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could tell from the response to a recent Impromptus that there are
a lot of Helen Thomas fans out there — well, not really fans
(although there are many of those, too, no doubt), but connoisseurs
of various episodes in her long and glorious career.
I thought I’d
reprint, for the amusement of the gallery, an exchange between La
Helen (Hélène?) and Ari Fleischer, from Nov. 26. It’s
classic Thomas:
Helen Thomas:
Does the president feel the United States has the right to bomb
or invade any country harboring terrorists? Is he going to invade
Spain?
Ari Fleischer:
Helen, the president, as I mentioned, is focused on Phase One
. . .
HT: Eight
suspected terrorists . . .
AF: The president
is focused on Phase One of the war against terrorism. But the
president has made it plain to the American people that this a
long-term war.
HT: Answer
the question. What right do we have to invade any country?
AF: I’m
not aware that we are invading Spain.
Ah, another
tragi-comical moment in the White House briefing room. Thing is,
while Helen Thomas, Sarah McClendon, and other curiosities are doing
their acts, there are real reporters waiting to ask real questions.
When it comes
to Thomases, give me Dave, give me Isiah (yes, that’s the correct
spelling — talk to his mother), give me Danny, but . . . oh,
Helen!
I have written copiously about Otto Reich, both in this column and
in the pages of NR itself (see, for example, “Dirty
Wars,” June 25, 2001). He is President Bush’s choice to
be assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere (formerly
known as assistant secretary of state for Latin America — and
the Canadians, I’m told, hate it when you revert to
the old title. Certain Caribbean people aren’t too happy about
it either). Suffice it to say that Reich is superbly qualified,
that he is utterly despised by the Left, and that, until recently,
his nomination was blocked by Sen. Chris Dodd on the Foreign Relations
Committee — Dodd, who has such power, wouldn’t allow him
a hearing.
Which led Bush
to put him in office by recess appointment (along with Eugene Scalia,
his nominee for solicitor at the Labor Department, who was opposed
by a cadre of Senate Democrats). I’m delighted that Bush “recessed”
him, and am unsurprised, by now, that he had the cojones
to do it. Bush has proven a president of Reaganite guts in many
respects. I can’t think of a better man than Reich to serve
in that job, for reasons of biography, philosophy, and sheer ability.
But I, like
others, I’m sure, am sorry it came down to that — the
recess appointment. The Left threw a lot of junk charges against
Reich, and if Reich had had a hearing, he would have knocked them
out of the park. The country would have seen a very impressive and
inspiring man, and his leftist opponents would have looked like
total fools. And now Reich — and we — have been deprived
of that. Also, a recess appointment brings with it just a bit of
a taint: He had to go in backdoor, not being able to go in by the
usual channels.
But that’s
solely Dodd’s fault, of course, which brings me to an additional
point I wish to make on this matter: Apparently, Dodd is influenced
by his chief Latin America staffer, a woman named Janice O’Connell
who is a fierce leftist from way back, a veteran of the Central
America wars of the 1980s, in which her side lost badly, and was
proven fallacious and wrong. I, for one, shrink — both in my
writing on this subject and in my conversation about it — from
calling attention to her. Dodd, and Dodd alone, is responsible for
what he does. He’s a smart boy, we’re told (not least
by his admirers). And if he decides he’s going to hamper and
slander a good and admirable man, that’s his problem —
and only his.
Speaking of annoying Connecticut Democrats, I wonder if you saw
the latest item about Joe Lieberman in Bob Novak’s column:
The senator is telling people, according to this report, that he’s
changed his mind about 2004: He’s going to run for the presidential
nomination whether Al Gore gets in or not.
Now, a man’s
allowed to change his mind, of course (though we sometimes call
this “reneging” ). But Lieberman seemed pretty stand-up
when he said, earlier on, that he couldn’t, in good conscience,
run against Gore, because he owed so much to Gore. No matter how
badly he wanted to be president, he couldn’t find it in him
to cross and frustrate the man who had given him a national stage.
These sentiments now seem to be out the window.
Which is not
the worst thing in the world: Politicians break promises or near
promises all the time. We don’t fall over in shock. But wouldn’t
a less biased press be cluck-clucking over this reversal? Or is
that too Bernard Goldbergesque a question?
As I mentioned recently, Pat Trueman — formerly of the Justice
Department, now with the American Family Association — is a
warrior against porn, particularly against child porn. He and his
organization and allies have been fighting a war against Yahoo,
which harbors within its mighty breast a good many child-porn sites,
which are — need it be said? — illegal. Trueman has now
written about another (yes, another) kidnapping case having to do
with such sites. Rather than describe it here, I invite you to take
a look at his press
release. As I’ve said before, this is a subject most of
us would like to turn away from; but, of course, this revulsion,
this turning away, is exactly what the malefactors count on. Thank
God for the Pat Truemans.
Thank God,
too, for the Family Research Council, which does noble work in this
connection, as in others. The FRC’s Miriam Moore provides a
tip about pornography pouring in through e-mail (or evident anywhere
else), when it involves children and child abuse: You can always
use www.cybertipline.com,
which polices such material. Also, the following Justice Department
address is useful: www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/report.htm.
Many readers
have said to me, “I feel helpless: Is there anything I can
do, besides hit the delete key?” Well, the aforementioned is
something we can do. It’s better than nothing.
I smiled a little the other day when The New York Times Sunday
Magazine did a fawning profile of José Bove, the French
“anti-globalization activist” whose specialty is attacking
McDonald’s franchises. (People have been killed in such attacks,
by the way, although Bove has disassociated himself from the killings.
Others might say that “he helps create the environment in which
. . .” — you know the line.) This reminded me of the two
fawning profiles the Times did of Billy Ayres, the Weather
Underground terrorist, the first of which appeared on — what
was that date? — oh yeah, Sept. 11, and the second of which
appeared the next Sunday, the 16th, in the Magazine. The
Times just can’t keep away from these guys. Are they
never embarrassed (I’m talking about the Timesmen)?
I offer the
following letter from an Impromptus reader:
“I finally
made it to Ground Zero last weekend (I live in the Chicago area),
and cannot begin to express what I felt. The memorials that have
sprouted up around the devastation are amazing. One item in particular
left me literally gasping for breath. A little boy had written a
birthday card to his father, in which he wished his father a happy
birthday and hoped he was happy ‘even though you are dead.’
There was a picture of the boy in his baseball uniform. It still
brings tears to my eyes as I think about it.
“My point is not to bring up the obvious realities of what
happened, but to contrast this with another event happening in Evanston,
Ill. (don’t you just love college towns?). The Barnes &
Noble store there sent me an e-mail encouraging me to come to the
store for the Bill Ayers book signing. I’ve let them know that
I will never shop at any Barnes & Noble store again (including
their Internet site). What the hell are these people thinking?”
I saw something a few days ago that amused me greatly. There was
an AP article — on the Internet — about the Israeli seizure
of that Palestinian/Iranian ship, loaded with 50 tons of matériel
with which to kill Israelis. Accompanying the article was a photo
of . . . well, I’ll let the caption say it all: “Palestinian
Haroon Al-Rabaa, right, and his son Ander bake bread in a makeshift
oven in their house, where cooking gas is not available due to the
Israeli army closure of the West Bank village of Salem, near Nablus.”
Ahh. Those
damn Israelis. This is the great victory the Palestinians have achieved
in the propaganda field. A friend of mine said the following recently:
“You know the most amazing change that has taken place over
the last quarter of a century or so? The reversal, in propaganda
terms, of the David-and-Goliath situation in the Middle East. It
used to be that everyone recognized who the real David was, Israel:
It was a tiny nation, a tiny sliver, against which 22 Arabs nations
were arrayed, a whole world, vowing to destroy that tiny nation,
struggling for its life, after the European Holocaust. And then,
the Arab propagandists, with heaps of help from the West, made it
the Palestinian wretches against the Israeli brutes, changing the
equation. And they’ve been cackling ever since — not that
any of the 22 Arab nations will ever offer the Palestinian wretches
any real aid.”
I believe I mentioned in a recent column — at least I meant
to — the extraordinary practice of the New York Times
in its articles about the Cornel West controversy at Harvard. Now,
the Times doesn’t do “Dr.” for Ph.D.’s;
they do “Mr.” or “Ms.” (or just maybe “Mrs.”
— although that’s a little antediluvian). It’s a
pretty strict thing. For example, Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield
is always “Mr. Mansfield.” And so on.
Yet, in its
articles about the university’s Afro-American Studies department,
the Times had “Dr. West,” “Dr. Gates”
(for Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), etc. For Harvard’s president,
Larry Summers, it was “Mr.” — and Summers, of course,
is as Ph.D.’ed as anyone.
What’s
going on? I noticed that Al Hunt did the same thing in his recent
Wall Street Journal column: It was “Dr. West” and
“Mr. Summers.” This is just possibly an amazing and gross
act of racial condescension. Roger Kimball makes the same point
in his article on the Harvard controversy in the current NR
(titled — what else? — “Dr. West and Mr. Summers”).
Let me keep
going on the Times: On Saturday, they had an obituary for
W. A. Criswell, the old leader of the Southern Baptists. Criswell
had a Ph.D. in theology. To the Times, however, he was “Mr.
Criswell,” all the way through, in accordance with the paper’s
(apparent) policy. When a fellow southerner was quoted, that man
said “Dr. Criswell,” in very much the southern habit.
(I have a friend who is a professor of music at a southern college,
and, when I visited him, I was surprised and amused that people
referred to him as “Dr.” ) (Memo to Chip: I still call
you “Chip.” )
I wonder if
the Times would care to declare a policy: Is it “Dr.”
for black Ph.D.-holders, “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Ms.”
for non-black Ph.D.-holders? Or what? I don’t believe the Times
is accidental about style. In fact, I think it takes it very seriously.
A final word — lightish (although not light): A reader wrote,
“The other morning I glanced at the headline in my local paper,
and it said, ‘Troops headed to Cuba.’ I got all excited:
The military was finally going to do the Lord’s work and remove
that cancerous regime, which has killed, tortured, impoverished,
and exiled so many. Only after I rubbed my eyes was I disappointed
to read it was just some MP work at Guantanamo.”
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