A reader from Texas writes to tell me that ‘Doctor Pepper’ should be written ‘Dr. Pepper’. He’s right. My mistake. The only time I tried that essence of evil I threw the can away so quickly that I cannot have had time to fix the correct spelling in my mind. Another reader (also from the Lone Star state) e-mails that there is a ‘Dr. Pepper’ museum in Waco, Texas.

Now, I’m not saying that Dr. Pepper devotees can be compared with an esoteric religious sect, but…

We have a reader in the Netherlands! Hans from Holland writes to say that he checks out the Corner ‘every day’ because he likes ‘to read about the free world. Good guy that he is, Hans will be voting for Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

One question from the suits:

Hans, do you have a subscription to NRODT?

That revolting despotism currently known as ‘Saudi’ Arabia is apparently interested in joining the WTO. The New York Sun is reporting (no link available) that, needless to say, the ‘Kingdom’ is hedging discussion about any application with numerous caveats. Unsurprisingly, this totalitarian state is, for example, not prepared to liberalize its ‘audio-visual’ sector. In addition, The Sun quotes Arab News as saying that Saudi Arabia will “not compromise its ‘unique status’ as the home of Islam’s holiest sites for the sake of joining the WTO”.

At this stage in the proceedings, it would be much more interesting to know whether the country’s government is prepared to take meaningful steps to change the country’s ‘status’ as a source of financial and ideological support for Islamic extremism. Until it does, this greedy, grasping and venomous regime should be told to shove off.

We’ve mentioned Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the Corner before. She’s the woman living in Holland who had to go into hiding after the death threats that followed her ‘admission’ that she was no longer a practicing Muslim. Now she is standing for election to the Dutch parliament. She’s interviewed in today’s Daily Telegraph.

Multiculturalism is, she believes, a calamitous mistake born of "a misplaced sense of guilt or pity". She notes that it has allowed militant imams "preaching hate" to indoctrinate youths in segregated schools, all heavily subsidized by the Dutch taxpayer. According to the report, she is “demanding an immediate end to state funding for 700 Islamic clubs, often run by hard-line clerics.”

Quite right.

I don’t know if this will be read anyone in the Netherlands, but if it is, here’s a message:

Vote for Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Here’s an excellent article by the Cato Institute's Doug Bandow on why it is not in America’s interest for the UK to sign up for the Euro. He’s right, of course, but, much more important (to me anyway), it’s not in Britain’s interest either.

Via blogger Iain Murray.

There’s trouble in Greenland. Who knew? Apparently, the government has fallen because of a row over the decision by a senior civil servant to summon a “healer” to drive evil spirits and “negative energy” out of government offices in Greenland’s capital, the marvelously monosyllabic Nuuk.

Evil spirits? Negative Energy? It’s just so much merde, but don’t tell Cherie Blair, wife of poor old Tony. She’s famous for her ‘bio-electric’ pendant filled with ‘magic crystals’ designed to ward off harmful rays from computers and mobile phones. More recently, she has, reportedly, taken to chatting to the dead, a weakness of another 'first lady' that I could mention. What is wrong with these people?

My own personal favorite tale of such madness comes from this account (recounted with relish in the Blair-hostile Daily Mail) of Tony and Cherie on holiday in Mexico:

“They stripped to their swimming costumes for a rebirthing ceremony in which they screamed in a special hut as they smeared each other with mud from the jungle, together with water melon and papaya, while ancient Mayan songs were chanted.”

So much for the Enlightenment.

France has never been known as the home of free speech, but even by the standards of that benighted country this is a new low point:

A French court has just ordered a magazine to pay Beaujolais producers libel damages of $300,000 for denouncing their product as ‘fermented fruit juice’ and quoting a wine guru who referred to Beaujolais as a “vin de merde”.

That’s tough criticism? Those French judges should hear what I have say about Doctor Pepper.

Meanwhile all lovers of liberty – and good wine - should boycott Beaujolais.

Today's Newsday gives a somewhat positive review to Mr. Sterling. As it is revealed in the article (and presumably in the episode tonight), Sterling hesitates to accept the governor's appointment to serve as senator because his own father was in politics and was not around during his childhood years. Family breakdown leads to liberalism -- Q.E.D.

I've been re-reading Tom Wolfe for an upcoming NRO piece I've just finished. In my old copy of his out-of-print anthology The Purple Decades, I found this golden passage describing a fictional "Modern Churchman." It was written in the 1970s, but it sure adds context to current events, which didn't emerge from nowhere. Wolfe writes:

He was a socially acceptable but obscure minister to the Tassel Loafer & Tennis Lesson Set until the day in 1975 when he announced that he was a pederast. He not only announced it, he enunciated his theory that the sexual life of the child was an essential part of, not an obstacle to, the spiritual life of the child, and that anyone who doubted that God had created a link of sexual attraction between generations was an upland Tennessee aborigine.

When he held a Holy Roller Disco Night in the sanctuary and urged the recitation of the prayer book 'in tongues,' he was featured in the Religious sections of both Time and Newsweek, and his elevation to bishop was said to be imminent.

Kentucky State Representative Susan Westrom has introduced legislation to abolish the legal confidentiality of statements made in confession to a priest (or by people of other faiths speaking to a minister, rabbi, etc.) According to Westrom's bill, "The privilege shall not extend to any communication relating to the neglect or abuse of a minor child." Should the bill become law, it will deter parents or other caregivers from seeking the help of priests and other religious counselors -- especially since aggressive social workers tend to define "neglect" very broadly.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights explains: "This bill does not touch tangentially on church-state relations—it cuts to the core. The sanctity of the confessional is one of the most important elements of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Indeed, it is impossible to fathom how the sacrament could operate if the government is permitted to penetrate the privacy of the priest-penitent relationship. At stake is both the religious liberty clause of the First Amendment and the establishment clause....the cases of child sexual abuse that have come to light have had nothing to do with information learned in the confessional."

The Kentucky bill -- and similar bills sure to be introduced in other states -- should be understood not simply as expressions of hostility towards religious freedom, but as important steps toward the total information state, in which all legal claims to privacy from state surveillance, such as the accountant-client privilege, are under attack.

Iraq must train convoys of martyrs in belief, and this will be possible only by [studying] the Koran. The Koran is the most energizing [book] for heroism and honor, and there is no room in it for weakness and laxness. 'Fight them; Allah will punish them at your hands, and will humiliate them, and will heal the hearts of the believers' [Koran 9:14]. Those knowledgeable in the Koran can, by Allah's will, as is happening in Palestine, shock the foundations of the enemy, whatever its strength. They can, with Allah's help, defeat it, however cruel it is. How great is the difference between those who seek martyrdom and those who seek [the life of] this world!

"Should doctors be required to provide non-English-speaking patients with translators?"

Yes 234 (11%)

Dreher gets sent to Holland. Miller gets to go play with cool stuff at NORAD. Now Derbyshire gets a column in the magazine. And all I get from Rich is some oblique fatwah about extending my banishment to soyland? What the Hell is that? What's next? Ponnuru gets assigned an in depth-expose on the mis-use of rum at Club Meds? Maybe when my soy-fiesta is over, Rich will let me write a first "hand" story on the sorry state of proctological medicine in Third World countries. I say it again: Rich Lowry is a terrible, terrible person.

Proof that there is no pleasing some people may be found in this complaint from a Bosnian woman regarding the accents of her interpreters:

Hataija Pehlic, a Bosnian woman of 50, suffers from depression. At St. Luke's Hospital in 2000, she was served by a succession of phone interpreters on a squawk box for two hours a day during a month of psychotherapy. They spoke a common language, "but I felt really bad," Ms. Pehlic says through one of Ms. Brown's interpreters. "They had different accents" -- accents, that is, of Serbians and Croatians, the enemies who had killed her son and driven her husband to suicide during the Balkan bloodshed of the 1990s.

"Should doctors be required to provide non-English-speaking patients with translators?"

http://www.nice-tits.org/

A couple dozen readers -- please no more -- have sent me emails about what a tear tattoo by your eye means. Answers include: It shows you've been in jail, a gang, a rape gang etc. Some say it also means you've been raped or done some raping. Again, I don't know if this O'Keefe shmo actually had a tear-drop tat or whether he simply had a really unfortunate birthmark. If someone actually watched the segment, they might be able to clarify for me. As for the actual meaning of the tattoo, my sense is that it varies.

Corner reader Jeff Stockwell of Stockwell Design writes: "Working in advertising I find most of the copy that adorns web sites is either written by designers or clients. These people for the most part are not writers. I would guess that a professional writer came nowhere near the copy for that web site. And students can't write because unless they are being taught by a writer, they're not learning the correct skills. Being able to diagram a sentence qualifies one to be an English teacher, but not a writer.

"A woman I know is a professor of English (and writing, I think) somewhere in Texas. When I used to ask her to write newsletter articles for me, I just wanted to kill myself they were so incomprehensible. She used to crow about winning writing awards."

Jonathan - I knew there was a reason why Tapped had lapsed into self-parody. You nailed it.

A reader who followed the links to the school I mentioned earlier is befuddled by the school's mission statement, which pledges the school "to provide an environment conducive to the development and growth of the academic, social, and physical skills of each student by improving instruction and performance
outcomes, providing a safe and orderly school climate, and promoting
community involvement. "

Says the reader: "Environment conducive? Improving instruction and performance outcomes... ? Why is it educators can't write?"

Which prompts the question: why can't students write? Perhaps it starts here. This kind of asinine jargon is depressingly common, even among people who write for a living. I used to work for a newspaper whose bosses were thrilled when they came up with a "mission statement" that vowed to make the paper the community's "most valued information provider." Can you imagine H.L. Mencken or any of the great ink-stained wretches working for an "information provider"? If news executives want to figure out why fewer people are reading newspapers, maybe they should stop thinking of their enterprises as "information providers," which signals sterility, and start thinking of them as newspapers.

Ken Nichols O’Keefe is the guy I "debated" today on CNN International. Of course, I could be wrong, but he struck me as a barnacle of clichéd propaganda masquerading as a man of integrity. He’s leading a bunch of "human shields" to Iraq. He seemed to believe that risking his life automatically made his arguments right and honest. As if were I to agree to be a human shield for the Mafia, my action would be incontrovertibly morally correct. In the few short minutes we were on, the former U.S. Marine and soon to be Baath Party meat-prop suggested America was in on the 9/11 attacks, was going to war for oil, called me a coward (yawn), and mentioned a half-dozen times that Bush didn’t win a majority of the votes in the last election. It really is difficult to exaggerate how much this guy represents the pugnacious ignorance of the anti-war left. If Lenin were alive he would brief his staff on the meaning of "useful idiot" with this guy’s picture. It was hard to tell from the monitor, so I might be mistaken but I believe he has a fake tear tattooed next to his eye. For whom he metaphorically weeps, I could not tell you. But I can guess.

Several readers have been quick to alert me to the fact that Orwell later recanted these views. I knew that. But A) he was more right the first time and B) his recantation had more to do with forgiving the inner motives of the pacifists than the objective consequences of their actions. In other words, he wanted to withdraw the assertion that pacifists were inwardly pro-Nazi. I do not believe he changed his mind about the fact that pacifist actions were pro-Nazi in their results. Some excerpts from his 1944 column on the subject:

"....We are told that it is only people’s objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are ‘objectively’ aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once.

".... This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people’s motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions. For there are occasions when even the most misguided person can see the results of what he is doing. Here is a crude but quite possible illustration. A pacifist is working in some job which gives him access to important military information, and is approached by a German secret agent. In those circumstances his subjective feelings do make a difference. If he is subjectively pro-Nazi he will sell his country, and if he isn’t, he won’t. And situations essentially similar though less dramatic are constantly arising.
In my opinion a few pacifists are inwardly pro-Nazi, and extremist left-wing parties will inevitably contain Fascist spies. The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult."

"In so far as it hampers the British war effort, British pacifism is on the side of the Nazis and German pacifism, if it exists, is on the side of Britain and the USSR. Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi."

"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'''

West Wing promises to be the height of somber and serious drama compared to the offal heading our way in the form of "Mr. Sterling." "Mister" -- get it? As in Mister Smith, who went to Washington. "Sterling" as in "Sterling" silver, which is what his heart must be made of beneath that broad hunky expanse of man-chest (Prediction: we see the Senator with his shirt off within the first three episodes). Put the two together and it equals a weekly sprinkler system of crap. From the promos alone, the schtick seems to be that Mr. Sterling looks like Warren Beatty (before Beatty needed diamond-cutter lighting to prevent his forhead from looking like Oklahoma with a hairline), talks like John McCain channelling Oprah Winfrey and votes like Paul Wellstone. We already know he'll be an independent and that he likes to march with farm-workers. But, unlike most senators, he's actually willing to talk to them! Bless his heart. Maybe it's the soy milk in my veins or the nitrogen bubbles in my brain, but I think this may be the show most in need of the regular intrusion of Monty Python-esque bloodthirsty pirates to slaughter everyone in the room.

Again, the show reached a new plateau on the way to the bottom. I feel the need to watch it as a matter of professional obligation now more than anything else. The show does inform how millions of people think politics and liberalism work. But, as Hans and Franz used to say, listen to me now or believe me later: I would rather stop a weed whacker with my tongue than watch the heart-wrenching romantic barf-o-rama that next week's show promises to be. Watching C.J. deal with her ailing father would be awful enough. But watching her get smoochy-faced with Matthew Modine defies several clauses of the Geneva Convention.

Sorry, maybe it's the soy-dementia, but I had awful writer's block today. Regardless, I'm done. It's in K-Lo's hands. Now I've got to go to the park and then the vet -- both for Cosmo's benefit (don't worry, the vet trip is for a check-up only).

Man, complaining about my deadlines and mentioning my dog again, Tapped must be aghast.

Some people -- especially readers who've received snarky emails back from me -- might be wondering why I'm a bit cranky these days. I'll tell you why, and I am not making this up. It's because I've spent the last week on an all-vegan diet (not vegetarian, mind you. That would be cake -- which I can't eat because it's got eggs and butter in it). Stop laughing, it's true. Rich Lowry, the most awful human being on the planet, insisted it would make a great article for me to go all-soy and write about it for the mag. It has been awful. I can't talk about it any more here because I have to save the material for the mag. But, I thought I owed people an explanation. Still, if you have any insights, recipes, or vegan bistro suggestions, please let me know.

Good piece by Nick Schulz on an enviro-smear.

Taking a full two days to "respond" to my critique of their silly self-congratulatory discussion of the draft, the gang at Tapped ignores all of the substance of my remarks to accuse me -- and the Corner -- of being unserious, in a "I know you are but what am I?" tone. I guess, it's a fair point as far as pot-calling-the-kettle-blackism goes. But that doesn't go very far. First of all, I challenge them to call my dog unserious to his face. They shall meet the wrath that is Cosmo. Or they may just get a yawn and a tennis ball. Fickle is his warrior's heart.

More important, I think Tapped is playing the role of the earnest liberal to pitch perfect perfection (is that redundant?). There's a huge difference between not taking yourself too seriously and not being serious. Tapped seems to take itself extremely seriously. While I make jokes about my dog, my belly and the pecuniary perfidy of the suits. Vive la difference! But I'll stack the substance of my arguments -- and the Corner's -- against theirs any day. Their assertion that conservatives don't want a draft because it might make America a healthier society is a perfect example. The fact that there's no humor or irony (never mind evidence) in their argument makes it almost impossible to take it seriously. Do you guys even know any conservatives? Anyway, maybe I was too harsh. But such liberal earnestness irks me mightily. At times I expect them to exclaim "And if you elect me student body president, we'll have the best senior year ever!"