Nader, Hewitt, Clinton, &c.

April 26, 2001 11:00 a.m.

saw the other day that Ralph Nader was speaking on yet another college campus — that’s what he does: speak to college students. That’s pretty much his whole life. And this tells you something, because college kids tend to be uninformed, inexperienced, and vulnerable to demagoguery and snake oil. I was conscious of this even when I was a student myself: that there were certain types who delighted in preying on kids, mentally, ideologically, mainly because they couldn’t scare up a respectful adult audience. It must be embarrassing, after a while, to be Ralph Nader and 65 years old (or whatever) and realize that the only people you can get to cheer and mob and love you are ignorant, impressionable kids. College students haven’t paid any taxes. When they hear the word “corporation,” they’re liable to think “Nazi.” And this is Nader’s constituency. Well, Allard Lowenstein did it (in large measure) for the sex. Nader? If he can win over a Kiwanis Club or an Elks lodge or even Local #1066, then I’ll be kind of impressed.

I caught Don Hewitt — the 60 Minutes producer — being interviewed by Fox’s Judith Regan the other night. Asked what he thought about Bill O’Reilly, he said (roughly) this: “I have my political views, and he has his, but what he has, that I don’t have, is disdain. He has disdain toward people who hold other views, and I just don’t get that.” Of course, we all know that 60 Minutes has been a model of respect and fairness toward conservatives and conservative ideas and conservative sensibilities over the years. True, Bill Buckley was treated okay — but he is often a grand exception. Others haven’t fared so well, have they?

Funny that Bill Clinton hasn’t taken the heat he ought to for leaving Bush with all that environmental nonsense — arsenic in the water, salmonella in our gullets, that kind of thing. This isn’t in the nature of governing so much as of a juvenile prank: The outgoing campers of Cabin 14 short-sheet the beds of incoming campers! They stop up the toilets, too! Clinton’s last-minute trap-laying — “He has been a busy beaver,” said Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer at the time — is yet more proof — final proof, as much as the pardons — that he was never fit to govern. He seemed never to take his responsibilities with the seriousness required. Yet it’s Bush who takes the heat on this: “The Republicans are putting arsenic back in the water!” says Jay Leno.

I think it would be kind of cool if Bush looked the American public in the eye and said (something like), “My predecessor did a nasty, prankish thing — and has left me to clean up the mess. So I’m going to, like the adult president I am.” In my view, W. has taken this gentlemanliness thing — this “new tone” and “new civility” — too far.

Anyone would rather be published in the Washington Post than in the Washington Times. So it was no surprise that the energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, gave an op-ed piece recently to the Post. But why not give it to the Times? Who says that the Post has to be an official paper — the equivalent of the Pyongyang Whatever? I think it would be sort of neat if a major figure — like the energy secretary — went to the Times when he had something to say. It would still be news. It would still get the word out. And it might give a deserving underdog a hand. The major figure would be big enough to do it: He’s a Cabinet secretary (for example). What does he care about a lousy byline in the Post? If I were a Cabinet member — heck, if I were president (since we’re being pretty scary anyway) — I’d offer my scribbles to the Washington Times. A little competition — a little variety, a little diversity — isn’t a bad thing anyway.

Michael McCurry, I kid you not, began a recent letter to The New Republic as follows: “No one would mistake me for an apologist for my ex-boss President Clinton, but…” Thing is, McCurry probably does think of himself as a brave, independent type. He has suggested, on occasion, that Clinton is perhaps slightly less than perfect — which must, indeed, make him a heretic in the Sidney Blumenthal school (to use a shorthand). That would make ex-toady and now-sometime critic George Stephanopoulos a beyond-heretic. As for McCurry, who could have known that his service to the disgraced senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey would stand as the most honorable segment of his career?

It seems that the Republican National Committee is busily “reaching out” — setting up various task forces to appeal to this ethnic group and this religious group, and so on. I understand the necessity for practical politics, but I still think it’s a shame. I would rather the Democrats played this kind of politics, alone. If Republicans made a hard appeal to Americanism — to Americans as Americans, rather than as members of groups, each in his lil’ tribe — the political effect could be thrilling, glorious. Someday, I hope to see a full-hearted, unabashed anti-identity-politics campaign. Someday, I would like to see a frontal assault on the “disuniting of America,” to use a useful phrase from a surprising source (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.). If no one else will, maybe I’ll have to run such a campaign myself.

Okay, I’m at this party, and this guy — a liberal academic — can’t get over that I’m a “conservative,” because conservatives are supposed to have horns and tails, etc. Introducing me, he says (more than once), “This is Jay, who’s a conservative, but a surprisingly pleasant fellow” (or something like that). This is the equivalent of the old, “For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.” I’m used to this, as many other conservatives are too, I imagine. But it’s still damn annoying. And it can ruin your whole day (or, at least, party). The wife of a cousin once said to me, “You know, I’ve never met a decent person who was a Republican.” This inspired a column of mine, which was one of the hottest, quickest things I ever wrote. Its theme was (approximately): This is what you think of me? Oh, superior one, let me tell you what I think of you!

I love it, though (I’m sounding like Bob Hope here — that was definitely a Bob Hope transition) — I love it, though, when a liberal tries to be all open-minded and magnanimous and tolerant with you. When I worked in a big Washington office that was heavily left-wing, I would come up in the elevator carrying both D.C. papers: the Post and the Times. And my colleagues would give me absolute hell for having the Times. You’d have thought I was bringing in kiddie porn (which might have been more acceptable). In an effort to embarrass or shame them, I’d say things like, “I don’t think it’s healthful to rely on a single news source — I like a little diversity.” But it never did much good.

One day, a guy confided to me, ”I sometimes peer into the newspaper box on the street to see what the headlines of the [Washington] Times are.” He said this in a tone that suggested I ought to be in awe of him for his immense broadmindedness. He seemed to imagine that this should qualify him for Albert Schweitzer status. And, in his milieu, it probably did.

The other thing I get is, “Oh, you work for National Review? I pick it up occasionally when I’m on the shuttle.” Allow me to translate: I wouldn’t buy the thing if my life depended on it, but when I’m about to board the New York-Washington (or Washington-New York) shuttle, and it’s sitting there for free, amid many other publications, I now and again deign to pick it up. For a fat girl, you don’t sweat much.

Back to that party for just a moment. The aforementioned liberal says to me — sensing my annoyance, seeking to mollify — “Don’t you have a guy who works for you named … what is it, Noah? Noah something? [He’s thinking of Jonah Goldberg.] I sometimes read him when [get this] he’s linked to Arts & Letters”! Do you love it? Peering into newspaper boxes; picking up a copy of NR on the shuttle; condescending to read our dear Noah when his material is linked to another site. Ahh.

It so happens that I grow very, very tired of defending my politics — and I’ve had my fill of busman’s holidays — but I got into it a little with the guy. One of the things he alleged was that Bush’s tax policies are … “redistributionist.” Yes. He quite seriously maintained that a policy of allowing taxpayers to keep more of their own earnings — a policy of the government’s taking less of those earnings — constitutes redistributionism. I realize we all tend to overuse the word “Orwellian,” but …

On April 18, the Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley had a wonderful piece entitled “Do Black Americans Still Need Black Leadership?” He suggested that today’s “civil rights” leaders are engaged in, among other things, job-protection (for themselves). I remember well that President Reagan made a similar suggestion, all those years ago. This sent Benjamin Hooks, then-head of the NAACP, into a tizzy. He went on Nightline (as I recall) to detail all the jobs he had held in his life — paperboy, waiter, and on up — and all the jobs he might be capable of holding in the future. Reagan had obviously struck a nerve.

It had been a long time since I thought of Hooks — a man who spent the 1980s accusing Reagan of racism, and generally making a jackass of himself, and bringing dishonor on his organization. In fact, it was because of Hooks that I first suspected something was wrong with the NAACP. A woman named Hazel Dukes didn’t help much either (or rather, she did). And all this, mind you, was well before Ben Chavis and the big money scandals (which are, of course, forgotten).

In the previous installment of “Impromptus,” I cited Barbara J. Fields, one of my best professors in college — and one of the best historians in the nation, and one of its best users of the English language (either written or spoken). She always warned against the careless use of the word “crisis” (which made me sheepish for employing it during the recent Hainan … whatever: standoff). Lately, she has complained of the perpetual use of the word “males,” and I have taken up this cause, keeping the pages of NR relatively clean of this strange, irritating, contemporary habit. “Males” should come up primarily in a biological context. For example, Marlin Perkins, in an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, might say, “When the males of the species meet the females of the species — yowza!” But where have the “men” gone? We read, very, very often, about “black males,” or “young black males.” Why not “men”? Probably, we should use “males” chiefly in a sarcastic way, mocking conventions, as in, “But then, James Fenimore Cooper is a dead white male.” If the words “MEN” and “WOMEN” disappear from bathroom doors, in favor of “MALES” and “FEMALES,” we’ll be in big trouble.

(By the way, someone should do a list, or book — maybe someone already has — of the cutesy designations on bathroom doors across the country. You know, in seafood restaurants, “Buoys” and “Gulls” — that sort of thing.)

While we’re on language: Almost every day, I see “panoply” used to mean “array” — and so it does. But I was taught (many years ago) that it meant, first and foremost, a suit of armor. This latter definition appears to be gone, while “panoply” has become basically a synonym for “array.” Odd.

The drums are beginning to beat against Judge Michael Luttig, of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He is one of the best judges in the country — a dream judge for any constitutionalist — and therefore the Left must bork him good, even before Bush thinks of nominating him to the Supreme Court. If Bush named him — and got him through — that, alone, would be worth this entire presidency. (Although this would not let the president off the hook for missile defense and Social Security reform.)

Did you notice how snippy certain journalists got over Bush’s speaking to one of the Hainan guys “pilot to pilot”? They just can’t stand the fact that Bush served in the National Guard and learned to fly military planes. Sure, Bush is no McCain, war-wise, and the press worships the one and disdains the other, but most journalists (including me, naturally) never did half as much as George W. Bush did. Hell, we didn’t do 1 percent of what he did.

Those thugs who wander from trade conference to trade conference? They’re not just idealistic, if misguided, activist-protesters: They are quasi-terrorists who cause fear or worse wherever they tread. I saw them in action at the two political conventions last summer. They have nothing at all in common with, for example, the civil-rights protesters of yore (or even with the anti-nuclear protesters of the 1980s, imbecilic as they were). They are masked, Shining Path-like goons, and free peoples ought to be vigilant against them.

Pick up a left-leaning newspaper or magazine, and you’re bound to find a little Tiger Woods resentment. It’s usually on the grounds of: Couldn’t he be blacker? The resenters may not put it so frankly, but that’s usually what they mean. A magazine called Savoy — “African-American-oriented,” as we say — has Tiger on its current cover, and the message is, largely, Tige, baby: Couldn’t you start being … you know: a little more racial? And then there is the egregious Robert Lipsyte, one of the collection of egregious sports columnists whom the New York Times publishes. He had a piece the other day entitled “One Writer’s Tiger Woods Problem.” In it, his major offense isn’t against Woods, but against Bobby Jones, about whom he writes: “Jones has been promoted as the saint of the links, this irascible Confederate princeling whose elitist and racist upbringing helped create that bastion of bigotry, the Augusta National Golf Club, and its absurdly cosseted premier event, the Masters, with its green straitjacket.”

This is what we might term, in other contexts, hate speech. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much resentment and bile and idiocy packed into one sentence. Lipsyte has an exceptionally severe case of Masters hatred (and there is more of it about than you might think). As for his Jones hatred, it is simply … well, I hate to get medical, but it is not the sign of a well person. Jones was an Atlantan and a man of his times, to be sure. (He also held a Harvard degree in literature.) But to write him off as — I don’t care to repeat, or even recall, Lipsyte's words — is indefensible. Jones was a great man, who established golf in America, defined sportsmanship, and exemplified grace under pressure. No one ever lived more brilliantly through a hideous, debilitating illness than he did. I could tell Jones stories for ages; there are books of them. But the main point of them is that this was a great — a great — man.

No section of the Times is more dismaying than its sports section. And the other sections are apolitical and race-unconscious by comparison.

A quick dip into the mail bag: I wrote, last time, of the loss of the word “stewardess,” along with a couple of others, and a reader e-mailed to say that “stewardesses” is the longest word in the English language that is typed by the left hand alone. He thereby provoked a memory: I had a junior-high basketball coach named Ken Treaster. “Cool name,” I said to him once. “Thanks,” he replied, “and ‘Treaster’ can be typed with only the left hand.”

So weird, what one remembers — I’ve really forgotten just about everything about (for example) this morning.

More than one reader wrote — in response to my blast at Colin Powell for his “disproportionality” blast at Israel — that Powell, in judging as he did, was going against his own doctrine, the Powell Doctrine, which prescribes the use of overwhelming force, for a quick and just peace.

We are talking, of course, about more than abstractions — as I was reminded by a letter from a woman in Israel. I would like to excerpt it:

“Remember this: The fact that the U.S. criticized Israel so vehemently completely destroyed any possible deterrent effect our counterattack might have had. I cannot tell you how depressing it is to sit here, worrying every minute of the day whether my kids are okay, whether the bus I’m next to at the intersection is going to blow up and take me with it, and on and on and on. We haven’t changed our lives. We went hiking during last week’s vacation, but it’s now an ever-present shadow inside my head somewhere. And then when the U.S. does something like this … well, how do you spell isolation?”

Please, I know: Arab mothers worry too. But, as has been true at every moment for more than 50 years now, Israel’s enemies can have peace whenever they want it — they need only to consent to coexist.

And on it goes. (Oof, that sounded a lot like Linda Ellerbee — sorry.)