HOROWITZ ON THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

Conservative insurrectionary, David Horowitz, goes after Gary Bauer et al for their hostility to gay dignity. Money quote:

In what the Washington Times described as a “stormy session” last week, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, Paul Weyrich, Gary Bauer and eight other “social conservatives” read the riot act to RNC chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with the “Human Rights Campaign,” a group promoting legal protections for homosexuals. This indiscretion, they said, “could put Bush’s entire re-election campaign in jeopardy.” According to the Times’ report by Ralph Hallow, the RNC chairman defended himself by saying, “You people don’t want me to meet with other folks, but I meet with anybody and everybody.” To this Gary Bauer retorted, “That can’t be true because you surely would not meet with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan.” Nice analogy Gary. Way to love thy neighbor.

Couldn’t put it better myself. But for Bauer, gay people are the equivalent of the KKK. A central tenet of his political message is not Christianity as represented in the Gospels, but the use of Christianity for purely political ends.

A NEW MCCARTHYISM?

This is the tired line now being peddled by those too embarrassed to admit that they were wrong about the war on terror, wrong about the war in Afghanistan, wrong about the war against Saddam. They are now complaining that criticizing the far left’s embrace of anti-Americanism is equivalent to McCarthyism. Hooey, of course. Tough criticism in a free society is not McCarthyism; it’s free speech. But what to make of this? MSNBC’s O’Reilly clone, Joe Scarborough, launched a TV campaign against Danny Glover’s lucrative spokesman contract with MCI on the grounds that Glover is a left-wing extremist, backing Castro, fulminating against the president, and so on. After a wave of viewer calls and emails, MCI has apparently now canceled Glover’s contract. Is this kosher? As a matter of principle, I loathe boycotts and the screeching and self-righteous rhetoric that often accompanies them. I even defended Dr Laura’s show against the mau-mauing gay left. So Scarborough’s campaign leaves me with not a little distaste in my mouth. Still, it’s not McCarthyism. The government is not involved; the argument is a valid one; no-one has a right to be a spokesman for corporate America, without public controversy or opposition. Glover hasn’t been silenced; and he’s free to continue to be an actor, where his views are likely to help, not hinder him. No one would complain if a similarly extreme right-winger were passed over by a major corporation. I don’t like Scarborough’s tactics. But Danny Glover can choose between his views and his corporate contracts. Perhaps, for his ideological consistency, it’s about time he did.

RICK’S METAPHORS

One reason Hendrik Hertzberg is such a joy to read (even when you want to scream at him) is his use of metaphor. If you’ve read Tom Friedman for years, metaphors tend to put you into a defensive crouch. Sid Blumenthal served up a doozy in his book, “The Clinton Wars:”

Not only did [Clinton] have to navigate the vessel of state in a vast sea through unpredictable storms, but he had to build a safe harbor. His political ability to tack with the wind was usually interpreted as being rudderless. Even long-term policy gains – whether on the economy, crime or trade – were obscured because of short-term political losses. And Clinton himself, caught in the midst of howling winds, could not know whether and how much he was succeeding.

Sea-sick yet? Yes, there’s nothing so boring as a fully-extended metaphor. But Rick’s specialty is the meta-metaphor. He takes a hoary old saying and throws it around a little, like hackey sack. “Affirmative action is strong medicine, and, as with any strong medicine, no great distance separates the therapeutic dose from the toxic one.” Not bad. But this one’s a beaut:

In both cases [scandals at the New York Times and the Washington Post], the people at the top said the right things about accepting responsibility. At the Post, at least one head eventually rolled – but it rolled sideways, and it quickly rejoined its body and resumed its upward trajectory. (The head was that of Bob Woodward, who lost his job as metropolitan editor. He was immediately made assistant managing editor for investigations, the job he still holds.)

Hilarious. And at the same time, vicious.

THE OTHER INTERN

One reason to suspect that affirmative action as such (as opposed to Raines’ guilt-complex) is not the main cause of the Jayson Blair affair: Macarena Hernandez, a Latina intern at the New York Times at the same time as Blair. She was the one who blew the whistle on her former colleague. And her story seems far more typical and encouraging.

A FIRST: Beagles are not exactly renowned for finding their way home. My own has no qualms about choosing between me and a potato chip. The chip wins every time. Which is all the more reason for giving thanks for this particular one. 800 miles?

RACE AND BLAIR

Bob Herbert writes an op-ed today about the Blair affair. No need to link, really. Like everything Herbert writes, the column was extravagantly crude, completely predictable and racially obsessed. In fact, the whole point of Herbert’s column is race. Maybe one in ten of his columns are not about race. But the Blair affair, Herbert insists, is not about race:

Now this would be a juicy story under any circumstances. But Mr. Blair is black, so there is the additional spice of race, to which so many Americans are terminally addicted. Listen up: the race issue in this case is as bogus as some of Jayson Blair’s reporting.

As Jonah Goldberg pointed out, if Americans are addicted to the issue of race, then Herbert is a major pusher. I’m skeptical that the Blair thing can be reduced simply to affirmative action. But I’m not skeptical that Blair’s race had something to do with Howell Raines’ treatment of him. Why am I not skeptical? Because Raines said so:

“Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts [Blair] appeared to be a promising young minority reporter,” Mr. Raines said. “I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities.” “Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?” he added, a moment later. “Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.”

Herbert doesn’t mention this, but then he never mentions anything that might complicate his own self-righteous, racial preening. New York Magazine adds a nuance to this story-line:

“The two attitudes at the Times are Upper West Side liberal or southern guilt. Nobody knows how to deal with black as just neighbor,” notes one reporter. “The black reporters are really angry,” says one reporter. Because Blair opened the door to the idea that maybe they didn’t deserve to be there. Blair seemed to understand these issues, and turned them to his advantage. “There’s that perception that Howell has unique feelings in this realm, and the widespread perception is that this kid gamed the system,” says an editor. By all accounts, Blair was not hesitant to bring up race around the office. “As soon as we met, he wanted to know how I felt about him being a black man,” says a Times writer. “He was obsessed about how minorities were hired differently.”

Blair, it seems, took advantage of Raines’ Guilty Southern White Boy syndrome. This is what happens when race becomes the criterion of any enterprise. The point of a newspaper is not and should never be diversity. It should be journalism. And the idea that you need minority reporters to tackle minority issues is itself racially blinkered, and condescending. It leads to unreadable columns like Herbert’s. It impugns the abilities and talents of the many excellent minority journalists who simply want to do their jobs well. And it makes possible disasters like the Raines-Blair mutual fixation. The real tragedy of the current crisis at the Times is that the one shibboleth that needs to be addressed – the diversity obsession – is the one shibboleth that is off-limits.

LOSING THE PEACE

I think it’s pretty obvious by now that the Pentagon has seriously misjudged the post-war situation in Iraq. The good news is that the administration seems to be responding, with more troops and more attention. 160,000 troops for a country the size of Iraq is not sufficient, certainly not in the short term. Shinseki was right in this respect; and Wolfowitz was wrong. There’s no scandal in this. War-plans are designed to be flexible. And now we need to be. For the war on terror to be successful, achieving stability and some measure of democracy in Iraq is an absolutely vital objective. It isn’t anti-Bush to say so. It’s precisely so that the president’s broad eight-year campaign against terror can succeed that Iraq must be successfully managed now. Before it slips out of our control. Does that mean naiton-building? You bet it does. So let’s build one, can we?

THE PALESTINIANS RESPOND

The disgusting murders in Israel in response to the slim chance of serious negotiation over the roadmap has drawn the predictable and defensible response from the Sharon government. Abbas has only minimal control over the terrorists who undermine him; Arafat is clearly in no mood to restrain the carnage; and the roadmap is dead without serious engagement from the Palestinians. It’s yet another suicide mission from the Palestinian Arabs. With the removal of Saddam and the emergence of Abbas, there was a new chance for some sort of progress. Once again, it has been thrown away. Sharon is hardly a risk-taker for peace; but who, under these circumstances, could be?

IS ARTHUR THE PROBLEM? David Warsh wonders if Sulzberger’s job is safe.