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 ay
back when we were trying to decide whom to support among presidential
hopefuls, if someone had said, “By July 2001, Time magazine
will be calling him ‘Mr. Missile Defense,’” a lot
of us would have replied: “That’s our guy!”
Well, that guy is none other than the current president. Time
has, indeed, dubbed Bush “Mr. Missile Defense” (they surely
didn’t mean that as a compliment, but we are free to react
as we wish). We should pause to consider the momentousness of this.
For years, we said, “Oh, for a president who could be called
‘Mr. Missile Defense!’” And here he is. For all our
gripes, enjoy.
Did you catch what W. said the other day? “I have told President
Putin that time matters; that I want to reach an accord sooner rather
than later; that I’m interested in getting something done with
him. But make no mistake about it [this is the stunning part]: I
would rather others came with us, but I feel so strongly and passionately
on the subject that we’ll move beyond, if need be.” In
other words (the language is not quite right at the end there),
we will move ahead by ourselves, if need be.
These words are so extraordinary coming from an American president,
we should not pass them over. I say again: Enjoy.
 On
the subject of Time magazine: They have a picture of the
First Lady standing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, with
an accompanying quiz: Why is Laura smiling? Could it be (for example)
that she thought, “To my daughter Jenna, this tower isn’t
leaning at all!”? (That’s a drunk joke, in case you weren’t
sure.)
Now, my point is going to be, not that Time shouldn’t
be picking on the First Couple’s 19-year-old daughter (surprised?),
but that this isn’t funny — at all. It is sophomoric in
the extreme. Who’s the irresponsible teenager here?
And this is Time magazine, folks. I realize that Whittaker
Chambers doesn’t work there anymore — that the old red-bordered
mare haint what she used to be — but still…
Stick
with media gripes: Dan Rather, in the midst of this Condit mess,
is going around lecturing everyone on the composition and importance
of “hard news.” The other night, he signed off, “For
the hard news, CBS Evening News.”
So, we should take lectures on proper news from Dan Rather? This
blatant, lifelong partisan who attends Democratic fundraisers? I
say, in honor of a fine ’80s TV show, gimme a break.
More
media gripes? Okay, since you insist. A headline in Monday’s
Times read, “Sharon Booed by Fellow Rightists Who Say
He’s Too Soft.” Believe it or not, I don’t have a
great problem with Sharon and the Likudniks being labeled “rightists”
(although if these democrats are rightists, what does that make
rightists?). No, what I object to is that Peres and the Laborites
are seldom — never? — called “leftists.”
This is an old, old point, and the world, no doubt, is tired of
hearing it: but it’s still true.
I’m
a tiny bit confused on something: Many in the media are saying that
Bush must rule against stem-cell research in order to appeal to
Catholic voters. These same pundits go on to say that these voters
supported Gore-Lieberman in the last election.
So, they voted for two candidates who are absolutely, 100 percent
in favor of abortion-on-demand — no ifs, ands, or buts. And
they’re going to be pleased with a president who prohibits
federal funding of stem-cell research? They would punish
a president who did not?
Something’s screwy here: and it ain’t the voters; it’s
the pundits.
We
see, more and more, the gross abuse of the term “isolationism.”
Tom Daschle, for example, knocks the administration as “isolationist”
for its opposition to Kyoto and its view that the ABM Treaty is
outdated (as well as harmful to American interests, which include
the building of a defense). This administration is very, very far
from isolationist; and Democrats like Daschle should talk, given
their stance in the latter years of the Cold War (which is a separate
point, I realize).
“Isolationist,” I fear, is becoming an epithet in the
hands of anti-Republican know-nothings. If the term is not rescued
soon, it will cease to have meaning. Might Daschle have been thinking
of “unilateralist”? No matter: He knows that “isolationism”
is a swear word in the American political vocabulary (and should
be, in my opinion). If Daschle and people like him misuse “isolationism”
knowingly, that’s all the worse.
And they wouldn’t be, exactly, know-nothings, would they?
I have
been picking on Time magazine, so I should jump to say that
the editors had the grace and judgment to publish a
magnificent essay by Shelby Steele, on racial profiling. I know:
You can’t bear to read any more on the subject. I thought I
couldn’t either. But Steele’s is an essay of great power,
deeply thought and beautifully expressed. The writer has occasionally
contributed to National Review, and he is altogether one
of the most valuable political-social minds and pens in the country.
Get
a load of this: The Democratic congressional committee features
Jane Fonda at a fundraiser. A spokesman at the opposite Republican
committee chides the Democrats, saying that their use of Fonda highlights
their “fundamental problem: an inability to appeal to middle-of-the-road
voters.” Then the Democratic spokesman retorts, “One
day they announce a new program to reach out to new women voters,
the next day they are attacking women.”
No, seriously, he really said that: the Republicans’ criticism
of Fonda (or, more accurately, the Democrats’ featuring of
Fonda) as an “attack” on “women.”
I swear, I know I’m partisan, but the Republicans aren’t
this absurd, are they? I mean, do our people talk this way? Do they?
The
Washington Post’s Richard Cohen is a very clever columnist,
and he must have thought he was particularly clever when he wrote
a
“memo” to John Ashcroft, urging him to remove J. Edgar
Hoover’s name from the FBI headquarters. Cohen said all the
usual things about Hoover: anti-King, anti-Kennedy, “black
fluffy dresses,” blah, blah, blah. What never gets said about
Hoover — and I wonder whether he has replaced Joe McCarthy
as the great hate object of the American Left — is that he
helped to take a lot of bad guys out of commission, for something
like 50 years: murderers, rapists, kidnappers, bombers, robbers.
People like Cohen are often interested in judging the “whole
life,” the “whole man” — but this is something
they would never extend to (the seriously flawed) Hoover.
Is it the central fact about Hoover, and his long, long career,
that he persecuted black people and liberal Democratic heroes? I
doubt it. But I also doubt that Americans will ever be able to look
back on Hoover calmly and judiciously; it is simply too late for
that now.
On
a Sunday-morning show, Doris Kearns Goodwin, the laureled historian
and ex-LBJ aide, said the following, about the Democrats and their
nemesis in the White House: “I don’t think they should
criticize him personally, but I think they should make darn sure
that their beliefs on the issues are where the country is, and force
George Bush to have to be in the opposite camp.” Nice, huh?
There’s principle for you! “Make darn sure that their
beliefs on the issues are where the country is.” Amazing —
particularly from a scholar.
A delicate,
delicate subject: Katharine Graham has been eulogized more widely
and more warmly than anyone else in my memory. It is lucky, in a
way, to be a personable and admired media power, in that the people
who make public discussion are media people. A lot of magnificent
men and women die, more or less unremarked, unlauded, unlamented;
but media people take care of their own. Nothing wrong with this,
of course. It’s just one of the imbalances of life, which we
all accept.
It might be mentioned, too, that the Washington Post, for
all its good qualities, is a doggedly liberal Democratic paper.
I have praised it (and very recently) for the diversity of opinion
on its op-ed page. And it does some valuable reporting. But in the
famed Style section in particular — and this is possibly the
most influential part of the paper — there is a steady current
of Left snideness, and Left attitude and ideology generally. We
conservatives are so used to this that we find it normal —
and somewhat gauche to comment on. And it is normal, of course.
Also, we tend to succumb to our own kind of Stockholm syndrome:
They whipped us, yes, but it wasn’t that bad this time. It
felt almost like a bath!
Say what you will about the Washington Times, but at least
there’s an alternative in a city as important as the capital,
as there should be. The Post’s influence on the course
of the national government is not invariably salutary.
You
have read, perhaps, that the Communists in Beijing have sentenced
two U.S. residents to ten years in prison. What will happen to them
there is something that fills attentive people with fright. The
two are scholars — I should name them: Gao Zhan and Qin Guangguang
— and they are accused of spying for Taiwan, ridiculously,
of course. The Communists did this even as the American secretary
of state arrived for a visit.
It is said, by optimists (as well as naïfs), that the Beijing Olympics
will turn a “spotlight” on the country. Sadly, they will
do nothing of the sort. And even if they did, who would look, or
respond? A government rewarded with the Olympic Games, despite its
steady brutalizing of its people, and other peoples, such as the
one in Tibet, knows that it can do anything, with impunity.
Andrew
Young is a consistently interesting man. His tenures as mayor of
Atlanta and ambassador to the U.N. seem ages away to me. I appreciate,
with every passing year, his thoughtfulness, and his absence of
ideology. He is staunch on school choice, for example, recognizing
that it would do a world of good, particularly for black Americans.
Here is a line from him in a recent Wall Street Journal column,
which addressed Bush’s faith-based initiative: “The crisis
of the poor is as much moral as it is material.” This makes
me sigh for the time when civil-rights leaders generally talked
this way. So, so far from…well, you know who they are.
May
I suggest a book? It is an unusual one, written by an unusual friend
of mine, Humberto Fontova. It is called The Helldivers’
Rodeo, and it is about…well, I’ll let the book jacket
have a crack at it: “The
Helldivers’ Rodeo is a fascinating, funny, and free-spirited
tale of some rowdy Cajuns, refugee Cubans, and scared-stiff Californians
who are obsessed with two things: old disco music and deep-sea fishing.”
Fontova is a Cuban-American, an NR conservative, and an all-around
adventurer/hellion. It says something that his book is blurbed by
Ted Nugent, the much-loved rocker-rightist. I am 75 percent certain
you’ll get a kick out of Helldivers; I am 100 percent
certain you’ve never seen anything like it.
The
Reuters news service reports that “a German couple who want
to call their baby daughter Jona will have to wait for a court to
decide whether it is suitable for a girl. The Kepurra family from
the eastern German town of Oranienburg have been battling officials
for a year over their choice of name. Jona, a common girl’s
name in Israel, is cited in reference books as a version of the
Biblical name Jonah, the male character who spent three days and
three nights in the belly of a whale…. Officials said Monday
the baby would remain nameless until the court decision. The legal
wrangling in Germany contrasts sharply with the relaxed approach
to names in many other countries.”
I’ll
say. The other day, I was scanning Page Six (the New York Post
gossip sheet), and I thought I’d read, “Yoko Ono took
her son, Serendipity 3…” I couldn’t remember such
a son, so I read the passage again, and found that it correctly
read, “Yoko Ono took her son to Serendipity 3 on East
60th Street for a frozen hot chocolate…” My first reading,
however, was perfectly plausible. For instance, there is a New
York Times reporter named Jennifer 8. Lee. I’ve always
wanted to meet her.
I was
going to write about Jimmy Carter, and his nuty blast against Bush,
but I don’t have the energy or spirit. I am simply exhausted
from hearing about his “ex-presidency,” how exemplary,
how shining, it is supposed to be. I like the building houses, but
I like rather less the pomposity, the sanctimony, the preening,
the blessings on dubious elections, the anger and resentment at
the Nicaraguan democrats — and a critique of George W. Bush
that is almost alarmingly off-the-wall.
Clinton’s
ex-presidency is more palatable, in a way, because it is more pathetic,
less irksome. And more is expected of Carter, of course — even
by those of us who long ago gave up thinking of him as the Sage,
to say nothing of Saint, of Plains.
Jeffrey
Archer has now been given four years in the slammer. (By the way,
why isn’t his name spelled “Geoffrey”? Has there
ever been an English “Jeffrey”? An irrelevant question,
of course.) Lord Archer’s offense was to have committed perjury
and suborned it…just like…. Well, I’ll say again:
I’m exhausted. Forgive me.
No, one shot: Archer will be behind bars; Clinton is watching André
Agassi play tennis at Wimbledon, 20 feet away from the poor guy,
sitting smugly, preeningly (in this, he is certainly like the allegedly
humble Carter, one of the most egotistical men in public life —
and I don’t say this negatively).
All right, that’s it.
In
the current U.S. News & World Report, there is a squib about
a new Scrabble stud, a guy named Stefan Fatsis who has written a
memoir, Word
Freak. I was delighted to read this, because it gives me
a chance to brag about my friend Keenan Wolfe, the number-one Scrabble
stud in the world (as far as I’m concerned, and what other
opinion matters — in this column?). My boy, I’ll have
you know, is responsible for “the most compactly playable game
of Scrabble,” as confirmed and publicized by Scrabble News.
Keenan put (as it was explained to me) 100 tiles in the smallest
possible rectangular space on the board — 14 columns by 8 rows,
with only 12 unused squares.
The boy — resident in Ann Arbor, Mich. — is a genius,
I’m telling you.
The
other day, I mentioned that the word “propaganda” is always
taken to mean false, lying propaganda. “Yes,” e-mailed
a reader, “and the word ‘pious,’ once used to mean
devout, is now used to mean falsely pious or hypocritical. And ‘righteous’
is always used to mean self-righteous.”
I spoke,
too, of the highs and lows of the Bush administration, and a reader
responded: “I nominate [for a high] something that has drawn
criticism — Bush’s low profile. You couldn’t escape
Clinton; Bush seems to disappear. That alone is worth voting for.”
I imagine many Americans feel this relief about Bush; it is one
of the reasons I supported him, and looked forward to his presidency
(perhaps against journalistic instincts and interests).
My
remarks on being a student abroad prompted this reflection: “I
spent a summer in Europe in the early ’90s, and thought it
humorous that Canadian students all had a maple leaf on their backpacks.
I asked one Canadian girl why, and she explained that it was ‘so
people won’t think we are Americans.’ Brits of college
age had similar attitudes towards Americans, to which my answer
was: ‘Lend-lease.’ That usually shut them up. The French
didn’t acknowledge my existence enough to gauge their attitudes,
but the Germans were fine towards Americans (especially when drinking
beer my friends and I paid for).”
I goofed
the other day when I wrote that all five Central American countries
were now democratic — there are seven countries in that
region (and they’re all democratic). A reader suggested a nice
way to remember these countries: “Beehives Give Extra-Special
Honey Near Clover-Ridden Parks.” That stands for Belize, Guatemala,
El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Kinda
of cool. “Every Good Boy Does Fine” for geographical klutzes.
(In Britain, by the way, that expression is “Every Good Boy
Deserves Favour,” the title of a piece written long ago by
André Previn.)
Who
should adorn the op-ed page of the New York Times, now occupied
by a lone (semi-) conservative, William Safire? That was the question
the other day, and reader response was robust (lots of r’s,
I know). Wrote one correspondent, “The Times thinks
Maureen Dowd is feisty? Let’s show ’em feisty: Bring on
Ann Coulter.” Another correspondent noted, “We need liberals,
too. I vote for the two most hard-nosed, principled ones: Nat Hentoff
and Mickey Kaus.” Well done.
Finally,
an old joke, contributed by a reader, concerning the pervasive —
well-nigh exclusive — Democracy of the state of West Virginia,
home of my in-laws: “A congressman, up for reelection, goes
stumping through his rural district, meeting the folks and shaking
hands. One of his constituents, a farmer, greets him enthusiastically.
The congressman asks the farmer whether he has any children. ‘Yes,
sir,’ replies the farmer. ‘I have eight grown boys.’
‘Have you raised them all right, as good Democrats?’ asks
the congressman. ‘Well, sir,’ says the farmer, slightly
embarrassed, ‘seven of them are Democrats.’ ‘What
about the eighth?’ asks the congressman. ‘Well, you see,
sir,’ stammers the farmer, worriedly rubbing the back of his
neck, ‘my boy Zeke, he got to reading’, and…’”
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