I have a terrible fault as a columnist. It doesn't affect you,
my readers, so much as it affects me. For some reason, I won't
allow myself to write the same thing more than once. Check out the
estimable Mark Steyn, for example, who has no such qualms. He will
write up four or five versions of the same idea for different
markets in any given week. And he has repeated his
demography-as-destiny theme an untold number of times.
So it gratifies me to have written, way back in October, in a
column titled "Giuliani Time," most of the things that everybody is
writing now. I should probably write them again.
Instead, I will confine myself to one observation. Giuliani has
done one thing that no other candidate seems to have the
self-control to do: He has kept his mouth shut. He makes speeches,
of course. But he doesn't seem to feel the urge to blab away to a
variety of audiences about how much he's like them, how much he
sympathizes with them, how much he identifies with them. As a
result, he doesn't put his foot in it, the way, say, Hillary seems
to do. And he doesn't need to triangulate furiously to explain his
positions.
Admirable. It bespeaks both honesty and self-control.
DAVE BARRY DOES A HILARIOUS TAKE in one of his books on how
newspaper executives meet from time to time to try to figure out
how to bolster falling circulation numbers. They always come up
with the same answer: Go after a more youthful audience. They
always try to same thing: bolder graphics, youth-oriented features,
"lifestyle" correspondents. And they always fail.
It appears that The American Spectator faces a problem
similar to those newspaper executives. The readership of our print
magazine skews old. What are we to do about that?
We could exploit it, I suppose, by selling ads for Poligrip and
Geritol. But, if we hope to change our reader profile, it might
work better to reach out actively to young conservative journalists
-- specifically, to the network of conservative newspapers that
have sprung up on campuses all over the country. Those papers are
replicating the early efforts of our own founder at Indiana, after
all. Could be some promising strategic partnerships formed there.
And we could find some young contributors with something to say to
their contemporaries.
THE SUPPOSED BOOMLET for Albert Gore amuses me. If you have
children, you get to listen to the soundtracks of TV cartoons. And
you know that such cartoons often employ popular voices in the news
as objects of satire. Bill Clinton's voice is common. So is Al
Gore's.
The problem for Gore boosters is that, while Bill Clinton's
voice evinces fun and jollity as so employed, the Gore voice
inevitably adheres to some prissy, stuck-up character who doesn't
have a clue. So if, or when, teachers show Al Gore's film to their
classes, the children have been conditioned to think, "Who's that
stuck-up dweeb?"
It's a small cultural indicator, true.
SOMETIMES THE TRUTH GETS out by accident. We have heard dire
warnings about "unprotected sex" for a couple of decades now.
Supposedly, HIV runs rampant, not only in obvious at-risk
populations (gay men, intravenous drug users), but throughout the
"heterosexual community" as well.
By accident, many years ago (I saw his name in a phone book), I
rediscovered one of my old college friends in Los Angeles, during
the heyday of the AIDS crisis. Pete was gay. He worked for the AIDS
Action Committee. He would tell you the bald truth about anything,
including some things you'd rather not know.
The risk of sexually-transmitted AIDS? "Your chance of getting
it from a woman is almost nil."
Now, in a story in the Los Angeles Times about a
parasite being carried to the U.S. from South America, come these
statistics about the U.S. blood supply:
In 1996, using an experimental test, the American Red
Cross found that one in 9,850 blood donors in the L.A. area tested
positive for the parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi. Two years
later, it was one in every 5,400. By 2006, a more refined test
detected the parasite in one in 3,800 donors. About 10% to 30% of
infected people develop symptoms of chronic disease, experts say.
By contrast, HIV, which blood banks screen for, shows up in one
of every 30,000 donors, said Susan Stramer, executive scientific
officer for the Red Cross.
Got that? Granted, there are other sexually transmitted diseases.
But it does appear that the fear of heterosexually transmitted AIDS
may be a bit overblown.
topics:
Bill Clinton, Satire, Books
