Best of the Web Today - May 10, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Watching the Watchers
Australian blogger Tim Blair calls our attention to an amusing kerfuffle Down Under that involves this Web site. It began when Janet Albrechtsen, a columnist for the Australian newspaper, gave a plug to the work of Arthur Chrenkoff:
Good news [about Iraq] is not hard to come by. But when something positive does happen, it either gets filtered through the anti-war eyes of the media or is all but ignored. And that is what the terrorists are counting on. They must detest The Wall Street Journal. Each fortnight the paper's website (www.wsj.com) includes a round-up of good news from Iraq. It makes for refreshing reading, if only to even up the Iraq ledger.
Last week came the latest instalment, all 27 pages of it.
There's a small error here. Chrenkoff's good-news roundup appears not on the Journal's primary Web site, WSJ.com, but here on OpinionJournal.com. Our guess is that Albrechtsen wrote "the paper's website" and some well-meaning copy editor inserted what turned out to be the wrong URL.
This prompted one Liz Jackson, a presenter for an amusingly bad show called "Media Watch" on the Australian Broadcast Corp., to file a "gotcha" commentary:
27 pages of good news, from the prestigious Wall Street Journal? We wanted to know more . . . but couldn't find it on their web site.
Until we followed this link to a spin-off site called OpinionJournal.com, where, if you hunt hard enough, you'll find this. . . .
Scroll down the page and it's pretty soon apparent that far from being the news that no-one else has reported, Arthur's good news is culled from stories produced by the BBC, the Washington Post, and other media outlets. . . .
There's also a fair swag of material direct from government agencies like USAID.
These pages were not produced by a Wall Street journalist, but a self described blogger. . . .
Arthur is not paid by the Wall Street Journal or the Dow Jones website OpinionJournal.com which publishes his blog without editing. . . .
No Janet.
Good News from Iraq is not published on the highly respected Wall Street Journal website--it's a blog published by a sister site.
Albrechtsen's column contains a small and probably innocent error, but Jackson's commentary includes several whoppers. OpinionJournal.com is in fact published by The Wall Street Journal; both its editor (a k a this columnist) and its assistant editor, Brendan Miniter, are on the editorial page staff and do work for the print edition of the paper as well. We do pay Chrenkoff a modest fee, and we do edit his work, though not for length. (In this case we aim for comprehensiveness rather than an easy read.)
We'd have been happy to explain this all if someone at ABC had bothered to phone or e-mail us (a practice we newspapermen call "reporting"). Liz, we've never heard of you either, but allow us to offer you some advice: If you're going to be snotty, at least make some effort at getting the facts right.
Sandstress Says She's Sorry
Yesterday's "Spot the Idiot" highlighted a Mother's Day piece by Sandy Wold that appeared in the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal. HonestReporting.com, a pro-Israel media watchdog group, also noted Wold's piece, and she replied with an apology, printed on Backspin, HonestReporting's blog:
As you probably know, I have received dozens of emails from members of your organization from all over the country and the U.K. in the past few days. I was truly surprised by your response. My goal was to write a column that would be noninflammatory, and clearly I was not.
Having read your emails and having spoken with many Jewish friends of mine, who have lived in Israel, were born in Israel, and/or know a lot more about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict than I do, I have learned much and better understand why you all are so upset with me.
I sincerely apologize for my lack of sensitivity to and inclusiveness of your group's perspective and experience in my article.
HR.com's response gets it just right:
Wold's apology is welcome, and to her credit.
But Wold's admission that she was previously uninformed on the realities of the conflict underscores our central point from this communique--that the demonization of Israel has seeped into entire communities that would otherwise have no particular interest in this corner of the world. Israel has become an accepted symbol of human evil, to be drawn from one's pocket as an apparent enemy of human progress and transcendent spritual [sic] goodness.
It's worth noting, too, that much of this attitude emanates from America's colleges and universities. This is not the ignorance of the uneducated but of the overeducated.
The World's Smallest Violin
Reuters is playing its favorite instrument while serenading America's most vicious criminals. "Death row prisoners in the United States are saying they can't take it anymore and asking to die," the "news" service's Ellen Wulfhorst reports from New York:
Behind that trend is the reality of their living conditions--typically more than a decade of mind-numbing isolation under the specter of death with years of legal wrangling ending in dashed hopes and execution. . . .
Tough-on-crime prison conditions and an ever-longer appeals process make dropping the legal fight attractive, experts say.
"The day-to-day experience becomes pretty unbearable," said Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who told a hearing in April that Ross' living conditions influenced his choice to die.
Are you able to control your weeping? If so, read the heartbreaking story of Michael Ross, scheduled for execution in Connecticut later this week:
Like inmates on death row across America, Ross is locked up most of the day in a small cell with no access to prison sports or education programs, and no interaction with other inmates.
In an essay posted on the Internet by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Ross describes his sliver of a window as offering "a wonderful view of the razor-wire fencing and outdoor recreation yard of the prison next door."
Unlike Ross, Dzung Ngoc Tu, Paula Perrera, Tammy Williams, Debra Smith Taylor, Robin Stavinksy, April Brunias, Leslie Shelley and Wendy Baribeault had no say in the timing or manner of their death. Reuters reduces them to a statistic--"eight women" Ross admitted killing--though it does note that he raped "most of them." (Thanks to ProDeathPenalty.org for remembering their names.)
There's no word whether he provided them with access to sports or education programs.
Dems vs. Voters
Here's a revealing comment from Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne:
The current acrimony in politics is incomprehensible unless it is understood as the inevitable next act of a long-term struggle. Its ferocity arises from the Democrats' refusal to accept the role assigned them by their opponents.
This pretty much explains it all: The Democrats view voters as "opponents."
JFK's First Hundred Days
PoliPundit.com notes that today marks a milestone: It's been exactly 100 days since John Kerry* promised to release his military records. PoliPundit urges readers to download form SF-180, authorizing the release, and helpfully provides fax numbers for Kerry's offices. He urges: "Please be polite."
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge.
Red Sensitivities
A Boston Globe editorial faults President Bush for being "insensitive" to communists:
What should be clear after Bush angered Russians by speaking of the Soviet "occupation" of the Baltic states--rather than the "liberation" Russia's President Vladimir Putin has evoked--is that one's reading of history can have a great bearing on the present and the future. And though Bush said some things in the Latvian capital of Riga and in Moscow that needed to be said, he was speaking as a leader who has demonstrated an unfortunate insensitivity to the lessons his predecessors learned from the inferno of World War II.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. Army Europe Band played "The Stars and Stripes Forever" in a parade through central Moscow to mark the president's visit there. That's probably insensitive too, but we love it.
Rich Butterfield Lowry
"Drug warriors simply think it's a good thing in and of itself to arrest marijuana smokers. Their crusade bears little or no connection to law enforcement. Crime generally has been declining from 1990 to 2002, even as pot arrests have increased."--Rich Lowry, National Review Online, May 10
Metaphor Alert
From a letter to the editor of the New York Times by Charles R. Cowley of Ann Arbor, Mich. (second letter):
Does David Brooks really think that President Bush and his advisers have made a U-turn and become progressives? One might think so from reading his May 8 column, in which he takes the Democrats to task for not jumping on the bandwagon to support Mr. Bush's latest twist in the Social Security battle, to means-test benefits.
The situation is rather simple. The Democrats know that the leopard hasn't changed his stripes, and they smell a rat.
That Explains Dowd, but What About Krugman?
"Study: Meanness in Girls Can Start at 3"--headline, Associated Press, May 6
Like Spalling Wards?
"Incumbants Face Many Challanges Come November"--headline, WKBW-TV Web site (Buffalo, N.Y.), May 9
For Goats, a Mixed Blessing
"Good News on Severed Goat Heads: Satan Not Involved"--headline, Reuters, May 10
How Much Can You Grow in a Billionth of an Acre?
"One-Billionth Acre of Biotech Seed Planted"--headline, Associated Press, May 10
Way to Ruin the Mood, Sex Researchers!
"Sex Researchers Shed Light on Unpopular Sex Acts"--headline, Reuters, May 9
Down in the Mouth
Carole Brown, chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority, has a new blog, the Chicago Tribune reports. The story contains this odd quote:
"I give her a lot of credit for getting out there and taking advantage of new technology to tell the CTA story. I think it's cool that it comes from the chair's mouth," said Kevin O'Neil, who runs CTA Tattler (kjo84.typepad.com/cta_tattler), which posts everyday stories and happenings.
The chair has a mouth? Well, we guess some chairs have arms, so why not? Now if only the walls had ears . . .
Meanwhile, the UC Berkeley math department's Web site says the department has a "vice chair for faculty affairs." Can't they afford a bed? |
