Disgrace and irresponsibility

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


Last Friday, The New York Times led the way in publishing information about a secret government program “to investigate and track terrorists that relies on a vast international database that includes Americans’ banking transactions.”

On Monday, in Washington, President Bush said the disclosure was “disgraceful.”

Saying such a thing is, of course, irresponsible. It is not a heinous irresponsibility, though Mr. Bush has proven himself capable of that level of irresponsibility (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”) There never was a president who didn’t seek to politicize the media, when it suited that president’s agenda and political needs. Labeling the press as irresponsible is a way of life in the government-media relationship. It’s the same as saying to the cop who is giving you the speeding ticket, “Don’t you have criminals to chase?”

It doesn’t hurt, though, to point out this mild presidential irresponsibility, when it happens. Like a bad writer with a metaphor, President Bush will beat a media disgrace to death, with a certain constituency latching on to the irrelevance like bulldogs, as Ann Coulter’s rise this week to the top of the best-seller list proves.

Presidents when they say these sorts of things are being irresponsible to the basic fabric of the republic. Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States, had disagreeable things to say about the media, but he also understood the reality.

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people,” he wrote, in 1787, “the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Interesting that Jefferson wrote this in January, 1787, several months before the convening of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. It illuminates a basic truth about freedom of the press in America, that would become spelled out so clearly in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Abbreviated to the business at hand, the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” The key word in the amendment is “abridging,” which means “to reduce in scope; to shorten in duration or extent.”

Its presence in the First Amendment meant the founding fathers must have understood that freedom of the press already existed in America. Freedom of the press predated the Constitution, which simply confirmed its eminence as a cornerstone in a free society.

That is awesome power, and yes, the power has been abused, and the abuses have been met with correction, both in the courts and in the court of public opinion. The basic power remains unchanged, and as eminent a cornerstone of American society as was confirmed in 1787 and 1789.

The failure of a president of the United States to acknowledge that power, and its role in the society and its governance, is irresponsible. Mundanely so, perhaps, but always worth noting. Mr. Bush, particularly, would serve himself well to embrace that reality, instead of looking for paths around it. There are no paths around the role of the American press. If he understood that, he would know that a program the size of tracking international financial transactions would not remain a secret for long, and he could plan accordingly, on the basis of our government being an opinion of the people.

The truth about Paris

I look at Paris Hilton and can’t for the life of me understand what people find so exciting about her.

Paris Hilton looks at a picture of me and says there is not a single reason on earth why she should try to excite me.

Her view is closer to the truth than mine.

Sigh. I live in an old world. My biggest entertainment excitement of the summer is wondering if the CBS Evening News will start showing car commercials when Katie Couric takes the anchor seat in September. It would be the first time since 1993 that the advertising world believes I might actually be interested in buying something you can’t find in a drugstore.

Paris isn’t the narcissistic one. Well, yes she is. Narcissism is her business, and she is very good at it. She was shopping in New York City not long ago, trying on shoes, and one pair she was looking at cost $1,000. She argued to the management that she should be given the shoes, because when others saw her wearing them, they would come in and buy a pair, too. For the $1,000 investment, they might get $15,000 back. They gave her the shoes.

But in our unique relationship, Paris isn’t the narcissistic one; I am. Mine is a narcissism of time and place. The time I was 15, or 20, or 25, was the best time in all of history to be 15, 20, or 25, and if everyone understood that, what a wonderful world it would be.

I need to go sit in a large mall for a couple of hours every day, until I reach a point where I can acknowledge that youth has changed. I just need to let go of June Allyson, Phyllis Thaxter, Donna Reed, Wanda Hendrix and even Jean Arthur, as the femme for whom the hero eventually falls. June Allyson sets a good example. June Allyson has grown up; the last time I saw her on a screen, she was selling incontinence apparel.

I need to follow her lead, start to live in 2006, and let Paris be Paris. Matt Leinart has fallen for her, and he certainly is not George Gipp or Monty Stratton or Glenn Miller or an F-86 Sabre fighter pilot with seven kills over Korea. Matt Leinart, falling for Phyllix Thaxter? I need to give myself a break. In a recent Sunday supplement magazine, some fossil in his own recliner at home took a big gulp off his oxygen bottle and wrote Walter Scott’s Personality Parade, wondering, “Why would quarterback Matt Leinart, the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, who is going to make millions playing for the Arizona Cardinals, hook up with a total airhead like Paris Hilton?” Walter’s reply: “Because he likes tall blondes and L.A.’s club scene. Next question?”

Thank you, Walter. Your answer was like a pail of cold water thrown in my face. Mattworld and Parisville are not strange places at all, in 2006. I am the one who is strange. I am the anomaly, not Paris.

The mall looks so strange to me because I am the only one sitting on the lip of the planter box with my bermudas buttoned at my waist, the hems above my knees, my shirt cut to fit my size, my baseball cap on frontwards, no tattoo on my body, and my cellphone on the kitchen counter at home. From my narcissist 1959 fortress I will peer through a portal at 2006 for an hour today, maybe a little longer tomorrow, and when I am finished I will go over to Marie Callendar’s for a martini and some oatmeal.

An Ann Coulter opportunity

Reading Ann Coulter reminds me of watching MTV. I didn’t want to watch MTV, but I felt like I had to, because when my kids were 10 and 15, it was a way to find out what was going on in their world.

Ann Coulter’s point of view is way too out of balance to the right to interest me as reading material, but it would be a way to find out what is going on in that world. She enjoys quite a constituency, I am told, and based on what she is writing and they are buying lately, that world is worth keeping an eye on.

I won’t read her if I don’t have to, and apparently there are sufficient reviewers, critics and other political writers to do that heavy work for me. In several places this past week I have seen reviews and commentary on what Coulter has to say, in her new book, about women who lost their husbands in the Sept. 11 attacks.

“These broads are millionaires,” she writes, “lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.”

She says that like it is a bad thing.

By coincidence, last night on television was a 1990s docudrama (based on real events) about a woman whose husband is killed and her son gravely wounded in December, 1993, by a man walking down the aisle of a Long Island commuter train, firing randomly from a 15-round assault weapon.

At the instant their names are known, the widow-mom, whose name is Carolyn McCarthy, becomes a celebrity. The movie makes a point of the media following her everywhere. She resists her celebrity, insisting she be allowed to focus on her grief, and her son’s survival and, later (she is a nurse), his recovery. She refuses entreaties to become part of a movement to get a bill through Congress banning 19 types of assault weapons.

Finally, though, confronted by the damage a single crazed person can do, when he is armed with an assault weapon, she joins the movement, lobbies hard for it in congressional corridors, lobbies and offices, and uses her celebrity – she is no fool – at every media opportunity. The bill passes. Later it is repealed, by – the movie maintains – Republican legislators lobbied hard by the National Rifle Association.

The movie ends with McCarthy switching parties, from Republican to Democrat, running for Congress against an incumbent Republican, and winning. McCarthy is now in her fourth term in the House of Representatives. Among her honors: Newsday's 100 Long Island Influentials, Long Island Business News' Long Island Top 50, Congressional Quarterly's 50 Most Effective Legislators, Redbook Magazine's Mothers and Shakers, Ladies' Home Journal 100 Most Important Women, and Advertising Age's list of "Most Impact by Women in 1999," and The American Organization of Nurse Executives' 2003 Honorary Member Award. McCarthy’s son, Kevin, is married and has two children.

Watching the credits roll, I felt like I had just been reading about her. It was the Coulter quote. Carolyn McCarthy’s profile matches those of the Sept. 11 widow-moms. The way their husbands died made them all instant celebrities, stalked by grief-arrazis, and lionized on TV. They may not have liked it, but there was nothing they could do about it except beg to be left alone.

At that point, they had a choice: sink, or rise. All bereaved people, whether celebrities or anonymous (beloved husband and father, maintenance supervisor, dies of prostate cancer), arrive at that choice. Most choose to rise, move on, find a new life where waits meaning and enjoyment of some kind. I have made that trip myself in the last six years, and I can tell you, it is the only way to go. I have emerged into a life that is overflowing with meaning and enjoyment.

Celebrities of the McCarthy and Sept. 11 caliber are, by their circumstances, automatically anointed with power. It is their choice to let that power sink, or rise. McCarthy chose rise, and so did the Sept. 11 women that Coulter mentions: Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Patty Casazza, all from New Jersey (Coulter lumps them as “The Witches of East Brunswick”), all familiar in D.C. politics now for advocacy and accountability related to the way their husbands died. Karen, my wife, makes a point worth considering: it is not the women, but their power, that Coulter attacks.

Would they prefer to be home with their husbands? Ask any Sept. 11 survivor: it is a moot point. This world is this world, and in it, you sink, or you rise. Coulter’s business model is so well-known, like MTV’s – be outrageous, sell product – that her words about the widows lose meaning in their transparency, at least out here in Balanceville. This blog is not about her. It is an opportunity provided by her, for a survivors proxy to give a nod to all survivors who choose to rise, that is too good to pass up.

Katie at CBS

When the public knows what the media knows, and the media knows it, then the equation will start to change.


Some people love Katie Couric, some people can’t stand her.

In my opinion, she is a regular person with very good news sense, and a totally commercial personality. Most of all, she is a gamer. A gamer is a player who always shows up when the chips are down. Joe Montana was a gamer. Reggie Jackson was a gamer. Tony Gwynn was a gamer.

A gamer in television news who is also a totally commercial personality is worth her weight in gold. If Katie weighs 130 pounds, and gold is $650 an ounce, Katie in gold is worth $1,352,000, a month, which is just about what CBS is paying her to become anchor of the Evening News, which is just about right. CBS isn’t paying her all that money because some people love her. CBS just wants the Evening News to improve in the ratings, so advertisers will pay more, and CBS and National Amusements will make more money.

It’s always all about money. If the criterion is content, or meaning to the world, The Today Show essentially is insignificant. If the criterion is money, The Today Show is the most lucrative programming on television, and that’s what made Katie so valuable. We can just be grateful she’s also a gamer. I’ll bet there isn’t a newspaper publisher in the country who wouldn’t pay an arm and a leg (somewhere in the middle-upper five figures, in newspaper values) to have a Katie Couric clone covering City Hall.

The CBS Evening News will be different with Katie as anchor. At least it better be. Having Katie Couric read news is like having Greg Maddux pitch batting practice. She is going to be an interviewer as well as an anchor, and she will be reporting live a lot, both hard and soft news, even the very soft but compelling stories that Charles Kuralt used to find. I can’t see this new show being contained to a half-hour. I wonder if the CBS Evening News will be expanded to an hour and become a fusion of the old Evening News, the Jim Lehrer News Hour without the propriety, and “On the Road.”

CBS has to figure out a legitimate way to keep Katie’s totally commercial personality on the field. That is where her everyday value is. Being a gamer is great, but a gamer shows up only in the really great games, and there aren’t too many of those in the daily news, thank God. If CBS is going to get its bang for the buck, she is going to have to emerge, somehow, in the viewer’s mind as “America’s Evening News Sweetheart,” highly likeable, highly mobile, highly diversified, and highly respected. God help them if they advertise her that way, but that is the end effect of putting all her skills to use, as ways to maximize ratings, which is the only thing that matters.