Hey, Teddy Kennedy!

OK, I didn't think of this, but I sure wish I did.

The Barcepundit wondered how TV pictures would look if a different finger was dipped into the ink. Here is Iraq's current president, al-Yawar, giving his due regards:

Hey, Ted Kennedy!

This picture just cries out for a caption. Possible captions include insults directed toward Euro-weasels and so on. My best suggestion that Ted Kennedy is the most deserving for his insane pre-election speech demanding that we do a Vietnam style bug-out.

Postscript:

The image was taken from Barcepundit. The image, of course, was photoshopped.

Is this an insane man or does he just play one on TV? “

I'm tempted to give up. I just cannot write as well as the Diplomad.

Here is the Diplomad snickering at John Kerry's attempt to not say something nice about an accomplishment—the election in Iraq— by a man who would make a better president than John Kerry; even if he was in a coma: Dubya.

[here is] your friend John “Christmas in Cambodia” Kerry! Listen to the leader speak:

I think it's gone as expected. <…> it is significant that there is a vote in Iraq. But no one in the United States or in the world-- and I'm confident of what the world response will be. No one in the United States should try to overhype this election. This election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation, and it's going to take a massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community than this administration has been willing to engage in. Absent that, we will not be successful in Iraq.

And a few days prior to this prouncement he had announced,

Throughout Europe, as I met with European leaders, it's clear that they're prepared to do more, but the [Bush] administration has not put the structure together for people to be able to do it," he said.

Is this an insane man or does he just play one on TV? “Gone as expected?” “Overhype?” Uh, you mean like, uh, you did with your war record, Senator? “A massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community than this administration has been willing to engage in?” What is he talking about? What does that mean? Negotiate with Al Zarqawi? Who are the mysterious European leaders he met who want to do more but are prevented from doing it by Bush? They must not belong to the EU which is now busy falling all over itself to kiss Bush’s behind and dump money on Iraq. Or Kofi? Is he afraid of Bush or what?

The French Combat Knife

For a limited time only, get the KY-86 Combat Sheath

This high speed survival weapon comes with a yellow "PEACE" sheath, which can be broken down into two (2) tactical panty shields. These French military-issue quilted menstrual pads are velcroed together to form the sheath. They each feature a special contour shape, to ease in road march rash, and come in a delicate 'Desert Flower' scent.

Manufactured in Dien Bin Phu, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the "Old Yeller" KU-86 French Army Knife is now available in limited numbers to the public. This state-of-the-art survival knife is the exact model currently issued to the elite Frence soldiers. This knife has a look all its own and contains all the special tools every French infratryman requires to for survival on the modern field of battle.

The knife handle consists of indestructable OD green Kraton handles, bisected by a bold yellow stipe and capped with stainless steel end pieces. The French Flag is proudly depicted on one side.

Packed inside this French powerhouse are a lanyard loop; a 'stars and stripes' pacifier, for practicing sucking on America's tit; a back azimuth compass, to aid in hasty retreats; a 3 1/4" 420HC stainless steel butterknife blade; a pop-up white flag, for emergency unconditional surrenders; a hair comb. for keeping vogue combat hairstyles in place; and of course, a whine corkscrew.


hat tip Geeks With Guns

UPDATE:

Welcome to visitors from KNIFE SURVIVAL TECHNIQUES and TRAINING KNIFE!

Look around and enjoy your stay!

France repeats call for foreign troop pullout from Iraq

France repeats call for foreign troop pullout from Iraq:

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has reiterated France's support for Iraqis to re-establish full independence with the pullout of foreign troops from the country, a Tunisian newspaper reported.

Before I continue with the requisite frog bashing, I would like to point out that France's forces are currently infesting the Ivory Coast. Perhaps the French should discontinue staining Africa with their presence before expressing any option regarding their better's conduct.

Now back to the case at hand:

First of all, I smugly note the irony that it is French, of all people, who are saying that the Americans are arrogant! This irony is enough to make my head spin.

Second, exactly who in the world asked (or cares) what the French opinion about whether "foreign" forces (i.e., non-French) forces remain in Iraq might be?

Let me answer that last one. For the record, Amercia is somewhere between completely and totally uninterested in what France's opinion might be. On any topic. If the U.S. ever wants to know what French opinion might be then we will beat it out of them.

George Will on "Statecraft as Soulcraft"

I've admired George Will's work for a long time. Today's article by George Will, The great frontier, refers to one of his books that I had the pleasure of reading back in the 80’s:

Twenty-two years ago there was a book, written by this columnist and read by dozens, titled ``Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does.'' It was a manifesto, of sorts, for ``big government conservatism.'' It argued that modern government, with its myriad prescriptions, proscriptions and incentives, cannot help but endorse and, to some extent, enforce certain values. So it should be thoughtful and articulate about it.

It cannot be said of Bush, as was famously said of Martin Van Buren, that he rows toward his goal ``with muffled oars.'' Bush has said ``I don't do nuance,'' and his ``ownership society'' agenda -- from Social Security personal accounts to health savings accounts to tax cuts -- is explicitly explained as soulcraft. Its purpose is to combat the learned incompetence of persons who become comfortable with excessive dependence on and supervision by government. His agenda's aim is to continue, in the language of his inaugural address, ``preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society.''

That is the crux of modern conservatism -- government taking strong measures to foster in the citizenry the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual independence. That is what the Homestead Act did, out in what no longer is the Great American Desert. "

As usual, George’s article is suffused with intelligent observations. Recommended reading.

Social Security calculator

Bob White discovered that the Heritage Foundation has put together an Social Security calculator. This calculator shows how much more you as a worker can get if your FICA taxes were invested in a Personal Retirement Account rather than Social Security.


Thanks Bob!

72% turnout in Iraq's election

With about two hours to go before the polls close in Iraq, FoxNews is reporting that there has been a 72% turnout. My Political Science professor once made a statement to our class: "The ballot box is just a substitute for blood in the street." Via today's vote, the Iraqis have registered that they are not acquiescing to being ruled by “blood in the street”; and they’re defying the al Qaeda death squads to do so.

The winners, in general, include the Iraqis and America. The Iraqis, of course, won because they are refusing to be ruled by tyrants. For America this election is another successful step in our project to tame the parts of the middle east that are infested with criminal regimes.

America military forces deserve special mention: over 1,100 American warriors have died advancing America’s interests. Criminal regimes spanned an uninterrupted area from Syria to Pakistan when Bush took office in 2001. One of the regimes, Afghanistan’s Taliban, protected bin Laden, provided a sanctuary for al Qaeda and enabled al Qaeda’s September 11^th terror attack on the U.S.

Today elected governments and not criminal regimes run Iraq and Afghanistan because our warriors removed the despots and created the stability needed to organize civil governments.

And we got a freebie: our exhibition of military force flipped Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi without firing a shot—or even our showing any interest in servicing him in the near future. Muammar Gaddafi ditched his WMD program for one reason and one reason alone: he saw what our military did to Saddam and Gaddafi was frantic to avoid Saddam’s fate. No prison cells for Gaddafi!

President Bush also deserves special mention. The successful outcome for this election is yet another in a series of victories for George W Bush. This victory also means a defeat for Bush’s opponents. A partial list of these losers includes:

bin Laden: he anointed Zarqawi to be prince “the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq”, Iraq presumabily being a district in the Caliphate bin Laden aspires to.

Zarqawi and his al Qaeda death squads: Zarqawi’s wave of homicide bombings, explicit death threats and terrorism was just one big wet firecracker.

The Baathist death squads: Baathists who were trying to reestablish an Sunni-based tyranny received a setback.

Syria and Iran: they provided support and money for the death squads that were trying to stop the election. Oh, and you’re next! Start sweating it.

The Weasels : France, Germany and France’s toy poodle, Belgium, did everything in their (non-existent) power to stop the U.S.

The UN : The UN Oil for Security Council Vetoes Scandal descredited the UN.

Saddam: Saddam bet the farm that French UNSC vetoes would save him from one division of U.S. Marines.

The Main Stream Media: The MSM was pulling for U.S. defeat.

The Democrats: The Democratic Party’s elites were pulling for U.S. defeat.

Ted Kennedy.: Treasonous drunkard, Ted Kennedy, has been trying to cause the U.S. to loss in Iraq in the same way he caused us to lose in Vietnam: by making us abandon the battlefield and leave our enemies in control of it.

Yup, Bush overcame some major opposition.

Oh, and an order for Treasonous Drunkard Ted Kennedy: Drink up.

The Diplomad upsets the ignorant left!

The Diplomad has a trumphant post where he notes that certain leftist blogs are having a collective hissy-fit because he was less than adoring of the UN. Actually the Diplomad is very contemptious of the UN, having wasted too much of his adult life watching that odious transnational organization in action.

Anyway, the Diplomad writes much funnier than I can. Here's a teaser:

Ah, The Diplomad has upset the ignorant left! That makes us happy. We are very happy; we dance the Diplomadic dance of joy -- a dance seen only twice before, to wit, on the occasions of the dates of the HowardianBushite election wins.

It seems that the leftoblogs (you can find them in our comments section, our trackbacks, or at www.technorati.com) are in a hissy-fit because our little non-profit blog has dared to poke fun at their sacred for-profit UN and their untouchable for-mucho-profit Global Warming Franchise. It seems the UN hasn't shared its Oil-for-Food gains with its supporters as yet, so they have been unable to go out and buy a working brain with the optional sense-of-humor chip installed.

The Diplomad should be required reading.

Like Saddam, Social Security is a crisis until Bush tries to fix it

The Questions And Observations blog, QandO, has an excellent post, Oh, that Social Security Crisis, which analyzes why the why the Democrats have suddenly changed their mind about whether Social Security is at risk.

QandO uses a couple of article by BSD afflicted Krugman that simply claims that Bush invented the Social Security crisis yesterday. QandO notes a number of speeches by Clinton, and others, during the 1990's that specifically mention the Social Security crisis. They also note that the Social Security Administration was saying 1998, "It is important to address the financing of both the OASI and DI programs soon..."

Regarding why the Dems are exhibiting such antics now, QandO quotes Tom Maguire's reasoning:..

if I were a proper Dem, I would insist that there was no current Social Security problem, and await the day when a Dem president and Congress could implement a more progressive solution.

Yup, I agree.

Ted Kennedy tries to rerun tet 68

Rush Limbaugh examined Ted Kennedy's recent comments at the National Press Club:

SENATOR KENNEDY: We have reached the point that a prolonged American military presence in Iraq is no longer productive for either Iraq or the United States. The US military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution. No matter how many times the administration denies it, there is no question they misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq. Despite the clear lesson of history, the president stubbornly clings to the false hope that the turning point is just around the corner.

RUSH: You remember, ladies and gentlemen, shortly -- by the way, you know where this term "quagmire" started? It's Walter Cronkite's word for Vietnam, and it is that expression of Cronkite's which is seen in the mainstream media to have turned the public opinion against the war. Thus, the use of "quagmire" as a word to describe Iraq by Senator Kennedy is no accident. Now, you'll recall that shortly before our election in November, Osama bin Laden tried to influence our election with a statement aired on Al-Jazeera. Yesterday, three days before the crucial election in Iraq, Senator Kennedy tried to influence the Iraq election and the demoralization of US troops and the undermining of US policy with a statement that he hopes will influence the election in Iraq. ...

Yup, I've already blogged about how Teddy led the Senate to welch on our aggrements to support South Vietnam, which led to South Vietnam losing to North Vietnam. That fat obnoxious drunkard is trying to make the U.S. lose again.

Keep trying, Teddy, bin Laden is counting on you coming through. After all, just like the North Vietnamese, bin Laden can't beat us on the battlefield—he can only win through turncoats like you.

Iraq the vote

National Lampoon comes through again. Also "Iraq the vote" is a great play on MTV's "mock the vote" slogan.

Hat tip to Shane for emailing this link.

The Tyrant-friendly EU

Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, observes that sanctimonious lip-servicer of human-rights, the EU, is practicing appeasement:

I vividly remember the slightly ludicrous, slightly risqué and somewhat distressing predicament in which Western diplomats in Prague found themselves during the Cold War. They regularly needed to resolve the delicate issue of whether to invite to their embassy celebrations various Charter 77 signatories, human-rights activists, critics of the communist regime, displaced politicians, or even banned writers, scholars and journalists -- people with whom the diplomats were generally friends.

Sometimes we dissidents were not invited, but received an apology, and sometimes we were invited, but did not accept the invitation so as not to complicate the lives of our courageous diplomat friends. …

`Dissidents or trade'

This all happened when the Iron Curtain divided Europe -- and the world -- into opposing camps. Western diplomats had their countries' economic interests to consider, but, unlike the Soviet side, they took seriously the idea of ''dissidents or trade.'' I cannot recall any occasion at that time when the West or any of its organizations (NATO, the European Community, etc.) issued some public appeal, recommendation or edict stating that some specific group of independently minded people -- however defined -- were not to be invited to diplomatic parties, celebrations or receptions.

But today this is happening. One of the strongest and most powerful democratic institutions in the world -- the European Union -- has no qualms in making a public promise to the Cuban dictatorship that it will re-institute diplomatic Apartheid. The EU's embassies in Havana will now craft their guest lists in accordance with the Cuban government's wishes. The shortsightedness of socialist Prime Minister José Zapatero of Spain has prevailed.

José Zapatero, you may recall, is the Spain’s socialist Neville Chamberlain who ran on a platform of bugging out in Iraq. He was opposed by, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who was a steadfast ally of the U.S.

Al Qaeda pulled their man, José Zapatero, to victory by bombing a Spanish commuter train a few days before the March 2004 election. Zapatero won and to Spain’s everlasting shame, capitulated in the war with al Qaeda by removing Spain’s soldiers from Iraq.

I can hardly think of a better way for the EU to dishonor the noble ideals of freedom, equality and human rights that the Union espouses -- indeed, principles that it reiterates in its constitutional agreement. To protect European corporations' profits from their Havana hotels, the Union will cease inviting open-minded people to EU embassies, and we will deduce who they are from the expression on the face of the dictator and his associates. It is hard to imagine a more shameful deal.

In my view, old Europe has already stained her honor. The EU’s actions are not a matter of supine acquiescence but instead are their technique. The EU countries are violating any actual principles since they never gave a damn about such things anyway.

During the 1990’s they couldn’t be bothered to halt an ongoing genocide occurring within Europe. Just think about this outrage: the Europeans were so unconcerned with the genocide conducted by Milosevic against fellow modern-day Europeans—in Europe, at that—that none of them could bother themselves to stop him.

Now mind you, the Europeans aren’t helpless; many European countries are members of NATO, have militaries with sufficient troops and equipment to service Milosevic.

Now why would anyone expect this bunch selfish moral midgets—who were willing to sit while Milosevic exterminated their fellow Europeans—to be willing to inconvenience themselves over Castro—who is just running measly tyranny over a few million Cubans of European decent? I don’t. In fact, I’d be surprised if they’d miss this opportunity.

[…].

Today, the EU is dancing to Fidel Castro's tune. … tomorrow it could bid for contracts to build missile bases on the coast of the People's Republic of China. The following day it could allow its decisions on Chechnya to be dictated by Russian President Vladimir Putin's advisors. Then, for some unknown reason, it could make its assistance to Africa conditional on fraternal ties with the worst African dictators.

Where will it end? The release of Milosevic? Denying a visa to Russian human-rights activist Sergey Kovalyov? An apology to Saddam Hussein? The opening of peace talks with al Qaeda?[emphasis mine—johnh]

For that matter, I’m expecting France to propose exchanging ambassadors with al Qaeda any day now.

It is suicidal for the EU to draw on Europe's worst political traditions, the common denominator of which is the idea that evil must be appeased and that the best way to achieve peace is through indifference to the freedom of others.[emphasis mine—johnh]

If that behavior suicidal then they have been committing suicide for years now.

Remember this, gentle readers, the next time you hear some sanctimonious Euro-weenie complain about the U.S. not meeting their lofty human-rights standards. Their human-rights rhetoric is only for show. It is attire for preening about on the world stage, not for governing their conduct.

War Stories from Fallujah

Did you ever want to read a well-written, first person account of combat in Fallujah? Well first lieutenant Neil Prakash, is both an excellent writer and an superb story-teller. He is also a tank platoon leader in Avenger Company, which is organized as Team Avenger for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

The full breakdown of 1LT Prakash’s place in the scheme of things is: 1LT Prakash, Avenger Co, 2nd Battalion — 63rd Armor Regiment “Lions” (2-63AR), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF 2), Forward Operations Base (FOB) WARHORSE

His blog, Armor Geddon, looks to be a cross between a journal and collection of short stories about his adventures when the U.S. took down Fallujah. I highly recommend going back to his first posts and then reading forward so as to read his tale in chronological order.

Here’s a teaser regarding some of the exercises that occurred just before we went into Fallujah:

SGT P told me all about the rehearsal yesterday that took the task force up to the attack position. They had reconned the site where they would stage for the attack and where we would breech into the city. "Oh my lord, Sir. You should have seen it. There were more vehicles than I have ever seen in my life. There were tanks, bradleys, humvees and PCs as far as you could see, stretched out across the desert. It was sick."

"Yeah well, I heard that yesterday was a reduced force rehearsal. Only the key leaders were out there with you. That was only 25% of the division task force for the assault."

“Sweet Jesus. This city has no idea what's about to hit it."

You're next!

Make sure you put some english on it when you swat them with that wrench!

Hat tip to Neo Warmonger

Thomas L Friedman: "Boy is my butt sore"

New blogger on the blog and member of the State Department's Republican underground, "New Sisyphus", just fisked the same Friedman column that I worked over a few days ago. Friedman, who writes a column for the New York Times (motto: All the news that fits their spin) did a column that New Sisyphus couldn't resider either: News Flash: NY Times, Columnist Dislike President Bush, Despair For Future of U.S.-E.U. Relations. Here's a taste:

As a liberal bellwether, Friedman represents the ultimate in conventional wisdom (the good ol' CW). The CW is hopelessly naive about Palestinian intentions; Friedman is hopelessly naive about Palestinian intentions. The CW is that any foreign policy challenge or setback is due to some American failure; Friedman is pretty sure that any foreign policy challenge or setback is obviously due to some American failure. The CW is that Democratic policy provisions are always altruistically motivated and self-evidently good; Friedman thinks that.....well, you get the idea.

Yesterday's Friedman column, "An American in Paris," is an exemplar of the genre. Chock full of cliches, lame metaphors and tired thinking--the kind one would expect from a political science professor at Evergreen State College--it was just crying our for a Fisking.

So, without further ado, please follow us to Friedmanland, were everything is always America's fault, Saudi princes have bona fide peace plans and if only Likud would retire from politics the Middle East would be an oasis of peace, science and industry!

[...]

In Friedmanland, France is Europe and Europe is France (plus perhaps Germany, but only if the Christian Democrats/CSU aren't in power). Never mind that the President enjoys solid support in Iraq from half of Europe in the form of actual boots on the ground (United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova, Norway, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovakia, Macedonia, and until terrorism-stained elections the better half of Spain). Nope, so long as enlightened opinion in the Quai D'Orsay says non, then Europe is against us! Certainly no one Tommy talks to is pro-Bush. I mean, he is a journalist after all.

Now go read his entire post, he had me cracking up.

EU to implode under burden of red tape

The EU Referendum blog has a post titled Cut red tape or suffer decline.

The whole post is worth reading but my reason for commenting on it is because it reenforces a point that I've been harping on for a while: the Europeans are drowning in their statist waste products.

Here's Richard of EU Referendum:

Latest of the long line of critics, the government's own 'red-tape czar' is calling on the EU to improve its business regulation or face long-term economic decline, according to The Times today.

Of course the Europeans are already in decline. Then the 'red-tape' czar, in a Herculean feat of mental alchemy, then

... called for an independent organisation to monitor and audit red tape and said: 'There need to be sufficient commission civil servants (sic) to carry out these functions and to progress the simplification agenda.'

Did ya catch that? The clueless Euro-weenie is proposing to add another set of bureaucrats who's purpose is to lift the dead hand of bureaucracy from Europe's vestigial economies. That like sending Custer more indians.

Asked what would happen if red tape continued to grow, Mr Arculus said: 'I think the consequences for Europe are extremely serious.' Europe's economy could decline to half the size of the US over the next 20 years if the tide of regulation was not stemmed, he said. [emphasis mine—johnh]

Yup, that's why the only thing that Europe is going to do is shrink in our rear-view mirror as we leave them behind.


Hat tip to The Diplomad

The Social Security tar pit

My friend, Tom G, is organizing a Townhall meeting on Social Security reform. He sent an email query to his associates eliciting feedback regarding Social Security concerns.

Here is a list of my reasons for believing we have to do something about reforming Social Security.

The Social Security (SS) system senselessly insists on conducting itself in a losing manner. You could design an investment program that would be even less profitable than SS, but that would take time. Our laws then coercively force citizens to invest in this poorly performing investment.

In summary, our SS system forces citizens to involuntarily invest a portion of their retirement savings into the least attractive retirement plan available.

The only defense I can think of for the SS system is that it is guaranteed to avoid loses at the price of only producing small gains. This defense is gravely weakened because the “safety” it provides is purchased at such a prohibitive price in lost opportunity that only the most clueless citizens would select it over the private accounts. (Of course I’m only referring to citizens who are approaching retirement. These folks do not have enough time to benefit from private accounts.)

The SS system enervates our economic growth. SS taxes are invested in government bonds. Like flies trapped in government securities amber, the trillions of dollars in the SS funds languishes in stasis until the citizens retire and it is doled out in monthly checks.

The money “invested” in SS is lost to the economy for the forty years or so between a citizen’s first paycheck and when he gets it back as a SS check. In contrast, retirement savings invested in private accounts—which presumably would be invested in index funds and so on—would have increased annual GNP growth by a few percent each year. This increase in the GNP’s rate of increase, of course, would compound annually.

We would all be much better off today if private account had been around for the last forty years.

Without either a material reduction in benefits or a material reform (e.g., private accounts), the existing SS system will become a threat to our economy. This is because the ratio of workers to retirees will become so low that SS taxes will have to be greatly increased. This debilitating tax increase will become a progressively larger drag on our economy.

Similar to the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Europeans’ much larger welfare state infrastructure warns us as to our fate should we fail to reform SS. The Europe’s welfare states are in trouble for the same reason that our SS system is destined to be in trouble: aging populations resulting in growing number of recipients and dwindling numbers of taxpayers to fund entitlements. Europe crisis has arrived decades before ours because (1) their population is aging quicker than ours, and (2) the stresses on their economies—already stagnated by their cradle-to-grave welfare systems—are approaching the danger zone.

Like so many clueless dinosaurs futilely struggling to escape a tar pit, the European countries are struggling to escape their self-constructed fiscal trap. This slow-motion spectacle of the European economies being consumed by their welfare states is a morbid example of what awaits us should we fail to act.

The sooner we reform SS the less painful it will be. It needs to be done, we need to get it over with.

Why is Dean running?

So Howard Dean is looking destined to become the DNC chairman.

And Hillary—as expected—is speechifying like she will be running in 2008.

And waaaay back in winter of 2003/2004—back when it looked like Dean was going to run the table and be the Democratic nominee in 2004—I read Dick Morris’ prediction that if Dean did win the Democratic nomination then

Dean, upon copping the prize, is likely to fire Terry McAuliffe and take control of the Democratic National Committee. No longer will its coffers be available to the Clintons to use as their private fund, channeling donations to candidates and causes they favor or that favor them.

Hmmm…. Clinton—Bill, that is—handpicked McAuliffe because he knew that McAuliffe would be a reliable marionette; dispensing DNC cash as Bill instructed him to. McAuliffe would have come in handy during Hillary’s 2008 election campaign.

And I guess the reason why Dean would have immediately fired McAuliffe is because McAuliffe—being Clinton’s creature—was covertly working against Dean during his campaign.

Now this is getting interesting. Dean is working hard to replace McAuliffe as the DNC chairman. If Dean is successful—and it increasingly looks that he will be successful—then Dean will be in a position to return the favor during Hillary’s 2008 campaign.

Yeah, I know, this thread of circumstances is flaky enough to get me nominated for the “Oliver Stone ‘Manchurian Canard’” award. And I’m thinking I deserve it this time.

Is Dean vindictive enough to go all of this hassle just to get some payback at the Clinton’s expense? I wouldn’t have thought so.

Perhaps Dean genuinely thinks that his leadership is exactly what the Democratic Party needs. (I’m sure the left-lobe of the blogosphere’s brain would agree with that assessment.)

Well, I don’t know the answers, I’m just asking.

In any case, my judgment is that it doesn’t matter that much who gets elected to the DNC chair; nobody can get elected unless they are accepted by the Michael-Moore-deranged Democratic Party elites. That should make it easier to beat’em again next time.

Turner Compares Fox's Popularity to Hitler

Ted Turner called Fox a propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared Fox News Channel's popularity to Adolph Hitler's popular election to run Germany before World War II.

I think Mr. Jane Fonda is just mad because FoxNEWS has kicked CNN's butt in the ratings.

Turner made those fiery comments in his first address at the National Association for Television Programming Executives' conference since he was ousted from Time Warner Inc. five years ago. Other comments include:

On Fox News: While Fox may be the largest news network [and has overtaken Turner's CNN], it's not the best, Turner said. He followed up by pointing out that Adolph Hitler got the most votes when he was elected to run Germany prior to WWII. He said the network is the propaganda tool for the Bush Administration. "There's nothing wrong with that. It's certainly legal. But it does pose problems for our democracy. Particularly when the news is dumbed down," leaving voters without critical information on politics and world events and overloaded with fluff," he said.

Yeah, I just hate it when a major news network withholds "critical information on politics and world events" from us voters. Why I recall a "a chief news executive", named Eason Jordan, did an opinion piece in the New York Time where he admitted his network:

...has systematically covered up stories of Iraqi atrocities. Reports of murder, torture, and planned assassinations were suppressed in order to maintain [his network's] Baghdad bureau.

Now maybe it's just me, but I would say that this withheld information was pretty important, “critical” even. So who was his employer? What news network would deliberately withhold such information?

I'm SOOOO glad you asked! It was Ted's network: "al CNN"!

Hey Ted! Thanks for that heads up on FoxNEWS! Get back with us if Fox ever descends below the standards of CNN (i.e., below sea level.)

Thanks big guy!

Hat tip to Drudge

update:

I should have expected this, but since I never do I was caught off-guard when, of course, Ted Turner's dumb comments—comparing FoxNEWS to Hitler and so on—was a topic on Brit Hume's segment on this evening's news.

After Brit quoted the effects of second hand marijuana on Ted Turner he then quoted a riposte from "a Fox News Spokesman”:

'Ted Turner is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network and now his mind. We wish him well."

My initial post lasted about 2 hours before Fox topped it. Oh well.

Postscript: the quote from the FoxNEWS spokesman is from my memory. I know that quote is fundamentally correct but might slightly vary from what was actually said.

Update2:

The quote of the FoxNEWS spokesmane has been corrected. Now have a link to the the quote.

It's like watching a hamster blow up in a microwave, only this time you’re gleeful!

This hilarious gem (quicktime) is so good that the blogosphere’s PC-weenies are blowing a gasket. (note: you will have to click "View the VW ad" after arriving a the hyperlink.)

The miscreants include:

KelliPundit: “it is one of the most tasteless pieces of film, no doubt.”

Jewlicious: “Most tasteless ad ever?”

Jeremy Tai Abbert: “That tastless viral ad for the Volkswagen Polo…”

They hated it. Good! This shows who is supporting the mad dogs over the underdogs around here.

On the other hand mrbrown gets my price for brilliant tongue-in-cheek commentary:

And if you've watched it, you might want to know that RoSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) is angry at this commercial. They noticed that the VW driver doesn't appear to be wearing a seat belt or any other form of safety harness, thus making him a unsuitable role model for impressionable British youth.

and we can’t tolerate “unsuitable role models” now, can we?

Note: you can install the plug-in necessary to view a Quicktime movie here.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin

Postscript:

The title of the post was inspired by a title on the Industrial Waste blog. My bad.

Update:

KelliPundit responds with this comment:

John,
Just discovered that you have judged my entire distaste for terrorists because I did not exactly enjoy the VW Bomber commercial.

I will not defend my stance on terrorists since it is painfully obvious that you did not take any time at my site to find out what side I fight for. I guess it is just too easy to take my dislike for the commercial and judge everything about me. Could it be laziness?

Now to the commercial: Since you obviously valued my opinion...What bothered me about the commercial was seeing the mother holding the baby outside the cafe. As a mother of young boys, my stomach instantly churned at this site. Call it reflexive or whatever. But it was my gut feeling at the time I saw the video. I've also visited the Jewish websites that lists the victims of suicide bombers and have read the individual stories. It struck a raw nerve in me that did not make me laugh.

Having said that, I am open minded enough to see how many people see this commercial as funny. I don't ridicule those people or call them names. They are entitled to their gut feeling as well.

After finding your post I nearly just blew it off and did not respond, but I felt compelled to do so. Compare our side bar of links and they are not much different. Dude, we're on the same team. Let the other side chew on each other. I believe we are all entitled to our own gut reactions to different situations...Geez...I don't believe I pleaded for the feelings of terrorists anywhere.

My first thought was how hurtful this commercial would be to anyone who had lost a loved one or had survived such a horrific event. Ridicule me on those grounds
if you must.

KelliPundit

Hmmm... After looking at your site It is apparent that I was wrong and you are right. I was too careless to bother looking at your site and just jumped to the conclusion that your objection was motivated by misplaced sympathy—not revulsion at the material itself.

You deserve, and I giving you, a public apology.

That I'm in this position is all my fault. I would be here I had exercised due diligence.

Again, my humble apologies.

johnh

Another masterpiece by Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson has produced another masterfully written article Postmodern War, which was published in the excellent City Journal:

It is still suicidal to meet the United States in a conventional war—at least for any enemy that has not fully adopted Western arms, discipline, logistics, and military organization. The recent abrupt collapse of both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s regime amply proves the folly of fighting America in direct conflicts. The military dynamism that enables the United States to intervene militarily in the Middle East—in a manner in which even the richest Middle Eastern countries could not intervene in North America—is not an accident of geography or a reflection of genes, but a result of culture. Our classical Western approaches to politics, religion, and economics—including consensual government, free markets, secularism, a strong middle class, and individual freedom—eventually translate on the battlefield into better-equipped, motivated, disciplined, and supported soldiers.

To an American television audience, al-Qaida videos of pajama-clad killers in ski masks beheading captives look scary, of course. But a platoon of Rangers would slaughter hundreds of them in seconds if they ever approached Americans openly on the field of conventional battle or even for brief moments of clear firing. In Mogadishu, Somalia, everything boded ill for a few trapped Americans—outnumbered, far from home, facing local hostility in urban warfare—and yet the real lesson was not that a few Americans were tragically killed, but that the modern successors to Xenophon’s Ten Thousand or the Redcoats at Rorke’s Drift managed to shoot their way out and kill over 1,000 in the process.

This is one of those articles that is so good that I just have nothing to add. Now go read it!

Iran, the ultimate "red state."

Thomas Friedman analyzes the world's biggest "blue state" (Europe), Americans who's outlook is no longer American but European (the Democrats) and the dawning realization in Europe that their anti-Bush sentiments are actually anti-American sentiments.

Why are Europeans so blue over George Bush's re-election? Because Europe is the world's biggest "blue state." This whole region is a rhapsody in blue. These days, even the small group of anti-anti-Americans in the European Union is uncomfortable being associated with Mr. Bush. There are Euro-conservatives, but, aside from, maybe, the ruling party in Italy, there is nothing here that quite corresponds to the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-tax, anti-national-health-care, anti-Kyoto, openly religious, pro-Iraq-war Bush Republican Party.

If you took all three major parties in Britain - Labor, Liberals and Conservatives - "their views on God, guns, gays, the death penalty, national health care and the environment would all fit somewhere inside the Democratic Party," said James Rubin, the Clinton State Department spokesman, who works in London. "That's why I get along with all three parties here. They're all Democrats!"

[...]

...the prevailing mood on the continent (if I may engage in a ridiculously sweeping generalization!) still seems to be one of shock and awe that Americans actually re-elected this man.

Before Mr. Bush's re-election, the prevailing attitude in Europe was definitely: "We're not anti-American. We're anti-Bush." But now that the American people have voted to re-elect Mr. Bush, Europe has a problem maintaining this distinction. The logic of the Europeans' position is that they should now be anti-American, not just anti-Bush, but most Europeans don't seem to want to go there. ...

Why not? The they will just be joining the French.

Europeans were convinced that Kerry had won on election night and were telling themselves that they knew all along that Americans were not all that bad - and then suddenly, as the truth emerged, there was a feeling of slow resignation: 'Oh well, we've been dreaming,' " said Dominique Moisi, one of France's top foreign policy analysts. "In fact, real America is moving away from us. We don't share the same values. ... In France it was a very emotional issue. It was as if Americans were voting for the president of France as much as for president of the United States."

[...]

The one concrete result of the U.S. election will probably be to reinforce Europe's focus on its own efforts to build a United States of Europe, and to further play down the trans-Atlantic alliance. "When it comes to emotions, the re-election of Bush has reinforced the feeling of alienation between Europe and the U.S.," Mr. Moisi said. "It is not that we are so much against America, it is that we cannot understand the evolution of that country. ... This election has weakened the concept of 'the West.' "[Emphasis mine—johnh]

HA! "Weakened the concept of 'the West'", Huh? And exactly who's "concept of 'the West' might have been weakened? Europe created Communism (Karl Marx was a German), Fascism, Nazism, Socialism and UN worship and yet according to top frog foreign policy analyst, Moisi, it’s all America’s fault that “the concept of ‘the West’” has been weakened.”

Hey Moisi, since when has the “the concept of ‘the West’” included incorporating losing national strategies such a heavy trade protectionism, economy crushing welfare systems, high unemployment, transnational progressivism, effete-ism, unilateral disarmament, the inability to defend national interests, the refusal to acknowledge that the West is under islamofascist attack? Not doing these things doesn’t weaken the concept of ‘the West’, it just make the U.S. a better, stronger place than Europe.

Let me offer you my concept of ‘the West’: the Europeans can fund economy-crushing welfare states by unilaterally disarming. Europeans have the freedom to be this irresponsible because they know that the U.S. is defending Europe.

The Europeans can indulge in moral preening on the world stage because they are relieved of the manly tasks of defending themselves. Europe’s detachment from having to conduct her own defense make it so much easier for her to shriek effeminate objections to the methods the U.S. uses when defending Europe.

And my final part of my concept of ‘the West’ is that Europe will have a fruitless hissy fit after she realizes how America has already dismissed Europe as simply irrelevant. America need not take any notice; nobody here (other than Democrats) gives a damn.

Funnily enough, the one country on this side of the ocean that would have elected Mr. Bush is not in Europe, but the Middle East: it's Iran, where many young people apparently hunger for Mr. Bush to remove their despotic leaders, the way he did in Iraq.

An Oxford student who had just returned from research in Iran told me that young Iranians were "loving anything their government hates," such as Mr. Bush, "and hating anything their government loves." Tehran is festooned in "Down With America" graffiti, the student said, but when he tried to take pictures of it, the Iranian students he was with urged him not to. They said it was just put there by their government and was not how most Iranians felt.

Iran, he said, is the ultimate "red state." Go figure.

Go figure what? What is there to work-out about the obvious? Of course the Iranian people would love for us to remove their criminal regime and toss them the keys. Watching the impending elections in Iraq has to be killing them with envy.

If the media coverage was war, the good guys would be getting slaughtered

Chrenkoff examines the firehose of negative news on Iraq.

... it's one thing to have a gut feeling about media negativity and another to know exactly how negative the coverage is. So today I decided to do a little tally.

Chrenkoff's numbers are staggering.

Hat tip to powerline

At any cost, don't let'em off the plantation!

David Limbaugh makes a polemic point:

"Two major changes have occurred since those long-forgotten days when Democrats were identifying Social Security as a crisis that had to be fixed immediately: The problem has gotten worse, and Democrats have proven they weren't sincere in the first place."

Well, as polemics this might work but what if you are trying to make a serious point?

Everybody acknowledged the last time we patched up Social Security that the changes weren’t a permanent solution; it was only intended to keep Social Security creaking along for another few decades. The repairs were considered successful because they kicked the problem somewhere into the next century.

The Social Security fund’s balance improved after the last fix, for a while, just as we always expected it to. And now it is on the decline again, again completely anticipated.

So the first part of David Limbaugh’s assertion, that “the problem has gotten worse” is true to the extent that the fund’s balance has been declining since its apogee a few years ago.

Now on to Limbaugh’s second point. He asserts that the Democrats have bad motives: “Democrats have proven they weren't sincere in the first place [about fixing Social Security].” Is this fair?

Well I guess it depends on what you define as an acceptable Social Security fix. The Democrats oppose any fix—regardless of its efficacy—if it reduces the citizen’s reliance on government run (read Democrat run) programs.

President Bush’s proposed fix will phase account holders from a government-run wealth transfer program into private investment accounts. It will also, eventually, render Social Security irrelevant. Nobody in their right mind would chose the underperforming Social Security accounts once everybody gets used to the idea of private accounts. Especially after they get used to the idea of private accounts being a good—and much more profitable—risk over the long run.

In fact private accounts will become the new “third rail” of politics. Voters will eject any politician that talks-up doing away with the private accounts. Social Security will, in contrast, will be come quite huggable.

The Democrat’s idea of a fix is to layer yet another temporary patch and kick the problem into the future another few years. One might sense that this is less of an “idea” than a habit—unless you also understand that the Democrats need Social Security for its own sake.

Put another way, the Democrats are the ones who need Social Security—not the country. The country needs some structured system coerces its citizens into prudently saving for their retirement. The Democrats need a government-run (read Democrat run) program that detaches citizens from our economy and—the Democrats hope—retards any inclination toward self-reliance. The ideal outcome, for the Democrats, would be an enervated citizenry with a herd-like fear of leaving the Democratic plantation.

Private account will complete the transformation of America into an ownership society. An ownership society will make it impossibly awkward for Democrats to demagogue Wall Street when all of the voters have a stake in Wall Street’s success. An ownership society will also be a society where the average person is much wealthier and the government—except for having to establish an involuntary investment structure—will have little to do with it.

Put another way, it is the Democrats who will die if George Bush grasps the “third rail” of politics.

So was David Limbaugh’s second assertion unfair? Not if “fixing Social Security” means fixing our national retirement system. Yes if “fixing Social Security” means retaining our existing system at any cost.

postscript:

As I type these words I realized that I might be wrong: having a stake in America’s victory over Islamofascists never stopped the Democrats from demagoguing Iraq. Oh well, let them continue demagoguing Wall Street too; they will just be driving yet another wedge between themselves and Americans.

Iran Will Defend Against U.S. Attack

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned the U.S. "Iran has plans to defend itself should the United States make any aggressive moves". He added 'The possibility of a U.S. attack against Iran is very low. We think America is not in a position to take a lunatic action of attacking Iran,' Khatami said. 'The U.S. is deeply engaged in Iraq.'"

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

That was the best laugh since John Kerry challenged the SwiftVets to "Bring it on" and then, maybe 24 hours later, began begging Bush to call them off before they hurt him too badly.

OK, let's get back to the warning growled by Iran's Mad-Dog-in-Chief. After a cursory examination of about, oh, 32 milliseconds, I determined that this threat was so loopy that only Barbra Boxer wouldn't giggle.

I mean, really, the President of a country that LOST a war with IRAQ—a country we dispatched in three weeks—is warning us that we better not mess with Iran if we don't want to get hurt.

Yeah, right.

He just wants to keep us from removing his criminal regime until he gets his nukes debugged. Then he wouldn't need to bluff.

French tsunami relief effort croaks

The "Last of the Famous International Playboys" blog has a post that has to seen to be believed:France 2 Humiliates French Government. The blogger Douglas posted:

The expeditious and professional deployment of US troops on humanitarian assistance missions to areas devastated by the Boxing Day Tsunami has quite publicly embarrassed the French government— on live television, no less. Yet another reason to thank the US Armed Forces.

For days now, the US military has been getting favorable coverage on the French nightly news due to its response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami. But tonight's broadcast was simply astounding. At 8 minutes into the broadcast, anchor David Pujadas begins a discussion of the disaster response and introduced a report on the American deployment:

First off, here is the powerful American machinery in action. For 24
hours now, there has been a landing ["débarquement"] taking place — there is no other word — while helicopters continue the distribution [of humanitarian
aid].

The report begins with an improvised helipad and then shows US airmen distributing "survival packages" of food, clothes and demountable shelters. In addition to showing those in need that they have not been forgotten, these supplies will allow their recipients to live for another day, says the narrator. Cut to shot of a Sri Lankan beach where amphibious vehicles are disembarking from landing craft — umistakably reminiscent of the D-Day landings. Note that above Pujadas used the word "débarquement" ("there is no other word"), which is the word most often used to refer to the D-Day landings. Footage of thousands of US marines offloading equipment. None of them are armed, points out the narrator, as this is a reconstruction mission. An interview with Juan Quijada, a US marine whose rank is not given. "Just here to help them as best I can," he says. 13,000 soldiers, we're told, and so far 200 metric tons of supplies

At nine minutes and 30 seconds into the broadcast, Pujadas says that "the scale of need must not hide the failure to provide it." He introduces the next report: "... the failure of a French civilian rescue mission in one of the most heavily affected areas."

We learn that 100 French firefighters as well as rescue and response workers have been sent to Meulaboh to establish a field hospital but that 8 days after their deployment and 15 days after the disaster, only 25% of their supplies have been delivered "because France has no helicopters [to deliver them]." (NB: during the Afghanistan war, France had to rent ALL of its helicopters from the Russian army.)

"The good will of the rescuers is not in question," says Pujadas. "This is well and truly a foul up."

[...]

The report tells us that France has only 1 helicopter on the scene, a Dauphin. However this one is on loan from the manufacturer, Aérospatiale, and is normally used to shuttle around executives, not to move large amounts of cargo.

Sporting a sour smile, a French soldier is interviewed:

For the moment, we don't have the infrastructure in place, if you will, for logistics. The tents, the shelters, the hospital grounds. We can't begin to
treat people under these circumstances.

When the news team arrived, the day's mission was no more than the installation of a latrine. The narrator says:

Privately, the doctors admit that the first emergency phase has passed and that the French have missed it.

On screen, we then see a French doctor say... "As soon as our supplies gets here. No problem." Then we are treated to the image of the French begging for assistance from an Indonesian colonel! "We're expecting helicopters tomorrow," he says, asking for two trucks so they can move supplies. The colonel laughs and claps him on the shoulder. Then the French meet with some Americans. "It's been tough for us," says a French firefighter. "The Americans prove goodnatured toward the 'Frenchies,'" says the narrator. "But not much else." Then a big, impressive American Chinook helicopter arrives, empty, to pick up American journalists. French men looking dejected.

The report ends with the following summation:

... that the French army should even now be unable to provide them with a few helicopters 15 days after the fact is surprising, especially given the public outcry that the tsunami provoked. It is as though France no longer has the means even to express its emotions.

Wow. I never expected to good coverage from the French. I also never expected to hear a such scathing self-criticism out from the French either.

How to Interrogate Terrorists

Heather Mac Donald has an excellent and long article How to Interrogate Terrorists. This article is so long and makes so many worthy points that I won't bother to do any commentary. At least not now.

Now go read it!

Shane has reservations about Sauther motives

I recently blogged about an article by, Van Gordon Sauther, an ex-president of CBS’s news division, where Sauther stated that CBS’ news had become so liberal that he stopped watching it.

Shane emailed and said:

Well I have never known too many ex-employees to give their former employer a good review. :)

Well that may be true, particularly with laid-off employees. This is a good reason to interpret ex-employees’ scorn with due skepticism. But in this case you don’t have to take Sauther’s word for it; you can check most of his assertions yourself.

Sauther said: CBS news has “it has no credibility”. I could defend that assertion.

Sauther said: CBS news has “no audience”. Well, that’s not strictly true but I think everybody understood him to mean that CBS news has a tiny audience and I believe most observers would more or less agree with that assessment. I sure do.

Sauther said: CBS news has “no morale”. Well I’m not in a position to know anything firsthand but I accept this assertion as true. I reason that being employed by an industry laughingstock would sure reduce my self-regard. CBS’ worker bees should be glum, if only because they’re probably looking at another round of layoffs.

Sauther said: CBS news has “no long-term emblematic anchorperson”. Another true assertion, at least for now.

Now most of these assertions are either obviously true or at least seem very plausible to me. The most interesting assertions Sauther made was:

A large swath of the society doesn't trust the news media. And for many, it's even stronger than that: They abhor the media and perceive it as an escalating threat to the society.

Now that statement might be debatable to certain people but not to me. Why? Because I agree that broadcast news is an escalating threat to America. Most news broadcasters, FoxNEWS aside, have actively endeavored to undermine the political support for our war in Iraq. CBS news attempted to change the outcome of the 2004 election by attacking the Bush campaign by running a false story late enough during in the campaign that so as to make it unanswerable. (I could go on but it is unnecessary and I might run out of electronic ink. )

Anyway, Sauther’s statement was my primary reason for blogging about his article in the first place.

Getting back to Shane's email, I still haven’t fully answered his point that Sauther might be just disgruntled. OK, fair enough. There are a number of factors that lead me to think that his article isn’t about settling a score over being fired twenty some years ago.

First of all, the jobs of all corporate officers in broadcast news divisions are always on thin ice anyway. Sauther himself said that he lost his job due to a management shake-up. As the president of CBS’ news division I expect that Sauther did his fair share of hiring and firing. Maybe he even presided over a layoff, who knows?

I think that the perspective gained from being a high level officer would tend to moderate any sense that his firing was unfairness or whatnot. Anyway, Sauther lost his job something like twenty years ago and I guess I accept his statement that he “great affection for CBS News” at face value, although I could be wrong for doing that.

This all makes me recall something I read years ago. In one part of her funny book, And So It Goes, which describes her adventures in broadcasting, journalist Linda Ellerbee examines both the scorn network management has for their typical viewer and management level job insecurity:

… one of the central precepts of television news. We who work in television believe we are smarter that the people who watch television. Television news producers often turn down certain stories because, they say, the stories are too complicated or too dull to mean anything to the plumber in Albuquerque.

[…]

Imagine, if you will, the arrogance of some producer who is too scared to ride the subway after dark, too lazy to start a fire in his fireplace without a fake self-starting log, too ignorant to change a tire and too confused to do his own tax return making fun of the plumber in Albuquerque just because he's a plumber in Albuquerque and he watches the television news. How can they ignore the fact that the plumber in Albuquerque, unlike most television news producers, at least has steady work?[emphasis mine—johnh]

Here Ellerbee strengthens my point that Sauther knew--or at least should have known that he could abruptly lose his job and for little reason.

Update:

Shane quickly sets me straight with this email:

I never said I DISAGREED with them though! ;-)

OK, so noted. I enjoyed writing my post all the same.

Hugh Downs denies press coverage is liberal and instead proves that journalists are arrogant elitists

One of the biggest old ladies on broadcast news, Hugh Downs, is hereby nominated for the "Pigs are unaware they're laying in their own waste-products" award for the following self-serving statement he made on Scarborough Country:

SCARBOROUGH: Conservatives have forever accused the media of being liberal. We have a poll that the Pew Research Center put out. Seven percent journalists out of 500 local and national reporters questioned called themselves conservative; 34 percent say they are liberal; 54 percent say they‘re moderate.

Is there a liberal bias in the media or is the bias towards getting the story first and getting the highest ratings, therefore, making the most money?

DOWNS: Well, I think the latter, by far. And, of course, when the word liberal came to be a pejorative word, you began to wonder, you have to say that the press doesn‘t want to be thought of as merely liberal.

But people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events and know a little more about what the background of what‘s happening. So, I suppose, in that respect, there is a liberal, if you want to call it a bias. The press is a little more in touch with what‘s happening. [emphasis mine—johnh]

Let’s stop right here and examine the part of Hugh Downs’ statement that I’ve highlighted. Marvel at its fundamental idiocy. If stupidity had mass then that statement would have imploded into a black hole and sucked Hugh Downs right into it.

Hugh Downs’s premise is that journalists are liberal because “they’re in-touch with what’s happening”. I object to his premise on two grounds: (1) it is an insult and (2) its falsity is blindingly obvious.

First, regarding the insult, if Downs’s premise is true then people who are not liberal “are less liberated in their thought" because “they are further from events” and “know a little less about the background of what’s happening” than their liberal counterparts. And, for good measure, people who are not liberal are “a little less in touch with what’s happening”.

Well bless the non-journalists’ simple little minds! Downs’ must find it inexplicable that we’ve managed to produce ingrates who oppose receiving liberal coaching—cleverly disguised as news (similar to hiding a child’s crushed aspirin in their applesauce)—from such cultured and worldly beings.

OK, I can’t go on like this.

Downs’ smug rationalization is Exhibit A if you ever want to make the case that the media is arrogant, haughty, condescending, self-aggrandizing, snooty and conceited. Downs is saying, in short, people who aren’t liberal are just too ignorant to be otherwise.

That attitude just makes me want to give Downs a hearty boot to his crotch.

Now let’s consider Downs’ transparently idiotic assertion that the experience from “being closer to events” and “knowing a little more about the background of what‘s happening” makes journalists liberal. Please.

Let’s give Downs’ insult to everyone’s intelligence the dignity of a test. Let’s pick a profession that it not known for being more liberal than the general population. Oh, I don’t know, let’s pick policemen.

Policemen, as a group, are, if anything, right of center. Now let’s apply the factors that Downs identified that mold journalists from average citizens into leftists ideologues impersonating journalists.

…people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they are closer to events… Well I can’t think of anyone who is “closer to events” than policemen. Sometimes policemen get so close to the events that it gets them killed. I know this because journalists—who keep themselves at a safer distance than cops—report on cop killings.

…people tend to be more liberated in their thought when they… know a little more about what the background of what‘s happening. Again, it is a cop’s job to document evidence, take written statements, be streetwise, exercise judgment regarding the characters he’s dealing with and more. Furthermore, unlike journalists, defense attorneys will attack a cop’s work in a courtroom setting. The only thing that journalists have to endure is being fact-checked by hundreds of bloggers.

A reasonable person, applying Hugh Downs’ theory—which rationalizes why most journalists are liberals—to cops, would conclude that all cops should be even bigger leftwing nutbars than the typical journalist. Commonly known facts implodes Hugh Downs’ theory even faster than Dan Ra^ther’s memo story.

Regarding the insult implicit in Downs' comment: you are implicitly insulting the listener’s intelligence if you expect the listener to accept a deliberately stupid statement you’ve made as true. Evidently Downs confidence in the audience’s stupidity was such that he uninhibitedly offered an patently silly excuse—and one that only required about 32 milliseconds of thought to refute—and expecting a credulous audience to swallow it without gagging.

I’m sure he would have fabricated a less blatant deception if he thought his audience was any smarter.
So why are leftists attracted to the media? For the same reason they’re attracted to academia: it gives them a means to shape our culture by controlling how information is presented.

Even ex-CBS'ers hate CBS' news

This is just too good. Van Gordon Sauter, ex-president of CBS’s news division—from the 1980’s to be sure—just had a scathing article published in the LA Times: What's Ailing CBS News? Let's Make a Not-So-Little List:

"What's the big problem at CBS News? Well, for one thing, it has no credibility. [emphasis mine—johnh] And no audience, no morale, no long-term emblematic anchorperson and no cohesive management structure. Outside of those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix. Personally, I have a great affection for CBS News, even though I was unceremoniously shown to the door there nearly 20 years ago in a tumultuous change of corporate management. But I stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me. [emphasis mine—johnh] I still check in, but less and less frequently. I increasingly drift to NBC News and Fox and MSNBC. "

And then Sauther goes on to say:

This week, when CBS News announced that four employees would lose their jobs in connection with the George Bush National Guard story, I was struck by how the network had become representative of a far larger, far more troubling problem: A large swath of the society doesn't trust the news media. And for many, it's even stronger than that: They abhor the media and perceive it as an escalating threat to the society. [emphasis mine—johnh]

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Take THAT!

An “escalating threat to the society”, huh? Yup, I’d say this boy’s on the ball.


Hat tip to Murrell for emailing me a heads-up on this one.

Triangulating the War

Victor Davis Hanson has yet another astute post on NRO: Triangulating the War.

Hanson describes the grim resolve the U.S. showed during WW II in the face of repeated disasters we encountered all the way to our eventual victory.

Focusing like a laser beam on the small problems we’re encountering—and showing not a trace of embarrassment that their much direr predictions fell flat—the political complainers refuse to acknowledge our resounding successes. Hanson marvels at the effeminate whimpering emanating from both our media and certain political leaders at any and all difficulties, not matter how trifling.

He points out that we’ve recently enjoyed victories that nobody thought were plausible before we achieved them. His examples include a three week war that dispatched the same Taliban that defeated the Russians in ten year war. He points out that we have recently achieved the election of a pro-American, Afghan president via free democratic elections; and both events would have been unbelievable beforehand.

Just read the whole thing.

Andy Rooney regrets that the big ones always get away

Murrell emailed me about story, CBS firings should go higher up, he found that quoted Andy Rooney, a 60 Minutes commentator and notorious curmudgeon, where Andy sourly complained:

"The people on the front lines got fired while the people most instrumental in getting the broadcast on escaped,' Rooney said He was referring to the firing of producer Mary Mapes and the requested resignations of a senior vice president and two 60 Minutes producers while anchor Dan Rather and CBS News chief Andrew Heyward kept their jobs."

The reason why Ra^ther and Heyward dodged the bullet is because the Thornburgh report—an investigation of Ra^therBogusGate that was ordered by CBS’ owners—held both Dan Ra^ther and Andrew Heyward blameless on the grounds that Ra^ther was just an innocent newsreader and because Heyward issued a directive—after the program was aired—ordering “a careful re-examination of the September 8 Segment to make certain that the 60 Minutes Wednesday reporting was sound in all respects.”

Rooney thinks the house cleaning is incomplete.

I guess Rooney is annoyed because the Thornburgh report gave sufficient political cover to justify inaction on Rather and Heyward. In my view, I’m most annoyed because this report concluded a lack of political bias at CBS. Kevin Craver, of Ra^thergate, speaks for me when he blogged:

The right lobe of the blogosphere today is picking apart the e-mail correspondence between former CBS Producer Mary Mapes and freelance journalist Michael Smith. I believe, like many, that the e-mails are a prima facie case of political bias that Dick Thornburgh and Lou Boccardi overlooked.

But one e-mail in particular, which has been quoted extensively in the blogosphere, stands out in my eyes, but not for the reasons cited on other blogs.

I am talking about this Aug. 31 e-mail from Smith to Mapes (page 62 of the report). I bold-face two passages for emphasis:

Today I am going to send the following hypothetical scenario to a reliable,trustable editor friend of mine . . .

What if there was a person who might have some information that couldpossibly change the momentum of an election but we needed to get anASAP book deal to help get us the information? What kinds of turnaroundpayment schedules are possible, keeping in mind the book probably couldnot make it out until after the election . . . . What I am asking is in this bestcase hypothetical scenario, can we get a decent sized advance payment,and get it turned around quickly.

The fact that Smith desires to “change the momentum of an election” is telling in and of itself. But what is more telling to me – what hints that the crew was desperate for a hit, any hit to the incumbent president – is the dull blade of the weapon CBS was trying to fashion.
Previous presidential embarassments that changed politics – Watergate, Teapot Dome, etc. – did so because the sitting president was connected to criminal activity. I am not defending anyone who willingly shirks military duty, but in this case, CBS hoped to prove President Bush did something that many sons of privilege from all political stripes (including the last commander in chief, if my memory serves me correctly) attempted during the Vietnam War.

I agree. The real outrage was CBS’ attempted intervention in the election’s outcome. This memo makes it evident that the players at CBS were committing politics and not journalism. Any investigator who was given this email, read it, and concluded that CBS was bias-free anyway is too naïve to conduct an investigation.

Ann Coulter, snickering at the one of the report’s authors, said:

Proving once again how useless "moderate Republicans" are, The CBS Report -- co-authored by moderate Republican Dick Thornburgh -- found no evidence of political bias at CBS.

Well, of course CBS would only accept Republicans who didn’t have a pair; that how Thornburgh got the job.

On top of everything else, Little Green Footballs noted that CBS had altered some of the Thornburgh report’s document attributes. CBS had originally posted the the Thornburgh report’s such that viewers could copy and past text. Subsequently, CBS had altered the document’s pdf attributes to prevent bloggers from using copy and paste when composing postings on this report.

Here is a link to a version of the the Thornburgh report’s with the copy and paste attribute enabled. Hat tip to LGF.

I will give Scott Ott, the satirist, the last, scathing, word:

CBS News Switches to Reality Gameshow Format

(2005-01-11) -- When life hands you a lemon, the old saying goes, make lemonade. CBS News President Andrew Heyward is doing just that, announcing today that the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather will be re-launched on March 10 as Myopic Zeal: The CBS Evening News Gameshow.

"It's edgy, it's hip and it capitalizes on our key asset -- intermittent credibility," said Mr. Heyward, who survived a recent epidemic of myopic zeal which proved terminal for four of his staff. "Since the internal investigation report, viewers have wondered if we could ever be trusted again. Instead of trying to rebuild that shattered credibility, which would take years and millions of dollars, we're going to roll with the punches."

The new show will feature the same set, the same reporters and the same style as Evening News Classic, but during each segment viewers can go to a website and vote on which elements of each story may be false, or at least lacking adequate authentication. Prizes will include cash and a chance to become a 'Myopic Zeal' correspondent for a day, which includes the full training course in ethics which 'big-time journalists' now receive.

"It gets the viewers involved in the story in a way that was possible before only on a blog," said Mr. Heyward. "We've taken a hard look at the blogosphere and decided, if you can't beat them, join them. We'll even let the viewers vote on why the errors were made, whether by myopic zeal, political subterfuge or gross incompetence."

The embattled news czar said production costs for the new show would be the same as the old, "since the reporters and producers won't have to do anything differently."

The network has begun talks with Mr. Rather's talent agent in hopes of pulling him out of semi-retirement to sign him as 'anchor' for the new show.

"For decades, Dan Rather has been our face and voice of intermittent credibility and myopic zeal," said Mr. Heyward. "Sure, there are others in this industry who are as zealous and as credible but he's the Tiffany anchor, having done for this network what anchors do best."

I'm awed at the way Scott Ott can cranks out such brilliance every day.

The War on the War on Terrorism

In September of last year Norman Podhoretz wrote the masterful essay World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win [pdf]. In this essay Podhoretz reasons exactly they way I do: he counts the Cold War as World War III and he considers America’s current war on Islamofanatics, jihadists and Islamic sectarian cleansers as a fourth World War.

Now Podhoretz has released yet another essay—this time examining the establishment’s struggle against Bush pursuit of wining WW IV—entitled The War Against World War IV [pdf] (html version). Podhoretz begins this essay—after a couple dozen paragraphs of rhetorical throat clearing—by concluding that Bush is unlikely to bend to the New York Times and continue fighting WW IV with his full energy. (Gee, I could have told you that.)

Podhoretz proceeds to analyze a number of players in the “War Against WW IV”. All of it is good and he zings some of my favorite subjects. I’ll quote some of his best:

America’s opponents that we’re fighting in Iraq:

In Iraq, the insurgents—a coalition of diehard Saddamists, domestic Islamofascists, and foreign jihadists—have a simple objective. They are trying to drive us out before the seeds of democratization that we are helping to sow have taken firm root and begun to flower. Only thus can the native insurgents hope to recapture the power they lost when we toppled Saddam; and only thus can the Iranians, the Syrians, and the Saudis, who have been dispatching and/or financing the foreign jihadists, escape becoming the next regimes to go the way of Saddam’s under the logic of the Bush Doctrine.

The despots tyrannizing these countries all know perfectly well that an American failure in Iraq would rule out the use of military force against them. They know that it would rob other, non-military measures of any real effectiveness. [emphasis mine—johnh] And they know that it would put a halt to the wave of reformist talk that has been sweeping through the region since the promulgation of the Bush Doctrine and that poses an unprecedented threat to their own hold on political power, just as it does to the religious and cultural power of the radical Islamists.

But the most important thing the insurgents and their backers in the neighboring despotisms know is that the battle for Iraq will not be won or lost in Iraq; it will be won or lost in the United States of America. [emphasis mine—johnh] On this they agree entirely with General John Abizaid, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, who recently told reporters touring Iraq: "It is all about staying the course. No military effort that anyone can make against us is going to be able to throw us out of this region." Is it any wonder, then, that the insurgents were praying for the victory of John F. Kerry—which they all assumed would mean an American withdrawal—or that the reelection of Bush—which they were not fooled by any exit polls into interpreting as anything other than a ratification of the Bush Doctrine—came as such a great blow to them? [emphasis mine—johnh] But too much is at stake in Iraq for them to give up now, especially as they are confident that they still have an excellent shot at getting the American public to conclude that the game is not worth the candle. General Abizaid again: "We have nothing to fear from this enemy except its ability to create panic . . . and gain a media victory." To achieve this species of victory—and perhaps inspired by the strategy that worked so well for the North Vietnamese— they are counting on the forces opposing the Bush Doctrine at home. These forces comprise just as motley a coalition as the one fighting in Iraq, and they are, after their own fashion, just as desperate.

For they too understand how much they for their own part stand to lose if the Bush Doctrine is ever generally judged to have passed the great test to which it has been put in Iraq. [emphasis mine—johnh]

I felt the resonance of alike-thinking minds as I read this passage.

Norman Podhoretz then examines America’s domestic transnationalist opponents:

...the liberal internationalists, with their virtually religious commitment to negotiations as the best, or indeed the only, way to resolve conflicts; their relentless faith in the UN (which they stubbornly persist in seeing as the great instrument of collective security even though its record is marked by "an unwillingness to get serious about preventing deadly violence"); and their corresponding squeamishness about military force. ….

Under Jimmy Carter (whose Secretary of State, Cyrus R. Vance, was a devout member of this school) and to a lesser extent under Bill Clinton, the liberal internationalists were at the very heart of American foreign policy. But while George W. Bush has thrown a rhetorical bone or two in their direction, and has even done them the kindness of making a few ceremonial bows to the UN, he has for all practical purposes written off the liberal-internationalist school. Nor has he been coy about this. As he declared in a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002:

We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign nonproliferation treaties, and then systematically break them.

The liberal internationalists were not slow to pick up on what statements like this held in store for them. While Kupchan [(an American transnationalist)] said f latly, "the election of George W. Bush [that] sounded the death-knell for liberal internationalism" (defined by him as "a moderate, centrist internationalism that manages the international system through compromise, consensus, and international institutions"). [Other American transnationalists], on the other hand, blamed Bush alone:

[A] set of hard-line, fundamentalist ideas have taken Washington by storm and provided the intellectual rationale for a radical post-11 September reorientation of American foreign policy. ... [This] is not leadership but a geostrategic wrecking ball that will destroy America’s own half-century-old international architecture.

…, thanks to the workings of this "wrecking ball," the liberal internationalists have been reduced to a domestic echo chamber for the French and the Germans. All they seem able to do is count the ways in which the "unilateral" invasion of Iraq has done "damage to the country’s international position" its prestige, credibility, security partnerships, and the goodwill of other countries" [emphasis mine—johnh] Since they refuse even to consider whether 9/11 demanded a "reorientation"—whether, that is, it demonstrated that "the tools and doctrines of the [old] system had outlived their utility" and had to be replaced with a "new set of rules for managing the emerging threats to international security"—they can hope for nothing better than a reversion to the status quo ante.

This observation reinforces my contention that transnationalists are patriots of “transnational organizations” (e.g., the UN) and diplomatic structures and “international goodwill” and anything else other than the U.S. and her national interests. In their worldview the U.S. interests are made to be sacrificed to what they evidently hold to be the “higher good”.

This dream, [the transnationalists think], could yet be realized by a scuttling of the Bush Doctrine through a withdrawal from Iraq that

would bring about a reconciliation with friends and allies shocked by Washington’s recent unilateralism and repudiation of international obligations, and thus do much to restore . . . American credibility and "soft power" in the world.

As against Hoffmann, neither Ikenberry nor Kupchan envisages so rosy a future for their common creed, even in the exceedingly unlikely event that the Bush Doctrine is abandoned. If, however, the doctrine should be vindicated by Iraq, they all fear—and rightly so—that it will be almost impossible, in Kupchan’s words, to “bring the U.S. back to a liberal brand of internationalism.” Or, I would add, to bring its exponents back to the center of the foreign-policy establishment.

Other players that Podhoretz covers includes “the Realists” ( i.e., Brent Scowcroft, et al), the subset of “Realists” and the entirety of the liberal internationalists who are rooting for our defeat, our media—this section is titled “All the news that fits their spin”—who are also attempting to engineer our defeat.

Podhoretz also revisits Tet, a concrete example of America being defeated by our media.

These outtakes were just the best parts of a great essay. Just read it all.

Ben Stein's defense of virtue

Pam H just emailed me Ben Stein’s last column, which he wrote in December of 2003. His column is so moving I will post it in this space:

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started.

Lew Harris, who founded this great site, asked me to do it maybe seven or eight years ago, and I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

But again, all things must pass, and my column for E! Online must pass. In a way, it is actually the perfect time for it to pass. Lew, whom I have known forever, was impressed that I knew so many stars at Morton's on Monday nights.

He could not get over it, in fact. So, he said I should write a column about the stars I saw at Morton's and what they had to say.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars.

I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.

But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery. The teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children. The kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero.

Last column, I told you a few of the rules I had learned to keep my sanity. Well, here is a final one to help you keep your sanity and keep you in the running for stardom: We are puny, insignificant creatures.

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin--or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life.

I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

As so many of you know, I am an avid Bush fan and a Republican. But I think the best guidance I ever got was from the inauguration speech of Democrat John F. Kennedy in January of 1961.

On a very cold and bright day in D.C., he said, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth...asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on Earth, God's work must surely be our own."

And then to paraphrase my favorite president, my boss and friend Richard Nixon, when he left the White House in August 1974, with me standing a few feet away, "This is not goodbye. The French have a word for it--au revoir. We'll see you again."

Au revoir, and thank you for reading me for so long. God bless every one of you. We'll see you again.

I completely agree with Ben Stein, movie “stars” are the most successful (and, consequently, the best paid) of our entertainers. Movie stars are entitled to due respect for their talents as entertainers but no more respect than that.

I also have no quarrel with whatever salary they can command; they produce huge profits for their employers. I also have no problem with certain actresses being manicured while being limo’ed somewhere. They’ve earned their money and they can spend it as they please.

That being said, earning huge bucks and using it for the purposes of living as high as possible, supporting huge consumption and being serviced by the hired help reveals self-indulgence, not virtue.

Virtue is a “values” word. You cannot discriminate between virtuous behavior and typical movie stars’ behavior unless you have the values necessary to recognize virtue—or the lack of it.

Today the word “virtue” has connotations of quaintness. This is largely the fault of our entertainment industry. Ironically, it is an industry that wouldn’t exist without virtuous Americans because America herself wouldn’t exist without virtuous Americans; virtuous America makes self-indulgent America possible.

Being a warrior is one of the least self-indulgent things a man can do. A military—ideally—is a socialist meritocracy. It is socialist because, in the military, ideally, the group is more important than the individual. It is a meritocracy because, ideally, a soldier’s standing is determined by his competence.

The military’s uncompromising devotion to competence and high performance is rooted in the harsh consequences of incompetence and inadequate performance: death and mutilation on the battlefield. Consequently military training is rigorous and sometimes harsh.

Combat is often conducted in harsh conditions. The summertime temperatures in Iraq exceed 120° F, Tora Bora (al Qaeda’s Afghan mountain sanctuaries) are some of the world’s most forbidding mountains with elevations to 10,000 feet and are snow-capped year-round.

The contrast cannot be made more stark. A man enlisting for military duty is voluntarily surrendering some of his civil rights so that he may endure the regimentation of the military's socialist culture, hardship, harsh conditions, hard training, the risk of death and mutilation and low pay all for the purpose of preserving a society of individuals, some of which are as undeserving of their blood as the entertainers Ben Stein wrote about.

Ben Stein’s essay celebrates the virtue of our most virtuous—our warriors—while being troubled that our culture assigns outlandishly high prestige to the most self-indulgent and unworthy among us: our entertainers. He is also sufficiently self-aware to realize that his writings about which stars he saw eating at Morton’s sent messages that contributed to the inflated prestige our culture assigns to our entertainers. Ben Stein discontinued writing his column when he realized that this misplaced prestige also contributes to our culture’s disdain for our virtuous defenders.

Put another way, he saw his writing was contributing its small part to corroding the values that our virtue depends on and he knew he had to stop writing it. I suppose that he would demure and characterize quitting writing his column about movie stars he saw dining at Morton’s was a small thing but I know that his self-respect demanded it. After all, the advantage of virtue is self-respect.