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KNIGHT OF THE NITWIT TABLE [Andrew Stuttaford] There's a dumb little piece in the latest Vanity Fair about a new production of The Crucible set for New York in March. Its gist is that this is "just in time," because America has again become "a society afraid of dissent." The most idiotic remark of all comes from the play's director, Sir Richard Eyre. Eyre notes that "It is extremely hard at the moment to take a stand against the consensus." The nitwit Knight goes on to say that, "The play takes place in the 17th Century, but I hope it will feel like the present day." Well, Sir Richard, in much of the Islamic world it does. Posted 3:11 PM | [Link] THE FRENCH, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford] Judging by today's European press the French still seem to be complaining about the administration's approach to America's enemies. Does this mean that France now wants to be the Vichy of Evil? Posted 3:08 PM | [Link] WOULD YOU LIKE A BOY OR GIRL EMBRYO?[Kathryn J. Lopez] Relatively quietly the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has reversed its previous position on sex-selection and human embryos. Its ethics committee had previously approved creating embryos and destroying based on sex. Now, they have had second thoughts, even though clinics have already been offering the service. Although the main chain, the Center for Human Reproduction, which advertises in the likes of The New Yorker, claims it will abide my the change of heart, it’s hard to believe that the new nonbinding statement from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine saying they "discourage" such sex selection and embryo destruction will be the end of it--especially since it has already had a real-life trial run. Have no doubt, we are the brave new world. Posted 1:58 PM | [Link] DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY [Kathryn J. Lopez] So now it seems it finally ok to admit that kids in day care do, in fact, get sick more often than kids who are at home with mom--only because there is a guilt-free spin to peddle. A new study finds that the kids who are sick during their preschool years because of the germs floating around day-care centers are less likely to catch everything the other kids have in elementary school. The day-care advantage disappears by around age 13 according to the study. An AP report notes "the findings should help relieve the guilt and anxiety parents often feel when putting their children in day care." As long as it makes adults feel better. Posted 1:52 PM | [Link] COURAGE KNOWS NO COLOR: [Rod Dreher] Here's an incredible story about a young white Zimbabwean who was born into a life of privilege, but who is taking beatings and risking his life to stand up to the bloodthirsty Afro-fascist dictator Robert Mugabe. The young man has increasing support of anti-Mugabe blacks, who say he is living proof that Mugabe's rhetoric calling whites are parasites is a racist lie. Posted 1:44 PM | [Link] TECHNICAL NOTE [Kathryn J. Lopez] We we're able to blog due to technical difficulties until this afternoon. I'll have a different excuse later for the next gap. Posted 1:44 PM | [Link] YOU WIN [Kathryn J. Lopez] John, I'm so jealous that you were the first to post the coolest news the Corner has ever blogged! No one but John posted until sometime this afternoon, of course, because we are all delirious with delight. (John is too, but after two days of Corner baseball chatter, Mrs. Miller made sure he did some work at home. We may need to hire her to ensure some discipline around here.) Anyhow, Corner congrats to the future Mr. & Mrs. Ponnuru. Posted 1:40 PM | [Link] WHY STAY CATHOLIC?: [Rod Dreher] The Catholic convert Mark Shea, an editor at www.catholicexchange.com, offers terrific reasons why good Catholics disgusted and demoralized in the wake of the Boston horrors to stay in the Church and fight for what's right. If you're a Catholic dispirited by the scandals, don't miss this great piece. Posted 1:22 PM | [Link] BOSTON, AGAIN: [Rod Dreher] If it's the weekend, it must be time for more bad news on the priest-pedophile front. This morning's Boston Globe reports yet another shocker. Newly released court documents show that judges sealed child sex abuse cases against several priests at the request of archdiocesan lawyers, and sometimes lawyers for the victim. Result: no one but the Church, the judge and the victims could ever know about what had transpired. One priest, whose 1993 settlement of a a child sex-abuse lawsuit was not made public, moved to New Hampshire, where he molested two children and was sent to prison in 1995. The Globe article makes it clear that in the wake of the Geoghan case, the days of the legal system cooperating to prevent the Church from being embarrassed are probably gone. Furthermore, today's Boston Herald reports that Massachusetts authorities may be on the verge of issuing criminal sex-abuse indictments against several Boston area priests. Posted 1:01 PM | [Link] NORTH KOREAN EVIL: [John J. Miller] An astonishing report on North Korean brutality, told by a defector who was once a Kim Jong Il bodyguard. Posted 5:40 AM | [Link]
READ THIS: [John J. Miller] A very good article in the latest Policy Review on why ordinary Chinese people have such a negative view of the United States. Many moons ago, the author, Ying Ma, was an intern of mine--she's a bright and talented young lady with a great future ahead. This isn't the last we'll be hearing from her. Posted 10:59 PM | [Link] HOME NEWS: [John J. Miller] NR's Ramesh Ponnuru popped the question to his girlfriend April last night, and she happily accepted. Personally, I think Ramesh is getting the better part of this deal, but April was giddy with excitement when they came by the office this afternoon. A hearty congratulations to the couple. Posted 10:23 PM | [Link] UNENLIGHTED IVIES [Kathryn J. Lopez] Columbia U. senior & former NR intern Jaime Sneider has a revealing op-ed in the New York Daily Newsthis week about anti-war activist on campus. Check this out: Outlining the People for Peace philosophy to me, one member gave the example of a missile heading toward a densely populated American city. According to him, "If they [the city's citizens] were a moral and enlightened people, they would wait patiently for death, encouraging a spirit of nonviolence." Curiously, People for Peace has yet to condemn Afghan civilians who have fled U.S. missiles. The whole op-ed can be read here. Posted 9:51 PM | [Link] NOT ALL FUN AND GAMES [Andrew Stuttaford] There's a truly bone-headed story today in Britain's left-wing The Guardian. A correspondent in Salt Lake City warns that "senior officials" at the IOC are "expressing concerns" over whether the U.S. can ever be permitted to stage another Olympics. While such a ban would be no great loss, it is interesting to read the details of "concerns" that include the following whine from one Olympic bureaucrat: "This is a show designed to send a message to Osama Bin Laden. President Bush is saying: "Look at us: you bombed us but you can't stop us going about our normal lives." But that is not what the Olympic Games are supposed to be about." Quite what the Games are meant to be about is not made clear. The IOC is also said to be "embarrassed" about the "heavy-handed" display of security. Apparently this runs against the genteel traditions of the Winter Olympics, an event which The Guardian describes as having been "a sedate, friendly festival" ever since its first staging in 1924, a record that presumably includes those nice 1936 Winter Games held in sedate, friendly Nazi Germany. Posted 9:15 PM | [Link] GILLIGAN IS THE DEVIL? [Jonah Goldberg] A reader inquires about my allusion to conspiracy nuts and Gilligan's Island in my column: I wondered if the conspiracy to which you referred has anything to do with the theory that Gilligan's Island was a religious allegoyr. To refresh your memory: The castaways represent the 7 deadly sins: Ginger - lust; Mary Anne - envy; Mr. Howell - Greed; Mrs. Howell - Sloth; the Professor - pride; the Skipper - rage and gluttony. Gilligan, of course, is the Devil that keeps them all trapped in their sins. Consider: - Every time they had a chance to escape the island, Gilligan fouled it up - He constantly wore a hat to hide his horns - He was the only castaway to dress in red - Pagan islanders put his face on a totem pole and worshipped him - He constantly had dreams in which he was a demon (dracula, Mr. Hyde, etc) Sorry to waste your time with such buffoonery, but to quote the killer in Dirty Harry, "I gots to know!" Posted 5:36 PM | [Link] BEIJING'S BUGGY: [Rod Dreher] Fascinating Bill Gertz item in today's WashTimes, explaining China's silence over Jiang Zemin's bugged airliner. Seems that the Chinese believe the bugging may have been done by Beijing hard-liner Li Peng, one of the Tiananmen Square butchers, as a way of spying on Jiang. If this proves to be the case, I'll be relieved that the CIA isn't responsible for such a sloppy job. Posted 4:22 PM | [Link] MORE SKATING IGNORANCE? [Rich Lowry] Glad Canadians got their share of the gold. But there’s something I wonder about: Why does presentation matter so much in ice skating? That American last night, Timothy Goebel, got killed in presentation just because he didn’t waive his arms and shake his hips like some out-of-control diva waiter. Why does that even matter? Posted 4:09 PM | [Link] ECUMENISM THESE DAYS: [Dreher] A Corner reader in Seattle passed along this prayer, written by Father Larry Brault of Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church in Upton, Mass.: A Lenten Prayer to One God for One World: Lord, our God, it was in the desert that you formed your people Israel and readied them to enter into a land flowing with milk and honey; it was in the desert that your Son, our Lord, Jesus retreated as he readied himself for His public ministry, proclaiming your Kinddom and bringing us your gift of salvation; it was in the desert that your child Muhammed heard your call to bring his people to a belief in the One God. During this Lenten season, bring us back to the desert of our own existence. Let us once again hear your voice calling us to reconversion. Allow us to rediscover you, the One God as well as the commonality we share with all our brothers and sisters throughout the world-your children. Let us be attentive to your will and live your commandment of love as we work and pray towards a world of peace and unity. This we pray in the name of Jesus who is one with you, O Yahweh, O Allah, and the Holy Spirit. Well, Your Working Boy phoned Fr. Brault, who said he wrote the prayer as "a call to our people to have sympathy and compassion for all those of Abrahamic faiths." Fr. Brault said the prayer does not recognize Muhammad as a genuine prophet, only as a "child of God." He added: "We want to spend this Lent showing our people what Judaism and Islam are really all about." I asked him if that would include talking about the persecution of Catholics and other Christians in Islamic countries. "Absolutely," he said. We shall see. Posted 2:29 PM | [Link] THE HOT CORNER: [John J. Miller] Rich, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that my wife is reading the Corner, which means this new feature we've started on NRO has broad-based appeal. Let's break out the cigars and celebrate. The bad news is that she paid particular attention to our baseball exchange. Now she thinks I'm not doing any work here in the office and demands to know why I'm not at home vacuuming the rugs, which I promised to do a couple of days ago. (Amy, if you are reading this, I'll try to do it tonight. Tomorrow at the latest. But first I've gotta get back to my job.) Posted 2:16 PM | [Link] AND, THE WINNER IS [Andrew Stuttaford] Can anyone think of a more sinister carny movie than Freaks, Tod Browning's effort from 1932? Seventy years old and still very nasty. Posted 1:54 PM | [Link] CARNY POP CULTURE OVERSIGHT [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, I don't talk about Carnies. They scare me. They're "Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands." Posted 11:59 AM | [Link] A reader objects: My mother is 92. She is a Shi'ite Catholic. She would absolutely have beaten the [expletive deleted, but still obvious] outa Norm Mineta if her flight to Rome or Knock or Madjugore or Fatima or Lourdes or Guadalupe or Compostella had been delayed. So lay off our Musselmen buddies. Posted 11:55 AM | [Link] AL FUQRA, THE JUNIOR AL QAEDA: [John J. Miller] When I wrote a story late last year about al Fuqra, a black Muslim group in the United States linked to multiple murders and bombings since 1980, I half thought we might never hear much about them again. But then Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl disappeared in Pakistan while he was trying to interview Sheik Gilani, the founder and spiritual leader of al Fuqra. Now the Washington Times reports that federal authorities are conducting an extensive investigation of the sect and that California just shut down a charter school they operated. (And earlier this week, there was another al Fuqra story in the Times, about its compound in rural Virginia.) So we're hearing plenty about them now--and let's hope that the news we hear in the future will be restricted to their bust-up. Posted 11:39 AM | [Link] BERNIE FOLLOW-UP: [Rich Lowry] John, DJ hit the Maier ball. But Bernie hit the game-winner, “the 400-foot bomb to end the game” to which I was referring. Posted 11:37 AM | [Link] OBJECT LESSON FOR THE MOOSE: [Rich Lowry] Jonah, I must part ways with you. I don’t expect The Moose to try to explain why it’s corrupting, say, for the GOP to get $100,000 from Global Crossing, but not corrupting for John McCain to get $30,000 from Global Crossing. I mean—why would he even try? If he did, he might end up like this. Who knows how this particular moose—pictured in yesterday’s New York Post-- ended up in this predicament, but I bet it involved intellectual inconsistency, petty hypocrisy, and covering for his friends. Posted 11:33 AM | [Link] CARNY KNOWLEDGE:[Rich Lowry] Here’s an e-mail. Jonah, over to you: “Carnies are getting a lot of press lately. As Homer Simpson once said: `If you can't trust carnies, who CAN you trust?’” Posted 11:31 AM | [Link] ANOTHER SATISFIED READER: [Rich Lowry] “Please stop posting emails from these ass-kissing readers looking for a pat on the head for reading NRO and/or NRODT. So they bought a subscription to NRODT, big [expletive deleted] deal! I also fit into the category of someone who purchased a subscription to NRODT after spending excessive amounts of time on NRO, but I'm not looking for praise or a posting in the Corner as a reward.” Posted 11:30 AM | [Link] THE SAUDIS: A THREAT TO ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION: [Rod Dreher] This one's a shocker. Today's NYTimes (link requires registration) reports on the efforts of a Saudi architect to preserve historic Islamic holy sites in Mecca. It seems that the Saudi royal family has been destroying ancient buildings and sites associated with the Prophet, as part of a scheme to modernize the city. A 1994 religious ruling by the nation's senior Wahhabi cleric provides theological justification for these terror acts, claiming that it's better to destroy old buildings and holy sites than to leave them standing if the faithful might fall into "idolatry" by venerating them. This, you will recall, is precisely the twisted theology that led the Taliban to blow up the Bamiyan Buddhas. The Saudi government and its religious berserkers are not only a menace to the West, they threaten the historical legacy of Islamic civilization too. Where is the Muslim outrage? Posted 10:17 AM | [Link] ISLAM MEANS PEACE, CONT'D [Jonah Goldberg ] I’m sure you’ve heard about this story. Pilgrims on their way to Mecca beat the Tourism and Aviation Minister to death because the flights were so tardy (I knew being the head of tourism for Afghanistan would be hard, but jeez). Now, I understand that going to Mecca is very important in Islam. I also understand that the freight these guys paid was a lot of money. But, well, look at it this way: my mother-in-law recently went on a pilgrimage to visit Christian Holy sites as part of the Jubilee. Something tells me that even if several of her flights had been canceled or delayed, she wouldn’t have beaten Norm Mineta to death over it. Posted 10:09 AM | [Link] COW BINGO: [Jonah Goldberg] American journalism at its best.Laughing at cows is wrong, apparently. Posted 10:06 AM | [Link] CORRECTION: [Rod Dreher] Daniel Pipes writes to say I mischaracterized one of his criticisms of "Across the Centuries," the 7th-grade textbook he has accused of pro-Islamic bias. In my NRO report, I noted that Pipes, in his New York Post column, cited the textbook for presenting "key articles of the Islamic faith" as if they were fact. "This isn't entirely true," I wrote, and cited examples of the textbook qualifying other claims with words like "Muslims believe." Pipes points out that he hadn't accused the textbook of doing that in every case, as my report implied. He's right. I regret the error, and shall phone the nearest madrassah forthwith to ask them how I can blame my mistake on the Mossad. Posted 10:05 AM | [Link] AN OLIVE BRANCH TO THE MOOSE [Jonah Goldberg ] Look, Mr. Moose: By all accounts you’re a smart, dedicated guy. We don't want this to get any nastier. Kathryn Lopez is already trying to install a Moose filter in the Corner's software to keep Rich and I from taunting you. We don’t want that (though this sounds like the sort of anti-free speech thing you’d approve of). Meanwhile, you can’t possibly enjoy being holed-up like Manuel Noriega in his sanctuary, with the nuns folding your underwear, while we blast "Rock the Casbah" outside your window day and night. Just come out and say something. Anything -- that directly responds to our objections and we will in all likelihood move on. It’s your obstinate silence that makes this such a challenge and, hence, impossible for us to back off. Posted 10:01 AM | [Link] THE MORNING AFTER: [Kathryn J. Lopez] So the V-Day Highlights from Corner mail: Vulvapalooza: Tufts Collective for Men Against Violence sponsors after VM, to “spread the word” (about vaginas?) ”It's 10 o'clock at night--do you know where your clitoris is?" The Princeton Tory covered the vulgarity on Princeton’s campus. (Far from the only school with this problem.) Vaginas in the chapel: During “Sex Week” at Washington University in St. Louis, The Vagina Monologues were held in the campus nondenominational chapel—Ash Wednesday services and VM were held on Wed. within hours of each other. Condom Olympics & “Sensual sundaes”: also at Washington U The Penis Monologues: an equal-oppportunity V-Day at Penn State Condomgrams: the most common V-Day fundraiser Posted 9:19 AM | [Link] THE MTV STATE [Kathryn J. Lopez] So, I also slept through Colin Powell's appearance on MTV, too. The news out of it: He advocates condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS. Among other things, he said,"I not only support their use, I encourage their use among people who are sexually active and need to protect themselves." Of course, I'm not upset so much at what Powell said as I am that he appeared on MTV. That having been said, I do wish when given opportunities like this, intelligent, articulate people--who the MTV crowd is willing to listen to--would take the time to, in a quick soundbyte, put to rest the "safe sex" "protect yourself" with a condom myths. So, yes, the Washington Post subhead is right. I'm irked. Posted 6:22 AM | [Link] THANK YOU, EVE ENSLER [Kathryn J. Lopez] I hadn't read that study, John. But Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues may have been acting to save my life last night. I was on late-night corner duty last night, but sat down to watch VM on HBO and almost immediately fell asleep. So you are all deprived of a report. But, I ALMOST made the five-hour mark (take an hour or so). Posted 5:58 AM | [Link] GOOD MORNING: [John J. Miller] Hey Kathryn, there's hope for early-morning bloggers like you and me: A new study says that people who sleep for eight hours or more a day live shorter lives. The bad news is that people who sleep only five hours a night also risk their health. Six to seven hours a night is recommended. Posted 5:49 AM | [Link] ON 400-FOOT BOMBS: [John J. Miller] I thought there was something fishy about Rich's version of the Jeffrey Maier story when I read it yesterday, but it wasn't until this morning that I was able to place it under the withering scrutiny of a Nexis fact-check search. Did Bernie Williams hit that ball? Nope; it was Derek Jeter. Was it "a 400-foot bomb"? Nope again; it was, in the words of New York Timesman George Vecsey, "a mild fly ball to right field." As they say in Kandahar, that's no daisy cutter. Hey, we all make mistakes--French judges, AL umpires (it was Rich Garcia, by the way), Yankees fans. But what are we to assume about Yankee fans when the only part of a story they can remember is the name of the kid who helped them cheat their way to a playoff win? Posted 5:33 AM | [Link]
I KNOW JUST HOW THEY FEEL:: An angry mob at the Kabul airport beat the Afghan travel minister to death today after enduring a two-day flight delay. I think their cousin was in front of me at the Dept. of Motor Vehicles office today, trying to get a license. An enraged Arab man started screaming at the couldn't-be-bothered clerk. "Do you mean to tell me I waiting hour and half here after I do what the woman said, and now you say I don't have the right documents?!" he bellowed. "I do everything she tell me! I bring everything she say! Everything! And you tell me this?!" And then he started cursing the clerk, demanding the pale fellow's name. The clerk said he wasn't giving his name to a foul-mouthed jerk. I can't say that I blame him, but neither do I blame the Arab guy, who probably lost a day's work dealing with the petty tyrants of the NY State bureaucracy. This was my second visit in three days to the DMV, and my paperwork still doesn't please those people. A French woman behind me in line said, "They treat us like cows. This is unbelievable." Yes indeed. I bet if the cud-chewing citizen-drones crowding that office had shown the same initiative as the Afghans, the New York State DMV office would be a lot more efficient and thoughtful toward its customers, instead of some dismal labyrinth out of '70s-era East Germany. Posted 9:50 PM | [Link] McCAIN VS. GROWTH II [Ramesh Ponnuru] Several times in the last few days, McCain has mentioned the Club for Growth as the kind of organization whose nefarious activities his bill is necessary to police. Yesterday evening the senator told Wolf Blitzer, “What we’re trying to do is stop organizations like a so-called Club for Growth that came into Arizona in a primary, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads. We had no idea who they were, where their money came from. And that’s what we’re trying to prevent here.” Actually, the club’s donors (at least those who donate over $200) are on file with the FEC, as required by law. Stephen Moore, the president of the club, tells me it ran no negative ads in Arizona—it ran only positive ads about congressional candidate Jeff Flake, who went on to win his primary over liberal Republican Susan Bittersmith. McCain was supporting her, and I guess he’s still upset. (For those who care, Moore, like several leading lights of the group, is affiliated with NR.) Posted 9:24 PM | [Link] McCAIN VS. GROWTH [Ramesh Ponnuru] Yesterday, the Senate voted on an amendment by Jon Kyl of Arizona to make repeal of the estate tax permanent. It got 56 votes, but two senators who didn’t vote (Domenici and Bennett) are also supporters. So it’s a few votes away from being filibuster-proof. Jean Carnahan was the only vulnerable Democrat up for re-election this year who voted no. Two senators who had previously voted to kill the estate tax for good switched sides: Democrat Patty Murray—and the other Republican senator from Arizona, John McCain. Posted 9:23 PM | [Link] V-DAY MANIA, CATHOLIC STYLE [Kathryn J. Lopez] Birthday-Boy Rodster, do not get me started. If you take a look at the official V-Day website, you have to start wondering why some schools bother pretending they are Catholic. Participating schools include the Catholic Fordham, Georgetown, Boston College, Holy Cross, Marquette, Marist, Marymount Manhattan...you get the idea. These schools are marching toward extinction. What's the point of having a Catholic college if there is nothing Catholic about them? Posted 4:31 PM | [Link] THIN ICE, PT. 2 [John J. Miller] In response to that editor (whose name escapes me) who is all worked up about the Jeffrey Maier kid, "a 400-foot bomb" is not a home run, except when an umpire screws up. What is this, affirmative action for Yankees? (I'm now starting to wonder: What are the odds that umpire was French?) One thing's for sure: I'd pay cold, hard cash to see Bernie Williams attempt a triple sow cow, or whatever it is those figure skaters call their spin-jump thingies. Posted 4:18 PM | [Link] MY FUNNY VALENTINE: [Dreher] A Catholic college in the Archdiocese of Detroit is sponsoring a gay and lesbian Valentine's Day dance tonight -- and Cardinal Maida, who was asked by some local Catholics to intervene to stop it, refused to get involved. When the they won't even bother to halt something like this, is there any wonder that American bishops haven't shown the slightest real interest in implementing the Pope's "Ex Corde Ecclesiae," the document ordering the bishops to make Catholic colleges authentically Catholic? Posted 4:03 PM | [Link] "THAT KID"!?!?!.: [Rich Lowry] First, "that kid" has a name, Jeffrey Maier. Second, I really don't think he was trying to "cheat," but just snag a home run ball. Third, the umpires did make a bad call, but it wasn't an umpire that let (I believe) Bernie Williams hit a 400-foot bomb to end the game but instead an Oriole "pitcher." Posted 3:27 PM | [Link] I agree with everybody who has said something smart and perceptive about skating and I disagree with anybody who said anything wrong or stupid about it. I just have four questions: 1. If the Westminster Dog Show is a "sporting event" how can figure skating not be? (sorry I don’t mean to obsess about dog shows, but they are to me what pervert priest scandals are to Rod Dreher). 2. Won’t any attempt to remove figure skating from the Olympics be considered "homophobic" since it would disproportionately affect gay men? 3. Has the Moose investigated as to whether or not the derelict judges took filthy soft-money? 4. Why am I playing along with Rich’s shameless appeals for people to subscribe to National Review? Posted 3:22 PM | [Link] Thanks so much for the suggestions. They are very helpful. But I don't need any more. I could spend the rest of the day just reading the ones I've gotten already. Thanks again. Posted 3:04 PM | [Link] O, CANADA [Andrew Stuttaford] Did you see David Pelletier and Jamie Sale on TV the day after the figure-skating event? Despite the wrong that had been done to them, they were calm, capable of a wry smile, dignified and uncomplaining. It was a restrained, typically Canadian performance, and if you want to understand why the United States is the global hegemon and Canada is, well, Canada, it wasn't a bad place to start. Posted 2:49 PM | [Link] THIN ICE: [John J. Miller] John Feinstein has an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today making the point that no matter how much athleticism figure skating requires, sports that rely on the subjective decisions of judges shouldn't be in the Olympics. He squirms by Kathryn's point about umpires and referees not being much different from judges, except that they wear funny uniforms and walk around the playing field. Kicking hockey out of the Olympics would make no sense. I kind of like figure skating (yes, I watched the pairs competition and thought the Canadians won it hands down), but I'll take a baseball game over it anyday. (Spring training starts this weekend!) Yet my most vivid memory of cheating in sports took place a few years ago when that kid in Yankee Stadium reached into the outfield and pulled in a fly ball that was allowed as a home run. If memory serves, the Yankees went on to beat the Orioles in that game and in the series. Granted, this may not have been "cheating," but it sure was a huge mistake on the part of the umpires--in a playoff game, no less--and what really bugged me was how so many New Yorkers wound up embracing the kid and thereby celebrated an infraction that gave them an unfair advantage over their opponent. But that doesn't mean baseball isn't a sport. Posted 2:37 PM | [Link] SKATING, I: [Rich Lowry] E-mail: “The outcome of the skating competition will likely not change, leaving more grief for the Canadians than for you over Luis Gonzalez and his bat. But it is possible that umpires or referees could be bought or bribed, just like those Olympic skating judges seem to have been, and cause an unfair outcome of a game, which would have nothing to do with the trueness or ferocity or finality of the sport played.” Good point (Kathryn is on to the same thing). My reasoning wasn’t air-tight, but see the next e-mail… Posted 2:33 PM | [Link] SKATING, II: [Rich Lowry] E-mail: “The answer to your question "why is figure skating a sport?" is simple. It's not. It is a competition. The difference is in the way the winner is decided. If the winner achieves success through their own merits and an objective goal (more points, faster time, more runs), it is a sport. If the winner is granted success by a subjective judgement by others, it is a competition. As my cousin and I have pointed out, Ping Pong is a sport while figure skating is not. This doesn't mean that figure skaters are not athletes; they are better athletes than ping pong players, and some major league pitchers for that matter.In my world, figure skating and like events are not sports, they areathletic events.” This seems right to me. Posted 2:31 PM | [Link] WORD GAMES [Andrew Stuttaford] There's a revealing juxtaposition of stories in the NYT today. The first (on page A14) is a hostile piece on the Bush administration's "hard line" attitude towards Axis of Evil charter member, North Korea. It includes a quote from the Clinton-era official, Robert Gallucci, responsible for negotiating the 1994 nuclear deal with the Pyongyang regime. Mr. Gallucci is clearly critical of the approach adopted by the current White House in its dealings with countries (such as North Korea) that are, to use his word, "reprehensible" in their domestic and international behavior. "Reprehensible"? The use of that one feeble adjective sums up much of what was wrong with Mr. Clinton's foreign policy. On the following page, readers can find the story of a defector from North Korea, who returned home only to discover that most of his family had been murdered by the regime as punishment for his defection. He himself was arrested, tortured and sentenced to nearly forty years in jail. "Reprehensible" or "evil"? You decide. Posted 2:14 PM | [Link] "VETO IT" [Ramesh Ponnuru] I agree with Rich, of course. McCain-Feingold contains unconstitutional provisions. More to the point, I'm sure the president and his advisers believe that, too. If President Bush fails to veto a bill he considers unconstitutional, it will be a real black mark on his presidency. What is he afraid of? That his popularity will drop from 85 to 80 percent? Posted 1:36 PM | [Link] FIGURES [Kathryn J. Lopez] Rich, I really shouldn't argue sports with you, but, since you don't seem to think figure-skating should be a sport anyway, I'll go ahead: What about umpires? Can't they screw up baseball games? Isn't there a little subjectivity there? The insinuation that figure skating is less of a sport than the likes of baseball seems unfair. It clearly requires athletic ability, coordination, concentration--many of the same things one needs to play baseball. And baseball, of course, has had it share of scandal. I would blame this scandal on the obvious corruptibility of the International Olympic Committee and associated parties, which we are already well too familiar with. Posted 1:28 PM | [Link] ON VALENTINE’S DAY, A TRUE STORY OF NR LOVE: [Rich Lowry] From Eric S. King: “After listening to me, apparently once too often, reference NRO material in conversation, my girlfriend bought me a subscription to NRODT for Christmas. I only mention this because of the fact that my girlfriend, while being an intelligent, beautiful and all around fantastic woman, is also completely, totally and unashamedly a liberal. It was difficult for her, especially when she saw NATIONAL REVIEW on her credit card statement. She considers the gift an expression of her unconditional love for me, I consider it the first successful step in the long deprogramming process that will end with her actually agreeing with me on occasion rather that just shaking her head and saying "oh, honey" with that disappointed tone in her voice everytime I talk about politics.” Posted 12:38 PM | [Link] EXCELLENT E-MAIL, REGARDING ENRONGATE: [Rich Lowry] “Enron execs are being treated like the villains, and at the same time the campaign finance reform debate is at least implicitly acknowledging that it was these fine people on Capitol Hill that bowed to Enron's every wish and allowed this debacle to occur. In other words, Enron's corruption was made possible by their campaign donations to the apparently easily corruptible legislators who then get to subpoena the Enron execs to tell them they are worse than carnies while at the same time arguing that they were corrupted by the carnies and that's why we need campaign finance reform. Yet somehow it's portrayed that the philosopher kings on Capitol Hill, who were so easily influenced by 2 or $3,000 each, are the good guys in all of this.” Posted 12:36 PM | [Link] WASH POST: "CHRIS SHAYS, THE GOP's RELECUTANT REBEL--IRE OVER HIS SOFT-MONEY BILL IS ENOUGH TO MAKE HIM CRY": [Rich Lowry] Gosh, I sure hope John McCain--that other vigorous Teddy Roosevelt-like campaign finance reformer--hugged him and held his hand yesterday. Posted 12:31 PM | [Link] ACTUALLY...: [Rich Lowry] ... I will give Shays this--he is smart, which sets him apart from most congressmen. But he does seem to embody the worry-wart weenie-ism behind campaign-finance reform. The Moose, meanwhile, embodies the petty hypocrisy behind it. Posted 12:30 PM | [Link] SPEAKING OF WHICH...: [Rich Lowry] The Moose is not Chip Griffin, as some of you have e-mailed. This could all be cleared up if The Moose had the guts actually to sign his screeds. But he prefers not to reconcile his attacks on corporate money with the fact that his incorruptible friends--John McCain and Bill Kristol--get skads of it, and prefers to writes his attacks on "stealth political campaigns" anonymously. Posted 12:28 PM | [Link] WHY IS FIGURE SKATING A SPORT?: [Rich Lowry] What always seemed to set sports apart from rest of life--like, say, beauty pageants--is its dreadful finality. At the end, you are either ahead or behind, and that's it--no judging scandals, no subjectivity, just the brutality of the final score. So, when Luis Gonzalez, gets a sorry, 190-foot, broken-bat single to end the World Series, all you can do about it is brood all winter. Posted 12:27 PM | [Link] AROUND NRO [Kathryn J. Lopez] Our senior writer Rod Dreher becomes even more senior today--it's his birthday. Posted 12:17 PM | [Link] I'm writing my syndicated column today and I'm looking for good examples of reforms that made things worse. Soft-money, for example, was a reform and now we think it's evil. If you've got a really good one (the shorter the better) please send them to me at JonahEmail@aol.com. Please DO NOT send them past 3:30 because I will have filed by then. Thanks. Posted 11:08 AM | [Link] I just got this email from Poppa G: "I liked your Westminster column. I've decided that 32% of the entries in the show actually were cats." Posted 10:20 AM | [Link] Man Convicted of Shooting Girlfriend Who He Thought Was About to Say 'New Jersey.' Too bad it was a Texas trial though. In New York that's a completely valid defense. Posted 10:13 AM | [Link] WAGE-GAP EXPLAINED! [Kathryn J. Lopez] A (male) reader writes: "The disparity in Valentine's Day expenditures is a justification for men to be paid more than women: we are expected to pay for just about everything." Posted 10:02 AM | [Link] About 8 zillion people have told me I got the number of human chromosomes wrong in yesterday’s column. Please, please, please stop sending me email about it. It was a mistake and all will be explained in my next corrections column. Posted 9:46 AM | [Link] Rich, we had to know that the Moose would get all puffy at the passage of campaign finance "reform." But today’s Moose Bleat is oddly snarky. Rather than celebrate what must be, for him, the most glorious day in the history of Christendom, he chooses to mock and ridicule the "big money conservatives" in an exceptionally ungracious way. I know the Moose has a policy of not responding to our observations, but I think today’s thin-skinned and defensive tone belies the fact that he’s been paying attention. And, perhaps even more telling, he doesn’t use a single exclamation point today! Posted 9:44 AM | [Link] Last night was the American Enterprise Institute annual dinner. This means that, once again, I was over-served by irresponsible bartenders (my first job in Washington was at AEI and the annual dinner is like a policy wonk Valhalla for me). Meanwhile my lovely bride had to leave early because she wasn’t feeling well. She’s staying home sick today (which means I can’t walk around with a spaghetti colander as a codpiece the way I normally do) and I’m taking care of her. Anyway, since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I would begin my shameless publicity campaign for her soon to be released and wonderful book. You will be hearing more from me about it in the days, weeks, months and perhaps years ahead. But for now, I will keep it simple: buy it or I will come to your home – with my spaghetti colander – and make you buy it. Posted 9:33 AM | [Link] [Kathryn J. Lopez] We may be close to experimenting with a free-market in organs. Gilbert Meilaender, who now serves on the president’s bioethics commissions cautioned against cash for organs in a piece for NR a few years ago. Among other things, he wrote: One might ask, If my death is an evil, why not at least try to get some good for others out of it? If my corpse is no longer my person, as it surely is not, why not treat it as a commodity if doing so helps the living? Ah, but that corpse is my mortal remains. There is no way to think of my person apart from it and no way to gaze upon it without thinking of my person--which person is a whole web of human relations, not a thing or a commodity. A corpse is uncanny precisely because we cannot, without doing violence to our humanity, divorce it fully from the person. To treat those mortal remains with respect, to refuse to see them as merely in service of other goods, is our last chance to honor the "extraterritoriality" of each human life and to affirm that the human person is not simply a "part" of a human community. Perhaps, if we do so honor even the corpse, I or some others will not live as long as we might, but we will have taken at least a small step toward preserving the kind of society in which anyone might wish to live. Posted 9:26 AM | [Link] WAYLON JENNINGS, RIP: [Dreher] A great American, a great Texan, has died. If only in our hearts, let's go to Luckenbach, Texas, to pay our respects. Posted 8:52 AM | [Link] GENDER-GAP ALERT!!! [Kathryn J. Lopez] Evidently, a typical man in a "relationship" will spend an average of $158 today on his valentine. The woman will in turn spend $36. Where's the outrage? Posted 8:38 AM | [Link] WELL, WELL, WELD: [John J. Miller] Hey Rod, you're on the Boston sex-scandal beat. Have you seen this report about what went on during Gov. Weld's administration? What astonished me--even more than the skankiness of the events described by this exhibitionist Byrnes--was Weld's comment: "It's a free country." I mean, a staffer apparently has multiple sexual encounters on the governor's conference table, and Weld isn't even a little ticked off? All I could think about was that cell-phone commercial where the guy doesn't get the message warning him not to hold a meeting in a certain room because the table's just been varnished. But wait a second, this is getting pretty gross. Sort of like the Oval Office during the Clinton years. Posted 7:23 AM | [Link] THE NEW AXIS: [John J. Miller] I'm looking over the results of a CNN/USA Today poll released the other day. In it, 82 percent label the government of Iraq as "evil," with 69 percent and 54 percent thinking the same of the regimes in Iran and North Korea. The Cuba result as disappointing: Only 45 describe the Castro dictatorship as evil, and 48 percent don't think it's evil. China gets a 38-percent evil rating (vs. 54 percent not-evil). Russia fared rather well: 17 percent say its government is evil, and 75 percent say it's not. Posted 6:30 AM | [Link] Tonight was the AEI prom. Many people came to my home. I served them alcohol. The rest will wait for another time. Posted 1:33 AM | [Link] WELL, ON SECOND THOUGHT [Kathryn J. Lopez] Maybe some of our college campuses could use an Authority for Enjoining Good and Preventing Evil on "V-Day." Check into the Corner later today for some of the V-Day events at schools around the country. And, send me any reports on events scheduled at your school at klopez@nationalreview.com. Posted 1:05 AM | [Link] SAUDI ROMANCE [Kathryn J. Lopez] If you happen to be in Saudi Arabia this Valentine's Day, BE CAREFUL. The Authority for Enjoining Good and Preventing Evil doesn't like the day and is patrolling stores to make sure there are no signs of the non-Muslim holiday. Teachers were warned to caution schoolchildren not to wear read. Posted 1:00 AM | [Link]
JENKINS RULES [Ramesh Ponnuru] Typically brilliant column by Holman Jenkins in today’s Wall Street Journal. On Enron’s 401(k)s: “It’s rude to say so, but what many ex-employees are now pleased to call their ‘life savings’ was evanescent wealth based on Enron’s peak market price and its evaporation would have taken place regardless of accounting fraud; indeed, it mostly had taken place before any fraud was uncovered.” Jenkins suggests a provocative list of reforms: End the corporate income tax, since it’s a major source of accounting complexity. Let a real market in audits develop by getting rid of the annually mandated ones. Let short sellers bet against companies, and allow insider trading too (“The SEC whinges about ‘fairness,’ but the average investor is not trying to beat the pros to a piece of market-moving info. He’s betting on the system itself, its ability to mobilize the best information to make sure companies are run honestly and well.”) I don’t know if I agree with all of Jenkins’s analysis. But it certainly beats the intemperate diatribes you’re getting elsewhere. Posted 4:33 PM | [Link] TAX NUMBERS [Ramesh Ponnuru] The Treasury has released figures saying that even with Bush’s tax cut, taxes are at near-record levels as a share of GDP. Since World War II, tax revenues as a share of GDP have been higher in only six years. Revenues as a share of GDP over the next ten years are still projected to be the highest for any ten-year period in American history. The numbers Treasury is citing are important for those of us who want to shrink the federal government’s claim on national resources. They may not be so important economically though. The burden of taxes includes both the revenues they raise and the “deadweight losses” they impose by distorting economic behavior. To the extent we have a more efficient tax system than we did twenty years ago, that total burden has probably fallen as a share of GDP even if the revenue share of it is higher. Posted 4:26 PM | [Link] HEY, ROCKY, WATCH ME PULL A CONSPIRACY OUT OF MY HAT: [Dreher] You Mooseketeers are out of control. I suspect we should consider merging our various Corner obsessions into a Vast Anti-Right-Wing Conspiracy theory. Personally, I shall undertake inquiries at once as to the involvement of the Archdiocese of Boston in the propagation of campaign finance laws. If that Jesuit college in Massachusetts that K-Lo wrote about earlier this morning allows funds from tonight's Ash Wednesday performance of "The Vagina Monologues" to be donated to Common Cause, does that constitute a smoking gun? Inquiring minds want to know. ;-) Posted 1:24 PM | [Link] THE MOOSE, ON CAT’S PAWS [Thunderous Aardvark ] Lion, let’s be fair. First of all, he is the Bull Moose (which does lend itself to easy ridicule). Second, I take your point. After all, the Bull Moose rails against the "sleaze" of "sham ads" by supposedly hidden, and therefor corrupt, forces. But here he is refusing to show his true colors. Would Teddy Roosevelt hide behind a pseudonym? I think not. One last thing: If Shays-Meehan passes, will the Moose at least close-up shop 60 days before every election? I hope so. Posted 11:56 AM | [Link] STEALTH FIGHTER: [The Lion] Jonah, don't be fooled by the by-line, it's really me, Rich. What I love about The Moose is the way he denounces "stealth political campaigns," but refuses to write under his own by-line. Who is The Moose? And why is he hiding? Posted 11:44 AM | [Link] TALK IS CHEAP [Stanley Kurtz] Tom Friedman of the New York Times has an odd op-ed out today. He's all for Bush threatening the Axis of Evil. We've allowed terrorists to kill Americans with impunity for years, says Friedman, so now we need a credible threat to bring Al Qaeda and the rogue states to heel. But then Friedman says it's really just the threat that he likes. He doesn't favor any actual military action against, say, Iraq. Huh? It's silly for Friedman to approve of the threat and then openly oppose the action being threatened. In any case, the time for mere threats has passed. We've been talking tough on Saddam for years, and nothing's happened. If we're lucky, the conquest of Iraq will suffice to communicate our serious of purpose to Iran and North Korea without requiring further military action. Posted 11:43 AM | [Link] BANNING ALL MONEY: [The Lion] According to John McCain in The Washington Post today, after his bill passes, "every American's voice [will be] as loud as those of the special-interests." What utopian clap-trap. But this does show us the ultimate goal toward which McCainiac logic points us: eliminating all political contributions and all lobbying and going to an entirely taxpayer-funded system hermetically sealed from any corporate pressure. Otherwise how is the average citizen to have as much influence with the former Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee as major McCain contributor Global Crossing? Posted 11:42 AM | [Link] OH MY BONNIE: [John J. Miller] Hey Jonah, I've always thought that Bonnie Erbe column is one of your best. She's such a good target. No conservative could have gotten away with the vicious poke she took at my former boss, Linda Chavez, on that unbelievably bad show, To the Contrary. Posted 11:22 AM | [Link] DASCHLE SECOND THOUGHTS: [Rich Lowry] According to The Washington Times, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has backed off his "axis of evil" criticism. Posted 10:59 AM | [Link] [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, I think I’ve got it. I couldn’t figure out where the Moose’s money came from. After all, I think the Moose is wrong and, remember, according to the Moose anytime someone is wrong it has to be due to the corrupting influence of big money. So, here’s my theory: the Moose is a paid stooge of the exclamation point industry. I looked through his current columns and found over forty of them! He was hiding his corruption right under our noses! Taking filthy E-P! money while lecturing the rest of us! Well, I say we must fight the pernicious influence of "Big Exclamation!" Posted 10:39 AM | [Link] V-DAY [Kathryn J. Lopez] Holy Cross, of course, is not the only school that will be celebrating Valentine's Day (or Ash Wednesday, as it happens) this week in unconventional ways. The Vagina Monologues, in fact, are routine on many campuses. But there are lots of other unconventional ways schools manage to mark the day, a day they consider a time to lash out at conventional sex role, the patriarchy, etc. If you are a student, professor, or parents with a disturbing "V-Day" event to report, e-mail me at klopez@nationalreview.com with the subject line "V-Day." And stay tuned to the Corner for updates. Posted 10:34 AM | [Link] ASHES & VAGINAS [Kathryn J. Lopez] It's Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40 days of Lent for many Christians, and so at the College of the Holy Cross, a Catholic college in Massachusetts, the student body will be marking the day with a showing of the infamous Vagina Monologues on campus. (They could not even wait until Valentine's Day?) It's causing a tad of an uproar at Holy Cross, but the Jesuit president stands behind it, and proponents warn that to cancel it would be infringing on "academic freedom." Which, of course, is ridiculous. What these “open-minded” Catholic and other religious schools fail to realize—or simply don’t care about—is that their insistence on being like everyone else will ultimately be their downfall. Posted 10:26 AM | [Link] [Jonah Goldberg] John, I got this from a reader in re the silly assault from Wash Post on your Reader's Digest article: I am reminded of the "M*A*S*H" episode in which Col. Flagg, goaded by Hawkeye and Trapper, searches Frank Burns's bunk for evidence of Frank's Communist leanings, and Flagg comes across Frank's copy of Reader's Digest. When Frank protests as to what could be wrong with Reader's Digest, Flagg snaps "Take away the third, fifth and sixth letters and what do you have? REDS DIGEST, Comrade!" Posted 10:25 AM | [Link] THE PLACE TO BE [Kathryn J. Lopez] According to PC Magazine, NRO is one of the 100 best sites on the web. Posted 10:14 AM | [Link] LE FIX WAS IN:: [Dreher] That Canadian pairs figure skaters Sale and Pelletier were robbed of a gold by the judges seems undeniable. Now, it's starting to look more and more like a conspiracy between the French and Russian judges. Yesterday, one commentator said that corruption is rife in judging figure skating competitions, and lamented that "Canadians always lose these things because Canadians are honest." Posted 9:45 AM | [Link] DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING: [Dreher] Gore's dithering over Arafat -- he's useless, but we should keep talking with him because the diplomatic process is of some worth -- seems to contrast with Gore's praise of Bush's straight talk about the "axis of evil." Gore thought Bush was right to state the blunt truth, but with Arafat, Gore is opposed to the U.S. Govt. actually adjusting its behavior to fit reality. That unwillingness to think clearly about these matters was throughout Gore's speech. He was in favor of acting strongly to settle Iraq's hash "on our terms," but lectured the administration to pay more attention to the concerns of America's allies, and to quit behaving so unilaterally. Well, which is it? Gore is in favor of throwing more money at the Third World to alleviate the kind of poverty that causes terrorism, but he ignores the fact that the 9/11 terrorists were all middle-class. He wants America to push these countries to reform, and says America should be more sensitive of the Muslims' hurt feelings, but when pressed for details on what the administration should actually do, he has no idea. After 9/11, even Gore's supporters were saying they're glad G.W. Bush, and not the dithering wonk, is running foreign policy. Last night's Council on Foreign Relations speech vindicated that view. Posted 9:35 AM | [Link] GORE ON ARAFAT: [Dreher] Last night, Al Gore told the Council on Foreign Relations that Yasser Arafat was "principally responsible" for the current violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He said Arafat erred by not taking Israel's generous land-for-peace offer at Camp David, and Gore accused the Palestinian leader of approving the seized Iranian shipment of weapons headed for the Palestinian Authority. Though admitting that Arafat's "credibility has frayed to almost nothing," Gore said the United States should not break off relations with him, because there's nobody else on that side to talk to. I suppose that's why the Bush Administration is still on speaking terms with Arafat, so maybe there's something to this. I'm dubious. Posted 9:24 AM | [Link] BONNIE BLOG II [Kathryn J. Lopez] Jonah, you are so right about Erbe. And your column was a classic. (And, dude, that blogg goes in the "best of the Corner" book.) One question though: What on God's beautiful green earth would possess you to read her column? Life is way too short for that, dude. Posted 9:07 AM | [Link] [Jonah Goldberg] Bonnie Erbe the host of the PBS show "To The Contrary" takes a swipe at the "Enron Pundits" in her column (who knew she had one?). As is her wont, she stretches a thimble-full of insight into an ocean of outrage. She’s free to beat up on journalists all she likes. But I could do without her typically shrill righteousness. Erbe’s unwatchable show is nothing but an institutionalized shake-down scam of corporations who want to be "feminist-friendly" (for more see my column "Sexist Clap-Trap on PBS.") Go ahead and be outraged at what you think is prostitution, Bonnie, but don’t shriek about it from the window of your whorehouse. Posted 8:57 AM | [Link] HARRY'S NOT MUSLIM [Kathryn J. Lopez]The Ministry of Education and Youth in the United Arab Emirates has banned Harry Potter from private school, because it contrary to Islamic values. Posted 6:48 AM | [Link] [Kathryn J. Lopez] John, It's like one of those "choose your own adventure" books for kids. Posted 6:06 AM | [Link] CAN BOTH BE TRUE?: [John J. Miller] Headline from today's Washington Post: "Powell: No Plans Now For War With 'Axis'" Headline from today's New York Times: "Powell Says U.S. Is Weighing Ways to Topple Hussein" Posted 6:00 AM | [Link] READER'S DIGEST CONSERVATIVES: [John J. Miller] After yesterday's dust-up with the Washington Post over my Reader's Digest article, my friend Lee Bockhorn of the Weekly Standard sent an email calling attention to this passage by Russell Kirk in The Politics of Prudence: "The person attached to America's popular conservatism is a person who reads the Reader's Digest. He is practical, not very imaginative, patriotic, satisfied for the most part with American society, traditional in his morals, defensive of his family and his property, hopeful, ready for technological and material improvements but suspicious of political tinkering. His name is legion, and so is hers. Like conservatives in other lands, he and she are the salt of the earth. His opinions on current affairs coincide with, and in part are formed by, the Reader's Digest, more widely circulated than all the other conservative magazines combined. In the Digest, it is not editorializing, but the general content and tone of the many articles, that tend to shape opinion. ... Of the weekly and monthly popular periodicals of the 1930s and 1940s, only the Digest is still a power in the land. ... Of course I do not mean that the Digest alone shapes the mind of the representative American conservative. ... My immediate point is that popular conservatism has a Reader's Digest mentality, rather than a National Review mentality." Posted 5:55 AM | [Link] EURO-NONSENSE [Kathryn J. Lopez] Talk about office regs run amok. An EU law could limit the volume orchestras play at. Posted 5:50 AM | [Link] MOORE CREDIT[Kathryn J. Lopez] While I wouldn’t run out and buy a Mandy Moore doll, she is a nice contrast to the likes of Britney. She’s actually got a new movie out, which isn’t a quarter as popular as the new Britney movie will be, because Moore is loads more…modest. Michelle Malkin had a nice column last week giving Moore credit for not going the Britney route. Posted 5:46 AM | [Link] Toy Story [Kathryn J. Lopez] Catching up….I find the NYTimes story yesterday on the NYC toy convention heartbreaking. Can’t give a kid your hand-me downs, for sure, or even the latest version of your favs, cause they are too mature for them. The toy industry’s “saviors” according to the Times: Britney Spears, 'N Sync, Destiny's Child and Mandy Moore—pop-music toys. Britney Spears would never get anywhere near my kid. Three cheers for immaturity. Posted 5:43 AM | [Link] THOSE FRENCH [Kathryn J. Lopez] Jonah, you could have called it. Drudge is calling it the “axels of evil.” French and Russian judges conspired against the Canadians at the Olympics. Posted 5:41 AM | [Link] CAPT. FRANK CALLAHAN: [Dreher] I know I'm starting to sound like a commercial, but you really have to see the March issue of Vanity Fair. Tonight I read David Halberstam's moving profile of a firehouse on Manhattan's West Side that lost most of its men on 9/11. Even five months away from that day, it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of the loss, and difficult to fathom the goodness, courage and honor of the 343 New York firemen who gave their lives so that others might live. It is good to think on these things, especially on a day of humility and penance like Ash Wednesday. Anyway, the Halberstam piece brought to mind the breathtaking eulogy that firehouse's captain, Frank Callahan, received at his memorial service, by a comrade. Read it. Print it out. Show it to your kids. Live its lesson. Posted 1:13 AM | [Link]
OUR DIM NEIGHBORS [Kathryn J. Lopez A prison inmate has a swastika on his arm. He has supposedly renounced his white-supremacist views, so the prison is removing it--at a cost of $4,088. Tolerance-minded activists are overjoyed. Posted 11:22 PM | [Link] HE'S BAAAACK: [Dreher] Al Gore made his first post-election foreign policy speech tonight at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's lost weight, but he still has the beard, which looks good on him now. He began by telling a funny story about driving around Tennessee with Tipper in a rented Taurus, and stopping at a Shoney's to eat. Gore explained to the Park Avenue crowd that Shoney's was a "low-cost family restaurant." When he and Tipper took a booth, he overheard someone nearby say, "That's Vice-President Gore!" A male voice replied, "He's come down a long way, hasn't he." Gore went on to say he told that anecdote at a speech in Africa last year, which prompted a confused wire-service reporter to file a story saying Al 'n Tipper were going to open up a "low-cost family restaurant." So that's where that story came from. Anyway, check NRO in the ayem for a full report on the address, which was surprisingly pro-Bush (and which stuck a shiv in Tom Daschle). Posted 10:16 PM | [Link] SOME LIES NEVER DIE: [Ramesh Ponnuru] Susan Estrich was on the tube yesterday, arguing that presidents invariably "end up out of touch." To illustrate, she brought up the first President Bush, "who thought that the supermarket scanner was some newfound technique." Estrich's point is arguable, but her example's been debunked--as noted, for example, by Jonah Goldberg in this column. I read about Estrich's remark in The Hotline, a daily compendium of political news; it doesn't mention whether Rich Lowry, who was on with Estrich, called her on her mistake. Posted 6:13 PM | [Link] BARF ALERT: [Dreher] The mail truck just arrived with a letter from a soldier posted overseas. "For your amusement, a recent ad from Stars and Stripes," he writes. I unfolded the enclosed page ripped from the tabloid and beheld an image of firefighters standing in the ruins of the World Trade Center. The text reads, "IN THE FACE OF SUCH GREAT EVIL, THERE IS ONLY ONE PLACE TO STAND. The passing of time will not dim our resolve. We stand with the world community in the fight against terrorism." Know who bought the ad? The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington, DC. Posted 5:16 PM | [Link] Rich, let’s not forget that the real heroes are the loyal NROers out there doing the hard work of recruiting subscribers without financial reward or professional glory. Herewith an email -- titled "Rich Lowry, the pimp" -- from one of NRO’s thousand points of light: "Hey Jonah, I want to go on record as having turned at least four friends into NRO devotees and one of those four to a NRODT subscriber (I am as well). I also fire over a continuous stream of articles over to my leftie cousin in hopes of bringing him back over to the bright side of the force (there is good in him, I can feel it.). Rich can pimp subscriptions all he wants but we're the ones out here doing the grunt work for ya'll..." And no, Rich, I didn’t forget to mention the wonderful subscription offer.. If everyone puts my name in the memo line of their checks, can I (finally) get a raise? Posted 5:08 PM | [Link] MEA CULPA: [Dreher] A cheesed-off reader writes to say that the Koran does not allow a Muslim seven wives, as Brad Dacus said in today's piece about the "Across the Centuries" textbook. The actual number, the reader says, is four. Well, gosh, that changes everything. Another reader, a California Catholic schoolteacher, writes to say that the Catholic schools in the Diocese of San Jose all use "Across the Centuries" as their 7th-grade history text (it's true; I confirmed this with the diocese). That's pretty incredible, given the relatively short shrift the textbook gives to the role of Christian faith and belief in world history. You'd expect a Catholic school to do better. Wouldn't you? Posted 4:55 PM | [Link] DON'T LOOK DOWN: [Dreher] Here's another creepy paragraph from that Vanity Fair article on the Naudet brothers, who filmed 9/11 at Ground Zero from the very first moment (they got the only known video of the first plane hitting the north tower). The speaker is Gedeon Naudet: "This firehouse, like every one, has superstitions. We'd heard about the Midget Rule. When you see two little people anywhere in the street, both on the same day, then you know you're going to have a job. For two months, we had been searching, then on the evening of the 10th of September, Jules saw little people and I saw little people. In two different places. Insane." Now, one hour after I read that, I stepped onto an elevator off Herald Square to go to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles office. There standing next to me was a man no taller than my waist. Tonight I have to go cover Al Gore's speech at the Council of Foreign Relations. If I see Robert Reich there, I'm going straight to Grand Central and taking the train the heck out of town. Posted 4:42 PM | [Link] A NEW KRUGMAN LOW:[Rich Lowry] It seems to me that this phrase from Krugman's latest should never appear in a serious columnist's work: "As Molly Ivins explained at length in her book `Shrub,'"... Posted 4:22 PM | [Link] THE PROSPECT CORRECTS: [Rich Lowry] BTW, someone from The American Prospect has e-mailed saying that they will correct their attack on Phil Gramm that I wrote about here. Posted 4:20 PM | [Link] RADICAL RE-ALIGNMENT [Andrew Stuttaford] The Swedish press is reporting that four of the main political parties in the usually cautious Nordic nation have drafted a new security doctrine. Under the proposed new policy the country will be "militarily non-aligned" rather than "neutral." The world trembles. Posted 4:08 PM | [Link] WFB ON CARDINAL LAW: [Dreher] Those Corner readers who have been following the Boston priest scandal won't want to miss Bill Buckley's new NRO column, in which he explains why Bernard Cardinal Law should resign. Posted 3:53 PM | [Link] HOUGHTON MIFFLIN RESPONDS: [Dreher] Collin Earnst, spokesman for textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin, was unable to get to me in time for deadline the company's full response to critics of "Across the Centuries," the 7th-grade social-studies text considered by some to be biased towards Islam. I wrote about the controversy in today's column. The company has now released a lengthy statement defending the textbook's fairness and accuracy. It's too long to repeat here, and Earnst made many of the same points to me in our brief phone conversation yesterday. One point worth noting here is the company's defense of the textbook's glossing over of Islamic atrocities. Writes Earnst, "As directed by the state of California, these books were to be written with 'Historical Empathy.' Thus, the textbooks do not focus on accounts of violence, cruelty or hatred on the part of any religion. In accordance with California state standards, 'Across the Centuries' focuses on how the beliefs of certain cultures help shape their motivation and their effect on history.'" Posted 3:50 PM | [Link] ATTENTION NUDGES! [Jonah Goldberg ] My column is up. Please stop haranguing me. And, as punishment, it’s extra long. Posted 2:38 PM | [Link] OUR FRIENDS THE SAUDIS: [Dreher] Please note the preceding horror was brought to you in part by citizens of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an official of whose government, according to MEMRI, recently appeared on Al-Jazeera to praise Osama bin Laden and blame Jews for the events recounted below. Posted 1:42 PM | [Link] BROTHERS: [Dreher] Just finished an incredible story in the March issue of Vanity Fair. David Friend tells the tale of Jules and Gedeon Naudet, the brothers who were in the middle of making a documentary about a downtown NYC firehouse when the September 11 attacks struck. The brothers shot from within the burning towers, and amid the aftermath. A two-hour film version of their footage will be shown on CBS next month, and will undoubtedly be the television event of the year. Here's an excerpt from the electrifying VF story: <<"Entering the lobby [of Tower One]," says Jules, "I saw two bodies burning on the floor. One was screaming, a woman's scream. The jet fuel had come down through the elevator shafts and had created a fireball in the lobby. Time stood still. It was the first time I had seen someone about to die. The windows had all been blown out. The marble had come off the walls. In about five, 10 minutes, we hear what sounds like explosions. A firefighter immediately says, 'We got jumpers.' People were leaping from such a height that, as they touches the ground, they disintegrated. Right in front of us, outside the lobby windows. And with each loud boom, every firefighter would shudder."> Posted 1:35 PM | [Link] [Stanley Kurtz] I agree, Rich. We can try economic liberalization as a route to long-term democratization. That's probably a safer and wiser choice than a quick move toward democratization in a region where a vote for theocratic dictatorship is always likely. But I wonder how many people have been thinking in these terms. You pointed out the other day that some hope to see an American installed government in Iraq serve as a model for the region. It might do that, but if it's not going to be democratic, it will probably look a lot like Egypt does now. Egypt has tried economic liberalization for some time, while still clamping down on popular support for Islamic fundamentalists. The economic liberalization has succeeded in creating a small pro-Western elite, but the ensuing economic insecurity, combined with huge population growth and urban migration, has also fed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. I wonder whether a reconstructed Iraq is going to succeed where Egypt has not. I guess my point is that people underestimate the difficulty of transforming the region, even given what may be a great deal of future American control. Posted 12:50 PM | [Link] [John Derbyshire] Among that vast class of people (to which, of course, none of us belongs) that read book reviews but not books, I think Huntington's Clash of Civilizations suffered some intellectual discounting from the unfortunate fact that it came out at a time when the longest and bloodiest recent war had been between Iran & Iraq--i.e. INTRA-civilizational. The book does in fact cover the necessary theory ("Islam's borders are bloody, and so are its innards..." p.258 etc. etc.), but of course you have to read it to know that. Posted 12:06 PM | [Link] I GOT MAIL [John Derbyshire] It's "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Can be heard on. That's half of my mail box this morning. The other half is singin' & dancin' Lunar New Year e-cards. I appreciate both very much, but they have had the combined effect of sending my Hotmail e-account over its size limit & I am getting red flashing messages. Shall deal with this... later. Posted 11:45 AM | [Link] [Rod Dreher] CNN just aired a scathing live interview with the publisher of an international figure-skating magazine, who was raving about the Canadians being robbed of the gold last night in pairs figure skating. In his view, the fix was in for the Russians. Know who the guy blamed? The French! The man, whose name I didn't catch, predicted French figure skaters were a lock to win an upcoming Olympic competition, based on his view that the French judges conspired in a quid pro quo with judges favoring the Russians. Posted 11:29 AM | [Link] MEMO TO JONAH: [Rich Lowry] When you make fun of my subscription-trolling in the future, please always provide a link to NR’s amazing, affordable, extra-special subscription offer. Posted 11:07 AM | [Link] NOT DEMOCRACY: [Rich Lowry] Stanley Kurtz has a thought-provoking piece up on NRO about America's new empire. But it's a mistake to think of what we want in the Middle East as "democratization." We shouldn't care whether people in the Middle East vote for long time. It's liberalization that counts, primarily the economic liberalization that will create the conditions eventually--very eventually--for democracy. Posted 11:04 AM | [Link] THIS DISTINCTION...: [Rich Lowry] ... between democratization and liberalization is one that Robert Kaplan constantly makes. Had dinner with him and some New York journalist-types last night. He's brilliant. Check out, for instance, his excellent piece on Samuel Huntington in The Atlantic. One thing Kaplan said that I didn't quite realize before is how much worse Iraq is than even its dictatorial neighbors. He says leaving Iraq for Syria makes Syria seem like a open, liberal democracy by comparison. Posted 11:02 AM | [Link] BRENNAN CENTER CORRUPTION: [Rich Lowry] Bradley Smith has an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. He points out that that the campaign-finance reforming Brennan Center had a fundraiser last October at which it raised $800,000 (gasp!) from sources like Coca-Cola, Philip Morris, and Enron (double gasp!). When it comes to campaign-finance reform, what's good for everyone else is never what's good for the reformers (check out specially the Mute Moose for an object lesson in this dynamic at work). BTW, I have a campaign-finance piece up. Posted 10:52 AM | [Link] TV FEEDBACK...: [Rich Lowry] ...e-mailed to me from another satisfied viewer: "Fox & Friends was on in our house as we prepared for work this morning. My wife entered the room part way through your discussion on Iraq, Saudi Arabia, et al. `Who is this guy?' she asked. `He's doesn't know what he's talking about.'" Posted 10:49 AM | [Link] INDIGESTION, CONT’D [Jonah Goldberg ] John, I was pretty stunned by Carlson’s tantrum. I normally like his stuff. I do have a theory though. There’s a tendency among critics to believe that nobody else has a right to be a critic. Music writers are vicious about other music writers in private and often in public. I once heard a media critic whine "everybody thinks they’re a media critic these days," as if he was saying, "everyone thinks they’re a quantum physicist these days." The easier it is to do something, the more tenacious people are in defending their turf (Unions for unskilled laborers come to mind). Maybe Carlson’s just pissed that a conservative beat him to a good -- and obviously true -- story that he should have been on top of. As you say, it’s a bit of a scandal that the Post’s "magazine reader" doesn’t read America’s most popular magazine. (I guess the Washington Post profile of NRO I’ve been waiting for won’t be coming any time soon now). Posted 9:13 AM | [Link] SLEEPING AID [Jonah Goldberg ] I’ve figured out why Rich is up so late blogging. He’s trying to figure out how to pimp subscriptions to the magazine without us making fun of him. Posted 9:02 AM | [Link] OSCAR HANDICAPPING: [Dreher] My take on the just-announced nominations: the Best Picture race is really between "A Beautiful Mind" and "Lord of the Rings." My suspicion is that the schmaltzy "Beautiful Mind" has to be the favorite, especially with the old-skewing Academy voters, though the brilliant fantasy epic "Lord of the Rings" by rights ought to win. (Ron Howard will win Best Director for the first time, too, which is crushing when you think about the astonishingly imaginative work done by "LOTR'"s Peter Jackson). Tom Wilkinson ("In the Bedroom") absolutely deserves to win Best Actor, though Russell Crowe, alas, is a shoo-in for "A Beautiful Mind." "Bedroom" will win its top Oscar for Sissy Spacek in the Best Actress category. Marisa Tomei, should win and will win a Supporting Actress trophy for "In the Bedroom." I was surprised to see Ian McKellen in the Supporting Actor category for his pivotal role as Gandalf in "LOTR"; if he doesn't win this one going away, he should turn Oscar voters into newts. Finally, the hottest competition will be in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, which features as its leading contenders "A Beautiful Mind," "Lord of the Rings" and "In the Bedroom." "Bedroom" has no serious shot at Best Picture, so it could be rewarded here. But I think it's more likely that Oscar will give Best Picture to "Beautiful Mind," Best Director to Ron Howard, and reward "LOTR" in the lesser categories of Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay. Anyway, if you've read the first book in the LOTR trilogy, you know what an incredible job the filmmakers did shoehorning that complex narrative into a three-hour film. Posted 8:55 AM | [Link] RETARDED STANDARD [Jonah Goldberg ] Sean Penn was just nominated for an Oscar for his film, "I am Sam" -- the movie in which he plays a mentally retarded man who fights to keep custody of his child. I have a general policy against seeing films about retarded people, so I won’t be seeing the film. But, I have seen a few interviews with Penn and others connected to the movie. Here’s one thing I’ve been trying to reconcile. The culture – as dictated by Hollywood – is saying more and more that intelligence, competence, etc should not matter. "It’s what’s in your heart that really counts," is the common refrain. Fair enough. But at the same time we are increasingly being told that it would "shock the conscience" of the nation to execute a retarded man. Again, fair enough. But the two positions do not work together. What if, at the end of "I am Sam," Sean Penn brutally murdered his adorable daughter? Would all of the speeches about how "it’s what’s in your heart that really counts," still apply? Somehow I doubt it. Posted 8:54 AM | [Link] INDIGESTION: [John J. Miller] The really weird thing about the Washington Post's Peter Carlson attacking my recent NR story on Reader's Digest is that he basically concedes all my main points: The magazine once focused on ordinary Americans but is now obsessed with celebrities, it used to feature innovative political reporting that now has all but vanished, and it used to be run by outright conservatives but now its editors are no different from run-of-the-mill liberals like, well, like Peter Carlson. He even quotes the new editor as refusing to say the magazine is conservative--something that perhaps no other top editor in the Digest's eight-decade history would have done until a couple of years ago. Carlson's article merely shows that the man who writes a column for the Post called "The Magazine Reader" hasn't been reading America's most popular magazine. Maybe he should get a job at the Digest, too. Posted 8:28 AM | [Link] OOPS!: [Dreher] In 1993, Fr. Thomas Kane was accused of child molestation in two separate lawsuits. Kane disappeared, and the Diocese of Worcester, Mass., said they didn't know what happened to him. As recently as last week, the diocesan spokesman repeated this claim to a reporter. Surprise! They lied. The Boston Herald reports today that Fr. Kane has been living in Mexico and receiving checks from the diocese all along. Posted 8:26 AM | [Link] LIGHT AT THE U.N.[Kathryn J. Lopez] It is not often that the Corner applauds words spoken by a U.N. official, but John Negroponte is an exception. At the Heritage Foundation yesterday he gave his first public address since (finally) becoming U.S. ambassador to the U.N. At Heritage he attacked the “root causes” of terrorism crowd, saying, among other things: "People do not suddenly loose their moral compass because they are poor, and terrorism does not represent or benefit the poor," he said. "One look at what terrorism did to Afghanistan's people and economy demonstrates exactly what might be called the terrorist's ethic of social and economic justice." Posted 8:22 AM | [Link] GETTING SERIOUS [Andrew Stuttaford] Is there any truth to the rumour about Norm Mineta's response to the publication last night of that list of terrorism suspects? Apparently, he's ordered that another thousand elderly ladies be selected for special screening at our nation's airports. Posted 8:10 AM | [Link] OUR ILLEGIT EX [Kathryn J. Lopez] At a recent appearance at Berkeley Bill Clinton was asked why the Right hates him: "Because I won." He went on to explain: "They thought they found a foolproof formula to turn us into cardboard cutouts--superficial, one-dimensional, non-American figures. And the American people voted for me. They never thought it was legitimate. They decided 'We should have never lost the White House. It belongs to us.' If you want to be a Democrat or progressive and run for national office today, you have to have a pretty high pain threshold. It's just the cost of doing business in politics today." And here I thought we were still paying the price of having him tend to his ego while little things like national security were left to the haters to clean up. Posted 8:09 AM | [Link] 6 AM ROCK [Kathryn J. Lopez] Rich, you are so competitive when you have insomnia.(By the way, I did not see you owning the weekend!) Posted 6:27 AM | [Link] TRANSGENDERED TOLERANCE [Kathryn J. Lopez] The United States Students Association wants the nation's colleges and universities to provide single-stall "gender neutral" restrooms for transgender students to protect them from harassment and physical attacks. Somehow singling them out like this will bring less attention to them? Posted 6:24 AM | [Link] DUTCH TREAT [Kathryn J. Lopez] The infamous “abortion boat” that was going to sail to “backward” nations and perform abortions in international waters has been grounded. The Dutch Ministry of Health refused to give it a license. Posted 6:19 AM | [Link] NRO THE TRENDSETTER: [John J. Miller] Michael Kinsley is stepping down as editor of Slate. In the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz writes that Kinsley will continue to be involved with Slate in come capacity and that "he plans to develop a 'corner' that will 'let the reader play with the technology in a totally unprofessional, amateurish way.'" A corner? Hmmm. Posted 5:24 AM | [Link] QUICK, CLONE THIS PRESIDENT!: [John J. Miller] A great statement yesterday from Bush, with cloning implications: "There is another danger to guard against: the use of genetic research to threaten the dignity of life itself. The powers of science are morally neutral -- as easily used for bad purposes as good ones. In the excitement of discovery, we must never forget that mankind is developed -- is defined not by intelligence alone, but by conscience. Even the most noble ends do not justify every means. (Applause.) Life itself is always to be valued and protected. In biomedical research, we're dealing with the very makings of life -- and the law must be firm and clear in restraining the reckless and protecting the voiceless. (Applause.)" By the way, don't you love how he uses the word "mankind"? It's so un-PC. He actually does it three times in this speech. Posted 5:13 AM | [Link] TERRORIST SEX: [John J. Miller] Following September 11, reports the Indianapolis Star, "Many colleges have responded by creating new classes, redesigning existing ones or just shifting discussions and class assignments. ... At the University of California at Los Angeles, faculty came up with a whopping 50 new courses." And because some idiot women's studies professor somewhere had to do it: "Then there's the online course 'The Sexuality of Terrorism'" at the University of California at Hayward." Posted 5:07 AM | [Link] WHO NEEDS EARLY MORNING BLOGS?: [Lowry] Rod--Kathryn and Jonah may blog pretty early in the morning, but we own the night. Posted 1:16 AM | [Link] WHERE'S THE WAR SOCIALISM?: [Lowry] According to E.J. Dionne, the only thing wrong with this war is that it hasn't yet increased taxes: "While most presidents who declare war ask taxpayers to bear its costs through tax increases, Bush proposed more tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy." Dionne's column is the purest expression of what NR has long maintained is the Democrat's view of an unstated post-9/11 deal: they will support the war, so long as they get what they want domestically. Since Bush is still fighting on the domestic front, Dionne writes, Democrats feel "betrayed." How dare he! Posted 1:12 AM | [Link] QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE!: [Dreher] On a 1997 visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee reportedly requested photos of Neil Armstrong planting the flag -- on Mars! I'm not making this up. I'm telling you people, if loving Queen Sheila is wrong, I don't want to be right. Posted 1:10 AM | [Link] WHO'S WESTERN?: [Dreher] In my piece on Monday's NRO, I quoted Ben Wattenberg saying Pat Buchanan is wrong to read Latin Americans -- Christians descended from Spanish and Portuguese colonizers -- out of Western culture. A reader says Ben's wrong: "Sure, on paper, the average Ecuadorian or Mexican is supposed to be culturally Spanish and Catholic. But let me ask you, in the recent controversies over Columbus, where were the Hispanic/Latino lobbies? Saying "Don't touch the man who built our culture?" Of course not. Mostly sitting it out or sympathizing with the Indian side of their mixed blood. Of course the reality is the average Mexican immigrant to the U.S. has very little idea of Hispano-Catholic high culture, and what little he or she knows gets lost in the multi-generational translation that is acculturation. Some American-born children will rediscover that culture in a new idiom, but most won't, and a significant number will adopt the faux-Aztec legends propagated by leftist Mexican intellectuals for decades, and put up statues of Quetzalcoatl in San Jose parks." Posted 1:03 AM | [Link] WHY HAVE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIALS BEEN SO GOOD LATELY?: [Lowry] The Post has been very sound on the war, and in this number accurately points out the congressional motive in having Ken Lay publicly take the Fifth today: "It will serve three very critical purposes: Getting senators on TV, getting senators on TV and getting senators on TV. Oh, yes. It will also humiliate a witness who remains, lest senators forget, innocent until proven guilty." Posted 1:03 AM | [Link] HARD SELL: [Lowry] According to the Washington Post, the geniuses at Qorvis Communications, hired guns for the Saudis, plan an all-out p.r. offensive to save the U.S.-Saudi relationship based on "the values we share." Uh, what values would those be? Beheadings? Religious police? Welfare for princes? Posted 12:53 AM | [Link] EXIT DASCHLE: [Lowry] Daschle's criticism of "axis of evil" phrase yesterday, and his skepticism on Iraq, may herald beginning of a partisan split on the war. Very bad news for the Dems. Will play better in Paris than Peoria. Posted 12:36 AM | [Link]
QUEEN SHEILA RIDES AGAIN: [Dreher] The sadly blog-free Weekly Standard entertains with an update on the further travels of Queen Sheila Jackson Lee, (D - Texas). I love this woman! She is the Tonya Harding of Congress, a woman so dim and low-class and self-unaware that you cannot help being transfixed by her trash-can diva antics. If somebody buys Queen Sheila a rhinestoned sedan chair, I volunteer to help carry her wherever she wants to go. Posted 7:00 PM | [Link] RED VS. BLUE: [Rod Dreher] A Navasota, Texas, reader interested in earlier Corner commentary on the upcoming book that makes fun of Dubya for not being up on trendy pop culture sends us to this essay on life in Red America, written by a Missouri farmer. This you gotta read. It appears in the current issue of The American Enterprise, a fine conservative magazine about which too few people know. Posted 6:25 PM | [Link] CLARIFICATION [John Derbyshire] A loyal reader reminds me that if I wish to maintain my reputation as a red-blooded heterosexual male and NRO's designated scourge of the Differently Oriented, I must refrain from any future references to Ethel Merman. Sorry about that. In future, I'll restrict my female-vocalist comments to Judy Garland. Posted 5:37 PM | [Link] BUCHANAN AND THIRD-WORLD CHRISTIANITY: [Dreher] Concerning Pat Buchanan's complaints about Third World immigrants changing American culture, a reader writes: "Another point I think Buchanan is missing is this: African Christianity is exploding. And the African version is Christianity is also ancient and maybe more in line with traditional values than the Christianity we see in the West. Case in point would be the bringing in African Anglican bishops to do confirmations in this country because their Episcopalian brethen can't say there was a real Resurrection or they want to ordain practicing homosexuals and radical feminists. Or the African Anglican Communion telling their English counterparts that they are delving into heresy. If we would hold our Egyptian "friends" to some standards of religious tolerance the ancient Coptic and Greek Orthodox churches could once again grow as the Antiochian See has experienced growth in Muslim Syria. Ethiopia is still a Christian bastion. Maybe a big growth in Christian Africa is just what this world needs - not a large growth of marginalized Christianity we see in Europe and this country." Posted 5:31 PM | [Link] MUTE MOOSE II: [Rich Lowry] Jonah, I'm beginning to think The Moose must be operating a "sham" website. Posted 5:22 PM | [Link] THE MUTE MOOSE [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, while we’re on the subject, I’ve been trying to figure out the Moose’s silence. I completely understand the logic of ignoring some critics. But it’s not like we’re some obscure site trying to score traffic off of a mention in the Moose Bleat. We’re providing the best publicity the Moose has gotten in months and the best he may get in years, assuming McCain doesn’t challenge Bush in ’04. And, it’s not like the Moose to hide from expressing his true feelings. So, I’m beginning to wonder if someone might have bought his silence. After all, all inexplicable behavior is a symptom of the corrupting influence of big money. Posted 4:56 PM | [Link] AU CONTRAIRE: [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, I’m not sure I agree. I think it works a little differently. I think the Moose and his fellow liberals like Rep. Marty Meehan look at policies they don’t like, and then they assume that they must have been paid for by "Big Money." Similarly, on Meet the Press this weekend Meehan more or less argued that Bush had been bought because he’d done things differently than Meehan would. You see, no rational person would disagree with the Moose or Meehan (same difference), unless he was being paid to. So, it’s not so much that his friends took money. His friends are correct on policy and therefor they cannot be bought, no matter how many checks from Enron or Global Crossing they deposit. Posted 4:55 PM | [Link] THE MOOSE LOOPHOLE: [Rich Lowry] Jonah, as far as I can tell the principle that animates The Moose’s position on campaign-finance reform is this: If his friends get money, it’s not corrupting, if anyone else gets money, it is. Too bad Ken Lay wasn’t buddies with The Moose. Then maybe there would be no “Enron scandal”! Posted 4:20 PM | [Link] THE IRAQI-JORDAN AXIS: [Rich Lowry] Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post sends along an interesting column on how a post-Saddam Iraq could ally with Jordan, creating an important new strategic bloc in Middle East. Posted 4:18 PM | [Link] EVERYTHING RICHARD PERLE…: [Rich Lowry] …writes or says is worth paying attention to. Here’s a transcript of a recent debate he had with Leon Furth. Posted 4:16 PM | [Link] THE SHEEHY CURSE? NO G-FILE TODAY [Jonah Goldberg] Maybe mocking Gail Sheehy wasn't such a good idea. Moments after I posted my last entry, a very odd computer crash occurred (coinciding with my own stupidity) and I managed to lose my entire column for today. I will have to re-do and post in the morning. Very annoying. Posted 2:30 PM | [Link] FAIR TO FRANK: You're right, Jonah, it would be a mistake to get worked up over a book none of us have seen, based only on a report on some of its contents. That Daily News report I linked to earlier, though, stomped a nerve. But I'm so glad you brought up pederasty, Jonah, because now I have an excuse to give a Boston update. Today's Boston Herald has several depressing stories on the subject. Briefly, Cardinal Law now promises that all the names of priests against whom "substantial" (their word) allegations of sexual impropriety have been made are now in the hands of the police (he's said this a couple of times before, and was wrong). But district attorneys complain that the information the Church is giving them is so sketchy as to be useless, implying that the new openness is little more than a public relations move. Secondly, there's information that a heretofore unknown Boston priest has been named in lawsuits, and in terms of sheer numbers, he may be another Fr. Geoghan. And finally, accused priests who had been promised, as part of a Church settlement with their alleged victims, were promised that their names would never be made public, are considering suing the Archdiocese for having done so. Sue the archdiocese?! I say these dirtbags should be thankful they're not in jail. Posted 2:29 PM | [Link] SUICIDE LUBRICANT: [Jonah Goldberg ] Look at what I just found. Didn’t Dante say this is what infidels and pederasts are forced to spend their time on in the 8th circle of hell? Posted 2:10 PM | [Link] BRUNI, BUT SERIOUSLY: [Jonah Goldberg ] Guys, my understanding is that the Bruni book is actually quite positive (though very light on substance). We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Clintonista’s. Remember when Gail Sheehy came out with her generally fawning work on Hillary Clinton? In order to have the slightest whiff of credibility there was some very mild negative stuff about her being an enabler for Bill or some such pop-psych stuff. But the Rodhamites were so knee-jerk in their humorless defensiveness they treated Sheehy as an enemy, pushing her to become more critical and giving her more exposure in the process. If the worst Bruni can say about Bush is that he doesn’t like "Sex and the City" that’s great news for Bush, the Republicans and the Republic. Posted 2:08 PM | [Link] ALL HAIL, RUTH WEDGWOOD: [Rich Lowry] If you’ve read my Geneva stuff on NRO, you know I have a crush on Geneva-guru Ruth Wedgwood. You can find a bunch of her excellent Geneva stuff here. Posted 1:49 PM | [Link] WAG THE BUSH: [Ramesh Ponnuru] I hadn't read The Nation in a while, but I picked up the latest issue to find this theory, mentioned in passing in the lead editorial: "[T]he Bush administration's stonewalling on its Enron connections signals that it's declaring war on openness and is bent on quashing this scandal by any means. How about, for instance, distracting us with an endless war on an 'axis of evil'?" I'm not sure that Karl Rove ever wrote that memo. But if all the hype about Enron actually does make it more likely that we topple the Iraqi regime, bring on the hype! Posted 1:45 PM | [Link] ALL HAIL, JIM MORSE:[Rich Lowry] Got a nice e-mail from Jim Morse: "1) Add me to the list of those who were drawn to subscribe to NRODT after getting hooked on NRO. (2) My father also began reading the magazine when he visited my house so I got him a gift subscription for Christmas. And (3) I started talking about NRODT and NRO so much at work that one of my co-workers now subscribes." Jonah, I think we should talk to Ed Capano about establishing the "Jim Morse Award for Distinguished Service to the Cause of National Review's Circulation." Posted 1:45 PM | [Link] AND ANOTHER THING: [Rod Dreher] How many Chuck Norris fans in the heartland came to the aid of New York City when we were flat on our backs last fall, giving their money, their prayers, and in some cases their labor, because we are their countrymen? And: for the record, I would rather sit through the entire Lloyd Webber canon, even "Starlight Express," rather than endure a single performance of Manhattan favorite "The Vagina Monologues." Harrumph! Posted 1:40 PM | [Link] UP-CHUCK: [Dreher] Au contraire, mon frere: I think old Chuckarooni is a crummy actor. And I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber, and all his pomps and works. You'll not find me defending stuff like that, just because it's popular, and even more, my cultural tastes probably line up as much with the Times reporter's as with the president's. What I object to is the sense I get from the report on the Bruni book that Bush is somehow out of touch with America because a) he doesn't like the same things as your average New York Times journalist, and b) he doesn't seem to have paid a lot of attention to pop culture, period. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I get so tired of the whole New York elite thing, in which people who don't share the worldview of a very small number of educated Manhattanites are disdained as cultural retards, whether they live in Far Rockaway, Queens, or Fargo, North Dakota. Remember when NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt died, and nobody in New York had any idea who he was? I don't care for NASCAR personally, but only a snob who's out of touch with the rest of the country would look down on Americans for admiring Dale Earnhardt. I bet you a million dollars George W. Bush knew who Dale Earnhardt was. Posted 1:35 PM | [Link] THE WAY TO CLINTON’S OFFICE[Kathryn J. Lopez] If you want to intern for Bill Clinton in his Harlem office, the latest issue of the women’s glossy Jane has pointers for you. The magazine had a few female Jane staffers send in their resumes, all with similar qualifications. Of four staffers, only one was called in, and immediately. The difference? The attractive redhead sent in a Polaroid of herself in a snug sweater. Jane claims the guy who interviewed her told her "her cover letter ‘really stood out’ and chuckled." Posted 1:28 PM | [Link] CHUCK'S NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT: [Jonah Goldberg ] Rod, Andrew: I'm generally with you on this. The idea that "Sex and the City" is the North Star of cultural literacy is absurd (the Simpsons’ was very funny on this point last night). But, I must say that Chuck Norris does, in fact, suck. Indeed, I’m hoping Bush likes Norris solely out of Texas-pride due to his "work" in Walker Texas Ranger. I am prepared to defend my accusation of Norris’ suckiness, but I will refrain from doing so, as long as you guys don’t come to his defense. Somehow, I think Andrew Stuttaford won’t champion Norris' work in "Top Dog." I have no such confidence in Rod. Posted 1:03 PM | [Link] BACK TO THE FUTURE? [John Derbyshire] Apropos the population forecasts in Pat Buchanan's book, discussed by Rod Dreher on today's NRO, I note the following from the Penguin Atlas of Modern History. In 1483 the population of the world broke down as follows (in millions): China 120, India 110, Europe 73, Africa 40, Mideast 24, Japan 15, SE Asia 14, Americas 11. This puts Europeans at about 18 percent... not very different from the late-21st century predictions in Pat's book. Posted 12:54 PM | [Link] THE FINER THINGS [Andrew Stuttaford] Even more interesting is the apparent insight into the Commander-in-Chief's splendid taste in snack foods. We already knew that he is (almost fatally) attracted to pretzels, but to learn that the great man is also a fan of Fritos and Cheez Doodles shows an appreciation of the poorer things of life that Senator Byrd could only dream about. Posted 12:30 PM | [Link] CURIOUS LABELS [Andrew Stuttaford] Rod, Poor Dubya just can't win. It seems that some types of popular culture are more equal than others. Failure to have heard of DiCaprio and Sex and The City is taken as evidence that the president is "out of touch", but an appreciation of Austin Powers, Cats and the Olivier-like qualities of Chuck Norris is proof of lowbrow tendencies. Posted 12:29 PM | [Link] ONE MORE QUESTION FOR THE MOOSE: [Jonah Goldberg ] How exactly do we become the "money right" when the only people taking money from Enron (and Global Crossing) are the Moose’s mentors – Bill Kristol and John McCain, respectively. Sounds like the sort of thinking we find on the Big Government Left. Posted 12:25 PM | [Link] WHAT DOES THE MOOSE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? [Jonah Goldberg ] Rich, for the record, I think the Standard’s parody was funny too. But, since you bring up Moose-Gate, in his latest column, the Moose declares, "It is now clear that the hundreds of thousands of dollars of soft Enron money helped purchase a lax regulatory system that led to a massive rip-off. Of course, to many on the money right, the Enron crime just demonstrated that the ‘system worked.’" Funny, the scads of hearings have produced no such clarity I am aware of. Maybe this is so "clear" to the Moose – but not to those of us on the "money right" – because the Moose was in on secret meetings with Kristol and the Enron gang when large amounts of their dirty money changed hands? Forget the GAO subpoena the Moose! Posted 12:21 PM | [Link] PLEASE EXPLAIN, MADAM [John Derbyshire] Recent exchanges about the late Princess Margaret here on The Corner made me think of the old Ethel Merman movie Call Me Madam. Browsing around for a cheap video or DVD--I have a weakness for old musicals, and an additional one for Ethel's huge, brassy voice--I was surprised to find...nothing at all. At last I turned up this on the Vera-Ellen website: "This movie is completely unavailable as it is tied up in litigation." What, since 1953? What's this all about? Anybody know? Posted 12:15 PM | [Link] FLYOVER COUNTRY [Ramesh Ponnuru] A letter-writer in the New York Times's art section nicely rebuked the paper's condescension yesterday: "To the editor: The New York Times leads its readers to believe that Kansas, and the Midwest as a whole, nurture a population of meth-brewing, inbred, under-educated rednecks, and Hal Hinson's article on the television series 'Smallville' was the latest example. Yes, this Kansan read Nietzsche in public high school (Circle High School, Towanda, Kan., class of 1992). In fact, I'll put Kansas public schools against New York City's any day. . . . Nora Sommers, Brooklyn." Having gone to Kansas public schools for 11 years, I'm with Sommers. Posted 11:55 AM | [Link] BILINGUAL BACKLASH: [Rich Lowry] E-mail from Ron Unz. Worth watching: “In a stunning political development, the senior educational appointees of Gov. Gray Davis's Administration have moved to restore California's system of bilingual education by nullifying crucial provisions of Proposition 227.” Posted 11:55 AM | [Link] THE MOOSE THAT DIDN’T BELLOW: [Rich Lowry] For what it’s worth, I think that Standard parody is pretty funny. But I wonder why they failed to parody what I would have thought is one of the most parody-able features of The Corner: Our relentless pounding of the Moose—the so-called Project of Conservative Reform—for staying silent about the campaign-finance scandals that have recently hit John McCain and Bill Kristol. Moose-gate deepens… Posted 11:33 AM | [Link] WEEKEND FOLLOW-UP: [Rich Lowry] The Washington Post has done some great reporting from Afghanistan. Yesterday's entry on how the U.S. may have mishandled the battle of Tora Bora is right up there. Here is something I hadn't heard before: Gen. Wesley Clark's thinks "that bin Laden's presence in the mountain caves may have been faked by his followers. `I think Tora Bora will prove to have been a strategic deception by al Qaeda.'” Posted 11:30 AM | [Link] JONAH GOEBBELS, CONTINUED [Jonah Goldberg] I’m still hearing from outraged readers about Friday’s column. Here’s an excerpt from a particularly breathless correspondent: "Your essay is obviously a work of dehumanizing propaganda, whose purpose is to hold a group (in this case, poor people) up for ridicule. It's the same kind of thing that Goebbels produced for the Germans about the Jews, different time, place, context, and target, but all of the principles he used are there. Straw men, junk science, a sneering tone, scapegoating, the preaching of a superior master race and the hammering on an inferior race (or in this case, class), you've learned your lessons well." Posted 11:09 AM | [Link] A GREAT MAUREEN DOWD COLUMN [Ramesh Ponnuru] No, really. Maybe she should do the war-between-the-sexes beat all the time. Posted 10:52 AM | [Link] CONFLICTS OF INTEREST [Ramesh Ponnuru] Jonah: I don't necessarily endorse the view that a company's auditor should not be allowed to do other business for it-and you're right to suggest that it's tough to argue against letting them do taxes in particular. Indeed, the paragraph after the one you quote goes into some of the reasons for letting auditors do other business, too. I definitely agree that the quest to end "conflicts-of-interest" is getting out of hand: In yesterday's New York Times, finance professor Charles Geisst suggested that (in the reporter's paraphrase) "Congress should consider requiring companies to switch auditors every few years so firms do not grow too cozy with their clients." I'm waiting for someone to argue that auditors should be forbidden to know their clients' names. Posted 10:38 AM | [Link] THE ERA OF TINA BROWN REALLY IS OVER: [Dreher] Did y'all see the story reporting that the President of the United States is dangerously out of touch with American pop culture? A forthcoming book by NYTimes political reporter Frank Bruni discloses that Dubya doesn't know who puffy-faced girly-man Leonardo DiCaprio is. The horror...the horror. Frankly, all this makes me have more confidence in Bush's common sense and decency. If the report is correct -- and to be fair, this stuff we're hearing now could be taken out of context -- the book will snicker at the fact that Bush thinks "Cats" is great theater. Now, one thing I hate more than Andrew Lloyd Webber and his kitties are snotty New York Times reporters who flaunt their cultural superiority over the rubes in Flyover Country. But we know what Timesmen pine for: the days when we had as our president a perjuring adulterer who would appear on MTV and talk about his underwear. Posted 10:38 AM | [Link] THE ENRON CONNECTION [Ramesh Ponnuru] Enron's bankruptcy is supposed to justify campaign-finance "reform," which the House is voting on this week. My question to people worked up about Enron is this: If some liberal group wants to run an ad denouncing some senator for his close ties to Enron right before the election, why shouldn't it be able to? The campaign-finance bill under consideration would make that illegal. Posted 10:13 AM | [Link] WHEN CONSULTING IS NOT CONSULTING [Jonah Goldberg] Ramesh, I read your Enron-explainer this weekend. I thought it was truly excellent (and I intend to flatter you regularly by stealing from it). But I do have one quibble. You write: "The most promising area for reform is not pensions, but accounting standards…. [O]ne popular proposal would forbid accounting firms from doing consulting work for companies they are auditing. This would keep the accountants from having conflicts of interest, and keep companies from floating skyward on a wish and a dream. The logic is sufficiently compelling that as staunch a free-marketeer as NR's Lawrence Kudlow has endorsed it." I don’t necessarily disagree with that. But, we should be clear that a big chunk of the "consulting work" these accounting firms do is actually old-fashioned tax-preparation. I can see why management consulting might be a conflict, but I don't agree that accounting firms should get out of the accounting business. Posted 10:11 AM | [Link] MORE ON THE SAND CASTLE: [Jonah Goldberg] A reader offers this clarification: "Just an FYI, Yes, the photo appearing at the head of the rotten.com article is authentic. However, I should point out that particular photo is a couple of months old and was taken at a sand sculpture competition in India (the people in the background being Hindus and Sikhs). I remember running across it and several other bizarre sand sculptures one day as I was perusing hindustantimes.com. Nevertheless, it is quite disturbing to the American eye." Posted 9:45 AM | [Link] ISLAMIC PEACE, BUILT ON FOUNDATIONS OF SAND [Jonah Goldberg] Before you follow this link, two things. First, this site is called rotten.com for a reason. It has some absolutely hideous images elsewhere on the site. Be very careful about poking around. Second, I am assuming this picture (which is only morally hideous) is authentic, but I am not vouching for it. Anyway, here you put go. Posted 9:23 AM | [Link] THAT ‘70s SHOW [Kathryn J. Lopez] Prominent among the reasons why the Feminist Majority Foundation opposes Charles Pickering for Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals: "Pickering has opposed the Equal Rights Amendment." And these are the women who want to teach the women of Afghanistan the ways of Western modernity. Posted 9:05 AM | [Link] THE STANDARD, WEAKLY: [Jonah Goldberg] The Weekly Standard’s latest parody (I know it’s a parody because it says "Parody" right there at the top of the page), takes a good-natured shot at the bloggers and this very feature, the Corner. I must confess that it would sting a bit more, were it not for two things. First, the Standard’s been playing catch-up like a fat kid at summer camp when it comes to the Internet for years. Why we should take pointers from them now is an interesting question. And second--though this is precisely the sort of incestuous self-referential blogging they mock--I made precisely the same joke a month ago in my column. Here’s the relevant part: "this morning Robert Wright responds to my criticism--first made here three months ago--that Tim Noah has it wrong about James Glassman's critique of Mickey Kaus's interpretation of my use of the phrase ‘tragedy of the commons.’" Those guys are so far behind the times, we even beat them to making fun of us. Posted 7:27 AM | [Link] WORRY WARTS: [John J. Miller] For an example of how a newspaper can take a piece of good news and twist it around in an attempt to give us something to worry about, see the Washington Post's report today on the increased number of bald eagle sightings along the Potomac River. Posted 5:16 AM | [Link] THAT USELESS U.N. [Kathryn J. Lopez] Evidently the U.S. may be on the verge of being dissed by the United Nations again. Kofi Annan is expected to reject the World Food Programme’s American pick to head the agency, picking an Australian instead. You may recall that nine months ago, the U.S. lost a seat on the International Narcotics Control Board and also on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights--the latter at the urging of Cuba, among others. The Washington Post suggests this latest incident could be payback for the Bush motorcade snubbing a group of U.N. diplomats on Wednesday when he was in NYC. That should only be the beginning of our snubbing. Posted 2:09 AM | [Link]
HILLARY WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford] I note from the latest Weekly World News that Senator Hillary Clinton (D., New York) is thought to have been involved with a space-alien since some time last summer. Who knew? Posted 3:57 PM | [Link] NO SAFETY PINS UNDER NORM'S WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford] Interesting photopiece in today's New York Times Magazine on items confiscated from travelers by airport-security inspectors at Orlando International. The total has increased tenfold since 9/11, which of itself is no bad thing. However, a quick glance at some of the contraband reminds us that the commonsense-free Norm "the menace" Mineta remains in charge. I can see why a can of tear gas or some handcuffs were taken away, but can anyone explain where the danger lies in an asthmatic's inhaler or, for that matter, a safety pin? Posted 3:56 PM | [Link] F.Y.I. [Kathryn J. Lopez] Dreher calls me "Ma'am." Posted 3:55 PM | [Link] AH-HA!: [Dreher] The Times obit of Princess Margaret this morning says that she made everybody call her "Ma'am," except her close friends. She let them call her "Ma'am darling." So that's where K-Lo gets it from! ;-D Posted 1:50 PM | [Link] WHO SAYS "WHEN" Kathryn J. Lopez] I’m not sure how far along these artificial wombs the London papers are reporting this morning are, but one thing is for sure. The more we "advance" in the realm of reproductive technology, the more distant human life becomes to our daily lives and choices. Think of the "freedom" that we’ve seen thanks to "the pill," in vitro fertilization, anonymous sperm banks--and yes, now, egg banks. The day will come when it’s more than pro-lifers warning that we’ve gone to far, at which point it will likely be too late. Posted 9:55 AM | [Link] OH MY: [John J. Miller] Did anybody else see the report that former DC mayor Marion Barry is thinking about running for city council again? Posted 6:20 AM | [Link] PAROCHIAL REPORTING: [John J. Miller] In its article today on the Cleveland school-choice case about to go before the Supreme Court, the New York Times trots out a pair of stupid arguments against the program: Some of the parents taking advantage of the program already had kids in parochial schools (as if making a financial sacrifice on behalf of your children before a state subsidy kicks should make you ineligible for the aid) and whites are proportionately a bit more likely than blacks to accept the aid (as if this should mean anything at all). Our newspaper of record is doing its level best to portray the whole thing as practically a payoff to white urban Catholics who don't need the money. Posted 5:48 AM | [Link] |
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