From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Great Minds Think Alike
"You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."--John Kerry*, Oct. 30
"Witnesses say Mr Ahmadinejad also tried to ridicule the students by referring to the university disciplinary code, under which those with three penalty points are suspended from studies. 'He joked that he was going to issue a presidential order for those with three stars to be enlisted as sergeants in the army. That made the students really angry,' said Mr Zamanian."--Guardian (London), Dec. 18
* He didn't mean it! He only said it!
Sheehanoia
Redux
Remember Cindy Sheehan? Neither does anyone else, which we suppose is why the
Associated Press is now putting forward a new "folk hero" for the
"anti-war movement": Rosemarie Jackowski, a diminutive sexagenarian
from Vermont who was arrested in 2003 for disrupting traffic and has been appealing
her conviction ever since. The AP makes her out to be just a regular old lady;
"Vt. Woman Is an Unlikely Peace Activist," reads the headline, and
the story, by John Curran, includes a putative veteran's endorsement:
"She's not a loony toon by any means," said Andrew Schoerke, 73, a retired U.S. Navy captain who was arrested with her. "She's a very down to earth, sensible, caring person with some very strong convictions."
But as blogger Dan Riehl points out, a simple Internet search turns up lots of information the AP leaves out. Her page on SelvesandOthers.org describes her as an "advocacy journalist" and includes links to articles she has written. In "Reparations for Iran," dated Aug. 9, she writes:
The United States owes reparations to the people of Iran. How much should be paid for the 1953 coup? How much is a democracy worth? Here's a thought. Suppose the U.S. gave all of its nuclear weapons to Iran. Would that be a win, win, win scenario? The world would be safer because the only nation that had ever used nukes would no longer have any. The people of Iran would be compensated for the 1953 coup. The U.S. taxpayers would be spared a bill for reparations.
In "Vermont Vets Support Ward Churchill Statement" (June 19), she praises a statement in which the crackpot Colorado "scholar" seemed to endorse terrorism to "get those in power to stop killing Indian children":
When I first saw this Churchill statement on the Mickey Z blog site, my initial reaction was that it was beautifully constructed poetry. Ward Churchill, the gentle poet, that was a new concept. As I read and re-read it over and over, I came to the conclusion that it is one of the most powerful pleas for peace and justice in literature.
Similarly, in a May 20 piece, she likened Churchill to Galileo. She also ran for attorney general last month as the nominee of the far-left Liberty Union Party, according to whose Web site she is also a member of the Socialist Party USA.
This information would seem to be useful in evaluating the AP source's claim that Jackowski is "not a loony toon." And surely it is a refutation of the AP's own claim that she is "an unlikely peace activist." It's hard to think of how she could be any likelier a peace activist.
Curran, the AP's reporter, at best shows a remarkable lack of skepticism about Jackowski's self-packaging as a normal grandma. But this is pretty much par for the course: The press tried to present Cindy Sheehan as a grieving everymom, when in fact she turned out to be an America-hating crackpot. Is it any wonder people don't trust journalists?
A
Sick Senator
Democratic control of the Senate next year may depend on the health of Sen.
Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat who fell ill last week with what turns
out to be an apparently congenital brain malformation. Reuters has the latest:
"Sen. Johnson remains in critical but stable condition, resting. At this point, no news is good news," a spokesman for the senator, Noah Pinegar, said via e-mail. . . .
Doctors have said Johnson will remain hospitalized until his brain swelling subsides and he will need physical therapy for weakness on the right side of his body. They also have not ruled out the possibility of further surgery.
If Johnson's seat becomes vacant, Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, would appoint a replacement to serve until the election in 2008. A physician reader, noting the right-side weakness, emails us:
If he's right-handed, this makes it very likely that his speech or understanding of speech will be very impaired, since both are controlled in the left hemisphere. Whether speech is affected depends on the exact location of the damage, but since the initial problem affected speech, and since they are expecting him to have limb weakness, the chances are quite high that his speech will be impaired.
An earlier Associated Press story contains this nugget:
A person familiar with Johnson's situation said surgery began late on Wednesday night and ended around 12:30 am local time (08:30 GMT) on Thursday and that the next 24 to 48 hours would be critical in determining Johnson's condition.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the senator's family.
Wow, that person must really respect Johnson's family, seeing as how he's willing to give out private information about the senator only if he can hide behind anonymity.
Diversity
Drivel
The Boston Globe reports on a silly new study that purports to reveal something
about race relations in Massachusetts:
Despite the increasing diversity of the population here, the state's black, white, Asian, and Latino residents are living largely separate lives and take a dim view of race relations, according to a poll released today.
At work, in their neighborhoods, and socially, an overwhelming majority of white residents, for example, still interact predominantly with other whites. The survey showed that 61 percent of white respondents said they see "only a few" or no African-Americans in daily life, and 71 percent said they see only a few or no Latinos.
"We have made a great symbolic statement about Massachusetts as a home to diverse people," said Steve Crosby, dean of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, which commissioned the survey along with three think tanks at the University of Massachusetts. "But this data tells us there is still serious work to be done in terms of race relations and conditions for all ethnicities in our community." . . .
According to the survey, African-Americans and Latinos also associate mostly with people of their own race and ethnicity, though they are not as segregated as the white residents. A large majority of Asians also said they interact with few or no African-Americans and Latinos, but they reported seeing more white residents in their daily lives than they do people of their own race.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Massachusetts is 83.4% white, 5.9% black, 4.7% Asian and 7.9% Latino (that last category overlaps with the racial ones). What this means is that if you came in contact with a representative sample of Massachusettsans each day, the vast majority of them (5 out of 6) would be white, while only a few would be black (about 1 in 17), Asian (1 in 21) or Hispanic (1 in 13).
The only finding the Globe describes that departs from this is that "African-Americans and Latinos . . . associate mostly with people of their own race and ethnicity." What sort of "serious work" would Steve Crosby do to prevent them from doing so?
What Would
We Do Without Crash Tests?
"Smaller Cars Perform Poorly in Crash Test"--headline, Associated
Press, Dec. 19
What
Continent Is Alaska On?
"Another report in the Vital Signs column about a study of collisions between
cars and moose misstated a ranking for Maine, where the study was done. It has
the most moose in the continental United States, not the country. (Alaska is
first.)"--correction (last item), New York Times, Dec. 19
They're
Tired of Rooting for the Arizona Cardinals
"Vatican Mulls Fielding Football Team"--headline, Agence France-Presse,
Dec. 18
Let's
See . . . Wings?
"One Key to Bird Flight Discovered"--headline, LiveScience.com, Dec. 18
Smart
Kidnappers, Foolish Choices
"Suspected Smart Kidnapper Yells at Judge"--headline, Associated Press,
Dec. 18
Fitch
Walks Free
"Abercrombie Gets 15 Months"--headline, Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune,
Dec. 18
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Actress Enters Drug Rehab Program"--headline, Associated
Press, Dec. 19
- "City Doesn't Act on Rezoning"--headline, Herald
Times (Manitowoc, Wis.), Dec. 19
- "Sean Penn: Impeach George W. Bush, Dick Cheney"--headline, FoxNews.com,
Dec. 19
- "France Beats a Retreat"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 18
Carno-Vegetarians
A new study shows that smart people are more likely to be vegetarians, reports
HealthDay. But it turns out there's a catch:
"Children who scored higher on IQ tests at age 10 were more likely than those who got lower scores to report that they were vegetarian at the age of 30," Gale said.
The researchers found that 4.5 percent of participants were vegetarians. Of these, 2.5 percent were vegan, and 33.6 percent said they were vegetarian but also ate fish or chicken.
There was no difference in IQ score between strict vegetarians and those who said they were vegetarian but who said they ate fish or chicken, the researchers add.
Luckily for them, the definition of vegetarian wasn't on the test!
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Thomas Brueckner, Bernard Levine, Kyle Kyllan, Michael Segal, Tim Ameigh, Steve Tefft, Jeff Fuller, C.E. Dobkin, Dan O'Shea, Don Hubschman, Tom Colandrea, Mark Finkelstein, Doug Black, Jim Orheim, Brendan O'Scannlain, Michael Zukerman, Thomas Dillon and Fred Furia. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Proposed: The Office of Congressional Buck-Passing.
- Jeremy Lott (from The American Spectator): Wow, Time magazine really is out of touch with the Internet age.
- Ned Crabb: Former boys and their soldier toys.
