Slinging Mud at the Times

Slinging Mud at the Times

Rich begins his desperate essay by noting that the night before Pearl's death was revealed, Goldberg was hawking his book on C-SPAN. He seethes: "Mr. Goldberg, you see, had once written an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal criticizing his network for what he saw as its liberal bias, and the price he paid for this act of courage was steep. His fellow employees considered him radioactive. They treated him like a pariah. And then came the ultimate indignity: Dan Rather stopped talking to him! Mr. Goldberg might still be telling his tale of woe, had not terrorism intervened and rendered his tale of self-martyrdom on behalf of Mr. Pearl's newspaper ludicrous. The savage murder of Mr. Pearl, like the terrorist carnage of Sept. 11, is an instant reality check."

A few facts. Goldberg didn't write Bias "on behalf" of the Journal. It's an account of the author's blackballing at CBS?where he'd worked since 1972, winning seven Emmy awards for the network?after questioning the left-leaning slant of its news division. As Goldberg has made clear on his media tour?I smell sour grapes on Rich's part since his recent memoir Ghost Light bombed?he doesn't believe there's a premeditated anticonservative cabal among dinosaur-celebrities like Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. Instead, as he explains, it's even worse: these men and their affluent colleagues in television and at elite newspapers like the Times and Washington Post don't even realize how they distort the news. They're ensconced in an exclusive bubble, a party-picture world of cocktail and dinner parties in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Georgetown, where everyone accepts as "normal" universal truths such as George Bush "stole" the election, pro-life citizens are "kooks" and affirmative action is an essential entitlement. Unless, of course, it keeps their private-school educated children out of Harvard, Yale or Brown.

Rich doesn't mention that Michael Moore, another wealthy "populist," kept up his own round of tv appearances in support of his successful book Stupid White Men, even after the "instant reality check" of Pearl's murder. Moore is far more hysterical in his political views than Goldberg?a garden-variety liberal for most of his life who hadn't ever voted for a Republican until at least 1996?professing on CNN and Fox that Bush will be forced to resign shortly because of the Enron financial scandal, among other acid-flashback crimes the author fabricates.

I don't fault Moore for sucking up to Stupid White Men like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity: he's a crafty self-publicist who knows what it takes to sell books. Rich is too lost in his own world of sitcoms and Broadway musicals to even consider the concept of marketing. But because he writes for the mega-circulation Times, his views are actually taken seriously by large numbers of delusional Americans.

Rich has nothing more between his ears than say, Paper co-editor David Hershkovits, but the latter's publication reaches such a tiny number of readers?most of whom probably couldn't name Bush's defense secretary?that his pink-elephant tirades don't amount to much.

In Paper's current issue, Hershkovits blasts Rudy Giuliani (saying the former mayor should've "pump[ed] many millions more than we currently do into improving public education," oblivious that such an expenditure would wind up in the teachers' union's already-bulging wallet), and then repeats the standard, no-facts take on Bush. He writes: "Then we have President Bush. Read my lips: E-N-R-O-N... Enron had a free run of the White House and access to everyone in the administration through a combination of campaign contributions, charity work, and well-oiled consultants. Lots of companies contribute to politicians' campaigns, but very few are on a first-name basis with the president, as is Enron chairman Kenneth Lay. Believe me, it's only going to get worse as scandalous revelations keep mounting."

How an aging New York City fashion/ nightclub shill knows so much about the White House isn't relevant; he's just foaming at the mouth. And incidentally, David, do you think Bill Clinton wasn't on a first-name basis with David Geffen and Barbra Streisand?

Anyway, the self-appointed pop culture czar at the Times then moves on to another scolding of President Bush, coming up with this bizarre theory: "[Bush] had advertised his own distaste for the press by publicly brandishing a copy of 'Bias' a month ago, but...turned up front-and-center to pay mournful tribute to Mr. Pearl last week. The president's sentiments were no doubt sincere, as is his muscular pursuit of the killers. But there is still scant evidence to suggest that he condones the idea of a free press."

It's true that Bush doesn't like reporters as a rule, just like Clinton didn't before him, but the notion that he's against a "free press" is asinine. During the President's recent Asian trip, while Times reporters joined their European allies in promoting the ridiculous idea that he was backing down from his "axis of evil" doctrine, the most significant engagement on his schedule was given little attention. Appearing at Tsinghua University in China, Bush delivered the boldest speech by a U.S. president in that country, eloquently explaining the virtues of a true democracy, including the rights to dissent and to pursue your own religious beliefs.

Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, writing in the March 4 Weekly Standard, were among the few pundits who grasped the enormity of the occasion. They wrote: "Every Chinese citizen who heard Bush's words understood the invidious comparison he was drawing between American freedom and Chinese tyranny. Everyone heard his message: that the tyranny under which they suffer must be changed or brought down. And to the old argument so often proffered by Chinese tyrants and their American apologists?that China is not 'ready' for democracy?well, Bush had an answer for that, too. 'Those who fear freedom sometimes argue it could lead to chaos, but it does not, because freedom means more than every man for himself.'"

If Bernard Goldberg needs another anecdote about the elite media's bias he could include Rich's distortion of which well-connected men profited from Global Crossing before that company's recent bankruptcy. The jaundiced columnist cites former President Bush, who accepted stock in lieu of an $80,000 speaking fee for the company, which (according to Business Week) appreciated to $4.5 million. Obviously, because Rich hews to the Times' selective agenda, he doesn't mention that DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe invested $100,000 in Global Crossing and later cashed out for $18 million.

The columnist's disgusting conclusion is a simplistic view of a Stupid White Hack. He writes: "...[T]he Bush administration is betting, not incorrectly, that the overall news culture is swinging back to its pre-9/11 bias, which is resolutely in favor of fun. Gary is back. Monica is back. Even Bernard Goldberg, for all his public griping, is back from his gulag, working as a correspondent for HBO Sports. Only Daniel Pearl is gone."

This kind of callous disrespect for the slain Wall Street Journal reporter, cynically invoked for one lousy column, ought to earn Rich membership in an exclusive men's club Down Below when his number is called, with buddies like Roy Cohn, Sidney Blumenthal, Chris Lehane, assorted Kennedys, J. Edgar Hoover, H.R. Haldeman, Paul Begala, W.J. Clinton and Andrea Dworkin.

Send Ari to the Showers

Another week, another round of stupid remarks heard in Washington, DC. Let's start with Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, a loyal but hapless presidential aide who's simply in over his head. Why Fleischer hasn't been dumped?or demoted?is a mystery that's beyond me. Last Thursday morning, the befuddled spokesman made a wholly unnecessary political blunder by blaming Bill Clinton for the escalation of violence in the Mideast. Frankly, I cringe every time clips are shown of the former president with his arms around Barak and Arafat at Camp David in 2000, but Fleischer's flip comment that "[Y]ou can make the case that in an attempt to shoot the moon and get nothing, more violence resulted," was a lose-lose goof. It doesn't matter that he was correct. Later that afternoon, after a damage-control scolding from Bush and Condi Rice, Ari had to hang his head before the media?a punishment worse than having to read a Hendrik Hertzberg column?and say: "No United States president, including President Clinton, is to blame for violence in the Middle East."

Of course Clinton was willing to short-change Israel in his fruitless legacy-building, but anyone associated with the Bush administration can't say that in public.

Last Wednesday, Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-Never-Never Land) made his colleague Robert Byrd look lucid by blaming Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey for the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, claiming that the former Enron consultant turned a blind eye to offshore companies, allowing Osama bin Laden to shelter money for his operations. The Treasury Dept., according to Fox News reporter Carl Cameron, "has been tracing the Al Qaeda accounts and they did not go through offshore tax havens." Also, in addition to falsely branding Mitch Daniels and Spencer Abraham former employees of Enron, Hollings then called Attorney General John Ashcroft "the energy secretary."

And Democrats wonder why they're reaping no political benefits from Enron's collapse. So, that campaign issue exhausted, and with the economy apparently in recovery, Tom Daschle violated the James Carville/Robert Shrum Democratic playbook and criticized Bush on the war, saying last Thursday that the initial success in Afghanistan notwithstanding, "I think the jury's still out about future success. I think there is expansion without at least a clear direction." That's dumb politics, I believe, but Daschle, along with John Kerry (who accused the GOP of employing "a false cloak of patriotism"), Dick Gephardt, Byrd, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, certainly are entitled to their opinions.

Trent Lott?who should've been deposed as the GOP Senate leader back in '98?not content to let the Democrats harm themselves, wet his drawers with this incredibly strident reaction: "How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism, especially when we have troops in the field? He should not be trying to divide our country while we are united." Please. It's not as if Republicans didn't snipe at Clinton during the Kosovo air war in '99.

Daschle, however, did appear foolish in his reaction to Lott's excessive posturing, saying, "I think the Republicans' reaction is nothing short of hysterical. I'm amused, frankly."

Cracks me up too, Tom.

Growin' Up

As Junior?too quickly?hurtles toward adolescence, another milestone's been added to my mental scrapbook. Last Saturday morning, at the stroke of nine, we stood at the counter of Tower Records' customer service booth in Noho and bought tickets for his first rock concert: the Green Day/Blink 182 show at the Garden on May 31. He told the cashier that we wanted standing room admission?which was quickly nixed?because "I wanna party with everyone." I gulped at that one, since he won't even be 10 until next fall, plunked down the $40 per and marched both of my sons over to St. Mark's Comics and let them wade through the boxes of Spider-Man oldies.

I told the boys about the first show I attended, back in the late 60s, a Byrds-Van Morrison double bill at Central Park, where the expensive seating went for two bucks, the rest for a single dollar. They couldn't care less about my memories of Roger McGuinn & Co., but were sufficiently amazed at the cheap prices. I was 13; a late bloomer in my boy's eyes, I suppose, but then there was no MTV in those days, Neil Armstrong hadn't yet landed on the moon, Teddy Kennedy was yet to meet his presidential Waterloo at a now-famous Massachusetts landmark and Orange Julius was doing a booming business on 8th St.

The timing for the "Pop Disaster" tour isn't the best?the Red Sox are playing at Yankee Stadium that night, a sacrifice for both of us?but at least I like Green Day well enough, certainly more than Junior's other favorite bands like Korn, Linkin Park, Jimmy Eat World and God help me, Kid Rock.

By the way, I've steered clear in the offseason from writing about the Bosox, but it was welcome news that the club's new owners?just 24 hours after officially closing on the deal?pink-slipped General Manager Dan Duquette. I'd never been a vociferous Duquette-basher, despite his aloof style, but when the Sox went into free fall last season and he berated Pedro Martinez for not pitching while injured, that put me over the edge. I'm pleased that in a vain effort to salvage his job Duquette made some smart acquisitions since October?Johnny Damon, John Burkett, Rickey Henderson, Tony Clark?but like manager Joe Kerrigan (any day now, he shall be released), he needed to be purged.

This Is Reality

Finally, some common sense about Enron's bankruptcy was found in the mainstream press. Michael Lewis, in a piece written for Bloomberg News, which was excerpted in The Washington Post on March 3, takes the unpopular position that not every Enron employee was a working-class stiff whose life savings evaporated because of the doings of the company's upper-echelon officers. In fact, as Lewis notes, when Enron was the toast of Houston and at its pinnacle of (illusory) financial glory, very few wanted to rock the boat.

There's little doubt that several high-profile Enron and Arthur Andersen executives are headed for the pokey: Andrew Fastow is in for the longest stretch, I'll bet, and Kenneth Lay (whose p.r. campaign highlighting his wife peddling a sob story was a disaster), despite his depiction as a Texan version of Mr. Magoo, will probably improve his tennis game for a year or so at an Allenwood-type facility.

Jeffrey Skilling, who's probably just as crooked as the rest, might skate completely, since he actually testified before Congress, befuddling financial dodos like Sen. Barbara Boxer in the process. As the always-entertaining Alan Abelson wrote in the March 4 Barron's: "The senators betrayed their unfamiliarity with Corporate America by expressing bafflement at just what a CEO is supposed to do if not keep a close eye on how his company is being run. In Mr. Skilling's case, his time seemingly was more than fully occupied keeping track of his stock options and planning an exit strategy."

Lewis, unlike most journalists, focuses on the hundreds of men and women in Enron's upper- and middle-management who are seeking compensation for their bad fortune. He writes: "Indeed, everything we know so far about Enron suggests that many, many employees were, at the very least, willing accomplices to the schemes dreamed up by their bosses. And now they want their money back! They are like accessories to a failed bank heist who demand restitution because the police confiscated their share of the take...

"The second reason to ignore the yelps and whimpers of Old Enronians is basic justice. The phony accounts Enron ginned up for many years allowed it to pay its employees as if they actually were conducting a hugely profitable business. Even those who were profitably engaged were probably grossly overpaid for their efforts. In short, they've already made out like bandits. Why give them more money?

"I know, I know: the retirement plan! Eight hundred and fifty million dollars in worker savings vanished! Somehow the media reports suggest Enron forced its employees to keep their savings in Enron shares. In fact there was a brief period last fall, from Oct. 29 through Nov. 12, in which the 401(k) plan was frozen and Enron's employees were unable to sell their shares. The stock during that span fell to $9.24 a share from $13.81, a small step in the long plunge from more than $90 to pennies today. The only shares workers were restricted from selling outside that window were those pumped into the plan by the company as a match for part of each employee's contribution. (Those shares couldn't be sold until the worker turned 50.)

"For the most part, workers held shares voluntarily and could have sold them, and diversified their portfolios, at any time... Probably there are a few Old Enronians?lowly clerks, some blue-collar types out in the field, the mentally incompetent?who deserve a helping hand. But I'll bet they aren't the ones who are now hollering for it."

When Will Rosie Tank?

So Rosie O'Donnell's a dyke. Stop the presses. The woman gives me the creeps, but her personal life is nobody's business.

But Jim Brady, writing in the Feb. 25 Advertising Age, makes a valid point about the future of her magazine Rosie. He said: "Let me put this carefully so as to be fair to all parties: I think Gruner & Jahr USA Publishing is getting screwed. Here they hand over a major national magazine with an honorable pedigree (plus obvious weaknesses) to a total outsider who'd never put an issue to bed before, rename the damned thing after her, and spend lots of dough and energy relaunching McCall's as Rosie, and what does Rosie do? She bails out on the TV talk show that gives her immediacy and muscle, and then writes a book about coming out of the closet. I couldn't care less about Rosie's sex life. But I do care about grand old magazines and what happens to them, to their dedicated staffs, to the readers who buy them and to the advertisers who support them. This is amateurism at its worst and unless CEO Dan Brewster and the Gruner people knew about it and disregarded it from the start, they've been blind-sided."

 

March 4

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