Peggy Noonan Thinks Of The Children

The crazy next-door-neighbor lady is out of the front porch again, chain smoking and squinting at all the neighborhood kids with that intense stare of hers. Don't worry, kids, Peg's just worried about the loss of your innocence.

Listen, won't you, to this account of Peg's Wonder Years:

Very few people in America don't remember being scared by history at least to some degree when they were kids. After Pearl Harbor, they thought the Japanese were about to invade California. If you are a boomer, you remember duck-and-cover drills. The Soviets had the bomb, and might have used it. I remember a little girl bursting into tears during the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was in grade school.[*]

But apart from that, apart from that one huge thing, life didn't seem menacing and full of dread. It was the boring 1950s and '60s, and the nice thing about a boring era is it's never boring. Life is interesting enough. There's always enough to scare a child.

After you give up trying to make sense of that last paragraph, consider this: The only scary thing about the 50s and 60s was the arms race. Those church bombings and lynchings and death threats had no effect on the kiddies. The idea of growing up, getting drafted and getting killed in Korea or Vietnam never phased the young'un of yore. Childhood disease didn't exist back then. And that media-wide embargo on stories of murder, assassination and riot left the tykes in blissful ignorance. It was prepubescent paradise when Peg was a pup.

I'm starting to miss the Peg who hyperventilated about suitcase nukes.

* Noonan was 12 in October 1962. It sounds like she was held back a few years.

Business As Usual

Sometiimes you learn more about national politics and the national political media from the ostensibly non-political stories. If you do a little digging.

For example, who says you can't learn anything from Politico.com? Here's a report on Norah O'Donnell, appropriately located in the gossip pages:

The pregnant and positively glowing MSNBC anchor, along with "Meet the Press" producer Michelle Jaconi, party-thrower extraordinaire (and lobbyist) Juleanna Glover Weiss and Mary Amons, is hosting a book party for Jill Kargman, author of "Momzillas," at the Ralph Lauren store at the Collection at Chevy Chase on Tuesday. Kargman, by the way, also happens to be the daughter of Chanel CEO Arie Kopelman, guaranteeing everyone there is dressed to the nines. If you miss it, don't worry; no doubt every "luxury" mag in town will have pictures of it for their future issues.

And who is Juleanna Glover Weiss?

Juleanna Glover Weiss is a lobbyist and media and campaign consultant who, in early 2005, left the Clark & Weinstock firm to become a principle [sic] in the new Ashcroft Group firm, founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft.

Previously, Glover Weiss "served on the 2000 presidential campaign and in the White House as the Press Secretary to Vice President Dick Cheney. Her campaign experience also includes significant roles in the Rudolph W. Giuliani U.S. Senate Exploratory Committee and the Steve Forbes 2000 Presidential Campaign. Before that, Ms. Glover Weiss served as a senior policy advisory to Senator John Ashcroft (R-Missouri); as the publicity director for the Weekly Standard; and as legislative director for the Project for the Republican Future."

At Clark & Weinstock, Glover Weiss "helped the Iraqi Governing Council's U.S. rep on 'messaging' and planned overall strategies for meetings with Administration officials, members of Congress/staffers and reporters," reported O'Dwyer's PR Daily.

Glover Weiss is a graduate of Marymount University and received her MBA from George Mason University

Noron and a Meet the Press producer partying with a Cheney flack, the daughter of a fashion CEO and a "socialite" (Ms. Amons). No wonder Noron so often sounds like a G.O.P. press release, and never sounds like a reporter.

Also in Politico, we learn why Holy Joe was so desparate to retain his Senate seat -- the opportunity to do public service!

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), NPR's Nina Totenberg and Charlie Cook donning leather jackets and shades "as the cool kids at Camp Wannabeapolitiki" -- must have been some prime-time acting for that one.

The skit (or whatever it was) was performed at a fundraiser for Thanks USA, a charity which raises scholarship funds for millitary families. The centerpiece of the event involved the 9 and 11 year old children of a Republican NBC lobbyist "donating $1,000 of their chore money" to a scholarship. (The children nominally created the charity, the article claims.) The sleazebag father/lobbyist, Bob Okun, bragged, "The girls really believe that the more you give, the more you get. The personal thank yous they received from the military families have made it all worthwhile for them."

If Holy Joe and Bob get their way, the precocius tykes will, in the fullness of time, be able give (and get) even more through their military service in Iraq. If they don't mind the cut in pay.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Instacracker's Heroes Edition

Alabama authorities have rounded up six weapons enthusiasts calling themselves the Alabama Free Militia. The investigation also "turned up truckloads of explosives and weapons, including 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition," all of which were possessed for self-defense purposes.

One of the six men apprehended was Michael Wayne Bobo, who is described by The Birmingham News as follows:

Bobo was living with his adoptive parents in the Lancshire Brentwood neighborhood in Trussville, a fairly new subdivision near the Cahaba Project with tree-lined streets and brick homes that cost upward of $600,000. He worked for his family's pest control company.

His red pickup truck, usually parked at the house, displays bumper stickers such as "Welcome to the South, Now Go Home," "The Second Amendment: 'You do not know you need it until they come to take it away' - Thomas Jefferson" and "Work Harder, Millions on Welfare Depend on You."

Mr. Bobo's picture is presently featured in Merriam-Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary under the entry for "cliche." The url for his warblog and his Free Republic screenname are not presently known.

Grand Old Police Blotter: No Happy Ending Edition

Republican fatcat Randall Tobias is resigning from his position as Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator (DUFAUSIDA) to spend more time with his hookers.

Contacted last night at his home in the District, Tobias, a former chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., declined to discuss the circumstances of his resignation, saying he would "stick with the statement the State Department released today."

According to ABC News, Tobias said he contacted the escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage" and that there had been "no sex" involved.

In a memo yesterday to the USAID staff, James R. Kunder, acting deputy USAID administrator, called the resignation "shocking news" and urged workers not to be "distracted from our developmental and emergency work."

Tobias reportedly paid $275 for 90 minute massage, hold the Dick Morris. Price seems a little stiff to me.

So how did Randy Randy come to become the DUFAUSIDA?

He and Lilly have been major donors to the Republican Party. He gave $4,000 to Bush from 1999 to 2001, and he and his wife donated a total of $37,000 to the GOP and its state elections committee during that period. Lilly, meanwhile, gave another $23,000 to Bush's campaign in 2000 and spent $234,000 on direct mail to its stockholders on Bush's behalf, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

But, seriously, it's a tragedy when a dedicated public servant has to resign for failings unrelated to her or his duties.

President Bush nominated him in July 2003 to lead a $15 billion program to fight AIDS worldwide.

At the time, some AIDS experts said Mr. Tobias did not have much experience with AIDS or Africa.

Or not.

Perhaps Mr. Tobias was just modeling the Bush Administration's theories of faith-based disease prevention for the benefit of the Dark Continent:

U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias on Thursday in Berlin defended the use of prevention programs that emphasize sexual abstinence in African and Caribbean countries that are set to receive assistance through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Agence France-Presse reports (Agence France-Presse, 4/22). The law (HR 1298) authorizing PEPFAR endorses the "ABC" HIV prevention model -- abstinence, be faithful, use condoms -- which has had success in lowering HIV prevalence rates in Uganda. The measure also specifies that one-third of the bill's HIV/AIDS prevention funding should be used for abstinence and monogamy programs (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 5/28/03). Tobias, who was in Berlin for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS' 2004 Awards for Business Excellence, said that promoting abstinence and monogamy are "far more effective" than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. "Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective," Tobias said, adding, "It's been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what's happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working." PEPFAR has been criticized by AIDS advocates for placing "false hopes" on abstinence and monogamy prevention programs, according to Agence France-Presse.

...

Tobias said, "What the Ugandans have proven is that if you can get young people -- and the results show that you can -- to understand how AIDS is spread and to delay the age at which they become sexually active, and then if you can get people who are sexually active to reduce hopefully to one the number of partners, they have proven to be the two most effective approaches to prevention." Tobias added, "The message to young people in the schools is not either 'Be abstinent or here are condoms, take your pick.' It is a message of 'Be abstinent.' Delaying sexual activity is a means of eliminating the risk of infection."...

So if Randy manfully resisted the advances of those predatory females of loose virtue, as he claims, shouldn't the Administration be promoting him rather than accepting his resignation?

Late Reviews

As a follow up to last week's post on audiobooks, I want to recommend Late Reviews and Latest Obsessions, a blog which has detailed reviews of hundreds of audiobooks. The reviews are insightful (which is to say, they coincide with my opinions and prejudices to a great extent) and cover a range of texts both classic and current. And they cover the performance ("[i]f there is a weakness to his reading, his pausing and phrasing suggests he's reading a nonametric verse narrative consisting of anapests followed by double dactyls") as well as the text.

The reviews tend toward the positive, although the blog's author ("The Critic") is great at slicing and dicing worthy targets as well. When Jonah Goldberg's Holidays With Hitler finally comes out in 2009 or thereafter, I hope The Critic gets his hands on the audio version.

And he also reviews Lyndon LaRouche pamphlets!

Post-Sound-Bite-Generating-Joint-Appearance-Still-Life-With-Podiums Analysis

I didn't see most of it.

Brian Williams has a great future as Joe Biden's straight man. As a journalist, not so much.

The MSNBC "analysis" lasted longer than the joint appearance, and is probably still going on.

Chris Matthews should save the work word dick for the Republican joint appearance or, better yet, a discussion of George W. Bush.

Update: Of course, my instant analysis isn't as profound as, say, that found at the venerable The New Republic. (Peretz hasn't commented yet, perhaps beacuse he swallowed the pencil Frank Foer was holding under his tongue during Senator Clinton's airtime.) Maybe I'll liveblog the forthcoming Republican debate, where the combo of pandering to the fundies and Tweety as emcee will provide a target-rich environment.

Update II (4/27/07): That's "the word dick," not "the work dick." Charles Pierce explains the reference here.

Willard Romney's Latest Flip-Flop: The War Against Iraq

"It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person," Romney said.

Some of us have been saying that for four years now, Muffy. And before it was too late.

Marty Peretz, Hipster

Dig:

My earlier post was about Carl Bernstein's quickly upcoming book about Hillary. The Times article I mentioned had also alluded to another volume, this one by Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., to be published by Little, Brown. It also has a slightly frigid title: Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Do you recall the song sung by Frank Sinatra, "Doing It My Way?" Choreographed by Twyla Tharp and performed by Baryshnikov. Very sexy, both lyrics and dance. Was "her way" meant to deliver a stark contrast?)

In any case, since my post I've gotten several phone calls asking why I had omitted the Gerth-Van Natta book. Simply because the Times said nothing about it content. But my callers claim to know, and I believe them. So it may not be just hives and tantrums. It might even come to shingles.

What a coincidence. Tharp's also my favorite choreographer of songs and Baryshnikov's my favorite performer of songs. Especially the non-existent ones.

p.s. Anybody got Marty's phone number? It appears he's taking calls now, and I'm dying to ask him about the stark contrast between the first person and third person.

"Give Me The Shemp, With Bozo the Clown Highlights"

Poor Maureen Dowd. Four hundred bucks can't buy her respect or a good haircut.

(Photo courtesy of The Huffington Post)

The Best And The Brightest

On the way home from work, I heard radio reports concerning the nine soldiers killed in Iraq and of David Halberstam's death in an auto accident in Menlo Park. After running some errands, I went home and tried to find some television reports on those two stories.

On CNN, Larry King was interviewing George and Babs Bush about cancer, and Anderson Cooper was reporting on contaminated pet food and the resumption of classes at Virginia Tech. On CNN Headline News (sic), Glenn Beck was having a "Debate" (according to the screen caption) on global warming with a right-wing talk show host, the director of a film ridiculing the idea of global warming and a "Republican environmentalist." And Nancy Grace had whatever inane shit she always has on. MSNBC had a reality show about models in New York (apparently, MSNBC has run out of prison footage and pedophiles gone wild) and a Countdown with some pretty stale stories on the Correspondents' Dinner and the Blue Angels crash. And on Fox News, there was comprehensive coverage of Alec Baldwin, Harry Reid's act of treason and the alleged murderer popularly known as "The Preacher's Wife."

Most if not all of this programming was rebroadcasts, since the staff of the "24-hour news networks" apparently knock off at or before 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. I couldn't watch all the channels at once and left the room occassionally to vomit, but, if there was anything about the Iraq deaths or Halberstam's death beyond a crawl at the bottom of the screen, I missed it.

These networks are, of course, run and staffed by some of the most intelligent, most driven, most accomplished and most well-compensated people in the United States. (Just ask them.) God bless our meritocracy and the majesty of the marketplace of ideas.

Exploiting A Tragedy

CNN's Reliable Sources, April 22, 2007:

KURTZ: Joining us now here in Washington, Bill Press, columnist and host of "The Bill Press Show" on Sirius Satellite Radio. In Philadelphia, Gail Shister, television writer for "The Philadelphia Inquirer". And in Irvine, California, radio talk show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt, author of the new book "A Mormon in the White House: Ten Things Every American Should Know About Mitt Romney".

...

Hugh Hewitt, you've told the world that you were appalled by NBC's decision to air part of this videotape. Why?

HUGH HEWITT, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Well, Howard, a number of reasons.

First of all, it was torture to the victims and survivors. Parents who had lost children, children who had lost fathers, spouses who had lost husbands and their extended families saw the man who took them to the next world in -- as he wanted to be seen. And I thought, along with most psychiatrists, it was just abuse and torture. I also think in the words of Mickey Kaus, NBC is now the go-to network for mass murderers. And mass murderers have been affected by this.

KURTZ: But you know, I was on your radio show...

HEWITT: Yes, you were.

KURTZ: ... a half hour before those images hit NBC, and you were complaining, why were they holding it? Why wasn't -- were they trying to get a ratings bonanza for "NBC Nightly News"? It turns out -- it turns out they were holding it at the request of the Virginia State Police authorities.

HEWITT: No, I wanted them to release his written redacted statement. But I agreed with you that I would be very angry if they showed the images.

I think it was you, Howard, who said, if they show one photograph, you could understand that. But I think that what has followed has been the incentivizing of mass murder, and NBC will have blood on its hands the next time someone sends a video to their network of their mayhem.

KURTZ: Well, that's a pretty strong statement.

....

KURTZ: Hugh Hewitt, now ABC, NBC, FOX say they're not airing this video anymore at all, CNN says not airing it except with limited exceptions. But in the first 24 hours, wasn't part of the problem not just NBC, but that every network on the planet, with the exception of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, I found out, was running this footage until it became video wallpaper?

HEWITT: Howard, it is part of the problem. But not every network. My show in 100 cities did not air a second of his audio, because it would be reprehensible to do so. And it isn't a close call.

Instantly, even before it was released, your reaction on my show was the same as the reaction -- I spent three days covering this from left, right and center, from various psychiatric experts, that this was a horrible thing to do. Dr. Michael Welner, an ABC News consultant, likened it to the release of a toxic cloud.

It has consequences. Yes, the copycat networks went out and did a terrible thing, but it goes back to NBC. And I would like to ask Steve Capus at some point, did they ask one serious forensic psychiatrist what the impact of this video would be on other unstable people?

If they had, they would not have done this. There were alternatives. They could have put it under a password-protected site, they could have released it three years from now on the Internet only.

What they did was astonishingly stupid and irresponsible. And until they apologize, the public will not let up on them.

SHISTER: Could I jump in here, Howie?

Do you think that any other network would have reacted any differently?

HEWITT: I don't know. I hope so. I hope that some of them would have taken at least 24 hours to talk to a psychiatrist, because it's like asking the media to treat unstable people.

They were having an impact on these individuals who will be killers in the future, because that which gets rewarded gets repeated.

...

HEWITT: Howard, can I jump in? Because you were right. You were right on that day before they aired it.

I asked you on the air -- it's posted at hughhewitt.com, and you said, "Don't do it. You will give the killer exactly what he wants." That's not Monday morning quarterbacking, and it's what any serious analyst would have come to the conclusion had they been asked by NBC.

It's not just any publicity whore who can plug his book, radio show, website and fellow Republican hack in a 10 minute segment on a mass murderer's killing spree. And pretend to be aghast at someone else exploiting the tragedy for ratings and profit.