill in turning out the black vote for Gore in the last election. But no-one should also ignore the semi-racist rhetoric she used to do so; nor her weird ambiguity about her sexual orientation while being on the board of the Millennium March on Washington for gay rights and visibility. Her current positioning is of a piece with a shrewd political mind – and with naked political ambition.

WHIGS AND TORIES: At dinner this week with my old and close friend, the historian Niall Ferguson, I finally figured out what I think is going on in British politics. It’s all very eighteenth century. The parties don’t represent massive differences – ideological or otherwise. Faction and personality is everything. You’ve got the classic Whig, Blair, believing in modernization and reform, destroying the nation-state, merging with a new, undemocratic and anti-American Europe. You have his tiny faction, perched atop a large and largely unreconstructed Labour Party base, that still instinctively uses the word ‘obscene’ to append to the word ‘profit.’ (I heard a Labour MP use exactly that phrase this week on British television, when referring to British Petroleum’s recent successes.) You have the classic Tory, Hague, equally beset by a parliamentary party the bulk of which represents little but a lumpen-aristocracy with the chance of a slow renewal. Plots are everywhere – I was surprised to hear and see the fragility of Blair’s coalition; but the factionalism stretches across British politics – and could wound Hague himself if he does very poorly in the coming election. You have the same fund-raising scandals that you have in Clinton’s Washington. And it’s all lively stuff, carried by a shamelessly partisan press, warring with each other as much as with the politicians, in a bawdy and rambunctious city that seems more alive than I can remember in my lifetime. Coming from Washington, it reminds me of the great lack in America of a single political, commercial and artistic capital in the United States. Sometimes in New York, of course. But never in the city to which I’ll return tomorrow. See you state-side.

TEDIUM.COM: Yes, the New Yorker has joined the digital age! I mention this a week or so after the fact merely to affect the same above-it-all ennui that, post-Tina, has quietly crept back into that gorgeous font. I also mention it since I’ve just read – in this endless trans-Atlantic flight – one of the best little pieces about the magazine since Michael Kinsley’s so many years back. David Pryce-Jones gets it pricelessly right in the current Spectator (of London) which is also (mainly) online. Don’t know several thousand feet up in the air whether this review is clickable, but if not, here are some gems. It’s a review of the latest New Yorker collection, devoted to those profiles which pile fact upon fact and anecdote upon anecdote until you know the precise color of some obscure person’s toe hair. Within the review is the best description I have yet read of what it is actually like – most of the time – to try and read the magazine: “Reading these profiles in their original magazine form, in self-preservation your eye will skip a couple of columns only to find that the writer is still struggling up to the waist in a bog of detail. Another skip or two, and you turn to the unfailingly amusing cartoons set into the text, and then you replace the magazine on the coffee table where it belongs as an accessory. An anthology offers no such escape. You suffer that loss of spirit which comes when some stranger at a gathering holds your arm to encumber you with a story which has no apparent point or ending.” For some reason, even writers who usually cannot write a boring sentence, like Ken Tynan or Malcolm Gladwell, have a job wading through to your consciousness in such environs. Tynan was reduced to observing that Mrs. Johnny Carson had “a quill-shaped Renaissance nose,” which sounds painful. Not as half as painful as reading about it.

ANTI-ZIONISM IN EUROPE: It’s alive and well and firmly entrenched. In London, you’ve only got to pick up the Economist, with its visceral disdain for Israel, to get a sense of the atmosphere. In some ways, though, it’s refreshing. In the United States, most opposition to Israeli defense actions, or diplomatic initiatives, or military strikes, is veiled through an anti-anti-Arabism that never quite gets to the point. Not so in the British press. In London, the left is particularly touchy. Barely any of Tony Blair’s back-benchers supported the strikes on Iraq, and papers like the Guardian can be relied upon to lambaste the Jewish state on a regular basis. Barbara Amiel points out in the Daily Telegraph today the tenor of some of the coverage. The Independent recently bold-faced a description of Ariel Sharon as a man whose “name is synonymous with butchery; with bloated corpses and disemboweled women and dead babies, with rape and pillage and murder.” Nice touch – the “dead babies.” The Guardian‘s Middle East correspondent, Damien Hirst, moonlights for the viciously anti-Zionist Lebanese Daily Star, where he opines that every inch of Israel is “usurped land” and a “colonialist enterprise.” The Observer – the major liberal Sunday paper – ran a poem yesterday by a poet who referred to “the Zionist SS.” Subtle, innit? But disturbing, nonetheless, that liberal Zionism seems pretty dormant in England, propped up by some Tories and Blairites atop a highly unfriendly carapace. My buddy William Hague is the genuine article. But I also hope George W. realizes the political risks Tony Blair takes in supporting strong military action against Iraq. On this one, I tip my borrowed yarmulke to the guy.

THE WAR ON ‘DRUGS’: My aversion to anti-drug laws only deepened this week when Tony “I’ll-Try-Anything” Blair announced that one of his major initiatives for the next parliament will be yet another ‘crack-down’ on drugs. These crack-downs happen every couple of years, of course, proving, again, that reconstructed left-wing parties – Clinton’s and Blair’s in particular – have some of the worst civil liberties records around. But the real problem is the definition of the word ‘drug.’ As technology advances, it’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish between what might be called recreational a
nd medicinal substances. Marijuana is the obvious candidate here – and has literally helped save the lives of thousands of cancer and AIDS patients. But now, there’s evidence that even the designer drug Ecstasy might have medicinal qualities. A forthcoming BBC documentary on Parkinson’s Disease discovered by complete chance that a Parkinson’s sufferer found temporary relief from his symptoms while ‘rolling’ in London’s club-scene. The man went to the clubs because they were one of the few places where his occasional uncontrollable jerking went unnoticed in the strobe lights and general mayhem. He felt less self-conscious and more alive. Then someone offered him some ‘e’ and – lo and behold – he found himself also able to move more smoothly, dance more easily, and regain flexibility. Now, scientists are beginning to replicate this and analyze the chemical structure of Ecstasy to see what possible medical benefits might be gained for people with Parkinson’s. I’m not saying there’s no societal interest in regulating some drugs – especially those that are highly chemically addictive or that lead to anti-social behavior. But some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs have come from accidents and experimentation and where chemicals are not demonstrably destructive or dangerous, I see no reason why people shouldn’t try them and see what happens. The greatest field of experimental behavior is that recovered from mass experience. Random discoveries are simply more likely the more people there are in the sample. So let’s have less of a war on drugs and more of a war on anti-social behavior. We might save or improve countless lives while we’re at it.