Best of the Web Today - February 15, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
It's Ronery at the Top
The Eason Jordan kerfuffle is really getting silly now. Blogger Charles Johnson points to a 1997 "report" from KCNA (second item), the North Korean "news" agency, titled "Gift to Secy. Kim Jong Il from CNN official":
Secretary Km Jong Il received a gift from Eason Jordan, President of the Newsgathering and International Network of the CNN of the United States, who is on a visit to Korea. Eason Jordan asked Kim Yong Sun, Chairman of the Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee and Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee, to convey the gift to Secretary Kim Jong Il.
Curiously, Johnson does not question the veracity of this report, even though it comes from an official arm of the North Korean regime. Talk about your biased MSM outfits! Where are all the bloggers demanding full disclosure of the KCNA author's conflicts of interest? (Why, the author isn't even named!)
As it turns out, there is some corroboration for the KCNA "report." It comes from Scott Fisher, an American expat living in Seoul, who visited North Korea in 2002 and wrote a lengthy travelogue that appears on the Web site 1stopkorea.com. Fisher visited the "Kim Jong Il Shrine," near the Chinese border, where gifts to the "dear leader" (or is it "great leader"?) are on display:
Ever wonder why CNN seems to be the only Western news organization regularly allowed into North Korea? The next room perhaps offered a clue. In the "Gifts from America" room a whole section of one wall is taken up by gifts from CNN. A few engraved plaques, a coffee cup (yeah, a freaking coffee cup!), a logo ashtray, etc. Probably at most a couple hundred bucks worth of crap that nonetheless get pride of place in the museum--for they reveal obvious signs of respect from a world famous news organization.
That's it? In April 2003, when Jordan admitted suppressing news so as to maintain access to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, that was a genuine outrage. Now bloggers are attacking Jordan for giving a dictator crap?
Protecting Their Own
From a New York Times piece on the EJK:
It was a businessman attending the forum in Davos who put Mr. Jordan's comments on the map with a Jan. 28 posting. Rony Abovitz, 34, of Hollywood, Fla., the co-founder of a medical technology company, was invited to Davos and was asked to write for the forum's first-ever blog, his first blogging effort. In an interview yesterday, he said that he had challenged Mr. Jordan's assertion that the United States was taking aim at journalists and asked for evidence.
Mr. Abovitz asked some of the journalists at the event if they were going to write about Mr. Jordan's comments and concluded that they were not because journalists wanted to protect their own. There was also some confusion about whether they could, because the session was officially "off the record."
Mr. Abovitz said the remarks bothered him, and at 2:21 a.m. local time, he posted his write-up on the forum's official blog (www.forumblog.org) under the headline "Do U.S. Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?"
What the Times article doesn't mention is that, as we noted last May, the Times itself published the same innuendo. In a dispatch from Karbala, Iraq, reporter Edward Wong claimed:
Iraq has become one of the most dangerous places in the world from which to report, with enormous potential for journalists to be deliberately targeted by either side or caught in the crossfire.
"Is there any evidence of such a thing?" we asked, just as Abovitz did after Jordan's comment in Davos. The Times never answered. Instead it edited the comments out of the original article, which had not yet appeared in print, and today the original doesn't seem to be archived anywhere.
Things That Don't Appall Liberals--I
Did you know liberals aren't appalled by child molestation? Before you send us angry letters about this, let us explain: We're not saying it, Reuters is. From a dispatch about the Michael Jackson trial:
Legal experts say prosecutors will look for jurors who are older, conservative, less taken with celebrity, willing to accept authority and appalled by child molestation.
Jackson's attorneys may look for more liberal jurors who have advanced degrees and are critical thinkers who question authority.
Is it possible that Reuters has a heretofore undetected conservative bias? After all, not only does this dispatch make liberals look like degenerates; it also omits the scare quotes around the emotive phrase child molestation.
Things That Don't Appall Liberals--II
Folks who complain about American "torture" of terrorists don't seem to have much to say about the conduct of U.N. "peacekeepers" in Africa. The Associated Press reports:
The Moroccan mission to the United Nations has announced it arrested six U.N. peacekeeping soldiers in Congo accused of sexually abusing local girls and discharged the contingent's commander. . . .
There have been more than 150 allegations of sexual exploitation of girls as young as 13 by U.N. peacekeepers in Congo.
Annan last Wednesday urged the Security Council to add at least 100 military police to the peacekeeping mission in Congo to help prevent sex abuse by the U.N. forces.
Great, the U.N. is going to send troops to prevent U.N. troops from abusing women. But hey, at least it's all multilateral, right?
World Ends, Poor Hardest Hit
"If New York or London or Paris or Berlin were hit by a nuclear terrorist attack, it might not only kill hundreds of thousands in an instant. It could also devastate the global economy, thereby plunging millions into poverty in developing nations."--U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 14
Same Old Deal
Does Howard Dean's election as Democratic National Committee chairman signal a change in direction for the party? Columnist Andrew Ferguson notes some evidence that it doesn't:
On the one hand, Dean and others spoke of the need to "change this party." Fair enough: A party that has lost all but three of the last 10 presidential elections, and by all odds is doomed to remain a congressional minority for the next six years, is ready for change.
On the other hand, Dean affirmed there was nothing wrong with the party beyond its timidity in declaring its own greatness, a timidity that could be corrected by being "really organized" at the grassroots and on the Internet.
That theme--there's nothing wrong with us that a little envelope-licking, doorbell-ringing, and Web logging can't fix--was reinforced by the video that introduced Dean Saturday morning. In it, a parade of the new chairman's supporters declared their unwillingness to alter their party's course.
Labor organizer Alexandra Rooker, for example, declared she "was sick of the experts" who say the party must "move to the right" to regain an electoral majority.
"Well, we ain't movin'," she declared on the video to loud applause from the assembled Democrats.
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman weighs in with a piece that likewise suggests the Angry Left is stuck in the same old rut. Here are the bullet points:
o Dean is a "moderate," not a "left-winger." His rise "reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting moderates, the Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White House."
o Dean's opposition to the liberation of Iraq has been "fully vindicated."
o "Deanism" is "about making a stand" against "the Bush plan for Social Security [which] is intended, in essence, to dismantle the most important achievement of the New Deal."
What's missing? Any sort of positive agenda, any indication that the Democrats stand for anything other than nostalgia for Vietnam and the Depression. Seventy years ago, when the New Deal actually was new, it was the Democrats who were "radicals" and the Republicans who "defended their principles aggressively" against them. That didn't work out so well for the GOP. Nowadays the Democrats have nothing to offer but the Same Old Deal.
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"Study: Homeless Shelters, Food in Demand"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 15, 2005
"Study: War on Poverty Sees More Hungry, Homeless"--headline, Reuters, Feb. 15, 2005
Will Work for Food
"Cheney Daughter to Work for Rice"--headline, FoxNews.com, Feb. 15
Bashar Assad Sleeps With the Fishes
"Mob Blames Syria for Hariri Assassination"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 15
Why Not Just Tell Them to Stare at the Sun?
"Washington Researchers Seek High-Tech Ways to Help Blind Students"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 13
Americans Think Armored Personnel Carrier Begs to Differ
"British Think Tank Says It's Time to Rethink Church-State Relations"--headline, Talon News, Feb. 14
You Don't Say
"It is unfair to speculate on a motive, but to fire 50 to 60 rounds into a mall filled with innocent people indicates a troubled person."--Ulster County, N.Y., district attorney Donald Williams, on the suspect in a Sunday mall shooting, quoted in today's New York Times
Dangerous Liaisons
"A Newark Airport security screener is being reassigned after officials said she failed to spot a 5-inch butcher knife in a passenger's pocketbook," the New York Post reports:
Katrina Bell, 27, of Greensboro, N.C., had cleared security and was waiting to board a flight with her sister on Saturday morning when she discovered she had forgotten to remove the knife from her bag. She had put it there--in preparation for a blind date Thursday night.
Something tells us Katrina Bell is going to have a hard time finding another date. |
