Kinsley - Please dont remain calm : provocations and commentaries

A t the time of my last collection, in 1995, I was living in Washington, D.C., single, writing for the New Republic , the Washington Post , and Time ; appearing five days a week as the liberal host on CNNs debate show Crossfire ; doing a bit of buckraking (Jacob Weisbergs term for giving speeches and appearing at conventions for a lot of money); and trying to keep secret the fact that I had Parkinsons disease. In the previous year, I had flubbed the chance to be the editor of New York Magazine by accepting the job, then turning it down. (A couple of years later I flubbed an even bigger chanceto be editor of the New Yorker although to this day Im not sure how. Si Newhouse offered me the job, then enigmatically withdrew the offer the next day.)

Twelve years later, I am living in Seattle, very happily married, and writing full-time for Time . I am out of the closet with the Parkinsons, had brain surgery last summer to mitigate the symptoms (a great success), and anticipate a more or less normal life span.

In the interim, I got the editorship I hungered for by starting an Internet magazine, Slate , for Microsoft Corporation. (My wife, Patty Stonesifer, was on the committee that interviewed me for the job. That is how we met. She now is CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.) Later I left the editorship of Slate and then left Slate itself to be editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times (a brief but memorable adventure of a year and change, as it turned out). Slate was later sold to the Washington Post Company. Under its second editorthe same Weisberg mentioned aboveit is profitable and influential.

I even have two terrific stepchildren, Sandy Stonesifer and Matt Stonesifer, and a terrific step-daughter-in-law, Crystal Vancho Stonesifer. My secret for raising terrific children: dont get involved until a week before the youngest finishes high school.

Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives, but Im going on my third or fourth. A lucky man.

On the larger stage, the writings in this book cover the end of the Clinton administration, the stolen election of 2000, and two terms of George W. Bush, including September 11, the war on terror, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The tone of these pieces varies widely. Some are whimsical, some are deadly serious, many are a mixture. Over the years this variety has confused people and put some off. It probably has not helped my career. I thought of putting together a collection of just the outright humor pieces, on the theory that collections of humor pieces are easier to sell. But on reflection, vanity would not allow.

I am grateful to many journalistic colleagues. The list is especially long at Slate , but I had better mention Jack Shafer or Im in trouble. Others I badger for wisdom regularly include Mickey Kaus, Nick Lemann, Tim Noah, Bob Wright, and Jacob Weisberg. I worked with some wonderful people at the Los Angeles Times (most of them now gone), starting with the great newspaper editor John Carroll and including Dean Baquet, Andres Martinez, Nick Goldberg, Bob Sipchen, Michael Newman, and Linda Hall. For the three or four minutes I was the American editor of Guardian.co.uk , I enjoyed working with Richard Adams and Alan Rusbridger, among others. Conor Clarke helped me to put together this collection.

The people I especially need to thank are not journalists. They are the doctors, physicians assistants, and nurses who truly have made my lucky life possible: the late Dr. Steve Fink at Massachusetts General Hospital; Dr. Tom Chase at the National Institutes of Health; Dr. Jay Nutt and Julie Carter at Oregon Health Sciences University; Dr. John Roberts, Dr. Gary Kaplan, and Dr. Leland Teng at Virginia Mason Clinic; Dr. Ali Rezai and all his colleagues at the amazing Cleveland Clinic, especially Dr. Monique Giroux, Sierra Farris, and Ellen Gooding.

This book is dedicated to Patty. Who else?

L ONG S ENTENCE

PARSING PAT ROBERTSON.

New Republic, May 8, 1995

T he controversy continues over whether Pat Robertsons bizarre rantings about the depredations of the Rothschilds and the Warburgs make him an anti-Semite. In a way, this debate has been a useful distraction for Robertson, since it has overshadowed the issue of whether he is a complete nut case. Based on the same evidence, that is a much easier question. Yet, as the leader of the Christian Coalition, he remains the most important person in the most powerful faction within the Republican Party. If this bothers the partys leading lightslet alone its intellectual apologiststhey have not said so.

On April 12, the Wall Street Journal editorial page published an apologia by Robertsontitled, a reply to my criticswhich casts light on both the anti-Semitism and lunacy issues. One sentence in particular caught my eye. Wonderfully mad, it is a self-quote from Robertsons 1990 book, The New Millennium . In other words, Robertson himself has chosen to highlight this sentence as a sample of his thought, and proof that he is not anti-Semitic. The sentence rewards close textual analysis. Here it is: Intolerance in any quarter is wrong, but inasmuch as we are able, we must ensure that the trend throughout the 1990s remains in favor of a Jewish homeland in Israel and not for the elimination for the Jews.

Thus sayeth the Rev. Pat Robertson.

It is hard to know where to begin to sample this sentences delights.

Perhaps it is best, in the Hebrew manner, to start at the end and move backwards. We immediately face a grammatical problem. It should, of course, be the elimination of the Jews, not the elimination for the Jews, which is an oddly arch way of putting it. Elimination would not, on balance, be for the Jews. To be sure, one might possibly say, elimination for the Jews, omitting the first the, in the sense of, Its curtains for the Jewsbut this would be a rakish construction, surely inappropriate to the subject under discussion.

This brings us to the nub of the matter. Interpretation is always tricky, but Robertson seems to be suggesting here that he opposes the elimination of the Jews. That is nice, and I believe him. He even opposes a trend toward the elimination of the Jews, which is especially comforting. But as evidence of an absence of anti-Semitism, it is a bit lacking in oomph. Does Robertson think that anti-Semitism consists of wishing for the elimination of the Jews? This is setting the bar awfully high.