Anti-Semitism at Duke
REGARDING YOUR SCRAPBOOK item (Nov. 1 / Nov. 8) on anti-Semitism at Duke University: Is anybody the least bit surprised at this turn of events? After all, Duke has just hosted, complimented, and justified a three-day conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, an organization whose goal is the destruction of Israel and the recruitment of students into a related terrorist-support group.
With that kind of encouragement, is it really any wonder that old-fashioned, homegrown anti-Semites are feeling empowered?
Laura T. Gutman
Durham, NC
I AM A LITTLE SURPRISED by THE SCRAPBOOK'S reaction to Philip Kurian's column "The Jews" that appeared in the Duke Chronicle.
Regardless of how we feel about an expressed opinion, everyone has a right to free speech (within bounds). As a society, to be sure, we have guidelines. We deem some forms of expression unacceptable. But Kurian's published opinion wasn't unacceptable--it was simply ignorant.
Why prohibit someone like Kurian from showing all of us (and the Duke student body) just how ignorant he or she is? Why stifle an opinion that should be expressed in order to be condemned? And, more important, who decides what's acceptable and what's not, absent some reaction from readers?
Kurian can now face the criticism of his peers. Those who think like him might reconsider. And, most important, the Duke faculty has learned that it has a long way to go in educating some members of its student body.
Jay Trunzo
Warwick, NY
Celebrity Politicos
AFTER READING Matt Labash's "The New Know-Nothings" (Nov. 1 / Nov. 8), I was compelled to respond. Among other things, Labash writes about Sean "P. Diddy" Combs--hip-hop mogul, fashion designer, and actor--and how he's been campaigning across America, encouraging young folks, especially young black Americans, to get out and vote. He even has a "Vote or Die" T-shirt.
What irony. Perhaps Combs and his entourage can visit the inner cities of this great nation and campaign to help stop young black men from killing each other. This past year, Washington, D.C., the most important city in the world, had the highest homicide rate in the country (though that rate was, ironically, the lowest it's been in years).
Washington's population is majority black. My 25-year-old nephew, God rest his soul, was shot and killed on July 23, 2004, on the streets of this city. He'll never vote, nor will his killer. Dead men can't vote, and neither can most felons.
No one can deny that rap music and rap artists have had a tremendous effect on this generation. Let them now step up to the plate and use their influence and money to help turn this crisis around.
Pamela A. Hairston
Washington, DC
IS IT REALLY NECESSARY for Matt Labash to insult entertainers for supporting an important cause such as voting? Obviously, Labash's opinion is that we are all self-absorbed idiots who do not use the sense God gave us.
This is not true. Perhaps we aren't as informed as professional journalists and may still need to learn a few things about the electoral process. But what is wrong with using one's influence to promote civic involvement? Frankly, many younger voters do not read THE WEEKLY STANDARD--but they will consume every word on MTV. It impresses them that their heroes are politically engaged.
Furthermore, if Labash looks closely enough, he may find that the entertainment world has more political savvy than expected.
Catrina N. Williams
Richmond, VA
A RINO, Not A Dem
JOSEPH BOTTUM has written a great article on Catholic voters ("The Myth of the Catholic Voter," Nov. 1 / Nov. 8). However, he mistakenly identifies Maine senator Susan Collins as a Democrat.
Senator Collins is a Republican, although I will grant she isn't much of one. Nor, as Bottum points out, is she much of a Catholic.
Joseph J. DeSanctis
Cheshire, CT
Kill All the Lawyers?
WILLIAM TUCKER'S article on the flu vaccine fiasco ("La Grippe of the Trial Lawyers," Oct. 25) prompts me to write about cancer, a dreaded word for many years. Billions have been spent searching for cures or palliatives for all types of cancer, with some success on the palliative side. But nothing has been done to attack the most widespread cancer affecting every single person in America: our legal "profession" as it now operates.
I'll venture a pessimistic guess that cures will be found for all medical cancers before even some palliative is legislated to rein in our legal cancer. The legal "profession" itself controls this problem--but it is also the mechanism that must deal with it.
The entire "profession" includes not only the plaintiff's bar and criminal defense attorneys, but also their active alumni: legislators and the judiciary, who will never be willing to take any action that might de-feather the comfy nests of their generously supportive brethren.
The result? A gigantic, metastasizing malignancy. And yet there are still parents who proudly proclaim that a son or daughter has been admitted to, or is in, law school.
Bruce Tennant
Hilton Head, SC
IT IS MISGUIDED to claim, as William Tucker does, that the current flu vaccine shortage is the fault of trial lawyers. Attorneys perform a very simple function: They operate within a system of rules to win courtroom arguments and, frequently, monetary settlements. That is simply their job.
The problem is not the trial lawyers. It is the legal structure within which they work. The solution is thus simple: Change the existing laws to protect vaccine manufacturers from unreasonable suits.
James L. Horwitz
Hendersonville, NC
Aussie Reality TV
AS MORONIC AS Big Brother contestants may be the world over, Matt Labash ("When a Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss," Oct. 18) does an injustice to Merlin Luck, the contestant who exited the Australian Big Brother house with a banner reading "Free th Refugees."
Luck can spell. The "e" in "the" on his homemade banner simply fell off. And the immigration minister was being disingenuous when he claimed there were no refugees in Australian detention centers. Despite the recent release of some refugees, others remain; and their detention has been a prominent political issue in Australia for years.
The minister should not have been the least bit "puzzled" by Luck's banner, having faced many similar demands from human rights groups and ordinary Australians.
Shakira Hussein
Canberra, Australia
Two CBS Peas in a Pod
REGARDING JOHN PODHORETZ'S "Dan Rather's Day of Reckoning" (Oct. 4), even the more sophisticated commentary on Dan Rather's forged document fiasco has failed to recognize that he is joined at the hip to his fabled predecessor, Walter Cronkite, who for decades anchored the CBS Evening News.
Even before the avuncular Cronkite bequeathed his post to an austere Rather, Cronkite openly proclaimed his liberal views and proudly admitted that he deliberately slanted the news.
In a June 1973 Playboy interview, Cronkite said most newsmen, including himself, tend to be "liberal, and possibly left of center as well. . . . They come to feel little allegiance to the established order. I think they're inclined to side with humanity rather than with authority and institutions."
In the early 1970s, when the Cold War was heating up, Cronkite's news broadcasts were highly critical of U.S. military spending. This bias was demonstrated by his reporting dovish opinion (reduce military spending) 15 times more often than hawkish opinion (increase spending). For him, the opinions of George McGovern and Teddy Kennedy were newsworthy, while the carefully researched recommendations of the Committee on the Present Danger were not.
In 1974, when he was asked to explain this disparity in his reporting, Cronkite said, "There are always groups in Washington expressing alarm over the state of our defenses. We don't carry those stories. The story is that there are those who want to cut defense spending" (emphasis added).
Cronkite also expressed his concern for "humanity" and his distrust of U.S. foreign policy in a recent interview with Larry King. Cronkite again warned against the dangers of U.S. military power and criticized President Bush's policies, adding that our problem today is not terrorism, but "greed which is overrunning our civilization." America, he declared, spends far too much on the military and not enough on fighting poverty.
Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather fall within the "liberal" tradition that distrusts the exercise of American power abroad. This is their right, but an honest and unbiased reporting of the news is their obligation.
Ernest Lefever
Chevy Chase, MD
Forget Paris
I FOUND CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL'S "Islamic Europe?" (Oct. 4) to be both informative and thought-provoking. It broached an issue that modern intellectuals have overlooked: the underlying paradox of the rise of Islamic influence in European affairs.
The desire by Western Europeans to be less xenophobic in the wake of the Holocaust has effectively benefited the Jewish people's contemporary enemy: the majority of Muslims who want to see Israel buried. What cruel irony that the legacy of the Jewish blood spilt in the Holocaust--a desire by Western Europeans to be more tolerant--has facilitated the rise of Islamic immigration and Islamic political power in Western Europe. That combination aims to undercut Israel's interests as much as possible.
And consider, for that matter, the recent surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes being perpetrated by Muslims in Europe. These were facilitated by the liberal immigration policies of the past few decades--which were in turn a function of the Holocaust's anti-intolerance legacy.
It is one thing for Western European Jews not to benefit from the legacy of the Holocaust. But it is a sad and twisted irony when the people who are least tolerant of Jewish causes benefit from that legacy. The Jewish people, 6 million of whom died in the Holocaust, should themselves benefit from Western Europe's desire for tolerance, not the people who have made promoting anti-Semitism their greatest passion.
Kit Cooper
Houston, TX