The Crazy World of Pollsters; Sighs, Lies & Heaves
The Crazy World of Pollsters; Sighs, Lies & Heaves
I did my duty for the Bush campaign last Saturday night, engaging in an intense 45-minute political discussion with one of those prized "swing" voters both presidential tickets covet. Nadine's a married professional woman, currently living in Miami, but moving in a few weeks to the Upper West Side. She's a registered independent who instinctively favors Gore on most issues, but believes Bush is the more authentic and personable of the two candidates. The Vice President's creepy debate performance last week didn't help win her over.
By the time the sorbet and espresso was served, we'd covered the gamut, from Bill Clinton's impeachment?Nadine thought it was for a relatively trivial matter?to the economically prosperous state of the nation, NASDAQ notwithstanding, to Gore's congenital distortions and embellishments. She applauded Bush's tamping down of the abortion issue, but wasn't sold on his partial privatization of Social Security. Nadine also didn't agree with my firm conviction that Gore's preposterous education plan?if you can call it that?which I believe means throwing even more money at a decaying societal cornerstone in hopes that it'll magically become stronger, was a cynical quid pro quo for the powerful teachers' union graft. Excuse me?political contributions.
Had we had more time to discuss the issues?our sitter was waiting at home?I might've made a convert. Or driven her completely over to the Democratic camp. In any case, it was lively dinner conversation, and proved once again how volatile this election is. It's destined to be the closest since 1960.
On the other hand, Friday night was a circus of frenetic activity, as New York Press celebrated its Best of Manhattan issue with a mobbed party at the Puck Bldg. As the guests poured through the doors, it felt like an AP ticker was pounding in my brain. Lisa Kearns delivered the news that the Boston Red Sox are up for sale. That's a momentous announcement, one that's both melancholy, for the fact that the team will leave the Yawkey Family's hands (67 years without a championship), and bracing, because it might bring in a New England owner who will be as aggressive as George Steinbrenner, a CEO who'll open up the wallet to deliver a World Series victory to a region that's been denied one since 1918.
Not long after, a journalist buddy arrived with the latest results of the Gallup Poll. On Thursday, Gore was ahead by 11 points. As of 7 p.m. Friday, the daily tracking showed that lead slashed by 10 points. In addition, he told me of the ABC-News survey that put Bush two points ahead of Prince Pinocchio. The following day, when Gallup posted the latest, a 7-point lead for the Republican, I was tickled, but a little suspect. Not that Bush didn't have a spectacular week, and Gore's sneering, show-off performance at the Oct. 3 debate in Boston was bound to erode his support. It was just that the sheer volatility of the sampled electorate makes this race so difficult to handicap.
But Friday's showing was good enough that my friend confidently matched the impulsive bet I made with Alex Cockburn last spring and laid $1000 down on Bush. Cockburn, in town to promote his seminal book Al Gore: A User's Manual, was a little apprehensive in taking on the burden of another wager, but obliged my colleague just the same. Neither of the men had consumed more than one of what Rush Limbaugh obnoxiously calls "adult beverages," so booze can be ruled out as the impetus for such relatively high stakes. I have an additional $250 with Alex on the Hillary Clinton-Rick Lazio Senate contest, one that even the thrifty Cockburn might actually be pleased to lose, for the thought of the odious First Lady hogging the cameras in Washington is a thought too horrible for any person of even minimal intelligence to bear.
I'm told the Puck bash continued well past my bedtime, and that some 2000 guests came and went throughout the evening. I left the moment my voice gave out and got home just in time for last-call Chinese takeout from the inconsistent Au Mandarin down at the World Financial Center. Both our boys posted for the first hour of the event, with Junior attempting a breakdance on the floor to DJ Bax's thumping modern music, while he waited for Jeff Koyen and George Tabb to arrive. Alas, while he and MUGGER III did see Jeff on their way out (our youngest, normally the mayor of Tribeca, was overwhelmed by the adult crowd, seeing a mass of humanity, everyone from well-dressed financial workers to beer-drinking cartoonists to uninvited malcontents), George made a late appearance. He'd been to the dentist for root canal surgery, which probably explained why he kept a bottle of tequila by his side the entire night. Medicinal, I'm certain, and not a mere Furious George prop for the crowd.
I chatted with Matt Seitz about the Oct. 1 death of celebrity British killer Reggie Kray, 66 (subject of the spectacular, and mostly ignored, film The Krays), and wanted to engage Godfrey Cheshire in the conversation, but he was off in the distance, wearing his customary uniform of black jeans and t-shirt, no doubt speculating about the imminent emergence of revolutionary Serbian cinema. And we also missed Teddy Bear Armond White, whom I saw at some other point in the festivities. That's the way it was; it was a difficult feat to corral more than three people at any given time, such were the logistics of the wall of people.
One group that did stick together was a quasi-Chesapeake Bay contingent: my old college roommate Howie Nadjari and his wife Patti, along with Al From Baltimore, Rob Brager, Michael Yockel and Michael Cohen, who'll join New York Press in just a few short weeks as the paper's publisher. Rob's an attorney, and also a liberal: that's a very formidable combination for a sparring partner, especially since he tossed down the gauntlet and baited me by saying that Gore is such a lousy candidate that it's a shame Clinton can't legally run for a third term. I wasn't falling for that trap, and excused myself to make sure Junior wasn't consuming too many Sprites or tossing the football he'd found into a table of middle-aged celebrants enjoying the magnificent?as always?food provided by a slew of local restaurants, among them Bar on A, Emerald Planet, Nice Guy Eddie's, La Bella, Nascimento, WWFNY, The World, Indiana Catering, Back Page, Mexican Radio and Shiki's. Adding to the considerable good cheer?booze division?were Guinness, Crossroads, Warehouse and Crillon Importers, with party supplies from NYC Shop.
I hadn't seen my high school friend Hazel Dunnigan in years, not since our dear friends Elena Seibert and Alan Goodman were married. She produced a snapshot of the two of us from 1971. As I've written many times, I'm not one to protest the irrevocable passage of time. But seeing myself in that picture, with my frizzy hair down to my butt, no doubt stoned on nickel-bag weed, along with a giggling 16-year-old Hazel, did provoke a double take. This was back in my Huntington days, when I babysat for a neighbor's children, and once the kids were asleep, invited friends over for quiet parties.
My ad-hoc employers were pharmacists, and worked till 1 or 2 in the morning, and so they were never the wiser to our gatherings on the back porch. Nor to the time, I'm sure, a year or two earlier, when, in the time-honored babysitter tradition, I raided the copious liquor cabinet and mixed a teenage concoction in a Mason jar. Once I was relieved from duty that night, I took my drink?a combination of Boone's Farm apple wine, bourbon, sloe gin and orange juice?settled across the street at the foot of Calmy Weiss' garage and guzzled the contents in about five minutes. And for five minutes I was flying high, literally intoxicated with feelings of warmth and grandeur; that warmth soon spilled over my clothes in the form of vomit, and I learned a valuable lesson about mixing and matching various varieties of alcohol.
It was a pleasure as well to see, if only for a few minutes, the incomparable historian Bill Bryk, cartoonists Russell Christian and Mike Wartella, Alison Wohl, Andy Krents, Susan Belair, an Inside contingent (Michael Hirschorn, Whitney Joiner, David Carr and his wife Jill), Edie Winograde, Doug Henwood (who admitted he prefers writing for New York Press over certain other publications), George Szamuely, Melik Kaylan, Jon Corzine, Jonathan Kalb, Alan Cabal, J.R. Taylor, Colin Robinson, James Taranto, John Fund, Ted Ryan, C.J. Sullivan, Chelsea Clinton, Andy Wang, Amy Sohn, Sue Mann, Lorne Manly, Mistress Ruby, Hadassah Lieberman and Steven and Rhonda Robinson. I'm told both Taki and Tuli Kupferberg were on the premises?probably at opposite ends of the hall?but I missed them both.
It's possible that some New York writers also attended, but most of that staff is invisible to me anyway. And with good reason, considering the journalistic equivalent of Wal-Mart wine that's printed weekly in the lifestyle journal. Consider this sentence by Tara Mandy in the Oct. 9 issue, tucked away in the "Gotham Real Estate" section. Writing about a 1700-square-foot co-op on N. Moore St. that recently sold for $765,000, Mandy's compelled to add: "It's also on the hippest street in TriBeCa [that's the idiotic way of spelling the neighborhood's name], near John F. Kennedy Jr.'s old loft, in a converted warehouse that now houses six apartments."
No knock on N. Moore?Walker's pub is a downtown institution?but do you think this quiet, short block would be considered Tribeca's "hippest" if starfucker Mandy wasn't ghoulishly fascinated by the fact that Kennedy once lived there?
I'm always happy to see friends from the New Criterion at our parties?media writer James Bowman nails Washington Post hack Howard Kurtz in this October's issue?but Criterion managing editor Roger Kimball published a very disturbing essay last week in The Wall Street Journal called "The Case for Censorship." Jeepers creepers. Kimball's supposed to be one of the smart fellows, as opposed to a prig like Mark Crispin Miller, whom I'll get to shortly.
Kimball wrote: "In any event, there are plenty of reasons to support government censorship when it comes to depictions of sex and violence. For one thing, it would encourage the entertainment industry to turn out material that is richer erotically... It is fashionable today to decry the old Hollywood code that proscribed showing even a married couple together in a double bed. But what a goad to the imagination and cleverness that code turned out to be!"
Hey Rog, spare me the sparkly justifications for a First Amendment-massacre and just join Al, Tipper, Jann and Joey on their crusade to cleanse the entertainment industry. When Ricky and Lucy slept in separate beds on tv in the 50s, it was insulting and unrealistic. And when the Rolling Stones weren't allowed to sing the correct lyrics to "Let's Spend the Night Together" on Ed Sullivan's show in the mid-60s, and the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" was banned by hundreds of radio stations, it was plainly incomprehensible.
Miller, a professor at New York University, and a self-proclaimed expert on the evils of media consolidation, wrote, for FEED on Oct. 4, an instantly dated piece about last week's presidential debate. It goes without saying that Miller trashed George Bush, but that's par for the course among academics and journalists. What really rankled me was the following insane thought (who said LSD was out of style with baby boomers?) about the Democratic nominee. "With his large, level gaze and air of bronzed self-confidence," high-as-a-kite Miller wrote, "and with his (seemingly) masterful serenity in marshalling all those facts and figures, Al Gore came across a bit like You-Know-Who in that TV debate of forty years ago. Gore also showed a brilliant knack for shafting his opponent without saying anything that sounded mean?a lot like JFK, who also flayed his adversary imperceptibly."
Miller also screwed up on a basic fact?he said Gore was older than Bush?but then I imagine the factcheckers at FEED aren't up to the standards of The Nation, a more typical venue for the nutty professor.
(As James Ledbetter, happily departed to England, might say, full-disclosure time: Miller was a teaching assistant at Johns Hopkins when I was a freshman there. Once, during a Victorian literature class, he made fun of a classmate who, in deconstructing a famous poem of the era, used the word "fornicate," instead of a more colloquial term. Miller sniffed and said, "They were fucking, okay," while my Texan friend's face turned redder than Bill Clinton's nose.)
Miller's inability to judge a debate was maddening, but no more so than Al Franken's article "Is Bush Dumb?" in the Oct. 26 issue of Rolling Stone. Franken, of course, ranks about as low on the comedians' reservation (uh-oh, I can see the smoke signals coming this way) as Billy Crystal right now, but RS' Jann Wenner, a Gore sycophant?must be that "bronzed self-confidence"?is a fan. Yet the hobbyist liberal, who helped make Rush Limbaugh even more famous than he already was, screwed up in the lead paragraph of his paint-by-numbers piece. Franken writes: "September 12 was a bad day for George W. Bush. That was the day the New York Times revealed that a Republican ad attacking Gore-Lieberman contained a single frame that said RATS. It was also the day a story broke that Gail Sheehy's upcoming Vanity Fair article would speculate that Bush is dyslexic."
Not that Rolling Stone or Franken would care to honestly bash Bush, but as most of the political world knows, Fox News' Tony Snow first "revealed," jokingly, that the ad bore a frame reading "RATS" for 1/30th of a second. The Times, two weeks later, after being fed the story by the Gore campaign, had wormboy-in-chief Richard Berke front-page a piece on the same subject. As for Gail Sheehy, while I'm sure Franken would rather fuck her than merely fornicate with her, her error-laden Vanity Fair hit-job was discredited upon publication. I guess it didn't help that many a newspaper made great sport of reporting that Sheehy's been a donor to several Democratic candidates, and so maybe wasn't really the "objective journalist" that she claims to be.
In fact, I was surprised that Miller, Franken and Sheehy weren't among the handful of protesters in front of Cartier last Saturday afternoon, handing out leaflets about the "conflict diamonds" the 5th Ave. jeweler apparently sells. My suspicion is that both Franken and Sheehy (not to mention Elton John and Barbra Streisand) are Cartier regulars, so their participation might've been a little awkward, but Junior and MUGGER III were certainly confused by the angry ladies shoving pamphlets in their faces.
It was an extraordinary autumn day in the city, and the three of us enjoyed walking around uptown, especially making a stop at the boys' favorite Sabrett vendor across from the Peninsula Hotel on 55th St. My bennie in the uptown excursion was finally getting a new eyeglasses prescription filled at Leonard Opticians, where my friend Brian Bennett inserted the new lenses in double time. The boys both bragged how they'd never have to wear glasses, the fact that all six of my family members and most of Mrs. M's have less-than-perfect eyesight being lost on them.
My prediction that they'd both be visiting an optometrist by the age of 15 fell on ears as deaf as those of R.W. Apple Jr., the New York Times pundit who's at a point in his life where he should give up the charade of covering politics and retire to a community where he can wolf down those 5 p.m. dinner specials designed for "seniors." On Oct. 8, Apple wrote a piece declaring that George Bush hasn't a prayer of carrying Pennsylvania, without even mentioning the fact that Rick Santorum, the incumbent GOP senator who's more conservative than his party's presidential nominee, is now holding steady with a double-digit poll lead over challenger Ron Klink.
Apple writes: "Mr. Bush faces a steep uphill fight here. One respected poll shows him 12 percentage points behind, and another puts him 4 back. Most professionals sense that the real margin must be in between." Could be, but would it be asking too much for Apple to name that "respected" poll, so readers could judge for themselves?
Similarly, on Oct. 7 in the Times, Katharine Q. Seelye writes a misleading opener to her article "Gore Campaign Sees Florida as Ripe for the Picking." We'll leave alone the GOP's contention that Bush is almost out of the woods?finally, Brother Jeb?in that state, feeling increasingly confident they'll capture the 25 essential electoral votes.
Seelye, on cue from Gore goofballs like press secretary Chris Lehane, who said on Sunday that Bush "thus far, has not met the Quayle standard," isn't doing her homework. She writes: "The 'magic place' that Vice President Al Gore was talking about today was Walt Disney world, but in political terms, it could easily have been the state of Florida, which is becoming increasingly central to a strategy that his campaign believes could give him a landslide victory in November."
Landslide? What, is this the election of 1996? I think it's 50-50 right now between Bush and Gore, but there ain't no landslide?Electoral College or popular vote?in sight. Like Apple, Seelye cites "polls," but doesn't name which ones. For all I know, she relies on Newsweek's numbers.
I did get a kick out of a Times full-page ad for its website in the Oct. 16 New York, which featured a large three-word headline: "Mind Altering Substance." Truth, in such a precious commodity at the elite media's newspaper of record, does exist after all. And, I must admit, I found a splendid column by Clyde Haberman in the Oct. 4 Times, ridiculing the notion, still dreamily invoked by nostalgists like Jack Newfield, Jim Brady and Pete Hamill, of a "Subway Series." After pointing out that a mere 25 percent of Shea and Yankee Stadiums' patrons arrive at the parks via mass transit, Haberman comes up with the following gem, perhaps the smartest comment I've read in the Times all year.
He wrote: "Consider this example of local fandom. At Shea Stadium last week, a man was charged with throwing a bottle at John Rocker, the pitcher with the famously big mouth. Accompanying this fellow, and also charged in the incident, was a friend, Brian C. Peterson. Mr. Peterson, you will recall, is that fine young man who did prison time for manslaughter after dumping his newborn son in a trash bin. What, the comedian Chris Rock said the other night, are we supposed to think about a guy who can't forgive John Rocker for saying stupid stuff but has no problem hanging out with a baby-killer?"
Finally, a word on wildly fluctuating polls this past week. It says something that when Gore said his uncle was gassed in WWI that reporters scurried to the Internet to find out if that claim was actually true.
What else accounts for the turnaround (which, admittedly, may prove fleeting)?
1. Voters realize that Gore is an untrustworthy asshole.
2. Dick Cheney clobbered yes-man Joe Lieberman in their debate last Thursday night. Cheney acted like a real partner to Bush; Lieberman was whiny and tinny, and spent most of his time thanking Gore for the opportunity to run on a national ticket.
3. The comfort level with Bush has increased.
4. The current instability of the financial markets isn't favorable to Gore.
?
Once again, the success of the "Best of" party was due to weeks of planning by a number of New York Press staff members, including Alex Schweitzer, Robynne Carroll, Chris Carbone, Ann Marie Collins, John Baxter and Orianne Cosentino. As a benefit of being the boss of this tight-knit operation, my only function was to show up on time, and I'm grateful to the staff who did the actual work. I'm not so mired in middle age that I forget the days back in Baltimore when Alan Hirsch and I would lug bags of ice to the office, buy chickens and seafood at dawn at the Cross Street Market in South Baltimore, run out for pizza at Bella Roma when the catered food was depleted and check off RSVPs at the door. It's a tribute to those involved in organizing this project from start to finish that the event was such a success.
OCTOBER 9
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