The incomparable Mickey Kaus notices Elizabeth Shogren’s Los Angeles Times piece on the Bush administration’s quiet efforts to deal with global warming in a more effective manner than posturing about Kyoto. Devastating quote from Eileen Claussen, the Clinton administration’s point-woman on climate change: “The Clinton administration agreed to ambitious targets in Kyoto but didn’t try to put in place a program at home that would allow them to meet the targets. This administration is doing the reverse.” That from a Clinton official? Ouch.
COULD IT GET ANY WORSE THAN CLINTON?: Buried in the news a couple of weeks ago were the latest figures on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the signal contribution of the Clinton administration to gay rights. The final year of Clinton’s term saw discharges on grounds of homosexuality increase by yet another 17 percent. This was at a time when the Gallup poll found a record 72 percent of Americans saw no reason why gays shouldn’t be hired by the military and when every other NATO country quietly ended their bans – to no apparent ill effect. All this helps put Clinton’s mixture of betrayal and incompetence in a starker light. The former president succeeded in more than doubling the rate of gay discharges in the military in a mere six years, as well as presiding over two brutal murders of soldiers believed to be gay by other servicemembers. I didn’t notice any major statements by the main gay organizations protesting this record – except for the admirable and dogged Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network. No surprise there. The other groups were busy complaining that George W. Bush hasn’t signed any Gay Pride declarations. Good to know the main gay rights organizations have their eyes on the ball.
POSEUR ALERT: “Above all else, Suck was a dream. It was a pretty good dream, too — a rock-and-roll dream, a pirate dream — about how a couple of kids maxing out their credit cards could grab eyeballs all over the world. How guerrilla publishers could flummox the old-line media mastodons no matter how massive their antique printing presses. How the primordial Internet was truly different — not the same-old same-old. It was particularly a Generation X dream. It rewrote the narrative for twenty-somethings. No longer would they be remembered as losers and slackers destined to sweep up behind the elephants. The Net became the defining moment for these young, their identity forever reshaped by those who slept
beneath their desks, invented a new world and — if their timing was lucky — got to keep their Porsches. This dream was also about telling the truth — especially when the truth sucked, hence the name — because you had nothing left to lose.” – Joel Garreau, The Washington Post, June 13.
BEGALA, DERBYSHIRE, POSEURS, ETC: One of the good things about having so many new readers is that some of you don’t know what the hell we’re talking about. To recap: the Begala Award is occasionally given for statements from liberals that are hyperbolic, excessive, dumb, unfair and unnecessarily inflammatory. It’s named after Paul Begala, for obvious reasons. We give a similar award, called a Derbyshire, for similar statements from the right. This one is named after John Derbyshire, the always entertaining and often wacko commentator for National Review Online. We also give an occasional mention to pretentious over-writing under the rubric, Poseur Alert (see above), a shameless rip-off of Private Eye’s “Pseuds’ Corner.” I look out for nominees all the time but the best ones often come from readers. Keep ’em coming.
The Dish 