From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Can
an Adult Be a Real Man?
We're not in front of a television today, so we're missing the first day of
the Senate Judiciary Committee questioning Samuel Alito. But we did tune in
yesterday afternoon for his opening statement. Mostly it was a nice tribute
to his parents, his wife and children, America, the Trenton of his childhood,
and Sandra Day O'Connor. But there was one moment of political, or at least
cultural, provocation, when he discussed his education at Princeton and Yale
Law School:
This was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community.
Naturally this made us think of Ted Kennedy, one of the Judiciary Committee inquisitors, who was certainly an irresponsible son of privilege back around, to pick a date at random, July 18, 1969. But Kennedy is no Alito peer. By 1969 he was already 37, almost two decades the future justice's senior.
No, Alito seems to have meant this as a criticism of the 1960s "counterculture." He was what the kids back then called a "square," and he was and remains proud of it.
This comment strikes us as a pretty shrewd move on Alito's part. Obviously it's a play to the Republican base, which largely loathes hippies. But its appeal is broader than that. After all, even Alito's more liberal peers are grown up now, and most of them would concede, with varying degrees of embarrassment, that they were irresponsible in their youth. Few parents, no matter how left-wing, want their children to become drug-addled, free-loving hippies.
But Alito's criticism of the counterculture has provoked a certain element of the Angry Left. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick is especially snotty, quoting Alito at length and annotating his comments with her italicized replies:
After I graduated from high school, I went a full 12 miles down the road, but really to a different world when I entered Princeton University. (Damn snobs.) A generation earlier, I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton. (And as I shall now illustrate, I was not.) But, by the time I graduated from high school, things had changed.
And this was a time of great intellectual excitement for me. Both college and law school opened up new worlds of ideas. (Ideas, love 'em. It's the people I hate . . .) But this was back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. (Damn hippies.) And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. (Smart and privileged people who went on to become yourselves, ladies and gentlemen of the Senate.) [OK, she's got a point on this one.--JT] And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community. (And so that is why I joined Concerned Alumni of Princeton and why, moreover, I am still so inflexible and judgmental today!)
National Review's Byron York discovers a fascinating pair of posts by a blogger called "Digby," which come with the imprimatur of the more prominent Duncan "Atrios" Black. Digby suggests that Alito is not a real man, and he links to this earlier analysis about baby-boomer masculinity:
The [Vietnam] war provided two very distinct tribal pathways to manhood. One was to join "the revolution" which included the perk of having equally revolutionary women at their sides, freely joining in sexual as well as political adventure as part of the broader cultural revolution. (The 60's leftist got laid. A lot.) And he was also deeply engaged in the major issue of his age, the war in Vietnam, in a way that was not, at the time, seen as cowardly, but rather quite threatening. His masculine image encompassed both sides of the male archetypal coin--he was both virile and heroic.
The other pathway to prove your manhood was to test your physical courage in battle. There was an actual bloody fight going on in Vietnam, after all.
By this puerile conception of masculinity, the ideal man would be one who embodies both Bill Clinton's tomcatting and John Kerry's showboating.
May we suggest an alternative definition? A real man is a faithful, loving husband and father who provides for his family and contributes to society by working diligently and conscientiously in his chosen field. We know of no reason to think that Alito falls anywhere short of this masculine ideal.
It is true that the military inculcates manly virtues--but it does so through discipline, not violence. Worth noting, too, is that Alito, far from the "chickenhawk" of Digby's imaginings, was a ROTC cadet at Princeton until the administration, presumably at the urging of campus hippies, expelled the program. (Army ROTC eventually returned to Princeton, though Navy and Air Force ROTC did not.)
Digby's claim amounts to the assertion that because Alito is an adult, he is not a man. Thus Alito has succeeded in underscoring the immaturity and unseriousness of the opposition. Not bad for an opening statement.
Assault
With a Passat
"What started with yelling and hand gestures on a Sunday morning in May
near White Rock Lake was quickly punctuated by the sound of crunching metal
as car struck bicycle," reported the Dallas Morning News on July 29,
2004:
On Wednesday, a distinguished law professor was indicted, accused of using her Volkswagen Passat as a deadly weapon in what police and cycling advocates describe as an extreme case of road rage.
Jane Dolkart, 56, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, she faces two to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Southern Methodist University officials said Ms. Dolkart remains on the law school faculty while the case is under review, but she is not teaching classes this summer.
The Morning News reported in June 2005 that Dolkart was convicted and sentenced to five years probation. She is among the signers of the anti-Alito letter we noted yesterday.
All we can say is, we'd hate to have a run-in with an undistinguished SMU law prof.
Go
for Broke
"The Palestinian Authority, the largest employer in the territories, is
facing a fiscal crisis that could result, as early as next month, in it being
unable to pay the salaries of its 130,000-plus officials and security staff,
Nigel Roberts, the World Bank's man in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," tells
Ha'aretz:
The five years he has spent in the World Bank's offices in the A-Ram neighborhood, on the northern border of Jerusalem, have been the worst years for the Palestinians and their Israeli neighbors since the occupation. Roberts warns that if all of the parties involved do not act more courageously, the worst of all may be yet to come. He says he is returning to the World Bank's headquarters in Washington, D.C. with major concerns.
To put it simply: The PA is on the verge of functional bankruptcy.
So an organization whose leaders are devoted to feathering their own nests and to committing violence against the only country in the region that has a functioning economy is in bad financial shape. Imagine that.
Great
Moments in Municipal Government
"The New Orleans City Council on Monday unanimously passed a resolution
calling on the Saints to hire Doug Williams as the team's new coach," the
Associated Press reports:
The resolution urges both Saints owner Tom Benson and general manager Mickey Loomis to give "strong consideration to naming Louisiana's own Doug Williams as the Saints head coach or as a high level administrator within the Saints organization."
We're glad to hear the recovery from Hurricane Katrina is complete, so that New Orleans pols can turn their attention to such important issues as this.
Persons
and Children First
Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, in an otherwise uninteresting San Jose Mercury
News piece whining about some minuscule federal budget cuts, gets tripped up
in politically correct language:
Why would we cut a program that has the sole purpose of helping to ensure that our children's basic financial needs are being met? Irresponsible deadbeat parents are getting off, and this must change. If delinquent parents fully paid their child support, thousands of women and children could be taken off welfare.
How come going after genderless "deadbeat parents" would help only "women" off welfare? Maybe California has kids with more than one mother--you never know what they'll come up with out there--but it seems as though Boxer is trying to be "nonsexist" while also promising to help damsels in distress.
The
Trial Court Mocked Her Hat Too
"Appeals Court in S.F. Dismisses Gennifer Flowers Suit"--headline,
San Jose Mercury News, Jan. 9
The Onion Imitates the Onion
"Marital Frustrations Channeled Through Thermometer"--headline, Onion, Oct. 17, 2001
"Marital Frustrations Channeled Through Thermometer"--headline, Onion, Jan. 4, 2006
Talk
About Your Cockeyed Optimists!
"Calif. Inmate Says He's Too Old, Ill to Die"--headline, USA Today,
Jan. 10
They
Looked in the Right Place
"Man Found Dead in Wahoo Cemetery"--headline, Omaha World-Herald,
Jan. 10
What
Did Most Want?
"Most Wanted Sex Offenders"--headline, WTOL-TV Web site (Toledo, Ohio),
Jan. 9
Imagine
How the Other Guy Felt!
"German Cannibal Finds Biopic in Poor Taste: 'I feel used,' says convict
who ate another man he met online"--headline and subheadline, MSNBC.com,
Jan. 10
Not
Everyone Is Susceptible to Thought
"Bird Flu Spreads to Humans More Easily Than Thought"--headline, Reuters,
Jan. 9
Thanks
for the Tip!--XXXV
"Health Tip: Learn What Triggers Your Head Pain"--headline, HealthDayNews,
Jan. 10
Better
Dead Than Fred
Newsday reports on a bizarre new book called "Who's Fred, Ha!: Silly, but
Fun Stress Relief":
Author David L. Mocknick of Philadelphia says that the name Fred--derived from Frederick, a German name that means "peace ruler"--has curative powers. . . .
Fredding begins when someone "baits" another person by getting him or her to say a word that rhymes with Fred.
When the target--a waitress in a diner who suggests bread when asked for an alternative to rolls, for example--falls into the trap, the Fredder calls out, "Bread! Fred! Who's Fred, ha!"
OK, let's try this: "Ramona, a Zapatista Guerrilla Leader, Is Dead."
Dead! Fred! Who's Fred, ha!
Believe it or not, we do feel better.
(Hat tip: Frank LoPinto.)
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Flanagan, Meredith Dickenson, William Katz, Ed Lasky, Glenn Taubman, Peter August, Steve Jackson, Rod Pennington, Robert Helmbrecht, Joel Griffith, Dave Tinkle, Ronald Marshall, Phil Hord, Bob Krumm, Robert Kolle and Ruth Papazian. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: The real surveillance scandal.
- Brendan Miniter: A would-be majority leader offers some ideas on how to embrace reform without DeLay.
- Brock Yates: Revving up for auto auctions where $100,000 is the low end.
