But “The Million Mom March was conceived last August in a gay resort community by a Hillary Clinton donor who’s never organized anything larger than a Democratic senator’s office” doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?
And why should ABC, NBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times be expected to know any of this? Just because half her surname might have rung a vague bell is no reason to leap to conclusions and assume she’s connected with Susan Thomases—any more than it would be wise to assume from the other half of her name that she’s related to Rick Dees and his Cast of Idiots, whose “Disco Duck” was a Number One hit in 1976.
But, speaking of Casts of Idiots, what about CBS? By now, you may be curious about that “part-time job,” as NBC coyly referred to it. A couple of waitressing shifts? A little secretarial work for the school district?
No, Donna is a part-time publicist for David Letterman’s Late Show.
Before that, she was a full-time publicist for CBS news anchor Dan Rather.
CBS This Morning, which is part of the same news division as Dan’s nightly broadcast, was one of the first news shows to report the Million Mom March movement last September, when Hattie Kauffman interviewed Donna.
“What,” asked Hattie, “turns a mild-mannered suburban mom into an anti-gun activist?”
The correct answer is: “A leave of absence from my employer, CBS, which, by remarkable coincidence, is also your employer, Hattie.”
But that’s not what Donna said. Only in the last week has CBS News begun disclosing that she’s one of theirs. As to Ms. Dees-Thomases’ work for those two Dem senators, not one U.S. newspaper or TV network has mentioned them, with the exception of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel. Mr. Murdoch, as we know, is a malign influence seeking to use his media outlets to further his sinister personal agenda.
Try it the other way round: “Barbara Bush was a typical Maine housewife with no interest in politics until she decided to start Housewives for Massive Tax Cuts. ‘As a typical housewife,’ she says, ‘I know what it’s like when an ordinary working stiff like George comes home every night and says, Geez, Barb. Not Cheez-In-A-Can on a second-hand Pop Tart again.’”
Or: “Canada’s Moms for Monarchy Movement was conceived last August by Elizabeth Windsor, a typical mother of four struggling to balance the needs of her family with the pressures of work. Liz, who’s never organized anything larger than a Royal Tour, says she’d always been too busy signing bills into law and giving Throne Speeches to pay much attention to constitutional matters.”
Every year, tens of thousands of pro-life women descend on Washington on the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. And every year they’re buried at the foot of the “Local News Briefs” on page E29. When you remark on the contrast between their perennial obscurity and the delirious coverage of the Milling Mall Moms, the news honchos say, “Ah, well. That’s because the Million Moms are so much more media-savvy.”
What kind of kinky post-modern response is that? Don’t worry, we’re not biased, we’re just easily manipulated, and who better to manipulate us than Dan Rather’s press agent?
I believe Dan when he says “liberal media bias” is one of the great myths. Although various recent polls show that half of all Americans live in households with guns, think Dubya is better on gun control than Al Gore, and have a positive opinion of the NRA, I’m willing to accept that no one who works in the CBS newsroom knows anyone who belongs to that half of the populace. But what happened with Donna Dees-Thomases goes beyond “bias”: In essence, America’s major news outlets colluded in the perpetration of a fraud on their audiences.
Well, the non-March is over now, and the non-Millions are relaunching themselves today as a political lobby group. Good luck to them. But yet again those old Soviet hardliners can only marvel: They spent decades smashing presses and jamming transmitters in an effort to shut down the flow of information. America’s achieved that happy state just by leaving it to ABC, CBS, and NBC.
LIVING LARGE
Syndicated column, January 18, 2013
I WAS OUT of the country for a few days and news from this great republic reached me only fitfully. I have learned to be wary of foreign reporting of U.S. events, since America can come off sounding faintly deranged. Much of what reached me didn’t sound entirely plausible: Did the entire U.S. media really fall for the imaginary dead girlfriend of a star football player?1 Did the President of the United States really announce twenty-three executive orders by reading out the policy views of carefully pre-screened grade-schoolers (“I want everybody to be happy and safe”)? Clearly, these vicious rumors were merely planted in the foreign press to make the United States appear ridiculous.
Meanwhile, hot from the fiscal-cliff fiasco, the media are already eagerly anticipating the next in the series of monthly capitulations by Republicans, this time on the debt ceiling. While I was abroad, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, a Harvard professor of constitutional law, a prominent congressman, and various other American eminences apparently had a sober and serious discussion on whether the United States Treasury could circumvent the debt constraints by minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Although Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider called the trillion-dollar coin “the most important fiscal policy debate you’ll ever see in your life,” most Democrat pundits appeared to favor the idea for the more straightforward joy it affords in sticking it to the House Republicans. No more tedious whining about spending from GOP congressmen. Next time Paul Ryan shows up in committee demanding to know about deficit-reduction plans, all the Treasury Secretary has to do is pull out a handful of trillion-dollar coins from down the back of the sofa and tell him to keep the change.
The trillion-dollar-groat fever rang a vague bell with me. Way back in 1893, Mark Twain wrote a short story called “The Million Pound Bank Note,” which in the Fifties Ronald Neame made into a rather droll film. A penniless American down and out in London (Gregory Peck) is presented by two eccentric Englishmen (Ronald Squire and Wilfrid Hyde-White) with a million-pound note which they have persuaded the Bank of England to print in order to settle a wager. One of the English chaps believes that simple possession of the note will allow the destitute Yank to live the high life without ever having to spend a shilling. And so it proves. He goes to the pub for lunch, offers the note, and the landlord explains that he’s unable to make change for a million pounds, but is honored to feed him anyway. He then goes to be fitted for a suit, and again the tailor regrets that he can’t provide change for a million pounds but delightedly measures him for silk shirts, court dress, and all the rest. I always liked the line Mark Twain’s protagonist uses on a duke’s niece he’s sweet on: He tells her “I hadn’t a cent in the world but just the million pound note.”
That’s Paul Krugman’s solution for America as it prepares to bust through another laughably named “debt limit”: We’d be a nation that hasn’t a cent in the world but just a trillion-dollar coin—and what more do we need? As with Gregory Peck in the movie, the mere fact of the coin’s existence would ensure we could go on living large. Indeed, aside from inflating a million quid to a trillion bucks, Professor Krugman’s proposal economically prunes the sprawling cast of the film down to an off-Broadway one-man show with Uncle Sam playing every part: A penniless Yank (Uncle Sam) runs into a wealthy benefactor (Uncle Sam) who has persuaded the banking authorities (Uncle Sam) to mint a trillion-dollar coin that will allow Uncle Sam (played by Uncle Sam) to extend an unending line of credit to Uncle Sam (also played by Uncle Sam).
This seems likely to work. As for the love interest, in the final scene, Paul Krugman takes his fake dead girlfriend (played by Barack Obama’s composite girlfriend) to a swank restaurant and buys her the world’s most expensive bottle of champagne (played by Lance Armstrong’s urine sample).
Do you ever get the feeling America’s choo-choo has jumped the tracks? Joe Weisenthal says that the trillion-dollar coin is the most serious adult proposal put forward in our l
ifetime “because it gets right to the nature of what is money.” As Weisenthal argues, “we’re still shackled with a gold-standard mentality where we think of money as a scarce natural resource that we need to husband carefully.” Ha! Every time it rains it rains trillion-dollar pennies from heaven. I believe Robert Mugabe made a similar observation on January 16, 2009, when he introduced Zimbabwe’s first one-hundred-trillion-dollar bank note. In that one dramatic month, the Zimbabwean dollar declined from 0.0000000072 of a U.S. dollar to 0.0000000003 of a U.S. dollar. But that’s what’s so great about being American. Because, when you’re American, one U.S. dollar will always be worth one U.S. dollar, no matter how many trillion-dollar coins you mint. Eat your heart out, you Zimbabwean losers. As Joe Weisenthal asks, what is money? Money is American: Everybody knows that.
Whether the world feels this way is another matter. For Paul Krugman, the issue is the insanity of the Republican Party, as manifested in their opposition to automatic debt-ceiling increases. By contrast, the contrarian Democrat Mickey Kaus thinks Republicans ought to be in favor of the trillion-dollar coin as an easy short-term fix to prevent them from getting screwed over by Obama and the media for the second time in a month. But out there, in what the State Department maps quaintly call the rest of the world, nobody cares about Democrats or Republicans, and the issue is not the debt ceiling but the debt. Forty-four nations voted at Bretton Woods to make the dollar the world’s reserve currency. If they were meeting today, I doubt they’d give that status to a nation piling on over a trillion in federal debt per year, 70 percent of which its left hand (the U.S. Treasury) borrows from its right hand (the Federal Reserve) through the Nigerian-e-mail equivalent of Paul Krugman’s trillion-dollar groat.
Meanwhile, I see the Bundesbank has decided to move three hundred tons of German gold from the Federal Reserve in New York back to Frankfurt. It’s probably nothing. And what’s to stop the Fed replacing it with three hundred tons of Boston cream donuts and declaring them of equivalent value? Or maybe three hundred imaginary dead football girlfriends, all platinum blondes.
Memo to John Boehner and Paul Ryan: No one will take you seriously until you find some photogenic second-graders and read out their cute letters. “I want everybody to be happy and safe and fithcally tholvent.” They may have to practice.
1Manti Te’o had recently been praised for continuing to play stellar football for Notre Dame while mourning his late girlfriend, Lennay, who had died in a car accident while battling Leukemia. Lennay turned out not to exist.
III
THE REPUBLIC OF MANNERS
POTPOURRI ROASTING ON AN OPEN FIRE
Maclean’s, December 25, 2006
I’M ONE OF THOSE FELLOWS who tends to leave the old Yuletide preparations until around 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve only to discover that half the stores closed early at 1 p.m. and those still open have nothing left except for massive storewide clearances on Hannukah wrapping paper. Yet for a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-Santa-suit-pants kind of guy, I seem to have acquired over the years an enormous number of books on how to have the perfect Christmas. There’s Checklist for a Perfect Christmas by Judith Blahink and How to Have a Perfect Christmas by Helen Isolde and The Absolutely without a Doubt Most Fantastically Perfect Christmas Ever by Evelyn Minshull and Creating the Perfect Christmas: Stylish Ideas and Step-By-Step Projects for the Festive Season by Antonia Swingson and Sania Pell, because there’s nothing you need around this time of year more than a multi-step project. The more steps the merrier, I always say. One stands agape before those folks who not only have their own seasonal celebrations under scheduled-to-the-second control but also find time to write a bestseller with a faintly hectoring title like It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Less Like Christmas than It Should Considering It’s Already the Second Week of September.
For the most part, these authors seem to have no existence beyond the holiday season. The two-female co-author combo is a particular favorite, both of them on the back in cozy sweaters looking like extras from The Andy Williams Christmas Show. Is there really an “Antonia Swingson” or “Sania Pell”? Their names sound alarmingly like their home-making tips: “For fun on Christmas morning, why not cut up the gift tags and randomly assemble them into holiday-advice-book author-pseudonyms?” “Judith Blahink”? Isn’t the blahinks what Scrooge has when they find him face down in the mulled cider? Christmas? Blah-hink-humbug.
I don’t want to give the wrong impression. A lot of the stuff in these tomes is very intriguing. Each year, for example, I dig out my old pal Martha Stewart’s entry in the field—Martha Stewart’s Christmas—and find myself strangely drawn to the phrase “coxcomb topiary.” The thing’s huge. It starts out as a misshapen lump like a hobbit that’s fallen into a trash compactor but that’s before Martha’s got to work “studding” it with—to pluck at random—“tiny pomegranates dusted with clear glitter.” Who would have thought the English language would ever have need for those words assembled in that order? Every third week of December, I read them and marvel. And then I drive to Walmart.
“Coxcomb” is the perfect Perfect Christmas Book word. Not all perfect Christmas authors are hip to that. Some think you can eschew “coxcomb” and get away with “potpourri,” which your run-of-the-mill generic mediocre Most Fantastically Perfect Christmas Ever book throws around the joint like, well, potpourri. But what is it the Fool tells King Lear? “If thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.” Or I am thinking of his codpiece? I always did get them mixed up at school. Codpiece topiary would also add a distinctive touch to one’s holiday, although perhaps a livelier talking-point than one might want in a Christmas centerpiece. But the point is, if thou followest Martha, thou must needs wear her coxcomb. Also her persimmon, another great Perfect Christmas Book word. If I were ever to write my own seasonal advice book, I would do so under the nom de plume (or, indeed, nom de plume pudding) of Persimmon Coxcomb.
In Old-Fashioned Country Christmas by Vickie and Jo Ann of the Gooseberry Patch, Joan Schaeffer is more off-hand: “Snip herbs and tie in small bundles to dry. During the winter when the fireplace is in use, toss a bundle of herbs into the crackling fire for a wonderful scent.” I like the insouciance of that “toss.” But it’s a very useful tip. A blazing hearth of oregano helps tone down the overpowering stench of cinnamon that can otherwise so easily predominate at this time of year. Still, the truly perfect preparing-for-Christmas book eschews Schaefferesque nonchalance, preferring an artful balance of massive effort and minimal reward. Nothing sums up the genre more succinctly than the two words “non-alcoholic wassail,” for which cup of cheerlessness one can find a recipe in Christmas 101 by Rick Rodgers.
As the title suggests, Mr. Rodgers, the author of Thanksgiving 101, sticks with the basics. “Organization is a skill I developed as a caterer,” he begins. Without organization, you’re screwed. You’re Baghdad beyond the Green Zone. But, with organization, you’ll be your very own Red-and-Green Zone, and Mr. Rodgers is the go-to guy. Before you can organize your Christmas it’s important to organize the organization of your Christmas, and a useful aid to organization is something called a “list.” That’s why, like many seasonal advice-givers, he has a section called—wait for it!—“Making a List and Checking It Twice.” This isn’t his line. He got it from the lyric for a song called “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Did you know that seasonal music can often add an appealingly seasonal touch to the seasonal atmosphere at this seasonal time of the seasonal season? Why not teach yourself vocal arranging and work up your own a cappella multi-part medley of “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “I Wonder as I Wander” for cousin Mabel’s kids to distract Gran’pa with on Christmas morning as you’re putting the final touches of clear glitter on the tiny pomegranates?
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before you can organize anything, you have to organize your list. As Rick Rodgers says, “A series of lists will help you breeze through the process.”
And don’t worry, it’s not boring! As Rick Rodge
rs also says, “Every time you mark a chore off the list, you will get a rewarding sense of accomplishment.”
But what if your list is simply too extensive? As Rick Rodgers further counsels, “If you look at a list and feel overwhelmed, pick up the phone and get a friend to give you a hand!”
But, by this stage, Rodgers knows he may be pushing the joys of list-making a tad too far and that it’s time to get on to the actual lists. “Here,” he writes, “are the lists that I use again and again.”
And the first one is . . . “Guest List”! “If you are having a large holiday season party, send out invitations as early as possible.” But when should one have a holiday season party? A good tip is to hold it during the holiday season. “We usually give our holiday party the week between Christmas and New Year’s,” reveals Mr. Rodgers.
Ha! What a piker! The true secret of successful Christmas planning is not to schedule it in December. As Vickie and Jo Ann recommend in Old-Fashioned Country Christmas: “Rather than having your annual party in December when you’re too overwhelmed to enjoy it, host a cookout in July with a Christmas theme, everything red and green!” Bright red watermelon, green salad, but with Christmas decorations! “White twinkling lights, Christmas napkins and a small artificial tree decorated with take-home ornaments make for a very festive atmosphere.” And in Canada in July we may even have real snow!
Christmas in summer, huh? That doesn’t sound much like an “old-fashioned country Christmas,” unless the country in question is Australia. Yet it makes perfect sense, and not just because nothing says “dreary convention-bound loser” like holding your Christmas party at Christmas. After all, if you schedule your holiday season for July, it’ll free up a lot of time in late December to work on your coxcomb topiary.