Month: July 2002

Check out this editorial in the Washington Blade by editor Chris Crain. It’s smart, fair and convincing. It simply says that those gay activists who predicted a Kulturkampf under George W. Bush were over-playing their hand. Bush compares relatively well with Clinton on gay rights issues – and certainly better than Chicken Little Democrats were predicting two years ago. I hope the Bushies see that the center of the gay community – not its loony left – is amenable to persuasion by Republicans. If the president signs the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, he’ll be close to a dramatic realignment in this voting bloc. Someone please tell Karl.

THE TIMES’ ALASKA NUMBERS: I’ve done a quick perusal of the report cited by the New York Times in defense of a thirty year alleged annual mean temperature rise in Alaska of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. I can’t find the number anywhere. The best I can do is the report’s claim that “warming has been up to 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade over the last three decades in the annual mean, with the largest warming occurring in the interior and arctic regions… Some Alaskan records show that a very large warming, of about 3 degrees Fahrenheit occurred suddenly around 1977 and has persisted since then.” Alaska is enormous and the “up to” phrase refers to maximum variations in different regions – not average annual temperature for the whole region, as the Times slyly implies. But even taking the biggest number in the report – which is still not the average annual temperature – the maximum annual mean temperature increase in any region would still be 4.5 degrees – not 5.4. Did the Times get a case of dyslexia? The report is also quite clear that factors other than global warming are probably responsible for large amounts of the variation, whereas the Times has implied that all of the variation is due to global warming. The only temperature chart I can find in the report shows permafrost warming since 1970 to be at most 1 degree Fahrenheit (although the mean annual permafrost temperature in 1950 is the same as today, and was followed by a severe drop in temperatures in the 1950s as a whole). Then look at these far clearer numbers and you can see the obvious conclusion: the New York Times is still lying about climate change in Alaska. They can’t even get their correction right. (If any of you want to take a closer look at the report – I have to travel again today – and see anything else worth noting or anything I might have missed, please let me know).

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE MARKET COLLAPSE: Michael Lewis gets it right. The system is working! This point strikes me as particularly pertinent:

In the future, a healthy new suspicion shall arise whenever any CEO pays himself tens of millions of dollars. The old rule of CEO pay was: the more you pay yourself, the more valuable you must be to the company. The new rule of CEO pay is: the more you pay yourself, the more you will be watched. After all, any CEO who is actually worth $25 million a year should be responsible enough, and decent enough, not to take it.

Amen. And buy.

DON’T FORGET: The gay debate will be broadcast on C-SPAN this weekend Saturday, July 13th at 3:50 P.M. and Sunday, July 14th at 1:35 A.M.

WHAT BUSH ISN’T: Buchananism is attempting a new bi-weekly magazine, called The American Conservative, due out this fall. Someone should sue him for expropriating a perfectly decent political tradition for his nativist, reactionary myopia. But Frankie Foer gets to the deeper point, which is that Buchanan’s agenda only highlights how far George W. Bush has taken his own party – especially since 9/11, when a nativist, isolationist spirit might have taken hold. The money quote, again:

[O]ver time it has become clear that on this side of the Atlantic, 9/11 hasn’t boosted the isolationist right; it has extinguished it. Instead of America Firstism, September 11 has produced a war on terrorism that has virtually ended conservative qualms about expending blood and treasure abroad. And as a corollary, it has produced an unprecedented eruption of conservative and evangelical support for Israel. The conservative establishment has co-opted post-9/11 fears of Muslim immigration, and Bush has covered his protectionist flank on trade. In short, Buchanan and his rich friends couldn’t have chosen a worse time to start a journal of the isolationist right.

It’s usually good form to express hope that any new publication succeeds. Sorry. No can do.

THE ECONOMIST’S DEFENSE: Here’s their self-defense in the Jerusalem Post. I’m not convinced. But make your own mind up.

I’ve spent the last couple days traveling to and attending a funeral. It was for a World War II veteran. The interment, in a rural cemetery, was an intimate affair, which allowed me to see close-up the honor guard ceremony the military still puts on for its vets. It was intensely moving. Two soldiers took the flag off the coffin and like Japanese Kabuki artists folded it with meticulous care. The way they handled the cloth reminded me of the way in which priests would touch the sacraments in the sacristy before and after mass. With almost painful slowness, the flag was folded into consecutive triangles before being handed to the man’s eldest son. (His youngest is my boyfriend.) Their salutes were almost slow-motion, like a Robert Wilson production. They performed the ceremony with such quiet precision for a man they never personally knew that you got a sudden, instant glimpse of what military service is really about. It’s not just a bond between a person and his or her country. It’s a bond between him and every other soldier who has ever been there – past, present and future. It’s a ritual of transcendence, symbolized by a flag, conjuring a nation. I had understood this before but never felt it. Now I have.

ANDREWSULLIVAN.COM GETS RESULTS! Not long after the American Prospect conceded that it had exaggerated its online traffic by almost 300 percent, the New York Times admits its Tim Egan Alaska story – hyped in editorials and by Bob “Suffer The Children” Herbert – contained a big fib. Here’s the correction printed yesterday:

A front-page article on June 16 about climate change in Alaska misstated the rise in temperatures there in the last 30 years. (The error was repeated in an editorial on Monday and in the Bob Herbert column on the Op-Ed page of June 24.) According to an assessment by the University of Alaska’s Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research, the annual mean temperature has risen 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit over 30 years, not 7 degrees.

Notice how long it took before this front-page fib was corrected – weeks. Notice also no admission that the Alaska Climate Research Center puts the rise as far less than that. I’m traveling and haven’t had time to dig into the Alaska University citation. If anyone out there could subject it to scrutiny, I’d be grateful. Like the American Prospect’s revised numbers, I still don’t buy it, and would like to see the basis of that 5.4 degree claim. But it’s gratifying to see that even the New York Times has to concede a whopper when it’s pointed out in daylight. Score one for the blogosphere. Here in cyber-space, we also correct our errors promptly.

RAINES WATCH: What do you do when a sensible proposal to arm pilots gains traction in the Congress? Do you commission a poll to find out what the public thinks? Nope. You send out a reporter to a state where the headlines have been full of America West pilots arrested for being drunk in the cockpit. Then you find some people who object to the idea and run this opposition as a “news-story.” Even then, the Times couldn’t get anything but a narrow plurality against arming pilots. But that was good enough for the lede and the headline. Doesn’t Howell know we’re wise to this propaganda?

REALITY CHECK: A useful corrective to market gloom from Clintonite Brad Delong. Here’s the money quote:

Out in the real world, moreover, the economy is doing just fine. Inflation-adjusted wages are up 13% over the past seven years–the best jump in three decades and a boon for most Americans. Inflation, outside of food and energy, is only 2.5%, down from 2.9% in 1995. And productivity growth over the past three years is still running at a 3.1% rate–far faster than the 1.5% seen in the first half of the 1990s and the entire 1980s. Indeed, productivity growth has been so strong that it can withstand even expected downward revisions in the economic data. At the end of July, the Commerce Dept. will issue revised estimates for the past couple of years that could reduce 2000’s reported gross domestic product and productivity growth by as much as a percentage point. But even if that happens, the three-year productivity growth rate will still be a very solid 2.7%.

I don’t know about you, but I’m buying.

You couldn’t parody his paleo-liberal column today. All government spending is good. But deficits are always bad! Tax cuts hurt – wait for it – children. Republicans – even if they try to reach out to black voters – are always evil. Marian Wright Edelman is such an unimpeachable figure, you just have to cite her to make your point. And then the moronic headline: “Suffer The Children.” This piece of hate was particularly noticeable:

The Bush men, father and son, are seldom more cynical than when they get it into their mischievous heads to rev up some support among black people. George the First could hardly contain a devilish smile as he gave us Clarence Thomas, a gruesome acolyte of Antonin Scalia who has spent much of his time on the Supreme Court taking a pickax to black interests.

Note the utter absence of any understanding of judicial reasoning. Note the monolithic notion of “black interests,” as if every black person has the same interests, dictated by people like Bob Herbert and the NAACP. Notice that appointing the first black secretary state and relying on a black woman as the critical figure in foreign policy is mere mischief and cynicism. As if deploying Bob Herbert to keep black voters in line with warmed-over propaganda weren’t as cynical a move as one could possibly get.

I still don’t know what Mike Kinsley really thinks about our future war with Iraq. (I don’t know what he thought about the last one either, come to think of it.) In his latest column, he just thinks we should have a real debate about it. Man, that’s a column I never thought I’d see with a Kinsley by-line. Wouldn’t it behoove a columnist to actually join that debate by saying what he thinks we should do? This is Kinsley’s brave call: Bush may go to war because of “the simple possibility that he sincerely believes Saddam poses a danger big enough to justify risking massive bloodshed and his own political ruin. And maybe he’s right.” Maybe he’s right? C’mon, Mike. Have you turned into David Gergen? Here’s a simple test for the best liberal columnist in the country: if he were president and he were responsible for the security of American citizens, and if he had had a wake-up call like 9/11, how long would he sit around before he acted to prevent something far, far worse? And if that meant a difficult but necessary war against Saddam, on what grounds should a responsible president punt?

I’ve been asked why I haven’t blogged much on the current attempt to inflict political damage on president Bush because of the accounting and business scandals of the last few months. I haven’t written anything because I don’t think I have anything interesting to say. (Yeah, I know that’s no excuse for a hack. But hey, I wrote a column about it.) The truth is: I’m really not qualified to make a judgment about what technically-speaking would be the best solution for punishing the guilty and preventing further abuse. The president’s balance seemed fair to my instinctively anti-regulatory impulses. But I’m open to other arguments. But I do think there’s something strained about the attempt to hold Bush personally accountable. The Harken stuff seems trivial to me. Almost all the worst corruption happened on (surprise!) Bill Clinton’s watch. Much of it can be attributed to the ethical temptations of a bubble economy and the root causes aren’t as salient today. I’m repulsed by the greed and dishonesty of some of the characters, but I don’t actually enjoy the thrill of class-warfare. That’s one thing that separates me from, say, Paul Krugman and Howell Raines. So let hem have their story. I’ll take a pass on their agenda.

THIRD-WAY ON POT: The Blair government has come up with a classic Third Way approach to marijuana legalization. They’ve suspended the laws that criminalize marijuana users who smoke pot discreetly in private. But they’ll be stepping up enforcement against dealers. So something will be illegal when sold, but legal when bought. Brilliant, no? It seems to me that marijuana, which is less socially and personally damaging than alcohol, should simply be legalized, its production regulated, and its sale taxed. That way, good laws against hard and addictive drugs can have more legitimacy; and the criminal problems associated with pot prohibition can be alleviated. My fear is that this semi-legalization will discredit the entire idea. It could keep the relationship between drugs and crime intact, while increasing drug-use. That’s about as bad as it gets. Or am I missing something?

AND NOW THEY WANT OUR COFFEE: The puritanical left – having tried to take away our booze, porn, and cigarettes – is now after our lattes. Okay, guys, this is serious.

GO, CAROLYN: The rape of Gary Condit’s private life by the media had some justification. The pillage of his wife’s had no such rationale. Every shred of her intimate life – from the first pregnancy to the difficult marriage – was laid bare, and with many lies thrown in for good measure. I hope she wins her future libel suit against the Enquirer, and that other unfairly trashed spouses follow her example.

THE SAVAGE TRUTH: My buddy Dan Savage tells the West Coast left some awkward truths in his latest column in The Stranger. It starts auspiciously enough:

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, I saw something that made me wanna hurl. I still see this something almost every day because it hangs in a window I pass on my way to work, and the urge to hurl–my lunch, a rock–is as fresh today as it was back when I first laid eyes on it. And just what is this offensive something? The American flag peace symbol that appeared on the cover of Seattle Weekly on September 20. They called it their “Peace and Patriotism” symbol. So what is it about the Weekly’s, uh, “PAP” symbol that bothers me so much? Just this: Pacifism and patriotism, together, is no longer an option after September 11.

Dan is basically a lefty but he’s not a complete fool. His sex column is one of the joys of American journalism and no-one could accuse him of being a right-winger on social matters. (He famously tried to give Gary Bauer the flu.) But Dan is also living proof that an awful lot of cultural and social liberals are fully aware of the terrorist forces we are still up against, and are not wringing their hands in response. Bottom line:

[I]t depresses this Gore voter past the point of despair to write this… but… uh… the recently unveiled Bush Doctrine (rough translation: If we think you’re coming after us next Tuesday, we’ll be bombing your ass flat this Tuesday) is a necessary evil.

Not exactly an epiphany. But writing this piece for Savage’s audience required balls. Dan has them.

FREUDIAN SLIP: If you subscribe to the Democratic Leadership Council’s email newsletter, you’d have had a chortle. The latest issue has a correction:

Due to an error, some subscribers may have received a copy of today’s New Dem Daily email with a mislabled subject line reading “NEW YORK TIMES: The Era of Evading Responsibility.” It should have said, “NEW DEM DAILY: The Era of Evading Responsibility.” We regret any confusion the error may have caused.

No confusion here. Just wondering why the correction was necessary. The New York Times is a DLC newsletter. Just further to the left.

The real story behind former CAA super-agent, Mike Ovitz’s, Vanity Fair meltdown is that his outburst about a “gay mafia” was not an isolated case. He has, apparently, a long record of intense discomfort around homosexuals, constant use of the word “fag,” and aversion to gay movies and gay agents. L.A. Weekly has the goods. The social right might have to adjust their notions of a monolthic pro-gay establishment in Hollywood. For many years, the most powerful agent was apparently a homophobe. Maybe that helps explain the still-stunning absence of almost any mainstream openly gay movie actors. It’s also pertinent that Vanity Fair didn’t seek to explore this dimension. But then Graydon Carter has long found peddling cliches about homosexuals to be very good copy.

Israelis are worse than the Nazis, says the Saudi ambassador to Britain. “This is a war of occupation, far more severe than anything the Germans did when they occupied Europe in World War Two.” We still have diplomatic relations with these nut-cases?

“How much money would you pay to see the makers of The Last Temptation of Christ make a similar film about the Prophet Muhammad? How long would they be alive? An hour? An hour and fifteen minutes?” – Jay Nordlinger, National Review

SPIN-FREE ZONE: It may be that the British commander of a naval ship that struck a rock in the South Pacific will be court-martialed. He clearly goofed badly. But I can’t help but admire his honesty and contrition. Here’s his account of what happened:

“It hazarded the lives of 250 men and women. We have done significant damage to a major British warship. This is not a good day for me.” Asked what caused the accident, he said: “A combination of unfortunate circumstances and human error. This is quite the worst thing that has ever happened, quite the worst. Character-building stuff.”

Wouldn’t it be great if a politician who screwed up royally would be as straight-forward about taking responsibility?

WAS HE A TERRORIST? Mark Steyn’s piece on Hadayat had me howling.

MORE RELIGIOUS CHILD ABUSE: This wasn’t sexual, but it strikes me as horrifying nonetheless. And all in the name of Christianity.

THE DEBATE ON C-SPAN: The gay debate between me, Richard Goldstein, Norah Vincent and Carmen Vasquez will apparently be shown on C-SPAN on Saturday July 13th at 3.50pm and Sunday July 14 at 1.35 am.

EUCLID UPDATE: The stray beagle, Euclid, that I found a couple months back had some rough heart-worm problems. She was treated with arsenic at the vet and slowly recovered. Here’s the latest missive from her new parents:

Euclid has gotten back some of her old spunk and zip. She has taken over the couch. But generously. Anyone else is permitted to sit there as long as they pay her adequate attention. She’s also turned into a somewhat finnicky eater — the only “treat” she’ll accept are bacon jerky strips from Giant. Forget plain biscuits, Sausages, or even the treats from the foofey Three Dog Bakery here in Bethesda. Ron and I are going out of town and leaving her for the first time next weekend. Euclid will be staying with my parents. My mother realizes that Euclid is about as close to a grandchild as she’ll ever get and is correspondingly doting. We’ll see if she can get even more spoiled.

Can’t wait to see her again when I get back to DC.

What’s the betting on when some Islamists will start arguing that the LAX shooting was actually a Jewish plot? Hadayat’s widow insists her dead husband had nothing to do with what happened.

GUNS DID IT: The Guardian frames the LAX shooting within the context of gun violence in America. I kid you not. Here’s Peter Preston’s view:

Two innocents killed at a ticket check-in are two too many. They are also mere drops in the ocean of blood which the US allows to flow daily – including on July 4 – through a society where guns and gun culture remain ubiquitous.

The lengths to which these appeasers will go to defend terrorism and attack the United States still take my breath away.

MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH: Nick Kristof, after yet another murder of Jews by a Muslim hater, worries about American religious bigotry. “If we want Saudi princes to confront their society’s hate-mongers, our own leaders should confront ours,” he preaches. Our bigotry is as bad as theirs’, he opines. Excuse me? When conservative Christians start murdering thousands of Muslim and Jewish civilians in the Middle East, it will be. Until then, there is simply no equivalence between anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. and anti-Western and anti-Semitic terrorism in the Arab world. One bigotry mouths off (often appallingly). The other murders thousands of civilians because of their religion and culture and glories in it. If Kristof cannot see that distinction, he should take a trip downtown and see the mass grave these evil fanatics created. They weren’t killed by the religious right.

HOW GERMS GET NICER: An archived article from the Atlantic provides some backing for my argument that some viruses mutate into less lethal forms as epidemics progress. Not necessarily true of HIV under drug regimens, but a hopeful possibility worth exploring.

RAINES WATCH: More checkable untruths in a New York Times editorial. Here’s what they wrote yesterday in another classic hack-liberal editorial about global warming:

Then came a more narrowly focused but equally disturbing report by The Times’s Timothy Egan about Alaska, where an astonishing seven-degree increase in average temperatures over 30 years has led to melting permafrost, sagging roads, dying forests, unexpected forest fires and disruption of marine life.

Here’s what the Alaska Climate Research Center has said about that Egan piece:

The article “Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn, and Sag” written by Timothy Egan, stated that the average temperature has risen seven degrees in the last 30 years. This statement was repeated in an editorial by Bob Herbert of 24 June 2002. This statement is incorrect. The correct warming for Alaska is about 1/3 of the quoted amount for the last climatological mean 1971 to 2000 (see table below). It should be pointed out that the table presents data from first class weather stations, which are professionally maintained and generate high quality data. The three stations, Barrow, Fairbanks, and Anchorage, represent a cross section of Alaska from north to south. Further, Barrow, situated in Northern Alaska, which gave the largest temperature increase, is the only long-term first class meteorological weather station in Northern Alaska. All changes are based upon the time period 1971 to 2000 and are compiled from a linear trend.

Now this correction has been around since June 24. So has this chart which shows average temperatures in Alaska for the last century, in which the century-long rise has been around 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The Egan piece’s assertion of such a temperature rise has no basis in fact whatsoever. It’s made up. It’s a non-fact. It has expired in verifiability. It has gone to rest among the fjords of Alaska. It is an ex-fact. So when will the Times correct this mistake? And when will they stop broadcasting it as if it were something they should be proud of?

ME IN TIME OUT: Here’s a recent interview I gave to Time Out New York. I hope you like the picture. I was in a silly mood.

THE EGYPTIAN PROFESSOR: It turns out that professor Mona Baker of the University of Manchester, the woman who has blacklisted two Israelis from a scholarly journal because of their nationality, is actually Egyptian. She immigrated to Britain twenty years ago. But she didn’t leave all her background behind.

IN DEFENSE OF THE ECONOMIST: My friends over there tell me there will be a formal response to Bret Stephens’ article about anti-Israeli bias at the Economist later this week. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, a pro-Economist sends in this example of a long, recent piece on the Middle East from the Economist, which, he argues, is very well-balanced. It’s not free. But if you don’t mind paying, decide for yourself. UPDATE: Here’s a free version of the piece.