The Dish

When culture-war types like Bill Bennett and Joe Lieberman argue against racy lyrics or sexy movies, they always take pains to point out they just want to shame record companies, radio stations, movie studios and so on to clean up their acts. They always profess shock when anyone accuses them of wanting to impose censorship. Well what else can describe the FCC’s recent $7,000 fine for a Colorado radio station for playing an already expurgated version of Eminem’s “The Slim Shady”? This is one of the first more public initiatives of the FCC under Michael Powell. Uh-oh.

EURO-BLAH: A classic editorial from the New York Times that could have been written at any point in the last thirty years. The Times worries that competing visions of the future of the E.U. from France and Germany could lead to “paralyzing gridlock.” Why would this be a problem? Because European integration is good. Why is European integration good? Because it has been in the past. Why will it be in the future? Is there a limit to such integration? What are the merits of the French and German arguments? Should the E.U. harmonize taxes, leave NATO, and so on? The Times doesn’t answer these questions. But they’re the only relevant questions. What U.S. foreign policy needs to think about now is exactly what kind of European integration is in American interests in the next twenty years. Sadly, we won’t have any help from the Times in actually figuring it out.

WHO SAID THIS ON TUESDAY?: “When we talk about fighting a modern day disease like HIV/AIDS and discuss huge dollar amounts and statistical data, it’s always in my mind that we’re talking about real people – people with loved ones – people with names and hopes and dreams. That’s what makes marking the 20th year of AIDS such a painful commemoration. That pain is deepened by the knowledge of what we have lost. The talents and the lives of those who have died. They are people we have known… people we have loved … people who have contributed greatly to our communities. Their memory drives us and their legacy inspires us to end the tragedy of this disease.” These moving words were uttered by Tommy Thompson, Secretary of State for Health and Human Services at the Kaiser Family Foundation. They are among the most compassionate words spoken about AIDS by a Republican federal office-holder I know of. Which may be why, of course, the media and AIDS activist world largely chose to ignore them.

WHAT THE HECK?: Here’s my prediction for the British election today. (Remember I thought Rick Lazio would win the night before.) Labour: 42 percent; Tories: 33 percent; Lib-Dems: who cares? The Tories will pick up enough seats to keep my buddy William in the hot seat. He will defeat Gordon Brown in the next election in 2005. No-one can accuse me of not putting myself on the line. Please don’t send me any lightly basted crows if I’m wrong. Deal?

Several readers have noticed that, in his interview with Frank Bruni, President Bush’s avowal to deal with the things he can change, live with the things he cannot and know how to tell the difference is uncannily similar to the pledge of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, good for W. Maybe there’s some zone of privacy and anonymity after all – even for a president.

HOME NEWS: As part of our continuing house-cleaning in advance of our redesign, my 1999 piece, “What’s So Bad About Hate?,” a cover-story for the New York Times Magazine, is now up on the site. You can read it here or in the Culture section of the Greatest Hits. It’s also included in “The Best American Essays 2000.”

You know what I like about President Bush? He knows his limits. He has boundaries, as the shrinks say. In his interview with Frank Bruni of the New York Times (Bruni’s a one-man refutation that the Times is universally anti-Bush), I was struck by Bush’s statements about what he couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Here’s a classic:
“Q. What sort of signals are you sending to Lott or the leadership about how they should proceed with the transfer of power?
A. That’s up to the Senate. One of the things you will learn from the executive branch is that the executive branch should not tell the Senate or the House how to organize. That’s a sensitive – that’s a matter of internal politics, internal procedures.”
Or how about this:
“Q. Don’t you ever just get a knot in your gut at times like that [the Jeffords defection]?
A. Not yet.
Q. Nothing? Not China?
A. A president is – there’s a lot on my plate on a daily basis.
Q. That would suggest the knot would be constant.
A. Well, there are some things over which I have no control and some things I t can influence. And I’m able to distinguish between the two.
Q. And you really think the Jeffords thing, no influence —
A. If a person makes up their mind that they want to make the decision he made, it’s awful hard to change a fellow’s mind. And I talked to him about it as plainly as I could. . . .”
Okay, I know some of you think I’m a complete sap for the guy. My friend Dan Savage came up with the felicitous phrase that I am always looking for the corn in each of President Bush’s turds (thanks, Dan!). But I’m serious when I say this guy seems to have a sense of proportion, of humility, and of common sense. So sue me for saying so. He reminds me of William Hague. Pity not a lot of other people seem to agree on that last one.

A VOICE OF STEELE: Shelby Steele’s essays on race in the 1980s were the most formative contemporary inspiration for my own attempts to rethink some of the assumptions behind gay politics. His piece today in the Wall Street Journal is a brave and good one. Brave because he dares conservatives, i.e. old-style liberals, not to be afraid of their principles – “merit, accountability, competition, the pursuit of excellence,” – against the well-meaning but ultimately empty compassion of today’s liberals, i.e. leftists. And good because he connects these principles to the real and urgent task of bringing everyone more fully into the American experiment. This requires courage. It’s not easy to take on certain entrenched interests who will doubtless demonize those who want minorities to help themselves as “mean-spirited” or “right-wing.” And courage – in a closely divided polity – is not always the political strategy pollsters and advisers urge. I fear George W. Bush is not up to this task. It is not his style. But Steele is right to remind us of Machiavelli’s dictum that taking risks sometimes lessens risk. Think Thatcher and Reagan. Think Truman. And hope, I guess. Hope.

Interesting Washington Post piece on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s inquiry into Florida’s election machinery. Bottom-line: the machinery sucked – and African-American voters seemed disproportionately affected. Still I have a few caveats. Why was this commission made up of four Democrats, three Independents and only one Republican? Wouldn’t it have more credibility if it had been more balanced? These are deeply partisan waters, after all. I’m also a little suspicious of the fact that the report was leaked before Governor Jeb Bush or Secretary of State Katherine Harris had a chance to provide a prepared response. Again, if you’re trying to present a serious report about a vital civil rights matter, isn’t it unseemly to try to spin the press this way? My last point is that the report, even when weighted so far to the left, exonerates the state of Florida from the charge of deliberately aiming to disenfranchise minority voters. There is “no conclusive evidence” of a “conspiracy” of this kind. The reason that this is a civil rights matter is therefore simply because the result of incompetence, over-zealous cleaning up of the voting felons, and so on, was de facto discriminatory against minorities. But this is not the same as deliberate discrimination. And that distinction, to my mind, matters. Racism doesn’t exist unless it is deliberate and conscious on the part of one human being. I don’t buy the notion of structural racism or economic racism and so on. When this report is used to inflame racial tensions even further (as some McAuliffe Democrats clearly intend), this distinction needs to be kept in mind.

A DAMN GOOD SHOT: Who says that Britain’s famed Eton College can’t raise distinguished scions of empire any more? Eton was the school that gave us Dipendra, the heir to the Nepalese throne, or “Dippy” as his Etonian class-mates called him. He was renowned at school, according to Tunku Varadarajan, for being a “damn good shot” in his formative years. Princes William and Harry went to Eton as well. Be afraid, Camilla. Be very afraid.

MUST READ OF THE WEEK: Check out the inimitable Sam Tanenhaus in this week’s New Republic for a stunning essay-review which helps cement the case that George W. Bush is not the extremist that some on the left are now asserting. The piece is convincing because it takes the long view of what has been going on in the Republican party for a generation or two and sees Bush in that context. Who’d have thought? Political analysis that looks back longer than the last news cycle? This piece is one reason I love my own magazine, even when I disagree with it. Without TNR, American liberalism in its rightful, thoughtful sense would truly be more beleaguered.

LETTER FROM EUROPE: Great email from a European immigrant to the U.S. on my point about liberalism as a religion. (For the record, several readers have let me know that Rush Limbaugh has been voicing this argument for a few years. My apologies for not accrediting him earlier). Here’s the email: “Concerning liberalism as religion: isn’t it simply that the U.S. is experiencing an episode of good old ideological folly? (I am using the word ideology in the sense of Hannah Arendt, or L. Giussani, or in the spirit of Dostoevsky’s “Demons”). I grew up on the continent (in Italy) in the 70’s and I can still recognize a Jacobin when I see one. When I came to this country I expected to find a haven of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. I was amazed to discover that this country is now pervaded (possibly for the first time in its history) by aggressive ideologies (both left and right), without having any of the anti-bodies that continental Europeans have been developing since 1789 (including an unhealthy amount of cynicism). I also find interesting that the current ideological wave has been building up in the last few decades at the same time when the traditional WASP elite has been replaced (especially in politics, academia and the law) by newcomers whose ethnic/cultural background is much closer to our traditional revolutionaries in continental Europe. Maybe, rather than Locke and Hobbes, it is time to go back to Edmund Burke.” To this I would only add that Burke was the lubricant that made Locke work. It’s not either-or. Surely, it’s both.

THANKS: May was a bumper month for us. 172,000 unique visitors. Wow. Also close to 1200 emails in the last week or so. Their eloquence and passion and concern make me realize how lucky I am to have a site like this and readers like you. I’ve worked overtime to answer almost every one. Onward …

You read something and a light bulb switches on. I had that feeling reading Stanley Kurtz’s piece in National Review Online about how contemporary liberalism has become a religion. Some of us who still think of ourselves as liberals in a classical sense also have faith in God to provide an over-arching meaning to our lives. So we enter political debate, guns blazing, but remain aware that it isn’t everything – that there is faith and culture and love and sex and home and friendship – and it is these things that give meaning to life. We engage in politics – or at least I do – in order to ensure that it doesn’t prevent us from enjoying life, to stop the busybodies and megalomaniacs from ruining our way of life. To paraphrase my philosophical mentor, Michael Oakeshott, I am a conservative in politics so I can be a radical in many other parts of life. But not all liberals feel this way. Liberals without faith or without a sense of private life, people who see everything as political, see their politics as the fundamental meaning of their lives. In their eyes, it is what makes them virtuous and others evil. So their liberalism becomes the opposite of what it was invented for. Liberalism was founded (by Hobbes, Locke, et al) to check religious intolerance, to create a safe political space where questions of ultimate meaning and import were set aside. But increasingly in some quarters, liberalism has become a religion of its own. There is an orthodoxy, a truth, and a religious hierarchy. New ideas are not considered for their own sakes, but simply in the context of whether they conform to the orthodoxy. Heretics are regularly singled out and punished. Opponents are not argued with, they are demonized. Little by little deviant thoughts are turned into crimes – speech-codes, loosely implemented sexual harassment laws, hate crime statutes. You see this on the racial left, the feminist left and the gay left. I’m not saying all liberals are like this. Thank God, many are not. But increasing numbers are; and we are fast approaching a very Animal Farm moment, when we look at the world view of some of the conservative fundamentalists and the world view of some of the liberal fundamentalists, and we find that they are exactly the same, bristling, insecure, intolerant creature.

SCUD REVENGE?: Maureen Dowd argued yesterday that Jim Jeffords’ revolt and John McCain’s non-revolt are responses to crude revenge tactics by George W. Bush. The evidence she provided for this is, to say the least, thin. Apparently, Jim Jeffords was not invited to a ceremony at the White House. Ouch. When Newt Gingrich griped about his lack of a good seat on Airforce One, Dowd ridiculed him for being a big baby. What’s the difference with Jeffords? Similarly, McCain. Sure, I have no doubt that Senator McCain harbors some bitterness about what happened in South Carolina – and I don’t blame him. Bush’s primary campaign there was disgraceful. But I have seen no real evidence of Bush trying to humiliate McCain since. McCain had a major speech at the convention, and didn’t meet stiff White House resistance to his campaign finance reform bill. Bush will likely sign such a bill if it reaches his desk. On the other hand, it seems likely that the Bush team has staffed the White House with people who supported Bush all along and have not hired former McCain staffers. So? This is another non-story. Did we expect Bill Clinton to hire staff from the Tsongas campaign in 1992? It seems to me that the Bush administration has been no more vengeful – and arguably much less – than any other recent administration in this respect and the attempt to prove otherwise just doesn’t hold much water. If anything, the tone of this new administration has been remarkably free of vengeful or angry talk. I hope the Bushies respond to some restlessness in their party by tacking gently to the center. I sure hope they don’t respond to this by stooping to their opponents’ level.

THE TORIES’ QUEENSLAND STRATEGY: No-one thinks that William Hague’s Tory party has a chance of avoiding humiliation on Thursday, when the Brits go to the polls. Well, the same could have been said for the opposition in the election in Queensland, Australia, in 1995. I know it sounds like a stretch, but bear with me. In Queensland, the ruling Labour party was way ahead in the polls, with a strong economy. The opposition party, the Liberal-Nationalists, all but conceded that they were going to lose. But in the last week of the campaign, they Liberal-Nationalists refocused their campaign around preventing Labor winning a landslide. The opposition’s message in a nutshell was: “if you think Labor’s arrogant now imagine what will happen if they win a big majority again.” This indeed is the final plea of the British Tories. They have rolled out a poster of Tony Blair, urging voters to “burst his bubble.” It’s desperate stuff but sometimes it works. In the Queensland election, the polls showed a huge margin of victory for Labour right up to election day. But in the vote itself, Labour saw its vote fall by 8 percent, and its big majority reduced to one seat. Could it happen in Britain? Well, Tony Blair’s only real weakness is the sense that he’s somewhat arrogant and out of touch. Plenty of people, while not wanting a Tory government, might think it worth bringing him down a peg or two. And in the last two national elections in Britain – for local seats and European seats – the Tories did far better than in the polls and actually beat Labour nationwide. I’m not saying it’s going to happen again, but I am saying it could.

In preparation for our complete redesign, we’re adding some new pieces to the site. One of them is called “The Scolds.” It’s my piece attacking creeping Puritanism in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It was the cover-story in the New York Times Magazine in October 1998.

You think Dick Cheney is scared of Bianca Jagger? The silly point of Tom Friedman’s column today is that because enviro-celebrities in England are protesting and boycotting Esso, a major oil company, over global warming, Texas oilmen will soon be putting pressure on W to go soft on Kyoto. Yeah, right. The interesting part of Friedman’s piece is a quote from a European environmentalist. “”As long as Kyoto was there, everyone could avoid real accountability and pretend that something was happening,” says Paul Gilding, the former head of Greenpeace and now chairman of Ecos, one of Australia’s leading environmental consulting firms. “But now George Bush, by trashing Kyoto, has blown everyone’s cover. If you care about the environment you can’t pretend anymore. Emissions are increasing, the climate is changing and people can now see for themselves that the world is fiddling while Rome burns.”” Can he actually mean that Bush’s impatience with lofty enviro-B.S. has actually helped focus activists on a more realistic approach to global warming than the phony Kyoto posturing? When, I wonder, will the greens acknowledge the source of their new inspiration?

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi my name is Spike, honey,'” – California attorney-general Bill Lockyer saying he hopes that the head of Enron Corporation is subjected to forcible male rape because of high energy prices in California. According to the Los Angeles Times, “neither Lockyer’s office nor any investigative panel has filed charges against Enron or other companies”.

LOYALTIES: A reflection on the contrasting careers of Jim Jeffords and the late Joe Moakley. See my new TRB opposite.

E.J. GOES O.T.T.: If the tax cut is law, that means it happens, right? Uh, no, according to E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post today. If it turns out that the tax cut makes it impossible to spend gazillions on prescription drugs for seniors or more, Dionne figures that the Congress can simply retroactively rescind the tax cut to pay for it. Does that mean actually asking for it back – or upping tax rates for one year? Or what? It seems to me that a budget plan of this magnitude has to hold – and, indeed, Bush will be held accountable for its results. But the notion that these laws can simply be rescinded at will, retroactively, or whenever the Democrats or Republicans want to spend more tax-payers’ money, seems loopy to me. E.J., face it. On the most important fiscal decision of the next decade, you lost. Deal with it or blame the president or urge more votes for Democrats to keep more of the people’s money. But don’t claim it hasn’t happened, or can be legislated away at will.

THE GROWING GAP: Unsurprising but still important stats from the CBO on income inequality in the U.S. Yeah, it’s growing. Because the dates of the study are 1979 to 1997, they’re a little misleading. 1997 was the recent low-point for inequality. The subsequent years saw real gains for those at the bottom of the scale. But what’s striking to me is the fact that the yawning inequality gap is independent of taxation. The gulf cited by the CBO is based on pre-tax income. Even the most punitive tax regime could do little about changing a growth in income for the very rich of 142 percent in 18 years, or a tiny decline in the very poor of around 3 percent. In fact, taxes have increasingly squeezed the rich in this period. In 1997, the wealthiest fifth paid 65 percent of all taxes – up from 57 percent in 1979. The poorest fifth’s contribution to taxes was halved in the same period. So lets forget about the notion, as Mickey Kaus argued in the 1980s and 1990s, that redistributive taxation can do anything but spit in the wind of the global economy. And let’s tackle what can really help the poor: better education, workfare, lower crime, and an open, dynamic economy.

Heads up that I’m on Hardball tonight with Chris Matthews. Political buzz, Jeffords, Jenna, Hillary, etc. And I’d also just like to say thanks to all of you who have written me emails of support during a very difficult time for me personally. Your support means more to me than I can say.

Oh yes. California Governor Gray Davis did his best to look menacing alongside the president yesterday. Today, he takes over the op-ed page of the New York Times (Jim Carville and Paul Begala had the day off) to whine yet again about how his state’s utility mess is someone else’s fault. Check out this interesting cover story in the current San Francisco Weekly, a liberal alternative weekly that is no sap to Republicans. What the story details is how California’s state bureaucracy negotiated contracts with the electricity companies that all but encouraged price gouging, that provided minimal protection against all sorts of obvious potential abuses of deregulation, and generally brought this whole steaming mess on itself. I must say the economics of electricity deregulation do not exactly set my brain-waves afire, but this was a fascinating piece. And damning for Governor Davis.

NO-ONE HAS PROVEN INTENT: Good piece in the Washington Post today about the incompetence of Florida’s attempt to clean up its voter rolls and remove convicted felons. It seems to me that this operation was clearly a scandal, disenfranchising many. But the Post ruins a good point by repeating the following mantra: “No one has proven intent to disenfranchise any group of voters, but the snafus have fueled a widespread perception among blacks that an effort was made to dilute their voting power…” So what? The issue is not what people perceive, it is what is true. Crediting some people’s perceptions, even when they may be completely wrong, is to engage in subjective fantasy. If the screw-ups were deliberate, then indeed righteous indignation is appropriate. If the screw-ups were accidental, then those responsible for the mess should be held accountable and changes made to make sure it doesn’t happen again – but at the same time, those engaging in conspiracy theories and paranoia should be debunked. The Post unwittingly lends credibility to this paranoia, while providing no reason to believe it’s justified. That isn’t reporting. It’s pandering.