Time Has the Two Faces of Bush Covered

The obvious choice for Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” was Saddam Hussein. The criteria for this designation is not that the person be a hero or even a nice guy. The distinction is given to the person who “for better or for worse, has had the most impact on the year’s events.”

But Time decided not to put the man Americans most hate on its first cover of 1991. Instead, it opted for a gimmicky equivocation: naming President George Bush “Men of the Year.”

The idea is that Bush is like two, two, two men in one: a resolute master of foreign policy and a fumbling, indecisive wimp on domestic affairs.

Even within this latter role, Bush comes across in Time’s profile like a man with multiple personality disorder. Or at least a duplicitous hypocrite.

At one time or another, Bush the candidate has positioned himself, Time says, “as a Goldwater conservative, a moderate mainstream Republican, an effective critic and then staunch supporter of Reaganomics--whatever it took to advance.”

As President, he has simply been ineffectual, the magazine contends, talking about policy without doing much.

But Bush’s foreign policy is a different matter, as his reaction to Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait demonstrates. Time quotes an unnamed White House official on the prevailing attitude of Bush advisers in the early days of the crisis: “Hey, too bad about Kuwait, but it’s just a gas station, and who cares whether the sign says Sinclair or Exxon?”

Bush saw it differently, though, and acted swiftly with Operation Desert Shield. And he, “unlike Ronald Reagan, was no lone cowboy single-handedly dispensing rough justice, but a sheriff rounding up a posse of law-abiding nations.”

Given the fact that we remain in a standoff with Iraq, it may be premature for Time to call Bush’s response “masterful.” But with the shove Hussein gave him, Bush, for better or worse, is certainly in a position to make an impact.

REQUIRED READING

* Roll over Beethoven, professor Marvin Minsky believes music appreciation is a glitch in the human machine.

“I know people who listen to music over and over again. I think it’s degrading to listen to a piece of music twice,” he says in the January Details.

That’s not all that annoys Minsky about being human.

People are “slugs,” the MIT Artificial Intelligence researcher says in this intriguing Q&A.; “I don’t understand why the human-worshipers are so pleased with themselves. Our memory is too small, we think too slowly, and we don’t live long enough. I can’t understand people who say people are good enough.

“In recent years I’ve practiced not liking music, though I still want to understand how it works. I think it’s just silly to like something without knowing why. When people react strongly to a certain stimulus it becomes urgent to find out why. If something is very popular it’s found a small hole in your nervous system. Like Hitler getting all those smart Germans--was it because Nazism was a great and profound thing, or was it something that in a computer program might be called a bug? So maybe great music is a bug in our thinking.”

* A few years back, humorist P.J. O’Rourke toured the Soviet Union with a group of American leftists on a tour sponsored by Nation magazine. His reportage devastated the group’s psuedo-intellectual pretentiousness. But now that communism is retreating in Eastern Europe, a new breed of tourist is invading the Evil Empire and its satellites. In the January-February Spy, Richard Stengel tags along with a right-wing tour that includes Phyllis Schlafly and her daughter. Judging from this account, leftist tourists have no monopoly on international buffoonery. (Also in this issue: an unflattering profile of American-born Queen Noor al Hussein of Jordan, and Spy Jr., a special issue for kids, including a Where’s Waldo spoof in which readers search for the hero in a complex New York cityscape of criminal pandemonium.)

* Gourmet magazine turns 50 this month. The centerpiece of the anniversary issue is a photo spread with recipes for a celebratory feast. But a piece on “Great Old Los Angeles Eating Places”--describing the menus and histories of such restaurants as El Cholo, Philippe, Little Joe’s and Taix--is another good reason to take a look at “The Magazine of Good Living.”

SHREDDER FODDER

“Empowerment” is one of the most dreadful buzzwords of recent coinage, but it represents a good idea: The notion that people--particularly women--should control their own lives.

So here it is 1991 and what’s the first thing on the agenda of certain women’s magazines? Urging readers to turn their lives over to the stars. The January New Woman, for example, tells readers that its special section on astrology “does more than predict the future: it tells you how you can gain empowerment and make your professional, romantic, and financial aspirations become a reality.”

The fall issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, published by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, reported that 33 newspapers in the United States and Canada now print disclaimers with their astrology columns. Most are similar to the one printed in the Kansas City Star: “Horoscopes have no basis in scientific fact and should be read for entertainment, not guidance.”

Women’s magazines imply the opposite. Which is not to say that the stargazing is unamusing. For example, Cosmopolitan this month offers “The 1991 Cosmo Girl’s Bedside Astrologer,” including a “Sun Sign Seduction Chart.” What Leo would not want to know that her romantic rendezvous will be “on a dewy mountain meadow at sunrise; on your own peach satin sheets,” and that her “passion’s perfume” is Chloe by Lagerfeld?