Category: Old Dish

Aaron Brown: “Some conservatives jumped on [Taliban fighter John] Walker, saying he is a product of cultural liberalism – the California kind – helping to turn an impressionable kid against his own country. Joining us from Salinas, California, one of those conservatives, Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution. Mr. Steele wrote a provocative article the other day in The Wall Street Journal – a column in the Journal. And here in New York, a columnist who thinks Mr. Steele is making an awfully broad generalization: Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. It’s nice to have both of you here.
Mr. Steele.”
Shelby Steele: “First of all, let me interrupt you just a minute. Is Richard Cohen a liberal?”
Brown: “Yeah, Richard Cohen’s a liberal. I think he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Richard Cohen: “On this issue.”
Brown: “Okay. Everyone is now branded, I guess.”
Steele: “Great. If I’m going to be, everybody’s going to be.”

– Exchange on CNN’s NewsNight, December 18.

Any objective view of the Clinton legacy must now include the military, security and intelligence failure that made September 11 possible. Check out my new piece opposite.

I’ve learned to trust whatever Reuel Marc Gerecht writes. He was one of the most prescient of writers before September 11 and one of the most perceptive judges of al Qaeda’s strength and ruthlessness. His op-ed today is a welcome tonic of concern that al Qaeda has not yet been eradicated, and that, for all we know, bin Laden is still alive. This we should fear. As my old friend Peter Bergen has shown, al Qaeda has an international structure explicitly designed to protect itself against the extinction of any one cell or base. Sending American troops into Pakistan and elsewhere to find him – and not relying upon unreliable proxies – is therefore a must. So is action in Somalia and Yemen.

ENRON: I’m still trying to figure out what this Enron thing is all about. The key thing with scandals like this, it seems to me, is to ask yourself: what’s the worst accusation that could be made? With Whitewater, the worst possibility was that it was a petty, sweetheart deal. It was easy to see that, even if this were true, it wasn’t that big a deal. Surely, from what we know now, it’s even less of a deal with Enron. I haven’t seen any argument yet that takes us beyond the line that many in the Bush administration were close to Enron, that Enron helped bankroll Bush’s campaigns, and that therefore there is some sort of guilt by association. If that’s it, it’s not pleasant but, like Whitewater, not that damaging either. If it isn’t, and some in the administration knew of the improprieties or in any way gave Enron special treatment in concealing them, then they deserve any payback they get. So far, the opposite appears to be the case – that Enron asked for help and none was forthcoming. The golden rule for Bush is to get everything out now. Bush’s and Cheney’s tendency toward secrecy in these matters is by far the biggest danger. I agree with Byron York on this. In this political culture, some sort of scandal or semi-scandal or appearance of scandal is inevitable in any administration. What matters is how you deal with it. So they need to be as forthright as possible. No Clintonism, please. Look what it did to him in the end.

ONE LAST MORRISISM: Given my latest piece on Clinton’s record on terrorism, I asked Dick Morris if he thought Clinton would be worried right now about what September 11 was doing to his legacy. Could Clinton be remorseful? Or angry? Or reflective? Morris’s answer took a while, since he hasn’t spoken to Clinton in years. Here’s a short version of his answer: “The thing about Bill Clinton is that he never, ever, ever, ever, EVER, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER, blames himself.”

WHY ARE CONSERVATIVE BOOKS SELLING?: Don’t you love it when a New York Times reviewer tries to explain why a book on liberal media bias is selling so well and he comes up with the following:

“It may simply be that conservatives are writing books of political thought and moderates and liberals aren’t. It may be that conservatives are simply more interesting when they do write and talk, and get to an audience’s belly in a way that liberals and moderates don’t. Or it may simply be that if you are a publisher and want to make money, the conservative writers with their broadcasting celebrity will attract the readers, so that’s where you put your chips.”

And could it be that the book is saying something interesting, important and correct? And Mr Arnold wonders where one might possibly get the idea that the media elites are sedated by their own liberal cocoon?

MEDIA BIAS IN SLATE: Here’s a little test. We’re told that although Slate has only Democrats on its editorial staff, it is perfectly able to restrain bias. Take a look at Tim Noah’s “Whopper of the Week,” feature. Now this section bills itself as a watchdog of lies in public life, a fun and often revealing feature. Now look at the Whopper of the Week 2001 Archive. By my accounting, there are 30 documented lies from Republicans, Conservatives, or right of center types; there are seven that really cannot be categorized (foreigners, admirals, etc.); and there are eight lies from Democrats or liberals. By far the biggest category of lies is confined to senior members of the Bush administration. 2001 was, of course, the year of the pardon scandals. But the most famous liar in recent history, one Bill Clinton, goes unmentioned, while George W. Bush gets multiple entries. Hmmmm. If this tally were unbiased, it would suggest that conservatives are three times more likely to lie than liberals. Now this may be a complete accident. It may be that Tim Noah, who is a bona fide big-L liberal, is completely unbiased in his selection of topics. Then again, it might be that he is not, and that he works for an excellent liberal online magazine, whose only real fault is that it won’t admit it’s biased to the left. I report. You decide.

KINSLEY ASKS II: Reading Bernard Goldberg’s best-seller tonight, I came across a curious excerpt. If you read Mike Kinsley’s critique, you might think that at some point, Goldberg claimed that it was evidence of bias that “a TV producer would decide to label a full-time ideologue like Phyllis Schlafly as ‘conservative’ but not feel obliged to label avocational activist Rosie O’Donnell as ‘liberal.'” As I say below, I think that is bias. But when you read Goldberg’s book, you find that Kinsley has conflated two comparisons Goldberg makes. Here they are on pages 56 and 57:

“Harry Smith, the cohost (at the time) of CBS This Morning, introduced a segment on sexual harrassment saying, ‘ … has anything really changed? Just ahead we’re going to ask noted law professor Catharine MacKinnon and conservative spokeswoman Phyllis Shlafly to talk about that.’ It sounds innocent enough, but why is it that Phyllis Shlafly was identified as a conservative, but Catharine MacKinnon was not identified as a radical feminist or a far-left professor or even as a plain old liberal?”

It seems to me that the Shlafly/Mackinnon contrast is pretty damning, and certainly far more damning than the Shlafly/O’Donnell contrast. On the next page, Goldberg writes:

“Rush Limbaugh is the conservative radio talk show host. But Rosie O’Donnell, who while hosting a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton said Mayor Rudy Giuliani was New York’s “village idiot,” is not the liberal TV talk show host.”

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but Mike is usually so devastatingly fair, even when he’s devastatingly sharp, that I was surprised by the conflation. I’m beginning to think the obvious truth of Goldberg’s book is causing havoc among otherwise sharp liberals. It has made Tom Shales look like a blithering idiot and now it’s made Mike Kinsley look either a mite careless or, well, biased.

“Do they really think it is devastating evidence of bias that a TV producer would decide to label a full-time ideologue like Phyllis Schlafly as ‘conservative’ but not feel obliged to label avocational activist Rosie O’Donnell as ‘liberal?'” Er, Mike, that would be yes. I do really think that. O’Donnell is easily as far to the left as Shlafly is to the right, and she has a much bigger platform from which to voice her views. And a critical element of the power of her megaphone is that it is never labeled properly as left-wing advocacy. I also think it’s prima facie evidence of liberal media bias that there’s barely a single Bush voter on Slate’s editorial staff. Yet, Slate is never described as a liberal magazine. To take an obvious analogy, there’s barely a Gore voter on National Review Online, yet they are routinely described as a conservative magazine. Do I think that double-standard is devastating evidence of bias? No, it’s not devastating, but it’s pretty good food for thought. “Devastating” evidence is the shrillness of some people’s response to Goldberg’s book, including, alas, Mike’s.

I’m pretty thrilled by Ron Rosenbaum’s flattering assumption that I never sleep. Actually, I tend to sleep at least nine and often ten hours a night. I think that’s why I tend to be pretty productive most of the time. My hours are weird though. I work till around 1.30 am most nights and don’t get up till 11 or later. I’ve even trained the beagle to do the same.

I caught a late lunch with Dick Morris today. It was the first time I’d met him (we were instructed to meet by a memo direct from Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Headquarters). First off, he reminded me that I had trashed his last book for the New York Times Book Review. Still, he was immensely good-natured about it. I’d completely forgotten, of course. One reason I keep my social life to my non-political friends is that I’ve written so many tough words about fellow hacks that I usually spend cocktail parties hiding behind couches. Anyway, Morris struck me as a real original. When he’s right, he’s amazingly perceptive, even close to genius. When he’s wrong, he’s really wrong. He also struck me as very human, vulnerable, smart, emotional. He had managed to keep his own identity apart from his public identity – no easy thing given the circles in which he runs. It was a private affair so I won’t kiss and tell but I was curious about his take on Clinton’s record on terrorism. He told me that he’d been able to interest Clinton about almost any subject … except terrorism. When the subject came up, Clinton’s eyes would glaze over and his interest would trail off. I also inquired about Buddy. All Dick said was that he had never seen Clinton so much as touch a dog in private. Figures. Generally speaking, I’ve found Morris’s political predictions to be pretty uneven, but he seems to feel the Dems may well take all of Congress this fall. After a while, Charles Krauthammer spotted us and invited us up for coffee. More plots. Dropped by TNR for chat. The Goldhagen piece on the Church and anti-Semitism is indeed out – and the cover-story. (The glacial pace of TNR’s website means it isn’t posted yet, alas.) I hope to read it this weekend and report back.

Ron Rosenbaum gives his opinion.

MORE ON IRAN: Check out Frankie Foer’s piece on the administrations odd priorities – thus far. But they seem to be changing.

People I trust close to the administration tell me not to fret about any loss of momentum or resolve in the war on terrorism. I believe them. But I hope president Bush makes clear in his State of the Union address that we are as yet only at the end of the beginning of this war. The “loose ends” in Afghanistan, as the New York Times calls them today, are more than that. Those loose ends are the al Qaeda leadership, the rogue Pakistani intelligence services, and even some less than disciplined authorities in Kandahar. Until these loose ends are firmly tied, we should be wary of moving on too precipitously. I see no problem with focusing next on Somalia, the Philippines, or Yemen. There are also practical reasons for a lull – replenishing armaments, rotating troops, managing the Pakistani-India stand-off. But we cannot delay Iraq or Iran indefinitely. I linked yesterday to a Yossi Klein Halevi piece on the growing Iranian threat. Today’s Safire column about the Iranian money behind the PLO’s latest shipment of weaponry adds urgency to the endeavor. The simultaneous appearance of Reza Pahlavi’s op-ed in the Washington Post today suggests a sea-change in elite opinion is underway. At the very least, we should now step up rhetorical and financial aid to the opposition movements in both countries. We know one thing: we will never be safe until the current regimes in Baghdad and Tehran are destroyed. What Bush should know is that mere reactive efforts – the Clinton strategy – are less than worthless. We must take the war to the enemies of civilization just as relentlessly as they have taken the war to us and our democratic allies. And we must keep surprising.

WHO KILLED BUDDY?: Inquiring minds demand to know.

THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH: Victor Davis Hanson doesn’t mince words in this expansive essay in the new City Journal:

“If Israel did not exist, the Arab world, in its current fit of denial, would have to invent something like it to vent its frustrations. That is not to say there may not be legitimate concerns in the struggle over Palestine, but merely that for millions of Muslims the fight over such small real estate stems from a deep psychological wound. It isn’t about lebensraum or some actual physical threat. Israel is a constant reminder that it is a nation’s culture-not its geography or size or magnitude of its oil reserves-that determines its wealth or freedom. For the Middle East to make peace with Israel would be to declare war on itself, to admit that that its own fundamental way of doing business-not the Jews-makes it poor, sick, and weak.”

The rest of the essay, “Why The Muslims Misjudged Us,” is just as robust. What’s particularly refreshing is the strength of Hanson’s serene faith in the superiority of Western democratic culture. It is not somehow racist or condescending to believe in the universal validity of democratic principles, or to see the struggle between those principles and tyranny as a constant theme in world history. And the attempt to redescribe such faith as somehow evil or suspect – whether on the far right or the post-modern left – is a central part of what has gone wrong in our culture, and what we are now, thankfully, putting right.

WHAT THE E.U. IS ALL ABOUT: Forget the common currency. Here’s at least part of what makes the European Union what it actually is. It’s a story about E.U. regulations on when a “sauce” becomes a “vegetable.” Apparently, the growing popularity in Europe of chunky sauces has caused panic among the control freaks and tariff-mongers in the Brussels bureaucracy, so they’re raising the “lump” limit for sauces. If they can’t define something, it can’t be regulated, protected from foreign competition or vetted for legal trade. So you end up with hilarious lump-splitting like this. And you wonder why the sensible Brits are a little leery?

YVES SAINT RUG?: Here’s a question: what credibility can a fashion genius have when he has hair like this. Maybe it’s a rug. That might even be reassuring. But the guy looks like Steve Allen with his finger in a socket.

DRUDGE VERSUS KONNER: Nice catch, Matt. Anyone in journalism has long known that Joan Konner, former head of the Columbia School of Journalism, is a case-study in leftist media bias. Touting herself as independent, she is, in fact, a big donor to left-feminist groups, like Emily’s List, and can barely contain her disdain for non-leftist media. Thus Fox news is biased, but CBS is a model of neutrality. Puh-leeze. She makes Tom Shales look like a fount of reason.

BLOGGER DOWN: My apologies for sporadic posting. I rely on Blogger, a free and wonderful service, that appears to be in a moderate meltdown right now. I haven’t been able to post all day. If you’re reading this, I got lucky.

SPEAKING OF ORIENTALISM: A reader recommends this takedown of Edward Said from the New Criterion a while back.

A defense of Paula Zahn and “A Beautiful Mind,” etc.

It’s hilarious to hear the harrumphing and denials and shock from senior CNN honchos over the recent promo CNN aired for Paula Zahn. The promo for Zahn’s new “show” went as follows: “Where can you find a morning news anchor who’s provocative, super-smart and – oh – just a little sexy?” Apparently, the sound of a zipper being unfastened overlaid the voice-over. The higher-ups professed shock and horror, and maybe they were shocked and horrified. But wasn’t this the television version of a gaffe – that rare moment when networks say publicly what they mean privately? (Dammit, but I’ve just read her new column and Maureen Dowd beat me to the punch on this.) Television, after all, is a visual medium. The most powerful visual symbols are sexual. The notion that you can have successful television without sex is simply utopian. In a highly competitive environment, the premium on sexual imagery is going to be even higher. Hence the prominence of a Paula Zahn. The idea that Zahn has been hired for her crack-journalism skills is ludicrous. This is the woman who put psychics on her show to search for Chandra Levy. She makes Connie Chung look like Sandra Day O’Connor. Of course she’s on the air because she’s hot. When you’re catering to straight men, in particular, a cute face and decent boobs are a huge advantage in capturing and keeping your audience. The tele-bimboes may be competent at what they do – but if they weren’t sexy, they simply wouldn’t be there. Why can’t television executives just admit the obvious?

IRAN WATCH: A very useful piece from Yossi Klein Halevi on the terrorist threat still posed by Iran.

THE THINNEST OF REIDS: I’ve now read Bob Wright’s piece on the war in Slate a couple of times and I’m still befuddled. What is he trying to say? He now concedes that he was basically wrong in his early hyper-skepticism about the Afghanistan campaign:

“I’m not saying that the Persian Gulf War, on balance, wasn’t justified. And I’m not saying that the Afghanistan war won’t in the long run have been a plus. And I’m certainly not saying I didn’t get anything wrong about the war.”

So what is he saying? You try and figure it out. I think he’s saying that even if we did amazingly well in the war on terrorists and terrorist states, there will always be anger against us, and this anger could always find one or a few men to fight back. Sure, but who exactly is denying that fact? The conundrum of what to do with failed societies and failed states is not one that Wright or Charles Krauthammer or anyone I know has managed to solve. And the danger of technology in the wrong hands will always be a danger – and not simply from abroad. What if, say, young Charles Bishop had found some anthrax? I guess what I’m saying is that this problem is logically separate from the problem of this particular war, as is the irrational hatred of some for the U.S. around the world. Some cranks will hate us whatever we do. But that shouldn’t prevent us from defending ourselves and attacking those who wish us harm.

SO WHAT DOES BOB SUGGEST? : Beats me. Some kind of global government is his ultimate goal, though quite how or why that would solve this problem escapes me. The closest I can get to a concrete Wright proposal is the following paragraph:

“And here is the crucial point: Five or 10 or 15 years from now-thanks partly to the Bush administration’s refusal to earnestly seek an international regime for policing biological weapons-the Reids of the world could be much more highly leveraged. Three or four Richard Reids (or slightly more competent versions of him) might kill 10,000, 30,000, even 300,000 people.”

So the solution to global terrorism is an international regime for policing biological weapons? Like the great international regime that managed to contain Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-chemical-biological programs? And such a regime would not only prevent Iraq from unleashing terror but it would also contain the handful of truly determined lone terrorists, the deranged or evil or fanatic? C’mon, Bob. You’ve got to do better than that.

HEADS UP: The buzz at The New Republic is that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of the stunning book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” has an explosive piece on anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church in the upcoming issue. Stay tuned.

ORNAMENTALISM: Several acute readers corrected me on a remark I made about Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma’s essay on “Occidentalism” in the New York Review of Books. I interpreted the following sentence as a rebuke to Edward Said: “But if one thing is clear in this murky war, it is that we should not counter Occidentalism with a nasty form of Orientalism. Once we fall for that temptation, the virus has infected us too.” In fact, it may be better read as a mild endorsement of Said’s theory of “Orientalism,” rather than a rebuttal. The broader argument, I’d still insist, is obviously counter to Said’s. Another reader suggests that the smartest Said rebuttal is, in fact, David Cannadine’s book on the British Empire, “Ornamentalism.” Cannadine suggests in the book that the British Empire, rather than being fixated on race, was actually based on class. English elites identified with, say, Indian elites more than they did with those lower down the totem pole. Worth checking out.

HOLY SHIT: Among all the whining special interest groups out there, the Catholic League is one of my least favorite. It’s a right-wing version of a left-wing victim group, eager to pounce upon perceived anti-Catholicism anywhere. So it’s always amusing when they trip up. Here’s a story that speaks for itself. American Catholics take offense at a Catalonian folk custom of placing defecating figurines in nativity scenes. The custom has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Catholicism, but the Catholic League has a cow anyway. Don’t they have anything better to do with their lives?