Dear Susan,
Nineteen. 19. Remember the number 19. When Louis Farrakhan went off on his numerology kick during his speech at the Million Man March, it was the number 19 that set him off. When Ken Starr responded to Steven Brill’s Content article, he wrote a 19-page letter. When Jim Fallows read a farewell statement to his U.S. news staff yesterday, it was a 19-page statement. The cosmos is aligning. I’ve got to run off to buy some lottery tickets.
You ask who fired him, Zuckerman or Harry Evans. Here’s a bit from Fallows’ speech, “Mort Zuckerman has decided that I should leave the magazine and that a new editor should come in…. If the choice were mine I would not be leaving right now. The choice is not mine.” He says he and the Zuck differed over the Versace story. Zuck wanted dozens of pages on the killings, as the other magazines gave it. Fallows gave it only a few pages, clearly the right call in my estimation. The rest of the speech is a pep talk about how much the magazine is improved.
I have complicated emotions about Fallows. My first real job in journalism was with a wire service in Chicago called City News Bureau and on my first day a kid committed suicide and I had to call all the neighbors to get some dirt on what drove him to it. Then an eminento died in a car crash and I had to call the fresh widow to get some tearful quotes. I was told to open my interview with, “I hear your husband was a generous man. Was that true?” Since then I’ve had trouble taking the phrase “journalistic ethics” too seriously.
But Fallows had loftier notions. He is the parson of the press corps, writing books and essays castigating journalists for low standards and cheap tricks. So there is great glee in the Washington chapter of the Society for the Preservation of Schadenfreude, now that Fallows has been brought low.
But on balance, I’m sad. I didn’t like him as much as the next guy when he took over. I wrote a truly mean parody about him in the Standard. But a few months later he offered me a job, which is always a sign of good taste. More than that, he improved the magazine. He made it substantive and intelligent. He did the sort of one-step-off-the-news stories that you remember for more than 15 seconds. And he hired some great journalists. Three of the best–Ron Brownstein, Timothy Noah and Steve Waldman–trash Zuckerman in the Washington Post today, so Fallows must have earned their respect. Their comments suggest that it was Zuck himself who was doing the pushing. My biggest beef is that a 19-page farewell address is too long. Get that editor an editor!
To be fair to Zuckerman, though, he has apparently hired the National Journal’s Steve Smith to replace Fallows. Smith has done wonders with his magazine. He’s also hired some great journalists, including your close personal friend, Stuart Taylor. I would like to raise a final ideological point, though. People who read U.S. News are overwhelmingly conservative–over 85 percent an insider once told me. Wouldn’t it be smart to bring in an editor with a conservative sensibility?
Speaking of the right wing, I’m with you on the government regulation of hamburger patties. My colleague Bill Kristol and I have been off on this kick that’s got the unfortunate name, National Greatness Conservatism. The basic idea is that the right got too anti-government and too anti-political. We want limited but energetic government in the T. Roosevelt, A. Hamilton, H. Clay and R. Giuliani tradition. We’re writing a piece now on why this conservative tradition is due for a revival. We’ll keep hamburger regulation and we’ll protect you after we take over the nation. Our right wing critics–and some skeptical Slate-niks–get planted in the next Panama Canal.
Speaking of right wing journalists, you asked yesterday how the McCormick mansion was. Great. McCormick, was a true publishing Caesar, owning the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, WGN and other outlets. He hated the British with a passion–fantasizing gleefully about the bombing of London during the blitz–but he loved English manners. He loved fox hunting and went around in pink hunting coats. He never carried money. Journalists in the Chicago Tribune dining room couldn’t begin eating lunch until McCormick started his. But he created a journalistic empire and once got FDR so mad, he considered sending the marines to take over the Trib building. Anybody who thinks politics lacks civility today should read the McCormick-FDR exchanges to see how much worse things were then.
He had many accomplishments, but one day in his life stuck out. In WWI he led a unit that helped take a French town called Cantigny from the Germans. The house is named Cantigny and it is stuffed with proclamations and references to that day. His tomb memorializes that day more than anything. He spent the rest of his life hosting reunions for soldiers who shared the day with him. And now there is a fantastic military museum that describes the heroics of his division, the Big Red One. He was a lonely man, and that day may have been the only day of companionship he felt his whole life.
TV is good. I was cold about the Clinton trip to China before hand, but now I’m warming. I spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union during its waning days and I can’t tell you how many Russians mentioned Reagan’s evil empire comments to me. So Clinton’s fine performance will have consequences. Of course Reagan also had polices that challenged the commies. Nonetheless, maybe Clinton will be remembered for this visit more than anything else in his presidency. Except the snow jobs.
All the best,
David
