Posted on Huffington Post - Aug. 13, 2010
By Steve Daley
In the death of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Chicago, there is for some of us a kind of guilty pleasure.
The obits have struggled to give the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee his due as a legislator, as a master of reaching bipartisan consensus on the thorniest of tax and entitlement issues.
But the overlay, as he understood and predicted, was indictment, loss of power, felony conviction and time served. “Powerful, Corrupt” is the headline writer’s shorthand, and that is fair enough in its way.
Perhaps society benefited from Rostenkowski’s conviction on two counts of mail fraud and the 17 months he spent in a federal lockup, winding up in a Salvation Army halfway house before his release. But this society will have to get a good deal more saintly before some of us think so.
As a reporter and columnist, I didn’t know Rostenkowski very well. Many of my colleagues, particularly in Chicago, knew him far better.
But I had time to observe him in his role as a committee chairman and there is this:
Rostenkowski came to Washington with a purpose. He did not come here to tell us how much he loved Jesus or to sit on cable television and impugn the motives of others.
The only worthwhile members of Congress are those who come to the place with that sense of purpose, whether you agree with that purpose or not. And you can get a good argument their estimable numbers are shrinking.
Rosty wanted power and influence and he wanted to get things done. It took him a while to get to his chairmanship but by any standard, by any measure, he succeeded at getting things done.
He was imperious and greedy, arrogant and tribal and, if you spent time on Capitol Hill, you understood that he was also widely respected and much beloved.
“Everybody has a district,” he said to me once. “Everybody had to go home and explain what they did here. Understanding that is fundamental.”
Ways and Means was not run as a democracy, but Rostenkowski understood the fears and ambitions of his colleagues, especially those on his committee.
In a sense he was all clichés. He combined a love of the back-room deal with that hoariest of congressional bromides – be a workhorse, not a show horse. Denizens of the Capitol, including many reporters, delighted in his bumptious, brash behavior and in his effectiveness.
I recall watching him deliver a floor speech – a relative rarity – on a bill to raise the pay of House members. Most of his colleagues wanted the money, of course, but they cowered in fear of constituent phone calls and the wrath of the opinion makers.
Rosty marched to the lectern and roared at the gathering, insisting on his worth, insisting that he would defend his salary back in Chicago.
Watching from behind him in the press gallery, I saw the beaming faces of his peers – Republicans and Democrats – basking in the moment. Here was a man living their dream – unapologetic and proud of his work.
Even his legislative failures were compelling. In 1989 a crowd of irate seniors famously chased him through the streets of his district over a health-care measure known as “catastrophic care.”
I wrote a Sunday column suggesting that if the voters of his district wanted face time with the Chairman on the matter they should pony up a $2000 honorarium and get him to give a speech.
The next week, the phone rang and an aide asked me to hold for the Chairman.
Rostenkowski had seen the column and, as his voice rose, said that I needed to know – not that he cared - that he didn’t give speeches for a mere $2000.
Another morning in the House I watched an esteemed reporter for the New York Times follow Rosty toward a door to one of the many meeting rooms he commanded.
The Timesman had more questions. Rosty had no more answers. He opened the door, stepped inside and shut the door in the reporter’s face.
Another Times reporter, the late Robin Toner, turned to me with a smile on her face. “Well,” she said, “you don’t see that happen to my paper very often.”
Finally, there is the art of the performance. Understanding this concept is not possible if you possess a reflexive distaste for politicians. But there it is.
There is pleasure to be drawn and something to be learned from watching someone do their job with surpassing skill, and a little style. Think Michael Jordan going to the hoop, Meryl Streep at the movies, Derek Jeter playing baseball, Mike Royko at the height of his column writing powers, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan working a crowd.
For all his imperfections, which will be well chronicled this week and next, Rostenkowski was exceedingly good at being Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of House Ways and Means Committee. There are worse legacies.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Mornings at Tammany Hall
The art teacher generally turned up at Tammany Hall around 9 in the morning. The saloon was closed, but someone would let Cliff through the double doors of the converted Washington townhouse near 21st St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. He would amble to the far end of the bar, away from the doors and the windows and place his briefcase on the barstool next to him.
He was an art professor, actually, at George Washington University, just a block down the street, and a watercolorist of some renown. “Gin,” he would offer, though anyone behind the battered counter would already be reaching for the Beefeater bottle.
Some men who drink at 9 in the morning need a newspaper or a crossword puzzle or a detective novel as a prop. And of course, in the era of Dick Nixon, the cell phone had not yet become an all-purpose appendage and refuge.
Cliff needed nothing but the gin. He was meticulous, quiet and polite, making church steeples with his fingers and pushing back his lank brown hair. He did not require gossip or bartender bonhomie or witless chat about the weekly fate of the Washington Redskins. He needed gin.
Around 10, Mr. Sims, a native Washingtonian of indeterminate age, would make his way from the downstairs kitchen to Cliff’s end of the bar. He would fire up a Kool, nod at Cliff and shoot a look at the bartender.
Charles Sims was famously uninterested in the names of the customers or of his white-boy colleagues who tended bar or waited tables. Someone would place three fingers of room-temperature gin in front of him and he would knock it back, always offering the same assessment.
“Make you sick or make you well,” he’d gasp.
From time to time, as a kind of peace offering, Charles would emerge from the kitchen with bowls of what he called “Turkey Butt stew.” The translation was literal – Charles wasted nothing in the Tammany Hall kitchen. But as appalling as it was in concept, we came to believe the stew (it was soup, actually) possessed miraculous, recuperative powers over the hangover. To that end we consumed it with vigor, and we didn’t ask too many questions.
For his part, Cliff, the art professor, would ignore the stew and generally have a pair of large gins, maybe three on a morning when the prospect of facing his students and his peers got the better of him.
Their behavior was in no way viewed as unusual or problematic, and the gin in the bottle was almost never Beefeater.
Resplendent in a turtleneck and Frye boots, I was the guy behind the counter cutting the fruit. Being hired as a waiter at Tammany had saved me from a life of graduate school and working as a loan officer wannabe in a bank on 14th St. I had ascended to day bartender when a colleague had, in a festive manner, fallen down about a hundred rows of seats at RFK Stadium.
“No hard feelings,” Leigh told me. “I ‘d rather wait tables. You actually like talking to these people.” And I did.
I was a guy who had never had much fun, and was essentially unfamiliar with the concept. On my 25th birthday, my new friends Tom Costello and Chris Reidy appeared to tell me I would be working the bar that October night and they would be celebrating my birthday because, well, they felt I didn’t know how.
They were right. But I learned pretty fast. Unlike the bank or grad school, the bar was always open. Cash flowed into the tip jar. There were interesting women with drinks who stayed up late. At night a gaggle of journalistic regulars appeared, men and women who looked like they were having a lot of fun on and off the job. There was live music a couple nights a week, notably Emmylou Harris and Asleep at the Wheel.
My career path was just about where I wanted it to be.
On some mornings we would earn an early visit from Father Tim, a crowd favorite in local saloon circles. He was a defrocked priest and a kind of hero by our raffish standards, having been bounced from the clergy by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington for “disseminating” birth control information to poor women.
Not abortion counseling. Father Tim lost his stripes for suggesting to poor women that they needn’t get pregnant. A firing offense in those days.
So we liked Father Tim. But he was not without his odd habits and tendencies. He kept a number of checkbooks, including one that identified him – ex post facto – as a priest. Bars honored personal checks in those days and it was remarkable how often Father Tim would flash the priestly checkbook in Georgetown or on Capitol Hill and be told it was all on the house. And thanks for coming in, Father.
At Tammany Hall we were in on the game, of course, but the padre never got whacked for more than every other drink. This was despite the fact that Father Tim routinely indulged in a personal saloon ritual that can only be described as disturbing.
Customers who order the same drink the same way every time are generally held in high regard by bartenders. And Father Tim pushed the limits, as unpredictable as the College of Cardinals. Perhaps it was some relic of his boyhood days in the seminary but the good father insisted on many variations of beverage, all in the same vessel. He might start with a soda, then transfer his affections to a Bloody Mary, then perhaps move on to a cold draft beer. Same glass.
We viewed this conduct as closer to a mortal sin than a venial one, but he was our mascot priest. He was often in the company of Maryland real estate moguls who were masquerading as doctors, looking for some public entity to build them a hospital, the better to fleece the government and the needy.
Father Tim forgave them their sins, apparently, but we pounded their bar checks, making them pay for everything, and then some. It was a simple rule of thumb: if someone we liked was going to pay a little less, then someone else was going to have to pay a little more.
At about 11:30, the place was as ready as it was ever going to be for business. On an average morning I’d brew another pot of coffee, discreetly pour the better part of a quart of King George IV scotch into a Dewar’s bottle and tighten the apron.
Normal people – strays – would be coming for hamburgers and chef salads and fish & chips, with iced tea, and we would have to serve them. “The job must be done,” Tom Costello would say. In five or six hours we could start the party again.
Cliff, Mr. Sims and Father Tim are real people; they are not real names.
He was an art professor, actually, at George Washington University, just a block down the street, and a watercolorist of some renown. “Gin,” he would offer, though anyone behind the battered counter would already be reaching for the Beefeater bottle.
Some men who drink at 9 in the morning need a newspaper or a crossword puzzle or a detective novel as a prop. And of course, in the era of Dick Nixon, the cell phone had not yet become an all-purpose appendage and refuge.
Cliff needed nothing but the gin. He was meticulous, quiet and polite, making church steeples with his fingers and pushing back his lank brown hair. He did not require gossip or bartender bonhomie or witless chat about the weekly fate of the Washington Redskins. He needed gin.
Around 10, Mr. Sims, a native Washingtonian of indeterminate age, would make his way from the downstairs kitchen to Cliff’s end of the bar. He would fire up a Kool, nod at Cliff and shoot a look at the bartender.
Charles Sims was famously uninterested in the names of the customers or of his white-boy colleagues who tended bar or waited tables. Someone would place three fingers of room-temperature gin in front of him and he would knock it back, always offering the same assessment.
“Make you sick or make you well,” he’d gasp.
From time to time, as a kind of peace offering, Charles would emerge from the kitchen with bowls of what he called “Turkey Butt stew.” The translation was literal – Charles wasted nothing in the Tammany Hall kitchen. But as appalling as it was in concept, we came to believe the stew (it was soup, actually) possessed miraculous, recuperative powers over the hangover. To that end we consumed it with vigor, and we didn’t ask too many questions.
For his part, Cliff, the art professor, would ignore the stew and generally have a pair of large gins, maybe three on a morning when the prospect of facing his students and his peers got the better of him.
Their behavior was in no way viewed as unusual or problematic, and the gin in the bottle was almost never Beefeater.
Resplendent in a turtleneck and Frye boots, I was the guy behind the counter cutting the fruit. Being hired as a waiter at Tammany had saved me from a life of graduate school and working as a loan officer wannabe in a bank on 14th St. I had ascended to day bartender when a colleague had, in a festive manner, fallen down about a hundred rows of seats at RFK Stadium.
“No hard feelings,” Leigh told me. “I ‘d rather wait tables. You actually like talking to these people.” And I did.
I was a guy who had never had much fun, and was essentially unfamiliar with the concept. On my 25th birthday, my new friends Tom Costello and Chris Reidy appeared to tell me I would be working the bar that October night and they would be celebrating my birthday because, well, they felt I didn’t know how.
They were right. But I learned pretty fast. Unlike the bank or grad school, the bar was always open. Cash flowed into the tip jar. There were interesting women with drinks who stayed up late. At night a gaggle of journalistic regulars appeared, men and women who looked like they were having a lot of fun on and off the job. There was live music a couple nights a week, notably Emmylou Harris and Asleep at the Wheel.
My career path was just about where I wanted it to be.
On some mornings we would earn an early visit from Father Tim, a crowd favorite in local saloon circles. He was a defrocked priest and a kind of hero by our raffish standards, having been bounced from the clergy by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington for “disseminating” birth control information to poor women.
Not abortion counseling. Father Tim lost his stripes for suggesting to poor women that they needn’t get pregnant. A firing offense in those days.
So we liked Father Tim. But he was not without his odd habits and tendencies. He kept a number of checkbooks, including one that identified him – ex post facto – as a priest. Bars honored personal checks in those days and it was remarkable how often Father Tim would flash the priestly checkbook in Georgetown or on Capitol Hill and be told it was all on the house. And thanks for coming in, Father.
At Tammany Hall we were in on the game, of course, but the padre never got whacked for more than every other drink. This was despite the fact that Father Tim routinely indulged in a personal saloon ritual that can only be described as disturbing.
Customers who order the same drink the same way every time are generally held in high regard by bartenders. And Father Tim pushed the limits, as unpredictable as the College of Cardinals. Perhaps it was some relic of his boyhood days in the seminary but the good father insisted on many variations of beverage, all in the same vessel. He might start with a soda, then transfer his affections to a Bloody Mary, then perhaps move on to a cold draft beer. Same glass.
We viewed this conduct as closer to a mortal sin than a venial one, but he was our mascot priest. He was often in the company of Maryland real estate moguls who were masquerading as doctors, looking for some public entity to build them a hospital, the better to fleece the government and the needy.
Father Tim forgave them their sins, apparently, but we pounded their bar checks, making them pay for everything, and then some. It was a simple rule of thumb: if someone we liked was going to pay a little less, then someone else was going to have to pay a little more.
At about 11:30, the place was as ready as it was ever going to be for business. On an average morning I’d brew another pot of coffee, discreetly pour the better part of a quart of King George IV scotch into a Dewar’s bottle and tighten the apron.
Normal people – strays – would be coming for hamburgers and chef salads and fish & chips, with iced tea, and we would have to serve them. “The job must be done,” Tom Costello would say. In five or six hours we could start the party again.
Cliff, Mr. Sims and Father Tim are real people; they are not real names.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Thinking About Crustaceans
We had the annual Fourth of July crabfest on the deck last weekend, a family tradition of relatively recent vintage hinged on a group consensus around Maryland hardshell crab.
It has become an exspensive habit - $72 a dozen for large crabs from Captain Pell's out on the edge of Fairfax County, Va. - but my wife, Jane, is a purist in these matters. And, as the man said of Christmas, it's only once a year.
Three dozen, with barbecued chicken and ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad, sliced tomatoes, collard greens (they come with the barbecue). We passed on the desserts this year, and nobody drinks as much as they used to, if at all. Still, plenty of cold beer at the ready.
My brother-in-law, Hugh, makes his own dipping sauce. My sister-in-law, Gwen, has acquired a taste for Woodchuck hard cider at these affairs, a reality that amazed and amused her daughter, Meredith. And my wife prides herself on eschewing the use of wooden hammers and shell crackers, using ony a paring knife to tame the beasts. The rest of us pound away as if we were clubbing the backsides of BP oil executives.
I used to insist on some shrimp at these affairs until I came to understand that I would learn to love blue crab or suffer the marital consequences. And I did. Learn to love blue crab.
It was hotter than the hubs of Hell, of course. And spreading three dozen crabs encrusted with Old Bay seasoning on a table laden with sides and covered in that morning's Sunday Washington Post produces a pile of refuse worthy of a small rural community. But it's sloppy and communal in the best sense of the words.
Blue crabs are strange, crawly predatory creatures and stranger dining fare. But they are hugely popular in Virginia, Maryland and Washington. The appeal spans race and gender; the local crab house is a haven for pickup trucks and BMWs, as popular with the Kenny Chesney crowd as it is with black and Hispanic families and, well, my family.
Hardshell crabs require an enormous amount of effort to generate a small amount of actual food - think artichokes but much, much better. And just about everyone who has eaten the critters three times in their adult lives becomes a self-proclaimed expert on the art and science of picking crabs.
Most of the meat is tucked away in little chambers beneath the outer shell and access requires scaling back the shell (easy enough) and peeling away the less-than-appetizing gills and "mustard," and, well, you get the general idea.
This year's bash was a little different. No one in my family really wants to talk about the horror in the Gulf of Mexico. Individually and collectively we are teeming with outrage and frustrated that this catastrophe does not appear to have generated nearly enough interest, anger and concern in the appropriate circles. The President is worried; the Coast Guard guy issues updates; the BP execs hide behind advertising while fronting employees in branded golf shirts to do their talking for them. The press keeps a respectful distance.
There is only that obscene video of the exploded well, fouling our own nest at the most fundamental level. And, by the way, who decided this was "a spill," like something a clumsy waiter would do?
The gusher, now reaching into its third month, is in fact a savage indictment of our inability - our unwillingness - to take care of our home.
So while we tried not to think the Gulf, we thought about Chesapeake Bay, where, according to some estimates, more than 400 million blue crabs abide. Still.
I thought about a quote from H.L. Mencken, an authority on matters of Maryland seafood and many other things. He called Chesapeake Bay "the great big outdoor protein factory." And we wondered what would become of that "protein factory," and all the others.
It has become an exspensive habit - $72 a dozen for large crabs from Captain Pell's out on the edge of Fairfax County, Va. - but my wife, Jane, is a purist in these matters. And, as the man said of Christmas, it's only once a year.
Three dozen, with barbecued chicken and ribs, corn on the cob, potato salad, sliced tomatoes, collard greens (they come with the barbecue). We passed on the desserts this year, and nobody drinks as much as they used to, if at all. Still, plenty of cold beer at the ready.
My brother-in-law, Hugh, makes his own dipping sauce. My sister-in-law, Gwen, has acquired a taste for Woodchuck hard cider at these affairs, a reality that amazed and amused her daughter, Meredith. And my wife prides herself on eschewing the use of wooden hammers and shell crackers, using ony a paring knife to tame the beasts. The rest of us pound away as if we were clubbing the backsides of BP oil executives.
I used to insist on some shrimp at these affairs until I came to understand that I would learn to love blue crab or suffer the marital consequences. And I did. Learn to love blue crab.
It was hotter than the hubs of Hell, of course. And spreading three dozen crabs encrusted with Old Bay seasoning on a table laden with sides and covered in that morning's Sunday Washington Post produces a pile of refuse worthy of a small rural community. But it's sloppy and communal in the best sense of the words.
Blue crabs are strange, crawly predatory creatures and stranger dining fare. But they are hugely popular in Virginia, Maryland and Washington. The appeal spans race and gender; the local crab house is a haven for pickup trucks and BMWs, as popular with the Kenny Chesney crowd as it is with black and Hispanic families and, well, my family.
Hardshell crabs require an enormous amount of effort to generate a small amount of actual food - think artichokes but much, much better. And just about everyone who has eaten the critters three times in their adult lives becomes a self-proclaimed expert on the art and science of picking crabs.
Most of the meat is tucked away in little chambers beneath the outer shell and access requires scaling back the shell (easy enough) and peeling away the less-than-appetizing gills and "mustard," and, well, you get the general idea.
This year's bash was a little different. No one in my family really wants to talk about the horror in the Gulf of Mexico. Individually and collectively we are teeming with outrage and frustrated that this catastrophe does not appear to have generated nearly enough interest, anger and concern in the appropriate circles. The President is worried; the Coast Guard guy issues updates; the BP execs hide behind advertising while fronting employees in branded golf shirts to do their talking for them. The press keeps a respectful distance.
There is only that obscene video of the exploded well, fouling our own nest at the most fundamental level. And, by the way, who decided this was "a spill," like something a clumsy waiter would do?
The gusher, now reaching into its third month, is in fact a savage indictment of our inability - our unwillingness - to take care of our home.
So while we tried not to think the Gulf, we thought about Chesapeake Bay, where, according to some estimates, more than 400 million blue crabs abide. Still.
I thought about a quote from H.L. Mencken, an authority on matters of Maryland seafood and many other things. He called Chesapeake Bay "the great big outdoor protein factory." And we wondered what would become of that "protein factory," and all the others.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Too Many Cooks
Published in the Columbia Journalism Review Online (www.cjr.org) - June 9, 2010
By Steve Daley
There they are again, this time on the front of the Washington Post "Style" section (6/4/10). It’s the celebrity chefs, and this time they’re in service to First Lady Michelle Obama and her campaign against childhood obesity.
The latest "Style" section snapshot of the culinary elites preceded a larger White House gathering of chefs who are every bit as serious about school nutrition as they are about a $28 chunk of pan roasted Arctic char with orange and rosemary beurre blanc.
We are in the age of the unavoidable cook. They won’t stay in the kitchen unless someone puts a camera in there.
Chef profiles crowd the pages of city magazines such as "Boston," "Los Angeles," and "Washingtonian." These publications track the career paths and great thoughts of chefs the way the old "Sporting News" used to follow All-Star shortstops.
Celebrity chefs overrun HBO’s clever "Treme," though it must be said the shiny, self-satisfied chaps playing themselves in a ruined post-Katrina New Orleans are well behaved, unlike the gaggle of posturing gangsta chefs who torment waiters and rail (generally in British and French accents) on cable television.
Gordon Ramsay, for example, presides over Fox’s "Hell’s Kitchen" like volcanic actor Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas", though in real-world terms he’s about a scary as crème brulee.
Ramsey’s normally affable British colleague Jamie Oliver, the tousle-haired “Naked Chef,” recently took his "Food Revolution" on ABC to Huntington, W. Va.
The locals, having been identified by the Centers for Disease Controls as particularly pitiful examples of lard-based American consumption, handed Oliver his colander when he toyed with the school lunch menu.
“They don’t understand me,” Oliver whinged to the press, and he wasn’t talking about his accent. For the moment, the “Food Revolution” will not be televised.
Anthony Bourdain, a prominent chef and frequent author perpetually angry about something, has a new book: "Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook".
Check, please.
The quality of the food in this new celebrity driven universe can be left for others to judge. But there is little doubt that the publicity machinery for the “top chefs” is four-star.
Consider the Cleveland-based Michael Symon, one of the Food Network’s “Iron Chefs.” He has mounted a heart-healthy campaign to keep resident basketball superstar LeBron James in the greater Cuyahoga County area.
Symon announced he would cook for James and his friends once a month if the big guy would re-sign with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
It seems like a middling incentive for James, who reportedly makes $15 million a year to play hoops and owns a $29 million endorsement contract from Nike. He could fly to Paris every week for dinner. But that doesn’t mean every news outlet from NBC to Yahoo Sports didn’t cover Symon’s offer.
The man’s a chef. Send a crew.
On May 2, Washington chef Jose Andres—one of Michelle Obama’s high-profile backers in the obesity battle - was the subject of an adoring "60 Minutes" profile.
The fawning segment, which would have made Donald Trump uncomfortable, focused on Andres’s modest roots and his charitable work.
But when Andres began to feed CBS interrogator Anderson Cooper in the chef’s fashionable, six-seat “Minibar by Jose Andres” establishment, a viewer could have been forgiven for thinking the Dalai Lama had gone into the restaurant business.
“Minibar is a window into creativity, that’s all,” said Andres, earning a nod from Cooper.
Last month, Chicago Sun-Times Washington reporter Lynn Sweet felt obliged to apologize to Chicago chef Rick Bayless, who had been drafted by the Obama message machine to assist in a May 19 state dinner for the president of Mexico.
It seems Bayless, demonstrating the professional modesty that characterizes his line of work, had sent a Twitter message or three about his White House culinary experience to his legions of cilantro-happy fans.
Twittering from inside the White House is in violation of some twenty-first century edict, as Sweet reported. Bayless swore on his garlic press that he did not engage in online social networking while actually on site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The whole enchilada wound up in “Politico,” The Washington Post, all available Chicago media, and a raft of food blogs, and Sweet opted to apologize.
The brouhaha might have been fueled by the fact that Bayless had given interviews about his bond with the Obamas and his “guest White House chef” status to The New York Times and NPR.
It’s no secret that after the gate-crashing fiasco at the Obama’s first state dinner, Bayless’s dear friends were determined to keep the gala a low-key affair until the plates were being cleared.
But in Chef World, publicity is seated at the other end of the food chain from salt: Too much is never enough.
By Steve Daley
There they are again, this time on the front of the Washington Post "Style" section (6/4/10). It’s the celebrity chefs, and this time they’re in service to First Lady Michelle Obama and her campaign against childhood obesity.
The latest "Style" section snapshot of the culinary elites preceded a larger White House gathering of chefs who are every bit as serious about school nutrition as they are about a $28 chunk of pan roasted Arctic char with orange and rosemary beurre blanc.
We are in the age of the unavoidable cook. They won’t stay in the kitchen unless someone puts a camera in there.
Chef profiles crowd the pages of city magazines such as "Boston," "Los Angeles," and "Washingtonian." These publications track the career paths and great thoughts of chefs the way the old "Sporting News" used to follow All-Star shortstops.
Celebrity chefs overrun HBO’s clever "Treme," though it must be said the shiny, self-satisfied chaps playing themselves in a ruined post-Katrina New Orleans are well behaved, unlike the gaggle of posturing gangsta chefs who torment waiters and rail (generally in British and French accents) on cable television.
Gordon Ramsay, for example, presides over Fox’s "Hell’s Kitchen" like volcanic actor Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas", though in real-world terms he’s about a scary as crème brulee.
Ramsey’s normally affable British colleague Jamie Oliver, the tousle-haired “Naked Chef,” recently took his "Food Revolution" on ABC to Huntington, W. Va.
The locals, having been identified by the Centers for Disease Controls as particularly pitiful examples of lard-based American consumption, handed Oliver his colander when he toyed with the school lunch menu.
“They don’t understand me,” Oliver whinged to the press, and he wasn’t talking about his accent. For the moment, the “Food Revolution” will not be televised.
Anthony Bourdain, a prominent chef and frequent author perpetually angry about something, has a new book: "Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook".
Check, please.
The quality of the food in this new celebrity driven universe can be left for others to judge. But there is little doubt that the publicity machinery for the “top chefs” is four-star.
Consider the Cleveland-based Michael Symon, one of the Food Network’s “Iron Chefs.” He has mounted a heart-healthy campaign to keep resident basketball superstar LeBron James in the greater Cuyahoga County area.
Symon announced he would cook for James and his friends once a month if the big guy would re-sign with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
It seems like a middling incentive for James, who reportedly makes $15 million a year to play hoops and owns a $29 million endorsement contract from Nike. He could fly to Paris every week for dinner. But that doesn’t mean every news outlet from NBC to Yahoo Sports didn’t cover Symon’s offer.
The man’s a chef. Send a crew.
On May 2, Washington chef Jose Andres—one of Michelle Obama’s high-profile backers in the obesity battle - was the subject of an adoring "60 Minutes" profile.
The fawning segment, which would have made Donald Trump uncomfortable, focused on Andres’s modest roots and his charitable work.
But when Andres began to feed CBS interrogator Anderson Cooper in the chef’s fashionable, six-seat “Minibar by Jose Andres” establishment, a viewer could have been forgiven for thinking the Dalai Lama had gone into the restaurant business.
“Minibar is a window into creativity, that’s all,” said Andres, earning a nod from Cooper.
Last month, Chicago Sun-Times Washington reporter Lynn Sweet felt obliged to apologize to Chicago chef Rick Bayless, who had been drafted by the Obama message machine to assist in a May 19 state dinner for the president of Mexico.
It seems Bayless, demonstrating the professional modesty that characterizes his line of work, had sent a Twitter message or three about his White House culinary experience to his legions of cilantro-happy fans.
Twittering from inside the White House is in violation of some twenty-first century edict, as Sweet reported. Bayless swore on his garlic press that he did not engage in online social networking while actually on site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The whole enchilada wound up in “Politico,” The Washington Post, all available Chicago media, and a raft of food blogs, and Sweet opted to apologize.
The brouhaha might have been fueled by the fact that Bayless had given interviews about his bond with the Obamas and his “guest White House chef” status to The New York Times and NPR.
It’s no secret that after the gate-crashing fiasco at the Obama’s first state dinner, Bayless’s dear friends were determined to keep the gala a low-key affair until the plates were being cleared.
But in Chef World, publicity is seated at the other end of the food chain from salt: Too much is never enough.
Monday, May 17, 2010
"The Pacific"
We watched the final episode of "The Pacific" on HBO last night, watched Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie come home to their families and futures, watched Merriell "Snafu" Shelton climb off a troop train in the New Orleans twilight and leave Sledge, his brother in arms through so much horror, sleeping, making no goodbyes.
Perhaps like others I have grown weary of the "greatest generation," even though my late father was part of it, fighting in the Pacific Theater.
I have watched "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" and Ken Burns' fine PBS series "The War," and I grew up watching John Wayne in the movies and "Combat" on TV. I have largely passed over the many books and weepy Tom Brokaw/Tom Hanks retrospectives on the men and women who fought and died in World War II.
"The Pacific" went a long way toward changing that. It was a remarkable piece, remarkable television, a relentless 10-week saga that conveyed the horror of infantry combat in a fashion I had never seen or even imagined.
The recreations of the battles at Guadacanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu and Iwo Jima come at the viewer at the speed of light and are nothing less than terrifying. A series of fine writers, directors and actors deliver the viewer into a world of bone-rattling tension played out in endless, teeming rain and jungle and on sun-baked atolls riddled with lethal caves and danger.
For the viewer, at least for this one, "The Pacific" peels back any lingering romance about wartime, pounding away at the point that in these moments the veneer of civilization is all but gone.
Snafu Shelton's character (played by a fascinating actor named Rami Malek) is equal parts golem and hero, a young man thrust into a reality so violent and uncertain that his amoral pose and boundless cynicism keeps him alive, or so he seems to believe.
There is a scene where Shelton talks idly about the fortunes of war with Sledge, his eyes as dead as a shark's, and you realize that as he chats he is tossing coral pebbles into the open skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
Sledge wrote a book, "With the Old Breed," as did Leckie, a newspaperman. These memoirs from the 1st Marine Division formed the core of the narrative for "The Pacific," as did the better-known and yet mostly forgotten story of Sgt. John Basilone, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor at Guadacanal and, after time spent stateside selling war bonds, made his way back to combat in time for the brutal landing at Iwo Jima.
Studs Terkel interviewed Sledge for his book 1984 book "The Good War." Sledge told him: "To me, there were two different wars. There was the war of the guy on the front lines. You don't come off until you are wounded or killed. Or, if lucky, relieved ... The man up front puts his life on the line day after day after day to the point of utter hopelessness."
That's the war "The Pacific," produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg and myriad others, deliver.
Sledge became a college professor in his native Alabama. Leckie went back to the newspaper trade. They married, lived out their lives, died the same year, 2001. There is a statue of John Basilone in his New Jersey home town, and a Navy destroyer is named for him.
Snafu Shelton, a gambling man, fixed air conditioners in rural Louisiana and by all accounts had a hard life, though it could not have been harder than the horrors he endured on those tiny islands more than 60 years ago.
Sledge, his companion across the killing ground of the airfield at Peleliu, in the caves on Okinawa and on the slow train home, was a pallbearer at his funeral. Their war will stay with me for a long time.
Perhaps like others I have grown weary of the "greatest generation," even though my late father was part of it, fighting in the Pacific Theater.
I have watched "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" and Ken Burns' fine PBS series "The War," and I grew up watching John Wayne in the movies and "Combat" on TV. I have largely passed over the many books and weepy Tom Brokaw/Tom Hanks retrospectives on the men and women who fought and died in World War II.
"The Pacific" went a long way toward changing that. It was a remarkable piece, remarkable television, a relentless 10-week saga that conveyed the horror of infantry combat in a fashion I had never seen or even imagined.
The recreations of the battles at Guadacanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu and Iwo Jima come at the viewer at the speed of light and are nothing less than terrifying. A series of fine writers, directors and actors deliver the viewer into a world of bone-rattling tension played out in endless, teeming rain and jungle and on sun-baked atolls riddled with lethal caves and danger.
For the viewer, at least for this one, "The Pacific" peels back any lingering romance about wartime, pounding away at the point that in these moments the veneer of civilization is all but gone.
Snafu Shelton's character (played by a fascinating actor named Rami Malek) is equal parts golem and hero, a young man thrust into a reality so violent and uncertain that his amoral pose and boundless cynicism keeps him alive, or so he seems to believe.
There is a scene where Shelton talks idly about the fortunes of war with Sledge, his eyes as dead as a shark's, and you realize that as he chats he is tossing coral pebbles into the open skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
Sledge wrote a book, "With the Old Breed," as did Leckie, a newspaperman. These memoirs from the 1st Marine Division formed the core of the narrative for "The Pacific," as did the better-known and yet mostly forgotten story of Sgt. John Basilone, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor at Guadacanal and, after time spent stateside selling war bonds, made his way back to combat in time for the brutal landing at Iwo Jima.
Studs Terkel interviewed Sledge for his book 1984 book "The Good War." Sledge told him: "To me, there were two different wars. There was the war of the guy on the front lines. You don't come off until you are wounded or killed. Or, if lucky, relieved ... The man up front puts his life on the line day after day after day to the point of utter hopelessness."
That's the war "The Pacific," produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg and myriad others, deliver.
Sledge became a college professor in his native Alabama. Leckie went back to the newspaper trade. They married, lived out their lives, died the same year, 2001. There is a statue of John Basilone in his New Jersey home town, and a Navy destroyer is named for him.
Snafu Shelton, a gambling man, fixed air conditioners in rural Louisiana and by all accounts had a hard life, though it could not have been harder than the horrors he endured on those tiny islands more than 60 years ago.
Sledge, his companion across the killing ground of the airfield at Peleliu, in the caves on Okinawa and on the slow train home, was a pallbearer at his funeral. Their war will stay with me for a long time.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
I Gave At The Office
Back in early 1976 I was running a bar in Washington D.C. The Class Reunion was a saloon for grown ups, a gathering place for reporters, lawyers, politicos, PR types and, after hours, other bar people and people I let stay after hours.
One night as I was conducting a 4 a.m. seminar on the state of American politics, a Democratic Party lawyer and friend of Oklahoma populist Sen. Fred Roy Harris shamed me into writing a $100 check to Harris' long forgotten presidential campaign. The next morning - well, afternoon - the lawyer called me at home and offered to give me the check back.
$100 was a fair amount of money in those days (and is again, as it turns out). But I had blathered on until sunrise so I told him to cash the check and good luck to Fred Harris and his lovely wife LaDonna.
It was the first time I had ever given money to a politician.
Fred and LaDonna didn't have much luck electorally. Jimmy Carter wound up in the White House and I went on a 24-year hiatus from giving money to the political class. It was called journalism.
Journalists don't offer up campaign contributions, as a general rule, and in my opinon it's a pretty good general rule. In the 20-plus years I spent in the newspaper business, I thought my colleagues were a trifle holier-than-thou about the whole thing, but to paraphrase songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, I kept my campaign business in my pocket.
In 1996 the Chicago Tribune and I had an ugly divorce. The market for Washington-based white male political writers and columnists of a certain age was a crowded demographic and after while it was clear my days in daily journalism were effectively at an end.
By 2000, I felt comfortable giving some dough to Al Gore for President, and no regrets except for the fact that Joe Lieberman may have benefited in some way.
We all know what happened in Florida that year and as for me an avalanche of mailings from every tree-loving, affirmative-acting, union-organizing liberal interest group rained down on our house. And the rain continues to this day.
I went in again in 2004 for Sen. John Kerry. My wife Jane and I also coughed up a modest amount for the Democratic National Committee. I was miffed at the presidential outcome but felt better about my largesse as the second Bush-Cheney term began to reveal itself.
2008 was no different. Made a modest contribution to the Barack Obama campaign. Gave $50 to something called "Act Blue" in support of the Democratic House member from my old Republican home town in western New York state. He turned out to be Eric Massa. Stop laughing.
So here we are. President Obama is doing pretty well on the job by my lights. But it's clear that a chap like me cannot pony up enough money to make it interesting. And I didn't write the checks to support the antics of recalcitrant Senate Democrats led by the preposterous Max Baucus of Montana who made a hash of health care or for the timid likes of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Not looking for perfection here but I'm still waiting on closing Gitmo and I'm not for open carry of guns in our national parks, which is now the law of the land. I'm pretty sure that the Afghanistan adventure is going to wind up badly.
Mostly I'm waiting for those 68 million people who voted for Obama to make themselves heard, and for the President and his party to act as if they're proud of what they're trying to do. I believe those two phenomena are connected.
This approach may not involve pleasing Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe or various editorial writers or the folks braying for "bipartisanship" as the culture war heats up.
Until then, however, the little check is not on the mail.
One night as I was conducting a 4 a.m. seminar on the state of American politics, a Democratic Party lawyer and friend of Oklahoma populist Sen. Fred Roy Harris shamed me into writing a $100 check to Harris' long forgotten presidential campaign. The next morning - well, afternoon - the lawyer called me at home and offered to give me the check back.
$100 was a fair amount of money in those days (and is again, as it turns out). But I had blathered on until sunrise so I told him to cash the check and good luck to Fred Harris and his lovely wife LaDonna.
It was the first time I had ever given money to a politician.
Fred and LaDonna didn't have much luck electorally. Jimmy Carter wound up in the White House and I went on a 24-year hiatus from giving money to the political class. It was called journalism.
Journalists don't offer up campaign contributions, as a general rule, and in my opinon it's a pretty good general rule. In the 20-plus years I spent in the newspaper business, I thought my colleagues were a trifle holier-than-thou about the whole thing, but to paraphrase songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, I kept my campaign business in my pocket.
In 1996 the Chicago Tribune and I had an ugly divorce. The market for Washington-based white male political writers and columnists of a certain age was a crowded demographic and after while it was clear my days in daily journalism were effectively at an end.
By 2000, I felt comfortable giving some dough to Al Gore for President, and no regrets except for the fact that Joe Lieberman may have benefited in some way.
We all know what happened in Florida that year and as for me an avalanche of mailings from every tree-loving, affirmative-acting, union-organizing liberal interest group rained down on our house. And the rain continues to this day.
I went in again in 2004 for Sen. John Kerry. My wife Jane and I also coughed up a modest amount for the Democratic National Committee. I was miffed at the presidential outcome but felt better about my largesse as the second Bush-Cheney term began to reveal itself.
2008 was no different. Made a modest contribution to the Barack Obama campaign. Gave $50 to something called "Act Blue" in support of the Democratic House member from my old Republican home town in western New York state. He turned out to be Eric Massa. Stop laughing.
So here we are. President Obama is doing pretty well on the job by my lights. But it's clear that a chap like me cannot pony up enough money to make it interesting. And I didn't write the checks to support the antics of recalcitrant Senate Democrats led by the preposterous Max Baucus of Montana who made a hash of health care or for the timid likes of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Not looking for perfection here but I'm still waiting on closing Gitmo and I'm not for open carry of guns in our national parks, which is now the law of the land. I'm pretty sure that the Afghanistan adventure is going to wind up badly.
Mostly I'm waiting for those 68 million people who voted for Obama to make themselves heard, and for the President and his party to act as if they're proud of what they're trying to do. I believe those two phenomena are connected.
This approach may not involve pleasing Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe or various editorial writers or the folks braying for "bipartisanship" as the culture war heats up.
Until then, however, the little check is not on the mail.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Breaking News from the Luncheon Keynoter
Posted on Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org) April 6, 2010
By Steve Daley
First of all I’d like to thank (Tucker Carlson; Arianna Hufington; that tweedy-looking professor over there) for the opportunity to discuss the future of newspapers and print journalism.
We meet at a time when our beloved industry is (in a period of historic transition; completely hosed; in more trouble than the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome).
Like you, I love the newspaper business. I (read five or six papers a day; got a week-a-year severance deal back when the getting was good; was in my 40s before I realized I had a job but not a career).
Almost every day someone asks me (for advice on whether or not to go to journalism school; how to become the London bureau chief for the New York Times; do I have a phone number for Burson-Marsteller).
And I always say the same thing; (Go for it, my friend; Why don’t you go outside and lie down in traffic?; I could tell you the truth but it’s too painful for both of us).
It’s true that when I was coming up you could (write your way out of South Bend; have someone help you file your story if you got drunk; fool yourself into thinking you had a professional future).
Yes, those were great days. But you didn’t come here to listen to (an embittered geezer; a guy with a 4-and-a-half bathroom house on 29th St. in Georgetown; complete sophistry about the future of print).
No, you want to (hear 21st century jargon such as “crowdfunding” and “reader engagement”; think you can be a salaried columnist when if you’re lucky you’ll end up as a “digital community manager”; believe that really smart people in newsrooms are getting a handle on all this).
Some may scoff. But I would encourage you to pursue that dream, because (newspapers fold but journalism school is forever; there may come a time when people will decline to write for nothing; maybe the MacArthur Foundation will pick up the tab for everything).
If I could say just one thing to you that is (reason for optimism; the main takeaway from my upcoming book on the future of news; palpably untrue and yet said all the time in these sessions it would be:
(The old business model isn’t working but you may be the one to identify the new model; The future lies in “hyperlocal” news; The answers can be found in incorporating advertising into Kindle content and smart phone applications).
In fact, innovation is everywhere. It’s true that the early results for “citizen journalism” (have been mixed; tell us that with free content you generally get what you pay for; exposed fundamental misunderstandings of the difference between reporting and bloviating).
If you’re like me, when you hear of the need for newspapers to move beyond the “monopoly mindset” and function better as “a filter,” you think (it makes a heck of a lot of sense; Dick Nixon would’ve loved that; give readers less, tell them it’s more).
And when you hear of the imperative to “personalize the news” you think (I love white space; co-branded flea markets; hey, I can now personally read my hometown paper in about five minutes).
Cynics often compare the newspaper to the dinosaur. But remember that (dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years; many had brains the size of walnuts, much like Chief Innovation Officers; extinction theories abound but we know the end came abruptly).
New voices have come to the table. The passion we feel is shared by (former radio execs who love hanging banners in the newsroom; bright young folks who tell Romenesko that credentialing reporters is elitist; the folks down at the news co-op who are kind of fixated on their non-profit tax status right now).
We welcome them all. I’d love to stay and entertain some questions but (I’m on CNN with Rick Sanchez in 25 minutes; I don’t have any good answers; I have to get back to a mandatory newsroom seminar on search engine optimization).
Going forward I wish you all what I have enjoyed - a long and fulfilling career in the newspaper game.
That, of course, (is what we all wish for; went out the window sometime during the Clinton years; is not ever going to happen in this millennium).
Be sure to tip your content providers, er, servers on the way out. The chicken Kiev was real nice.
By Steve Daley
First of all I’d like to thank (Tucker Carlson; Arianna Hufington; that tweedy-looking professor over there) for the opportunity to discuss the future of newspapers and print journalism.
We meet at a time when our beloved industry is (in a period of historic transition; completely hosed; in more trouble than the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome).
Like you, I love the newspaper business. I (read five or six papers a day; got a week-a-year severance deal back when the getting was good; was in my 40s before I realized I had a job but not a career).
Almost every day someone asks me (for advice on whether or not to go to journalism school; how to become the London bureau chief for the New York Times; do I have a phone number for Burson-Marsteller).
And I always say the same thing; (Go for it, my friend; Why don’t you go outside and lie down in traffic?; I could tell you the truth but it’s too painful for both of us).
It’s true that when I was coming up you could (write your way out of South Bend; have someone help you file your story if you got drunk; fool yourself into thinking you had a professional future).
Yes, those were great days. But you didn’t come here to listen to (an embittered geezer; a guy with a 4-and-a-half bathroom house on 29th St. in Georgetown; complete sophistry about the future of print).
No, you want to (hear 21st century jargon such as “crowdfunding” and “reader engagement”; think you can be a salaried columnist when if you’re lucky you’ll end up as a “digital community manager”; believe that really smart people in newsrooms are getting a handle on all this).
Some may scoff. But I would encourage you to pursue that dream, because (newspapers fold but journalism school is forever; there may come a time when people will decline to write for nothing; maybe the MacArthur Foundation will pick up the tab for everything).
If I could say just one thing to you that is (reason for optimism; the main takeaway from my upcoming book on the future of news; palpably untrue and yet said all the time in these sessions it would be:
(The old business model isn’t working but you may be the one to identify the new model; The future lies in “hyperlocal” news; The answers can be found in incorporating advertising into Kindle content and smart phone applications).
In fact, innovation is everywhere. It’s true that the early results for “citizen journalism” (have been mixed; tell us that with free content you generally get what you pay for; exposed fundamental misunderstandings of the difference between reporting and bloviating).
If you’re like me, when you hear of the need for newspapers to move beyond the “monopoly mindset” and function better as “a filter,” you think (it makes a heck of a lot of sense; Dick Nixon would’ve loved that; give readers less, tell them it’s more).
And when you hear of the imperative to “personalize the news” you think (I love white space; co-branded flea markets; hey, I can now personally read my hometown paper in about five minutes).
Cynics often compare the newspaper to the dinosaur. But remember that (dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years; many had brains the size of walnuts, much like Chief Innovation Officers; extinction theories abound but we know the end came abruptly).
New voices have come to the table. The passion we feel is shared by (former radio execs who love hanging banners in the newsroom; bright young folks who tell Romenesko that credentialing reporters is elitist; the folks down at the news co-op who are kind of fixated on their non-profit tax status right now).
We welcome them all. I’d love to stay and entertain some questions but (I’m on CNN with Rick Sanchez in 25 minutes; I don’t have any good answers; I have to get back to a mandatory newsroom seminar on search engine optimization).
Going forward I wish you all what I have enjoyed - a long and fulfilling career in the newspaper game.
That, of course, (is what we all wish for; went out the window sometime during the Clinton years; is not ever going to happen in this millennium).
Be sure to tip your content providers, er, servers on the way out. The chicken Kiev was real nice.
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