Duke's Sham Diversity
By Duke Conservative Union
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 10, 2004
The Duke Conservative Union announced today that it has uncovered the blatant hypocrisy of President Nannerl Keohane’s touting of “diversity” as a cardinal virtue in higher education. In a full-page advertisement in today’s Chronicle, the student-run daily of Duke University, the DCU demonstrated that many of the departments at Duke are home to mind-numbing political conformity.
By cross-referencing Duke’s departmental faculty lists with North Carolina voter registration, the DCU found, for example, that Democrats outnumber Republicans in the departments of History, Literature, Sociology, and English by 32-to-0, 11-to-0, 9-to-0, and 18-to-1 margins. Accordingly, the Duke Conservative Union has questioned President Keohane’s self-championed obsession with “intellectual diversity.” The advertisement calls on President Keohane to divulge whether she thinks such ideological conformity represents what she means by “diversity.”
“The massive discrepancies between Democrats and Republicans in many of Duke’s departments demonstrate how un-diverse this university truly is,” remarked Madison Kitchens, a member of the Duke Conservative Union. “The Duke Conservative Union has ably demonstrated that President Keohane’s heralding of ‘diversity’ is a sham.”
A student-run activist organization, the Duke Conservative Union strives to promote conservative principles, policies, and candidates at Duke University—its ambitious goal being to provide a balanced argument in politics on campus.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
From ABC News Note: 2/10/04: It's unbelievable that they actually admitted to the liberal bias of the media.
Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."
They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.
The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.
It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.
It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.
It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."
It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.
Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).
The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.
That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:
Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.
So we ask again: What's it going to be, Ken, Karen, Mary, Terry, Nicole, and Dan?
Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."
They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.
The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.
It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.
It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.
It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."
It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.
Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).
The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.
That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:
Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.
So we ask again: What's it going to be, Ken, Karen, Mary, Terry, Nicole, and Dan?
Monday, February 09, 2004
Phenomenal piece here from americanthinker.com:
GWB: HBS MBA
February 3rd, 2004
President George W. Bush is the very first President to hold a Masters Degree in Business Administration. Even better (or worse, depending on your perspective), his MBA is from Harvard Business School, where postgraduate management training was invented in the early part of the last century, and which to many stands as a symbol of the good, the bad, and the ugly faces of modern management. Harvard MBAs indisputably lead more major corporations, receive higher starting salaries fresh out of school, and carry with them more élan and glamour than the graduates of any rival business schools – facts which do not necessarily lead to admiration and love.
The comparatively small amount of attention paid by the political press to the President’s Harvard MBA partially reflects a generalized ignorance of, and hostility toward, the degree itself. More importantly, acknowledging that he learned any valuable intellectual perspectives would contradict the storyline that young W was a party animal, who coasted through his elite education, scarcely cracking a book. In other words, as the left never tires of claiming, he is too “stupid” to have picked up any tricks across the Charles River from Harvard Square.
This is patently incorrect. Having attended Harvard Business School at the same time as the President, graduating from the two-year program a year after he did, and then serving on its faculty after a year’s interval spent writing a PhD thesis, I am intimately familiar with the rigors of the program at the time, and the miniscule degree of slack cut for even the most well-connected students, when their performance did not make the grade.
There is simply no way on earth that the son of the then-Ambassador to China, or anyone else, could have coasted through Harvard Business School with a “gentleman’s C.” I never, ever heard of a case of an incompetent student being allowed to graduate, simply because a certain family was prominent. On the contrary, I did hear stories of well-born students having to leave prior to graduation. The academic standards were a point of considerable pride.
An inability to learn and apply the lessons of the classroom and the voluminous nightly study materials, from regression analysis to strategy-formulation to marketing to human behavior in organizations, was simply not tolerated. Grading took place on a strict curve, and those who found themselves on the lower range of the curve in too many subjects hit the dreaded “screen” and had to supply convincing rationales to the Academic Performance Committee as to why they should be allowed to attend the second year of the program, much less graduate. The screen was a vital component of the HBS quality assurance program, itself an essential method of protecting the value of the school’s MBA “brand.” Harvard Business School would no sooner voluntarily graduate an incompetent MBA holder than Coca Cola would ship-out bottles containing dead mice.
Accepting the premise that George W. Bush actually learned the lessons taught him at Harvard Business School, there are a number of characteristics of his administration which become far more understandable. Here are a few of the more important ways in which his Harvard MBA explains the way he governs.
The very first lesson drummed-into new students, as they file into the classrooms of Aldrich Hall, is that management consists of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. There is never perfect information, and decisions often have to be made even when you’d really prefer to know a lot more. Given this reality, students are taught many techniques for analyzing the data which is available, extracting the non-obvious facets, learning how read into it the reasonable inferences which can be made, while quantifying the risks of doing so, and learning the costs and value of obtaining additional data.
The job of the executive of to weigh probabilities in evaluating imperfect information; to assess the costs and benefits of acting or not acting; and to construct scenarios around the various possible time frames for taking action, taking into account the probable reactions of the other vital actors. That political opponents at home carp at him over his imperfect data at the time is no surprise, and no reason to regret his decision. The costs of not acting were simply too great, and the downside potential of erroneous information too low to prefer inaction. Better data would have been preferable, of course, but President Bush shows no sign of remorse for doing what he knows was the prudent thing under the circumstances.
A second broad and important lesson the President learned at Harvard Business School is to embrace a finite number of strategic goals, and to make each one of those goals serve as many desirable ends as possible. The truism of this lesson is that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. If you can’t focus on everything, then you need to be able to focus on those few goals which will have the broadest impact, leading to a future capacity to attain other desirable ends. No exact number of goals is the limit, but three is an awfully good number to aim at. Those goals should be mutually consistent, so that the step-by-step accomplishment of each one aids in the achievement of the others.
There is both evidence and logic to suggest that George W. Bush has chosen just a small handful of major goals. His current number one priority was thrust upon him: winning a complete victory in the War on Terror. There is no evidence that this was on his initial short list of priorities. But after 9/11, he made himself very clear, very quickly, that his priorities had drastically changed. He also set out a realistic time frame – decades – for this number one goal. From this broad goal cascade a series of subordinate tasks, from persuading dictators that it is in their interests to eschew support for terror groups, to strengthening American military, intelligence and domestic law enforcement capabilities, for example.
I think his second broad goal is to build a long-lasting pattern of Republican political dominance of government, by forging a new grand coalition of voting blocs, adding to the existing GOP stalwart groups (conservatives, low tax lovers, the traditionally religious, and small business owners) a substantial number of lower income, but upward-mobility-aspiring members of every group, including ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics, but also as many blacks as possible.
If there is any single theme which unites all these people, it is a belief in the American Dream. The freedom to improve one’s lot in life, along with the ability to marshal the necessary resources without hindrance by oppressive regulations, taxes, or other governmental interference, is one of the cornerstones of this coalition. The goal is not simply to attract poeple by serving their interests, but to convince them to identify themselves with the Republicans, as the political instrument of their dreams.
In the short run, issues of importance to the conservative base may seem to be getting short shrift: government spending, especially on expansion of entitlements and such amenities as the NEA, may help reach out to swing voters, but do not inspire the base. Look for President Bush to address his base directly, as well as symbolically, prior to the election. But understand that he will put more priority on the broad goal of reaching out to expand his voting support than he will on catering to his base, who will, when all is said and done, place so much weight on securing the Presidency for a War on Terror activist (see Goal #1) that they will turn out and vote for his re-election
A third major goal, closely related, is to get and keep the economy growing at a healthy pace. The President inherited an economy moving into recession as he took office. Then, 9/11 knocked the stuffing out of many industries, and dealt a huge financial and psychological blow to the nation. Aggressive tax cuts, augmented by cooperative Federal Reserve management of the money supply and interest rates, have now restored the economy to robust growth. Complaints about low job growth miss two points: that in the early stages of an economic recovery, employers defer adding staff, and that the economy as a whole is moving away from the full-time-job model of work towards independent contracting forms of work, thus omitting many people’s work (including my own) from being counted as a “job.”
A healthy economy which creates opportunities for work and self-advancement generates new members for the American Dream Coalition. A robust and successful conduct of the War on Terror secures domestic safety, encouraging investment and growth, and brings pride as an American to all groups in society. All of these factors encourage more people to identify as Republicans, securing the political goal of the President. The three goals mutually reinforce one another.
Another basic lesson young George W. Bush learned in the classrooms of Harvard Business School is that different managers have legitimately different styles of operating as executives. There is no “one right way” to manage. Successful executives develop a style which is true to their own nature, and which builds on their strengths. George W. Bush is a natural delegator, an executive who seeks the best possible people to work for him, instills loyalty (by practicing it himself), and then gives them plenty of room to operate. His “sins” as an executive have been, and are likely to remain those of a loose leash, allowing ineffective subordinates too much time and too much room. This is why it has taken him so long to remove certain cabinet officials.
The case study method as practiced at Harvard Business School features intense discussions of alternative plans for defining and then resolving the problems described in the B-school’s famous cases. A well-structured spirited discussion has the virtue of systematically revealing the implications of different courses of action, allowing deeper analysis, and ultimately leading to better decisions. President Bush’s preference for keeping senior advisors of different persuasions, such as Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz, reflects the value he places on hearing the best case made for alternative courses of action. Critics who speak of a power struggle which needs to be resolved in favor of one side or the other, completely miss the point.
One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out-psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.
By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.
Only time will tell, whether Saddam ever had any WMDs. Their non-existence has not been proven. Only time will tell whether or not Osama bin Laden (or his corpse) will be taken into custody by American Troops. Only time will tell whether or not Iraq will continue to make progress toward a transition toward a peaceful democratic government. George W. Bush knows much more information about these topics than his domestic political opponents do. At the moment, they are betting a lot of their chips on one side of these questions.
We will see by November who has the winning hand.
-Thomas Lifson
GWB: HBS MBA
February 3rd, 2004
President George W. Bush is the very first President to hold a Masters Degree in Business Administration. Even better (or worse, depending on your perspective), his MBA is from Harvard Business School, where postgraduate management training was invented in the early part of the last century, and which to many stands as a symbol of the good, the bad, and the ugly faces of modern management. Harvard MBAs indisputably lead more major corporations, receive higher starting salaries fresh out of school, and carry with them more élan and glamour than the graduates of any rival business schools – facts which do not necessarily lead to admiration and love.
The comparatively small amount of attention paid by the political press to the President’s Harvard MBA partially reflects a generalized ignorance of, and hostility toward, the degree itself. More importantly, acknowledging that he learned any valuable intellectual perspectives would contradict the storyline that young W was a party animal, who coasted through his elite education, scarcely cracking a book. In other words, as the left never tires of claiming, he is too “stupid” to have picked up any tricks across the Charles River from Harvard Square.
This is patently incorrect. Having attended Harvard Business School at the same time as the President, graduating from the two-year program a year after he did, and then serving on its faculty after a year’s interval spent writing a PhD thesis, I am intimately familiar with the rigors of the program at the time, and the miniscule degree of slack cut for even the most well-connected students, when their performance did not make the grade.
There is simply no way on earth that the son of the then-Ambassador to China, or anyone else, could have coasted through Harvard Business School with a “gentleman’s C.” I never, ever heard of a case of an incompetent student being allowed to graduate, simply because a certain family was prominent. On the contrary, I did hear stories of well-born students having to leave prior to graduation. The academic standards were a point of considerable pride.
An inability to learn and apply the lessons of the classroom and the voluminous nightly study materials, from regression analysis to strategy-formulation to marketing to human behavior in organizations, was simply not tolerated. Grading took place on a strict curve, and those who found themselves on the lower range of the curve in too many subjects hit the dreaded “screen” and had to supply convincing rationales to the Academic Performance Committee as to why they should be allowed to attend the second year of the program, much less graduate. The screen was a vital component of the HBS quality assurance program, itself an essential method of protecting the value of the school’s MBA “brand.” Harvard Business School would no sooner voluntarily graduate an incompetent MBA holder than Coca Cola would ship-out bottles containing dead mice.
Accepting the premise that George W. Bush actually learned the lessons taught him at Harvard Business School, there are a number of characteristics of his administration which become far more understandable. Here are a few of the more important ways in which his Harvard MBA explains the way he governs.
The very first lesson drummed-into new students, as they file into the classrooms of Aldrich Hall, is that management consists of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. There is never perfect information, and decisions often have to be made even when you’d really prefer to know a lot more. Given this reality, students are taught many techniques for analyzing the data which is available, extracting the non-obvious facets, learning how read into it the reasonable inferences which can be made, while quantifying the risks of doing so, and learning the costs and value of obtaining additional data.
The job of the executive of to weigh probabilities in evaluating imperfect information; to assess the costs and benefits of acting or not acting; and to construct scenarios around the various possible time frames for taking action, taking into account the probable reactions of the other vital actors. That political opponents at home carp at him over his imperfect data at the time is no surprise, and no reason to regret his decision. The costs of not acting were simply too great, and the downside potential of erroneous information too low to prefer inaction. Better data would have been preferable, of course, but President Bush shows no sign of remorse for doing what he knows was the prudent thing under the circumstances.
A second broad and important lesson the President learned at Harvard Business School is to embrace a finite number of strategic goals, and to make each one of those goals serve as many desirable ends as possible. The truism of this lesson is that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. If you can’t focus on everything, then you need to be able to focus on those few goals which will have the broadest impact, leading to a future capacity to attain other desirable ends. No exact number of goals is the limit, but three is an awfully good number to aim at. Those goals should be mutually consistent, so that the step-by-step accomplishment of each one aids in the achievement of the others.
There is both evidence and logic to suggest that George W. Bush has chosen just a small handful of major goals. His current number one priority was thrust upon him: winning a complete victory in the War on Terror. There is no evidence that this was on his initial short list of priorities. But after 9/11, he made himself very clear, very quickly, that his priorities had drastically changed. He also set out a realistic time frame – decades – for this number one goal. From this broad goal cascade a series of subordinate tasks, from persuading dictators that it is in their interests to eschew support for terror groups, to strengthening American military, intelligence and domestic law enforcement capabilities, for example.
I think his second broad goal is to build a long-lasting pattern of Republican political dominance of government, by forging a new grand coalition of voting blocs, adding to the existing GOP stalwart groups (conservatives, low tax lovers, the traditionally religious, and small business owners) a substantial number of lower income, but upward-mobility-aspiring members of every group, including ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics, but also as many blacks as possible.
If there is any single theme which unites all these people, it is a belief in the American Dream. The freedom to improve one’s lot in life, along with the ability to marshal the necessary resources without hindrance by oppressive regulations, taxes, or other governmental interference, is one of the cornerstones of this coalition. The goal is not simply to attract poeple by serving their interests, but to convince them to identify themselves with the Republicans, as the political instrument of their dreams.
In the short run, issues of importance to the conservative base may seem to be getting short shrift: government spending, especially on expansion of entitlements and such amenities as the NEA, may help reach out to swing voters, but do not inspire the base. Look for President Bush to address his base directly, as well as symbolically, prior to the election. But understand that he will put more priority on the broad goal of reaching out to expand his voting support than he will on catering to his base, who will, when all is said and done, place so much weight on securing the Presidency for a War on Terror activist (see Goal #1) that they will turn out and vote for his re-election
A third major goal, closely related, is to get and keep the economy growing at a healthy pace. The President inherited an economy moving into recession as he took office. Then, 9/11 knocked the stuffing out of many industries, and dealt a huge financial and psychological blow to the nation. Aggressive tax cuts, augmented by cooperative Federal Reserve management of the money supply and interest rates, have now restored the economy to robust growth. Complaints about low job growth miss two points: that in the early stages of an economic recovery, employers defer adding staff, and that the economy as a whole is moving away from the full-time-job model of work towards independent contracting forms of work, thus omitting many people’s work (including my own) from being counted as a “job.”
A healthy economy which creates opportunities for work and self-advancement generates new members for the American Dream Coalition. A robust and successful conduct of the War on Terror secures domestic safety, encouraging investment and growth, and brings pride as an American to all groups in society. All of these factors encourage more people to identify as Republicans, securing the political goal of the President. The three goals mutually reinforce one another.
Another basic lesson young George W. Bush learned in the classrooms of Harvard Business School is that different managers have legitimately different styles of operating as executives. There is no “one right way” to manage. Successful executives develop a style which is true to their own nature, and which builds on their strengths. George W. Bush is a natural delegator, an executive who seeks the best possible people to work for him, instills loyalty (by practicing it himself), and then gives them plenty of room to operate. His “sins” as an executive have been, and are likely to remain those of a loose leash, allowing ineffective subordinates too much time and too much room. This is why it has taken him so long to remove certain cabinet officials.
The case study method as practiced at Harvard Business School features intense discussions of alternative plans for defining and then resolving the problems described in the B-school’s famous cases. A well-structured spirited discussion has the virtue of systematically revealing the implications of different courses of action, allowing deeper analysis, and ultimately leading to better decisions. President Bush’s preference for keeping senior advisors of different persuasions, such as Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz, reflects the value he places on hearing the best case made for alternative courses of action. Critics who speak of a power struggle which needs to be resolved in favor of one side or the other, completely miss the point.
One final note on George W. Bush’s management style and his Harvard Business School background does not derive from the classroom, per se. One feature of life there is that a subculture of poker players exists. Poker is a natural fit with the inclinations, talents, and skills of many future entrepreneurs. A close reading of the odds, combined with the ability to out-psych the opposition, leads to capital accumulation in many fields, aside from the poker table.
By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.
Only time will tell, whether Saddam ever had any WMDs. Their non-existence has not been proven. Only time will tell whether or not Osama bin Laden (or his corpse) will be taken into custody by American Troops. Only time will tell whether or not Iraq will continue to make progress toward a transition toward a peaceful democratic government. George W. Bush knows much more information about these topics than his domestic political opponents do. At the moment, they are betting a lot of their chips on one side of these questions.
We will see by November who has the winning hand.
-Thomas Lifson
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Along with Victor Davis Hanson, Steyn may be the best columnist writing today.
Keeping abreast of federal budget developments
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
It's easy for those of us on the campaign trail to lose sight of the bigger picture. When I was asked what I thought of the huge boob exposed in prime time, I thought it was a reference to Al Sharpton not knowing what the Federal Reserve was in that candidates' debate. But it turns out instead to be something to do with Janet Jackson. This is a political column, and in the normal course of events some fifth-rate entertainer's breast awkwardly sticking out from her hideous costume with the nipple poking up through some sort of miniature hub cap would not normally fall within my remit.
Except that it does. Because the federal government is launching a "thorough" investigation into Janet Jackson's right breast. "I think the FCC is being pretty silly about investigating this," said Howard Dean, the has-been Vermonter. "I'm probably affected in some ways by the fact that I'm a doctor, so it's not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me."
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd type: I'm with Howard Dean on this one. I hasten to add that, alas, breasts are a more unusual phenomenon for me, but I'm generally all in favor of them: I enjoy them when they turn up on BBC costume dramas and when you're driving through France enjoying the topography and they pop up on billboards so you can enjoy the topoffgraphy. There's something to be said for the relaxed Continental approach to nudity. There's nothing to be said for the hollow joyless mechanical pop culture trash of the Super Bowl show: It was sleazy and worthless when it was fully clothed.
Nonetheless, I don't see why we need a government investigation. Unlike Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the existence of Janet Jackson's breast is not in doubt. We know where it is, there have been verified sightings; we're not relying on faulty intelligence and grainy satellite imagery. So I agree with Howlin' Howard. No doubt he has personal reasons for not wanting the feds to police these kinds of incidents: It's easy to picture him on stage that night in Iowa going into his bloodcurdling scream -- "Yeeeaaaaaarrrgghhhhh!" -- and suddenly ripping open his button-down shirt to expose his right breast with a Ben and Jerry's waffle cone stuck on the nipple. But, whatever the reason, it's heartening to find a Democratic candidate man enough to identify even one area of government spending as unnecessary.
What happened after that Super Bowl show? Within hours, Janet Jackson had lost a lucrative TV contract, NBC had excised a Dean-like breast examination from "ER," the NFL announced their Pro Bowl show was dropping some similarly "edgy" half-time entertainment and replacing it with hula dancers and conch blowers, the Grammy Awards telecast decided to go into a play-it-safe time-delay so delayed you'll be able to tune in and see the Grammy for Best LP go to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. That's a lot of fallout. If the Golden Globes hadn't had the good fortune to have already been broadcast, they would undoubtedly have been panicked into changing their name. And, just to cap it off, a lady in Knoxville, outraged at Justin taking Janet's top off, is suing the pants off Justin, Janet, CBS, MTV and Viacom. This is the American way: public pressure, commercial calculation, litigation. And it's amazingly efficient. It's a classic example of the market's greatest strength -- its ability to self-correct: By midweek, the bottom had dropped out of network nudity.
By contrast, what will be accomplished by a government investigation? Eventually, the FCC will issue a ruling and, if we're lucky, it won't be quite as ridiculous as their pronouncement on Bono's recent use of the f-word, which the FCC deemed permissible because he was using it adjectivally. If the point of these FCC investigations is to maintain standards of decency, then clearly they've been a colossal flop. As they should be. If the descent of popular culture into a factory-farm freak show is to be reversed, it should be by the people, not by FCC Chairman Michael Powell prancing around in metaphorical knickerbockers and buckled shoes as the Queen's Lord High Chamberlain.
Let us now turn from the breast shot heard of around the world to the president's $2.5 trillion budget. Do you know what a trillion is? Don't bother. If you buy a calculator from Staples, you can't get enough zeroes on the screen. But here's one way to look at it: President Bush plans to blow more of your money in the coming year than the first 25 presidents of the United States spent combined, even after adjusting for inflation. In other words, the budget, like Janet, is bustin' its bodice.
And, like the investigation by the Federal Nipple Police, most of it's a waste of time and money. Never mind the president's sudden generosity toward the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency Republicans once dreamed of abolishing. Did you know that a couple of weeks ago the president signed an $820 billion appropriations bill that, among other boondoggles, puts the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on the public dime? That's right: rock 'n' roll -- the most ruthlessly corporate industry in the world -- apparently requires the tax dollars of America's widows and spinsters. If every rock star donated just 1 percent of what he's spent on drugs since 1966, you could have the most lavish Hall of Fame in the world. But he won't, so you have to pay up instead. One day you'll swing by and in the Jackson Family exhibit there'll be an animatronic recreation of Janet's dancing breast: your tax dollars at work.
If rock 'n' roll requires federal funding, we might as well give up. A government with its fingers in every pie is unlikely to have enough left over for the handful of pies it should have its fingers in. It was summed up by Americans' only glimpse of the president on the morning of 9/11: the commander-in-chief being informed of the first attack on the American mainland in nearly 200 years while he was speaking to grade-schoolers in Florida. That image encapsulates everything that's wrong with both parties' approach to government.
As we learned in the days after, because of incompatible computers, the FBI was unable to e-mail pictures of the 9/11 killers to local offices. Yet there's money for rock 'n' roll nostalgia, and an "indoor rain forest" in Iowa. The president should not be the National School Superintendent, the Pharmacist-in-Chief, the Curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the Inspector-General of Janet Jackson's Breasts. And, if neither politicians nor the electorate understands that at a time of war, then republican government is doomed.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
Keeping abreast of federal budget developments
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
It's easy for those of us on the campaign trail to lose sight of the bigger picture. When I was asked what I thought of the huge boob exposed in prime time, I thought it was a reference to Al Sharpton not knowing what the Federal Reserve was in that candidates' debate. But it turns out instead to be something to do with Janet Jackson. This is a political column, and in the normal course of events some fifth-rate entertainer's breast awkwardly sticking out from her hideous costume with the nipple poking up through some sort of miniature hub cap would not normally fall within my remit.
Except that it does. Because the federal government is launching a "thorough" investigation into Janet Jackson's right breast. "I think the FCC is being pretty silly about investigating this," said Howard Dean, the has-been Vermonter. "I'm probably affected in some ways by the fact that I'm a doctor, so it's not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me."
Here's a sentence I never thought I'd type: I'm with Howard Dean on this one. I hasten to add that, alas, breasts are a more unusual phenomenon for me, but I'm generally all in favor of them: I enjoy them when they turn up on BBC costume dramas and when you're driving through France enjoying the topography and they pop up on billboards so you can enjoy the topoffgraphy. There's something to be said for the relaxed Continental approach to nudity. There's nothing to be said for the hollow joyless mechanical pop culture trash of the Super Bowl show: It was sleazy and worthless when it was fully clothed.
Nonetheless, I don't see why we need a government investigation. Unlike Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the existence of Janet Jackson's breast is not in doubt. We know where it is, there have been verified sightings; we're not relying on faulty intelligence and grainy satellite imagery. So I agree with Howlin' Howard. No doubt he has personal reasons for not wanting the feds to police these kinds of incidents: It's easy to picture him on stage that night in Iowa going into his bloodcurdling scream -- "Yeeeaaaaaarrrgghhhhh!" -- and suddenly ripping open his button-down shirt to expose his right breast with a Ben and Jerry's waffle cone stuck on the nipple. But, whatever the reason, it's heartening to find a Democratic candidate man enough to identify even one area of government spending as unnecessary.
What happened after that Super Bowl show? Within hours, Janet Jackson had lost a lucrative TV contract, NBC had excised a Dean-like breast examination from "ER," the NFL announced their Pro Bowl show was dropping some similarly "edgy" half-time entertainment and replacing it with hula dancers and conch blowers, the Grammy Awards telecast decided to go into a play-it-safe time-delay so delayed you'll be able to tune in and see the Grammy for Best LP go to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. That's a lot of fallout. If the Golden Globes hadn't had the good fortune to have already been broadcast, they would undoubtedly have been panicked into changing their name. And, just to cap it off, a lady in Knoxville, outraged at Justin taking Janet's top off, is suing the pants off Justin, Janet, CBS, MTV and Viacom. This is the American way: public pressure, commercial calculation, litigation. And it's amazingly efficient. It's a classic example of the market's greatest strength -- its ability to self-correct: By midweek, the bottom had dropped out of network nudity.
By contrast, what will be accomplished by a government investigation? Eventually, the FCC will issue a ruling and, if we're lucky, it won't be quite as ridiculous as their pronouncement on Bono's recent use of the f-word, which the FCC deemed permissible because he was using it adjectivally. If the point of these FCC investigations is to maintain standards of decency, then clearly they've been a colossal flop. As they should be. If the descent of popular culture into a factory-farm freak show is to be reversed, it should be by the people, not by FCC Chairman Michael Powell prancing around in metaphorical knickerbockers and buckled shoes as the Queen's Lord High Chamberlain.
Let us now turn from the breast shot heard of around the world to the president's $2.5 trillion budget. Do you know what a trillion is? Don't bother. If you buy a calculator from Staples, you can't get enough zeroes on the screen. But here's one way to look at it: President Bush plans to blow more of your money in the coming year than the first 25 presidents of the United States spent combined, even after adjusting for inflation. In other words, the budget, like Janet, is bustin' its bodice.
And, like the investigation by the Federal Nipple Police, most of it's a waste of time and money. Never mind the president's sudden generosity toward the National Endowment for the Arts, an agency Republicans once dreamed of abolishing. Did you know that a couple of weeks ago the president signed an $820 billion appropriations bill that, among other boondoggles, puts the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on the public dime? That's right: rock 'n' roll -- the most ruthlessly corporate industry in the world -- apparently requires the tax dollars of America's widows and spinsters. If every rock star donated just 1 percent of what he's spent on drugs since 1966, you could have the most lavish Hall of Fame in the world. But he won't, so you have to pay up instead. One day you'll swing by and in the Jackson Family exhibit there'll be an animatronic recreation of Janet's dancing breast: your tax dollars at work.
If rock 'n' roll requires federal funding, we might as well give up. A government with its fingers in every pie is unlikely to have enough left over for the handful of pies it should have its fingers in. It was summed up by Americans' only glimpse of the president on the morning of 9/11: the commander-in-chief being informed of the first attack on the American mainland in nearly 200 years while he was speaking to grade-schoolers in Florida. That image encapsulates everything that's wrong with both parties' approach to government.
As we learned in the days after, because of incompatible computers, the FBI was unable to e-mail pictures of the 9/11 killers to local offices. Yet there's money for rock 'n' roll nostalgia, and an "indoor rain forest" in Iowa. The president should not be the National School Superintendent, the Pharmacist-in-Chief, the Curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the Inspector-General of Janet Jackson's Breasts. And, if neither politicians nor the electorate understands that at a time of war, then republican government is doomed.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
A couple of quotes posted on Instapundit that help to illustrate the silliness of the "Bush lied" crowd:
TOM DASCHLE, on the war resolution, back in 2002:
Daschle, D-South Dakota, said the threat of Iraq's weapons programs "may not be imminent. But it is real. It is growing. And it cannot be ignored."
Dick Gephardt:
"I believe we have an obligation to protect the United States by preventing him from getting these weapons and either using them himself or passing them or their components on to terrorists who share his destructive intent," said Gephardt, who helped draft the measure.
So they didn't think that Saddam was an "imminent" threat, but thought it was worth going to war to keep him from becoming one, eh? That's just what Bush said.
TOM DASCHLE, on the war resolution, back in 2002:
Daschle, D-South Dakota, said the threat of Iraq's weapons programs "may not be imminent. But it is real. It is growing. And it cannot be ignored."
Dick Gephardt:
"I believe we have an obligation to protect the United States by preventing him from getting these weapons and either using them himself or passing them or their components on to terrorists who share his destructive intent," said Gephardt, who helped draft the measure.
So they didn't think that Saddam was an "imminent" threat, but thought it was worth going to war to keep him from becoming one, eh? That's just what Bush said.
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