Supersized loser week

By Jackson Murphy
web posted June 9, 2003

It's not every week that there are billionaires on the verge of a
"perp-walk", former first lady's telling all, future Hall of Famers
caught with cork in their bat, and pompous newspaper editors
resigning amidst endless jokes. But these four seem like the
"supersized" losers of the week.

Let's start with Martha Stewart. This week she stepped down as
the head of her own company, and plead innocent to a variety of
changes, including conspiracy, stemming from her sale of some
ImClone stock. Martha has become one of the most talked
about people this year for the sale of 4,000 shares. The fact that
Martha is a dedicated control freak is what makes her story so
compelling. How can she make overly complicated crafts and
bakery goods into an empire only to get caught red handed
doing something so stupid?

"Big news from Wall Street," said MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.
"The Feds are cracking down on Martha Stewart. That's kind of
like letting Hitler keep control of his army and arresting the
Fuhrer's secretary for typing out his orders."

Then there is Hillary Clinton. With her new book hitting
bookstores today Sen. Clinton admits that, "as a wife, I wanted
to wring Bill's neck." We can only hope that Simon & Shuster
didn't pay $8 million to figure this sort of thing out.

I was always under the impression that Hillary Clinton is a really
smart woman. But to think with of all of Bill's extra-marital
dalliances this one came as a surprise seems ridiculously naïve or
politically astute. It would seem that the whole book, at
sprawling 576 pages, is designed with one purpose: to paint
Hillary as the complete innocent and distance her from the
sleaziness of her portly husband.

What this book is designed to do is to forever prevent Hillary
from becoming the Martha Stewart of the Democratic Party.
Painting her this way transformed her from being a political
Martha into likeable Hillary. As Dick Morris tells it, "For Hillary
to pretend injured innocence at this point has only one motive:
She needs to somehow justify her strident public defense of her
husband. "

"She can't admit the truth: that she defended him because she
didn't want him forced from office -- ending both their political
careers -- because he'd been unfaithful to her," continued
Morris.

What about Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa? Last Monday
the U.S. House of Representatives, always the hard workers for
the people, passed a resolution "Congratulating Sammy Sosa of
the Chicago Cubs for Hitting 500 Major League Home Runs."
The resolution passed 372-0.

The next night Sammy was thrown out of a game for having cork
in his bat, eventually getting an 8-game suspension. This is a
perfect example of why government should never interfere in
anything, but maybe it was simply an accident by Mr. Sosa.
Does this tarnish Sammy's 500 home runs or that glorious season
when he and Mark McGwire chased Roger Maris's single
season home run record? Time will only tell. Perhaps they will
put an asterisk beside all his homeruns, but it sure is hard to
dislike someone who seems so nice-Martha Stewart, Sammy is
not.

This brings us to Howell Raines. Raines, the newly resigned
Executive editor of The New York Times, finally bowed to
growing pressure and scandal at the famous paper of record.

In 19 short months, Raines made the paper the punchline of
every late night talk show host. A reputation is forever changed,
and proof that even large media organizations are still held
accountable. The Times was always the Swiss banker of news --
if you can't trust the Times, then who can you trust?

Andrew Sullivan who has made a sizable cottage industry out of
gleefully taking shots at the Times credits the rise of webloggers
for the Raines ousting. "Blogs revealed how many of the NYT's
polls were skewed in the way they presented or spun data. They
exposed the anti-Bush fervor of the Enron coverage. Then they
broadcast the revelation of how Paul Krugman had once had
lucrative former ties with Enron. We exposed blatant lies on the
front-page - from allegedly soaring temperatures in Alaska to the
fabricated cooptation of Henry Kissinger into the anti-war camp
in August 2002."
 
The interesting thing about fame and fortune, especially in
America, is that one week you can be the equivalent of pond
scum, and then perhaps even in the next week you are back on
top. Supersized losers can sometimes repair devastating blows
to reputations but can Martha ever be looked at the same day,
can Hillary ever be mentioned without thinking of Bill and
Monica, can Sammy ever uncork his image, or can Howell
Raines ever run a paper again. Probably not, yet the unique thing
is that they could everyone likes a good comeback.

Jackson Murphy is a commentator from Vancouver, Canada.
He is the editor of "Dispatches" a website that serves up political
commentary 24-7. [URL: http://www.dispatches.blogspot.com/]
You can contact him at jacksonmurphy@telus.net.

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