The Voice of Treason

I caught a little bit of the story on the radio. Someone walked into the Jewish Federation in downtown Seattle and announced: “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel!” That this justifies his actions - shooting five Jewish women - is another story…and the media will most likely debate that if they ever get around to reporting this attack. I’ve been watching the news, waiting to hear more information, but all I’m hearing is how despicable that drunk Mel Gibson is.

“We oughta deport that anti-Semite back to Australia!”

Now see here. Mel was born in Peekskill, New York. I’m not making excuses for the man, but I’m baffled by the reaction to his alcoholic rant. After listening to callers on talk radio and the media’s coverage of the Israeli/Lebanese conflict, Mel Gibson comes across as the least hateful of the group.

It’s like the freaking levees in New Orleans. The pressure’s building and everyone chooses to ignore it until there’s a break. Like the putrid water from Lake Pontchartrain, anti-Semitism is suddenly in our faces and everyone…strangely…is taken by surprise.

I was sitting with my classmates today, and a very sweet Filipino woman from New York started to say that she was contemplating a move back. I asked how it would be possible for her to afford to live in Manhattan. She assured me there were available apartments there.

Another student, an Indian who moved here after leaving a job in Dubai, asked a question: “But it’s cheaper to live in Brooklyn, isn’t it?”

“Yah, it ees cheaper, but dere is sooo manny Jews dere.”

I noticed that when she said the word “Jews” her face squinched up and got sort of scowly. It was an odd moment. In fact, for a second I thought I was watching CNN.

Yeah, I know it sounds like herpes; it isn’t, but it’s just as annoying. I’m watching the news out of Israel and Lebanon and I have to ask: Did I blink and miss the flyers that al Qaeda dropped throughout the month of August 2001?

“Just a head’s up! We will be flying planes into your World Trade Center, Pentagon, White House, and Capitol on September 11 - you might want to schedule some PTO that day.”

Yet Israel has been warning “innocent” Lebanese civilians to scram because they’re in danger. Who else does that? Like residents of New Orleans, locals are slow to evacuate when told to, yet they have no trouble assembling when it’s time to destroy property. A spontaneous eruption: windows at the office of the U.N. are being smashed. And oh, my, my - what a strange coincidence that another spontaneous eruption is in Gaza. More destruction at the U.N. building there.

So we’re to believe that these spontaneous eruptions are spontaneous? Upset, incensed Muslims run willy-nilly into the streets, but always have the presence of mind to grab their professionally printed signs and international flags before leaving their homes. Hmmmm.

I have access to a computer, Photoshop, and a 24-hour Kinko’s. I keep a room on the side of the house with a stash of flags from every nation, 20×30 photos of world leaders, and an assortment of professionally printed signs in 54 languages. Doesn’t everyone?

Well, maybe not here…but they’re definitely stockpiling protest aids in the Third World. Question: If we are to believe that these innocent civilians live on two dollars a year and are functionally illiterate, where are they getting all these snazzy props? Call me nitpicky, but we are being told daily that Islam is peaceful and loving, so could someone explain to me why so many Islamic nations are anything but?

Last question: what the hell is an “innocent civilian” anyway?

Tony Curtis did it; Jack Lemmon did it; Milton Berle did it; even Dustin Hoffman did it. Like covers of  Weekly World News, this one’s suitable for framing. Is it Marilyn Monroe? Jayne Mansfield? Mamie van Doren? No…it’s Rudy Giuliani in drag.

I admit I cracked up when I pulled Rudy out of the mailbox this week. I knew it was coming and now here it is. I’d mentioned this on The V.O.T. a long time ago: Will America vote for a (male) candidate who’s been known to wear a dress in public?

I submitted back then that I would. But it looks like I might not have that opportunity. Would the Republican Party really nominate Rudy Giuliani as their 2008 presidential candidate? Like NR asks: Would Rudy play in Peoria?

This will be interesting to watch because the Left would have to be careful how it attacks Giuliani. They can’t very well criticize the man for being pro-choice and anti-gun. What can they do? Pull video of Rudy’s appearances in Pride parades and chide him for moving in with a gay couple after one of his sloppy divorces?

What the Left has generally said about Rudy is that he was too tough and did too good a job of cleaning up New York City and making the place inhabitable. Shame on him for turning public opinion of the city around and attracting all those tourists from Middle America who had previously sworn that they’d never step foot in that hellhole.

I visited New York in the early nineties and fell in love with the place. I even went to Shea Stadium and spoke with some lovely Mets fans. I was wearing a Cubs shirt and cap and had expected to be jumped outside the park, but the fans were surprisingly funny and friendly. This wasn’t the New York I’d expected.

There’s a very long list of things I like about Rudy Giuliani and one of the things I like is his temperament. It works for a mayor of a city like New York, but will it work for the leader of the free world? A lot of people are wondering the same thing.

And I suspect that there are social Conservatives who won’t support him. My Catholic friend who’s a one-issue voter says she would never support a pro-choice candidate. If both the Democrats and Republicans nominate pro-choice candidates, what will voters like her do? And what will the two parties do? Find the most conservative VPs to put on the ticket? That won’t play in Peoria or Pasadena or Poughkeepsie.

What I don’t look forward to is the attack from the Right. It’ll get ugly and personal, and it will show the party in a most unflattering light. The Left will only have to sit back and watch and say “See? We told you they were like this.”

The question, I guess, is who is the base in 2008? Will the GOP need to depend on social Conservatives to win, or have those people already made up their minds to look elsewhere for representation? The most socially conservative Republicans I knew in 2004 were supporting the Constitution Party. These folks would never vote for a Rudy Giuliani or a John McCain.

So what to do? Abandon them and play to Republicans and Independents who are tough on crime, taxes, and terror, but soft on everything else? Sounds to me that the Democrats and Republicans will be nominating the same candidate. Well, maybe except for that taxes part.

Um, is there a Libertarian in the house?

“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”

– Dorothy Parker

So I was just saying that I don’t check my mail as often as I used to because mail, in general, has become less enjoyable. I’d mentioned that at one time I practically staked out my mailbox - and one reason I used to do that was Florence King. When Miss King had the last page of National Review all to herself, I couldn’t wait for the new issue to appear in my box.

Well, maybe that old feeling will return - I’ve noticed that her columns have been appearing in the magazine again. And, as Martha Stewart would say, it’s a very good thing. I’ve said here before how much I adore Florence King, and her article in the new issue of NR reminds me again of how much I’ve missed her. Miss King appreciates the likes of Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker and recognizes their brilliance and wit. I suspect, if the pair were still alive, Florence would be on par with Wilde and Parker in any situation, yet I wouldn’t be surprised if the two started grating on her nerves after a while and she was forced to whittle them down to stubs.

Florence’s fuse is a short one. She hasn’t the patience to put up with crap, and frankly she shouldn’t have to. But then what would she write about? We need Florence to be subjected to crap.

Her subject this time is Ann Coulter. Ann’s been skewered by just about everyone, but you haven’t really been skewered until you’ve been skewered by Miss King. It reminds me that Ann has been appearing quite a bit on FOX News lately. Every time I hear that Ann is coming up after a break (a “whoosh!”, as Miss King submits in her article), I can hear T somewhere in the house, groaning:

“Oh, no-o-o-o-o! Not Ann Coulter again! God, I hate her!!!”

I’ve recently discovered that T hates Sean Hannity, too, and it doesn’t help that Ann is on Hannity & Colmes a lot. He insists there’s something going on between Sean and Ann because he can’t see any other reason why she’s become a fixture on the program.

She appeared on Cavuto’s show the other day, and T almost lost it. He went off on some tirade about product placement and how he wouldn’t be surprised if Ann started sporting FOX logo tattoos all over her body. Ann likes to bare her arms, so to speak, and T even has an issue with that.

“So is that intentional?”

“Is what intentional?”

“That. Her bare arms. Her hair covering the straps on whatever’s she’s wearing. It makes her look like she’s naked under all her hair. Is she supposed to look naked? Is that intentional?”

I think T suspects the boys at FOX are overly smitten with Ms. Coulter. In contrast, the “boys” at NR were not as infatuated, true; but I know crushes like this in the media are fleeting and the bloom will be off this rose faster than you can say Claudia Schiffer.

Sure, I prefer the styles of Florence King, Peggy Noonan, and Laura Ingraham - all very different in their points of view and delivery systems - but I cannot jump on the Coulter-bashing bandwagon.

Why bother when Florence King has apparently said all there is to say on the subject?

I’m a responsible adult who pays her bills in a timely manner. I used to practically stake out my mailbox so I could pounce on any new bills and pay them early. Late charges? No, that’s just something I won’t tolerate.

But I’ve noticed that the older I get, the less time I spend walking down to the mailbox to collect my mail. Days will go by before it occurs to me that the postman might be unable to squeeze any more into the box, and then I’ll be forced to drive to the local Post Office, stand in line for a few hours, and ask for it, almost as if I’d just spent two weeks in Bermuda instead of just a few yards away in Avoidance.

Mail simply isn’t as fun as it used to be. For instance, after four days, it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked the box, so I trudged down the block to fetch its contents. When you see envelopes from the State Taxation and Revenue Department, it’s never a good sign. I didn’t even have to open them; I knew what was inside. I told T:

“Remember after we mailed off our taxes I said that I thought we’d forgotten to claim those piddly energy rebate checks from the governor? I bet we’re getting nailed now.”

Am I psychic or what? In the future, I would prefer that our politicians keep their puny rebate checks and shove them up their asses if it’s going to mean that we the taxpayers are forced to pay more in penalties than what the amount of the original rebate was.

I didn’t ask for a rebate check, remember. And doesn’t the word “rebate” suggest that it’s as if you’ve overpaid on something so you’re getting a little of that something back? A refund? Why, then, is that taxed?

Why, it’s sort of like the money when you receive after you cash out your 401(k). Why is that taxed? Or when a person tries to invest their money or set some aside to save for that rainy day? Why is that taxed? Or regular income, for that matter? The stuff you and no one else gets up every morning and trudges off to work for? Why is that taxed? Or the money that exists after you’ve assumed room temperature and you don’t?

Oh…just don’t get me started.

If the Left can proclaim Bill Clinton the “first black president,” I’d like the Right to be able to proclaim Condi Rice the first black Margaret Thatcher. But there’s no evidence so far that Condi’s another Maggie. And that’s a disappointment. Sure, there were a lot of people on the Right who were thinking that George W. Bush was more Reagan than George H.W. Bush, but that’s not all that accurate, either.

We seem to be stuck, as a culture, in this nostalgic, weird, nebulous, sixties/seventies world (good Lord, just look at the awful clothes out there) and some of us - those who already experienced this weird nebulous world in real life - are starting to feel nostalgic for something that feels just a little bit more eighties. We want a Reagan. We want a Thatcher.

And this is a moment in history where someone has an engraved invitation to step up and fill those big shoes. Everybody’s looking at Condi. She’s a swell package and she’s certainly sharp. And she can be fierce. But is she fierce enough? Is she even conservative?

The relationship between Reagan and Thatcher was something to watch. It changed the world. Maggie wasted no time summing up Reagan’s successor and warned him against going all wobbly.

Now we’re watching the crisis in the Middle East and wondering if this Bush and Condi Rice will go wobbly. The pressure’s on: will the U.S. policy be wobbly or will we stand firm?

Iron or JELL-O? What will it be?

In a world where an incompetent like Kofi Annan can accuse the Israelis of deliberately targeting members of the U.N.; groups can sue when elections don’t go their way; and Lebanese-Americans can sue the federal government to influence foreign policy and dictate a cease-fire, it’s easy to succumb to wobbly.

A word of caution: Wobbly is never good foreign policy. (Happily, John Bolton seems to get that. The idiots who have contributed to Mr. Bolton’s inaccurate and libelous bio on Wikipedia obviously do not.)

I was just saying that I could depend on Bill Buckley for words one rarely sees in print and never hears. And I appreciate that. What I don’t appreciate is when a word catches fire in the press and is repeated endlessly for weeks.

A word that reared its ugly head back when the Danish cartoon flap started flappin’ is back. So annoyed by the media’s overusage of the word was I that I went on a blogging rampage and spent days on a series entitled: “The Grapes of Wrath Are Fomenting.”

Yes, it’s true. “Fomenting” is back with a vengeance. And who’s all fomented this time? Hezbollah. There’s a whole lot of fomenting going on. The Middle East has been fomenting for quite a while, dontcha know, and this whole Israel/Lebanese thing has been all a-foment for…well, ever.

There is just something about this word that’s rubbing me the wrong way. I beseech the MSM to find a new word before my head explodes. I beg. I implore. Find a substitute for “foment” before it’s too late.

Try “stir up” or “provoke.” “Fuel” or “incite.” “Agitate.” Or one I’m feeling right now…how ’bout “aggravate,” huh? Would that work for ya? Would it? WOULD IT????

I was puttering last night and switched on Drudge for a bit. He was all atwitter over the CBS interview with Bill Buckley. Kept saying that Buckley was at odds with Bush but, at his age, this could simply be a senility issue. Is Buckley losing it, he asked.

Hell no, Matt. Buckley isn’t losing his marbles and this news isn’t new. Buckley has been critical of the war in Iraq for what seems like dog years. But, as Drudge goes on to explain, criticism from the Right is serious business. He dismisses most of the carping from the Left, but when he hears a Conservative - and especially someone like Bill Buckley - saying something unflattering he sits up straight in his chair and he pays attention. I’d bet his toes twitch in his socks, too.

Matt, calm yourself. Conservatives have been skeptical from the beginning - where have you been? Remember that they had a candidate once - his name was Ronald Wilson Reagan - and they’d hoped that the other George Bush had learned a thing or two from him. No such luck. George Bush - number 41 - could not be called a Conservative. Ever since he said he was for something kinder and gentler, Reagan Conservatives got all bristly. His son aggravated the situation when he dropped the “compassionate conservative” bomb. Code words from the Bush family made it clear that they were not your grandfather’s conservatives. Grumbling started…things were said. Things like: “Jeb would be the smarter choice. Even Barbara likes him better.”

But Conservatives looked at the alternatives and said they’d give Dubya a shot. As for me, I voted for George Bush because I liked his choice for running mate. A lot. Still do. I’m surrounded by those who continue to nitpick and criticize Bush, and there’s much to criticize. Do I regret how I voted? No. I’m still thinking about the alternatives.

Am I ready to turn on the man completely because Bill Buckley has verbalized some criticism? No, because I’ve been subscribing to National Review longer than I can remember so this - again - is not news. Am I siding with Buckley? It’s not a question, really, of taking sides. It’s more of a matter of acknowledging Buckley and that he makes valid points. He’s measured, he’s fair, he’s…well, right. It’s a habit of his.

My relationship with George W. Bush is warm, but I haven’t known him long. I’ve known Mr. Buckley since I was eight years old. As I’ve said, I lived in Chicago in 1968 and I saw him “debate” Gore Vidal on TV. A life-changing experience and I’ve been faithful - just like one of his NR canine mascots - ever since. I respect the man. I like the man. I admire the man. Why, I’d let that man nibble my ballpoint pen if he didn’t have one of his own.

And I have no trouble with his opinions. We don’t agree on every point, but he knows how to support an argument and can usually win me over with facts and common sense. And a few words that you never see in print anymore and never, ever hear.

Drudge and others will try to make a story of this but they shouldn’t waste their time. Buckley and other Conservatives will praise George Bush in some areas, but there are issues that concern them. I can’t say I’m thrilled with the spending, and I can’t say I’m happy with the lack of tax and Social Security reform. I’d prefer a more aggressive approach to the War on Terror. And, like his dad, he’s been much too friendly towards Congress and other enemy combatants.

George. Take a page out of the big Reagan book and just say VETO.

I’m sorry…I just can’t get this image out of my head. When I heard that the car Ronald Reagan drove around the ranch - Rancho del Cielo, the Western White House - for so many years was restored so it could be displayed as a museum piece there, I had to sit up and pay attention.

I’d seen the man in a plain white T-shirt on the back of a horse, but what else did he drive around the ranch? A truck? A jeep?

No. Actually it was a red 1978 Subaru BRAT. You know, Subaru’s Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter? It was a gift from Reagan’s national security advisor and he drove that thing faithfully for years.

Call me crazy, call me sentimental fool, call me frivolous little cotton head - but I can’t help think there’s something utterly charming about this tidbit.

A Reagan red BRAT, back at the ranch.

I haven’t awarded anyone a Loogy in a long time, so I think I should hand out a few today. The first Loogy shall be awarded to the group of anti-gay protesters in Riga, Latvia. I don’t care if it’s Charles Manson or a crowd of book-burning Aryans - one just doesn’t hurl feces or eggs at anyone. An egg could become a perfectly fine chicken or part of a lovely omelette. It’s criminal to waste a good egg by lobbing it at someone’s head. And it’s never appropriate to fling feces at anyone. Especially if you’re trying to make the point that you aren’t related to baboons. Tossing offensive objects at people because you disagree with them only suggests that you are incapable of supporting your alternate position. Go out and buy some poster board and markers, make some signs, and be prepared to debate. If you can’t do that, then stay home, and write a letter to the editor.

Next!

A loogy to the couple of the year — Stephanie Voskanian, 31, and Oshin Grigorian, 35 — arrested as suspects in the assault and battery of 75-year-old Pedro Dorado, a parking lot attendant in Burbank, California. Actually, Mr. Dorado was a parking lot attendant in Burbank. After the dispute over a $5 parking fee, which resulted in a severe head injury, coma, and death for Mr. Dorado, Ms. Voskanian remains eight months pregnant — Mr. Dorado is just remains.

And one more to hock…

“You’ll eat when your father gets home! From his business trip two weeks from now.”

Police in Wichita, Kansas discovered two little girls in a basement, malnourished and severely emaciated. Their two step-siblings upstairs were quite well-fed and looked nothing like concentration camp survivors. “Stepmom” has been taken in for questioning; dad will be interrogated when he gets back from his business trip. Whenever that is.

Stay tuned for more Loogys - coming soon!