Tucker Carlson v. Freelance Genius

This story from the Washington Post caught my eye, because it featured my favorite video store:

Clerk's Blog Spells Trouble

It all started with a simple video rental. Who knows where it will end?

Potomac Video store clerk Charles Williamson, 28, posted a message on his blog, Freelance Genius, Dec. 23 that described how he set up a movie rental account for MSNBC host Tucker Carlson at the MacArthur Boulevard store the day before.

"I could tell you what he and his ridiculously wasped-out female companion (wife?) rented if you really want to know," he wrote. "I won't tell you where he lives, though. That would be wrong and stupid." Williamson also joked that he wouldn't send 10,000 copies of Jon Stewart's best-selling political satire, "America (The Book)," to Carlson's home; Stewart ridiculed Carlson on "Crossfire" before the 2004 election.

A week later, Williamson had forgotten all about it, he told us yesterday. That is, until Carlson, 37, reappeared at the video store and, said Williamson, "got pretty aggressive." According to Williamson, Carlson confronted him about the blog and said he viewed the post as a threat to him and his wife. "He said, 'If you keep this [expletive] up, I will [expletive] destroy you,' " Williamson recalled.

Williamson said he agreed to remove the blog post and did so later that night: "All I remember thinking was I was worried about what this guy was going to do." He consulted a lawyer friend and was told he had probably not broken any laws. "What I said was pretty juvenile, I'll admit," he said.

In a phone interview Thursday, Carlson acknowledged that he approached Williamson in the store and said he was "very aggressive" because he wanted the post removed: "I don't like to call the police or call his boss. . . . I'm a libertarian. I'm not into that."

On Monday, Williamson said, his Potomac Video manager called and fired him. Williamson said he was told the company was threatened with legal action "and the owner doesn't like that." He re-posted the original Carlson item later that day. Williamson said he later learned that a man who identified himself as a lawyer for Carlson had been in the store and asked Potomac Video employees questions about him.

Carlson told us that he was concerned for the safety of his family, but did not threaten legal action against the company or push to have Williamson, who still has his office-manager day job, fired.

"He implied he was going to come and do something to my house," Carlson said. "I've got four kids at home and I've had serious problems with stalkers twice. . . . This guy is threatening to come to my house and I'm on the road all the time. What would you do? This guy is threatening my family."

Carlson said he took no further action and said he couldn't have called his lawyer because he doesn't have one.

"He's trying to make it sound like I'm this big, bad guy trying to hurt the video store clerk," he said. "I don't understand why he's hassling me. I just wanted to rent a Woody Allen movie."

A manager at Potomac Video told us the situation was "absurd" but refused to answer questions. The company's lawyer, Steven Kramer, said he is investigating the matter, but would not comment further.

Williamson told us Thursday that before the incident his blog usually received a handful of hits a day from friends and a few other bloggers. Wonkette.com linked to the post on Tuesday and, as of yesterday, over 6,700 readers had checked in.

"I'm just a guy with a blog," he said. "I live over MacArthur Boulevard and I go to work and sometimes I see famous people. . . . I blogged about seeing Karl Rove, and the Secret Service didn't knock down my door."

You can read Williamson's minute-by-minute account of the story on his personal blog, Freelance Genius:

I have been asked to write a timeline of all the interactions and incidents surrounding the Tucker situation. I am worried that too much more on this is going to turn my ego space into a one trick pony, but I do take requests on occasion. The real problem with ponies is that I don't know how to ride ponies and they are enemies of the state.

Between 8 and 9:30 pm on Friday, December 22, 2006: Tucker comes to store, opens account and rents unspecified movie.

Approximately 12:15 am Saturday, December 23, 2006: Chuckles publishes blog about encounter.

Between 6:30 and 8 pm on Friday, January 5, 2007: Tucker enters store, threatens Chuckles, leaves. Chuckles resumes working and tries not to let shit get to him.

Approximately 11:15 pm on Friday, January 5, 2007: Chuckles takes post down from site in order to be a basically nice guy, even though he doesn't like being threatened in his place of business.

Between 12:30 and 1:30 pm on Monday, January 8, 2007: Chuckles receives call that his employment at the unnamed video store has been terminated due to threats of legal action against the store.

Approximately 2:31 pm Monday, January 8, 2007: Chuckles reposts the original offending post, updates it, updates the explanation post, then posts his statement of the entire affair.

Between 7:00 pm and 8:15 pm Monday, January 8, 2007: A man identifying himself as a lawyer for Tucker Carlson enters the video store and asks questions of employee (whom we shall call EmpAlpha) about Chuckles such as Chuckles' full name, blog address, home address, current employer, whether the post was removed, whether the blog was deleted, etc. Chuckles arrives at video store shortly after this person has left.

10:40 pm Monday, January 8, 2007: Chuckles updates the post about the whole thing.

Sometime after 5 pm Wednesday, January 10, 2007: A person enters the store asking an employee (now called EmpBeta) questions about EmpAlpha. It is currently not known whether the questing person on Wednesday was the same as the person on Monday. The questing person on Wednesday did not identify himself as a lawyer for Tucker Carlson so far as Chuckles knows. Chuckles receives word of this incident from EmpAlpha, not EmpBeta. EmpBeta has not read Chuckles' blog, apparently.

Between 2:00 and 2:30 pm Thursday, January 11, 2007: Chuckles gives interview to Washington Post Reliable Source column.

3:14 pm, Thursday, January 11, 2007: Chuckles receives word that Tucker Carlson is denying having a lawyer and Tucker also states that he is not pursuing any action against The Genius.

You all may make your own conclusions from the facts of the situation. Personally, I doubt the person that had been asking questions about me will ever show up again. The simplest answer is that Tucker called the lawyer off as soon as he received a phone call from the Post. It is almost too bad that moron of a lawyer couldn't figure out how to either find me or contact me, even after I posted an email address on this blog. I doubt that guy is worth the money, but what do I know? I am just a member of the peasant class.

I wonder if he's going to sue? If so, we'll follow the story here...

Is James Traub a Jew-Hater?

Reading today's New York Times Magazine profile of ADL chief Abe Foxman by James Traub, I couldn't help wonder if Traub is a Jew-Hater. He repeated anti-Semitic stereotypes about rich and powerful Jews, he mocked Foxman's experience as a Holocaust survivor hidden by a Polish nanny, he suggested that the US could have avoided 9/11 by dropping support for Israel, and he appeared to give credence to the "Jewish Lobby" arguments of Walt and Mearshimer, while defending the views of Minister Farrkhan and Jimmy Carter. OK, if it appeared in an American Nazi publication it would make sense--or even in the Nation. But the New York Times Magazine? Do they really want to lose the rest of their subscribers?

I'm no fan of the ADL, I've criticized Foxman for Koshering Borat, but Traub's article a real slime job, a crude and ugly smear that reeked of was so over-the-line, so ugly, so cruel, and so dishonest, that it may be the most disgraceful thing I've seen in print yet at the Times, which might perhaps think about changing its motto to: "All the News NOT Fit to Print."

As for James Traub, if he's not a Jew-Hater, unless the piece was some sort of Borat-like parody designed to fight anti-Semitism, I'd say Traub does a remarkable literary imitation of presenting the very tendencies the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith was established to combat.

Senator Jim Webb: Bush Should Fly to Iran

On the Democratic side, Sen. Jim Webb also had an idea, expressed at a hearing on C=Span, that President Bush fly to Tehran to confront the Mullahs personally.:

And I personally think it would be a bold act for George W. Bush to get on an airplane and go to Tehran in the same manner that President Nixon did, take a gamble, and not give up one thing that we believe in, in terms of its moving toward weapons of mass destruction, our belief that Israel needs to be recognized and interests need to be protected, but to maybe start changing the formula here.

Again, I don't know whether it would work (Neville Chamberlain's 1938 meeting with Hitler in Munich sprang to mind), any more than Giuliani and Gingrich's proposal, but again, at least it is an idea. Webb's cracked open the taboo on discussing Iraq policy options. One good thing about crisis, the famous Chinese "danger plus opportunity," is that it opens things up for ideas, which makes life more interesting.

Bush's failiures may not be due to a lack of will--but to a failure of imagination.

Giuliani & Gingrich: Stop Using Contractors in Iraq

Hizzoner Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich published a plan in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, calling for an Iraqi CCC to rebuild Iraq. I don't know whether it might work, or if is too late. But at least it is an idea.

In any case, I think the main point of the op-ed was buried towards the end--so I'm highlighting it here. The two Republican leaders want to drop private contractors like Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root, BearingPoint, Booz Allen Hamilton as well as NGOs--in favor of the military and Iraqi government:

One word of caution: The program should be overseen by the U.S. military, not private contractors, to avoid unnecessary delays in deployment or accusations of cronyism in the bidding process. Our military will still be devoted to its primary role of hunting down terrorists and patrolling the streets, but administering a jobs program would be a direct extension of their effort to secure law and order. After the program has been started and becomes successful, it can be transferred to a civilian authority within the Iraqi government.

I'd go even further--and ask that private for-profit and non-profit contractors return to US taxpayers the money Congress and the President gave them in order to rebuild Iraq. It might go towards paying for the 20,000 troops President Bush has asked for...

How to Eavesdrop on Bill Moyers' Phone Calls

I was amazed to hear a 1966 telephone call between Bill Moyers and President Lyndon Johnson, while driving in my car the other night. If I only had heard them when I wrote the "Rev. Moyers" chapter in my book, PBS: Behind the Screen, I could have quoted from them. In any case, Moyers sounded just like the kind of guy people said he was. No wonder Johnson stopped talking to him...

You can listen to Moyers talk with LBJ, for yourself at C-SPAN's LBJ White House Tapes Archive.

My Favorite Video Store

Why do I love my local, neighborhood video store, Potomac Video?

Maybe because they usually have whatever film I'm looking for--classic old movies, new releases, international films.

Maybe because the manager will chat with me and ask me how I liked the film.

Maybe because the manager has ordered swashbuckler and western films for me, after I've seen all one the ones in stock.

Maybe because they still have a large collection of VHS cassettes.

And most of all, because they still stock my film on VHS, even though it came out 25 years ago, and hasn't been rented since 2003...

Christopher Hitchens on Thomas Jefferson & Religion

Hitchens is on a roll, taking on both Congressman Keith Ellison and his Christian fundamentalist critics, in Slate:

A few years later, in 1786, the new United States found that it was having to deal very directly with the tenets of the Muslim religion. The Barbary states of North Africa (or, if you prefer, the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, plus Morocco) were using the ports of today's Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia to wage a war of piracy and enslavement against all shipping that passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Thousands of vessels were taken, and more than a million Europeans and Americans sold into slavery. The fledgling United States of America was in an especially difficult position, having forfeited the protection of the British Royal Navy. Under this pressure, Congress gave assent to the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated by Jefferson's friend Joel Barlow, which stated roundly that "the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen." This has often been taken as a secular affirmation, which it probably was, but the difficulty for secularists is that it also attempted to buy off the Muslim pirates by the payment of tribute. That this might not be so easy was discovered by Jefferson and John Adams when they went to call on Tripoli's envoy to London, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. They asked him by what right he extorted money and took slaves in this way. As Jefferson later reported to Secretary of State John Jay, and to the Congress:

The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Medieval as it is, this has a modern ring to it. Abdrahaman did not fail to add that a commission paid directly to Tripoli—and another paid to himself—would secure some temporary lenience. I believe on the evidence that it was at this moment that Jefferson decided to make war on the Muslim states of North Africa as soon as the opportunity presented itself. And, even if I am wrong, we can be sure that the dispatch of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to the Barbary shore was the first and most important act of his presidency. It took several years of bombardment before the practice of kidnap and piracy and slavery was put down, but put down it was, Quranic justification or not.

Jefferson did not demand regime change of the Barbary states, only policy change. And as far as I can find, he avoided any comment on the religious dimension of the war. But then, he avoided public comment on faith whenever possible. It was not until long after his death that we became able to read most of his scornful writings on revelation and redemption (recently cited with great clarity by Brooke Allen in her book Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers). And it was not until long after his death that The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth was publishable. Sometimes known as "the Jefferson Bible" for short, this consists of the four gospels of the New Testament as redacted by our third president with (literally) a razor blade in his hand. With this blade, he excised every verse dealing with virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and other puerile superstition, thus leaving him (and us) with a very much shorter book. In 1904 (those were the days), the Jefferson Bible was printed by order of Congress, and for many years was presented to all newly elected members of that body. Here's a tradition worth reviving: Why not ask all new members of Congress to swear on that?

HOUSE

Someone I know is a fan of Hugh Laurie, and while I was teaching last night, she watched his Fox medical drama, HOUSE. She reported that he is completely changed from Jeeves and Wooster days. Dr. House is a testy, irritable drug addict, who chews vicodin, percodan, and other controlled substances like M&Ms. He calls everyone an idiot. Everytime he's supposed to go into rehab, he has to take care of another medical emergency--so his visit to the Betty Ford Center slips between the cracks.

What kind of specialist is he? I asked.

All of them, she answered.

Is it believable?

No.

Did she like the it?

Yes.

Given recent news reports about the release of FBI files documenting Chief Justice Rehnquist's long-term Placidyl habit, a tv-drama about a drug-addicted doctor may be in keeping with the Zeigeist. It sounds interesting, though I wonder if Dr. House's fictional medical center's fictional administrator ever worries about legal or medical liability... In any case, when I get a Tuesday night off--or a TiVo subscription--I may take a look myself.

Meanwhile, I'm working on my spec script for a series pilot about a drug-addicted Chief Justice of the United States, who believes that the CIA is spying on him. He's diagnosed as suffering from paranoia and a persecution complex during a withdrawal episode.

"He must be going crazy, to think that the CIA is spying on him," says a doctor in one scene set at a Washington, DC hospital, after the Chief Justice attempts to escape the grounds dressed in pyjamas.

"Why do you say that?" asks a concerned young intern.

The doctor looks him straight in the eye, pauses, and mumbles: "Everyone knows it's the FBI."

Sunset Boulevard, Reconsidered

We watched Sunset Boulevard (1950) the other night on DVD, thanks to Netflix. It struck me that Gloria Swanson's character of Norma Desmond was at the time supposed to be 50 years old--ancient enough to be a washed-up old bag desperate for her comeback. In some way, Swanson's scenery-chewing performance reminded one of Madonna...

In any case, the film is funny, especially as an inside joke about Hollywood, which hasn't changed much, it seems. Norma Desmond had a pet chimp--so did Michael Jackson. Norma Desmond believed in astrologers--so did Nancy Reagan. Norma Desmond had her first spouse work as her domestic servant--so did the owners of a Hollywood bookshop where someone I know toiled in the 1990s.

Swanson's life was apparently as melodramatic as Norma Desmond's--minus the murder of William Holden. Here's a list of Swanson's real-life romances from Wikipedia:

Marriages and Relationships
She married actor Wallace Beery (1885-1949) in 1916. They divorced in 1919 with no children but according to Swanson she miscarried after Beery, encouraged by his mother, secretly gave her a poison intended to induce a miscarriage.

She married Herbert K. Somborn (1881-1934), then president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant, in 1919. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn, was born in 1920. Their divorce, finalized in January 1925, was sensational. Somborn accused her of adultery with 13 men including Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino and Marshall Neilan. During this divorce in 1923 Swanson adopted a baby boy named Sonny Smith (1922-1975). She renamed him Joseph Patrick Swanson in tribute to her then lover, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr., the Kennedy family patriarch.

Her third husband was French aristocrat Henry de la Falaise, Marquis de la Falaise whom she married in 1925 after the Somborn divorce was finalized. He became a film executive representing Pathé in the United States. She conceived a child with him but had an abortion which she said (in her autobiography, Swanson on Swanson) she regretted. This marriage ended in divorce in 1931.

In August 1931, Swanson married Michael Farmer (1902-1975). Although frequently described as a sportsman the only evidence of the Irishman's prowess was his frequent betrothals. Unfortunately Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time, making the actress technically a bigamist. She was forced to remarry Farmer the following November, by which time she was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born in 1932. The Farmers were divorced in 1934.

In 1945 Swanson married William N. Davey and they divorced in 1946. Little is known of Davey except that single mother Gloria married this rich man because young Michelle had been nagging her about wanting a father. According to Swanson, she and Davey actually cohabited forty-five days.

Swanson's final marriage was in 1976 and lasted until her death. Her sixth husband, writer William Dufty (1916-2002), was the co-author of Billie Holiday's autobiography Lady Sings the Blues and the author of Sugar Blues, a best-selling health book. Swanson shared her husband's enthusiasm for macrobiotic diets.

There's an interesting review of the film by D.K. Holm on DVD Journal.

A New Year's Plug

Before heading off for the holidays, I went to a book party at the Hudson Institute for John O'Sullivan's memoir of life with Margaret Thatcher (he was her speechwriter). I didn't have a chance to plug the book then, so I want to do it now. O'Sullivan gave a fascinating glimpse into Thather's behind-the-scenes personality, and if the book is even half as good as his talk, it's worth buying.

Most telling anecdote: After the Pope and Reagan had survived assassination attempts, they reportedly said they thought they had spared by Providence for a special purpose. O'Sullivan asked Thatcher, did she think she had been spared by God for a special purpose -- after surviving the IRA's Brighton Conservative party conference bombing on October 12, 1984.

The Iron Lady's answer was brief:

"No."

You can buy the book from Amazon.com

Frederic Martel on American Culture

I was interested to read Alan Riding's interview with Frederic Martel, a French intellectual with a new book explaining American culture, De la culture en Amerique. Here's an excerpt from the article that sparked my interest:

What France's cultural elites have rarely done, however, is examine how both serious and pop culture actually work in the United States.

Rather, in the view of Frédéric Martel, a Frenchman and author of a recently released book on the topic, they have preferred to hide behind "a certain ideological anti-Americanism."

Now Martel, 39, a former French cultural attaché in Boston, has set out to change this. In "Culture in America," a 622-page tome weighty with information, he challenges the conventional view in Paris that (French) culture financed and organized by the government is entirely good and that (American) culture shaped by market forces is necessarily bad.

"My first idea was to compare France and the United States," he recalled, "but when I arrived in America, I realized things were much more complicated. The United States is a continent, and you can't compare a continent with a small country or a decentralized country with one that is highly centralized."

Sounds a little bit Michel Schneider, whose La Comedie de la culture critiqued the French Ministry of Culture; or Marc Fumaroli, author of L'Etat Culturel, whom I interviewed in 2000 while he visited Washington. Unfortunately, the book hasn't been translated into English yet, but as soon as it is, I'll get my copy. Meanwhile, for those who read French, here's a link to his website...

UPDATE: Frederic Martel writes:

Dear Laurence Jarvik,

Thanks a lot for your email and for the nice comment on my book. I think you are right on your comments. I just think you miss one important point when comparing my work with Michel Schneider or Marc Fumaroli (books that I know pretty well). First of all there are both very polemics (especially Schneider) and on France. I'm not talking about France at all and I'm not polemic. Second of all, I'm from the left, so it's a book by a kind of social-democrat guy not by a center right or a conservative perspective. At least, I think on my project this way. Just for your information and as a friendly reader on you own work.

Affectueusemet, frederic martel

Act of Repudiation

Cuban-American filmmaker Agustin Blazquez has another picture coming out for the New Year: Act of Repudiation. It sounds truly shocking. Here's the description he sent:

COVERING CUBA 5/CUBRIENDO CUBA 5
ACT OF REPUDIATION/ACTO DE REPUDIO
(in English with Spanish subtitles/en ingles con subtitulos en español)
produced & directed by Agustin Blazquez

WORLD PREMIERE/PREMIERE MUNDIAL
Presented by Miami Dade College

THIS IS THE STORY OF AN ACT OF REPUDIATION DIRECTED AT CLASSIC GUITARIST CARLOS MOLINA AND HIS FAMILY
Es la historia de un Acto de Repudio dirigido contra el guitarrista clasico Carlos Molina y su familia

ARTS & POLITICS ARE INSEPARABLE IN CUBA
Las artes y la politica son inseparables en Cuba

THE REALITY OF CUBAN LIFE UNDER CASTRO’S REGIME!
La realidad de la vida cubana bajo el regimen de Castro!

WHAT THE U.S. MEDIA DOESN’T TELL
Lo que la prensa de EE.UU. no dice

DON’T MISS THIS DOCUMENTARY
No se pierda este documental

Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 8 p.m.
Sabado 20 de enero de 2007, a las 8 p.m.
TOWER THEATER
1508 S.W. 8th Street, Miami, Florida

Contacts/contactos: Juan Mendieta, Director of Comunications, 305 237-7611,Beverly Counts Rodrigues, Director of Public Relations with the Press: 305-237-3949 y Alejandro Rios: 305-237-7482 & 305-989-1701

Konstantin's Russian Blog on Anna Politkovskaya

Konstantin explains how some Russians saw the recently assassinated Moscow journalist:

That's exactly what Anna Politkovskaya was – a war journalist fighting on the side of Chechen rebels. And she did her job fine. I believe her books and articles helped dozens of Chechen men and women to become guerillas and suicide bombers. During proper wars like WW2 nations don’t have war correspondents writing “truth” about their soldiers but in case an army is fighting guerillas like in Chechnya or Iraq things are different. First, such wars are mostly distant and don’t disturb everyday activities of ordinary citizens. Second, we live in a very politically correct world where big transnational NGO’s keep a close eye on human rights and power abuses. This way it’s normal that there’re many Politkovskayas both in Russia and in America. Only people both in Russia or America have very little interest to read books where their sons are described as sadistic orcs from Mordor. Enemy war correspondents are almost always marginal figures to the general public in there native countries but are extremely popular in countries that support their enemies. This is why Politkovskaya was so popular in the West and Gore Vidal is so loved in Iran.

The Accomplices

This season, New York's New Group Theatre (which appears to be a regular venue for plays by Wally Shawn, among others) presents the world premiere of playwright Bernard Weinraub's drama, The Accomplices, based on the real-life story of Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson), Ben Hecht and the work of the Emergency Committee to Rescue the Jewish People of Europe during World War II. Having dealt with this topic on film--and as an acquaintance of the playwright--I'm looking foward to seeing the show when it opens on 42nd Street's Theatre Row in March...

Ann Althouse on The Liberty Fund

Happy New Year!

A change of topic for 2007:

Ann Althouse recently attended a Liberty Fund conference, and made some striking comments on her blog, here: Althouse: Where I was when I was out of my milieu.

I am struck -- you may think it is absurd for me to be suddenly struck by this -- but I am struck by how deeply and seriously libertarians and conservatives believe in their ideas. I'm used to the way lefties and liberals take themselves seriously and how deeply they believe. Me, I find true believers strange and -- if they have power -- frightening. And my first reaction is to doubt that they really do truly believe.

One of the reasons 9/11 had such a big impact on me is that it was such a profound demonstration of the fact that these people are serious. They really believe.

I need to be more vigilant.

And here: Here's the post where I take on Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine.

My friends, in all honesty, what made me cry -- and I'm not too sentimental, as you may have noticed -- was the realization that these people didn't care about civil rights.

I was also astonished by the poise with which my tablemates handled Althouse. Our companions did not raise their voices nor dismiss her (as I would have), but tried to calm her down. In fact, Althouse made the situation even more personal by yelling repeatedly at one of my dinner companions (who is also a colleague) that she was an "intellectual lightweight" and an "embarrassment to women everywhere." In fact, in my opinion, with that statement Althouse had actually identified herself. Before Althouse stalked away, I asked her to apologize for that insult, but she refused.

I don't think I said "embarrassment to women everywhere." That doesn't sound like my language. But I really was very angry at this young woman for her smiling and for her incessant justification of racial discrimination. I left the table because Bailey himself yelled at me in an extremely harsh way. He just kept saying "You don't know her. I know her." Basically, they were colleagues, and he was vouching for her. He didn't respond on the substantive issue. How could he? He agreed with her about private discrimination. At that point, I was so offended by these people that I got up and left. I felt terrible about causing a scene and being part of any ugliness. But on long reflection, I think I would have felt far worse if I had sat through all of that without saying anything.

And here: Are we having Fund yet?

Idea geeks. Okay. Well, my experience in legal academia is that people who try to get into the idea geek zone need to get their pretensions punctured right away. The sharp lawprof types I admire always see a veneer on top of something more important, and our instinct is to peel it off. What is your love of this idea really about? That's our method.

We are here to harsh your geek zone mellow.

I am interested in Althouse's reactions, because a few years ago I was invited to a Liberty Fund event, and found it a mixed bag. The Liberty Fund does some good things, has republished works by the Founding Fathers, copies of which they donated to my Russian and Uzbek universities. In addition, there were some very interesting people at the conference on aesthetics I participated in--I got to meet Canadian painter Alex Colville, whom someone I know and I later visited in Nova Scotia, as well as critic Roger Shattuck, whose writings on Proust are worthwhile. Nevertheless, I think that Althouse has picked up on something that was in the air. In her verbal confrontation with Ron Bailey (not my favorite person--he once came up to me at an AEI event to berate me for my publications on PBS, demanding that I should criticize C-Span, instead, because C-Span is part of a lobbying effort by the cable industry--I answered something like, "So what?" Which ended the conversation), in any case, it comes out that Althouse didn't go to the Liberty Fund "hospitality suite" for cocktails after dinner. I did go to one of those late-night "bull sessions." What I heard wasn't pretty, and not fit to print. (Neither Colville nor Shattuck appeared to be there.) Not used to this sort of thing, I excused myself soon after arriving. So, I tend to conclude that if Althouse had gone drinking with the boys and girls, she might have encountered even more evidence for her case... I do agree with Althouse that certain cult-like aspects undercut the seminars' potential for making more of a useful contribution to intellectual discourse and dialog. There should be a place for more robust debate. Unfortunately, Liberty didn't fully rise to the challenge, in my experience--or Althouse's.

Remembering Jeane Kirkpatrick

From the American Enterprise Institute website:

AEI senior fellow Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who joined the Institute in 1978, died yesterday. As a young political scientist at Georgetown University, Kirkpatrick wrote the first major study of the role of women in modern politics, Political Woman (1974). It was an essay written for Commentary magazine in 1979, Dictatorships and Double Standards (later expanded into a full-length book), that launched her into the political limelight. In the article, Kirkpatrick chronicled the failures of the Carter administration's foreign policy and argued for a clearer understanding of the American national interest. Her essay matched Ronald Reagan's instincts and convictions, and when he became president, he appointed her to represent the United States at the United Nations. Ambassador Kirkpatrick was a member of the president's cabinet and the National Security Council. The United States has lost a great patriot and champion of freedom, and AEI mourns our beloved colleague.

Martin Kramer on the Iraq Study Group Report

From Martin Kramer's Sandstorm

Cogent arguments can be made for each of these three fixes, but only if you accept the core assumption: the receptivity of the Arab world to the democracy message. That is why I cannot regard these as true Plan Bs. Each of them is a Plan A, version 2.0. They build on the very same premise as Plan A: that we just have to find the right path to their open hearts.

And there's the rub. There is a growing suspicion that maybe the problem isn't us, it's them—it is some complex interaction of culture, history, and economy that is the obstacle to a successful democratic transformation.

I say "suspicion" deliberately. The idea of an Arab exception has always been anathema on the left and in Middle Eastern studies, for obvious reasons. But it has been anathema on the right as well. President Bush (following Ronald Reagan) has attacked "cultural condescension," and no one wants to be guilty of that. So we have to keep our suspicions to ourselves.

But let us be frank: there isn't a person in this room who, down in his gut, doesn't harbor such a suspicion. And no amount of historical analogy, social science theory, or stern gazes from Condi Rice can put this suspicion to rest, because too much of the front page of the paper seems to validate it.

There are also subversive texts that go far to substantiate it. One of them was published by The Washington Institute in 1992: Elie Kedourie'sDemocracy and Arab Political Culture. "There is nothing in the political traditions of the Arab world," he wrote, "which might make familiar, or indeed intelligible, the organizing ideas of constitutional and representative government. . . . Those who say that democracy is the only remedy for the Arab world disregard a long experience which clearly shows that democracy has been tried in many countries and uniformly failed."

These words now shock us in their lack of equivocation; a leading political scientist once denounced Kedourie (Baghdad-born and raised) for his "Eurocentric chauvinism." But if it is Eurocentric chauvinism we are out to pillory, might not our gaze fall upon democracy promotion itself? Upon the big-think social scientists and New York intellectuals who ran a few data sets or met a few dissidents and proclaimed the Arab world ready and eager? Upon the CPA appointees who flew into Baghdad loaded with books on the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan? One could go on in this vein, but you get the idea.

A Different Freedom

The only exit from our own self-centered chauvinism is to begin to think systematically about the way the Arab world is different, and then to formulate a true Plan B—a plan not fixated on elections, or even on democracy, but on the kind of freedoms whose suppression has been most resented in the region. Those freedoms are not the ones we necessarily value. They are collective, not individual; and they revolve around identity, not interests. There is a yearning for freedom—of a kind I call freedom of identity.

A Holiday Book Recommendation

Do you know someone who wants to understand the roots of today's conflict in the Middle East? There's no better introduction than Barbara Tuchman's Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour.

Tuchman published this book--her first--with NYU Press in 1956, dedicated to the memory of her parents Alma Morgenthau and Maurice Wertheim. I had not heard of it before it turned up in my Amazon search for a copy of her classic, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, which I had wanted to read again for perspective on the current Iraq crisis.

I can't say enough good things about this study, which is a careful examination of the role of Britain in the Middle East over the centuries, with special attention to the origins of the Balfour declaration. Tuchman writes with verve and gusto, bringing to life characters from Richard the Lion Hearted to Mark Sykes, T. E. Lawrence, Lord Balfour, and Chaim Weizmann. She's particularly good at describing the conflict in British Jewry between anti-Zionists like Montagu and Montefiores and Zionists like Nathaniel Rothschild. The Manchester Guardian and Winston Churchill come out looking good. Lloyd George is the villain of the piece (she basically calls him a liar).

For Anglophiles, as well as those interested in Zionism, Evangelical Christianity, or the Middle East--or those just wanting to read a brilliant history book...

You can buy the book from Amazon.com, here:

James Kurth on Crushing Iraq's Sunni Insurgency

From The New Republic (ht Foreign Policy Research Institute):

The Sunni Arabs of Iraq have much to answer for. Since they have
always made up a rather small minority--about 15 to 20 percent of
the country's total population--the regimes they created were
historically authoritarian ones. They compensated for their small
base by employing especially brutal methods against their Kurdish
and Shia neighbors. Successive Sunni governments became
steadily more repressive, leading eventually to the rule of the Baath
Party and culminating in the ferocious regime of Saddam Hussein.

Baathist Iraq was often compared to Nazi Germany: Saddam was
said to play the role of Adolf Hitler and the Baath Party that of the Nazi
Party. A more accurate comparison, however, would analogize the Baath
Party to the Waffen S.S., the Nazi Party's elite unit, and the Sunni Arab
community to the Nazi Party as a whole, which eventually made up as much
as 15 percent of Germany's population.

But, unlike their Nazi counterparts in Germany in 1945, the Sunni
Arabs in Iraq in 2003 were not totally defeated, devastated, and
demoralized by the time their government was toppled.
Consequently, they were soon able to initiate and support a vicious
insurgency. Even now, when Shia militias are taking their revenge
on the Sunni community and only the U.S. military stands in the
way of its decimation, opinion polls show that nearly 90 percent of
Sunnis approve of insurgent attacks on U.S. troops.

Many commentators have suggested partitioning Iraq into three
states--Shia, Kurdish, and Sunni. This would be a good solution in
many respects (analogous to the partitioning of the former
Yugoslavia), except that any Sunni state would be dominated by
an Islamist regime created by the insurgents, who would claim that
they had defeated and driven out the U.S. military and would
continue to inflict murder and mayhem upon their Shia and Kurdish
neighbors. This is why the Sunnis have to be subordinated so that
they have no state at all. The result would be an Iraq partitioned
into two states--a Shia one in the center (including Baghdad) and
the south and a Kurdish one in the north.

Mark Steyn on the Baker-Hamilton Commission on Iraq

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

God, I can't go on. I'd rather watch Mia Farrow making out with Mickey Rooney to a Doobie Brothers LP. As its piece de resistance, the Baker Commission concluded its deliberations by inviting testimony from -- drumroll, please -- Sen. John F. Kerry. If you're one of those dummies who goofs off in school, you wind up in Iraq. But, if you're sophisticated and nuanced, you wind up on a commission about Iraq. Rounding it all out -- playing David Gest to Jim Baker's Liza -- is, inevitably, co-chairman Lee Hamilton, former congressman from Indiana. As you'll recall, he also co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, in accordance with Article II Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution, which states: "Ye monopoly of wisdom on ye foreign policy, national security and other weighty affairs shall be vested in a retired Representative from the 9th District in Indiana, if he be sufficiently venerable of mien. In the event that he becomes incapacitated, his place shall be taken by Jill St. John." I would be calling for a blue-ribbon commission to look into whether we need all these blue-ribbon commissions, but they'd probably get Lee Hamilton to chair that, too.

Don't get me wrong, I like a Friars' Club Roast as much as the next guy and I'm sure Jim Baker kibitzing with John Kerry was the hottest ticket in town. But doesn't it strike you as just a tiny bit parochial? Aside from Senator Kerry, I wonder whether the commission thought to hear from anyone such as Goh Chok Tong, the former prime minister of Singapore. A couple of years back, on a visit to Washington just as the Democrat-media headless-chicken quagmire-frenzy was getting into gear, he summed it up beautifully:

''The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail.''

As I write in my new book, Singaporean Cabinet ministers apparently understand that more clearly than U.S. senators, congressmen and former secretaries of state. Or, as one Baker Commission grandee told the New York Times, ''We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.''

An ''exit strategy'' on those terms is the path out not just from Iraq but from a lot of other places, too -- including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia, China, the South Sandwich Islands. For America would be revealed to the world as a fraud: a hyperpower that's all hype and no power -- or, at any rate, no will. According to the New York Sun, ''An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference . . .''

On the face of it, this sounds an admirably hard-headed confirmation of James Baker's most celebrated soundbite on the Middle East ''peace process'': ''F - - k the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway.'' His recommendations seem intended to f - - k the Jews well and truly by making them the designated fall guys for Iraq. But hang on: If Israel could be forced into giving up the Golan Heights and other land (as some fantasists suggest) in order to persuade the Syrians and Iranians to ease up on killing coalition forces in Iraq, our enemies would have learned an important lesson: The best way to weaken Israel is to kill Americans. I'm all for Bakerite cynicism, but this would seem to f - - k not just the Jews but the Americans, too.

It would, furthermore, be a particularly contemptible confirmation of a line I heard Bernard Lewis, our greatest Middle Eastern scholar, use the other day -- that ''America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.'' To punish your friends as a means of rewarding your enemies for killing your forces would seem to be an almost ludicrously parodic illustration of that dictum. In the end, America would be punishing itself. The world would understand that Vietnam is not the exception but the rule.