Roundup: Media's Take

July 13, 2004

Robert Fisk: The Grandson of the Cleric Who Led the Insurrection Against the British in 1920 Speaks Out

Robert Fisk, in the Independent (July 12, 2004):The Americans could learn a lot from Sheikh Jouwad Mehdi Al-Khalasi. A tall, distinguished man who speaks with eloquence and humor, he has the same forehead and piercing eyes of his grandfather - the man who led the Shiite Muslim insurrection against British occupation in 1920. He brings out a portrait of the grand old revolutionary, who has a fluffy but carefully combe

July 12, 2004

Stephen Schwartz: Islam Doesn't Need a Reformation

Stephen Schwartz, at techcentralstation.com (June 1, 2004): ... Today, it is common to hear Westerners, who have read a few polemical articles and imagine themselves great experts on Islam, calling for "an Islamic Reformation," and an "Islamic Luther." Other such are horrified to hear the argument, which is quite widespread among informed non-Muslim scholars as well as Muslims, that Islam alrea

July 12, 2004

Joshua Spivak: Political Conventions Are a Bore

Joshua Spivak, in the Chicago Tribune (July 9, 2004): Every four years Americans are subjected to political conventions, a relentlessly hyped, expensive event paid for partly by public funds. Despite the avalanche of coverage given to these events, the most important story is missed: While once critical to our political system, the quadrennial conventions are a useless, poi

July 11, 2004

Kerry-Edwards Ticket Aims at Long-Contested Working-Class Votes

From the New York Times (July 11 2004): Every presidential ticket is a snapshot of a party, a particular political moment, a particular political need. Often, it shows politicians scrambling to pull together various regions or ideological wings of a party, like Franklin D. Roosevelt paired with the conservative Texan John Nance Garner, the speaker of the House, in 1932. Sometimes, the politicians are try

July 10, 2004

William Kristol: Voters Should Be Reminded That the Iraq War Was Bi-Partisan

William Kristol, in the Weekly Standard (July 19 2004): LAST THURSDAY, CNN's Larry King asked John Kerry whether he would want former President Bill Clinton to campaign on his behalf. Kerry said yes."What American would not trade the economy we had in the 1990s, the fact that we were not at war and young Americans were not deployed?" Kerry's answer is revealing. We were, in fact, at wa

July 10, 2004

"John Kerry may be wooden, but he's at his best in a fight"

From the Australian Magazine (July 10 2004): John Kerry thinks he knows the Australian accent pretty well."Oz-TRY-le-an," he says with emphasis as we meet mid-air aboard his Boeing 757, modestly emblazoned"John Kerry President". Half an hour earlier we'd raced out of Denver, Colorado, our police motorcade ablaze in blue and red. Now we should be heading south for New Mexico, where more voters wait to be wooed. But instead of another stop on the trail Kerry hopes will end at the Whit

July 10, 2004

America’s New Generation More Proper, More Conservative

From the Straits Times (Singapore) July 10 2004: A NEW decency is at play in American popular culture - and it coincides with the rise of a new generation that is more conservative than their rebellious Sixties-era parents. The outcry over Janet Jackson's breast-baring stunt is one vivid aspect of a new American primness, ephemeral or not, and it has also defined decency as one wedge issue in the elections. Post-Janet, the annual Victoria's Secret lingerie show was c

July 10, 2004

Is Political Star John Edwards Consigning Himself to Traditional V-P Oblivion?

From the Toronto Star (July 10 2004): John Edwards can't get the high-beam smile off his face. Picked this week as putative Democratic candidate John Kerry's running mate, his joy at the notion of becoming U.S. vice-president fairly leaps off the TV screen. But has the junior senator from North Carolina thought it through? He's important now. Some say his open-faced affability is, in fact, crucial if Kerry's so-far plodding campaign is ever to catch fire. But if

July 9, 2004

H.D.S. Greenway: The Neocons Are Losing Influence

H.D.S. Greenway, in the Boston Globe (July 9 2004): WHEN IS the last time you heard Donald Rumsfeld insult an ally? The defense secretary used to insult an ally a week. The men from Mars in Rumsfeld's inner circle had nothing but contempt for the un-warlike Europeans from Venus, as Robert Kagan famously put it. But in recent months Rumsfeld has become strangely quiet. Th

July 9, 2004

In the Number Two Spot, Could John Edwards Be as Effective as Lyndon Johnson?

From the New York Times (July 9 2004): Senator John Kerry's political advisers plan to dispatch his new running mate, Senator John Edwards, to rural areas in critical states across the Midwest and the West, in the belief that Mr. Edwards could be an unusually powerful advocate for the ticket in regions viewed as President Bush's stronghold. For all the attention to Mr. Edwards's Southern roots, Mr.

July 9, 2004

Stephen F. Hayes: The Distortions of Senator Carl Levin on Iraq

Stephen F. Hayes, in the Weekly Standard (July 9 2004): DOES SENATOR CARL LEVIN believe in preemption? The Michigan Democrat, one of the fiercest partisan critics of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, held a bizarre press conference Thursday to criticize the Senate Intelligence Committee's not-yet-released report on prewar intelligence. Levin faulted the exhaustive document f

July 9, 2004

Multiculturalism Is "An Alien Belief System" Foisted on American Public

Lawrence Auster, in Frontpagemag.com (July 9 2004): Some years ago the Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer declared that"we are all multiculturalists now." One's initial response to such an unwanted announcement is to say:"What do you mean, 'we'?" Yet, even if"we" do not subscribe to that sentiment, it cannot be denied that over the last twenty years multiculturalism has become the ruling idea of Ameri

July 8, 2004

Look for the National Media to Obscure John Edwards's Political History

Paul Chesser, in the Weekly Standard (July 8 2004): When Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina suspended his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in March, my Carolina Journal colleagues and I engaged in a Wall Street Journal-inspired"bye-ku" competition in remembrance of his campaign. His"Two Americas" and"son of a mill worker" themes were popular targets, but so was the media

July 8, 2004

Richard Cohen: The Passionate Past of John Edwards

Richard Chohen, in the Washington Post (July 8 2004): Back in 2002 I went over to see John and Elizabeth Edwards at their house in Washington. We had lunch, salads for us all, the pundit sizing up the prodigy with the usual Beltway questions about this or that, when suddenly Edwards set the agenda. He talked passionately about racial injustice. I won't go into the particulars of that con

July 8, 2004

George Will: The Left Has Adopted Economic Self-Interest

George F. Will, in the Washington Post (July 8 2004): It has come to this: The crux of the political left's complaint about Americans is that they are insufficiently materialistic. For a century, the left has largely failed to enact its agenda for redistributing wealth. What the left has achieved is a rich literature of disappointment, explaining the mystery, as the left sees it, of why

July 7, 2004

Neal Gabler: Journalism Has Traded Truthful Reality for 'Balance'

Neal Gabler, in the Los Angeles Times (July 7 2004): No one can accuse documentarian and bedraggled, beer-bellied gadfly Michael Moore of having a hidden agenda. He has raised a firestorm of controversy and generated a torrent of publicity not only by bludgeoning President Bush with his feature-length attack,"Fahrenheit 9/11," but also by declaring that he made the film in hopes of booti

July 7, 2004

Recent History Informs Greenspan's Go-Slow Approach

Irwin M. Stelzer, in the Weekly Standard (July 7 2004): ON SUNDAY, we Americans did what we always do on the Fourth: We grilled hot dogs and watched fireworks in celebration of the day in 1776 when we declared our independence of Britain by adopting"The Unanimous Declaration of The Thirteen United States of America." As Edmund Burke told the Parliament,"a succession of Acts of Tyranny" by

July 7, 2004

News Media Competing through Partisanship More than Ever

From the Los Angeles Times (July 7 2004): If the American news media are lucky, 2004 will be remembered as the year of living dangerously. If not, then this election cycle may be recalled as the point at which journalism's slide back into partisanship became a kind of free fall. Presidential elections always challenge the press: The pace of events and competitive pressure invariably war with th

July 7, 2004

Dick Morris: Could Edwards Be Another Eagleton?

Dick Morris, in FrontPageMagazine.com (July 7 2004): The cheering that surrounds John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards for vice president may fade quickly if the Bush campaign’s negative researchers are on the ball. Edwards has a real vulnerability in the way he raised campaign money during his abortive presidential bid. The North Carolina senator and former trial lawyer leaned heavily on his

July 7, 2004

Christian Zionists Mix Historical Determinism with Religious Politics

From the Christian Science Monitor (July 7 2004): Ray Sanders and his wife, Sharon, grew up on farms in the American Midwest, but Israel has long been their home. Their journey began in the 1970s, when they read Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic bestseller,"The Late Great Planet Earth," which laid out a scenario for the end of the world according to a literal interpretation of Bible prophecies. "That awakened our understanding to Israel and its prophetic role in the Last Days," Mr. Sa