MayerBlog: The Web Log of
David N. Mayer

February Falderal

Some of my uncommon-sense observations on some of the foolish developments in the worlds of politics and popular culture:

n    Google-Eyed G-Men

With all the furor over the Bush Administration’s controversial domestic surveillance program – its use of the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless wiretaps on the communications of suspected Islamic terrorists – it’s alarming that comparatively little is being said about a far greater threat to Americans’ civil liberties:  the Administration’s attempt to force Google Inc. to turn over data on how users have been using its popular search engines.  The Bush Justice Department has been trying to amass information about millions of users of Google and other Internet search engines, in what is clearly a fishing expedition aimed at bolstering the government’s attempt to revive a questionable law, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998 – a federal law intended to help shield minors from online pornography, which the courts have (quite correctly) found unconstitutional.  (The law makes it a federal crime for a commercial website to put up materials “harmful to minors” unless placed in areas only accessible to adults.  The Supreme Court in 2004 upheld an injunction against COPA’s enforcement, holding that the government had not provided sufficient evidence to show that COPA was the least restrictive, most effective way of protecting minors from exposure to pornography on the Internet.  The current fishing expedition is the government’s attempt to marshal evidence that COPA is more effective in screening out “porn” – that is, sexually explicit or erotic materials – than filtering software that’s available to concerned parents.) 

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the latest incompetent to head the U.S. Justice Department, clearly has screwed-up priorities.  At a time when the federal government ought to be focusing its attention on the dangers posed by Islamic terrorists and other real criminals, Gonzales is worried about Americans viewing sexually-explicit materials over the Internet in the privacy of their own homes.  As is usually the case when statists, of either the left or the right, seek to expand the powers of “Big Brother,” they attempt to justify it by emotional appeals to “the children.”  “We are trying to gather up information in order to help the enforcement of a federal law to ensure the protection, quite frankly, of our nation’s children against pornography,” Gonzales said last month in Washington.  Well, Mr. Attorney General, quite frankly, you’re invading the privacy of millions of Americans in order to bolster your case for enforcing this unconstitutional law.  Parents who object to their children viewing so-called “pornography” on the Internet can police their kids’ computer use; it’s their business – not the government’s – just as it’s not the government’s business what individuals, in the privacy of their own homes, view on their computers.     

Bravo for Google, which is fighting the Justice Department subpoena, calling it “unduly burdensome, vague and intending to harass.”  And shame on Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft, who confirmed that they had complied, at least partially, with similar subpoenas.  As one privacy-rights attorney observed, “You have to be alarmed at the idea that the government can come in and say, `I want you to give me your statistical data.’  This could be the first step on the way to asking for the content of e-mails.”  What’s at stake here is not just the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, but also the First Amendment’s protection of free expression, which provides, “Congress shall pass no law abridging freedom of speech.”  The First Amendment means exactly what it says:  it doesn’t permit Congress to abridge speech to “protect” children, or for any other purpose that statists might manufacture as a justification for censorship; “no law” means NO LAW!

n    Hillary’s Own “Plantation”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D.-N.Y.) made news last month when, in a speech to a largely black audience, she referred to the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives as a “plantation” – adding (wink, wink) “You know what I’m talking about.”  If there’s any justice in the world, that comment will be remembered – with her own words coming back to haunt her – for as long as she’s a political candidate.  Investor’s Business Daily responded almost immediately with an apt cartoon, showing her making the comment, “It’s a plantation – you know what I’m talking about,” pointing to the U.S. Capitol and dressed like “Mammy” from Gone with the Wind, with manacles on her wrists and chained to a huge metal ball labeled “Liberal Special Interests.” 

As clever as that cartoon was, however, it revealed only half of Mrs. Clinton’s hypocrisy.  True, Democrats are “enslaved,” in a sense, to left-wing special interests – consider, for example, all the Senate Democrats who voted “No” earlier this week on Justice Samuel Alito’s confirmation.  But the real hypocrisy in Mrs. Clinton, or any Democrat, talking about “plantations” is that the worst “plantation” that still exists today, in a real sense for many black Americans, is the welfare state that most Democrats want to perpetuate and expand.  If anything comes close to enslaving (in the true sense of the word) some black Americans today, it’s the vicious cycle of dependency on government “entitlements” (a disingenuous name for the handouts dispensed by welfare-state programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment and disability compensation, and the like), which keep poor people trapped in poverty by undermining initiative and individual responsibility, the only sure “cures” for the problem of poverty.  Before resorting to that tired ploy of “playing the race card” (which, sadly, seems to have become part of the standard repertoire of the Democrats’ political play book), Hillary should first consider those who are victimized by the policies she and her fellow partisans advocate.  What’s that old saying about folks in glass houses?  

n    Partisan Preachers:  So What?

Also last month, in a story coming out of Columbus, Ohio but with important national implications, it was announced that the federal Internal Revenue Service was investigating two local conservative Christian “mega-churches,” the Rev. Rod Parsley’s World Harvest Church in south Columbus and the Rev. Russell Johnson’s Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster.  The IRS investigation was prompted by complaints from 31 other pastors (many of them anonymous), who alleged that the evangelical megachurches headed by Parsley and Johnson, along with three affiliated organizations, should lose their tax-exempt status for participating in partisan politics.  The complaint alleges numerous instances in which the churches promoted conservative Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the front-running GOP candidate for Ohio’s governor, at religious events, in voter-registration drives and in educational materials. 

Although I like Mr. Blackwell (I’m willing to forgive his social conservative political views because he’s the only candidate for governor in Ohio, besides the candidate for the Libertarian Party, who’s serious about cutting government spending), I’m not at all a fan of Rev. Parsley, his so-called “Center for Moral Clarity,” and the “biblical morality” he advocates – which I regard as both irrational and evil.  But neither do I like the left-liberal politics preached by many of the complaint-signers in this case, who are probably guilty of hypocrisy for complaining to the IRS about conservative pastors’ support for Republican politicians or issues when they themselves, in various ways, lend support for Democratic politicians and left-liberal political issues. 

Notwithstanding all the hysteria about the “Religious Right” and its involvement in American politics, there’s also a problem with the Religious Left’s involvement in American politics, too.  IRS regulations prohibit pastors from endorsing candidates on behalf of the church, distributing materials favoring one candidate or political party, and providing one candidate exclusive opportunities to speak at church services.  Surely clergymen with left-liberal political views –  Catholic priests and bishops, black preachers (such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson), pastors at “mainline” Protestant churches, as well as many rabbis and mullahs – are no less politically active than conservative evangelistic ministers.  If the IRS is investigating the latter, it should damn well also investigate the former, who are apt to be just as guilty of violating the IRS regulations for tax-exempt religious institutions.  Perhaps, too, it’s time to reassess these restrictions, especially considering the historic role played by ministers in American political history – going all the way back to the many ministers who supported the Patriot cause in the American Revolution.  Why shouldn’t all clergy have full freedom of expression, including the freedom to endorse political candidates or to take stands on questions of public policy?  

n    Hamas-ochists

People of all political stripes who support “democracy” as an end in itself in the Middle East got a rude awakening last month when Hamas, the militant terrorist organization, won a large majority in the Palestinian parliamentary election.  According to a USA Today story, “the election shocker ended a 40-year political reign by Fatah, the party of the late Yasser Arafat.  It also heightens the danger of civil war between Palestinian factions,” and if such violence spreads to Israel, threatens again to end the fragile Middle East peace process between Israel and its enemies (“Palestinians choose avowed enemy of Israel,” January 27).  President Bush and other world leaders have called for Hamas to renounce violence and its long-held opposition to Israel’s existence, but one might as well expect a tiger to lose its stripes and become a vegan. 

When will those naïve idiots realize that democracy is not the solution to the region’s problems?  All democracy yields is rule by the majority, and if the majority of a given population – say, a bunch of Palestinian barbarians – favors Islamic terrorism, then democracy simply enables dangerous regimes to rise to power by popular mandate rather than by military coup.  

n    Harass-holes

According to a study released in late January by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation, 62 percent of undergraduates have been sexually harassed on campus or at college events.  The problem with this statistic – the fatal flaw, or hole, in the AAUW study – is that it is based on a definition of sexual harassment so broad as to be utterly worthless.  Although the AAUW Foundation touts the online survey it commissioned last May as the most comprehensive of its kind, the survey – conducted by Harris Interactive of a supposedly representative sample of 2.036 undergraduates – defined sexual harassment as “unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior which interferes with your life.”  The definition includes not only unwelcome physical contact, such as touching or grabbing, but also “offensive” comments or jokes.  Little wonder that 62% of the respondents said they’d been “sexually harassed” under this definition, or that 51% of male students and 31% of female students admitted to harassing others. 

Sadly, like so many other surveys on this subject, the AAUW survey was tainted by those who have an agenda to make sexual harassment seem more of a problem on college campuses than it really is:  radical feminists (who frequently share with social conservatives a Victorian-like aversion to sexuality) and others who have created a cottage industry out of anti-harassment sensitivity training.  The same kind of overbroad definition that makes such surveys worthless also makes campus “speech codes” – codes of conduct that prohibit “offensive” comments or jokes – so dangerous to free expression on many college campuses today.   (For more on this, see the splendid website maintained by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).) 

And it’s also counterproductive, as George Rutherglen, a law professor at the University of Virginia, has pointed out:  “The way the survey uses the term sexual harassment is extremely vague and uncertain.  It looks like it captures a lot of incidents, which I think most people rightly regard as annoying but not worth complaining about. . . .  If every interaction between men and women could be labeled sexual harassment, then no misconduct will ever be punished.”  (“Viewpoints vary widely on sexual harassment,” Columbus Dispatch, Jan. 28, 2006.)   In other words, the survey trivializes whatever real problems of sexual harassment do exist on college campuses.    

n    The New World: Hollywood vs. History, Again

What’s with Colin Farrell’s film career?  Since his riveting performance in the thriller Phone Booth, he’s starred in a series of duds – Oliver Stone’s Alexander (some of the best scenes of which were excised in the director’s cut), and now, The New World, a story loosely based on the historic encounter between the American Indian princess Pocahontas and the Englishman Capt. John Smith at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. 

Most of the criticisms of the movie – its plodding pace, the tedious internal monologues of the lead characters – are justified.  Most egregious, however, is the film’s distortion of history, turning the true story of the friendship that developed between Pocahontas and Smith – who, at the time of their first meeting, were a 10-year-old girl and a 26-year-old young soldier – into a romance which, among other things, distorts the truth about Pocahontas’ individuality and the important leadership role in the new colony by Smith, who’s turned by the film into someone little better than a pedophile.  Why must Hollywood distort history in a failed attempt to make the story compelling, when the real historical story is sufficiently compelling on its own? 

It was a mistake to have anything but low expectations for The New World:  after all, the film was given “two thumbs up” by Ebert & Roeper, who called it “the best historical romance since Titanic.”  What nonsense!  These idiots, who apparently know nothing of real history or romance, also had given a thumbs-up to Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s tawdry Bush-bashing piece of political propaganda. 

n    Adios, West Wing – and Good Riddance!

            NBC has announced that it will be canceling the White House drama The West Wing at the end of this season.  The critically acclaimed, 7-season series, which cast Martin Sheen as left-liberals’ notion of an ideal president, had for some time allowed Democrats to continue to deny the reality of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and indulge in their fantasy of having another left-liberal in the White House.  I’ve never seen a single episode of the show, and I never intend to:  Not only am I repulsed by its leftist political bias, but I’m fed up with politicians of all stripes.  Politicians of all sorts, both Demopublican and Replicrat, already control far too much of my time and resources; I don’t want them intruding on my television, too – where I’d much rather follow the adventures of castaways lost on a mysterious island or even the tribulations of desperate housewives.  (I’m reminded of Ayn Rand’s apt definition of politicians: persons “whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalizations that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun."  How true!) 

I’m glad to see television viewers finally come to their senses, as ratings for the program have been steadily dropping for some time and dropping precipitously during the past year or so – which, of course, is the reason for the series’ cancellation.  Now if only the same fate would befall that other White House drama, ABC’s Commander-in-Chief, which stars Geena Davis as a less bitchy Hillary Clinton. 

n    “A Mardi Gras for the Ages”

Preparations are on track for Mardi Gras 2006, to be held February 18-28 in New Orleans, only six months after Hurricane Katrina (and subsequent floods) devastated a wide area of the city.  The city is ready, says Mary Herczog, author of Frommer’s New Orleans and a part-time resident, who expects a once-in-a-lifetime experience this year – which also happens to be the 150^th anniversary of the event.  “This is a city that has gone through cataclysm, and its citizens are desperately ready to let off some steam,” says Herzog, who anticipates that this year’s celebration will be “a Mardi Gras for the ages.”  The celebration will be scaled back somewhat – parade routes have been shortened, and there will be only 8 days of parades instead of the usual two weeks, to keep down costs for the cash-strapped city – but most of the parading krewes will be participating, and the tourist districts are ready.  (It helped that the flood that ravaged other parts of New Orleans largely spared the French Quarter and the Garden District, the city’s key tourism areas, where major attractions such as the Café du Monde and the National D-Day Museum long ago reopened, and where the major hotels that have reopened are nearly sold out for peak Mardi Gras days.)  (“Big Easy could see `a Mardi Gras for the ages,’ USA Today, Jan. 27, 2006.) 

It’s inspiring to see New Orleans bounce back from its disaster, but policymakers who are dreaming of a massive federal bailout – to restore, at U.S. taxpayer expense, New Orleans to what it was pre-Katrina, including all its inherent problems – ought to take note:  virtually everything that will make this year’s Mardi Gras celebration not only possible, but also successful, comes from the free market system working as it should, unimpeded by government.

 | Link to this Entry | Posted Thursday, February 2, 2006 | Copyright © David N. Mayer