The Times Gets It Right-or Left
Scrapbook The Times Gets It Right—or Left Let it never be said that THE SCRAPBOOK is a Negative Nelly, just carp, carp, carp all day long, with scarcely a kind word for anyone. This week...
...But first, a kind word for THE SCRAPBOOK...
...Techno-geek New Democrat...
...It carries a whiff of modesty...
...So speakers from Bill Clinton to Jesse Jackson muted their criticism...
...More tellingly, Jackson skipped over a chunk of the negative lines in his prepared text...
...It turns out that we heard right...
...Robbins said matter-of-factly that he’s defecting from the party...
...Time for a change...
...Poll Finds Delegates to the Left of Both Public and Party,” read the headline...
...They were turned off by negative attacks...
...You would think he’d be less of an irritant to the world’s oldest political party...
...In the weeks leading up to the convention, Democratic officials tried out fierce attacks on Bush and Republicans, and the folks gathered around their pollsters’ tables recoiled...
...For a man of such towering vanity, this would be a stunning concession— almost endearing...
...The other was Taiwan’s Chen Shui-bian, who, except for a brief wave to well-wishers, stuck to his hotel room Sunday night, trying hard not to be the skunk at Clinton’s party...
...Hillary’s remarks were an automaticpilot campaign pitch, and Bill’s defense of the recent Camp David talks was strictly pro forma...
...It suggests a realization on his part that there are some people who don’t particularly like him, and that those people are nevertheless worth addressing, if only to encourage them to pursue the president’s values (building bridges, listening to Fleetwood Mac, etc...
...But by week’s end the answer was in...
...To say “whenever you think of me,” in a valedictory address, suggests an assumption that, well, let’s face it, all of you out there are going to be thinking about me an awful lot, probably won’t be able to get me off your minds, in fact, and while you’re thinking about me, which I know you will be, often, I’d like you to build bridges and the rest as a way of showing your vast appreciation for my wonderfulness...
...THE SCRAPBOOK spied them after they finished a TV interview and, summoning our courage, asked for an autograph...
...Ag secretaries do not routinely deliver climactic speeches...
...Plied by mansion staff with drinks and beef satays, many of our giddy colleagues went on a voyeuristic safari through Hugh Hefner’s infamous Grotto, the legendary love cave where steam rises from the tropically humid pools...
...But if an enterprising photographer crouched low, he could get a splendid picture of Clinton or Lieberman with the phrase “Hollow Man” looming above his head...
...The story and its dramatic placement struck us (and not only us) as a sly bit of GOPbashing— a signal to readers that George W. Bush’s vaunted redefining of the Republican party was merely a scam...
...Firebreathing Jacobin...
...He said “whenever...
...They probably won’t be back in 2004...
...Let’s see: Moses, St...
...The party was tossed for newsfolk—including roughhewn, shoe-leather types like Bryant Gumbel, who said he knows who will win on Survivor but refused to tell us...
...Hef did not look amused...
...Compassionate Democrats...
...To THE SCRAPBOOK, an avid if amateur Clintonologist, it was a matter of some significance...
...But the speakers didn’t deliver them...
...The Times heard wrong (as it duly noted in a correction...
...Toward the end of the evening, a media rep asked us if we were having a great time...
...Midway through the evening our host emerged from his lair (which was off-limits to journos...
...Enjoy it...
...Democratic speechwriters, scribbling away on speech after speech, were deeply frustrated by this turn to kinder gentlerism, and you can’t blame them...
...It will not go down as a landmark in the history of political advance work...
...The podium from which the speakers would speak had been erected in front of an advertisement for Sony’s forthcoming movies, as a way for the studio to cadge a little free publicity...
...True, Jackson called Bush an ally of “Jefferson Davis,” but nobody in TV Land knows who Jefferson Davis is...
...We double-checked the transcript in the New York Times—the newspaper of record—and sure enough, the Times agreed with the Herald (there’s a first time for everything): The president had said “Whatever . . .” And so it went, back and forth, throughout much of convention week: whatever, whenever—witnesses seemed split into two camps...
...We patiently took the trouble of explaining matters to the Times: People who go to political conventions are activists, and activists are ideological, so you can bet that people who go to a party’s convention will exhibit, in concentrated form, that party’s ideology...
...And what does he like about Nader...
...One, of course, was Bill Clinton...
...The Times had actually gone to the trouble of commissioning a poll of Republican delegates, only to discover that most of these people who had traveled hundreds and thousands of miles to attend the convention of America’s conservative party were . . . it’s hard to believe . . . conservative...
...When the Times figures that one out, it’ll have a real story...
...Bush aides have been saying for months now that attacks won’t work...
...Hollow Praise The day before the convention officially opened, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee and some other Jewish organizations sponsored an event at the Sony Studios lot for Joe Lieberman and Bill and Hillary Clinton...
...The larger point of the Republican story—that the delegates are more extreme than the image their nominee is (hypocritically) hoping to cultivate—was missing from last week’s story about the Democrats...
...These Democratic advance men have got to become more irony-conscious...
...The “Whenever” Puzzle Solved THE SCRAPBOOK is delighted to learn that it is not going deaf—or at least that it’s not getting any deafer than some other reputable publications...
...But no...
...Playboy bunnies, their cottontails aquiver, gladly posed for Polaroids with all comers, many of whom returned for follow-ups three or four times...
...But the next day, reading the Boston Herald, we discovered that the president had said “whatever you think about me . . .”—an oblique reference, said the Herald, to the Lewinsky scandal...
...They came up with dozens of clever zingers for speakers to deliver...
...Sam Gejdenson, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, had invited about a dozen congressmen to meet Taiwan’s new president...
...Get outta here...
...And we closed—rather cattily, we see now—by saying that we looked forward to reading the Times’s story at the Democratic convention, explaining to its readers how all those ultra-liberal delegates were so far to the left of the American mainstream...
...Almost...
...The delegates arriving here . . . think of themselves as moderates, but their views on issues . . . are more liberal than those of the public or even Democratic voters generally...
...I haven’t had anything to drink, so I’m not foolish enough to answer that,” he said graciously...
...One of the barboys said he’d refuse to swim in there unless the water was first bombed with Clorox bleach...
...It was the focus groups...
...Which story, to our delight, appeared on the first day of the convention last week in Los Angeles...
...This was more than a parlor game, more than a mere diversion for the convention-addled...
...The famously frosty show-biz couple Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins appeared at the left-wing “shadow convention” to declare their support of Ralph Nader...
...Augustine, Isaac Newton, Bill Clinton...
...Whenever, in other words, suggests more than towering vanity...
...it suggests an all-consuming narcissism...
...They went out of their way to lavish praise on their boss, with the kind of competitive suck-upsmanship that second-tier pols specialize in...
...But Democrats, take heart...
...Good,” she said...
...On the other hand, some of his remarks were not-so-subtly critical of the Clinton administration’s record: 45 million uninsured, no moratorium on the death penalty, a fifth of all kids living in poverty...
...of the congresswoman...
...Poll of Delegates Shows Convention Solidly on Right,” said the headline...
...As everyone knows, Al Gore’s advisers are trying desperately to dream up ways to distinguish their man from his boss...
...Pushing on, we asked him the question we knew America wanted to ask, and would have asked, if America had been fortified with as much liquid courage as THE SCRAPBOOK: Even though Loretta Sanchez had been forced to cancel her Playboy fund-raiser, would he be willing, if she were willing, to do an, ah, expos...
...We need not add that there are many, many people who, once the president leaves office, hope never to think of him, ever again...
...Even so, Chen’s overnight presence— he was just catching some sleep on his way to Central America and Africa—proved to be embarrassing for the White House...
...This week we have a kind word for the New York Times...
...For the Democratic nominee himself has yet to decide what image he wants the party to present...
...The chorus of flattery spiraled upward, until it climaxed, if we can use that word in an item about the president, with Dan Glickman, who some people may remember as the secretary of agriculture...
...One obvious way to do that, This page intentionally left blank - advertisement their eyes enjoyed the conventions...
...Did you wonder why speakers at the Democratic convention were so soft-hitting in their attacks on George W. Bush...
...Nader’s Celebrities Not all the movie stars were going gaga for Gore last week...
...But in placement and substance, it is just about a mirror image of the article written for Philadelphia...
...You’ll never be back...
...Hef pursed his lips, pausing thoughtfully while looking skyward...
...President Chen deserved better...
...He was not the only tease in attendance, however...
...But when Robbins realized he was autographing a WEEKLY STANDARD notepad, he grunted and pushed it away: “THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Whenever is a different kettle of fish, however, in THE SCRAPBOOK’s opinion...
...After some White House officials had suggested privately that the president had said “Whatever,” the White House released the official transcript of the president’s speech, answering the question once and for all: Is Bill Clinton a world-class egotist, or is he merely self-absorbed to an unappealing, and perhaps pathological, degree...
...Clinton, said Glickman, is “one of the most extraordinary people of all time...
...We thanked “Hef ”—as we have come to think of him—for the spread, told him we’d had one complimentary cocktail too many, and asked him if he would mind putting us up for the night, as we were in no condition to drive...
...More conservative than most Americans...
...It wasn’t a sudden conversion to compassionate conservatism...
...The interesting speeches came from the cabinet secretaries...
...While the Democrats spent much of the week toasting their commitment to human rights, their party still couldn’t find time to warm up to the new democracy in Taiwan...
...And he was one of the few speakers to mention Bush by name...
...And we refuse to think any more about it...
...If the president said “whatever you think about me,” it constitutes more than an oblique reference to the Lewinsky scandal...
...Polishing Al Gore’s R?sum...
...But that’s understandable...
...The reporters and camera crews were penned in a hot, sun-beaten triangle of grass, and then were kept waiting for nearly two hours as the Clintons dillydallied at a Barbra Streisand fund-raiser across town...
...Hef at the Hutch It was with a grim sense of anthropological duty that THE SCRAPBOOK hied itself over to a party at the Playboy Mansion, held the Saturday night before the convention...
...At last the guests of honor arrived...
...A great time,” we said...
...Once again, the gist of the story is so . . . so duh...
...Chen, who took power earlier this year in the first peaceful and democratic change of governments in China’s 5,000-year history, is obviously a major irritant to the thugs in Beijing...
...President Non Grata There were two presidents in Los Angeles as the convention was getting underway...
...When Chen ultimately declined the invitation, Gejdenson told the press that the heavy hand of the White House had “pressured [Chen] to refrain from meeting with Congress during his visit...
...This must be the Democratic National Convention...
...The pair are still reliably anti-conservative...
...Three weeks ago in Philadelphia, we criticized the Times for greeting Republican delegates on the opening day of their convention with a front-page story of stunning obviousness...
...He can’t be bought,” said Robbins...
...When President Clinton went barreling into his peroration on the convention’s first night, we were right there, tightly gripping our ear trumpet, and we could swear his almost-final words were, “And remember, whenever you think about me, keep putting people first, keep building those bridges, and don’t stop thinking about tomorrow...
Vol. 5 • August 2000 • No. 47
