From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Islamo-Nazis
During the invasion of 1979-81, Iran's regime at one point released most of
the black and female U.S. hostages it was holding at the embassy in Tehran.
This presumably was a clumsy effort to curry favor with the politically correct
left by practicing a bizarre sort of affirmative action.
The mad mullahs who run Iran are responding quite differently to the publication of supposedly outrageous cartoons in a Danish newspaper, as the Guardian reports:
Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust. . . .
Hamshari is owned by Tehran city council and its plan follows a string of anti-Zionist statements by Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in the second world war as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."
Farid Mortazavi, the paper's graphics editor, said the cartoons would be published to test the argument of western newspapers which have cited freedom of expression in printing the prophet Muhammad images.
"The western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," Mr Mortazavi said.
The Iranians have a small point here. In some European countries, it is in fact illegal to deny the Holocaust or otherwise disseminate Nazi propaganda. Such a prohibition would be virtually unthinkable in America, with its robust tradition of free speech. But it's understandable in Europe, where, within living memory, Nazi propaganda incited horrific violence on a massive scale.
What the Iranian newspaper's stunt should underscore is that the closest counterpart today to the Nazi Party is not those who mock the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. It is, rather, the radical Islamists who have used that mockery as a pretext for anti-Semitism and incitement of violence.
We'll
Take That as a 'Yes'
"They want to test our feelings. They want to know whether Muslims are extremists
or not. Death to them and to their newspapers."--"protester"
Mawli Abdul Qahar Abu Israra in Afghanistan, quoted by the BBC, Feb. 6
We
Told You So
"Remember when the images from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were
going to awaken Americans to the need to address yawning inequalities of race
and class, etc.?" asks blogger Mickey Kaus. He answers by quoting Democratic
pollster Celinda Lake from a presentation at the liberal Center
for American Progress (PDF, quote on page 12):
Katrina did not add much to this dialogue, and certainly the post--we could have a whole symposium on the post-Katrina environment and how that may or may not have worked to actually promote a constructive dialogue in this country on race. People very quickly got off any kind of analysis that Katrina was due to race and the patterns of Katrina were due to race.
And when we try to test that, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago, in focus groups, people said--white people said, "Well, hey, it was an African-American mayor. It was a black mayor. It was just incompetence. It was corruption. It had nothing to do with race. A black mayor couldn't get black people out of New Orleans." And so people have really settled back into actually kind of a mean-spirited assessment here. Far from Katrina promoting very much, if anything Katrina is backfiring a little bit.
Lake's findings are fascinating, though not surprising to anyone who read our post-Katrina commentary. But her idea about what constitutes "a constructive dialogue" seems to us misguided. Her focus-groupers' assessment of Ray Nagin is honest, and to our mind accurate--and if the old liberal rituals of black victimhood and white guilt were really constructive, surely they'd have built something by now.
Dear
Belgium and Switzerland, Please Send Chocolate
"Mayor: New Orleans Will Seek Aid From Other Nations"--headline, Reuters,
Feb. 6
Whitewashing
a Black Leader--III
The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer has gotten around to following up on its incomplete
story from last week on NAACP chairman Julian Bond's speech at Fayetteville
State University. Here is what Bond said, according to the Observer:
- "Their [Republicans'] idea of equal rights is the American flag and the
Confederate swastika [sic] flying side-by-side."
- The Bush administration uses Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice "as kinds
of human shields against any criticism of their record on civil rights."
- "Republicans draw their most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics."
There's a 42-megabyte MP3 file of the speech. On the Observer's blog, editorial page editor Tim White defends Bond, sort of:
In this era of mean-spirited political conversation, why should we be surprised when the leader of a civil-rights organization uses the same kind of overheated rhetoric that we hear every day from Democrats and Republicans in Washington?
We should be surprised because the Observer, in its original story on the speech, chose to suppress this information, portraying Bond as engaged in a "fight for equal rights" who had nothing more inflammatory to say than, "We have a president who talks like a populist and governs for the privileged."
It's a backhanded defense to say that a supposed statesman of civil rights is only as bad as a typical Washington pol, but in any case a reader of the Observer would not have known this were it not for the kerfuffle WorldNetDaily started with its inaccurate report of the speech.
(Hat tip: Brendan Loy.)
Rage
in a Cage
"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton struck back today against a Republican
leader's charge on Sunday that if Mrs. Clinton runs for president in 2008, she
might fail because voters dislike 'angry candidates' and 'Hillary Clinton seems
to have a lot of anger,' " the New York Times reports:
Speaking to reporters in a Head Start classroom on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she came to criticize President Bush's new federal budget plan released this morning, Mrs. Clinton was asked about those remarks by Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, on the ABC news program "This Week"
"I would suggest that the Washington Republicans worry about these devastating budget cuts, the confusion and bureaucratic nightmare in the prescription drug benefit -- that that's where they should be spending their time and energy, instead of trying to divert attention away from their many failures and shortcomings," Mrs. Clinton said.
Well aware of Mr. Mehlman's remarks, which appear to be a new line of attack on her by Republican leaders as they look toward 2008, Mrs. Clinton spoke in even tones throughout the news conference. She conveyed her displeasure with temperate phrases, including referring to Mr. Bush's budget priorities as "upside down," that were far less harsh than the sort of language she sometimes uses at political events and campaign fund-raisers.
You can just tell this is killing her. Maybe literally: "Angry people are more likely to sustain injuries serious enough to require emergency medical care," reports USA Today. On the other hand, "the risk is higher for men than women"--so if Hillary finally does let her anger loose, maybe she won't hurt herself as much as Howard Dean did.
Who's
Crying Now?
"A Republican lawmaker who once described Washington's combative U.N. ambassador,
John Bolton, as everything a diplomat should not be, had some kind words for
him while visiting U.N. headquarters on Monday. 'I spend a lot of time with
John on the phone. I think he is really working very constructively to move
forward,' said Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio."--Reuters, Feb. 6
It
Takes a Big Man to Say He's Sorry
"I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances
to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan
lobbying reform legislation were sincere."--Sen. John McCain, open letter
to Sen. Barack Obama, Feb. 6
Metaphor
Alert
"My job is to herd these Republicans. And if I have too many frogs
jumping out of the wheelbarrow as I'm moving down the field, it means
I've gotta be putting people back in."--Sen. Bill Frist, quoted in the Washington
Post, Feb. 5
Prisons
Fill Up Despite Falling Crime Rate!
"Record Sales of Sleeping Pills Are Causing Worries"--headline, New
York Times, Feb. 7
That's
Almost 1/76,425th of a Cent for Every Man, Woman and Child in America!
"The House gave final approval to a measure intended to trim $39 from the
budget deficit over the next five years."--GovernmentGuide.com, Feb. 1
You
Don't Say
"Brains of Young Adults Not Fully Mature"--headline, LiveScience.com,
Feb. 6
Thanks
for the Tip!--XLIV
"Health Tip: Stay Healthy After Menopause"--headline, HealthDayNews,
Feb. 6
News
You Can Use
"Paper Shredders May Hurt Kids' Hands"--headline, WebMD.com, Feb. 6
This
Should Be in Genesis, Not Judges
"Judge to Decide Whether to Halt Ark. Project to Protect Bird"--headline,
Log Cabin Democrat (Conway, Ark.), Feb. 7
Pretty
Soon Skiers Will Be Extinct Too
"Deaths of 5 Skiers Stun Mammoth"--headline, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 6
Bottom
Story of the Day
"Firefighter Twists Ankle While Battling Blaze"--headline, KPRC-TV
Web site (Houston), Feb. 7
'A
Watershed Moment'
Paul Mirengoff, a blogger at Power Line, "is too modest to post any of
the many congratulatory messages we have received regarding his attempt to interview
Senators Kennedy and Durbin [yesterday] afternoon," reports Scott Johnson,
also a blogger at Power Line. Fortunately, Johnson is not too modest; he shares
several of them. Our favorite is from reader Jack Lifton:
If mediocre intellects like Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy, and Joe Biden want to question sitting justices of the federal appellate courts (Roberts and Alito) or a former Chief Justice of a large state Supreme Court (Alberto Gonzales, Texas) with regard to their interpreting decisions of the United States Supreme Court on issues of Constitutional law, then it should be perfectly normal for the press to have members who are top-notch lawyers, such as Paul Mirengoff, to question the Senators.
Unfortunately up until the recent flowering of the blogosphere the mainstream press not only did not hire such luminaries, but it didn't have the ability to select them. Mediocre intellects questioned mediocre intellects.
The blogosphere has raised the ante on professional reporting to a level undreamed of just a few years ago. This is the beginning of the end of intellectual duds winning high office. I cannot wait until persons with the abilities of Paul Mirengoff are posing questions to candidates this fall.
John Hinderaker, yet another Power Line blogger, says of Mirengoff's interview with the two senators, "This may, indeed, have been a watershed moment."
Modest Mirengoff recounts the interview here. It seems the blogosphere has outdone the mainstream media in the one area where we thought the MSM's advantage was insurmountable: self-regard.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ed Lasky, Monty Krieger, Ethel Fenig, Ruth Papazian, Bob Batts, Steve Bartin, Tom Linehan, Amanda Albright-Flynn, Lauren Shniderman, Michael Hopkovitz, Rosanne Klass, Yehuda Hilewitz, John Forsberg, Larry Hau, Debbie Klutz, C.E. Dobkin, Duncan Fox, Carl Lemke, Joseph Lazauskus, Don Walker, Caitlin Davis, Christian Peck, Anne McCaughey, Jena Olsen, Jim Orheim, Leonora LaMantia, David Hyman, John Hartness, Steve Prestegard, Julie Beck, Jamie Extract, Joshua Bowman, Scott Bell, Joseph Tully, J. Kaufman and Mary Tarpey. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Fouad Ajami : The ballot is not infallible, but it has broken the Arab pact with tyranny.
- John Fund: Don Young's Way, Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and other Alaskan money pits.
- Paul Beston: A "Jesus freak" joins a "radical faith community."
