Major-league what?
When a Republican calls a Times reporter an a------, it's a big news story
Mark Steyn
National Post
Stand well back. Bush has -- gasp! -- "gone negative." He has unleashed -- aaargh! -- "the politics of personal destruction." And what's more the guy he's personally destroying is a blameless journalist. As every TV viewer in America knows by now, while up on the podium, waiting to speak, genial George Dubya spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Forgetting there was a microphone mere inches from his plastic smile, the Governor chortled to Dick Cheney, "There's Adam Clymer, major-league a------ from The New York Times." "Oh, yeah, he is," agreed Cheney. "Big time."
By a------, I mean, of course, ass---- or, according to what paper you read, ---hole. At any rate, as The Washington Times noted, it was "a vulgar euphemism for a rectal aperture," which somehow sounds even more explicit. "Bush Uses Profanity About Reporter," the Associated Press said. Given that profane means "serving to debase or defile what is holy," I'm not sure what the AP's getting at here. To the best of my knowledge, no major religion regards the rectal aperture as sacred, except possibly adherents at the shrine of The New York Times.
Anyway, Bryant Gumbel, host of the widely unwatched CBS Early Show, was not impressed: "Bush may have even taken yet another step backwards by sticking his foot in his mouth with a vulgar comment." On this issue, Bryant knows whereof he speaks. The grand panjandrum recently interviewed a Christian conservative about the Supreme Court decision on gay Scoutmasters, at the end of which he handed over to the weather guy. Unfortunately, the camera lingered on him just long enough to catch him dismissing his conservative interviewee as a "f---ing idiot."
Alas, a Gumbellian level of wit is clearly beyond Bush. "At least in the old days pols insulted journalists with flair," sighed the Times' Maureen Dowd in a column headlined "Minor-League Mouth." "Now W reduces us to an uninspired vulgarity, a mere aside employed in some puerile display of male bonding with 'Big Time' Dick Cheney." A couple of years back her Times colleague R.W. Apple Jr. referred to those of us who write for The American Spectator as a bunch of "a------s" -- not in a casual off-mike aside, but in an on-the-record interview. An a------. Not exactly Dorothy Parker, is it? As Maureen says, it's so "uninspired" and "puerile." And Apple didn't even hail us as major-league, big-time a------s. Just humble unadorned a------s. Small time. Minor league.
But it seems it's one thing for a Times a------ to call me an a------, quite another for a Times a------ to be characterized as such by a Republican a------. Mr. Clymer is, after all, the acclaimed author of Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography, in which he salutes his subject "not just as the leading Senator of his time, but as one of the greats in history ... a lawmaker of skill, experience, and purpose rarely surpassed since 1789." Not that Clymer, schooled in the art of Times impartiality, doesn't tackle the debit side of the Kennedy ledger: His "achievements as a Senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne." Oh, well, that's OK then. I don't know how many lives the Senator's changed -- he certainly changed Mary Jo's -- but I'm struck less by the precise arithmetic than by the curious equation: How many changed lives justify leaving Miss Kopechne struggling for breath for hours pressed up against the window in a small, shrinking airpocket in Teddy's car? If the Senator had managed to change the lives of even more Americans, would it have been OK to leave a couple more broads down there? Such a comparison doesn't automatically make its writer an a------, but it certainly gives one a commanding lead in the preliminary qualifying round.
But the assholian status of Mr. Clymer is not under serious investigation. Instead, on the news shows, the clip of Dubya's frightful lèse-majesté has been broadcast again and again. The benign explanation is that, well, you know how the networks tend to play up anything they get on video. But there's all kinds of stuff they get on video that mysteriously never makes it to air. At the Democratic Convention last month, six Boy Scouts walked out on stage to lead the Pledge of Allegiance. They were booed by delegates. "It was pretty insensitive," said one -- not about the booing, but about the decision to let the Scouts appear at the Convention, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling permitting the organization to exclude openly gay Scoutmasters. So there were the rank and file of the Democratic party jeering at half a dozen bewildered young boys. This is amazing, I thought. I'd already filed my column for the day, but I felt sure ABC, CBS, NBC et al. would be on top of the issue. But no, not a peep. The New York Times and Washington Post likewise considered it unworthy of mention.
By contrast, when gay Congressman Jim Kolbe addressed the Republican Convention, the Times devoted no fewer than four stories to his reception: As he spoke, 12 members of the Texas delegation, being disapprovers of homosexuality, quietly bowed their heads in prayer. Even worse, most of the rest of those hard-hearted Republicans "offered only tepid applause," tutted the Times. "Tepid applause!" Is there no end to the hate these bigots aren't prepared to spew? Unlike the loud boos from the Dems, the silent prayer and tepid applause at the GOP were gone over at length by the media.
Returning from Los Angeles, The Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson weighed in on the "civic disengagement" of America, marveling that "the top U.S. papers -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Boston Globe -- are among the best in the world and streets ahead of anything in Canada. To read their political coverage is to be given lessons in accurate, thorough and thoughtful journalism." Why, even the much-maligned TV networks "assemble an astonishing array of journalistic talent for conventions and political coverage generally, far beyond what any network can provide in Canada." Yet "in spite of" this vast array of thoughtful thoroughness, he wrote, only 50% of voters will bother turning up this election day.
No, Jeffrey. Not "in spite of," but (at least in part) because of. Have you ever tried reading The Boston Globe? The accurate, thorough, thoughtful newsrooms he so admires are fully committed to diversity of gender, diversity of race, diversity of sexual orientation, diversity of everything except fundamental worldview: 92% of American journalists (according to the official statistics) voted for Clinton-Gore. That doesn't mean 92% of them are a-------s, but it does help explain why their papers are the dullest and most unreadable in the English-speaking world. Conformity is their watchword: With the exception of The Wall Street Journal's comment pages, every one of the papers Jeffrey cites is solidly and reliably Democratic. And they're all agreed on what news is: News is "tepid applause" from Republican homophobes, not boos and jeers from tolerant Democrats. American political coverage is a private club, and it's no wonder more and more of the public just leaves 'em to get on with it.
William Powers summed it up beautifully in the National Journal: "The journalistic establishment is like one big, pretentious snot-nosed French waiter, and it's time for America to hurl a glass of ice water in its face and give it the boot." Calling 'em a------s is a good start. Way to go, Dub!
nationalpost.com
And for anyone who actually read this far without thinking it was humourous, the obligatory joke:
John returned home late and found a naked man in his wife's bedroom closet.
"Hey, what are you doing in there?"
"I'm riding a bus."
"That's a stupid thing to say!"
"That's a stupid thing to ask!" |
