BY JAMES TARANTO
Who
Put the 'Fat' in 'Fatwa'?
"Fueled by a high-calorie diet, detainees at Guantanamo Bay are becoming
fat," reports the Associated Press:
Most of the prisoners arrived at the military prison in southeast Cuba slightly underweight but have since gained an average of 20 pounds (9 kilograms), and most are now "normal to mildly overweight or mildly obese," Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, spokesman for the detention facilities, said Monday.
One detainee's weight has almost doubled to 410 pounds (186 kilograms), Durand said.
There's this one detainee, Ahmed, and boy is he fat!
(How fat is he?)
He's so fat, when he blows himself up, he blows himself up!
Open
Secrets
Was Speaker Dennis Hastert insufficiently vigilant in dealing with the Mark
Foley problem? Apparently Hastert knew months ago about three emails Foley had
sent to a teenager, which were creepy but not incriminating. Yesterday's editorial
in The Wall Street Journal posed the question:
What next was Mr. Hastert supposed to do with an elected Congressman? Assume that Mr. Foley was a potential sexual predator and bar him from having any private communication with pages? Refer him to the Ethics Committee? In retrospect, barring contact with pages would have been wise.
But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one? . . .
Yes, Mr. Hastert and his staff should have done more to quarantine Mr. Foley from male pages after the first email came to light. But if that's the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant.
The suggestion here is that Hastert and his colleagues were wary of pursuing the matter because they did not want to be accused of a witch hunt against a gay man. The Associated Press reports that the Miami Herald had copies of the emails and did not go with the story for precisely this reason:
"Our decision at the time was . . . that because the language was not sexually explicit and was subject to interpretation, from innocuous to 'sick,' as the page characterized it, to be cautious," said Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Herald. "Given the potentially devastating impact that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay, and lacking any corroborating information, we chose not to do a story."
The Los Angeles Times reports that for years Foley has been "known to have a special interest in younger men," some of whom are actually older boys:
In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, several current and former congressional employees and others said they recalled Foley approaching young male pages, aides and interns at parties and other venues.
"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.
Another former congressional staff member said he too had been the object of Foley's advances. "It was so well known around the House. Pages passed it along from class to class," said the former aide, adding that when he was 18 a few years ago and working as an intern, Foley approached him at a bar near the Capitol and asked for his e-mail address.
All this raises another question: If it was common knowledge that Foley was homosexual, and it was common knowledge among pages that his tastes ran toward boys barely this side of puberty, in what sense can he be said to have been "in the closet"? This wasn't Jim McGreevey, who had an ordinary life with a wife and kids and a secret interest in other men (not boys). Foley might not have shouted from the rooftops that he was gay, but he doesn't seem to have been at pains to keep it hidden either.
CNN reports from West Palm Beach, Fla., on another weird twist in the story:
Foley was molested by a clergyman when he was between the ages of 13 and 15, his attorney said Tuesday amid allegations that the congressman exchanged inappropriate e-mails and instant messages with teen congressional pages. . . .
[David] Roth would not release details of Foley's alleged molestation, saying only that making it public "is part of Mark's recovery" and that Foley would discuss it further when he is released from a center where he's being treated for alcoholism and mental issues. It will be at least 30 days before he is discharged, Roth said.
Roth added that "Mark Foley wants you to know he is a gay man."
We're not sure whether to credit the molested-by-a-priest story, which sounds like an excuse. (In fact, even if it explains Foley's interest in boys, it in no way exonerates him for acting on those impulses.) But for the sake of argument, let's suppose it is true. What are we to make of it?
Roth seems to be implying that Foley's interest in boys is the result of the trauma of having been molested when he was a boy. If so, does this mean that some homosexuals are made rather than born? Or are we to believe that Foley was born gay and would be having "normal" relationships with adult men had he not encountered the pulpitarian pervert?
What all this suggests to us is that human sexuality is vastly more complicated than either traditional morality or liberal dogma will allow.
Jesus Saves. All Others Accumulate Wealth.
On Friday we
noted an Associated Press story full of doom and gloom because consumer
spending was down by 0.1% in August. A reader called our attention to another
AP dispatch, from January, that was sounding alarm bells because consumer
spending was too high:
Americans are spending everything they're making and more, pushing the national savings rate to the lowest point since the Great Depression. . . .
The Commerce Department reported Monday that Americans' personal savings fell into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent last year. That means that people not only spent all of their after-tax income last year but had to dip into previous savings or increase their borrowing.
The savings rate has been negative for an entire year only twice before--in 1932 and 1933--two years when Americans were having to deplete savings to cope with the massive job layoffs and business failures caused by the Great Depression.
As it turns out, the "savings rate" whose low level had the AP so alarmed in January is a meaningless figure. Bankrate.com explains why:
When typical consumers hear "savings," more often than not they think about the portion of money stowed away for safekeeping in a bank or investment account. But to an economist, that emergency cash is not savings, but instead is considered "wealth."
"As an economist, we see savings as the absence of consumption. Wealth is the accumulation of assets," [Keith] Leggett [of the American Bankers Association] says.
By many measures, even with a falling savings rate, U.S. consumers are wealthier than they have ever been.
In addition, Bankrate notes that the income measures used to calculate the spending and savings rates ignore such sources as capital gains and private pension benefits. So the next time you read a story about the alarmingly low savings rate, take it with a grain of salt.
Metaphor
Alert
"Watching Phil Angelides on Fox the other night was like watching a
one man herd of deer caught in all the headlights on the Santa Monica Freeway
simultaneously. Or maybe all the cars streaming out of the USC game,
because he was throwing the 'Hail Marry Pass' of all time to prevent
being swamped by the onrushing Arnold. If elected, our Phil now
pledges to pull California troops out of Iraq unilaterally! Good boy, Phil.
You win the 'nice liberal boy of century medal,' but it ain't
gonna help you win the gubernatorial election one jot. In fact it makes
you seem like a fool, preaching to the choir like some clueless lost
cause, while your opponent bestrides the political center."--blogger
Roger L. Simon, Oct. 3
Glad
They Cleared That Up
"An article on Sept. 17 about the abundance of satire in American culture
referred incorrectly to an episode of 'South Park.' In it, the character Cartman
tricks another child into eating his own parents in a bowl of chili; Cartman
himself does not eat them."--correction, New York Times magazine, Oct. 1
Aha,
They're Not Just Listening to Terrorists!
"Fashion Designer Tapped for Anne Klein Line"--headline, Crain's New
York Business, Oct. 3
Is
That an LP or a 45?
"Ozone Hole Matches Record Size"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 3
Finally,
a Cure
"Cold Cases 'Could Be Solved' With New DNA Testing"--headline, Independent
(London), Oct. 4
'Honest,
Ociffer, I Only Brank One Deer!'
"Surprised Cop Finds Deer in Trunk of Woman's Car"--headline, KGW-TV
Web site (Portland, Ore.), Oct. 3
In
the Dog Days, People Look to Sirius
"Angry Owners Sue L.A. Agency for Failing to Turn Dogs Into Stars"--headline,
KABC-TV Web site (Los Angeles), Oct. 3
They
Never Should Have Let Elephants Marry
"Elephant Kills Man on Honeymoon"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 2
'Nice
Shell You've Got There. Be a Shame if Anything Were to Happen to It'
"Developer Pays Tortoise Protection Fine"--headline, Naples (Fla.)
News, Oct. 4
They're
Good Pack Animals, but No Substitute for a Plane
"Carriers Asses Options on Airbus Delay"--headline, Associated Press,
Oct. 4
Litigation
More Powerful Than Thought
"City Sued for Thinking About Suit"--headline, Columbus Dispatch,
Oct. 4
Bottom Stories of the Day
Et
Tu, Kos?
Markos "Kos" Moulitsas has what some would consider happy news:
My wife and I just got back from the 12-week ultrasound, and seeing that everything looks healthy and normal, I think it's safe to announce that yes, we're about six months away from having our second child.
The due date is early April. And while it's been a rough pregnancy thus far (just like the first), it was great seeing our very active 3-inch baby on a monitor.
Congratulations to the proud parents-to-be. But what, what is this about a 3-inch, 12-week "baby"? Has there ever been a more blatant attempt to undermine Roe v. Wade? It seems the antichoice fanatics have even infiltrated the progressive netroots.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Dan O'Shea, Ethel Fenig, Mara Gold, Ed Lasky, Don Hubschman, Joe Bacon, Ruth Papazian, Lewis Chilton, Chris Scibelli, Steve Breitenbach, Michael Segal, Jeff Techentin, Sam Wakim, Robert Koslover, Charlie Gaylord, Marion Dreyfus, John Neal, Samuel Walker, Dave Englet, Tad Doviak, Michael Newton, Wayne Bowman, Ted Olsen, Steve Weaver, Don Stewart, Bob Levy, Ross McCain, Jerry Rhoden and Dave Feinstein. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
Copyright © 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.