Frank Rich: The Butcher of the Beltway

By Bryan Curtis
Posted Monday, Dec. 12, 2005, at 6:52 PM ET

In New York, Times columnist Frank Rich is a local hero. If he lacks the national profile of Times stars Maureen Dowd and David Brooks, and the liberal bloodlust of Paul Krugman, then his column is nonetheless a beloved Manhattan institution. Part of it is that Rich is a genuine New York celebrity, dating from when he was the Times' chief drama critic, the celebrated "Butcher of Broadway." And part of it is that the critical voice Rich honed on the theater beat, and now uses in his column, is perfectly tuned to the voice of Manhattan liberalism. In Rich's column you hear the mantra of the Upper West Side: a despair at the current liberal predicament, leavened by self-righteousness. "The answer is not complicated," Rich wrote last month. "When people in power get away with telling bigger and bigger lies, they naturally think they can keep getting away with it. And for a long time, Mr. Bush and his cronies did. Not anymore."

A few weeks ago, I went to see Rich among the faithful, giving a talk at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Each year, the 92nd Street Y brings in a roster of eminences, from Alan Alda to Barbara Boxer, designed to draw out the old lions of Manhattan liberalism. A sign of Rich's star power is that tickets for his "evening with" had sold out well in advance, as they do every time he visits the Y. The lobby had the giddy buzz of a rock concert, and I spotted an elderly woman, suffering from age or just desperation to see her hero, attempt twice to sneak into the auditorium without a ticket. Inside, the audience hung on Rich's every word, nodding vigorously when he skewered George W. Bush ("I think he has lost the trust of the country") and resignedly when he skewered the Democrats ("I think the Democrats are pathetic"). Within a half-hour the synchronous head-bobbing had reached a level achieved only by a few rock acts; I imagine the aging ladies in the front row were ready to pelt Rich with their underwear, if only they had been able to stand.

The role of lefty hero is essentially Rich's third act in journalism. In 1994, after 14 high-octane years as drama critic, Rich began to write what you might call cultural op-eds. In these, Rich would stroke his chin about Oprah Winfrey's Beloved or David Hare's The Blue Room—each cultural exemplum supposedly containing clues to desires of the polity. The theorizing had its limits—what, in the end, did Beloved tell us about society? (And Rich has unfortunately produced a crowd of imitators, including Dowd at the Times.) But Rich also had his share of triumphs. In 2003, after moving his column to the "Arts & Leisure" section, he was one of the first journalists to call Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic. Played out in print and on TV, the Gibson-Rich feud both anticipated the cultural rift of the 2004 presidential election and was sensationally entertaining to boot. After Gibson expressed his desire to see the columnist killed along with his dog, Rich deadpanned, "I don't have a dog."

Since returning to the op-ed page in April, Rich has transformed himself into a more conventional left-wing animal. Gone is the snarky, channel-surfing sociologist; in is the defiant liberal champion who produces headlines like "Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt" (Nov. 27), "The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman" (Nov. 7), and "Karl and Scooter's Excellent Adventure" (Oct. 23). The column remains about the culture only in its shocked discovery, two weeks out of three, that some evangelical supporters of the GOP do not admire gay people, artists, or Jews.

cont'd...

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