The Dish

“Patriotism opposes the lone representative of democracy who was brave enough to vote her conscience instead of following an angry mob. (Several others have confessed they wanted to vote the same way, but chickened out.) Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth who’ve spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder?” This is Barbara Kingsolver’s response to the many, many Americans who are not for intimidation, censorship, bigotry, sexism and whatever, and yet who also take pride in a symbol of country and freedom. Kingsolver still won’t sign on to Old Glory, and her view of history is, to say the least, a little undeveloped. Here she is on the Gulf War: “In the Persian Gulf War we rushed to the aid of Kuwait, a monarchy in which women enjoyed approximately the same rights as a 19th century American slave. The values we fought for and won there are best understood, I think, by oil companies. Meanwhile, a country of civilians was devastated, and remains destroyed.” Hmmm. No mention of Iraq or Saddam or aggression or the invasion of Kuwait. The selective nature of some of these people’s memory is truly remarkable. No mention either of the truly fanatical hatred of women, gays, Jews and so on, represented by the Taliban. I have been asked by many to stop quoting these idiocies of the far left. Sorry, but no deal. I absolutely, categorically defend far leftists’ right to write or say whatever they think, without fear or intimidation. But equally, it seems to me that exposing their nihilism, narcissism and illogic is also an important duty. Some people take these writers seriously. It’s time they didn’t.

DUNKIRK IN NEW YORK: A beautiful piece somewhat mitigating the dreck the Observer has been running elsewhere. An Australian, Peter Carey, pays tribute to his new city: “Now our neighbourhood has become a command centre. That evening we are standing on the corner of Houston and 6th Avenue watching the huge earth-moving equipment and heavy trucks rolling, bumper to bumper, in a never-ending parade towards the devastation. Here is the endless might and wealth of America. Here are the drivers, like soldiers, heroes. These are not military vehicles but huge trucks from small companies in Connecticut and New Jersey, from Bergen and Hackensack. Seeing all these individuals rise to the crisis, with their American flags stuck out of windows and taped to radio aerials, I am reminded of Dunkirk. I am moved. We are all moved. The crowds come out to cheer them. I do too, without reserve.”

A reader sends in some Newspeak terms for Reuters to use to describe the September 11 terrorists: “asymmetric warfare specialists” or “civilian elimination engineers.” Other euphemisms welcomed.

HITCH VERSUS THE LEFT: Hitchens goes at it again, taking on his own friends in the Nation. It’s ok for me to bang on about the Left. They hate me anyway. But Hitchens’ brilliant little piece skewers them like a well-done kebab. Here’s one favorite rhetorical flourish: “But straight away, we meet people who complain at once that this enemy is us, really. Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed “we” did. Well, does this not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power? A sudden sheep-like silence, broken by a bleat.” LOL.

MOVE OVER, PETER JENNINGS: “My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war… It seems impossible to explain to a 13-year-old, for whom the war in Vietnam might as well be the War of Jenkins’s Ear, the connection between waving the flag and bombing ordinary people half a world away back to the proverbial stone age. I tell her she can buy a flag with her own money and fly it out her bedroom window, because that’s hers, but the living room is off-limits.” – Katha Pollitt, The Nation. These domestic scenes sound like a hilarious red-diaper version of Absolutely Fabulous, where hippie mom and nerdy daughter fight their own little cultural war. I’m with the kid.

My luggage (and laptop) are stuck at Boston’s Logan Airport, causing a slight delay in updating the Daily Dish. To tide you over you’ll find two new feature articles posted to the right.

Howie Kurtz reports today that ABC News reporters and staffers are going to be barred from wearing small American flag pins during this war. “Objectivity” is the key. As if anyone believed Peter Jennings would allow something obscene like love of country to infect his broadcast. Reuters will also apparently ban the use of the word “terrorist” from its lexicon. Too biased. “We’re trying to treat everyone on a level playing field, however tragic it’s been and however awful and cataclysmic for the American people and people around the world,” Reuters official Stephen Jukes tells Howie. Then he gets to the real reason: “We don’t want to jeopardize the safety of our staff. Our people are on the front lines, in Gaza, the West Bank and Afghanistan. The minute we seem to be siding with one side or another, they’re in danger.” And what exactly do you call people who massacre over 6,000 innocent civilians? Operatives? Campaigners? Peace-workers? Newspeak is alive and well – and harbored in the cowardly heart of Reuters.

GOOD FOR HERBERT: Bob Herbert gives me the willies a lot of the time, but say this for him: he’s open-minded and his tribute to president Bush’s address to Congress was gracious and true.

So fitting that Mark Bingham should have had Senator John McCain at his private memorial service. And quite typical that the Senator was glad to be there. Bingham was a Republican, gay and a hero who supported McCain’s campaign early on. For McCain to point out how much Mark did to save this country from even worse horror was particularly touching. It helps erase the stench from the Amos Brown grandstanding of last week. I’m proud to reprint part of the Senator’s eulogy here: “I never knew Mark Bingham. But I wish I had. I know he was a good son and friend, a good rugby player, a good American, and an extraordinary human being. He supported me, and his support now ranks among the greatest honors of my life. I wish I had known before September 11 just how great an honor his trust in me was. I wish I could have thanked him for it more profusely than time and circumstances allowed. But I know it now. And I thank him with the only means I possess, by being as good an American as he was.” May he rest in peace.

LETTERS: Reports on the far left’s anti-Americanism around the country; war and legitimate dissent; denial and death. Get ready to be cheered up.

SCRAP THE CONSTITUTION: It’s a pretty good rule these days that the comments of anyone writing from the faculty of a leading American university about this event will be constrained from telling it like it is. American academia is currently in thrall to post-modern, post-colonialist nihilism in which any moral judgment – except knee-jerk demonization of Caucasians – is verboten. So part of the amusement of reading these people in the mainstream press is watching their ideology collide with common sense. Take a look at Yale scholar Lamin Sanneh’s op-ed piece in the New York Times today. The following sentences ring with all the clarity of a dark, impenetrable fog: “Muslim leaders need to embark on programs of democratic renewal – with the support of the West, if necessary. The West needs to overcome its insistence that the nation-state must be secular to be legitimate. The West should recognize that specific cultural values and political policy may intersect without threatening civil liberties, and that religion can play an important role in public life. That would enable Muslims to engage with the West without endorsing secularism.” What on earth does that mean? There are simply no Arab-Muslim states with even a semblance of democracy, and none that looks like fertile ground. They are all dictatorships or theocracies or some hideous combination of the two, despite billions in aid from the U.S. The pro-democracy forces in, say, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, are all but non-existent, and the main challenges to the despots come from even more fanatical mullahs. I’m sorry but a blithe call for “programs of democratic renewal” in those countries is all but meaningless. Besides, the West has accepted as legitimate the semi-religious satrapy of Saudi Arabia, while that regime has fostered the very fanaticism we now confront. The second point from Sanneh seems to be some sort of call for the Western nations to abandon their own sharp delineation between Church and State, i.e. a repeal of the First Amendment. Or some sort of greater fusion of presumably Christian public values with our politics. And this is supposed to help Muslims engage with the West? Gee, smart thinking on that one. Maybe if we put a cross in the middle of the Mall, they’ll have a better target next time. I think this article is a classic in seeing how many of our current academics, parroting leftist dogmas to themselves and their poor, bewildered students for so long, have nothing much to tell us at a moment like this. In fact, their long endorsement of moral nihilism paved the way for the decadence and irrelevance we now see endemic on the far left.

DOWD’S SCOOP: Maureen Dowd, who has seen her entire year-long analysis of George W. Bush demolished before her eyes, keeps up the animosity in Sunday’s column. I wish Maureen would give the guy a second chance. Bush has shown he is not lazy, not dumb, not incompetent, not a puppet. Today’s New York Times’ story about the president reveals someone adept at management and decision-making, trusting a black woman as his most important confidant. You’d think that combo might make some liberals take a pause and reassess the man. Dowd even has a scoop on her hands, at least I think it’s one: “Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political strategist, is in the middle of our national security crisis. First, he called around town, trying to sell reporters the story – now widely discredited – that Mr. Bush didn’t immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air Force One was in jeopardy, too.” Funny, but I haven’t read anywhere a story showing that the alleged coded threat to Airforce One and the White House was made up to give the president political cover. That is an extraordinary claim and surely deserves some evidence. Dowd is accusing the president of a bald-faced lie about our national security at a uniquely dangerous and important moment. Can we have something a bit more solid than “widely discredited”? Come on, Maureen. Tell us what you know.

FAREWELL, PTOWN: Finally flying back to DC tomorrow. They’ve just draped the hideous Pilgrim Monument with red, white and blue lights, and the mist is coming in off the bay. I feel enormous sadness leaving this little place, not least because it’s far safer than where I’m headed; but also because its calm and eerie beauty has helped keep me and others sane these past couple of weeks. I do want to say, however, that this little town of such diversity and counter-culture has done itself proud. The memorials, the crowds, the gentle hugs on the street, the bonfires and tears, the flags jammed onto boats and trucks – they all showed that beneath our differences, some things endure. A drag show benefit at the Atlantic House raised over $10,000 for the American Red Cross a few days ago. How’s that for a symbol? My one deep hope is that through this awful conflict, we may relearn the importance of a citizenship and community that transcends our particular identity. And part of that started here.

Perhaps one of the best analyses of Bush’s superb speech last Thursday night can be found in the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung. As the author Frank Schirrmacher observes, the patience and resolution of the president’s message was completely not what the terrorists were expecting. They wanted Armageddon, a massive, sudden Clinton-like counter-strike that they could use to foment further disruption. What they got was a deadly serious, internationally conscious, militarily patient call to arms.

HITCH AGAIN: Christopher Hitchens and I disagree about many, many things, but I’ve always regarded him as a decent man of the Left who can tell the truth as he sees it. He’s also a chum. In the current climate he is doing us all a favor by seeing more clearly what needs to be seen by his comrades. Hitch was absolutely right in being one of the first people to recognize the dark evil of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, right to see the moral stakes in Bosnia, right to expose Bill Clinton for the negligent charlatan he was. So I’m not exactly surprised by his clarity in the Nation. Here’s the critical passage for which he deserves warm support: “[T]he bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there’s no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about “the West,” to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don’t like and can’t defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state. Loose talk about chickens coming home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emitted by Falwell and Robertson, and exhibits about the same intellectual content. Indiscriminate murder is not a judgment, even obliquely, on the victims or their way of life, or ours. Any decent and concerned reader of this magazine could have been on one of those planes, or in one of those buildings–yes, even in the Pentagon.”

MARK BINGHAM’S LEGACY: I normally post letters in the letters section. But I want to make an exception for the following. It says a great deal to me and, I’m sure to others. It suggests that this war may lead to a better world, as long as we fight tenaciously and intelligently to win:
“I am a pretty conservative native Arizonan. I thought I was middle of the road until I went to college, where I found out that, at least compared to most of the “elites” in my generation, I’m right of center. I was a football and rugby player in college as well, which further differentiated me from most of my classmates in that such sports were viewed with suspicion by most of the liberal-types on campus (which would be a sizeable majority). I also hold pretty conservative Christian views on most matters (I guess I’m a conservative Methodist, which is a bit of an oxymoron I’ll grant).
“The issue I wanted to talk about is gay rights, and gays in the military in particular. As you might imagine, growing up in Arizona in a family with strong military ties (my grandfather dropped out of medical school in WW II to be a medic), I agreed with the majority sentiment in my state that gays had no place in the military, especially if they were open about it. I played football in high school with several guys who ended up as combat vets of the Gulf War, and they were all in agreement that admitting gays would undercut morale and unit cohesion. Since this jived with my preconceptions, it just reinforced my position. I’ve read your arguments to the contrary (based on the similar problems with integration of the African Americans after WW II), and while I understood the merits of them, I still disagreed. What changed my mind was Mark Bingham.
“You see, whether I admitted it consciously or not, one of my problems with gays in the military was not only the unit cohesion issue, but also the sense that gays just couldn’t cut it. This perception is based in part on the media portrayal of gays (lots of it by gays themselves) as effeminate, etc., as well as my personal experience with gays my age, most of whom seemed little interested in military service or aggressive pursuits in general, unless it was protesting something (a daily occurence at Pomona).
“Well, as we found out last week, Mark Bingham could cut it. He played rugby for Berkeley in the early 90’s, when they had the best team in the nation and won the national championship three times in 5 years. I played against them twice during that time period, and we got killed both times. I’m sure I met Mark and had a beer with him after these games (Rugby can be pretty social that way), and I have no doubt that he crushed me once or twice, and vice versa, out on the “pitch.” Last week during the aftermath of the attacks, the thought that kept occurring to me was, what would I have done if I had been on one of those planes? I know (without really knowing) that I would’ve attacked the terrorists and gone down swinging. It seems that had I been on the same plane as Mark, he would’ve been right there with me, and would have certainly been a formidable ally to have. His reaction (fight the bastards) to this horrible assault was the same as mine, and he probably helped save thousands of lives, and perhaps our Capital or the White House as well. He’s a hero, plain and simple. I simply can’t say to myself anymore that gays have no place in the military. I thought you should know.

A sharp reader noticed an interesting difference between Edward Said’s piece for the Observer and the same piece as it appeared in Al Ahram, designed for Arab audiences only. In the Observer, Said notes that “Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a normally rebarbative and unpleasantly combative, even retrograde figure, has rapidly attained Churchillian status.” In al-Ahram, the sentence appears as: “Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a normally rebarbative and unpleasantly combative, even retrograde figure, known for his virulently Zionist views, has rapidly attained Churchillian status.” Hmmm. I wonder who is responsible for this. Said, playing both sides of the aisle, like Arafat? The Observer, worried that Said’s swipe at Giuliani might alienate even their readers? Or Al Ahram, eager to denigrate even a man such as Giuliani? None of the possibilities is very encouraging. But then with Said, what else could we expect?

GAYS IN THE MILITARY: Some of you have asked me for a link to the fact that gays can now serve openly in the military – as long as there is a war on. Here’s one piece from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Nothing since Reagan has been as good in presidential oratory. The president’s speech writers crafted a luminescent call to arms. It was measured without being weak; it was moving without a trace of melodrama; it was stirring without being jingoist. And there was something about the president’s demeanor that suggested to me at last that he knows why he got this office. To speak of his growth at this point would be to condescend. He gets it. He means it. He knows what this war is fundamentally about. My cherished moment was when he rightly described this threat – and its twisted ideology – with the other great evils that have threatened freedom in the last century and before. “The unmarked grave of discarded lies” is a phrase that resonates deeply and truly. God bless the man and the country he finally indisuptably leads.

I probably shouldn’t write this right now since I am literally shaking with anger. A memorial service for San Francisco’s victims of the World Trade Center massacre was essentially hijacked by America-haters. San Francisco supervisor Amos Brown took advantage of the occasion – in front of families of the victims – to deliver an anti-America tirade. Paul Holm, the partner of Mark Bingham, the heroic gay rugby player who may well have played a part in downing one of the planes in Pennsylvania, stormed off the stage in protest. “America, America,” Brown ranted. “What did you do — either intentionally or unintentionally — in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting? America, what did you do in the global warming conference when you did not embrace the smaller nations? America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the the world conference on racism, when you wouldn’t show up? Ohhhh — America, what did you do?” As the leftist crowd cheered, Paul went over to Senator Dianne Feinstein and said to her “This was supposed to be a memorial service.” He also went up to Senator Barbara Boxer and Governor Gray Davis and told them he thought Brown’s remarks were a disgrace, as they truly were. Then he quit the stage, and will always be forced to remember his husband’s memorial service as a place of anger and despair. Brown’s sentiments are completely inappropriate in any case. But to express them in front of grieving spouses, people who may well not share Brown’s hideous politics, is simply vile. (To her great credit, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, hardly a conservative, disowned and criticized Brown’s remarks.) Maybe it’s because I know some of Bingham’s friends who do not share this perverted politics that I feel so angry right now. I feel as if this hero has been violated after his death. What on earth could possess people to do this at a moment like that?

AMPLIFICATION: The quote from James Dobson cited in a previous item has not been confirmed. It was posted on a gay news service but there is no independent confirmation. I’m trying to nail it down with a second citation, but until I do, I’ll remove it.

Two missives from the far right that are well worth airing, and that I have so far missed. The first was noted by James Taranto on OpinionJournal.com. It’s from a man called Anthony Lobaido, published on a major conservative news site, WorldNet Daily. Here’s a choice passage: “In the West, we most often see Islamic people as crazed and irrational. But have we considered that the Muslims might not be irrational when they consider America to be akin to Satan? Let’s look at the Satanic Bible. What are the values of Satan? Lust, greed, gluttony, revenge. Hmm. Sounds like American society. Is New York the head of the “Great Satan”? All that is evil in the world can be found in New York: MTV, the United Nations, the U.N. abortion programs, the Council on Foreign Relations, New Age Church of St. John the Divine, Wall Street greed, Madison Avenue manipulation and of course more confirmed AIDS cases than the rest of America combined. Let’s remember the filthy sodomite gay parade last summer in New York. Let’s remember all the New York politicians falling all over themselves to praise this sick spectacle.” Perhaps Josh Marshall will forgive me for pointing out something that is, as he would put it, “slightly off-message.” How about “disgusting,” Josh, or have you too lost a sense of the difference between “off-message” and “evil”?