Best of the Web Today - October 15, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Best of the Tube Next Week
We're scheduled to appear Monday on Fox News Channel's "Fox News Live" with David Asman, discussing blogs and political campaigns. Also on the program will be blogress Ana Marie "Wonkette" Cox. The segment is to begin at 12:40 p.m. Eastern Time, but of course these things are always subject to change if the news demands.
Gay-Bait Backlash
John Kerry's gratuitous mention during Wednesday's debate of Dick Cheney's gay daughter has become the most talked about moment of the debate, and it looks as though it's backfiring on the Kedwards campaign. True, most gay activists seem untroubled by Kedwards' gay-baiting, apparently on the (no doubt accurate) theory that a Kerry administration would be far friendlier to their policy agenda than the Bush administration is. And it's anyone's guess whether the publicity for Cheney's daughter will suppress turnout among conservative Republicans or lead conservative Democrats to remain in the fold.
But blogger Steve Sturm suggests that by intruding into the Cheneys' private life, Kedwards may provoke a backlash among the broader electorate--those for whom gay issues are not a top priority, pro or con (quoting verbatim):
I think that if there's any negative repercussions to Kerry making that commentary, it will not come from those upset that he brought up Mary's sexual preferences but rather from those who recoil at Kerry due to his blatent violation of the rule: thou shall NOT speak of another's kid in any way that could POSSIBLE be construed as negative. Only unambiguously postive comments, such as "what a nicely behaved child," "your kid is such a good athlete," "your son is so smart" and so on, are allowed.
To see this dynamic in action, just watch the neighborhood mothers react if/when someone makes such a negative comment--not just if it were aimed at their own kid, but even if were aimed at someone elses. Even if the comment reflects the opinion of a number of mothers, the faux pas of actually blurting it out is guaranteed to produced averted eyes and making hasty excuses about having to get home. It just ain't done.
Fox News notes that yesterday John Edwards's wife, Elizabeth, had this to say about Lynne Cheney's outrage over Kerry's remarks: "I think that it indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences." If Sturm is right, Mrs. Edwards's suggestion that Mrs. Cheney is ashamed of her own child only compounds the problem.
In response to the criticism, Kerry partisans offer what one might term the Seinfeld defense: There's nothing wrong with being a lesbian; therefore there's nothing wrong with mentioning that someone is a lesbian--and those who object to Kerry having done so are bigots. Reader Connor Fridersdorf has a simple answer to this:
I fault John Kerry for bringing up Mary Cheney's homosexuality not because I think there's anything wrong with being a lesbian, but because John Kerry and I both know that many voters out there--from both parties--think there is something wrong with being a lesbian.
John Kerry was sneakily playing to the wrongheaded prejudices of those voters. And one need not share their wrongheaded prejudices to understand and denounce his strategy.
Blogger Napoleon Cole offers a fitting analogy: In 2000 some supporters of George W. Bush reportedly spread rumors that John McCain had a "black baby." (In fact, he had adopted a Bangladeshi child.) As Cole writes:
I do not think it is shameful to be of Bangladeshi descent. . . . Yet some people decided to use McCain's adopted child's race to fan the flames of racism, and turn voters against him.
Dick Gephardt also has a lesbian daughter. Suppose Gephardt had been the Democratic nominee, and President Bush had said this in the debate:
I do know that we have a choice to make in America and that is to treat people with tolerance and respect and dignity. It's important that we do that. And I also know in a free society people, consenting adults can live the way they want to live. And that's to be honored.
I think my opponent and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her.
The first paragraph of this hypothetical quote is taken from what Bush actually said in the debate Wednesday; the second paragraph is adapted from John Edwards's comments about Cheney last Tuesday. Does anyone doubt that Bush would today stand accused of gay-baiting or worse if the shoe were on the other foot?
Delinquents for Kerry
Youngsters incarcerated at the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, Conn., cast ballots in a mock election yesterday:
The election, which Kerry won 93 to 40, wrapped up an 11-week educational program on the political process that organizers hope will encourage the men to vote when they leave prison. The program taught about the history of the political parties, how to register to vote, and their rights under state voting laws. Inmates also analyzed the issues, debating about the economy, abortion rights, and the war in Iraq.
Kerry scored 70% of the juvenile-offender "vote" (because they're behind bars, and some are minors to boot, they can't cast actual ballots).
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that in a survey of military families, "Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, was more trusted by 69 percent while 24 percent said they trusted Kerry more"--almost a mirror image of the juvenile-hall results.
Hey, Whatever Works
In Wednesday's debate, moderator Bob Schieffer asked John Kerry to respond to criticisms from some Catholic leaders that, as Schieffer put it, "it would be a sin to vote for a candidate like you because you support a woman's right to choose an abortion and unlimited stem-cell research." Kerry defended his views on abortion and stem cells on the ground that "I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith." But then he added:
My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, "What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead."
And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people.
That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth.
That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.
Notes Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe: "I do wish Kerry would explain sometime why it is OK for his faith to shape his stands on social welfare programs and the environment when he vows never to let his stands on abortion and embryonic stem cells be shaped by that same faith."
Ward Healer
Columnist Charles Krauthammer is outraged by John Edwards's comment earlier this week that "if we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again":
In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable. . . .
Politicians have long promised a chicken in every pot. It is part of the game. It is one thing to promise ethanol subsidies here, dairy price controls there. But to exploit the desperate hopes of desperate people with the promise of Christ-like cures is beyond the pale.
There is no apologizing for Edwards's remark. It is too revealing. There is absolutely nothing the man will not say to get elected.
Krauthammer speaks with considerable authority here. He is trained as a physician, and he is also paralyzed, the result of an accident he suffered while a medical student.
Take Nine Raisins and Call Me in the Morning
The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that Teresa Heinz Kerry, campaigning in the Nevada city, offered what she called a "highly effective" cure for arthritis:
"You get some gin and get some white raisins--and only white raisins--and soak them in the gin for two weeks," she said. "Then eat nine of the raisins a day."
And you thought Hillarycare was bad!
Insulting the Voters
Tennessee Democrats are denying that they produced the "Special Olympics" anti-Bush flyer that showed up in a state legislator's campaign office, the Jackson (Tenn.) Sun reports:
Democrats said it was planted in the campaign office of state Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, presumedly by a conservative activist bent on catching the candidate in a gotcha. . . .
''This is the work of shady Republican operatives and is reminiscent of the Nixon-era Watergate burglaries,'' said Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Randy Button. ''This is just the latest in a long history of dirty politics on the part of Republicans.''
Fitzhugh concedes the flier did appear, at least briefly, in his re-election office. Democrats say it was only in the office for at most a couple of hours after someone unknown left it on a table--and it was promptly thrown away when found.
''If you know me, you know I had nothing to do with this,'' Fitzhugh said.
One possibility the Sun story doesn't raise is that the flyer was produced by a Bush-hater sympathetic to, but not involved with, Fitzhugh's campaign. Whatever the case, the whole kerfuffle is reminiscent of an Onion story from April:
In the latest round of political mudslinging, both John Kerry's and George W. Bush's election committees have replaced ads that focus on their opponents' shortcomings with ads that personally insult the voting public.
"The Bush people initiated this volley of negative ads, but we won't be lured into a reactive campaign against the Republicans," Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said Monday. "It's time to redirect the cheap name-calling away from Bush and toward those Americans who might be idiotic enough to vote for him."
A controversial 30-second TV spot for Kerry that aired throughout the Midwest Monday blamed the country's ills not on Bush's policies, but on the "sheer stupidity" of America's voters.
"In the past four years, America's national debt has reached an all-time high," the ad's narrator said. "And who's responsible? You are. You're sitting there eating a big bowl of Fritos, watching TV, and getting fatter as the country goes to hell. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Life Imitates the Onion: The Panatagraph of Bloomington, Ill., reports on a speech by Angry Left diva Arianna Huffington: "Americans who vote the Bush-Cheney ticket are using their fear-driven 'lizard brains,' a syndicated columnist and author told an Illinois Wesleyan University audience Wednesday evening."
The Nader Threat?
"With less than three weeks before the election, Ralph Nader is emerging as just the threat that Democrats feared," the New York Times reports:
Despite a concerted effort by Democrats to derail his independent candidacy, as well as his being struck off the Pennsylvania ballot on Wednesday, Mr. Nader will be on the ballots in more than 30 states.
Polls show that he could influence the outcomes in nine by drawing support from Mr. Kerry. They are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
Moreover, six--Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin--were among the top 20 where Mr. Nader drew his strongest support in 2000. If the vote for Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry is as evenly divided as the polls suggest, the electoral votes in any one of those states could determine who becomes president.
Color us skeptical. In 2000 Nader's vote total was bigger than Bush's victory margin in only two states, Florida and New Hampshire--and that year he was on the ballot in every state but North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming (and in Wyoming, he got 2.1% as a write-in).
This year, with the Angry Left motivated more by Bush hatred than disgust with both parties, many Nader voters are likely to defect to Kerry. Among them is Nader's 2000 running mate, Winona LaDuke, who, the Native American Times reports, has officially endorsed the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam.
We wouldn't be so bold as to make a prediction, but our guess is that Nader will get no more than 2% of the nationwide popular vote this time around, and we wouldn't be surprised to see him fall short of 1%. This could, however, change if Bush takes a commanding lead in the polls by election eve. If Kerry's loss seems a foregone conclusion, Naderites will have little incentive to throw their votes away on the Democrat. So far, though, the polls continue to show a close race.
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Liberal Democrat Backs Bush
"The No. 2 official in Japan's ruling party sharply criticized U.S. Democratic challenger John Kerry's North Korea policy Friday, adding that he hoped President Bush would be re-elected," Reuters reports from Tokyo:
"I think there would be trouble if it's not President Bush," Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe told a radio program, Kyodo news agency reported.
"For instance, Mr Kerry wants to handle the North Korean issue bilaterally, which is out of the question. We're now in the era of multilateralism," Takebe was quoted as saying.
Byrd Backs Chicken
"The Senate's most senior member on Thursday defended Sen. Mark Dayton's decision to close his Washington office over concerns about a terrorist attack," reports the Associated Press:
"Senator Dayton took this precautionary step based on his conscience and his responsibility to his staff," said Sen. Robert Byrd, an eight-term Democratic senator from West Virginia. "I commend him."
Our Brendan Miniter, writing in OpinionJournal's Political Diary (subscribe here), speculates that being a chicken may not be the reason Dayton flew the coop:
Others wonder if the senator's staff has actually decamped to South Dakota to campaign for embattled Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Sen. Dayton's one time chief of staff, Marc Kimball, used to work for Mr. Daschle (Mr. Kimball is now in a tough race of his own for a seat in Minnesota's state legislature). To borrow the cover line from this week's National Journal, Sen. Daschle is "fighting for his life" in a year when Democrats suddenly smell an outside possibility of taking back the Senate. Maybe before letting them leave the building, Senate security personnel should have put tracking collars on Mr. Dayton's staff.
Kim Strassel has more on the Daschle race, which looks to be this year's most interesting Senate campaign.
Rappers for Terrorism
Knight Ridder has an appalling little story about a rap star:
If Osama bin Laden ever buys a rap album, he'll probably start with a CD by KRS-One. The hip-hop anarchist has declared his solidarity with al-Qaida by asserting that he and other African-Americans "cheered when 9-11 happened," reports the New York Daily News. . . .
"I say that proudly," the Boogie Down Productions founder went on, insisting that, before the attack, security guards kept Blacks out of the World Trade Center "because of the way we talk and dress. So when the planes hit the building, we were like, 'Mmmm--justice.' "
He also said, "America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place." Uh, OK, tell you what, KRS--you go first. |
