BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, March 29, 2004 3:48 p.m. EST
Kerry's
Great American Joke-Out--II
Thanks to all the U.S. military service members, relatives of service members,
veterans and military trainees who answered our invitation
Friday to comment on President Bush's jokes about the hunt for weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq. A selection of the responses is available at the link
atop this item. The comments were overwhelmingly supportive of the president;
we've now received 111 of them, of which only three were critical. We're not
counting e-mails from readers who claimed no military ties, such as one who
sourly anticipated that we would publish "paeans from soldiers who think
the sun shines out of W.'s b**t" (asterisks in original).
Several of those who responded said they thought the real butt of the joke
was President Bush's critics and their small-minded obsession with the WMD issue.
Reader Catherine Logan:
Although a strong libertarian and sometimes (I choose my causes with care)
radical Democrat, I laughed until I almost fell off my chair at the presidential
stand-up (or crawl-around) comedian act.
But then, I am an Ashkenazi Jew. We are famous for our ability to find something
humorous in everything. Like a friend of mine who asked me one day if I knew
what one Jew said to another in the gas chamber. The answer? "Well, at least
I'm finally rid of the lice we picked up on the train."
I think sometimes things get so bizarre, so horrible, so unbearable, that
you have to make jokes about them--even if there are tears at the same time.
The huffiness over Baby Bush's jokes, however, is probably because it spoiled
all the political (left-wing) satirists' plans for the coming months of campaigning.
You can't very well use the president's self-directed humor in your own campaign,
after all.
So Kerry and others were miffed and not having been the ones to get the jokes
first.
Actually, though, Kerry's party is not above joking about the war in Iraq.
The Democratic National Committee's Web site features a page it bills as "The
Game that Ties the Truth in Knots":
Play our new game, the George W. Bush Credibility Twister.
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush told us that Iraq tried
to buy uranium from Africa. But that claim was false. What did President Bush
know about this bogus charge, and when did he know it? Play "George W.
Bush Credibility Twister" and see if you can untangle the truth.
Click the "SPIN" button to start.
Now, far be it from us to scold anyone for making light of a serious matter.
But consider the premise of the DNC's joke: that any flaw in the case President
Bush made for Iraq's liberation renders the whole effort unworthy. The implication
is that the sacrifices of those who've died, been wounded or suffered other
hardships in the war are in vain. Yes, someone is making jokes at the expense
of America's brave fighting men and women, but it isn't President Bush.
Who
Is Brad Owens?
John Kerry did trot out one veteran who blasted President Bush for his WMD humor.
From Kerry's Thursday press
release:
"How Out of Touch Can This President Be?
"George Bush insulted me as a veteran and as a friend to many still serving
in Iraq. This act lowers the dialogue about weapons of mass destruction. War
is the single most serious event that a President or government can carry
its people into. No weapons of mass destruction have been found and that is
no joke--this is for real. This cheapens the sacrifice that American soldiers
and their families are dealing with every single day."--Brad Owens (Iraqi
War Veteran, US Army Reserves)
Blogger Henry Hanks calls our attention to this 1998 article from the Augusta
(Ga.) Chronicle:
The Richmond County Republican Party has cast out one of its candidates for
the state House.
The party's executive committee voted to "disassociate itself"
from House District 115 candidate Bradley Owens because of his 1992 association
with then-presidential candidate David Duke, the former grand wizard of the
Ku Klux Klan.
A picture of Mr. Owens clasping the hand of Mr. Duke appeared on the front
page of The Augusta Chronicle on March 6, 1992, when the avowed white supremacist
visited Langley, S.C.
As Hanks writes, the GOP refused to back Owens, "but now he's good enough
for the apparent Democratic nominee for president of the United States, simply
because he's a veteran."
'Sock
It to Me!'
On Friday we described Richard Nixon as "utterly humorless," but some
readers reminded us this wasn't quite true, pointing us to his "Laugh-In"
appearance during the 1968 campaign. Here's how Brainevent.com describes it:
On September 16, 1968, during one of the frantically-paced joke montage sequences,
the Republican candidate for president of the United States appeared on the
"wildest" TV show of the time to deliver one of the most famous Laugh-In catchphrases:
"Sock it to me!"
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense; it probably didn't make any sense to Nixon
either. But he suddenly looked a little more with-it, a little less stodgy
and uptight and--dare we say it?--Republican. And the show re-ran and re-ran
the Nixon clip in future episodes, right next to Judy Carne dancing in her
bikini and Arte Johnson saying "Verrrrrry interesting" and then falling off
his tricycle. Don't ask.
Perhaps tellingly, no one disputed our contention that Jimmy Carter was (and
remains) utterly humorless.
Kerry:
We Didn't Do the 'Hard Work of Responding'
The Seattle Times has a Sunday section for kids called "Next," and
the current edition features an online poll that asks "Who do you blame
for 9/11?" Three choices are offered: "Bush," "Clinton"
and "CIA." There isn't even a write-in category for those who blame
the actual culprits, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. And people say it's crazy
to think Saddam Hussein might have been involved?
There has of course been a lot of finger-pointing of late over which U.S. officials'
failures to act were the most damaging. We'd just like to point out that John
Kerry admitted that he had not done enough, in an appearance on CNN's "Larry
King Live" on Sept. 11, 2001:
King: Senator Kerry did your . . . committee on international
operations and terrorism ever actually fear something like this?
Kerry: Absolutely. Absolutely. . . . We have always known
this could happen. We've warned about it. We've talked about it. I regret
to say, as--I served on the Intelligence Committee up until last year. I can
remember after the bombings of the embassies, after TWA 800, we went through
this flurry of activity, talking about it, but not really doing hard work
of responding.
This of course does not mean Kerry is to blame for Sept. 11. It merely underscores
that until then, the vast majority of political leaders of both parties did
not take the terrorist threat seriously enough. On the left-wing site CommonDreams.org,
a professor named Ira
Chernus illuminates one reason why:
Suppose the Bush administration had heeded the urgent pleas of Richard Clarke.
Suppose they had made stopping Osama's agents their very highest goal. Suppose
they had done everything that Clarke and other antiterrorism experts advised.
How would we on the left, in the peace and justice movement, have responded?
We would have called it fear-mongering. We would have decried their skewed
priorities. Every time they stopped an Arab tourist on suspicion, or made
us take off our shoes at the airport, we would have denounced the emerging
police state. And we would have been right.
Note that "And we would have been right." Chernus argues that the
left should not "sit back and smile along with the Kerryites" but
instead should blame America for terrorism:
If we applaud Richard Clarke and his kind now, we cannot urge the voters
to do the right thing for the right reason. We cannot argue that militarism
and tough "security measures" are the wrong approach to the problem. We cannot
explain how Bush's foreign policy, like Clinton's, breeds anti-American violence.
We cannot talk about the changes we want to see in U.S. foreign policy, so
that the victims of our policy won't feel driven to commit suicide in an effort
to deter us. When it comes to so-called terrorism, those are the right reasons
to turn Bush out of office.
Chernus is right that Kerry will never wholeheartedly embrace this agenda.
But if you don't think appeasement is the answer to terror, ask yourself
who would come closer to doing so: Bush or Kerry?
The
Dems Ordered Potatoes
"GOP Panelists Ask for Rice"--headline, Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette,
March 29
More
Foreign Leaders for Kerry?
Hans Blix stopped short of a full-fledged endorsement, but when asked by the
New York Times magazine what he thinks of John Kerry, the erstwhile weapons
inspector said, "I welcome his attitude toward multilateral cooperation.
I think he is trying to get back to the traditional U.S. attitudes."
Columnist Amir
Taheri argues that "a consensus seems to be emerging" in the Arab
world "that a Kerry presidency will lift what the Arab elite regards as
its worst nightmare during the presidency of George W Bush":
The assumption in Arab media and political circles is that Kerry as president
will abandon Bush's "dreams of change" in the Middle East and restore Washington's
traditional policy of support for the status quo in the Arab world.
Taheri disagrees, saying that "the sea-change that 9/11 has produced"
renders impossible a return to the status quo ante, even if Bush loses his re-election
bid. The truth is probably somewhere in between: The movement for change in
the Middle East has enough momentum that Kerry will be unable to stop it, even
if he wants to. But it's hard to believe he would be as bold as President Bush.
After all, if Kerry had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power.
The Arab elites are not united in their opposition to reform, either, as the
Washington Post's Jackson
Diehl notes:
A much-anticipated summit of the Arab League, scheduled to begin today in
Tunis, was abruptly put off Saturday, and for a remarkable reason: The kings,
emirs and presidents-for-life of the Arab Middle East are unable to agree
on a common response to the Bush administration's new policy of promoting
democracy in their region. The younger and brighter rulers, knowing the stagnant
status quo is unsustainable, are pushing a strategy of co-option, offering
halfway, half-baked "reform" programs they have hastily drawn up. The less
enlightened insist on sticking to the excuses that Arab dictators have offered
the world for the past half-century: a) the first priority must be Israel,
and b) foreign tutelage is wrong, except when applied to Israel.
Further evidence that Bush's policies are working comes from the Associated
Press's Sydney bureau: "Syria has asked close U.S. ally Australia for
help in repairing its relations with Washington." Australia earlier played
a central role in the rapprochement between the U.S. and Libya. The Baathists
who rule Syria may or may not be sincere, but there's little question that they're
scared. Would President Kerry inspire the same fear?
Who's
Distracted?--I
"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al-Qaida and suspected of
heading a terrorist network in Iraq, is now believed to have been the brains
behind the deadly Madrid railway attacks," the Associated Press reports,
citing "a French [!] private investigator."
What was that again about Saddam Hussein having no connection to al Qaeda?
Who's
Distracted?--II
"Mullah Mohammad Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, was wounded
in a U.S. bombing raid earlier this month that killed four of his bodyguards,
Deutsche Presse-Agentur said, citing a newspaper report in Pakistan," Bloomberg
News reports.
Is
Arafat Next?
"Israeli intelligence claims it has detailed evidence proving that Yasser
Arafat's West Bank compound is a refuge for some of the most wanted Palestinian
terrorist suspects and a nerve centre for 'martyr' attacks," London's Sunday
Telegraph reports:
According to senior officials, a growing band of men wanted on suspicion
of planning suicide bombings and murdering settlers is being sheltered in
the compound, known as the Mukata. The evidence that Mr Arafat, 74, is at
the apex of a terrorist infrastructure is being used by some Israeli ministers
to argue that he should be killed in an air strike, as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
the spiritual leader of the Hamas terror group, was last week.
Ha'aretz
has more on Arafat's terror ties:
A confession by a member of Fatah's armed branch in Nablus has shed new light
on the extent of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's involvement
in terror. The terror suspect told Shin Bet security service interrogators
that money he received from Arafat was used to purchase weapons and to carry
out shooting attacks in the West Bank.
Raaf Mansur, from the Nablus area, was detained by Israel Defense Forces
soldiers last February. Mansur headed a wing of Fatah's military branch, the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. His cell was responsible for attacks in the Nablus
and Jenin areas.
Letters confiscated by Israeli security forces from Mansur's home included
pleas sent to Arafat for money to fund armed activities. Mansur told interrogators
that his appeals to Arafat resulted in a monthly NIS [new Israeli shekels]
7,500 [about $1,650] payment to him. The allocations continued up to the time
of Mansur's arrest.
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon personally promised President Bush that
he would not kill or exile Arafat. But as the Associated
Press reports from Jerusalem, "Israel's government attorney recommended
Sunday that . . . Sharon be indicted for bribe-taking, officials said,
in what is seen as a major--but not final--step toward his possible resignation."
If Sharon resigns, his promise to spare Arafat becomes moot.
Drunken
Minors Against the War
Here's a telling anecdote from the New York Times (ellipsis in original):
When the New York City Police Department brass met with protest organizers
before the March 20 antiwar demonstration, it was in the hopes of planning
a peaceful gathering. But when the department posted on its own Web site lengthy
instructions for where and when to show up, the location of portable toilets
and other helpful tidbits, it crossed over, some say, into micromanaging and
meddling.
Rankled protesters felt like the high school kid whose weekend kegger suddenly--horrifyingly--receives
the blessing of his parents. It's still a party. It's just a little more . . .
lame.
So adolescent are these "antiwar activists" that they recoil at the
very idea of adult supervision.
What
Would Kerry Do Without Experts?
"Kerry Under Pressure for A Blueprint: Compelling Agenda Needed, Experts
Say"--headline and subheadline, Washington Post, March 28
This article concludes with what blogger John
Ellis describes as a "classic gasbag quote" from William Galston,
a former Clinton adviser: "Kerry was acceptable to all the factions of the party
because it was hard to type-cast him as Old Democrat or New Democrat, and it's
hard to type-cast the party as New Democrat or Old Democrat. Bill Clinton changed
some things, but he didn't change all things. [This is] a party that is uneasily
poised between the parts of its past it wants to cling to and a future that
it has not fully defined."
Just the kind of strong leadership we need while there's a war on.
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
- "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew
Jackson
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin
Roosevelt
- "The buck stops here."--Harry
Truman
- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country."--John
Kennedy
- "Today we are told that, after three million lost jobs and so many lost
hopes, America is now turning a corner. But those who say that, they're not
standing on the corner of Highland Street, where two 15-year-old teenagers
were hit in a drive-by shooting last week."--John
Kerry
Government
Shutdown Redux
Senate Democrats are threatening to use filibusters to block every single one
of President Bush's judicial nominees, Fox News reports. The Dems are trying
to mau-mau the president into agreeing not to make any more "recess appointments"
to the bench--which are temporary but do not require Senate confirmation. Sen.
Chuck "Deep End" Schumer issued a statement Friday vowing "to hold
nominations until the White House commits to stop abusing the advise and consent
process."
Bush has used recess appointments to put two of his appointees, Charles Pickering
and Bill Pryor, on the bench temporarily. Minority Leader Tom Daschle claims
this is "a departure from historic and constitutional practices":
"At no point has a president ever used a recess appointment to install a
rejected nominee onto the federal bench, and there are intonations there will
be even more recess appointments in the coming months. . . ."
But neither Pickering nor Pryor was rejected by the Senate. Indeed, both commanded
the support of a majority of senators, so Democrats used a filibuster--which
requires only 41 votes--to prevent the Senate from voting on their confirmations.
Legislators have considerable power to obstruct the workings of government,
but as Newt Gingrich found out with the "government shutdown" in 1995--a
confrontation that, by all accounts, President Clinton won--doing so can be
politically risky. In this case, the Senate shenanigans may be handing an issue
to their opponents in the November election--and to President Bush, as he stumps
for them.
Close Senate races are expected in at least eight "red" states: Alaska,
Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South
Dakota (where Daschle himself seeks re-election). If the GOP can win all of
these, along with Georgia (which the Republicans are expected to win easily)
and Illinois (an uphill battle for the GOP), they will have a 57-43 majority
in the Senate--not quite filibuster-proof, but close. Such a drubbing could
prompt the Democrats to consider a change in tactics in the 109th Congress.
Wouldn't
That Make Him an Octogamist?
"Eighth Wife Ends Bigamist's Career"--headline, Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
March 27
This
Just In
"Soap Works"--headline, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, March 27
How
About Turning It Off?
"No Clear Remedy as Parents Decry TV"--headline, Associated Press,
March 29
This
Sounds Painful for Everyone Involved
"Vermont Probes Man With 70 Goats in House"--headline, Associated
Press, March 29
You
Don't Have to Be a Brain Sturgeon to Figure This Out
"Baby Sturgeon Strong Evidence of Reproduction"--headline, Washington
Times, March 29
Don't
Know Much About History
In a column defending Michael Newdow's effort to strike "under God"
from the Pledge of Allegiance, columnist Ellen Goodman offers this observation:
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, "there are so many references to God in
the daily lives of this country" that the words in the pledge have no more
religious meaning than the words on the coin. Maybe so. But remember that
adding "In God We Trust" was also a political sop to opponents after Lincoln
rejected their proposal to insert Jesus Christ into the preamble of the Constitution.
That's a pretty neat trick, seeing as how the Constitution was written in 1787
and Lincoln wasn't born until 1809.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Sonny Emerson,
Sean Fitzpatrick, David Simcoe, Nancy Block, Julie Berry, Stephen Lachaga, Doug
Levene, Arnold Schulberg, Michael Segal, Jim Baer, David Worley, C.E. Dobkin,
Ethel Fenig, Carl Sherer, Barak Moore, Raghu Desikan, David Gerstman, Yehuda
Hilewitz, Michael Zukerman, John Gaylord, Gad Meir, Irina Fayerberg, S.E. Brenner,
Rosanne Klass, Monty Krieger, Steven Stoller, Steve Roberts, Edward Himmelfarb,
Rick Walsh, Justin Taylor, Edward Morrissey, Charles Steinberg, Tom Linehan,
Brian Jones, Brian Azman, William Beutler, Steve Baus, Dan Shepherdson, Scott
Smith and Bennett Stern. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com,
and please include the URL.)
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