A nicely written tribute to one of the best sitcoms ever.
Four for the Road
Frasier Crane won't die this season.
By Kevin M. Cherry
Earlier this week, NBC announced that this would be the final season of the long-running sitcom, Frasier. While the Peacock has spent countless hour promoting the last season of Friends ("Get ready to say goodbye to the best comedy ever"), Frasier — its record five consecutive Emmys for best comedy series are among its record 31 overall — will end not with a bang but a whimper. Declining ratings and revenues are to blame, but NBC will be losing something perhaps more important than dollars: a 22-year legacy that began with Cheers and continued with the spin-off, Frasier. Fortunately, both series are being released as DVDs; seasons one and two of each series are available now, in four-disc sets.
When Cheers premiered all those years ago, it came in last in the weekly ratings. Yet what is most impressive about the early shows is their quality: Many of the highlights of the series come from these two seasons, as evidenced by the best-of 200th episode (hosted by John McLaughlin). The performances are already spot-on, and the writers had a firm grasp of the different personalities. The series' creators — Glen and Les Charles and James Burrows, who had honed their skills on Taxi — originally contemplated an American version of the John Cleese-Connie Booth classic, Fawlty Towers. However, they came to realize that the best scenes took place in the bar, and set the entire series in a Boston pub based on the Bull and Finch Tavern.
Over the years, Cheers had its growing pains. The second season is weaker than the first, as too much attention is paid to the blooming relationship between Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane (Shelley Long). As Norm puts it in one episode, "I kinda miss the good old days when they threw up at the sight of each other." The series would reach its high points over the next two seasons, with the introduction of Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) as Diane's new (and soon to be jilted) fiancé, which causes the Diane-Sam relationship to mature. The sudden death of Nick Colasanto (Coach) forced the writers to introduce Indiana farm-boy Woody (Woody Harrelson), as the bar's resident simpleton, but he never was able to equal what Danson refers to as Colasanto's "heart and soul, the sweetness of Cheers." Even so, this replacement worked far better than did the introduction of Rebecca (Kirstie Alley) after Diane left. Apart from the staff, the other characters throughout the years — Frasier's wife Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth), Harry the Hat (Harry Anderson), Carla's (Rhea Perlman, the first person cast) various ex-husbands — came and drank, but it was really Norm (George Wendt) and Cliff (John Ratzenberger) who came, drank, and stayed in our comedic memories.
Frasier, too, had its up and downs. The last few seasons, particularly after the departure of original writers Christopher Lloyd and Joe Keenan and the 9/11 death of writer David Angell, have focused too greatly on the Niles (David Hyde Pierce)-Daphne (Jane Leeves) romance. While Cheers brought Sam and Diane together from the get-go, Niles and Daphne had a rockier road. Putting aside, however, the marriages of Frasier and Lilith and Woody and Kelly, Cheers was not primarily about family: It was about a good group of friends who became each other's family, as symbolized in its last episode. The focus of Frasier, however, has always been the Crane family: Frasier, his brother Niles, and their father, Martin (John Mahoney). This was the core of the series, and several of the early-season episodes bring this out brilliantly, particularly those that focus on the difficult relationship between stuffy, intellectual Frasier and his hard-working, blue-collar father.
Cheers and Frasier have retained a great deal of their freshness over the years, mostly because they did not try to stay contemporary. They certainly shirked talking about politics: Sam once justified his inclusion in Boston's most eligible bachelors list by saying that it provided him with the opportunity to discuss political issues: "I told them I thought nuclear war would be bad news. . . . I can always say I was misquoted." And Howard Dean is not the first person to psychoanalyze political candidates: Frasier decides to endorse a liberal candidate against their father's law-and-order choice; but when he calls the candidate "the sane choice," his words come back to haunt him.
The new DVD editions certainly contribute to the series' freshness. The transfer from film to DVD is splendid, and makes you realize what an injustice is done to these shows in reruns (especially the older Cheers episodes). It's nice to be able to skip the sappy Cheers theme, but it would be equally convenient to be able to skip the end credits and play all the episodes on disc at once. In fact, the DVDs contain very little in the way of special features. The first season of Cheers has a brief episode with Ted Danson, and a compilation of highlights featuring various characters; the second season provides a compilation of clips about the show's history and more highlights. Frasier provides a bit more: In addition to the highlight clips, it includes commentaries on one episode per season. These are informative and enjoyable — for instance, Nile's trademark wiping of his chairs with his handkerchief was not scripted, but a suggestion from director James Burrows. They leave you, however, wanting to know more, with insights from the stars as well as the writers, directors, and creators.
What I found striking while reviewing these episodes is that I remembered more of the punch lines from Cheers but more plotlines from Frasier. In a way, that summarizes the two shows: Cheers was an exchange of witticisms with more than enough characters to keep it interesting. Frasier, by relying on a smaller cast, was forced to develop the characters it had — sometimes well, sometimes not, but always moving forward. While Cheers rarely used the possibilities its characters offered — such as Sam's alcoholism — the finest episodes of Cheers, in fact, may have come in season 11 when Frasier discovers Lilith has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. In its early years, Frasier retained this emotional core, but it faded over time; in its last season, however, Frasier has improved and refocused on its core three characters, but it still does not possess the strength of the earlier episodes.
Just as Cheers was able to come out with a strong final episode — followed by a drunken cast party on The Tonight Show — here's hoping that Frasier can do the same later this year. Even despite its recent weaknesses, some critics assembled this week to hear the death knell toll for Frasier booed NBC head of entertainment Jeffrey Zucker for the announcement. Nevertheless, having the DVDs of both series available should ease some of their pain.
— Kevin Cherry is an NRO contributor.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Hank Aaron steps up to the plate with a scathing rebuke of Pete Rose.
Aaron: Keep Rose out of baseball
Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — Hank Aaron is adamant: Pete Rose has no place in the Hall of Fame, or anywhere in baseball.
The all-time home run leader harshly criticized the career hit king for an insincere confession, saying Rose should not be reinstated after admitting he bet on the game.
"During these past few days, I've looked at Pete on television, and he hasn't given any signs of an honest confession," Aaron told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview published in Friday editions.
"Plus, I've seen absolutely no truth whatsoever in what he's saying," he said.
Aaron, a vice president with the Atlanta Braves, said Rose should be treated like anyone else who gambles on games.
"I just think it's hogwash to say that he should be put back into the game just because the public wants it," Aaron said. "A rule is a rule, and the rule is on every clubhouse door that you can't bet on baseball. It doesn't say that you're excluded if you have 4,000 hits or 700 home runs."
Rose admitted betting on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s. He accepted a lifetime ban from the game, which bars him from consideration for the Hall of Fame.
That's the way it should be, according to Aaron.
"What are you going to do about Shoeless Joe Jackson?" he asked, referring to the player who was banned after he and seven teammates were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. "Ted Williams said many days to me that (Jackson) didn't have anything to do with the scandal. If you let Pete in, you have to deal with that."
Aaron is also skeptical of Rose's claims, considering he is still a recreational gambler who doesn't see the need for professional help.
"It's just like an alcoholic saying that he doesn't drink whiskey anymore, but he still drinks beer," Aaron said. "Pete says that even though he isn't a gambler anymore, he still bets on the horses. That's bad."
In addition, Aaron is perturbed that Rose's book came out just before Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley were voted into the Hall of Fame.
"The timing of when he said all of this was very bad," Aaron said. "I'm still quite angry with it."
During Aaron's frequent travels from his Atlanta home to Milwaukee for business purposes, he chats often with commissioner Bug Selig. Aaron doesn't expect Rose to be reinstated anytime soon.
"I know how Bud thinks, so I'm guessing it'll be later," Aaron said.
That said, he never has never discussed the Rose matter with Selig. Aaron would like the commissioner to meet with small groups of Hall of Famers to get their feelings on Rose before making any decision on reinstatement.
"I don't want people to think that, if I go to Bud, he'll gravitate to my opinion," Aaron said.
Aaron is the second Hall of Famer this week to come out against Rose's reinstatement. In an open letter Wednesday, Ferguson Jenkins said, "Knowing what I know now, I will never support your reinstatement to the game or your bid for the Hall."
Jenkins had previously supported Rose's bid for Cooperstown.
"It's so apparent now with the gambling issue, he's kind of lost my vote," Jenkins said.
Aaron: Keep Rose out of baseball
Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — Hank Aaron is adamant: Pete Rose has no place in the Hall of Fame, or anywhere in baseball.
The all-time home run leader harshly criticized the career hit king for an insincere confession, saying Rose should not be reinstated after admitting he bet on the game.
"During these past few days, I've looked at Pete on television, and he hasn't given any signs of an honest confession," Aaron told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview published in Friday editions.
"Plus, I've seen absolutely no truth whatsoever in what he's saying," he said.
Aaron, a vice president with the Atlanta Braves, said Rose should be treated like anyone else who gambles on games.
"I just think it's hogwash to say that he should be put back into the game just because the public wants it," Aaron said. "A rule is a rule, and the rule is on every clubhouse door that you can't bet on baseball. It doesn't say that you're excluded if you have 4,000 hits or 700 home runs."
Rose admitted betting on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s. He accepted a lifetime ban from the game, which bars him from consideration for the Hall of Fame.
That's the way it should be, according to Aaron.
"What are you going to do about Shoeless Joe Jackson?" he asked, referring to the player who was banned after he and seven teammates were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. "Ted Williams said many days to me that (Jackson) didn't have anything to do with the scandal. If you let Pete in, you have to deal with that."
Aaron is also skeptical of Rose's claims, considering he is still a recreational gambler who doesn't see the need for professional help.
"It's just like an alcoholic saying that he doesn't drink whiskey anymore, but he still drinks beer," Aaron said. "Pete says that even though he isn't a gambler anymore, he still bets on the horses. That's bad."
In addition, Aaron is perturbed that Rose's book came out just before Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley were voted into the Hall of Fame.
"The timing of when he said all of this was very bad," Aaron said. "I'm still quite angry with it."
During Aaron's frequent travels from his Atlanta home to Milwaukee for business purposes, he chats often with commissioner Bug Selig. Aaron doesn't expect Rose to be reinstated anytime soon.
"I know how Bud thinks, so I'm guessing it'll be later," Aaron said.
That said, he never has never discussed the Rose matter with Selig. Aaron would like the commissioner to meet with small groups of Hall of Famers to get their feelings on Rose before making any decision on reinstatement.
"I don't want people to think that, if I go to Bud, he'll gravitate to my opinion," Aaron said.
Aaron is the second Hall of Famer this week to come out against Rose's reinstatement. In an open letter Wednesday, Ferguson Jenkins said, "Knowing what I know now, I will never support your reinstatement to the game or your bid for the Hall."
Jenkins had previously supported Rose's bid for Cooperstown.
"It's so apparent now with the gambling issue, he's kind of lost my vote," Jenkins said.
From the NY Times: (I assume it's not made up.)
The Joke Is on Liberals, Says Dennis Miller, Host of His Own Show Again
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14 — Dennis Miller, the liberal-turned-conservative comedian and defender of President Bush and the war in Iraq, is less than two weeks away from being the host of a new talk show on CNBC. For him it can't come soon enough.
"People say I've slid to the right," Mr. Miller said in his office at the NBC Studios in Burbank, speaking in his rat-a-tat-tat style. "Well, can you blame me? One of the biggest malfeasances of the left right now is the mislabeling of Hitler. Quit saying this guy is Hitler," he said, referring to Mr. Bush. "Hitler is Hitler. That's the quintessential evil in the history of the universe, and we're throwing it around on MoveOn.org to win a contest. That's grotesque to me."
Mr. Miller, who was speaking about television advertisements submitted to a competition held by MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a liberal political group, was just getting started.
"Did you see the Democratic debate the other night?" he asked. "To me Dennis Kucinich's politics are more scrambled than Rod Steiger's dream journal. And Clark? He's a wizard in many ways, but when I hear him speak, it's almost like he's slumming. There's a mensch discrepancy there. At least John Edwards, who to me is a reasonably shallow guy, at least he can dog-paddle around in that park and not look out of place."
Mr. Miller's rapid-fire monologues and obscure, even weird cultural references — Rod Steiger's dream journal? — have made him one of television's most visible comedians over the last two decades. He was a regular on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" from 1985 to 1991; had an Emmy Award-winning weekly series on HBO, "Dennis Miller Live," in the 1990's; worked as a film and television actor; was a commentator for two seasons on ABC's "Monday Night Football"; and most recently was an essayist for Fox News.
Mr. Miller's metamorphosis from iconoclastic liberal to free-wheeling conservative — which he partly attributes to the Sept. 11 attacks — has not only made this 50-year-old comedian an esteemed figure on the Fox network. It has also made California Republicans, who have triumphed with a movie star in the governor's mansion, look to Mr. Miller as a possible opponent to Senator Barbara Boxer, the liberal Democrat who is up for re-election this year. (Mr. Miller supported Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor and performed last summer at California fund-raisers for President Bush.)
Mr. Miller said he told the Republicans he had no interest in running against Ms. Boxer, largely because winning would mean moving to Washington from Santa Barbara, where he lives with his wife and two children. "They inquired about my availability to run against Barbara Boxer, but I'm not at the point where I would consider it," he said.
His new hourlong show, "Dennis Miller," at 9 p.m. weeknights (with a repeat of one show on Sunday), will have its premiere on Jan. 26. It will include his usual venting on current issues, as well as interviews with political figures, journalists and others, and a nightly "right-left" debate among figures at different points on the political spectrum.
Pamela Thomas-Graham, president and chief executive of CNBC, said Mr. Miller's "kinetic energy" appealed to the network, now mostly an outlet for financial news. By hiring him, she said, CNBC hoped to retain and expand its daytime audience with a politically savvy show. She added that the CNBC daytime viewers were probably "interested in relaxing at night" with material that reached beyond Wall Street.
Ms. Thomas-Graham said Mr. Miller's political positions had played no role in the decision to hire him. "We are completely agnostic in that direction," she said. "We were looking for someone who has a point of view and is willing to defend that point of view."
Mr. Miller is also not a traditional conservative. "I've always been a pragmatist," he said. "If two gay guys want to get married, it's none of my business. I could care less. More power to them. I'm happy when people fall in love. But if some idiot foreign terrorist wants to blow up their wedding to make a political statement, I would rather kill him before he can do it, or have my country kill him before he can do it, instead of having him do it and punishing him after the fact. If that makes me a right-wing fanatic, I will bask in that assignation."
Mr. Miller said he remained socially liberal. "I think abortion's wrong, but it's none of my business to tell somebody what's wrong," he said. "So I'm pro-choice. I want to keep my nose out of other people's personal business. I guess I fall into conservative when it comes to protecting the United States in a world where a lot of people hate the United States."
The Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Miller said, changed him. "Everybody should be in the protection business now," he said. "I can't imagine anybody not saying that. Well, I guess on the farthest end of the left they'd say, `That's our fault.' And on the middle end they'd say, `Well, there's another way to deal with it other than flat-out protecting ourselves.' I just don't believe that. People say we're the ones who make them hate us because of what we do. That's garbage to me. I think they're nuts. And you've got to protect yourself from nuts."
Mr. Miller's decision to join CNBC came after a somewhat troubled time in his career. He said he was fired by ABC in 2002 after two seasons as a commentator on "Monday Night Football" when the network had a chance to hire John Madden. Mr. Miller's reviews had been mixed. He said he enjoyed being a sports commentator and had no ill will toward ABC. "As soon as Madden left Fox, I pretty much knew I was going to be whacked," he said. "Here was Madden, the Pliny the Elder of football announcers. And they were going to stay with the kid?"
"I was having fun," Mr. Miller added. "I had alienated half the community, and probably half of them liked me. Which is pretty much my batting average. I began to see maybe a decade ago that my career was never going to be in complete approval. I wasn't endearing."
As open as he is about his political views, Mr. Miller is reticent about his private life. He grew up in Pittsburgh and says his mother, now dead, is "a sainted figure to me." His parents were estranged, and he declines to talk about his father. (One of Mr. Miller's brothers, Jimmy, is a partner in Gold/Miller, a Hollywood management company that represents stars like Jim Carrey.)
Mr. Miller said that as a youth he worked in delis and scooped ice cream until he realized that his life was going to turn into a "Kafka novella" unless he began seriously pursuing comedy. He started performing in clubs and on local television in Pittsburgh, then moved to Los Angeles, where he met other struggling comedians. Jerry Seinfeld got him a gig at the Improv, and Jay Leno found him an apartment. He remains close to both. He appeared on television with David Letterman and later auditioned for Lorne Michaels for "Saturday Night Live."
"He looked at me and goes, `Would you like to do my newscast?,' " Mr. Miller recalled. "And I said, `Yeah, I would,' and he said, `Well, I'll see you tomorrow.' And then I walked out. And I remember thinking, `My life has just changed.' "
Mr. Miller said his own comedic influences include Jonathan Miller, Richard Pryor, Richard Belzer and Mr. Leno. He speaks more hesitantly about the two comedians with whom he has often been compared, Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.
He said he had transcripts of some of Mr. Sahl's early shows and was amazed by them. But then he lost interest. Mr. Sahl, he said, became too close to the Kennedy family and was "a savage name-dropper." Mr. Miller added, "It always reminded me to watch myself."
Surprisingly he is tougher on Lenny Bruce. "Lenny was a heroin addict, and I could care less about heroin addicts," Mr. Miller said. "Once I hear a guy is a heroin addict, and they tell me he's a genius, I think, really? I'm not trying to be judgmental. But anybody whose last vision is of a tile pattern on a bathroom floor, I don't know what kind of genius they are."
The Joke Is on Liberals, Says Dennis Miller, Host of His Own Show Again
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14 — Dennis Miller, the liberal-turned-conservative comedian and defender of President Bush and the war in Iraq, is less than two weeks away from being the host of a new talk show on CNBC. For him it can't come soon enough.
"People say I've slid to the right," Mr. Miller said in his office at the NBC Studios in Burbank, speaking in his rat-a-tat-tat style. "Well, can you blame me? One of the biggest malfeasances of the left right now is the mislabeling of Hitler. Quit saying this guy is Hitler," he said, referring to Mr. Bush. "Hitler is Hitler. That's the quintessential evil in the history of the universe, and we're throwing it around on MoveOn.org to win a contest. That's grotesque to me."
Mr. Miller, who was speaking about television advertisements submitted to a competition held by MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a liberal political group, was just getting started.
"Did you see the Democratic debate the other night?" he asked. "To me Dennis Kucinich's politics are more scrambled than Rod Steiger's dream journal. And Clark? He's a wizard in many ways, but when I hear him speak, it's almost like he's slumming. There's a mensch discrepancy there. At least John Edwards, who to me is a reasonably shallow guy, at least he can dog-paddle around in that park and not look out of place."
Mr. Miller's rapid-fire monologues and obscure, even weird cultural references — Rod Steiger's dream journal? — have made him one of television's most visible comedians over the last two decades. He was a regular on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" from 1985 to 1991; had an Emmy Award-winning weekly series on HBO, "Dennis Miller Live," in the 1990's; worked as a film and television actor; was a commentator for two seasons on ABC's "Monday Night Football"; and most recently was an essayist for Fox News.
Mr. Miller's metamorphosis from iconoclastic liberal to free-wheeling conservative — which he partly attributes to the Sept. 11 attacks — has not only made this 50-year-old comedian an esteemed figure on the Fox network. It has also made California Republicans, who have triumphed with a movie star in the governor's mansion, look to Mr. Miller as a possible opponent to Senator Barbara Boxer, the liberal Democrat who is up for re-election this year. (Mr. Miller supported Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor and performed last summer at California fund-raisers for President Bush.)
Mr. Miller said he told the Republicans he had no interest in running against Ms. Boxer, largely because winning would mean moving to Washington from Santa Barbara, where he lives with his wife and two children. "They inquired about my availability to run against Barbara Boxer, but I'm not at the point where I would consider it," he said.
His new hourlong show, "Dennis Miller," at 9 p.m. weeknights (with a repeat of one show on Sunday), will have its premiere on Jan. 26. It will include his usual venting on current issues, as well as interviews with political figures, journalists and others, and a nightly "right-left" debate among figures at different points on the political spectrum.
Pamela Thomas-Graham, president and chief executive of CNBC, said Mr. Miller's "kinetic energy" appealed to the network, now mostly an outlet for financial news. By hiring him, she said, CNBC hoped to retain and expand its daytime audience with a politically savvy show. She added that the CNBC daytime viewers were probably "interested in relaxing at night" with material that reached beyond Wall Street.
Ms. Thomas-Graham said Mr. Miller's political positions had played no role in the decision to hire him. "We are completely agnostic in that direction," she said. "We were looking for someone who has a point of view and is willing to defend that point of view."
Mr. Miller is also not a traditional conservative. "I've always been a pragmatist," he said. "If two gay guys want to get married, it's none of my business. I could care less. More power to them. I'm happy when people fall in love. But if some idiot foreign terrorist wants to blow up their wedding to make a political statement, I would rather kill him before he can do it, or have my country kill him before he can do it, instead of having him do it and punishing him after the fact. If that makes me a right-wing fanatic, I will bask in that assignation."
Mr. Miller said he remained socially liberal. "I think abortion's wrong, but it's none of my business to tell somebody what's wrong," he said. "So I'm pro-choice. I want to keep my nose out of other people's personal business. I guess I fall into conservative when it comes to protecting the United States in a world where a lot of people hate the United States."
The Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Miller said, changed him. "Everybody should be in the protection business now," he said. "I can't imagine anybody not saying that. Well, I guess on the farthest end of the left they'd say, `That's our fault.' And on the middle end they'd say, `Well, there's another way to deal with it other than flat-out protecting ourselves.' I just don't believe that. People say we're the ones who make them hate us because of what we do. That's garbage to me. I think they're nuts. And you've got to protect yourself from nuts."
Mr. Miller's decision to join CNBC came after a somewhat troubled time in his career. He said he was fired by ABC in 2002 after two seasons as a commentator on "Monday Night Football" when the network had a chance to hire John Madden. Mr. Miller's reviews had been mixed. He said he enjoyed being a sports commentator and had no ill will toward ABC. "As soon as Madden left Fox, I pretty much knew I was going to be whacked," he said. "Here was Madden, the Pliny the Elder of football announcers. And they were going to stay with the kid?"
"I was having fun," Mr. Miller added. "I had alienated half the community, and probably half of them liked me. Which is pretty much my batting average. I began to see maybe a decade ago that my career was never going to be in complete approval. I wasn't endearing."
As open as he is about his political views, Mr. Miller is reticent about his private life. He grew up in Pittsburgh and says his mother, now dead, is "a sainted figure to me." His parents were estranged, and he declines to talk about his father. (One of Mr. Miller's brothers, Jimmy, is a partner in Gold/Miller, a Hollywood management company that represents stars like Jim Carrey.)
Mr. Miller said that as a youth he worked in delis and scooped ice cream until he realized that his life was going to turn into a "Kafka novella" unless he began seriously pursuing comedy. He started performing in clubs and on local television in Pittsburgh, then moved to Los Angeles, where he met other struggling comedians. Jerry Seinfeld got him a gig at the Improv, and Jay Leno found him an apartment. He remains close to both. He appeared on television with David Letterman and later auditioned for Lorne Michaels for "Saturday Night Live."
"He looked at me and goes, `Would you like to do my newscast?,' " Mr. Miller recalled. "And I said, `Yeah, I would,' and he said, `Well, I'll see you tomorrow.' And then I walked out. And I remember thinking, `My life has just changed.' "
Mr. Miller said his own comedic influences include Jonathan Miller, Richard Pryor, Richard Belzer and Mr. Leno. He speaks more hesitantly about the two comedians with whom he has often been compared, Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce.
He said he had transcripts of some of Mr. Sahl's early shows and was amazed by them. But then he lost interest. Mr. Sahl, he said, became too close to the Kennedy family and was "a savage name-dropper." Mr. Miller added, "It always reminded me to watch myself."
Surprisingly he is tougher on Lenny Bruce. "Lenny was a heroin addict, and I could care less about heroin addicts," Mr. Miller said. "Once I hear a guy is a heroin addict, and they tell me he's a genius, I think, really? I'm not trying to be judgmental. But anybody whose last vision is of a tile pattern on a bathroom floor, I don't know what kind of genius they are."
Thursday, January 15, 2004
This isn't going to convince any of the tin foil hat wearers at Democratic Underground, but it's interesting reading.
Analysis: How smart is Bush?
By Steve Sailer
UPI National Correspondent
Published 1/14/2004 1:12 PM
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- By disdainfully describing George W. Bush's behavior during Cabinet meetings as that of a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people," former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has reopened the debate over just how smart the president is. Some objective numbers from Bush's past suggest he is reasonably but not exceptionally intelligent, but questions remain about his curiosity and openness to learning.
The New Yorker magazine revealed in 1999 that Bush scored 1206 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test: 566 Verbal, 640 Math. While there is something crass about focusing upon a future president's exam scores, these numbers possess a blunt honesty lacking in much of the carefully contrived folklore about politicians' brains.
Bush's 1206 is a better score than it may seem to younger people because the Educational Testing Service "recentered" (inflated) SAT scoring in the mid-'90s. Bush's score is the equivalent of a 1280 under today's dumbed-down scoring system.
How does that 1206 compare to the general population? The contrast is a little tricky because students who are clearly not college material generally don't take the SAT.
Linda Gottfredson, co-director of the University of Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, told United Press International: "I recently converted Bush's SAT score to an IQ using the high school norms available for his age cohort. Educational Testing Service happened to have done a study of representative high school students within a year or so of when he took the test. I derived an IQ of 125, which is the 95th percentile." In other words, only one out of 20 people would score higher.
Another IQ expert, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, the co-author of the bestseller "The Bell Curve," came up with a similar result when asked by UPI. Noting that everybody except high school dropouts takes the PSAT when they are sophomores, Murray calculated from PSAT scores that "I think you're safe in saying that Dubya's IQ, based on his SAT score, is in excess of 120, which puts him the top 10 percent of the distribution, but I wouldn't try to be more precise than that."
By way of comparison, Bush's 2000 opponent Al Gore scored 134 and 133 the two times he took an IQ test in high school, putting him just under the top 1 percent of the public. Not surprisingly, the former vice president's' SAT scores were also strong but not stratospheric: Verbal 625, Math 730, for a total of 1,355 out of a perfect score of 1,600.
According to historian Thomas C. Reeves, author of "A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy," in prep school JFK scored a 119 on an IQ test. Reeves told UPI, "Kennedy was at no time outstanding in school; spelling was always a problem for him."
Bush's other published scores are from the Air Force officer test he took when he applied to join the Air National Guard. The Dallas Morning News reported on July 4, 1999, that Bush's "score on the pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers."
Gottfredson pointed out, though, that officer applicants are a relatively elite group, so that's much better than the 25th percentile among the whole population. Further, this subtest focused on spatial questions that don't come up regularly in the Oval Office, such as "identifying the angle of a plane in flight ... and figuring out which way a gear in a machine would turn in response to another gear's being turned."
In contrast, the Morning News recounted, "On the 'officer quality section,' designed to measure intangible traits such as leadership, Mr. Bush scored better than 95 percent of those taking the test."
Gottfredson commented, "What do you want in a president -- spatial ability or leadership?"
University of California-Davis psychology professor Dean Keith Simonton has written numerous books using quantitative techniques to assess historical figures, including his 1987 work "Why Presidents Succeed: A Political Psychology of Leadership."
Simonton told UPI, "In raw intellect, Bush is about average" for a president.
On the other hand, Simonton didn't see much evidence that Bush tries hard to use the brains he's got. "He has very little intellectual energy or curiosity, relatively few interests, and a dearth of bona fide aesthetic or cultural tastes." Simonton speculated that this could suggest a low level of "openness to experience."
Indeed, despite being the scion of an elite family with worldwide connections, Bush's hobbies appear limited to not much more than running, fishing and baseball. His biographers state, however, that he has paid relentless attention to structuring organizations and assessing the people who could fill them.
Simonton also suggested, "Bush scores extremely low on integrative complexity. ... This is the capacity to look at issues from multiple perspectives and to integrate that diverse outlook into a single coherent viewpoint. ... Bush finds it hard to view the world in other way than his own. That's why he's so hard to engage in a genuine debate. He can say 'I hear you,' but he really can't."
Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
Analysis: How smart is Bush?
By Steve Sailer
UPI National Correspondent
Published 1/14/2004 1:12 PM
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- By disdainfully describing George W. Bush's behavior during Cabinet meetings as that of a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people," former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has reopened the debate over just how smart the president is. Some objective numbers from Bush's past suggest he is reasonably but not exceptionally intelligent, but questions remain about his curiosity and openness to learning.
The New Yorker magazine revealed in 1999 that Bush scored 1206 on his Scholastic Aptitude Test: 566 Verbal, 640 Math. While there is something crass about focusing upon a future president's exam scores, these numbers possess a blunt honesty lacking in much of the carefully contrived folklore about politicians' brains.
Bush's 1206 is a better score than it may seem to younger people because the Educational Testing Service "recentered" (inflated) SAT scoring in the mid-'90s. Bush's score is the equivalent of a 1280 under today's dumbed-down scoring system.
How does that 1206 compare to the general population? The contrast is a little tricky because students who are clearly not college material generally don't take the SAT.
Linda Gottfredson, co-director of the University of Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, told United Press International: "I recently converted Bush's SAT score to an IQ using the high school norms available for his age cohort. Educational Testing Service happened to have done a study of representative high school students within a year or so of when he took the test. I derived an IQ of 125, which is the 95th percentile." In other words, only one out of 20 people would score higher.
Another IQ expert, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, the co-author of the bestseller "The Bell Curve," came up with a similar result when asked by UPI. Noting that everybody except high school dropouts takes the PSAT when they are sophomores, Murray calculated from PSAT scores that "I think you're safe in saying that Dubya's IQ, based on his SAT score, is in excess of 120, which puts him the top 10 percent of the distribution, but I wouldn't try to be more precise than that."
By way of comparison, Bush's 2000 opponent Al Gore scored 134 and 133 the two times he took an IQ test in high school, putting him just under the top 1 percent of the public. Not surprisingly, the former vice president's' SAT scores were also strong but not stratospheric: Verbal 625, Math 730, for a total of 1,355 out of a perfect score of 1,600.
According to historian Thomas C. Reeves, author of "A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy," in prep school JFK scored a 119 on an IQ test. Reeves told UPI, "Kennedy was at no time outstanding in school; spelling was always a problem for him."
Bush's other published scores are from the Air Force officer test he took when he applied to join the Air National Guard. The Dallas Morning News reported on July 4, 1999, that Bush's "score on the pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers."
Gottfredson pointed out, though, that officer applicants are a relatively elite group, so that's much better than the 25th percentile among the whole population. Further, this subtest focused on spatial questions that don't come up regularly in the Oval Office, such as "identifying the angle of a plane in flight ... and figuring out which way a gear in a machine would turn in response to another gear's being turned."
In contrast, the Morning News recounted, "On the 'officer quality section,' designed to measure intangible traits such as leadership, Mr. Bush scored better than 95 percent of those taking the test."
Gottfredson commented, "What do you want in a president -- spatial ability or leadership?"
University of California-Davis psychology professor Dean Keith Simonton has written numerous books using quantitative techniques to assess historical figures, including his 1987 work "Why Presidents Succeed: A Political Psychology of Leadership."
Simonton told UPI, "In raw intellect, Bush is about average" for a president.
On the other hand, Simonton didn't see much evidence that Bush tries hard to use the brains he's got. "He has very little intellectual energy or curiosity, relatively few interests, and a dearth of bona fide aesthetic or cultural tastes." Simonton speculated that this could suggest a low level of "openness to experience."
Indeed, despite being the scion of an elite family with worldwide connections, Bush's hobbies appear limited to not much more than running, fishing and baseball. His biographers state, however, that he has paid relentless attention to structuring organizations and assessing the people who could fill them.
Simonton also suggested, "Bush scores extremely low on integrative complexity. ... This is the capacity to look at issues from multiple perspectives and to integrate that diverse outlook into a single coherent viewpoint. ... Bush finds it hard to view the world in other way than his own. That's why he's so hard to engage in a genuine debate. He can say 'I hear you,' but he really can't."
Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
Excellent piece of analysis from the American Spectator site.
The Children’s Hour
By Jay Currie
Published 1/15/2004 12:08:08 AM
As Republican pundits from Bill Kristol to Andrew Sullivan try to muffle their glee at the prospect of Dr. Dean as the Democratic nominee, cool heads of the Democratic Party have long since made the following political calculation:
Proposition the first: Barring catastrophe, there is not the slightest chance of beating Bush in 2004.
The second: No serious person wants the sort of catastrophe which could leave Bush vulnerable or worse.
The third: No serious person will seek the top spot on the Democratic ticket facing almost certain defeat.
The fourth: Democratic Party activists -- tin foil hats, Michael Moore fan club memberships, Moveon.org charter members, psych degrees, Boston, Berkeley, Seattle -- have not had a presidential candidate since 1988.
Therefore: Time for Children's Hour.
The present Democratic Party is an uneasy coalition of naïveté and sophistication, idealism and calculation. It manages to team smart union and city machine politicians with social activists and tree huggers. Black, lesbian, Burning Man attendees rub shoulders with fine old Savannah patricians who have yet to forgive Lincoln.
To maintain these alliances, the Party has to balance the necessity of achieving power with a willingness to act as a focal point for the assorted idealisms and group identities which represent a significant fraction of its electoral support and, perhaps, a majority of its activists.
For the professionals -- the Clintons, the Gores, Bill Bradley and so on -- real power matters. To attain power, the professionals know they have to keep the amateurs committed without actually inviting them to the table.
Thus: Howard Dean.
The doctor and his supporters are the last in a string of no-hopers stretching back to Gene McCarthy and running though George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis.
By endorsing Dean, the pros are quarantining the activist wing for the real election in 2008. When Dean fights the good fight and loses -- big or small; but loses -- it will be a snap for Hillary, Al, and the rest of them to, shedding crocodile tears, hail him as the heart of the Democratic Party and then get on with the serious race for the 2008 nomination.
And make no mistake: 2008 is a genuine opportunity for the Democrats. Bush will be gone with no obvious successor. If the economy is booming there will be room for arguments about redistribution, if it tanks, the Republican record of deficit spending will be ripe for attack. No matter how well the War on Terror and Iraq go, the public will be tired of orange alert after alert.
But the American electorate as a whole will not be the least bit interested in an anti-war, multi-lateralist, tax-raising Democrat in the Dean mold. Dem pros know this and are working hard to position the party to take full advantage of Bush's departure. Which means sidelining the activists and running a candidate who can win.
The pros also know how big the stakes are in 2008. It may be the last best chance of stopping the Republicans from becoming the natural governing party. And a damn close-run thing it will be. If the Democratic activists defected to a resurgent Green Party in any numbers -- and Dean implicitly suggested that if he did not win his supporters would find a new home -- the Republicans will further entrench their still-shaky majority status.
So, while Republican bigs may relish a real fight, with real positions, over the next ten months, the Democratic pros have moved on. The kids are going to have their chance -- as they do every generation -- to run a big-time campaign on their most heartfelt issues. They'll have enough money to make it feel like the real thing and they will even have professional politicians endorsing their candidate.
And when they lose, the pros will be able to say, "You did a great job. Really. Now, anyone who has learned anything come onboard." If the Children's Hour works, former Deanies, older and a bit chastened, will realize winning, not ideological purity, is what matters in politics. And the Democratic Party will have seasoned another generation of pros.
Jay Currie's writing is archived at JayCurrie.com.
The Children’s Hour
By Jay Currie
Published 1/15/2004 12:08:08 AM
As Republican pundits from Bill Kristol to Andrew Sullivan try to muffle their glee at the prospect of Dr. Dean as the Democratic nominee, cool heads of the Democratic Party have long since made the following political calculation:
Proposition the first: Barring catastrophe, there is not the slightest chance of beating Bush in 2004.
The second: No serious person wants the sort of catastrophe which could leave Bush vulnerable or worse.
The third: No serious person will seek the top spot on the Democratic ticket facing almost certain defeat.
The fourth: Democratic Party activists -- tin foil hats, Michael Moore fan club memberships, Moveon.org charter members, psych degrees, Boston, Berkeley, Seattle -- have not had a presidential candidate since 1988.
Therefore: Time for Children's Hour.
The present Democratic Party is an uneasy coalition of naïveté and sophistication, idealism and calculation. It manages to team smart union and city machine politicians with social activists and tree huggers. Black, lesbian, Burning Man attendees rub shoulders with fine old Savannah patricians who have yet to forgive Lincoln.
To maintain these alliances, the Party has to balance the necessity of achieving power with a willingness to act as a focal point for the assorted idealisms and group identities which represent a significant fraction of its electoral support and, perhaps, a majority of its activists.
For the professionals -- the Clintons, the Gores, Bill Bradley and so on -- real power matters. To attain power, the professionals know they have to keep the amateurs committed without actually inviting them to the table.
Thus: Howard Dean.
The doctor and his supporters are the last in a string of no-hopers stretching back to Gene McCarthy and running though George McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis.
By endorsing Dean, the pros are quarantining the activist wing for the real election in 2008. When Dean fights the good fight and loses -- big or small; but loses -- it will be a snap for Hillary, Al, and the rest of them to, shedding crocodile tears, hail him as the heart of the Democratic Party and then get on with the serious race for the 2008 nomination.
And make no mistake: 2008 is a genuine opportunity for the Democrats. Bush will be gone with no obvious successor. If the economy is booming there will be room for arguments about redistribution, if it tanks, the Republican record of deficit spending will be ripe for attack. No matter how well the War on Terror and Iraq go, the public will be tired of orange alert after alert.
But the American electorate as a whole will not be the least bit interested in an anti-war, multi-lateralist, tax-raising Democrat in the Dean mold. Dem pros know this and are working hard to position the party to take full advantage of Bush's departure. Which means sidelining the activists and running a candidate who can win.
The pros also know how big the stakes are in 2008. It may be the last best chance of stopping the Republicans from becoming the natural governing party. And a damn close-run thing it will be. If the Democratic activists defected to a resurgent Green Party in any numbers -- and Dean implicitly suggested that if he did not win his supporters would find a new home -- the Republicans will further entrench their still-shaky majority status.
So, while Republican bigs may relish a real fight, with real positions, over the next ten months, the Democratic pros have moved on. The kids are going to have their chance -- as they do every generation -- to run a big-time campaign on their most heartfelt issues. They'll have enough money to make it feel like the real thing and they will even have professional politicians endorsing their candidate.
And when they lose, the pros will be able to say, "You did a great job. Really. Now, anyone who has learned anything come onboard." If the Children's Hour works, former Deanies, older and a bit chastened, will realize winning, not ideological purity, is what matters in politics. And the Democratic Party will have seasoned another generation of pros.
Jay Currie's writing is archived at JayCurrie.com.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Excellent column here by Suzyn Waldman about Fredo II.
Clemens weaved a masterpiece
By Suzyn Waldman
Special to YES Network Online
January 13, 2004
To be kind, it looks like the script from "The Perfect Storm."
Andy Pettitte signs with the Houston Astros. Roger Clemens is called by a radio station and has a Hummer delivered to his front lawn, which he returned. His kids go to school and their friends keep asking, "Is your dad coming home to pitch?" Roger gets calls from everyone he's ever known since the age of 12, begging him to pitch for the hometown team. Drayton McLane visits. He is recruited by Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio. He is told he can miss road trips when he's not scheduled to pitch (how's THAT going to work, Jimy Williams?).
Roger's mother gives him her blessing to pitch at home. Debbie gets calls from Laura Pettitte telling her how much fun this would all be. Debbie goes to the mall, and strangers come up to her and beg her to allow Roger to pitch one more year. The Pettittes and the Clemens go on vacation together to Hawaii. Roger and Andy can play golf every day, and pitch for the hometown team. The adulation and attention is enormous. It's one big Texas frat party for Roger Clemens.
I hope it's worth it.
He has just blown up five years of good feelings from Yankee fans. He has blown up that standing ovation at Fenway Park, the stopping of the World Series in Florida, the feeling that he IS a Yankee. And Roger Clemens honestly doesn't see it.
He says he still is a Yankee. He tried to call Mr. Steinbrenner. He called Derek Jeter. He loves the fans. Oh really?
Tell that to Brian Cashman, who now gets nothing, not even draft picks, for the man many have called the greatest right-hander in history. Because Roger insisted he had retired, the Yankees didn't offer him arbitration.
The owner whom he "tried to call" issued a statement including the words, "He told the world he was retiring, and we had no choice but to believe him." Think the Boss is happy about this today?
Roger has signed a 10-year personal services contract with the Astros starting when he finally does retire. Doesn't sound like a Yankee to me.
Roger will spin it his own way now. He always does. Of course he can still pitch. Of course he has a right to change his mind. Of course he can still think he is a Yankee.
And of course, we don't have to believe him anymore.
Oh, by the way, Roger told that radio station in Houston to deliver the Hummer to his house… a white one for Debbie.
Suzyn Waldman co-hosts "Yankees Hot Stove," is a reporter for the YES Network's Yankee Pre and Post Game shows and is a regular contributor to YES Network Online.
Clemens weaved a masterpiece
By Suzyn Waldman
Special to YES Network Online
January 13, 2004
To be kind, it looks like the script from "The Perfect Storm."
Andy Pettitte signs with the Houston Astros. Roger Clemens is called by a radio station and has a Hummer delivered to his front lawn, which he returned. His kids go to school and their friends keep asking, "Is your dad coming home to pitch?" Roger gets calls from everyone he's ever known since the age of 12, begging him to pitch for the hometown team. Drayton McLane visits. He is recruited by Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio. He is told he can miss road trips when he's not scheduled to pitch (how's THAT going to work, Jimy Williams?).
Roger's mother gives him her blessing to pitch at home. Debbie gets calls from Laura Pettitte telling her how much fun this would all be. Debbie goes to the mall, and strangers come up to her and beg her to allow Roger to pitch one more year. The Pettittes and the Clemens go on vacation together to Hawaii. Roger and Andy can play golf every day, and pitch for the hometown team. The adulation and attention is enormous. It's one big Texas frat party for Roger Clemens.
I hope it's worth it.
He has just blown up five years of good feelings from Yankee fans. He has blown up that standing ovation at Fenway Park, the stopping of the World Series in Florida, the feeling that he IS a Yankee. And Roger Clemens honestly doesn't see it.
He says he still is a Yankee. He tried to call Mr. Steinbrenner. He called Derek Jeter. He loves the fans. Oh really?
Tell that to Brian Cashman, who now gets nothing, not even draft picks, for the man many have called the greatest right-hander in history. Because Roger insisted he had retired, the Yankees didn't offer him arbitration.
The owner whom he "tried to call" issued a statement including the words, "He told the world he was retiring, and we had no choice but to believe him." Think the Boss is happy about this today?
Roger has signed a 10-year personal services contract with the Astros starting when he finally does retire. Doesn't sound like a Yankee to me.
Roger will spin it his own way now. He always does. Of course he can still pitch. Of course he has a right to change his mind. Of course he can still think he is a Yankee.
And of course, we don't have to believe him anymore.
Oh, by the way, Roger told that radio station in Houston to deliver the Hummer to his house… a white one for Debbie.
Suzyn Waldman co-hosts "Yankees Hot Stove," is a reporter for the YES Network's Yankee Pre and Post Game shows and is a regular contributor to YES Network Online.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Another fantastic column by Mark Steyn.
We are falling under the imam's spell
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 13/01/2004)
Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you're Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 – none of which is factually in dispute – the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain.
But, if you're Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual emotive rant about how "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers on the West Bank "should be shot dead" because "they are Nazis" and "I feel nothing but hatred for them", the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London's cultural arbiters each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.
So, while the BBC is "investigating" Kilroy, its only statement on Mr Paulin was an oblique but curiously worded allusion to the non-controversy on the Corporation website: "His polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers in the US, where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive." "The Jewish question"? "Notoriously sensitive"? Is this really how they talk at the BBC?
Mr Paulin's style is only metaphorically knockabout. But, a few days after his remarks were published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, some doughty Palestinian "activists" rose to his challenge and knocked about some settlers more literally, murdering among others five-year-old Danielle Shefi. In a touch of symbolism the critic in Mr Paulin might have found a wee bit obvious, they left her Mickey Mouse sheets soaked in blood.
Evidently Kilroy's "polemical, knockabout style" is far more problematic. For what it's worth, I accept the BBC's right to axe his show. I haven't seen it in a decade and I thought they should have axed it then. I myself got fired by the BBC a while back and, although I had a couple of rough years sleeping in a rotting boxcar at the back of the freight yards, I crawled my way back to semi-insolvency. There's no doubt in my mind that, when the CRE, the BBC, the Metropolitan Police and the Muslim Council of Britain are through making an example of him, he'll still be able to find gainful employment, if not in TV then certainly in casual construction work or seasonal fruit-picking.
But it's not really about Kilroy or Paulin or Jews, or the Saudis beheading men for (alleged) homosexuality, or the inability of the "moderate" Jordanian parliament to ban honour killing, or the fact that (as Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post memorably put it) if Robert Mugabe walked into an Arab League summit he'd be the most democratically legitimate leader in the room. It's not about any of that: it's about the future of your "multicultural" society.
One reason why the Arab world is in the state it's in is because one cannot raise certain subjects without it impacting severely on one's wellbeing. And if you can't discuss issues, they don't exist. According to Ibrahim Nawar of Arab Press Freedom Watch, in the last two years seven Saudi editors have been fired for criticising government policies. To fire a British talk-show host for criticising Saudi policies is surely over-reaching even for the notoriously super-sensitive Muslim lobby.
But apparently not. "What Robert could do," suggested the CRE's Trevor Phillips helpfully, "is issue a proper apology, not for the fact that people were offended, but for saying this stuff in the first place. Secondly he could learn something about Muslims and Arabs – they gave us maths and medicine – and thirdly he could use some of his vast earnings to support a Muslim charity. Then I would say he has been properly contrite."
Extravagant public contrition. Re-education camp. "Voluntary" surrender of assets. It's not unknown for officials at government agencies to lean on troublemaking citizens in this way, but not usually in functioning democracies.
When Catholic groups complain about things like Terrence McNally's Broadway play Corpus Christi (in which a gay Jesus enjoys anal sex with Judas), the arts crowd says a healthy society has to have "artists" with the "courage" to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas", etc. But, when Cincinnati Muslims complained about the local theatre's new play about a Palestinian suicide bomber, the production was immediately cancelled: the courageous transgressive arts guys folded like a Bedouin tent. The play was almost laughably pro-Palestinian, but that wasn't the point: the Muslim community leaders didn't care whether the play was pro- or anti-Islam: for them, Islam was beyond discussion. End of subject. And so it was.
Fifteen years ago, when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was declared and both his defenders and detractors managed to miss what the business was really about, the Times's Clifford Longley nailed it very well. Surveying the threats from British Muslim groups, he wrote that certain Muslim beliefs "are not compatible with a plural society: Islam does not know how to exist as a minority culture. For it is not just a set of private individual principles and beliefs. Islam is a social creed above all, a radically different way of organising society as a whole."
Since then, societal organisation-wise, things seem to be going Islam's way swimmingly - literally in the case of the French municipal pool which bowed to Muslim requests to institute single-sex bathing, but also in more important ways. Thus, I see the French interior minister flew to Egypt to seek the blessing for his new religious legislation of the big-time imam at the al-Azhar theological institute. Rather odd, don't you think? After all, Egypt isn't in the French interior. But, if Egypt doesn't fall within the interior minister's jurisdiction, France apparently falls within the imam's.
And so, when free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often than not wins – and all the noisy types who run around crying "Censorship!" if a Texas radio station refuses to play the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks suddenly fall silent. I don't know about you, but this "multicultural Britain" business is beginning to feel like an interim phase.
We are falling under the imam's spell
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 13/01/2004)
Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you're Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 – none of which is factually in dispute – the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain.
But, if you're Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual emotive rant about how "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers on the West Bank "should be shot dead" because "they are Nazis" and "I feel nothing but hatred for them", the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London's cultural arbiters each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.
So, while the BBC is "investigating" Kilroy, its only statement on Mr Paulin was an oblique but curiously worded allusion to the non-controversy on the Corporation website: "His polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers in the US, where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive." "The Jewish question"? "Notoriously sensitive"? Is this really how they talk at the BBC?
Mr Paulin's style is only metaphorically knockabout. But, a few days after his remarks were published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, some doughty Palestinian "activists" rose to his challenge and knocked about some settlers more literally, murdering among others five-year-old Danielle Shefi. In a touch of symbolism the critic in Mr Paulin might have found a wee bit obvious, they left her Mickey Mouse sheets soaked in blood.
Evidently Kilroy's "polemical, knockabout style" is far more problematic. For what it's worth, I accept the BBC's right to axe his show. I haven't seen it in a decade and I thought they should have axed it then. I myself got fired by the BBC a while back and, although I had a couple of rough years sleeping in a rotting boxcar at the back of the freight yards, I crawled my way back to semi-insolvency. There's no doubt in my mind that, when the CRE, the BBC, the Metropolitan Police and the Muslim Council of Britain are through making an example of him, he'll still be able to find gainful employment, if not in TV then certainly in casual construction work or seasonal fruit-picking.
But it's not really about Kilroy or Paulin or Jews, or the Saudis beheading men for (alleged) homosexuality, or the inability of the "moderate" Jordanian parliament to ban honour killing, or the fact that (as Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post memorably put it) if Robert Mugabe walked into an Arab League summit he'd be the most democratically legitimate leader in the room. It's not about any of that: it's about the future of your "multicultural" society.
One reason why the Arab world is in the state it's in is because one cannot raise certain subjects without it impacting severely on one's wellbeing. And if you can't discuss issues, they don't exist. According to Ibrahim Nawar of Arab Press Freedom Watch, in the last two years seven Saudi editors have been fired for criticising government policies. To fire a British talk-show host for criticising Saudi policies is surely over-reaching even for the notoriously super-sensitive Muslim lobby.
But apparently not. "What Robert could do," suggested the CRE's Trevor Phillips helpfully, "is issue a proper apology, not for the fact that people were offended, but for saying this stuff in the first place. Secondly he could learn something about Muslims and Arabs – they gave us maths and medicine – and thirdly he could use some of his vast earnings to support a Muslim charity. Then I would say he has been properly contrite."
Extravagant public contrition. Re-education camp. "Voluntary" surrender of assets. It's not unknown for officials at government agencies to lean on troublemaking citizens in this way, but not usually in functioning democracies.
When Catholic groups complain about things like Terrence McNally's Broadway play Corpus Christi (in which a gay Jesus enjoys anal sex with Judas), the arts crowd says a healthy society has to have "artists" with the "courage" to "explore" "transgressive" "ideas", etc. But, when Cincinnati Muslims complained about the local theatre's new play about a Palestinian suicide bomber, the production was immediately cancelled: the courageous transgressive arts guys folded like a Bedouin tent. The play was almost laughably pro-Palestinian, but that wasn't the point: the Muslim community leaders didn't care whether the play was pro- or anti-Islam: for them, Islam was beyond discussion. End of subject. And so it was.
Fifteen years ago, when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was declared and both his defenders and detractors managed to miss what the business was really about, the Times's Clifford Longley nailed it very well. Surveying the threats from British Muslim groups, he wrote that certain Muslim beliefs "are not compatible with a plural society: Islam does not know how to exist as a minority culture. For it is not just a set of private individual principles and beliefs. Islam is a social creed above all, a radically different way of organising society as a whole."
Since then, societal organisation-wise, things seem to be going Islam's way swimmingly - literally in the case of the French municipal pool which bowed to Muslim requests to institute single-sex bathing, but also in more important ways. Thus, I see the French interior minister flew to Egypt to seek the blessing for his new religious legislation of the big-time imam at the al-Azhar theological institute. Rather odd, don't you think? After all, Egypt isn't in the French interior. But, if Egypt doesn't fall within the interior minister's jurisdiction, France apparently falls within the imam's.
And so, when free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often than not wins – and all the noisy types who run around crying "Censorship!" if a Texas radio station refuses to play the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks suddenly fall silent. I don't know about you, but this "multicultural Britain" business is beginning to feel like an interim phase.
Good news for Lennon fans. Norman is an excellent writer, his Beatles bio "Shout" being one of the best things written about them, and Riley's previous book of Beatle song analysis, "Tell Me Why," is one of the best critical volumes on the Fabs. Good reading in store.
Ono-backed Lennon bio shopped around NY
by Matthew Flamm
A proposal for a new biography of John Lennon that would have the blessings of his widow, Yoko Ono, is making the rounds of New York publishers.
The as-yet-untitled book--which has already sold in the United Kingdom--will be written by veteran rock scribe Philip Norman and may include a foreword by Ms. Ono, who has agreed to give the author access to materials that belonged to the ex-Beatle.
Mr. Norman's agent, Peter Matson, declined to comment.
The book will face competition from music writer Tim Riley, who recently signed with W.W. Norton to pen a full-scale life of Lennon.
Copyright 2004, Crain Communications, Inc
Ono-backed Lennon bio shopped around NY
by Matthew Flamm
A proposal for a new biography of John Lennon that would have the blessings of his widow, Yoko Ono, is making the rounds of New York publishers.
The as-yet-untitled book--which has already sold in the United Kingdom--will be written by veteran rock scribe Philip Norman and may include a foreword by Ms. Ono, who has agreed to give the author access to materials that belonged to the ex-Beatle.
Mr. Norman's agent, Peter Matson, declined to comment.
The book will face competition from music writer Tim Riley, who recently signed with W.W. Norton to pen a full-scale life of Lennon.
Copyright 2004, Crain Communications, Inc
Interesting article on the Prince's proclivity for speaking (one hopes for his sake) without thinking.
on the trail
Wesley Clark's Loose Lips
Six quotes overheard in New Hampshire.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Monday, Jan. 12, 2004, at 5:47 PM PT
Whether it's true or not, Gen. Wesley Clark's rise in the polls in New Hampshire is being partly attributed to some voters having "cold feet" about former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, especially Dean's penchant for making statements that are quickly seized upon by Fox News or the Republican Party as evidence of unpatriotic disloyalty. But Clark has the same propensity for speaking imprecisely off the cuff. Here are some statements I heard him make last week during my trip with him in New Hampshire:
Bush was "warned" about 9/11?
"President Bush didn't do his job as commander in chief in the early months of his administration. He was warned that the greatest threat to the United States of America was Osama Bin Laden, yet on the 11th of September in 2001, the United States had no plan for dealing with the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden. The ship of state was on autopilot. There were good CIA officers and FBI officers and everybody doing what they'd been taught to do, but the essential leadership process of putting focus on the resources of the United States, and giving these agencies a real target and a mission, it wasn't done. At least, I think that's what the evidence will show if we ever get the results of this presidential commission, and if they've asked the right questions." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)
Bush "never intended" to get Osama Bin Laden?
"We bombed Afghanistan, we missed Osama Bin Laden, partly because the president never intended to put the resources in to get Osama Bin Laden. All along, right after 9/11, they'd made their mind up, I guess, that we were going to go after Saddam Hussein. That's what people in the Pentagon told me. And they capped the resources, stopped the commitment to Afghanistan, and started shifting to prepare to go after Saddam Hussein." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)
There wasn't a single terrorist in Iraq before the war?
"The president was not and has not been held accountable yet for misleading the American people. He is continuing to associate Saddam, Iraq, and the problem of terrorism. Yet the only terrorists that are in Iraq are the people that have come there to attack us." (Jan. 7, Town House, Peterborough.)
Fifty-five million voters are "ill-informed" dupes of the Christian right?
"Now, there's one party in America that's made the United Nations the enemy. And I don't know how many of you have ever read that series of books that's published by the Christian right that's called the "Left Behind" series? Probably nobody's read it up here. But don't feel bad, I'm not recommending it to you. I'm just telling you that according to the book cover that I saw in the airport, 55 million copies have been printed. And in it, the Antichrist is the United Nations. And so there's this huge, ill-informed body of sentiment out there that's just grinding away against the United Nations." (Jan. 7, Fuller Elementary School, Keene.)
Does Islam need an Enlightenment or just Match.com?
"Young men in an Islamic culture cannot get married until they can support a family. No job, no marriage. No marriage, unhappy young men. They get real angry, they feel real frustrated, they feel real powerless. And a certain number of them are being exploited in the mosques by this recruiting network." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)
President Bush doesn't even want to find Bin Laden?
"Newsweek magazine says he's in the mountains of western Pakistan. And I guess if Newsweek could find him there, we could, too, if we wanted to." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)
Chris Suellentrop is Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief. You can e-mail him at suellentrop@slate.com.
on the trail
Wesley Clark's Loose Lips
Six quotes overheard in New Hampshire.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Monday, Jan. 12, 2004, at 5:47 PM PT
Whether it's true or not, Gen. Wesley Clark's rise in the polls in New Hampshire is being partly attributed to some voters having "cold feet" about former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, especially Dean's penchant for making statements that are quickly seized upon by Fox News or the Republican Party as evidence of unpatriotic disloyalty. But Clark has the same propensity for speaking imprecisely off the cuff. Here are some statements I heard him make last week during my trip with him in New Hampshire:
Bush was "warned" about 9/11?
"President Bush didn't do his job as commander in chief in the early months of his administration. He was warned that the greatest threat to the United States of America was Osama Bin Laden, yet on the 11th of September in 2001, the United States had no plan for dealing with the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden. The ship of state was on autopilot. There were good CIA officers and FBI officers and everybody doing what they'd been taught to do, but the essential leadership process of putting focus on the resources of the United States, and giving these agencies a real target and a mission, it wasn't done. At least, I think that's what the evidence will show if we ever get the results of this presidential commission, and if they've asked the right questions." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)
Bush "never intended" to get Osama Bin Laden?
"We bombed Afghanistan, we missed Osama Bin Laden, partly because the president never intended to put the resources in to get Osama Bin Laden. All along, right after 9/11, they'd made their mind up, I guess, that we were going to go after Saddam Hussein. That's what people in the Pentagon told me. And they capped the resources, stopped the commitment to Afghanistan, and started shifting to prepare to go after Saddam Hussein." (Jan. 6, McKelvie Middle School, Bedford.)
There wasn't a single terrorist in Iraq before the war?
"The president was not and has not been held accountable yet for misleading the American people. He is continuing to associate Saddam, Iraq, and the problem of terrorism. Yet the only terrorists that are in Iraq are the people that have come there to attack us." (Jan. 7, Town House, Peterborough.)
Fifty-five million voters are "ill-informed" dupes of the Christian right?
"Now, there's one party in America that's made the United Nations the enemy. And I don't know how many of you have ever read that series of books that's published by the Christian right that's called the "Left Behind" series? Probably nobody's read it up here. But don't feel bad, I'm not recommending it to you. I'm just telling you that according to the book cover that I saw in the airport, 55 million copies have been printed. And in it, the Antichrist is the United Nations. And so there's this huge, ill-informed body of sentiment out there that's just grinding away against the United Nations." (Jan. 7, Fuller Elementary School, Keene.)
Does Islam need an Enlightenment or just Match.com?
"Young men in an Islamic culture cannot get married until they can support a family. No job, no marriage. No marriage, unhappy young men. They get real angry, they feel real frustrated, they feel real powerless. And a certain number of them are being exploited in the mosques by this recruiting network." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)
President Bush doesn't even want to find Bin Laden?
"Newsweek magazine says he's in the mountains of western Pakistan. And I guess if Newsweek could find him there, we could, too, if we wanted to." (Jan. 8, Havenwoods Heritage Heights senior center, Concord.)
Chris Suellentrop is Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief. You can e-mail him at suellentrop@slate.com.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Another great column from Mark Steyn:
Illegals the political 'untouchables'
January 11, 2004
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
According to a RoperASW poll from last year, 83 percent of
Americans support mandatory detention and forfeiture of
property for illegal immigrants, followed by deportation.
Eighty-three percent. Pretty big number. So who are the 17 percent who don't think illegal immigrants should be seized, jailed, have their property confiscated and deported?
Well, they're pretty much everyone in the two major parties, plus the entire U.S. media.
So why don't they think as the masses do? In the media and the Democratic Party, everyone seems to subscribe to the wisdom of Carol Moseley Braun's mom. As Ambassador Braun told her audience in the ABC debate, the NPR debate, the Rainbow/PUSH debate, the UCLA environmental debate, the AFCSME debate, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus debate, the Congressional Black Caucus debate, the Service Employees International Union debate, etc:
''My late mother used to say it doesn't matter if you came to this country on the Mayflower or a slave ship, through Ellis Island or across the Rio Grande, we're all in the same boat now.''
It goes down so well that Gov. Howard Dean's started using it, too. And why not? It's beautifully coded imagery: Whether you came here as slave owner or slave, standing in line and filling in the paperwork or through the express check-in, everyone's an immigrant, and all the rest is fine print. Who are we to distinguish between some uptight white-bread Pilgrim disembarking at Plymouth Rock and an Algerian terrorist with a forged Quebec driver's license making a break for it at the British Columbia/Washington state border en route to blow up LAX? Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Illegal Americans, Islamist Americans, Incendiary Americans, we're all in the same boat, whether we're rowing or planting the plastic explosives.
Like so much Media-Democrat conventional wisdom, its uselessness or harmfulness as practically applied is less important than the fact that it advertises your niceness. So, for Democratic presidential candidates, being a moral poseur is the default position on immigration. After all, to be concerned about immigration is, as they see it, to be a racist.
So, as on so many issues, the Democratic Party has nothing helpful to contribute. That leaves the Republican Party. I would imagine that, when a WASPy old Mayflower madam like Dean recycles Carol's mom's paean to Ellis Island and the Rio Grande, a lot of Republicans roll their eyes, if only metaphorically. Yet there was the president the other day using much the same nostalgic imagery in service of a massive amnesty dressed up as a decade-or-two ''temporary worker'' application process.
If you're one of that 83 percent of Americans who want illegal immigrants deported, you're probably wondering why it's easier for those who break U.S. immigration law to get a job at the White House (true: an illegal immigrant worked as a Clinton/Bush gardener) than for anybody who wants to enforce U.S. immigration law to get a job at the White House. And I guess the answer is this: There are supposedly up to 10 million illegals living and working in America. It's not politically possible for a civilized nation forcibly to deport a population three times as big as Ireland's.
So which of the remaining options is the least worst? To leave a population 20 times bigger than that of Dean's Vermont living in the shadows, knowing that those shadows provide cover for all sorts of murky activities -- from fake IDs for terrorists to election fraud. Or to shrug ''They're here, they're clear, get used to it,'' and ensnare them, like lawful citizens, within the coils of the bureaucracy.
The president has opted for the latter option. A pragmatic conservative could support that, but only if the move was accompanied by a determination to address the ''root cause'': the inertia and incompetence of America's immigration bureaucracy. But there's no indication in the president's remarks that he's prepared to get serious about that. America takes in roughly a million legal immigrants and half-a-million illegals each year. Even routine visa and green card application take years to process: two, five, 10 years. Not because the feds are spending two, five or 10 years doing unusually thorough background checks, but just because that's how long it takes to shuffle the paperwork. Imagine a branch of ''60-Minute Photo'' that takes 60 minutes to develop the photos but three months to move them from the front counter to the lab at the back and another eight months to move them from the lab back to the counter. Right now, the system has a backlog just shy of 5 million. Drop another few million from the Undocumented American community in their laps, and lawful immigrants can add another half-decade and a couple more circles of hell to their own applications.
Remember the 1986 immigration amnesty? One of its beneficiaries was Mahmoud abu Halima, who went on to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. His friend Mohammad Salameh wasn't so fortunate. He applied for the '86 amnesty but was rejected. So he just stayed on in America, living illegally, and happily was still around to help Mahmoud and co-attack the Twin Towers. He's the guy who rented the truck, which suggests he had enough ID to get past the rental agent at Ryder.
But I don't want to tar illegal immigrants with the terrorist brush. After all, in their second and much more successful assault on the World Trade Center, most of the killers were approved by the State Department, ushered in through Foggy Bottom's ''visa express'' program for Saudis, even though their answers on the application form were almost comically inadequate (''Address while in the United States: HOTEL, AMERICA'') and they're exactly the category -- young single men with no job and no motive to return -- that's supposed to be a red flag for immigration fraud.
So that's a triple failure. Whether the terrorist (a) does the proper paperwork upfront, (b) applies for a retrospective amnesty, (c) gets rejected and ordered to be deported, or (bonus category d) gets arrested for immigration violations and then released (like Sniper Boy John Lee Malvo), it makes no difference: Whichever menu option he selects, the federal government will let him carry on living here until he's decided which Americans he wants to kill.
The world's most powerful nation has an illegal immigration problem because it has a legal immigration problem. Transferring millions of people from the unofficial shadow network to the arthritic bureaucracy that allowed the problem to get this big is unlikely to solve it.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
Illegals the political 'untouchables'
January 11, 2004
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
According to a RoperASW poll from last year, 83 percent of
Americans support mandatory detention and forfeiture of
property for illegal immigrants, followed by deportation.
Eighty-three percent. Pretty big number. So who are the 17 percent who don't think illegal immigrants should be seized, jailed, have their property confiscated and deported?
Well, they're pretty much everyone in the two major parties, plus the entire U.S. media.
So why don't they think as the masses do? In the media and the Democratic Party, everyone seems to subscribe to the wisdom of Carol Moseley Braun's mom. As Ambassador Braun told her audience in the ABC debate, the NPR debate, the Rainbow/PUSH debate, the UCLA environmental debate, the AFCSME debate, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus debate, the Congressional Black Caucus debate, the Service Employees International Union debate, etc:
''My late mother used to say it doesn't matter if you came to this country on the Mayflower or a slave ship, through Ellis Island or across the Rio Grande, we're all in the same boat now.''
It goes down so well that Gov. Howard Dean's started using it, too. And why not? It's beautifully coded imagery: Whether you came here as slave owner or slave, standing in line and filling in the paperwork or through the express check-in, everyone's an immigrant, and all the rest is fine print. Who are we to distinguish between some uptight white-bread Pilgrim disembarking at Plymouth Rock and an Algerian terrorist with a forged Quebec driver's license making a break for it at the British Columbia/Washington state border en route to blow up LAX? Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Illegal Americans, Islamist Americans, Incendiary Americans, we're all in the same boat, whether we're rowing or planting the plastic explosives.
Like so much Media-Democrat conventional wisdom, its uselessness or harmfulness as practically applied is less important than the fact that it advertises your niceness. So, for Democratic presidential candidates, being a moral poseur is the default position on immigration. After all, to be concerned about immigration is, as they see it, to be a racist.
So, as on so many issues, the Democratic Party has nothing helpful to contribute. That leaves the Republican Party. I would imagine that, when a WASPy old Mayflower madam like Dean recycles Carol's mom's paean to Ellis Island and the Rio Grande, a lot of Republicans roll their eyes, if only metaphorically. Yet there was the president the other day using much the same nostalgic imagery in service of a massive amnesty dressed up as a decade-or-two ''temporary worker'' application process.
If you're one of that 83 percent of Americans who want illegal immigrants deported, you're probably wondering why it's easier for those who break U.S. immigration law to get a job at the White House (true: an illegal immigrant worked as a Clinton/Bush gardener) than for anybody who wants to enforce U.S. immigration law to get a job at the White House. And I guess the answer is this: There are supposedly up to 10 million illegals living and working in America. It's not politically possible for a civilized nation forcibly to deport a population three times as big as Ireland's.
So which of the remaining options is the least worst? To leave a population 20 times bigger than that of Dean's Vermont living in the shadows, knowing that those shadows provide cover for all sorts of murky activities -- from fake IDs for terrorists to election fraud. Or to shrug ''They're here, they're clear, get used to it,'' and ensnare them, like lawful citizens, within the coils of the bureaucracy.
The president has opted for the latter option. A pragmatic conservative could support that, but only if the move was accompanied by a determination to address the ''root cause'': the inertia and incompetence of America's immigration bureaucracy. But there's no indication in the president's remarks that he's prepared to get serious about that. America takes in roughly a million legal immigrants and half-a-million illegals each year. Even routine visa and green card application take years to process: two, five, 10 years. Not because the feds are spending two, five or 10 years doing unusually thorough background checks, but just because that's how long it takes to shuffle the paperwork. Imagine a branch of ''60-Minute Photo'' that takes 60 minutes to develop the photos but three months to move them from the front counter to the lab at the back and another eight months to move them from the lab back to the counter. Right now, the system has a backlog just shy of 5 million. Drop another few million from the Undocumented American community in their laps, and lawful immigrants can add another half-decade and a couple more circles of hell to their own applications.
Remember the 1986 immigration amnesty? One of its beneficiaries was Mahmoud abu Halima, who went on to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. His friend Mohammad Salameh wasn't so fortunate. He applied for the '86 amnesty but was rejected. So he just stayed on in America, living illegally, and happily was still around to help Mahmoud and co-attack the Twin Towers. He's the guy who rented the truck, which suggests he had enough ID to get past the rental agent at Ryder.
But I don't want to tar illegal immigrants with the terrorist brush. After all, in their second and much more successful assault on the World Trade Center, most of the killers were approved by the State Department, ushered in through Foggy Bottom's ''visa express'' program for Saudis, even though their answers on the application form were almost comically inadequate (''Address while in the United States: HOTEL, AMERICA'') and they're exactly the category -- young single men with no job and no motive to return -- that's supposed to be a red flag for immigration fraud.
So that's a triple failure. Whether the terrorist (a) does the proper paperwork upfront, (b) applies for a retrospective amnesty, (c) gets rejected and ordered to be deported, or (bonus category d) gets arrested for immigration violations and then released (like Sniper Boy John Lee Malvo), it makes no difference: Whichever menu option he selects, the federal government will let him carry on living here until he's decided which Americans he wants to kill.
The world's most powerful nation has an illegal immigration problem because it has a legal immigration problem. Transferring millions of people from the unofficial shadow network to the arthritic bureaucracy that allowed the problem to get this big is unlikely to solve it.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
Great post about Howard the Dean from James Taranto of Opinion Journal, on "The Best of the Web."
The Bully Pulpit
Angry Left types who've been fantasizing about Howard Dean "taking on" President Bush must have been thrilled yesterday when Dean put Dale Ungerer in his place. Ungerer, a 67-year-old retiree from Hawkeye, Iowa, stood up at a town hall meeting and offered some advice to the diminutive doc:
Ungerer called on the Democrats to heed the biblical maxim of "love thy neighbor," adding: "Please tone down the garbage, the mean-mouthing, of tearing down your neighbor, and being so pompous."
Dean, who listened quietly, immediately replied, "George Bush is not my neighbor." When Ungerer tried to interrupt, the former governor shouted: "You sit down! You had your say, and now I'm going to have my say." . . .
"Under the guise of supporting your neighbor, we're all expected not to criticize the president because it's unpatriotic. I think it's unpatriotic to do some of the things that this president has done to the country," Dean said to applause. "It is time not to put up any of this 'love thy neighbor.' "
Dean is awfully defensive about his patriotism, isn't he? Actually, Ungerer never questioned Dean's patriotism, and we're not going to either. But we do have some questions about Dean's manhood. In The Nation, one Richard Goldstein rhapsodizes about he-man Dean, who "has skillfully cast himself as a manly alternative to Bush's ripe macho." Well, OK, if you think a real man is someone who bullies 67-year-olds, we suppose Goldstein has a point.
Naturally, we beg to differ. No doubt there is plenty of testosterone coursing through those veins that bulge out of Dean's neck, but that just means he's male. What separates the men from the boys is a degree of maturity that Dean seems to lack. The ability to keep one's cool, not the propensity to lose it, is a manifestation of the strength that makes a real man.
An interesting historical note: It turns out Dean isn't the first angry Howard to run for president. In 1976, Howard the Duck mounted a candidacy, only to lose to Jimmy Carter. Coincidentally, that Howard wasn't a real duck, either.
The Bully Pulpit
Angry Left types who've been fantasizing about Howard Dean "taking on" President Bush must have been thrilled yesterday when Dean put Dale Ungerer in his place. Ungerer, a 67-year-old retiree from Hawkeye, Iowa, stood up at a town hall meeting and offered some advice to the diminutive doc:
Ungerer called on the Democrats to heed the biblical maxim of "love thy neighbor," adding: "Please tone down the garbage, the mean-mouthing, of tearing down your neighbor, and being so pompous."
Dean, who listened quietly, immediately replied, "George Bush is not my neighbor." When Ungerer tried to interrupt, the former governor shouted: "You sit down! You had your say, and now I'm going to have my say." . . .
"Under the guise of supporting your neighbor, we're all expected not to criticize the president because it's unpatriotic. I think it's unpatriotic to do some of the things that this president has done to the country," Dean said to applause. "It is time not to put up any of this 'love thy neighbor.' "
Dean is awfully defensive about his patriotism, isn't he? Actually, Ungerer never questioned Dean's patriotism, and we're not going to either. But we do have some questions about Dean's manhood. In The Nation, one Richard Goldstein rhapsodizes about he-man Dean, who "has skillfully cast himself as a manly alternative to Bush's ripe macho." Well, OK, if you think a real man is someone who bullies 67-year-olds, we suppose Goldstein has a point.
Naturally, we beg to differ. No doubt there is plenty of testosterone coursing through those veins that bulge out of Dean's neck, but that just means he's male. What separates the men from the boys is a degree of maturity that Dean seems to lack. The ability to keep one's cool, not the propensity to lose it, is a manifestation of the strength that makes a real man.
An interesting historical note: It turns out Dean isn't the first angry Howard to run for president. In 1976, Howard the Duck mounted a candidacy, only to lose to Jimmy Carter. Coincidentally, that Howard wasn't a real duck, either.
Excellent post here from Andrew Sullivan:
THE FAR LEFT AND DISSENT:
Yes, we all know that spokesmen and women for the far left have been subjected to vicious McCarthyite tactics by the Bush police state and, er, bloggers, because they have dared to dissent bravely from the war on terror. But there are some dissidents the far left is quite happy to see in jail - as long as that jail is in Cuba.
Some context: Nat Hentoff has been championing dozens of writers, thinkers and librarians who have been subject to Fidel Castro's latest bout of chronic communism and now have no freedom at all. Hentoff - about as liberal and as saintly a defender of civil liberties of anyone on the planet - was particularly incensed by the imprisonment of librarians. But the American Library Association won't protest the incarceration of their Cuban colleagues. Why not? Over to Michael Moore's fact-checker, Ann Sparanese, who is on the board of the ALA, protesting Hentoff in the Village Voice's letters page:
Hentoff is mistaken about why the dissidents are in prison. The laws under which they were convicted criminalize collaboration with, or aid to, a foreign power seeking to overthrow the Cuban government. The Law of Protection of the Independence of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba (Law 88) was passed in 1999 in direct reaction to the passage of the Helms-Burton Law by the U.S. Congress in 1996. Helms-Burton tightens the economic embargo against Cuba and appropriates millions of our tax dollars every year for the overthrow of the Cuban government, euphemistically referred to as 'transition.'
Those arrested were convicted of receiving aid from U.S. agents for the purposes of regime change, not for distributing copies of 1984. Even Amnesty International devotes quite a bit of ink to the role of U.S. policy in creating conditions for the 'crackdown' in Cuba.
Off-base: one of Hentoff's championed dissidents, Victor Arroyo, was jailed on charges of simply having an independent library. But even if Sparanese were right, it's now legit to jail librarians if they receive aid for their work from a foreign source? Nice to know whom Ms Sparanese would be putting in the slammer come her revolution. And, of course, Castro's tyranny is actually the fault of ... the United States: "Without Helms-Burton, the Cuban laws would lose their rationale and those imprisoned might be freed. Many of us disdain the idea that our cherished professional values should be enlisted in the service of the wrong-headed and provocative foreign policy of our own government."
They learn nothing. Ever.
THE FAR LEFT AND DISSENT:
Yes, we all know that spokesmen and women for the far left have been subjected to vicious McCarthyite tactics by the Bush police state and, er, bloggers, because they have dared to dissent bravely from the war on terror. But there are some dissidents the far left is quite happy to see in jail - as long as that jail is in Cuba.
Some context: Nat Hentoff has been championing dozens of writers, thinkers and librarians who have been subject to Fidel Castro's latest bout of chronic communism and now have no freedom at all. Hentoff - about as liberal and as saintly a defender of civil liberties of anyone on the planet - was particularly incensed by the imprisonment of librarians. But the American Library Association won't protest the incarceration of their Cuban colleagues. Why not? Over to Michael Moore's fact-checker, Ann Sparanese, who is on the board of the ALA, protesting Hentoff in the Village Voice's letters page:
Hentoff is mistaken about why the dissidents are in prison. The laws under which they were convicted criminalize collaboration with, or aid to, a foreign power seeking to overthrow the Cuban government. The Law of Protection of the Independence of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba (Law 88) was passed in 1999 in direct reaction to the passage of the Helms-Burton Law by the U.S. Congress in 1996. Helms-Burton tightens the economic embargo against Cuba and appropriates millions of our tax dollars every year for the overthrow of the Cuban government, euphemistically referred to as 'transition.'
Those arrested were convicted of receiving aid from U.S. agents for the purposes of regime change, not for distributing copies of 1984. Even Amnesty International devotes quite a bit of ink to the role of U.S. policy in creating conditions for the 'crackdown' in Cuba.
Off-base: one of Hentoff's championed dissidents, Victor Arroyo, was jailed on charges of simply having an independent library. But even if Sparanese were right, it's now legit to jail librarians if they receive aid for their work from a foreign source? Nice to know whom Ms Sparanese would be putting in the slammer come her revolution. And, of course, Castro's tyranny is actually the fault of ... the United States: "Without Helms-Burton, the Cuban laws would lose their rationale and those imprisoned might be freed. Many of us disdain the idea that our cherished professional values should be enlisted in the service of the wrong-headed and provocative foreign policy of our own government."
They learn nothing. Ever.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Very cool story from CDs Sunday Morning today. The kind of thing that gives one a little bit of hope for the future. Nice to see that all college students aren't members of the messy, greasy-haired black clothes wearing, mopey, whining, droney and/or clanging alterna-rock music fraternity.
A Cappella Frenzy
Jan. 11, 2004
Believe it or not, the organized noise of chaos at Yale University is a part of rush.
It's not the usual competition where sororities and fraternities vie for the best recruits, or when nervous freshmen ponder whether they'll make the cut.
When the shouting there is over, it's all about singing, as CBS News Sunday Morning's Rita Braver discovered. The student body is part of a cappella rush.
The phrase "a cappella" is derived from Italian, meaning "in the style of the chapel." It is music made only by voices -- no instruments. And it is one of the hottest movements on campuses all across the country.
There are almost 1,000 groups nationwide -- 15 at Yale alone. Some are coed and others single sex, and they sing everything from top 10 hits to old favorites.
Tradition has it that collegiate a cappella started at Yale at Maury's Bar in 1939. A handful of Yale men decided to start a club that would sing for drinks. The Yale University Whiffenpoofs have been singing ever since.
Open only to senior men at Yale, the Whiffs have some pretty famous ex-members.
President Bush's grandfather was a Whiffenpoof. Neither President Bush, however, was a Whiff. But, Marc Freed Finnegan, the group's business manager, still has plenty of bragging rights.
"The tradition is that each year a new Whiffenpoof group has their initials carved into a table," says Finnegan. "Cole Porter is right over here, and he was in the class of 1918."
And every Yale a cappella group is steeped in its own tradition, which can be a bit foreboding to aspiring a cappella singers such as freshmen Zach O'Mally Greenburg, Rebecca Bloom and John Bittner.
"I haven't had a single afternoon off since the whole thing started," says Bloom.
"I ended up auditioning for nine [groups]," adds Greenburg. "Because I really didn't know what I wanted, so I figured, you know, the more the merrier."
The auditions could be stressful.
"You're not really sure whether they want you or you want them, or some strange combination between the two," says Bittner.
How do you get into an a cappella group? Sunday Morning asked the Dukesmen warming up for rush in bandannas and war paint.
They say the best singer has the best chance of joining the group. But in a perceived college culture of drugs and sex, why join an a cappella group?
"I think one of the sexiest things on earth is to see 16 hot men on stage singing to you," laughs a cappella member Chris.
No one really knows exactly why collegiate a cappella has become so popular in the last decade, but there's big competition with so many groups on so many campuses.
At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Loreleis sing up a storm, trying to attract paying customers to their big show. It can be hard work. With nine groups on the campus, non-singing students sometimes complain. Some say they're tired of hearing the '80s pop music. But members of the a cappella group say they get support for their singing.
Matt Susong of UNC's Clef Hangers readily admits part of the attraction of performing a cappella is that it can make you a campus star.
"To be at a school where I can go to a party or to a bar the next night and have people come up to me and actually know who I am -- like I'm a basketball player or something like that -- it's really special," says Susong.
The pressure was on for the Yale freshmen in the hours before tap night, when they'll know which a cappella group will invite them to join.
"I've been putting off my nervousness all week," says John Bittner. "I mean, anything could really happen."
Behind the scenes, the groups were prepping and primping. They were trying to be the first to get to the dorm rooms of their top picks. Each new member drank from a loving cup with punch certified as non-alcoholic by the rush co-chair.
By 10 p.m., all of the runners were massed behind High Street Gate. And soon, they were off.
A cappella at Yale is so sacrosanct that the University wouldn't let Sunday Morning follow the kids into the dorms.
But confidential sources and videotape showed that Zach O'Mally Greenburg, Rebecca Bloom and John Bittner got in, coincidentally to the same group: Out of the Blue.
A Cappella Frenzy
Jan. 11, 2004
Believe it or not, the organized noise of chaos at Yale University is a part of rush.
It's not the usual competition where sororities and fraternities vie for the best recruits, or when nervous freshmen ponder whether they'll make the cut.
When the shouting there is over, it's all about singing, as CBS News Sunday Morning's Rita Braver discovered. The student body is part of a cappella rush.
The phrase "a cappella" is derived from Italian, meaning "in the style of the chapel." It is music made only by voices -- no instruments. And it is one of the hottest movements on campuses all across the country.
There are almost 1,000 groups nationwide -- 15 at Yale alone. Some are coed and others single sex, and they sing everything from top 10 hits to old favorites.
Tradition has it that collegiate a cappella started at Yale at Maury's Bar in 1939. A handful of Yale men decided to start a club that would sing for drinks. The Yale University Whiffenpoofs have been singing ever since.
Open only to senior men at Yale, the Whiffs have some pretty famous ex-members.
President Bush's grandfather was a Whiffenpoof. Neither President Bush, however, was a Whiff. But, Marc Freed Finnegan, the group's business manager, still has plenty of bragging rights.
"The tradition is that each year a new Whiffenpoof group has their initials carved into a table," says Finnegan. "Cole Porter is right over here, and he was in the class of 1918."
And every Yale a cappella group is steeped in its own tradition, which can be a bit foreboding to aspiring a cappella singers such as freshmen Zach O'Mally Greenburg, Rebecca Bloom and John Bittner.
"I haven't had a single afternoon off since the whole thing started," says Bloom.
"I ended up auditioning for nine [groups]," adds Greenburg. "Because I really didn't know what I wanted, so I figured, you know, the more the merrier."
The auditions could be stressful.
"You're not really sure whether they want you or you want them, or some strange combination between the two," says Bittner.
How do you get into an a cappella group? Sunday Morning asked the Dukesmen warming up for rush in bandannas and war paint.
They say the best singer has the best chance of joining the group. But in a perceived college culture of drugs and sex, why join an a cappella group?
"I think one of the sexiest things on earth is to see 16 hot men on stage singing to you," laughs a cappella member Chris.
No one really knows exactly why collegiate a cappella has become so popular in the last decade, but there's big competition with so many groups on so many campuses.
At the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Loreleis sing up a storm, trying to attract paying customers to their big show. It can be hard work. With nine groups on the campus, non-singing students sometimes complain. Some say they're tired of hearing the '80s pop music. But members of the a cappella group say they get support for their singing.
Matt Susong of UNC's Clef Hangers readily admits part of the attraction of performing a cappella is that it can make you a campus star.
"To be at a school where I can go to a party or to a bar the next night and have people come up to me and actually know who I am -- like I'm a basketball player or something like that -- it's really special," says Susong.
The pressure was on for the Yale freshmen in the hours before tap night, when they'll know which a cappella group will invite them to join.
"I've been putting off my nervousness all week," says John Bittner. "I mean, anything could really happen."
Behind the scenes, the groups were prepping and primping. They were trying to be the first to get to the dorm rooms of their top picks. Each new member drank from a loving cup with punch certified as non-alcoholic by the rush co-chair.
By 10 p.m., all of the runners were massed behind High Street Gate. And soon, they were off.
A cappella at Yale is so sacrosanct that the University wouldn't let Sunday Morning follow the kids into the dorms.
But confidential sources and videotape showed that Zach O'Mally Greenburg, Rebecca Bloom and John Bittner got in, coincidentally to the same group: Out of the Blue.
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