Category: Old Dish

“At 50, he went with then-representative John Kasich to Rolling Stones and Pearl Jam concerts-at the latter of which he threw himself into the mosh pit. According to a long-time aide, Condit attended a 50,000-strong Hell’s Angels birthday bash for a convicted cop-killer. It now emerges that he was enjoying other things, as well, that belie his Nazarene façade: Thai and Chinese food, Ben & Jerry’s low-fat chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, body-oil massages, and ladies of all stripes-an intern, a barely legal preacher’s daughter, and a flight attendant among them. His favorite D.C. bar is a joint named Tryst; his favorite tie-rack is his headboard. Needless to say, the private Gary Condit has caught most people by surprise.” – Sam Dealey in the Weekly Standard. Hold on a minute. Didn’t even Alan Keyes jump into a mosh-pit? And what exactly is wrong with Thai and Chinese food? Or chocolate chip cookie-dough ice-cream? Or body oil massages? Or a Pearl Jam concert? Or a coffee-shop-diner (where in D.C. I eat daily) called Tryst?As to the facts, the preacher whose daughter was allegedly seduced has now said he made it up. As to Condit’s presumed guilt, it seems increasingly likely that Condit’s whereabouts are almost entirely accounted for the day Chandra Levy went missing, we are left to ask the reason for this unseemly harrumph. Dealey’s argument is summarized by this sentence: “The enlightened position Quinn propounds-that sex doesn’t matter-is only an evolved version of Clinton’s defense-that sex is private.” So sex isn’t private? And if sex isn’t, what is? After the debacle of the attack on Bill Clinton’s sex life – rather than his perjury – the puritanical right has obviously learned nothing. Until they do, the political wilderness is theirs’ to enjoy.

BUGLIOSI RIDICULOSI: The best and most thorough pricking of Vincent Bugliosi’s pomposity I’ve yet seen is Peter Berkowitz’s. Calm, thorough and accurate, this little essay is a primer not on the alleged outrage of the last election’s resolution – but on its eminent reasonableness.

REALITY BITES: American liberal orthodoxy states that race as such does not exist. It is a social construction, or a false social labeling, or another fantasy of troglodytes. That’s why it’s always interesting when science – in its neutral, non-political guise – crashes up against this shibboleth. A story in Saturday’s New York Times details the issues involved in making racial or ethnic distinctions in mapping the human genome. Part of the point of studying the genome is to find the origins of diseases – in order to find ways to cure them. But certain parts of the human population have slightly different susceptibilities to such things. So what to do? Surely Dr. Eric Lander’s view is the right one: “We must make sure the information is not used to stigmatize populations,” the Whitehead Institute scientist told the Times. “But we have an affirmative responsibility to ensure that what is learned will be useful for all populations. If we shy away and don’t record the data for certain populations, we can’t be sure to serve those populations medically.” Exactly. In this fraught area, we should stop insisting that there are no genetic differences between ethnic and racial groups, and start trying to discern the probably very subtle but also discernible differences. Scientists shouldn’t work from an a priori political stance that racial difference is a myth. They should ask naxefve questions and seek the best answers. And those answers, from everything we know, look as if they’ll be extremely complex – and possibly deeply challenging.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: A British reader takes issue with my account of the Tory leadership election. I’ve heard similar analyses from British friends, and they seem persuasive. Here it is:

“Whilst homophobia probably had a role in [Portillo’s] elimination from the contest, the reality is that few people really knew what he represented after so many of his U-turns. For instance, Portillo’s only substantive pronouncement on same-sex partnership rights was to say that he did not have an opinion either way; and his call for a public debate on drugs policy left many commentators asking in vain what his own views were.
“Even more importantly, however, was the cavalier and high-handed way in which Portillo dealt with many of his parliamentary colleagues. Following his Road to Damascus conversion to an ill-defined “caring Conservatism”, for example, this aspiring Party Leader gratuitously cut off many of his closest friends for being too right-wing, even though a number of them were the very MPs whose support he would eventually need to become Party Leader. Notably, hardly any member of the Thatcherite ‘No Turning Back’ group of MPs endorsed him. Indeed, during his candidacy, Portillo effectively said that he would expel figures like Lord Tebbit (former Party Chairman) if they publicly criticised such politically correct ideals as multiculturalism. So much for free speech in the Tories’ broad church.
“Worse still, Portillo surrounded himself with sycophantic twenty-somethings who ultimately formed the core of his campaign team and who went round telling Tory MPs, “No support, no job”. One such figure was Portillo’s principal press officer, Malcolm Gooderham, who shot to fame weeks before the General Election when he was exposed in the “Daily Mirror” newspaper for trying to plant anti-Hague stories in the tabloid press. Significantly, Gooderham was not sacked for such blatant disloyalty.
“With respect to your remarks about Ken Clarke, I believe that there is an American saying, “I’d rather be right than President”, which sums up the Conservative Party’s predicament after two consecutive 1983-style defeats. According to the opinion polls, Clarke was always the most popular of the original five candidates for Party Leader, both amongst Tory voters and the electorate at large. Both Clarke and Duncan Smith have said, moreover, that the only issue that seriously divides the Party (i.e., the euro) will be regarded as a free vote, especially whenever the referendum is held.
“Principles are wonderful things, but not much use if they condemn a political party to perpetual opposition – a lesson that Labour had to learn the hard way. Unfortunately, Michael Portillo was a flawed individual who would have been unable to return the Conservative Party to government for a variety of reasons. That is why, in the final analysis, he lost.”

My take on embryo stem-cell research – posted opposite.

So Jeffrey Archer gets four years in jail for perjury, while Bill Clinton gets to pardon even more crooks. At least one country is interested in defending its legal system.

MEDIA HELL WATCH: Interesting sub-head for NR’s Condit coverage: “A daily news digest of Washington’s latest sex-and-lies scandal.” Nothing there about a missing person, a possible crime, an unsolved mystery – just sex and “lies.” I put “lies” in quotation marks, since we have no evidence that Gary Condit has told any lies at all. We know it took three police interviews to get him to admit that he had an affair with Levy. Before then he said they were good friends. That is also true – if not the whole truth. We also have no idea what the actual conversation with the Keystone – I mean D.C. – cops was. For all we know, they may not have asked him explicitly about his sexual relationship with Levy until the third interview. Meanwhile in Levy news, the Modesto minister who claimed his daughter had an affair with Condit has subsequently recanted. So now we have an actual lie. And it exonerates Condit. The media, however, gleefully outed the minister’s daughter for her alleged sexual affair. I hope she sues the bejeezus out of them. And why doesn’t Rebecca Cooper sue the New York Post? They made the same accusation against her. When the media has gone this nuts, the only recourse is sometimes the law.

BEST CONDIT PIECE YET: Jonathan Rauch carves up the anti-privacy crusade with his usual razor-sharp mind. Not to be missed.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I’m an Irish politics junkie who finds your web-site and arguments highly stimulating. I disagree with you on why the Tories voted against Portillo.
One factor which has been massively under-reported in my opinion is Portillo’s falseness. He’s always spinning and projecting an image and it’s very difficult to understand where he really stands on anything. Consider his demeanor immediately after his defeat. There he was with a broad smile and saying “I can live with this result” when, in reality, this highly ambitious man must have been crushed by the cruel dashing of his long-held ambition. Portillo was at all times a consummate insider jostling for personal and political advantage. Contrast that with Clarke (who did his own career in the last parliament no good with his stance on Europe) and with Duncan-Smith (who led the revolt against the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty when Maggie was still in charge … again not the action of a man to whom personal advancement was everything).
Portillo reminded me of Al Gore – probably a decent man but an actor whose sincerity I couldn’t trust after so many policy flip-flops and insincere attempts to appear sincere.
Despite all that, I think the Tories have made a massive mistake in dumping Portillo – he was the only candidate who could have skated over their cracks on Europe. With Clarke or Duncan-Smith the cracks could become chasms.”

“Again, the only way a church can retain its religious character is if it can staff itself with those who share the same faith,” argued James Sensenbrenner, a Republican congressman close to the religious right. Fair enough. But does a Baptist charity need to exclude Jews from helping out in a homeless shelter, as Jerrold Nadler rightly asked? And does a Catholic charity have to exclude willing Methodists from mentoring youth? And how about gay Catholics or gay Baptists? The impulse behind the notion of the government removing obstacles from religious charities to get funding to help the needy is a good one. But, in a culture as diverse as this one, blurring politics and religion in this way is simply a recipe for further discord. We’ve already seen what difficulties even the Salvation Army will face finding a way to make all this work. More good institutions are going to go through the mire of controversy – a process that can only distract them from their real mission and tarnish the very reputations that help make them effective. These groups are not designed to be political lightning rods. But that’s exactly what president Bush’s ill-conceived, well-meant proposal will bring about. I hope the Senate puts some strong firewalls in the eventual bill to prevent my tax-dollars being used to fund groups that want to deny me my – and anyone else’s – civil rights. Or, better still, that this proposal meets the early death it richly deserves.

MAKES YOU APPRECIATE BABA WAWA: “She married Felix Frankfurter’s brilliant law clerk, Philip Graham, who took over running The Post, which her father purchased at a bankruptcy sale. Graham built the paper but became estranged from Kay. She had him committed to a mental hospital, and he was clearly intending divorce when she signed him out and took him for a weekend outing during which he was found shot. His death was ruled a suicide. Within 48 hours, she declared herself the publisher.” – editorial from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

DC POLICE HELL: A couple of emails from Washingtonians say more about this issue than I can:

“The investigatory skills [of the D.C. cops] aren’t the only things in need of serious improvement; their powers of simple observation could be better as well. On several occasions, I’ve watched the Metropolitan Police Department sit idly by as cars, within clear view of the MPD, have barreled through stoplights and well nigh killed people. And heaven help you if you’re the victim of a crime. Many of my friends have called the police after their cars have been broken into only to have the dispatcher refuse to send an officer out to the scene to investigate. But perhaps it is best that the MPD doesn’t visit the scene of a crime: on one occasion, a friend of mine had summoned the DC constabulary to his house after it had been burgled, and much of his wife’s jewelry stolen. Whatever jewelry was left by the burglars was stolen by two female police officers who responded to the call. So you’re pretty much damned if you call the MPD and damned if you don’t.”

“It was Sunday, March 18, 2001, approximately 5:45 p.m. I was walking up N Street in Dupont Circle towards 21st Street. I was on my usual visit to friends who live in a building on the corner. The car, a beat up Ford, backed into a driveway at the 2100 block of N blocking my path. The door opened, the passenger was holding a pistol which he pointed at me and said “Sir, if you run I will shoot you.” Well, long story short, I ran like hell and was able to get away. My friend watched the entire episode from his second floor apartment window and called 911. This all happened less than a block from The Newport where Chandra lived. The DC police arrived from the Second District. The officer told me that I had a 50/50 chance by running. However, no chance whatsoever if they forced me into the car and took me to an ATM. He said my body would more than likely never have been found.”

And what if, like Chandra, he’d left all his money at home?

“I think there is a non-arbitrary point where a fertilized ovum can be said to become a human being, and it’s about ten days after fertilization, not at the time of fertilization. At about ten days into term an interesting thing happens: A ball of cells, some of which go on to become placenta, some to be fetus, undergoes “primitive streaking.” At this point it is determined which cells go on to which role — you can distinguish fetus from placenta — and, maybe even more importantly, twinning is no longer possible. As long as twinning remains possible, there is no human individual. Whatever exists before ten days can undergo fission, human beings cannot. So, if all of this is right, then one cannot object that working on what’s in the dish five days after fertilization is working on a human being, and bringing about its demise is not homicide. There may be other objections to doing this, but homicide it ain’t.”

“”He is a committed conservative, no question about it, but he’s not a hater,” – Mark “liberal but not a hater” Shields, Washington Post.

THE LEVYS: According to the New York “no unpublished slur” Post, the impetus for the concentration on Gary Condit’s brother, Darrell, has come from Chandra Levy’s family. So now we have a manhunt conducted or orchestrated by people with a vested interest. Ever read “The Scarlet Letter?” Or “The Crucible”? The Levy family’s distress is understandable; their grief and worry terrible. But that’s precisely why their agenda should not be the same as the media’s or the cops’. It’s good sign, though, that the press is now attempting to justify its ransacking the lives of private individuals by citing the wishes of the Levy family. It means the bloodhounds are beginning to worry they have drastically over-played their hand. If I were the Levys, I’d be worried. At some point, this insatiable tiger they are riding will eat them as well. It is already beginning to nibble at the reputation of their missing daughter.

THE EXPENSE OF LANDFILLS: A reader asks: Did it occur to the DC cops that it would have been less expensive to search area landfills if they had started their search ten bleeping weeks ago?

A brave and important column by Bob Herbert today. No, I haven’t finally lost it. He notices an Ohio case in which a man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for writing a private prison journal in which he fantasized about sex with children. No-one’s defending the sentiment in the journal. But Herbert is completely right that any American citizen should be able to write anything he or she wants in a private journal and not have it used to put him in jail. Even Mary Eberstadt might agree with that. Then again, maybe not. One can only hope that Herbert’s new-found vigilance against the thought-police might lead him to worry a tiny bit more about hate crime laws.

POST-MORTEM: The Washington Post is surely right to be deeply proud of the legacy of Katharine Graham. But today’s op-ed roster of mini-eulogies is so, well, Washington. I was especially struck by Barbara Walters’ first paragraph: “Katharine Graham, her daughter, Lally, and a few close friends were at my home for lunch just two weekends ago. It had been a celebratory couple of days for Kay and Lally, whose birthdays were within days of each other. The night before, Lally had thrown a big party, and Kay had risen to toast her daughter with enormous pride. Then her son Steve Graham gave wonderfully insightful and amusing remarks. So I want to talk about Kay as a mother.” But before I do, can I remind you all of my fabulous recent lunch-party? Le tout Washington was there. Everyone was so, well, wonderfully insightful and amusing.

CORRECTIONS: I apologize to Josh Marshall. It seems I was reading a wrong and outdated link to his site. I still can’t figure out exactly how to access the new page – I kept refreshing the old one and it kept giving me the old page. Sorry again. Innocent error. And Josh makes a good point about why he didn’t name the ABC News reporter. He didn’t have an on-the-record source. Tapper has now named her – and criticized the DC cops, which makes him 2 for 0. It’s a particularly devastating detail that the cops haven’t even contacted the reporter, Rebecca Cooper, to ask her about Condit’s state of mind that day. More evidence that the real story here is not Condit’s foolish and selfish defensiveness, but the D.C. Police Department’s staggering incompetence. (By the way, when will the New York Post apologize for printing that Cooper had had an affair with Condit?) Way to go, Jake. I’ve also outraged one reader by getting the date of the L.A. riots wrong. It was 1992, not 1991.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I am very concerned to see that Salon.com accepts advertising from a Cuban Cigar website, located in Switzerland (link: http://www.cubancigars.com). To my mind, it really puts in doubt their reporting on (1) Cuba (I will have to reevaluate their coverage of the Elian story) and (2) tobacco (perhaps anti-smoking stories are really carefully planted attempts to lure readers away from cigarettes, made in my home state of North Carolina and towards Fidel-friendly cigars).”

The barrel hasn’t been scraped this thoroughly in years. Now Fox News is going after Condit’s other brother – and they do so using the usual trick of cowards and weasels, by asking whether it’s relevant, while retailing every sordid detail they can find. I’m sorry, but this has absolutely no relevance to the disappearance of Levy. It is purely and simply a disgrace. (By the way, Josh Marshall promised on July 14 to answer my question as to why he won’t name the ABC news reporter who interviewed Condit at the time of Levy’s disappearance. Since then, he’s uttered not a word. Even Mickey “no unpublished thought” Kaus has gone uncharacteristically silent. Hmmmm.)

When the ultra-conservative (and often excellent) newspaper, The Washington Times, doesn’t support a constitutional amendment to impose one marriage model on every state, then you know it’s a stretch. Kudos for the Times for standing up for conservatism. Too bad National Review let anti-gay hysteria stain its reputation.

You thought the media blood-lust was abating? Now it’s Gary Condit’s brother’s turn to be roasted on an open press fire – this time by the Associated Press. Will it help find Levy? Who cares?

GO MICKEY: Valuable deconstruction of the New York Times’ military ballot non-story by Mickey “Hanging Chad” Kaus.

NATIONAL REVIEW GETS BLUDGEONED BY READERS: Take a look at these letters and see if, like me, you think National Review’s hysterical support for an unprecedented anti-federalist Constitutional Amendment on marriage holds up under fire. I hope they don’t mind my saying so, but the editors’ response is lame. Presumably aware that this proposal trashes any semblance of states’ rights, the editors and my friend Stanley Kurtz make the point that the Amendment is designed to avoid such a national solution imposed by one state’s judges. To quote Kurtz, “Precisely because of the “full faith and credit clause,” there has to be national agreement on the basic definition of marriage. Otherwise, a single state court can impose a radically new definition upon the entire country – a possibility that never even occurred to the framers.” That sentence is simply wrong. Some same-sex marriage proponents at one point hoped it might be true but it clearly isn’t. (And, for the record, if it were true, I would oppose it for exactly the same reasons I oppose an Amendment that would impose one federal rule for marriage on every state and state constitution.) The full faith and credit clause has always been interpreted to mean that legal “judgments,” i.e. documents ruled legal in a court, like ownership of property and so on, must be portable from state to state. But a marriage has never been deemed a “judgment” of this kind. That’s why when northern states allowed miscegenation, they didn’t automatically mandate legal mixed-race marriages across the South. Today, one state’s same-sex marriage would also not be automatically endorsed by every other state. It would be decided on a case by case basis, and all the constitutional and legal history suggests that, in most cases, such marriages are not portable. To read more about this, check out the Constitutional Law section in my anthology, Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con.” I wish the editors of National Review had. There is simply no basis for their hysteria on this – let alone a basis for violating conservatism’s traditional distrust of federal solutions to state problems.