Shots in the Dark

“Let’s give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.“

—Virginia senator and presidential aspirant George Allen addressing S.R. Sidarth, a young man of Indian descent, at a campaign rally; the man works for Allen’s Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. “Macaque” is a French Tunisian slur for people with dark skin; Allen’s mother is French Tunisian. Spelled “macaca,” the word means either a monkey from the Eastern Hemisphere or a town in South Africa. Allen says he has no idea what he meant by the term.

Sidarth, by the way, was the only non-white person present in a crowd of about 100…..

Charles McGrath reviews Seth Mnookin’s Feeding the Monster in this week’s NYTBR. Since some of you faulted me for saying that Mnookin was not the most graceful stylist, I will quote:

The publisher presumably hopes that “Feeding the Monster” will catch on with the same audience that made “Moneyball” such a hit, but the real news here — the triumph of analysis and statistical study over instinct and sentimentality in the running of a baseball team — may be a bit old now, and Mnookin, though an excellent reporter, is not as stylish a writer as Michael Lewis. He has also chosen to lard his book with copious footnotes, some of which appear to be a homage to David Foster Wallace, while many others — defining the terms E.R.A., on-base percentage and the like and explaining the workings of the wild-card playoff system — seem to suggest that his intended audience is Martians, or else archaeologists investigating baseball sometime in the distant future.

When I first posted about Time’s story, “Who Needs Harvard?“, I wrote that I doubted it would have any impact on the university’s reputation. I didn’t know at the time that it was the magazine’s cover….and on CNN.com, the link to the story reads, “Smart students looking beyond Harvard.”

Which makes me think that I may have been wrong, and this isn’t such a great piece for the university….

Wick Sloane, a columnist for InsideHigherEd.com, nominates himself for the Harvard presidency. The column’s a little incoherent—I think it’s supposed to be funny—but he does have one quote that sounds right, from my observation:

“Simple kindness…is in short supply at Harvard.”

“That may be the way the vice president sees it, but I don’t see it that way, and I don’t think most Americans see it that way.”

—Former Homeland Security head Tom Ridge, a Republican, asked about Dick Cheney’s comment that Ned Lamont’s primary win over Joe Lieberman would encourage “Al Qaeda types.”

Daybreak Moon over the Sea of Cortez, Baja California

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that, in the Northeast, George Bush has a 28 percent approval rating. 28 percent! Not only is that 12 points below his national average, it’s just really, really, really low. (I doubt that even Jimmy Carter was ever at 28 percent anywhere.)

The president is so unpopular that he’s going to bring his party crashing down with him come this November. And you can’t help but think that Dick Cheney speaking out on Joe Lieberman’s behalf didn’t do Lieberman any good. If I were Ned Lamont, I’d put up a new ad right away: “Joe Lieberman: The Man Dick Cheney Wants to Reelect”….

…it’s the Alps.

Thanks to global warming, the glacier that has held a Swiss mountain-top together is vanishing, and the top of the mountain—about the size of two Empire State buildings—is about to fall.

Everyone else in the world gets it. When will George Bush and Dick Cheney?

In his piece on Joe Lieberman for Slate—which some of you remarked upon below—Jacob Weisberg (full disclosure: Jacob was a college classmate and is a friend) invokes just about every cliche of Lieberman-Lamont campaign coverage there is.

According to Weisberg:

Joe Lieberman is a “highly regarded, well-ensconced Democrat”…

Translation: Joe Lieberman is a long-time incumbent known and approved of by the MSM.

Ned Lamont is “a preppy political novice from Greenwich.“

Hmmm. What exactly does that mean? There’s at least three insults in there, only one of which—novice—really has anything to do with Lamont’s political qualifications, the other two of which are clearly supposed to contrast Lamont with Lieberman in (what is to Weisberg) an unflattering way. In this context, the description of Lamont being preppy and from Greenwich has as much to do with what Lamont is not (Jewish) than with what he is (Protestant, wealthy). It’s the old canard that preppy WASPs are not serious people.

Lamont’s campaign “was made plausible by Web-based ‘Net roots’ activists”…

Even if that’s true…so what? Since when do journalists get upset when a grass-roots movement propels a political novice into the limelight? Only when it’s a candidate taking on one of their annointed favorites. (It’d be as if someone dared challenge John McCain.)

Connecticut is uncharacteristically liberal, even for a blue state.

No, it isn’t. It’s not California or Massachusetts or Rhode Island or the District of Columbia. Its last three governors have been two Republicans and an independent, Lowell Weicker, who once was a Republican. (Almost throughout the 20th century, Connecticut governors alternated between a Democrat and a Republican.)

Southern Connecticut, especially the suburbs such as, um, Greenwich, leans Republican. When I was a kid, my congressman, Stuart McKinney—a good and honorable man—was a moderate Republican. So is his replacement, Chris Shays. Connecticut has two Democratic representatives…and three Republican.

Weisberg would be right if he said that Connecticut’s cities—New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford—are liberal. (Although if I recall correctly, Connecticut went for Reagan in the ’80s, and voted for GHWB in 1988.) Otherwise, he’s wrong.

And remember—back in the early days of the campaign, one of Lieberman’s criticisms of Lamont was that he voted too often with Republicans…..

But Weisberg’s main argument is that, in voting against Lieberman, the Democrats are making a Vietnam-style mistake, and neglecting the seriousness of the worldwide “war” against Islamic terror and fundamentalism.

I disagree, for two reasons.

The first is that Weisberg misunderstands—or misrepresents—why people voted against Lieberman. Sure, some of it was about the war. But as I’ve written previously, many Connecticut voters are sick and tired of Lieberman. His sanctimony hasn’t aged well, and neither has his lust for power, his incessant ambition. (Could you believe it when Lieberman said that the good of the country required him to run as an independent? The hubris.)

Many Connecticut voters also feel that Lieberman has lost touch with his state and that he prefers the company of inside-the-Beltway types. And Republicans.

Because it’s not just the war that anti-Lieberman voters are protesting; it’s the president and his administration. It’s the sense that this country has gone down a seriously wrong path, and that President Bush is the person who has led us down it, and that those people who have facilitated the president’s incompetence are complicit in it. That describes Lieberman perfectly.

And here’s the second reason why I think Weisberg is wrong about the Democrats’ repeating Vietnam-era mistakes. It’s not that they’re soft on terrorism. It’s that they feel that the president’s kicking-the-campfire approach isn’t working; it only spreads the sparks of terrorism further around the world.

There’s a serious argument to be made that, in the end, it isn’t military force that undermines terrorism; it’s peaceful foreign policy. Which isn’t at all to say that force isn’t sometimes necessary. But as we learn, force can negate an immediate terrorist threat, but inevitably, it creates more such threats. The war against terror isn’t working…as the New York Times reports today, it is provoking more new apostles than ever before.

So why did Connecticut Democrats vote against Lieberman? Let’s recap.

It’s not because they are soft on terrorism. It’s because…

1) They disagree with his support for the war on Iraq—which, we all know now, had nothing to do with terrorism.

2) They don’t like him anymore.

3) They feel he has lost touch with his home state and become an inside-the-Beltway politician.

4) They think that his support for President Bush in various areas has helped the President take the country in the wrong direction, and they want to see a senator from Connecticut who will stand up to the President, rather than suck up to him.

It’s not complicated, really.

Not necessarily anyone, concludes a lengthy article in the new issue of Time. Not when there are so many fine colleges around the country that may be a better fit for many kids who currently spend thousands on college counselors and drive themselves nuts to get into Harvard. Or, the article suggests, corrupt themselves, like Kaavya Viswanathan.

This article is manifestly true, of course, and has been every year for decades. Will it have the slightest impact on the number of kids grabbing and clawing to get into Harvard? Probably not. All it does, really, is build the Harvard brand….

One other note: Admissions dean Bill Fitzsimmons is quoted in the article discussing the percentage of students at Harvard from low-income families. “”The word has gone out that if you are talented, the sky is the limit,” Fitzsimmons says. “If we don’t take advantage of that energy, America will languish.”

Fitzsimmons is usually pitch-perfect with the media, but I think he strikes an off-note here: The United States will survive if Harvard doesn’t take a few dozen more low-income kids every year. The real point is that Harvard will languish without the energy and diversity of those students…..