BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Monday, June 21, 2004
FUN WITH BILL AND DAN. So
there he was, in all his shining, frustrating glory - Bill Clinton,
one
on one with Dan Rather, on
60 Minutes. The interview was fascinating to those of us who
find Clinton himself fascinating, but depressingly short on
substance. On CNN's Reliable Sources yesterday, Howard Kurtz
told
Rather, "You've covered a lot of ground in this interview, from the
economy to Kosovo, but inevitably you came to Monica
Lewinsky."
Well, maybe. But, in watching it,
it seemed to me that nearly the entire interview was taken up with
Lewinsky and a few other personal matters, punctuated mainly by
Clinton's explanation of how he warded off a kiss from Yasser Arafat
at that momentous outdoor news conference with Yitzhak Rabin. Clinton
did a pretty good Rabin imitation, too.
Clinton's fault, or Rather's? It's
hard to say, since we can't see the outtakes. Rather told Kurtz that
what we saw last night was culled from four hours' worth of
interviews, so maybe the more serious stuff was left on the
cutting-room floor. Still, Clinton is well known for his eagerness to
please, and I'm sure he realizes that his tawdry personal life will
sell far more books than a recitation of how he managed to balance
the budget.
Among the oddities of the book
world's blockbuster mentality is that a phenomenon like Clinton's
My Life starts to seem old even before anyone has had a chance
to read it. At 957 pages, the book is going to feel like a project to
those who actually determine to read the thing. The New York
Times' Michiko Kakutani, obviously a faster reader than Media
Log, has already whipped through her advance copy and
pronounced
it to be a mess:
The book, which weighs in
at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often
eye-crossingly dull - the sound of one man prattling away, not for
the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of
history.
Ooh, I can't wait! Meanwhile,
remember, the thing won't even be available to the rest of us until
Tuesday.
posted at 9:14 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
