The Dish

What the blogosphere helped bring to the surface has now led to a few excellent pieces about the lessons of the crude smearing of Pim Fortuyn. Anne Applebaum rises to the occasion in Slate; and David Brooks has a lovely analogy (originated by Tom Wolfe) between the American media elite and a Victorian gentleman:

[W]hat is interesting from our point of view is that the Victorian gent that is the Western press corps could not even allow Pim Fortuyn to exist. With the unselfconscious instinct for self-preservation that has always been the great strength of Victorianism, whether in its original form or today, the gent had to depict Fortuyn as something other than what he was. The gent had to depict him as a cliche, a far-right bogeyman. To acknowledge the existence of the real Fortuyn would be to acknowledge the rift between tolerance and multiculturalism. To do that would be to explore what this rift means–what it means in the Middle East and at home.
That exploration is impermissible. It is beyond the bounds of polite discussion. Hence, it does not exist.
Pim Fortuyn is dead. In fact, he never existed.

And that is why Howell Raines’ newspaper still cannot run an editorial on the issue. It would require self-criticism. But the best analysis I’ve read so far is from my friend Matthew Parris in the Times in London (reg. req.). Matthew gets how Fortuyn’s sexual orientation led him to the populist right. He sees that homosexuality – far from being attracted to the drab conformism of the modern left – is characterologically attracted both to conformism of the old right and/or the radicalism of liberal freedom. The attachment of gay men to the center-left is an anomaly that has already begun to wane. As Matthew puts it,

In the decades ahead many gays will be coming out in a new way. They will be scaling the walls of the political stockade where they once needed shelter and exploring the wild woods. The wildest of these is likely to be what we used to call the Right but which might better be called populism and which will often have an authoritarian streak. This rightward migration has been happening for some time with Jewish voters and politicians, once a mainstay of socialism. It will challenge and in the end break the Centre-Left’s dream of gathering a rainbow coalition of once-beleaguered minorities to dance behind the machine. As the rainbow shatters, bright colours will dance away in strange directions. Pim Fortuyn was a very bright colour indeed… [The homosexual] sense of not belonging touches off two utterly contradictory responses. They are both present within a gay man and are never reconciled. One gains the upper hand in some, in others the other prevails, in many neither. The responses to a sense of not belonging are a yearning to conform, and a yearning to break free.

Quite. I look at my own writing and I see both strains – toward authority and against it. Now, whatever one might think of this state of mind, it certainly isn’t easily contained within the bounds of contemporary liberal orthodoxy. Camille Paglia anyone? Bjorn Lomborg?

ENVIRO-BORES WATCH: More p.c. crapola from the animal rights movement. You can’t even call a football team the “packers” any more?

“LYING IN PONDS” EXPLAINED: A reader suggests a source for the elusive website, “Lying in Ponds.” It’s possibly a reference to a scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie. Here’s the relevant extract:

ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake… [angels sing] …her arm clad in the purest
shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis
for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate
from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just
’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

Do my readers rock, or what?

LETTERS: A defense of annulments; an explanation of Francophobia; an attack on single-sex schools; and what Islam has in common with Catholicism. The usual slugfest on today’s Letters Page.

HAVANA CALLING: When I see Jimmy Carter sucking up to Fidel Castro, I realize once again why I wore a “Reagan ’80” button in my English high school. Yes, my teachers were appalled. They probably still are.

WHAT LOMBORG CONCEDES: Whatever his critics say, Lomborg’s “pretty clear that some environmental problems are real. Fisheries in international waters are in trouble. Ocean eutrophication from agricultural fertilizers is real. While half the world’s species won’t be lost in the next fifty years, almost 1% will, and that’s still pretty big. While half the world’s rainforests aren’t cut down every year, there are real problems with small, unique ecosystems being obliterated. Acid rain has ruined some large fraction of Sweden’s lakes. Maybe because he says these things in a matter of fact tone, people miss them.” A flurry of smart, detailed critiques of Bjorn Lomborg – and his opponents – in the Book Club today.

AFTER HOLLAND, DENMARK? Another social-democratic country, governed for long by a center-left consensus is seeing its politics up-ended by hostility to Islamist immigration and the dictates of the EU bureaucracy. Ignore some of the leftist posturing of this piece in the American Prospect and focus on the excellent reporting. Does the following scenario sound familiar?:

Nonetheless, the mid-1990s found many Danes grumbling about the media’s supposed lack of immigration coverage. Despite high immigrant-crime rates in urban areas, reporters seemed reluctant to cover stories that might cast immigrants in a negative light. To critics, the political left’s refusal to confront the dark side of immigration made it complicit in a spiral of silence. And in this growing public discontent, the editors of Ekstra Bladet, a popular daily tabloid newspaper, saw an opportunity. The paper swiftly produced an avalanche of reporting on refugee abuse of the welfare system, including a 1997 print and television series called The Foreigners, which depicted a Somali man with two wives and 11 children who received upwards of $75,000 per year in welfare benefits. The newspaper’s accompanying editorials recommended that the government lower welfare benefits for refugees in order to provide them with incentives to work. This media onslaught immediately captured the public’s attention, and it held special appeal for working-class voters.

It strikes me as interesting that this populist revolt against the elite consensus in Europe also gained force after September 11. Europeans face to face with illiberal Islamism may in the long run be close and fervent supporters of America’s war against terror. Now if only they can persuade their leaders and the media.

FORTUYN KOOKIES UPDATE: An email from a close observer of what’s goi
ng on in Holland relates the following:

This story is getting more interesting by the minute.
This emerged this morning. One of the three other prospective MPs on the List Fortuyn that the killer seems to have had on his ‘hit list’ was a young and virtually unknown man called Joost Eerdmans, nr. 19 on the List. When I saw that originally it puzzled me why he would be on the hitlist.
This morning one Dutch newspaper (the Algemeen Dagblad) reports the following: Joost Eerdmans is a real animal lover, and a member of the Dutch “Animal Protection Association”. Some emails were received by the party sent by the association “Wakker Dier” (Awake Animal) critical of its environmental and animal policies. Since the List Fortuyn (formed only weeks before the elections, after Fortuyn was kicked out of his other political party) didn’t really have a fully worked out policy platform, animal lover Eerdmans wrote back to the people from Wakker Dier, explaining that the List Fortuyn was not anti-environment per se and that he would personally fight for animal friendly policies within the party.
Wakker Dier is an important animal rights action group that has very close ties to Environmental Offensive, where the murderer worked.
Somehow, the involvement of Joost Eerdmans with animal rights policy in the List Fortuyn was made known to Volkert van der Graaf, who perversely decided to put Eerdmans on his hit list.
A spokesman for the List Fortuyn said: “As always the Left abused our arguments and so Joost ended up on the list of people who had to die.” The Dutch report is available here.

A stirring and brilliant email from former Soviet dissident Elena Bonner is doing the rounds. I hope someone bigger than me publishes it in its entirety. It reminded me again that the struggle is not over and it made me question my tolerance of the Bush administration’s nimble but worryingly diffuse dealings with the Arab-Israeli conflict. I hope it stiffens your sinews, as it did mine:

On April 2, Donald Rumsfeld announced that Saddam Hussein had instituted a $25,000 payment for suicide bombers. How should the civilized world regard this gruesome form of terror and Saddam’s peculiar subsidy for it? We are familiar with murders committed by hired killers acting for the mafia. These are horrible crimes, but the persons ordering the murders try to remain anonymous in order to avoid arrest and trial. Saddam, on the other hand, has advertised his support for the suicide bombers and the fact that he ordered their actions, secure in the knowledge that he won’t be prosecuted for this. Moreover, people are not killed one at a time; the idea is rather “the more, the merrier.” The innocent victims are killed only because of their race, religion or political opinions. The suicide bombers have introduced a new weapon – cheap and easily transported – into the business of terrorism. And without a doubt, it will spread around the world, not only to promote the political aims of various extremist groups, but also as a way for tens and hundreds of mentally disturbed persons to solve their problems. Anyone – tacitly sympathizing with the suicide-terrorists – who thinks that this new weapon of murder-on-command can be kept localized is mistaken. If there is no attempt to fight back against them, very soon the suicide bombers’ attacks will spread beyond Jerusalem. Their bombs will explode on the Champs-Elysees, on Red Square, on Broadway, on Picadilly, and on the streets of Peking, Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus, depending on who orders and pays for the explosion and what are his goals. And the suicide squads may use weapons more dangerous and destructive than bombs strapped to their waists … Sudden death will become an everyday occurence, and fear will be omnipresent. The idea that some states will be exempt from the plague is an illusion. You won’t escape being eaten by an alligator even if you feed your neighbors to him one-by-one. Those who hailed the 1938 Munich agreement in hopes that it would secure peace learned this much too late. They helped bring on World War II. … Either terrorism, nourished by anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, and the ambitions of some politicians, will win, or our common human reason will defeat it. No third way can be found!

THE PUBLIC GETS IT: More and more, Americans see Israel’s struggle against the Palestinian terrorist insurgency as no different from our own struggle against al Qaeda. Sharon wins! This is what the president believes in his gut. He should stick with his instincts. The American people are morally, strategically and logically right.

A VICTIM OF THE LARGER STRUGGLE AGAINST TERROR: My coverage of the bad coverage of Pim Fortuyn’s murder has led to a flurry of emails from Europe and around the world. Most from Europe write in to say that the Euro-press has been as bad as the American for the most part. One email stood out. It’s from a Belgian diplomat assigned to the Netherlands. Here’s his take on Fortuyn’s rise: Fortuyn was a baby boomer of the 1960s – a counter-cultural liberal who took a stand against Islamist intolerance. (My mind brings to the fore people like Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie or even Camille P.) The cataclyst for Fortuyn’s sudden rise was a single television show. Over to the diplomat:

On a sunday late February an across the board selection of imams and social leaders of the muslim society in Holland were interviewed on prime time national television. The country was a few weeks before country-wide local elections, so all the opinions had to be known, and definitely the ones of the immigrants and the foreigners in the country… I had just returned to Brussels from a weekend with the parents in the countryside and had tuned into one of the Dutch TV channels. The journalists did an excellent job and no questions were left out. But, I could not believe my ears when I was listening to their answers: on the family (“The man is master and lord”), on women (“They have to serve”), on democracy and human rights (“This is not part of the Koran nor of the Sharia and alien to our cultural beliefs, though we will not fight it when in a foreign country”) and in the end on Fortuyn and gay men… (“Worse than pigs,” they barely refrained from saying “ready to be slaughtered”). The strange thing was that the reaction in the studio was silence and even next day, little in the media about it… even the authorities did not react, except the Justice Minister who said: “freedom of speech”. However there was one who came forward, namely Fortuyn, who was also interviewed and who dared to say: “This is a backward culture and values we cannot share.” Then came the outcry from the others, he was forced out of this new protest party and branded by the politically correct in the Netherlands, as racist and fascist. He withstood the storm, put up his own party and barely two weeks later at the local elections won a landslide 36% of the votes in his hometown Rotterdam, coming ahead of everybody else and that from zero.

In other words, the key element in Fortuyn’s rise to power was his opposition to Islamism and the fascist tendencies within it. He was a victim of the deeper struggle against religious fundamentalism. He was no saint. He was at times a vulgar populist. But he was not only not a fascist; he was one of the few willing to stand up against it.

THE PUBLIC VERSUS PROFESSIONAL “SCIENCE”: “To quote the email from the person with the B.S. in “Environmental Horticulture,” the one who wrote,

“I must point out that the only positive press from this book comes from non-scientists, those who don’t know how to analyze his arguments and references, or those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. There are many frustrated people in the sciences who are shaking their heads at the amount of time that must be wasted defending their work against his poorly analyzed arguments.”

I would answer that there are many frustrated people in the “real world” who have been “shaking their heads” for decades over the amount of time that we have to defend our livelihoods against the poorly analyzed directions of academics. We have our degrees in business, economics, law, or engineering, and have to participate in an actual market that will reward or penalize our efforts based on merit. At the same time, the scientific community (at least the large organizations) spew poorly researched, obviously biased, and hopelessly naive “studies” and “press releases” directing government to put “reasonable” restrictions on how the rest of us live. The media, looking for any frightful story (like 25% of liquor consumed by minors?), gladly trumpet the latest to a frightened public.” After an email last week from a scientist complaining about the need to waste time by answering public criticism of professional research, I got an avalanche of emails. Today’s book club discussionreprints an edited selection. Thie pixels are aglow.

MORE ON FORTUYN’S KILLER: Good piece in my British home, the Sunday Times (reg. req.), on the man, who killed Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn. As I have mentioned, a previously unsolved murder of an environmental official is being tied to van der Graaf – and one of the links is that both that murder and Fortuyn’s were accomplished by point-blank gun-shots with rare 9mm silver-tip hollow-point bullets. Van der Graaf was questioned about that killing at the time. There’s more:

Documents found on the hard disk of a computer seized from his home also point to a possible link with arson attacks in November 1999 on a plant in Milheeze, a few miles to the south, that produces feed for minks, and a series of incidents at a local poultry farm that started in 1995 … A police search of van der Graaf’s home turned up plans of Fortuyn’s house and the homes of three other prospective MPs on his party’s list, including Jim Janssen van Raay, a prominent former Christian Democrat MEP. All three have been given 24-hour protection.

This is enviro-terrorism. It’s far more dangerous than anything Fortuyn argued for. But what’s the betting that Europe’s social-democratic elites will take it on?

UBI CARITAS: Some superb pieces this weekend about the crisis in the Catholic Church. Frank Bruni’s beautiful exploration of the subject in the New York Times Magazine shouldn’t be missed. Nor should this arresting piece in the Washington Post about the large number of priests there who have wives, girlfriends or companions. As is often the case in dysfunctional hierarchies (the Church, the military, etc.), the only thing worse than breaking these rules is being honest about it. Father Marinero told his parishioners about his love affairs, they understood, and he still functions as a de facto priest, even though he has been stripped of formal authority. “The important thing about loving God is not that you’re celibate,” he tells Mary Jordan. “The important thing is that you dedicate your life to God, whether you have 10 kids or you are celibate.” I’m sure he’s right. I know a priest whom I wrote about in my book, “Love Undetectable.” He was loved by his parishioners, did a fantastic job, but eventually cracked under the pressure of being gay and being celibate. For him, it wasn’t just the lack of sex and intimacy; it was the cognitive dissonance between who he was and what the Church was even willing to discuss or understand. He quit. But he is still a priest in every sense of tthe word. He reaches out to people; he listens; he pastors. That’s just his calling; and watching it in action is a joy. I cannot say how much it grieves me to see my own Church lose so many wonderful priests because the weight of these laws seems to outweigh the imperative of actually doing God’s work in the world we now live in. I hope our current trauma will enable us to rethink whether such structures as celibacy are now actually inhibiting what God wants rather than enabling it. But the hierarchy seems intent on not even listening.

LABEL WATCH: This from the New York Times Magazine (sniff): “…[Bernie Mac’s] tone was several shades streetier and more explosive than anything Bill Cosby could imagine. He began by saying, ‘When a kid gets 1 years old, I believe you got the right to hit ’em in the throat or stomach.’ He then raged about the fecklessness of under-age mothers. His fury was so comically operatic, however, that Mac managed to share a stark, neocon vision of black life without alienating his audience.” So it’s neoconservative to endorse physically abusing children?

LIBERALISM AND ISLAM: I don’t buy this somewhat Borkian view of how modern liberalism has made the West vulnerable to Islam, but it makes for a stimulating read. Bracing even. Here’s the conclusion:

Liberalism has to be rescued from the clutches of the libertarians, in order to defend liberal democracy from militant Islam on the one hand and the racist Right on the other. Fortuyn was never going to be the answer. He was part of the problem. But in exposing the hypocrisy and confusion of false liberalism, he did us all a service.

What interesting ideological times we live in.

THOSE UNRELIABLE BLOGS: I’ve been whacked lately a little for a few minor but swiftly corrected errors on my website. We all make mistakes. But some of the correctors point to bloggery as a more error-prone medium than the bigger media. Here’s a correction in Sunday’s New York Times, sent to me by an eagle-eyed reader. It speaks for itself:

An article on April 21 about Florida’s place in the national culture referred incorrectly to the standoff between Branch Davidians and the F.B.I. in Waco, Tex., which occurred during the tenure of Janet Reno as attorney general of the United States and is getting new attention in light of her campaign for the Florida governorship. The investigation of the standoff led by former Senator John Danforth was independent, not Congressional. According to the Danforth report, the Branch Davidians were responsible for the fire inside their compound; it was not started by the F.B.I. The number of Branch Davidians who died was about 80, not 75, including more than 20 children, not 25. The previous office held by Reno was state attorney for Dade County, Fla., not state attorney general. The article also misidentified the first family of Hispanic origin to live in the Florida governor’s mansion. It was that of Bob Martinez, not Jeb Bush. The article also referred incorrectly to a swamp in Florida. It is Okefenokee; Atchafalaya (not Atchalafaya) is in Louisiana.

And I don’t have fact-checkers.

LIBERAL INTOLERANCE WATCH: Not Howell Raines this time, but a course at Berkeley whose description in the catalog warns: “conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections.” Why not just other colleges?

WAS FORTUYN A VAMPIRE?: The BBC makes him look like one. By the way, some of you wrote in to say that I’m wrong to defend Fortuyn as someone who was not anti-immigration. He was anti-immigration, you argue, but not anti-immigrant. Fair enough, especially since I said he opposed further immigration. But, strictly speaking, his party still stands for some newcomers – 10,000 a year rather than 40,000 – and its main concern is their integration into Dutch society.

ANOTHER FAR-RIGHT EXTREMIST: Time for the New York Times, the Guardian and the BBC to decry this statement from a leading “far right” politician, arguing that Muslim immigrants need to be integrated better in order to guard against Islamo-fascist threats. That politician is Peter Hain, Blair’s minister for Europe, and a founder of the 1970s Anti-Nazi League and a longtime campaigner against apartheid. Never mind. Just as well he’s not gay or Dutch.

“Unpopular Governor Leads Race, Polls Show.” – San Jose Mercury News.

BIAS CHECK:Sorry, I gave a bad link to the Zonitics blog below. Here’s the right one. I’ve also amended the size of Holland in a post below. Although many media references have compared Holland to Rhode Island in area, it’s closer to Maryland.

Smart piece in Salon on the culture of blogging. Actually, just sane and insightful. Here’s Scott Rosenberg on how bloggers keep the rest of the media (and, I might add, other bloggers) on their toes:

[T]o lazy reporters, the world of blogs represents their worst nightmare: It’s an endless parade of experts in every conceivable subject they might write about, all equipped with Internet-style megaphones ready to pounce on errors. Careful and thoughtful journalists will nevertheless welcome the advent of blogging: At worst, it should keep them on their toes and give them an incentive not to slip up, and at best, it should give them a chance to do their job better.

The one element that Rosenberg misses, however, is blowback. If, like me, you both write for the mainstream media and also snarl at it on a regular basis, some editors can take revenge and cut you off. Most of the time, people in big media, being journalists, don’t mind criticism, especially from a piddling one-man blog. But others take offense, and you get canned. In my case, I have been barred indefinitely from writing any more for the New York Times Magazine. Although I have long had a fantastic relationship with the editors there, and have written some of my best journalism for them, their boss, Howell Raines, has sent down a ruling. My presence in the Times, I’m told, makes him “uncomfortable,” and I am off limits for the indefinite future. A great sadness to me, but completely his editorial prerogative and, given the sharpness of some of my broadsides, understandable. I’m lucky I have other outlets – and this blog of course! – but it does tend to show that the notion that new media and old media are effortlessly complementary is not completely true. When you bite the hand that feeds you, sometimes you’ll get a good slapping. But don’t worry. I’ll keep biting.

FUNERAL FOR THE “FASCIST”: If you saw the photograph in today’s New York Times of thousands of young and old people holding up pictures of Pim Fortuyn, you will understand better why the media’s depiction of him as a wacko fascist is a grotesque distortion. The New York Times won’t give us an article, but the Washington Post does, and the newest revelations are interesting:

Meanwhile in Amsterdam, prosecutors indicated Fortuyn’s suspected killer may have been plotting against three other members of his anti-immigration party. Police have charged a 32-year-old Dutchman with the killing. Though his name has not been officially released, he has been identified by former colleagues as Volkert van der Graaf, an environmental and animal rights activist. The names of the party members and maps of their neighborhoods were found in the suspect’s car, said a spokeswoman for the pubic prosecutor.

By the way, Fortuyn’s party is not “anti-immigration.” It fully supports the right of every current immigrant in Holland to stay and be assimilated. All it wants is an end to further immigration in a country the size of Maryland with a population of 16 million. But what this news suggests is that this murder was part of a premeditated campaign of political assassination from far-left, enviro-maniacs. That’s news. Vote LPF.

I couldn’t bring myself to read the book, but here’s the inimitable Christopher Hitchens on the latest piece of mendacious preening from David Brock:

He finds it difficult to refer to himself – when he isn’t crippled by self-loathing – without using the words “icon” and “poster boy.” There are actually very few revelations in the book, unless you are surprised to learn that a cabal of right-wingers tried to frame the Clintons for killing Vince Foster. (Brock now prefers the even more far-out view that Foster was murdered by the Wall Street Journal.) Referring to the anti-Semitism of a famous conservative, he cites what might be a joke in poor taste and says it was “one of her gentler remarks.” What, couldn’t he have cited a more damning one? … Still, I wanted to take an extra shower after trudging through this dismally written, pick-nose, spiteful and furtive little book. It glitters with malice and the more cowardly kind of “disclosure”; it’s a dank, filthy tissue turned inside out. And it is all written allegedly as a defense of the Clintons’ right to privacy! As someone who despised Clinton from the very first, I remember resenting the damage done by hysterical and fabricated right-wing attacks, which bought him time and sympathy. Anyone really interested in this period should grab the paperback version of Michael Isikoff’s Uncovering Clinton, a verifiable story told by a serious journalist, who began by disbelieving the rumors and discovered by honest exertion that many of them, and some that had not even been suspected, were true.

Enjoy.

PARTISAN PUNDITS: Fascinating study by a new blog (well, new to me) about which pundits and columnists are the most reflexively partisan. They measure this by tagging the names of politicians or parties or similar phrases and measuring how often a pundit mentions them, and whether positively or negatively. Guess who’s the most ferociously partisan columnist, the one most likely to scream and yell for one side, or rail against the other, rather than engage in actual argument or reason? Yes, it’s Paul “Enron” Krugman! He’s followed by three Republican-supporters, Peggy Noonan, Michael Kelly and Bob Bartley. The Wall Street Journal is the most partisan, but the New York Times isn’t far behind. It is the main repository of loathing for president Bush around. Like we didn’t know. It gets even more interesting when you see how this partisanship is expressed – either by plugging your side (positive) or slamming the other (negative). The most positive is Peggy Noonan (gush, gush as she does); the most negative is Frank Rich. The most positive for Republicans is Peggy Noonan, and the most positive for Democrats is – bizarrely – Tunku Varadarajan. The biggest single partisan anti-Republicans are – drum roll – in reverse order: Bill Keller, Sebastian Mallaby,Michael Kinsley, Frank Rich, and … Paul Krugman.

HOW MUCH WARMER? “Yes, humanity certainly has some impact on global warming, but what magnitude that impact will be is extremely questionable. Again, Lomborg’s suggestion that our best solution is to make the developing world more capable of adapting to climate change is diametrically opposed to the anti-humanist, anti-technology, anti-capitalism solutions of the environmental movement.” Today, the global warming debate in the Book Club.

THE EURO-LEFT’S NEW LOW: This column by the Independent’s columnist, Mark Steel, is so vile in its near-celebration of the murder of Pim Fortuyn that it is almost beneath criticism. Notice he won’t cite a single one of Fortuyn’s policy positions, his stark differences with Le Pen and Haider, his social liberalism. For Steel, smelly leftist orthodoxy trumps examination of the truth or even basic decency. The subtitle says it all: “It’s true that Le Pen didn’t like Fortuyn, but then Mussolini didn’t like Hitler.” The implication, of course, is that Fortuyn was even more extreme than Le Pen. Where are you when we need you, Eric Blair?

NUMBER-CRUNCHING LIBERAL BIAS: I ignored Geoffrey Nunberg’s piece in the American Prospect in April, debunking the notion of liberal media bias by numbers, because it so flew in the face of what I knew that I figured something had to be wrong. (And I was too lazy to do all the enormously laborious number-crunching to refute it. So sue me.) I figured someone would correct it at some point. And so they have. Check out this blog, Zonitics from Arizona and scroll down to May 7. Let me say again for the umpteenth time: I have no problem with good old bias. If Howell Raines wants to run a newspaper tilted left, that’s fine by me. But there needs to be honesty about this or you lose credibility. By the way, a reader sends in the following tally from the Times in the last month: use of “far-left” – 16 times; “far right” – 38 times; use of “left-wing” – 26; “right-wing” – 63.

One of the truly odd facets of the contemporary Catholic church is that while insisting that divorced and remarried Catholics can have no meaningful access to the sacraments and cannot receive absolution, there is an escape clause: annulment. This is usually reserved for Kennedys and other prominent or wealthy Catholics, but is occasionally granted others. In my view, it’s a humane option, if granted on the merits – and it shows how exceptions to firm rules have always been allowed in Catholicism (unless you’re gay, that is, when no exceptions are ever allowed.) Now Newt Gingrich is trying the Kennedy gambit. Figures, doesn’t it?

THE NEW YORK TIMES AND FORTUYN’S MURDERER: Pim Fortuyn may still be an odious rightist, but his assassin, a left-wing environmental extremist, is still merely a “champion” of animal rights, according to the New York Times. High up in this breath-taking Marlise Simons piece, there’s an attempt to argue that the enviro-group to which Fortuyn’s murderer is “exclusively” a litigious group. Then in the last paragraph, we find that the assassin might be linked to another murder of an environmental official, and that he was not simply a member of the group but a co-founder, and that one of his colleagues called him a “fanatic.” Still, Simons’ left-liberal blinders stay firmly on. Here’s the jaw-dropping sentence: “The news prompted an outpouring of furious e-mails and telephone threats against other environmental groups, whose members fear that a broader hate campaign may be building up.” This is the first use of the term ‘hate’ in the Times’ coverage of this event. And it’s used to describe those appalled at the use of political violence – not the practitioners of violence themselves. What a monstrous moral inversion. Let’s see: a extremist enviro-maniac murders an openly gay, libertarian supporter of Israel. And it’s the victim who’s a fascist?

ADDENDUM:Mickey Kaus emails to say that the idea of incorporating his blog into Slate was not a Jake Weisberg innovation entirely, but had first been raised as an idea by Mike Kinsley. Whoever dreamed it up, good luck with it.

This is the kind of bold initiative I want to see more of from the Bush administration. Publicly-funded single-sex schools are an excellent way both to encourage excellence in environments where both girls and boys can do better, and also to increase parental choice. The usual “civil rights” groups are whining, of course. They should be ignored. This is an especially important move for boys – who are currently lagging behind girls in many educational skills, and too often subjected to anti-male curricula. I’m biased, of course. I went to a public co-ed elementary school and a public single-sex high school. Of course I turned into a raving homosexual, but most of my peers didn’t. (And, no, I didn’t go to one of those private all-boy schools which make American Catholic churches look like repositories of sexual restraint). All in all, this is a bold and smart move. I just hope they don’t cave into the “feminist” establishment and back down.

STEVEN ERLANGER’S SMEAR: Truly amazing that Howell Raines’ New York Times has yet to weigh in editorially about the assassination of an openly gay political leader in Holland. What’s keeping them from commenting – either in editorial columns or op-eds? Beats me, although the obvious answer is that they don’t have a clue what to say. The Times was no better than most other mainstream media outlets in brazenly misrepresenting Pim Fortuyn’s politics, and having stoked the animosity that ultimately felled Fortuyn, they might well be a little leery of jumping in. Here’s how the Times’ Steven Erlanger’s explained the Fortuyn phenomenon a mere day before he was murdered by a member of the far left:

Exploiting a general disappointment with Europe’s mainstream politicians, evident in the lower voter turnout, Mr. Le Pen and others who have modernized their fascism, like Jörg Haider of Austria and Pim Fortuyn of the Netherlands, have made extraordinary showings in percentage terms.

It’s perfectly fair to say that populist displeasure at the dictatorial remoteness of the EU played a part in support for Haider, Le Pen and Fortuyn, but describing the colorful professor Pim as a modernizer of fascism is sloppy, false and defamatory. I discovered this appalling quote from an excellent article by Dutch journalist, Diederik van Hoogstraten, just posted on Salon (subscribers only, alas). Here’s the money quote, though:

Calling Fortuyn a neo-fascist is in line with seeing every voter for Le Pen or Berlusconi as a dumb xenophobe. The European left, in power but out of touch, has done exactly that for years. But the issues that Fortuyn and other addressed, have needed urgent attention from the social-democrats in office. To call those who planned to vote for him a bunch of fascists is, to say the least, strange, as many of them had voted for leftist parties in prior elections. It’s safe to say that the ruling class of today helped create the electoral base for populists whom they still do not know how to fight.

For excellent treatment of the Fortuyn affair, and how it has shown up the mainstream media’s biases, check out the Independent Gay Forum website. Paul Varnell’s piece is particularly fine. Reason’s Charles Paul Freund also has an excellent dissection of how the media cannot deal with unconventional politics. I like this point:

For now, appeals to diversity, gender equality, etc., are reserved for groups that, in contemporary journalistic discourse, are given “oppressed” status. When such groups use these appeals, or when these appeals are used on their behalf, it’s legitimate. But when the same appeals are used to argue against the apparent interests of such groups, it’s a category violation. In other words, you can’t allow the villain any of the good lines without either raising the status of the villain or lowering the status of the lines, and that in the end that is one of the most revealing aspects of the Fortuyn story.

For a classic example of how mainstream American gay organizations have responded, check out the website of the Human Rights Campaign. They say … nothing. And why would they? Whenever anything serious happens in the gay rights movement, such as the military battle or the marriage struggle or a prominent assassination, these groups are always, always, AWOL.

ET TU, MICKEY? Mickey Kaus, pioneering blogger, has now defected to the mainstream. It’s a sad day for the blogosphere. His blog will now be incorporated into Slate, which is very smart for Slate (and another sign that Jake Weisberg knows what he’s doing). In my opinion, most online magazines will in the not-so-distant future become agglomerations of bloggers. Their most popular features are already drifting in that direction. What they will eventually become will be more like talk-radio stations, where a handful of provocative bloggers will create a branded talk environment, rather like the blogosphere itself, but with a few editors picking which people to include. The interesting question will be: how is that different from a reader’s “favorites list” – except some editor muckety muck picks the links and you don’t? The only difference will be having to access these blogs via a magazine portal, presumably. Conceptually speaking, that’s a thin reed on which to hang what we once called a magazine, much thinner than a bunch of pages of dead wood. But, hey, good luck to them. It’s worth a shot and proof that Jake is thinking about the medium more deeply than Mike seemed able to. And knowing Mickey, he won’t be likely to cave into groupthink. Also knowing Mickey, of course, this relationship will probably last about eight minutes.

FROM DR STRANGELOVE TO MR EX-GREEN:“Many viewed [Lomborg’s skeptical predecessors] Herman Kahn and Julian Simon as “American rightwing ideological economists,” as Lomborg admits he once viewed Simon. (Kahn may have partially inspired the title character of “Dr. Strangelove,” to give a sense of how he was regarded.) Thus, the left wing could dismiss their views as inherently without merit and unworthy of response or consideration. Censorship via silence. But Lomborg was a progressive Social Democrat and member of Greenpeace from politically-correct Denmark. For Lomborg to change his mind and to reject publicly the “Litany” made him not merely an adversary but a heretic and apostate. The only appropriate response was burning at the stake. Fortunately, literal burnings are rare in the Western World, but as the fanaticism, hate, and violence of the New Left (as seen in the streets of Seattle and repeatedly in Washington DC), raving fanaticism is by no means a thing of the past.” This and many other reactions to Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” in today’s Book Club discussion.

EUCLID UPDATE:Well, she’s put on about five pounds, hasn’t pooped in the apartment for a week, and this evening secured a place on my bed. As I prepare to crash now, there are two beagles occupying my futon. But the best news is that Dusty tried to play with Euclid tonight. She wasn’t that successful. Euclid seemed a little intimidated and kept wandering over to me, as I wrote the Dish, for some sort of approval. Eventually, she picked up a small toy Dusty had tossed in her direction and walked off with it. A start, I suppose. But for a week’s convalesence, the progress has been pretty remarkable. Thanks for all the inquiring emails. I hav
e a feeling I can’t give this little thing away now.

THE LAW DEPOSITION: Read it here in excruciating detail. The Boston cardinal and protector of child-abusers must be hating this. Imagine the humiliation of actually being accountable to victims. My favorite quote from Law’s lawyer: “Well, first of all, let me take the first issue, the First Amendment. I suggest that we agree that I can have a continuing objection as to the First Amendment. I have raised the First Amendment as a defense and feel the inquiry into the internal workings of the Church is inappropriate.” How’s that for clerical privilege.

PRO-MILITARY P.C.: What on earth is wrong with a newspaper printing stories about how some horny American sailors all but rampaged through some Australian brothels when first given shore leave? No one disuptes the facts, but military families are upset. The Sun newspaper, of Bremerton, Washington, which reprinted the story, grovels to its outraged readers in an apology. Pathetic. These soldiers can defeat al Qaeda but they can’t deal with bad publicity? Here’s a tip: if you don’t want bad press, don’t go to brothels and so wear out the prostitutes that they have to shut the place down for a breather.

MORE FORTUYN SMEARS: This from the insufferably smug John Simpson, the BBC bigwig who earned ridicule in the Afghan war for claiming on BBC radio to have liberated Kabul. He throws around words like “hatred,” to describe Fortuyn’s politics. When Fortuyn loses his temper after Simpson compares him to Jean-Marie Le Pen, this merely confirms for Simpson that he is right. Here’s a lovely piece of liberal bigotry: “But in many ways – his avowed homosexuality apart – Fortuyn was an archetypical right-winger.” Has it occurred to Simpson that someone’s sexual orientation does not dictate a thinking person’s politics on matters such as taxes, immigration, or the role of government. Does he think “archetypal right-wingers” support same-sex marriage, legal cannabis, abortion on demand, and so on? Do you think Simpson would for one minute show the same condescending skepticism toward Fortuyn’s murderer, a mere environmental activist? When I read columns like this one, you can see where the anger that propelled Fortuyn to prominence comes from. I hope the Fortuyn list wins unprecedented support in the coming Dutch elections. (By the way, check out the photo. There’s a Fortuyn supporter holding up pictures of Martin Luther King Jr, John F Kennedy and Malcolm X. So much for would-be Hitlers.)

WHY I STILL LOVE TNR: Because a liberal pro-Gore magazine is still prepared to take on environmental irrationality. Gregg Easterbrook, a Lomborg in tweeds, has been on the case for years and years. Always worth reading, his evisceration of the American Prospect’s blather is, as always, informative and enjoyable.

EVERYONE’S A CRITIC, PART TROIS: Remember what I said about theater critics? All subjectivity, unreliable, undependable? I take it all back. What a wonderfully perceptive reviewer of acting Nelson Pressley is. Just kidding. He’s nice about me and my lovely, saintly, hilarious Beatrice, Brooke Butterworth, but he’s tough on the directorial concept of the show. All in all, completely fair criticism. But then I’m way biased aren’t I?

“To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow creatures . . . That the authors of such splendid benefits should be requited by martyrdom; that their reward should be to be dealt with as the vilest of criminals, is not, upon this theory, a deplorable error and misfortune for which humanity should mourn in sackcloth and ashes, but the normal and justifiable state of things. The propounder of a new truth, according to this doctrine, should stand . . . with a halter round his neck, to be instantly tightened if the public assembly did not, upon hearing his reasons, then and there adopt his proposition. People who defend this mode of treating benefactors, cannot be supposed to set much value on the benefit; and I believe this view of the subject is mostly confined to the sort of persons who think that new truths may have been desirable once, but that we have had enough of them now.” – John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty.”

RUMMY VERSUS PENTAGON PORK: Now here’s a battle worth fighting. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s sensible attempt to retire the Crusader artillery system is being stymied by insubordinate Pentagon hacks and Congressional Republicans. I differ with many of my libertarian friends in believing in an interventionist foreign policy and a big defense budget. (Bigger than that now envisaged by the Congress. Empires aren’t cheap.) By far the best argument against this position is that the Pentagon wastes money, doesn’t focus resources on where they are needed, is slow to modernize, reluctant to downsize when necessary, and so on. Rumsfeld’s laudable early attempts to reform this monster went awry. Now, with money flowing more freely, he has a stronger hand to reform where it’s necessary. The battle over Crusader is a critical test of whether he will succeed. I’m glad the Washington Post is weighing in on his side. More need to.

WHAT’S IN A LABEL? The New York Times, which has only recently stopped calling Pim Fortuyn an extremist, had the following to say today about the political assassination of a would-be prime minister of Holland: “Dutch political leaders decided today to go ahead with the general elections next week, even after the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing politician who had stood a chance to become the country’s next prime minister. The police confirmed today that they were holding the assassination suspect, a 32-year-old Dutch environmental activist.” Notice how a socially libertarian maverick is “right-wing” but an ideological assassin is just an “environmental activist.” Even the Dutch police have described the murderer as an enviro-radical. But extremes, in the Time’s p.c. world, only exist on the right. The subtle marginalization of Fortuyn continues, even in death. I would simply ask you to imagine: if this gay man were a liberal and had been killed by a fascist, do you think this story would be treated by the New York Times the same way?

LEAVE US ALONE: “There are many frustrated people in the sciences who are shaking their heads at the amount of time that must be wasted defending their work against his poorly analyzed arguments. Lomborg has no credentials to back up his arguments. Lomborg is an Associate Professor of statistics in a history department, has never published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, nor has he subjected this book to peer review. His startling lack of ecological knowledge isn’t hidden by his nearly 3000 footnotes to this work. Those that insist Lomborg’s book be characterized as a polemic rather than analysis, and [ask that he] please move on to subjects in which he has training and can discuss with authority, are belittled by him — a tactic used by the right. We know his agenda and we wish the hype would go away so we can return to important work.” – an environmental scientist wishes Bjorn Lomborg would just shut up. This and other viewpoints in Day 2 of the debate about “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” in the Book Club.

WHAT ABOUT KASHMIR? The Euro-elites, represented by the insufferable Chris Patten, are appalled that their visceral hostility to Israel might be deemed by Americans to be linked to anti-Semitism. A reader sends the following analogy along to add perspective:

One comparison I sometimes suggest to Europeans is this. The situation in Kashmir has some parallels to the Middle East. A minority is having its hopes for self-determination postponed. In fact, India goes even further than Israel, by ruling out Kashmiri statehood a priori. India claims to be under periodic terrorist attack, and responds with massive force. Lightly armed men from Kashmir and beyond go up against heavily armed and highly trained Indian troops, not to mention Indian tanks, artillery and aircraft.
It’s certainly a mess, and far too many civilians have been killed, either accidentally or through criminal negligence. But where are the protests against India in Europe? Where are the daily editorials? Where are the organized letter-writing campaigns by European liberals? Where are the demonstrations against Indian representative offices? Where are the calls by the EU to boycott Indian trade?
Even-handed criticism is fine, but when Europeans and their media reserve their ire for one country and one race – perhaps especially given their own history – then they run the risk of the accusations of anti-semitism that they are earning.

Couldn’t put it better myself.

THE SMEARING OF FORTUYN, CTD: Check out this description of him in today’s Daily Telegraph – from a former Tory cabinet minister, no less: “Britain has been fortunate to avoid the rise of extreme Right-wing, hateful politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn, the Dutchman who was murdered in Hilversum.” Then I received this email today from Germany, where at least one guy is able to see clearly:

Predictably, Fortuyn is much vilified our press. “Rechtspopulist” (right-wing populist) seems to be his first name, “ausländerfeindlich” (hostile to foreigners) his job description. The newspapers work really hard to get that across. But an article, written after his death, in the online edition of Der Spiegel really goes over the top – our most “respectable” weekly newsmag, by the way. In “The voice of the hidden racism” Fortuyn is repeatedly called a “Rechtsextremist” (right-wing extremist), the word is usually reserved for Neonazis, not politicians of the right. He is credited with bringing the Netherland’s “latent racism” to the surface, but somehow it all fails to shock. The authors must have felt this, too. What to do? Well, according to this article, Fortuyn wanted to “drastically cut back support for sick and disabled people”. The article says nothing else. What a nasty man! Then I remembered The Economist had a survey about the Netherlands in a recent issue. I quote: “….the biggest blemish of all on the Dutch employment record: its absurdly generous disability scheme known as the WAO. Nearly a million people qualify for this, out of a total working population of around 7m, and the
number is still rising. Taken at face value, that 15% rate would suggest that disability in the Netherlands is half as prevalent again as it is in comparable countries…” And later “In effect, the WAO has been used to mop up disguised unemployment” I could not verify that Fortuyn merely wanted to reform this bizarre scheme, but the info makes a big difference, doesn’t it? In the foreign press section they quote the “Aftonbladet”, a Stockholm Newspaper, with the words: “The brown parties of Europe have a new martyr.” Perhaps, if it wasn’t for our so very balanced media, they might never have noticed that Fortuyn was one of them?

Speaking of which, check out this prophetic piece about the smearing of Fortuyn by Dave Kopel in last weekend’s Rocky Mountain News. He nails it.

WHAT THEY THINK OF AMERICA: A stimulating batch of essays worth perusing from the British literary journal, Granta. (I’ve only skimmed so if there’s a Sontagian moment or so, forgive me.) I was particularly buoyed by an essay by Ivan Klima from the Czech Republic. Here’s the blunt truth:

For more than a century now there has existed a sort of American dream. For some it means boundless affluence, for others freedom. I am not a devotee of hypermarkets or of grandiose mansions containing dozens of rooms for just two or three people and a few pedigree dogs and cats. I’ve never yearned for more than one car or a private plane, jet-engined or otherwise. I have an aversion to profligacy, but I don’t share the view that there is an indirect relationship between America’s affluence and Third World poverty. Without idealizing the policies of the big monopolies (either American or European), I am convinced that America’s wealth, which derives from the work of many generations, is chiefly the result of the creative activity of free citizens. The Americans are not to blame for Third World poverty, which is mostly due to the circumstances in the Third World and the demoralizing lack of freedom that most of the people there endure.

A helpful Fortuyn quote from fellow-blogger, Joe Katzman. See if you think this makes him a member of the “far-right” as even Drudge described him yesterday:

“Large groups in the community are lagging behind in social and cultural terms. These groups often originate from countries which did not participate in the Judeo-Christian-humanist developments which have been taking place in Europe for centuries. These shortfalls in development are highly regrettable, as they result in a divide in society and form a threat to the functioning of our large cities.
“This must be tackled vigorously, on the one hand by paying extra attention to housing, schools and cultural education for these groups, but on the other by requiring these groups to make a maximum effort themselves. Cultural developments which are diametrically opposed to the desired integration and emancipation, such as arranged marriages, honour revenge and female circumcision, must be fought by means of legislation and public information. Discrimination against women in fundamentalist Islamic circles is particularly unacceptable.
“In a democratic society like ours, all citizens have the same rights and obligations, irrespective of race, gender, beliefs and nature. There is a division of Church and State in the Netherlands, and therefore also of mosque and state. Thanks to the division of powers (the executive, legislative and judiciary powers), citizens can develop themselves in relative freedom. Our hard-fought freedoms are worth protecting against increasing fundamentalism. We must carry out a study into whether the introduction of a social and military service for boys and girls of eighteen years of age or older can contribute to integration.”

I guess in a society in which a New York Times columnist can compare George W. Bush to Le Pen, such exaggerations are to be expected. But that doesn’t make them any truer.

THE EURO-ELITE RESPONDS: This astonishing quote via Reuters tells you much about what the Euro-elites really feel about a political assassination:

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, referring to Le Pen’s success in France, said the political atmosphere in Europe was “already very delicate.”
“This on top, is of course, very dangerous.”
“Democratic parties have to campaign in a very cautious way, and in a balanced and serene way to try to orientate the debate toward democratic values,” Michel told VRT television.

Yes, this is the continent that gave us fascism. And yes, it could happen again, if political violence is responded to in this craven way.

From the invaluable journalist Rex Wockner, the following quotes from Dutch gay leaders:

“It still feels totally unthinkable, and it feels like our democracy and our way of life have been deeply wounded,” veteran Dutch gay activist Grada Schadee said May 7.
“I was much against his political ideas but I deeply respected him on his openness [as a gay man]. He was so sharp in his debating techniques. He was serious yet also caused much laughter with the public.”
“The whole country is in shock,” said Alex Kröner, publisher of the Amsterdam magazine Gay & Night. “He won one-third of the votes in [the] Rotterdam [local elections] and they expected that he would show at least 20 to 25 percent nationally. People are bringing flowers to his house and where the shooting was and also in Amsterdam at the national square.”
“It’s difficult to generalize,” said Gay & Night Editor Hans Verhoeven. “You either loved him or you hated him. One of the things that was important, he was very openly gay. He talked on public radio about his visits to dark rooms [gay bar backrooms] and he told about the rent boys [hustlers] he employed at his home. He was very open and that was, strangely enough, accepted by the whole society and made him an example for gay people, not only about being out but about how to explore your gay life.
“The general feeling here is one of disbelief. It is the first time since 1672 that we had a political assassination,” Verhoeven said.

The latest information is that his assassin worked for an enviro-leftist organization. That makes me all the gladder to have selected Bjorn Lomborg as our author for this month. Another gay contrarian, he has experienced the same kind of enviro-leftist intolerance that Fortuyn apparently did – although, mercifully, to a far lesser degree.