Advertisement

The war on youth

Failed presidential bids often have a terrible afterlife, plaguing us long after the bidder has faded from the scene. Remember Gov. Pete Wilson, an exceptionally nasty Republican governor of California? Years ago, Wilson geared up for his doomed hopes for national office by putting forward savage laws aimed at young people, of whom respectable California voters supposedly live in mortal fear.

Wilson passed on to all the usual rewards awaiting an ex-governor, but his anti-youth bill survives, and has a rendezvous with California's voters as an initiative on the ballot, March 7, designated as Prop. 21, nestling next to its consort in intolerance, Prop. 22, which is the Knight initiative, banning all forms of marriage except those between a girl and a guy.

These are the only two props on the California ballot that get a specific thumbs up from the state's Republican Party. Mindful of the gay voter, the Democrats are against the Knight initiative, and on Prop. 21, they take no position at all.

George W. needs an HMO to fix his growing nose

AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh, come now, Gov. Bush. None of us minds a little exaggeration; a little polishing of the positive when it comes to your record here in Texas. But now it's "liar, liar, pants on fire." Your nose is growing, Governor.

George W. Bush is now running a TV ad around the country that claims: "While Washington was deadlocked, he passed a patients' bill of rights. Under Gov. Bush, Texas enacted some of the most comprehensive patient-protection laws in the nation."

Excuse me, but if anyone is interested in the truth, George Dubya vetoed the patients' bill of rights in Texas when it was first passed by the legislators in 1995; and when they passed it again, over his opposition, by a veto-proof majority in 1997, he threatened to veto it again and then let it become law without his signature because a veto wouldn't hold.

He never even signed the patients' bill of rights, and you can look it up. Claiming that "he passed" or "delivered" the patients' bill of rights is turning the truth on its head.

Let us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear in the 74th and 75th sessions of the Texas Lege.

Dr. Laura: Radio’s leading anti-gay zealot

Twenty million listeners are accustomed to hearing the refrain on the radio: "I'm Dr. Laura Schlesinger." While many assume that she's a licensed physician or psychologist, her doctorate is actually in physiology. What's most unfortunate is that Schlesinger uses her enormous media power to violate a key precept of health care: First, do no harm.

Dr. Laura does a lot of harm. Sitting at a powerful microphone, she spews abuse at those who live outside the circle she has drawn around humanity. Being gay is "a biological error," Schlesinger proclaims.

Many of the people listening are youngsters. The other day, I heard a 10-year-old caller on Schlesinger's program, deferentially seeking advice. He got plenty of it, like everyone else within earshot.

The real war is not the fighting words of the primary campaign

AUSTIN, Texas -- Like all the other political junkies, I am just loving this -- wow, a white-hot primary; pollsters confounded; pundits wrong; he's up, no, he's down; the people calling the shots; experts looking like fools. What fun.

One must admit, anent our boy George Dubya, that if you can't even get a two-day bounce -- from Saturday in South Carolina to Tuesday in Michigan -- after spending $30 million, you could be in trouble.

What a slugfest that was in South Carolina -- the best East Texas campaign I've seen in years. Open thuggery! John McCain accused Bush of being like Bill Clinton (horror of horrors), while Bush's supporters were accusing McCain of being gay, a womanizer, having a Jewish campaign chairman, a black daughter and a drug-addict wife. Boy, that was some goin' there. The Bushies must be proud of that one.

The great mystery at this point is why so many Republicans are still voting for Bush on the theory that he's their strongest candidate. One can see why the big-money Republicans are still for him -- McCain actually threatens to do something about big money in politics. But what about the rest of the R's?

Jeorg Haider's Reeboks

Just as in Europe, prominent people here are still busy striking moral attitudes about Joerg Haider, the Austrian head of the Freedom Party now being treated as the greatest menace to Austrian decorum since the Turks besieged Vienna in 1683. Try this one from Paul Fireman, chairman and CEO of Reebok International, handed down from Reebok headquarters in Stoughton, Mass., on Feb 11, 2000.

"In 1994, I learned from an associate in London that Joerg Haider appeared in an Austrian video wearing Reebok products. Upon learning of this, I ordered an immediate investigation, and found that an employee in Austria, acting on his own behalf, without any knowledge of Reebok International, had provided product for this video. This individual's actions were a clear violation of Reebok's code of conduct, and totally against what we stand for. I asked for his immediate dismissal from our Austrian subsidiary. Reebok responded quickly and responsibly to a deplorable situation. Reebok has never supported Haider. His opinions are abhorrent to me personally, and in direct conflict with the values of human rights that form the core values of this company."

NPR floats an ombudsman, but problems run deep

What if a big restaurant chain announced that it was hiring a chief inspector -- and filled the job with the person who'd been in charge of the company's kitchens? We might roll our eyes if the incoming inspector proclaimed from the outset that the meals on the menu were delicious and nutritious.

National Public Radio has hired an ombudsman -- "to receive, independently investigate and respond to queries from the public regarding editorial standards in its programming." Jeffrey Dvorkin, the NPR vice president for news and information since 1997, is moving into the new position. A press release quotes him as saying that the creation of the ombudsman post "keeps NPR at the forefront of editorial excellence."

In this context, NPR's first ombudsman in two decades is not off to an auspicious start. The boosterism should make us wary. But Dvorkin seems committed to dialogue. "I'm the agent for the listener, and I'm there to help raise issues to the editorial staff that are of concern to the public," he told me in a recent interview.

Don't blame the IRA for the Ulster veto

Not the least dismaying aspect of the most recent crisis in Northern Ireland has been the stampeding of public opinion here in the United States into denunciation of the IRA, and into sympathy to the political maneuvers of the British government and of the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble. Naturally enough, this sudden tilt is being viewed with profound satisfaction by the British, not to mention the Ulster Unionists, who have chafed for years at the admirable refusal of the Clinton administration to take dictation from the British Embassy in Washington.

Tens of thousands of high-flown words have now been devoted to the IRA's supposed flouting of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, the IRA's lack of good faith, and Sinn Fein's duplicity. Yet, as Britain's Secretary for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, finally admitted at the end of last week as he returned the province to direct rule, suspending its 10-week-old coalition government, the IRA is not in breach of that agreement, which stated that decommissioning of IRA weapons should occur "in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement." This was what the IRA said once

E-Vandalism intrudes on the power to be heard

A specter is haunting cyberspace -- the specter of e-vandalism.

Media alarms have been loud recently: Electronic commerce is under siege. A virtual crime wave threatens to wreak havoc on the World Wide Web. Any site is vulnerable, no matter how big.

Let's not bother to shed tears for the likes of E*Trade, Amazon.com and Buy.com. Sympathy seems misplaced for massive outfits that are blights on the Web as they strip-mall every pixel in reach. And I can't summon much empathy for the targeted website run by the Time Warner subsidiary CNN, a cable giant with millions of viewers every day.

But at the same time, even when electronic attacks occur against corporate sites with little or no socially redeeming value, I won't cheer for cyber-saboteurs. Efforts to censor or block communication are odious -- whether based in government offices, corporate suites or secret hacker locations. What we need is not less but more speech: and especially more diverse speech.

Bush "Pioneers" creative campaign fund-raising

AUSTIN, Texas -- I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks Sunday morning. There was Karl Rove (a.k.a. "Bush's Brain") on television, chatting with the Sabbath gasbags about how the real champion of campaign finance reform is ... George W. Bush.

This was funny enough, but Rove went on to say solemnly that John McCain has taken money from lobbyists and special-interest groups! Of course, by then I was on the floor.

And then Rove said: "He (McCain) is the only candidate to accept a $2 million contribution. He took $2 million raised for a Senate campaign and transferred it over to his presidential campaign. He benefits from the current sort of insider way that we handle campaign finance laws in America, and he sees nothing wrong with that." By then I was in hysterics. Let's take a look at the record.

George W. Bush has raised the unheard-of sum of $70 million for his presidential campaign. He has collected so much money that he can afford to ignore the caps on campaign spending that accompany federal matching funds.

Alan Greenspan of Sunnybrook Farm

AUSTIN, Texas -- Listening to our presidential candidates is a splendid example of the dog-that-did-not-bark-in-the-night. (The dog-that-did-not-bark was the crucial clue to the solution of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Elementary, my dear Watson.)

While they snipe at one another over golden oldies -- abortion, soccer moms and who-invented-Willie-Horton -- there is something happening out here. And they don't know what it is, do they, Mr. Jones?

Alan Greenspan, the great pooh-bah of the economy, just raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point -- the fourth increase since June -- and clearly signaled another increase to come on March 21. This was in an effort to tamp down the roaring stock market.

The response from the stock market? According to The Associated Press, "Investors poured money into the shares of technology companies to the exclusion of all other sectors." It was the speculation in high-tech stocks that Greenspan was trying to stop, so that was a brilliant success, wasn't it?

Bill Clinton used to quote a definition of insanity: It's doing the same thing that doesn't work over and over again.

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS