Best of the Web Today - March 3, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
Pink vs. Green
You may remember her from such movies as "A Low Down Dirty Shame" and "Woo." Call Jada Pinkett Smith's latest production "Heteronormative Hell." The Harvard Crimson reports the actress appeared on campus recently as part of the 20th annual Cultural Rhythms show, and what she had to say was quite inflammatory:
"Women, you can have it all--a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career," she said. "They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want. All you have to do is want it."
"To my men, open your mind, open your eyes to new ideas. Be open," she added.
This didn't quite provoke fainting spells, like Larry Summers's recent remarks, but the Crimson reports that "some students were offended" and that "the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations have begun working together to increase sensitivity toward issues of sexuality at Harvard."
In case you're one of those backward types who don't understand why what Smith said is so horrible, the Crimson spells it out:
BGLTSA Co-Chair Jordan B. Woods '06 said that, while many BGLTSA members thought Pinkett Smith's speech was "motivational," some were insulted because they thought she narrowly defined the roles of men and women in relationships.
"Some of the content was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable," he said.
Calling the comments heteronormative, according to Woods, means they implied that standard sexual relationships are only between males and females.
"Our position is that the comments weren't homophobic, but the content was specific to male-female relationships," Woods said.
Now first of all, maybe the BGLTSA guys (and gals, etc.) would feel more comfortable if they had a nice big soft chair instead of one made of "Woods." But seriously, we were glad we'd read about the Cambridge commotion, which sensitized us to the problem of heteronormativity. As a result, we were ready to be appropriately outraged at this article in the Los Angeles Times:
Scientists who compared frogs collected over the last 150 years have discovered a dramatic increase in hermaphrodites during the times when contamination from the pesticide DDT and other chlorinated compounds was widespread.
Frogs with both male and female reproductive organs were rare in the 19th and early 20th centuries but more common during the 1950s, when the largest volumes of the chemicals were used. . . .
The ability of certain chemicals to mimic or block estrogen and testosterone, which are key in sexual organ development and reproduction, is considered one of the most disturbing discoveries in environmental science of the last decade.
"Disturbing"? Only if you're prejudiced against transgendered amphibian-Americans. This blatant heteronormativism makes us feel very uncomfortable. Shame on the Los Angeles Times, and shame on Susan Estrich for remaining silent in the face of such oppression!
The New Generation Gap
Are college students more patriotic today than their predecessors were in the 1960s and '70s? A pair of articles in the Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper on a campus that banished ROTC back then, give reason to think the answer is yes. First, an editorial:
It's time to bring the Reserve Officer Training Corps back to Columbia. While we oppose many of the military's policies, particularly its "don't ask, don't tell" program, we recognize the valuable ideological and socioeconomic diversity that a military presence would bring to campus.
Jason Elliott, a self-described "left-winger," agrees in an op-ed:
The campus-wide resistance against the ROTC stems, like it or not, from anger over how America has exerted its military strength in recent global events. The left feels that America's unchallengeable military prowess has been co-opted by hawkish leaders who have made unwise decisions. There is no better time, therefore, to welcome ROTC onto our campus than right now, when the armed forces' leadership is in desperate need of a complete overhaul.
If we--the left wing--want to fundamentally change the way America's military is managed, we should do it from the inside, by becoming the leadership: officers in the armed forces, or officials in the Department of Defense. . . .
I believe that putting our liberal, antiwar student body inside the same campus gates as ROTC cadets would foster mutual understanding of why the other side so passionately believes what it believes. We have a lot to learn from those willing to make defending this country their life's work. Conversely, the military's future brass (today's ROTC) should take a long look at us and realize that antiwar activists--and liberals in general--aren't tree-hugging wimps but intelligent individuals with reasoned points of view and rock-hard convictions.
Elliott actually manages to stake out a position that is antiwar, and stridently so, without being antimilitary. Contrast this bright young man with 63-year-old Rep. Mike Honda of California, who in 2003 voted against a resolution supporting the troops in Iraq. Now, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, he has proposed a law that would make it easier for parents to block military recruiters from gaining easy access to high school students on or off campus." Endorsing the Honda measure is Eric Mar, president of the San Francisco school board:
"It's not like the military heavily targets San Francisco,'' Mar said. "They know we are wary of military recruiters,'' because of widespread anti-war sentiment in the city and because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell'' policy that has led to the dismissal of gays and lesbians from the military.
"We as a school district should have the say not to allow them in at all, '' he contended. "There would be tremendous support in our district for what Mr. Honda is doing.''
Also getting into the act is the American Civil Liberties Union:
The ACLU has received complaints from parents, students, teachers and principals about the current policy. It says the law provides that schools have to give the military the same access it provides to other recruiters, such as those from businesses or colleges. But reports from around the country say that at some schools, military recruiters are a fixture, making regular appearances.
"They target low-performing schools. At some schools like that, the military recruiters have more of a relationship with students than the school staff,'' said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
If "military recruiters have more of a relationship with students than the school staff," what does that say about the quality of government schools? And what does it say about the ACLU that its answer to lousy schools is to deprive students stuck there of other opportunities?
Would You Like Some Flying Toast With That Thai Chicken Salad?
Rolling Stone profiles MoveOn.org and describes the Angry Left as an Internet bubble, some 15 months after we first employed the analogy. Still, it's an amusing piece:
Moveon is guided by a tiny, tightknit group of leaders. There are only ten of them, still deeply committed to the Internet start-up ethos of working out of their homes and apartments in better-dead-than-red bastions such as Berkeley, California, Manhattan and Washington, D.C. For a political organization that likes to rail against "the consulting class of professional election losers," MoveOn seems remarkably unconcerned about its own win-loss record. Talk to the group's leadership and you won't hear much about the agony of defeat. Wes Boyd--the software entrepreneur who used his fortune from creating the Flying Toaster screen saver to co-found MoveOn--blithely acknowledges the need to produce some electoral wins "in the classical sense." But he sees the rise of MoveOn's progressive populism as a moral victory in and of itself. . . .
The magazine likens Boyd to "someone who spends all day in an Internet chat room and assumes the rest of the world is as psyched as he and his online compatriots are about, say, the Lord of the Rings trilogy." But our favorite bit is about Joan Blades, MoveOn's co-founder and Boyd's better half:
"The GOP is painting us as socialist radicals," Blades tells me with seeming disbelief over Thai chicken salad at the Berkeley Art Museum.
Surely a real socialist radical would have ordered the raw Vietnamese mushroom salad instead.
Metaphor Alert
"This message to those who attack you; you reap what you sow, so watch your back. We're still following the leader, and you can all go to hell."--patriot and former senator Max Cleland at a going-away party for former senator Tom Daschle, quoted in the Washington Post, March 2
Cashing In on Rathergate
From the New York Observer comes an update on the aftermath of CBS's phony-documents scandal. Two of the three CBS executives who were asked to resign in January after the release of the report on the scandal, Mary Murphy and Betsy West, have now done so, "signing nondisclosure agreements in the process." The third exec, Josh Howard, is still holding out; as we speculated last month, a Howard wrongful-termination suit could be disastrous for CBS.
Meanwhile, Mary Mapes, the segment producer, "is preparing to shop a book proposal offering an inside account of what happened at CBS News during the memo scandal":
The book will constitute Ms. Mapes' defense against charges of journalistic misconduct. According to Wesley Neff, president of the literary and lecture agency that is representing Ms. Mapes, the producer plans to argue for the veracity of the four memos supposedly typed by President Bush's former National Guard squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, in the early 1970's. . . .
Ms. Mapes' book proposal will include 40 pages of analysis and documentation that she offered to the panel to back up the documents' authenticity. In an addendum to that material--supplied on the condition it not be directly quoted--Ms. Mapes avoids direct discussion of fonts and character spacing.
Instead, she argues that the substance of the memos meshes with Mr. Bush's known records (the panel had claimed the documents clashed) and that inconsistencies in their format could have reflected the work of different typists--as found, she argues, in some of the official records.
Moreover, Ms. Mapes adds, given that two of Mr. Killian's contemporaries said the documents fit his thoughts and actions, a forger would have had to correctly guess the mental state of a dead man.
Well, which is harder--guessing the mental state of a dead man, or generating a Microsoft Word document in 1973? In any case, it appears that the four journalists CBS decided to "hold accountable" for the National Guard fiasco, one will get a nice book advance and the other three will get paid by CBS to go away. Maybe the reason the network didn't dismiss Dan Rather is he didn't need the money.
The World's Smallest Violin
"The last couple of years have not been easy for anyone, myself included, who hoped that the Iraq war would produce a decent, democratizing outcome."--Thomas Friedman, New York Times, March 3
The Color Purple
"There's a crowing triumphalist narrative out of Washington that is to be resisted because it's wrong and counterproductive," complains Timothy Garton Ash in a Los Angeles Times op-ed:
Here, for example, is what the undersecretary of State for global affairs, Paula Dobriansky, said on Monday: "As the president noted in Bratislava just last week, there was a Rose Revolution in Georgia, an Orange Revolution in Ukraine and, most recently, a Purple Revolution in Iraq. In Lebanon, we see growing momentum for a 'Cedar Revolution' that is unifying the citizens of that nation to the cause of true democracy and freedom from foreign influence."
Spot the odd one out. "Purple Revolution" in Iraq? Purple, as in the color of blood? There's a vital difference between a democratic revolution that is peaceful, authentic and generated by people inside a country and one that is imposed, or kick-started, by a military invasion and occupation.
Uh, Tim, that would be purple, as in the color of the ink that marked Iraqi voters' fingers. Most people's blood is red. Meanwhile, an Associated Press dispatch reports on a recent antiterror protest in Iraq:
The protesters held the impromptu demonstration on front of the clinic, chanting "No to terrorism!" and "No to Baptism and Wahhabism!"
Maybe they had read Russell Arben Fox's "Saying No to Baptism: A Philosophical Account," which appeared in December on Time and Seasons, "quite possibly the most unappreciated, yet Oscar-nominated onymous Mormon group blog in history." Though more likely they said "Baathism" and someone mangled the quote along the way.
Sounds Like a Job for Weed-B-Gone
"Derelict Plants Are Crippling Iraq's Petroleum Industry"--headline, New York Times, March 3
The Canadian What?
"The U.S. embassy in Canada denied a newspaper story on Wednesday that said Canadian Defence Minister Bill Graham had trouble boarding a plane because his name was on a U.S. no-fly list designed to deter terrorists," Reuters reports from Ottawa:
"Apparently there is another Bill Graham out there somewhere who did something to get his name on an American watch list," the paper said.
"Mr. Graham was obliged to prove that he was the other Bill Graham, the one in charge of the Canadian (Armed) Forces."
If someone showed up and told you he was with the "Canadian armed forces," would you believe him?
Hmr Nds
Kyrgyzstan is not consonant-deprived, as we said in an item yesterday (since corrected). The word we should have used, of course, is disemvoweled.
Another item erred in saying that Ted Kennedy's anti-Iraq speech of Jan. 27 had disappeared from its Web site. In fact it is here, at a different link than before, and one that is not easily found except by using the Kennedy site's search engine.
The Devil Is in the Details
"Electrical Fault Blamed for Fire in Hell"--headline, New Zealand Herald, March 3
This Just In
"Detroit Falls Behind in Fight Against Blight"--headline, Detroit News, March 1
Why There Are So Few Elephants in Germany
"Inseminating Elephant Takes 2 Germans, an Ultrasound and a Very Long Wait"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 2
A Star Is Born?
"A Japanese-U.S. joint research team has been successful in taking X-ray photos of a 'fetus of a star' that has not yet begun to emit light," reports Japan's Mainichi newspaper. Can it be long before Karl Rove and his antichoice fanatics find ways to exploit this to win votes in the red planets?
Baby Bottles
"Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman told a group of fourth graders on Monday that if he was marooned on a desert island the one thing he would want to have with him is a bottle of gin," the Las Vegas sun reports:
And when a student quizzed Goodman about his hobbies he replied that "drinking" was one of them, said Mackey Elementary School Principal Kamala Washington, who was present for the mayor's visit.
Goodman was unapologetic for his comments that came during his visit to the elementary school in North Las Vegas.
"I'm the George Washington of mayors. I can't tell a lie. If they didn't want the answer the kid shouldn't have asked the question," Goodman said. "It's me, what can I do?"
Washington--Kamala, not George--said of her charges that Goodman's comments "just went over their heads." She added: "When someone talks about drinking they think 'juice' anyway."
Still, perhaps his fondness for the hard spirits gives a clue as to Goodman's political success. DigitalRoom.net has an essay called "How to Win an Argument," and its first bit of advice is "Drink liquor":
Suppose you're at a party and some hotshot intellectual is expounding on the economy of Peru, a subject you know nothing about. If you're drinking some health-fanatic drink like grapefruit juice, you'll hang back, afraid to display your ignorance, while the hotshot entralls [sic] your date. But if you drink several large shots of Jack Daniels, you'll discover you have STRONG VIEWS about the Peruvian economy. You'll be a WEALTH of information. You'll argue forcefully, offering searing insights and possibly upsetting furniture. People will be impressed. Some may leave the room.
The essay concludes with "Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler":
This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly. Say: "That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler might say" or "You certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler."
If Goodman can master this technique, he'll be on his way to becoming the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate. |
