Times Doesn't Relent
KIND OF A dead zone this week, on the subject of politics, since by the time most of those inclined to read this column get to it the results of the election will (presumably) be decided, and the New York Times will either shut down for a day of mourning or declare a national holiday.
According to the gossip column, Heinz let his lazy imagination do the talking by telling Philadelphia magazine that President Bush was a "cokehead." Strictly recycled dirt, that one, but the following comment is sure to be remembered in any future campaign: "One of the things I've noticed is the Israel lobby-the treatment of Israel as the 51st state, sort of a swing state."
Maybe that's the sort of diplomacy Kerry's had in mind this past year when accusing President Bush of alienating the rest of the world (while ignoring the fact that the rest of the world is trying to live in the United States).
Meanwhile, the Times' Thomas Friedman is desperately trying to show he's as out of touch as some of his colleagues on the op-ed page. Friedman's traditional view of Israel's own war on terrorism is mushy to the point of incoherence, but, as opposed to Paul Krugman, he attempts to portray a moderate voice (which is utterly anachronistic at the 21st-century Times). But even let's-all-get-along self-proclaimed experts are susceptible to the anti-Republican virus that's infested not only the Times' haunted headquarters but the Manhattan cocktail circuit as well.
Friedman's Halloween essay was not a parody, I fear, but rather a sign of upcoming dementia. The well-traveled columnist/Saudi diplomat decides, in retrospect, that President Bush's father wasn't such a bad egg after all-not that he or his employers said so at the time, eagerly embracing Bill Clinton's catastrophically cavalier foreign policy-and that Kerry would be a worthy heir of the 41st president.
Friedman's not known for stylish writing, as he proves with his opening: "Columnists for this newspaper are not allowed to endorse presidential candidates. [Why not insult the intelligence of his readers, as if anyone doesn't know who Krugman, Dowd, Herbert, Kristof, Brooks and Safire prefer.] But I think this election is so important, I am going to break the rules. I hope I don't get fired. But here goes: I am endorsing George Bush for president. No, no-not George W. Bush. I am endorsing his father-George Herbert Walker Bush."
That passes for humor in the Friedman playbook, which makes me think that even Kerry would be better company at a ballgame than jolly old Tom. He praises "41" for raising taxes, but reserves special accolades for the elder Bush's skill at building foreign alliances. "Mr. Bush chose not to invade Baghdad in 1991. Right or wrong [wrong, and one of the reasons the GOP stayed at home in November of '92], he felt that had he tried, he would have lost the coalition he had built up to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He obviously believed that the U.S. should never invade an Arab capital without a coalition that contained countries whose support mattered in that part of the world, such as France, Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia."
Friedman apparently wishes upon a lucky star that the country could go back to an era when the World Trade Center was still part of the NYC skyline. That kind of thinking, if taken seriously by politicians, is far more dangerous than Krugman's paranoid rants about taxes, a Bush draft and stolen elections.
Sox in '05
IT WOULD BE impolite to gloat over the Red Sox's historic dismantling of the Yankee dynasty earlier this month-except to mention that A-Fraud is a total asshole, demonstrated in the ALCS by swatting a ball out of Bronson Arroyo's hand at a crucial moment in the 6th game-and besides, I feel a bit bad for the vendors outside Yankee Stadium who are left with a surplus of "1918!" t-shirts.
During the day on Oct. 27, before the Sox's last game with the Cards, who lay down for Boston like a minor-league affiliate of the Devil Rays, a number of friends and correspondents wondered how I'd celebrate if the team actually swept the World Series. One of my buddies, like thousands of fans, planned to drape a Sox t-shirt over his father's grave. There was no doubt about my own reaction-after sweating every single strike in the bottom of the ninth-and with Nicky sitting by my side watching the tube, it unfolded just as I thought. As the Sox mobbed the field, I simply heaved an immense sigh of relief and flashed a smile as wide as Mike Moore's well-nourished belly.
During the commercials that interrupted the post-game show-I now know the Fox fall lineup by heart, losing several hundred brain cells in the process, although I am hankering for some Emerald Nuts-the mind inevitably wandered and flashed back, sometimes just for seconds, to past Red Sox games.
Nicky's 12, and like his 10-year-old brother Booker, won't have to follow baseball each season wondering whether the Sox will win it all in his lifetime. I don't think he fully appreciates that, but what the hell. In describing the Sox-Cards Series of 1967, when I was also 12, Nicky was mystified as he learned that kids actually brought transistor radios (a foreign term, perhaps as strange as Israel's importance to the U.S. is to Chris Heinz) to school since the games started in daytime. Adding that I'd race home to catch the latter innings on the family's black and white tv just furthered his notion that Dad's a golden oldie Boomer.
That year of Yaz and Jim Lonborg and the unbearable tragedy that struck the late Tony Conigliaro-on his way to the Hall of Fame before poor Jack Hamilton mistakenly beaned him one August night-didn't qualify as a classic Sox choke for several reasons. First, they'd finished in ninth place the year before, won the pennant on the last day of the season and were making their first Series appearance since 1946. They lost in seven games and I just figured a title would soon be on its way. In fact, unlike the Cubs, the franchise that sportswriters stupidly lump with the Sox as "lovable losers," Boston has rarely fielded a bad team ever since that year.
And in 1975, when Jim Rice and Luis Tiant made headlines and helped the Sox sweep the despised Oakland A's in the playoffs, I was a junior in college and saw Carlton Fisk's extra-inning homer in the campus bar (the drinking age was 18 back then and you could have a smoke with a beer inside) and when the team blew it in the final game I wasn't too bummed, since it was a terrific season. Three years later, watching the Bucky Dent homer on a large-screen tv in a dive bar in Baltimore was a hint of future frustration, but still not devastating.
Speeding things up, some of my younger friends and relatives were inconsolable last year when Aaron Boone went deep on Tim Wakefield in the seventh game of the ALCS, sending the Yanks to doom against the Florida Marlins. I was disappointed, muttered a few words that are unprintable, flipped off the tube and went to bed. It just didn't compare to 1986, the ultimate Red Sox choke (now rivaled only by the Yanks' experience this year), when I watched the ugliness unfold alone in a Baltimore apartment that Oct. 25 and fielded post-midnight calls from New Yorkers. It was only the sixth game, and theoretically the Sox still had a shot against the Mets but everyone knew it was over.
So now the Curse is reversed-it officially happened on July 31 when the disgruntled and injured Nomar Garciaparra was dispatched to the Cubs-and unlike the countless inane stories suggesting that Bosox fans will be at wits end, unable to flash their masochism, I'm of a different mind. Sure, the off-season will be more pleasant, but I'm looking forward to a new Sox dynasty, and suspect that the team's brilliant GM Theo Epstein (a Kerry supporter, but what the hell, baseball and politics don't mix) is going to remake the team once again. Pedro Martinez will find a mango tree somewhere out west, head-case Derek Lowe goes to Detroit or Baltimore, Jason Varitek stays put and the bidding war for Carl Pavano and Tim Hudson against George Steinbrenner will soon begin.