PUNDIT WATCH
Douglas, Susan
PUNDIT WATCH Susan Douglas Missing Stories Department Instead of "Pundit Watch" this column should be called "Soothsayer Watch." Each week, in the face of some of the most morally bankrupt and...
...Will relished Lawrence's predicament as he launched into this tirade...
...he has gone out of his way...
...Fred Barnes's comment on converting the school-lunch program into block grants...
...When it comes to race, however, and the benighted, oppressive, discriminatory conditions confronting upper-middle-class white men, there are pundits who will live in the present, and few of them with as much vitriol and hysteria as George Will...
...How to fund it in these lean times...
...Panelists were also asked to foresee what the impact on American politics would be of an O.J...
...Imagine a cross between Joe McCarthy, Howard Stern, and Hannibal Lector and you will have a close approximation of his behavior toward Joycelyn Elders when she appeared as a guest on This Week with David Brinkley...
...even though they rarely answer the question...
...Their commentary was a painful reminder of how empty the air waves are of liberal, let alone progressive policy proposals...
...This should be front-page news, with Bunn's photo splattered everywhere...
...During one of the more infamous budget-cutting sprees by the House Appropriations Committee—the one where they approved cuts in the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, summer-jobs programs, rural-housing loans, school lunches for kids, nutritional programs for pregnant women and children of preschool age, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—the Republican Congressman from Oregon insisted on keeping the $6.5 million budgeted for his visitors' center...
...acquittal, and which political party will benefit the most from his getting off, the Republicans or the Democrats...
...His performance was a perfect demonstration of why we still need affirmative action in this country...
...Good, he's now living with the results of speech codes...
...Each week, in the face of some of the most morally bankrupt and socially destructive legislative proposals of the century, the "pundits" look not at current events, but into tea leaves, crystal balls, and their own palms to predict what will happen next summer or next year...
...When pundits live in the future, certain present-day grotesqueries can escape notice...
...will be acquitted or not...
...When the soothsayers look to the future, kids are never in the picture, at least not other people's kids...
...It turns out Watt launched a little welfare reform program of his own, allegedly siphoning millions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to some needy landlords and developers— you know, people not gripped by the "culture of dependency" afflicting usual HUD beneficiaries...
...He likes speech codes...
...I swear—I am not making this up...
...Another recent McLaughlin Group topic—preferred over, say, the Republican plan to "reform" tort law so it will be harder to sue the purveyors of defective or dangerous products—was whether O.J...
...These are total time-wasters since no one can answer either question...
...The two perennial soothsayer favorites are: who will be the Republican nominee...
...to conform to every jot and tiddle of the politically correct, multicultural agenda . . . there is no interest group on the left that he will not pander to...
...The one good thing about affirmative action suddenly becoming such a hot topic is that black men we don't get to see enough of—such as Congressman Charles Rangel and Professor William Julius Wilson—appeared recently on Meet the Press, and eloquently confronted head-on the racist agenda of Congress...
...Silent and invisible during all of the recent debate about slashing federal programs for poor people and their children were the children themselves...
...This spares them having to confront what Clinton has rightly labeled the Republican war against children...
...The Watt scandal is just one of many examples of legal and illegal corporate welfare, but I'm sorry, my dears, we can't discuss that on television...
...And, of course, we were reminded that African-American experts are rarely given air time except to talk about race-related issues...
...By eliminating $4.8 million from the Energy Department's heating-assistance program, a cut which will affect approximately six million low-income people...
...That's what he did to Elders in an unvarnished display of white male arrogance...
...It would foment "class warfare" against the rich...
...No such luck...
...He built this kind of world, and if he finds it painful, good...
...Okay, so I'm no headline writer...
...Here is one of the headlines we didn't get to see last month: Congressman Jim Bunn Freezes Out Poor People to Build Visitors' Center...
...The McLaughlin Group couldn't fill more than ten minutes without the relentless discussions focused on predicting the future, especially of individual, elite, white men...
...See, it's white bleeding-heart liberals who are really responsible for racial tensions in America...
...But at least it relieves the obligation of reflecting on the twenty-five-count perjury indictment against James Watt...
...Can you imagine Will constantly interrupting Bob Dole or Phil Gramm with "That's not what I asked" or "Would you answer the question...
...Lawrence, it turns out, has one of the best records in the country for increasing minority and female representation among the student body, the faculty, and the administration...
...After the initial "hysteria," he says, "the public's going to love it...
...Then Watt allegedly lied to Congress...
...He was equally rabid when discussing the case of besieged President Francis Lawrence of Rutgers University, under attack for some racially insensitive remarks for which he has publicly apologized...
...I wonder what would happen to our national discourse, and to pending legislation in Congress, if for one week the nightly news and the talk shows were turned over to the kids of America, especially kids whose families live at or below the poverty line, kids on welfare, kids who learned their numbers and the alphabet from Sesame Street, kids in foster homes, kids who would go hungry without the school-lunch program...
...He likes all the rigmarole of enforced orthodoxy, and he's now having it enforced upon him...
...Will he beat Clinton...
...But they will be...
...It serves him right...
...I don't think they'd be at all interested in predicting what will happen in New Hampshire a year from now.M Susan Douglas, author most recently of "Where the Girls Are," appears in this space every month...
Vol. 59 • April 1995 • No. 4
