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Times Watch for
December 15, 2003
Frank Rich's Exquisite Timing
"Christmas Will Be Bloody This Year" is editor-columnist Frank Rich's latest installment of tiresome current events-as-Hollywood-movie analogies. This time, Rich equates the war in Iraq with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy: "Through happenstance, 'Lord of the Rings' has become in our time a mirror of our own history."
A few sentences later, Rich former theatre critic for the Times, truly does "break a leg" in the figurative sense: "In the final installment, the pre-eminent heavy of the first two parts, the evil wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee), has vanished--as out of sight, if not mind, as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein." Of course, readers who had the TV on that morning knew Hussein was no longer "out of sight."
Rich's latest bit of bad timing reminds Times Watch of his March 30 fawning over Iraq war correspondent Peter Arnett. In Rich's imagining, Arnett was "one person on the scene who didn’t buy the initial story line" and who "recognized a mindless TV rerun when he saw it." The same day Rich's praise appeared, Arnett played a starring role as pro-Saddam propagandist on state-controlled Iraqi television.
Given Rich's track record, perhaps its best for Broadway he's no longer the paper's theater critic--his praise would be a kiss of death for a new show.
For Frank Rich's latest flop, click here.
• Peter Arnett | George W. Bush | Saddam Hussein | Iraq War | Frank Rich
White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller squeezes a secrecy- and intrigue-laced 800-word story out of a pheasant-hunting jaunt by Vice President Dick Cheney. Monday's "After Cheney's Private Hunt, Others Take Their Shots" is an overwrought account of Cheney's recent visit to the Rolling Rock Club, a private hunt club in Pennsylvania: "A lot of other people noticed the fallen birds: hunters who pursue birds in the wild, the Democratic presidential candidates and the Humane Society of the United States, which likened the shootings to the first day of the Iraq war. 'This can only be called a shooting-gallery operation,' said Wayne Pacelle, the senior vice president of the Humane Society, who pronounced himself outraged. 'Hunting is supposed to involve some opportunity for the animal to evade the hunter. Hunting in this setting is reduced to mass killing.'"
Bumiller adds ominously: "Mr. Cheney, who almost never speaks to the news media, had no comment on his trip or the identity of his hunting companions, and his office provided only sparse information....Details of the exact nature of the hunt were also hard to come by. Officers at the private Rolling Rock Club, which meanders over 10,000 acres in Ligonier Township about a 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh, did not return numerous calls seeking comment....Mr. Cheney often hunts in the wild, and his office would not discuss how frequently he shoots pen-raised birds at private clubs."
Stonewalling, cover-up...it's Pheasantgate!
At the end, Bumiller even lets a spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry take a potshot at Cheney. Leading up to that is Bumiller's description of Kerry's photo-op pheasant hunt from last month, which Bumiller portrays in a significantly more favorable light: "[Kerry] blew two pheasants out of the Iowa sky in two shots of his 12-gauge shotgun, a display meant to show his prowess as well as his support for the rights of hunters and an assault-weapons ban. Mr. Kerry downed the birds in a cornfield, not at a private club."
For the rest of Bumiller on Cheney's pheasant hunt, click here.
• Elisabeth Bumiller | Dick Cheney | Gaffes | Hunting
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org