The lawyers go to work for John Walker.
THANKS, TOM DASCHLE: It seems we have Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle to thank for finally killing off the unnecessary, pork-laden, budget-busting “stimulus package.” Not only will we avoid having to pay for all that pork spending, we may even cut the projected deficit this year to $15 billion from $80 billion. According to the Washington Post, we may even have a surplus in 2004. I have no problem extending unemployment benefits as an interim measure. But we should be relieved that this piece of Keynesian pump-priming never made it out of the Congress. And Bush should be mildly ashamed of himself for his empty posturing on something no sane conservative should have ever supported.
KENNEDY VERSUS “INDIVIDUALISM”: In what was a classic Freudian slip, Ted Kennedy rejoiced in the New England Patriots victory this week with the following statement: ”At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good.” Facing down individualism? Sorry, Ted, we haven’t installed socialism just yet. But keep trying, big guy. Keep trying …
NOAH VERSUS PRIVACY: What’s galling about Tim Noah’s little item on Slate about an email sent to family and friends by Danielle Crittenden is not its smug, schoolboy tone. What’s galling is that Noah doesn’t even seem to think anyone could think the printing of a private correspondence could be regarded as ethically problematic. Crittenden was probably foolish to have divulged anything in an email, especially if it had some juicy political gossip in them. But she is ethically in the right, and Noah in the wrong. If Noah had found a lost private letter, opened it, and divulged its contents in print, he’d be regarded as a cad. If he’d bugged her phone to get the gossip, he could be thrown in jail. But because it’s just an email and can be reproduced at will and sent to an infinite number of people simultaneously, it’s somehow ok. Sorry, I don’t buy the ethical distinction. The fact that a private email might be “newsworthy” is neither here nor there. It’s a private communication between two or more individuals. It is simply wrong to violate that trust. What we’re seeing here is just another sign that any semblance of privacy in our society is being effectively destroyed. This destruction of any private zone helps extinguish freedom of thought, emotional intimacy, and public dignity for everyone. At the same time, it seems impossible to stop it, especially when journalists see any right to privacy automatically trumped by the flimsiest of “newsworthy” excuses.
GREAT INSULTS: Here’s a classic from P.G. Wodehouse from his 1936 book, “The Code of the Woosters”:
He was, as I had already been able to perceive, a breath-taking cove. About seven feet in height, and swathed in a plaid ulster which made him look about six feet across, he caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment.
ENRON – THE PATH NOT TAKEN: An interesting British side-note to the various pundits and economists, like Bill Kristol and Paul Krugman, who were paid large amounts to sit on Enron “advisory boards.” Enron seemed to have a similar strategy in Britain and tried to snooker Gavyn Davies, a left-of-center economist, former Goldman Sachs honcho, friend of New Labour’s Gordon Brown and now, thanks to his Blairite friends, chairman of the BBC. Davies was indeed an external adviser to Enron for two years from 1999, but he says he turned down the $50,000 proffered fee. “The advice given was entirely consistent with my position as chief economist at Goldman Sachs and was similar to that which I routinely gave to dozens of other entities, without accepting direct payment,” Davies said. Perhaps there was indirect payment to Goldman Sachs, but the avoidance of a large financial dump into his own personal checkbook shows that some people were tempted like Krugman, Kristol, et al, but not all of them took the bait. Good for Davies.
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS: Sweden prides itself on being a tolerant multicultural society – as well it should. But the cultures from which it absorbs immigrants are not so tolerant. The country is now in an uproar about yet another “honor killing” of a daughter by a Kurdish father because she chose to marry a man, rather than submit to her father’s diktat. It’s a horrifying tale, and perhaps a useful corrective to my defense of alien cultures yesterday, as long as women have true freedom to choose their own destiny. In this case, Sweden gave the woman the choice, and her own father brutally took it away. A lesson, perhaps, in the limits of cultural assimilation.
CORRECTION: William Allen White was not the editor of the Kansas City Star but the Emporia Gazette.
The Dish 