From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Now
Are the Tchotchkes!
Some of you have written over the years in search of OpinionJournal.com knickknacks,
and now we have come through. The Wall Street Journal store now offers OpinionJournal.com
mugs
and golf
shirts. The mugs, which have the OpinionJournal logo on one side and "I
Read Best of the Web Today" on the other, sell for $13.99, or $12.99 if
you subscribe to the Journal or WSJ.com. The shirts cost $39.99, or $34.99 for
subscribers.
Also just out: the paperback version of "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House." (Full disclosure: You can buy it from the OpinionJournal bookstore.) It includes an all-new survey of scholars rating the presidents, the first one ever to include George W. Bush, as well as updated chapters on Bush (by Paul Gigot) and on presidential leadership after disputed elections (by this columnist). We wrote about the results on Monday.
And
as long as we're in self-promotional mode, we'd like to mention a couple of
awards we received yesterday. The Web Marketing Association named OpinionJournal.com
the winner of its 2005 Webaward for "Best
Political Website." And last night MSNBC oddball Keith
Olbermann declared your humble columnist "worst person in the world";
it seems we edged out Louis Farrakhan and John Stossel. Impressively, all five
of Olbermann's viewers e-mailed us to tell us we had won.
The
Truth About Race in America--II
Perhaps the ugliest thing written in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was a post
on the Puffington Host by Randall Robinson, a self-styled "social justice
advocate," which appeared on Sept. 2:
It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
I am a sixty-four year old African-American. New Orleans marks the end of the America I strove for. . . .
My hand shakes with anger as I write. I, the formerly un-jaundiced human rights advocate, have finally come to see my country for what it really is. A monstrous fraud.
Robinson subsequently retracted the wildly implausible cannibalism claim (surely one of the most invidious antiblack stereotypes imaginable). But in a disclaimer atop the article, he writes that he "stand[s] behind everything else I wrote without reservation." Apparently that includes the statement that "thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying," which is almost certainly (knock on wood) an exaggeration. According to the Associated Press, the latest death toll for the entire state of Louisiana is 423. (Granted, this isn't a final figure and is likely to rise.)
Robinson's views are extreme, and his way of expressing them particularly inflammatory, but as we noted yesterday, black Americans' views of racial issues tend to be sharply at variance with those of whites, and thus of the population as a whole. In a Gallup poll, 60% of blacks think that "one reason the federal government was slow in rescuing these people was because many of them were black." Eighty-six percent of whites and (by our estimate) approximately 78% of the total population disagrees with this statement, for which there is no evidence and which is almost certainly false.
Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are "like us," which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it's perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.
But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.
Robinson followed up his cannibalism post with a call for dialogue last Monday:
Long ago white America stopped talking to black America about what black America needed to talk about. Indeed, white America long ago stopped talking about what all of America needs badly to talk about--race, and the origins and causes, exceptions notwithstanding, of intergenerational white wealth and black poverty in America.
Perhaps now, we can begin to talk. Honestly for once. For the good of us all.
But if Robinson is willing to conclude--based on urban legends, rumors and his own prejudices--that America is "a monstrous fraud," what can there possibly be to talk about?
A
Chief Justice Is Born
There are many theories about when life begins: Some say at conception, others
at "quickening," and still others at birth. Some even think life
begins at 40. But Alan Dershowitz, Harvard's most socially rough-edged law
professor, goes even further. To his mind, according to the Harvard Crimson,
life doesn't begin until sometime after the 206th trimester of pregnancy:
In a stab at the 50-year-old [John] Roberts, who, if confirmed, will be the youngest chief justice in 200 years, Dershowitz said, "Today, they're trying to nominate fetuses in the hope that they will be kept alive like [Terri] Schiavo."
Before embellishing jokes from the Onion, Dershowitz should check his facts. Terri Schiavo was not kept alive; she was aborted in the 169th trimester, even though that was not her mother's choice.
Maybe Dersh is trying to put political pressure on Roberts to recuse himself from abortion cases. Yet in that case, is any justice free of conflicts of interest? Even John Paul Stevens, though now in his 345th trimester and thus presumably a full person even by the Dershowitz standard, is a former fetus, right?
Now
Fetuses Are Running for Governor
"Va. Governor Candidate Dodges Abortion"--headline, Associated Press,
Sept. 14
What
Do You Mean, 'We'?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave an interview to the New York Times
Publisher's Group the other day, and it included an interesting exchange, in
which the unidentified questioner disputed the rationale for liberating Iraq
as opposed to some other Arab country:
Q: I mean, it strikes me as Saudi Arabia who would be the more likely target than Iraq under that theory.
Rice: Well, you absolutely have to get change in Saudi Arabia, too. But in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt and in Kuwait and in all of--that's why we actually have a broader Middle East reform agenda where you're going to do those--where you're going to insist on and press for exactly those kind of reforms.
In fact, I think it has three pillars. It has one pillar that says where you can--and look, we didn't go into Iraq because we thought it was just a great place to start. We have a history. We had a history with Saddam Hussein of 12 years. But when you have an opportunity to build a different kind of state in the core of the Middle East, take it and make your goals for an Iraq actually goals that are consistent with a different kind of Middle East.
A Palestinian-Israeli peace is a part of that. It's the second pillar. And a third pillar is broad reform in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia, where the combination of activity in Saudi against terrorists finally and pressures I think are increasing in Saudi Arabia for reform.
Q: When you say that you have an opportunity, I think if I were to look back I would say this was a rather difficult one. I mean, I can imagine a few other countries where it might have started with greater ease.
Rice: No, but look, we were still in a state of war with Saddam Hussein. . . . What we needed to do was to deal with the threat that was there with Saddam Hussein. In that sense, you didn't go--you didn't defeat Nazi Germany because you wanted to build a democratic Germany. You defeated Nazi Germany because it was a threat to the region. You defeated Saddam Hussein because he was a threat to the region.
But having defeated Nazi Germany, it was only the United States that insisted on a democratic Germany. Having defeated Saddam Hussein, it is the United States that is insisting on a democratic Iraq. That's the point.
Q: We're the only ones determining that it was a threat to the region.
Rice: No.
Q: The rest of the world was a little less convinced.
Rice: No. We actually did have, you know, a number of coalition partners.
Q: Two.
Rice: No, quite a few coalition partners.
Now, when the Times questioner says that "we're the only ones determining that it was a threat to the region," presumably he was using the national "we"--i.e., referring to the U.S. government--and not the editorial "we." Then again, check this out:
Although many Americans are puzzled about why the Bush administration chose to pick this fight now, it's not surprising that in the wake of Sept. 11, the president would want to make the world safer, and that one of his top priorities would be eliminating Iraq's ability to create biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Of all the military powers in the world, Iraq is the one that has twice invaded its neighbors without provocation and that has used chemical weapons both on its military foes and some of its own restive people.
That was an editorial in the New York Times, Feb. 23, 2003. It would seem the paper is fatuous only in retrospect.
'You're
Either With Us, or You're With the Paper Clips'
"Terror Leader in Iraq Declares War on Tape"--headline, Associated
Press, Sept. 14
Spot
the Idiot
In today's Boston Globe, one Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, who works with
the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard University,
actually argues for a policy of appeasing al Qaeda:
Though dismissed widely, the best strategy for the United States may well be to acknowledge and address the collective reasons in which Al Qaeda anchors its acts of force. Al Qaeda has been true to its word in announcing and implementing its strategy for over a decade. It is likely to be true to its word in the future and cease hostilities against the United States, and indeed bring an end to the war it declared in 1996 and in 1998, in return for some degree of satisfaction regarding its grievances. In 2002, bin Laden declared: ''Whether America escalates or deescalates this conflict, we will reply in kind."
Of course, this is the same paper that, in October 2001, published an op-ed titled "Getting to Yes With the Taliban." What's next, "How to Win Friends and Influence Kim Jong Il?"
Weapons
of Mass Instruction
"U.S. Deploys Slide Show to Press Case Against Iran"--headline, Washington
Post, Sept. 14
Quick,
Someone Burp Them!
"Md. Lawmakers Bothered by High Gas"--headline, WTOP-AM Web site (Washington),
Sept. 13
If
You Can Read This, Thank a Health Tip
"Health Tip: Prevent Vision Loss"--headline, HealthDay, Sept. 14
Top
Cop Gets Lucky
"New Police Chief Selected for Loving"--headline, Associated Press,
Sept. 13
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
"Hubble Spies Homeless Black Hole"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 14, 2005
Life Imitates the Onion
"F--- Everything, We're Doing Five Blades"--headline, article "by" Gillette CEO James M. Kitts, Onion, Feb. 18, 2004
"Gillette Unveils 5-Bladed Razor"--headline, CNN/Money, Sept. 14, 2005
Smart
Women, Foolish Choices
"A Manhattan fertility specialist has been sued by two women who say he
broke their hearts after meeting them through an online dating site on which
he pretended to be single," Reuters reports from New York:
In their lawsuits the two women, Tiffany Wang and Jing Huang, accused Dr. Khaled Zeitoun, 46, of pretending to be single and using mind games to entice them into sexual relationships with tales of past lives.
According to court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court and made public this week, Zeitoun is married with three children. Wang said she met him in March 2001 through a Web site on which he said he was single and had never married.
"Zeitoun claimed he and Wang had been married to each other in previous lives," Wang's lawsuit said, adding that the doctor told her he had mistreated her in that life and "searched for her in this lifetime to correct his past mistakes."
Oh great. Now what happens when we meet a woman we really were married to in a previous life and want to ask her out? She'll never believe us! Oh, sure, we were married in a previous life, just like that Khaled Zeitoun! This creep has gone and ruined it for all the rest of us.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ruth Papazian, Brent Baker, Richard Goldstein, Jeffrey Jones, Thomas Tirney, Michael Segal, Tim Willis, Erik Moy, Karen Bashore, Dan Keen, Don Hubschman, Robert Koontz, Ed Lasky, Steve Tefft, William Katz, Doug Levene, Tom Bruscino, Jim Rutherford, Len Ridley, Dan O'Shea, Scott Miller and Marc van Rijssen. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Jack Welch: Why Katrina will make us stronger.
- Manuel Miranda: In praise of baseball, apple pie, motherhood and judicial restraint.
- Masood Farivar: A new book looks at the history of the Afghan jihad.
