Entries Tagged 'liberal opinion' ↓

Don’t you hate it when David Brooks uses his New York Times perch to remind his readers that life is full of unexpected turns, expecially ones that reflect well on BushHitler?

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals. … The additional fact is that Bush, who made such bad calls early in the war, made a courageous and astute decision in 2006. More than a year on, the surge has produced large, if tenuous, gains. Violence is down sharply. Daily life has improved. Iraqi security forces have been given time to become a more effective fighting force. The Iraqi government is showing signs of strength and even glimmers of impartiality. Iraq has moved from being a failed state to, as Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations has put it, merely a fragile one.

The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.

Yep. (This also applies to Brooks, by the way, who referred to the Iraq war as “a disaster” many times during what he now refers to as “the dark days of 2006.”) He’s not humble enough to acknowledge his own previous cocksureness and foolishness. But he’s out there on the cutting edge of what should be opinion right now. We’ll see how it plays.

Brooks sets the stage:

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson [about orthodox thinking] during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

It’s unlikely that there will be many such souls, but count me among those who grudgingly (grudgingly because we are of a certain [anti-Vietnam War] age) admit that Bush’s stubbornness has, on balance, been a good thing for America in the immediate wake of 9/11. Many of America’s cocksure enemies have stood down in the wake of Bush’s cowboy-like cocksure aggressiveness. Bush himself has said he regrets the language he used; I didn’t hear him say that he regrets his “going on offense” against America’s enemies, as indeed he shouldn’t.

Something else has been gained in these long seven years. Brooks doesn’t mention it, but I will:L Islamism now has many respectable enemies—including several of Britain’s most famous public intellectuals and novelists.

The New York Times doesn’t quite approve of such heterodox thoughts as this one expressed by Ian McEwan, the author of Atonement:

“As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark skinned, he who criticizes it is racist.” He added: “This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on — we know it well.”

The Independent, a British paper, referred to McEwan’s words as

an astonishingly strong attack on Islamism

and pointed out that these words could,

in today’s febrile legalistic climate, lay him open to being investigated for a “hate crime”.

Despite adding to the “febrile” climate surrounding this issue, at least the Independent is honest enough to give a full airing to McEwan’s views, which I reprint here with some emphasis [e.a.]:

McEwan – author of On Chesil Beach and the acclaimed Atonement and Enduring Love – has spoken on the issue of Islamism before, telling The New York Times last December: “All religions make very big claims about the world, and it should be possible in an open society to dispute them. It should be possible to say, ‘I find some ideas in Islam questionable’ without being called a racist.”

But his words in the Corriere interview are far stronger, although they do fall short of the invective deployed by Martin Amis. He has said “the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order”, and told The Independent’s columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a Muslim, in an open letter: “Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.”

McEwan’s interviewer pointed out that there exist equally hard-line schools of thought within Christianity, for example in the United States. “I find them equally absurd,” McEwan replied. “I don’t like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don’t want to kill anyone in my city, that’s the difference.”

But McEwan’s specific irritation is reserved for those who find ideological grounds to condemn his and Amis’s views. “When you ask a novelist or a poet about his vision regarding an aspect of the world, you don’t get the response of a politician or a sociologist, but even if you don’t like what he says you have to accept it, you can’t react with defamation. Martin is not a racist, and neither am I.”

Thank you, Ian McEwan. And may others join you in perpetrating the “hate crime” of speaking out in favor of freedom of expression, even (perhaps especially) when your ideas are out of favor with “expert and elite opinion” [Brooks's phrase].

If Obama were as convinced as his fans that he had put his pastor problem behind him, something tells me he wouldn’t be making a stop on The View in his continuing apology tour. But that’s where he’ll be today:

Obama’s ‘View’: Defend Man, Not Words

The Senator, who is currently leading Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in the pledged delegate count for the 2008 Democratic nomination, agreed Wright’s remarks are “rightly offensive.”

Obama described Wright as a “brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp.”

“View” co-host Elisabeth Hasslebeck expressed concern that Obama’s choice of pastor may show a lack of judgment.

The candidate explained, “Part of what my role in my politics is to get people who don’t normally listen to each other, to talk to each other, who [say] crazy things, who are offended by each other, for me to understand them and to maybe help them understand each other.”

Obama said he talked to Wright after the controversy erupted.

“I think he’s saddened by what’s happened, and I told him I feel badly that he has been characterized just in this one way, and people haven’t seen this broader aspect of him,” Obama said.

I see he stopped by and talked to ABC’s Charlie Gibson, too:

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for 20 years, telling ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson that it’s unfair to judge him based only on the controversial remarks of a few sermons and not his entire career. (Ida Astute/ABC)

Will this stop the bleeding?

Tom Maguire doesn’t think so:

Can someone help me with what looks like the latest fantasy from Obama as he explains his Reverend Wright (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON - White House hopeful Barack Obama suggests he would have left his Chicago church had his longtime pastor, whose fiery anti-American comments about U.S. foreign policy and race relations threatened Obama’s campaign, not stepped down.

“Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying at the church,” Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, “The View.” The interview will be broadcast Friday.

Let’s make the working assumption that this excerpt is accurate and in context - time will tell, since the show airs tomorrow.

So, when did Wright acknowledge that what he had said was deeply offensive and inappropriate? The AP story recounts some of Wright’s controversial comments but oddly omits to mention his apology, as does all other news coverage with which I am familiar. And I am strangely certain that a Wright apology would have made the news - unless he never made it publicly.

In case you think I’m being too hard on Obama, think again: I’ve been talking about his hollow PRopaganda^TM image for quite a while. Now I’m just watching it unravel.

Barack Obama and his handlers are apparently so arrogant that they thought they could ignore the first rule of celebrity-image construction: the man must consistently reflect the message. Unfortunately, with Obama, you scratch the highly polished surface and you get a bundle of contradictions that you cannot make consistent with his message, no matter how hard you try.

He says he’s a uniter, and yet for 20 he has chosen to stay inside the bosom of a church whose pastor a) promotes the nursing of grievances in the black community and b) routinely says all kinds of crazy shit. And then, instead of addressing this issue (which, of course, he cannot address in any way that will make him, as a man, consistent with his messiah image), he chose to lecture us about American racism.

I don’t know about you, but no matter how much I admire the political dexterity, I find his politics very old school. If this is change, I don’t want any part of it—particularly since I still don’t know what he stands for.

And if you think I’m cynical, read Kaus. But do not fail to note his reasoning, because it’s sound [e.a.]:

e) The “profound mistake” of this sermon is not that Wright “spoke as if our society was static”–Obama’s analysis on Feb. 18th. The problem is that “white folks’ greed” is not the main cause of a “world in need.” I’m not saying voters shouldn’t cut Obama a lot of slack on Wright’s anti-white fulminations. But the Senator should have spoken up publicly against the semi-paranoid “white greed” explanation a long time ago, no? And he could show a little humility. Again, this wasn’t the occasion for him to be lecturing everyone else. …

Me, I’m thinking that Obama agrees with the Reverend, at least partly. And guess what? I agree! He’s right! (After all, the evils of capitalism—and there were evils of capitalism—were all perpetrated by white people, because white people ruled America.)

But if you’re planning to run for president of the United States, you evict people like the Reverend from your life. You disown them—yes, even if you’re black and you have a long list of righteous reasons to be aggrieved.

Because it’s nasty shit, and no one wants to think of their president as having breathed in that polluted talk—even if he was only nodding in tune to the atmospherics—for 20 years.

I read Engram’s blog with great pleasure, because of his methodical and data-filled critical analysis (or, rather, dismemberment) of the “trends” cited unilaterally as such by the MSM, although these “trends” are oftentimes not supported by meaningful evidence.

Engram tracks reductive bite-size memes (such as, say, “the surge is a failure”) , providing data points on a month-by-month basis, thus providing meaningful evidence accumulated over a period of time, which in turn is something that can fairly and reasonably be claimed to assess the truth (or the lies or the empty speculation) behind such claims.  

As Engram repeatedly notes (and as should be obvious but often isn’t), this is the only objective way to track actual (as opposed to rhetorical) trends (aka change).***

His neutral approach to accumulating and reporting the data doesn’t mean that Engram doesn’t have a point of view, however, or attitude. 

I admit that I share his attitude today, about the NYT’s one-year-long ”reporting” about the “surge” being (first) doomed and (then) a failure. Engram writes [e.a.]:

But in their editorial [published] right after the testimony by Petraeus (in September of 2007), the editors [of the New York Times] adopted the standard liberal line according to which the whole purpose of the troop surge was give Iraqi politicians time to pass political benchmarks:

The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and make decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources.

This has become a standard liberal talking point even though it is factually inaccurate. The left switched to this talking point after their prediction that the troop surge would not reduce violence in Iraq was proven wrong. Instead of acknowledging how wrong they were about that, they seamlessly invented a new story about the “real” purpose of the surge. It is a story that exists in the liberal brain but is nowhere to be found in Bush’s speech to the nation in which he explained the purpose of the troop surge (which the New York Times criticized for not focusing on political reconciliation in Baghdad).

In any case, as the horrid news of greatly reduced violence in Iraq becomes increasingly inescapable even to those who are so blind that they cannot see that we are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, talk of political reconciliation (and attendant pessimism about that) has become standard on the left (in the New York Times as well). Unfortunately, more horrid news of political reconciliation in Iraq is starting to pile up, so much so that the editors had to painfully acknowledge that fact in their editorial today:

Making (Some) Progress in Iraq

Good news is rare in Iraq. But after months of bitter feuding, Iraq’s Parliament has finally approved a budget, outlined the scope of provincial powers, set an Oct. 1 date for provincial elections and voted a general amnesty for detainees.

Of course, the same editors who declared that Iraq was a failure, that the troop surge would be of no help, and that General Petraeus was lying about a massive reduction in violence are now somewhat pessimistic that these laws will be effectively implemented. Gee, that’s significant. After all, these crack journalists have proven time and again that they know what they are talking about, haven’t they?

No, “these [New York Times] journalists” often don’t know what they are talking about. They are not any better-informed than many dozens of well-informed members of the public who have created opinion platforms for themselves in the blogosphere. They are often peddling a narrative line.

Some of “these journalists” give the impression of being humiliatingly ill-informed. (Although I’ll admit there’s a silver lining in Alessandra Stanley’s inability to remember which cable “news” outlet it is that boasts, probably dozens of times in every 24-hour-period, that it has ”the best political team on television.” Propaganda is only successful if it sticks.)

—————- 

*** I would add this: Everything else is speculation or deliberate manipulation, aimed at influencing public opinion—aka propaganda. And McLuhan was right: the medium is the message.

I can’t help it if I’m a close reader, okay? So after I read Matthew Yglesias’s disapproving post about Hillary rushing to her feet at the SOTU to applaud Bush’s line about the terrorists knowing that the surge had worked, I went and clicked on the link he provided and read the whole piece.

And, lo and behold, what did I find? That Yglesias’s man Barack Obama went wild at the SOTU last night when Bush put Iran on notice:

When Bush warned the Iranian government that “America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf” Obama jumped up to applaud. Clinton leaned across Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), seated to her left, to look in Obama’s direction before slowly standing.

I long ago stopped trying to post any responses over at Yglesias’s place, because if he reads them, he gives no indication of having done so and rarely, if ever, responds—not very blogger-like. But I note that others continue the effort to address Yglesias’s points, as if they are worth discussion.

One commenter brought my point to his attention [e.a.]:

I agree with Steven this is pretty clear evidence HRC is just hawkish by nature, and that’s a good enough reason to not give your vote to her.

But can someone tell me what to make of this?

When Bush warned the Iranian government that “America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf” Obama jumped up to applaud. Clinton leaned across Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), seated to her left, to look in Obama’s direction before slowly standing.

The Illinois senator strongly criticized the former first lady last year when she supported a resolution calling for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be designated a terrorist organization. Obama supporters and other Democrats charged the vote would give Bush political cover to begin military operations against Iran.

Wouldn’t Obama’s criticism of the Kyl-Leiberman bill mean he shouldn’t stand up here? And didn’t he give that vote a pass in any case? Does not compute.

Posted by plum | January 29, 2008 10:01 AM

A couple of points: Mr. Obama’s fans don’t seem to care much about what he stands for—even if it includes a strong and aggressive national defense—as long as he doesn’t make much noise about it or as long as he doesn’t use threatening language or as long as he doesn’t seem (on the surface) to relish combat the way Hillary Clinton does.

I find that weird, but maybe not so weird. (More about this social/societal/cultural phenomenon another time.)

The other point that becomes obvious when you read the Hill piece that Yglesias linked to is that there is a huge dividing line among the Democrats—a fight for the soul of the Democratic party, is how Ron Silver put it long ago—between mostly young militant peaceniks and battle-hardened and beaten-up-by-reality liberals.

But it also seems to be about those who accept reality and those who are wary of Wag the Dog scenarios and Gulf of Tonkin lies, as this commenter at Yglesias’s place suggests [e.a.]:

The difference [between Hillary and Obama] is between those who have been tricked into thinking that Iraq has something to do with terrorism and those who understand that Iraq is an allegory for the American domestic factional struggle.

DIVIDED WE FALL.

Posted by Frank Wilhoit | January 29, 2008 9:26 AM

That makes both this election and what comes afterward very, very interesting—to me at least: the culture war (which is what we argue over when we argue over the Iraq war) is still on. Full force. It certainly won’t end with Bush, or with Clinton, or with McCain.

Nor would it end with Obama, however. But I’ll let the dreamers dream.

Roger L. Simon thinks the NYT demonstrates pathological hatred of Rudy Giuliani:

The idea that the NYT actually backs a Republican for President seems more likely to be a spoof at The Onion, but it’s evidently for real and they are giving the (very weak) nod to McCain. Yawn…. but what’s fascinating is that the brief remarks supporting McCain are followed by an attack on Rudy which is virtually pathological:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking.

It goes on. When I used the word pathological, I wasn’t exaggerating. The hatred is out of control. It would be interesting to speculate on why, but it’s late and I leave that to readers.

It’s fun to speculate why! Here’s my idea: New York liberals are afraid that if Rudy gets elected, they’re gonna have to answer for him—kinda the way that American Jews have to answer for Israel. Everyone will hate and blame New York, and we can’t have that!

Apparently, there’s been quite a reaction to the announcement that Bill Kristol will have one of the most coveted bully pulpits in America: a column in the New York Times. I first wrote about this a couple of days ago and then went out of town.

Now the Times has been confronted. Editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal finds it easy to defend his hire:

Rosenthal told Politico shortly after the official announcement Saturday that he fails to understand “this weird fear of opposing views.”

“The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”

Kristol himself is one gleeful culture warrior:

“I was flattered watching blogosphere heads explode,” Kristol told Politico. “It was kind of amusing.”

She’s not in the blogosphere, but could Kristol have meant Katha Pollitt?

Just shoot me. First, it was Sam Tanenhaus, conservative editor of the New York Times Book Review being put in charge of the News of the Week in Review section. That means one conservative will determine how politics,culture and ideas are covered in TWO of the most important sections of the supposedly liberal newspaper of record. Now, says the Huffington Post, the Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will be writing a weekly op-ed column. That’s Bill Kristol ,Fox commentator , editor of the the Murdochian agitprop factory Weekly Standard, George W. Bush’s propagandist in chief, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, relentless promoter of the war in Iraq , ideological bully and thug.

Kristol responded directly to that attack (via Exurban League, where you can check out his Thug 4 Life pic too):

Give a holla to my neocons in the Bay,
I’m livin’ in DC still clutchin’ on my AK.
Tell ‘em,
“Thug for life,
High till’ i die”
When ‘em stupid Nation witches ask why!

Among other spicy events to look forward to, election 2008 is about to get a little more interesting (Kristol has a one-year contract).

Bottom line, says The Politico, this is a smart business decision for the New York Times:

Despised or not, Kristol is bound to create controversy (read: Web page views). It’s no surprise that during this overheated election season Newsweek and other such magazines are bringing in political lighting rods like Karl Rove and Markos Moulitsas.

In the new media world of the early 21st century, apparently it’s no longer enough to merely attract attention. You want (or need) to attract lightning to get noticed.

Kevin Drum notes that Ezra Klein agrees with David Brooks about something):

Ezra Klein, after a full day of prostate blogging yesterday, says today that David Brooks is right when it comes to the big picture in healthcare policy:

He correctly identifies the central reality of health care politics, which is that most Americans are basically happy with what they have, but worried about keeping it. Policies that guarantee their futures are quite popular. Policies that radically change their presents are not.

Drum has a ready answer:

Well, if that’s the case, then here’s an idea: expand Medicare (or create a similar program) to cover every person in America under the age of 21. And then let them keep it as they grow older. In ten years everyone under 31 would be covered.

Only someone who has had no experience with Medicare would recommend expanding that miserable excuse for an “aid” agency, with its grotesquely bloated bureaucracy and its outlandishly incompetent bureaucrats. And don’t even get me started about what they consider an appropriate level of care.

Our health care system must be addressed … somehow. I’m no wonk—I don’t know the first thing about it. But can we think up something more effective than Medicare? Please?

Something’s gonna have to be done about Tina Fey, who was profiled in the NYT about her surprising hit show 30 Rock. She admitted that America’s Mayor is her weakness:

In writing for Liz, Ms. Fey said, she drew somewhat on her own experiences in television. In one episode Liz is called a vulgar name by a subordinate, an incident that Ms. Fey said was based on something that happened to her.

In another episode, in which Liz reflects on things about herself that others wouldn’t know, she says, “There is an 80 percent chance” that she will “tell all my friends I’m voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain.”

Ms. Fey, who wrote that line, said it was semi-autobiographical, a way of “admitting I have a lot of liberal feelings, but I also live in New York, and I want to feel safe, and I secretly kind of want Giuliani.”

As I was saying just recently …

The Democrats in general, and MoveOn specifically, seem not to realize that in order to deliver politically correct votes, you need to do a lot more than kneecap people into spouting politically correct attitudes in the public square. You can lead a horse to water, etc.

My point about Rudy Giuliani was that he knows a lot about the kind of public political correctness that elects a “fascist” to a second term in a huge victory in decidedly not-”fascist” New York City.

Anybody paying attention?
Nah, I didn’t think so.

No, not him

LAWRENCE OLIVIER AS ARCHIE RICE, LONDON, 1957, photo by Snowden

I mean him:

Really, it’s too delicious. First, in May 2006, Andrew Sullivan introduces America to the crisis of “Christianism”:

 So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

 (though I note that the concept was introduced a year and a half earlier, in November 2004, on the Daily Kos)

However, there is another movement in this nation, which I refer to as Christianism.  The term is dervied from “Islamist” — or those people who claimed to be followers of Islam, but are nothing more than terrorists who do not follow the principles of Islam.  There are those “Christians” who do not seem to be following the principles of Christianity — thus the term “Christianist”.

Then today, having hysterically hyped a bogus concept for more than a year, Sullivan, finding himself uncomfortably off-message, asks: “Is Christianism Peaking?” His lede is a closeup of this dude,

the Big Bad Wolf who stared down the “Christianists” who got Sullivan’s knickers in a twist.

I won’t bother to copy and paste anything from Sullivan’s furious backpedaling. Just five days ago, he was claiming that Christianists were taking over the military and preying on innocent Orthodox Jewish kidney-stone sufferers—the horror! the horror! (I made fun of him here.)

He is left to bleat incoherently about his politics, religion, and moral code—not that I’m paying attention. I’m fascinated by the fact that he abandoned his year-long anti-Christianist crusade just like that. Stopped on a dime.

Yglesias slapped him about it. But it looks like the very influential Frank Rich is the one who made him back off.

The new bosses are not quite like the old bosses, eh?

Wolfowitz will no doubt be gone from the World Bank soon enough, but it will be on his terms, not theirs.

Today, he got a ringing endorsement in the NYT from the Nigerian politician Nuhu Ribadu:

Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the bank’s energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He is a champion of using international development institutions to deal with some of the world’s major problems. And he has been a steadfast supporter of the efforts of African organizations to rescue our people from the scourge of misrule, which leads to poverty, disease and early death. …

 When disgruntled lawmakers here tried to cut off our financing and shut down critical aspects of our operation, a World Bank grant of $5 million allowed us to bring to closure important cases of political corruption involving key members of Nigeria’s ruling elite, including members of the executive branch and Parliament.

 

In this fucked-up world, where the dedicated and driven are burned at the stake

and the mind-bogglingly ignorant, crass, and incompetent

 
are offered countless venues in which to strut their very wrong stuff (really, Rosie?), just for the sake of our amusement (because Infotainment Rules), it is refreshing to watch Wolfowitz, a dignified human being, take a three-week-long pounding and still have the stuff to stand up for himself:

The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone, even if the ethics charges are unwarranted,” he said. “I, for one, will not give in to such tactics. And I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest.”

And I for one enjoy hearing him call out certain of his enemies by name

Wolfowitz’s defense was striking in that it singled out three longtime bank officials as having specifically ordered him to handle Riza’s compensation package himself in 2005. He said they were Roberto Danino, the general counsel; Xavier Coll, vice president for human resources; and Ad Melkert, head of the bank board’s ethics committee.

and to clarify the actions he took:

“…In working to resolve the potential conflict of interest that was created by my and Ms. Riza’s relationship, I acted, transparently, sought and received guidance from the bank’s ethics committee, and conducted myself in good faith in accordance with that guidance,” he said. Riza’s salary, in excess of $190,000, is in the same range as that drawn by about 1,000 other bank employees, Wolfowitz said.

Indeed, Wolfowitz’s final point was most interesting. It was elaborated upon in a New York Sun piece that throws light on the gravy train that is known as the World Bank.

A closer look at bank pay packages suggests that the trouble here is not that Ms. Riza gets a “girlfriend” salary, a mysterious wage not quite tethered to market reality. It is that World Bank staffers also do — and almost all without spending a minute alone with the bank’s embattled president.

The bank’s administrative budget is $1 billion a year. It employs well over 10,000 people. Thousands of others consult.

The bank doesn’t publish current salaries. But according to its annual report for 2006, a senior professional, or “G” level employee, starts at $92,230 and can go up to $167,860, a little more than the $165,200 for a member of the 110th Congress. A manager, or “H” level staffer, can make $226,650. This was the category for which Ms. Riza was on the shortlist.

There are aproximately 1,000 H level staff at the bank. So the portrayal of Ms. Riza as receiving compensation unheard of is inaccurate.

The next salary level, “I,” includes directors or senior advisers, who earn up to $268,650. There are more than 200 of these, and they supervise many others. Mr. Wolfowitz stirred ire by bringing two allies into the bank at salaries of, reportedly, $240,000 and $250,000. He may have misstepped in the execution, but the “I” data suggest those pay levels were not out of line.

Move up a tier to the 25 or so professionals, the “J” level employees, or vice presidents: Top salary, $289,540. Senior vice presidents and managing directors who have made it to the “K” class received as much as $311,000. The president’s pay, when you include expenses, lands in the mid-$400,000 range.

In other words, Mr. Wolfowitz is paid like the American president, a foundation head, or a not-very-good securities analyst.

Of course you may not want to take this at face value, since the New York Sun, where this story ran, was recently smeared by Gawker as a “Zionist daily rag.” And the otherwise decent-seeming but always hostile to Israel Robert Wright, he of bloggingheads.tv fame, voiced similar disapproval by referring to the Sun as a “neocon paper.”   

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.***

I’m stumped and, as I said, tired. But even if I have nothing illuminating to say, I’m still reading the papers and the blogs and watching some of the infotainment that passes for news. Now that I’ve lifted the self-imposed pressure to produce, on average, four posts a day, I find myself gaining a bit of perspective and maybe seeing more of the forest.Time will tell. Check back.

Also: I took another 20 pictures this morning. I’m sure to post more of them by tomorrow.

———————- 

***Thank you, Buffalo Springfield, for the lyrics.

The editor of the NYT’s Metro section, that’s who, and she/he is holding it close to the vest, which is kind of puzzling. In an otherwise admirable report, which gives us a rare look behind the scenes into the “West African diaspora” in New York City where a fire claimed the lives of eight children and a woman this week, a salient question is left unanswered. Never mind that this defies common sense. It also violates one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: don’t leave any threads hanging.

But as so often happens, tragedy also exposes an immigrant community’s secrets. There is the Malians’ practice of taking more than one wife, transplanted by some from village compounds in the hills of western Mali to crowded apartments in the Bronx. There is their often-faltering climb up the entrepreneurial ladder, with attendant business failures and bankruptcies. And there is the tricky business of immigration status: Many Malians are here illegally even as they raise children who become the newest generation of New Yorkers.

I’ll cut to the chase. The “salient question” left unanswered is: What “cultural” practice is it that allows polygamy? Why, it’s Islam. But that’s never mentioned once in this piece—although one interviewee specifically mentions the role of her religion in the mix of issues being discussed [e.a.]:

Polygamy is common in Mali and throughout West Africa. But it is illegal in the United States, and it can bar immigrants from gaining permanent legal residency or citizenship. Many West Africans are uncomfortable talking about the practice with an outsider, particularly so soon after the tragic fire.

But many West Africans say that Mr. Magassa’s arrangement is a subterranean feature of life here, particularly for older men who can afford it. At a spacious African hair-braiding salon on 125th Street, Aminata Dia, the Senegalese owner, consulted with her husband before talking about the practice to a reporter. She said men traditionally bring the first wife first, but of late many prefer to bring the youngest.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Ms. Dia said. “It’s our religion that allows men to have four wives. But two wives in the same house, it’s not so common — usually they have one wife abroad and one here.”

A fierce argument erupted about whether this was too volatile an issue to talk about with an outsider. “All women suffer from polygamy, but our religion says we should not speak,” said an employee, Aminata Fatou, 29. “One can’t do away with that.”

Countered Ms. Dia: “If every woman shuts her mouth, she is complicit. I’m against polygamy — it’s bad for the woman, the man and the children.”

For the record, this “insider” is saying exactly the same thing that Ayaan Hirsi Ali says (albeit more pointedly and loudly). I don’t hear anyone calling her a “native informer” or an “Enlightenment fundamentalist.”

Furthermore, Ms. Dia has enough common sense to fill an entire immigrant community:

Then she added a coda: “If you leave your country, you have to come with the good things, not bring the bad things with you.”

It’s people like Ms. Dia who have turned America into the successfully-bublingbubbling-over melting pot it is. Long may the pot continue to melt us.

A nobody by the name of Neely Tucker, writing for one of our country’s leading newspapers, the Washington Post, disgraces him/herself (sorry: I don’t know the sex of this “journalist” named Neely) and the reputation of his/her newspaper—not to mention his/her profession—by doing a grotesque hit job on Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

So now, ladies and gentlemen, live from Somalia and the Netherlands! Give it up for new-to-Washington Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim heretic, self-proclaimed “Infidel,” whose memoir by that name is at No. 7 on the New York Times bestseller list!

It’s a popping good story, fascinating, with lots of forward lean to the narrative. She’s got guts, brains, looks, talent. She’s called the prophet Muhammad a pervert. She says, “Islam is a culture that has been outlived.” She has lost her faith, ditched two husbands and been disowned by her family.

I would be erring on the side of tolerance and indulgence if I said that of course it’s understandable that the WaPo’s Neely Tucker doesn’t get Hirsi Ali. Tucker, after all, is just your typical American—born, bred, and marinated in the knowledge that the things Hirsi Ali describes in her memoir could never happen to someone he/she knows. And also used to judging books by their cover and never peeking inside.

But I would be wrong to indulge Neely Tucker, because Neely Tucker is a journalist, whose job requires that s/he look deeper into the subjects he/she examines, in order to explain to his/her readers something that they don’t know. None of that here, of course. To Tucker, Hirsi Ali is just another provocative celebrity author who needs to be taken down a peg or two.

For example: Why not pretend that (instead of being the worldly and well traveled intellectual she is) Hirsi Ali just landed from Mars?

you know, you have to wonder how idealized a concept she has of this country. You wonder what she’ll make of the cultural incoherency: 50 Cent, Rosie O’Donnell, Jerry Falwell, Don DeLillo, the death penalty, the state of Idaho, college football, the gun lobby. She seems as if she’d be perfectly at home at a Georgetown reception as the only black person in the room and perfectly lost at a Harlem dinner party. She wouldn’t rate an invitation to the Dearborn, Mich., Arab American dinner.

So the smearing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali continues apace. And I note once again that this disgraceful, shameful trend is being fueled by noted “progressive” Western elites and intellectuals.

This is a subject that is sure to become more important: how liberals and progressives can be “pro-Israel” (a term currently being discussed at Ezra Klein’s blog) and yet distinguish themselves from the blood-curdling “pro-Israel” stance of, say, a certain Texas pastor.

I want the folks who live in Israel now to stay there and live happy lives untroubled by violence. I think that peace agreements, like the agreement of the late 1970s that has ended war between Israel and Egypt, are the only way to achieve this. Compare me to the Texas megachurch pastor who endorses Israeli military action as the best means for covering the region in a “sea of human blood drained from the veins of those who have followed Satan.” The term “pro-Israel” should not be applied to his view. Yet NPR bestows the “pro-Israel” appellation on him, even while noting that most Israelis reject his position. Suggestions for reforming the discourse are welcome.

Dude, you don’t have to reform the discourse. You have to widen your perspective. ’cause the problem isn’t the discourse here in America. The problem is what’s going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians over there. So you should stop worrying about who your allies on the homefront are and start worrying about what’s standing in the way of peace for those folks in Israel whom you profess to care about. Surely it isn’t that blood-curdling Texas pastor?

But otherwise I’m impressed.

Global politics enters the entertainment arena in Europe. The organizers of the cheesy Eurovision Song Contest, “notorious for the banality of its entries,” as The Times (London) puts it, are confronted with the problem of an Israeli band that sings about not wanting to be annihilated by A’jad (who was last seen yesterday making love to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who showed his appreciation by claiming that A’jad endorsed the Saudis’ 2002 peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians. Ha!).

Will Israeli peaceniks be allowed to participate in the world of global pop culture? With lyrics like this? [see this post for a discussion about how pop culture can work to dissipate conflict]

The world is full of terror

If someone makes an error

He’s gonna blow us up to biddy biddy kingdom come

There are some crazy rulers they hide and try to fool us

With demonic, technologic willingness to harm

They’re gonna push the button

Push the button push the bu push the bu push the button

And I don’t want to die; I want to see the flowers bloom

Don’t want a go capoot ka boom, and I don’t want to cry

I wanna have a lot of fun, just sitting in the sun

But nevertheless - he’s gonna push the button

Push the button push the bu push the bu push the button

The New York Times and the London Times quoted one of the contest organizers as saying: “It’s absolutely clear that this kind of message is not appropriate for the competition.” Why not? I wonder. Last year, as I recall (and wrote about here), a Finnish heavy-metal band with a rather unappealing Satan-worshipping “message” won the competition.

And an anti-war message is inappropriate in 2007? I’m not sure I get that.

Kobi Oz, the lead singer of the Israeli band whose song was voted into the competition by popular vote in Israel (those are the rules of entry), says:

“I’m not worked up over the issue, because I know our song is not political. …the song is about the state of humanity in general, whereby a minority has access to excessive power. The song could be about the terror in Russia or Spain, or the violence on the streets of England or France.

“Our way of dealing with terror it to laugh in its face. I think the Europeans should adopt this method as well.” [e.a.]

Good luck with that! I’ll be following along.

Gerard Baker thinks we should elect a Democrat in 2008 because it will cause us to get serious about the things that really matter (like the global jihad against Western modernity).*** Well, not if America’s finest progressives, Ivy League graduates, and political strategist wannabes have anything to say about it.

Right now, for example, at TAPPED they’re busy talking about the division of labor inside the family:

FEMINISM AND EX ANTE HOUSEWORK STANDARDS. Matt interprets data adduced by Jessica and finds more evidence for my assertion that the typical arrangement of housework in households occupied by heterosexual couples reflects unjust gender balances combined with actually different ex ante standards of cleanliness/tidiness (which are related to said inequalities, of course, but a feminist analysis doesn’t require any specific ex ante level of domestic work beyond what is necessary for sanitation, cooking, childrearing, etc.) With all due respect to the great Marcotte and Waring I continue to disagree with the implied solution of creating equality within domestic work norms that are an unholy marriage of 1) patriarchy, 2) the related assumption of one partner devoted full-time to domestic work, and 3) general cultural assumptions that unstructured leisure time is somehow immoral. Instead I think that it makes more sense to try to achieve equality within a more rational allocation of priorities that doesn’t take 50s-bourgeois standards of tedious domestic busywork as a given.

If you didn’t understand a word of that, you’re not alone. In my house, I yell at the various guilty parties to clean up after themselves, or if I get really annoyed, I do it myself and harangue the guilty parties afterward. And we live happily ever after.

But that’s not my point. My point is that in November 2002, after the Dems were destroyed in the midterms, Heather Hurlburt, a former speechwriter for Clinton (and now a participant at Democracy Arsenal), wrote a devastating essay (”War Torn: Why Democrats Can’t Think Straight about National Security”) about then-Democrat wonks’ lack of interest in anything having to do with foreign affairs and their surfeit of interest in the minutiae of domestic policy.

Nothing has changed, I see. Young progressives may talk and write about foreign policy these days, but they understand it (and, worse, care about it, to the extent they do) only as it relates to domestic politics (or else they wouldn’t write the jargon-and slogan-filled, naive, detached, callous, and unhelpful things they tend to write).

Have a nice weekend!

———

*** Yes, I know I wrote about this before.

While the young progressives at TAPPED Talmudicize about the finer points of Israel’s nuclear deterrence capability and speculate about the plans to use that capability. And while other progressives fulminate about those Embarrassing, Nasty Jews and AIPAC, who want to lead the United States straight to destruction—and damn the consequences!—for the sake of Israel. And while yet more young progressives debate about whether or not Comrade Edwards is with them or against them in the campaign to Just Say No to Bombing Iran…

Israel is getting busy deterring the Iranian nuclear program—if you believe this item first published in The Times (London):

 A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.

An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour’s death emerged on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as “gas poisoning”.

Is it too much to ask all the young opinion makers to follow the goddamn news?

…is love, sweet love.

Livni and Abbas in Davos Photo: AP

For what it’s worth, and I fear it isn’t worth much, because this story is getting barely any play while the horrid rape charges against Israel’s loony president, Katsav, grab the headlines [one of the cardinal rules of infotainment is that the "better story" always wins: sex---even violent sex---is always a "better" story than almost anything, even when the stakes are war or peace]:

Livni says Palestinian state is achievable

Foreign minister tells World Economic Forum negotiations between Israel, Palestinians must be based on idea of two states living side by side in peace. Palestinian President Abbas says agreement will help strengthen moderates in region

Peres and Abbas (Photo: Reuters)

The NYT’s Steven Erlanger says, however, that there has never been a less propitious moment to try to reignite the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I can’t say I disagree.

It would be hard to imagine a less promising moment for the United States to restart serious Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.

Six years after the last such talks, the Palestinian government is controlled by Hamas, which preaches Israel’s destruction. Approval ratings for the Israeli prime minister are barely in double digits. Gaza and neighboring Lebanon are in turmoil. President Bush is weak.

Yet the administration is holding a meeting on Feb. 2 of the so-called quartet, whose other members are the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, to be followed by “informal talks” between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, with help from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, about the shape of a final peace treaty and the nature of a Palestinian state beside Israel.

The Americans are responding to pleas for re-engagement from the European Union, the Palestinian president and moderate Arab nations.

Well, yes. But wasn’t this also the recommendation of the ISG, the so-called Baker-Hamilton and a long list of others?

On January 4, I wrote:

And every day a new political wiseman solemnly intones that the key to peace is to solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue (one way or the other).*** It is to laugh!

[update: Check out the post. When I repreinted it here, it screwed up my code/theme/whatever.]

Well, guys and gals, it looks like there’s movement on that front, so it would be good to get some encouragement…—that is, if you all were really serious about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it is the key to world peace an all.

Sadly, Newsweek Baghdad correspondent Mike Hastings lost his about-to-be-fiancee in Iraq last week.

Andrea Parhamovich— “Andi” to her friends—was killed in an ambush in Baghdad. A 28-year-old civilian consultant working for the nonprofit National Democratic Institute, she was in a convoy when gunmen opened fire; Al Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents claimed responsibility.

Reflecting on her death in an e-mail to his Newsweek colleagues, Hastings wrote [emphasis mine]:

“We all take risks over here, and we know the risks. It’s part of the job. But killing a soldier or getting whacked as a war correspondent is one thing—still tragic yet somehow more acceptable—but killing a civilian here to help is just despicable. Shouldn’t have happened. Is it worth it? Good question, don’t have an answer really. I hope it is, have my doubts, but more so, I hope she isn’t forgotten. She wanted to be here, to be a part of history. She loved the adventure and the romance of it all. She loved helping people, making a difference. She loved politics; her heroes were Joan of Arc and Empress SiSi of Austria. (In other words: strong independent women. Like I said, she was a handful.)

“America could not have asked for a better face, a better representative in Iraq. She’s the best and the brightest of her generation, the best of what our country stands for, and she was killed by truly evil people with a bankrupt ideology. I sound like Bush, but I think we can sometimes forget how bad these guys are.”

Well, not to put too fine a point on it… but yes.

Am I taking a cheap shot? Sure. I don’t care. I hope a bit of what Hastings and his Newsweek colleagues learned from this terrible, bitter experience will stick.

On this theme, writing in City Journal, Hitchens contemplates Mark Steyn’s obsession with

the general apathy and surrender of the West in the face of a determined assault from a religious ideology, or an ideological religion, afflicted by no sickly doubt about what it wants or by any scruples about how to get it.

Many of us share this obsession. Hitchens asks:

How does one respond, in other words, when an enemy challenges not just your cherished values but additionally forces you to examine the very assumptions that have heretofore seemed to underpin those values?

That is the question, isn’t it? Since 9/11 and up until now, liberals have consistently disappointed by falling back on Frantz Fanon:

[Liberals] cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the “Third World.” You can see this identification in the way that the Palestinians (about 20 percent of whom were Christian until their numbers began to decline) have become an “Islamic” cause and in the amazing ignorance that most leftists display about India, a multiethnic secular democracy under attack from al-Qaida and its surrogates long before the United States was. And you can see it, too, in the stupid neologism “Islamophobia,” which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism.

This kind of thinking is old, tired, and simply not good enough. Hitchens again:

Islamist suicide-terrorism has mutated into new shapes and adopted fresh grievances as a result of the mobilization against it. Liberalism has found even more convoluted means of blaming itself for the attack upon it. But at least the long period of somnambulism is over, and the opportunity now exists for antibodies to form against the infection.

Still:

The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives: we are all responsible for doing our utmost as citizens as well as for demanding more imagination from our leaders.

So I take my cheap shots where I can get them in order to preserve energy for the long fight ahead.

Andrew Sullivan links to a devastating column by Nick Cohen. It’s devastating for those like me and Cohen, who are infuriated by the deranged detachment of our fellows on the liberal left, and devastatingly on-target about my liberal-left cohort, which has abdicated moral responsibility and taken on the ill-fitting cloak of moral purity in the wake of 9/11 rather than face the realities that challenge its 30+-year-old worldview:

Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? As important, why did a European Union that daily announces its commitment to the liberal principles of human rights and international law do nothing as crimes against humanity took place just over its borders? …

Why is the world upside down?

Of course Cohen has some answers:

My parents joined the Communist Party, but left it in their twenties. My father encouraged me to read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s exposés of the Soviet Union and argue about them at the dinner table. He knew how bad the left could get, but this knowledge did not stop him from remaining very left-wing. He would never have entertained the notion that communism was as bad as fascism. In this, he was typical. Anti-communism was never accepted as the moral equivalent of anti-fascism, not only by my parents but also by the overwhelming majority of liberal-minded people. The left was still morally superior. Even when millions were murdered and tens of millions were enslaved and humiliated, the ‘root cause’ of crimes beyond the human imagination was the perversion of noble socialist ideals.

Every now and again, someone asks why the double standard persists to this day. The philosophical answer is that communism did not feel as bad as fascism because in theory, if not in practice, communism was an ideology that offered universal emancipation, while only a German could benefit from Hitler’s Nazism and only an Italian could prosper under Mussolini’s fascism. I’m more impressed by the matter-of-fact consideration that fascist forces took over or menaced Western countries in the Thirties and Forties, and although there was a communist menace in the Cold War, the Cold War never turned hot and Western Europe and North America never experienced the totalitarianism of the left.

Indeed. Never having experienced totalitarianism of the left, my cohort is unable—or unwilling—to take the leap of imagination necessary to confront the fact that totalitarianism, whether from the right, the left, or the fanatically “religious,” is a scourge on humanity.

The good fight today is against the forces of darkness that seek to deprive individuals across the globe of their excruciatingly hard-won political and personal freedoms—supposedly in the name of Allah but actually for bloody revenge and in quest of raw power.

I am a child of the dark forces of the 20th century. Rocked in the kindly bosom of America, I was able to rise above and to soar through my American dreams along with my cohort. But I can never forget where I came from.

You might call me your guilty conscience.

On the other hand, you might call me the unexploded ordnance of the 20th century.

We’re here. We won’t shut up. Get used to it.

Here’s Judea Pearl, father of the beheaded WSJ journalist Daniel Pearl, on how to watch Al Jazeera. (Hint: carefully)

[F]or two months now Al Jazeera has been taking its mixture of news coverage and extremist propagandizing to our front door through an English-language station. Called Al Jazeera English, the network can be received via satellite or streamed over the Internet. It has bureaus in London and Washington, and has recruited such high-profile Western journalists as Sir David Frost as correspondents.

In part, this is promising. The Arabic version of Al Jazeera and its various spinoffs on satellite TV and the Internet are usually credited with having a positive influence on Arab society. …

Now for the caution [emphasis added]:

But what should concern Westerners is that the ideology of men like Sheik Qaradawi saturates many of the network’s programs, and is gaining wider acceptance among Muslim youths in the West. In its “straight” news coverage on its Arabic TV broadcasts and Web sites, Al Jazeera’s reports consistently amplify radical Islamist sentiments (although without endorsing violence explicitly). …

In short, Al Jazeera’s editors choreograph a worldview in which an irreconcilable struggle rages between an evil-meaning Western oppressor and its helpless, righteous Arab victims. Most worrisome, perhaps, it often reports on supposed Western conspiracies behind most Arab hardships or failings, thus fueling the sense of helplessness, humiliation and anger among Muslim youths and helping turn them into potential recruits for terrorist organizations.

This is exactly what David Kilcullen, counterterrorism expert, has written about—that we need to find ways to “turn” potential jihadists before they actually become jihadists. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera is busy creating new ones every day.

Nevertheless, Pearl is not in favor of shutting down Al Jazeera. Bravo. I agree completely. It’s an unwelcome reality that the Arabic satellite channels are broadcasting anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic material 24/7, but it’s a reality we have to live with. Sooner or later we will have to challenge it—and top it. With effective counterpropaganda.

That is a decades-long project.

Meanwhile: note from Judea Pearl to the Daily Show guys and Rachel Sklar at Eat the Press (even though they’re not journalists), who think Al Jazeera English is the bees’ knees:

I wouldn’t call for banning Al Jazeera English in the United States even if that were possible. It is important to extend a hand to the network because it can become a force for good; but it is as important for our news organizations to scrutinize its content and let its viewers know when anti-Western wishes are subverting objective truth.