From the WSJ Opinion Archives
From
Bad to Verse
Did you know New Jersey has a poet laureate? Hell, we didn't know New Jersey
had a poet, unless the overrated Bruce Springsteen counts. But indeed,
the Garden State has a statute
establishing the position, to which a group of arts bureaucrats are supposed
to appoint "a distinguished poet from New Jersey." The current poet
laureate is one Amiri Baraka, and here's a sample of his work:
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
This "poem," titled "Somebody Blew Up America," carries a 2001 copyright and was obviously written in the aftermath of Sept. 11. It's a puerile, racist, semiliterate rant, but it does have a New Jersey angle: It mentions Bret Schundler, last year's unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor, including him in a list with Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, Rudy Giuliani--and David Duke. This is derivative of the work of Tyrone Green, the satirical jailhouse poet played by Eddie Murphy on "Saturday Night Live" two decades ago, who once said: "I hate white people because they W-I-T-E."
The Newark Star-Ledger reports that Gov. Jim McGreevey is asking Baraka to resign, notwithstanding the boisterous bard's denunciation of the governor's erstwhile opponent. McGreevey objects to a passage that repeats an anti-Semitic lie:
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Baraka refuses to quit, and it appears neither McGreevey nor the panel of arts bureaucrats who selected him a month ago has the power to fire him. His term lasts for two years, during which time the law stipulates that he is to "promote and encourage poetry within the State and shall give no fewer than two public readings within the State each year." What a huge embarrassment to poor New Jersey, a state that has enough trouble getting any respect as it is. What to do?
We never thought we'd say this--about anything--but the Saudi model is instructive. As we noted Sept. 17, after Ghazi Algosaibi, Riyadh's ambassador to London, disgraced his country by publishing a poem glorifying suicide terrorists, Crown Prince Abdullah recalled him from the embassy and put him in charge of Saudi sewers. McGreevey should find a similar position in Trenton for Baraka, so that he can put his expertise in "doo doo" to work for the benefit of New Jerseyites.
The Reactionary Left
We hear a lot of warnings from left-wing members of the Leave Saddam Alone Coalition
about the prospect of "another Vietnam," and often these critics seem
actually to be hoping for another quagmire-cum-defeat. Some of these
people simply hate America, but others seem to long for the glorious days of
the antiwar movement. (For an example of the latter see this Derrick
Jackson column.)
We've previously noted some of the myriad differences between the conflict in Vietnam and the forthcoming one in Iraq. But there's also a difference between today's far left and the Vietnam era's that makes a coherent antiwar movement unlikely to emerge: The far left today is a purely reactionary movement.
As anyone who's attended an "antiglobalization" protest knows, the only thing uniting the left is its hatreds--of capitalism, America and Israel. You find at these events a menagerie of special interests promoting their own little causes. But the far left today, though it styles itself "progressive," has no coherent vision of how to make the world better--in sharp contrast with today's conservative internationalists, who favor the vigorous use of U.S. diplomatic and military force to expand democracy.
Loren Finkelstein, "a San Francisco yoga instructor and organizer for Mobilization for Global Justice," makes the point eloquently. He tells Bloomberg News Service that anticapitalist protests in Washington aim at "quarantining the IMF and World Bank, separating them and containing the disease they spread all around the world." This is a resistance movement, not a revolutionary one.
Whereas the far left is directionless today, it was not during Vietnam era. In those days, communism wasn't entirely a spent force, and it was still possible for the gullible or the fanatical to believe that Ho Chi Minh was on the right side. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega was the left's last great Marxist hope, and while lefties still fawn nostalgically over Fidel Castro, no one seriously argues that his is the way of the future.
Leftists may side with Saddam, Osama and Hamas on the grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but all but the most addled realize that Islamofascism is anything but a progressive worldview. We could write a thousand words on this, but instead check out this picture. It shows two young women at a Madrid protest, holding a sign that reads NO GUERRA ("No war"). The women are practically naked, except for bikinis made up to look like Hamas-style suicide belts. The message seems to be: Exterminating Jews is a real turn-on. Which, come to think of it, is the Palestinian Arab view too, since "martyrs" are supposed to be rewarded with an eternal orgy in paradise.
But fantasizing about blowing up Jews is hardly a tenable political program, and this picture actually illustrates the lack of common ground between the left and the Islamists. If these two señoritas showed that much skin anywhere in the Arab world, they'd be stoned to death in a New York minute.
Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Coherent Thought Has Got to Go
If you think we're exaggerating when we say the left has no coherent vision,
here are some examples. The Daily
Telegraph reported on a guy who planned to join an antiwar demonstration
in London but isn't actually antiwar at all:
One of the marchers was 14-year-old Hussein Mohammed who was born in Iraq but came to London with his family seven years ago.
Hussein said that he was not actually opposed to an attack on Iraq as long as not too many civilians were killed. The teenager said that even American rule would be preferable to that imposed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
He said: "I'm against Saddam because he doesn't have a heart for any people. I think he should be attacked. I'd rather have America than Saddam."
But the boy said that any war should be directly against Saddam's regime and not civilians.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on antiglobalization protests in Washington:
Emily Jacobi, 19, of Indianapolis said she decided to become a protester after witnessing poverty in Cuba on a trip there as a student journalist.
''I recognize that I'm a capitalist. I'm a consumer,'' said Jacobi, an international studies student at American University. ''But realize something. We're not here just to disrupt. We're not just bored kids with nothing better to do than cause trouble.''
Which raises the obvious question: If poverty in Cuba moved her to action, why is she protesting against capitalism? Cuba hasn't been capitalist in more than 40 years.
And here, courtesy of the Washington Post, is a lovely example of a leftist who contradicts his own words merely by speaking them:
"Getting together and talking freely is now considered subversive," said Jason Ford, a Vermont activist who joined the demonstrations. "But that could be one connecting issue -- the democratic right to just assemble is being lost."
Yesterday afternoon, Ford was one of a couple of hundred protesters sitting in Farragut Square debating the future of such demonstrations.
Democrats
for Saddam
"Almost no one in America thinks Saddam Hussein is an enlightened leader,"
a New
York Times editorial dryly noted the other day. Good thing they included
that almost, for Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington state actually seems
to approve of the Iraqi dictator. Along with Michigan's David Bonior and California's
Mike Thompson, McDermott visited Baghdad as part of an Iraqi propaganda effort.
Here's what McDermott told Wolf Blitzer yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition":
"My question really is, why do they [the Bush administration] want the
regime change? I would much rather have disarmament here."
If we take McDermott at his word, he is saying that it is actually desirable to leave Saddam in power, so long as he is disarmed. A more charitable reading is that the congressman doesn't actually object to regime change, but to the proposed means toward that end, namely war.
But if McDermott isn't a Saddam supporter, how do we explain his comments on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos"? (There's no online transcript, but United Press International has a report.) On the subject of weapons inspectors, McDermott said the West should trust Saddam: "I think you have to take the Iraqis on their face value. . . . They should be given a chance, otherwise were trying to provoke them into war." In the same interview, he said he thought President Bush "would mislead the American people" in order to justify war.
Just imagine the outrage that would have ensued--and rightly so--if a Republican, back in 1998, had opined that Saddam Hussein was more trustworthy than Bill Clinton.
You Don't
Say--I
"With only five weeks to go before voters cast their ballots on Nov. 5,
the Iraq issue may play a role in how some members of Congress vote on the Iraq
resolution."--MSNBC.com, Sept. 30
Will
America Take the Cake?
Ken Adelman doesn't need us to defend him, but hey, what are friends for? Ever
since Adelman penned a Washington Post op-ed in February predicting that war
with Iraq would be a "cakewalk," he's served a TV punching bag for
both antiwar commentators and pro-war ones who wish to appear "responsible."
The latest example in the latter category is Sen. John McCain, who said on Wolf
Blitzer's "Late
Edition" yesterday: "I think a 'cakewalk' is a very bad choice
of words, and I'm sure that Mr. Adelman didn't mean it that way."
Let us stipulate that the Iraq war may prove not to be a cakewalk, and that in any case the military should be preparing for the worst. Adelman's prediction is still plausible and, in light of past experience, a lot more credible than some of the forecasts the media are taking very seriously. Yesterday's New York Times respectfully relays the views of Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz:
Mr. Aziz's sober warning that "the assault against Iraq will not be a cakewalk" but rather "a fierce war during which the United States will suffer losses they have never sustained for decades," was timed to exploit the concerns expressed by American political and military figures that the task of removing Mr. Hussein's government could devolve into punishing urban warfare and thousands of American casualties.
Aziz was issuing similar "sober warnings" a decade ago. In a PBS "Frontline" interview, James Baker, secretary of state during the Gulf War, describes a prewar meeting he had with Aziz in Geneva:
Q: Did he understand the force that he was going to encounter?
Baker: During the course of the meeting, I made an effort to to point out to him that as President Bush's letter to President Saddam Hussein pointed out, we were deadly serious about this, that there was no given in opposition. That this was now a matter of the credibility of the United Nations, it was a matter of a resolution supported by the overwhelming majority of the international community. And that they had to leave Kuwait unconditionally and, if not, overwhelmingly superior force would be used against them. I said that they should not make the mistake of assuming that they would control the terms of the battle, as perhaps they might have assumed in their war with Iran. That this would be a totally different situation that our technological superiority was overwhelming and would be brought to bear in and he took all that in.
He didn't buy it. He said something like--you haven't fought in the desert before. Your Arab allies will turn and run, they will not fight their brothers. You will be surprised at the strength and the determination and the force and the courage of the Iraqi military. Things like that. And it was not a particularly productive debate. I think as it turned out our assessments of what our overwhelmingly superior military forces could do were correct.
Absent further evidence, our money's on Adelman over Aziz.
He Ran to
Iraq
Newsweek reports on the latest possible Baghdad-al Qaeda connection: Ahmad Hikmat
Shakir, an Iraqi national whom Jordanian authorities arrested last October at
the airport in Amman after the U.S. described him as "a suspected terrorist
who had been in direct contact with some of the major operatives in the September
11 plot." But three months later "Shakir was inexplicably released
by Jordanian authorities--and promptly vanished."
The newsmagazine says it's uncertain if Shakir's al Qaeda activities had Baghdad's approval or he was "a Qaeda terrorist who just happened to be Iraqi." But, the magazine says, "Shakir's case may be the most tantalizing evidence yet to support the administration's contention that there are ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq."
Israel
in Iraq?
"Israeli special forces are operating inside western Iraq, pinpointing
locations where Iraqi missile launchers might be positioned," Ha'aretz
reports, citing the newsletter Jane's Foreign Report. "The newsletter said
the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit was ordered into Iraq 'to find and identify
places used by, or likely to be used by, Iraqi Scud missile launchers.' "
Israel
Retreats
The latest siege of Yasser Arafat's compound is over and is generally being
reckoned a failure. Israel pulled out without arresting the wanted terrorists
who were holed up with Arafat, "after explicit requests from a White House fearful
of disruption of its war plans for Iraq." Ha'aretz reports that "Cabinet Minister
Natan Sharansky said that government officials had failed to take into account
how Washington would react to the operation as a possible hindrance to a future
U.S. offensive against Saddam Hussein."
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"One Sharon confidant, speaking during the premier's visit to Russia, called Arafat 'the most famous homeless person in the world.' "--Jerusalem Post, Sept. 30, 2002
Don't
Know Much About History
The New York Times' James Bennett reports from Hebron on the Jewish holiday
of Sukkot:
Here, where a hard-nosed band of a few hundred Jewish settlers has rooted itself in a city of 150,000 Palestinians, the holiday has become a time to celebrate, and perhaps multiply, homes they consider permanent.
Bennett paints the Jews as interlopers without noting, as Hillel Halkin does, that "an ancient Jewish community had existed" in Hebron "until driven out by a pogrom in 1929."
You
Don't Say--II
"Because he has no security clearance, Mr. Moussaoui is not supposed to
be given access to classified documents."--New York Times, Sept. 27
San
Francisco Comical
"A federal 'No Fly' list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding planes,
is snaring peace activists at San Francisco International and other U. S. airports,
triggering complaints that civil liberties are being trampled," claims
a report by the San Francisco Chronicle's Alan Gathright. But here's one of
the examples he cites:
In November, Nancy Oden, a Green Party USA official in Maine, wound up being a suspect passenger and was barred from flying out of the Bangor airport to Chicago, where she planned to attend a Green Party meeting and make a presentation about "pesticides as weapons of war."
Oden said a National Guardsman grabbed her arm when she tried to help a security screener searching her bags with a stuck zipper. The middle-aged woman, who said she was conservatively dressed and wore no anti-war buttons, said the guardsman seemed to know her activist background. . . .
Airport officials said at the time that Oden was barred from boarding because she was uncooperative with security procedures, which she denies. Instead, Oden pointed out that the American Airlines ticket clerk--who marked her boarding pass with an "S"--had acknowledged she wasn't picked by random.
"You were going to be searched no matter what. Your name was checked on the list," he said, according to Oden.
"The only reason I could come up with is that the FBI is reactivating their old anti-war activists' files," said Oden, who protested the Vietnam War as a young office worker in Washington, D.C. "It is intimidation. It's just like years ago when the FBI built a file about me and they called my landlord and my co-workers. . . . They did that with everyone in the anti-war movement."
The urban-myth busters at Snopes.com, however, debunked Oden's claims months ago, noting that she did in fact refuse to cooperate with the screening process. As for the "S" on the ticket, that's happened to us too, and we're far from an antiwar activist. "It was more likely due to the manner in which she purchased her ticket than for her activist past," points out a press report Snopes quotes. It's a shame the San Francisco Chronicle can't get it right.
The
Torch Flickers Out?
Sen. Bob Torricelli, the New Jersey Democrat whose ethics problems have suddenly
made him the most vulnerable incumbent in the Senate, may drop his re-election
bid. He was supposed to have a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT to announce his
decision, but the speculation is that's he holding off at the urging of Democrats
who are scrambling to figure out whether state law allows them to put a new
candidate on the ballot with just over five weeks before the election. (Prediction:
If there is a new candidate, it won't be Amiri Baraka.)
CNN quotes a "senior Democratic operative" as describing the situation as "confused, confusing and chaotic." The link above should take you to the network's latest update on the story.
Tipping
Their Mitt?
Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts, is looking
weaker. The Boston Globe reports Democrat Shannon O'Brien has a six-point lead
in a new poll. But Florida's Gov. Jeb Bush appears to be in fairly good shape,
for now, against Democrat Bill McBride, who edged out Janet Reno for his party's
nomination. The Associated
Press reports one poll gives Bush a 50% to 44% lead, while another favors
the governor by 49% to 43%.
Harkin-gate
"Sen. Tom Harkin's campaign manager resigned abruptly Friday" in connection
with a scandal that erupted after a Harkin supporter surreptitiously taped a
strategy meeting of Rep. Greg Ganske's campaign. "Harkin hopes Friday's
campaign changes will put the controversy behind his re-election bid,"
the Des Moines Register notes. We shall see.
Metaphor
Alert
"It started out as a tempest in a teapot, but I'm afraid it has
developed some legs. I'm sort of delighted to have something that has
some tension and electricity in it, because the races, as usual, sort
of degenerate into professionally produced television advertising and negative
ping-pong. This, at least, has a different texture."--Iowa State
University political scientist Steffen Schmidt on the Harkin scandal, quoted
in the New York Times, Sept. 28 (italics ours)
Pills
for Preteens
"Girls as young as 11 will be able to obtain the morning-after pill at
a London school without their parents' consent," the Daily Telegraph reports.
"Under current law, parents do not need to be informed."
Not
Too Brite--VII
Reuters, it seems, gets a chuckle out of child abuse. "Police arrested
a Texas man on child abuse charges on Friday after he allegedly used a 100,000-volt
stun gun to discipline his 8-year-old stepson for missing the school bus,"
the wire service reports, under the heading "Oddly Enough."
Our
Polyamorous Past Prez
Bill Clinton visited South Africa last week, and the Johnannesburg-based Sunday
Times quotes Renee de Wet, a waitress who served him at a Cape Town restaurant
on Friday: "As he left he asked if we'd like to have a picture taken and we
rounded up all the staff. He was just such a cool guy. As he was leaving, he
put his arms round a girl in his party--I don't know what her name was, she
was small and dark--and said, 'Hey, take a picture of this for your local paper.
This is my other wife.' "
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Greg Daldau, Jerry Skurnik, Monty Krieger, Michael Segal, Kevin Walker, Gad Meir, C.E. Dobkin, Marie Bourgeois, Mark Morgan, Yehuda Hilewitz, T. Young, Jerome Marcus, Rosanne Klass, Toby Brevitz, Tom Elia, Michael Williamson, Joel Goldberg, Aaron Gross, Tom Elia, Fred Butzen, Stephen Levy, Mara Gold, Jim Baer, S.E. Brenner, Damian Bennett, Harry Forbes, Chris Greenwich, George Sabatino, Shawn Turk, Raymond Young, Raghu Desikan, Todd Warnick, Carl Sherer, Natalie Cohen, David Spetner, Robert Pupkin, Elliot Ganz, Ralph Drury, Richard Haisley, Lew Prince, L. Lane, Jim Fehrle and Sarina Penn. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Are Gore and Daschle really embracing McGovernite isolationism?
- Robert Bartley: The Vietnam syndrome is dead--and it's the Democrats' albatross.
- Brendan Miniter: A pork-barrel expenditure even vegetarians find kosher.
