Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean rage against Republicans. It's not a winning approach.
Thursday, June 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Wall Street Journal
I don't know that Democrats understand how Republicans experience the attacks Democratic leaders make on them. I'm not sure they know how they sound to us.
In America there is a lot of political integration. Democrats and Republicans are friends. Life forces them to be if they need to be forced, which most don't. They know each other from the office, Little League, school meetings, the neighborhood. Actually America is mostly filled with people who say not "I'm a Democrat" and "I'm a Republican," but "I voted for Bush" and "I like McCain" and "I voted for Kerry." They identify by personal action more than political party, at least in my experience.
Washington is more politically segregated. In Washington, Democrats by and large hang out with Democrats, Republicans with Republicans. This is true in consulting, in think tanks, in journals, in Congress. If you work for a Democratic senator, the office is full of Democrats. The people with whom you share inside jokes and the occasional bitter aside are Democrats. The "neighborhood" in which you go to meetings during your long days is Democratic. The same is true for Republicans.
And it's inevitable. The structure of things decrees it, as does human nature. Like-minded people seek like-minded people for stimulating conversation and more.
So in some key ways in Washington, the most politically engaged individuals in both parties do not understand each other. This expresses itself in certain assumptions. Democrats think Republicans are mean. Republicans know Democrats are the mean party.
**********
Knowing that, let's do a thought experiment. Close your eyes and imagine this.
President Bush is introduced at a great gathering in Topeka, Kan. It is the evening of June 9, 2005. Ruffles and flourishes, "Hail to the Chief," hearty applause from a packed ballroom. Mr. Bush walks to the podium and delivers the following address.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I want to speak this evening about how I see the political landscape. Let me jump right in. The struggle between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is a struggle between good and evil--and we're the good. I hate Democrats. Let's face it, they have never made an honest living in their lives. Who are they, really, but people who are intent on abusing power, destroying the United States Senate and undermining our Constitution? They have no shame.
But why would they? They have never been acquainted with the truth. You ever been to a Democratic fundraiser? They all look the same. They all behave the same. They have a dictatorship, and suffer from zeal so extreme they think they have a direct line to heaven. But what would you expect when you have a far left extremist base? We cannot afford more of their leadership. I call on you to help me defeat them!"Imagine Mr. Bush saying those things, and the crowd roaring with lusty delight. Imagine John McCain saying them for that matter, or any other likely Republican candidate for president, or Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican National Committee.
Can you imagine them talking this way? Me neither. Because they wouldn't.
Messrs. Bush, McCain, et al., would find talk like that to be extreme, damaging, desperate. They would understand it would tend to add a new level of hysteria to political discourse, and that's not good for the country. I think they would know such talk is unworthy in a leader, or potential leader, of a great democracy. I think they would understand that talk like that is destructive to the ties that bind--and to the speaker's political prospects.
**********
Why don't Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean know this? And what does it mean that they do not know it?
For as you know, the color-coded phrases in the "Bush speech" above come from speeches and statements given by Sen. Clinton and Democratic chairman Dean recently. (Mrs. Clinton's comments are in green and Mr. Dean's in purple, and I changed "right" to "left.")
Clinton is likely the next Democratic nominee for president. Mr. Dean is the head of the Democratic Party. They are important and powerful. They may one day run the country. It is disturbing that they speak as they do.
How do people who are not part of the Democratic base react to their statements? I think something like this: What's wrong with these people? Don't they understand they lower things with their name calling and bitter language? If this is how they feel free to present themselves in public, what will they do and say in private if they ever run the country?
If Mr. Bush ever spoke this way, most Republicans would feel embarrassment. I would be among the legions who would denounce his statement. Democrats are half the country; it is offensive to label them as hateful, it's wrong. Even though we're torn by disagreements, there is an old and unspoken tradition that we're all in this together, we're all citizens together. It is destructive to act against this tradition.
One assumes all the media, especially the MSM, would treat the speech as if it were an epochal event in the Bush presidency, and the beginning of the end. They would say he was unleashing the dark forces of division; they would label his statement as manipulative, malevolent, immature.
And they'd be right.
**********
There is a tradition of political generosity that prevails among the normal people of America, a certain live-and-let-live-ness. That is why Little League games don't break out in fistfights, at least over politics. You don't shun people in the neighborhood because they're Democrats, and you don't inform the Republican in the next cubicle that he is evil, lazy and racist. That just doesn't play in America. There are breaches, exceptions, incidents. We are not angels. But by and large even though we disagree with each other, and even if we come to dislike each other, we maintain, for reasons both moral and practical, decorum. Civility. We keep a lid on it. We don't lower it to the level of invective. We don't by nature seek to divide.
When you have been in Washington long enough and have become consumed by your place in the political struggle, you can lose sight of the American arrangement. You can become harsh and shrill. You can become the sort of person who would start the fight at the Little League game. You can become--how might a columnist, as opposed to a political leader, put it?--a jackass. But not a funny one, a destructive one, the type that can knock down the barn it took the farmer years to build.
The comportment of Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean is actually not worthy of America. Their statements suggest they are in no way equal to the country they seek to lead. And something tells me that sooner or later America is going to tell them. But in a generous, mature and fair-minded way.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Laura Mansfield: Sami Al-Arian's Islamic Academy
By Laura Mansfield
FrontPageMagazine.com June 8, 2005
Florida's tuition voucher program is designed to help improve the education level of children who attend schools which do not meet educational standards. In 2003, Florida taxpayers indirectly subsidized the Islamic Academy of Florida in Tampa, with over $350,000 in funds.
Why is this a problem? What makes funding an Islamic school any different from funding a Christian school?
The difference is that at the time, the school's principal was none other than Sami Al Arian, who was under indictment for terrorism-related charges. He is at this very moment going to trial.
The Florida Islamic Academy was founded in 1992 by Sami Al-Arian. North American Islamic Trust holds the the title to the school property, as well as to the Tampa-area mosques at 130th Ave. E in Temple Terrace, FL and at 6307 Barclay Avenue in Spring Hill, FL. The trust owns about 27 percent of the 1,200 mosques in the United States.
The North American Islamic Trust is a subsidiary of the Islamic Society of North America.Sami Al Arian, along with seven others, was indicted in February 2003, on racketeering charges for allegedly financing and supporting homicide bombers in Israel.
The Florida Islamic Academy is explicitly named in the indictment:
The Islamic Academy of Florida, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "IAF") was a tax exempt Florida corporation established on August 24, 1992. SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN was the Director of IAF from its inception through at least June, 2002. SAMEEH HAMMOUDEH was also employed by the IAF and served as its Treasurer. IAF was located at 5910 East 130th Avenue, Tampa, Florida.
And then later goes on to state:
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Jihad-Shiqaqi Faction (PIJ), including the ICP, WISE, IAF, and others known and unknown, constituted an "enterprise" (hereinafter referred to as the "PIJ Enterprise"), as defined by Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961(4); that is, a group of individuals and entities associated in fact which engaged in, and the activities of which affected, interstate and foreign commerce. The enterprise constituted an ongoing organization whose members functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objects of the enterprise.
The indictment also alleges:
On or about May 5, 2002, SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN and SAMEEH HAMMOUDEH caused an employee at IAF to tell an unidentified woman during a telephone conversation that the woman should write a check to IAF after she indicated she wanted to send money for the Palestinians.
Yet, despite this, the Islamic Academy of Florida continued to receive money from the tuition voucher program in Florida through July 2003.
On July 19, 2003, the Palm Beach Post reported that payments to the school were being suspended:
John Kirtley, founder of the voucher organization Florida PRIDE, said he is suspending payments to the Tampa-based Islamic Academy of Florida, which has been under scrutiny by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI in relation to its founder and former Director Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian stands accused of being the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group responsible for numerous suicide bombings in Israel.
Florida PRIDE provides the Islamic school with money that it collects from corporations. The corporations in turn get to deduct the amount of their donations - up to $5 million - from their state taxes.
According to the Palm Beach Post article, the school received approximately $350,000 from Florida PRIDE for tuition for 100 underprivileged students in 2003. This makes up more than 50% of the school's revenue.
Islamic Academy of Florida has since been removed from the Florida PRIDE program completely. How much, if any, of this money actually went to support terrorism is unknown. In the meantime, while the cases of Al Arian and the others indicted move through the legal system, the North American Islamic Trust continues to operate Islamic primary and secondary schools throughout the country. The Islamic Society of North America continues to operate mosques and school as well.
How many more of these schools will eventually be linked to terrorism? How many of their faculty and staff have ties to terrorist organizations?
Those questions need to be answered.
FrontPageMagazine.com June 8, 2005
Florida's tuition voucher program is designed to help improve the education level of children who attend schools which do not meet educational standards. In 2003, Florida taxpayers indirectly subsidized the Islamic Academy of Florida in Tampa, with over $350,000 in funds.
Why is this a problem? What makes funding an Islamic school any different from funding a Christian school?
The difference is that at the time, the school's principal was none other than Sami Al Arian, who was under indictment for terrorism-related charges. He is at this very moment going to trial.
The Florida Islamic Academy was founded in 1992 by Sami Al-Arian. North American Islamic Trust holds the the title to the school property, as well as to the Tampa-area mosques at 130th Ave. E in Temple Terrace, FL and at 6307 Barclay Avenue in Spring Hill, FL. The trust owns about 27 percent of the 1,200 mosques in the United States.
The North American Islamic Trust is a subsidiary of the Islamic Society of North America.Sami Al Arian, along with seven others, was indicted in February 2003, on racketeering charges for allegedly financing and supporting homicide bombers in Israel.
The Florida Islamic Academy is explicitly named in the indictment:
The Islamic Academy of Florida, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as "IAF") was a tax exempt Florida corporation established on August 24, 1992. SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN was the Director of IAF from its inception through at least June, 2002. SAMEEH HAMMOUDEH was also employed by the IAF and served as its Treasurer. IAF was located at 5910 East 130th Avenue, Tampa, Florida.
And then later goes on to state:
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Jihad-Shiqaqi Faction (PIJ), including the ICP, WISE, IAF, and others known and unknown, constituted an "enterprise" (hereinafter referred to as the "PIJ Enterprise"), as defined by Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961(4); that is, a group of individuals and entities associated in fact which engaged in, and the activities of which affected, interstate and foreign commerce. The enterprise constituted an ongoing organization whose members functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objects of the enterprise.
The indictment also alleges:
On or about May 5, 2002, SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN and SAMEEH HAMMOUDEH caused an employee at IAF to tell an unidentified woman during a telephone conversation that the woman should write a check to IAF after she indicated she wanted to send money for the Palestinians.
Yet, despite this, the Islamic Academy of Florida continued to receive money from the tuition voucher program in Florida through July 2003.
On July 19, 2003, the Palm Beach Post reported that payments to the school were being suspended:
John Kirtley, founder of the voucher organization Florida PRIDE, said he is suspending payments to the Tampa-based Islamic Academy of Florida, which has been under scrutiny by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI in relation to its founder and former Director Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian stands accused of being the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group responsible for numerous suicide bombings in Israel.
Florida PRIDE provides the Islamic school with money that it collects from corporations. The corporations in turn get to deduct the amount of their donations - up to $5 million - from their state taxes.
According to the Palm Beach Post article, the school received approximately $350,000 from Florida PRIDE for tuition for 100 underprivileged students in 2003. This makes up more than 50% of the school's revenue.
Islamic Academy of Florida has since been removed from the Florida PRIDE program completely. How much, if any, of this money actually went to support terrorism is unknown. In the meantime, while the cases of Al Arian and the others indicted move through the legal system, the North American Islamic Trust continues to operate Islamic primary and secondary schools throughout the country. The Islamic Society of North America continues to operate mosques and school as well.
How many more of these schools will eventually be linked to terrorism? How many of their faculty and staff have ties to terrorist organizations?
Those questions need to be answered.
Gary Aldrich: The Mark Felt Four
http://www.townhall.com
Gary Aldrich (archive)
June 8, 2005
The FBI is in the news again, and yet again, the news isn’t good. The legendary crime-fighting, spy-catching agency that J. Edgar Hoover founded can’t get a break.
First it was revealed that Mark Felt, the number two executive to Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, was “Deep Throat,” and that Felt was all but passing out official FBI FD-302’s, which are reports of interrogations with key witnesses in the Watergate case. The basis of my allegation includes written statements I have read from former FBI agents who actually worked on the case. One of these had developed an important witness, only to see the witness’ name and her blockbusting facts – that could only have come from hot-off-the press FBI documents – appear in The Washington Post. Years later, he is angry to learn that the promises of confidentiality to a frightened White House insider were broken mere hours after the interview by a high-ranking Bureau official who should have known better.
In a recent article in the Albany Times Union written by Brendan Lyons, it’s revealed that a former agent, Paul V. Daly, learned sometime in 1978 that Felt was in fact “Deep Throat” and that three FBI Headquarters and Field Office officials gave Felt regular briefings, even though they apparently knew Felt had entered into an unholy alliance with the Post, supplying raw FBI data. In any important case, supervisors in FBI Headquarters are responsible for monitoring and sometimes directing the investigations, then briefing higher-ups including the director. In order to do that, they must furnish HQ with written documents which are later introduced into evidence in a court of law. Until then, the documents are considered “raw” – that is, untested.
For those reasons as well as the ethical and legal implications, it is unconscionable for FBI officials to unilaterally furnish raw FBI documents to the media.
But, the “real” director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, had just died and had been replaced by an “outsider” favored by President Nixon. Hoover had been the director for decades and had served under 8 presidents. The FBI without Hoover was like chicken without Perdue to many high-ranking Bureau officials who had fashioned their entire persona around a Hoover-led agency.
In fact, all high Bureau officials’ career tracks were based on Hoover’s unique and harsh management style. These guys wanted a chance at the top slot as director of the FBI. If one of them made it, the other three might tag along as top executives. But their careers were in grave jeopardy because everyone knew that the new guy coming in, chosen by the president, would get wide latitude to make changes at the top.
This would be especially threatening to the Hoover-ites, because it was a well-known perception in Washington that Hoover’s FBI was considered “too powerful and independent.” It was also widely reported that the White House wanted somebody who could “de-Hooverize” the FBI. L. Patrick Gray, a by-the-book retired Navy officer, was seen as that man. Thus the career hopes of Mark Felt and his close associates were dashed, even as Felt was moved into the second seat to serve as Gray’s assistant. The naive Gray should have known that Hoover-trained Felt and his cronies would accept no consolation prizes.
They would be lurking and waiting to pounce on the acting director's very first missteps. Meanwhile, as part of their plan for revenge, they apparently rationalized a secret cabal to funnel key information about the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post.
In hindsight, it could be claimed by Nixon-haters that their motivations were noble – that they believed that the Nixon Administration would shut down any FBI investigation that threatened his power. In reality, the federal investigation had taken on a life of its own and could not be stopped by Nixon or anyone else. Hundreds of FBI agents were assigned to the case, and there is no way a corrupt politician could have silenced all of them. Not every FBI agent’s life is completely centered and controlled by the mere fact he or she is an FBI agent. As one highly successful former agent once told me, “Hey, I was looking for a job when I found that one at the Bureau. I did that job and then I moved on, and up.”
If the motives of Felt’s cabal were pure, why didn’t a single one of them ever step forward to announce that it was they, the fabulous Felt Four, who had saved the nation? I believe the answer is, they never spoke about it because they were merely trying to save their threatened careers. In other words, they could not move on, so they refused to let go.
Let’s review what was happening in our country during the Nixon presidency: entire cities were being burned to the ground, and banks and universities bombed, while hard-Left Marxist radicals like Bernadine Doran called for “Revolution!” even as they stuffed cash into their pockets that had been funneled to them by the Soviet Union. This environment would seem to supply little justification for the selling-out by these four FBI executives, even if they did believe they were forcing an FBI investigation of monumental proportions into the public eye so that it could not be quashed by an “abusive” president.
Claims that “there was only one thing that Mark Felt could do” seem especially hollow when you consider that there was always a legal way available to this cabal. There is a third branch of government on Capitol Hill called the U.S. Congress, who at that very time was gleefully sharpening their knives, salivating at the chance to impeach a detested president.
Are we to believe that these politically-savvy top FBI officials believed that not only was the White House compromised, but also the U.S. Congress? If they actually believed that, then I would say that they were very dangerous men in very high posts who were in a position to do serious damage to this country.
The Felt Four were not heroes – they were politically- and selfishly-motivated, out-of-control bureaucrats who believed they had a right to break the very laws they were paid to enforce. In hindsight, President Nixon was correct in passing over Mark Felt for the position of FBI Director. For that we owe Nixon and his men a debt of gratitude, because if there is something worse than a corrupt politician, it is a corrupt bureaucrat with a badge and arrest powers.
Especially grateful may be the majority of the former and present Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who do take their oath of office seriously.
Gary Aldrich is the president of The Patrick Henry Center, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Gary W. Aldrich
Contact Gary Aldrich Read Aldrich's biography
On sale now! Gary Aldrich's latest!
Thunder on the Left-
Gary Aldrich, author of the best-selling Unlimited Access, makes a compelling case that today's Democratic Party has been hijacked by the hard left. The result: a clear and present danger to our national security. Aldrich knows what he's talking about. He was an FBI Agent for 26 years and spent the last 5 years of his FBI career working in the White House, where exposed Bill Clinton's lies and cover-ups. Read the Townhall.com review of this book. And then save 30% when you buy it now!
Gary Aldrich (archive)
June 8, 2005
The FBI is in the news again, and yet again, the news isn’t good. The legendary crime-fighting, spy-catching agency that J. Edgar Hoover founded can’t get a break.
First it was revealed that Mark Felt, the number two executive to Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, was “Deep Throat,” and that Felt was all but passing out official FBI FD-302’s, which are reports of interrogations with key witnesses in the Watergate case. The basis of my allegation includes written statements I have read from former FBI agents who actually worked on the case. One of these had developed an important witness, only to see the witness’ name and her blockbusting facts – that could only have come from hot-off-the press FBI documents – appear in The Washington Post. Years later, he is angry to learn that the promises of confidentiality to a frightened White House insider were broken mere hours after the interview by a high-ranking Bureau official who should have known better.
In a recent article in the Albany Times Union written by Brendan Lyons, it’s revealed that a former agent, Paul V. Daly, learned sometime in 1978 that Felt was in fact “Deep Throat” and that three FBI Headquarters and Field Office officials gave Felt regular briefings, even though they apparently knew Felt had entered into an unholy alliance with the Post, supplying raw FBI data. In any important case, supervisors in FBI Headquarters are responsible for monitoring and sometimes directing the investigations, then briefing higher-ups including the director. In order to do that, they must furnish HQ with written documents which are later introduced into evidence in a court of law. Until then, the documents are considered “raw” – that is, untested.
For those reasons as well as the ethical and legal implications, it is unconscionable for FBI officials to unilaterally furnish raw FBI documents to the media.
But, the “real” director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, had just died and had been replaced by an “outsider” favored by President Nixon. Hoover had been the director for decades and had served under 8 presidents. The FBI without Hoover was like chicken without Perdue to many high-ranking Bureau officials who had fashioned their entire persona around a Hoover-led agency.
In fact, all high Bureau officials’ career tracks were based on Hoover’s unique and harsh management style. These guys wanted a chance at the top slot as director of the FBI. If one of them made it, the other three might tag along as top executives. But their careers were in grave jeopardy because everyone knew that the new guy coming in, chosen by the president, would get wide latitude to make changes at the top.
This would be especially threatening to the Hoover-ites, because it was a well-known perception in Washington that Hoover’s FBI was considered “too powerful and independent.” It was also widely reported that the White House wanted somebody who could “de-Hooverize” the FBI. L. Patrick Gray, a by-the-book retired Navy officer, was seen as that man. Thus the career hopes of Mark Felt and his close associates were dashed, even as Felt was moved into the second seat to serve as Gray’s assistant. The naive Gray should have known that Hoover-trained Felt and his cronies would accept no consolation prizes.
They would be lurking and waiting to pounce on the acting director's very first missteps. Meanwhile, as part of their plan for revenge, they apparently rationalized a secret cabal to funnel key information about the Watergate investigation to The Washington Post.
In hindsight, it could be claimed by Nixon-haters that their motivations were noble – that they believed that the Nixon Administration would shut down any FBI investigation that threatened his power. In reality, the federal investigation had taken on a life of its own and could not be stopped by Nixon or anyone else. Hundreds of FBI agents were assigned to the case, and there is no way a corrupt politician could have silenced all of them. Not every FBI agent’s life is completely centered and controlled by the mere fact he or she is an FBI agent. As one highly successful former agent once told me, “Hey, I was looking for a job when I found that one at the Bureau. I did that job and then I moved on, and up.”
If the motives of Felt’s cabal were pure, why didn’t a single one of them ever step forward to announce that it was they, the fabulous Felt Four, who had saved the nation? I believe the answer is, they never spoke about it because they were merely trying to save their threatened careers. In other words, they could not move on, so they refused to let go.
Let’s review what was happening in our country during the Nixon presidency: entire cities were being burned to the ground, and banks and universities bombed, while hard-Left Marxist radicals like Bernadine Doran called for “Revolution!” even as they stuffed cash into their pockets that had been funneled to them by the Soviet Union. This environment would seem to supply little justification for the selling-out by these four FBI executives, even if they did believe they were forcing an FBI investigation of monumental proportions into the public eye so that it could not be quashed by an “abusive” president.
Claims that “there was only one thing that Mark Felt could do” seem especially hollow when you consider that there was always a legal way available to this cabal. There is a third branch of government on Capitol Hill called the U.S. Congress, who at that very time was gleefully sharpening their knives, salivating at the chance to impeach a detested president.
Are we to believe that these politically-savvy top FBI officials believed that not only was the White House compromised, but also the U.S. Congress? If they actually believed that, then I would say that they were very dangerous men in very high posts who were in a position to do serious damage to this country.
The Felt Four were not heroes – they were politically- and selfishly-motivated, out-of-control bureaucrats who believed they had a right to break the very laws they were paid to enforce. In hindsight, President Nixon was correct in passing over Mark Felt for the position of FBI Director. For that we owe Nixon and his men a debt of gratitude, because if there is something worse than a corrupt politician, it is a corrupt bureaucrat with a badge and arrest powers.
Especially grateful may be the majority of the former and present Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who do take their oath of office seriously.
Gary Aldrich is the president of The Patrick Henry Center, a Townhall.com member group.
©2005 Gary W. Aldrich
Contact Gary Aldrich Read Aldrich's biography
On sale now! Gary Aldrich's latest!
Thunder on the Left-
Gary Aldrich, author of the best-selling Unlimited Access, makes a compelling case that today's Democratic Party has been hijacked by the hard left. The result: a clear and present danger to our national security. Aldrich knows what he's talking about. He was an FBI Agent for 26 years and spent the last 5 years of his FBI career working in the White House, where exposed Bill Clinton's lies and cover-ups. Read the Townhall.com review of this book. And then save 30% when you buy it now!
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Thomas Sowell: Looking Back
http://www.townhall.com
Thomas Sowell (archive)
June 6, 2005
We may look back on some eras as heroic -- that of the founding fathers or "the greatest generation" that fought World War II -- but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or blundered into wars in which every country involved ended up worse off than before. How will people a century from now look back on our era? Fortunately, most of us will be long gone by then, so we will be spared the embarrassment of seeing ourselves judged.
What will future generations say about how we behaved when confronted by international terrorist organizations that have repeatedly demonstrated their cut-throat ruthlessness and now had the prospect of getting nuclear weapons from rogue nations like Iran and North Korea?
What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention?
During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.
This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.
What will those who look back on these times think when they see that the American Civil Liberties Union, and others who have made excuses for all sorts of criminals, were pushing for the prosecution of our own troops for life-and-death decisions they had a split second to make in the heat of combat?
The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us.
It is impossible to fight a war without heroism. Yet can you name a single American military hero acclaimed by the media for an act of courage in combat? Such courage is systematically ignored by most of the media.
If American troops kill a hundred terrorists in battle and lose ten of their own men doing it, the only headline will be: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."
Those in the media who have carped at the military for years, and have repeatedly opposed military spending, are now claiming to be "honoring" our military by making a big production out of publishing the names of all those killed in Iraq. Will future generations see through this hypocrisy -- and wonder why we did not?
What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?
Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not.
Nothing will more painfully reveal the irresponsible frivolity of our times than the many demands in the media and in politics that we act only with the approval of the United Nations and after winning over "world opinion."
How long this will take and what our enemies will be doing in the meantime while we are going through these futile exercises is something that gets very little attention.
Do you remember Osama bin Laden warning us, on the eve of last year's elections, that he would retaliate against those parts of the United States that voted for Bush? The United States is not Spain, so we disregarded his threats.
But what of future generations, after international terrorists get nuclear weapons? And what will our descendants think of us -- will they ever forgive us -- for leaving them in such a desperate situation because we were paralyzed by a desire to placate "world opinion"?
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
Thomas Sowell (archive)
June 6, 2005
We may look back on some eras as heroic -- that of the founding fathers or "the greatest generation" that fought World War II -- but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or blundered into wars in which every country involved ended up worse off than before. How will people a century from now look back on our era? Fortunately, most of us will be long gone by then, so we will be spared the embarrassment of seeing ourselves judged.
What will future generations say about how we behaved when confronted by international terrorist organizations that have repeatedly demonstrated their cut-throat ruthlessness and now had the prospect of getting nuclear weapons from rogue nations like Iran and North Korea?
What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention?
During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.
This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.
What will those who look back on these times think when they see that the American Civil Liberties Union, and others who have made excuses for all sorts of criminals, were pushing for the prosecution of our own troops for life-and-death decisions they had a split second to make in the heat of combat?
The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us.
It is impossible to fight a war without heroism. Yet can you name a single American military hero acclaimed by the media for an act of courage in combat? Such courage is systematically ignored by most of the media.
If American troops kill a hundred terrorists in battle and lose ten of their own men doing it, the only headline will be: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."
Those in the media who have carped at the military for years, and have repeatedly opposed military spending, are now claiming to be "honoring" our military by making a big production out of publishing the names of all those killed in Iraq. Will future generations see through this hypocrisy -- and wonder why we did not?
What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?
Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not.
Nothing will more painfully reveal the irresponsible frivolity of our times than the many demands in the media and in politics that we act only with the approval of the United Nations and after winning over "world opinion."
How long this will take and what our enemies will be doing in the meantime while we are going through these futile exercises is something that gets very little attention.
Do you remember Osama bin Laden warning us, on the eve of last year's elections, that he would retaliate against those parts of the United States that voted for Bush? The United States is not Spain, so we disregarded his threats.
But what of future generations, after international terrorists get nuclear weapons? And what will our descendants think of us -- will they ever forgive us -- for leaving them in such a desperate situation because we were paralyzed by a desire to placate "world opinion"?
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
Christopher Hitchens: Terminal Futility
Routine airport security won't thwart jihadists, but it does inconvenience and endanger the rest of us.
Slate.com
Posted Monday, June 6, 2005, at 1:02 PM PT
Is there anyone reading this column who would agree with Mark O. Hatfield Jr., spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, that in the past year "the average peak wait time at [airport] checkpoints has dropped a minute ... to about 12 minutes"? This is what he was cited as having said, in a New York Times report of a confidential document from the Department of Homeland Security. The last time I was at Dulles Airport, the line for security began at the entrance to the terminal and wound itself in several rope-line convolutions, like a clogged intestine, for about 40 minutes. I had allowed the usual two hours and was checking no luggage, but this and other banana-republic conditions almost made me miss my plane. Nor was it a "peak time." In any case, a passenger cannot know what a "peak time" will be. Only the TSA knows how many people are booked on how many flights at a given hour and can make provision of enough machines and personnel. Or not, as the case may be.
So, Hatfield was telling me something that I didn't know. The rest of the report, however, contains things that everyone does know to be true. We learn that there is no real capacity to detect explosives, for example. And we learn that, "If, say, a handgun were discovered, the terrorist would have ample ability to retain control of it. TSA screeners are neither expecting to encounter a real weapon nor are they trained to gain control of it." Who hasn't worked that out?
I think I had also noticed that there are not enough plastic bins or tables to line them up on, and that "X-ray machines that examine carry-on baggage sit idle as much as 30 per cent of the time." The time elapsed between Sept. 11, 2001, and today's writing (1,364 days) is only slightly less than the time between Pearl Harbor and the unconditional surrender of Japan (1,365 days). And airport security is still a silly farce that subjects the law-abiding to collective punishment while presenting almost no deterrent to a determined suicide-killer.
There is one mercy at least: One no longer sees people smiling and saying, "Thank you" as their wheelchairs and their children are put through pointless inspections. But the new form of servile abjection—standing in sullen lines and just putting up with it—is hardly an improvement. One sometimes wants to ask, "What's my name?" or, "To what database is this connected" when someone has just asked for the third time for you to put down a bag and produce a driver's license. But I think the fear of making some inscrutable "no-fly" list may inhibit many people. There has never yet been a hijacker who boarded a plane without taking the trouble to purchase a ticket and carry an ID. Members of the last successful group were on a "watch list," for all the difference that made. The next successful group will not be on a watch list.
Flying from London to Washington the other day, I was told that I was no longer required to take my computer out of its case. Apparently, there are scanners that can see though soft cases as well as through the hardened lid of a laptop (and apparently the United States hasn't managed to invest in any of these scanners for its domestic airports). On the other hand, I was asked if I had packed my own bags and if they had been under my control at all times. This exceptionally stupid pair of questions—to which a terrorist would have to answer "yes" by definition—is now deemed too stupid for U.S. domestic purposes and stupid enough only for international travel. This makes as much sense as diverting a full plane that carries a notorious Islamist crooner, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, from one airport to another.
Routines and "zero tolerance" exercises will never thwart determined jihadists who are inventive and who are willing to sacrifice their lives. That requires inventiveness and initiative. But airport officials are not allowed to use their initiative. People who have had their names confused with wanted or suspect people, and who have spent hours proving that they are who they say they are, are nonetheless compelled to go through the whole process every time, often with officials who have seen them before and cleared them before, because the system that never seems to catch anyone can never seem to let go of anyone, either.
While people are treated as packages, we learn from the same New York Times account of the still-secret Homeland Security document that "air cargo on passenger planes is rarely physically inspected today." Imagine, if you will, the wolfish grin of an al-Qaida fan who reads that sentence. I sometimes don't want to mention all the other loopholes, in case it gives ideas to the wrong people, but just imagine for a second that we imposed our current airport rules on trains, or the subway, or the tunnels and bridges …
What we are looking at, then, is a hugely costly and oppressive system that is designed to maintain the illusion of safety and the delusion that the state is protecting its citizens. The main beneficiaries seem to be the pilferers employed by this vast bureaucracy—we have had several recent reports about the steep increase in items stolen from luggage. And that is petty theft that takes place off-stage. What amazes me is the willingness of Americans to submit to confiscation at the point of search. Every day, people are relieved of private property in broad daylight, with the sole net result that they wouldn't have even a nail file with which to protect themselves if (or rather when) the next hijacking occurs.
Last month, cigarette lighters were added to the confiscation list. There's probably some half-baked "shoe-bomber" justification for this, but I hear that at Boise airport in Idaho there's now a lighter bin on the way out of the airport, like the penny tray in some shops, that allows you to pick one up. Give one; take one—it all helps to pass the time until the next disaster, which collective punishment of the law-abiding is doing nothing to prevent.
Related in Slate
In February, Andy Bowers discovered a loophole that makes identity checks useless. Timothy Noah (not a terrorist) described how his name ended up on the No-Fly List, and in May, Keelin McDonell explained why Cat Stevens was allowed on a plane when his name is on the list. Steven Aftergood gave the legal reasoning behind the TSA's policy of secrecy, and the authors of Safe assessed the newest gizmos for finding terrorists.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
Slate.com
Posted Monday, June 6, 2005, at 1:02 PM PT
Is there anyone reading this column who would agree with Mark O. Hatfield Jr., spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, that in the past year "the average peak wait time at [airport] checkpoints has dropped a minute ... to about 12 minutes"? This is what he was cited as having said, in a New York Times report of a confidential document from the Department of Homeland Security. The last time I was at Dulles Airport, the line for security began at the entrance to the terminal and wound itself in several rope-line convolutions, like a clogged intestine, for about 40 minutes. I had allowed the usual two hours and was checking no luggage, but this and other banana-republic conditions almost made me miss my plane. Nor was it a "peak time." In any case, a passenger cannot know what a "peak time" will be. Only the TSA knows how many people are booked on how many flights at a given hour and can make provision of enough machines and personnel. Or not, as the case may be.
So, Hatfield was telling me something that I didn't know. The rest of the report, however, contains things that everyone does know to be true. We learn that there is no real capacity to detect explosives, for example. And we learn that, "If, say, a handgun were discovered, the terrorist would have ample ability to retain control of it. TSA screeners are neither expecting to encounter a real weapon nor are they trained to gain control of it." Who hasn't worked that out?
I think I had also noticed that there are not enough plastic bins or tables to line them up on, and that "X-ray machines that examine carry-on baggage sit idle as much as 30 per cent of the time." The time elapsed between Sept. 11, 2001, and today's writing (1,364 days) is only slightly less than the time between Pearl Harbor and the unconditional surrender of Japan (1,365 days). And airport security is still a silly farce that subjects the law-abiding to collective punishment while presenting almost no deterrent to a determined suicide-killer.
There is one mercy at least: One no longer sees people smiling and saying, "Thank you" as their wheelchairs and their children are put through pointless inspections. But the new form of servile abjection—standing in sullen lines and just putting up with it—is hardly an improvement. One sometimes wants to ask, "What's my name?" or, "To what database is this connected" when someone has just asked for the third time for you to put down a bag and produce a driver's license. But I think the fear of making some inscrutable "no-fly" list may inhibit many people. There has never yet been a hijacker who boarded a plane without taking the trouble to purchase a ticket and carry an ID. Members of the last successful group were on a "watch list," for all the difference that made. The next successful group will not be on a watch list.
Flying from London to Washington the other day, I was told that I was no longer required to take my computer out of its case. Apparently, there are scanners that can see though soft cases as well as through the hardened lid of a laptop (and apparently the United States hasn't managed to invest in any of these scanners for its domestic airports). On the other hand, I was asked if I had packed my own bags and if they had been under my control at all times. This exceptionally stupid pair of questions—to which a terrorist would have to answer "yes" by definition—is now deemed too stupid for U.S. domestic purposes and stupid enough only for international travel. This makes as much sense as diverting a full plane that carries a notorious Islamist crooner, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, from one airport to another.
Routines and "zero tolerance" exercises will never thwart determined jihadists who are inventive and who are willing to sacrifice their lives. That requires inventiveness and initiative. But airport officials are not allowed to use their initiative. People who have had their names confused with wanted or suspect people, and who have spent hours proving that they are who they say they are, are nonetheless compelled to go through the whole process every time, often with officials who have seen them before and cleared them before, because the system that never seems to catch anyone can never seem to let go of anyone, either.
While people are treated as packages, we learn from the same New York Times account of the still-secret Homeland Security document that "air cargo on passenger planes is rarely physically inspected today." Imagine, if you will, the wolfish grin of an al-Qaida fan who reads that sentence. I sometimes don't want to mention all the other loopholes, in case it gives ideas to the wrong people, but just imagine for a second that we imposed our current airport rules on trains, or the subway, or the tunnels and bridges …
What we are looking at, then, is a hugely costly and oppressive system that is designed to maintain the illusion of safety and the delusion that the state is protecting its citizens. The main beneficiaries seem to be the pilferers employed by this vast bureaucracy—we have had several recent reports about the steep increase in items stolen from luggage. And that is petty theft that takes place off-stage. What amazes me is the willingness of Americans to submit to confiscation at the point of search. Every day, people are relieved of private property in broad daylight, with the sole net result that they wouldn't have even a nail file with which to protect themselves if (or rather when) the next hijacking occurs.
Last month, cigarette lighters were added to the confiscation list. There's probably some half-baked "shoe-bomber" justification for this, but I hear that at Boise airport in Idaho there's now a lighter bin on the way out of the airport, like the penny tray in some shops, that allows you to pick one up. Give one; take one—it all helps to pass the time until the next disaster, which collective punishment of the law-abiding is doing nothing to prevent.
Related in Slate
In February, Andy Bowers discovered a loophole that makes identity checks useless. Timothy Noah (not a terrorist) described how his name ended up on the No-Fly List, and in May, Keelin McDonell explained why Cat Stevens was allowed on a plane when his name is on the list. Steven Aftergood gave the legal reasoning behind the TSA's policy of secrecy, and the authors of Safe assessed the newest gizmos for finding terrorists.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.
Monday, June 06, 2005
NY Times Book Review- The Book Business: Cash Up Front
June 5, 2005
By RANDY KENNEDY
The New York Times Book Review
If you walk around any Barnes & Noble or other large bookseller right about now, there's a good chance you will notice prominent stacks of a thick hardcover with an eye-catching jacket and the title ''Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.'' The book, written by a former Clinton administration official, David J. Rothkopf, and published by PublicAffairs, is based on interviews with foreign policy insiders like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice, and offers itself as a definitive study of the council, sometimes called the most powerful group of people in the history of the world.
Like many other customers, you might have thought the book was on display simply because the booksellers believed it was important, particularly relevant now and would practically sell itself.
This is also what Peter Osnos, the chief executive of PublicAffairs, would like to think. But he has been in the publishing business long enough to know that it's never that simple. In order to ensure the book was on display on the front tables, his company had to pay a total of about $11,000 to the large bookstore chains. Last fall the company also paid what Osnos called ''a significant amount of money'' for prominent placement of a new boxed edition of Lou Cannon's two-volume biography of Ronald Reagan, after the former president died in June.
''Had we not done that,'' Osnos said recently, ''there's no guarantee where the book would be. It could have been in the back somewhere.''
Osnos takes great pains to stress that he is not complaining about the arrangement, but simply describing a complicated kind of machinery that has evolved over the last 15 years in the world of American bookselling. Over that period, the amount of retail space devoted to selling books has quadrupled -- from superstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders to the growing book sections of big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco, and even of supermarkets. And with this expansion the once humble conventions of book display -- the neighborhood bookstore window, the recommended-books table near the cash register -- have also been supersized beyond recognition. In fact, many publishers say that the tables and flashy cardboard displays that crowd the front of chain bookstores have emerged as a marketing force fully as powerful as the traditional ways of trying to bring a book to the public's hard-won attention -- through newspaper and magazine ads, reviews, author tours and radio and television interviews.
But this promotional device, like most others, comes with a cost. It is known, somewhat deceptively, as a cooperative advertising agreement. In plain terms, it means that many of the books on display at the front of a store or placed face out at the end of an aisle are there because the publisher paid for them to be there, not necessarily because anyone at the bookstore thought the book was noteworthy or interesting.
Under such programs, booksellers -- mostly chains, but also larger independent stores -- keep a certain percentage of a publisher's net sales, usually 3 percent to 5 percent annually, depending on the agreement with the publisher. This money is then parceled out for various purposes, to help, for example, defray the bookseller's advertising costs, when a chain takes out ads or prints fliers to promote certain books. But the publisher's money may also buy coveted space on the store's front tables or on tall, highly visible racks, known as stepladders, announcing to customers that these books are considered the most important in the store.
''The Barnes & Noble stepladder is the best piece of real estate there is,'' said one veteran publishing executive -- who, like most others interviewed for this article, did not want his name used when talking about the world of book display. ''Now, when I go into a store I practically genuflect in front of the stepladder.'' (As an example, he said that one of his books with sales of about 800 copies a week immediately jumped to 3,000 to 4,000 copies a week once he paid for its placement on stepladders in stores across the country.)
Pay-for-display programs are nothing new in the retail world. Supermarkets have long extracted money from manufacturers to put their boxes of cereal or detergent in eye-catching spots. But the practice seems less savory in bookselling, where bookstore owners and managers were once assumed to serve as an editorial presence, recommending and featuring books they liked. Besides, publishers complain that, despite its name, cooperative advertising is not a cooperative exercise in the least. Some compare it to a tax or even to extortion -- evoking the practice of ''payola'' in the radio industry. Which is not to say that co-op is actually under-the-table, illegal or even unethical -- it's just that bookstores don't tell customers about it.
Co-op advertising has thus acquired a reputation as a kind of dirty secret of the publishing business. In 1999, Amazon.com, which also charges publishers for prominent placement and promotion of books on its Web site, dealt with complaints about the policy by saying it would disclose which titles had been paid for, but it has since stopped doing so. A disclaimer on the site (it takes some searching to find) informs customers that Amazon accepts payments, but, it adds, ''We don't sell our reviews -- and we don't say a book is good just because it's a publisher-supported title.'' Barnes & Noble likewise says that while its ''Discover Great New Writers'' program is supported by money from publishers, the company would never allow a publisher to ''buy'' a spot on this list; it reserves the right to choose the books itself.
Trying to get publishers or booksellers to talk about display agreements, even off the record, is like trying to persuade Mafiosi to break the oath of omertá. One respected New York publishing executive contacted by this reporter couldn't get off the phone fast enough when asked about it. But among themselves, publishers complain bitterly that display programs are just another way that the big bookstores are dictating how they do business. Booksellers, meanwhile, hate to talk about display arrangements because they feel that they have been unfairly portrayed as somehow dishonest or mercenary in a highly competitive business with paper-thin profit margins.
''At no point in time do we put a book on display unless we think it's going to sell,'' said Stephen Riggio, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, who bristled at questions about the practice. Gregory P. Josefowicz, the chief executive of Borders Group -- which has a chain of about 500 bookstores -- agreed. ''If we just keep displaying things that don't meet customer needs but are there because of the availability of co-op, that would be a bad strategy,'' he said. He didn't dispute the prevalence of co-op, however, noting that he and other booksellers felt that sharing some display costs with publishers was justified. ''Space does cost,'' he said.
''The rearrangement of the products in the store by store staff is an investment in money for us,'' Josefowicz added.
The phenomenon of co-op advertising was born during the Depression, when book sales dropped sharply and publishers and bookstores willingly joined hands to share advertising and promotion costs. Later, when sales improved, some booksellers insisted on keeping the agreements. ''And that was the first step down the slippery slope from many publishers' points of view,'' said one publishing executive with more than 20 years' sales experience. For years, as bookselling remained largely in the hands of independent stores, pay-for-display was rare, but with the rise of chains and the explosion of display space the arrangements have become more complex and costly.
Publishers have had a love-hate relationship with the idea almost from the beginning. ''I have to say that there were probably some publishers at the time who saw someone else's book in the front window and thought, 'Hey, I'd pay for that if I could,' '' said the veteran executive. And indeed now, displays in superstores are seen by some publishers, especially smaller houses, as an increasingly reliable way to promote their books. ''The promotions cost a fair amount,'' said George Gibson, the publisher of Walker & Company -- known for making successful books like Dava Sobel's ''Longitude'' -- ''but you're buying space, and they have every right to sell that space, and in this day and age when there are so many books being published -- literally every day -- the trick is to try to get a book to stand out in the crowd.''
He added, of the agreements, ''Sure, it might be nice if they cost less, but you use them judiciously.''
The veteran publishing executive said he believes that in many Barnes & Noble superstores, about 70 percent of the books on front-of-store tables are there because co-op money secures their spot. (In New York City, the percentage is less because store clerks have traditionally retained more autonomy to promote books they personally like and think will sell well.) Stephen Riggio declined to say what percentage of books on display tables in Barnes & Noble were generally part of cooperative programs, but maintained that it was ''a small amount system-wide'' and added that ''it's not the driving force behind our merchandising.''
But many publishers disagree and say that costs for certain types of display arrangements with large booksellers are becoming too high. Numbers are very hard to come by, but some publishers said that the price for placement on front-of-store promotional tables for only a few weeks or a month -- in some cases, even, just one week -- at Barnes & Noble stores can be between $10,000 and $20,000 per book, depending on the time of year. Placement on eye-catching cardboard displays can cost much more than $20,000. When compared to the cost of advertising, those fees are not inordinately large, but publishers say that they are starting to take a bigger and bigger share of the money set aside to promote books.
''A great deal of our marketing money is now going to co-op,'' said one publisher. He added that he also has experienced more pressure from booksellers. They do not openly threaten to hide the book in the store if no cooperative money is used, he said; the stores obviously also want books to sell. But that threat is sometimes implicit. ''They're not rude,'' he said. ''They just don't promote the book.''
And booksellers are going after even relatively small amounts of additional money from publishers. One publisher tells a story of a major bookselling company offering a chance for one of the publisher's noted authors to address a dinner meeting of the company's senior managers, a great opportunity for the author. But the bookseller demanded $5,000 from the publisher to allow the author to speak. The offer was declined. ''It's an aggressive posture,'' the publisher said.
While publishers disagree about the merits of paying for display, one thing about the arrangements is clear: they further concentrate money and attention on the books that need it least.
The phenomenon, which has been called a reverse Robin Hood effect, happens because publishers pay huge advances to star authors and then feel they must support that author's book with substantial promotion money. Of course, this was happening well before bookstore display emerged as a force. But publishers say that display arrangements have made promotion budgets even more lopsided in favor of the Stephen Kings and Danielle Steels of the book world, meaning that new authors or less prominent books are given increasingly little advertising or display help.
Stephen Riggio said that while prominent authors do get heavy display support from publishers, he believes big booksellers are unfairly charged with hurting smaller books and publishers with their display policies. ''It's just another j'accuse story in which we are painted by some people in publishing as limiting the marketplace,'' he said. ''It gets right to me.''
On the contrary, he argues, the expansion of his company's stores gives it ''the ability to stock the most diverse collection of books that we've ever been able to do.'' That means books by small and medium-size publishers are ''getting more exposure than ever before.''
The publishing executive with 20 years in sales said that he has been part of many discussions in which marketing divisions have debated the wisdom of devoting large sums of display money to big-name authors whose books would sell well anyway, instead of putting it toward good smaller books that need the attention.
''Those conversations have occurred time and time again,'' he said. ''But no one has had the guts'' to gamble on the lesser-known titles. ''Nobody will do that because the risk is too great for losing the amount of money you've invested in Stephen King.''
Peter Osnos said that for small publishers like him -- PublicAffairs puts out around 50 new books a year -- the expensive world of bookstore display forces him to try to find other ways to get his books talked about.
''One way is to hand a retailer a large check and they will stick your book up front,'' he said. ''What I have to be is more intrepid.''
''Money is the easiest way,'' he added, ''but it's not the only way.''
Randy Kennedy is an arts reporter for The Times.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
By RANDY KENNEDY
The New York Times Book Review
If you walk around any Barnes & Noble or other large bookseller right about now, there's a good chance you will notice prominent stacks of a thick hardcover with an eye-catching jacket and the title ''Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.'' The book, written by a former Clinton administration official, David J. Rothkopf, and published by PublicAffairs, is based on interviews with foreign policy insiders like Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice, and offers itself as a definitive study of the council, sometimes called the most powerful group of people in the history of the world.
Like many other customers, you might have thought the book was on display simply because the booksellers believed it was important, particularly relevant now and would practically sell itself.
This is also what Peter Osnos, the chief executive of PublicAffairs, would like to think. But he has been in the publishing business long enough to know that it's never that simple. In order to ensure the book was on display on the front tables, his company had to pay a total of about $11,000 to the large bookstore chains. Last fall the company also paid what Osnos called ''a significant amount of money'' for prominent placement of a new boxed edition of Lou Cannon's two-volume biography of Ronald Reagan, after the former president died in June.
''Had we not done that,'' Osnos said recently, ''there's no guarantee where the book would be. It could have been in the back somewhere.''
Osnos takes great pains to stress that he is not complaining about the arrangement, but simply describing a complicated kind of machinery that has evolved over the last 15 years in the world of American bookselling. Over that period, the amount of retail space devoted to selling books has quadrupled -- from superstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders to the growing book sections of big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco, and even of supermarkets. And with this expansion the once humble conventions of book display -- the neighborhood bookstore window, the recommended-books table near the cash register -- have also been supersized beyond recognition. In fact, many publishers say that the tables and flashy cardboard displays that crowd the front of chain bookstores have emerged as a marketing force fully as powerful as the traditional ways of trying to bring a book to the public's hard-won attention -- through newspaper and magazine ads, reviews, author tours and radio and television interviews.
But this promotional device, like most others, comes with a cost. It is known, somewhat deceptively, as a cooperative advertising agreement. In plain terms, it means that many of the books on display at the front of a store or placed face out at the end of an aisle are there because the publisher paid for them to be there, not necessarily because anyone at the bookstore thought the book was noteworthy or interesting.
Under such programs, booksellers -- mostly chains, but also larger independent stores -- keep a certain percentage of a publisher's net sales, usually 3 percent to 5 percent annually, depending on the agreement with the publisher. This money is then parceled out for various purposes, to help, for example, defray the bookseller's advertising costs, when a chain takes out ads or prints fliers to promote certain books. But the publisher's money may also buy coveted space on the store's front tables or on tall, highly visible racks, known as stepladders, announcing to customers that these books are considered the most important in the store.
''The Barnes & Noble stepladder is the best piece of real estate there is,'' said one veteran publishing executive -- who, like most others interviewed for this article, did not want his name used when talking about the world of book display. ''Now, when I go into a store I practically genuflect in front of the stepladder.'' (As an example, he said that one of his books with sales of about 800 copies a week immediately jumped to 3,000 to 4,000 copies a week once he paid for its placement on stepladders in stores across the country.)
Pay-for-display programs are nothing new in the retail world. Supermarkets have long extracted money from manufacturers to put their boxes of cereal or detergent in eye-catching spots. But the practice seems less savory in bookselling, where bookstore owners and managers were once assumed to serve as an editorial presence, recommending and featuring books they liked. Besides, publishers complain that, despite its name, cooperative advertising is not a cooperative exercise in the least. Some compare it to a tax or even to extortion -- evoking the practice of ''payola'' in the radio industry. Which is not to say that co-op is actually under-the-table, illegal or even unethical -- it's just that bookstores don't tell customers about it.
Co-op advertising has thus acquired a reputation as a kind of dirty secret of the publishing business. In 1999, Amazon.com, which also charges publishers for prominent placement and promotion of books on its Web site, dealt with complaints about the policy by saying it would disclose which titles had been paid for, but it has since stopped doing so. A disclaimer on the site (it takes some searching to find) informs customers that Amazon accepts payments, but, it adds, ''We don't sell our reviews -- and we don't say a book is good just because it's a publisher-supported title.'' Barnes & Noble likewise says that while its ''Discover Great New Writers'' program is supported by money from publishers, the company would never allow a publisher to ''buy'' a spot on this list; it reserves the right to choose the books itself.
Trying to get publishers or booksellers to talk about display agreements, even off the record, is like trying to persuade Mafiosi to break the oath of omertá. One respected New York publishing executive contacted by this reporter couldn't get off the phone fast enough when asked about it. But among themselves, publishers complain bitterly that display programs are just another way that the big bookstores are dictating how they do business. Booksellers, meanwhile, hate to talk about display arrangements because they feel that they have been unfairly portrayed as somehow dishonest or mercenary in a highly competitive business with paper-thin profit margins.
''At no point in time do we put a book on display unless we think it's going to sell,'' said Stephen Riggio, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, who bristled at questions about the practice. Gregory P. Josefowicz, the chief executive of Borders Group -- which has a chain of about 500 bookstores -- agreed. ''If we just keep displaying things that don't meet customer needs but are there because of the availability of co-op, that would be a bad strategy,'' he said. He didn't dispute the prevalence of co-op, however, noting that he and other booksellers felt that sharing some display costs with publishers was justified. ''Space does cost,'' he said.
''The rearrangement of the products in the store by store staff is an investment in money for us,'' Josefowicz added.
The phenomenon of co-op advertising was born during the Depression, when book sales dropped sharply and publishers and bookstores willingly joined hands to share advertising and promotion costs. Later, when sales improved, some booksellers insisted on keeping the agreements. ''And that was the first step down the slippery slope from many publishers' points of view,'' said one publishing executive with more than 20 years' sales experience. For years, as bookselling remained largely in the hands of independent stores, pay-for-display was rare, but with the rise of chains and the explosion of display space the arrangements have become more complex and costly.
Publishers have had a love-hate relationship with the idea almost from the beginning. ''I have to say that there were probably some publishers at the time who saw someone else's book in the front window and thought, 'Hey, I'd pay for that if I could,' '' said the veteran executive. And indeed now, displays in superstores are seen by some publishers, especially smaller houses, as an increasingly reliable way to promote their books. ''The promotions cost a fair amount,'' said George Gibson, the publisher of Walker & Company -- known for making successful books like Dava Sobel's ''Longitude'' -- ''but you're buying space, and they have every right to sell that space, and in this day and age when there are so many books being published -- literally every day -- the trick is to try to get a book to stand out in the crowd.''
He added, of the agreements, ''Sure, it might be nice if they cost less, but you use them judiciously.''
The veteran publishing executive said he believes that in many Barnes & Noble superstores, about 70 percent of the books on front-of-store tables are there because co-op money secures their spot. (In New York City, the percentage is less because store clerks have traditionally retained more autonomy to promote books they personally like and think will sell well.) Stephen Riggio declined to say what percentage of books on display tables in Barnes & Noble were generally part of cooperative programs, but maintained that it was ''a small amount system-wide'' and added that ''it's not the driving force behind our merchandising.''
But many publishers disagree and say that costs for certain types of display arrangements with large booksellers are becoming too high. Numbers are very hard to come by, but some publishers said that the price for placement on front-of-store promotional tables for only a few weeks or a month -- in some cases, even, just one week -- at Barnes & Noble stores can be between $10,000 and $20,000 per book, depending on the time of year. Placement on eye-catching cardboard displays can cost much more than $20,000. When compared to the cost of advertising, those fees are not inordinately large, but publishers say that they are starting to take a bigger and bigger share of the money set aside to promote books.
''A great deal of our marketing money is now going to co-op,'' said one publisher. He added that he also has experienced more pressure from booksellers. They do not openly threaten to hide the book in the store if no cooperative money is used, he said; the stores obviously also want books to sell. But that threat is sometimes implicit. ''They're not rude,'' he said. ''They just don't promote the book.''
And booksellers are going after even relatively small amounts of additional money from publishers. One publisher tells a story of a major bookselling company offering a chance for one of the publisher's noted authors to address a dinner meeting of the company's senior managers, a great opportunity for the author. But the bookseller demanded $5,000 from the publisher to allow the author to speak. The offer was declined. ''It's an aggressive posture,'' the publisher said.
While publishers disagree about the merits of paying for display, one thing about the arrangements is clear: they further concentrate money and attention on the books that need it least.
The phenomenon, which has been called a reverse Robin Hood effect, happens because publishers pay huge advances to star authors and then feel they must support that author's book with substantial promotion money. Of course, this was happening well before bookstore display emerged as a force. But publishers say that display arrangements have made promotion budgets even more lopsided in favor of the Stephen Kings and Danielle Steels of the book world, meaning that new authors or less prominent books are given increasingly little advertising or display help.
Stephen Riggio said that while prominent authors do get heavy display support from publishers, he believes big booksellers are unfairly charged with hurting smaller books and publishers with their display policies. ''It's just another j'accuse story in which we are painted by some people in publishing as limiting the marketplace,'' he said. ''It gets right to me.''
On the contrary, he argues, the expansion of his company's stores gives it ''the ability to stock the most diverse collection of books that we've ever been able to do.'' That means books by small and medium-size publishers are ''getting more exposure than ever before.''
The publishing executive with 20 years in sales said that he has been part of many discussions in which marketing divisions have debated the wisdom of devoting large sums of display money to big-name authors whose books would sell well anyway, instead of putting it toward good smaller books that need the attention.
''Those conversations have occurred time and time again,'' he said. ''But no one has had the guts'' to gamble on the lesser-known titles. ''Nobody will do that because the risk is too great for losing the amount of money you've invested in Stephen King.''
Peter Osnos said that for small publishers like him -- PublicAffairs puts out around 50 new books a year -- the expensive world of bookstore display forces him to try to find other ways to get his books talked about.
''One way is to hand a retailer a large check and they will stick your book up front,'' he said. ''What I have to be is more intrepid.''
''Money is the easiest way,'' he added, ''but it's not the only way.''
Randy Kennedy is an arts reporter for The Times.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Auction Angers Clemente Family
Pieces of plane from fatal crash put up for bidding
Monday, June 06, 2005
By Jan Ackerman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
More than three decades after Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash while on a mercy mission to Nicaragua, Leland's, an online sports auction house, is selling pieces of the wreckage as sports memorabilia.
The news, first reported by The New York Times, angered the Clemente family, which has vowed legal action.
"Obviously, we're talking to attorneys. ... We're going to try to stop this," said son Roberto Clemente Jr., in an interview yesterday with KDKA-TV.
"The most upsetting part for the family is that you're taking an auction that's supposed to be about baseball, and parts of the plane where my father died have nothing to do with baseball," said Clemente.
"For us, it's shocking that someone would actually put that in as [items] for an auction without even asking the family if it was OK," he said.
Officials at the auction house could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Clemente was a baseball legend, not just in Pittsburgh but in his native Puerto Rico and in the worldwide Latin community. He had 3,000 hits, a career batting average of .317 and 240 home runs in 18 major league seasons.
He died on New Year's Eve 1972, at age 38, while trying to deliver relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
His plane, a DC-7 cargo plane, crashed at sea after takeoff from San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing five passengers, including Clemente, whose body was never recovered.
Two parts of the plane, a propeller and a piece of metal, are being sold on Leland's Web site, www.lelands.com, in an auction scheduled to end June 24.
More than 30 Clemente-related items are part of the auction, including signed baseballs and photographs, a game-worn hat, a business card, a coin set and even photos of Clemente getting a haircut.
One item, the "Roberto Clemente Tragedy Collection," includes photos and newspaper articles about the crash from his native Puerto Rico and his adopted city of Pittsburgh.
In marketing the ill-fated plane's 14-by-79-inch propeller, auctioneers seemed to acknowledge in promotional material that the sale might be upsetting to some.
"While we realize the piece may send a cold chill up your back, remember it for the humanitarian mission it was on when it fell to the sea. And remember Roberto Clemente for everything he was," they wrote.
According to a narrative on the Web site describing the propeller, divers were able to recover a few pieces of the plane after the crash. These were supposedly offered to the Clemente family, but they declined. A local pilot asked authorities if he could have them as a tribute to Roberto, who was his hero. The pilot retained the pieces for 30 years.
As of yesterday, two bids had been received for the 19-by-14-inch piece of metal. The high bid was $1,650. Three bids had been received for the propeller, the highest being $1,210.
Clemente Jr., who hosts a weekly radio show called "The Latin Beat" on WFAN, a sports talk station in New York City, said he learned of the auction just before his show on Saturday.
"I didn't know what to think at the time ... it was pretty hard to do my show," said Clemente, who added that he didn't mention the auction during the show.
(Jan Ackerman can be reached at jackerman@post-gazette.com or 412-851-1512.)
Friday, June 03, 2005
George Neumayr: Kingdom of This World
http://www.spectator.org
By George Neumayr
Published 5/10/2005 12:06:30 AM
The gravitation of liberals to illiberal ideologies is uncanny. The more illiberal the ideology, the more likely liberals will endeavor to understand and defend it. Militant Islam enjoys the benefits of this phenomenon in this century, just as the totalitarians of the Soviet Union benefited from it in the last. Militant Islam's most powerful propagandists are not Muslims but self-hating Westerners who interpret militant Islam's history and doctrines with a sympathy they never extend to Western religion.
The latest illustration of this self-hatred is Kingdom of Heaven, an anti-crusader movie that contains Hollywood's idea of a happy ending -- Christians in retreat and Islam on the march. Owing to this species of death-wish liberalism, Islamic conquerors against the West don't even need to rewrite history. Defeated Westerners will rewrite it for them, making their imperialism by the sword look harmless. A few years ago PBS, making a great effort to refurbish Islam in the wake of 9/11, produced a documentary depicting the early Muslim warriors as 7th-century Alan Aldas. Kingdom of Heaven keeps this propaganda rolling, which director Sir Ridley Scott's spokesman didn't even bother to hide prior to the movie's release. He told the London press last year that the movie is designed to please Muslims. "We hope that the Muslim world sees the rectification of history," Scott's spokesman said.
What's meant by rectification of history here is the rewriting of history according to politically correct exigencies in the liberal mind. This need produces a ludicrous movie that looks as if it was assembled by a committee at the U.N. The movie's portrayals break down as: Believing Christians bad, Muslims and de-Christianized Knights good. Just as 9/11 inspired liberals to rework the concept of jihad to mean innocuous self-improvement, so in Kingdom of Heaven liberalism is trying to rework the concept of Knighthood, defining its true manifestation as a commitment to secularized social justice. The true knights, in other words, didn't risk life and limb to liberate the Holy Land from four centuries of brutal jihad but to oversee the building of wells and other public works projects. The good Knights, you see, didn't care a whit that Muslims armies had been assaulting Eastern Christianity in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and had seized Jerusalem in a power grab that left the Christian Patriarch Sophronius, according to Edward Gibbon, mumbling in sorrow, "Behold the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet." No, the good knights sought political rather than religious salvation in the Holy Land. They just wanted to form a kingdom of this world in which all peoples could live in syncretistic harmony.
Ridley Scott's absurdly anachronistic, U.N.-style vision put considerable pressure on him to make stuff up in the movie. For example, he cobbles together a council of properly liberalized Muslims, Christians, and Jews to try and save Jerusalem from wild-eyed, primitive fundamentalists. Professor Riley-Smith of Cambridge University calls this part of the movie "utter nonsense." No such "confraternity" existed. The movie's so amateurish it wouldn't even be worth examining were it not a window on a mindset that will bedevil the West for a long time to come. The movie contains Big Lies, pervasive in the culture, that will make the preservation of what is left of Western civilization very difficult. Imagine if the attitude that informs the movie were present at the time of Islam's advances through the centuries on Spain, France, Italy, and Austria. Would Europe exist? Nope, and perhaps the Ridley Scotts would consider that a good thing. The people of Vienna in the late 1600s should have said to the Muslim armies, "Thank you for conquering us." That Europe is now internally disintegrating as it is Islamized is due to the disappearance of the Christian consensus that movies like Kingdom of Heaven applaud.
The Christianity without Christ that liberalism extols is a Christianity with no interest in Jerusalem. It is no wonder that CAIR and other Muslim groups are cheering this movie: it vindicates the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land, which even the very cautious historian Bernard Lewis has described as a polemical power grab that was designed to announce to the world that Islam had supplanted Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem is not mentioned a single time in the Koran. But Islam, in order to supersede Judeo-Christianity, had to occupy Jerusalem and build a Dome of the Rock to overshadow the dome over Jesus Christ's tomb. The inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock, which predict ruin for Jews and Christians if they do not submit to Islam, make Islam's use of Jerusalem clear. Militant Islam was the new world order, the Dome of the Rock announced -- a message its Western dupes centuries later still don't not grasp and won't until they live under it.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.
By George Neumayr
Published 5/10/2005 12:06:30 AM
The gravitation of liberals to illiberal ideologies is uncanny. The more illiberal the ideology, the more likely liberals will endeavor to understand and defend it. Militant Islam enjoys the benefits of this phenomenon in this century, just as the totalitarians of the Soviet Union benefited from it in the last. Militant Islam's most powerful propagandists are not Muslims but self-hating Westerners who interpret militant Islam's history and doctrines with a sympathy they never extend to Western religion.
The latest illustration of this self-hatred is Kingdom of Heaven, an anti-crusader movie that contains Hollywood's idea of a happy ending -- Christians in retreat and Islam on the march. Owing to this species of death-wish liberalism, Islamic conquerors against the West don't even need to rewrite history. Defeated Westerners will rewrite it for them, making their imperialism by the sword look harmless. A few years ago PBS, making a great effort to refurbish Islam in the wake of 9/11, produced a documentary depicting the early Muslim warriors as 7th-century Alan Aldas. Kingdom of Heaven keeps this propaganda rolling, which director Sir Ridley Scott's spokesman didn't even bother to hide prior to the movie's release. He told the London press last year that the movie is designed to please Muslims. "We hope that the Muslim world sees the rectification of history," Scott's spokesman said.
What's meant by rectification of history here is the rewriting of history according to politically correct exigencies in the liberal mind. This need produces a ludicrous movie that looks as if it was assembled by a committee at the U.N. The movie's portrayals break down as: Believing Christians bad, Muslims and de-Christianized Knights good. Just as 9/11 inspired liberals to rework the concept of jihad to mean innocuous self-improvement, so in Kingdom of Heaven liberalism is trying to rework the concept of Knighthood, defining its true manifestation as a commitment to secularized social justice. The true knights, in other words, didn't risk life and limb to liberate the Holy Land from four centuries of brutal jihad but to oversee the building of wells and other public works projects. The good Knights, you see, didn't care a whit that Muslims armies had been assaulting Eastern Christianity in Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and had seized Jerusalem in a power grab that left the Christian Patriarch Sophronius, according to Edward Gibbon, mumbling in sorrow, "Behold the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet." No, the good knights sought political rather than religious salvation in the Holy Land. They just wanted to form a kingdom of this world in which all peoples could live in syncretistic harmony.
Ridley Scott's absurdly anachronistic, U.N.-style vision put considerable pressure on him to make stuff up in the movie. For example, he cobbles together a council of properly liberalized Muslims, Christians, and Jews to try and save Jerusalem from wild-eyed, primitive fundamentalists. Professor Riley-Smith of Cambridge University calls this part of the movie "utter nonsense." No such "confraternity" existed. The movie's so amateurish it wouldn't even be worth examining were it not a window on a mindset that will bedevil the West for a long time to come. The movie contains Big Lies, pervasive in the culture, that will make the preservation of what is left of Western civilization very difficult. Imagine if the attitude that informs the movie were present at the time of Islam's advances through the centuries on Spain, France, Italy, and Austria. Would Europe exist? Nope, and perhaps the Ridley Scotts would consider that a good thing. The people of Vienna in the late 1600s should have said to the Muslim armies, "Thank you for conquering us." That Europe is now internally disintegrating as it is Islamized is due to the disappearance of the Christian consensus that movies like Kingdom of Heaven applaud.
The Christianity without Christ that liberalism extols is a Christianity with no interest in Jerusalem. It is no wonder that CAIR and other Muslim groups are cheering this movie: it vindicates the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land, which even the very cautious historian Bernard Lewis has described as a polemical power grab that was designed to announce to the world that Islam had supplanted Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem is not mentioned a single time in the Koran. But Islam, in order to supersede Judeo-Christianity, had to occupy Jerusalem and build a Dome of the Rock to overshadow the dome over Jesus Christ's tomb. The inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock, which predict ruin for Jews and Christians if they do not submit to Islam, make Islam's use of Jerusalem clear. Militant Islam was the new world order, the Dome of the Rock announced -- a message its Western dupes centuries later still don't not grasp and won't until they live under it.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.
Stephen Hunter Reviews 'Cinderella Man'
The Contender
Ron Howard's 'Cinderella Man' Rings True Until the Final Round
By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 3, 2005; Page C01
In all respects save one, "Cinderella Man" is so square you could shoot pool on its head. It's straightforward, honest, inspirational, the story of a straightforward, honest, inspirational guy -- and one thought you have right away is, how come they waited so long to make it into a movie?
And, unlike the last Ron Howard-Russell Crowe collaboration, "A Beautiful Mind," it is almost entirely trick-free. There's no business of the hidden subjective camera where we think we're seeing what would be considered "reality" when in fact we're inside a diseased mind. In this one, what you see is what you get.
What you get is the professional arc de triomphe of Jim Braddock, a New Jersey heavyweight of the '30s with a big heart, a good punch and fragile hands. After breaking his right, he fell from grace with the lords of the game -- the movie represents them as stuffy cigar smokers in three-piece suits sitting in a paneled boardroom. He lost his New York license, he couldn't get fights, so he went to work as a stevedore on the Hoboken docks to support his beloved wife and three kids. It was the height of the Depression and he was soon laid off his full-time job; the family just barely scraped by on his part-time work, the dole and a lot of huddling together during cold Jersey nights in a ramshackle, powerless apartment.
Then Jim caught a break, finally. After almost a fightless year, a highly ranked boxer dropped out of a bout, and Braddock was asked to fill in; out of shape, burdened by his wife's misgivings but desperate for a payday, he gave it a shot. And won. Instead of could have been a contender, he suddenly was a contender. He won again. And won again. Suddenly, four fights into his second chance, he was fighting Max Baer for the heavyweight championship of the world.
The story goes that during his time on the docks, he'd favored his left over the broken right and in so doing, built that arm into a ferocious punching piston, which he'd lacked initially. In a funny way, his misfortune made him a better boxer than he might have ever been otherwise.
You have to give it to Howard and Crowe for not giving in to the modern tendency in biography to discover and exploit the secret lives that so many great men have (and even more of us less-great ones!). Some biographers will even invent a nice juicy secret life for craven gain, such as the fellow who argued that Errol Flynn was a Nazi spy or the other who said J. Edgar Hoover partied in ball gowns. But Howard and Crowe never stoop, and Braddock, God bless him, defies any such temptations: He seemed never to have gotten drunk, chased babes, yelled or fought outside the ring. As solid a family man as any father who knew best, he was as humble as he was heroic and as heroic as he was strong and as strong as he was noble. He was just pure ring knight with Parsifal's singleness of purpose, who found himself within a one-two combination of boxing's grail.
In less able hands, surely such virtue would grow tedious halfway into Reel 2. But Crowe manages to keep it watchable by keeping it honest: You don't feel him preening or posing, you feel no smugness or self-awareness. He gives us a good man who doesn't know how good he is and for that reason takes no pleasure in his virtue, who just is and does without much fanfare.
Particularly now, when we're used to seeing jocks with the narcissism and ego of prima ballerinas, surrounded by gofers, sycophants and homeboys, to say nothing of diamonds, minks and silk lingerie -- these are the jocks I'm still talking about, not their girlfriends! -- it's an utter astonishment to see a family guy whose idea of a good time is to read bedtime stories to his kids, then sit by the fire with his wife, Mae (played well enough, though with an occasionally wavering Jersey accent, by Renee Zellweger). We're in an almost irony-free zone, where everything is exactly as it seems, and no subtexts are available for subtext-fanatics.
For example, Howard and screenwriter Cliff Hollingsworth largely avoid the temptation that the makers of that other inspirational story of a '30s jock, albeit a four-legged one, couldn't avoid: The latter made Seabiscuit a symbol for Roosevelt's New Deal, for a hope aborning which gave the unemployed millions the belief that better times lay just ahead. You thought: Is this a speedy pony or some kind of national salvation machine?
By contrast, the fighter is just a fighter, first, last and always. Crowe keeps him grounded in reality and Howard, who loves the smoky squalor of old-time boxing halls, stays away from the Lincoln Continental commercial cinematography that also bedeviled "Seabiscuit." Howard's Depression is scabby and cold, full of Hoovervilles (in Central Park, no less) and legions of damned men; Howard's casting director has a great time finding faces that could have been taken out of Walker Evans's Dust Bowl photos.
Even the boxing choreography is good, and it's so brilliantly photographed that it recalls the work that cinematographer James Wong Howe did on what is probably the best of all boxing movies, Robert Rossen's "Body and Soul," in 1947. (Howe filmed on roller skates so he could get in close and stay fluid.) There's no "Rocky"-style overamplification or any of Scorsese's stylizations from "Raging Bull." It's just the game, the thud of leather-encased fists smashing into human meat, of body punches, jabs and one-two combinations.
With all that going for it, one must ask, why didn't they just tell it completely straight?
In other words, why did they feel so compelled to create an utterly bogus Max Baer for the virtuous Jim to fight in the movie's admittedly compelling climactic, championship bout? I understand the melodramatic demands of the narrative: To show off Jim's virtue, Howard and Hollingsworth felt they had to deliver an equally outsize portrait of evil so that the lines between good and bad, right and wrong, decent and profane were made ever starker, so that the battle isn't so much between boxers as between moral systems.
But see, it was between boxers. These meanings that outsiders impose -- Schmeling as an Aryan demigod who had to be felled by the righteous Louis, Griffith as a noble gay icon destroying the bigoted Paret, Clay was seen as an uppity punk to be straightened out by Papa Liston (whose career as a mob enforcer was conveniently forgotten), Smokin' Joe putting the same uppity punk, now called Ali, in his place, then Ali, an icon of black selfhood, reclaiming the title against the same Joe -- have no reality inside the ring, where it's nothing but punch, will and pain-threshold.
"Cinderella Man" devises a whole new personality for Baer, turning him into a popeyed psycho and libertine, with two floozies on his arm or lounging in his hotel room in satins, a cretin who boasts of killing men in the ring and makes rude sexual suggestions to Mae. Craig Bierko plays the champ as a cross between Al Capone and Attila the Hun. Does he think this is his Oscar ride? Does he want to be the next Mr. T?
It's just not right. In fact, Baer was as beloved as any heavyweight in history, was seen as a friendly, clownish kind of guy, and when a fighter died after a fight with him, he was so upset he quit boxing for several months, then went 2-4 when he came back. It took an intervention by Jack Dempsey and a crash course in short punches to get him back on track. He fought one great fight -- against Schmeling -- and pretty much phoned it in from then on. As the great sportswriter Jimmy Cannon put it, "Baer was shaped to be a great pug, but his heart did not belong in that immense and thrilling body. It was a clown's heart. A heart that must have hurt by terror and fear in the years Baer was forced to pretend he was a fighter."
It's not enough to ruin the picture, but it does leave a bad taste in the mouth. Maybe, as an act of contrition, Crowe and Howard ought to collaborate on a last biopic: "Clown Man: The Max Baer Story."
Cinderella Man (144 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for athletic violence and emotional intensity.
Pat Buchanan: Completing the Watergate Picture
http://www.townhall.com
Pat Buchanan (archive)
June 3, 2005
And so it turns out that the two most famous investigative reporters of all time were a pair of stenographers for an FBI hack who was ratting out President Nixon for passing him over as director.
That corrupt cop, Mark Felt, should be named co-winner of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize given to The Washington Post. For it appears Felt swiped the research for the Post's Watergate stories from FBI files, while Woodward did rewrite and Bernstein was on the coffee-and-Danish run.
The Post was scooped on the outing of "Deep Throat" by Felt's family. Understandably. The Felts resent that Woodward and Bernstein got rich and famous, while 91-year-old Mark, who did the dirty work, is feeding pigeons at the nursing home. The Felts now want their cut of the swag. Deep Throat was right, "Follow the money!"
And so the great mystery, "Who was Deep Throat?" reaches its anticlimax. He turns out to be a toady who oversaw black bag jobs for J. Edgar, violated his oath and, out of malice and spite, leaked the fruits of an honest FBI investigation to the nest of Nixon-haters over on 15th Street, then lied about it for 30 years.
Why did Felt lie? Because Felt knew he had disgraced himself and dishonored everything an FBI agent should stand for. He didn't want his old comrades to know what a snake he had been. Linda Tripp, savaged by the same press lionizing Felt, at least had the moral courage to go public and take the heat when she blew the whistle on Bill Clinton.
But to Bob and Carl and Ben and Sally, Felt is a "hero," a real Medal of Freedom man. And to them, perhaps, he is. For in the 1970s, a hero was any turncoat who would sink teeth into a president who was ending with honor a war into which the Liberal Establishment had plunged this country, and then cut and run when the body bags started coming home and their Ivy League kids started calling them names.
From the time Nixon nailed Golden Boy Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy and ran over all the liberal icons from Helen Gahagan Douglas to Adlai Stevenson, Nixon was the great hate object of the Left, second only to Tailgunner Joe.
In 1960, they thought they buried him in Cook County, when the graveyard wards came in for JFK. They thought they had the casket sealed when he held that "last press conference" after his defeat for governor of California.
But after 1964, Nixon led his party back to victory after victory, culminating in the 49-state landslide of 1972 over the antiwar movement propagandized by the Post. By 1973, all U.S. troops were home, the POWs were headed for Clark Field, every provincial capital was in Saigon's hands and Richard Nixon was at 69 percent. And the Establishment was beside itself with hatred.
And so they resolved to finish him. And by his failure to act decisively and ruthlessly to clean his campaign and White House of loyalists who had blundered and, yes, committed crimes, he became ensnared in a cover-up that would destroy his presidency. He gave them a sword, and they ran it right through him. And when he went down, Southeast Asia and everything 58,000 Americans had bled and died for went down with him.
And that is upon the conscience of us all.
But the Establishment did not care, for it had gone over the hill the day Nixon became commander in chief.
When you look back at it, what was Watergate all about? A black bag job at Larry O'Brien's place like the ones "hero" Felt used to run for Hoover. Liddy and Hunt on an escapade to get Daniel Ellsberg's file from his shrink, which probably would have been too heavy to carry anyway. And, oh yes, 200 pizzas Segretti sent with those 30 African ambassadors in native costume to Ed Muskie's D.C. fund-raiser.
Not one miscreancy committed by Nixon's men did not have its antecedent in the White Houses of JFK or LBJ. But they got away with it, including the distribution to the press of dirt on Dr. King, picked up by secret FBI photo and wiretap. What Segretti dirty trick remotely approaches that one, which the liberal press covered up?
Wednesday night, sipping a Chalk Hill, I watched as Ted Koppel, at his most oleaginous and unctuous, fed up one cheese ball after another to Ben Bradlee. What do you think of Buchanan calling Felt a "traitor," said Koppel, misquoting me.
"Gimme a break!" croaked Bradlee.
Well, you give us a break, Ben. All this bullhockey about how you and the Great Stenographers saved the republic is getting so thick the tourists will need to rent chain saws to cut through it.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Pat Buchanan Read Buchanan's biography
Pat Buchanan (archive)
June 3, 2005
And so it turns out that the two most famous investigative reporters of all time were a pair of stenographers for an FBI hack who was ratting out President Nixon for passing him over as director.
That corrupt cop, Mark Felt, should be named co-winner of the 1973 Pulitzer Prize given to The Washington Post. For it appears Felt swiped the research for the Post's Watergate stories from FBI files, while Woodward did rewrite and Bernstein was on the coffee-and-Danish run.
The Post was scooped on the outing of "Deep Throat" by Felt's family. Understandably. The Felts resent that Woodward and Bernstein got rich and famous, while 91-year-old Mark, who did the dirty work, is feeding pigeons at the nursing home. The Felts now want their cut of the swag. Deep Throat was right, "Follow the money!"
And so the great mystery, "Who was Deep Throat?" reaches its anticlimax. He turns out to be a toady who oversaw black bag jobs for J. Edgar, violated his oath and, out of malice and spite, leaked the fruits of an honest FBI investigation to the nest of Nixon-haters over on 15th Street, then lied about it for 30 years.
Why did Felt lie? Because Felt knew he had disgraced himself and dishonored everything an FBI agent should stand for. He didn't want his old comrades to know what a snake he had been. Linda Tripp, savaged by the same press lionizing Felt, at least had the moral courage to go public and take the heat when she blew the whistle on Bill Clinton.
But to Bob and Carl and Ben and Sally, Felt is a "hero," a real Medal of Freedom man. And to them, perhaps, he is. For in the 1970s, a hero was any turncoat who would sink teeth into a president who was ending with honor a war into which the Liberal Establishment had plunged this country, and then cut and run when the body bags started coming home and their Ivy League kids started calling them names.
From the time Nixon nailed Golden Boy Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy and ran over all the liberal icons from Helen Gahagan Douglas to Adlai Stevenson, Nixon was the great hate object of the Left, second only to Tailgunner Joe.
In 1960, they thought they buried him in Cook County, when the graveyard wards came in for JFK. They thought they had the casket sealed when he held that "last press conference" after his defeat for governor of California.
But after 1964, Nixon led his party back to victory after victory, culminating in the 49-state landslide of 1972 over the antiwar movement propagandized by the Post. By 1973, all U.S. troops were home, the POWs were headed for Clark Field, every provincial capital was in Saigon's hands and Richard Nixon was at 69 percent. And the Establishment was beside itself with hatred.
And so they resolved to finish him. And by his failure to act decisively and ruthlessly to clean his campaign and White House of loyalists who had blundered and, yes, committed crimes, he became ensnared in a cover-up that would destroy his presidency. He gave them a sword, and they ran it right through him. And when he went down, Southeast Asia and everything 58,000 Americans had bled and died for went down with him.
And that is upon the conscience of us all.
But the Establishment did not care, for it had gone over the hill the day Nixon became commander in chief.
When you look back at it, what was Watergate all about? A black bag job at Larry O'Brien's place like the ones "hero" Felt used to run for Hoover. Liddy and Hunt on an escapade to get Daniel Ellsberg's file from his shrink, which probably would have been too heavy to carry anyway. And, oh yes, 200 pizzas Segretti sent with those 30 African ambassadors in native costume to Ed Muskie's D.C. fund-raiser.
Not one miscreancy committed by Nixon's men did not have its antecedent in the White Houses of JFK or LBJ. But they got away with it, including the distribution to the press of dirt on Dr. King, picked up by secret FBI photo and wiretap. What Segretti dirty trick remotely approaches that one, which the liberal press covered up?
Wednesday night, sipping a Chalk Hill, I watched as Ted Koppel, at his most oleaginous and unctuous, fed up one cheese ball after another to Ben Bradlee. What do you think of Buchanan calling Felt a "traitor," said Koppel, misquoting me.
"Gimme a break!" croaked Bradlee.
Well, you give us a break, Ben. All this bullhockey about how you and the Great Stenographers saved the republic is getting so thick the tourists will need to rent chain saws to cut through it.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Pat Buchanan Read Buchanan's biography
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Peggy Noonan: The Legend of Deep Throat
[Click on the link provided to read Peggy Noonan's outstanding column on Mark Felt in this morning's Wall Street Journal]
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006763
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006763
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Michelle Malkin: The Truth About Guantanamo Bay
http://www.townhall.com
Michelle Malkin (archive)
June 1, 2005
The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It's the "gulag of our time," wails Amnesty International. It's the "anti-Statue of Liberty," bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story -- the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don't want you to hear.
According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread "atrocities" at Gitmo:
A significant number of detainees' complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda's explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been "beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog" could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn't seen it.
Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.
In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.
Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards' use of profanity, and bad food.
If this is unacceptable, "gulag"-style "torture," then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)
Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled "Inside the Wire," inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- the officials at the detention facility have been.
Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times a day.
Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo's library -- yes, library -- is stocked with Jihadi books. "I was surprised that we'd be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists," Saar admits. "[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists' religious devotion." Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees "as a sort of show of respect for their faith."
Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, "would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children's throats" if released.
The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration's failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation -- and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.
Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Print Send
Contact Michelle Malkin Read Malkin's biography
Save 29% on Malkin's latest!
In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror
Should civil liberties always trump national security? In a time of war, Michelle Malkin insists, the survival of the nation must come first. In this provocative new book, Malkin offers a ringing justification for the most reviled wartime policies in American history: the evacuation, relocation, and internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II. She also defends racial, ethnic, religious, and nationality profiling as effective defensive measures in today's War on Terror.
Michelle Malkin (archive)
June 1, 2005
The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It's the "gulag of our time," wails Amnesty International. It's the "anti-Statue of Liberty," bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story -- the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don't want you to hear.
According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread "atrocities" at Gitmo:
A significant number of detainees' complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda's explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been "beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog" could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn't seen it.
Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.
In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.
Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards' use of profanity, and bad food.
If this is unacceptable, "gulag"-style "torture," then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)
Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled "Inside the Wire," inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam -- to a fault, I believe -- the officials at the detention facility have been.
Each detainee's cell has a sink installed low to the ground, "to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet" before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get "two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals" a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims' call to prayer five times a day.
Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo's library -- yes, library -- is stocked with Jihadi books. "I was surprised that we'd be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists," Saar admits. "[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists' religious devotion." Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees "as a sort of show of respect for their faith."
Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, "would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children's throats" if released.
The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration's failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation -- and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.
Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Print Send
Contact Michelle Malkin Read Malkin's biography
Save 29% on Malkin's latest!
In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror
Should civil liberties always trump national security? In a time of war, Michelle Malkin insists, the survival of the nation must come first. In this provocative new book, Malkin offers a ringing justification for the most reviled wartime policies in American history: the evacuation, relocation, and internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II. She also defends racial, ethnic, religious, and nationality profiling as effective defensive measures in today's War on Terror.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
The Guardian: Springsteen Concert Review
Bruce Springsteen
Royal Albert Hall, London
Caroline Sullivan
Monday May 30, 2005
The Guardian
On arriving at the first of Bruce Springsteen's only two UK dates, everyone was presented with a card spelling out the rules for the night. This was a solo acoustic show, and there was to be no intermission, no late arrivals and, heaven forbid, no leaving foyer doors ajar. On the last point, they were rigorous. Spotting an open door on the upper tier, a steward gasped, "Oh my God", and sprinted to close it. "He's very strict, and he'll stop the show," she explained.
So Springsteen has become the sort of aesthete who gets thrown off his stride by an errant chink of light. Age and acoustic tours have a way of doing that to even former spit-and-sawdust types. They also implant the idea that it's acceptable to play for two hours without slipping in a single major hit (The River was as hitsy as it got).
Who'd have thought it - and the worry is, having acquired the gravitas to pull this kind of thing off, he'll probably never fully revert to being the rocking Boss. If that's the case, at least he's negotiating career midlife in a way that will cause the least embarrassment to his kids. There are worse things - ask Mick Jagger - than the role of introspective patriarch, and Springsteen is doing it with grace and maturity.
In a show dominated by the new Devils & Dust album, he covered the personal and the political with equal passion, giving a song about the death of his son's friend (Silver Palomino) the same weight as a rant about American racism toward Mexican immigrants (Matamoros Banks). He did it in an accent that has somehow migrated several states southwest of his native New Jersey, which imbued a folksy twang to his anecdotes. Not only is Springsteen a modern version of the politically-engaged Cash/ Guthrie agitator, he now speaks like them.
His singing voice has taken on the same weathered patina, and as he solemnly moved through the set, accompanying himself on harmonium and piano, they would have thought he made a creditable elder statesman of Americana.
Frank Schaeffer: Fundamentalists to the Right and to the Left
Fundamentalists to the Right,
Fundamentalists to the Left
What my hate mail tells me
about Christian factions today.-By Frank Schaeffer
To see the article on beliefnet.com:Click Here
(Complete article also below:)
I abandoned Protestant Christian fundamentalism many years ago for Greek Orthodoxy. I converted because the Orthodox tradition embraces paradox and mystery. For someone raised in a strict Calvinist home, relief from absolutist certainty was most welcome.
But Christian fundamentalism has not abandoned me. It's come back to haunt me in both liberal and conservative forms. I find myself a minor lightning rod in the culture wars: apparently, I haven't chosen sides well enough.
You see, I write novels and nonfiction for a living. My novels describe a boy growing up in Switzerland as the son of American Calvinist missionaries. In these books, I take what I hope is an empathetically amusing insider's look at what it's like to grow up in a home run by zealots who make it their life's work to separate themselves from the World.
My most recent nonfiction work, "Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story About Love and The United States Marine Corps," I co-wrote with my son John. It's about the aftermath of his 1999 decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps.
So now I'm swimming in a vortex of indignant e-mail from members of both the "Christian right" and the "Christian left." Some Christian evangelical/fundamentalists who disliked my earlier novels find my latest one particularly offensive. They've written to me that they hate everything about it, starting with its "pornographic" cover (a bra and postcard of the Matterhorn are featured). In the book, the fourteen-year-old protagonist is torn between his volcanic burgeoning sexuality and a fundamentalist family so strict that he has never seen a movie, watched television, or danced.
Apparently, some fundamentalists recognize themselves in the parents portrayed in the book and don't like looking in the mirror. They also don't like sex. The gist of their angry letters is: Take a number, God will kill you soon.
On the other side of the fence, my liberal readers assume I must be "some sort of right-wing war monger" because the book I wrote with my son expressed admiration for the Marine Corps. They accuse me of being the sort of imperialist who would stone Jesus to death if given the chance.
These two groups of Christians presumably don't like one another, but from where I'm sitting, they are more alike than different. To these members of the religious right and left, there seem to be only two choices: for or against their dogmas. And, like certain fundamentalist Muslims much in the news of late, they too seem to have no concept of the separation of art, culture, and religion. Dogmatic purity must be adhered to in all endeavors and the slightest deviation is a serious offense. Moreover, no one with a sense of humor about religion (let alone sex!) need apply.
I know something about fundamentalism. I'm the son of a fundamentalist evangelist. My late father, Francis Schaeffer, was a guru/prophet to his evangelical followers. Almost 20 years after his death, thousands of his books still sell each year. My father was very influential in the beginnings of the so-called Religious Right. Through his voluminous writings, he provided intellectual underpinnings for the views of tens of thousands of fundamentalists on such issues as a literal interpretation of scripture.
The Christian fundamentalists who stumble across my novels because of the family name detest them because they're about religious people and are set in Europe, where my parents had their mission. Some evangelical readers take them as biographies and are offended that the parents in the stories are portrayed warts and all, thus besmirching the memory of Francis Schaeffer. Other fundamentalists just don't like anything that pokes fun at the narrow legalistic Christianity in which they have invested themselves and with which they are inflicting their children.
Meanwhile, one liberal reader e-mailed me about my Marines book: "You seem not to understand the simple purpose and message that was Christ's life... I, for once, am gladdened that MY [Catholic] church has demonstrated the backbone to speak against this criminal invasion [of Iraq]... Yes, Jesus was/is a radical and you seem to be the kind of person in the crowd throwing stones at him for challenging the status quo." Never mind that my son and I wrote our decidedly personal, non-political account before the Iraq war was even on the horizon -- in fact, before 9-11.
And, in a letter that appeared in the Los Angeles Times (April 17, 2003), another reader suggests that my problem is that not only that am I pro-Marines but that I'm white. "Schaeffer obviously suffers from guilt based on perceived privilege of class and race. (He is white, of course.) It is the use of young people like his son for imperialist projects in the invasion of Iraq that is the shame here, not a rejection of military service..." You get the idea.
Then a reader who liked the Marine book but hated my latest novel wrote: "WHY did you write these novels? Are you trying to insult the evangelicals? If so, you are succeeding... I admonish you, remove these books from the marketplace." Then this from a fan who used the fact that my son is currently deployed in the Middle East to amplify his critique: "In your 'Zermatt' you get cheap laughs at fundamentalists who actually believe in avoiding fornication even as your own 'heart,' your son, is in harm's way. Frank, God isn't mocked. A friend of mine just died of a massive stroke Friday night. Repent before it's too late. It isn't going to matter what Publisher's Weekly said about you back in 2003 when you stand before God's throne...."
So I'm caught in the shrinking space between two calcified political doctrines of the left and right. My correspondents seem so certain of everything -- especially that God is on their side.
I hope there is still room in our polarized country for Christians like me, who don't subscribe to any one-dogma-fits-all. It seems to me that life is too short, sweet, and mysterious for us to be able to exhaustively "explain" anything much, let alone explain everything with certainty.
For those of us who write, the choice these days seems to be between picking an ideological side (and learning to see things in black and white), or being wanderers unwelcome in either hostile camp. Come to think of it, that is not a bad place to be, at least for someone who believes in paradox and mystery.
Frank Schaeffer's new novel is "Zermatt." His most recent work of nonfiction, co-authored with his son, Corporal John Schaeffer, is "Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story about Love And The United States Marine Corps."
For more information, visit: Frank Schaeffer.com
Fundamentalists to the Left
What my hate mail tells me
about Christian factions today.-By Frank Schaeffer
To see the article on beliefnet.com:Click Here
(Complete article also below:)
I abandoned Protestant Christian fundamentalism many years ago for Greek Orthodoxy. I converted because the Orthodox tradition embraces paradox and mystery. For someone raised in a strict Calvinist home, relief from absolutist certainty was most welcome.
But Christian fundamentalism has not abandoned me. It's come back to haunt me in both liberal and conservative forms. I find myself a minor lightning rod in the culture wars: apparently, I haven't chosen sides well enough.
You see, I write novels and nonfiction for a living. My novels describe a boy growing up in Switzerland as the son of American Calvinist missionaries. In these books, I take what I hope is an empathetically amusing insider's look at what it's like to grow up in a home run by zealots who make it their life's work to separate themselves from the World.
My most recent nonfiction work, "Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story About Love and The United States Marine Corps," I co-wrote with my son John. It's about the aftermath of his 1999 decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps.
So now I'm swimming in a vortex of indignant e-mail from members of both the "Christian right" and the "Christian left." Some Christian evangelical/fundamentalists who disliked my earlier novels find my latest one particularly offensive. They've written to me that they hate everything about it, starting with its "pornographic" cover (a bra and postcard of the Matterhorn are featured). In the book, the fourteen-year-old protagonist is torn between his volcanic burgeoning sexuality and a fundamentalist family so strict that he has never seen a movie, watched television, or danced.
Apparently, some fundamentalists recognize themselves in the parents portrayed in the book and don't like looking in the mirror. They also don't like sex. The gist of their angry letters is: Take a number, God will kill you soon.
On the other side of the fence, my liberal readers assume I must be "some sort of right-wing war monger" because the book I wrote with my son expressed admiration for the Marine Corps. They accuse me of being the sort of imperialist who would stone Jesus to death if given the chance.
These two groups of Christians presumably don't like one another, but from where I'm sitting, they are more alike than different. To these members of the religious right and left, there seem to be only two choices: for or against their dogmas. And, like certain fundamentalist Muslims much in the news of late, they too seem to have no concept of the separation of art, culture, and religion. Dogmatic purity must be adhered to in all endeavors and the slightest deviation is a serious offense. Moreover, no one with a sense of humor about religion (let alone sex!) need apply.
I know something about fundamentalism. I'm the son of a fundamentalist evangelist. My late father, Francis Schaeffer, was a guru/prophet to his evangelical followers. Almost 20 years after his death, thousands of his books still sell each year. My father was very influential in the beginnings of the so-called Religious Right. Through his voluminous writings, he provided intellectual underpinnings for the views of tens of thousands of fundamentalists on such issues as a literal interpretation of scripture.
The Christian fundamentalists who stumble across my novels because of the family name detest them because they're about religious people and are set in Europe, where my parents had their mission. Some evangelical readers take them as biographies and are offended that the parents in the stories are portrayed warts and all, thus besmirching the memory of Francis Schaeffer. Other fundamentalists just don't like anything that pokes fun at the narrow legalistic Christianity in which they have invested themselves and with which they are inflicting their children.
Meanwhile, one liberal reader e-mailed me about my Marines book: "You seem not to understand the simple purpose and message that was Christ's life... I, for once, am gladdened that MY [Catholic] church has demonstrated the backbone to speak against this criminal invasion [of Iraq]... Yes, Jesus was/is a radical and you seem to be the kind of person in the crowd throwing stones at him for challenging the status quo." Never mind that my son and I wrote our decidedly personal, non-political account before the Iraq war was even on the horizon -- in fact, before 9-11.
And, in a letter that appeared in the Los Angeles Times (April 17, 2003), another reader suggests that my problem is that not only that am I pro-Marines but that I'm white. "Schaeffer obviously suffers from guilt based on perceived privilege of class and race. (He is white, of course.) It is the use of young people like his son for imperialist projects in the invasion of Iraq that is the shame here, not a rejection of military service..." You get the idea.
Then a reader who liked the Marine book but hated my latest novel wrote: "WHY did you write these novels? Are you trying to insult the evangelicals? If so, you are succeeding... I admonish you, remove these books from the marketplace." Then this from a fan who used the fact that my son is currently deployed in the Middle East to amplify his critique: "In your 'Zermatt' you get cheap laughs at fundamentalists who actually believe in avoiding fornication even as your own 'heart,' your son, is in harm's way. Frank, God isn't mocked. A friend of mine just died of a massive stroke Friday night. Repent before it's too late. It isn't going to matter what Publisher's Weekly said about you back in 2003 when you stand before God's throne...."
So I'm caught in the shrinking space between two calcified political doctrines of the left and right. My correspondents seem so certain of everything -- especially that God is on their side.
I hope there is still room in our polarized country for Christians like me, who don't subscribe to any one-dogma-fits-all. It seems to me that life is too short, sweet, and mysterious for us to be able to exhaustively "explain" anything much, let alone explain everything with certainty.
For those of us who write, the choice these days seems to be between picking an ideological side (and learning to see things in black and white), or being wanderers unwelcome in either hostile camp. Come to think of it, that is not a bad place to be, at least for someone who believes in paradox and mystery.
Frank Schaeffer's new novel is "Zermatt." His most recent work of nonfiction, co-authored with his son, Corporal John Schaeffer, is "Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story about Love And The United States Marine Corps."
For more information, visit: Frank Schaeffer.com
New Book Details Intimidation of Women Involved in Clinton Sex Scandals
Sen. Clinton Allegedly Intimidated Husband's Sexual Accusers
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
May 31, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - A new book detailing the alleged sexual improprieties of former president Bill Clinton also charges that current U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton played a major role in threatening and intimidating her husband's accusers.
Candice E. Jackson, author of "Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine," told Cybercast News Service that in addition to the "sexual abuse" she alleges was committed by Bill Clinton, "Hillary's involvement is just as devastating and just as important in all this." "[Hillary Clinton] was right there in the inner circle taking a lead in giving these women zero credibility, in attacking them in the public and through the press and in participating in all of these scare tactics, like hiring private investigators to threaten them and follow them," Jackson explained. Hillary Clinton is "either as misogynistic as her husband or she is simply willing to conspire to mistreat women if that's what it takes to preserve their political careers," Jackson added.
She said the former president's behavior toward numerous women "demonstrated sexual harassment and sexual abuse and ultimately misogyny on his part. Jackson said Bill Clinton was guilty of "a true lack of respect of for women that allowed him to use and abuse them and throw them away when he was done and do whatever it took to keep them quiet if they tried to speak up about it." Jackson is an attorney and formerly worked for the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has filed numerous lawsuits over the last decade targeting both Bill and Hillary Clinton for their alleged roles in various controversies.
Jackson's book details how Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey, both accusers of Bill Clinton, dealt with the White House spin machine as it allegedly attempted to discredit, bribe, audit, threaten and intimidate them. "The gravity, the seriousness of the mistreatment that they suffered, really just didn't come through in the mainstream press at the time," Jackson said.
Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and subsequent two terms in office were surrounded by a host of different women alleging sexual improprieties. Broaddrick alleged that then-Arkansas attorney general Bill Clinton raped her in a hotel in Little Rock, Ark., in 1978. "People need to remember this side of Clinton before writing him up as a hero for women." said Broaddrick in a press release regarding the book "Their Lives," which goes on sale Tuesday.
Willey alleged she was sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton in the White House in 1993 during his first term. "I appreciate [Jackson's] painstaking attempt to express the true nightmare Bill and Hillary put me through." Willey said of the book in a statement.
Jackson admits that one of her goals it to prevent Sen. Hillary Clinton from being elected president in 2008. Mrs. Clinton to expected to run for re-election to the Senate representing New York State in 2006 and then perhaps launch a Democratic bid to win the White House that her husband occupied between 1993 and 2001. "We have let the Clintons go to the White House once and I think this is a serious enough abuse issue to prevent them from going there again," Jackson said.
Jackson, who describes herself as a "libertarian feminist," hopes her book will open the eyes of feminists in the U.S. to the "importance of not allowing the Clintons to escape with a reputation for being pro-woman when they have truly destroyed women along the way. "The Clintons have really gotten away with a political reputation of being defenders of women's rights and women's issues," Jackson said. "To me that really says a lot about the state of feminism in this country. It seems like it doesn't even matter whether women are brutally mistreated as long as politicians support abortion rights," she added.
Calls to the New York City press office of former president Bill Clinton and the Washington office of Sen. Hillary Clinton were not returned.
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
May 31, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - A new book detailing the alleged sexual improprieties of former president Bill Clinton also charges that current U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton played a major role in threatening and intimidating her husband's accusers.
Candice E. Jackson, author of "Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine," told Cybercast News Service that in addition to the "sexual abuse" she alleges was committed by Bill Clinton, "Hillary's involvement is just as devastating and just as important in all this." "[Hillary Clinton] was right there in the inner circle taking a lead in giving these women zero credibility, in attacking them in the public and through the press and in participating in all of these scare tactics, like hiring private investigators to threaten them and follow them," Jackson explained. Hillary Clinton is "either as misogynistic as her husband or she is simply willing to conspire to mistreat women if that's what it takes to preserve their political careers," Jackson added.
She said the former president's behavior toward numerous women "demonstrated sexual harassment and sexual abuse and ultimately misogyny on his part. Jackson said Bill Clinton was guilty of "a true lack of respect of for women that allowed him to use and abuse them and throw them away when he was done and do whatever it took to keep them quiet if they tried to speak up about it." Jackson is an attorney and formerly worked for the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, which has filed numerous lawsuits over the last decade targeting both Bill and Hillary Clinton for their alleged roles in various controversies.
Jackson's book details how Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey, both accusers of Bill Clinton, dealt with the White House spin machine as it allegedly attempted to discredit, bribe, audit, threaten and intimidate them. "The gravity, the seriousness of the mistreatment that they suffered, really just didn't come through in the mainstream press at the time," Jackson said.
Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and subsequent two terms in office were surrounded by a host of different women alleging sexual improprieties. Broaddrick alleged that then-Arkansas attorney general Bill Clinton raped her in a hotel in Little Rock, Ark., in 1978. "People need to remember this side of Clinton before writing him up as a hero for women." said Broaddrick in a press release regarding the book "Their Lives," which goes on sale Tuesday.
Willey alleged she was sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton in the White House in 1993 during his first term. "I appreciate [Jackson's] painstaking attempt to express the true nightmare Bill and Hillary put me through." Willey said of the book in a statement.
Jackson admits that one of her goals it to prevent Sen. Hillary Clinton from being elected president in 2008. Mrs. Clinton to expected to run for re-election to the Senate representing New York State in 2006 and then perhaps launch a Democratic bid to win the White House that her husband occupied between 1993 and 2001. "We have let the Clintons go to the White House once and I think this is a serious enough abuse issue to prevent them from going there again," Jackson said.
Jackson, who describes herself as a "libertarian feminist," hopes her book will open the eyes of feminists in the U.S. to the "importance of not allowing the Clintons to escape with a reputation for being pro-woman when they have truly destroyed women along the way. "The Clintons have really gotten away with a political reputation of being defenders of women's rights and women's issues," Jackson said. "To me that really says a lot about the state of feminism in this country. It seems like it doesn't even matter whether women are brutally mistreated as long as politicians support abortion rights," she added.
Calls to the New York City press office of former president Bill Clinton and the Washington office of Sen. Hillary Clinton were not returned.
David Horowitz: Vindication: There Is An Unholy Alliance
By David Horowitz
http://www.FrontPageMag.com May 31, 2005
Last fall I published a book called Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, which argued that the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic jihadists, an alliance that developed out of the left's support for the genocidal camapaign of Palestinian jihadists against the Jews, and its global assault on the world capitalist system called "anti-globalization."With the support of FrontPageMag.com and Newsmax.com, the Washington Times and National Review -- and of course talk radio -- the book has done pretty well. There are 50,000 copies in print and most of them have been sold. However, it went unnoticed in most of the conservative press and in all the mainstream (leftwing) press except the New York Times. There it was given a paragraph or two among 4 other books about Islam and dismissed by a shallow NYU professor as the work of a "relic."
The fact is that many people like this fellow refuse to recognize that there even is a left in the West, let alone that it is working day and night to undermine the institutions of American society, sabotage our nation's war on terror and help our enemies to prevail. To enlighten these deniers I put up a website at www.discoverthenetworks.org demonstrating the links between radical Islam and American progressives organizationally and also their shared agendas (e.g., opposition to the Patriot Act, bleeding heart concern for the terrorists mercifully locked up in Guatanamo etc.) Just as sophisticated liberals (The New Republic comes to mind) ignored my book, so others ridiculed the website. How absurd to think that American radicals and their less radical allies had any connection whatsoever to the Arab and Islamic forces ranged against us, even though a million of them marched to prevent the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and then went on to obstruct the Administration's war for freedom in the Middle East.
Or consider the assault on our terrorist incarceration center at Guantanamo Bay. This is a pen for keeping these terrorists off the field of battle which means from plotting to plant a dirty nuclear bomb in large American cities. According to The New York Times white shoe law firms have been mobilized by anti-American radical and lifelong advocate of Communist causes Michael Ratner to obstruct America's war effort and attempt to free the soldiers of the enemy.
According to the Times, Ratner is "coordinating the assigning of lawyers to [terrorist] prisoners." Of course the Times doesn't mention that Ratner is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, created as a Soviet front and still wedded to its Communist heritage or that he is the current head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which was launched by William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy in lieu of the Commmunist Party they had originally designed and which has dedicated itself to defending terrorist states like Castro's Cuba and terrorist movements like the Communist guerilla armies in Central America during the 80s. Or that its members revere convicted terrorist and colleague Lynne Stewart for her Communist and pro-terrorist views. For that you would have to go to www.discoverthenetworks.org and check the references here and here and here, for a start. Naturally Ratner and his fifth column friends are also spearheading the Anti-Patriot Act movement and the Open Borders Movement.
All this information is readily available and consciously ignored by the Times and other fellow-traveling media of the "progressive" left; this leaves the impression that the unholy alliance we have described in detail is somehow a figment of our imagination. No one actually reading these profiles could reasonably come to such a conclusion, but we are aware that laziness is an unappreciated factor in human affairs. So it was a welcome email I received from a friend the other day containing an Iraq News Network interview with British Laborite, progressive, Saddam ally and hero of such letwing websites as Counterpunch.org and CommonDreams.org, which should settle once and for all whether there are large numbers of pro-terrorist leftists out there who consciously think of alliance with the jihadists:
Mohammad Basirul Haq Sinha: "You often call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces globally. How far is it possible under current situation?"
Galloway: "Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries. They have the same interest in opposing savage capitalist globalization which is intent upon homogenizing the entire world turning us basically into factory chickens which can be forced fed the American diet of everything from food to Coca-Cola to movies and TV culture. And whose only role in life is to consume the things produced endlessly by the multinational corporations. And the progressive organizations & movements agree on that with the Muslims."
Otherwise we believe that we should all have to speak as Texan and eat McDonalds and be ruled by Bush and Blair. So on the very grave big issues of the day-issues of war, occupation, justice, opposition to globalization-the Muslims and the progressives are on the same side.
Of course Galloway is on the left end of the progressive spectrum. Yet while his political recommendations are anathema to moderate members of that spectrum, their own critiques of the Bush Administrataion and the war in Iraq are generally so immoderate and often so parallel to the views of Galloway and his friends that it is hard to see how they are an opposing force. The loudest and most convincing hysterics leading the charge on the situations in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo belong to the New York Times and the moderate left. Coupled with the lack of interest at the Times and the New Republic in the political dossiers of the Michael Ratners and the anti-American, totalitarian sympathizers leading the charge in these cases, this silence suggests that the popular front decried by worthy liberals like Peter Beinart and Martin Peretz is still very much intact. An anti-war academic like Todd Gitlin would be appalled by Galloway's call. He has criticized Bolshevik groups like International ANSWER and his work is welcomed in sensible liberal venues like The New Republic (where mine is banned) and The New York Times. In Unholy Alliance, I analyze Gitlin's writings about patriotism and the war on terror and America and show there is little to distinguish from those on the left he claims to despise in his own condemnation of American society and his ill-concealed disgust with his country. The shared antipathy for the United States between open self-declared enemies like Galloway and Zarqawi and "liberals" who detest both is what allows liberals -- like the Wall Street lawyers mobilized by Ratner -- to be recruited to the destructive agendas of the anti-American jihad.
As noted, their entrance into the jihad is through such defense of democracy agendas as the abuses at Abu Ghraib (so minor in terms of the liberation of Iraq that the Imam Ali Sistani never uttered a word of protest over the incidents), the detaining of al-Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo and the effort to strengthen internal security controls.When these issues, all of which contain legitimate concerns when raised in proportionate measure, are coupled with the hysterical hatred of Bush and distrust of American purpose that is by now second nature to these same progressives, it is hard to see where Galloway's alliance ends and their progressivism begins. If liberals want the respect of conservatives they need to re-set their priorities. The first target on their agenda should not be the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, but the fifth column left and the war against us at home.
David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring. Click here to read more about David
http://www.FrontPageMag.com May 31, 2005
Last fall I published a book called Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, which argued that the progressive left in the West was in a de facto alliance with the Islamic jihadists, an alliance that developed out of the left's support for the genocidal camapaign of Palestinian jihadists against the Jews, and its global assault on the world capitalist system called "anti-globalization."With the support of FrontPageMag.com and Newsmax.com, the Washington Times and National Review -- and of course talk radio -- the book has done pretty well. There are 50,000 copies in print and most of them have been sold. However, it went unnoticed in most of the conservative press and in all the mainstream (leftwing) press except the New York Times. There it was given a paragraph or two among 4 other books about Islam and dismissed by a shallow NYU professor as the work of a "relic."
The fact is that many people like this fellow refuse to recognize that there even is a left in the West, let alone that it is working day and night to undermine the institutions of American society, sabotage our nation's war on terror and help our enemies to prevail. To enlighten these deniers I put up a website at www.discoverthenetworks.org demonstrating the links between radical Islam and American progressives organizationally and also their shared agendas (e.g., opposition to the Patriot Act, bleeding heart concern for the terrorists mercifully locked up in Guatanamo etc.) Just as sophisticated liberals (The New Republic comes to mind) ignored my book, so others ridiculed the website. How absurd to think that American radicals and their less radical allies had any connection whatsoever to the Arab and Islamic forces ranged against us, even though a million of them marched to prevent the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and then went on to obstruct the Administration's war for freedom in the Middle East.
Or consider the assault on our terrorist incarceration center at Guantanamo Bay. This is a pen for keeping these terrorists off the field of battle which means from plotting to plant a dirty nuclear bomb in large American cities. According to The New York Times white shoe law firms have been mobilized by anti-American radical and lifelong advocate of Communist causes Michael Ratner to obstruct America's war effort and attempt to free the soldiers of the enemy.
According to the Times, Ratner is "coordinating the assigning of lawyers to [terrorist] prisoners." Of course the Times doesn't mention that Ratner is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, created as a Soviet front and still wedded to its Communist heritage or that he is the current head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which was launched by William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy in lieu of the Commmunist Party they had originally designed and which has dedicated itself to defending terrorist states like Castro's Cuba and terrorist movements like the Communist guerilla armies in Central America during the 80s. Or that its members revere convicted terrorist and colleague Lynne Stewart for her Communist and pro-terrorist views. For that you would have to go to www.discoverthenetworks.org and check the references here and here and here, for a start. Naturally Ratner and his fifth column friends are also spearheading the Anti-Patriot Act movement and the Open Borders Movement.
All this information is readily available and consciously ignored by the Times and other fellow-traveling media of the "progressive" left; this leaves the impression that the unholy alliance we have described in detail is somehow a figment of our imagination. No one actually reading these profiles could reasonably come to such a conclusion, but we are aware that laziness is an unappreciated factor in human affairs. So it was a welcome email I received from a friend the other day containing an Iraq News Network interview with British Laborite, progressive, Saddam ally and hero of such letwing websites as Counterpunch.org and CommonDreams.org, which should settle once and for all whether there are large numbers of pro-terrorist leftists out there who consciously think of alliance with the jihadists:
Mohammad Basirul Haq Sinha: "You often call for uniting Muslim and progressive forces globally. How far is it possible under current situation?"
Galloway: "Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries. They have the same interest in opposing savage capitalist globalization which is intent upon homogenizing the entire world turning us basically into factory chickens which can be forced fed the American diet of everything from food to Coca-Cola to movies and TV culture. And whose only role in life is to consume the things produced endlessly by the multinational corporations. And the progressive organizations & movements agree on that with the Muslims."
Otherwise we believe that we should all have to speak as Texan and eat McDonalds and be ruled by Bush and Blair. So on the very grave big issues of the day-issues of war, occupation, justice, opposition to globalization-the Muslims and the progressives are on the same side.
Of course Galloway is on the left end of the progressive spectrum. Yet while his political recommendations are anathema to moderate members of that spectrum, their own critiques of the Bush Administrataion and the war in Iraq are generally so immoderate and often so parallel to the views of Galloway and his friends that it is hard to see how they are an opposing force. The loudest and most convincing hysterics leading the charge on the situations in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo belong to the New York Times and the moderate left. Coupled with the lack of interest at the Times and the New Republic in the political dossiers of the Michael Ratners and the anti-American, totalitarian sympathizers leading the charge in these cases, this silence suggests that the popular front decried by worthy liberals like Peter Beinart and Martin Peretz is still very much intact. An anti-war academic like Todd Gitlin would be appalled by Galloway's call. He has criticized Bolshevik groups like International ANSWER and his work is welcomed in sensible liberal venues like The New Republic (where mine is banned) and The New York Times. In Unholy Alliance, I analyze Gitlin's writings about patriotism and the war on terror and America and show there is little to distinguish from those on the left he claims to despise in his own condemnation of American society and his ill-concealed disgust with his country. The shared antipathy for the United States between open self-declared enemies like Galloway and Zarqawi and "liberals" who detest both is what allows liberals -- like the Wall Street lawyers mobilized by Ratner -- to be recruited to the destructive agendas of the anti-American jihad.
As noted, their entrance into the jihad is through such defense of democracy agendas as the abuses at Abu Ghraib (so minor in terms of the liberation of Iraq that the Imam Ali Sistani never uttered a word of protest over the incidents), the detaining of al-Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo and the effort to strengthen internal security controls.When these issues, all of which contain legitimate concerns when raised in proportionate measure, are coupled with the hysterical hatred of Bush and distrust of American purpose that is by now second nature to these same progressives, it is hard to see where Galloway's alliance ends and their progressivism begins. If liberals want the respect of conservatives they need to re-set their priorities. The first target on their agenda should not be the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, but the fifth column left and the war against us at home.
David Horowitz is the author of numerous books including an autobiography, Radical Son, which has been described as “the first great autobiography of his generation,” and which chronicles his odyssey from radical activism to the current positions he holds. Among his other books are The Politics of Bad Faith and The Art of Political War. The Art of Political War was described by White House political strategist Karl Rove as “the perfect guide to winning on the political battlefield.” Horowitz’s latest book, Uncivil Wars, was published in January this year, and chronicles his crusade against intolerance and racial McCarthyism on college campuses last spring. Click here to read more about David
Monday, May 30, 2005
Frank Schaeffer: Fathers, Sons and the Lessons of War
COMMENTARY
The Los Angeles Times
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and most recently the author of "Faith of Our Sons -- A Father's Wartime Diary" (Carroll & Graf/Avalon, 2004).
I never served in the military. Before my son unexpectedly volunteered for the Marines, I was busy writing my novels and raising my family, and giving little thought to the men and women who guard us. My attitude has changed. I did not choose to change. I was forced to.
When my son was at war in Iraq I felt anger toward my circle of oldest friends — mostly well-off, well-educated people. I didn't know one other parent with a son or daughter in harm's way or even in the military. And no leaders were asking Americans outside the military to make any sacrifices.
Were we all in this together or not?
My son, Marine Sgt. John Schaeffer, recently came home alive from two back-to-back combat tours in the Middle East.
A tall, thin figure slowly unfolded from a beat-up little car. John had driven all night to Boston from a base near Washington, where he had landed the day before. He did not want me to meet him there. "I'll need time to myself," my son said when he called from Kuwait on the way home. He said he wanted "to get my head in gear." I gave my wife, Genie, a head start. Mother embraced son. "I was so worried," Genie said. John held her as she sobbed. She pulled away to look up again and again to make sure he was really there. My wife gave me a great gift: time alone with my boy. John was bone-weary and lay stretched on his bed. I lay down next to him and was gripping him the whole time, an arm, a hand; it didn't matter. I just wanted to be certain that the nightmares I'd had about John being killed were lies.
"Once, we were in this convoy," John said. "I spotted this car getting between me and our following vehicle, and we don't like it when anyone gets between us. Then I see these tubes on the front seat that look like RPGs, so I draw a bead on the driver. If he had so much as touched those tubes I would have put one right into his chest."
John dozed a little and then roused himself. "It turned out those were just cardboard tubes. I came within a heartbeat of killing him because of friggin' cardboard tubes. I almost killed an innocent man, Dad." I kept holding my son, the way I used to when he was 2 and crawled into our bed after a scary dream. I asked John if he'd rather sleep than talk, and he said there would be time for sleep later. "My record was two hours short of five days straight with no sleep. Twenty-hour days were par for the course." With the relief flooding over, under and around me came an incredible exhaustion. I dozed, soothed by his voice. It was the first good sleep I'd had in months. I woke and John was asleep next to me. I left my Marine asleep in his room. I poked my head through his door every few minutes. At one point, I found myself kneeling by his bed watching him breathe. I found myself praying and crying for all the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands and wives of those who were not coming home. For the first time in my life, I was weeping for strangers.
There are Americans on their knees next to fresh graves from Arlington to Bozeman, from Tampa to Fargo. There are young men and women learning to walk again and receiving skin grafts for horrible burns.
Before my son went to war I never would have shed tears for them. My son humbled me. My son connected me to my country. He taught me that our men and women in uniform are not the "other."
They are our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Sometimes shedding tears for strangers is a sacred duty. Sometimes it's all we can do.
The Los Angeles Times
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and most recently the author of "Faith of Our Sons -- A Father's Wartime Diary" (Carroll & Graf/Avalon, 2004).
I never served in the military. Before my son unexpectedly volunteered for the Marines, I was busy writing my novels and raising my family, and giving little thought to the men and women who guard us. My attitude has changed. I did not choose to change. I was forced to.
When my son was at war in Iraq I felt anger toward my circle of oldest friends — mostly well-off, well-educated people. I didn't know one other parent with a son or daughter in harm's way or even in the military. And no leaders were asking Americans outside the military to make any sacrifices.
Were we all in this together or not?
My son, Marine Sgt. John Schaeffer, recently came home alive from two back-to-back combat tours in the Middle East.
A tall, thin figure slowly unfolded from a beat-up little car. John had driven all night to Boston from a base near Washington, where he had landed the day before. He did not want me to meet him there. "I'll need time to myself," my son said when he called from Kuwait on the way home. He said he wanted "to get my head in gear." I gave my wife, Genie, a head start. Mother embraced son. "I was so worried," Genie said. John held her as she sobbed. She pulled away to look up again and again to make sure he was really there. My wife gave me a great gift: time alone with my boy. John was bone-weary and lay stretched on his bed. I lay down next to him and was gripping him the whole time, an arm, a hand; it didn't matter. I just wanted to be certain that the nightmares I'd had about John being killed were lies.
"Once, we were in this convoy," John said. "I spotted this car getting between me and our following vehicle, and we don't like it when anyone gets between us. Then I see these tubes on the front seat that look like RPGs, so I draw a bead on the driver. If he had so much as touched those tubes I would have put one right into his chest."
John dozed a little and then roused himself. "It turned out those were just cardboard tubes. I came within a heartbeat of killing him because of friggin' cardboard tubes. I almost killed an innocent man, Dad." I kept holding my son, the way I used to when he was 2 and crawled into our bed after a scary dream. I asked John if he'd rather sleep than talk, and he said there would be time for sleep later. "My record was two hours short of five days straight with no sleep. Twenty-hour days were par for the course." With the relief flooding over, under and around me came an incredible exhaustion. I dozed, soothed by his voice. It was the first good sleep I'd had in months. I woke and John was asleep next to me. I left my Marine asleep in his room. I poked my head through his door every few minutes. At one point, I found myself kneeling by his bed watching him breathe. I found myself praying and crying for all the fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands and wives of those who were not coming home. For the first time in my life, I was weeping for strangers.
There are Americans on their knees next to fresh graves from Arlington to Bozeman, from Tampa to Fargo. There are young men and women learning to walk again and receiving skin grafts for horrible burns.
Before my son went to war I never would have shed tears for them. My son humbled me. My son connected me to my country. He taught me that our men and women in uniform are not the "other."
They are our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Sometimes shedding tears for strangers is a sacred duty. Sometimes it's all we can do.
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