Sometimes we pick up where we left off. Last week Richard
Cohen ran away with top dog honors, for reducing the Middle
East mess to a question of the “Me, Myself and I and the My
Unsurpassed Tolerance for Palestine.” But it’s true what they say:
By asserting our right to self-defense, we radicalized him further.
So this week Richard returned, holding many knives with his teeth.
One day after the latest suicide bombing called into question
Cohen’s benign reading of Palestinian politics — and if nothing
else sabotaged the peace process Cohen is ready to sacrifice many
lives outside his own to pursue — he announced that the real loser
in its wake is “Ariel Sharon’s credibility.” One moment Sharon is
sitting quietly in the Oval Office chatting with our president; the
next a sucker-puncher informs him that the bombing specifically
designed to sabotage his White House meeting is all his fault.
Will the Richard Cohens and Noam Chomskys of the peace process
posse make up their minds? If, instead of heeding their call and
heading to Washington to give peace a chance, Sharon had stayed
home to supervise his country’s defenses, there probably would have
been one fewer suicide bombing. Now Cohen and Co. have radicalized
Sharon further. Not smart at all. The world isn’t ready for another
round of Israeli success.
For a while it appeared Michael Kinsley was ready to join the
Cohen Brigade. You could almost feel him chomskying at the bit. But
never mind. False alarm. He’s not really criticizing “the annoying”
Sharon for treating Palestinians like terrorists. He’s criticizing
G.W. Bush for treating terrorists like terrorists (when the
president chooses to do so). Glad that’s settled.
Our country’s president continues to roller-coaster. One month
his biggest fan, Andrew Sullivan, confesses, “I should have trusted
the president more.” The next he calls him “spineless,” a sure
recipe for a politics of paralysis. What did Bush do this time?
Merely sign off on the most expensive farm subsidy bill since the
invention of corporate welfare farming in Mesopotamia. Is it really
that bad? Consider the times we live in. We’re at war. Farmers have
silos. You really think we’re going to fill them at a time like
this with corn? On the other hand, there is legitimate worry that
the missiles planted in those silos will be ethanol-powered. War
profiteering is one tradition we can do without.
Here comes the judge — not. On Thursday Democrats celebrated
the one-year anniversary of their campaign to reduce the United
States government to two branches. Bush nominees to the federal
bench remain in lockup, and Warden Leahy swears he ‘d let them out
if only he could find the key. As always with Pat, what we have
here is a failure to communicate. He remains personally insulted —
at least that’s what Ralph Neas and People for the American Way and
Ralph Neas instructed him to claim — that previously confirmed
Republican appointees continue to act outside the modern
mainstream. Why, just the other day Judge Sentelle, the purported
mastermind of the Kenneth Starr selection as Clinton inquisitor,
overruled a commie-symp judge to order the seating of a Bush
appointee on the indispensable U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Now
its director-for-life and the afterlife, Mary Frances Berry, is
seething in a way no one has ever even seen Ariel Sharon seethe.
All because Republicans once appointed judges. That mistake won’t
happen again.
The federal judiciary’s last hurrah shall remain Title IX, whose
XXXth anniversary this week reminded the country that women play a
meaner game of softball and field hockey that any college jocks we
know. Of course it also means that most colleges are shutting down
every men’s sport this side of football, basketball, and pledge
week. But let’s look at the bright side. If Trent Lott were in
college today, he’d never be allowed to serve his campus as a
cheerleader, unless he gave priority to women’s lacrosse.
Europe remains the continent of our dreams, a land of political
stability, calm, deep culture, and compassion. Tony Blair sure
seemed outraged by the assassination of a leading Dutch politician.
Now he insists there can be no war against Iraq without the U.N.’s
permission, the same body that voted overwhelmingly to condemn
Israel two minutes after a suicide bomber set himself off in Tel
Aviv. Poor France. Is it fair that everyone wants to boycott only
it? Well, some countries display charm, others don’t. It’s easy to
pick on the French, whose egos are a fragile as the shells of the
snails they eat. But they’re so good at being French. Even in
America, the land which, according to Charles de Gaulle, passed
from barbarism to decadence without acquiring even a patina of
civilization, a Frenchman remains true to himself. Thus in Los
Angeles, consul-general for France Jean-Luc Sibiude called the
boycott of his country “totally unjustified,” telling the
Washington Post, “I’m sick and tired of these alleged
accusations that France is a country of anti-Semitism.” And without
tossing the bottle of water in his hands into the trash, he added,
“I’m especially sick and tired with the analogy to the Vichy
situation.” Such defiance! Reminds you of his country back in
1940.
M. Sibiude’s résistance has been for naught. Enemy
Central always gets its homme. We may not be the
Académie Française, but we’re not the Legion of Honor
either. We’re just down home Enemy Central, doing our lonely little
job of landing a choice poisson for proud display as EOW
catch of the week.
Now the worry is that everyone will boycott the awards
ceremony.
