Best of the Web Today – July 12, 2007
- “Fashion Designer Liz Claiborne Dies”–headline, Associated Press, June 27
- “Ahead of the Bell: Liz Claiborne”–headline, Associated Press, July 11
- ” ‘I strenuously object?’ Is that how it works? Hm? ‘Objection.’ ‘Overruled.’ ‘Oh, no, no, no. No, I strenuously object.’ ‘Oh. Well, if you strenuously object then I should take some time to reconsider.’ “–Lt. Weinberg (Kevin Pollak) in “A Few Good Men,” 1992
- “Pants Suit Plaintiff Asks Judge to Reconsider”–headline, Washington Post, July 11
- “Money Found in Toilets Across Japan”–headline, Associated Press, July 11
- “High Temperatures Touch on Different Aspects of Our Lives”–headline, Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), July 11
- “When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors . . .”–headline, Desert Sun (Palm Springs, Calif.), July 12
- “Nicole Richie’s DUI Trial Delayed Again”–headline, CNN.com, July 11
- “See Ya Later, Alligator: Reptile Wrestlers a Dying Breed”–headline, Washington Times, July 9
- “Turkeys Don’t Show Signs of Deadly Flu”–headline, Associated Press, July 11
- “Libertarian Party Responds to President Bush’s Press Conference About Progress in Iraq”–headline, press release, Libertarian National Committee, July 12
- Review & Outlook: The “benchmark” excuse: Crocker and Petraeus speak some truths, if senators are listening.
- Dan Henninger: Tech-savvy terrorists use the Web for propaganda and incitement.
- Fred Siegel: American liberals took leave of reason after JFK’s murder.
By JAMES TARANTO
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Keep on Truckin’
If John Kerry got “swift boated,” Rudy Giuliani may be getting “ladder trucked.” ABC News reports:
The nation’s largest firefighters union is set to launch a video on Wednesday that seeks to tarnish former mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s reputation as a strong leader before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The 13-minute video–set for distribution to firefighters and the general public courtesy of the International Association of Fire Fighters–uses interviews with New York City firefighters and families of 9/11 victims to argue that Giuliani has exaggerated his record as mayor.
“He’s running on his 9/11 leadership and it was lacking–and there was none,” Jim Riches, a deputy chief in the New York Fire Department and a father of one of the 9/11 victims, says on the video, according to a transcript obtained by ABC News. “I blame Giuliani. He was the leader that day. And he was the leader for the eight years leading up to that.”
Here are the video and the union’s site, Rudy-UrbanLegend.com. The video makes three claims: that Giuliani’s administration took too long to replace bad Fire Department radios after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and replaced them with other bad radios; that the mayor erred in locating the city’s command center at 7 World Trade Center rather than a lower-profile location; and that he was in too much of a hurry to conclude the Ground Zero cleanup without exhaustively searching for the remains of fallen firemen.
The last complaint has the greatest emotional resonance, but as the video acknowledges, Giuliani quickly backed down and allowed the search to continue. Putting the command center at the WTC seems a foolish decision, but it’s hard to see how it reflects a lack of leadership. As for the radios, the firemen appear to have a strong case that the Giuliani administration was tragically inattentive, but this seems a case of 20/20 hindsight. We don’t recall the Democratic mayoral candidates in 1993 or 1997 making an issue of FDNY radios either.
The comparison to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s efforts against John Kerry are obvious: In both cases, groups not affiliated with an opposing campaign are going after the candidate on his supposed strong suit. But for several reasons, we suspect the firemen will not be as effective as the swift boaters.
In Kerry’s case, it was the word of one group of men who served with him against that of another group: those who thought he was a hero vs. those who thought he was a goat. To a truly neutral observer, the existence of the latter group was enough to neutralize the former. Because Giuliani’s 9/11 leadership was quite public, the same observer has a much richer context in which to evaluate the firemen’s claims.
Those complaints cut both ways, too. Giuliani’s reputation is that of a tough leader. A New York mayor who didn’t incur the wrath of public-sector unions would be more vulnerable to the charge of weakness. By contrast, Kerry and his backers could not denounce the Swift Boat Veterans as liars without undermining the rationale for Kerry’s campaign, namely that merely being a veteran was an assurance of good character.
Another difference is that the firemen’s attack is coming a year earlier in the election cycle than the Swift Boat Veterans’ did. That means that if Giuliani is the nominee a year from now, this will all be old news. And unlike Kerry, Giuliani is responding swiftly. His campaign issued a press release yesterday calling the union the “International Association of Partisan Politics.”
As we argued in 2005, Kerry–who, by the way, served in Vietnam–was lulled into complacency by friendly journalists, who he thought could keep the lid on any questions about his Vietnam service and other activities. There’s no chance of that happening to Giuliani.
Why Appeasement Doesn’t Work Either
Writing at Wired.com, Bruce Schneier makes a counterintuitive but fascinating argument that draws on an academic paper by Max Abrahms titled “Why Terrorism Does Not Work.” As Schneier sums it up, people have a “cognitive bias” that leads them to an erroneous conclusion about the motives of terrorists:
Because terrorism often results in the horrific deaths of innocents, we mistakenly infer that the horrific deaths of innocents is the primary motivation of the terrorist, and not the means to a different end. . . .
[Abrahms] analyzes the political motivations of 28 terrorist groups: the complete list of “foreign terrorist organizations” designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2001. He lists 42 policy objectives of those groups, and found that they only achieved them 7 percent of the time. . . . Terrorism is a pretty ineffective means of influencing policy. . . .
This theory explains, with a clarity I have never seen before, why so many people make the bizarre claim that al Qaeda terrorism–or Islamic terrorism in general–is “different”: that while other terrorist groups might have policy objectives, al Qaeda’s primary motivation is to kill us all. This is something we have heard from President Bush again and again–Abrams [sic] has a page of examples in the paper–and is a rhetorical staple in the debate. . . .
Since Bin Laden caused the death of a couple of thousand people in the 9/11 attacks, people assume that must have been his actual goal, and he’s just giving lip service to what he claims are his goals. Even Bin Laden’s actual objectives are ignored as people focus on the deaths, the destruction and the economic impact.
Perversely, Bush’s misinterpretation of terrorists’ motives actually helps prevent them from achieving their goals.
What’s really perverse, though, is the conclusion that Schneier draws from all this:
None of this is meant to either excuse or justify terrorism. In fact, it does the exact opposite, by demonstrating why terrorism doesn’t work as a tool of persuasion and policy change. But we’re more effective at fighting terrorism if we understand that it is a means to an end and not an end in itself; it requires us to understand the true motivations of the terrorists and not just their particular tactics. And the more our own cognitive biases cloud that understanding, the more we mischaracterize the threat and make bad security trade-offs.
But wait. According to Schneier, terrorism doesn’t work because our cognitive biases cloud our understanding. If we developed a clearer understanding, in this view, we would focus more on terrorists’ stated goals. Surely this would, at least in some cases, lead us to accede to terrorists’ demands so as to appease them.
Result: Terrorism would have a higher success rate. Surely this would not escape the notice of people with political grievances, who would become more likely to employ terrorism to realize their goals. If indeed what Schneier offers is clarity, it is accompanied by the strongest argument we’ve ever heard for opacity.
Vitter Fruit
Our item yesterday on Larry Flynt and Sen. David Vitter prompted some interesting commentary. Blogress Ann Althouse responds to our comments on her post on the subject:
Taranto isn’t reading me carefully. I’m not talking about what Vitter needs to do to expiate his sins. I’m talking about what Vitter needs to do to make it only an issue of sin. My point is–quite clearly–that as long as [accused madam Deborah] Palfrey is incapable of treating this as a matter between herself and God, it is not morally logical for Vitter to claim that capacity for himself. He must first take whatever action he can to put Palfrey in the same position he wants for himself. Vitter is a member of Congress, and Palfrey is being prosecuted under federal law. He cannot morally turn away from her plight while he holds power.
Althouse’s original words were: “Shouldn’t the expiation of Vitter’s sins wait until he has introduced a bill that would create a federal right to engage in the business of prostitution?” It would take a careful reader indeed to conclude that Althouse is not referring to “what Vitter needs to do to expiate his sins.”
Anyway, the argument is illogical on several levels. For one, the crime Vitter is thought to have committed, patronizing a prostitute, is different from the crimes with which Palfrey is charged: racketeering and conspiracy. (Prostitution is under state and local jurisdiction.) Does Althouse think Vitter should introduce legislation to decriminalize racketeering and conspiracy?
Further, the idea that Vitter is getting off easy seems to have it backward. The proper comparison here would be not to Palfrey but to others situated similarly to Vitter–i.e., those who may be incriminated by Palfrey’s phone records. Among this group, Vitter is being singled out for humiliating attention owing to his status as an elected official. However much Vitter might like to treat this as a matter “between himself and God,” it is also a matter between the news media and Larry Flynt and the voters of Louisiana and political junkies and voyeurs all over the world.
Which brings us to an interesting point from reader Andy Phillips:
Hypocrisy does not mean saying one thing and doing the opposite. It means saying something that one does not believe. Let’s take the example of getting drunk. Let’s say that I believe that getting drunk is immoral. Does it make me a hypocrite if I get drunk? No, it makes me weak. I could believe that it is immoral but still not be able to resist the temptation to get drunk. It doesn’t make my belief any less true or my actions any worse.
Now let’s say that Larry Flynt doesn’t believe that getting drunk is immoral. What are his consequences of getting drunk? Your comment on his living up to his own low moral standards hits the nail on the head. Objectively, my getting drunk is no more or less immoral than Larry Flynt’s.
If Larry Flynt attacked me for getting drunk, that would be hypocrisy, because he doesn’t believe that getting drunk is immoral. It’s hypocrisy for him to say that it’s OK for him to get drunk but not OK for me to get drunk.
We saw the mainstream media’s reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s addiction to pain killers and Bill Bennett’s gambling problem. These men were not hypocrites. I guarantee you that neither of these men wished for their own problems, and, after having gone through what they did, they most likely feel even more strongly about them than they did before. Again, weakness, not hypocrisy.
By this reasoning, Larry Flynt–an antimoralist who exposes the moral weaknesses of moralists–is the ultimate hypocrite. And in a strange way, it is a case of vice paying tribute to virtue.
Clinton’s Understudy
Bill Clinton was scheduled to give the keynote address at this week’s NAACP convention in the Motor City, but begged off for undetermined reasons, the Detroit Free Press reports:
Young NAACP convention-goers who thought they were going to hear former President Bill Clinton instead heard rapper Master P. . . .
The rapper also asked those in the audience not to blame hip-hop for African-American social ills. He did, however, acknowledge that the hip-hop industry isn’t perfect.
“I was once part of the problem. But I realized, by having kids, that if I’ve got to get in the car and turn down my own music, something is wrong and I’ve got to fix it,” he said.
Earlier in the week, “the NAACP symbolically buried the ‘N’ word,” the Associated Press reports:
The Baltimore-based civil rights organization first announced the “N” word burial in April. Delegates and supporters marched about a quarter-mile from Cobo Hall to Hart Plaza downtown where a eulogy was given.
The issue was given a national forum in April when talk show host Don Imus directed racially derogatory comments at black members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. . . .
[NAACP chairman Julian] Bond, who addressed the convention Sunday, said NAACP leadership has been in discussions with entertainers, especially rappers, about removing racial and gender-specific slurs from their music.
So far, No Limit Records CEO Master P, and rap legends Kurtis Blow and Eric B. have given their support.
How bad are Master P’s lyrics? Here’s one example (warning: link contains unredacted obscenities):
Nigga what what bitches callin’ my name
Homies hut hut No Limit still in the game
See I’m a money making nigga like Bill Gates
Me and my lil cousin toss bitches from state to state
Lil’ Beezy he off the heezy
He in the threezy smoking weezy
I don’t give a f— about you hatin’ I’m chasin’ fortune and fame
I got every ghetto bitch screamin my name
If the Imus kerfuffle means less stuff like this, some good will have come of it.
Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls, It Tolls for Liz
Life Imitates the Movies
Don’t They Use Lethal Injection in Ohio?
“Councilman Proposes No Hanging Out on Public Square Law”–headline, WEWS-TV Web site (Cleveland), July 12
RFK Vows: ‘I’ll Never Lend That Jerk Another Book’
“John Edwards Takes Page From RFK’s Book”–headline, Associated Press, July 12
Turns Out the Russians Don’t Love Their Children
“Sting Reveals Security Gap at Nuclear Agency”–headline, Washington Post, July 12
Must’ve Been Going North
“CTA Bus Rear-Ended on South Side”–headline, Chicago Sun-Times, July 11
Dude, You’ve Gotta Water It!
“S.D. Farmer Struggling to Grow Hemp”–headline, Associated Press, July 11
They’s Playing to Type
“Hicks Buys Trailer Park Near Stadium”–headline, Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas), July 11
If Only They Weren’t So Widespread
“Overweight Kids Face Widespread Stigma”–headline, Associated Press, July 12
Now That’s What We Call Poor!
“At the East End Community School in Portland [Maine], 85 percent of the students live in households with incomes 185 percent below the federal poverty level. At Reiche School in Portland, the percentage is 83.43.”–Portland Press Herald, July 11
Breaking News From 1620
“Pilgrims Destroying the Himalayas: Experts”–headline, Reuters, July 12
News You Can Use
Bottom Stories of the Day
Hoi School Confidential
“The Pittsburgh Public Schools will drop ‘public’ from its name and adopt a new, standardized way of referring to its schools as part of a campaign to brighten and strengthen the district’s image,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports (hat tip: Tom Elia):
For example, Schenley High School will be called Pittsburgh Schenley. . . .
Under the policy, the district simply will call itself the “Pittsburgh Schools.” The district’s logo–a pattern of circles, triangles and squares–will still be used.
But the district also will begin using “Excellence for All,” the name of its sweeping academic-improvement plan, on all stationery and other written materials. “Excellence for All” has its own logo with a gold swirl and star. . . .
Under the new policy, Sterrett Classical Academy will be called Pittsburgh Sterrett. But the school’s traditional name still will be used–albeit in smaller print–on stationery and other printed materials. . . .
By dropping “public” from its name, [school board member] Randall Taylor said, the district might be able to avoid the negative attitude often associated with public schools. . . .
By adding Pittsburgh to the identity of each school, [chief of staff Lisa] Fischetti hopes the public will come to associate a level of quality with every school in the district.
Well, it’s certainly nice to see someone getting serious about improving education. But if the word “public” is in such disrepute, isn’t it awfully insulting for Fischetti to say, as the Post puts it, that she “hopes the public will come to associate a level of quality with every school in the district”? Henceforth, call them Pittsburgh Polloi.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Christopher Thomas, Steve Padgett, Michael Segal, J. Kaplan, Jerry Urbanek, Don Stewart, Rod Pennington, Jeff Dobbs, Kevin Mullaney, Brian O’Rourke, David Goldfarb, Tom Elliott, Ray Hendel, Michael Guzman, John Parker, Charlie Gaylord, Monty Krieger, Paul Wood, Ron Ackert, Mark Davies, Bryan Fischer, Craig Ray and Jack Archer. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
URL for this article: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010325
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