Liberal admits that conservatives have more fun
OPINION
Conservatively speaking, I say right on
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist, 9/12/2002
Los Angeles Weekly media critic John Powers recently made bold to compare The Nation, the fatigued voice of the tired left, with Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, the post-Dartmouth Review frat house of the New Right. ''The Standard is incomparably more alluring,'' Powers wrote. The magazine ''woos you by saying, `We're having more fun over here on the right.'''
Is it true, to paraphrase the famous Clairol marketing campaign: Do conservatives really have more fun? The answer is yes, incontrovertibly so. Who would you rather be? Me, plodding through errands on my bicycle, sporting my pathetic ''One Less Car'' T-shirt, or one of the many SUV drivers who blast exhaust in my face as they roar off to fill up on cheap gas? Who would you rather be? Goo-goo good guy Warren Tolman, painstakingly explaining his position on the School Building Assistance Program? Or Mitt Romney, who has his own, no-frills education plan: Send them to (private, tony) Belmont Hill! It worked for his kids - why won't it work for everybody?
Everywhere you look, conservatives are living large. Who is having the most fun on the New York Times op-ed page? Pet conservative William Safire, obviously. The old walrus may be long in the tooth, but he's still bellowing out wonderful, readable balderdash: demi-truthful speculation about regime changes in Russia and China, immodestly disguised puffs for friends' books, and, of course, those timely leaks from the lifers at the Justice Department - over 40 percent of which seem to have some basis in fact.
My liberal friends all adore Safire's colleague Paul Krugman - soooo insightful, they insist. But Krugman is the kid with his hand up all the time; Look at me! I know the answer! Does anyone really expect George Bush's budget numbers to add up? Do you think Dick Cheney and Bush hover over the op-ed page of the New York Times, wringing their hands in despair? ''Oh, no, George. Professor Krugman says we can't pay for Social Security! We're in the tall grass now!''
Look at right-wing telebimbo Ann Coulter. She's having a gas. She's got a huge, best-selling ''book,'' ''Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right,'' recounting how the media is biased against conservatives like her. Clever gambit! It worked for washed-up CBS hack Bernard Goldberg, (author of the best-selling ''Bias''; What's next in this brand extension? ''Traducement''? ''Obtrectation''?) and it's working for her! Liberals really are idiots, we see, as Katie Couric invites Coulter to hawk her wares on the ''Today'' show to prove ... Big Media isn't biased. Thanks, Katie! Ker-ching!
That a lot isn't true - the part about the New York Times' ignoring the death of stock-car racer Dale Earnhardt, for instance - has been well documented on Bob Somerby's Web site, The Daily Howler (www.dailyhowler.com). But remember, he's a liberal, so he's biased.
Half the fun of being a conservative is taunting liberals and watching them rise to the bait. Leather-lunged village-idiot-dignified-by-the-Kennedy School-degree mill Bill O'Reilly claims that National Public Radio unfairly ignored his best-selling ''books,'' ''The O'Reilly Factor'' and ''The No-Spin Zone.'' This prompted a hilarious climb-down from an NPR factotum, who said the network would be delighted to give Roger Ailes' hand puppet some air time. NPR receives a small amount of money from Congress and lives in pathological fear of being called precisely what it is: Lib-Lab, audio wallpaper for the whole foods set.
Next up: veteran stager/under-the-radar cable TV ''personality'' Patrick Buchanan is launching a badly needed new conservative magazine, The American Conservative, this month. We know he is going to have plenty of fun because his financial angel is gossip-slinger extraordinaire Taki Theodoracopulos, last seen in this space praising the wine cellars, and the top-flight management crew at Boston University: ''The chancellor, John Silber, and the president, Jon Westling, were delightful fellows, and they've done a hell of a job recruiting some very good people.'' Pip, pip! Profiles of Taki inevitably mention his 1984 cocaine bust and his seminal 1982 essay in The American Spectator titled, ''Why American Women are Lousy Lovers.''
I am relocating to the Right. Let the good times roll!
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 9/12/2002.
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