Nice to see one of our strongest political columnists continuing to appear in the arts and
culture pages. I’m talking of course about Frank Rich, of The New York Times, who excoriated
the Bush administration Sunday for its sublimely misguided efforts to manage the news, “Why Are We Back in Vietnam?”
Loved it all, but especially his point that “the first place to look” for the news “is any TV
news show on which [Condoleezza] Rice, [Andrew] Card, Dick Cheney, Colin
Powell and Donald Rumsfeld are not appearing.” They get
trotted out for Oprah or Letterman, while real journalists who might ask real questions, like Ted
Koppel or the producers of “Frontline,” get stiffed. It’s an obvious point, but somebody needed to
say it — and Rich said it beautifully.
Speaking of political columnists, I’d say that David Brooks is still trying to find his rhythm as
the latest addition to The New York Times’s op-ed page. He’s best when his political bias comes
wrapped in clever social commentary. Otherwise he tends to go flat. Compare Saturday’s column,
“Living in the Age of Edge,” about Helmut Newton
as the personification of meaningless style, with a recent one about the three faces of the
Democratic Party, “The Good, The
Bad, The Ugly.”
Just by using that movie cliché for a headline (even copy editors on the feature desk know to
avoid it), he lowers expectations and fills up on conventional wisdom. The column on
Newton, though not sterling either, at least draws the interesting conclusion “that of all the human
traits that shape culture and history, the most underappreciated is the power of
vacuousness.”
Here’s an example of strong writing by Martin Bernheimer on an entirely different subject: the
Boston Symphony Orchestra’s concert performance of “Pelléas et Mélisande” under principal
guest-conductor Bernard Haitink. It’s music
criticism that speaks in real language, conveying real impressions
without resorting to either the academic jargon of the specialist or the technospeak of overdone
scholarship.
