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May 19, 2003, 9:00 a.m. Oh, the arrogance — still. Why Bush is different (part 1,056,331). Red meat for graduates — and more

ou may have read that Fox News is having a little feud, or contretemps, with Aaron Brown, an anchor (or something) for CNN. Brown has specialized in ridiculing Fox — as the CNN people usually do — claiming the network is the equivalent of conservative talk radio. Here he goes: "There's room for conservative talk radio on television. But I don't think anyone ought to pretend it's the New York Times or CNN."

Hmm: One result I was hoping for, in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, is that the New York Times, CNN, et al. would be a little more humble — a little less scornful, a little less belittling, a little less judgmental. But I guess not.

I don't think anyone ought to pretend it's the New York Times or CNN. No, let's not pretend: because Fox News hasn't had a scandal like Peter Arnett fabricating about Vietnam or Jayson Blair fabricating about everything.

A little more humility, gentlemen, as you contemplate the beams in your own eyes.

Have you noticed how some people snort when our victories in war are "too easy"? Back after Grenada, Madeleine Albright — then a Democratic foreign-policy doyenne (as now, I guess) — sniffed, "Well, it's like the Washington Redskins beating the Little Sisters of the Poor." And now Carol Moseley Braun has come along to say, "You know, the notion that we won the war against Iraq is like saying we won a war against Arizona. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's not that big of a country, and nobody, I don't think, had any notion that we would do anything but win it."

Asked whether President Bush deserved any credit for Iraq, the candidate said, "Well, you know, I mean, if you pick a fight, and if — you know, you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat 'em, where's the honor in that?"

There are a million things to say about this repugnant remark, but I will confine myself to: Ask a freed Iraqi political prisoner where the honor was in destroying Saddam Hussein and his evil regime.

And I wish to ask this: Why is it that the Democratic party, in general, is so seldom held accountable for the statements of its leaders and spokesmen? Rick Santorum makes some less than air-tight remarks about jurisprudence, and the whole Republican party is supposed to be under a shadow. Carol Moseley Braun — and others — talk like this, and everyone goes, "La, la, la."

Hyperbole is the natural speaking mode of a candidate. But sometimes, one of them makes you kind of sick.

Here's John Edwards, the North Carolina senator, touting himself: "Some people ask me, 'Why run now? You have time.' No, I don't. I don't, you don't, and America doesn't. This could be the most important election in our lifetime."

Oh, "puh-leeze," as a former editor of mine used to write frequently.

Can you believe that some Democrats are going to run on being tougher — way tougher — than President Bush on terrorism and homeland security? I mean, why should they even try? Will anyone buy this? It's so . . . counterintuitive, among other things. I mean, it's like Republicans claiming that they'll give you more socialized medicine than their opponents. Why even the feint?

Bush's supporters claim that he's "a different kind of president" — and so he is, in myriad ways, most strikingly in his determination to kill terrorism from its roots. He also met with Cuban dissidents and democracy activists on Cuban Independence Day. Now there's a different kind of president. W. is, in fact, a human-rights president — just as Reagan was (and as Bush the First wasn't, really). Of course, neither Reagan nor W. gets credit for being a human-rights president — only Jimmy Carter is supposed to have been that. But the record is clear on the subject, and many people — especially those in Communist or formerly Communist countries — know it.

Speaking of Cuba, listen to this letter, if you will, from a reader:

"Dear Jay: I wanted to make sure this one didn't fly under the radar. The following is from the latest issue of Time. The article concerns Oswaldo Paya, the human-rights leader:

"'At the same time, Paya, who was widely cheered during a visit to Miami this year, has helped bring that city's once rabidly anti-Castro politics toward a potentially more constructive center. Wresting the Cuba debate away from the pro- and anti-Castro extremists may be Paya's most helpful accomplishment.'

"So, I suppose being 'rabidly anti-Castro' and thus staunchly anti-totalitarian, anti-murder, anti-torture, and anti-repression is less respectable than taking a moderate line against this evil. And note the moral equivalence between 'pro- and anti-Castro extremists.'

"Sorry, I just had to vent."

I know what you mean. But you have to watch these extremists. Take Elie Wiesel, for example. He's rabidly anti-Nazi. Why couldn't he be more moderately anti-Nazi, like, say, David Irving (if Irving is)?

Bill Clinton gave a commencement address at Tougaloo College, in Mississippi. And with what did he inspire the grads? "They" — the Republicans — "want to pay for the tax cut by kicking 500,000 children out of after-school programs. . . . It is wrong. It is wrong. There's nothing right about it."

Think about this for a second, folks. A former president of the United States — out of office two years — gave a screamingly partisan speech at a commencement. Can you imagine? Can you imagine yourself doing it?

I certainly couldn't do it — I couldn't do it now, as an opinion journalist. I would consider it undignified and inappropriate. And the man was president of the United States. Wouldn't you feel you had an obligation or something?

Meanwhile, New York Times reporter Chris Hedges gave a screamingly antiwar speech at the commencement of Rockford College, in Illinois. Rather, he tried to — but the students revolted, and he had to stop.

I'm for free speech and all — but I find this immensely encouraging. The students — many of them — felt that the speaker had no right to impose on their big day a speech of this character. I'm sure their faculty was more favorable.

So, a bit of hope. The story can be found here, and I got it through AndrewSullivan.com.

More college news? Let me just quote from a report by the delightfully named Sunshine DeWitt:

Smith College students earlier this month made a decision some might find mystifying: Although Smith is a women's college, the students voted to change the language of their student constitution so that the pronouns "she" and "her" would be replaced with gender-neutral terms.

The vote applies only to student government documents, and not to official college publications, so none of the college's brochures will excise the female pronouns.

The student government vote is an indication of a deeper issue facing Smith College, and other same-sex institutions, which is that a growing number of students identify themselves as transgender, and say they feel uncomfortable with female pronouns.

"Smith College is a college for women, and within that there is a place for all kinds of women," said Brenda Allen, director of institutional diversity.

Director of institutional diversity. I mean, who's not?

You can't parody anything in this country anymore (and thanks to my colleague Emmy Chang for forwarding this astonishing — but yet not astonishing — story).

In the months since 9/11, there's been a lot of talk — often loose talk — about democracy. Some ignoramuses or mischief-makers mock the "neocons" (whatever they are) as "democratists." But what sensible people have been mainly talking about is the rule of law: the precious rule of law, without which democracy is nothing. (As Robert Conquest has pointed out, Orwell was a "law-and-liberty man," and so should we be.) For example, Russia is in dire need of the rule of law — of such elementary (you would think) notions as contracts.

So my eyes got larger when I saw a headline in the New York Times: "Kosovo Pins Its Hopes on Rule of Law." (The story is here.) Police are doing such things as stopping traffic violators — and fresh air, bearing civilization, blows through that country.

Adam Daifallah is reporting from Baghdad for the New York Sun, and he has some interesting things to relate. I was especially struck by: "Every Iraqi [at a mass grave] had a story to tell. One man, who had lost three relatives in the 1991 Shiite uprising, said he did not want any Arab press taking pictures at the gravesite because they supported Saddam all these years."

Oh, there's so much packed into that statement.

Have you heard about the "Laci" bill? Actually, its sponsors are calling it "Laci and Conner's Law." The former was Laci Peterson, apparently murdered in California by her husband, Scott. Conner was their (unborn) son, apparently murdered at the same time by his father. The bill would make it a federal crime to harm a fetus. It would mimic laws already existing in more than half the states, and President Bush has pledged to sign it.

Democrats — and other abortion-rights supporters — are, of course, crying foul. Because once you say that you can't kill a fetus, then you might have to say . . . well, you know.

Icky.

Susan Estrich has written a remarkable column. She, recall, is the former Harvard Law professor who went into politics (as Michael Dukakis's campaign manager). (Of course, what Harvard Law professor is not in politics? But that's another story.)

The remarkable column had to do with the Clintons, that remarkable couple. Estrich wants them to "shut up," because they "suck up every bit of the available air," so that "nothing is left for anyone else."

But "don't get me wrong. No one spent more time defending Bill Clinton than I did. Too much, according to most of my friends. But in a constitutional crisis, there was no choice. Enough is enough.

"There's no excuse for a grown man to have an affair with an intern, whether his name is Bill Clinton or Jack Kennedy. What the former president did was wrong."

Ahh — now she tells us! When it's nice and safe! When the "constitutional crisis" has passed! Because the truth couldn't be let out at that moment. Did it have to be protected by "a bodyguard of lies"?

Such are the principles of a Dukakisite.

One gets tired of praising and marveling at Mark Steyn. Or rather, one doesn't get tired — one just runs out of words.

I thought of this when reading a recent political column of his — and while reading his current theater review in The New Criterion. (The review isn't available online, but here is that journal's website, and you should be subscribing to The New Cri. anyway, thank you very much.)

Mark's piece concerns a play by A. R. Gurney Jr. having to do with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Let me just share with you some of my favorite excerpts:

"For all his Republican bigotry, Hartwell has an exotic past. Years ago, while on a Fulbright scholarship in Beirut, he had an affair with a Palestinian woman — indeed, a 'Palestinian intellectual,' as they say: judging from the number of people to whom this phrase is applied, intellectualism would appear to be the principal activity of the Palestinian people, rather as guano-extracting is to Nauru."

And,

"The trouble with writing a play that hinges on a brand-new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan is that there comes a point when you have to reveal what that plan is. . . . Most of the peace plans still in play are pretty shopworn, the romance long since drained out of them: a return to 1967 borders with some adjustments and abandonment of settlements, etc. The sort of stuff that gets Thomas Friedman squealing orgasmically before Crown Prince Abdullah would seem dull and technical in a drama. So instead Gurney gives us his own peace proposal, via Amira's terrorist son: a Federated Republic of Israel and Palestine.

"Well, give him credit. At least he doesn't bother paying lip service to a 'two-state solution,' which, for many if not most Palestinians, is an intermediate stage to a one-state solution. Gurney takes us there in one leap: bye, bye, Israel, in the sense of a sovereign state with its own seat at the U.N.; never again would an Israeli Olympic team be slaughtered because Israel would no longer have an Olympic team."

Oh, Mark Steyn. You hate to say that any writer or thinker is irreplaceable, but . . .

Speaking of The New Criterion — and its website — there is an archive available of the journal's music column, which is written by the author of Impromptus — go figure.

FILE IT UNDER "BUMMER":

With yells of joy in rudimentary English, five Colombian stowaways emerged jubilantly from a ship they thought had docked in Miami only to discover they were still in their country after five days at sea, the police said. The cargo ship they were hiding on sailed from Buenaventura on Sunday, but had so many mechanical problems that in five days it went only as far as another Colombian port, Cartagena. The stowaways were arrested, released, and put on a bus back to Buenaventura.

That little item comes from Reuters. As I said, bummer.

Finally, I just have to tell you that the Met — the Metropolitan Opera — announced yesterday that, after about a thousand years, Texaco will stop sponsoring its Saturday-afternoon broadcast. The Met is looking for another sponsor.

Texaco will continue until the end of next season, whose final broadcast opera will be Die Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).

What else, huh?

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