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Times Watch for
January 14, 2004
Times Book Critic Not Mum On Frum
Times book critic Michiko Kakutani takes on "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," the new book by conservative hawks David Frum and Richard Perle. Kakutani is not known for her sympathy to conservative themes, and her problems with Frum and Perle's book (she calls them "super-hawkish") start with the title. She writes in Tuesday's edition: "It captures the authors' absolutist, Manichaean language and worldview; their cocky know-it-all tone; their swaggering insinuation that they know 'how to win the war on terror' and that readers, the Bush administration and the rest of the world had better listen to them."
There's more: "The book takes the instructive, prescriptive stance assumed by many conservative theorists in recent books, but it turns out to be less a reasoned effort to convince the unconvinced than a furious manifesto aimed at true believers. It is a screed….Making its points with all the subtlety of a pit bull on steroids…smug, shrill and deliberately provocative." She laments the authors' "triumphalist boasts," "macho posturing," and "willful, flame-throwing language," and their book's "bullying tone and often specious reasoning."
Kakutani clearly isn't fond of Frum's recent work. Her January 9, 2003, review of the former Bush speechwriter's White House memoir tills much the same overwrought adjectival ground: "What is surprising about 'The Right Man' is how tired, disingenuous and knee-jerk so many of its arguments are….a shrill polemic about the administration's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and its campaign against Saddam Hussein….The book is filled with a spinmeister's cliches ('Bush's record has been dauntless, far-seeing, and consistent' on the war) and is riddled with contradictions and evasions….There are wacky and sometimes self-serving assertions in this book….Mr. Frum's penchant for facile analogies and bellicose language underscores the dogmatic, hectoring tone of this book, a book that plays solely to readers who already share all of his certainties and that makes no effort to persuade others through historical knowledge, foreign policy acumen or simple logic."
For the rest of Kakutani's thumbs-down, click here.
• Books | David Frum | Iraq War | Michiko Kakutani | Terrorism
Iraq "Staggers" Through Another Hussein-Free Day
The U.S. mission in Iraq has just gone to hell since Saddam's capture, judging by the first line of Wednesday's dispatch from Edward Wong about an army helicopter downed near Baghdad: "A month after Saddam Hussein was pulled from his spider hole, and with the transfer of sovereignty looming, Iraq staggered through another disturbing day of violence and instability." Wong's word choice is exquisitely pejorative--"looming," "staggered," the significance of the dictator's capture dismissed in a clause. Not until the 15th paragraph do we get a hint the long-term outlook in Iraq may actually be brightening: "General Kimmitt said the average number of daily attacks against allied soldiers had plummeted to 17 from a high of 50 in mid-November."
Back on December 16, Wong memorably noted the aftermath of Hussein's capture: "The joyous bursts of gunfire that echoed throughout parts of Iraq on Sunday are already a distant memory."
(Interestingly, the online version of Wong's Wednesday story includes a pasted-in update from Reuters that gives the story a more balanced tone: "But in a boost for occupation forces searching for leaders of the insurgency, the United States military said four relatives of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein's former vice president and the most wanted fugitive in Iraq, were arrested in early morning raids on Wednesday, Reuters reported.")
For the rest of Wong from Iraq, click here.
• Saddam Hussein | Iraq War | Edward Wong
A "Mean Mood" in US Knocks Down Liberal Legislation
Liberal editorial writer Adam Cohen puts his name on another Sunday opinion piece, "Can Disabled People Be Forced to Crawl Up the Courthouse Steps?" Staying true to his liberal background (he was a lawyer for the
Southern Poverty Law Center), Cohen laments the "mean mood" that's settled on the country. Gee,
who could he be talking about?
On the Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Lane, involving the Americans with Disabilities Act and a disabled Tennessee man, he writes: "When George Lane showed up at the Polk County Courthouse with a crushed hip and pelvis, he had a problem. His hearing was on the second floor, there was no elevator, and the judge said he had better get upstairs. Mr. Lane, both of whose legs were in casts, somehow managed to get out of his wheelchair and crawl up two flights of stairs.…While Mr. Lane crawled up, he says, the judge and other courthouse employees 'stood at the top of the stairs and laughed at me.' His case was not heard in the morning session, he says, and at the lunch break he crawled back down. That afternoon, when he refused to crawl upstairs again, he was arrested for failing to appear, and put in jail. Anyone looking for evidence that a mean mood has descended on the nation need only stop by the Supreme Court Tuesday for the arguments in Tennessee v. Lane."
One feels sympathy for Lane's plight, but as Times reporter Linda Greenhouse clarifies in Wednesday's edition, Lane wasn't bereft of options: "[Tennessee's Solicitor General Michael] Moore said Mr. Lane was offered accommodations to enable him to go to his hearing, including being carried upstairs or having the hearing moved to the ground floor." And even assuming as fact the shoddy treatment Lane received--What makes it a federal case?
Cohen uses the case to attack the conservative Supreme Court for favoring the doctrine of "federalism," or states' rights: "As off base as the Supreme Court's states' rights rulings have been, they have prompted little popular outrage. The doctrines are too obscure for most people to follow, and 'respect the power of Congress' is not much of a rallying cry. But these decisions have deprived Americans of important protections, like the Violence Against Women Act and the Gun-Free School Zones Act. And they have made it easier to discriminate against older workers, blind people and cancer victims."
But perhaps Cohen doesn't get into the details because he fears that his favorite liberal activist legislation may not stand up to constitutional scrutiny, or even common sense. In 2000 the Supreme Court struck down the Violence Against Women Act on the sensible grounds that gender-motivated violence was not economic activity. That refuted the odd argument put forth by the Clinton Justice Department that, since violence against women could conceivably hurt the U.S. economy, Congress thus had authority to regulate crimes against women through the Constitution's commerce clause.
As for Cohen's other cherished piece of legislation, it had similar flaws. In 1995 the Court overturned the Gun-Free School Zones Act, stating "possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity." The liberal New Republic magazine hailed the ruling as a necessary antidote to "the mindless impulse to federalize crimes that the states are prosecuting perfectly well on their own."
For the rest of Cohen on the mean mood of conservatism, click here.
• Adam Cohen | Editorial | Federalism | Supreme Court
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org