Best of the Web Today - April 11, 2007
By JAMES TARANTO
Today's Videos on WSJ.com: What a rich selection!
o Inside the Editorial Page, on McCain and Iraq.
o James Taranto debunks a left-wing no-fly hoax.
o John Fund on Imus vs. gangsta culture.
o Brendan Miniter on Gov. Bill Richardson.
Enmity Begins at Home
After the smashing success of their Syrian jaunt, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos are considering another trip--"to open a dialogue with Iran," the San Francisco Chronicle reports:
"Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,'' Lantos said. "Speaking for myself, I'm ready to go--and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.''
Still, the Democrats have their limits. The Chronicle reports that there is one world leader with whom congressional Democrats are unwilling to hold an unconditional dialogue:
President Bush, raising the political stakes in his fight with Congress over the war in Iraq, made Democratic leaders an offer they could and did refuse--come to the White House to accept his demand for continued, unfettered funding of the war.
"We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill: a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal, and without handcuffing our generals on the ground," the president said of the fight over the emergency war spending legislation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking Tuesday at a news conference in San Francisco, forcefully rejected Bush's invitation--as had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada several hours earlier at a Capitol appearance.
"What the president invited us to do is to come to his office so that we could accept, without any discussion, the bill that he wants," Pelosi said. "That's not worthy of the concerns of the American people. And I join with Sen. Reid in rejecting an invitation of that kind. . . ."
Meanwhile at the Puffington Host, John Kerry* defends Pelosi's junket to Syria:
We Democrats should've been unapologetic last week defending Speaker Pelosi because the truth was on our side: She had a right to go. And she was right to go. The coordinated attack on her trip to Syria was as inappropriate as it was irresponsible. And when that happens to one of our leaders, we should all damn well stand up and be counted in our support, or else we hand partisan operatives on the other side a dangerous victory.
The telling phrase here is "the other side." Which side is Kerry on? The Democrats' against the Republicans', it would seem, not America's against its enemies.
It used to be said that politics ends at the water's edge--that is, that both parties stood in solidarity against foreign foes. Many of today's Democrats have precisely inverted the meaning of that adage. They stand against Republicans, even if that means standing in solidarity with America's enemies.
Making Islam the Enemy
"The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide," the Arizona Republic reports:
Key portions of the documentary focus on Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix and his American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit organization of Muslim Americans who advocate patriotism, constitutional democracy and a separation of church and state.
Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank. . . .
In the making of Islam vs. Islamists, Burke's co-producers were Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, and Alex Alexiev, the non-profit organization's vice president. Both men are neo-conservatives who have written on the threat of "Islamofascism" to the free world.
Before filming began last year, Burke says, ["Crossroads" executive producer Jeff] Bieber asked him, "Don't you check into the politics of the people you work with?"
Bieber denies this account, saying the documentary had "serious structural problems" and was "alarmist." Not having seen the doc, we can't judge. But here's what troubled us: We got an email yesterday from CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which highlighted this article. The subject line read: "Muslim-Bashers Involved in Possible PBS Islam Doc," and the excerpt had Gaffney's and Alexiev's names in bold as well as the sentence above beginning "Both men are neo-conservatives . . ."
So according to CAIR, Gaffney and Alexiev are "Muslim-bashers" because they oppose "Islamofascism." By equating Islam and "Islamofascism" in this way, it is CAIR that is furthering the idea that Islam itself is the enemy.
The New White Power Movement
"For the first time, the Seattle Public Schools is sending students from four high schools and their chaperones to a conference on 'white privilege,' sponsored by the University of Colorado and a variety of other groups," reports the online newspaper Crosscut Seattle:
What makes it noteworthy is the fact the school district's policies regarding race have been in the news lately. Officially, the district presumes racism is institutionalized in Seattle schools and that students of color are inherently disadvantaged.
A particularly strident articulation of this notion was once posted on the school district's Web site. It said, in effect, that in America only whites are racist and that examples of white cultural racism included individualism and expectations that students learn standard English. When it came to light last year, the statements were removed.
Here is the Web site of the White Privilege Conference, and here's an excerpt from the frequently asked questions page:
Q. What is privilege?
A. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious. White Privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.
Peggy McIntosh
"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
Do these people stop to think about what they are saying and what effect it is likely to have on children? Judging by the picture on this page, Peggy McIntosh is easily old enough to have come of age before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which means that she doubtless is steeped in white guilt, which informs her concept of the "invisible knapsack."
But what happens if you tell some white kid born in the 1990s--decades into the post-civil-rights era--that he has an invisible knapsack? Race means little to him, white guilt is an incomprehensible relic of an earlier time. Probably his reaction to learning of the knapsack is, "Cool!" Who wouldn't want a knapsack full of treasures?
It seems likely to us, then, that the White Privilege Conference will end up promoting a sense among young whites that they are superior.
Stem-Cell Slant
"Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again," the Times of London reports. That's the first paragraph. In the eighth and ninth, we learn that this promising field of technology is under threat from "powerful critics":
Previous studies have suggested that stem-cell therapies offer huge potential to treat a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neuron disease. A study by British scientists in November also reported that stem-cell injections could repair organ damage in heart attack victims.
But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells--those acquired from human embryos--is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.
So that means if Bush had his way, he would've stopped the new diabetic breakthrough? Uh, no, it turns out:
After stem cells had been harvested from their blood, they then underwent a mild form of chemotherapy to eliminate the white blood cells causing damage to the pancreas. They were then given transfusions of their own stem cells to help rebuild their immune systems.
So this story has nothing to do with embryonic stem cells. But the Times doesn't tell us that until paragraph No. 16.
Breaking News From 1853
"Levi Strauss Off to Profitable Start"--headline, Associated Press, April 10
Hair of the Dog?
"Study Reveals How Drunken Bats Sober Up"--headline, LiveScience.com, April 10
News You Can Use
o "Chubby? 'Fat' Might Be Just Your Size"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, April 11
o "Expert: Flames Are a Threat"--headline, Detroit News, April 11
Bottom Stories of the Day
o "Wellington to Take Over Control of Traffic Light Along Forest Hill Boulevard"--headline, Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), April 10
o "Overturned Semi Didn't Hurt Environment"--headline, Enquirer (Cincinnati), April 11
o "Chew on This: Rep. Proposes Official State Cookie"--headline, Des Moines Register, April 7
The Constitution Under Siege
Our item yesterday on Prof. Walter Murphy's fanciful tale of political persecution brought this horror story from reader Stephen Gill:
I thought I'd share my own version of just how vindictive George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are and warn your readers that even the most casual and seemingly private conversation can subject someone to a violation of their civil liberties.
I have a 3-year-old daughter named Alexandra. In December, my family was going to Disney World for a vacation. When we got to the ticket counter, three of us--my wife, my infant son and I--were able to check in, but my daughter was flagged. The airline rep told us that our little 3-year-old was on the no-fly list. It took some processing, verification and telephone calls, but 10 minutes later, we were cleared, Alexandra got a ticket, and we were on our way to the Magic Kingdom.
But it struck me: What exactly could Alexandra have done to get on the no fly list? Then it dawned on me. My daughter is enrolled in a half-day pre-K here in Houston, and they spent part of one day discussing government (mind you that they are 3- and 4-year olds so I doubt they were getting into separation of powers, the Bill of Rights and bicameral legislatures). I know this because on the way to the airport, my daughter informed that George Washington was the president of the United States. Being a good parent, I replied that George Washington was the first president, but the president now is George Bush. She told me I was wrong, that George Bush was the first president but that he was dead now, and George Washington was the president. At this point we were pulling into the airport parking.
So you see, in a matter of minutes--from the utterance of her words to the time it took to get to the ticket counter, Karl Rove, or maybe Cheney, or perhaps Bush himself, was able to hear my daughter describe Bush as "dead" and get her name on the no-fly list. So count me as one who agrees with Rod Dreher: This is pervasive, and we really do need congressional hearings on all of this.
Hmm, maybe they were afraid she would beat up Keith Olbermann.
Incidentally, Dreher, whose comments we highlighted yesterday, manfully acknowledges having overreacted to the Murphy tale, and notes, a tad defensively, that he had qualified his original comments with phrases such as "if true" (which were included in our excerpt). Mark Graber, who posted Murphy's original tale, now writes of Murphy, "Perhaps he has lost his mind or his judgment has gone horribly awry" (obviously it's the latter, we'd say). Josh Marshall earlier acknowledged that one commentator was skeptical about the story, but otherwise seems to have let the subject drop. Andrew Sullivan and Matt Stoller apparently are unbowed in their gullibility.
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