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Now one reads that, on the day she launched her '06 Senate-campaign website — FriendsofHillary.com — it had so many visitors that it crashed. Hillary Clinton is the princess, or queen, of the Democratic party, which represents about half the country. (It just kills my fellow cons when they are reminded that Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush, nationally.) Hillary is an utter heroine to a huge chunk of our nation. Much as that nauseates us, we have to be aware of it — and plan and act accordingly! Let me emphasize: It isn't just lesbian, socialist vegans who are pro-Hillary; that is a comforting fantasy. It's good and ordinary and patriotic American folk who are drawn to her. Believe me — I know some!
Well, John Kerry, the other day, accused President Bush of having "the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover." Aside from the colossal asininity of that charge: He just had to get the name of Hoover in there, didn't he! Mind you, President Hoover left office 70 years ago.
Anyway . . .
I don't recall that Hitler extolled the glory of the Lutheran Church as he and Eva undertook their final embraces. (Of course, Stalin did discover Russia — when his back was to the wall — as against International Communism and the New Soviet Man, didn't he?)
The curse of color continues. (Pardon the alliteration.)
The other day, at the urging of a friend of mine — not that I needed any urging — I picked up Seth's From Heaven Lake, his travel book concerned with China and Tibet (I insist on separating the two). At the beginning of the book, he referred — at least twice — to China's "Liberation." By this he meant the coming of the Communists to power in 1949. He was not merely quoting government propaganda; he wasn't using "Liberation" ironically (and, yes, he employed the capital letter) — he appeared really to mean it. This is the regime, needless to say, that would kill tens of millions of people, in one of the worst cases of genocide, oppression, and surreality in human history. ("Surreality" is a fishy word — not authorized — but I avail myself of it.) I'll pick up From Heaven Lake sometime later. But I didn't really have the stomach to keep going. And, by the way, Seth pronounces his name "sate." I believe I once titled a piece "'Seth,' Rhymes with 'Great.'" It's still true.
Well, the best I can do is quote my heroes Strunk & White, who rule as follows:
Professor Strunk and Mr. White got into my brain early, and they will never be dislodged, hate to tell you — not that I can remember what I read yesterday.
"Dear Jay: You say, 'David Frum for President,' if Orrin Hatch succeeds in getting the Constitution amended to allow foreign-born citizens to be elected to our highest office. Okay. But after President Frum: President Steyn!"
"One more handful of downers from you, Mister, and Impromptus may be moved out of the golden hour . . . like to lunchtime, or after dinner." Can't say I haven't been warned!
"Plus ça change! [New York mayor Michael] Bloomberg's got a little Russian in him."
"The Democratic party is totally bankrupt, full of personal vendetta and hatred. They have no ideas on what they would do in power, only what they don't want the Republicans to do. I do not trust them with the security or the future of this country anymore. "When I voted for Clinton, I felt the country deserved him. We didn't deserve the best. I don't feel that way anymore. I want someone who stands for the things that this country stands for, someone who has read the Constitution and isn't interested in living under the U.N. Charter. I want to vote for someone who understands that those of us out of work right now want jobs, not unemployment extensions. I am not hearing anything from the Democrats that leads me to believe that they get it."
"Dear Jay: While I don't agree with separating out the gay kids from normal high schools into an all-gay high school, I can understand its appeal. Back where I grew up — rural/suburban California — I desperately wanted to go to a high school with more Asian kids (I'm half Japanese and it shows), because we stuck out in a school that was heavily Latino and black. There were about four of us in my graduating class of 650 or so. To get an idea of our dropout rate, know that, our freshman year, we had around 900 students in my class. "The fundamental problem in many high schools today is that teachers don't discipline the students. It got to the point where my friends and I, though we were all males, would not go to the restrooms unless we were in a group, because it wasn't safe. The segregated high school for gay kids is understandable: The few obviously gay kids in high school frequently got what one who later became my friend called 'the still living sh** kicked out of us' because the teachers would do NOTHING. "I think the separate-high-school solution is like papering over a crack in the wall. The difficult problem of the crack is that the house's foundation must be reset. But papering over it makes things seem better. Getting the kids who are most at risk of getting clobbered safely away from a dangerous school is papering over the problem; what really needs to be done is to make schools themselves safer. Of course, that would require holding poor minority kids responsible for their actions, which was unthinkable in my area. So these young thugs become dangerous older thugs . . ."
"Second, times have changed. When I graduated high school, you were just starting to see same-sex couples at proms. Now, it's no big deal. And I was in Livonia, Mich., so if it was that casual in the Midwest in 1990, I can't imagine why you'd need a segregated school in NYC."
"Moreover, I think the abuse actually engenders certain political attitudes that conservatives find undesirable. The gay kid who is constantly picked on starts to resent all straight people for the way they've made him suffer and he will want nothing more than to reject every aspect of culture that he believes is representative of heterosexuality (fidelity, marriage, abstinence, etc.). I also think it causes him to identify his sexuality as being more central to his being than a gay student who wasn't picked on does (me, for example). I would think that, as a conservative, you would want to avoid this . . ."
"I'm in high school in the Bay Area, and am a bit of a theater dweeb. Naturally, many of my friends are gay (or bisexual, or whatever). Whether or not the rest of the school views it as cool, my friends do; two of them go around saying, 'We're the scary gay drama upperclassmen,' and laughing about the 'dumb straight kids.' I, being 17 and (as aforementioned) a theater dweeb, have done a fair amount of wavering about sexuality. I'm still not quite sure about myself, but I do know that the gay community is about the dumbest thing ever; no matter what I feel, I'm certainly not aligning myself with it. These friends also insist that all of our straight friends are simply in denial, and try to 'lesbify' all of them. One of them recently decided she's actually straight after all (she is. Trust me), and the others proceeded to insist that she wasn't and to bully her into being bisexual again. In their view, if you realize you're not straight, you're seeing the light, but if you realize you're not gay, you're lying to yourself. In any case, whether they're 'cool' or not, they're certainly not harassed at all."
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ever am I more annoying to my fellow conservatives than when I state how
popular Hillary Clinton is, and what a threat she is, on the political
stage. I annoyed conservatives all through that Senate campaign, when
many were chortling "carpetbagger," "liberal extremist,"
etc. And I have done so more recently by pointing to the mind-boggling
popularity of her memoir. This is a book that, from what I've heard, is
dull and unnewsworthy. And it's flying off the shelves. It is winning
back that historic advance, and going on from there.
All of my life, the Democrats have been running against Herbert Hoover,
one of the most maligned men in American history (despite his undeniable
errors). Walter Mondale had a great line in 1984, when he was irked at
Ronald Reagan's habit of quoting FDR, Harry Truman, and other Democrats.
"Stick to your own heroes," said Fritz: "Harding, Hoover,
and Nixon." Pretty good, huh?
