Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

I’ve always believed that William Bennett, like Trent Lott, is not the brightest bulb in the conservative lamp, so it doesn’t surprise me that he said something stupid that will give the left even more impetus to smear all conservatives as racist. Haven’t prominent members of the right learned by now that, whether it’s fair or not, you have to be careful about the way you word things lest you arouse the attention of the PC Police? Gawd…

UPDATE: Bill Bennett clarifies his remarks. The White House condemns the initial broadcast. And Rush Limbaugh and Andrew McCarthy dismiss the controversy as just so much PC Police brutality (I don’t deny that the PC Police are using excessive force in response to Bennett’s remarks, but that doesn’t excuse Bennett’s stupidity).

Was Tuesday’s Boston City Council preliminary election a setback for race relations in this city? Maybe not at first glance–Latino progressive Felix Arroyo, an incumbent, finished second in the overall tally, and Asian-American progressive Sam Yoon shocked many observers with a surprisingly strong fifth-place finish. However, the failures of two other candidates who also appealed to progressive voters suggest a curious trend that may not bode well for future ethnic harmony in Beantown.

Matt O’Malley and Patricia White, who both campaigned hard to appeal to liberals of all colors, both fared rather poorly relative to the hype they received in the local media beforehand. Granted, both performed better than Edward Flynn, the pretender/contender who tried to coast on his daddy’s name, but still, both should have had stronger nights.

Why did they perform so poorly? Perhaps O’Malley’s affiliation with scandal-scarred Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea J. Cabral hurt him. Perhaps White, like Flynn, was perceived to be coasting on her father’s coattails. Or perhaps different forces were at work. Could it be that O’Malley and White, despite their solidly liberal credentials, were the victims of political reverse discrimination?

Arroyo is already seen as a important symbol of diversity on the predominately white City Council. And much has been made of Yoon’s "trailblazing" status as the first serious Asian-American contender for a City Council seat; in an August profile of Yoon, the Boston Phoenix noted that "…he could be an attractive choice for white liberals frustrated by the continued white domination of Boston politics…"

Did progressive voters thus embrace Yoon and Arroyo for their ethnicity–and shun O’Malley and White for theirs?

For all the talk of the "new Boston" and the city’s majority-minority status, there has been much grumbling about the fact that the Council isn’t as "diverse" as the city it represents. And last year, the Sheriff’s race between Cabral and Councilor Stephen J. Murphy carried the subtle undercurrent of "new [i.e., diverse] Boston" vs. the "old [i.e., Irish-Catholic] guard", an undercurrent that became blatant when Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan declared that Murphy should not win because Boston already had more than enough Irish-Catholic elected officials.

Eagan was vociferously denounced for the article, but very few of the critics seriously analyzed how many people shared Eagan’s views–how many people actually bought into the notion that there needs to be some sort of "cap" on the number of Irish-Catholic politicians elected in Boston. Could the philosophy that Eagan espoused have manifested itself in the poor showings of Irish-Catholic candidates O’Malley and White? White did acknowledge that one of the reasons she lost in her 2003 bid for a City Council seat was that "…there was an assumption, because I was Irish-Catholic and the daughter of an older politician from a different generation, that I was somehow a conservative Irish-Catholic politician." And despite O’Malley’s extensive efforts to appeal to communities of color, progressive voters who felt that "diversity" was of paramount concern would obviously not support O’Malley as enthusiastically as they would Yoon or Arroyo. Viewed from this perspective, it can be argued that O’Malley and White were, in essence, "racially profiled" by progressive voters.

If the poor performances of O’Malley and White were really due to liberal voters sharing Eagan’s view that there is an "overabundance" of white Irish-Catholic politicians, then this represents another example of the far left’s embrace of institutionalized race-consciousness. The belief that candidates should be elected principally for purposes of "racial diversity" or "ethnic balance", regardless of their merits (or lack thereof) as candidates, is depressing proof that progressives no longer give a whit about the concept of colorblindness. Yes, there is a long "tradition" in America of people voting for a candidate just because the candidate belongs to a given ethnic group. However, shouldn’t we try to put an end to such a strange "tradition", instead of continuing it for purposes of political correctness? If ethnicity-driven voting was bad in the Louise Day Hicks era, it’s also bad in the Dianne Wilkerson era.

If it is true that O’Malley and White were rejected by progressives simply because they were "persons of pallor" (to use David Brudnoy’s old tongue-in-cheek term), then that suggests an unhealthy racial fixation on the part of the far left. O’Malley and White didn’t choose to be Irish any more than Yoon and Arroyo chose their respective ethnicities. All four candidates should be evaluated based solely on their qualifications and abilities. If any voter used color as a criterion to grant or deny support to any of these candidates, then that voter should be shrouded in shame.   

UPDATE: More from the Globe.

Order in the court.

Order in the court.

This story tells you all you need to know about the tragedy of the American welfare state…

What to say? What to say? I never liked the dude anyway!

More problems for beleaguered Mass. State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson…

UPDATE: More from the Herald and Globe.

The Washington Post on Mitt Romney.

The Boston Herald reports on the latest unfortunate developments involving a 10-year-old girl, living in a South Boston housing project, who witnessed a stabbing and wrote a letter to Boston Mayor Tom Menino urging him to do something about the violence surrounding the area.

The young girl’s crusade to clean up the project has been championed by, among others, WRKO-AM talk host Scott Allen Miller, who has had the girl’s mother on his show several times since the original story broke, and who has characterized the crime wave in Southie as evidence of Menino’s inattention to real problems in the city. On this morning’s show, Miller reacted angrily when informed by the girl’s mother that Menino, "running" for a guaranteed re-election, hasn’t even bothered to respond to the girl’s letter.

Miller is right to be upset that Boston has a clueless, classless mayor who can find time to participate in bizarre "talent shows" but cannot spend five minutes writing the girl back. However, it’s a stretch to suggest that Menino should be held accountable for the lawlessness in the project. Menino is responsible for a lot of things, but the problem of violence in Southie is entirely the fault of a) those who commit the violence and b) those who refuse to help the cops clean it up.

Yes, 50 residents of the project confronted city officials on September 22, demanding more aggressive policing from the cops. However, as the officials pointed out, in order to have more aggressive policing, the cops must have extensive cooperation from non-criminal residents.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening in this city for a while. The Boston Phoenix has extensively reported on the problems the Boston Police Department has been having in terms of solving crime, problems stemming from the fact that residents of the city’s various neighborhoods are so paranoid about "police misconduct" that they either a) won’t help the cops solve crimes or b) reflexively acquit suspects arrested by the cops. It seems self-evident, does it not, that South Boston is now one of the “various neighborhoods” in question?

Instead of addressing this point, Miller alleged that if the criminality were occurring in Menino’s Hyde Park neighborhood, more would be done to stop it. Wait a minute–what’s the difference between that argument and the paranoid contention that President Bush would have aided the residents of New Orleans much faster if they had been predominately white instead of predominately black?

Menino is to blame for much of the decline in the city’s quality of life, but he cannot be held responsible for every single thing that goes wrong in the city, just as Bush cannot be held responsible for every single thing that goes wrong in the country. If most residents of the project are apparently reluctant to aid Boston Police in rooting out the criminal element, than how is that Menino’s fault? It pains me to no end to have to defend Menino; it makes me feel like a lawyer who can’t stand his client, but must represent him anyway. However, when the guy’s not guilty of something, he should be acquitted. In this case, it seems pretty obvious that residents of the project haven’t done much, prior to this young girl’s activism, to aid the cops in rooting out the bad guys, and that this is another case of evil prospering because good men do nothing. The prior indifference of most of the project’s residents is to blame for the crime wave, not Menino. It is right to find fault with the mayor for not replying to the girl’s letter. It is wrong to find fault with him for a problem caused by too few residents willing to stand up to crime before this girl did.

UPDATE: More from the Herald.

It was no surprise that Jodie Foster’s Flightplan opened at #1, but it was a real surprise that Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, which I expected to bomb completely, opened at #2…

Traditionalists and people of faith who feel that elites are forcing them to accept homosexuality are fighting back. Unfortunately, it appears their preferred methods of retaliation are more erroneous than effective.

Last Thursday, a private Christian high school in Ontario, California, expelled a student after discovering that her mother has a same-sex partner. The school’s headmaster informed the "two mommies" of fourteen-year-old Shay Clark that, according to school guidelines, pupils cannot attend the school if their parents behave in ways "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian lifestyle [including] cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship." Earlier this week, the Vatican announced plans to issue a new edict barring all homosexuals, even celibate ones, from becoming priests, apparently in response to the numerous priest-pedophilia scandals that have been uncovered since the beginning of the decade.

In both cases, these religious institutions have a right to make such decisions, a right that should be respected, a right that will not be respected by gay advocacy groups and the far left. However, in both cases, these religious institutions are misguided.

In the Ontario case, one does not have to be an ACLU moonbat to wonder if the school’s policy is being applied consistently. Is the school also expelling students whose parents are having extramarital affairs or downloading hardcore pornography? What if the parents are deviating from a Christian lifestyle by embezzling money at work or shooting heroin at home? Or are the offspring of homosexual parents the only targets?

With regard to the Vatican, the new edict is effective is reinforcing traditional Catholic doctrine concerning homosexuality, but it won’t do much to reduce the problem of pedophilia. Simply put, one cannot tell by looking which candidate for the priesthood is a potential molester. In addition, the edict’s logic rests upon the notion that all homosexuals pose a risk to young children, ignoring the fact that there are plenty of gays who are aghast at the very idea of molestation. In this case, the Vatican is engaging in the same sort of shortsighted thinking that leads to such things as "don’t ask, don’t tell" and the contretemps over gays in the Boy Scouts. (Assuming that all homosexuals are potential pedophiles is sort of like assuming that all African-Americans in New Orleans are potential looters, no?)

While the Vatican’s edict is misguided, they are well within their rights to establish such guidelines, which is why I have little sympathy for Andrew Sullivan and others who have decided to toss rhetorical fireballs in Rome’s direction. Castigating the Catholic Church for alleged homophobia is counterproductive and foolish: the Church, mistaken as it may be, is not acting out of homophobia, but out of what it believes to be principle.

In the long run, these actions will do little to stem the greater societal push towards acceptance of homosexuality. These cases are little more than examples of wise people making unwise decisions. However, the makers of these decisions do have a "right to choose"–and aren’t "progressives" supposed to support that?

UPDATE: More from the Globe.

In a time of ferocious weather, partisan judicial battles, and reckless government spending, political observers like myself are in desperate need for a good laugh. Thankfully, chuckles galore are being provided by the blood feud between Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and progressive activist David Brock.

On Tuesday, O’Reilly went after Brock and his website, mediamatters.org–which bills itself as a "progressive, Washington-based nonprofit research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the US media"–for Brock’s attempt to characterize a poor joke O’Reilly made about the UN as an example of mendaciousness on his part. (Six days before, O’Reilly had remarked, "I just wish [Hurricane] Katrina had only hit the UN building, nothing else. Just flooded them all. And I wouldn’t have rescued them.")

Granted, it was a stupid joke. However, Brock, instead of simply recognizing the remark as a lousy attempt at stand-up comedy, evidently contacted United Nations Foundation President Tim Wirth, and alerted him to O’Reilly’s "death wish." Wirth then wrote a letter to Fox News demanding that O’Reilly apologize for the joke.

O’Reilly refused to apologize, and instead delivered a lengthy tirade on his show, condemning mediamatters.org as a "creepy little group" that behaves like the devil-worshippers in Rosemary’s Baby.

Honestly, between O’Reilly and Brock, I don’t know who’s acting more strangely. O’Reilly, who for some reason refuses to proclaim himself a conservative, instead defining himself as a "traditionalist" attempting to combat the forces of "secular progressivism" (if you oppose the secular progressive agenda, aren’t you by definition a conservative?) should really refrain from making these sorts of jokes in a time when political correctness has murdered humor. Like it or not, Mr. O’Reilly, we live in a day and age when too many people are "stuck on stupid" and apparently don’t understand when something is said in jest. A man as wise as O’Reilly should know better than to give his media enemies the clubs with which to whack him.

As for Brock, I fail to see how highlighting O’Reilly’s remarks accords in any way with his mission statement. When he started his site a year and a half ago, Brock (a former conservative who broke with the right after he was accused of soft-pedaling his criticism of Hillary Clinton in his 1996 book The Seduction of Hillary Rodham) actually seemed to be doing a pretty effective job of cataloging misstatements from the far right. Since then, however, the site has deteriorated into merely chronicling supposedly offensive statements by mainstream conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and O’Reilly; the chronicles are often accompanied by the most unflattering photos of conservatives he can find (just yesterday, he ran a photo of Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto which made him look like a villain from a 1940s Warner Bros. gangster pic.)

If Brock has now turned his principal focus towards documenting "inflammatory" statements from members of the mainstream right, then perhaps he should revise his mission statement to reflect this change. "Pejorative" pontifications and misinformation are two different things. (Perhaps the name of the website should also be changed to offensiveopinions.org or rightwingreactionaryrants.org or some such, but not mediamatters.org.)

This fight between O’Reilly and Brock is destined to end in a no-contest. Both are intelligent men who will remain on the national scene for years to come. I have my issues with both men, but O’Reilly is as courageous a fighter against left-wing lunacy as one can get, and Brock can still serve a purpose if he once again criticizes the extreme instead of castigating the mainstream. I know both men can’t stand each other, but for chrissakes, can’t we all just get along?

There’s been quite a bit of reaction in the blogosphere concerning Howard Kurtz’s September 19 article on Washingtonpost.com concerning the mainstream media’s unwillingness, prior to the Katrina disaster, to engage in any serious analysis of the persistence of poverty in America. For some reason, however, very few of the blog-based responses to Kurtz’s article have pointed out what seems to be a no-brainer: that the mainstream media is rather reluctant to address poverty because any comprehensive story about the issue will have the unintended effect of benefiting the political right.

For the past for decades, conservatives have argued that poverty cannot be ameliorated by massive social programs, but by encouraging the impoverished to be self-sufficient, industrious, and cautious of engaging in behaviors that perpetuate the cycle of poverty (see George F. Will’s Three Rules To Avoid Poverty). They’ve also claimed that the Democratic Party, which professes to be the champions of the poor, are in reality desirous of keeping the poor completely dependent on the government, so that they will continue to vote for those who dole out federal sustenance.

Looking at the images of devastation in New Orleans, can anyone deny that those who did not have the means to escape beforehand were also those who were lulled into a false sense of security by the Democratic politicians who have dominated that state for decades? Liberals have asked how Americans could tolerate the fact that so many of their fellow citizens remain in such a lamentable economic condition. Conservatives, however, are asking: Why is it that the Democratic politicians in Louisiana did nothing to encourage the residents of New Orleans and other depressed areas of the state to lift themselves out of that condition? Where were the great Democratic initiatives to encourage inner-city prosperity? Why didn’t the Democrats take action to promote economic development in the state’s most downtrodden regions?

Or is the truth more insidious–that the Democratic machine which has controlled Louisiana since the Huey Long era simply did not want to encourage self-sufficiency among the state’s most impoverished residents, and preferred to make them, in essence, wards of the state?

To acknowledge the persistence of American poverty is to acknowledge the abject failure of the party that claims to stand for the poor to do anything to help them escape their woeful situation. This is a truth that cuts too close to the bone–which is why the mainstream media would rather ignore it.

UPDATE: Will the Republicans take up arms in the war on poverty?

A disgusting stunt by Boston Mayor Tom Menino.

UPDATE: More from the Herald.

Is North Korea serious about getting rid of its nuclear weapons? And would I be too much of a Bush booster if I suggested that this action by North Korea would not have happened if Kim Jong Il wasn’t a little apprehensive about ending up like Saddam Hussein? More from Reuters and the AP.