The press is spinning the Bush administration’s back-to-back decisions to uphold tough new standards for wetland conservation and now lead emissions as a U-turn from a flurry of anti-environmental actions. But this is silly. One of Bush’s first decisions was maintaining a highly onerous regulation requiring petroleum companies to clean up diesel fuel – the decision most resisted by business interests. His decision on Kyoto had already been made for him – by the Congress and the recalcitrant Europeans last fall. His arsenic decision – to postpone implementation of tougher standards for a few years – was made so as not to be bounced into a decision made by the Clinton decision at the last minute. And Clinton’s decision had itself been delayed several years for exactly the same political reasons that Bush was worried about. I predict a small U-turn by the press on this. Gregg Easterbrook has a terrific piece out in next week’s New Republic (I got a sneak preview) that will lead the new CW. Bush is actually pretty green, when you take a deep breath and look at the substance. And if his energy commission comes up with a proposal to vastly increase our nuclear power capacity, he will deserve more support for backing real environmental health, rather than grabbing easy headlines.
SPIELBERG’S SCOUTS: The director Steven Spielberg has quit his post on the advisory board for the Boy Scouts, citing their continued discrimination against homosexual scouts and scout-masters. Good for Spielberg. The Scouts’ current policy is poisonous and irrational. They allow closet-cases to stay on in their organization, but boys and men who strive for honesty about their emotional orientation are booted. Lying is a virtue, argue the Scouts, in unholy agreement with the U.S. military. And please don’t give me the argument that gay scout-masters are all potential pedophiles about to rape children. It has as much validity as an argument that says the Scouts should ban Jews or Texans for the same reason. There is no solid correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia; and there’s no way to ensure that boys will be safe under an adult male’s supervision except by making a judgment about the character of the man himself, straight or gay. The current policy doesn’t do that. In fact, openly gay Scout-masters are the least likely to abuse their authority. They are courageous enough to state their orientation and aware that they are consequently subjected to more than usual circumspection because of prevailing canards about pedophilia. It’s the secretive closet-cases you have to worry about – exactly the people the current policy attracts and retains. Don’t get me wrong. I supported the Scouts’ Constitutional right to discriminate against anyone. But that doesn’t mean I have to support their reactionary politics. Spielberg also seemed to me to strike the right note – of sadness at this irrational and cruel prejudice and hope that this invidious policy will one day change to allow decent people to support the Scouts again, and all the good work they continue, despite the odds, to do.
GOVERNMENT BY COMMERCIAL: Orwell worried about it, but it took Tony Blair to turn the British government into a permanent media campaign. New statistics show that the Labour government is now the biggest single advertiser in the U.K., spending more than any private company, to inform and uplift its citizens. It spends over $160 million a year in propaganda, I mean, commercials, and its publicly financed spending peaked in February. No other major country, apart from Canada, has the government anywhere near the top ten advertizers. Hmmmm. There couldn’t be an election coming up, could there?
THE WEAKEST LINK: Maybe I’m dreaming, but I can’t help feeling that the brutal Darwinianism of shows like “The Weakest Link,” and “Survivor,” are partly ways in which our popular culture balances out the prevailing p.c. notions that winning is somehow suspect, that self-esteem matters more than academic achievement, that every Harvard student deserves an A or an A-. Watching the equivalent of Miss Jean Brodie send all those charming contestants into the oblivion of humiliating failure is a reminder of what good universities used to be like. But then you need teachers like Ms Robinson to be in charge, rather than the racist politburos that now seem to dominate most campus faculties. Well, I can dream, can’t I?
WELL, AT LEAST THEY’RE HONEST: “Conservatives Oppose Bush’s Inclusive Approach on Homosexuals.” – a headline from this morning’s cnsnews.com, formerly Conservative News Service.
The Dish 