Roundup: Media's Take

July 6, 2004

Europeans Are Rejecting Left-Right Ideology

From the New York Times (July 6 2004): Germany's Social Democratic Party, which has headed its governing coalition for six years, has always been the party of the country's working class. That is why when the leader of the country's biggest trade union called the government a failure the other day, it seemed as if something was fundamentally out of kilter in German politics. Things seem to

July 6, 2004

Has US-UK Intelligence Sharing Been Too Cozy?

From the Financial Times (London), July 6 2004: America's spy agencies have been under relentless scrutiny over mistakes they made on Iraq and their failure to prevent the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A public report from the Senate intelligence committee expected to be released soon will spell out the flaws in US intelligence in Iraq in more detail and the spotlight will return with a later report from the panel investigating the September 11 attacks. British agencie

July 5, 2004

Has William Rehnquist Lost Control?

From the New York Times (July 3 2004): Although it has been 10 years since its membership last changed, the Supreme Court that concluded its term last week was, surprisingly and in important ways, a new court. It is too soon to say for sure, but it is possible that the 2003-04 term may go down in history as the one when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist lost his court. The cases decided in t

July 5, 2004

Michael Moore's History Better Told by Two Conservative Historians

Simon Jenkins, in the Times (London), July 2 2004: MICHAEL MOORE'S blockbuster, Fahrenheit 9/11, is the worst good film I have seen. Opening in Britain after breaking box-office records in America, it ranks among the most savage and sensational antiwar movies. Though I agree with its thrust, the depiction of George Bush over Iraq is flawed. Don't miss it, but turn off your brain first. Then go quietly home and read a slim volume from two conservative historians, Stefan H

July 5, 2004

Remembering the Roots of the National Review

Ben Johnson, in FrontPageMagazine.com (July 5 2004): Aloise Buckley Heath once reminisced that, when her brother set out to establish National Review in the mid-1950s, “Our most deeply buried fear was that Gerald L.K. Smith was the only other conservative in America.” Fifty years later, William F. Buckley Jr.’s “weekly journal of opinion” (now bi-weekly) reaches more than a quarter-million readers, includ

July 5, 2004

America's Problematic Empire

Roger Cohen, in the

July 5, 2004

What Has Happened To America Since the Hope of Lewis and Clark?

From the Boston Globe (July 4 2004): On a sweltering day in August 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark clambered to the top of a 70-foot knoll north of the Missouri River. Local Yankton Sioux believed the landmark to be haunted, but instead of ghosts the explorers took in a vista that awed them with its majesty and potential. ''We beheld a most butifull landscape," Clar

July 5, 2004

A Newspaper That Missed the Civil Rights Movement

From the Lexington Herald-Leader (July 4 2004): CLARIFICATION: It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission. John Carroll, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, who edited this newspaper from 1979 to 1991, recently proposed a correction like the one above during a speech on journalism ethics. Today, as the nation celebrates its liberties and marks the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1

July 4, 2004

Bill Clinton: Like Other Presidents, Possessed of an Abnormal Drive

Joel Achenbach, in the Wash Post (July 4, 2004):You can see him in action on the back of the book jacket, working a crowd with two hands, smiling, sucking up the attention, devouring the love. And it's fully reciprocated: The people are straining to reach him, to touch him, to receive his presidential validation. Bill Clinton's world has a radial symmetry, like a flower, with his white thatch

July 2, 2004

Nebraskans Are Hoping They Can Reverse Out-State Migration

David Hendee, in the Omaha World Herald (June 27, 2004): It was the Nebraska version of a gold rush. Thousands of land-seekers poured into remote towns from O'Neill to Alliance 100 years ago this week to stake a claim to a square-mile homestead in Nebraska's last frontier. They temporarily reversed a period of declining population that had started in the 1890s. In less than two decades, the population of the 37 central and western Nebrask

July 2, 2004

The Trouble with Iraq Is We Never Won the War

Michael Hill, in the Balt Sun (June 27, 2004):...In the same way that the Bush administration prefers to portray American troops as liberators instead of occupiers, it would rather compare the Iraqi transformation to the aftermath of World War II in Germany and Japan instead of post-colonial independence in places like Africa. But Jeffrey Herf, a historian at the University of Maryland, says there are significant differences. "As soon as people bega

July 2, 2004

Vice Pesidents Have a Habit of Using Salty References

Henry Beard, in the Los Angeles Times (July 2 2004): Vice President Dick Cheney recently took a lot of heat after he used an epithet in a spirited exchange with Sen. Pat Leahy on the Senate floor, but the reaction was excessive. The occupants of the second-highest office in the land have been known for their salty language since the earliest days of the republic

July 2, 2004

Walt Disney: How He Inspired the Counterculture

Joshua Glenn, in the Boston Globe (June 27, 2004):DID WALT DISNEY turn Johnny Tremain, the teenage hero of Esther Forbes's 1944 Newbery Award-winning novel of that title, from a proper Bostonian son of the Revolution into a proto-1960s radical? Such is the suggestion of film historian Douglas Brode, author of the newly published "From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney Created the Counterculture" (University of Texas). Rather than providing pro-Esta

July 2, 2004

Media Spotlights the National Prisoner of War Museum at Andersonville

Ron Martz, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (June 28, 2004):In the introductory video to the National Prisoner of War Museum here, a former American captive in North Korea tells of seeing the skin stripped off the bodies of U.S. soldiers. Others talk about American POWs being buried alive, of suffering relentless beatings and unimaginable torture at the hands of their captors in Germany, Japan, North Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.Those who venture t

July 2, 2004

Bat Ye'or: Europeans Are Repeating the Mistake of Munich (Again)

Bat Ye'or, in the course of a seminar at the French Senate reprinted by frontpagemag.com (July 2, 2004): Allow me first to make a preliminary observation about the title of this session: the ‘return of the spirit of Munich’ – a title which I find somewhat optimistic. At Munich, in 1938, France and England, exhausted by the death toll of the Great War, abandoned Czechoslovakia to the N

July 2, 2004

Michael Barone: The 40th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and No One Is Celebrating?

Michael Barone, in the WSJ (July 2, 2004): It seems that there will be far less commemoration of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, exactly 40 years ago today, than there was of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in May. This is not as it should be. Brown was certainly a milestone in the nation's history, a declaration

July 2, 2004

Dick Morris: Kerry's Smart Strategy Could End in Bush's Churchill-Like Defeat

Dick Morris, in frontpagemag.com (July 1, 2004): Even as the polling shows a nation evenly divided, Americans are curiously united in their perceptions of the two candidates. By 20 points or more, they agree that Bush is better on terrorism, national defense, and homeland security. Even on Iraq, even on the worst days, they give Bush a 10-point margin over Kerry. On the other hand, they give Kerry a le

July 2, 2004

Bush Is In Trouble, Scandals Popping Up Everywhere

Ken Fireman, in Newsday (July 1, 2004):The vice president upbraids a senator on the floor of the chamber for what he calls personal attacks, then ends the conversation with a transitive verb straight from the barnyard. A chief architect of the Iraq war refers to journalists covering the conflict as cowardly rumor-mongers during a congressional hearing, and is forced to

July 1, 2004

Nader: A Man in Search of a Rationale for his Campaign

Media critic Norman Solomon, in the Baltimore Sun (July 1, 2004): Presidential candidate Ralph Nader is standing on a bar of soap in a political rainstorm. Midway through 2004, while his electoral base shrinks, one of the great American reformers of the 20th century is drifting out to sea. When the Green Party's national convention refused to endorse Mr. Nader for president a few days ago, the delegates were not rejecting his strong anti-corporate and pro-democracy p

July 1, 2004

Laurence Tribe: The Supreme Court Affirms American Legal Principles

Laurence Tribe, in the WSJ (July 1, 2004): ...With luck, the world's understanding of America will be shaped as well by what our Supreme Court, in three landmark decisions rendered this Monday, declared about the rights of those whom U.S. military authorities detain -- whether at Abu Ghraib, in Guantanamo or in a naval brig in South Carolina. The