Presswatch/Honor Rolls
O'Sullivan, John
PRESSWATCH HONOR ROLLS Every morning during the Geneva Summit, the networks had various "experts" grading the respective performances of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Since a news blackout...
...He was murdering our boy by such devices as striding out to greet him warmly and announcing that the Soviets would hold a press conference before the U.S...
...8.10 ea...
...had decided whether to hold one...
...In other words, Reagan had succeeded to the degree that he had become more liberal (in journalese: "pragmatic...
...Newfield's other reasons for holding him in high regard: "He is instinctively a Christian of mercy...
...Auden...
...To rescue him from this type of slur, Mr...
...A. I'm afraid so, Tom...
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...The consensus of the press corps here is that the Soviets have seized the initiative on this one...
...Q. That's a fascinating reflection of Western European opinion, Bill...
...Breslin is after more serious sport than mere jokes at the expense of the dying...
...Even waist sizes 30-46...
...That's something the U.S...
...Breslin's common sense failed to alert him to this evidence and to its considerable significance...
...backing down...
...To the Christian all men are neighbors...
...No man has been present at more evil in this city than Roy Cohn...
...Gorbachev, it turned out, was exactly the kind of renaissance superman the advance advertising had led us to expect...
...We have a particular, and sometimes hard, duty to love our enemies...
...It's a small world, and for readers of the Village Voice it is an even smaller one...
...They're knitted from combed, 100% cotton that feels softer, fits better and lasts longer...
...Cohn seems to be the target of some sort of abuse for his politics...
...He continues...
...I am sorry to break the news to Spectator readers, but Reagan almost in-variably did poorly...
...In particular, the announcement of the Soviet press conference, though a distinctly minor coup by any sensible standard, pandered to journalistic self-importance...
...All about Roy Cohn, through all the years, people have been broken and died, supposedly the best Americans we had turned into utterly despicable stool pigeons and cowards, people have made small fortunes writing of Cohn and portraying him on the screen...
...And should the Soviets then renege on that deal, no doubt the Times would feel compelled to denounce them as, yes, "an insensitive empire...
...It's between you and your God...
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...In-deed, Mr...
...The New York Times editorial chirped optimistically about "The Spirit of Geneva," which it defined as follows: "The chances are great that if President Reagan awakes this morning to an alarming report about a new Soviet missile, he will resist denouncing Mr...
...A double-fabric crotch for longer wear...
...But Pete Hamill once discovered a copy of W.H...
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...To give this picture a decent frame, Mr...
...And by a pleasing series of coincidences, evidence that these alternative interpretations were correct appeared—not only in Mr...
...A. That's far from certain, Tom...
...How did he reach these conclusions...
...In this view, Goetz's response was a class action suit of vigilante justice...
...Q. Another A for the Soviets and B minus for the U.S...
...response, perhaps something on the lines of "aw shucks...
...But Mr...
...Gorbachev as a cheat and resort instead to a personal plea for a satisfactory explanation...
...Newfield's award came out...
...Breslin was aware of the advice, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and, ever deadline-conscious, wanted to get in his blows on time...
...A. Not as much concern as perhaps it should be causing, Tom...
...You may never want to wear any others once you've discovered the comfort of these boxer shorts...
...Once "Today," "Good Morning, America," and the "CBS Morning News" have been transported lock, stock, and teleprompter to Switzerland, baby, you had better come up with something...
...Remember the President is 20 years older than Gorbachev...
...Card >I Exp...
...A. They're pretty divided—but that's been the pattern here...
...Here was a wonderful opportunity for the Christian of mercy to do his stuff...
...The term, I think, is Pharisee...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Only after they have failed to give a satisfactory explanation is a public complaint considered—and even then, rarely delivered...
...Double-stitched seams for durability...
...A. Exactly...
...Second, the Times's example of "an American bomber" is plainly disingenuous since just lately, the Soviets have been 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1986 shooting down civilian airliners...
...people rejoiced...
...The second bias was, of course, the bottom-line reductionist idea that the importance of a news story is determined by the cost of its coverage...
...Color: White...
...But it is precisely the sort of bargain that the liberal press had been lamenting would be prevented if Reagan remained rigidly and/or stridently attached to the SDI...
...He warned very firmly against exaggerated expectations or taking Soviet words to represent real concessions...
...official told me today that Cap Weinberger phoned the President personally, urging him to wait for Gorbachev to cough a second time—and then to say, "There you go again," hinting that the Soviet leader might prove weak under pressure...
...Plainly, Reagan hoped to avoid the mistake of the Nix-on Administration in allowing summit diplomacy to foster the psychological disarmament of the West...
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...Cohn, as the world knows, is in the hospital suffering from a terminal illness...
...This symbolic light falls directly upon an open book, almost concealed beneath a rubble of empty whisky bottles and crumpled beer cans, and illuminates gloriously the sacred words of the title page: Poems, by W.H...
...But there were equally plausible explanations available—namely, that Goetz had shot people he thought were threatening and robbing him and that other subway riders, tired of being robbed and intimidated by young thugs, rejoiced because someone had punished four representatives of their tormentors...
...Nothing daunted...
...Breslin had written about one of his old enemies, Roy Cohn, only a month before the Newfield award...
...They favor a more moderate U.S...
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...Gorbachev will fire off a complaint instead of a missile...
...By another strange coincidence, Mr...
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...Newfield cites several noble qualities which he discerns in the columnist...
...Or as Bacon put it: "Revenge is a kind of wild justice...
...But Mr...
...The central conceit of Mr...
...Do the Reagan people plan any countermeasures...
...How should we classify such writing...
...So, combining the two points, we come up with the Times's view of what proper d6tente means: namely, if we allow the Soviets to cheat on arms control agreements without any fuss and complaint, they will very decently reciprocate by not murdering civilian airline passengers...
...After diligently reporting some important facts about what had happened between Goetz and the four youths on the IRT train that day, Mr...
...It is not clear from the syntax what exactly is going on...
...A senior State Dept...
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...Q. Is that causing much concern on the U.S...
...But the case that Goetz shot people who were robbing and threatening him now looks very strong...
...Since a news blackout had been imposed more or less effectively, there was nothing very substantial on which the experts could base their grades, but they graded away merrily nonetheless...
...A. Well, it was a very strong and authoritative cough, Tom, a genuine leader's cough...
...Breslin's columns on the Goetz case, "bringing factual light to the Goetz-to-Rambo hysteria," written when "the city .. . the mayor, and much of the media were glorifying the vigilante Goetz...
...Phone Name Address City [ State zip t J THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1986 29...
...Cherubim and Seraphim—some blowing trumpets, others merely disporting themselves—attest to its holy significance...
...To begin with, the U.S...
...side...
...already notifies the Soviets privately of suspected violations of arms control accords...
...Nor is that surprising, since blacks account for a large percentage of the subway-riding population and hence of victims of subway muggers...
...At the edge of the painting, allegorical figures representing Ignorance, Want, Squalor, Vice, and Police Brutality shuffle off into the darkness, looking horribly embarrassed at the Revelation of their great antagonist's unsuspected depths...
...But no mat-ter...
...That comparison is a fascinating one...
...Newfield...
...That is the spirit of Geneva and it is something to build on...
...What a dramatic scene Newfield conjures up in that short paragraph, a turning-point in man's adventure of intellectual discovery, fit to be recorded by one of the great religious artists of the Renaissance, perhaps by Michelangelo himself in his Sistine Chapel period...
...But Reagan's speech to Congress gave no support to even that limited thesis...
...Of course, there had always been strong evidence against the thesis that New Yorkers had rejoiced from racist motives—notably the fact that many blacks were among those rejoicing...
...It took the media only a short time to adjust to the President's transformation from poor boob to quiet Machiavellian...
...I suppose by exercising his fabled common sense...
...Cohn seeking to make his confession: "There's no way...
...But most diplomatic observers here think that would be overkill and might backfire...
...Breslin's accounts of his life and time in bars have led the New York Policeman's Union, an old opponent, to label him "the old saloon bar philosopher," which might be meant kindly but isn't...
...Breslin reached two broad conclusions...
...Well, it's not conclusive...
...Q.E.D...
...They thought he looked easy bait...
...But an exception may be made of his award to Mr...
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...hence all involved must have been inspired by racist prejudice...
...Hence the "expert" analyses of every twitch of Gorbachev's nose or Reagan's eyebrow—analyses parodied by the New York Post thus: Q. We gather, Bill, that Gorbachev coughed John O'Sullivan is the editorial page editor of the New York Post and a columnist for the Times of London...
...Auden's poems hidden in the bottom drawer of Breslin's desk at the Daily News...
...Breslin then inquired how they were going to rob him...
...any friend who gets into trouble, who has a death in the family, or is in the hospital, Breslin will be his most loyal and steady visitor...
...in the cold air this morning...
...One is "unpopular common sense," demonstrated in Mr...
...The chances are, too, that if an American bomber strays over Soviet territory tomorrow, Mr...
...7.60 ea...
...I don't want to deal direct...
...Not, I think, Christian—even of the most muscular sort...
...But the at-tack on Mr...
...Not a deal that by John O'Sullivan necessarily appeals to the Spectator's hard-headed readers, who may see no virtue in endlessly chattering to the Soviets anyway...
...They retreated smartly to the argument that Reagan had renounced his anti-Communist principles and declared the evil empire to be merely tiresome...
...How is that being seen in Geneva...
...One was the media's overestimation of their own role...
...The painting would depict the eager young apprentice Hamill, neck muscles straining and rippling under his blue collar, reaching up to drag open the vast bottom drawer of the master's marmoreal desk, which towers upwards to be lost in the dark and troubledheavens...
...A cough from Reaganeven assuming he could match the Soviet leader's very self-confident cough—might just revive the age issue...
...But Mr...
...Backed in full by our "You be the Judge"rM guarantee of complete satisfaction...
...He decided that Goetz had shot the four youths simply because they were black and that New Yorkers rejoiced in the shooting because they were racists...
...These judgments reflected several media biases...
...side is very aware of...
...Q. But if the President doesn't launch a retaliatory cough, won't that be seen as the U.S...
...Newfield re-counted this memorable story in his tribute: "Breslin wears several stage masks, and he tries to conceal his considerable intellect...
...A white shot four blacks...
...It enabled the assembled pundits suddenly to see themselves in a historic light—the world's press receiving the great Russian potentate on the occasion of his triumph at Geneva...
...The gloomy mass of clouds is pierced in the top right hand corner, however, by a single beam of light which, as if from the hand of God himself, strikes diagonally across the width of the canvas...
...You've probably never worn more comfortable boxers...
...Hamill was doing poking around in the bottom of Breslin's desk—an unanswered question which the tribute fails to clear up...
...Which is perhaps relevant to one of Mr...
...Cohn and on the moral decency of New Yorkers does remind me of one figure in the Good Book who thanked God that he was not as other men, not like the publican, curiously enough...
...When the news blackout was finally lifted, however, it turned out that Reagan had achieved agreement on two future summits, regular meetings between senior officials in the meantime, arms control talks in which an agreement on intermediate weapons will no longer be held hostage to an agreement on "Star Wars," a pledge to resolve human rights cases "in a spirit of cooperation," and a number of bilateral deals on cultural exchanges, consular appointments, and economic cooperation—without making any con-cession whatever on his strategic missile defense program...
...Breslin's column but also on the very day that Village Voice containing Mr...
...Unpopular those early columns on the Goetz case certainly were—but do they deserve the description "common sense...
...The emerging picture of Soviet dominance here was well ex-pressed by the Swiss afternoon headline: "Gorbachev Coughs—And America Catch-es A Cold...
...Q. Couldn't the President just, well, cough back...
...Breslin had interviewed one ofthe four youths, Daryl Cabey, who con-firmed Goetz's account of the incident in one crucial respect: "They [i.e., the other three youths] were going to rob him...
...Breslin's column was that he, as a prominent if hardly orthodox Catholic, received a telephone call from Mr...
...Which is why the Soviets are seen as very smart here in focusing attention on the coughing issue where they are strong, and away from light and witty repartee where Reagan is perceived to have the advantage...
...It would be wrong to name all the recipients, some of whom, after all, might not have consented to be approved of by Mr...
...One wonders idly, of course, exactly what Mr...
...They may be consulting their libel lawyers even as I write...
...Perhaps he simply preferred to think the worst of people...
...Jimmy Breslin, the New York Daily News columnist, who himself disdains reticence and treats the readers to searing and sometimes confessional reports of his encounters in bar, police court, and tenement...
...He was beaten by Gorbachev on style, on confidence, on appearance, on vigor, and on general all-round oomph...
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...Just scare him," came the reply...
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...That argument is still ongoing, though...
...Take the issue of November 26, in which its veteran political correspondent, Jack Newfield, listed his "9th Annual Honor Roll" of public figures who had won his approval...
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Vol. 19 • February 1986 • No. 2
