The Dish

The winner this week is one Richard Stern, head of the Agua Buena Human Rights Association, for equating the production of life-saving drugs with mass murder. It’s from a letter to the president of the University of Minnesota: “I have recently been informed that the University of Minnesota is the patent holder on compounds used to produce the drug abacavir. The outrageously high prices of anti-retroviral medications is a reality which we in Central America assumed was the result of policies of multi-national pharmaceutical companies. Now, students at the University of Minnesota have informed us, that the University is also profiting from the prices of these medications. It is shocking to me personally that a University would be involved in this situation, which is really of genocidal proportions.”

I loathe airplanes but they do give me reading time. A couple of recommendations. Christopher Hitchens sparkles in the new Vanity Fair, with a screed against the anti-smoking commissars. Hitch is an old lefty, but his knee jerks in the right direction when it comes to civil liberties and what he calls “p.c. creeps.” (He was also of course bravely dead-on when it came to Clinton). Hitch rightly points out that smoking isn’t merely a health hazard or a dirty habit – it is also a part of a certain kind of culture. The kind of bar Hitch likes to get toasted in is not smoke-free; nor is any decent jazz lounge; nor, in the old days, was a back-room at a political convention. Several members of my family smoked and I hated it as a child. But the smoky haze in the kitchen as several Irish-English relatives yelled at one another over some minor political issue nevertheless provided great production values for my youth. Yes, yes, I know second-hand smoke is supposed to be harmful (although I don’t believe it for a second). And I don’t believe in smoking in someone else’s face without asking first. This is called manners. But equally, as Hitch puts it, “Don’t pursue me to the park bench if you prevent me from smoking indoors; I will of course ask permission of anyone else sitting there. I will even ask permission to smoke from people who visit me in my own home. But I won’t let them visit me and then tell me to put my cigarette out. Anyone failing to see this distinction is a moral cretin.” Amen, brother. And I say this as someone who has never smoked a cigarette in his entire life. (Tobacco, anyway.)

PIN-STRIPED NAZIS: Equally, Ian Buruma (another friend) has a terrific little piece in the New Yorker about the trial of David Irving, the English historian and Holocaust “minimizer.” Ian attended the libel trial Irving brought against the American scholar Deborah Lipstadt in London and elegantly picks apart its very English subtext of class resentment. I think Buruma gets Irving perfectly and lands a couple of deft punches at some of his supporters. (He’s a little unfair on Hitch, though.) Buruma is alternately fascinated and repelled by a certain kind of English aristocratic reactionary, and is wise enough to see that this dark and evil strain in English culture nearly ceded the continent to Hitler in 1940. It’s also far from dead, as any perusal of the Daily Telegraph will reveal. But I had never quite put Irving in this context – as a member of what Orwell called the insecure “lower-upper-middle-class.” Ian also pointed out some amazing details from the trial that had somehow gone unreported until now: “At moments, … Irving made curious slips, as when he apparently referred to the judge as mein Fuhrer. (It should also be noted that the judge once or twice referred to Irving as Hitler.)” Could Monty Python have pulled that one off, I wonder?

DERBYSHIRE: Several readers have emailed to say that they couldn’t see anything racist or bigoted in John Derbyshire’s weird piece about Jews in National Review Online, noted earlier. Perhaps I needed to translate. Derbyshire’s favorite Jew from his childhood exclaimed that he loathed Proust because he was a “Chewish poof!” That means “Jewish faggot.” Derbyshire then wrote: “I have never since felt the slightest urge to read Proust.” To dismiss one of the greatest writers in Western civilization purely because he was a Jewish homosexual seems to me to be prima facie evidence of bigotry. If that isn’t, what is?

I’ve gotten some fair comments in the mail asking me to unpack my assertion that although China is a tyranny, it does deserve some sphere of influence as a great power. I should say I don’t believe that extends to Taiwan, which deserves our support and protection. I don’t believe it involves any territorial aggression, and that includes Tibet. But a state as large and as potentially powerful as China can’t be wished away. It has to be dealt with. With any luck, it may break up into smaller units in the future, or democratize in some measure. Until then, we have to accept its existence and work with it. I don’t regard it as I regarded the Soviet Union, i.e. as an international menace, and so I don’t adhere to the containment fixation of some on the right. Speaking of which, I must say I’m a little stunned by their quiescence. Marshall Whitman has a fair comment on this today. If Clinton had sent that letter, the Republicans would now be sending him Chamberlain umbrellas en masse. But Clinton wouldn’t have deserved that either.

WHITE NIGGERS AGAIN: A reader sends in the following passage from Ronald Takaki’s book, “A Different Mirror.” According to Takaki, the term was actually coined by pre-Emancipation African-Americans to describe racist Irishmen, who initiated race riots in New York City in 1863. Fascinating. “”Led by Irish longshoremen, the rioters warned employers ‘not to put any niggers to work’ and blacks to stay away from the docks. they insisted that all stevedore jobs belonged to white men. The riot continued for four days. Finally, an army regiment rushed to the city from Gettysburg and restored order. By then scores of people had been injured and 105 killed. Condemning the ‘revolting fiendish, cowardly, cruel’ treatment of poor unfortunate negroes,’ an Irish newspaper, the Metropolitan Record, declared that ‘a superior race should distain to vent their passions on an inferior one… Reacting to Irish hostility, blacks called their tormentor ‘white niggers.’ They resented being told by immigrants to leave the country of their birth and ‘go back’ to Africa, a place they had never been. On one plantation, slaves mocked their Irish overseer by saying that an Irishman was ‘only a Negro turned inside out.’ Blacks told anti-Irish stories about the alleged gullibility and stupidity of the new-comers…”

FINALLY: “On top of the foot-and-mouth epidemic, there is now a growing emergency concerning the welfare of animals. Across the country there are appalling scenes of animal suffering.” – Tory leader William Hague, breaking the silence among British politicians about the hideous cruelty of some of the measures to counter foot and mouth disease in Britain.

The Asian-American website, AsianAvenue.com, is asking its readers to collect menus from Chinese restaurants to send to National Review’s Jonah Goldberg en masse in response to his tacky anti-Chinese comments last week. It could be worse. What if the English started sending him menus?

WOOHOO: Brill’s Content has just included andrewsullivan.com in its “Best of the Web 2001” round-up. Thanks to all of you who made that possible. A year ago, it was just a pipe-dream.

I think the China episode says a lot about our new administration. It says that we will have very few emotionally satisfying episodes in the next four years. This is a principled but pragmatic government. The end-game they negotiated was neither a clear victory for the U.S. nor a clear win for Beijing. A clear win for us would have been the return of the aircraft and an apology from them for bringing it down. A clear win for them would have been an apology from us for flying in international airspace and for causing the accident. As it is, I see no problem with the etymological hair-splitting that settled the issue. Etymological hair-splitting is what diplomacy is all about, which is why it was once conducted in the language most conducive to subtle deception, French. The revanchist Right will have a cow about this; and Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan will blow a gasket. Who cares? China is not the Soviet Union; it is enmeshed into the international trading system in ways the Soviets never were; it has no intention of global hegemony, merely regional power, which it has every right to. It’s a tyranny, though, and an unstable one, which will require a firm but delicate touch in the next few decades – a combination of free trade and firm military deterrence. I don’t believe the Chinese will interpret this as weakness. I think they will interpret this as the forbearance that comes from strength. And that’s exactly what Bush provided. The polls have given him a six point boost from this so far. I bet they’ll see a further boost now. This, in my view, was the kind of grown-up leadership we lacked for eight years. I’m glad it’s back.

Marjorie Williams comes out bravely against women smoking in today’s Washington Post. Or, more accurately, she berates feminist organizations for not joining the war against tobacco companies. But why on earth should they? No-one alive today is unaware of the risks of smoking. If women want to smoke, why should feminist organizations try to stop them? Isn’t feminism about choice and isn’t smoking a choice? Williams even berates the cigarette companies for helping finance a whole array of feminist groups and mocks Philip Morris for funding programs to help battered women. That’ll teach them to do something that actually, tangibly benefits women. As usual with nanny-liberals (and some nanny-conservatives), Williams’ main worry is that women cannot resist the lures of advertizing. But this argument infantilizes women and teenage girls even further. They’re not pawns of ads. They’re women deciding to take their own risks and live their own lives. It says something about what has happened to feminism that this is something we’re now supposed to regret rather than celebrate.

If you thought the Waco incident is over and done with, download and read this report from the Cato Institute’s Thomas Lynch. It’s bracing reading. I’m not a member of the black helicopter crowd, but, from the beginning, I had deep qualms about the Waco raid. Lynch carefully undermines Jack Danforth’s official inquiry without engaging in conspiracy theories or paranoid fantasies. Official crimes were clearly committed at Waco, and many of these law-enforcement criminals never faced justice. Cato is to be congratulated for not forgetting this tragedy – one that ranks up there with the seizure of Elian Gonzales in authoritarian over-kills orchestrated by former attorney-general Janet Reno.

THE JOYS OF SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: The British National Health Service, the last remnant of the Soviet Union still alive and funded by British taxpayers, recently announced a bid to clean up Britain’s bacteria-crammed hospitals. A staggering 100,000 infections take place in Britain’s hospitals each year, leading to 5,000 deaths. To put it another way: the NHS actually kills 5,000 people a year – the equivalent of 25,000 Americans. And this is the system many single-payer Democrats want to replicate here?

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: Who else, but John Derbyshire? In a weird essay in National Review devoted to why he likes Jews (in which he spends muchs time explaining why he can’t stand many of them), he unloads himself of his views of Marcel Proust, one of the most sublime stylists in any language: “Martin [Kellerman, a neighbor of Derbyshire’s as a child] was a man of much learning and strong opinions. Some of his pronouncements were made with such force and conviction that I have not, even to this day, ventured to gainsay them. When, one evening, someone asked him for an opinion on Proust, he shook his head and gave a firm “No!” Why? we asked. Replied Martin, in his heavy German accent salted with British slang: “Because I do not like poofs. Und I especially do not like Chewish poofs. It is against nature, und against my religion.” I have never since felt the slightest urge to read Proust.” Does National Review actually pay this hoary old bigot for stuff like this? Was Joe Sobran not available?

Tonight, I’m told, ABC’s World News Tonight will have a segment on the controversy around the Jesse Dirkhising case. Yours truly was interviewed for it. Check it out. While you’re at it, also take a look at the Washington Post’s gut-wrenching series on animal cruelty in many slaughterhouses across America. They have evidence of unconscionable brutality – even without foot-and-mouth disease.

As I speak, a charming lady is playing with my beagle and taking photos for the Washington Post profile. Incoming … as Drudge would say. Howie called yesterday to confirm a few details – including my friendship with Barry Diller. Uh-oh. On another front, I’ve got several emails asking for details about how to support the site. Click on the “Tipping Point” button down there on the right and you’ll get details. The re-design is going ahead full-steam and, although I haven’t seen it yet, Robert Cameron (my guardian angel at Fantascope) says it’s ground-breaking. Should be up by the end of the month.

Modern Humorist dismembers Barbra. Heaven.

CULTURE WARRIORS: Never disappoint, so it was good to see the National Gay Lesbian Task Force take a swipe at the new openly gay head of the White House AIDS Office. “We are ready, willing and able to meet with Evertz to discuss how we can work together to increase funding for HIV/AIDS and to pursue policies that will strengthen our fight against the disease,” said NGLTF Executive Director Elizabeth Toledo in a press release. Note that the main effort must be to increase funding – on the day the Bush budget showed Ryan White spending will be stable from this year to next. A more significant challenge to Evertz is to rid Ryan White of widespread corruption and waste. A superb piece in the current Washington Monthly, a good-government liberal magazine, gives a devastating account of how much Ryan White money is being siphoned away from patients to fat-cat AIDS organizations and their lobbyists. Meanwhile the Fundamentalist Right are quietly apoplectic. Check out Jake Tapper’s latest in Salon. My favorite quote is from Heather Cirmo, head of the Family research Council: “The question is, how is the Bush administration going to act on the homosexual agenda? So far it seems to be going on a different road from the road that we’re taking.” And how’s this from an anonymous “conservative lobbyist: “I certainly don’t approve of the homosexual agenda, but I know the president has a different view. He’s pretty comfortable with these guys as long as they’re on board with the rest of his agenda.” I guess I didn’t screw up endorsing W after all.