I was intrigued by a news item yesterday, concerning Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.). You remember what Harry Reid said about her at a fundraiser in the last election cycle, don’t you? “We in the Senate refer to Senator Gillibrand as the ‘hottest member.’”
Frankly, I thought that was discourteous toward Senators Boxer, Landrieu, Mikulski, and other members of the upper chamber. But I obviously lack the savoir-faire that makes you Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
Anyway, the item said that Gillibrand “proposed making it easier to round up geese from a federal refuge near Kennedy Airport and kill them” — those geese are a menace, colliding with plane engines.
In the current National Review, I have a piece on North Dakota and its oil boom. There are some who would like to kill off the goose that is laying golden eggs. And the main would-be killer is the Obama EPA. Along with the rest of the administration.
Last year, the Justice Department brought suit against several oil companies operating in North Dakota’s Bakken formation. What had they done? Well, a tiny handful of birds had died in “reserve pits.” The companies were prosecuted under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Company officials faced prison.
With dispatch, a sane district-court judge threw out the suit. As he did so, he listed some of the ways in which birds die: including flying into wind turbines. That kills something like 33,000 a year. But the Left never picks on wind power; only oil.
Will the Justice Department ever prosecute airlines, for the death of geese? Anyway . . .
‐Reading this article, about the Pakistani prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, I was startled to see that he is the longest-serving PM in his country’s history. It seems like just yesterday he became prime minister: It was in March 2008. I met him three months later. I moderated a panel on which he sat. (This was at what I call “Davos in the Middle East,” or more snappily, “Davos in the Desert.”)
As I remarked at the time, he seemed quite mild, even a bit milquetoast: His handshake would not have cracked an egg; his voice was gentle, even sweet. But you cannot survive in Pakistani politics — particularly at that level — without qualities other than sweetness.
I met him on another occasion, I think, and I went back — i.e., have Googled — to see what I wrote. What I wrote in my online journals. I thought I’d reprint a couple of (quick) paragraphs:
. . . Gilani utters another phrase I like very much. He is asked a question about the future — about whether Pakistani politics will be stable or unstable. It is perfectly natural to ask such questions. But Gilani says, “Politics is a day-to-day affair.” Therefore, you can’t be too certain about the future.
“Politics is a day-to-day affair.” Indeed. And that is perhaps especially true in Pakistan.
‐Did you read this headline? “France warns Syria that UN clock is ticking.” Oh, that’ll make Assad shake in his boots: France, the United Nations . . . Tick, tock, tick, tock, yawn, zzzzzzzz.
‐I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a little “conflicted” about Singapore. Terrible modern word: “conflicted.” But I bow to it now and then. Singapore is a success and model, in many ways. Lee Kuan Yew has greatness in him.
But he has ungreatness in him too, and Singapore is not a properly free country. The latest example: The government has refused to allow an opposition leader to travel to Norway next month to participate in the Oslo Freedom Forum.
Is that how the Singaporean government wishes to be? Really? Aren’t they embarrassed at some level, very close to the surface? (To read about this matter, go here.)
‐We have all heard about Draconian punishments in Singapore — whipping for gum chewing, stuff like that. (I’m exaggerating a little.) But I wonder whether one citizen’s punishment was too light: “Singapore man fined for setting cat on fire.” Story here.
‐Earlier this week, at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Elie Wiesel introduced President Obama. One Nobel peace laureate introducing another!
Wiesel said, “How is it that Assad is still in power? How is it that the Holocaust’s number-one denier, Ahmadinejad, is still a president? He who threatens to use nuclear weapons — to use nuclear weapons — to destroy the Jewish state. Have we not learned? We must. We must know that when evil has power, it is almost too late.”
Later, addressing Obama directly, he said, “Mr. President, we are here in this place of memory. Israel cannot not remember. And because it remembers, it must be strong, just to defend its own survival and its own destiny.”
Yes. Wiesel has talked frankly to presidents before. In 1985, receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, he admonished Reagan not to go to the Bitburg cemetery (as the president had promised Helmut Kohl he would). Reagan sat there with the most intent, pained expression on his face.
The next year, Wiesel won the peace prize. I have just written a book on this subject — a history of the Nobel Peace Prize — and wish to quote a paragraph:
Did Wiesel’s stance against Reagan help him with the Nobel Committee? It’s hard to say — but it could not have hurt. Reagan was a hated figure among Western European political elites, not least in Scandinavia. And Wiesel was not exactly a darling of the international Left: His staunch anti-Communism, and his general support of the Jewish state, made him suspect. The stance against Reagan may have lent him what we know as “street cred” (credibility in the street).
Who knows? (But one can guess intelligently.)
‐Speaking of Nobel peace laureates: You may remember Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human-rights lawyer who won the prize in 2003. She is now in exile (though she may not prefer to use that term). I interviewed her and profiled her last year: Go here, if you like.
News comes now that, in Iran, an associate of hers, Narges Mohammadi, has been thrown into prison. Mohammadi was a spokeswoman for Ebadi’s Center for Human Rights Defenders (now banned). She, Mohammadi, is confined in Evin Prison, one of the darkest, worst, most violent places on earth, especially for women.
There is too little attention to the Iranian government’s brutality, and maybe too much pleading of, “Can’t we all just get along?”
‐Okay, something a little lighter: What happens when you don’t pay your gas bill? They might turn off your eternal flame. That’s what happened in Kyrgyzstan, when the capital city, Bishkek, failed to pay a $9,400 debt. The gas company cut off supply to the war memorial. The eternal flame went, “See ya.”
To read about this sad, pathetic event, go here. We may laugh; I may laugh. But if the United States keeps going in an Obamite direction . . .
‐I had a memory when reading this excellent Jeff Jacoby column. (They’re all excellent, his columns.) He quoted Barbara Tuchman. And, when I was in graduate school, a prominent historian and some of his students snickered a little about Tuchman — just a writer, they said, no historian.
That’s when I figured that Tuchman had something. She did, and does. I e-mailed this memory to Jeff — who commented, “I guess the snickers were because her writing was clear, lively, perceptive, and free of cant or sanctimony. But then, we can’t all be Howard Zinn.”
Perfect.
‐I noticed that Robert Gates is joining Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley to form the consulting firm of RiceHadleyGates. It will be another Kissinger Associates, I guess. And the naming style is totally up-to-date.
What if Kissinger Associates had been founded this year, instead of 30 years ago? Would the firm be called KissAss?
‐Looked at the NRO Web Briefing yesterday, and almost jumped out of my chair. We linked to an article by Lazar Berman. One of the most phenomenal pianists of the 20th century, blogging for The American? No, the pianist died in 2005. This is another Lazar Berman.
Remarkable.
‐Speaking of music: For my latest column in City Arts, go here. It has to do with Barber — Samuel Barber — at the movies, and a new work by Michael Hersch.
‐My friend Jamie Glazov of FrontPage Mag is hosting a “Town Hall on Terror,” in Greater Los Angeles. It is sponsored by two organizations: Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Interested Southern Californians should try this link.
‐I thought this was kind of amusing: President Obama honored the National Teacher of the Year, Rebecca Mieliwocki. That wasn’t amusing. But the Associated Press’s rendering of the pronunciation of her name kind of was: “Mil-WAU-kee.” (Go here.)
Couldn’t they have simply said, “Like the city in Wisconsin, where the Brewers play”?
‐Until recently, one of the Los Angeles Lakers was known as Ron Artest. Now he calls himself Metta World Peace. He has the reputation of a brute, and he just gave another player a concussion.
A reader suggested a bumper sticker: “Visualize World Peace Not Elbowing People in the Head.”
‐In my Monday Impromptus, I jotted a Broadway note, and here is another. I’ve been on a minor Broadway jag with my cousin — who is a budding musical-theater star herself.
We went to see Anything Goes, which put me in mind of Ronald Reagan. (I know: What doesn’t?) When he was president, he was bemoaning the state of the movies: They were so vulgar, crude, and dumb. And totally unsexy. What was sexy, he said, was an old scene where a couple vanished into a hotel room. Seconds later, a hand reached out to put a sign on the door handle: “Do Not Disturb.”
You can’t outdo something like that in the sexy department, said Reagan. I agree.
Would you like a lyric from Cole Porter? “You’d be so easy to love,” he says — “So sweet to waken with / So nice to sit down to the eggs and bacon with.”
Corny, but wonderful, and, in the right context, about a million times sexier than what passes for sexy today.
Okay, I’m off my soapbox till the next time, and I’ll see you later.
#JAYBOOK#