Wanted to say something about one aspect of the Gates business. (And by “Gates,” I mean Henry Louis, the black-studies guy, not Robert, the defense secretary.) On one of our NRO blogs, the invaluable Carol Ianonne wrote,

“As one of the lawyers said at the Cambridge police press conference, there are different ways in which all things could be handled, but there was nothing illegitimate about what Crowley did. Yes, someone else might have done differently, but it is the policeman at the scene who must make instantaneous judgments. This was seconded by the black officer Leon Lashley, who was there and also saw Gates acting erratically, as did the Hispanic officer Figueroa.”

We are all mighty happy that the force at Gates’s house was multiracial — a rainbow. What luck. But what if these guys had not been a rainbow? What if they had been monochromatic? What difference would that make? Why should we have to rely on, and take note of, the skin color of officers in action?

I am reminded of something, and please bear with me — the connection may not be immediately obvious: Back in GWB days, a lot of people, on the left and on the right, said that we were in Iraq because of Jews. Jews had manipulated Bush into it, and this was a Jewish project. A lot of us were forced into, “Well, Bush isn’t Jewish, as you know. And Cheney isn’t Jewish. Powell isn’t Jewish. Rumsfeld isn’t Jewish. Rice isn’t Jewish.” Etc., etc. And this made me quite queasy: this withholding of yellow stars, and the affixing of them.

I have a friend on the Buchananite right, roughly speaking, who insisted to me that Tenet was Jewish. I explained to him that, in fact, our CIA director was of Greek origin. But I felt sort of dirty in doing so: What if Tenet had been Jewish? So what?

Which brings me back to those cops at the Gates home: What if they had all been white, or Hispanic, or Aleut? Isn’t the question whether they acted rightly or wrongly?

I realize that some of the foregoing is naive — but not all of it, I hope you will agree.

‐Okay, sports fans, get a load of this — it will not make you happy, I wager. Last week, a friend of mine wrote,

Hi, Jay,
I have to recount to you an incident that involved my daughter a few days ago. Here goes:
Both of my daughters participate in a student-run theater group called Act 2 Act whose purpose is to raise money for human-rights causes. They are rehearsing The Diary of Anne Frank, to be performed this weekend. They have been doing local radio interviews to promote the play.
My twelve-year-old is playing Anne, and her director — the founder of the group — is 16. They did an interview by phone with an NPR correspondent. She asked some odd, leading questions such as “Isn’t this the first time you’ve ever done something helpful like this?” and “What does this have to do with President Obama?” The answer to the first question is “No, we do this sort of thing regularly,” and the answer to the second is, “Well, nothing.” The kids were really put on the spot. It was all strange and disconcerting.
Well, everything became clear when the interview aired later in the evening. The correspondent shaped the piece to insinuate that the kids had been inspired by Barack Obama to start this theater company and do this play. OMG! (As the kids say.) We all know the NPR mindset, but to stoop so low and take away from these kids their own heartfelt inspiration — that was just disgusting.

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Could you remind me, once more, why we have government radio, and government TV, anyway? I guess this is what Dan Rather means by “public media” (as if privately owned media weren’t public). It’s bad enough when an ordinary, commercial outlet is shoddy, misleading, or mendacious. But a taxpayer-funded outlet?

This may be mere emotion talking, but if there’s one reform I’d like to see, it is to do away altogether with government media in this liberal republic (and you know I mean liberal in an older, honorable sense).

‐Well, at least we can say this about the current period: Government media and the government itself are in perfect harmony! Both houses of Congress are liberal Democratic, the White House is liberal Democratic. PBS and NPR are really with the program! In fact, they are the program! (Isn’t this the way they do it in Venezuela?)

‐It may not be obvious — in fact, it is most un-obvious — but I don’t like whining about the media, I really don’t. It’s just that I like less that the media provide so much to whine about.

‐Was somewhat startled, and somewhat moved, to see this headline: “US troops now a ‘coalition of one’ in Iraq.” Yes, the Brits and the Aussies have just left. The Associated Press tells us that, “at its height, the coalition numbered about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries — 250,000 from the United States, about 40,000 from Britain, and the rest ranging from 2,000 Australians to 70 Albanians.” Coalition members can be glad of what they did — especially if the Iraq effort succeeds. And for the sake of us all — the Iraqis, other Middle Easterners, the United States, the rest of the West — it had better.

Actually, some countries contributed fewer troops than those 70 Albanians. (At least, I recall that this was so.) I remember seeing marines from Tonga guarding the Faw Palace in Iraq: scene of some of Saddam Hussein’s uncountable crimes. I wrote the following in a journal last fall:

. . . think of laughs around the world: Tonga!
And I remember something that Donald Rumsfeld told me, when I brought up the issue of small countries with him. He said, yes, the countries may be small — and people can laugh. But what if it took some political courage to send troops to Iraq, and some personal courage, too? And what if those troops constitute a decent percentage of the given country’s armed forces? Does anyone ever think of that?
Probably not.

No, probably not.

‐Speaking of that Iraq journal, I would like to revisit — republish — what Ryan Crocker, then our ambassador, told us. This is what I wrote:

. . . before we leave the room, I ask a standard journalistic question: “Is there anything else you’d like to say? Is there anything you wish people could know?” He says yes, actually: and gives what, to me, is a very moving and impassioned statement — an impassioned statement from an understated, careful, and, from what I can tell, cool man:
“Iraq is really, really important. How things go here will transform the region and America’s role in the region, one way or the other. If Iraq is successful in establishing itself as a democracy, where the rule of law is paramount, that will be something remarkable for the region.” America will be judged, as well as Iraq: “Ultimately, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we got here.”
Crocker continues, “People are tired of Iraq. They say, ‘Let’s get it over and done with. We don’t want to watch the Iraq movie anymore.’ But the Iraq movie will go on for many more reels, with or without us. And it will have a big effect on us, whether we like it or not.”

Yup.

‐What are we doing in Iraq, actually? Why are we talking to Sunni insurgents, and scaring the daylights out of the Iraqi government? Let me quote Nibras Kazimi, in his piece “Iraq: Once Again, Who Is the Enemy?”

A diplomatic crisis of sorts erupted while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was visiting Washington last week concerning secret negotiations that the U.S. government had been holding with an insurgent group. These negotiations were only revealed after the purported leader of the group announced during an interview with the Aljazeera Satellite Channel on July 15 that they had occurred.
These negotiations are nothing new; they have been going on with one group or another claiming to represent the Sunni insurgency since 2005. But what is galling is that, after all this time, there has been almost no interest, either from the U.S. Congress or the American media, to get answers from the American negotiators as to who are these insurgent leaders, what are their end goals, and why have negotiations always ended up failing?

I have a friend who is a very wise student of the Middle East — having worked and negotiated there his entire life. And he says roughly the following:

The U.S. is talking to Sunni insurgents, playing footsie, which is fine. But to what end? Are the Americans going to stab the Iraqi government in the back? The government is mainly Shiite, of course — because Shiites are the great majority of the country. And they were kept down by a Sunni minority for decades. Now it is their turn to participate in public life according to their due. They are not Iranian stooges or even Iranian allies. They are proud Arab nationalists. But, if the Americans side with the Sunnis, they will go to the Iranians, for help. And then the Sunnis will say to the Americans, “See, you could never trust the Shiites — they are Iranians at heart.” But it will be the Americans’ fault! And what is the Saudi role in all this? They are terrified — terrified — of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, the seat of the caliphate. And they will do everything they can to see that the Sunnis are once more supreme in Iraq. Is America trying to please or appease the Saudis? You could make an argument — not a good one, in my view — that America must always and everywhere side with the Sunnis, because they are the majority in the Arab world at large. But if that is to be American policy — shouldn’t there be a debate about it, instead of silence? Let’s talk about what is happening. Interesting ideas.

‐I just want you to rest easy: Raúl Castro will not undo the Communist system. On Saturday he said, “I wasn’t elected president to return capitalism to Cuba or surrender the revolution.” Don’t you love that “elected”?!

‐Many readers have asked me to comment on President Obama’s award of a Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, the U.N. figure who is a perfect U.N. figure, really, because she is a champion of the Third Worldists and Israel-haters. I will say something I have said before: You can know a president by the Medals of Freedom he awards. You can know where his head and heart are. I wrote a piece on exactly this theme in December 2007. Kind of interesting (if I say so myself). If you’d like to see, go here.

‐May I say something complimentary about President Obama? I just want to. They say he is charming, and I find him rather un-, most of the time, but he can in fact be charming — as when he said the following at one of his “town halls” on health care: “I’m just going to call on people as they raise their hand. I’ll go girl, boy, girl, boy so that people don’t think I’m biased.”

I liked that. Human. Fun. (And our president can appear robotic, at least to me.)

By the way, isn’t it interesting that he said “girl, boy, girl, boy” instead of the usual “boy, girl, boy, girl”? Sort of like saying, in a return address, “Mary and Bob Smith,” which became the rage, as I recall, about 20 years ago.

‐Okay, a word on that most boring topic (most of the time), the weather. An article in the New York Times tells us that

this summer has been conspicuously different in New York City. Not one 99-degree day in Central Park. Not a single day that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperature failed to reach 90 in either June or July.
The daily average last month was at or below normal every day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York — one more day than in Fairbanks, Alaska.

That, sports fans, is why they started to call it “climate change,” instead of “global warming” — covers everything. Absolutely everything. Neat, huh? Why didn’t you think of that?

‐Okay, guys, want to wrap up — with a name? We’ve been having fun with names in this column the last few weeks, and there have been many, many nominations — and touching stories that go with. Let me do just one name, here at column’s end. Reader says, “I worked with a man with the last name Pfefferle (pronounced FEF-fer-ly). He was married to a woman named Beverly: Beverly Pfefferle. [Almost a hinkety-pinkety!] I always thought she must have really loved him to take on that name.”

Ah, l’amour. See you!

#JAYBOOK#