The Alito Vocabulary
In its December 1 story on Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito and his work on a 1985 abortion case, the Washington Post raised an eyebrow at the fact that Alito, then a Justice Department lawyer, had written a memo in which (hold on to your hat) "he referred to a doctor who performs the procedure as an 'abortionist.'"
Obviously, for the Post, Alito's vocabulary seemed newsworthy, inflammatory even, notwithstanding that the customary dictionary definition of an abortionist is (indeed) a doctor who performs the "procedure," as the Post delicately puts it. In polite company these days, reference is rarely made any longer to "doctors" and "procedures"--the preferred discourse is instead about "choices," which are made at "clinics" staffed by volunteers who are there to defend "human rights."
Lest you think The Scrapbook is exaggerating to make a point, consider one reporter's question from Arlen Specter's December 2 press conference on the Alito memo:
Question: The explanation that he was acting as an advocate, do you feel that encompasses or explains all the language in that memo? Because in addition to making arguments, I mean, if I can just refer to a couple of things in there, he refers to doctors who perform abortions as 'abortionists,' he talks about their financial incentives, which is a big trope of the pro-life movement . . .
That's right, they're not doing all those procedures for the money, only for the principle of the thing.
On the off chance that reporters who think this way, or their editors, either believe that abortionists no longer exist or that no doctor who "performs the procedure" is willing to accept that designation, The Scrapbook would like to recommend a story by Stephanie Simon that appeared in the November 29 Los Angeles Times.
Simon reports at length on an Arkansas doctor, one William F. Harrison, who "estimates he's terminated at least 20,000 pregnancies" since he began counting in 1967.
He's got one hell of a work ethic, too. Here's his daily schedule: "Three abortions before lunch, and three more after." He admits to Simon: "I am destroying life." But he also likes to think that "he's giving life" because his patients are being "born again," thanks to the procedure. And how does Harrison describe his profession? Yes, "He calls himself an 'abortionist.'"
In Memoriam
Like more than a few other readers, we were startled a couple of weeks ago when Nick Kristof, the New York Times columnist, interrupted his generally favorable review of a new Mao biography to pick a quarrel with the authors over how many millions of Chinese the old monster had starved to death. Wrote Kristof: "The authors declare that 'close to 38 million people died' [in the Great Famine of 1958-61], and in a footnote they cite a Chinese population analysis of mortality figures in those years. Well, maybe. But there have been many expert estimates in scholarly books and journals of the death toll, ranging widely, and in reality no one really knows for sure--and certainly the mortality data are too crude to inspire confidence. The most meticulous estimates by demographers who have researched the famine toll are mostly lower than this book's: Judith Banister estimated 30 million; Basil Ashton also came up with 30 million; and Xizhe Peng suggested about 23 million. Simply plucking a high-end estimate out of an article and embracing it as the one true estimate worries me; if that is stretched, then what else is?"
This strikes us as something slightly indecent to quarrel over. So maybe we can all agree that it was at least 23 million too many. And perhaps we can agree, too, that killing on this scale is not something that should be easily forgotten.
Which brings us to the timely appeal we received in the mail from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. They've entered the stretch run of their fund-raising to erect a memorial to the 100 million victims (roughly speaking, Mr. Kristof) of Mao, Stalin, Lenin, et al. The statue--a bronze replica of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy statue--is planned for a site a few blocks north of the U.S. Capitol. Details can be found at www.victimsofcommunism.org.
Lend Me Your Ears
Over the years, we've watched agog as Al Sharpton has sold everything from "economic justice" to D.C. statehood to his soul to the devil. Now, the man who garnered more 2004 Democratic primary votes than any other churchless reverend is selling something new: high-interest car title loans.
As the Washington Post reported last week, Sharpton has become a TV pitchman for LoanMax ("Finally, there's someone in Virginia who will loan money to people the big guys won't loan to.") In so doing, he has joined the distinguished ranks of other political types who humiliated themselves for money--from Ann Richards and Mario Cuomo munching Doritos, to Eleanor Roosevelt pushing Good Luck Margarine, to Bob Dole revealing the sagging state of affairs before he started popping his little blue pill.
We can't honestly say we're surprised. The Scrapbook always suspected Sharpton might end up selling used cars. But the car-title-loan business appears to be more lucrative. The transactions allow cash-strapped customers who can't get bank loans to borrow money by using their cars as collateral. And we hear the interest rates are competitive with those offered by Nicky the Nose down at the Cement Shoe Factory.
Sharpton's ads have aired in three states where legislators have considered capping what can amount to annualized interest rates of 360 percent. The attorney general in one of those states, Iowa, has called it "the most abusive lending practice in the state" (vehicles can be repossessed after one missed payment). Iowa senate Democrats have actually created a worksheet illustrating what would happen if a customer got a $400 car title loan from LoanMax. After two and a half months of making minimum payments, borrowers would have paid $374, and would still owe another $300. Sharpton's right: That's not the sort of deal the "big guys" go in for.
And look at it this way. Sharpton has finally found something he never had before: a job.
Civic Education
There are disadvantages to indoctrinating college students with left-wing agit-prop. For one thing, not everyone goes to college. For another, the students are old enough to think for themselves. So some Madison, Wis., schoolteachers had the bright idea to start young. As explained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, third-graders at Frank Allis Elementary School were assigned to write 12 letters "urging an end to the war in Iraq" to "third-graders at other Wisconsin and out-of-state schools, federal lawmakers, the media and President Bush. If the war hadn't ended by the 12th day of letter writing, students would have had to start the process all over again."
The purpose? To teach "civic responsibility." Yeah right. Sounds more like training the tykes for employment in the sweatshops of the modern American left, where the favorite political activity is carpet-bombing ideological enemies with thousands of identical form letters. The only real surprise in this story is that the principal quashed the project.