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Times Watch for November 18, 2004

The Times' Toilet Humor

     Thursday's Metro section carries a profile of Manhattan politico Christine Quinn, who is "Fighting for Gay Rights in Full Cry." Quinn's is one of a long line of fawning profiles of liberal activists in "Public Lives," a feature tucked inside the paper's Metro section.

     Reporter Robin Finn finds her subject's anti-Bush toilet humor quite amusing: "At Councilwoman Christine C. Quinn's homey, rent-stabilized Chelsea apartment, the threshold bears a New York Yankees doormat. The television is tuned to Lifetime, the often-weepy network for women. The family dog, Sadie, a mutt with two doting human mommies and no daddy, wears her political heart on her sleeve: a Kerry bandanna and a button that reads, cheekily, 'I Pee on Bushes.' Who says partisan politics has to be humorless? Or confined to people?"

     It's hard to imagine "Public Lives" going equally giggly over a Manhattan denizen who dressed his dog with, say, an anti-Kerry/Edwards button reading "Flush the Johns."

For the rest of Finn on Quinn, click here.

• Campaign 2004 | Robin Finn | Gay Issues | Public Lives

"Ruined, Devastated" Falluja

     Baghdad-based reporter Edward Wong files another cheerless report from Iraq: "Showing Their Resolve, Rebels Mount Attacks in Northern and Central Iraq."

     Wong takes care to note the harm Americans have wrought on the "ruined" and "devastated" city of Falluja: "Ambushes and bomb attacks jolted central and northern Iraq on Wednesday as insurgents pressed a campaign against American and Iraqi forces after the American-led offensive that left swaths of Falluja in ruins. The violence flared in cities across the Sunni triangle, from Ramadi to Bayji to Kirkuk, though guerrillas largely stayed off the streets of the inflamed city of Mosul on the second day of an American sweep there. At least 21 Iraqis were killed and dozens wounded in the wave of attacks on Wednesday. American commanders say they control every part of Falluja, but firefights broke out across the devastated city throughout the day. Marines dodged sniper fire. Explosions shook the area. Military officials said they were still barring residents who had fled the city from returning to their homes. A senior American military officer in Iraq estimated that American-led forces had killed up to 2,000 insurgents in the Falluja offensive, and that up to 200 had been killed in Mosul and other cities. The officer said in an interview that he hoped the tactical victory achieved in Falluja would push ambivalent Sunni Arab leaders to side with the Americans and become involved in the political process."

For the rest of Edward Wong from Baghdad, click here.

• Falluja | Iraq War | Edward Wong

Clinton's "Personal Scandal"

     Reporter Katharine Seelye's filing from the soon-to-be-dedicated Clinton library in Little Rock, "Clinton Library Reflects Its Subject's Volatile Era," mentions the former president's Whitewater scandal just once, in passing: "There is a picture of Susan McDougal, who went to jail over the Whitewater case, but no picture of [Monica] Lewinsky."

     Seelye is much more interesting in the Lewinsky affair, which she discusses in detail, but labels it a "personal scandal" even though Clinton was impeached for his perjury in the matter, not his adultery: "This is also the only [presidential library] to deal directly, however fleetingly, with a personal scandal. It presents Mr. Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, much as his memoir did, as a personal lapse, and it casts the impeachment that resulted as a symptom of a power struggle with the Republicans in Congress. The name Monica Lewinsky, who is not further identified, appears twice in the text of a larger exhibit called 'The Fight for Power.'"

For the rest of Seelye on the Clinton library, click here.

• Bill Clinton | Clinton Library | Monica Lewinsky | Katharine Seelye

"Crusted-Nut-Bar Dick Cheney"

     Maureen Dowd's post-election agita continues in her Thursday column, "A Plague of Toadies," in which a recent performance of "Pericles" inspires her to write: "Now, in the 21st-century reign of King George II, flattery is mandatory, dissent is forbidden, and erring without admitting error is the best way to get ahead. President Bush is purging the naysayers who tried to temper crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney and the neocon crazies on Iraq."

For the full Dowd, click here.

• Campaign 2004 | Dick Cheney | Columnists | Maureen Dowd

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org