The newest edition of the Dartmouth Review (subtitled "BureaucraZy!") has an unusual quotation on its back page:
"Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -- Joe Theismann
I'm not sure why this quotation made the cut. My best guess is that there is something funny about somebody who doesn't know Albert Einstein's first name. We're supposed to laugh at this ignorant lout. Well, if I'm right, the Review must find this joke especially funny, as directly adjacent to this quotation is another:
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." -- Alfred Einstein.
What makes this mistake even worse is that Alston Ramsay spends almost an entire page wagging his finger sanctimoniously at the DFP for poor fact checking, because the DFP didn't dig through Jane Doe's medical records before the date rape article. Maybe there's some substance to his criticism, but it's hardly his place to offer it, considering the overwhelming evidence that he either thinks Einstein's first name was Alfred, or is too damn lazy to even proofread his newspaper, let alone check facts.
Larry Scholer's Smarter Dartmouth hasn't posted a critique of this Dumber Review yet, but I'm sure he's busy on the weekends anyway.
Posted by Nic,
6:11 PM
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More important news: Well, day old news, I guess, but Gary Kasparov is losing to yet another computer chess program in a four-game match. Kasparov has a loss and a draw, while the virtual reality program "X3D Fritz" has a win and a draw. Fritz had previously trounced Big Blue, the computer who handed grandmaster Kasparov his only professional defeat back in 1997. Charles Krauthammer wrote an incisive analysis of the event for the Weekly Standard back then, which is still worth reading.
All this brings to mind the epic Karpov-Kasparov matches in the 1980s. In 1987, when Kasparov proved himself the greatest player in the world, Economist had this to say about the politics of the match:
This being chess, politics have played almost as big a part in the contest as the two Soviet grandmasters. The 24-year-old Mr Kasparov projects openness and even rebelliousness against authority. His supporters in the West say he is more in tune with Mr Gorbachev's new Russia than his brilliant but dour 36-year-old rival. At the end of the match, Mr Kasparov spoke to journalists about glasnost, perestroika and shaking up chess's ruling international body, FIDE; Mr Karpov did not give a press conference at all.
If you can find it, Martin Amis wrote a brilliant little essay a while back about the specter of communism hanging over those matches. Kasparov was more than up to the challenge. Alas, as Pejman Yousefzadeh notes, it's possible that Kasparov is no longer the right man to defend the honor of mankind.
Posted by Brad Plumer,
3:07 PM
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Friday, November 14, 2003 The Note on Dean and the Confederate Flag:
Dean was asked about the flag issue at a town hall meeting in Hampton, New Hampshire. Dean acknowledged that it was a mistake to use that particular phrasing.
"I should not have use the words 'Confederate flag.' That is a racist symbol. We understand that. We don't need to get into that.. it's a very sensitive symbol. The main message … which most people got … is about two things. First, we need to bring Southern whites into this party or we're not going to win elections anymore … . The second issue is about race in general."
The questioner referenced Kerry's Wednesday appearance on Manchester's WGIR, but Kerry insisted he had not said those words:
Questioner: "Senator, yesterday you said, ah, that you think your rival, Howard Dean, is unelectable; how come?" Kerry: "I don't think I said that … ". A moment later, the second questioner took a shot: Questioner: "Senator, you said that you didn't say that Howard Dean was unelectable … on a radio show what I have you saying was, 'Howard Dean will not be able to beat George Bush. I believe that very strongly. Sounds like a synonym (for unelectable) to me."
Kerry: "Well, it's a synonym. I'll accept that. But I didn't say he was unelectable. I said I don't think he'll be able to beat George Bush."
And, finally, the Senator voluntarily returned to the subject for clarification … sort of: Kerry: "Can I just say in answer to the question earlier on the terminology, I wasn't trying to be cute, I just didn't use the word 'unelectable'. So, when you said that to me, I didn't realize, you know, that I do remember saying that, you know, I think it's hard to beat George Bush. That's all."
That's why it's so disappointing that Clark told a group of veterans yesterday that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban burning of the American flag. You could see President Bush trying to make this an issue in the campaign. (His father used it to impugn Michael Dukaksis's patriotism in 1988.) But Clark, of all the candidates, is perfectly insulated against attacks on his patriotism. Which means his support for the amendment must be genuine, not merely tactical. And that is genuinely scary. (TNR)
And I was liking Clark's talk of a new American patriotism. But if this is what it means, forget it.
Posted by Timothy,
6:37 PM
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The Ketchup Money Finally Comes Into Play
I have been waiting for this moment since the start of the campaign. John Kerry has just announced (about 2 minutes ago) that he will follow Howard Dean in forgoing federal matching funds. The difference is that in order to catch up to Dean's sea of contributors Kerry is going to foot the bill himself, providing the funding for his campaign out of his pockets. Those pockets are deep. And they are filled with Heinz ketchup.
from the email that john kerry sent to me (personally!)
I wish Howard Dean had kept his promise to stay within the campaign finance system. But he did not. He changed the rules of this race - and anyone with a real shot at the nomination must now play by those rules...In doing this, I will follow the law which requires that those assets be mine and no one else.
I always thought that Kerry should have done this from the start. Bush may be able to raise $200 million but Kerry's wife is worth $600 million. I'm not sure that he will be able spend any of this but it might not matter. Kerry himself is worth around $12-14 million.
Posted by Jordan,
4:48 PM
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Live Free or Die or Have a Lesbian Affair The New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled that a lesbian affair does not constitute adultery. Three of the court’s five judges ruled against a husband who divorced his wife after she had a relationship with another woman, saying that the official Webster’s dictionary definition of adultery referred to “intercourse.” Legal scholars expressed surprise, with one saying that most Americans would consider their spouse’s sexual relationship with either a man or woman “an equivalent betrayal.”
Posted by T. Wood,
12:23 PM
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A must read If you're interested in Dean, the South, and his appeal to minority communities. From The Village Voice.
Posted by Graham,
12:17 PM
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Great Moments in Government As reported by the Washington Post....
7:05 -- Downstairs, in the Mansfield Room, the Democrats are holding a pep rally for supporters, some of whom wear T-shirts that read: "We Confirmed 98% of Bush's Judges And All We Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." Pumping his pasty fist into the air, Ted Kennedy bellows, "We are not going to be a rubber stamp for right-wing ideological judges."
10:20 -- "A militant minority is thwarting the will of the majority," says Hatch. His voice is getting even raspier. Now he sounds like Howlin' Wolf.
11:45 -- "Here we are," says Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "It's quarter of 12 at night and I feel all perky." The Republicans just aren't perky enough, she suggests. "You get 168 and you don't get four," she says, "and you're whining and you're crying."
She points to a sign reading, "2.6 million manufacturing jobs lost," and she asks the Senate to give unanimous consent to a bill that would raise the minimum wage. A Republican immediately objects, killing the motion.
"That just proves the point," Boxer says. "They just want to complain about four people who already have jobs. They don't want to talk about people who are unemployed."
12:45 -- Up in the press gallery, somebody has put a six-pack of beer on ice, creating a quandary for those reporters who are still awake: If they drink a beer, they could doze off and miss some of this scintillating debate. If they don't drink a beer, they have to watch the debate stone-cold sober.
7:20 -- Outside, the sun is fighting through heavy gray clouds, illuminating the magnificent dome of the Capitol.
Police in heavy coats are standing guard. One of them has been watching the debates on and off through the long night.
"I could see if it was something important like the budget or Iraq," the cop says, "but who cares about judicial appointments?"
This marathon has been going on for more than 13 hours now. There's still nearly 17 hours to go, and some Republicans are talking about continuing past midnight.
I hope any conservative student involved in the grandstanding at the Dean event who explained his actions as being in protest of Dean's insensitive, stereotypical comment was just saying that to cover themselves and not look too mean. Maybe they feared being beat up by a room full of pacifists.
As conservatives, our message should be that "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," isn't worth all the intraparty Democratic fuss. They should cut their own guy some slack and understand his message.
This is not much different than President Bush welcoming support for his reelection from pro-choice Republicans.
alex talcott # 5:34 PM
If this flag flap is so obviously a satire then what is the message? Surely satire should have some sort of message unless it is merely a prank, which this seems to be (a very effective prank at that, kudos there). While I am impressed by the amount of media coverage that this has gotten, all of the quotes by flag-wavers that I have come across have attacked Dean from the left, calling him an insensitive racial stereotyper.
It seems that the participants have been misleading in explaining their rationale to reporters. Cosidering the coordination of the flyers and the protest, how well does this jibe with the argument that "the whole thing was such an obvious pardody that no one could reasonably get mad about it or misconstrue it?" (that is not meant as a quote but as my approximate summary of some points made on the previous thread).
If the pranksters lied about their intent then how can this still be called an obvious parody? What makes parody obvious is intent. What would make intent obvious would be some kind of intellectual consistancy. Lying about the M.O. is disingenuous.
Posted by Jordan,
9:46 AM
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Thursday, November 13, 2003 Satire and the Inviolablility of Activist Dignity
Good parodists know to give away the joke. It was bad form for the Confederate Flag posterers to use the official logo (couldn't you easily change it to "Degeneration Dean"?). It was bad form for the Lampoon to steal the Review from people's doorsteps while distributing their own newspaper. It was bad form for the Jacko to not make its identity sufficiently obvious when the initial Keggy blitz was sent weeks ago.
Unlike SA, however, the Review and the Dean campaign can't take a joke poorly executed. The Lampoon making fun of the Review's reputation -- merited or otherwise -- was hilarious. And the Dean posters were one of the best pranks I've ever been privileged to witness.
Late last month, six staff members of The Harvard Lampoon humor magazine loaded 2,000 copies of their latest spoof into a Range Rover and drove two hours north to Hanover, N.H.
Their destination: Dartmouth College, which was rocked a year and a half ago by charges of anti-Semitism after student staff members on the ultraconservative Dartmouth Review inserted a passage from Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in the Review's masthead.
Their mission: to distribute a look-alike takeoff of the Review titled "Spring Fashion Issue," featuring photos of Adolf Hitler posing in the woods in preppy garb and articles mimicking the conservative themes, the personal attacks and the inflammatory style for which the Review has become known.
Inside the parody issue, the Dartmouth president, James Freedman, is assailed as a "poo-poo head," the Democratic Party is characterized as the party of the elderly kept alive by "Medicaire," and fictitious editorial writers apologize for publishing passages of "Mein Kampf" but hail its "rhetorical flair unsurpassed in German literature since Nietzsche."
All in all it seemed like a chummy Ivy League prank -- until a Review reporter caught the Lampooners in a dorm, replacing real issues with the spoofs, and called the police. "They were nose to nose," said Bob McEwen, head of campus security. ... Kenneth Weissman, the Review's editor in chief, then asked the Dartmouth administration to condemn the parody for its play on fascist themes, a request that was denied because Harvard, not Dartmouth students, were the instigators, said Alex Huppe, a Dartmouth spokesman. Mr. Huppe pointed out that the Review itself had once published a cartoon of President Freedman dressed like Hitler on its cover. ... Mr. Weissman said he had called the police because the Lampoon staff members "were removing legitimate issues of the Review" from dormitories. In an open letter posted around the campus, he charged the Lampoon with "falsely representing" the Review.
Oh come on, no reasonable person could possibly think the Review would put Hitler in preppy garb.
Posted by Timothy,
10:19 PM
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It Depends on what the meaning of "State of Affairs" and "Unprecedented" is... Andrew Grossman, former editor of the Dartmouth Review, says this about Democratic filibustering of judicial nominees:
Democrat senators’ holds and promised filibusters block another dozen or so nominees. This state of affairs is unprecedented: never before has the Senate denied a judicial nominee a simple up-or-down vote with a filibuster. (No, Abe Fortas’s 1968 nomination to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court doesn’t count; President Johnson, sensing that Fortas would lose an eventual vote to bipartisan opposition, withdrew Fortas’s nomination after four months and one lost cloture vote.)
Well, I guess the Democrats will have to stop filibustering, and go with precedent: just continue voting against cloture!
(I'm waiting for someone to defend the absurd argument a first vote against cloture is consitutional but by some legal and metaphysical magic each additional vote against cloture is unconstitutional. Bonus Points: Defend that position using Bush's favored judicial philosophy of strict constructionalism)
A Filibuster Framed for Fox Hah! How pathetic are the Republicans? Here's from a GOP memo read by a Democratic Senator on the floor of the house:
It is important to double your efforts to get your boss to S-230 on time. Fox News channel is really excited about the marathon. Britt [sic] Hume at 6 would love to open the door to all our 51 Senators walking on to the floor. The producer wants to know, will we walk in exactly at 6:02 when the show starts so we can get it live to open Britt Hume's show? Or, if not, can we give them an exact time for the walk-in start?
Posted by Timothy,
8:05 PM
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European Social Forum
The European Social Forum has been getting a lot of press in France, but apparently not anywhere else. The Financial Times (UK) says:
The three-day session of plenary meetings, seminars and workshops spread over four locations will test the strength and diversity of the anti-globalisation movement as it seeks to build on its first forum in Florence last year and the success of the original gathering at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001.
Apparently the traditional left in Europe is keen to use the forum to build support for themselves, even if the Scotsman thinks that a successful forum may just be the begining of their leftward demise, and the birth of the extreme left in European politics (personally, PS is extreme enough for me, though Labour could do with a shakeup):
Parts of the ESF want to channel the movement into becoming a mass party of the Left, participating in mainstream electoral politics. In France last year, the Trots and the ecology movement got a combined 20 per cent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections... LCR and LO, have just signed a historic electoral pact ahead of the Paris jamboree. They want a single anti-capitalist list in next year’s French regional elections. If they succeed, they could make serious gains in the regional assemblies, just as the SSP and the Greens did at Holyrood last May. That would spell disaster for the French Socialists. Here in Britain, George Galloway will probably head an ESF movement list (aka "Stop the War") in the 2004 Euro elections.
Strangely though, its not the left that would become the sgreatest supporters of the left in much of the European countryside (ie for regional and local elections), the general antiglobalization, isolationist twist that the movement carries could endear it to everyone from the Hunting Party in france, to retirees who miss the communist era in Eastern Germany.
Posted by Nikhil,
9:35 AM
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Poor form: Graham Roth obviously has a history of sending thoughtless blitzes, but this blitz, posted by Emmett, really takes the cake:
--- Forwarded message from Graham Roth ---
>Date: 12 Nov 2003 16:51:33 EST >From: Graham Roth >Subject: this probably goes without saying
Hi, my friend Sue forwarded me a blitz to this list about the confederate flag posters going up around campus.
I only recognize a few names. If you don't know me, I'm the Editor of the Free Press and I spent the summer working on Howard Dean's campaign. I'm one of the co-chairs of Generation Dean at Dartmouth.
As you probably guessed, we did not put up those posters.
I'd appreciate it if you help out by taking down any that you come across.
Edit: Commenters have pointed out that the posters explicitly claimed to be sponsored by the Young Dems. I didn't notice that at all when I saw the posters (it's in tiny print at the bottom), and that, to me, changes everything. The blitz, of course, made it seem like they were taken down for being immature, and maybe that was the primary reason (which is deplorable), but ultimately it was justified. So Graham, I apologize for the attack. It was overhasty and I should have asked you about it first.
That said, if the poster had only sported the "Generation Dean" logo on top, the tear-downs would have been unwarranted. Yes, it's a bit misleading, but so what? How do you feel about posters that attack or parody McDonald's using their logo (like this one?). What if someone put up a parody poster attacking Bush using the "official" Bush-Cheney 2004 logo? What about this website? Should we burn t-shirts that parody the college social norms campaign ("the average student drinks 10-11-12 drinks" etc.)? After all, someone might mistakenly think that the college is sponsoring these ads, huh?
Posted by Brad Plumer,
12:33 AM
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Wednesday, November 12, 2003 Iraq is not Vietnam
How many times have we heard this from the military, administration, and even media? Enough, I suppose, to get me thinking about the comparison drawn. If Iraq is so dissimilar to Vietnam, why are the two mention so often in the same breath?
I have developed a thought in the past five minutes which I'd like to get down before bedtime. This evening, PBS aired the second part of the 2-part series on American war journalism and, for the first time, I really gained an appreciation for what happened in Vietnam in terms of media correspondence. I now believe that when people say that Iraq is not Vietnam, they mean not only that the military situation is quite distinct, but that there's as yet no way to make Americans at home aware of what is truly going on in Iraq. I know that I've personally seen very little death on TV even though everything is live. Surprising considering that a few hundred Coalition troops have been killed and thousands injured. More interesting, though sadly not so surprising is that there's virtually no coverage of the over 14,000 Iraqi citizens who've lost their lives and the many, many more who've been wounded. This war is strangely un-warlike for the majority of Americans. I even wonder if the families of fallen soldiers truly have any idea of how their loved-ones fared in Iraq. Worse than the last Gulf War? I don't know.
But now, on a different note, I want to stop and consider the statement that Iraq is so different from Vietnam. I'm no political scientist, but in 1945, Ho Chi Minh effectively appealed to the United States for help to free Veitnam from its French Colonial captors. It was all downhill from there. Now I'm wondering if the US's obsession over a speedy development of the Iraqi Constitution isn't some kind of righting of a political wrong of many years ago. Oh well, it might be an interesting narrative. That's not the point though. The point is, things seem to be getting worse in Iraq militarily and politically. Even the CIA today didn't seem to think that the US was scoring charisma points with the people. If that's the case, what would prevent turning Iraq into another Vietnam, where the people become so dissillusioned that they turn against there very people who might have been their liberators?
JIM LEHRER: Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?
DONALD RUMSFELD: There's obviously -- the Shiite population in Iraq and the Kurdish population in Iraq have been treated very badly by Saddam Hussein's regime. They represent a large fraction of the total. There's no question but that they would be welcomed.
Q: Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said, I remember this it was done very well, you said they would welcome us with open arms.
Rumsfeld: Never said that.
Q: Never said that.
Rumsfeld: Never did. You may remember it well, but you’re thinking of somebody else. You can’t find anywhere me saying anything like either one of those two things you just said I said. I may look like somebody else.
Posted by Clint,
9:45 AM
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You may have missed it... ...but this past weekend was the first ever National Conference on Media Reform. It got nearly no corporate media coverage, but had a speaker and workshop list that was quite impressive. It also featured musical performances by Steve Earl, Tom Morello, Billy Bragg, Lester Chambers, Boots Riley, and FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein (who showcased his nasty harmonica chops). You can sort through a whole pile of links of independent and alternative coverage here, but the highlight was likely this Bill Moyers speech, availible from Madison Indymedia. Scroll down for the mp3 links.
Posted by Clint,
8:21 AM
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003 A Democracy of One
I'm surprised no one posted about this. George Soros has apparently decided to single-handedly bank roll the fight against Bush.
Says the Washington Post: Soros believes that a "supremacist ideology" guides this White House. He hears echoes in its rhetoric of his childhood in occupied Hungary. "When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans." It conjures up memories, he said, of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit ("The enemy is listening"). Soros's contributions are filling a gap in Democratic Party finances that opened after the restrictions in the 2002 McCain-Feingold law took effect.
Though it does bother me that a single unelected individual with power, can unilaterally decide to undue the votes of millions of Americans. Oh wait, I forgot that's exactly what Sandra Day O'Connor did in 2000.
On the same topic, I recently met Nadine Strossen, President of the ACLU and asked her what she thought about the McCain-Feingold law (which the ACLU opposes). She seemed to think that when/if McCain-Feingold gets over-turned, America will go back to public financing of elections (despite the fact that both parties have now officially seceded from the public financing system).
I think the best solution would be to imitate Maine and create voluntary spending limits for candidates. If one candidate violates the spending limit- they are required to pay a "fee" of 50% of their campaign expenditures to their opponent's campaign. It doesn't violate the first amendment because it is a good ol' fashioned Article I taxing power.
Posted by Graham,
4:09 PM
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81 years old today, and still getting it right
A sappy woman sent me a letter a few years back. She knew I was sappy, too, which is to say a lifelong northern Democrat in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt mode, a friend of the working stiffs. She was about to have a baby, not mine, and wished to know if it was a bad thing to bring such a sweet and innocent creature into a world as bad as this one is. I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society. Perhaps some of you are or will become saints for her child to meet.
Posted by Clint,
7:15 AM
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Libertarians take NH and Liberals take NJ??
From governorship to Legislature, state becomes a party bastion New Jersey has two Democratic U.S. senators. Seven of its 13 congressmen are Democrats. So is the governor. And after Tuesday's elections, the Democrats have majorities in both houses of the Legislature and control in 11 of 21 counties.
In only one other state -- West Virginia, where labor rules -- can Democrats boast control of the governorship, the Legislature, both U.S. senators and a majority of the House members. And even there, President Bush scored a surprising 6-point victory over Gore. Gore won New Jersey by 16 percentage points.
You know that old saying, maybe there's something in the water? But I think this says more about the Democratic Party's mounting failures in other states...
Posted by Dan,
1:56 AM
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Monday, November 10, 2003 Censorship Gone Wild: Gain a Yard, Lose a Mile
Congratulations to Texas for finally moving into the 20th century by approving science textbooks that don't pander to the Religious Right. Seriously, considering everything I've heard about the dominance of the Wrong Christians in Texas, it must have taken a lot of courage for the Board of Education to finally take care of this.
But then, not all is well in the land of censorship-free education. The Christian Science Monitor reports on the status of Iraqi textbooks, where censors have deleted anything that's even remotely critical of the US. That includes the Persian Gulf War, and anything related to Israel. Of course, that means when questions come up, teachers just teach from their personal knowledge and experience -- which isn't THAT bad, in my opinion. The old Saddam-deifying textbooks are gone, and at least we haven't shoved any unabashedly pro-American textbooks down the Iraqis throats. Things could be worse.
But censorship-happy conservatives may win the post. Salon.com has a thorough article on a new bill that would allow government officials to pull funding on Middle East studies departments that are critical of American foreign policy. And while the federal government certainly has the right to direct federal funding, all the cries of "In the name of Homeland Security" buzzing around the bill give a foreboding sense that neoconservatives will snatch up the opportunity to tightly censor academic debate.
PS -- And a brief hat tip to Brad Plumer, who examined this very subject of censorship in education (with a bi-partisan lens, too) in the last issue of The Dartmouth Contemporary. Also a good read, indeed.
Posted by Nick,
12:54 AM
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Sunday, November 09, 2003 Culture War I took a look at this article on City Journal (care of the observor) and the part about South Park brought back a recent argument I had with Jordan about the show's political leanings. The author, and Jordan, argue that there is an underlying conservatism in South Park. Now, while the show is unabashedly anti-PC, I don't think it's conservative at all. Matt Stone, afterall, was interviewed by the much-criticized Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine.
So, is South Park conservative? AND (bigger question), is PCism part of American liberalism?
In the context of Brad's earlier posts, I'd offer that the sensibilities of conservatives are as easily offended as any. Can speech codes on campus truly be attributed to a liberal academic establishment? What about so-called 'free speech zones' in public places and non-stop cries of anti-Americanism that have created de facto 'speech codes' in the neo-con PC current public discourse. Just last Spring, Erin Fifield's Congressman tried to get Nicholas De Genova fired from Columbia University for making a statement that he found offensive.
Posted by Graham,
8:46 PM
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More ninnies: Last week Republicans unearthed a memo written by Democrats in the Senate Select Committee that revealed shocking aims: to push for an investigation into administration wrongdoing. Sean Hannity called it "politicized" intelligence. Rick Santorum threatened to shove all those damn Democrats off the committee. Bill Frist decided to freeze further investigation of prewar intelligence in Iraq, at least until the Democrats said they were sorry.
Apparently none of them bothered to do what Kevin Drum did and actually read the memo. And it turns out, the memo's harmless. Entirely harmless. Basically it comes down to two facts: the Republicans are trying to shift the focus of the investigation away from the administration, and the Democrats want a wider, more persistent inquiry to figure out why intelligence was wrong. Um, pardon, but isn't that exactly why we have a Senate Intelligence Committee? To, uh, investigate? Why are Republicans fuming and carping so much?
Jay Nordlinger should issue a retraction for this old OpinionJournal piece. Would "real men" ever moan and whine like this? Hm?
Posted by Brad Plumer,
6:37 PM
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Whiners and their whining whines... Bill O'Reilly's new beef: writers and publishers. Apparently, Terry McAuliffe and the DNC are peddling their... their... b-b-books (!) on members and contributors, and perhaps even paying people to write liberal books. O'Reilly aghast:
Now the danger is that DNC Chief Terry McAuliffe is using and paying professional hit men to demean and denigrate political opponents. That's exactly what President Nixon did when he used the plumber's union to harass his opponents.
Books are intimidating like plumber's unions are intimidating? Wah--? It's time to ask: when did conservatives become such ninnies? O'Reilly is fine with Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, but when liberals start striking back he squeals out "smear book!," "smear book!" Reminds me of all that "poor Rush Limbaugh" talk. Incidentally, O'Reilly won't name a single liberal book he has a problem with. Then again, that might require him to back up his attacks.
Ooh, for more sob stories, read this piece where O'Reilly complains that he's misunderstood. The poor guy can't understand why everyone calls him an ideologue. Quick hint: when you start sniveling on and on about "hurtful" liberal books-- heck, when you try to suppress "hurtful" books with frivolous law suits-- you get branded an ideologue real quick. Now stop crying.
