Month: August 2001

When Chandra Levy’s parents first tried to push their missing daughter to the head of the D.C. police’s to-do list, they thought using the media was a good idea. And indeed one of the constant refrains of those who justify the media excess of the last couple of months is that, whatever hideous wreckage it leaves behind in the form of people’s ruined private lives, it’s worth it if the coverage helps find a missing person. Well, guess what? The coverage has actually achieved the reverse. The cops have been deluged with bogus, false, crazy, wacko and misleading tips – and, under media pressure, been forced to check them out. This massive waste of resources – resources that could have been used to investigate an actual crime rather than a speculation about one – has yet to turn up anything useful, so far as we know. This, we are also told by the cops in the Washington Post, is very common in missing person cases. All this is why police investigation should properly be left to law enforcement – not the distressed parents of missing children and desperate editors of tabloids. The way in which personal grief has been allowed to distort and corrupt our criminal justice system is perhaps the enduring lesson of this case. We owe the Levys our sympathy. We do not owe them the abolition of a neutral and independent police force.

BORKING MARRIAGE: There is little to say about Robert Bork’s piece on same-sex marriage today. There is nothing original in it, and I presume the Journal ran it under intense pressure from the theo-conservatives. And there is nothing surprising about it. Since his horrifying treatment at the hands of the cultural left in his Supreme Court nomination hearings, Bork has become a sadly bitter man, who rages against almost anything in the modern world. But there are a couple of sentences worth parsing: “Some proponents of gay marriage, such as Jonathan Rauch, have tried to split cultural conservatives by invoking federalism. Family law, he argues, has always been governed by the states. Though that is not entirely true, it is entirely irrelevant. A constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of same-sex marriage would itself override federalism.” Note first the sly slur. He asserts that Jon Rauch’s defense of federalism in this matter is tactical, made purely as a means to “split cultural conservatives.” It doesn’t occur to Bork that Rauch may be sincere in this, or if it does occur to him, he’s not gracious enough to admit it. He then goes on to say of Rauch’s point that marriage has always been a state matter, that it “is not entirely true.” So that means it’s almost entirely true? Then Bork says it is irrelevant because the Supreme Court is poised to impose same-sex marriage on the whole country. Huh? We don’t even have same-sex marriage in a single state. We are years and probably decades away from the U.S. Supreme Court intervening in this matter, if it ever does. But this alleged emergency is the reason for this radical amendment? The real reason surely is that a faction on the right wants to shut down this debate before it has really begun because they have been slowly losing the argument – in the press and in the polls, where support for equal marriage rights is growing.

LETTERS: Guns in Seattle; media scolds and religion; etc.

GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST: David Broder, we are all taught to believe, is the dean of Washington journalism. And so he is. He still reports; he’s never shrill; he’s often very shrewd and on target. But he’s also prone to the notion that besets all those who look down on ideological zeal or hardball. His most recent column bewails the fact that George W. Bush stuck with his tax cut pledge. For Broder, Bush has made it harder for himself to spend more money on important things like a senior prescription drug benefit, or a bigger military. But has it occurred to Broder that Bush believes the tax cut is simply more important than his other objectives? Or that Bush has decided it would be better to return to deficits than to acquiesce in the massive new entitlements Democrats want to spend the surpluses on? Such a thought doesn’t seem to have crossed Broder’s mind. It is a given to many journalists that taxes are good, that government doesn’t need to get any smaller, that all our problems – from senior health-care to energy shortages – can never be simply left alone. Yesterday the Post itself went one better, excoriating Virginia for not having high enough taxes. “Virginia is a wealthy state,” the Post opines, “but much of the wealth is untaxed.” The nerve of it!

ZOE AND JIM: The best thing I could find to read all day (in journalism, that is) is Zoe Heller and Jim Wolcott chatting each other up in Slate. They are so right about the Condit-Levy story. The true joy of this summer (apart from the Elysian weather here on the Cape) has been watching all these anti-Condit pundit-scolds making complete asses of themselves. Wolcott has a beaut of a description of Larry King’s descent into Psychic News Network world: “Night after night, Larry King, looking like a shriveled astronaut strapped by his suspenders into a Mercury 7 module, led a bevy of blond conservative harpies–Hillary haters who had somehow cornered the peroxide market–and a few half-hearted dissenters in a free-association panel discussion of the Condit-Levy case that was a harlequinade of spite, wild speculation, and cheap moralizing, with Condit cast as the wolf, Chandra the naive lamb.” Man, Wolcott can write. And he’s so on target about these creepy Condit-haters trying desperately to relive their Lewinsky glory days. As if adultery were a Democratic monopoly.

“But the news about the 401(k)’s [losing value] has got me nervous. I’m delighted if it foils the plot to securitize Social Security, which strikes me as yet another instance of our becoming like post-Soviet Russia — tearing apart our common wealth to enrich our corporate oligarchs and liberating the rest of us, as someone once said, to go sleep under a bridge.”- Nelson Aldrich Jr., New York Times Magazine, August 5.

IS BUSH WORSE THAN POL POT?: More liberal charm from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

LETTERS: Hillary and little animals; the gay left attacks gay leftists now as well; etc.

Have you ever read a weirder New York Times’ “EDITOR’S NOTE” than yesterday’s? Here it is: “Readers who solve The Times’s Sunday puzzles may wish to skip this note until they have completed today’s crossword. That puzzle, on Page 64 of the magazine, is titled “Homonames.” Its principal answers are homonyms of well-known names — words pronounced like the names but spelled differently and unrelated in meaning. After advance copies of the magazine had been delivered, a few readers, perhaps prompted by the sound of the title, said they perceived allusions to gay life among the puzzle clues. Slurs involving sexual orientation would be a violation of The Times’s standards. The newspaper has requested and received assurances from the puzzle editor and the puzzle creator, a veteran Times contributor, that no such allusions — nor any suggestions about anyone’s sexual orientation — were intended.” Now take a look at the clues in the “Homonames” crossword: “Tote a narrow opening?” “Friend of Françoise?” “Add more lubricant.” “People who live next to a Y.” “__flash.” “Tiny openings.” “Scratched up leather straps?” “Reddish purple.” “Fashion designer Gernreich.” “Gob.” “Place to get a screwdriver.” “1967 Rookie of the Year.” I’m happy to take the Times’ word for it that this crossword had no conscious intent to make me fall about laughing. But has the crossword creator ever thought of having psycho-therapy?

AND NOW THEY’RE AFTER NORAH: I guess most of you know by now what gay leftists do to those gay men and women who dare to disagree with them. The apparatchiks of the Old Guard attack the dissidents, vilify them, smear them, ransack their private lives, do anything to keep them from being published or read or listened to. Norah Vincent, a young lesbian independent writer, is not the first. But the vicious attacks on her by the usual suspects are still depressing. Today in the New York Times, the Voice’s official gay lefty Richard Goldstein, goes on the attack again against her with this slur: “The liberal press needs to ask itself why they consistently promote the work of gay writers who attack other gay people.” Attack other gay people? Did Goldstein, who recently ransacked my private life for sport, say that with a straight face? Perhaps he is unaware of his ally, Charles Kaiser, who glibly says the following in the Times today: “I certainly think that Andrew [Sullivan’s] popularity, especially on the talk-show circuit has a lot to do with his own self hatred.” That’s not an attack on another gay person? To accuse someone of self-hatred is the lowest and cheapest of insults. It’s something no-one can rebut; and it strikes at the core of someone’s integrity. So too does the notion that those of us who want to offer a different future for homosexuals – integration into the wider world, the replacement of victimology with self-esteem, a free market economy where individuals can pursue their dreams regardless of sexual orientation – are somehow “attacking” gay people. Both these assertions are among the lowest smears possible upon someone’s integrity. The only thing lower is the charge of hypocrisy – a deliberate lie that has repeatedly been foisted on me as well. What are these smear-artists afraid of? That Norah and I might actually win an audience? That we might have earned some readership? That we might change some people’s minds? Ah, there’s the rub. The best answer to these hate-mongers is to keep writing and thinking and ignoring them. Their day is over, and the only thing left of it, like the smile of the Cheshire cat, is the lingering poison and envy that hovers in the air. Meanwhile, check out Norah’s new website. Yes, it’s www.norahvincent.com.

CATHOLIC DUAL LOYALTY AGAIN: Joe Conason’s work has always given me the willies, but his latest questioning of the motives of the spy Robert Hanssen was even more disturbing than usual. In his limning of Hanssen’s connections with Opus Dei, a special order for laity and clergy within the Catholic Church, Conason does more than simply veer up to the edge of an ancient and trusty anti-Catholic libel. He suggests that Hanssen wasn’t merely a traitor for the Russians, but a traitor for the Vatican, secretly waging war against leftists in the United States, using classified information. How’s that for a two-fer? Conason’s implication is that Hannsen’s treachery for the Pope was worse than his doings for Moscow, because he was ideologically motivated in his papist surveillance of American lefties, while merely financially interested in handing secrets over to the Russians. Worse, Hannsen’s emails show him to be appalled by Bill Clinton, Conason’s mentor in all things political and moral. Imagine that: a man who thinks more highly of the Pope than Bill Clinton! Conason veils his prejudice by citing liberal Catholics’ issues with Opus Dei. But his meaning is clear enough. Obviously, I’m not defending the activities of Hannsen. But I am querying the easy anti-Catholicism (especially when it comes to conservative Catholics) in the liberal media. Check it out for yourself. And ask yourself: would anyone get away with this kind of dual loyalty smear with any other group? American Jews, for example? I doubt it – and for good reason.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “Hillary just doesn’t care about battered women and their kids.” Sub-head on a piece by Richard Miniter, Wall Street Journal. Does she hate cuddly little animals as well?

LETTERS:A Hillary mystery unraveled; dumber jocks; the hell of special interest groups; etc.

CHINA’S ANTI-CHOICE POLICIES: The Daily Telegraph reports that China is going to force up to 20,000 abortions in a small province that has been bucking the neo-fascist government in Beijing. Amazing quote from a U.N. official, Sven Burmester, the United Nations Population Fund representative in Beijing: “For all the bad press, China has achieved the impossible. The country has solved its population problem.” The bad press includes the drowning of infants in rice-paddies, forced abortions for heavily pregnant women, coerced sterilizations, and on and on. Here’s a simple good faith test for feminist groups in the U.S.: take a stand against forced abortions and sterilization in China. Or is ‘choice’ for women merely a noble principle when the government is attempting to stop abortion rather than impose it?

“”The Mail on Sunday, like its sister paper the Daily Mail, occupies the middlebrow middle ground in the British press… Politically it has always hewed to a far-right agenda, from its mid-1930s sympathetic portrayal of Adolf Hitler to its mid-1980s fawning over Margaret Thatcher.” – Martin Lewis, Salon.

LETTERS: A rat’s ass in Wyoming; the Streisand rule; the brilliance of jocks, etc.

The latest poll from the Washington Post reiterates what most other polls have been saying. Bush has a job approval rating of 59 percent, his second highest ever. His personal rating is 63 percent. The Village Idiot appears to be doing far better than Clinton at this point in his presidency – despite a jihad against him from such outlets as the New York Times. But as I pointed out last week in “Negatives,” the real point is not these dips and bumps – but the more impressive stability of these numbers. Dick Cheney, moreover, has now overtaken John McCain in favorability ratings. One quote in the Post says a lot, I think: “‘I feel a lot more comfortable having Bush in the White House. He’s taking his time, being careful, trying to switch the direction from what was going on before. . . . The Clinton years were very difficult for me. His personal life overwhelmed everything else.'” This from a swing-voter in Pennsylvania. No reason for complacency but certainly a tonic against panic.

THE GAY THOUGHT POLICE, AGAIN: Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, the gay thought police, represented by GLAAD, the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, have targeted yet another piece of popular culture. Kevin Smith, hilarious director of “Clerks,” and of the forthcoming, “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” have been sent the usual letter of humorless derision from some gay activists. They object to any humor directed at gays, any presentation of even vaguely homophobic attitudes, even in jest, indeed any satire at all in which gay people might be targets. The only answer to this is to tell these humorless professional homosexuals where to get off. Smith is so obviously gay-friendly and so obviously in touch with popular culture that gays should be thrilled to have him direct his satirical fire at them as well as everybody else. Here’s Smith’s own response to this idiocy: “You all know me. You all know how big a fan I am of the gay community. You all know the respect and fascination I have for gay culture and practices.” This is a homophobe? GLAAD, taking a page from Jesse Jackson’s book, have already secured $10,000 from Smith as a measure of his good faith, but they’re planning to try and bilk his parent company of $200,000 for the Matthew Shepard Foundation as well. Nice little movie you have there. Shame if we made it out to be bigoted. Once upon a time, gay people were revered for their wit, sense of humor, love of irony, willingness to take a joke. When did their representatives turn into such humorless, shake-down jerks?

UNVEILED: Finally, the social right are making serious arguments against same-sex marriage. They’re still wrong though. Why? Check out my new TRB opposite. In the same vein, check out Jonathan Rauch’s most recent fusillade in National Review Online. Then tell me if you still think the case against gay marriage holds up.

LETTERS: Why actors are actually smart; a lament for old-fashioned discretion, etc.

Tina Brown has always been a liberal for social reasons. It would be a little much to ask her to articulate an actual politics, since she shows no sign of having one, or even wanting to have one. But you cannot go to the right parties or throw the right parties in Manhattan without cosying up to the left, in its various social guises, so the left is what Tina kowtows to when it matters. But even the politics of posturing has always been subservient to fashion in the Brown universe. What’s true or right or good has never been as important as what’s hot. So no-one should be surprised by Brown’s use of models posing as the Bush girls in jail in a fashion spread. It is, in so many ways, an almost perfect representation of what Brown’s journalism represents. Thanks, Tina, for clarifying everything.

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL IN THE SCOUTS: The Associated Press is reporting that one of Massachusetts’ biggest Boy Scouts Councils will allow gay scoutmasters, as long as they remain completely mute about their orientation. “Discussions about sexual orientation do not have a place in Scouts,” said Brock Bigsby, Scout executive for the Massachusetts Minuteman Council. “The Scouts will not inquire into a person’s sexual history, and that person will not expose their sexual orientation one way or the other.” Good idea. Now let’s make sure no-one talks about sexual orientation – straights included. No mention of wives or girlfriends or children; no mention that they are heterosexual in any way. Let’s see how long they last in the closet. I give them ten minutes.

MORE RACE-BAITING AT THE WASHINGTON POST: Bulls-eye column by David Horowitz on the latest piece of race-baiting by a black Washington Post staffer. Courtland Milloy wonders aloud whether Colin Powell is a “Bush man” or a “Black man” because he has sensible objections to the upcoming U.N. Conference on Racism. Can you imagine a white Post columnist writing a piece about, say, a Clinton trip to Africa and asking whether Clinton was properly white? The Conference, which is yet another U.N. excuse for anti-semitism and America-envy, should command no respect or even deference from the U.S. It will be a platform for attacking Israel and the United States for alleged racism, a platform peopled by the usual thugs and know-nothings who lead and pillage dozens of developing countries. The U.S is supposed to take moral lessons from Robert Mugabe and Yassir Arafat? Powell has already visited Africa and demonstrated leadership on AIDS. He needs no lessons from Milloy on being black in America. Besides, he is not a black secretary of state; he is a secretary of state, who happens to be black. The attempt to use his race as a means to dictate policy positions is as ugly as it is sometimes effective. We’ve seen this kind of tactic so many times before. I remember a piece by Polly Toynbee in the Washington Monthly years ago asking whether Margaret Thatcher was a woman. Thatcher regarded such attacks as beneath contempt. So should Powell.

LETTERS: The difference between Huppies and Bulies; who’s dumber; actors or jocks?, etc.

Unpersuasive piece by Byron York about the seriousness of Bush’s slide in the Zogby poll. Zogby’s polls are out of kilter with everyone else’s which show a pretty stable positive rating for Bush in the mid to upper 50s. Zogby shows a positive rating now of only 47.2 percent. The reason for the discrepancy is the way the poll is structured, rating responses not on a positive-negative scale, but divvied up between “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” and “poor.” If you split these down the middle, with good and excellent being positive, and fair and poor being negative, you get a slow slide downwards, especially among those who once thought Bush’s performance was ‘good’ and now think it’s only ‘fair.’ But, of course, this depends on what the meaning of the word “fair” is. Personally, I don’t think it’s that negative a judgment. It’s a neutral sentiment leaning toward approval. (Zogby might try testing the term ‘mediocre,’ a neutral term leaning toward disapproval, for better results). If you put “fair” in the ‘positive’ column, then Bush’s ratings have gone from 78 percent in June to 80.8 percent in July. If you put it in a neutral column, and take it out of measurement altogether, and subtract those who think Bush is doing a poor job from those who think he’s doing a good or excellent job, then you get a net positive count of 29.9 in June and 29.9 in July. Pretty stable, huh? I’m not saying Bush doesn’t have things to worry about, especially his terrible job at countering the liberal media and his outreach to suburban moderates, but the Zogby hype strikes me as overdone.

“Frankly, I don’t care whether or not Barbara Bush wore denims to Buckingham Palace, it was rude of me to write about her, and I will never mention her again. She deserves to be as much of a regular American kid as you can possibly be when your father is the president. I was wrong.”- Roger Ebert recanting today in the Chicago Sun-Times.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE I: “Bush doesn’t like people, unless the people grew up with him at Andover. Clinton can play up, down and sideways.” – an anonymous Clinton crony, given cover in Maureen Dowd’s column today.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE II: “I have to wonder if the Bush administration’s position on the World Conference on Racism is just politically dumb or if it is perhaps indicative some something more malignant. Is the Bush White House just full of latent racists?” – Rep. Cynthia McKinney. No, but the Congressional Black Caucus is.

Couldn’t disagree with David Plotz more. In Slate recently, he inveighed against this fetid month of bad journalism and cultural sloth. But I’ve always enjoyed August – and not just because I was born in it. Our culture needs more fallowness, more time when nothing is done, more days when little is expected and less is accomplished. August is the only time when we are allowed to relax without having some sort of stressful holiday to ruin it. It’s the only month when complete abdication of responsibility is permitted. And it’s the only month when otherwise sensible journalists are reduced to writing inane musings on whether months should exist or not.

ART FOLLOWS LIFE DEPT.: The Onion goes one better than anyone else on the Condit case.

WHAT’S A HUPPIE?: Find out in letters today. Also: more stupid actor theories, and inside Lizzie’s car.

COPS IN D.C.: They’re still the real story. John Miller has a helpful primer on the sharp decline in D.C.’s police force under Mayor Marion Barry. Miller writes: “Consider simply the homicide numbers: 1,500 unsolved murders over the last decade; 225 killings by alleged repeat offenders, including 125 who had been arrested previously (most of their charges were dismissed).” In the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen chimes in, reminding us that, “to take one standard measure – fatal shootings per 1,000 officers – the figure for Washington is 2.15 while that for New York is 0.71.” Yes, things do seem to be slowly improving under new police chief Ramsey. But if this sordid Levy story is to have any good result at all, surely it should be some renewed Congressional scrutiny of the police force in the District. If we cannot be represented in Congress, at least we should be allowed to have a police force worthy of the name.

MEDIA RETRACTIONS WATCH: Terrific checklist of media outlets that broadcast Gary Condit’s alleged affair with a minister’s daughter – but have yet to retract the story and apologize. And to all of you who’ve emailed to tell me you still believe the affair occurred: go tell it to the F.B.I.