BUMILLER BIAS WATCH

“[President Bush] also said Democratic senators ‘need to stop fussing and stop talking and get something to my desk that will take care of the workers and provide stimulus to this economy.’ ” – Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, December 5.
“”There seems to be a little bit of a logjam in Washington, D.C. right now. And I know that Senators from both parties, if they could hear the stories about — and I’m sure they do, I’m sure they listen when they go home. But they need to act. They need to stop fussing and stop talking and get something to my desk that will take care of the workers and provide stimulus to this economy.” – President Bush’s actual remarks, same day (emphasis added).

“MALIGN NEGLECT”

One theme of James Bennet’s otherwise excellent recent dispatches from Israel has been that the current conflict was in part caused by the Bush administration’s “malign neglect” of the peace-process. This ignores the fact that more Israelis have been murdered by terrorists since the Oslo Accord than in all the years since 1948. It is also belied by the New York Times’ own story today by David Firestone that documents Hamas’s plans for terror and supplanting the PLO since at least 1993.

ASHCROFT, BUTTERFIELD AND GUNS: The invaluable weblogger, Glenn Reynolds, dismantles Fox Butterfield’s New York Times’ piece on attorney general Ashcroft’s ruling on gun checks today. Reynolds argues that “a firearms registry that permits the lookup of individuals is specifically forbidden by statute.” Hmmm.

THE MYTH OF THE MYTH OF THE ANTI-WAR LEFT: Be sure to check out Ron Radosh’s response to Jake Weisberg in the current Frontpage magazine. Thinking about this debate overnight, it occurred to me that I should add something. Although I disagree with Jake about the salience of the anti-war left, he does have one good point. Those of us who hammered the nihilists, post-modernists and feeble-minded after September 11 might seem to be going overboard in one respect. In retrospect, with regard to this war, these people turned out to be pretty irrelevant. But there was no way we could have predicted that at the time, and under the circumstances, I think we were right to take no chances. Jake will have noticed that the anti-left campaign has now subsided in this regard. But more generally, the reason for our vehemence was that we decided to take the opportunity of the war to expose and discredit the far-left more broadly. The reason is obvious. For the past generation, the pomo left has hijacked our universities, helped destroy good high school education, derailed good causes like gay rights, and acted as a horrifying bully whenever it won power. Most of the time, sane good people couldn’t be bothered to take notice of these authoritarians. The war changed that. By showing how people like Sontag, Pollitt, Chomsky, Moore, et al were incapable even of responding to mass murder, we were able to show how deeply corrupt their thinking was and is. The war was an invaluable opportunity to expose them to a wider audience, discredit and marginalize them. I make no apologies for doing so. Liberals whose cause is also derailed by these extremists should, in my opinion, join in. And some liberals – like The New Republic – have. It’s a pity that Jake and others should now rise to these leftists’ defense just when we have them somewhat on the run. I say: smoke ’em out wherever they’re hiding.

THOSE SWEDISH CHARACTERS: I’m sorry for the weird characters in an item posted yesterday. To all of you Microsoft gloaters, it had nothing to do with Apple. It’s too boring to go into detail but it was a series of tech errors. I hope it won’t happen again.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the “ratio studiorum” of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach – if not the Kingdom of Heaven – the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment. You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions… And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic. ” – Umberto Eco.

CLINTON LEGACY WATCH

Here’s an op-ed by someone who ought to know on Bill Clinton’s negligence with regard to al Qaeda. It’s by one Mansoor Ijaz, the interlocutor between the Clinton administration and Sudan in 1996 and after. One devastating passage: “In July 2000–three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen–I brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with Bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States’ closest Arab allies–an ally whose name I am not free to divulge–approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials. The offer, which would have brought Bin Laden to the Arab country as the first step of an extradition process that would eventually deliver him to the U.S., required only that Clinton make a state visit there to personally request Bin Laden’s extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family–Clintonian diplomacy at its best.” Let’s see how Joe Conason spins his way out of this one.

THE REAL BUSH: Amazing that Salon ran this little piece, but from everything I know, it tells you much more about the real character of our president than any number of hatchet-jobs from Dowd, Wolff, etc. Enjoy.

CAMELOT IS A SILLY PLACE: I’m a sucker for Lego and Monty Python, so this little movie amused me no end. Give it a whirl.

THE NON-EXISTENT LEFT: Yes, I know these people don’t really exist. Their influence is always exaggerated by crazy daisy-cutter rightists like yours truly, but this piece by Stanley Kurtz is really eye-opening. Author Christina Hoff Sommers was invited to speak about various educational methods designed to eradicate differences between boys and girls in American education. The forum was the Center for Substance Abuse and Prevention (CSAP) of the Department of Health and Human Services. When Sommers was about to launch into criticism of some of these programs, she heard what might be described as the rallying cry of the academic left when they come across someone who disagrees with them. “Shut the fuck up, bitch,” yelled professor Jay Wade of Fordham University. Sommers’ talk was ended. All Sommers had done was argue against positions held by the leftist educational establishment. Their response was to humiliate, insult and silence her, which is what they do every day on their respective campuses against anyone deviating from their agenda. The apologists for the far left – they don’t exist, they’re fringe, they’re irrelevant – have one thing in common. They haven’t been targeted by these intolerant bullies. Maybe when they are, they will wake up and see what’s really out there.

THE TALIBAN’S DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL: All the rest of NATO may have given up on policing their militaries for homosexuals, but the United States can rest easy knowing that one military that still supports U.S. policy is the Taliban. Any consorting with beardless young men in the army is strictly forbidden. This story from the Daily Telegraph tells of a weird and fastidious obsession.

THE MYTH OF THE MYTH OF THE ANTI-WAR LEFT

There’s a new liberal spin out there. The left has always been in favor of the war. My friend Jake Weisberg makes the point in Slate: “Those policing the debate are dropping the rhetorical equivalent of daisy cutters on a few malnourished left-wing stragglers. Of course those opposed to the United States defending itself against terrorism are wrong. They also happen to be totally irrelevant.” My friend, the always charming Rick Hertzberg, did the same pirouette in the New Yorker last week: “[T]here is no anti-war movement to speak of… Apart from traditional pacifists, and a tiny handful of reflexive Rip Van Winkles, almost no-one objects, in broad outline, to the aims and methods of the anti-terrorism campaign.” This week Hertzberg blithely goes on to object to virtually every domestic security measure the administration has pursued and calls for Attorney General Ashcroft to resign. Never mind.

SOME CONTEXT: What neither Rick nor Jake points out is context. Neither can deny that a battery of left-wing intellectuals – from the Nation to the New Yorker to Slate – had immediate knee-jerk anti-American responses to September 11. They did. Some of us documented it. Neither Rick nor Jake can deny that 5 percent of the country still opposes the war. Neither can deny that much of the left-wing professoriate blamed America first – again, it is documented, thanks in part to invidious “debate-policers” like me. (And by the way, I started the Sontag Awards. The Weekly Standard ripped the idea off.) Nor can they deny that anti-war protestors organized, rallied and mobilized in the immediate aftermath of the massacre. Did Rick or Jake go to Union Square or see the anti-war protestors in Washington calling George W. Bush the “real terrorist”? Now it’s also true that these people are a tiny fringe. They exist in “enclaves.” But it’s equally true that the main reason for their current retreat is not because they didn’t exist in the first place – but because even in their reality-free minds, the sheer success of the war completely pulled the rug from beneath them. After all, it’s hard to rally against a war when it seems on the verge of being won. Do Hertzberg and Weisberg doubt for a minute that if the Taliban were still in power and if the Northern Alliance and U.S. troops were still bottled up in Northern Afghanistan that the airwaves wouldn’t be crammed with naysayers and anti-war protestors? Do they listen to NPR’s incessant anti-war commentary? Another reason, methinks, why the Nation, Sontag, et al have changed their tune somewhat is precisely because some of us refused to give them a pass. I think many leftists were shocked by the vehemence of the reaction to their nihilism and stupidity. Our intellectual daisy-cutters, like the real thing, had an effect. Most of these intellectuals are slaves to public opinion and they tacked to the prevailing winds at the first opportunity. But they haven’t disappeared. At every step of the way, they have tried to undermine the war effort. They have done what they can to slant the media; they have opposed much of the domestic anti-terrorism effort; people like Barbara Kingsolver still subject us to glib sermons about American cultural inferiority. I can see why moderate lefties might want to retroactively cover up the knee-jerk attitudes of their more extreme allies in the wake of a mass-murder of American civilians. But some of us noticed at the time. And some of us won’t forget.

KAUS ON FIRE

If you like catty web-commentary – and I have no idea whether you do – then check out Mickey Kaus’s first two items today. He skewers Salon; then he skewers Bob Kuttner, the oleaginous socialist who runs the mind-numbingly earnest American Prospect. (Kuttner’s intellectual acumen can be gleaned from a cover-piece he wrote for The New Republic at the beginning of the 1990s predicting an economic “abyss” for the entire decade. Oh, well.) My favorite quote from Kuttner’s snooty letter is when he refers to the always-readable kausfiles.com as a “vanity webletter.” I love it when these tired old poobahs refer to weblogs as “vanity” publications. Eric Alterman described andrewsullivan.com as such in a previous column. Kuttner and Alterman are just jealous because weblogs are new and interesting and free and subversive, while they are pouring out the same old schlock for media conglomerates and lefty philanthropists, with nothing better to do with their money. And people actually read us.

MEDIA BIAS WATCH

This from NBC News correspondent Keith Miller talking to Tom Brokaw last night.

“MILLER: Today’s violence continues a battle between two men that goes back more than 30 years: Arafat, the freedom fighter, intent on winning a homeland for Palestinians; and Sharon, the tank commander, defending the state of Israel. Today, both men are in their seventies, losing patience and running out of time.”

Freedom fighter versus tank commander? Who’d you pick?

RACIAL POLITICS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, I’m biased because the New York Times today was referring to my former teacher, Harvey C. Mansfield, a lone voice decrying grade inflation. But was it really necessary for the Times to report the following in this way:

“[Mansfield] has also injected a racial component into the discussion by contending that white professors tend to avoid giving bad grades to black students, perhaps because they worry that such students might then be inclined to flee Harvard.
“There’s a feeling that you shouldn’t pass judgment in a way that might hurt someone’s self-esteem,” said Mr. Mansfield, who is white.”

Notice the subtle pejorative here. Mansfield didn’t raise a touchy subject worth exploring. He “injected a racial component” into the debate. And his motives are suspect because “he is white.” This from a paper which will go out of its way in all sorts of cases to avoid citing the race of someone who is black, for fear of stirring racial stereotypes. Simply put, it is irrelevant what race Mansfield is. Either his point has merit, or it does not. In this case, I’m not sure I completely agree with Harvey. But that doesn’t mean his point should be summarily dismissed. This man has been right about this issue before the New York Times even reported it. They need to give him some r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

ON A ROLL

Since September 11, Tom Friedman has been almost unrecognizably good. Today’s column is a burst of clear-eyed sanity. Here’s a sentence that’s still ringing in my ears: “[I]f it is impossible anymore for Arab-Muslim leaders to distinguish between Palestinian resistance directed at military targets and tied to a specific peace proposal, and terrorism designed to kill kids, without regard to a peace plan or political alternatives, then over time no moral discourse will be possible between America and the Arabs.” There you have it. But will the Arabs understand this before it gets too late?