 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
WHAT'S UP, DOC?: [Rod Dreher] Dale Price notes that Jimmy Carter is likely the only Nobel laureate to have been attacked by a nautically-oriented rabbit. He also has some tart observations about Norwegians. Posted 6:41 PM | [Link] GRATITUDE [Andrew Stuttaford] This report, from today's New York Times, makes depressing reading not much more than a decade after American soldiers were killed in the course of the war that freed Kuwait from Iraqi rule. Here's the introduction: "KUWAIT, Oct. 11 — Muhammad al-Mulaifi, head of the information department at Kuwait's Ministry of Islamic Affairs, tried momentarily to suppress a smile, then broke into a broad grin when asked if he supported the terrorist attacks on the United States last year. "I would be lying if said I wasn't happy about the attack," he said, sitting on the floor of his air-conditioned home office, a carpeted, cushioned oasis amid the harsh heat of this small, dry country. Mr. Mulaifi said that many Kuwaitis were delighted about what had happened to the United States and that he had attended parties held in celebration." It would be interesting to know what the Kuwaiti government has to say about Mr. Al-Mulaifi, who is, after all, one of its employees. Posted 6:23 PM | [Link] BALI BOMB: [Rod Dreher] Fox News has pictures on now of the massive bombing of a tourist resort in Bali, Indonesia. It's terrifying, just terrifying. Sixty people are reported dead, many of them believed to be foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility for this yet, but Islamic terrorists have been doing this to Indonesian Christians for several years now, so it's pretty much a question of whether this was al-Qaeda or some other Islamic fanatics. Chalk up one more victory for the religion of peace. Posted 5:09 PM | [Link] OKAY [Jonah Goldberg] I wish you luck with your book. Seriously. But as for writing what you see, I'm reminded of the story about Richard Nixon. He explained to an interviewer that it was obvious the world was widly over-populated because wherever he went he saw huge crowds. Anyway, I don' think there's anything left to say about this except it's too bad you can't write it under the pseudonym Edmund Birkenstock. Cheers, Jonah Posted 3:41 PM | [Link] CRUNCHY, THE END: Finally, you criticize my approach as "overly journalistic." To this I can only reply that I'm writing about what I see. I had no idea these folks were out there until I first wrote about this phenomenon this past summer, and received hundreds of e-mails from people saying, "Me too!". I'm so curious now to learn more; if I do a book on it, once I've talked with and even visited crunchy cons, it should be possible to define them a little more clearly. Clearly there's something going on out there, and the best way to investigate it is by talking to these people and asking them how they arrived at their conslusions, and why they feel alienated from contemporary mainstream conservatism. You seem determined to conclude a priori that because they don't fit your theoretical construct, they can't be said to exist. But they do! You just have never met any of them, Beltway Boy. ;-) Hey, this has been lots of fun, Jonah. You and I should take this act on the road, hitting the conservative college circuit. Hillsdale! Dartmouth! Bob Jones University! Umm...umm... . Posted 12:03 PM | [Link] CRUNCHY, PART V: [Rod Dreher] About Kirk, I never claimed he was crunchy, only that crunchy cons adore him. It's silly to think crunchy cons imagine Kirk walking around in hemp clothing and Birks, any more than they imagine the traditionalist Catholic Oxford don J.R.R. Tolkien as a pothead, even though hippies went nutso for his work in the 1960s. As far as I can tell, the Kirk-admiring crunchy cons cotton to his belief that there are elements of human society that ought to be conserved in the face of modernity's onslaught -- and in particular, the tide of mass consumer culture and globalization, in the face of which too many who call themselves conservative fail to mount much resistance, or even to see the need to resist -- in part because they have fetishized, from the Right, individual choice as the highest goal of the good society, without much deliberation on the morality of what's being chosen. I get the sense that crunchy cons are really paleocons without the foreign-policy isolationism, and shorn of racialist suspicions. Posted 11:59 AM | [Link] CRUNCHY, PART IV: [Rod Dreher] Perhaps I've created part of the confusion by using the word "crunchy." If I had known that so many conservatives would sese themselves in my essays, I would have found a better term (and please readers, send in your suggestions). I thought that I and a few of my friends were just eccentric right-wingers; I had no idea so many people shared our sensibilities. "Crunchy" is the slang term used to describe people whose tastes in food and fashion run toward the stripped-down, the "natural" (e.g., "Look at that girl with no make-up; is she crunchy, or what?"). There's a lot of that among crunchy cons, but it really is about their ideas, and how they've implemented those ideas into their lifestyle. The only nod my own wardrobe makes toward crunchiness is the Birkenstocks; my hair is shorter than yours, Jonah. "Crunchy" came into it as a descriptive term only because I wanted to highlight the novelty that there are conservatives whose countercultural conservative (traditionalist?) beliefs cause them to rub shoulders at times with leftists outside the liberal mainstream. Posted 11:53 AM | [Link] CRUNCH, PART III: [Rod Dreher] You keep fixating on the "clothes and food" aspect of this phenomenon, which is certainly the least important part of it. I only brought in clothes and food insofar as they are cultural signifiers. Again, I think your experience growing up in NYC blinds you to the importance of these things elsewhere. Where I grew up, the only people who wore sandals were hippies 'n liberals; you could be as right-wing as the day is long, and have decided that Birkenstocks were really comfortable, and helped your foot pain -- but if you went out in public with them, you were telling the community that you were a liberal (cf. "Okie from Muskogee"). Same thing with the health-food store in town: only hippie liberals shopped there, irrespective of the actual health benefits of the food they served there. The point of my bringing it up was to highlight how silly and p.c. conservatives can be, dismissing and ridiculing food and fashion as emblematic of a political or cultural worldview. That doesn't really happen in place as diverse as NYC, but I can assure you it does elsewhere. My wife, who is from Dallas, laughed in telling me how hard it was to buy her first pair of Birks while in college, for fear of what her conservative friends would say. Surely you see, Jonah, that the point isn't that wearing certain clothese or eating certain foods has much to do with virtue; teh point is that many conservatives have a reactionary mindset that keeps them from thinking about how conservative thought and tradition might lead to conclusions at odds with what mainstream conservatism (or at least the GOP) espouses. In other words, the kind of conservative who looks at someone wearing open-toed sandals, or walking around with a copy of Organic Gardening under her arm, and says, "Liberal!", will probably be the kind of conservative who listens to (say) a right-wing criticism of unregulated sprawl, and says, "Socialist!" -- this, without having listened to the conservative's argument from conservative principles. Posted 11:49 AM | [Link] CRUNCH, PART II: [Rod Dreher] Yet in general, they believe that what does by the name "conservatism" these days gives short shrift to thing conservatism ought to be concerned about. They are more communitarian than mainstream conservatives. They believe that popular conservatism is too closely allied with the Chamber of Commerce, and tha tthis uncritical embrace of business interests can be harmful to conservative interests (e.g., the Baptist crunchy con in smalltown Minnesota who told me he was a rock-ribbed right-winger, but would be worried if Republicans gained control of the town council, for fear they would let developers run roughshod over the historic downtown). They believe that contemporary conservatism behaves as if man was made to serve the free market, not the other way around. They tend to pay more attention to the importance of art and architecture in creating a humane public square, and reject the mainstream conservative lack of interest in same as a kind of utilitarianism/Philistinism. (Side note: a decade ago, I had a conversation with Pat Buchanan (!) in which he lamented that aside from a few thinkers and opinion leaders on the Right, the extent of mainstream conservative interest in aesthetics was, "Defund the National Endowment for the Arts.") Crunchy cons adopt a more adversarial stance toward consumerist mass culture than most conservatives (and liberals for that matter -- which is where crunchy cons find something in common with left-wing counterculturalists). Posted 11:32 AM | [Link] CRUNCHING BACK, PART I: [Rod Dreher] Jonah, you really are missing the point of this thing. For one, I'm not trying to describe or craft a coherent political philosophy here; this is, as far as I can tell, a sensibility. That's why you'll find me using the phrase "tend to" when I write about what crunchy cons believe. I've heard from Christian crunchy cons and atheist crunchy cons (all self-identified as crunchy cons), and they can't possibly agree on everything. From what I've been able to tell, crunchy cons share the general conservative concern with taxes, defense, the overweening federal government, etc. They all disdain the utopian, permissive, spineless, grievance-ridden mess that contemporary liberalism has become, in large part because it misdiagnoses the human condition, and prescribes false, unjust and destructive remedies. Posted 11:22 AM | [Link] BOMB ATTACK IN FINLAND [Andrew Stuttaford] Kathryn, that's awful news from Vantaa, the suburb (near the airport) just outside Helsinki where the attack occurred. Here's a little more from the local press, but the killer's motives, so far, are a mystery. Posted 11:06 AM | [Link] SPOOKY SATURDAY [Andrew Stuttaford] Russell Kirk believed in ghosts? Good grief. I remember once, years ago, being invited to stay in a very old house back in England. Coming down that morning, I found the entire family waiting expectantly over their breakfast (Rod: it was almost certainly bacon, eggs, fried bread and mushrooms. Delicious!) for a terrified and shaken Stuttaford to come down the stairs. Apparently the guestroom was infamous for the ghosts that were said to lurk there. Generations of unsuspecting guests had 'seen things'. Not me. Slept like a log. Ghosts? No such thing. Now there's a pointless controversy for the weekend. Posted 10:45 AM | [Link] SMOKING, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford] Jonah, of course, federalism - and thus local - control does not always lead to results that gladden the libertarian heart. And there's currently no better example of this than, yes, Nurse Bloomberg's current crusade against smoking in bars. As to what that ban could mean, here's an interesting insight from Andrew Sullivan yesterday: "Riding through Commercial Street tonight, I saw something new. Around the entrances to various bars, there were mounds of strewn cigarette butts. They banned smoking in bars here a week or so ago. I wonder if these piles of debris, all gathered in one place around exits and entrances to buildings will one day be deemed the hallmark of this particular time. And what people in the future will think of that." They will think that we were nuts, that's what. Manhattan is a densely populated island with no clear distinction between residential and commercial areas. Forcing smokers to gather outside bars at night will inevitably increase the disruption, noise and litter for those who live in the neighborhood. Not that that seems to worry the Nurse. 'Quality of Life', it seems, was a Giuliani thing. Posted 10:23 AM | [Link] ISLAMIC FAMILY VALUES: [Rod Dreher] Please, spare me the stories about how tolerant Islamic societies are of non-Muslims. In moderate Jordan, a Christian widow has gone into hiding because an Islamic law court has ruled that she must turn over her children to her estranged Muslim brother. This case highlights the fact that under Islamic law, non-Muslims have few rights. Human rights groups are begging King Abdullah to intervene. (Don't bring up the Vatican and Edgardo Mortara example to me; what the Church did to that child was wicked, but it also happened in the 19th century, and the Church has reformed; this is happening NOW). Posted 10:16 AM | [Link] KEE-RUNCH!: [Rod Dreher] I don't visit the Corner for 12 hours, and look what happens! Now that I'm jacked up on my morning six cups of coffee, I'll write my response. Fear not, Kathryn, I plan to stand down after this (shouldn't we all be getting dressed for Ramesh's wedding later today?), though I should note that readers, whether they side with me or Jonah, report that they've really enjoyed this exchange. I think it's good when we can find an issue on which NR editors disagree, and discuss it in The Corner. Posted 10:10 AM | [Link] YOU GUYS ARE SO NICE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...I bet many of you would be willing to send me a gift subscripton of National Review on Dead Tree if I asked. Since my job perk is I get a free copy of each issue (sometimes, though, only tear sheets from the pages I specifically worked on), think about giving one to a family member, friend, or colleague (enemies, cool, too--we won't question motives) as a Christmas gift. It's much easier to carry around with you to flip through on the bus, in a restaurant, or wherever, than NRO. Posted 10:09 AM | [Link] IT SOUNDS INCREASINGLY LIKE SPEICHER WAS DEFINITELY CAPTURED [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From the AP: Navy Secretary Gordon England on Friday changed Speicher's official status to missing/captured. "I have no evidence to conclude that Captain Speicher is dead," England wrote. "While the information available to me now does not prove definitively that Captain Speicher is alive and in Iraqi custody, I am personally convinced the Iraqis seized him sometime after his plane went down. Further, it is my firm belief that the government of Iraq knows what happened to Captain Speicher." Posted 9:50 AM | [Link] SAPPY SATURDAY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This is nothing new, but I have been getting a lot of great e-mail lately. As my Corner colleagues know, we have terrific readers—who send great ideas, suggestions, complaints, and comments. I am still amazed by the pre-8 AM e-mail that came in yesterday as the Carter thing hit the news, but then it’s really not all that uncharacteristic of you’all. We’re honored you read us, interact with us, and send our links to your family and friends. We may not always write back—I, personally, am admittedly terrible at e-mail management and admire those who are better at it—but we’re always reading them and appreciating them, and making them a part of our work. (Is it the Couch or Cosmo who would now ask “You call that work?”) Please keep them coming. And, thanks. Posted 9:44 AM | [Link] SNIPER INFO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A few readers have actually e-mailed in the last day or two asking for the law-enforcement phone number for reporting any information on the sniper. And, so, if you need it, and have credible info to report (as opposed to conspiracy theories), it is: 1-888-324-9800. Posted 9:43 AM | [Link] SNIPER PROFILING [John Derbyshire] Colin Ferguson, the Long Island Railroad killer of December 1993 did his deed on the train just ahead of mine. My train was delayed for an hour and a half. When I got home my wife was worried sick (this was pre-cellphone). The neighbors had come in to rally round. They had all been watching the news coverage on TV. Rosie reports that people kept saying: "It must be a black guy. If he was white, they would have told us...." Posted 9:21 AM | [Link] DON'T WORRY K-LO [Jonah Goldberg] I think I've got it out of my system. I am done with the Crunchy con thing. Posted 9:20 AM | [Link] THE T WORD [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A Fox reporter just referred to the sniper murders as “acts of terror” and followed up with Ari at his press briefing yesterday addressing it (making it clear it is, so to speak, a "homeland" issue--I do hate that word). Doesn't have to mean a jihadist. Seems even if the murder(s) are not, terror is the right word. Posted 9:17 AM | [Link] WONDERING [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Seems there's reporting that witnesses have seen two people in a white van, possibly one blond woman we heard yesterday from a gas-station witness in Spotsylvania, but the police/FBI are offering no description of the suspects. I'm not talking about profiling here, and maybe the FBI/police are getting too many differing stories, but whenever there's no description of the suspects, you can't help but wonder. And in a quick scan of the stories, I notice references to authorities bringing people in who “fit the description" of the suspects, so they appear to have a sketch to work off. The public silence seems to give more credence to the Jim/Jonah theory. Just a thought. Posted 9:16 AM | [Link] WONDERING [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Seems there's reporting that witnesses have seen two people in a white van, possibly one blond woman we heard yesterday from a gas-station witness in Spotsylvania, but the police/FBI are offering no description of the suspects. I'm not talking about profiling here, and maybe the FBI/police are getting too many differing stories, but whenever there's no description of the suspects, you can't help but wonder. And in a quick scan of the stories, I notice references to authorities bringing people in who “fit the description" of the suspects, so they appear to have a sketch to work off. The public silence seems to give more credence to the Jim/Jonah theory. Just a thought. Posted 9:16 AM | [Link] ANOTHER BOMBER IN ISRAEL STOPPED MINUTES BEFORE AN ATTACK [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This time due to the work of U.S. Embassy security (he was at a Tel Aviv cafe by the U.S. embassy) and a cafe security guard. Posted 8:55 AM | [Link] EVERYONE NOTICE THIS HELSINKI BOMBING? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Little to no motive talk, so far as I can see. Six dead. Posted 8:52 AM | [Link] THERE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FIVE PLANES? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] New 9/11 info. Posted 7:50 AM | [Link] BEHIND THE FAMOUS MONTANA AD [Kathryn Jean Lopez] John Berlau reports that the internal polling on both sides found that the Taylor-Baucus race was much closer than other polls were reporting. And, interestingly, the ad was a national project, a project of the DSCC. Posted 7:46 AM | [Link] I LOVE FOX [Kathryn Jean Lopez] They are showing a photo of the Carters with Castro from earlier this year, right now. Posted 7:24 AM | [Link] MAYOR BRAT [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I don't know how much people in the outside world care about this story--I'm not even sure how many New Yorkers or even Italians do--but Mayor Bloomberg made a silly mistake in inviting cast members of The Sopranos to the big city's Columbus Day parade. But instead of just taking the private group's decision and walking without "my friends," he's boycotting the parade now. Anyone could have warned Bloomberg this would have played out this way. Maybe he just has other things he wants to do Monday and needed an excuse? Posted 7:23 AM | [Link] LETTER OF THE MONTH [John Derbyshire] For connoisseurs of "Letters to the Editor." The cover story of the October 5th issue of The Economist was about the election in Brazil, with a banner headline THE MEANING OF LULA. This was a reference to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, head of the country's biggest left-wing party. Well, the current Economist carries a letter from one Asif Niazi, address given only as "Canada." The letter reads as follows: "Sir--'The meaning of Lula' (October 5th) in Urdu is penis." Posted 6:48 AM | [Link] SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I TURN OFF THE COMPUTER! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] :-) Posted 6:46 AM | [Link]
AND LASTLY [Jonah Goldberg] There is federalism. In a properly constituted republic, local communities could be as crunchy or as libertarian as they like. I have always supported the right of local communities to be as Christian or as gay or as whatever they want to be. Federalism solves almost all libertarian-conservative battles. And that, too, is not a new point in the conservative arsenal. Posted 4:39 PM | [Link] AS FOR SMOKING AND BEER.... [Jonah Goldberg] I agree with you entirely that there are areas where politics and lifestyle intersect very closely. And I'd like to reduce the number of areas where that happens. The Left made smoking a political issue, not the Right. And that is instructive because it shows what happens when people make lifestyle and politics inseparable. Now, I am not a libertarian and nobody would ever accuse me of being one. But for a movement which in your words is skeptical of the free market, smoking and beer do not strike me as the best examples because if the free market were allowed to function properly, bars would be allowed to decide for themselves whether they wanted to allow smoking and the government would not be granting favors to the big brewers. Posted 4:36 PM | [Link] KIRK’S REAL PASSION [Jonah Goldberg] Let me put it another way. Let’s stick with Russell Kirk. Kirk believed in ghosts, spirits and other things which go bump in the night. He was passionate about their existence and even admitted to having spoken with many of them in his Mecosta, Michigan manse. And unlike anything remotely resembling Crunchy Conservatism, he wrote widely on the subject including numerous ghost and horror stories. Indeed, one of the three most important awards he ever received was the Radcliffe Award from the Count Dracula Society. Indeed, digging deeper, you’d find that not only Kirk, but C.S. Lewis had interesting things to say about ghosts. And perhaps Chesterton. Digging deeper still, you’d find that the gnostics and the Lord knows who else had cool things to say about ghosts. Now, if you were to announce that you wanted to hear from the many readers of NRO who believe in ghosts, I have no doubt that you would receive more than enough feedback to make it seem like there is a movement of ghost-conservatives out there. And maybe in fact there are some interesting things to say about ghost conservatives. But we should not lose sight of the fact that it is you who is imposing a larger meaning on these people that previously did not exist (the people existed of course). You continue to discuss crunchy cons as if there is a level of consciousness about this "movement" independent of you. There isn’t. Now it’s possible, as did happen with media drumbeat over Gen X, that you will be able to "educate" people into believing this is an important distinction. And perhaps enough people will buy into it so that it becomes an important distinction. But why exactly do you want to do that? If you have real problems with the free market and corporations I can respect that. Make the movement about those ideas not what the members of the movement buy at the store. Richard Weaver’s book was called "Ideas Have Consequences" not "Clothes Have Consequences." Posted 4:24 PM | [Link] THE JOURNALISTIC CONCEIT [Jonah Goldberg] The problem with your approach to this, in my eyes, is that it is overly journalistic. Much like the Gen X craze which claimed to ascribe tangible and unique political views to tens of millions of people of diverse backgrounds simply because they were born between two arbitrary dates, you are taking a bunch of conservative people who don’t fit the conservative stereotype in terms of what they wear and ascribing to them a coherent and distinct political philosophy. Just like some Time magazine reporter who found five random Gen Xers who’d agree that social security was problem and then concluded that Gen Xers care about social security, you’re finding a bunch of people who happen to have pony tails or sandals and asserting that these are a distinct demographic. I’ve met plenty of blue blazer Republicans who love smart growth and want to keep their local woods intact, are they not allowed in the Crunchy Con Club because they don’t fit the dress code? Posted 4:23 PM | [Link] WELL... [Jonah Goldberg] Okay, since Kathryn isn't here I will engage in some cross crunch conversation. And since we’re all out in the open now we can both dispense with the usual – and sincere caveats – that we’re all friends here. Let me try this again: Rod, why on earth you think that because someone picked up and liked Russell Kirk they are a "crunchy conservative" is beyond me. Kirk wasn’t crunchy in any sense. He was a 19th century patrician who dressed in a dignified manner every day of his life as far as I know. The fact that a bunch of people who wear crunchy clothing now like Kirk doesn’t change that. Why do you put the focus on the clothes and the food preferences rather than on the ideas? If you had written a cover story about conservatives who are rejecting the free market approach of the mainstream conservatives, I’d say "now that’s a good story." If you’d written about the renaissance of Kirkian conservatism or the need for such a renaissance, I’d be keenly interested in such an article as well. But do you really want to say that people who are interested in Kirk are necessarily inclined toward organic food and people who don’t like Kirk aren’t? Why marry the lifestyle to the ideas when there is no reason to think they have anything significant to do with each other? I can guarantee you (as you acknowledge in your piece), that libertarians as a group are far, far, far crunchier than Kirk-followers and they like the free market a great deal. So if you can be crunchy and on the crunchy right but disagree with crunchy cons, shouldn’t we drop the word crunchy and come up with one that defines the holders of ideas rather than the holders of Fresh Fields tote bags? Posted 4:22 PM | [Link] ONE SEC ROD.... [Jonah Goldberg] I just got back from playing with Cosmo. A response will be up in a moment. Posted 4:05 PM | [Link] CRUNCHY PART II: [Rod Dreher] A quick example of the reason I think crunchy-con is a real thing, and why it says something to conservative nonconformists who live in Red America. One Midwestern reader wrote to say he'd always considered himself conservative, but couldn't figure out why his instincts led him to more "liberal" positions on certain issues (e.g., the environment). Then he read my crunchy-con articles, picked up Russell Kirk for the first time, and discovered that his "liberal" instincts were actually pretty conservative -- but conservative in a Kirkian sense. "The problem is that most mainstream conservatives aren't reading Russell Kirk," he wrote. "They're reading Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity." Now, don't get me wrong, I like both Limbaugh and Hannity, and am grateful for their work. But there is a lot more to conservatism than what our most popular personalities espouse, and what the media tells us. People should know about it, and shouldn't be made to feel that they're some kind of liberal for adhering to this strain of conservatism. Posted 3:20 PM | [Link] CRUNCHY FALLOUT: [Rod Dreher] I could be wrong, but my e-mail suggests that not a few readers are getting a kick out of reading Jonah and me sparring over this crunchy-con thing. So I'm game for keeping it up for a couple more days if you are, Jonah -- as long as we have useful things to say. I'd like to respond to your contention in the current G-File that crunchy-con is merely a cover for a way of politicizing lifestyle choices. I think you're wrong, and for a couple of reasons. For one thing, at times, lifestyle can't help but be political, inasmuch as politics is the process by which we agree on the rules we're going to live with. Look at the anti-smoking charge NYC's Mayor Bloomberg is on. For his supporters, this is about defending the rights of non-smokers to breathe smoke-free air in bars; for his opponents, this is about defending the rights of bar owners to set the rules in their own establishments (I'm with the bar owners, by the way). To smoke or not to smoke is a lifestyle choice, but when it happens in public, it's political. The same principle applies to something as seemingly esoteric as, say, beer. Say you don't like mass-produced beer, and are partial to microbrews. You may have to get involved politically to open up the market and distribution systems to small brewers. You could say that that's about a bunch of fancy-pants yuppies politicizing taste, or you could say that it's about expanding the market, about supporting small businessmen, about reviving the old craft of artisanal beer-brewing, etc. My point with the crunchy-con thing is that too many mainstream conservatives are quick to write off these things as mere questions of taste, when in fact there are political considerations inherent in the choices (if only by creating a place in the public square where conservatives who want to make those choices, e.g. homeschooling, can do so). Posted 3:13 PM | [Link] PAPA GOLDBERG: [Rod Dreher] I'm thrilled you're going to be a daddy, Jonah. You can't possibly imagine now how wonderful it is, and how it shakes up your assumptions in unexpected ways. I may dread saying this, because few things are as annoying as people writing about their kids, but I do hope you'll make Life with Baby a semi-regular G-File topic. I suspect you'll have really interesting things to say about what being responsible for another life does to one's politics and passions. And if Jessica ever wants to know how to make healthy baby food at home, without spending good money to buy factory-regurgitated crap, you know who to call. Posted 3:02 PM | [Link] MISSING-CAPTURED [Kathryn Jean Lopez] More on the change of status, which has been in the works... Posted 2:49 PM | [Link] EXPLODING BRAINS [John Derbyshire] OWLS. "Exploding owls." That's it. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Don't know what's the matter with me today. Prob. something to do with these letters from enraged Hiberno-fascists NR keeps faxing to me. (BTW Julie: the green ink doesn't come through too well on fax, cd you please photocopy before sending? And no, there is no need to send on those big bulky packages with Boston postmarks, I'll pick them up next time I'm in the office... Next year, perhaps....) Posted 2:40 PM | [Link] ROD... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...just read Andrew's review of Amis, save yourself time. Posted 2:36 PM | [Link] EXPLODING E-MAILS [John Derbyshire] Sorry, sorry: I meant "exploding habits." Think Franciscan suicide bombers. Posted 2:33 PM | [Link] EXPLODING HOBBITS [John Derbyshire] Sorry, typo: that subject line should of course have read "exploding hobbits." Posted 2:32 PM | [Link] KOBA'S TALLY: [Rod Dreher] Someone gave me a copy of Martin Amis's Koba the Dread, which is about Stalin and his Western defenders on the intellectual left. I'm reading Hitchens' book on Orwell now, and I hadn't planned to read Amis anytime soon. Nevertheless, I just glanced at the first page, and shuddered when I read this: Here is the second sentence of Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine: 'We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.' That sentence represents 3,040 lives. The book is 411 pages long. Why does the moral rottenness of the left European intellectuals who choose the Nobel Peace laureates come to mind...? Posted 2:28 PM | [Link] EXPLODING RABBITS [John Derbyshire] Oh, I get it! "Who... Who... Who..." sounds like an owl, see? Brilliant! My opinion of Amiri Baraka's poetic skills just went up a notch... from -6,491 to -6,490. And yes, thanks, I am now thoroughly familiar with Senator Theodore G. Bilbo of Mississippi, and aware that he was, though very short in stature, definitely not a hobbit. Posted 2:12 PM | [Link] THE SPEICHER STORY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] If you need a refresher. Posted 2:00 PM | [Link] BREAKING [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From CNN: The U.S. changes the status of Navy Capt. Scott Speicher, shot down over Iraq in January 1991, to missing-captured. Details soon. Posted 1:54 PM | [Link] HERE YOU GO.... [Jonah Goldberg] Cosmo is not only real, he is an avid NR subscriber. He particularly likes Derbyshire's articles about the Chinese, because, you know. Posted 1:39 PM | [Link] THE SUNDAY SHOW SCHEDULE!!! [Staff] Posted 1:28 PM | [Link] RE: I DON'T UNDERSTAND [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I think they just think he's too cool to be real or something odd like that. I don't know, they are your fans. Posted 1:22 PM | [Link] EXHIBIT A [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The most recent Washington U posting was incorrectly attributed to me instead of the Man, Stan. You know who did that. Posted 1:21 PM | [Link] I DON'T UNDERSTAND [Jonah Goldberg] How can people think Cosmo isn't real? If I knew how to post pictures in the Corner I'd put 'em up. But how can people think he's not real? As for Kathryn sleeping -- of course she doesn't sleep. I mean, how could she? Posted 1:19 PM | [Link] FAQ [Kathryn Jean Lopez] One of the most frequently asked questions I get, after, "Is Cosmo real?" is "Do you sleep?" The answer: Not often. And you can tell. Posted 1:10 PM | [Link] THE NOBEL VOTING HAS ENDED [Kathryn Jean Lopez] My inbox has exploded. Thanks to everyone who voted. Check in this weekend for results (gotta keep you coming back). Posted 1:08 PM | [Link] RE: TRY AGAIN [Jonah Goldberg] In fact, I'm seeking reparations from the Egyptian government for the enslavement of the Hebrews. Though, I should say, there is some controversy about whether the Hebrews actually built the pyramids. But, that's a different kettle of fish. Posted 1:06 PM | [Link] LATEST FROM WASHINGTON U [Stanley Kurtz] It looks like the current case of p.c. extremism at Washington University Law School is no fluke. A reader tell me that about a year ago (before or after 9/11?) the school voted to deny tuition wavers to graduates planning military law careers–even though the waivers were offered to students planning other government careers. The reason given, of course, was the “don’t ask, don’t tell,” although you can bet that a general hostility to the military was at work as well. My reader isn’t certain, but he thinks the block on waivers for the military was rolled back by public outcry. Clarification from readers on this and other Washington University history would be welcome. Posted 12:53 PM | [Link] TRY AGAIN [James S. Robbins] Former Jordanian Ambassador to Iraq Bassam Qakish on all the fuss about Saddam Hussein's palaces: “The pharaohs built the pyramids, and nobody blamed them because thousands of people died." Except maybe Moses? Posted 12:47 PM | [Link] VEHICLE PROFILING [Jonah Goldberg] I am outraged, however, by all of this talk of pulling over only "white vans." Why only white vans? What about black vans? In this age of political correctness are white vans the only vans it's okay to harass these days? I mean what have things....oh forget it. Posted 12:38 PM | [Link] THE SNIPER [Jonah Goldberg] I'm with Jim in thinking this is part of the Fall offensive, along with the attacks in Kuwait and off the coast of Yemen. Obviously, we won't know for sure. But what I find most persuasive is the possibility that this is a two man team. That just strikes me as way too professional. Also, the syntax on the "Dear Mr. Policeman" note was weird (though sacriligious). Also, and this, I think, might be a bit of a stretch, but the fact that so many victims are people pumping gas sounds like it might be symbolic. All of these al Quaeda types make such a big deal about our foreign policy being a product of our thirst for oil to feed our cars. Maybe that means something. Or maybe, it's just that gas purchasers make easier targets. Anyway, it's getting pretty bad around here. Posted 12:28 PM | [Link] RE: DEMOCRACY V. ISLAM V. NYT [Stanley Kurtz] Yes, Jonah. People sometimes forget how slow the expansion of the franchise was, even in Europe. It took time for a population unschooled in democracy, and often illiterate, to acquire democratic habits and understand democratic principles. Even as great a liberal democrat as John Stuart Mill was adamant that democracy and universal suffrage were unworkable if the underlying cultural conditions were not first in place: “When a people have no sufficient value for, and attachment to, a representative constitution, they have next to no chance of retaining it.” Posted 11:56 AM | [Link] RE: CONSOLATION [KJL] Andrew, it's the only consolation, but, man, is it sweet. Posted 11:47 AM | [Link] CARTER'S PRIZE : A CONSOLATION [Andrew Stuttaford] Bill Clinton is mad as hell. Posted 11:46 AM | [Link] BY THE WAY.... [Jonah Goldberg] The Goldberg File is up and, while I don't normally say this sort of thing, you should probably read the whole thing. You'll see what I mean. Posted 11:28 AM | [Link] DEMOCRACY V. ISLAM V. NYT [Jonah Goldberg] Stan, I agree entirely that democracy comes slowly, especially in Islamic countries. This in fact has been the cause of my biggest peeves with the New York Times. The Times has always argued that democracy trumps any threat to the rule of law. They editorialized in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran because they couldn’t stand the Shah and his friendship with the US. They argued that Khomeini should be allowed back in Iran because he was so popular and, well, popularity is the heart of democracy. I wonder if they’re still pleased with how things turned out. They editorialized against the decision in Algeria a decade ago which prevented Islamic extremists from taking over despite their successful and popular campaign based on the Koran and a promise to abolish democracy. And just last Sunday, the Times denounced the Turkish military for its power to veto any election which might serve to repeal a secular government and replace it with religious fanatics. The Times has always believed it's better to have one free election – and just one – then the longstanding rule of law and the prospect for a permanent democratic culture. This is my biggest fear about a post-War Iraq: the New York Times crowd will force the US to implement a flimsy democracy on Iraq too soon because the New York Times has never learned from its own mistakes. Posted 11:20 AM | [Link] RE: NO OFFENSE... [Stanley Kurtz] You’re right Kathryn. Musharraf is still essentially a dictator and still has the power to override or dissolve the parliament. Having consolidated that power, he was willing to risk a baby-step back toward democracy. But that baby-step has tripped him up. It undermines his legitimacy, and makes a coup by a disgruntled public aware of their own increasing unhappiness with their pro-American leader more likely. It also complicates efforts in the area near Afghanistan, because even if a local government of fundamentalists can be overridden, they can be a nuisance. But the real significance of this vote is the warning sign it gives about moving toward democracy before the groundwork has be laid. What if Pakistan really was a full democracy? Then the rise of the fundamentalists would be a very serious problem. That’s what we have to remember as we move into a post-war Iraq. Posted 11:19 AM | [Link] RE: ANOTHER BELTWAY-AREA SHOOTING [James S. Robbins] I wonder when the authorities are going to figure out the the sniper attacks are part of al Qaeda fall offensive? Posted 11:13 AM | [Link] ANOTHER BELTWAY-AREA SHOOTING [KJL] Posted 11:13 AM | [Link] ONE MORE... [James S. Robbins] Also there was a huge bomb blast in Chechnya. The bad guys are on the offensive everywhere Posted 10:58 AM | [Link] NO OFFENSE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...but, can't Musharaf still just do what dictators do, ignore the election? Posted 10:56 AM | [Link] NOT SO EASY [Stanley Kurtz] Aside from the practical problems, the Pakistani election is a real warning sign for those who look for a quick an easy establishment of democracy in the Muslim world. Here is a case where even a cautious move toward a restoration of democracy and parliamentary government has seriously undercut pro-American forces and given a major boost to Muslim fundamentalists (who pledge, not more democracy, but expulsion of U.S. forces and establishment of Islamic law). Even Islamabad, filled with the middle classes and the governing elite, elected a fundamentalist, to the surprise of all. In the long term, we need democracy in the Middle East, but too quick a transition, before a liberal civil society has been built, will only play into the hands of fundamentalists. Posted 10:55 AM | [Link] AND IN PAKISTAN... [Stanley Kurtz] Sobering news from Pakistan today, where pro-American president Pervez Musharraf’s party was badly set back in parliamentary elections. The problem was less the strong showing of the secular opposition parties than the surprising rise of the Muslim fundamentalists–who took up to 30 seats, when their best previous showing was 9. The result is a loss of legitimacy for Musharraf and the takeover of the province near Afghanistan by a local fundamentalist government. This will weaken Musharraf nationally, and make it much harder for Americans to root out al-Qaeda flooding into Pakistan from Afghanistan. Posted 10:54 AM | [Link] LISTENING TO AL QAEDA [James S. Robbins] An excerpt from the al Qaeda intercepts (Salmane is Lazer Ben Khaklifa, an al Qaeda operative known as "the Postman" because acts as a courier for forged documents. The Postman is a Tunisian. This comes courtesy of Corriere della Sera, a Milanese daily.): [Salmane] Yes, there are new developments. It is up to you. You remember the "program" I mentioned to you the other time? The one that strengthens faith? Posted 10:53 AM | [Link] TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM [Jonah Goldberg] From CNSNews.com:
Posted 10:52 AM | [Link] MORE FROM ITALY [James S. Robbins] Italian police have also apprehended five Pakistanis video taping the Gigli shopping mall near Florence. Three of them had no identity paers. They claimed to have making the tape as a souvenier to show family back home, but why were they filming scenes of the parking lot? Posted 10:48 AM | [Link] SCORE ANOTHER ONE FOR ITALY [James S. Robbins] Italian police have moved against a four man al Qaeda cell operating in Naples and Milan after intercepting a phone call from Switzerland in which one of the terrorists said, "We are ready to start the match." Chillingly similar to the NSA intercept from September 10, 2001 (interpreted too late, alas), "The match starts tomorrow." More evidence that we are in the middle of a new phase of the war. We're still winning, but stay safe out there. Posted 10:47 AM | [Link] THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS [James S. Robbins] In an interview in the Saudi magazine Al Majallah, Al Qaeda spokesman Abd-al-Rahman al-Rashid states that Saddam Hussein "is at the top of Al-Qa'ida's assassination list." He goes on to say that "Saddam is exactly like Bush in barbarism, cruelty, and unbelief." Sure would be ironic if Osama's crew brought about regime change for us. Conversely, if Saddam hands over the al Qaeda leadership, would we pay him the reward money? Posted 10:45 AM | [Link] THE EVIL OF IRAQ [Jonah Goldberg] This is simply riveting reading. It's an interview with a German lefty who knows Iraq first hand and is quite honest about its horrors. This is excellent ammunition for people who say comparisons to Hitler and Stalin are overblown. Posted 9:45 AM | [Link] CAN FRANK LAUTENBERG WRITE THE G-FILE FOR ME? [Jonah Goldberg] Following is the script of "The Lesson," a commercial running in New Jersey (thanks to the Hotline): BOY NO. 1 [taking a test]: Aw man, I can't do this. I quit! Teacher? TEACHER: Yes? BOY NO. 2: If I fail this test, can I have Frank Lautenberg take it for me? ANNOUNCER [v/o]: Torricelli and Lautenberg are teaching our children the wrong lessons. BOY NO. 2 [playing basketball]: Aw, I'm losing. I quit! Let Frank Lautenberg play for me. ANNOUNCER: Tell your children you don't just quit because you're losing. BOY NO. 2: Torricelli can quit, I can quit. I'm not gonna lose. (On screen: Paid for by the NJ State Republican Comm. George Buckwald, Treasurer. Without the consent, coordination or authorization of Forrester 2002) Posted 9:40 AM | [Link] ACTUALLY.... [Jonah Goldberg] Jay Nordlinger's take[s] on Jimmy Carter, HGM, are more authoritative and comprehensive than the column I linked to below. Posted 9:34 AM | [Link] DERB.... [Jonah Goldberg] How do you deal with Miami University in Oxford Ohio? Posted 9:29 AM | [Link] JIMMY CARTER!? [Jonah Goldberg] He's history's greatest monster! Posted 9:25 AM | [Link] ARE UNION LEADERS ANTIWAR? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Do read Steve Silbiger's piece. Posted 9:18 AM | [Link] DISORIENTED [John Derbyshire] Can anyone tell me why Washington University is in St. Louis? I mean, why isn't it in Washington? Sheesh, I have enough trouble with Washington DC and Washington State. Posted 9:07 AM | [Link] REX REED, OF ALL PEOPLE: [Rod Dreher] Mark Shea points out that movie critic Rex Reed, of all people, is sick of lefty blowhard Michael Moore's exhibitionism. (Scroll down for the review). Posted 8:55 AM | [Link] UNHAPPY ADMINISTRATORS [Stanley Kurtz] Washington University administrators are clearly reeling from the public’s angry reaction to their suppression of the pro-life student group. Last night, they appeared before the Law Student’s association and said that the scandal was doing real damage to Washington University’s reputation. They were hoping the students would come around and recognize the pro-life organization, but the law students refused. The administrators don’t want to reverse the student’s decision. The argument now being used against the pro-lifers is that they are a “single issue” group with a “narrow political agenda.” Actually, there are several pro-life issues at stake, and the law school already recognizes OUTLAW, a group advocating tolerance for those who are ”sexually diverse.” This is obviously a politically motivated double standard that flies in the face of the most basic belief in freedom of association. (Here’s Erin O’Connor on campus free association.) The students and administrators of Washington University have acted deliberately, repeatedly, and shamefully to suppress the pro-lifers. Washington University deserves every bit of bad publicity that it gets. Posted 8:09 AM | [Link] WASHINGTON U. UPDATE [Stanley Kurtz] Washington University Law School continues to withhold recognition from a student pro-life group, even after much adverse publicity from FIRE. Corner readers did excellent work yesterday flooding Washington University with e-mails. Read this account of the outrage and send more e-mails, if you like, to the addresses at the bottom. Oh, and here’s a taste of the sort of reply you might get. Posted 8:07 AM | [Link] DECLINE AND FALL [Andrew Stuttaford] Three American presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Roosevelt (1906), Wilson (1919) and, now, Carter... Posted 8:00 AM | [Link] WILL MCNAMARA APOLOGIZE TO CASTRO? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Cuban Missile Crisis vets retreat to Havana. Posted 7:47 AM | [Link] I'LL STOP GRUMBLING, SOON... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...but it was the lead story on The Today Show. Congress votes to give the president authorization to move into Iraq and Jimmy Carter's meaningless award is the top story. Of course, it's not meaningless when it was meant as a slap in the face to the current administration. Posted 7:03 AM | [Link] GIVE ME AN EVIL PRIZE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Tunku Varadarajan at the Journal wants nothing to do with a peace prize. Posted 6:57 AM | [Link] NOOOOOOOOOOO [Andrew Stuttaford] Carter's Nobel prize: mush for the wimp? Posted 6:54 AM | [Link] HOW SWEET [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat exchange holiday greetings. Posted 6:34 AM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 6:34 AM | [Link] MR. HUMAN RIGHTS, REALLY? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] We'll post this on the homepage in a little bit, but in the meantime, here's an excerpt from a Jay Nordlinger piece from May on the peace man: Care for a quick walk down Memory Lane? Joshua Muravchik reminded us of some Carter nuggets in a 1994 piece for The New Republic. While in office, Carter hailed Tito as "a man who believes in human rights." He said of Ceausescu and himself, "Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and politics . . . We believe in enhancing human rights." Since leaving office, Carter has praised Syria's late Assad (killer of at least 20,000 in Hama) and the Ethiopian tyrant Mengistu (killer of many more than that). In Haiti, he told the dictator Cédras that he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country." Posted 6:18 AM | [Link] OKAY, SO VOTE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Who would you have given the Peace Prize to? (pretend the thing actually has meaning. Just pretend.) I'll publish results sometime this weekend. NOTE: Subject line should read VOTE. Thanks. Posted 6:14 AM | [Link] JUST LIKE THE GARDEN STATE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Of course, at John Derb will tell you in a few hours on the main page, that's not too far off from the poet laureate of New Jersey. Posted 6:10 AM | [Link] AND FROM JORDAN [Kathryn Jean Lopez] "As for you, black Condoleezza Rice, swallow your tongue, remember your origins and stop talking about liberation and freedom. Have you not been taught by your cowboy masters that 'slaves' cannot liberate themselves, that they are not capable to capture the large Islamic world whose cultural roots are planted in the depths of history The slaves who are happy with their enslavement, O Condoleezza, will continue to be enslaved. They will never be free and will never free others." Posted 6:10 AM | [Link] EGYPTIAN OPPOSITION TO DR.RICE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Condi Rice made comments on bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq and an Egyptian newspaper said thus (translation, of course, courtesy of MEMRI): In the Egyptian opposition weekly Al-Usbu', National Security Advisor Rice is the subject of a vicious attack by the columnist, Hani Zaid, who wrote under the title: "Condoleezza Rice—National Security Advisor in the rank of a little prostitute": "Ms. Rice persists in treating the Arabs as the masters treated the slaves or the students who have not reached the age of maturity in one of the American schools... Rice talks about teaching us democracy and freedom. She ignores the racism which prevailed when she was a child in Alabama where she attended segregated schools for blacks because she was a black Negro from African origins. She passed her holidays in parks specifically designated for blacks, and she was not allowed to enter restaurants for white people only. When she was 9, she participated in the funerals of four of her Negro friends who were murdered in a racist attack at a Baptist church in Westminster. She has forgotten all of this. What she remembers is the study of Zionism in the hands of Joseph Corwellthe father of Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, in the faculty for political science at Stanford (sic) ... All there is for me to say to this lady and to her administration...[is] we do not need lessons from anybody." Posted 6:07 AM | [Link] I AM OFFICIALLY AMAZED... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...about the number of Corner readers who have emailed me at this hour to complain about the Carter prize. Posted 6:02 AM | [Link] ARGH [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Here's Reuters: The committee also criticized President Bush and his campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Carter has said it would be a tragic and costly error for the United States to attack Iraq without U.N. support. Posted 6:00 AM | [Link] NEXT UP [Kathryn Jean Lopez] You know next year it'll be Kofi Annan (again) for trying to stop bloodthirsty American cowboys from attacking Iraq. Posted 5:53 AM | [Link] IT COULD'VE BEEN BONO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] I don't see it one the wires yet, but a reader from Norway e-mails that Jimmy Carter has been named this year's Nobel Preace Prize winner. (Here's who was in the running.) Posted 5:52 AM | [Link] SOMETHING FEELS OFF... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...when NYers are protesting Hillary. Posted 12:02 AM | [Link]
THE AD THAT CHANGED MONTANA POLITICS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] How did the Democrats get away with this? Imagine if this had played out differently: If a Republican ran a hairdresser ad about his Democratic opponent like this. Watch the ad. Listen to the music. You'll see what I mean. Posted 9:54 PM | [Link] MUSLIMS FOR THE AMERICAN WAY [ Mike Potemra] Thanks to Stephen Schwartz for pointing out this website--it's run by patriotic Americans who practice the Muslim faith. Islamic spirituality-like all other religions-flourishes in our pluralistic country, and these Muslims join their fellow Americans in defending our (freely chosen) ways of life against the terroristic would-be theocrats. Posted 6:51 PM | [Link] READER WANTS A RETRACTION [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Aforementioned quoted Oxygen-viewing reader sends me an emergency email: "I do NOT watch the Oxygen network, thus the disclaimer of "just flicking through". It was the Iraqi dissident that caught my attention. I just hung around long enough to discover Oprah's shocking reaction." I suspected. Posted 5:59 PM | [Link] :-) [Kathryn Jean Lopez] You saw that coming, didn't you? Posted 5:53 PM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 5:52 PM | [Link] WE DO NOT... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...by the way, endorse you reading a friend's copy. Every man, woman, child, even dog (Ask Cosmo), deserves his own subscription to National Review. Posted 5:52 PM | [Link] NRO KILLS TREES TOO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A faithful reader writes: You know how you always talk about the Dead Tree edition? Well, I happen to kill more trees with NRO than I would subscribing to NR (I read my friend's copy, so don't worry, I read it.). I daily print off the NRO articles (where's the G-File?!?!). Granted, I use the "Print Version," but I still print at least 20 pages a day (I print the Corner, too). And I know I'm not the only one. I see oher NRO readers on MARTA all the time. Posted 5:45 PM | [Link] EVEN WORSE THAN BIDEN [Jonathan Adler] Roll Call provides more evidence that Senator Leahy is more partisan, and far less-disposed to fair play, than Senator Biden ever was as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy deep-sixed a vote on judicial nominee Dennis Shedd -- despite prior assurances that there would be a vote -- because Shedd would have won a committee vote. As Biden told Roll Call, "If there is a vote on Shedd, Shedd wins." Posted 5:12 PM | [Link] CAN MONTANANS PULL A TORRICELLI? [Jonathan Adler] The GOP Senate candidate in Montana has withdrawn from the race, and now there's talk of a replacement. Stay tuned. Posted 5:12 PM | [Link] WHO KNEW... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...that Corner readers also watch Oxygen?! Posted 5:09 PM | [Link] MORE CHEERS FOR OPRAH [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A reader writes: I watched about twenty minutes of "After the Show" by Oprah on the Oxygen network last night. Just flicking through, and saw an Iraqi dissident speaking. Posted 5:09 PM | [Link] CDL. PULJIC, RECONSIDERED: [Rod Dreher] A Catholic American friend who served with US forces in the Balkans writes to take strong exception to the comments of the Archbishop of Sarajevo, which I blogged earlier today. He says that despite Cdl. Puljic's apparent openness to religious dialogue, he is in fact a movement Croat nationalist who had to be forced to sit down to talk with anybody. This reader cautions not to be fooled by the cardinal archbishop's kind and reasonable words, and says that Puljic was a nasty character who had it in for Bosnian Muslims until the U.S. troops arrived to stop him. Me, I don't know, but I trust my friend's judgment. Anybody else have any insight? Posted 4:13 PM | [Link] PASSED! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] The House resolution on Iraq. Posted 3:34 PM | [Link] OUR IRAQ POSITION IS OFFICIALLY COOL [Kathryn Jean Lopez] More on Oprah. It seems she had Stanley's man Kenneth Pollack on (a Clintonite), along with Judith Miller of the NYT. A well-informed NRO friend who watched--and swears he was given a heads-up, he does not watch regularly--tells me: "of all that I have seen, or heard, politics be damned, i would use this show to convince the masses." It was "a well thought out indictment of Saddam." Posted 3:12 PM | [Link] @#$% FUNNY [Jonah Goldberg] I think this is hilarious. Be warned it has curse wrods in it -- for those of you who complain about not being warned of such things. Posted 2:50 PM | [Link] OPRAH'S ON? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] My e-mail box suggests that Oprah Winfrey might be pro-Iraq invasion. Anyone want to educate me? Posted 2:44 PM | [Link] SUPERSTITION WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford] Here's a piece from the Independent on Europe's first school of witchcraft. The curriculum is, apparently, "downright scientific". Amongst other scientific subjects, the course includes, ahem, astrology and ritual magic. Posted 1:55 PM | [Link] NASTY OR NICE? [Andrew Stuttaford] Britain's Tories are currently agonizing over they whether they are or are not 'nasty'. Blogger Natalie Solent has something to say about this. Posted 1:43 PM | [Link] VULTURES [Andrew Stuttaford] The gun control nuts of the 'Violence Policy Center' are doing their best to profit from the Maryland shootings. Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst at the VPC, is quoted on Bloomberg News clearly attempting to link these murders with something that the VPC refers to as "a growing sniper subculture in the United States". The VPC does at least have the honesty to acknowledge it has no idea who the shooter is, raising the question as to how it is that the organization is able to speak speak so authoritatively about the killer's 'subculture'. Posted 1:22 PM | [Link] SILENT CAL IN CUBA [John Derbyshire] Readers of my novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream will recall that the plot hinges on the existence of a professional actor who travels round the country doing a one-man show in which he impersonates Calvin Coolidge. That character was based on Jim Cooke of Quincy, Mass., who actually does do such a show. Now I hear from Jim that he is trying to get a booking in Cuba. See, Silent Cal was the only U.S. president to visit Cuba while in office, and next January is the 75th anniversary of that visit. Jim wants to be there to commemorate the event. Anyone care to estimate his chances of a gig? (And BTW, if your school, company, or club would like to have the 30th president drop in, Jim is available for bookings at Jkoolcal@aol.com.) Posted 12:57 PM | [Link] THE WORST CIVIL-RIGHTS VIOLATION: [Rod Dreher] Reader Jason McCrory draws attention to an upcoming civil-rights march against abortion in the black community, scheduled for Birmingham. Posted 12:56 PM | [Link] PEKING [Andrew Stuttaford] John, in that piece, Jay asks whether anyone remembers 'Peiping'. The answer is yes - Corner readers. When I mentioned 'Peking' in a post a few months ago, a number of Peiping loyalists wrote in to complain about my new-fangled ways. Posted 12:53 PM | [Link] CRUNCHY CHRISTIAN? YES. CONSERVATIVE? WELL...: Tom Sullivan sends along this provocative essay written by Greg Wolfe, the Catholic editor of the arts journal Image. He was apparently once a student of Russell Kirk's, and worked at National Review. He's not on the team anymore, but he has some interesting ideas about the problematic relationship political types have to art and literature. Here Wolfe is bemoaning the "hyper-politicization of our social order," in an observation I think crunchy-cons can agree with: "There is some debate about just how deep the divisions in the culture wars go, but I think it's fair to say that, at the level of public discourse, we witnessed a slide into increasingly shrill, utopian ideological rhetoric on both sides of the aisle. Politics may be a noble calling, but it is always in danger of becoming an end in itself. Political struggles take place over issues that are defined by the underlying culture. And culture, in turn, is nourished by art and religion. With all respect to my elders and betters, I think my generation, which grew up after the '60s, is less interested in manning the ideological battlements and more interested in cultivating the spiritual and imaginative sources of our common life." Posted 12:51 PM | [Link] YOU SAY LIGORNO, I SAY LEGHORN [John Derbyshire] Jay Nordlinger tackles the toponymic snobs in his "Impromptus" today. I did a piece on this a while ago, planting a firm marker for a conservative approach to both toponymy and ethnonymy. Posted 12:39 PM | [Link] CAMPUS RESEGREGATION REPORT [Stanley Kurtz] Speaking of the dangers of an organization like MEChA, an important report has just been issued by the New York Civil Rights Coalition, an organization that favors integration and opposes most forms of affirmative action. The report details the problem of resegregation on college campuses that provide special housing to ethnic groups. Of course, this segregation is a key motivating factor behind the rise of neo-racist organizations like MEChA. Posted 12:01 PM | [Link] RACISM WELCOMED [Stanley Kurtz] While pro-life groups are being banned at Washington University, an organization of Mexican students that is openly racist is thriving on campuses throughout the country. Read David Orland’s chilling account of MEChA over at Boundless. This group may have a right to organize, but that doesn’t mean that it’s racism shouldn’t be condemned and its attempts to stifle the speech of opponents exposed. And by the way, you’ll find in Orland’s piece more evidence of the invaluable work done by FIRE. As I said on NRO last month, if you want to contribute to an organization that really does something about campus p.c., FIRE is for you. Posted 12:00 PM | [Link] BANNING FREE SPEECH AT WASHINGTON U [Stanley Kurtz] Last month I had a piece on NRO about the important work being done by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). FIRE’s latest case involves a truly outrageous effort by Washington University in St. Louis to prevent a pro-life student group from organizing on campus. The university even pressured this group to include an anti-death penalty plank in its platform–as if it’s their place to tell a student group what position to take. At the bottom of the story linked above, you’ll see e-mail addresses of Washington University officials, to whom you can direct protests, and of the head of the pro-life student group, to whom you can direct help. Posted 11:57 AM | [Link] FAME'S THE SLUR [Kathryn Jean Lopez] So that's what "paleoconservative" means! Posted 11:31 AM | [Link] IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE IN PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Bat Yeor, the Jewish Egyptian-born author of four books on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule, including, most recently, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide--and a frequent NRO contributor (her most recent piece is here another here, another here ), will be speaking at Brown tonight at 7:30, topic: "Dhimmitude Past and Present: An Invented or Real History?" It's free/open to public and at the Salomon Center for Teaching on "The College Green," Room 001. She's travelling in the U.S., giving a few talks; I'll dig out the Boston, New York, and D.C. info as soon as I make it back to my in-box. Posted 11:24 AM | [Link] UNITED WE STAND! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A friend reports on the state of the Senate floor right now: Tom Daschle is giving the same speech GWB gave at the UN weeks ago! He's on the floor of the senate trashing Saddam and talking about how he flouted UN resolutions. Posted 10:54 AM | [Link] MEMORY LANE [Jonah Goldberg] If you saw "Law and Order" last night you might recall that they prominently featured a bar called "Cannons." Just a little personal trivia: Cannons was my bar. I started going there regularly with friends from high school in 10th grade and continued going well after college. Whenever my NYC buddies and I get together -- increasingly rare -- that is where we meet. It looks very respectable now, but it used to be a serious Irish dive on the edge of Harlem -- it'd have to be to serve a bunch of underage reprobates like us. I've never given up my love of dives and I owe it all to Cannons. This is probably too much information, but so be it. Posted 10:47 AM | [Link] ANOTHER MARKET NOBEL [Jonathan Adler] Yesterday Vernon Smith of George Mason University and the Mercatus Center was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work developing the field of "experimental economics." Posted 10:40 AM | [Link] "EUROPE ITSELF IS AT STAKE": [Rod Dreher] The Roman Catholic archbishop of Sarajevo warns that Europe doesn't understand the threat it faces from Islam. He points out that Muslims should be respected and treated fairly in Christian nations, but that Christians should receive the same respect in Muslim nations -- which they, of course, do not. Posted 10:40 AM | [Link] FIGHTING BACK [Emmy Chang] Muslim schoolgirls in India take up boxing. Posted 10:39 AM | [Link] RE: SCHOOLS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] God bless those families for having the luxury to care about liberal stuff in religion class. Truth be told, for some kids in the inner-city, that someone made the sacrifice to send them to a school that allows God in the door--never mind lets Him be their guide and reason for being--if they get the message that God gives a crap about them, that itself may make a life-and-death difference in their lives. That they might be singing "Peace Is Flowing Like a River" at First Friday Mass is the last thing I would worry about when I think of some of the schools in the big city we live in, as well as many other cities and low-income areas. I don’t mean to prolong this thread, but as one with a lot of personal experience with the problems of "Catholic identity" and watered-down Catholicism in Catholic higher ed, believe me, I know well your “horror stories,” but, man, there’s some incredible stuff happening in schools, too. And, it's not just that they saving some inner-city kids. Posted 10:38 AM | [Link] RE: YOUNG FOGEYS: [Rod Dreher] Fogeyism has nothing to do with crunchy-con. Jonah's on to something: nobody who turns off the TV as a matter of principle is in a position to call someone else a fogey. I myself am a troglodyte about certain things, and fairly progressive on others. Crunchy-con is not about a bunch of hippie right-wingers telling the mainstream conservatives to let their hair down, man. What is it, then? Patience, crunchy rightists: I'll have my response to Jonah up shortly. Posted 10:19 AM | [Link] RE: CATHOLIC SCHOOLS: [Rod Dreher] Fair enough, Kathryn. I shouldn't have shot off my mouth. I was reminded yesterday by a religious brother who is a friend of mine that his high school has a deserved reputation for being solidly Catholic. It's just that one hears so many horror stories from Catholic families who have had to fight with their parochial schools over liberal nonsense being taught in religion class. And if I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone express thanks for their Jesuit education, which taught them that this Catholic stuff is for the birds, I'd have a big fat pile of money I could send to someone not my bishop. Posted 10:13 AM | [Link] NRO ON TV [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Jim Robbins on MSNBC at 10. Topic: Iraq. Question: "Can the president be trusted?" Who comes up with these? Posted 9:08 AM | [Link] ABOUT THIS "YOUNG FOGEY" THING [Jonah Goldberg] I'm not sure I have any problem with being called a "fogey" as I am old-fashioned in many respects. But, without opening a can of worms in the Corner, I'm not sure that the crunchy con position isn't the more fogeyish than my own. A fogey, by my dictionary, is someone who is behind the times. Since I'm not the one eager to tune out television and the mass media, how exactly am I the fogey? Again, this seems like the typical bias of non-conservatives who equate skepticism with "not getting it." When feminists, for example, shriek at conservatives "you just don't understand" their arrogance causes them to fail to grasp that conservatives could in fact understand them and just think they're wrong. I'm not behind the times because of my objections to this new "crunchy conservatism" thing, I just think it's wrong. Posted 8:53 AM | [Link] TIME TO CHANGE THE HOMELAND ALERT COLOR? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Al Qaeda getting ready for more? Posted 8:53 AM | [Link] OF COURSE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...in the U.S. women who use "RU-486" are left to have their "forced miscarriages" in the comfort of their homes, not even a careless nurse nearby to apologize to them for the mess. Those women, too, will "never get over what happened to [them]." Nor, by the way, will "the products of conception from [their] terminations." Posted 8:45 AM | [Link] HEY, THAT’S NO BLOB OF CELLS! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A British woman rudely discovers “the products of conception from [her] termination,” a.k.a aborted baby, in a jar. Posted 8:43 AM | [Link] 9/11 WASN'T HIS FIRST TIME FLYING NEAR THE PENTAGON [Kathryn Jean Lopez] One of the 9/11 hijackers, Hani Hanjour, flew test runs in small rented planes by the World Trade Center and Pentagon prior to attack day. He eventually would drive American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. Posted 7:37 AM | [Link] WEDDED BLISS [Andrew Stuttaford] The good news for Brussels: Chancellor Schroeder says that Germany is "wedded" to the EU's economic stability pact. The bad news: Schroeder is now on his fourth marriage. Posted 7:18 AM | [Link] BACK TO THAT OTHER WAR [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Saddam has some German help. Posted 6:10 AM | [Link] MISS AMERICA... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...has been made safe for abstinence. Posted 6:09 AM | [Link] "YOUNG FOGEYS" UNITE! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Jonah, I think you are officially our leader. A lot of Navy officers have been e-mailing me since I noted Rich is getting all the Marine fan mail, so they can be our protection from the granola makers, should war break out. Posted 6:07 AM | [Link]
OH, SURE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...so the Corner-reading Marines e-mail Rich!?! Posted 7:40 PM | [Link] A LITTLE CREDIT, MAN [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Rod, chill a little on downing schools. As ample research in recent decades and individuals' personal testimony has suggested, some schools--especially Catholic schools--have been salvation for some kids, especially inner-city poor kids (though not exclusively). I'm not questioning your family's decision, that's your choice and your business. But, there's a lot of good stuff happening in schools across the nation--including New York City. I know people who have literally given their lives to education, and, specifically, Catholic education, and I know a lot of kids who were in their classrooms and whose faith was enriched by their lessons and, more importantly, by their examples. Posted 7:39 PM | [Link] MORE PETER SINGER OUTRAGEOUSNESS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Bet you hadn't thought about how the 9/11 attacks were like SUVs on our roads right now. Posted 7:36 PM | [Link] CNN [Jonah Goldberg] is reporting that the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Kuwait is being questioned in the attacks on US marines. Posted 5:17 PM | [Link] DAN RATHER [Jonah Goldberg] Rich, Dan rather is the most pugnaciously and willfully obtuse of the media-bias deniers. His refusal to admit media bias, let alone his insistence that it is a "myth" is often so juvenile I half expect him to say "if you think I'm wrong I won't be your friend anymore." Anyway, a few Rather quotes from my files (sorry I don't have all the sources and dates handy): "Republicans kill the bill to clean up sleazy political fundraising. The business of dirty campaign money will stay business as usual...." "We've also been digging into what ever happened to even modest gun control measures in the U.S. Congress. Apparently not much." --Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, November 3, 1999. "Senator Simon, is there any doubt in your mind that [Souter's] views pretty well parallel those of John Sununu's which means he's anti-abortion or anti-women's rights, whichever way you want to put it?" -- Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News. "The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor." "If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners...Thank you very much and tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for her." -- Dan Rather at a May 27 CBS affiliates meeting talking via satellite to President Clinton about his new on-air partnership "The shootings in Killeen [, Texas] are the latest tragedy highlighting the success of the gun lobby at fighting gun control." Posted 4:31 PM | [Link] E-MAIL: [Rich Lowry] "The crux of the Danner article restates much of Robert Kaplan's piece in the upcoming Atlantic, posted on the net a few weeks ago. Being a NY Times piece, Danner's is noticeably without Kaplan's trademark sentences of stunning cold-bloodedness. An example fromt the Kaplan piece: `Keep in mind that the Middle East is a laboratory of pure power politics. For example, nothing impressed the Iranians so much as our accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988, which they believed was not an accident. Iran's subsequent cease-fire with Iraq was partly the result of that belief.'" Posted 4:29 PM | [Link] HOMESCHOOLING AND JONAH: [Rod Dreher] Glad you clarified your criticism of homeschooling, Jonah, before I finished writing my response to your anti-crunch article. As I've said here before, my wife and I are planning to homeschool our son, who just turned three. We really don't see a choice here in NYC: 1) we can't possibly afford private schooling here; 2) we would prefer our child to remain Catholic, so Catholic school is out; and 3) the NYC public schools -- give me a break! I'd love to be able to put my kid in public or parochial school, but his education is too precious to waste. I'm not one of those homeschooling types who believes that public schools are bad in their very essence. I was educated in public schools, and am well aware of their good and bad aspects, and indeed several family members are public school teachers or administrators. I am also well aware of the asinine things educrats, educational theorists and jerkwad egalitarians have forced upon the public schools (and public schoolteachers), things that have nothing to do with traditional learning, and everything to do with social engineering. One of many examples: One elementary school teacher who is a friend of mine had to put up with a severely disabled child in her class for the entire year, screaming and carrying on all the livelong day. The poor child couldn't help it; he was disabled. But it was more important to the school that they "mainstream" this disabled child that the right of the other kids in the classroom to an education was compromised. If you, as a parent, object, they call you a hard-hearted bigot. No thanks, man. Posted 4:15 PM | [Link] ANOTHER THING ON RATHER: [Rich Lowry] He said that the military is biased against the media! Now, it may very well be that the military distrusts the media, but it would behoove Mr. Rather to ask himself why that’s the case… Posted 4:11 PM | [Link] MY “HARANGUE”: [Rich Lowry] Was on a panel this morning about the military and the media moderated by Dan Rather. Guess what? He doesn’t think the media is biased—partly because no one mentions it to him when they say hi to him on the street. He thought my argument was a “political harangue” (and was quite testy about it—these anchors don’t have thick skins). A Corner fan who is in the Marine reserves was kind enough to invite me on the panel—semper fi to Major Wiffler and all the other Marines out there. Posted 3:52 PM | [Link] RED OCTOBER: [Rich Lowry] I’ve never gotten entirely over my boyish regard for sports uniforms (remember how some kids would pick their favorite team based on their uniform?). I can watch any Yankee home game, almost any time (even when they’re getting spanked by the Angels), just to see the pin-stripes—beautiful. But I’ve also always liked red in a baseball uniform—so, both the Cardinals and the new Angels uniforms are very sharp I think. Based on uniforms, I’m rooting for them both. One of the reasons it hurt so much to lose to the D-backs last year, was it was almost an insult to lose to a team with that damn snake on the hat. (Also, I won’t bore everyone with my long analysis of why the Yanks lost this year—suffice it to say that I respect very much what the Angels did in the series—hearty congratulations.) Posted 3:51 PM | [Link] MARK DANNER GETS IT: [Rich Lowry] The New Yorker writer’s op-ed in the New York Times today has an excellent description of the long-term goal in Iraq: “It envisions a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq — secular, middle-class, urbanized, rich with oil — that will replace the autocracy of Saudi Arabia as the key American ally in the Persian Gulf, allowing the withdrawal of United States troops from the kingdom. The presence of a victorious American Army in Iraq would then serve as a powerful boost to moderate elements in neighboring Iran, hastening that critical country's evolution away from the mullahs and toward a more moderate course. Such an evolution in Tehran would lead to a withdrawal of Iranian support for Hezbollah and other radical groups, thereby isolating Syria and reducing pressure on Israel. This undercutting of radicals on Israel's northern borders and within the West Bank and Gaza would spell the definitive end of Yasir Arafat and lead eventually to a favorable solution of the Arab-Israeli problem." His piece also has a very serious, responsible argument about the risks involved in this project. Highly recommended... Posted 3:50 PM | [Link] BREAKING [KJL] PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) _ A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled that the Census Bureau must release its statistically adjusted count of the U.S. population. The government has refused to release those numbers, arguing that they would cause political battles over federal funding. Instead, the government has been releasing only the population counts done by census takers. But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the public is entitled to the statistically adjusted figures. Posted 3:08 PM | [Link] SORRY, GOD'S TAKEN [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A Florida judge denied a man's request to change his name to "God." So, his new name is "I Am Who Am." Posted 2:56 PM | [Link] STICKEY WICKET [John Derbyshire] Andrew: According to the late Malcolm Muggeridge, the German secret service in WW2 used to prepare agents for undercover work in England by making them read the works of P.G. Wodehouse. One poor dope was picked up within hours of being parachuted in. He had aroused suspicion as soon as he reached the nearest town, mainly because he was wearing spats and a monocle... Posted 2:19 PM | [Link] JONAH'S READING [Andrew Stuttaford] John, under the circumstances (a Buick?), your suggestion might be a little, well, advanced. 1066 And All That might be a better place to start, followed, not inappropriately, by George Mikes' How to be an Alien. Once these delightful, but somewhat old-fashioned, works have been read (and thoroughly digested) how about two more contemporary books, bracing in their almost Derbian embrace of despair: England by Roger Scruton and The Abolition of Britain by Peter Hitchens? To conclude with a final dose of misery, try So Little Done by 'Theodore Dalrymple' (Anthony Daniels) - possibly the bleakest novel of recent years. Posted 1:36 PM | [Link] SPEAKING OF SACRIFICING YOUR KIDS FOR NOBLE EDUCATIONAL GOALS [Jonah Goldberg] Goodletter to the editor in the Wash Post recently. Posted 1:05 PM | [Link] FOR THE RECORD [Jonah Goldberg] First, I didn't intend to suggest in any way whatsoever that Andrew is dentally challenged. Second, I am a raging Anglophile. I was engaged in London, spent much of my honeymoon there and I love the country deeply. I am such an Anglophile, in fact, I cruise around British consulates and embassies in a gray buick, wearing nothing but a trenchcoat and my Union Jack boxers, hoping to entice some bloke into my car for tea. Posted 12:55 PM | [Link] STATE OF THE REALM [John Derbyshire] Jonah: I recommend a book titled The English, by Jeremy Paxman. It is a good survey of the current state of the nation. (The English nation, that is. As Flanders & Swann said: "Examine the Irishman, Welshman, or Scot / You'll find he's a stinker as likely as not..." Certainly no responsible person should give a moment's thought to these Celtic fringes, vegetating in their aboriginal squalor.) Warning: Paxman is a media lefty, albeit of the milder sort, & there are half a dozen passages for which you'll need a wooden spoon handy to bite down on. Overall, though, it's a fair picture. Posted 12:47 PM | [Link] TOOK THE BAIT [Andrew Stuttaford] That's right, Jonah. You baited the trap and I bit (or at least I would have done if I had any teeth)... Posted 12:36 PM | [Link] HOMESCHOOLING AS RETREAT [Jonah Goldberg] In yesterday's G-File, I wrote, "homeschooling, for example, is nothing but a strategic retreat from the battlefield." This has elicited considerable harumphery from many homeschooling readers.I thought about doing a whole column on the topic but I decided I didn't have that much to say. But let me explain myself to those who were aggrieved by the statement. When I say "strategic retreat" I mean precisely that. A strategic retreat is what smart soldiers do when the odds against victory under the current circumstances are too high. It isn't surrender, it isn't panic, it isn't anything but what it is -- the right call given the circumstances. And by that I am referring to the current mess we call America's public schools. I don't blame homeschoolers for choosing to educate their kids at home. To me it seems like a rational response in many circumstances, in much the same way it is a rational response -- and strategic retreat -- to put your kids in a Catholic parochial school even if you're not Catholic. But, what I am saying is that if the public schools weren't such a mess, if the educational culture in this country were in better shape the need to homeschool or for school vouchers for that matter would be much smaller and so would the numbers of people who homeschool. I do not subscribe to the libertarian view that simply because public schools are, in the words of Milton Friedman, "government schools" they cannot do their jobs properly. They did their jobs quite well for quite a long time and still do in many communities. Where they have stopped doing a good job is precisely where homeschooling has become a necessary alternative. I don't think people are under any obligation to do anything with their children they feel isn't in their best interest. So if homeschooling is the better option they shouldn't sacrifice their kids for the noble ideal of public schooling -- hence their strategic retreats from public schools. But most -- not all -- of the homeschoolers I've talked to admit that if there were good viable schools, public or private, they could send their kids to they would do so. Posted 12:25 PM | [Link] I KNEW... [Jonah Goldberg] My orthodontic baiting would get Andrew in the Corner. Posted 12:09 PM | [Link] AHEM [Andrew Stuttaford] Blimey, Jonah, nothing ever happens over in Blighty. Abandoned by the Derb and humbly aware that their best days are behind them, the bowler-hatted English just sit quietly in their tranquil villages ( or deprived, yet cheerful, cockney slums), gumming down salt and vinegar crisps, talking like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins and leafing through magazines dedicated to the Queen. The only excitement in their drab, yet picturesque, lives comes from visiting GIs, representatives of the dental superpower, who make themselves popular with small gifts of cigarettes, chocolates, and false teeth. Posted 11:57 AM | [Link] MARINE KILLING WAS AL-QUAEDA HIT [Jonah Goldberg] Networks reporting. Here's a CNN story. Posted 11:55 AM | [Link] LOL [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Oh, but Jonah, you missed the times: WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] 2:12 am WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] 2:24 am WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] 2:26 am WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] 2:27 am ... Posted 11:53 AM | [Link] I'M IMAGINING..... [Jonah Goldberg] Something like this..... WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Kathryn Lopez] HELLO? [Kathryn Lopez] Posted 11:51 AM | [Link] RE: WHERE IS EVERYBODY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Imagine if I asked that question everytime I was lonely in The Corner.... Posted 11:42 AM | [Link] WHERE IS EVERYBODY? [Jonah Goldberg] Posted 11:40 AM | [Link] I'M GOING TO LONDON [Jonah Goldberg] I've been invited to record a BBC debate thing on Iraq and war. Probably heading out at the end of the month. Anything worth writing about over there? I hear they fixed their teeth so that's out. Posted 10:36 AM | [Link] MORE JEWS, MORE EVANGELICALS [Jonah Goldberg] I've got to say I find this stuff fascinating, perhaps because I'm sufficiently ignorant about the subject. My syndicated column has elicited scores of email from some very thoughtful evangelicals including several pastors. Among the things I've learned: "....the extreme end time view is held be a vocal minority of leaders and an under informed vocal group. They may be right. But most of us focus on the fact ( Biblically) that God chose Abraham and his children for his special people. That promise is not revoked. Through Israel came the greatest truth ( the Bible) on how to treat each other. Through Israel would come the Messiah ( for you of course will come). The nitty gritty details beyond that are well speculative at best as they are not as clearly defined in scripture. Many of us are just plain rabid Israel supporters because it is right thing to do in the face of the evil that pervades most of the world. " Another reader explains: This [stereotyped portrayal of the evangelical] interpretation of Revelation, which is a highly symbolic and apocalyptic book (think Ezechiel, or the visionary parts of Daniel) is held by a small minority of Christians, not by Christians generally. It is based on an interpretational principle called dispensationalism, which was invented in the 19th century by a preacher named Darby. It is fairly common among evangelical Protestants (e.g., Timothy LaHaye of 'Left Behind' fame). And a third tells me: I am an evangelical Christian of the charismatic reformed variety (there are many different types of evangelicals, but I won't go down that road). Christians whose eschatology follows the format that you outlined in your column are called pre-tribulation dispensational pre-millenialists. I won't go into it, but many evangelicals in the reformed camp have a different view called post-tribulation a-millenialism - this happens to be my theology of the last days. We don't envision quite the same role for the Jewish nation as the pre-tribbers do. Posted 10:27 AM | [Link] SENATOR BYRD [Jonah Goldberg] It's almost like he's piling the pork into his sentences. From today's LA Times: "As I have witnessed the tides that ebb and flow on the world stage over these 50 years, all the more have I come to believe that the Constitution is the principal mast to which we should rope ourselves in order to put wax in our ears to the siren calls that will lead us astray from what the Constitution says." Posted 10:03 AM | [Link] JEWS AND EVANGELICALS CONT'D [Jonah Goldberg] I decided to take out conversation in the corner about evangelicals and turn it into my syndicated column. FYI. Posted 9:55 AM | [Link] ABOUT THIS WAR [Stanley Kurtz] David Broder has an op-ed today making an obvious but important point--that the division of the Democrats over the war is really the shadow of Vietnam hanging over the party. No one knows what's going to happen now. An easy victory in Iraq and a reasonable aftermath could kill the Vietnam syndrome and damage the Democrats for years to come. But a tough war, and much more, a tough aftermath in Iraq, could split the country and keep the scars of Vietnam unhealed. Time will tell. Posted 9:05 AM | [Link] CBS/NYT CLARIFICATION [Stanley Kurtz] Late yesterday I noted that a reader had e-mailed with a PDF from the CBS/NYT poll criticized in David Tell’s piece. That file left out the questions discussed by Tell, and I wondered if these questions had been pulled in response to Tell’s piece. They weren’t. Another reader e-mails with yet another PDF containing the full poll results. Posted 8:54 AM | [Link] HARRY BELAFONTE = BUFFOON [Jonah Goldberg] I thought this stuff was over. Posted 8:52 AM | [Link] BULLYING AND ACTIVISM [Stanley Kurtz] Interesting article at ABC News today about the use of school anti-bullying programs by homosexual activists. Last year we had an effort to eliminate the celebration of Mother’s Day. Now we’re teaching children to avoid terms like girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, or marriage. This is a national battle that is bound to grow. Posted 8:40 AM | [Link] RE: HARRY AND THE STATE MAN [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Just one qualifier, Rod. After "lead" add "--however hesitantly--." Don't want to go too gaga over Foggy Bottom's main man, now. Posted 8:39 AM | [Link] RE: HARRY BELAFONTE: [Rod Dreher] You know, Kathryn, it's hard for me to get too upset on Gen. Powell's behalf over Harry Belafonte's idiotic remarks. Think about it: if both men dropped dead today, what would the first paragraphs of their obituaries say? In Gen. Powell's case, he would have been best known for helping lead, in a victorious war, the armies of the most powerful nation that ever existed; as well as having become the most powerful black man in the world by later being put in charge of that great nation's foreign policy. In Hon. Belafonte's case, he's best known for -- in fact, is only known for -- having sung a catchy ditty about longshoremen and tropical fruit a generation or two ago. And this, this ... asterisk of a man has the nerve to lecture Colin Powell about authentic blackness? Please. Posted 8:26 AM | [Link] DICTATORS RIG ELECTIONS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Questions raised about how legit Pakistani elections were. Posted 8:20 AM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 8:19 AM | [Link] NOTE, TOO... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...that in a State report on religious freedom released Monday, it was stated: "Freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia." Official documents and administration talk should mimic one another here. Posted 6:47 AM | [Link] WE MIGHT SOON BE "CONCERNED" ABOUT SAUDI ARABIA [Kathryn Jean Lopez] State Department considers including the Kingdom on a list of coutries with religious-freedom issues. Posted 6:45 AM | [Link] UNCLE TOM'S BANANA BOAT [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Harry Belefonte lashes out at Colin Powell for colluding with the white man. Posted 5:41 AM | [Link] I STILL THINK ASSUME "TERRORIST" UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...but that's not what this Justice official is saying. Posted 5:39 AM | [Link] NICE TO SEE... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...a smart, gutsy, un-P.C. Miss America actually ticking people off over abstinence. Posted 5:37 AM | [Link] SOMETHING IS VERY OFF... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...there mustbe a full moon or there was some kind of seismic shift in reality....evidently Sean Hannity was on Barbara Walters's chick show The View yesterday. Posted 5:35 AM | [Link] LEFT THE LEFT: [Rod Dreher] Leftist New York intellectual Ron Rosenbaum went to the big antiwar demo in Central Park on Sunday, and came away deciding he was sick to death of the America-hating Left. He says he hasn't become a conservative, but this excellent essay of his suggests it may just be a matter of time. Posted 1:14 AM | [Link] I LOVE IT! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] You have insomnia? Subscribe to NR--it won't cure your insomnia, but it'll give you something worthwhile to read! Posted 12:33 AM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 12:32 AM | [Link] GUYS, RACISM CONFERENCE STORY GETS BETTER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Did anyone notice the quotes from a CDC, U.S. government official at that bizarre racism conference in Barbados? This, from the Washington Times: The conference - dubbed the African and African Descendants World Conference Against Racism - is seen by organizers as a follow-up to the U.N.'s anti-racism conference held last September in Durban, South Africa. Posted 12:19 AM | [Link] THURMOND'S MAD [Jonathan Adler] And he has good reason according to these reports from the AP and How Appealing. Posted 12:14 AM | [Link] A THIRD OPINION [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A reader writes: My take on the headline "Gunmen Killed" vs. "Marine Killed" is a bit different than yours and James Robbins's. I rather like the "Gunmen Killed" first, because it very clearly communicates: "If you mess with the American military, you will quickly die." Not a bad message to send. Posted 12:01 AM | [Link]
EU HYPOCRISY, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford] We've heard a lot from the EU about the evils of the US supposedly throwing its weight about. Well, check out this story from the Daily Telegraph about Brussels' efforts to bully Switzerland into handing over information to the EU's taxmen. Harsh sanctions, it seems, are on the agenda.This has infuriated a spokesman for the Swiss Bankers Association, who complains, reasonably enough, that "Switzerland is not Iraq". Actually, in a way that's a pity. If Switzerland were Iraq, the EU would be advocating compromise, conciliation, and dialog, dialog, dialog... Posted 8:36 PM | [Link] THE WORST SENATOR? [Andrew Stuttaford] Jonah, weren't you asking for nominations for this a week or so ago? How about Robert Byrd? Posted 8:01 PM | [Link] TORY DESPAIR [Andrew Stuttaford] Over in the UK, the Tories are holding their annual conference, an agonizing spectacle by all accounts. In a fascinating article (click on 'current issue') in this month's Prospect, John O'Sullivan takes a look at the pitiful remnants of Thatcher's legions. His conclusion? The Conservatives have undergone a "collective nervous breakdown". Posted 7:34 PM | [Link] AND: [Rod Dreher] ...the response will be up soon too -- but it will be brief, and in The Corner, because I promised Rich we wouldn't drag this out. I first have to finish reading The Rage and the Pride tonight. I don't think Oriana Fallaci is a crunchy conservative. I think she's a firewater conservative. No, I think she's a Viking. I think I would not like to be her enemy. Posted 5:52 PM | [Link] UNILATERALISM [James S. Robbins] Kuwaiti TV reports an unsuccessful attempt on Saddam Hussein's life by one of his own Air Force officers. Now that's what I call unilateralism! Posted 5:51 PM | [Link] STILL MORE WINNING HEADLINES [James S. Robbins] Kat, I looked at the Google news search engine and most headlines featured Marines first, bad guys second if at all. But the headline on Beirut Al-Manar Television (affiliated with Hizbollah) was "Two Killed in Clash With US Marines in Kuwait" -- so the NYT and AP are not exactly alone. Posted 5:50 PM | [Link] THE NEVER ENDING.... [Jonah Goldberg] ...response to Crunchy Conservatism is up. Posted 5:45 PM | [Link] NEW PROUST TRANSLATION [ Mike Potemra] This fascinating article in the UK Spectator outlines the problems with a new translation of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu--in my view the best novel ever written. (WARNING: Some of the words in that article are unsuitable for younger readers.) All the more reason for us to be grateful for the earlier translations-by Scott-Moncrieff and Kilmartin-which are still widely available and cherished as masterpieces in their own right. Anybody who has never read this work has a great treat in store for him. Posted 5:45 PM | [Link] ANOTHER WINNER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Jim, hours ago, you and I IMed (the only way anyone at NRO communicates) about this Kuwait attack and I originally called it an "accident." You thought I was off my rocker. Why wasn't I calling an attack and attack? Because I had not read the story yet and only saw this headline, which a reader kindly just sent me, from the Associated Press: "U.S. Marine Dies in Kuwait Exercise" Posted 5:39 PM | [Link] FIRST DRAFT [James S. Robbins] Note that the first version of the NYT headline was simply "Kuwaiti Gunmen Killed." Envision Sept 12, 2001 headline: "19 Hijackers Die in Bid for Attention" Posted 5:26 PM | [Link] CORNER GETS RESULTS? [KJL] A reader writes: Somebody at the Times must read The Corner; the headline about the attack on the marines has been changed to "Kuwaiti Gunmen Slain After Killing U.S. Marine". Posted 5:20 PM | [Link] CLUMSY DOG WITH LARGE HEAD [Jonah Goldberg] That is all. Posted 5:06 PM | [Link] WOW [KJL] Jim, that goes right next to the Washington Post headline last week celebrating Maryland diversity, as evidenced by the dead victims of the at-large sniper/terrorist. Posted 4:48 PM | [Link] AMAZING [James S. Robbins] A reader alerts me to the NYT online headline regarding the attack on our brave troops: "Gunmen Killed After Attacking U.S. Marines in Kuwait" Not "Marine Killed" but "Gunmen Killed"? I can see the April 15, 1865 headline: "Actor Breaks Leg After Shooting Lincoln." Posted 4:47 PM | [Link] TIMES UPDATE [Stanley Kurtz] A reader sends me a note with a PDF link that seems to suggest some funny business, possibly in response to David Tell’s piece, over at CBS/New York Times. It appears that CBS/New York Times has deleted the questions from its poll results that enabled David Tell to expose the Times’s story as what he calls, “an outright fraud, a falsehood, a work of fiction.” Maybe there’s some misunderstanding here. I would welcome clarification. But on the surface it does appear that the key questions on which Tell based his piece (along with a number of others) are now missing. Posted 4:41 PM | [Link] "HOLY FATHER, HELP US!": [Rod Dreher] Phil Lawler, the mensch who edits the orthodox and indispensable Catholic World Report, begs the Pope to take action to solve the crisis in the American RC church. Posted 4:32 PM | [Link] SOMEONE SENDS... [Richard Lowry] along... "Nigerian e-mail scheme is netting millions By Todd Bensman Dallas Morning News DALLAS - The letters often look like they came from a government or bank office. They start off with a dash of conspiratorial intimacy and fancy language and lead into promises of vast, easy riches. One writer promises a nice windfall if you'll only help move $23 million into American banks from Nigeria. "You will retain 20 percent of the total amount, 75 percent for us, and 5 percent will be set aside on completion of this business to offset any expenses we might have incurred during the processing of these funds," the sender writes. "Include your confidential telephone and fax numbers in your reply so that I can let you know how we are going to proceed." If you use e-mail, there's a good chance you've received this plea or something like it. You've probably deleted it without responding. But federal law-enforcement authorities say hundreds or even thousands of people have fallen prey to the elaborate confidence game officials call "419" - after a Nigerian criminal statute that has done little to curb the problem. Officials say the spread of the Internet in Africa has meant a worsening of the scheme, and some victims get so sucked in that they end up giving away their life savings in the hope that one big transaction will justify it all...." Posted 4:16 PM | [Link] DETERRENCE 101 [Lowry] This AP story is up on Drudge: "Saddam Hussein's apparent policy of not resorting to terrorist attacks against the United States could change if he concludes a U.S.-led attack against him was inevitable, CIA Director George Tenet said as President's Bush bid for congressional support to use force hit a snag in the Senate. Tenet, in a letter read before a joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees Tuesday, said that ``Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons.'' But Tenet went on to say that should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack against his country could not be deterred, ``he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist action.'' This will, of course, prompt critics to say it's too dangerous to attack Saddam. It also, of course, is a text-book example of how deterrence can work in Saddam's favor-his terrorist threat serves to discourage us from attacking him. So, Tenet's analysis should furnish more justification for taking on Saddam now, before his deterrent becomes even stronger. Posted 3:52 PM | [Link] I'VE ALWAYS WONDERED... [Rich Lowry] ...do people actually fall for these Nigerian business-deal spam e-mails? I get at least one or two a day: "REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP. Firstly I must solicit your strictest confidence in this subject. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret. A member of the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (N.E.P.C.) who was part of the federal government delegation to your country during a trade exhibition gave your particulars to me. I have decided to seek a confidential operation with you in the execution of the deal described hereunder, etc., etc., etc." Posted 3:51 PM | [Link] PAYBACK TIME [James S. Robbins] Very sad news about the Marine casualties in Kuwait today I'm sure that whoever was technically behind the attacks, Iraq will and should blamed, at least by the guys on the ground. And I don't think Iraqi border troops should sleep very soundly tonight. Force Recon is out there somewhere, and payback is a bitch. Posted 3:28 PM | [Link] ON MD TERROR [James S. Robbins] One cannot generalize about "Islamic terrorists" claiming credit for their actions. Witness the fact that al Qaeda never claimed credit for anything it did, even 9/11, until very recently. Besides, tactically, it makes a lot more sense to keep us guessing. They would be utter fools to claim credit for these shootings, it would only focus law enforcement on them. Posted 3:27 PM | [Link] FREE SPEECH FOLLIES: [Rod Dreher] Why is it that no matter how obnoxious some religious believers can be, anti-religious loudmouths are even worse? Posted 3:17 PM | [Link] HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE AN ITALIAN WOMAN SCORNED: [Rod Dreher] The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci's electrifying anti-Islam "sermon" (her word), The Rage and the Pride, is finally out in America. I've just read the introduction to the American edition, and I gotta tell ya, Fallaci makes Camille Paglia look like Emily Dickinson. Here she is vowing revenge if Islamists take out St. Peter's Basilica, the Uffizi Galleries, etc.: "And should the poor-little-things destroy one of those treasures, only one, I swear: it is I who would become a holy-warrior. it is I who would become a murderer. So listen to me, you followers of a God who preaches and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I was born in the war. I grew up in the war. About war I know a lot and believe me: I have more balls than your kamikazes who find the courage to die only when dying means killing thousands of people. Babies included. War you wanted, war you want? Good. As far as I am concerned, war is and war will be. Until the last breath." Posted 3:11 PM | [Link] AL QAEDA IN MARYLAND?: [Rod Dreher] A reader says that Islamic terrorists are usually quick to claim responsibility for their acts, something that hasn't happened with the DC-area sniper. Posted 3:04 PM | [Link] GOV. LE GRIS: [Rod Dreher] Bill Simon's funny new commercial asks Californians to send Gray Davis to France. Posted 3:02 PM | [Link] DUMB...AND DUMBER [Andrew Stuttaford] Judging by that New York Times report, in Oyster Bay, officials want to go even further - they are, apparently, proposing to ban smoking outside - at the town's parks and beaches. Incredible. Posted 2:31 PM | [Link] GERTZ: [Rod Dreher] A Colorado reader weighs in on the "is the sniper a terrorist?" question by sending the following item, written in the Washington Times by Bill Gertz, dated October 4: "U.S. intelligence agencies received reports this week indicating Islamic terrorists have targeted American schools for attack, intelligence officials said. The reports indicate that the targeting includes plans to attack all levels of educational institutions in the United States, ranging from elementary schools to colleges and universities, said officials familiar with the reports. The information on schools as terrorist targets is among the scores of threat reports received by U.S. intelligence agencies every day. Some officials questioned the veracity of the report but said U.S. intelligence agencies have to weigh all the reports carefully." Posted 2:16 PM | [Link] PACK IT IN [Andrew Stuttaford] Nassau County has become the first county in New York to vote to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars. Amongst the supporters of the measure mentioned in the New York Times article on this latest example of legislative overreach is one James DeVito. DeVito is a non-smoker, who is quoted as complaining about the health effects of having to breathe in the smoke of others at his workplace, a bar. That's an increasingly familiar - if self-indulgent - complaint, but in this case it comes with a twist: Judging by the report, DeVito owns the bar in question. If he had wanted to avoid smoke he could have simply banned smoking there. That would have been his choice - and his right. It might, I suppose, have put him at a disadvantage to some competitors, although, in a county where a poll revealed that 81 percent of adults claim not to smoke, that's far from certain. No matter. Rather than take that risk DeVito preferred to back the law that reduces the rights - and the choices - of all. Posted 2:15 PM | [Link] RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: [Rod Dreher] In Holland, a Somali woman went on TV and criticized Islam's treatment of women. She's now in hiding after receiving (she says) death threats after she went off the air. Please note the bias in this news report of the event, from England's left-wing Observer; the lede describes this woman's condemnation of Islamic treatment of women as "Islamophobia" -- as if criticism of Islam is itself an irrational and possibly unethical act. Posted 2:13 PM | [Link] E-MAIL [Rich Lowry] "I think it was (genuflect) Mark Steyn who asked how many allies we had to have before we would no longer be "going it alone." As of now, we have, on board, Britain, Israel, Turkey, Australia, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, and Qatar. Canada's leadership is preparing them for helping out; we have troops "on maneuvers" in Jordan; troops in Djibouti; a budding Israeli alliance with Eritrea; and isn't India backing us on this? All of a sudden, I don't feel so "alone."" Posted 2:10 PM | [Link] JIHAD AGAINST ALL OF US [James S. Robbins] But Rod, they are not at war with Jews, they are at war with America. Bin Laden's declaration of war did not single out Jews, nor did the 1998 fatwa that extended the war to American civilians. Nor have targeting documents we have captured recently specify hitting Jewish targets. The whole point of terrorism is to make it random, to make everyone afraid. I think we have to assume this is linked to the war until proven otherwise. Also note -- they did kill an Indian American, and Indians are not exactly on al Qaeda's list of friends. Posted 2:03 PM | [Link] RE: MD ASSUMPTIONS: [Rod Dreher] Jim, only because it seems to me that if this were al-Qaeda or another Islamic terrorist group, the targets would be symbolic in some way. They'd be hitting Jews, or Jewish interests, for example. On the other hand, a reader points out that if this is the work of terrorists, they are far more effective in spreading terror by hitting people entirely at random. If they were only shooting at Jews, non-Jews might assume that they weren't a target. Now, everyone is a target. Posted 1:50 PM | [Link] MD ASSUMPTIONS [James S. Robbins] Rod, why do you say the sniper attacks in Maryland -- and DC -- and Virginia -- are "probably not Islamic terrorism?" It would seem to me that under the circumstances -- taking place around our nation's capital, using a high powered rifle, part of a team, random victims, and during wartime -- terrorism would be the default assumption until proven otherwise. Posted 1:41 PM | [Link] AL SHARPTON'S DETERMINATION: [Rod Dreher] I didn't have room in my review of Al Sharpton's campaign book to go into a story about why I think one would be foolish to underestimate the lengths to which Sharpton will go to satisfy his ambition. Last year, when I was a New York Post columnist, I had been writing about slavery in Sudan. Sharpton decided he wanted to travel there with Christian relief workers and see the phenomenon for himself -- and he invited me along. The trip was very dangerous: you have to fly hours into a war zone that happens to be one of the most disease-ridden hellholes on the planet. There was no way for any of us to get effectively vaccinated in time to leave on the next expedition, and given how deadly the diseases were, and that I have a wife and child to support, I chose not to go. Sharpton went (as did my Post and NRO colleague Robert A. George, who perhaps can add something to this account), and truly risked illness and death to bear witness to the atrocities. But what did he do when he returned? Not a damn thing for the slaves. Instead, he proclaimed that the trip to Africa occasioned an epiphany that he should seek the presidency. The wretched of the earth, black Christians and animists being bombed, raped, tortured and enslaved by the Islamic government, were simply a campaign prop for him. This proved to me once and for all that Sharpton is one of the most cynical men in public life. But just imagine what a man who will risk his life for a campaign stunt is capable of? Posted 12:54 PM | [Link] ANNOYING IRAQ SPIN [Rich Lowry] It's beginning to be said on TV--I heard some Dem Senator say it on Fox today (Nelson, I think)--that Bush has made a major concession in acknowledging that allies are necessary and desirable in any action against Iraq. This seems a concession only because Bush's critics created such a unilateralist strawman. We were always going to try to get allies. And the fact is that one way to get them is to show your willingness to go alone--other countries will accommodate themselves to a new reality once you convince them you are going to create it. Posted 12:50 PM | [Link] NO, NOT "CATHOLIC" [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Reuters has a piece up "reporting" on a supposed coalition of Catholic groups petitioning the United Nations to pressure the Vatican on the scandals. Don't be misguided. This has nothing to do with reforming problems in the Catholic Church, however. Ultimately, their goal is to boot the Holy See from its Permanent Observer status at the U.N. But I get ahead of myself. The group behind this Reuters story, Catholics for a Free Choice, is not Catholic. It's basicially a woman and her website and fax machine--no membership--aand oodles of Left/abortion-industry money. The Rockefeller Foundation, the Playboy Foundation, you name it, are what is behind CFFC. I looked behind CFFC's media veil for Crisis a few months ago. I direct you here if you're interested. Posted 12:49 PM | [Link] THIS IS THE REAL FACE OF EGYPT [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Middle East scholar Martin Kramer has a mini-profile on his website of the “authentic” Egyptian ambassador, playwright Ali Salem. He’s currently visiting the U.S. A fascinating read. Posted 11:12 AM | [Link] RAMESH DEBATES CLONING [Melissa Seckora] NR's Ramesh Ponnuru will appear on a America’s Future Foundation panel on cloning tomorrow night at 7 in D.C. Click here for details and RSVP info. Posted 11:09 AM | [Link] ONE OF THE AT-LARGE TERROR SUSPECTS FROM FRIDAY'S PORTLAND ANNOUNCEMENT... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...has been caught in Malaysia. Posted 10:55 AM | [Link] REAL UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE, ON TV![Kathryn Jean Lopez] I actually thought that was what The Real World was. Posted 10:51 AM | [Link] THE NYT EXPOSED! [Stanley Kurtz] The problem of bias at the New York Times has truly crossed a threshold. At this point, the paper has lost a significant share of its credibility. I know I read it with a vastly more critical eye than I did even a year ago, when I was already writing stories about bias at the Times. Andrew Sullivan has done a particularly good job of exposing the Times’s descent into blatant partisanship. Now, David Tell has exposed another story so egregiously false that it really goes beyond bias and calls the ethics of the paper’s authors and editors into question. Posted 10:51 AM | [Link] RACISM CONFERENCE PRAISES MUGABE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Better call it "racist" conference next year. Posted 10:34 AM | [Link] BEWARE, EXPLOSIVE GUITARS [Kathryn Jean Lopez] & lap-top cases. Posted 10:26 AM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 10:22 AM | [Link] THE RIGHT THING, BELATEDLY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] That Arizona radio station has fired the DJ, Beau Duran, who prank called St. Louis Cardinals pticher Darryl Kile's widow last week. On air, he called her and asked if she had a date for the playoffs, which the team had her in town for. The station is no longer calling it a simple misjudgment, which they were doing late last week (as reported in The Corner). And, in a too-late statement, Duran said, "I am truly sorry for having offended Mrs. Kile and the Cardinals organization." For Mrs. Kile, the damage was already done, but for the station to have done anything less than fire him would have been an affront to decency. Credit for nudging the station in the right direction should go to everyone who e-mailed and phoned the station. Posted 8:45 AM | [Link] SEE SADDAM BUILD [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Here are those satellite photos the prez mentioned last night. Posted 5:55 AM | [Link] BILL GERTZ SAYS... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...al Qaeda is looking toward Russia to pick up weapons. Posted 5:28 AM | [Link]
THE MARYLAND SNIPER: [Rod Dreher] The ongoing horror in suburban Maryland is probably not Islamic terrorism, but it did prompt a memory of something a friend said to me not long ago. He pointed out that severay years ago, USA Today's Jack Kelley obtained an al-Qaeda planning document, listing their top terrorist targets in America. On the list was a plan to hijack every school bus full of children in an American small town one morning, and blow them all to bits. Think of the impact of something like that happening in the heartland. Our Islamist enemies certainly have. Posted 10:50 PM | [Link] SOMEONE GOT FIRED AT THE DNC TODAY [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Evidently a press release went out earlier today saying a Joe Lieberman speech after the president's speech this evening would be the Democratic response. Midway through the White House-policy-bolstering speech, another release backed away from it. Posted 10:14 PM | [Link] ELABORATION[Kathryn Jean Lopez] In weary-eyed linking for the choir, I understated the president's speech from earlier this evening. A reader writes to fill in my gap: The President's speech was abolutely magnificent. Plain, simple, eloquent. Clear, unflinching, serious. Absolutely decorous. And he managed to pronounce "nuclear" the way Easterners do. Sources tell me Jim McDermott's reaction was different. Posted 10:08 PM | [Link] I CANNOT... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...watch CNN at night. Connie Chung. FLIP. Larry King. FLIP, needless to say. Aaron Brown. FLIP! Posted 10:02 PM | [Link] A GOOD SHOWING... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...from Bill Simon in a gubernatorial debate tonight. Posted 9:58 PM | [Link] MAKING THE CASE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Good, comprehensive speech from the president tonight. Posted 9:49 PM | [Link] BIG CASE, UNDER THE RADAR [Stanley Kurtz] The mainstream media has still not taken proper notice of Worth v. Martinez, the important new reverse discrimination case being argued by the Center for Individual Rights against HUD and the EEOC. If Worth v. Martinez succeeds, it would mean a huge blow to affirmative action programs. Word is starting to filter out, though. Check out this op-ed from a local Florida paper. Posted 3:03 PM | [Link] ANOTHER JERSEY NOTE [Robert A. George] One last thing on New Jersey. The last time Lautenberg was on the ballot -- 1994 -- he only received 50% of the vote. The Republican got 47, with, I believe a Libertarian getting the rest. Admittedly that was the GOP's Perfect Storm year at the polls, but the results definitely suggest that Lautenberg is not exactly someone that Forrester needs to quake before. Posted 2:45 PM | [Link] SUPREME PASS [Robert A. George] So the Supremes decided to take a pass on the NJ Senate race. I'm guessing that they couldn't find four justices who thought that the Court should hear the case. Given the abuse they took after Bush v. Gore, I'm not surprised. Besides, Kate O'Beirne was right this weekend in saying that the Court isn't going to get involved everytime a state court starts making law. So now Forrester and the GOP can stop whining and take on Lautenberg on the merits. Given everything that's going on, I think the big news is that Lautenberg leading *only* by 6-10 points. Half the respondents probably think he's still Senator! Forrester has a good opportunity here to make his case on the issues. Posted 2:41 PM | [Link] THE ROBERT GEORGE PROBLEM [Robert A. George] Certainly not the first time there has been confusion on our names. I was wondering why I got about a dozen e-mails last week on that article (there have been other times when we've both contributed within a day or so of one another, but people haven't e-mailed me thinking I was him). Finally, a mutual friend of both of us mentioned that he wrote to Kurtz correcting him. (Oh, all fans of Prof. George, please be advised that your mis-sent sent e-mails were forwarded along!) Posted 2:22 PM | [Link] THE TWO ROBERT GEORGES: [Ramesh Ponnuru] I'm catching up on Howard Kurtz columns. A few days ago, the Washington Post media columnist wrote this about the New Jersey supreme court's ruling: "The Torricelli decision is bringing out the inner law professor in lots of writers, who got their first taste feasting on the Palm Beach butterfly ballot. National Review's Robert George blames . . . Christie [Whitman]." Kurtz picked a bad example here. The writer of the article he's quoting is Robert P. George, who teaches constitutional law (among other things) at Princeton University. Kurtz clearly has in mind Robert A. George, who works for the New York Post, appears regularly on CNN, and is a regular contributor to NRO. An understandable mistake, but a slightly embarrassing one given the shot Kurtz was taking. Posted 2:13 PM | [Link] FROM THE AP [Jonah Goldberg] "WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court refused Monday to be drawn into an election fight that resurrected memories of the court's contentious intervention in the presidential election two years ago. Democrats may now go ahead with plans to replace Sen. Robert Torricelli with former Sen. Frank Lautenberg on the Nov. 5 ballot in their effort to retain their one-seat hold on the Senate. New Jersey Republicans had called the switch a political ploy intended to dump a candidate who seemed sure to lose in favor of a potential winner. They asked the Supreme Court to stop the Democrats, arguing that the candidate swap came too close to Election Day. The high court did not explain its reasons for rejecting the GOP appeal. Posted 2:00 PM | [Link] SUPREMES WON'T HEAR TORRICELLI CASE [Jonah Goldberg] That just in. Posted 1:57 PM | [Link] RIGHT ON, JONAH! [ Mike Potemra] Your post on Jews and Evangelicals was an important contribution to the cause of religious understanding-especially the part at the end about how today's Christians are showing great improvement over their religion's past record of anti-Semitic excesses. The recent controversy among Catholics over whether the Church should formally proselytize Jewish people shows how far Christians have come: The debate is between A) those who believe Jews are entitled to be told what Catholics believe is the full truth (i.e., Christ and Catholicism) and B) those who believe God has a separate and valid covenant with the Jews that he will fulfill in His own way and in His own time. Neither side in that contentious debate shows any kind of disrespect or bigotry against Jews. (Gone-for good-are the days when the Catholic liturgy contained references to "the perfidious Jews.") This is yet another sign of progress--progress we should build on, instead of carping about theological fine print. Posted 1:56 PM | [Link] G-FILE UPDATE [Jonah Goldberg] I know that I've been a bit unreliable lately when it comes to filing. And that less-than-grand tradition will continue today. I had to finish two pieces for the next dead tree NR. Also, I've got a few other plates spinning I'll fill you in on at a later date (assuming anyone cares). I will still try to do three columns this week, but the rollout schedule is uncertain. Posted 1:47 PM | [Link] THIS IS DARTH VADER [Jonah Goldberg] James Earl Jones will be the voice of Anakin Skywalker in Episode Three. However, the article isn't particularly fascinating and might be considered a bit of a spoiler. Posted 1:35 PM | [Link] A NOTE FROM THE POPPA [Jonah Goldberg] "Your two items on Evangelicals and Jews were very good. Even if Jesus in his first or second coming walked on water and turned an acorn into a fig tree - but ate some barbecued pork chops - there would be Jews who would condemn him for violating the laws ofr kashrut. The theological problems would still remain: Jesus could prove he is all-powerful and even omniscient - but how does he prove he is all good? That's what is defined by man, and what is appealing in Judaism is that there is a never-ending discussion, indeed argument, with God, with the rabbis and learned men often challenging God's game plan and at times persuading him to alter his strategies, which sometimes are over the top, like flooding the entire world." Posted 1:18 PM | [Link] 60 MINUTES, JEWS AND EVANGELICALS CONT’D [Jonah Goldberg] They interviewed Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg who is deeply offended that evangelicals expect Jews to either die or be converted when the Messiah returns. This may be discomforting news to some Jews, but come on. First of all, can we at least accept that if in fact Armageddon arrives and Jesus makes himself known to the world, that some Jews might be inclined to rethink the finer details of their Judaism? I mean if Jesus is out there walking on water, saving souls and the like -- all the while the oceans are turning to blood and whatnot -- can we at least hold out the possibility that some Jews might listen to the guy? Meanwhile if you really believe in Judaism -- what are you worried about? The Christian scenario won't transpire, the Messiah will show up for the first time, not the second, and everything will work itslef out. And in the meantime these obviously decent and kind-hearted people are just about the only folks showing you an ounce of support. Every religion has theological fine print which will be disagreeable to someone else. The only relevant question in this life is how these theological precepts translate themselves into real-life morality. In the past certain Christian interepretations have spelled bad news for Jews. So, I think purely as a practical matter, Jews should be delighted that so many Christians have decided to reformulate Christian love into a doctrine which treats Jews with kindness, tolerance and support rather than a doctrine which results in, say, the Inquisition. Posted 12:21 PM | [Link] DECONSTRUCTING MO-DO: [Rod Dreher] Josh Chafetz explains quite well why Maureen Dowd is so fourth-rate. Posted 12:19 PM | [Link] 60 MINUTES JEWS AND EVANGELICALS [Jonah Goldberg] Last night 60 Minutes featured an interesting piece about the growing attachment of evangelical Christians to Jews in general and Israel in particular. Because it was 60 Minutes the upshot was how terrible it is that Christian Conservatives are once again making the world worse, this time by supporting hardliners in Israel. It was hardly subtle. The story divided critics of this development into two camps, the realists and the theologians. The realists feel that the evangelicals are too hardcore in their support of Israeli settlers, for example. I may disagree with some of the realists’ arguments, but I can at least respect them as they are based in a pragmatic assessment of the facts. What I cannot understand are the Jews who are horrified and offended by the fact that some Christians support Israel and the Jews because of biblical teaching. I mean, hello: aren't there more than a few Jews who support (and oppose) the existence of Israel because of their own personal reading of the Bible? And aren’t love and charity biblical teachings as well? Since when do we say "Oh, you’re just being kind to people because the Bible tells you too!" Posted 12:19 PM | [Link] PRIORITIES, PRIORITIES [Kathryn Jean Lopez] CBS, NBC, and ABC will not be airing the president's speech tonight. Posted 12:17 PM | [Link] PIM FORTUYN FILE: [Rod Dreher] It turns out that the thug arrested on charges of stabbing the openly gay mayor of Paris is a Muslim who reportedly told police he hates gays and politicians. Andrew Sullivan says if a fundamentalist Christian had done this, there would be an incredible outcry, and of course he's right. It would be expected that Christian leaders would naturally condemn the act, and separate themselves from the violence. So why do Muslims get a pass? You've heard it from me before but it must be repeated at every opportunity: this multicultural hypocrisy is going to prove deadly to the West. Pim Fortuyn warned us. Posted 11:54 AM | [Link] THE BLESSING OF COSMO [Jonah Goldberg] Since I usually have so little to contribute to the Corner's Catholic commentary, I thought some of you might like to know that Cosmo attended a Mass yesterday (is Mass capitalized? I have no idea). While I was at CNN doing so little, the fair Jessica took Coz to Battery Kemble for the blessing of the animals in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. Now Cosmo, as everyone knows, is something of a Scoop Jackson Democrat and a reformed Jew, but by all accounts he had a grand time. Posted 11:14 AM | [Link] ANOTHER MARYLAND SHOOTING [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This one outside a school. Posted 9:33 AM | [Link] BUSH WANTS TO BE EMPEROR!! [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Baghdad Dem Jim McDermott uncovers the Empire America plotat a town-hall meeting (this time, from within our borders). Posted 8:58 AM | [Link] IF YOU WANT JONAH TO GET THE FIRST POST OF THE DAY MORE OFTEN... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...Bribe. Donate to NRO. (Need more convincing? See my Donate! pitch from the weekend by scrolling down to PUTTING YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR EYES ARE. Don't read The Corner on the weekends? Look at the important debates you miss!) Posted 8:36 AM | [Link] FUN WITH NUMBERS [Roger Clegg] A survey by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation focusing on Hispanic registered voters was released late last week. It has some interesting nuggets in it, some surprising and some not, and much of what’s interesting is not about Hispanics. A few items: (1) Blacks are more likely than whites or Hispanics to call divorce and gay sex “unacceptable”; a majority of blacks, whites, and Hispanics say having a child out of wedlock is “acceptable”; Hispanics are more likely than whites or blacks to call abortion “unacceptable.” (2) Latinos are more likely than whites or blacks to say that the government is better at providing services to people in need than religious, charitable, and community organizations. (3) A plurality of Hispanics, whites, and blacks—and all within a percentage point or two—agree that there are “too many” immigrants living in the United States today, but only 21 percent of Hispanics want to reduce the number of Latin Americans permitted to immigrate, versus 33 and 40 percent of whites and blacks, respectively, who would do so; Hispanics, especially foreign-born Hispanics, are much more likely to agree that illegal immigrants help the economy and to favor amnesty. (4) Hispanics are more likely to support and be registered as Democrats than Republicans, but not nearly to the same degree as blacks; only whites are more likely to support and be registered as Republicans; also, only whites are in double digits with responses that “National defense/defense readiness” is the “most important” or “second most important” issue in determining support for a political candidate. Posted 8:25 AM | [Link] HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?[Kathryn Jean Lopez] Lautenberg is in the lead in New Jersey. Posted 8:09 AM | [Link] TIT FOR TAT [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Saudi Arabia will start fingerprinting Americans in the kingdom in response to the U.S. (finally) fingerprinting visa applicants and holders from a list of countries that was recently announced would belatedly include Saudi Arabia. Of course, if fingerprinting is the extent of their retaliation, we should consider it a victory. Posted 8:08 AM | [Link] GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW! That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details. Posted 6:45 AM | [Link] IF YOU MISS ARTS & LETTER ALREADY... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...visit Denis Duton's Philosophy and Literature page--along with the other sites the old Arts & Letters site refers to in it's farewell message. You'll notice a familiar voice. Posted 6:37 AM | [Link] SAY IT ISN’T SO [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Arts & Letters Daily is no more! Posted 6:34 AM | [Link] PMS PRAYERS... [Kathryn Jean Lopez] ...many turn to God at that time of the month. Especially husbands. (I bring this up because of the FDA comish being in hot water over his Christianity problem. Posted 5:36 AM | [Link] RE: NYAH, YADA YADA [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Jonah, your fans are asking me if that means the GFile will be the first article posted on NRO this week. Sorry, you asked for it! :-) Posted 5:33 AM | [Link] NYAH, NYAH [Jonah Goldberg] I got the first post of the week! Posted 12:50 AM | [Link]
GOOD NEWS, IF TRUE [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Is Saddam Hussein's inner circle falling apart? Posted 10:14 PM | [Link] METROPOLIS V. GOTHAM [Jonah Goldberg] If you'd like to read more about the locations of Gotham and Metropolis in the (inherently inferior) DC universe click here and scroll down a bit. Posted 5:54 PM | [Link] MORE ON NYC V DC [Jonah Goldberg] Andrew, Rod: Again, I don't really dispute any of what you say. In 10 years in DC I've been to a total of four maybe five parties on Capitol Hill. When I was single, I very rarely left a ten square block area between my job(s) at the American Enterprise Institute building and my various apartments in Adams Morgan. Indeed, until my wife and I bought this house I lived in Adams Morgan solely because it is the only neighborhood remotely like New York City in any way -- food, loudness, bars, strange people. As I said, I do not dispute that New York is the superior city by any measure of citiness (Baltimore, a city I adore, is far more charming as a city than DC too). In fact, I am baffled by people in DC who claim otherwise. I often simply conclude it is a matter of power-worship which blinds them to the fact that this is a second-rate city, the equivalent of a car lover who cannot understand that Detroit is a bad city despite the fact they make so many good cars there. My decision to live in DC was -- like such decision always are -- a personal one. I had many bad habits of mind and body in New York City and, in an odd way, loved the place too much to stay there. But DC is where I've made my best friends, met my wife, found my dog and, complaints notwithstanding, embarked on a career I enjoy. New York -- where my parents and brother live -- will always be where I am from. But for the foreseeable future, DC is my home. Posted 5:48 PM | [Link] A CONCERNED READER CLARIFIES [Jonah Goldberg] "Jonah, Please inform the Cornerites that Metropolis is New York City and that Gotham is Boston! Gotham is not on an island; it is north of Metropolis; it is nearly always cold and rainy; the local insane asylum is call Arkham (in honor of H.P. Lovecraft who set all of his stories in New England). I am no fan of Boston, especially after attending college in that area. However, this is a point about that DC universe that people never seem to get straight." Posted 5:38 PM | [Link] TOLERANCE WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford] Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali immigrant to Holland (and advisor to the Dutch socialist opposition) made some comments critical of what she saw as Islamic attitudes to women. The London Observer now reports that she has been forced into hiding following a "barrage" of death threats. Posted 4:56 PM | [Link] JAMES BOND, WATERBOY [Andrew Stuttaford] The London Observer is reporting that, in the next Bond film, 007 will be off the martinis. That's bad enough, but this statement reportedly made by the general manager of Ty Nant (the Welsh company that supplied the mineral water that Bond will be seen to be drinking) adds insult to injury: "Perhaps Bond wants to be associated with something more relevant than alcohol." More 'relevant'? The drivel continues: "[Bond] drinking mineral water also sends out a much more positive message to the young people who will go to see the film..." What patronizing, priggish and pompous nonsense. So far as I am concerned, when it comes to Ty Nant, you can say never again. Posted 4:42 PM | [Link] THE BRAIN OF A HUMMINGBIRD [Andrew Stuttaford] Here's an interesting piece from the Sunday Telegraph on Hollwood's response to the Iraq situation. Check out what R Lee Ermey (the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket) has to say about Barbra Streisand. Posted 4:18 PM | [Link] RE: HEY ROD: [Rod Dreher] I had no choice but to adopt the Yankees as my own, Kathryn. Matthew, my three-year-old, is a stone-cold Yankees fan. Lord knows I didn't encourage him; if anything, I tried to push him into the Mets camp. To absolutely no avail. The kid comes out with "Go Yankees!" apropos of nothing. We were watching the game the other night, and he says to me, "Derek Jeter is my Yankees name. What's yours?" It's obviously in his blood, so what am I supposed to do? Posted 2:44 PM | [Link] THAT SAID...: [Rod Dreher] ...Jonah is right about the insane expense of life in NYC obviating many of its advantages. NY is a good city to be rich or young in. If you're rich, you can buy your way out of the hassles of everyday life; if you're young, you're having too much fun to care. But for people like me -- a 35-year-old family guy -- it's hard to justify paying so much in taxes, rent and everything else, when you can't afford to enjoy many of the things that make life here so exquisite. And then we'll go for a walk through Central Park on some glorious autumn afternoon, and wonder how on earth we would ever consider leaving such a place, a place like no other. A Southern-born New Yorker wrote to the Times today to say that like the South, New York is such a distinctive and endlessly interesting place that people who have lived there find it hard to leave, and never get it out of their system. I think that's true. I'll never get over missing the South, and if we should ever leave NYC and return there, not a day will go by when I won't pine for that view of the Brooklyn Bridge, the shop windows of upper Madison Avenue at Christmastime, and the newsprint on my hands from reading the Post on the subway. Posted 2:41 PM | [Link] RE: NEW YORK, NEW YORK: [Rod Dreher] Jonah makes a couple of interesting points I'd like to comment on. When I first moved to DC, a decade ago, when I was 25, I was positively giddy over how easy it was to find young people from all over the country who were interested in politics, media and ideas, and who liked to talk about them. When I left Washington to take a job in south Florida three years later, I missed it fiercely, and actually sat in my apartment for weeks, pathetically watching C-SPAN while it was sunny outside. Three years after that, I got married and moved to NYC, and it took about two seconds to decide that This Must Be the Place. On a trip back to Washington to visit a friend, my first time there in four years, I found myself at a keg party on the Hill, bored out of my mind by all the people my age who could talk about nothing but policy and government, which they discussed passionately. What had happened to me? I used to find this so incredibly interesting. If anything, I'd become more conservative since I lived in DC, but a lot less overtly political, I was finding. Now, you can find lots of good arguments in NYC, but in Washington, that factory town, the only thing anybody wants to argue about is politics. Once that was liberating to me, but now I find it stifling. Posted 2:33 PM | [Link] SENSE OF HUMOR WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford] This gem comes from David Rosenbaum's Campaign Season in today's New York Times: "Looking Back, and Ahead, in Laughter When she was first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton...seemed to change her hairstyle weekly. Since she has been in the Senate, Mrs. Clinton has kept the same hairdo — short, blond and TV-ready. She has also worked to dispel the notion that she is humorless. At lunch last week, Senator Clinton, Democrat of New York, was asked if she had come up with a title for her memoir — the book, scheduled for publication next year, for which she received an $8 million advance from Simon & Schuster. "Headbands and Headaches," she said with a smile." Keep working at it, Hillary... Posted 1:45 PM | [Link] RUDE ABOUT BLOOM [Andrew Stuttaford] Well, if Harold Bloom knows how to hurl an insult or two, so does Joseph Epstein. Following my post yesterday, a number of readers have referred me to this entertaining polemic by Epstein on Bloom. It's all well worth reading, but (whether you agree with Epstein's conclusions or not) this paragraph is a truly classic piece of invective: "Harold Bloom resembles no one so much as Zero Mostel, with something of the same physique and verbal mania but none of the amusing punchlines. Such laughs as are to be found in Bloom are all unconsciously created on his part. In The Western Canon, he reports that whenever he re-reads Bleak House he cries whenever Esther Summerson does, “and I don’t think I’m being sentimental.” In the same book he also reports that he uses the poems of Walt Whitman to assuage grief. “I remember one summer, in crisis, being at Nantucket with a friend who was absorbed in fishing, while I read aloud to both of us from Whitman and recovered myself again.” Poor friend, one feels, poor fish." Ouch. Posted 1:30 PM | [Link] TAIWAN [Andrew Stuttaford] Responding to an earlier post about Taiwan abandoning any designs over Mongolia, a reader comments that Taiwan should also renounce any claims it might have over Tibet. So far as I can see from a quick Google search, Taiwan (as part of its assertion that it is the legitimate successor to pre-revolutionary China) was still proclaiming its right to rule over Tibet into the late 1990s. If it still does, a change of policy would be a welcome gesture - and yet another reminder to the world of the difference between the island nation and the dictatorship across the water. Posted 1:09 PM | [Link] METROPOLIS 2 [Andrew Stuttaford] A reader writes to comment that he has heard it said that Metropolis is New York City by day, and Gotham is New York City by night. That's nicely put. Posted 12:57 PM | [Link] METROPOLIS? [Andrew Stuttaford] Kathryn, Washington as Metropolis? I think not. Thanks to oppressive city planning, it's a squat sort of town. No skyscrapers. New York City is both Gotham and Metropolis: that's part of its weird charm. In the 1970s, it was more Gotham than Metropolis. Under Giuliani, Metropolis made a comeback. Posted 12:35 PM | [Link] NEW YORK, NEW YORK [Andrew Stuttaford] Jonah, Rod is right and so, gulp, is Frank Rich. My first visit to New York City, back in the early 1980s, took me to a high rise hotel with a tremendous view of Manhattan. Returning to my room after dinner that first evening, I found that the curtains were still open, revealing the skyline by night in all its splendor. At that point, I just knew that this was the place to be. Nearly twenty years later, that's still what I think. DC, Ottawa on the Potomac, is, I'm afraid, simply dull. All that the city has is a sort of 'believe it or not' strangeness about it. Just how can the capital of the world's sole superpower manage to appear quite so provincial? Actually, to be fair, the fact that DC is such a humdrum spot reflects well on America. Many of the world's most famously impressive cities - (London, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg) were capitals of empire and/or autocracy, the headquarters of governments that didn't know their place. Until the early twentieth century America's notion of the state was refreshingly modest, and it has a capital to match. That's not a bad thing. Posted 12:25 PM | [Link] |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
<% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>