by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, November 24, 2003 2:57 P.M. EST

Dean Endorses Rall
Ted Rall is like a chronic rash. You really want to scratch it, but doing so only aggravates the inflammation, so if you're smart you'll leave it alone. We've been pretty disciplined about this, not mentioning his name in almost a year. But there has been a Rall outbreak on Howard Dean's blog, and, alas, it requires attention.

Over the weekend Matthew Gross, Dean's blogger in chief, linked approvingly to a Rall column titled "Howard Dean for President." Gross wrote that Rall "explains why so many third party voters are coming to Dean," according to blogger Eugene Volokh's transcription of Gross's entry. (After coming in for criticism in the blogosphere, Gross seems to have changed the word explains to considers.)

The parts of the Rall column that Gross quotes seem like inoffensive puffery:

Dean has a corner on the single most important issue to Americans: health care. His politics are surprisingly centrist. . . . Dean's . . . an insurgent small-state governor disliked by his own party's top leaders. . . . The rubber would really tear up the road at the presidential debates, where Dean's dry, sardonic Long Island wit would devastate the hapless Bush--and charm television viewers.

Actually, the risible reference to Dean's "dry, sardonic wit," not to mention the expectation that he'll "charm" anyone, suggests that Rall is completely unfamiliar with the man. (As an aside, how is the "rubber" going to "tear up the road" when it's "underneath" it?)

Who is Ted Rall? The parts of the column Gross refrains from quoting give you some sense of Rall's worldview. He likens the Bush administration to the Sept. 11 hijackers: "Who could have imagined back then that a dozen maniacs would hijack our democracy, bankrupt the treasury and subvert our basic values?" He describes Bush's appealing the Florida election dispute to the U.S. Supreme court as an act of treason. He claims that after Sept. 11 "did Bush begin acting like a dictator." And he makes this astonishing statement:

America is under attack, and Bush is enemy number one.

Where does Osama bin Laden rank in Rall's enemies list? He doesn't say. Meanwhile, here are some other examples of Rall's work:

• In an April 2001 column for the Mother Jones Web site (which erroneously labels it as having been published a year earlier), Rall endorsed the use of violence by opponents of free trade: "The disruption of the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City last weekend provides a classic example of doing good while throwing hard objects at big sheets of glass. . . . Lefties just don't seem to get this fundamental truth of politics: Not only has there never been a revolution without violence, but there's never been meaningful social change without violence or at least the threat thereof."
  
  
• In an October 2001 syndicated column, Rall argued against liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban and claimed that the Sept. 11 attacks were merely a pretext, "the perfect excuse to do what the U.S. had wanted all along: invade and/or install an old-school puppet regime in Kabul."
  
  
• In March 2002, Rall published a cartoon (reproduced on BlogsforBush.com) that mocked "terror widows," apparently including the wife of Daniel Pearl, who had learned of her husband's death just two weeks earlier. The strip's third panel depicts a woman standing in front of a bank of microphones saying, "Of course it's a bummer that they slashed my husband's throat--but the worst was having to watch the Olympics alone!
  
  
• In a column published two weeks ago--on Veterans Day, no less--Rall described Iraq's pro-Saddam guerrillas as nationalist freedom-fighters: "Dear Recruit: Thank you for joining the Iraqi resistance forces. You have been issued an AK-47 rifle, rocket-propelled grenade launcher and an address where you can pick up supplies of bombs and remote-controlled mines. Please let your cell leader know if you require additional materiel for use against the Americans. You are joining a broad and diverse coalition dedicated to one principle: Iraq for Iraqis."

Now, obviously it isn't Dean's fault that this vile little creep endorses him--or, to be precise, flirts with the idea of endorsing him: "Maybe it's premature to endorse Gov. Dean. But right now, given the information we have available, he's the preferred candidate of us Anybody But Bushies."

But Dean's campaign is trumpeting Rall's support on his Web site, and that ought to be enough to make anyone uneasy with the notion of Dean's finger on the button.

You Don't Say
"Front-Runner Dean May Find It Tough Attracting Conservatives"--headline, Monterey (Calif.) Herald, Nov. 23

Get Off Dean's Back
And now a word in Howard Dean's defense. Over the weekend the New York Times picked up the story of Dean's Vietnam-era draft deferment. While in high school Dean had been diagnosed as suffering from spondylolysis, "a low-back pain that sometimes radiates into the legs," and as a result the Selective Service classified him as 1-Y, "qualified for military service only in case of extreme national emergency."

What happened next makes for a funny story at Dean's expense:

In the 10 months after his graduation from Yale, time he might otherwise have spent in uniform, Dr. Dean lived the life of a ski bum in Aspen, Colo. His back condition did not affect his skiing the way the rigors of military service would have, he said, nor did it prevent him from taking odd jobs like pouring concrete in the warm months and washing dishes when it got cold.

Dean acknowledges that, in the Times' words, he "was eager to get" the deferment and that "had he wanted to serve, he probably could have." Even his mother tells the Times her son's avoidance of military service "looks bad." Matt Drudge reports strategists for Sen. John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, were overheard in Iowa talking about "doing an ad where they would contrast Kerry's anti-war activism with Dean as a draft-dodging ski bum."

But is this really relevant to Dean's qualifications to be president? Military experience certainly isn't a prerequisite for successful wartime leadership; neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin D. Roosevelt ever served in uniform. Nor does a military record guarantee that one is strong on national defense, as Kerry and Wesley Clark are both proving daily--and as George McGovern and Jimmy Carter showed a generation ago.

It's probably true that Dean's privileged background helped him escape service, as the Times notes:

In a 1970 article in The New York Times, Curtis W. Tarr, the director of Selective Service, said the rising number of medical deferments--from 24.2 percent of those examined in 1966 to 40.7 percent in July 1969--was causing alarm in Washington.

"It's one of the real inequities left in the system," Mr. Tarr said, because young men from wealthier families could afford to pay for tests that might uncover some deferrable medical condition.

But this injustice was remedied with the abolition of the draft. Now that we find ourselves in a war that we cannot afford to lose, it's time to put the divisions of Vietnam behind us. Dean's views on national security today are what really matter--and they would give ample reason to oppose his presidential bid, even if he had served heroically 30 years ago.

See No Evil
"The European Union's racism watchdog has shelved a report on anti-semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined," the Financial Times reports. The senior staff and board of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia nixed the researchers' findings over objections to "their definition of anti-semitism, which included some anti-Israel acts. The focus on Muslim and pro-Palestinian perpetrators, meanwhile, was judged inflammatory." And after all, appeasement worked so well 70 years ago, the last time Europe saw a major outbreak of anti-Semitism.

The Theologian in Chief Gets It Right
Last week in Britain, a reporter asked President Bush if "Muslims worship the same Almighty" that he does. Bush replied: "I do say that freedom is the Almighty's gift to every person. I also condition it by saying freedom is not America's gift to the world. It's much greater than that, of course. And I believe we worship the same god." The Washington Post reports that the president's ecumenism prompted a kerfuffle among evangelical Christians:

Bush's remarks sent immediate shock waves through Christian Web sites and radio broadcasts. A Baptist Press report quoted Richard D. Land, president of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, as saying that Bush "is simply mistaken."

"We should always remember that he is commander in chief, not theologian in chief," Land said in a telephone interview yesterday. "The Bible is clear on this: The one and true god is Jehovah, and his only begotten son is Jesus Christ."

The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, also issued a statement contradicting Bush.

"The Christian God encourages freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health. The Muslim god appears to value the opposite. The personalities of each god are evident in the cultures, civilizations and dispositions of the peoples that serve them. Muhammad's central message was submission; Jesus' central message was love. They seem to be very different personalities," Haggard said.

Bush is right. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all monotheistic religions, united in the belief in a single God. (Muslims often call God by the Arab name Allah, but then so do Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews.) The three religions conceive of God differently, and Muslims and Jews do not share the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. A Christian may well believe that Islam's conception of God is wrong, but if you believe in only one God, it makes no logical sense to describe a fellow monotheist as worshipping a "different" God.

Where Can Our Cat Join Up?
"Anti-Terrorism Funds Buy Wide Array of Pet Projects"--headline, Washington Post, Nov. 23

This Just In
"Al-Qaeda Has Links to Many Major Attacks"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 23

Anti-American Marketing--II
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman is distancing himself from the lurid cover of the British edition of his book, "The Great Unraveling," the New York Times reports:

Mr. Krugman, for his part, said he did not remember seeing the cover until prepublication copies were sent to reviewers. "I think it was intended to be ironic," he said.

The cover images of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were borrowed from puppets carried by protesters outside the World Economic Forum in New York in 2002. Mr. Krugman said that he took part in the forum and does not share the protesters' views. He noted that his columns have defended free trade and argued that the administration's war in Iraq was not about oil.

"It is a marketing thing, not a statement," he said. "I should have taken a look at that and said, 'What are you doing marketing me as if I am Michael Moore? This is silly.' "

Incivility is one thing, he said, but the book cover "may be undignified, which would be a reason to object."

We noted the story Thursday. Incidentally, the Times describes the cover's image of Dick Cheney as having a "Hitler mustache."

Wacko Jacko Is Blacko?
"Black show business stars Friday rallied around pop icon Michael Jackson following his stunning arrest on child sex charges," reports Agence France-Presse:

The star's mother, Catherine Jackson, told the online version of Germany's Bunte magazine Friday that there were two interpretations of the law in the United States--"one for whites and one for blacks." . . .

US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson called for restraint, saying the entertainer deserved a trial in court, not in the media, and expressed "grave concerns" over prosecutors' handling of the case. . . .

Singer Rick James, a friend of Jackson since their Motown recording days, was blunt about what he saw as prosecutor Tom Sneddon's motives in pursuing Jackson on child abuse charges for the second time in 10 years.

"He's black, rich and famous, and they have nothing better to do," he said of the charges Sneddon filed against Jackson. "As soon as you get famous and black, they go after you," he told CNN.

Huh? Exactly when did Jacko get blacko?

Far-left commentator William Rivers Pitt is the latest to hint at a political conspiracy at work:

George W. Bush should send Michael Jackson flowers and a thank-you note, and send more flowers to CNN. The Republican Party effected an historic takeover of Congress in 1994, during a time when the only television coverage one could find focused on OJ Simpson. The timing was exquisite. We're right back, today, to that marvelous chapter in American journalism history.

We're skeptical, to say the least, of the notion that O.J. Simpson was the decisive factor in the 1994 Republican victory. But if Pitt is right, the implication is interesting: Democratic voters, he is suggesting, are far more prone to being distracted by celebrity trials than Republican ones.

What Would Jacko Do Without Experts?
"Jackson's Legal Team Bears Heavy Burden of Proof, Expert Says"--headline, MTV.com, Nov. 24

Dispatches From the PC Nuthouse
An unnamed employee of the University of Virginia Medical Center is under fire for using a racial slur in a conversation, reports the Cavalier Daily:

University President John T. Casteen, III issued a statement yesterday responding to allegations that a Medical Center employee used a racial epithet during a conversation at a recent staff meeting, calling the usage "offensive" and "insulting." . . .

In an e-mail sent to a black faculty e-mail list, History Prof. Julian Bond, national chair of the NAACP, called for the employee to make a public apology and take sensitivity training.

"My first impulse is that this should be a dismissible infraction--but free speech protections I hold dear tell me that shouldn't be so," Bond wrote, adding that the administration "ought to disavow such language."

"The University expects all members of the University community to be alert to the rights and dignity of all our people and also alert to racial and other insults," said Casteen in his statement.

So what did the employee say that was so offensive? R. Edward Howell, CEO of the medical center, reports it was "something like this: 'I can't believe in this day and age that there's a sports team in our nation's capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks.' "

In other words, the "offender" used a politically incorrect word in the course of expressing a very PC sentiment. But that's not good enough. Political correctness, like other totalitarian ideologies, demands absolute purity.

Great Moments in Journalism
The late Walter Duranty, a New York Times reporter and Stalin apologist, won't be stripped of his 1932 Pulitzer Prize, the Times reports. The Pulitzer board said in a statement that there was "no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception" in the articles that won Duranty the prize. The Times itself has acknowledged that Duranty covered up the facts about the Stalin-induced famine in Ukraine in 1932-33, but the board said that he did not do so in "the specific pieces entered in the competition."

"We respect and commend the Pulitzer board for its decision on this complex and sensitive issue," said Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, the Times' publisher. Sulzberger had earlier argued, preposterously, that revoking the prize would somehow have amounted to a Stalinist "airbrushing" of history. In truth, it would have set the record straight and been an act of hygiene for the Pultizer board, the Times and journalism in general, all of which are diminished slightly by the decision to let the prize stand.

Metaphor Alert
"Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations."--David Brooks, New York Times, Nov. 22

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Vermont has the least restrictive gun-control laws in the country, and Howard Dean hopes to use his moderate position on guns to win support next November from rural voters who wouldn't vote for a gun-grabbing fellow Democrat. But at Hartford High School in White River Junction, Vt., a 16-year-old student has been suspended for having an unloaded deer rifle on school grounds.

The unnamed student's mother "said her son had been hunting before school and forgot the weapon was in his car. Hartford Police Chief Joseph Estey said the incident unfolded Tuesday after another student noticed the rifle in the car, which was parked on school grounds. Police took possession of the weapon after a high school administrator removed it from the unlocked vehicle." Though the boy hasn't been charged with a crime, he won't return to school until Dec. 1.

Not Too Brite--CXXVI
"Vietnamese drug addicts kidnapped a mute teenager, bundled him in a sack and sold him to a dog-meat eatery as a stray canine," Reuters reports from Hanoi.

Oddly Enough!

Living Large in Reuterville
"A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis," Reuters reports:

The object of the Californian's anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management. . . . He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.

That's right, Reuters, the "news" service that refuses to call Osama bin Laden a terrorist, doesn't put scare quotes around penis enhancement.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Norman Stone: Who is murdering Jews and Englishmen in Turkey?
• Vermont Royster: America doesn't elect radicals as president--not even soft-spoken ones.
• Bruce Cole: The humanities are vital to our country's defense.