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Greenfield at Large

The Week in Review

Aired June 15, 2001 - 22:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEFF GREENFIELD, HOST: You have seen this week's headlines: a notorious killer dies, a president's first trip abroad. But will those and the other headlines really matter down the road? And were there really big stories lurking in the shadows of those headlines? Tonight on GREENFIELD AT LARGE.

As sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives, or at least, this week. Tonight, my guests, writers Joe Queenan and Christopher Caldwell, and National Public Radio's Sue Ellicott join me as we seek to pluck those grains of sand from the raging river of time, and examine them in the bright light of context and perspective.

Somebody, please, stop me before I overwrite again. Now, at first glance, at least, this week's headlines did seem to speak of events that actually may matter down the road. Will they? Let's start with this first glance, backwards.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD (voice-over): On Monday, Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

HARVEY LAPPIN, WARDEN, U.S. PENITENTIARY: The court order to execute inmate Timothy James McVeigh has been fulfilled.

GREENFIELD: Some 1,400 members of the press came to cover every detail.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you feel better today?

ANTHONY SCOTT, VICTIM/WITNESS: About that much.

GREENFIELD: Maybe it was morbid curiosity, maybe it was simply the last chapter of one of the worst crimes in American history.

KATHLEEN TREANOR, VICTIM'S RELATIVE: This is a completion of justice.

GREENFIELD: Meanwhile, on the broader crime front, the Department of Justice reported that crime in America was down some 15 percent in the past year. Those numbers directly contradict the recent FBI report that said crime was leveling off. Why the difference? Well, they are using different numbers, or maybe the FBI lost a few documents. Not that our prisons are empty. In fact, some of those behind bars include the folks who illegally protested the Navy's bombing practice on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are our friends and neighbors, and they don't want us there.

GREENFIELD: While President Bush announced the bombing runs would stop by 2003, protester Al Sharpton remained behind bars, where he continued his fast.

AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: People need somebody to stand up for them.

GREENFIELD: Please insert your own wisecrack here.

Across the Atlantic, more arrests and more protests, in this case, 200 arrests in Goteborg, Sweden, one of President Bush's stops on his first foreign trip.

From the streets, to the suites. European leaders who met Bush expressed fear of America's new policies on everything from the environment to missile defense.

And speaking of European fears of American power, the $41 billion merger between General Electric and Honeywell was thrown into grave doubt when the European Union's Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said the deal threatened competition. It also threatened to ruin the last chapter of Jack Welch's celebrated reign as GE's CEO.

Fear turned out to be a popular item here at home. NBC debuted its new reality show, "Fear Factor," where people confront their own worst terrors for big money. Critics called it "the end of civilization as we know it." Twelve million viewers watched.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: I see. The way you draw huge audiences for a brand- new show is to face your most primal terrors head on. Well, we're a new show, and in that spirit, I wanted to book Dennis Rodman, Rip Taylor and Imelda Marcos to discuss postmodern neofeminist fluorocarbon theory. But, you know, it's really hard to get that kind of A-list on a Friday in June.

Instead, and fortunately for us, we've got a fine panel who will do quite nicely, thank you. Author Joe Queenan, who writes for just about everybody, and whose new book, "Balsamic Dreams" is a witty tirade, that is if you want to believe today's "New York Times."

Writer Sue Ellicott has been a reporter for the BBC. She is currently a contributor to National Public Radio.

And Christopher Caldwell, senior writer at the "Weekly Standard," also writes for Slate.com, and he is seen on CNN's own "TAKE 5," and was invaluable to us in our unconventional attempt to make sense of last fall's election, if that were possible. Christopher, let me start with you and the president in Europe. It is the sort of stuff of which headlines and think pieces are made. Is really there much at stake in this trip?

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL, SENIOR WRITER, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Yes, there is, but I think the headlines were made a week ago. This is -- we are facing a wall of spin from this administration, and I'm struck by how little the actual trip resembles the stories that are written about it.

GREENFIELD: How so?

CALDWELL: The administration is claiming that Bush has really charmed these people, and now they are amazed to see how well-briefed he is. I don't see European leaders breaking up over Kyoto. I don't see them breaking ranks on their opposition to U.S. opposition to Kyoto. I don't see them breaking ranks on opposition to missile defense. I don't see any big diplomatic triumphs here.

GREENFIELD: Sue Ellicott, there has been a spate of stories here in the States, saying you know, the way Europe regards new presidents, they never respect them. They always look at them as this kind of weird people who get elected from odd parts of the country. You have traveled recently in Europe, how are they reacting to the new guy on the block?

SUE ELLICOTT, NPR: I don't think they necessarily feel that everybody is, you know, a weird guy who doesn't deserve his job. I think there was a lot of intellectual respect for Clinton, I thought they thought -- they felt -- they though he was no pushover whatsoever.

But I spoke to a friend who had been at the foreign office while Reagan was in office, and fell asleep after a very important meeting in Reykjavik.

GREENFIELD: But this -- did Reagan fall asleep or your friend?

ELLICOTT: No, Reagan -- and maybe my friend, too. But he said that, you know, in everybody's view, at least Bush was no Reagan. They thought this is a guy who at least stayed awake.

GREENFIELD: Joe, that may be what I'm talking about, though, this notion that when Reagan came in, a lot of the folks in Europe saw him as a bomb-throwing actor from California. It seemed to me by the end of this tenure some of what he laid on the table looked pretty good to Europe.

JOE QUEENAN, AUTHOR, "BALSAMIC DREAMS": I don't think Americans care what Europeans think about us, and I think that is a good point. I think that that's the whole point of being an American, that we don't -- like Tom Wolf said, "when chips are down, we just turn on the power."

Americans don't care what the French think about our presidents or our policies. Certainly don't care what the Germans think after their record of the 20th century. So I think that that kind of knee- jerk type of reaction to our presidents that they are just sort of rude, that they are not sophisticated, I don't think that the average person in the United States cares one way or the other about it.

Remember when the thing happened with Clinton, where people were saying the French are laughing at us? Who cares what the French -- you know, the French, you know -- it's a cliche to say it, but the French do like Jerry Lewis and Mickey Rourke, and we are just not -- there -- California has a bigger economy than France, probably, so who cares.

GREENFIELD: I want to pick up on...

ELLICOTT: Another thing about this is that the Europeans also feel incredibly insecure that really the Americans don't care that they are making rude comments about them either, and this is sort of a batting backwards and forwards at this sort of inferiority-superiority complexes, you know, over the Atlantic.

GREENFIELD: We are going to pick up on this theme, and we are also going to put Mr. Queenan in for ambassador to the U.N. I'm not sure this nomination is going through. We will find out.

When we come back, we are going to talk about how to turn 34 cents into millions of dollars, and my guests are going to enjoy a round of interview payback, asking me what I know, or more likely don't know, about the news of the week. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: We're back with our guests, all of them writers and at least sometimes reporters. Joe Queenan, Christopher Caldwell and Sue Ellicott, and they collectively are the scale upon which we are weighing the stories of the week.

Congratulations on that honor.

Christopher, Joe Queenan and his neo-isolationist, I guess, mode was telling us we don't care what the Europeans think, but at least one story this week seems to me we have to. When the European Union competition commissioner turned to GE Honeywell and said: You might have to forget that merger, it seems to me that's one area where the flexing of Europeans' muscles really do matter.

CALDWELL: Absolutely. They objection is that GE and Honeywell will consolidate a near-monopolistic position certain areas of airline industry, and when you're dealing with France, which is actually the fourth-largest economy in the world, and Germany, which is the third, you put them together, you've got an economy much bigger than ours.

And you've seen Europe take a lead in this with things like encryption. There's a lot of software that can't be developed now because it can't be put into the European market. So they are leading on this.

GREENFIELD: So, Sue Ellicott, see, this is an area where perhaps the notion that, well, there's no Cold War, Bush doesn't have to go to Europe to get permission to put medium-range missiles in the theater there, the way Reagan did -- but this may be the competition, or the arena where Europe really is going to have a way to say to America: You darn well better care about us.

ELLICOTT: It seems that those are the issues that are most pressing now. People have knocked Bush for not making the trips to France and Germany and Britain, and going off to kind of smaller countries, but it seems a big issue -- and I've just come back from Europe. I was in Spain and I was in Britain for about three weeks, and the things that people care about in Europe is trade with America. I met up with some executives at Formica, in northeast Spain, and they'd all come -- they'd been at business school in Boston, they had all gone off and worked for months in California. That is the -- that's the one thing they care about. They don't mind any political disagreements.

GREENFIELD: I'm going to make -- I wanted to make 180 degree turn, if I might, because I wanted to try to get to a different topic, and that is Mr. McVeigh. That was the only story -- for 72 hours in the United States, was Tim McVeigh's execution. It's four days later, and as sometimes happens in the media, I get a sense that there's no half-life to this story at all. What's the long-range consequence of that?

QUEENAN: It's -- capital punishment isn't an issue that people really care about. They care about taxes, they care about the economy, they care about the stock market. People don't care about capital punishment. People who are in favor of it are in favor, and people who aren't, aren't sufficiently opposed to it to do anything about it.

GREENFIELD: But they certainly do care about crime. I mean, for many years in this country, crime was a driving, dominant political issue, each on presidential campaigns. So I'm wondering, Christopher, if you think that that number that we talked about, the decline in crime -- if that, in fact, is what happened. And certainly, there's been a decline in '90s. Whether that's taken crime to some extent off the political table.

CALDWELL: I think it might have, and if so, the result would be a lot more interesting cities, as something other than therapeutic or remedial areas. I mean, cities as places to invest in, perhaps, and build parks in. The most amazing crime...

QUEENAN: Not Detroit.

CALDWELL: Not Detroit, but the most amazing crime fact of today is that walking up 10th Avenue, I saw Jaguar convertible parked with the top open, with no owner around.

QUEENAN: Oh, I always leave it there.

(LAUGHTER)

ELLICOTT: I've had friends, lived in New York for 30 years and never locked their cars. They thought it was the safest anti-theft device around.

GREENFIELD: But the point I'm getting at, I think there's a tie- in here, is that -- it's a perhaps quirky theory -- that the safer people feel about crime in general, the more they're willing to consider alternatives to capital punishment. That it was in the '70s and '80s when people were convinced the government couldn't stop crime, period, that support...

QUEENAN: Right, but the crack epidemic ended. And the crack epidemic ended in part because a lot of people died, but also because the demographics changed in the cities. But once you have a lot of young kids again, and if you have unemployment, then you'll have another epidemic like that and you'll have more crime. So it's not like in the past, there have been things like, well, we debated slavery in 19th century.

That went on for generations, whereas this, this is the sort of thing that every three years we come back to this debate. Is crime declining? Yes, no, and it just keeps shifting according to kinds of statistics that these guys give us.

GREENFIELD: Sue...

ELLICOTT: What struck me about the whole debate was that it wasn't -- actually that it was not really much of a debate. Whether it was coverage in the European papers or coverage here, is that it was all about, you know, whether -- the argument just stalls out whether or not Timothy McVeigh should be killed. Is it right to take the life -- take the life of someone who's already taken a life?

No one -- I just saw very little about, you know, what the alternatives are, how -- how do you pay for people if you're not going to have capital punishment, what a fitting punishment is. I felt the debate was just we support it, we don't support it, so end of story. And every time there's an execution (UNINTELLIGIBLE), you know, the yeses and the nos, and I don't think it ever advances...

CALDWELL: I am surprised -- I'm actually surprised that the anti-capital punishment side looked so strong in this case, which was really about as close to a no-brainer, slam-dunk as you can get.

ELLICOTT: And it sort of gets -- it's boring. I mean, you look at the European papers, it just gives them this incredible moral, judicial superiority, but nobody comes up with any arguments...

QUEENAN: We only kill people one at a time. In Europe they do it 50 million at a time.

GREENFIELD: OK. You know what, ambassador also ain't looking too good for Joe.

When we come back, what happened this week that might really matter in the long run? We're going to see what our guests have to say about that, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) GREENFIELD: We're back with Joe Queenan, Christopher Caldwell and Sue Ellicott. We're looking back at the week's top stories.

And what I want to know now is the stuff that may not have been in the screaming headlines of the week that each of you think may actually matter.

Christopher, let's start with you.

CALDWELL: I think that the resignation of William Hague from the Conservative Party in England is a really big deal. Tony Blair has used a lot of what Margaret Thatcher built to become a really autocratic, centralist prime minister, and at this point, Britain really has no opposition party with a rationale. It's a sort of dangerous opportunity, in a paradoxical way, for them.

GREENFIELD: Sue?

ELLICOTT: I suppose that should have been mine, but I didn't think of that at all. Actually, I thought it was very interesting the decision by the judge in Seattle to force a pharmacy to include female contraceptives in the insurance plan, because I felt, you know, Viagra has had its day for kind of far too long, and it's time that women they get some of their dollars reimbursed too.

GREENFIELD: Perhaps the three middle-aged men on this panel will not weigh in on whether Viagra has had its moment too long.

CALDWELL: I would argue that Viagra is a drug for women, but that's a different show.

GREENFIELD: Yes, it is.

Joe Queenan, what do you want to put on the table?

QUEENAN: Mainstream America discovers the greatness of Allen Iverson. After several years of moaning about the fact that Michael Jordan has retired -- and he should stay retired, because if he comes back, Iverson will light him up. The country is discovering what's a great player Allen Iverson is. And that has nothing do with the fact that I'm from Philadelphia and support the 76ers.

GREENFIELD: Well, I will show what I think may have an enormously important story if we look at this tape, perhaps you saw, in the papers a story, of a young man who had claimed a $46 million lottery ticket and people thought that the deadline had passed and what this gentleman had done, is to actually put his winning ticket in U.S. mail, put a 34 cent stamp on an envelope, mailed it two days before the deadline, and it arrived unharmed.

And here is why I think this is important. Last week we were talking on this show about the fact "The West Wing" had improved people's confidence in the federal government. Now you all know that the poster child for the anti big government people in this country is the post office. Conservatives always ask liberals, how would you like health care plan run by the people who run the post office? This may turn the whole debate around.

ELLICOTT: We'll have to drop that phrase, "Go postal."

GREENFIELD: And that's right. Occasionally we worried about the post office for other reasons. But I couldn't help but think this is -- this may, if George Bush were attacking Al Gore as the big government guy, and this incident happened, we might not even have had to count those chads in Florida.

ELLICOTT: It's surprising that anyone would be that ambivalent about $46 million.

QUEENAN: The thing about McVeigh, that interested me, though, was can people distinguish between -- you know there have been 700 state mandated executions over the past few years -- can people distinguish between a federally mandated execution and a state mandated execution?

ELLICOTT: By the level of media coverage, if only that.

GREENFIELD: But it wasn't because it was a federal execution, it was the nature of the deed, I would think, isn't it? We had 85 executions in 2000, we've had 33 this year. Nobody paid all that much attention. It had to do with the enormity of the act.

CALDWELL: I cannot stand this kind of emotional pageantry that we have been going through since -- Iran hostage crisis, you know, with the ribbons, and the -- and the victims rights focus strikes me as really driving our thoughts on this way off the point.

ELLICOTT: Well, the whole parsing of his last word, his last statement, the poem by Invictus, and the "I am the master" -- to me it was too much like Seinfeld, the "master of my domain." I got a bit of a sick laugh out of that.

QUEENAN: When they do those polls to find out where capital punishment ranks on the scale of things that matter to people, doesn't it always come in like 25th or something like that? It's just not...

GREENFIELD: No, as an issue it ranks low but as I said, depending on what happens with crime, crime can be anywhere from -- you know that crime is down in the United States when it is not very high on people's lists.

QUEENAN: Well, you get rid of a guy like that and crime goes down immediately. Get rid of a few more of his friends.

GREENFIELD: See, we always get most provocative when time is up, but I would rather do, you know, too little than too much. Thank to you all of you for your contributions thus far. But when we come back, I think I'm going to be less grateful because coming up my guests turn the tables on me with what I can only assume are a series of incisive, enlightening, and impossible questions. It is a segment they call "That's A Fair Question," and I call, "Oh, My God." You can play along too, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: For reasons still unclear to me, the producers of this program have designed a segment whose purpose is to make me look bad. It's a little something they call "That's a Fair Question." It's a quiz featuring some of the more obscure items in the news this week, and my guests have been enlisted in this plot.

And I promise you I have not seen any of these questions. Sue, you're first.

ELLICOTT: Sure you haven't been peeping over my card?

GREENFIELD: No, no, no, no.

ELLICOTT: OK. Identify this superhero whose new video debuted at number one on Soundscan's top children's chart this week. Can we roll the tape, please?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang on to your spandex! There is more action! Hold on to your hats! There's more Scripture!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Romans 8.2 says that through Jesus Christ, the law of the spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Boy, I haven't got a clue on that one.

ELLICOTT: OK. Is it: the Almighty Truth, Bible Man, or Leviticus Lad?

GREENFIELD: I'm going to say it's Bible Man.

ELLICOTT: I'm sad to say that you are right!

GREENFIELD: Oh, yeah, because -- yes, we did narrow it down a bit.

All right, Christopher.

CALDWELL: All right. In the category of superheroes, this with some help from your producers: what food product makes its Japanese debut this October? Is it Godzilla meat, the McMorthra, or spam?

GREENFIELD: OK, going out on a limb, I'm going to guess spam.

CALDWELL: No, it is Godzilla meat.

GREENFIELD: There is not much defense, if you actually think about it, is there?

Joe?

QUEENAN: My question: which nation did President Bush visit this week? Czechoslovakia, Africa or Narnia?

GREENFIELD: OK. Actually, the answer is none, because there is no Czechoslovakia anymore. It's the Czech Republic. But he did call Africa a nation.

QUEENAN: Many people can make that mistake.

GREENFIELD: So, you know, I think the question becomes invalidated by the clumsy way that the producers phrased it.

QUEENAN: I'm glad you made it clear it was not my question.

GREENFIELD: No, it wasn't. OK. But -- you know -- having been to the Czech Republic once in my life, I was quite reminded it was no longer Czechoslovakia.

Go ahead, Sue.

ELLICOTT: Who got booed off the stage in game four of the NBA finals?

GREENFIELD: Let's see what the possibilities are.

ELLICOTT: You know, I have no possibilities for you. You just have to guess it.

GREENFIELD: Who got booed -- game four -- I have no idea.

ELLICOTT: I'll give you a clue, it was one person.

GREENFIELD: Well, that's good. Was it the person who sang the national anthem?

ELLICOTT: I guess so.

GREENFIELD: Who was it?

ELLICOTT: You don't have any idea?

GREENFIELD: No, but I'm guessing it was whoever sang the national anthem.

ELLICOTT: OK, well, that's not good enough. Do you know the name of the group? Actually, I'll tell you the name of the group and you tell me the name of the singer. Destiny's Child.

GREENFIELD: OK. Well.

QUEENAN: I thought it was Ralph Nader.

ELLICOTT: And the singer was the lead singer, Beyonce Knowles.

GREENFIELD: We have to move on, thank God.

CALDWELL: Which provision was not in the yesterday's Senate education bill? Was it: required testing for grades three through eight; financial incentives for improved schools, or a ban on flicker butter patties onto the cafeteria ceiling? Which was not in the bill?

GREENFIELD: Well, I want to say the last, but I also think they did cut back on the financial incentives, so I'm -- I doubt they actually had the anti-flicker bill, but I am going to say B.

CALDWELL: Your producers have tricked you. It was the ban on flicking butter patties.

GREENFIELD: I'm going to check that. Sounds like a dairy compact bill to me. Last question.

QUEENAN: Explain why this scene has special significance to you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right now, it appears to be...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: This one I know. That is the horse Dr. Greenfield, a 30-1 shot that ran in the Belmont stakes. We were on the verge last week of recommending people put their lifesaving on it. He is not only still out there running, he threw off his jockey -- which I plan to do with my producer -- and they could barely get him at the starting gate, which fortunately has not happened.

We got to go, thank God. Thanks to my guests Christopher Caldwell, Sue Ellicott and Joe Queenan. Have a great weekend. I will see you Monday night. Our topic: they all do it, movie makers, politicians, advertisers, even journalists. They all cross the line between reality and make-believe. Is it ever OK, and if not, why not?

On an unrelated note, "SPORTS TONIGHT" is next.

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