Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Peaceable Political Kingdom THE SCRAPBOOK has its sentimental moments, but last Saturday evening, January 5, in Manchester, New Hampshire, was not one of them. We refer to the...
...The following day the evening news featured a segment on “that remarkable moment from last night’s debate,” in the words of news reader Dan Harris...
...That doesn’t mean every rumor makes it on the wire...
...The fact that these smart, calculating, ambitious politicians were able to mingle photogenically for five minutes on stage tells us nothing whatsoever except that they are practiced performers and dues-paying members of a very exclusive club...
...Another subscriber inquired if Lindsay Lohan would finally sober up in rehab...
...we wouldn’t want to leave a story this important to the blogs...
...Siegel’s other concern was that the updating would cost millions of dollars and the delay would result in many newspapers not even getting Parade...
...But as Timothy McNulty, public editor for the Chicago Tribune, notes, “Though it is a moot question, how many readers would have complained if, for whatever the reason, the magazine was missing on Sunday...
...Let’s hope not...
...By no rational measure was Philip Agee a “whistle-blower...
...There’s a term for people like the late Philip Agee, and it isn’t “whistleblower...
...And a “whistle-blower,” in the lexicon of the press, is usually a heroic individual who, at some peril to himself, exposes cost overruns or corporate malfeasance...
...THE SCRAPBOOK was interested to see who’s taller than whom, but ABC nearly swooned with excitement...
...The real problem here is not political differences between Democrats and Republicans, but the media mythology that vigorous debate about strongly held principles—in a TV studio or on Capitol Hill—is somehow “divisive,” “hyper-partisan,” or destructive to the nation...
...It was “Charlie Gibson simply hoping for a moment of civility,” exclaimed correspondent David Muir, who enlisted our own P.J...
...Count us as one who would have been bereft without our Parade...
...O’Rourke to share in the wonder of it all...
...According to columnist James Brady, he didn’t seem dead at all...
...The Personality Parade section printed a reader’s concern about Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro’s health and answered optimistically that the horse was going to be fine—after he had already been put down...
...But it does mean that we want to pay attention to what others are reporting and seek to confirm those stories that WE feel warrant the wire...
...Do Dan Harris and David Muir really believe that former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani had never before set eyes on Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, or that Governors Mitt Romney, Bill Richardson, and Mike Huckabee were strangers to one another...
...Charles Gibson, who grew up in Washington, knows perfectly well that senators mingle on the Senate floor on a daily basis—do they never watch C-SPAN at ABC?—exchanging pleasantries and gossip, trading votes, indulging in the sort of meaningless small talk that’s a second language for most politicians...
...If we want to watch an outbreak of the Peaceable Kingdom, with real fake sincerity, and everybody crying and hugging in front of an audience, THE SCRAPBOOK will tune in to Oprah, thank you...
...and that “unity,” smiling faces, and embraces are the objects of democracy...
...But Agee betrayed his oath, national security, and fellow agents—sometimes unto death—and sold out his country, for cash among other things, to its deadliest enemy during the Cold War...
...Death of a Scoundrel THE SCRAPBOOK notes that Philip Agee, the CIA agent who abandoned his post in 1969 to offer his services to the Soviet Union, and systematically published the names and addresses of hundreds of agents and sympathizers— resulting in the murder of several, including the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, in 1975—has died in Havana...
...As readers of THE SCRAPBOOK are painfully aware, Reuters has tended in recent years to editorialize by the use (or nonuse) of certain words— “terrorist” being one —and this is another example...
...Let’s review the Sunday insert’s, ahem, parade of posthumous features: An “In Step With” column profiling Gene Siskel was printed after the movie critic’s death...
...We refer to the interlude between the Republican and Democratic presidential television debates when the moderator, ABC news reader Charles Gibson, asked all the candidates, from both parties, to “share the stage for a moment...
...And when we determine that we’ll write something, we must expedite it...
...On they came—Hillary and John E., Mitt and Mike, John M. and Barack— and swarmed around the stage for a few minutes, smiling, squeezing elbows, and whispering sweet nothings into one another’s ears...
...The truth is that ABC News was particularly disingenuous here...
...To his credit, P.J...
...Our satisfaction in speculating that Agee died of Cuban medicine in squalid exile was spoiled, but only slightly, by the Reuters story about his death, which identified Agee in its headline as a “CIA whistle-blower...
...asked Muir, “and who do they really wanna hug...
...Parade quoted the head of the Promises center where the actress was staying who assured us that “Lohan . . . seems committed to finally getting clean...
...of the Cuban system...
...It goes without saying that a wire service ought to be particularly scrupulous about loaded language, but we’ll say it anyway...
...Defending the decision to run the Bhutto cover story without an editor’s note, publisher Randy Siegel explained that Parade had gone to press on December 21, six days before Bhutto’s death, and that 32 million copies were already on their way to more than 400 newspapers...
...Don’t Rain on my Parade Last week’s issue of Parade magazine featured Gail Sheehy’s interview of Benazir Bhutto on the cover and asked of the assassinated Pakistani politician: “Is Benazir Bhutto America’s best hope against al-Qaeda...
...took a suitably jaundiced view of the proceedings, preferring to wonder what the candidates might have been saying (Clinton to McCain: “John, I’ll always love you, no matter what happens in November”) than reading anything in particular into the spectacle...
...We can’t help but notice that Agee died at the comparatively premature age of 72 from peritonitis, an abdominal infection that, nowadays, is associated with botched surgery and substandard care—a cautionary note to admirers (Michael Moore, Jonathan Kozol, etc...
...What are these candidates really thinking...
...The Britney Wire THE SCRAPBOOK confesses a weakness for blogs about the celebrityindustrial complex and was amused last week to learn from several of them about an internal memo from Associated Press assistant bureau chief Frank Baker to the wire service’s southern California editorial staff: Now and for the foreseeable future, virtually everything involving Britney [Spears] is a big deal...
...Good to know that the venerable wire service is on the case...
...Besides, Siegel told the Associated Press, “We decided that this was an important interview to share with the American people...
...Five days earlier, Lohan was charged with a DUI (her blood alcohol level was 0.12) and possession of cocaine...
...THE SCRAPBOOK assumes that the presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, are all grown-ups, fully capable of debating their differences with vigor and passion, and practicing basic manners when thrown together in public...
...Of course, CIA agents are welcome to resign their jobs and publicly dissent from agency practices or American foreign policy...
...Readers may be wondering if this sounds familiar...
Vol. 13 • January 2007 • No. 18
