Janet Reno, W.’s (and Daddy’s) men, tilted like a Fox? &c.

June 26, 2001 10:00 a.m.

anet Reno, former attorney general, Elián-snatcher, and potential Democratic candidate for governor, has told a Spanish-language radio station, “I did what I did for one human reason [she is speaking, of course, of the snatch at gunpoint]: I think the little boy belongs to his father.” Good. At least she’s dropped that nonsense about what the rule of law required.

A report has it that a good many of George W. Bush’s appointees worked in the administration of his father: some 43 percent. This is being spun as, “Look, he’s relying on all his daddy’s men!” Another way to interpret the news is: Some 43 percent of those working in this Republican administration worked in the previous Republican administration (paternity quite aside). This does not seem terribly abnormal.

Here’s one of the questions of the hour: Is the Fox News Channel biased to the right, or does it just seem that way, because it has more conservatives than usual and we are used to a left-wing monopoly, or near-monopoly? One school says, “Yes, we are so accustomed to a left-wing monopoly that balance looks like a gross rightward tilt.” Another school says, “C’mon, guys, Fox News is right-wing, plain and simple.”

I happen to tend toward the first school. But that’s not what I want to say. What I want to say is, I recently raised this question with a group of thoughtful people, and got a very interesting response, or two: One person said, “It’s like the University of Chicago [this speaker’s alma mater]. Because it has more than the usual amount of conservatives, or free-marketeers, it’s seen as a right-wing school. But the truth is, most of the faculty and students are on the left. It’s just that, because there’s more than a token or two, the university is seen as some right-wing bastion.” Then someone else chimed in, “Same is true of Claremont McKenna. That’s known as a conservative institution: but it is simply balanced.”

I can’t speak with authority on any of this. But it does seem clear that, in our time and place, mere balance can seem like roaring right-wing dominance.

One of the things that should have died with the Jeffords defection is the myth that the Washington press corps is cynical and hard-boiled. Or rather, that myth should be qualified: The Washington press corps is plenty cynical and hard-boiled — toward conservatives. Jim Jeffords did something of breathtaking expedience: He waited until the Senate was 50-50, and he could alter the course of politics in America, to make his move. Through Reagan, Gingrich, and everything else that’s scary, Jeffords stayed put; only the rise of “compassionate conservatism” prompted his bolt. If the Senate had been, say, 58-42 in favor of the Republicans, and Jeffords decided to leave the party because his mind and heart simply couldn’t take it anymore, that would have been fairly admirable: He would, for example, have had to give up his committee chairmanship. But the circumstances of his switch were far, far different — and the Washington press corps was remarkably uncynical and un-hard-boiled about that. I happen to wish the pressies were cynical and hard-boiled: uniformly so.

And, while we’re on the subject of senators: When John McCain departs from the administration, and blasts it, he is regarded as maverick and independent-minded and gutsy and so on. He’s no one’s yes-man, nosirree! But hardly anyone has been tougher on the administration than conservative senator James Inhofe, who blasted Bush mercilessly over his decision to get the Navy out of Vieques. Was Inhofe hailed as maverick, and independent-minded, and all those nice things? Are you kidding?

I am something of a student of New York Times leads — not “ledes,” as journalists often spell it, out of sheer affectation — and one on Saturday was a beaut. Under Katharine Q. Seelye’s byline — by the way, that is the second-most-famous middle-initial Q in America, after Prof. James Q. Wilson — a Page 1 article began, “House votes this week against oil drilling…seemed to be a clear sign of a new assertiveness among Republicans to stand up for the environment.” That lead, it should not be necessary to say, purveys an editorial opinion: that opposition to oil drilling equals standing up for the environment. You and I know that a person can be sensitive to the environment, and see a need for government to stand watch over the environment, and still believe that drilling — some drilling — is appropriate. Drilling is not necessarily earth-rape; opposition to drilling is not necessarily “standing up for the environment” (it can be, for example, a political tactic); and our paper of record should keep its opinions on the editorial page, where they belong.

(Let me add a quick something: I once thought it would be a good idea to publish a book of conservative trivia entitled, “What Does the ‘Q’ Stand For? and Other Right-minded Questions.”)

You will have noticed that Rep. Gary Condit’s people have started speculating about Chandra Levy’s possible “infatuation” with him. They are beginning to paint a picture of the missing intern as some kind of deranged stalker. Now, she may or may not have been — but this talk is very familiar. It is reminiscent, of course, of the Clintonites’ spin about Monica Lewinsky. Early in that scandal, Rep. Charlie Rangel, a faithful friend of the president’s, called Lewinsky a “poor child” with “emotional problems,” not “playing with a full deck.” One of the Clinton lawyers, Warren L. Dennis, referred to her as a “born stalker.”

Of course, the president had had a sexual affair with his intern — in the Oval Office. One thing I do know, and that is that it’s not very nice to cast aspersions on a young woman who is missing and about whom the worst is feared. Can’t Condit’s people wait until she turns up, alive or dead, before they start spinning and smearing?

The other day, I read a typical story in the New York Post: that Rudy Giuliani was going after the city’s Board of Education (once again), demanding that it account for “missing millions” (a reference to dollars, not people). I was reminded that one of the things I will miss most about Giuliani as mayor is that he and his people pay attention to things. They don’t let much slide; they are on top of what they should be on top of. It’s hard to imagine a liberal Democratic mayor — which is the kind we will next get — paying attention to what the Board of Ed. does, holding it to account. It’s hard to imagine that a liberal Democratic mayor will ever demand excellence, or competence, or honesty, from any element of the education establishment. But Giuliani and his crew care — there’s a word you don’t see much in connection with Republican politicians and government. This kind of caring — caring about what sort of schools the Democrats inflict on us — doesn’t count as caring, officially, but it is. Warring against crime, for that matter, is caring. But Giuliani will never be credited as a political executive who cares — which is too bad.

It is one of the recurring points of NR senior editor David Pryce-Jones, author of The Strange Death of the Soviet Union, among many other brilliant and important books: The Communist states never had the kind of accounting that Nazi Germany underwent — no Nuremberg-like trials, no de-Communization, no anything. And this retards the democratic progress of the formerly Communist countries today.

With this in mind, it was heartening to read recently that the Hungarian government had tried and convicted an old army commander named Istvan Dudas. Dudas was responsible for a massacre that took place during the 1956 Uprising. As the AP related, a crowd of over 1,000 surrounded the garrison of which Dudas had charge, demanding that the Communist red star be removed. Dudas, apparently, ordered his men to fire into the crowd, killing 50 people.

The government chose not to force the 77-year-old man to serve his sentence of three years; but at least there was an accounting.

Speaking of David Pryce-Jones, another of his books is The Hungarian Revolution, published in 1969. This is, for my money, the best account of that episode: informative, gripping, and morally unshakable. Find it if you can.

You know how we have an "Ask the Editor" service? Well, I have a question for Jonah Goldberg, which I would like to pose here, rather than in the regular forum (and I invite any other cognoscente — that’s the correct spelling, by the way, in the singular, so don’t give me any guff — to answer as well): In the opening sequence of The Simpsons, Lisa is kicked out of band practice for being unruly. This seems out of character, even given her exuberance on the saxophone. Lisa is very much a goody-goody; if you know her from the show, it’s hard to imagine that she would ever be booted from a classroom. My question is, did the show’s creators originally have other ideas for Lisa? Was she supposed to be a bit more like Bart? What gives? The Lisa part of the opening sequence seems incongruous.

While we’re on popular culture, I’d like to recommend a movie, which is not usually my business: The other night, the missus and I rented Best in Show. This must be one of the funniest, most intelligent, best acted, most imaginative, most enjoyable movies I’ve ever seen. It plays off the Westminster dog show, and it is, in the main, a parodic documentary. The movie’s writers are Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, who also act in it. They are, demonstrably, hugely talented men — and Guest has the additional distinction of being married to Jamie Lee Curtis, which is no minor achievement.

In the previous installment of “Impromptus,” I remarked on the lamentable fact that the Bush/Republican states are known as the “red states” while the Gore/Democratic ones are known as the “blue states.” Many readers wrote to record their own lamentations, and one of them said this: “When I was in the Army, we did war games (usually called ‘field exercises’), and the Op-For or Opposing Force — the bad guys — were always red on our maps. Our forces were, of course, blue. So the use of red for Republican has always struck me as…wrong.” But, he continued, “think of the possibilities” for Democrats! They can now say, “Better dead than red,” or, “Are you now or have you ever been a red?” or “There are 57 reds [Bush appointees] in the State Department!”

Clever.

Also in the previous installment, I addressed the question of The Most Misspelled Word in the English Language. My nominee, based on my editorial experience, was millennium, very often spelled with only one n. I remembered that my old friend and colleague at The Weekly Standard, Richard Starr, voted for desiccate, which is almost always spelled “dessicate.” I should have remembered that another of Richard’s candidates was minuscule, very often spelled “miniscule” — the “mini” makes people think of small.

NRO readers were eager to weigh in on this. One reported that, much to his sorrow, he had misspelled millennium in a Christmas poem, mailed out to the masses. Another sent an article about a high school in Florida that had millennium misspelled on all its diplomas (the paper that published that report admitted to frequently misspelling the word, too).

Still others — including several teachers — nominated more misspelled words, among them harass, occasional, definite, supersede (people want to write “supercede,” knowing that cede is a word), commitment, committee, and committed. Another big misspelled word is misspell itself: This is often written “mispell,” a double embarrassment. This reminds me that one of the most frequently mispronounced words in the English language is, in fact, mispronunciation: Thinking of the verb, people want to say, “mispronounciation” — “noun” instead of “nun.”

I myself (back to spelling now) have always had trouble with raccoon and vacuum — What’s doubled? What’s not? One thing people seem to agree on is that, once you have trouble spelling a word — in childhood, say — it is very hard to shake it. The habits linger.

You will surely be impressed, as I was, by the research of NRO reader Mark Nau. He investigated the frequency of misspelled words by means of that great database, the Internet. He writes, “Using Google, I looked for the word millennium, then its misspelled compatriot, ‘millenium.’ The correct form gets 4.11 million hits, while the latter gets 1.29 million. The count of the incorrect form is extremely impressive, both in sheer volume and as a percentage. Here is how the candidates fared:

“Millennium vs. ‘Millenium’: 4,110,000 to 1,290,000, 23.9%
Accommodate vs. ‘Accomodate’: 1,960,000 to 210,000, 9.7%
Occurred vs. ‘Occured’: 6,030,000 to 366,000, 5.7%
Desiccate vs. ‘Dessicate’: 3,860 to 1,190, 23.6%

“I then checked a few other words that came to mind:

“Supersede vs. ‘Supercede’: 155,000 to 38,400, 19.9%
Noticeable vs. ‘Noticable’: 597,000 to 71,000, 10.6%
Minuscule vs. ‘Miniscule’: 114,000 to 57,900, 33.7%

“At which point I ceased, pleased to have found an arguably stronger candidate than your own [millennium]. Note the power of the ‘mini-’ prefix.” Indeed.

Hats off, and thank you, to Mark Nau.

I would like to close with an obit, little noticed by most people, no doubt, but acutely noticed by me. He rated about two and a half inches in the New York Times, which was pretty good. He was Ike Brown, a pinch hitter for the Detroit Tigers during my formative years. I loved Ike Brown, and also another Brown, Gates Brown, who, like Ike, was a pinch hitter for the Tigers. In addition, these two Browns looked alike. I somehow got it into my head that they were brothers.

One memorable afternoon, I walked into the home of a friend of mine, whose father was a coach. And there, seated at the kitchen table, was Gates Brown, big as life (and he was big, period). I was startled and thrilled to see him, being a Tiger…fanatic, is the only word, and, of course, that is the word from which we get the simpler “fan.” (The Italian word for “fan” is tifoso, or a victim of typhoid fever.) Trying to make conversation, I chirped to Gates Brown, “How’s your brother Ike?” He wearily informed me that Ike was not his brother. He had probably gotten this many, many times before. I was absolutely mortified, wanting to die. To compound the matter, there was the racial aspect — both men were black. Again, I wanted to die. But Gates, bless him, went on to tell me how Ike was: where he was, what he was doing. That salved things somewhat.

The obit said that the Browns roomed together. According to a former teammate of theirs, “Ike would wake up every morning saying, ‘It’s a beautiful day,’ whether it was or not.” What a beautiful guy — both Browns.