Presswatch: Strange Last Respects
Corry, John
PRESSWATCH by John Corry Strange Last Respects B arry, we hardly knew ye. It seemed you had changed so much. When you died, any number of folks on the other side said they admired you, even...
...According to Brill, the scandal had more to do with Starr than with Lewinsky, and while Brill never quite came out and said so flatly, it may be Bill Clinton hardly even knew Lewin-sky...
...They were also relying on unidentified sources...
...No one who mattered then in Washington or in the media dared pay attention, however...
...PRESSWATCH by John Corry Strange Last Respects B arry, we hardly knew ye...
...Camille Paglia even went on-line to say you made "most of today's money-mad mob of smarmy politicos—including the seedy, sweaty, sneaky Newt Gingrich—look like toads in contrast...
...When you died, any number of folks on the other side said they admired you, even Hillary Clinton and Frank Rich...
...In fact, the Times liked that one so much, it put it on the front page the next day...
...liked you, but generally there was a truce...
...A man who names his magazine after himself is on a vanity trip to begin with, and a Justice Department investigation might only be an unexpected bonus...
...Actually it had been made by Tony you said, and it may be there had been a Schwartz, and Bill Moyers had little to do misunderstanding...
...Who knew then that General Quinn would turn out to be Sally Quinn's father...
...Brill and Brill's Content are left now with only "full accountability" unsullied, and that's where ombudsman Kovach will come in...
...It would be nice to think now that a lesson was learned from that, but much of the commentary about you showed that was not the case...
...Media consultant Schwartz lived obituary said, Barry Goldwater often in what was once a Pentecostal church on "heard his own words outside of their political context," and was convinced the press had distorted them...
...After all, Johnson's incremental approach was a disaster, while you had said we should "win or get out...
...Kovach, curator of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, former editor of the Atlanta Journal, and former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, is the ombudsman for Brill's Content, and it is a position he takes seriously...
...saw "dangerous signs of Hitlerism," and as Daniel Schorr reported on CBS that strange year, a Lieut...
...Then the disclosure that he was a Democratic contributor easily took care of the third...
...As he said in his first column, he will operate independently of the magazine's owners or editors, and approach each issue just like its readers...
...inspired in newsrooms...
...In his publisher's note to readers in the premiere issue Brill listed the four principles on which his magazine was founded: "nonfiction should be true," "truth in labeling and sourcing," "no hidden motives," and "full accountability...
...Jackie Judd of ABC might "believe almost anything the prosecutors" told her...
...Subsequently the war went on for years, and lives were lost for no reason...
...You were a nice guy, but you still had been an extremist...
...But if you had unleashed it, along with the carrier-based bombers, in 1966, say, or before North Vietnam built up its air defenses, the war might have ended long before it did...
...You had, he said, your good points, but you were still a "dangerous extremist...
...William Quinn had even invited you to visit "Berchtesgaden, once Hitler's stamping ground...
...Instead it showed a little girl plucking the daisy's petals, and counting up to ten...
...One of them, Glenn Simpson of the Wall Street Journal, had a tape recording of Brill's interview with him to prove it...
...and anyway, it is almost impossible to imagine you ever committing 500,000 troops to a quagmire...
...Worse, Starr was leaking secret testimony from the grand jury and virtually dictating the reporters' stories...
...Also, Starr wrote to it Brill, and complained about "a reckless and irresponsible attack that borders on the libelous...
...Political columnists said it was rude to say that, and the commercial was withdrawn, but almost to a man the same columnists warned that if we did vote for you, we would end up fighting a big land war in Asia...
...But Janet Reno has now said that the Justice Department will consider an investigation of Brill's charges against Starr, and it may be that was the idea behind the piece all along...
...All you can know for sure is that Brill, despite his pretensions, is a really rotten journalist...
...The odd thing is, the guy may not even know it...
...Then, after his much-touted piece appeared, a half-dozen reporters Brill mentioned by name said they had been misquoted...
...4"111111.00111D about who made it and what it You hadn't meant the awful things said...
...Meanwhile Presswatch will admit it has no business reading his mind, but it won't let that stop it: Kovach read the fat, tedious, and ever so lawyerly piece by Steven Brill, and thought, damn, Brill is a flack for the White House...
...You also said abortion was nobody's business, and there was no reason gays should not serve in the military...
...And if the early bombing had not worked, you probably would have withdrawn from Southeast Asia...
...In your heart, you know that's right...
...Hillary praised The Conscience of a Conservative, and said she also was committed to "individual responsibility...
...In a way, of course, they were right: 21,178,188 Americans did vote for you, and we did indeed end up fighting a big land war in Asia...
...It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it...
...David Bloom of NBC did "lapdog-like work...
...Martin Luther King, Jr...
...No one on the program disagreed with that, 0 A and on "Inside Washington" two nights 6. Barry Goldwater turned out to be a nice guy after all...
...You said nasty things about Jerry Falwell, Richard Nixon, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and even your old friend Ronald Reagan...
...Schwartz acolytes and fans all gave the '64 equivalent of high-fives when they saw it...
...They were passing on rumors, hearsay, and allegations, and presenting them as facts...
...Indeed Brill sneered a lot in his piece, especially at his betters—reporters like Schmidt, who had been aggressive in covering the White House...
...Reporters who suggested otherwise, Brill sniffed, may be "right in general" — the italics are his—"about President Clinton's allegiance to his marriage vows," but on Lewinsky they were utterly irresponsible...
...Or as Ken Bode, the moderator of PBS's "Washington Week in Review," described you: "Fast, quick trigger-finger, yes, quick to shoot...
...Most of the obits said that made you a straight-shooter and a man who spoke his mind, although there was a subtext when they did...
...Gen...
...Whatever your earlier sins, it seemed they had been forgiven...
...The obit writers, along with so many of the commentators, had no use for conservatives themselves, and you had confirmed their feelings...
...B ill Kovach has a problem...
...At zero a big mushroom cloud filled the sky, while Lyndon Johnson intoned about "how we must either love each other, or we must die...
...Meanwhile, many of your obits mentioned the "daisy" commercial, [though they were confused West 56th Street in Manhattan, and while he was thought of as an eccentric, he was awfully good at his work...
...He said he even had paid for his own subscription...
...Though heinsisted it was improper to use unidentified sources, his piece was simply full of them—"a Justice Department official," "a Justice Department participant," "a Times reporter," and so on...
...Bode was agreeing with Robin Wright of the Los Angeles Times, who remembered you had talked about using tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam (actually, you had said they could be used for defoliation) and that you had a "reputation as someone who operated on the edge...
...The extremist label aside, though, in death you still did well...
...apparently, Barry, you just hadn't known what you were saying...
...Nonetheless, none of the obits even came close to describing the fear you once 48 August 1998 • The American Spectator later, Evan Thomas of Newsweek insisted your old reputation was justified...
...So a question now, even if none of the obituary writers and commentators raised it: What would have happened in Vietnam if you had been elected president...
...On the other hand, you can't tell...
...A few die-hards still disJOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...The Times seemed to be suggesting the press had never distorted a thing...
...Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, for example, had "a perpetually whiny voice and an awkward, nervous look...
...The American Spectator • August 1998 49...
...You turned out to be the media's Marlboro man...
...You were supposed to be an extremist...
...But in her loose-cannon way, alas, Paglia was also reflecting the liberal consensus: You might have been an extremist, but when you turned on your own, you redeemed yourself...
...As you said, you either win or get out...
...That sounded fine, of course, but Brill's use of unidentified sources, as well as his flawed interviews, violated the first two principles...
...Or, as Brill said of Sue Schmidt of the Washington Post, she "does stenography for the prosecutors...
...Everyone thought it was run by brownshirts, and fascism was in sight...
...News 6 World Report gave a full page to the wonderful, even if hokey, old Yosuf Karsh photograph in which you pose against a cactus while wearing a cowboy hat and holding a pump-action shotgun...
...The beauty part was that it never even mentioned your name...
...But come to think of it, the extremist title was honorably earned, and you ought to be proud of that...
...Then we had a freeze frame, while an announcer counted down from ten to zero...
...Well, that was rich—Lyndon and love one another, but everyone still got the message: You were nutty enough to plunge the world into nuclear war...
...Reporters who covered you in 1964 liked you personally, but there was a feeling your presidential campaign had to be stopped...
...Yes, she really did say that...
...The piece, of course, was about Ken Starr and the reporters who covered the scandal over Monica Lewinsky, and it insisted they had everything backwards...
...At the same time, you didn't know who Brill was supposedly hearing things from himself...
...The daisy commercial was meant to awaken latent fears about you, and it did...
...Frank carried on about your gay grandson, and thought it wonderful that one of your daughters once had an abortion...
...You were "in favor of unleashing the Strategic Air Command...
...As the New York Times with it...
Vol. 31 • August 1998 • No. 8
