by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, January 14, 2005 4:21 P.M. EST

You Oughta Be in Pictures
If you're a college student fed up with heavy-handed leftism from the faculty, here's a chance to do something about it, and possibly end up on the silver screen. (If you have kids who're in college, you might want to forward this column to them.) Evan Coyne Maloney, a young New York-based documentarian, is looking for students to help the full-length version of his film "Brainwashing 101." (The preliminary, 46-minute version is available for ordering or downloading here.)

Maloney is collecting information about "professors who turn classrooms into their personal political soapboxes." Here's what you do if you want to participate:

1. When a professor voices his or her political views in class--but only when it does not pertain to the subject matter at hand--keep track of how much class time is spent on the political discussion, and to the best of your ability, record the comments made by the professor.
   
   
2. Also, record the date of the discussion, the name of your professor, the name and course ID of the class, and the name and location (city and state) of your school.
   
   
3. Lastly, you must be able to provide the name of at least one other student who was present at the time and who is willing to corroborate your report.

Maloney's site, AcademicBias.com (link atop this item), provides an e-mail address where you can submit the info. "Based on your reports, we will be visiting a number of schools to see what the administration's official position is on political advertising in class. If you help us, you could end up in our movie!"

Many college professors are under the impression that "academic freedom" gives them the right not only to say whatever they want but also to be insulated from any scrutiny or criticism. It will be fun to watch them squirm when Maloney shines a light on them.

Jimmy Carter Wannabe
Remember John Kerry? He was the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, and last year he came somewhat close to almost being elected president. Now Kerry seems to be following in the footsteps of the worst recent ex-president, Jimmy Carter, traveling the world and bad-mouthing American foreign policy.

Kerry "Wednesday said in Egypt that Arab countries are frustrated by U.S. policies in Iraq," United Press International reports:

Speaking after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Kerry said he noticed during his Middle East tour most countries were unhappy with the poor U.S. efforts to end the violence that has been raging for 21 months in Iraq. . . .

Kerry also accused the Bush administration of negligence in planning the post-Saddam Hussein phase, which allowed the rise of terrorism in Iraq.

The Arabic News adds that in a meeting with Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, "Kerry admitted that the US committed terrible mistakes in Iraq." "Admitted"? Bellyaching about America's supposed mistakes in Iraq was the central theme of Kerry's presidential campaign, which the American people rejected, in part because he didn't have anything to say that went beyond bellyaching.

The Associated Press reports that Kerry, who in addition to looking French "has relatives in France and speaks French," is meeting today with France's President Jacques Chirac, who though a formal ally has been a consistent adversary of U.S. interests. We can breathe a sigh of relief that President Bush, and not Kerry, is to be inaugurated next week. Can you imagine the president of the United States meeting with Jacques Chirac?

The 'Disenfranchisement' Canard
"For the first time since 1975, the Georgia House of Representatives has no African-Americans who serve as committee chairmen," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Members of the Legislative Black Caucus--all Democrats--said Wednesday they had been disenfranchised. Black House members noted that in the Republican-controlled Senate, two African-American Democrats were given committee chairmanships.

"Disenfranchisement" actually means being denied the vote, but Democrats of late have started using it as a dysphemism for "losing." There's no disfranchisement in the Georgia House; it is normal in American legislative bodies for the majority party to hold committee chairmanships.

The problem here is the political isolation of black Americans, who overwhelmingly vote for the minority party. There's an easy way for members of Georgia's Legislative Black Caucus to have a chance at chairing committees: by changing their party affiliation.

Bloggers on the Take--II
Back in October 2003, we noted an article in The Hill, according to which Howard Dean was paying bloggers "to keep the enthusiasm up on his website." As we acknowledged the following day, blogger Ed Cone asked the Hill reporter, who said he did not mean "to imply that any blogger other than those appearing on the Dean campaign weblog is getting paid by the campaign."

Today's Wall Street Journal, however, reports that in fact the Dean campaign "hired two Internet political 'bloggers' as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide":

Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Mr. Dean's campaign, made the disclosure earlier this week in her own Web log, Zonkette. She said "to be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment--but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." The hiring of the consultants was noted in several publications at the time. . . .

The partisan Democratic political bloggers who were hired by the Dean campaign were Jerome Armstrong, who publishes the blog MyDD, and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who publishes DailyKos. . . . The two men, who jointly operated a small political consulting firm, said they didn't believe the Dean campaign had been trying to buy their influence. Both men noted that they had promoted Mr. Dean's campaign long before they were hired and continued to do so after their contract with the campaign ended.

This is similar to what Armstrong Williams said he did: take money from the Department of Education to promote views he already believed in. Education Secretary Rod Paige yesterday disputed Williams's account, saying in a statement that the department's payments to Williams's PR firm "went exclusively toward the production and airtime of advertisements," not to pay for Williams's comments. This is passing strange, since if Paige is right, Williams has admitted to an ethical lapse he didn't commit.

The Dean campaign, unlike the Education Department, didn't spend tax dollars. But the bloggers who benefited from its largesse appear to be as compromised ethically as Williams.

Stuttering Mafiosi for Dean
"Megan Matson, California mother of three, and Director of The MMOB, announced today that her organization passionately supports Dr. Howard Dean as the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee."--press release, Jan. 13

Sen. Malaprop
This is very cute: In the Journal Standard of northwest Illinois, Roland Tolliver has a humorous list of predictions for 2005. Here's one for January:

President Bush will have a gala Inauguration Ball spending millions of dollars and he misreads Obama as Osama and doesn't allow him into the party.

This ran yesterday. The day before, it actually happened. The Associated Press notes that a Washington pol "mangled the name of the Democrats' new star, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, calling him 'Osama bin . . . Osama . . . Obama." Only it wasn't President Bush, it was Ted Kennedy.

Majidah Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

Centrist Broadcasting System?
Van Gordon Sauter, a former CBS News president who was ousted two decades ago, has a remarkably frank assessment of his erstwhile network in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece:

What's the big problem at CBS News? Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix.

Sauter acknowledges CBS's "unremitting liberal orientation" and says it led him to give up the network's news in favor of NBC, Fox and MSNBC. But he holds out hope for CBS's future:

My guess is that CBS Chairman Les Moonves, the most effective executive in broadcasting today, will try to use the current frailty of CBS News to reshape it. The insufferable hubris and self-righteousness of the organization have been replaced by apprehension.

Although himself a liberal, Moonves will mandate a clear and defensible center for the news organization. . . . Flavored news, of the right or left, won't work. Networks must offer nonpartisan, objective news.

For CBS News, the only path back to anything near first place will require a compass setting based in objectivity and quality.

It's hard to argue with that. But CBS's refusal to acknowledge the obvious--that the fraudulent "60 Minutes" story on President Bush and the National Guard was driven by a political agenda--will make the network's credibility much harder to restore, even if it does improve the quality of its coverage.

More on Infant Mortality
Yesterday we noted that the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof had published a column comparing the U.S. infant-mortality rate unfavorably with those of Cuba and China, and we explained why this is a canard. Last night found us in attendance at a debate on U.S.-Cuba policy, and we hope Kristof--whose purpose was not to praise communist dictatorships but to criticize America--will be chagrined to learn that the Castro-apologist side of the debate made much of this claim.

More information on the infant-mortality question comes from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

In 1998 Switzerland's infant mortality of 4.8 per 1,000 births was only two-thirds of the rate found in the United States (7.2 per 1,000).107 However, Switzerland does not treat the death of an infant born less than 30 centimeters in length as a live birth. This threshold effectively excludes many very low birth weight babies such as those weighing less than one kilogram (2.2 pounds). Yet, close to one-third of all infant deaths recorded in the United States are among infants weighing 2.2 pounds or less. If these very low birth weight infants (most of which measure less then 30 centimeters) were reclassified in the United States vital statistics as "stillborn" rather than "live births," the respective rates of the two countries would be similar.

And, of course, the U.S. rate would be considerably better than Cuba's--if indeed Cuba's reported figures are accurate to begin with. A July 2003 Unicef report on infant mortality in Central Asia notes that underreporting of infant mortality is common in the Third World:

In all eight countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia, the estimated infant mortality rate from the surveys is far higher than the official rate. In Azerbaijan, for example, the survey estimate is four times greater--74 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births--than the official rate of 17 per 1,000.

Since its purportedly superior health-care system is a major part of Fidel Castro's efforts to burnish his image in the West, there is reason for suspicion about whether the Cuban figures are on the level. And one additional point on China: The CIA World Factbook notes that the nationwide infant-mortality rate for girls (29.14 per thousand live births) is one-third higher than that for boys (21.84)--presumably an effect of China's coercive "one child" policy that has led couples to disfavor girls.

Homer nods: The U.S. infant-mortality rates in 1990 and 1995 were 9.2 and 7.6 per 1,000, respectively, not per 100,000, as we said yesterday (since corrected).

Great Moments in Public Education
The Connecticut Post reports that the Milford Board of Education "signed off Tuesday on a much-heralded plan to make reading the next graduation requirement for the city's high school students, designating the Class of 2009 the first to be subject to the new rules."

That means if you're in high school now, you won't need to learn to read in order to graduate. Though if you don't know how to read, we don't know why we're bothering to tell you this.

There Must Be Some Connection

"Former Congressman Now Teaching at Harvard"--headline, KOTV Web site (Tulsa, Okla.), Jan. 13

"Harvard Hires 'Fun Czar' to Spice Up Campus Life"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 13

What Was Hastert Thinking?
"Speaker Lauds Stripping as Lucrative Career"--headline, San Jose Mercury News, Jan. 13

What Would Homelessness Rediscovery Watch Do Without Experts?

"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

"It's a Dog-Eat-Dog World for Homeless, Says Expert"--headline, Star (Johannesburg, South Africa), Jan. 12, 2005

Tongues Untied
"Military Has Discharged 26 Gay Linguists"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 14

Capt. Renault Visits Iowa
"Police Shocked by Electricity From Power Pole"--headline, WHO-TV Web site (Des Moines, Iowa), Jan. 12

He'll Never Rise Again
"Bread Co-Founder Jimmy Griffin Dies"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 14

Metaphor Alert
Blogger David Horowitz on anti-American historians: "So now the chickens have come home to roost and this same academic left wants to eat its cake and have it too (no surprise here). It wants to abandon the cloak of scholarly objectivity and declare war on America's war and on the Bush Administration and then it wants to turn around and hide behind its scholarly aura, appealing in the name of knowledge for access to documents it can use for its partisan agendas."

I'm Exasperated by My Offspring
With Valentine's Day a month away, the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. announces the "Crazy for You Bear":

Dressed in a white straitjacket embroidered with a red heart, this Bear is a great gift for someone you're crazy about. He even comes with a "Commitment Report" stating "Can't Eat, Can't Sleep, My Heart's Racing. Diagnosis--Crazy for You!" Trust us. She'll go nuts over this Bear!

Normally we'd be put off by something so cutesy, but we warmed to the CFYB when we heard that "mental health advocates" were up in arms about it. The Barre-Montpelier (Vt.) Times Argus reports:

On Thursday, advocates stepped up their campaign to have the bear removed. In a letter to Elizabeth Robert, Vermont Teddy Bear's chief executive officer, the advocates said they were shocked at the company's behavior.

"We are frankly very surprised and disappointed that Vermont Teddy Bear Co. has decided to choose profit margin over public sensitivity," said the letter, signed by three mental health groups and Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield. "Despite your acknowledgment that it was an 'edgy' marketing strategy and that it is offensive to some people, you are moving ahead with the product."

Even the governor of Vermont, Republican James Douglas, thought the matter worth addressing:

"If it were my choice it would have never been offered in the first place," Douglas said during his weekly news conference. "Mental health is very serious. We should not stigmatize it further with these marketing efforts."

Howard Dean could not be reached for comment. If you want to show your opposition to these self-serious scolds, you can order a Crazy for You Bear here. As for Anne Donahue and James Douglas, it sounds as though they could use some humor therapy.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ethel Fenig, Michael Hopkovitz, Scott Desmond, Buddy Smith, Brent Silver, Victor Ellis, Tom Darrow, Barak Moore, Jim Orheim, Nathan Sass, Greg de Mocskonyi, Dave Wheeler, Naftali Friedman, Ed Lasky, Henry Hanks, John Holland, Doug Murray, Ted Rathkopf, Russ Faria, James Eckert, Bob Barnes, Kevin Townsend, Richard Blackwood, Samuel Walker, Daniel Foty, Don Hubschman, Christopher Marciano, Marcia Wilson, David Gerstman, John Williamson, Gary Petersen, Thomas Shapira, Greg Chaudoin and Mark Van Der Molen. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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