by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 4:09 P.M. EST

Gay-Baiting Giuliani
There's almost a year to go before the presidential election, and already the Angry Left is employing gutter tactics against the Republican front-runner. One ugly theme has emerged:

• "Could the United States, for that matter, elect a cross-dresser? The Rudy Giuliani surge would be comic if its broader implications were not so grave."--James Carroll, Boston Globe, Oct. 29
  
  
• "Rudy's acceptance of Pat Robertson's endorsement is equally foolish. Not only has it made utterly transparent that Giuliani isn't just a cross dresser but also a man capable of practicing the oldest profession as well as any Jezebel . . ."--Gloria Feldt, Puffington Host, Nov. 9
  
  
• " Rudy Giuliani did Hillary imitations, complete with mincing steps and effete hand gestures, looking just like the cross-dresser we know him to be."--Stanley Fish, New York Times Web site, Nov. 11
  
  
• "The old guard, Pat Robertson, has just endorsed the cross-dressing former mayor of New York to defeat what he called Islamic 'blood lust.' "--Andrew Sullivan, Times (London), Nov. 11

They make Giuliani sound like Boy George. In fact, as we've noted, he's more Monty Python, having donned a dress on a couple of occasions purely for comic effect.

It's especially sad to see Andrew Sullivan, who styles himself a champion of gay rights, resort to a rank appeal to homophobia in order to score cheap partisan points.

The Use and Abuse of Children
What do "antiwar" protesters and terrorists have in common? What we have in mind here is a tactical similarity, not an ideological one. The Associated Press reports on a protest in Olympia, Wash., designed to disrupt military shipments through the port there:

On Friday, protesters, including several small children, were able to keep two trucks from leaving the port. Olympia police said the department did not have enough officers available to remove the protesters Friday, and that they were not prepared to physically remove children.

"Protesters," like terrorists, use children as human shields. But doesn't Washington state have laws against child abuse?

Hillary Rodham Butterfield
The New Republic's Michael Crowley reports on Hillary Clinton's media strategy. It would be an understatement to call it heavy-handed; is there such a word as "obese-handed"?

Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers.

Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage.

Wow, a paradox! Seems like just the other day we were reading that more people are in prison, despite the declining crime rate!

Don't worry, though, it turns out that the Clintons' thuggishness is all President Bush's fault: "The Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation."

Yeah, right. Mrs. Clinton must've emulated the Bush approach because it has been so successful in spurring positive coverage.

Donkey Heaven
Howard Dean is as weird as ever, suggests this report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

"This country is not a theocracy," Dean said. "There are fundamental differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party believes that everybody in this room ought to be comfortable being an American Jew, not just an American; that there are no bars to heaven for anybody; that we are not a one-religion nation; and that no child or member of a football team ought to be able to cringe at the last line of a prayer before going onto the field."

It seems to us that just about everybody, regardless of party affiliation, agrees that "everybody in this room"--he was speaking to a gathering of the United Jewish Communities--"ought to be comfortable being an American Jew" and that "we are not a one-religion nation." We're not sure what Dean is getting at with that last point.

But what in the world does he mean when he says "the Democratic Party believes . . . that there are no bars to heaven for anybody"? This is purely a theological question, with no bearing whatever on public policy. It's a matter about which a political party in a secular democracy has no business having an opinion.

Damned Lies and Statistics
"Decades after the civil rights movement, the income gap between black and white families has grown," reports the Associated Press, citing a new Brookings Institution study. How could this be? Have all America's efforts on behalf of civil rights been in vain? Read on:

Incomes have increased among both black and white families in the past three decades--mainly because more women are in the work force. But the increase was greater among whites, according to the study being released Tuesday.

One reason for the growing disparity: Incomes among black men have actually declined in the past three decades, when adjusted for inflation. They were offset only by gains among black women.

Incomes among white men, meanwhile, were relatively stagnant, while those of white women increased more than fivefold.

The main story here has nothing to do with racial inequality--and while the AP presents all the relevant facts, it puts them in no particular order, so that you have to puzzle out what's actually going on. To get a clearer picture, go to the original study and look at Figure 1, on the sixth page of the PDF.

According to this chart, the median personal income for white women in their 30s was $4,021 in 1975. For black women in their 30s it was $12,063. In 2005, the figures were $22,030 for white women and $21,000 for black women.

So black women in 1974--just a decade after the Civil Rights Act--were making three times as much as their white counterparts? How can that be? The footnote gives away the game: "All men and women ages 30-39, including those with no personal income, are included in these estimates."

It seems clear that in 1974 a much higher percentage of black women than white women had paying jobs, and that in the subsequent three decades huge numbers of white women entered the work force. In this sense the real story is a closing of the gap to the detriment of whites, as necessity forces more white women to work.

Lord of the Flies--III
Bob Herbert of the New York Times has joined the internecine war over Ronald Reagan, with a response to David Brooks's defense of the Gipper that does not mention Brooks by name. For the ninth time, Herbert repeats the claim that Reagan was making an appeal to racism when he told a crowd in Mississippi, "I believe in states' rights." Herbert claims:

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans--they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

But Herbert does not give the full quote. As we noted yesterday, what Reagan actually said was:

Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level.

If the meaning Herbert ascribes to Reagan was so clear, why won't Herbert print the entire quote?

And why is anyone arguing about this, more than a quarter century later? Herbert lists a variety of Reagan policies to which he objected:

He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Congress overrode the veto.

Reagan also vetoed the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Congress overrode that veto, too.

Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people.

Whatever the merits of these particular issues, they all have one thing in common: Reagan lost on each one of them. (On the holiday for Dr. King, he gave in, signing legislation creating it, something even former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who went to work for Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers after Reagan spoke in favor of states' rights in Mississippi, acknowleges--though Herbert does not.)

What does all this mean? One or both of the following two things: (1) Reagan's "wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited" views on racial matters were not a high priority to him, or (2) the issue of civil rights was so deeply settled by the 1980s that even a popular president, who was effective on many other matters, was unable to have any sway whatever.

In either case, the vituperativeness of the attacks on Reagan now--almost two decades after he left office--is hard to understand. Part of it, we suppose, is a matter of nursing historical grudges. But part of it too is an effort by people like Herbert and Krugman at guilt by association--an attempt to appropriate the moral authority of the civil rights movement to discredit the views of Reagan's ideological heirs on issues that are pertinent today. That they should resort to such tactics surely is a sign of intellectual weakness.

Wannabe Pundits
Here's a new approach to this feature. Fill in the blank:

The ____ are a lot like the current President of the United States. They think that if they keep repeating their lies and half-truths and remind people who they are enough times, people will buy into what they're selling. According to one poll, only 21 percent of the American people are buying what President Bush is selling, but it sure took a long time and lot of deaths to get there.

The answer: "BCS Presidents." The author is John Feinstein of WashingtonPost.com (whose byline is misspelled "Feistein"). We're not sure what "BCS Presidents" are, but it has something to do with college football.

Now try this one, from the Daily Times of Wilson, N.C.:

Maybe it's yet another sign of global warming, but ____ are slightly down this year.

Arctic ice levels? Home heating bills? Nope, "applications to be in the Wilson Jaycees Christmas Parade"!

Why Do They Work if They Can't Support Themselves?
"Obama: U.S. Doesn't Support Working Women"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 12

'Time and Tide Wait for No Man'--Ed Norton
"For Injured Soldiers, New Clothes From Volunteer Sewers"--headline, Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 13

It Said, 'I'm Melting! I'm Melting!'
"Talking Snow in Yancey County"--headline, Asheville (N.C.), Citizen-Times, Nov. 13

Slower Than Wha . . . Oh Look! A Squirrel!
"Study: ADHD Kids' Brain Areas Develop Slower"--headline, CNN.com, Nov. 12

They Still Prefer Doughnuts
"NJ School Cameras Fed Live to Cops"--headline, WCBS-TV Web site (New York), Nov. 12

Help Wanted
" 'Well-Organized' Serial Bank Robbers Sought"--headline, News-Record (Greensboro, N.C.), Nov. 13

News You Can Use

• "Best to Use Tools When Loosening Lug Nut"--headline, Associated Press, Nov. 12
  
  
• "Not All Teenage Seniors Are as Lazy as Some People Think"--headline, Bradenton (Fla.) Herald, Nov. 12
  
  
• "Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say"--headline, New York Times, Nov. 13

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "No Clock Ticking Here"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 12
  
  
• "Heather Mills Names New PR Adviser"--headline, Reuters, Nov. 12
  
  
• "Accountants Will Meet in Lakeland"--headline, News Chief (Winter Haven, Fla.), Nov. 13

The Space Race
SpaceTrader.com is the official Web site of the gift shop at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. One of the toys you can buy there is the "woman astronaut figure":

This 11.5" doll comes outfitted in an astronaut jumpsuit and includes functional space luggage. All packed in a pink backpack. Official decals of NASA logo and STS-107 crew patch adorn the luggage case. Also available in African-American.

That is, you can buy a doll that looks black. NASA is catering to the widespread belief that black dolls are good for black children's self-esteem, and by using the term "African-American," NASA is trying to be politically correct.

It needs to try harder. If the "black" doll is "African-American," what is the "white" doll? "American"! Seriously, that's what the drop-down menu on the Web site says. Do we really need to explain that African-Americans are American too? C'mon, guys, this isn't exactly rocket science.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to John Nernoff, Frank Piskolich, Geoff Gill, Ethel Fenig, Richard Waldron, Ed Lasky, Jared Silverman, David Forsmark, Will Tysse, Mark Youngkin, Donald Jacobs, John Covil, Ray Hendel, Jerome Burke, Gerald Stanley, Bruce Goldman, Charles Murphy, Jeff Dobbs, Doug Black, Jay Povlin, Steve Prestegard, Ed Jordan and David Chamberlin. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: A Treasury study refutes populist hokum about "income inequality."
• Bret Stephens: What's it like to be Pervez Musharraf?
• Daniel Ford: Minutes in World War II took a toll comparable to that of months in Iraq.