by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, June 25, 2003 2:43 P.M. EDT

With Extreme Prejudice--II
We were skeptical last month when New York Times columnist Bob Herbert suggested that antiblack racism is prevalent at his newspaper. But on today's op-ed page appears powerful evidence that Herbert may have been on to something. Maureen Dowd weighs in on Monday's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the use of racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School.

Dowd has not a word to say about Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion, or about the dissenting opinions of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia. She concentrates on the dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas. She doesn't grapple with his arguments, quoting a mere 35 words from the decision, of which 27 are from a Frederick Douglass quote Thomas used. Instead, Dowd simply throws racial slurs at Thomas, who is black:

What a cunning man Clarence Thomas is.

He knew that he could not make a powerful legal argument against racial preferences, given the fact that he got into Yale Law School and got picked for the Supreme Court thanks to his race.

So he made a powerful psychological argument against what the British call "positive discrimination," known here as affirmative action. . . .

The dissent is a clinical study of a man who has been driven barking mad by the beneficial treatment he has received.

It's poignant, really. It makes him crazy that people think he is where he is because of his race, but he is where he is because of his race. . . . Maybe he is disgusted with his own great historic ingratitude.

Dowd pretends as if there's no substance to Thomas's argument--she labels his dissent a "therapeutic outburst"--yet she unwittingly illustrates the truth of one of his arguments, namely that racial preferences stigmatize blacks, whether or not they relied on them for advancement. As Thomas puts it:

When blacks take positions in the highest places of government, industry, or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement. The question itself is the stigma--because either racial discrimination did play a role, in which case the person may be deemed "otherwise unqualified," or it did not, in which case asking the question itself unfairly marks those blacks who would succeed without discrimination.

Clarence Thomas graduated from Yale Law School in 1974. Twenty-nine years later, after a distinguished career as a public servant, he is ridiculed in the pages of one of America's more influential newspapers by a columnist who presumes that he was unqualified to gain admission on the merits.

What about Justice Scalia, who joined Justice Thomas's dissent? Is he "barking mad" too? Dowd doesn't say. But then, Scalia is white.

You Don't Say--I
"Impact on Universities Will Range From None to a Lot"--headline, New York Times, June 25

What Would Bush-Haters Do Without Experts?
The latest entry in the absurd attempt to discredit the liberation of Iraq is a piece in today's New York Times titled "Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence." Here's the lead:

A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several Congressional officials said today.

But if you read on, it turns out the Times is punching the air. The official himself, "identified by several officials as Christian Westermann," refused to talk to the paper. But the Times' secondhand account of his testimony makes clear--albeit not until the sixth through eighth paragraphs--that there's nothing here:

Mr. Westermann told lawmakers last week that while he felt pressure, he never actually changed the wording of any of his intelligence reports.

He did not immediately provide lawmakers with details about his complaints, and it remains uncertain the degree to which his concerns related to Iraq or other regional issues.

Administration officials said his most specific complaints concerned issues related to intelligence on Cuba, and he has not yet provided similar specific complaints about the handling of intelligence on Iraq.

Meanwhile, far-left author William Rivers Pitt, in an article that shamelessly exploits the memories of fallen American soldiers in an unsuccessful effort to score political points against the president, rests his argument on a "wretchedly revealing exchange" between Tim Russert and Wesley Clark, the retired general and frequent TV talking head, on "Meet the Press":

Clark: I think there was a certain amount of hype in the intelligence, and I think the information that's come out thus far does indicate that there was a sort of selective reading of the intelligence in the sense of sort of building a case.

Russert: Hyped by whom?

Clark: Well, I . . .

Russert: The CIA, or the president or vice president? Secretary of defense, who?

Clark: I think it was an effort to convince the American people to do something, and I think there was an immediate determination right after 9/11 that Saddam Hussein was one of the keys to winning the war on terror. Whether it was the need just to strike out or whether he was a linchpin in this, there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.

Russert: By who? Who did that?

Clark: Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, "You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein." I said, "But-I'm willing to say it but what's your evidence?" And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had-Middle East think tanks and people like this and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn't talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection.

So Clark got a call from "all over"--note that he gives no hint of the actual identity of the caller--in which "all over" encouraged him to say something he wasn't sure he agreed with, and apparently he did not say it. All this proves . . . what, exactly? Only the utter insubstantiality of the arguments being proffered by President Bush's fevered foes.

Why the GOP Picked New York
"In what looked like a mini dress rehearsal for the cacophony of dissent that's expected to hit the streets of New York City during next summer's GOP convention, nearly 3,000 demonstrators gathered on Seventh Avenue to protest President Bush as he presided over a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser inside midtown's Sheraton Hotel on Monday," the Village Voice reports:

The folks on the street seemed to have little trouble connecting the issues. Antiwar placards demanding "Where are the Weapons of Mass Destruction?" and "End King Geoge's Reign of Terror!" jostled freely with pro-choice banners and signs denouncing Bush's "War on Women." Many in the crowd said they were outraged that the Republican party continues to invoke the attacks of 9/11 as a rallying cry for Bush's presidency. "I feel like Bush coming to New York is especially hypocritical because he's done nothing for this city," said Sarah Beretczki, a 29-year-old illustrator from Brooklyn who sported a sign that read, "My Bush Sheds Its Own Blood."

We saw some of these people riding the subway Monday night, and it makes us understand why the Republican Party chose New York as the site of its convention. No one pays much attention to protests of a mere fund-raiser, but during the convention TV crews will be unable to resist them--thus treating voters across the country to images of Bush's opposition as a bunch of extremists and freaks.

Oh Well, Keep Trying
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld now says there's "no reason to believe" that Saddam Hussein, his sons or other top Baathists were in a convoy attacked last week near the Syrian border. But the Mirror, a London tabloid, reports that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, "Saddam Hussein's ludicrous spin doctor," has been nabbed in suburban Baghdad. "Information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf had been hiding out at a relative's house since April watching satellite TV--banned under Saddam," the Mirror reports.

The Associated Press reports from Baghdad that satellite dishes are in heavy demand, as Iraqis bask in their newfound freedom. "We're like the blind who have been offered the gift of sight," 32-year-old Mahabat Ahmad tells the AP.

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy
  
  
• "I'm just waiting for the country to say, 'Tilt! Tilt!'--we are so out of balance in terms of what we are doing."--Nancy Pelosi

Monkeyfishing in Britain?
The Herald, a British paper, quotes President Bush as describing Marshall Mathers III, the rap star who goes by the stage name "Eminem," as "the most dangerous threat to American children since polio." Did Bush really say this? We doubt it. It certainly doesn't sound like him.

We did a Factiva search to find the origin of the quote, and we found 11 stories that cited it, though none said where or when Bush supposedly said it. Of the stories, seven were from British papers, two from Australian ones, one from an Irish one, and one from the U.S.--the Orange County (Calif.) Register, according to which "British newspapers quote President George W. Bush saying" it. The earliest reference was in the Leicester Mercury of Feb. 10, 2001.

So did Bush actually say this, or do British newspapers just make stuff up?

You Don't Say--II
"Media, PR Often at Odds"--headline, (Annapolis, Md.) Capital, June 24

Metaphor Alert
"Firefighters fanned out above and below a raging wildfire on a mountaintop north of Tucson in an attempt to beat back flames that have destroyed more than 250 homes in a vacation community."--from "Firefighters Tackle Wildfire Near Tucson," Associated Press, June 24 (italics ours)

Sniffly Storks Purchase Fortified Wine
"Congestion an Incentive for Port Buy of 5 Cranes"--headline, Houston Chronicle, June 23

With No Help From the Philistine Viruses
"Cultured Bacteria Save Medieval Italian Frescoes"--headline, Reuters, June 25

Glad They Cleared That Up
Today's New York Times includes this correction:

Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday in the special Women's Health section about reasons for exercising misplaced the quotation marks in citing advertisement for the New York Sports Club. The ad read: "Exercise reduces the risk of cancer. Not to mention the risk of saggy butt." (Both sentences were part of the quotation, not just the first.)

Civil Liberties, European Style
The European Union is considering legislation against "sex discrimination," that, among other things, "could lead to a ban on [TV] programmes and advertisements that stereotype women or men," reports EUObserver.com.

No wonder Europeans have such a hard time understanding America, where some people's idea of free speech is so expansive that it includes the "right" to look at porn in the library and the "right" not to be criticized. Though come to think of it, a lot of those same people think Europe is more enlightened than we are.

Civil-Rights Struggles of the 21st Century
In 1999 the NAACP took on a cutting-edge civil-rights issue. The group's president, Kweisi Mfume, "blasted the television industry for having a lineup of primetime shows that he called 'a virtual whitewash' of images," writes USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham. "The charge, that none of the fall 1999 programs had any blacks or other minorities in leading roles, got a quick response from television executives."

OK, it's not exactly Brown v. Board of Education, but it's still a victory for civil rights, right? Wickham's not so sure. "This good now appears to have come with a hidden cost," he writes: "Last year, 'alcohol advertising was placed on all 15 of the television programs most popular with African-American youth," the Georgetown University Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth reported last week."

The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports that Calvin Broadus, a rap star who goes by the stage name "Snoop Dogg," is taking on another case of invidious inequity:

Snoop Dogg isn't wild about "Girls Gone Wild" anymore.

The rapper, who appeared as the host on one of the raunchy strip videos, told The Associated Press he's done with the series because it doesn't feature women of color.

"If you notice, there hasn't been no girls of (ethnicity) at all on none of those tapes," Snoop Dogg complained during a recent interview. "No black girls, no Spanish girls--all white girls, and that (stuff) ain't cool, because white girls ain't the only hos that get wild."

Hos, incidentally, is pronounced "hose" and is the plural of ho, a disparaging slang term for a woman. Derived from whore, it carries a connotation of loose morals.

Now, we don't mean to make light of racial bigotry, which remains a serious problem, at least on the New York Times op-ed page. But it is a sign of enormous racial progress that anyone has the luxury of being bothered by such trivial matters as racial disparities in beer ads or "Girls Gone Wild."

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Pro-Castro senators hold a Bush nominee hostage.
• Claudia Rosett: Two refugee stories, a Turkish hero and the U.N.'s goats.
• Daniel Akst: The New York Times' moose and other creatures in the management menagerie.