EdDriscoll.com

Posted 6/25/2004 01:52:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
YEAR THREE: Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on where we stand in the war on terror:

Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that. Abu Ghraib is on the front pages daily. Stories of thousands of American soldiers in combat against terrorist killers from the Hindu Kush to Fallujah do not merit the D section. Senator Kennedy's two years of insane outbursts should have earned him formal censure rather than a commemoration from the Democratic establishment. What a litany of distractions! Words — preemption," "unilateralism," "hegemony," — whiz by and lose all meaning. Names — "Halliburton," "Chalabi," "INC" — become little more than red meat. Vocabulary is turned upside down: "Contractors," who at great risk restore power and water to the poor, are now little more than "profiteers" and "opportunists"; killers are not even "terrorists" but mere "militants." "Neo-cons" are wild-eyed extremists; "realists" are no longer cynics — inclined to let thousands die abroad unless the chaos interrupts transit of oil or food — but rather "sober" and "circumspect," and more likely Kerry supporters. A depressing array of transitory personalities parades before our screen, entering stage left to grab 15 minutes of notoriety for their scripted invective, only to exit on the right into oblivion. Who can remember all these one-tell-all-book, one-weekend-on-the-Sunday-news-programs personalities — a Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Howard Dean, Paul O'Neil, Joe Wilson, Richard Clark, or Richard ben Veniste? In between their appearances on Sunday morning television or 60 Minutes, a few D.C. functionaries are carted out for periodic shouting — an unhinged Al Gore, a puffed-up Ted Kennedy, a faux-serious Bob Kerry, and occasionally a Senator Byrd or Hollings. And since the very day after 9/11 we've gotten the Vietnam-era retreads — a Peter Arnett, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Robert Scheer, John Dean, or Seymour Hersh — tottering out with the latest conspiracies about the old bogeymen and "higher-ups." We are winning the military war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists are on the run. And slowly, even ineptly, we are achieving our political goals of democratic reform in once-awful places. Thirty years of genocide, vast forced transfers of whole peoples, the desecration of entire landscapes, a ruined infrastructure, and a brutalized and demoralized civilian psyche are being remedied, often under fire. All this and more has been achieved at the price of political turmoil, deep divisions in the West — here and abroad — and the emergence of a strong minority, led by mostly elites, who simply wish it all to fail.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 6/25/2004 12:52:05 PM by Edward Driscoll

DID AL GORE CALL BILL CLINTON a digital brown shirt yesterday? Because it's pretty obvious that the two don't see eye-to-eye on Iraq. Of course, maybe Al just called himself a digital brown shirt, because his digitized version from the 1990s directly contradicts his current version. And an Al divided against itself cannot stand! (Apologies to both George Costanza and Jayson Blair. And probably James Taranto, too.) At the start of the Clinton administration, there's no way I would have believed that Bill would be the calm, sensible one, out having fun, doing talk shows, looking to enjoy his retirement in a relaxed aging-but-still-youthful-but-elder statesman-like manner (I know, I know, he's made up stories out of whole cloth, but let me run with this) and that Al Gore would be out giving demonizing speeches and constantly breaking Godwin's Law. As I've said before, wasn't Al put on the ticket in '92 to be the moderate half of the equation? UPDATE: Heh.

Posted 6/25/2004 12:39:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
OH, THOSE WMDS: 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq.

Posted 6/25/2004 12:33:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEMOCRAT ZELL MILLER TO SPEAK AT GOP CONVENTION: He's retiring in January, so he's got nothing to lose.

Posted 6/25/2004 01:16:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
SPOKANE GETS 100 BLOCKS OF WIRELESS INTERNET: Look to see more and more large scale Wi-Fi applications, something we've been writing about since this site's early days.

Posted 6/25/2004 12:22:42 AM by Edward Driscoll
NEW FOR 1974! IT'S THE CLOCKWORK ORANGE COLLECTION! "Welcome to Eurobad '74, an exhibition of Europe's worst interiors of 1974", the introductory page says, and it's certainly tough to argue with that. Every room looks like a set from A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's dystopian classic. Viddy well, little brothers! Viddy well! (Via Blackfive.)

Posted 6/25/2004 12:09:30 AM by Edward Driscoll
WELL, YES, I CAN, ACTUALLY: Andrew Sullivan asks, "Can you wait for Roger Ebert's review of Fahrenheit 9/11?" It's now online. Keep Ebert's stated biases in mind when reading it.

Posted 6/24/2004 10:58:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE CRACK-UP CONTINUES: After years of complaining that Strom Thurmond was too old to function in the Senate, the Democrats have found a nonagenarian of their own: the infamous Granny D. As the Resurrection Song Weblog notes, "Things aren't perfect in my camp, I'll be the first to admit. But can't the Democrats do better than John Kerry, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, and Granny D?" Also, I thought Democrats were supposed to appeal to the young--you know, the "Rock The Vote" crowd. But it's party whose leading lights include 86-year old Robert Byrd, 80 year old Frank Lautenberg, and now, entering the picture, 96-year old Granny D.

Posted 6/24/2004 10:31:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE MAN WHO MADE ME BATMAN: Eugene Volokh, Porn Star.

Posted 6/24/2004 06:42:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
"TENS OF THOUSANDS OF READERS HAVE DESERTED [England's] Daily Mirror because its Iraqi torture pictures were exposed as a fake, the newspaper’s owner admitted yesterday." Gee, what a surprise. UPDATE: As is this.

Posted 6/24/2004 03:46:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
WELL NOW WE KNOW: Yesterday, I wrote:

At what point do we start coming up for names for what the left is doing now? To paraphrase President Clinton, it's not a conspiracy; it's right out in the open: the constant hammering of President Bush by the press (who ignore their own reporting on Iraq during the Clinton years), the outbursts in the Senate by disgruntled leftwingers like Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Frank Lautenberg; Michael Moore's film and now this...[This being the backing of Fahrenheit 911 by the chairman of the DNC and other high ranking Democrats.]

Today, this was a headline on Reuters.com:

Bush Camp Hits Democrats' 'Coalition of Wild-Eyed' WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's re-election campaign lumped together vocal outbursts by Democrats Al Gore, Howard Dean and others on Thursday and called them part of John Kerry's "Coalition of the Wild-Eyed." The Bush-Cheney campaign released a video on its Web Site that played up some of the more strident statements Democrats have made on the campaign trail and declared: "This is not a time for pessimism and rage." The implication the Bush campaign appeared to be trying to leave was that some of the main boosters of Kerry's presidential campaign are filled with rage and perhaps a bit kooky. "Today, our campaign is releasing a web video to 6 million of our supporters to show them what we're up against and what we're up against is John Kerry's 'coalition of the wild-eyed,"' said Bush campaign manager Ken Melhman.

Read the rest of the Reuters piece. Finally, Bush is getting the mainstream media to report on the Democrats' shenanigans, by highlighting them in his ads and press releases. As Hugh Hewitt writes, "It stings because it is so true". Hopefully more will follow.

Posted 6/24/2004 03:38:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
CONGRATS TO TECHNICAL SGT. STRYKER, now with extra stripes on his sleeves!

Posted 6/24/2004 01:57:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLASHBACK: In April of 2003, we wrote:

KEEPING THE BACK BENCH WARM: Back in the 1970s, "me too Republicans" in Congress ensured that their party would stay on the back bench for many years, by offering little in the way of new ideas. Rather, they'd look at the welfare and social spending by the Democrats and talk about how expensive it was, and that the fat should be cut out of it...[Nancy] Pelosi is the House Minority Leader--and looks to continue to keep her party in the minority.

She must be thinking they'll be there for a while--because she's just introduced a House minority "Bill of Rights"! Via Hugh Hewitt, who writes, "That's pretty revealing, isn't it? She's ready for a long stay on the loser's side of the aisle. I was in Washington for a long stretch of the Democrat's majority in the lower body. I think they should get every courtesy they extended to the GOP." Oh--and this does help to explain the Pelosi-Beaker connection that Chris Muir noticed today. UPDATE: Speaking of keeping the backbench warm, this doesn't sound like the actions of a party that's trying to recapture America's goodwill, does it? GOOORRRREEEE UPDATE: Neither does this. Power Line also has some thoughts, and notes that just as the press has forgotten their own words in the 1990s, so has Al Gore.

Posted 6/24/2004 01:00:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
SELLING ITEMS ON EBAY? Snopes has some important advice to heed before photographing them.

Posted 6/24/2004 12:19:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS: David Letterman's "Top Ten Things Overheard in Line at the Clinton Book Signing". Actually, I'm kind of surprised that "Greg Packer! Not you again, man!" isn't on the list.

Posted 6/24/2004 12:07:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
ROGER & ME REDUX: Pauline Kael was among the first critics perceptive enough to spot what a huckster Michael Moore is (unlike Rex Reed), and her 1989 review of the film has been reprinted here. Back when I was a film junky, I also remember reading an article in England's Sight and Sound magazine (hardly a bastion of conservativism) that exposed many of the lies in that film as well, which put Moore on the map. Not the least of which was the film's premise: Moore wore a silly cardboard cartoon "PRESS" badge whenever he visited GM, thus ensuring that he'd never meet with Roger Smith--because if he did, there'd be no movie. (Via Terry Teachout.)

Posted 6/24/2004 11:05:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT MOMENTS IN PRESIDENTAL HISTORY, as spotted by Joshua Claybourn.

Posted 6/24/2004 10:51:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
BILL HOBBS HAS AN EXCLUSIVE: "Torture at Guantanamo? I've got proof", Hobbs claims, adding:

a source deep within the Pentagon has sent me the previously classified transcript of a secret video tape of an actual interrogation session involving both men and women. The partial transcript is unclear as to time, date and full identies of all those involved.

(Via Steve Green.)

Posted 6/24/2004 10:39:25 AM by Edward Driscoll
THAT '70S SHOW: Tim Blair spots John Kerry slumming with a once-popular author whose career peaked in the mid-'70s, not coincidentally because his talent has become ravaged by heavy pharmaceutical excess. He's now known primarily known as a leading Holocaust denier. Why do I expect Kerry to appear at his next campaign stop wearing John Travolta's white polyester suit from Saturday Night Fever--or worse--maybe a lime green leisure suit?

Posted 6/24/2004 01:31:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
"NEWSPAPERS BITE", writes journalist Kathleen Parker, who says they're looking for love in wrong places:

Let me be blunt. Newspapers bite. The work isn't much fun anymore, thanks to the soul-snatching corporate culture that has euthanized newsroom personalities. Most papers reflect that numbers-crunching, cubicle-hunkering mentality. We're boring, predictable, staid and out of touch with the folks with quarters. Nobody rushes to the rack anymore to see what the paper's great voices have to say because there aren't many great voices left. Meanwhile, half the nation's editorial cartoonists - Doug Marlette's "designated feelers" - have disappeared from editorial pages, leaving holes where hearts used to beat. With television offering headlines - and Internet blogs offering inspired commentary - why do people want to get their hands dirty reading stale stories that fail to ring the chime of truth? Declining reader confidence isn't just about high-profile scandals such as the Jayson Blair/New York Times and Jack Kelley/USA Today debacles. Distrust is also tied to the reality "disconnect" between those who produce newspapers and those who read them. Yes, the media tilt left and the Earth is round. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center that has journalists debating themselves reports that the elite media are far more liberal than the public ("Ordinary Americans," as the elites like to call you). While 34 percent of journalists self-identify as liberal, only 20 percent of Ordinary Americans do. Only 7 percent of journalists consider themselves conservative, compared with 33 percent of the public. Even those figures may be misleading, as a large majority of journalists consider themselves moderate. You be the judge.

RTWT.

Posted 6/24/2004 01:27:17 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE PRESS MISFIRES: Paul Greenberg writes, "Once again strawmen are strewn about everywhere as the major media all agree a claim the Bush administration never made now has been refuted." Meanwhile, David Limbaugh says that The New York Times owes President Bush an apology. Only one?

Posted 6/24/2004 01:21:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
A REFRESHING CHANGE: Colorado Republican Senate hopeful Pete Coors urges lowing the drinking age from 21 to 18:

"We got along fine for years with the 18-year-old drinking age," the former CEO of the Coors Brewing Co. told an audience of about 200 people at a candidates' debate here. "We're criminalizing our young people."

Wow--the Instapundit conspiracy moves in mysterious ways...

Posted 6/23/2004 11:10:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
INSERT FISH INTO BARREL. NOW AIM: Rex Reed reviews Fahrenheit 911. James Lileks rebuts. Screedy fun ensues.

Posted 6/23/2004 10:19:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
"STAY QUIET AND YOU'LL BE OK": Robert Spencer suggests a new slogan for the anti-war militant left and the press. (Sadly increasingly indistinguishable these days.) As William McGowan noted in Coloring The News, by drinking the PC Kool-Aid in the late 1980s, the press pretty much assured that this would be their tone. In their fear to not offend anybody--save for, as "Pinch" Sulzberger was quoted as saying, "white, heterosexual males"--they've also completely lost their moral compass. What's interesting though, as a commenter on Charles Johnson's site noted, is that since this tactic has alienated much of the American public (based on the latest Pew Report), their primary readers are increasingly, exclusively the left. And they either had to have seen this coming, or be clueless as to the unintended consequences of the direction that they set out in. So as not alienate their remaining readers, it becomes increasingly more important to keep them in the liberal cocoon. And the cocoon narrows that much more--on both the readers and the press. But hey, stay quiet, and you'll be OK! For somebody the left considers a dummy, this guy is sure on to something. (Found via Little Green Footballs.)

Posted 6/23/2004 09:38:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
HAWKISH CLOTHES ITCH DOVES: Jonah Goldberg writes:

Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic (and a friend of mine), has been complaining for a very long time that conservatives haven't shown the sort of introspection liberals have in the wake of the White House's missteps. After all, conservatives historically have looked skeptically on pie-in-the-sky Wilsonian adventures abroad -- and especially on the notion that the Pentagon has some sort of Easy Bake Oven nation-building set that can whip up democratic societies overnight. Now it is the liberals and leftists who sound like Kissingerian foreign policy realists, making allowances for barbaric regimes and ridiculing conservatives who needlessly demonized Saddam. But Saddam was a demon. Since we've been in Iraq, we've confirmed that he killed more than 300,000 Shiites after 1991 alone. We've found up to 30,000 in a single grave. Forty thousand "marsh Arabs" were murdered and their lands drained. We didn't need to confirm what happened to the Kurds. It's also worth recalling the reason we were in a de facto state of war with Saddam long before the actual war: It was to keep Saddam from doing these sorts of things to Kurds and Shiites again (never mind the Kuwaitis). The no-fly zones, the laughably and tragically inept sanctions regime -- which was making Saddam stronger and French and UN bureaucrats richer -- the various cruise missile attacks: These were all acts of war necessary to "keep Saddam in his box." And that whole system was falling apart. Bush faced a choice: Let Saddam out of his box or get rid of him. The former would make Saddam a hero, lower the price for defying America and further solidify the law of the jackboot in the Arab world. After 9/11 Bush felt he had no choice at all. We had to force changes in the Arab world before the Arab world forced worse things on us. Removing Saddam has had unforeseeable bad consequences, as well as some foreseeable ones. But it seems to me that liberals who now think we shouldn't have done it, solely because we didn't do it "just right," are falling prey to their own historic pie-in-the-skyism. There is no "just right" way to do things like this. If there were, we would have toppled Saddam with nerf bats.

Posted 6/23/2004 06:31:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
DURING ONE HIS MANY INTERVIEWS THIS PAST WEEK (I think during the BBC interview), President Clinton was asked about "the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy", and he said something along the lines of "I think it was wrong of Hillary to refer to it as a conspiracy. It was a very big machine, but it was right out in the open." At what point do we start coming up for names for what the left is doing now? To paraphrase President Clinton, it's not a conspiracy; it's right out in the open: the constant hammering of President Bush by the press (who ignore their own reporting on Iraq during the Clinton years), the outbursts in the Senate by disgruntled leftwingers like Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Frank Lautenberg; Michael Moore's film; and now this:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Cheered by supporters, Michael Moore previewed his Bush-bashing documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," before a mostly Democratic audience in the nation's capital Wednesday night. Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said he thought the film would play an important role in this election year. "This movie raises a lot of the issues that Americans are talking about, that George Bush has been asleep at the switch since he's been president," McAuliffe said as he walked the red carpet into the premiere. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa implored all Americans to see the film: "It's important for the American people to understand what has gone on before, what led us to this point, and to see it sort of in this unvarnished presentation by Michael Moore."

Add to it Mario Cuomo's efforts to get its rating lowered from R to PG-13 so that more kids could attend. Here you have three very prominent members of the Democratic party praising a piece of agitprop designed to trash a sitting president. Hillary could go on The Today Show in 1998 and claim a vast right wing conspiracy with a straight face, and nobody in the press questioned her. Does Bush get to make a similar claim about the left? If so, how can he frame it, considering how much he's loathed by the press? I do think that ultimately, this stuff isn't helping the left's cause, and they're overplaying their hand, just like the over the top Wellstone funeral-cum-political orgy of 2002. They've hitched themselves to something which is likely to rebound very badly in their faces; but in the meantime, I hope a rope-a-dope strategy is in place by the White House, because without signs of the president fighting back, all of this can be brutal to watch. On the other hand, the staggering amount of overheated rhetoric doesn't sound at all like the FDR-style jaunty "happy days are here again" feeling of a party confident of victory in the fall. It's not 1968--yet. But it can certainly feel like it, at times. UPDATE: John H. Hinderaker of The Power Line Blog writes, "With all of this publicity, Fahrenheit 9/11 can only be a mega-hit. I mean, the last cultural phenomenon to receive this kind of hype was Air America". Heh. More from Power Line on the left's crack-up here. ANOTHER UPDATE: John Hawkins has some questions for the Democratic politicians who consider Moore to be part of the mainstream.

Posted 6/23/2004 02:20:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
AXIS OF STUPIDITY: Charles Johnson writes, "I’ll bet there were some dropped jaws in BBC boardrooms at the results of this Glasgow University study, which somehow, against all odds and evidence, found that the BBC favors Israel in its reporting. "I didn’t think it possible", Johnson adds, "but I believe we’ve found someone even more anti-Israel than the Beeb".

Posted 6/23/2004 01:52:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Just found out one of my favorite P.J. O'Rourke essays is online.

Posted 6/23/2004 12:37:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM: Scott Ott "reports" that SpaceShipOne pilot glimpsed "Edge of Clinton Book Hype". And so did Matt Drudge, who currently has a long list of headlines from local book sellers reporting less than brisk sales. Meanwhile, RatherBiased explores the CBS-Amazon partnership. Sadly, Greg Packer could not be reached for comment.

Posted 6/23/2004 11:32:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE LOST PATRIOTS OF HOLLYWOOD: Michelle Malkin picks up a theme we've discussed several times, perhaps most memorably here.

Posted 6/23/2004 01:10:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
IN THE MODERN POLITICAL ERA, it's all about the sound bite. Crafting a phrase that instantly captures your goals, your style, your elan:

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"

"A kinder and gentler America."

"I feel your pain."

"The soft bigotry of low expectations."

These are all some of the more memorable sound bites from the past two decades of presidential politics. Of course, when you've given your opponent a sound bite he can use against you, you've clearly fumbled the ball. And by the way, did Jay Nordlinger call this, or what?

Posted 6/23/2004 12:19:46 AM by Edward Driscoll
"HOW CAN HE DO THAT--IT'S NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE!" "IN NEW JERSEY ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!" was a gag line in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo about the always strange doings in my home state. And as Darren Copeland, the Colorado Conservative writes, it's about to commit fiscal suicide, raising taxes for those New Jersey residents earning more than $500,000 each year. "I wonder how many of those households remain in New Jersey if this tax is implemented", Darren writes. "If I were one of those people, I would be moving, and leaving New Jersey high and dry". A fair chunk will do just that, as the Laffer Curve remains inviolable. (Incidentally, Darren, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at last month's Colorado Blogger Bash, has lots more good stuff on his blog.) UPDATE: Not surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal has some thoughts.

Posted 6/22/2004 10:32:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE ON PUNITIVE LIBERALISM, from Roger Kimball of The New Criterion.

Posted 6/22/2004 09:51:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
LIKE THE MAN SAYS...Heh.

Posted 6/22/2004 08:58:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
TWO MORE NEWS SOURCES EXPOSE THE SADDAM-BIN LADEN CONNECTION: CNN and The Guardian. Oh wait, just like Newsweek, NPR and The New York Times, those stories ran in the late '90s. As Glenn Reynolds writes, "No doubt this was a preemptive fiction on the part of the not-yet-nominated Bush Administration". It was! After all, CBS told me that President Bush was in office back in '98.

Posted 6/22/2004 08:27:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLINTON'S BBC INTERVIEW: Here's the full clip of the interview that Drudge has been flogging, which is an hour long. The sparks (and finger-pointing) occur at about 28 minutes in; it's hilarious watching President Clinton verbally beating up on a man from the BBC(!) about "wanting to help the far right". Although the warm-up, where Clinton blames the politics of Watergate for leading to this, is fun. Gee Bill, which party created the politics of Watergate to bring down a sitting president? On the other hand, it's pretty staggering that Clinton has to go to the BBC to escape what Mickey Kaus calls "the liberal cocoon"--the mass of reporters in America who prop up, and refuse to ask politicians on the left tough questions. (Via "The Corner". Real Player required to via video.)

Posted 6/22/2004 04:53:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
A MATTER OF FAITH: David Brooks points out something that Rod Dreher wrote about last year: that just as Republicans became the party of religion, the Democrats have become the party of the Godless. As Brooks writes:

More than any other leading Democrat, Bill Clinton understands the role religion actually plays in modern politics. He knows Americans want to be able to see their leaders' faith. A recent Pew survey showed that for every American who thinks politicians should talk less about religion, there are two Americans who believe politicians should talk more. And Clinton seems to understand, as many Democrats do not, that a politician's faith isn't just about litmus test issues like abortion or gay marriage. Many people just want to know that their leader, like them, is in the fellowship of believers. Their president doesn't have to be a saint, but he does have to be a pilgrim. He does have to be engaged, as they are, in a personal voyage toward God. Clinton made this sort of faith-based connection, at least until he sullied himself with the Lewinsky affair. He won the evangelical vote in 1992, and won it again in 1996. He understood that if Democrats are not seen as religious, they will be seen as secular Ivy League liberals, and they will lose. John Kerry doesn't seem to get this. Many of the people running the Democratic Party don't get it either.

This isn't news; the fact that it's being discussed in the Times, is. As Dreher wrote:

True story: I once proposed a column on some now-forgotten religious theme to the man who was at the time the city editor of the New York Post. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "This is not a religious city," he said, with a straight face. As it happened, the man lived in my neighborhood. To walk to the subway every morning, he had to pass in front of or close to two Catholic churches, an Episcopal church, a synagogue, a mosque, an Assemblies of God Hispanic parish, and an Iglesia Bautista Hispana. Yet this man did not see those places because he does not know anyone who attends them. It's not that this editor despises religion; it's that he's too parochial (pardon the pun) to see what's right in front of him. There's a lot of truth in that old line attributed to the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, who supposedly remarked, in all sincerity, "I don't understand how Nixon won; I don't know a soul who voted for him."

And unlike Dreher and Brooks, I doubt many of the reporters on The Times understand how the Democrats became the Godless Party. (Via Betsy Newmark.)

Posted 6/22/2004 04:40:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
"SAVE THE PLANET. JUMP IN YOUR CAR!" Glenn Reynolds and Reason have great posts on a recent study which indicates, as Roger Ford of Modern Railways magazine says, "a family of four going by car is about as environmentally friendly as you can get", especially when compared to today's trains. Maybe that's why Syd Mead told me that:

"Mass transit" is purely an academic term. With half the world's populations living in cities by 2050, owning a private automobile becomes a default response to the imperfect and often inconvenient availability of so-called "mass transit" mobility.

Sadly though, "the desire named streetcar" continues to percolate in most city planners' brains.

Posted 6/22/2004 02:58:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE to go to the book store: Greg Packer is back, and being quoted in (where else) The New York Times.

Posted 6/22/2004 02:28:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
SANTANA PLAYS THE RACE CARD, after the death of legendary jazz drummer Elvin Jones last month, in an article in the San Diego Union Tribune:

A hippie at heart, Carlos Santana has long championed music as a potent force for creating positive vibrations that – as this veteran of the 1969 Woodstock festival puts it – "can change your molecular structure." But the legendary rocker sounded uncharacteristically angry during a discussion about the recent death of one of his musical heroes, jazz drum icon Elvin Jones, who died May 18 of heart failure. Santana, who will be honored in Los Angeles as the 2004 Latin Recording Academy Person of the Year on Aug. 30, is incensed that Jones' death elicited scant media coverage. He expressed his frustration during a recent interview from his San Rafael office. "I'm really embarrassed for this nation, and for MTV and VH1 and Rolling Stone, because it was a very racist thing not to acknowledge this most important musician when he passed," said Santana, whose 1999 album, "Supernatural," won nine Grammys and has sold more than 25 million copies. "For them to (play up) Ozzy Osbourne and other corny-ass white people, but not Elvin, is demeaning and I'm really embarrassed to live in this country." * * * The reason for the slight, Santana believes, is a matter of racial and cultural prejudice. "When Miles (Davis) died (in 1991), for four hours in France they stopped everything on TV and radio – all the regular programming – and just showed Miles for four hours, all through France," Santana recalled. "Here in the U.S., it's embarrassing (how jazz is treated). People should be ashamed of themselves."

There's a very simple answer to this: put your money where your mouth is, Carlos--create a jazz TV channel for cable. If Al Gore can convince a group of investors to buy a Canadian TV channel to create Al-TV, there's no reason why Santana can't try to do something similar. But will there be enough of an audience for advertising revenues? Because as Air America on the radio is showing, if nobody tunes in, it won't stay on for too long. VH-1 showed jazz every Sunday night in the mid to late 1980s. Jazz musician Ben Sidran was the host, and I used to watch it each week. But apparently, nobody else did, because it was eventually cancelled. There's a great book from the late 1990s called If It Ain't Got That Swing: The Rebirth of Grown-Up Culture by Mark Gauvreau Judge. Judge argues that rock and roll took off in the mid-1950s largely because jazz musicians and their critics abandoned the popular swing bands for the much more insular bebop and cool jazz, which made the musicians and critics happy, but alienated mass audiences, who wanted simple music they can dance to. When Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Elvis came along offering them just that, guess where the audiences went? And Santana knows this--there's a reason why his latest record sold 50 bazillion copies: because it had simple songs with popular young singers on them, rather than Coltrane-style modal jams. So Carlos is filling sports arenas playing rock, but surprised that nobody's buying jazz records. Go figure. Incidentally, has anybody asked Santana what he thinks of the outpouring of emotion that Ray Charles received when he died? Or does that not count because Ray sold out and played popular music to the masses, rather than jazz. ...You know, like Santana.

Posted 6/22/2004 01:13:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPACESHIP ONE: When it comes to space, I'm strictly a layman. But this article appears to me to be a somewhat decent first look at SpaceShip One's flight yesterday. But its level of cynicism doesn't help matters. It's written as if only the federal government's contributions to space research count. The headline makes it sound like the flight was a giant Estes model rocket launch. Was the Wright Brothers' flight a giant leap for paper airplane builders? And these equally cynical paragraphs don't help matters:

In many ways, the moment is more Wild West than Wilbur Wright, opening a new frontier for the geniuses and thrill seekers, businessmen and hucksters who have long followed pioneers to new lands and new markets. "It's like the opening of the West," says Howard McCurdy, a spaceflight historian at American University in Washington. "Entrepreneurs followed in the wake of the oft government-funded explorers. There were a lot of characters and a lot of innovation."

I wasn't around when Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for the first time, and when Alan Sheppard and Gus Grissom followed with their first suborbital flights, but yesterday's flight is equally important: the first time a man who wasn't on a government payroll went into space. (Unfortunately, pilot Mchael Melvill isn't on Henry Luce's payroll, so he won't get the endless and positive PR that the Mercury Seven astronauts received.) Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey will eventually arrive, but like most Kubrick productions, it's going to take much longer than first anticipated.

Posted 6/22/2004 01:06:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
LATEST ELECTRONIC HOUSE NEWSLETTER ONLINE: For three decades, X10 has been the home automation language, making it possible to buy compatible products in stores like Radio Shack and Home Depot. But it's definitely getting long in the tooth. My latest Electronic House newsletter asks if a potential successor has been found.

Posted 6/22/2004 12:54:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
ENEMIES TOGETHER: Robert L. Pollock writes, "Clinton was right: Saddam and al Qaeda had numerous connections". Heck, you could read about some of them in the news--back in the late '90s.

Posted 6/22/2004 11:37:33 AM by Edward Driscoll
ROGER SIMON ON FAHRENHEIT 911:

Now I know I will be criticized for making this statement without seeing the film (perhaps fairly). But I did see the trailer the other night and what is being emphasized in the advertisement is that the documentary reveals the shocking news that Bush helped the Bin Laden family leave America immediately after 9/11. Now Hitchens, of course, shows how this is a bald-faced lie. Bush critic Richard Clarke has acknowledged his sole responsibility for that. (I blogged about this a few weeks ago.) It seems to invalidate the entire film without having to go further. It will be interesting to see how the critics respond. Don't look for the Cannes Film Festival to rescind the Palme d'Or. After all, Quentin Tarantino informed us that his jury had awarded the film the prize "for aesthetic reasons."

Of course they did.

Posted 6/22/2004 12:39:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
PUNITIVE LIBERALISM: I'd say that a meme is born, except that I've long been aware of this condition (and you probably have been as well). But now it has a name.

Posted 6/21/2004 10:02:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOTE TO SELF: Don't make Christopher Hitchens angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry. And I'll bet the Incredible Bulk himself, Michael Moore, really hates Hitch today:

A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history. If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

James Lileks writes, "Ever wondered if there’s a literary equivalent of someone attacking a hanging side of beef with a chain saw? Wonder no more."

Posted 6/21/2004 04:33:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
MR. PRESIDENT, WE CANNOT AFFORD A PRIVATELY FUNDED SPACECRAFT GAP! Steve Schmidt, Bush-Cheney '04 Spokesman notes some bad timing on Senator Kerry's part today:

Only John Kerry would declare the country to be in scientific decline on a day when the country’s first privately funded space trip is successfully completed. America is the world leader in patents, research and development and Nobel prizes, and the President's budget raises federal research and development funding to $132 billion for 2005, a 44 percent increase since taking office.