Posted on September 24, 2002

by

Daniel Clark

* The tiny nation of Qatar became the first Middle Eastern country to offer substantial assistance to the United States, by allowing the U.S. to occupy its air base in preparation for the coming war with Iraq. If you look up "Qatar" in the dictionary, you will find four possible pronunciations for it: (ki-tar’),(gi-tar’), (kot’-ter), and (got’-ter). One you won’t find is "Gutter," which is the way many news anchors have pronounced it. The media, of course, have been solidly opposed to another Iraqi war. Could it be that they are deliberately mispronouncing the name of our ally, as a snotty way of showing their disapproval of its actions? If you think that sounds paranoid, and that network and cable news anchors are too professional for such pettiness, then you must have already forgotten about "Alien Gonzalez," and you surely don’t remember the Republicans’ "Contract On America."

* One of the great, gaseous liberal catch phrases of all time is "blaming the victim," which is something you're not supposed to do under any circumstances. But now, the people from the National Education Association, among others on the far-Left, are wringing their hands and wondering what Americans -- the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- did to bring those terrible deeds upon themselves. This is actually not inconsistent, as liberals see it, because when they use the word "victim," they mean a "victim of society," like a murderer, thief, or drug dealer. The victimizer, by their definition, is the American culture, i.e., the true victims of the criminals' crimes. Now, they tell us not to blame the terrorists, but instead to be introspective, and figure out what we did to cause the killers to hate us. So what else is new at the NEA?

* Hillary Clinton criticized President Bush’s tax cuts in an interview on WABC, in which she said, "Frankly, we should not be giving money or throwing money at anything that is not going to pay off." So, to paraphrase, the money you earn is wasted if it is given to you by its rightful owners in Washington. She’s nothing if not consistent.

* When addressing world hunger, the United Nations would have a little more credibility if its delegates didn’t cram their faces with lobster and caviar, as they did at their "World Food Summit" in June, and again at their "Earth Summit" in August. For appearances’ sake, at least, you’d think they could last a week on ordinary cafeteria food, instead of eating better than they do at the Oscars. What’s worse, they are building momentum for a proposed global tax, so they can take food off your table, without depriving themselves of a single, delectable morsel. Mind you, they wouldn’t dream of taxing the people who directly deprive others of food, and other necessities. Rest assured that he teflon pockets of Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe are perfectly safe from the U.N.’s sticky fingers.

* University of South Carolina football coach Lou Holtz was recently invited to join the Augusta National Golf Club, which, of course, has been targeted by the National Council of Women’s Organizations, because it does not have any female members. NCWO president Martha Burk appealed to the University to somehow discipline Holtz. "It is absolutely the wrong kind of symbolism for an individual who represents a public university in a major way to belong to a club that discriminates against women," she said. "I hope along with Lou Holtz, some female members will be invited, and it will remove Holtz’s problem as well as that of the other members who represent public corporations." Does this woman think she’s omnipotent? Lou Holtz doesn’t have a problem. He gleefully accepted the Augusta club’s invitation, and university president Andrew Sorensen says that faculty members can belong to whatever private clubs they want, because … um … they’re private.

* The NCWO counts among its members the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and the National Abortion Federation. Each of these groups, as well as the NCWO as a whole, defends the dismemberment and killing of 1.3 million innocent human beings a year, based on the presumption of a "right to privacy." If Augusta chairman Hootie Johnson weren’t sympathetic to the pro-abortion cause, he’d have pointed this out himself long ago, and torpedoed Burk’s campaign against his private club. The "right to privacy" activists’ harassment of Johnson is just the latest example of why this publication calls the pro-abortion movement the most dishonest political movement in the history of the United States.

* In August, the House of Representatives passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban for the third time. If the Democrat-controlled Senate dares to take it up before the end of the year, we can expect to hear pro-abortion activists complain, as they have both other times, that the diagrams used to depict the procedure are inaccurate because -- all together now -- "These are not perfect Gerber babies." Not perfect? Well, off with their heads, then. The truth is that an overwhelming percentage of babies killed through partial-birth abortion are perfectly healthy, as are their mothers. But just this once, anti-abortion legislators should grant the pro-abortion side its wish, and alter the diagrams to depict a deformed baby being stabbed in the base of the skull with a pair of scissors, and then having its brains sucked out through a catheter. Then they can let America listen to those ghouls defend it.

* Jimmy Carter is convinced that Saddam Hussein poses no threat to the United States. Somebody should remind him that Louis Farrakhan, who knows the exact coordinates of the Mother Wheel, visited Saddam recently and prayed for an Iraqi victory over the U.S. Then, the former president and part-time UFO spotter might change his mind.

* Nelson Mandela has got to be one of the most overrated people on the face of the earth, both intellectually and morally. The former South African president told Newsweek that "the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace," because of President Bush’s plans to invade Iraq. As far as we’re concerned, there hasn’t been any world peace for over a year now, and there should not be any peace in countries that harbor and train terrorists, until they are defeated. Mandela wondered aloud why we’re so concerned that Iraq might obtain weapons of mass destruction when we already know that Israel has them. "Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white?" he asked. How absurd can you get? Throughout the entire Gulf War, do you remember seeing a single black Iraqi? And regardless of what color they are, what kind of twit would believe that’s the reason for our concern? Of course we hold different standards for Israel than for Iraq. Israel was our ally when we were at war with Iraq. Saddam agreed not to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons as a condition of his surrender. He agreed to have U.N. weapons inspectors monitor his country, but then started denying them access to particular sites, and then kicked the inspectors out altogether. He broke a treaty he signed with us, and that justifies our holding him accountable. If Mandela cannot understand that, then it’s a miracle that his country survived his presidency.

* In that same interview, the 84 year-old Mandela called Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld "dinosaurs," and criticized Cheney for voting against releasing him from prison, when the vice president served in Congress in the eighties. Of course, the U.S. Congress had no authority to release Mandela from a South African prison. The substantive part of the bill that Cheney voted against would have formally recognized the African National Congress, and imposed a U.S. embargo against South Africa. Cheney voted no, because the ANC was rightly listed as a terrorist organization at the time, and because American businesses were the ones providing jobs for South African blacks, so an embargo would have economically harmed people already suffering under oppression. The bill’s supporters tacked on a purely symbolic amendment making a statement in support of Mandela’s release, in order to intimidate opponents into going along, but Cheney stood his ground. The charge that Cheney somehow helped keep Mandela imprisoned is a lie, and Mandela is a liar for bringing it up. After being insulted like that, Cheney couldn’t be faulted if he cast another symbolic vote, to imprison Mr. Mandela in a house with his ex-wife Winnie for the rest of his life.

* The National Review is arguably the most reliably conservative print publication in America … on every issue except illegal drugs, where it has staked out a position just slightly to the right of Cheech and Chong. Not coincidentally, that’s also the one matter in regard to which the editors allow their emotions to get the better of them. A prime example of this can be found in their most recent issue’s The Week section, which supports a Canadian proposal to legalize the sale of marijuana to people aged 16 and up, and criticizes U.S. drug czar John Walters’ reaction. It quotes Walters as saying, "We [in the United States] know that marijuana is a harmful drug, particularly for young people," then responds, "True, which must be why the Canadian committee forbade sale to minors." Does the NR really think that 16 year-olds are not minors? The fellas at NAMBLA would be pleased to hear that.

* Another hockey season is about to get underway, and many fans don’t realize or care that last year’s leading scorer, Jarome Iginla, is black. The half-Nigerian superstar was the subject of a few features last year that invoked the name of former Boston Bruin Willie O’Ree, who is believed to have been the first black player ever in the NHL. O’Ree is often called "the Jackie Robinson of hockey." That’s a misnomer, though, because hockey needed no Jackie Robinson, because blacks were never prohibited from playing in the NHL in the first place. There hadn’t previously been any black players because the league had only six teams at the time, the rosters were dominated by Canadians, and Canada’s population is overwhelmingly white. O’Ree didn’t have to overcome segregation like Robinson did; he just had to play better hockey than enough other guys to make an NHL roster. He’s not Jackie Robinson; he’s just a good ex-hockey player, who is black.

* The Robinson - O’Ree distinction is an important one because Americans have so grossly distorted the meaning of "segregation." As a social phenomenon, "segregation" is an active process of separating one group of people from another, not a coincidental statistical anomaly. When people say that public schools are "becoming more segregated," what they mean is that, statistically, a greater percentage of white than black parents can afford to rescue their children from public schools. That’s not segregation. When, on the other hand, universities create "black studies" departments, and black-only dormitories (i.e., "self-affirmative housing"), that’s segregation.

* Remember that it was Democrat Governor Orval Faubus who forcibly resisted the integration of public schools in Little Rock, and it was Republican President Eisenhower who stared him down. If the parties were reversed, you would be reminded of this incessantly.

* By the way, Jackie Robinson was a Republican, and an active supporter of Richard Nixon, and he would not have appreciated Bill Clinton’s attempts to posthumously change his party affiliation.

* 2000 Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is now complaining that the Bush administration is orchestrating its war on terrorism at the bidding of Israel. In order to believe that, he must think that Israel is telling the U.S. to tell Israel not to kill Yasir Arafat. Whatever it is that Reform Party founder Ross Perot has got, it must be contagious.

* A new study by NASA indicates that the world is growing slightly thicker around the equator. After a few of the usual extrapolations from groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, we will have been warned: The Earth is going flat!

* This increased girth of the planet must be the result of overfeeding, which is surely not healthy. It's about time some intrepid lawyer took it upon himself to represent this obese orb of ours, and sue the makers of Miracle-Gro.

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