June 2004
The Fourth Choice: Ending the Reign of Activist Judges
If you are looking for a reason to vote for Ralph Nader, the way both parties are handling the “gay marriage” issue should give you lots of data. John Kerry, when asked his opinion of “gay marriage,” looks like a dog getting a bath, as Chris Hitchens puts it. Kerry says he personally opposes “gay marriage”—but he favors civil unions, which are exactly the same thing. The states, he says, should decide the issue, but he voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which was specifically designed to allow each state to reject marriage licenses issued in other states. Even President Bush, who seems to have the advantage on the issue, is ill at ease. He vacillated for months and then proposed a constitutional amendment banning “gay marriage” but condoning civil unions: “The amendment,” he said, “should fully protect marriage while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.” The status in other states of a New Hampshire civil union is left to the courts—the same “activist courts” who, the President said, were so irresponsible that they made the amendment necessary in the first place. Neither Kerry nor Bush has a coherent position.
Press Lords!—June 2004
PERSPECTIVE
Honest Journalist
by Thomas Fleming
A modest proposal.
VIEWS
Independent Media Tribes
by Jesse Walker
Bypassing the old gatekeepers.
Reality TV News
by Justin Raimondo
Scripted by the Bush administration.
A Question of Power
Movies come and movies go, but probably never in the history of American film has more controversy greeted any movie than that which met Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ before and after its debut on Ash Wednesday. We all know what the controversy was about. It had nothing to do with the qualities of the film as film (it was average, as are all of Mr. Gibson’s movies), the acting (with the possible but minor exception of the fellow who played Pontius Pilate, there was no acting to speak of), the dialogue (who can possibly tell, except the handful of philologists who could follow the Latin and Aramaic?), or the plot (depending on your religious views, either there was none or it was the Greatest Story Ever Told). The controversy had to do with whether Gibson’s film was really antisemitic, and, while a good many Christians and gentiles said it was, the principal accusers along these lines were Jewish.
Honest Journalist
Why are the phrases “honest journalist” and “free press” so often greeted with a snicker? Of course, everyone exempts his own columnist or talking head from the general condemnation, but most Americans also exempt their own congressman from the universal condemnation of Congress as a body made up of toadies and swindlers. To see the American press in action, simply tune in a program like The Capital Gang. Whatever the question that divides the group—the veracity and competence of Condoleezza Rice, the payments to Haliburton for supplying oil to Iraq, the voting record of John Kerry—the response almost always breaks down along party lines: Bob Novak, Sean Hannity, Tony Snow, Kate O’Beirne, shilling for the Republicans; Mark Shields, Al Hunt, Alan Colmes doing the same for the Democrats. Occasionally, a speaker wanders off the reservation, usually because he is loyal to another reservation like the conservative movement or Marxist ideology, but such exceptions are rare interruptions in the smooth flow of thoughtless chatter and fact-free propaganda.
The Fall of Lord Blackadder and Lady Manolo (of Blahnik)
Mark Steyn once told me a revealing story about Conrad Black’s “conservative” Canadian national newspaper, the National Post. It seems star columnist David Frum had ventured this evaluation: “The Post has a problem. It was started to save Canada, but Canada isn’t worth saving.”
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