Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Monday, May 30, 2005
Remembering the Color Red
[Today is Memorial Day, and there is much to remember, and much for which to be grateful. Today is a Thanksgiving Day of sorts, a day of gratitude for heroism, strategic genius, strength, and even death. Not senseless death, not ruthless genius, not heroism based on lies; but the noblest acts of the human spirit, which always manifest themselves in risk and sacrifice.]
©Bill Gnade
You've seen the flag, thousands of times, or perhaps too many times to count. It's arguably a gaudy piece of fabric, like so many strips of cloth pasted together, with staid geometry. It's the sort of thing a child might make, and hardly the kind of thing one would expect of an artist. Picasso would not come up with such a design, nor would Pollack or Warhol or Wyeth. It's a child's creation, it seems, deliberate and direct. A stick figure of simple ideas.
What are those ideas? Thirteen stripes for thirteen colonies; fifty stars of fifty states floating in a blue field of vigilance, perseverance and justice; white for purity and innocence, red for hardiness and courage.
It's all pretty simple.
But the dominating color of the flag is not justice blue or innocent white; it is the hardy, courageous red, the red of bloodshed, of bloody knuckles, barked shins, and bulleted bodies. It is the red of bellicosity, of fighting heartily and hardily, with courage and pride, for what is blue and white, for the pure and innocent; the vigilant and the just.
It is only sensible that red dominates, as this country is built on the blood of others, countless, mostly faceless and nameless others, who fought and died for ideals we are free to mock and rebuke in legal and social safety, if we choose. We are free to live because others freely died; their loss being our gain, and therefore their gain as well.
Any living thing on this planet stands in and is rooted in death, in the bloodshed and battles of life. The giant pines outside my windows grip the earth in their sinewy, rooty grasp, rooted in the life-giving death and decay which is soil. There is no escaping the fact that everything alive is alive because of countless deaths, countless invisible battles for survival. America's ideals stand tall quietly sipping the blood of the buried ages past.
So the flag is red, blood red, and there is no white purity or blue vigilance without that bold, primary color.
Currently, blood, American military blood is dripping in desert sand in a far-away land. It is being bound and mopped up in pure white gauze with blue vigilance, but it is dripping nonetheless. What comfort is there to the dead and wounded if we, as many Americans do, tell them that we support them as heroes yet the reason for their heroism is stupid or a lie or illegal? What meaning does it give an amputee or quadripelegic or blind man, to tell him or her that, though honored for losing some part of his or her life, they did so for deception? What sense is there in such paradox - that a man is a hero for doing the immoral or false thing?
"Oh, I support the troops, I just don't support the war."
It's not unlike telling your child that you support his interest in playing baseball, but you just don't support the game. You find the game stupid, immoral, illegal, dishonest --but-- you support his participation. Yes, you just love your daughter's interest in the cello, you just think the cello and Beethoven and Bach are all lies and abuses of power.
One wonders how such parents can cheer at baseball games, or applaud at the end of cello recitals. Most parenting experts would consider such duplicity bad parenting, sending out the double-binds of mixed messages. It would be considered, undoubtedly, by astute therapists, to even be a form of child abuse.
Consider, though, this possibility to frame an allegedly unjust war. Consider that our soldiers were sent in to battle as antibodies are sent into fight infection; or that they are sent in as scalpels to remove a malignancy. And what if they discover there is no infection or malignancy? Would the doctors who sent them in be considered fools, primarily when all the evidence, and even the patient, points to a considerable problem? Would it all be for naught if the reasons were empty and vain?
No, for the precise reason that when the scalpels opened the patient's body, and the antibodies coursed through her veins, other tumors were discovered and removed, and other infections subdued. Doctors could then be heard telling their patient afterwards, "Well, the scans showed a tumor on your liver and an abscess on your bladder, but when we opened you up, we discovered our mistake: You had a malignancy on your stomach and an abscess on your spleen."
For sure countless folks might be tempted to yell out, "Liars! Cheats! Surgery-mongers! You went in on false pretenses. You fudged the MRI data, you fixed the diagnostics around preconceived ideas!" But they'd be fools.
Today remember what it is that makes protest possible, and what it is that makes Thanksgiving necessary. It's Memorial Day. Remember.
Remember that it is a red day for a reason. And, lest we forget, let us remember too that all the states were red in the very beginning.
Peace.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade
You've seen the flag, thousands of times, or perhaps too many times to count. It's arguably a gaudy piece of fabric, like so many strips of cloth pasted together, with staid geometry. It's the sort of thing a child might make, and hardly the kind of thing one would expect of an artist. Picasso would not come up with such a design, nor would Pollack or Warhol or Wyeth. It's a child's creation, it seems, deliberate and direct. A stick figure of simple ideas.
What are those ideas? Thirteen stripes for thirteen colonies; fifty stars of fifty states floating in a blue field of vigilance, perseverance and justice; white for purity and innocence, red for hardiness and courage.
It's all pretty simple.
But the dominating color of the flag is not justice blue or innocent white; it is the hardy, courageous red, the red of bloodshed, of bloody knuckles, barked shins, and bulleted bodies. It is the red of bellicosity, of fighting heartily and hardily, with courage and pride, for what is blue and white, for the pure and innocent; the vigilant and the just.
It is only sensible that red dominates, as this country is built on the blood of others, countless, mostly faceless and nameless others, who fought and died for ideals we are free to mock and rebuke in legal and social safety, if we choose. We are free to live because others freely died; their loss being our gain, and therefore their gain as well.
Any living thing on this planet stands in and is rooted in death, in the bloodshed and battles of life. The giant pines outside my windows grip the earth in their sinewy, rooty grasp, rooted in the life-giving death and decay which is soil. There is no escaping the fact that everything alive is alive because of countless deaths, countless invisible battles for survival. America's ideals stand tall quietly sipping the blood of the buried ages past.
So the flag is red, blood red, and there is no white purity or blue vigilance without that bold, primary color.
Currently, blood, American military blood is dripping in desert sand in a far-away land. It is being bound and mopped up in pure white gauze with blue vigilance, but it is dripping nonetheless. What comfort is there to the dead and wounded if we, as many Americans do, tell them that we support them as heroes yet the reason for their heroism is stupid or a lie or illegal? What meaning does it give an amputee or quadripelegic or blind man, to tell him or her that, though honored for losing some part of his or her life, they did so for deception? What sense is there in such paradox - that a man is a hero for doing the immoral or false thing?
"Oh, I support the troops, I just don't support the war."
It's not unlike telling your child that you support his interest in playing baseball, but you just don't support the game. You find the game stupid, immoral, illegal, dishonest --but-- you support his participation. Yes, you just love your daughter's interest in the cello, you just think the cello and Beethoven and Bach are all lies and abuses of power.
One wonders how such parents can cheer at baseball games, or applaud at the end of cello recitals. Most parenting experts would consider such duplicity bad parenting, sending out the double-binds of mixed messages. It would be considered, undoubtedly, by astute therapists, to even be a form of child abuse.
Consider, though, this possibility to frame an allegedly unjust war. Consider that our soldiers were sent in to battle as antibodies are sent into fight infection; or that they are sent in as scalpels to remove a malignancy. And what if they discover there is no infection or malignancy? Would the doctors who sent them in be considered fools, primarily when all the evidence, and even the patient, points to a considerable problem? Would it all be for naught if the reasons were empty and vain?
No, for the precise reason that when the scalpels opened the patient's body, and the antibodies coursed through her veins, other tumors were discovered and removed, and other infections subdued. Doctors could then be heard telling their patient afterwards, "Well, the scans showed a tumor on your liver and an abscess on your bladder, but when we opened you up, we discovered our mistake: You had a malignancy on your stomach and an abscess on your spleen."
For sure countless folks might be tempted to yell out, "Liars! Cheats! Surgery-mongers! You went in on false pretenses. You fudged the MRI data, you fixed the diagnostics around preconceived ideas!" But they'd be fools.
Today remember what it is that makes protest possible, and what it is that makes Thanksgiving necessary. It's Memorial Day. Remember.
Remember that it is a red day for a reason. And, lest we forget, let us remember too that all the states were red in the very beginning.
Peace.
Contratimes
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Remembering Why: Our Neighbors
[In a series for Memorial Day, Contratimes prints this column written a few days after 9/11 and published in a New Hampshire newspaper. It is offered here as a reminder of what it is we ignore, in part, to our own peril.]
©Bill Gnade 2005
Tragedy always sparks a series of ‘what-ifs’: What if we had only done this, or they had only done that? Such second-guessing is inevitable; natural; even responsible.
The recent attacks on our country’s security have produced a myriad of what-ifs, but the most obvious is the what-if regarding our government’s intelligence agencies: What if the federal government could’ve prevented these bombings?
To be sure, there are those who have wondered aloud how the most well-funded intelligence-gathering network in the world could have missed such an apparently obvious threat. That’s a good question. But it is not the only question, or even the primary.
But before I offer what I think is the primary question, it is important to know what it is that threatened America on September 11, 2001. What is our enemy? Who is it?
Our enemy is not really Osama bin Laden, or rogue nations. Our enemy is domestic, and it is two-fold. Our first enemy is our freedom; and our second is security.
How freedom is our enemy is easy to explain: Osama bin Laden could not have done what he did (if he did do it) without the freedoms with which we provided him. It is not overstatement: it was freedom that provided both the infrastructure and superstructure for the success of the attacks against that very freedom.
What happened on September 11? Nothing more than a demonstration of what bad people can do with the good freedoms we live with everyday. It was our relatively free borders, our easy access to information (including architectural, aviation and avionic data), our flight instruction schools, our lightly secured airports and airplanes, our generally free air space that were turned to evil purposes. And it was also our trust in the goodness of humans living in agreement, under law and grace, that were disdained, and turned against us.
Osama bin Laden could not have unfurled his hatred in a Soviet Gulag; his efforts would have been futile in the oppression of Albania of old, or North Korea, or in Alcatraz. For it is freedom, and the wealth of free peoples, that permitted bin Laden to rebuke that freedom with a bomb; his attack on freedom merely affirms the freedom which enables him to attack.
Thus, freedom by nature is and must be a risk.
Our second enemy is this: our desire for security in response to the potential abuse of freedom. It is the kneejerk reaction of removing our freedoms, the ones that made this attack possible (and those freedoms are many), of creating a spiritual Gulag, an Alcatraz of the soul, merely to feel secure. For to remove the possibility of threat is to lock oneself up in a bunker, a bunker for the mind. A world in which there is no way to commit wrong, is similar to a world where there is no way to commit right: they are both forms of imprisonment.
With this said, one must ask whether the government can predict threats when those threats don’t come from outside, but from within. It is not enough to say that we are at war with terrorism, and that we will mete out justice on those who harbor terrorists. For since 1776 this country has been at war with terrorism, and one of the countries that has harbored terrorists is the United States, a fact we learned powerfully on September 11.
But here’s the primary question. It is not where did our intelligence agencies go in the country’s hour of need. Rather it is this: Why do so few Americans love their neighbors?
Lest we forget, the majority of the terrorists of September 11 were in fact our neighbors.
Remember other tragedies, other horrors? Remember our reaction to Jeffrey Dahlmer, the cannibal/murderer with corpses in his apartment? Did we not all ask: Where were his neighbors? Remember Timothy McVeigh: Did we not all ask, how could his friends and family not know? What of the mother who kills her own children while dad is at work? Don’t we all ask: How come dad didn’t see the signs?
If there is anything approaching a rebuke in all this it is the following: that Americans, myself included, are so absorbed in themselves they don’t see signs of the angel of death in their neighbors’ yards. Some of us not only don’t know our neighbors, we don’t even know our own families. So when one of our neighbors or children shoots up a school yard, or blows up a building, we might want to ask, where were we?
Of course, I am not advocating spying on our neighbors, but loving them. Love implies being involved, paying attention. And if I must report suspicious behavior, or put myself at risk, it is for no other reason than to prevent other neighbors from getting hurt. A healthy suspicion should be part of a healthy love.
No doubt our nation’s intelligence agencies will turn inward, to the domestic side of the threat that faces us. And we are free to ask all the what-ifs we want, as we should. But if we don’t ask, ‘What if we were more involved with our neighbors?’, there will be no end of tragedies.
Contratimes
Have a safe and honorable Memorial Day. Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2005
Tragedy always sparks a series of ‘what-ifs’: What if we had only done this, or they had only done that? Such second-guessing is inevitable; natural; even responsible.
The recent attacks on our country’s security have produced a myriad of what-ifs, but the most obvious is the what-if regarding our government’s intelligence agencies: What if the federal government could’ve prevented these bombings?
To be sure, there are those who have wondered aloud how the most well-funded intelligence-gathering network in the world could have missed such an apparently obvious threat. That’s a good question. But it is not the only question, or even the primary.
But before I offer what I think is the primary question, it is important to know what it is that threatened America on September 11, 2001. What is our enemy? Who is it?
Our enemy is not really Osama bin Laden, or rogue nations. Our enemy is domestic, and it is two-fold. Our first enemy is our freedom; and our second is security.
How freedom is our enemy is easy to explain: Osama bin Laden could not have done what he did (if he did do it) without the freedoms with which we provided him. It is not overstatement: it was freedom that provided both the infrastructure and superstructure for the success of the attacks against that very freedom.
What happened on September 11? Nothing more than a demonstration of what bad people can do with the good freedoms we live with everyday. It was our relatively free borders, our easy access to information (including architectural, aviation and avionic data), our flight instruction schools, our lightly secured airports and airplanes, our generally free air space that were turned to evil purposes. And it was also our trust in the goodness of humans living in agreement, under law and grace, that were disdained, and turned against us.
Osama bin Laden could not have unfurled his hatred in a Soviet Gulag; his efforts would have been futile in the oppression of Albania of old, or North Korea, or in Alcatraz. For it is freedom, and the wealth of free peoples, that permitted bin Laden to rebuke that freedom with a bomb; his attack on freedom merely affirms the freedom which enables him to attack.
Thus, freedom by nature is and must be a risk.
Our second enemy is this: our desire for security in response to the potential abuse of freedom. It is the kneejerk reaction of removing our freedoms, the ones that made this attack possible (and those freedoms are many), of creating a spiritual Gulag, an Alcatraz of the soul, merely to feel secure. For to remove the possibility of threat is to lock oneself up in a bunker, a bunker for the mind. A world in which there is no way to commit wrong, is similar to a world where there is no way to commit right: they are both forms of imprisonment.
With this said, one must ask whether the government can predict threats when those threats don’t come from outside, but from within. It is not enough to say that we are at war with terrorism, and that we will mete out justice on those who harbor terrorists. For since 1776 this country has been at war with terrorism, and one of the countries that has harbored terrorists is the United States, a fact we learned powerfully on September 11.
But here’s the primary question. It is not where did our intelligence agencies go in the country’s hour of need. Rather it is this: Why do so few Americans love their neighbors?
Lest we forget, the majority of the terrorists of September 11 were in fact our neighbors.
Remember other tragedies, other horrors? Remember our reaction to Jeffrey Dahlmer, the cannibal/murderer with corpses in his apartment? Did we not all ask: Where were his neighbors? Remember Timothy McVeigh: Did we not all ask, how could his friends and family not know? What of the mother who kills her own children while dad is at work? Don’t we all ask: How come dad didn’t see the signs?
If there is anything approaching a rebuke in all this it is the following: that Americans, myself included, are so absorbed in themselves they don’t see signs of the angel of death in their neighbors’ yards. Some of us not only don’t know our neighbors, we don’t even know our own families. So when one of our neighbors or children shoots up a school yard, or blows up a building, we might want to ask, where were we?
Of course, I am not advocating spying on our neighbors, but loving them. Love implies being involved, paying attention. And if I must report suspicious behavior, or put myself at risk, it is for no other reason than to prevent other neighbors from getting hurt. A healthy suspicion should be part of a healthy love.
No doubt our nation’s intelligence agencies will turn inward, to the domestic side of the threat that faces us. And we are free to ask all the what-ifs we want, as we should. But if we don’t ask, ‘What if we were more involved with our neighbors?’, there will be no end of tragedies.
Contratimes
Have a safe and honorable Memorial Day. Peace.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Why-War: A Letter To A License Plate
[In honor of the Memorial Day which we in America generally celebrate with a three-day weekend, parades and solemn assemblies, I submit a short series of essays regarding war, the military and "turning the other cheek", among other things.]
Dear "Why-War",
I saw your Subaru wagon the other day zip through town. You were just about to escape my attention when I spotted your license plate, Why-War; and I realized that it's too bad such plates don't come with punctuation marks. For surely you mean to ask a question, "Why war?" But it is possible that your little plate is for you an answer to a rhetorical question, like "Why do we care about the Middle East?"
"Why? War."
Or perhaps it's "Why Dash War," about hastening to do battle when you'd prefer restraint.
But I doubt your diminutive statement is so nuanced. It is no doubt a form of protest, a skeptic's query into the futility of war; a pacifist's shaking of the head; a Quaker's bending of the knee.
It's amazing how something as terse as "Why war?" requires for an answer something the size of a book. When one hears, for example, that "the war in Iraq is all about oil," one is struck with not merely the uselessness of trying to answer the statement in like length ("The war is not about oil"), but with the daunting fact that rebuttals to such claims may require volumes. If I say that "I am a descendant of the sexual union between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene," which is a rather small statement, there is no short and easy answer for even the most gifted Christian apologist to posit against me. Moreover, if I should say that President Bush is a liar, and leave it at that, my respondents might take months to tear down my assertion.
So, too, with your little "Why war?" There is no easy answer.
But like a fool too eager to take on any challenge, I shall run in headstrong -- like an untrained man runs into a burning house to aid his neighbor -- and I shall answer your query.
There are two reasons to "war," and they are that war is natural, and that war is loving. Do you doubt me? I should think you would. But I think that you would be wrong to hold fast to that doubt.
That war is natural is as plain as biology. Just read "Fecundity," the priceless chapter in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and you'll understand the claim. For every cell on this planet is in a battle against other cells; every species bears within its cytoplasm the power of defense and attack; the power of parry and lunge. Darwin knew this intimately, though not with the mystical force of Ms. Dillard. Life is struggle, if it is anything.
Right now, in each human body, masses of cells fight to keep the masses of cells alive, swarming and devouring enemy cells with so much pus and pugilism, white blood cells swirling down highways of vein and artery, blue and red lights a-flashing. There is no peace in the human corpus, until it is a human corpse. Even when the human body fails to protect itself from invaders, outside mercenaries come with hypodermics and knives and radiation and chemotherapy, with all restraint cast to the wind to rout out and destroy enemy strongholds. And all this without even flinching about collateral damage, as organs are chopped up and limbs chopped off to stop the cancerous, gangrenous, infectious flow.
If the human body can be so violent, and the doctors who protect it, then why not the body corporate, the collective humanity of nations, as they fight to rid the world of infection and disease? No doubt some, yourself included, might retort that humans are not cancers, that some regimes are not infections, and that to excise them is improper. But surely you agree that not all ideas are equal, or else you'd not be a pacifist, would you? And surely you agree that there are such things as bad ideas, ideas like "The Jews Must Die!" or "Long Live Tyranny!" Well, if there are bad ideas, such ideas do not live in a vacuum. They live in a host, whether it be one sick ruler, like Hitler, or one sick group of people. For there are people who believe bad ideas, with all their heart. Are the carriers of bad ideas not a threat, particularly if their idea is "Kill the infidel Americans!"?
OK. So you might accept that some people are bad. But do I hear you complain about preemption, about attacking that which is not a threat, at least not yet? Oh, what to say to that.
Perhaps something personal. My own mother, a small tumor in her breast, awoke from surgery to discover her entire breast was gone, her pectoral muscle (much of it) and her lymph nodes chiseled out, with but a scar left, all in a preemptive strike of the surgeon's scalpel. Preemptive strikes happen all the time in this world, every minute, and it is as common as bees swarming and stinging to death (including their own death) a threat that is no threat at all, but is only so perceived. Why war? Why sting?
But we are more than bees, or so we believe, and we have more to learn from gods than we do from white blood cells. Or so you might claim?
Fine. Let's take a look at the greatest of all religious founders, at least to those of us in the West, Jesus the (alleged) Christ. For in his teachings we find, or so it goes, the clearest and simplest moral codes, particularly as it relates to violence. "Turn the other cheek" to your aggressor; "Those who fight by the sword" shall die by it; "Love your neighbor as yourself." Ahh, yes, the refreshing simplicity of Jesus' teaching!
But, please notice, dear sir, that Jesus does not really teach us anything about conflict. Yes, he tells us to find our accuser and make peace with him, or to make peace with the magistrate before he presents his case in the court, but Jesus tells us nothing about how to behave if our accuser or judge loathes making peace.
Here's what Jesus does not help us with at all. Imagine you and your son are sitting at table Sunday morning enjoying sticky buns and tea. Suddenly your neighbor barges through the door wielding an ax, blood dripping from his arms and hands. He raises his ax over his head and steps toward you.
Stop the scene! Now ask yourself, "Who is my neighbor?" Is it the man with the ax, or your son, or both? Both, right? So, if we take Jesus' words to heart, you must turn your cheek to your neighbor, right? Which neighbor? Oh, yes. The aggressive, murderous one. And now imagine if that is what you did (start the scene!), that you, having the power to stop the man with the ax, turned in deferential love to him your silky cheek, and permitted him to cleave your skull.
Stop! How is this act of selfless pacifism loving your other neighbor, your son? How is he LOVED by your submitting to murder, and, how is HE loved by you leaving him unprotected from the murderer's hands. Moreover, how is "turning your cheek" loving at all, when it is unloving for a father (is it not?) to knowingly and willingly leave his son fatherless?
OK. Start the scene again. This time, instead of the ax-man coming at you, he turns to kill your son, or a different neighbor, Mr. Jones, who has just dropped by. You are not going to shout to your son, "Just turn the other cheek, Jimmy!" or to Jones, "Turn that cheek of yours, Jonesy!" Are you? How is this "loving your neighbor as yourself"?
You see, Jesus does not help us here. Nor can he. For your son is your neighbor, and you must consider his well-being. What then is the loving thing to do? The loving thing is to protect your son and the madman; your son from violence and being orphaned, the man from committing a crime from which he may never recover. So, you leap to your feet, fight the man with fury, and you protect your son. In fact, you kill the ax-wielder, if you must, in order to keep him from sinning further, which is an act of grace and love.
But more importantly, here is a lesson Jesus does not teach: You not only must turn the other cheek to aggressors, you must FORCE everyone around you to do the same. In other words, Jesus did not teach that it is your mission to make everyone pacifists, but that only you should turn the other cheek. Hence, it is not Jesus who teaches that we should protest the defensive manuevers our neighbor across the street decides to take when he or she feels threatened.
So, in short, Jesus does not really help us understand war. He gives us little to go on.
Think of war, politically, in this way. If a woman has a right to choose to have an abortion with the blessing of the Supreme Court, then why doesn't your neighbor have the right to defend himself with all the force of the military? After all, if you're pro-life, it's not YOU who's having the abortion. Nor, if you are pro-peace, is it you bombing Baghdad. You see (surely you do), that this is all about freedom, about people having the liberty to defend themselves, or to stop aggressors from offending others, as they see fit: That is how THEY LOVE THEIR NEIGHBORS. And you, all pacifist and concerned in your Subaru, can go about your day loving and fighting and turning the other cheek as you see fit.
Sometimes loving one's neighbors requires that you stop them in their tracks from hurting your other neighbors, and by hurting themselves should they continue their violent ways. Stop a man dead before he kills a man, and you've stopped him from committing a crime. It's an odd grace, but it is a grace nonetheless.
I hope this answers your "Why-War" license plate. Do you know, by the way, that such plates are known as "vanity plates?"
Perhaps you do.
Peace, always.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: War On Terror, Pacifism, Christianity
Friday, May 27, 2005
Straining At Truths, Swallowing Lies
Consider it the new Puritanism. It's the new state religion manifested in great public displays of pain, shock, and disgust. It's as common as news print; as rarefied as membership in the Myopia Hunt Club. In short, it's everywhere, and it is ruining our lives. For it's the moral shock, the umbrage, at the wrong things.
Take two examples. The first, from a small New Hampshire town, is the story of a police chief who arrested a known illegal alien for trespassing. In minutes, it seems, human rights groups, on Monday, descended upon New Ipswich, New Hampshire, to protest the abuse of a Mexican illegal wanton in his dislike of America's immigration laws. Protesters screamed and squirmed about 'profiling' and the alleged abuse profiling invokes.
In short, the police chief is evil, though he did nothing wrong; and the lawbreaker is good. (One protester's sign read: "No human is illegal"; while a letter drafted by the Human Rights Task Force stated that "Everyone in the United States of America, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to equal protection under our nation's laws." Everyone, apparently, except a person who enforces those laws.)
The second example was reported moments ago. A 97-year-old Massachusetts woman, from Boston's Jamaica Plain, was found beaten to death in her home. Her "LifeLine" button had been pressed to alert authorities of trouble. When police arrived, she was found wrapped in a rug.
The juxtaposition of these stories is telling. For there is not, nor will there be, ANY protest outside this woman's home by the Human Rights Task Force. She might as well have died at the hands of Muslim terrorists.
But arrest a Mexican for committing a crime prompts the 'sensitive', truly moral among us to cry out against 'racism' and 'profiling'. Of course, no one screams about the profiling done by criminals against 'women' alone at night or the elderly 'rollovers' whose cashed Social Security checks are easy pickings. After all, profiling is fairly standard practice for criminals.
There is a slew of other glaring examples of America's increased Puritan fastidiousness. Here are a few more presented in no meaningful order:
1) Americans are concerned that the Koran was mishandled by US military servicemen at Guantanamo Bay, with even the commanding Brigadier General speaking in apologetic tones. Of course, desecration of the religious rights of Christians in Africa, of Buddhist artifacts in Afghanistan, or of crucifixes (soaked in urine) in American art circles prompts a mere callous dismissal. Moreover, no one reproaches Muslim fanatics for abusing the Koran in order to justify murder.
2) That Abu Ghraib abuses were considered "atrocities" (by Hillary Clinton, no less), and yet there is nary a candlelight vigil for beheaded Americans and Europeans (they deserve it, apparently, since they should not have been there in the first place, sort of like any woman raped in a dark alley at night), proves that we are increasingly morally indignant at the wrong behaviors.
3) Americans mock a President for stumbling over his words, but are apparently sophisticated enough to permit former KKK-member, and now senior senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia (in 2001, on FOX News): "My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white n*ggers. I've seen a lot of white n*ggers in my time. I'm going to use that word...."† Misspell 'potato' or misspeak 'nuclear', and you're an idiot. But if you're a Democrat racist, that's not worth a single placard. When Trent Lott praised the former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, his remarks led to a lynching. And his words were innocuous. But Byrd keeps on flapping without a a single Democrat crowing about his impropriety.
4) While attending the consecration of the first elected openly gay bishop in Christendom, I witnessed a dissenter read before the thousands gathered a description, replete with statistics and clinical terminology, of the behaviors of homosexual men. In short, the dissenter was reading MERE WORDS, you know, he was MAKING SOUNDS WITH HIS MOUTH. Suddenly the presiding bishop, the titular head of the American Episcopal Church, raised his hand and said, "Spare us the details and get to the substance." Odd, don't you think, that speaking of homosexuality in words is offensive, but the acts of homosexuals are not? If the details in words offend us, then why not the acts themselves? In other words, it is OK to do what no one wants to talk about it; but it's evil to talk about it.
5) Related to number 4, if a person ever expects a homosexual to 'change', note that such a person is instantly vilified as homophobic and abusive. However, no one seems to mind DEMANDING that homophobes MUST change. Of course homosexuals are born and homophobes are made, or so goes the new Puritanism. That few rarely point out that socio-biologists have insisted for decades that a person's genes are selfishly interested in procreation to preserve themselves in perpetuity; indicating that a strong aversion to homosexuality might actually be genetic, you know, in-born; reveals that the new Puritanism is only open to certain limited types of thinking.
6) When Reverend Jerry Falwell talks about making America great again, he is censured by the new Puritans who believe that religion has no place in politics. But when Reverend Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, speaks on America's greatness, the new Puritans fall dumbly silent. (No one notices, it seems, the colossal irony that Barry Lynn is a REVEREND interested in protecting America from religion.) They stop their ears to Falwell's evil rhetoric, and stand mute when Lynn rants with contradictions.
These are but a few of the many examples of the new puritanism. No one protested when Andrea Dworkin (now deceased) argued that men and women were different, essentially (and that women are better); but Harvard's faculty reeled and wailed when its president recently suggested that men and women MIGHT be different; proving that the new Puritanism is in the highest places.
It seems the Koran flushed down the toilet has prompted some, at least in spirit, to fly the American flag at half-staff, nay, to even burn it (Muslims burn our flag daily. Burned a Koran lately?). But the death of a pope, the head-of-state of the Vatican, a true defender of peace and justice, prompts many to wonder whether flying the flag at half-staff in his honor violates the U.S. Constitution. Muslims can flush American skulls down toilets in the name of the Koran; but Americans are to feel ashamed that their soldiers have not worn gloves when handling the same book. You get the picture, and that picture is a mess.
Welcome to the new Puritanism, where we strain at gnats and swallow camels. Or, more accurately, we strain at truth, swallowing everything else.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
†For the Byrd quote, see this link. Yes, Byrd did apologize publicly for his slur and gaffe. So too did Trent Lott. But Lott remains marginalized.
Take two examples. The first, from a small New Hampshire town, is the story of a police chief who arrested a known illegal alien for trespassing. In minutes, it seems, human rights groups, on Monday, descended upon New Ipswich, New Hampshire, to protest the abuse of a Mexican illegal wanton in his dislike of America's immigration laws. Protesters screamed and squirmed about 'profiling' and the alleged abuse profiling invokes.
In short, the police chief is evil, though he did nothing wrong; and the lawbreaker is good. (One protester's sign read: "No human is illegal"; while a letter drafted by the Human Rights Task Force stated that "Everyone in the United States of America, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to equal protection under our nation's laws." Everyone, apparently, except a person who enforces those laws.)
The second example was reported moments ago. A 97-year-old Massachusetts woman, from Boston's Jamaica Plain, was found beaten to death in her home. Her "LifeLine" button had been pressed to alert authorities of trouble. When police arrived, she was found wrapped in a rug.
The juxtaposition of these stories is telling. For there is not, nor will there be, ANY protest outside this woman's home by the Human Rights Task Force. She might as well have died at the hands of Muslim terrorists.
But arrest a Mexican for committing a crime prompts the 'sensitive', truly moral among us to cry out against 'racism' and 'profiling'. Of course, no one screams about the profiling done by criminals against 'women' alone at night or the elderly 'rollovers' whose cashed Social Security checks are easy pickings. After all, profiling is fairly standard practice for criminals.
There is a slew of other glaring examples of America's increased Puritan fastidiousness. Here are a few more presented in no meaningful order:
1) Americans are concerned that the Koran was mishandled by US military servicemen at Guantanamo Bay, with even the commanding Brigadier General speaking in apologetic tones. Of course, desecration of the religious rights of Christians in Africa, of Buddhist artifacts in Afghanistan, or of crucifixes (soaked in urine) in American art circles prompts a mere callous dismissal. Moreover, no one reproaches Muslim fanatics for abusing the Koran in order to justify murder.
2) That Abu Ghraib abuses were considered "atrocities" (by Hillary Clinton, no less), and yet there is nary a candlelight vigil for beheaded Americans and Europeans (they deserve it, apparently, since they should not have been there in the first place, sort of like any woman raped in a dark alley at night), proves that we are increasingly morally indignant at the wrong behaviors.
3) Americans mock a President for stumbling over his words, but are apparently sophisticated enough to permit former KKK-member, and now senior senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia (in 2001, on FOX News): "My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white n*ggers. I've seen a lot of white n*ggers in my time. I'm going to use that word...."† Misspell 'potato' or misspeak 'nuclear', and you're an idiot. But if you're a Democrat racist, that's not worth a single placard. When Trent Lott praised the former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, his remarks led to a lynching. And his words were innocuous. But Byrd keeps on flapping without a a single Democrat crowing about his impropriety.
4) While attending the consecration of the first elected openly gay bishop in Christendom, I witnessed a dissenter read before the thousands gathered a description, replete with statistics and clinical terminology, of the behaviors of homosexual men. In short, the dissenter was reading MERE WORDS, you know, he was MAKING SOUNDS WITH HIS MOUTH. Suddenly the presiding bishop, the titular head of the American Episcopal Church, raised his hand and said, "Spare us the details and get to the substance." Odd, don't you think, that speaking of homosexuality in words is offensive, but the acts of homosexuals are not? If the details in words offend us, then why not the acts themselves? In other words, it is OK to do what no one wants to talk about it; but it's evil to talk about it.
5) Related to number 4, if a person ever expects a homosexual to 'change', note that such a person is instantly vilified as homophobic and abusive. However, no one seems to mind DEMANDING that homophobes MUST change. Of course homosexuals are born and homophobes are made, or so goes the new Puritanism. That few rarely point out that socio-biologists have insisted for decades that a person's genes are selfishly interested in procreation to preserve themselves in perpetuity; indicating that a strong aversion to homosexuality might actually be genetic, you know, in-born; reveals that the new Puritanism is only open to certain limited types of thinking.
6) When Reverend Jerry Falwell talks about making America great again, he is censured by the new Puritans who believe that religion has no place in politics. But when Reverend Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, speaks on America's greatness, the new Puritans fall dumbly silent. (No one notices, it seems, the colossal irony that Barry Lynn is a REVEREND interested in protecting America from religion.) They stop their ears to Falwell's evil rhetoric, and stand mute when Lynn rants with contradictions.
These are but a few of the many examples of the new puritanism. No one protested when Andrea Dworkin (now deceased) argued that men and women were different, essentially (and that women are better); but Harvard's faculty reeled and wailed when its president recently suggested that men and women MIGHT be different; proving that the new Puritanism is in the highest places.
It seems the Koran flushed down the toilet has prompted some, at least in spirit, to fly the American flag at half-staff, nay, to even burn it (Muslims burn our flag daily. Burned a Koran lately?). But the death of a pope, the head-of-state of the Vatican, a true defender of peace and justice, prompts many to wonder whether flying the flag at half-staff in his honor violates the U.S. Constitution. Muslims can flush American skulls down toilets in the name of the Koran; but Americans are to feel ashamed that their soldiers have not worn gloves when handling the same book. You get the picture, and that picture is a mess.
Welcome to the new Puritanism, where we strain at gnats and swallow camels. Or, more accurately, we strain at truth, swallowing everything else.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
†For the Byrd quote, see this link. Yes, Byrd did apologize publicly for his slur and gaffe. So too did Trent Lott. But Lott remains marginalized.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
A Side-Splitting Wound
©Bill Gnade 2005
I attended college in the early 1980's, beginning my freshman year at the zenith of the Preppy Handbook's popularity. Izod shirts under Brooks Brothers oxfords, and anything L.L. Bean, were the rage for a large subset of my college peers during the first two years of matriculation on Boston's North Shore.
There was much comic fallout around prepdom, not least of which was the many prepped-out underclassmen who'd never even seen a prep school. Of course, I was among them. But the most curious example of prepification was a battle-royale between two students, the inimitable David Moshier, and the ever-condescending, clenched-jawed Geoffrey A. P. Groesbeck. These two battled for preppy supremacy with such vigor their GPAs plummeted; with frequent midnight drives to Freeport, Maine's L.L. Bean to acquire more accoutrements for their oft uncivil duel.
I recall once sitting in the dining commons with Mr. Moshier, a manic-type from a plush New Jersey township, when Mr. Groesbeck came in festooned in Bean, Lacoste and Brooks Brothers from head-to-toe, kelly-green accents everywhere.
"Look, Moshier, I've got the Izod belt and the (who remembers?) wide-whale cords. Just got back from Freeport. I even purchased the Izod watchband," boasted Groesbeck.
Moshier stood up to reveal similar bits of clothing, showing tags and logos. And then, the death-blow.
"Yes, Groesbeck, very nice, but do you have the Izod watch?" Moshier asked. At that he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a cloth-banded (kelly-green and navy, and the Izod logo) wristwatch with an alligator pointing its hands to the hour, minutes, and seconds.
Too much. Groesbeck's rage and contempt were elevated beyond self-control. He grimaced, shook, and stormed out of the dining hall.
A few weeks later, as winter settled on the North Shore, Moshier and I, and one other friend, took a late-night meander down the "Path of Righteousness," a shoreline trail that skirted Coy Pond, one of several large campus ponds. The path was so named by those who indulged in a variety of substance abuses on that trail, from tobacco and marijuana to martinis and beer. You see, such things were forbidden on the campus of our conservative college, which was a good thing for those who found post-adolescent freedom more imprisoning than liberating.
Well this particular night there was a thin layer of snow, a dusting, on the frozen surface of Coy Pond. The moon was bright and high in the sky, as is typical in a New England winter, but the overcast sky gently diffused its lambent beam. We came to our favorite spot, a rocky jut at the halfway point along the shoreline. The three of us lit up cigarettes (the last year I smoked, 1981) and settled into conversation.
At some point Moshier, in full preppy regalia and teetering a bit from drinks at "7-Central," asked if the ice was safe and made his way toward the white and glowing slab.
"Let's go out on the pond. It will be cool!" he urged.
Of course, my friend and I begged him to reconsider, knowing that the ice could not be more than two inches thick. After much scoffing, blustering and typical macho sneering, Moshier lowered himself, holding onto rocks along the shore, and reached his Brooks Brothers-loafered foot toward the ice. He tapped the leather heel lightly on the pond's frozen surface.
"It's safe. See?" He tapped it again.
Mocking laughter abounded.
"You bonehead, you can't tell that way. You've got to give the ice a kick, man."
Moshier positioned himself a little lower, and extended his foot a few inches. He tapped his heel nearly imperceptibly harder. "Click, click." And then again. "Click."
"Pow!"
Moshier recoiled. To our amazement, his tiny Brooks Brothers leather heel had fractured the entire ice cap, fissuring it like a lightning bolt across Coy Pond from one distant shore to the other. Immediately, dark, cold water oozed up through the crack, a black-and-white slash in winter's skin.
We stood in stunned silence. It was impossible. The pond was split in two.
Then, a rush of uncontrollable laughter.
The following morning, from the windows of the dining hall, everyone could see an 18-inch wide band of frozen, black water jagging its way across the snow-covered pond. It was like a giant weld between two pieces of arctic steel; or a scab binding torn frosted flesh. It would become a scar that would last the whole winter, and to us, the three who witnessed the great fissure, it was a miracle. A preppy miracle made by the least likely force on campus: The Izod Timekeeper with a Tapping Leather Heel.
No doubt this memoir is a roundabout way for something larger than mere recollection for recollection's sake. Perhaps it is. I do not know, exactly. But I thought of this story this morning, after hearing about the Senate compromise regarding filibustering and the "nuclear option." For the Senate is like my preppy friends, all dress-up covering considerable animus and hostility. It is not a place where enemies knot together in cars for late-night drives to L.L. Bean, though they do knot together in chambers for late-night struggles for supremacy. Most senators are not wearing an Izod watch, but they do watch the clock and notice that time is running ceaselessly. Most senators are not fighting to win the preppiest-guy-on-campus award, but they are indeed interested in winning awards of a far different kind. Most are well-dressed, all buttoned down just so.
As I recall that night on Coy Pond, I think there is a danger that the Senate compromise is a split in a frozen Senate that looks miraculous; that looks like it was made with great force of will, and great strength of mind.
But my guess is that it was made by something of a heel; and that it will not heal until the heat comes on.
Contratimes
I attended college in the early 1980's, beginning my freshman year at the zenith of the Preppy Handbook's popularity. Izod shirts under Brooks Brothers oxfords, and anything L.L. Bean, were the rage for a large subset of my college peers during the first two years of matriculation on Boston's North Shore.
There was much comic fallout around prepdom, not least of which was the many prepped-out underclassmen who'd never even seen a prep school. Of course, I was among them. But the most curious example of prepification was a battle-royale between two students, the inimitable David Moshier, and the ever-condescending, clenched-jawed Geoffrey A. P. Groesbeck. These two battled for preppy supremacy with such vigor their GPAs plummeted; with frequent midnight drives to Freeport, Maine's L.L. Bean to acquire more accoutrements for their oft uncivil duel.
I recall once sitting in the dining commons with Mr. Moshier, a manic-type from a plush New Jersey township, when Mr. Groesbeck came in festooned in Bean, Lacoste and Brooks Brothers from head-to-toe, kelly-green accents everywhere.
"Look, Moshier, I've got the Izod belt and the (who remembers?) wide-whale cords. Just got back from Freeport. I even purchased the Izod watchband," boasted Groesbeck.
Moshier stood up to reveal similar bits of clothing, showing tags and logos. And then, the death-blow.
"Yes, Groesbeck, very nice, but do you have the Izod watch?" Moshier asked. At that he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a cloth-banded (kelly-green and navy, and the Izod logo) wristwatch with an alligator pointing its hands to the hour, minutes, and seconds.
Too much. Groesbeck's rage and contempt were elevated beyond self-control. He grimaced, shook, and stormed out of the dining hall.
A few weeks later, as winter settled on the North Shore, Moshier and I, and one other friend, took a late-night meander down the "Path of Righteousness," a shoreline trail that skirted Coy Pond, one of several large campus ponds. The path was so named by those who indulged in a variety of substance abuses on that trail, from tobacco and marijuana to martinis and beer. You see, such things were forbidden on the campus of our conservative college, which was a good thing for those who found post-adolescent freedom more imprisoning than liberating.
Well this particular night there was a thin layer of snow, a dusting, on the frozen surface of Coy Pond. The moon was bright and high in the sky, as is typical in a New England winter, but the overcast sky gently diffused its lambent beam. We came to our favorite spot, a rocky jut at the halfway point along the shoreline. The three of us lit up cigarettes (the last year I smoked, 1981) and settled into conversation.
At some point Moshier, in full preppy regalia and teetering a bit from drinks at "7-Central," asked if the ice was safe and made his way toward the white and glowing slab.
"Let's go out on the pond. It will be cool!" he urged.
Of course, my friend and I begged him to reconsider, knowing that the ice could not be more than two inches thick. After much scoffing, blustering and typical macho sneering, Moshier lowered himself, holding onto rocks along the shore, and reached his Brooks Brothers-loafered foot toward the ice. He tapped the leather heel lightly on the pond's frozen surface.
"It's safe. See?" He tapped it again.
Mocking laughter abounded.
"You bonehead, you can't tell that way. You've got to give the ice a kick, man."
Moshier positioned himself a little lower, and extended his foot a few inches. He tapped his heel nearly imperceptibly harder. "Click, click." And then again. "Click."
"Pow!"
Moshier recoiled. To our amazement, his tiny Brooks Brothers leather heel had fractured the entire ice cap, fissuring it like a lightning bolt across Coy Pond from one distant shore to the other. Immediately, dark, cold water oozed up through the crack, a black-and-white slash in winter's skin.
We stood in stunned silence. It was impossible. The pond was split in two.
Then, a rush of uncontrollable laughter.
The following morning, from the windows of the dining hall, everyone could see an 18-inch wide band of frozen, black water jagging its way across the snow-covered pond. It was like a giant weld between two pieces of arctic steel; or a scab binding torn frosted flesh. It would become a scar that would last the whole winter, and to us, the three who witnessed the great fissure, it was a miracle. A preppy miracle made by the least likely force on campus: The Izod Timekeeper with a Tapping Leather Heel.
No doubt this memoir is a roundabout way for something larger than mere recollection for recollection's sake. Perhaps it is. I do not know, exactly. But I thought of this story this morning, after hearing about the Senate compromise regarding filibustering and the "nuclear option." For the Senate is like my preppy friends, all dress-up covering considerable animus and hostility. It is not a place where enemies knot together in cars for late-night drives to L.L. Bean, though they do knot together in chambers for late-night struggles for supremacy. Most senators are not wearing an Izod watch, but they do watch the clock and notice that time is running ceaselessly. Most senators are not fighting to win the preppiest-guy-on-campus award, but they are indeed interested in winning awards of a far different kind. Most are well-dressed, all buttoned down just so.
As I recall that night on Coy Pond, I think there is a danger that the Senate compromise is a split in a frozen Senate that looks miraculous; that looks like it was made with great force of will, and great strength of mind.
But my guess is that it was made by something of a heel; and that it will not heal until the heat comes on.
Contratimes
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Daniel Schorr and the "Downing Street Memo"
I am not much of a conspiracy theorist. If anything, a conspiracy would have to hit me in the nose before I'd believe that I even had a nose.
With that said, I found myself warily listening to the wonderings of long-time NPR (National Public Radio) political commentator Daniel Schorr this morning as he waxed concerned about the lack of media coverage in America regarding the wildly popular (in Britain) Downing Street Memo recently printed in The London Times. The memo apparently inflicts major damage on both President Bush's and Prime Minister Tony Blair's contentions that Iraq was not a target of war as early as their critics suggest.
But the leaked confidential memo reportedly drafted by a Downing Street policy aide "proves" that Washington and Blair were "sexing up" intelligence reports and other vital materials regarding Iraq as much as a year before things allegedly got going. It's not a stretch to think Bush and Blair did in fact do such a thing; as it is not a stretch to think that they did not do such a thing.
However, Daniel Schorr's lament, or perhaps it is a rebuke, that the American press has been strangely silent, and the American people's appetite curiously sated, regarding this British grenade-of-a-memo is a lament that is wildly out of place. Why? Because the American people, news consumers most, and the media that feed them, do not trust memos anymore, particularly memos that seem too perfect and too perfectly damning of the President of the United States. This, it is sad to say, is the deleterious consequence of the 60 Minutes reports last year in which forged documents were used to impugn a sitting president.
Remember that colossal embarrassment? Remember where the truth was found, where it was reported? It was found and reported in the Blogosphere, as numerous bloggers' scepticism and skill uncovered the problems of Rathergate.
Now comes this meatball of a pitch in the form of a Downing Street memo, and everyone, at least to Daniel Schorr, should be ready to smash it out of the park. But I'll bet most Americans can't hit that pitch, precisely because they expect at any moment it is going to take a dive into the dirt.
Take a look at the memo for yourself. It IS a doozy, so to speak. But it is such a doozy that one can't help but be sceptical. And if I were to voice my doubts, it would be on the following facts, observed solely by me, as far as I know, but no doubt being observed by countless bloggers:
A) How is it that a TOP SECRET (Super-duper decoder-ring secret) document is addressed to David Manning, the British ambassador in Washington, but it is NOT addressed to SIR David Manning, when in fact, Sir Manning is so knighted? Moreover, how is it that the carbon-copy addressees include SIR Richard Wilson, a man aptly addressed as SIR though there is no such formality for the rather bland "David Manning" to whom the memo is FORMALLY addressed? Or do I misunderstand British correspondence and titles?
B) How is it that a memo re: intelligence and Iraq War planning and similar material is so secret, and yet it is forwarded to, among others, Tony Blair's press secretary?
C) How is it that the co-addresses include the "Attorney-General" when the Attorney General of Britain, according to his own webpage and countless references easily pulled up on Google, does not include a hyphen in his title?
D) Check out this quote from the memo: "Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN." (Regarding inspections, etc.) Do Englishmen use this expression, play "hard-ball"? Is that not a reference to American baseball? Or is there a softball cricket league in London's suburbs I know nothing about?
E) Check out the following excerpts:
"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justfied by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
Besides this quote being nearly perfectly damnable of the Bush administration, with its PERFECT sentence "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," what do you think of the verb tense? If a memo is drafted to describe what is recently and/or currently being planned, would it not be MORE likely that the writer would say "The intelligence and facts ARE being fixed" rather than the far less perfect "WERE being fixed"? Also, does anyone believe that the NSC had "no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record"? Excuse me? Is this a suggestion that Saddam Hussein's regime was so sterling, or so recently polished, that the NSC should have been shouting its praises from the rooftops; or that the NSC was reluctant to report on Saddam's contrite and compassionate heart?
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. ...We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would
also help with the legal justification for the use of force."
Again, do you buy that "It SEEMED clear that Bush HAD made up his mind" instead of a more vital, current, and immediate "It SEEMS clear Bush HAS made up his mind"? How about "Saddam WAS not threatening?" Shouldn't that be "Saddam IS NOT threatening?" Come now, this memo is allegedly a couple of days after the fact, and that plans to attack Iraq are still in process. The verb tense is suspicious.
"Conclusions: (a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options. ... " Again, please note the verb tenses. "We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions, [etc.]" Shouldn't that read "We should work on the assumption that the UK WILL take part ... But we NEED a fuller picture before we CAN take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US ... we ARE considering ..."?
OK. You get the picture. I am not suggesting that the memo is forged. I am saying that there are reasons for being sceptical. First, the internal criticism of the memo leads to lots of questions, not least of which is "Who actually wrote this, when, and why is it so strange, and so strangely and suspiciously perfect (and yet it is imperfect in many ways)?" Second, the memo is incredible, at least a bit, because of the fallout left by the Rathergate scandal. Yes, the memo is allegedly drafted by Downing Street aide Matthew Rycroft. Yes, apparently neither the Bush administration nor the Blair government have commented about its validity or invalidity. But should we just accept its validity prima facie because it is "leaked" or "telling"?
Hence, my conclusion: Daniel Schorr, who seems to have avoided any detailed scrutiny of the memo, might want to look inward as to why the public is not inflamed by the insinuations of this memo. And he might look at the methods of his colleagues in the glorious profession in which he works who have corrupted or sullied the process of fact-finding, reporting, and self-analysis.
We indeed are sceptical. But this memo does not help us find our way to more certain grounds.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved
Technorati tags: The Downing Street Memo, Downing Street Memo, Daniel Schorr, NPR
[To hear Mr. Schorr's commentary, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4661884]
With that said, I found myself warily listening to the wonderings of long-time NPR (National Public Radio) political commentator Daniel Schorr this morning as he waxed concerned about the lack of media coverage in America regarding the wildly popular (in Britain) Downing Street Memo recently printed in The London Times. The memo apparently inflicts major damage on both President Bush's and Prime Minister Tony Blair's contentions that Iraq was not a target of war as early as their critics suggest.
But the leaked confidential memo reportedly drafted by a Downing Street policy aide "proves" that Washington and Blair were "sexing up" intelligence reports and other vital materials regarding Iraq as much as a year before things allegedly got going. It's not a stretch to think Bush and Blair did in fact do such a thing; as it is not a stretch to think that they did not do such a thing.
However, Daniel Schorr's lament, or perhaps it is a rebuke, that the American press has been strangely silent, and the American people's appetite curiously sated, regarding this British grenade-of-a-memo is a lament that is wildly out of place. Why? Because the American people, news consumers most, and the media that feed them, do not trust memos anymore, particularly memos that seem too perfect and too perfectly damning of the President of the United States. This, it is sad to say, is the deleterious consequence of the 60 Minutes reports last year in which forged documents were used to impugn a sitting president.
Remember that colossal embarrassment? Remember where the truth was found, where it was reported? It was found and reported in the Blogosphere, as numerous bloggers' scepticism and skill uncovered the problems of Rathergate.
Now comes this meatball of a pitch in the form of a Downing Street memo, and everyone, at least to Daniel Schorr, should be ready to smash it out of the park. But I'll bet most Americans can't hit that pitch, precisely because they expect at any moment it is going to take a dive into the dirt.
Take a look at the memo for yourself. It IS a doozy, so to speak. But it is such a doozy that one can't help but be sceptical. And if I were to voice my doubts, it would be on the following facts, observed solely by me, as far as I know, but no doubt being observed by countless bloggers:
A) How is it that a TOP SECRET (Super-duper decoder-ring secret) document is addressed to David Manning, the British ambassador in Washington, but it is NOT addressed to SIR David Manning, when in fact, Sir Manning is so knighted? Moreover, how is it that the carbon-copy addressees include SIR Richard Wilson, a man aptly addressed as SIR though there is no such formality for the rather bland "David Manning" to whom the memo is FORMALLY addressed? Or do I misunderstand British correspondence and titles?
B) How is it that a memo re: intelligence and Iraq War planning and similar material is so secret, and yet it is forwarded to, among others, Tony Blair's press secretary?
C) How is it that the co-addresses include the "Attorney-General" when the Attorney General of Britain, according to his own webpage and countless references easily pulled up on Google, does not include a hyphen in his title?
D) Check out this quote from the memo: "Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN." (Regarding inspections, etc.) Do Englishmen use this expression, play "hard-ball"? Is that not a reference to American baseball? Or is there a softball cricket league in London's suburbs I know nothing about?
E) Check out the following excerpts:
"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justfied by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
Besides this quote being nearly perfectly damnable of the Bush administration, with its PERFECT sentence "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," what do you think of the verb tense? If a memo is drafted to describe what is recently and/or currently being planned, would it not be MORE likely that the writer would say "The intelligence and facts ARE being fixed" rather than the far less perfect "WERE being fixed"? Also, does anyone believe that the NSC had "no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record"? Excuse me? Is this a suggestion that Saddam Hussein's regime was so sterling, or so recently polished, that the NSC should have been shouting its praises from the rooftops; or that the NSC was reluctant to report on Saddam's contrite and compassionate heart?
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. ...We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would
also help with the legal justification for the use of force."
Again, do you buy that "It SEEMED clear that Bush HAD made up his mind" instead of a more vital, current, and immediate "It SEEMS clear Bush HAS made up his mind"? How about "Saddam WAS not threatening?" Shouldn't that be "Saddam IS NOT threatening?" Come now, this memo is allegedly a couple of days after the fact, and that plans to attack Iraq are still in process. The verb tense is suspicious.
"Conclusions: (a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options. ... " Again, please note the verb tenses. "We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions, [etc.]" Shouldn't that read "We should work on the assumption that the UK WILL take part ... But we NEED a fuller picture before we CAN take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US ... we ARE considering ..."?
OK. You get the picture. I am not suggesting that the memo is forged. I am saying that there are reasons for being sceptical. First, the internal criticism of the memo leads to lots of questions, not least of which is "Who actually wrote this, when, and why is it so strange, and so strangely and suspiciously perfect (and yet it is imperfect in many ways)?" Second, the memo is incredible, at least a bit, because of the fallout left by the Rathergate scandal. Yes, the memo is allegedly drafted by Downing Street aide Matthew Rycroft. Yes, apparently neither the Bush administration nor the Blair government have commented about its validity or invalidity. But should we just accept its validity prima facie because it is "leaked" or "telling"?
Hence, my conclusion: Daniel Schorr, who seems to have avoided any detailed scrutiny of the memo, might want to look inward as to why the public is not inflamed by the insinuations of this memo. And he might look at the methods of his colleagues in the glorious profession in which he works who have corrupted or sullied the process of fact-finding, reporting, and self-analysis.
We indeed are sceptical. But this memo does not help us find our way to more certain grounds.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved
Technorati tags: The Downing Street Memo, Downing Street Memo, Daniel Schorr, NPR
[To hear Mr. Schorr's commentary, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4661884]
Friday, May 20, 2005
Fili-blustering Contradictions Through The Senate
[Dut to some technical difficulties here at Contratimes, there has been a delay in recent posts. Apologies abound.]
©Bill Gnade 2005
I once wrote that if there are some things too good to be true, it follows that some things are too bad to be false. I'd like to amend that a little bit and say that there are also some things so dumb, they could only have been uttered by a U.S. Senator.
As you know by now, the U.S. Senate is rife with chestbeatings and podium-poundings over the possibility Senate Republicans will change Senate rules in order to stop the Democratic senators from preventing an "up or down" vote on President Bush's judicial nominees by the deployment of the filibuster. On one side of the aisle, Republicans bluster about Democrats' obstructionism; on the other, Democrats bluster about majority tyranny.
Now, I am not going to analyze the intricacies of Senate traditions and rules. Others far wiser have done such analysis. I am much more interested in a glaring contradiction, a contradiction of massive proportions, committed by Democrat Charles Schumer, from New York, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Schumer is an important player in the whole filibuster battle, for the simple reason that he is unabashedly critical of judicial nominees not on the basis of each nominee's judicial aptitude, but on each nominee's ideology. In fact, Tom Brune of Newsday reports on May 20, 2005 that "The battle royal over judicial appointments and filibusters now preoccupying the Senate can be traced back to an op-ed article published four years ago by a little-known senator from New York. ... Newly named as chairman of a Senate subcommittee on the courts, Sen. Charles Schumer wrote that his fellow Democrats could reject President George W. Bush's nominees based on ideology, not just qualifications and temperament."
It's not what a potential federal judge DOES, or whether he or she applies the law as the legislature intended; what matters is what belief-system a candidate for the judiciary holds, or so Schumer, one of the Senate frontmen on this issue, posits for our consideration.
But even this, which MUST at least border on a religious litmus test, does not concern me. What concerns me is something more insidious; something very subtle, argued by Sen. Schumer during a hearing in the judiciary committee. It is insidious in that it represents a tyranny based on manipulation of fact; it is subtle in that no media outlets or independent critics picked up on its lunacy.
It all begins with understanding the filibuster as a "protector of minority rights", with said minority NOT being blacks and latinos and blind skeet-shooters, but rather the minority party in the Senate which, at the moment, is the Democratic Party. Even George Will (a master in these matters) has written that "The filibuster is an important defense of minority rights, enabling democratic government to measure and respect not merely numbers but also intensity in public controversies. Filibusters enable intense minorities to slow the governmental juggernaut." Schumer himself has voiced this idea that the filibuster protects a minority from the tyrannical mob-mentality of the majority.
But I heard (unfortunately the transcript is not yet availiable) Schumer on C-Span's broadcast of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing of May 12 say the following (and I promise this is an accurate summation of his remarks):
"It is worth pointing out that while each Senator's vote in the Senate is of the same value, with each state of the Union getting two votes from two senators, not every Senator's vote represents the same representational value. The fact is that my state, the one I represent, New York, has far more people in it than do many of the states represented by my Republican counterparts. Many of my distinguished Democratic colleagues come from states of far greater populations than nearly all the Republican Senators represent. And I can assure this body that my state, and those states represented by my Democratic colleagues, do not support changing the filibuster rules, nor do they support the appointment of extremist judges."
See the subtle contradiction? I hope so.
Yes, Schumer is right, each state only has two Senators. Yes, each Senator's vote is of equal legislative weight. We are all OK with that.
But none of us should be OK with the fact that his Senate colleagues, particularly his Republican ones, should have given Schumer a pass on his absurd commentary. Not even a twitch of the lip by committee chair Arlen Specter, for instance. And none of us should countenance Schumer's crazy contradiction.
Schumer has implied, rather loudly, I think, that the Democratic minority which protects itself with a filibuster, is a minority in the Senate but is really the majority of the country's citizens. Schumer is suggesting that the Senate Republicans are actually a minority group, perhaps consisting of religious fanatics bent on creating theocracy with the appointment of radical judges. Schumer and his brethren on his side of the aisle actually REPRESENT more people than do the Republicans, and thus, at the very least, the Democrats are entitled to maintaining the filibuster to protect the will of their perceived majority.
See the contradiction? For if Schumer and his party in the Senate really are the "majority", then the filibuster for the Democrats does not protect "minority" rights, it protects majority tyranny. In other words, Schumer has opined that the Republicans are a minority trying to prevent the majority from maintaining control over that minority via the filibuster. In short, the Democrats are the REAL majority, yet they MUST be allowed to filibuster for the protection of their rights.
What, one wonders, is Schumer's suggestion that the "minority" Republicans do to protect their rights from Schumer's tyranny? How about changing the rules so that filibusters can't be deployed to prevent cloture or an "up and down" vote? How about debating and voting on the merits and performance of each judicial nominee? How about letting a simple majority say "yea" or "nay" to President Bush's appointments?
Of course, Schumer is as ironic as he is contradictory. Let me conclude with this statement of his made during his radio address on Saturday, May 14:
"Americans are a mainstream people, and we are a people of faith. Most of us believe deeply in God, but we also believe deeply in the right of debate and compromise."
Where, Mr. Schumer, is the debate? For you and your party have stopped it, repeatedly. And do you not know that one compromise inherent to all democracies is to let people vote, and to make rule changes? That's what makes democracy so vital, so strong, so elastic.
Shame on the Republican Senators for not at least pointing out that Mr. Schumer's remarks about "representation" should have been articulated in the House of Representatives, where such remarks make a semblance of sense. And shame on Schumer for ever articulating such a heinous, manipulative idea.
If Schumer believes his own remarks, then he is serving in the wrong chamber, and maybe even in the wrong country.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005
I once wrote that if there are some things too good to be true, it follows that some things are too bad to be false. I'd like to amend that a little bit and say that there are also some things so dumb, they could only have been uttered by a U.S. Senator.
As you know by now, the U.S. Senate is rife with chestbeatings and podium-poundings over the possibility Senate Republicans will change Senate rules in order to stop the Democratic senators from preventing an "up or down" vote on President Bush's judicial nominees by the deployment of the filibuster. On one side of the aisle, Republicans bluster about Democrats' obstructionism; on the other, Democrats bluster about majority tyranny.
Now, I am not going to analyze the intricacies of Senate traditions and rules. Others far wiser have done such analysis. I am much more interested in a glaring contradiction, a contradiction of massive proportions, committed by Democrat Charles Schumer, from New York, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Schumer is an important player in the whole filibuster battle, for the simple reason that he is unabashedly critical of judicial nominees not on the basis of each nominee's judicial aptitude, but on each nominee's ideology. In fact, Tom Brune of Newsday reports on May 20, 2005 that "The battle royal over judicial appointments and filibusters now preoccupying the Senate can be traced back to an op-ed article published four years ago by a little-known senator from New York. ... Newly named as chairman of a Senate subcommittee on the courts, Sen. Charles Schumer wrote that his fellow Democrats could reject President George W. Bush's nominees based on ideology, not just qualifications and temperament."
It's not what a potential federal judge DOES, or whether he or she applies the law as the legislature intended; what matters is what belief-system a candidate for the judiciary holds, or so Schumer, one of the Senate frontmen on this issue, posits for our consideration.
But even this, which MUST at least border on a religious litmus test, does not concern me. What concerns me is something more insidious; something very subtle, argued by Sen. Schumer during a hearing in the judiciary committee. It is insidious in that it represents a tyranny based on manipulation of fact; it is subtle in that no media outlets or independent critics picked up on its lunacy.
It all begins with understanding the filibuster as a "protector of minority rights", with said minority NOT being blacks and latinos and blind skeet-shooters, but rather the minority party in the Senate which, at the moment, is the Democratic Party. Even George Will (a master in these matters) has written that "The filibuster is an important defense of minority rights, enabling democratic government to measure and respect not merely numbers but also intensity in public controversies. Filibusters enable intense minorities to slow the governmental juggernaut." Schumer himself has voiced this idea that the filibuster protects a minority from the tyrannical mob-mentality of the majority.
But I heard (unfortunately the transcript is not yet availiable) Schumer on C-Span's broadcast of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing of May 12 say the following (and I promise this is an accurate summation of his remarks):
"It is worth pointing out that while each Senator's vote in the Senate is of the same value, with each state of the Union getting two votes from two senators, not every Senator's vote represents the same representational value. The fact is that my state, the one I represent, New York, has far more people in it than do many of the states represented by my Republican counterparts. Many of my distinguished Democratic colleagues come from states of far greater populations than nearly all the Republican Senators represent. And I can assure this body that my state, and those states represented by my Democratic colleagues, do not support changing the filibuster rules, nor do they support the appointment of extremist judges."
See the subtle contradiction? I hope so.
Yes, Schumer is right, each state only has two Senators. Yes, each Senator's vote is of equal legislative weight. We are all OK with that.
But none of us should be OK with the fact that his Senate colleagues, particularly his Republican ones, should have given Schumer a pass on his absurd commentary. Not even a twitch of the lip by committee chair Arlen Specter, for instance. And none of us should countenance Schumer's crazy contradiction.
Schumer has implied, rather loudly, I think, that the Democratic minority which protects itself with a filibuster, is a minority in the Senate but is really the majority of the country's citizens. Schumer is suggesting that the Senate Republicans are actually a minority group, perhaps consisting of religious fanatics bent on creating theocracy with the appointment of radical judges. Schumer and his brethren on his side of the aisle actually REPRESENT more people than do the Republicans, and thus, at the very least, the Democrats are entitled to maintaining the filibuster to protect the will of their perceived majority.
See the contradiction? For if Schumer and his party in the Senate really are the "majority", then the filibuster for the Democrats does not protect "minority" rights, it protects majority tyranny. In other words, Schumer has opined that the Republicans are a minority trying to prevent the majority from maintaining control over that minority via the filibuster. In short, the Democrats are the REAL majority, yet they MUST be allowed to filibuster for the protection of their rights.
What, one wonders, is Schumer's suggestion that the "minority" Republicans do to protect their rights from Schumer's tyranny? How about changing the rules so that filibusters can't be deployed to prevent cloture or an "up and down" vote? How about debating and voting on the merits and performance of each judicial nominee? How about letting a simple majority say "yea" or "nay" to President Bush's appointments?
Of course, Schumer is as ironic as he is contradictory. Let me conclude with this statement of his made during his radio address on Saturday, May 14:
"Americans are a mainstream people, and we are a people of faith. Most of us believe deeply in God, but we also believe deeply in the right of debate and compromise."
Where, Mr. Schumer, is the debate? For you and your party have stopped it, repeatedly. And do you not know that one compromise inherent to all democracies is to let people vote, and to make rule changes? That's what makes democracy so vital, so strong, so elastic.
Shame on the Republican Senators for not at least pointing out that Mr. Schumer's remarks about "representation" should have been articulated in the House of Representatives, where such remarks make a semblance of sense. And shame on Schumer for ever articulating such a heinous, manipulative idea.
If Schumer believes his own remarks, then he is serving in the wrong chamber, and maybe even in the wrong country.
Contratimes
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Newswreck magazine and the ABC Noose
©Bill Gnade 2005
[Last week's Newsweek magazine published a small article in which it was reported that American servicemen desecrated the Koran by flushing a copy down a toilet at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. Newsweek later retracted the report.]
Please allow me to share the following dialogue which occurred Tuesday in the White House briefing room when White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan was abused by ABC News' Terry Moran (who is, in my opinion, the worst TV news reporter in the business). Here is an excerpt from that press conference highlighting the exchange:
"Q: Scott, you said that the retraction by Newsweek magazine of its story is a good first step. What else does the President want this American magazine to do?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it's what I talked about yesterday. This report, which Newsweek has now retracted and said was wrong, has had serious consequences. People did lose their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged; there is lasting damage to our image because of this report. And we would encourage Newsweek to do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region.
And I think Newsweek can do that by talking about the way they got this wrong, and pointing out what the policies and practices of the United States military are when it comes to the handling of the Holy Koran. The military put in place policies and procedures to make sure that the Koran was handled -- or is handled with the utmost care and respect. And I think it would help to point that out, because some have taken this report -- those that are opposed to the United States -- some have taken this report and exploited it and used it to incite violence.
Q: With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --
Q: You're pressuring them.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --
Q: It's not pressure?
MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report."
One might augur that ABC's Terry Moran included in his report the evening of this exchange that Newsweek is crumpling under pressure from the White House. Why not? The New York Times did it yesterday (5.17.05), with this lead:
"After a drumbeat of criticism from the Bush administration and others, Newsweek magazine yesterday went beyond an apology it issued Sunday and retracted an article published May 1 that stated that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had tried to rattle Muslim detainees by flushing a Koran down a toilet.
"The original article was blamed for inciting widespread protests and riots in the Muslim world, where desecration of the Koran is viewed as an incendiary act, and where at least 17 people were killed in the ensuing violence."
The alleged "drumbeat" (how cute, a war-monger reference) of criticism is more a harmless thud, if McLellan's words are any indication of the threat he and Mr. Bush pose to a free press. More importantly, Terry Moran has done something, a sleight-of-hand journalistic trick, that has passed unnoticed by most people: Moran has made Newsweek, not an irresponsible culprit, but a victim. A victim pressured into a certain act by an aggressor. Sort of like a date rape, just without the date or the rape.
But please note that Moran makes a singularly declarative sentence: "You're pressuring them." Odd that his statement is not a question. Rather, it is the component of a foregone conclusion, one that establishes both the victimhood of Newsweek and the sins of the White House. That Moran feels himself sufficiently enlightened to tell the White House that it's pressuring a competitor while there seems to be evidence of no such thing should prove to the attentive that Terry Moran's enlightenment is rather dim. Unfortunately it does not prove Moran's dimness to very many people.
Just look at how this whole thing morphs as the press corps later returns to its favorite item on the menu. Even Pat Robertson is dragged into the morass. And please note who is drumming the drumbeat of criticism:
"Q: Back on Newsweek. Richard Myers, last Thursday -- I'm going to read you a quote from him. He said, "It's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran." He said it was "more tied up in the political process and reconciliation that President Karzai and his cabinet were conducting." And he said that that was from an after-action report he got that day.
So what has changed between last Thursday and today, five days later, to make you now think that those -- that that violence was a result of Newsweek?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, clearly, the report was used to incite violence by people who oppose the United States and want to mischaracterize the values and the views of the United States of America. The protests may have been pre-staged by those who oppose the United States and who may be opposed to moving forward on freedom and democracy in the region, but the images that we have seen across our television screens over the last few days clearly show that this report was used to incite violence. People lost their lives --
Q: But may I just follow up, please? He didn't say "protest," he said -- he used the word very specifically, "violence." He said the violence, as far as they know from their people on the ground -- which is something that you always say you respect wholeheartedly -- it was not because of Newsweek.
MR. McCLELLAN: Dana, I guess I'm not looking at it the same way as you do, and I think the Department of Defense has spoken to this issue over the last few days. But the facts are very clear that this report was used in the region by people opposed to the United States to incite violence and to portray a very negative image of the United States, one that runs contrary to everything that we value and believe, and it has done some serious damage to our image.
Q: You don't think there's any way that perhaps you're looking at it a little bit differently, now that you understand that the Newsweek report is false?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think you can go look at just about every news report that has covered this and they have pointed out that this report, itself, helped spark some violence in the region.
Q: Scott, to go back to Dana's question, are you saying that General Myers was wrong, therefore, that this -- the violence he's talking about? Are you saying he was wrong in his assessment of what happened in Afghanistan?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, not at all. In fact, maybe you didn't hear me, but as I said, there are people that are opposed to the United States that look at every opportunity to try to do damage to our image in the region, and --
Q: Okay --
MR. McCLELLAN: Hang on, let me finish -- and this report gave the additional material to incite violence, and additional material to exploit in the region. The report was wrong. Newsweek has stated that it was wrong. And there has been some lasting damage that has been done to our image because of this report. And it's going to take some work to repair that damage. And that's why we would encourage Newsweek to do its part to help repair the damage.
Q: Let me follow up on that. What -- you said that -- what specifically are you asking Newsweek to do? I mean, to follow up on Terry's question, are you saying they should write a story? Are you going that far? How else can Newsweek, you know, satisfy you here?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, as I said, we would encourage them to continue working diligently to help repair the damage that has been done because of this --
Q: Are you asking them to write a story?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- because of this report. I think Newsweek is going to be in the best position to determine how to achieve that. And there are ways that I pointed out that they can help repair the damage. One way is to point out what the policies and practices of our United States military are. Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care --
Q: Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?
MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --
Q: You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm coming to your question, and you're not letting me have a chance to respond. But our military goes out of their way to handle the Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And so now I think it's incumbent and -- incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies and practices are in that part of the world, because it's in that region where this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so that's all I'm saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing that. That's all I'm saying.
Q: As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first, how and where the story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if it really happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a story.
MR. McCLELLAN: I think Newsweek has talked about it. They took it --
Q: And second thing is that it's not only Newsweek story. In the past, well-known people who can make and break a society, they make statements against other religions, like Mr. Pat Robertson against Hinduism in the past. How can we prepare for the future all these stories, it doesn't happen again in the future? Do you think the President can come out and make sure, because that's what the Muslims are calling on the President to come out --
MR. McCLELLAN: We have to continue speaking out about the values that the United States stands for. And one value that we stand very strongly for is religious freedom. We believe all people should be able to practice their religion as they see fit. And we welcome a diversity of views. We welcome all those who -- well, I mean, we believe that religious freedom is at the heart of this issue here. And some people have taken this report and mischaracterized what we stand for here in America. So we're going to continue reaching out to people in the Muslim world and talking about what we believe in and what we stand for, and the values that we hold so dearly.
And in terms of what we're doing already, we're also asking our friends in the region to help make sure that that message gets out there, the message of what we believe in and what we stand for here in the United States, and the policies and practices that our military follows. Our military goes to great length to show the utmost respect for the Holy Koran and for the ability of detainees to worship freely. And I think that's something we will continue to point out.
In terms of the first question, I think that Newsweek talked about it yesterday; they talked about what went wrong, they talked about how this was based on a single, anonymous source, and they retracted the story, said it was wrong, and they shouldn't have gone with the story in the first place.
Q: Just to follow quickly --
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me keep going. Terry, go ahead.
Q: Scott, is this whole conversation about Newsweek and the White House, is this going on just in the media, or are White House officials talking to editors at Newsweek about what they think should be done?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm not aware of any such conversations, other than what I've said publicly. I know Newsweek did reach out to the Department of Defense to talk about the story, when they realized that they may have gotten it wrong. And they've since taken some steps, and we appreciate the step that they took yesterday.
Q: But you are not being any more specific with editors of Newsweek about what you think -- I mean, in a sort of one-to-one way, about --
MR. McCLELLAN: No, look, I mean, Newsweek is going to have to make those determinations. All we're saying is that we would encourage them to help undo the damage that has been done. Some of it's not going to be able to be undone, some of it is lasting. But we would just simply encourage Newsweek to do what they can to help repair the damage that was done in the region. And Newsweek certainly has the ability to do that. They are a widely-published magazine." †
Is it any wonder that the liberal press, and the leftists who feed on their reports, find the White House a bastion of secrecy? For it seems that the press forces the White House to deploy its defenses rather than to open its file drawers. It's a type of self-fulfilling prophecy, where the press snarls in expectation that the White House will be defensive, and then it goes about making sure that the White House is in fact defensive.
And is it any wonder that Terry Moran behaves more like a hangman readying the noose than a newsman gathering the news?
No, none of this is much of a wonder at all. It's to be expected from a press that is free enough to scream that it is hardly free at all; and yet is not at all free enough from its own ideologies and presumptions to accurately report reality, or to question itself.
A free press, you ask?
Free from what? Fairness?
Sure.
Contratimes
†The entire transcript of the Tuesday, May 17, 2005, press conference is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050517-2.html
Update:. It needs to be pointed out that David Brooks of the NYT today (5.19.05) has opined in his column that, in part, Newsweek is in fact a victim. However, Brooks' column is a good one, pointing out the absurdities inherent in many of the responses on the left and the right to the Newsweek article in question.
[Last week's Newsweek magazine published a small article in which it was reported that American servicemen desecrated the Koran by flushing a copy down a toilet at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. Newsweek later retracted the report.]
Please allow me to share the following dialogue which occurred Tuesday in the White House briefing room when White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan was abused by ABC News' Terry Moran (who is, in my opinion, the worst TV news reporter in the business). Here is an excerpt from that press conference highlighting the exchange:
"Q: Scott, you said that the retraction by Newsweek magazine of its story is a good first step. What else does the President want this American magazine to do?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, it's what I talked about yesterday. This report, which Newsweek has now retracted and said was wrong, has had serious consequences. People did lose their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged; there is lasting damage to our image because of this report. And we would encourage Newsweek to do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region.
And I think Newsweek can do that by talking about the way they got this wrong, and pointing out what the policies and practices of the United States military are when it comes to the handling of the Holy Koran. The military put in place policies and procedures to make sure that the Koran was handled -- or is handled with the utmost care and respect. And I think it would help to point that out, because some have taken this report -- those that are opposed to the United States -- some have taken this report and exploited it and used it to incite violence.
Q: With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --
Q: You're pressuring them.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --
Q: It's not pressure?
MR. McCLELLAN: Look, this report caused serious damage to the image of the United States abroad. And Newsweek has said that they got it wrong. I think Newsweek recognizes the responsibility they have. We appreciate the step that they took by retracting the story. Now we would encourage them to move forward and do all that they can to help repair the damage that has been done by this report. And that's all I'm saying. But, no, you're absolutely right, it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report."
One might augur that ABC's Terry Moran included in his report the evening of this exchange that Newsweek is crumpling under pressure from the White House. Why not? The New York Times did it yesterday (5.17.05), with this lead:
"After a drumbeat of criticism from the Bush administration and others, Newsweek magazine yesterday went beyond an apology it issued Sunday and retracted an article published May 1 that stated that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had tried to rattle Muslim detainees by flushing a Koran down a toilet.
"The original article was blamed for inciting widespread protests and riots in the Muslim world, where desecration of the Koran is viewed as an incendiary act, and where at least 17 people were killed in the ensuing violence."
The alleged "drumbeat" (how cute, a war-monger reference) of criticism is more a harmless thud, if McLellan's words are any indication of the threat he and Mr. Bush pose to a free press. More importantly, Terry Moran has done something, a sleight-of-hand journalistic trick, that has passed unnoticed by most people: Moran has made Newsweek, not an irresponsible culprit, but a victim. A victim pressured into a certain act by an aggressor. Sort of like a date rape, just without the date or the rape.
But please note that Moran makes a singularly declarative sentence: "You're pressuring them." Odd that his statement is not a question. Rather, it is the component of a foregone conclusion, one that establishes both the victimhood of Newsweek and the sins of the White House. That Moran feels himself sufficiently enlightened to tell the White House that it's pressuring a competitor while there seems to be evidence of no such thing should prove to the attentive that Terry Moran's enlightenment is rather dim. Unfortunately it does not prove Moran's dimness to very many people.
Just look at how this whole thing morphs as the press corps later returns to its favorite item on the menu. Even Pat Robertson is dragged into the morass. And please note who is drumming the drumbeat of criticism:
"Q: Back on Newsweek. Richard Myers, last Thursday -- I'm going to read you a quote from him. He said, "It's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran." He said it was "more tied up in the political process and reconciliation that President Karzai and his cabinet were conducting." And he said that that was from an after-action report he got that day.
So what has changed between last Thursday and today, five days later, to make you now think that those -- that that violence was a result of Newsweek?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, clearly, the report was used to incite violence by people who oppose the United States and want to mischaracterize the values and the views of the United States of America. The protests may have been pre-staged by those who oppose the United States and who may be opposed to moving forward on freedom and democracy in the region, but the images that we have seen across our television screens over the last few days clearly show that this report was used to incite violence. People lost their lives --
Q: But may I just follow up, please? He didn't say "protest," he said -- he used the word very specifically, "violence." He said the violence, as far as they know from their people on the ground -- which is something that you always say you respect wholeheartedly -- it was not because of Newsweek.
MR. McCLELLAN: Dana, I guess I'm not looking at it the same way as you do, and I think the Department of Defense has spoken to this issue over the last few days. But the facts are very clear that this report was used in the region by people opposed to the United States to incite violence and to portray a very negative image of the United States, one that runs contrary to everything that we value and believe, and it has done some serious damage to our image.
Q: You don't think there's any way that perhaps you're looking at it a little bit differently, now that you understand that the Newsweek report is false?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think you can go look at just about every news report that has covered this and they have pointed out that this report, itself, helped spark some violence in the region.
Q: Scott, to go back to Dana's question, are you saying that General Myers was wrong, therefore, that this -- the violence he's talking about? Are you saying he was wrong in his assessment of what happened in Afghanistan?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, not at all. In fact, maybe you didn't hear me, but as I said, there are people that are opposed to the United States that look at every opportunity to try to do damage to our image in the region, and --
Q: Okay --
MR. McCLELLAN: Hang on, let me finish -- and this report gave the additional material to incite violence, and additional material to exploit in the region. The report was wrong. Newsweek has stated that it was wrong. And there has been some lasting damage that has been done to our image because of this report. And it's going to take some work to repair that damage. And that's why we would encourage Newsweek to do its part to help repair the damage.
Q: Let me follow up on that. What -- you said that -- what specifically are you asking Newsweek to do? I mean, to follow up on Terry's question, are you saying they should write a story? Are you going that far? How else can Newsweek, you know, satisfy you here?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, as I said, we would encourage them to continue working diligently to help repair the damage that has been done because of this --
Q: Are you asking them to write a story?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- because of this report. I think Newsweek is going to be in the best position to determine how to achieve that. And there are ways that I pointed out that they can help repair the damage. One way is to point out what the policies and practices of our United States military are. Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care --
Q: Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?
MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --
Q: You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm coming to your question, and you're not letting me have a chance to respond. But our military goes out of their way to handle the Koran with care and respect. There are policies and practices that are in place. This report was wrong. Newsweek, itself, stated that it was wrong. And so now I think it's incumbent and -- incumbent upon Newsweek to do their part to help repair the damage. And they can do that through ways that they see best, but one way that would be good would be to point out what the policies and practices are in that part of the world, because it's in that region where this report has been exploited and used to cause lasting damage to the image of the United States of America. It has had serious consequences. And so that's all I'm saying, is that we would encourage them to take steps to help repair the damage. And I think that they recognize the importance of doing that. That's all I'm saying.
Q: As far as the Newsweek article is concerned, first, how and where the story came from? And do you think somebody can investigate if it really happened at the base, and who told Newsweek? Because somebody wrote a story.
MR. McCLELLAN: I think Newsweek has talked about it. They took it --
Q: And second thing is that it's not only Newsweek story. In the past, well-known people who can make and break a society, they make statements against other religions, like Mr. Pat Robertson against Hinduism in the past. How can we prepare for the future all these stories, it doesn't happen again in the future? Do you think the President can come out and make sure, because that's what the Muslims are calling on the President to come out --
MR. McCLELLAN: We have to continue speaking out about the values that the United States stands for. And one value that we stand very strongly for is religious freedom. We believe all people should be able to practice their religion as they see fit. And we welcome a diversity of views. We welcome all those who -- well, I mean, we believe that religious freedom is at the heart of this issue here. And some people have taken this report and mischaracterized what we stand for here in America. So we're going to continue reaching out to people in the Muslim world and talking about what we believe in and what we stand for, and the values that we hold so dearly.
And in terms of what we're doing already, we're also asking our friends in the region to help make sure that that message gets out there, the message of what we believe in and what we stand for here in the United States, and the policies and practices that our military follows. Our military goes to great length to show the utmost respect for the Holy Koran and for the ability of detainees to worship freely. And I think that's something we will continue to point out.
In terms of the first question, I think that Newsweek talked about it yesterday; they talked about what went wrong, they talked about how this was based on a single, anonymous source, and they retracted the story, said it was wrong, and they shouldn't have gone with the story in the first place.
Q: Just to follow quickly --
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me keep going. Terry, go ahead.
Q: Scott, is this whole conversation about Newsweek and the White House, is this going on just in the media, or are White House officials talking to editors at Newsweek about what they think should be done?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm not aware of any such conversations, other than what I've said publicly. I know Newsweek did reach out to the Department of Defense to talk about the story, when they realized that they may have gotten it wrong. And they've since taken some steps, and we appreciate the step that they took yesterday.
Q: But you are not being any more specific with editors of Newsweek about what you think -- I mean, in a sort of one-to-one way, about --
MR. McCLELLAN: No, look, I mean, Newsweek is going to have to make those determinations. All we're saying is that we would encourage them to help undo the damage that has been done. Some of it's not going to be able to be undone, some of it is lasting. But we would just simply encourage Newsweek to do what they can to help repair the damage that was done in the region. And Newsweek certainly has the ability to do that. They are a widely-published magazine." †
Is it any wonder that the liberal press, and the leftists who feed on their reports, find the White House a bastion of secrecy? For it seems that the press forces the White House to deploy its defenses rather than to open its file drawers. It's a type of self-fulfilling prophecy, where the press snarls in expectation that the White House will be defensive, and then it goes about making sure that the White House is in fact defensive.
And is it any wonder that Terry Moran behaves more like a hangman readying the noose than a newsman gathering the news?
No, none of this is much of a wonder at all. It's to be expected from a press that is free enough to scream that it is hardly free at all; and yet is not at all free enough from its own ideologies and presumptions to accurately report reality, or to question itself.
A free press, you ask?
Free from what? Fairness?
Sure.
Contratimes
†The entire transcript of the Tuesday, May 17, 2005, press conference is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050517-2.html
Update:. It needs to be pointed out that David Brooks of the NYT today (5.19.05) has opined in his column that, in part, Newsweek is in fact a victim. However, Brooks' column is a good one, pointing out the absurdities inherent in many of the responses on the left and the right to the Newsweek article in question.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
A Fifty-Million Dollar Apology for Simple Math
©Bill Gnade 2005
For those of you formerly riveted by the humble 2004 presidential campaign of Carol Mosley Braun, you'll recall that one of her campaign slogans was "'Take the 'Men Only' sign off the White House door." Women supporters of her hoped-for presidency applauded her vigorous support of promoting women everywhere.
Jump with me to the rather recent remarks of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, who made the rather inglorious suggestion that women might have an intrinsic disadvantage for success in the hard sciences and mathematics. At the moment of his alleged misarticulation, Umbrage replaced Veritas on the Harvard emblem, as truth fell victim to indignation and outrage. For it was suggested - from on high, no less - that men and women might be different; a suggestion that threatens the sacrosanct political dogma of equality between the sexes.
Hence, yesterday, in an apparent gesture of contrition for offending good sense, President Summers announced that Harvard has earmarked $50 million for investing in the futures market of women and minority faculty recruitment, particularly in the sciences. In effect, Summers' announcement is an apology for simple math.
And here is that math:
4, four, 6-2, square root of 16, 2x=8, IV, the number of winning games needed to win a World Series, the number of seasons, the number of legs on a moose -- each of these is equal, one to another. Each are different ways of writing the number 4. Four is equal to 36/9. 2 squared equals 1/2 times 8. You get the picture.
Hence, if men and women are equal, the following MUST be the case:
Bill Clinton equals Hillary Clinton; Carol Mosley Braun equals George W. Bush; (any woman) = (any man); a woman president and a man president comprise a tautology.
See the problem? Surely Carol Mosley Braun does not. For she believes (and she campaigned for the presidency ardently on this belief, with myriad women cheering her on), that the 'Men Only' sign needs to be removed from the White House, which is non-sensical if men and women are equal. For there is nothing to gain having a woman in the White House if she is equal to a man. Why have a woman president, ever, if WOMAN equals MAN? What is gained writing 'Five minus 1' instead of '4', if both values are the same?
So then, when the Harvard president dares depart from the rudiments of simple math, or for merely doing simple math, when discussing male/female differences, strikes me not as vicious sexism. It's good thinking.
Besides, our lives are replete with examples that contradict Man=Woman. Remember "Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus?" Remember that men are "less in touch with their emotions than women?" Remember that men NEVER ask for directions?
Admittedly, these are anecdotal, but when anecdotes can be heaped as high as mountain peaks, one might begin to suspect such anecdotes amount to a pile of evidence. Men are exactly what compared to women when it comes to using a TV remote? Women are what compared to men when it comes to working in the kitchen? Men are what compared to women in nearly every TV commercial regarding parenting, or going to Circuit City, or buying a Hemi-powered Dodge Durango? Men and women are what when it comes to pornography? Women are what compared to men when depicted in HBO's "Sex and the City"? Oh, that's right. Men and women are different when compared one to another.
What do nearly ALL American women in politics believe about themselves? They believe that they bring an INTRINSICALLY different perspective to the public square than that possessed by men. Does anyone believe that Hillary Clinton believes her sex plays no part in her political views? Does anyone believe that feminists concede their perspectives are the same as those of Jimmy-John and Danny-Don Swampson?
Understanding that men and women are intrinsically different requires not one credit hour of study at Harvard University. (An NPR report a few years back featured a study that indicated men intrinsically navigate large spaces better than women, while women navigate smaller spaces better than men; with said differences rooted in evolution, with men as hunters and women as home-keepers. Where's the outrage?! I also recall studies suggesting that men perform the mental operation of viewing abstract 3-D objects [mentally, mind you] better than women.)
But it need not matter what studies show us, because every day we have women, conservative and liberal, reminding us how different they are from men. Conservative women, however, truly believe in those differences, are comfortable with them, and largely hold no animus or jealously that men do some tasks better (and some worse). Liberal women, by contrast, shout about equality, writing essays and tracts about the glass ceiling and corporate identities, and yet constantly remind us in that very act of protest that they see things, feel things, and think things in a different - and (allegedly) better - way than the men whose positions they want. In short, their very cries for equality prove they are not equal.
Really, Mr. Summers is right: Math is a problem for women.
At least some of them.
Contratimes
For those of you formerly riveted by the humble 2004 presidential campaign of Carol Mosley Braun, you'll recall that one of her campaign slogans was "'Take the 'Men Only' sign off the White House door." Women supporters of her hoped-for presidency applauded her vigorous support of promoting women everywhere.
Jump with me to the rather recent remarks of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, who made the rather inglorious suggestion that women might have an intrinsic disadvantage for success in the hard sciences and mathematics. At the moment of his alleged misarticulation, Umbrage replaced Veritas on the Harvard emblem, as truth fell victim to indignation and outrage. For it was suggested - from on high, no less - that men and women might be different; a suggestion that threatens the sacrosanct political dogma of equality between the sexes.
Hence, yesterday, in an apparent gesture of contrition for offending good sense, President Summers announced that Harvard has earmarked $50 million for investing in the futures market of women and minority faculty recruitment, particularly in the sciences. In effect, Summers' announcement is an apology for simple math.
And here is that math:
4, four, 6-2, square root of 16, 2x=8, IV, the number of winning games needed to win a World Series, the number of seasons, the number of legs on a moose -- each of these is equal, one to another. Each are different ways of writing the number 4. Four is equal to 36/9. 2 squared equals 1/2 times 8. You get the picture.
Hence, if men and women are equal, the following MUST be the case:
Bill Clinton equals Hillary Clinton; Carol Mosley Braun equals George W. Bush; (any woman) = (any man); a woman president and a man president comprise a tautology.
See the problem? Surely Carol Mosley Braun does not. For she believes (and she campaigned for the presidency ardently on this belief, with myriad women cheering her on), that the 'Men Only' sign needs to be removed from the White House, which is non-sensical if men and women are equal. For there is nothing to gain having a woman in the White House if she is equal to a man. Why have a woman president, ever, if WOMAN equals MAN? What is gained writing 'Five minus 1' instead of '4', if both values are the same?
So then, when the Harvard president dares depart from the rudiments of simple math, or for merely doing simple math, when discussing male/female differences, strikes me not as vicious sexism. It's good thinking.
Besides, our lives are replete with examples that contradict Man=Woman. Remember "Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus?" Remember that men are "less in touch with their emotions than women?" Remember that men NEVER ask for directions?
Admittedly, these are anecdotal, but when anecdotes can be heaped as high as mountain peaks, one might begin to suspect such anecdotes amount to a pile of evidence. Men are exactly what compared to women when it comes to using a TV remote? Women are what compared to men when it comes to working in the kitchen? Men are what compared to women in nearly every TV commercial regarding parenting, or going to Circuit City, or buying a Hemi-powered Dodge Durango? Men and women are what when it comes to pornography? Women are what compared to men when depicted in HBO's "Sex and the City"? Oh, that's right. Men and women are different when compared one to another.
What do nearly ALL American women in politics believe about themselves? They believe that they bring an INTRINSICALLY different perspective to the public square than that possessed by men. Does anyone believe that Hillary Clinton believes her sex plays no part in her political views? Does anyone believe that feminists concede their perspectives are the same as those of Jimmy-John and Danny-Don Swampson?
Understanding that men and women are intrinsically different requires not one credit hour of study at Harvard University. (An NPR report a few years back featured a study that indicated men intrinsically navigate large spaces better than women, while women navigate smaller spaces better than men; with said differences rooted in evolution, with men as hunters and women as home-keepers. Where's the outrage?! I also recall studies suggesting that men perform the mental operation of viewing abstract 3-D objects [mentally, mind you] better than women.)
But it need not matter what studies show us, because every day we have women, conservative and liberal, reminding us how different they are from men. Conservative women, however, truly believe in those differences, are comfortable with them, and largely hold no animus or jealously that men do some tasks better (and some worse). Liberal women, by contrast, shout about equality, writing essays and tracts about the glass ceiling and corporate identities, and yet constantly remind us in that very act of protest that they see things, feel things, and think things in a different - and (allegedly) better - way than the men whose positions they want. In short, their very cries for equality prove they are not equal.
Really, Mr. Summers is right: Math is a problem for women.
At least some of them.
Contratimes
Monday, May 16, 2005
The New York Times' drug dealers, Part V: Dispensing Spong
©Bill Gnade/2005
[Nicholas Kristof can't just get enough of the Church. Once again he dispenses a narcotic for the masses, although this time he dispenses a nearly lethal dose. Again, I continue with my thesis that the "New York Times is the opiate of the people."]
Shelby Spong is so thoroughly heretical he offends his own orthodoxy, an orthodoxy of abuse and contradiction. In fact, Spong, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, is so censorious of orthodox Christianity that it requires less effort to believe in fairies and woodland nymphs than it does to believe that Mr. Spong has ever been a Christian. His is a vision imbued with gnosticism, the privileged vision of those who transcend the mundanity of the common faithful; a vision that supplants the myopia of the Holy See.
Amazingly, it is a vision touted in press and propaganda as fresh, new, progressive; though it is old and tired; tried, and found wanting. That's why it is called heresy: not because it is new or unknown; but because it is old and forsaken and untrue and harmful to humanity.
Perhaps that is why New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof turns to Spong for guidance in his most recent column "Liberal Bible-Thumping"(5.15.05). By way of propping up liberals' efforts to win the so-called culture wars, Kristof writes that Spong has something to teach liberals in his new book, The Sins of Scripture:
"This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States."
Unfortunately Kristof neglects to tell his readers what the essence is of this alleged "Great Awakening." Irrespective of such oversight, all readers cognizant of the issues involving the separation of church and state should take note: Liberals must denounce the Church's intrusion in politics unless, as Kristof reveals, the Church is Shelby Spong. THAT kind of intrusion, that kind of breach of the defenses against creeping religiosity in the sacred secular is permissible. Jerry Falwell's kind is damnable.
Kristof to liberals: Be more like Spong.
And what is Spong? Surely he is not an Episcopalian, for I know Episcopalians. Spong is, as I've said many times elsewhere, a Unitarian with a fetish for vestments (for those of you who are not familiar with vestments, vestments are the religious garb - gowns, cassocks, albs, stoles, etc. - typical of liturgical churchs). In fact, Spong has publicly stated his love of Unitarianism, and his affinity for it, during a lecture he delivered at the nearby Unitarian Church that once employed me.
Need proof of Spong's Unitarianism? Here are just two telling quotes from Spong culled from thousands of possibe choices:
"Jesus did not die for our sins! Jesus was not a sacrifice offered to God to overcome the fall that never happened. We are emerging creatures, not fallen creatures." [http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox30599.html]
"To the extent that the Buddha, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Krishna, Mohammed, Confucius, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Genoa, Hildengard of Bingen, Rosa Parks, Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Buber, Thich Nhat Hahn, Dag Hammarskjold, or any other holy person brings life, love, and being to another, then to that degree that person is to me the word of God incarnate. No fence can be placed around the Being of God. The suggestion that Jesus is of a different kind of substance and therefore different from every other human being in kind instead of in degree will ultimately have to be abandoned. Then the realization will surely begin to dawn that to perceive Jesus as different form others only in degree is to open all people to the divine potential found in the Christ figure. It is to invite all people to step into the power of living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to be all that any one of can be - a self whole, free, real, and expanding, a participant in a humanity without boundaries." [http://www.escapefromwatchtower.com/spong3.html (From Who is Christ for us?)]
These statements have Unitarians leaping in the pews, and the orthodox on bended knee.
Kristof continues with this gem about the atrocious behavior of the Jewish God (the OLD Testament God, for Christians), quoting Spong (and look at the crown jewel that follows it):
'"Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong asks. Or what about 1 Samuel 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders to wipe out all the Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and infant." Hmmm. Tough love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament, Revelation 19:17 has an angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner of "the flesh of all people."'
"Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School ..."
I guess if Spong has taught at Harvard Div, I should just stop thinking.
There is a passage in the Old Testament that says something like this: If a man is caught having sex with a goat, the man and the goat shall be put to death (I'm not making this up). For two seconds, maybe three, the passage bothered me, not least because I could not understand the violence toward the goat. And then, clarity. For I understand humans well enough to know this: That if Smith is caught having sex with a goat, and is killed for it (yet the goat is spared), Jones and Brown might very well turn that goat into a sideshow.
"Step right up, folks, and see the goat that won the heart of Smith."
No doubt others might even be tempted to see what a goat "felt" like; or to exploit the goat in sundry ways. One can't imagine that Mrs. Smith would like to see that goat prancing through her garden. Thus, killing the goat might actually be progressive.
So when God told Israel to practice genocide in its battles, was He not actually encouraging Israel to be compassionate, even distinct from its warring enemies? For at the time it was typical for tribes to kill enemy men and abscond with their women and children and livestock, all as spoils of war. Turned into sex slaves (though sometimes wives), and just plain slaves, the women (and children) were often brutalized by their enemies. Thus, for God to order the killing of every enemy tribal member, without flinching, indeed may have been humane orders. And I dare say, when another tribe walked through a decimated village leveled by the advancing Israelites, they must've wondered, even scoffed, at the kind of warriors that would reject the flesh and wealth of the plundered.
But it's easy for the heretic Spong to look back 30 or 40 centuries from his high post and snear at the drooling primitives of the past. It's easy because Spong is arrogant, bringing 21st-Century table manners and silver spoons to a Bronze Age banquet, demanding post-modern propriety. It's also easy because Spong believes we are heading toward perfection (as stated above) as "emerging creatures." We are not fallen; we are not getting worse, unless we are Roman Catholics. In that case, we are not emerging at all. And one can have no doubt that Spong believes he is more emergent than his evangelical neighbors.
And here is a perfect opiate for the careless from Kristof's pen:
"Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith."'
I am glad that Kristof admits to some skepticism here, but it is both too little and too late. That Spong should find Paul an angry gay man closeted in Corinth, so to speak, without so much as a historical or scriptural justification than his own voyuerism passed off as scholarship, is not only typical Spong gnosticism; it is typical Spong self-deception.
He is hardly, HARDLY, a role model for liberals anywhere. And he is hardly a gentle, tolerant shepherd. He writes:
"Let me say this carefully, but clearly. Anyone who elevates their prejudices to the position where they are defended as the will of God is evil."†
Interesting.
I wonder if Spong believes he's doing God's will. If he doesn't, then he's awash in futility. If he does, then, in his own words, he's evil.
Oh, the conundrums of being an emergent God.
Contratimes
†See http://www.beliefnet.com/story/11/story_1107_1.html
[Nicholas Kristof can't just get enough of the Church. Once again he dispenses a narcotic for the masses, although this time he dispenses a nearly lethal dose. Again, I continue with my thesis that the "New York Times is the opiate of the people."]
Shelby Spong is so thoroughly heretical he offends his own orthodoxy, an orthodoxy of abuse and contradiction. In fact, Spong, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, is so censorious of orthodox Christianity that it requires less effort to believe in fairies and woodland nymphs than it does to believe that Mr. Spong has ever been a Christian. His is a vision imbued with gnosticism, the privileged vision of those who transcend the mundanity of the common faithful; a vision that supplants the myopia of the Holy See.
Amazingly, it is a vision touted in press and propaganda as fresh, new, progressive; though it is old and tired; tried, and found wanting. That's why it is called heresy: not because it is new or unknown; but because it is old and forsaken and untrue and harmful to humanity.
Perhaps that is why New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof turns to Spong for guidance in his most recent column "Liberal Bible-Thumping"(5.15.05). By way of propping up liberals' efforts to win the so-called culture wars, Kristof writes that Spong has something to teach liberals in his new book, The Sins of Scripture:
"This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States."
Unfortunately Kristof neglects to tell his readers what the essence is of this alleged "Great Awakening." Irrespective of such oversight, all readers cognizant of the issues involving the separation of church and state should take note: Liberals must denounce the Church's intrusion in politics unless, as Kristof reveals, the Church is Shelby Spong. THAT kind of intrusion, that kind of breach of the defenses against creeping religiosity in the sacred secular is permissible. Jerry Falwell's kind is damnable.
Kristof to liberals: Be more like Spong.
And what is Spong? Surely he is not an Episcopalian, for I know Episcopalians. Spong is, as I've said many times elsewhere, a Unitarian with a fetish for vestments (for those of you who are not familiar with vestments, vestments are the religious garb - gowns, cassocks, albs, stoles, etc. - typical of liturgical churchs). In fact, Spong has publicly stated his love of Unitarianism, and his affinity for it, during a lecture he delivered at the nearby Unitarian Church that once employed me.
Need proof of Spong's Unitarianism? Here are just two telling quotes from Spong culled from thousands of possibe choices:
"Jesus did not die for our sins! Jesus was not a sacrifice offered to God to overcome the fall that never happened. We are emerging creatures, not fallen creatures." [http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox30599.html]
"To the extent that the Buddha, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Krishna, Mohammed, Confucius, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Genoa, Hildengard of Bingen, Rosa Parks, Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Buber, Thich Nhat Hahn, Dag Hammarskjold, or any other holy person brings life, love, and being to another, then to that degree that person is to me the word of God incarnate. No fence can be placed around the Being of God. The suggestion that Jesus is of a different kind of substance and therefore different from every other human being in kind instead of in degree will ultimately have to be abandoned. Then the realization will surely begin to dawn that to perceive Jesus as different form others only in degree is to open all people to the divine potential found in the Christ figure. It is to invite all people to step into the power of living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to be all that any one of can be - a self whole, free, real, and expanding, a participant in a humanity without boundaries." [http://www.escapefromwatchtower.com/spong3.html (From Who is Christ for us?)]
These statements have Unitarians leaping in the pews, and the orthodox on bended knee.
Kristof continues with this gem about the atrocious behavior of the Jewish God (the OLD Testament God, for Christians), quoting Spong (and look at the crown jewel that follows it):
'"Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong asks. Or what about 1 Samuel 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders to wipe out all the Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and infant." Hmmm. Tough love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament, Revelation 19:17 has an angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner of "the flesh of all people."'
"Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School ..."
I guess if Spong has taught at Harvard Div, I should just stop thinking.
There is a passage in the Old Testament that says something like this: If a man is caught having sex with a goat, the man and the goat shall be put to death (I'm not making this up). For two seconds, maybe three, the passage bothered me, not least because I could not understand the violence toward the goat. And then, clarity. For I understand humans well enough to know this: That if Smith is caught having sex with a goat, and is killed for it (yet the goat is spared), Jones and Brown might very well turn that goat into a sideshow.
"Step right up, folks, and see the goat that won the heart of Smith."
No doubt others might even be tempted to see what a goat "felt" like; or to exploit the goat in sundry ways. One can't imagine that Mrs. Smith would like to see that goat prancing through her garden. Thus, killing the goat might actually be progressive.
So when God told Israel to practice genocide in its battles, was He not actually encouraging Israel to be compassionate, even distinct from its warring enemies? For at the time it was typical for tribes to kill enemy men and abscond with their women and children and livestock, all as spoils of war. Turned into sex slaves (though sometimes wives), and just plain slaves, the women (and children) were often brutalized by their enemies. Thus, for God to order the killing of every enemy tribal member, without flinching, indeed may have been humane orders. And I dare say, when another tribe walked through a decimated village leveled by the advancing Israelites, they must've wondered, even scoffed, at the kind of warriors that would reject the flesh and wealth of the plundered.
But it's easy for the heretic Spong to look back 30 or 40 centuries from his high post and snear at the drooling primitives of the past. It's easy because Spong is arrogant, bringing 21st-Century table manners and silver spoons to a Bronze Age banquet, demanding post-modern propriety. It's also easy because Spong believes we are heading toward perfection (as stated above) as "emerging creatures." We are not fallen; we are not getting worse, unless we are Roman Catholics. In that case, we are not emerging at all. And one can have no doubt that Spong believes he is more emergent than his evangelical neighbors.
And here is a perfect opiate for the careless from Kristof's pen:
"Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith."'
I am glad that Kristof admits to some skepticism here, but it is both too little and too late. That Spong should find Paul an angry gay man closeted in Corinth, so to speak, without so much as a historical or scriptural justification than his own voyuerism passed off as scholarship, is not only typical Spong gnosticism; it is typical Spong self-deception.
He is hardly, HARDLY, a role model for liberals anywhere. And he is hardly a gentle, tolerant shepherd. He writes:
"Let me say this carefully, but clearly. Anyone who elevates their prejudices to the position where they are defended as the will of God is evil."†
Interesting.
I wonder if Spong believes he's doing God's will. If he doesn't, then he's awash in futility. If he does, then, in his own words, he's evil.
Oh, the conundrums of being an emergent God.
Contratimes
†See http://www.beliefnet.com/story/11/story_1107_1.html
Friday, May 13, 2005
The New York Times' drug dealers, Part IV
[In keeping with my claim that "the New York Times is the opiate of the people," and that its columnists are essentially dealers in said opiate, I continue with Ms. Maureen Dowd.]
Maureen Dowd's column (5.7.05), complete with Washington dateline (What Rough Beasts?), just makes things too easy for me. I swear, her essay describes a positively hallucinatory experience, presented in a recklessness befitting a person convinced of the superiority of her own LSD trip. Of course, we are talking about opiates, and Dowd's dispensed opiate is a rhetorical style that appeals to those who love to pretend to be intellectual. It's dress-up for the mind dealt with all the speed of drive-up window service: you quickly get your fix, though it ain't much.
Seriously, Ms. Dowd could not make my point easier than if she actually did peddle drugs on Broadway.
Here's the gist of Dowd's piece:
She "loves", or so she claims, chimeras (pronounced ki MEER ahs, for you pedantic-types), mythological monsters composed of sundry animal parts, you know, fire-breathing lion-headed goats with snake tails (Dowd calls the chimera of mythology a "she-monster"). From this deeply personal revelation, Dowd further reveals that she has a Medusa magnet on her refrigerator, confirming for all of us that she is a bona fide monster enthusiast. Of course, with that Gorgon on her fridge, one might conclude that Ms. Dowd enjoys delivering an icy stare at unsuspecting men, turning them to stone.
Curiously, Dowd springboards from these disclosures to genetics, from whence she teaches us that geneticists warn of chimeras being generated by humanity's heavy-handed intrusion into genetic engineering. Referencing Frankenstein's real master, Mary Shelley, Dowd concludes that "Playing Creator is tricky - even if you chase down your accidents with torches."
Guess, just guess, what Dowd's next line is.
After writing 423 words, Dowd writes this laugher:
"President Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening."
Why is this so funny? First, it proves that Dowd finds an odd pleasure in surprising unsuspecting men, leaving them - as the President should be after reading Dowd's piece - frozen in speechlessness. Second, after playing the pedagogue with us on matters of mythology and bio-ethics, Dowd unfurls without shame a contradiction of such magnitude, she can't even see it. For Dowd has just taken so much of our time telling us about how much she loves chimeras; only to tell us that she doesn't love the chimeras created in Bush's political petri dish.
But it is also funny because it is so damned cutesy: "... injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy ..." Is it possible that such drivel garners Pulitzer Prizes? You bet!
What other chimeras does she fear and loathe? (Does she love what she fears and loathes, or does she fear and loathe what she loves? Or does none of it matter in the nightmarish world of Maureen Dowd?)
Apparently she finds too grotesque for her refrigerator "The Republican Party"; Tom Delay, G. W. and Bill Frist (dangerous chimeras crushing Washingtonians beneath their cloven hoofs); evangelical Christians, who've hijacked the GOP (she must just ADORE the religious left, which explains her silence about that political force); and those who thought that giving food and water to a brain-injured woman - loved by her family - was not extraordinary medical intervention.
Yes, Dowd loves chimeras.
But the best is that Dowd slams the religious right for fearing "stem cell research, which could lead to more of a 'culture of life'..." All this from a woman who has just said that she loves chimeras, and then warns us of the dangers facing geneticists who dare blend genetic material between species. Why be so concerned about a few rogue gene strains, Ms. Dowd, if you are so enamored of stem cell research? (Please note that Dowd plays the perfect Gorgon here, for she fails to tell us that the religious right does not fear stem cell research; rather, it opposes embryonic stem cell research.) If Shelley is so inerrant about the dangers of being a creator, then why, Ms. Dowd, are evangelicals so errant when they say the same thing?
Suffice it to say that Ms. Dowd's essay reveals something startling: there is a creature who writes with contradicting hands, who speaks without thinking, whose metaphors are sophomorically mixed. In short, we have convincing evidence of a monster, a key-tapping she-monster.
And it is clear that Ms. Dowd loves that monster terribly; and perhaps even loves her alone.
One can only wonder if Ms. Dowd realizes that the only way to slay Medusa is to use a mirror.
(Put that on your refrigerator.)
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: maureen dowd, Gorgons, Chimeras, Medusa
Maureen Dowd's column (5.7.05), complete with Washington dateline (What Rough Beasts?), just makes things too easy for me. I swear, her essay describes a positively hallucinatory experience, presented in a recklessness befitting a person convinced of the superiority of her own LSD trip. Of course, we are talking about opiates, and Dowd's dispensed opiate is a rhetorical style that appeals to those who love to pretend to be intellectual. It's dress-up for the mind dealt with all the speed of drive-up window service: you quickly get your fix, though it ain't much.
Seriously, Ms. Dowd could not make my point easier than if she actually did peddle drugs on Broadway.
Here's the gist of Dowd's piece:
She "loves", or so she claims, chimeras (pronounced ki MEER ahs, for you pedantic-types), mythological monsters composed of sundry animal parts, you know, fire-breathing lion-headed goats with snake tails (Dowd calls the chimera of mythology a "she-monster"). From this deeply personal revelation, Dowd further reveals that she has a Medusa magnet on her refrigerator, confirming for all of us that she is a bona fide monster enthusiast. Of course, with that Gorgon on her fridge, one might conclude that Ms. Dowd enjoys delivering an icy stare at unsuspecting men, turning them to stone.
Curiously, Dowd springboards from these disclosures to genetics, from whence she teaches us that geneticists warn of chimeras being generated by humanity's heavy-handed intrusion into genetic engineering. Referencing Frankenstein's real master, Mary Shelley, Dowd concludes that "Playing Creator is tricky - even if you chase down your accidents with torches."
Guess, just guess, what Dowd's next line is.
After writing 423 words, Dowd writes this laugher:
"President Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening."
Why is this so funny? First, it proves that Dowd finds an odd pleasure in surprising unsuspecting men, leaving them - as the President should be after reading Dowd's piece - frozen in speechlessness. Second, after playing the pedagogue with us on matters of mythology and bio-ethics, Dowd unfurls without shame a contradiction of such magnitude, she can't even see it. For Dowd has just taken so much of our time telling us about how much she loves chimeras; only to tell us that she doesn't love the chimeras created in Bush's political petri dish.
But it is also funny because it is so damned cutesy: "... injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy ..." Is it possible that such drivel garners Pulitzer Prizes? You bet!
What other chimeras does she fear and loathe? (Does she love what she fears and loathes, or does she fear and loathe what she loves? Or does none of it matter in the nightmarish world of Maureen Dowd?)
Apparently she finds too grotesque for her refrigerator "The Republican Party"; Tom Delay, G. W. and Bill Frist (dangerous chimeras crushing Washingtonians beneath their cloven hoofs); evangelical Christians, who've hijacked the GOP (she must just ADORE the religious left, which explains her silence about that political force); and those who thought that giving food and water to a brain-injured woman - loved by her family - was not extraordinary medical intervention.
Yes, Dowd loves chimeras.
But the best is that Dowd slams the religious right for fearing "stem cell research, which could lead to more of a 'culture of life'..." All this from a woman who has just said that she loves chimeras, and then warns us of the dangers facing geneticists who dare blend genetic material between species. Why be so concerned about a few rogue gene strains, Ms. Dowd, if you are so enamored of stem cell research? (Please note that Dowd plays the perfect Gorgon here, for she fails to tell us that the religious right does not fear stem cell research; rather, it opposes embryonic stem cell research.) If Shelley is so inerrant about the dangers of being a creator, then why, Ms. Dowd, are evangelicals so errant when they say the same thing?
Suffice it to say that Ms. Dowd's essay reveals something startling: there is a creature who writes with contradicting hands, who speaks without thinking, whose metaphors are sophomorically mixed. In short, we have convincing evidence of a monster, a key-tapping she-monster.
And it is clear that Ms. Dowd loves that monster terribly; and perhaps even loves her alone.
One can only wonder if Ms. Dowd realizes that the only way to slay Medusa is to use a mirror.
(Put that on your refrigerator.)
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: maureen dowd, Gorgons, Chimeras, Medusa
Thursday, May 12, 2005
The New York Times' drug dealers, Part III
[In keeping with my claim that "the New York Times is the opiate of the people," and that its columnists are essentially dealers in said opiate, I continue with Mr. Nicholas Kristof.]
In two consecutive columns this week, Mr. Nicholas Kristof upbraids the Catholic Church, particularly Pope Benedict XVI, for failing to support the distribution and use of condoms throughout Christendom as a response to AIDS. In The Pope and Aids (May 8), Kristof blames the Church for "hundreds of thousands" of AIDS deaths; in Catholic Devotion, and Doubts (May 10), Kristof warns that if the Church remains doctrinally intransigent, a "Re-Reformation" is imminent.
One might first ask why Kristof is so obsessed with Catholic reform. Is it due to his own personal love of the papacy; of the magesterium; of Christ and the Holy Twelve? Or is he obsessed with reforming the Church because such reforms serve political ends: That by redefining Church doctrine, the once stalwart Church will become just another marginalized political entity, superfluous in total, because its teachings conform to the whim and whine of the people?
That Kristof is obsessed is clear: four columns in a month about the Church. And then there's the ditty he wrote last summer (and it really was a ditty) about the foolishness of the Virgin Birth; that those who believe it are intellectually, well, deficient.
It is so comforting to find those who denounce papal infallibility, and yet espouse personal infallibility. For surely Kristof believes that he is positively inerrant in his statements about the Church, its teachings and its future; and the role it has played in killing people with the AIDS virus for not distributing condoms. Surely one does not think that Kristof attaches a disclaimer to his op-eds with anything resembling a statement like, "You know, I might be wrong about this. I don't REALLY know much about Catholicism"?
No such disclaimer exists because Kristof thinks he is infallible about papal fallibility.
Check out this statement that concludes his May 8 essay:
"So if Pope Benedict wants to ease human suffering, then there's one simple step he could take that would save vast numbers of lives. He could encourage the use of condoms, if not for contraception, then at least to fight AIDS. That choice between obeying tradition and saving lives is stark, and let's all pray he'll make the courageous choice."
Add this statement:
"... the Vatican's ban on condoms has cost many hundreds of thousands of lives from AIDS."
Then add this (Kristof is allegedly quoting a 17-year-old Catholic girl, HIV-positive):
"Because of their age, they should be wiser," she said of the cardinals, adding: "I resent that they don't think of people like me, teenagers with AIDS or H.I.V."
From these it is pretty clear we can conclude one thing: The Catholic Church is evil. Not glorious, not compassionate, not merciful, not the repository of Christian truth. No, it is evil: It's all the Church's fault.
Yes, Kristof makes a passing remark or two about the many good things the Church has done. But his praise is muttered under his breath. It is not sung from the rooftops.
Sadly, really sadly, Kristof lacks the fortitude of mind to delve into WHY the Catholic Church opposes condoms. Its refusal to budge on this issue has nothing to do with some tangential teaching in the Church. Its refusal is rooted in the very core of what the Church believes about Christ, His marriage and intercourse with His Bride (the Church), and what it means to be a human being. Kristof turns a blind eye to the Church's ancient (the most ancient of all) moral teachings on abstinence; on behaving in a sexually healthy way (which would mean not being promiscuous and NOT performing anal intercourse, which is the MAIN means for transmitting the virus for heterosexuals AND homosexuals, from what I've been learning).
Does anyone really think that the Church is complicit in AIDS deaths when it has repeatedly said, for millennia, that sex should ONLY occur between a man and woman, married, as virgins?
(Kristof might as well blame mothers and fathers for having children! For surely these parents knew that this world was full of disease, violence and tragedy before they chose to have offspring. How dare they have children when they knew bad things would most likely happen to them! Parents are to blame for suffering! For if there were no kids, there'd be less suffering!)
The absurdity of Kristof is demonstrable: he's blaming the wrong thing, and he's taking the high moral ground against a Church that has done nothing wrong. It's easy to do when you don't want people to have to face the consequences of the choices they make.
Ultimately Kristof has a low, cynical view, not of the Church, but of humanity. Kristof believes that people are so animalistic, they can neither control themselves, nor can they take responsibility for their actions. The Church, believing that sexual intercourse is neither a sport nor a pasttime, believes that people are so noble that they indeed can practice sexuality in a holy, wondrous manner without resorting to latex and chemicals and toxins and machines and celluloid and narcotics to ensure sexual bliss. (In fact, the Church so adores sexual intercourse It considers it a sacrament. Progressives the world over scoff at such high-falutin language.)
Finally, I am reminded of the communists who thought their system would succeed, "IF ONLY" capitalism would get the hell out of their way. Similarly, I am reminded of gay rights advocates who insist that they will be happy "IF ONLY" the homophobics would get the hell out of their way. The same could be said of the feminists, or the progressives: there is always someone preventing them from finding happiness and peace. Kristof appears to be saying, ultimately, that the AIDS crisis would be better served IF ONLY the Roman Catholic Church would be a better Church.
In fact, Kristof would have us believe that the world would be a better place "IF ONLY" the Church was a bit more like Mr. Kristof.
Yes indeed, Mr. Kristof, it is time for a "Re-Reformation", whatever that means.
Perhaps you might want to "re-reform" your opinions, or something even more fundamental.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize
In two consecutive columns this week, Mr. Nicholas Kristof upbraids the Catholic Church, particularly Pope Benedict XVI, for failing to support the distribution and use of condoms throughout Christendom as a response to AIDS. In The Pope and Aids (May 8), Kristof blames the Church for "hundreds of thousands" of AIDS deaths; in Catholic Devotion, and Doubts (May 10), Kristof warns that if the Church remains doctrinally intransigent, a "Re-Reformation" is imminent.
One might first ask why Kristof is so obsessed with Catholic reform. Is it due to his own personal love of the papacy; of the magesterium; of Christ and the Holy Twelve? Or is he obsessed with reforming the Church because such reforms serve political ends: That by redefining Church doctrine, the once stalwart Church will become just another marginalized political entity, superfluous in total, because its teachings conform to the whim and whine of the people?
That Kristof is obsessed is clear: four columns in a month about the Church. And then there's the ditty he wrote last summer (and it really was a ditty) about the foolishness of the Virgin Birth; that those who believe it are intellectually, well, deficient.
It is so comforting to find those who denounce papal infallibility, and yet espouse personal infallibility. For surely Kristof believes that he is positively inerrant in his statements about the Church, its teachings and its future; and the role it has played in killing people with the AIDS virus for not distributing condoms. Surely one does not think that Kristof attaches a disclaimer to his op-eds with anything resembling a statement like, "You know, I might be wrong about this. I don't REALLY know much about Catholicism"?
No such disclaimer exists because Kristof thinks he is infallible about papal fallibility.
Check out this statement that concludes his May 8 essay:
"So if Pope Benedict wants to ease human suffering, then there's one simple step he could take that would save vast numbers of lives. He could encourage the use of condoms, if not for contraception, then at least to fight AIDS. That choice between obeying tradition and saving lives is stark, and let's all pray he'll make the courageous choice."
Add this statement:
"... the Vatican's ban on condoms has cost many hundreds of thousands of lives from AIDS."
Then add this (Kristof is allegedly quoting a 17-year-old Catholic girl, HIV-positive):
"Because of their age, they should be wiser," she said of the cardinals, adding: "I resent that they don't think of people like me, teenagers with AIDS or H.I.V."
From these it is pretty clear we can conclude one thing: The Catholic Church is evil. Not glorious, not compassionate, not merciful, not the repository of Christian truth. No, it is evil: It's all the Church's fault.
Yes, Kristof makes a passing remark or two about the many good things the Church has done. But his praise is muttered under his breath. It is not sung from the rooftops.
Sadly, really sadly, Kristof lacks the fortitude of mind to delve into WHY the Catholic Church opposes condoms. Its refusal to budge on this issue has nothing to do with some tangential teaching in the Church. Its refusal is rooted in the very core of what the Church believes about Christ, His marriage and intercourse with His Bride (the Church), and what it means to be a human being. Kristof turns a blind eye to the Church's ancient (the most ancient of all) moral teachings on abstinence; on behaving in a sexually healthy way (which would mean not being promiscuous and NOT performing anal intercourse, which is the MAIN means for transmitting the virus for heterosexuals AND homosexuals, from what I've been learning).
Does anyone really think that the Church is complicit in AIDS deaths when it has repeatedly said, for millennia, that sex should ONLY occur between a man and woman, married, as virgins?
(Kristof might as well blame mothers and fathers for having children! For surely these parents knew that this world was full of disease, violence and tragedy before they chose to have offspring. How dare they have children when they knew bad things would most likely happen to them! Parents are to blame for suffering! For if there were no kids, there'd be less suffering!)
The absurdity of Kristof is demonstrable: he's blaming the wrong thing, and he's taking the high moral ground against a Church that has done nothing wrong. It's easy to do when you don't want people to have to face the consequences of the choices they make.
Ultimately Kristof has a low, cynical view, not of the Church, but of humanity. Kristof believes that people are so animalistic, they can neither control themselves, nor can they take responsibility for their actions. The Church, believing that sexual intercourse is neither a sport nor a pasttime, believes that people are so noble that they indeed can practice sexuality in a holy, wondrous manner without resorting to latex and chemicals and toxins and machines and celluloid and narcotics to ensure sexual bliss. (In fact, the Church so adores sexual intercourse It considers it a sacrament. Progressives the world over scoff at such high-falutin language.)
Finally, I am reminded of the communists who thought their system would succeed, "IF ONLY" capitalism would get the hell out of their way. Similarly, I am reminded of gay rights advocates who insist that they will be happy "IF ONLY" the homophobics would get the hell out of their way. The same could be said of the feminists, or the progressives: there is always someone preventing them from finding happiness and peace. Kristof appears to be saying, ultimately, that the AIDS crisis would be better served IF ONLY the Roman Catholic Church would be a better Church.
In fact, Kristof would have us believe that the world would be a better place "IF ONLY" the Church was a bit more like Mr. Kristof.
Yes indeed, Mr. Kristof, it is time for a "Re-Reformation", whatever that means.
Perhaps you might want to "re-reform" your opinions, or something even more fundamental.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: New York Times, Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer Prize
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
The New York Times' drug dealers, Part II
(Part I of this ridiculously outstanding series begins here.)
[In keeping with my claim made yesterday that "the New York Times is the opiate of the people," and that its columnists are essentially dealers in said opiate, I continue with Mr. Frank Rich.]
On Sunday, 5.8.05, Frank Rich rebuked the media for its increasing complicity in perpetuating the propaganda of the Bush administration; for its pandering to its own corporate interests; and for its lack of journalistic standards. Laced through Rich's essay, Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished, are heavy doses of soporifics that yield little else but oscitancy, you know, yawning.
Here's essentially Rich's argument: Media respect in the broader culture is on the skids because the masses are sick and tired of the media kow-towing to the Bush adminstration. A more liberal, aggressive, and independent press would do wonders for the press' bad image problems, at least Rich believes.
To think that Rich only mentions the Jayson Blair scandal in passing - which is a real scandal at the Times - and yet suggests that Laura Bush's jokes were scandalously applauded by a "sycophantic" press, reveals that Mr. Rich has his priorities in odd order. It's not that the press has been too timid in its reportage, Mr. Rich, a timidity that has media ratings sliding down the tubes. It's that the press' reportage has been dishonest.
What? Does Rich forget the 60 Minutes documents already? Does he think the Jayson Blair story is a rare anomaly? Does he think that most consumers of news believe that the media are fair, or unbiased? Come now, Mr. Rich. Most people recognize that the media are almost entirely composed of supporters of one political party. That is why media outlets are finding it hard to dominate their markets: Because more and more consumers are hip to the fact that NEWS is no longer the scoop. SPIN is the scoop.
Media outlets no longer (largely because it is a 24/7 never-to-stop lustfest for one-upsmanship) take the time to find real news rooted in real events; they look for real events and real news to spin in a particularly unique and marketable way. Should the NYT begin to market a product that was spun conservative (no gay wedding announcements, an op-ed page like the WSJ, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Bob Herbert replaced by Ann Coulter, Rich Lowry, and David Horowitz), that paper would see its left-leaning market decline, a market it has created by appealing to the left in the tri-state area; complete with a mystique that the "paper of record" is where serious thinkers get their news (a mystique which appeals to the Democrats in my sleepy little NH town). So, it's not about the news, Mr. Rich, but the ideology in which the news is cradled, even shaped.
But here is the reality, gleaned from my own years as a print journalist. Please allow these few anecdotes to help build my case.
In 1983, I believe, while sitting with my father during his lunch break in the main hall of the MacDowell Art Colony (my father was the maintenance foreman at that esteemed retreat), I watched a televised mid-day news conference with President Ronald Reagan. I recall that at no time did President Reagan raise his hand, or touch his face, during his opening statements. Then, as he fielded questions pertaining to numerous topics including the invasion of Grenada, President Reagan scratched the side of his head while listening to one reporter's question. The instant he raised his hand, every motor-driven 35mm camera in the White House press room ripped off countless frames, the mad whirring and clicking evident to the TV audience.
The next day, on the front page of the Boston Globe, above the fold, was a photo of President Reagan, in a boxed story. The photo showed Reagan scratching his head, his mouth slightly open as if speaking, with a pullout quote in bold text adjacent to his image. The quote, about Grenada, read something like this: "Um, I am not sure ... I don't know about ..." Amazingly, the question that was being asked when Reagan touched his head was not about Grenada at all. So, the editors of the Globe ran an unflattering image of the President scratching his head to convey the idea that he did not know what the hell was going on. (Please realize: He was not speaking when the photo was taken; he was listening, and, for an instant, the camera lied.)
THIS is why the media are (and have been) losing America's respect, Mr. Rich!
But there is more. While I was covering Barbara Bush's 1991 campaign for her husband's presidential bid, I recall the repugnant commentary of the press pack following her. It was replete with indecency. The topper? A Boston TV news anchor turned to me and asked rhetorically, "Why should we care what she says. She just f---- the president."
While working as a staffer at what is touted as the "most liberal newspaper in New Hampshire" (the 60 town region it covers now votes almost exclusively Democratic. Surprised?), I recall that the sarcastic, critical attitude that pervaded the newsroom without so much as a moment of self-reflection, struck me as endemic to the whole newsgathering process. And when it came to photographing candidates for office as they stumped through the region, countless photos were taken, with the least flattering images going to the Republicans. In fact, the chief of photography, one of my dearest friends and a longtime Massachusetts Democrat, confessed to me that he ALWAYS submits the least flattering photographs of Republicans possible. Why? Because to him they are nothing but "greedy, lying bastards." And this from an award-winning photojournalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Associated Press and Washington Post.
Recently, I was assigned by a major national news outlet (this admission may cost me my relationship there) to photograph (and I will be as discreet as possible) a story related to a major international conflict. The photo editor requested in an email photo request that I take a "moody portrait" of a particular person. Can you guess which way the story was going to lean when a photo editor asks for a portrait to be "moody"?
That the news media create news where there is none; that they bend it to conform to an ideological market they want to exploit for cash; that they scoop each other not with news but with spin; these are the reasons Americans no longer trust the media. Moreover, Americans don't trust the media because they think more carefully than Frank Rich.
Mr. Rich need only look at his own work, and the work of his paper, to see why the media have fallen in such disrepute and disrepair. The slovenliness of Mr. Rich's colleague, Bob Herbert, for instance, in his last two columns, is a perfect example of why Americans are looking high and low for more trustworthy sources.
Contratimes
PS. Dear Mr. Rich,
Do you mind if I challenge you, since you are part of the press? Surely you don't. So, one more thing. When you berate the press for failing to get into President Bush's face for his announcement two years ago that 'major combat operations were over' in Iraq, you know, the "Mission Accomplished speech"; do you realize how inane you sound? For how is it that controlling a nation's commerce; its infrastructure and superstructure; its airfields and airspace; its military, government and its power plants; its highways and schools, how is it, dear sir, that such an accomplishment does not signify to you the END of major combat operations? Are we still in need of hurling cruise missiles in the Sunni triangle from warships in the Persian Gulf? Are we still in need of B-52 sorties dropping Daisy Cutters on Saddam's Republican Guard? Do we need to send tank battalions to level Iraqi defenses?
How long, dear sir, does America need to control (total control is impossible) a nation thousands of miles away before you - and your clairvoyant colleagues - will tell us when major combat is indeed over?
Peace.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
[In keeping with my claim made yesterday that "the New York Times is the opiate of the people," and that its columnists are essentially dealers in said opiate, I continue with Mr. Frank Rich.]
On Sunday, 5.8.05, Frank Rich rebuked the media for its increasing complicity in perpetuating the propaganda of the Bush administration; for its pandering to its own corporate interests; and for its lack of journalistic standards. Laced through Rich's essay, Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished, are heavy doses of soporifics that yield little else but oscitancy, you know, yawning.
Here's essentially Rich's argument: Media respect in the broader culture is on the skids because the masses are sick and tired of the media kow-towing to the Bush adminstration. A more liberal, aggressive, and independent press would do wonders for the press' bad image problems, at least Rich believes.
To think that Rich only mentions the Jayson Blair scandal in passing - which is a real scandal at the Times - and yet suggests that Laura Bush's jokes were scandalously applauded by a "sycophantic" press, reveals that Mr. Rich has his priorities in odd order. It's not that the press has been too timid in its reportage, Mr. Rich, a timidity that has media ratings sliding down the tubes. It's that the press' reportage has been dishonest.
What? Does Rich forget the 60 Minutes documents already? Does he think the Jayson Blair story is a rare anomaly? Does he think that most consumers of news believe that the media are fair, or unbiased? Come now, Mr. Rich. Most people recognize that the media are almost entirely composed of supporters of one political party. That is why media outlets are finding it hard to dominate their markets: Because more and more consumers are hip to the fact that NEWS is no longer the scoop. SPIN is the scoop.
Media outlets no longer (largely because it is a 24/7 never-to-stop lustfest for one-upsmanship) take the time to find real news rooted in real events; they look for real events and real news to spin in a particularly unique and marketable way. Should the NYT begin to market a product that was spun conservative (no gay wedding announcements, an op-ed page like the WSJ, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Bob Herbert replaced by Ann Coulter, Rich Lowry, and David Horowitz), that paper would see its left-leaning market decline, a market it has created by appealing to the left in the tri-state area; complete with a mystique that the "paper of record" is where serious thinkers get their news (a mystique which appeals to the Democrats in my sleepy little NH town). So, it's not about the news, Mr. Rich, but the ideology in which the news is cradled, even shaped.
But here is the reality, gleaned from my own years as a print journalist. Please allow these few anecdotes to help build my case.
In 1983, I believe, while sitting with my father during his lunch break in the main hall of the MacDowell Art Colony (my father was the maintenance foreman at that esteemed retreat), I watched a televised mid-day news conference with President Ronald Reagan. I recall that at no time did President Reagan raise his hand, or touch his face, during his opening statements. Then, as he fielded questions pertaining to numerous topics including the invasion of Grenada, President Reagan scratched the side of his head while listening to one reporter's question. The instant he raised his hand, every motor-driven 35mm camera in the White House press room ripped off countless frames, the mad whirring and clicking evident to the TV audience.
The next day, on the front page of the Boston Globe, above the fold, was a photo of President Reagan, in a boxed story. The photo showed Reagan scratching his head, his mouth slightly open as if speaking, with a pullout quote in bold text adjacent to his image. The quote, about Grenada, read something like this: "Um, I am not sure ... I don't know about ..." Amazingly, the question that was being asked when Reagan touched his head was not about Grenada at all. So, the editors of the Globe ran an unflattering image of the President scratching his head to convey the idea that he did not know what the hell was going on. (Please realize: He was not speaking when the photo was taken; he was listening, and, for an instant, the camera lied.)
THIS is why the media are (and have been) losing America's respect, Mr. Rich!
But there is more. While I was covering Barbara Bush's 1991 campaign for her husband's presidential bid, I recall the repugnant commentary of the press pack following her. It was replete with indecency. The topper? A Boston TV news anchor turned to me and asked rhetorically, "Why should we care what she says. She just f---- the president."
While working as a staffer at what is touted as the "most liberal newspaper in New Hampshire" (the 60 town region it covers now votes almost exclusively Democratic. Surprised?), I recall that the sarcastic, critical attitude that pervaded the newsroom without so much as a moment of self-reflection, struck me as endemic to the whole newsgathering process. And when it came to photographing candidates for office as they stumped through the region, countless photos were taken, with the least flattering images going to the Republicans. In fact, the chief of photography, one of my dearest friends and a longtime Massachusetts Democrat, confessed to me that he ALWAYS submits the least flattering photographs of Republicans possible. Why? Because to him they are nothing but "greedy, lying bastards." And this from an award-winning photojournalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Associated Press and Washington Post.
Recently, I was assigned by a major national news outlet (this admission may cost me my relationship there) to photograph (and I will be as discreet as possible) a story related to a major international conflict. The photo editor requested in an email photo request that I take a "moody portrait" of a particular person. Can you guess which way the story was going to lean when a photo editor asks for a portrait to be "moody"?
That the news media create news where there is none; that they bend it to conform to an ideological market they want to exploit for cash; that they scoop each other not with news but with spin; these are the reasons Americans no longer trust the media. Moreover, Americans don't trust the media because they think more carefully than Frank Rich.
Mr. Rich need only look at his own work, and the work of his paper, to see why the media have fallen in such disrepute and disrepair. The slovenliness of Mr. Rich's colleague, Bob Herbert, for instance, in his last two columns, is a perfect example of why Americans are looking high and low for more trustworthy sources.
Contratimes
PS. Dear Mr. Rich,
Do you mind if I challenge you, since you are part of the press? Surely you don't. So, one more thing. When you berate the press for failing to get into President Bush's face for his announcement two years ago that 'major combat operations were over' in Iraq, you know, the "Mission Accomplished speech"; do you realize how inane you sound? For how is it that controlling a nation's commerce; its infrastructure and superstructure; its airfields and airspace; its military, government and its power plants; its highways and schools, how is it, dear sir, that such an accomplishment does not signify to you the END of major combat operations? Are we still in need of hurling cruise missiles in the Sunni triangle from warships in the Persian Gulf? Are we still in need of B-52 sorties dropping Daisy Cutters on Saddam's Republican Guard? Do we need to send tank battalions to level Iraqi defenses?
How long, dear sir, does America need to control (total control is impossible) a nation thousands of miles away before you - and your clairvoyant colleagues - will tell us when major combat is indeed over?
Peace.
BG
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
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