The Dish

I loved this quote from Clare Short, former Blair minister, now bitter old lefty:

“Any pretence that this means that the tactics of their so-called war on terror are succeeding is sadly false. Obviously the news about Gadaffi is welcome, but it has been a long process, and any suggestion that events in Libya are linked to the war in Iraq is unfounded. The co-ordination of the Blair-Bush press conferences claiming a big success in the war on terror has a pathetic tone that reflects Blair’s desperation and the two men’s continuing belief that they can prosecute their war with half-truths and deceptions.”

Did you crack a smile? Even the NYT had to give some credit to the Bush-Blair leadership that got us here. Add in the capture of Saddam – and the comparative calm in Iraq since – and we may have reached a mile-stone in the war on terror. It’s a good moment to re-state that much criticism of the Bush-Blair policy has distorted it. Neither London nor Washington has eschewed diplomacy these past three years. Both leaders tried manfully to get the United Nations to sanction the much-needed liberation of Iraq. Both have cooperated in keeping pressure on Iran and North Korea without resort to arms. Both have engaged diplomatically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan has made their diplomacy far, far more credible. Hence the slow climb-down of the French, Germans and Russians over Iraqi debt. Hence Iran’s reluctant acceptance of nuke inspectors. Hence Gaddafi’s volte-face. Hence, the cracking of the Iraqi Baathist thugs who were not amenable to the softly-softly approach during Ramadan. What Bush and Blair realize is that you need to talk but you also need to show strength – especially in the Arab world. Theirs’ is neither a crazed unilateralism nor a shoot-first diplomacy. It’s a pragmatic but determined combination of talk and walk – with the goal of keeping terror and WMDs at arms length from us. So far, so good. There’s a long, long way ahead. But I feel more confident about the war now than at any time since that awful day. I’m not saying we’re past the worst. I don’t know. But I do know we’re making headway. That wasn’t inevitable. And I know who deserves praise for getting us here; and who tried hardest to stop it.

An astonishingly bad piece in the New York Times yesterday on marriage and the proposed constitutional amendment. At its heart was the following assertion:

President Bush had been noncommittal about a constitutional amendment immediately after the Massachusetts ruling, with the administration worried that support for a ban on gay marriage would alienate moderate voters. But last week Mr. Bush for the first time voiced his support, saying, “I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that.” The statement signals the White House’s increasing confidence that it can exploit the matter in the presidential campaign, both to energize its evangelical supporters and to discredit the eventual Democratic nominee.

One small problem: the president did not say that. He said: “If necessary, I will support a constitutional amendment…” In the context of religious right demands for immediate support for the FMA, that’s a big difference. He also went on to support states’ rights in the matter of codifying relationships. That isn’t just my spin; anti-gay marriage conservatives voiced disappointment with the president’s statement. Even the gay press focused on Bush’s deliberate ambiguity, putting the critical words “if necessary” in the headlines. To ignore all that context and then to lop off two critical words from a presidential sentence is to commit what amounts to a lie about Bush’s position. Why?

THE NYT COCOON: A good question. If you reported the actual quote, you’d have to explain Bush’s nuanced and obfuscatory position. If you did that, you couldn’t run a simple Bush-is-evil-and-the-hicks-out-there-are-all-bigots story. You couldn’t claim that the White House was exploiting this issue (with no evidence and not even a blind quote to back it up). But this anti-Bush line is more important to the NYT than the truth. That’s why seven out of ten quotes are anti-marriage equality; and the piece doesn’t mention the enormous age polarization – with the young favoring marriage equality and seniors being horrified by it. That’s also why Elder and Seelye can describe 55 percent support for an amendment as “strong.” Huh? It’s worth recalling that the flag-burning amendment was supported by around 80 percent of the public, and the balanced budget amendment by around 85 percent – and yet both failed. Isn’t 55 percent support therefore actually weak for an amendment to the Constitution? Isn’t the fact that a third of Republicans oppose the amendment significant? What’s almost funny about the piece is that it takes five paragraphs until we get to the 55 percent number. And the language gets weaker as it goes along. Support goes from “strong” in the headline to “widespread” later and then the data shows that in the Northeast and West, the amendment barely makes the 50 percent mark or slips below it. Strong? Dan Drezner isn’t the only one who takes exception. I know it’s Christmas, and editors are away or hung-over from the office party. But this degree of shoddy journalism is inexcusable. It’s a good test for the new ombudsman. Email Dan Okrent at public@nytimes.com and demand a correction but more importantly an explanation for the doctored quote. Someone somewhere at the Times looked at the original statement and consciously truncated it to alter its meaning – in the lead story on the front page of the Sunday New York Times. Then they spun and distorted the rest of the piece to fit. Who will be held accountable?

Will they now try and sue him?

An interesting position from Wesley Clark:

And I would say to the Europeans, I pledge to you as the American president that we’ll consult with you first. You get the right of first refusal on the security concerns that we have. We’ll bring you in.

The right of first refusal. I’m with Clark on consultation and on building the U.S. alliance in Europe. But first refusal? That’s tantamount to Howard Dean’s view that we should seek the “permission” of the United Nations before military action. Permission? But my deeper problem is that Clark doesn’t seem to have moved beyond the Europe of the Cold War. Things were different then. France and Germany had the Soviet Union breathing down their necks. The EU was far smaller than it is today and will be tomorrow. The truth is: Rummy was right. There are now two Europes – the core Europe of France, Germany and the Benelux countries, and the periphery that is growing faster and is far more comfortable with the U.S alliance. Draw a circle: Britain, Poland, Italy, Spain are the big ones. Throw in the Baltics and Turkey and you have a real alliance. So let’s keep our contacts with the core but let’s also reach out to the new Europe. Clark is stuck in the past. Bush has dragged us into the future.

THE TRULY NOBLE: An amazing scoop from the Sunday Times of London (whose website is pay-only for non-Brits, alas). It’s a list of notable Brits who have turned down royal honors – either medals or knighthoods. They include: the cook Nigella Lawson, actors Honor Blackman and Alastair Sim, writers JB Priestley, Graham Greene and Roald Dahl, as well as David Bowie, Isaiah Berlin, Helen Mirren and Lucian Freud. I’m impressed. the British honors system, whereby ordinary people of extraordinary ability or achievement are turned into pseudo-lords and ladies or given some medal of honor by the “British Empire” is a horrifying instance of the hold that class snobbery still has on Britain. In my view, the whole system should be abolished. But how immeasurably cool to have turned down the chance to become a “lord”. And even cooler to have kept quiet about it until a leak revealed it. The refuseniks are the true British heroes; not the establishment toadies.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The Wise Woman had words that she muttered to herself, so that you couldn’t hear what they were, and if she tied a bit of red thread round the child’s toe the while, it would keep off the water in the head. There were women in Raveloe, at that present time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman’s little bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had never had an idiot child, as Ann Coulter had.” – George Eliot, ahead of her time, in “Silas Marner,” Chapter 2, 1861.

Gaddafi made the decision as the coalition invaded Iraq. Hmmm. Maybe Howard Dean would have sent Warren Christopher instead.

BAATHIST BROADCASTING CORPORATION: An internal BBC email tells its reporters not to refer to Saddam as a dictator. From the Daily Telegraph’s London Spy column:

“An email has been circulated telling us not to refer to Saddam as a dictator,” I’m told. “Instead, we are supposed to describe him as the former leader of Iraq. Apparently, because his presidency was endorsed in a referendum, he was technically elected. Hence the word dictator is banned. It’s all rather ridiculous.” The Beeb insists that the email merely restates existing guidelines. “We wanted to remind journalists whose work is seen and heard internationally of the need to use neutral language,” says a spokesman.

Just when you think they couldn’t get any worse, the BBC goes and does something like this. Under these guidelines, would Hitler have ever been called a “dictator”? He was originally elected in a freer election than Saddam, after all.

AMERICA AND MODERNITY: Mike Elliott, in a wise piece, points out the distinction.

INEVITABLE, I SUPPOSE: Mac Eye for the Windows Guy. How gay is Apple.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “The US is about to hold another election that will be largely bought and sold by business and oil interests. Think of the corruption that US and UK conservatives carelessly unleashed upon the former Soviet Union in the name of extreme free market ideology.” – Polly Toynbee, the Guardian. You can “unleash” corruption?

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “I am also well aware that historically there have been many Americans who were both good Republicans and good Christians, Abraham Lincoln perhaps most preeminently. But the Republican Party in its current incarnation is racist (racism being the clear premise of its “Southern strategy,” pursued so singlemindedly since the days of the ineffable Richard Nixon) and the enemy of the poor. To be these things – to be against the poor and the marginalized – is, in my reading of the New Testament, to be specifically anti-Christian.” – Thomas Cahill, alienating an awful lot of potential readers.

“My grandfather emigrated to the United States from Greece in about 1905, at the age of 10 – alone on a ship going to meet his father and brother (coming in through Ellis Island, and looking, I’m sure, quite like the young Vito Corleone in New York Harbour in the “Godfather” flashback scenes – though his future was more peaceful).
Before settling down, to become a railroad worker and early union organizer, he spent a couple of years (from age 15) “hobo-ing” around the western United States. He was very adamant that this was an honorable pastime. A hobo, he said, is not a bum. He goes from place to place and looks for honest work to earn his food and a place to sleep – he is NOT looking for a hand-out.
This is probably not an important distinction for those who are homeless anymore, but when I read your use of the word “hobo” to describe Saddam Hussein, I couldn’t help but remember my grandfather, and I thought “Saddam should be so lucky as to be a hobo – he could wish for so much dignity.” My grandfather achieved a third grade education and spent his life as a mechanic. He raised four sons, three of whom were old enough to volunteer for WWII. The four earned two Master’s and two Ph.D.’s, and produced 15 grandchildren who have done no less. One of the more than 15 great-grandchildren is in the Naval Academy, and one is a Marine. This is the legacy of a hobo. Saddam, master of the palaces and father of the lion-cubs, is just a bum.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

MY MAN, DENNIS: He used to be too snarky for my taste. But his chutzpah in talking openly about the defense of civilization has won me over. He’s the kind of conservative who doesn’t think the world will end if two guys want to commit to one another for life but who thinks our own world might very well end if we don’t get a grip on Islamist terrorists with WMDs. In other words, he has the right priorities. I should have linked to this already, but better late than never. Money quote: “I will say this, I feel more politically engaged than I’ve ever felt in my life because I do think we live in dangerous times, and anybody who looks at the world and says this is the time to be a wuss – I can’t buy that anymore.” Amen.

HELL ON EARTH: Just when you thought Malaysia couldn’t get scarier, they propose mass chopping off of foreskins. It will apparently bring people together. Couldn’t they just hold hands?

ANGELS DROOPS: The most brilliant, ground-breaking, revolutionary work of art since, er, Frank Rich started writing for the New York Times slipped again in the ratings last week. Its first audience of 4.2 million slipped to 2.9 million for the finale, according to Hollywood Reporter. A reader’s defense of ‘Angels’ can be read here.

DEAN UNDER FIRE: Now, the center-left Spinsanity is having a whack. The best Dean critique i’ve read so far is this devastating editorial in the Washington Post from yesterday. A couple of days ago, Joe Klein told me he thought Dean had peaked. Maybe. But it’s one hell of a peak.

MORSE’S BLIND-SPOT: Jennifer Roback Morse has a beautiful little essay in the current National Review Online. It’s about her marriage, what marriage is, and her own experience of infertility, adoption, childbirth and all sorts of complicated, conflicted experiences to be had in the modern world. It’s a subtle piece, so I won’t try to summarize it, but one of its points is that marriage is about letting go of control, of letting another person’s life become your own, of building a little platoon of intimacy that is deeper than any single or particular end – a baby, a home, a career. What I simply don’t understand is why a woman as obviously as sensitive and humane as Morse nevertheless believes that excluding loving gay couples from such an experience is not only a good thing but a vital thing for people already in such marriages. Are gay people not also human? Can they not also put a joint life before personal gratification? Why does Morse simply assume that homosexuality is about “self-centeredness”? Morse doesn’t actually provide any such arguments. She just seems to take it for granted that this is a zero-sum game, that including gay people in the profound experience of self-giving is somehow destructive of her own relationship. I don’t get it. I don’t see it. And her utter indifference to the actual lives, loves and relationships of gay people – does she know any, I wonder? – undermines her otherwise compelling moral sense. That’s a shame. Gay and straight people have a common ground of understanding when it comes to marriage: we are all human. We all need and benefit from the experience of love and self-giving. It ennobles, sanctifies, elevates. Why does someone like Morse insist that gay people cannot be a part of this?

Time to dust off this old award. Here’s how Canada’s National Post describes the CBC’s coverage of the capture of Saddam:

To summarize, here are the impressions a casual viewer might have taken from Monday night’s CBC news: (1) Iraqis still love Saddam, and so his capture has only enraged them; (2) Despite Mr. Bush’s “gloating,” things will get worse; (3) Saddam’s trial will be a propaganda trick engineered to re-elect a Republican president; (4) To the extent Saddam did anything bad, America was the real villain; and (5) Saddam’s capture is meaningless anyway because Osama is still on the loose.

Sounds familiar. Did the BBC train these guys?

Bush is back at 63 percent, and Dean is faltering. This will fade, of course. But maybe Dean has peaked. Bush-hater Jon Chait at The New Republic starts an anti-Dean blog. Last time I checked, Chait was supporting Clark. Money quote:

Earlier this year I wrote a piece for TNR that defended hatred of President Bush. (I argued that hating Bush may lead to irrationality–rooting against the capture of Saddam Hussein, or, say, nominating Howard Dean–but it’s not irrational in and of itself.) But recently I’m finding that Dean hatred is crowding out Bush hatred in my mental space. It’s not that I think Dean would be a worse president than Bush–he’d probably be better, although that’s extremely faint praise given that Bush is the worst president of the last 80 years. Bush is like the next-door neighbor who lets his dog poop on your lawn and his kid shoot bb’s at your house and who says something irritating to you every day on his way to work. Dean, on the other hand, is like the ne’er-do-well who’s dating your daughter. You realize the neighbor is a worse person than the boyfriend, but the boyfriend (and the frightening prospect that he’ll become your son-in-law) consumes more of your attention.

The beginning of deep Democratic panic.

Dan Drezner shows, by comparison, how weak the Democratic attacks on George W. Bush’s foreign policy have been.

BAIT AND SWITCH WATCH:

“Saddam Hussein has long been an obsession for the world, and particularly the United States. Yet Iraq was so cut off from the outside that it was impossible for anyone – including, it seems, American intelligence officials – to get a clear picture of who he really was… George W. Bush’s Saddam Hussein was both vicious and efficient – a combination that made him a clear and imminent threat to international security. He not only had the will to harm his neighbors and the United States, he had the means. He was rapidly expanding an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons while steadily moving closer to becoming a nuclear power. He was so clever and well organized that he might surprise the world with nuclear weapons at any time. And although his regime was a secular one, it was so single-minded in its anti-Americanism that it was undoubtedly working with the radical Islamist terrorists of Al Qaeda.” – New York Times editorial, December 17, 2003.

“Mr. Bush’s blunt assessment of the Iraqi threat and the need for a firm, united response by the United Nations were well put. Iraq, with its storehouses of biological toxins, its advanced nuclear weapons program, its defiance of international sanctions and its ambitiously malignant dictator, is precisely the kind of threat that the United Nations was established to deal with. Betting on the good faith of Saddam Hussein or trusting that the problem will fade away is unrealistic. As Mr. Bush said, after a decade of Iraqi defiance the U.N. faces a defining moment and a test of its purpose and resolve.” – New York Times editorial, September 13, 2002.

(Thanks to a diligent reader.)

“I shouldn’t take it personally. Because what (the Bush) administration was attempting to do was turn back the progress of the entire 20th century. They were not just after Bill Clinton – they wanted to undo Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt. They were on their way to Teddy Roosevelt. It was a bipartisan right-wing extreme agenda.” – Senator Hillary Clinton, earlier this week. More Sid, alas.

GALLOWAY AWARD NOMINEE: “With no weapons, no ties, and no truth, the capture of Saddam was merely the most massive and irresponsible police raid in modern times. We broke in without a search warrant.” – Derrick Z. Jackson, making a strong, late entry, in the Boston Globe.

QUEERER EYE: What Carson might have done a few centuries ago. And, if you haven’t already seen it, today.

THE MIKE KELLY AWARD: Here are the details for a new award in honor of a great journalist.