Category: Old Dish

Well, we weren’t the only ones who complained about the Ted Rall cartoon. But I’m sure the blogosphere helped prompt the New York Times to yank it from their site.

A superb and succinct demolition of the New York Times-Saudi Arabia plan for “peace” in Israel by Anne Applebaum in Slate. My favorite observation:

In these circumstances, the outside intervention-from President Clinton-was an utter disaster. He forced everyone to play their cards too soon, before either the Israeli or the Palestinian general public were ready to give up on violence. I can’t see how Colin Powell or Javier Solana could, at the moment, do much better: Negotiations could perhaps calm the situation, but until one or both sides has come to the conclusion that talking will produce a better deal than fighting, negotiations have little chance of long-term success. Northern Ireland is different. Even if the IRA still hasn’t quite given up its battle, there is at least a popular consensus for peace.

I agree with Applebaum, and share her belief that Bill Clinton’s policy of premature “peace” helped intensify the war. More evidence of his damaging foreign policy legacy.

Another statement from a bravely anonymous priest to the Boston Herald. There’s no pedophile problem. There’s a gay problem. “My personal feeling is, I don’t care,” this conservative priest asserts. “We should stand up and be counted, reaffirming the authentic faith. If this element [the gay clergy] isn’t rooted out, we’re going to see reoccurrences. Vocations will come back; God will take care of that.” These stories are not accidental. They’re deliberate. The church hierarchy have now found a way out of their dilemma. Bruised by revelations that they have sheltered, supported and ignored child molestation, they now want to purge not the clerics who hid the abusers – but gay priests who have done nothing wrong. This campaign suggests to me a civil war could soon break out in the American priesthood. It’s going to get brutal, as gay Catholics are targeted for smears, accusations and exposure.

Useful post-primary analysis from Arnold Steinberg at NRO. The worry is that he mainly shows how Riordan lost rather than how Simon won. Some Republicans see another Reagan. I’ll refrain from commenting. But campaigns serve a purpose in that they help show the weakness of a candidate and therefore his potential weakness in office. Riordan clearly failed the test – and the voters’ judgment should be respected. Whether Simon can now rally is another matter entirely. Still, the warning signs are there. Davis picked the GOP candidate. The turnout was pathetic. Simon’s politics have little majority appeal. I smell political suicide. But Simon deserves the benefit of the doubt – for now.

PODHORETZ ONLINE: Norman Podoretz’s recent AEI lecture predicting a new Vietnam-like domestic struggle over the war on terror is now online. Thanks to FrontPage magazine for pointing it out. I’m more sanguine than the Pod. But the speech is unsettling nonetheless.

U.S. gaining ground in Afghanistan battle; Bush resists taking Saudi-Egyptian bait; Riordan, Condit, Pickering look doomed; Bush abandons free trade principles, risks rift with Europe; Communist-supporting, homophobic minister dies.

NIGHTMARE TIME: For the first time since September 11, I’ve been having nightmares. I can’t get out of my head the knowledge that Islamo-fascists and their allies may well have the wherewithal to detonate a dirty nuclear bomb in a major city in the near future. I live blocks away from one likely target. So do hundreds of thousands of others. If the terrorists succeed, they could render Washington or Manhattan uninhabitable for decades. They could make the White House and the Capitol off-limits to human beings for a century. And our defense against this? Extremely limited. I’m taken to task sometimes for being impatient with those who keep questioning the need for this war, the necessity to move against the axis of evil that wants to destroy us. What I don’t understand is how they can be so complacent. Don’t they see the greatest danger this republic has ever faced is now in front of us? Don’t they understand that neutralizing Iraq is not some kind of interesting proposal in an unnecessary war – but the bare minimum to prevent a holocaust in the very heart of this country’s democracy? I’m not given to panic, but I can see nowhere any hard evidence that debunks the possibility of this scenario. In fact, the more you think about the amount of nuclear material out there that’s unaccounted for, the inevitable limits of prevention in an open society, and the evil fanaticism of our enemy, the more terrifying our predicament really is. I think this is 1940. I think this is just beginning. I share James Lileks’ superb commentary yesterday on his wonderful blog:

I had that feeling all day – felt like October. Made you realize that it’s been October every day since October. And it’s going to be October for some time, right up until the day it’s September again.

Are you ready?

THE VATICAN’S ROT: I bumped into another gay Catholic tonight – Notre Dame graduate, weekly church-goer, concerned and dedicated layman. He told me he couldn’t go to church any more. The way in which the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, tried to pin the Church’s pedophile corruption on good gay priests last Sunday was just too much for him. “They’ve declared war on us. All of us,” he said to me. “If we stay, we simply condone the bigotry and ingratitude. I don’t know where to go, but I cannot stay any more.” I’m beginning to believe he’s right – this is a watershed moment. For a quarter of a century, gay Catholics and gay priests have clung to the reed of the 1976 doctrine that homosexuality as a condition is not sinful, and that homosexuals are persons with dignity who belong in the Church. Now Navarro-Valls, a member of the Opus Dei sect that now dominates the Church hierarchy while the pope declines into aged irrelevance, has abandoned that doctrine. Gays cannot be ordained, he says. Worse, their ordinations are invalid. He’s almost daring gay priests to quit. You know how many American priests would be left? Perhaps half of the current number. And a hierarchy that subjected children in its care to serial molestation now tries to change the subject by impugning its own innocent gay priests. This gambit by the hierarchy shows the “objective disorder” at the heart of their ideology. As Margery Eagan puts it in Tuesday’s Boston Herald,

While church leadership dumped from Boston parishes Catholic gays who refused to renounce their “sin,” as we all know now it has not even acknowledged what scholars and parishioners – and their children – have noticed for years: that scores of Catholic priests – many of its very, very finest priests, in fact – are gay. But the big gay elephant sits there in the middle of the rectory table. We pretend we don’t see it. The culture of silence prevails.

Eagen is no anti-Catholic liberal and neither is her paper. And nor am I. She just sees corruption and bigotry when it stares her in the face. She also shows how the Vatican’s stupendous hypocrisy over its own gay priests is connected with the pedophile corruption. Good gay priests may have been afraid to name pedophiles for fear they would be smeared as well. It turns out their fears were justified. It seems to me that after the Vatican’s declaration of war on its gay clergy last weekend that gay priests have a simple duty. They need to come out in large numbers to their parishioners and to the press. They need to dare the Vatican to fire them. They need to stop the defensiveness of the past, stand up for their moral integrity, and expose the rot at the heart of the Church. And lay Catholics need to support them against the hierarchy every inch of the way. How dare the Church impugn innocents while it shelters the guilty? And how can decent American Catholics not rise up against the hierarchy for it?

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: A truly ugly incident in a Congressional primary in Illinois. I’d find it hard to vote for Rahm Emanuel under most circumstances but given the bigotry unleashed by an ally of his opponent, I’d do so in a heart-beat. Ugly.

HOPING FOR RECESSION: Another pundit praying for higher unemployment, lower growth, and collapsing demand is Robert “Crazy Bob” Kuttner. He only likes booms when Democrats are in power. Here’s a classic of the genre. I should remind readers that Kuttner wrote the epic version of this type of piece back at the dawn of the 1990s, when he wrote a forecast of the coming decade’s economic fortunes for The New Republic. The piece was entitled, “The Abyss.”

ASHCROFT UNPLUGGED: Now his underlings have to sing for their supper?

LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS WATCH: Frank Rich recently described the notion of liberal media bias, as documented by Bernie Goldberg, as “ludicrous.” That’s the kind of remark one simply cannot find an adequate response to. So I defer to a young and fearless blogger, Patrick Ruffini. He did a quick statistical analysis of the use of the term “right-wing” in a couple of major papers. He concludes:

Since 1996, the Washington Post has used this loaded term more than twice as frequently as “left-wing.” References to “right-wing” increased in even-numbered election years when the political stakes were higher – 73.2% of the “-wing” references compared to 67.5% in non-electio
n years. This disparity was even more palpable at the New York Times, where 80.2% of the left-right mentions on the national news pages since 1996 have spotlighted the right. The research also found that the more loaded and derogatory the phrase, the more likely it was to be associated with the political right. The term “conservative” outpolled “liberal” by 66-34% in New York Times news page mentions, while the aforementioned “right-wing” clocked in at 80% in a similar measure. However, the term “right-wing extremist” was used at least six times as frequently than “left-wing extremist” (at 87.4% since ’96 in the Times).

These are not mild discrepancies. They’re huge discrepancies. Ruffini then tries another experiment. How do these papers characterize famous conservative, Jesse Helms, and famous liberal, Ted Kennedy? Drum-roll, please:

At the New York Times, 28.1% of the stories mentioning Jesse Helms also mentioned the word “conservative” while only 11.3% of the stories with Ted Kennedy in them mentioned the word “liberal.” At the politically savvier WaPo, both figures were higher, but there was still a disparity: 30.6% for Helms, 18.8% for Kennedy.

Liberal bias? Ludicrous!

UN SUCCESS-STORY D’UN BLOGGEUR: Le Monde puffs yours truly, among others. Oh the ignominy.

SCORE ONE FOR BRIT: Nice catch by Brit Hume today. All that Congressional whining about a “secret government,” about not being informed, and so on turns out to be so much hooey. That old pork-pig, Robert Byrd, even turned down a briefing on the issue last fall. And it was flagged in the papers at the time as well. Of course the real story is: when we’re under such a threat that the government sets up an underground bunker, don’t you think our representatives could think of something better to say than that they’re miffed they weren’t in on it?

This mantra, propagated by the anti-war left, turns out to be true. Not true in the sense that the anti-war voices are silenced. They are, if anything, grossly over-represented in the current media, compared to the culture as a whole. True in the sense that the left is using whatever power it has to keep dissident voices silenced. In Britain, left-wing journalists are in the forefront of this, although they clearly have less skill and subtlety than their American peers. The New Statesman has run anti-Semitic images on its covers and this week has a columnist offering money for someone to assassinate president Bush. But when a former editor of the magazine, John Lloyd, wrote a letter to the editor criticizing knee-jerking anti-Americanism, the letter was rejected. The London Review of Books also turned down a pro-Blair essay by David Marquand, because the far-left editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, couldn’t in good conscience run any praise of Tony Blair’s conduct of the war. Marquand and Lloyd are not minor figures. They are leading lions of the sensible left in Britain. And they are not even allowed to praise a Labour prime minister! Censorship rules. And the left, as usual, is the most expert at it.

“EXCORIATING DISH”: Canada’s Globe and Mail has one of the best recent pieces on blogging and what it means for journalism. This site’s a favorite.

U.S. says it’s prepared to fight harder for victory against terrorists; Sharon ups the ante against Palestinian terror; Cheney takes on Daschle; chastity hip again in L.A.; London’s emailers meanest in Britain.

THE TEST FOR DASCHLE: Several of you have emailed to say that my suspicion of Tom Daschle’s anti-war murmurings is unfounded. Bryan Keefer has a similar argument in Salon. It goes roughly like this: Daschle is simply voicing loyal criticism designed to ensure that this war is conducted effectively. He should be defended, not quashed. Effective questioning of the war is essential to its success. In theory, I agree with the emailers. As a matter of principle, it seems to me that constructive war-criticism is not only defensible but vital. It’s one advantage a democracy has against a tyranny in any war. Such questions are how Churchill replaced Chamberlain months after the war against Hitler was initiated. But Daschle’s statements, when you peruse them, simply don’t add up to that. Upon close inspection, he has nothing substantive to say. If he said, say, that we need to go easy on Iraq, or that North Korea is a side-show, or that Iran should be engaged not confronted, then I might disagree with him strongly, but I certainly wouldn’t question the appropriateness of his comments. But he didn’t say anything that specific. He made no positive proposals. He simply whined about the vagueness of war aims (which are anything but vague), complained of the lack of exit strategies (Guess what? In a war on terrorism, there are no exit strategies) and generally tested the anti-war waters. I respect a good opposition raising important, concrete questions about tactics and strategy in a war. But I suspect whiners who are angling for political advantage at the possible expense of this country’s security, and our troops’ safety. That’s what Daschle now is. He should make real arguments, advance substantive criticisms, or shut up. But he’s too cowardly to do the former and too opportunistic to do the latter.

DASCHLE AND VIETNAM: “The point people miss when talking about Daschle’s comments isn’t what he said (which was a pretty timid opposition to the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush administration) but what he will say if we let him get away with it. Remember, the original anti-Vietnam voices were just as timid as Daschle is now.” For more of this debate, see the letters page.

FUMBLING IRAN AND TORA BORA: So you want real criticism of the conduct of the war? Try Michael Ledeen’s bracing concern that the state of the union speech is in danger of sounding hollow if we don’t back it up with real action on Iran. Also try reading this useful account of how Osama bin Laden got away from Tora Bora in the Christian Science Monitor. We need more of this and less of Daschle.

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: A useful round-up of the sad truth that there have probably been around 1000 civilian casualties in the Afghanistan war so far. That’s one quarter of the number cited by some anti-war activists. But obviously a grim reminder that no war spares the innocent and an important spur to attempting to keep those numbers as low as possible.

BOOK CLUB UPDATE: A bumper start to the new book club discussion – and a couple of points. Some of you are dismayed that I’ve picked a book critical of president Bush by a New York Times reporter. But this is not Oprah. Picking a book to read and argue about is not an endorsement or a promotional love-fest. It’s an opportunity for debate. And Frank Bruni has agreed to answer your questions and join in the fun. Give him your worst! I know he can take it. It’s also not a book of theory, like the last one. That’s deliberate. We’ll have future books that are more intellectual, but this one opens up real questions about presidential character and history as well as the role of the press. For what it’s worth, it’s also highly readable and I’m enjoying it immensely so far. We’ll also be doubling the number of reader contributions this time, and I’ll be taking a more aggressive role in steering the debate. So join the experiment. And support the site at the same time. For basic info on how the club works, click here.

IT’S TWUE! IT’S TWUE!: Does Slate’s usually sassy ad reviewer Rob Walker really have to ask why a black actor is featured in a sketch where he pulls down his pants to make a “big impression?” I’m beginning to think we should start a clueless white straight guy award in his honor.

MY KIND OF REPUBLICAN: Dude, this guy deserves an award. It’s a free country.

THE CHURCH’S PRIORITIES: “Last week there was an editorial cartoon in the Times-Picayune that depicted a priest going to confession. He said “Bless me father, I like to touch little boys.” The confessor said “Oh thank God, I thought you were going to say you wanted to ordain women!” It would have been funny had it not been so close to the truth.” More of this debate on the letters page.

PRAYING FOR RECESSION: In Chicago last weekend, it was amusing to watch the weather anchors prepare for a major snow-storm. They’ve mastered a very difficult maneuver – which is saying that they’re dreading the storm, that it could be terrible, that everyone should stay inside, that it could get really brutal, while they’re obviously enjoying every minute of it. 18 inches of snow! Woohoo! Or at least that’s what their facial expressions say. The reverse syndrome can be observed among liberal economists and pundits writing about the recession ending. They’re obliged to sound cheerful, but, deep inside, they’re clearly hating it. Paul Krugman’s recent column was a classic of the genre. It will kill him to see people getting jobs, earning money, buying stocks, while Bush is president. Similarly, the New York Times buried the big news last week of revised GDP numbers in the fourth quarter on the second page of the business section. Yes, I know this recovery could well be anemic. But there’s still something wonderful about the way some people just can’t bear to hear the good news. If you find any other great examples of lib
eral pundits failing to sound cheerful about the recovery, please send them my way.

RALL’S NEW LOW: Just when you thought this America-hating sicko couldn’t sink any lower, he goes and produces a cartoon like this.

LABOUR VERSUS BLAIR AND THE WAR: Some 86 percent of Labour Party members of parliament oppose extending the war to Iraq. Tony Blair deserves even more credit for getting off the fence on this one and taking a stand. Maybe if some of those MPs could read the intelligence briefings Blair reads, they might just change their minds.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “A lifetime of politics was coming to an end; yet a newspaper strike made it certain that Churchill’s resignation would receive little public coverage. On April 4 he and his wife gave a farewell dinner at No. 10 to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. At noon on the following day he held his last Cabinet meeting, wishing his colleagues ‘all good fortune in the difficult, but hopeful, situation which they had to face.’ He next saw the Ministers not in the Cabinet telling them. ‘Man is spirit’, and leaving them with one piece of advice, ‘Never be separated from the Americans.'” -from Martin Gilbert’s “Churchill: A Life.”

Number 8. Join the book club by buying the book here.

Was Daschle’s snipe at the war an opening salvo? Or a minor gripe? My take posted opposite.

Number 10.