All That Phil Gramm Mail

 

In the last newsletter, I made some disparaging remarks about Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who single-handedly prevented passage of censure in the Senate. I impugned his motives, as well as his intelligence. I was surprised when to ordinarily rational and thoughtful correspondents rose to his defense. Harrison Klein of California and Hawaii had this to say:

Opposing the censure resolution was one of the few things Phil Gramm has done that I agreed with. Seems to me the Constitution is pretty clear: impeach and remove from office or don't. And besides the questionable constitutionality of a censure resolution, it seems totally inconsequential. "You're a bad boy!" What possible impact would that have on anybody? Your friend Jon Carroll wrote recently on the irrelevance of censure; he argued so eloquently that I could only offer a poor paraphrase.

Well, I wish I could say Jon Carroll is a friend. I interviewed him once for TechWeb Internet. I think he is a brilliant columnist--probably the best daily newspaper columnist in America today, bar none. I have recommended him before and will recommend him again.

Let me quote a few words from the column in question, which, I am sorry to say, I missed when it first appeared in the newspaper:

You've Been A Bad Boy

By Jon Carroll

... Is this man going to be brought lower by a censure resolution? Is he going to be upset because Dianne Feinstein and a few other finger-waggers want to say what a bad, bad boy he's been? It is to laugh. He has to have dinner with Hillary every night; is the disapproval of Arlen Specter really going to destroy his slumbers?...

This column also has some cheap shots at DiFi, whom I happen to like, but Jon Carroll is so clever it is easy to forgive his occasional lapses of political taste.

Anyway, without Harrison, I would not have seen this column. Since I am not in politics, I am legally allowed to change my opinion. So I've changed it. Maybe Phil Gramm isn't a totally venal idiot, and maybe censure wasn't such a hot idea.

By the way, Joe Brancatelli also chided me for knocking Phil and suggested he might have had honest motives.