The most surprising fact of the entire Bob Watch experience for me has been that in this column’s 18-month history, nobody has ever written in defending Bob Greene.
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For the Republican convention, Bob hies himself across the country, tut-tutting those people on the plane wearing tank tops on the way. Once in San Diego, he ignores the convention, outside of watching a sound check. Instead he eulogizes the speech as a literary form. He sits in a coffeehouse–Ricky’s–finding it the source of “the most significant news coming out” of the convention (“Twenty minutes and a million miles away,” August 18). Bob is shocked to find people don’t care. They aren’t heatedly discussing speeches. Talk is of sports, weather, and freeway traffic.
He ends with a typical journalist’s preen–himself and Bob Dole, years earlier, in a booth at a similar coffee shop, just a pair of Bobs talking politics. If only Dole could figure out “what the people in here are thinking right now” he might have a chance, Bob suggests.
Bob must have missed the bombing of Cambodia. We can only speculate how many more times Bob will dredge up the Baby Richard story, all the while ignoring the fact that Richard could be the happiest, most well-adjusted boy in the world. Bob just doesn’t know, and either doesn’t care to–or can’t–find out.
