The Dish

Best nugget in Dana Milbank’s Washington Post piece yesterday on the conservative picks in the Bush administration was about the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This is nanny-state central, regulating everything the federal government can get its hands on. So it’s great news that John D. Graham has taken over. According to the Post, “Graham is founder of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which is funded by more than 100 large corporations and trade groups, including Dow, 3M, Dupont, Monsanto, Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute. He is the leading proponent of “comparative risk analysis” to balance the need for regulation against the risk of the event, and he was prominent in the 1995 regulatory reform battles.” Imagine that? Someone who thinks government regulators should measure the price of meddling against the actual social gain. Watch out for more hysterical headlines about arsenic in our water, and many more Begala-isms from Barbara Boxer.

WEAKLY STANDARD: I wonder if the staunchly anti-China Weekly Standard will have anything to say about Rupert Murdoch’s son, James’, open hostility to freedom of religion (or of anything, for that matter) in the People’s Republic? Murdoch Junior just attacked the Falun Gong sect as anti-patriotic, and his remarks have been interpreted as a bid to smooth Rupert Murdoch’s business plans in China. Murdoch also owns the Weekly Standard. A good test of any magazine’s editorial integrity is it ability to criticize its proprietor. Let’s see, shall we?

STOP THE PRESSES: The New York Times finally discovers that others are doing journalism on Jesse Jackson. The front-page piece today was a spin-job for the Jackson forces, hyping his popularity among most blacks, and regurgitating the real reporting done by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, National Enquirer, and the New York Post. Bottom-line spin: Jackson’s down but not out. I guess it’s good news that the Times has finally acknowledged it completely missed the boat for political reasons. Not so good news that the Times’ own original reporting on Jackson’s scandals simply doesn’t exist. Guess we’re going to have to wait for the incoming Sixty Minutes bombshell I’m told is in the works.

A REAL TIME EXPERIMENT: I got a call last week from the Washington Post’s Howie Kurtz, who wants to do a piece on me. My policy is basically to say yes to all press inquiries. Heck, I’m a journalist. What conceivable credibility could I have if I didn’t talk to reporters? Besides, Howie is one of the smartest and fairest media critics there is. (Suck-up hereby ends.) Nevertheless, it occurred to me that one of the truly new things in web-journalism is instant transparency. In the old days, someone would call you up, interview you, maybe talk to a few others, write it up and then you’d wait for the piece to arrive. If you felt the writer got something wrong, too bad. If you felt the piece was really really wrong, you could always write a letter to the editor, which would appear weeks later and no-one would read. But e-journalism allows for another option – and I don’t mean insta-reaction, like my little squib about Michael Wolff’s phoned-in job. Why not write up my account of the story/interview as it happens? I’m supposed to be interviewed by Howie tomorrow. I’ll post my impressions of the conversation later that day. I’ll also add the stray comments of those people he’s called who have bothered to debrief me. That way, you guys can read the final product with some better awareness of how it emerged. There are two obvious objections. Come on, Sullivan, I can hear you saying. You’ve already got a bit of a rep as a screaming solipsist. This is way too insider. Fair enough, but this isn’t a Dave Eggers hissy fit. It’s just a way to turn the tables a little bit on the established media and their power, and to encourage others to do the same. I’ll write it up as a journalistic exercise, not as some bout of paranoid self-obsession. Second objection: who cares anyway? Good point. But if you couldn’t care about Howie Kurtz on me, you might care about the general principle of media transparency. No journalist or reader should be opposed to more data out there. Anyway, I figure it’s worth trying. As with many aspects of the new world of independent web journalists, I’d rather try something new than play it safe. By the way, Howie doesn’t know about this yet. Well, he does now, I guess.

BUSH ABROAD: We’re beginning to have some small sense of Bush’s foreign policy – and it is different. Gone is Clinton’s diplomatic hyper-activity. Bush told Ariel Sharon last week that he had no interest in jump-starting talks between Arabs and Israelis; and he simultaneously removed the C.I.A. from any role in mediating security disputes between the two sides. Don’t hold your breath waiting for more American intervention in Ireland. Or for instructions to the Japanese about how to get their economy back. The silence over the growing conflict in Macedonia has also been as pervasive as the administration’s passivity during the stock market nose-dive. But the moments of actual action are just as revealing. At the same time as Bush has apparently abandoned Clinton’s meddling, he has also dropped Clinton’s soft edge with tricky potential adversaries. The week before last the administration told North Korea that it had no interest in any future missile negotiations. With Russia, the new administration’s attitude is that the country is neither friend nor foe – just a regional power with a penchant for spying, incompetence and human rights abuses. No accident either that the new administration has opened new lines of communications with the Chechen resistance. You first saw this refreshing straightforwardness with missile defense. The Clinton administration punted the issue for as long as possible, and adopted an air of apology in raising the matter occasionally with European partners. Not so the Bushies. They rightly see no reason why a sovereign country cannot develop next-generation defense systems which threaten no-one. In all of this there is a nationalist self-confidence that was sometimes lacking with the Clintonites. The Bushies see the world as conservatives tend to do: as an inherently anarchic place, where the unvarnished advancement of self-interest and national security should be no occasion for squeamishness. Now, if only they can control Colin Powell …

We never figured out on this site is what happens when the editor/writer/proof-reader gets sick, takes a vacation or just goofs off for a weekend. Have just spent the last three days in New York City, a trip dominated by an annual dance-party at the Roseland Ballroom, called the Black Party. The best way to describe it is as a gay rave: club-music, dancing from 11pm Saturday till 4pm Sunday, and socializing all weekend. I didn’t sleep last night at all and could barely get through the paper today. Up late with the Oscars, and post-party parties, back to DC tomorrow. The point of this is that the Dish will be updated later today (Monday) rather than tonight, as usual. Hell it’s way late now anyway. Check in later this afternoon. Sorry for my first delinquent weekend since I started this.

It’s not unusual for the Weekly Standard to find all sorts of reasons to consider certain ideas and arguments beyond the pale of civilized discourse, so it’s interesting to note what that magazine considers to be well within the pale. In the current issue, there is a warm and respectful tribute to R.J. Rushdoony, the philosopher behind Christian Reconstructionism, who died in February. (Sorry, it’s not on the web.) Rushdoony supported the abolition of the American Constitution in favor of a political order drawn directly from Biblical, Mosaic law. Thus in his view, adultery should not merely be a criminal offense. It should be punished with death. For Rushdoony, the ex-gay movement was way too tolerant: “Not arrested development or immaturity but deliberate and mature warfare against God marks the homosexual. God’s penalty is death, and a godly order will enforce it.” He approved of stoning of adulterers as one option, and execution of children who slander their parents. I think it’s fair to describe his views as theo-fascist, and him as a would-be American Ayatollah. A more forgiving judgment is that he was just a crackpot. (The best summary of what Rushdoony stood for I know of is Walter Olson’s definitive essay, “An Invitation To A Stoning.”) Yet the Standard writes of him thus: “Rushdoony may end up having as great an impact on American life as other, better known American theologians of the past century.” He was, to be sure, “too controversial for many [on the Christian Right] to embrace openly.” (That “openly” is priceless.) But he was also “an eccentric and a genius, a man of follies and a man with some genuine greatness in him. An American original, if ever there was one.” (The author hails from Moscow, Idaho, a hotbed of Christian Reconstructionism.) Beneath Rushdoony’s wish to trash the Constitution and execute countless citizens for religious sin, he was a great soul: “A son of immigrants, Rushdoony proved a thoroughly American intellectual – in the old-fashioned sense: an independent-minded autodidact and polymath, who approached even the most esoteric matters with an earthy practicality.” I guess the editors of the Standard believe public stonings of recalcitrant offspring is evidence of “earthy practicality.” I beg to differ. If anyone needs evidence of the Standard’s capitulation to theocratic extremism, and its apparent fondness for a man who found American liberal institutions contemptible, they should read this article. It’s the most chilling piece to appear in a mainstream publication in years.

Slate’s Tim Noah, whom I’ve criticized recently, has a real scoop. Just when you thought the controversy was all but over, a bunch of old Nation readers have managed to talk New York University into launching a website dedicated the proposition that Alger Hiss was innocent. You know all those spam emails you get promising you the greatest fantasy on the web? Look no further.

“After 60 days of the Bush administration, prosperity is in trouble, air quality is in trouble, lakes, rivers and forests are in trouble and our drinking water is in trouble too.” – Senator Barbara Boxer today, giving Paul Begala a run for his money.

I really don’t mean to bring up Richard Cohen again but his column in today’s Post is so revealing it’s worth a good read. It’s about David Horowitz’s attention-grabbing ad about reparations for slavery. Here’s the kicker paragraph: “Word for word, there’s not a lot in Horowitz’s ad with which I disagree. But word for word is not, I learned a long time ago, how people read. They take in a message – a tone. They hear an inaudible sound. They sense what the movie director Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) would call “the juice.” The interior message of Horowitz’s ad is smug, cold – dismissive. It’s not racist, as some have charged. It just feels that way.” What Cohen is saying is that what should matter in public debate is not whether an argument makes sense or not, but how some people will feel when exposed to it. This cult of sensitivity – the sworn enemy of rational thought – is the new shibboleth of the some well-meaning types on the left. For them, it doesn’t matter if what you say is objectively racist or wrong or bigoted; even if what you say makes complete sense, all that really matters is if someone, particular of a designated minority group, feels offended. This is the underlying rationale for speech codes; it’s the sentiment behind those who refused to run the Horowitz ad; it’s the rallying cry of the campus left. But when there’s only feeling, there is no debate, and no arguments – merely the “inaudible sounds” of people’s emotions. And when there is no debate, there can be no progress. This cult of feeling, if you scratch it a little, is an almost purely reactionary phenomenon – which is why real liberals should resist it at every opportunity.

IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR: This is not an invitation for you all to flood me with tax hell stories, but this tale from a reader cracked me up: “A couple of years ago I accidentally contributed more than I was supposed to to an IRA account, so I had to take it out and pay a penalty, which I did. A couple of months later, I get a letter saying I owe $450. I call the IRS and they say I don’t owe anything. Another 2 months and another letter comes saying I owe the $450. I call the IRS and they say I don’t owe anything. Another two months, another letter, a threat to place a lien, etc. Back and forth this goes, until they finally determine they have two records on me in their database, one says I owe the other doesn’t. Delete one record, case closed, right? No, two months later I get a check from the IRS for the $450 they said I owed to them. I don’t cash it, I just hold it. Three months later, they say they want their money back – with interest, which I paid.” Ah, how wonderful our government is.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM IN A NUTSHELL: How would this reader suggestion work? Raise the individual hard money contribution to $25,000. Not enough to really sway anyone, but enough to alleviate the need for oodles of soft money. Full disclosure of everything. Then the flat tax. Why would corporate lobbyists need to lobby when there are no loopholes to create? Not perfect, but more feasible and effective than anything else now on the table.

EVEN IN THE JOURNAL: A reader points out an odd piece of cognitive dissonance in the Wall Street Journal’s news pages. In a piece on March 20, devoted to president Bush’s possible Supreme Court picks, the reporter quotes White House legal counsel, Justice Gonzalez, in an abortion case: “Our role as judges requires that we put aside our own personal views of what we might like to see enacted and instead do our best to discern what the legislature intended.” Then the reporter writes: “That philosophy is about as far away from Justice Scalia’s view on abortion as Austin is from Washington.” Huh? This is exactly Scalia’s position. The piece goes on to say that Scalia said that “the right to abortion ‘must be overruled.'” But Scalia only believes that such a right should be over-ruled if the Courts are imposing the right on a reluctant or hostile legislature. When reporters on the Journal don’t even have a basic clue as to the principles of conservative (or liberal) judicial restraint, what hope is there for CNN?

The Domenici amendment allows Congressional and Senate candidates who are up against self-financed multi-millionaires to raise more money than other pols. Seems fair enough to me. What seems odd, as Rich Galen points out, is that Maria Cantwell, Ted Kennedy and Jay Rockefeller voted against it. I guess the motto is: take no chances.

I know you can’t wait for this. Were you up all night following the returns from Marseilles as well? Anyway, a reader points out that I missed a couple of interesting facts. The new mayor of Paris is openly gay, which must make him the most powerful openly gay official in the world. Also: the right actually won a majority of the vote in Paris, but lost because of its distribution in various arrondissements. No Gore-style whining though. And no “chads pendants” either.

AGONY FOR ECSTASY: Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, along comes a proposal to make shipping and selling of Ecstasy punishable to the same extent as powder cocaine. What are those guys smoking? The penalty for selling 100 grams of MDMA may shortly be the same as that for selling 100 grams of heroin. What’s the rationale for this insanity? “The damage this drug can produce is significant and long-term,” Robert Mueller, acting assistant attorney-general, said. “We have an opportunity to stop this growing problem before it becomes an epidemic, and the proposal put forth by the commission would very much help.” There is no evidence that the damage this drug does is any worse than eating McDonalds french fries every day; no evidence that it is addictive; no evidence that it does anything very bad except allow people to have a great time. An epidemic? Could we please ban this metaphor for everything bar infectious diseases? Mueller, it turns out, was once chief homicide officer for the District of Columbia, so he’s no stranger to pursuing policies that seem to have no effect whatsoever. I guess that qualifies him to pursue the drug war as well as anyone else.

BIG BABIES: I’m no economist but I’m relieved that Greenspan didn’t panic and do what the markets want today. There’s nothing in the underlying state of the economy to warrant a huge interest rate cut. These stock-brokers who have never known anything but an incredible bull had their customary hissy-fit, but they really need to get over themselves. It’s not the role of the Fed to protect investors from a bubble; it’s the role of the Fed to keep inflation low. I’m glad Greenspan sees this. It’s good to have a grown-up around somewhere.

SPEAKING OF D.C. GOVERNMENT: I finally disposed of a three-year tax battle with what passes for the District’s revenue office. In 1998, I paid $19,000 of income tax to the District. For that, I got: a joke of a police force, the most expensive and worst public education system in the country, and streets that make downtown Lagos look smooth. But never mind. I’m used to the joys of living in a city controlled by one party for generations. Six months later, I got a letter from D.C. telling me that they weren’t sure, but had I paid my taxes last year? The envelope stated: THIS IS NOT A TAX BILL. I wrote back saying I had indeed paid my taxes, and wondered how an office could mislay a check for $19,000. A few months later, I got another letter saying that I had definitely not paid my taxes and that my bill was now around $22,000. I wrote back explaining that I had already paid them and written a letter to that effect. Six months later, I get another letter, telling me a lien was being placed on my house to recover $24,000 in unpaid taxes. I mailed them a copy of my bank-statement showing the $19,000 paid, the number of the check, the number of the account, my social security number and so on. No response. Six months later, I get a call from the D.C. office informing me that a lien had now been placed on my condo and that my credit record was being damaged, and that I owed close to $27,000. I blew a gasket. The lady on the phone had no records of any of the by-then three letters I had sent, or indeed any materials relevant to the case but her instructions to call me. She was nice enough, her calm demeanor suggesting that this was nothing new. I finally went in to my bank to ask them to fax a Xerox of the cashed check to the D.C. Treasurer’s office. The bank manager smiled. This was the second time that day he had had to do this. He does this dozens of times a month! The check, with a big stamp on the back showing it had been cashed by D.C. in December 1998, was faxed last Friday to the D.C. Treasurer. No word yet. And I’m supposed to be against a tax cut?

Terrific column on Reinaldo Arenas: acute and moving. I had no idea that in the March 5 New York Observer, Philip Weiss had written that Castro’s “dedication and vision are staggering.” Blimey. Has Phil been hanging with Graydon Carter lately?

PAGE-TURNER: Splendid and evocative piece by columnist Clarence Page on the resilient discrepancy between black and white SAT scores. Page doesn’t go for the ostrich-like “abolish the SAT and everything will be OK” theory of some. He’s interested, as anyone should be, in why there’s such a tenacious SAT gap, even among high-income blacks. Page is even big enough to acknowledge that “The Bell Curve,” Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s book on social inequality in America, helped open up an honest dialogue about this (despite attempts by many not to have the debate at all). Page posits that the stress of thinking their intelligence is being evaluated may play a part in black under-performance, citing interesting studies suggesting that some blacks out-psych themselves on some tests. This is surely worth exploring – to see if we can find ways to alleviate it. If smart blacks are being denied places at colleges simply for psychological reasons, we need to find a way to frame the tests so that they don’t achieve this effect. But it’s worth acknowledging the courage of a black columnist like Page to wrestle with these issues so openly. It’s the beginning of a solution – if we can only resist the instinct to brush the problem completely under the carpet for reasons of misplaced sensitivity.

PALM BEACH SANITY: Apparently no hanging chads in the latest Palm Beach County election, says the Wall Street Journal. Using exactly the same technology as last November, but with increased voter awareness of how to use it, the County executed a near-perfect election. “What happened in the past,” voter Joseph Giordano told the Palm Beach Post, “was due to our negligence and inability to read the rules.” Thanks, Joseph. It may have taken a few months for the obvious to sink in, but I’m glad it now has.

THOSE FRENCH ELECTION RESULTS IN FULL: You probably saw the headlines showing the French Left winning Paris for the first time in ages, and Lyons, as well. But a day later, election results across the country, especially in rural areas, show major conservative gains. Outside Paris, the left lost – big time – even in a period of economic growth, presided over by a leftist prime minister. Socialists lost control of over 30 major towns, including Blois, Strasbourg, Orleans, and Rouen. Three cabinet ministers failed to win municipal power – most prominent among them the odious Americanophobe, Jack Lang, education minister, and former minister of “culture.” If replicated nationally, it would mean a return to power of the right nationally. Just a straw in the wind. The results in general showed that neither main party bloc has unbeatable momentum for next year’s big electoral fight; but that the right-wing, dismissed as losers only a few days ago, should not be counted out. Even the leftist paper, Liberation, conceded that “The blue [conservative] wave that swept across France’s regions weakens [Socialist Prime Minister Lionel] Jospin more than the gains in Paris and Lyon strengthen him.” Worth pondering as beleaguered Britain, with a near-revolutionary rural population, goes to the polls in May. Pundits are giving the Tories no hope at all. Sound familiar?