Month: August 2001

These two ideas, around for a while, gained steam in the 1990s. I’m proud that The New Republic, while I was editor (and after), helped pioneer them. They’re both now staples of debate – but they reveal, I think, a problem with the way our politics is still framed. Welfare reform is generally touted as an idea from the “right,” while same-sex marriage is generally viewed (by most conservatives at least) as an idea from the “left.” In fact, both ideas transcend these categories. They are, as Jim Pinkerton used to say, New Paradigm ideas. Welfare reform is not really conservative. It still uses the state as a powerful instrument in both protecting the vulnerable and bringing them, with a big stick and a little carrot, into the mainstream. At the same time, it isn’t really liberal in as much as it is attempting to undo the bad social engineering of 1960s and 1970s liberalism. Ditto same-sex marriage. Like welfare reform, this is an attempt to bring a marginalized group into the mainstream of society (liberal), and provide some incentives for social responsibility (conservative). In fact, I think both ideas are extremely similar in their blend of government power, individual responsibility and post-ideological thinking. The only reason why the same political coalition doesn’t endorse both is that the blinders of ideology are still affixed – however amateurishly – to our political eyes.

NEW LETTERS: From an Irishman, a Bible-Belter, and a Jew. Multiculturalism redux.

Terrific editorial from the Washington Post today on the Good Friday Peace agreement. It largely echoes my TRB of last week and also notices that Gerry Adams, the chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, is setting off for a trip to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro. Will Graydon Carter tag along?

THE LATEST CELEBRITY TESTIFIES: An Onion must-read on a hairy, over-weight, inarticulate visitor to Congress. And, no I don’t mean Alec Baldwin.

A new poll shows that seven out of ten Europeans think that president Bush makes international decisions solely on the basis of U.S. interests. And we’re supposed to be upset about this? If I were Karl Rove, I’d be sending this poll out to every media outlet I could find.

YOU GO, DORIS: Feminist icon and novelist Doris Lessing has had it with contemporary feminism. She rightly believes it has degenerated, like the putrid remains of the civil rights movement, into cheer-leading, parochialism and bigotry. Its main focus? Hatred of men: “I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed,” Lessing vented at the Edinburgh Festival. “We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men?? I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men. You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologizing for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives.” Amen, Doris. Good to see that Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia have some reinforcements. She says of modern feminism: “It has become a kind of religion that you can’t criticize because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not.” The same could be said for many of the current movements to support minorities.

IRELAND AGAIN: I’m still amazed at how many readers still hold the view that the problem in Ireland is “British” occupation and that everything would be ok if they just left or conceded everything to the I.R.A. The main problem with this analysis, which still hovers behind some American coverage of the Irish conflict, is that it ignores the Republic. The last thing Dublin wants is a united Ireland in which the Republic is expected to deal with what would be a ferocious and well-armed Unionist insurgency in the North. Both London and Dublin want some kind of power-sharing in Ulster and both, unlike some opinion leaders in America, have few illusions about the IRA. Check out this editorial from the Dublin Irish Times on August 1, putting the onus for the failure of peace on the IRA. And check out a devastating report in the same paper of how the Good Friday Agreement led to no reduction in violence from either side, particularly the IRA. The “cease-fire” proclaimed for p.r. purposes was merely a cease-fire against obvious sectarian attacks. It certainly didn’t stop the ninety killings from both sides that followed the “peace” agreement.

UNCONSCIOUS MEDIA BIAS: Nice sentence in the New York Times today about the 1996 Immigration Act, one of the most disgraceful pieces of legislation in recent years: “”Before passage of a Republican-backed law five years ago, only an immigration judge could order the deportation of someone who arrived without valid travel documents. Now an immigration officer can exercise that power, called expedited removal, on the spot, a move intended to cut down on fraud.” Of course, this is accurate. But it is also accurate to point out that president Clinton signed the law and that it passed the Senate 97 – 3 and the House by 333 votes to 87. That looks pretty bipartisan to me. So why the completely arbitrary nailing of Republicans?

Why can’t Americans vacate? Check out the latest piece opposite.

Michael Kelly states the obvious – but with a fervor all too rare these days. A must-read.

The plight of Chinese orphans; an Aussie guy unloads on American women; the etymology of “Christers,” again; etc.

The shocking news is that the IRA have now withdrawn their alleged offer to disarm. Surprise! The usual suspects will now say that the Unionists brought this about by refusing to believe a mere IRA promise, which belied everything the IRA has said in the last three years. That, of course, was the entire point of this silly exercise in IRA spin – to deflect blame from the IRA for the breakdown of the “peace”-process. Meanwhile, three IRA members were just caught in Colombia hanging with paramilitary groups there. Intelligence sources tell the Daily Telegraph today that “they were acquiring information and expertise in the firing of home-made and self-engineered rocket and mortar devices for use in rural and urban areas as well as offering their own talents in the same areas of activity.” Hmmm. These terrorists arrived in Colombia posing as journalists five weeks ago, just as the IRA leadership was pulling the wool over the eyes of the “peace” negotiators. The security sources have this to say about the incident: “The Colombian incident confirms what we have said all along. While we have a ceasefire, it simply means that, for a given time, they are not killing police officers and soldiers, but reserve the right to continue all other activities, including murder, punishment attacks, robberies, recruitment, targeting and training. They have not taken a day off since before the ceasefire. They are scouring the world to try to advance their technology and improve their devices.” And people wonder why the Unionists are a teensy bit skeptical of the IRA’s claims to want disarmament.

PLO SCHTICK: Meanwhile, back in Israel, there is a de facto war under way. As Michael Ledeen points out in National Review Online, so much for Clinton’s foreign policy legacy of “peace.” The arguments I made recently about the IRA apply, of course, even more emphatically to the PLO. Both groups are professional terrorist organizations, using an underlying political grievance to stay in the business of killing. Neither will ever faithfully negotiate; and if the leaders of these thugs were foolish enough to negotiate some kind of real truce, they would never be able to enforce it. But the Israeli crisis is even deeper than that of Ireland. In Ireland, you have two democratic governments in Dublin and London, both skeptical of the IRA, and with at least some popular legitimacy to enforce peace. You also have prosperous economies in which there is an alternative for young people who prefer to make money rather than war. In the Levant, every single pro-PLO Arab country is a dictatorship, supported by mob rule, suspicious of capitalism, and dedicated to anti-Zionism as the main means of taking and securing power. The notion that these people can be negotiated with is – how can one put this kindly? – nuts. The truth is that both in Ireland and Israel, the solution is already in place. It’s called partition. What’s needed in both places is not some constant attempt to renegotiate borders. That way simply leads to more war. What’s needed are governments in Jerusalem, London and Dublin prepared to enforce the current borders effectively, and to take on terrorism with unforgiving force. Take it away, Sharon. And save your apologies. Anyone who believes that the PLO wants peace with Israel is so delusional they cannot be persuaded. So ignore them and defend your country.

MICKEY VERSUS THE TIMES: Just so you know I’m not the only one obsessing about bias in the news (like reporting about HIV transmission), here’s Mickey Kaus’s great job detailing how the New York Times did its best to hide the amazing news of the success of welfare reform. Yes, he’s picky. But he’s also right.

Check out Susan Okie’s front-page story in the Washington Post on the CDC’s latest release of AIDS statistics. Complete reiteration of CDC orthodoxy, with nary an attempt to subject any of it to the teensiest bit of skepticism or statistical analysis. I think most reporters simply assume that an agency tracking diseases is so obviously laudatory that scrutinizing its press-releases is somehow rude. But surely an AIDS reporter should be aware of the healthy debate about what we reliably know about HIV transmission in America right now, and aware that many of the studies she cites as authorities have been thoroughly questioned in the gay and AIDS press. And surely someone with some basic knowledge of statistics also knows that drops of 20 to 40 percent in an epidemic are almost impossible to sustain after a while, especially when the number of deaths out of a population of 270 million is now somewhere around 20,000. The latest CDC report is not that revealing, in fact. Since its only solid data are in those states where reporting cases of HIV transmission is mandatory, and since the states with by far the biggest HIV load aren’t among these (yet), most of this is educated guess-work. Still, it looks as if AIDS deaths (a relatively solid number) have plateaued at around 20,000 a year. The current rate of HIV transmission is still anybody’s guess.

ENGLISH ANTI-AMERICANISM: Compared to France, of course, it’s piddling. And the English consume Americana like Midwesterners engulf carbohydrates. It’s always grating to read relatively serious newspapers in London taking Hollywood schlock seriously, but then it’s better than much of British popular culture, with better production values too. But every now and again, you see something that encapsulates an attitude. Check out Christina Odone’s little essay in the Guardian and you’ll see what I mean. She’s not completely wrong about the picture of American women we are fed in popular culture, but there’s a parochial quality to the analysis that is peculiarly English. In fact, it’s parochialism dressed up as world-weariness, which is a pretty good description of the Economist as well. Still, it’s the kind of piece that couldn’t be printed in a major American paper, because of sentences like this: “Try talking to an American woman about anything she’s not worked on, given birth to, or slept with: she can’t. Outside the professional, or the emotional, she loses her bearing.” I think she’s been reading too much Quindlen. Then my brother emailed me this little piece of British twittery about the fact that Americans have no sense of irony. Notice that Brits mistake Californians for Americans. Also notice that the London wags can’t spell “San Francisco.” Ah, but those Brits are so subtle and well-educated. My ass they are.

LETTERS: An American woman says what she thinks of her British counterparts; etc.

STEM CELL PATIENCE: Timely report from Canada on a breakthrough in harvesting stem cells from human and mice skin. Maybe human embryos are not the only way. Maybe some kind of prudent wait-and-see approach (similar to W’s) could bring us the best of both worlds. Curious this hasn’t been reported in the U.S. press (apart from buried in the Wall Street Journal). Or maybe not that curious at all.

“The China Center for Adoption Affairs shall not identify prospective adoptive referrals for homosexuals. Legally, the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China recognizes only families formed by marriage of opposite sex and does not recognize the legality of homosexual families, and the homosexual families are, therefore, not protected by laws. From the Chinese medical point of view, the China Mental Disorder Classification and Diagnosis Standard classifies homosexuality as sexual obstruction, belonging to psychiatric disease of the kind of sexual psychological barrier. In terms of the Chinese traditional ethics and customs and habits, homosexuality is an act violating public morality and therefore not recognized by the society. In accordance with the principle that adoption shall not violate social ethics as set forth in the Adoption Law, foreign homosexuals are not allowed to adopt children in China.” This is the official Beijing statement regarding the ability of gay couples to adopt Chinese infants. Say what you like about those godless Commies, they sure know how to put homosexuals in their place. Why doesn’t the Family Research Council honor and support this stand for traditional morality?

STREISAND AWARD NOMINEE:
“How do you approach the project of being a human on the planet?

That’s an excellent question. I think I have an idea of the life that I should live, but don’t have the courage to live it. During the years that I have been alive, the country that I happen to come from has been a cruel force in the world, in my view. I don’t believe in holding on to my U.S. passport, and yet I haven’t given it up. I have a terrible fear of prison. I’m very claustrophobic. And so I don’t do the things I really believe in doing, chaining myself to this or that and getting arrested. So I’m very aware of the absurdity of my life that is caused by cowardice and fear.”

– playwright Wallace Shawn, blathering on about nothing in the <a HREF = http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/magazine/12QUESTIONS.html?searchpv=day01 TARGET = NEW>New York Times.

NEW LETTERS: St Augustine on Al Gore’s beard, no limbo for stem cells, etc.

FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE TIMES: I’m grateful to a reader for pointing out the following sentence in the New York Times’ profile of Leon Kass, the man picked by president Bush to keep an eye on stem cell issues. Here it is: “Critics of Dr. Kass’s views call him a neoconservative thinker, citing his opposition to cloning and in-vitro fertilization.” This sentence simply assumes that being a neoconservative is something somehow damning. It’s not a big deal, and the slant is pretty subtle. But can you imagine a sentence in the Times saying, “Critics of Michael Kinsley call him a neoliberal, citing his support for tax reform and free market economics.” It wouldn’t happen. Sometimes the bias is so internalized and subtle the writer and editor don’t even know they’re practicing it.

Longtime readers will remember my noting the trip to Cuba of a bunch of media machers last February. CBS’s Leslie Moonves, Vanity Fair’s editor Graydon Carter, who has just published Gore Vidal’s pornographic defense of domestic U.S. terrorism, and MTV head Tom Freston, were among those who toasted the murderous thug Fidel Castro. They got permission from the Treasury Department before they left, but it’s not clear whether they violated the terms of their trip. The Feds, according to the Miami Herald, are now investigating. A good sign of increasingly frosty relations between Washington and Hollywood. It still staggers me how people who consider themselves liberal and enlightened could suck up to a man who dragooned homosexuals into concentration camps, outlawed any political opposition, and is responsible for the murder and imprisonment of thousands for political crimes. A good piece in Front Page magazine lately highlighted the vicious homophobia of Castro. So now we know a little about Graydon Carter’s politics: he is tolerant toward communist dictators and fascist terrorists. Oh well. It’s the buzz and white rums that count.

VILLAGE BIGOT: I posted an excerpt from James Ridgeway’s recent piece from the Village Voice where he accuses “Christers” of wanting to oppress whole classes of people and of being racists (since they only want to have white babies). (Has Ridgeway heard of something called African-American Christianity?) I assumed “Christer” was a misprint. It turns out it isn’t. It’s a retro slur against Christians originating in the 1960s. It’s basically the equivalent of calling a Jewish person a “kike,” a heterosexual person a “breeder,” or a gay person a “faggot”, except I think it’s worse than that because it also manages to use the sacred word “Christ” as a form of abuse. Can you imagine the hyper-p.c. Voice ever allowing any other religion to be abused in this way?

NETWORK REVISITED: Spent one day this weekend inside with friends watching old movies. I was really impressed by Woody Allen’s “Deconstructing Harry.” I’d seen it before but never appreciated it fully. So completely shameless and true, it’s his best movie, I think, apart from Annie Hall. But I was really blown away by “Network.” Twenty-five years ago, this movie constructed a fantasy parody of the network news gone bad. There was a populist loud-mouth (O’Reilly?), and a full-time psychic (Zahn?). No wonder Dan Rather told viewers after Bush’s stem-cell speech to get themselves a newspaper if they want to have a chance of understanding current events. Paddy Chayevsky’s nightmare is now our banality. And who anywhere is anything close to “mad as hell”?

LETTERS: In defense of Bush’s speech; embryos in limbo; why conservatives deserve no respect; etc.

THE BIGGEST STORY OF THE YEAR: It’s rare that, in a public policy debate, you get hard evidence of the success of a certain policy in a short space of time. This isn’t true of the most significant social policy change of the 1990s: welfare reform. We’ve almost forgotten the white-knuckled battle it took to prise real welfare reform from the Clinton presidency – especially against the almost ceaseless arguments from left-liberals who fought any real change to the end. Well, guess what? The liberals were dead, flat wrong. When the New York Times is forced to run a front-page story on the clear revival of the poor black family following reform, you know the debate is all but over. When that story includes a capitulation from one of those who resigned from his position at HHS over the Clinton-Republican change, then you know this matters. Mickey Kaus, one of the few liberals to have pursued this in the 1980s and 1990s like a Jack Russell attached to a mailman’s heel, has every reason to crow. Yes, the Times does its best to minimize the news. But the lesson is clear: bad government policy can undermine social stability and order. But just as important: these mistakes can be undone. There is nothing inevitable about social chaos. All that’s needed is the will to reverse it.

WHO’S FIGHTING AIDS IN AFRICA?: Nevaripine is a drug that, in combination with others, can sharply reduce HIV transmission from mother to unborn child. Since the success rate in preventing this kind of transmission is far higher than the success rate at controlling the disease once a child has it, you’d think this would be a priority for the South African government. Are the evil drug companies standing in the way? The drug’s manufacturer, Boehringer Ingelheim, has been giving the drug away fro free for over a year in Africa. This still hasn’t prevented the usual AIDS activists from attacking the company. But it turns out the drug is hard to give away in Africa because there are so few natal and post-natal facilities through which to administer the drug, and no safe baby formula or clean water to administer it after birth. To add to this, the South African government won’t provide the free drug through its public health services. Why? Beats me. Check out this story from South Africa to see if you can see a credible answer. And check out Bob Herbert’s latest column taking Pretoria to task … Oh, well. I can always dream.