Best of the Web Today - November 30, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Born to Be Mild
President Bush is in Canada, of all places, and Toronto's Globe and Mail on Saturday ran a story warning that anti-American "protesters" were going to get violent. It doesn't seem to be happening. Agence France-Presse reports from Ottawa (that's the capital) that "journalists outnumbered demonstrators" at the early demos:
The first demonstration--of Palestinians and sympathisers of the Palestinian cause opposed to Washington's support of Israel--attracted less [sic] than 40 demonstrators.
According to a quick head count by journalists, the protest attracted 39 demonstrators, 42 journalists and television crew members and three police officers.
"A few thousand" did show up later at Ottawa's City Hall, according to the Associated Press, but it doesn't seem to have been violent or even interesting. They held up signs calling the president a "war criminal" and an "assassin." Lawrence Wueft, a 60-year-old sculptor from New Brunswick (up by Maine), held a sign that said, "Bush go home." And you know, he probably will.
Will the Dems 'Get' Religion?
The Boston Globe reports that Democrats, stung by their crushing defeat in this month's election, are trying to figure out what this whole "religion" thing is about:
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is investigating how Democrats can talk more effectively about religious issues in the run-up to the midterm elections, when the party of an incumbent president traditionally loses seats in Congress. He was reluctant to talk about his plans until his staff completed research he requested.
Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
Sibling Rivalry
Here's a quote from what is probably the best Maureen Dowd column ever on a topic other than organ transplantation:
We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of people of faith that place moral values over personal freedoms. They are not all "wacky evangelicals." They are people who don't like Howard Stern piping a hard porn show over the airwaves and wrapping himself in the freedom of the First Amendment. They don't like being told that a young girl does not have to seek her mother's counsel about an abortion. They don't like seeing an eight-month-old fetus having his head punctured and his brains sucked out. They don't like being told the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silent prayer and the words "under God" are offensive to an enlightened few so nobody should be allowed to use them.
If this doesn't sound like Maureen Dowd, that's because Maureen didn't write it. Her brother Kevin did. Which gives us an idea: Since William Safire is retiring next month, why not make Kevin Dowd the Times' new conservative op-ed columnist?
Can Uncle Walt Explain This?
"Al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a videotape broadcast on Monday al Qaeda would continue to attack the United States until Washington changed its policies toward the Muslim world," Reuters reports from Dubai.
Well, whatever. What's interesting is that although the video didn't air till yesterday, it "appeared to have been taped before the U.S. presidential elections because he said it not matter [sic] to al Qaeda whether Americans chose President Bush or Democratic challenger John Kerry."
Will Walter Cronkite kindly explain why Karl Rove delayed the release of this video until nearly a month after the election?
Soldiers + Boots = Vietnam!
Despite President Bush's re-election and the impending election in Iraq, the New York Times seems to be holding out hope that America will suffer ignominious defeat. Yesterday's paper carried a dispatch by John F. Burns from Chard Duwaish, Iraq, titled "Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids":
As marines aboard fast patrol boats roared up the Euphrates on a dawn raid on Sunday, images pressed in of another American war where troops moved up wide rivers on camouflaged boats, with machine-gunners nervously scanning riverbanks for the hidden enemy.
That war is rarely mentioned among the American troops in Iraq, many of whom were not yet born when the last American combat units withdrew from Vietnam more than 30 years ago. A war that America did not win is considered a bad talisman among those men and women, who privately admit to fears that this war could be lost.
Shadows falling and images pressing in: What passes for war reporting these days are such figments of a journalist's imagination--or lack thereof.
The Best of Both Worlds
"If we can do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."--John Edwards, Oct. 11
"Stem Cells Help Woman Walk Again"--headline, News.com.au, Nov. 28
Death in the Family?
Capt. Moshe Taranto, 23-year-old commander of the Israeli Defense Forces' "elite tunnel-busting unit," died yesterday "when a deep ditch parallel to a weapons-smuggling tunnel collapsed," burying him, the Jerusalem Post reports. Coincidentally, terror advocate Rachel Corrie, who died last year in a bulldozer accident while defending weapons-smuggling tunnels, was also 23.
Many readers have written to ask if Capt. Taranto was related to us. We don't know of any relation, but we have made an inquiry to Leon Taranto, our fifth cousin once removed and the leading world-wide authority on Tarantos. We'll let you know what we hear.
The Bombing Starts at Harvard
"Military Recruiters Target Schools Strategically"--headline, Boston Globe, Nov. 29
Red Diapers and Jesus' Constitutional Cameo
Two follow-ups to Friday items: In response to Steven Platzer's contention that 1960s counterculture types were products of the Republican suburbs, reader Diane Ravitch writes:
The leadership of the '60s generation contained an extraordinary number of "red diaper" babies. They didn't grow up in Moscow, Idaho! Seymour Martin Lipset and Stanley Rothman have written about the lineage of that generation. It was not of the conformist suburbs!
"Red diaper" babies, for those not familiar with the lingo, were children of 1930s-era communists. Another reader tells us that Ravitch herself made the point in her book "The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980," which we'll plug even though she was too modest to do so.
In response to our item asking if the Constitution is unconstitutional, several readers point out that it is indeed, and they point to the document's final paragraph, which precedes George Washington's signature:
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
"Our Lord" refers not merely to God but to Jesus Christ, so even the old Judeo-Christian dodge is out of the question.
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"For Homeless, a State of Crisis"--headline, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30
No Wonder They Don't Celebrate Thanksgiving . . .
"Europeans in No Mood to Welcome Turkey"--headline, Chicago Tribune, Nov. 26
. . . but Maybe This'll Change Their Mind
"Team Uses Biotech to Build a Better Turkey"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 26
This Just In
"With Thanksgiving Over, Xmas Could Be Next"--headline, Forbes.com, Nov. 29
You Don't Say
"Man Dies in Empire State Building Leap"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 27
Chevy Chase, Call Your Office
"Conflict Over Madrid's Last Remaining Statue of Franco Never Dies"--headline, New York Times, Nov. 27
Why Not Help Them Instead?
"Communities Open Hearts to Hurt Vets"--headline, Washington Times, Nov. 28
The World's Smallest Violin
Martha Stewart, serving time in Corrections Camp in Alderson, W.Va., apparently is popular among her fellow inmates. But the Associated Press reports at least one prisoner is whining about prison conditions:
Roman Catholic nun Carol Gilbert, 57, who is serving time in the same prison as the famous homemaker, says she enjoys eating with Stewart, although the setting could be better.
"We're not talking about a tea party," Gilbert's attorney, Sue Tyburski, told the Rocky Mountain News for a story in Saturday's editions. "We're talking about a big cafeteria setting with the terrible food."
What's a nun doing in prison anyway? Turns out she participated in "an anti-war protest" and was convicted of obstructing national defense and damaging government property.
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What Limbaugh Is Doing With All Those Towels
"Rush to Clean 'Significant' Spill"--headline, CBSNews.com, Nov. 27
Where the Flintstones Get Their Milk
"Mammoth Dairy Farm Proposed in Orleans"--headline, Sentinel-Standard (Ionia, Mich.), Nov. 27
The Dwarfs Were Happy, Then Grumpy
"Snow White Fired for Posing Nude"--headline, Reuters, Nov. 29
Being Faithful Just Got Easier
Health Talk, a Canadian Web site, reports on a new study of adultery. What caught our attention was this quote from Prof. Tim Spector, the lead researcher: "Not surprisingly, the average number of sexual partners was significantly higher among respondents who had been unfaithful compared with those who had remained faithful--a mean of eight compared with four."
Apparently you're now considered faithful as long as you've had no more than three affairs. We suppose this would make adultery less common.
Them Kids Don't Need No Good Grammar Neither
"A group of former schoolchildren who made the line 'We don't need no education' famous may soon have some extra pocket money," reports the Canadian network CBC. It seems the erstwhile schoolchildren, now in their 30s, sang the following lines in Pink Floyd's song "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2":
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Now they've filed for payment from a new royalty fund and are expected to pocket "the equivalent of a few hundred dollars"--Canadian, we guess--each. The recording had been a secret, CBC reports: "At the band's request, music teacher Alun Renshaw took the children, then students at Islington Green School, to a nearby studio without the permission of the school's headmistress." Or, to judge by the lyrics' atrocious grammar, of the English teacher.
That'll Teach Ya!
"Kevin Winston, 46, called police at 2:45 a.m. Friday after his 16-year-old daughter came home drunk and unruly," the Associated Press reports from Newark, N.J. "When police arrived, however, the girl told them she feared for her safety because her father stored drugs and weapons in the home. The girl led officers to a crawl space above the ceiling where they found four semiautomatic guns and more than 600 vials of cocaine." Cops arrested Winston and charged him with "numerous weapons and drug charges."
The AP reports that Winston called the cops because he wanted to teach the girl, whom the report doesn't name, "a lesson." Apparently she didn't need no education. |
