TRAMP THE DIRT DOWN

DIED. CASPAR WEINBERGER, 88, wry, intellectual public servant whose long record of toil in the White Houses of Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan was marred by a late, rare blemish: a 1992 indictment for allegedly covering up facts in the Iran-contra scandal, which he vigorously denied and for which he was pardoned; in Bangor, Maine.

Reagan suuposedly taught us how "perception is reality," and most hook that line up to the Bush onslaught on a "reality-based" opposition. To me the Bush era correlative goes something like "All information is political: the weather, obituaries, school lunch menus..." This Weinberger obit is so slanted as to be authored by somebody to the right of Novak. How does one choose the first two adjectives for this reptilean slime to be "wry, intellectual..."? Does anybody remember anything close to witty and/or intelligent Cap ever said? And his "long record of public service" (read: rank cronyism) was "marred' by a "late, rare blemish" (read: grand jury indictment for high crimes, including diverting funds drug profits to those "moral equivalent of our founding forefather" Contras from a fellow Republican, Lawrence Walsh), and pardoned on a Christmas holiday Friday evening by Bush Sr. on his way out of office, the most shameful kind of "exoneration," the Nixonian kind.

Worst thing about it: it goes by completely unremarked, as if Time, which once had airs of respectability, can adopt its irrefutible tone without redress. Which it can.