EdDriscoll.com

Posted 2/6/2004 02:36:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
ROLL THE TAPE: If I were Karl Rove, I'd be drooling in anticipation of using audio or videotape, or simply typed up text rolling across the screen of what John Kerry said in February 1971 in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. . . . They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

As James Lileks and Hugh Hewitt have written, Kerry is eminently beatable. (Kerry's post-Vietnam record--and the record of the media in covering Vietnam vets in general, is available online in the latest issue of National Review, but a subscription is required.) UPDATE: Is Kerry actually planting his own phony hecklers in the audience?? ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's more on Kerry's life during the late-1960s and early 1970s. ONE MORE UPDATE: Robert Moran, vice president at Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, writes, "John Kerry should enjoy [his current] poll numbers while they last, because his free ride is about to end.

Posted 2/6/2004 02:19:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
WE TRIED, BUT YOU WERE YAWNING: Russian President Vladimir Putin, reacting to the Moscow Subway attack this morning, has called upon world leaders to join forces in the fight against terror, which he calls "the plague of the 21st century." (Via Best of the Web.)

Posted 2/6/2004 01:32:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
C-RATIONS WITH ANDRE: Rich Lowry "interviews" John Kerry. Hillarity, and stories of 'Nam, ensue.

Posted 2/6/2004 01:29:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
CASH AND KERRY: Fellow Democratic Senator Zell Miller had this to say about John Kerry's record on Tuesday's Hannity and Colmes on Fox:

They don't know John Kerry's record. They haven't examined it. This is a very vulnerable candidate on several issues. ... [H]e is the Olympic gold medalist, when it comes to special interest money. I also think that he is very vulnerable on the issues of national security. ...[I]f you look at his voting record, it is terrible as far as it comes to national defense and helping fund a good intelligence unit.

Roger L. Simon adds:

I don’t believe Kerry has done that much changing—that’s why I brought up Vietnam in the first place. The same man who could vote in favor of the War in Iraq and then vote months later not to fund our troops once we had won that war is the same person who kept changing his mind on Vietnam for what seem to be in retrospect at least partly opportunistic reasons. (By the way, I have much more respect for Dean—like me another draft dodger—whose views, though I disagree with them, are consistent in this area. I don’t even believe Kerry when he implies the War on Terror is puffed up. I’m sure he’d say something completely different in another circumstance.)

Simon adds, "We live in serious times and this is, despite his fancy suits and seeming gravitas, a fundamentally unserious person. I don't trust him at the controls."

Posted 2/6/2004 12:09:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
AN EVOLVING POSITION: "Evolution" is no longer a verboten word in Georgia schools. Via Joanne Jacobs. For our original coverage, click here.

Posted 2/5/2004 10:33:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
TERRORISTS KILL 30 IN MOSCOW SUBWAY BLAST: "Explosion Rocks Moscow Subway" says Fox News and Drudge. UPDATE (1:42 AM PST): The death toll stands at approximately 30, with an additional 150 wounded. AP reports that "The Russian capital has been on alert for terrorist attacks following a series of suicide bombings that officials have blamed on Chechen rebels".

Posted 2/5/2004 10:15:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GIPPER! Friday, February 6th marks President Reagan's 93rd birthday. Marvin Olasky looks at the 1940s--the key decade when "Reagan became Reagan". UPDATE: Orrin Judd looks at birthday ceremonies at the Reagan Library, and then quotes from Reagan's last letter, which is on display at there. (If the Bro. Judd's archives aren't working, click here and scroll down.)

Posted 2/5/2004 09:53:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SPIDER-MAN, SYRIA AND WAL-MART LINK, revealed.

Posted 2/5/2004 07:36:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
AMERICA IS DIVIDED: "So what" says Jonah Goldberg, and he's right. Of course, it also depends on what your definition of "divided" is:

First of all, until you've got more than 600,000 American bodies stacked up like cordwood, spare me the "more divided than ever before" talk. We have this phrase in political discourse which is very useful. It goes like this: "...since the end of the Civil War..." You can put it at the end or the beginning of almost any sentence to indicate that you are discussing trends that began after the War Between the States concluded. Because that period in American history is what you might call a statistical outlier. We were really divided then, what with all the shooting each other and stuff. Even in places where there was no shooting, we were very divided. The New York Draft Riots, for example, featured mobs of 50,000 ticked-off New Yorkers and Irish immigrants who burned big chunks of the city over three days and hanged a lot of black people from street lights. I know the Florida recount was a big deal and all, but let's get a little perspective. Second, I haven't looked at the survey data on this question since I was a policy gnome at the American Enterprise Institute, but it seems to me that one could make a persuasive argument that America was more deeply divided in, let's see: the 1780s, 1790s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1890s, 1920s, 1930s, 1960s, 1970s, and possibly the 1980s and 1990s. Now, it may be true, as Greenberg suggests, that we are now more evenly divided than at any time--possibly including the Civil War period. But evenly divided people can, and often do, settle their differences with Nerf bats or over checkers or even, don't you know, at the ballot box. Deeply divided people, on the other hand, are more likely to use guns, knives, and really pointy rocks to settle their differences. In other words, living in an evenly divided society is an interesting challenge politically, but not a really big problem, while living in a deeply divided society is cause for stocking up on bottled water and shotgun shells.

Exactly.

Posted 2/5/2004 07:06:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
C'MON HUGH, TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL: Hugh Hewitt is being rather evasive here; it's hard to pin down what his take on John Kerry is. While I admire subtlety, the deliberate obfuscation that Hewitt employs makes deciphering his thoughts rather difficult:

He's a tax-raising, free-spending, marriage ending, war crime alleging, missile defense opposing, North Korean appeasing, Soros-loving, cut-and-running Taxachusetts lefty whose voting record is, according to the gold standard of lefties, the Americans for Democratic Action, to the left of Teddy Kennedy? Do you mean that line of attack? I'm shocked that the Republicans might actually point out that the election of John Kerry would install the hardest left president in American history. I suppose we aren't supposed to mention the "cash and Kerry" stuff either? Or botox? Or anything about his dreary, endlessly self-serving rewrite of his statements about Vietnam (see below.) Dean excited the GOP because he was a noisy target. Kerry is quieter but much larger. Let the games begin.

They already have. Saturday Night Live's writers need to start working on "Kerry After Dark" for next season's November 6th episode. It won't take much--merely a quick find-and-replace search with Word 2003. UPDATE: This isn't helping Kerry, either.

Posted 2/5/2004 06:34:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
BECAUSE ONE MAN'S TERRORIST IS ANOTHER MAN'S MOVIE STAR: Jesse Walker writes that "Not one, not two, not three, but four films about Che Guevara will soon hit theaters, all from major studios. And that barely scratches the surface of Che chic." Leave it to Hollywood, the same people who turned a unibrowed Stalin-worshiper into a glamorous box office winner.

Posted 2/5/2004 06:25:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARLEN SPECTER: PORKER OF THE YEAR, as nominated by the Citizens Against Government Waste. Based on his vote during the Clinton Impeachment, I always thought Specter preferred haggis to pork, myself.

Posted 2/5/2004 05:13:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, I'M FIRST RUNNER-UP IN YESTERDAY'S VODKAPUNDIT CAPTION CONTEST! And my acceptance speech is online there. Thank you, all of you, for being such marvelous people, and for voting the way you did. (And thank you to the automatic Academy Award speechwriting program, for the power assist.)

Posted 2/5/2004 04:45:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
ABOUT TIME: Amtrak is adding Wi-Fi to six Northeastern U.S. train stations, in a move to attract more business travelers. Hopefully eventually they'll eventually install it on trains as well. Amtrak has done a reasonable job of embracing laptop users in the past five years--I remember taking numerous Northeast Corridor trains in '95 and '96 that only had two 120V outlet per Amfleet car. Now most cars have been retrofitted to one per each row of seats. Good to seem them getting serious with Wi-Fi as well.

Posted 2/5/2004 04:23:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
SORRY FOR THE RELATIVE LACK OF POSTS TODAY: Busy cranking out my next newsletter for Electronic House.

Posted 2/5/2004 02:29:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
BET THESE WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED PRIOR TO SUNDAY: The NFL recinds Bengals quarterback Jon Kitna's $5000 fine for wearing a baseball cap with a cross on it during press interviews. ESPN canceled their raunchy Playmakers drama about a fictional NFL team awash, as AP describes it, in "drug use, marital infidelity, racism and homophobia". And the NFL is toning down the halftime show at the Pro Bowl, for the 25 people in America who actually watch the final game of the season. UPDATE: Oh, and a Knoxville woman is suing Janet Jackson's boob. Or something like that.

Posted 2/5/2004 02:20:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
JFK=JUST FOR KERRY, whose favorite greeting to lesser mortals is apparently, "Do you know who I am?" Howie Carr does.

Posted 2/5/2004 02:17:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
TERESA HEINZ, AFRICAN-AMERICAN: Well, that's what James Taranto says, and he's got a point.

Posted 2/5/2004 02:05:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE BOTOXED BRAHAMIN: Jim Geraghty does the Heinz-Kerry water ballet and once again sees environmentalists whose beliefs "apply to everyone but themselves", as Larry Sabato is quoted by Geraghty as saying.

Posted 2/4/2004 11:06:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES LILEKS' MOJO WORKS DOUBLE-OVERTIME today, as he Fisks not only Patrick Stewart, but Kerry as well:

What's the message here? John Kerry is best suited to lead us in the present war because he was a prominent opponant of the last one, which we lost. John Kerry led the fight to leave South Vietnam to the mercies of the North. John Kerry would rather lose a theater for the right reasons than win it for reasons the critics derided. Dress it up however you like, but that’s what it came down to; college students marched not against the Vietnamese war but the American participation in that conflict. Anyone fill the Mall in DC to protest the reeducation camps? Any Solidarity with the Boat People committees formed on campuses after the fall of the south? The privations of the vanquished South Vietnamese were an uncomfortable consequence of their goals – but of course it didn’t detract a jot from the nobility of the cause. I still remember the week we had a Vietnamese woman stay at our house - she was a Party member, a professional, and what did she bring back home for her kids? White paper. To draw on. A luxury item, that. If Kerry wants to bring this era back, he’s demonstrated that his branch of the party are the modern-day Bourbons. They have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. For them the great evil wasn’t communism, but America’s response to communism. And now the threat isn’t Islamic terrorism, but what we do to combat it. We act without French approval. We act after 170 UN resolutions instead of crafting a 171st which forbids us from acting. We deploy anti-missile defenses around the Korean peninsula instead of striking a deal to give them more food, more oil, more time.

"In short, we act as if we have a pair", says Lileks, something the left began to lose during LBJ's administration, when it didn't have the balls to fight for a clear-cut victory in Vietnam, and really lost when it nominated McGovern in '72. Be sure to check out the photo Lileks posted as well.

Posted 2/4/2004 09:47:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
"IF ONLY GEORGE W. BUSH WEREN'T THE LIBERATOR": Orrin Judd writes:

Very amusing moment today on Fresh Air--Terry Gross was interviewing Egyptian publisher and human rights activist Hisham Kassem. She noted that he had supported the Iraq War before it started, in the belief that it would bring reform not just to Iraq but the whole region, and she wondered if he'd reconsidered. He answered that he hadn't, that the war had in fact brought democracy to Iraq and was having a liberalizing effect throughout the Middle East. She asked for examples, which he proceeded to cite, saying there were really too many to go through in their entirety. Then, not knowing when she'd dug her grave deep enough, she asked if the Kay report had called the war into question. He answered that he didn't care about WMD nor think it was the primary cause of or justification for the war, that getting rid of the regime was sufficient unto itself. Her disappointment at the improved prospects for freedom in the Arab world was palpable. How have liberals worked themselves into such a perverse position?

A couple of years ago, Jonah Goldberg dubbed it "hypocrophobia"--the crippling fear that many in the left have of being taken seriously.

Posted 2/4/2004 08:50:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
ED FLIES OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST of Eugene, Oregon, a city which may name a school after Ken Kesey. Joanne Jacobs and her readers have lots of fun with this idea.

Posted 2/4/2004 07:44:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
CATS, DOGS, AND KENNEWICK MAN: National Review Online is praising the 9th ~~Circus~~ Circuit Court, specifically on its decision concerning on the Kennewick Man case.

Posted 2/4/2004 05:22:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLOSING THE BARN DOOR AFTER THE NIPPLE ESCAPES: OK, so Janet is apparently banned from the Grammies this year, after "Nipplegate" was seen by nearly a billion people live, and countless more via the Drudge Report and numerous other Internet sources. And now she'll get to play the martyr, and be the most talked about person at the Grammies, a show seen by far, far fewer people, and whose ratings in recent years have been steadily in decline. The 2002 Grammies attracted just 19 million viewers. And while math was never my strong suit, a billion shocked people sounds like a more desirable audience than 19 million bored ones, especially for a pop star whose freshness dating expired several years ago. Nice leftover from the Clintonian '90s: break the law (broadcasting standards in this case), and become even more famous. UPDATE: Ann Coulter is in rare form over Nipplegate:

Former front-runner Howard Dean sat out this week's primaries, but still managed to make news by ridiculing the FCC's plan to investigate MTV's halftime show at the Super Bowl. Dean pronounced the proposed investigation "silly." He explained that, as a doctor, a naked breast is "not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me." That's an interesting standard. Presumably a primetime exhibition of Janet Jackson having a full pelvic exam and pap smear would not be "exactly an unusual phenomenon" for Dean either. Let's just be grateful Dean's not a proctologist. Meanwhile, the rest of the country was not so copacetic about being flashed with what The New York Times called Janet Jackson's "middle-aged woman's breast." Janet Jackson said she decided to add "the reveal" following the final rehearsal, which I found pretty shocking. Not the reveal -- the fact that the number in question was actually rehearsed. Even CBS executives were enraged by MTV's halftime show, saying they could have gotten the identical show from National Geographic for a fraction of the price.

Heh.

Posted 2/4/2004 03:51:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
TATTOOS: They're not just for soldiers and idiots anymore! Oh wait, yeah, they are.

Posted 2/4/2004 03:49:33 PM by Edward Driscoll

PRESIDENT BUSH, DRAFT DODGER? Good collection of links at Instapundit.com. I'd also add this link to recent ABC and CNN looks at the issue, which--surprisingly, given the biases of those networks--pronounce Bush clean. The Professor quotes Neil Bortz, who said:

[T]he same people were trying to convince us in 1992 that Bill Clinton's draft-dodging was no big deal. Surely the Democrats don't think we're that stupid. . . . What a bunch of lying, hypocritical phonies.

Hey, just think of it as the chickenhawk slur sexed up for an election year.

Posted 2/4/2004 03:06:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
STEPHEN GREEN'S ON A ROLL TODAY: Stop on by and check out the VodkaPundit--if you haven't already.

Posted 2/4/2004 02:43:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
"ONLY THE FLEECED ARE TRULY FREE": Jacob Sullum looks at our outrageously politicized and politically correct former surgeon generals and their views on smoking, and writes:

In other words, people who can't break tobacco's tenacious hold suddenly find that they can when the price of cigarettes goes up. Apparently, the free choice that is lost when you start smoking can be restored through taxation. Only the fleeced are truly free.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 2/4/2004 01:58:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET is a difficult moment in a young man's life. He worries about what his friends and family will think. Will he be ostracized--maybe even blacklisted--for his unusual beliefs? He knows his life will never be the same, but some things are necessary to do, if only to be able to look at one's self in the mirror and not turn away.

Posted 2/4/2004 01:52:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORNING IN AMERICA UPDATE: Several bits of positive economic news.

Posted 2/4/2004 01:37:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANNE APPLEBAUM WRITES THAT a new Auschwitz is under our noses, and wonders why, once again, so few people care:

Later -- in 10 years, or in 60 -- it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied. Historians in Asia, Europe and here will finger various institutions, just as we do now, and demand they justify their past actions. And no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers but failed to act.

As Mark Twain (may have) said, "The past may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme".

Posted 2/4/2004 12:57:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S A SICILIAN MESSAGE. It means Howard Dean's candidacy sleeps with the fishes. (Via Drudge.) UPDATE: It's write your own caption time over at Stephen Green's!

Posted 2/4/2004 12:53:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEL GIBSON IS CURRENTLY FOCUS GROUP TESTING The Passion of Christ, and cutting some of its more controversial scenes accordingly...

Posted 2/4/2004 12:49:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLACKLISTING BY THE LEFT? I'm shocked! Shocked! It's certainly never happened before!

Posted 2/4/2004 12:10:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
MASSACHUSETTS COURT ALLOWS GAY MARRIAGE: Jonah Goldberg comments:

Each of the major Democratic candidates say they are against gay marriage. They are all, I believe, against a Federal Marriage Amendment. Fine, so am I. But what exactly will Democrats do to oppose gay marriage? As I've noted before -- when Dean was the frontrunner -- none of these guys seem willing to do anything to back up their positions. They want the courts to simply take the issue away from them while they insist they are firm on the issue. Dean was the most cynical and dishonest on the subject. But I can't see how Kerry's much better. There might still be room for Bush to get on the right side of the issue politically if he can force Democrats to answer the question "Would you do anything to stop gay marriage?"

To say the least, it will be very interesting to watch all this play out, and to watch Kerry and the remaining Democratic presidential candidates tap-dance. UPDATE: Stephen Green adds:

I'm all for gay marriage, as I'm sure readers here know. But the Massachusetts Supremes just handed Bush a wedge issue which could very well set back the gay marriage movement. It's tough for the law to jump ahead of the culture without creating Roe v Wade-type endless rancor -- especially when it tries to do so by judicial fiat. And culturally, I'm afraid, we might not be ready for nation-wide gay marriage. The best hope is that the national Supreme Court stays the hell out of this one, and lets the issue evolve -- and progress -- more naturally.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Looks like the slippery slope is getting slipperier up there. I blame Chuck Woolery.

Posted 2/3/2004 11:24:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
TAKING YOUR HOME THEATER ON THE ROAD: My latest newsletter for Electronic House magazine is now online.

Posted 2/3/2004 08:38:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
DON'T REACH FOR THESE SMELLING SALTS: A seven pound block of cyanide salt was discovered by U.S. troops in Baghdad late last month. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, exposure to even a small amount of cyanide salt through contact or inhalation can cause immediate death. (Via John Hawkins.)

Posted 2/3/2004 08:30:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
FOX NEWS LEAVES ITS RIVALS IN THE DUST: There's a stunning gap in the ratings between the Fox News Channel and its nearest competitors. Ed Bark of The Dallas Morning News writes:

It's really no contest anymore -- not the race among the Democratic presidential candidates but the battle for cable news ratings supremacy. Fox News Channel continues to crush CNN and MSNBC in the political season. The latest available Nielsen Media Research numbers, for the week of Jan. 19-25, show the "Fair and Balanced" network averaging 1.8 million viewers in prime time to rank seventh among all cable networks. CNN had 906,000 viewers during the same period and MSNBC just 363,000. The week included the Iowa caucuses and President Bush's State of the Union address, both of which received substantial attention on all three cable news networks. CNN must be wondering what hit it after making another major investment in political coverage. The granddaddy of cable news has fallen and can't seem to get up. Fox's recent hiring of respected Chris Wallace from ABC News is another blow.

Bark quotes Wolf Blitzer of CNN as saying, "If you're distorting, or if you're tilting towards one side, believe me, that will come through very, very quickly. And you'll be slapped very quickly, as you should be." Maybe this is what Blitzer was referring to.

Posted 2/3/2004 08:09:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT BROADBAND WAS INVENTED FOR: The average person's brain has a sort of chronometer which assumes that all photos prior to say, the mid-1950s should be in black and white. But Michael Jennings links to some gorgeous color photos of Chicago in the 1940s and '50s, and infinitely more astonishing, staggering color photos of Czarist Russia from the years just prior to World War I. Found via Joanne Jacobs, these are the sorts of images that truly make owning a high-speed connection worth it.

Posted 2/3/2004 07:37:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOW NOT TO BE A FREELANCER: Just follow the lead of the illustrator that Tunku Varadarajan interviewed for The Wall Street Journal.

Posted 2/3/2004 07:26:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE QUOTE OF THE DAY comes from Virginia Postrel, who writes:

Bush's fiscal legacy is expanding Medicare, just as his father's regulatory legacy was the Americans With Disabilities Act. It's amazing how much damage those Bushes can do by being nice.

There's a lot about both men to be admired, but fiscal and governmental restraint, unfortunately, isn't one of their best traits.

Posted 2/3/2004 06:52:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
WE CUT AWAY FROM OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG to present this special message from the Lieberman 2004 campaign.

Posted 2/3/2004 03:58:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF SMELLING THE COFFEE: Dan Marino resigns as head of football operations for the Miami Dolphins.

Posted 2/3/2004 03:46:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
ADVANTAGE ED! Back on January 28th, we wrote:

CHUTZPAH: Did John Kerry, husband of Teresa Heinz, widowed heir to the Heinz Ketchup fortune, really say he was going to take a stand against "the economy of special privilege"?

Flashforward to the next issue of Time Magazine, due out on February 9th:

"As Kerry rails about 'George Bush and his economy of privilege,' his wife flies across the country in a ketchup-red-and-white jet sporting '57' as part of its tail number.

EdDriscoll.com: taking tomorrow's gratuitous shots, today.

Posted 2/3/2004 03:19:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
DONE DEMS HAVE SCRAMBLED EGGS IN THEIR TRAILERS: Mike Alissi of Reason writes that "Lieberman and Clark are smelling the coffee". Meanwhile, Stephen Green writes, "Dean is laying off staff and his campaign is broke". And Wes Clark Jr. seems to feel that living in a trailer during your salad days means you're automatically assured a key to the White House later. But don't worry, Teresa and Hillary will have plenty of scrambled eggs for their men in the morning.

Posted 2/3/2004 02:45:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
IMPRESSIVE...MOST IMPRESSIVE: Joe Gibbs announces his coaching staff, two of whom are former NFL head coaches themselves, and one of whom was the offensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys during their '95 Super Bowl season.

Posted 2/3/2004 01:13:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES BOWMAN ON JOHN KERRY AND THE LEFT:

There are certain core constituencies that any political party must avoid offending at almost any cost. The Democrats have more of them than the Republicans. They include blacks, activist women and public sector unions, for example — which is why none of the Democratic candidates will so much as hint that he might have doubts about affirmative action or abortion or opposing educational vouchers. One of these Democratic constituencies is the anti-war left, those whose political consciousness was formed during the Vietnam war. Sometimes called the "Blame America First" crowd, they are as implacable and as necessary as any of the other Democrat constituencies, and they are by nature deeply suspicious not only of the Pentagon and the projection of American power abroad but of all forms of behavior that they would describe as "militaristic." * * * That may be why Democrats seem at times to be even more willing than the Republicans to swoon over guys like Kerry who have a fist-full of medals. Of course Kerry threw away his medals. Except that he didn’t. He pretended to throw them away during a Vietnam War protest but secretly kept them and, after it was once again popular to have served in Vietnam, mounted them on his wall. In Kerry’s ambivalence about his own service in Vietnam, we see the ambivalence of his party towards American power. Unless he, or whomever the Democrats nominate, gets better about hiding that ambivalence, I can’t see the American people entrusting him with that power.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 2/3/2004 12:58:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
IN MARKETING NEWS, the NFL has released its Super Bowl XXXVIII commemorative game ball...

Posted 2/3/2004 12:37:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
OUCH: "My suggestion to the Democrats: Next time you want to earn your bona fides in a southern state, try South Dakota." --Michael Graham on the South Carolina Primary.

Posted 2/3/2004 12:04:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE CREDIBLE THAN LAROUCHE and Sharpton: Ronnie James Dio throws his hair extensions into the ring.

Posted 2/3/2004 11:09:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE FINAL WORD ON NIPPLEGATE--at least for the moment--goes to Skip Bayless, veteran sportswriter with the San Jose Mercury News.

Posted 2/3/2004 10:21:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
ANTI-SEMITISM IN MANHATTAN: At a basketball game between two of its top prep schools. What are the kids being taught there?

Posted 2/3/2004 10:15:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
CRUSHING OF DISSENT at the University of Oklahoma: As Glenn Reynolds might say, John Ashcroft is probably to blame. (Via Stephen Green.)

Posted 2/3/2004 02:11:52 AM by Edward Driscoll
"THE BLOODY CROSSROADS": Leonard Garment (remember him?!) writes on how Laura Bush and Dana Gioia are remaking the National Endowment for the Arts. For our thoughts, and lots of links on the subject, click here.

Posted 2/3/2004 01:52:05 AM by Edward Driscoll
"CONSPIRACIES SO VAST": Darrin McMahon of The Boston Globe looks at conspiracy theories from "the Age of Enlightenment...[to] the Age of the Internet". McMahon throws Ann Coulter's Treason into the mix, perhaps to avoid answering the unspoken question his article raises, but can't or won't answer: arguably beginning with Hillary Clinton's "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" quip in early 1998, why have so many conspiracy theories been coming from the left? (Via PrestoPundit.) UPDATE: Speaking of conspiracies from the left... ANOTHER UPDATE: James Taranto looks at conspiracy theories regarding Ricin in the Senate mailroom from 2001 and today.

Posted 2/3/2004 01:09:32 AM by Edward Driscoll
LIFE ON MARS: Proof positive that we need to send manned missions there to investigate further.

Posted 2/2/2004 11:44:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GIPPER, HOSS: James C. Miller III stresses the importance of preserving the Reagan legacy with his 93th birthday fast approaching. He's right.

Posted 2/2/2004 11:28:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOWARD DEAN, MEDIA ANALYST: Today, Howard Dean says that an FCC inquiry over a football related television controversy is "silly":

Howard Dean, a physician and a Democratic presidential candidate, on Monday dismissed as 'silly' a government inquiry into whether indecency rules were broken during the broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show when pop diva Janet Jackson's bodice was ripped to expose her right breast. 'I find that to be a bit of a flap about nothing,' the former Vermont governor said. 'I'm probably affected in some ways by the fact that I'm a doctor, so it's not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me.'

Setting aside the fact that Dean apparently doesn't understand that some people (such as impressionable young kids) aren't doctors and aren't used to seeing exposed, pierced nipples on TV everyday (not to mention women having their clothes ripped off by men in 50,000 seat stadiums), this is in direct contradiction to Dean's remarks near the start of the football season. Back on October 1st, Dean said:

ESPN should terminate Limbaugh's contract immediately, and send the message to its viewers and the nation that it holds commentators to the highest standard.

So questioning the biases of the media is grounds for being fired, but exposing nipples is silly. And Dean has no problem demanding that one TV network fire someone whose views he disagrees with, but thinks that the FCC has no business investigating another. And having "the highest standard" is important sometimes, but standards are unimportant other times. OK. Glad we cleared that up! UPDATE: John Hawkins also has some thoughts on Dean and Janet. ANOTHER UPDATE: So does Tim Graham.

Posted 2/2/2004 07:04:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
DENIAL ISN'T A RIVER: Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times writes that denying their role in Nipplegate isn't the first whopper that CBS has told recently:

CBS has told so many howlers over the past 18 months that any claim to dignity — and righteous indignation — by this network is now open to snickering. CBS insisted there was no quid pro quo when it sent Pfc. Jessica Lynch a letter suggesting that an exclusive interview with CBS News would be rewarded with other lucrative contracts within the Viacom empire. CBS insisted that its decision to cancel the mini-series "The Reagans" had nothing to do with the right-wing lobbying campaign that threatened a boycott of advertisers' products. And the network insisted that it did not sweeten a deal with Michael Jackson to secure a "60 Minutes" interview with him after his arrest last November as the network was preparing a Michael Jackson entertainment special. Implausible deniability and the fungible walls between news and entertainment, and between art and commerce, exist at every major network. But like a high school student caught smoking pot by the principal, CBS can hardly wriggle free by arguing that everybody does it.

Of course, from Walter Duranty to Jayson Blair, the Times itself is hardly pure and innocent themselves when it comes to lying.

Posted 2/2/2004 06:54:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
RICIN IN THE SENATE MAILROOM? That's what early tests show.

Posted 2/2/2004 06:37:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
HELL ON EARTH: England's Guardian looks at North Korea's Camp 22, and its Auschwitz-like horrors. As Orrin Judd writes, "Saying 'Never again' makes us all feel better, but when it starts happening again we show rather little interest in stopping it".

Posted 2/2/2004 04:54:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
"DOMINATE. INTIMIDATE. CONTROL.": Reason looks at the sorry record of the Transportation Security Administration.

Posted 2/2/2004 04:18:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE BOOBS: James Lileks writes, "Remember after 9/11, when we wondered whether we'd ever get back to feeling normal? I think the answer is "yes.":

Apparently Justin Timberlake, former suitor of the philosopher and mathematician Britney Spears, was doing a duet with Janet Jackson. She was dressed in what appeared to be formalwear for zombie morticians -- that wretched leather S&M chic we have come to expect from our "edgy" artists. Mr. Timberlake was dressed like a slob, of course -- he's the sort of modern male who, when called upon to knot a tie, digs through his stack of Maxims looking for an article titled "What to Do If You Gotta Hit a Funeral." At the end of the song, Jackson sang "make me naked" -- and why not? It wouldn't be a halftime show without a joyless mechanical bump & grind masquerading as sensuality, set to a grim tuneless squall of sound masquerading as music. And yes, I am now officially in Coot Mode. Whatever happened to the good old halftime shows, when Up With People would come out and sing about Ice Cream Socials and saving kittens that fell down a well? What happened to America? But I ramble. Point is, Janet -- "Miss Jackson," if you're nasty -- unholstered 50 percent of her bosom, and now the nation is debating whether it was intentional or an accident, and whether Super Bowls of the future will feature enthusiastic deployment of previously shielded body parts. Oy.

Indeed. (Or "Exactly". Or "Heh", or whatever hep phrase all us cool coots use these days, daddy-o.)

Posted 2/2/2004 04:01:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
A JOURNALIST WHO GETS IT: Why yes, we do cover more than Janet Jackson's boobs (which is more than she covers, these days). Lowell Branham of The Knoxville News Sentinel is a rare journalist who understands media bias:

I don't know why left-wingers and the media establishment harbor such antipathy toward SUVs, but I suspect it may be because SUVs are a vehicle much favored by those of us who hunt and fish. Anyone who hunts or fishes must be an insensitive brute, and since the left-wingers long battle to take our guns away has failed to yield results, now they're going after our wheels. When I started out in the news business nearly 45 years ago, advocacy by editorial writers and columnists was acceptable, but a strong effort was made to keep the news columns free of tilt or bias. But even back then the principle of impartiality was beginning to erode, and nowadays it's reached the point where there's scarcely any pretense of maintaining fairness and objectivity. In fact, practically any day of the week I can scan the news wires and find multiple examples of downright falsehoods being foisted off on the public to make a point. What I don't know is whether the falsehoods are deliberate or simply a product of the ignorance of the writers and the editors who foster them. It doesn't make much difference, though, in terms of the impact on readers who are savvy enough to know when they're being lied to.

Branham writes that "It's no wonder journalists now rank below lawyers and used-car salesmen in the eyes of the public". And it's no wonder so many Blogs have sprouted up to call them on their lies.

Posted 2/2/2004 03:54:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU DON'T SAY! AP headline: "Super Bowl spurs increase in betting".

Posted 2/2/2004 03:31:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
WILL THE PATS REPEAT? Paul Attner of The Sporting News writes that head coach Bill Belichick has helped the Patriots crack the NFL code.

Posted 2/2/2004 03:23:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
CBS ISSUES STERN WARNING TO PARENTS after yesterday's game. Scott Ott has the "details".

Posted 2/2/2004 03:06:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE GAME ITSELF: Like the rest of this past NFL season, the game on the field yesterday was actually pretty darn good. Pete Rozelle, the late former commissioner of the NFL, was obsessed with parity as early as the late 1970s. The NFL efforts to level the playing field--and level dynasties such as the Packers of the 1960s and the Cowboys and Steelers of the 1970s--culminated in free agency and the salary cap, which has produced an incredibly competitive league. It's a league where the difference between a Super Bowl champ and an also-ran is much, much smaller than it was in the '70s and '80s. Which is the reason why the Super Bowls of the late 1990s and the "noughts" have had far fewer blowouts than those of past. Skip Bayless writes today that he's "wiped out" from "just writing about the most engrossing Super Bowl I've covered in 29 years". Too bad, that as with the endless (and I do mean endless) largely leftwing sports reporters' obsessions with Rush Limbaugh, and the Philly media trashing Brett Favre's dad, what happened during halftime yesterday seemed to completely overshadow the game itself.

Posted 2/2/2004 01:57:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
AMEN: Steven Den Beste puts Nipplegate into perspective--and then some.

Posted 2/2/2004 01:34:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Star Trek's Borg and the Jackson family? Let's ask the KGB!

Posted 2/2/2004 12:46:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
NIPPLEGATE, EPISODE II: THE AREOLAE STRIKE BACK: Jonah Goldberg makes a good firm...point about Nipplegate:

This morning on CNN I caught Jack Cafferty (who's great by my lights) reading viewer email on the whole thing. One viewer gave the hackneyed "we all have body parts, get over it" defense. I haven't had time to scan the blogosphere, but I am sure there are already plenty of people having a good laugh at the "prudes" who took offense to Jackson's display. But here's the thing. Shocking the sensibilities of the bourgeoisie is so old. The people who thought Janet's boob-watch moment was a good idea -- beforehand or afterwards -- almost surely didn't actually enjoy the spectacle themselves. What appeals to them is the idea of shocking other people. Clearly, they weren't shocked -- enjoyably or otherwise -- by seeing Janet's tassledness. They're used to such displays. No, what was cool about it was that it would offend the sensibilities of fuddy-duddies. This sort of thing is the source of a vast, vast amount of bad "art," music, fiction etc. The value of a song or a video is measured not by its creativity or excellence, but by its ability to elicit the desired response from the other side. This sort of thing is so unimpressive. It's tired, it's played-out, it's Madonna. So I'm fine with being might peeved with CBS. But let's not forget to mention that part of their mistake was being predictably banal.

And then lying about it afterwards. Heck, Orson Welles did that, in 1938, when he held a press conference after his radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds terrified a nation. His mouth virtually melting butter, he cooed to reporters that he had no idea of what would happen during the broadcast. He merely set out to tell an entertaining story! (I think there's a clip of Welles' performance--surely his best bit of acting, ever--in the Citizen Kane DVD.) But then MTV is played out. It used to be fun in the mid-80s, back when it actually showed videos. If you've got VH-1 Classics on your cable or satellite system, you can actually see how tame much of those videos from the mid-80s were, and often how much fun. Then, perhaps with Madonna's success in mind, MTV decided it needed to shock--really shock--people. Instead, ultimately, it merely anesthezied them. And once Madonna released her Sex book, shocking the masses was pretty much passe, anyhow. I'm not a puritan--but there's plenty of sex available already in popular culture. Heck, just turn to the #500 and #600 blocks of DirecTV channels at around 11:00 PM on a weekend, and it's positively awash in "bare flesh, rouged areolae, moistened crevices, and stiffened giblets", as Tom Wolfe once wrote. And ironically, there were plenty of puritans buying advertising space on the Super Bowl, as the second half was filled with interminable ads begging teenagers and young adults not to smoke, not to do drugs, not to drink and drive, not to buy booze if they're underage, and heck, CBS turned PETA down for their ad about not eating meat. In a way, this is the final triumph of the XFL. While Rod Smart, a.k.a "He Hate Me", arguably the most famous player of the flash-in-the-pan wrestling-cum-football league played a minor role in yesterday's game as a fairly anonymous kick returner for the Panthers, the standards of his old league became--at least for the post-season--the standards of the NFL and the TV networks that made it an enormous success.

Posted 2/2/2004 10:57:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
"NIPPLEGATE" is what they're calling it on NRO'S "The Corner" this morning, and understandably so. But the vulgarity of the off-field activities at the Super Bowl goes way beyond Janet Jackson and MTV's schtick during halftime. As the Washington Post's long-time liberal TV critic Tom Shales wrote:

An exciting game -- by Super Bowl standards -- between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers was upstaged not only by its halftime show but also by the "edgy" and often crude humor of the commercials. Over the years -- partly because of the huge expense involved -- Super Bowl commercials have become widely ballyhooed events in themselves, and this year some sponsors, paying up to $2.9 million for a 30-second spot, went the smut route in order to stand out in the crowd. Early in the evening, a supposedly hilarious beer commercial featured a dog that was trained to bite men in the crotch and hold on. The man being bitten moaned and grimaced in pain and finally surrendered his can of Bud Light. As it happened, Bud Light set the standards for tastelessness and self-congratulatory humor. A later commercial, stealing a joke from a classic episode of the sitcom "Seinfeld," involved a flatulent horse. The animal, tied to a carriage, emitted an outburst from beneath its tail that caused a candle to burst into flame and burn the hair of the woman holding it. A loud sound effect made it clear that the horse was suffering digestive distress. Many of the other Super Bowl commercials seemed conspicuously inappropriate for an event that is a national rite and the kind of rare TV attraction that brings families together in front of the set. CBS chose to air a spot advertising the upcoming horror movie "Van Helsing" even though it contained extremely disturbing and graphic images of brutality and gore and despite the fact that it has yet to be rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. If the film were eventually to be rated NC-17, it would be contrary to network policy to carry any commercials for it. Based on excerpts shown, "Van Helsing" will earn an R, or Restricted, rating, meaning the film is considered suitable for those under 17 only if they are accompanied by a parent or other adult. The ad was wall-to-wall with monsters baring fangs and implied horrific violence. The negative vibes given off by so many off-color or violent commercials put a soggy cloud over what was supposed to be an evening of wholesome fun. Some of the spots were funny; Jessica Simpson and the Muppets had a high time in their commercial for Pizza Hut, and Homer Simpson starred in a funny spot. But the ghastly output from Bud Light included a commercial in which a chimpanzee talked to a beautiful girl as they sat together on a couch while she waited for her date to return from the kitchen. The monkey made a pass at the girl and asked, "So, how do you feel about back hair?" There was also an excess of commercials for drugs designed to help men suffering from erectile dysfunction.

I think this Super Bowl set a trio of firsts: first use of the world "erection" (spoken by the narrator--James Naughton, I think--in the Cialis ad), first commercial with flatulence, and first nipple. Naughton was the actor in the mid-70s TV series version of Planet of the Apes, and as Charlton Heston would say, yesterday's Super Bowl was a madhouse. A maaaaadhouse. Or, maybe it wasn't. Oddly enough, I never saw Janet's boob, and apparently, neither did the twenty or so other people watching the game at my house. By the end of the Super Bowl halftime show, my wife was serving sliced ham and noodle koogle to our guests, who were getting ready to settle back in for the second half, and I was bopping between the kitchen and the den. During the first five minutes of the halftime show, I was progressively turning the sound lower, as nobody here seemed to care about Janet Jackson, Kid Rock, Justin Whathisname and the rest of the halftime performers. I had my PC on during the game, but mostly to have Yahoo's NFL coverage loaded. It was only when I clicked over to the Drudge Report after the game that I saw the photo of Janet and her boob. (And fortunately so, it seems: Janet's nipple apparently completely ruined the game for Stephen Green. Well, maybe not completely...) More thoughts later.

Posted 2/1/2004 02:17:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU CAN'T SAY THOSE THINGS ON TV: James Lileks, in his thrice-weekly "Backfence" column (why yes, I did just say "thrice"!) writes that he admires "those people who practice verbal chastity". So do I. And fortunately, so does the current FCC chairman.

Posted 2/1/2004 02:02:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
SUPER BOWL BRIC-A-BRAC: AP odds and ends about the game.

Posted 2/1/2004 01:33:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, I THINK THERE'S A GAME TODAY! To coin a phrase, are you ready for some football?

Posted 2/1/2004 01:28:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
...JUST THE SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: Andrew Stuttaford writes that the current favorite to become the new chairman of the BBC "is apparently none other than EU commissioner Chris Patten, a man long notorious for his embrace of humbug, hypocrisy and hysterical anti-Americanism". Stuttaford adds, "He should fit in nicely".

Posted 2/1/2004 01:21:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
"A FORM OF HUMAN SACRIFICE": Charles Johnson writes that "the annual stampede at the 'stoning of Satan' ritual in Saudi Arabia has racked up one of the largest death counts ever, 244":

This traditional stampede takes place year after year, and seems to kill more Muslims each time. Saudi officials invariably respond with a shrug and a hat tip to Allah. They know it’s going to happen, set up the conditions for it to happen, and make no effective attempt to stop it. What we’re seeing is a form of human sacrifice.

But Johnson adds, "who are we to judge the traditions of other cultures? Just last Christmas, Betty Jo Biolovsky tore a fingernail while battling for the last scrap of potato salad at a church social in Peoria. Isn’t that really the same thing?" Heh. Be sure to read the summary of hajj death tolls that one of Johnson's readers compiled.