Beyond Fact-Checking
            

            Hi Russ,

            While you've been in Bermuda getting sunburned, I've been up in the
mountains (Catskills) all summer, which has been great for getting away but
also leaves me somewhat media-challenged--I get the New York dailies but don't
have cable or any TV, and even the radio reception is terrible. For any
magazine less popular than Time , the nearest venue is that great
metropolitan center, Woodstock, which is 25 miles away. Courtesy of a traveling
family member I did get hold of the first Talk issue, speaking of
Hillary. The profile was terrible--it must be really difficult to write with
your nose so far up someone's ass.

            Hillary needs a great popular novel to do her justice. She's in some ways
poignant, in some ways horrifying, and an ur-representation of all our cultural
contradictions about women and power. I'm no fan of her politics--on the
evidence, her left-wing reputation is entirely undeserved, she's a
pro-corporate New Democrat (that health plan should have been called the
Insurance Company Protection Act), a pious communitarian (against divorce--!!),
no friend of civil liberties, feminism half a millimeter deep. I would vote for
her for Senate, because I can't stand Giuliani and don't want to see the
Republicans get 60 votes, but not with any enthusiasm. She's a vulnerable
candidate, not because of the New York thing but because she's arrogant, hates
the press, and people are tired of the Clintons. (Though if Ken Starr is stupid
enough to release his report right before the election, she's in.) But Giuliani
is no shoo-in: A lot of New Yorkers and even suburbanites are turned off by his
authoritarianism; Pataki and D'Amato will continue to undermine him,
endorsement or no; and the Conservative Party probably won't endorse him unless
he makes some gestures to the right, which will not help him with his New
York/suburban base.

            I do think Hillary will run, short of some major negative groundswell, which
I don't detect so far. I hope she does, since it would at least be an exciting
and unpredictable race, unlike (so far) the presidential yawn. RFK Jr. or
Andrew Cuomo?? Excuse me while I take a nap. Rangel? Maybe. Nita Lowey would
have been the best candidate, actually, but at this point she could never
escape the comparisons and the celebrity gap.

            Re: the dailies' casual attitude toward facts: If news stories get the dates
wrong, the "facts" purveyed by what passes for news analysis and commentary
make me feel like I'm living in an alternate universe. From what I read, we're
in the middle of an endless euphoric economic boom and lots of jobs at rising
wages, while what I see is a shaky stock market, technology companies unable to
unload their overstock of computers, continuing layoffs, people losing good
jobs and getting part-time, lower-paid, benefitless jobs instead, etc., etc.
And then I keep reading that the culture war is over--so what do you call it
when the Kansas school board has decided evolution doesn't have to be
taught?