The Dish

“Oh no, even Andrew Sullivan has gone Queen Mum crazy. What’s all your guff about her and WWII supposed to mean? Without being cruel or disrespectful or even, perish the thought, mildly republican, you should make some reference to the facts about Queen Elizabeth and fascism.” – this and backlash from the left, all on the just-updated Letters Page.

I’ve been taken to task by Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity (a supporter and former sponsor of Michael Moore’s) and gay left media guru, Jim Romenesko, for apparently making a small error in my recent Sunday Times piece about Michael Moore’s screed, “Stupid White Men.” I’m accused of being sloppy. Here’s what I wrote:

There is also barely a mention in Moore’s book about the current war on terrorism. You can understand why. It raises questions the left simply doesn’t want to answer. Was the American intervention in Afghanistan, which many leftists opposed, a liberating mission after all? How can leftists bemoan the removal of a viciously oppressive, sexist, homophobic tyranny?

So far, no factual errors. The defenders of Moore say that his book went to press before September 11 and therefore this criticism is redundant. Huh? Here’s a piece from Salon in January that shows that Moore could have changed the book if he wanted to, that the publishers wanted him to, but he refused:

Moore’s new book, “Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation,” which pointedly criticizes President George W. Bush and his administration, was due in stores on Oct. 2. As with many books scheduled for release in the weeks that immediately followed Sept. 11, plans to ship the title to stores were put on hold. According to HarperCollins, “both Moore and [Judith Regan’s HarperCollins imprint] ReganBooks thought its publication would be insensitive, given the events of September 11.” By mid-October, there were 50,000 finished books (out of an announced first printing of 100,000) collecting a month’s worth of dust in a Scranton, Pa., warehouse, and ReganBooks had yet to schedule a new release date for “Stupid White Men.” It was holding off in hopes that Moore would include new material to address the recent events, and would change the title and cover art. Moore says he readily agreed to these requests. But once HarperCollins had his consent, it asked Moore to rewrite sections — up to 50 percent of the book — that it deemed politically offensive given the current climate. In addition, the Rupert Murdoch-owned publishing house wanted Moore to help defray half the cost of destroying the old copies and of producing the new edition, by contributing $100,000 from his royalty account. Moore was aghast. “They wanted me to censor myself and then pay for the right to censor myself,” he declared. “I’m not going to do that!” After close to three months of relentless negotiations that threatened to embarrass one of the country’s leading publishing houses, the potentially explosive drama was suddenly resolved when HarperCollins announced on Dec. 18 its plans to publish “Stupid White Men” as is, slating the title for early March 2002.

You can understand why Moore didn’t want to do this. I think he was probably right to hold onto his unique brand of bitter vituperation. And it was unfair for the publishing house to demand that he make a financial sacrifice for a news event he had no control over. But it’s simply not true that the book was already published by September 11 and that no changes were in any way possible. Of course, changes were possible. It was also possible that Moore could have amended the book to further excoriate Bush’s handling of the war. But he didn’t. My sentences: “There is also barely a mention in Moore’s book about the current war on terrorism. You can understand why,” therefore stand up. I can understand why Jim Romenesko, who has a gay-left agenda, and Brendan Nyhan, who also has an agenda, would want to skew this matter. But there were no factual inaccuracies in my article. And they should retract their assertion that there were. (P.S. A simple test of whether Romenesko has any fairness in this matter will be shown if he links to this post to rebut his featuring Nyhan’s piece. We’ll see, won’t we?)

“Mr. Rove polls for the magic-button phrases and rationales that will persuade the middle class to help the rich get richer and build a mandate for smog from sea to oil-slicked sea.” – Maureen Dowd, New York Times, today.

TIRED OF THE MEDIA SPIN ON ISRAEL? Check out the blogger alternative – in real time.

This month’s book club selection is Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” It’s not brand new. But it fulfills all the requirements for our book club. It’s provocative; it’s scholarly and meticulously researched; it tackles a burning public issue; and it helps break down some of the more hackneyed right-left debates. Lomborg is a Green; he believes passionately, as I do, in protecting the health of our planet. But he’s also got a brain and he’s skeptical of some of the more outlandish and pessimistic claims of the Green movement. He began his book attempting to refute professor Julian Simon’s work debunking the notion that the earth’s environment is getting worse. To Lomborg’s amazement, he couldn’t refute it. He’s a statistician by training and found that the stats simply didn’t correlate with deep environmental pessimism. This book is the result of his subsequent research. He’s been attacked – sometimes physically – by the old Green guard. He has been pilloried by other environmentalist scientists. He has been cut off from his old allies. And yet he has found some unlikely fans in the reviewers in the mainstream press and from magazines like the Economist. In any event, it’s a book I’ve long meant to buy and read. So why not join in and read alongside me and other andrewsullivan.com readers? Bjorn has agreed to participate – and we’ll also be linking to sites critical and supportive of his work. The only difference is that this is a longer book than our first two – over 400 pages. But it’s such a ground-breaking and stimulating book that I didn’t think that should bar it from being part of our online experiment in book reading and debate. For that reason, we’ll take a full month to read it and start the discussion May 6. So don’t delay. To join the debate for this month, click here to get the book. It promises to be an education and a political stimulant.

CNN PUFFS MOORE: Here’s the most egregiously celebratory puff-piece on the embittered leftist, Michael Moore – from CNN, natch. The prose is priceless: “If some leaders had their way, Moore might be brought up on charges of treason for his critical remarks about the conservative agenda and the Bush administration,” CNN argues. Which leaders, exactly? Then there’s CNN’s attempt at balance in visiting a Moore book-signing:

“He’s wonderful,” said Traverse City Mayor Margaret Dodd. “He cares about the things America is supposed to care about, and he has the courage to do something.” Erin Chamberlain, an organizer of the newly formed campus Green Party, said Moore was a role model. Shannon Hemingway, a volunteer with the college radio station, praised him for presenting complex issues in simple terms. “He’s genuine,” Hemingway said.

Remember that this book has chapters called “Kill Whitey,” and “Idiot Nation.” It argues that president Bush is the beneficiary of a coup. In case you haven’t got the message that Moore is a vital dissenter, brave and true, opposed only by the crazy far right, there’s a puffy book review as well. Let’s say there’s a similar figure on the far right. How about Patrick Buchanan? Or even, say, Ann Coulter? Can you imagine in a million years a similar soft-lens approach being meted out to him or her? Walter, you’ve still got some work to do.

ANOTHER WONDERFUL CATHOLIC BLOGGER: Check this guy out. He calls his blog Sursum Corda.

HOME NEWS: Great news, actually. Traffic last month was 805,000 visits, from 210,000 separate web addresses. And my e-partner Robert just did the accounting, and discovered that we went into a clear debt-free profit in January and that the profit has now risen steadily each month. It’s only a few grand – but hey, it’s something! All because of the book club and your generosity. Another way of looking at this is that this form of Internet journalism went into profit within 18 months. If we stay completely still, and don’t grow at all, I will be able to pay myself a salary more than comparable to my salary at The New Republic. It won’t make me rich, but it sure will pay the rent and then some. This is your achievement, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it’s a small milestone in e-journalism. We may not have made much yet – but this site has now made more profit than Slate and Salon combined. Thanks again – and please keep this success growing. You’ve proved the nay-sayers wrong. Which is why the anti-blog backlash from the established media is now underway. Methinks they’re a little rattled. As well they might be.

OUR GAY CHURCH: I guess I should make it clear, after much discussion on this site and elsewhere, that I am in no way trying to deny that a large majority of the Church’s sexual abuse cases appear to be same-sex in nature; or, for that matter, that most seem to be with post-pubescent youngsters rather than children (which makes the offense less awful, to my mind, but still reprehensible). The difference I have with the likes of Rod Dreher is that I do not believe that this makes it a homosexual problem. It is an abuse problem. Repeatedly describing it as a gay problem unfairly smears the many good gay priests who manage to perform their duties without sexual abuse.

THE SHOE DROPS: But if you read the anti-gay Church conservatives closely, you also realize one amazing thing. They have all but conceded that their beloved Church – in one of the most conservative eras under John Paul II – is predominantly a gay-run institution, at least in America. And since the numbers will tell you that only a small minority of these gay priests have committed sexual abuse, the conclusion surely is that the Church in America relies now to an extraordinary extent on gay priests. Gratitude? Don’t count on it. Sympathy? You’ve got to be kidding. These gay priests are lucky not to be exposed and kicked out – let alone thanked. The sneering tone adopted by some toward these indispensable stewards of the faith shows how deep their contempt for gay men truly is. It also acts as a means to resist the obvious implications of all this.

THE PLIGHT OF GOOD GAY PRIESTS: Think about it for a minute. What gay priests have to do is serve a church that also says that their fellow gays are “intrinsically disordered,” that any attempt by gay men and women to have sex or intimacy or committed relationships is simply a capitulation to evil, that society is justified in permitting discrimination in housing, employment and all manner of occupations to gay people, and that even violence against gays can be understood (if not condoned) in some contexts as a result of gays pushing their agenda too far. Now imagine what that does to the souls and minds and spiritual health of many gay priests. It eats them up. They know this demeaning attitude toward gay people is corrosive of the church and destructive of their own vocations. This internal psychic stress surely has something to do with the small minority who break down and do what actually are ‘evil’ things. But if there is no difference, from the point of view of the church, between the evil of gay intimacy and the evil of sexual abuse, is it any wonder that some conflicted souls act upon that assertion? Or that some get los
t in spiritual, sexual and ethical confusion? This doesn’t excuse their sins and crimes. But the psychological torture wrought upon gay Catholics by their own Church’s doctrines reaches its cruelest peak when applied to gay Catholic priests. It would be nice if some Catholic conservatives, even if they insist that gays in the clergy and laity must be condemned to the martyrdom of loneliness and sexlessness that the Church believes is the only authentic homosexual vocation, acknowledged that this is a very hard cross to bear. It would be even nicer if these conservatives were then able to thank these brave and conflicted souls, who not only bear the deep burden of deep emotional and ethical conflict but have kept their church alive when others haven’t. But I won’t hold my breath.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “If we reasoned better about war, there could be less of it. An example of bad reasoning is the conventional premise that an adversary who targets innocent civilians is too evil to be worthy of a hearing and a negotiated peace. The goal of less war and less terrorism would be helped by reasoning about what causes terrorists to become terrorists, what their goals are, and whether their goals could fit into a mutually beneficial peace settlement. This essay will make four points about the killing of innocent civilians:
One, the conventional belief that civilians in a democracy are innocent is false.
Two, the rule of war that civilians are not to be targets of military violence is inconsistent.
Three, the rule of war that civilians are not to be targets of military violence is counterproductive.
Four, this inconsistent rule of war is counterproductive because it is used to demonize the enemy and increase the emotions for war.” – Clark Rieke, defending terrorism, on the clarifying anti-war left site, Nonviolence.org. By non-violence, they mean no response to terrorist violence. I think.

WHEN WHITE KIDS RIOT: It’s somehow a sporting tradition, especially after the universally approved NCAA championship. When black kids do it, it’s crime. Michelle Cottle has a point, methinks.

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM?: An Irish bishop has just quit because of the way he handled sex abuse cases in the past. He’ll be headed to Rome this week to finalize his departure. This follows a similar incident in Poland. But this is a minor matter of interest only to those “pansexual” Americans. Yeah, right.

BEING FAIR TO MOORE: Several of you have alerted me to the fact that I was wrong to criticize Michael Moore for not mentioning the war on terror in his latest screed. The book apparently went to press on September 10 and therefore couldn’t be changed. I’m sorry I missed this fact. Nevertheless, it still strikes me as somewhat unconvincing. If Moore had wanted to address the issue, HarperCollins could easily have adjusted its press run, added an extra chapter, or some such exigency. They had several months to make changes. But hey, I should have noted the press run issue in the piece. My apologies for that.

Several of you have emailed me to say that I was unfair to the New York Times. There was indeed a wave of criticism of Bush’s Middle East policy over the weekend and the previous week. And sure enough, there was – in the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and andrewsullivan.com, for example. But that wasn’t the point of the Times piece. The point of the Times’s piece was that the criticism was aimed at Bush’s apparent stand-offishness and inattention to the problem. The implication was that Bush’s mistake was not to continue Clinton’s policy of constant hands-on meddling. But the criticism from the right has been precisely the opposite – that Cheney’s trip was too involved, that it was too defensive, that the administration was too equivocal in is support of Israel against terror, that it was micro-managing too much. All that makes the Times’ spin even more disingenous. At least it does to my mind.

According to this story, Paul Krugman wouldn’t even applaud military officials at the Gridiron dinner and noticeably refused to take part in the ‘non-partisan’ spirit of the occasion, refusing to applaud or laugh at any non-Democrats, even when they were making fun of themselves. “People are free to be partisan in their columns,” a White House official comments, “but if you’re going to accept an invitation for an event that honors the president and keeps a non-partisan tone, it’s not too much to think Mr. Krugman, having accepted the invitation, could have acted in the spirit of the dinner.” On this point, you can perhaps sympathize with Krugman. After all, when there are confirmed plutocrats, insistent liars and corporate puppets running the country, they don’t deserve any applause, do they? But my question is: what is this defender of ordinary people, this scourge of the establishment, this brave voice for truth against the lies of Washington, this lone crusader against corporate power-mongers (except when they offer him sweetheart deals) – what’s he doing at this hideous, insider, log-rolling establishment love-fest in the first place?

The Boston Globe’s “media columnist,” Alex Beam, weighs in against blogs today, as predicted. He’s snide, he lacks substance, and he’s gullible! He cites Bjorn Staerk’s April Fool blog – about converting to the far left – as if it were legit. One thing about those newspaper guys. They sure do have a good nose for b.s. Hey, Beam, you got an editor? Beam also informed all the bloggers in advance that he was writing a hatchet piece. James Lileks got the following missive: “James, weren’t you once a talented humor writer? Why are you churning out this web dreck?” I got an even blunter email, which I won’t reproduce since it was a private correspondence. Of course, it’s all flattering, really. He clearly reads bloggers. How many bloggers or their readers have ever read him?

KAUS ON KRUGMAN: Mickey relents and sees what others are seeing: that Paul Krugman once “had a beautiful mind.” Now he rants on about “powerful forces” controlling politics, the Heritage Foundation running the country, Coors beer and Richard Mellon Scaife conspiring to rob old people of their livelihoods, and the complete health of our social security system. The grassy knoll beckons, Paul.

WHAT’S LEFT? My take on what’s happened to the American left. Yes, I know that giving any attention to Michael Moore seems foolish. I would ignore him – but he’s at the top of the best-seller lists. He represents something – a small but dedicated constituency of the embittered and the unthinking that increasingly dictates what remains of a left-wing agenda. In contrast, I’m in awe of Michael Walzer as a thinker with integrity and a decent commitment to left-wing politics. Which makes his gloom about the crisis on the left that much more convincing to me.

It’s been such a wonderful Easter weekend I found it hard to sit down and think, let alone, write about the Middle East. I guess two points strike me: I was really cheered by president Bush’s statement about Israel’s need for self-defense, and about Yassir Arafat’s fundamental responsibility for each day’s unfolding horrors. I was rattled recently by what seemed like equivocation emerging from the White House. I should have trusted the president more. Secondly, this is indeed a war, as prime minister Sharon has said. Yassir Arafat is part of a nexus of terror that has links to Baghdad, is armed by the Iranian dictators, fomented by the Syrians, and financed by the Saudis. Tom Friedman is absolutely right that if the strategy of suicide bombing is allowed to work in Israel, it is only a matter of time before it is deployed in America. And, as Friedman notes, it is not some ad hoc strategy concocted by the Palestinians. It is a conscious, premeditated war-plan devised and supported by almost every Arab state. Yesterday, a Palestinian spokesman made the following statement:

“Our heroes will penetrate your streets, your cities. You will not enjoy security and peace unless our people enjoy peace and freedom… This aggression is by an American decision, and American weapons. America now is the one providing cover for terrorism and supporting terrorism.”

Ignore the Orwellian newspeak. What matters is that these deranged Islamist murderers see Israel as target practise. This war in Israel is not some minor conflict related geographically to the war against terror. It is the same war. Its solution cannot be negotiated. It has to be won. Israel must now fight for survival, by rooting out the terrorist networks threatening the sole democracy in the Middle East, unilaterally retreating to more compact and defensible borders, constructing a wall that will more effectively keep Islamist terrorists out, and beginning a policy of deportations of any and all Israeli Arabs connected to terrorist groups. There is no other way. There is no-one but fanatics and murderers to negotiate with. You’ve got to kiss the settlements goodbye, wage a far more aggressive war against the Palestinian terrorists, and then consolidate defensible territory. We can and should hope for peace. But the only way to get there is through the thorough prosecution of this war. As Sharon tells Safire today: “All countries seeking peace should pray that the Israeli Defense Forces succeed in their mission, because only by uprooting and eradicating terror will we achieve a durable peace.” He’s right. Let us pray.

THE QUEEN MUM: It’s a little hard to feel enormous sorrow at the death of a royal at the grand old age of 101. Sympathy has better objects – some of the victims of more suicide bombings in Israel, for example. But the wife of King George VI nevertheless played a crucial role in steeling her then woefully unprepared husband to be king after the abdication of Edward VIII. It was a precarious time – of danger abroad, a deeply divided British establishment, and a looming war. She held the monarchy together, a feat which, in retrospect, turned out to be an important ingredient in enabling Britain to sustain itself under Hitler’s assault. My old editor, Bill Deedes, of the Daily Telegraph gets it just right in his paper today. And he’s one of the few journalists old enough to recall how many of her best friends this former queen lost – in the First World War!

BILL’S BACK: Like a belated belch from a bad meal, Newsweek is now featuring an interview with former president Bill Clinton. They chose that hard-as-nails unbiased reporter Jonathan Alter to do it. Was Joe Conason unavailable? But maybe Conason would have balked at questions like: “Why do you think the right wing was so obsessed with you?” and “Why do they still beat up on you when you’re not in power anymore?” (To be fair, Alter did ask some tougher questions as well.) The thing that struck me most about the interview is how utterly unchanged Clinton is. His life is still crammed with meaningless activity, his schedule constructed to avoid any moment of silent reflection. And then there’s the fathomless self-pity. He knew nothing, he says, about the dismally corrupt procedure of selling pardons in his last weeks. The only reason he wouldn’t pardon Marc Rich again was that the ‘politics’ was terrible. Er, Mr. President, has it occurred to you that it was simply wrong to pardon a fugitive criminal and tax-evader? Nah. Then there’s his Brock-Blumenthal notion of some “right-wing establishment,” that was out to get him. Let’s gladly concur that there were many unsavory characters on the right who often behaved disgracefully in trying to smear him. But an establishment? When Clinton took office, both Senate and House were controlled by his own party. Every major newspaper and media outlet had endorsed him. Wall Street loved him. Hollywood adored him. And he thinks the “establishment” was out to get him? The truth is: if there is such a thing as a “right-wing establishment,” Clinton created it, just as his malfeasance and corruption managed to turn even the New York Times editorial board against him.

THE CLINTON EXCEPTION: All these people – from Howell Raines to Mike Kelly – Clinton cannot forgive. But you know who he can understand? Osama bin Laden. Here’s the amazing quote:

There is one thing I wish I had been able to do. [In fall 2000] I had two options, OK? We knew more or less where [bin Laden] would spend the night. But keep in mind, we were told he was going to be at that training site [in August 1998] and he left a couple of hours before [the missiles hit]. So what did I have? A 40 percent chance of knowing we could have hit it. But there were a very large number of women and children in that compound and it’s almost like he was daring me to kill them. And we know at the same time he was training people to kill me. Which was fair enough-I was trying to get him. I felt it would hurt America’s interests if we killed a lot of Afghani women and children and didn’t even get him.

Those are my italics. Think about that for a minute. Here’s Osama bin Laden, an evil man, training people in a despicable distortion of Islam to murder innocents. He’s already killed Americans. He’s planning the WTC massacre. And Clinton thinks it’s “fair enough” for bin Laden to try and assassinate the president of the United States because the president “was trying to get him.” You want to know why I’m glad Clinton isn’t president right now? Statements like that.

THE REAL DRUG WAR: The Onion manages to penetrate to the truth – once again.

THE NEXT BOOK CLUB BOOK: Who wants to launch anything on April 1? The new book will be announced Wednesday. Check back in then.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “I’d venture, for a start, that Catholicism has caused more pedophilia than it has cured; in my opinion, the reason why this church is so dead set against abortion is so that its priests can have a ready stream of children to molest.” – Julie Burchill, The Guardian.

MORONIC CONVERGENCE:How’s this for an April Fool? The Guardian runs a story on a French book that is now soaring on the French bestseller lists. The book claims there was never a terrorist plane crash into the Pentagon. It was all made up by the U.S. government. American Airlines Flight 77 never took off and never crashed. Its missing passengers are presumably in some secure location. I hope this is an April Fool. But I have a sinking suspicion it isn’t.

Paul Krugman’s now made the last step toward becoming a bona fide left-wing paranoiac. His column today, in which he endorses David Brock, and portrays all conservative criticism of the Clinton administration or indeed of any liberal figure as part of a plutocratic-funded smear machine is loopy enough. Has he read his own paper’s editorials criticizing Clinton’s Whitewater conduct? But arguing that his own Enron mess was concocted by the same smear machine is simply deranged. The fact of Krugman’s $50,000 Enron sweet-heart deal was reported first not by the Washington Times, but by the New York Times, that well-known organ of the right-wing conspiracy. This site certainly helped bring this fact to others’ attention. I wish I were the beneficiary of vast amounts of right-wing scandal money, but Krugman will have to accept that I have yet to receive one personal dollar from writing for this site for eighteen months and have zero plutocrats (you know my email address if you want to shower cash on the site, guys), except the generous support of hundreds of modest donors, all of whom are promptly disclosed. This site, allegedly a tool of vast right-wing moneyed interests, also broke the story of Bill Kristol’s $50,000 “fee,” as well as reporting on Larry Kudlow’s, Peggy Noonan’s and Irwin Stelzer’s easy Enron money. Moreover, the only way in which the issue of bought-and-paid-for pundits could be raised in the New York Times was by the left-wing site, TomPaine.com, by buying an ad on Krugman’s own op-ed page. The Times’ media reporters – alone in the national media – wouldn’t touch the pundit scandal as a separate, important part of the Enron story. Hmmm. So much for a right-wing conspiracy. Krugman knows this, of course. But rather than reflecting on some of the conflicts of interest his corporate buck-raking has generated, he prefers to disappear down the sink-hole of conspiracy theories, paranoid tales of right-wing money, and the usual Manichean self-righteousness of the hard left. It’s a shame. One day, he’ll start thinking and writing intelligently about economics. Until then, he’s the one who increasingly seems to be blowing smoke.