Here’s Mark Steyn on the European response to Arnold’s election. His conclusion?

”California's problem was that it was beginning to take on the characteristics of an EU state, not just in its fiscal incoherence but in its assumption that politics was a private dialogue between a lifelong political class and a like-minded media. It would be too much to expect Le Monde and the BBC to stop being condescending about American electorates. But they might draw a lesson and cease being such snots about their own.”

So I get to post a self-serving email to:

Hi Jonah,

I just read your corner comment about the hotline mistake and the example emails from your lefty readers. I am a political centrist and I'm comfortable saying that I can see through spin, propaganda, and lies as well as anyone. I must disagree with the delusional leftist jokers who emailed you because I consider you a very honest conservative. In no way do I see you as just a spinning/BS'ing republican party hack.

I've discovered why so many foul-mouthed buffoons are sending me this hysterical, unhinged nonsense about Dean (I don't mean the correction stuff, that's fair game. I mean the aggressive stupidity and crudity).

They're typical "Atrios" readers. My apologies to Dean fans. It turns out Dean-support isn't the common denominator at all. It's the sort of folks who think it takes a lot of cleverness to write like a ninth-grader who just learned the F word.

I've gotten a lot of email from Dean supporters saying I got it wrong about his "gaffe" with the Hispanic questioner. Apparently Dean had conflated answers to two different questioners. His reference to "your income level" was a reference to a previous question. I relied on the Hotline for the facts, something I am -- and will continue to be -- completely comfortable doing. The Hotline, if you didn't know, is an entirely non-partisan Washington tipsheet owned by the National Journal (which costs quite a bit to subscribe to). But in this case they got it wrong and therefor so did I.

What I find hilarious, however, is the near hysteria of the Dean emailers. I can't print many of them because of the language. But here's two that will give you the flavor:

Mr. Goldberg,

Here is the woman's question on Medicare from the recent Democratic debate:

"QUESTION: Yes. Forgive me for having to read this.

I am a stroke survivor, I am disabled and on a fixed income. For seven
months I went without prescription medication because we cannot afford supplemental insurance to my Medicare.

I chose food over medicine. How can you assure me and the many other voters -- there's millions like me -- that you empathize with my hardship and as president you will make certain this won't happen to any other American? Thank you."

She said she was on a fixed income, and Dean remembered that when he answered the question. FIXED INCOME. You were WRONG when you called Dean's answer racist responding to a Latina. Are you going to correct your gross error? I didn't think so. It would just spoil your record of spreading untruths. You and your ilk are what make this country rotten.
Sincerely,
[Name withheld]

And this one sent to the Corner:

Jonah obviously couldn't be bothered to track multiple questioners and a multi-part response from Gov. Dean. Hint, Jonah-boy, read the transcript and see if you can spot your error. Or was it an error, and not a spin-driven lie????

Disgustedly,

[Name withheld],

WASHINGTON (AP) - Eager to please a key Florida constituency, President George W. Bush directed his secretary of state and his Cuban-born housing secretary Friday to recommend ways to achieve a transition to democracy in Cuba after 44 years under Fidel Castro.

From the Hotline:

Making An Ass-umption? In answering a question from Spanish-speaking Ernestina Escobar, who was introduced as "someone in our audience who has experienced the American dream." Dean responded: "You would have prescription benefits if you moved to Vermont, because a third of all our people, especially at your income level, are eligible for prescription benefits without help from the federal government." She never mentioned her financial situation.

Imagine if a white, preppy Park Avenue Republican had made this gaffe?

I've gotten quite a few like this from political science prof:

The OED has the first English use of "defeatism" in the Observer of 9 June 1918, the quotation being "Irish Nationalists will henceforth support Pacifism, and that means defeatism." But Andrew Stuttaford may be on to something when he suggests a French origin--the OED has the French "défaitisme" as the derivation. And surely Lenin, like other educated Russians of his day, knew French.

If anybody has anything more detailed or conclusive, please let me know.

The following are literal translations of the Chinese names of fast food chains. Can you guess their English names?

a. 'Chinese Fortress King'

b. 'Agree Virtue Chicken'

c. 'Warm Base of a Fruit'

Here are the solutions, which you can find in Chinese characters on Marc's blog: a. Burger King (Han Bao Wang)

b. KFC (Ken De Ji)

c. Wendy's (Wen Di)

I just came across an item while researching my book. An author says the word "defeatism" was first coined by the Russian revolutionaries during WWI as an explicit policy for the defeat of ones own country. Through quick googling and such I've been able to find all sorts of references to Lenin's doctrine of "revolutionary defeatism" but that would suggest that the word "defeatism" already existed. Anybody have a definitive answer on this? Derb? Readers?

I'm not looking, by the way, for all sorts of stuff about Lenin at Finland Station. I'm looking for the etymological skinny.

Will you find a letter like this:

Jonah:

I was catching up on yesterday's corner postings and became enthralled with the subject of race in advertisements at NRO; i.e. Hillsdale College. Then you pop up with a link to the Whizzinator and I had to laugh. It seems there is a racial subtext to that product as well.

I work in the probation/parole field and was recently at a state manager's meeting when the issue of the Whizzinator came up. We have to keep ourselves apprised of all of the inventive ways in which offenders cheat on their drug tests. One manager noted that they had caught an offender using the Whizzinator in an unusual way. Seems that a black man had chosen to use a white Whizzinator to pass a drug screen, and an alert officer caught the discrepancy.

Needless to say, I was looking under the conference table to see if it had suitable room for me to hide from the state bureaucrats forthcoming lectures concerning sensitive racial subjects. Thankfully, it never came. Instead, everyone in the room exchanged uncomfortable glances in complete silence for a few moments, and then we moved on.

[Name withheld]

From a reader:

Doesn't her response prove your point since, I believe, the earlier posting referenced a picture of the Magazine staff having only white people in it. All white photo, but not all white Mag. All white photo, but not all white school. She corrected your reaction to the Mag photo and then went on to assert an interpretation of the school photo.

[Name withheld]

The following are literal translations of the Chinese names of fast food chains. Can you guess their English names?

a. 'Chinese Fortress King'

b. 'Agree Virtue Chicken'

c. 'Warm Base of a Fruit'

I shouldn't have said that the American Prospect was all-white. I assumed that from some of the earlier blog posts about the magazine's racial make up. Sorry about that.

The fact that it is not all white was brought to my attention by Melanie Alston-Akers. She writes:

"....Well, I'm not white and neither are others on our staff. If Goldberg's going to fling absolutes around, he should get them right.

And as far as the ad goes, it does have an only-certain-people-are-wanted-at-this-school flavor. I saw it immediately. Goldberg probably did not because many white people, of all political persuasions, are blind to the racial implications of things around them.

When I looked at the ad, I saw a school where I didn't think my family would be wanted. Reading the small text was not on my agenda after I saw the photo and the accompanying caption. "Good old days" is a loaded phrase and has been, particularly for blacks, for a long time in this country. That's not the fault of black people. But that's not something that many white people are going to see or recognize or care about.

Hillsdale may have fabulous racial diversity, but you can't tell that from the ad. The ad shows white, I saw white, and I assumed white. Not because I'm a liberal, but because I'm not white. And I'm certain that there are plenty of other blacks and other people of color -- regardless of their political views -- who would feel the same.

My responseSorry, I really don't buy it. One person's feelings -- or many people's feelings -- do not have an alchemic effect on the motives of others. If the ad makes a black person feel unwelcome -- or if it makes them feel like a giant frilly duck for that matter -- that doesn't speak to the intent of the person(s) who designed the ad. If you think the effect of the ad was racially insensitive why assume the intent was racially insensitive? I know liberals are fond of pointing at things like disparate impact and then backfilling racist intent to explain why the impact is disparate. But I think such arguments are often ludicrous.

Plus, while I'm not familiar with Melanie Alston-Akers, I'm skeptical of her claim that such inferences have nothing to do with her being a liberal and everything to do with her being black. I'm sure it's possible that other blacks of different political persuasions, including conservatives, would draw the same conclusion as her about the ad. I am also sure that many blacks would not (I know this because I heard from some). I do not think those blacks are any less authentically black. In other words, what explains Ms. Alston-Akers inference is not her skin color but the ideological, political and culture views she brings to the table. Simply because she instantly felt unwelcome might be good proof Hillsdale shoud rethink its ad campaigns, but it counts for exactly zero toward Richard Just's still-outrageous assertion that Hillsdale is cynically racist in its appeals.

Moreover, if Ms. Alston-Akers can't bother squeazing into her "agenda" the time it takes to actually read the words in the ad before reading the minds of those behind them, maybe she should get into a business that doesn't require relying on words for a living.

Note: I do not agree that only weird people own turtles. My father's only pets as a boy were two turtles (I think they lived two weeks) and my wife is determined to get a pet turtle. Nonetheless, from a reader:

Could someone please point out that Dreher tossed in "Feed Turtles" in his morning routine? I like Rod Dreher, but I've had my suspicions about him before (the Rapture stuff scared me). Now I can confirm my suspicions, only weird people own turtles. You, of all people, can not let someone slip "Feed Turtles" into their morning routine without saying something. That's like me writing up this routine:

Wake up, shower, brush teeth, brew coffee, pour milk in cereal, hide the bodies, put on shoes, read the paper, drive to work.

And then nobody mentions the "hide the bodies" part.

[Name withheld]

I own the local Dairy Queen and will buy lunch for any new subscribers to NRODT with the zip code 28734. I will buy a small blizzard (okay, medium) for any new NRD subscribers with the same zip code. Okay, okay, I'll throw in dessert on top of the lunch for new NRDOT subscribers.

Any other readers willing to offer local incentives to new subscribers? Any Lexus dealers out there?

3 am Plug NR Digital...6 am: Plug NR Digital

6:30 am: Plug NR Digital

7 am: Plug NR Digital

7:30 am: Plug NR Digital

8 am: Plug NR Digital....

From a reader:

Have any black people spoken about the ad? I am curious. As a black person, and one whose friends, a majority anyway, are black, we never thought that all school photos need blacks in them to be non-racist or that all white ones implied racism, especially photos from schools in the middle of no where. OK, maybe no where is wrong, but certainly not the center of the black population. If montana colleges have brochures without blacks in it so what? Its more offensive when they make the 1 or 2 black kids who go there appear in every photo, like we are a significant presence at the school. We realize, unlike liberal whites, that we are not everywhere... we do get annoyed when tv shows in NYC show no blacks, hispanics, or asians and we are a huge percentage of NYC's population. If Montana, North Dakota, or those midwest states most people have a hard time placing on a map have schools or any school for that matter, want to have a pic without blacks so what. Now if the university of mississippi did that same add, I might think something was up given its actual history.

I wonder do travel ads for dean's vermont show the 3 black people living in the state, on their brochures?

6:15 AM dog barking because stray dog is outside the window. He's in love with her because he's not neutered and she was supposed to be at 6 months but she got mange and had to have injections before she scratched all her hair off. "Oh, she's too young to go into heat," says vet. Oh, really. Now stray is sleeping on our porch (cute, shepherd mix, sweet but irritatingly enamored).

6:20 walk dog. Wave NY Post at stray.

6:25 Children up and hungry (they do not sleep in like Derb's). Toast and jam three different ways, two kinds of cereal, one order of waffles.

6:40 Search for socks, gym uniforms, school shoes, permission slips, lunch boxes, last night's homework.

6:45 Make coffee, make lunch, pack lunch boxes, pack snacks.

6:55 Fill out permission slips, write checks for field trips to Emperor's New Clothes (should be some interesting staging for 2nd graders -- "it's a nudie play," says my 7-year old) and Pequot Museum.

7:05 Dutiful daughter dressed and feeding the dog. Second grader still pondering shoe laces of right shoe.

7:10 3-year old wants attention. "Mommy, I calling you!"

7:15 Left shoe of 7-year old now being tied. Dog barking.

7:20 Refrain of "we're going to miss the bus" begins.

7:25 Children returned to bathroom for face-washing and one case of skipped tooth-brushing. Dog still barking.

7:30 "It's time for the bus!" I realize once again that I will be standing outside in my flannel pajamas as I have forgotten to change.

7:32 We run en masse outside as I brush the kids' hair and ignore the little one who wants his waffles reheated.

7:33 "THE BUS! It's here!" Last dash back inside for forgotten lunch box. Dog going nuts.

Children pile on. Driver gives me that look -- "You made it today." I notice my son's shoes are still untied. "Tie your shoes!" I yell.

7:34 Return inside. Husband sitting in fluffy bathrobe with the newspaper and a cup of coffee. "Why was the dog barking so much?" he wonders.

Tiny son: "Mommy, hello? Waffles, please."

[Please note that there was no coffee-drinking or newspaper-reading by the person who posted this.]

NR print subscribers can access NR/D by clicking on the "Download NR Magazine Here" link at NRO's homepage. You will be prompted to enter your account number from a recent magazine label...so it's helpful to have one handy. After your account number is validated, you will create a unique username and password which will allow you access to NR/D at anytime.

From a reader:

To most people good old days + education = well scrubbed and behaved kids learning the three Rs after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Anybody who can see a picture of a bunch of white kids and immediately think racism is probably almost incapable of framing anything outside the context of race. Like that woman who said the weather service was racist because there were no hurricanes with "typically black names". These are the most egregious of racists because they insinuate race into everything while standing on what they see as the moral high ground.

Nick Confessore -- who I respect -- jumps into the fray. His defense of the American Prospect on the staff photo thing works for me. Or at least, I don't think it's worth arguing about. However he sums up his larger position thus:

To recap, for Jonah's benefit: Pictures of white people: Fine. Pictures of white people paired with tag lines that seem to hearken back to the "good old days" of de facto school segregation: Questionable, at best.

And there it is. Even a school which has virtually no history of segregation -- unlike all the of the wonderful Ivy Leagues which churn out so many white liberals -- can never, ever, show pictures of white kids and speak of the good old days without it being a reference to segregation. Even when they provide a couple hundred words defining explicitly what they mean by "good old days." In other words, Tapped's position is just so much PC nonsense. And, according to them, if you break the PC language -- or in this case symbollic code -- you get no benefit of the doubt and are immediately assumed to be racist or at least practicing such poor judgement as to make racism a reasonable conclusion.

This is the sort of Catch-22 the left loves to create for conservatives. Remember when the GOP served a rich ethnic cocktail at the 2000 convention? They were lampooned as hypocrites across the liberal media spectrum. However, if they'd just trotted out white folks, they'd have been condemned as a bastion of white privilege. Next we're going to hear that we need an "honest dialogue" on race and the first conservative guy who opens his mouth will be denounced as a racist.

Well, I'm not buying it. I think Just should admit he was venting a knee jerk response and apologize. People sometimes speak too quickly when blogging. Lord knows I have. It seems to me at least that circling the wagons around a wrong and nasty jab is the wrong way to go.

Lots of email from readers who think I was too soft on Just. For example:

Jonah,

You let Mr. Just off the hook too easily.

The crux of his defense is the phrase: "in an age where the conventions of educational advertising, like them or hate them, mean that most schools use such photos as a chance to show off their diversity."

In other words, Just feels that being racial bean-counters is REQUIRED in order to avoid the charge of racism. That's the essential difference between his liberal/racist position, and yours.

Okay, I'm off the radio. Let's take a look at Richard Just's defense. He starts by recounting all sorts of negative things from Hillsdale's past in an effort to show that my own accounts of Hillsdale's past are a bit rosey. Sounds fair. Except, the problem is that my observations (and Aaron Bailey's) were on point. They spoke directly to the fact that Hillsdale's own "good old days" were decidedly un-racist. In fact, Hillsdale's record of inclusiveness shames Princeton's (Just's alma mater). Meanwhile, Just's clips are mostly irrelevant chatter applicable to almost any college campus (what school hasn't been called "Stalinist" by someone?).

Moving on, Just gets to the meat of his defense, which is worth reprinting here. He writes:

What do they mean by the phrase "the good old days"? It's impossible to know for sure, of course, but Goldberg doesn't offer any possibilities to counter my suggestion. By itself, that phrase could mean anything. Taken together with an all-white picture (in an age where the conventions of educational advertising, like them or hate them, mean that most schools use such photos as a chance to show off their diversity) and the ad's rather glib denunciation of "politically correct" revisionism, it's enough to make you wonder whether there is a racial subtext at play here.

Obviously there were a lot of things that were different about schools in "the good old days." But segregation -- both de jure and de facto -- looms pretty large in that history. In the context of an ad that raises race implicitly by discussing "politically correct" revisionism, how can Goldberg find it so outrageous to wonder if "the good old days" doesn't carry racial implications? And I'm not talking about the days of southern governors standing in schoolhouse doors and education being rigidly segregated by state law. I'm talking about that not-so-distant past, when parents of privilege in all parts of the country just didn't have to worry about their kids going to school with blacks or Jews or poor kids because those kinds of kids didn't go to the schools where they sent their children. If Goldberg doesn't believe that such a time existed, he's the one who's engaged in a little revisionism. If he doesn't think that nostalgia for such a time can be conjured -- and perhaps intended -- by an ad that invokes "the good old days" and refers implicitly to race, then he's not living in the real world with the rest of us.

How lame. Just not only ignores what I wrote he -- again -- ignores the words actually in the ad. As I noted before, there's a 7-point checklist on the ad which gives a good indication of what Hillsdale means by the "good old days" -- as does the rest of the text. Not one of these points includes such phrases as "keeping the blacks out" or "preserve white privilege." It's full of stuff like "teaching moral character" and "appropriate and effective self-discipline." Richard: that is the evidence you're looking for.

I know it comes as a shock to the brand of (all-white) liberals who staff the ramparts at the American Prospect, but most conservative parents don't think of Jim Crow when they hear about the "good old days" in education. If Just thinks white conservatives can never speak of the "good old days" without providing a cast that looks like America, he should just say so and defend his position.

Also, Just is now back-peddaling. Initially he said the racist implication of the ad was essentially obvious and "not too thinly veiled." Now he's merely saying it's not absurd to hold out the possibility that such was the intent. Sure, sure it's possible. But it is neither probable nor aparrent. And when things are not obvious they must be argued, not asserted. This is especially the case when more plausible and less slanderous explanations are available. For example, it seems to me that a far more likely explanation is that Hillsdale had no idea such an interpretation was possible since its conscience is clear and its own record on the issue is so exemplary. Reagrdless, if we could just get liberals like Mr. Just to employ Occam's Razor when it comes to issues of race this country would be a lot healthier.

Indeed, the fact that Mr. Just's first instinct is to assume racism on the part of others -- rather than, say, read the text -- reveals he's the one fixated on race, not Hillsdale.

6:00 Rise.

6:05 When breakfast under way (see next), walk down driveway to retrieve newspaper (New York Post).

6:10 Sit down to breakfast--Quaker Oats, with a sprinkling of raisins, a sliced-up banana and a splash of milk, plus a glass of orange juice. Read newspaper while eating breakfast.

6:25 Walkies with Boris.

7:15 (approx.) S, s, and s.

7:30 (approx) Sit at desk. Power up computer. Read stuff I wrote yesterday. (Note to aspiring writers: Always sleep on your work, if possible. It's amazing how different a piece can look in the morning.) Make necessary adjustments. Send to editor.

8:00 Start internet browse of day's news & opinion.

8:20 Family rise. Greet family.

8:30 Kids have first fight of the day. Pour oil on troubled waters.

8:45 Supervise kids' teeth-brushing, hair-combing, bag-finding, etc.

8:55 See kids off to school bus.

9:00 Resume internet browsing.

Kathryn - Here's how most mornings work for me. I get up. Deal with baby as needed (needs dictated by fair Jessica). Brush teeth etc. Check email, Corner, National Review homepage. Take Cosmo to park and ponder what I should say in Corner upon my return (usually while listening to NPR or C-Span on walkman). Then I come home. Clean off Cosmo's paws. Give Cosmo a pill. Compliment lil Lucy on her outfit. Drink coffee, if available. Surf web, look at papers, Post to Corner.

I suppose I should insert "re-check homepage" after "drink coffee, if available." Then again, I should also insert "do 200 push-ups," write "10 pages for my book" and "clean up my office."

Bush's desire for Turkish forces is craven. Hoping to reduce U.S. troop commitments as an election looms, he verges on throwing away the practical and moral achievements won with our soldiers' blood.

His actions will backfire at home as surely as they will in Iraq. A Turkish presence will make things worse, not better.