Editorials / The Great Pretender, Green and Bear It
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS The Great Pretender by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. New York I have fled our nation's capital for our nation's apple, seeking serenity. Down in Washington the other night, I made a dreadful...
...Otherwise Donaldson is welcome to his $100,000...
...Today she is a la Donna Karan, tomorrow Levis and work shirts, next month, who knows...
...A joke or two out of him about the dollar or the budget, and the dollar could sink, the stock market swoon...
...It was too much...
...Bill Clinton, ever since he as a teenager met John F. Kennedy, has wanted to be president...
...We had a very amusing time, and I consider Watters a friend...
...The President...
...Consider their achievements...
...He has mastered the presidential gestures...
...Gingrich that he is resigning...
...In the event that trained actors and actresses ever decide to enter the business of TV political commentary, the essential mediocrity of the present gang of second-rate reporters, albeit first-rate "networkers," will be revealed...
...Some should...
...After dinner I approached Watters's table to accept thanks and tell him he ought not to claim to be president off-stage...
...Sam Donaldson makes off with $25,000 and, as press patroller Richard Harwood recently noted in the Washington Post, he has become a "multimillionaire TV personality [who] is shown also to be a big-time rancher in New Mexico who collects nearly $100,000 a year in federal farm subsidies...
...I know a president when I see one...
...But is he on the left...
...Will the Senate appoint an independent counsel if Cokie neglects to disclose that key to the city she picked up in Topeka...
...fl Green and Bear It 18 The American Spectator September 1995...
...Well, let me re-adjust that statement...
...After it was delivered, the waiter returned telling me that "the President would like to thank" me before I left...
...And on television they both talk and solemnize...
...Every fashion designer knows that, at any time, a call might come in from the White House notifying the designer that Mrs...
...Oh, but Cokie Roberts makes off with $30,000 to $35,000 a speech...
...The book was unreadable...
...His imitation of the president is flawless...
...We elected Bill Clinton president, and there are limits beyond which this impersonator, Watters, ought not to go...
...In our age of artifice a presidential impersonator could cause great mischief...
...We really do not know "precisely" what Hillary Rodham Clinton looks like...
...Well, how about Senate pages or Capitol Hill cops...
...This is total nonsense...
...Believe it or not, some of Washington's journalists use ghost writers...
...Clinton's schedule for a revision of the current hairdo...
...He himself would have his mind on affairs of state...
...She was very blonde and had a ter16 The American Spectator September 1995 rifically chic red outfit—my compliments...
...Surely when offered a—what would he call it?—"freebie," he would just say "no...
...Certainly Senator Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, is pleased...
...Watters, impersonating Clinton, could say anything, and he would be believed...
...The more serious question is: Are these journalists accomplished journalists...
...George Will writes well, is original, and has actually enough ideas to sustain books...
...Our real president announces policy shifts all the time...
...Another is William Safire, who has also broken a story or two...
...Or how about breaking news stories...
...That was taking things too far...
...As I approached Watters's table, I had much on my mind...
...Every hairdresser in Washington lives with the sense that, at any moment, his or her number will turn up on Mrs...
...Carolina Herrera, Brooks Brothers, Sears Roebuck...
...What do they do to acquire such market value on the rubber-chicken circuit...
...Their envious rivals must be relishing the controversy...
...Being in an expansive mood, I ordered the presidential impersonator a round of champagne...
...The bill passed by 60-39...
...He has even won the office outright, beating a sitting president...
...How about just writing well, free of cant, clichés, and blunders...
...Clinton wants to revise her "look...
...How many have demonstrated the capacity for sustained thought, research, and writing that is necessary for writing a book...
...They talk a lot...
...Well, if we pass on the matter of an original mind, there is David Broder...
...All right, maybe he has not conducted himself in public with the dignity and gravitas we expect...
...But then the blonde seated across from him started acting like Hillary...
...He is the inspiration behind a measure passed in the Senate July 20 requiring journalists to file disclosure statements if they cover the Senate...
...Doing so could cause confusion, maybe even a constitutional crisis...
...Possibly, as the press has noted, foreign leaders walk away from him believing that the American people elected a mediocre leader...
...He proceeded to the back of the room where he sat down with some friends...
...The President of the United States would not accept champagne from a stranger...
...What if Watters were to appear on the Jay Leno show and announce some significant policy shift with regard to the currency...
...Suffice it to say that the other night in the restaurant, my friend, the presidential impersonator, Tim Watters, had a very stylish "Hillary" with him...
...Her look keeps changing...
...That so few Washington journalists meet these criteria is the real scandal in Washington journalism, not high incomes...
...The Senate's attentions are misdirected...
...friends and acquaintances seated nearby are amazed by their wisdom and their lies...
...Christopher Hitchens passes all the above criteria, but you might think him too far left...
...Have any been responsible for any major story that anyone remembers...
...That brings up another scandal of American journalism...
...But since that night, the press has been relentless in pursuit of me...
...What if he were to go up to Capitol Hill and tell Newt Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...As for the real president, I do not believe that we would get along very well...
...Okay, so writing a book is for the heavyweights...
...Do we associate any of the aforementioned media giants with any new story, perhaps one characterized by boldness, originality, or investigative talent...
...She had Hillary's manner down pat...
...Down in Washington the other night, I made a dreadful mistake that has cost me my peace of mind...
...In the highly competitive world of national talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, and now Michael Reagan have demonstrated that some are better talkers than others...
...While dining at one of the town's—locals call Washington a town, not a city—great eateries, Tim Watters, the man who impersonates President Bill Clinton, passed my table...
...He talked about his daughter Chelsea's summer vacation at camp...
...This preposterous senatorial ruin caused the controversy...
...What if he were to declare that the morning's foreign policy towards Bosnia would stay in effect all day, no changes, no backing down, no threats of air strikes or ground troops...
...Truth be known, evil is the root of all evil...
...All three talk more colorfully than the aforementioned tycoons, and more energetically...
...A sound grasp of English, an original mind, the capacity to dig out a story that others have missed, these are the marks of a first-class journalist...
...Actually there are Washington journalists who meet some of these criteria...
...And that brutal look she directed at me...
...Hence I am in New York in strict isolation...
...His aides would be wary...
...Actually, the measure is based on the hoary fallacy that money is the root of all evil...
...Talking can be a minor art, and in cafes and country stores all over the Western world there are talk virtuosi...
...Of course, most Americans talk a lot, some better than others...
...As for the solemnizing that these weekend warriors perform on such shows as the McGoofy Gang (Mike Royko's felicific term), all are inferior to the most pedestrian soap opera actor...
...Now, I had had dinner with Watters a few weeks back...
...Most of the giants of today's media are where they are not because of their journalistic skill but because of the assiduous self-promoting they do at cocktail parties and on other occasions...
...Well, if you oppose rich people getting subsidies, change the law...
...So now it seems that Watters, the presidential impersonator, has picked up with a woman who looks and acts precisely like Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...But I am sounding partisan...
...The reporters insist that the beneficiary of my hospitality the other night really was the president...
...But in private, surely Bill Clinton can act the part of the president...
...I wanted to tell him we only have one president, and he lives with Hillary...
...So few journalists on the left admit to any politics at all...
...What if he were to call a press conference and declare war on the Serbs...
...He used all the Clintonian gestures, the gnawed lip, hands prayerful, index finger skyward...
...There was a time when most of Washington's most respected journalists had cleared the hurdle of writing books—without a ghost writer...
...How many speak from any expertise that elevates them above their colleagues...
...Before I had a chance to express my concern that he cease and desist fromimpersonating President Clinton, he went into his routine...
...She just stared at me with a brutally impatient glare...
...Green and Bear It C okie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, George Will, and all the other tycoons of media chatter are under fire...
...Recognizing me immediately, Watters got up and shook hands...
...This is humbug...
...Its supporters justify it by asserting that if senators have to reveal their outside income, it is only fair that journalists do, too...
...Rather than question how much these journalists earn, one might more properly question the quality of their work...
...How about journalists on the left...
...Sam Donaldson wrote a book some years back in which he boasted that he had not used a ghost writer...
Vol. 28 • September 1995 • No. 9
