Best of the Web Today - July 26, 2007
By JAMES TARANTO
Today's Video on WSJ.com: James Taranto on Democrats' insouciance about genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Spot the Racists
"The producers of ABC's new 'Cavemen' said Wednesday the comedy is much more than the insurance company commercials that inspired it, but isn't designed to be an ambitious allegory about race," the Associated Press reports from Beverly Hills, Calif.
Huh? If "Cavemen" is not "an ambitious allegory about race," why would it even occur to the producers to deny that is what it is? We checked the photos from the show on the Internet Movie Database, and all of the characters appear to be paleolithoids of pallor. Whose idea was it that there was some sort of racial overtone here?
Still scratching our head, we returned to the AP dispatch and made our way to the fifth paragraph:
[Mike] Schiff and fellow producers responded to reporters' questions about the series, many of them focusing on parallels between the cavemen and black stereotypes and the pitfalls of turning an ad into a series.
Aha! So reporters saw "cavemen," thought "black people," and started asking questions based on their own stereotypes.
Don't they teach racial sensitivity in journalism school out in California?
Whites Need Not Apply
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a pair of policies that discriminated on the basis of race in order to promote racial integration. The Boston Globe reports that a similar program in Massachusetts is endangered by the ruling:
Leaders of a 41-year-old state program created to integrate suburban schools with urban minority students are facing the possibility that they may have to allow white participants in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling last month.
Program leaders and others fear that including white students from the cities in the voluntary desegregation program, known as Metco, could lead to the program's demise. Admit white students, suburban superintendents say, and their communities may pull out because the program's purpose was to diversify their predominantly white schools.
Here is how the program works:
Boston students are entered onto a waiting list of 12,000 students, including a small number of white students, for about 450 spots a year. Metco refers minority applicants to suburban school systems as seats open. Under state guidelines, for every 10 names Metco refers, six are black, three are Latino and one is Asian, reflecting Boston's minority demographics. A few white students, trying to exploit the system, slip through because they classify themselves as Latino. . . .
Program officials and suburban superintendents worry that allowing white students to participate would jeopardize Metco's future because the Legislature may no longer consider the program worth funding.
This column opposes so-called affirmative action, but we have conceded that it is less invidious than old-fashioned Jim Crow segregation because it typically does not involve a blanket exclusion on the basis of race. In Boston, however, one minority is completely excluded from the transfer program. Metco has quotas for blacks, Hispanics and Asians, but whites--who according to the Globe, made up 14% of the Boston schools' student body as of 2005--simply need not apply.
This seems more blatantly unconstitutional than the programs the court struck down, which excluded racial groups only after their quotas had been met. As for the excuse that the Legislature might not be willing to support Metco if it did not discriminate, how is that argument any stronger today than it was in the Jim Crow era?
They Might Be Giants
The Boston Globe is owned by the New York Times Co., but you wouldn't know it from reading an editorial the other day called "The World After George W. Bush." Oh, it was as anti-Bush as you'd expect, but this passage does not conform to New York Times style:
Clearly Iraq is Bush's greatest failure. Whether the many-sided conflicts raging there are the inevitable consequence of the US invasion or whether they stem from incoherent post-invasion policies, the result is the same: Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites are slaughtering each other. Al Qaeda in Iraq, an affiliate of Osama bin Laden's gang, is sending suicide bombers to blow up mosques and markets, police stations, and US vehicles.
Why didn't the folks at the Globe get the memo about calling it "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" and denying that it has anything to do with either Iraq or al Qaeda? Maybe the guys at the Times addressed the envelope to the Trimountaine Plane.
Speaking of which, reader Debbie Symanovich has some further suggestions for the Times style mavens:
If the New York Times keeps using the ancient term "Mesopotamia" in reference to modern-day Iraq, perhaps we should start using the word "Persia" to describe the region we now call Iran.
We could call Turkey the "Ottomans." And we could call Syria "Sargon."
We might even be able to slip in the term "Babylon" to describe parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
This can be so much fun!
But I guess we would have to call Israel "Israel." (Funny thing!)
Then again, there are limits. It's Istanbul, not Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks'.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us
Rep. Barbara Lee sponsored a piece of legislation prohibiting funding for permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. Although Lee is a fringe-left figure from the San Francisco Bay area, the bill passed overwhelmingly yesterday, 399-24 (all the "nays" were from Republicans).
Why was Lee able to get such strong bipartisan support for the proposal? Because it's meaningless, as the Associated Press explains:
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, voted for it but belittled it, too. . . .
" 'No permanent bases' is already the policy of the United States, and there is no such thing as a 'permanent' U.S. military base in foreign countries," Boehner added. "All U.S. military bases abroad are subject to cooperative agreements with the respective host countries. The agreements can be altered or eliminated at any time."
A partial exception to this is Guantanamo Bay, where the U.S. has a perpetual lease that can be broken only by mutual consent.
Reliable Sources
"Army Secretary Peter Geren is expected to recommend that a retired three-star general be demoted for his role in providing misleading information about the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, military officials say, in what would be a stinging and rare rebuke," the Associated Press reports:
The officials requested anonymity because the punishments under consideration by Geren have not been made public.
Well, now that they have been made public in this story, isn't the AP obliged to name its sources?
Dangerous Liaisons
o "[U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin] Bergner said [captured al Qaeda in Iraq figure Dawoud Mahmoud] al-Mashhadani served as an intermediary between [Abu Ayub] al-Masri [the Egyptian-born leader of al Qaeda in Iraq] and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri."--Associated Press, July 18
o "I also acted as a liaison between the governor's office and the various state agencies responsible for law enforcement and homeland security, such as the Office of Counterterrorism, State and local police, the Coast Guard, the Attorney General's office, and the National Guard."--GolanCipel.com, Web site of the man who denies being former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey's gay ex-lover
Ahmadinejad Imitates Bonnie Raitt
o Let's give them something to talk about
A little mystery to figure out
Let's give them something to talk about
How about love, love, love, love
--Bonnie Raitt, "Something to Talk About," 1991
o "Iran will never abandon its peaceful (nuclear) work," [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad told state television. "Our nuclear work is legal and why should we stop it? . . . If we suspend our nuclear work there will be no issue to talk about (with the West)."--Reuters, July 26, 2007
London's Independent, meanwhile, has this report on Iran's nuclear program:
Another senior Iranian official said that with almost 3,000 centrifuges now running at Natanz, "we have at the moment enough centrifuges to go to a bomb." But the official added that Iran was barred by its own security and defence doctrine, by parliament, and by a religious fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader, from building a bomb. The official added that if Iran produced a single bomb "what is it good for? If we attack Israeli with one bomb, America would attack us with thousands of bombs. It's suicide."
Why are we not reassured by a fundamentalist Muslim regime's promises not to build a bomb and use it to commit suicide?
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
o "One man with courage makes a majority."--attributed to Andrew Jackson
o "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin D. Roosevelt
o "The buck stops here."--Harry S. Truman
o "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John F. Kennedy
o "The biggest problem is my butt hurts. Is that normal?"--John Edwards
What's His Event?
"Spielberg Mulls Quitting Olympics to Pressure Chinese on Darfur"--headline, ABCNews.com, July 26
Won't She Be Dizzy After Turning 540 Degrees?
"Whatever you have done in the past, do a 360-degree turn and go the other way."--defense lawyer Gerald Sands's advice to celebrity Lindsay Lohan, quoted by the Associated Press, July 25
What Would Lohan Do Without Experts?
o "Experts Urge Lohan to Seek Rehab"--headline, Associated Press, July 25
o "Experts: Lohan, Spears Making Mockery of Rehab"--headline, Reuters, July 26
What Would We Do Without Oscar the Cat?
"Oscar the Cat Predicts Nursing Home Deaths"--headline, FoxNews.com, July 26
Well, It Is July
"Study: Nevada Has Big Temperature Gains"--headline, Associated Press, July 25
So What Do Parents Do?
"State Law: Schools Are Required to Supply Kids"--headline, Register Herald (Beckley, W.Va.), July 26
Help Wanted
o "Wanted: Volunteers to Be Stung by Jellyfish"--headline, USA Today, July 26
o "Day-Care Bandit Sought"--headline, Beaver County Times and Allegheny Times (Pennsylvania), July 25
News You Can Use
"Getting Old an Expensive Prospect"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 25
Bottom Story of the Day
"Canada Wins Pan Am Bronze in Women's Soccer"--headline, CBC.ca, July 26
Caged Heat
Scenes from a trial, from the Miami Herald:
The case drew snickers in the courtroom, especially during jury selection, when prospective jurors were quizzed about their own habits.
Defense attorney Kathleen McHugh faced 17 prospective jurors and asked point-blank who among them had never done that particular sex act.
No hands went up.
"That particular sex act," which we'll abbreviate TPSA, is one that does not require a conjugal visit, if you catch our drift. Twenty-year-old Terry Lee Alexander, who was already in jail for armed robbery, was charged with indecent exposure for performing TPSA in his cell within view of a female sheriff's deputy.
The jury found Alexander guilty, ruling "that an inmate's jail cell is 'a limited access public place' where exposing oneself is against the law." The Herald notes that not all Florida localities handle such cases by bringing criminal charges:
Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, said jail inmates there are written up for violating jail rules and subject to internal punishment ranging from loss of visitation privileges to solitary confinement.
But wait. For people most strongly inclined toward TPSA, would solitary confinement really be a punishment?
URL for this article: opinionjournal.com |
