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"Punch" Bradley, "Judy" Gore and the injustice being done John Rocker
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Jan. 12, 2000 |
With only 16 seconds left after Buffalo had taken the lead, Tennessee fullback Lorenzo Neal suddenly handed off a kick reception to tight end Frank Wycheck (a Philadelphia native), who spun and leapt on one foot to hurl a long, gorgeous, cross-field lateral to wide receiver Kevin Dyson, who stretched for a stooping catch and then sped 75 yards down the sideline behind a cadre of deft blockers to the end zone. This was gutsy, old-time football at its finest. Football, which I have repeatedly described as my pagan religion, is the key to understanding American business and politics. It's the ultimate war game, a fusion of brain and brawn whose analytic strategies should be studied by every ambitious young man or woman. Camille Paglia Camille Paglia's column appears in Salon People every third Wednesday.
Perhaps the floundering, Nashville-based Al Gore campaign will take heart from the rise of the upstart Titans, a transplanted Texas team (the former Houston Oilers), just as President Bill Clinton must have been tickled hot-pink by the University of Arkansas' 27-6 victory over the University of Texas at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on New Year's Day. In sports terms, the still-shaky big-league rookie Gov. George W. Bush has the momentum in this year's election, since Texas, from country crossroads to glassy big city, is virtually the United States of Football. Even the woman Bush defeated at his political debut -- feisty Gov. Ann Richards -- radiated the shrewd, tough football spirit. So where are we on the presidential gridiron? An irritable, hot-motor Bush is finally starting to beat up on the creepy Sen. John McCain, whom Northeastern liberal journalists, in weird homoerotic fixation, have been over-promoting for months. Never have so many been so wrong about so much in regard to McCain, whom this column has distrusted and opposed from the start. While Gore was endorsed last week, to universal yawns, by creaky warhorse Sen. Ted Kennedy, Bush gained much more from the vivacious endorsement of Elizabeth Dole, who has reemerged refreshed with a better hairdo and more sober clothes and who is clearly more effective singing the praises of alpha males (like husband Bob at the 1996 Republican convention) than she is in running her own campaign. The chemistry between Bush and Dole was palpable, and feminists across the political spectrum should be applauding Dole's tenacity in maintaining her viability as a vice-presidential candidate. Bill Bradley, meanwhile, for whom I will probably vote in the April 4 Pennsylvania primary, is starting to stall. Bush's notorious smirk has migrated to the disdainful Bradley mug. Gore bobs and weaves like a gingham puppet, but Bradley has lost gravitas by consenting to be daily Punch to Gore's Judy. Condescension and irony, which phlegmatic Bradley is using against the giggling, yip-yapping Gore, are Ivy League tactics that will never win a general election. I'm counting the minutes until next month's New Hampshire primary so that we can get past the grotesque obsession with the media-coddled citizens of that marginal state. New Hampshire's tyranny over national politics must end. American culture has long grown away from its New England roots -- as shown by the present preponderance of Southern and Southwestern presidential candidates. The servile spectacle of journalists and White House wannabes endlessly fawning over New Hampshire voters is revolting. Despite the proliferation of political chat shows on cable channels (which thankfully broke the hammerlock of the major media in the 1990s), there is a detectable slide toward provincialism again. News-based shows, which should be neutral spaces for debate, are slothfully over-relying on surrogates of candidates to speak for the campaigns. For example, after Bill Bradley made the important charge last week that Al Gore and company have been in a "Washington bunker," the once-mighty CNN program, "Crossfire," invited not independent commentators but two over-exposed campaign representatives (one current, one former) to discuss the issue. The formulaic script of that show could have been written in advance and mailed from Antarctica. Thanks to slack network oversight of producers, news shows are being hijacked to serve as unpaid advertisements for the campaigns. This is a corrupt practice that must be stopped. Hillary Clinton -- who if she actually runs for senator will be the final, asphyxiating millstone around Gore's neck -- moved two vans of household goods into her posh new house in Chappaqua, N.Y., last week, giving her a discreetly smooth transition from a marriage she can't live with or without. The massive Secret Service bills for this escapade are coming out of your taxes -- which would be better employed in upgrading inner-city schools or providing free prescription medicines to senior citizens. Hillary the Duchess sheds crocodile tears about the homeless but swans around with the rich and famous and speaks out of both sides of her mouth on every issue, as prompted by her shadow cabinet of amoral advisors (led by the loathsome Harold Ickes). That my home state of New York would vote into office in November a person who barely turned resident in January is absurd on the face of it. Even Robert Kennedy (another over-praised Machiavellian) had lived in New York for his first 13 years and had served as attorney general before he was elected senator in 1964. Hillary has never persisted or succeeded at any job -- until she became the treasury-draining, globe-hopping Marie Antoinette of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Last week my cousin Wanda, a county legislator in upstate New York, sent me a fabulous, blazing-yellow bumper sticker with "HILLARY" crossed out with a giant X next to the underscored motto, "Not here...Not now...NOT EVER!!" As a disillusioned Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton twice, I wholeheartedly agree. The liberal bias of the Northeastern major media was shown yet again by their refusal to mention that Hillary was startled by boos from the crowd when she was introduced by her husband at the late-night millennial festivities on the Washington Mall. Only the Los Angeles Times ran the Jan. 1 item, which was spread via the liberation network of the Internet (thanks to the conservative NewsMax.com as well as the ever-vigilant Drudge Report). Does anyone honestly think that if a prominent Republican were booed on the Mall, it would have gone unreported by the networks, the New York Times and the Washington Post? But the times they may be a-changin': Even the normally pro-Clinton New York Daily News scathingly editorialized on Jan. 3 that Hillary is using "the motorcades and the Secret Service" to hide from the media, that "[her] elusiveness is troubling" and that "A campaign that consists of little more than photo-ops mocks democracy."
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