From the WSJ Opinion Archives
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Missed
'Er Souljah
In June 2006, we said that Hillary Clinton might have had her first "Sister
Souljah moment." Sister Souljah (not a real nun) was the rap singer whose
comments about killing whitey Bill Clinton criticized during the 1992 campaign.
Clinton thereby infuriated Jesse Jackson but looked to other people as if he
was willing to stand up to Jackson. Mrs. Clinton had told a liberal group that
she opposed a "timetable" for surrendering in Iraq, drawing "boos
and hisses" from a liberal audience.
Now Mrs. Clinton is being criticized from both the left (Richard Cohen) and the right (Seth Gitell) for missing a Sister Souljah moment last week. The Souljah figure is MoveOn.org, which published a McCarthyite ad about Gen. David Petraeus in the New York Times. Says Cohen:
The MoveOn.org ad was the moment for Clinton to rise above hackdom. It was a moment for her to insist that the business of politics, not to mention governing, is made even uglier and more difficult when people who merely differ with one another resort to insult. It was a moment for her to say that an Army general, under orders and attempting to fulfill a mission, should not be so casually trashed--especially since she herself has been on the other side of the Iraq War issue and said things she must now regret. And it was a moment for her to trot out her favorite phrase ["the politics of personal destruction"] and use it, not in her own defense for once, but in defense of someone else. That moment is gone now--maybe because for Hillary Clinton it never arrived in the first place.
It's worse than that, though. Mrs. Clinton not only didn't denounce the ad; she echoed it, albeit in politer terms--and gave prospective November opponent Rudy Giuliani an opportunity to produce a very effective ad comparing and contrasting Mrs. Clinton's ugly remarks with MoveOn.org's uglier ones. It may be that Mrs. Clinton does not have her husband's political ease.
Two,
Four, Six, Eight--That's How Many People Showed Up
Yesterday we
complained about what we dubbed as the "angry hippie whitewash"--i.e.,
the tendency of news reporters to treat the "antiwar" movement as
both bigger and more normal than it actually is. So cheers to the Sacramento
News & Review, a self-described "independent alternative" publication,
for getting the story right. Jaime O'Neill reports:
The editor of SN&R made a bad call. As a freelance writer, I pitched my services to cover a peace rally on the west steps of the state Capitol building last Friday, September 7, and the editor went for it.
As it turned out, there wasn't much of a story there, but it was impossible to tell in advance that the event would be such a flop. . . .
Without a trace of irony, one of the first speakers at the event shouted into the microphone, "This is what democracy looks like," and then tried to lead the pathetically small crowd in chanting those words, but the effort died. There may, however, have been more truth than poetry in the observation. When it comes to imposing the popular will on the people who are in charge, this exercise in pissing up a rope just might be what democracy looks like these days, at least as it's practiced in the United States of America.
An hour into the event, a woman passed me with a disappointed look on her face and said, "This is pitiful."
And it was. "We are not insignificant," a speaker read from his prepared speech, but the numbers assembled before him gave lie to his words. And the repeated references to the will of the people seemed pointedly indifferent to the fact of the rather listless group that milled around, carrying the same sorts of banners and placards that might have been seen a couple of generations ago in much larger and much younger gatherings.
Read the whole thing--it's the feel-good story of the season!
'Too
Many Americans Are Asleep'
The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun reports on an appearance by John Kerry*
at the University of Florida:
Much of his speech . . . was devoted to the war in Iraq. Kerry condemned the lack of diplomacy used by the Bush administration in Iraq and urged the audience to take notice of the damage that has done to the U.S.
"Too many Americans are asleep," Kerry said.
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Oh, sorry, we fell asleep at the keyboard again. We guess Kerry has a point. The Associated Press reports on something else that happened at the Kerry event:
A University of Florida student with a history of taping his own practical jokes was Tasered by campus police Monday and arrested after loudly and repeatedly trying to ask U.S. Sen. John Kerry questions during a campus forum. . . .
Videos of the Monday night incident, posted on several Web sites and played repeatedly on television news, show officers pulling [Andrew] Meyer away from the microphone after he asks Kerry about impeaching President Bush and whether he and Bush were both members of the secret society Skull and Bones at Yale University. . . .
As Kerry tells the audience he will answer the student's "very important question," Meyer yells at the officers to release him, crying out, "Don't Tase me, bro," just before he is shocked by the Taser. He is then led from the room, screaming, "What did I do?"
Give Meyer credit--he figured out how to stay awake through a John Kerry speech.
* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam.
Constitution
Shmonstitution
Congress is considering legislation that would give the District of Columbia
a House seat--notwithstanding the Constitution's provision that House members
"shall be composed of Members chosen every second year by the People of
the several States." Surprise, surprise, the New York Times supports the
measure:
Opponents continue to raise constitutional issues about the district's not being a full-fledged state; proponents offer counterarguments about Congress's long history of dominating, even dictating, the city's precise political freedoms. This will likely end up in the courts, but what could be closer to the ideals of America's democracy than giving D.C. taxpayers their long-denied representation?
As reader John Steele Gordon writes, "How about obeying the fundamental law of the land?"
You've also got to love that line about the district "not being a full-fledged state"--as if there's some sort of intermediate state short of statehood.
ButterfieldSelect
The New York Times is ending its paid TimesSelect service, meaning that the
work of the paper's columnists will be available free on the Web. They're still
overcharging for Krugman, Dowd and Rich, but they're also giving away something
genuinely valuable: access to the paper's archives since 1987 and before 1923.
The Times's own report on the move has a funny observation:
Many readers lamented their loss of access to the work of the 23 news and opinion columnists of The Times--as did some of the columnists themselves. Some of those writers have such ardent followings that even with access restricted, their work often appeared on the lists of the most e-mailed articles.
Maybe those articles are emailed because that's the only way to get them to people who don't have TimesSelect.
Low
Countries at Low, Low Prices
Someone put Belgium up for bid on eBay, and someone else bid $17 million for
it, Agence France-Presse reports. But there was bad news for the winning bidder:
eBay canceled the auction. "A spokesman for the online auctioneer says
it cannot host the sale of anything virtual or unrealistic." We've been
to Belgium, and that's a pretty good description of the place.
Little
Green M&Ms
"Mars Says No to Changing Chocolate"--headline, Associated Press,
Sept. 17
'Bob
Dole Wasn't Scared of Any Salad Mix!'
"Dole Recalls Salad Mix in E. Coli Scare"--headline, Associated Press,
Sept. 18
'Don't
Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out'
"Blunt Statement on Retirement of Rep. Jim Ramstad"--headline, press
release, office of Rep. Roy Blunt, Sept. 18
Larry Craig
Should Have Been Disqualified
"Men Lose in Public-Restroom Cleanliness Contest"--headline, Arizona
Daily Star (Tucson), Sept. 18
Help
Wanted
"Porn Star Sought for WSU Sorority Sex Assault"--headline, Associated
Press, Sept. 18
Breaking
News From 1924
"NHL Schedules First U.S. Game"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 17
Breaking
News From 1930
"Depression Pushes Middle-Aged Workers to Retire"--headline, HealthDay,
Sept. 17
Breaking
News From 2001
"Palestinian Authority Celebrates 9-11 Terror Attacks"--headline,
Palestinian Media Watch, Sept. 17
News You Can Use
- "Revealed: The Secret to True Happiness"--headline, Daily
Mail (London), Sept. 18
- "Mammoth Dung, Prehistoric Goo May Speed Warming"--headline, Reuters,
Sept. 18
- "Got Crocs? Be Careful on the Escalator"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 17
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Rapper 50 Cent Says He Likes Clinton"--headline, CNN.com,
Sept. 18
- "LAKE REGION STATE COLLEGE: Basketball Coach Waits All Night for Bill
Clinton to Autograph Book"--headline, Associated
Press, Sept. 17
- "Sources Claim Barry Manilow Lying About 'View' Boycott"--headline,
omg.yahoo.com,
Sept. 17
- "Local Rabbi Thinks Michael Mukasey Perfect for AG Job"--headline, Daily News (New York), Sept. 18
Judgment
Day
"A federal appeals court panel has refused to reinstate a lawsuit brought
against Caterpillar Inc. by the family of a 23-year-old [terror advocate] crushed
to death by an Israeli bulldozer," the Associated Press reports. Rachel
Corrie would have been 28 by now had she not died in the accident that she herself
caused. "The three 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges unanimously
ruled that the lawsuit presented foreign policy questions best left to the White
House," the AP adds.
So what now for the plaintiffs? Here's an idea, courtesy of KETV in Omaha, Neb.:
State Sen. Ernie Chambers is suing God. He said on Monday that it is to prove a point about frivolous lawsuits. . . . "Thus anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody--even God," Chambers said.
Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.
Maybe the Corrie family can sue God too, claiming that the law of gravity violated Rachel's civil rights. The good thing about suing God, too, is that you're unlikely to lose at trial. Eventually he always settles out of court.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Steve Karass, Ed Lasky, Brad Doyle, Jeff Meling, Richard Haisley, Dan O'Shea, Brooks Mick, Jeff Dobbs, Robert Paci, Scott Siegel, Jeff Hunter, Charlie Gaylord, Marc Tarrasch, Steve Prestegard, Paul Dyck, Alan Jones, John Williamson, Bryan Fischer, Steve Thom, Andy Hefty, Rex Pilger, Wright Truesdell, Joel McLemore, Paul Gross, James Carr, Brian Hightower, Mike Granoff, Glen Leinbach, Thomas Beverly, Brendan Schulman, Ronald Morris, Stefan Sharkansky, Joseph Kaufman, Peter Iorio, Naftali Friedman, Lyle Katz, Paul Wood, Dan Benton, Evan Slatis, Bradford Davis, John Zimmerman, Jerry Rhoden, David Benzion, Dan McLaughlin, Michael Throop, Paul Stewart, Dennis Kennedy, Michael Connally, Monty Krieger, Michael Segal, Lawrence Weiss, Wes Workman, William Katz, Bill Gnade, Brenda Becker, Jared Silverman, Jacob Kaplan, Bill Vis, Ken Summers, Robert Elworth and Steve Grohovsky. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Earth to Washington: Mukasey fits the job. Don't screw up this one.
- Bret Stephens: Osirak II? Israel's silence on Syria speaks volumes.
- Karl Rove: Republicans can win on health care.
