The American Spectator

MAKING HEADLINES
Re: Philip Klein’s Hillary Slaps Iowa Voter:

Bad headline. Very bad headline. I read it as a literal slap.
— Yaakov “Jim” Watkins

The headline of Philip Klein’s recent article, “Hillary Slaps Iowa Voter,” accomplished the purpose for which it must surely have been intended — it provoked me to click the link to see what had happened at Senator Clinton’s campaign event. But reading the article, I discovered something interesting: Hillary did NOT slap an Iowa voter. She argued with him. You could even say that she “lost her cool” with him. She did not slap anybody. I don’t think that even putting the word slap in quotation marks would have provided a fair representation of what actually happened.

Occasionally, people who don’t already hate Hillary Clinton read the Spectator. If the content they discovered in it seemed fair, or at least subtle, the magazine might persuade some outside its traditional following to genuinely consider the views expressed within. That’s not going to happen when a piece is written and headlined in such a dishonest way.
— Willis Sparks

Philip Klein’s article was a disgrace, beginning with the headline and the first sentence. Mr. Klein appears to be a Hillary hater without an ounce of objectivity. I guess that comes from a fear that she is going to crush her Republican rivals.

Keep up the Hillary bashing from the right, it only helps to solidify her lead among Democrats and Independents. And with their party identification dropping like a rock, right wing Republicans and American Spectator writers just don’t matter.
— Joe Scaccia
Pasadena, California
P.S. If it wasn’t for Drudge, you guys would never be heard from.

As an Iowa voter, and lifetime Iowan, I was very offended by Hillary Clinton’s comments and behavior. I also was raised in the same area of Iowa where the questioner asked a completely appropriate question. I don’t blame him for responding negatively to Hillary’s responses.

I believe it clearly shows how Hillary Clinton thinks: she is the smartest person to serve as President and she arrogantly believes that the voters are only there to rubber stamp her aspirations to the Presidency. You can fool some of the voters some of the time, you can fool all of the voters some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the voters all of the time.
— Alfredo V. Alvarez

I find it hysterical that you think that an audience in Iowa would applaud Senator Clinton (and they DID applaud, by every account including your own) for “screaming” at a young, innocent questioner whom Hillary Clinton “bitch-slapped” right in front of them.

This is the problem with Republicans. The audience APPLAUDS Clinton and the GOP talking point is, “Clinton in trouble!!!!” Yet she keeps beating every Republican candidate in head-to-head polling.

I smell another Thumpin’.
— “freespeak”

It is possible to fact check HRC’s statement that she had indeed been asked that same question at three other locations?
— Mike Reardon
Woodlands, Texas

“It was an insult…. It was basically calling me stupid.”

It seems Mr. Rolph finally understands the entire premise on which radical socialism is based. YOU ARE TOO STUPID TO MAKE ANY DECISIONS FOR YOURSELF.

Sorry it took you so long to get it, Mr. Rolph.
— Jay W. Molyneaux

This headline demonstrates the Spectator lacks the one thing that any journalistic endeavor needs the most…ethics.

Do it right or don’t do it at all.
— Bruce Findlay
Ft. Worth, Texas

Well, don’t worry — the so-called mainstream media will drop this news item down the memory hole, too. If anyone thought the media took sides in 2004, just wait until the 2008 election.
— John Lockwood

COLD FUSION
Re: Ben Stein’s Shut Up:

The “feverish” efforts to get the bomb were all exerted by the United States, thank God. See Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, for the whole story.
— Bill Ducker
Austin, Texas

You’ve made quite a career of it complaining so I hope this is just a temporary respite. Keep complaining!
— Marc Epstein

“Shut Up” was wonderful.
— Pat Wood

SCHIPS ON THEIR SHOULDER
Re: Andrew Cline’s Protecting the Most Vulnerable:

It would probably help if Republicans would quit trying to put a smiley face on Socialism. The SCHIP is already a socialist program or extension of similar programs already weighting down everyone who pays income tax. All the Democrats want to do is expand it to more Americans who will be beholden to them as a result. We lost the principled argument a long time ago and now we are left complaining that the expansion of this or that Karl Marx inspired program will be too costly. From each according to his means to each according to his needs. We are going to keep right on losing the argument and eventually the foundation of the Nation if we keep trying to make Socialism affordable. Somebody has to pay for all that is “free.” Starting in about 5 years the real weight of socialism is going to start weighting down fewer and fewer tax payers vs. those depending on it. The more we give away the more will come with their hands out…by the tens of millions and counting.
— Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

So the socialists think this is funny, do they? They whine they are denied 35 billion in tobacco tax revenue for SCHIP, sure to stop smoking and dry up the source. Then who pays? Everyone. Let this man — the Heritage Foundation’s Norman B. Ture — speak the facts to them in public and let us all see them laugh:

“The federal government’s appetite for tax revenues appears to know no bounds. Congress has a long list of tax hikes under consideration to pay for new spending. Yet the American taxpayer is already subject to a historically high and rapidly rising level of federal taxes, even when accounting for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. While the federal tax share is now just above its 40-year average, the taxes paid per individual hits a new record almost every year, even after adjusting for the effects of inflation. Rather than raising taxes, Congress should be looking to cut taxes. A first benchmark of their progress would be to freeze the taxpayer burden at the 2007 level.”
— Russel Ready

BOLD FACED
Re: The Prowler’s Rush Week:

Translations in bold:

“Limbaugh isn’t the only one who needs to be” punished for “what he says on the radio,” says a House leadership source. “We don’t have as big a megaphone as these guys, but this all political, and we’ll” trample the Constitution “all we can to gain the advantage. If we can” shut him up, “it will help our folks out there on the campaign trail.”
— Reid Bogie
Waterbury, CT

WAKEUP CALL
Re: Jennifer Rubin’s It’s That Bad:

A Hillary Clinton presidency will change America as we know it. But it may be the only thing that will renew and wake up the conservative cause. The Republican establishment seems loathe to back a true conservative for 2008. A 2008 disaster for the Republicans may kill the wobbly Republican establishment-style of leadership that has been increasingly prominent since Bill Clinton faced down Newt Gringrich over the 1995 Federal budget standoff and after Clinton won the 1996 election. Four years of bad governing from her and Democrats and an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who will vote mostly for Democrats will compel a large grass roots movement within conservatism by 2012. It may be large enough to overcome all the mess that will result from a Hillary Clinton presidency. I believe that by 2012 the conservative movement, by necessity, will be stronger than the one that emerged after Reagan and Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America won the Congress for Republicans. Remember the 1994 Republican Congress was weakened in just 4 short months after it gave in to Clinton on the budget. By 2012, providing conservatives can regain the White House and come close to parity in the congress we will instinctively know that we will not be able to afford such quick and easy defeats.
— Steve Cade
Astoria, Oregon

WEANED FROM LIBERALISM
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s The Goldwater-Reagan Victory:

Several years ago, fresh faced and just out of college full of liberal weanings, I mean leanings, I attended a business seminar and the high energy speaker said something so simple and so profound I have never forgotten it; in fact it remains a staple in my business and personal life. To wit: “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” I find it absolutely befuddling that otherwise intelligent people cannot get this simple axiom through there soft hearted heads, instead relying on emotion, parroting like infants the big lies of the current leftist propagandists. One only has to look at the hyperbole over the veto to expand the SCHIP program coming from the pie holes of Hillary, Teddy, Nancy, Harry, et al. Goebbels would have been proud! As for Rush, he will be in the famous “Attila the Hun” chair educating those who chose to listen and skewering the fools on the left as long as he chooses.

Sic semper tyrannis!
— Stuart Reed
Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan

BASTARDY AND IMMIGRATION
Re: Reid Collins’s Bastard:

Mr. Reid Collins’s trenchant criticism of societal indifference, nay, acceptance, of the growing numbers of “bastards” being born in this country would be described by modernists as “quaint”; nonetheless, he has set out a disturbing mise en scene regarding another aspect of this nation’s serious moral collapse. The pathology he alludes to, however, is far more likely within the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder, where multiple children from multiple parents are much more common, than with the Bradys and Berrys of this world, which is not to excuse their contributions to the problem. If, however, the optimists among you believe that such a phenomenon, either among the rich or poor is a passing affair, allow me to intone the words of the late entertainer, Al Jolson: You ain’t seen nothing yet!

In May of this year, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) issued a “Backgrounder” written by its Director of Research, Steven A. Camarota. Entitled “Illegitimate Nation,” Camarota’s conclusions, based on data from 1980-2003, using private and public sources, should deeply worry anyone who cares about the moral state of this country. Included in those findings, which tracked the meteoric rise of a “bastard” nation, was that teenagers .”..have the highest illegitimacy levels…” And, if we didn’t already know it, “Research shows that children of unmarried parents are much more likely to live in poverty, have low academic achievement, and have higher high school dropout rates than those born to married parents.” But there are other elements of the CIS study which also cannot be discarded. Camarota concluded:

The country is currently debating whether to legalize illegal aliens or alternatively, to enforce the law and cause them to go home. Since 60% of illegals lack a high school diploma and 80% are Hispanic, legalization could contribute to the illegitimacy problem by allowing illegals to remain in the U.S. (N.B.: California, with the greatest number of illegal aliens, led the U.S. in illegitimate births in 2003: 42.6%.)

Thus, the idea that immigration will reinvigorate traditional family values is unrealistic.

It would be inane to believe that immigrants are the only factor in the moral decline of this country, a position that Camarota assiduously avoids. The open and pervasive use of inappropriate language and sexual situations in movies, the growing sexual innuendo of programs on television (forget cable), and the rise of “shock jocks” on radio all have played their part. But to add to that witches brew a situation that is, at least, subject to our correction, and do nothing about it is just plain dumb. Unless, of course, we plan to amuse ourselves on the path to national suicide.

Pax Tecum,
— Vincent Chiarello
American Council for Immigration Reform

Pretty big difference between Brady & Berry. Berry pre-meditatively decided to have the children out of wedlock. It’s not as though Brady is running away from the situation, but it’s common knowledge that Brady was breaking up with his girlfriend when she “somehow” got pregnant.
— Geof Narlee
Walpole, (of course) Massachusetts

Kudos to Reid Collins for his excellent article regarding a subject which is rarely brought into the sunshine. It is despicable that we in this country are applauding the idea and fact of bringing children into this world absent of a family unit. Thank you, Mr. Collins, for expressing my heartfelt feelings about this subject.
— Jane Straley
Berlin, Maryland

FIFTH COLUMNISTS
Re: William Tucker’s The Real Lesson of Vietnam:

You are forgetting about the power of propaganda to form public opinion and how crucial this was to the North Vietnamese victory.

For ideological reasons the American press concentrated on reporting as much bad news as possible (e.g., Hamburger Hill), and even reporting good news (e.g., the total failure of the Tet Offensive) as American failures.

You can argue that “objective” reporting requires that all the news be reported; but this it total rubbish. For whatever reason, the press did not report all the screw-ups during WWII which cost thousands of American lives. Even the successful Normandy invasion was one botched effort after another. Let’s not even mention Anzio, Operation Market Garden and the myriad death-beaches for US Marines on Pacific islands that perhaps never should have been invaded in the first place.

Yet, the press did not report on the hundreds of instances of American military negligence and incompetence during WWII.

Why?

Sure, much of the bad news was censored, but in those days the press really wanted the US to win that war. The press, in general, felt that the US was on the “good” side, fighting against the bad guys. (Of course, at the time the worst mass murderer in the history of the world, Joe Stalin and his Bolshevik hoards were on the “good” side too; so much for the notion of the last “good” war).

Today, the media elites and their brethren in academia and the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party truly dislike this country and all it stands for. Their comments to the contrary, they really do want the US to lose in Iraq as they wanted the US to lose in Vietnam. In fact, the media during Vietnam and today are nothing more than the propaganda arm of the extreme left; they are American equivalents of Goebbels’ Die Sturmer or the Bolshevik Pravda and Izvestia.

The media during Vietnam, by their constant reporting of negative news — real or otherwise — helped form public opinion in this country that the war was a lost cause and, more sinister, the communist North was on the “correct” and “right” side, while the USA was on the wrong side. It was the media that encouraged and actively aroused the populace to protest the war. The radical left (SDS, etc.) knew that any protest they organized — regardless of how small or insignificant — would be prominently reported in the papers and on TV.

The same situation exists today in regards to Iraq.

Like all liberal elites, the media has an affinity for any tyrant that is anti-American and they will literally support, via white-washing or just plain ignoring, these tyrants. So, they know that being nice to Castro, Chavez and that other Castro wannabe, Ortega, will go un-noticed, and praised by their brethren in the American radical left. (Makes no difference how often these leftist Latin caudillos visit and hug their new found pal, Ahmadinejad of Iran. Also, remember Ortega hugging Kim Il-sung, the pere about 15 years ago). The media, as of yet, knows they cannot get away with being nice to Kim Jong-il, the fils, so they more or less ignore the mass exterminations — via starvation — that occur there.

The discovery of Saddam’s killing fields had absolutely zero impact on the media views of the Iraq war. For every minute of news coverage of these killing fields (frankly, I recall no coverage) they provided 1 hour of coverage of Abu Ghraib.

It is simply impossible to reconcile the media protestations when confronted about their patriotism with their assertions that they are in fact pro-USA. Their actions (i.e., reporting ) — far more loudly than their words — define what they truly believe; that the US is now the Nazi Germany of the world and must be defeated. And they, the elite media, have by far the most effective tool for encouraging this view; the power of propaganda with all its attendant distortions and lies.

The real lesson here is that the US should never again wage an un-declared war AND, as FDR, Woodrow Wilson and Lincoln realized, allow an unfettered press. Since about 1965 the American mass media, for the first time in the history of this republic, has become viciously anti-American. No republic can survive a home-grown rot of this magnitude.

You can be rest assured that our left wing media will be at the forefront in support of any insurrection of Mexican-American radicals when that occurs, and it will. The propaganda arm of those radicals already is in place, ready to do their bidding.

Goebbels, his boss Hitler, and Hitler’s first ideological cousin, Stalin must be smiling in their graves. Santa Ana will soon be smiling too.
— AC
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

HOPPING MAD ABOUT FRED
Re: Pedro Solito’s letter (under “Light His Fire”) Reader Mail’s Smiley Faces:

Too bad someone did not use some of that turpentine in the right spot on Mr. Solito. Is it too late to charge animal abuse?
— Elaine Kyle