Month: July 2003

You begin to think that this BBC report might be fair – and it certainly provides evidence for optimism. And then you come across paragraphs like these:

But [the government appointees] are dismissed as outsiders by Iraqis, as people that spent the Saddam years outside Iraq whilst others suffered and struggled within. Perhaps most damning is the almost total lack of belief that people seem to have that the council will be able to act independently of its’ [sic] American masters. Maybe it is the hulking presence of US tanks and armoured cars on street corners; maybe it is the vacuum in authority left by the collapse of a totalitarian regime. But there is precious little faith amongst Iraqis that this council represents the beginning of an era of self government. For most Iraqis, the bottle is most definitely half empty.

Notice how these things are simply asserted. How does this guy know what “most Iraqis” think? Why, given the unprecedented range of participants in the new governing council in Iraq, is it so obvious that they will not become autonomous at some point?

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “Polygamy is not worse than gay marriage, it is better. At least polygamy, for all its ugly defects, is an attempt to secure stable mother-father families for children.” – Maggie Gallagher, coming up with “new” arguments against gay marriage.

How could I have forgotten? Here’s one way to commemmorate one of the worst moments in Western history.

The NYT establishment is apparently angry at the blithe denial displayed by Pablo Picasso on Charlie Rose.

Here’s the original piece. In it, Connor and the FRC oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment for the same reasons the Concerned Women for America do: they believe it’s not restrictive enough. They want an amendment that would more explicitly rob gay couples of any protection whatever under the law – preventing them from hospital visitation, property rights, shared healthcare, and on and on. I think, as I’ve argued elsewhere, that the current FMA would do all of these things – and many legal scholars agree. Others argue that this wouldn’t be the case – but if the language of the amendment can provoke genuine and deep disagreement by serious parties, wouldn’t it be similarly open to a radical spectrum of intrepretation by courts and legislatures? And isn’t such a vague and sweeping amendment precisely what shouldn’t be written into the federal Constitution? You can be sure, for example, that if FMA passed, the far right would work very, very hard to have it interpreted in as broad and restriuctive a way as possible. The FRC is clear in their intent to attack gay couples and gay citizens:

We will oppose the granting of “domestic partner benefits” by both private and public organizations. We will speak out against the creation of “civil unions” in whatever state they are proposed (as we did vigorously in California, helping to kill AB 1338).- And we will struggle with all that we have against civil marriage for same-sex couples anywhere in the United States.

Give them points for honesty. But please don’t call me paranoid. These people would rob gay citizens of very basic rights – for no other reason than they’re gay.

John Kerry, like Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, opposes equality for gay citizens in the most fundamental matter related to emotionaland sexual orientation. But, like the Clintons, he offers no argument. Give the far right their due: they really have tried to come up with an infinite array of reasons to oppose civil equality in this respect. But this is what Kerry said:

Marriage is an institution between men and women for the purpose of having children and procreating.

Now, Kerry is in a second marriage to a woman also in a second marriage, with no apparent connection to the goal of reproduction or child-rearing. Like Pat Buchanan, he lives a marriage that is childless. Fred Hiatt homes in on the point in the Washington Post today. It seems to me that Kerry has just argued that he himself should have no right to marry. (I’ll leave the speciousness of the Clintons’ defense of marital privilege to your judgment, but it would be hard to find a deeper example of hypocrisy than their joint defense of traditional marriage.) But his real reason is deeper. It could easily be construed as a statement like: “I am heterosexual, and heterosexuals deserve special rights that privilege them unrelated to any actual roles or acts that they might perform.” Kerry is asserting – frankly, crudely, unmistakably – heterosexual supremacy. Just because. I find this far more objectionable than those on the religious right who at least have some theological or strained sociological reasons for opposition.

The Kurdish leader got it exactly right:

The liveliest moments of the news conference occurred when some council members disputed questions from the news media. The Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani criticized a BBC correspondent for suggesting that the interim government would have limited powers and therefore little legitimacy among the Iraqis. “The Council has a lot of authority, appointing ministers, diplomats, budgets, security,” Mr. Talabani said. He then accused the BBC of having been biased toward Mr. Hussein’s government during the war.

And they still are pining for a Saddamite revival. I don’t think it’s because they actually consciously support a man who tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of people. I think it’s because their hatred of the West trumps their disdain for tyranny. And that’s been the story of the far left in the West for a century now.

The one amazing thing about Charlie Rose’s interview with “my friend,” Howell Raines, is that Raines spoke more than Rose did. Much more. Has that ever happened before? (Full disclosure: I couldn’t bring myself to watch it, so I’m going by a reading of the transcript.) Anyway, it’s quite clear that Raines hasn’t the slightest clue what happened to him and not the faintest notion of where he went wrong. He thinks his main mistake was trying to push the Times too fast to new heights of excellence. Ooooo-kaaaay. Charlie naturally didn’t ask Raines a thing about how he skewed coverage to the left. But he wasn’t a total push-over (although how he suppressed a giggle when Raines cited Picasso as a retirement model I don’t know). My favorite little interaction:

CHARLIE ROSE: Why were the troops in revolt against Howell Raines, or do you believe that is not true?

HOWELL RAINES: I believe that is not true in the stark formation that you give it. Clearly we were on a march that we had planned very carefully to have a paper that was as good at everything as the Times is at the things that traditionally does well, foreign affairs for example. In the course of that march we stepped on a land mine. I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

Now I’ve spoken to many NYT reporters since the liberation and read the comments of many, many more. The march metaphor is true only if you view it as a kind of death march run by a crazed, power-mad dictator. When the land-mine went off, the troops mutinied like punch-drunk deserters. Then there’s this:

HOWELL RAINES: And that coalesced and brought to the surface a number of complaints which are real but which are not universal. I could show you a stack of hundreds of communications from people on the staff editors and writers saying this is a terrible mistake; we know where you were going; it was the right place; we were with you.

CHARLIE ROSE: What was a terrible mistake – sorry – the fact you left the paper was a terrible mistake?

HOWELL RAINES: Yes. That’s a body of opinion.

I think we know one thing from this interview. There was no way that the nature of the Raines’ regime would have reformed itself. He still doesn’t realize why he created such a mess. Perhaps he never will. Then there’s this piece of surrealism:

The other problem from my point of view is there, according to the Times statistics there are 80 million people in the country who have the intellectual appetite for a paper like the New York Times.

CHARLIE ROSE: How many?

HOWELL RAINES: Eighty million.

CHARLIE ROSE: Great.

HOWELL RAINES: The New York Times sells 1.2 million papers a day. That tells me something. That tells me that you have got to change the paper, not in its standards, not in its principles, but in the breadth of its intellectual interests, and in its vitality, in its graphics, in the way it’s written, and the way stories are selected so that you get the other 78 million.

What to say? First off, of course, it’s so nutso an idea it’s strange Raines would bring it up in public. But then you realize the true scope of this guy’s ambition: he wanted to increase the circulation of the New York Times by 6,500 percent. He is and was out of his tiny mind. I can’t wait for the novel.

If this claim is true, Bush’s “flypaper” strategy in Iraq could be working.

FRC AND FMA: A reader remembers a piece he once read by FRC’s outgoing head, Kenneth Connor, opposing the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment:

I spent about an hour unsuccessfully attempting to find it on the FRC website. Apparently, it doesn’t exist there anymore. I did a web search and located the old link. Here is the teaser from the web search. Revisionist history at FRC?: “Family Research Council: Insight: Why the Family Research Council Cannot Endorse the Proposed ‘Federal Marriage Amendment.’ ‘We respect the concern for federalism that underlies the language of the Federal Marriage Amendment; nevertheless, we believe that the institution of marriage, like the protections enumerated in the B…’

Fascinating. Herewith an open request to FRC (or anyone else out there) to give me a link to the piece so we can see if or why Kenneth Connor once opposed the FMA; and whether that had any impact on his departure from FRC. Meanwhile, another member of the far right takes exception to the FMA. Concerned Women for America’s Jan La Rue opposes the FMA “because it would not prevent state legislatures from recognizing and benefiting civil unions and other such relationships, which would result in legalized counterfeit marriage.” I think she’s wrong. But it shows the extent of the opposition to gay relationships of any sort that animates the far right. What both quotes reveal is how even in the cloistered world of the far right, the FMA has opponents. What chance then of writing it into the very Constitution itself?

A movie trailer for Mel Gibson’s new movie about the death of Jesus. Looks promising. To my mind, however, it will be hard to beat Martin Scorsese’s “Last Temptation.”

POSEUR ALERT: “Neoformalism posits that viewers are active-that they perform operations. Contrary to psychoanalytic criticism, I assume that film viewing is composed mostly of nonconscious, preconscious, and conscious activities. Indeed, we may define the viewer as a hypothetical entity who responds actively to cues within the film on the basis of automatic perceptual processes and on the basis of experience. Since historical contexts make the protocols of these responses inter-subjective, we may analyze films without resorting to subjectivity . . . According to Bordwell, ‘The organism constructs a perceptual judgment on the basis of nonconscious inferences.'” – film theorist Kristin Thompson, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

BUSH ON FREE TRADE: No one can now doubt that, in matters of free trade, the Clinton administration was far more conservative than Bush is. So we now have two huge disappointments: a protectionist tilt on trade and a profligate slide on fiscal responsibility. At least some conservatives are begining to realize the damage Bush is doing to economic conservatism – and the economy itself.

Amazingly, I don’t think this piece from a BBC correspondent in Vietnam is a self-parody. The BBC reporter is candid: he once “hugely admired” Ho Chi Minh. He’s aghast at how he is commemmorated. He is clearly appalled by the capitalist revival in the country. He seeks out an old Ho ChiMinh soldiertofindsomeone whocan expres regret for Vietnam’s transitionto market capitalism. The end of the piece runs thus:

“The goal of the party today is to create a nation which is prosperous, strong AND equal,” he said. “And one day I hope we will be equal.” It’s a very faint hope. Vietnam is still a long way from the raucous consumer culture in neighbouring countries like Thailand and Malaysia – but that’s where it’s heading. Sooner or later, Saigon will start to resemble Bangkok or Singapore. Its people will pour into shopping malls, unable to afford most of the products on display but happy enough to dream that one day they might. It is impossible not to be in awe of the sacrifices made by men like Colonel Duong – but if Vietnam ends up like its neighbours, he may be tempted to ask himself just what it was he was fighting for.

It is impossible not to be inawe of the sacrifices made by former soldiers of a brutal communist regime. This is a true insight into the worldview of many BBC reporters. They are former Communist sympathizers, fanatical anti-Americans and deeply hostile to market capitalism. No wonder they are now trying to bring down Tony Blair. But why does the British public still tolerate financing this ideological crusade?

THE AMERICAN RIGHT AND ANGLICANISM: Was the successful attempt to stop a celibate gay man becoming an Episcopalian bishop financed in part by the American far right? Some Anglicans believe so:

The Very Reverend Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark Cathedral, condemned the opponents of Canon John as the “Anglican Taliban”, and called for an inquiry into how such groups are funded. “The campaign against Jeffrey was enormously well organised and well funded,” he said. Another senior Anglican close to the affair said: “One of the things that’s become apparent is the role of American evangelicals. You begin to see the same people cropping up all around the globe.” Dr Slee accused evangelicals from America and Australia of making substantial cash handouts to third world bishops who support their views, particularly at the time of the Lambeth conference in 1998, which produced a strong Anglican statement backing traditionalist teaching on sexuality.

American evangelicals deny colluding with African conservatives to bring down an openly gay cleric. But they would, wouldn’t they?