From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 3:46 P.M. EDT

Wanted: Chicken Sexers
Yet another ultraliberal woman has been won over by John Edwards's womanly charms: his spouse, Elizabeth Edwards. In an interview with Salon, Mrs. Edwards suggests that Mrs. Clinton is more mannish than Mr. Edwards:

When I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you're as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women's issues. I'm sympathetic--she wants to be commander in chief. But she's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is. And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, "Support me because I'm a woman," and I want to say to her, "Well, then support me because I'm a woman." The question is not so much how she campaigns--that's theater. The question is, what does her campaign tell you about how she'll govern? And I'm not convinced she'd be as good an advocate for women.

Taking a slight liberty with the quote, the Drudge Report ran (and later changed) the banner:

GENDER BENDER: WIFE EDWARDS SAYS HILLARY 'BEHAVING LIKE A MAN'

This put Salon editrix Joan Walsh, who conducted the interview, on the defensive:

I knew Edwards was making news when she criticized Clinton, but she was definitely not calling her a man, which is one of the GOP's favorite slurs against Hillary Clinton. This is the last, best hope of the Republicans to hold onto the White House: To brand the leading candidate, who happens to be female, as too mannish, while slurring the leading men--John Edwards and Barack Obama--as girly.

We remember reading such slurs in an article just last week:

In a few words, this Iowa voter had epitomized the struggle now playing out between the top two Democrats nationally. They are fighting for undecided female voters who are attracted by Obama's feminine appeal, but still drawn to the macho performance of the only woman to ever have a real shot at the Oval Office.

May the best woman win.

The author of that piece, Salon's Michael Scherer, didn't even hazard a guess as to whether Edwards was male or female. If you believe what you read in Salon, it takes a chicken sexer to keep the Democrats straight.

The Democratic Bubble
With just 476 days to go until the 2008 election, we have a feeling the Democrats are getting overconfident. True, President Bush is highly unpopular, but he isn't seeking re-election, and the vice president isn't running either--the first completely open race since 1952. True, too, the Democrats did very well in 2006, but that isn't necessarily a portent; and indeed it argues that at least in House races the Dems will be defending more marginal seats.

The Democrats are particularly vulnerable to overconfidence because the "mainstream media" are on their side and tend to be insufficiently critical. (We explained how this hurt John Kerry in an article for The American Spectator two years ago.) Today we noted a couple of examples of credulous media puffery of Democrats.

The first is a New York Times piece, titled "Obama's Camp Cultivates Crop in Small Donors." We've heard this before, of course--but when you read the Times piece, however, it turns out that the numbers are inflated:

Just moments before he arrived [at a $2,300-a-plate fund-raiser in San Francisco], Mr. Obama had said goodbye to a less exclusive crowd of 10,000 that had gathered to hear him speak across the bay in Oakland. They paid nothing to hear him, but spent $40,000 on Obama T-shirts, baseball caps, buttons and other knickknacks. And the Obama campaign registered each of the purchasers as one of the record 258,000 contributors it signed up in the first six months of the year. . . .

To capitalize on his celebrity, Mr. Obama's campaign has . . . employed novel tactics--like counting sales of $5 speech tickets or $4.50 Obama key chains as individual contributions--to pump up his numbers and transform grass-roots enthusiasm into more useful forms of support. No other campaign is known to have listed paraphernalia sales as donations.

This doesn't seem fraudulent, but it sure is cynical.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times suggests that the Democratic candidates are appealing across party lines:

After watching the top five Democratic candidates for president speak before a trial lawyers' group Sunday, attorney Jim Ronca of Philadelphia, a staunch Republican, became certain of one thing: He is not going to vote Republican in the 2008 presidential election.

He will support the Democrats.

"I'm not only going to vote Democratic, I'm going to financially support the Democrats," Ronca said after a luncheon forum of the American Association for Justice, featuring Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Joe Biden. "The Republicans in Washington are an embarrassment."

Here is a list of Ronca's campaign contributions from the last four election cycles:

  • 2006: $500 to Bob Casey, Democratic candidate for Senate.

  • 2004: $2,000 each to John Edwards and John Kerry, Democratic candidates for president; $1,000 to Allyson Schwartz, Democratic candidate for the House.

  • 2002: $500 to Arlen Specter, Republican senator.

  • 2000: $1,000 to Ron Klink, Democratic candidate for Senate; $250 to Patrick Casey, Democratic candidate for the House; $250 to Stewart Greenleaf, Republican candidate for the House.

So Ronca has given $6,750 to Democrats, nine times as much as the $750 he has given Republicans; and his most recent GOP donation was three elections ago. That is what the Chicago Sun-Times calls a "staunch Republican"? Seems to us there are probably stauncher ones.

Short and to the Point
Many readers wrote us in response to yesterday's item on the declining relative physical stature of Americans vis-à-vis Europeans hypothesizing that if Americans have become shorter, it is because of the ethnic diversity attendant to being a nation of immigrants. The evidence would seem to back up this theory. According to tables based on the Centers for Disease Control's Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted between 1988 and 1994, the median height of a 40-year-old man was:

The "other" category includes Asian-Americans, Indians, Eskimos and non-Mexican Hispanics.

But this is all the AP story had to say about ethnicity and height:

Komlos' most recent data indicate a small uptick in the heights of white Americans born between 1975 and 1983, a suggestion that the gap may finally be closing. But there has been no similar increase among blacks, a suggestion that inequality may indeed play a significant role in the height gap.

In another recent paper, Komlos and Lauderdale also found height inequality between American urbanites and residents of suburbs and rural areas. In Kansas, for example, white males are about as tall as their European peers; it's big cities like New York, where men are about 1.75 inches shorter than that, that drag America's average down.

If our readers' hypothesis is true, you would expect a place like New York, which has a high proportion of immigrants and members of nonblack minorities, to have shorter people than a predominantly pallid Plains state like Kansas. But the AP reporter apparently felt constrained to discuss ethnic disparities explicitly only in ways that fit acceptable media stereotype--e.g., black people as victims of "inequality."

Great Moments in Higher Education
"The longtime chairman of the Roger Williams University board admitted Monday that he had used the N-word during a board meeting, saying it 'kind of slipped out,' " the Associated Press reports from Providence, R.I.:

"I apologized for that," Ralph Papitto said in an interview on WPRO-AM. "What else can I do? Kill myself?"

Apparently the word he used was "nappy":

Barbara Roberts, then a board member, said Papitto became irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, at one point using the slur to refer to black candidates.

She said he then told the board he knew he couldn't say that because of Don Imus, the radio host who was fired after referring to Rutgers University women's basketball team members as "nappy-headed hos." . . .

He said he had never used the term before.

"The first time I heard it was on television and then rap music or something," Papitto told WPRO.

The link above includes a photo of Papitto, who doesn't look like the typical rap listener. (He's 80.) Papitto has left the Roger Williams board, but he says his resignation, in the AP's words, "was based on his age and his desire to spend more time with his family. He denied a newspaper report that he was forced out over the racial epithet."

Meanwhile, the Detroit Free Press reports on another higher-ed scandal:

School officials on Monday fired Eastern Michigan University President Jim Fallon, and accepted the separations of the college's Department of Public Safety Chief Cindy Hall, and James Vick, vice president of student affairs, months after top school officials were accused of covering up the rape and slaying of a student by publicly ruling out foul play, school officials said. . . .

The key findings in an 18-page U.S. Department of Education report said the school failed to report in a timely manner such crimes as rape, alcohol, drug and weapons violations.

The report came following an investigation of how the university responded to the death in December of Laura Dickinson, 22, of Hastings.

The U.S. Department of Education report said the university failed to alert the public of the rape and killing of Laura Dickinson, and that it violated federal law by underreporting and misreporting other crimes on campus since 2003.

Reliable Sources
President Bush "made a brief surprise visit" to a White House meeting yesterday between Republican congressional staffers and his own aides, the Associated Press reports:

"He said, 'We have to do this,' " the attendee said, referring to stabilizing Iraq. The attendee spoke anonymously because the meeting was intended to be private.

Since the reporter isn't giving the source's name, why not describe his motives accurately: The attendee spoke anonymously so as to evade responsibility for betraying a confidence.

Wannabe Pundits

Terrific movie, Sicko. You can nitpick little factoid problems with MichaelMoore's [sic] story of health care being better in most of the free world (and some of the non-free world too) if you wish, but you'd be overlooking the guts of the story: that for the richest country in the world, our health care system is full of holes. And the disgrace of Los Angeles hospitals dumping indigent patients on the street long before they're ready to be discharged ... to watch that and not be outraged, you've got to be comatose.

That's Sports Illustrated's Peter King in his "Monday Morning QB" column--though in fairness to King, this appears in a section of the column devoted to "non-football thoughts." In addition to a pundit and a movie critic, King evidently aspires to be a baseball writer, a TV critic, a travel writer and a restaurant critic. You've got to admire ambition like that.

How Disarming
"Plagued by high homicide rates, officials in the U.S. capital said Monday they will petition the Supreme Court as they seek to defend Washington's 30-year-old ban on most handguns," the Associated Press reports from Washington.

Well, that makes sense. After all, homicide rates in Washington were very low until 4 1/2 months ago, when a lower court struck down the ban.

Fox Butterfield Is on Vacation
From a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece by Ezra Klein:

Every other advanced economy offers a government guarantee of paid vacation to its workforce. Britain assures its workforce of 20 days of guaranteed, compensated leave. . . . We guarantee zero. Absolutely none. That's why one out of 10 full-time American employees, and more than six out of 10 part-time employees, get no vacation. . . . This is strange. Of all these countries, the United States is, by far, the richest.

What's even more bizarre is that prisons keep filling up even though crime is decreasing!

What Would We Do Without Reports?
"Report Says al-Qaida Seeks to Attack U.S."--headline, Associated Press, July 17

Drinking and Petting Don't Mix

Rap Is Worse
"Country Urged to Rein In Vulgar, Sexist TV Ads"--headline, Reuters, July 16

If Not, She'll Demand a Refund
"Wife Could Get Death in Murder-for-Hire"--headline, Associated Press, July 17

At Least Until Rigor Mortis Subsides
"Man Who Was Killed Keeping a Stiff Upper Lip"--headline, Daily Mail (London), July 17

The Yankees Are Looking to Sign the Thrower
"Texan Injured When Rock Thrown at Taxi in Pittsburgh"--headline, KCEN-TV Web site (Waco, Texas), July 16

Breaking News From 1775
"Youngsters Enlisting in Gen. Washington's Army"--headline, Times (Trenton, N.J.), July 17

News You Can Use

  • "Humans Walk Upright to Conserve Energy"--headline, Associated Press, July 16

  • "The Truth Is, We Can't Ignore the Sun"--headline, Sunday Telegraph (London), July 15

Bottom Story of the Day
"Fmr. Ambassador Joseph Wilson Endorses Clinton"--headline, press release, HillaryClinton.com, July 16

The Clinton Defense
"A 28-year-old Beeville [Texas] man accused of molesting a 6-year-old girl last summer was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday," reports the Beeville Bee-Picayune:

Ten of the jurors wanted to give Edward Lee Robinson more time behind bars but one juror didn't believe oral sex constituted sex. "We really wanted him to get more time but I guess we have to be satisfied with 10 years because one juror insisted on no more than five years," said Assistant District Attorney Deborah Branch. "She didn't think oral sex was sex."

It seems Bill Clinton's legacy is secure.

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