Roundup: Media's Take

October 13, 2004

Bush Presidency To Be Seen As Epoch-Changing

Unsigned, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10 Oct. 2004 For all these weeks and months we have looked at George W. Bush through the lens of a microscope, which shows us a president's scar tissues, exaggerates his flaws and attributes, enlarges the small characteristics that otherwise escape the eye. It might be healthy, about four weeks from the election, to look at the president through a telescope, which tells us what stands out about a political figure from afar. For through the tele

October 13, 2004

Perspective On Fraternity Of Masons' Recent Struggles

Terry Golway, The New York Times, 10 Oct. 2004 Everything about the Masonic Temple looks old so old that it is hard to believe the cornerstone was laid in 1927, and not a hundred years earlier. The effect is intended to remind the state's 32,000 Masons that they belong to fraternity rich in tradition and ritual -- not to mention myth and legend. Inside the temple's three ornate meeting rooms are beautifully detailed rugs scarred by wear and tear. But a former leader of the frat

October 13, 2004

John Kerry, 9/11 And Onward

Matt Bai, The New York Times, 10 Oct. 2004 As New York and Washington were under attack on Sept. 11, 2001, a film crew happened to come upon John Kerry leaving the Capitol. The brief moment of footage, included in a BBC documentary called ''Clear the Skies,'' tells us something, perhaps, about Kerry in a crisis. The camera captures Congressional aides and visitors, clearly distraught and holding onto one another, streaming down the back steps of the Capitol building in near panic, fol

October 13, 2004

The New Deal: U.S. Workers Increasingly Shoulder Risks

Peter G. Gosselin, Los Angeles Times, 10 Oct. 2004 By most conventional measures, Paul Fredo is an American success story. The son of a coal miner, he made almost $200,000 in the last year, enough to place him in the top 2% of wage earners. As a financial manager for the U.S. unit of Alstom, the French bullet-train maker, he has lived an expense-account life, spending most nights in hotels and jetting to meetings in Washington and Paris. But look carefully at Fredo's circu

October 13, 2004

Bill Kristol: We've Never Before Elected a President Who Took Foreign Policy Positions Like John Kerry

Bill Kristol, in the Weekly Standard (Oct. 18, 2004): NEVER HAVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE elected as president a candidate with a record on national security issues resembling that of John Kerry. Consider some of the distinctive national security choices Kerry has made over the years.***April 22, 1971: The American people have never elected president someone who, while serving in the m

October 9, 2004

Hostages Have Often Paid the Price for British Imperial Ventures

Linda Colley, in the Guardian (Sept. 25, 2004):An innocent man going about his business is seized by Muslim raiders, and his life is put at risk. Members of his family issue desperate pleas for his safety and release. Special church services and prayer meetings are held on his behalf. Petitions are dispatched to London urging the powerful to "do something" to free him. In sections of the media there are dar

October 9, 2004

Why Bush Won't Fade in Memory 100 Years from Now

From the Concord Monitor (Oct. 8, 2004): [http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041008/REPOSITORY/410080336/1017] For all these weeks and months, we have looked at George W. Bush through the lens of a microscope, which shows us a president's scar tissues, exaggerates his flaws and attributes, enlarges the small characteristics that otherwise esc

October 8, 2004

Poets And Writers Help Former Soldiers Articulate Experience Of War

John Woestendiek, The Baltimore Sun, 06 Oct. 2004 Even with their sleek, steel blue barrels fully loaded, they were amazingly lightweight gadgets - fully operable with just three fingers, two in a pinch; small enough to fit in a shirt pocket; powerful enough to topple governments. Paid for by a defense contractor under a program approved by the Pentagon, they were handed out, one per solider, to volunteers from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines who gathered here last month t

October 8, 2004

A Long-Discredited Cure May Hold A Promising Secret

Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Boston Globe, 05 Oct. 2004 For 2,500 years, doctors unleashed a single, gory cure-all on nearly every ailment known to mankind a good bleeding. Confronted with a fever, rattly cough, intermittent seizures, heart disease, or even mental illness, doctors bled their patients, sometimes until they passed out. The common practice of bloodletting weakened and probably killed some patients including George Washington, who was bled of 2 to 3 quarts of blood after

October 8, 2004

Quiet Contemplation Reveals World War II Memorial's Power

Nicolaus Mills, Los Angeles Times, 04 Oct. 2004 [Nicolaus Mills, Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. He is also the author of"The Triumph of Meanness: America's War Against Its Better Self" (Houghton Mifflin, 1997).] The 17 years that it took to get the new National World War II Memorial in Washington from a Congressional proposal to architectural completion are more than four times longer than it took to fight World War II. During this

October 8, 2004

Ethiopia Asks World To Return Looted Treasures

Meera Selva, The Independent (London), 04 Oct. 2004 Wander around Axum, a sleepy town in northern Ethiopia, and it is impossible to ignore the giant pit that has been dug right in the centre of town. It is to be filled with the Rome Obelisk, a 1,700-year-old carved granite stone that was hauled away by the Italians in 1937 during Mussolini's brutal occupation of the country. Sipping macchiato made from an imported Italian coffee machine, 24-year- old Akul explains just why the s

October 8, 2004

Roy Hoffman's Take On Kerry's Vietnam Service

Hanna Rosin, The Washington Post, 03 Oct. 2004 [Editor's Note: This is only an excerpt from a much longer piece.] "This is Latch." That's how Roy Hoffmann opened the calls, with a name he hadn't used in 35 years, a name the man at the other end of the line last heard crackling over a radio receiver in Vietnam. He called all the men who'd been under his command there, finding their names in old mimeographed records and photos once stored in his attic and now spread a

October 8, 2004

Two Academic Writers Assert 'Da Vinci Code' Is Plagiarism

Elizabeth Day, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON), 03 Oct. 2004 It is the biggest-selling adult fiction book of all time and has earned its author a reputed pounds 140 million with its plot about a global conspiracy to suppress Christ's marriage. The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 12 million copies and has been translated into 42 languages. But now two writers are suing its publishers, claiming that it was copied from their bestseller that first appeared more than 20 years ago. M

October 8, 2004

William Safire Explores Ideas Of 'Swing Voter' and 'Battleground States'

William Safire, The New York Times, 03 Oct. 2004 If there is one area of total agreement among political thumb-suckers of every stripe, it is that the 2004 presidential election will be won or lost in the battleground states. California and New York? Fuhgeddaboutem. They go in the blue-state column. Texas and South Carolina? Sure-thing red states. ''What they did in Florida in 2000,'' John Kerry warned the Congressional black caucus, ''they may be planning to do in battl

October 8, 2004

A Plan To Honor Canada's Pierre Trudeau

Daniel Girard, The Toronto Star, 02 Oct. 2004 Pierre Trudeau may get his place in the mountains after all. Four years after an avalanche of criticism prompted then-prime minister Jean Chretien to abandon plans to rename Canada's highest peak - Mount Logan in the Yukon - for his former cabinet colleague, other plans for a Mount Trudeau are in the works. This one comes from the village of Valemount, a community of about 1,400 people in the picturesque mountains of northeast

October 8, 2004

The Idea Of Pre-emptive Strikes - Past and Present

James Sterngold, The San Francisco Chronicle, 02 Oct. 2004 George Bush has insisted repeatedly on the campaign trail that his presidency has been characterized by unwavering policies based on core convictions. But a key component of his security and military strategy -- a willingness to wage war"pre-emptively" against perceived enemies -- lies largely in tatters, say experts and policy-makers. These experts, from both sides of the political spectrum, say the brutal experience in

October 8, 2004

Michael Schwartz: Why We Should Beware of the Polls

Michael Schwartz, at www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute (Oct. 6, 2004): [Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has worked for 30 years measuring and analyzing public opinion. Once upon a time, he was also a founding partner of MarketCast, where he pioneered the use of multivariate analysis in measuring attitudes toward movies while designing and e

October 7, 2004

David Gelernter: Bush Should Explain Iraq Is Not Vietnam

David Gelernter, in the Weekly Standard (Oct. 11, 2004):JOHN KERRY is famously hard to pin down; you can reach out to grasp his opinion only to find that it has flitted away like a bashful butterfly, or a goldfish you are trying to catch with your bare hands. But nowadays his pronouncements and campaign ads are easy to read. They suggest that Iraq is like Vietnam; that our top

October 1, 2004

Charles Krauthammer: Kerry Is Running Like Nixon in '68

Charles Krauthammer, in th WSJ (Oct. , 2004): [C]haracter is destiny. Mr. Kerry fell back to talking about the current war in the only way he knows -- in terms of Vietnam. He does not say"Vietnam" explicitly. But this new aggressive Iraq stance has one unmistakable theme: Wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Vietnam -- not as crime or glory, but as terrible strategic mistake.

October 1, 2004

Initial Response To New American Indian Museum

Marc Fisher, The Washington Post, 21 Sept. 2004 The sand-toned, curved limestone walls of the new National Museum of the American Indian make it the most sensuous and serene structure on the Mall, a powerful and immediate sign that this nation's roots lie deeper than Roman temples and English gardens. But as alluring a reminder as this building is of who was here first, the inside of the museum -- the story it tells -- is an exercise in intellectual timidity and a sorry abrogat