|
Clymer Blows His Cover!
Now we know: Bush had him pegged. |
|||
Posted Monday, September 11, 2000 New York Times reporter Adam Clymer buried the lede in his Sunday "Week in Review" essay addressing the issue of what it was like to be called a "major league asshole" by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. For most of the piece, Clymer adopts a humble "I'm-just-a-reporter" pose, blinking shyly in the glare of the spotlight. "I tried to fade into the background," he notes, "which is how newspaper reporters try to work." He's surprised when "the lenses were on me, not [GOP candidate Dick Cheney]." Being attacked by the powerful, Clymer contends, is just part of his job. Here he's not so humble, boasting that he was once beaten by a Communist mob in Moscow and clocked by one of Sheriff Jim Clark's deputies in Selma, Ala. He notes that he "never made the Nixon enemies list," a bit of modesty so false he immediately suggests he should have made the list. Clymer's intended, on-the-surface message: I've been assaulted by better thugs than you, George W! If Bush took umbrage at his article about health care in Texas, "Hey, it's a free country. After all, if newspaper reporters wanted to be loved ..." This seemingly thick-skinned swagger doesn't stop Clymer from zinging Bush for not apologizing, however ("I had not heard from him, or his aides."). The unintended message, of course, is that--as Slate's Timothy Noah guessed--Clymer was clearly delighted, not "disappointed," in Bush's attack, just as he would have liked to have made the Nixon enemies list. But wait. In the second to last paragraph, Clymer confesses to something. "About 18 months ago," he says, he was editing an article on Bush's efforts to study up on the issues. "With feeble gallows humor, I suggested that perhaps he needed the tutorials more than others." Then, "a spectacular typesetting blunder got my wisecrack printed." In a subsequent editor's note, the "Times apologized, sort of."
Clymer doesn't say exactly what his "wisecrack" was--to
find out, you have to dig out the original article, which
was published on March 15, 1999, under the bylines of
Richard L. Berke and Rick Lyman. Regarding Bush's policy
studies, the article says, "Politicians in both parties
said they had never seen such a comprehensive and elaborate
undertaking, particularly this early in a campaign." Then,
it adds:
Clymer's buried confession--when supplemented by the actual sentence he inserted--accomplishes two things. First, it more or less shows he really is hostile to Bush. Now we know what he thinks; he thinks Bush is unqualified. That's fine--it's a free country! But then Clymer shouldn't pose as a humble, open-minded reporter who will "sometimes vote" Republican and is therefore shocked and "disappointed" by Bush's criticism. Second, it shows, contrary to expectations, that Bush's personal criticism was fully justified. Imagine that you were running for president, and somebody stuck a snide remark like that in the news section of the most influential paper in America. You'd call the person who did it an "asshole"! Of course Clymer isn't really an asshole--and he may be right about Bush--but it's a bit much to expect Bush to take that into account. He had been provoked. And to think, everyone assumed that Bush was reacting only to Clymer's health-care reporting and his snotty little box about the GOP prescription drug ad! Clymer's confession also raises the question: What else are the Times editors writing in that secret font that isn't supposed to be printed? Wouldn't it be useful for readers if this exegesis were published along with the official, sanitized text? Certainly it would be more honest, and more informative, than the phony "just a reporter" pose of traditional Timesmen like Clymer. [How would Bush have known it was Clymer who stuck in the offending sentence?--Ed. Bush would logically have complained to Berke, or someone else at the Times, and they might have defended themselves by fingering Clymer. Or someone could have leaked the Bushies a printout of the Times file complete with the internal annotations. When I was at Newsweek during the 1988 election, the Bush camp spent a surprising amount of energy trying to figure out which of the magazine's editors was behind a cover line that used the word "Wimp." You'd think it would be beneath a presidential candidate to care, but it's not.] P.S.: Clymer also dismisses the Weekly Standard, which apparently once criticized him, as "from the ideological fringes." More proof, if you needed it, that in Clymer's head traditional reporting, Times style, means not "objective" disinterestedness but rather reporting from the established, responsible center--and that what Clymer regards as the responsible center is a bit to the left of what others may regard as the responsible center. (I don't agree with much of what's in the Standard, but I don't think Kristol & Company are ideological nutcases who can simply be disregarded.) New E-mail service: Sign up, using the ListBot gizmo below, and you will be notified by e-mail whenever there's a new item on kausfiles.com. [Note: this service is free. You'll be asked a couple of demographic questions; if you find them annoying just leave them unanswered.] | ||||
|
Recently archived:
Gore vs. the Mysterious Forces
The trouble with the Democrats' Shrumarama in L.A..
Cheney: Cheerleader for OPEC
Let those Yankees in key Midwest battleground states freeze in the dark!
Bush and Cheney: The Secret Transcripts
Crock of Goldstein
WaPo welfare reporter falls for Brookings spin, and worse.
The Real Hillary Scandal
Mr. and Mrs. Clinton forgot to get their stories straight.
The Gift of Nader
Gore could use a rival on his left.
Rehnquist's Scandalous Shmatte
Did he deduct that $30,000 robe?
What's He Hiding?
Notes toward a unified Bush theory.
Special Re-Flogging Edition
More on WaPo's hypocritical critic.
CBS's Defective Defector
60 Minutes adopts Internet news standards.
Looking for Mr. Good Death
Mickey's Assignment Desk #8.
Another Greenhouse Effect
Resurgence of "labor resurgence" stories puzzles experts.
Crosswired Politics
Why the parties are trading places on some issues.
The Toobin Crisis, Day 141
Ann Godoff vs. Charles Peters.
The Purnick Platform
The new NYT lets it all hang out.
Run, Peggy, Run!
The best anti-Hillary candidate.
Kuttner's Poor Statistics
Have child poverty rates 'scarcely moved'?
Drew's Cluelessness
Please don't let her anywhere near the First Amendment.
Why Gore Won't Pick Richardson
An impolite thought ....
How Convenient!
Now McCain tells us.
Now She's Done It
Maybe that nice centrist Mrs. Clinton really is against welfare reform.
Pardon Our Reporting
Clinton left the door wide open!
Elian: An Overlooked Angle?
Castro did Clinton a big favor last year.
Boomers Against Death
The shift against the death penalty isn't necessarily a shift to the left.
The Perfect Campaign
All e-mail, all the time!
No Justice, No Paez
The LAT and 'judicial activism.'
Kausfiles Battles for the Vital Center!
Why Bush has plenty of time to reposition himself.
Clean Sheets
The case for selling the Lincoln Bedroom.
Don't Push It, Hillary
Plus: kausfiles moves its cheese!
Faster Politics
Why 'momentum' ain't what it used to be.
Jeffrey Toobin, Chicken!
Fifth of a series.
Hillary's Shocking Truth
Plus: the Nissan Cojones Watch.
Hit Poems
A kausfiles contest.
Gore's Press Problem
Plus: How he blew his chance for a New Hampshire knockout.
Bush Knows What "Regatta" Means
Bradley's SATS; the media's moodswing; the neolibs' nightmare.
Jeffrey Toobin, Hypocrite, Part III!
How dare Isikoff write a book, says Toobin in his book.
Not Gotcha
Why Gore's gay flip was a genuine gaffe.
Pay Up, Shrum!
Litmus test flip-flop smoking gun.
Jeffrey Toobin, Hypocrite
'Tawdry voyeurism,' anyone?
Cuomo Family Values
Did Mario raise his son to be Hillary's Boy?
DeParle Gets Half the Story
The NYT doesn't tell us what we need to know about Milwaukee's poor.
Bill Clinton Wants You on Welfare!
Is this the dole administration after all?
The Pornographer Who Didn't Bark
Why wouldn't Flynt bust Newt?
Yes, There Are Easy Answers!
The NYT and WaPo find a quick fix for affirmative action.
Who Stole Nissan's Cojones?
Jerry Hirshberg'a got a lot of ... chutzpah!
Doesn't Anyone Want to Be Famous?
The political opportunity of a lifetime.
The Ending of the Black
Underclass, Part XVIII
African-American welfare receipt falls to new low.
Just Buzz Me!
Synergy City! Harvey Weinstein plans a TV show based on Talk.
Is Daniel Patrick Moynihan the
Devil? A review of the evidence to date.
Harvey Scores Again! An
exciting new Talk contest.
Is It Over? Clinton's Pathetic
Second Term Revealing the one Big Thing he still might accomplish.
Maybe Bush Didn't Snort
Coke -- Maybe He Dropped Acid! One solution to the Bush drug mystery.
George Bush, Drug Pioneer?
Bush's pharmacological time-line seems a little ... out of the mainstream.
Will Tina Fire Lucinda? Talk and truth.
Copyright 2000 Mickey Kaus.
|