Category: Old Dish

I really don’t mean to bring up Richard Cohen again but his column in today’s Post is so revealing it’s worth a good read. It’s about David Horowitz’s attention-grabbing ad about reparations for slavery. Here’s the kicker paragraph: “Word for word, there’s not a lot in Horowitz’s ad with which I disagree. But word for word is not, I learned a long time ago, how people read. They take in a message – a tone. They hear an inaudible sound. They sense what the movie director Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) would call “the juice.” The interior message of Horowitz’s ad is smug, cold – dismissive. It’s not racist, as some have charged. It just feels that way.” What Cohen is saying is that what should matter in public debate is not whether an argument makes sense or not, but how some people will feel when exposed to it. This cult of sensitivity – the sworn enemy of rational thought – is the new shibboleth of the some well-meaning types on the left. For them, it doesn’t matter if what you say is objectively racist or wrong or bigoted; even if what you say makes complete sense, all that really matters is if someone, particular of a designated minority group, feels offended. This is the underlying rationale for speech codes; it’s the sentiment behind those who refused to run the Horowitz ad; it’s the rallying cry of the campus left. But when there’s only feeling, there is no debate, and no arguments – merely the “inaudible sounds” of people’s emotions. And when there is no debate, there can be no progress. This cult of feeling, if you scratch it a little, is an almost purely reactionary phenomenon – which is why real liberals should resist it at every opportunity.

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR: This is not an invitation for you all to flood me with tax hell stories, but this tale from a reader cracked me up: “A couple of years ago I accidentally contributed more than I was supposed to to an IRA account, so I had to take it out and pay a penalty, which I did. A couple of months later, I get a letter saying I owe $450. I call the IRS and they say I don’t owe anything. Another 2 months and another letter comes saying I owe the $450. I call the IRS and they say I don’t owe anything. Another two months, another letter, a threat to place a lien, etc. Back and forth this goes, until they finally determine they have two records on me in their database, one says I owe the other doesn’t. Delete one record, case closed, right? No, two months later I get a check from the IRS for the $450 they said I owed to them. I don’t cash it, I just hold it. Three months later, they say they want their money back – with interest, which I paid.” Ah, how wonderful our government is.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM IN A NUTSHELL: How would this reader suggestion work? Raise the individual hard money contribution to $25,000. Not enough to really sway anyone, but enough to alleviate the need for oodles of soft money. Full disclosure of everything. Then the flat tax. Why would corporate lobbyists need to lobby when there are no loopholes to create? Not perfect, but more feasible and effective than anything else now on the table.

EVEN IN THE JOURNAL: A reader points out an odd piece of cognitive dissonance in the Wall Street Journal’s news pages. In a piece on March 20, devoted to president Bush’s possible Supreme Court picks, the reporter quotes White House legal counsel, Justice Gonzalez, in an abortion case: “Our role as judges requires that we put aside our own personal views of what we might like to see enacted and instead do our best to discern what the legislature intended.” Then the reporter writes: “That philosophy is about as far away from Justice Scalia’s view on abortion as Austin is from Washington.” Huh? This is exactly Scalia’s position. The piece goes on to say that Scalia said that “the right to abortion ‘must be overruled.'” But Scalia only believes that such a right should be over-ruled if the Courts are imposing the right on a reluctant or hostile legislature. When reporters on the Journal don’t even have a basic clue as to the principles of conservative (or liberal) judicial restraint, what hope is there for CNN?

The Domenici amendment allows Congressional and Senate candidates who are up against self-financed multi-millionaires to raise more money than other pols. Seems fair enough to me. What seems odd, as Rich Galen points out, is that Maria Cantwell, Ted Kennedy and Jay Rockefeller voted against it. I guess the motto is: take no chances.

I know you can’t wait for this. Were you up all night following the returns from Marseilles as well? Anyway, a reader points out that I missed a couple of interesting facts. The new mayor of Paris is openly gay, which must make him the most powerful openly gay official in the world. Also: the right actually won a majority of the vote in Paris, but lost because of its distribution in various arrondissements. No Gore-style whining though. And no “chads pendants” either.

AGONY FOR ECSTASY: Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, along comes a proposal to make shipping and selling of Ecstasy punishable to the same extent as powder cocaine. What are those guys smoking? The penalty for selling 100 grams of MDMA may shortly be the same as that for selling 100 grams of heroin. What’s the rationale for this insanity? “The damage this drug can produce is significant and long-term,” Robert Mueller, acting assistant attorney-general, said. “We have an opportunity to stop this growing problem before it becomes an epidemic, and the proposal put forth by the commission would very much help.” There is no evidence that the damage this drug does is any worse than eating McDonalds french fries every day; no evidence that it is addictive; no evidence that it does anything very bad except allow people to have a great time. An epidemic? Could we please ban this metaphor for everything bar infectious diseases? Mueller, it turns out, was once chief homicide officer for the District of Columbia, so he’s no stranger to pursuing policies that seem to have no effect whatsoever. I guess that qualifies him to pursue the drug war as well as anyone else.

BIG BABIES: I’m no economist but I’m relieved that Greenspan didn’t panic and do what the markets want today. There’s nothing in the underlying state of the economy to warrant a huge interest rate cut. These stock-brokers who have never known anything but an incredible bull had their customary hissy-fit, but they really need to get over themselves. It’s not the role of the Fed to protect investors from a bubble; it’s the role of the Fed to keep inflation low. I’m glad Greenspan sees this. It’s good to have a grown-up around somewhere.

SPEAKING OF D.C. GOVERNMENT: I finally disposed of a three-year tax battle with what passes for the District’s revenue office. In 1998, I paid $19,000 of income tax to the District. For that, I got: a joke of a police force, the most expensive and worst public education system in the country, and streets that make downtown Lagos look smooth. But never mind. I’m used to the joys of living in a city controlled by one party for generations. Six months later, I got a letter from D.C. telling me that they weren’t sure, but had I paid my taxes last year? The envelope stated: THIS IS NOT A TAX BILL. I wrote back saying I had indeed paid my taxes, and wondered how an office could mislay a check for $19,000. A few months later, I got another letter saying that I had definitely not paid my taxes and that my bill was now around $22,000. I wrote back explaining that I had already paid them and written a letter to that effect. Six months later, I get another letter, telling me a lien was being placed on my house to recover $24,000 in unpaid taxes. I mailed them a copy of my bank-statement showing the $19,000 paid, the number of the check, the number of the account, my social security number and so on. No response. Six months later, I get a call from the D.C. office informing me that a lien had now been placed on my condo and that my credit record was being damaged, and that I owed close to $27,000. I blew a gasket. The lady on the phone had no records of any of the by-then three letters I had sent, or indeed any materials relevant to the case but her instructions to call me. She was nice enough, her calm demeanor suggesting that this was nothing new. I finally went in to my bank to ask them to fax a Xerox of the cashed check to the D.C. Treasurer’s office. The bank manager smiled. This was the second time that day he had had to do this. He does this dozens of times a month! The check, with a big stamp on the back showing it had been cashed by D.C. in December 1998, was faxed last Friday to the D.C. Treasurer. No word yet. And I’m supposed to be against a tax cut?

Terrific column on Reinaldo Arenas: acute and moving. I had no idea that in the March 5 New York Observer, Philip Weiss had written that Castro’s “dedication and vision are staggering.” Blimey. Has Phil been hanging with Graydon Carter lately?

PAGE-TURNER: Splendid and evocative piece by columnist Clarence Page on the resilient discrepancy between black and white SAT scores. Page doesn’t go for the ostrich-like “abolish the SAT and everything will be OK” theory of some. He’s interested, as anyone should be, in why there’s such a tenacious SAT gap, even among high-income blacks. Page is even big enough to acknowledge that “The Bell Curve,” Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s book on social inequality in America, helped open up an honest dialogue about this (despite attempts by many not to have the debate at all). Page posits that the stress of thinking their intelligence is being evaluated may play a part in black under-performance, citing interesting studies suggesting that some blacks out-psych themselves on some tests. This is surely worth exploring – to see if we can find ways to alleviate it. If smart blacks are being denied places at colleges simply for psychological reasons, we need to find a way to frame the tests so that they don’t achieve this effect. But it’s worth acknowledging the courage of a black columnist like Page to wrestle with these issues so openly. It’s the beginning of a solution – if we can only resist the instinct to brush the problem completely under the carpet for reasons of misplaced sensitivity.

PALM BEACH SANITY: Apparently no hanging chads in the latest Palm Beach County election, says the Wall Street Journal. Using exactly the same technology as last November, but with increased voter awareness of how to use it, the County executed a near-perfect election. “What happened in the past,” voter Joseph Giordano told the Palm Beach Post, “was due to our negligence and inability to read the rules.” Thanks, Joseph. It may have taken a few months for the obvious to sink in, but I’m glad it now has.

THOSE FRENCH ELECTION RESULTS IN FULL: You probably saw the headlines showing the French Left winning Paris for the first time in ages, and Lyons, as well. But a day later, election results across the country, especially in rural areas, show major conservative gains. Outside Paris, the left lost – big time – even in a period of economic growth, presided over by a leftist prime minister. Socialists lost control of over 30 major towns, including Blois, Strasbourg, Orleans, and Rouen. Three cabinet ministers failed to win municipal power – most prominent among them the odious Americanophobe, Jack Lang, education minister, and former minister of “culture.” If replicated nationally, it would mean a return to power of the right nationally. Just a straw in the wind. The results in general showed that neither main party bloc has unbeatable momentum for next year’s big electoral fight; but that the right-wing, dismissed as losers only a few days ago, should not be counted out. Even the leftist paper, Liberation, conceded that “The blue [conservative] wave that swept across France’s regions weakens [Socialist Prime Minister Lionel] Jospin more than the gains in Paris and Lyon strengthen him.” Worth pondering as beleaguered Britain, with a near-revolutionary rural population, goes to the polls in May. Pundits are giving the Tories no hope at all. Sound familiar?

The story that George Stephanopoulos was barring reporters from a talk at the University of Wisconsin is a non-story. His speaking agent put that clause in, and it’s perfectly plausible that George hadn’t read it. (I never read mine). Reporters will now be permitted. And Hillary Rodham Clinton’s extravagant New York office, at $500,000 a year in rent, isn’t quite as bad as it seems either. Her predecessor’s office, according to the Washington Post, now rents for $627,000. And she’ll have her hands full. So give her a pass on this one. If it’s not worth the price, her constituents will surely find a way to let her know.

Nice Mr Tony Blair, British prime minister, has just unveiled a new ad campaign in time for the general election. Aimed at party loyalists, it features his opponent (and my friend) William Hague, Tory leader, as … the son of Satan! The election ad starts with a video of Margaret Thatcher and a condemnation of her economic policies as verging on Satanic. Although she has now departed, the ad warns: “They forgot one thing – there was a son.” Cut to video of a 16-year-old William Hague addressing the 1977 Conservative party conference. Background music is supplied by the soundtrack of “Damien.” If I were William, I’d hit back with another movie reference, designed to get at Blair’s handling of the foot and mouth epidemic. Call it: “Silence of the Lambs.”

I’m a bit of a self-hating Irishman here, but I had a good time on St Paddy’s Day this year thanks to a party given by a Jewish friend of mine. It was a fundraiser for a local gay-straight rugby team (very post-gay) and featured the usual bevy of plaid-shirted Washington types, but also a bunch of thick-necked, buzz-cutted rugger enthusiasts. I had to play rugby for five years or so at my English high school (hence, in part, my 19 inch neck), and my father treats rugby as something only a mite bit less important than life and death, so I can talk rugby positions with the best of them. Of course, rugby, properly understood, is only one half sport. The other half is drinking. Well, we did admirably by the latter. It was the first party since high school where people peed into the drain outside rather than wait in line for the john. It’s civilizing sport is rugby. For years in England, I’d heard people refer disparagingly to rugby fanatics as “rugger-buggers.” Finally, I get to hang out with the literal thing.

I was called last week by Bill O’Reilly’s staff to see if I would go on the air to defend the murderer-rapists of 13 year-old Jesse Dirkhising, or at least to defend the idea that this was just as horrific a crime as that perpetrated against Matthew Shepard. The underlying point O’Reilly wanted to make is that the liberal media hyped the Shepard murder but has all but ignored the Dirkhising rape-murder out of deference to gay sensibilities. I said I didn’t see much point in making these distinctions, and that I believed that both crimes were evil and, if convicted, Dirkhising’s assailants should get the full punishment of the law. Those kinds of nuances don’t always work well on O’Reilly so I guess I won’t be on the show. But one of the worst aspects of hate-crimes laws seems to me to be illustrated by this case. Instead of looking at crimes criminally and punishing them, hate crime laws force us to see crimes politically. They give preference to one type of crime over another, one group over another, for political reasons. And this can prompt a political response. Why should straight criminals be vilified and doubly punished while gay ones are ignored? To be sure, Dirkhising’s murder was not a ‘hate-crime’ in the way that the Shepard murder was. The gay lovers who subjected a boy they knew to a sex game that quickly became an assault were not trying to target straight boys as a group. But that doesn’t make their assault any the less heinous. Sure, the lurid details of this murder would always be great material for true gay-haters, people who want to tar all gay people with the same brush (in the same way that some activists wanted to tar all residents of Laramie with the same brush as the thugs who murdered Shepard). But without the double-standards evoked by hate crime laws, this kind of reasoning would not have much of an audience or a rationale. Yes, the true gay-haters would endure; but they wouldn’t be given the shred of a point hate crimes laws give them. And the battered bodies of Jesse Dirkhising and Matthew Shepard could finally rest in peace – along with what’s left of a fair criminal justice system.

LIFE AFTER WARTIME: More evidence of the abatement of the culture war in a piece in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. After all the huffing and puffing over partial birth abortion, it turns out that the Republicans don’t actually plan to pass anything very soon. It seems they’re stymied by a Supreme Court ruling that allows the killing of all-but-born babies, if the mother’s health is threatened. The definition of ‘health’ includes “”all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age.” Why not just add: and if she damn well feels like it? Mickey Kaus has a level-headed analysis, but what strikes me is the lassitude of the Bush administration in the face of this. I guess they’re hemmed in by SCOTUS, but I would have expected something more urgent on the table by now. This is surely the real U-turn of this young administration, not carbon dioxide emissions.

Been peppered with emails goading me to accuse George W. Bush of a breath-taking U-turn on carbon dioxide emissions. I liked his campaign policy best. But, to be honest, I hadn’t even been aware of it till he reversed it, which must also be the case for almost the entire press corps. The Wall Street Journal points out today that the single sentence about CO2 in a September 29 speech went unreported anywhere, except the Dow Jones Energy Report and an AP item making fun of Bush’s pronunciation of “dioxide.” The Journal also points out that, in his reversal, Bush probably won back his core supporters, rather than betraying them. It’s also true that Bush’s CO2 position was even more ambitious than Gore’s. In policy terms, this is a real story. I think the evidence for global warming is extremely impressive, and some painful shifts in our energy policy are probably required to minimize the damage. But in political terms, this is a huge non-event. Sorry, but no cigar here for Salon writers. I’m hoping that the first real U-turn will be on the estate tax.

WISDOM OF HOMER: I referred recently to Homer Simpson’s endorsement of the theory of repressed memory. A reader sent in the exact quote, addressed to Lisa: “Take your anger and squeeze it into a tight little ball, and then release it at an inappropriate time. Remember when daddy hit that referee with the whiskey bottle? Hmm? Yeah…”