From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Vietnam Syndrome
Acknowledged
ABC's Terry Moran, the White House correspondent who the other day demanded
of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "Who made you editor of
Newsweek?," yesterday appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. Somewhat surprisingly,
he said he "agree[d] with the substance of what Scott McClellan was saying,
that it would be a good thing for Newsweek to come out try to undo some of the
damage that was done by its report." And he basically pronounced himself
satisfied with McClellan's answer that he wasn't "telling the media [what]
to do." Had McClellan been doing that, Moran told Hewitt, it would have
amounted to "demagoguery." We can't really disagree.
More interesting, though, is this acknowledgment:
There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous. That's different from the media doing its job of challenging the exercise of power without fear or favor.
Moran tells Hewitt he finished college in 1982, which presumably makes him around 45; certainly he looks too young to have come of age in the Vietnam/Watergate era. It may be that the bad habits the media learned during those years will fade away as older journalists and executives retire and younger ones move up the ladder.
Journalistic
Suicide Strategy
Yesterday we
noted that the press seemed to be circling its wagons to defend Newsweek
from White House criticism over its now-retracted Koran-flushing report. Blogger
Kevin Drum speculates that the press may go on the offense:
By the time this is all over, I suspect the Pentagon is going to be sorry it ever made a fuss over the Newsweek item in the first place. Every reporter in town is now going to start investigating this stuff, and the results are not likely to be pretty. Stay tuned for a fusillade of deeply researched stories about allegations of religious desecration by American troops starting in about a week.
This is a very bad idea. Newsweek's error was not only journalistic but also cultural: Its reporters and editors plainly failed to anticipate how inflammatory its report would be in the Muslim world. Journalists dealing with this issue now do not have the excuse of ignorance. A high degree of circumspection, at the very least, is in order before news organizations flog further "allegations of religious desecration."
The press also has a self-interested reason for treading very carefully here. As David Gergen observed on "Hardball" the other night:
It strikes me that this might be one of those famous tipping points, that, when you have a series of blunders, scandals, what have you, in the mainstream media, that, at a certain point, . . . the public gets fed up. And because so many people died here as a consequence of this, the publication, I think there's a lot of anger out there. You can see it in the blogs. . . . You can see it in the conversation today. I think the public may have just had enough.
And it may--if there's any silver lining, it may be that there will be a real push now to raise the standards in journalism, so that these unidentified, anonymous sources can't drive the coverage in the way this individual did.
It strikes us that if this is a "tipping point," the chief reason is not Newsweek's use of flimsy sources--a technical point that isn't of that much interest to nonjournalists--but rather its cavalier attitude toward American interests.
Anyway, if the media respond to the Newsweek scandal by openly waging war against the military, which side do they think the American people--their audience--will take? Drum's suggested course of action would likely prove not just destructive but self-destructive, if not suicidal.
Chutzpah
Alert
The left-wing ankle-biters over at MediaMatters.org criticize the media for
ignoring "the checkered journalistic record of Newsweek investigative correspondent
Michael Isikoff," who co-wrote the Koran-flushing story. Specifically:
Isikoff's role as a leading reporter on the so-called "Clinton scandals" in the 1990s, including the Paula Jones, Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky cases, has gone virtually unnoticed in broadcast, cable TV and print reports so far on the Newsweek story.
One commentator who does cite Isikoff's Clinton coverage is the conservative polemicist Ann Coulter. Needless to say, she doesn't get any credit from MediaMatters. Even more amusing, MediaMatters is run by David Brock, the self-described "right-wing hit man" who broke the "Troopergate" story in The American Spectator back in 1993.
(Hat tip: David Corn.)
What
Would We Do Without Reports?
"Report: Muslim World Largely Anti-American"--headline, Associated
Press, May 18
You Don't Say
"Zarqawi Purportedly Sanctions Murders of the Innocent"--headline,
New York Sun, May 19
Will
the Dems Unilaterally Disarm?
Mickey Kaus speculates that a compromise of sorts may be in the offing in the
battle over judicial filibusters. He quotes an anonymous source who e-mailed
ABC's "The Note" to say: "Deal not likely. But you may see d's
break and vote for cloture and then we don't need deal and don't need nuclear
option." Kaus explains:
In other words, if they don't have the sure votes to beat back the proposed Frist/Cheney ruling that you can't filibuster a judicial nominee, Democrats will just decide not to filibuster each particular judicial nominee as that nominee comes up. That means those nominees will be confirmed, one-by-one, but Democrats will avoid setting an anti-filibuster precedent that would affect how Supreme Court nominees are considered later on.
The key here is that the vote on cloture precedes the vote on the parliamentary "nuclear" rules change.
Eventually, I guess, Republicans could still cunningly try to force a vote on the parliamentary maneuver by having a handful of GOPs perversely vote against cloture, countering the Dem defectors, so that the cloture vote falls into the crucial more-than-50/less-than-60 range. Then more Democrats could perversely try to frustrate Republicans by voting for cloture, to be countered by more perverse Republicans, and so on and so on until either the parties' more or less completely switch positions, do-si-do style. Fun, fun, fun! But no climactic roll-call vote, unless the Dems miscalculate.
When a Supreme Court appointment comes up, of course, Dems would have to filibuster--but then Frist would have to set his precedent when everyone's paying attention, as opposed to now, when everybody isn't because it looks like an obscure insider rules change about mid-level appellate judges.
If Dems do have the sure votes to defeat the nuclear option, of course, then either Frist will prevent it from coming to a vote, or he'll hold the vote and lose. But if there is any uncertainty, I suspect, Dems will not want to roll the dice (even if Frist does).
Kaus makes an important assumption that strikes us as highly dubious: namely, that the Dems would be better off defending the filibuster during a Supreme Court nomination fight, "when everyone's paying attention." We'd say the opposite is true. Whatever the merits of a particular nominee, who but a partisan (i.e., someone now paying attention) would think it fair to deny him a vote? Indeed, if there's one advantage for Democrats in abolishing the filibuster now, it is that it would relieve the pressure on them from far-left interest groups to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee.
There are other reasons, however, why the Dems may want to avoid the "nuclear" confrontation now, thus preserving the filibuster for future use. With a few dissenting Republicans, it seems clear that Frist has at best a bare majority for eliminating the filibuster now. If the Democrats gain Senate seats next year--or even before the election, through the death or retirement of a Republican from a state with a Democratic governor--the filibuster may suddenly lose its "nuclear" vulnerability.
Further, some Democrats have been acting against their own political interests by obstructing Bush nominees (cf Tom Daschle). Freeing them to vote for cloture could help their re-election chances, which would be in the long-term interests of the Democrats.
Meanwhile, Homer--make that Kinsley--nods. Yesterday we quoted a Los Angeles Times editorial that stated: "Democratic senators themselves decried the filibuster not long ago when they were in the majority and President Clinton's judicial nominees were being blocked." Actually, although it's true that some Democrats opposed the filibuster even in 1995, when the Republicans were in the majority, the Republicans did not filibuster any Clinton judicial nominee in 1993-94, when they were in the minority. The Senate held only one cloture vote on a judicial nominee: on H. Lee Sarokin for the Third U.S. circuit Court of Appeals, and the vote to end debate was 85-12. Sarokin was subsequently confirmed, 63-35.
Critics
Criticize Call for Congress to Condemn Criticism
"Judge Urges Congressional Condemnation of Criticism of Judges"--headline,
Associated Press, May 18
Finally,
an Explanation for the Election!
"Research Finds That Red Is for Winners"--headline, New York Times,
May 19
Great
Moments in Public Education
"The Teacher of the Year for the Lucia Mar Unified School District cannot
be named within the space of this story," reports the San Luis Obispo (Calif.)
Tribune:
"It's everyone," said Branden Leach, president of the Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association.
All 575 instructors in San Luis Obispo County's largest school district are winners, he said. "We all help children in our own special way."
The name of the winner was to have been announced at tonight's school board meeting. Instead, Leach will read a statement explaining why the union has decided not to pick a single winner this year.
Leach explains that the union actually means to make a political statement: "choosing one among us as the best is similar to merit pay," which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports. Leach says that in the past when the union named a teacher of the year, "the winner invariably said 'I'm not the best.' " We're not sure arguing that all teachers are equally bad is the best way to win public support.
Comedy
Club Losing Members
"Joke-Telling Genitals Don't Get Free-Speech Protection"--headline, Detroit
Free Press, May 12
Yeah,
but You Shoulda Seen the One That Got Away
"Well Endowed Fish Get the Girls"--headline, LiveScience.com, May 11
We
Just Hope the French Lost
"Earliest European Human Debate Settled"--headline, DiscoveryChannel.com,
May 18
Nine-Fingered
Discount
The San Francisco Chronicle has the latest twist in the finger scam against
Wendy's:
The Las Vegas man whose severed fingertip ended up in a cup of Wendy's chili gave his mangled digit to a co-worker to settle a $50 debt--but had no idea it would be used in an alleged scheme to swindle the fast-food chain, the man's mother said Tuesday.
San Jose police have refused to name the man whose finger they believe ended up in the chili. But the man's mother, reached by The Chronicle on Tuesday, said the finger belonged to her 36-year-old son, Brian Paul Rossiter of Las Vegas.
"My son is the victim in this,'' Rossiter's mother, Brenda Shouey, said in a telephone interview from her Pennsylvania home. "I believe he got caught in something, and he didn't understand what was going on.''
What he got caught in was a mechanical truck lift "at a Las Vegas paving firm where he worked with James Plascencia, the husband of Anna Ayala, the woman accused of planting the fingertip in her cup of Wendy's chili." Shouey says her son was desperate for cash while laid up after reconstructive surgery for his hand.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports a judge refused to reduce the $500,000 bail of Ayala, the alleged scamstress. That finger may end up costing her an arm and a leg.
The Delphine Menace
Yesterday we
noted a zany letter to the editor in an item we said "has no point."
How wrong we were. It turns out that the letter writer, Dave Genova of Asheville,
N.C., was dead wrong when he described dolphins as peaceful creatures. They
have, in fact, been implicated in a whole host of crimes:
- Bullying. "Gangs of strong males pick on younger or smaller
dolphins," National
Geographic television reported in 1999.
- Domestic violence. "Dr. Richard Connor, studying dolphins in
Shark Bay in Western Australia, has documented cases of males kidnapping and
holding females captive, sometimes for months at a time," according to
National Geographic.
- Interspecies hate crimes. "Harbour porpoises are being killed
in increasing numbers by bottlenose dolphins around British coasts,"
the BBC
reported in January. The New
York Times reported in 1999 that "dolphins have been found to bludgeon
porpoises to death by the hundreds."
- Infanticide. "Dolphin researchers from the United States and
Britain recently reported that baby bottlenose dolphins found dead on the
shores of both countries were likely battered to death by adult bottlenose
dolphins," reported Ocean
Watch in 1998. The Times reported in 1999 that "off Scotland, a scientist
watched in shock for nearly an hour as an adult dolphin repeatedly picked
up a baby in its mouth and smacked it against the water, over and over, until
it sank from view."
- Sexual Assault. "A Norwegian man is accusing a dolphin of attempted rape," Reuters reported from Oslo in 1999. "Norway's top-selling daily Verdens Gang on Tuesday quoted the 28-year-old as saying that the dolphin apparently mistook him for a female after swimming alongside him in the sea off Farsund, south Norway, earlier this month. The dolphin's penis got caught between the man's swimming costume and his legs. . . . 'The dolphin shoved me forward two or three metres [six to 10 feet] before I got loose,' he said. 'At first I thought it was a fin . . . but dolphins don't have fins on their underbellies.' "
But here's some good news: It turns out that the fishing nets used to catch tuna have the added benefit of ensnaring and killing dolphins. Tuna that is not caught using this method is labeled "dolphin safe" so that you can avoid it. This Web site has a helpful list of supermarket chains that sell non-dolphin-safe tuna. Tuck away a nice tuna-salad sandwich, and you'll be doing your part to save the world from the delphine menace.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ed Lasky, Michael Kennedy, Tom Linehan, Allen O'Donnell, Peter Rice, Steve Goss, Chris Fehr, D. Adams, Jeff Soyer, William Katz, Don Hubschman, C.E. Dobkin, Barak Moore, Dave Burge, Ray Nelson, Pat Kunz, Lyle Beefelt, Brian Foxworthy, Paul Wood, Kenyon Wilson, Ruth Papazian, Michael Segal, Daniel Goldstein, Jonathan Bailey, Bret Popper, W. Clark Goodwin, Chris Stern, Randall Woodman, Curtis Almond, James Scott, Bill Mitchell, Rob Quandt, Seán Fitzpatrick, Gary Phoenix, Greg Askins, Nicholas Zeisler, John Sanders, Paul Gross, Bill King, Steve Daly, Thomas Blackwood, Charles Mueller, John Gerde, Steve Lombardo, Curtis Meek, Douglas Palmer, John Vecchione and Talbot Thrasher. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: How desperate is the ACLU to derail the Patriot Act?
- Leo Banks: Arizona rednecks win a round against the ACLU.
- Brendan Miniter: Two new books look at some of the individuals who made America great.
