The Dish

The latest initiative from the theoconservative right: suing Kerry for heresy! You just can’t make this stuff up.

Fascinating new details from C. Everett Koop on the Reagan administration and AIDS. He believes Reagan’s heart was in the right place – but his advisers were the guilty ones. Money quote:

“Conservatives around him didn’t want him to get involved because of the people who had [AIDS],” Koop remembered. “They said, ‘Homosexuals, intravenous drug abusers, heterosexuals who are sexually promiscuous, prostitutes — don’t they deserve what they got?’ I’ve always resented that. I think I could have saved a lot more people.”

He continues:

As one example, Koop cited his failed attempt to add an AIDS awareness spin to First Lady Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign. Koop saw the First Lady’s campaign as a perfect opportunity for President Reagan to address the AIDS crisis. “I contacted him [Reagan] through personal friends and suggested he could accomplish more if he appeared with her and for him to say something like, ‘That includes IV drugs like heroin. You’re not just saying no to drugs, you’re saying no to AIDS,'” Koop said.
After asking Koop several well-informed questions regarding AIDS, Reagan took the idea to his domestic policy council the next morning.
“It caused an uproar,” Koop said. “They said, ‘That’s lose-lose, you want win-win.’ He listened to those who he thought were acting on his best behalf.”

Reagan is responsible for not over-ruling these advisors. But whoever those people were in his domestic policy council, I hope they are proud of themselves.

A very sensible editorial – a nice balance to the witch-hunt of the Chicago Tribune. I should add, in self-flagellatory mode, that my quick post yesterday implying some kind of link between the Trib’s actions and the fact that a relative of a Tribune board member lost in the primary was, in retrospect, stupid. There’s no reason to believe the Trib was influenced in that way – they endorsed another candidate. If I criticize Michael Moore for innuendo, I should make sure I don’t stray into the same thing myself.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “Sen. Murphy seems totally oblivious to the implications. “Will you deny them their rights?” she asks. With some 3 percent of the population, gay couples already seem to enjoy a marked advantage over straight ones in the allocation of supposedly superfluous children.
But whose rights are being denied depends on how deeply we probe and what questions we ask. Granting gay couples the “right” to have children by definition means giving them the right to have someone else’s children, and the question arises whether the original parent or parents ever agreed to part with them.
Not necessarily. Governments that kind-heartedly bestow other people’s children on homosexual couples also have both the power and the motivation to confiscate those children from their original parents, even when the parents have done nothing to warrant losing them.” – Stephen Baskerville, in an article entitled, “Could your kids be given to ‘gay’ parents?” It would be hard to come up with a more inflammatory title or a more despicable attempt to conflate gay marriage rights with the abuse of children.

“May god keep Bush and Allawi, because Bush threw out Saddam and Allawi will give us safety and security.” – Kathem Moula Asim, 75, retired but working as a local guard in the market. The BBC found several Iraqis and asked for their opinions about the new government. They were all positive. If the BBC reports this – they must have scoured Baghdad for hostile quotes – things may be looking up in Iraq.

THE LOOMING REPUBLICAN WAR: The current tussle in the Congress over the budget is just a precursor to what I think will be outright Republican civil war after this election. If Bush wins, it will cripple his ability to get anything done. If he loses, the recriminations will get vicious. The fiscal conservatives will be fighting the “deficits-don’t-matter” crowd. The realists will be out to topple the neocons. The Santorum-Ashcroft axis will continue to wage war on any Republicans not interested in legislating either the Old Testament or the dictates of the Vatican. (The FMA battle now looks more and more like an attempt by Santorum to identify Republican social moderates so he can use primary hardliners to challenge them in the future.) The battle lines are deep and sharp – and the future of American conservatism is at stake. Bush has proven himself unable to unite a party that includes Tom DeLay as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain and Bill Frist. Whether the coming civil war is about who lost the election, or who will exploit the victory, it’s going to be nasty and enduring. No single party can be both for individual liberty and for theologically-based social policy; both for fiscal balance and drunken-sailor spending; both for interventionism abroad and against moralism in foreign policy. The incoherence is just too deep, the tensions too strained. And with the war on terror itself a point of contention among conservatives, geo-politics will not be able to keep the coalition in one piece.

SPONSORED BY NATIONAL REVIEW: The latest monument to Ronald Reagan is unveiled.

“Small point, because I think Serra’s drawing is important and was happy he bought the back page of The Nation, but the pleasevote.com site is registered to Richard’s operation and the contact information referring to me is erroneously attributed. Acting on my own, I helped one of his assistants find the site name months ago, and only discovered yesterday when I started getting angry e-mails about the drawing that he had experienced difficulty with the registration process and had left my e-mail in the contact sections.
The Bush Administration is openly stonewalling the torture investigation, the press as usual is asleep, all the while American values abroad are facing their biggest test since My Lai. When a great American artist and patriot expresses his rage via his medium and tries to shake people into realizing what is at stake, I am grateful.” All I have to say is that outrage at Abu Ghraib is something I share. I just don’t think portraying the president as eating the heads of live babies is a decent way of expressing it.

THE LIES OF FAHRENHEIT I: Just one Dowdified quote from Condi Rice.

THE LIES OF FAHRENHEIT II: This one on the Unocal “conspiracy.”

THE LIES OF FAHRENHEIT III: On the Carlyle Group and how the Saudis allegedly bought the Bushes.

If you want proof that Jacques Chirac would never, ever have acquiesced in the removal of his old buddy, Saddam Hussein, you only have to look at his decision to prevent any NATO cooperation in Iraq, now that sovereignty has been transferred. He has one central plank in his foreign policy: the obstruction of American power. If that means hoping for the failure of Iraqi democracy, so be it. If it means turning a blind eye to terror, so be it. But even Le Monde is beginning to see through his cynicism. Here’s an extract from their editorial today, translated by my France-watcher:

“For the 15 months since the beginning of the American-British [notice avoidance of the Vichy expression “Anglo-American” — translator] intervention in Iraq, Jacques Chirac has been working on the solution to a difficult diplomatic equation: how to maintain his opposition to the war without seeming to be shamefully nostalgic for Saddam Hussein — something the Americans have hinted at on several occasions — and while also fulfilling his obligations as an ally of the US. . . . In Iraq, the United States has two goals: to give international legitimacy to its intervention and to replace a portion of its troops with NATO forces. France has conceded the first point in voting in favor of the recent UN resolutions. France still resists the second, but without having been able to block an involvement susceptible of leading, sooner or later, to the presence of the trans-Atlantic organization in Iraq. This is a rear-guard battle that illustrates Chirac’s dilemma: he must not oppose the reconstruction of a “sovereign” Iraq while at the same time not appearing to give the lie to his own [anti-war] policies. This is also a position of watchful waiting, permitting cooperation with John Kerry, if he wins the Presidential election, and also permitting living with George Bush, if reelected.”

But it’s so nakedly self-interested it’s self-defeating. Chirac is already being isolated within Europe, and is striking out at potential rivals in his own party. He’s a tired, pompous, corrupt hack. Always has been.

WHAT THE MEDIA WON’T BROADCAST: Oh, they’ll find out details of people’s sex lives and sue to publish and broadcast them, and they’ll show endless footage of Abu Ghraib abuses. But terrorist beheadings? Nah. Here’s a classic statement of the journalist elite, from the Los Angeles Times:

“Any news outlet – or any private individual, for that matter – who makes available footage of the actual beheadings is, to my mind, an accessory to the crime itself,” says Kunkel, dean of journalism at the University of Maryland. “Those are the individuals who are essentially finishing the work of the terrorists, by delivering their grisly ‘message.'”

And why isn’t the broadcasting of the Abu Ghraib abuses also adding to the humiliation of the victims? Remember that the acts occasioned shame (which was, in part, the point) and the shame is immeasurably amplified by repeated broadcasts. I think the answer is that the media will broadcast anything that will embarrass Americans or America. But they will give terrorists a pass. No surprises there, I guess.

I don’t know what to make of this. But it’s a painful addendum to a wonderful book.

“I could not resist bringing to your attention this delicious little typo-slash-Freudian-slip, from a reader review of “Fahrenheit 9/11” at the NY Times website (to which I was referred by your blog):

‘I was expecting a sloppy, fuzzy, highly manipulated treatment. Instead, Bush Administration damns itself through its own actions, its own words, its own lies…all documented for prosperity.’

Yes, pseudo-proletarian Michael Moore’s prosperity — indeed.”

Check out the reader reviews. I think they’re all five star raves.

Weird event on National Review’s website. John Derbyshire wrote one of his usual posts, celebrating a Scottish bed and breakfast for refusing to give a gay couple a double-bed. He delighted in the fact that someone somewhere was taking a stand against the evils of “oppressive tolerance,” and quoted the piece at some length, especially the owners’ abhorrence of “perversion”. A short time later, his post was truncated to a small blurb; and the quotes from the linked piece removed entirely. Does this mean that NRO actually thinks that celebrations of anti-gay intolerance are not something they want to endorse? But why start now? Derbyshire is on record supporting prejudice – pure prejudice – against gay people, proudly describing himself as a mild homophobe; he supported the abuses at Abu Ghraib with the immortal words “Kick one [a prisoner] for me;” he has proclaimed his refusal to live anywhere where there are large numbers of African-Americans; and on and on. NRO think they can prettify this by the occasional retroactive edit? Here’s the story that warmed Derbyshire’s heart:

Tom Forrest, owner of the bed-and-breakfast accommodation in the Scottish Highlands, where a sometimes stern Presbyterian spirit remains strong, had other ideas.
He would be happy to rent the couple a room with twin beds at the guest house in the village of Kinlochewe, “but we will not condone your perversion” with a double bed, he wrote in an e-mail, the Times newspaper said Wednesday.
Angry at the response, Nock replied by suggesting that Forrest was bigoted.
“Bigot? No. Respect for other guests,” came the reply.
“Homophobic? No, I have no hatred or fear of poofs, etc — I just do not approve of unnatural acts being performed in my home.”
Nock in return asked the Scottish tourism board to remove the guesthouse from a list of recommended accommodation on its website, saying that the prejudice had “depressed” him, the report said.
The tourism board asked the guest house owner to act differently, but he has refused to back down, saying he ran a “respectable” establishment.
“I have had bent people coming to stay, but they have had a twin room and respect our wishes,” Forrest was quoted as saying.

Notice that it is not homophobic to call gay people “poofs,” or “bent”. Maybe NRO merely didn’t want those words on its website, which is commendable. What is less commendable is their desire to endorse the sentiment that makes sense of them.