Author: Andrew Sullivan

The one important and thoroughly welcome part of Michael Ignatieff’s essay in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine is its realism. Sure, I think he’s being excessive in describing American global influence as an “empire.” Empires, as I understand them, actually control territory, exploit it, and exercize sovereignty over it. The United States, with a few tiny exceptions, doesn’t do that. It protects its allies; it trades; it polices the seas and skies. It’s far more like the eighteenth century British Empire than the nineteenth, and even then, without actual colonies of any substance. But Ignatieff is surely right to frame the real question as: do we actually have a choice any more? American trade alone makes some sort of international police work essential. The rise of weapons of mass destruction together with lethal terrorism and porous international borders all turn isolationism into a non-starter. The military abdication of most of the other Western countries also makes the United States the enforcer of last resort (remember Bosnia and Kosovo?). Allowing a genocidal nutcase access to nuclear weapons in the most oil-rich part of the globe is simply not something any responsible hegemon can allow – not only for its own security, but for that of the entire world. The question then becomes one between an Empire Lite or an Empire Heavy. I’m more skeptical than some neoconservatives about the feasibility of having troops and civil servants all over the globe, ushering in a new era of democracy. But I’m even more skeptical of the left conservatives and reactionary leftists who believe inaction and retreat is a viable option. We have to find a way between both temptations – case by case, region by region, year by year. This is where the real debate should be: not in hysterical leftwing cries of imperial dictatorship or in paleocon nostalgia for withdrawal, but in the hard, day by day assessment of risks and benefits of specific actions.

EURO-ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: “Hitler’s Nazi regime occupied Europe for four years only. Palestine and the West Bank have been occupied for 40 years.” Thus a minor Labour Party official in Wales. This stuff is getting more and more poisonous.

THE NUNS AS WELL: Forty percent of women religious have experienced some kind of sexual abuse – many at the hands of the Church? Now how will the hierarchy manage to blame this on the homosexuals? No doubt they’ll give it their best shot.

DERBYSHIRE AND RACE: Many of you have taken me to task for being disconcerted by John Derbyshire’s recent comment on National Review that the New Year’s babies born to a lesbian couple in DC and a single black mother in New York should prompt one to “despair.” Let’s leave aside the assumption that a child born into a loving, middle class same-sex couple home is a matter for despair. Derbyshire’s aversion to gay people, freely confessed, celebrated and condoned in National Review, and other venues, is a matter of public record. Was his despair at the black single mother a genuine worry about the state of the black family rather than a simple expression of disdain? I can’t know what’s in Derb’s heart. But I do know that he is extremely frank about what he believes about race. Here’s a recent post-Lott statement of his in National Review:

All American politicians are liars and hypocrites about race, from Democrats like Hillary Clinton posing as champions of the downtrodden black masses while buying a house in the whitest town they can find, to Republicans pretending not to know that (a) many millions of nonblack Americans seriously dislike black people, (b) well-nigh every one of those people votes Republican, and (c) without those votes no Republican would ever win any election above the county level. (Am I being beeped out yet?)

Now what does he really mean by this? I think he means that he agrees with the NAACP and others that the Republican Party is at root a party based on racial hatred. But he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it! His only problem is with those who deny this, and he hints in the piece that his own views about race are too explosive for polite company. Then there’s this odd detail. In National Review again, Derbyshire recently described looking for a place to live in the New York suburbs:

One time we got off the train in a town that was pretty solidly black. It took us about five minutes to figure this out. Then we went back to the railroad station and sat half an hour waiting for the next train.

He justifies this by citing a range of statistics about why black neighborhoods tend to be worse off than others. “Are we racists?” he asks of himself and his wife. “Depends what you mean,” he answers. Then there are the weirdnesses that creep into his writing about race. What does one make of the following statement, for example, also published in National Review:

You understand, I am sure, that when I talk about race, I am talking about blacks and nonblacks, the two races that inhabit the United States.

Huh? Even if you agree with Derb (as I do) that race is not entirely socially constructed, why this obsession with blacks and “non-blacks”? Don’t Asians qualify? Hispanics? Native Americans? All this is simply to say that when you have a record like John Derbyshire’s on race and you voice “despair” at a new-born black child in New York City, there comes a point at which a reasonable reader may eventually cease to give you the benefit of the doubt.

KRUGMAN WINS AGAIN!: The website, “Lying in Ponds,” does an annual survey of who, among the major newspaper columnists, is the most reflexively, viscerally partisan. Paul Krugman’s columns – “a lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption” – win first prize for the second year in a row. Here’s the summary:

After evaluating all 2,129 columns written by our 37 pundits in 2002, it’s time to draw some conclusions. I’ve stressed all along that Lying in Ponds is attempting to make a distinction between ordinary party preference (there’s nothing wrong with being opinionated or having a political ideology) and excessive partisanship (“blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance”). While it’s obviously difficult to draw a definitive line, the top three pundits in the rankings clearly revealed excessive partisanship by the remarkable consistency of their extremely one-sided commentary throughout the year. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman took the partisanship lead early and lapped the field. In a year in which Mr. Krugman generated lots of buzz and won an award, his 18:1 ratio of negative to positive Republican references and 99 columns without a single substantive deviation from the party line were unmatched in the Lying in Ponds portion of the punditocracy.

The details are fascinating as well. Among the most relentlessly partisan: Mike Kinsley. The most one-sided columns in a newspaper: the Wall Street Journal. The most diverse: the Washington Post.

Jonah nails it again in his new review of “The Two Towers,” where he saves us from any more lugubrious commentary in favor of making fun of others, especially those who see, say, Orcs as a disturbingly racist fantasy:

One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people – like me – who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, “Cool, Orcs!” On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim “black people!”

I must say whenever I think of Jonah in future, the phrase, “Cool, Orcs!”, will hover genially in my frontal lobe. Read the whole piece.

“[T]he South African archbishop added that, while al-Qaeda was a terrorist organisation, many of its followers were ‘not lunatic fringe, many of them are quite intelligent’, and that leaders had to ask why such people ‘should be willing to pilot a plane and go to their deaths’.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, quoted in today’s Guardian.

“[Art Spiegelman] described his current endeavor as ‘recollections of Sept. 11, 2001, and the feeling of imminent death that it brought with it seen from further and further spiraling distances as we move towards a present where we’re equally threatened by Al Qaeda and my President.'” – from the New York Observer.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “Populated by such real-life characters as William Marcy “Boss” Tweed (Jim Broadbent), the venal Tammany Hall politico and vote buyer, and set against the backdrop of a Civil War that no one seems to want to fight, “Gangs” has the look, feel and sound of authentic history. Still, it makes it clear that the past is ever prologue to a today that is only superficially less wicked. “Remember the first rule of politics,” says Tweed after an underling informs him that the polls have run out of ballots. “The ballots don’t make the votes. The counters make the votes. Keep counting.” To be sure, former Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris never threw a meat cleaver into anyone’s back (one of Bill the Butcher’s milder political “fixes”), but if images of Florida and hanging chads don’t come to mind, then you’re not paying attention.” – Michael O’Sullivan, the Washington Post.

Paul Krugman just gave an interview to Der Spiegel. It’s a festival of German-pleasing anti-Americanism and Bush-bashing. Here are a couple of choice quotes, worthy of Michael Moore:

No one expects the President to be a saint. … But it is pretty amazing the distance that this administration will go in trying to fool the public. Sometimes I have the feeling that I no longer live in one of the world’s oldest democracies, but in the Philippines under a new Marcos.

Useful to know that a columnist at the New York Times believes that president Bush is indistinguishable from an unelected tyrant. Then there’s this piece of naked pandering to European prejudice against America:

Instead [of writing a column about the New Economy], I now find myself once again as the lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption. Sometimes I think that one of these days I’ll end up in one of those cages on Guantanamo Bay (laughs). But I can still seek asylum in Germany. I hope you’d accept me in an emergency.

The poor beleaguered martyr for truth. So persecuted by the government he gets to write twice weekly for the New York Times and have the media establishment gush constantly about him. So pure you’d never know he once served on Enron’s Advisory Board and still hasn’t returned his $50,000 sinecure. Asylum? Lonely voice of truth? The vanity is almost as gob-smacking as the self-righteousness.

D.C.’s vaunted cops apparently missed an entire corpse under a bed in a recent search of an apartment. A foot was even poking out from under the bed. “Poor lighting” was the excuse. A second search recovered the body. And we thought they’d find Chandra?

“Before this election the Bush administration had taken every opportunity to give the extreme right-wing of his party what they’ve wanted on social issues, but they were doing it quietly. Now they’ll be more out front. I think there will be steamroller in January that will attempt to crush reproductive freedom. We’re talking about sending women back to a time when they were barefoot and pregnant.” – Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in an absurdly crude and out-of-touch piece in Salon.

It seems former British prime minister, Harold MacMillan, slept. Here’s part of the letter he wrote to the Queen, about a major summit meeting with French, German and American leaders in 1959. It has just been released for public consumption:

After lunch, which was extremely good, Dr Adenauer delivered for nearly an hour a lecture on the dangers of communism and the best way to deal with it in the schools, in the factories and in the homes. I regret to inform Your Majesty that I fell asleep during the latter part of this oration.

A classic. Nice assessment of Eisenhower too.

That appears to be the new Bob Forehead term deployed by the Democrats. John Edwards, in particular, seems to have retired the “Working Families” mantra in favor of the “Regular People” formula. Maybe these things work. But the way in which these focus-group locutions deaden the language, rob it of any life or meaning or specificity is truly depressing. No “regular people” talk about “regular people.” My other problem with Edwards is that he’s a Southerner. For the Democrats to nominate a Southerner for the fourth time in four election cycles may make electoral college sense, but it still slights the parts of the country that are more dependably Democratic. Still, I like his politics – they seem sanely to the right of, say, Al Gore. And he has a touch of the Tony Blair about him: the slick yet somehow earnest combination. Hard to pull off.

WILL BLOGGING PAY? The prospects are looking brighter. John Scalzi just got a book contract because of a blog serialization. And my first pay check (thanks to you) comes in two weeks. Woohoo.

GREEN BUSH: Belated recognition of this administration’s tight diesel fuel emission standards. The news got some play, but we’re still a long way from denting the reflexive Bush-is-anti-environment chorus. The administration bears some responsibility for this. The diesel fuel decision is a real pro-environment call – not just blather – that the president should have gotten real credit for. It should have been announced in dramatic, news-making fashion, by the president himself. Instead, it was buried in turn-of-the-year blahs. A lost opportunity. If I were Mr Rove, I’d be planning several pro-green initiatives for the next two years, with major presidential backing for them. Get Matthew Scully to write the speech. Show why responsible conservatism cares about the natural world, its conservation, its health. There’s a record here. Trumpet it. And force the lazy hacks to change their script.

SCHEER ILLOGIC: Here’s a classic from Robert Scheer in the Nation:

In fact, the Shiite fundamentalists must be high-fiving in Tehran over the costly American makeover of Central Asia. These fundamentalists would be the biggest benefactors of any takedown of neighboring Iraq, as they were when the United States installed Iran’s longtime puppets, the Northern Alliance, as top dogs in Afghanistan.

Does Scheer really believe that the fundamentalist tyrants clinging to power in Tehran want a successful regime change next door? And yet he’s the one accusing the Bush administration of illogic.

Here’s the Advocate story about Herb Ritts’ early death. He died because his immune system was severely compromised by HIV. And here’s a German version of the same story. Odd that this should be restricted to the gay press. Or are we now headed back to the early 1980s?

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “K-Lo: So DC’s first baby of the year was born to a lesbian couple. New York’s seems to have been to a black single mother. Don’t you sometimes feel like giving in to despair?” – John Derbyshire, National Review Online. I guess I’m used to Derb’s dismay at homosexuals, and you could explain this comment by saying he’s merely depressed by the absence of two-parent male-female families. But why the gratuitous mention of the race of the single mother? Once again, you get the impression that Derb would be happier if this country had fewer blacks and gays in it. No surprise he sympathized with Trent Lott.