107 1/2 Washington Street

Compare and Contrast: An Exercise in Futility

2004-08-17T22:13:00.000-05:00

The New England Republican scours the web and finds a transcript of a news conference demonstrating the feeding frenzy by the media over the "Bush Went AWOL" non-story.

Compare this to the media coverage (or lack thereof) of Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" and other questionable stories from Kerry's four months in Vietnam. Ask yourself why there's such a difference. Remind yourself that you already know the answer.

The Psychology of the Lie

2004-08-17T21:04:00.000-05:00

The blogosphere is moving too fast for me to keep up with John Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia confabulations, his campaign's unconvincing (or outright bizarre) responses to the logical problems presented by the story (in all its permutations), and the blogosphere's dogged determination to get to the bottom of it all. I'll just point you to Power Line and Captain Ed, who have been doing the sort of work we should be seeing from Big Media.

What fascinates me about all this is the central figure himself--John Kerry--a man who built his campaign around his four months in Vietnam, and then can't seem to understand why people are calling his Vietnam stories into question. In short, Kerry was lying on every occasion he mentioned spending Christmas Eve, 1968, across the border in Cambodia, being fired upon by the Khmer Rouge, and listening to President Nixon declare that there are no American troops in Cambodia. This was the event that was "seared--seared" into his memory--the even that turned him from gung-ho soldier to embittered war veteran. Except it didn't happen.

What causes someone to invent a story that is quite obviously a lie, and stick to it with such determination for so many years? The story was most famously repeated on the floor of the Senate in 1986. Why didn't anyone then point out that Nixon wasn't president in December, 1968? Why didn't someone tell Mr. Kerry that in 1968, the Khmer Rouge wasn't yet a player in the region? How did we let him pass off this lie since, apparently, the late 70s until as recently as July of 2004?

Perhaps the better question is what psychology is at work in this man?

It is, perhaps, an odd thing to state that I am fascinated by the phenomenon of lying. Specifically, big lies. When you combine great big lies with an enthusiastic fervor to spread them and a stubborn determination to stick by them regardless of their transparent nature, the armchair psychoanalyst in me begins squirming with giddy anticipation. I want to know what makes these people tick.

Today I was reminded of an article I read way back in 1991. I'm convinced there's a connection between the kind of man John Kerry is--psychologically speaking--and the kind of people discussed in this article.

The veteran's story was horrifying. As Edward re-counted his experience of watching a buddy's head explode during a firefight, the other vets in the therapeutic group for post-traumatic stress disorder nodded understandingly. Of them all, Ed's Vietnam tour had been the most harrowing. His vivid reliving of wartime events in therapy left both his therapist and himself exhausted emotionally. The therapist had recommended the vets' group as a way to help Ed cope.
A close buddy from the vets' group decided to cheer Ed up by staging a surprise party for his birthday. A little amateur snooping around revealed that Ed's parents lived nearby, and the friend gave them a call. "What?!" said Ed's mother. "He's in a veterans' recovery group? But . . . but he was rated 4F. He never was allowed to go to Vietnam!"

Ed's friends were angry, believing he had lied to them. But he remained adamant he'd been to Vietnam even after being "exposed" as an obvious hoax. Was there another explanation? His therapist, in talking with a colleague, discovered there was.

The article explains that 1 out of 12 Americans is susceptible to creating a memory out of thin air--and then believing it himself. This is referred to as the "Grade Five Syndrome."

One of the early pioneers in researching so-called "brainwashing" techniques is psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel, an expert in hypnosis. Spiegel discovered from numerous studies that between 5 and 10 percent of the American population are not only more susceptible to suggestion, but also exhibit a number of other intriguing characteristics. He labeled such individuals as "Grade Five Personalities," based on scores they achieved in a measure of hypnotizability called the "Hypnotic Induction Profile (HIP)."

"The HIP is based on a brief series of simple tests and measurements including eye roll and arm levitation," notes Dr. George Ganaway, director of the Atlanta-based Ridgeview Center for Dissociative Disorders. "A person graded two on the scale is considered mildly hypnotizable. Grade fives are what we call the 'hypnotic virtuosos.'"

Anthropologist Sherrill Mulhern, writing about Spiegel's study of "Grade Fives," remarks

These subjects exhibit a posture of trust, "an intense, beguiling innocent expectation of support from others". . . In the therapeutic context, this behavior is translated into a persistent demand that "all attention and concern be focused on them."

The article continues:

Grade fives are particularly vulnerable to something Spiegel calls "the compulsive triad." The first point of the triad, compulsive compliance, is a fancy way of saying that in a trance state fives feel an all-but-overwhelming urge to comply with someone suggesting a new or variant viewpoint. The second leg of the triad, source amnesia, means basically that the five who comes up with certain information is unable to recall where the information actually came from. The third element, rationalization, occurs when the grade five encounters logical opposition to his or her adopted viewpoint.

Mulhern:

Grade fives' highly empathetic abilities make them particularly vulnerable to introspective therapeutic techniques. For example, when they are asked to probe their memories for additional details concerning a particular remembered image or event, Grade fives compulsively respond to their therapists' requests by adding information from various sources into their memories to "fill in the blanks." Researchers found that although these subjects ignore the sources of confabulated details, when questioned about the fallacious information, they make enormous efforts to fit the imagined material logically into the ongoing narrative of their recovered and reexperienced memories.

From there, the article continues discussing the implications of this study in the context of "recovered memories." But let's pause and consider how the description of these "Grade Fives" fits in with what we see in Candidate Kerry. He's come up with a doozy of a story which we must assume he believes himself given all the times he's retold it. Furthermore, he piles on the details to "fill in the blanks," even though it's those pesky details that are causing all the problems.

It's always the details that cause the problems. Had Kerry remained vague about Cambodia (to name only one problem area) he probably wouldn't be in this predicament. But by giving a specific time (Christmas Eve), and mentioning Nixon and the Khmer Rouge by name, he reveals the falsity of the story. His campaign's efforts to cover for him have only made it worse. For example, Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan gave us this explanation:

''The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam.''

I realize that geography is a weak spot for some people. Still, I would expect a refutation that doesn't require redrawing national borders. Get out your maps, folks, and look at where the Mekong Delta really is.

Another explanation is that Kerry was running a series of "black ops" missions into Cambodia in January or February of 1969, involving Navy SEALS and CIA operatives--stories which have also been refuted by people who know better. The point is that piling on the details to add veracity to a lie only make the lie more obvious.

But more importantly, what psychology is at work here? When you get right down to it, is it all about narcissism? Or is that too simplistic an explanation? Does the "Grade Five Syndrome" factor in somehow? I'm still trying to collect my thoughts.

The "What if" I don't want to think about.

2004-08-12T21:02:00.000-05:00

The USA Today today had a review of Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint, a novel about a man who wants to assassinate George Bush. When I first heard of the book, I thought it was probably only tangentially about an assassination. Certainly no one would try to publish--just prior to an election--a novel where the assassination of one of the candidates is the main point of the book.

According to this review, I was wrong. Indeed, it appears that the whole book is a conversation about killing the president--one character convinced it must be done, the other--no Bush fan himself--trying to talk the first character out of it. And the conclusion: "open to interpretation."

So it appears that we're not left with morality winning out over murderousness.

And here's the line from the review I found really chilling:

Baker makes you feel as if you are indeed inside the mind of a potential assassin. Whether you want to go there is your choice.

Okay, imagine this scenario. An unbalanced individual--say Michael Moore--reads this book, and already convinced that George Bush is a bad guy is convinced by the narrative that Bush must be assassinated. So he does it.

Should Nicholson Baker be considered an accomplice? Should the publishing company be held liable as well?

But hey, those are just academic questions. The anti-Bush climate in this country is at a point where it's not such a stretch to imagine there will probably be an assassination attempt--not by al Qaeda, but by an American citizen gone round the bend. My biggest question is "WHAT THE HELL WAS KNOPF THINKING!"

I suspect that if the novel was set in 1865 and was a conversation between John Wilkes Booth and a friend, I might find it interesting. When an event like that lies so far in the past, it becomes a sort of academic study. But given the current political atmosphere, publishing this book is irresponsible.

Ten Challenges to Anti-War Politics

2004-08-11T08:37:00.000-05:00

I read this article--Ten Challenges to Anti-War Politics--back in 2002 when the US bombed Afghanistan out of the stone age and back into modern times. I read it again as we went to war in Iraq. I recommend it again now because the questions it poses are timeless, and exactly the sort of thing to keep in mind when responding to anti-War critics.

Wait for the video

2004-07-30T08:30:00.000-05:00

I did go see the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate," and I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps "quite a bit" is more accurate. "The Manchurian Candidate" (the original) posits that a person could be brainwashed into acting not only against his country, but against his own sense of morality. There's no magic technology causing it; just a compromised human mind. It's this personal violation of the mind that makes the story work and adds that extra level of dread. It's also the reason why this story has been retold many times. Even on Star Trek.

But in the new version, it's a chip in the brain. It's technology. And in a way it's a cheat. There's a revulsion in the idea that one's own mind could be reprogrammed--merely through the power of suggestion--to commit immoral acts. This is a violation of the self on the most intimate level. But when it's a piece of technology turning a person into an automaton, that same level of revulsion isn't there. If all I have to do is make sure no one sticks a chip in my head, well . . . that's easy. But if it's not a chip--if it's just the most subtle of suggestions that are reprogramming me at the most basic level, that's a very real and present fear. (Why did you really purchase that particular product? What subtle or not-so-subtle advertising messages played a part in your decision?)

In a way, the film contains both elements. Yes, it's a chip in the head that forces Raymond Shaw to act as he does. But the film itself uses the power of suggestion in another, more concerning way.

The film, of course, concerns a presidential campaign. Meryl Streep fills in for Angela Lansbury as a Hillary-esque Senator working for the not-so-shadowy Manchurian Global, a multinational corporation filling in for the Red Chinese of the original. Except for the fact that Streep does a better Hillary than Hillary does, and except for the fact that the film is set in the present day, one will likely assume that the Shaws and their campaign staff are Democrats. And yet when was the last time you heard a Democrat speaking so forcefully about combatting terrorism, as Streep does throughout the film? Furthermore, there are newsreports running in the background of nearly every scene. Pay attention to this background noise. Watch the headlines crawling on the bottom of the screens every time a television is shown. In this alternate version of 2004, the US is under a nearly constant terrorism threat. There have been many major attacks in cities across the country.

The message by the filmmakers, and I don't think I'm wrong in picking up on this, is that the administration is exaggerating the terrorism threat for political purposes. If they can keep people in a state of fear, they will be more likely to reelect the President who is determined to combat this threat. But the filmmakers want us to understand that real threat is not from terrorists, but from global multinational corporations--the puppet-masters behind everything that happens in the world. Or, to put it bluntly--Halliburton.

Ah, yes. It all comes back to Halliburton in the end, doesn't it?

Like the original, this film is built on the power of suggestion, though not as a fictional device, but as a real and determined method of unseating President Bush.

Except it's not very subtle.

The original still rules, mainly for that very cool and very surreal brainwashing demonstration scene cross-cut with the ladies' garden club meeting. If you're really interested in the new version, save yourself a few bucks and rent it when it's released on home video--hopefully sometimes after November 2nd.

"This moment changed me from the inside."

2004-07-30T08:06:00.000-05:00

Ahmed had been a major in Saddam Hussein's air defense unit for nine years. Then, on April 9, 2003, his life changed.

"I was on my way home to Baghdad after my brigadier boss had told me the war was over and to go home," Ahmed said, describing his last moments as a major in the old Iraqi Army air defense unit he had been with for nine years. "He said it was an order," he added.
"So I walked home from our station in Al Hillah, south of Baghdad, but I didn’t change my clothes," Ahmed said, "And I came to a Marine checkpoint on a bridge in Baghdad. And I still had my uniform on and the Marine sergeant stopped me ..."

"’Where are you going?’ he asked me," Ahmed said in his accented but surprisingly good English.

"And I tell him, ’I am a major in the Iraqi Army and I was ordered to go to my house’" Ahmed said, finishing the backdrop to a life-defining moment he had not seen coming; and on what was supposed to be just a long 50-plus mile walk home to his wife and five children.

The encounter would prove to be a pivotal one for the military veteran because for the next two anxious minutes, Ahmed went through what must be emotions impossible to describe to someone who has never known he was about to die. It was more the result of the 33-year-old’s lifetime of experience with the ways of Saddam Hussein.

Ahmed, though, was actually two minutes away from a rebirth of sorts. "He looked at me for a while and I thought he was going to kill me," Ahmed said. "But he didn’t kill me," he added. "Instead he came to the position of attention and saluted me as an officer," Ahmed said, "And said, ’Sir you can go.’"

"I took a few steps and began to cry," he said, "Because I think, ’Why do I fight these people for ten years?[’”]

"This moment changed me from the inside," Ahmed said. "What he did was kill me without pistol. He killed the old major in the Iraqi Army who fought America from 1993 to 2003.”

Ahmed's inspirational story doesn't end there. Read the whole thing.

Choosing the "Candidate"

2004-07-29T18:22:00.000-05:00

My choices for evening viewing: Kerry's speech at the convention, or The Manchurian Candidate on DVD. I will probably settle on the DVD.

The Manchurian Candidate has, of course, been remade, and is out in theaters this weekend. I plan to see it, but there's one aspect I find curious. The original is set during the Cold War era, and the bad guys are the Red Chinese. The new version is set after the Gulf War and the bad guys are part of a multinational corporation.

To put it even more succinctly: the bad guys were commies in the original; the bad guys are capitalists in the remake.

How times change.

Thoughts on Dems and Al... (Sharpton not Gore)

2004-07-29T12:51:00.000-05:00

So Al Sharpton is now worthy of a spot at the podium for the Democratic Party?

Has post-Modernism taken such hold on this once great party that his actions
goading racial tensions in decades past now cease to have ever existed??

Is the mandate to excite the "anybody but Bush" crowd to fervor now above
principles of truth or integrity????

Can anybody read Humphrey's 1948 speech about racial equality,
the Creator, truth, and justice and see any continuity with the Dems of 2004??

Would any Democratic believe it is correct for a government document to be
published in 2004 using language like "all men are created equal and are
endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights"??? Wouldn't that be unconstitutional??

Wouldn't a better modern document read "some people are more equal than
others and because of justice may impose their truths through undemocratic
means for the greater good. Others are not fully equal because of their
non-personhood or reactionary views. It is self-evident that those who are
enlightened know that there is no inherent truth. Truth emanates from those
who are good enough to be progressive. They will help others to be educated in
the new truths through all available means."???

Some questions to ponder.

"God bless that fist, Samir!"

2004-07-29T12:46:00.000-05:00

Blackfive asks, "Did you ever wonder who that guy was holding Saddam on the ground?" His name is Samir, an Iraqi who fled that country in 1991 and eventually settled in St. Louis. He worked for the military as an interpreter in Iraq, and just happened to be the guy who pulled Saddam from his spider hole. Here's an excerpt from KSDK-TV in St. Louis:

In Arabic Samir said he continued to pursuade Saddam to come out. He was about to come face to face with the tyrant who killed his loved ones. Saddam was the reason he fled Iraq in 1991 and eventually moved to St. Louis.

Samir says, "I was like, 'I got him.'" We all reached him and pulled him out. And we say Saddam Hussein he looks really old. He looks disgusting." There was also anger. "You want to beat the crap out of him. He destroyed millions in Iraq. I'm one. I left my family 13 years ago because of him."

Saddam couldn't fight back, but he did speak out. "He called me a spy. He called me a traitor. I had to punch him in face. They had to hold me back. I got so angry I almost lost my mind. I didn't know what to do. Choke him to death. That's really not good enough."

Omar at "Iraq the Model" probably speaks for most Iraqis when he says "God bless that fist Samir. That punch was from ALL Iraqis."

Convention Report--Wednesday from the Couch, II

2004-07-29T05:11:00.000-05:00

I missed John Edwards' speech last night. But the Deacon at Power Line didn't. Great stuff. I still find myself wondering why the Democrats are daring to discuss the rising costs of health care given John Edwards' contribution to such things. John Stossel has an interesting piece on VP Candidate Edwards, trial lawyers, and their effect on the country.

Trial lawyers comprise one of the most powerful professions in America, yet we rarely hear about the unintended consequences of what they do, and how the lawsuits they pursue impact our lives. . . .

John Edwards has said he loved being a trial lawyer because he was able to help the little guy, but lawyers hurt the little guys, too. Every product you buy has a built-in cost to cover what lawyers make through lawsuits. . . .

But paying higher prices is not the biggest effect of what the lawyers do. What may be worse is what the fear of lawsuits do to medical care and innovation.

In hospitals, the lawyers have bred so much fear that patients now suffer more pain, and may be less safe because doctors are concerned about being sued.

"That fear is always there," said obstetrics professor Dr. Edgar Mandeville. "Everybody walks in mortal fear of being sued."

The Department of Health and Human Services found doctors order painful tests they consider unnecessary, for fear of being sued. And the majority of doctors say they recommended invasive procedures more often than they believed were medically necessary in an effort to prevent potential litigation. . . .

Clearly, there are bad and careless doctors, but in certain specialties most doctors are being sued.

In fact, 76 percent of American obstetricians have been sued. Yet lawyers . . . often say there are only a 'few' physicians who are causing all the problems.

Then how is it fair that three-fourths of the obstetricians get sued?

Consumers pay for that insurance in increased costs, but the result doesn't necessarily make us safer. A government study found this fear of lawsuits has made many hospitals reluctant to report problems, with as many as 95 percent of adverse events believed to go unreported.

Are the fear and the secrecy making us less safe?

Stossel also includes this interesting statistic.

Lawyers were the biggest contributors to [Edwards'] presidential campaign, and now they've become the biggest givers to the Democratic Party — bigger than labor unions, corporations — bigger than anybody.

UPDATE: I also missed Teresa Heinz-Kerry's speech on Tuesday. But Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker didn't. It's a skewed analysis, but gives us a bit of insight into Teresa's family history, if nothing else.

She is clearly a woman who enjoys telling others her opinion. She makes her pronouncements with a slightly grand air, as if giving a gift to lesser mortals. She went on to mainly talk about herself, her father, her marches against apartheid while a student in South Africa, and her right to speak her mind and be “opinionated” (hands making quotation marks in the air). It all seemed rather defensive, as if she needed to prove herself virtuous, and entitled to have a major voice in matters of public concern. Maybe growing up in a racist Portuguese colony as a member of the tiny white colonial elite has left her with a bit of guilt. Incidentally, she only referred to the land of her birth as a “dictatorship,” glossing over her family’s participation in a harsh colonial system oppressing black Africans. Because her father only was able to vote once, at the age of 73, she even posed as a family of victims of "dictatorship."

I was going to take points off for not recognizing Teresa's reference to Lincoln's inaugural address ("mystic chords of . . . memory") but I see he's corrected himself now.

One more Convention Question . . .

2004-07-29T04:43:00.000-05:00

Who selects the music? Obviously I haven't heard every single music break during the convention, but what I have heard is puzzling. It's Motown, Hip-Hop, or 60s-era folk music set to an R&B arrangement. (And please, enough with the folk music. You don't want to remind people of 1968. Trust me on this.) When it's not one of those three, it's some horribly plinky Kingergarten-style music. Granted, when the Clintons were on-stage, we were treated to the now-obvious "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow."

I don't know what kind of music John Kerry listens to. I suspect he doesn't listen to any, but I'm sure if you asked him he'd have an answer geared toward whichever group he was speaking to.

But would it hurt the convention planners to throw in a few different styles? Or perhaps something unabashedly patriotic? (James Brown's "Living in America" was used, but isn't quite what I had in mind.) Why is it that I fully expect to hear Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" (overused as it is, it still moves me) at the Republican convention, but couldn't imagine the Democrats using it at theirs? I can't imagine them using country music at all, actually. Certainly not Toby Keith, even though he is a registered Democrat, but you'd think the Dixie Chicks would have made an appearance.

UPDATE: Captain Ed discusses one of those songs I missed. Sheesh. Who was the brilliant DNC strategist who recommended a song that references presidential assassination?

Flipper, faster than lightning . . .

2004-07-29T04:30:00.000-05:00

Using a string of news clips and interviews with Kerry, this video quite clearly demonstrates Kerry's flip-flops on Iraq, strongly suggesting that Kerry is merely an opportunist, saying what he needed to say to get the anti-war vote. It's all here, from his enthusiastic support for the war to his vote against funding for our troops to his "nuanced" attempts to pretend he didn't say what he said. (All that's missing is "Shove it!")

Even I, no fan of Kerry, was surprised by the stuff collected here. At times Kerry sounds like more of a hawk than even Rummy. The result is that he doesn't come across as someone who changed his mind, which would be understandable, he comes across as someone who's trying to pretend he was never in favor of the war. Which is a demonstrable lie.

Convention Report--Wednesday from the Couch

2004-07-28T12:35:00.000-05:00

Well, Tuesday actually.

I'm watching a repeat of Michael Moore's speech at the convention yesterday. Ick First of all, it's now clear that the Democrats have given up control to the wacko fringe. I hope someone saves this once-proud party from the lefty-loony wing, or it will soon cease to exist. (Not such a bad idea, actually.) Second, you'd think that Moore, speaking at a convention, would try to look a little more respectable. Does he ever change that cap and sweatshirt? Or shave? I'm suddenly glad that smell-o-vision hasn't been invented.

I'll say this: Moore is an entertaining speaker. If you read a transcript of this speech, he would sound like the paranoid conspiracy theorist that he is. But if you actually watch this, he seems warm and friendly. No wonder people slurp up his lies like poisoned Kool-Aid.

Right now he's saying that Canadians are better than Americans. You know, I wish he'd become a Canadian. You guys can have him. He's certainly not an American. Right now Moore is saying his little piece of Propaganda has made more money than any Disney film this year. That can't possibly be true, can it? Oh, now he's claiming there was a Disney-Saudi conspiracy to keep his film from being distributed. Geez. Now comes the lies, and the lies about lies.

Here's the level of discourse you get from Moore: "[The Bush administration is] up at 6 in the morning trying to figure out which minority group they're gonna screw today."

You know, I'm reminded of the hate rallies in Orwell's "1984." This whole convention is like that.

Convention Report--Tuesday from the Couch

2004-07-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

Hmmm. A minister from a Chicago United Church of Christ just stepped up to the microphone and put his church fully behind John Kerry. "We wanna get that cowboy out of the White House" was one of his lines. Shouldn't that church lose its tax-exempt status?

LATER: Gephardt's on. Arrgh! This is driving me crazy! I swear if I hear one more delegate say that Bush acted "unilaterally" or decided to "go it alone," I'm gonna reach right through the TV screen and throttle the idiot. Not only is it a lie, it's an insult to the more than 30 nations who contributed to this war.

LATER: And I will also reach through the screen if I hear "we'll make sure every vote is counted!" one more time. They were counted, counted, counted, and recounted. Gore lost every single recount!!

LATER STILL: I watched Kennedy, a bit of Gephardt, and some of Dean before giving up completely. And I really wanted to see if Teresa Heinz-Kerry would go off-script, too, but watching those other three was painful enough. The brazen hypocrisy on display at this convention is absolutely stunning. I'll give 'em marks for chutzpah, though. But what'll they do if Kerry gets elected? Bush-hatred is the only thing holding the party together at the moment.

Anyway, I couldn't take it any longer and popped in the Season 1 set of "The Dead Zone" which I got from the library.

Please tell me this is a joke

2004-07-27T09:45:00.000-05:00

Captain Ed points us to the most appalling casual wear of the summer season. I would love to know if anyone has actually bought one. Or worn one in public. Although I suspect this woman would probably wear it with pride.

Convention Report--Monday from the Couch

2004-07-27T08:13:00.000-05:00

We did manage to catch a bit of Monday night's DNC party. We tuned in just as Carter was in the middle of what appeared to be a cure for insomnia. He was hard to listen to, and not just for his hypocrisy. Had quite a laugh listening to Carter criticizing Bush's middle-east policy. I realize that for most people the 70s were a blur, but even in the middle of that blur, the 444-day hostage drama in Iran is probably one of the things people still remember well. I understand that this is the first convention the Democrats have allowed Carter to speak at since 1980, and now I understand why.

I have no idea what Carter meant when he blamed Bush for creating panic across the nation. I guess the only thing I've seen close to "panic" was the short-lived run on the gas pumps on the night of 9/11, and for that we have Osama to thank.

Though Hillary gave us much more than the simple introduction to her husband the party had planned for her, we thought Hillary was actually better than Bill. (Not that I care much for Hillary, and my wife dislikes her more than I do.) Both my wife and I thought it interesting that when Hillary brought up the subject of combating terrorism, her very first statement on the subject was that we need to train police and fire fighters better. Perhaps it did not occur to her that those people are responders. They cannot prevent terrorist attacks. They can only respond after the attack has happened. But maybe she thinks that our only relation to terrorists should be as victims.

She did eventually get around to talking about making sure our military are protected, but invoking John Kerry's name immediately after that was laughable considering how he voted against funding that would have supplied body armor and other equipment to our soldiers in Iraq.

Bill bored us, but what a gloryhound, eh? He could start a religion. His disciples were certainly pouring on the love, staring at him with rapt, teary-eyed adoration. And he was clearly lovin' the spotlight. But his rhetoric was as empty as Carter's was earlier. Carter just didn't have the same charisma, and charisma is a nice distraction when you haven't got anything new to say. I'm still waiting for these guys to talk about terrorism seriously. It was just buzzwords and "We'll do it differently," and "Bush lied" (which he didn't, but I guess these guys couldn't be bothered to read the recent reports). The speechifying steered well clear of any plans the Democrats might have for keeping us safe from terrorist threats. I'm interested in what they might have to say, because at this point it doesn't seem like the Democrats are worried about terrorism at all. The topic is notable by its absense (or where mentioned, by lack of serious discourse on the subject).

Anyway, Bill surprised me, though. The guy dragged his party kicking and screaming toward the center, and now he's acting like he was a far-lefty all along. But after 15 minutes we couldn't stand him any longer and switched over to C-SPAN2 which was running the 1960 Republican convention. Nixon! Nixon! Nixon!

Why blog? Part II

2004-07-26T17:25:00.000-05:00

All the cool kids have blogs. Maybe I could be cool, too.

And all the cool kids got to go to the DNC convention in Boston, and I have to sit at home and watch it on C-SPAN. I shall pout now.

In case no one noticed . . .

2004-07-26T09:32:00.000-05:00

Is the New York Times a liberal newspaper? "Of course it is," says public editor Daniel Okrent. And they're arrogant about it, too. Are we surprised? Of course we're not. We're a bit surprised by the bold admission, though. Okrent not only admits to the Times' liberal biases, he explains how the Times editors fail to see beyond their narrow worldview, fail to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires, and pretty much confesses to the Times being completely out of touch with the rest of the country.

Although I'm not quite sure he sees it as a problem.

The fattest file on my hard drive is jammed with letters from the disappointed, the dismayed and the irate who find in this newspaper a liberal bias that infects not just political coverage but a range of issues from abortion to zoology to the appointment of an admitted Democrat to be its watchdog. (That would be me.) By contrast, readers who attack The Times from the left - and there are plenty - generally confine their complaints to the paper's coverage of electoral politics and foreign policy.

I'll get to the politics-and-policy issues this fall (I want to watch the campaign coverage before I conclude anything), but for now my concern is the flammable stuff that ignites the right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you've been reading the paper with your eyes closed.

But if you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world.

Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.

Using the example of the same-sex marriage issue, Okrent ably demonstrates the problem with the Times.

[I]t's disappointing to see The Times present the social and cultural aspects of same-sex marriage in a tone that approaches cheerleading. So far this year, front-page headlines have told me that "For Children of Gays, Marriage Brings Joy," (March 19, 2004); that the family of "Two Fathers, With One Happy to Stay at Home," (Jan. 12, 2004) is a new archetype; and that "Gay Couples Seek Unions in God's Eyes," (Jan. 30, 2004).

I've learned where gay couples go to celebrate their marriages; I've met gay couples picking out bridal dresses; I've been introduced to couples who have been together for decades and have now sanctified their vows in Canada, couples who have successfully integrated the world of competitive ballroom dancing, couples whose lives are the platonic model of suburban stability.

Every one of these articles was perfectly legitimate. Cumulatively, though, they would make a very effective ad campaign for the gay marriage cause. You wouldn't even need the articles: run the headlines over the invariably sunny pictures of invariably happy people that ran with most of these pieces, and you'd have the makings of a life insurance commercial.

This implicit advocacy is underscored by what hasn't appeared. Apart from one excursion into the legal ramifications of custody battles ("Split Gay Couples Face Custody Hurdles," by Adam Liptak and Pam Belluck, March 24), potentially nettlesome effects of gay marriage have been virtually absent from The Times since the issue exploded last winter.

The San Francisco Chronicle runs an uninflected article about Congressional testimony from a Stanford scholar making the case that gay marriage in the Netherlands has had a deleterious effect on heterosexual marriage. The Boston Globe explores the potential impact of same-sex marriage on tax revenues, and the paucity of reliable research on child-rearing in gay families. But in The Times, I have learned next to nothing about these issues, nor about partner abuse in the gay community, about any social difficulties that might be encountered by children of gay couples or about divorce rates (or causes, or consequences) among the 7,000 couples legally joined in Vermont since civil union was established there four years ago.

On a topic that has produced one of the defining debates of our time, Times editors have failed to provide the three-dimensional perspective balanced journalism requires. This has not occurred because of management fiat, but because getting outside one's own value system takes a great deal of self-questioning.

Oddly, his closing paragraph seems to suggest that this ain't such a big deal.

Six years ago, the ownership of this sophisticated New York institution decided to make it a truly national paper. Today, only 50 percent of The Times's readership resides in metropolitan New York, but the paper's heart, mind and habits remain embedded here. You can take the paper out of the city, but without an effort to take the city and all its attendant provocations, experiments and attitudes out of the paper, readers with a different worldview will find The Times an alien beast.

Taking the New York out of The New York Times would be a really bad idea. But a determination by the editors to be mindful of the weight of its hometown's presence would not.

I think those of us in what's derisively called "flyover country" have long known that the coasts are essentially foreign countries. Ironically, they seem to think that we're the narrow-minded, parochial ones. But I think I'd rather live out here where both the Republicans and the Progressive got its start. Home of McCarthy and "Fighting Bob" LaFollette. At least there's diversity of opinion here.

The Spin is In!

2004-07-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

The New York Times is convinced that Sandy Berger's thievery is really a Bush scandal. Un-freakin'-believable. We'll let Gregory Djerejian explain it. If I try I'm likely to burst a blood vessel from the rage. This wasn't just a reporter who "inadvertantly" did a "sloppy" job on a story. This is precision writing with a specific agenda.

Kerry's Own Rose Mary Woods!

2004-07-22T09:36:00.000-05:00

Hugh Hewitt has a good column up at the Weekly Standard's site regarding Sandy Berger's Burglary.

As any lawyer who has ever argued over the contents of a brief knows, the stuff that gets left out can be the most telling material of all--indicative of prejudices and priorities, sensitivities and credibility. Berger's sticky fingers have left a gap in the record of the Clinton administration's response to the growing threat posed by al Qaeda. Unless other files exist with all the same drafts and handwritten notes that Berger destroyed, we will never be able to conclude whether Berger's actions were simply another display of fecklessness and recklessness on an issue of national security, or an attempt to bleach the record of Clinton-era malpractice on matters of terror.
Washington has had to judge gaps in the record before. "[A] few minutes missing from a non-subpoenaed tape hardly seemed worth a second thought," Richard Nixon wrote in his memoir of his reaction on first learning that Rose Mary Woods had deleted a portion of the famous tapes. Nixon would conclude "most people think that my inability to explain the 18 and 1/2-minute gap is the most unbelievable and insulting part of the whole of Watergate." Imaginations ran wild, and Nixon's credibility never recovered.

Now crucial drafts of an important report are missing, and no one has reported if exact duplicates--not "copies"--have been found. Unless and until "red-lined"

versions of the previous and following drafts are produced and compared to the "missing" drafts, we will never know what vanished from the record in Berger's pants. Could it have been a reference to Osama's flight from Sudan, or a warning of airplanes as missiles? No one can know unless some other repository existed for all of the drafts, and only if copies of all handwritten notes exist in that same file. The trouble with widely circulated papers is that principals make handwritten notations on all of them, which are then returned to the central record keeper. Every "copy" is an original if a note has been made in the margin.

But who really thinks this will damage Kerry or Clinton the way those 18 1/2 minutes dogged Nixon the rest of his life? It's barely being reported now, and you can bet that the moment the convention starts, the story will disappear.

Had this been Condi Rice, we'd be hearing a different story from Big Media.

Any time's the wrong time.

2004-07-21T15:13:00.000-05:00

The spinmeisters at Big Media have turned the Sandy Berger scandal on its ear. The story is not about Berger taking classified documents out of the National Archives--a crime that would normally land someone in prison for ten years--the story is really about the timing of the supposed "leak." Slings and Arrows reminds us that no time is the right time for Democrats.

Does it really matter when or whether or who leaked it? The fact is that a criminal investigation of an advisor to John Kerry's campaign (and a person whose name was on the short list for Secretary of State in a Kerry administration) is in progress. It's good that the people know. When did they want this information to come out? What time would have been a good time for them? Or did they expect it to remain a secret forever?

Light Rail: "We Told You So"

2004-07-20T12:30:00.000-05:00

The Taxpayers League of Minnesota weighs in with a "We Told You So" regarding the Hiawatha light-rail line, which is creating more problems than it promised to solve.

Is it really possible that nobody considered the impact of at-grade light rail crossings when they planned and built the nearly $800 million Hiawatha light rail line? All those traffic “experts” who wowed Minnesotans with those projections of light rail’s impact on transportation seem to have forgotten that most of us drive—and the smooth working of the transportation system is what government should be working to improve.

And the transportation system is suffering badly due to the opening of the Hiawatha light rail line. Lines of cars now stretch up to 4 blocks, impeded by the incessant crossing of the trains across the heavily traveled roads—crossings that are mandated by our contract with those traffic experts in the Federal Government.

And these are the geniuses who want to give us the Northstar Corridor and the University Ave light rail line? Can you imagine the traffic snarls that would be caused by a routine closing of University Ave to car traffic every 7 minutes?

I'm told that parking near the stations has been hellish as well. But I'm not sure the light-rail advocates were all that interested in making it easier for commuters in cars. The goal was probably to increase commuter frustration hoping that they could again point to light-rail as a "solution." They won't rest until we're all taking light-rail or bicycles.

More and more workers in the Twin Cities are settling here in Western Wisconsin. It would have been more logical to invest in a passenger line along the I-94 corridor, bringing workers into the Twin Cities from as far away as Eau Claire. This wouldn't just bring in the workday commuters, but the day-trippers as well. Put stops at the Airport and the Mall of America, and you'd never have trouble finding passengers.

Why don't I have an iPod yet?

2004-07-20T10:17:00.000-05:00

According to Newsweek, they're "a life-changing cultural phenomenon."

Steve Jobs noticed something earlier this year in New York City. "I was on Madison," says Apple's CEO, "and it was, like, on every block, there was someone with white headphones, and I thought, 'Oh, my God, it's starting to happen'." Jonathan Ive, the company's design guru, had a similar experience in London: "On the streets and coming out of the tubes, you'd see people fiddling with it." And Victor Katch, a 59-year-old professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan, saw it in Ann Arbor. "When you walk across campus, the ratio seems as high as 2 out of 3 people," he says.

They're talking about the sudden ubiquity of the iPod, the cigarette-box-size digital music player (and its colorful credit-card-size little sister, the Mini) that's smacked right into the sweet spot where a consumer product becomes something much, much more: an icon, a pet, a status indicator and an indispensable part of one's life. To 3 million-plus owners, iPods not only give constant access to their entire collection of songs and CDs, but membership into an implicit society that's transforming the way music will be consumed in the future. "When my students see me on campus with my iPod, they smile," says Professor Katch, whose unit stores everything from Mozart to Dean Martin. "It's sort of a bonding."

I have no desire to be that hip. This kind of talk usually turns me away from the product being praised. And yet I still want one. The price tag's a little steep, but if you think of it not as a music as a portable hard drive that doubles as a music player, then maybe it's not so bad. In fact, it's downright useful. (Unlike, say, the Gigapet.)

But "life changing"? No, . . . I don't think so.

MoveOn vs. Fox News

2004-07-19T20:13:00.000-05:00

The guys at Fraters Libertas point us to this web page on which the idiots at MoveOn.org have a petition to the FTC demanding that Fox News must not use their "Fair and Balanced" trademark.

Here's the line that gave me a laugh.

A free and independent press is vital to democracy. Political partisans cannot be allowed to falsely represent themselves as journalists.

Indeed. So I assume that their next targets will be the L. A. Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times (to name a few)?

Inconvenient Lives

2004-07-19T19:41:00.000-05:00

Stories like this one in the New York Times (registration required) leave me at a loss for words. It's the story of a woman who found herself pregnant with triplets, and decided that two of the three must be destroyed. ("Selective reduction" is the clinical term the pro-abortion crowd uses to disguise what's really going on.)

And why did she have two of her three children destroyed? Because it might affect her lifestyle.

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

. . . now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.

In Huxley's Brave New World, motherhood is considered a low, vulgar thing. Huxley was quite the prognosticator.

And I have to ask: what purpose did this story serve? Why did the New York Times print it? I can't quite figure that one out.

"A Mile and a Promise"

2004-07-19T18:38:00.000-05:00

Over at Tech Central, Ralph Kinney Bennett shares this story about a National Guard sergeant who lost his leg to a landmine in Afghanistan and his visit with the President. If true, it offers a good insight into our President's character.

I hope it's true.

Why blog?

2004-07-16T20:28:00.000-05:00

I had to do it.

After entertaining myself for weeks reading other people's blogs, I had to start a blog of my own.

All the other bloggers make it look easy, of course, as if their thoughts just tumble out of their brains, full of wit and wisdom and insight . . . and grammatically correct.

If nothing else, I'll always strive to be grammatically correct.