I’ve learned to trust whatever Reuel Marc Gerecht writes. He was one of the most prescient of writers before September 11 and one of the most perceptive judges of al Qaeda’s strength and ruthlessness. His op-ed today is a welcome tonic of concern that al Qaeda has not yet been eradicated, and that, for all we know, bin Laden is still alive. This we should fear. As my old friend Peter Bergen has shown, al Qaeda has an international structure explicitly designed to protect itself against the extinction of any one cell or base. Sending American troops into Pakistan and elsewhere to find him – and not relying upon unreliable proxies – is therefore a must. So is action in Somalia and Yemen.
ENRON: I’m still trying to figure out what this Enron thing is all about. The key thing with scandals like this, it seems to me, is to ask yourself: what’s the worst accusation that could be made? With Whitewater, the worst possibility was that it was a petty, sweetheart deal. It was easy to see that, even if this were true, it wasn’t that big a deal. Surely, from what we know now, it’s even less of a deal with Enron. I haven’t seen any argument yet that takes us beyond the line that many in the Bush administration were close to Enron, that Enron helped bankroll Bush’s campaigns, and that therefore there is some sort of guilt by association. If that’s it, it’s not pleasant but, like Whitewater, not that damaging either. If it isn’t, and some in the administration knew of the improprieties or in any way gave Enron special treatment in concealing them, then they deserve any payback they get. So far, the opposite appears to be the case – that Enron asked for help and none was forthcoming. The golden rule for Bush is to get everything out now. Bush’s and Cheney’s tendency toward secrecy in these matters is by far the biggest danger. I agree with Byron York on this. In this political culture, some sort of scandal or semi-scandal or appearance of scandal is inevitable in any administration. What matters is how you deal with it. So they need to be as forthright as possible. No Clintonism, please. Look what it did to him in the end.
ONE LAST MORRISISM: Given my latest piece on Clinton’s record on terrorism, I asked Dick Morris if he thought Clinton would be worried right now about what September 11 was doing to his legacy. Could Clinton be remorseful? Or angry? Or reflective? Morris’s answer took a while, since he hasn’t spoken to Clinton in years. Here’s a short version of his answer: “The thing about Bill Clinton is that he never, ever, ever, ever, EVER, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER, blames himself.”
WHY ARE CONSERVATIVE BOOKS SELLING?: Don’t you love it when a New York Times reviewer tries to explain why a book on liberal media bias is selling so well and he comes up with the following:
“It may simply be that conservatives are writing books of political thought and moderates and liberals aren’t. It may be that conservatives are simply more interesting when they do write and talk, and get to an audience’s belly in a way that liberals and moderates don’t. Or it may simply be that if you are a publisher and want to make money, the conservative writers with their broadcasting celebrity will attract the readers, so that’s where you put your chips.”
And could it be that the book is saying something interesting, important and correct? And Mr Arnold wonders where one might possibly get the idea that the media elites are sedated by their own liberal cocoon?
MEDIA BIAS IN SLATE: Here’s a little test. We’re told that although Slate has only Democrats on its editorial staff, it is perfectly able to restrain bias. Take a look at Tim Noah’s “Whopper of the Week,” feature. Now this section bills itself as a watchdog of lies in public life, a fun and often revealing feature. Now look at the Whopper of the Week 2001 Archive. By my accounting, there are 30 documented lies from Republicans, Conservatives, or right of center types; there are seven that really cannot be categorized (foreigners, admirals, etc.); and there are eight lies from Democrats or liberals. By far the biggest category of lies is confined to senior members of the Bush administration. 2001 was, of course, the year of the pardon scandals. But the most famous liar in recent history, one Bill Clinton, goes unmentioned, while George W. Bush gets multiple entries. Hmmmm. If this tally were unbiased, it would suggest that conservatives are three times more likely to lie than liberals. Now this may be a complete accident. It may be that Tim Noah, who is a bona fide big-L liberal, is completely unbiased in his selection of topics. Then again, it might be that he is not, and that he works for an excellent liberal online magazine, whose only real fault is that it won’t admit it’s biased to the left. I report. You decide.
KINSLEY ASKS II: Reading Bernard Goldberg’s best-seller tonight, I came across a curious excerpt. If you read Mike Kinsley’s critique, you might think that at some point, Goldberg claimed that it was evidence of bias that “a TV producer would decide to label a full-time ideologue like Phyllis Schlafly as ‘conservative’ but not feel obliged to label avocational activist Rosie O’Donnell as ‘liberal.'” As I say below, I think that is bias. But when you read Goldberg’s book, you find that Kinsley has conflated two comparisons Goldberg makes. Here they are on pages 56 and 57:
“Harry Smith, the cohost (at the time) of CBS This Morning, introduced a segment on sexual harrassment saying, ‘ … has anything really changed? Just ahead we’re going to ask noted law professor Catharine MacKinnon and conservative spokeswoman Phyllis Shlafly to talk about that.’ It sounds innocent enough, but why is it that Phyllis Shlafly was identified as a conservative, but Catharine MacKinnon was not identified as a radical feminist or a far-left professor or even as a plain old liberal?”
It seems to me that the Shlafly/Mackinnon contrast is pretty damning, and certainly far more damning than the Shlafly/O’Donnell contrast. On the next page, Goldberg writes:
“Rush Limbaugh is the conservative radio talk show host. But Rosie O’Donnell, who while hosting a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton said Mayor Rudy Giuliani was New York’s “village idiot,” is not the liberal TV talk show host.”
Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but Mike is usually so devastatingly fair, even when he’s devastatingly sharp, that I was surprised by the conflation. I’m beginning to think the obvious truth of Goldberg’s book is causing havoc among otherwise sharp liberals. It has made Tom Shales look like a blithering idiot and now it’s made Mike Kinsley look either a mite careless or, well, biased.
The Dish 