Best of the Web Today - August 16, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
The Crippled-Vet Ploy
There's plenty of blame to go around for the appalling spectacle of Sheehanoia, but one name that hasn't been mentioned is that of John Kerry. Kerry might have invented, and he certainly pioneered, the tactic being employed by those who are exploiting Cindy Sheehan to further their political agenda. As he explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971:
"I called the media. . . . I said, 'If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage?' 'Oh, yes, we will cover that.' "
Do you remember the media spectacle in Crawford, Texas, a year ago? It was precisely the crippled-vet ploy. Kerry sent triple amputee Max Cleland, who had been defeated in his 2002 Senate re-election bid, to deliver a letter to President Bush demanding that the president denounce the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This move was stunning in its audacity, though not its effectiveness: Here was Kerry, staking his campaign on his authority as a Vietnam veteran, appealing to the authority of another Vietnam veteran in an effort to silence Vietnam veterans who opposed him.
The media love this sort of story because of its man-bites-dog nature: Vietnam veteran says fellow vets are war criminals! Sept. 11 widows blame Bush for their husbands' deaths! Gold Star Mother says son died in vain! But isn't the shtick getting a little old by now?
In any case, because of this man-bites-dog quality the stories are ultimately meaningless. John Kerry did not actually speak for Vietnam veterans, most of whom thought their service was honorable. The "Jersey girls" do not actually speak for Sept. 11 widows, most of whom understand that Islamist terrorists, not the president, murdered their husbands. And Cindy Sheehan does not actually speak for Gold Star Mothers, most of whom remember their children as heroes, not dupes; and hardly any of whom agree with Sheehan that "this country is not worth dying for."
Sheehanoia is a sign of the desperation, not the strength, of the left in America. Publicity stunts are no substitute for an actual political program. Joan Walsh writes in Salon:
Even as Sheehan's public relations victories give people reason to be optimistic about the administration's unraveling in Iraq, liberals and war opponents have to be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Rooting for "the administration's unraveling in Iraq"--that is, for America's defeat in the central antiterror battleground--is not what we'd call a political program.
CBS to Bush: Ugh!
Here's a telling quote that appeared earlier today in a CBSNews.com story on Sheehan:
Sheehan has vowed to continue her Texas vigil through the rest of President Bush's vacation ugh Bush's August vacation, unless he meets with her. She began her protest 10 days ago and has since been joined by more than 100 anti-war activists.
The network later corrected its mistake, but it still shows up in a Google search. (And we saved a copy on our hard drive.) Anyway, it kind of proves what we wrote yesterday about the media's motivation in perpetuating Sheehanoia: "Members of the White House press corps find the annual sojourn to Crawford deathly dull." Ugh indeed!
Sheehan vs. Sheehan
Patrick Sheehan has filed for divorce from his wife, Cindy; The Smoking Gun has a copy of his petition. There's nothing much to say about this, except that our heart goes out to Mr. Sheehan, who has lost both a son and his wife of 28 years.
The Good News Is, the Good News May Get Reported
A heartening piece of metajournalism appeared in yesterday's New York Times. It seems the Associated Press has come under pressure from American editors about the negativity of its coverage from Iraq. Rosemary Goudreau, editorial page editor of the Tampa Tribune, received numerous copies of a mass e-mail listing accomplishments in Iraq, and this prompted her to contact the AP:
Ms. Goudreau's newspaper, like most dailies in America, relies largely on The Associated Press for its coverage of the Iraq war. So she finally forwarded the e-mail message to Mike Silverman, managing editor of The A.P., asking if there was a way to check these assertions and to put them into context. Like many other journalists, Mr. Silverman had also received a copy of the message.
Ms. Goudreau's query prompted an unusual discussion last month in New York at a regular meeting of editors whose newspapers are members of The Associated Press. Some editors expressed concern that a kind of bunker mentality was preventing reporters in Iraq from getting out and explaining the bigger picture beyond the daily death tolls.
"The bottom-line question was, people wanted to know if we're making progress in Iraq," Ms. Goudreau said, and the A.P. articles were not helping to answer that question.
"It was uncomfortable questioning The A.P., knowing that Iraq is such a dangerous place," she said. "But there's a perception that we're not telling the whole story."
The fault here, though, does not lie entirely with the AP. Silverman says he researched the e-mail and found that in the Times' words, "most of the information in the anonymous e-mail message had been reported by The A.P., but the details had been buried in articles or the articles had been overlooked." The Times piece concludes by noting that Goudreau conceded that by the end of the meeting, "editors were acknowledging that even in their own hometowns, 'we're more likely to focus on people who are killed than on the positive news out of a school.' "
And indeed, here's an AP Baghdad dispatch that moved yesterday on the AP wire:
The capital's Sadr City section was once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest, but it has become one of the brightest successes for the U.S. security effort.
So far this year, there has been only one car bombing in the neighborhood, and only one American soldier has been killed.
A year ago, militiamen garbed in black and armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades roamed the streets in open revolt against the American presence. But U.S. troops quelled the uprising, and today calmly patrol the district, aided by loyalists of the radical cleric who spurred the violence.
A Google News search--which is wide-ranging but not comprehensive--turned up only two newspapers that have published the Sadr City story: the Chicago Sun-Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The story is not terribly time-sensitive, so let us hope that other papers will pick it up.
One additional bit of context: It was in Sadr City that Casey Sheehan was killed in action in April 2004. America's success there is further evidence that he did not die in vain.
Clash Poor
We had a moment of déjà vu this morning when we saw the front-page Washington Post story: "Roberts Unlikely to Face Big Fight: Many Democrats See Battle as Futile." It reminded us of the New York Times article last December that said essentially the same thing about a hypothetical nominee:
Some Democrats said that the changing environment might make Congressional Democrats less likely to go full force in trying to block any Supreme Court appointment solely on the basis of abortion if the nomination did not change the current 5-4 balance on the court.
[Democratic consultant Howard] Wolfson said that if Mr. Bush tried to replace a justice who supports Roe v. Wade with one who opposes it, than an all-out battle would begin. But he and other Democrats said that would not necessarily be the case if the president sought to replace one justice who opposes Roe v. Wade with another.
The assumption here was that Chief Justice Rehnquist would be the first to go, but as it turns out, a replacement for a pro-Roe justice is apparently going to sail through. Why? Well, the Times piece was actually about the Democrats' efforts to shed their image as an extreme pro-abortion party, a subject the Post also mentions in passing:
Democrats said that instead of mounting a headlong assault on Roberts, they plan to use the hearings and the surrounding attention by the news media to remind voters of their party's values, including the protection of rights for individual Americans. The plan calls for emphasizing rights beyond abortion in an effort to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.
Presumably when Dems talk of "rights beyond abortion," they don't mean they intend to take a slide down the slippery slope to infanticide, filicide, parricide, etc. Rather, they mean they don't want to talk about abortion. We're betting a lot of Democrats are secretly hoping the court does overturn Roe, whose continued existence we've argued is politically disastrous for them.
Religion = Terror?
People on the religious right often accuse their counterparts on the secular left of antireligious bigotry, a description the secular left regards as unfair. But here's someone who seems to be guilty as charged: Joe Cook, head of the American Civil Liberties Union in Louisiana, who's fighting with the Tangipahoa Parish school board over religious speech in government schools. Baton Rouge's WAFB-TV quotes him as follows:
"They believe that they answer to a higher power, in my opinion. Which is the kind of thinking that you had with the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in this country, and the people who did the kind of things in London."
If you don't find this troubling, imagine someone saying the reverse: They don't believe in God, which is the kind of thinking you had with the people who imprisoned dissidents in the gulag and murdered millions through famine.
Life Imitates Treacher
"Although when you really think about it, why is everybody assuming that a same-sex marriage is automatically gay? What if two dudes are just really good friends and like hanging out? I mean, spending time with each other? Have you ever actually seen them doing it? Huh? Then you don't know! Two guys can be roommates and that doesn't mean they're gay, right? So why can't they tie the knot? Maybe it's just for tax purposes or something, gutter-brain. Try not to jump to conclusions next time."--blogger Jim Treacher, Feb. 27, 2004
"Bill Dalrymple, 56, and best friend Bryan Pinn, 65, have decided to take the plunge and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation with a twist--they're straight men. . . . The two--both of whom were previously married and both of whom are still looking for a good woman to love--insist that after the humour subsided, a real issue lies at the heart of it all. 'There are significant tax implications that we don't think the government has thought through.' Pinn said."--Toronto Sun, Aug. 6, 2005
Newspaper Boasts: We Don't Get Results!
"More than a week after their names were printed on the front page of The Charleston Gazette, none of the city's top 10 delinquent landlords have paid any of the nearly $200,000 in fire and trash fees they owe the city."--Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, Aug. 16
A Bold Editorial Stand
"Our View: Preparation Will Help Get Your Child Ready for Schooltime"--headline, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, Aug. 16
What Would We Do Without Autopsies?
"Autopsies Show Some on Jet Were Alive Before Crash"--headline, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16
This Just In
"Tourism Booming in Hawaii"--headline, CNN.com, Aug. 15
Quick, Someone Give Jack a Clean Fork!
"Bacterial Contamination of Jacks Fork Prompts Concerns"--headline, Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, Aug. 15
Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?
Seattle's King County Department of Health offers this brilliant advice in a page on condoms and HIV:
No method of contraception or disease prevention is effective when practiced incorrectly or inconsistently. A 1988 National Survey of Family Growth found abstinence to have a contraceptive failure rate of 26% when not practiced consistently. So, in abstinence, as in condom use, consistency is key.
Isn't practicing abstinence inconsistently like being a little bit pregnant?
Passing On Despite MoveOn
What does Mr. Rogers, the children's TV personality, have in common with Generalissimo Francisco Franco? Before we answer, let's have a look at MoveOn.org's list of "recent success stories":
We are delighted that we were able to help restore some of the cuts [Congress] made to NPR and PBS. MoveOn.org members sent in more than 1 million comments and made more than 40,000 calls to tell Congress to save Big Bird and Mr. Rogers. We are glad to have helped protect such an important service.
Looks as though the MoveOn folks have been spending too much time in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Mr. Rogers is still dead. |
