Category: Old Dish

Of course, Matt Drudge is an interested party. But isn’t he absolutely right that the mainstream media – the New York Times, Wall Street Journal news pages, USA Today – should at least have reported the news of his vindication in the libel suit brought against him by Sidney Blumenthal? These papers covered his error, but are silent about his vindication. What gives? Every time the media establishment behaves this way – over Lewinsky, Kerrey, Drudge – they give Matt and the Internet more credibility. Don’t they even realize they look stupid in their obvious bias?

An amazing story from Seattle. A bill designed to clamp down on school bullying has been all but killed by some conservative Christians who fear it could lead to tolerance of homosexuality. They want to make sure that the bill does not preclude kids from expressing their disdain of gays. Now, I’m all in favor of maximizing free speech, but the bill even contains language expressly ensuring that such expressions of opinion would be protected. I’m also skeptical of attempts to ban anything but clear verbal and physical bullying, since vaguer definitions are very hard to define. But what surely shouldn’t be protected is the physical abuse of kids targeted as “faggots.” Do some Christian conservatives actually believe that such bullying and name-calling should be defended? Do they actually regard such intimidation of gays (and many straights) as an important part of their children’s education? Perhaps they know that without verbal and physical bullying of gay kids, social disapproval of homosexuality might wane. These attitudes start early, after all. But enforcing social norms by defending the bullying of children seems to me a pretty unconscionable position. By the same token, I can’t see any reason either for why some conservatives support hate crime laws protecting every conceivable minority except homosexuals. This is George Bush’s nutball position. I’m against all hate crime laws. But if you’re going to have them at all, why should they exclude the group that is one of the most likely to be targeted? This discrepancy is a signal. It’s saying subtly to thugs: “Hate crimes are bad, but we understand it if you hate homos. That’s a defensible pretext for bashing – or at least more defensible than bashing someone who’s black or Jewish or Mormon.” I can’t believe that most humane conservatives really feel that way; or even that those who sincerely oppose homosexual equality still believe it’s ok to slur, bully, attack or wound gay kids or adults. So why support policies that do just that? How about changing the tone, Mr President?

HOME NEWS: We had 142,000 unique visitors last month – a new record – up from 82,000 in January. Thanks. The Tipping Jar now has over $11,000 in it. The only downside of all this is that I can’t keep up with the mail. I used to make a point of replying to almost everyone. I can’t do that any more, or I’d have no time to do anything else. But I do read every one, even if I can’t respond individually. So don’t stop writing. The Dish’s hottest ingredients are often spiced by readers’ tips. Keep ’em coming.

As everyone knows, Hollywood is a hyper-liberal paradise, where every day, actors and directors and producers try to advance the cause of social justice. They’re particularly keen on advancing gay rights, and any other trendy social cause that pops onto the radar screen. And yet it’s still true that there isn’t a single openly gay lead actor in the business in 2001. Why? I can’t believe it’s because there isn’t one – or an aspiring one. The answer is surely that the big machers in Hollywood are scared of losing money if a romantic star – especially a man – gets a public reputation as gay. They’ll never admit this, of course. It makes them look like the discriminatory businessmen and women that they are. But every now and again, the truth gets blurted out. Here’s a quote from Tom Cruise’s lawyer as to why he’s suing a porn actor for a cool $100 million for claiming he had a relationship with Cruise: ”Losing the respect and enthusiasm of a substantial segment of the movie-going public would cost Cruise very substantial sums,” the libel suit states. ”While plaintiff believes in the right of others to follow their own sexual preference, vast numbers of the public throughout the world do not share that view and, believing that he had a homosexual affair and did so during his marriage, they will be less inclined to patronize Cruise’s films, particularly since he tends to play parts calling for heterosexual romance and action adventure.” So there you have it. I have no idea if Cruise is gay or not. He seems straight to me. But the rationale is clear enough: being gay could cost you fans and money, even if, like Cruise, you’re not exactly starving on Sunset Boulevard. This libel suit, whatever its merits, is in fact a mechanism whereby ostensibly liberal Hollywood sends a deliberate message to its gay stars and actors: Stay in the closet – or your career is toast. (And what exactly, by the way, is incompatible between being gay and “action adventure?” Is Cruise peddling stereotypes as well as urging gays in movies to stay closeted?) So next time Hollywood’s elites start prattling on about their pro-gay politics, don’t stifle a guffaw. They care about one thing only: the bottom line. That’s a defensible position. What’s indefensible is their liberal posturing at the same time.

Tony Blair refused to concede that he was basically in favor of President Bush’s National Missile Defense plan – when he was in the House of Commons yesterday. But his spin-meister, Alistair Campbell, subsequently told the press that the British government backs Bush. Why the discrepancy? Blair heads an anti-American party in which he is strangely isolated. So he mumbles in Parliament and sends his spinners out to explain to the public what he really feels. I’m with Thatcher on this one. She has immediately endorsed NMD, despite having once been a skeptic, and told Blair to stop “shilly-shallying” and to champion Bush’s “bold vision” at every international forum. God, I miss her.

“And of course I adore the charismatic Babylonian harlot who gets her pestilent comeuppance at the hands of mother nature.” Is anyone else you know capable of a sentence like that? The ‘of course’ clinches it.

When the Village Voice says Jesse Jackson is doomed, he almost certainly is. Check out the gripping letter from the pastor who invited Jackson to repent and got a spin-operation instead. Check out Rod Dreher’s cursory look through Jackson’s amended tax returns as well. If a lone Dreher can find that much, imagine what a team of investigative reporters from a major paper could do? Above all, check out the upcoming Sixty Minutes investigation into Jackson’s Africa trips. The buzz is bigger than the Kerrey horror.

Two more keys to the Kerrey puzzle which are worth mulling over. Vietnam was a horrible and chaotic conflict in which many men may have done immoral things. But charges of war-crimes are brought even in less chaotic circumstances. The military researcher and Vietnam vet, B.G. Burkett, has pointed out, for example, that in the last eleven months of World War II, a thousand G.I.s were tried for capital crimes against civilians, 443 were condemned to death and 96 were executed. If we were strict in enforcing the rules of a just war then, why should we simply ignore important evidence of war-crimes today? Secondly, Jake Weisberg makes a good point about the Clintonian nature of Kerrey’s fellow SEALs’ statement backing up their now-famous commander. The statement “repeatedly notes,” Weisberg observes, “”We took fire and we returned fire.” This in no way answers the charge that the killing of women and children was intentional. “No order was given or received to execute innocent women, old men and children as has been described by some,” the statement says. “… Our actions were in response to a dangerous situation that we know for certain could have resulted in our deaths. … We were young men then and did what we thought was right and necessary.”” Not a very convincing denial to me.

I must be the only person alive who’s a friend of both Matt Drudge and Sid Blumenthal. (That may end when I post this item). But I have to say that, however awful Matt’s mistake in making unfounded allegations about Sid several years ago, he corrected them swiftly, apologized, and did all he could do to rectify the damage. Sid’s subsequent lawsuit was therefore nothing but over-kill and intimidation – backed by the Clinton White House and its many loathsome cronies. When Sid started deposing journalist after journalist in a surreal paranoid fantasy, intimidation became lunacy. He did the wrong thing in getting in, but the right thing in getting out. It seems to me that his settlement of the lawsuit is a clear vindication for Matt – and good news for everyone else trying to forge good, risk-taking journalism on the web. Mistakes, which we all make, should be broadcast and corrected swiftly and openly. The human beings who make them should not be hounded through the courts, when they have done all they can to correct the error. When the person doing the hounding is a journalist himself, he owes the profession something of an apology.

“The tax cut agreed to yesterday continues to pose a threat to federal resources” – The New York Times today. “Federal resources?” Now what would they be? Oh, I remember now. Look in your wallet. (If you find a similar example of liberal or conservative blather, send it my way, will ya?)

INVESTIGATE: One reason I’m a believer in a free press is that every now and again, the truth will out. It doesn’t take many voices to prompt an inquiry, and after Gregory Vistica’s riveting account, I think an official military inquiry into Bob Kerrey’s alleged war crimes is not just advisable but essential. Mike Kelly argues for it today; The New Republic is going to take on Kerrey editorially this week; the best b.s. sniffers around – John Leo, Mickey Kaus – have mouthed off. For good measure, what’s stopping the Times from calling for a military investigation? The inquiry would best be staffed by professional war-crime sleuths and Vietnam vets. Two possible members would be Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, a Vietnam vet who was one of the few to stand up against the evil at My Lai. Another possibility is Vietnam vet and former Nebraska state senator, John DeCamp. Both DeCamp and Thompson served and seem able to distinguish between legitimate military actions and war-crimes. Both have called for an investigation. They should get their request, even though the clubby Senate seems intent on protecting its own.

AMPLIFICATION DEPT: Several readers from Nebraska have alerted me to the fact that former Nebraska state senator John DeCamp almost certainly may be too volatile or political a figure to serve on an independent inquiry. He also has a prickly history with Kerrey. So scrap that specific suggestion. But the notion of a Vietnam vet from the heartland with some political credibility is still a good one. Let the search begin.

SIMPLE QUESTION: Do you think if any evidence had emerged of, say, Oliver North’s possible war-crimes in Vietnam – in identical terms – that Newsweek would have spiked the story? I guess that one answers itself.

MULTIPLE CHOICE: The key Kerrey questions, it seems to me, are a) in a fire-fight, most civilians would instinctively seek cover randomly in shelters. So why did a group convene in the middle of a village in the middle of a shoot-out? b) why were there no survivors? c) in a chaotic, night-time fire-fight, why were none of Kerrey’s men killed or even wounded? d) where is the evidence that Kerrey’s men were attacked at all? e) what motive does Gerhard Klann have to implicate himself in cold-blooded murder if not to tell the truth?

WHILE I’M AT IT: Let me deal with two dumb recent arguments. The first is William Safire’s who, despite glaring holes in Kerrey’s account, asserts that because every other Navy SEAL backs Kerrey (after they all convened for a meeting) then Kerrey should be given the benefit of the doubt. Please. Every single member of that unit has an obvious motive to forget, fib, or duck. They should be questioned separately. Secondly, James Webb’s abhorrent piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (abhorrent because he attributes “arrogance” to anyone concerned about possible war-crimes) contains an obvious fallacy. He cites a military radio transmission that has an unidentified Vietnamese man asked for retribution for the massacre shortly afterwards. Webb cites the transcript as backing Kerrey’s argument that he was facing Viet Cong forces. The transcript reads: “Thus far it appears 24 people were killed. 13 were women and children and one old man. 11 were unidentified and assumed to be VC.” But it’s pretty clear that this is the military’s view, not the Vietnamese protestor’s. And any civilians who didn’t move out of the contested hamlets in that time and place were automatically labeled VC by the military. So the only real point of Webb’s radio transcript is that 11 victims were unidentified males. Advantage: Vistica. (Thanks to my readers for keeping me posted on many aspects of this).

LET THE SUNSTEIN IN: Law professor Cass Sunstein had an op-ed I complained about last Thursday in the New York Times calling, in his best independent, academic tone, for Democratic resistance to all of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. Yesterday, the Times reported that “Forty-two of the Senate’s 50 Democrats attended a private retreat this weekend in Farmington, Pa., where a principal topic was forging a unified party strategy to combat the White House on judicial nominees. The senators listened to a panel composed of . . . Prof. Cass M. Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School . . .” Don’t you think Sunstein’s blatant partisanship is something the Times might have alerted its readers about before publishing his fatuous op-ed?

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “The village Kerrey entered that fateful night fell into McNamara’s territory of the doomed; does it matter whether those illiterate peasants ended up the hapless victims of McNamara’s napalm or a Navy SEAL’s razor-sharp knife? The difference is that Kerrey was forced to witness the pain while McNamara, the Ford Co. auto executive-turned-deskside-warrior, was not.” – Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times. Forced to witness the pain? Of his victims?

Can anyone tell me what on earth has happened to Arianna Huffington? Until pretty recently, she was often funny, smart and on the ball. Yes, she was a bit of a vamp for the cameras, but she had a brain almost as big as her hair, and we were mainly the better off for it. She and I were – are – friends. But in a matter of a few years, she has gone from being the spouse of a potential Republican Senator, to some kind of neo-populist, to a tired and tiresome leftist. Today I read a column of hers about Bush’s environmental record, peddling all the usual NPR canards, failing to make any substantive points about what actually is different between Clinton and Bush on matters green, and then complaining that all the pro- and anti-greens care about is spin. Spinner, heal thyself. I’ve spent some time these past few years defending Arianna against those who have described her as a shallow opportunist and intellectual fraud. But I can’t keep doing it if she keeps producing the direst pieces of self-incrimination this side of Bob Kerrey.

NANNY STATE UPDATE: Prompted by the neo-Stalinists who run San Francisco, the FDA has now ordered pharmaceutical companies to cease publishing or making ads for HIV drugs that show people with HIV as healthy, happy or physically fit. Some truly bitter activists in SF can’t bear the sight of some people actually doing well on HIV meds, thriving physically, repairing their lives and responding to ads that help keep their spirits up and their minds educated. The activists argue that the ads don’t accurately describe the nausea, fatigue, and other side-effects of the drugs and encourage unsafe sex because they reduce the stigma of HIV. Duh. Why would anyone want to access a drug whose ad implies it will make you look like hell? (Besides are some difficult side-effects more troublesome than the alternative?) And the reason people might think unsafe sex is less risky today is not because they just saw an ad. It’s because the risks of getting HIV today are far lower than they were just five, let alone ten, years ago. I can see the point of having small-print in the ads explaining side-effects (as the ads now include by law) but what on earth is gained by re-stigmatizing the sick and undermining the self-esteem of people with HIV? Don’t these people realize that a positive psychological outlook is critical to long-term survival? I thought I’d seen everything in lunatic AIDS activism. But this is a truly new low. Next they’ll be trying to force some of us who look physically healthy and are openly HIV-positive to stay indoors all day so as not to send out the wrong signals. Or will we all be banned from the gym?

LIKE IKE?: Some interesting parallels between Dwight D. Eisenhower and George W. Bush. Check out my recent Sunday Times column opposite.

THE UNEXAMINED EDITORIAL PAGE: The authors of the study I cited yesterday showing unprecedented hostility to George W. Bush from the editorials and op-eds at the New York Times have an op-ed in the New York Times today, called “The Unexamined President.” They relate the results of their study of the media’s coverage of Bush with one obvious piece missing. You guessed it.

THE RANKS OPEN A LITTLE: The best piece I’ve read so far about Bob Kerrey is in Slate. It’s by my old friend Jake Weisberg. Jake manages both to empathize with Kerrey (whom he admires) and to avoid flinching from judgment. This is particularly admirable coming from someone who wrote one of the most fawning pieces I’ve ever read about a politician, on Bob Kerrey, in The New Republic in 1989. Kerrey subsequently told Jake he never read the story. Figures. It was entitled, if memory serves, “Saint Bob.” Not quite. There’s also a decent column by Richard Cohen today on how the Establishment’s view that Bob Kerrey should be left alone to “heal” is dubious. Could there be the beginning of a backlash?