Best of the Web Today - June 17, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
'It's Not Their Fault'
Here's a revealing passage from a Washington Times report on a John Kerry campaign appearance in Columbus, Ohio:
Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college.
"That's unacceptable," he said. "But it's not their fault."
Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and "all of us as adults not doing what we need to do."
What do adults "need to do" to prevent youngsters from turning to crime? Surely, above all, instill in them a sense of personal responsibility. Kerry sends precisely the opposite message when he says of criminals--and, it would seem, only of those criminals who happen to be black--that "it's not their fault." There's a tinge of racism, what President Bush aptly terms "the soft bigotry of low expectations," in Kerry's assumption that young blacks can't be expected to do any better than end up in prison.
Kerry's Grass Is Greener in the Blue States
"The success of our campaign depends on having a strong and active group of supporters," says John Kerry's Web site. "With your help, we will create a program whose size and reach is unmatched in the history of Presidential elections."
But the effort is coming up short, claims pro-Bush blogger Matt Margolis. He used a nifty feature on Kerry's volunteers page that lets you search for supporters of the haughty, French-looking caged hamster, who by the way served in Vietnam, within 25 miles of any ZIP code in the country. He found an abundance of Kerry volunteers in and around Beverly Hills (215), Boston (246), Manhattan (373), San Francisco (251) and Washington (467), but far fewer in swing-state locales like Cincinnati (36), Cleveland (52), Las Vegas (23), Minneapolis (61) and Phoenix (46).
Part of the difference no doubt is a function of population density, and of course it's no surprise that Kerry supporters would be concentrated in heavily Democratic areas. But Sam Dealey notes in the New York Post that President Bush's grassroots campaign is so well-organized they've even gotten around to shopping for furniture:
The Bush campaign has concentrated overwhelmingly on its field operations in the hopes of blunting that of the Democrats. In the battleground state of Ohio, for example, the Bush camp announced its state leadership in late September and formally opened its headquarters on New Year's. By mid-February, the campaign named leaders in all of the state's counties, and has already selected chairs in almost 90 percent of targeted precincts.
Similarly, the Bush campaign has formally been organizing in Florida since early October. The campaign now claims it has grassroots coordinators in every targeted precinct.
"We have a county chair in every single state that was closest in 2000," says Bush campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise. "And in many of those closest states, we're organizing down to the precinct level, building a robust grassroots team."
"I think that they're lying," says [Democratic strategist Donna] Brazile. "I think they're organized down to the block level. I think they've done one step better."
Less consequential but more amusing is the Kerry camp's desultory organization in Texas. The Houston Press's oddly named "Hair Balls" column reports (last item):
One Houston mother tells Hair Balls she wanted to introduce her preteen and a couple of his friends to the political process by the time-honored tradition of envelope-stuffing and block-walking. So she found a number for the Kerry campaign's Houston headquarters and dialed, no doubt expecting open arms for an actual volunteer here in alleged Bush Country.
"Umm," she was told by a clearly taken-aback staffer. "We don't really have a lot of room here." Not to mention "I don't really know what volunteers could do" (Whaaat?) and abject horror at the thought of preteens running around.
"It turns out Kerry's office here deals only with fund-raising calls to bigfoot financial types," the paper reports. This leads us to suspect that the Kerry campaign has simply decided to write off the state of Texas.
Kerry Adviser: We Need More Enemies
Since we last heard from him, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida has somehow gone from being a fringe candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination to, in the Washington Times' words, "to Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign." Graham surfaced in a conference call with reporters yesterday in which he revealed--you better sit down before you read this--that al Qaeda has a presence in Iraq:
"Are there al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq today? The answer is absolutely yes," said Mr. Graham, former ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "I would not be surprised if lieutenants of Osama bin Laden were part of that."
But Mr. Graham blamed the administration for al Qaeda's presence there, saying, "We created a situation of chaos. We made it an attractive haven for all kinds of terrorists."
Now, it's probably true that there are more al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq today than there were before it was liberated. But if so, they came from somewhere else. Where would Graham rather they be? Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, whose governments have mixed loyalties and thus are hardly reliable terror-fighters? New York or Washington? Heck, why not Miami?
It's hard to see how Graham can consider Iraq a "haven" for terrorists, when there are more than 150,000 coalition troops there to kill or capture the terrorists. Besides, even if there are more al Qaeda men in Iraq today, there's also one fewer dictator. Graham's complaint seems to be that America doesn't have enough enemies.
'Just Because I Could'
In an interview with Dan Rather, to air Sunday on "60 Minutes," Bill Clinton admits that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky, the Associated Press reports. We feel as if we've lost our innocence. After all, Clinton went on national television and told us he did not. He waved his finger, for crying out loud! If you can't believe a finger-wagging president of the United States, who can you believe?
Clinton says he messed with Monica "for the worst possible reason: just because I could. I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."
Really? "Just because I could" sounds a lot like "Because it's there." Does Clinton really mean to suggest that it was "morally indefensible" for George Leigh Mallory to climb Mount Everest? What an outrageous slur against a great explorer.
Of his impeachment for lying under oath and obstructing justice, however, Clinton says: "The whole battle was a badge of honor. I don't see it as a stain, because it was illegitimate."
At long last, sir, have you no shame? We guess that depends on what the meaning of shame is.
We Really Are a Hip-Hop Nation
"9/11 Panel Raps Response to Hijackings"--headline, Associated Press, June 17
The Soviet What?
Even at this late date, not everyone agrees that Ronald Reagan deserves primary credit for winning the Cold War. Some still maintain that Mikhail Gorbachev, Time magazine's erstwhile "Man of the Decade," was the driving force. This, of course, is absurd. While Gorbachev's reforms certainly helped things along, the purpose of those reforms was to save communism, not to bury it.
One Francis A. Andrew of Zarqa, Jordan, offers a truly novel theory in a letter to the editor of the Arab News (last letter):
First of all we have to examine very carefully what is meant by the term "communism." More often than not it is simply used as a label whereby those who possess what is generally described as a "right-wing" political disposition discredit their "left-wing" opponents. This is in much the same vein as those on the left use the term "fascist" to depict right-of-center politicians. . . .
Communism, according to the classical model as described by Marx and Engels, has never existed, so it was never there to "collapse" in the first place. In the old Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries, economic and technological development had reached the critical point whereby state capitalism and the slave labor of the gulags had to give way to the more efficient system of free-market economics and devolved capitalism.
So the increased freedom now enjoyed by the peoples of the old Soviet bloc has nothing to do with Reagan or American influence or anything else like them. It is simply due to the onward march of history and the inevitable and involuntary changes that come with it.
Communism never existed. It was all a bad dream. Or was it?
Pining Away for Something to Eat
KCNA, the official North Korean "news" agency, carries the following dispatch under the headline "Efficacious Pine Needle Foodstuff":
Pine needle has been used as material of health foodstuffs from ancient times in Korea. According to "Hyangyakjipsongbang" (a medical encyclopedia) published in the 15th century in Korea, pine needle prevents aging, invigorates spirits and turns grey hair to black.
The Korean people have used pine needles in steaming rice-cake and curing various diseases.
The Natural Health Foodstuff Company under the Ministry of Forestry developed a pine needle tea last year through deep study of medical classics and ecological experiments. It also succeeded in making pine needle liquor which preserves its natural medicinal ingredients.
The liquor contains vitamins C, B1, B2, B12, PP, A and E, and some 40 kinds of microelements including calcium and selenium, nucleic acid, essential amino acid and sexual hormone preparations.
It is efficacious for the prevention and treatment of cancer, arteriosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, chronic colitis, rheumatic inflammation, cerebral hemorrhage and cerebral thrombosis. It also prevents aging and promotes health.
Kim Chang Gil, director of the company, told KCNA that the liquor is popular among people as it makes people feel well, promotes digestion by eliminating toxic elements from liver and increasing the liver function and removes swelling. It is also a good diuretic.
The company . . . has steadily made researches to make other kinds of pine needle foodstuffs.
You really have to admire the positive attitude of those NoKo commies. Life doesn't even give them lemons, and still they make pine-needle ade.
Testing the Limits
"In a direct challenge to federal limits on political advocacy, the National Rifle Association plans to begin broadcasting a daily radio program on Thursday to provide news and pro-gun commentary to 400,000 listeners," the New York Times reports.
In a direct challenge to federal limits on political advocacy, the New York Times Co. plans to continue publishing a daily newspaper to provide news and antigun commentary to 1.1 million readers.
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Acrobats Are People Too
"The animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has asked the city of St. Paul to take legal action against Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the case of an acrobat who fell to her death during a performance last month at Xcel Energy Center," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
Is PETA suggesting that it considers acrobats to be less than human?
Fowl Play
"Seven teenagers who beheaded two chickens because they were curious whether they would run around with their heads cut off" have been convicted of animal cruelty, the Associated Press reports from Statesboro, Ga. As part of their sentence, the teens will have to "read a book about animals' feelings."
You may scoff, but apparently chickens are very sensitive, at least according to prosecutors, who claimed that another six of the birds "died because of the stress of witnessing the beheadings."
In case you were wondering, the defendants' lawyer says the two murdered chickens "sort of ran a very short distance and they sort of flopped over." Oh, the chickenity!
Stereotyping Siberian Kangaroos
Some readers took issue with our Tuesday item on the racial controversy over the new movie "Garfield." Here's John Behnke
The quote you supplied--
Garfield is orange, which implies that he represents the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, i.e. making fun of muslim fighters because this is a comedy. The black stripes represent scars caused by torture with hot metal rods (see: Abu Ghraib prison), which sends the wrong message to kids, many of who will grow up to serve in the US army. He's also overweight, lazy, selfish and loves lasagna, which represents a racist stab at all americans of italian origin.
Who could've ever imagined that a film based on a 26 year old cartoon strip about a cat could have so many implications and controversial hidden messages?
--had a final sentence you left off:
This is indeed a racist movie, and I'm a purple, eight foot tall, three-legged, kickboxing siberian kangaroo.
The author was obviously being sarcastic, not "elaborating further."
Well, Mr. Behnke, why would you say the author was "obvoiusly being sarcastic" just because he's a purple, eight-foot-tall, three-legged, kickboxing Siberian kangaroo? How sad that in the 21st century there are still those who stereotype others on the basis of their color, height, number of legs, athletic activities, nationality and species. |
