Month: December 2004

Here’s an interesting point from a reader:

At a most simplistic level much of the opposition to steroid use is based on the ingestion of artificial ‘substances’ that boost performance without there being a relationship to the amount of work or level of talent that an individual athlete has. This has the perceived effect of decoupling the characteristics of the individual from that individual’s performance. This line of arguing says that performance should be based on intrinsic rather than extrinsic factors. Well, how do you classify this one? Nike puts athletes in a house with reduced oxygen levels so that the body builds up its oxygen use/carrying capacity as a response. This allows them to ‘live’ in a house at a virtual high altitude and train at low altitude. In this case, the athlete’s performance is being boosted by a substance that is extrinsic to their individual characteristics (and in fact is ‘ingested’ in manner analogous to steroids) yet this approach is praised rather than pilloried. Is the ingestion of chemicals (yes CO2 is a chemical, albeit an abundant one) to boost performance desirable or not? You can’t have it both ways so to be consistent the anti-steroid crowd should be calling for the expulsion of most of the US long distance running team.

I tend to agree. The distinctions between what is intrinsic to performance and what is extrinsic are somewhat arbitrary. Take even nutrition. If someone who had poor childhood nutrition competes against someone who had a healthy upbringing, isn’t the contest unfair in the same way as a contest affected by unlilateral use of steroids? No, not exactly the same. But not completely different either.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I’m a ‘decriminalize pot’ libertarian but I don’t get the defense of Bonds and Giambi. Sure, if they stood up there like men and said we take steroids and we think they should be legal- I would respect them. But they lied repeatedly, giving the impression that they were significantly more talented than the clean players. If you want to see modern players obliterating old records just give them METAL BATS! The only reason they’re using steroids is because it’s the best way to cheat while acting like your just like everyone else.
I’m shocked by the lack of outrage (outside of sports columnists). I wish they could be banned from the league. Pete Rose betting on other teams is nothing compared to what these guys did. And remember how we treated the East German and Chinese Olympic athletes like they were Frankenstein monsters born from the evils of communism? Marion Jones is getting the benefit of the doubt because she doesn’t look like a freak of nature.
Sports’ modern era is tainted. The only reason our culture won’t admit it is because everyone’s life is so wrapped up in the accomplishments of these juiced-up overpaid athletes driven by the richest of the rich. If you take these stats and titles away from many Americans, their lives are meaningless.
I know this sounds like a ‘Democracy Now’ rant but if you’re going to appreciate the benefits of our free-market you have to condemn its failures.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

The bad news is that Omar and Ali, the intrepid Iraqi bloggers, couldn’t make our coffee date this afternoon. The good news is that they blew me off for the president of the United States. I think Wolfowitz got them into the Oval Office. Yay.

AND ISRAEL: I forgot to mention that Israel also just recognized gay couples for legal benefits and protections. I wonder if David Frum is pissed off. I’ll be responding to this erroneous post soon. Soon, it will become, I think, a defining characteristic of modern, democratic states that they acknowledge equal rights for gay citizens. Except, alas, in America?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “If I were a soldier overseas wanting to defend my country, I’d want to ask the secretary of defense the same question, and that is, are we getting the best we can get us? And they deserve the best.” – president Bush, saying the right thing, today.

A libertarian take. And, yes, the health hazards are grossly exaggerated.

ATTACKING THE RED CROSS: TNR gets it right this week in an editorial bemoaning the righ’s knee-jerk critique of the International Committee of the Red Cross. ICRC’s crime? Reporting on prisoner abuse under U.S. command. It’s worth stating the obvious: the abuse is a much bigger problem than the ICRC. Have conservatives lost their moral bearings? Money quote:

It is the height of hypocrisy for Rumsfeld to malign the ICRC. His Pentagon has spent nearly three years insisting that the ICRC’s presence at Guantánamo Bay obviates any need for further human rights monitoring. In November 2002, when asked about disturbing photographs that had been leaked to the press showing hooded and restrained enemy combatants en route to the prison, then-Defense Department spokeswoman Torie Clarke said, “People also know, but should be reminded, we have the International Red Cross … to ensure that the treatment of the detainees is absolutely appropriate.” And, when three British inmates at Guantánamo charged after their release that they were abused, Navy Secretary Gordon England told CNN in August that the charges couldn’t be true because “the International Committee of the Red Cross is here regularly. … I can’t imagine that someone would not have reported this to the icrc.” On Monday, The Washington Times editorialized that the ICRC’s report should be ignored “without more concrete and substantiated evidence.” But, by making the ICRC the only monitor with access to Guantánamo, Rumsfeld has ensured that there can’t be any.

And that’s the point, isn’t it?

NOW, NEW ZEALAND: After Canada and Britain, another part of the Anglosphere grants relationship rights to gay couples. In parliament. On a free vote. No judicial “tyranny.”

It could be worse.

Glenn does his best, but it’s not terribly effective. We are almost two years into a conflict and critical defense weaponry is not available to soldiers who might die needlessly as a result. This is not that complicated. When Rumsfeld said, “you go to war with the Army you have,” he was apparently forgetting that we went to war months and months ago. The fact that soldiers are still unprotected, that we still have too few troops there, that prisoner abuse is still occurring, that the borders are still not even close to being sealed, that the insurgency is still threatening the entire future, that we still haven’t confronted the question of our global manpower needs … well, these issues go to the heart of the question of Rumsfeld’s and Bush’s competence. This is not knee-jerk anti-war sentiment. This is knee-jerk pro-war sentiment. The question of whether we should fight is to me an obvious one. The question of whether Bush and Rumsfeld have a clue what they’re doing is less easily answered. But we sure know they think they’re perfect. And their arrogance has just intensified. Not encouraging.

“Right now there are 22 active conflicts across the globe in which Muslims are involved. Most Muslims have not even heard of most of them because those conflicts do not provide excuses for fomenting hatred against the United States. Next time you hear someone say the US was in trouble in the Muslim world because of Israel, remember that things may not be that simple.” – Amir Taheri, in his latest column, “What If It’s Not Israel They Loathe?”

CLIMATE CHANGE: Reducing greenhouse gases was a cast-iron pledge from Tony Blair’s government in the two elections he has won. But there’s been no change in seven years. And Blair is preaching to the rest of the world on this?

“A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey-workers and consumers.” – Jane Smiley, from the classic Slate piece.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE II: “The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.” – Garrison Keillor, In These Times. Some occasional glimpses of originality, but mainly that peculiarly Malkinesque combo of hysterical and exhausted.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE III: “Look, I’m sure that the aforementioned Kerry cabal has a lot to say regarding …

• Buying a Bentley,
• Conducting an orgy,
• The preeminent natural herb for curbing the side effects of herpes,
• How to pick out the right stripper and midget for a ménage à trois,
• Where to get nice leather pants,
• Which silicone company produces the best butt implants,
• Where to buy Viagra by volume,
• How to drink alcohol like Otis on Mayberry RFD,
• How to juggle a wife and girlfriend(s),
• How to mousse one’s hair to stand up like Elsa Lancaster’s in The
Bride of Frankenstein,
• Where to get a tattoo on your ass,
• Where to have a tattoo removed from your ass,
• Where to buy a purple velvet spandex cat suit, a good cravat, and
felt booties,
• How to redistribute someone else’s wealth to pimps, whores and welfare brats,
• How to rid one’s nation of Judeo-Christian ethics and …
• How to make a mock-u-mentary film filled with complete crap about a
standing war-time president.” – Doug Giles, Townhall.com.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE IV: “Arrogant to the core, the elitist ketchup-digger revealed his true feelings toward George Bush – and by extension, all of us clodhopping carp-chompers in the Red States — with one infamous slip of the tongue.” – Ron Marr, CNS News.com. Actually, Marr makes it out of Malkin-land, with the phrase “clodhopping carp-chompers.” That’s original. If odd.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE V: “She’s not afraid to expose hypocritical environmentalists, needle pork-loving politicians or criticize the MTV generation’s morally deprived icons.” – Michelle Malkin, from her own biography.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE VI: A cartoon.

My case for states’ rights as a conservative principle – now more than ever. And here’s a small example of how it works.

IMMINENT IN CANADA: Civil marriage for gays across the country may be announced today. Legislation will follow.

“If you can’t stomach the truths of what our soldiers are doing and how brutally and bloodily they’re dying and in just what manner they have to kill those innocent Iraqi civilians in the name of BushCo’s desperate lurch toward greed and power and Iraqi oil fields and empire, maybe you don’t have the right to stick that little flag on your oil-sucking SUV.” – Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle. Many more tomorrow. Keep ’em coming.

Just for the record, this Coulterism is classic Malkin Award material:

My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call ‘women’ at the Democratic National Convention.

Cliched? Check. Playground insults? Check. No originality? Check. Assumption of reader agreement? Check. But as I said, too easy.