September 30, 2003, 8:33 a.m.
The question of the media, the question of the Democrats, a composer responds, and more

I have a concern today: and that is that the gap between the situation in Iraq as it is, and our media's reporting on it, is dangerously wide. So much of what you think about Iraq depends on what you read.

It seems to me that the media have a rooting interest in a quagmire scenario over there. They (by and large — and one must generalize in these matters) were against the Iraq campaign, and they're against the Bush administration in general. Naturally, they want to justify their pre-campaign position and their general disapproval of the administration. So they paint Iraq as black as possible.

As usual with the media, it's not a case so much of accuracy as of emphasis and proportion (although accuracy is still on occasion a problem).

I have talked to several people, who are solid internationalists, and solid Bush-backers, who think Iraq is a disaster, and that we possibly should never have gone in in the first place. I really can't blame them: because they base these opinions on the information they're given.

I tell them things that counter their bleak picture of how it's going — and they say, "Where do you get these things? Why am I not hearing about them?" And if you stick to Dan, Tom, and Peter — well, you're not necessarily going to hear about them.

I'm reminded of something that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in the mid-1980s: "If I relied on the news media for my information about Nicaragua, I wouldn't support aid to the contras either" (I'm paraphrasing).

I guess I should say, pro forma, that I'm all for critical journalism, both on the news-reporting end and on the commentary end. But my impression is that the reporting from Iraq, and the commentary about Iraq, are dangerously unbalanced. Magnificent things are occurring in Iraq, along with the shooting of U.S. soldiers. An entire nation has a chance at rebirth — a chance that, sadly, doesn't come to every nation. And there are actually people who are intelligent and good who, thanks to what they read and hear, are convinced that the situation for Iraqis is worse than under Saddam and his Baathist thugocracy.

A couple of days ago, Maureen Dowd — a star opinion columnist for the New York Times — wrote that the U.S. had "trashed two countries." That's Afghanistan and Iraq. Trashed.

Do you suppose that Afghans and Iraqis feel that way? Do they long for the Taliban and Saddam, and their "untrashed" states?

As I have often said, the administration should do a better job making the pro-war-on-terror, pro-Iraq-campaign, pro-"occupation" case (or cases). A conservative Republican president can't just inspire and rally and polemicize — he has to report the news, in a way. Because the full-time news people won't necessarily give him any help.

Having said that, I was heartened by an Associated Press report about "Operation Pencil Box" — a U.S. program to get the schools of Tikrit back on their feet.

I quote from Patrick Quinn's opening:

Sitting inside a dusty office in a shrapnel-damaged building, Gerald Fox stares intently at his laptop, juggling the cost of electrical wiring, pipes, brick, and mortar.

In recent weeks, the 34-year-old U.S. Army sergeant has been working on a proposal to have nine schools rebuilt in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, at a cost of $243,300. He already has contracts for repairs to 14 other schools and has assessed 92 others.

His work is part of a project designed to repair some of the 2,000 schools in the three Iraqi provinces controlled by the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division. The aim is to have some schools ready by Oct. 1, when students go back to class.

Let me remind you of something you already know, ladies and gentlemen: This is a most unusual nation, the United States. We are a most unusual "conqueror," a most unusual "occupier." Few Americans realize how exceptional we are in the history of the world. You don't hear that kind of thing much in our schools — at least I didn't, back in dear old Ann Arbor, where the posters of Che Guevara were plenteous and the air was thick with reefer.

A couple of comments, late, I know, on last week's Democratic debate. Howard Dean said, ". . . we need to remember that the enemy is George Bush, not each other." I understand the loose rhetoric of political debate — but I believe that if a Republican had referred to a Democrat as "the enemy," we'd've heard about it — from the media at large. Is that too paranoid for you? Or just realistic?

Also, Sen. Edwards referred to "the investor class" — the capital-gains tax rate should be lowered "so we can expand the investor class in America." Has he been reading Ramesh Ponnuru? I certainly hope so!

Then, here comes Dick Gephardt: "Greed, selfishness, can kill this great democracy and ruin capitalism. We need a president different than George Bush, who was brought to office by the millionaires."

By the millionaires, huh? Boy, there must be a lot of millionaires in America. And too bad Al Gore didn't have any millionaires backing him, poor penniless candidate!

(For years, the following has been true: The average contribution to the Republican party is much lower than the average contribution to the Democratic party. The Republicans, in this respect, are more grass-rootsy and populist.)

Speaking of economic demagoguery, Candidate Kucinich railed against — get this — the "maldistribution of the wealth." That is one of the most revealing things I've heard all year. This Democrat believes that there is something called "wealth" to be "distributed," and that's pretty much all one needs to know.

Finally, I have said several times that Joe Lieberman is the Democratic candidate the White House should fear most. For one thing, he is personable, likable — not an ideologue (unless he is trying to be, which he did a lot, unfortunately, in the 2000 campaign). Said Lieberman in this debate, "In the Bush administration, the foxes are guarding the foxes, and the middle-class hens are getting plucked." And "I want to make clear I said 'plucked.'"

Not bad.

I guess the acceptance of Al Sharpton is complete — certainly in the Democratic party, certainly in the media establishment of the United States. Not another Democratic presidential candidate, not a mainstream journalist (as far as I can tell) mentions Steven Pagones or Freddy's Fashion Mart (to begin with).

Pagones is the man whose life Sharpton all but ruined: He charged that he raped a girl named Tawana Brawley (who was never raped by anybody). Pagones sued for defamation and, believe it or not, won. Sharpton refused to pay up — but eventually a group of his cronies did, presumably so that Sharpton could get on more easily with his political career (although I'm not sure that would have mattered). Sharpton has steadfastly refused to apologize to Pagones — he apparently considers it a matter of perverse principle.

And at Freddy's Fashion Mart, he merely had a hand in inciting the murder of eight people. He turned his ire on "white interlopers," and a more action-oriented extremist turned his gun and matches on the store. (For a history of Sharpton, you may wish to see my "Power Dem" from 2000: here.)

But now Sharpton is basically just another Democrat, as unremarkable as, say, Sen. Dodd. The other presidential candidates welcome him as just another guy on the platform. He swans through the various capitals, glad-handing, attending A-list parties, and all the rest of it.

Look, I'm all for repentance and redemption — but redemption without repentance is a little odd.

I was slightly sickened to see President Bush toast Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil. Tell you why.

I had just read an article by Armando Valladares on da Silva and Cuba. Da Silva is a longtime Castroite, one of the dictator's biggest apologists in the democratic world (which is saying something). As Valladares recorded, da Silva said of Castro in 2001, "In spite of the fact that your face already is marked with wrinkles, Fidel, your soul remains clean because you never betrayed the interests of your people. . . . Thank you, Fidel, thank you because you continue to exist."

That is pretty sick-making — a (supposed) democrat slobbering over a totalitarian torturer. But there's more.

Da Silva has publicly called Valladares a "picareta" — which I'm told is Portuguese for "liar" or "pretender." Now, Valladares, of course, is the opposite: This great Cuban dissident — the author of Against All Hope — is called the Cuban Solzhenitsyn, and with justice. It is well to recall that such slurs were hurled against Solzhenitsyn too, putting Valladares in very good company. Apparently, this is the price one must pay to stand up against dictatorship.

My main point: I wouldn't much care to toast Lula da Silva.

Laura Bush has been in Paris, in part to mark America's reentry into UNESCO, and that reminds me: It was Reagan who withdrew us from UNESCO, because the organization had become hopelessly corrupt and anti-democratic. But now, apparently, UNESCO has reformed, enough to convince the current president that it merits U.S. participation. Fine. But remember: It didn't reform by itself, on its own initiative; it reformed because of what the Gipper did — boldly, to storms of criticism — all those years ago.

I've made this point too many times in Impromptus — but I thought I'd throw it at you once again.

Two new books have appeared from the orbit of The New Criterion, the sublime journal edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. One is from Roger himself: an expanded edition of Art's Prospect. And the other is by Brooke Allen: Twentieth-Century Attitudes, a collection of literary essays. A nice write-up by former NR-nik and current New Criterion associate editor James Panero can be found here.

In a column last week, I remarked on a new symphony by Stephen Hartke, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for the recent anniversary of September 11. I hit pretty hard at his use of the medieval poem "The Ruin" for this symphony, and the composer has responded. Portions of his letter are as follows:

". . . The fact is, I chose ["The Ruin"] precisely because it celebrates the achievement of those ancient builders and their striving, even though, as must happen to all things, the great city they built suffered misfortune. Your take on the line 'Death swept away all the bravery of men' is simply wrong — after all, death is final, and in its finality it sweeps away everything. I certainly was not intending this as any sort of deprecation of those who died that day or of those who worked so tirelessly and, yes, bravely to rescue whom they could, and I believe that I am well within my rights to resent your inference that somehow I was impugning their memory and deeds.

"The many people who spoke to me after each performance [in the Philharmonic's subscription series] were quite unanimous in hearing the work as an affirmation of the human spirit, as a call to carry on, to resist evil, to strive. I do not subscribe to Prof. [Paul] Kennedy's views nor do I buy the once-fashionable 'End of History' argument. One of the things that drew me to this text was that it is indeed quite old and that since its composition many great civilizations have risen and fallen. I myself have been sensing a squeamishness in America about striving — all these debates about whether or not to keep building tall buildings, or to have a new tower at Ground Zero — and I wanted to remind people that just because disaster can strike, we mustn't give up. This Old English poet was observing a fact: Roman Britain crumbled — but he was acknowledging something else as well: Their effort was worth it, it was glorious. Given that this text was written around the year 800, the poet himself was living at a time of transition when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were beginning to come into their own as a new, vibrant culture — not yet capable of the splendor of the Romans, perhaps, but I sense that the poet knew that one day it would truly flourish. . . ."

Readers, please note that Mr. Hartke's Symphony No. 3 can be heard via the New York Philharmonic's website, here.

Earlier in the month, I had commented on the execution of that killer of an abortion doctor, saying that, as far as I had been able to observe, the anti-capital-punishment forces had been strangely silent on this execution.

I received the following, corrective letter:

"Hello, Mr. Nordlinger: I am a longtime activist in opposition to the death penalty and wanted to let you know that the organizations that I belong to were indeed active in protesting this execution, as we do all executions, regardless of the crime. In fact, there were a few more people from my organizations there than in some other recent executions. I would no more want this man put to death than I would want anyone put to death. We liberals have many faults, it's true, but this inconsistency you mentioned isn't one of them."

The rest of that letter dealt with music — a subject much bigger than death!

Finally, I'd like to give you a reason to love the New York Post's right-leaning gossipeuse Cindy Adams, who in her column yesterday wrote:

"At the very special Asia House breakfast for the very special Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, her people told me she'd arrived the day before 5:30 a.m., was leaving that night 7:30 p.m., was jammed with meetings, U.N., etc., but had squeezed in the musical 'Nine.' We'd met before, so her close circle, Robert Romulo and newspaperwoman Beth Romulo, widow of General Carlos P. Romulo, edged me in to get her quote about enjoying a Broadway show. But I couldn't. Because the enormous behind and ego and mouth of Richard Holbooke, who was once ambassador and whose huge career like his huge rear is behind him, physically blocked me. 'You just wait a minute,' he said for no reason other than to act important like he once was and/or keep a working reporter from doing her job. Everyone who saw talked about his boorishness — not just me."

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