Best of the Web Today - April 12, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Bill Clinton, Loathe-ario
Saturday's New York Times carried the news that political consultant Arthur Finkelstein "had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts." Although Finkelstein's gayness wasn't news, his nuptials were something of a man-bites-dog story, for he is a Republican, and Republicans generally oppose same-sex marriage, whereas Democrats oppose it only when they're sure that is the politically expedient position.
Finkelstein made the Times again on Sunday, when the paper reported that he is gearing up an effort to defeat Hillary Clinton's expected 2008 presidential bid. "Republicans who know of his intentions say he is moving behind the scenes to line up donors to help the committee, called Stop Her Now, reach its goal of raising as much as $10 million to finance an independent campaign against her."
This morning's Times brings us yet another Finkelstein update:
Former President Bill Clinton unleashed an attack yesterday against a gay Republican strategist who has plans to work against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's re-election, suggesting that the man may be "self-loathing" to work on behalf of the Republican Party.
John Edwards, John Kerry and now Bill Clinton--that's three. We can now officially speak of the gay-baiting trend among Democratic politicians, though in fairness to Kedwards, we should note that they did not go so far as to imply being gay was loathsome.
Anyway, there's no need to resort to cheap armchair psychology to explain why Finkelstein would go to work against Mrs. Clinton. Why would anyone expect a man who's just gotten gay-married to have any use for the non-same-sex spouse of the president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act?
Kerry Outing
We were going to write about this, but Holman Jenkins, editor of Political Diary, beat us to it, so we'll give you his take:
Where's the special prosecutor? A bipartisan cabal of U.S. senators (a k a John Kerry and Richard Lugar) spilled in open hearings yesterday the name of a supposedly undercover U.S. intelligence agent in Latin America as they pursued their Constitutional duty to belabor UN nominee John Bolton over past arguments with WMD analysts. Unlike the famous outing of CIA officer and Joe Wilson wife Valerie Plame, however, ignorance won't be a promising defense this time. Yesterday's hearing involved elaborate circumlocutions indicating that everybody knew they were trying to keep a secret--"This other analyst at the CIA, whom I'll try and call Mr. Smith here, I hope I can keep that straight," was Mr. Bolton's attempt. But these stabs at discretion soon broke down, especially when Mr. Kerry began reading from transcripts of closed-door questioning with committee staffers, incautiously babbling the name that others were trying to keep out of the public record.
Anybody can consult the AP story or the committee hearing transcript from yesterday, available from news services and Congress's own website, to find the name. He's also been mentioned dozens of times in the press over the years, which is hardly surprising given a succession of jobs with high public profiles, like, say, press spokesman for a U.S. congressman and White House national security official.
The previous Plame affair raised the same question raised in this case: Whom does the CIA think it's fooling? Putting politically connected people in "undercover" assignments may look good on their résumés and flatter the Walter Mitty in all of us, but is this really spying in any meaningful sense?
Please note that we're not going to give you a PD preview every day, so you'll be missing lots of good stuff if you don't subscribe now. On the Smith matter, meanwhile, can we expect cries of outrage from the same folks who tried to hype the Plame "outing" into a scandal? Or do they not even care how purely partisan they appear?
Did Franken Bury Kerry?
Yesterday we noted that John Kerry* appeared to have fallen for an Onion joke (derived from a ScrappleFace joke) about Republicans encouraging Democrats to "vote on Wednesday." It turns out, however, that the gag originated at least four years earlier, but in 2000 it was a Democratic joke. On Oct. 31, 2000, the Hampton Union reported on an appearance in the New Hampshire town by Angry Left comic Al Franken:
Then he ended his brief talk by reminding all Democrats to inform their Republican friends to remember to vote.
"If your friends say I'm voting for Bush, just remind them of the rule change. That Republicans get to vote on Wednesday, Nov. 8. Democrats vote on Tuesday and Republicans on Wednesday. That's what I'm tell my Republican friends, and I think they believe me," Franken ended.
And it seems that someone called Bruce Vilanch had the same idea. From the Nov. 7, 2000, Variety:
"All you Democrats, vote on Tuesday; you Republicans, vote on Wednesday!" Those were the words (written by Bruce Vilanch) with which Whoopi Goldberg was to have greeted attendees at BAFTA-LA's tribute to Steven Spielberg, Saturday at the Century Plaza Hotel. But only a few hours before the event, Whoopi phoned BAFTA-LA exec director Donald Haber to report she was flu-felled, running a fever and unable to appear. Opening speaker, thesp Ian Abercrombie was quickly asked to deliver some of Goldberg's/Vilanch's remarks, including the above.
How dense must Kerry be if he doesn't even get his own side's jokes?
* Haughty, French-looking, Vietnam, 72 days ago. You know the drill.
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
o "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
o "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt
o "The buck stops here."--Harry Truman
o "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy
o "You can dance around it, you can run away from it, you can put perfume on it, but the bottom line is the bottom line."--Barbara Boxer
When News Travels Slow
Some readers accused us of taking a cheap shot against Texas in yesterday's Unpatriotic Dissent Watch, wherein we suggested that news was slow to reach the Lone Star State. It turns out, though, that there is some historical basis for this view. From a description of "Juneteenth":
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that all slaves were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation--which had become official January 1, 1863.
Meanwhile, reader Don Hubschman offers this observation:
It is interesting to note that the two most vocal positions taken by the Dems/Angry Left have been with regard to Terri Schiavo's death and U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
Both are very safe positions for the victory-starved side to take, as both positions will eventually be winners. Terri Schiavo was eventually going to pass away, and the U.S. will eventually withdraw from Iraq. Thus the party that was swept from congress and has lost seven of 10 presidential elections can win something by simply waiting long enough.
The more we think about it, the more we think Hubschman is on to something. This explains other liberal positions, too, like the environmental doomsaying. Sure, the world may have a few billion years left, but it's gotta end sometime.
James Dobson Imitates Ted Kennedy
Liberal commentators David Brock, Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan all fault Focus on the Family's James Dobson for making the following comment about judges on his radio show yesterday (he was addressing guest Mark Levin, author of "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America"):
I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality. And now we have black-robed men, and that's what you're talking about.
In 1987 Sen. Ted Kennedy waged a similar attack against the judiciary: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which . . . blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters." Dobson's comment is as intemperate and foolish, though probably not as consequential, as Kennedy's.
One Marine vs. 20 Idiots--Guess Who Wins?
On Friday we noted that a score of Ohio University students and others had staged a "die-in" to protest the liberation of Iraq. The Post, the student newspaper, carried a letter from Marc Fencil, a senior who is also a Marine currently stationed in Iraq, that is so excellent we reprint it in full:
It's a shame that I'm here in Iraq with the Marines right now and not back at Ohio University completing my senior year and joining in blissful ignorance with the enlightened, war-seasoned protesters who participated in the recent "die-in" at College Gate. It would appear that all the action is back home, but why don't we make sure? That's right, this is an open invitation for you to cut your hair, take a shower, get in shape and come on over! If Michael Moore can shave and lose enough weight to fit into a pair of camouflage utilities, then he can come too!
Make sure you all say your goodbyes to your loved ones though, because you won't be seeing them for at least the next nine months. You need to get here quick because I don't want you to miss a thing. You missed last month's discovery of a basement full of suicide vests from the former regime (I'm sure Saddam's henchmen just wore them because they were trendy though). You weren't here for the opening of a brand new school we built either. You might also notice women exercising their new freedom of walking to the market unaccompanied by their husbands.
There is a man here, we just call him al-Zarqawi, but we think he'd be delighted to sit down and give you some advice on how you can further disrespect the victims of Sept. 11 and the 1,600 of America's bravest who have laid down their lives for a safer world. Of course he'll still call you "infidel" but since you already agree that there is no real evil in the world, I see no reason for you to be afraid. Besides, didn't you say that radical Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance?
I'm warning you though -it's not going to be all fun and games over here. You might have bad dreams for the next several nights after you zip up the body bag over a friend's disfigured face. I know you think that nothing, even a world free of terror for one's children, is worth dying for, but bear with me here. We're going to live in conditions you've never dreamt about. You should get here soon though, because the temperatures are going to be over 130 degrees very soon and we will be carrying full combat loads (we're still going to work though). When it's all over, I promise you can go back to your coffee houses and preach about social justice and peace while you continue to live outside of reality.
If you decide to decline my offer, then at least you should sleep well tonight knowing that men wearing black facemasks and carrying AK-47s yelling "Allahu Akbar" over here are proud of you and are forever indebted to you for advancing their cause of terror. While you ponder this, I'll get back to the real "die-in" over here. I don't mind.
What can we say but "Semper fi"?
What Would We Do Without Polls?
"Poll: Many Dread Preparing Taxes"--headline, Arizona Republic, April 12
What Would We Do Without Panels?
"Terrorism a Global Menace Panel Says"--headline, United Press International, April 12
If They Accept, Who'll Be Buried in Grant's Tomb?
"U.S. Grant Offered To Team Studying Computer Attacks"--headline, The Wall Street Journal (link for subscribers), April 12
Maybe He Can Help Study Computer Attacks Too
"Ill. Museum Brings Abraham Lincoln to Life"--headline, Associated Press, April 12
And Cloned Cigar Close, but . . .
"Study: Cloned Meat, Milk Nearly the Same"--headline, Associated Press, April 11
Cardinal Egan Goes to Rome, and Look What Happens
"Rabid Raccoon Confirmed in Nassau County"--headline, WINS-AM Web site (New York), April 12
Karl Rove and the Pope Plot!
So we're watching Fox News Sunday and there's Juan Williams on the panel of commentators (no transcript online) explaining what went on at the pope's funeral:
I don't think that you can make the argument that somehow President Bush was trying to pull himself away from this occasion. I think he thrust himself in the middle of the funeral quite directly to create an association between himself and the Catholic Church.
And I think it has, for him and for Karl Rove, some good political consequences down the road. And I think that's part of a political calculus that you saw play out here this week. Presidents don't usually go to these funerals. And I think this president made a very calculated decision.
We knew Rove had something to do with the pope's death! Der Spiegel describes an even crazier hypothesis:
Germany's highest ranking female member of parliament has a new theory: the US government set the Catholic pedophilia scandal in motion because it wanted to weaken an already frail pope. That's also why it made Poland its chief partner in the Iraq war: to make the Vatican look bad. . . .
It seems the U.S. had to do something to weaken the influence of the pope, who was an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq. Vollmer finds it all very suspicious that after the war, "Poland was made a top occupying power in Iraq, naturally to weaken the pope's hinterland. Or how then, of all times, the campaign against the Catholic Church and the pedophilia was started, which was, of course, totally justified, but at this point in time was definitely a tit-for-tat response." Vollmer found it somehow strange that the US presidents traveled to the Vatican despite the "tough power struggles."
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