The Dish

I’m always recommending reading and you’ve got far better things to do, but, if you have a few minutes, have a look at a truly splendid piece in the current issue of Reason magazine on the prescription drug industry. Better than anything I’ve yet read, it’s a devastating rebuttal of most of the attacks on Big Pharma these last few years. Compared to John Le Carre’s sub-literate screed in the current Nation, it’s a cornucopia of lucid information and analysis. It also destroys the American Prospect’s embarrassingly dumb recent attack on the drug industry, “The Price Isn’t Right.” My favorite points: the Columbia economist Frank Lichtenberg’s studies of how pharmaceutical innovation has cost our society far less than it has saved in increased longevity, leisure, health and reductions in hospitalization. To my mind, this issue is now the front-line of our new ideological divide. Who wins matters – not least for the health, happiness and productivity of the next generation of Americans.

ARSENIC AGAIN: Interesting letter from Christie Todd Whitman in the Washington Post today. She points out that the last-minute Clinton regulations on reducing arsenic levels in water weren’t due to be in place till 2006. This means either a) the Bushies have exaggerated the economic cost in getting to this level or b) there’s no harm in having a second look before we enforce them. Either way, it’s a little hard to interpret this as W deliberately poisoning our drinking water at the behest of corporate America.

Just after Holland comes Belgium. Reuters reports today that the Belgian government intends to introduce legislation very shortly to legalize equal marriage rights for homosexuals. The Health minister gave her reasons: “The government considers the right to marry a constitutional right, and the chance to marry the sole true opportunity to see that homosexual and heterosexual couples are treated in the same way.” Couldn’t have put it better myself. The prime minister of this 75 percent Roman Catholic country has said, “There are no objections on principle for the moment.” This news comes on the heels of Holland’s legalization of equal marriage rights on Sunday and a Gill Foundation study that asked over 1000 gay men and lesbian what their primary objective was in political change. 32 percent said equal marriage rights – more than for any other issue. Those who once argued that we should leave this issue alone, that it would never win, that its time had not come, are slowly being proved wrong. Far from being defensive about this, I think gay leaders should be even more aggressive. We should move bills in every state we can – not simply to deflect attacks on equal marriage rights, but to legalize marriage for all citizens equally. Paul Varnell wrote an excellent column recently on these lines. Check it out.

SAVE THE COWS: A definitive piece in New Scientist rebuts the notion that mass slaughter is the best way to restrain foot-and-mouth disease. In fact, these tactics are primarily a way to protect EU agriculture from Eastern bloc products. Tony Blair has now put off elections to cope with the crisis – and its fallout. Could cows save the Tories? Stranger things have happened.

“We have a President who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.” – Barbra Streisand, in an urgent 3-page <a HREF = http://www.drudgereport.com/babs.htm TARGET = NEW>memo to Democratic leaders, leaked to the Drudge Report.

“With the guidance of his regents, the Duke of Halliburton and Cardinal Rumsfeld, W. has set off the specter of a mushroom cloud of carcinogens and carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear power and “China Syndrome” fears, rapacious drilling and retrenchment on women’s rights, the missile shield, spy tensions and the cold war.” – Maureen Dowd, The <a HREF = http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/opinion/01DOWD.html TARGET = NEW>New York Times.

Memo to Maureen: on arsenic and carbon dioxide, Bush has proposed keeping the same regimes that prevailed throughout the entire Clinton administration; he has acknowledged that drilling in the Arctic Reserve almost certainly won’t happen; more nuclear power is actually a way to help alleviate global warming, not exacerbate it; he supports a missile shield that Clinton also (more coolly) supported; the expulsion of Russian spies was in the works for months before he took office. Oh and: what retrenchment of “women’s rights”? Overseas abortion aid? Did I blink and miss something?

There are just a few nascent buds of blossom on the cherry trees, and the hyacinths are slowly unwrapping in the window boxes. In the dank afternoon air, all that interrupts the chirping of birdsong outside my apartment window is the familiar pop-popping of gunfire, the shattering of car windscreens, and a swoop of sirens. Two guys running down my block apparently opened fire, taking in a few parked cars. Could be worse, I suppose. No-one was killed. And the cops actually caught the guy using the gun. This latter event, previously unknown in Washington, may signal some kind of increasing role for our police force in combating something they have recently begun to identify as “crime.” But don’t count on it.

MALE-FREE ZONE: A reader sends in a fascinating email about self-defense classes from which men are barred. It’s the kind of email I would really like to include in a letters page – which, thanks to your donations, will be up and running within a month. Anyway, here it is: “I took one of those self-defense classes in college. The real reason they don’t want men attending is that it is half therapy session. You have to get very aggressive to be effective. They have you scream very loud, visualize male attackers, fight the instructor, etc. It can do weird things to you psychologically – hit areas you never knew existed. “Hey, you know it occurs to me that I’m pretty pissed off that I have to deal with this at all – and that I’ve lived my whole life under this threat. F— men.” A lot of women seize up anyway because it literally goes against every fiber of their being to do anything that aggressive or to hurt someone. It would presumably be worse with guys there. It’s not just the p.c. faction and reverse discrimination. It’s amazing how well this feminist warrior mentality fits in with the views of the police who teach these courses. “Everyone is a potential criminal.” After the course, I walked around paranoid for months and then it wore off.” Good point, I think. But I’m not entirely convinced. For example, it’s not necessary to fear that every man will rape you to get your head wrapped around self-defense. A couple of sympathetic men – maybe gay men! – might help defuse the androphobia. And imagine for a minute if they had such classes in inner cities and encouraged the participants, black and white, to assume that every black man was a potential mugger or rapist – and excluded black men from the course. I doubt that would pass the sniff test – rightly so. So why is it ok to generalize about one group and not another?

One of the more hilarious aspects of the politicization of religion exhibited by some elements of the Christian Right is what evangelicals are supposed to pray for these days. A classic of the genre is the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Friday Capitol Hill Prayer. Last Friday’s called upon the Almighty to, among other things, support “the passage of a law permitting charitable tax deductions for those who do not itemize their deductions ? and the passage of a significant tax cut that will inject life into the economy and appropriately return the American people’s money.” I’m not sure whether Jesus is a supply-sider (I haven’t checked the New Testment for the Laffer Curve, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere). But the Christian Right seems sure that the Holy Spirit is opposed to campaign finance reform, worried about faith-based government money going to Muslims, and definitely in favor of cutting the top rate to 33 percent. A lot of people criticize the Christian Right for what they have done to politics. It’s nothing compared to the damage they have done to religion.

The definitive job on the New York Review of Books. Fred Siegel in the New York Observer documents its long history of getting everything wrong, its loathing of capitalism, its solipsism and marginality, its pomposity and tedium, its condescension to the American public, its cliquish insularity … and more. Thanks to Mickey Kaus for pointing me toward it.

THANKS, WSJ: A stern editorial today from the Journal deploring some African countries’ recent turn toward scapegoating homosexuals in the AIDS epidemic. It’s encouraging in many ways, not least because it’s rare to hear the Journal, or indeed any other conservative outlet, defend homosexuals from the threat of violence or intimidation or discrimination. This is a shame. Even if some conservatives may disagree on marriage rights or military service, there really should be a consensus that no-one should be targeted for violence or hatred because their orientation. This needn’t mean hate crime laws (although it surely means that if you support hate crime laws for other groups, there is no rational reason to deny them to gays.) It simply means a public affirmation of homosexual dignity and humanity. Don’t you think that conservatives who want to deny civil rights to homosexuals would seem less mean-spirited if they occasionally took a moment to regret anti-gay violence or anti-gay bigotry? I guess I shouldn’t be handing out this p.r. advice to people I disagree with, but heck, take it. And good for the Journal for leading the way.

A truly gut-wrenching and important piece in Salon.com by Joan Walsh. It’s about the war against successful for-profit schools in the inner-cities. Many of these schools, funded by the Edison Project, have been making real progress in raising test scores, improving teaching and helping minority kids. You’d think public school boards would be ecstatic. Instead, one of the best Edison schools in San Francisco faces being shut down because it is not p.c. enough, even though it is doing great work with minority children. Similarly, New York City Schools Chancellor Harold Levy’s attempt to hand over a few schools in New York City to Edison looks doomed, because of visceral hostility to anything smacking of profit. It’s a classic case of leftist ideology prevailing over the interests of children. Ballsy of Salon to run with this. And timely too.

So an emissary of Marc Rich is apprehended flying into London carrying close to $2 million in ready cash. Am I the only one wondering what that cash was for and for whom it was intended? Could Pardonscam get a second wind?

The case against Britain’s barbaric policy of killing the herds in order to save them from foot-and-mouth disease. Check out my new TRB, “The Killing Fields,” posted opposite.

I’m a little perplexed by the hysterical reaction of the foreign, especially European, press to Bush’s decision to ignore the quixotic Kyoto agreement. No other industrialized country has yet ratified it. The Senate has already voted 95 – 0 not even to consider ratifying it. Bush’s statement is simply the recognition of the bleeding obvious. Of course, in diplomacy, you’re not supposed to tell the truth, at least not bluntly. But it’s refreshing when someone does. Bush’s first moves abroad – telling the North Koreans and Palestinians where to get off, insisting on missile defense, dropping Kyoto – all remind me of very early Thatcher. Her predecessors had all played the internationalist game, hob-nobbing at summits, talking grandly about the future of the planet, issuing communiqués no-one intended to abide by, and so on. Thatcher walked into her first European summit, asked for a rebate for Britain from the E.U., demanding “our money back,” and wouldn’t budge till she got her way. Her international peers were appalled at her vulgarity. But Thatcher thought that foreign policy was about pursuing your national interest. So, it appears, does Bush. They’re both right – and deeply refreshing.