Gaddafi made the decision as the coalition invaded Iraq. Hmmm. Maybe Howard Dean would have sent Warren Christopher instead.
BAATHIST BROADCASTING CORPORATION: An internal BBC email tells its reporters not to refer to Saddam as a dictator. From the Daily Telegraph’s London Spy column:
“An email has been circulated telling us not to refer to Saddam as a dictator,” I’m told. “Instead, we are supposed to describe him as the former leader of Iraq. Apparently, because his presidency was endorsed in a referendum, he was technically elected. Hence the word dictator is banned. It’s all rather ridiculous.” The Beeb insists that the email merely restates existing guidelines. “We wanted to remind journalists whose work is seen and heard internationally of the need to use neutral language,” says a spokesman.
Just when you think they couldn’t get any worse, the BBC goes and does something like this. Under these guidelines, would Hitler have ever been called a “dictator”? He was originally elected in a freer election than Saddam, after all.
AMERICA AND MODERNITY: Mike Elliott, in a wise piece, points out the distinction.
INEVITABLE, I SUPPOSE: Mac Eye for the Windows Guy. How gay is Apple.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “The US is about to hold another election that will be largely bought and sold by business and oil interests. Think of the corruption that US and UK conservatives carelessly unleashed upon the former Soviet Union in the name of extreme free market ideology.” – Polly Toynbee, the Guardian. You can “unleash” corruption?
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “I am also well aware that historically there have been many Americans who were both good Republicans and good Christians, Abraham Lincoln perhaps most preeminently. But the Republican Party in its current incarnation is racist (racism being the clear premise of its “Southern strategy,” pursued so singlemindedly since the days of the ineffable Richard Nixon) and the enemy of the poor. To be these things – to be against the poor and the marginalized – is, in my reading of the New Testament, to be specifically anti-Christian.” – Thomas Cahill, alienating an awful lot of potential readers.
The Dish 