BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Monday, December 22, 2003
The overweening arrogance of
George Will. George Will's buckraking ways have landed him in
some trouble today. And what's not to love about that?
In this morning's New York
Times, Jacques Steinberg and Geraldine Fabrikant report
that Will was one of several conservative deep thinkers - along with
National Review founder William Buckley, geriatric war
criminal Henry Kissinger, Carter-era hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Margaret Thatcher, and others - who were paid to lend intellectual
legitimacy to Conrad Black, a newspaper baron who is himself in quite
a bit of hot water over his alleged corrupt business
practices.
It seems that not only did Will
provide a fawning blurb for Black's new biography of Franklin
Roosevelt - the recipient of an unusually harsh assessment
in the current New York Times Book Review by former Boston
Globe editor Michael Janeway - but he has also sucked up to his
secret benefactor in his column as well.
Here are the (literal) money
paragraphs:
In a column syndicated by
The Washington Post Writers Group in March, Mr. Will recounted
observations Mr. Black had made in a London speech defending the
Bush administration's stance on Iraq.
In a rebuttal to Mr. Bush's
critics, Mr. Will wrote, "Into this welter of foolishness has
waded Conrad Black, a British citizen and member of the House of
Lords who is a proprietor of many newspapers."
Asked in the interview if he
should have told his readers of the payments he had received from
Hollinger, Mr. Will said he saw no reason to do so.
"My business is my business," he
said. "Got it?"
Alan Shearer, editorial director
and general manager of The Washington Post Writers Group, said he
was unaware of Mr. Will's affiliation with Hollinger or the money
he received. "I think I would have liked to have known," Mr.
Shearer said.
Buckley comes in for some
criticism, too, but in the main his response is that of an
old-fashioned gentleman: he has often disclosed his friendship with
Black, but not his financial arrangement. Will, by contrast, looks
like a money-grubbing worm.
Of course, Will has made a career
out of using his column to advance his own interests, political,
financial, and otherwise. Most memorably, in 1980 Will secretly
prepped Ronald Reagan for his debate against Jimmy Carter - a
coaching session made all the easier because the Reagan campaign had
improperly obtained a copy of Carter's briefing book. Will later went
on television and pronounced Reagan's performance to be that of a
"thoroughbred." Norman Solomon has a good synopsis here,
on the Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting
website.
FAIR's Steve Rendall
recounts
a bit of unpleasantness that descended on Will in 1996, when he
continually tore into Bill Clinton at a time when Will's wife, Mari
Maseng, was working for Clinton's opponent, Bob Dole. Will,
naturally, didn't disclose.
George Will is an elegant writer,
and he sure knows how to wear a bowtie. But he has always
subordinated the interests of his readers to his own, narrower
causes.
I'm glad to see that his editor is
pissed off. Editorial-page editors across the country might consider
whether Will has now proven himself to be a repeat offender with no
possibility of rehabilitation.
Convention-al wisdom. The
contracts, as they say, have already been signed. But are Mayor Tom
Menino and planners for the Democratic National Convention really
going to walk into a full-blown catastrophe now that a viable
alternative has been identified?
Last Friday, the Boston
Herald's Cosmo Macero wrote
(sub. req.) that the new convention center in South Boston would be
ready by next July if the go-ahead to move the DNC were
given.
It is a brilliant idea. The
FleetCenter is a disaster waiting to happen. There is no place to put
the media (and the modern convention is, above all else, a media
show). And security in such a crowded neighborhood is bound to be so
odious that it will leave a bad taste for years to come.
Check this out from Macero's
column:
"If we got the call from
the mayor or the committee ... I believe we could do it," says Jim
Rooney, chief executive of the Massachusetts Convention Center
Authority and Menino's one-time chief of staff. "It would look
different. But it could and would be made to look like a good
media event, which is by and large what conventions are."
The analogous situation is
Philadelphia, which hosted the Republican National Convention in
2000. Most of the events took place in the downtown, all within a few
blocks. But the convention itself was held far from the downtown, in
a facility surrounded by acres of unused land - plenty of room for
tents to house the media, security, and the like.
It was an ideal set-up, and one
Boston would do well to emulate. Now that it appears this could
really be done, the only intelligent response is to make it happen.
posted at 8:56 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
