The op-ed printed by the Washington Post on Sunday was an eye-opener. It was about the influx of black people into a traditionally white neighborhood, and the views of some whites employed by the Post about it. “We damn sure are not about to let black folks buy up all the property,” wrote the Post’s employee, Natalie Hopkinson. “There is a real sense among white friends that the city is slipping away from us. A few months ago … a gentleman passed me a flyer. It invited me to a community meeting where residents planned to debate the question, “Is our White City turning Chocolate?” I pocketed the flyer, but didn’t bother going to the meeting. I already knew the answer: Not if I have anything to say about it.” Now, would you or would you not regard those statements as blatantly racist? I ask because I have changed them a little: the piece was actually written by a black middle-class woman bemoaning white people moving into Washington D.C. But all I have changed are the racial identifiers in those statements. For the full context, check out the entire story. It brings to mind a recent public meeting in my own neighborhood when some local residents objected to renovation of neighboring buildings because, “we don’t want any more white people living here.” The Post clearly believes it is fine to publish a baldly racist piece condemning racial integration, by one of their own employees no less, and merely because she is black. If you doubt me, can you imagine for a second the Post allowing a white employee to write an identical piece in reverse? And people wonder why some of us are disenchanted with what passes for the civil rights movement. In many cases, that movement is now little more than a vehicle for bigotry and racism. And it’s aided and abetted by newspapers that surely should know better.
BUSH VS. HELMS?: Buried in the fine print of this story in the New York Times is the fact that president George W. Bush is opposed to the Helms amendment to the Education Bill, a specious piece of unwarranted federal intervention in the autonomy of local schools and school boards. Good for Bush. Just don’t expect any gay rights organizations to give him an ounce of credit.
EASTERBROOK AGAIN: My colleague at The New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook, has long waged a lonely battle for sanity among liberal environmentalists. He’s a Democrat and pro-environment. But he also has a brain and intellectual honesty. Check out, if you missed it, his piece in yesterday’s New York Times about European attitudes to America. Here’s the best paragraph, delivered with Gregg’s usual thoroughness: “Indeed, despite European protestations, American ecological standards are far more strict than European rules, and have been for 20 years or more… Paris today has worse smog than Houston; water quality, especially of rivers, is lower in Europe than in the United States; acid rain reduction has been more rapid in the United States than in Europe; European Union nations like Greece, Italy and Portugal still discharge huge volumes of untreated municipal waste water, a practice all but banned in America. In addition, the European Union did not act against leaded gasoline till more than a decade after the United States; the forested percentage of the United States is higher than the forested percentage of most European countries, while America has fewer threatened species than Europe; and many other environmental indicators favor the United States.” The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
BUMPER STICKERS 2002: The San Francisco Chronicle debuts some slogans for Gray Davis’s re-election campaign. My favorites:
Ich bin ein Bulb-dimmer
Power to some of the people
The tunnel at the end of the blight
A thousand points of light, give or take a thousand
Ask yourself: Are you better off today than you were 438 years ago?
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT … EVENTUALLY: Good piece in Saturday’s New York Times about AIDS in New York City. John Tierney finally points out that the epidemic was grotesquely exaggerated in the 1980s by many of the same public health authorities that are now telling us we are seeing another explosion. Tierney reports that in July 1988, health authorities reduced their estimation of people infected with HIV in New York City from 400,000 to 200,000 over night. Subsequent estimates have put the number at 120,000. In other words, the estimates were off by over 300 percent. When Stephen Josephs, the New York City health commissioner, had the courage to tell the truth, he was hounded by the usual gay thugs, had his home picketed and spray-painted, and was personally harassed. When journalist Michael Fumento dared to write the obvious in 1990, in his book, “The Myth of Heterosexual Aids,” many stores refused to order or sell it for fear of gay terrorism. Funny how this legacy is almost never mentioned in the press lauding ACT-UP, the group behind these know-nothing tactics. Fumento and Josephs, of course, were right. New evidence can be found in the latest report from the American Council on Science and Health. I recommend its sane conclusions, and its skepticism about current statistics. Maybe soon, we will find out some hard data, because HIV is now (since June 2000) a reportable condition in New York City. And if we discover there is a real upsurge, we should do all we can to counter it. But in general, I second the judgment of Elizabeth Whelan, A.C.S.H.’s president: “AIDS was a genuine crisis in the 1980’s, but today it’s no more a crisis than any other chronic disease suffered by New Yorkers. We need to put AIDS in context and give it the proportionate share of resources. It shouldn’t be getting more than its share because we’ve been brainwashed into thinking the numbers are greater than they are.” Amen, sister. Amen.
MR. POT, YOU HAVE A MR. KETTLE ON LINE TWO: Anthony Lewis says George W. Bush has a closed mind.
The Dish 