James Wolcott on Zell Miller

Angry White Man Wigs Out
Posted by James Wolcott
The blue eyes of wrath. The gnarled hands gripping the air as if clutching a liberal in a lethal chokehold.

Zell Miller did not disappoint millions of disenfranchised Americans with Confederate flags decorating their basements when he delivered his rousing speech to the Republican National Convention last night.

His inner Bunsen burner was still ablaze when he hit the cable news shows afterwards to unlease additional Zellfire. There he met resistance. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer, in an apparent research mixup, asked actual reportorial questions regarding Miller's contradictory statements over the years regarding Kerry etc, and the old boy began babbling like Lionel Barrymore. Worse was to come on Hardball, where Miller had a complete cheddar cheese meltdown.

This raises a question. When did it become customary for speakers to give a speech and then make the rounds to be first responders to what they just said? It removes whatever dramatic punch the speech had to have the speaker participate in the postmortem cudchewing. It's much more Sinatrally powerful to have your say, take your applause, and then depart the stage and let the reaction unroll. Instead, politicians exit the stage to tour a series of smaller stages, spinning on their own behalf and annotating their own talking points, which become points of diminishing return.

Inviting Zell Miller to the Republican convention to give voice to lynch mobs who feel neglected by the Democratic Party will prove to be a prehistoric bonehead mistake and an early Christmas present of Schadenfreude to his former colleagues. I picture certain Democratic bigwigs reacting the way Brian Dennehy did in that wonderful made-for-TV docudrama about Three's Company as ABC chief Fred Silverman. Hearing the news of Suzanne Somers' latest contract tantrum, Dennehy's Freddie takes a rich puff on his cigar, smiles, and croons with satisfaction, "Not my problem anymore."

Zell Miller: Not our problem anymore.


P.S. Just now on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough described Miller's speech as a "barnburner," presumably intending a compliment. But any reader of Faulkner knows that there's few souls rottener than that of a barnburner, who leaves nothing in his wake than rage and destruction. In Faulkner Country, a barnburner is driven out of the county. In Bush Country, he's given a privileged timeslot.


09.02.04 11:22AM · LINK · Pings (4)