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Of course, the CBS anchor was not in a great position to refuse. But could some of the most uncharitable among us say that he gave aid and comfort to the enemy (and to a ghastly, murderous dictator to boot)? I’m not condemning here (yet). I’m just askin’.
(I believe there are some 47 countries represented at our main war facility in Qatar.) The next day, in her Washington Post column, Mary McGrory smirked at “a White House that is now wooing nations such as Angola.” It’s funny. If these liberals weren’t so eager to trash Bush, they wouldn’t discard their principles and poses so quickly. Time was, liberals used to honor Third World countries, especially black-African ones like Angola. Any conservative who smirked at Angola, they would have called a racist, for sure. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it, as Bob Dole would say. Liberals would have said it was arrogant and colonialist to disregard the smaller countries and to care only about the opinions of Big White Governments, like France’s and Germany’s. Ah, but I’m about to explode, so I’ll simmer down, sport (as a friend’s father used to say).
So that wasn’t annoying to Mary McGrory? Of course not. Aziz is the representative and mouthpiece of Saddam Hussein, whose regime is one of the most oppressive, most tyrannical, and most murderous in the world. But only uptight white males like the Bushies could be “annoyed” by his tête-à-tête with the Pope.
Why would the Washington Post publish a columnist so . . . uh, inconsistent, at least? But she’s a smooth writer, we must give her that.
“Ashcroft, with an almost biblical bloodlust, has unfortunately become an ugly face of America abroad.” I’ll go on (or rather, let him): “In all of Europe — and much of the rest of the world — capital punishment has been abolished. Even some countries that retain it almost never use it anymore. It has become the sine qua non of a civilized nation: You don’t torture, you don’t execute.” Notice the easy linkage between torture and execution. We execute murderers — particularly serial murderers — after an exhaustive legal process, in which the accused have nearly endless appeals. To equate this practice with torture . . . well, that’s why Cohen gets paid the big bucks, I guess.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart has sent a letter to Secretary of State Powell, saying, “We must make certain to let the Chinese regime know, in no uncertain terms, that the physical integrity of Jian-li Yang is a matter of the utmost importance to the United States.” I hope Powell reads it, putting Jian-li on his “radar screen.” It could actually mean life or death for this man. Lincoln Diaz-Balart was not alone in signing the letter. He had with him Dan Burton (R.-Ind.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R.-Fla.), Chris Smith (R.-N.J.), Dana Rohrbacher (R.-Calif.), and Mario Diaz-Balart, another Miami Republican, and brother of Lincoln. In other words, the usual suspects: those who care about human rights even in countries controlled by Communists. Imagine that.
That’s yet another example of why the Times needs a conservative or two over at 43rd Street! I mean, every politically attuned conservative knows what Chris DeMuth and Irving K. look like — it’s like recognizing Shaquille O’Neal and Jennifer Lopez. It’s bad enough that the Times lacks a proper conservative op-ed columnist. But couldn’t they have one or two in humble jobs like caption-checking?
He has come out with some interesting advice, however, for his party: “Democrats have to fashion a message of economic growth. It can’t be a negative message. It has to be an optimistic message of hope and opportunity.” He continued, “Democrats have to stop this reflex opposition to tax cuts. We’ve got to be more pragmatic.” When he was a Clinton cabinet member, he was free to be a liberal gadfly. Now that he has to conduct real business in New Mexico . . . a little more realistic. But I wish Democrats like that would stop thinking of economic policy as merely strategic, instead of a matter of thought and proof.
Torment? Er, . . .
You know, I think this is an excellent point. I can’t say why, frankly — I just do. I guess it’s just based on having lived a while (as Lucianne Goldberg might say).
That was so perfect.
This reminded me of something the crusty old pro at a golf course where I worked used to say: “You have me confused . . . with someone who gives a fig.” Word to the wise: He didn’t say “fig.”
“Cleave together, cleave apart.” Another writer says, “Take dust. It can mean to remove dust, as in, ‘dust the countertops,’ or it can mean to add dust, as in, ‘dust the cake with powdered sugar.’” Sure ’nuff. And that makes me hungry! Another reader says, “Slow up, slow down — they mean the same thing.”
“Jay, if you think the American kids who study abroad in Europe are bad, you should see some of the people I spent last year with while studying in Cuba (I know, I know, shame on me). Believe it or not, most of the Cubans I spoke with were more pro-U.S., pro-Bush, and pro-war than were my American classmates. [You’re tellin’ me?] The Cubans would say things like, ‘We understand your need to defend yourselves,’ while the American students would more or less walk around wearing sandwich boards that proclaimed, ‘I DID NOT VOTE FOR BUSH.’ Embarrassing. “What is remarkable is that despite all the brainwashing, state TV, Granma, etc., so many Cubans were able to sort through the garbage and see what was really going on with respect to the situation in the U.S. It’s too bad we can’t say the same for American university students.” A man spoke of his experience as a student abroad in Russia: “On my infrequent
trips to Moscow from the provincial capital where I was living, I would
find myself going to or by the U.S. embassy. Involuntarily, The Star-Spangled
Banner would start an unending circuit in my head. My eyes would water,
and I would even murmur the lyrics under my breath, hoping not to look
too deranged to passers-by. Each time, the wave of emotion astounded me.
Don’t you love that? Another reader wrote of traveling through Europe as a student. Some Germans assailed him viciously for being an American. But then he met an old German who “sat down and told us that he had been in the German army at the end of the war. He knew the war was over and he was desperately trying to make it back to get his family and get them to the American lines as fast as he could. He succeeded and found a new life in the West. He said, ‘These young people know nothing but criticism; they’ve had too easy a life guaranteed by your army here in Germany. Without your country we would have been invaded years ago by the Russians. I am thankful for the United States of America.’ “Jay, at that time I was probably more liberal than conservative, but that ended any liberal notions. For the rest of the trip, I was a new person and saw the world through new eyes. When I got back to the U.S., at Customs, my papers were checked and the woman said, ‘Welcome home.’ For the first time in my life I realized what that meant.” The writer continued, “I traveled to Poland a few years back with a Christian ministry delivering wheelchairs to disabled people. In one church I had been elected to speak. I spoke of praying for Poland and the other countries under Soviet domination. Afterwards these dear brothers and sisters came up to me and through an interpreter said, ‘We were always praying for you; we knew the United States would never forget us.’ I am humbled by that kind of love and faithfulness.” Okay, how ’bout this, for some levity (sort of)? “I was in Taiwan for a month on business, and was stuck with CNN for English-language news. One entertainment story was about an ‘indoor drive-in’ movie theater in Thailand, with shells of autos for the seating, and car-hop service. The narrator attributed part of the decline of outdoor drive-ins to, yes, global warming — since ‘people don’t like to be in a stuffy car to watch a movie.’” That is beautiful — so CNN.
Bush would — I’d like to think.
A reader wrote, “I teach in a small midwestern university. My office is in the Fine Arts building and I hear music all the time. I am tempted to post Ashkenazy’s joke on my door — but I would like to get tenure.” Can you imagine? That sympathy with a joke related by a major musician who was once a refugee from Soviet Russia would endanger a person’s tenure? In Free — even post-Cold War — America? But it’s true. |
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veryone’s abuzz about the Dan Rather interview, and I don’t
blame them. (Yes, I know that “him” goes with “everyone,”
but I’m being cazh here, so lay off me.) I’ll tell you what
I think the most suspect part of the whole affair was: not the interview
proper, but the private briefing that Rather gave Saddam afterward. The
Iraqi dictator wanted to gauge him on American public opinion, etc. —
wanted Rather to help him out.
In the last few columns, I’ve been discussing the continuing denigration
of America’s Eastern European allies by liberals. (Mark Shields smirking
at Albania, etc.) On Wednesday, Maureen Dowd devoted an entire 
