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Mugger: Great Black Hope

Russ Smith — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year I had the daft notion that no matter who won November’s presidential election, Barack Obama or John McCain, the political rancor that’s divided the country since Bill Clinton’s administration—and exacerbated greatly by the immediate, pre-Iraq, pre-Katrina loathing of George W. Bush—would dissipate and people would no longer risk rupturing friendships by debating current events in Washington, D.C. After all, even economic conservatives like myself couldn’t deny the extraordinary charm of Obama, his ability to attract immense crowds populated by rhapsodic citizens of all ages and, perhaps most significantly, the first-term senator’s writing and rhetorical skills. On the other side, it was believable that Democrats wouldn’t be entirely apoplectic if McCain prevailed, since he’s a crusty old bird who’s unpredictable and would probably serve just four years.

How incredibly naive for as is now apparent, if Obama loses (unlikely, but not out of the question), especially by a small margin, there’s sure to be a firestorm from the Left that will make the Florida recount of 2000 seem like a student- council election. Obama, of course, is seen as—finally!—the president who will return the United States to the halcyon 1,000 days of Camelot when John F. Kennedy brought to the White House not only “vigah” but a sense of optimism.

Never mind that had Richard Nixon, with the shift of a few hundred thousand votes in key states, won the 1960 election there would’ve been disappointment among his supporters but no great surprise. It doesn’t matter that Kennedy was a hawk, a fiscal conservative and, as a surrogate for his father’s dashed ambitions, a rather grubby politician. All that changed when he was assassinated; and ever since then Democrats have tried in vain to recreate his (largely retrospective) charismatic leadership.

In my discussions with friends under the age of 30—including one of my kids—who are enthusiastically plumping for Obama, they continuously compare the “post-racial” candidate to the Kennedy brothers (the inspirational ones, not Teddy), exclaiming that a new dawn is coming to America. I find this fairly comical—although keeping those thoughts private, since I already have a list of professional enemies that could fill the Manhattan white pages—since what they know about the 1960s is gleaned from lefty professors or nostalgic parents.

Sam Anderson, in a June 22 New York article (“Raise High the Rafters”), in which he gives a “rhetorical analysis” of Obama’s upcoming nomination acceptance speech in Denver later this summer, traces the senator’s rapid canonization, as many have, to his convention speech in support of “droopy” John Kerry four years ago.

“In 10 minutes,” he writes, “America watched [Obama] rip off the rumpled suit of anonymous, mild-mannered state-senatorhood and squeeze into the gaudy cape and tights of our national oratorical superhero—a honey-tongued Frankenfusion of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cicero, Jesus, and all our most cherished national acronyms (MLK, JFK, RFK, FDR).” That Anderson doesn’t include Ronald Reagan in the pantheon is telling enough, but most of all, this guy isn’t kidding, saying that Obama has “justified much of the hype.” At least he was right about Kerry.

If a huge number of Americans really do believe this sort of unprecedented hyperbole, a McCain inauguration next January might actually result in mayhem. The rejection of a modern-day combination of Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi and Cicero just won’t be tolerated. Already, despite some quibbles about Obama revealing his shrewd, if not uncommon, strategy of tacking to the center for the fall election—FISA, Iraq, the death penalty, gay marriage, etc.—even the devotees of Pied Piper Kos don’t believe for a second that once in office he’ll chuck all the “Yes We Can” jargon aside and assume the role of the world’s most respected leader, allowing Americans to travel abroad once more without fear of condemnation from morally superior Europeans.

The cover of Rolling Stone’s July 10 issue encapsulates the hysteria over Obama. Granted, that magazine has been in a state of unlamented rigor mortis ever since it left San Francisco for New York in 1976, hopping on the Jimmy Carter bandwagon. But as a cultural artifact it can’t be dismissed as merely owner Jann Wenner’s unquenchable star-fucking. The cover is stripped of the usual headlines—no tease of a Rush or Eagles reunion—and simply features a beatific, Jesus-like photo of Obama (wearing an American flag pin) with a winning smile and closed eyes.

Inside, Wenner’s interview with the probable next commander-in-chief is stomach churning, a pastiche of music chatter and suck-up questions. Wenner, who’s often described as the quintessential example of a narcissistic Boomer, undoubtedly at one time dreamed of becoming America’s first “rock-and-roll president” (a baton he passed on, inexplicably, to Fleetwood Mac fan Bill Clinton in 1992). But as his personal baggage precluded a run for office, he’s a self-appointed kingmaker instead. Obviously, he has lots of company in that role—it could be, right now, there are more kings than peasants in the Democratic Party and media—but Wenner has no shame.

The magazine proprietor writes in his introduction about how refreshing it was that on the chartered 757 campaign plane (where he interviewed Obama) that there was no first-class seating, not even for the modern-day Cicero. No mention of carbon footprints, naturally. Wenner’s second question (which reminds me of a ’93 White House interview he conducted with Clinton in which he twice asked the grumpy president if he was “having fun”) was about Obama’s favorite songs by Bob Dylan. Americans will be captivated, and reassured, that the Chicago pol has the entirety of Blood on the Tracks on his iPod, as well as Howlin’ Wolf, John Coltrane, Elton John and the Stones.

No interview, even a softball one like this, in which Wenner concludes by telling Obama, “Good luck. We are following you daily with great hope and admiration,” would be complete without a meaningful discussion about Bruce Springsteen.

Wenner: “And you call him the Boss?”

Obama: “You’ve got to.”

The candidate goes on to exclaim, “Bruce” is, as Wenner might say, “the shit.” Less colloquially, Obama gushes, “Not only do I love Bruce’s music, but I just love him as a person. He is a guy who has never lost track of his roots, who knows who he is, who has never put on a front.” I guess Mr. Barack hasn’t given Springsteen’s poignant “Brilliant Disguise” many listens, since the wealthy singer bares in that song his mixed-up confusion in the wake of his first marriage’s dissolution.

Oh, and then Obama adds, “We haven’t actually met in person.”

As I’ve written before, I hope that McCain pulls off a minor miracle and becomes president next year; but if he doesn’t, I’m already resigned to an Obama presidency, which promises to be entertaining and intellectually stimulating, if very scary on the foreign policy and economic front. I’m just so relieved that Hillary Clinton won’t occupy the Oval Office (and probably won’t ever be invited for an informal chat) that I can live with the results. But as the hype among Obama’s media enablers builds and builds and builds, I don’t think my Democrat friends will be quite as sanguine should their man lose.

Mugger: The Packrat Pack

Russ Smith — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with one of my older brothers at a once-fashionable Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, and, as is often the case, after some wine we dispensed with current events—he’s considering, to my chagrin, pulling the lever for Barack Obama as a protest against John McCain’s hypocrisy on campaign finance reform—and got lost in family nostalgia. Our mother passed away 25 years ago, and so the topic of her myriad eccentricities, both endearing and maddening, consumed the two of us, while a half-dozen younger members of the Smith clan nattered on about God knows what.

There’s no scientific research I can cite, but it’s my bet that genetics play a part in not only medical predispositions but also habits. For example, this particular brother and I are both packrats, like Mom, a quirk that eluded the remainder of the immediate family. My oldest brother, to take an extreme case, keeps almost nothing of sentimental value; he probably has about five or six photographs in his personal possession, while I’ve got boxes of them, including a stash of grainy black and whites of my parents from the 1930s when they were impossibly young and vibrant and just starting out as adults in the Bronx.

I made the case that my collection of pictures, coins, old magazines—in my basement there’s a box of very early issues of Rolling Stone, including the back-to-back RIP covers of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix from 1970—and the like wasn’t just a hobby. It was something to pass down to the kids, in the hope that 50 years from now my descendants will be thrilled to explore Americana artifacts from an earlier age.

Unlike many obsessive collectors, I don’t care at all about the monetary value of what’s being stored, thinking that if you’re planning on making a killing of a first edition comic book, say, pristinely shrink-wrapped, a decade or two in the future, it doesn’t point to an abundance of financial acumen. This is a common misconception.

In last week’s Weekly Standard, Joseph Epstein, writing about his lack of hobbies, made this observation: “Many [of his peers] saved baseball cards, which, if in later life their wives didn’t insist they pitch them out, may well be worth vast sums today.” I’ve got about 1500 baseball cards, ranging from the late 1940s to today (the combined stash of my brothers and me and my own kids), and it’s likely a dealer wouldn’t even shell out $300 for the lot. And why would he? Most of the cards are bent and beat-up, after being abused (as they should) during childhood games of “up against the wall,” “colors” and “match and de-match.” The fun is in looking at the cards today: how the Topps design changed over the years, the hairstyles of players and goofy uniforms.

My brother, whose own house is splendidly decorated with framed family photos and other mementos from the past, disabused my notion with an exaggerated wave of his hand. “You’re just being naïve,” he said, “when your kids’ children and grandchildren come across your ‘treasures,’ if the stuff even survive various moves around the country, the 1951 Jackie Robinson baseball card you’re passing on will probably get about two seconds of attention. Packrats like us collect and store and pore over what we like and there’s no reason to think you’re compiling a tiny family museum for the benefit of future generations.”

That kind of bummed me out, but he’s undoubtedly correct. My two sons are complete opposites in this regard: Nicky doesn’t give a hoot about a really cool photo of his grandparents and granduncles on the boardwalk at Coney Island from 1940, while Booker sees a curio like that and wants to know the story behind it.

Now, that leads me to a biannual tradition in our household, which consists of emptying about 20 piggy banks of all the loose change that’s been accumulated in the preceding two years. Booker and I did this last week—Nick was off filming a movie and has no patience for sorting through the coins, but he does like his share of the windfall once they’re dumped in the local Coinstar—and had a ball. It’s kind of like eating hard-shell crabs: You pick through a huge pile, chucking all the coins of no curiosity into a bucket, hoping to find a relative rarity. To-

day, that would constitute what Booker nabbed an hour into the process: a 1964 quarter, the last year that those coins were 90 percent silver and didn’t have the copper split down the side.

We also compete to find “wheat” pennies (although Booker calls them pennies with “tails”), the far more attractive coins that on the flipside of Abe Lincoln’s profile features the words “One Cent” prominently, framed by stalks of wheat. The design was changed in 1958, and not many are left in circulation. (Another bonus to this exercise is thinking about how many people have touched the coins, kept them in pockets or jars, what kind of store registers they’ve been in, and how many have been retrieved from the street. As our hands quickly became filthy, there’s no possible speculation about the pass-through rate.) This year was pretty good for “tails,” as we captured pennies from 1919, 1942, 1944, 1948, 1950, 1953, 1955 and 1956. And that’s in addition to nickels from the 1940s and 1950s (sadly, no Buffalo heads—phased out in ‘38—were found this year), one Lady Liberty dime (jettisoned in ’45), and a bunch of new state quarters and coins from India, the Bahamas and Ecuador.

The call for the penny’s abolition gets bandied about in newspaper columns periodically. The last flurry was two years ago when then-Rep. Jim Kolbe wrote a bill that would retire the one-cent piece, since each penny costs the government 1.23 cents to make. The bill died in Congress, although I suppose the penny will eventually be phased out, which sort of sucks. At least to me. In June of 2004, William Safire wrote a column on this topic for the Times, and it at least had the virtue of being kind of funny. He wrote: “The time has come to abolish the outdated, almost worthless, bothersome and wasteful penny. Even President Lincoln, who distrusted the notion of paper money because he thought he would have to sign each greenback, would be ashamed to have his face on this specious specie.”

Hooey. Packrats like me hope that day never comes.

Mugger: Rupe Therapy

Russ Smith — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It’s no surprise that Mark Bowden’s article, “Mr. Murdoch Goes to War,” in the July/August issue of The Atlantic was catnip for mainstream journalists across the country. Who better to take on Rupert Murdoch than the respected, prize-winning 56-year-old Bowden, whose career as a newspaperman and author (Black Hawk Down) is beyond reproach? Armed with quotes from such sainted figures as Gene Roberts—the writer’s onetime boss at the Philadelphia Inquirer in the fat years of upscale dailies—Bowden makes clear that the “global-media buccaneer,” who has made the audacious (to some) boast that he intends his new acquisition, The Wall Street Journal, to compete with the New York Times for national domination, is no sure bet to succeed.

Roberts tells his onetime star investigative reporter: “Murdoch says he wants to turn [the Journal] into something more like the New York Times, but I suspect it will end up looking more like USA Today.” It’s a quaint observation from the septuagenarian Roberts, sure to get a snort from his cohorts in the incestuous elite media world, but it reminds me more of the widespread dismissal of Matt Drudge just a decade ago as nothing more than an “Internet gossip.” The plain fact is that men like Bowden and Roberts have already lost their war; the days of expensive foreign bureaus scattered across the globe, the freedom for reporters to work for months on one in-depth investigative series, the perks and salaries made possible by double-digit profit margins—all that’s gone and will likely never return. It’s like baseball purists complaining about the designated hitter rule in the American League or the bling that players flaunt on the field; no matter how loud the moans and high-handed criticism, the world has passed them by.

What’s even more curious to me is that Bowden spends his lengthy article exclusively on Murdoch, who at 77 is still vigorous and “lives the life of a young man” with a (third) wife “almost four decades his junior”; but despite possible protestations from the “tabloid pirate,” he won’t live forever. In fact, what Bowden and almost everyone else who’s written about Murdoch’s News Corp. buying Dow Jones Co. last year has neglected to put into proper perspective is this: It’s James Murdoch, now 35 and his father’s putative heir, who will have far more influence on the future direction of not only The Wall Street Journal but also all of the News Corp. properties. Bowden’s myopic take on Murdoch is at first blush rather astonishing, for he’s a man of keen intelligence and industrious at his craft; but I imagine he’s stuck in the media bubble of the moment, and he’s unable to imagine an ungrateful industry that doesn’t necessarily value men and women of his accomplishments.

People, by nature, don’t like change. My oldest brother, for example, complained bitterly when the Journal embraced modern times and started publishing in more than one compact section. Three months later, he was used to the “new” WSJ, although still hadn’t quite figured out how to juggle the paper on his train commute. Today, the “buzz” says that the paper’s a-hed stories—the eclectic and non-timely pieces that traditionally occupied a cherished spot in the middle of the front page—will be jettisoned for more topical news. Bowden writes, “The a-hed seems to sink lower and lower on the front page every day, like a setting sun.”

I like those stories too: a story by Jeanne Whalen and Isabella Lisk on June 17, datelined Orsett, England, was a wonderful curio. The headline is superb (“Alien Invasion: High-School Prom Lands in England, Causes a Bother”), as is the story itself. The duo writes: “Britain, the land of school uniforms, rigorous exams and ivy-covered school halls, is embracing an American invasion: the high-school prom.”

And who says the influence of United States has waned under the Bush administration?

Over at the Times, Barry Gewen, one of the editors of the paper’s Sunday book review section, took solace in Bowden’s Atlantic essay, writing gleefully in the Times’ “Paper Cuts” blog that Murdoch’s “war” against his paper won’t be an easy one to win. “[Murdoch] faces a classic business-school conundrum, one that may be studied at Wharton and on the banks of the Charles River for years to come.” Claiming, with faint hope I think, that Murdoch runs the risk of alienating the Journal’s core readership by competing with the Times by adding more political news, sports and lifestyle stories, Gewen compares it to a soda war. “But think of what happened when Coca-Cola tried to move into Pepsi’s niche with a sweeter concoction called New Coke: if faced a consumer revolt and was forced to retreat just to hold on to what it already had.”

But the “conundrum” is not at all analogous. Coke was tinkering, trying to expand its market share: The Journal and Times are fighting for their very survival as both companies attempt to successfully forge a profitable transformation to the Internet. It would seem, given News Corp.’s far more varied media portfolio—including newspapers, MySpace, cable television, 20th Century Fox, BSkyB and HarperCollins, to name just a few leaders—is far more equipped to wage a battle for global supremacy over the Times Co., which presently is saddled with the shrinking Boston Globe and, more importantly, growing dissent among its shareholders about the shaky leadership of the Sulzberger family. What may be studied at Wharton and [puke alert] “on the banks of the Charles River” is how an outsider, say George Soros or Michael Bloomberg, came to own what was once the most prestigious newspaper company in American history.

Bowden and his peers, set in their ways, don’t seem to comprehend that the communications business they knew is changing rapidly while they kvetch about the disappearance of long-form and allegedly objective journalism. As for alienating the Journal’s core audience, that’s old news too: for example, I still subscribe to that daily (and the Times as well), but I read most of it online. I don’t care if the “a-hed” is on the front page anymore; I don’t riffle through the first section on Wednesday to read Holman Jenkins’ business column or the new political column by Thomas Frank; and it certainly doesn’t bother me that the Journal has an advertisement on its front page.

The real question in the “war” between the Times Co. and Dow Jones is which entity is better equipped in the next decade to both make money and publish, in whatever form, a quality product. My money is on the Murdoch family.

Mugger: Take This Joba, And Shove It!

Russ Smith — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

It’s a simple fact that there are only two teams in Major League Baseball that matter: the Yankees and Red Sox. And while fans and commentators can natter on all they want about Chase Utley, Willie Randolph or the Tampa Bay Rays’ Cinderella season, just two questions merit any serious discussion. One: Why was phenom reliever Joba Chamberlain jettisoned to the Yanks starting rotation? Two: What effect will the prolonged absence of the Bosox’s David Ortiz have on the A.L. East division race?

Last week, I was on the phone with one of my brothers, who’d just arrived in Mumbai for a hectic weeklong business trip, and all he wanted to talk about was how Joba had fared in his start against the Blue Jays on June 3. We agree on most matters (although he’s considering, probably just to get my goat, voting for Barack Obama in the fall), but baseball isn’t one of them. He’s been a Yanks fan since about 1950—and hates the Sox and the team’s TV-broadcast character, Jerry Remy, as much as I despise the Bombers and YES’s Michael Kay. I delivered the pleasing news that Joba had lasted less than three innings, after a build-up in the city that far exceeded the latest news from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In fact, as the New York Observer’s Howard Medgal noted the next day, Joba received two standing ovations at Yankee Stadium before he even threw a pitch, leading the writer to say, “Even Lou Gehrig, after his ‘Luckiest Man’ speech, only got one.” That’s not too surprising, since “curtain calls,” especially at the Stadium, have become ubiquitous today—Melky Cabrera goes the yard in the third inning, and he emerges from the dugout to doff his cap—but the razzmatazz over the kid’s first big league start was really over the top, even by 21st-century standards.

Not surprisingly, I don’t care for many current Yanks—the gracious duo of Hideki Matsui and Mariano Rivera are exceptions—but man, the excitable Joba seems to have gotten a raw deal. First, while I understand the Yanks’ rotation is in flux—and if anyone believes that Mike Mussina, the Stanford grad who’s so brainy and curious that on a trip to Japan a few years ago he never ventured out of his hotel room, will continue on his Fountain of Youth run throughout the season, it just proves that optimism flourishes—why general manager Brian Cashman would succumb to Hank Steinbrenner’s wishes on the questionable Joba strategy makes me scratch my chin. Here you’ve got a lights-out reliever, an outstanding successor to Rivera in a year or two, probably guaranteeing that the Yanks will have the sport’s most dominant closer for two decades, and suddenly that late-inning weapon is wiped out. As a Sox partisan, I love the move, but it still doesn’t make much sense.

I also don’t get the antipathy directed at young Chamberlain, the engaging Nebraskan who’s not only a superior athlete but appears to be a stand-up guy as well, if only judging by his devotion to his infirm father Harlan. Yeah, he pumps his fist after a big strikeout, which irritates some purists, but it doesn’t bother me; didn’t Homer Jones start that trend a couple of decades ago when he’d spike a football in the end zone after catching a touchdown pass? Besides, it’s hypocritical for any Sox fan to jump Joba for his inning-ending antics when their guy’s closer, Jonathan Papelbon, is perhaps even more demonstrative.

At a time when every MLB team has a plethora of partisan blogs (often excellent), it took me by surprise to read the venom directed at Joba from “The Tao of Stieb,” one of the Toronto Blue Jays’ venues. The night after the sensation’s aborted start, this appeared: “Fat ugly toad Joba Chamberlain last just over two innings. There’s your goddamned saviour, Yankee fans. And while we’re at it, Joba has done pretty much fuck all as a major league starter aside from having some overhyped ‘rules’ named after him.” Hey, Tao, your team won that game, and they were the first recipient of the dumb Yanks front-office decision, one that even Johnny Damon, blessedly speaking out of turn, criticized—telling the Daily News’ John Harper that he felt “the bullpen was our strength… Everyone’s trying to replace a guy who was possibly the best in that role.”

I’m writing before Joba’s Sunday start against the lowly Royals, but even if he chucks six scoreless innings, it’s still a mistake in my book.

And now to the other raging question in the baseball blogosphere: Should the Red Sox sign Barry Bonds, currently out of work, to replace Ortiz as DH in their lineup? It’s just a rumor, of course, and nearly everyone thinks Sox GM Theo Epstein won’t touch Bonds, but I wish he would. That puts me in a minority in the newly crowned “Red Sox Nation”—the legion of bandwagon jumpers who crowd every visiting ballpark since Boston finally won a World Series four years ago—since most think Balco Barry is tainted goods. Yeah, so what else is new? As a Sox blogger on “Fire Joe Morgan” said last week, Epstein didn’t flinch last season is trading for Eric Gagne, who was known as a ‘roider. And New England Patriots fans got over the revelations of “Tapegate” last fall as long as their team was winning.

One of my favorite blogs is Craig Calcaterra’s “Shysterball”; although Calcaterra, a 34-year-old lawyer currently living in Ohio, is a Braves fan in his heart, his daily observations are fairly neutral, well-argued and a lot more interesting than what you find in the dailies. Nonetheless, Calcaterra last week added to his voice to the chorus shouting “No Bonds in Boston.” He wrote: “As I and many others have said in the past, the biggest thing anyone has to worry about with respect to a Bonds signing is a fan revolt and the intense scrutiny the front office would be subjected in the event Bonds falls on his face (which is very possible).”

Bonds seems like a creep to me—I don’t particularly care about his PED use, but his surliness, accusations of beating up girlfriends and IRS fraud don’t make you think of, say, Brooks Robinson or Ichiro—but if Ortiz is lost for the season, pumpkin-head might squelch a “fan revolt” if he walks a lot in front of Manny Ramirez and launches balls into Fenway Park’s right-field bleachers. Let Mike Lupica and the ’s Dan Shaughnessy bitch all they want; if Bonds helps the Sox win another title, I’m on board.

Despite Bud Selig’s bleating about the “integrity” of baseball, that’s a crock. The sport is a big business; so to paraphrase the popular commercial that airs on ESPN, “There’s no piety in baseball.”

Teddy Without Tears

Russ Smith — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Pardon the following lapse of manners, for it’s rather unseemly to write or speak critically of the terminally ill, but the outpouring of media and political grief following Senator Ted Kennedy’s diagnosis of brain cancer has me in a real stew. Yes, it’s grim news for Kennedy’s wife, children and relatives, but let’s be honest: The man is 76 years old (a hard 76, I might add) and has led a long, privileged and exciting life. Most objective people would say he’s had a pretty good run.

When the severity of Kennedy’s condition was made public late last month, Senator Patrick Leahy said, “I’m having a hard time remembering a day in my 34 years here I’ve felt so sadly.” No undue disrespect intended to the Vermont windbag, but if his memory is that faulty he ought to make a doctor’s appointment post-haste. Are the events of September 11, 2001 now so distant that Leahy actually feels worse about an elderly friend’s medical predicament than the nearly 3,000 people, of all ages, who perished on that day? Was that not the “saddest” day in recent memory, not only in Washington, D.C. and New York but across the country as well? While I don’t think Leahy, among others who are “shocked” by the latest Kennedy “tragedy” (since when is it tragic when a person of that age dies?) was intentionally callous, for that’s what his statement was, but it sure ticks me off. One can only imagine how the relatives of the innocent Americans who were killed on 9/11 might feel if they came across Leahy’s comment. Likewise, you’d think Leahy, a vociferous critic of the Iraq War, would feel just as “sad” every time a young man or woman is killed in combat.

Bloomberg’s Albert Hunt—once the token liberal columnist at The Wall Street Journal and a regular on television’s The Capital Gang—was typical in his fulsome, grossly exaggerated pre-obituary of Kennedy in a sickening article published on May 26. He begins: “Edward M. Kennedy is the most gifted legislator, and one of the best politicians and most exuberant public servants I have known in my almost four decades of covering Washington and politics. Historians will rank him with Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Robert Taft and John C. Calhoun as a giant of the Senate…He is and will be the gold standard of excellence in the Senate.”

Waiter, reality check please? It’s not until the 15th paragraph of Hunt’s article that he mentions, in cruel passing, what many people think of first when Ted Kennedy’s name is mentioned. “There remain legions of Kennedy haters, some of whom resent his liberal politics, and others who can never forgive his behavior at Chappaquiddick in 1969 when a young woman died.” Hunt can’t bring himself to even mention the name of that 29-year-old “young woman,” Mary Jo Kopechne, who perished when the car Kennedy was driving veered off the Dike Bridge between Chappaquiddick Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

Kennedy, who didn’t report the accident to local authorities until the following day, received a two-month suspended sentence for his actions. Because of the family’s immense popularity in Massachusetts (and obviously the recent assassinations of his brothers Jack and Bobby) Kennedy wasn’t forced to resign. It’s inconceivable today—with the massive, instantaneous communications industry— that he would have politically survived such an immense scandal. By the same token, President Kennedy, with his blatant promiscuity, concealed illnesses, connections with the mob and fundraising procedures—bags of cash exchanged at airports—was also the product of a clubby Washington culture that wasn’t so far removed from Boss Tweed.

Yet Ted Kennedy’s blemishes, to be charitable, didn’t start and end with Chappaquiddick. Hunt continues (in fairness, I could have picked out a dozen similar pieces): “Yet when it comes to character and personal generosity, few measure up to Kennedy. As the sole surviving son of the fabled family, he has been a parent to, in addition to his own three children, the 13 kids of his slain brothers; other nieces and nephews, some considerably successful on their own, worship him.”

I could be wrong, but it’s probably safe to assume that the Senator’s nephew, William Kennedy Smith, doesn’t unconditionally “worship” his uncle. It was back in 1991 when Smith, accompanied by Kennedy and his son Patrick, spent time knocking back drinks at Palm Beach’s Au Bar; Smith, then 30, picked up a 29-year-old woman and the four of them retreated to a family-owned house. Patricia Bowman, the object of Smith’s affections, subsequently accused him of rape, although he was acquitted of all charges at a well-publicized criminal trial later that year. Ted Kennedy was divorced at the time—GQ ran a scathing profile of him around the same time that detailed his sexual adventures in Washington, often accompanied by buddy Senator Christopher Dodd—and an object of ridicule not only for his carousing but also for his yo-yo weight losses and gains.

Also in 1991, at the contentious Judiciary Committee hearings over President Bush’s Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas—where Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment—Kennedy, supposedly a champion of women’s rights, was noticeably mute. Journalist Anna Quindlen, then with the New York Times, wrote that Kennedy “let us down because he had to; he was muzzled by the facts of his life.” And the Boston Globe, a steadfast ally of Kennedy, editorialized that his “reputation as a womanizer made him an inappropriate and non-credible” leader in the bid to scuttle the conservative Thomas’ nomination.

That wasn’t the case, however, in 1987, when Kennedy was brutal and demagogic in his attacks on Ronald Reagan’s own Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork—so much so that the term “Borking” became part of Washington’s lexicon. It’s true that Bork was, and is, conservative; but Kennedy, who today is hailed as the ultimate Senate conciliator, a man who can work with Democrats and Republicans alike, was a madman on a mission. In a quote that ought to be taught in all high schools and colleges, public and private—if only to slightly balance the Camelot mythology that persists to this day—Kennedy thundered: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government and doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”

This filth came from the mouth of the man commonly referred to as the “liberal lion” of the Senate (a grossly grandiose compliment conferred upon him long before his current cancer diagnosis). Kennedy, without the aid of a speechwriter (not unlike George W. Bush) has never been known for his extemporaneous rhetoric, let along speaking in complete sentences—as his infamous 1979 interview with Roger Mudd, in which he couldn’t articulate why he wanted to be president, amply demonstrated—so maybe the above bit of paranoid and delusional character assassination was the handiwork of an acolyte such as speechwriter Robert Shrum, but that’s no excuse. Really, did Kennedy actually believe that Bork’s elevation to the Supreme Court would lead to, among the other charges, of “blacks sit[ting] at segregated lunch counters”? Of course not, although were it not for his own personal scandals, it’s a given that Clarence Thomas would have received the same treatment in 1991 and probably not be on the Court today.

Last week The Harvard Crimson ran an editorial beseeching the school’s administration to award Kennedy a “doctorate honoris causa” at this year’s commencement. The authors are concerned that since Kennedy may not live to receive an honorary degree next year—such recognition is not conferred posthumously at Harvard—this may be his last chance. “As one of the University’s most distinguished sons and actively engaged alumni,” the editorial continues, “Senator Kennedy has touched the lives of numerous undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff.”

However, there’s probably good reason that the school’s vetting committee for honorary degrees isn’t as keen on this idea as the Crimson writers. Kennedy was expelled from Harvard for cheating—after serving in the army for two years he was readmitted—a story the Boston Globe discovered in 1962 when he was running for his brother’s Massachusetts Senate seat at the age of 30. According to Richard Reeves’ book President Kennedy: Profile of Power, JFK “negotiated” with the Globe’s Washington bureau chief about the how the story should be handled. JFK joked at the time, “We haven’t spent as much fucking time on anything since Cuba.” Reeves, a traditional liberal, continues: “The President and the bureau chief worked out a statement, which Edward Kennedy repeated in a staged interview, admitting that another student had taken a freshman Spanish exam for him.” Subsequently, the … then ran a “gentle” story about the “Harvard incident.”

The late Texas Gov. Ann Richards once famously said about the first President Bush, “Poor George. He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” Maybe so, but Bush has nothing on Teddy Kennedy when it comes to the extraordinary perks of wealth, power and fame. I’m not saying Kennedy’s achieved nothing in the Senate—his immigration reform stance, for example, is important, especially today when the country is in a protectionist mode—but as the formal glowing obituaries are being written right now, it’s important to remember that this political celebrity has had, at best, an extremely checkered career.

Mugger: Bush Comes To Shove

Russ Smith — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

As the 2008 presidential campaign rolls along, becoming nastier or more conciliatory depending on the day, one thing is clear: Liberal Democrats are scared shitless—with little reason, in my opinion—that once again they’ll be denied on Election Day in November. Remember the spate of news articles and op-ed columns in late 2004 (and not just confined to the Times), after the laconic John Kerry was narrowly defeated by George Bush, about the large number of affluent New Yorkers and Californians who were so depressed at the result that they couldn’t speak or eat, and sought refuge—or maybe doubled up their time—with a psychiatrist?

In the unlikely event that John McCain noses out Barack Obama this fall, it’s hard to imagine what the reaction will be from those investing so much of their time and psychic energy on electing a man who will relieve the United States from the Constitution-shredding, global warming flat-earthers and corporate lackeys who comprise the Bush administration.

I don’t suspect there will be a rash of skyscraper jumpers—that’s too 1929—but watch out for the reports of devastated voters snuffing themselves, either on purpose or accidentally, with a mixture of top-shelf vodka and Ambien. And it could finally happen that all those actors who swear they’ll move abroad if a Republican wins, actually will.

Consider the following proclamation from Josh Marshall—the well-regarded and successful creator of the partisan (but generally smart) Talking Points Memo—after Bush gave his now-notorious (at least among Democrats) speech at the Knesset earlier this month, in which he warned that negotiating with terrorists was similar to European appeasement in the 1930s as Hitler gallivanted across the continent. Needless to say, conservative blogs and publications and websites had a field day mocking Marshall, and they were right.

Marshall said: “In case you hadn’t heard yet, the president attacked Sen. Obama [Bush named no specific Democrats] as a terrorist coddler on the order of the late 30s Nazi-appeasers in a speech before the Israeli Knesset. As the president who’s probably done more to damage the country than any in 150 years, I can’t say I’m exactly surprised that he’d do this. But it really was disgusting, even for him.”

Several years ago, I met Josh and had an engaging conversation for an hour or so, and he struck me as a really good guy. Still is, I’m sure, but he’s clearly become unglued. Bush will not be regarded as a top-tier president by historians—although the verdict, I believe, won’t be as severe as is currently bandied about—but think about the lunacy of Marshall’s condemnation. Bush has “probably” done more damage to the United States since any president since 1858? So James Buchanan, who ignored the imminent Civil War, was a better president?

Woodrow Wilson, a moralistic man who violently violated the Bill of Rights by jailing journalists who spoke out against the United States’ involvement in World War I, and stoked anti-immigrant fervor with his support of Prohibition, did less “damage” to U.S. democracy than Bush? I find it hard to fathom that Marshall and his ilk can rank the current president below Herbert Hoover, on whose watch, of course, the most devastating depression in U.S. history began.

Harry Truman, now a Democratic saint, was shunned for years by party members, derided as a man who was “stubborn” and a bumbler in hock to the Missouri political machine, who also gave the order to bomb Japan, sent armed men to their deaths in the Korean War and did little to stop the rise of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Maybe it’s not fair to burden Truman with the rise of McCarthyism—Dwight Eisenhower wasn’t much better. But I’d venture to say, without fear of contradiction, that the blacklisting, paranoia and ruin of decent people’s careers that McCarthy was largely responsible for trumps any of Bush’s mistakes. As for the economy—the current unemployment rate is 5 percent, although it’ll most likely tick up in the next year—is Bush worse than Jimmy Carter (who, by the way, did some bumbling himself in dealing with Iran)? Americans suffered through sky-high credit rates, double-digit inflation and an average unemployment rate of 7.7 during Carter’s four ignominious years as president.

At least Marshall doesn’t lard his commentary with purple prose; the same can’t be said for sportswriter/political provocateur Charles P. Pierce, the onetime buddy of John McCain who apparently considers his writing to be a combination of H.L. Mencken, Murray Kempton and I.F. Stone. Pierce, who in truth isn’t too bad on NPR’s Saturday program “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!,” swung for the bleachers with his horribly contrived Esquire (June issue) article “The Cynic and Senator Obama.” Since Pierce is more worldly, well-read and skeptical than the rest of us—especially the millions who’ve embraced Obama’s candidacy—he’s not about to get fooled again. Writing in the third person as “the cynic,” Pierce followed the Illinois senator on the campaign hustings this spring; and while he concedes Obama is tough, shrewd and smart, his closing plea (Pierce faults the de facto Democratic nominee for not calling for Bush’s impeachment, among other sins) is “Convince me. Convince me. Convince me.”

Although Pierce doesn’t go back into history as far as Marshall, it’s his contention that the United States hasn’t been a “great” country since LBJ shepherded civil rights legislation through Congress more than four decades ago. Since then, “The people of the United States have been accessorial in the murder of their country.” Now, maybe it’s just me being cynical, but if my recollection is correct Democrats in 2000 were whining that Bill Clinton wasn’t eligible to run for a third term—a travesty in their opinion, since he restored the country to greatness and was hardly complicit in its “murder.”

In the course of Pierce’s article he repeats this mantra five times about the present condition of the United States: “Someone will have to measure the wreckage. Someone will have to walk through the ruins. Someone will have to count the cost.” This really is the work of an unhinged man. Yes, it’s a conceit Pierce employs to express his doubt that Obama will be anything more than a normal politician, albeit one who speaks magnificently. But even though most liberals are eager to enumerate the list of Bush’s incompetent decisions, I haven’t come across anyone in those circles who draws such an apocalyptic, Guernica-like description of the United States today. Reading Pierce, you’d think he’d just toured Dresden at the conclusion of World War II.

Should McCain win in November, as a charitable man, I do hope that Pierce’s friends keep him away from sharp objects and the medicine and liquor cabinets.

Mugger: Thank Me For Smoking

Russ Smith — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

During the course of the day at my small office in north Baltimore, where six colleagues and I operate a new youth-oriented website—www.splicetoday.com— there’s a lot of good-natured ribbing that takes place, often at the expense of yours truly. I’m the senior citizen of the bunch at 52; the person closest to middle age is 31, with the remaining employees under 25. About a month ago, for example, I was the object of much ridicule upon asking the office manager for help in working an iPod, a swell Christmas present from my 13-year-old son Booker. Eyes rolled as Claire pressed a button in about five seconds and sent me upstairs; I wasn’t really chastened, since this is a somewhat normal occurrence, whether it involves complex (for me) computer maneuvers or setting up message retrieval on the cell phone.

However, one day last week came a moment of supreme satisfaction, as our 23-year-old managing editor was staring at the fax machine for several minutes, trying to figure out how to make it work. “John,” I inquired, “are you just slow today or is there something more seriously wrong with your brain?” He didn’t particularly appreciate that remark and explained to this Boomer that he’d only sent three faxes in his life. I was astonished, at least initially, until realizing there was no reason why someone of his age, in just his second job after graduating from college, would be familiar with what was once a revolutionary gadget. When setting up New York Press in 1988, the fax machine was a wonder—remember how the pages would fade after several days?—and of course I’ve sent and received thousands of faxes over the years. The device is still used, of course, but it’s quickly going the route of the eight-track, seating at 800-capacity music venues and stock tables in daily newspapers.

Which brings me to the topic of tobacco, smoking, cigarette advertising and the days before it was considered mandatory courtesy to ask someone, “Do you mind if I smoke?” Just a decade or two from now, as tobacco addicts die off, the whole notion of commonplace smoking will make for nostalgic and often funny stories that grandparents will tell (probably unaware of repeating themselves) at family gatherings. It’s in the tradition of oral history handed down to succeeding generations: Some of the details spun out will be wrong, apocryphal or innocently burnished by the passage of time. However, what’s more disturbing to me, a longtime smoker, is that when such reminiscences are recorded in written essays—and thus recorded as gospel via the Internet—is that some authors are simply getting their facts wrong.

David Sedaris, born in 1956, recently published a typically entertaining piece on his own smoking history in The New Yorker, “Letting Go: Smoking and non-smoking,” and his fiddling with the truth (probably inadvertent, for he is over 50 years old) resulted in my immediate thought that none of his editors at the weekly ever fell prey to the now-reviled habit. The following is just one example of where Sedaris is off base: “[C]oolness, for most of us, had nothing to do with it. It’s popular to believe that every smoker was brainwashed, sucked in by product placement and subliminal print ads.” No doubt, New York anti-smoking activist Gene Borio, a pleasant enough fellow who used to bombard New York Press with letters to the editor in the golden days (at least on the revenue side for publishers) after a full-page cigarette advertisement was published, will disagree—and Gene, the war’s over: you won—but smoking had everything to do with “coolness.”

It wasn’t Ricky and Lucy Ricardo casually lighting up on I Love Lucy reruns that led me to start smoking at the age of 14; it was the far more compelling example of my fourth-oldest brother, in 1969, nonchalantly lighting up a Kool in our living room. He was the epitome of cool: long red hair, perfectly faded Lee jeans, a participant in student sit-ins and someone whom I believed had the best taste in music. So, it wasn’t much of a leap when I followed suit and began carrying a pack of unfiltered Kools (and later Newports and Alpines) in my BVD blue T-shirt pocket. This was before the stupid Joe Camel controversy, but advertising and product placement had absolutely nothing to do with my picking up the vice. Nor did peer pressure, even as I enjoyed (as did Sedaris) the outside smoking lounge at Huntington High School.

What’s worse, Sedaris gets key tobacco lore all wrong. He writes: “Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry [in fact, the pretentious bad poets actually favored Galouise cigs]. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems for alcoholics, and Mores for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really wouldn’t.” I’ll give Sedaris credit on the Mores jab, but how in the world does he justify labeling Salems as the brand of choice for alcoholics? I’ve encountered, over the years, countless alcoholics and their preference in cigarettes was always varied and often indiscriminate. Perhaps this is a quibble, but if Sedaris is going to hand down to present and future readers a story about the lost culture of smoking, he shouldn’t be so promiscuous with the truth. Likewise, saying that “Merits were for sex addicts,” is nonsense, but many of his readers who’ve never touched a cigarette might believe him.

Another misconception in Sedaris’ essay is that “light” and “ultra-light” cigarettes, marketed extensively as a “healthy” alternative 12 years after the Surgeon General’s 1964 report, were like regulars but with “a pinhole in them.” Sure, it was fashionable for tough guys—when bumming, say, a Marlboro Light—to rip off the filter, but that was mostly show. In fact, when I switched from regular Merits to the ultra-light brand, it took just two days to feel the same pull from the cigarette.

All of this may seem frivolous or worse in today’s virulent anti-tobacco environment—take a look at myspace profiles and you’ll find very few members who admit to smoking—but when the cigarette cult is finally extinguished, it is important in terms of 20th-century pop culture and business history not to distort a staple of American life (like horse-drawn carriages or transistor radios) that was once so prevalent and vibrant.

Mugger: Bill of Wrongs

Russ Smith — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Barring the still-unlikely event that Hillary Clinton is elected president this November—which would entail not only corrupting the Democratic Party’s very weird nomination process as well as mending fences with outraged African Americans—the most satisfying result for Republicans would be Bill Clinton’s exit from the national stage. If Barack Obama prevails, perhaps Clinton might land an ambassadorship to St. Lucia; if it’s John McCain, he can expect nothing.

Those of us who opposed Clinton during his contentious presidency—the gargantuan ego (even for a politician); the constant hypocrisy, best exemplified when he declared his kinship with Americans “playing by the rules,” even when his fundraisers engaged in dubious and maybe illegal methods; the initial lies about Monica Lewinsky, turning a tawdry but largely irrelevant bout of adultery into a crippling and prolonged scandal; and, upon leaving office, the pardon of ‘jes folks fugitive Marc Rich—will be delighted to see him go.

Better yet, a sizable percentage of his own supporters, who clamored for a third Clinton term in 2000, are disgusted by his conduct during this campaign: not only because of his outrageous and incorrect comparison of the Jesse Jackson and Obama candidacies in South Carolina but also his inability to let his wife take the spotlight this year. The noxious slogan from ’92, “Two for the price of one,” which enchanted liberals and feminists who envisioned a First Lady who did more than choose the color of curtains and suggested menus for state dinners, has taken on a new and ugly significance.

Bill Clinton has, in a rapid and wholly unexpected twist of Democratic orthodoxy, become political baggage. The former chief executive, in keeping with his appalling me-myself-and-I character, wasn’t shy, even at the height of his popularity while in office, in regretting that his “legacy” was diminished because he wasn’t a wartime president. Now, after his self-serving performances across the country this year, he’ll be consigned, even by sympathetic historians, to the purgatory of a “middle-tier” presidency, maybe lumped together with Grover Cleveland instead of Harry Truman. Just the thought of this new reality—with his wife in office, the opportunity to burnish his record was tantalizing—has probably aged Clinton 10 years.

Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff—who’d rather give up a book advance than vote Republican—claims in a curious June column that adultery will comprise the bulk of Clinton’s legacy. He writes: “The Clinton-Lewinsky drama—as documentary a look at sexuality as Kinsey—created a virtual racial stereotype of middle-aged [white male] desire, an Amos ‘N Andy of sexual need.” Wolff’s unmistakable brief for Obama is explained by the conjecture that Americans want to elect a president who doesn’t need to get some on the side. “Against these middle-aged people, he’s the naturalist,” Wolff says, “the credible and hopeful figure of a man who might actually be having sex with his smiling, energetic, and oomphy wife.” It’s hard to argue with Wolff’s borderline salacious description of Michele Obama as “oomphy,” but it’s plain silly of him to describe the Senator as “young.” Obama is 46, and if that’s not middle-aged—in fact, Wolff’s not that much older—well, who knows, maybe people will reach 120 years sooner rather than later.

Anyway, let’s also not forget that the goofy appellation given to Bill Clinton by Toni Morrison as America’s “first black president,” now seems like a bit on a late-night comedy show. (He was also called, by awestruck admirers, the first “woman,” “gay” and “Hispanic” president, but those labels were deemed silly even the 1990s.)

It’s worth citing a passage (thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto for digging up the piece) from Morrison’s 1998 New Yorker essay: “Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing [this is unique to blacks?], McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

Now, just 10 years later, a mere decade, there’s the very real possibility that Obama, who doesn’t have white skin, will become president. For Clinton, paraphrasing the Grateful Dead, what a short, strange trip it’s been.

The former president takes particular umbrage at Obama’s repeated stump speeches in which he doesn’t pay due deference in differentiating the administrations of Clinton and his widely reviled successor. The gall! In the May 5 New Yorker, Ryan Lizza, in a “I can see both sides of the story” and ultimately tepid essay about the burst Bill Clinton bubble, bent the ear of an anonymous Hillary adviser, who told him, “I think this campaign has enraged [Bill]… He doesn’t like Obama.” I guess not, considering that the frontrunner repeatedly says that Clinton, as well as Bush, is responsible for the loss of heartland jobs and the supposed Wall Street culture that envelops Washington.

In truth, I think two of Clinton’s most laudable accomplishments were his Welfare Reform Act (regardless of the political expediency that motivated him, cutting off Bob Dole’s legs in the ’96 campaign) and his successful and bitter effort to pass the NAFTA legislation. That Obama strikes a protectionist pose—which would naturally lead to an unwise nativist stance on immigration, even if he won’t admit it—is one reason, among many, that I prefer John McCain; but just imagine how seriously this pisses off Bill Clinton.

Still, what possessed the man once called “The Natural,” for his legendary campaigning skills, to call South Carolina’s Rep. James Clyburn in the middle of the night (according to Lizza’s mole) and rant at him for nearly an hour? Clyburn, who is black and influential, said later: “It’s pretty widespread now that African-Americans have lost a whole lot of respect for Bill Clinton.”

But far more damaging for the multimillionaire, jet-setting Clinton is that his constituency in the mainstream media has also lost respect for him. Apologists like historian/essayist David Greenberg and the cartoonish James Carville notwithstanding, that spells defeat for the egocentric Arkansan who once dreamed of a posterity that mentioned his name in the same sentences as John F. Kennedy.

Mugger: Historical Blindness

Russ Smith — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Despite the near hysteria in the media, as ever fixating on Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton’s gaffe of the moment, it’s a great year to be a Democrat. In fact, the script for the 2008 presidential election had its first draft three years ago, after the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina—you’d think, reading a lot of the online and print commentary, that President Bush and his staff actually willed the catastrophic storm, when it was really an example of egregious and lackluster response—and was furthered by the ’06 midterm elections. And now, as the economy quickly retreats into a down cycle, which will certainly continue well past November, it’s still very difficult to see just how John McCain can defeat Obama.

Yes, there’s the argument, peddled by Clinton and her surrogates, that Obama—given his supposed “elitism” and association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright—can’t win battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, but that’s hogwash. It’s true that Obama will suffer from (to be charitable) subconscious racism among blocs of older white voters (who’d never admit as much to a pollster), but his extraordinary appeal to Americans under the age of 40 and proven ability to rally African Americans in massive numbers makes that an electoral wash.

I’m not betting a nickel on this election—which pisses me off, since casual wagers are a lot of fun—abstaining as in ’96 when unlucky Bob Dole, finally in the national limelight, was politically dead on arrival.

Several weeks ago, writing in The New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew (mercifully confined to that forgotten ghetto after far too many years of filing endless and dated “Letter From Washington” dispatches for The New Yorker) made the absurd statement that the continuing battle between Obama and Clinton is “dividing friends and families like no other [election] I’ve seen.”

I don’t mean to pick on a woman who’s advancing in years, but is Drew’s memory so faulty that she doesn’t recall the extremely contentious intra-party disputes 40 years ago pitting the supporters of Sens. Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy against each other? I do, and the rancor of that year makes it seem like Obama and Clinton are merely squabbling on a play date. I was a teenager at the time and licked stamps for McCarthy at the local headquarters. I was outraged when Kennedy, after rebuffing for months the pleas of Allard Lowenstein to challenge LBJ, opportunistically announced his candidacy just days after the Minnesotan nearly defeated the incumbent in the New Hampshire primary. Typical Kennedy style, was the sentiment in the McCarthy camp. One of my brothers, in college then, quickly switched over to RFK, and we debated heatedly and in anger right up to the day when Kennedy met his tragic and senseless demise in Los Angeles.

More recently, the weird outcome of the 2000 election made it impossible for Bush and Gore partisans to bring up politics at the dinner table, water cooler or at parties, for fear of fracturing friendships, so pronounced was, to use the phrase of the month, the bitterness. Some of us learned the hard way—I’ve just now repaired the damage among several acquaintances for whom my support for Bush was just beyond the pale. One unseasonably warm day, in Tribeca’s Washington Market Park, a buddy and I nearly came to blows about the Supreme Court’s nod in favor of Bush, and it was only the intervention of our wives,, and the sight of our kids playing nearby, that cooled things down. (Lucky for me, since I’d have been squashed like a bug.) Now, we keep in touch by email or phone nearly every day;, but we keep the topics confined to our mutual Red Sox obsession, current films and the various difficulties of trying to co-exist with teenagers in our respective dwellings.

The current division between Democrats is another example of the myopic mind-set of liberal reporters, columnists, editorialists and television commentators, who, while perhaps engaging in political scuffles within their incestuous world, imagine that the entirety of the nation feels the same way. That’s simply not true: When the nomination is settled, Democrats, desperate to regain the White House, will back their candidate with a vigor and enthusiasm not seen for decades. In my small office in north Baltimore, where I’m the lone person supporting McCain, there’s fascination, and some disgust, about the prolonged primary. But although all five of my colleagues are for Obama, not one of them has even considered the possibility of voting for McCain should Clinton improbably and undoubtedly sleazily wrest the nomination from their preferred candidate.

They can’t wait to vote against the Republicans in November. It could be that the Times’ Paul Krugman will stay at home on Election Day—his persistent animus aimed at Obama is one of this year’s great media mysteries, although my suspicion is that his investment in the short-lived campaign of John Edwards is the explanation—but surely he’d be an anomaly.

Far too much nonsense has been written about the Philadelphia debate and the alleged incompetence of ABC’s Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asking “gotcha” questions instead of engaging the competitors in serious policy issues. I suppose Clinton is more centrist than Obama, although her motives, like her husband’s, are always suspect; but after what must be a record fro presidential debates, how many times can the inquisitors query the contenders on how they’d govern more effectively , and equitably, than Bush?

Nancy Franklin, in the April 28 New Yorker, after moaning about the “death march” between Obama and Clinton—talk about hyperbole!—was at least sensible enough to conclude her television critique by writing: “They were flawed and they were impressive, and to me they both looked like winners.” Franklin prefers Clinton, echoing a common Boomer sentiment, saying, “When you’ve been a feminist all your life, and hoping since kindergarten that a woman would be president in your lifetime, and you’re now a certain age, and now, Oh, my God, here is that woman, it’s easy to get a little grandiose.” (For the record, I don’t recall any girls in kindergarten ever talking about politics.) Yet she also lapses into New York-Boston speak, claiming, “I know hardly anyone who hasn’t also been made a little crazy [by the primary fight].”

Most Democrats across the country, I’m certain, aren’t as consumed by the current political drama; it’s a source of interest, obviously, but less important than paying bills, helping their kids with homework, tending to gardens, figuring out student loans, attending sporting events and trying to stay healthy. When the time comes, they’ll vote for the Democrat, celebrate after a likely victory, and get on with their lives.

Mugging For The Camera

Russ Smith — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Twenty years ago, as the six-person staff of the New York Press settled into our first headquarters, a second-floor space at Broadway and Spring Street, I wrestled with the difficulty of naming this column, just three weeks before the first issue would be distributed to what we expected would be an initially indifferent audience. It wasn’t that the vision for the free weekly was flawed—The Village Voice was then a behemoth in the alternative newspaper market, a paid-circulation paper that had priced itself out of reach for small retailers and restaurants, reputedly treating clients like dirt, and therefore ripe for competition—but rather the plain fact that New Yorkers had seen other weeklies come and go, usually within a year.

The city’s media landscape in 2008 obviously couldn’t be imagined by any of the cocky smart-alecks plying their trade two decades ago in the pre-blogosphere, pre-Craigslist days. Tina Brown, now a relic attempting to cook up any new project that’ll restore her fiefdom, was the belle of the Upper East Side, with sycophants lining up to kiss her Vanity Fair-encrusted ring; Spy magazine was a smarter, more clever print version of Gawker, and its future appeared limitless; the Times (and Wall Street Journal) posted plump profits each quarter that now seem as distant as Johnny Carson or David Dinkins’ “gorgeous mosaic”; and the Voice, stuffed with retail and classified advertisements, was a must-read for not only newly arrived students or artists, but 60s survivors as well. People who remembered the more idiosyncratic Voice of founding editor Dan Wolf, and even the glitzier version run by Clay Felker, might’ve bitched about the paper’s increasing homogenization, but most still bought it every Wednesday.

The travails of print-based media companies have been well documented, lamented and chewed over by journalists (often by those taking buy-outs from dailies) with almost hysterical frequency during the past five years. This was, after all, was long considered an impregnable profession; reporters and editorialists traditionally wrote the obituaries of other failing industries, never really believing there would come a time when the victims would be men and women they knew or even worked with. That The New York Times is a ripe target for a takeover would have been a daft notion even at the start of this century; now, after News Corp. acquired Dow Jones & Co., it just seems like a matter of time.

On a micro level, the alternative weeklies, for more than a generation the gateway for young adults seeking entertainment not listed in the dailies, long arts reviews and irreverent pop culture criticism, are also in flux. A large part of the trouble can be attributed to neglect: As the best weekly papers became more successful, and their now-wealthy owners were able to pay salaries that rivaled other publishing concerns, the youth market was ceded to Internet entrepreneurs.

At one time, people picked up free weeklies around the country to find out what to do on Saturday night, look for rentals or scan the dirty ads; the editorial content was a bonus, although one that cemented the reputation of writers who often migrated to higher-profile jobs. Now that listings and classifieds are available on the web, and confronted with the plain fact that most adults under the age of 30 simply don’t read newspapers, weekly owners and editors have a problem.

Hence the layoffs and sniping at and about the Voice, which gets the most attention because it’s owned by an out-of-town chain (Village Voice Media) and Mike Lacey, the company’s editor-in-chief, has the reputation of a hard-nosed proprietor/journalist who’s never cared about making enemies. The weeklies, now with middle-aged staffs, made a half-hearted transformation to the Internet, mirroring the dailies, and are now playing catch-up. In addition, young media entrepreneurs with access to a small amount of money aren’t going to start newspapers, like Lacey or his colleagues did in the early ’70s; they’ll take their chances online.

When the Chicago Reader, long a cash cow, was sold last year, one of the owners, approaching 60, said he simply didn’t have energy to soldier on in a vastly changed environment. It could be that Lacey (who a couple of weeks ago was caught on tape using the word “nigger” in a jocular manner, which was promptly displayed on any number of Internet sites) might feel the same way.

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Anyhow, pardon the digression, and back to 1988. Several of us, spending an hour or two or three after work at the pre-chic Milano’s on Houston Street, tossing back pints of beer and shots of crummy tequila, would trade names back and forth, but nothing stuck. As it happened, not long before the launch, at home in Tribeca, my sister-in-law called to tell me my brother had been accosted at their co-op a few blocks down the street at Hudson and Franklin. Terry asked if I could mind their infant son while she went to St. Vincent’s. My brother, walking home from his job on Rector St., had reached their loft—the ground floor of which is now occupied by Nobu—and was suddenly approached by a disreputable character who pointed a gun at his head and demanded “all your money.” Acting out of adrenaline, and not common sense, my brother hit the guy with his briefcase and ran down the street, eluding his stalker—Holland Tunnel traffic aided his escape—but was moving so fast that he tripped and wound up with a serious infection on his leg.

The next day, while visiting him at the hospital, I asked if it was OK if I called my column “MUGGER,” an idea that occurred while rocking the baby to sleep the night before. He laughed, said it was no skin off his nose, and so I had a name. The initial anonymity of MUGGER—I didn’t attach a byline until the New York Press’s 10th anniversary—was a gimmick, an attempt to create any bit of controversy for a 24-page paper that was riddled with typos and articles that wouldn’t even be considered for publication a few years later.

More significantly, this incident illustrated the landscape of Lower Manhattan in 1988, pre-Giuliani, a time when streetlights were scarce or often broken. A few months later, wading through the Soho tourists on the way to the office on a brilliant Sunday afternoon, I saw the strangest spectacle. A tall man, with a bright red bandana on his head, was calmly smashing the windshield of a parked car on Spring St., ignoring the then-ubiquitous “no radio” hand-scrawled poster on the dashboard. He went about his business as if he were changing a flat tire, put the plundered loot in a pillowcase, and then walked off to an unknown destination.

This wasn’t exactly a Kitty Genovese moment, but the fact that no one, myself included, among the hundreds of people in the vicinity bothered to flag down a cop or dial 911, simply demonstrates that such criminal activity was routine, a downside of living in New York at the time. That night, when telling the story to a couple of friends at Puffy’s, the paper’s first art director, Michael Gentile, asked, “Did the guy get anything good out of the car?” and then ordered another Rolling Rock.

Around the same time, I arrived at the office one Monday morning and found several cops on the premises, putting handcuffs on a teenager who’d botched a robbery an hour or so earlier. Apparently, he’d gained access to our space from the roof of the building, making his way downstairs and hammered a hole in one of the walls of the bathroom. He’d collected six computers, some loose change in desks and then, satisfied with a job well done, helped himself to several warm beers on a salesman’s desk and then passed out. It was the paper’s operations manager, I believe, who the first in that morning and she saw the slumbering crook and called the police, who had a hearty laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

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There were other oddities, at least by my reckoning, we encountered in the paper’s first year. In the fall of 1987, I’d sold Baltimore’s City Paper, a weekly a buddy and I began as college seniors in ’77 back when such publications were still derisively dismissed by most people as “underground.” At one store near the city’s then-abandoned waterfront, the paper wasn’t allowed access to the top of a cigarette machine for distribution because the logo was red, which screamed “Communist propaganda” to the owner. Eleven years later, in New York, I ran into a reverse problem. The New York Press was no longer allowed in Shakespeare Books on Broadway, because, the clerk told me, the staff objected to MUGGER’s negative comments about Jesse Jackson, who was running for president that year.

The very notion that my politically conservative commentary—at least on economic and foreign policy issues—was so foreign to many readers that the New York Press was labeled a “Republican paper,” despite the fact that everyone on the staff except me voted for Michael Dukakis that fall. That mischaracterization of the paper’s content continued for years, even after the columns of Alexander Cockburn, David Corn, John Strausbaugh, David Lindsay, Amy Sohn, Jessica Willis and Bill Monahan were added to an eclectic mix.

The cost of living in New York in 1988 was shockingly high, especially to those young men and women who came up from Baltimore to join the staff, a plain and constant reality no matter what the state of the national economy is in. Michael Gentile and his wife, for example, were blown away that the studio off University Place, a few minutes away from the Cedar Tavern, set them back $1,200/mo. One time that year, returning to Baltimore for a wedding, several of us had nightcaps at a hotel bar. When the check came for three beers and a margarita and totaled just $7.97, I asked the waitress if her math was on the blink. No, she replied with a smile, one that broadened when I left a $5 tip.

The New York Press was the first weekly to switch over to desktop publishing, a decision that was made by our designer Joachim Blunck, who then worked at the TV show A Current Affair. The amount of money saved on production costs was substantial; instead of several people pasting up bits of copy, including one-line corrections, on galleys, the whole job was at first accomplished by Gentile and one part-time employee. On the other hand, diving into a new technology wasn’t exactly a financial lark. For example, aside from the 300 street boxes we’d purchased to distribute the paper, the biggest investment was for… a printer. This machine, the size of a large chest of drawers, and featuring 300 d.p.i. resolution, set us back north of $20,000. As I write today, there’s a 900 d.p.i. Brother printer next to my iMac that retails at Staples for under $300.

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The New York Press’ early years involved a lot of tough slogging, making pitches to recalcitrant advertisers (most of whom are out of business today), attracting writers for minimal fees and continually missing the deadline for our printer in the Meatpacking District. But mostly, we had a lot of fun. Like poking fingers in the eyes of established Voice critics like Robert Christgau (who called the New York Press a “yuppie paper,” considered an insult back then) and Richard Goldstein, who wondered, upon reading my column after the GOP ’94 Congressional landslide, “When did it become cool to be conservative?”

When we moved to Puck Building in ’89, taking over Spy magazine’s offices, there was a steady stream of visitors who’d come by to hang out, such as Beauregard Houston-Montgomery, then an omnipresent man about town who had the talent of amiably mixing with the staffs of competing publications, whether it was Paper (just as horrendous then as it is now), the short-lived Egg or the Voice. Ben Katchor, who introduced his extraordinary comic strip “Julius Knipl” in the first issue of the New York Press, was prized for his droll and often self-deprecating monologues, and Mike Doughty (pre-Soul Coughing) was always welcome, a jack-in-the-box energizer who responded to an in-house ad for music critics and wound up writing for the paper for several years. J.R. Taylor, who complemented Doughty and Neil Strauss in the New York Press’ music pages, delighted some staffers and appalled others with his stream of politically incorrect pronouncements, but never took offense when upbraided. And there was no one who wouldn’t interrupt their work when “Slackjaw” columnist Jim Knipfel—before he became the paper’s receptionist and then staff writer—stopped by and offered a slug from his pint bottle of blackberry brandy to anyone who was interested.

Oh, one more note about the strung-out assailant, mentioned at the top of this column. An hour after he’d flubbed that mugging, he was apprehended in the now-closed coffee shop Socrates, across the street from my brother’s loft. High on crack, a waitress called the cops and he was hauled off to the local precinct and sent to the same prison from which he’d been released that very afternoon. Say what you will about mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg—and I’ve said plenty, with the former a grandstanding creep, the latter a holier-than-thou nudge—but it’s indisputable that New York, under their administrations, has become a much safer place to live and work.