One mean senator, Clinton’s latest, against the Olympic grinches, &c.

February 7, 2002 9:25 a.m.

en. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D., S.C.) is back in the news. He’s one of the senators participating in Enron mania. Just the other day, he said, “This gentleman, Mr. Lay, bought the government.” That’s Hollings: wrong, buffoonish, and quotable.

He is, in fact, one of the most quotable people in Congress, being both blunt and mean. For a while, he wanted to be president, and a few others (but too few) wanted him to be president, too. Everyone said he “looked like a president” — solid, commanding, white-haired. Almost came from Central Casting. But then he opened his mouth . . . and he seemed less presidential.

Also, poor guy, although he’s been in the Senate for about 100 years, he’s still the junior senator from South Carolina, ’cause ol’ Strom’s still hangin’ on. (Go, Strom.)

I’d like to relate a Hollings-mean story. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, as so many others did. (Ultimately, the “prize” was taken by another Fritz — Mondale.) One of the field was Reuben Askew, then the former governor of Florida. Askew had an eye tic; he would twitch occasionally. In one of the big debates — moderated by Barbara Walters, as I recall (another was moderated by Phil Donahue) — Askew said something Hollings didn’t like; Hollings thought that Askew had misrepresented something he (Hollings) had said. So ol’ Fritz blurted out — with incredible venom in that Foghorn Leghorn voice — “Whassa mattuh, you got a tic in yo’ ea-uh, too?” (“What’s the matter, you got a tic in your ear, too?”)

Fritz Hollings can seem cute to people. I guess I long ago gave up thinking of him as cute.

Did you happen to catch Bill Clinton’s latest? He’s unhappy with President Bush and how he is handling North Korea. At a glam New York gathering, Clinton said, “I figure I left the next administration with a big foreign-policy win” on North Korea — hinting, as the New York Times put it, that the new president had “squandered” the opportunity.

Yeah, thanks a lot, big guy. You teed it up real nicely for Bush. The current president is, in part, having to deal with the consequences of the former president’s dangerously weak foreign policy, including the refusal to do anything serious about Khobar Towers, the bombing of our embassies, the attack on the Cole, etc.

Clinton, if he remains unrepentant, should at least maintain a dignified silence. But he just can’t help himself.

One of the most astonishing things to appear in print recently came in a Michael Ignatieff op-ed piece published in the Times. The piece concerned human rights in foreign policy. Ignatieff said that Sudan, before 9/11, had been “under attack from a coalition of liberals and black churches determined to end slavery and stop Khartoum’s war against the south.”

Say what? That statement took my breath away. For years, conservatives had been trying to draw attention to Sudan and its slavery, and no one cared. No one who “mattered” — who was important, in a New York Times, Brookings Institution kind of way — cared. We tried to embarrass the appalling and unembarrassable Randall Robinson, head of TransAfrica, who refused to lift a finger or utter a peep about Sudan’s horrors — and he was supposed to be the great guardian of Africa and of U.S. Africa policy. We tried to arouse the Left generally on the subject, with no luck. The Sudanese regime was anti-American, and that was good enough for many, or at least good enough to earn their indifference.

National Review screamed, the Wall Street Journal editorial page screamed, The Weekly Standard screamed, Freedom House screamed — and, after enough screaming, some of the usual liberal subjects got the message, and Al Sharpton, for example, flew to Sudan (for the chief purpose, of course, of upstaging his mentor/rival Jesse Jackson).

Liberals and black churches? Gimme a break.

A story from Texas two days ago said that education secretary Rod Paige had returned home to Houston to “tout education spending increases” in the administration’s new budget.

That is amazing, and amazingly discouraging. George W. Bush ran the most education-reformist campaign in history. And now his education secretary is going around bragging about more money — just as any Democrat, any status-quoer would. Candidate Bush said he wasn’t averse to spending money, but that the major thing was reform, and that it wasn’t lack of money that had harmed, if not ruined, the schools.

Where is that candidate? He was right.

Back when Judicial Watch was harassing the Clintonites, Larry Klayman and the boys said they weren’t particularly partisan, they were just good citizen watchdogs. Everybody snorted, of course. Now Judicial Watch is harassing the Bushies, particularly on the matter of energy-policy documents. There is less snorting now, or should be.

Do you remember exactly when the gambling people first started referring to gambling as “gaming”? I can’t give you a date, but I think it was within the last ten, fifteen years. It seems that “gaming” is supposed to take the vice, the sin, out of gambling — sounds like foosball or Pac Man or something: “gaming.”

The other day, the lil’ woman had some newscast on, and I heard the anchorlady say “gaming”: and I knew the gambling industry had won, at least in that instance. Their euphemism had been bought, repeated — which is too bad.

“Gaming” isn’t the most triumphant lexical feat in political history — “pro-choice” is. But it’s right up there.

So help me, Kiss, the rock group, was in the news. The group’s “frontman,” Gene Simmons, was interviewed by NPR’s Terry Gross, and grossed her out. Apparently he hasn’t lost a step, or lick, or whatever.

Well, that was the second time in a matter of days that I heard the name “Kiss.” Alice Cooper was playing in the Pebble Beach golf tournament, as he does most every year. (The tournament, for decades, was known as the “Crosby clambake,” and it includes a pro-am, heavy with celebrities. Now the tourney is the “AT&T” something-or-other.) Alice had hit it into the gallery, and found that the lie wasn’t so good. So he quipped to the fans, “Why didn’t you give me a better lie? You must be Kiss fans.” Everyone laughed; it was actually a rather sweet moment.

Ah, a Kiss-Alice Cooper rivalry. Those were the days. And who could have known they could grow up to be geezers? Well, anyone who thought about it, I suppose.

Rarely is high popular literature accorded the analytical attention and respect it deserves. Not just anyone can sit down and write a Grisham bestseller — there’s a lot of craft in that, and a large dose of talent. One Big Critic to recognize this is Janet Maslin, who wrote a terrifically revealing, appropriately respectful, and altogether refreshing review of Grisham’s latest.

Now, I have never read Grisham — but I’ve read Grisham-like authors, and they must have something on the ball. Maslin assumes this. And, once again, she proves herself one stand-up chick. In the last couple of years, she has shown herself to be an even better book critic than she was a movie critic. She doesn’t condescend to Grisham; she isn’t slumming; she’s just giving credit where credit is due.

I’m not much for dispensing advice in this column, but since my readers are so nice — and so tolerant of me — I think I will, just this once. My word of advice is: Don’t let the Olympic naysayers get you down.

For the last many cycles — and maybe forever, for all I know — the Olympics have had no end of badmouthers: It’s all commercialized. The amateurism has been taken out. The television coverage is all mushy and feminized — too much up-close-and-personal. And so on.

There are many legitimate criticisms to be made of the Olympics — and I’ve made several of them — but don’t forget that the Olympics remain a magical thing, one of the greatest and most inspiring shows on earth. And television does a superb job of covering them, all things considered (no, not the NPR program; just “all things considered”). There are a million ways in which one could televise the Olympics, and no one way would please everybody. I, for one, like the personal stories; I also like the little digests, the highlights reels — the abridgements. This is a way of taking in a huge, multipart event.

So, there’s my advice: Don’t let the Olympic grinches get you down, and don’t become one yourself. Weed out the grousing, weed out the Mormon bashing, weed out the party poopers — and just see this magnificent pageant, marveling at its idealism, athleticism, universalism, humanity (“the thrill of . . ., the agony of . . .”), and sheer joy.

I have written before about the efforts of family groups to boycott Internet portals like Yahoo, for all the porn — including child porn — available through them, and their general reluctance to do something about it.

A reader writes in to ask me, “How nutso do you go about avoiding Yahoo et al.?” (Nicely phrased.) I have to answer: Not very; in fact, not at all. I’m lazy. I guess we’re now back into the whole “Made in China” issue (whether to avoid buying, etc.). I am not a model human-rights citizen. But I admire extravagantly those who are.

Another reader writes: “I think you’ll like this: We were ordering several new servers, and when my boss mentioned IBM, I (the lowest minion on the pole) piped in with, ‘I don’t think we should buy IBM because they are a sponsor of the 2008 Olympics in China, a most repressive regime.’ Silence. We now have four IBM boxes. Oh well, I tried.”

And bless him for it.

In the last couple of Impromptus, I have offered some precious “H.W. moments” — instances that show the first Bush to be an unusual and admirable fellow.

Several readers wrote in to say that he demonstrated his class — and not the Walker Point kind — again at the Super Bowl. He and Roger Staubach were present for the coin toss. The ref (or someone) gave the coin to the ex-president to toss; but Bush handed it to Staubach, so the ex-quarterback could do the honors.

We’ve talked before about praising Person A without knocking Person B. But let’s knock Person B: A reader says, “I wonder what Bill Clinton would do given the same opportunity. My bet is he would play it for self-aggrandizement in any and every way he could — toss the coin and try to catch it behind his back or something, followed by a sax solo.”

Another reader contributes this: “When [H.W.] was vice president, he was the (very popular) speaker at my graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. As part of the introduction of him, his service in WWII was recapped, a key point being that he survived having two planes shot out from under him in the Pacific. After the applause died down, he said (in so many words) that while he was grateful for the introduction and the response, he wasn’t sure if the accolades were deserved, considering he had ‘cost the government two good airplanes.’ It was very funny, but I also got the strong impression that there was a lot of sincerity in it.”

I’m fond of a coinage that a reader has come up with. I had remarked about a particularly embarrassing headline for Mike Bloomberg in the New York Times. It was tartly, mischievously worded. The reader said, “That’s not a headline: Let’s call them ‘hitlines.’”

And — speaking of Olympians — a stray comment about Cathy Rigby brought this: “In the early ’80s, some friends and I were bowling at a local [Louisiana] alley, and we noticed that a few lanes over Cathy Rigby was bowling. The funny part is, she was terrible — lots of gutter balls. Now, I understand that just because one excels in one sport, one doesn’t necessarily excel in another, vastly different one. Still, it was sort of funny to watch an Olympic athlete struggling with a relatively low-skill sport. [No mail, please — I didn’t say it. This is the letter-writer, and a bowler himself. I love — revere — Earl “The Pearl” Anthony. And Chris Schenkel. Please, no mail.] I actually found it sort of charming.”

So do I.

A column ago, I had an item concerning abortion lexical politics: “unborn child,” and so on. A reader points out that not only have pro-choice forces triumphed with “pro-choice,” they call their opponents “anti-choice.” Pro-lifers call themselves pro-lifers, but they don’t call their opponents “anti-life” — that I have heard, anyway.

Another good point: about The Great Breast (the one featured in photos with John Ashcroft, and that Justice — the department, not the woman — wanted to drape): “Just wondering if anyone has come up with any published photos that showed Reno and The Breast. Or is just Republican AGs who require such an angle of photography?”

I don’t remember any. A good, Bozellian, splendid point.

Meant to relate this to you before: Back when we were discussing honorifics, status, professions, etc., someone sent me the following, delightful note: “I have a colleague in the [astronomical] observatory where I work. When he gets on an airplane, and doesn’t want to talk to the person sitting next to him, when asked what he does, he says, ‘I’m an astrophysicist.’ When he does want to talk, he says, ‘I’m an astronomer.’”

Last, I’m going to do something unusual — I think unprecedented. I want to print verbatim an item from the Castro Lobby Watch, part of the Cuban-American National Foundation:

“A Canadian Woman Celebrates Cuba’s ‘Child Prostitution Chic’

“In what may be the most brazen celebration of the exploitation of Cuban women by a female writer yet, Robyn Swanson of the Vancouver, British Columbia, North Shore News embarks on a completely unabashed celebration of prostitution in Cuba. In her appalling puff piece, ‘Unraveling the Layers of Cuban Culture,’ based on a recent jaunt to the island with her husband, Swanson dismisses the systemic tragedy of child prostitution in Cuba with a wink and a nod. ‘We may be in communist Cuba,’ she says, ‘but boys will be boys.’

“According to this starry-eyed traveler, ‘a trip to Havana promises a multitude of sensual stimuli that shouldn’t be missed.’ After droning on endlessly about 50s Chevys and ‘faded elegance,’ Swanson [describes] Havana’s version of nightlife:

“‘Gorgeous young women stare doe-eyed at their puffy, Caucasian dates enjoying their mid-life crises and all the pretty company that money can buy.’

“Isn’t that just charming! Oh, and they’re young! How young, you ask?

“According to Julia O’Connell Davidson, in her 1999 book Prostitution, Power and Freedom: ‘We interviewed a fourteen-year-old child in Cuba who had migrated from a rural village to a tourist area because she so desperately wanted to own a pair of shoes and had heard it was possible to make money by “going with” tourists.’

“Not young enough for you?

“Well then maybe you should talk to Aktham Zuhair Salem Madanat, international child trafficker and pimp, who, in London’s Sunday Mirror newsmagazine of January 6, had this ringing endorsement [of] his ‘product’:

“‘I can bring over seven girls right now from Cuba . . . There are two young girls — one is eleven. They are farm girls, very simple and easily controlled.’

“Doe-eyed AND easily controlled? What a country!

“But wait, its gets better . . . because according to Robyn Swanson, Cuban child prostitutes are also chic! ‘There’s no doubt the Cubans have an enviable sense of sensuality evident in their wardrobe style and colour. Few other women can wear hot pink Lycra pants with the same panache and look good.’

“Quick, somebody call Gucci! But first let’s get some platforms for that 14-year-old!

“Fortunately, for the Cubans, Swanson says they bear a ‘joyous disposition that bears no signs of bitterness or cynicism at their lot in life.’

“Is that so? Well I guess that explains why we hear so little in the Canadian media about torture in the Cuban Gulag!

“Thank you Mrs. Swanson, for explaining it to us all so well.”

You will forgive me if I repeat myself (this is Jay again): The betrayal of the Cuban people by free people elsewhere is one of the most grotesque phenomena of our time. Maybe we can’t bestir ourselves to do anything to help the Cubans — but we can at least not rub their noses in their defilement and misery.