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| Home Front: Politix |
| Weekends With the President's Men |
| 2006-07-01 |
| This article is written in such a way, I need to go wash my hands after reading. I don't usually even click on a NYT article, but this one I had to read. Sheezz. It's as tho the author just had to see if he could excel at dripping condescended hatred with his words. Selected paragraphs. Caption under picture: There is a lens in the birdhouse at the driveway of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's home at St. Michaels, Md. .... One is Vice President Dick Cheney, 65, who paid $2.67 million last September for a house that resembles a wide, squat Mount Vernon. Another is his old friend Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, 73, who in 2003 paid $1.5 million for a brick Georgian that was last a bed-and-breakfast. Among other recognizable owners in the area are Tony Snow, President Bush's new press secretary; Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's presidential campaign manager in 2004; Nicholas Brady, President George H. W. Bush's treasury secretary; and John S. D. Eisenhower, a writer and historian and the son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. ..... In St. Michaels, you also don't see much of the one-upping of Joneses or architectural bullying found in showier coastal resorts. The old farm families and the wealthy weekenders like the Rumsfelds and Cheneys look out over acres of lawn rolling down to the sea grass and their own private docks. But the homes are hidden down two-lane roads with cunning yellow signs on utility poles that say, menacingly and untruthfully, "No Outlet," and then down driveways shrouded by trees and lined with thick and impenetrable hedgerows. Letting terrorists know there is another way out. The houses have names. Mr. Rumsfeld's is Mount Misery and is just across Rolles Creek from a house called Mount Pleasant. On four acres, with four bathrooms, five bedrooms and five fireplaces, built in 1804, the Rumsfeld house is just barely visible at the end of a gravel drive. .... Today, where the drive begins, Mount Misery seems a congenial place, with a white mailbox with newspaper delivery sleeves attached, a big American flag fluttering from a post by a split-rail fence and a tall, one-hole birdhouse of the sort made for bluebirds — although the lens in the hole suggests another function. At the site of the article is a picture of the birdhouse with this caption, There is a lens in the birdhouse at the driveway of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's home at St. Michaels, Md. ... Less than two miles from the Rumsfelds', past Southwind, where the late James A. Michener wrote much of his epic novel "Chesapeake," Church Neck Road dead-ends at private Fuller Road on the left. About a quarter-mile up, past grazing cattle and sheep and four other homes, is Vice President Cheney's nine-acre place, Ballintober. The house, built in 1930, is rambling and white. It has a five-car garage, a pool, stately formal gardens, a laundry chute and large, glass-walled waterside rooms for entertaining. Coldwell Banker's real estate listing called it an "individually designed dwelling." It is also unapproachable. "The last time I went up Fuller Road," Katie Edmonds, an agent at Meredith Real Estate, said, "S.U.V.'s came out of the woods at me." Neighbors also complain about federal security agents' shutting down Church Neck Road to let the Cheneys pass in their speeding brigades of shiny black S.U.V.'s. But they don't complain much, because the newcomers are thought to be good for property values. If the Cheneys and Rumsfelds are willing to buy here, after all, who wouldn't be? ... Caption from another picture: High Powered St. Michaels has become a weekend-home haven for some influential Washingtonians; even Joyce Rumsfeld shops at Big Al's Market. ... The second-home owners cannot vote in local elections, but their needs, whimsies and appetites set the tone of the town. Approaching St. Michaels, Route 33 — the only way in or out — passes a lumberyard's lawn full of rocking chairs. .... Some people view the new neighbors less cordially. On Railroad Avenue, which the Cheneys and Rumsfelds use to reach Church Neck, Cassandra Harrison, a mother of two who waits tables and cleans houses, was resting on the stoop of her one-story white ranch house. She is grateful that the air space above the Cheneys' house is blocked. "It's a no-fly zone, and that's good," she said. "But I'm not happy. I don't think society's liking them so much." Ms. Harrison, 23, voted for the first time in 2004, she said, "just because I did not want him. I don't think that they tell us the truth." But that is a minority view in Talbot County, which went 61 percent for Mr. Bush in 2000 and 58 percent in 2004. Support for the war in Iraq is waning here as it is most everywhere else. But the great majority of Mr. Nestlehutt's 790 parishioners, he said, are "tolerant," live-and-let-live urban Republicans, not hard-core social conservatives. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, he said, seem to fit right in. .. This guy is trying for his Pulitzer like that ridiculous article in the WAPO that won one on the fashion dressing of Judge Robert's family. Disgusting. BDS in full force. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #4 TW -- well, she did win, not for fashion, but for criticism--- For distinguished criticism, in print or in print and online, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). "Awarded to Robin Givhan of The Washington Post for her witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism." Check out this site http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2006/04/17/LI2006041700592.html She submitted 10 articles that included Cheney's hunting dress, Rice in those incredible black boots and Mrs. Roberts. I know, it doesn't make sense, but then, none of the decisions did. Bet this guy submits this "for criticism." |
| Posted by: Sherry 2006-07-01 18:12 |
| #3 Outrageous behaviour. The NYT are really pushing their luck. |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2006-07-01 17:33 |
| #2 why not publish GPS coordinates so terrorists and protesters can Garmin ight onto the proerty. The NYT is on it's way out of business. They should be jailed for this crap |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-07-01 17:31 |
| #1 The fashion critic won a Pulitzer? Absurd -- she never got past the waspish, "she ought to be wearing my fave labels," stage. And she was wrong, too -- her fave labels were completely unsuitable for Mrs. Robert's body type, and questionable for that situation. In my opinion, of course, and admittedly I've never been anywhere near a Pulitzer, although I might've got my name near a patent once. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-07-01 17:13 |