Marjorie Williams and Tucker Carlson
Clinton Interview 5.0
By Tucker Carlson
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2000, at 4:03 PM ETDear Marjorie,
It sounds to me like you have deep reasons to be sick of the presidential race. I don't. I'm just tired and bored. I did my first interview with George W. Bush two and a half years ago. He's saying roughly the same things now that he was saying then. (And saying them the same way. "He's not stupid, but he frequently stumbles over his sentences and has trouble pronouncing long words," I wrote in my journal after our first conversation on May 1, 1998.) Gore is saying somewhat different things than he used to, but he is still the same Gore.
They're both relatively interesting people--relative to most people, anyway. (If you don't believe me, try interviewing undecided voters.) But not even a presidential candidate makes good copy after a while. I'm sick of trying to find new angles on these guys.
Now that I've revealed myself as essentially shallow, on to Esquire. The Clinton interview was amazing, I agree, but not for the obvious reasons. All that business about what a great president he has been, how he has been hounded by the Radical Right, how the GOP owes him an apology, blah, blah, blah, blah--it was so perfectly Clinton. Too perfectly Clinton. You could have programmed a computer to produce that interview: Input self-pity here, self-aggrandizement there, write the code for self-justification, and--boom--Clinton Interview 5.0.
Nothing new. What was new, and really, really cringe-making, was the interviewer. Did you read his questions? At one point he asked Clinton if it was fair to say he had brought government back to the people. At another point he asked the president if he still has his Mustang. Come on.
I'm not the sort of faux tough-guy journalist who believes the only honest questions are mean questions. There's a place for softballs. Larry King, for one, asks a lot of how-did-you-feel?-type questions that are easy enough to mock, but that can also be effective and evocative. But there's a difference between using a soft touch and sucking up. The Esquire guy sucked up. In fact, he slobbered.
No one is slobbering over Rep. Jim Moran at the moment. (Note here my use of Paragraph Transition Helper 5.0.) Yes, he is my congressman, and, yes, I feel a little sorry for him, too. It's not that I have trouble believing anything unsavory I read about him. I once sat across from Moran at dinner. He struck me as thoroughly 19-century, and I mean that as half a compliment. He's big and loud and charming and physical. I can imagine him taking shady loans from lobbyist buddies. At least.
What I can't imagine him doing is racking up huge credit card debts. But apparently he did, which is part of the reason he had such money problems. A man charged with shaping the federal budget is paying the monthly minimums on his Discover card? You don't have to be a much of a fiscal conservative to find that objectionable somehow.
But that's not even what really gets me about it. Maxing out on your credit cards is embarrassing. It's an undignified thing to do, particularly if you're a member of Congress and even if you're Jim Moran. But he did it, and now everyone knows about it. Which is why I feel sorry for him.
Best,
Tucker
Clinton Interview 5.0
By Tucker Carlson
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2000, at 4:03 PM ETMarjorie Williams is the author of a weekly opinion column for the Washington Post
, a contributing writer at Talk
magazine, and a member of Slate's "Book Club." Tucker Carlson writes for the Weekly Standard and Talk
magazine. Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: The first two posts below comment on different Breakfast Table topics, but we can't help sensing a connection, and a rather cruel blow at the BT participants.
The other important topic is of course Jeopardy. David Franklin's post is here. Kevin Bertsch gives a detailed analysis (we feature the conclusion below) and says "Tucker you still don't understand"--though it seems to us at The Fray that Mr Carlson's words "Blow yourself up before you let yourself squeak by" make it clear he doesn't need to understand strategy. Meriadoc points out that "knowing the answer" doesn't seem to feature in any of this discussion, and there are other comments throughout The Fray.
Elsewhere, Lisa Hancock-Jasie generously gives Tucker Carlson two reasons not to like Rupert Murdoch, and then another two later on.]
I'm aghast at what Carlson and Williams say about their college days. My years at Brown, in physics and then computer science, were the most intensive periods of sustained learning of my life. I guess it's true, very few people go into quantum physics because they can't make it as journalism majors.
--Bob Munck
(To reply, click
here.)
Sure, space colonization isn't getting as much attention as, say, Al Gore's earth tones, or the latest Oprah appearance. No surprise. Columbus' voyage wasn't thought of as important at the time either. That's because the chattering classes, then and now, are more interested in gossip than news. They like to talk about each other, and about the people they fondly imagine they're like, or will be like some day, or at least will have influence over some day.
In all of this, of course, they're mostly wrong. But a close connection to reality has never been the strength of the chattering classes. That's for the boring geeky types who actually change the world.
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to
Wednesday's entry:]
In third place, sometimes the right move is to bet everything, sometimes it's to bet nothing, and sometimes you bet part of what you have. David's strategy was perfectly rational, and to have bet everything to avoid appearing 'wimpy' would have been to substitute macho stupidity for brains, which is generally not a winning move on Jeopardy.
--Kevin Bertsch
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to
Tuesday's entry:]
Why do issues like a kiss or Oprah dominate? The answer is because the press, and by this I mean the working press not the pundits, have been reduced to recycling AP wire stories churned out by the same five writers for the same five major papers every day. Facts that don't fit preordained story lines are jettisoned. Al Gore is a liar, that's the story, run with it. George Bush doesn't lie, he's stupid, and his misstatements are just good natured mistakes. This is what passes for journalism. The punditocracy, by which I mean those highly paid folks like your own Tucker and Marjorie who take it upon themselves not to be journalists, but to provide their opinion on everything, whether they are qualified in the subject matter or not, have completely punted in this election. It is they who declared that going on Oprah was a good idea. It is they who decided Bush was a frontrunner before the first vote was cast in Iowa. It is they who have declared Clinton-fatigue a factor. It is they who refuse to delve in any depth into the issues of the day.
Ask not for whom Al Gore kisses, he kisses for thee.
--John Burns
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to
Monday's
entry:]
One key sign that it doesn't look good for Gore is Joe Lieberman's decision to remain in the Senate race in Connecticut. Based on that decision, I suspect that the Dem's internal polling numbers look worse than the public tracking polls. If Lieberman either loses the Vice Presidency or withdraws from the Senate race, the seat would be a shoe-in for the Democrats, while if Gore/Lieberman win, it will be assured for the Republicans. If it looked like Lieberman might be the next Vice President, there would be a lot of pressure on him to withdraw from the Senate race.
--J.Travers
(To reply, click
here.)
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: The first two posts below comment on different Breakfast Table topics, but we can't help sensing a connection, and a rather cruel blow at the BT participants.
The other important topic is of course Jeopardy. David Franklin's post is here. Kevin Bertsch gives a detailed analysis (we feature the conclusion below) and says "Tucker you still don't understand"--though it seems to us at The Fray that Mr Carlson's words "Blow yourself up before you let yourself squeak by" make it clear he doesn't need to understand strategy. Meriadoc points out that "knowing the answer" doesn't seem to feature in any of this discussion, and there are other comments throughout The Fray.
Elsewhere, Lisa Hancock-Jasie generously gives Tucker Carlson two reasons not to like Rupert Murdoch, and then another two later on.]
I'm aghast at what Carlson and Williams say about their college days. My years at Brown, in physics and then computer science, were the most intensive periods of sustained learning of my life. I guess it's true, very few people go into quantum physics because they can't make it as journalism majors.
--Bob Munck
(To reply, click here.)
Sure, space colonization isn't getting as much attention as, say, Al Gore's earth tones, or the latest Oprah appearance. No surprise. Columbus' voyage wasn't thought of as important at the time either. That's because the chattering classes, then and now, are more interested in gossip than news. They like to talk about each other, and about the people they fondly imagine they're like, or will be like some day, or at least will have influence over some day.
In all of this, of course, they're mostly wrong. But a close connection to reality has never been the strength of the chattering classes. That's for the boring geeky types who actually change the world.
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Wednesday's entry:]
In third place, sometimes the right move is to bet everything, sometimes it's to bet nothing, and sometimes you bet part of what you have. David's strategy was perfectly rational, and to have bet everything to avoid appearing 'wimpy' would have been to substitute macho stupidity for brains, which is generally not a winning move on Jeopardy.
--Kevin Bertsch
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Tuesday's entry:]
Why do issues like a kiss or Oprah dominate? The answer is because the press, and by this I mean the working press not the pundits, have been reduced to recycling AP wire stories churned out by the same five writers for the same five major papers every day. Facts that don't fit preordained story lines are jettisoned. Al Gore is a liar, that's the story, run with it. George Bush doesn't lie, he's stupid, and his misstatements are just good natured mistakes. This is what passes for journalism. The punditocracy, by which I mean those highly paid folks like your own Tucker and Marjorie who take it upon themselves not to be journalists, but to provide their opinion on everything, whether they are qualified in the subject matter or not, have completely punted in this election. It is they who declared that going on Oprah was a good idea. It is they who decided Bush was a frontrunner before the first vote was cast in Iowa. It is they who have declared Clinton-fatigue a factor. It is they who refuse to delve in any depth into the issues of the day.
Ask not for whom Al Gore kisses, he kisses for thee.
--John Burns
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Monday's entry:]
One key sign that it doesn't look good for Gore is Joe Lieberman's decision to remain in the Senate race in Connecticut. Based on that decision, I suspect that the Dem's internal polling numbers look worse than the public tracking polls. If Lieberman either loses the Vice Presidency or withdraws from the Senate race, the seat would be a shoe-in for the Democrats, while if Gore/Lieberman win, it will be assured for the Republicans. If it looked like Lieberman might be the next Vice President, there would be a lot of pressure on him to withdraw from the Senate race.
--J.Travers
(To reply, click here.)