From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
49 years ago today in Iowa countryside,
the music died
By THOMAS ZACHEK

Feb. 2, 2008

Today marks 49 years since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper took off in the early morning from Clear Lake, Iowa, and went down to their deaths in a plane crash.

It was rock 'n' roll's first great tragedy.

Like the music they sang, they were so young. Valens, just 17, had two hits to his credit, "Donna" and the upbeat "La Bamba," adapted from a Mexican folk song and now a staple of oldies bands.

The Bopper was a deejay who got interested in novelty tunes, trying to make it with "Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor." His intended hit went nowhere, but there was plenty of interest in its flip side, an ad-libbed ditty called "Chantilly Lace." The oldest of the three at 28, Richardson left a pregnant wife who, five months later, gave birth to J.P. Richardson Jr., who now tours singing his dad's songs.

Then there was Holly, generally considered one of rock music's early geniuses. At only 22, Holly had a string of classic rockers like "That'll Be the Day" and "Maybe Baby" and had begun to move in the direction of sophisticated ballads like "True Love Ways."

Holly wanted to stay in New York with his pregnant wife and record, but management insisted that a winter tour was necessary, though it was poorly planned. It followed a circuitous route from Milwaukee's Million Dollar Ballroom on Jan. 23, criss-crossing Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, playing Green Bay on Feb. 1 and then Clear Lake, a last-minute addition, on Feb. 2.

They traveled in a series of decrepit buses ill-equipped to handle our brutal Midwest winter. The buses kept breaking down, even forcing them to cancel a matinee in Appleton and continue to Green Bay to play the Riverside that night.

Holly was so tired and cold that he wanted to charter a plane from Clear Lake so that he could get to Fargo, N.D., early and be more rested.

It was never determined why the plane went down five minutes after takeoff, but the crash silenced at least one, if not three, of rock 'n' roll's first great voices.

Holly influenced legions of rock performers. His driving, upbeat, feel-good tunes are the essence of rock 'n' roll. In an era when singers didn't write their own material and sometimes didn't even play on their own records, Holly was the whole package - songwriting, arranging and performing.

With his tight pants and black eyeglasses, he looked like the quintessential nerd - until he hit the first chord and you realized that coolness is not what you look like but what you do. His wearing glasses on stage gave impressionable and nearsighted young John Lennon permission to do the same. And in their Duluth audience was a gangly teenager from Hibbing named Bobby Zimmerman.

The first track from the first Rolling Stones' album is a Holly song. Waylon Jennings started out playing with Holly (and gave up his seat on the plane to Richardson). The Beatles covered Holly and credited him as a major influence, right up there with Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. Paul McCartney says that when the Beatles first started out, they gravitated toward Holly's songs because all they needed were three chords.

Indeed, Holly and the Crickets were one of the first garage bands, and every young band trying their hand at chords and licks follows in their footsteps.

It is sadly ironic that Milwaukee radio stations don't play Holly's music today, since the airwaves are filled with his musical descendants and you can hear his influence every day.

Rave on.

Thomas Zachek of Hubertus is a retired teacher. His e-mail address is tomscolumn@hotmail.com

From The Wall Street Journal:
A Rebellion and an Awkward Embrace
By PEGGY NOONAN
February 1, 2008

In the most exciting and confounding election cycle of my lifetime, Rudy Giuliani, the Prince of the City, is out because he was about to lose New York, John Edwards is out, the Clintons are fighting for their historical reputations, and the stalwart conservative New York Post has come out strong and stinging for Barack Obama. If you had asked me in December if I would write that sentence in February, I would have said: Um, no.

If there is a part of you that loves politics, loves the sheer brunt force of it, the great game of it, you are waking up each morning with a spring in your step. "What happened last night?"

Both races continue to clarify, if not resolve. On the Democratic side, a great rebellion, a coming together of former officials, members of the commenting class, and the Kennedy family to stand athwart the Clintonian future and say, Stop. They are saying, as Jack Kennedy did when pressed to endorse a hack for governor of Massachusetts, "Sometimes party loyalty asks too much."

On the Republican side an embrace, but an awkward and unfinished one. It's like the man-hug the pol at the podium now feels he must give to the man he's just introduced. They used to just shake and say, "Thanks, Bob," and go to the podium. Now they embrace, with an always apparent self-consciousness. Can you imagine JFK doing this? Or Reagan?

It is this kind of embrace many in the Republican party are giving John McCain. He has real supporters. He keeps winning. But he's not getting even close to half the vote, as the presumptive nominee should. And he has been at odds with his party on so many things.

* * *

As much attention as the decision of the stars of the Kennedy family to endorse Sen. Obama received this week, it has still not been given its due. This was a break with the establishment and from the expected, and it may carry a price. The Clintons are deeply wired into their party, they run many money lines and power lines, and Hillary Clinton is still, in the Super Tuesday states, in the lead. Will the lives of those who rebelled against her be made more pleasant if she wins? The Clintons have never had the wit to be forgiving.

But all parties, all movements, need men and women who will come forward every decade or so to name tendencies within that are abusive or destructive, to throw off the low and grubby. Teddy's speech in this regard was a barnburner. He went straight against the negative and bullying, hard for the need to find inspiration again.

He is an old lion of his party, a hero of the base. But people do what they know how to do, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and Teddy has long led a comfortable life as a party panjandrum who knew to sit back and watch as the dog barked and the caravan moved on. In a way he seemed to rebel against his own tendencies. He put himself on the line.

"I love this country," he said, "I believe in the bright light of hope and possibility. I always have."

As a conservative I would say Ted Kennedy has spent much of his career being not just wrong about the issues but so deeply wrong, so consistently and reliably wrong that it had a kind of grandeur to it. So wrong that I cannot actually think of a single serious policy question on which I agreed with him. But I remember the night President Reagan spoke of Sen. Kennedy's brother at a fund-raiser for the JFK Library, and I remember the letter Reagan got from Teddy. "Your presence itself was such a magnificent tribute to my brother. . . . The country is well served by your eloquent graceful leadership, Mr. President." He ended it, "With my prayers and thanks for you as you lead us through these difficult times."

Liberals are rarely interested in pointing out, and conservatives by and large may not know, but everyone who knows Teddy Kennedy knows that he holds a deep love for his country, that he feels a reverence for the presidency and a desire that America be represented with grace abroad and stature at home. He has seen administrations come and go. And maybe much of what he's learned came forward, came together, this week.

His principled and uncompromising rebellion seemed to me a patriotic act, and adds to the rising tide of Geffenism. When David Geffen broke with Mrs. Clinton last summer, and couched his disapproval along ethical lines, he was almost alone among important Democrats. It took some guts. Now others are joining his side. Good.

* * *

The Republican contest may well end on Tuesday, but I sense little relief and much unease. In terms of avowed programs, policies and approaches, Mitt Romney was the more conservative candidate, and his even-keeled air won many friends. He offered executive experience and business acumen. As for how he came across, here is Mike Deaver on Ronald Reagan: "This is a face that when the baby sees it, the baby smiles."

His supporters tell me he will fight to the end. The conservative establishment still has hopes. But the great unruly base may be doing some redefining.

If you go by the Florida returns, maybe this year positions aren't everything. Republicans on the ground think the conservative is the one who suffered 5½ years in the Hanoi Hilton. Republicans on the ground think the conservative is the one who has endured a lifetime in the rounds in Washington and survived as antispending, antiabortion and pro-military. Republicans on the ground think the conservative is the old fighter jock who'll keep the country safe in a rocky time ahead. And maybe Republicans on the ground are saying: He earned it.

The conventional wisdom is Mr. Romney can't win it while Mike Huckabee's in it. If Mr. Huckabee dropped out, Mr. Romney might pick up his conservatives. But Mr. Huckabee seems very happy running, and perhaps happy thinking of his future as the Mitt slayer in the party of John.

Mr. McCain seems to me to have two immediate problems, both of which he might address. One is that he doesn't seem to much like conservatives, and never has. They can't help admire him, but they've disagreed with him on so many issues, and when they bring this up his demeanor tends to morph into the second problem: He radiates, he telegraphs, a certain indignation at being questioned by people who've never had to vote in Congress and make a deal. He's like Moe Greene in "The Godfather," when Michael Corleone tells him he's going to buy him out. "Do you know who I am? I'm Moe Greene. I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders." I've been on the firing line, punk. I am the voice of surviving conservatism.

This doesn't always go over so well. Mr. Giuliani seems to know Mr. McCain is Moe Greene. Mr. Huckabee probably thought "The Godfather" was kinda violent. Mr. Romney may be thinking to himself, But Michael Corleone won in the end, and had better suits.

From The New Criterion:
State worship
by John O'Sullivan

Jonah Goldberg
Liberal Fascism:
The Secret History of the American Left,
From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
Doubleday, 487 pages, $27.95

Liberal Fascism came under attack even before it had gone through the formality of being published or made informally available as uncorrected proofs. Lexington, The Economist’s usually urbane Washington columnist, devoted the first of two dismissive comments to it nine months before publication. “Progressive” critics in the blogosphere were positively sulphurous in the month before it appeared. A gaggle of critics on Amazon discussed, with counterexamples (“A dark and stormy night … etc.”), whether this was the worst book ever written. It was still ahead when I last checked.

What seems to have induced this frenzied rejection is the book’s title suggesting that fascism is a liberal or left-wing phenomenon. That argument is certainly in the book. Indeed, Jonah Goldberg, a friend and National Review colleague, writes early on that he was inspired to write it partly by irritation at the endlessly repeated liberal claim that fascism is a sort of extreme or covert conservatism so that if you strike a conservative, a fascist will strike you back.

His starting point, therefore, is to point out that fascism is a collectivist doctrine, worshipful towards the centralized state, socialist in economics (Nazism, remember, is short for National Socialism), hostile to both tradition and capitalism—in short, a left-wing ideology opposed in almost every respect to classical liberal conservative individualism. It is this argument that has incensed his advance critics.

In fact, as Goldberg points out in his first pages, something like this is the conventional wisdom among scholars of fascism. Some say it openly; others disguise it in formulations about the convoluted nature of fascist ideology; but only a handful of primitive Marxists still maintain that fascism is capitalism unmasked.

Goldberg goes beyond this conventional wisdom, however, to construct a much more ambitious theory of fascism as a kind of über-ideology. His broad thesis is that the decades from the early 1900s to the 1950s were “the fascist moment.” Across the advanced world, intellectuals lost faith in limited government, free market ideas, political democracy, diverse and competing social and cultural institutions, and all the higgledy-piggledy messiness of a free society. Groups as different as “progressives” in America, Fabians in Britain, Bismarckians in Germany, and the Futurists in Italy all sought to replace laissez-faire with state control and regulation.

Still more significant, all these groups—“progressives” no less than the others—were inspired by a semi-religious awe for the centralized state as the expression of a united national community. Such respectable figures as John Dewey, Herbert Croly, and Walter Lippmann saw World War I precisely as the opportunity to turn the disorganized populace into a genuine community dedicated to a great “national purpose.” In the single most provocative passage in the book, Goldberg argues that the Woodrow Wilson administration—with its corporate War Industry Board, its censorship of anti-war publications, and its thousands of “four-minute men” hired to give short patriotic speeches to any public gathering—was the first fascist government in history. Later progressives seized on the Great Depression to justify extending state control of life a second time under the New Deal.

In all of this there are clearly echoes of the totalitarian movements—as the Progressives themselves kept proclaiming well into the 1930s—of Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, and Stalin. But is the similarity strong enough to justify treating either the Progressives or their liberal successors today as “fascists”? Would it not be fairer to describe the period Goldberg delineates as “the statist moment” in which state worship advanced everywhere but in different philosophic forms, each influenced and sometimes restrained by the national traditions of its own society: militarist and conformist in Germany, poetically grandiloquent in Italy, aristocratically liberal in Britain, can-do pragmatist in America, some deservedly called fascism, others worthy of a less opprobrious term?

There is some truth in this criticism. The spirit in which even frankly illiberal measures are implemented can make a deep difference. Wartime Britain under Churchill was a tightly regulated society resting on a collectivist economy. Fascists were detained without trial, newspapers subject to military censorship. Yet the government was regularly criticized in the press. Debate in parliament was unrestrained. And there was a widespread sense of liberty expressed, among other ways, by equally widespread grumbling over rationing. Britain in those days had state control without state worship.

That marked Britain out from Fascist Italy, which glorified both the Italian state and il Duce in the most extravagant (and misleading) terms. State worship had appalling consequences that included a lost war. To do Mussolini justice, however, his regime never sought to worship the state with the primitive blood sacrifice of either class or race genocide as did Nazism and Soviet communism.

What then separates these two practitioners of genocidal statism? Surely it is a blend of hypocrisy and aesthetics. Communism had the shrewdness to disguise its genocidal drives behind a façade of concern for social justice. Nazism was not merely frank about its barbaric hatreds; it expressed their essence in theatrical displays of mass sadism that made Nazi uniforms and insignia a staple of the pornography industry. How different, how very very different, from the domestic politics of our own dear John Dewey!

Doubtless it is an understandable desire to separate Progressives and liberals from Hitler’s crimes that stimulates protests against the book. Goldberg underlines throughout, however, that he is attributing neither mass murder nor anti-Semitism to the Progressives or today’s liberals. He even exculpates Italian fascism from these charges. But there are lesser crimes than genocide. Although the infractions of liberty were temporary and restrained by law and tradition under Wilson, as under Churchill, they nonetheless occurred and had victims.

Did they amount to fascism? Do the ideas of today’s liberals? The answer probably lies in the degree of their spiritual ambition. Winning a war is a discrete aim with a time limit on emergency laws. But when H. G. Wells coined the term “liberal fascism” in a 1932 speech that called on his audience to replace the “dilatory indecisiveness” of democracy with bodies that would “end as the sustaining organizations of a reconstituted mankind,” he was not limiting his aims at all. No time limit or lack of ambition there even if in the service of liberal ideas.

Herein lies the significance of Goldberg’s long list of current liberal attitudes—mocked by some reviewers—that mimic past fascist ideas. From the young Hillary Clinton’s attempt to collectivize children under the banner of rights through the authoritarianism of political correctness and “sensitivity training” to the post-religious “politics of meaning,” modern statist liberalism exhibits an itch to regulate the lives—and increasingly the minds—of others that seems both boundless and boundlessly self-confident. If Goldberg exagerrates he exagerates something real.

Whether or not this liberalism amounts to fascism is questionable—but it is a reasonable question and a warning to prudent liberals. That such a liberalism is closer to fascism than either doctrine is to Anglo-American conservatism Goldberg has established beyond reasonable doubt.

From the Los Angeles Times:
These guys aren't feeling super
Pain is the name of the game in NFL, mostly for former players
Bill Plaschke

February 1, 2008

PHOENIX -- Eight o'clock on a desert morning, the rising sun casts an unsettling glow on the two deep, disparate shades of the NFL.

In one corner of town are the stars.

In the other corner are the scars.

Outside a flowery suburban resort, the New England Patriots are walking into tents with hundreds of reporters to talk about the Super Bowl.

Inside a sterile downtown convention center, four dozen NFL stars are limping into a half-empty ballroom to talk about what happens next.

At the same time the stars are waxing in their glory, the scars are murmuring in their pain.

Junior Seau talks about Sunday's generally accepted truth.

"It's a proud moment for the NFL," he says.

Dave Pear, a retired defensive tackle, talks about Sunday's proven consequences.

"I've been in constant pain for 25 years," he says.

Tom Brady talks about the wonders of possibly going undefeated.

"We're hoping to make it a truly memorable season for all of us," he says.

Conrad Dobler, a retired offensive lineman, talks about how every Patriot has already lost.

"I was on the floor the other day and I couldn't get up," he says.

That these two news conferences occurred simultaneously was odd and uncomfortable.

It was also a far clearer statement about the state of NFL than Commissioner Roger Goodell can ever give.

Just because they're dressed like Supermen doesn't mean they aren't human.

The single enduring constant of the NFL's 85 years has not been punts, passes or kicks, but pain.

From their first hit to their last breath, the players are subject to untold agonies unseen in any other sport, and in few other professions.

The stars hide it with shots and pills and pride.

The scars remind us that they can't hide it forever.

The stars support a union that often refuses to pay old-timers' disability claims or raise their meager pensions.

The scars showed up this week to remind those stars that one day, the cane will be in the other hand.

"Everyone thinks they're invincible," said Richard Dent, former defensive tackle. "Look around, and you can see they're not."

Looking around the ballroom where the old-timers were gathered Thursday morning, things were easy to see, and difficult to watch.

It took them long minutes to walk to their chairs, one player on a motorized cart, another clanking a cane, most of them limping.

The reason for the gathering was even more awkward and sad.

Frustrated at their union's support, the former players had formed a fund-raising group known as Gridiron Greats. The news conference was to promote an auction on gridirongreats.org that would help pay for things such as former players' knee replacement surgeries.

The league makes billions off the violence of players, yet those players have to sell their autographs to pay for the damage?

Union chief Gene Upshaw makes $6.7 million a year -- more than triple any other sports union boss -- yet retired union workers have to beg the public to pay for a new ankle?

"There's a dark secret out there," said Carl Eller, former defensive end.

"But that secret is being let out of the bag."

In the middle of the hourlong gathering, Pear suddenly stood up and wobbled around in front of his chair.

Turns out, the 54-year-old former Tampa Bay Buccaneer and Oakland Raider can't stand or sit for more than 20 minutes at a time.

He played only six years, yet he has had seven spinal surgeries, a hip replacement, and so much concussion residue that he falls asleep during the day and often fights off vertigo.

He used to be able to bench press 500 pounds. Now he can bench 15.

His career ended at 27 in 1981 because of a herniated disk in his back when the Raiders released him after he helped them win a Super Bowl, and eventually called owner Al Davis for medical help.

"He still hasn't called me back," Pear said.

During that time he has flooded the league with inquiries about disability insurance, but has been essentially told the same thing.

Seven spinal surgeries doesn't mean you're disabled.

The league disability plan routinely denies players whose disabilities occur after their playing days, even if it was a result of a playing injury.

"People don't understand," Pear said.

Upshaw, who once threatened to break former player Joe DeLamielleure's neck if he kept complaining, said that the union is doing its best.

"Never once have I turned my back on a retired player," Upshaw said at his annual news conference Thursday. "I fight for retired players and I fight for present players. I fight for future players."

Those present and future players never put any pressure on Upshaw to help the retired guys.

The stars never realize they will one day be scars.

"All these guys in the league now, they don't understand, it could be them sitting on our side one day," Michael Irvin said.

Some do. Kyle Turley, an offensive lineman with the Kansas City Chiefs this season, donated a $25,000 game check to the old-timers, and pushed for others to contribute. But he barely came up with $25 a player.

"Until those players realize they could be in the same boat, nothing is going to happen," Turley said.

The plight of former players is a dark secret indeed, a fact unwittingly highlighted by Upshaw when he bragged about a new union plan to help players suffering from various forms of dementia.

He said that, of the nearly 9,000 former players, he had received 80 applications for help.

That would put the rate of dementia in the NFL at about six times the national average.

Said Upshaw: "I wouldn't agree that we, as football players, are suffering at a higher rate than the general public."

Countered Dobler: "Every day I wake up, I wonder what else I'm going to lose."

Out in the suburbs, the stars ended their Thursday media session with hope.

"I'm very excited, it's going to be a lot of fun, we're going to be ready to go this Sunday," the Patriots' Wes Welker said.

Back downtown, the scars ended it with resignation.

"You playing golf?" someone asked Dobler as he hobbled toward a sunny mid-morning sky.

"Not anymore," he said.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

GOP TO EDWARDS:
HOW MUCH FOR THAT CONCESSION SPEECH?
by Ann Coulter

January 30, 2008

The Democrats are trying to give away an election they should win in a walk by nominating someone with real problems -- like, for example, a first-term senator with a 100 percent rating from Americans for Democratic Action and whose middle name is "Hussein."

But we won't let them.

The bright side of the Florida debacle is that I no longer fear Hillary Clinton. (I mean in terms of her becoming president -- on a personal level, she's still a little creepy.) I'd rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal policies with none of the responsibility.

Also, McCain lies a lot, which is really more a specialty of the Democrats.

Recently, McCain responded to Mitt Romney's statement that he understood the economy based on his many years in the private sector by claiming Romney had said a military career is not a "real job."

McCain's neurotic boast that he is the only Republican who supported the surge is beginning to sound as insane as Bill Clinton's claim to being the "first black president" -- although less insulting to blacks. As with the Clintons, you find yourself looking up such tedious facts as this, which ran a week after Bush announced the surge:

"On the morning of Bush's address, Romney endorsed a troop surge." -- The National Journal, Jan. 13, 2007

And yet for the 4 billionth time, at the Jan. 5, 2008, Republican debate, McCain bragged about his own raw courage in supporting the surge despite (apocryphal) Republican attacks, saying: "I said at the time that Gen. Petraeus and his strategy must be employed, and I was criticized by Republicans at that time. And that was a low point, but I stuck to it. I didn't change."

A review of contemporaneous news stories about the surge clearly demonstrates that the only Republicans who were so much as "skeptical" of the surge consisted of a few oddball liberal Republicans such as Sens. Gordon Smith, Norm Coleman and Olympia Snowe.

They certainly weren't attacking McCain, their standard-bearer in liberal Republicanism. But even if they were, it was a "low point" for McCain being "criticized" by the likes of Olympia Snowe?

In point of fact, McCain didn't even stand up to the milquetoasts. In April 2007, when Democrats in the Senate passed a bill funding the troops but also requiring a rapid withdrawal, "moderate" Republicans Smith and Chuck Hagel voted with the Democrats. McCain and Lindsey Graham skipped the vote.

But like the Democrats, McCain thinks if he simply says something over and over again, he can make people believe it's true. Thus again at the South Carolina debate on Jan. 10, McCain was proclaiming that he was "the only one on this stage" who supported the surge.

Since he would deny it about two minutes later, here is exactly what Mr. Straight Talk said about the surge: "I supported that; I argued for it. I'm the only one on this stage that did. And I condemn the Rumsfeld strategy before that."

The next question went to Giuliani and -- amid great flattery -- Giuliani noted that he also supported Bush's surge "the night of the president's speech."

Mr. Straight Talk contradicted Giuliani, saying: "Not at the time."

Again, Giuliani said: "The night of the president's speech, I was on television. I supported the surge. I've supported it throughout."

To which McCain finally said he didn't mean that he was "the only one on this stage" who supported the surge. So by "the only one on this stage," McCain really meant, "one of several people on this stage." OK, great. Now tell us your definition of the word "is," Senator.

I know Republicans have been trained not to go prostrate at Ivy League degrees, but do we have to admire stupidity?

Mr. Straight Talk also announced at that same debate: "One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth." That and the fact that Democrats were allowed to vote in the Republican primary.

Even in the Florida primary, allegedly limited to Republicans, McCain lost among Republicans. (Seventeen percent of the Republican primary voters in Florida called themselves "Independents.")

That helps, but why would any Republican vote for McCain?

At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas -- tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals -- Republicans in Congress will support "our" president -- just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush's great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers.

You need little flags like that for Republicans since, as we know from the recent unpleasantness in Florida, Republicans are unalterably stupid.

Republicans who vote for McCain are trying to be cute, like the Democrats were four years ago by voting for the "pragmatic" candidate, Vietnam vet John Kerry. This will turn out to be precisely as clever a gambit as nominating Kerry was, the brilliance of which was revealed on Election Day 2004.

From PajamasMedia.com:
First They Came for the Gays
PJM Oslo:
Once an oasis of tolerance, Europe is slowly but surely succumbing to Islamization. “Sharia law may still be an alien concept to some Westerners,” writes Bruce Bawer. “But it’s staring gay Europeans right in the face — and pointing toward a chilling future for all free people.”

By Bruce Bawer

One day last month, I gave a talk in Rome about how the supposedly liberal ideology of multiculturalism has made possible the spread in Europe of the highly illiberal ideology of fundamentalist Islam, with all its brutality and – among other things – violent homophobia. When I returned to my hotel, I phoned my partner back home in Oslo only to learn that moments earlier he had been confronted at a bus stop by two Muslim youths, one of whom had asked if he was gay, started to pull out a knife, then kicked him as he got on the bus, which had pulled up at just the right moment. If the bus hadn’t come when it did, the encounter could have been much worse.

Not very long ago, Oslo was an icy Shangri-la of Scandinavian self-discipline, governability, and respect for the law. But in recent years, there have been grim changes, including a rise in gay-bashings. The summer of 2006 saw an unprecedented wave of them. The culprits, very disproportionately, are young Muslim men.

It’s not just Oslo, of course. The problem afflicts most of Western Europe. And anecdotal evidence suggests that such crimes are dramatically underreported. My own partner chose not to report his assault. I urged him to, but he protested that it wouldn’t make any difference. He was probably right.

The reason for the rise in gay bashings in Europe is clear – and it’s the same reason for the rise in rape. As the number of Muslims in Europe grows, and as the proportion of those Muslims who were born and bred in Europe also grows, many Muslim men are more inclined to see Europe as a part of the umma (or Muslim world), to believe that they have the right and duty to enforce sharia law in the cities where they live, and to recognize that any aggression on their part will likely go unpunished. Such men need not be actively religious in order to feel that they have carte blanche to assault openly gay men and non-submissive women, whose freedom to live their lives as they wish is among the most conspicuous symbols of the West’s defiance of holy law.

Multiculturalists can’t face all this. So it is that even when there are brutal gay-bashings, few journalists write about them; of those who do, few mention that the perpetrators are Muslims; and those who do mention it take the line that these perpetrators are lashing out in desperate response to their own oppression.

Never mind that Europe, far from oppressing Muslims, offers personal freedoms and welfare-state benefits far beyond those available in any Muslim country. Never mind that few if any Europeans – certainly not gay people – are doing any Muslim-bashing. Never mind that Hindu and Buddhist immigrants, or immigrants from South America or China, feel no compulsion to react violently against their “oppression.” No, assaults by Muslims always have to be construed as defensive – as expressions not of power but of weakness, not of aggression but of helplessness. To suggest that the culprits, far from being fragile, sensitive flowers who’ve been pushed over the line by something we did, are in fact bullies driven by an overweening sense of superiority and a deep-seated malice – both of which they’ve been carefully taught at home, at school, and, yes, in the mosque – is verboten.

One familiar response is: “Well, non-Muslims beat up gays, too!” Yep – indeed they do. Yet for a while there, in much of Western Europe, homosexuality was on its way to being a non-issue. In Amsterdam in the late 1990s, I was delightfully surprised to discover that when groups of straight teenage boys passed gay couples in the streets, they just walked past without any reaction whatsoever. The sight of gay people didn’t upset, threaten, amuse, or confuse them; the familiar, insecure urge to respond to open homosexuality with some kind of distancing, disdainful word or gesture – and thereby affirm to one another, and to themselves, their own heterosexual credentials – was simply not part of those kids’ makeup. For me, it was a remarkable experience. Amsterdam then seemed to me the leading edge of a new wave in the progress of human civilization.

Alas, it is now very clearly the opposite. The number of reported gay-bashings in Amsterdam now climbs steadily year by year. Nearly half Muslim, the city is a front in the struggle between democracy and sharia, under which, lest it be forgotten, homosexuality can be a capital offense. Things have gotten so bad there that even on the part of the exceedingly politically correct, there has been a degree of acknowledgment that something has changed, and is still changing. After a group of Amsterdam Muslims beat up Chris Crain, the six-foot-five editor of the gay newspaper The Washington Blade, in May 2005, the head of the Netherlands’ leading gay-rights organization admitted that tolerance of gay people in that city was “slipping away like sand through the fingers” and that “gays and lesbians are less willing to walk hand-in-hand because they might be beaten up.”

I can testify that this is true. Yet politicians, journalists, activists, and others who cling to the multicultural mindset can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the Islamic foundations of all this bullying. Instead, they offer the same kind of nonsense that was served up by a Human Rights Watch spokesman after the Chris Crain incident. “There’s still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society,” that spokesman said. “Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities they have to suffer.”

So powerful is the determination to turn away from the plain and simple truth that Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen recently commissioned a study by the University of Amsterdam. Its purpose? To try to figure out what motives underlie the increase in attacks on gay men and lesbians by Dutch-Moroccan men in Amsterdam. “Some researchers,” wrote a reporter for UPI, “believe they [Muslim gay-bashers] lashed out at local gays after feeling stigmatized by Dutch society.” In other words, as the straight-talking Norwegian immigration expert Inger-Lise Lien put it sardonically when I showed her the article, “it’s the assailant who’s the real victim.”

As for Cohen, he would appear to be operating out of pure cynicism. This is the same mayor, after all, who has called for the Netherlands to reach some “accommodation” with its male Muslim residents that would allow them to oppress their wives, sisters, and daughters – though he hasn’t been entirely clear as to just where he would draw the line. (Beatings? Rape? Forced marriage? Genital mutilation? Honor killing?) Given such an extraordinary record of pragmatism, it seems safe to assume that Cohen would also be more than willing, in the name of peace in our time, to turn away with respectful discretion when Muslim gangs beat the living daylights out of the occasional flikker.

In any event, another mayor, London’s Ken Livingstone, has already blazed that trail. In 2004, playing host to Sunni scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has supported the execution of gay people, Livingstone hailed him as a “progressive.” When gay activists called him on this ridiculous assertion, Livingstone retaliated by putting out a dissertation-length report whitewashing Qaradawi and smearing his critics as racists.

Even as Europeans in positions of authority persist in denying the plain facts about Muslim attitudes toward gay people, leading European Muslims keep reminding us what those attitudes are. Take Norway’s Asghar Ali, deputy chairman of Norway’s Islamic Council. Ali, who also holds high-ranking positions in Norway’s ruling Labor Party and in the powerful Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, and has worked in an advisory capacity on the government’s Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud, would seem to be a model of successful assimilation. Yet at a November 2007 debate arranged by the gay student organization at the University of Oslo, he refused to reject the death penalty for gays. When asked about this issue, the head of the Islamic Council, Senaid Kobilica, said that Norwegian Muslims needed to discuss it and consult religious authorities. “While this process is underway,” Kobilica said, “I ask for understanding and respect for the fact that I am unable to comment, either about my personal position or about the position of the Islamic Council of Norway.” Understanding and respect, that is, for his unwillingness to say flat out that he did not believe gay people should be murdered.

Perhaps younger, well educated Muslims are more enlightened? Another participant in the University of Oslo debate, Muslim Student Association head Usman Rana, said that he personally didn’t support making homosexuality a capital crime, but that he would not criticize other countries’ practices. “There is unfortunately a tendency in Norway to degrade religious people,” Rana told Universitas, the college newspaper. “It is due to an extreme secularism among the Norwegian public. I fervently hope that our participation [in the debate on the death penalty for gays] helps to create a more nuanced view of Islam. The Norwegian public needs to become more liberal.” Once again, it’s the assailants – or, in this case, the would-be executioners – who are the real victims.

The Norwegian public may not yet be “liberal” enough to suit Rana, but the European establishment has been exceedingly so. Though Kobilica’s refusal to condemn the execution of gays caused a brief stir in the media, the Norwegian government has made no move to withdraw the Islamic Council’s annual subsidy of half a million kroner (about $100,000). Government officials and journalists continue to treat the council with deference, to view it as the Voice of Muslims, and to pretend that it is a voice of moderation. Once the flap over executing gays died down, moreover, politicians and others returned soon enough to the mantra about Islam being a religion of peace.

It’s very clear what’s going on here – and where it’s all headed. Europe is on its way down the road of Islamization, and it’s reached a point along that road at which gay people’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is being directly challenged, both by knife-wielding bullies on the street and by taxpayer-funded thugs whose organizations already enjoy quasi-governmental authority. Sharia law may still be an alien concept to some Westerners, but it’s staring gay Europeans right in the face – and pointing toward a chilling future for all free people. Pim Fortuyn saw all this coming years ago; most of today’s European leaders still refuse to see it even though it’s right before their eyes.

Bruce Bawer’s book While Europe Slept is now in paperback. His website is at www.brucebawer.com.

From The New York Daily News:
Whitey Ford's warehouse sale!
BY LINDSAY GREENE

Tuesday, January 29th 2008, 4:00 AM

Whitey Ford decided it was time to clean out his attic - and his stash of pinstripe goodies could be worth a mound of cash.

The legendary Yankee pitcher showed off an array of belongings that will go on the auction block, including a baseball President John F. Kennedy signed for Ford and his Hall of Fame induction plaque.

"When your house starts getting full and your kids don't have a place to sleep, it's time to get rid of stuff," said Ford, 79. The treasure trove also includes a signed photo of Mickey Mantle, Ford's rookie jersey and an authentic, used game glove.

All pieces will be sold at a Javits Center auction during the MLB All-Star festivities on July 14 and 15. Yankee Stadium will host this summer's All-Star Game. Auction organizers wouldn't put a value on the entire cache of hundreds of pieces of memorabilia.

Ford collected the items over the years since he broke into the major leagues with the Yanks in 1950, mostly without giving much thought to them.

He regrets not saving more stuff.

"Joe DiMaggio was my idol and now I wish that during the few years I played with him that I picked up every cigarette he threw away, and every piece of gum he spit out," Ford said, half in jest.

Ford's personal favorite item is a photo of Mantle in front of a truck in the garage where he once worked.

Using Ford's given first name, Mantle signed the photo: "To Ed and Joan - need anything fixed just call ole Mick."

Campaign Dishonesty from the Clintons and McCain
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- In 1976, Fred Harris -- a populist precursor of this year's version of John Edwards -- championed "the little people." When he finished fourth with just 10.8 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, he cheerfully explained that the little people were too little to reach the levers on the voting machines. Soon Edwards will join Harris in the book of presidential trivia. (What presidential candidate was known as "Little Lyndon from Lawton"? Answer: Former Sen. Harris from Lawton, Okla.) Meanwhile, note this:

Although Edwards got just 18 percent of the vote in the Democrats' South Carolina primary -- which he won four years ago, beating John Kerry with 45 percent -- he received the support of half the white voters who made up their minds in the week before the voting. Many of these surely were recoiling from Hillary Clinton, who had been reduced to the role of surrogate speaker for her husband, the king across the water, restive for a Restoration with her tagging along.

The week before South Carolina voted was the week when, at last, even some Democrats noticed. Noticed, that is, the distinctive cloud of coarseness that hovers over the Clintons, seeping acid rain.

That cloud has been a constant accouterment of their careers, and has been influencing the nation's political weather for 16 years. But by the time Bill Clinton brought the Democratic Party in from the wilderness in 1992, the party had lost five of the previous six, and seven of the previous 10, presidential elections. Democrats were so grateful to him, and so determined not to resume wandering in the wilderness, that they averted their gazes to avoid seeing, and hummed show tunes to avoid hearing, the Clintons' routine mendacities.

Then, last week, came the radio ad that even South Carolinians, who are not squeamish about bite-and-gouge politics, thought was one brick over a load, and that the Clintons withdrew. It was the one that said Obama endorsed Republican ideas (because he said Republicans had some ideas). The Clinton campaign also accused Obama of praising Ronald Reagan (because Obama noted the stark fact that Reagan had changed the country's trajectory more than some other recent presidents -- hello, Bill -- had done).

This was a garden-variety dishonesty, the manufacture of which does not cause a Clinton in midseason form to break a sweat. And it was no worse than -- actually, not as gross as -- St. John of Arizona's crooked-talk claim in Florida that Mitt Romney wanted to "surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do" in Iraq because Romney "wanted to set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster."

Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, the Clintons should bask in the glow of John McCain's Clintonian gloss on this fact: Ten months ago Romney said that President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki should discuss, privately, "a series of timetables and milestones." That unremarkable thought was twisted by McCain, whose distortions are notably clumsy, as when Romney said, accurately, that he alone among the candidates has had extensive experience in private-sector business. That truth was subjected to McCain's sophistry, and he charged that Romney had said "you haven't had a real job" if you had a military career. If, this autumn, voters must choose between Clinton and McCain, they will face, at least stylistically, an echo, not a choice.

But that dreary scenario need not come to pass. Romney seems to have found his voice as attention turns to the economy, a subject concerning which McCain seems neither conversant nor eager to become so. And in South Carolina, Obama, more than doubling Clinton's 27 percent, won a majority of the votes, becoming the first person in either party to do so in a contested primary this year. He won a majority of men and of women, which pretty much covers the rainbow of genders. And he used his victory speech to clearly associate the Clintons with "the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election" (hello again, Bill, you political ethicist who famously said "you gotta do what you gotta do") and "the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea -- even if it's one you never agreed with."

Obama is running against two Clintons -- or one and a fraction of one, given how much she has been diminished by her overbearing spouse. Romney is marginally better off running against a Clinton impersonator.

From Reuters:
Web yields deadly tricks for crime writers
By Gavin Haycock

LONDON (Reuters) - Thinking about killing someone and can't figure out how to finish the job and make crime pay? It's the kind of stuff that keeps crime fiction writers awake at night.

If the blood-splattered creative juices aren't flowing, the authors of crime and thriller novels are increasingly turning to the Web and digging up, often by chance, the idea for their next blockbuster.

Writers can find out about street layouts, building locations, or the latest in guns, poisons and nuclear bombs. They can also learn how victims would react to acid or bullets or being pushed from a helicopter.

"I needed to find out what a body would look like if dug up from a shallow grave after three months," said London-based crime writer Mark Billingham, who pens novels featuring detective Tom Thorne (www.markbillingham.com).

"Within about 10 minutes of searching, I was in touch with a forensic anthropologist news group in the States and got all manner of helpful stuff," he said.

Lee Child, the British-born thriller writer based in New York whose novels follow the adventures of former U.S. military policeman Jack Reacher, found inspiration for his next book, due in 2009, while dabbling on the Internet.

"I was just surfing the Web and came across some law enforcement sites where there was a list of visual indicators for recognizing a suicide bomber," said Child.

"I started this new book with the idea that my hero is on the subway in New York late at night and gazing at this person and realizes that this hits 11 out of 11 on this list and what is he going to do about it," he said. "It started just purely from some idle browsing on the Web."

DARK HEARTS AND MINDS

Web-based forums like www.crimespace.ning.com and the Crime Writers Association www.thecwa.co.uk have flourished, bringing together writers and fans around the world.

Authors I spoke with for this column rated among their favorites the crime fiction sites "Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind" at www.sarahweinman.com, www.thrillerwriters.org and www.crimespot.net.

Seasoned or aspiring writers also track blogs run by police officers where they can read tales and learn jargon -- something that was not possible a few years back.

Child said one of the great benefits of tapping into the right police blog site is that writers can learn about tension between departments, staff and bosses, personal concerns and how they balance the "banal with the extraordinary".

"It's like coming up out of a tunnel into a different world. If you are reasonably sensitive to words and nuance, like all writers ought to be, you can actually pick up a tremendous amount of good stuff almost accidentally," said Child.

Peter Robinson, the novelist behind the Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks books (www.inspectorbanks.com), is another one who finds the Web a useful resource for research.

"I used to use big heavy reference books or go to the reference library, but now I find I can get most of what I want without leaving my study, or even my chair."

Robinson, who teaches crime writing at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies, occasionally writes at a remote lake house in Northern Ontario where he has no Web access. The setting suits him, although he is likely to return home with a stack of questions to answer online.

Established writers often like to get new ideas from face-to-face meetings with police and legal contacts, but that can be impossible for a writer who has yet to make it big.

Billingham says it was not until he had two published crime fiction books behind him that doors began opening to detectives, many of whom have become friends.

"For the first couple of books I was just ringing the press office and having to use the Internet. None of it can take the place of sitting down with a cop for half an hour," he adds.

Technology cuts both ways for authors, particularly when it comes to plot twists in a Web-connected world.

"With the Internet, computers in general, mobile phones, CCTV and DNA to consider, the crime writer has to find new ways for the criminal to avoid leaving too many traces, or there would be no story," said Robinson.

And sometimes old-fashioned research -- the sort found in books and at the library -- still works best.

Child says he likes using picture books, particularly to help get the look and feel of guns.

Others share that view. Among recent posts on the www.crimeonline.net portal is one from an aspiring author who has tried unsuccessfully to find the right information via the Web about how a detective agency worked in the early 1900s.

The reply is to consider a trusted resource -- books.

(Reporting by Gavin Haycock)

What McCain Means
by Patrick J. Buchanan

In 2004, the voters of Arizona, by 56 percent to 44 percent, enacted Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship before an individual may vote or receive state benefits. Forty-six percent of Hispanics voted for Prop. 200, giving the lie to those who say Hispanics support the illegal invasion of their country.

Over 190,000 Arizonans petitioned to put Prop. 200 on the ballot. As it simply required proof of citizenship before receiving the benefits and privileges of citizenship, who could oppose it? Answer: the entire GOP congressional delegation, led by Sen. John McCain.

This is the same John McCain who battled the border fence and colluded with Teddy Kennedy on the amnesty bill rejected by Congress last year after a national uproar.

Bottom line: If the presidential race is between Hillary and Amnesty John, the border security battle is over and lost. As Laura Ingraham asks, "If Congress passes McCain-Kennedy in 2009, would President McCain sign it?"

For conservatives, the stakes could not be higher.

For on the great controversies, McCain has sided as often with the Democrats and the Big Media that pay him court as with conservatives.

Where President Bush has been bravest, on taxes and judges, McCain has been his nemesis. Not only did McCain vote against the Bush tax cuts twice, he colluded to sell out the most conservative of the Bush nominees to the courts.

In 1993, McCain voted to confirm ACLU liberal and pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But when Bush set out to restore constitutionalism, McCain colluded with Democrats who wanted to retain power to kill Bush's most conservative nominees.

McCain helped form the Gang of 14, including seven Democrats, who agreed to block a GOP Senate from using the "nuclear option" -- allowing a simple GOP majority to break a Democrat filibuster of judicial nominees -- unless the seven Democrats approved. McCain thus conspired with liberals to put at risk the most courageous conservatives nominees of President Bush.

With his record of voting for liberal justices Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and of colluding with Democrats in their campaign to kill the most conservative Bush nominees, what guarantee is there a President McCain will nominate and fight for the fifth jurist who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?

In the battle over campaign finance reform, McCain colluded again. The McCain-Feingold law denies to gun folks and right-to-lifers their basic First Amendment right to name friends and foes in ads run before elections.

As for the policies that have transparently failed Bush and the nation, McCain remains an obdurate advocate.

After America has run five straight record trade deficits that have denuded the nation of thousands of factories and 3 million manufacturing jobs, McCain is still babbling on about Smoot-Hawley.

"When you study history, every time we've adopted protectionism, we've paid a very heavy price," McCain told a Detroit paper after informing Michiganders their auto jobs are never coming back.

But what history is John McCain talking about?

Was the Tariff of 1816, which saved infant U.S. industries from the malicious dumping by British merchants after the War of 1812, a failure? Were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Calhoun and Henry Clay fools to support President Madison's tariff?

From Abraham Lincoln through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party -- the Party of Protection -- put 12 presidents in the White House to two for the Democrats, and the United States became the mightiest industrial power in history, producing 42 percent of the world's manufactured goods.

This is failure -- while Bush free trade is a success? Tell it to Ohio.

Even Hillary Clinton, whose husband enacted NAFTA with McCain's support, has begun to question the NAFTA paradigm. Not McCain.

Where Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon came to office determined to extricate the nation with honor from a war whose costs had begun to outweigh any benefit, McCain is talking about spending 50 or 100 years in Iraq.

Where Bush, by moving NATO onto Russia's doorstep, planting bases in Central Asia and intervening in the affairs of Russia's neighbors, has undone the work of Reagan in making Russia a friend, he sounds like George McGovern alongside the braying McCain, who can't wait to get into Vladimir Putin's face.

Where Bush finally cleansed his administration of neocons, if not of their legacy, a McCain candidacy is the last, best hope of a neocon restoration and new military adventures in the Middle East.

If Rudy Giuliani founders in Florida, neocons will be chanting, "Mac is back!"

The three issues that ruined the Bush presidency are this misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America's borders from invasion and a mindless trade policy that has destroyed the dollar and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America at fire-sale prices.

McCain remains an unthinking advocate of all three.

But where Bush was at his best, on taxes and judges, McCain was collaborating with Hillary. The question conservatives may face if McCain is nominated is not whom should I vote for, but should I vote.

From Slate.com:
Fool Me Thrice
It should be no surprise that the Clintons
are playing the race card.
By Christopher Hitchens

How can one equal Bill Clinton for thuggery and opportunism when it comes to the so-called "race card"? And where does one even start with the breathtaking nastiness of his own conduct, and that of his supporters, in the last week? Barack Obama carries South Carolina having made no sectarian appeal to any specific kind of voter, and the best Clinton can say is that this is no better than Jesse Jackson managed to do. Really? Did Jackson come south having already got himself elected the senator from Illinois? And, come to think of it, was Jackson so much to be despised and sneered at when he was needed as Clinton's "confessor," along with Billy Graham, during the squalor of impeachment?

This calculated willingness to shop on both sides of the street of racial politics was actually analyzed quite shrewdly by Dick Morris, the former consigliere of the gruesome twosome, in conversation with Sean Hannity last week. The Clintons, he thought, would be quite happy to lose big to the "black vote" in South Carolina. It would enable them to signal that they were the ones to stem the flow of the color tide. Morris' host protested that this seemed a touch cynical. Morris jovially assured him that he knew the people he was talking about.

As indeed he did. It was Hillary Clinton who insisted on recalling Morris to the embattled White House, notwithstanding his various disgraces and notwithstanding the fact that he had been the adviser and strategist for Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Why am I saying "notwithstanding"? It was because he had performed so well for Helms, including helping him with the famous "white hands" ad that showed a white man crumpling up a letter that told him of preference for "minorities" in hiring, that Morris was thought of by the then-first lady as such a guru.

I never quite understand how the Clintons' initial exploitation of racism was overlooked the first time around and has been airbrushed from the record since. After falling behind in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and after being caught lying about the affair with Gennifer Flowers to which he later confessed under oath, Clinton left the campaign trail and flew home to Arkansas to give the maximum publicity to his decision to sign a death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was a black inmate on death row who had shot himself in the head after committing a double murder and, instead of dying as a result, had achieved the same effect as a lobotomy would have done. He never understood the charge against him or the sentence. After being served his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he told the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber, "for later." Several police and prison-officer witnesses expressed extreme queasiness at this execution of a gravely impaired man, and the prison chaplain, Dennis Pigman, later resigned from the prison service. The whole dismal and cruel and pathetic story was told by Marshall Frady in a long essay in The New Yorker in 1993 and is also recounted in a chapter titled "Chameleon in Black and White" by your humble servant in his book No One Left To Lie To. For now, I just ask you to imagine what would have been said if a Republican governor, falling in the polls, had gone out of his way to execute a mentally incompetent African-American prisoner.

Or leaf back, if you will, to the New York Times of March 23, 1992, and the jolly headline, "Club Where Clinton Has Golfed Retains Ways of Old South." Yes indeedy, the Country Club of Little Rock had 500 members, all of them white, and the aspirant candidate had himself photographed there more than once until Jerry Brown made an issue of it. It was then announced by Clinton's people that "the staff and facilities" at the club were "integrated"—a pretty way of stating that the toilets were cleaned by black Arkansans. Yet all this was forgiven by credulous liberals who were sure that they had discovered a New Democrat who was a Southerner to boot.

Many of these same people do not like it now that they see similar two-faced tactics being employed against "one of their own." Well, tough. And many of the most prominent and eloquent black columnists—Bob Herbert, Colbert King, Eugene Robinson—are also acting shocked. It's a bit late. I have to say that Bob Herbert shocked even me by quoting Andrew Young, who said that his pal Clinton was "every bit as black as Barack" because he'd screwed more black chicks. How is Hillary Clinton, or Chelsea Clinton, supposed to feel on hearing that little endorsement? One gets the impression, though, at least from the wife, that anything is OK as long as it works, or even has a chance of working. When Toni Morrison described Clinton as "black" on the basis of his promiscuity and dysfunction and uncertainty about his parentage, she did more than cater to the white racist impression of the African-American male. She tapped into the sort of self-hatred that is evidently more common than we might choose to think. Say what you will about Sen. Obama (and I say that he's got much more charisma than guts), he is miles above this sort of squalor and has decent manners. Say what you will about the Clintons, you cannot acquit them of having played the race card several times in both directions and of having done so in the most vulgar and unscrupulous fashion. Anyone who thinks that this equals "change" is a fool, and an easily fooled fool at that.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

From The Boston Globe:
A Patriot answers two callings
With charitable foundation,
Watson offers a spiritual example

By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Staff

January 28, 2008

FOXBOROUGH - When Benjamin Watson was barely 4 years old, already having mastered the proper technique for a three-point football stance, he tugged earnestly at his father's sleeve.

"Dad," he said. "Can you put me in the closet?"

"Why, son? Why should I do that?" his father, pastor Ken Watson, responded.

"So you can announce my name," Benjamin answered. "So I can run onto the football field."

And so began a family ritual. Young Benjamin, crammed in with the coats, would patiently wait as his father declared in a booming voice, "Now, starting at running back for the Washington Redskins, No. 45, Benjamin Watson . . . "

At that moment, the boy would bust out, arms raised, eyes fixed straight ahead on the dream in front of him.

"Ever since I can remember," said Ken Watson, "if you asked Benjamin what he wanted to be when he grew up, he'd answer, 'I want to be a football player and a missionary.' "

Twenty-three years later, Patriots tight end Benjamin Watson is an NFL starter, an integral part of an unbeaten team that will try to cap its perfect season with a victory over the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII Sunday in Glendale, Ariz.

Watson's career is approaching its zenith, yet as he has established himself as a respected member of the Patriots, he simultaneously has answered the call of his faith. Last week, while his teammates enjoyed a three-day hiatus from football, Watson formally kicked off his "One More" Foundation, created to promote educational and enrichment opportunities through charitable programs.

"So much of football relates to Christian life - sacrifice, commitment, discipline," said Watson. "I know God has a plan for me. I don't know what it is. After football? Who knows? My grandmother and my father always said I would end up as a missionary. Well, I feel like I am one now."

Inquisitive mind

The genesis of that calling came when he was a child in Rock Hill, S.C, as he engaged in bedtime talks with his mother, Diana, about her beliefs.

"He'd ask me spiritual questions he wouldn't ask when the light was on," Diana Watson said. "Questions about Jesus, about sins, about heaven. He was very inquisitive. He was looking for answers."

Because his dad was a pastor, Watson and his five siblings spent each summer tagging along to Christian camps. Benjamin found himself transfixed by the words of his father, whom he admired fervently. Once, after the family returned from a retreat with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), Benjamin's friends came over to toss a football. Instead, they were given a sermon by a solemn 7-year-old intent on spreading the word of God.

"The kids were all sitting on the curb, listening to Benjamin talk," Ken Watson said. "He was telling them how important it was to give your life to the Lord. I was like, 'Wow.' "

Faith needs time to grow and develop. Benjamin was not a perfect child. He was too competitive, a sore loser, something that initially concerned Ken Watson, a former football player at the University of Maryland.

"I got this oversized teddy bear at a flea market," Ken Watson said. "I brought it home, and every night before bed, Benjamin would box with it. Every night, I'd let him win.

"So this one night I didn't let Ben win. I roughed him up pretty good with that teddy bear. Then I told him it was time for bed. The light was out and it was an hour later, and he was still screaming for me to bring that teddy bear back in there so he could beat him."

Watson recalls a habit of using bad language, which was quickly truncated by his mother sticking a bar of Ivory soap in his mouth. He teased his sister, Jessica, two years behind him, for what she wore, what she said, even berating her for the size of her head.

When the Watson children dressed for church, greeting friends with impeccable manners, Jessica groaned as her oldest brother smiled sweetly, pecking members of the congregation on the cheek.

"I thought he was a demon," Jessica Watson said.

As Watson grew older and excelled in football, his father reminded him to praise God in the midst of his failures as well as his successes.

"I told him his love for God should be the same when he was dropping the ball as when he was catching a touchdown," Ken Watson said.

Faith is not something to turn on and off like a faucet, although many athletes have been criticized for doing just that. The reason some people have an aversion to athletes who publicly praise Christ, Ken Watson said, is that occasionally the athletes come off as inconsistent, even hypocritical.

"I think when people see athletes being very demonstrative on the field about their relationship with God, they also want to see what they do once the game is over," he explained. "If you are pointing your finger to the sky and praising the Lord after you score a touchdown, then you get off the field and you're a bum, well, who is going to believe in you?"

College an awakening

When Benjamin accepted a scholarship to Duke to play football, his mother worried his values would be skewed by the adulation so readily thrust upon sports heroes. Watson found college to be an awakening.

There were temptations everywhere: co-ed dorms, late nights, wild parties. Hardly any of his friends went to church. Even fewer talked about God.

"You grow up a certain way, and you make decisions within your family," Watson said. "But then you go to college and the decisions become harder. You are away from home, from the influence of your parents, dealing with peer pressure. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in college."

He immersed himself in his football experience, but the Duke team was horrible. The team struggled to a 3-8 mark in 1999, his freshman season, and the losing wore on him.

"I kind of dreaded going to those games, to tell you the truth," his sister Jessica said. "The players were always so down."

Watson transferred to Georgia, where the temptations were the same, even greater, but he took his father's advice and learned to anticipate trouble long before it cornered him. He became involved in FCA and discovered kindred spirits.

He earned second-team all Southeastern Conference honors as a senior and was selected by the Patriots in the first round of the 2004 draft.

Trying rookie season

Expectations were high for the chiseled tight end, but in the second game of his rookie season, Watson injured his knee and was placed on injured reserve. The Patriots cruised to a 14-2 record without him and beat Philadelphia in Super Bowl XXXIX.

"It was so hard," Watson said. "First of all, you know how it is with our team. No one could know. It was almost two years before the media realized I had suffered a torn ACL. I felt I had to keep it to myself.

"Somehow you ended up feeling like it's your fault, like you are holding on to this bad secret, like you are letting people down."

He tried to interact with the team, but injured players are apart from the hub of activity. By necessity, the team must focus on who can help it on the field.

"The train moves on," said Watson. "On days like that, when you are feeling secluded from everyone else, you have to remember that who you are as a football player does not measure your worth as a person. What matters is who you are in Christ."

One of the more striking customs in sports is when opposing NFL players, who, moments earlier were trying to annihilate one another, join hands in the center of the field to share a prayer when the game ends.

"It's a time for us to acknowledge there is more to life than football, that all the glory should go to God, not Benjamin Watson, or anyone else," Watson said. "We thank God for the opportunity to let us play in the NFL, we thank him for our physical gifts, and we pray for the safety of the traveling team.

"Now, everyone in that huddle isn't necessarily Christian, just as everyone outside that huddle is not necessarily a heathen. We're all human. We all make mistakes."

Watson does not preach to his Patriots teammates like he did when he spread his message to his neighborhood pals.

He hopes his actions speak for him. Watson is the FCA spokesperson and donates his time to food banks, the Salvation Army, Toys for Tots, and Habitat for Humanity. He said his foundation will help multiple charities, not just Christian ones.

He still relishes a trip he took with his father to Jamaica last April on a mission.

Platform for view

His mother wonders if Watson will become a pastor when he retires from the NFL.

"He has a platform now," said Diana Watson, "if he chooses to use it."

Ken Watson has heard his son speak many times. The most impressive, he said, was last summer when Benjamin addressed 800 football players at Northwestern, his old high school in Rock Hill.

He talked about his long rookie season, watching the Patriots win it all without any contribution from him.

"He told them how he didn't feel a part of the team, until one day Tom Brady walked up to him and said, 'Ben, we're going to win you a Super Bowl ring,' " said Ken Watson. "The night of the game, Benjamin stood on the sideline and was part of the team. Did he do anything to help them win? No, but he was part of something bigger than individual glory, just as God is."

Benjamin Watson is healthy for this Super Bowl. He proved it by leveling a number of San Diego Chargers with some bone-crunching blocks during the Patriots' AFC Championship game win last week.

"I'm watching the final minutes of that game, and I'm saying, 'Lord, please don't let this kid get hurt,' " Ken Watson said. "He deserves this chance. He's come a long way from the closet."

Watson feels blessed to have found his wife, Kirsten, who will be heavily involved in the "One More" Foundation. He is grateful for his parents, who guided him along his Christian path.

Even Jessica has come around to believing the "demon" is a man to be admired. She is an elementary school teacher in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and her students quiz her about her famous football sibling.

"The other day one of them asked me, 'Who is your favorite player?' " Jessica said. "I thought about it for a minute, and I said, 'You know what? I guess it would have to be my brother.' "

Jackie MacMullan can be reached at macmullan@globe.com.

From PajamasMedia.com:
Reciprocity,
or, thoughts on being an idolatrous infidel
By Roger Kimball

If you happen to find yourself in Saudi Arabia driving down the highway toward Mecca, you will eventually encounter a big sign advising you that Mecca is for Muslims only. The other road is “obligatory for non Muslims.”

Penalty for taking the wrong road? Officially, there is “no set punishment for this offense,” though incarceration followed by a large fine and expulsion are not uncommon. One source of advice for travelers offers the friendly tip that non-Muslims avoid Mecca (and Medina, where similar restrictions apply) because “Severe punishment is given to the non-Muslims if they are caught inside Mecca.” The 19th-century traveler Richard Burton took the precaution of having himself circumcised before sneaking into the city in 1853 disguised as a Muslim pilgrim. Notwithstanding the lack of official sanctions, he wrote, “nothing could save a European detected by the populace, or one who after pilgrimage declared himself an unbeliever.”

Perhaps this seemed quaint and romantic in the 19th century. What I find remarkable is with what equanimity we—meaning we idolatrous Christian, Jewish, and atheistical Westerners—accept this prohibition. Imagine, if you will, that there was an analogous sign as you approached New York.

What wailing and gnashing of teeth there would be over that outrage! The lawsuits would pile up quicker than you can say “ACLU.” But why? The usual line is that, being a freedom-loving lot, we prefer let other people do what they like, even if what they like doing is curtailing the freedom of others—e.g., us, their own women, etc.—to travel where they like, when they like, with whom they like.

But hasn’t this asymmetry gone too far? I have no particular desire to go to Mecca—indeed, I would pay a tidy sum not to visit that locus of lunacy—but supposing I did wish to book the family into the Mecca Marquis for a spot of holiday fun and fanaticism? Why should that be forbidden? Because the Koran (9:28) says Christians and other low-lifes are “unclean”? Because Muslims regard the city as a sacred spot, bound up with the core beliefs of their religion, which we idolators do not share?

Well, couldn’t we with equal justice argue that New York (to say nothing of London, Paris, and dozens of other spots) are sacred to us idolatrous Westerners? Do they not, each in its distinctive way, epitomize some central aspect of our core beliefs, for example, the belief that one should be free to worship, or not worship, as one pleases? What city better sums up the untidy dynamism of modern democratic capitalism than New York? I do not say New York is beyond criticism, only that it embodies a way, indeed a philosophy, of life. Why should it welcome those whose fundamental outlook is not merely indifferent but ostentatiously hostile to everything that makes New York a lower-case mecca for enlightened secularists of all religions?

I sometimes ask my friends such questions. Most of them think I am just joshing. I’m not. I also ask them if they know, in rough numbers, how many Christian churches and Jewish temples there are in Saudi Arabia (to take one example)—just a ballpark figure, I tell them. Many are surprised when I tell them that the number is zero. Such institutions, and the symbols and documents that accompany them, are illegal there. Yes, that’s right: Bibles, Crucifixes, the Star of David, and other such infidel religious paraphernalia are illegal there.

OK, then why are we so accommodating about Muslims’ building mosques, many of which are breeding grounds of Islamic extremism (more), in the West. As of 2004, there were more than 2000 mosques in the United States. I haven’t counted, but the number of mosques in Great Britain makes for an impressive, by which I mean long, list.

Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Muslim activist and impresario, sent shivers of delight through Western liberals when he called for a “moratorium” on the application of Sharia law—you know, stoning adultrous women to death, cutting off the hands of thieves, executing apostates, that sort of thing—in places like Western Europe that were not (or not yet) fully under the sway of Islam. Good old Tariq, who by the way, is a grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, neglected to mention exactly how long he thought his moratorium (“moratorium” n.: “a temporary reprieve or suspension”) should last: until next Tuesday? A year from Wednesday? But I would like to propose a different moratorium: a temporary reprieve or suspension of mosque building in the West until there are, say, 20 Christian churches and 20 temples in Saudi Arabia. That’s only a hundredth of the number of mosques there are in the U.S., but I don’t believe in making grandiose demands.

Again, when I mention this idea to friends, many just chuckle, thinking I am not in earnest. Why shouldn’t I be? “Oh, well, we aren’t a country like Saudi Arabia. We believe in freedom of religion,” etc., etc. Precisely. Because we believe in freedom of religion, we must be on guard against those activities which, unchecked, would spell the abolition of freedom. “There is,” said G.K. Chesterton, “a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.” Freedom—religious, economic, social—is a marvelous thing. And that is why ideologies bent on using and abusing freedom in order to destroy freedom must be carefully scrutinized and, at times, curtailed.

Unfortunately, the West’s response, increasingly, has been a long preemptive cringe. Just last week, the BBC reported that a story based on the Three Little Pigs was turned down by the government for an award because the subject matter could “offend Muslims.” Note well: the report didn’t specify any actual Muslims complaining about the porcine fairy tale. Those denying the award already knew how an offended Muslim acted—who can forget the conflagration that followed the publication of those cartoons of Mohammad? No, instead of vigilance, supine resignation is the order of the day. Better capitulate now and get all that unpleasantness out of the way. It is a habit that breeds first apathy and then contempt, including self-contempt. The tonic of offending and being offended is part of the price we pay for living in a free, secular society. Those who pretend that their sensibilities are too delicate to withstand the affronts of ordinary daily life are not asking for religious freedom: they are aiming to abolish it. That must end, and soon.

From The Corner at NRO:

Gas Attack
John Derbyshire

I dunno, I must be missing a gene or two. Everybody, including even some conservatives, is telling me what a fine uplifting orator Barack Obama is. All I see is great gusts of hot air. When he says something that actually has any semantic content, either it is just false, or else it is naked socialism.

I was just looking through Obama's latest oratorical masterpiece. It strikes me as obnoxious, where it is not just flatulent.

… we've got young people all across this country who have never had a reason to participate until now.

The "reason to participate," for people of any age, is the sense of citizenly duty. This sense didn't exist before Obama showed up?

We're up against the belief that it's all right for lobbyists to dominate our government, that they are just part of the system in Washington.

But lobbyists are part of the system in Washington. It says so in the First Amendment: "… to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Obama wants to repeal the First Amendment?

We're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House.

That's the conventional thinking? So how did Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush get elected President? None of them had any "longevity in Washington" — not even as much as you, Senator. Sure, I understand, this is throwing some of Hillary's stuff back at her, but it's still nonsense.

… real leadership is about … the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose, a higher purpose.

Not just cant, but Leninist cant. We are a republic of free people, not the tools of some "leader" pursuing a historical "purpose." What is your "higher purpose," Senator? And what happens to those of us who decline to rally around it?

… there are people all across this great nation who … can't afford another four years without health care, that can't afford another four years without good schools, that can't afford another four years without decent wages because our leaders couldn't come together and get it done.

A doctor visit costs no more than a name-brand pair of sneakers — less, probably, in relation to average earnings, than ever in our history. Hospital emergency rooms treat anyone. The theory that spending a ton of money gets you "good schools" was tested to destruction in Kansas City, 1985-97. All that KC got out of it was the most bloated and corrupt educational bureaucracy since Imperial China's (and increased dropout rates to boot!) And why should employers pay "decent wages" to Americans, when they can pay in-decent wages to illegal immigrants? — those illegal immigrants whose unlawful presence in our country you are just fine with, Senator?

And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words: Yes, we can.

Cynicism towards the kind of vaporous flapdoodle Obama trades in is fully justified, and ought to be encouraged. Doubt that an Obama administration will be able to do any better with the nation's issues than a Clinton, McCain, Romney, or Paul administration, is likewise fully justified, given Obama's lack of executive experience, or of experience in any real job; as is doubt that the things Obama says he wants to do, are desirable. Fear that an Obama administration will just take more of our money to sluice away on bureaucratic extravaganzas, ditto.

The man's a hard-left socialist, for Heaven's sake. Anyone falling for this stuff learned nothing from the later 20th century.

From GolfDigest.com:
Writing Golf History
Don't like hearing about Tiger?
You're in for a very long season
if the Buick Invitational is a sign of what's to come

Tiger blends the creative and the intuitive like no one else in the game ever has.

By Ron Sirak
Photo By Donald Miralle/Getty Images

January 27, 2008

If anyone is sick of reading stories about Tiger Woods, here's a tip: You are in for a long season. On Friday, after Woods dialed in an impressively routine 65 to take a four-stroke lead into the weekend at the Buick Invitational, I went out on a limb about the size of Barry Bonds' head and projected a winner at Torrey Pines. That might have been the safest prediction since Noah said it felt like rain. Now, it seems, everyone is getting on board, marching two-by-two up the gangplank and forecasting the impossible for Tiger. And none of it seems outrageous.

When someone says this could be the year Tiger sweeps the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship, it seems like a plausible prediction. When the most unbreakable record in professional golf -- the 11 consecutive victories by Byron Nelson in 1945 -- is placed on the table as suddenly breakable, no one says, "Are you nuts?" After seeing the way Woods played in his first PGA Tour event in four months -- running away with the Buick Invitational for his third consecutive tour victory, fifth in his last six starts and 62nd of his career -- it's difficult not to believe the man simply plays the game better than it has ever been played.

There may be no sport in which domination is as difficult to achieve as in golf. Two very wise women, the Golf Digest Top 50 teachers Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson, taught me that we have in life two categories of events: Those which we can control and those we can't control. Successes, they say, involves distinguishing between the two and directing your energies toward the controllable while having the discipline to not waste time and energy on that beyond your control. In no game is the challenge greater than in golf, and no athlete has ever made the distinction as successfully as Woods.

Now I'm not clever enough to have figured any of this out myself, but I am aware enough to take a healthy drink when led to pond of knowledge. Several years ago I worked on the book "Every Shot Must Have a Purpose" with Marriott and Nilsson and was bowled over by the simplicity of their peak-performance philosophy. Think about it: We can't control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to what happens to us. And who shows more control than Woods?

Golf is all about the uncontrollable. The test of a true champion has as much to do with how they react as it does with how they act. In just about every other sport -- even the individual sports of tennis and boxing -- you can influence the outcome of your opponent by playing defense, disrupting their rhythm or simply out-hustling them. Not so in golf. There is no game in which you have less control over whether you win or lose than in golf. That's what makes what Woods is doing even more remarkable.

Truly, you can't control whether you win in golf, you can only control those things that can lead to winning. You can't control the weather, bad bounces or the fact that someone else plays lights out. But you can control your tempo, your decision-making, your focus and your preparation. Has anyone ever done that as well as Woods?

As much as we focus on the physical talents Woods brings to the game of golf -- he's probably the most-skilled athlete ever to play the game -- it is his intangibles that make him special. Yes, he is strong, yes he can do wondrous things with the golf ball and yes he has the uncanny ability to hit the big shot at the most important time. But his genius is much more complex than any of that.

He is not only smart, he is creative and intuitive. Part of the unique nature of golf is that it is both an art and a science. Tiger blends the two brilliantly. As he has matured before our eyes from the 20-year-old gambling swashbuckler into a 32-year-old father he has developed an uncanny sense of control on the golf course. The driver stays in the bag more often as he opts to hit fairways and go after greens from 200 yards out rather than risk the rough for a 150-yard approach shot.

Woods sees the golf course like a chessboard and plays the game several shots ahead without ever losing focus on the shot he has to hit right now. If the pin is on the right side of the green he drives to the left side of the fairway. If the pin is back, he brings in a low knock-shot that releases and runs. If the pin is up, he hits a high shot past the flag and spins it back. This is the way Jack Nicklaus dominated; this is the way Ben Hogan surgically took apart a golf course. This is why Woods is now tied with Arnold Palmer on the career victory list, two behind Hogan and 20 behind Sam Snead's all-time record of 82.

If you are tired of reading about Tiger Woods then it is time for you to become a cricket fan. But this has the potential to be the kind of season that will not only please the pure golf fan; it will captivate fans of all sports and, in fact, those who appreciate genius in any area of achievement. If you are tired of reading about Tiger Woods you are missing the point. History is a blank page open in front of Woods, and he is in the process of authoring an entry people will read about as long as greatness is appreciated. Embrace it.

Sirak's most-recent book with Marriott and Nilsson is "The Game Before the Game: The Perfect 30-Minute Practice."