Reply #11: Frank Rich was a savage Theatre critic moved to the opinion piece

[karynnj]

Though personally liberal, he covers politics as if it was a play or a movie. Is the actor too stiff? Does he look silly in costumes? He will go for the snark over insight any time - it plays better. He will often write a good piece bemoaning that the country voted on the wrong things - but he has never admitted that he was one of the cheerleaders who had great fun leading the laughs over insubstantial meaningless non issues.

On the Love Story issue, the author went to Yale with Gore - I think they were roommates. Gore and other sons of very powerful men at Harvard were the model for the Love Story character. The plot is a common classic theme. Gore never said that the story was his and Tipper's - it wasn't.

The problem is that, just as TV News became entertainment, a large part of the op-ed page did too. The problem was that the Cool Kidz, Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, never stopped in 2000 or 2004 to seriously look at the candidates, their resumes, and what they believed in. That would have been no fun. The problem is that people reading them took their descriptions which turned each into pretty non-inspiring 2 dimensional characters - when each are really fascinating complex people who had spent their lives in public service. Nor did their paper want them to do that - the snarky attacks sold better.

So, Frank Rich, who would be fun to read if he were a DU poster inadvertently diminished people working hard to actually make the world better - and was cheered on because we loved his clever Bush put downs - which didn't hurt Bush as they were brushed aside as liberal NYT attacks.