The Dish

The one amazing thing about Charlie Rose’s interview with “my friend,” Howell Raines, is that Raines spoke more than Rose did. Much more. Has that ever happened before? (Full disclosure: I couldn’t bring myself to watch it, so I’m going by a reading of the transcript.) Anyway, it’s quite clear that Raines hasn’t the slightest clue what happened to him and not the faintest notion of where he went wrong. He thinks his main mistake was trying to push the Times too fast to new heights of excellence. Ooooo-kaaaay. Charlie naturally didn’t ask Raines a thing about how he skewed coverage to the left. But he wasn’t a total push-over (although how he suppressed a giggle when Raines cited Picasso as a retirement model I don’t know). My favorite little interaction:

CHARLIE ROSE: Why were the troops in revolt against Howell Raines, or do you believe that is not true?

HOWELL RAINES: I believe that is not true in the stark formation that you give it. Clearly we were on a march that we had planned very carefully to have a paper that was as good at everything as the Times is at the things that traditionally does well, foreign affairs for example. In the course of that march we stepped on a land mine. I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

Now I’ve spoken to many NYT reporters since the liberation and read the comments of many, many more. The march metaphor is true only if you view it as a kind of death march run by a crazed, power-mad dictator. When the land-mine went off, the troops mutinied like punch-drunk deserters. Then there’s this:

HOWELL RAINES: And that coalesced and brought to the surface a number of complaints which are real but which are not universal. I could show you a stack of hundreds of communications from people on the staff editors and writers saying this is a terrible mistake; we know where you were going; it was the right place; we were with you.

CHARLIE ROSE: What was a terrible mistake – sorry – the fact you left the paper was a terrible mistake?

HOWELL RAINES: Yes. That’s a body of opinion.

I think we know one thing from this interview. There was no way that the nature of the Raines’ regime would have reformed itself. He still doesn’t realize why he created such a mess. Perhaps he never will. Then there’s this piece of surrealism:

The other problem from my point of view is there, according to the Times statistics there are 80 million people in the country who have the intellectual appetite for a paper like the New York Times.

CHARLIE ROSE: How many?

HOWELL RAINES: Eighty million.

CHARLIE ROSE: Great.

HOWELL RAINES: The New York Times sells 1.2 million papers a day. That tells me something. That tells me that you have got to change the paper, not in its standards, not in its principles, but in the breadth of its intellectual interests, and in its vitality, in its graphics, in the way it’s written, and the way stories are selected so that you get the other 78 million.

What to say? First off, of course, it’s so nutso an idea it’s strange Raines would bring it up in public. But then you realize the true scope of this guy’s ambition: he wanted to increase the circulation of the New York Times by 6,500 percent. He is and was out of his tiny mind. I can’t wait for the novel.

If this claim is true, Bush’s “flypaper” strategy in Iraq could be working.

FRC AND FMA: A reader remembers a piece he once read by FRC’s outgoing head, Kenneth Connor, opposing the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment:

I spent about an hour unsuccessfully attempting to find it on the FRC website. Apparently, it doesn’t exist there anymore. I did a web search and located the old link. Here is the teaser from the web search. Revisionist history at FRC?: “Family Research Council: Insight: Why the Family Research Council Cannot Endorse the Proposed ‘Federal Marriage Amendment.’ ‘We respect the concern for federalism that underlies the language of the Federal Marriage Amendment; nevertheless, we believe that the institution of marriage, like the protections enumerated in the B…’

Fascinating. Herewith an open request to FRC (or anyone else out there) to give me a link to the piece so we can see if or why Kenneth Connor once opposed the FMA; and whether that had any impact on his departure from FRC. Meanwhile, another member of the far right takes exception to the FMA. Concerned Women for America’s Jan La Rue opposes the FMA “because it would not prevent state legislatures from recognizing and benefiting civil unions and other such relationships, which would result in legalized counterfeit marriage.” I think she’s wrong. But it shows the extent of the opposition to gay relationships of any sort that animates the far right. What both quotes reveal is how even in the cloistered world of the far right, the FMA has opponents. What chance then of writing it into the very Constitution itself?

A movie trailer for Mel Gibson’s new movie about the death of Jesus. Looks promising. To my mind, however, it will be hard to beat Martin Scorsese’s “Last Temptation.”

POSEUR ALERT: “Neoformalism posits that viewers are active-that they perform operations. Contrary to psychoanalytic criticism, I assume that film viewing is composed mostly of nonconscious, preconscious, and conscious activities. Indeed, we may define the viewer as a hypothetical entity who responds actively to cues within the film on the basis of automatic perceptual processes and on the basis of experience. Since historical contexts make the protocols of these responses inter-subjective, we may analyze films without resorting to subjectivity . . . According to Bordwell, ‘The organism constructs a perceptual judgment on the basis of nonconscious inferences.'” – film theorist Kristin Thompson, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

BUSH ON FREE TRADE: No one can now doubt that, in matters of free trade, the Clinton administration was far more conservative than Bush is. So we now have two huge disappointments: a protectionist tilt on trade and a profligate slide on fiscal responsibility. At least some conservatives are begining to realize the damage Bush is doing to economic conservatism – and the economy itself.

Amazingly, I don’t think this piece from a BBC correspondent in Vietnam is a self-parody. The BBC reporter is candid: he once “hugely admired” Ho Chi Minh. He’s aghast at how he is commemmorated. He is clearly appalled by the capitalist revival in the country. He seeks out an old Ho ChiMinh soldiertofindsomeone whocan expres regret for Vietnam’s transitionto market capitalism. The end of the piece runs thus:

“The goal of the party today is to create a nation which is prosperous, strong AND equal,” he said. “And one day I hope we will be equal.” It’s a very faint hope. Vietnam is still a long way from the raucous consumer culture in neighbouring countries like Thailand and Malaysia – but that’s where it’s heading. Sooner or later, Saigon will start to resemble Bangkok or Singapore. Its people will pour into shopping malls, unable to afford most of the products on display but happy enough to dream that one day they might. It is impossible not to be in awe of the sacrifices made by men like Colonel Duong – but if Vietnam ends up like its neighbours, he may be tempted to ask himself just what it was he was fighting for.

It is impossible not to be inawe of the sacrifices made by former soldiers of a brutal communist regime. This is a true insight into the worldview of many BBC reporters. They are former Communist sympathizers, fanatical anti-Americans and deeply hostile to market capitalism. No wonder they are now trying to bring down Tony Blair. But why does the British public still tolerate financing this ideological crusade?

THE AMERICAN RIGHT AND ANGLICANISM: Was the successful attempt to stop a celibate gay man becoming an Episcopalian bishop financed in part by the American far right? Some Anglicans believe so:

The Very Reverend Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark Cathedral, condemned the opponents of Canon John as the “Anglican Taliban”, and called for an inquiry into how such groups are funded. “The campaign against Jeffrey was enormously well organised and well funded,” he said. Another senior Anglican close to the affair said: “One of the things that’s become apparent is the role of American evangelicals. You begin to see the same people cropping up all around the globe.” Dr Slee accused evangelicals from America and Australia of making substantial cash handouts to third world bishops who support their views, particularly at the time of the Lambeth conference in 1998, which produced a strong Anglican statement backing traditionalist teaching on sexuality.

American evangelicals deny colluding with African conservatives to bring down an openly gay cleric. But they would, wouldn’t they?

“What I once loved about journalism went missing some time ago and seems to have resurfaced as the driving force of the blogosphere: a high-spirited, irreverent, swashbuckling, lances-to-the-ready assault on the status quo. While mainstream journalists are tucked inside their newsroom cubicles deciphering management’s latest ‘tidy desk’ memo, bloggers are building bonfires and handing out virtual leaflets along America’s Information Highway.”- Kathleen Parker, Orlando Sentinel.

THE LIE THAT WON’T QUIT: “Visits by Israeli officials usually involve intense security, and none is more controversial than Mr Sharon, who has presided over the reoccupation of Palestinian towns and cities and the Jenin atrocities as Prime Minister.” – The Independent, yesterday. (My italics.)

The strange tale of a white hump-back whale – and its pursuers.

MORE BBC LIES: John Gross reviews their pro-communist mini-series on the Cambridge spies:

Two incidents, for example, are shown playing a crucial role in pushing the quartet towards communism. In one of them, a Jewish girlfriend of Philby’s at Cambridge is subjected to Nazi-style insults. In another, college domestic workers who are on strike are beaten up by right-wing undergraduates. The most notable thing about both episodes, in the context of a supposed docudrama, is that neither of them actually happened: they were both dreamed up by the scriptwriter. And there are many other fabrications, including a KGB attempt to assassinate Franco which fails because Philby, decent and humane fellow that he is, can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
Some of the inaccuracies are trivial in themselves, though they do a good deal to color the atmosphere. Others are of considerable historical significance. The fifth Cambridge spy, John Cairncross, makes only a brief appearance, for example: he is shown working as a wartime code-breaker, and rejecting Blunt’s suggestion that he start passing on information to the Russians. In reality, as Oleg Gordievsky has pointed out in a trenchant analysis of the series, during the war Cairncross keptthe KGB supplied with a steady flow of decrypts, including the first news they received of work on the atomic bomb. You wonder why the scriptwriter decided to play down his importance.

No need to wonder. These people regard the Soviet Union as a glorious experiment gone awry. Why not celebrate its early, traitorous apostles?

Is anyone else a lttle perturbed that Howell Raines’ first post-resignation interview will be with one of his best friends, a guest at his wedding, and another Southern liberal? Now, I love Charlie Rose; but I’ll be watching tonight for signs that Charlie will disclose his close personal friendship with Raines; and that he asks the tough questions about the immense damage Raines inflicted on the NYT. That’s called ethical, full-disclosure journalism.

This Cliff May piece is an excellent counter-point to the BBC and CBS.

Truly chilling report that plague has broken out in Oran, Algeria. That town was, of course, the subject of Albert Camus’ book, “The Plague,” one of the masterpieces of 20th Century literature. The book ends wondering when the next outbreak would take place.

WMD UPDATE: This one is gooo-ood.

BUSH AND THE JEWS: He’s trying to win over the Gen-Xers. Smart idea.

HOW TO SAVE THE THIRD WORLD: Abolish agricultural subsidies. For once, I agree with the Guardian. President Bush’s massive increases for such subsidies is yet another indicator that, in economic policy, he’s much more of a socialist than he lets on. Big debt, deficit financing, huge new entitlements, and bigger subsidies: Bush’s economic policy is a Democratic dream. So why are Republicans voting for it?

FREE SPEECH ALERT: If this campus nightmare is true, it’s horrifying.

Ramesh Ponnuru claims I misread the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. I don’t think I have. I think the amendment is a very clever device to strip gay couples of any civil protections whatsoever – regardless of courts, legislatures or majority decisions. Let me explain. Say Massachusetts decides by a mixture of court rulings and legislative action to legalize gay marriages. The FMA would bar this from happening – denying the state the right to determine marriage, a right the states have always enjoyed. Ramesh agrees with me on that one. But Ramesh then argues that civil union laws that gave gays some of the benefits of marriage would not be barred by FMA. He’s wrong, I think. In the FMA, states are not just constrained by not being able to construe judicial rulings as mandating equal marriage rights; they cannot even construe a state or federal law as such. No civil unions law could therefore stand up in court, if challenged. Or even a modest domestic partnership package. A reader lays out the case:

Consider Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), the pre-Brown civil rights case that held that a racially discriminatory provision in a deed could not be enforced under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The logic of that case is that a private agreement to discriminate on racial grounds is no longer private if you need the courts to enforce it: a court which enforced such a deed would itself be violating equal protection. The logic of Shelley, applied to the Federal Marriage Amendment, would require that private legal arrangements that gay men and lesbians now make to provide the legal incidents of marriage could not be enforced in court. For example, suppose A gave his partner B a durable power of attorney to make health care decisions for him. If a hospital thereafter chose to ignore B’s directives with respect to A’s health care, B would have no redress, because a court would be barred by the FMA from enforcing the power of attorney. (Likewise if A and B agreed to make reciprocal wills, etc.) I’m sure that the proponents of the FMA say that it would simply maintain the status quo. No one should believe them.

Yep, the amendment is that extreme. Another reader weighs in:

Suppose a state enacts a statute that:
(1) establishes civil unions, which may include same-sex partners;
(2)-makes it incumbent upon employers to extend the same domestic partnership benefits to employees’ “civil union” spouses-that it does to employees’ “marriage” spouses; and
(3) creates a cause of action against any employer that fails to comply with (2).
Suppose then that a gay man enters a civil union with his partner, requests the domestic partnership benefits, and the employer refuses.-Employee sues.
-It seems to me that under the statute, in order for a court to grant relief, it will have to find that the language of the statute conferrs “legal incidents of marriage” on an unmarried couple.- Just because the “plain reading” of the statute provides a legal incident of marriage doesn’t mean that the court is not “construing” the statute when it grants relief.- The FMA would prohibit the court from doing that, making parts (2) and (3) of the statute unenforceable.- At that point, what’s left of the civil union that distinguishes it from a novelty marriage license won at a carnival?-

But that’s precisely the purpose of the amendment. It needs to be exposed for what it is: an unprecedented attack on states’ rights, on minority enfranchisement and the Constitution. Next week, it will be wheeled out as a response to the Massachusetts Court ruling. Don’t believe the mollifying language of its backers. They mean business and they have gay couples in their sights.