Best of the Web Today - June 20, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Tied Up in Nots
The Austin American-Statesman reports on DemocracyFest 2005, "a three-day convention of progressive politics that is one part kvetch and two parts prep," which drew 900 Democratic activists to Texas' capital. "The festival aims to engage the grass roots in a nonelection year and to improve the electability--to borrow a commonly heard word in 2004--of the progressive wing of the party." One participant explains the strategy:
"We've got to establish the message of the Democratic Party: that we're not against America, that we're not immoral people," Sandra Brown, a committed Democrat from Galveston County, said.
"Democrats: We're not against America! We're not immoral!" Does this sound like a winning message?
A Sorry Senator
Sen. Dick Durbin, under fire for likening American servicemen to Nazis, issued a statement Friday:
I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.
Like Trent Lott 2 1/2 years ago, Durbin is trying to appease his critics by offering what looks vaguely like an apology but actually isn't. This is something that trips up politicians all the time. Nonpoliticians too--remember Peter Bart?
As we asked when we wrote about the Bart kerfuffle back in 2001, does anyone really believe Durbin's original statement didn't reflect his "true feelings"? If it didn't, why doesn't he apologize for it unconditionally?
There's been talk of an effort to censure Durbin, but The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol says a more appropriate outcome would be what happened to Lott--namely, the loss of his Senate leadership post.
Speaking of Lott, last Monday he took the Senate floor during a debate on a symbolic antilynching resolution--which passed on voice vote and had some 80 co-sponsors, Lott not among them--and gave a short speech (link in PDF).
"Mr. President, I would like to state my support for the nomination of Thomas B. Griffith to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit," Lott began--and he proceeded to say not a word about the antilynching resolution. This seems awfully crass given Lott's own troubled history on racial matters.
Is Durbin Aiding the Enemy?
Mark Steyn argues that Dick Durbin's slanders are worse than indecent, that they actually harm American interests:
If you close Gitmo tomorrow, the world's anti-Americans will look around and within 48 hours alight on something else for Gulag of the Week.
And this is where it's time to question Durbin's patriotism. As [Sen. Pat] Leahy implicitly acknowledges, Guantanamo is about "image" and "perception"--about how others see America. If this one small camp of a few hundred people has "drained the world's good will," whose fault is that?
The senator from Illinois' comparisons are as tired as they're grotesque. They add nothing useful to the debate. But around the planet, folks naturally figure that, if only 100 people out of nearly 300 million get to be senators, the position must be a big deal. Hence, headlines in the Arab world like "U.S. Senator Stands By Nazi Remark." That's al-Jazeera, where the senator from al-Inois is now a big hero--for slandering his own country, for confirming the lurid propaganda of his country's enemies. Yes, folks, American soldiers are Nazis and American prison camps are gulags: don't take our word for it, Senator Bigshot says so.
But there's a problem with this argument. Steyn rightly rejects the contention by Durbin, Leahy & Co. that by not coddling terrorists, America is inflaming the enemy. But if closing Guantanamo would not appease would-be terrorists, what makes Steyn think that they would be appeased if politicians refrained from lunatic exaggerations like Durbin's? (Indeed, one could argue that such exaggerations, if believed, may have a deterrent effect.)
Anti-Americanism is not a rational response to America's faults but a form of bigotry. Trying to appease it is futile. "If you are part of the wrong group, nothing you do is right anyway!" observes Gloria Steinem. "So you might as well do what you [obscenity deleted] well please, you know! I mean, there's no way of behaving in order to get approval. . . . If you do that, you've given the approver all the power."
"This isn't a Republican vs Democrat thing," Steyn writes; "it's about senior Democrats who are so over-invested in their hatred of a passing administration that they've signed on to the nuttiest slurs of the lunatic fringe." But that is a Republican vs. Democrat thing, is it not? Blogger "Grim" offers a much more optimistic take on all this:
The political sniping between Blue and Red, left and right, is not warfare. It is politics; and I think it is no nastier now than it was in the 1990s. As far as the GWOT [global war on terror] goes, then, here is the important fact: we are fighting it entirely in the enemy's society. Our own society is not changed by the war; if anything, society is reverting to pre-9/11 mores.
We're a bit less sanguine than this; it strikes us that there is a real danger of complacency or defeatism, the latter of which could prove self-fulfilling. (In the same essay, Grim makes a compelling case against defeatism vis-à-vis Iraq.) And "pre-9/11 mores" include the lack of vigilance that gave us 9/11. At the same time, let's not get carried away: Durbin's remarks are a lot less dangerous than they are offensive.
A Klan Whitewash
Sen. Robert Byrd has a memoir out today, and in it he deals with his membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. But the Washington Post reports that "the account is not complete. He does not acknowledge the full length of time he spent as a Klan organizer and advocate. Nor does he make any mention of a particularly incendiary letter he wrote in 1945 complaining about efforts to integrate the military."
The recipient of that letter was Sen. Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi Democrat who was "one of the Senate's most notorious segregationists":
Byrd said in the Dec. 11, 1945, letter--which would not become public for 42 more years with the publication of a book on blacks in the military during World War II by author Graham Smith--that he would never fight in the armed forces "with a Negro by my side." Byrd added that, "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."
Wow, this guy is as patriotic as Dick Durbin and as tolerant as Trent Lott! Byrd also tries to minimize the Klan's racism:
Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career. He described it essentially as a fraternal group of elites--doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other "upstanding people" who at no time engaged in or preached violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics, who historically were targets of the Klan.
Down in Philadelphia, Miss., another former Klansman is on trial for the 1964 murders of civil-rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger has an update on the trial:
The Ku Klux Klan is a "peaceful organization," a former Philadelphia mayor said today to jurors in the murder trial of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen.
Harlan Majure, mayor of the Neshoba County city in the 1990s, testified as the defense's presentation wound down and the case moved closer to jury deliberations. . . .
Majure, under questioning from District Attorney Mark Duncan, said that Killen's character is "good." When asked by Duncan if he'd change his opinion if he knew Killen was a Klan member, Majure said he wouldn't.
"Come on, Mr. Majure," Duncan said. "You've lived in this county. You've read the books and seen the movies. You know this organization is not peaceful."
"The Klan did a lot of good," Majure answered.
Byrd at least acknowledges that his involvement with the Klan was a "major mistake. . . . My only explanation for the entire episode is that I was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision--a jejune and immature outlook--seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions." Given the echoes of Byrd's memoir in that Mississippi courthouse, we'd say that affliction hasn't been completely cured.
In the U.S. Senate, Anyway
"Bipolar Disorder More Widespread Than Thought"--headline, HealthDay News, June 17
Shouldn't the Headline Read, 'Biden Not Running'?
"Biden to Seek Presidential Nomination: Senator Says He Plans to Run in 2008 Unless He Has Little Chance of Winning"--headline and subheadline, Washington Post, June 20
If at First You Don't Secede
Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, historian Robert McElvaine offers what may be the worst historical analogy ever. The Iraq war, he argues, is not another Vietnam but another Civil War. And that's a bad thing. He rejects the idea that liberating Iraq is analogous to the civil rights movement of the 20th century:
Even if the avowed objectives of the outsiders [in Mississippi] in 1964 and today were similar, the means they employed to try to achieve those ends were radically different. That difference points up the wrongheadedness of the Bush policy in Iraq. The outsiders, joined by many blacks and a few whites in Mississippi, sought to bring freedom and democracy to this state peacefully.
The use of military force to improve the situation of African Americans had been tried a century before, in the 1860s. The result was more than a half million people killed. Slavery ended, but freedom and democracy lasted only during the period of military occupation that followed the Civil War. Little more than a decade after the end of that terrible war, the occupying forces were gone, and the undemocratic elements had been restored to their dominance and oppression.
This is mostly true, but the North's chief aim in the Civil War was not to improve the situation of Southern blacks. It was to preserve the Union, and in that it succeeded, albeit at enormous cost.
What would have happened in the 20th century if the North had lost the war, or had decided not to wage it and let the Confederate States of America have its independence? There's no way of knowing for sure, but we do know that achieving full equality for blacks involved strong actions by all three branches of the federal government, over the vigorous and sometimes violent objections of Southern politicians.
President Truman's order desegregating the military, Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would have had no force in the South if the South were not still part of the United States. It's hard to deny, then, that preservation of the Union via the Civil War was a necessary condition for black equality, even if the latter came about a century late.
A 'Chairman' Scorned
Blogger Duncan "Atrios" Black prints a hilarious letter from Rep. John Conyers to the Washington Post, complaining about Dana Milbank's treatment of Conyers's make-believe impeachment hearing. The best bit:
In a typically derisive and uninformed passage, Milbank makes much of other lawmakers calling me "Mr. Chairman" and says I liked it so much that I used "chairmanly phrases." Milbank may not know that I was the Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee from 1988 to 1994. By protocol and tradition in the House, once you have been a Chairman you are always referred to as such. Thus, there was nothing unusual about my being referred to as Mr. Chairman.
Sometimes the best way to respond when your dignity is affronted is simply to keep silent. Here Conyers succeeds only in diminishing his dignity further. On a more substantive note, Conyers distances himself from anti-Semitic comments one of his "witnesses" made:
I do not agree with, support, or condone any comments asserting Israeli control over U.S. policy, and I find any allegation that Israel is trying to dominate the world or had anything to do with the September 11 tragedy disgusting and offensive.
The Associated Press reports that Democratic National Committee Howard Dean issued a statement disavowing anti-Semitic literature Democratic activists had been distributing in conjunction with the hearing. Well, it's reassuring to know that something is beyond the pale even for Howard Dean.
But Conyers can't get off so easy. After all, he invited Ray McGovern, the "witness" whose statements Conyers claims he doesn't "condone," to "testify" at his "hearing." As blogger Richard Baehr notes, "McGovern's views are well known (that is why he was invited by Conyers, presumably), and the activists were handing out their anti-Semitic literature openly to everyone in sight in the DNC office."
Doesn't Anyone Listen?
John McCain appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday, and he had this to say about Iraq:
What the American people should have been told, and should be told, and I believe the president is going to tell them, I think he's focusing back on Iraq, I think it's long, it's hard, it's tough. It's very tough.
Hey John, listen up! Here's President Bush in the first debate with John Kerry*, on Sept. 30:
In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. You know why? Because an enemy realizes the stakes. The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That's why they're fighting so vociferously.
And here he is an Oct. 26 photo-op with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia:
Q: Mr. President, the defense secretary has written a memorandum saying there have been mixed results in the war on terror, that it's going to be a long, hard slog, and no bold steps have been taken yet. Do you agree with that characterization?
Bush: What I agree with is that the war on terror is going to be tough work, and it's going to take a while. . . . We've got work to do. This is a long war on terror.
In today's New York Times, Mario Cuomo, a former New York governor, weighs in against President Bush's threatened veto of legislation funding embryonic stem-cell research. Here's what he thinks Bush should do:
To extricate himself from an untenable position, the president should start by following the successful pattern established in other areas of dealing with the clash of religious and political questions, including the law concerning abortion. . . .
[The president should] employ a panel of respected scientists, humanists and religious leaders to consider testimony from bioscience experts describing when consciousness first appears, when viability outside the womb usually occurs, and how other religions treat the subject. They would then provide their conclusions to lawmakers.
Hey Mario, pay attention! Here's what Bush said in his Aug. 8, 2001, speech announcing his stem-cell compromise:
As I thought through this issue, I kept returning to two fundamental questions: First, are these frozen embryos human life, and therefore, something precious to be protected? And second, if they're going to be destroyed anyway, shouldn't they be used for a greater good, for research that has the potential to save and improve other lives?
I've asked those questions and others of scientists, scholars, bioethicists, religious leaders, doctors, researchers, members of Congress, my Cabinet, and my friends. . . .
I will also name a President's council to monitor stem cell research, to recommend appropriate guidelines and regulations, and to consider all of the medical and ethical ramifications of biomedical innovation. This council will consist of leading scientists, doctors, ethicists, lawyers, theologians and others, and will be chaired by Dr. Leon Kass, a leading biomedical ethicist from the University of Chicago.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with the president, but when he talks, shouldn't we at least listen?
* "A European at heart," according to Bernard-Henri Lévy.
The Blind Leading the Blind--to Their Deaths
Terri Schiavo's autopsy results came out last week, and those who favored her death seem to place great weight on the medical examiner's conclusion that she couldn't see. Two columnists cited this in yesterday's Boston Globe. Here's Ellen Goodman:
The medical examiners delivered their autopsy report in the most matter-of-fact tone. Terri Schiavo's brain had atrophied to half the normal size for a woman her age. Her eyes, the focus of that famous videotape, saw nothing. She was blind.
And here's Thomas Oliphant:
Faced with elaborate medical evidence of a person with half a brain and no eyesight, there was a skillful combination of the preposterous claim that only the truth was being sought and unctuous assurances from Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who told a national television audience last week that he had put the episode behind him and moved on.
A front-page article in Friday's Globe profiled Emily Crockett, a severely disabled Harvard student:
When she was just a small child, golf ball-sized malignancies formed near her brain stem. Doctors told her parents to plan for her next birthday as if it would be her last.
The tumor would eventually leave her legally blind, paralyze the left side of her body, and forever shift the axis of her world.
But it had no power to obscure the essence of Emily: Her fierce sense of fairness. Her impish sense of humor.
And her singular determination that her life would not be defined by the malignant star-shaped cells that linger in her brain or by the long, thin cane with which she now navigates the well-groomed quadrangles of Harvard--to her a blur of marble, brick, and green.
The difference between Emily Crockett's case and Terri Schiavo's is obvious, but, given the former's story, Goodman's and Oliphant's triumphant declarations that Schiavo was blind anyway seem awfully creepy.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Broadsheet
"Imagine a birthday party calculated to impress on the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, at a hillside loggia nestled between sea views and a golf course. The waiters wear togas, and fig trees rented for one night wave their fruited limbs over the tables. . . . When guests ask [a waiter] for a drink, he pours Stolichnaya vodka into a giant ice sculpture of Michelangelo's 'David' that sluices the liquid magically around the icy torso, eventually spouting into a crystal glass. . . . The birthday party, as outlined in a planning memo sent by a Tyco International staff member, Beth Pacitti, in April 2001, is just another item to add to the growing list of L. Dennis Kozlowski's apparent excesses while chief executive of the company."--"Lifestyles of the Rich and Red-Faced," New York Times, Sept. 22, 2002
"Formerly known as the woman whom her husband feted at a $2.1 million 40th-birthday party on Sardinia (prosecutors say he billed half to Tyco), Mrs. Kozlowski has appeared daily in court, dressed in a black turtleneck and muted suits, a simple wedding band and diamond studs. During recesses she accompanies her husband from the courtroom, gently patting his back as he exits, adjusting his tie ever so slightly as they wait to re-enter. She sits three rows behind him, hands folded, listening intently to testimony."--"The Wifely Art of Standing By," New York Times, Oct. 19, 2003
"The videotape is now rated only PG-13. The most salacious scenes in the video of L. Dennis Kozlowski's multimillion-dollar birthday party for his second wife, Karen, on the island of Sardinia were ordered cut yesterday from a version to be shown to jurors in the trial of Mr. Kozlowski, who is accused of helping loot Tyco International of $600 million. Judge Michael J. Obus left on the cutting room floor scenes of the ice sculpture of Michelangelo's 'David' urinating Stolichnaya vodka into crystal glasses and Mrs. Kozlowski's birthday cake in the shape of a woman's body with sparklers protruding from her breasts."--"This Tyco Video Has Been Edited for Content," New York Times, Oct. 28, 2003
"It is pretty hard to top the revelations in the Kozlowski trial, best of all the $2.1-million birthday party that he held for his wife on the island of Sardinia, complete with an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's 'David' urinating vodka. 'Money,' the Beatles once said, 'can't buy me love.' Or, apparently, good taste."--"Vodka Stream Meets Walden Pond," New York Times, Jan. 30, 2004
"Prosecutors also limited much of the most salacious testimony about Mr. Kozlowski's consumption that had made the first trial fodder for the tabloids and entertainment television news programs, but had backfired badly with the jury."--"Ex-Chief and Aide Guilty of Looting Millions at Tyco," New York Times, June 18, 2005
The Third Rail of American Politics
"Two Cass County [Mich.] Men Electrocuted When Poll Touches Power Line"--headline, Associated Press, June 19
What Would We Do Without Meta-Analyses?
"Big-Brained People Are Smarter: A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between In Vivo Brain Volume and Intelligence"--headline, Intelligence No. 33, 2005 (link in PDF)
Wouldn't They Fall Off With All That Oil?
"Consumer Group Wants Warning Labels on Potato Chips"--headline, Reuters, June 17
Everywhere Else, They're Striped
"Africanized Bees Spotted in SW Arkansas"--headline, Associated Press, June 17
This Doesn't Add Up
Here's a shocking report from the Associated Press in San Francisco:
Despite being arrested at least nine times for molesting boys, Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller managed to avoid lengthy prison terms, coach youth football, move in with another convicted sex offender and be named by authorities as one of the most prolific child molesters in history.
Schwartzmiller's criminal record began 35 years ago, but he never registered as a sex offender and spent just 12 years in prison. In his time on the outside, police suspect he molested as many as 36,000 children in several states, Mexico and Brazil.
Now let's stop a minute and do some simple arithmetic. The AP says Schwartzmiller is 63. Presumably he didn't molest any children during his 12 years behind bars or before he hit puberty--let's say around age 12. That means his career as a molester would have amounted to 39 years at most--or roughly 14,235 days. If he molested 36,000 children in 14.235 days, that works out to an average of 2.53 children a day. Schwartzmiller may be a monster, but these numbers just don't seem plausible.
Grapefruit Goggles
A new study by the Smell and Taste Institute in Chicago "shows that the scent of grapefruit on women make them seem younger to men," reports the Associated Press:
Institute director Alan Hirsch said he smeared several middle-aged women with broccoli, banana, spearmint leaves, and lavender but none of those scents made a difference to the men.
But the scent of grapefruit changed men's perceptions. Hirsch said that when male volunteers were asked to write down how old the woman with grapefruit odor was, the age was considerably less than reality.
Grapefruit is cheaper than alcohol, too--though if you really want to splurge, you can always opt for a salty dog. |
