A brave and important column by Bob Herbert today. No, I haven’t finally lost it. He notices an Ohio case in which a man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for writing a private prison journal in which he fantasized about sex with children. No-one’s defending the sentiment in the journal. But Herbert is completely right that any American citizen should be able to write anything he or she wants in a private journal and not have it used to put him in jail. Even Mary Eberstadt might agree with that. Then again, maybe not. One can only hope that Herbert’s new-found vigilance against the thought-police might lead him to worry a tiny bit more about hate crime laws.
POST-MORTEM: The Washington Post is surely right to be deeply proud of the legacy of Katharine Graham. But today’s op-ed roster of mini-eulogies is so, well, Washington. I was especially struck by Barbara Walters’ first paragraph: “Katharine Graham, her daughter, Lally, and a few close friends were at my home for lunch just two weekends ago. It had been a celebratory couple of days for Kay and Lally, whose birthdays were within days of each other. The night before, Lally had thrown a big party, and Kay had risen to toast her daughter with enormous pride. Then her son Steve Graham gave wonderfully insightful and amusing remarks. So I want to talk about Kay as a mother.” But before I do, can I remind you all of my fabulous recent lunch-party? Le tout Washington was there. Everyone was so, well, wonderfully insightful and amusing.
CORRECTIONS: I apologize to Josh Marshall. It seems I was reading a wrong and outdated link to his site. I still can’t figure out exactly how to access the new page – I kept refreshing the old one and it kept giving me the old page. Sorry again. Innocent error. And Josh makes a good point about why he didn’t name the ABC News reporter. He didn’t have an on-the-record source. Tapper has now named her – and criticized the DC cops, which makes him 2 for 0. It’s a particularly devastating detail that the cops haven’t even contacted the reporter, Rebecca Cooper, to ask her about Condit’s state of mind that day. More evidence that the real story here is not Condit’s foolish and selfish defensiveness, but the D.C. Police Department’s staggering incompetence. (By the way, when will the New York Post apologize for printing that Cooper had had an affair with Condit?) Way to go, Jake. I’ve also outraged one reader by getting the date of the L.A. riots wrong. It was 1992, not 1991.
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I am very concerned to see that Salon.com accepts advertising from a Cuban Cigar website, located in Switzerland (link: http://www.cubancigars.com). To my mind, it really puts in doubt their reporting on (1) Cuba (I will have to reevaluate their coverage of the Elian story) and (2) tobacco (perhaps anti-smoking stories are really carefully planted attempts to lure readers away from cigarettes, made in my home state of North Carolina and towards Fidel-friendly cigars).”
The Dish 