BEST OF THE WEB
BY JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, March 9, 2005 3:21 p.m.
Freedom's Fair-Weather Friends
The recent spate of good news from the Middle East has prompted a wave of second thoughts from erstwhile supporters of the tyrannical status quo. The Washington Post, the Washington Times and blogger Bill Rice all have roundups of the recent "By George, Maybe George Was Right" articles and comments. One of the most notable was a front-page story in Britain's far-left newspaper the Independent titled "Was Bush Right After All?":
How much Mr Bush is responsible for these development [sic] is debatable. The peaceful uprising in Lebanon was provoked by outrage at the assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri, in which a Syrian hand is suspected, although not proven. Then the man who insisted on elections in Iraq when the US wanted to postpone or dilute them was Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, leader of Iraq's majority Shia community. And the death from old age of Yasser Arafat, not machinations in Washington, led to the election that might break the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock.
Indubitably, however, even his most grudging domestic opponents and his harshest critics in the region admit that Mr Bush is also in part responsible. The 2003 invasion of Iraq may have been justified by a giant fraud, but that, and above all the January election to which it led, transfixing the Arab world, has proved a catalyst.
Well, not all of them. As the Post notes, the Independent's own America-hating polemicist Robert Fisk "begged to differ" and "predicted that Bush's call for Syria to withdraw from Lebanon would only hurt the Lebanese."
We never thought Fisk was redeemable, but then again, we didn't think Ted Kennedy was either. Yet there he was Sunday on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos"--admittedly, a show no one watches--saying: "What's taken place in a number of those countries is enormously constructive. It's a reflection the president has been involved."
One suspects these are fair-weather friends of freedom--that in case of future adversity, they will revert to their accustomed role of delivering unconstructive criticism. And Fisk isn't alone in his ideological rigidity. "What Rise in Freedom?" asks the headline of an especially sour Boston Globe column by Robert Kuttner, who offers a litany of excuses to withhold any credit for President Bush. Here's our favorite:
The new Israel-Palestine reality reflects the death of Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon's decision to seize the moment, defy his party, and do a ''Nixon to China" by dismantling some Israeli settlements in Arab lands. This shift has nothing to do with Bush or Iraq. Indeed, the Bush administration has been less active in promoting a Palestine settlement than any in memory. (Watch out, when Fidel Castro finally dies and democracy comes to Cuba, Bush will take credit for that, too.)
Some of us would argue that the administration's being "less active in promoting a Palestine settlement" has been extraordinarily helpful. Whereas President Clinton gambled his legacy on negotiations with Arafat and lost, President Bush made democracy a precondition for a Palestinian state and obliterated the regime in Baghdad that was one of the biggest sponsors of anti-Israel terrorism.
Kuttner also warns that the results of Arab democracy may not be to America's liking, but here he seems to be engaging in projection. The closing line of his column makes clear that the results of American democracy aren't to his liking: "If democracy is good enough for Iraqis, let's defend what Bush has not yet wrecked of democracy at home."
Another hilariously strained effort to deny credit to President Bush appears in this week's Time magazine:
Across the Middle East last week, a tide of good news suggested that another corner might be near. Amid the flush of springlike exuberance, though, it was hard to know which events history would immortalize. Was it President Hosni Mubarak's startling announcement that Egypt would hold its first-ever secret ballot, multiparty presidential elections? Was it the popular demonstrations in Beirut two days later that finally forced the resignation of the Syrian-backed Prime Minister and his Cabinet? Or did the start of something momentous come on Thursday, when Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah welcomed Syria's President Bashar Assad to Riyadh and not only told Assad to get Syria's 14,000 troops out of Lebanon but also announced to the world that he had said so?
What's missing from the list of possible turning points? The Iraqi election, of course.
A Joke Is a Very Serious Thing
Yesterday's follow-up on last Wednesday's item about Nancy Soderberg's famous interview on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" prompted e-mails from readers on both sides of the issue. Agreeing with our interpretation of the interview is Joel Engel:
As one who's published satire that few seemed to understand was actually satire, I watched with keen interest the "Daily Show With Jon Stewart" video at the link you provided. My opinion? Yes, Stewart was asking questions in a comedically ironic way, but these were indisputably serious questions. His intent, I sense, was to gently distance himself from the horror of having been, well, wrong--and not just wrong, but passionately and crudely wrong on national television every night for the last two years. The ramifications of having been so gloriously wrong are that, if all goes according to Bush's plan, Stewart's got no place to hide--and his fans have no reason to "get their news from Jon Stewart," as several polls have proclaimed under-30s do with increasing frequency. It's little wonder that, in this interview with Nancy Soderberg, he gave himself the out of "Oh, if only Bush had told us ahead of time that what he wanted was to spread democracy instead of WMDs," which is quickly becoming the 21st-century equivalent of leftists proclaiming that all of America stood against the Soviets during the Cold War.
As for Soderberg, she was answering serious questions--even those asked in a tone of bemused irony--seriously. After all, she'd come on the air to promote not a book of Rodney Dangerfield's best one-liners, but a serious-minded critique of the Bush team. Her great misfortune is that it was written, thanks to the long lead time publishing requires, long before the news turned unrelentingly good. So she now has to distance herself from her book's title, thesis and text. A smart woman, she no doubt had to recognize that her opening remark about the administration's finding that it's harder than they thought to bend the world "to their will" was a complete non sequitur, given the events of the day. It's a terrible thing, apparently, to consider yourself a member of the intellectual elite driven to effete obsolescence by a cowboy. Worse, though, is to believe that you're going to have a bestseller after being a featured segment on "60 Minutes," but instead current events have consigned you to six uncomfortable minutes on the conflicted Jon Stewart show. Hence: There's always Iran and North Korea.
But Tom Castle takes exception:
I was about to e-mail you yesterday and call you on your silly attempt to turn what was obviously a joke into traitorous sentiment. But then I recalled that this is your stock in trade--you essentially make your living accusing others of treason, and the fundamental dishonesty of your work speaks for itself. You already know the truth, so there's no need to "correct" you, because you're lying, not just confused.
Regardless, I still feel compelled to call bullsh-- on you for the 857th time. Soderberg was joking, and there is no "element of truth" to the slander that she's traitorous. Plus, your reasoning is lacking, to put it mildly. Your headline implies that Soderberg is being dishonest when she says she "was only joking." Then you state that it's obvious she was joking, because she was on Comedy Central, and nothing serious is ever said there. Then you wrap up by saying she wasn't really joking, after all, because she made the traitorous comment four times. Which is it, smart guy?
You're probably the most loathsome high-profile blogger out there. I don't know how you live with yourself. You're like some rabid college wingnut who never grew out of adolescence. That you can get paid for this tripe, even well after college (?), amazes me.
Who has the better sense of humor here? We report, you decide. Anyway, we never characterized Soderberg's sentiments as "traitorous"; we called them "ambivalent." Reader Eric Axelson recalls harboring similar feelings:
Your items on Nancy Soderberg's at-least ambivalence about the successes of President Bush struck a chord with me.
As a Democratic elected official in the 1980s I had a similar response to any of Ronald Reagan's initiatives. I can recall a sinking feeling as the stock market took off in late 1982, worrying that Reagan would get credit. Or being peeved that the Grenada invasion was so successful. Or that Reagan engineered the tax reform that Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt had staked out. And conversely, when the Iran-contra scandal blew up I was delighted that Reagan would be brought down a peg (although Oliver North pretty much cleaned the clocks of the lawyers and congressional inquisitors in his testimony). The bottom line for us partisan Democrats back then (as now) was that if it was good for Reagan (even if also good for the country) we opposed, belittled, quibbled, nattered and otherwise sought to diminish.
It was only well after Reagan had left office that I began to see how successful and far-reaching his policies actually were. In the 1990s I began to annoy my leftist friends by stating the obvious, that Reagan was the most successful U.S. president since FDR. And it was only a relatively short ideological journey (helped along by Clinton's feckless policies and corruption) to embrace the policies of President Bush that are engendering freedom in places that have known only tyranny.
One could no doubt also find examples of Republicans rooting for bad things to happen when Democrats were in power. We're all human, after all.
Teasing the Iranians
From the Onion:
Almost a year after the cessation of major combat and a month after the nation's first free democratic elections, President Bush unveiled the coalition forces' strategy for exiting Iraq.
"I'm pleased to announce that the Department of Defense and I have formulated a plan for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq," Bush announced Monday morning. "We'll just go through Iran."
This strikes us as rather cruel. The Iranians may not know that the Onion is a satirical publication, and why get their hopes up like this? Then again, life has imitated the Onion before . . .
Hold That Violin?
Yesterday's "World's Smallest Violin" entry brought this response from reader Ralph Keith:
When I read Moien Kanaan's comments, I am left wondering if he is really complaining about the violent, closed-minded society of the Palestinians enforced by terror groups like Hamas. It sounds to me like he wants to get on with his work, but cannot because it is not safe for the proper Israeli technicians to come and assist him. He sounds frustrated with the backwardness of some Palestinians to me. The good news is, there are probably a lot of others frustrated as well. In that is the chance for peace.
An excellent point, we must admit.
Democrats Against Democracy
"A liberal grassroots network that helped fuel Howard Dean's maverick run for president is crackling back to life to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot initiative drive," the San Francisco Chronicle reports:
California for Democracy, the state arm of a national group that raised millions of dollars for Dean over the Internet, is planning a high-tech campaign targeting the Republican governor, who wraps up an out-of-state fund- raising tour in Washington today.
The group's re-emergence came as a committee closely aligned with Schwarzenegger began running television advertisements Monday urging voters to seek out signature-gatherers and sign up.
But volunteers from California for Democracy hope to frustrate those efforts. They plan to use the Web and mobile technology to keep roughly 9,000 supporters abreast of the whereabouts of signature-gatherers for Schwarzenegger ballot initiatives. Organizers say volunteers will then head to those locations to distribute the group's leaflets denouncing the planned special election, which opponents note will cost as much as $70 million.
So let's see if we have this straight: These guys say they're for "democracy," but they're mobilizing to prevent an election.
Lording It Over Us
Americans who attend church regularly and who care about "moral values" issues like abortion and same-sex marriage tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican, and Democrats have been struggling over what to do about this. A common suggestion is to wage a "moral" offensive. In an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed, Jim Kelley, who "works in marketing," unwittingly demonstrates what's wrong with this idea:
As long as we remain a secular left instead of a religious left, we are doomed to be on the fringe of American society. It is not enough for our political candidates to "find religion" just to grab a few more votes. The voters will see through that in a heartbeat. Liberal religion must come from the heart. Liberals must begin articulating our own positive "moral values."
Jesus would not have thought it fair to give a tax cut to the ultra-rich while giving crumbs to the poor.
Jesus would be appalled with the lies that we were given as reason to invade Iraq and would condemn the modern-day religious crusade that we have started.
Jesus preached inclusion and compassion and included people who were considered outcasts in his society, such as lepers and prostitutes, among his followers. I am sure that he would have had compassion on gays and lesbians and would have condemned the recent effort to use the law to restrict their full rights as citizens.
Liberal self-righteousness is nothing new; everyone knows they think they're morally superior to the rest of us. Proclaiming that Jesus is on their side does seems an unpromising way of winning over voters, many of whom after all disagree with them on the substance of these issues.
Different Strokes
Six weeks ago, Habitat for Humanity fired founder and president Millard Fuller for "sexual harassment." The Washington Post reports that Fuller is denying the charges and supporters are campaigning for his rehiring, and it offers an interesting revelation about Habitat's most prominent volunteer, Jimmy Carter:
Carter also rose to Fuller's defense on the only previous occasion when sexual harassment charges against him became public. In 1990-91, five women who were current or former employees of Habitat told the board of directors that he had subjected them to unwanted sexual advances--including kissing them on the mouth and touching their buttocks--as well as vindictive behavior when he was rebuffed.
Board members said they came close to firing Fuller. But they said that after Carter warned in a confidential letter that a "national scandal" could ensue, the directors allowed Fuller to work for a year from an outside office and then restored his duties as chief executive.
In the March 26, 1990, letter, Carter said he himself was given to physical displays of affection and appreciation, such as kisses on the cheek and hugs, to women he knew professionally and socially that were sometimes not welcomed. He wrote that he shook hands with several men and hugged and kissed several women at the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Library in 1979 and that the late president's widow had "visibly flinched" at his actions.
"Without minimizing in any way the significance of what has happened at Habitat, let me say quite frankly that I have had some similar kinds of relationships with some of my own female employees and associates. If one ever complained officially, there could be an avalanche of similar charges," Carter wrote in the letter, which Millard Fuller provided to The Washington Post.
We are in no position to evaluate the claims against Fuller, and we are no fan of Jimmy Carter, but in this instance we tend to sympathize with the former president. It may be that his style of management was excessively hands-on, but sexual-harassment law often is a crude instrument for policing such conduct.
How Appealing Could He Have Been if He Made Students Vomit?
"Teacher Fired for Making Students Vomit Loses Appeal"--headline, News-Record (Greensboro, N.C.), March 8
What Would We Do Without Allergy Studies?
"Allergy Studies: Roaches Worse Than Furry Pets"--headline, CNN.com, March 9
The Birds, the Bees and the Cukes
The Washington Times reports on a new sex education program in Montgomery County, Md.:
Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School in Bethesda, Seneca Valley High School in Germantown and Springbrook High School in Silver Spring will take part in the high school course in which 10th-graders will be shown how to put condoms on cucumbers.
Oh dear, someone needs to explain the facts of life to the folks who run the Montgomery County schools.
Lesson 1: What do you call people who put condoms on cucumbers? Parents! |
