The Pack Rat

D.C. weathers a gail

Some have a taste for the Collins mix of humor and politics; others, apparently, do not find it so pleasing to the palate

Can a political journalist be taken seriously if she doesn't seem to take politics seriously? That's
become the question haunting various national columnists. How do you write with gravitas about America's politicians when, for the most part, your subjects have turned the world's greatest political system into a joke? This quandary tends to separate the Old Guard from the arrivistes (David Broder vs. Michael Kelly; Robert Novak vs. Maureen Dowd).
And along gender lines, it also divides those women who "want to be taken seriously in a man's world" (you know who I mean) from most other female political writers.
Here comes Gail Collins, an old-timer with a fresh set of eyes, a writer who has paid her dues in the political-reporting trenches. With the clear voice of the child who asked why the emperor was wearing no clothes, she's been asking her new readers, "Have you taken a look at these political campaigns recently?" Her lighter approach, while popular with New York Times fans, has a few members of the Washington media clan clucking. But Collins recognizes that the current crop of conspiracy theorists, capos, and candidates aren't worthy of the Full Safire Treatment.
"The voters of Iowa have spoken. Don't listen." That was the opening of a wonderful column in late January after the corn country's caucus. "The American people spent an entire century trying to wrest the power to nominate presidential candidates out of the hands of the party bosses, and now we're handing it over to Iowa?
A state where the most popular events involve collegiate wrestling?
"The black residents I ran into in Des Moines — and they are three of the nicest folks you ever met … ," she continued, making a stronger statement about the irrelevancy of Iowa's caucus than a shelf of almanacs of American politics. She took heat from Iowa for refusing to genuflect at the altar of serious political tradition, but she was right.
"The vice president calls for a ban on guns in church," she said in a piece on presidential candidate Al Gore and Republican candidate George W. Bush. "'Pistols have no place in our pews,' he said. The nation has seven months to accept the fact that Mr. Bush is actually on the other side of this one," she ended dryly. She had just said volumes about the convoluted way in which diehard fans of each candidate will rationalize why they will vote for someone whose position on a major issue they oppose.
This 54-year-old info babe started with United Press International in New York, and to this day tells would-be journalists to "find a place teetering on the brink of bankruptcy" — they'll have a better chance at getting varied assignments. Coming off an economics fellowship at Columbia
University, Collins found herself stuck covering the stock market for UPI. But when the service's Off-Broadway critic's pacemaker exploded and he died, Collins stepped in to cover the Steppenwolf Theater Company's New York runs.
Jobs at the New York Daily News and New York Newsday followed before she was hired by the Times. She wrote with a tough elegance about Al Sharpton's refusal to apologize during the Steven Pagones suit after the Tawana Brawley travesty. In 1998, she penned, "The defamation trial of Tawana Brawley's former advisers is crowded with people frozen in time, a clash of men whose life trajectories seem to have come to a halt in 1988."
However, she claims to get along with Sharpton, whom she describes as "very
politically sophisticated. He knows he'll never have real credibility unless he
apologizes. And he won't."
As an amateur anthropologist, Collins is "fascinated" by Hillary Clinton. "Imagine having people so focused on you … because you breathe every morning. To bring out such strong feelings on both sides like that just by … existing."
You probably will not see "up close and personal" pieces on the campaign trail this year by Collins. She's become slightly suspicious of the process of having a reporter get quality time with a candidate. "They're so closed down, you only get what they want you to … and then you feel vaguely guilty if you're not nice to them after they spent so much time with you." Obviously, Collins has noticed the work of certain major columnists who did get access — and felt grateful.
Collins was pretty proud of several millennium pieces, including one for The New York Times Magazine, which led to a contract to do a book on the history of women.
But it's her pithy political points that stand out. "The idea that Bill Clinton let members of a [Puerto Rican] terrorist group out of jail for Hillary's sake is an interesting concept. It's the political equivalent of giving your wife an anniversary gift of an untrained collie. … [W]hen the choice is between a sneaky plot and all-purpose bumbling, in this White House it's generally safe to go with Door Number Two." Perhaps a steady diet of quick jabs will lose its appeal later, but right now it's more palatable than 10,000 words of "good for you" oatmeal. And it's what this race deserves.

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(copyright: Editor & Publisher June 19, 2000)