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Zoë Heller and James Wolcott

the breakfast table
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from: James Wolcott

Vintage Dubya

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001, at 12:26 PM ET

Dear Zoë,

CNN's new youth push suffered a surrealistic setback last night as Larry King devoted his entire hour to--The Secret Life of Liberace. His guests included Phyllis Diller, Mike Douglas, Robert Goulet, and Debbie Reynolds (who once sat on my lap during a TV taping ... she sat on everyone's lap, as I recall ... she's what they call "irrepressible"). The strangest figure in this wax-works was a Liberace imitator--imagine that being your life's calling--who fondled the candelabra like Jonathan Winters doing a scene from The Loved One. Firing questions at random, Larry didn't bother establishing who Liberace was for the benefit of the nose-ringed youngsters in the audience too stoned to change the channel or documenting how he achieved the pop renown he did (the subject of a wonderful essay in Dave Hickey's collection, Air Guitar); practically his first question was, "Was he a great artist?"--a question that didn't quite go with the footage of Lee high-stepping across the stage in hot pants. Of course, Larry's questions are endearingly irrelevant since he never listens to the answers anyway.

The title of the show turned out to be a tease. When Larry broached the subject of Liberace's "secret life," Debbie Reynolds quickly swatted him down, arguing that we should remember and celebrate Liberace as an entertainer rather than poke into the personal life of this dear man. Larry didn't persist, perhaps fearing Deb would sit on him.

It seems so right that George Bush should spend part of today lending his sweat equity to Habitat for Humanity in the Texas heat, a transparent charade to recast himself as a compassionate conservative for all those moderate Republican women voters who are less inclined than men to see the world reduced to ash. I can just hear him now, gripping a hammer and telling reporters, "I'm a builder, not a destroyer. That's what my presidency is all about. I know it's hot, being president is about being able to take the heat." Heat may come to be the defining condition of his sham presidency. I've noticed that there have been three stages in the response to global warming from the conservative pundits and policymakers who stock Bush's cookie-jar head:

1) Global warming doesn't exist. It's a myth, a false scare cooked up by environmentalists. When too much scientific evidence came in for even these ideologues to ignore, they went to a fallback position, which was,
2) Global warming may exist, but it's the result of long-term climate changes, not the product of industrial pollution. I.e., if it's happening, it's happening, but there's nothing we can do about it. That fallback position collapsed and now we're at the fallback to the fallback position, which is,
3) Global warming may exist, and it may be mankind's fault, but to take drastic measures would wreck the economy and weaken us competitively and who are a bunch of snooty, jealous, ungrateful foreigners to be telling us, the last remaining superpower, to buckle our belts and cooperate with the rest of the world. WE ARE THE WORLD.

To me, the most arrogant thing about Bush is his rugged humility. That earnest tone he pipes into his voice when he talks about consulting our allies on the challenges ahead or expresses concern about an issue that he clearly isn't going to do anything about. I don't believe he's a nice, caring soul because a nice, caring soul wouldn't have mocked Karla Faye Tucker's pleas before her execution to a reporter. There was an incident reported recently in the New York Times where a man in Philadelphia politely expressed his disappointment with some of Bush's decisions, and Bush snapped, "Who cares what you think?" That, I believe, is the true Bush. He doesn't care what any of us think because we're not the ones he's taking instructions from. You'll want to rush out and get the latest New York Observer, which has a cover story on the downward spiral of the New York Post under its new kangaroo editor.

Jim

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819
from: James Wolcott

Vintage Dubya

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2001, at 12:26 PM ET
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Zoë Heller is a columnist for the London Daily Telegraph and author of the novel Everything You Know. James Wolcott is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and author of the novel The Catsitters.
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