FrontPageMagazine.com
January 26, 2005
At Jihad Watch we have received a large number of inquiries, both sober and frenzied, about the Coptic family found murdered in Jersey City last week.
As is well known, the Copts in Jersey City and elsewhere have many suspicions about this crime. But when they have voiced these suspicions, they have been frequently denounced as “Islamophobes” – an all-purpose term of abuse used to silence criticism of Islam and of Muslims. And Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio is dismissive of the idea that the killings were religiously motivated: “Is it possible? Yes. Do we have anything that gives us reason to believe this is what it was, factually? No. Nothing indicates that was the prime motivation for this. That we can clearly say.” The media has widely accepted the idea that it was just a robbery.
Yet law enforcement officials have received information from at least one Copt — a close friend of the Armanious family — indicating that the crime was indeed religiously motivated. This family friend has said that an imam in Jersey City declared this Christian family’s blood “halal,” (i.e., licit to shed), because of their proselytizing activities among Muslims. He has named — by name — a suspect in this crime, whose motive was religious and who has fled the country.
Perhaps there is nothing to this. Perhaps the man who has fled is innocent. But even if he is, the Copts have had perfectly cogent reasons for their suspicions. The Armanious family was outspoken in trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. Hossam Armanious vigorously spread his faith at PalTalk, and his 15-year-old daughter Sylvia displayed similar zeal at Dickinson High School. There is credible evidence that for this activity the family received a death threat. In light of all that, it may be that what needs to be justified is the idea that their deaths were in fact unrelated to that proselytizing activity. Islamic law, the Sharia, has traditionally made it a capital offense both for a Muslim to leave Islam, and for a non-Muslim to attempt to convert a Muslim. Many Muslims take such laws very seriously. The Theo van Gogh murder in the Netherlands indicates that at least some will not hesitate to enforce Sharia penalties even in the lands of the infidels.
But if the killer is never caught, which is a distinct possibility since he could be half a world away by now, Muslim spokesmen will attribute the suspicions of the Copts to a “climate of hysteria” against Muslims, and portray themselves — as they do so often — as victims.
Still, a larger question remains. If the Armanious family did in fact receive a death threat related to their proselytizing on Pal Talk, what are the implications for our free society? If the murders were indeed, as many Copts suspect, a warning to them not to proselytize among Muslims, what does that mean for the free exchange of ideas that has always been one of the central values – perhaps the central value – of the American polity?
The mainstream media has done a poor job of covering this case. It has not bothered to explain that the difficulties Copts experience in Egypt are not “old” or even “centuries-old” (as the New York Times put it) — they are as old as when the Muslim invaders first conquered Coptic Christian Egypt. They don’t come from anything Copts have said or done to Muslims, but from the supremacist nature of Islamic beliefs. But in the media in general there has been no understanding of this and no discussion of the Sharia — or of how apostates in Islam are to be treated, or of what punishment is to be meted out to those who dare (as the Armanious family dared) not to act as the despised and cowed minority they were in Egypt, but as free and equal and proud citizens of this country.
No statement has come from the Hudson County Prosecutors Office that shows any sign that that Office has considered these questions, or fully investigated the Copts’ suspicions and allegations. This may not have been a Sharia-inspired killing on American soil, but nothing that has yet come from Edward DeFazio or anyone else seems to deal adequately with the indications that it was. White House Wilsonians seem intent on bringing “democracy” to Iraq, as if that will somehow solve the problem of Islam, and of the jihad that they persist in identifying solely by one of its tools, terrorism. Meanwhile, an unknown number of Muslims in the United States — possibly including the killer of the Armanious family — are working to solve the problems of Islam by laboring, in one way or another, to bring Sharia to this country.
But few are paying attention to that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Monday, January 24, 2005
Mike S. Adams: How to Talk to an Atheist (And You Must)
[The title of this article is a play on the title of Ann Coulter's latest book "How to to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)" - jtf]
Mike S. Adams (archive)
January 24, 2005 Print Send
When I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I saw a car covered with sacrilegious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention. I’m sure he was also seeking to elicit anger from people of faith. The anger helps the atheist to justify his atheism. And, all too often, the atheist gets exactly what he is looking for.
In fact, just the other day, I heard a Christian refer to Michael Newdow as an “attention-craving SOB.” It reminded me of the time I heard someone refer to Annie Laurie Gaylor as a “b**ch.” I don’t have the same reaction towards atheists, even when I see them attacking my basic religious freedoms. When I look into their eyes I see an emptiness that evokes pity. Maybe that’s because I was once one of them.
I still remember the night I publicly declared my atheism. It was April 3rd, 1992. I was a long-haired musician, playing guitar at a bar called “The Gin” in Oxford, Mississippi. The subject of religion came up in a conversation during one of my breaks. An Ole Miss Law student, who had been an undergraduate with me at Mississippi State years before, asked me whether I was still dating my girlfriend, Sally. Then he asked why I had broken up with my previous girlfriend two years before.
After I explained that my former girlfriend was too much of a fundamentalist while I was an atheist, his jaw nearly hit the ground. “Are you really an atheist?” he asked. He assured me he didn’t mean to pry and that he was merely concerned. He didn’t have to tell me that. His reaction gave him away. It was a reaction he could not have possibly faked.
That law student, whose name I have forgotten, made no effort to convert me on the spot. But he did plead with me to pick up a copy of Mere Christianity. “I’ve heard it all before,” I said. He told me I was wrong. He said that C.S. Lewis was the best apologist of the 20th century, but he didn’t push the matter. The conversation ended abruptly. I never saw him again.
Years later, I read Mere Christianity and it did have a great effect upon me. But, recently, I was thinking about what really drove me to read the book. How could I have remembered the title of a book I heard only once? After all, it was many years before at the end of a long night of drinking in a bar in Mississippi.
The answer is simple. The advice was given to me by someone who sincerely considered the matter to be urgent. And that sense of urgency was conveyed without a trace of anger. It was just a matter of one human being communicating his concern for another without being pushy and holier-than-thou.
If a Christian really believes the things he professes to believe, he will go to great lengths to share it with others. He would even crawl on his belly across a desert of broken glass if he thought he could reach an atheist. He would certainly do more than utter profanity and show contempt for the atheist.
When my relationship with my atheist girlfriend ended on April 4th, 1992, I thought it was the end of the world. I didn’t know I had just taken my first step on the road to freedom. I certainly didn’t believe in divine intervention. But I do now.
I don’t think about those days as often as I should. But the next time I see Michael Newdow on TV, I will try to remember. And when I feel some sadness, I will try to keep the faith that there is always hope.
Between faith and hope and something, the greatest of these things is something. As long as there are atheists among us, we cannot forget that greatest thing. I am glad that law student remembered. I plan to thank him when I see him again.
Mike S. Adams will speak at Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN) on January 27th at 7:15 p.m. The speech, to be held in Hays Hall, will be open to the public.
©2005 Mike S. Adams
Contact Mike S. Adams Read Adams's biography
Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor
David Limbaugh says Mike Adams's first book "is a brilliant, but disturbing expose of life in postmodern academia today. No one better reveals the fraud pervading America's college campuses under the seductive euphemisms of political correctness, multiculturalism, and diversity-destructive forces that have led to sheer chaos. Adams is a modern-day Jeremiah whose warnings we cannot afford to ignore." (read Townhall's review) Order it now and save 30% off the cover price!
Mike S. Adams (archive)
January 24, 2005 Print Send
When I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I saw a car covered with sacrilegious bumper stickers. It seemed obvious to me that the owner was craving attention. I’m sure he was also seeking to elicit anger from people of faith. The anger helps the atheist to justify his atheism. And, all too often, the atheist gets exactly what he is looking for.
In fact, just the other day, I heard a Christian refer to Michael Newdow as an “attention-craving SOB.” It reminded me of the time I heard someone refer to Annie Laurie Gaylor as a “b**ch.” I don’t have the same reaction towards atheists, even when I see them attacking my basic religious freedoms. When I look into their eyes I see an emptiness that evokes pity. Maybe that’s because I was once one of them.
I still remember the night I publicly declared my atheism. It was April 3rd, 1992. I was a long-haired musician, playing guitar at a bar called “The Gin” in Oxford, Mississippi. The subject of religion came up in a conversation during one of my breaks. An Ole Miss Law student, who had been an undergraduate with me at Mississippi State years before, asked me whether I was still dating my girlfriend, Sally. Then he asked why I had broken up with my previous girlfriend two years before.
After I explained that my former girlfriend was too much of a fundamentalist while I was an atheist, his jaw nearly hit the ground. “Are you really an atheist?” he asked. He assured me he didn’t mean to pry and that he was merely concerned. He didn’t have to tell me that. His reaction gave him away. It was a reaction he could not have possibly faked.
That law student, whose name I have forgotten, made no effort to convert me on the spot. But he did plead with me to pick up a copy of Mere Christianity. “I’ve heard it all before,” I said. He told me I was wrong. He said that C.S. Lewis was the best apologist of the 20th century, but he didn’t push the matter. The conversation ended abruptly. I never saw him again.
Years later, I read Mere Christianity and it did have a great effect upon me. But, recently, I was thinking about what really drove me to read the book. How could I have remembered the title of a book I heard only once? After all, it was many years before at the end of a long night of drinking in a bar in Mississippi.
The answer is simple. The advice was given to me by someone who sincerely considered the matter to be urgent. And that sense of urgency was conveyed without a trace of anger. It was just a matter of one human being communicating his concern for another without being pushy and holier-than-thou.
If a Christian really believes the things he professes to believe, he will go to great lengths to share it with others. He would even crawl on his belly across a desert of broken glass if he thought he could reach an atheist. He would certainly do more than utter profanity and show contempt for the atheist.
When my relationship with my atheist girlfriend ended on April 4th, 1992, I thought it was the end of the world. I didn’t know I had just taken my first step on the road to freedom. I certainly didn’t believe in divine intervention. But I do now.
I don’t think about those days as often as I should. But the next time I see Michael Newdow on TV, I will try to remember. And when I feel some sadness, I will try to keep the faith that there is always hope.
Between faith and hope and something, the greatest of these things is something. As long as there are atheists among us, we cannot forget that greatest thing. I am glad that law student remembered. I plan to thank him when I see him again.
Mike S. Adams will speak at Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN) on January 27th at 7:15 p.m. The speech, to be held in Hays Hall, will be open to the public.
©2005 Mike S. Adams
Contact Mike S. Adams Read Adams's biography
Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel: Confessions of a Conservative College Professor
David Limbaugh says Mike Adams's first book "is a brilliant, but disturbing expose of life in postmodern academia today. No one better reveals the fraud pervading America's college campuses under the seductive euphemisms of political correctness, multiculturalism, and diversity-destructive forces that have led to sheer chaos. Adams is a modern-day Jeremiah whose warnings we cannot afford to ignore." (read Townhall's review) Order it now and save 30% off the cover price!
NRO- Dead Reckoning: Roe at 25
January 24, 2005, 7:38 a.m.
By The Editors
http://www.nationalreview.com
EDITOR'S NOTE: This editorial appeared piece appears in the January 26, 1998, January 31, 2005, issue of National Review.
A quarter-century has passed since the Supreme Court struck down the laws of every state in the nation, in the name of a constitutional right to abortion it had just discovered. In Roe v. Wade, the Court prohibited any regulation of abortion in the first trimester, allowed only regulations pertaining to the health of the mother in the second, and mandated that any regulation in the third make an exception for maternal health. In the companion case of Doe v. Bolton, the Court insisted on the broadest definition of health — economic, familial, emotional. Legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon describes the result as the most radical pro-abortion policy in the democratic world. It permits abortion at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason or for no reason. It has licensed the killing of some thirty-five million members of the human family so far.
The abortion regime was born in lies. In Britain (and in California, pre-Roe), the abortion lobby deceptively promoted legal revisions to allow "therapeutic" abortions and then defined every abortion as "therapeutic." The abortion lobby lied about Jane Roe, claiming her pregnancy resulted from a gang rape. It lied about the number of back-alley abortions. Justice Blackmun relied on fictitious history to argue, in Roe, that abortion had never been a common law crime.
The abortion regime is also sustained by lies. Its supporters constantly lie about the radicalism of Roe: even now, most Americans who "agree with Roe v. Wade" in polls think that it left third-term abortions illegal and restricted second-term abortions. They have lied about the frequency and "medical necessity" of partial-birth abortion. Then there are the euphemisms: "terminating a pregnancy," abortion "providers," "products of conception." "The fetus is only a potential human being" — as if it might as easily become an elk. "It should be between a woman and her doctor" — the latter an abortionist who has never met the woman before and who has a financial interest in her decision. This movement cannot speak the truth.
Roe's supporters said at the time that the widespread availability of abortion would lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies, hence less child abuse; it has not. They said that fewer women would die from back-alley abortions; the post-1940s decline in the number of women who died from abortions, the result of antibiotics, actually slowed after Roe — probably because the total number of abortions rose. They said it would reduce illegitimacy and child poverty, predictions that now seem like grim jokes.
Pro-lifers were, alas, more prescient. They claimed the West had started down the slippery slope of a progressive devaluation of human life. After the unborn would come the elderly and the infirm — more burdens to others; more obstacles to others' goals; probably better off dead, like "unwanted children." And so now we are debating whether to allow euthanasia, whether to create embryos for experimental purposes, whether to permit the killing of infants about to leave the womb.
And what greater claim on our protection, after all, does that infant have a moment after birth? He still lacks the attributes of "personhood" — rationality, autonomy, rich interactions — that pro-abortion philosophers consider the preconditions of a right to life. The argument boils down to this assertion: If we want to eliminate you and you cannot stop us, we are justified in doing it. Might makes right. Among intellectuals, infanticide is in the first phase of a movement from the unthinkable to the arguable to the debatable to the acceptable.
Everything abortion touches, it corrupts. It has corrupted family life. In the war between the sexes, abortion tilts the playing field toward predatory males, giving them another excuse for abandoning their offspring: She chose to carry the child; let her pay for her choice. Our law now says, in effect, that fatherhood has no meaning, and we are shocked that some men have learned that lesson too well. It has corrupted the Supreme Court, which has protected the abortion license even while tacitly admitting its lack of constitutional grounding. If the courts can invent such a right, unmoored in the text, tradition, or logic of the Constitution, then they can do almost anything; and so they have done. The law on everything from free speech to biotechnology has been distorted to accommodate abortionism. And abortion has deeply corrupted the practice of medicine, transforming healers into killers.
Most of all, perhaps, it has corrupted liberalism. For all its flaws, liberalism could until the early seventies claim a proud history of standing up for the powerless and downtrodden, of expanding the definition of the community for whom we pledge protection, of resisting the idea that might makes right. The Democratic Party has casually abandoned that legacy. Liberals' commitment to civil rights, it turns out, ends when the constituency in question can offer neither votes nor revenues.
Abortion-on-demand has, however, also called into being in America a pro-life movement comprising millions of ordinary citizens. Their largely unsung efforts to help pregnant women in distress have prevented countless abortions. And their political witness has helped maintain a pro-life ethic that has stopped millions more. The conversions of conscience have almost all been to the pro-life side — Bernard Nathanson, Nat Hentoff, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. The conversions of convenience have mostly gone the other way, mainly, politicians who wanted to get ahead in the Democratic Party — Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt. The fight against abortion has resulted in unprecedented dialogue and cooperation between Catholics and Protestants, first on moral values and now on theological ones. It has helped transform the Republican Party from a preserve of elite WASPs into a populist and conservative party.
True, few politicians of either party — with honorable exceptions like Henry Hyde, Chris Smith, Jesse Helms, Bob Casey, Charles Canady, and Rick Santorum — have provided leadership in the struggle. Not because opposition to abortion is unpopular — throughout the Roe era, 70 percent of the public has supported laws that would prohibit 90 percent of abortions — but because politicians, and even more the consultants and journalists and big-money donors to whom they listen, tend to move in elite circles where accepting abortion is de rigueur and pro-life advocacy at best an offense against good taste. Since everyone they know favors legal abortion, they understandably conclude that everyone does. But there is progress even here. The pro-abortion intellectual front is crumbling. Supporters of the license increasingly concede that what they support is, indeed, the taking of human life. Pro-lifers, their convictions rooted in firmer soil, have not had to make reciprocal concessions.
There can be little doubt that, left to the normal workings of democracy, abortion laws would generally be protective of infants in the womb. The main obstacle on our path to a society where every child is welcomed in life and protected in law, then, remains what it has always been: the Supreme Court. There abortionism is well entrenched; and last year the Court appeared to slam the door on the legal possibility of a congressional override of its decisions on abortion or anything else. By defining a practice at odds with our deep and settled moral convictions as part of the fundamental law of the land, the Supreme Court has created a slow-motion constitutional crisis. This is what comes of courting death.
* * *
YOU’RE NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO NATIONAL REVIEW? Sign up right now! It’s easy: Subscribe to National Review here, or to the digital version of the magazine here. You can even order a subscription as a gift: print or digital!
The latest:
Dead Reckoning 01/24
An Odd, Sad Waif 01/07
Big Sister Is Watching You 01/05
The Coming Struggle for Outer Space 01/04
Previous Articles:
Lowry: Miller's Mission 01/24 8:53 a.m.
Daniels: The Meaning Of a Riot 01/24 7:45 a.m.
Vincent: The Civil Rights of Iraqis 01/24 7:43 a.m.
Symposium: Onward March 01/24 7:40 a.m.
Bayefsky: W & Human Rights 01/24 7:39 a.m.
Editors: Dead Reckoning 01/24 7:38 a.m.
Graham: George Gets Even 01/24 7:37 a.m.
Owens: Bootin' Number Talk 01/24 7:36 a.m.
Coffin: Know Thy Enemy? 01/24 7:35 a.m.
Kudlow: Not Enough Peace & Prosperity 01/21 1:04 p.m.
WFB: What Is Bush Saying? 01/21 12:06 p.m.
Novak: Bush Bids for Greatness 01/21 10:31 a.m.
Flynn: Move On Already 01/21 9:32 a.m.
Pfeiffer: Among the Counter-Inaugurators 01/21 8:44 a.m.
By The Editors
http://www.nationalreview.com
EDITOR'S NOTE: This editorial appeared piece appears in the January 26, 1998, January 31, 2005, issue of National Review.
A quarter-century has passed since the Supreme Court struck down the laws of every state in the nation, in the name of a constitutional right to abortion it had just discovered. In Roe v. Wade, the Court prohibited any regulation of abortion in the first trimester, allowed only regulations pertaining to the health of the mother in the second, and mandated that any regulation in the third make an exception for maternal health. In the companion case of Doe v. Bolton, the Court insisted on the broadest definition of health — economic, familial, emotional. Legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon describes the result as the most radical pro-abortion policy in the democratic world. It permits abortion at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason or for no reason. It has licensed the killing of some thirty-five million members of the human family so far.
The abortion regime was born in lies. In Britain (and in California, pre-Roe), the abortion lobby deceptively promoted legal revisions to allow "therapeutic" abortions and then defined every abortion as "therapeutic." The abortion lobby lied about Jane Roe, claiming her pregnancy resulted from a gang rape. It lied about the number of back-alley abortions. Justice Blackmun relied on fictitious history to argue, in Roe, that abortion had never been a common law crime.
The abortion regime is also sustained by lies. Its supporters constantly lie about the radicalism of Roe: even now, most Americans who "agree with Roe v. Wade" in polls think that it left third-term abortions illegal and restricted second-term abortions. They have lied about the frequency and "medical necessity" of partial-birth abortion. Then there are the euphemisms: "terminating a pregnancy," abortion "providers," "products of conception." "The fetus is only a potential human being" — as if it might as easily become an elk. "It should be between a woman and her doctor" — the latter an abortionist who has never met the woman before and who has a financial interest in her decision. This movement cannot speak the truth.
Roe's supporters said at the time that the widespread availability of abortion would lead to fewer unwanted pregnancies, hence less child abuse; it has not. They said that fewer women would die from back-alley abortions; the post-1940s decline in the number of women who died from abortions, the result of antibiotics, actually slowed after Roe — probably because the total number of abortions rose. They said it would reduce illegitimacy and child poverty, predictions that now seem like grim jokes.
Pro-lifers were, alas, more prescient. They claimed the West had started down the slippery slope of a progressive devaluation of human life. After the unborn would come the elderly and the infirm — more burdens to others; more obstacles to others' goals; probably better off dead, like "unwanted children." And so now we are debating whether to allow euthanasia, whether to create embryos for experimental purposes, whether to permit the killing of infants about to leave the womb.
And what greater claim on our protection, after all, does that infant have a moment after birth? He still lacks the attributes of "personhood" — rationality, autonomy, rich interactions — that pro-abortion philosophers consider the preconditions of a right to life. The argument boils down to this assertion: If we want to eliminate you and you cannot stop us, we are justified in doing it. Might makes right. Among intellectuals, infanticide is in the first phase of a movement from the unthinkable to the arguable to the debatable to the acceptable.
Everything abortion touches, it corrupts. It has corrupted family life. In the war between the sexes, abortion tilts the playing field toward predatory males, giving them another excuse for abandoning their offspring: She chose to carry the child; let her pay for her choice. Our law now says, in effect, that fatherhood has no meaning, and we are shocked that some men have learned that lesson too well. It has corrupted the Supreme Court, which has protected the abortion license even while tacitly admitting its lack of constitutional grounding. If the courts can invent such a right, unmoored in the text, tradition, or logic of the Constitution, then they can do almost anything; and so they have done. The law on everything from free speech to biotechnology has been distorted to accommodate abortionism. And abortion has deeply corrupted the practice of medicine, transforming healers into killers.
Most of all, perhaps, it has corrupted liberalism. For all its flaws, liberalism could until the early seventies claim a proud history of standing up for the powerless and downtrodden, of expanding the definition of the community for whom we pledge protection, of resisting the idea that might makes right. The Democratic Party has casually abandoned that legacy. Liberals' commitment to civil rights, it turns out, ends when the constituency in question can offer neither votes nor revenues.
Abortion-on-demand has, however, also called into being in America a pro-life movement comprising millions of ordinary citizens. Their largely unsung efforts to help pregnant women in distress have prevented countless abortions. And their political witness has helped maintain a pro-life ethic that has stopped millions more. The conversions of conscience have almost all been to the pro-life side — Bernard Nathanson, Nat Hentoff, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. The conversions of convenience have mostly gone the other way, mainly, politicians who wanted to get ahead in the Democratic Party — Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt. The fight against abortion has resulted in unprecedented dialogue and cooperation between Catholics and Protestants, first on moral values and now on theological ones. It has helped transform the Republican Party from a preserve of elite WASPs into a populist and conservative party.
True, few politicians of either party — with honorable exceptions like Henry Hyde, Chris Smith, Jesse Helms, Bob Casey, Charles Canady, and Rick Santorum — have provided leadership in the struggle. Not because opposition to abortion is unpopular — throughout the Roe era, 70 percent of the public has supported laws that would prohibit 90 percent of abortions — but because politicians, and even more the consultants and journalists and big-money donors to whom they listen, tend to move in elite circles where accepting abortion is de rigueur and pro-life advocacy at best an offense against good taste. Since everyone they know favors legal abortion, they understandably conclude that everyone does. But there is progress even here. The pro-abortion intellectual front is crumbling. Supporters of the license increasingly concede that what they support is, indeed, the taking of human life. Pro-lifers, their convictions rooted in firmer soil, have not had to make reciprocal concessions.
There can be little doubt that, left to the normal workings of democracy, abortion laws would generally be protective of infants in the womb. The main obstacle on our path to a society where every child is welcomed in life and protected in law, then, remains what it has always been: the Supreme Court. There abortionism is well entrenched; and last year the Court appeared to slam the door on the legal possibility of a congressional override of its decisions on abortion or anything else. By defining a practice at odds with our deep and settled moral convictions as part of the fundamental law of the land, the Supreme Court has created a slow-motion constitutional crisis. This is what comes of courting death.
* * *
YOU’RE NOT A SUBSCRIBER TO NATIONAL REVIEW? Sign up right now! It’s easy: Subscribe to National Review here, or to the digital version of the magazine here. You can even order a subscription as a gift: print or digital!
The latest:
Dead Reckoning 01/24
An Odd, Sad Waif 01/07
Big Sister Is Watching You 01/05
The Coming Struggle for Outer Space 01/04
Previous Articles:
Lowry: Miller's Mission 01/24 8:53 a.m.
Daniels: The Meaning Of a Riot 01/24 7:45 a.m.
Vincent: The Civil Rights of Iraqis 01/24 7:43 a.m.
Symposium: Onward March 01/24 7:40 a.m.
Bayefsky: W & Human Rights 01/24 7:39 a.m.
Editors: Dead Reckoning 01/24 7:38 a.m.
Graham: George Gets Even 01/24 7:37 a.m.
Owens: Bootin' Number Talk 01/24 7:36 a.m.
Coffin: Know Thy Enemy? 01/24 7:35 a.m.
Kudlow: Not Enough Peace & Prosperity 01/21 1:04 p.m.
WFB: What Is Bush Saying? 01/21 12:06 p.m.
Novak: Bush Bids for Greatness 01/21 10:31 a.m.
Flynn: Move On Already 01/21 9:32 a.m.
Pfeiffer: Among the Counter-Inaugurators 01/21 8:44 a.m.
NRO- Onward March: Americans Protest Roe Again
January 24, 2005, 7:40 a.m.
National Review Online
EDITOR'S NOTE: Today marks the 32 annual March for Life on Washington, D.C., protesting the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. Why march every year? NRO asked a few pro-lifers that question. Their answers follow.
Robert P. George-
"Supreme Court Settles Abortion Issue" — The New York Times, January 23, 1973.
We march each year to defy the New York Times and falsify its infamous headline. We march to prove that this is still America, where faithful people will never permit the promise of our Declaration of Independence to sink into desuetude. We march to express implacable resistance to the forces of the culture of death.
— Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
Frederica Mathewes-Green-
The point of marching every year is just like the point of observing Memorial Day every year. It's appropriate to remember a tragedy on an annual basis and draw attention, showing that we haven't forgotten and engaging in corporate mourning. It's also important to demonstrate our commitment to changing this situation and our resolve to continue to demand that unborn children be protected from fatal violence.
— Frederica Mathewes-Green writes regularly for NPR's Morning Edition, Beliefnet.com, Christianity Today, and other publications. She is the author of Gender: Men, Women, Sex and Feminism, among other books.
Michael Novak-
In politics, steadiness is everything. Persistence counts. Will power and people power matter. That is why, exhausting as it is, repetitive as it is (like the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart, the rhythm of the lungs), the March for Life must go on year after year, through storm and sleet and hail.
The Supreme Court wants us to believe that they have settled a matter they have no power nor right to settle, that they have created precedents, and generated behaviors and commitments which compromise millions and many will therefore want in self-interest to defend, and that slowly their decision of 1973 will pacify the public thoroughly.
But they have overstepped their powers. They have practiced government without the consent of the governed. They have usurped the role of the legislature.
We have no procedure for making our consciences effective within the law, short of marches and protests and a constant series of elections — defeating those who would kill the unborn by choice, and bringing in new champions of the inalienable right to life and to defend the otherwise defenseless.
The moral position of the other side is more and more visibly untenable.
They are welcome to their liberty and their free choice, of course, but they have no right to employ these to abort the lives of those who are human individuals every bit as much as they are. The genetic code of every single one of the aborted is unique and irreplaceable, different from that of mother and father (although of course related). The aborted would never become cocker spaniels or sparrows or any other creature except fully grown human beings, were their lives not abruptly taken from them.
Each of them would be different from any brother or sister or any other person. To destroy these unique human individuals wantonly is no one's right.
In a Lockean democracy, the point of the social contract between the individual and the state is to protect vulnerable individuals from the rapacity of others. The state is obligated to provide that protection. In the case of the aborted, it is failing in its duty.
March on, then! March on!
Sooner or later the drip, drip, drip of the "water torture" of this annual March will awaken the nation. Today our nation knows not what it is doing. It is refusing to regard with clear eyes the horrific abuse it is heaping on its own unborn.
We march to invite people to, please, think again. "You could not possibly wish abortion had been done to you," we say. "Therefore, do it not to others."
— Michael Novak's latest book is The Universal Hunger for Liberty (Perseus, Basic), but he has written extensively on the theme addressed above in Belief and Unbelief and The Experience of Nothingness, as well as (with Jana Novak) Tell Me Why, all of which are still in print and available through his website at www.michaelnovak.net.
Austin Ruse-
The great victory of the pro-life movement is that we have kept the issue front and center in the American consciousness. We are still here and are not going away. This annual march is the largest visible manifestation of this fact."
— Austin Ruse is president of the Washington, D.C.-based Culture of Life Foundation.
Cathy Ruse-
The March for Life is a protest against an act of raw judicial power that is responsible for the death of over 40 million Americans. When the Supreme Court imposed a radical legal regime for abortion nationwide, it violated the will of the people and the constitutional workings of our democracy. And the march will continue until the will of the people is done. No other issue in the history of the country has generated such a sustained act of protest. All together, more people have marched in this march for this cause than in any other in American history.
— Cathy Cleaver Ruse is pro-life spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Jill Stanek-
I think the march is something of a pilgrimage.The March is organically grown, not a particularly organized event. There's no promotion, no cajoling of people and associated special-interest groups to attend (like the so-called March for Women's Lives). The weather is the worst of the entire year, yet the number of attendees only grows. It's something pro-lifers are just drawn to do. The march provides an opportunity to see a hundred thousand friends, gathered together to mourn the loss of 45 million of our babies.
— Jill Stanek is a nurse and pro-life activist.
National Review Online
EDITOR'S NOTE: Today marks the 32 annual March for Life on Washington, D.C., protesting the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. Why march every year? NRO asked a few pro-lifers that question. Their answers follow.
Robert P. George-
"Supreme Court Settles Abortion Issue" — The New York Times, January 23, 1973.
We march each year to defy the New York Times and falsify its infamous headline. We march to prove that this is still America, where faithful people will never permit the promise of our Declaration of Independence to sink into desuetude. We march to express implacable resistance to the forces of the culture of death.
— Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
Frederica Mathewes-Green-
The point of marching every year is just like the point of observing Memorial Day every year. It's appropriate to remember a tragedy on an annual basis and draw attention, showing that we haven't forgotten and engaging in corporate mourning. It's also important to demonstrate our commitment to changing this situation and our resolve to continue to demand that unborn children be protected from fatal violence.
— Frederica Mathewes-Green writes regularly for NPR's Morning Edition, Beliefnet.com, Christianity Today, and other publications. She is the author of Gender: Men, Women, Sex and Feminism, among other books.
Michael Novak-
In politics, steadiness is everything. Persistence counts. Will power and people power matter. That is why, exhausting as it is, repetitive as it is (like the circulation of the blood, the beating of the heart, the rhythm of the lungs), the March for Life must go on year after year, through storm and sleet and hail.
The Supreme Court wants us to believe that they have settled a matter they have no power nor right to settle, that they have created precedents, and generated behaviors and commitments which compromise millions and many will therefore want in self-interest to defend, and that slowly their decision of 1973 will pacify the public thoroughly.
But they have overstepped their powers. They have practiced government without the consent of the governed. They have usurped the role of the legislature.
We have no procedure for making our consciences effective within the law, short of marches and protests and a constant series of elections — defeating those who would kill the unborn by choice, and bringing in new champions of the inalienable right to life and to defend the otherwise defenseless.
The moral position of the other side is more and more visibly untenable.
They are welcome to their liberty and their free choice, of course, but they have no right to employ these to abort the lives of those who are human individuals every bit as much as they are. The genetic code of every single one of the aborted is unique and irreplaceable, different from that of mother and father (although of course related). The aborted would never become cocker spaniels or sparrows or any other creature except fully grown human beings, were their lives not abruptly taken from them.
Each of them would be different from any brother or sister or any other person. To destroy these unique human individuals wantonly is no one's right.
In a Lockean democracy, the point of the social contract between the individual and the state is to protect vulnerable individuals from the rapacity of others. The state is obligated to provide that protection. In the case of the aborted, it is failing in its duty.
March on, then! March on!
Sooner or later the drip, drip, drip of the "water torture" of this annual March will awaken the nation. Today our nation knows not what it is doing. It is refusing to regard with clear eyes the horrific abuse it is heaping on its own unborn.
We march to invite people to, please, think again. "You could not possibly wish abortion had been done to you," we say. "Therefore, do it not to others."
— Michael Novak's latest book is The Universal Hunger for Liberty (Perseus, Basic), but he has written extensively on the theme addressed above in Belief and Unbelief and The Experience of Nothingness, as well as (with Jana Novak) Tell Me Why, all of which are still in print and available through his website at www.michaelnovak.net.
Austin Ruse-
The great victory of the pro-life movement is that we have kept the issue front and center in the American consciousness. We are still here and are not going away. This annual march is the largest visible manifestation of this fact."
— Austin Ruse is president of the Washington, D.C.-based Culture of Life Foundation.
Cathy Ruse-
The March for Life is a protest against an act of raw judicial power that is responsible for the death of over 40 million Americans. When the Supreme Court imposed a radical legal regime for abortion nationwide, it violated the will of the people and the constitutional workings of our democracy. And the march will continue until the will of the people is done. No other issue in the history of the country has generated such a sustained act of protest. All together, more people have marched in this march for this cause than in any other in American history.
— Cathy Cleaver Ruse is pro-life spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Jill Stanek-
I think the march is something of a pilgrimage.The March is organically grown, not a particularly organized event. There's no promotion, no cajoling of people and associated special-interest groups to attend (like the so-called March for Women's Lives). The weather is the worst of the entire year, yet the number of attendees only grows. It's something pro-lifers are just drawn to do. The march provides an opportunity to see a hundred thousand friends, gathered together to mourn the loss of 45 million of our babies.
— Jill Stanek is a nurse and pro-life activist.
Tom Shales: 'Tonight' And Forever
Johnny Carson, the Late-Night Host Whose Best Act Was Himself
By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page C01
We've had 13 years to get over saying a painful goodbye to Johnny Carson. Now we have to start all over again. Even though he stayed almost completely out of the public eye since stepping down as host of "The Tonight Show," this time the pain is much worse.
There is absolutely no chance Johnny will come back now, even for an instant. Early Sunday morning, the great comedy star, who became known as "the king of late night" for his amazing longevity and class, died, at 79, of emphysema. On his last show, he expressed sorrow that his son Rick, victim of a car crash, couldn't be there with the rest of his family to make it a "perfect evening."
"But I guess life does what it's supposed to do," he said, "and you accept it and move on."
Still, it's awfully hard to accept the loss of a man who was like a next-door neighbor to 20 million people, dropping by to end the day with a few laughs, even when there seemed so little in the world to laugh about, always agreeable and always at his most ingratiating. Johnny Carson always managed to find something to amuse us, usually something deflating the pompous and the self-important -- two faults of which he was never guilty himself.
"And so it has come to this," he told us on his last "Tonight" show ever. "I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it." That speaks to part of what made Carson so magnetic and infectious, what made him such a pleasure to have in the house: We didn't watch the show, we watched him, and in addition to being entertained by him, we enjoyed watching him be entertained by others.
His delight at the discovery of some newfound comic talent -- he and his staff probably discovered more of that than anyone else in the history of show business -- was palpable; he'd laugh so hard that his chair would almost roll out from under him. When Bette Midler sang a farewell "One for My Baby" to him on the penultimate show, a camera caught Midler in the foreground singing and Johnny in the background sniffing tearfully, and we felt not like intruders on a private moment but like close friends who'd been invited to share it.
Carson has been called an Everyman figure, but that would be fitting only if every man were hilarious. He not only had brilliant timing and a lightning-quick mind for ad libs, he had a unique talent for turning bum jokes into gold. If a punch line elicited silence or groans from the studio audience, Carson would make a funny crack about how bad the joke was, or pull down the overhead microphone and say into it, "Attention Kmart shoppers" or, in the darkest hours, break into a soft-shoe dance with Doc Severinsen leading the band in "Tea for Two."
Ed McMahon, Carson's longtime announcer, seemed to laugh with particular gusto at these demonstrations of desperation. Sometimes Carson grew philosophical about the strange enjoyment people got from the clunkers and from seeing him squirm.
"It's like I'm up on a ledge and the crowd below is yelling, 'Jump! Jump!' " he said.
"He was the best," David Letterman declared in a statement yesterday from St. Bart's, where he and his family are vacationing. He called Carson "a star and a gentleman" and said there wasn't a night when he didn't ask himself how "Johnny" would have done something.
Peter Lassally, a close friend of Carson's who'd joined the show as a producer in 1970, was shocked and despondent at Carson's death, especially since Carson had been having such a joyful retirement. "After he left the show, he became so much more open and gentle," Lassally recalled from his home in Malibu. "He was so much sweeter and relaxed, and it was so much fun to be with him."
Speaking often by phone in addition to sharing occasional nights out, Lassally said, he and Carson would "talk about how terrible the world situation was -- politics, books, things in the news. He was always interested in the world outside of show business. He would also call when he was watching a really bad television show, especially something live, and he'd ask if I was watching it too. If I wasn't, I'd turn it on, and we'd laugh hysterically just at how bad it was. He never failed to call when something was really, really awful."
Carson didn't miss doing "The Tonight Show," but he may have missed doing the monologue. It was Lassally who revealed just last week that Carson would occasionally write a joke about some item in the news and send it off to Letterman, and that those jokes would sometimes end up in Letterman's monologue. He'd been doing this for more than a year, Lassally said yesterday. Carson found Letterman "strange" but always liked him and would have preferred that Letterman, not Jay Leno, succeed him at the "Tonight Show" desk.
Lassally revealed the secret about the jokes because he was trying to get inquiring TV columnists off the topic of Carson's health, not wanting to discuss it any more than necessary. The National Enquirer had splashed a story about Carson being rushed to the hospital on its front page, and the tabloid is usually accurate when dealing with stories of celebrity illness. Lassally hadn't heard from Carson for three weeks, he said yesterday, and Carson's voice hadn't sounded very healthy on the phone -- high-pitched and raspy.
Carson was a heavy smoker for years, and when he started as "Tonight" host, with the show still originating from NBC Studios in New York, smoke was always wafting up from an ashtray on his desk. He eventually tried to avoid taking puffs while on camera, and -- chided by such guests as Tony Randall -- finally gave up smoking altogether. But permanent damage may have been done.
Hundreds and hundreds of guests passed through "The Tonight Show" talking to Johnny over those 30 years, most of them plugging movies or TV shows or books. Carson made it all entertaining with his sharp wit and self-deprecating humor. There were also regular scripted comedy segments in which Carson would wear a costume and play a wacky character, a kind of throwback to the vaudeville era and to showbiz as Carson -- though hardly any of today's stars -- remembered it.
He would don a wig and dress and be irreverent "Aunt Blabby," a character with more than a passing resemblance to Jonathan Winters as "Maude Frickert." When Carl Sagan was a popular figure, Carson -- an astronomy buff himself -- would do a dead-on Sagan impression, always talking about "billions and billions" of these or those in the solar system. To deliver the news of the future, Carson would turn himself into "Zontar Rather," and to divine questions without ever having seen the answers (because, as straight man McMahon explained, they had been kept in "a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls' porch since noon today"), Carson plopped a turban on his head and became "Carnac the Magnificent."
Answer: Sis boom bah. Question: What is the sound of a sheep exploding?
These and other bits -- Art Fern, the hammy commercial pitchman who kept interrupting the afternoon movie on an unnamed local TV station -- usually followed the monologue, which was the jewel in the turban for the show. Carson's best interviews, meanwhile, were not necessarily with movie or TV stars so much as the ones he did with small children and very old people, whom Carson always seemed to find awesome.
Kids were great because they weren't intimidated by cameras and lights. Little Zachary La Voy, a fledgling actor, kept peeking at himself in a monitor during a 1989 show now available on home video. Carson: "How do you think you look?" Little boy: "Cute!" Carson erupted in laughter.
He also very dependably got laughs from segments featuring wild animals brought to the studio by zoologists and other experts. Once when a leopard in a cage suddenly growled and swiped at Carson, Carson ran all the way across the studio floor and jumped into the arms of McMahon.
The show was almost always a joy to watch because Carson almost always took great joy in doing it.
Carson turned down all entreaties -- and there were dozens -- to come out of retirement for one show, one little sketch, one brief appearance. Except for a tiny appearance on Letterman's CBS show, Carson stayed away. During a 1993 interview, he revealed one of the main reasons for remaining out of the public eye: Bob Hope. Carson thought Hope seemed sad continuing to make appearances on television, even if only to stand up and wave, as he waded further and further into his nineties and grew increasingly infirm. Carson did not want to look pathetic, nor come across as someone who refused to leave the stage even though the hour had clearly come.
The tabloids occasionally printed sneaky photographs of Carson on his boat or walking in Malibu and appearing to be less trim and buoyant than he always was on "The Tonight Show." But for the most part, the prevailing image that Carson left us was of a man still full of vitality, mischief, irreverence and incomparable charm -- a man who still seemed boyish even as he crossed the boundary into his seventies.
"I hope when I find something I want to do and think you would like, I can come back," Carson said in his final remarks that last night. Faithful fans knew he was bluffing even then, and that it was unlikely he would ever return. Now it is official, though his image will always be available through one form of electronic legerdemain or another.
It can never be the same as when the multicolored curtains parted, the band played Johnny's theme (which he wrote with Paul Anka) and McMahon did his trademark "Heeeeeere's Johnny."
His death received almost marathon coverage on some of the news channels yesterday as though he had been a head of state. In a way, he was. New comedians couldn't really be popular until Carson had officially christened them with appearances on his show -- perhaps even including a few accolades from the master himself, or an invitation to sit down and chat on the couch.
When an especially celebrated person dies, it is often called the end of an era. But Johnny Carson's era didn't end yesterday; it ended many years earlier. One way or another, it's gone.
And yet there are times when you are watching a movie made in the past three decades and you hear a Carson show or his familiar theme music in the background, and suddenly you perk up, do a double take, and think maybe he never left and he'll be on again tonight after all.
When he left, Johnny said he would like to relive all 30 years over again. If only we could. If only we could.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Johnny Carson: 1925-2005
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By Brian Lowry and Scott Collins, Special to The Los Angeles Times
Johnny Carson, who in three decades as host of "The Tonight Show" became one of America's most influential entertainers as well as one of television's most powerful figures, died Sunday. He was 79.
His nephew, Jeff Sotzing, a former producer of "The Tonight Show," said Carson died peacefully, but declined to give a location or other details.
NBC, Carson's longtime employer, said the comedian died of emphysema at his Malibu home. He had suffered a heart attack and undergone quadruple bypass surgery in 1999.
Sotzing said there would be no memorial service.
Former NBC Chairman Grant Tinker once called Carson's run on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" "the biggest and best television has ever been." When Carson announced his retirement in 1991, another comedy legend, Bob Hope, said it was "sort of like a head falling off Mt. Rushmore." Although Carson was not the first "Tonight" host — Steve Allen and Jack Paar preceded him — he carried the format to previously unimagined heights and made late-night TV an enduring institution.
Millions of fans stayed up past their usual bedtimes to watch his interviews with stars and odd newsmakers, as well as sketches involving his silly, sometimes demented characters, such as TV host Art Fern and fortune teller Carnac the Magnificent.
He also is frequently credited with giving vital early breaks to two top-rated late-night hosts — Jay Leno and David Letterman — as well as a legion of stand-up comics. That list includes David Brenner, George Carlin, Billy Crystal, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld.
Ed McMahon, the sidekick who always introduced Carson with "Heeeeere's Johnny!" said the former talk-show host was "like a brother to me." "Our 34 years of working together, plus the 12 years since then, created a friendship which was professional, family-like and one of respect and great admiration," McMahon said in a statement"It's a sad day for his family and for the country," Letterman said in a statement. "All of us who came after are pretenders. We will not see the likes of him again."
Leno, who followed Carson as host of "The Tonight Show," called him "the gold standard" of television. "No single individual has had as great an impact on television as Johnny," Leno said in a statement. "It's hard to believe he's actually gone. It's a tremendous loss for everyone who Johnny made laugh for so many years." Peter Lassally, Carson's producer for more than two decades, told reporters last week that even though the comedian had been battling emphysema "a long time," he remained an avid TV viewer and was even sending jokes to Letterman for monologues on his CBS show, "The Late Show with David Letterman."
Known for his deadpan expressions and wry delivery, Carson proved that late night could be profitable for the networks, and the wee hours are now crammed with talk shows inspired by his success on "The Tonight Show."
But none of those shows will probably ever match Carson's reach. In 1969, ukulele-playing camp figure Tiny Tim and his bride, Miss Vicki, married in an on-air ceremony on Carson's "Tonight Show." Critics derided the event as a stunt, but more than 40 million viewers tuned in — a staggering figure for late night, and about as many as watched the 2004 Academy Awards in prime time.
Carson kept growing his audience throughout the 1960s and '70s, even as NBC's competitors cooked up rival shows designed to end his dominance. But TV viewers developed a bond with Carson that others could neither duplicate nor shatter. In a 1978 New Yorker profile of Carson, writer Kenneth Tynan observed that this was "a feat that, in its blend of staying power and mounting popularity, is without precedent in the history of television."
Carson spun running gags from those who joined him on the show. There were frequent cracks about McMahon's supposed penchant for alcohol and the relentlessly dull social life of band member Tommy Newsom. But as an interviewer, Carson was as gentle as he was effective. He asked guests questions that viewers wanted answered, but he managed to avoid seeming prying or mean-spirited.
That goes a long way toward explaining why virtually every figure of importance from show business and politics eventually wound up on "The Tonight Show," from Martin Luther King Jr. to Bill Clinton to Tom Cruise. All told, Carson was host to 22,000 guests during his 30 years on "The Tonight Show."
The late-night host had become an extraordinarily private figure in recent years, given the national stage he commanded for three decades. He seldom appeared in public and — other than a few cameos on Letterman's late-night show and a tribute to Hope — completely eschewed television after leaving "The Tonight Show" on May 22, 1992, with a retrospective that drew an audience that rivaled ratings for the Super Bowl. "I bid you a very heartfelt good night," were his parting words.
After years of silence, Carson spoke to Esquire magazine for a 2002 profile, reconfirming his belief that he had done the right thing in essentially disappearing from public view."I left at the right time," he said. "You've got to know when to get the hell off the stage, and the timing was right for me. The reason I really don't go back or do interviews is because I just let the work speak for itself."
From a cultural standpoint, Carson's nightly monologue developed a reputation as a bellwether in terms of the national mood. When Carson began making Watergate jokes, the New York Times wrote in 1975, "We knew it was permissible to ridicule the president, that Mr. Nixon was done for.""The influence he had on the country was unique. He was the conscience of America," said Lassally, who noted that Carson also was extraordinarily evenhanded, so much so that no one ever knew his personal political leanings.
Carson also had a major effect on television standards, lacing his monologues with sexual innuendo that once would have been unthinkable on television."Next to Milton Berle and Lucille Ball, he's had the single greatest influence on the content of television," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy. "He really created the monologue and turned it into a cultural barometer of political and social events. Many people got their take on what was acceptable from the monologue."Carson himself said in a 1986 interview, "I knew from the monologue the very night that Spiro Agnew was suddenly in deep trouble," referring to Nixon's former vice president, who was forced to resign in a financial scandal not related to Watergate. "From a one-line observation I can get a response, a reaction … that may be the best indicator of how [someone] is perceived in this country."
If Carson's jokes reverberated in Washington, an appearance on "The Tonight Show" was seen for many years in Hollywood as a career-making platform, especially for stand-up comedians. Seinfeld said receiving the "OK" sign from Carson after his first appearance was "the Holy Grail of comedy." Rickles, the comic who Carson championed early in his career, said in a statement that "Johnny … always made me look good.""That was his nature, to always make his guests look their best, and he made all of my appearances into 'events,' " Rickles said.
Dick Cavett said that Carson "made people.""It was the Midas touch for a young comic to come on the show," he said. "I was always a guest on the couch. My manager wouldn't let me do stand-up. All the prestige [on the show] was on the couch.""What I appreciated about Johnny is that he let me pinch hit there [on "The Tonight Show"], and that really helped me get my own show," Joey Bishop said in an interview. Bishop, who had a short-lived late-night show on ABC in the late 1960s, was one of many rival entertainers that other networks put forth to try to put a dent in Carson's ratings.
Introduced by Groucho Marx on his first show on Oct. 1, 1962, Carson went on to host more than 7,500 hours of television and weathered numerous late-night challenges, including competing shows featuring Bishop, Cavett, Merv Griffin, Joan Rivers, Pat Sajak and Alan Thicke, that all came and went during his tenure.
At the end, feeling NBC was maneuvering behind him to line up a replacement, Carson stunned the television world when he announced his plans to retire at an advertising presentation in 1991, setting off a flurry of debate and backstage jockeying to determine whether Letterman or Leno should become his successor. Leno won the job, prompting Letterman to leave NBC for a competing show on CBS.
Although he never publicly took sides in the battle with Leno, Carson was said to have felt privately that Letterman was better-suited to be his replacement. On Sunday, Letterman credited Carson for his professional success."He gave me a shot on his show, and in doing so he gave me a career," Letterman said. "A night doesn't go by that I don't ask myself, 'What would Johnny have done?' "Lassally called Carson's ability to step out of the spotlight at 66 and reject entreaties to return "an elegant end to his career."
Friends frequently tried to coax Carson out of retirement. Steve Martin, a poker buddy, proposed that Carson make an appearance on the Academy Awards — of which he was the host of several times — and NBC Chairman Bob Wright pleaded with him to appear on the network's 75th anniversary special in May 2002. Carson declined.
Nevertheless, he admitted in the Esquire interview that a decade after leaving "The Tonight Show," the program stayed with him, telling the magazine that he still had dreams in which he was late for work and suddenly realized that he was unprepared to go on."I wake up in a sweat," he said. "It's now been 10 years since I've been done with the job, but I will still be back there — it was two-thirds of my adult life, remember — and people will be as real and fresh and current as ever in the dream."
Carson did exhibit some signs of wanting to safeguard his legacy. In 2003, for example, he wrote the Wall Street Journal to correct a reference to the use of canned laughter on the program, stressing that he never did during his 30-year tenure."I don't mean to sound peevish," Carson said, "but I wouldn't want people's memories of 'The Tonight Show' to be dimmed because they believed the laughter they heard wasn't genuine."
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Carson, as the host, was how effortless he made "The Tonight Show" look. His monologue, never rehearsed, seemed to perfectly capture the tone necessary to let people unwind. He also seemed to possess an innate understanding of the rhythms and pacing of television."It should be low-key," Carson once told reporter Rick Du Brow, then at the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. "It's the end of the day. People watching don't want someone who looks like they're going to have a nervous breakdown."
In a sense, Carson was the perfect personality for television — reflecting the generation following the great radio stars such as Jack Benny and Hope, one that grew up with the medium."I use the camera," Carson said. "I remember seeing a silent film from the '20s with Oliver Hardy sighing directly into the camera. I can't explain how perfect that sigh was. It's like trying to explain comedy."
Lassally said that even in retirement Carson never lost his passion for comedy and was still finding plenty of material from reading the newspaper."I think the thing he misses the most is the monologue," Lassally said.
Some attribute part of Carson's vast appeal to his Midwestern roots and sensibility. Born in Corning, Iowa, Carson was raised in Norfolk, Neb., where he began his career as a teenager, performing a magic act he called "The Great Carsoni."Unlike the comics he admired, many of whom were from poor backgrounds, Carson enjoyed relative prosperity even during the Depression as the son of a district manager for the power company. He was a middle child, with an older sister, Catherine, and younger brother, Dick, who later worked as a director on "The Tonight Show" and other TV programs.
Carson served in the Navy (a ship he was on, the Pennsylvania, was torpedoed in August 1945, killing nearly 20 of his crew mates) and subsequently attended the University of Nebraska.
Honing his act by performing during college, he landed a job after graduation at a local radio station — WOW in Omaha — where he wrote comedy and announced commercials. Not long after the first TV station in the area signed on in 1949, Carson started to host a 15-minute TV show, "Squirrel's Nest."
The comic moved to Los Angeles in 1950, becoming a staff announcer at the local CBS station, KNXT (now KCBS-TV Channel 2), which led to his own program, "Carson's Cellar." He subsequently wrote for Red Skelton's TV show.
Carson ascended to network television at the age of 29, headlining a daytime show and substituting on CBS' "The Morning Show." In 1957, he became host of what became a popular ABC daytime show, "Who Do You Trust?" which first paired him with McMahon.
When Paar decided to leave "The Tonight Show," NBC saw Carson as the obvious replacement. Desperate to have him, the network used guest hosts for six months until Carson — who initially turned down the job — was free of his ABC contract.
His starting salary, $100,000 a year, eventually blossomed into millions (his earnings reportedly exceeded $20 million a year by 1990). Carson owned the sketches on his show as well, which were packaged and sold separately to TV stations under the name "Carson's Comedy Classics." Carson moved "The Tonight Show" from New York to Burbank — which became another regular target for jokes — in 1972. He also pressed to cut the show from 90 minutes (it originally ran 1 hour and 45 minutes) to an hour in 1980 and threatened to quit to get the network to do so.
NBC resisted, resulting in a public and protracted contract negotiation. The network eventually caved in, however, giving Carson ownership of the show itself in the process. This was not surprising since "The Tonight Show" accounted for nearly a fifth of the network's total profit from advertising revenue.
Carson was equally successful as a headliner in Las Vegas, and he negotiated extended vacation time (as well as Mondays off) that allowed him to perform there frequently.
If Carson was a king in the entertainment world, his personal life was thornier. He remained an inordinately private person for such a public figure, but the facts that came out often seemed at odds with his genial on-screen image.
Carson married four times, was said to be a chain smoker and wrestled with alcoholism. He endured the death of one of his three sons, Rick, in a 1991 car accident at the age of 39.
Carson usually allowed his personal life to invade the show only in jest, but after that incident he fought back tears while eulogizing his son. After a much-publicized arrest for drunken driving in 1982, Carson had a policeman escort him onstage. One of Carson's wives, Joanne, said the comic had focused on his career "because instinctively he knew the career would never let him down. He felt it would never betray him, and it never has betrayed him."Although his first divorce became final in 1963, that relationship became an issue in 1990 when his wife (Jody "Joan" Wolcott, the mother of all three children and his college sweetheart) demanded a ninefold increase in her alimony payments, to $120,000 per year. Carson's attorneys called the request "a baldfaced holdup."
Carson was married to his fourth wife, Alexis, in 1987. The two met on the beach a few years earlier and wed in a private ceremony at his Malibu home. His passions included astronomy and tennis, both as a player and fan, evidenced by his regular trips to the Wimbledon tournament in England."If I had given as much to marriage as I gave to 'The Tonight Show,' I'd probably have a hell of a marriage," Carson told The Times in 1986. "But the fact is, I haven't given that, and there you have the simple reason for the failure of my marriages: I put the energy into the show."
For all the plaudits heaped on him, Carson's influence within Hollywood was equally legendary. Laurence Leamer claimed that no other talk show would book him when he wrote "King of the Night," an unflattering 1989 biography of Carson, whom he called "the most powerful person in Los Angeles." In the book, Leamer characterized him as a cold and ruthless individual, a womanizer who was abusive with his wives and petty in his business dealings.
Carson freely admitted that he "never was a social animal." He didn't like being surrounded by people, drove himself to work and was extremely selective about his friends, spending lots of time in his sprawling hilltop estate, so large as to prompt comic Bob Newhart to quip on a visit, "Where's the gift shop?"
The build-up to Carson's final episode in 1992 became a national event. The Comedy Central network went dark during that hour, and Arsenio Hall aired reruns of his late-night series the last week out of deference to Carson.
Ratings swelled, with millions tuning in to see final guests Robin Williams and Bette Midler, the latter singing a memorable duet with Carson. His family attended the final "Tonight" taping, and Carson addressed his sons, Chris and Cory, in signing off."I realize that being an offspring of someone who is constantly in the public eye is not easy," Carson said. "So guys, I want you to know that I love you. I hope that your old man has not caused you too much discomfort."
Despite staying out of the public eye after leaving, Carson continued to maintain offices in Santa Monica, going in a few days a week. Company affairs — including the sale of "Tonight Show" videos that continued to sell briskly, marketed via TV "infomercials" — have been run by his nephew, Sotzing.
Carson also indulged his passion for the sea in his later years, sailing extensively on a specially equipped 130-foot yacht, the Serengeti — named, he said, for the region in Africa that captivated him on a trip there in the 1990s.
Although Carson appeared in the 1964 movie "Looking for Love," which starred Connie Francis, he ultimately decided to focus his career almost exclusively on "The Tonight Show." Carson admitted that he had "thought about movies for years" but felt that they didn't offer a terribly viable option because he was so well-known as himself. "[Robert] Redford can play a baseball player, but I'm playing me. Every night," he said.
Among the film offers Carson turned down was the chance to play a character modeled after him, opposite Robert DeNiro, in "The King of Comedy," a role that went to Jerry Lewis.
Although he generally avoided acting, Carson did host the Academy Awards on five occasions from 1979 to 1984 (the exception being in 1983). His own list of honors included six Emmys and the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award. He also was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and was celebrated by the Kennedy Center for career achievement the next year.
During a 1979 interview with Mike Wallace for CBS' "60 Minutes," the journalist asked Carson: "What would you like your epitaph to be?"Without missing a beat, Carson quipped: "I'll be right back."
Key Moments on Carson:
Johnny Carson's legacy is not one of catchphrases or famous one-line jokes. It was his physical shtick — his trademark golf swing at the end of every monologue or the stumble onstage when he made his entrance as the bumbling Carnac the Magnificent. It was his perfectly timed deadpans and slow-burn reactions — who could ever forget the look on his face when a little marmoset relieved himself on Carson's head? It was his gallery of zany characters whom audiences never tired of during his three-decade tenure on NBC.
1964: Carson introduces two of his most popular characters: the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-silly mind reader, Carnac the Magnificent, and the gossipy, wisecracking Aunt Blabby. But the biggest laugh of the year — perhaps the biggest one in the history of "The Tonight Show" — came when singer-actor Ed Ames demonstrated how to throw a tomahawk, only to hit a cardboard dummy in the crotch.
1966: Carson begins "The Mighty Carson Art Players," a sketch format that over the years saw him parody famous figures, including President Reagan and actor Karl Malden hawking the American Express card.
1969: More than 40 million viewers tune in to see the wedding of the falsetto singer Tiny Tim and his teenage bride, Miss Vicki. Copies of this episode, and the premiere episode of Carson's "The Tonight Show," have been lost.
1971: Carson debuts as the lascivious character Art Fern, host of the "Tea Time Movie." With his pencil-thin mustache, slicked-back hair and tacky suits, Fern would peddle products, seduce his buxom co-host and give nonsensical, forever-changing directions to the Slauson freeway cut-off.
1977: Carson introduces the last of his great characters, the super-patriotic but dimwitted Floyd R. Turbo, who would deliver bombastic editorials dressed in a checked buffalo jacket and a hat with earflaps.
1992: On the next-to-last show on May 21— the final installment that featured guest stars — Bette Midler brings Carson to tears when she serenades him with the standard "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)." And on the last broadcast, after sharing memories with sidekick Ed McMahon and band leader Doc Severinsen, Carson took the stage alone and delivered one of TV's classiest farewells:"You people watching, I can only tell you that it's been an honor and a privilege coming into your homes all these years to entertain you. And I hope when I find something I want to do and think you would like, I can come back and [you will be] as gracious in inviting me into your homes as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight."
Compiled by Times staff writer Susan King
Lowry, now a columnist and television critic for Daily Variety, wrote much of this obituary while a Times staff writer. Collins is a Times staff writer. Times staff writer Susan King also contributed to this report.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Richard Berman Calls 'Super Size Me' A Sick Reality Show
'Super Size Me' Is Just Another Sick Reality Show
By: Richard Berman
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted On March 12, 2004
Documentary films may have their own Oscar category, but they rarely appear in mainstream theaters. Still, ''Super Size Me'' -- which earned Morgan Spurlock the nod for best documentary director at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival -- is coming soon to a theater near you. What makes ''Super Size Me'' exceptional? Simple. It's not a documentary at all.
The main attraction of ''Super Size Me'' is watching Spurlock put on weight while he gorges on nothing but McDonald's food for a month. Spurlock calls it ''an honest film about what can happen when you continue to have a fast-food diet.'' But eating 90 meals in a row at the same restaurant is no more realistic than so-called reality shows like ''Average Joe.'' Take away the anti-fast food elitism, and ''Super Size Me'' looks like a cross between ''Fear Factor'' and ''My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance.''
MTV viewers may remember Spurlock's short-lived show ''I Bet You Will,'' whose motto was ''stupidity pays.'' With cameras rolling, Spurlock paid a man to gulp down an entire 24-ounce jar of mayonnaise. He got a woman to shave her head, combine the hair with butter to form a giant hairball, and then eat it. Internet voyeurs could also see one guy chew on a piece of dog feces for Spurlock's ready cash. Not surprisingly, the show featured an ''Official Puke Bucket.''
Fast-forward to 2004. The mainstream media are lining up to shake hands with Spurlock, who now presents himself as a serious and socially concerned documentary filmmaker. Spurlock recently pontificated that ''If there's one thing we could accomplish, it is that we make people think about what they put in their mouth.'' This from a guy who once paid people to eat dog droppings.
''Super Size Me'' is little more than an extended episode of ''I Bet You Will,'' in which Spurlock dares himself to eat poorly, yells ''action,'' and laughs all the way to the bank. However, it does successfully demonstrate the truth of his own words from the days of ''I Bet You Will'': ''People will do anything -- and I mean anything -- for money.''
Of course, Spurlock is hardly the only ambitious prankster who sees dollar signs where the rest of us see dinner. Trial lawyers have spent the last few years greedily eyeing Big Food. Perhaps not coincidently, Spurlock says his burger bonanza was inspired by a lawsuit blaming McDonald's for making people fat.
Spurlock's admiration for trial lawyers cuts both ways. Some of these sharks are beginning to pretend that Spurlock's stunt has serious meaning. George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, an adviser in the McDonald's lawsuit, is already promoting ''Super Size Me'' as a harbinger of more fast-food litigation.
If anything, ''Super Size Me'' is a lesson in why obesity lawsuits are so frivolous. Spurlock consciously chose to eat just one type of food day in and day out. He was no unwitting victim of convenient, inexpensive and tasty food.
Conspicuously absent from Spurlock's blame-the-burger publicity drive is any mention of his physical activity. Nutritionists tell us that weight gain is just calories in vs. calories out. It doesn't really matter if the calories come in the form of Big Macs or brussels sprouts. Just ask Don Gorske. He's in the Guinness Book of Records for eating 19,000 Big Macs. Gorske is 6 feet tall, 180 pounds, and his cholesterol is a healthy 155.
''Super Size Me'' goes so far as to associate Ronald McDonald with dealing drugs. While watching commercials that feature the iconic clown, the audience is treated to the song ''Pusher Man.'' Banzhaf has also pushed the inane notion that McDonald's fare is akin to illegal drugs such as heroin. Last summer he threatened to sue fast-food restaurants if they didn't display warnings telling consumers their food was ''addictive.''
The lawyers and Spurlock are serving up a flawed premise: that we're powerless to stop Big Food from turning us into a nation of fatties. Sadly, the next guy to exist on nothing but fast food for a month will probably try to turn his story into a courtroom drama. It's a trial lawyer's dream come true, and a case Banzhaf has been waiting years to file.
I bet he will.
— Richard Berman is executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies and consumers.
By: Richard Berman
Chicago Sun-Times
Posted On March 12, 2004
Documentary films may have their own Oscar category, but they rarely appear in mainstream theaters. Still, ''Super Size Me'' -- which earned Morgan Spurlock the nod for best documentary director at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival -- is coming soon to a theater near you. What makes ''Super Size Me'' exceptional? Simple. It's not a documentary at all.The main attraction of ''Super Size Me'' is watching Spurlock put on weight while he gorges on nothing but McDonald's food for a month. Spurlock calls it ''an honest film about what can happen when you continue to have a fast-food diet.'' But eating 90 meals in a row at the same restaurant is no more realistic than so-called reality shows like ''Average Joe.'' Take away the anti-fast food elitism, and ''Super Size Me'' looks like a cross between ''Fear Factor'' and ''My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance.''
MTV viewers may remember Spurlock's short-lived show ''I Bet You Will,'' whose motto was ''stupidity pays.'' With cameras rolling, Spurlock paid a man to gulp down an entire 24-ounce jar of mayonnaise. He got a woman to shave her head, combine the hair with butter to form a giant hairball, and then eat it. Internet voyeurs could also see one guy chew on a piece of dog feces for Spurlock's ready cash. Not surprisingly, the show featured an ''Official Puke Bucket.''
Fast-forward to 2004. The mainstream media are lining up to shake hands with Spurlock, who now presents himself as a serious and socially concerned documentary filmmaker. Spurlock recently pontificated that ''If there's one thing we could accomplish, it is that we make people think about what they put in their mouth.'' This from a guy who once paid people to eat dog droppings.
''Super Size Me'' is little more than an extended episode of ''I Bet You Will,'' in which Spurlock dares himself to eat poorly, yells ''action,'' and laughs all the way to the bank. However, it does successfully demonstrate the truth of his own words from the days of ''I Bet You Will'': ''People will do anything -- and I mean anything -- for money.''
Of course, Spurlock is hardly the only ambitious prankster who sees dollar signs where the rest of us see dinner. Trial lawyers have spent the last few years greedily eyeing Big Food. Perhaps not coincidently, Spurlock says his burger bonanza was inspired by a lawsuit blaming McDonald's for making people fat.
Spurlock's admiration for trial lawyers cuts both ways. Some of these sharks are beginning to pretend that Spurlock's stunt has serious meaning. George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, an adviser in the McDonald's lawsuit, is already promoting ''Super Size Me'' as a harbinger of more fast-food litigation.
If anything, ''Super Size Me'' is a lesson in why obesity lawsuits are so frivolous. Spurlock consciously chose to eat just one type of food day in and day out. He was no unwitting victim of convenient, inexpensive and tasty food.
Conspicuously absent from Spurlock's blame-the-burger publicity drive is any mention of his physical activity. Nutritionists tell us that weight gain is just calories in vs. calories out. It doesn't really matter if the calories come in the form of Big Macs or brussels sprouts. Just ask Don Gorske. He's in the Guinness Book of Records for eating 19,000 Big Macs. Gorske is 6 feet tall, 180 pounds, and his cholesterol is a healthy 155.
''Super Size Me'' goes so far as to associate Ronald McDonald with dealing drugs. While watching commercials that feature the iconic clown, the audience is treated to the song ''Pusher Man.'' Banzhaf has also pushed the inane notion that McDonald's fare is akin to illegal drugs such as heroin. Last summer he threatened to sue fast-food restaurants if they didn't display warnings telling consumers their food was ''addictive.''
The lawyers and Spurlock are serving up a flawed premise: that we're powerless to stop Big Food from turning us into a nation of fatties. Sadly, the next guy to exist on nothing but fast food for a month will probably try to turn his story into a courtroom drama. It's a trial lawyer's dream come true, and a case Banzhaf has been waiting years to file.
I bet he will.
— Richard Berman is executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies and consumers.
Center For Consumer Fredom: CDC Corrects Obesity Study Results
CDC Officially Corrects Flawed Obesity Study
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/
January 19, 2005
It's official. Yesterday afternoon, a team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including the agency's director, was forced to officially correct their deeply flawed study that wrongly blamed obesity for 400,000 U.S. deaths every year. Their statement read in part: "We are writing to inform the JAMA readership that through an error in our computations, we overestimated the number of deaths caused by poor diet and physical inactivity."
Although the CDC researchers owned up to one of their substantial mistakes, it is unfortunate that they did not reassess the larger problems with their highly controversial method. As we've told you before, the CDC relied on a flawed study that has come under fire from both inside and outside the agency for drastically overestimating the number of obesity-attributable deaths.
The CDC's correction only came after the Center for Consumer Freedom pointed out that the agency had overestimated the number of deaths supposedly attributable to obesity, and The Wall Street Journal's Betsy McKay broke the story. Despite yesterday's mea culpa, the CDC team's new estimate of 365,000 deaths a year fails to correct their study's most glaring problems, which serve to greatly exaggerate the real figure.
"365,000 deaths" is quite a convenient number if you're an obesity-hyper trying to scare the public. It probably won't be long before you hear the farce that obesity causes 1,000 deaths a day. To reach this too-good-to-be-true conclusion, the CDC had to perform a little mathematical hocus-pocus. The original 400,000 estimate was actually rounded down from 402,553, even though the nearest 5,000 number was 405,000. This time around, after recalculating to correct the computational error, the CDC reports the actual figure as 362,304 -- which is 360,000 if you round to the nearest 5,000. So now they're rounded up rather than down, both times ignoring the rules of rounding by failing to go to the nearest 5,000. And both times they ended up with the more media-friendly figure.
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/
January 19, 2005
It's official. Yesterday afternoon, a team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including the agency's director, was forced to officially correct their deeply flawed study that wrongly blamed obesity for 400,000 U.S. deaths every year. Their statement read in part: "We are writing to inform the JAMA readership that through an error in our computations, we overestimated the number of deaths caused by poor diet and physical inactivity."
Although the CDC researchers owned up to one of their substantial mistakes, it is unfortunate that they did not reassess the larger problems with their highly controversial method. As we've told you before, the CDC relied on a flawed study that has come under fire from both inside and outside the agency for drastically overestimating the number of obesity-attributable deaths.
The CDC's correction only came after the Center for Consumer Freedom pointed out that the agency had overestimated the number of deaths supposedly attributable to obesity, and The Wall Street Journal's Betsy McKay broke the story. Despite yesterday's mea culpa, the CDC team's new estimate of 365,000 deaths a year fails to correct their study's most glaring problems, which serve to greatly exaggerate the real figure.
"365,000 deaths" is quite a convenient number if you're an obesity-hyper trying to scare the public. It probably won't be long before you hear the farce that obesity causes 1,000 deaths a day. To reach this too-good-to-be-true conclusion, the CDC had to perform a little mathematical hocus-pocus. The original 400,000 estimate was actually rounded down from 402,553, even though the nearest 5,000 number was 405,000. This time around, after recalculating to correct the computational error, the CDC reports the actual figure as 362,304 -- which is 360,000 if you round to the nearest 5,000. So now they're rounded up rather than down, both times ignoring the rules of rounding by failing to go to the nearest 5,000. And both times they ended up with the more media-friendly figure.
Houston Chronicle: Clemens is King of the Hill
With a contract richer than any other pitcher's in history, Clemens arms the Astros for another run at the NL pennant
18 million reasons to play
By DAVID BARRON
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
More than four decades after Harris County voters passed an $18 million bond issue to build a sporting palace that eventually became the Astrodome, Astros owner Drayton McLane on Friday closed an $18 million deal to keep another civic landmark — favorite son Roger Clemens — in a Houston uniform for the 2005 season.
Clemens' $18 million salary for next season will be the highest ever paid to a major-league pitcher. It dwarfs by more than $3 million the payroll for the entire 25-man Astros roster for 1992, the season before McLane bought the ballclub.
But consider how far the Astros have come. Also-rans amid the Astrodome's fading splendor in the early 1990s, they came within a victory last year of bringing Houston's first World Series to downtown's gleaming Minute Maid Park.
And the 42-year-old Clemens sounded Friday as if he were determined to make the difference in 2005.
"Like Drayton says, it's time to do it again," Clemens said. "And who's to say we can't?"
Certainly not McLane.
"(Clemens) can make more of a difference for the Houston Astros than any player in baseball," the owner said. "There is only one Roger Clemens. We have some magnificent players here who have played great. But it was his personality, his championship attitude, that lifted us last season.
"It was the greatest season in the history of the Houston Astros. But I like to draw the line. That's done. We've got to move forward."
For McLane, the Astros and their fans, Clemens' decision to return to baseball for a 22nd season takes some of the sting out of losing free agent Carlos Beltran's two weeks ago to the New York Mets.
$18 million commitment
That long-ago $18 million commitment paved the way toward building the domed stadium that gave Houston its first national identity as a big-league city. The latest investment gives the Astros a chance to continue the momentum that began last January, when Clemens ended his short-lived retirement for what he thought would be one last season with his hometown team.
After finishing 87-75 and out of the playoffs in 2003, the Astros were 92-70 in 2004, closing the regular season as baseball's hottest team to claim the National League wild-card berth. They won a playoff series for the first time in franchise history, beating the Atlanta Braves in the NL Division Series, before losing a seven-game series to the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL championship and a berth in the World Series.
After drawing 2.4 million fans in 2003, the Astros saw attendance zoom to 3.08 million last season. Season-ticket sales climbed from 15,000 to 20,000 for 2004.
Average attendance for the 21 games Clemens pitched at Minute Maid Park was 39,359, almost 1,500 higher than the average crowd on days he didn't pitch. And he gave everybody their money's worth for last year's $5 million salary (plus $1.825 million in bonuses),posting an 18-4 record to win his record seventh Cy Young Award.
Agent Randy Hendricks said signing Clemens gave the Astros a chance to dispel the small-time aura that some tried to attach to the team in the wake of the failure to sign Beltran.
"I told (the Astros) that particularly in light of the Beltran situation, why don't you just graciously and easily put him on top of everybody, because he deserves it and it's a great statement?" Hendricks said. "It shows that's not always about nickels and dimes. He did it for you last year; you do it for him this year.
"It's a good marketing move, they did it, and they don't become the discounted Astros."
Before Clemens arrived, said consultant David Carter with the Sports Business Group in Los Angeles, "you didn't hear any buzz surrounding the Astros. He particularly enhanced their notoriety among the next generation of fans, who previously had no reason to follow the Astros.
"I would say his value to the team was 50-50, comparing what he brings on the field and off the field. That's very rare. There are very few athletes who can bring that sort of distinction, who can assume a brand and give it maximum value."
For evidence of that new cachet, visitors to Minute Maid Park need look no further than the gap between the two light standards in left-center field. The brick-colored sign advertising the 2004 All-Star Game has been replaced by a sign advertising Citgo, which moved its corporate headquarters to Houston last year and recently became the Astros' newest corporate partner.
Clemens noticed it. After all, he began his major-league career in Boston, where the 40-year-old Citgo sign in Kenmore Square beyond the Green Monster is one of the signature landmarks of an evening at Fenway Park — home of the 2004 World Series champion Red Sox.
He fell short of bringing the World Series to Houston. But in what he thought was his final season, Clemens noticed the buzz he helped bring to his hometown team in 2004.
"The everlasting thing that I take (from 2004) is how loud it was at this stadium," he said. "(Yankees legend Reggie Jackson) said he hoped I could bring home a little bit of the magic and excitement I felt at Yankee Stadium. In the middle of the playoffs, I called him and said, 'You need to get down here and hear this stadium. It's loud.'
"When I wasn't out there performing, I asked the veteran players if things were like this a few years ago. They said absolutely not."
Clemens the fanAs the season progressed, not only was Clemens a player, he was an Astros fan.
And it was as an Astros fan, he said, that he began working last week toward his decision to play in 2005.
In the wake of Beltran's move to New York, Chronicle columnist Richard Justice on Jan. 10 wrote that the Astros should stick with younger players, "trust their judgment and move ahead." At least one reader agreed with him.
"I was thinking about what these guys were going to go through and was already distancing myself a little bit from performing," Clemens said. "Then I looked at the (proposed) lineup and read the column, and I thought it was nice. As a fan, I thought it was all right. We accept it; let's move on and see how we can do."
And move on the Astros will, bolstered by one of baseball's greatest righthanded pitchers in the starting rotation.
"I take a deep breath, and here we go again," Clemens said. "We'll try to bring some smiles to some more hometown fans' faces. I'm ready for the challenge."
david.barron@chron.com
18 million reasons to play
By DAVID BARRON
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
More than four decades after Harris County voters passed an $18 million bond issue to build a sporting palace that eventually became the Astrodome, Astros owner Drayton McLane on Friday closed an $18 million deal to keep another civic landmark — favorite son Roger Clemens — in a Houston uniform for the 2005 season.
Clemens' $18 million salary for next season will be the highest ever paid to a major-league pitcher. It dwarfs by more than $3 million the payroll for the entire 25-man Astros roster for 1992, the season before McLane bought the ballclub.
But consider how far the Astros have come. Also-rans amid the Astrodome's fading splendor in the early 1990s, they came within a victory last year of bringing Houston's first World Series to downtown's gleaming Minute Maid Park.
And the 42-year-old Clemens sounded Friday as if he were determined to make the difference in 2005.
"Like Drayton says, it's time to do it again," Clemens said. "And who's to say we can't?"
Certainly not McLane.
"(Clemens) can make more of a difference for the Houston Astros than any player in baseball," the owner said. "There is only one Roger Clemens. We have some magnificent players here who have played great. But it was his personality, his championship attitude, that lifted us last season.
"It was the greatest season in the history of the Houston Astros. But I like to draw the line. That's done. We've got to move forward."
For McLane, the Astros and their fans, Clemens' decision to return to baseball for a 22nd season takes some of the sting out of losing free agent Carlos Beltran's two weeks ago to the New York Mets.
$18 million commitment
That long-ago $18 million commitment paved the way toward building the domed stadium that gave Houston its first national identity as a big-league city. The latest investment gives the Astros a chance to continue the momentum that began last January, when Clemens ended his short-lived retirement for what he thought would be one last season with his hometown team.
After finishing 87-75 and out of the playoffs in 2003, the Astros were 92-70 in 2004, closing the regular season as baseball's hottest team to claim the National League wild-card berth. They won a playoff series for the first time in franchise history, beating the Atlanta Braves in the NL Division Series, before losing a seven-game series to the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL championship and a berth in the World Series.
After drawing 2.4 million fans in 2003, the Astros saw attendance zoom to 3.08 million last season. Season-ticket sales climbed from 15,000 to 20,000 for 2004.
Average attendance for the 21 games Clemens pitched at Minute Maid Park was 39,359, almost 1,500 higher than the average crowd on days he didn't pitch. And he gave everybody their money's worth for last year's $5 million salary (plus $1.825 million in bonuses),posting an 18-4 record to win his record seventh Cy Young Award.
Agent Randy Hendricks said signing Clemens gave the Astros a chance to dispel the small-time aura that some tried to attach to the team in the wake of the failure to sign Beltran.
"I told (the Astros) that particularly in light of the Beltran situation, why don't you just graciously and easily put him on top of everybody, because he deserves it and it's a great statement?" Hendricks said. "It shows that's not always about nickels and dimes. He did it for you last year; you do it for him this year.
"It's a good marketing move, they did it, and they don't become the discounted Astros."
Before Clemens arrived, said consultant David Carter with the Sports Business Group in Los Angeles, "you didn't hear any buzz surrounding the Astros. He particularly enhanced their notoriety among the next generation of fans, who previously had no reason to follow the Astros.
"I would say his value to the team was 50-50, comparing what he brings on the field and off the field. That's very rare. There are very few athletes who can bring that sort of distinction, who can assume a brand and give it maximum value."
For evidence of that new cachet, visitors to Minute Maid Park need look no further than the gap between the two light standards in left-center field. The brick-colored sign advertising the 2004 All-Star Game has been replaced by a sign advertising Citgo, which moved its corporate headquarters to Houston last year and recently became the Astros' newest corporate partner.
Clemens noticed it. After all, he began his major-league career in Boston, where the 40-year-old Citgo sign in Kenmore Square beyond the Green Monster is one of the signature landmarks of an evening at Fenway Park — home of the 2004 World Series champion Red Sox.
He fell short of bringing the World Series to Houston. But in what he thought was his final season, Clemens noticed the buzz he helped bring to his hometown team in 2004.
"The everlasting thing that I take (from 2004) is how loud it was at this stadium," he said. "(Yankees legend Reggie Jackson) said he hoped I could bring home a little bit of the magic and excitement I felt at Yankee Stadium. In the middle of the playoffs, I called him and said, 'You need to get down here and hear this stadium. It's loud.'
"When I wasn't out there performing, I asked the veteran players if things were like this a few years ago. They said absolutely not."
Clemens the fanAs the season progressed, not only was Clemens a player, he was an Astros fan.
And it was as an Astros fan, he said, that he began working last week toward his decision to play in 2005.
In the wake of Beltran's move to New York, Chronicle columnist Richard Justice on Jan. 10 wrote that the Astros should stick with younger players, "trust their judgment and move ahead." At least one reader agreed with him.
"I was thinking about what these guys were going to go through and was already distancing myself a little bit from performing," Clemens said. "Then I looked at the (proposed) lineup and read the column, and I thought it was nice. As a fan, I thought it was all right. We accept it; let's move on and see how we can do."
And move on the Astros will, bolstered by one of baseball's greatest righthanded pitchers in the starting rotation.
"I take a deep breath, and here we go again," Clemens said. "We'll try to bring some smiles to some more hometown fans' faces. I'm ready for the challenge."
david.barron@chron.com
Houston Chronicle: Clemens Signing Makes Sense
At last, there's sense where focus was dollars and cents
By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
With the exception of owner Drayton McLane reiterating his championship cry, not one word was mentioned Friday about this Astros club having the goods to win a playoff berth, much less a title.
Not by general manager Tim Purpura. Not by manager Phil Garner. Not by Roger Clemens.
Contrast that with a year ago in the same setting, when Clemens first signed with the Astros. You could sense something special in the air. You walked away knowing something big was about to happen to baseball in this city.
Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell attended that 2004 news conference at the ballpark and spoke openly about getting to the World Series.
Andy Pettitte talked about the powerful lineup that complemented the starting pitching, comparing it to what he always knew as a Yankee.
Clemens said the goal of the 2004 Astros was more than "just making the playoffs."
This time, the Astros spoke in measured tones, balancing the promise of superb starting pitching against personnel losses in the offseason and questions in the lineup and bullpen.
"Make no mistake about it, the team we're going to go with right now, we're going to have to pitch and everybody's going to have to play a little bit above their capability," Clemens said. "Including me."
Institutional changeBut there is one huge difference between this Astros team entering a season with questions and former Astros teams in the same predicament.
Astros thinking has changed, top to bottom — primarily at the top, with McLane.
The way this club conducts its baseball business today has as much to do with baseball as business. Not long ago, championship talk was just that. Talk.
The run at Carlos Beltran, while futile, said much about how last season's playoff run reshaped baseball strategies at Union Station. So did Friday's signing of Clemens at a cool $18 million for one season.
There was a time not long ago when McLane would glad hand his way through the clubhouse, asking players what they've done to become champions, and players fought the urge to roll their eyes or laugh.
What have we done? What about you, big man?
Early in his ownership of the Astros, McLane was burned on a few big-name signings he thought would juice attendance and give this club a shot. Doug Drabek and Greg Swindellwere two of the more notable ones.
Those experiences made McLane meek and frugal. It's a reputation McLane has fought much of the past decade, but in many ways indeed it remains warranted.
At odds in front officeHe allowed free agents such as Darryl Kile, Mike Hampton and Moises Alou to move on. When former GM Gerry Hunsicker approached him with some kind of daring idea or another, occasionally McLane butted heads with his sidekick.
Former Astros closer Billy Wagner stated publicly what many believed privately about McLane. Before being traded to the Phillies after the 2003 season, Wagner characterized McLane as caring more about competing than winning.
"If you want to win, you don't cut salary," Wagner said. "That's just common sense."
Once, McLane didn't get it. The 2004 season changed that.
That's the biggest impact Clemens has had on this club. It's bigger than the buzz Clemens created every time he toed the rubber. It's bigger than Clemens' huge contract.
And it could prove to be bigger than the significant obstacles this club faces in 2005.
With Clemens showing the way and Beltran spinning magic last October, McLane realized it can be done here. Spending and thinking creatively does work.
As one Astros executive put it Friday: "If I would have told you three years ago that we'd make a $100 million offer to the biggest free agent on the market and sign Roger Clemens for $18 million, you would have asked, 'What is Drayton smoking?' In the past, it was always, 'We don't have the resources.' "
Much work to be doneRoger Clemens certainly won't make this club a champion by himself. He will make the starting rotation as formidable as any in baseball, barring injury.
But there are too many holes. There are too many questions for anyone to honestly believe the parts are there for another wildly entertaining October.
But Clemens has seen the change in his boss, too.
"Sure, there are questions," Clemens said. "There are a lot of things that figure into it. We need Lance (Berkman) back. We need Jeff (Bagwell) to feel as well as he can. You can just go on down the line.
"But who's to say that if we're scuffling at the All-Star break, we're not going to get another horse or two to jump-start us? Us, as players, giving (McLane) a taste of that, maybe that will encourage him to do it again. Maybe a few years back he was hesitant. That's what Andy and I wanted to do. We wanted to right this ship a little bit. Now they have something to live up to."
Now, maybe the Astros can head into April, even July, and know the bottom line won't be the same, old bottom line McLane used to study. It will be finding a way to win.
john.lopez@chron.com
By JOHN P. LOPEZ
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
With the exception of owner Drayton McLane reiterating his championship cry, not one word was mentioned Friday about this Astros club having the goods to win a playoff berth, much less a title.
Not by general manager Tim Purpura. Not by manager Phil Garner. Not by Roger Clemens.
Contrast that with a year ago in the same setting, when Clemens first signed with the Astros. You could sense something special in the air. You walked away knowing something big was about to happen to baseball in this city.
Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell attended that 2004 news conference at the ballpark and spoke openly about getting to the World Series.
Andy Pettitte talked about the powerful lineup that complemented the starting pitching, comparing it to what he always knew as a Yankee.
Clemens said the goal of the 2004 Astros was more than "just making the playoffs."
This time, the Astros spoke in measured tones, balancing the promise of superb starting pitching against personnel losses in the offseason and questions in the lineup and bullpen.
"Make no mistake about it, the team we're going to go with right now, we're going to have to pitch and everybody's going to have to play a little bit above their capability," Clemens said. "Including me."
Institutional changeBut there is one huge difference between this Astros team entering a season with questions and former Astros teams in the same predicament.
Astros thinking has changed, top to bottom — primarily at the top, with McLane.
The way this club conducts its baseball business today has as much to do with baseball as business. Not long ago, championship talk was just that. Talk.
The run at Carlos Beltran, while futile, said much about how last season's playoff run reshaped baseball strategies at Union Station. So did Friday's signing of Clemens at a cool $18 million for one season.
There was a time not long ago when McLane would glad hand his way through the clubhouse, asking players what they've done to become champions, and players fought the urge to roll their eyes or laugh.
What have we done? What about you, big man?
Early in his ownership of the Astros, McLane was burned on a few big-name signings he thought would juice attendance and give this club a shot. Doug Drabek and Greg Swindellwere two of the more notable ones.
Those experiences made McLane meek and frugal. It's a reputation McLane has fought much of the past decade, but in many ways indeed it remains warranted.
At odds in front officeHe allowed free agents such as Darryl Kile, Mike Hampton and Moises Alou to move on. When former GM Gerry Hunsicker approached him with some kind of daring idea or another, occasionally McLane butted heads with his sidekick.
Former Astros closer Billy Wagner stated publicly what many believed privately about McLane. Before being traded to the Phillies after the 2003 season, Wagner characterized McLane as caring more about competing than winning.
"If you want to win, you don't cut salary," Wagner said. "That's just common sense."
Once, McLane didn't get it. The 2004 season changed that.
That's the biggest impact Clemens has had on this club. It's bigger than the buzz Clemens created every time he toed the rubber. It's bigger than Clemens' huge contract.
And it could prove to be bigger than the significant obstacles this club faces in 2005.
With Clemens showing the way and Beltran spinning magic last October, McLane realized it can be done here. Spending and thinking creatively does work.
As one Astros executive put it Friday: "If I would have told you three years ago that we'd make a $100 million offer to the biggest free agent on the market and sign Roger Clemens for $18 million, you would have asked, 'What is Drayton smoking?' In the past, it was always, 'We don't have the resources.' "
Much work to be doneRoger Clemens certainly won't make this club a champion by himself. He will make the starting rotation as formidable as any in baseball, barring injury.
But there are too many holes. There are too many questions for anyone to honestly believe the parts are there for another wildly entertaining October.
But Clemens has seen the change in his boss, too.
"Sure, there are questions," Clemens said. "There are a lot of things that figure into it. We need Lance (Berkman) back. We need Jeff (Bagwell) to feel as well as he can. You can just go on down the line.
"But who's to say that if we're scuffling at the All-Star break, we're not going to get another horse or two to jump-start us? Us, as players, giving (McLane) a taste of that, maybe that will encourage him to do it again. Maybe a few years back he was hesitant. That's what Andy and I wanted to do. We wanted to right this ship a little bit. Now they have something to live up to."
Now, maybe the Astros can head into April, even July, and know the bottom line won't be the same, old bottom line McLane used to study. It will be finding a way to win.
john.lopez@chron.com
Houston Chronicle: Clemens Could Reach 8th on All-time Wins List
Upstaging Carlton still on to-do list
Clemens could reach eighth place on baseball's list of all-time winners
By BRIAN MCTAGGART
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
One of the most memorable moments of the 2004 baseball season — and there were more than a few — came May 5 when Roger Clemens moved past Steve Carlton on the all-time strikeout list.
The crowd at Minute Maid Park roared like never before when Clemens struck out Raul Mondesi of the Pittsburgh Pirates, hailing the Rocket as if he had broken a sacred record.
But the fact remained Clemens had moved into second place on the all-time list and was still more 1,500 strikeouts shy of breaking the record of 5,714 set by fellow Texas fireballer Nolan Ryan.
Nevertheless, Clemens' achievement was one for the books, and now that he has decided to return for his 22nd season, he could reach more milestones this year.
Clemens is at the top when it comes to winning Cy Young Awards, earning his record seventh last year.
"Go for No. 8!" Clemens' wife, Debbie, said after Friday's news conference to announce Clemens would return to the Astros.
One of a kindClemens, 42, also leads all active pitchers in wins (328), starts (639), innings (4,493), strikeouts (4,317), complete games (117) and shutouts (46).
Because of the era in which he pitches, Clemens won't come close to breaking records for most career wins, innings, complete games or shutouts.
But his place in history is secure.
"There's only one Roger Clemens," agent Randy Hendricks said.
Clemens needs just one more win to move into a tie for ninth-place on the all-time list with Carlton (329). The only other player on the all-time wins list within striking range is Tim Keefe, who's in eighth place with 342 wins from 1880-1893. Clemens would need to win 15 games to pass Keefe.
Clemens and Randy Johnson, who was recently traded from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the New York Yankees, are tied for second on the career list with 12 seasons of 200 or more strikeouts.
Both trail Ryan's 15 seasons on that list.
Johnson trailingJohnson, 41, ranks second behind Clemens with five Cy Young Awards and finished second behind Clemens in voting in the National League last year. Clemens is the oldest pitcher to win the Cy Young and is one of only four to win it in both leagues.
Clemens went 18-4 last season with a winning percentage of .818, best in the majors.
He became the first player to win eight Baseball Writers' Association of America awards — Cy Youngs in 1986, 1987, 1991, 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2004 and the 1986 American League Most Valuable Player.
He also could move into the top 10 for career starts this year. With 639 starts, he's in 13th place and just 27 starts shy of tying Walter Johnson for 10th place at 666. Clemens started 32 games last season.
Shutouts become rareClemens is tied for 26th on the all-time shutout list with 46, but considering he has had just one shutout since the end of the 1999 season, it's unlikely he'll add to that total.
If he pitches 200 innings, he would move into the top 20 in innings pitched.
Because he has pitched for so long, Clemens ranks high on some dubious lists as well: home runs allowed (23rd with 336), walks allowed (11th with 1,458), earned runs allowed (27th with 1,588) and hit batters (13th with 147).
brian.mctaggart@chron.com
Clemens could reach eighth place on baseball's list of all-time winners
By BRIAN MCTAGGART
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
One of the most memorable moments of the 2004 baseball season — and there were more than a few — came May 5 when Roger Clemens moved past Steve Carlton on the all-time strikeout list.
The crowd at Minute Maid Park roared like never before when Clemens struck out Raul Mondesi of the Pittsburgh Pirates, hailing the Rocket as if he had broken a sacred record.
But the fact remained Clemens had moved into second place on the all-time list and was still more 1,500 strikeouts shy of breaking the record of 5,714 set by fellow Texas fireballer Nolan Ryan.
Nevertheless, Clemens' achievement was one for the books, and now that he has decided to return for his 22nd season, he could reach more milestones this year.
Clemens is at the top when it comes to winning Cy Young Awards, earning his record seventh last year.
"Go for No. 8!" Clemens' wife, Debbie, said after Friday's news conference to announce Clemens would return to the Astros.
One of a kindClemens, 42, also leads all active pitchers in wins (328), starts (639), innings (4,493), strikeouts (4,317), complete games (117) and shutouts (46).
Because of the era in which he pitches, Clemens won't come close to breaking records for most career wins, innings, complete games or shutouts.
But his place in history is secure.
"There's only one Roger Clemens," agent Randy Hendricks said.
Clemens needs just one more win to move into a tie for ninth-place on the all-time list with Carlton (329). The only other player on the all-time wins list within striking range is Tim Keefe, who's in eighth place with 342 wins from 1880-1893. Clemens would need to win 15 games to pass Keefe.
Clemens and Randy Johnson, who was recently traded from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the New York Yankees, are tied for second on the career list with 12 seasons of 200 or more strikeouts.
Both trail Ryan's 15 seasons on that list.
Johnson trailingJohnson, 41, ranks second behind Clemens with five Cy Young Awards and finished second behind Clemens in voting in the National League last year. Clemens is the oldest pitcher to win the Cy Young and is one of only four to win it in both leagues.
Clemens went 18-4 last season with a winning percentage of .818, best in the majors.
He became the first player to win eight Baseball Writers' Association of America awards — Cy Youngs in 1986, 1987, 1991, 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2004 and the 1986 American League Most Valuable Player.
He also could move into the top 10 for career starts this year. With 639 starts, he's in 13th place and just 27 starts shy of tying Walter Johnson for 10th place at 666. Clemens started 32 games last season.
Shutouts become rareClemens is tied for 26th on the all-time shutout list with 46, but considering he has had just one shutout since the end of the 1999 season, it's unlikely he'll add to that total.
If he pitches 200 innings, he would move into the top 20 in innings pitched.
Because he has pitched for so long, Clemens ranks high on some dubious lists as well: home runs allowed (23rd with 336), walks allowed (11th with 1,458), earned runs allowed (27th with 1,588) and hit batters (13th with 147).
brian.mctaggart@chron.com
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Chuck Colson: Destroying Abortion Myths
Chuck Colson (archive)
January 19, 2005
As Americans have learned more about the devastating impact of abortion, we’ve seen our country become more pro-life. But we’re still a long way from building a culture of life that welcomes every child. To do that, we need to demolish the most pervasive myths about abortion. A new book titled The Cost of ‘Choice’: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion is a valuable tool in that effort. In a series of thought-provoking essays, women from all walks of life tackle those myths head-on.
Myth number one: Abortion is first and foremost a woman’s issue. Again and again, the writers in this book make the case that abortion is an issue that hurts all of us, not least by pitting men, women, and children against each other. We’ve reached a point, the writers explain, where instead of providing support and solutions to women in crisis pregnancies, society often turns against them. The book is full of quotes and stories from women who aborted against their will because other people expected them to do so.
Also noteworthy here is an essay titled “The Feminist Case against Abortion,” in which Serrin M. Foster points out, “It is a man—abortion rights activist Larry Lader . . . who credits himself with guiding a reluctant [Betty] Friedan, the first president of NOW to make abortion a serious issue for the organization.” Foster explains how Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson worked together to promote the abortion agenda to the feminist movement.
That leads to myth number two. Foster adds, “Dr. Nathanson, who later became a pro-life activist, said that he and Lader were able to persuade Friedan that abortion was a civil rights issue, basing much of their argument on the claim that tens of thousands of women died from illegal abortions each year. Nathanson later admitted that they had simply made up the numbers.” In other words, those who claim that repealing Roe would take us back to a Dark Age of women dying in back alleys are basing their argument on a lie.
Which takes us to myth number three: the myth that legalized abortion automatically means safe abortion. Again, the writers in The Cost of ‘Choice’ beg to differ. Attorney Denise Burke writes, “With the abortion industry’s own statistics as a basis, it is clear that thousands of women are being injured by abortion each year and that some of them die.” And then there’s the physical aftermath of abortion, examined most thoroughly here by Dr. Angela Lanfranchi in an essay on the much-maligned link between abortion and breast cancer.
To enumerate all the abortion-related myths dealt with here could take all day. But really, they’re all part of one greater myth: the myth that abortion is good for women. As this book demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. Wilberforce Forum Fellow Paige Comstock Cunningham of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity sums it up well: “Women are simply offered abortion, the quick fix, while genuinely meaningful solutions to their social or personal problems are left unexplored. . . . As long as abortion on demand remains legal and a constitutional right, women will continue to be isolated and exploited.” Please, don’t tell us abortion is good for women.
For further reading and information:
Erika Bachiochi, ed., The Cost of ‘Choice’: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (Encounter Books, 2004). In this book, the writers argue that over the last three decades, legal abortion has had harmful effects on women—socially, medically, psychologically and culturally.
This year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C., will take place on Monday, January 24, 2005 . To learn more, visit the website , or call 202-543-3377.
Erika Bachiochi, “ The abortion debate ,” Washington Times, 29 October 2004 .
Jan Wolfe, “ Feminist argues cost of abortion ,” The Heights ( Boston College), 9 December 2004 .
Steven Ertelt, “ Women Who Regret Their Abortions to Speak at Supreme Court ,” LifeNews.com, 11 January 2005 .
BreakPoint Commentary No. 041026, “ Human Life: It’s What Matters Most .”
BreakPoint Commentary No. 041015, “ Politics First, Women Second: The Illness They Won’t Talk About .”
Brian McGuire, “ Abortion: A Tool of Male Oppression? ” interview with Serrin Foster, National Catholic Register, 16-22 April 2000.
Jill Stanek , “ How does ‘moderating pro-choice position’ translate? ” Worldnetdaily.com, 5 January 2005 .
Debra Rosenburg, “ Anxiety Over Abortion ,” Newsweek, 20 December 2005 .
BreakPoint’s “ Culture of Life Packet ” includes the Family Research Council booklet, “Building a Culture of Life: A Call to Respect Human Dignity in American Life,” and a “BreakPoint This Week” CD interview with William Saunders of Family Research Council in which he discusses what citizens can do to make a difference for life. The CD also includes a speech by Dr. Robert George, “Bioethics and the Clash of Orthodoxies.”
Chuck Colson is founder and chairman of BreakPoint Online, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 BreakPoint Online
Read Colson's biography
January 19, 2005
As Americans have learned more about the devastating impact of abortion, we’ve seen our country become more pro-life. But we’re still a long way from building a culture of life that welcomes every child. To do that, we need to demolish the most pervasive myths about abortion. A new book titled The Cost of ‘Choice’: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion is a valuable tool in that effort. In a series of thought-provoking essays, women from all walks of life tackle those myths head-on.
Myth number one: Abortion is first and foremost a woman’s issue. Again and again, the writers in this book make the case that abortion is an issue that hurts all of us, not least by pitting men, women, and children against each other. We’ve reached a point, the writers explain, where instead of providing support and solutions to women in crisis pregnancies, society often turns against them. The book is full of quotes and stories from women who aborted against their will because other people expected them to do so.
Also noteworthy here is an essay titled “The Feminist Case against Abortion,” in which Serrin M. Foster points out, “It is a man—abortion rights activist Larry Lader . . . who credits himself with guiding a reluctant [Betty] Friedan, the first president of NOW to make abortion a serious issue for the organization.” Foster explains how Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson worked together to promote the abortion agenda to the feminist movement.
That leads to myth number two. Foster adds, “Dr. Nathanson, who later became a pro-life activist, said that he and Lader were able to persuade Friedan that abortion was a civil rights issue, basing much of their argument on the claim that tens of thousands of women died from illegal abortions each year. Nathanson later admitted that they had simply made up the numbers.” In other words, those who claim that repealing Roe would take us back to a Dark Age of women dying in back alleys are basing their argument on a lie.
Which takes us to myth number three: the myth that legalized abortion automatically means safe abortion. Again, the writers in The Cost of ‘Choice’ beg to differ. Attorney Denise Burke writes, “With the abortion industry’s own statistics as a basis, it is clear that thousands of women are being injured by abortion each year and that some of them die.” And then there’s the physical aftermath of abortion, examined most thoroughly here by Dr. Angela Lanfranchi in an essay on the much-maligned link between abortion and breast cancer.
To enumerate all the abortion-related myths dealt with here could take all day. But really, they’re all part of one greater myth: the myth that abortion is good for women. As this book demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. Wilberforce Forum Fellow Paige Comstock Cunningham of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity sums it up well: “Women are simply offered abortion, the quick fix, while genuinely meaningful solutions to their social or personal problems are left unexplored. . . . As long as abortion on demand remains legal and a constitutional right, women will continue to be isolated and exploited.” Please, don’t tell us abortion is good for women.
For further reading and information:
Erika Bachiochi, ed., The Cost of ‘Choice’: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (Encounter Books, 2004). In this book, the writers argue that over the last three decades, legal abortion has had harmful effects on women—socially, medically, psychologically and culturally.
This year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C., will take place on Monday, January 24, 2005 . To learn more, visit the website , or call 202-543-3377.
Erika Bachiochi, “ The abortion debate ,” Washington Times, 29 October 2004 .
Jan Wolfe, “ Feminist argues cost of abortion ,” The Heights ( Boston College), 9 December 2004 .
Steven Ertelt, “ Women Who Regret Their Abortions to Speak at Supreme Court ,” LifeNews.com, 11 January 2005 .
BreakPoint Commentary No. 041026, “ Human Life: It’s What Matters Most .”
BreakPoint Commentary No. 041015, “ Politics First, Women Second: The Illness They Won’t Talk About .”
Brian McGuire, “ Abortion: A Tool of Male Oppression? ” interview with Serrin Foster, National Catholic Register, 16-22 April 2000.
Jill Stanek , “ How does ‘moderating pro-choice position’ translate? ” Worldnetdaily.com, 5 January 2005 .
Debra Rosenburg, “ Anxiety Over Abortion ,” Newsweek, 20 December 2005 .
BreakPoint’s “ Culture of Life Packet ” includes the Family Research Council booklet, “Building a Culture of Life: A Call to Respect Human Dignity in American Life,” and a “BreakPoint This Week” CD interview with William Saunders of Family Research Council in which he discusses what citizens can do to make a difference for life. The CD also includes a speech by Dr. Robert George, “Bioethics and the Clash of Orthodoxies.”
Chuck Colson is founder and chairman of BreakPoint Online, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 BreakPoint Online
Read Colson's biography
Ann Coulter: It's Our Party, You Can Cry if You Want to
Ann Coulter (archive)
January 20, 2005
In what the New York Times called Angola's "worst crisis" in "nearly 30 years" in December 1992, the country erupted into civil war. By January 1993, the streets were piled with thousands of dead bodies. In the prior year, hundreds of thousands had died of starvation in Somalia. Millions more were still at risk.
Also in 1993, January floods left dozens dead and thousands homeless in Tijuana, Mexico. Russia was, according to a New York Times editorial, on the brink of disaster, facing economic circumstances like those "that helped bring forth Hitler." Nine people were killed in a volcano in Colombia in mid-January, including American scientists. In Bosnia, according to the Times, hundreds had died of starvation and exposure in a matter of days.
"It has all been so much fun," Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd gushed in the New York Times in January 1993. It was Bill Clinton's one-week inaugural celebration. "Is it too much to ask that it go on forever?" (For those who loved America, the next eight years would only seem to go on forever.)
Rich and Dowd quoted Hollywood agent Karen Russell, saying: "I'm in this fantasy world. I haven't slept. I'm punch drunk. ... I just feel like I'm in this place called Clinton-land" – which, if it were a theme park, could bill itself as "the sleaziest place on Earth!" Russell, they said, "spoke for everyone."
While dead bodies rotted in the streets of Angola and Somalia, the only "dead soldiers" in evidence in Clinton-land were the empty Cristal bottles lining the parade route. The most massive relief efforts that week took place at the rows of portable toilets circling each site of drunken Clintonista revelry.
Instead of having the usual Inauguration Day in 1993, Clinton had an "Inauguration Week," with high-tech pageantry, large-screen TVs on the mall, Hollywood direction and, indeed, half of Hollywood. The amount of money that would have been saved just by holding the inauguration in Brentwood could have averted the Rwandan tragedy Clinton ignored just a few years later.
The spokesman for Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Committee said the inaugural events would cost about $25 million – largesse exceeded only by the $50 million Ken Starr was forced to spend when "Clintonland" turned out to be populated with felons. Think of all the starving children in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia and elsewhere that $25 million could have fed! And don't even get me started on Michael Moore's "on location" food budget!
I wouldn't mention it, except for the Times' recent editorial snippily remarking that the amount of foreign aid to tsunami victims offered by the United States within the first few days of the disaster was "less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities." By that logic, why hold the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, or spend money on restaurants and theater productions praised in the New York Times? That money could go to tsunami victims!
A letter writer to the Times redoubled the Times' bile, claiming to be "embarrassed for our country" on account of the government's "pathetic initial offer of aid" to the tsunami victims. Yet he was still willing to throw away 37 cents on a postage stamp to send his letter – money that could have been spent on the relief effort! (One strongly suspects the letter writer was embarrassed for his country long before the tsunami hit and will remain so long after.)
Another letter writer suggested the first lady wear a used dress to the inauguration to "honor the young people who are dying in her husband's misbegotten war." (To honor John Kerry's position on Iraq, Mrs. Bush would have to order an expensive gown and then, after it was delivered, decide she didn't want to pay for it.)
Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night.
Speaking of which, I just remembered: George Soros is worth $7 billion! Couldn't he get by on, say, $1 billion and donate the rest to the tsunami victims? If gun owners have to explain why they "need" a so-called "assault rifle," shouldn't Soros have to explain why he "needs" $7 billion? Last year, Soros announced that the central focus of his life would be removing Bush from office. Would that Soros could refocus that energy on alleviating the suffering of tsunami victims.
Ann Coulter is host of AnnCoulter.org, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Universal Press Syndicate
Contact Ann Coulter Read Coulter's biography
JUST RELEASED! Ann's latest!How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)
In her latest book, Ann Coulter collects the best of her columns, including some that no one has dared to print before! In this book, she explains, are "bootlegs, never-released versions, NC-17 versions, lost classics, remixes, extended-play versions, and the director's cut columns." Buy her new book this week and save 26%!
January 20, 2005
In what the New York Times called Angola's "worst crisis" in "nearly 30 years" in December 1992, the country erupted into civil war. By January 1993, the streets were piled with thousands of dead bodies. In the prior year, hundreds of thousands had died of starvation in Somalia. Millions more were still at risk.
Also in 1993, January floods left dozens dead and thousands homeless in Tijuana, Mexico. Russia was, according to a New York Times editorial, on the brink of disaster, facing economic circumstances like those "that helped bring forth Hitler." Nine people were killed in a volcano in Colombia in mid-January, including American scientists. In Bosnia, according to the Times, hundreds had died of starvation and exposure in a matter of days.
"It has all been so much fun," Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd gushed in the New York Times in January 1993. It was Bill Clinton's one-week inaugural celebration. "Is it too much to ask that it go on forever?" (For those who loved America, the next eight years would only seem to go on forever.)
Rich and Dowd quoted Hollywood agent Karen Russell, saying: "I'm in this fantasy world. I haven't slept. I'm punch drunk. ... I just feel like I'm in this place called Clinton-land" – which, if it were a theme park, could bill itself as "the sleaziest place on Earth!" Russell, they said, "spoke for everyone."
While dead bodies rotted in the streets of Angola and Somalia, the only "dead soldiers" in evidence in Clinton-land were the empty Cristal bottles lining the parade route. The most massive relief efforts that week took place at the rows of portable toilets circling each site of drunken Clintonista revelry.
Instead of having the usual Inauguration Day in 1993, Clinton had an "Inauguration Week," with high-tech pageantry, large-screen TVs on the mall, Hollywood direction and, indeed, half of Hollywood. The amount of money that would have been saved just by holding the inauguration in Brentwood could have averted the Rwandan tragedy Clinton ignored just a few years later.
The spokesman for Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Committee said the inaugural events would cost about $25 million – largesse exceeded only by the $50 million Ken Starr was forced to spend when "Clintonland" turned out to be populated with felons. Think of all the starving children in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia and elsewhere that $25 million could have fed! And don't even get me started on Michael Moore's "on location" food budget!
I wouldn't mention it, except for the Times' recent editorial snippily remarking that the amount of foreign aid to tsunami victims offered by the United States within the first few days of the disaster was "less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities." By that logic, why hold the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, or spend money on restaurants and theater productions praised in the New York Times? That money could go to tsunami victims!
A letter writer to the Times redoubled the Times' bile, claiming to be "embarrassed for our country" on account of the government's "pathetic initial offer of aid" to the tsunami victims. Yet he was still willing to throw away 37 cents on a postage stamp to send his letter – money that could have been spent on the relief effort! (One strongly suspects the letter writer was embarrassed for his country long before the tsunami hit and will remain so long after.)
Another letter writer suggested the first lady wear a used dress to the inauguration to "honor the young people who are dying in her husband's misbegotten war." (To honor John Kerry's position on Iraq, Mrs. Bush would have to order an expensive gown and then, after it was delivered, decide she didn't want to pay for it.)
Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night.
Speaking of which, I just remembered: George Soros is worth $7 billion! Couldn't he get by on, say, $1 billion and donate the rest to the tsunami victims? If gun owners have to explain why they "need" a so-called "assault rifle," shouldn't Soros have to explain why he "needs" $7 billion? Last year, Soros announced that the central focus of his life would be removing Bush from office. Would that Soros could refocus that energy on alleviating the suffering of tsunami victims.
Ann Coulter is host of AnnCoulter.org, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Universal Press Syndicate
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