Scrapbook
Listening In On the Speaker Give the New York Times some credit: Its continuing efforts to pump up the Gingrich "scandals" verge on the heroic. Friday morning January 10, the Gray Lady greeted its...
...Other notable speeches came from a visibly shaken Tom Campbell, rising to explain why he wouldn't be voting for Gingrich, and fellow moderate Marge Roukema, trying to extract from the leadership some rules changes in exchange for her support...
...She was rebuffed but supported the speaker anyway...
...But his pro-choice position on abortion means he's unlikely to find the 83 votes needed to win...
...Antique fence posts have been converted into sconces...
...The large bloc of Christian Coalition-oriented committee members—as many as 40, according to the Coalition's Ralph Reed—has expressed its reservations about Merrill on these grounds...
...Getting to 83 Don't expect another Haley Barbour...
...All the non-verbal cues signaled a major revelation...
...But the larger cause of toppling the speaker would have been ill served by an accurate headline: "Gingrich Heard Being Scrupulous in Not Violating Ethics Agreement...
...He acknowledges, "While I'm not necessarily people's first choice, I am their second choice...
...Emerging late last week as a favored compromise candidate was Jim Nicholson, a conservative national committee member from Colorado...
...The section's editor is Christopher Caldwell, who has been a senior writer here since the inception of The Weekly Standard...
...It didn't help that Merrill, along with his promotional video, distributed a slick 18-page pamphlet advertising the Virginia consulting firm managing his race, Stevens, McAuliffe & Schriefer...
...A bigger problem may be that Merrill is seen by many committee members as an ally of high-priced consultants...
...Friday morning January 10, the Gray Lady greeted its readers with the headline "Gingrich Is Heard Urging Tactics in Ethics Case" over the byline of Adam Clymer, the paper's designated Gingrich hound...
...Plus Chris sits in his office and reads French novels—in French...
...Or better yet, how about a special prosecutor...
...Gingrich," as Clymer delicately put it— passed along to the Times a tape of a phone call between Gingrich and the House leadership, made on the day Gingrich arrived at his agreement with the ethics committee...
...In contrast to the disciplined, hard-headed display of old-fashioned political muscle that had just gotten him the speaker's job for a second term, Gingrich's speech looked like it would take up where the maudlin San Diego convention left off last summer (you remember—the tear-jerking show that oh so successfully boosted Bob Dole's soccer-mom vote...
...Act Like Democrats The morning meeting of House Republicans on the day of Newt Gingrich's reelection as speaker was highlighted by pro-Gingrich speeches from two Democrat-turned-Republicans—Billy Tauzin and Mike Parker...
...The ice pick made fake wormholes...
...There was a boxed three-column spread on the front page, with a large picture of Gingrich, and almost a full page on the inside, complete with side-bar...
...editor who dropped out of the media whirl to drive horse carriages, has now been hired by Tina Brown of the New Yorker as a part-time editor...
...He has contributed articles to the American Spectator and the New Republic and writes a widely syndicated column on personal computers...
...This could get interesting...
...No cliche has been left out...
...If only they'd had a story to go with it...
...Chuck Robb were actually convicted a few years back for disseminating a similarly taped conversation in hopes of damaging a political enemy...
...Both argued that their old colleagues, under the same circumstances, would have unflinchingly put loyalty to their party above all other considerations...
...A //orfme/PoliticsNow poll last week found David Norcross of New Jersey, former RNC counsel, nominally leading with 19 votes, but the combined support for "Uncommitted" and "No answer" was a more revealing 90 votes...
...As Ohio congressman Mike Oxley, a former FBI agent, points out: 'The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act makes it illegal to intentionally intercept cellular phone calls and to possess or divulge the contents of any intercepted conversation...
...Nicholson is a Vietnam veteran who has spent the last 20 years mired in grassroots politics...
...A 19th-century wood and iron shoe rack has been turned into a wine rack...
...And his home-state paper, the conservative Manchester Union-Leader, endorsed one of his opponents...
...In other words, the race is wide open...
...Liberal Gentry" Update Jane Amsterdam, the former Manhattan inc...
...Gingrich last week launched into a misbegotten parallel between the need to rethink race relations and the resistance of Olympics bureaucrats thirty-some years ago to Dick Fosbury's innovative high-jump technique...
...Steve Merrill, the early front-runner and popular governor of New Hampshire, never managed to pull away from the field...
...Now the Washington managing editor of Fox News, Brit began his career as a newspaperman at the Hartford Times and worked for Jack Anderson before joining ABC News in 1973...
...A Liberal Gentry shrine...
...The agreement stipulated in part that Gingrich would not orchestrate attacks on the ethics committee...
...For that matter, in its huffing and puffing to inflate another Gingrich non-scandal, the Times may have missed an even juicier story—one that was literally handed to it...
...At the moment, carriage driving is a lot harder to do than editing," Amsterdam told the New York Observer, presumably while sharpening her quill pen...
...Gingrich"—was very likely violating federal law, something only Gingrich's frothiest critics accuse the speaker of doing...
...Announcements !_ With this issue we give a name and an editor to our cultural pages...
...The act of forwarding a secretly taped private conversation to a news organization for publication is explicitly prohibited under federal law...
...In its celebration of the American spirit and its upbeat arguments for serious conservative reforms such as the rollback of affirmative action and the curbing of judicial activism, the speech was an unanticipated triumph...
...If Merrill falters, Norcross will pick up more votes...
...New ceilings were made from 100-year-old barnwood, while fresh wood for the staircase was beaten with a hammer, five-pound iron ball, ice pick, tiles, and chains to give it the proper aged look...
...But just as he was conjuring up memories of his ill-fated beach-volleyball metaphor in San Diego, the speaker managed to find his footing and go on to deliver a speech that was vintage Gingrich (1994 vintage, that is...
...In fact, the transcript proved that Gingrich and his colleagues were quite meticulously observing the agreement's jots and tittles...
...Hearings, anyone...
...Simpson continues to haunt us...
...Nor do most observers expect that the Right's favored candidate, Tom Pauken, can get to 83, though he's shown surprising strength...
...Perhaps Gingrich remembered in time to stop himself that the high-jump innovation he was about to commend came to be known as the Fosbury Flop...
...Clymer wrote the story so artfully that casual readers might conclude Gingrich could be heard violating the agreement...
...We are also pleased to add Brit Hume to our roster of contributing editors...
...The story, in other words, was precisely the opposite of what the Times said...
...Edward Wilson, a dentist, and Barry Salzman, a management consultant, have renovated an 18th-century gristmill...
...Apparently a Democratic congressman—"hostile to Mr...
...Now here's some news: That unnamed congressman—so friendly to Adam Clymer but so "hostile to Mr...
...So who's going to be the next chairman...
...The windows have been enlarged to mammoth size...
...That's the message to keep in mind when the 165 members of the Republican National Committee convene on January 17 to select a new leader...
...Most of the committee members are looking for another Haley, but there's not one in this race," says Tom Slade, chairman of the Florida GOP...
...Books & Arts will be the rubric for our expanded coverage of literature, biography, philosophy, history, art, movies, television, etc...
...As a matter of fact, aides to Sen...
...Meanwhile, the January 9 Home section of the New York Times carried the vital article "A Vision of Simplicity Is New Grist for the Mill," which adds new depth to the esthetic limned two weeks ago in our article "The Liberal Gentry...
...Among his many provocative articles were cover stories on the feminization of America and why O.J...
...New white parchment shades were soaked in water, baked, dried, crushed, and ironed to give them appropriate texture...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 18
