Best of the Web Today - April 23, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
A Football Hero Who Became a Proper Hero
Pat Tillman, an Arizona Cardinals defensive back, left the team in 2002 to join the Rangers. No, he didn't switch to baseball and move to Texas. He joined the Army Rangers, and he gave up a $3.6 million football contract to do it.
Yesterday Tillman died in combat in Afghanistan, ABC News reports:
According to a Pentagon source, Tillman was killed in action when his unit's patrol was attacked by small arms and mortar fire during a coordinated ambush in eastern Afghanistan.
Two U.S. soldiers were wounded and one enemy combatant was killed during the ambush.
Tillman's brother, Kevin, a former minor league baseball player with the Cleveland Indians, is in the same platoon.
In July 2002 our Peggy Noonan paid tribute to Pat Tillman and also profiled (anonymously) various powerful and well-to-do parents of servicemen. "We are making a lot of Tillmans in America," Noonan observes. Let's hope we lose as few as possible in the course of defeating the enemy.
Happy Earth Day, Mr. Kerry
Yesterday was Earth Day, the environmentalist faux holiday observed every day on Lenin's birthday. In fact, the first Earth Day was April 22, 1970, the Lenin centenary. John Kerry is presenting himself as the environmental candidate, so it's a little surprising to learn that he spent Earth Day advocating policies that would increase Americans' fossil-fuel consumption. As Reuters reports:
Kerry on Thursday challenged President Bush to prove he had not cut a deal with Saudi Arabia by pressuring OPEC oil-producing countries to lower prices now. . . .
"Mr. President, I'm here today to say if there was no deal, no agreement . . . then stand up today and jawbone OPEC to lower the price now," Kerry told a rally at the University of Houston to mark Earth Day.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports Kerry may own "a gas-guzzling SUV"--depending on what the meaning of own is:
Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the Chevrolet SUV.
"The family has it. I don't have it," he said.
Well, at least he didn't inhale the exhaust fumes. Kerry also "said it's important for his family to buy American cars." But that Chrysler 300M of his turns out to be made in Canada.
Nader: Poor but Potent?
"Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader raised about $600,000 in the two months since he announced his candidacy, enough money to qualify for federal matching funds and well ahead of the fund-raising pace he set four years ago," the Associated Press reports from Washington.
Sounds like good news for Nader and bad news for Kerry--but maybe not. Another AP dispatch reports that Howard Dean's campaign raked in $626,615 last month alone--even though it is now defunct.
Then again, Nader is sufficiently well known that he may not need that much money to stir things up this November. Tech Central Station's James Glassman argues that with Nader in the race, troubles in Iraq could work in President Bush's favor:
Kerry's position on the war is not much different from the President's--except that Kerry says he would manage it better and make it more international. Nader, by contrast, is fervently anti-war: "I have been against this war from the beginning. We must not waste lives in order to control and waste more oil." Nader even believes that Bush should be impeached because he "led the United States into an illegal, unconstitutional war in Iraq."
Nader calls Bush a "messianic militarist," and in a letter on his website, he writes that, just as during the conflict in Vietnam in 1968, when two pro-war candidates--Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey--were running for president, today we have, similarly, Bush and Kerry. Nader warns students that "machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place."
In a Gallup poll earlier this month, 28% favored pulling all American troops out of Iraq. Even if Kerry won three-quarters of these antiwar voters (and assuming all of them eschewed Bush), the remaining quarter alone would give Nader 7%, almost three times his total last year.
Peaceniks Grab Kids' Toys
"A project to provide children in Iraq with teddy bears has been criticised by peace campaigners, as the toys are made from military uniforms," the BBC reports:
Volunteers at the US RAF Lakenheath base in Suffolk have been producing the soft toys from old and torn uniforms which were found in an attic.
But campaigners Suffolk 4 Peace have said the scheme is insensitive and could traumatise the Iraqi children. . . .
Annie Wimbush, of Suffolk 4 Peace, said the material being used was inappropriate.
"The camouflage material, the uniform material that's being used could in fact trigger trauma symptoms in a child as well as relieve them," she said.
Does Annie Wimbush have any kids? Do they get lumps of coal in their Christmas stockings?
The Grass Is Always Greener
"For Japanese Hostages, Release Only Adds to Stress"--headline, New York Times, April 22
Not Too Brite--CXL
"A Mexican cook killed his drinking buddy, cut up his body and boiled him in herbs, according to police who fear he may have been turning him into tamales," Reuters reports from Mexico City.
Oddly Enough!
(For an explanation of the "Not Too Brite" series, click here.)
What Would We Do Without Reports?
"College Science Classes Are a Bore, Report Says"--headline, Reuters, April 22
What Would We Do Without Agencies?
"Agencies Say Poverty Persists Despite Global Efforts"--headline, Washington Post, April 23
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Alas! Poor Petrarch! What Would He Do Without Experts?
"Skull Found in Petrarch's Tomb Is Not His, Experts Say"--headline, WOKR-TV Web site (Rochester, N.Y.), April 23
Racial Preference Shell Game
Seattle is building a new monorail, and "officials are aiming to hire minority and female workers for one-third of the Green Line's 600 construction jobs, undaunted by a state law that forbids racial and gender preferences in public hiring." Here's how they evade the law:
Diversity targets are a cornerstone of a new labor agreement with 19 union locals that was signed yesterday by the monorail agency and union leaders.
Companies that win $1.3 billion in monorail design and construction contracts must hire mainly through the union halls, which in turn are expected to recruit "people of color" for at least 21 percent of the on-site workers and women for 12 percent of the jobs.
Jan Keiser, the project's contracts manager, claims the "goals" are not quotas, "because the companies and unions will not be penalized if they fall short." But then there's this: "She added that companies will be judged partly on their diversity plans when two teams of builders bid for the $1.3 billion contract this summer." Perhaps this is all technically legal, but it certainly sounds as if the state is taking great pains to avoid acting in the spirit of the law. If the discrimination in question were against minorities, no one would dream of tolerating it.
Bawling Alone
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the latest manifestation of the campus culture of complaint: discrimination against unmarried professors. Example:
Bella M. DePaulo remembers the semester at the University of Virginia when she was asked to teach a night class because the time was inconvenient for her married colleagues. She recalls the Thursday evening she wound up taking a job candidate to dinner alone because everyone else in her department had family obligations.
Single professors frequently experience such slights, says Ms. DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology on the University of California's campus here who does research on discrimination against single people.
Particularly unfair, she says, are the perks that some universities offer to married professors, but that do not apply to single professors, like hefty tuition discounts for children of faculty members.
"Single people are the last underrepresented minority," Alice Bench, a religion professor at Case Western Reserve University, tells the Chronicle. But their problem is not that they are "underrepresented," it is that they are not married and thus cannot avail themselves of the emotional, financial and logistical support that a husband or wife brings. As for those tuition discounts, aren't they available to children whose parents are unmarried? |
