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 will take free money
from just about anybody. I'll take money from NARAL, PETA, the Libertarian
party, the Communist party (I hear they share offices), whomever.
So long as it's legal for me to do it, I'll take cash from a sweaty
guy named Bruno in back of the 7-11 or from some Saudi sheik sucking
on a hookah-load of crack smoke. Let the word go forth: I will take
money from any friend, hold my hand out to any foe in order to assure
the survival and success of my bank account. You send me a check,
you'll be more likely to trip over Jimmy Hoffa than see that bad
boy again.
Oh, sure, if
Saddam Hussein, Pablo Escobar, or Al Sharpton sent me a thick wad
of non-sequential frogskins, I might give the schmundo to charity
rather than pocket it. But that's really a procedural question that
arises only after I stuff the roll of Benjamins into my pocket.
In fact, when you think about it, taking free cash from your enemies
is an even bigger no-brainer than taking it from your friends. It
makes your enemies poorer and you richer, win-win. That's why I
don't charge conservative groups very much for speeches but (if
the offer ever comes) I'd make NOW pay out the yazoo for my sage
comments and how-many-feminists-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb?
jokes. Call it my program to defund the Left.
The hitch,
of course, is that people don't give away money for free very often,
at least not when I'm around. Invariably, these hard cases want
something in return for their lucre. This is a lesson Homer Simpson
learned when he was searching under his couch for a wayward peanut
and found a $20 bill instead:
Homer:
Awww... 20 dollars!? I wanted a peanut.
Homer's brain: Twenty dollars can
buy many peanuts!
Homer: Explain how.
Homer's brain: Money can be exchanged
for goods and services!
Homer: Woo-hoo!
In my line
of work, the goods and services I provide take the form of words,
sometimes typed into a computer, sometimes spoken into a microphone.
I'm flexible on this (nudge-nudge, wink-wink), because the customer
is always right. So if you want those words painted in cherry syrup
across my belly, we can work something out.
Nonetheless,
the closest you can get to free money in my line of work is by giving
speeches to huge corporations and trade associations. You show up,
eat a mediocre meal, repeat precisely what you'd say to a friend
by the watercooler, answer a few questions, and then collect a check
that could make Sam Donaldson shut up for three complete seconds.
Or so I've
heard.
You see, I
don't get the big bucks yet. Sure, I do my right-wing Shecky-Green-goes-to-Washington
act every now and then and get paid for it. But I don't get the
huge dollars. The phat dollars. The oh-I'm-sorry-I-missed-your-call-but-I-was-at-my-villa-chastizing-the-help
dollars. And now I might never get them, because all of a sudden
it's inherently "corrupting" to take money from people
who want to give it to you in exchange for words.
The
Enron Pundits
The
Washington Post's Howard Kurtz makes a rare, and excellent,
foray into their op-ed page today to lambast the so-called "Enron
Pundits" first exposed by Andrew Sullivan. Kurtz lays it
out clearly enough, but here's a quick recap. Bill Kristol, Paul
Krugman, and our own Larry Kudlow, to name three, took money from
Enron back when Enron money was there for the taking. They gave
some speeches. Peggy Noonan took some money too, but she did real
work for it and I don't think she should be in the same category.
Anyway, each
pundit has responded in ways that closely jibe with their personalities.
Noonan has been the honest babe she's always been, saying, "I
don't regret having done the work — it was honest work, honestly
done, hard work too, reported on my taxes, not hidden in any way....
But my feeling is: I have to talk about my experience in order to
talk about Enron, and I have to talk about Enron because I have
strong feelings about what they did."
Since the news
broke, Larry
has been straightforward about it all. In fact, he says he is
whaling even harder on Enron now because he feels betrayed. Bill
Kristol's been nonchalant, dismissing the whole fuss as not-quite-serious.
And, true to
form, Paul Krugman has been an arrogantly hysterical crapweasel.
Indeed, in
his several attempts to make this an issue about everybody or anybody
but him, he's denounced the vast-right-wing conspiracy and dragged
his feet on coming clean. He clearly knows he screwed up, though,
because he is now wildly overcompensating. Look
at his columns yourself. On January 25, he's screaming from
his bunker that he did nothing wrong. On January 28, he pronounces
that the Enron bankruptcy, and not the September 11 attacks, "will
come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society."
The most telling
bit of solipsism is when he writes, "An event changes everything
only if it changes the way you see yourself. And the terrorist attack
couldn't do that…" One wonders if it's even occurred to
Krugman how dumb he sounds — that maybe, just maybe, the Enron
bankruptcy and the ensuing deflating of his stature may only have
changed the way he sees himself more than 9/11 did. But,
for the rest of us, this tectonic event in American history might
be a bit bigger than the bankruptcy of one company. Lots of columnists
are arrogant, but usually an editor intervenes before they turn
the entire world into Narcissus's pool.
But if Krugman
sees too much through his own egocentric prism, I wish Bill
Kristol would reflect just a bit more on how his personal experience
relates to his political views. The concern in some corners is that
he can't speak objectively about Enron because he took money from
them. No offense to Bill, but so what? Energy deregulation, stricter
accounting rules, and pension reform are not issues many people
seek especial guidance from Bill Kristol on anyway. I'm sure he's
got interesting things to say, but the debate would not be poorer
if we had to take his views on these subjects with a grain of salt.
On campaign-finance
reform, though, Bill Kristol has a problem. Kurtz lumps all the
Enron pundits together, but Bill is a special case. Until yesterday,
Krugman never wrote a thing, at least not in the New York Times,
about campaign-finance reform. Larry Kudlow is opposed to it, as
far as I know. But Bill Kristol — whoo-boy! — Bill Kristol
has an investment in CFR far deeper than anything Enron ever put
into him.
Through his
and his magazine's unrelenting support of John McCain, Kristol did
a great deal to boost the cause of "reform," especially
in the liberal press. A magazine editor, Kristol advocated banning
the ability of the non-magazine-owning public to have our say through
issue ads. Moreover, he often made it sound like "honest"
conservatives really knew that the "system" is corrupted
by "K-Street lobbyists," but those of us who opposed a
total ban on soft money — or who opposed John McCain —
were doing so in order to protect narrow parochial or partisan interests.
The reality, I think, was always closer to the reverse. Kristol
hitched his wagon to McCain and then had to abandon a principled
position on campaign-finance reform as a result. But I could be
wrong on that.
Where I'm not
wrong is when I say that Bill Kristol isn't corrupt. He's an honest
guy, ten times smarter than I am fat, and so decent he has legions
of fiercely loyal fans in Washington. I'd be amazed if he moved
a single comma in his magazine or on TV because of the money he
got from Enron.
But —
if Bill Kristol isn't corrupt because he took more money from Enron
than the average American makes in a couple of years, for less work
than the average American does on a single Sunday — why does
he assume that money corrupts everyone else? Why should we think
that the Republican party — with hundreds of competing constituencies,
thousands of employees, tens of thousands of financial supporters,
and millions of members — would be corrupted by a few donations
not much bigger than what Kristol got from Enron? Why should the
entire U.S. Congress be corrupt, as John McCain so often suggested,
when they have to disclose where they got their money, and hold
themselves accountable to the voters — while Bill Kristol is
accountable to no one, and isn't corrupted?
Somehow, I
doubt that Kristol will draw the obvious lesson where it matters:
that money in itself isn't corrupting. It's the difference between
hookers and housekeepers — it all depends on what you do for
the money you get paid. The mere "appearance" of corruption
is a silly standard, held constant hostage to the thin-skinned outrage
of the loudest "reformer." There should be one standard
for politicians, journalists, and everybody else in a position of
public trust: Tell people where you got your money whenever appropriate,
and then let the public hold you accountable for your actions.
Unfortunately,
rather than Kristol applying his personal experience to challenge
the reformers, the reformers, mark my words, are going to use his
experience to bring their Rube Goldberg machinery to journalistic
ethics. I think this stinks because it brings to journalism the
same cynicism these people bring to politics. I also think it stinks
because I want to buy a house.
To contact
my speaker's bureau, click
here.
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