STEADY PROGRESS
Re: Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder’s American
Jews and Israel:
I for one, gentlemen, and my nephew for another, and perhaps my
son, too — are avid Jewish supporters of the Republican Party —
and I am optimistic that we are among a growing group of converts
from Democratic Party idiocy.
— Robert Kirsh
FREELY AVAILABLE
Re: Jeremy Lott’s The
Real Paper of Record:
Outstanding piece on USA Today. One addition about
distribution: You mentioned that readers in your small home town
can buy USAT at various outlets. My parents, who live in
rural western Pennsylvania, actually have it delivered. This
supplements our local daily, which is ambitious but unable to focus
any resources further afield than the county level.
I might add that although me an’ the kin are simple yokels, the
folks would probably prefer the WSJ or NYT.
Despite being ensconced in Red State wonderland, they know all
about the foibles of the various national offerings. Unfortunately
for them, any of the others would be prohibitively expensive — and
probably arrive days late. Kudos to USAT for providing a
product that people can actually track down — even if the
coast-bound elites look down their noses at people who would dare
form their world-view over a double-meat sausage McMuffin with egg,
two hash browns and extra-hot coffee minus the -ccino/-latte
conceit. I’ll point your article out to them — they will be glad
to hear that the rumors about USAT’s inferiority are
mostly just silly exaggerations. They were beginning to suspect as
much anyway.
— Sam MacDonald
USA Today is given free at nearly every major hotel chain
in the country. I would not buy the paper as I still think it leans
to the left, however when someone gives me a copy I tend to page
through it. I wonder how this free distribution affects the
legitimate readership numbers.
— Skip Davidhizar
SOCCER TO ME
Re: Jerry Carter’s Meet
Philip Anschutz:
I’m a conservative and I’m not suspicious of soccer. It just
bores my
backside off. I don’t find the game un-American. I just find it
narcoleptic.
Soccer is the metric system of sports. It’s a game for people
who visited Europe once and should have stayed there. I guess the
game is all right for women, children, and the clergy. But I can’t
imagine why grown men bother with it.
An otherwise sound friend of mine who played soccer in college
is fond of telling me that more people in the world play soccer
than any other sport. Perhaps so. But I’m just as fond of pointing
out to him that they play it so they don’t have to watch it.
OK, I’m being uncharitable. The games we love are the games we
learned when we were children. I love baseball (the real
beautiful game) because my dad had a baseball glove on my hand
before I could stand up. That’s why for me baseball is still the
most fun you can have with your pants on. So, if there are grownups
who get actual pleasure from watching 10 men (or is it 12?) with
unpronounceable names dash about in their underwear for hours
kicking a checkered ball to determine who wins 1-0 (while their low
forehead fans maim each other in the stands), well, there’s just no
accounting for taste. Heck, I understand you can buy sushi in some
major league ball parks (most of them on the planet California).
Life is nothing if not mysterious.
— Larry Thornberry
Tampa, FL
P.S. Speaking of soccer moms — let us all pray that they never
stop worrying about their weight long enough to realize what a
complete lock they have on the political process in America.
SILENT TREATMENT
Re: George Neumayr’s Momentum
Stopper:
Mr. Neumayr’s article is pretty much on target, except for one
omission: the state’s press outside of the Los Angeles
Times. I’m a resident of California’s middle portion and
therefore have the McClatchy family’s (NYT Sulzberger
wannabes’) Sacramento Bee as my primary print media news
source for state and local happenings.
In this organ of the Democratic Party William Simon seems to not
exist, except as a peripheral to Davis. Just today, an article,
based on a Simon accusation of incompetence and malfeasance on the
part of the governor and his cronies, had one paragraph, out of
dozens, with Simon’s name in it. All other paragraphs were spins by
Davis appointees and consultants.
To read this paper, the only major daily for the 4th largest
metro area in the state (after L.A./Orange County, S.F. Bay Area
and San Diego), one would think Davis were running against the
Invisible Man who had also become mute.
I’m certain the politically egregious L.A. Times and
S.F. Chronicle are pretty much in step with this. As for
the local TV news, Simon is an even greater nonentity. What a
wonderful preview of the benefits of the Feds’ CFR.
— Mike Daley
Jackson, CA
RIGHT ON
Re: Jed Babbin’s Why
I Hate Hollywood:
Mr. Babbin has Noam Chomsky pegged. He could also have noted
that Chomsky’s prose is unreadable.
— Lee H. Arten
GUNS ALOFT
Re: Reid Collins’ Flying
Blind:
“Flying Blind” by Reid Collins almost captures the absolute
idiocy of DOT’s decision to prohibit airline pilots from arming
themselves while on the job. Is it only the pilots who realize that
our flights are not much safer today than they were before
9/11?
In place of armed pilots, only a knucklehead would suggest
aerial acrobatics to keep determined killers off their feet. Did no
one at the hearing remember the crash of Flight 587 and the NTSB’s
warnings about abrupt maneuvers causing a plane’s tail to fall
off?
Is it not likely that we’ve had no 9/11 takeovers of late
because hijackers figure that pilots might be armed or that there
may be an air marshal aboard? Today we know that the chance of the
former is 0% and the latter 1%.
Today three or four or five guys could commandeer an aircraft by
grabbing and garroting a flight attendant shortly after takeoff.
They could use the attendant’s stun gun and another passenger in a
fishing-line or cable-tie noose to keep other passengers and crew
members at bay away while they work the door with a composite
crowbar. They could pile up enough bodies to prevent passengers
from performing any heroics.
Meanwhile, the undistracted (because they are unarmed) pilots
can watch the closed-circuit video of the murders in the back and
barbarians at the gates. Should the pilots manage to land the plane
safely before the bad guys break in, what happens? The bad guys are
really screwed! They’ll just keep on butchering until the cavalry
arrives. Yes, and who will ride in to save the day on short notice
at whatever podunk airfield the aircraft manages to put down at?
The sheriff and his deputies? Will the airfield even have a set of
passenger stairs?
Hey, should they survive, these pilots will never want to climb
into the cockpit again.
Why are McCain, Hollings, Ridge, and Mineta so overwrought about
guns in the hands of pilots who’ve undergone sky-marshal training?
Their failure to think through this policy will cause needless
deaths.
— Mike Cakor
Columbia, SC
Let’s see if I understand airline safety according to G. W. Bush.
It’s all right for an F-15 to blow a hijacked airliner and everyone
on it to heaven or hell. But it’s too dangerous for the airliner’s
pilots to carry guns in an attempt the thwart the hijackers. That
about it?
Who the hell is setting the rules of engagement around here -
the Queen of Hearts?
— Larry Thornberry
Tampa, FL
NATIVITY SCENE
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s PLO
Revelry in Bethlehem:
Re: your commentary about Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity
seizure, it would have been interesting to ask, “What if the church
had been a mosque occupied by armed Israelis?”
I’d “bet the family jewels” that had that happened the howling
voices of condemnation would have been mute if not missing. Much
like it is in its deafening silence in reacting to the Arab
desecration of the church proper and that extends to the White
House’s failure to forcefully condemn that disgusting action.
— Ken Wyman
Huntsville, AL
WORKED AS BEST IT COULD
Re: Wlady Pleszczynski Lighting
Up the President:
I’d like to say thank you for your article, “Lighting Up the
President,” which motivated me to ask: Is there really any basis
for the allegations being made that 9/11 was the result of an
intelligence failure?
Over the last week and half the news media, members of Congress
(both liberal and some conservatives), and media pundits have
engaged in this steady mantra of “the intelligence failure of
September 11, 2001.” I would argue that if there was any failure in
the nation’s intelligence apparatus, it came in the form that the
nation’s intelligence apparatus worked — to the degree
that statute, Congress, and Presidential Directive have allowed it
to work. It should be clear to us all that despite the
gutting, the political correctness imposed, and cuts in its budget,
the nation’s intelligence apparatus worked in spite of its being
set up to fail. In an interview on C-Span’s Book TV aired in
February 2002, Tom Clancy expressed his views on this very point.
Clancy observed that our post-September 11 level of expectation
regarding the nation’s intelligence apparatus was all out of
proportion to the resources and actions allotted to it by Congress
and the President. In other words, you get what you pay for. If the
President and the Congress won’t let the intelligence apparatus
infiltrate the bad guys, spy on them, or remove them from the gene
pool with extreme prejudice, but instead are more concerned with
being politically correct in all its forms … then it probably
would be better not to have an intelligence operation at all than
to have one that appears to be ineffective and useless.
David Horowitz, in his article “How The Left Undermined
America’s Security,” presents the sad and tragic history of how
liberals put this nation on the road culminating in the tragedy of
September 11th. Horowitz’s brilliantly documents how the liberals
in Congress, academia and the media have waged a relentless war on
the nation’s intelligence, since the time of Senator Frank Church’s
committee investigation into the activities of the CIA until this
very day.
One more observation needs to be made: the very fact that the
CIA had operators in Afghanistan shortly before and during the time
of our military operations against the Taliban, and they were from
all appearances successful in their operations. For an intelligence
apparatus that allegedly melted down, it performed as it should
despite attempts to make it ineffectual….
— Sam Dupree
BASH OF THE DAY
Re: The Prowler Pre-Timor
Tremors:
“The former president, though, was well behaved. (Clinton)
played golf during a layover in Hawaii …” It depends upon what
the meaning of layover is.
— Kitty Myers
Painted Post, NY
RATE MAIL
Re: Reader Mail’s Daze
of the Democrats:
You know you folks at the Prowler “have arrived” when
the Know-Nothing Bolshy Site Pests start sending you their
diatribes. And congrats for having the balls to publish their
tripe! Onward and Upward!!!
— Gene Smith
Contoocook, NH
Re: “unsigned“‘s remarks about J.C. the carpenter: I’ve always
suspected Jimmy Carter chafes at being only the world’s
secondmost famous carpenter…
— Kevin M. McGehee
Coweta County, GA
NO MORE BLUES
Nice to see you guys are “back.” I was very disappointed in the
demise of the TAS online site, and only heard about
The American Prowler, and its relationship to
TAS, recently on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program.
— Jim Phillips
Folsom, CA
