Month: July 2001

And Joe Lelyveld as well. All that money, months of investigation, a dozen reporters assigned fulltime to the case … and all they got was this lousy non-story. Bottom line: there was no electoral fraud in Florida; there was “no support for the suspicions of Democrats that the Bush campaign had organized an effort to solicit late votes”; the Bush people were no more aggressive in getting their military ballots counted in Florida than the Gore team was in getting recounts in favored counties; the Bushies’ military ballot success would have made no difference to the final result. Surely an A12 story. Perhaps Joe Lelyveld was trying to make this his breathless, show-stopping finale. But he has such a glittering career, it would have been better for him to have given this non-event the placement it deserved, rather than fronting it all over the front page and yards and yards within. The Times is now surely on a knife-edge of credibility. It’s still the best paper in the world – and I’m proud to contribute to its magazine. But if it keeps blaring non-stories like this to appease its leftist Manhattan base, and maintains its close to unanimous chorus of editorial and op-ed hostility to president Bush, it will become less authoritative. People like me who care about it and groan about some of its obvious news bias will simply stop reading it. Or, worse, we’ll start assuming it’s propaganda until proven otherwise.

THE BAR LOWERS EVEN FURTHER: “Kausfiles’ goal is to have no unpublished thoughts on the Chandra Levy story.” – Mickey Kaus’s bid to violate anyone’s privacy – and indeed raise any Chandra scenario whatever – on the Internet. So why hasn’t Mickey named the ABC News reporter whose relationship with Condit was purely professional, according to her bosses? In his piece, Mickey also makes a weird mention of the likelihood of Chandra using a motorbike at the time she disappeared. (For those of you who, like me, remain befuddled by this leap of the imagination, it apparently explains why she left her purse behind, but kept her I.D. with her.) Huh? Is this some nudge-nudge wink-wink reference to a surreal story yanked a few days ago by Newsmax, linking Levy and Condit to all sorts of sado-masochistic, biker shenanigans? Ok, Mickey. If you really want no unpublished thoughts, can you be more explicit here? Or is this just a complete guess? After all, everyone knows that anyone into S&M sex is just a murderer waiting for his chance.

THOSE CHANDRA MAKE-OVER PICS: If Chandra is still alive and comes back from wherever she is unharmed, I hope she tells the DC Police Department what she thinks of those artists’ renditions of her with new hair and accessories. Blimey. She looks like Linda Tripp with an Afro. Come to think of it, there’s a drag-queen performing in Provincetown right now who’s the spitting image of this Chandra. Could I have a scoop on my hands? Headed out now on my motorbike (without my purse) to investigate …

SANITY ON RIOTING: The best little piece of analysis on rioting came my way this week via an email. (The best, that is, since The Onion’s spoof front-page of the L.A. Riots in 1991: “Rioters Demand Justice, Tape Decks.”) My friend Matthew Parris points out in the Times of London that rioting is fun; it resonates with a permanently violent and aggressive part of human nature, which only needs an excuse or an opportunity to be vented. Why are people rioting, every well-meaning person asks, and sets up a commission to investigate its causes, and seeks dialogue and ponders where this will all end up. Phooey, says Parris. This whole approach is typical of a modern mind that refuses to believe that there are any human problems that cannot be solved, any human crisis that cannot be alleviated, any human experience that cannot be turned into a problem begging for a solution. Maybe the problem is the point. Asking why people are rioting is a function of naiveté or utopianism. “You might as well look at a dinner table piled with food and surrounded by diners, and ask: “Why? What do they mean by this? What can we learn? What are they trying to say?” They do not mean anything; they are communicating nothing; we can learn from the rhythmical working of their jaws nothing. The consumption of food is explained by the human appetite for food.’ And rioting is explained by the human appetite for conflict. With a little bit of testosterone thrown in for good measure.

An amazing picture accompanies an interesting article on fetal surgery in the New York Times Magazine today. A tiny arm and hand of the unborn child reaches up toward a phsyician’s glove. The Times’ caption? “Dr. Joseph Bruner with Kelly Hasten’s uterus.” Talk about blinders.

WORSE THAN THE FRENCH: Satisfying article in the “Arts and Left-Wing Ideas” section of the New York Times yesterday. It features – guess what? – another glowing profile of a leftist academic. Only this time, she bites back! Julia Kristeva, a post-structuralist Freudian (ok, I’m trying to pin her down here), has long been an icon of the fascist academic left in the U.S. They have used Kristeva’s work to justify their racist, sexist and homophobic attacks on any minority individual who dares to actually think for herself. Now along comes Kristeva to say, to paraphrase Eliot, “that is not what I meant at all. That is not it at all.” Surveying the wreckage American liberal racists have wrought with her work, she now insists: “What is important is not to affirm the power and identity of groups, but to increase the freedom of individuals … To assume a group identity is a dead end. And if some people have interpreted French thinking to mean they should, they are totally wrong.” Amen, sister.

“At this point, there are so many pieces of the puzzle to fit together that it’s almost irresponsible not to speculate about this sort of scenario, along with all the others.” – my me-zine hero and friend, Mickey Kaus. All the others? So it’s ok to speculate about anything that might possibly, conceivably, potentially, have to do with Chandra Levy’s disappearance? Everyone Condit has ever slept with? Every dirty-talking phone-call he might ever have had? Every tryst he might have conducted? Every stain on any piece of clothing? OK, Mickey. Here’s a challenge. If it’s ok to speculate about any possible scenario, why haven’t you repeated the Newsmax story (almost immediately yanked from the wires) that linked Condit to bisexual orgies, Harley-Davidson rapes and murders, Haitian prostitutes, and on and on? Hey, it’s all speculation. It’s almost irresponsible not to publish them. Put your website where your mouth is. And why haven’t you published the name of the ABC News reporter? I would if I had the information reliably. Do you have a source?

I REPRINT, YOU DECIDE: Two interesting responses to my tadpole analogy, which I now realize is full of holes. Interesting holes that I am working on filling for a column next week. These emails home in on the whole ‘potential life’ issue. They might help clarify things:

“Your analogy on stem cell research is interesting, but here is something that I have always thought about regarding human life.
My oldest daughter Erin is 11 years old. When she was in utero, the doctor thought we had lost her, but my wife had an ultrasound and it turned out Erin was still alive. If we had lost the baby, it would have been Erin we lost, not some mass of cells. Erin was always Erin, even before we knew her. In the same way, stem cell research will not be carried out on masses of cells. It will be carried out on Jim, Cathy, Janie, Tommy, and yes, Erin.”

“This is getting zen, baby. You really are making it too complicated. It is what it is in the moment. Otherwise you enter the realm of probability. If you eat fertilized eggs for your scrambled egg breakfast, are you getting the nutritional value of a chicken or an egg?
The frog is in the future. The (egg?) is in the past. The tadpole is in the moment. You are cutting off a probability for a frog, sure. The tadpole may well have died before it grew to frogdom, but you can make certain deductions about lake health using your big old brain. It doesn’t matter. You still killed a tadpole and would be tried under the green court of law for tadpole death not frog death.
If you kill a child, you cut off the potential adult, but you didn’t kill an adult, you killed a child. If you freeze a fertilized egg you are not freezing an adult or a child, you are freezing a fertilized egg.
My pro-life cousin got in vitro–twice. That means a few embryos were discarded. She doesn’t think of them as her lost children, trust me. She thinks of them as fertilized eggs. Well, she thinks of them not at allactually.
If those in vitro fertilized eggs had not existed, neither would her children. Their probability line would have been cut off. (You do realize that lots of fertilized eggs are naturally discarded by a woman’s body without implantation…Should we mount a campaign to save their lives????)”

I was struck by something in Josh Marshall’s typically good piece in Salon today. He details a complicated and not-too-interesting nugget in the Condit affair. It involves an ABC News reporter who interviewed Condit the day after Levy’s disappearance at my local coffee shop in Adams Morgan, D.C. There are some discrepancies between the timeline of those days proffered by Condit and what ABC News says it knows because of the timing of the interview. Josh also mentions that other news outlets have alleged that the reporter (unnamed) had an affair with Condit. ABC News insists that their relationship was purely professional – but won’t name the reporter. Why? If she is a reporter with nothing to hide and has relevant information that might help find Chandra Levy, why the sudden squeamishness about privacy? Once again, this gets it the wrong way round. If ABC News is right about their reporter’s relationship with Condit, this is one instance in which there are no real privacy considerations. As long as ABC News says there was no affair, then the reporter has nothing to be afraid of in disclosing her name. In fact, she has a duty to do so. I fear this is another instance of the media attacking others’ privacy while protecting their own. Typical that Salon didn’t have the guts to name her either. Who do they think they are? One rule for the media elite; another for their victims. And which media reporter will raise this question? None – so far. Thank God for me-zines. C’mon, Josh. If you know her name, tell us. Bypass Salon. They’re cowards. Use your own site.

“This year a new sedition act – disguised as “campaign-finance reform” – was passed by the Senate but, by a narrow margin, was at least temporarily beaten back yesterday on a procedural vote in the House of Representatives … Those who support the Sedition Act of 2001 may masquerade as good-government reformers, and they may use self-serving populist rhetoric to describe their intentions, but the truth is that their real beef is with representative government.” – Mark R. Levin, National Review Online.

In the hopes of figuring out the issue of the ethics of stem cell research, it sometimes helps to analogize. Here’s one I thought of. Let’s say there’s a lake somewhere that for some reason is seeing too many frogs reproducing. Bear with me. These frogs are making it hard for other species to breed and exist. So the environmental authorities decide to kill off the frogs to save the lake and rescue other species. Now what would the ethical difference be between killing these frogs as tadpoles when they spawn or later as grown frogs? Obviously, killing the tadpoles might be easier and less messy. But would anyone dispute that they are being killed as surely as the frogs or that by killing tadpoles, we are effectively killing frogs? The death of potential frogs compared to grown frogs seems to me to be a distinction without a difference. So if it’s meaningless for frogs, why do we have lower standards for humans?

SALON RESPONDS AGAIN: To their credit, Salon has answered my question about pharmaceutical ads. Patrick Hurley replied that, to the best of his knowledge, no drug company has advertized in Salon ever. Somehow I think they won’t in the future now either.

I can’t wait for the New York Times front-page treatment of why president Bush has bounced back in the polls. Can we have color graphs on the front page, analysis by Rick Berke, op-eds by Frank Rich, Bob Herbert et al. pondering why this has happened – and an accompanying editorial? Oh, never mind. But Gallup’s poll suggests to me that I’m not crazy, and that Bush’s low-key style, while infuriating those who want more government for every problem, will eventually win people over. Bush is now at a 57 percent job approval rating, compared to 45 percent for Bill Clinton at this stage. An amazing 78 percent say they respect him and 70 percent say they approve of him as a person. 62 percent say he has been more civil than his opponents; yet 69 percent say he is tough enough for the job. That’s an impressive combo. The lesson? Ignore the chattering classes. Ignore Manhattan insiders who have no real feel for the way most Americans think. Trust your instincts. And keep smiling. And keep your baseball caps for inside.

IS CHANDRA ALIVE?: Drudge fronts the National Enquirer’s scoop on the Levy disappearance. She told friends she was pregnant with Condit’s child and used her computer and cell-phone a day after she disappeared. Drudge implies that this casts an even darker light on Condit. Could be. Did he hack into her computer to check records? But why would he have used her cell-phone a day later? It’s also compatible with another scenario. Has she just upped and left? I’m not defending Condit. He obviously should have been forthcoming to the cops early on. But I do think the press should focus on issues relevant to Levy’s disappearance, not to Condit’s private moral conduct. It’s still possible he’s completely innocent. And that should count for something.

Wow. One reason I read every email I get is that you guys are so smart. I’d paraphrase your responses to this latest storm in a tea-cup, but I couldn’t really put it better than you have. What this suggests to me is that the audience of readers is simply way ahead of the suppliers of journalism these days. You get it. They don’t. And you see what the Internet is doing to these old media power-structures. They’re melting! They’re melting!

Here’s a selection of some of the best emails. Thanks so much. And thanks also for the big jump in donations since this flap started. There’s more good sponsorship news coming as a result of this. When it’s confirmed, I’ll let you know. But Gloria Gaynor said it best. Here are your responses:

“”The deeper question is: can me-zines accept any financing from sponsorship and advertising without these kinds of attacks?” Of course not. And it’s not going to matter if the money is paid directly to the writer or to an intermediary, or if the negotiations are carried out by someone else. But the even deeper question is “So what?” Everybody gets money from somewhere; everybody has temptations to bend to get more–and to keep what they have coming. It’s the totality of your life and work that defends you. Sometimes advertisers support people that they know will support them. Sometimes they support others in hope they will change. So it is with politicians. Some people give money to politicians they know agree with them. Some give money to politicians to try to change their minds. And some politicians respectably shake down people with talk of restrictive legislation that then doesn’t happen–what Fred McChesney called Money for Nothing, in his 1997 book of the same name (Harvard University Press, subtitled “Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion.”) Which is why I think campaign finance reform is as much a crock as journalism finance reform would be, and why I think exclusive public financing of politicians would be as good an idea as exclusive public financing of journalists.

“Salon, et. al., are afraid of one frightening reality (at least in their eyes): that the Internet can so leverage the power of one, truly independent thinker, that their product of many “thinkers” is shown for what it really is – a hugely expensive exercise in diminishing returns. Go, man!

“Salon and Inside ain’t worth my telling them where to get off… Their stock value (I believe approaching approximately six corn flakes per share) speaks better than any invective I could muster. Now if Lady Camille could just get a new home for her writings…

“It is kind of funny that people would think that your dependence on the drug companies for therapy is not a conflict, but as soon as they give you any money it is a conflict. I guess if you were in a car accident and say, Gary Condit, pulled you out of your burning car, saved your life, and then paid a cab to take you home, if you wrote anything about Gary Condit you wouldn’t have to disclose the lifesaving, but you’d have to disclose the cab ride.

“Your decision about the taking the Pharma shows me something. Fundamentally, the Left hates business and, of course, “profits.” See how they’re attacking Microsoft because the company doesn’t want the Philadelphia schools system ripping off its software. As Salon explains, it’s not stealing when a poor school district does it. It’s vicious corporate bullying when a company defends licensing laws, though. You’re wrong if you think this issue is just about the pharmaceutical industry, it’s also about YOU making money. You’re not allowed to; you’re a conservative.

“Next time, take the money.

“I wonder if there’s something worth discussing in conflicts of interest that arise amongst journalists who aspire to work for the New York Times. I suspect that sometimes punches get pulled because the person wonders if down the road that’s their dream job and they don’t want anything in print to screw it up. So NYT criticism is left to some specialized outlets (& you). Might also be present in relation to criticism of any big media outlet (Time, Newsweek/Post etc). If a factor, then especially prevalent at places where people keep their resumes updated given the uncertain future (Salon, Inside).

“Obviously Andrew, you need a staff of a couple thousand people. How pissed would the elitist Salon types be? They, who feel they have a divine right to control the press, are already in cardiac trauma over the insolence of Drudge. So, why don’t you get 2,000 staffers to write for you?

“If it weren’t for all the recent fuss @ salon.com, I’d never have known your site existed. I’ll read it regularly from now on. Happy crucifixion….”

To their credit, Salon has coughed up a long list of advertisers and sponsors, which they say is incomplete. It’s jammed with movie studios whose films they review, book publishers whose books they cover, companies they inevitably write about, magazines they link to, and on and on. Perhaps it’s best if I put it this way:

Salon’s advertisers in 2001: Intel, Proctor & Gamble, Audible.com, X10, Lexus, Motorola, Mercedes, Warner Bros, Buy.com, New Republic, McAfee, Harper Collins, NY Times, AT&T Wireless, Lancôme, 20th Century Fox, Oxford University Press, Discover Card, Penguin/Putnam, Inside.com, Diamondology, Gillette, Mercury Mountaineer, Hewlett-Packard, Salomon, Smith Barney, CDW, Virgin Atlantic, The New School, The Street.com, Business 2.0, E Trade, Verizon, Ask Jeeves, Esquire, iPublish, Universal Studios, I.T. World, Grey Mause Records.

andrewsullivan.com’s advertiser in 2001: PHRMA (gratuity).

Now who do you think should be asking whom about conflict of interest questions?

By the way, I’ve also asked Salon for a list of their investors. No word yet. Hmmm. I’ve also asked them if they have ever taken money from a pharmaceutical company. That should be interesting. Inside.com hasn’t responded. One word about their silence: pathetic.

Okay, they asked for it. We’re going to put up PHRMA’s ad anyway as soon as we get it – and take nothing in return. Screw the money. I’m not going to be brow-beaten by the usual combination of gotcha journalists and left-wing thought police. The point of the ads was to provide intelligent people, i.e. my beloved readers, a way to link to sites that actually give real information about the issue of pharmaceuticals instead of the thinly veiled liberal propaganda doled out by the mainstream press. PHRMA usually pays through the teeth for these ads, which is why they offered us a modest sum. I’m quite happy to forgo the money, but not the principle. We should get the ad copy soon and post it as soon as we get it. In the meantime, tell Salon and Inside where to get off by visiting these sites for yourself. Here’s one. And here’s