SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook THE "POTJTTCS OF PERSONAL DESTRUCTION" Journalists by reputation are supposed to be a cynical, hard-bitten lot, so can someone please explain to The Scrapbook why more reporters don't...
...Last, Iron Eyes may not have really been Iron Eyes...
...At the edge of a highway cluttered with litter, a piece of garbage is thrown from a passing car and lands at his feet...
...At Eli's Cheesecake factory in Chicago on March 12, 1992, just before the Illinois primary, candidate Bill Clinton was asked by reporters about a campaign ad by Paul Tsongas that gently questioned Clinton's honesty...
...First, we learned that Iron Eyes never wanted to do the ad—"Indians don't cry" he explained—but agreed to at the behest of Lady Bird Johnson...
...Or as Americans say nowadays, can't we put this behind us...
...Reporters pressed Samphan on the question of personal responsibility: "Please," he said...
...Another top aide to Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, added: "Actually we are very sorry, not just for the lives of people, but also for the lives of animals that suffered in the war...
...defense spending had shrunk from 27 percent of total federal spending to 15 percent: 'The Insatiable Pentagon.'" THE CLINTON STANDARD Think the meaning of the Clinton scandal hasn't penetrated the countryside...
...Clinton responded that the American people "are tired of the politics of personal destruction...
...But a fellow eyeballing the 102 citations could not possibly doubt that the term is used mainly to help readers see that Republicans, impeachers and other conservatives are nasty, unpleasant people and potential dog-kickers...
...This is an old story...
...In fact, six years later—with 1,373-and-counting mentions of the politics of personal destruction in the Nexis database—it's still a good bet...
...In 1996, his half sister revealed to the New Orleans Times-Picayune that Cody was actually a second-generation Italian-American from southwestern Louisiana and that he created his Indian identity out of thin air...
...THE CRYING GAME Anyone who watched TV in the 1970s will remember the image: A morose Indian paddles a canoe through a polluted stream, a belching smokestack in the background...
...The historic utterance shows up in an article filed the next day by Bill Lambrecht of the St...
...Rather than just denying accusations—of marital infidelity, draft-dodging and, recently, his business dealings—Clinton is working to convert them to political currency...
...You judge...
...29, former Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan now regrets his leading role in Pol Pot's genocidal Communist regime that murdered two million Cambodians in the late 1970s...
...Scrapbook THE "POTJTTCS OF PERSONAL DESTRUCTION" Journalists by reputation are supposed to be a cynical, hard-bitten lot, so can someone please explain to The Scrapbook why more reporters don't chortle whenever Bill clinton and his aides chant their favorite mantra, the politics of pers^^al destruction...
...According to wire-service reports on Dec...
...It's "unfortunate," said Lehane, that Alexander "has joined the Republican attack pack by engaging in this politics of personal destruction...
...and the encouragement of Hillary...
...Ciao, kemosabe...
...His 1998 greatest-hits column last week is worth quoting at length: "In years past, folks trying to make it as directors in Hollywood learned that it helped to clue in the audience if the bad guy wore a black hat and immediately kicked the nearest dog upon descending from the stagecoach...
...Talk about the politics of personal destruction...
...Oh, stuff it...
...The Nexis database tells us that this phrase appeared in 102 Times articles and/or editorial comments last year...
...Second, the tear was not really a tear, but a drop of eyewash (is nothing sacred...
...one of the things I'm . . . betting on is that people will know they've been conned by the politics of distraction, the politics of division and the politics of personal destruction...
...The narrator of the famous public-service ad intones: "People start pollution, people can stop it...
...Yes—sorry, sorry, sorry, I am very sorry," Samphan told reporters...
...For one thing, White House allies have engaged in one long campaign of personal destruction over the past year, egged on by the example of Bill Clinton (remember Monica as stalker...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, who presciently summarized the political usefulness of the coinage: "As he moves toward the Democratic nomination, Arkansas Gov...
...Seligman also spotted a fantastic headline atop an Oct...
...And the judge complied...
...Let's make it simple for our fellow journalists: Whenever White House types utter the magic words— the politics of personal destruction—they are being insincere...
...A Bush spokesman disputed the assessment and tried to explain the content of compassionate conservatism...
...Sir?," the judge said, taken aback...
...Which, by the way, is where the phrase was born in the first place...
...The politics of personal destruction is a focus-group-tested bit of verbiage that Bill Clinton and his operatives wave through the air like catnip, because they have learned that earnest reporters and their earnest audience purr at the sound of the words...
...Leave this to history...
...Folks trying to make it at the New York Times nowadays clue in the readers by working 'mean-spirited' into their copy...
...Compassionate conservative' is just like Al Gore talking about 'practical idealism.' They're designed to mean nothing...
...One looked in vain for a mean-spirited liberal...
...A week later, Tsongas had withdrawn from the race, and Clinton trotted out the phrase for the second time, to Adam Nagourney for a profile in USA Today:: "Most of the people who talk to me, who know me, don't have any doubt about my fitness to be president, my character, my honesty, the propriety of my behavior or my wife...
...TIME TO MOVE ON...
...Usually, when White House spokesmen use the phrase, they are merely trying to change the subject...
...Isn't it time to move on...
...He belongs in jail," the man reiterated...
...A single tear, shown in close-up, rolls down the man's cheek...
...But how about Gore spokesperson Chris Lehane...
...Said Alexander of the slogans: "Those are weasel words...
...it's called campaigning...
...Somewhat surprisingly, the label was not in every last case affixed to conservatives...
...The prosecutor then asked the judge to drop the man from the jury pool...
...The words don't mean anything, unless it's to suggest ever so subtly that the reporter should please go write another thumb-sucking news analysis about mean-spirited conservatives...
...Last week in a criminal court in Stafford County, Virginia, 50 miles south of Washington, the judge asked potential jurors in a burglary and sexual assault case if they could decide the matter fairly and impartially...
...Well, that was certainly a good bet...
...Bill Clinton is casting himself as a victim of those who worry that he will be tripped up one day by his past...
...KEEPING UP WTTH THE TIMES The creative use of the Nexis database to embarrass journalists and other public figures with their past utterances is a technique pioneered by Dan Seligman in the brilliant column he used to write for Fortune magazine...
...1 editorial appearing, he noted, "after a decade in which U.S...
...Happily for Seligman fans, if unhappily for the New York Times, he now trains his sights exclusively on the paper of record in a monthly column for the New York Post...
...A bearded, fiftyish man rose and asked for a sidebar at the bench...
...Last week, former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander uttered a mild-mannered complaint about the campaign slogans of his potential rivals for the White House in 2000, George "compassionate conservatism" Bush and Al "practical idealism" Gore...
...The actor, Iron Eyes Cody, died last week, but the obituaries did not bring a tear to the eye...
...Judge," the fellow said, "as long as Bill Clinton is not in jail, I can't vote to put anybody in jail...
...There was an oddball reference on the sports page to Monica Seles' 'mean-spirited backhand' (in a match with Steffi Graf), and also a literary allusion to Ernest Hemingway's 'mean-spirited Moveable Feast' (said to be unfair in its depiction of Scott Fitzgerald...
...But "he always wanted to be an Indian," his sister told the paper...
...Making fun of a rival's political slogan is not personal and it's not destructive...
...Is THE SCRAPBOOK being cynical...
Vol. 4 • January 1999 • No. 17
