Salon.com > David Skinner

Leaving little to the imagination

Thu, 15 Feb 2001 15:00:00 +0000

Sometimes called the conservative prom, the American Enterprise Institute's Francis Boyer lecture and dinner is an annual black-tie event that brings together many classes of right-side Washington: ideologues, intellectuals, bureaucrats, research assistants, foundation heads, journalists -- and a fair sprinkling of people who actually pay for the privilege of dining with them. An award is given; the recipient delivers a lecture. Things kick off with free drinks, include a solid meal and feature first-rate live music. It's a terrific evening, a grand departure from your average suffocating D.C. cocktail party. I probably should be too embarrassed to admit it, but the conservative prom is the reason I own a tuxedo.

And this year was even more special than usual. Our guy is in the White House, and that has a most direct effect on everyone there. To take an obvious example, Lynne Cheney, an AEI fellow, is married to the vice president -- you know, Dick (the 1993 Boyer award winner). Both were there, along with a retinue of Secret Service agents. But there were also many young politicos whom I knew from dollar-Bud happy hours, now doing things like setting up departments of the executive branch. Instead of a gathering of dissidents, this year's dinner and lecture was, suddenly, a party for the in-crowd

Matters of the heart

Wed, 20 Sep 2000 08:47:00 +0000

Oprah Winfrey fans like stories from the heart -- which is fortunate, since both presidential candidates have many. In fact, back when George W. Bush's life story of sin and redemption was new to voters, he was destroying Al Gore in the polls. And lately, as Gore's pre-White House biography, especially his marital romance, has received a lot of attention he has pulled ahead of Bush. Oprah fans are also, by and large, female and middle-class, representing a hotly contested group of voters, which may explain why both presidential candidates have now appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. Today was Bush's turn.

He was once a drinker, voters were reminded, but now he was sober. He was lost, but now he was found, having accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. Prodding him to describe a time when he may have needed forgiveness, Oprah said, "I am looking for specifics."

Gore’s soft sell on “Oprah”

Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:12:00 +0000

The Gore campaign team has been saying for a while now that it would emphasize its candidate's credentials as a real person. Monday, the campaign had the vice president take the next logical step: Al Gore went on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Gore talked, endlessly it seemed, about Tipper Gore. Oprah asked how he had reacted to the news of Tipper's depression. He did what he had to, he said, which was to "feel the love and start the healing." He touted his wife's work in protecting American kids from those "albums that are inappropriate," something the Gores played down in 1992. He once gave Tipper a bracelet, he told everyone, inscribed, "To the bravest person I know."

He said he couldn't explain what she had to be so brave about. Of course, it didn't matter, since the point was not about Tipper, his "soul mate," but about Gore: a man who loves his wife silly, irrationally, so much he can't even say.

Such is the kind of dumbstruck male preferred by Oprah's audience. "Men mature more slowly than women," Gore said when asked to say something about being a man.

"Yes, they do," Oprah replied.

"What's the most important problem facing America?" an audience member asked.