Old Smokes

Any given week offers curious newspaper readers-and such readers still exist, no matter egocentric bloggers' protestations to the contrary-a jolt of bizarre stories and opinions, but the past 10 days have been downright deluxe.

The Times' Frank Rich, on Aug. 14, left me howling with his unintentional reminder that not once in his half-century or so of life has he ever been considered a cool guy. Making fun of George Bush's most recent declaration that "We will stay the course" in Iraq, Rich countered-no joke-"What do you mean we, white man?" I'm looking forward to the columnist's updated publicity photo, in which his new cornrowed locks will be prominent.

Even that doesn't compare, though, to a Times editorial the next day, one of its continuing "Free Judith Miller" series, in which the writer insists the paper's jailed reporter be set free. "Ms. Miller has spent 41 days trying to preserve [freedom of the press]. That is far too long, for her, for us and especially for a country that prides itself on exporting its belief in a free press to the rest of the world." Man, oh man alive, say a prayer for Judy and please pass that splendid '46 bottle of port. A reminder for Times ministers: Miller entered journalism knowing its remote hazards, and any day now, any month now, she shall be released.

After a baseball game last Sunday in which Angels pitcher Brendan Donnelly blew a routine throw to first, allowing the Mariners to tie the score, he told a Los Angeles Times reporter the following: "That error wasn't committed by me. It was committed by the little girl down the street, because that's what I felt like when I released it. I don't know what I was doing." An anti-Angels ad is currently being produced by NARAL.

Mick Jagger, despite his alleged "bad boy" routine, never had any balls. After the Bush-bashing lyrics to a new Stones song, "Sweet Neo Con," were released, Mick told Extra, "It's not really aimed at anyone." Sure thing, just like the Stones aren't trying to gin up enthusiasm from the under 30 set in the hopes that the kids will not only attend their upcoming concerts but also purchase CDs from the band's enormous catalog. Let's remember that Jagger acquiesced to CBS execs back in '67 when the Stones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and changed the lyrics of their hit "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together."

Not surprisingly, given the media's unabashed narcissism about its favored club members, the premature death of ABC anchor Peter Jennings provided an opportunity for reams of column inches by writers eulogizing the "urbane" and James Bond-like swashbuckling Canadian, more often than not using the occasion to advance their own agendas. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, in an Aug. 8 MSNBC online column, confessed that although he didn't know Jennings "well," the two did discuss the dearth of international news in this country's media "at a social event" some six months ago, pre-cancer diagnosis.

Alter wrote: "The rap on Peter Jennings was that he took himself too seriously. I'm glad he did, because that meant that he took us seriously, too, and our need to know about things that are distant and complicated but a lot more important than most of what passes for news." Alter's fairly serious too, in a "kiss up, kick down" way, that so many of his colleagues tarred John Bolton, so maybe he's oblivious to his own magazine's rapid decline into the mush of celebrity-worship and fad stories that at one time were beneath the competitor to the now equally vapid Time.

It's obviously a heartbreaking time for Jennings' family, and a more "urbane" media might've kept the eulogies short and respectful. An editorial in last week's New York Observer was way over the top in calling Jennings "one of the greatest in the succession from Murrow to Cronkite to Brinkley, in the age of network news anchors who could focus and guide a viewing nation by their experience and intrinsic humanity." God only knows what the paper will print when Mario Cuomo negotiates with St. Peter.

The Observer writer contradicts Alter's slant by maintaining that Jennings wasn't "serious" at all times. Perhaps anyone but Alter would draw that conclusion about Jennings, who was married four times, tremendously wealthy and fortunate his position afforded him the luxury of traveling all over the world. The editorial's conclusion was (I think) an unintended parody of how the elite media think. "[Jennings] embraced this city. He was a New Yorker who loved the Upper West Side, played in Central Park and even found his way to the Hamptons? We will all miss his style of sophisticated intelligence."

Many Americans, myself included, won't miss Jennings' thinly-veiled anti-Semitism or bias against anyone to the political right of Teddy Kennedy, but it is reassuring that the news anchor was able to fit the Hamptons into his schedule.

Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson exploited the death of Jennings, who presumably died from smoking-related lung cancer, as a means to attack the tobacco industry. At one point in his Aug. 10 op-ed, Jackson says, "Cigarettes remain strong precisely because tobacco CEOs shamelessly prey on the weak while landmark tobacco settlements [most of which are absurd to begin with, a way to line the pockets of lawyers] in several states that were supposed to funnel money into prevention have been gutted by budget woes."

And here we have, once again, the same strange obsession with cigarettes, as if this isn't a theme that's harrumphed about in the media nearly every week. Yes, smoking tobacco kills people, as anyone with an i.q. higher than cheeseburger-munching Jason Giambi knows. Jackson might've at least pointed out that elected officials, both local and national, Democrat and Republican, haven't once called for a prohibition on tobacco, since the loss of tax revenue would be too severe. (You do wonder when a member of Congress will speak in front of colleagues and make a case for legalizing marijuana, not only to free police from wasting precious time but also to reap similar tax benefits.)

And Jackson's column doesn't mention the word "alcohol" once, which would seem an equally important industry to go after if he's going to moralize about corporate America's "prey[ing] on the weak." Surely the Globe's writer has witnessed how booze destroys lives-often at a much earlier age than lung cancer-causing not only heart disease, but also lubricated violence, crime, car crash fatalities and broken families.

Longtime baseball manager Gene Mauch also died this month, and while he wasn't the household name that Jennings was, the man whose Philadelphia Phillies blew a pennant in 1964 and Anaheim Angels choked in the '86 playoffs, was, in his own way, just as "sophisticated" as the "urbane" anchor. Mike Penner wrote a masterful obituary in the Aug. 9 Los Angeles Times, comparing Mauch, considered aloof and crabby, to his counterpart at the Dodgers, the showboat Tommy Lasorda, who Penner describes "as the jovial Italian uncle every mother and nun loved." He continues: "The stereotypes did both men a disservice. Lasorda had a coarse streak that made the celebrities in the photos on his office wall hold their ears when he ranted?" On the other hand, Mauch was "articulate and witty, with a wide range of interests that would surprise those who knew only the caricature of Mauch the baseball obsessive. Back in the 1980s, writers covering the Angels used to joke that Mauch would have made a great sportswriter, except he was too smart."

I like that. Perhaps if the unmentionable happens-the Yanks don't make the playoffs-and Joe Torre is fired or resigns, the unflappable skipper will consider writing editorials for the New York Times.