A EULOGY FOR MICHAEL KELLY BY WAY OF ON-THE-SCENE GOSSIPMONGERING

Longtime readers of my other blog will know I was always a fan of Michael Kelly. What a decade: reporting from Iraq during the first Gulf War, stints at the New York Times and The New Republic, his pugnacious New Yorker and Washington Post column, helming TNR and National Journal before eventually moving on to tranform The Atlantic Monthly from an enlightening yet often very boring magazine into the best English-language periodical on the planet. When he was killed outside of Baghdad last spring I wrote this brief and inadequate tribute. So this gives me a chance to write a bit more.

A few weeks ago I went out to Politics and Prose -- the independent bookstore where you see (well, I do) all the book-readings on C-SPAN2's Book TV weekends -- to see a few of DC's non-governmental A-listers read from the recently released collection of Kelly's published writings, "Things Worth Fighting For." Listees present comprised Ted Koppel, Bob Woodward, Maureen Dowd, Leon Wieseltier (actually NY-based), and David Bradley (owner, National Journal and Atlantic).

Outside, it was a warm day, one of a few up to that point. Inside, it was sweltering. And crowded. I arrived with friends about 15 minutes before the scheduled start time, which was about 15 minutes later than we'd planned. Already it was SRO, with a square post in the middle of the store creating a wide blind spot for anyone behind it. I managed to get out of that blind spot, but I had to step on a few toes and elbow a few people aside (literally) in order to do it. Of course, the C-SPAN camera was there too, blocking even more views (but enabling, um, hundreds more on Book TV!).

David Bradley started things by introducing those present, R to L away from the podium: Wieseltier (pronounced "weasel-terr," I take it?), Woodward, Koppel. No Dowd yet. Typical. Ted is glowing, probably thanks to makeup. Bob almost looks like he doesn't know what he's doing there. Where the hell does MoDo think she is?

Bradley read from two e-mails he got from Kelly just before and during the war in 2003, and the transcript of a satellite call between the two somewhere in an undisclosed region of Iraq in the thick of battle with the 3iD. Kelly told him the military forbade him from revealing their exact location ... and by the way, we're "35 miles south of Baghdad." I don't know if it's in the book (Bryan, your McSweeney's collection has me on a six-month backlog) but it should be.

Wieseltier was the first up, with a 1996 TRB column he helped edit, lambasting Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell at the time Clinton was reportedly considering them to replace Warren Christopher as Secretary of State.

By the time this is read, Clinton may have made his choice, but I would still like to take this opportunity to get on the record with a low, ad hominem assault against two fine men. I'm violently opposed to the idea of Richard Holbrooke as Secretary of State and only slightly less set against George Mitchell, and it is entirely personal.

If Wieseltier is to be believed, they spent most of the time fine-tuning the jokes. And it is funny. Of course, Wieseltier's delivery was spot on. Then again, it also ends up praising eventual nominee Madeleine Albright, words he surely disagreed with in the last year or two of his life.

Woodward stepped up next with "Farmer Al," a couple of Post columns, including one from 1999 that built a few miles of path for the ridicule of Al Gore that followed. Woodward reading this was somehow appropriate, and not just because he represented the Post -- his reading voice is as wooden as Gore's persona. So here you have the least funny man in the room reading what's considered one of Kelly's funniest bits. Call it a testament to the power of Kelly's words or call it a reaction to the discomfiture of that stuffy bookstore, but the laughter was enormous.

Al thought of the day that lay ahead. Farming was hard work, backbreaking hard, and it never stopped. But it was good, honorable work, and there was money in it too. "And there's money in not doing it too," Al's father, Senator Al, liked to say.

Uproarious. Leon Wieseltier -- a much better speaker -- nearly lost it, his face turning bright red. Nay, crimson! The whole place was in stitches. Maybe Woodward's banality was just the thing to keep it from getting out of control.

At about this point, MoDo came in from the back, looking as much like a fifty-year-old Lisa Loeb as possible (low-neck blouse, thick-rim glasses) and took her seat. !?!?.

Koppel (no sunglasses this time) read a bit from Kelly's last column, about pushing north to Baghdad relatively quickly, after only for a minute or so reading from the wrong column.

Seriously, I was thinking, where else did Maureen Dowd have to be tonight? To hear Bradley tell it, she and Mike Kelly were likethis in the NYT news room, where they even once co-bylined a Magazine cover story for the first Clinton inauguration. Who did she think she was? Yes, I knew, but I remained annoyed. I know I risk going into argumentum ad hominem, but her voice was irritating -- and this is from somebody largely unbothered by both Susan Estrich and Billy Corgan. If Woodward's banality surprised me, more so did MoDo's nasality.

Even more fitting than Woodward's woodenness was Dowd's choice of a column: priceless yet unfortunate. Kelly's 2001 "We Americans are some kind of fat" is filled with clever turns of phrase and well-timed insults, literally is start-to-finish a comic tour de force on the embarrassments of our national pigginess, but it ultimately says nothing. Hmm... who does that sound like? Fitting, all right.

Bradley returned briefly to thank Kelly's wife Max, and their two young sons, Tom and Jack. Planned in advance but to my surprise, Tom gets up and reads the last e-mail Dad sent from Iraq, which included a long, half-made up list of the things he was taking into the desert (i.e. a bathtub, a pirate's treasure map). No doubt the crowd cut these kids a bit of slack -- this was but two weeks after the first anniversary of Kelly's death. They needed it, not because they teared up but because they kept getting side-tracked and, apropos of nothing, telling jokes the crowd only pretended to get. The kids seemed to have a good handle on things -- well-adjusted -- but what do I know. Neither did the A-listers. Koppel cracked up. Bradley was enjoying himself. Woodward was already gone (the bastard!). But MoDo was stone-faced. And Wieseltier actually seemed perplexed. (I've made my guesses about which of them are childless.)

I read later that the next day Tom and Jack (with Mom in tow) delivered a copy of "Things Worth Fighting For" to President Bush, in the Oval Office, and Tom interviewed Bush for his elementary school newspaper at home in Boston. Courtesy something called the Swampscott Recorder, here's the first couple lines:

Tom Kelly, age 8: What do you remember most about second grade?

[President Bush]: I remember learning how to be a good reader. I think that's the most important part about early grades, is to become a good reader. That way, when you get older, you're a better reader.

(TK fumbles with his notebook.)

GB: "See, that's why you got the recorder. Most reporters, and you're a big time reporter now, when they come to the Oval Office, they don't spend time writing the answers. They just ask them."

I'll look forward to seeing what Tom Kelly writes when he's older.

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posted by WWB at 10:29 PM |