Roundup: Media's Take

February 11, 2004

Manhattan's History Is Being Neglected in the Debates About 9-11 Memorials

Russell Shorto, in the NYT (Feb. 9, 2004): Acre for acre, Lower Manhattan may be the most historic piece of real estate in America. Here the Sons of Liberty plotted revolution, the Stamp Act Congress met to defy taxation without representation, colonists exchanged fire with British ships in the harbor, and General Washington and his officers celebrated their victory. The first president was inaugurated here

February 11, 2004

NYT Editorial: Bush's Service in the National Guard

Editorial in the NYT (Feb. 11, 2004): If President Bush thought that his release of selected payroll and service records would quell the growing controversy over whether he ducked some of his required service in the Air National Guard three decades ago, he is clearly mistaken. The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of d

February 10, 2004

Cold Mountain Is Racist

Greg Tate, in the Village Voice (Feb. 4-10, 2004): We African Americans lead strange and conflicted lives at the movies. For this reason, the Internet was recently abuzz with calls by actor and self-described semiotician Erik Todd Dellums to boycott Cold Mountain , a Civil War film noticeably lacking in melanin content. Charles Frazier's novel hardly avoids African Americans as concertedly as

February 10, 2004

If Lincoln Were Alive, He'd Be a Democrat

Greg Bailey, a St. Louis attorney, is a correspondent for the Economist: As Abraham Lincoln's birthday approaches Republicans around the nation gather together in country clubs and halls for their annual Lincoln Day banquets. Dressed in their finest, the loan officer of the branch bank sips his gimlet while the cross-wearing locksmith intones the virtues of home schooling to the party faithful gathered around the table. The rank and file eye each other warily occasionally

February 10, 2004

Reagan Ran Deficits, Why Can't Bush?

Brenden Miniter, assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com, in WSJ (Feb. 10, 2004): Unlike most families, the federal government can perpetually spend more than it takes in and still remain fiscally sound. That's because unlike us mortals, Uncle Sam isn't going to retire. His income isn't going to top off in middle age and slip in his golden years. The occasional but short-lived downturn notwith

February 10, 2004

What Yale Can Teach the World About the US

Amity Shlaes, writing in the Financial Times (London) (Feb. 9, 2004) John Kerry, Howard Dean, George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman all have something in common, and it is not merely that they spent January running for the US presidency. They are all Yale men.But then Bush v Clinton was also a Yale v Yale event. A Yale graduate has occupied the Oval Office for a decade and a half now. Assuming Hillary Clinton (Yale Law School, 1973) is all her fans hope, the reign

February 10, 2004

Can Bush Repeat Nixon's Trick and Manipulate the Economy to Win?

Charles R. Morris, author of Money, Greed and Risk, in the NYT (Feb. 7, 2004):If President Bush can maintain the recovery through his re-election campaign, he will be in rarefied company. Richard M. Nixon, in fact, may be the only recent president to accomplish this feat, timing a recovery from a midterm recession to coincide with his 1972 race. The

February 10, 2004

Frank Rich: TV Lets Candidates Be as Inauthentic as They Want to Be

Frank Rich, in the NYT (Feb. 8, 2004):To survey the progress of America's political culture over four decades, you need rerun only two TV shows, each starring a Massachusetts Democrat with the initials J.F.K. On June 16, 1960, Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in a natty suit, sat next to the brilliant and much-mourned Jack Paar on NBC's "Tonight Sh

February 10, 2004

If Israel's Policies Are Unjust, We Should Say So

Henry Siegman, writing in the Financial Times (London) (Feb. 10th, 2004) It would have been hard to imagine in the aftermath of the second world war that the issue of anti-Semitism would once again require the attention of decent men and women within the lifetime of Holocaust survivors. It would have been even harder to imagine that the state of Israel, whose creation was intended by its Zionist founders as a cure for the malignancy of anti-Semitism, would itself be

February 10, 2004

"War President" Left on Defensive

Michael Dobbs, writing in the Boston Globe (Feb. 9, 2004) President Bush's unusual appearance on"Meet the Press" yesterday underscored two important points about the coming election: Bush himself is likely to be the main issue and, despite the many advantages of incumbency, he is beginning the year in a defensive crouch.His aggressive responses to moderator Tim Russert underscored both what his admirers and critics see in him - the resoluteness and the stubbornness

February 10, 2004

Sharon Changes Direction, Not Style

Laura King, writing for the Los Angeles Times (Feb 8, 2004)Years before he became prime minister, Ariel Sharon was fond of taking visitors to a bare, rocky West Bank hillside overlooking Israel's narrow but densely populated coastal plain. There, in a set-piece speech, with wind-ruffled maps at hand, he would forcefully insist on Israel's need in the name of self-defense to hold fast to this piece of strategic high ground -- never mentioning that this same stony eart

February 10, 2004

Bush on Vietnam: What Went Wrong

Fred Kaplan, in Slate (Feb. 9, 2004): [Tim] Russert asked [President Bush] whether he supported that war. Bush replied that he did, sort of. The president added: The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is a lesson that any president must learn, and that is to set the goal and the objective and allow the milit

February 9, 2004

Blair Is Not Churchill

Paul Waugh, writing in the Independant (London) (Feb. 7, 2004):ONE WAS faced with an enemy that had the biggest army in history, had overrun half of Europe and was bombing British cities on a daily basis.The other was faced with an enemy that couldn't use its air force in its own airspace, was crippled by sanctions and possessed weapons that it now turns out were more imagined than real.Most historians wouldn't dare to compare Winston Churchill's wartim

February 7, 2004

Vets Don't Razzle Dazzle War

Bill Eichenberger, writing in the Columbus Dispatch (Feb. 3, 2004):In two best sellers, historian James Bradley has addressed conflict in the Pacific during World War II. Flags of Our Fathers (2000) tells the story of the six "boys" who raised the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi during the battle for the island of Iwo Jima.The photograph of the event is considered the most-reproduced image in history.Flyboys (2003) t

February 7, 2004

Populism's Back--Why?

Brad Knickerbocker, writing in the Christian Science Monitor (Feb. 4, 2004): Fighting for the "little guy" against wealthy, powerful interests has been a staple of American politics since the first New England patriots railed against King George III's tax policies. Today, in similar manner, the leading Democratic presidential contenders are trying to present their effort as a populist uprising against a plutocratic admi

February 7, 2004

"Auschwitz" Is Under Our Noses in North Korea--And Still We Do Nothing

Columnist Anne Applebaum, writing in the Wash Post (Feb. 4, 2004):Nearly 60 years ago last week, Auschwitz was liberated. On Jan. 27, 1945, four Russian soldiers rode into the camp. They seemed "wonderfully concrete and real," remembered Primo Levi, one of the prisoners, "perched on their enormous horses, between the gray of the snow and the gray of

February 7, 2004

Mel Gibson's Insensitivity (At Best) About the Holocaust

Tim Rutten, writing in the LAT (Feb. 4, 2004):[Mel] Gibson has allowed himself to be characterized as a Catholic and has reinforced that impression by seeking the Vatican's approval of his film and then publicizing a purported papal endorsement. Reams of sympathetic publicity continue to describe Gibson as "a devout Catholic." In fact, he is not. Catholics belong

February 7, 2004

What the Boston Globe Found Out in 2000 About Bush's Military Record

Walter V. Robinson, writing in the Boston Globe (Feb. 5, 2004):A detailed Globe examination of the records in 2000 unearthed official reports by Bush's Guard commanders that they had not seen him for a year. There was also no evidence that Bush had done part of his Guard service in Alabama, as he has claimed. Bush's Guard appointment, made possible by family connections, was cut short when Bush was allowed to leave his Houston Guard unit ei

February 6, 2004

Is the Bird Virus Similar to the Virus that Caused the Flu Epidemic of 1918?

From NPR (Feb. 5, 2004): The flu epidemic of 1918 ranks with the Black Death of the Middle Ages as one of the deadliest contagions of all times. The virus swept across the Earth, killing an estimated 20 million people in little over a year. In the United States, more than half a million people died from the illness between September 1918 and June 1919. To this day, no one knows why the virus was s

February 6, 2004

Joshua Micah Marshall: Did the Bush Administration Create a New American Empire—Or Weaken the Old One?

Joshua Micah Marshall, writing in the New Yorker (Feb. 2, 2004): For leftist critics of America's role in the world, it has long been a baleful article of faith that the United States is an agent of “neo-imperialism,” exerting its power through global capital and through organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After September 11th, a left-wing accusation became a right-wing aspiration: co