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June 2005

June 2005
Will Smith  |  by unconsideredtrifles.blogspot.com. All rights reserved. 18.07 | 14:14

"My traffic is sheets...

being, as I am...

a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles." – The Winter's Tale, 4.3.

13-28

    "On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of the battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory."
"Restrain the stiff-borne action.

"

This week VDH American reticence toward war. Yet he does so to further illustrate Islamofascisms' adroit exploitation of this trait--and the the political Left's inability (refusal?) to recognize this vulnerability.



What, though, are the deep roots of the Left's inability to criticize and condemn Islamism with anything more than token rhetoric? Why do they seem to urge us to "move on" from 9-11? If the Bush Administration's policies are such Orwellian horror stories, then why is no alternative means of addressing the problem of international terrorism coming out of liberal circles?



Hanson responds to these questions, as it were, by citing two deep currents in contemporary American political discourse: multiculturalism and the aesthetics of liberalism (think of a lip-biting Clinton telling folks how much he hates war even as he bombs Kosovo, etc.).
But once the suicide murdering and bombing from Iraq began to dominate the news, then this administration, for historical reasons largely beyond its own control, had a very small reservoir of good will.

The Islamists proved to be more adept in the public relations of winning liberal exemption from criticism than did the administration itself, as one nude Iraqi on film or a crumpled Koran was always deemed far worse than daily beheadings and executions. Indeed, the terrorists were able to morph into downtrodden victims of a bullying, imperialistic America faster than George W. Bush was able to appear a reluctant progressive at war with the Dark Age values of our enemies.


And once that transformation was established, we were into a dangerous cycle of a conservative, tough-talking president intervening abroad to thwart the poorer of the third world — something that has never been an easy thing in recent American history, but now in our own age has become a propagandist's dream come true.

Don't miss this gem of a paragraph (that I should probably tack up on a wall somewhere within earshot of the gasps and shieks coming from my fellow denizens in the Ivory Tower):

When Western liberals today talk of a mythical period in the days after 9/11 of "unity" and "European solidarity" what they really remember is a Golden Age of Victimhood, or about four weeks before the strikes against the Taliban commenced. Then for a precious moment at last the United States was a real victim, apparently weak and vulnerable, and suffering cosmic justice from a suddenly empowered other.

Oh, to return to the days before Iraq and Afghanistan, when we were hurt, introspective, and pitied, and had not yet "lashed out."

I'm grateful to Steve Rosenberg.

He denied my son a trophy.
Nine-year-old Michael Jr. is a terrific boy.

And he plays sports with a pretty high level of concentration and effort. But when it comes to his most recent baseball season, his team's efforts weren't worthy of recognition.
He had a terrific coach in a volunteer named Joe Katz.

Most guys coach because they have a son on the team. Katz did it because he loves the game and wanted to teach the fundamentals.
And every week his team got better.

But the Rattlers didn't win a game and were in last place. Because all teams in the AA Division make the playoffs (something I also question), they had the opportunity to get a win under their belts when they defeated the Cougars before getting clobbered in their final game.
Bottom line: They won only once.


Enter Steve Rosenberg. Steve was Michael's coach last year and the year before that. Steve is not only a coach but also doubles as the president of the Lower Merion Little League.


For several years, boys in Lower Merion have grown accustomed to getting trophies just for showing up. They call them "participation trophies." But Steve Rosenberg has put an end to this trophy mania.

And I salute him.
Over some opposition, Rosenberg put an end to the participation-trophy system for kids 9 years old and up. From now on, those boys will have to actually do something to get a trophy:
"To keep you as a prisoner, not like a guest.

"

Philly Radio personality Michael Smerconish has Secretary Rumsfeld over the Guantanamo situation, here's an excerpt:
He got a laugh out of my telling him that after hearing Amnesty International’s complaints, I then read the Time Magazine piece – thinking I had missed something - and was reminded of the old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is”.

“There’s no torture going on down there and there hasn’t been,” said the Secretary of Defense to me today.

I told him I had defended the practices at Guatanamo Bay last week on Hardball with Chris Matthews, and was confronted with the usual rebuttal, that our interrogation techniques don’t generate results.

He said the interrogation methods are indeed successful.
“There is no question but that the United States is learning a great deal. We’ve learned the organization structure of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, we’ve learned the extent of terrorist presence in Europe, the U.

S., and the Middle East. We have information on al Qaeda’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, information on recruiting and recruitment centers, on terrorist skill sets, financing.

This information has saved American lives, the information that has been gained down there.”
“No one wants to hold these people, no one wants to spend time interrogating these people, but we simply have to do it. We are in a long struggle against violent extremists who are anxious and financed to kill innocent men women and children in our country and other western countries across the globe.

”
Finally, what does he say to those who wish to close Gitmo Bay? The Secretary answered with a question of his own: “Then the question is, what is the alternative. He who would tear down what is has the responsibility of recommending something better.

And I haven’t heard anybody who said anything like that who has any idea at all, unless you want to let all these people go and let them kill another 3,000 or 10,000 Americans.”
“This facility is needed. It is housing people who have done great damage to our country, who are determined to go out and kill additional people if they have the chance: bomb-makers and terrorist financers, and suicide bombers.

And they need to be kept off the street, and they are being kept off the street in Guantanamo at a facility being operated by young men and women from our armed services who are doing a fine job they are treating them in a humane way, but they are keeping them off the street, and they are interrogating them to find out additional information so we can prevent future terrorist acts.”

I haven't forgotten about our discussion of , and now that I've finished it, I'd like to share with you just a couple of observations from the perspective of a Shakespearean reading this classic piece of 19th-century American fiction.



Melville could not have written Moby Dick without Shakespeare. LOL. How's that for literary solipsism?

! What I mean by that rash statement is that I was deeply impressed by the numerous ways that Melville draws upon Shakespearean antecedents to tell his own story. This in no way diminishes the novelist's achievement--after all, Shakespeare himself borrowed heavily from previous accounts of most of his stories (for one thing, modern notions of copyright were simply nonexistent).



Readers familiar with Macbeth, for example, will no doubt recognize the prophesies in , "The Whale Watch". In Witch-like fashion, Fedallah fuels Ahab's hubris by assuring him that only hemp can kill him--which the latter presumptively assumes to mean the gallows. He also allows him to think that the two hearses he will glimpse will be literal rather than metaphorical manifestations:
"Aye, aye!

a strange sight that, Parsee!- a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha!

Such a sight we shall not soon see."
"Believe it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man."

While it's true that Fedallah remains a somewhat diabolical figure like the "Weird Sisters" in Macbeth, Melville also lets his readers see the extent to which Ahab's own obsessive ambition is far more responsible than the hands of Fate to which his speeches often appeal.

Incidentally, fans of John Huston's well-known 1956 starring will note here that the movie screenplay-- since it eliminated the character of Fedallah altogether (probably for brevity as well as to solidify Peck's central role)--transfers the prophecy of Fedallah's rise and return to Ahab himself, so that (playing Starbuck) and other sailors see their dead captain's arm beckoning them to their doom.

Just a few chapters later in "The Musket" (chapter 123), Melville's debt to the Scottish Play re-emerges as Starbuck experiences a kind of psychomachia (or "soul war") at the sight of a loaded musket nearby the sleeping Ahab:

"He would have shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very musket that he pointed at me;- that one with the studded lock; let me touch it- lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I should shake so now.

Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and powder in the pan;- that's not good.

Best spill it?- wait. I'll cure myself of this.

I'll hold the musket boldly while I think.- I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair?

Fair for death and doom,- that's fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's only fair for that accursed fish.- The very tube he pointed at me!

- the very one; this one- I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very thing I handle now.- Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. .

.. What, then, remains?

The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me and law.- Aye, aye, 'tis so.

- Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together? And would I be a murderer, then, if" [and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end against the door.]

Compare this to Macbeth's famous "Is this a dagger I see before me.

..?

" as he stands outside of King Duncan's chamber, plotting murder and assassination (the first known instance of that word in English, by the way).

Beyond Macbeth, readers may notice echoes of King Lear's desperate curses as Ahab rails against the thunder and lightning of the storm in , "The Candles". Here too is Lear's pride and hubris:

"Oh!

thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee.

I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. ..

. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee." [Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap lengthwise to thrice their previous height; Ahab, with the rest, closes his eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them.

]


Did you notice that Melville even includes stage directions here ( in many of the later chapters)--very peculiar for a novel, and I think a dead giveaway to his readers that he's recalling Shakespeare. And now compare Ahab's speech with this from Lear:
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage!

blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulph'rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!

And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack Nature's moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!

I could go on, but I think you get the point. And what is my point?

Well, beyond Melville's intimate awareness of Shakespeare, I think he clearly wants to raise the energy-level of these final chapters, and what better way to do this than by injecting drama--quite literally so, even the stage directions!! You will note, finally, what Melville writes in the of his tale:

The drama's done.

Why then here does any one step forth? -- Because one did survive the wreck.

Not, "the novel is done" but "the drama's done".

And now Ishmael steps forth" as if from a curtain that has just closed on the dreadful final scene.

If in our we grew to an appreciation of Melville's ability to meander--to stray from the direct course of the novel's plot so as to mimic the experience of being at sea--then now I think we can come to see how masterfully he can guide us back on track and return the story of Ishmael's journey to a fever-pitch of excitement and action. Note, however, that Melville still delays.

We still have yet to meet the White Whale, and in fact the encounter with the famous Leviathan barely comprises twenty pages of this whale-sized sea story. But that is as it should be; after all, Moby Dick is about much, much more than the hunt for a whale.

If you've been reading , I'd love to hear your thoughts and insights.

Or tell me what you think of the , which I still enjoy. Many have stated that they believe the casting of Peck as Ahab was a mistake--what do you think?

"Yet he shall have a noble memory."
If you haven't yet read Jonah Goldberg's beautiful, endearing, and aptly funny tribute to his father Sidney who recently passed away, you can find it . He begins:
As few here would vigorously dispute, my parents are, at first blush, an odd match.

Mom, an Episcopalian southern gal essentially ran away from home as a teenager, looking for fun and adventure.

In a sense Dad ran away from home too, but in the way so many nice Jewish boys of his generation did: he graduated from high school when he was 15 and headed off to the University of Michigan looking for books, books, and more books. As Goldberg family legend has it, my parents were engaged after only a few dates, and mom fell for dad after a daytime date at the Central Park Zoo.



My Dad, already in his late thirties and a respected editor, took Mom on a daytime trip to the zoo. Now, for a gal like Mom, this wasn’t exactly her idea of an exciting date. But she was intrigued.

He brought her straight away to the old birdhouse, which hasn’t been there for decades. At the main birdcage he told her to look off to one side where an un-presupposing small bird was standing alone. It took my Mom a few moments to find it.

Keep your eye on that one, Dad told her, as she was still wondering what this was all about. And she waited. And waited.

What was the deal? And then, suddenly, the bird hopped.

"He's of a most facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it.

"

Nay, 'tis strange, 'tis very strange, that is the
brief and the tedious of it; and he's of a most
facinerious spirit that will not acknowledge it.
(All's Well, )

Victor Davis Hanson several strange contradictions between the news coming out of the Middle East and the hackneyed truisms of the American Left.
So unhinged have we become that if an American policymaker calls for democracy and reform in the Middle East, then he is likely to echo the aspirations of jailed and persecuted Arab reformers.

But if he says Islamic fascism is either none of our business or that we lack the wisdom or morality to pass judgment on the pathologies of a traditional tribal society, then the jihadist and the police state — and our own Western Left — approve.

In particular, he makes a point by point analysis of a recent Wash. Post article about a Syrian terrorist smuggler, the upshot of which is, he says, that:
Note how in this one Washington Post story how almost every one of our Western myths promulgated by the antiwar Left is shattered by a candid jihadist himself.

First, there was always radical Islamic anti-American hatred that preceded Iraq. Indeed, celebrations were spontaneous immediately after September 11 on the mere news of slaughtered Americans.
We have been told that jihadists and secular Baathists have little in common, and that only our war brought them together.

But like the Japanese and Nazis in World War II, autocrat and jihadist have shared interests in hating liberal democracies — and well before our response they were jointly fanning efforts against the United States.
Note too the passive-aggressive nature of Syria that gives into rather than resists American pressures. When the U.

S. threatens, it backsteps; when we relent, it goes back on the offensive.
Americans worry that captured terrorists have proper Korans and are allowed traditional grooming.

Arab jailors immediately shave the traditional beards of those they arrest.
Saudi Arabia claims to be our ally, but its Wahhabi roots are so deep and its oil revenues so vast that much of its multilayered ruling class could not cease its support for jihad even if it wished. We forget that their 'war against terror' is a war against Muslim terrorists who attack Muslims — not necessarily against Muslim terrorists ("militants") who attack Westerners.


Some claim that anti-Semitism is an exaggerated charge, yet the jihadists blame the Jews, not just Israel, instinctively.
Burlingame is a trustee of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, a position that has given her intimate knowledge of the plans for Ground Zero. Her concern is not the size and shape of the buildings, but what's planned below ground level to the Americans who died on 9/11.


Burlingame is now blowing the lid off the fact that this space will include a so-called International Freedom Center whose organizers say that they intend to take us on what they call a "journey through the history of freedom."
"The people who are going to run this building are the same people who are suing Don Rumsfeld over the Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo stuff - I'm talking about Human Rights First and the ACLU, they're going to cram that building with what we think is going to be propaganda.
"They're going to show slavery, cross-burnings, Native American genocide, Nazi Germany atrocities, and the Soviet gulag.

Apparently they don't think Sept. 11 was enough an atrocity of an epic proportion and their message is going to be multiculturalism, internationalism and peace through understanding," Burlingame explained to me.
"Is American blood so cheap that is not enough to tell the story of that day and must all the 9/11 artifacts be hidden underground?

" she asks. "People are going to stand up in this huge building, trying to wrap their mind around the monumental destruction of Sept. 11, and they're going to.

.. see Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees.

It is infuriating."
On a similar topic related to 9-11 and its ramifications, Smerconish sent a notice out to his listerners regarding a development in airport security. Since it concerns YOU and asks for YOUR INPUT, I am posting it here.

Michael writes:


I want to make certain that you heard something important that I discussed on the air, on Friday. The House Committee on Homeland Security contacted me this week because of my book Flying Blind, and my continued interest in airport screening. The Committee wants to know the extent to which old ladies with aluminum walkers, young babies, soldiers and others with no resemblance to the 9/11 hijackers are still being singled out for secondary screening at airports.

The Committee is particularly interested in incidents that have occurred within the last year or so. They are planning a hearing and would like to present witnesses. (I am planning a hearing of my own - details to follow!

)

If you or a family member has been involved in what you consider to be a ridiculous example of airport screening, please spell it out in an email, and send it to me c/o of my web site. .

I want to deliver to the Congress examples of ways that political correctness is still hampering airport security.

I am honored that they asked me. Help me, please. Many thanks.



MAS

I'm sure he'd love to hear your airport screening horror story, so drop him an email.

"Masking the business from the common eye.

"

It's almost as if had this USA Today in mind when he spoke of the useful idiots who are buying the Iranian Election charade hook, line, and sinker. The latter opines:
If ever there was a cautionary tale about the laws of unintended consequences for U.S.

involvement in foreign countries, Iran — as it goes to the polls for a presidential election Friday — is it. The lesson is more than pertinent for U.S.

efforts in Iraq and to bring democracy to the Middle East.

That's right, once again Americans are blundering agressors who are ignorant of history..

..blah, blah, blah.

..

Ledeen's column is, as usual, a useful corrective to those who too quickly reach for anything to swat at the Bush Administration's policies without taking the time to notice with whom they are getting into bed.

Witness another recent example when the American Left of a man who aided and abetted a dictator. He writes:

Ask yourself two simple questions. Does the president of Iran hold any real power?

Has any "candidate" (of which there are eight) been chosen by anyone other than the supreme leader and his cronies?

No, and no. Whoever is "elected" (and you can be sure that the outcome is already known, millions of "officially cast" ballots having been manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast) will be an instrument of the mullahcracy.

The sole "issue" in the farce is how best to convince George W. Bush that it would be wrong for the United States to press on with support for the forces of freedom in Iran, because that would "force" the mullahs to crack down (which they are doing already). The slogan for the post-electoral period will be "give reform a chance.

" And you can be sure that the useful idiots among us, from the Amanpour woman at CNN to the Haass man at the Council on Foreign Relations, have already prepared their sermons and their slogans, ranging from "hopes for a new relationship" to "a rare opportunity for an historic dialogue," and other such slogans.

Bang! Right on the money--only it appears that the USA Today editorialist is not waiting for the results of the Elections to chastise supposed American folly.



UPDATE (6/17/05, 7:35am): You can see from this news lead from the AP that they just don't understand the very news they're reporting:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranians voted Friday in a high-stakes election shaping up as the closest presidential race since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with young people disillusioned with the system run by clerics calling for an election boycott.
Notice the contradiction: if it's such an important election, then why are "disillusioned" young people urging a boycott? Something's not right here, but the AP doesn't (want to) see it; fortunately, Ledeen spells it out for them.



"And here's the heart that triumphs."
An truly touching of triumph:
The chant began late in the fourth quarter in the basketball gym at Clovis East High School in California.

The students started it first, clapping their hands in unison and pounding the bleachers with their feet.

It didn't take long for the parents to pick it up, too. The noise grew until the whole gym seemed to shake.


"We want Ryno. We want Ryno."
Pacing the sideline, coach Tim Amundsen felt himself getting goose bumps.

Less than 4 minutes remained in the game, and Clovis East was winning comfortably over rival Buchanan High. Now Amundsen had a decision to make.
It was senior night, the last time Ryan Belflower would wear his home uniform.

Everyone in the gym knew his story.
Ryan was a special education student who would do anything to fit in and worked tirelessly to make that happen. His basketball career began as a ninth grader passing out balls to the girls' team.

Then he hooked on with the boys' team, getting there every morning at 6:30, helping out in drills, running the practice clock and cleaning up afterward.
Now, he sat proudly on the sideline in his own white No. 12 uniform.


The crowd wanted him in the game. Amundsen wanted him in, too. But he was also afraid the slightly built 18-year-old might get hurt.


Amundsen considered all this as he walked toward Ryan and patted him on the shoulder. Off came the warmup jacket, the buzzer blew and Ryan kind of half-hopped, half-ran onto the court, his left leg trailing slightly at an odd angle.
The noise was deafening as he ran out on the court.


In the stands, Justin Belflower was near tears. A few years earlier, he was a jock at Clovis East, one of those big men on campus. He knew how hard his kid brother had worked for this moment.


"If you had said four years ago he'd play in a varsity basketball game, I'd say stop lying because it will never happen," Justin said.
On this afternoon in February, it did.
And Clovis East would never be the same.


"Press not a falling man too far."
Like , I don't think that we as a nation have truly been allowed to view and come to terms with the images of those who tragically leapt to their death on September 11th.

Now a contemporary photographer to raise the issue:
Millions watched in horror as officer workers leapt from New York's World Trade Center Towers on Sept.

11, 2001. Kerry Skarbakka was horrified, too, by the TV images but -- and he tries to be careful when he explains this -- he was also inspired. The scene sparked a fascination with falling -- the fear, the freedom, the fate.


"I was so distraught, I needed some way to find an artistic response,'' he said.
On Tuesday, the 34-year-old "performance photographer'' demonstrated his art by repeatedly plunging four stories from the roof of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, his arms and legs flailing.
A cable and harness prevented him from crashing, but Skarbakka's descent was swift, stunning dozens of passersby who paused outside the museum at 220 E.

Chicago.
Sure, this guy may be pulling a gimmick, but I dont' think so. I say bring back the horror of 9-11: in these days of excessive hand-wringing over Gitmo we need to be reminded about how this whole thing started.



"The wit which I can well observe today in our young lords."
The New York Times thinks it's news that the next generation is perhaps increasingly conservative (be still my beating heart!

).

They are young and bright and ardently right. They tack Ronald Reagan calendars on their cubicle walls and devote brown bag lunches to the free market theories of Friedrich von Hayek.

They come from 51 colleges and 28 states, calling for low taxes, strong defense and dorm rooms with a view.

And let's get one thing straight: they're not here to run the copying machine.
The summer interns of the Heritage Foundation have arrived, forming an elite corps inside the capital's premier conservative research group.

The 64 interns are each paid a 10-week stipend of $2,500, and about half are housed in a subsidized dorm at the group's headquarters, complete with a fitness room.
Unusual in its size (and in its walk-in closets), the program, on which Heritage spends $570,000 a year, is both a coveted spot on the young conservative circuit and an example of the care the movement takes to cultivate its young.
You can already see the author's biases: when you're writing about Republicans you must get the money out there right away--as if poor little Liberal groups are feeding their interns canned Spam (er, excuse me, I mean canned tofu.

) Next, you must clearly depict conservatives as being indoctrinated/brainwashed. There are several hints of this throughout the article.

Yet as you read the story, notice the tone of their reporting--it recalls Jonah's theory of " " -- a classic piece, here's an excerpt detailing his extended metaphor:

But, my point is, whenever I read liberals reporting about the goings-on of conservatives I always get the nature-documentary vibe.

A liberal reporter puts on his or her Dian Fossey hat in order to attempt to write another installment of Conservatives in the Mist. I've followed this particular brand of reporting for years, it's almost a fetish of mine. Most attempts fail.

Of these lesser varieties, there's fear ("Troglodytes!"), mockery ("Irrelevant troglodytes!"), condescension ("I had to explain to them they're troglodytes.

"), bewilderment ("Why don't they understand they're troglodytes?"), astonishment (Dear God, they're not all troglodytes!"), and a few combinations of all the above.



But sometimes they even succeed, to a point. Thus, like the real Dian Fossey, they manage to saunter into the leafy thickets of conservatism, and are welcomed into a band of gorillas. They hold out the equivalent of a banana or maybe a fistful of grubs for long enough and eventually we come sniffing around.

We're intrigued by the creature lavishing attention on us. And the reporter eventually begins to feel as though he has been accepted into the band. Eventually, we conservatives grow comfortable enough around them to return to our old patterns.

We scratch and fight and do our gorilla things and the chronicler dutifully takes notes. The notes eventually make their way into an article for the New York Times or The New Yorker or Vanity Fair.
"Who knew?

" the readers will say over their morning bagels and coffee in Southampton or Fire Island, "I had no idea conservatives were such intelligent creatures. Why they even have the capacity for emotion and even some rudimentary forms of kindness."

This fantastic tongue-in-cheek title caught my eye while perusing the ever-stimulating Tech Central Station site:


Yet in fact the title is not so ironic; as its author goes on to explain, there are people who have actually made this accusation:
Nicholas Kristof, of the New York Times, says that the Vatican's rejection of condoms has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, making it one of "its most tragic mistakes in the first two millennia of its history" (1).

The influential New Statesman, in London, ran a cover story shortly after the Pope's death claiming that he "probably contributed more to the continental spread of [AIDS] than the trucking industry and prostitution combined" (2).

Rosemary Neill, of The Australian, in Sydney, opined that the intransigent Vatican "will eventually be accused of crimes against humanity" (3). Polly Toynbee, of the UK's Guardian newspaper -- who clearly had something quite vile for breakfast that morning -- compared JP2 to Lenin: "they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost" (4).

Even doctors chimed in. The world's leading medical journal, The Lancet, accused an ignorant and rigid Pope of presenting "insuperable obstacles to the prevention of disease" (5).The article subsequently decimates these outrageous attempts to scapegoat John Paul the Great with some important statistics and facts that: (a.

) demonstrate the lack of correspondance between the prevelance of HIV?AIDS and the prevalence of Catholicism in various parts of Africa, (b.) note the vast amount of money and resources that the Church contributes to the fight against HIV/AIDS.



Yet it goes even further: it argues against the dogmatic assumption that condoms are the only or even the primary way of stopping HIV/AIDS.

-- once again, TCS does not disappoint.

"The courses of his youth promised it not."
The courses of his youth promised it not.
.

. .
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady currance, scouring faults
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat and all at once
As in this king.

(Henry V )


Anyone familiar with the story of how young Hal becomes the victorious warrior-king Henry V in Shakespeare's second tetralogy will recognize a similar pattern at work in about a juvenile delinquent who, thanks to a strict environment at an Idaho detention center and later the professionalism of the Submarine Force, turned his life around.

A short read--perfect for the weekend. Enjoy!

(hat tip: )

As you read it, note how different the environment of this facility was (almost fifty years ago) to the current school environment described by Christina Hoff Sommers in , where:

Purple is replacing red as the color of choice for teachers. Why, you may ask? It seems that educators worry that emphatic red corrections on a homework assignment or test can be stressful, demeaning — even "frightening" for a young person.

The principal of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Pittsburgh advises teachers to use only "pleasant-feeling tones."

Major pen manufacturers appear to agree. Robert Silberman, vice president of marketing at Pilot Pen, says teachers "are trying to be positive and reinforcing rather than harsh.

" Michael Finn, a spokesperson for Paper Mate, approves: "This is a kinder, more gentle education system." Which color is best for children? Stephen Ahle, principal at Pacific Rim Elementary in Carlsbad, Calif.

, offers lavender "because it is a calming color."
A calmer, gentler grading color? Are schoolchildren really so upset by corrections in primary red?

Why have teachers become so careful?
It seems that many adults today regard the children in their care as fragile hothouse flowers who require protection from even the remote possibility of frustration, disappointment or failure. The new solicitude goes far beyond blacklisting red pens.

Many schools now discourage or prohibit competitive games such as tag or dodge ball. The rationale: too many hurt feelings. In May 2002, for example, the principal of Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, Calif.

, sent a newsletter to parents informing them that children could no longer play tag during the lunch recess. As she explained, "In this game, there is a 'victim' or 'It,' which creates a self-esteem issue."

"Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.

"

Taking a look across the Pacific this week VDH a global shift that, though in many ways dire for our security, will also work in favor of the US:
Yes, we are witnessing one of the great transfers of power and influence that have traditionally changed civilization itself, as money, influence, and military power are gradually inching away from Europe. And this time the shake-up is not regional but global. While scholars and economists concentrate on its economic and political dimensions, few have noticed how a new China and an increasingly vulnerable Europe will markedly change the image of the United States.


As nations come to know the Chinese, and as a ripe Europe increasingly cannot or will not defend itself, the old maligned United States will begin to look pretty good again. More important, America will not be the world’s easily caricatured sole power, but more likely the sole democratic superpower that factors in morality in addition to national interest in its treatment of others.

China is strong without morality; Europe is impotent in its ethical smugness.

The buffer United States, in contrast, believes morality is not mere good intentions but the willingness and ability to translate easy idealism into hard and messy practice.
Most critics will find such sentiments laughable or naïve; but just watch China in the years to come. Those who now malign the imperfections of the United States may well in shock whimper back, asking for our friendship.

Then the boutique practice of anti-Americanism among the global elite will come to an end.
I sure hope he's right--if for no other reason than that I'm getting sick and tired of all of my whining colleagues in Academia.

"Would he had been one of my rank!"
You may have seen this Washington Times last week back, and if so, my hope is that when you saw that you said: "Aha! I already know that 'cause I read Will's " " -- particularly this .



In any case, here's the supposed "breaking news":

Britain's leading theater gurus are engaged in a class battle over the true identity of the author behind Shakespeare's plays.
Mark Rylance, the outgoing artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, recently endorsed a theory the plays were composed by a team of writers, led by Francis Bacon and including Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford.
But his successor, Dominic Dromgoole, has branded Rylance's theory "baloney" and its supporters "snobs.

"
He told Wednesday's Times of London the historical evidence indicates Shakespeare, a working-class playwright from Stratford, wrote the plays.
"People can't accept that he was working-class. They can't accept that his father was illiterate, and that he wasn't posh.

"
Rylance, chairman of the Shakespeare Authorship Trust, last year wrote he had difficulty reconciling the intellectualism in the plays with William Shakespeare's access to learning.
Professor Anne Barton, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, said the De Vere/Bacon theory was "a product of snobbery, that a Stratford grammar-school boy could not have written the plays, and I'm thoroughly fed up with it."

"He that conceals him: death!

"

Bringing the murderous caitiff to the stake;
He that conceals him: death! --King Lear ( )

in the War on Terrorism:
U.S.

intelligence and foreign allies have growing evidence that wanted terrorists have been residing in Iran despite repeated American warnings to Tehran not to harbor them.
The evidence, which stretches over several years, includes communications by a fugitive mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing and the capture of a Saudi militant who appeared in a video in whichOsama bin Laden confirmed he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks, according to U.

S. and foreign officials.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because much of the evidence remains classified.


Saudi intelligence officers tracked and apprehended Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi last year in eastern Iran, officials said. The arrest came nearly three years after the cleric appeared with bin Laden and discussed details of the Sept. 11 planning during a dinner that was videotaped and aired across the world.


The capture was a coup for Saudi Arabia, which spent months tracking him and setting up the intelligence operation that led to his being taken into custody in exchange for eventual amnesty.
The officials said interrogations of al-Harbi, who is now in Saudi Arabia, have yielded confirmation of many al-Qaida tactics, including how members crossed into Iran after the U.S.

began military operations to rout al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan.

Al-Harbi is believed to have been paralyzed from the waist down while fighting in the 1990s alongside Muslim extremists in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and he surprised intelligence officials when he appeared in the December 2001 video with bin Laden.
"Everybody praises what you did," al-Harbi said on the tape.


U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies also have evidence stretching back to the late 1990s that indicates Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil remains hiding in Iran.

He is wanted as one of the masterminds of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans.
Al-Mughassil, who also goes by the alias Abu Omran, has been charged as a fugitive by the United States with conspiracy to commit murder in the attacks and has a $5 million bounty on his head.
U.

S. authorities have long alleged the 1996 bombing was carried out by a Saudi wing of the militant group Hezbollah, which receives support from Iran and Syria.
Intelligence agencies gathered evidence, including a specific phone number, as early as 1997 indicating al-Mughassil was living in Iran, and have other information indicating his whereabouts.


U.S. officials have not publicly discussed the Saudi capture of al-Harbi or their evidence on al-Mughassil's whereabouts, but have increasingly raised questions about Iran's efforts to turn over other suspected terrorists believed to be under some form of loose house arrest.


Nicholas Burns, State Department undersecretary for political affairs, told Congress last month that Iran has refused to identify al-Qaida members it has in custody.
"Iran continues to hold senior al-Qaida leaders who are wanted for murdering Americans and others in the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings and for plotting to kill countless others," Burns said.
Top administration officials have repeatedly warned Iran against harboring or assisting suspected terrorists.


U.S. intelligence this week has been checking some reports, still uncorroborated as of Friday, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader of the Iraqi insurgency, may have dipped into Iran, officials said.


On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned countries in the Middle East not to help al-Zarqawi.
"Were a neighboring country to take him in and provide medical assistance or haven for him, they, obviously, would be associating themselves with a major linkage in the al-Qaida network and a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands," Rumsfeld said.


The U.S. and foreign officials said evidence gathered by intelligence agencies indicates the following figures are somewhere in Iran:
• Saad bin Laden, the son of the al-Qaida leader whom U.

S. authorities have aggressively hunted since the Sept. 11 attacks.


• Saif al-Adel, an al-Qaida security chief wanted in connection with the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.


• Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the chief of information for al-Qaida and a frequently quoted spokesman for bin Laden.
U.S.

and foreign intelligence officials say they believe those three are under some form of house arrest or surveillance by Iranian authorities.
Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the conditions that some of suspected terrorists are living under are unclear. Katzman said it's possible they are being held in guarded villas and he doubts any detention is uncomfortable.


"I think that Iran sees these guys as something of an insurance policy," he said. "It's leverage."
Rasool Nafisi, a Middle East analyst who studies conservative groups in Iran and travels there frequently for research, said Iran has returned some lower-rank operatives to their home countries but probably is keeping higher-ranking operatives as a bartering chip.


"Remember, Islamic tradition is very much based on haggling," Nafisi said. "Everything is negotiable, and you haggle for everything. If I were the Iranian government, I'd be very happy to have them and to use them in future negotiations with the United States.

"

"A wilder nature than the business."
Ok, it's time to reveal one of the deep dark secrets of my childhood..

.

..

.unlike most kids of my age, I hated -- no, no, wrong word -- I felt greatly disquieted by the movie (1971).

Call me un-American.

Call me a strange child (after all, the Flintstones caused me so much anxiety that I couldn't bear to watch). But this movie freaked me out. Now, I've never really liked musicals to begin with (other than and which were favorites of my mother), but looking back on it, there was something else I couldn't put my finger on at the time--was it the wiff of pedophilia that the movie exuded?



Anyway, I mention all of this because Tim Burton's new movie ( ) starring Johnnie Depp is coming out and Gene Wilder has his disappointment with the new production:

Actor Gene Wilder says money is the reason moviemakers are remaking Roald Dahl's fantasy about Willy Wonka. Wilder, who played Wonka in the 1971 Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, said it is pointless to remake the movie ..

. It's all about money, Wilder told World Entertainment News Network. It's just some people sitting around thinking 'How can we make some more money?

' I don't see the point of going back and doing it all over again, Wilder said. I like Johnny Depp, and I appreciate that he has said on record that my shoes will be hard to fill. But I don't know how it will all turn out.

Moviemaker Tim Burton said his new movie will be closer to Dahl's book than Wilder's earlier musical version.


So tell me, are you going to see it? Any of you share my aversion to the original film?

"Discredit more in hiding of the fault."
Have you read cagey piece of criticism by David Brooks in the New York Times?

Just the first few paragraphs should whet your appetite:
Forgive me for making a blunt and obvious point, but events in Western Europe are slowly discrediting large swaths of American liberalism.
Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security.

And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.



Brooks goes on to note the ironically debilitating conservatism and nostalgia that is currently plaguing Western Europe. Much of what he says proves an accurate diagnosis of the liberal Left in this country, particularly as they hold their group-hug over the glory days of Watergate and the self-congratulatory "Woodstein."

I want to highlight what I take to be Brooks' overarching point: the promises of a socialist utopia have either blinded its proponents or (more cynically), they simply don't care that the welfare state that has helped them to gain and hold on to political power now threatens the welfare of their people.



It reminds me of an analogy made by Pembroke in the much-neglected play King John:

And oftentimes excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse,
As patches set upon a little breach
Discredit more in hiding of the fault
Than did the fault before it was so patch'd. ( )
In other words, it's something like the Emperor's new clothes with these elite European bureaucrats ( their counterparts over here). As Brooks says, "The core fact is that the European model is foundering under the fact that billions of people are willing to work harder than the Europeans are.

Europeans clearly love their way of life, but don't know how to sustain it."

I dare say Europe will be an interesting spectacle in the next decade or so; my hope is that they will not (as they did 75 years ago) resort to violence, fascism, and anti-Semitism as a way out of their hopeless desperation and nostalgia for a past "Golden Age".

Victor Davis Hanson asks a similar question in about the "Death Throes" of the EU:

The only question that remains is just how low will the 100,000 bureaucrats of the European Union go in shrieking to their defiant electorates as they stampede for the exits.



In fact, 2005 is a culmination of dying ideas. Despite the boasts and threats, almost every political alternative to Western liberalism over the last quarter-century is crashing or already in flames.

Yet VDH remains optimistic--and I'll end, as he does, with this positive note:
What are we left with then?



Democracy, open markets, personal freedom, individual rights, pride in national traditions, worry about big government -- which is what we see in the United States, Britain, Australia and their allies in Japan and the breakaway countries in Europe. Elections in Ethiopia, France, Iraq, Lebanon and Ukraine all point to a desire for more freedom from central state control.

Embers of communism, fascism, theocracy and socialism, of course, will always flare up if we become complacent or arrogant.

Wounded beasts like Iran, North Korea and bin Laden are most dangerous before they expire. Expect discredited EU bureaucrats to conjure up the specter of the American bogeyman before they pension out.

Still, the racket and clamor from all these antidemocratic ideas in 2005 are not birth pangs, but the bitter death throes of those whose time has nearly passed.


"To know the cause of your abrupt departure."
A bump in the road of good news out of South Bend:

It took about 15 minutes in South Bend for Charlie Weis to impress people as a man with a clear plan for success at Notre Dame. A big part of that plan was the impressively diverse and talented coaching staff Weis hired.

This week that plan hit its first significant snag.

Weis announced Wednesday that assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach David Cutcliffe will not be rejoining the program after suffering a heart attack in March and undergoing triple bypass surgery. That immediately reduces the Notre Dame staff's level of experience, expertise and recruiting reach.


Cutcliffe, the former head coach at Mississippi, had been a sounding board for rookie head man Weis. His work in helping develop Peyton Manning and Tee Martin at Tennessee and Eli Manning at Ole Miss earned him the reputation as a quarterback guru. And his roots in the Deep South make him valuable for a program with a national recruiting base.


Despite the jarring news, the man with a plan is now the man with a contingency plan. Weis said on a teleconference Wednesday that he already has a successor in mind and on the verge of being hired, but he declined to name that person until a contract is signed.
"If we opened this thing up, I'd have 50 people applying for quarterback coach this afternoon," Weis said.

"They need not apply."
Weis has said all along that he has a coaching "depth chart" in case he needs to fill a position. This was one move he's been mulling for months, in case Cutcliffe could not make a full recovery.


"I wasn't blowing hot air about having a depth chart," Weis said. "I had since the middle of March to think about it, so that makes this one a little easier to be prepared for."
Cutcliffe's successor might be familiar with Notre Dame.

Former Fighting Irish quarterback Ron Powlus and former Irish assistant Peter Vaas have been the most prominent names in speculation.
While Cutcliffe convalesced in Mississippi, Weis received permission from the NCAA to allow Powlus, the program's director of personnel development, to act as a position coach during spring practice. Powlus primarily worked with Notre Dame's backup quarterbacks in the spring, while Weis worked with starter Brady Quinn.

Vaas, a five-year head coach in NFL Europe, coached quarterbacks and running backs at Notre Dame under Lou Holtz.
Weis will need a coach who can handle the nuts and bolts of quarterback coaching: footwork, throwing technique and basic fundamentals – things he won't have time to obsess over as the head coach.
"To be a position coach and head coach during the regular season is a really tough task if you're going to run the team," Weis said.


But Notre Dame shouldn't suffer from a strategy standpoint. Cutcliffe is considered an accomplished offensive game-planner and play-caller, but that's Weis' strength as well.
Cutcliffe, 50, told Weis last week that he didn't think he could return to coaching this year.

Weis asked him to spend the weekend thinking about it. On Tuesday, Cutcliffe called Weis and resigned.
"I want to thank coach Weis and the University of Notre Dame for being so good to my family," Cutcliffe said on a later teleconference from his home in Mississippi.

"This health issue was just a sudden thing. It kind of snuck up on me."
After surgery, Cutcliffe had some complications that slowed his recovery.

He said he's lost about 30 pounds.
"I'm just getting into rehab good, getting some endurance. I know me.

I'm not going to be able to jump back into the way I wanted to do it. I just didn't feel like I was able to jump back in and do my best."
This caps a fairly miserable year for Cutcliffe.

He was given a new contract after guiding Ole Miss to 10 wins and a Cotton Bowl berth in 2003 but then was shockingly fired after a subpar 2004 season. He contemplated sitting out a year before Weis came along with his offer, and then he suffered a heart attack on March 9.
Nevertheless, Cutcliffe said this is "definitely not" a permanent retirement.

He is planning to move to eastern Tennessee and will continue his recovery there.


I want to wish Coach Cutcliffe "God speed" in his recovery and continued health.

Go Irish!

Speaking of bizarre right-wing murder fantasies: On May 18, Media Matters that Clear Channel radio host Glenn Beck said on-air that he was "thinking about killing [filmmaker] Michael Moore" and wondered whether "I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it."
And the media didn't care.


Beck is on more than 100 radio stations; listen to him each week -- as many as listen to Don Imus and O'Reilly -- and he fantasized on-air about killing a man. And there has been no outrage, no uproar, no media coverage at all -- save one article in the Columbus Dispatch that reported that two liberal radio hosts "needle[d] conservative radio talk-show host Glenn Beck for saying he'd like to kill Michael Moore."
An obscure college professor named Ward Churchill wrote an obscure essay comparing victims of 9/11 to Nazis, after which an obscure college invited him to speak to a few hundred students -- and suddenly you couldn't turn on the television without hearing his name.

A search of the Lexis-Nexis database yields more than 700 "hits" for "Ward Churchill and Nazi"; Bill O'Reilly alone has covered Churchill on this year, according to the weblog CJR Daily.
Yet a right-wing radio host with a weekly audience in the millions can openly contemplate killing a man, and news outlets don't consider this a story.
At least he hasn't been featured on the cover of Time -- yet.


"With busy hammers closing rivets up."

I wonder if from China..

.

Russia is sending China the second of eight new Kilo class submarines this month. All eight boats are expected to be in service by next year.

This is somewhat faster than expected. The Kilo is the best diesel-electric submarine the Russians have ever produced.

.

..has anything to do with recent mishap:

Japan is looking into a report that a Chinese submarine is being towed in the South China Sea toward Hainan Island, government sources said Tuesday.

Defense Agency Director General Yoshinori Ono told a news conference he has been briefed on the situation. But he refrained from disclosing what he knew, saying only that Japan's security is not directly affected.
The diesel-powered sub apparently became inoperative due to an onboard fire in the South China Sea.

The sources said it was confirmed to have surfaced and was being towed to the west from the Taiwan area by a navy vessel.
In 2003, all 70 crew members aboard a conventionally powered Chinese submarine reportedly died following "mechanical problems" during an exercise in the Yellow Sea.

(hat tip: )
Well-known literary critic Stanley Fish--famously parodied as Morris Zapp, a brash and publicity-seeking scholar of Jane Austen, by author --is .

The emeritous dean famous for his apologtetics of postmodernism is currently teaching Freshmen writing courses, where he argues:
Most composition courses that American students take today emphasize content rather than form, on the theory that if you chew over big ideas long enough, the ability to write about them will (mysteriously) follow. The theory is wrong.

Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom. Form is the way.

All well and good, I suppose.

But what about the mission of teaching them how to write a cogent, well-argued essay? Fish, it seems, will have none of that, but instead proposes:
On the first day of my freshman writing class I give the students this assignment: You will be divided into groups and by the end of the semester each group will be expected to have created its own language, complete with a syntax, a lexicon, a text, rules for translating the text and strategies for teaching your language to fellow students. The language you create cannot be English or a slightly coded version of English, but it must be capable of indicating the distinctions - between tense, number, manner, mood, agency and the like - that English enables us to make.


You can imagine the reaction of students who think that "syntax" is something cigarette smokers pay, guess that "lexicon" is the name of a rebel tribe inhabiting a galaxy far away, and haven't the slightest idea of what words like "tense," "manner" and "mood" mean. They think I'm crazy. Yet 14 weeks later - and this happens every time - each group has produced a language of incredible sophistication and precision.



I guess that I'm under the mistaken impression that students ought to have learned this in elementary school. I fail to see how this prepares them for writing college-level essays for their subsequent courses. It may be unfair to say, but once again this seems to be yet another example of Fish selfishly trying to prove a point about Postmodernism (the hallowedness of "Form" has long been a penchant of his) at the expense of his students' training.



Then again, it may help them to decode and .

Read more on by unconsideredtrifles.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.
Keywords: United States, Notre Dame, Middle East, Clovis East, Saudi Arabia, York Times, Moby Dick, Steve Rosenberg, Khobar Towers, High School
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