Bush Wraps it Up; "Tight as a Tick" Only to the Media
Bush Wraps it Up; "Tight as a Tick" Only to the Media
It's conceivable, if highly unlikely, that Al Gore can still win the presidential election. This would require an extraordinary set of circumstances: with the Deep South (with the exception of Florida) completely lost to George W. Bush, Gore must win Florida (iffy), Pennsylvania (iffy), Michigan (iffy), Illinois (probably), Missouri (dicey) and Wisconsin (iffy). Minnesota, Washington and Oregon are all in the who-knows category. In addition, he'll have to hold California (likely, but I'm smelling an upset there) and New Jersey (another longshot for Bush, as Bob Franks is poised to shock Democrats by upending Jon Corzine and his $59-million campaign).
Typically, the Beltway experts are at least 10 days behind the real story. Even though it's quite obvious that Bush is headed to a decisive victory, political hacks and analysts still cling to the daft notion that this election will be the closest in 40 years. That's dishonest reporting and most of the culprits know it. Whether it's out of sheer disbelief that someone who's not as "smart" as they are might beat the favored Gore, or, more charitably, the desire for an exciting plot, the facts no longer point to a rerun of the Kennedy-Nixon match-up. Based on the evidence before me today, Oct. 30, it appears that Bush will win the popular vote by a 6-5 margin. It's increasingly possible that he'll blow Gore away in the Electoral College.
When Gore vaulted in the polls after his successful Democratic Convention, pundits flocked?shades of the St. McCain crusade!?to the "Bush is Toast" bandwagon. Most memorably, New York's Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., writing in his Sept. 18 "National Interest" column, claimed that Bush's mild Labor Day slur against Times reporter Adam Clymer was the death knell of his candidacy. Just like that, in September, Bush became Walter Mondale. The clairvoyant O'Donnell concluded: "The more Bush has to talk about policy, the more incompetent he'll sound. So as the campaign heads into the fall?and passes the point at which no recent front-runner has faced an upset?Bush must choose between talking about honor and sounding irrelevant or talking about policy and sounding incompetent. In other words, it's over."
Not so coincidentally, I think, that was the last time "The National Interest" appeared in New York. A spokeswoman for the magazine last week would neither confirm nor deny that the long-standing column has been discontinued.
Slate's William Saletan, as irritating a journalist polluting the Internet as you'll find (with the obvious exceptions of Eric Alterman, Howard Fineman and Margaret Carlson), also declared, on Sept. 13, that Bush might as well go back to Austin and play computer poker.
Saletan was so moved by the one-month Gore advantage in the polls that he audaciously wrote, "The numbers are moving toward Gore because fundamental dynamics tilt the election in his favor. The only question has been how far those dynamics would carry him. Now that he has passed Bush, the race is over. Yes, in principle, Bush could win. The stock market could crash. Gore could be caught shagging an intern." (I just love it when Michael Kinsley's apprentices ape his British affectations.) "Bush could electrify the country with the greatest performance in the history of presidential debates. But barring such a grossly unlikely event, there is no reason to think Bush will recover... Stick a fork in him. He's done."
Unlike O'Donnell and New York, apparently, Saletan still writes for Slate, most recently a piece on how deceptive the polls are.
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One of Bush's smartest strategic gambits, against the advice of his Austin braintrust, was to keep his word and not write off California, as his father and Bob Dole did. Bush might well come up short in this essential state for Gore, but in spending time and money there he's accomplished several goals. One, he's fulfilled his promise, an act Gore wouldn't know anything about. Two, even if he loses, his presence is helping endangered Republican congressional candidates. And three, by making a play for California he's put Gore in the awful position of having to compete for those 54 electoral votes he took for granted. Gov. Gray Davis, who's probably planning an exploratory committee for the 2004 election, was so frustrated by the Gore campaign that he appealed directly to Bill Clinton to rally the Democratic base in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Suddenly, Gore has added the state to his dizzying home-stretch itinerary.
Gore's manic schedule last week must've dampened confidence among his supporters. How could it not? He was see-sawing from state to state, ones even Michael Dukakis won in '88, fending off Ralph Nader's increasingly muscular effort, as well as Clinton's headline-grabbing meddling, and looking like a madman as he switched from populist to small-government advocate depending on what city or town he was barnstorming in. At one stop he's a hunter, just smelling that deer for dinner; two hours later and 100 miles down the road, he's linking hands with NARAL and PETA activists. Look into Gore's eyes and you can see the desperation, as if he's thinking: "I had this in the bag. What the fuck?pardon my French, Tipper?went wrong?"
I don't discount a "November surprise." Already, the NAACP has shamed itself by airing an ad that not so subtly blames Bush for the death of James Byrd. This blatant race-baiting, which was successful in the '98 midterm elections when Clinton claimed that voting for Republicans would result in the burning of black churches, is unlikely to be successful this time around. The political landscape is completely transformed from two years ago: bogey-man Newt Gingrich is no longer the symbol of GOP treachery; Bush has wisely aligned himself with the nation's Republican governors rather than the likes of Trent Lott and Tom DeLay; and the looming impeachment battle, which was red-hot two autumns ago, is no longer an issue.
Kweisi Mfume, head of the NAACP, has a lot to answer for. His behavior saddens me: back in Baltimore, when he was a radio host, then city councilman and U.S. representative, I interviewed him often for the weekly I edited and owned, City Paper, and always thought he was a stand-up, trustworthy man. I suppose prolonged exposure to the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, Bill Clinton and Charlie Rangel can corrupt even the strongest of men.
No one would any longer accuse Joe Lieberman of possessing one scintilla of character. Not only did he refuse to back out of his concurrent U.S. Senate race in Connecticut, much to the displeasure of his colleagues (not to mention the disloyalty shown to Gore), but he also won't repudiate that NAACP trash. In fact, on last Sunday's Meet the Press, Lieberman claimed he was unfamiliar with the ad. Sure. When host Tim Russert quoted Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey as saying the spot was "offensive, divisive and counterproductive," Gore's number two said: "It's the first I've seen of it. Was that somebody related to James Byrd?" Incredibly, Lieberman called the "Bush as KKK Wizard" commercial factual?and this is the wimp who intends to clean up the entertainment industry.
Independent groups sympathetic to Bush have also disgraced their candidate with cesspool advertising, most notably the rip-off of Tony Schwartz's famous "daisy girl" spot for LBJ (aired only once in '64), which outrageously implies that Gore's election would lead to nuclear war. The Bush campaign demanded the ad be pulled; Gore's desperate team?the frazzled Mark Fabiani, DNC chairman Joe Andrew, affirmative action-hire Chris Lehane (not black, just dumb) and populist Bob Shrum, who's enriching himself not only with fees from Gore's effort but Jon Corzine's as well?hasn't followed suit with the NAACP. Nor have they disavowed Ed Asner's recorded phone messages to Michigan residents denigrating Bush, or the weepy testimonials from Texas women, also directed to Michigan's voters, that Bush helped kill their husbands with inadequate healthcare in their home state.
And, with Clinton's history, it pays to be paranoid. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if by week's end Attorney General Janet Reno hands down indictments of people close to George W. Bush. Anyone, in the fourth-dimension world of Reno, Sid Blumenthal, Tad Devine and James Carville, is fair game. Karl Rove, perhaps, or maybe Richard Rainwater, the financier who was integral to Bush's buying the Texas Rangers. And if the polling results are really dismal, the ultimate play might be the arrest of Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida. Far-fetched? No. Nothing can be ruled out when an election's at stake.
Clinton, shunted aside by Gore for most of the campaign, must be a bitter old bubba. (It's incredible how aged the Arkansan looks now; just as Jimmy Carter left office a shadow of his bouncy candidate of '76, it's eerie to compare photos of Clinton from '92 to just last week.) Fine by me?as I've written before, I hope he's eventually chained next to J. Edgar Hoover down in hell?but what is the man thinking right now? On the one hand, he resents Gore and can't bear the thought that his sidekick-in-name-only, should he be elected, might be judged by historians as a superior president. Then again, Clinton must be fearful of a Bush-appointed attorney general. I doubt that the President's crimes will land him in the clink, but the fines will certainly put a dent in his $100,000 speeches before still-adoring Hollywood audiences.
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A friend of mine called last Friday, concerned that the election was nailed down for Gore. "Say what, Gomer?" I replied, with absolute incredulity, given the continuing surge for Bush across the nation. "Where are you getting your information?" This intelligent fellow, a successful financier in his late 30s who doesn't watch tv, admitted that he's been following the campaign via The New York Times, the business section of The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.
No wonder.
I gave the guy a pass; he's in a different racket from mine, doesn't pore over polling data and local news stories from low-circulation newspapers or watch the cable talk shows. Just as I wouldn't presume to know when to short a dot-com, it follows that he had no idea Bush is going to win Pennsylvania, Ohio and, if the current trend prevails, perhaps New Jersey.
But if you read the Times, another election is taking place. For example, the front page of Sunday's early edition was typical of the desperate newspaper's attempt to prop up Gore's last-ditch candidacy. Front and center was a four-color picture of Hillary Clinton greeting an enthusiastic crowd at Cornell, with the headline "Shaking Hands, and Pointing a Finger at Her Rival." The lead story, "Drive Under Way to Raise Turnout of Black Voters," gives the impression, against all intelligent data, that President Clinton's plan to whip up his fellow black citizens will give an enormous boost to Gore. The story doesn't mention that the Vice President wouldn't be caught dead on the same stage as his boss, so fearful that, aside from minority and celebrity voters (the latter who probably won't even make it to the polls), most of the citizenry has finally had enough of Clinton's assault on truth, morals and character.
The third political story on the Times' front page of Oct. 29 was yet another hit-job by Nicholas D. Kristof, a propagandist who'll no doubt receive a Wall Street-like bonus from publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. at year's end, for his Carville-like attacks on Bush. This week's installment was titled "For Bush, His Toughest Call Was the Choice to Run at All." Kristof waited only until paragraph five to lob a stink bomb at the Texas Governor. He writes: "For a man who had never been particularly driven by ambition, whose overseas experience was pretty much limited to trying to date Chinese women (unsuccessfully) during a visit to Beijing in 1975, it was surreal suddenly to be at the top of the charts."
On Oct. 16, Kristof got to his point even earlier in his story: "Gov. George W. Bush has written that 'by far the most profound' decision he or any governor can make is whether to proceed with an execution. 'I get the facts, weigh them thoughtfully and carefully, and decide,' Mr. Bush wrote in his autobiography. What he did not say is that he normally does this in 15 minutes."
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Last Sunday's Times also carried the paper's official endorsement of Al Gore, a reaffirmation of at least 100 editorials and "news" articles they've run since last fall. It wasn't a pretty read, but I'm used to walking knee-deep in the muck that passes for Times prose. There are numerous highlights in this preposterous editorial?calling Bush a "pliable" man who'd be steamrolled by the GOP Congress is just one laugher?but it's the following passage that deserves special notice:
"Like Senator John McCain, Mr. Gore has been chastened by personal experience with sleazy fund-raising. He has promised to make campaign finance reform his first legislative priority, whereas Mr. Bush is unwilling to endorse the elimination of special-interest money from American politics."
I'll leave aside the absurd notion that "campaign finance reform" is a laudable goal; that the Times won't admit that such legislation increases the media's power is indictment enough of their position. But where in the world did the paper get the daft idea that Gore has been "chastened" by his criminal fundraising activities? This is a corrupt elected official who still won't fess up that the Buddhist Temple cash shakedown was a fundraiser. And if Gore's recent forays to Hollywood and New York, raking in millions from the very same entertainers he promises to police for indecency once in office, is any indication that he's any better than Bill Clinton in that regard, it's lost on me. Finally, since when does a Gore "promise" even approximate the realm of believability? His entire campaign has been based on lies, pandering and scare tactics.
This is the man the United States' alleged "paper of record" recommends as the next president. Arthur Sulzberger, rightfully protected by the First Amendment, can't be jailed for such outright distortion of the truth, but it's beyond me how he can look his children in the eyes each morning.
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I refuse to waste much time discussing the Times' Oct. 22 spurious endorsement of Hillary Clinton for U.S. Senate. It's ironic that the same newspaper has endorsed the Republican candidate for the same position in New Jersey, calling Bob Franks "a cautiously moderate Republican" who is a "solid lawmaker." The same can be said for Rick Lazio, Clinton's opponent in New York. But Hillary is special, notable for "handshaking her way through town squares and state fairs"; she has acquired "a grasp of local issues."
The paper's approval of Mrs. Clinton includes this gem: "The investigative literature of Whitewater and related scandals is replete with evidence that Mrs. Clinton has a lamentable tendency to treat political opponents as enemies... Her fondness for stonewalling in response to legitimate questions about financial or legislative matters contributed to the bad ethical reputation of the Clinton administration."
That's quite a recommendation. Lazio's campaign has been lackluster, and was slow to point out his opponent's utter lack of scruples, but I believe he'll ultimately prevail. The Long Island Congressman won't be the most aggressive person to represent New York, but at least voters know that he's not using the Senate as an almost immediate means to national power, a possible presidential run and the domestic rebuke of her husband. If Al Gore defeats Bush by less than 12 percentage points in New York, the nation will be rid of both Clintons, and the citizenry will be richer for that outcome.
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It was touching, I'll admit, to read in Chancellor Sulzberger's Oct. 21 Times a folksy editorial about the passing of the "indefatigable" 90-year-old Gus Hall, the leader of America's Communist Party. "His life story," the piece read, "improbably enough, is a genuine American tale... He never wavered from his sclerotic orthodoxy, and never attempted to transform the party of the proletariat into a more trendy leftist alternative. That would have offended his native Midwestern stubbornness."
How lovely. As for Hall's affinity for Josef Stalin, a man every bit as evil as Germany's You-Know-Who, well, that was a long, long time ago, kids. What're several million murders compared to an opportunity to toss a sop to those stubborn Midwesterners who might subscribe to the Times' sclerotic national edition?
How fitting, then, that the Times continues to lead the demagoguery against Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who's had the audacity to mount a presidential campaign because of his belief that the Bill Clinton/Al Gore machine has destroyed the "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party. In an Oct. 26 editorial, just three days before the paper endorsed Gore, the word was passed from within the Times' Kremlin that of course voters have a right to cast a "protest" vote for Nader. But it would be wrong.
Why? Read this exercise in democracy: "Back in June, we criticized Ralph Nader's presidential bid as a self-indulgent crusade that could gull some voters into thinking that there were no clear policy choices between Al Gore and George Bush. As the election nears, what once seemed a speculative threat has become a very real danger to the Gore campaign [italics mine], with polls suggesting that Mr. Nader's meager share of the vote could nevertheless make the difference in eight states with 70 electoral votes."
I'm not quite sure why the Times doesn't simply suggest a one-party state, with their candidate installed every four years. That, at least, would be honest.
Once again, the Times gets on its high horse about campaign finance reform, attempting to "gull" its readers into thinking that Gore actually gives a hoot about that sanctimonious, and dangerous, legislation. The editorial concludes: "Yet Mr. Nader acts as if the presidential election would have no impact on the future campaign finance legislation. In so doing he deludes his followers, brightens Mr. Bush's prospects and dims his own legacy as a reformer. He calls his wrecking-ball candidacy a matter of principle, but it looks from here like ego run amok."
And when the Times unveils a holy testament, Upper West Side journalists are sure to follow. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who spent an entire summer working for Nader, is irked that the former left-wing icon is mucking up Gore's campaign strategy. But more significantly, the correspondent who grew up to share Air Force Two rides with the Veep and actually knows Bill Clinton, like, on a first-name basis, is fearful that Nader is "squandering his most precious asset?his intellectual honesty."
Drop out, Ralph. The guilt of disappointing an affluent Beltway squid is far too much of a burden to bear.
And then there's The Nation's imperious Eric Alterman. This vile man is so incensed that Nader has exercised his constitutional right to run for president that he foams in a Nov. 13 column, "Ralph Nader's campaign does not deserve a single progressive vote on November 7. Not one."
So there! Al Gore, a serial liar who convinced Clinton to play ball with the GOP and pass welfare reform, deserves all those my-view's-more-intelligent-than-yours "progressive" votes. A vote for Nader, according to Alterman, will assure the victory of a "dimwitted right-wing President with Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey inaugurating an era of conservative reaction the likes of which Newt Gingrich could scarcely have imagined."
Eric, man, like that's a right-on slogan, but it's so 1994. Besides, dude, Kurt's dead.
Anybody Here/Seen my old friend Todd/Can you tell me where he's gone?/He shouted "off the pigs"/In a time he can't remember/Now he's gone underground.
If only that were so. Todd Gitlin, yet another cast-off professor at New York University, is also giving Nader the back of his hand. In an Oct. 28 article for Salon, Gitlin comes up with this doozy: "The choice...is not between Al Gore and Jesus Christ, or, in fact, between Al Gore and Ralph Nader. In America, we're not going to get a president better than Gore. We may well get a lot worse: a country-club airhead whose occasional rhetoric of compassion obscures the fact that his deepest, most abiding, most consistent compassion is for untrammeled business."
Hey Todd, is Occidental Petroleum a "business"? Can the Democratic Fort Knox known as Hollywood be called a "business"? Does Jann Wenner, the multimillionaire publisher whose fifth home is inside Al Gore's butt, own a "business"? You, Todd, did not lay off the brown acid at Woodstock, and it's showing.
Writing about minnows such as Alter, Alterman and Gitlin is giving me a headache, so I'll return to the Times and just go straight for amputation.
In 1980, the Times had no such difficulty with Republican-turned-Independent John Anderson in the presidential contest against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. In fact, on Sept. 21 of that year, the paper ran a sharp editorial chastising Carter for refusing to debate Reagan if Anderson were included. A sample: "Mr. Carter says he won't debate two Republicans. He'll cheerfully debate Ronald Reagan but only one-on-one, or, as he said Thursday, 'man-to-man,' as though Independent John Anderson were a cocker spaniel, perhaps, and invisible at that. How Mr. Carter can simultaneously regard him as a second Republican and also as a liberal threat is something the President does not explain."
But it's easy to explain the Times' reasoning. Anderson, a moderate Republican, started a third party that year because he didn't care for the choice of Carter or Reagan. Sort of like Ralph Nader. But even though the Times wasn't enthusiastic about Carter?who was??the thought of a "dimwit" like Reagan was so impossible to contemplate that the prospect of Anderson draining liberal Republican support from the former California governor was appealing.
Then, on Oct. 26 of that year, in issuing its endorsement of Carter, the Times decided that Anderson was merely a "spoiler" who had the possibility of tipping a few states to Reagan (this was after Reagan creamed Carter in their only debate). Still, the Times praised the maverick: "In Nietzsche's words, he is someone who only shook the tree when the fruit was ripe?but look at the size of the tree he shook. Against all odds, Mr. Anderson got on the ballot in every state. He wrote a platform that the parties might envy. He has campaigned with distinction."
Ahem.
Myself, I completely disagree with Nader's political views, but I do believe he's a man of integrity, unlike Gore, and find the Times' hypocrisy unbearably repugnant. Like New York Press' own Alex Cockburn, a steadfast Nader champion, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an op-ed piece in the Oct. 26 Times, explaining why she'll vote for Nader. (Comrade Sulzberger must've been off playing golf that day. No doubt a trip to the gulag was ordered for the fool who let Ehrenreich's opinion dirty the Gore newsletter.) She said: "A vote for Mr. Nader is neither a vote for Mr. Bush nor a vote nihilistically thrown away. For old-fashioned Democrats and adherents of a vigorous democracy generally, it's a statement of affirmation and hope."
Closing this week's Nader chapter, let's hear from Ralph himself, straight from Cleveland on Oct. 26: "Al Gore, in his typically cowardly way, is sending out surrogates [Jesse Jackson, Sen. Paul Wellstone], most of them progressive Democrats whom he has not supported, to criticize our campaign."
Ground Control to Roger Clemens
A lot of ink was spilled about the just-completed "Subway Series," and, as usual, most of the stories and editorials have been of minor-league quality. With any justice, the Yankees' five-game waltz against the Mets will go down in baseball history as the "Clemens Series." It was inexcusable?cowardly?that Clemens wasn't ejected after throwing part of Mike Piazza's bat at him in the first inning of the second game at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 22; and then given a 10-game suspension, beginning next April, instead of the measly $50,000 fine that was administered by Major League Baseball's taskmaster Frank Robinson. Clemens, who earns more than $8 million per year, probably spends more than 50 grand a month at Pizza Hut. Or on steroids.
This wasn't an ordinary temper tantrum. It was the first time Clemens faced Piazza since nearly ending the catcher's career with a beanball last July 8. I doubt Clemens intentionally hit the Mets' superstar in the head, but his lack of contrition was despicable. And don't give me this "throwback player" routine in defense of the loony Yankee. I happen to like "chin music" as much as the next baseball devotee: it's a pleasure to watch men play the game with passion, instead of just racking up statistics to give their agents for postseason negotiating. For example, Boston's Pedro Martinez is quick to retaliate on behalf of a teammate with a brushback or fastball in the gut.
The Rocket, who's played most of his career with the Red Sox, was once my favorite player. He was squeezed out of Boston by a penurious management and I hold no grudge for him leaving the team. But from a fan who remembers Tony Conigliaro's career?and, essentially, his life?being ended by a beanball, it's not an overstatement to say that Clemens is out of control.
Question: How do you square the humiliating punishment meted out to loudmouth John Rocker, the Braves pitcher who popped off to a reporter last year, with Clemens' slap on the wrist? Rocker's offense was rapping like a dumb bigot, and so Bud Selig, baseball's spineless commissioner, sent him off to counseling and suspended him for part of the 2000 season.
Rocker was guilty of "hate speech." And in today's society that's apparently worse than actually injuring an opponent.
Had legendary baseball czar Kenesaw Mountain Landis been in attendance two Sundays ago, he might've yanked Clemens off the field by the ear and banned him for the entire 2001 season. I'd have applauded that action.
My eight-year-old son and I happened to be at the Stadium that night, and from our second-row loge seats it was clear that Clemens threw part of Piazza's broken bat at the Met. Even the fans in our section, all rooting for the Yanks, went slackjawed when the incident occurred.
(I was stunned that the ratio of Yanks-Mets supporters ran about 95 percent to the Bombers; I'd have thought more Islanders would've ventured onto enemy territory. Junior, who hates the Yankees because they defeated the Sox, wore a Mets uniform; it was only his age, I think, that kept the razzing on a good-natured level.)
The bench-clearing spectacle in the first was a jarring sight: Junior, wide-eyed, snapped photos from the moment the bat cracked to the resumption of the game, and now has a souvenir of that sequence of events. Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who watched Clemens fold in the clutch all those years in Boston, was genuinely pleased, I think, that the Rocket finally threw two masterpiece games in postseason play, one against the Mariners, the other that two-hitter defeating the Mets. He even called Clemens' performance this October "Gibson-esque," a bittersweet truth for those of us who remember the Bosox's heartbreaking loss against St. Louis in '67.
But Shaughnessy, no stylist, was correct in the following Oct. 24 opinion: "But no one's mentioning Bob Gibson when they talk about Clemens today. Instead, he's being compared with Jimmy Piersall, Dennis Rodman, Mike Tyson, Albert Belle, and other sports nuts."
New York Press columnist Lionel Tiger, writing in the Oct. 26 Times, offered an apt anthropological spin: "Throwing splintered bats at opponents isn't part of this. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani suggested that Clemens's toss was just an 'instinctual reaction.' [Sort of like Rudy handcuffing innocent Wall Street traders in the late 80s.] That is precisely the problem. The last thing large and strong athletes can afford to do in the emotion of tense struggle is react with unfiltered ferocity. It is not only far too dangerous for them personally but an affront to the wider community that understands the mandatory nature of the rule book... The rules are the same for everyone. They make the game safe and emotionally bearable. They work. Roger Clemens should be ashamed of himself for not following them."
So it's agreed: Clemens is a creep who diminishes the reigning World Champions. But leave it to a writer for the ailing webzine Salon to connect the pitcher's behavior to the presidential election. In one of the most idiotic pieces I've read recently (assuming it's not parody), John Giuffo, on Oct. 26, made a case that New Yorkers should root for the Mets because they're the team for "real New Yorkers." Don't forget, Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart, Frank McCourt, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are all Mets fans. Case closed. The team that isn't "fueled by cash and controlled by robber barons." That's news to me: if Piazza, Al Leiter and Robin Ventura are paid the current minimum wage, more power to them.
Giuffo on Clemens: "Worst of all, Clemens is from Texas. What cruel twist of fate allowed this violent knuckle-dragger to escape that state's death mill? Why isn't he the next retard to be denied clemency by Dubya? Shouldn't there have been a fateful night two decades ago involving a couple dozen Coors and a misperceived homosexual advance followed by a pickup truck chase outside the Cowpoke Tit-A-Roo in Lubbock?"
Classy prose. Worthy of journalism starfucker Christopher Hitchens on the very worst day of his writing career.
As I've made clear in the past, I'm not a fan of Yankee fanatic Rudy Giuliani. Nevertheless, he's a father, and this clod Giuffo is such a worm that he attacks the Mayor's son, writing: "New York's No. 1 jerk is a fan of New York's No. 1 jerks. And because fandom is usually passed down genetically, so is 14-year-old Andrew Giuliani. One close-up shot of Satan's Lil' Butterball in navy and white, greased hands shoveling popcorn down his jiggly gullet, and you'll know exactly what side you're pulling for."
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This was the first World Series game Junior's ever attended; in fact, it was mine as well. Walking up the steps from the D train across the street from the Stadium was a scene that most non-New Yorkers must think is typical of the city. It's not, but praise the Lord, this was an urban time-capsule that could've been captured from any celebration of Yankee dominance. There was a line to get into Stan's sports shop, like it was Tiffany's on Christmas Eve. The minute-by-minute swelling of the crowd?every other fan was openly drinking outside, whether it was quarts of beer or pints of vodka?was like nothing I've ever seen at a ballgame, and I've been to hundreds of them. Everyone had an angle?be it scalping tickets despite the heavy presence of NYC cops or selling Subway Series souvenirs, half of which had "Mets Suck" emblazoned on them?and by 7 p.m., about an hour before the moving tribute to the fallen USS Cole men and women, the streets were already knee-deep in trash, not dissimilar to the midnight debris seen on the last night of the San Gennaro feast in Little Italy.
It was a spark of reality that any of the hinterlands baseball fans with their cutesy boutique stadiums, complete with theme restaurants and petting zoos, and sushi instead of shitty Yankee hotdogs, will never understand. This was baseball: living history with the echoes of the great Yankee teams of the past 80 years, some of which my parents, uncles and brothers got to see, not to mention Boy MUGGER, sitting in the bleachers and upper deck seats with my dad in the 60s.
I haven't a clue as to why this World Series was the lowest-rated in tv history. It doesn't make a lot of sense, since the Yanks are a huge draw on the road during the regular season; but maybe our fellow American citizens to the west are just tired of anything that has to do with New York. It's understandable, to a degree, why the presidential debates didn't draw as many viewers as in the past; looking at Al Gore for 90 minutes is slow torture. But the World Series? I'd suggest that my fellow countrymen are going pinko on me, but with George W. Bush likely to assume the presidency in January, that theory doesn't hold up either.
I didn't let go of my son's hand until we got to our seats, a little spooked at the mob mentality, especially with an eight-year-old in tow who thought nothing of yelling, "Yankees suck!" when some drunk questioned his Mets attire. But it was a game to remember, even though the Mets were powerless against the brutish Clemens, and my son was transfixed by the decorative bunting, the opening ceremonies, Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford throwing out the first ball, and the sheer pageantry that he'd never experienced before.
Pete Hamill, professional Brooklyn Dodgers curator, wrote a daily column for the New York Post and it was pretty awful, if harmless, material. But the prole/celeb-hag/ Mexican revolutionary, a journalist/author who's undergone as many personality makeovers as Al Gore (at least he's had the grace to do it over a lifetime, rather than in a single year), was at his worst on Oct. 25. The night after the Mets had won their only game against the Yanks, and Hamill, who favored the Queens team as the natural descendants of the Pee Wee Reese Dodgers, thought it was fitting that the victory came on the 28th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's death.
Hamill wrote: "Once upon a time in New York, this was what every World Series game seemed to be like. Robinson's Dodgers?and in some crucial ways they were his team?lost more than they won, but they always played the full nine innings. They never quit. They never dogged it. They wouldn't dare, because if they did, they would have to deal with Mr. Robinson. And Jack Roosevelt Robinson was a serious man...
"For those of us who were young in those years, Robinson taught us lessons that had little do with baseball. If you were a plumber or a sculptor, a carpenter or a writer, a dentist or an ironworker, Robinson taught you to do a day's work as if it were the last day of your life."
Now this is romantic drivel that should've been spiked. Granted, I was an infant at the time, but I have a hard time believing that dentists and sculptors, and carpenters and ironworkers, thought more about pleasing Jack Roosevelt Robinson than their own families, which they did by bringing home a paycheck or creating and maybe selling their artwork. Have some more rice pudding, Pete: your fastball is down to 5 mph.
On the subject of those glory days, Jim Callaghan, writing in the Oct. 30 New York Observer, had an illuminating piece about the Dodgers and New York Giants of the 50s; the Dodgers' move to California in 1958 still has the likes of Hamill and Jack Newfield in perpetual rage. According to Callaghan, in 1955, a year when the Dodgers finally defeated the Yanks in a World Series, they drew an average of only 14,000 fans during the regular season in Ebbets Field. Duke Snider, a Dodgers hero, called Brooklynites "the worst fans in the league." And Giants owner Horace Stoneham, when asked about moving West, said, "Well, I feel bad for the kids. But I haven't seen many of their parents at the ballpark lately."
Some goofball at The New York Times must've been smoking reefer in the john before jotting down these absurd lines for an Oct. 28 editorial. "If you were alive and breathing this week," this no doubt Columbia Journalism School graduate wrote, "you got a glimpse of Gotham that is not often revealed to strangers or to itself. The rivalry between the Mets and the Yankees did not divide the city. It united it. These breathless games, so much closer in score than in the final tally of games won and lost, drew fans of both teams into a single vortex. No matter how much they claim to differ from each other, it became clear this week just how much Mets and Yankees fans truly share."
Absolutely. And if you're going to Times Square, man, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.
Finally, in The New Yorker's Oct. 30 "Talk of the Town," the "Comment" piece was downright atrocious. (I was positive the byline at the end would reveal its usual author, Hendrik Hertzberg; instead, it was with horror I read the name of editor David Remnick.) It was a pastiche of "Smile on your brother" Mets-Yanks unity; a tacit endorsement of Al Gore over the "incurious" Governor of Texas; and an hysterical assessment of the Mideast battle, as if that's the only part of the world that matters to Americans, one that the likely "vaporous" president is apt to mess up. As if Bill Clinton achieved anything in his legacy meetings with Arafat and Barak.
The baseball segment was pure folly: "It's a cinematic feeling to walk up the street and follow the game as the play-by-play wafts out a cab window, then from the doorway of a bar, following you all the way home, as if the city, for once, were a communal, and not a lonely arrangement." Bullshit. First, the games were played so late that I doubt Remnick, a family man, was walking around the city at 11 p.m. to hear the mellifluous sound of the play-by-play announcers emanating from Arab-driven cabs. And for most of the city, which isn't all that interested in baseball, there was nothing "communal" about last week. It was largely a week in the life of New York. I'll bet the Yanks' ticker-tape parade, for which Giuliani has encouraged kids to play hooky, but presumably not jaywalk on Broadway, causes more consternation than joy because of the traffic gridlock.
Finally, in a cheap shot I thought Remnick, if not his stable of left-wing political hack writers, was above, the editor blasts Bush in advance for not saving Israel. He writes, to his shame: "What also awaits, conceivably, is a new American President who might want to stop the fighting but hasn't the slightest idea how. His education and rise in public life, after all, came at the ballpark, where the battles are all fun and games."
OCTOBER 30
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