My Dinner With Michael
Kinsley
4/20/05
I began Wednesday evening in a sulky mood. Yes, I was going to the
Michael
Kinsley (Los Angeles Times Editorial and Opinion editor) and Andres
Martinez (Editorial Page Editor) at the Harvard/Radcliffe Club at the
LA Athletic Club. Downside. The program was scheduled to begin at
6pm (when I could meet with all the hot brainy chix) but my date Cathy
said we should arrive at 7pm.
I absolutely must arrive on time to events or I get all out of kilter.
So at 6:52pm, I walked up the Club carrying my book -- You Can't Go
Home Again by Thomas Wolfe. If anyone asks me why I've got a book with
me, I'm gonna say it is just in case the evening is boring. That will
let the world know how ticked off I am and these Harvard types don't
impress me because I exchange email with Jenna Jameson.
I call Cathy on my cell phone and say I'll meet her at the entrance.
Seven minutes later and no sign of Cathy, I call her again. She's already
in the program. I'm waiting outside like a fool for a woman who'll never
come.
It's the same old story.
The panel is well underway as I walk in. There are no spare seats near
hot chix and it would be rude of me anyway to seize one as I already
have my date Cathy.
Finally seats are brought to the back and side. I'm feeling happier
because I didn't have to spring for the entrance. Thanks to Jim,
our host.
The panelists are mumbling and muttering under their breaths. They
avoid the mic and it doesn't even matter because they have nothing to
say.
Just as I'm ready to open my book, Mike Kinsley knocks off a few good
lines. Then Andres resumes the mumble about nothing and the moderator
(Steven Arkow, works at DOJ as a federal prosecutor) in his tenor voice
shuns the mic and I'm ready to write some nasty stuff about cutting
the balls off of people who won't speak into the mic because they sound
like eunechs anyway.
Then I realize that this sort of writing would not endear me to Cathy
who had warned me to be on my best behavior.
Kinsley says there are 14 on The Times editorial board. There were
no lawyers when he came aboard. Now there are three. He wants more lawyers
because they are systematic thinkers. LAT Editor John Carrol disagrees.
The moderator's voice reminds me of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy
birthday Mr. President" to JFK.
I fight to keep myself in my seat when my soul wants to jump up and
yell, "Have you guys ever considered publishing something interesting?
Just as a change of pace, mind you."
The LA Times has long been the most boring, and the most predictably
and reflexively liberal of any major newspaper. I'm not sure it is any
better under Kinsley.
I've been reading Michael since I was a teenager. I think The New Republic
(TNR) was at its best under his leadership (though his reign over Slate
left much to be desired because almost all his writers were uniformly
and predictably liberal, unlike the vibrant TNR).
Michael has brought in a bunch of pals from the Northeast, including
dull regulars such as Margaret Carlson. Snore. How about some fresh
LA voices Michael?
Kinsley describes David
Shaw as The Times "Ideas" columnist. Cathy and I break
into laughter.
An insistent woman in the front row, without any prompting from the
moderator about opening things up to the floor, badgers Michael about
Shaw and other Times shortcoming. I immediately know its Amy Alkon,
AdviceGoddess.com.
Five minutes later, Cathy asks me, "Who is that speaking?"
"It's Amy," I say.
"Oh," Cathy responds, chagrined. "I wondered why her
voice sounded so familiar."
"Newspapers are establishment publications," says Kinsley.
Martinez describes The LAT as "freewheeling" compared to
The NYT editorial page. He says The NYT's "history and tradition
is almost oppressive."
Looking around the audience, nobody seems to care what Andres says.
But they're glued to Kinsley who keeps trying to share the spotlight
with Andres.
A man with a heavy Mexican accent makes a three-point speech about
the late Frank
del Olmo, the first Latino editor at The LAT.
The man is ticked off that The Times hasn't replaced him with another
Latino editor. He praises Frank for being the only journalist to make
a solid stand against the Mexican Mafia.
"As opposed to what?" wonders Cathy. "Other journalists
support the Mexican Mafia?"
Though the room is filled with Harvard/Radcliffe graduates, many of
them are idiots. They ask lengthy ponderous questions.
Kinsley praises the promising accomplished Latino voices at The LAT.
The man in the audience wants them to further Frank Del Olmo's racial
activism.
That's exactly what's needed in journalists -- more racial activism.
Martinez and Kinsley suck up to his racial platitudes rather than slamming
them down his throat as he deserves.
What kind of reaction would a man praising activism for the white race
get in this crowd? He'd be shown the door. But when it comes to Latinos
and Blacks, you can never be too racially active without the wimpy liberals
at The LAT stepping into line behind it.
Kinsley's talk about the bright promising Latinos at The LAT reminds
me of those who talk about "articulate Blacks."
Andres grew up in Mexico but he has no Mexican accent, yet many people
of Mexican ancestry who grew up in California speak with a Mexican accent,
such as porn star Daisy Fuentez.
The man wants to know what editorials The LAT has published that would
make Frank del Olmo proud. Instead of telling him to jump out the window,
Andres lists a variety of pro-Latino editorials, including one for giving
CA Drivers License to illegal aliens (thereby destroying the DL as a
valid ID device for a US citizen).
A middle-aged black woman says her 20-year old niece doesn't read newspapers,
doesn't know who John
[R.] Bolton is, and that this therefore must be the fault of newspapers.
"Your niece is a moron," says Cathy, and Kinsley says the
same thing, though in more polite language.
Kinsley stammers a lot, repeating the same word up to six times before
he can move on.
Mike says he's been an opinion journalist all his life and he doesn't
feel like he's influenced anything.
Cathy leaves at 8:10.
Jim invites me to dinner with the panelists and a dozen other elites.
Kinsley sits down opposite me. His first question is what year did
I graduate Harvard. I confess I'm an interloper.
I quote chapter and verse from things he wrote 20 years ago. He says
he doesn't know whether to be flattered or frightened.
Kinsley says Mickey Kaus
with his blog has a bigger influence (due to his immediacy) than
the LAT editorial and opinion pages. Kinsley was used to the immediacy
of Slate (which was slow in web time). He'd send off an article, take
a shower, and return to his computer to find his article online. Now
at The LAT, he turns in his column for Sunday on Tuesday.
Kinsley says newspapers are doomed. He wants to do more blogger/interactive
things on The LAT website. He's excited by The LAT's new head of Internet
operations -- Rob
Barrett, the husband of Ruth Shalit.
Kinsley wants to know how I make money from blogging. I confess that
the only way I do it is to write about porn and surround it with ads
for porn sites.
That stops conversation around us (a bunch of elite lawyers) and so
I talk about my decade writing on the industry.
Michael wants to know what questions I ask porn stars.
I say the first one is -- when you were a kid, what did you want to
be when you grew up?
Then the group of us went around and answered the question. Michael
always wanted to be an opinon journalist.
My second question to porn stars is -- what expectations were you raised
with.
Michael says he was expected to be a doctor (cartoonist Michael Ramirez
has four siblings who are doctors, he's the disappointment to his mother).
Third key question -- what do you love and hate about what you're doing.
Kinsley suggests that a better question would be -- what do you dislike
about what you're doing. That's more genuine. Love and hate is too dramatic.
Wrong, I say. You need to key in to people's most powerful emotions
to get the most compelling material. And you can't ask a porn star point
blank what she dislikes about the industry because you will likely raise
her immediate suspicion that you are putting her and the industry down
and you are most interested in damaging information. Porn stars are
too familiar with people who want to slam their industry and as soon
as they get a whiff of this, they clam up.
The key to any great interview is not the exactness of the questions
but the amount of rapport you are able to establish with your subject.
I quote back to Kinsley an article he wrote 18-years ago on his two-weeks
in Australia. I asked him how much Australia's kindliness was due to
the racial monotony of its population (98% white). He said that he pointed
out in his article that Australia's dynamism was substantially due to
its opening up to asian immigration.
Kinsley waxed lyrical about racial and sexual-orientation diversity
on Miami's South Beach.
I asked him about the higher crime rates that result from racial (and
other types of) diversity.
Kinsley didn't see any connection between high crime rates and diversity.
So I shut up on this sensitive topic.
I ask Kinsley if he had any Republicans writing for him at Slate (I
don't recall any being on staff). "Oh sure," Michael says.
"Who?" I ask.
"Jack Shafer,"
says Kinsley.
"Jack's not a Republican. He's a libertarian."
"He voted for Bush [senior and junior]," said Michael.
Not convincing. Slate was almost pure liberalism with a smattering
of libertarianism (as far as staffers).
Jack Shafer replies to my inquiry: "I ain't never voted for no
Bush."
Shafer says he has never voted Republican for president and that the
one word that best describes his political beliefs is "libertarian."
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a registered Republican
who was a staff writer for Slate.
Kinsley (who wears a couple of days' growth of beard on his face) says
the Outfoxed documentary
was crap.
Kinsley remembers Stephen Glass as a nice kid at The New Republic who
worked as a secretary. Kinsley felt bad he couldn't get him writing
gigs.
Glass went on to fabricate information in about 40 articles for TNR.
Kinsley had the same reaction to the Stephen Glass movie Shattered
Glass as I did -- it was superb, though too reverential towards
TNR.
Kinsley has long hated fact-checkers. He thinks reporters should be
their own fact-checkers and having fact-checkers on staff makes reporters
lazy.
I asked Michael what was the most perceptive article written on him.
He mentioned one in Vanity Fair by a famous 20/20 correspondent who
wrote that the man who doesn't blink (watch Kinsley on TV, he rarely
blinks) blinked (when he accepted and rejected the editorship of New
York magazine within 24-hours, during this same time he received his
diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease, which he only made public when he
left Slate about two years ago).
I remind Kinsley that he never got to edit Literary Editor and incoherent
blowhard Leon
Wieseltier who's long had a snug relationship with former TNR publisher
Marty Peretz that leaves Leon exempt from editing, even though he desperately
needs it.
Three years ago, Michael married his former boss at Microsoft who now
runs the Bill Gates charitable foundation.
Kinsley splits his time between LA and Seattle.
I ask Michael and the group if they've heard of Air
Supply. Nobody has. I tell them that I learned about love through
the prism of Air Supply songs. They look at me mystified.
These are Harvard graduates. What exactly do they teach there? Obviously
no Australian Music Appreciation.
I sit next to a beautiful woman I knew a decade ago. Now she's married
and has two kids in addition to a thriving career.
I'm reminded again of how far I lag behind my peers in the things that
are most meaningful.
Kinsley scoffs at how the Washington Post carefully labels satirical
articles as "satire."
I regale the group with tales of my five
hours of live radio debate with Paul Cambria on this. Paul thrashed
me (I took Kinsley's position on satire -- that if you label it, it
is no longer funny, and the inherent material should reveal whether
something is satirical or literal).
Kinsley and Kaus (both graduates of Harvard Law School) wanted to start
a magazine that would have a big disclaimer on the front that some of
its contents were invented. They thought this might serve as a protection
against libel suits but they were quickly dissuaded. If an average person
could read something you wrote or published and believe it was true,
then you are on the hook for libel if you maliciously publish falsehoods.
Unlike Mickey
Kaus (who has a thing for zany right-wing blondes), Kinsley has
never dated Ann
Coulter nor known her in a Biblical way (not implying that Mickey
has known her in that way).
I ask Michael which magazines he most looks forward to reading. He
says The New Republic. He says The Atlantic is the magazine he feels
he ought to read (but rarely does).
Whenever I stop talking, the Harvard/Radcliffe types quickly revert
to discussing odd architecture in various obscure Harvard buildings.
Jolly lucky for these folks that I came along to liven up the party
(and I didn't even have to demonstrate, even though I was about to at
times, the traditional Australian art of penis puppetry).
Jane writes: "I loved reading your Michael Kinsley piece. He’s
my favorite opinion writer – brilliant writer – but I remember seeing
him on Crossfire and being horrified. Every time he was attacked he
looked like he was about to run home and tell his mommy. I’m curious
if he was better in a non-confrontational setting?"
It was a terrific experience having dinner with him. A lifelong dream
fulfilled and far more wholesome than many of my other dreams.