November 28, 2003 by s.z.

Town Hall: Where the Elite Meet to Break Your Spirit Since I have no creativity left today, I'm going to once again just summarize the Town Hall columns.  As on the 26th, the recurring themes are: Gay Marriage is Bad, the Medicare Bill is Bad, Ronald Reagan is Good, and Thanksgiving Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry About Iraq.  But today you also get Rich Lowry's favorite beer ads, Ollie North's call for more Wayne Newtons, and some info on which races make the best newspaper men: 1.  Jeff Jacoby Worship the free market at the church or synagogue of your choice. No turkey czar sat in a command post somewhere, consulting a master plan and issuing orders. No one rode herd on all those people, forcing them to cooperate for your benefit. And yet they did cooperate. When you arrived at the supermarket, your turkey was there. You didn't have to do anything but show up to buy it. If that isn't a miracle, what should we call it? 2.  Mona Charen On this Thanksgiving Day, Mona is grateful for the world's most wonderful neighbors, the world's cutest and most winsome dog, and for al Qaeda, for giving us a pretext for invading Iraq. Because he is gone, 60,000 Iraqi children under the age of five will not die this year, as they have done for the more than 10 years since sanctions were imposed following the Gulf War (UNICEF figures), and Saddam will not be in a position to share weapons of mass destruction with his friends in Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.  Those ties, stretching back 10 years, are documented in The Weekly Standard magazine. 3.  Ollie North Celebrities should be seen at USO shows, and not heard. America could use fewer celebrities like the Dixie Chicks and Sean Penn and more like Wayne Newton and Gary Sinise.   4.  Brent Bozell The Hollywood liberal elite agenda is trying to force homosexuality down our throats by trying to make homophobes look bad.  On perhaps no issue is there more built-in cultural politics -- and manifest hyperbole -- than homosexuality. Beginning in the mid-1970s, homosexuals regularly have been presented on television as positive characters often treated in shabbily negative (read: bigoted) ways. 5.  Jacob Sullum The Medicare bill is bad; not because it will privatize medicare, like the Dems said, but because it's really, really expensive.  And also some of the stuff the Dems said, only spoken by Republicans. Especially since the price of getting these meager changes was a drug benefit that will add trillions to Medicare's fiscal imbalance while taking from the poor and giving to the rich.  As the Heritage Foundation's Robert Moffit notes, the drug plan "will guarantee that low-income working people pay the drug bills of rich retirees with six-figure incomes."  Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., one of the few Republicans who placed principle above politics by voting against the bill, called it "the largest tax increase that one generation has put on another generation in the history of the country."  6. Charles Krauthammer The "Geneva accord" between Israel and Palestine is a sham of a mockery of a sham because it would require Israel to make some concessions.  Besides, Krauthammer didn't vote for Yossi Beilin. This is not a treaty, this is a suicide note -- by a private citizen on behalf of a country that has utterly rejected him politically. That it should get any encouragement from the United States or from its secretary of state is a disgrace.  7.  Jonah Goldberg Jonah isn't in favor of homosexuality, in that it's new and trendy.  But neither is he behind the Federal Marriage Amendment, because just as Prohibition actually popularized drinking, the FMA could result in millions of Americans flocking to Gayeasies, where they would illegally get married.  Jonah suggests letting each state make it's own laws about same-sex unions, and then amending the Constitution to say that the red states don't have to recognize the marriages of the godless, liberal ones. I think gay marriage is probably a bad idea. But, I admit, my feelings stem partly from a conservative view that holds that all radical new ideas are probably bad ones.  I like "muddling through," as the British say.  8.  Paul Crespo The Commies would have taken over the world, if not for Reagan.  Ron also whipped stagflation, and got rid of malaise. Reagan's idea for a Strategic Defense Initiative to neutralize the Soviet nuclear threat -- derisively dubbed ''Star Wars'' by opponents -- provoked panic among Kremlin leaders. Reagan's radical plan worked. With Mikhail Gorbachevs acquiescence, the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989, and per Reagans prediction, the Soviet system soon ended up ``on the trash heap of history.''   9.  William F. Buckley Bill claims that Andrew Sullivan has a "considerable constituency."  Bill also goes along with Jonah's Federalist plan of "Gay marriage for some states, little American flags for others."  However, he never answer his title question: "Does Marriage Matter?"  I guess he's getting old and it just slipped his mind. The Commonwealth has 180 days in which to contrive language that is not discriminatory, but -- is. The Constitution might say that marriage is a union between two people who can create a third person.  A different approach would be to distinguish between the nature of benefits conferred on couples who take on the burdens of raising children and those who do not; though there would surely arise a Philadelphia lawyer conjoining with another Philadelphia lawyer to find something constitutionally objectionable in the very idea.   10.  Maggie Gallagher Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children? She [Elizabeth Marquardt, "a 33-year-old mother, wife, feminist and lifelong Democrat"]  is not going to be deterred by charges of bigotry or hate. Children of divorce, she says, suffer because they don't have a mom and dad in one family: "I really suspect that children of same-sex couples feel the same way, and I will keep raising the question until we find out."   11.  Bob Novak Republicans are MEAN! Take for instance, the way they pressured their colleagues to vote for the Medicare Bill. A weary George W. Bush, just returned from Europe, was awakened at 4 a.m. to make personal calls to House members. Republicans voting against the bill were told they were endangering their political futures. Major contributors warned Rep. Jim DeMint they would cut off funding for his Senate race in South Carolina. A Missouri state legislator called Rep. Todd Akin to threaten a primary challenge against him.  12.  John Hanley It's Thanksgiving in Iraq.  Schools and hospitals are opening; there's electricity and a turkey.  Oh, and poultry too. As if all this wasn't enough, we got word not long ago that President Bush made a surprise visit to the troops at Baghad International Airport...For the President of the United States to come here, even for a couple hours, is huge in our minds.  By sharing the dangers and the distance with the people he sent here, he has secured our thanks now and in the future.  During the day's activities, an admittedly corny comparison to the first American Thanksgiving kept popping up in my head.  After all, a small group of Americans are here, in a new and alien environment, working with Iraqi counterparts to create something better.   13.  Rich Lowry Rich likes beer ads. Beer, of course, is one of the great social lubricants of American life, and breweries have contributed more than their share to the enjoyment of TV viewing. For every mindless and tasteless beer ad (yes, "twins," that's you), there is one that is clever and memorable. Budweiser has, in recent years, given us the frogs, "Wass-up?" and "True." Miller Lite's "Taste Great/Less Filling" debate is iconic, as is Foster's slogan "Australian for beer."  14.  Edwin J. Feulner The Medicare bill will cause millions of seniors to start take more drugs, because they're free.  And who will pay for them?  Us taxpayers, that's who!  And be ready for doctors to write more prescriptions than before, since Uncle Sam, not the patient, will now be picking up the tab.  15.  Helle Dale How DARE Tony Blair claim to be our friend, when as soon as our President is gone, he cheats on us with Jacques Chirac?  What a slut! Mr. Blair's strategy is — as hinted above — that he wants to have it all. This week, he was even a cartoon character on the Fox network cartoon show "The Simpsons."   16.  John McCaslin Josh quotes some timeless truths about newspapering from a 1934 book given to him a dead Washington Times correspondent. Some things about newspapers, we read from the book, haven't changed.  [snip] Finally, the author concludes, racial inheritance "probably has little to do with journalistic expertness, and yet most men who have got ahead in American journalism have been of Irish, English or Scottish blood.  There have been a few Germans, and fewer from Scandinavian countries. French blood? Sometimes, but not often. And a good Italian newspaperman is so rare that he belongs in the Smithsonian Institution.  Jewish reporters are impossible to classify; some are cloddish, some brilliant, some level-headed, some itching with messianic afflictions, some profligate, and some close-fisted and scheming.  One thing surely may be said about them: most Jews know enough not to drink too much.  Of all reporters, the Irish, if they have a poetic streak in them and can stay reasonably sober, probably make the best."  Josh is presumably of Scottish ancestry, which means he can write just about as well as the Irish, but without all the boozing.  Good info to keep in mind.         And that concludes our recap of what the great minds of conservatism are saying today about stuff.  I hope you learned as much from it as I did. 4:29:05 AM

Sunny Daze RATING SESAME STREET [Kathryn Jean Lopez] This site's got a point about the increasing softness of SS. That said, I still have a soft spot for Elmo, nonetheless. If we had to assign a SS character to The Corner crowd, Derb would be the Count--or would he be Oscar (? :-)--there is that whole misanthrope/the world is going to hell in a handbacket theme), I think the Jonah/Cosmo/Couch shtick might get Cookie; Grover tends to get into a tizzy easily and tries to narrate and moderate, so there's your K-Lo ....I better stop now. Yes, the Corner is THE spot for the preschool members of the conservative crowd to "express themselves creatively, and learn such cornerstone cognitive concepts as 'same' and 'different.'" I think it's great that they are using their imaginations and pretending to be Sesame Street characters.  To help them in this regard, here are a few bits that they could maybe use for their next playtime project: Count Derb, a geeky-looking middle-aged white man with a foreign accent and an anal-retentive fascination with numbers and gay sex.  Here he counts men: One.  One man.  The voice of one man, crying in the wilderness that everything is crap these days. Two. Two men.  Two men trying to consummate a gay marriage.  Ha ha. Three.  Three men married to each other, which is perfectly acceptable now, thanks to the Massachusetts court ruling. Four.  Four men engaged in an orgy.  Body parts fitting together in ways that God never intended.  Rutting and writhing in intemperate lust on network TV, since Madonna and Britney lowered the threshold of common decency with that MTV kiss.   Etc. Jonah Cookie Monster:  Sings, "N is for National Review, that's good enough for me." Although, I think that the Jonah/Cosmo dynamics are probably best represented by the song that begins: Doggie Cosmo, you're the one You make punditing lots of fun. Doggie Cosmo, I'm awfully fond of you. Doggie Cosmo, it's not true That you write better than I do. Doggie Cosmo, you're my only real friend It's true. And as for K.Lo, well, I found the perfect Grover quote for her to use as a sig: "Hello, everybody! This is your old furry pal, Grover. Yes. Today I am going to talk to you about this word. And this word is, um... it is, uh... it is a word that I do not know." I also think that K.Lo could play both the parrot AND the plumber in the that favorite old skit.  (You know the one: "Whooo is it?" "It's Rich Lowry's Legacy.  It's come to fix the sink." "Whooo is it?" "It's Rich Lowry's Legacy.  It's COME TO FIX THE SINK."  Etc.) Anyway, next time we can talk about who plays Bert to Jonah's Ernie, who is Guy Smiley, and who is Mister Snuffleupagus. 1:53:08 AM