The Dish

“I have a theory about Sam Tanenhaus, one that will explain this and other odd bouts of liberal irrationality. His biography of Whitaker Chambers rehabilitated a figure hugely reviled on the left. As Tanenhaus must know, contemporary liberalism is extremely closed-minded and vengeful; as the country moves further and further away from the need for great social movements (e.g., the civil rights movement), nasty ideological battles are fought over increasingly pettier issues. As the redeemer of the man who accused leftist icon Alger Hiss, Tanenhaus could easily be subject to ongoing discrimination and vilification throughout his career. He doesn’t want to share the fate of Ronald Radosh, forever blackballed from academia and the tonier venues of opinion journalism for the thoughtcrime of confirming the guilt of the Rosenbergs. Therefore, Tanenhaus must periodically confirm his liberal bona fides – in this case, by saying what many on the left believe to be true, that all conservatives are mean-spirited crazies, and that there is no distinction whatsoever between the most thoughtful conservative writer and Ann Coulter.”

“And just because white Evangelicals supposedly vote in part based on their religious beliefs is no reason to say they think religion and politics are not distinct. Maybe they are among the few protestants who have strong religious beliefs. Maybe more of them answer polls honestly. And regardless of the reason for the poll’s results, what is wrong with considering one’s beliefs when voting? Plenty of Democrats vote based on their belief in the moral rectitude of affirmative action, abortion and big government social programs. I respect your writings and agree with almost everything you say, but will admit I am bothered by your constant digs against evangelical protestants.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

One of the clearest and sanest assessments of our mistakes but also our potential in liberated Iraq is Jim Hoagland’s piece in the Washington Post today. Money quote:

Vietnam shaped the cautious-to-pessimistic strategic outlook for a generation of American military leaders that included Colin L. Powell, who popularized the concept of never engaging abroad without overwhelming force, clear political aims and preconceived exit strategies. Now, the worldview of a new generation of commanders is being formed in Iraq’s deserts, mountains and cities in a still uneven attempt at nation-building.
These generals are making their own exit strategy as they go. They see that the overriding U.S. goal must be to make Iraq into a country that works — without several U.S. Army divisions stationed here. Otherwise, in the Sunni heartland in particular, the U.S. Army risks turning into an occupying force regarded with hostility and suspicion while its own demoralized troops long to return home.

Read the whole thing.

Very strange to read the normally sane and cogent Sam Tanenhaus going off the rails in Slate magazine. His argument seems to be that conservative critics of Ann Coulter secretly agree with her and have criticized her to deflect attention from their own closeted belief that all contemporary Democrats and liberals are traitors. He summarizes his cheap shot here:

Horowitz et al. are right [about Coulter], of course. But why are they so worked up? And why reach back so far to single out a few “good” liberals? This just reinforces Coulter’s argument that today’s breed can be dismissed as a single lumpen mass. In other words, they agree with her. So, why the outrage? Here’s a guess: Coulter’s conservative critics fear that her legions of fans-and lots of others, too-see no appreciable difference between her ill-informed comic diatribes and their high-brow ultraserious ones, particularly since Coulter’s previous performances were praised by some now on the attack.

Let me provide some other, less strained reasons for being exercized by Ann Coulter. Those of us who believe that, yes, some Democrats and leftists were traitors in the Cold War understand that the accusation is a very grave one and don’t want to see it used so broadly that it discredits the argument altogether. The difference between us and Coulter is that we want to make distinctions and she doesn’t. So in today’s Democratic Party, it’s vital to distinguish between the well-intentioned critiques of Howard Dean or John Kerry or Bob Graham and those crackpot Democratic activists on Democratic Underground or openly treasonous Columbia University professors who really do want to see the U.S. defeated in Iraq. This strikes me as a pretty critical distinction. My beef with many Democrats right now is not that they’re traitors of any kind but that they have got their perspective skewed; and they need to realize more strongly that we really are fighting truly bad guys out there and our president isn’t one of them. How weird that Tanenhaus should should somehow fail to see this distinction and paint diverse and serious writers like Dorothy Rabinowitz and David Horowitz as indistinguishable from Coulter. Isn’t that kind of broad brush exactly what Coulter is criticized for? The truth is: in this article, Tanenhaus is far closer to Coulter’s methods than any of the people he criticizes.

“Good evening. Reports that the former Italian leader Benito Mussolini is “dead” and “hanging” “upside down” at a petrol station were received with scepticism in Rome today. Our “reporter” – whoops, scrub the inverted commas round “reporter”, the scare-quotes key on the typewriter’s jammed again. Anyway our reporter Andrew “Gilligan” is “on” the scene “in” Milan. Andrew…

Andrew Gilligan: I’m leaning on a lamp post at the corner of the street in case a certain little duce swings by, and I don’t see any dead dictators, John. But then the Allies have a history of making these premature announcements…

He’s just above your head, Andrew. I know you don’t like to do wide shots, but, if the camera pulls back, I think you’ll find that’s definitely a finger tickling the back of your ear…

AG: Well, there you are. He’s not hanging from a petrol station, is he? He’s hanging from a rope attached to a girder on the forecourt of a petrol station. We’ve become all too familiar with the Allies playing fast and loose with the facts.” I’m still laughing.

His hopes for recession seem to be receding.

They don’t want their reporter Andrew Gilligan’s parliamentary testimony published. It could be too damning. Their official argument? Gilligan is “under stress” and it could affect his health. So a journalist backed by the biggest media entity in Europe who has accused the government of lying is too fragile to have his own public comments published. What a crock. A parliamentary committee member comments: “There appear to be compassionate grounds not to publish the evidence. We’re in a situation here where if we publish the evidence and something happens to Mr Gilligan we’d be in a very difficult situation.” In my opinion, the BBC is going down. But there are plenty of twists to come in this tale, I’m sure.

WEPs: As most people know, we don’t really have a problem in this country with Christians believing that there is no real distinction between religion and politics. Except for one group: white evangelical protestants, who see no reason not to use politics to reflect their sometimes literalist Biblical views. A new poll finds exactly that:

In other findings on religion and politics, the poll found that 48 percent of white evangelical Protestants said their religious beliefs frequently affected their voting, compared with 10 percent of white mainline Protestants, 12 percent of white non-Hispanic Catholics and 12 percent of Hispanic Catholics.

That’s quite some discrepancy. And it suggests a theocratic alliance between WEPs and Catholic Hispanics may well not come to fruition.

A BBC RANT: This time against its soccer coverage. I loved this guy’s attitude:

It’s insane but we live in a country where it’s illegal to watch – or even own – a television unless you pay the BBC money.
You can’t argue about it.
You can’t demand money back for all the years they paid Sid Little’s wages. You can’t demand a rebate because you don’t want to see the bloody Proms or because Peter Sissons has a pointy head or because you think Andrew ‘sexed up’ Gilligan is a liar.
You just have to pay. No arguing.
-The BBC can and does put people in jail for not paying them money to watch TV. Even if they don’t watch the BBC much, or even at all.
-You wouldn’t think that watching TV is a crime punishable by imprisonment would you? But it is.
-Once the BBC has our money, they spend a lot of it pompously telling us how we should ‘get a different perspective’.
Of course, every weekend millions of us get a different perspective not by watching Jim Davidson on the Generation Game but by taking ecstasy and other mind-bending intoxicants, which is frankly the only way to endure much of the BBC’s output.

Amen, brother. But when does the revolution begin?

CNN CORRECTS: The media giant sends the following message: “It is entirely untrue that CNN declined to air a video tape purporting to show an attack by agents of the Iranian regime on students in their dormitory. CNN was never offered such a tape, does not know if such a tape exists, does not have an office in Iran and never has.”

It was good to see the papers take Dick Cheney’s AEI speech yesterday seriously. They all but ignored Paul Wolfowitz’s superb briefing the day before. And what Cheney does is address something very fundamental to the argument. Here’s the money section:

The ability to criticize is one of the great strengths of our democracy, but those who do so have an obligation to answer this question: How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?
Last October, the director of Central Intelligence issued a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s continuing programs of weapons of mass destruction. That document contained the consensus judgments of the intelligence community, based upon the best information available about the Iraqi threat.
The NIE declared, quote, “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction program in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions. If left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade,” end quote.
Those charged with the security of this nation could not read such an assessment and pretend that it did not exist. Ignoring such information or trying to wish it away would be irresponsible in the extreme.

How can one disagree? The problem with the critics is that they ignore the context and the impossibility of complete certainty in intelligence. But given that NIE assessment, given what we found out on September 11, what would we have expected the government to do? If they over-estimated the WMD capacity of Saddam, it was surely a better option than under-estimating it. Yes, war is and was a grave decision. But war against the monster in Baghdad was always far more morally defensible than war against almost any other regime on the planet. I have no problem whatever with tough criticism of the intelligence we had before the war, or the uses to which it was put. But I still have found no clear evidence that the administration acted in bad faith, or that the end-result is anything but a boon to our security, the security of the entire world, and to the poor Iraqi people, terrorized for generations. The president should get back on the offensive, and show how his opponents would have left this country more vulnerable than any responsible government can or should tolerate.

BROOKS TO THE NYT: A great move for the New York Times, although David will have to defend himself from becoming the tame establishment conservative. Still, it really does show someone there gets what has gone wrong. With David Shipley at the Op-Ed reins, we have a chance of a truly diverse editorial page for the first time in a very long while.

HRC DEFENDING BIGOTRY: Here’s the Human Rights Campaign’s Winnie Stachelberg’s response to a Democratic congressman calling another congresman a “fruitcake” and a “cocksucker”:

“I think Congressman Stark’s use of the word [fruitcake], he probably regrets having used it. I think he meant nothing by it, but I think in the 2003 context, it’s probably a poor choice of words. But it’s also important to note that Congressman Stark is one of the gay community’s staunchest allies.”

Translation: bigotry is fine if you vote our way. How will anyone take HRC seriously when they condemn Republican bigotry in the future?

… that makes infertility a condition for marriage:

The cite for this is W.R.S. Section 765.03 (1). Here is the text:
765.03 Who shall not marry; divorced persons. (1) No marriage shall be contracted
while either of the parties has a husband or wife living, nor between persons who are nearer of kin than 2nd cousins except that marriage may be contracted between first cousins where the female has attained the age of 55 years or where either party, at the time of application for a marriage license, submits an affidavit signed by a physician stating that either party is permanently sterile. Relationship under this section shall be computed by the rule of the civil law, whether the parties to the marriage are of the half or of the whole blood. A marriage may not be contracted if either party has such want of understanding as renders him or her incapable of assenting to marriage.

That’s from Wisconsin. So far, two states not only do not insist in procreation being a condition for marriage; they insist that it be a bar to marriage. So what is the point of civil marriage then in Arizona and Wisconsin? It is the emotional union of two people. As long as they’re straight.

THE END OF DRUG RESEARCH: The war against the pharmaceutical companies is only intensifying in this country. Here’s a case study of what happens when politicians pursue this cost-cutting agenda. In Germany, the drug research sector has now slid into second-class status. It will happen here. It is happening here.

A new record for the site: according to Alexa.com, this blog just reached its highest ever ranking on the web. Thanks again.