When is a TV Ad not a TV Ad? When it's on PBS...

I had to laugh, once again, at The New York Times (login required) today, reading Nat Ives' article about PBS's non-commercial commercials, and coming across this:

The 15-second commercial for Chipotle, a Mexican restaurant chain owned by McDonald's, will accompany 'How to Cook Everything: Bittman Takes On America's Chefs,' on some 150 public television stations across the country. The program features Mark Bittman, a cookbook author who writes a column for the Dining section of The New York Times, which is a sponsor of the program.

In the story, the Times repeats PBS's claims that their ads are not ads. How come?

The Chipotle spots had to toe some very fine lines. For example, the guidelines allow people in the spots to consume a product as long as they do not appear to enjoy it overtly. So the producer instructed the actors in its pledge drive spoof not to look too thrilled.

Maybe the New York Times is becoming a humor magazine...

Terri Schiavo's Case is an Exception

Andrew McCarthy says that the facts are unusual: "It is not for nothing that we say bad cases make bad law. We have no reason to believe Terri's situation is more a paradigm than an aberration. For most husbands in Michael Schiavo's shoes -- anxious to get on with new lives and aware that a stricken wife's family was willing and able to take on the burdens of care -- we can reasonably hope that ending the wife's life would not become an obsession. Most men or women in Michael's circumstances would step aside. Many, if they'd entangled themselves in new relationships, would avail themselves of the ready legal framework for ending the marriage. Most spouses would not suddenly remember, seven years after the fact, that their partners had evinced a carefully considered wish to die rather than be sustained if they were ever to become incapacitated."

Is Kofi Annan A Crook?

That's the main question underlying Roger L. Simon's story on the UN's Oil-for-Food Investigation. Paul Volcker's report is scheduled for release tomorrow. Simon claims it shows that Annan may have been closer to his son's scandalous business activities than previously revealed.

The Future Belongs to Blogs

Says Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter:

Let This Prediction Be True!

Buried several paragraphs down in an interesting World Peace Herald analysis of blog influence on the 2004 election is the following prediction by Scott Anthony:
...20 years from now, there will be an entirely new industry based on blogs. Just a few years ago, he noted, when eBay was launched, it was selling novelty items, such as Pez candy dispensers. Today, it is a major retail force that even sells automobiles.

Who's Scott Anthony, you ask? (I did.) He is the co-author of 'Seeing What's Next' (Harvard Business School Press, 2005), and a partner in Innosight LLC in Watertown, Mass. Let's hope he does - see what's next, I mean."

Bruce Thornton on "Dhimmitude"

From VDH's Private Papers
a review of Bat Ye'or's book on Islamism's triumph in Europe and aspirations in America : "As Ye'or documents, the key to Islamist terrorism is Israel, but not in the way most people think. For the jihadist mentality, Israel must be destroyed, if not by bombs and tanks, then by piece-meal concessions and sheer demography. It make take fifty years, it may take a hundred, but like the medieval Crusader kingdoms, this manifestation of the dynamic power of Western cultural ideals cannot be allowed to survive as a constant reminder of Islamic civilization's failure. Israel's war is our war, and until we forcefully assert that linkage in our public pronouncements and more important in our actions, everything else we do just buys some time, in which the forces of appeasement and the murderous energy of the jihadists will do their work."

James Q. Wilson: Living Wills Don't Help

From OpinionJournal : "But scholars have shown that we have greatly exaggerated the benefits of living wills. Studies by University of Michigan professor Carl Schneider and others have shown that living wills rarely make any difference. People with them are likely to get exactly the same treatment as people without them, possibly because doctors and family members ignore the wills. And ignoring them is often the right thing to do, because it is virtually impossible to write a living will that anticipates and makes decisions about all of the many, complicated, and hard to foresee illnesses you may face.

For example, suppose you say that you want the plug pulled if you have advanced Alzheimer's disease. But then it turns out that when you are in this hopeless condition your son or daughter is about to graduate from college. You want to see that event. Or suppose that you anticipate being in Terri Schiavo's condition at a time when all doctors agree that you have no chance of recovering your personhood and so you order the doctors to remove the feeding tubes. But several years later when you enter into a persistent vegetative state, some doctors have come to believe on the basis of new evidence that there is a chance you may recover at least some functions. If you knew that you might well have changed your mind, but after entering into a PVS you can make no decisions. It is not clear we would be doing you a favor by starving you to death. On the contrary, we might well be doing what you might regard as murder.

There is a document that is probably better than a living will, and that is a durable power of attorney that authorizes a person that you know and trust to make end-of-life decisions for you."

Egypt Will Test Bush's Democracy Policy

Kirk Sowell wonders if Egypt will mean triumph or tears for President George W. Bush (tip via Publius Pundit):

I say that Egypt, not Iraq, may be the democracy movement's toughest test because of the difference between the two countries. Iraq's most prominent religious figure, the Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has long been a genuine democracy advocate. So it is not so surprising that the United Iraqi Alliance, which ran with his endorsement, would show its democratic bone fides after winning an election, as they have now. But in Egypt the [Muslim] Brotherhood is by far the most powerful Islamist movement, and the most powerful and well-organized opposition group in the country. While the Brotherhood has renounced violence as a means of taking power in Egypt, they consistently push for Egypt to abrogate its peace treaty with Israel and go to war, and is brimming with enthusiasm for jihadism in the Al-Qaeda mode.

Of course, it is not certain that the Brotherhood would win. Mubarak might win a free election, and there is also a non-Islamist opposition movement whose most prominent leader, Ayman Nour, was recently released from prison. The belief that the Brotherhood can win is based largely on their repeated success in winning professional and student association elections (lawyers, teachers, etc.). But perhaps their organizational advantage would be less key in a national election. I will simply note that if there is a free election and the Muslim Brotherhood does win, the world could face its first democratically-elected terroristic government - since 1933.

Manzarali on Mark McGwire's Steroid Troubles

From This 'n' That: "Come on, Mr. McGwire. It's an easy question. If steroid use in major league baseball has already been determined to be illegal, why would it not be cheating? In other words, Mr. McGwire, it wasn't cheating in your heart and mind. But it's not too late. You still have time to become a true hero. And you don't have to be juiced to succeed. All you need is a clear conscience."

This Book Looks Interesting

The Myth of Islamic Tolerance...

Happy Easter

Here's a page of Easter links atEaster on the Net...

Not "Mission Accomplished" in Kyrgyzstan

Scraps of Moscow reminds us that it is too early to tell what will happen in the aftermath of the Kyrgyz revolution. Commenting on Daan van der Schreick's analysis in The Moscow Times, which argues that in the aftermath of the current revolt, Kyrgyzstan's 1990s-era experiment democracy may be viewed by leaders or neighboring countries as a cause of instability rather than an example to follow:

Probably this has idea has been mentioned elsewhere, but this is the first place I've seen it articulated in print. This sort of deflates the triumphalism I've seen on several US right-wing blogs, people crowing about the triumph of democracy. Sorry, guys, what happened in Bishkek is not really related to the 'liberation' of Iraq or to any US actions - in fact, I've seen reports that the US played on both sides of this game.

Well, I think it's pretty clear that the US supported the protesters, based on Ambassador Young's statements, as well as the way events played out. You could more reasonably conclude that Russia seems to have played both sides. But Lyndon's conclusion is worth thinking about:

As several more thoughtful bloggers have noted, the proof of the new government will be in the pudding - will we see democratic elections in the near future as promised, or will the opposition-turned-rulers get busy feeding themselves at the corruption trough, a rich tradition in the former Soviet space?

Easter Tourists Return to Jerusalem

From the San Jose Mercury News:

For people whose livelihood have depended upon the flow of tourists to Jerusalem's holy sites, the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, indeed has been a path of sorrows. Millennium celebrations at the start of 2000 helped bring more than 2.5 million visitors to Israel, perhaps half of them Christian pilgrims. After fighting broke out between Israel and the Palestinians in September of that year, that number plummeted, eventually falling nearly two-thirds.

The Israeli Tourism Ministry said visitors had increased about one-third over levels at this time last year, although numbers still lagged pre-intifada levels. The falloff in fighting over the past two months, though, reassured many people who had put off earlier travel. In Jerusalem, different faiths jostle up against one another every day, and [Good] Friday was no exception.

Washington Celebrates Walt Whitman

Today's Washington Post has an interesting guide to Walt Whitman's 10 years in Washington, DC, suitable for a walking tour. The article, detailing where he lived and worked from 1863-1873--military hospital, Department of the Interior, Attorney-General's office, and so forth-- begins with this verse from Leaves of Grass:

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooks you round the waist,

My right hand points to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.

-- Walt Whitman, untitled version of 'Song of Myself' in 'Leaves of Grass,' 1855

The boarding houses he slept in have been torn down, but the government office buildings remain. There is a move to rename the street in front of the National Portrait Gallery after Whitman...

Bad Democracies, Good Dictatorships

Curzon considers the paradoxes of democratization in the light of the Kyrgyz crisis:

Clarrifying policy between good, established democracies and bad, corrupt dictatorships is easy. Regime change in France would be silly; regime change in Turkmenistan would be most welcome. But what we increasingly see is a messy choice between good and bad democracies. In an age where democracy is fetishized by politicians and NGOs alike and where the EU, the US, and the UN require third world countries to hold elections before the recieve aid, the emerging challenge for policymakers is to recognize when democracies are dysfunctional and when dictatorships are enlightened.

Robert Conquest on Democracy

From The National Interest (via TheRussianDilettante):

Another aspect of premature 'democracy' is the adulation of what used to be and might still be called 'the city mob' (noted by Aristotle as ochlocracy). In France, of course, in the 1790s, a spate of ideologues turned to the Paris mob, in riot after riot, until the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon's coup of 1799. The ploy was that, as A. E. Housman put it, a capital city with far fewer inhabitants could decide the fate of the country's millions.

That democracy is not the only, or inevitable, criterion of social progress is obvious. If free elections give power to a repression of consensuality, they are worse than useless. We will presumably not forget that Hitler came to power in 1933 by election, with mass and militant support. The communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was effected by constitutional intrigues backed by 'mass demonstrations.' We need hardly mention the 'peoples' democracies' and the 90 percent votes they always received.

As to later elections, a few years ago there was a fairly authentic one in Algeria. If its results had been honored, it would have replaced the established military rulers with an Islamist political order. This was something like the choice facing Pakistan in 2002. At any rate, it is not a matter on which the simple concepts of democracy and free elections provide us with clear criteria.

Herb Meyer Was Right

According to thisYahoo! News Report: Kyrgyzstan President Resigns.

Putin to Visit Israel

According to the BBC, Vladimir Putin will make his first visit to Israel at the end of April, a sign of improving relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv. (Though I doubt he'll pay a call on fugitive Yukos executives living there--unless he pardons Khodorkovsky, first).

How Do You Build Democracy?

Daniel Pipes worries President Bush may have the wrong theory of democracy-building:

The theory implied here is that running for office – with its emphasis on such mundane matters as fixing potholes and providing good schools – will temper Hezbollah and Hamas.

Count me skeptical.

The historical record does not support such optimism. When politically adept totalitarians win power democratically, they do fix potholes and improve schools – but only as a means to transform their countries in accordance with their utopian visions. This generalization applies most clearly to the historical cases (Adolf Hitler in Germany after 1933, Salvador Allende in Chile after 1970) but it also appears valid for the current ones (Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh since 2001, Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an in Turkey since 2002).

The Latest on the Crisis in Kyrgyzstan

Can be found on Nathan Hamm's Central Asian website: Registan.net...

Tony Blair's Revenge...

DG Mark Thompson will sack over 5,000 people at the BBC, says The Guardian:

More than one in five BBC staff now face losing their jobs as further details of director general Mark Thompson's radical revamp emerged yesterday, including the loss of 1,500 jobs in programme-making divisions such as news and sport.

Initial estimates of up to 5,000 job cuts are being hastily revised upwards by broadcasting unions, which are threatening strike action if compulsory redundancies are enforced.

Including jobs that will be lost as a result of redundancies, the outsourcing of some roles and the sell-off of commercial divisions such as BBC Broadcast and BBC Resources, up to 6,000 jobs are now expected to go in the biggest ever cull of staff at the corporation.