Best of the Web Today - February 18, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Bye-ku for Howard Dean
He raged and he screamed
Then lingered long enough to
End with a whimper
(Earlier bye-kus: Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Carol Moseley Braun, Yasuhiro Nakasone and Bob Graham.)
Edwards Badgers Kerry
The results in yesterday's Wisconsin primary remind us a lot of the outcome in nearby Iowa four weeks ago: a win by John Kerry (with 40% of the vote), with a respectable second-place showing by John Edwards (34%) and Howard Dean (18%) a distant third. As in Iowa, Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman were not competing; the only difference was that neither was Dick Gephardt.
Since Kerry victories and Dean defeats are no longer news, most of the postprimary analysis has centered on Edwards's performance. "Kerry's momentum is now checked," writes William Safire in the New York Times. "The surprise was John Edwards's powerful showing, especially among independents." Suddenly, we're hearing, it's a two-man race--even though Kerry has won 15 of 17 primaries, compared with just one for Edwards. (Wesley Clark won one as well before deserting the race.)
The Wisconsin exit polls (available in HTML and PDF) give further reason for skepticism about Edwards's supposed surge. The Badger State does not have party registration, so that anyone can vote in the primary. Of the voters in the exit poll, only 62% described themselves as Democrats, and they went overwhelmingly for Kerry, 48% to 31%. Edwards bested Kerry 40% to 28% among independents (who made up 29% of the sample) and 44% to 18% among Republicans (9% of the sample).
Curiously, Kerry vastly outpolled Edwards--69% to 21%--among the 23% of the exit poll sample who said their highest priority was choosing the man who "can defeat George W. Bush." Kerry's weak showing among self-described independents and Republicans suggests that his "electability" may be a myth--the product of out-of-touch Democrats who think voters will excuse Kerry's weakness on national security owing to his war record, and who think anyone will be impressed by his phony tough-guy "bring it on" bluster.
It's not out of the question that the Edwards surge will actually amount to something. It's especially helpful to Edwards that Clark and Dean are out of the race, making him the only alternative to the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam. But with primaries coming up March 2 in big states like California and New York, which allow only Democrats to vote, Edwards's cross-party appeal will be of little further help. Edwards almost certainly is more electable than Kerry, but can he persuade his own party of that?
Political Torture
One reason Edwards would be a better general-election candidate than Kerry is that the former has a pleasant, sunny demeanor, while the latter is stiff and dour. Americans seem to like their presidents to be men of good cheer; since at least 1980, the more lightsome candidate has beaten his grimmer opponent every time.
ScrappleFace.com has a funny riff on this theme: "The North Carolina Senator . . . captured 95 percent of the votes of people who had seen Mr. Kerry speaking on TV," according to the satirical Web site. "Mr. Kerry won big among former Al Gore supporters who believe that 'talking slowly without moving one's face' is the key to defeating Mr. Bush."
Kerry has the dubious and perhaps unique distinction of being a presidential candidate whose speeches have actually been used as an instrument of torture against Americans. The Los Angeles Times reports on Kerry's April 22, 1971, appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which we noted last week:
Dressed in his combat fatigues and ribbons, [Kerry] told Congress that U.S. soldiers had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads . . . randomly shot at civilians . . . in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." He later acknowledged that he did not witness the crimes himself but had heard about them from others. . . .
Paul Galanti learned of Kerry's speech while held captive inside North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison. The Navy pilot had been shot down in June 1966 and spent nearly seven years as a prisoner of war.
During torture sessions, he said, his captors cited the antiwar speeches as "an example of why we should cross over to [their] side."
Whereas those who've attended Edwards events report that he's a captivating speaker, listening to Kerry speak is like being in captivity.
This Just In
"Kerry Hopes War Record Attracts Vets"--headline, FoxNews.com, Feb. 17
The Spirit of '72
Tom Hayden, the 64-year-old erstwhile student protester, California state senator and Jane Fonda husband, is happy with the direction the Democratic Party has taken this year. "The Democratic presidential candidates have adopted the broad goals of the peace and justice movements, becoming anti-war and pro-fair trade in the course of the primaries," he writes at AlterNet.org:
American politics is being realigned swiftly and unexpectedly in a progressive direction. On war and peace, jobs and trade, civil rights and civil liberties, and the environment, the Democratic Party is being shaped by its own insurgent constituencies on the ground than by its internal leadership, consultants and pollsters, fundraising professionals, revolving-door law firms and their clientele.
Such a realignment was envisioned in the Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) when human hope was in the air 40 years ago. The early SDS strategy was that independent social movements (civil rights, students, peace and labor) could shape a progressive political majority, force white Southern conservatives from the party, and spark a new governing coalition in the tradition of the New Deal. Assassinations and the war in Vietnam ended those hopes. But now the same fault lines have appeared in American democracy once again, and those whose ideals were forged in the 1960s may have one last chance to, so to speak, accomplish their mission.
If Hayden is right, this bodes ill for the Dems. The last time they unreservedly embraced the "ideals" of the 1960s was in 1972, when they nominated George McGovern, he of acid, amnesty and abortion. McGovern managed 37.5% of the popular vote and carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, and he was running against an unpopular war.
Speaking of McGovern, the 81-year-old ex-senator has a letter to the editor in today's New York Times in which he urges America to abandon Iraq. It's signed "George McGovern, Marco Island, Fla." In case you're not familiar with Marco Island, check out its Web site:
Marco Island is the largest of Florida's Ten Thousand Islands, located on the Gulf of Mexico in Southwest Florida. It has been described as Magical, Mystical and Alluring. The attraction is tropical sun-washed white beaches and a casual easy paced life style. Sunshine, frolicking dolphins, and all of the water and sun sports that go with the beaches are available for your pleasure.
Just the sort of place to incubate a progressive populist movement.
We Have Overcome
Campus police caught a student wandering around a dorm in blackface, reports the Daily Orange, the Syracuse University student newspaper. But the university's director of public safety, Marlene Hall, tells the paper the suspect offered an excuse: "The student told officers that the face paint was camouflage--not blackface--and that he was actually on his way to rob a house, Hall said." Only a burglar--what a relief!
Meanwhile, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., reports that "a photo scavenger hunt" at Pomona College sparked "a racial controversy":
An e-mail from group leaders suggested that members snap "a photo with 10 or more Asians," an ethnic group that makes up about 13 percent of students. . . .
Ann Quinley, the dean of students, sent an e-mail to all students denouncing the incident, quickly making it the buzz of Pomona College's 1,500 students.
"The potential of having numerous students run around campus trying to snap photographs with 10 or more Asian or Asian American people is racist, offensive, and in violation of shared community values," Quinley wrote on behalf of the Incident Response Team, a committee that responds to "bias-related incidents and hate crimes."
And at the University of Oregon, the Daily Emerald reports that a campus production of "The Vagina Monologues" drew protests:
They silently stood hand in hand with gray duct tape pasted across their lips and "Vagina Warriors" emblazoned on the back of their white shirts. The front of the shirts had different messages: "Warning: Hostile Vagina," "Not all vaginas are skinny, white + straight" and "My [obscenity deleted] is not represented here." . . .
In flyers handed out to audience members at the show, University graduate Nicole Sangsuree Barrett wrote that while there was "diversity" in the show, it was minimal. Women of "a variety of skin colors, body sizes, abilities and gender expressions" were not adequately represented, she said.
Reading about such nonsense, it's hard to believe that the civil rights movement was, within living memory, an important and morally serious enterprise.
Doomsville
Ha'aretz picks up a report from Israel Radio that the terror group Hamas "is proposing to the Palestinian public that settlements evacuated by Israel under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan be used to house the families of suicide bombers." Well, putting them all in the same place would make them an easier target for the Israelis.
Meanwhile, the Olympian, a daily published in the Washington state capital, reports that Rachel Corrie, the terror advocate who died in a bulldozer accident last year while trying to protect Palestinian weapons-smuggling operations, has won a posthumous award from a "housing rights group":
On Monday evening, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions presented Corrie's parents with the first Housing Defender Award given by the group. . . . Previously, the group gave awards only to national governments.
A man's weapons-smuggling tunnel is his castle?
Weasel Watch
"France's heavily subsidised intelligentsia accused the Paris government yesterday of waging a 'war on intelligence,' " London's Daily Telegraph reports:
More than 20,000 academics, artists, writers, doctors and lawyers have signed a petition decrying the "new state anti-intellectualism."
Eight thousand of the names were published yesterday in the cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles, alongside a manifesto that called on all the groups threatened by the government's attitude to unite. . . .
The petition aims to bring together the diverse groups who have a gripe with the government. These range from freelance performers, whose pay and benefit entitlements have been reduced, to lawyers, who oppose the government's stringent new crime Bill. Teachers, doctors and researchers are seething over budget cuts, while psychiatrists must now obtain proper scientific qualifications.
It's a measure of just how pathetic American intellectuals are that they actually admire the French government.
Reuters: Jews Are Pressuring Us!
This comes from a Reuters dispatch on Mel Gibson's controversial new movie, "The Passion of the Christ":
In an interview with Reuters Television after he met Vatican officials, Abraham Foxman, U.S. director of the Anti-Defamation League, an independent Jewish pressure group, said the film portrayed Jews as bloodthirsty and vengeful.
Now, we have no dog in the fight over Gibson's movie, but Reuters' description of the ADL as a "pressure group" got our attention. It's not that the characterization is inaccurate; the ADL is indeed, as Merriam-Webster defines the term, "an interest group organized to influence public and especially government policy but not to elect candidates to office."
But pressure group is a somewhat pejorative term, and Reuters is anything but evenhanded in its application. In another dispatch, the "news" service describes the Council on American Islamic Relations as "an Islamic civil rights and advocacy group."
A Great Idea, Up in Smoke
It seems Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not planning to tear a roof off California's state capitol to make way for a "smoking plaza," as the Daily Telegraph had reported (and we repeated yesterday). Sacramento Bee blogger Daniel Weintraub says the story is false: "I checked with the governor's office. They officially confirmed: no plans for any demolition or altering of the Capitol. They have, of course, installed a donated tent, about 10 feet by 10 feet, in the center of the governor's (pre-existing) open air courtyard. The tent looks for all the world like a smoking tent, complete with ashtrays. But Schwarzenegger aides insist on calling the shelter a 'deal-making tent.' "
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It's the Eponymy, Stupid
Yesterday we noted that the delightfully named Dr. Bias, professor of information at the University of Texas, had won an engineering award from IBM. Here's another prof with a great name: Dr. Duffus, chairman of Emory University's department of mathematics and computer science.
Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
"Slaying Victim Dies After Altercation"--headline, Record (Stockton, Calif.), Feb. 18
Now We're Cooking With Gas
"Cookbook Features Recipes for Death Row"--headline, Associated Press, Feb. 18
I Smell a Rat
"Fear of catching bird flu from eating chicken has prompted some people in northwest Cambodia to resort to eating rats," the Associated Press reports from Phnom Penh, the capital. "People eat the rat meat with rice or as a snack while drinking alcohol."
Are Cambodian eating habits the inspiration for the strange new ad campaign promoting the Quiznos Subs fast-food chain? The ads, which you can watch in Flash format at the Quiznos Web site, feature a musical pair of animated creatures--one sings, the other plays guitar--that look for all the world like wild-eyed mutant rodents. Mmmm . . . toasty! |
