Toranto is on a roll today.
Best of the Web Today - June 14, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
The Crying Game
What makes George Voinovich so contemptible? Michael Collins of the Scripps Howard News Service posed the question over the weekend, in an article amusingly titled "Scorn Over 'Buckeye Boo-Hoo' Mystifies Experts":
Ever since Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, got all weepy on the Senate floor a few weeks ago, he has been widely mocked by pundits, wags, bloggers, editorial writers and just about everybody else with a sense of emotional superiority. . . .
Although it's nothing new for politicians to become the laughingstock of an increasingly cynical public, even the experts are a little baffled by the outpouring of hostility directed at Voinovich's outpouring of emotion.
"We don't universally make fun of politicians when they cry--that's the interesting thing," said Randolph Cornelius, a Vassar College professor and researcher who has studied human emotions, and weeping in particular.
In some cases, in fact, letting the tears flow can enhance a politician's image. Think Rudolph Giuliani and 9/11. Giuliani's emotional, misty-eyed public appearances in the days after the terrorist attacks softened his brusque image as New York mayor and helped him build needed political capital, Cornelius said.
The difference, of course, is that tears were one appropriate response to the enormity of 9/11. Similarly, we saw a congressman on TV during the recent stem-cell debate who was in tears as he talked about the plight of cancer-stricken kids, which is indisputably sad.
Voinovich, by contrast, was blubbering because John Bolton, a man who is purported to be socially rough-edged, is about to become America's ambassador to the U.N. This is not something that would make a normal person weep. "If he cried every time he thought of a brusque federal official, Lake Erie couldn't hold all the tears," political scientist John Pitney tells Collins.
The emotional incongruity of Voinovich's response is enough to make him seem weird, but the contempt to which he has been subject is also owing to the way in which he came to oppose Bolton. At first he seemed totally indifferent to the question of who would be the U.N. ambassador, not even bothering to show up for the Bolton hearings. He finally appeared on the day the committee was to have voted on the nomination, listened to the Democrats ritually denounce Bolton, and then declared himself troubled, causing a delay in the vote.
When the time finally came to send Bolton's nomination to the floor, Voinovich declared that he had been persuaded Bolton was "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be" and that he would oppose the nomination on the Senate floor--though it didn't become clear until later that he hoped to drown Bolton in his own tears.
What makes Voinovich's lachrymosity so ludicrous is its sincerity. Does Chris Dodd or Joe Biden or John Kerry or Barbara Boxer cry herself to sleep thinking about mean old John Bolton going to Turtle Bay? Not a chance. Their campaign against Bolton was totally cynical, motivated by a combination of ideology and partisanship. And Voinovich fell for it! Their phony sanctimony touched his heart and drove him to tears. His crying fit on the Senate floor was a display of weak-mindedness as well as emotional incontinence.
Or, to put it another way, the Democrats can't win elections or accomplish much of anything else--but damned if they can't make George Voinovich cry. Even an expert should understand why that makes him the most ridiculous man in politics today.
Maddy's Call to Arms
Madeleine Albright spoke in Denver the other day and faulted America for neglecting Africa:
She decried the country's lack of support for sub-Saharan black Africa, calling Rwanda a "volcanic" genocide and the current situation in the Darfur region of Sudan a "rolling genocide" that the United States must get involved in.
"There's no excuse. The money we spend in one year in Iraq would pay for 20 years of helping Africa," she said.
One thing's for sure: If Madeleine Albright were secretary of state, we'd be doing a lot more about Africa's problems. Oh wait . . .
(Hat tip: Don Surber.)
This Kafir Shrugs
Columnist Diana West is troubled by the precautions American soldiers guarding terrorist prisoners take to avoid "mishandling" the Koran, and she explains their theological underpinnings:
Under Islamic law, non-Muslims are deemed unfit to touch the Quran. That much is generally known. What is not usually considered is the reason: According to the Islamic law, we are unclean.
The term is "najis." On the multilingual Web site of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, there is a catalogue of Islamic laws. This includes a list of "najis things." There are 10, beginning with an assortment of excretions and body fluids--obvious stuff that really shouldn't need special mention. On the "najis" list with urine, feces, etc., are the pig, the dog and the "kafir." That means the Christian, the Jew, the unbeliever in Islam--and, chances are, the Gitmo guard.
In effect, then, with its official policy of clean cloves and detainee towels, the United States military is promoting, enabling and accepting the Islamic concept of najis--the unclean infidel--a barbarous notion that has helped fuel the bloodlust of jihad and the non-Muslim subjugation of dhimmitude. Our soldiers are many things: self-sacrificing, bold, loyal and true. They are not unclean.
Is this political correctness run amok? Not exactly. It's something else again, a new threat from within that needs vigilant redress. P.C. is about victimology, the elevation of perceived victim groups to the canonical pantheon. The Gitmo rules are more blatantly about surrender, a voluntary self-extinguishment, a spreading condition of denial of what is right and worth standing for. Not what you expect from the United States Southern Command.
This seems like an overreaction. To our mind, the military's deference to Muslim law is an act of magnanimity, not surrender. Lots of religions believe things that seem silly to nonbelievers, and if a Muslim fundamentalist believes we're "unclean," there's no reason that should bother us any more than if a Christian fundamentalist believes we're going to hell. Muslim terrorists are our enemies because they're trying to kill us, not because they think we're unclean.
Another Confirmation
The Senate has approved another judicial nominee, Thomas Griffith of Utah, whom President Bush appointed to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The vote was 73-24; every opponent was a Democrat. The Associated Press explains why some Dems objected to Griffith:
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Judiciary [Committee] Democrat, said Griffith's refusal to get a Utah law license should have disqualifed [sic] him from the court.
Griffith said he doesn't have a Utah law license because he never thought he needed it for his job as lawyer for Brigham Young University. He also took the blame for losing his D.C. law license by not paying bar association dues. He got the license back by paying what he owed.
"Mr. Griffith has foregone at least 10 opportunities to take the bar in Utah, and has continued to refuse to do so during the pendency of his nomination. In this regard he appears to think he is above the law," Leahy said. "That is not the kind of person who should be entrusted with a lifetime appointment to a federal court and, least of all, to such an important court as the D.C. Circuit, which is entrusted with protecting the rights of all Americans. This is the wrong nomination for this court."
The Democrats did not filibuster Griffith's nomination in 2004, but it failed to get past the Judiciary Committee, whose then-chairman, Orrin Hatch, was the leading champion of his fellow Utahn.
Liberal Racism
Columnist Derrick Z. Jackson denounces Republicans for highlighting Janice Rogers Brown's background as a black girl in segregated Alabama:
All this comes from the party that has slashed the budget for literacy, housing, youth programs and community development grants for the millions of other would-be Janice Rogers Browns. While praising Brown for pulling herself up by her bootstraps, the White House and the Republican majority in Congress won't raise the minimum wage and has even taken to trashing Head Start. Janice Rogers Brown, born in 1949, should be thankful that she is old enough to have had a boot with a strap. Most of today's black girls are expected to excel in public schools funded on shoestrings.
The suggestion that blacks can't succeed without federal programs is offensive enough, and Jackson's argument is nonsense anyway. Aside from the minimum wage (imposed in 1938), all the programs to which Jackson refers date from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, which means Brown wouldn't have been able to "benefit" from them until she was in high school.
Land of the Lost
Back in April 2003, we argued that polygamy would be far worse for society than same-sex marriage. A story in London's Guardian dramatically illustrates the point:
Up to 1,000 teenage boys have been separated from their parents and thrown out of their communities by a polygamous sect to make more young women available for older men, Utah officials claim.
Many of these "Lost Boys," some as young as 13, have simply been dumped on the side of the road in Arizona and Utah, by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), and told they will never see their families again or go to heaven.
It should be noted that this is not the LDS church, also known as the Mormons, which has strictly forbidden polygamy since 1890. Jim Hill, an investigator for the Utah attorney general, "said although the boys may have been rebellious, their expulsion had more to do with the ruthless sexual arithmetic of a polygamous sect."
They'll End Poverty in 22 Days!
The Sun, a London tabloid, reports from Moscow on a meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Vladimir Putin:
Mr Putin had invited Mr Blair to his country residence for talks about the Prime Minister's drive to wipe out third world poverty before next month's G8 summit at Gleneagles.
And people say President Bush is a dreamer.
Can't Anyone Get Them From the Token Clerk Anyway?
"NYPD Denies Reports Man Taken Into Custody in Brooklyn Had Maps of Subway System"--headline, NY1.com, June 13
Some of Us Saw It in 1969
"NASA Sees Earliest Manned Moon Landing in 2015"--headline, Reuters, June 13
We Feel Their Pain
"Lonely Galaxies Appear Blue"--headline, Space.com, June 13
What Would We Do Without Giant Balls of 'Snot'?
"Giant Balls of 'Snot' Explain Ocean Mystery"--headline, LiveScience.com, June 10
Will Cigars Be Allowed Too?
"Clinton May Rescind Park Ban on Sex Offenders"--headline, Deseret News (Salt Lake City), June 13
So Does Michael Jackson
"ACLU Needs to Leave the Boy Scouts Alone"--headline, Decatur (Ala.) Daily, June 14
'MSM' Means What?
We always thought "MSM" was an abbreviation for "mainstream media," but boy were we wrong. Check out this story from the Miami Herald:
A just-completed survey of men who have sex with men (MSM) in five U.S. metropolitan areas -- including the Miami area -- found that black men in this category were more than twice as likely to be infected with HIV as other such men, and much less likely to be aware of it.
The survey and HIV testing of 1,767 men, done at gay bars, book stores and street corners, found that 46 percent of black MSM were HIV-positive compared with 21 percent of white non-Hispanics and 17 percent of Hispanics.
This kind of terminology could raise some serious confusion: "I thought he was straight," she said, "but it turns out he's just a social worker."
Meanwhile, the Cherwell, a student newspaper at Oxford, reports a student there is accused of being coarse--to a horse, of course:
A student at Balliol College was arrested and detained in custody for a night after he verbally abused a police horse. . . . [Steve] Brown was fined for "causing harassment, harm or distress," after he repeatedly called the officer's horse "gay." . . .
Brown inquired, "How do you feel about your horse being gay?" of one of the policemen, stating that his colleague's was clearly not gay. After repeated comments on the sexuality of his horse, and despite warnings from the policeman about his behaviour, Brown's offer of an apology to the horse was rejected and he was handcuffed and taken by the officers to the police station. . . .
The [police] spokesman also said that the "homophobic comments" were not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area.
Let's hope Brown learns his lesson, and the next time he finds himself in a similar situation he calls the horse an SSS. |
