Author: Andrew Sullivan

More evidence of spin. Here’s a section from the transcript of May 20 Congressional testimony given by Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh on how the Justice Department has contacted libraries in the course of its duties:

REP. CHABOT: Can you tell us how many times, if at all, library records have been accessed under the new FISA standards in the USA PATRIOT Act? And if they have been so accessed, have the requests been confined to the library records of a specified person?
AAG DINH: Mr. Chairman, Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, requires the Department of Justice to submit semi-annual reports to this committee and also to the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate counterparts on the number of times and the manner in which that section was used in total. We have made those reports. Unfortunately, because they occur in the context of national security investigation, that information is classified.
We have made, in light of the recent public information concerning visits to the library, we have conducted an informal survey of the field offices, relating to its visits to libraries. And I think the results from this informal survey is that libraries have been contacted approximately 50 times, based on articulatable suspicion or voluntary calls from libraries regarding suspicious activities. Most, if not all of these contacts that we have identified were made in the context of a criminal investigation and pursuant to voluntary disclosure or a grand jury subpoena, in that context.

{The italics are mine.] Here is how the New York Times reported this testimony the next day:

In the most detailed public accounting of how it had used its expanded powers to fight terrorism, the Justice Department released information today showing that federal agents had conducted hundreds of bugging and surveillance operations and visited numerous libraries and mosques using new law enforcement tools … Such a mingling of intelligence and criminal investigations was largely banned under internal Justice Department procedures that were in place before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 … And agents have contacted about 50 libraries nationwide in the course of terrorism investigations, often at the invitation of librarians who saw something suspicious, said Viet Dinh, an assistant attorney general who briefed members of the House Judiciary Committee on the findings at a hearing today.

Notice the critical distinction here. Dinh specifically said that the library contacts had nothing to do with national security or terrorism. The Times reported that that was precisely the context in which those contacts were made. The question is not whether you believe DOJ or not. I’m as queasy about some of these investigations as anyone. The question is what was actually said at the hearing. The Times, it seems to me, simply and critically misrepresented what Viet Dinh said, to make a point opposite to that in his testimony. The DOJ has subsequently protested the Times’ account. As well they might.

ANOTHER COUNTRY: “I think you may be a little hasty in poo-pooing the Sontag line about imagining you’re not an American. (Hell, for you it’s not even too difficult, is it?) A certain sort of person takes the position that one should not criticize others unless one’s own house is perfectly in order. When thinking about one’s own country this line of thought inevitably leads to a double standard: Judging your own country but reserving judgment on others.
To take my own case, in principle I am an anarchist and in practice I am a mild social democrat. One thing I found when I started thinking of myself as an anarchist (largely to distance myself from socialists) was that I came to view the United States as just another country, and when you put them all on a level playing field with the others it comes off rather well.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

So I get back to Provincetown today, beagle in tow, boyfriend imminent, my newly renovated, reconstructed, whatever, beach-shack looking awesome. I now have – yes – two actual rooms. For the first time, I have a separate space for the toilet. (Yes, for two years, you had to ask everyone to leave the room and wait outside if you wanted to do number twos. That’s why my friends have long described my beach shack as Andrew’s Bathroom By The Sea. But no longer! Ha!) Only one problem: what Verizon calls a “cable failure” means no phone service. It could be out for days. So here I am tapping into cyberspace from a WiFi connection in Whaler’s Wharf, thanks to my friends at Cybercove, a little Internet cafe off Commercial Street. They close at 7 pm but the signal is 24 hours, so tonight, I’ll try and dish from a park bench located nearby. The blog must go on. But it might be briefer tonight. I’m wiped.

Interesting poll in USA Today: 70 percent think things are going moderately well or very well in Iraq; and 67 percent believe that the administration did not deliberately deceive anyone about the WMD threat from Saddam. If I were to poll my own brain, I’d come up with similar results. Sorry, Paul. Try harder.

No one who’s been a sentient human being could have missed the campaign that the entire political left (which includes the New York Times) has been waging against pharmaceutical companies. I’ve no doubt that some of these companies deserve tough scrutiny. But I also have no doubt that when the history of this period is written, one of the biggest stories will be the revolution in pharmaceutical research that has transformed the lives of millions from sickness to health. In that light, check out the latest NYT screed, by the usually reliable (if reflexibly leftist) Robert Pear. Pear’s story was about internal documents, discussing the industry’s lobbying plans for the next year. What’s striking is that nowhere in the piece is there a quote from the drug lobby explaining, defending or simply “no commenting” on the affair. None. Steve Brill summed up this lacuna eloquently enough in an email to Jim Romenesko’s website:

In (Sunday’s) Times we have a clear indication that the paper may now be so beset by internal strife that it has fallen off its basic game… if the explanation is that someone at the Times thinks quoting from the internal memos is allowing the group to speak for itself, that is not only absurd but also dangerous in the sense that nowhere in the story are we even told that Pear confirmed with the group that the internal documents are real – ie., that they aren’t fake or aren’t superceded by later drafts… How could anyone, let alone the Times, publish this story with no comment from the group that is the target?

Brill, it appears, still assumes that the NYT is about presenting both sides of the story in old-style journalistic fashion. Where has he been these past two years? For more details on how the NYT has pursued its ideological crusade against drug companies – even making up “studies” that don’t exist – check out Bob Goldberg’s latest piece in National Review.

POLICING THE BEEB: The BBC’s governors have decided they now need to monitor the national radio and television service each quarter to detect and keep an eye on bias. That may well be a result of the protests that this blog and many, many others helped frame and coordinate. Three cheers for the “second superpower” of the web. Now how do we get in touch with the NYT board?

One of my guilty pleasures is Lucianne Goldberg’s “Short Cuts” column. One of her short takes yesterday was about the imminent release of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoir, which, God help me, I have already agreed to review. Over to Lucianne:

The book will be launched with one of the slickest publicity campaigns in publishing history. Of course, one news cycle after it is published any possible juice will be squeezed into a one page AP story. Newsday seems to have spent the weekend calling prominent women and getting them to speculate on the contents of “Living History.” The only gal who had anything fun to say was the redoubtable Camile Paglia who never, ever pulls a punch: “Anyone who stays married to an infantile, drooling, serial groper deserves what she gets.” Camile, we miss you.

Yes, indeed, we do.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “What you identify as “Christo-fascism” was something Samuel Butler observed more than three hundred years ago in ‘Hudibras’:

‘… errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;
And prove their doctrines orthodox
By apostolick blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and devastation,
A godly-thorough reformation…’

It was of course the dictatorship of Cromwell that Butler satirized. It is no coincidence that the radical and violent people who today profess to be acting in Christian causes are almost all “dispensationalist” Christians deriving their spiritual tradition from the Calvinist or Anabaptist strains of Protestantism.” You can say that again. More feedback on the Letters Page.

Yes, it looks as if the Canadians are not going to settle for a true attack on marriage by coming up with a lesser institution for gays and less serious straights. The country could well establish equal marriage rights soon. Meanwhile, an Anglican ceremony in Canada blessing a gay partnership of 21 years has created another rift in the Church of England. I’d think that any marriage that lasts 21 years these days is worth some sort of celebration. But not, for some, if it means celebrating gay men or lesbians committed to faithfulness and responsibility in their relationships.

SONTAG ETC: I feel a little bad for quoting one line from Susan Sontag’s commencement address. It was self-parodic, but the rest of her speech struck me as sane and fresh. I linked, but I still feel sheepish. I should also say that Jonathan Landman’s email turns out not to have been prompted by my post yesterday. He says it was a separate response to my email of last week, and since it came to my private email address (from which I sent the first query), he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.

Check out this cartoon from the Chicago Tribune last Friday.

Mickey has the goods on the latest piece of half-baked crusaderism from the New York Times – this time abandoning the usual rules of journalism to go after those evil drug companies – yes, the same evil drug companies that have saved the lives of countless people like me. But he’s also on the case of Michael Wolff, the toast of Manhattan’s media elite. Wolff has defended the New York Times, and has a post-modern approach to what he calls

the line between absolute fact and the instinctual sense of how far over the line of absolute fact it’s safe to go, which is more and more the real tradecraft. Nor is it really possible to explain that smartness in a soft-news world involves a certain quality of plasticity.

What does he mean? In common language, he means that it’s ok to make stuff up if you’re as smart and brilliant as Michael Wolff is. I’m glad Wolff has now made his own journalistic ethic transparent. But I knew it already. He wrote a profile of me for New York Magazine over a year ago. I’m used to sloppy reporting, attitude-driven prose, and complete contempt for the truth in magazine journalism, but even I was shocked by the piece. It was riddled with errors; he grotesquely distorted a quote for his own purposes (he later conceded he had in an email); he had clearly read none of my books, while giving the impression he had; and when challenged privately about all this, he responded that the column was about how he feels, not about the reality. That same column – complete fantasy – was then given a National Magazine Award! No wonder Wolff defends fabulists. He is one. And that’s why today’s New York journalism hails him.

The fusion of Christianity and fascism is not new, of course. The Nazis’ Deutsche Christen openly coopted the Gospels in order to preach their opposite. But the story of Eric Rudolph shows that this strain endures in some parts of the world. Here’s the email that prosecutors think Rudolph may have written to justify his bombings of abortion clinics and gay bars and the inter-racial aspects of the Olympics:

“We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly communist regime in New York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackey’s in Washington. It is you who are responsible and preside over the murder of children and issue the policy of ungodly preversion thats destroying our people.”

It’s premature to put these words into Rudolph’s mouth. And, of course, the whole concept of a Christian terrorist is a hideous oxymoron. But the crusades were a form of terrorism. So was the inquisition at a state level. The Christian Identity movement, with which Rudolph was associated, is clearly a Christo-fascist organization. In fact, this is probably a better term for those who adhere to what appears to be Rudolph’s ideology. And the fact that the even the teachings of a first century preacher of non-violence could be turned into fascist terror merely shows the extent to which any religion can be distorted away from its essence.

It seems posting the question about whether Joyce Wadler did indeed write the column ascribed to her is a more effective way of getting an answer from the New York Times than writing to its complaints department. Here’s Jon Landman’s email addressing the question I asked this morning:

Dear Mr. Sullivan,
You have been misinformed. Joyce Wadler did indeed write the column in question before she left for the Memorial Day weekend (it ran on the Tuesday immediately following). She did rely more heavily than usual on Campbell Robertson’s file, which is why she gave him (unnamed) credit. Campbell is a very talented young man who writes his files so well that Joyce can use unusually big chunks of them with less rewriting than would otherwise be necessary. (The reason Joyce showed me his file was to make sure people recognize his ability.) But the voice of that column – one of the most distinctive and personal in the newspaper – was clearly Joyce’s. I would add that Joyce has long argued vigorously for an exception to our usual practice of not giving named credit to legmen and women. She won the argument the day the Tuesday column ran – it was the last to run without taglines crediting her helpers. Which may want to make you rethink your conclusion that “lots of people in control at The Times still don’t get it.”
cheers, Jon Landman

Hmmm. So in future, the columns will include extra by-lines to reflect the people who actually compose them. Progress. But this new policy does indeed suggest that previously, there was an inappropriate lack of correct attribution. My insider reader wasn’t totally off the mark. I wonder who it was.