Hammers And Nails

I have no use for Sean Penn's naïve pronouncements on international politics, but you have to give him credit for pissing off the prissy scolds of society. An April 21 "Page Six" item showed Penn, whose performances in the films The Falcon and the Snowman, The Interpreter and Mystic River assure his professional reputation, at his best. According to the Post gossip column-which needs a serious facelift to counteract the similar, but far superior, Gawker.com-Penn was at the Museum of Modern Art last week celebrating the release of The Interpreter. During the gala he committed a crime worse than defending John Bolton: The actor smoked a cigarette inside.

A "peeved partygoer" (no doubt a Kerry voter) told a "Page Six" scrub, "It was absolutely disgusting. He smoked the entire thing right in the middle of the bright, shiny new gem of the New York museum system." Imagine that, Penn smoked the "entire thing," instead of bowing to the wishes of some celebrity-hag. Never mind that most of the works displayed at the museum are courtesy of artists who smoke, drink and swear (or did when they were alive), and probably jaywalk as well. Sure, Penn used his fame card to get away with the most minor of misdemeanors, but it's a nostalgic reminder of the days when you could light up not only inside your own office, as well as supermarkets, airplanes, cabs and elevators. A long-ago era when Americans weren't squeamish about eating veal, wearing fur and not obsessively counting calories.

On the subject of tobacco outlaws, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter uses an anecdote in the May 2 issue-a column, headlined "Why We Need DeLay to Stay," that officially confirms his double-dipping as a journalist and Democratic strategist-to set up the House Majority Leader as roadkill. He writes: "A couple of years ago, Tom DeLay was chomping on a cigar at a Washington restaurant with some lobbyists. The manager went over to tell him he couldn't smoke because the restaurant was located on property leased from the federal government, which bars smoking. 'I am the federal government,' DeLay replied, in words that will follow the onetime exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, like ants at a picnic."

Never mind the bad Dan Rather imitation, the obnoxious putdown of DeLay's former occupation-he's not wealthy and had to work for a living, unlike Teddy Kennedy and Jay Rockefeller, for example-or even the notation of DeLay's "legendary gerrymandering," as if the Texan invented that admittedly sleazy congressional tradition.

Alter's main concern is that DeLay survives his upcoming ethical battles in Washington. Should this decade's Newt Gingrich be forced from office, the Newsweek defender of the Constitution argues, the Democrats will be shorn of a three-eyed monster to demagogue about during the 2006 midterm elections. Most Republicans, according to Alter, are members of that secret sect called the "radical" right wing, who are trying to pass "bad" legislation, like cutting taxes and reforming Social Security. Alter appeals to all Americans: "This job [marginalizing DeLay] belongs to the voters, who can hammer the Hammer by siding against his many acolytes in Congress. Let's make 2006 a referendum on the right wing. For that, DeLay must stay."

Democrats do have a chance at taking over Congress next year, but it won't be on account of a monolithic attack on the "right wing," a tactic that's failed the party since the GOP first assumed power a decade ago. Alter complains that most Democrats have been too passive, too bipartisan, too darn accommodating to President Bush and Republican leaders. I guess he doesn't think Sen. Chris Dodd, who's leading the character assassination of Bolton, is a wimp. And what of Barbara Boxer, the madam of Marin County who believes anyone to the right of Eugene Debs is an illiterate cracker? And then there's Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin, Patrick Leahy, Howard Dean (who called Republicans "brain-dead" at a photo-op in Toronto), Hillary Clinton (when she's not holding a Bible in states that voted for Bush), John Kerry and Joe Biden, just a smattering of Democrats who've had a winning season in obstructing the President's agenda.

In reality, most voters don't care too much about DeLay: If he's found guilty of ethical lapses, it'll be met with a collective "they all do it" shrug, and when he's tossed to the back benches in the House, his name will be forgotten. The midterm elections, and leadership of the next Congress, will be decided mainly on the economy; inflation and high interest rates doom Republicans, while low unemployment hurts Alter's party.

But hey, hold the phone, Jackson! We've veered off track. This year's medical news is that it's okay to be several pounds overweight, a onetime social faux-paux that now, at least until the next study is released, postpones a meeting with St. Peter or Joe Kennedy, depending on how you've behaved during life and on the past 35 Earth Days. I don't believe any of this academic trash: How can you when the danger or benefit of caffeine or red wine yo-yos every couple of years more wildly than the net worth of the inexplicably still-ubiquitous Donald Trump? I've always figured that losing weight isn't so complicated; if the pants are a little snug, stop eating so much. Take a two-mile walk every day instead of spending a fortune on tummy-tucks or space-consuming exercise machines.

David Brooks, the Times op-ed columnist who revealed his character at the beginning of the baseball season by publicly renouncing his longtime allegiance to the New York Mets in favor of his now-hometown Washington Nationals, is tickled. It's mere coincidence that I'm dumping on the Pataki-Whitman "conservative" two weeks in a row-obviously his writing is preferable to that of Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd-but he's brought it on himself. Brooks, who describes himself as "a member of the community of low-center-of-gravity Americans," finds vindication in the medical bulletin, and now no longer feels guilty when leaving a trail of pastry crumbs in his office.

Feeling creative, Brooks writes (April 24): "Mother Nature, we now know, is a saucy wench, who likes to play cosmic tricks on humanity? The chief lesson I take away from this report is that Mother Nature is happy to tolerate marginally irresponsible misbehavior?[S]he does want you to eat the occasional Cinnabon, so long as it isn't bigger than Delaware. She wants you to have that fourth glass of wine, and lecture the dinner table on the future of the papacy based on your extensive reading of 'The Da Vinci Code.' She wants a little socially productive mediocrity."

Tubby's colleague, John Tierney, also commenting on the probably fleeting wisdom (April 23), is at least funny about it. Accurately writing that in the late 20th century, achieving "thinness" became a status symbol for the rich, he includes one paragraph that blows away Brooks' nerdy gloating. Tierney writes: "George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University, calls this shift the King Henry VIII and Oprah Winfrey Effect. In Tudor England, it took hundreds of gardeners, farmers, hunters and butchers to keep Henry VIII fat. In America today, anyone can bulk up without help, but it takes a new set of vassals-personal trainer, nutritionist, private chef-to keep Oprah from looking like Henry VIII."