The American Spectator

p> MR. KNICK (posted 5/15/03 12:36 a.m.) br> It’s all too sad when a Dave DeBusschere dies at 62. Willis Reed or Walt Frazier got the glory when the New York Knicks won the NBA championship in 1970, but everyone knew DeBusschere was their franchise player. Before he joined them they were nothing. Traded from Detroit in late 1968, he immediately turned them into a strong team. Everyone remembers Jerry West’s 60-foot shot to tie game three of the championship series in Los Angeles. But it was DeBusschere’s outside shot that won that game in overtime. /p>

If teammate Bill Bradley had been half as tough, maybe he’d be president today. As it is, Dollar Bill captured DeBusschere nicely in his books, including this description of visits to DeBusschere’s family bar in Detroit across from a Chrysler plant. “Most of the autoworkers knew Dave, the basketball star, who played the game the same way these men approached their jobs: Work hard and get it done. Give a few blows and take a few. No complaints. Dave would consume six cans of beer to my one…”

p> ONE LAST HAYMAKER (posted 5/15/03 12:37 a.m.) br> Bill Bennett and his gambling are no longer anyone’s lead story, though no doubt he continues to feel the effects of the recent tempest set off in his name. Spiteful figures such as Michael Kinsley settled twenty odd years of frustration to viciously attack Bennett, as if he’d never repaid them a gambling debt and now suddenly they were free to collect and bludgeon him with a tire iron. One camp that seemed reliably loyal to Bennett was Washington neocondom, which was pretty much part of the same network to which Bennett belonged and even made him the great figure he became. /p>

So it must have come as a shock to hear the stern denunciation of Bennett, if not strong distancing from him, that emerged from a leading voice of Washington neoconservatism, David Brooks, last Friday during his joint weekly appearance with Mark Shields on PBS’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” Asked for his “quick thoughts on Bill Bennett’s problems this week,” he responded:

“Well, it’s a failure of character. It’s something that he is surrounded by, talk of virtue. He doesn’t live up to it. He doesn’t show self-discipline. You know, they say that Satan is a deceiver. I’m not quite sure he’s hit bottom and faced up to the addiction and the problem that he has….”

Thanks to Jayson Blair, this may be one earthquake that didn’t register.

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