Week of Oct. 8, 2007

Congrats to Al Gore for a well deserved Nobel Peace Prize. If I were one of these pundit fellows, I would opine that the only way this prize can be turned into a successful run for the Democratic nomination would be to strike a deal with Barack Obama in the next seventy hours or so for Obama to agree to step aside and run as Gore's vice president (which would give Edwards the opportunity to strike his own deal for a poverty-czar style job and drop out gracefully ...). It sounds crazy, I know, but it also makes sense. Otherwise, it's already too late, and as I've written here before, I don't think Gore really wants it all that badly (and I'd be amazed if Obama would agree to the above as well).

Thank God! We have been waiting almost 100 years for the House Foreign Affairs Committee to do it and at long last they did, those statesmen and stateswomen! They voted to declare the 1915 massacres of Armenians by the Turks an official genocide.

Now, don't you feel better? Isn't the world a better place for this courageous act on the part of our legislators? Aren't we all freer? Stronger? Safer? More long-lived? Healthier? Richer? Wiser and better sexually adjusted?

What's next? A resolution condemning Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and the slaughter visited on the Egyptians at the Battle of the Pyramids? And how about a little legislative attention for the Romans killed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Better look into that one, too, guys.

Do you think that the House Foreign Affairs Committee might, after it has righted any number of ancient wrongs, look into what the Sam Hill is going on now? This very committee has a direct responsibility for the death of 600,000 Iraqis and the flight of some 2 million more from their homes. Does that bear a little looking into? While they are putting the genocide label on others, would the gentlemen and gentleladies of the committee consider putting some sort of label on themselves?

During the October 8 edition of CNBC's The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked right-wing pundit Ann Coulter:"If you had your way ... and your dreams, which are genuine, came true ... what would this country look like?" Coulter responded,"It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like." She described the convention as follows:"People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America." Deutsch then asked,"It would be better if we were all Christian?" to which Coulter responded,"Yes." Later in the discussion, Deutsch said to her:"[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians," and Coulter again replied,"Yes." When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like"the head of Iran" and"wipe Israel off the Earth," Coulter stated:"No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. ... That's what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws."

After a commercial break, Deutsch said that"Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment," and asked her,"So you don't think that was offensive?" Coulter responded:"No. I'm sorry. It is not intended to be. I don't think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to live up to all the laws. What Christians believe -- this is just a statement of what the New Testament is -- is that that's why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don't believe our testament." Coulter later said:"We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all."

If the Turks did not commit genocide against the Armenians, then it's hard to know what the word means. And yet the White House, supported by Abe Foxman's Anti-Defamation League, which purports to care about human rights, would refuse to label it as such because they find it politically inconvenient. I actually think there's an argument against such a resolution, or at least in terms of timing, given that bad relations with Turkey could lead to an invasion of Kurdistan and even more chaos over there. If I were president, I might do what Bush (and Clinton) before him is doing. That's realpolitik, and it's part of the job. But I wouldn't go around parading my morality all the time. And if I ran an organization called the"Anti-Defamation League," and collected money for the purpose of protecting human rights and preventing genocide, well, then, I would voluntarily go out of business and give the money to someone who really wants to do that kind of work.

Once more, the English department at my Southern liberal arts college will send a team to the Modern Language Association meeting to search for an African American. Oops, did I say that? I mean, an African-Americanist — someone who specializes in research and teaching African-American literature. This search, three years running, has become the most vexing aspect of departmental life, at least in part because of the department’s well-meaning but misguided goal of hiring a black candidate. When the applications come in, there is a more or less unspoken attempt to read the color of the candidate based on the colleges they attended, their names, or their committee work.

It would be relatively easy to conclude that gambling has become so prominent in American life because we have become a hedonistic country in which anything goes. But as the Rev. Richard McGowan, a Jesuit priest and gambling expert at Boston College, reminded me, 30 years ago gambling was considered a sin while smoking was fashionable, whereas today the reverse is true.

Thin-skinned to bad reviews or put-downs that called him the Kennedys'" court-historian," Schlesinger settles old scores with blood shooting straight from his eyes like a horned toad provoked. Joan Didion, for example, is a"viperfish, whispering little creature . . . a breathy, faux-sensitive writer" and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, is demeaned as a"sour Irish drunk." Writers who try to smear his reputation -- Seymour Hersh, Nigel Hamilton and Joe McGinniss, among others -- get walloped even harder."Enemies," he writes."I reflected the other day on the people who go out of their way to attack me, dragging my name into irrelevant contexts in order to make what they regard as devastating insults. . . . I wish they were more distinguished."

We liberal Democrats have been kidding ourselves for seven years if we really think we have anything to do with the debate over our foreign policy. We are nothing but whipping boys and girls, trotted out as defeatists eager to stab our troops in the back to rally the public behind a policy that has so far delivered nothing but failure. The real battle has been a family fight (literally) among Republicans, pitting the surviving GIs and Silents (Scowcroft, Baker, Colin Powell and the first President Bush), against the Boomers, including Cheney (temperamentally a Boomer although technically a Silent), Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, and George W. Bush. A secondary player has been the entire bureaucracy, including most the military and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which always had doubts about the war in Iraq and has wanted to wind it up as quickly as possible for at least three years.

WHAT'S the difference between a low-tech lynching and a high-tech lynching? A high-tech lynching brings a tenured job on the Supreme Court and a $1.5 million book deal. A low-tech lynching, not so much.