Roundup: Media's Take

June 21, 2004

Is Terrorist's Attorney a Modern Rosenberg?

From David Horowitz's Blog in Frontpagemag.com (June 20 2004): Attorney Lynne Stewart is about to go on trial for aiding and abetting the terrorist leader Omar Abdel Rahman. Stewart is an avowed supporter of terrorism and an outspoken Communist. Whether she is a member of the party or no is really irrelevant. Her heroes -- as she proudly proclaimed in a toast at the annual convention of the National Lawyers Guild where she

June 21, 2004

Australian Politicians of the Mid-20th Century

From the Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia) June 21 2004: A BOOK launched last week covers a period of Australian history when parents weren't concerned about their children eating junk food. Instead, many worried, and desperately, that they might not eat at all. Today Peter Garrett, Bob Brown and John Howard are seen as extremists by their more hysterical enemies. During the period of this book there were real extremists: Marxists plotting revolution and fascist

June 21, 2004

Clinton Is Broadening Exposure To Shape Legacy

From Newsday (June 21 2004): 'Clinton Redux." "Clinton's Complaint." "The Greatest Story Ever Told." "The Scarlet Presidency." Depending upon whom you talk to, the nearly 1,000-page memoir by former President Bill Clinton could wear all of these possible titles, befitting its outsized, often larger-than- life main character. Arriving this week with much fanfare and already a No. 1 best-seller based on pre-orders, the story of America's first Baby Boom president is si

June 20, 2004

What Makes for a Compelling Presidential Memoir?

From Newsday (June 20 2004): In his upcoming memoir, former President Bill Clinton tells the story of his life and his presidency. If you ask Columbia Journalism School professor Evan Cornog, however, Clinton is not the first president to spin a yarn, and he certainly will not be the last. According to Cornog, storytelling has always been a president's most important task. In his new book due out in August,"The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determin

June 20, 2004

Assessing Reagan's Place in History

T.R. Fehrenbach, in the San Antonio Express-News (June 20 2004): As the lives of great men all remind us, figuring out their place in history is no easy thing. It only seems simpler when the passage of time lends perspective. People who affect the world during their lifetime, after all, may be judged for their deeds but only evaluated by their legacies. Som

June 20, 2004

Go Ahead and Declare Reagan One of the Greats

Bruce Kauffmann, in the Oregonian (June 20 2004):"Even God realized he couldn't change the past. That's why he created historians." -- Anonymous Michael Beschloss is a serious historian. He says no accurate assessment of Ronald Reagan's presidency can be made for another 30 years. Beschloss' point is well taken. There will be a decade or so of hagi

June 20, 2004

Comparing Bush and Reagan

From the New York Times (June 20 2004): While Democrat John Kerry struggles to define himself to the public, President Bush is encountering image troubles as well. Trying to run on his record, Bush finds himself subject to frequent comparisons with other GOP luminaries: Ronald Reagan, the first President Bush, Sen. John McCain, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The comparisons do not always benefit

June 20, 2004

Frank Rich: Not that Many People Actually Tuned in to the Reagan Extravaganza

Frank Rich, in the NYT (June 20, 2004):...Experts kept saying how "surprised" everyone was about "the outpouring" for Reagan, but saying didn't make it so. The dirty little secret of the week: the outpouring didn't live up to its hype. "There was this kind of extraordinary outpouring not by the public but by reporters who should know better," as Morle

June 20, 2004

Bush and Kerry's Social Past

From the Los Angeles Times (June 20 2004): He is a scion of American aristocracy whose path through life has been strewn with privilege. Born to a family with deep roots on the Eastern Seaboard and a powerful place in U.S. history, he was pushed out of the nest into a boarding school where he often felt out of place. But that school -- and his name -- would help pave the way into an Ivy League college. At Yale, he was tapped for an exclusive secret society. The first-b

June 20, 2004

The U.S. Has Been Complicit with Torture in Vietnam and Latin America

Stephen Kinzer, in the Wash Post (June 11, 2004):Not everyone was shocked by the revelations of the ways American soldiers have abused Iraqi prisoners. Those who have studied techniques that American interrogators taught and used in Vietnam, Latin America, and elsewhere during past decades felt only a grim sense of recognition. "We are living an illusion if we think these practices are un

June 19, 2004

Michael Barone: Should We Swap Horses Mid-Stream?

Michael Barone, in the LAT (June 18, 2004): On Jan. 5, 1762, the Czarina Elizabeth died. Russia was in the midst of the Seven Years' War, fighting alongside Austria and France and against the Prussia of Frederick the Great. Prussia was on the verge of defeat: Before he learned of the czarina's death, Frederick wrote to an aide,"We ought now to think of

June 19, 2004

LA Times on Clinton's Memoirs

from the Los Angeles Times (June 19 2004): Bill Clinton was on a roll, telling a rapt audience at New York University this week about his battles against impeachment and life in the White House. But then he abruptly stopped, and left listeners with a big tease: "If you like what I talked about," he said,"wait until you read the book." With Clinton's memoir,"My Life," set to hit stores next week, the stories behind its publication are bursting with superlatives: The former

June 18, 2004

To Understand Iraq, Take a Visit to the British Museum

Neil MacGregor, in the Guardian (June 14, 2004):The collapse of the Tower of Babel is perhaps the central urban myth. It is certainly the most disquieting. In Babylon, the great city that fascinated and horrified the Biblical writers, people of different races and languages, drawn together in pursuit of wealth, tried for the first time to live together - and f

June 18, 2004

Should Saddam's Monuments Be Razed?

Brian Whitaker, in the Guardian (June 16, 2004):The undecided fate of Saddam Hussein's surviving monuments in Iraq sparked controversy last night at a public forum in the British Museum as debate focused on whether to demolish them or preserve them as a reminder of his rule. "What counts is to have a fresh start," said Ghaith Abdul Ahad, a 28-year-old Iraqi architect-turned-journalist

June 18, 2004

The Cost of Censorship in Wartime (The Secret History of Japanese Balloon Bombs)

Liam Callanan, the author of The Cloud Atlas, a novel, in Slate (June 16, 2004): ... what is at stake each time we erase the news is not just the nation's security but, more important, our history.And that's why it's helpful to turn to history for an object lesson, a case of wartime censorship where the issue was much less

June 17, 2004

Ike's Son Wonders What Ike Would Do Today

John S.D. Eisenhower, in the International Herald Tribune (June 6, 2004):The 60th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, on the day known in common parlance as D-Day, was once again an occasion to pause and contemplate its significance. Like all Americans, I am proud of the achievements of my fellow soldiers but aware of the ordeal they underwent. To this day, I v

June 15, 2004

Bush Has the Same Enemies Reagan Did

George Melloan, in the WSJ (June 15, 2004): ... some of the same people who were attacking Ronald Reagan in the 1980s are still around doing the same thing to President Bush. Teddy Kennedy was calling Ronald Reagan a warmonger in 1984, thus feeding useful nuggets to KGB propagandists; he today chortles that Iraq is President Bush's"Vietnam." Sena

June 15, 2004

NYT: How Bush Stacks Up Against Reagan

Elisabeth Bumiller, in the NYT (June 14, 2004): ...This past weekend, the White House Web site prominently featured a collection of Reagan remembrances and a photo essay of Mr. Bush at the funeral for the former president. The Bush campaign Web site went one better, offering a video of Mr. Reagan uttering his most famous lines -"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc" - interspersed with Mr. Bush's own words

June 14, 2004

Okinawa ... Time for a Change in the Relationship with the U.S.

Ota Masahide, a former governor of Okinawa Prefecture and historian of Okinawa, is currently a Social Democratic Party member of the Upper House, in Japan Focus (June 2004): When a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl was raped by three U.S. soldiers in the autumn of 1995, I was governor of Okinawa Prefecture. In my address to the people of Okinawa, I said,"I apologize to you all for failing to protect the girl's human rights and dignity."   I uttered these word

June 13, 2004

Is the Country Really Sharply Divided?

John Tierney, in the NYT (June 13, 2004):If you've been following the election coverage, you know how angry you're supposed to be. This has been called the Armageddon election in the 50-50 nation, a civil war between the Blue and the Red states, a clash between churchgoers and secularists hopelessly separated by a values chasm and a culture gap. But do Ameri