Many people, including some of the brightest, have always objected to the term “War on Terror.” They say it’s too vague. I’ve always disagreed: When we say “War on Terror,” everyone knows whom and what we’re talking about.
Anyway, I thought of this dispute when reading remarks by President Bush last week. This was after the U.S. embassy in Yemen was attacked. Bush said, “This attack is a reminder that we are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives. One objective of these extremists is to kill, to try to cause the United States to lose our nerve and to withdraw from regions of the world.”
That is, of course, exactly right. I’ve often wondered why Bush doesn’t give more press conferences — why he doesn’t do more “town halls,” etc. He’s supposed to be a bad communicator, but I have never agreed. He is sometimes a reluctant communicator.
I once asked Condi Rice why Bush didn’t give more press conferences. She said (I paraphrase), “You would say that, because you’re in the press.” Actually, I think it would do Bush and his administration a lot of good. The country and world, too.
Anyway . . .
‐On the Corner last week, I said something about Ramsey Clark. And Andy McCarthy sent me a grin-making note:
Jay,
Clark (along with the dreadful Lynne Stewart) represented the Blind Sheikh at our trial. [This was the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.] As a result, Ramzi Yousef, who was the mastermind behind the bombing, was known among us counterterrorism types as “the other Ramsey.”
Marvelous. And, speaking of marvelous, you can find Andy’s book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad here.
‐There has been a lot of talk lately about the Bush Doctrine — because Sarah Palin was supposed to have been undone by it. (My eye.) I liked something a reader wrote: “With Russian warships being invited to South America, and nations there expelling our diplomats, are we worried about the wrong doctrine? Should we instead start thinking again about the Monroe?”
‐Longtime readers of this column know that I have strong views about Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. He is one of Fidel Castro’s best friends in the Free World. He is not merely an apologist for Castro. He is an ardent advocate of him, if you appreciate the distinction. It’s not just that he makes excuses for him. He champions him.
Rarely have Free World officeholders been so staunch for a brutal dictator.
And everyone loves him — Rangel, that is. (Many love Castro, too.) “Good ol’ ‘Chollie,’” they say — quick with a quip, every journalist’s pet. Even some conservatives have fallen for his act.
You have heard what he said when asked about Gov. Sarah Palin: “You got to be kind to the disabled.” (Read about this here.)
I could write for pages about this, but let me pose two questions: If a conservative Republican said the same about a Democratic vice-presidential nominee, would he be able to remain in public life? And second: How can conservatives have discussions with liberals, when this is the way they think and talk about us?
Many people mind that Rangel — the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — is a big-time tax cheat. I mind that he’s a moral skunk.
‐You know that, last week, Joe Biden praised higher taxes as patriotic. You may also remember that Rangel has long denounced tax cuts as . . . racist. But of course. He once said, “It’s not ‘spic’ or ‘nigger’ anymore. They say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.’”
What a beaut, “Chollie” Rangel. And you will not find a more beloved politician among the Washington press corps, unless, of course, he is Barack Obama.
‐Last Thursday, on the Corner, I posted two notes about Sarah Palin. (You can find them here and here.) I asked, “Why the hatred directed against her? Why the filth poured over her head? Why the naked rage?” I further asked, “Is she done, through? Has what we might broadly call ‘the Left’ succeeded in stigmatizing her, tarring her, forever — the way they did Bork, Quayle, and Thomas?”
These notes drew many reader responses — about 300 of them. I’m sorry I will not have time to answer them all, or even read them all. Many of them are interesting, insightful, anguished, moving. Many tell of personal encounters with Palin-haters (as one of my Corner notes did).
I’d like to provide, here, just a little sampling of the reaction. Many people wrote about the hacking into Palin’s e-mail — but more than that, about the relative media indifference to it. It seems to me that the “MSM” basically yawned. Would they have done the same if Obama’s e-mail had been stolen and disseminated?
You remember “Passportgate” from 1992. That was a very, very big deal. Of course, when Clinton appointees at the Defense Department leaked classified information from Linda Tripp’s national-security file — that was no big deal. And this was the very violation for which Charles Colson went to jail (as he, among others, reminded me). (I spent a good part of 1998, 1999, and 2000 reporting and writing on such matters.)
Have a reader letter: “The same liberals who become apoplectic at the thought that some CIA/NSA cube-dweller may be sifting through Osama bin Laden’s e-mail without a warrant are perfectly blasé about what happened to Palin. How can that be? Would the waterboarding of Sarah be okay, too?”
That could be a real quandary.
Here’s another reader letter: “When Sarah Palin found out that her e-mail account had been compromised, she closed it. That sounds like the logical thing to do. But the website that posted her stolen mail called that action an attempt to ‘destroy evidence.’ So you see, the bad guy in this situation is Palin, not the hackers.” Well, of course — didn’t we all know that?
I have written a fair amount about Palin-hate and abortion — and this letter caught my eye: “I’ve been sitting and working this morning at a gathering place on the Rice University campus. Sitting at a table a few feet away, two women are chatting. The conversation turns to Sarah Palin. They both hate her. She will do away with abortion, with birth control, she is a creationist, a book-banner. But they keep coming back to abortion.”
At the end of his letter, this correspondent says, “[All this] is enough to make me despair. And to think that the America of my imagination is no longer the real America. Maybe it never was.”
A woman received an e-mail whose Subject line was “Brilliant Strategy.” And this is what the e-mail said (there’s a follow-up, so stay tuned):
Dear Friends:
We may have thought we wanted a woman on a national political ticket, but the joke has really been on us, hasn’t it? Are you as sick in your stomach as I am at the thought of Sarah Palin as Vice President of the United States?
Since Palin gave her speech accepting the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency, Barack Obama’s campaign has raised over $10 million. Some of you may already be supporting the Obama campaign financially; others of you may still be recovering from the primaries. None of you, however, can be happy with Palin’s selection, especially given on her positions on women’s issues.
So, if you feel you can’t support the Obama campaign financially, may I suggest the following fiendishly brilliant alternative? Make a donation to Planned Parenthood. In Sarah Palin’s name. A Planned Parenthood donation is tax deductible, while a political donation isn’t.
And here’s the good part: When you make a donation to PP in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.
And this is what our correspondent wrote (to me):
Imagine getting this e-mail. Imagine telling women to make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah’s name so that she’ll get a card. Her crime, of course, is that she has chosen life, that she is self-made, and that she has a beautiful family. And she’s happy.
As a woman who was a liberal on Long Island before 9/11 made me rethink things and Mark Steyn’s America Alone hammered it home, I’ll tell you what is spurring some of the most intense hatred from the sisterhood: Sarah makes them remember their own choices, i.e., their abortions, their commitment to self over family, to self over country, to self over God.
But the first one, well, that’s the kicker — we liberal gals were so blasé about abortions back in the day. Now we look at Sarah and think, “What if?” So . . . college would have been deferred a few years, and we ended up divorced from our first husbands anyway, so maybe a shotgun marriage that resulted in our true firstborn wouldn’t have been so bad, and are we really so happy now?”
Have another letter, please:
Dear Jay,
After reading your post “Sick,” I began writing to you and then stopped because my e-mail was so long. But your second post “Something About Sarah” got me going again.
I’m the child of refugees from East Germany. My parents grew up under the Nazis, then met and married under the Communists. During my early childhood, they escaped to Canada. I grew up in a liberal, cultured, European household, listening to dinner-table conversations about the effects of propaganda, the impact of bullying tactics, the role of “useful idiots,” the creation of scapegoats, and the deliberate fomenting of hatred toward those with whom one disagrees.
I grew up understanding that a fascist/totalitarian regime can become the government anywhere — even in the United States — when the danger goes unrecognized by citizens.
This next letter is from a very thoughtful Detroiter who has long been a liberal Democrat — and who has been turning, turning (like some other people we know):
Well, although I do have qualms about her present fitness to be president, Jay, I like her. And her nomination and the reaction to it is significant for me personally — it marks my final break with liberalism, even of the more center-left variety.
It’s one thing to criticize her political qualifications, and there are legitimate questions about that. The Left’s and the media’s reaction to her has been disgraceful and disgusting. Equally vile are those people who are perfectly capable of opposing her politically while speaking up for her right to be treated fairly — but who fail to do so.
If nothing else, this should put paid to the notion that the Democratic party supports and cares about average Americans. If I hadn’t already decided to vote for McCain on national-security grounds, I would do so simply because people like this should not have the power to deal with the lives of ordinary people.
I thought Jonah Goldberg somewhat overstated the case in his book about the fascist roots of much liberal thought and conduct; I’m no longer so sure.
Me neither, baby.
Do you-all know what a Kronstadt is? In 1921, Russian sailors, soldiers, and others rose up against the Bolshevik regime. (Never again would there be such an uprising, until the very end.) Ol’ Lenin suppressed the revolt as only he (and his disciples) could. This disillusioned some in the West — and marked the end of their affection for Communism.
From then on, “Kronstadt” became a term for “that which caused a break with Communism.” “What was your Kronstadt?” “Oh, the Kirov murder.” Or the show trials. Or the Secret Speech. Or Budapest, or Prague, etc. Some people never get their Kronstadts — like the famous, wealthy, and revered British historian Eric Hobsbawm. Such people stay true even now.
Well, American liberals experience Kronstadts, too. I could write a book. (Hey, there’s an idea . . .)
A final word on Palin — whose “presence during these times” reminds one reader of a line from Dickens: “There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.” Is that too much for you? It may well be, but, for some of us, it’s not too much — not just at the moment. Maybe later, when political and personal discussion is saner, and more decent.
‐No, one more word about Palin — and it is this: Have you noticed that liberals have a habit of calling conservative leaders stupid? Do we do the same? I don’t think so, actually: We simply say their leaders are wrong (or distasteful or repulsive or whatever).
They called Eisenhower stupid. In fact, when I was about 13, I read a Philip Roth book, because I heard there was sex in it. (There was.) And one of the characters described Ike as “illiterate.” So I told my grandfather that Eisenhower had been illiterate. He said, “Where’d you get that?” I flushed.
They called Goldwater stupid. They didn’t call Nixon stupid, they called him bad instead (which he was, to a degree). They called Ford stupid. They of course called Reagan stupid — very stupid. They didn’t call 41 that — he was just goofy, or elitist,, or unacceptable. They called Quayle stupid. Dole, I can’t quite remember — I think they mainly said he was old, bitter, and mean. W., they called stupid. And now Palin.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. There’s a word for people who level that charge against such people: stupid.
‐In the PRC, the government constructed a Potemkin village, along with an Olympic village. And, of course, such villages crumble, when they have served their purposes. This report from the AP is interesting:
The Olympic flame is out, the smog is back, and traffic again clogs the roads.
Welcome to what commentators are calling China’s “post-Olympic era,” in which euphoria over the Beijing Games is slowly giving way to economic worries, new safety crises and a future both brimming with confidence and tinged with uncertainty.
So far, it’s off to a rocky start.
“Brimming with confidence and tinged with uncertainty”? Anyway, here’s some good news: They released an “underground” bishop, Jia Zhiguo, who has been arrested many, many times. He’s still under 24-hour surveillance — but hey . . .
‐On the Corner last week, I remarked a bumper sticker: “Who Would Jesus Bomb?” I commented on both its grammar and its character. The sticker, you see, mocks Christians and War on Terror supporters at the same time. A two-fer (or something).
Many, many people wrote in about that, including one who said, “Whom would Jesus bomb? The same people we are, only with perfect intel and perfect aim.”
I’m not endorsing this, but . . . I thought it was amusing. Hope you agree.
‐A little music? For a review of the New York Philharmonic’s opening night — Lorin Maazel, conductor, Sir James Galway, flute — go here. For a piece on CDs, go here. Under review are the pianist Lang Lang, a new recording of The Excursions of Mr. Brouček (Janáček’s comic opera), and Julian Bream, the lutenist and guitarist.
For “previews” of the New York season — from now until New Year’s — go here and here. The first deals with concerts and recitals; the second deals with operas.
All of these pieces were published in the New York Sun.
‐A little language? Somewhere above, I wanted to write the word “blaséness.” It is not found in the dictionary (at least mine). But “blasé,” I believe, needs a noun — deserves a noun. And can’t you add “ness” to anything, or “ity,” or other suffixes?
Damn, is English grand.
‐A cultural observation? When I was growing up in Ann Arbor, hippies and druggies played hacky sack. In fact, it was a cultural signifier: Only hippies and druggies played hacky sack. It was kind of their national pastime (besides toking). In fact, “hacky-sack-playing burnout” was a fairly common phrase.
I hadn’t seen hacky sack in years — until I was in Central Park a few days ago, and saw workmen playing it, on a break. (A couple seemed a little embarrassed.)
What’s my point? Not sure I have one — it’s just that: well, hacky sack can be enjoyed even when you’re neither stoned nor wearing a Che Guevara shirt.