Among the Intellectualoids: Bum of the Month
York, Byron
"Among the Intellectualoids: Bum of the Month" by Byron York Bum of the Month just before the first votes of the campaign, New Republic writer Michael Lewis followed Republican presidential hopeful Alan Keyes to a...
...for Lewis, things were just as bad in New Hampshire...
...And when you attack the big guys, ridicule them, too...
...Why yes, they do...
...For I was the authority on Ron Silver...
...It's truly astonishing," Lewis writes...
...The presence of Silver was more than enough to close the deal...
...perhaps that's news to New Republic readers...
...Yet Lewis is trying...
...For a brief time in late February, it looked as if Lewis might be softening...
...The farmer, the salesman, the women who love them, and the politicians who court them: how could the political process not seem grotesque...
...He went on to describe one typical stop where "men who haven't shaved or bathed squeeze in beside BYRON YORK is a writer and television producer in Washington...
...The realtor nodded...
...No relation to the guy who played Dershowitz...
...Every now and then my wife would casually mention that we should knock on his door and ask him to dinner, as if it were no big deal, as if he were just another country neighbor...
...The Republicans understand why," the cover hinted ominously...
...It's because they're all such losers...
...His instincts seemed to take over again when McCreedy took him on a tour of the pig shed, where Lewis gagged on the stench of manure...
...They like Keyes because he makes them feel good about their failures...
...The residence in question overlooks the Hudson River...
...This house was about $200,000 to get our piece of the American dream," Lewis quotes the husband as saying...
...Belittle the little guy...
...The strategy is short on substance, but readers at least find out which candidates pick their noses or wear cheap shoes...
...It was so revolting, he wrote, that its effects could only be compared to one thing: a speech by Alan Keyes...
...After all, the magazine devoted a recent cover story to telling its audience that country music is very, very popular...
...How odd those voters in Iowa and New Hampshire must seem to someone in his circle...
...Not only does he have terrible teeth ("They are discolored and look as if each and every one has been sharpened to a point"), he has bad feet ("He's a foot masturbator"), and, worst of all, he grew up without any money...
...Do you...
...The story ends sadly...
...People in places called "suburbs" like it a lot...
...58 April 9 9 6 The American Spectator a couple whom I'll call the Buchanans.He spoke to me without once pulling rank, much as if I were someone worthy of his time...
...Lewis closed with a wistful look "through a stand of sugar maples at the house that does not belong to Ron Silver...
...Type-B males and the women who love them...
...Under no circumstances, I explained to my wife, would I be mistaken for one of those star-f—ers Ron Silver was avoiding by not having his country house in the Hamptons...
...The McCreedys have the gift of kindness to strangers...
...The house was eventually rented out to normal people, who told Lewis that a man named David Silver owned it...
...The answer occurred to him as he looked around the crowd...
...The American Spectator • April 19 9 6 59...
...They seemed proud of their home...
...McCreedy's wife even worried that their visitor might be from PETA, certainly an unwelcome thought for a pig farmer...
...Readers have learned a lot about Morry Taylor...
...If the marriage-based family comprising God-fearing people is the ideal state of man," Lewis continued, "these people immediately are at the top of the heap...
...But Lewis can't conceal a core belief that this is a rather loathsome process undertaken by rather loathsome people...
...Should they approach him...
...it's the candidates, too...
...Why, Lewis wondered, did the idea have such appeal...
...But Lewis's moment of big-heartedness was short-lived...
...AMONG TH E INTELLECTUALOIDS by Byron York Bum of the Month just before the first votes of the campaign, New Republic writer Michael Lewis followed Republican presidential hopeful Alan Keyes to a small Iowa town where the candidate was giving a speech...
...And, to be fair, his pieces are interesting...
...It concerned his purchase of a summer house...
...And what about Pat Buchanan's supporters...
...Ron Silver was a great guy...
...The Iowans needn't be too offended, though...
...I can honestly say that...
...As far as these people knew I was some protester who had come to disrupt their lives and yet they still fed me and humored me before venturing to ask...
...Lewis describes how McCreedy, a hard-line, blunt-spoken conservative, welcomed Lewis into his home, showed him around, and fed him a good meal—all without knowing much of anything about Michael Lewis...
...The audience seemed transfixed by Keyes's message that preserving the marriage-based family is the only way for America to survive...
...Buchanan in a roadside diner to tell him how pissed off they are...
...The answer is likely to be no, especially if readers are spending much time on Lewis's campaign dispatches...
...That's Lewis: contemptuous of a man like Gramm, who rose from nothing to earn a Ph.D., win election to the House and Senate, and run for president, yet awestruck in the presence of a mid-level movie star...
...Of course, for Lewis, it's not just the voters who are repellent losers...
...Recently he revealed something of himself in another New Republic story...
...Her proposal always lingered in the air for a few moments after she made it, awaiting my ultimate decision...
...Still, it may be a disservice to Lewis to describe him as simply looking down on ordinary Americans...
...Judging from his writings, Lewis, the author of reams of status-obsessed musings about money and the rich, seems haunted by class longings at least as intense as those of the New Hampshire man who saved to buy his $200,000 piece of the American dream...
...Here are the conservatives who have lost the money game," Lewis wrote...
...So he adopts the well-worn strategy of elite journalists who come face-to-face with the conservative masses: ridicule the little guy...
...After all, Lewis writes, he had met Silver once before: Perhaps five years ago we sat improbably close together at a dinner party thrown by If you're not a swank celeb, Michael Lewis hates you...
...Lewis's reaction: "Do real people really think like this...
...After his father became ill his mother used to take little Phil from their lower-middle-class house to the rich folks' neighborhood, where she would point to the houses and say, 'If you work hard you can live in one of those!'" Lewis marveled, "People really do think like that...
...the Lewises bought the house...
...Just look at Gramm, whom Lewis sized up before his Iowa flameout...
...Lewis described the excitement that followed: —Ron Silver the actor?' I asked...
...It seems hard to believe that someone so profoundly estranged from the values of millions of Americans could make sense of this year's — or any year's —political race...
...Lewis and his wife were taking in the scenery when their real estate agent pointed to the house next door and said, "That's Ron Silver's place...
...Today, New Hampshire is transformed into Lunaticville, USA," Lewis wrote of the candidate's swing through the northern part of the state...
...But they went out of their way to be nice to him...
...On the day of the Iowa caucus, he visited a pig farmer named Wilfred McCreedy...
...And I would not have dreamed of actually doing such a thing...
...For the next year they agonized about their famous neighbor...
...The guy who played Dershowitz?' asked my wife...
...Take the couple in Salem who hosted a visit by Phil Gramm...
...I recall reading somewhere about Gramm's upbringing in Columbus, Georgia," Lewis wrote...
...I was unable to suppress the same tiny surge of validation that I feel upon discovering a celebrity in my restaurant, airplane, hotel or retail outlet...
Vol. 29 • April 1996 • No. 4
