Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Your Tim Russert reader

• David Remnick in The New Yorker: Tim Russert
• Tom Shales in The Washington Post: Tim Russert: The smile that lit up journalism
• Matthew Yglesias in The Atlantic: Goodbye to The Master
• Jacques Steinberg in The New York Times: Tim Russert, ‘Meet the Press’ Host, Is Dead at 58
• The Times: Tim Russert: political journalist and author

Your Hamilton Jordan reader

Hamilton Jordan has died of cancer aged 63. Jordan ran Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign at the tender age of 31 and later became his chief of staff. Here's your reader on his life.

-- Rick Lyman in The New York Times: Hamilton Jordan, Carter's right hand, dies at 63

-- Joe Holley and Martin Weil in The Washington Post: Architect of Carter Presidency

-- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: That third-party opportunity has vanished, but Hamilton Jordan has not

-- John Stacks in Time (1976): Engineering the victory

-- James Fallows in The Atlantic: Hamilton Jordan

Your Humphrey Lyttelton reader

• The Times: Obituary of Humphrey Lyttelton
• Ross Leckie in The Times: It just occurred to me...
• The Guardian: In praise of...Humphrey Lyttelton
• Deborah Ross in The Independent: Humphrey Lyttelton: Getting the Humph
• The Telegraph: Humphrey Lyttelton, doyen of double entendres
• Andrew Martin in New Statesman: Class conscious - Praising the pioneers of revivalist jazz

Dith Pran: A reader

-- Douglas Martin in The New York Times: Dith Pran, 'Killing Fields' Photographer, dies at 65

-- The Times Obituary: Dith Pran

-- Dith Pran in The New York Times: Video: The last word

-- Dith Pran in The New York Times: Return to the Killing Fields

-- Time: Schanberg's score

-- See below for The Killing Fields trailer:

Death of a conservative pioneer

William F. Buckley Jr., American conservative pioneer, has died. He was 82. He was found at his desk where he had been writing a column.

I think Buckley has a good claim to having been one of the most important and influential public intellectuals in the world in the last 100 years.

But not really because of anything he wrote or said.

It was because of what he did. In founding the National Review he rescued conservatives from their schisms and arcane disputes. He rooted out, for instance, anti-semitism and brought different wings of the movement together.

The result was the creation of the defining force in US politics over the last three decades. Hence my claims on Buckley's behalf.

What Buckley had above all was drive and spirit. It is that - rather than ideological consistency - that marked him out and means that he will be missed.

Buckley's impact is captured well in Sam Tanenhaus's New York Times piece entitled The Buckley Effect and in a Salon piece by Buckley friend Chris Weinkopf.

You can read the New York Times obituary here.

And you can read the words of the man himself:

--William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review: Fowlerspeak-Goodspeak

--William F. Buckley Jr. in The Atlantic: Bush for President

--William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review: It didn't work (in Iraq)

--William F. Buckley Jr. in The Atlantic: A master and commander decides, after a lifetime on the water, that he will no longer go down to the sea

The troubling legacy of Norman Mailer

Roger Kimball speaks for me with a magnificent dissent on Norman Mailer:

Mailer epitomized a certain species of macho, adolescent radicalism that helped to inure the wider public to displays of violence, anti-American tirades, and sexual braggadocio.

(via Arts and Letters Daily)

The talent of Dina Rabinovitch

To her family and her friends she was something much, much more, but I am sure Dina Rabinovitch, who died yesterday, would like that people remember her as a journalist.

From the moment I met her, more than 25 years ago now, when we were both starting out at university, I was aware of her fierce ambition to make it as a writer and her dedication to the task. I was always slightly in awe of it. And I still am.

Read her diary today, published as the cover story in G2, and you will see how, though she died so tragically young, she still managed to fulfil her promise and became the serious, sparkling talent she had the ability to be.

Alan Coren: in his own words

How do you find the right words to pay tribute to such a distinguished columnist as Alan Coren? Alan, who died last night, was able to draw on such a seemingly bottomless bag of fancy or obscure words, of literary allusions and popular references, and of styles and parodies, that anything I write will feel flat-flooted. Nonetheless, I'll just say that his colleagues on the Comment Desk will miss him, his sense of fun and his column. So the best way to pay tribute to Alan is to let his words do the talking.

AC invents the perfect yuletide gift: The Digital Aftershave Necktie Phoneslippers

AC awakes from unconsciousness and demands a handgrenade

AC tells you 13 thirteen things you didn't know about Harry Potter

AC introduces Jim Bnod, one of the new generation of spies

AC discovers a new EU measurement, the huddersfield

AC celebrates Whopper of the Year and hefty ladies

Robbie Millen

The profane and provocative Tony Wilson

The funeral of the simultaneously dreadful and magnificent Tony Wilson, of Factory Records, was held today.

Wilson's comments on politics were so profane it was virtually impossible to find a single complete quote from this Spiked interview in 2001 that didn't require asterisks. But I enjoyed this story:

Wilson had a narrow escape when it came to John Smith. He wrote an article for the Manchester Evening News in 1994, which, he says, 'was basically a plea for somebody to kill that dick John Smith' - then jetted off to America for a conference, switched on CNN and heard that Smith had died of a heart attack. 'I nearly had one myself, there on the spot', says Wilson, 'but luckily the Evening News managed to pull the article in time. The last thing I needed was to be blamed for the death of John Smith'.

I also enjoyed his reason for supporting Tony Blair and new Labour:

Left-wing Labour MPs, some of whom were friends of mine, they were f***ing tossers all of them. They kept Thatcher in power. She did a great job of staying in power by herself, but she was assisted by left-wing Labour MPs all the way, who were so into their own f***ing inner-party politics that they didn't know how to relate to potential voters.'

And as for Labour leaders...'No one was ever going to elect Michael Foot or Neil f***ing hunchback Kinnock, or - though no one admits it now because he's dead and has become a "great politician" as they all do when they die - the awful John Smith.

He concluded:

We mustn't forget how important it is to trounce the Tories

The rest of it is fun too.

Close Reagan aide dies

The LA Times, fittingly, has a very good portrait of Mike Deaver, the man who helped make Ronald Reagan.

I particularly liked this story:

One of his [Deaver's] first jobs was working for California Republican George Murphy, a former actor, in his 1964 U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy's former press secretary.

To present Salinger in his worst light, Deaver followed him to many a campaign stop, offering him a cigar as he stepped out of his car. Deaver later recalled that Salinger would stick the cigar in his mouth, giving photographers a ready shot of a fat cat - hardly the man-of-the-people portrait a Democrat might prefer.

Remembering Ron Brown

The death of the, ahem, colourful MP Ron Brown reminded me of one of my favourite political posters, posted everywhere in my student days.

Mr Brown, then sitting for Labour, had visited Afghanistan during the Soviet ascendancy there. He claimed that he had "seen no tanks". A picture then emerged of him standing proudly in front of a huge tank.

The Federation of Conservative Students reprinted the picture and the quote with this accompanying slogan:

Warning - Socialism damages your eyesight

Anyone still got one?

The best and the brightest

There are many people who didn't much admire David Halberstam, the New York Times journalist who died in a road accident on Monday.

Lyndon Johnson, for instance, thought him a traitor for his reports from Vietnam. Others thought him a media insider with a pompous view of its institutions, as reflected in his book The Powers That Be. And even his elegies to baseball have their critics. Richard Ben Cramer paints a much more realistic Joe DiMaggio, and has a much harsher view.

But while acknowledging that Halberstam was too much the romantic (although even this was not always a fault), with too much respect for the myths of a bygone age, I am among those who thought him a true great and mourn his passing.

His book The Best and the Brightest, in particular, is sparkling. And important. It is a classic study of the way political decisions are made, with an importance far beyond its subject. 

Halberstam shows how politicians often commit themselves to a course of action before they realise it and are then tugged along by a need to remain consistent. If you haven't read it, I recommend it strongly.

The death of a post modernist

Verso have sent me a press release expressing their sadness at the death of Jean Baudrillard. I would be sad too, except that I do not believe his death took place. Save for as a media event, of course.

How Britain has become a better place

This morning's Times obituary of John Inman finished with this:

For the past 30 years, Inman lived in a mews house near the canal in Little Venice, West London, despite a fire in 2004. After a lifetime of living in hotel bedrooms, he enjoyed leading a life of quiet, domestic routine.

Inman was a private man who did not like talking about his sexuality, but in 2005 he entered into a civil partnership with his partner of 35 years, Ron Lynch.

But just eight years ago, Inman still felt it necessary to say this.

(UPDATE: For more, read Matthew Parris's excellent piece published this saturday)

Don't forget Young Mr Grace

John Inman's death is obviously sad. But I am afraid I can't just sit here and take all this stuff about Mr Humphries being the central character in Are You being Served?

The most important character, without doubt, was Young Mr Grace (Old Mr Grace doesn't get out much these days.)

Think about how many bosses's speeches you have either heard or given which are just variants of his immortal line:

You're all doing very well

Was this the worst press conference ever?

The death of Arthur Schlesinger Jr has prompted the telling of many an anecdote.

Arianna Huffington story about Schlesinger's response to her invitation to blog on her site - "can I fax in my blog" - was good. But my favourite story was this one: 

Schlesinger had opposed the venture [the Bay of Pigs], though he put his hand to an official paper justifying the invasion and accepted the task of speaking for the provisional government of Cuba, which the CIA had brought to a small hut in the Everglades to ship to Cuba after the invading brigade established its beachhead.

Matters descended into farce when Schlesinger held a press conference. As the cameras rolled, television viewers could hear the members of the would-be government inside the hut shouting in Spanish: "Let us out. Let us out."

Schlesinger, embarrassed, nevertheless continued to speak for the members of the supposedly legitimate government, who had apparently been locked inside the hut because the CIA feared what they might say about Kennedy "betraying the invasion".

If anyone has a story of a worse press conference I'd love to hear it.

Death of a neocon pioneer

Seymour Martin Lipset was one of the original neocons. He wrote widely on the nature of American society and was responsible for promoting the idea of American exceptionalism.

Part of the group of intellectuals at New York's City College who started out as leftists and became the left's strongest critics, Lipset never became a Republican. Still ,he was admired by many conservatives. One of them, Michael Barone, marks Lipset's death with this tribute.

Bob Woodward is wrong to defend Gerald Ford - but he's still one of journalism's heroes

The last week has seen extensive discussion of one of the great political events of my teen years - Gerald Ford's pardon for Richard Nixon. It was a political disaster for Ford at the time, but now? Now it is widely seen as a great act of statesmanship.

My view is closer to the political attitude at the time than it is to the current consensus. I think no one should be above the law.

Eric Boehlert shares this view, and argues that Watergate journalist Bob Woodward has been largely responsible for the shift in consensus. But then he broadens out into a general attack on Bob Woodward.

Now such attacks are quite common, but in my view misplaced.

Yes, Woodward defends his sources and tends to favour their view of the world. But this is the price he, and the reader, pays for spectacular access and reporting. Relying entirely on a Woodward account would never suffice as a rounded view of an historical event, but he provides invaluable insights and information.

So I regard him as a hero, where Boehlert sees him as a villain. Nevertheless the article is worth reading, not least for this well informed speculation:

It's worth nothing that in Woodward's Post article about Ford criticizing the Iraq war, Woodward wrote that he had talked to Ford "for a future book project." So, apparently, that's why Woodward was interviewing Ford on the QT back in 2004 and 2005. A representative for Woodward's publisher, Simon & Schuster, could not be reached to comment on whether Woodward's next book will be about Ford. But if it is, that would explain Woodward's incessant spinning about the Ford pardon.

Jeane Kirkpatrick: a neocon, American hero?

In this interesting article, Norman Podhoretz hails Jeane Kirkpatrick as an American hero. Perhaps more interestingly, he also talks about her as an early neoconservative.

Why interesting? Because the paper that first brought her to public attention drew a line between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. As the New York Times puts it:

She said it was an historic mistake for the United States to have shied away from dictators like the Somozas in Nicaragua and the Shah of Iran. If they served American interests, they were defensible.

This is not now the position associated with neocons. It is worth noting that when she drew it, the left hated it.

Right-wing apologists for Pinochet should be ashamed of themselves

"Long live Pinochet" chanted his supporters as the old man lay dying in hospital. As for me, I thought he'd lived more than long enough.

The Times records Margaret Thatcher as being "greatly saddened". How extraordinary. Pinochet was a murderer, a torturer and a thief. How can you be greatly saddened by the death of someone like that?

Those (on the right I am ashamed to say) who whitewash Pinochet and his crimes are saying one or more of the following:

• No, he wasn't a murderer, torturer and thief. It's all been made up by Christopher Hitchens.
• His murdering and torturing were acceptable because the victims were primarily communists or socialists
• Yes, he was a murderer, torturer and thief but at least he was our murderer, torturer and thief.
• What's a little murdering when he introduced a funded pension scheme?
• What's a little torture when he was on our side in the Falklands War?

What pathetic, morally bankrupt arguments. There's no such thing as "our murderer". Such "realism" should have no place in the thinking of those who support liberty.

The newspapers say that Pinochet had heart failure last night. I think his heart failed him a long time ago.

Not 'arf

Now, Alan "Fluff" Freeman. Was I the only person to regard the amount of coverage given to his death utterly ridiculous? He used to play records for a living and talk between them.

If you don't believe me, listen to this interview with Paul Gambaccini on the Today programme. I rest my case.

Reflections on Milton Friedman

I remember when I was in my late teens watching Milton Friedman on television. He was explaining that if you increased the benefits for disabled people you would suddenly find that you had more of them. My reaction? What a bizarre idea, almost mad. I told my father what I had heard and laughed.

Friedman, of course, was quite correct and making an observation of fundamental importance in understanding the relationship between the welfare state and its clients, and much else besides.

I didn't agree with him on everything. I am not a libertarian. But he was a great man and his influence on me was strong.

Arts and Letters Daily does its usual good job collecting together Friedman obituaries (see the left hand column, for today only). The Wall Street Journal interview by former Times man Tunku Varadarajan is particularly good, if quirky. Iraq was apparently the only major issue in 68 years of marriage that divided Milton and his wife Rose.

And here he is explaining how a pencil is made. A short (2 minute) exposition on the power of markets.