Beaujolais-off
A not-so-nice Segway from Rhone reds to Parisian peds.
Cellar Dweller: Sarvis offers his services to any pathological, oenophilic hoarder on the following premise: "Wine ain't art, although it is artisan. It isn't a Micky Mantle trading card either. Don't just hang it on the wall or stick it in the closet - the damn stuff is meant to be consumed." To wine cheats – profiled in Mike Steinberger's "Grape Deceptions," – burdened with the spousal ultimatum of "it's me or the hooch," Sarvis will come to your house (or take delivery, if your preference) of key elements of your cellar and give them the fitting release that they deserve. The wine is happy, and your guilt is relieved. Moving Violations: Like the kid on the bicycle in Better Off Dead chasing John Cusack, Geoff has been on Tad Friend's tail all week for Friend's Segway spin through the arrondissements of Paris. Geoff takes a generational swipe here, then here jumps on Friend for having "no business driving down the sidewalk (aside from his fantasies that the entire world marvels at him for his fancy little gizmo.)," and finally, upon reading Friend's revelation that a middle-aged clerk "would never have approached us if we had been standing on our Segways," scoffs: I care enough to notice, but... *sob*... not enough... *sob*... to care...who knew the Segway would render your silly feet so obsolete? Who knew that this device would finally usher in the stratified dystopia we've always expected? Geoff reportedly has a lunch date this week with Oakland mayor Jerry Brown to stem any incursion of Segways into the streets of the city…KFA2:45 p.m.
Thursday, May 22, 2003
The Courthouse Steps at High Noon: In response to Michael Isakoff's review of Sidney Blumenthal's, The Clinton Wars, Tim Noah files a second round (Sid Blumenthal Framed, Part 2), reprising a Chatterbox from October 1998 in which he takes up for Blumenthal against charges that the former Clinton aide-of-indeterminate-value-and-proximity overstated Starr prosecutors' inquisitional zeal during grand jury testimony. Noah reviewed the book for Slate on Tuesday, as well.
The sticky point is Blumenthal's motive in naming specific networks and media outlets when asked by the grand jury, "Did you distribute [talking points denigrating Kenneth Starr's prosecution team produced by the Democratic National Committee] to anyone outside the White House?"
To answer Chatterbox's barb of "[W]hom does Isikoff suppose the prosecutors had in mind when they asked Blumenthal about distributing DNC talking points 'outside the White House'? Blumenthal's cleaning lady?," Isikoff promptly jumps into the Fray:
Chatterbox strains way too much. Blumenthal's grandiloquent statement on the courthouse steps proclaimed that he was 'forced to answer questions about my conversations...with the New York Times, CNN, CBS, Time magazine, U.s. News, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer and there may have been a few others.' There was no way to listen to that and conclude anything but that the prosecutors had asked him about each of these news organizations and what he said to them.
Isikoff continues:
Blumenthal's public statements about his testimony were misleading. It's not just me who thought so. It was also the grand jurors who chastised him, through the grand jury forewoman, for his "inaccurate representation" of what took place...
Isikoff's complete rebuttal to "Part Two" is here.
Not one to surrender home-Fray-advantage, Noah concedes that "it was Blumenthal, not the prosecutor" that enumerated the catalog of media shops,
