"A man is privileged when his passion obliges him to betray his convictions to please the woman he loves," wrote the artist Rene Magritte.
LAST WEEK I had some unusual encounters with and about men. This male-dominated excitement doesn't often occur for a woman my age, but then, I've always been lucky in life.
My friends -- the delectable Judith Martin of "Miss Manners" fame and New Orleans' own Julia Reed joined with me in a three-way conversation last week for "The Wow Effect" show on NPR's member stations, particularly the station called Robin Hood.
What the three of us talked about was -- men, in all their glory and disarray and whether or not we should want to change them. Is the bad boy-type man a life necessity? Can he be tamed? Should he be?
Specifically, we discussed Tiger Woods. Did he deserve to be so smeared, pilloried, analyzed and hounded for his sins of adultery? After all, he isn't a sitting president, governor, member of Congress or someone of the type where total rectitude is required. (And many are the lacks of rectitude we have seen among our presidents, governors, and members of Congress when it comes to dabbling in women and whatnot!)
Julia seemed to be of the mind that Tiger's indiscretions are none of our business and they do not really interfere with his chief occupation, playing championship golf. This is not a game where exactitude of moral behavior applies. As Julia noted, "If Tiger's offense had happened in championship basketball, nobody would even flinch.
Basketball guys bring guns to the locker room and carry on and nobody overreacts. Judith says, "In that case, the players are actual role models." We asked each other, does any of this concern anyone other than Tiger and his wife? When I heard Julia's ideas I found myself inclined to agree. I don't really care what Tiger does; it's his and his wife's problem.
Judith Martin offered a perky point about how much we all love to gossip and talk about matters that don't actually concern us -- how a lack of our right to offer opinions and judgments never keeps us from gawking into the private business of others.
I told my ladies that I had just read a new book about King Charles II, a king of Great Britain, who was famous for the scandals of his many love affairs and his enjoyment of women. Yet at the same time, he was a pretty good king, working for tolerance in religious differences, eschewing the executions and tortures that still went on in Restoration England.
So my point was that men haven't changed much down the ages. Male faithfulness is a rare event and male ascendancy over females has never been 50-50 and may never be. I guess I concluded by saying I like men, even badly behaved men, and my feeling is to let them be themselves and, as a woman, to just rise above it. What I'm saying, I guess, is let the Tigers and Charlie Sheens and Mel Gibson guys struggle with their own demons.
I am sure to be flayed alive for these informal conclusions.
SPEAKING OF men, I dropped into Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar the other eve to greet my old friend George Clooney. He was standing there, looking impossibly Clark Gable-like with his new girlfriend Elisabetta Canalis. "Hey, Mammacita!" said the star, giving me a big hug and the full brush of his immaculate new beard. This was a night when George was waiting for his father, Nick, to arrive so they could celebrate dad's birthday. George's mom, Nina, came too. George gave Nick a first edition of Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman." We talked a little about how good Nick Clooney had been speaking at the Walter Cronkite funeral, putting other better-known speakers to shame.
Young Clooney has been around pushing his very good movie "Up in the Air" and this night in the Monkey Bar, he was celebrating in a party hosted by Vanity Fair and Paramount's Brad Grey. Glimpsed in the throng -- Sting, Trudie Styler, Bob and Lynne Balaban, Albert Maysles, Ron Perelman, Tovah Feldshuh, Paul Schrader, Paul Haggis, Jason Reitman, Anna Kendrick, Woody Harrelson, Bryan Lourd, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas, Lorne Michaels, Lorraine Bracco, David "The Sopranos" Chase, Spike Lee, and like that.
George whispered to me that he hopes to host a telethon to raise money for Haiti on Jan. 22 on all the MTV channels. So wait for it.
I ENCOUNTERED one of my idols at the bar, none other than the grand poobah of criticizing the obvious -- Christopher Hitchens. Mr. H is the man who has done those magnificent unprecedented attacks on world idols with feet of clay -- I do mean Mother Teresa, the old Queen Mother, Princess Diana, Henry Kissinger and of late Gore Vidal.
Sometimes I resist but usually I applaud his verdicts. He is the person who dared to write "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" and this is a book I dip into over and over, while hoping to deny many of its ideas. But it is hard to argue with Christopher Hitchens, really a genius of a writer. We had a drink together and decided that the many gods visiting in the inner room were not great, just movie folks struggling to keep their heads above water!
(E-mail Liz Smith at MES3838@aol.com, or write to her c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.)
