Capitol Ideas / Kennedy's Hearing Aides
Bethell, Tom
"Capitol Ideas / Kennedy's Hearing Aides" is our only proper response. Today this mentality stands exposed in all its decrepitude. In the Southeast Asian holocaust and in the Iranian hysteria, we see the utter discrediting of...
...At another moment, he openly seeks the advice and consent of the man from the American Civil Liberties Union...
...What kind of courage does it take to walk out on your kid...
...hind with her busba,~, Ted...
...In response, she gives another curtsy, and Bayh speaks back...
...he inquires at one point...
...Hatch worries that the Bayh amendment will undermine the family...
...It would permit wives to charge their husbands with rape...
...Heads turn and there is a subtle change in the noise level...
...Kennedy does not mind a bit...
...He can, and for good measure Bayh adds that "the First Amendment doesn't give anyone the right to go into my backyard or into nuclear power plants...
...Senator...
...Hatch withdraws his objection, Miss Josephson gives one last curtsy, and the athletic director has a moment of glory...
...Kramer, matters are not so simple...
...When Hatch speaks, she gives him an aggrieved look, as though he were insulting her...
...The senators put their elbows on the table but aides do not as a rule...
...Judging by their reactions at today's markup, quite a few senators don't know either...
...As he listens, he peels off pieces of the outer leaf of his cigar...
...Can you comment on that kind of concern, er, aon...
...One has to be an idiot and a drunk to believe, as Mr...
...The jutting line of his back-corset is plainly visible beneath his shirt...
...But this is more complex...
...grey areas . . . . " Kennedy concludes...
...One day Ted comes home from the office, full of news about his latest success, and Joanna nervously hands him her front-door key, his laundry (continued on page 39) 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980...
...Others carry briefcases and wave memoranda, while still others have little insignia in their lapels and wear large-cut suits to accommodate the bulges under their armpits...
...It is possible even to feel sorry for him-driven by circumstances more or less beyond his control into a public life for which he is probably unsuited by temperament, and which he probably does not enjoy...
...The hearing room is plainly too small for the number of people in it...
...The senator from Utah "is right about 99 percent of the time," Thurmond suspects, but this is not one of them...
...The Krarners are an affluent, chic couple living on Manhattan's Upper East Side...
...He welcomes any comments...
...Hatch eventually gives up the battle when Senator Thurrriond makes it clear that he is not offering any support...
...One has to be an idiot to believe, as some piously do, that America's war in Southeast Asia persuaded Pol Pot to destroy his own nation...
...A "markup session" is what happens when the senators on a committee get together and debate among themselves various proposals to amend pending legislation...
...into seeing her husband as he "really is," and goes against all she has beet told in order to free herseffof her lord and master and run her own life...
...It is not clear whether Mr...
...Schwartz, who wears heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, is sitting with an air of great dignity and comfort in the chair of Senator Metzenbaum of Ohio...
...Now Senator Birch Bayh makes an entry, chewing gum...
...ch.air, at the end of the table, there is a little wooden gavel...
...KRAMER VS...
...Sitting next to him is the aged Senator Strom Thurmond, an extinct volcano most unlikely to erupt...
...Kennedy enters the room and pops a cigar into his mouth...
...Kennedy puts on his jacket, and an appropriate amount of hand-grasping, nodding and smiling, murmuring and plotting is carried on around him...
...He defers to Gainer throughout the proceedings...
...Schwartz is from Ohio, but he gives his reaction...
...In whispering to Bayh, she won't assume the crouch position Probably it would be too undignified...
...S. 1722 is an elaborate attempt to rewrite a section of the criminal code, and it has been winding its way through the legislative labyrinths for eight years at least...
...Rather, it is about Joanna Kramer's decision to go off and "fred herself" and the effects that decision by John Podhoretz has on the little boy she leaves be...
...From across the table, it looks like a curtsy...
...And here they come, Kennedy leading by a nose, rounding corners and now clattering down the final straight, which i s an echoing flagstone corridor in the center of the United States Capitol building...
...Some call out, "Senator...
...Joanna (Meryl Streep) stays at home and minds their son, Billy (Justin Henry...
...There is a respectful hush among the senators as he explains what the law is and how it is about to be changed...
...Now these nostrums and the beliefs underpinning them have been exposed in all their lurid vacuity...
...There (continued on page 28) C A P I T O L I D E A S "''OOOO'*'*''.O.OO.OOO6..O..OO..OO*.O*O..*.O.OO*,OO.*OOOOO*.*JOOO...O .,~176176176176176 ~176176176176176176176176176176176176 *,~176176176176176176176176176176 KENNEDY'S HEARING AIDES Wherever Senator Edward M. Kennedy goes, he is surrounded by a tight cluster of petitioners and protectors who maneuver for positions around his bustling person...
...But no one is against the First Amendment...
...Ah, Mr...
...The numerous legislative assistants, who outnumber the senators two or three to one, are more interested in trying to influby Tom B e t h e l l ence the bill this way or that...
...There appears not to be an authoritarian bone in his body...
...The latter carry notepads, but are probably more interested in Kennedy than in the bill under consideration...
...A Secret...
...Their nostrums have lead to literally millions of deaths and could lead to ~ millions more...
...Finally his entourage gathers itself together and sweeps him out of the room, out into the slipstream of presidential campaigning...
...as they trot along in his wake--the whole convoy proceeding at well above normal walking speed...
...His face is salmon-pink, his hair somewhat tousled...
...We're not trying to run a whizzer so that we crush First Amendment rights," someone reassures...
...Very THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR .JANUARY 1980 5 close to Kennedy's right and slightly behind him is a slim, balding gentleman named Ken Feinberg, the special counsel to the Judiciary Committee...
...The draft bill is over 400 pages long, and very few people in America have any idea what the whole thing means or why in fact it is necessary to rewrite the criminal code...
...Then a gentleman begins to speak in a loud, clear voice from the audience, several paces away from the senatorial table...
...This is none other than Ron Gainer from the Justice Department...
...The movie is not really concerned with the marital difficulties of its title characters...
...His role proves to be that of interpreter...
...KRAMER Ever since the rapid suffusion of the attitudes and rhetoric of the women's tiheration movement into every aspect of American life, movies have been made about the explosive issues of male domination and female subjugation, sexual bondage, and "societal brainwashing...
...And to think that the Shah was our "puppet" and that we were responsible for his policies-well, here one has to be less than an idiot: One has to be Garry Wills writing his syndicated column...
...His aides stand up again...
...In a new movie called Kraraer vs...
...It is true to say of most of them, if not all, that a portion of their daily routine is devoted to imagining that they actually are senators, in which capacity they find that they easily outperform their employers...
...Kennedy is on his way...
...The room is already packed with senators' aides...
...He resembles nothing so much as the easygoing headmaster who lets the boys rag the faculty...
...Kram~,r tackles it at the very beginning...
...Kramer vs...
...A long table with microphones in front of each chair awaits the senatorial arrivals...
...In front of Kennedy's Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington columnist and Washington editor of Harper's...
...Kennedy has about him an air of slightly disreputable, roguish charm...
...And while the movie fails to come away with a completely satisfactory answer to the question it poses, it treats its subject with a delicacy and accuracy that have been missing from the other movies about women, going - to - find - out - who- they - really-are...
...These movies all applaud, or cry for, their heroines as they, either successfully or unsuccessfully but always courageously, try to strip themselves of the yoke of millennia-old slavery...
...If Kennedy is the gregarious headmaster, Bayh is the athletic director who knows a thing or two about keeping order...
...But before too long Bayh gets up and leaves the room...
...It's all a part of the new Puritanism, apparently...
...He takes his chair, and the two aides standing behind get down into the approved "crouch" position, ready to start their whisPering...
...These movies--among them Alice Doesn't Lave Here Anymore, Coming Home, and An Unmarried I~oman--all follow a standard case history: A woman, thinking she has been a happy wife and mother, is suddenly shocked John Pod/Joretz is a student at the University of Chicago...
...You get the feeling that were it not for the accident of heredity he would today be far, far away from the tedium of a Judiciary Committee meeting~perhaps tending bar somewhere in South Boston or rollicking about with half a dozen pals at the racetrack...
...All good things must come to an end, and before much more progress is made Kennedy picks up his gavel and announces that the committee will reconvene for further deliberations on the criminal code the following Tuesday morning...
...Ted (Dustin Hoffman) is an advertising executive whose career is beginning to blossom...
...Sometimes they will push protocol m its limits and put one elbow on the table...
...and reporters...
...Then, after a while, the urge becomes irresistible and they openly sit in the chairs...
...Then the roaming athletic director returns, this time holding his coat over his shoulder, Camelotstyle...
...When a.celebrity shows up at a crowded party, the decibel level rises...
...In the Southeast Asian holocaust and in the Iranian hysteria, we see the utter discrediting of the sometimes guilt-ridden, sometimes self-righteous appeasers who have reigned atop our foreign policy establishment since Vietnam...
...The eager young assistants are beginning to creep up closer to the senators' chairs, many of which are still empty...
...He stands by the door for a while, looking out over the assembled company, continuing to chew, as if to say: I'm just going to stand here and chew gum for the time being, and anyone who doesn't like it can join me outside...
...Bayh has a peculiar amendment he wishes to insert...
...Kennedy looks down at his cigar and peels off a few more flakes...
...There is some obscure talk, started by Senator Simpson of Wyoming (a lean-faced country-lawyer type), about First Amendment rights in connection with protestors occupying nuclear power plants...
...Senator Thad Cochran, a young and eager-to-please Republican from Mississippi, says something to Kennedy about a proposed amendmenr, and as he speaks Kennedy has his head turned to the right, listening not to Cochran but to Feinberg, who whispers continuously into Kennedy's ear...
...Luce does, that there would be no boat people had the United States and the refugees been more cooperative with Hanoi...
...When someone tells Ted that " k took a lot of courage for Joanna m do what she did," he responds with "Yeah...
...to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, where he will preside over a markup session of Senate bill S. 1722 (formerly S.1...
...I wish the Justice Department might be able to help," says Kennedy, who is playing with his gavel...
...Service man takes up station by the door, and Kennedy moves over toward his chair, taking his jacket off...
...To persist in advocating them is to declare oneself a fanatic in behalf of idiocy...
...The murmur level rises...
...But they know their place...
...In his back-and-forth with Hatch, Bayh is now advised by Jessica Joseplason, who is tall and is wearing a calf-length tweedy skirt and matching jacket...
...Schwartz, what's your reaction on this...
...and we realize that this is the kind of challenge to the heroine that the other movies simply lied about or hid from...
...He is opposed by Senator Orrin Hatch, who has been sitting through the proceedings with a faint air of long-suffering rectitude...
...Instead, she executes a quick little knee bend to lower herself to Bayh's height...
Vol. 13 • January 1980 • No. 1
