Month: October 2002

The New Republic’s blog does a handy little job on Mondale’s acceptance speech.

“Economy Races Ahead at 3.1 Annual Rate in Summer,” – Associated Press headline on the AP website.

“Economy Grows at 3.1 percent. Consumer spending on big-ticket items fuels third quarter surge.” – Washington Post.

“Economy Grew at 3.1% in 3rd Quarter, Slower Than Expected” – New York Times.

When Michael Ledeen first suggested this, I thought he was joking. But it makes a twisted sort of sense as a deterrent, doesn’t it?

One of my acquaintances here in Provincetown said something arresting yesterday. We’re friendly, although he’s about as perfect an example of a New York lefty, with Wellstonian touches, that I’ve ever met. He disagrees with almost everything I say, naturally, was against the war in Afghanistan, let alone Iraq, thinks Bush is a corporate crony cipher, etc. etc. etc. The first thing he brought up when we bumped into each other was the Wellstone memorial service. It really bugged him. He felt the pure partisanship, the jeering and cheering, the fanaticism almost, just after a family has been killed, was about as unseemly a spectacle as anything one could imagine. As I’ve seen the clips, I can’t help but agree. What on earth could they have been thinking? That picture of Clinton and Mondale yucking it up, for example. Sure, there are times at political wakes when such outbursts of hilarity are appropriate. But shouldn’t an ex-president and an ex-vice-president be aware of what that would look like in such a context? I have a feeling that the Wellstone rally-cum-memorial-service will shortly become a symbol of something: the pre-eminence of political values over humane ones. This is what a lot of people hate about politics. And you can’t blame them. This attitude is not the exclusive province of either party, of course. But one of the reasons Bush is popular, I think, is precisely because he doesn’t seem at all times motivated by such values, however much his critics try to prove the contrary. There’s a decency there that was sadly lacking Tuesday night. And it’s that contrast that so many find instructive.

SOME OTHER BONES: “I’ll accept compliments from the Right when they agree that Henry Kissinger belongs in the dock, and when they admit that this failure on their part is also sheltering Saddam Hussein from an indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and when they acknowledge that their trashing of the International Criminal Court is a betrayal of the whole ethos of “regime change”. And after that, I have some other bones to pick with them…” – Christopher Hitchens lets it rip on the Book Club Page, as the email chat continues.

Will Saletan writes this of the Wellstone “memorial service:”

“Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning,” Wellstone declares in a videotaped speech shown on the overhead screens. “Politics is about improving people’s lives.” But as the evening’s speakers proceed, it becomes clear that to them, honoring Wellstone’s legacy is all about winning the election. Repeating the words of Wellstone’s son, the assembly shouts, “We will win! We will win!” Rick Kahn, a friend of Wellstone’s, urges everyone to “set aside the partisan bickering,” but in the next breath he challenges several Republican senators in attendance to “honor your friend” by helping to “win this election for Paul Wellstone.” What can he be thinking?

My feelings entirely. Is there a chance that this kind of spectacle will actually persuade voters not to vote for Mondale? I guess not.

Ah, yes, one Ted Rall again.

This time in Hawaii. Somehow, I’m not surprised any more.

Richard Goldstein eulogizes one of the founders of the gay rights movement today in the Times. The theme of his op-ed is how we need to get better acquainted with gay history, a very worthy cause. But Goldstein, of course, is not a reliable guide. His op-ed today, for example, ignores some obviously vital facts about Harry Hay. Goldstein calls Hay “a Marxist who proudly called himself a sissy.” True enough. But Hay was more than a Marxist; he was a proud Communist, who defended the Soviet Union’s murderous dictatorship till his dying days. As the Times obituary pointed out, Hay maintained his allegiance to Communism, even after the homophobic Communist Party kicked him out. In fact, even recently, he declared that he lamented the demise of the Soviet Union. He was also a supporter of the sexual abuse of children, fervently supporting the vile organization, NAMBLA, and lobbying to make it a part of the gay rights movement. (Both Goldstein and the Times obit have erased this part of Hay’s life as well.) These facts are simply part of the historical record, and should surely be included in any eulogy of the man. But like the Stalinists themselves, Goldstein simply air-brushes these facts from history. Why? Isn’t Goldstein proud of the fact that Hay was a Communist? If he isn’t, why does he euphemize it? If he is, shouldn’t this be a part of his assessment? Again, try the counterfactual: if Hay had been a member of the Nazi Party in the 1930s, and if he had refused to renounce his support of Nazism right up to his death, if he had said recently that he lamented the passing of the Nazi state, wouldn’t this have been the lead sentence of any obituary? And if he’d been a Nazi supporter of child-abuse, would the Times have even dreamed of running an op-ed eulogizing his death and omitting these facts? Of course not. And people wonder why Orwell still matters.

The coverage of the sniper attacks is getting comical. Especially, of course, in the hyper-p.c. New York Times. The reporting is still there, mercifully. But the tippy-toeing around the bleeding obvious is just hilarious. We now know, for example, that the Chevy Caprice was sighted, noted and suspected by cops, a total of eleven times before the alleged murderers were detained. On three occasions, the cops actually talked to the sniper and his accomplice. The reasons for not detaining or further questioining Muhammad and Malvo given by the New York Times are:

Federal, state and local officials all said there was nothing in the database to suggest that the car had been stolen or that Mr. Muhammad, one of its owners, was wanted for any crime. As a result, the officers had no reason to detain Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Malvo. Investigators also said that officers were so focused on seeking white vans and trucks that it was easy to overlook the old Caprice.

That’s fair enough. But isn’t there something missing? A senior police official has already told the Washington Post that the race of the men was a factor in letting them go. Shouldn’t this at least be investigated or even mentioned in the Times story? If the cops are now denying that they used racial profiling, that’s important. If they confirm it, that’s also important. So why won’t the Times even mention this question, let alone report on it? I think it qualifies as news that’s unfit to provide their readers. In liberal journalism today, some questions simply cannot be asked, let alone answered.

A HATE CRIME: Ditto the story by Dean Murphy, about Muhammad’s shooting of a synagogue. Remember the hue and cry over alleged white racist church burnings which turned out to be a complete crock? In most cases, the Times will call someone sneezing a hate crime if any racial or religious motivation is involved. but when a black muslim is involved, you have to tread very, very carefully. The evidence, however, is mounting:

The shooting at Temple Beth El also raises the question of whether the men, if they did the shooting, were motivated at least in part by religious intolerance. Rabbi Glickman said he was reluctant to characterize the shooting here as a hate crime, but he was troubled by Mr. Muhammad’s association with the Nation of Islam, whose leadership has been accused of anti-Semitism.
A former friend of Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Malvo in Bellingham, Wash., where the two men were known to have stayed this year, said Mr. Muhammad sometimes spoke disparagingly about Christians and Jews. The friend, Harjeet Singh, suggested that it was perhaps not coincidental that none of the victims in the sniper attacks were obviously Muslim, for example women wearing traditional head scarves.
“In his mind, even black people were no good if they stood with whites or Christians,” said the friend, Mr. Singh, a Sikh from India, who added that Mr. Muhammad always greeted him with a traditional Muslim salutation in Arabic.

Hmmm. I wonder what his motivation was. Any idea? I particularly like the p.c. description of the Nation of Islam, a virulently anti-Semitic organization in every respect. According to the Times, only the Nation of Islam’s “leadership has been accused of anti-Semitism.” Notice the weasel words. There is no doubt whatever that the leadership of the Nation of Islam is anti-Semitic. None. Out of bizarre political correctness, the Times is even now – as it did in the 1930s – refusing to report on anti-Semitism candidly, clearly and relevantly. They should be ashamed.

It seems to me completely possible that president Bush will have to make a critical decision in the next week or so on the U.N. and Iraq. Colin Powell said yesterday with respect to the ongoing diplomacy: “We’re getting close to a point where we’ll have to see whether or not we can bridge these remaining differences in the very near future. I don’t want to give you days or a week, but it certainly isn’t much longer than that.” That time-line places the president’s announcement of a U.N. decision and the U.S. response smack bang in line with the Congressional elections. The timing isn’t Bush’s fault. Russia and France are the culprits for dragging their feet for so long. But think of two possible scenarios: the U.S. secures a diplomatic victory and gets U.N. support for its Iraq strategy or the president tells the country we’re going to put together the kind of non-U.N.-sponsored coalition that made the Kosovo intervention possible. Either way, it’s huge news. I’d say it could be enough to swing the election. If Bush gives the U.N. till Friday and the war news dominates the weekend, then we’ll have a highly volatile final day or two. This may not happen of course. But in some ways, I think Bush ought to wrap this up before November 5. The war on terror is a critical issue in the country – I’d argue far and away the most critical issue right now – and the voters should know what the executive branch plans before they vote for the legislature. Maybe it will help Republicans. Maybe it will strengthen the argument for divided government, in order to temper a White House going to war. But either way, any decision will knock everything else out of the news cycle. Won’t it?

TRASH PICK-UP: Check out The New Republic’s cover-story this week on the tawdry British exports now transforming American culture. It’s written by a tawdry British export … well, I thought I’d say it before Eric Alterman does.

YESTERDAY’S LILEKS: A corker. Not only does he praise the Pet Shop Boys, whose last album, Release, is firmly embedded in my iPod as a lyrical Xanax, but he burrows in on arguably the worst presidential candidate in recent memory, Walter Mondale. My fave passage:

In doing some research for today’s Mondale column, I reread his speech at the 1984 Democratic convention. Here’s a real time-capsule moment for you: ‘When we speak of change, the words are Gary Hart’s. When we speak of hope, the fire is Jesse Jackson’s. When we speak of caring, the spirit is Ted Kennedy’s. When we speak of the future, the message is Geraldine Ferraro.’ Well, at least one out of four didn’t cheat on his wife. What a snapshot of 1984: a time when Gary Hart was the 845th blurry photocopy of JFK to be handed around, when Jesse Jackson was regarded as a bulwark of righteous enlightenment instead of a self-aggrandizing shakedown artist; when Ted Kennedy was a big pickled Care Bear, and Geraldine Ferraro was the future, not a footnote-to-be. I was a hardcore Democrat at the time, and I remember watching the speech and thinking: we are going to lose. We are going to lose 51 states. Puerto Rico will demand statehood just for the chance not to vote for this guy.

And I keep remembering Dana Carvey’s SNL sketch on the guy. Wellstone’s death is indeed a tragedy. But why compound it by voting for this misguided relic?

“DEAR LENIN,
(I never thought I would end up addressing an email in this manner…)
Nice to meet a fellow buff. Orwell more than once said that he doubted things in the USSR would have been much better if Trotsky had won over Stalin, but he did have a slight sympathy with the Left Opposition and a close friendship with some of its intellectual diaspora, and would never have thought of the accusation “Trotskyist” as a damning one. He had, I think, the same ambivalence about Lenin that you indicate…” Hitchens spars with readers in the latest Book Club installment. Don’t miss it.

MY SPECIAL RIGHTS: “Indeed, Mr. Sullivan, I am sure you do not like to hear this, but you get the attention you get because you are a gay conservative. If you were a liberal, you would have to compete with many other thinkers, many of whom write better than you, are more intelligent than you are, and produce work that is much deeper than reflexive support for the Bush administration that you pass off as work.” A reader objects to my objection to Harry Belafonte, why the Dems don’t gay-bait, why the anti-war movement is right to single out Israel, and other viewpoints on the Letters Page, edited by Reihan Salam.