Best of the Web Today - February 23, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
The Paranoid Left
Back in September, when the story first broke of CBS's fabricated Texas Air National Guard memos, Terry McAuliffe, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, theorized that White House adviser Karl Rove might have produced the memos.
That theory seems to be catching on among left-wing Democrats. Blogger Charles Johnson reports that Rep. Maurice Hinchey of upstate New York put it forward at a weekend community forum in Ithaca. Here's a partial transcript:
Hinchey: They've had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it's handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: It originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers.
Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilities in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it; they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they--and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only--what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for.
They--the people there--they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had 'em. They didn't care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.
Audience member: Do you have any evidence for that?
Hinchey: Yes I do. Once they did that--
Audience: [murmuring]
Hinchey: --once they did that, then it undermined everything else about Bush's draft dodging. Once they were able to say, "This is false! These papers are not accurate, they're, they're, they're false, they've been falsified." That had the effect of taking the whole issue away.
Audience member: So you have evidence that the papers came from the Bush administration?
Hinchey: No. I--that's my belief.
Audience member: OK.
Hinchey: And I said that. In the very beginning. I said, "It's my belief that those papers, and that setup, originated with Karl Rove and the White House."
Audience member: Don't you think it's irresponsible to make charges like that?
Hinchey: No I don't. I think it's very important to make charges like that. I think it's very important to combat this kind of activity in every way that you can. And I'm willing--and most people are not--to step forward in situations like this and take risks.
Audience: [clapping and cheering]
Hinchey: I consider that to be part of my job, and I'm gonna continue to do it.
In his classic 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," historian Richard Hofstadter described this mentality:
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. . . .
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman--sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced.
Hofstadter wrote at a time of liberal ascendancy, and as he noted, "in recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers," especially Sen. Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society. But as he noted, "the paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life."
These days it is recurring on the left--a point that first became clear seven years ago last month, when, as CNN reported then, First Lady Hillary Clinton denied that her husband had had an affair with Monica Lewisnky and "blamed the sex allegations on a 'a vast right-wing conspiracy.' " Its ironic that today Mrs. Clinton seems quite sane compared with many in her party.
Chuck Schumer's 'Rocky' Road
The New York Observer's Lizzy Ratner has an amusing report on Chuck Schumer, New York's little-known senior senator:
"[My wife] Iris and I saw that great movie with Hilary Swank, with the boxer," said Mr. Schumer, referring to the Oscar-nominated sob-saga, Million Dollar Baby, about a spunky young waitress who becomes a champion boxer, only to suffer a brutal spinal-cord injury that paralyzes her from neck to toe. "I loved it. I had a dream about it. . . . I was thinking of her on that respirator." . . .
It doesn't take a Freudian to connect the psychological dots between the movie and Mr. Schumer's own situation as one of the leaders of the beleaguered Democratic Party. After all, aren't the Senate Democrats struggling for life--much like Ms. Swank's character--after losing six seats in the bruising 2004 elections? And isn't it part of Mr. Schumer's job, as the new head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, to make sure that the plug isn't pulled once and for all during the next round of elections in 2006? No wonder he's dreaming of respirators.
Ratner goes on to describe Schumer's plans for winning Senate seats in the next election and comes to this conclusion:
Whether this strategy is successful, of course, will become clear on the first Tuesday in November 2006, when Mr. Schumer's candidates go head to head against their Republican counterparts at the polls. For Mr. Schumer, that day will be the true test--the real boxing match. Does this make Mr. Schumer nervous? "Nah," he said with a dismissive shrug.
Still, he had better hope this story ends like Rocky.
Then again, maybe not. Didn't Rocky lose to Apollo Creed?
The Arab Berlin Wall?--II
We're tempted to make fun of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius for imitating our item yesterday with his column today titled "Beirut's Berlin Wall." In truth, Ignatius got the idea not from us but from a source, whose saying it is a lot more interesting than ours, Walid Jumblatt, patriarch of Lebanon's Druze community "and, until recently, a man who accommodated Syria's occupation":
"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
Meanwhile, author Patrick Seale, writing in London's left-wing Guardian, discounts the theory that Syria assassinated Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq Hariri:
If Syria killed Rafik Hariri, . . . it must be judged an act of political suicide. Syria is already under great international pressure from the US, France and Israel. To kill Hariri at this critical moment would be to destroy Syria's reputation once and for all and hand its enemies a weapon with which to deliver the blow that could finally destabilise the Damascus regime, and even possibly bring it down.
So attributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible.
Seale lists a host of "potential candidates" to blame for the Hariri murder, including, "of course, Israel." But why is it implausible to think Syria would miscalculate and do something harmful to its own interests?
Homer Nods
Pfc. Rob Jacobs, the soldier who recently received hate mail signed by sixth-graders in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Park Slope neighborhood, is stationed in South Korea, not Iraq as we said in an item yesterday (since corrected). We guess this at least makes more plausible one boy's accusation that Jacobs was "destroying holy places like mosques." Why there are hardly any mosques left in Korea!
Several readers have asked how to contact Pfc. Jacobs. Radio hostess Eileen Byrne has the address.
Zero-Tolerance Watch
"A 13-year-old student in Orange County, Fla., was suspended for 10 days and could be banned from school over an alleged assault with a rubber band," reports Orlando's WKMG-TV:
Robert Gomez, a seventh-grader at Liberty Middle School, said he picked up a rubber band at school and slipped it on his wrist.
Gomez said when his science teacher demanded the rubber band, the student said he tossed it on her desk.
After the incident, Gomez received a 10-day suspension for threatening his teacher with what administrators say was a weapon, Local 6 News reported.
"They said if he would have aimed it a little more and he would have gotten it closer to her face he would have hit her in the eye," mother Jenette Rojas said.
Hat tip: ZeroIntelligence.net.
What Would We Do Without Olive Experts?
"Oils Ain't Oils, Say Olive Experts"--headline, Australian Broadcast Corp. Web site, Feb. 23
We'll Drink to That
"Smithsonian's Small Still Awaits Word on Community Service"--headline, Washington Post, Feb. 23
Digital Man
Governor Dummer Academy, a boarding school in Newbury, Mass., is changing its name to Governor Academy so as to put a stop to the "dumb and Dummer" jokes, the Associated Press reports. The AP quotes one alum who's happy about the decision:
Todd Bairstow, a 1991 graduate, said he hopes the trustees stick with their decision to change the name, because it is needed in the hyper-competitive world of elite boarding schools.
"I love the place, I really do," said Bairstow, 32, an advertising writer in Boston. "You don't want a place you love to be the butt of jokes, to be a punchline."
Todd, a word to the wise: Don't dwell on other people's funny names when you're named for an ursine digit.
Incontinent on the Continent
Belgian author Paul Belien, who kindly showed us around Antwerp when we were vacationing in his country last summer, has a piece on The Weekly Standard's Web site that gives us quite a chuckle. It seems that Belgium's Socialist Party, which is part of the governing coalition, marked President Bush's visit this week by distributing "piss stickers, specially made to be used in urinals," that depict Bush's face against an American-flag backdrop, with a caption (in English, not Belgiumish) that reads GO AHEAD, PISS ON ME!!
We're beginning to detect a theme. Remember "Piss Christ," Andres Serrano's photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine, the exhibition of which was subsidized by the National Endowment for the Arts? Those who objected to this drain on the Treasury found themselves denounced as philistines.
As the years have passed, we've been subjected to elitist lectures about how sophisticated the Europeans are when compared with Americans, and especially when compared with the simple-minded cowboy in the White House. But really, how much sophistication does it take to make No. 1 on an image of the leader of the free world? Not only does the emperor have no clothes, but he's raining all over the parade.
Bush left Brussels for Mainz, Germany, where urinal stickers shouldn't be a problem. After all, Germans would never stand for such a thing. |
