At a time when Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq while attempting to install a Western-style democracy (according, that is, to the White House’s reason du jour for invading and occupying that country), one would think democracy is a good thing.
Apparently not, according to Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. He has a solution to all the peskier aspects of democracy, such as some Senators taking seriously their Constitutional imperative to provide “advice and consent” on judicial nominees. As he put it in a speech on the Senate floor yesterday, “What this Government needs is one of those extreme makeovers they have on television, and I am not referring to some minor nose job or a little botox here and there.”
His solution is blindingly simple: repeal the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which junked the back-room appointment of Senators by state legislatures and opened the process up to popular election. In pursuit of this lofty goal, he introduced S.J. Res. 35, a proposed constitutional amendment to do just that.
So let me get this straight – Miller’s answer to arguments over unfunded mandates, judicial nominations, and a border fence with Mexico (which he blames on “nutty environmentalists”) is less democracy? He claims that an appointed Senate would be free of “special-interest tyranny,” and that “we now have too many Senators who are mere cat’s-paws for the special interests.” Of course, in his world, the state legislatures are beacons of citizen responsiveness, a far cry from the reality of how they actually work.
To give him credit, he knows his proposed amendment is, to put it mildly, a long shot. “I know it doesn't stand a chance of getting even a single cosponsor, much less a single vote beyond my own,” he said.
You have to admit, the notion of keeping the people out of the people’s business does have a distinct appeal. It would be so much easier without all this messy debate, these untidy disagreements, this awkward hindrance to the government’s business that is democracy.
But on further reflection, this may not be quite the act of political buffoonery it appears to be. One of the chief Republican complaints of recent years is that the Senate occasionally refuses to confirm a few of the more odious of President Bush’s judicial nominees. (It should be mentioned that despite all the GOP fuss, Senate Democrats blocked just four nominees, approving 173 more.) So what better way to turn the Senate into a toothless rubber stamp than by turning it into a tool of the state legislatures?
Ever since the 2000 Census, Republicans around the country have put a lot of effort into gerrymandering state legislatures to maximize potential Republican districts and minimize potential Democratic ones, usually by breaking up traditionally Democratic districts so they form parts of several GOP-majority districts instead of combining into a single one. Engineering as many Republican-dominated legislatures as possible means, under Miller’s proposed amendment, a larger number of Republican senators – meaning a Senate far more likely to go along with whatever a Republican President may care to do. If a Democrat gets elected President, the same scheme would guarantee a recalcitrant Senate.
And Miller, by a staggering coincidence, is a rogue Democrat who votes with the Republicans nearly all the time and is in thick with the GOP leadership. Indeed, this year he wrote A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, in which he bashes his ostensible party for supposed loony leftism.
It seems to be quite a plan. Fortunately, no one has yet gone on record as co-sponsoring it.
4/29/2004
4/28/2004
Adoption for Your Amusement
What were they thinking?
Last weekend, the ABC news magazine show 20/20 ran a promotional spot for an upcoming segment called “Be My Baby.” “Barbara [Walters] will bring you what might be called the ultimate reality show,” co-anchor John Stossel proclaimed. “As you watch, a pregnant teenager will decide which of five couples gets her baby.”
It was utterly repulsive, and gave the impression that ABC was running some sort of depraved contest with a baby as the grand prize. The network was flooded with calls from horrified viewers and quickly backtracked, saying that the segment isn’t really what the promo said it is, but rather a thoughtful examination of open adoption. Nevertheless, the spot was hurriedly (and wisely) replaced with a considerably more restrained one.
As anyone who has ever adopted a child knows, adoption is not a game. It is not a competition. It does not have winners and losers. Rather, it is a very personal process which makes would-be parents look deep within themselves and determine whether or not they really want to have children. Our son was adopted, so I speak from personal experience.
For her part, Walters should have known this, as her daughter was adopted as well. The fact that she did not object to this promo (she is, after all, the show’s main talent; it seems highly unlikely that it would not have been run by her) speaks volumes about her judgment.
Of course, this is not to say that adoption is a taboo subject. The Discovery Health Channel’s show Adoption Stories profiles families and their children via adoption, going through the process from start to finish, and does so with respect and good taste. ABC could learn a thing or two from it.
Last weekend, the ABC news magazine show 20/20 ran a promotional spot for an upcoming segment called “Be My Baby.” “Barbara [Walters] will bring you what might be called the ultimate reality show,” co-anchor John Stossel proclaimed. “As you watch, a pregnant teenager will decide which of five couples gets her baby.”
It was utterly repulsive, and gave the impression that ABC was running some sort of depraved contest with a baby as the grand prize. The network was flooded with calls from horrified viewers and quickly backtracked, saying that the segment isn’t really what the promo said it is, but rather a thoughtful examination of open adoption. Nevertheless, the spot was hurriedly (and wisely) replaced with a considerably more restrained one.
As anyone who has ever adopted a child knows, adoption is not a game. It is not a competition. It does not have winners and losers. Rather, it is a very personal process which makes would-be parents look deep within themselves and determine whether or not they really want to have children. Our son was adopted, so I speak from personal experience.
For her part, Walters should have known this, as her daughter was adopted as well. The fact that she did not object to this promo (she is, after all, the show’s main talent; it seems highly unlikely that it would not have been run by her) speaks volumes about her judgment.
Of course, this is not to say that adoption is a taboo subject. The Discovery Health Channel’s show Adoption Stories profiles families and their children via adoption, going through the process from start to finish, and does so with respect and good taste. ABC could learn a thing or two from it.
4/23/2004
Fooling Some of the People
Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people some of the time, and even all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.” The White House is having great success at fooling some of the people.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, one of the most ubiquitous propaganda lines used by the Administration was that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were bosom buddies. Ground into our brains with endless insinuation, we were indoctrinated to believe that by invading Iraq, we were striking back against the people who attacked us on 9/11, that it was but one battle in the “war on terror,” that there was no difference between the secular Hussein and the Islamist bin Laden. It was so spectacularly successful that even American troops sent to Iraq fell for it, as shown by the examples of “this is for 9/11” comments heard from more than one soldier.
Of course, it wasn’t true. Iraq and al Qaeda were well known to loathe each other and each saw the other as mortal enemies. The Administration, having been told as such by CIA and the State Department, knew this full well, but went right on saying otherwise. After all, the American people were far more likely to support an unprovoked invasion of a country which didn’t attack us if they thought they were connected to those who did, and if they believed Iraq was directly responsible for 9/11, so much the better.
We now have more proof on just how successful this misinformation campaign was. The Program in International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland just released the results of a study showing that 37% of the American people believe that Hussein gave “substantial support to al Qaeda” with another 20% believing that he was “directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks.” Additionally, 45% believe that “clear evidence” was found linking Hussein and al Qaeda. None of these are even remotely true, but that didn’t stop the Administration from touting them anyway.
When a similar study was published earlier this year, the White House’s response was the same as their reaction to anything they don’t like – they simply ignored it and plowed ahead saying the same thing. Even in last week’s press conference, President Bush claimed that al Qaeda “lost an ally in Baghdad” when Iraq was invaded.
Just how divorced from reality is the White House? We all know that they tend to look at everything through rose-tinted glasses – for example, the Administration’s ludicrous insistence that the ongoing carnage in Iraq is actually a sign of success. (So if everyone is killed, does that mean we win?) Willfully ignoring repeatedly established fact, however, is very different. Numerous children’s stories say that if you believe something hard enough and long enough, it happens. So, apparently, does the White House.
The sheer gall in constantly rolling out the same rhetoric which has already been shown to be false is breathtaking, and also rather unsettling. If President Bush sincerely believes in a nonexistent Hussein-bin Laden connection despite all the evidence against it, one wonders what else he believes. Then again, he was quoted in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack as refusing to consult his father (the first President Bush) on the matter of Iraq, saying that “He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice...there’s a higher Father that I appeal to.” Sounds like we now have a governmental decision-making process literally based on blind faith rather than reason and experience.
On the other hand, Bush et al may simply be having a good laugh at our expense, popping champagne corks in the Oval Office and celebrating their success in having put such a whopper over on the American public.
I’m not sure which one is scarier.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, one of the most ubiquitous propaganda lines used by the Administration was that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were bosom buddies. Ground into our brains with endless insinuation, we were indoctrinated to believe that by invading Iraq, we were striking back against the people who attacked us on 9/11, that it was but one battle in the “war on terror,” that there was no difference between the secular Hussein and the Islamist bin Laden. It was so spectacularly successful that even American troops sent to Iraq fell for it, as shown by the examples of “this is for 9/11” comments heard from more than one soldier.
Of course, it wasn’t true. Iraq and al Qaeda were well known to loathe each other and each saw the other as mortal enemies. The Administration, having been told as such by CIA and the State Department, knew this full well, but went right on saying otherwise. After all, the American people were far more likely to support an unprovoked invasion of a country which didn’t attack us if they thought they were connected to those who did, and if they believed Iraq was directly responsible for 9/11, so much the better.
We now have more proof on just how successful this misinformation campaign was. The Program in International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland just released the results of a study showing that 37% of the American people believe that Hussein gave “substantial support to al Qaeda” with another 20% believing that he was “directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks.” Additionally, 45% believe that “clear evidence” was found linking Hussein and al Qaeda. None of these are even remotely true, but that didn’t stop the Administration from touting them anyway.
When a similar study was published earlier this year, the White House’s response was the same as their reaction to anything they don’t like – they simply ignored it and plowed ahead saying the same thing. Even in last week’s press conference, President Bush claimed that al Qaeda “lost an ally in Baghdad” when Iraq was invaded.
Just how divorced from reality is the White House? We all know that they tend to look at everything through rose-tinted glasses – for example, the Administration’s ludicrous insistence that the ongoing carnage in Iraq is actually a sign of success. (So if everyone is killed, does that mean we win?) Willfully ignoring repeatedly established fact, however, is very different. Numerous children’s stories say that if you believe something hard enough and long enough, it happens. So, apparently, does the White House.
The sheer gall in constantly rolling out the same rhetoric which has already been shown to be false is breathtaking, and also rather unsettling. If President Bush sincerely believes in a nonexistent Hussein-bin Laden connection despite all the evidence against it, one wonders what else he believes. Then again, he was quoted in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack as refusing to consult his father (the first President Bush) on the matter of Iraq, saying that “He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice...there’s a higher Father that I appeal to.” Sounds like we now have a governmental decision-making process literally based on blind faith rather than reason and experience.
On the other hand, Bush et al may simply be having a good laugh at our expense, popping champagne corks in the Oval Office and celebrating their success in having put such a whopper over on the American public.
I’m not sure which one is scarier.
4/21/2004
Israel Is Always Wrong
Let me get this straight – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announces that his country will unilaterally withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and a large part of the West Bank, evacuating all Jewish communities within, and turning them over to Palestinian control. In effect, Sharon is giving up on negotiations, finally admitting that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side, and cutting Israel’s losses. Not surprisingly, the Greater Israel proponents are infuriated, seeing the disengagement plan as nothing less than surrender to Palestinian terrorism.
The response from the Palestinians and their allies, on the other hand, is rage, threats and condemnation.
The portion of the media that is friendly to the Palestinians denounced the Sharon plan as a “land grab” for holding on to part of the West Bank, conveniently ignoring that under the plan, Israel will in fact give up a large amount of land and pull out. The media also went ballistic when President Bush endorsed the plan, saying that he does not support a Palestinian “right of return” which would allow the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to move to Israel instead of a Palestinian state, destroying the Jewish state demographically.
(The “right of return” has been the subject of much misconception and misinformation over the years, so here’s a short primer on the topic:
In 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan for what was at the time British Mandatory Palestine, dividing it between the Jewish and Arab communities, with Jerusalem to be internationalized. The Jews accepted the plan while the Arabs, threatening riots and chaos, rejected it, and when Israel declared independence in 1948, the surrounding Arab nations instantly declared war and invaded. While the fighting was ongoing, about half a million Arabs fled their homes in what is now Israel. Some were genuinely expelled by Israeli soldiers, in a tragedy long acknowledged by the Jewish state. But most left because they were told to do so by their own leaders, who promised they would only be away for a short time until the Jews were pushed into the sea. When the Jews perfidiously fought back and won, the Arab leaders promptly abandoned the refugees to the UN, who built camps to hold them as an allegedly temporary solution.
Over the years, Israel has made numerous attempts to rectify the refugee situation, only to have each and every one, even substantive improvements to the camps, rejected by the Arabs. Even when the PLO took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, nothing at all was done with the camps. This is because the Arabs do not want a solution to the problem; they want to keep the refugees as desperate and miserable as humanly possible, to be used as weapons against Israel, both in terms of propaganda and as a ready source of terrorists.
It is an interesting historical parallel that about half a million Jews fled or were expelled from various Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Unlike the Arab response to the Palestinians, the Jews were welcomed to Israel with open arms and quickly integrated into Israeli society. Thus, there is no Jewish refugee problem.)
Turning back to the current situation – what is wrong with this picture? The Palestinians are given large tracts of land on which to build a state, no reciprocal action necessary, and their reaction is to threaten war.
The simple fact is that, according to the Palestinians, everything Israel does is wrong. No exceptions. Nothing short of national suicide will satisfy them, because that is what they want. If you pay attention to the Arabic-language Palestinian media, you will quickly learn that the PLO speaks out of both sides of its mouth. In English, they call for negotiations, justice and peaceful coexistence. In Arabic, they call for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion and/or massacre of its Jewish citizens. (For numerous examples translated into English, see the websites of Palestinian Media Watch and the Middle East Media Research Institute.)
Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” When they were offered an independent state in 2000 at Camp David and again at Taba, which would have taken up all of Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, parts of East Jerusalem, and a portion of the Negev Desert to make up the difference, it was rejected with a hail of bullets and bombs. It was the best deal they will ever be offered. In this time of relentless terror, each proposal the Palestinians reject is guaranteed to be replaced with a worse one.
Hopefully, they will realize at some point that Israel is not going anywhere, and that it is in everyone’s best interests to accept a two-state solution. (This also applies to the Israelis who claim all of the West Bank and Gaza as literally God-given. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere, either.) If the Palestinians turn their energies away from terrorism and hatred and instead focus on building a new society dedicated to peace and a new Middle East, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish.
But they have to take that first step before anything else. And, sadly, no one sees that happening anytime soon.
The response from the Palestinians and their allies, on the other hand, is rage, threats and condemnation.
The portion of the media that is friendly to the Palestinians denounced the Sharon plan as a “land grab” for holding on to part of the West Bank, conveniently ignoring that under the plan, Israel will in fact give up a large amount of land and pull out. The media also went ballistic when President Bush endorsed the plan, saying that he does not support a Palestinian “right of return” which would allow the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to move to Israel instead of a Palestinian state, destroying the Jewish state demographically.
(The “right of return” has been the subject of much misconception and misinformation over the years, so here’s a short primer on the topic:
In 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan for what was at the time British Mandatory Palestine, dividing it between the Jewish and Arab communities, with Jerusalem to be internationalized. The Jews accepted the plan while the Arabs, threatening riots and chaos, rejected it, and when Israel declared independence in 1948, the surrounding Arab nations instantly declared war and invaded. While the fighting was ongoing, about half a million Arabs fled their homes in what is now Israel. Some were genuinely expelled by Israeli soldiers, in a tragedy long acknowledged by the Jewish state. But most left because they were told to do so by their own leaders, who promised they would only be away for a short time until the Jews were pushed into the sea. When the Jews perfidiously fought back and won, the Arab leaders promptly abandoned the refugees to the UN, who built camps to hold them as an allegedly temporary solution.
Over the years, Israel has made numerous attempts to rectify the refugee situation, only to have each and every one, even substantive improvements to the camps, rejected by the Arabs. Even when the PLO took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, nothing at all was done with the camps. This is because the Arabs do not want a solution to the problem; they want to keep the refugees as desperate and miserable as humanly possible, to be used as weapons against Israel, both in terms of propaganda and as a ready source of terrorists.
It is an interesting historical parallel that about half a million Jews fled or were expelled from various Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Unlike the Arab response to the Palestinians, the Jews were welcomed to Israel with open arms and quickly integrated into Israeli society. Thus, there is no Jewish refugee problem.)
Turning back to the current situation – what is wrong with this picture? The Palestinians are given large tracts of land on which to build a state, no reciprocal action necessary, and their reaction is to threaten war.
The simple fact is that, according to the Palestinians, everything Israel does is wrong. No exceptions. Nothing short of national suicide will satisfy them, because that is what they want. If you pay attention to the Arabic-language Palestinian media, you will quickly learn that the PLO speaks out of both sides of its mouth. In English, they call for negotiations, justice and peaceful coexistence. In Arabic, they call for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion and/or massacre of its Jewish citizens. (For numerous examples translated into English, see the websites of Palestinian Media Watch and the Middle East Media Research Institute.)
Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” When they were offered an independent state in 2000 at Camp David and again at Taba, which would have taken up all of Gaza, virtually all of the West Bank, parts of East Jerusalem, and a portion of the Negev Desert to make up the difference, it was rejected with a hail of bullets and bombs. It was the best deal they will ever be offered. In this time of relentless terror, each proposal the Palestinians reject is guaranteed to be replaced with a worse one.
Hopefully, they will realize at some point that Israel is not going anywhere, and that it is in everyone’s best interests to accept a two-state solution. (This also applies to the Israelis who claim all of the West Bank and Gaza as literally God-given. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere, either.) If the Palestinians turn their energies away from terrorism and hatred and instead focus on building a new society dedicated to peace and a new Middle East, there’s nothing they can’t accomplish.
But they have to take that first step before anything else. And, sadly, no one sees that happening anytime soon.
4/17/2004
Rock Bottom for Reality TV
I know it has been said many times before that reality TV has sunk so low it cannot go any further. And each time, it has been proven wrong as it outdoes itself again and again, each time enthralling viewers with its train-wreck fascination. From the smarmy almost-prostitution of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire to the merry voyeurism of Big Brother and its clones to the greedily self-delusional women of Joe Millionaire (not to mention the sequel!), the genre keeps plumbing new depths.
Personally, I thought the absolute worst came with The Littlest Groom, in which a 4'5" man looked for love among women of similar height, with a few average-height women thrown in for good measure. It was little more than a multi-hour short joke and brought back memories of the 1938 film The Terror of Tiny Town, which starred "Jed Buell's Midgets in a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors."
How foolish of me. For now comes along the very latest in reality television – surgery for your amusement! ABC did it first with Extreme Makeover, in which "lucky individuals are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime chance" to be refurbished by a team of "the nation's top plastic surgeons, eye surgeons and cosmetic dentists." The now-rebuilt people are shown delighted with their new bodies as they return to whatever passes for normal life with them.
But, as we all know, good enough simply cannot be left alone; showing before-and-after photos just isn't sufficiently humiliating and/or titillating. So Fox (who else?) got into the game with The Swan, which not only puts these allegedly lucky people under the knife, but also pits them against each other in a beauty pageant afterwards. Or, as the Fox website puts it, "Each week feathers will fly as the inevitable pecking order emerges. Those not up to the challenge are sent home. Those who are will go on to compete in a pageant for a chance to become 'The Ultimate Swan.'"
Not be left out, MTV chimed in with I Want a Famous Face, featuring people who for whatever reason want to be transformed into a look-alike of their favorite star, whether that be Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or what have you. For sheer wretchedness, this one actually edges out The Swan, as difficult as that is to imagine. What kind of person would be so obsessed with, say, Britney Spears, that she would actually volunteer to go under the knife and be altered into a freakish clone? Or what kind of man would want to become a shadow of Elvis? And to have it all shown on television. (One wonders what their lives will be like in 20-30 years, when Pamela Anderson is just a bad memory.)
What's next for reality TV? How about The Death House, where condemned prisoners compete against each other; the winner gets a pardon and the loser gets the chair – broadcast live, of course. (No, wait, they already did that in the film The Running Man. Oh, what the hell, put it on anyway and call it a remake.) Or perhaps Sexy Mamas, in which wannabe parents experiment with new sexual positions and fertility treatments, with the winners getting pregnant. (This one can be shown twice: once on network TV with all the naughty bits fuzzed out, and once on pay-per-view with everything displayed for all to see.) Maybe Who Wants to Be My Mommy and Daddy?, where viewers all across America get to vote on which couples can adopt which children. (The really scary part is that this idea was actually pitched to a network but thankfully was not picked up. A patent application was submitted, however.)
We all know why reality television is king of the airwaves. It's cheap to produce, has a ready-made audience of voyeurs, and has an even readier-made pool of applicants who are so dazzled by the chance to get on the boob tube that they will risk national humiliation, disfiguration, and worse. I for one desperately hope that the genre will burn itself out, and soon. I'm not sure how many more editions of Temptation Island can be shown before people start throwing their TVs out the window.
Personally, I thought the absolute worst came with The Littlest Groom, in which a 4'5" man looked for love among women of similar height, with a few average-height women thrown in for good measure. It was little more than a multi-hour short joke and brought back memories of the 1938 film The Terror of Tiny Town, which starred "Jed Buell's Midgets in a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors."
How foolish of me. For now comes along the very latest in reality television – surgery for your amusement! ABC did it first with Extreme Makeover, in which "lucky individuals are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime chance" to be refurbished by a team of "the nation's top plastic surgeons, eye surgeons and cosmetic dentists." The now-rebuilt people are shown delighted with their new bodies as they return to whatever passes for normal life with them.
But, as we all know, good enough simply cannot be left alone; showing before-and-after photos just isn't sufficiently humiliating and/or titillating. So Fox (who else?) got into the game with The Swan, which not only puts these allegedly lucky people under the knife, but also pits them against each other in a beauty pageant afterwards. Or, as the Fox website puts it, "Each week feathers will fly as the inevitable pecking order emerges. Those not up to the challenge are sent home. Those who are will go on to compete in a pageant for a chance to become 'The Ultimate Swan.'"
Not be left out, MTV chimed in with I Want a Famous Face, featuring people who for whatever reason want to be transformed into a look-alike of their favorite star, whether that be Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or what have you. For sheer wretchedness, this one actually edges out The Swan, as difficult as that is to imagine. What kind of person would be so obsessed with, say, Britney Spears, that she would actually volunteer to go under the knife and be altered into a freakish clone? Or what kind of man would want to become a shadow of Elvis? And to have it all shown on television. (One wonders what their lives will be like in 20-30 years, when Pamela Anderson is just a bad memory.)
What's next for reality TV? How about The Death House, where condemned prisoners compete against each other; the winner gets a pardon and the loser gets the chair – broadcast live, of course. (No, wait, they already did that in the film The Running Man. Oh, what the hell, put it on anyway and call it a remake.) Or perhaps Sexy Mamas, in which wannabe parents experiment with new sexual positions and fertility treatments, with the winners getting pregnant. (This one can be shown twice: once on network TV with all the naughty bits fuzzed out, and once on pay-per-view with everything displayed for all to see.) Maybe Who Wants to Be My Mommy and Daddy?, where viewers all across America get to vote on which couples can adopt which children. (The really scary part is that this idea was actually pitched to a network but thankfully was not picked up. A patent application was submitted, however.)
We all know why reality television is king of the airwaves. It's cheap to produce, has a ready-made audience of voyeurs, and has an even readier-made pool of applicants who are so dazzled by the chance to get on the boob tube that they will risk national humiliation, disfiguration, and worse. I for one desperately hope that the genre will burn itself out, and soon. I'm not sure how many more editions of Temptation Island can be shown before people start throwing their TVs out the window.
4/09/2004
Fried Rice
Watching National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testifying before the 9/11 commission had something of a surreal air about it. Here was a woman who spent days making the talk-show rounds, insisting that she would love to testify but simply did not have the time, representing an Administration which fought the commission so fiercely it only convinced Americans that they had something to hide.
In the end, obtaining Rice's testimony, as enlightening as parts of it turned out to be, may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. The price was steep: the commission had to agree not to call anyone else from the Administration under oath and not to recall Rice at all. The commission will be allowed to question President Bush, but any testimony has to be brief, private, not under oath – and given with Vice President Cheney in the same room. (Speculation immediately started circulating as to why Cheney has to be there, with most explanations along the lines of "nobody trusts Bush to say the right thing without Cheney there to keep him in line.")
In her testimony, Rice claimed that nothing pointed towards an imminent terrorist attack – only to contradict herself moments later when she reluctantly admitted that the notorious August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Her attempts to depict the PDB as "frustratingly vague" as to the "manner of attack" also self-destructed when a commissioner said that according to the PDB, "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."
Trying to salvage the situation, she said the PDB was actually about "historical" information rather than a current warning. Nobody believed her; after all, at the time numerous intelligence reports warned of just such an imminent attack. And her vain attempts to repaint Bush's pre-9/11 activities as gunning for Osama bin Laden were simply pathetic, if for no other reason that anyone who paid any attention to the news in 2001 knows that al Qaeda wasn't anywhere on the Administration radar at the time.
The overall impression of her testimony fits perfectly with the long-standing White House pattern of never admitting mistakes no matter what. Whenever anything goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault. Rice spent hours blaming the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton – everyone except the people who were actually in charge that terrible September morning.
Yesterday's events are indicative of the White House attitude towards the 9/11 commission as a whole. After fighting the victims' families for months on the need for any investigation at all, the Administration grudgingly created it but stalled every inch of the way. Refusing to divulge information, refusing to allow testimony, stonewalling like mad – it's like the White House is wearing a large sign saying "We Have Something To Hide, And It's Pretty Darn Big."
Just this week, it was revealed that the White House withheld thousands of pages of documents dating back to the Clinton Administration from the commission, claiming they did not need to see them even though Clinton staffers had already given their approval. (They do not seem to understand that it's up to the commissioners to determine whether items are relevant or not.) The Administration also announced that they would scrutinize the commission's report line-by-line before its release, raising immediate suspicion that anything politically unpleasant would be removed (as happened with the Congressional 9/11 report, when the White House excised information on al Qaeda connections with the Saudi royal family), or at least held up until after the election.
The Administration wants to keep 9/11 as an event solely to be exploited for political purposes, whether it's whipping up public support for invading Iraq or for re-election ads showing a stalwart Bush facing down the evildoers. Any honest debate and/or introspection are officially, in the words of New York Times columnist William Safire, a "blame game," a "you-should-have-known inquisition." God forbid we should try to learn anything from what happened.
Could the 9/11 attacks have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not. A definitive answer may never be known. But that is hardly an excuse for the Bush Administration to drag its feet as it has. They owe it to the nation – and especially to the families – to stop obstructing the commission's work and to support a full, fair and public accounting of what happened.
In the end, obtaining Rice's testimony, as enlightening as parts of it turned out to be, may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. The price was steep: the commission had to agree not to call anyone else from the Administration under oath and not to recall Rice at all. The commission will be allowed to question President Bush, but any testimony has to be brief, private, not under oath – and given with Vice President Cheney in the same room. (Speculation immediately started circulating as to why Cheney has to be there, with most explanations along the lines of "nobody trusts Bush to say the right thing without Cheney there to keep him in line.")
In her testimony, Rice claimed that nothing pointed towards an imminent terrorist attack – only to contradict herself moments later when she reluctantly admitted that the notorious August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Her attempts to depict the PDB as "frustratingly vague" as to the "manner of attack" also self-destructed when a commissioner said that according to the PDB, "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."
Trying to salvage the situation, she said the PDB was actually about "historical" information rather than a current warning. Nobody believed her; after all, at the time numerous intelligence reports warned of just such an imminent attack. And her vain attempts to repaint Bush's pre-9/11 activities as gunning for Osama bin Laden were simply pathetic, if for no other reason that anyone who paid any attention to the news in 2001 knows that al Qaeda wasn't anywhere on the Administration radar at the time.
The overall impression of her testimony fits perfectly with the long-standing White House pattern of never admitting mistakes no matter what. Whenever anything goes wrong, it's always someone else's fault. Rice spent hours blaming the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Richard Clarke, Bill Clinton – everyone except the people who were actually in charge that terrible September morning.
Yesterday's events are indicative of the White House attitude towards the 9/11 commission as a whole. After fighting the victims' families for months on the need for any investigation at all, the Administration grudgingly created it but stalled every inch of the way. Refusing to divulge information, refusing to allow testimony, stonewalling like mad – it's like the White House is wearing a large sign saying "We Have Something To Hide, And It's Pretty Darn Big."
Just this week, it was revealed that the White House withheld thousands of pages of documents dating back to the Clinton Administration from the commission, claiming they did not need to see them even though Clinton staffers had already given their approval. (They do not seem to understand that it's up to the commissioners to determine whether items are relevant or not.) The Administration also announced that they would scrutinize the commission's report line-by-line before its release, raising immediate suspicion that anything politically unpleasant would be removed (as happened with the Congressional 9/11 report, when the White House excised information on al Qaeda connections with the Saudi royal family), or at least held up until after the election.
The Administration wants to keep 9/11 as an event solely to be exploited for political purposes, whether it's whipping up public support for invading Iraq or for re-election ads showing a stalwart Bush facing down the evildoers. Any honest debate and/or introspection are officially, in the words of New York Times columnist William Safire, a "blame game," a "you-should-have-known inquisition." God forbid we should try to learn anything from what happened.
Could the 9/11 attacks have been prevented? Maybe, maybe not. A definitive answer may never be known. But that is hardly an excuse for the Bush Administration to drag its feet as it has. They owe it to the nation – and especially to the families – to stop obstructing the commission's work and to support a full, fair and public accounting of what happened.
4/07/2004
Nader, Raiding
Four years ago, when Ralph Nader entered the presidential race as the Green Party candidate, he provided a much-needed alternative to a Democratic candidate who concentrated on running away from his record and a Republican candidate who ran mostly on his name and his family connections. Of course, enough Democratic voters who were disgusted with Al Gore's campaign voted for Nader that George W. Bush was able to win Florida (with a little help from the Supreme Court) and hence the election.
Back in 2000, the arguments against a Nader vote were largely theoretical. After all, Bush was mostly an empty suit at that point, with not much to define him except slogans and his record as governor of Texas. (Unlike most states, the governor of Texas has little power, relatively speaking, so Bush's Austin record didn't offer much to run on.) The progressive community watched in horror as Gore turned his back on the Clinton Administration's accomplishments, apparently terrified that people would connect him with Bill Clinton's personal scandals. With no major-party candidate espousing a progressive agenda, it's not surprising that many nominally Democratic voters deserted the Gore ticket in droves.
But after three-plus years of a Bush Administration, we now know what would be in store with a Bush re-election. More wars based on false pretenses, more sky-high budget deficits, more gargantuan tax cuts for those who need them the least, more government spying on citizen and non-citizen alike, more fake economic math, and more obsessive secrecy.
On the other hand, the progressive community is not very enthusiastic about John Kerry. While he is considerably better than Bush, his record in the Senate is hardly as liberal as the Bush campaign likes to make out. He is the chosen candidate of the Democratic Leadership Council, the power structure that was instrumental in moving the party away from its progressive roots and towards the political center in the 1990s. (This is why the DLC and the national party were so horrified by Howard Dean's candidacy; he took on the party in addition to the Administration.)
As it stands now, Kerry has a pretty good chance of defeating Bush in November. (Of course, with seven months until Election Day, anything can happen in the interim.) Until Nader is factored into the equation, that is. Current polls show that while Kerry holds a more-or-less consistent lead over Bush, that lead disappears if Nader becomes a third choice.
Nader is perfectly within his rights to run for President, and is equally within his rights to claim that there is no substantive difference between Bush and Kerry. But it doesn't make him right. While Kerry's positions may not be as different from Bush's for many Democrats' liking, he is by far better than Bush. (He cannot possibly be worse.) Many Democrats this year have adopted the slogan "Anybody But Bush," and are apparently determined to support the party nominee no matter who it is.
Four years ago, the Gore campaign said that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." We didn't realize the truth of that slogan at the time. It remains to be seen whether enough Democrats will accept Kerry as is, warts and all, rather than going for a more ideologically pure candidate. The objective this year is to defeat Bush in November. Let's keep our collective eye on the ball.
Back in 2000, the arguments against a Nader vote were largely theoretical. After all, Bush was mostly an empty suit at that point, with not much to define him except slogans and his record as governor of Texas. (Unlike most states, the governor of Texas has little power, relatively speaking, so Bush's Austin record didn't offer much to run on.) The progressive community watched in horror as Gore turned his back on the Clinton Administration's accomplishments, apparently terrified that people would connect him with Bill Clinton's personal scandals. With no major-party candidate espousing a progressive agenda, it's not surprising that many nominally Democratic voters deserted the Gore ticket in droves.
But after three-plus years of a Bush Administration, we now know what would be in store with a Bush re-election. More wars based on false pretenses, more sky-high budget deficits, more gargantuan tax cuts for those who need them the least, more government spying on citizen and non-citizen alike, more fake economic math, and more obsessive secrecy.
On the other hand, the progressive community is not very enthusiastic about John Kerry. While he is considerably better than Bush, his record in the Senate is hardly as liberal as the Bush campaign likes to make out. He is the chosen candidate of the Democratic Leadership Council, the power structure that was instrumental in moving the party away from its progressive roots and towards the political center in the 1990s. (This is why the DLC and the national party were so horrified by Howard Dean's candidacy; he took on the party in addition to the Administration.)
As it stands now, Kerry has a pretty good chance of defeating Bush in November. (Of course, with seven months until Election Day, anything can happen in the interim.) Until Nader is factored into the equation, that is. Current polls show that while Kerry holds a more-or-less consistent lead over Bush, that lead disappears if Nader becomes a third choice.
Nader is perfectly within his rights to run for President, and is equally within his rights to claim that there is no substantive difference between Bush and Kerry. But it doesn't make him right. While Kerry's positions may not be as different from Bush's for many Democrats' liking, he is by far better than Bush. (He cannot possibly be worse.) Many Democrats this year have adopted the slogan "Anybody But Bush," and are apparently determined to support the party nominee no matter who it is.
Four years ago, the Gore campaign said that "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." We didn't realize the truth of that slogan at the time. It remains to be seen whether enough Democrats will accept Kerry as is, warts and all, rather than going for a more ideologically pure candidate. The objective this year is to defeat Bush in November. Let's keep our collective eye on the ball.
4/03/2004
But Is It True?
On April 2, the Labor Department announced that the U.S. economy added an astounding 308,000 jobs in March. The financial markets applauded, sending the Dow Jones up by 97 points and the dollar significantly higher. After years of stagnant employment rates and a "jobless recovery," it's good news indeed.
But is it true?
The fact that the question is even being asked is an indicator of how untrustworthy the Bush Administration has become. After all, we have been down this road before.
In the fall of 2003, when the White House was pressing Congress to pass the much-vaunted Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill, much of the opposition said that it would massively subsidize the health-care and pharmaceutical industries while delivering only token benefits to senior citizens. About a dozen Republican "deficit hawks," already uneasy about the skyrocketing federal budget deficit ($521 billion and climbing), complained about the $399 billion price tag and voted yes only after severe pressure. After the bill was safely passed into law, the White House announced that the "recalculated" cost would be $550 billion - a full third more than Congress and the public had been told.
Several weeks ago, it was revealed that the Administration had known the price tag would be higher all along, and deliberately cooked the books to get the bill passed. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, had originally calculated that the bill's ten-year price would in fact be $550 billion. His then-supervisor, Thomas Scully, ordered him to suppress the figure and substitute a more politically acceptable $399 billion on pain of termination. (Scully has since left the government and become - surprise, surprise! - a highly paid health-care lobbyist.)
There is a considerable difference between putting a political spin on the numbers to make them look good and altering the numbers in the first place. The first is simply normal politics, while the second is blatantly dishonest. Does no one in the Administration remember that this is how Enron got flushed down the toilet?
Now, when the White House is rightfully criticized on its job-creation performance in an election year, along comes a highly favorable job report. The question has to be asked: are the job numbers genuine, or are they just making it up - again?
Not to put too fine a point on it, the White House has only itself to blame for such speculation. Having been shown that they will use intentionally fake math to get a bill passed, one can be forgiven for now looking at each and every set of numbers from the Administration with a skeptical eye.
But is it true?
The fact that the question is even being asked is an indicator of how untrustworthy the Bush Administration has become. After all, we have been down this road before.
In the fall of 2003, when the White House was pressing Congress to pass the much-vaunted Medicare prescription-drug benefit bill, much of the opposition said that it would massively subsidize the health-care and pharmaceutical industries while delivering only token benefits to senior citizens. About a dozen Republican "deficit hawks," already uneasy about the skyrocketing federal budget deficit ($521 billion and climbing), complained about the $399 billion price tag and voted yes only after severe pressure. After the bill was safely passed into law, the White House announced that the "recalculated" cost would be $550 billion - a full third more than Congress and the public had been told.
Several weeks ago, it was revealed that the Administration had known the price tag would be higher all along, and deliberately cooked the books to get the bill passed. Richard Foster, Medicare's head cost analyst, had originally calculated that the bill's ten-year price would in fact be $550 billion. His then-supervisor, Thomas Scully, ordered him to suppress the figure and substitute a more politically acceptable $399 billion on pain of termination. (Scully has since left the government and become - surprise, surprise! - a highly paid health-care lobbyist.)
There is a considerable difference between putting a political spin on the numbers to make them look good and altering the numbers in the first place. The first is simply normal politics, while the second is blatantly dishonest. Does no one in the Administration remember that this is how Enron got flushed down the toilet?
Now, when the White House is rightfully criticized on its job-creation performance in an election year, along comes a highly favorable job report. The question has to be asked: are the job numbers genuine, or are they just making it up - again?
Not to put too fine a point on it, the White House has only itself to blame for such speculation. Having been shown that they will use intentionally fake math to get a bill passed, one can be forgiven for now looking at each and every set of numbers from the Administration with a skeptical eye.
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