April 25, 2007

• Best Of the Web

  
  BY JAMES TARANTO
  Tuesday, April 24, 2007 12:33 p.m. EDT

  Red Alert
  Will Weissert, Havana correspondent of the Associated Press, takes a tough, skeptical look at the government he has been assigned to cover. Well, no, he doesn’t. Actually it’s a puff piece:

  “Fidel: 80 More Years,” proclaim the good wishes still hanging on storefront and balcony banners months after Cubans celebrated their leader’s 80th birthday. Fidel Castro may be ailing, but he’s a living example of something Cubans take pride in–an average life expectancy roughly similar to that of the United States.

  And if the CIA says it, it must be true:

  Cuba’s average life expectancy is 77.08 years–second in Latin America after Puerto Rico and more than 11 years above the world average, according to the 2007 CIA World Fact Book.

  It says Cuban life expectancy averages 74.85 years for men and 79.43 years for women, compared with 75.15 and 80.97 respectively for Americans.

  Weissert doesn’t tell us the source of the CIA’s information. Do these numbers come from Cuba’s totalitarian regime, and if so, shouldn’t we automatically take them with a grain of salt? There are some obvious questions a serious reporter might want to ask about these numbers. The most obvious one: Do they include people who die trying to escape?

  Two years ago we took the New York Times’s Nick Kristof to task for a bogus claim that the U.S. infant-mortality rate is no better than Cuba’s and far worse than those of other advanced countries. It turns out the reason for this is that American physicians are alone in making heroic efforts to save premature infants, who in other countries would be discarded and never even be recorded as having been born. The higher prevalence of death at age zero would have a downward effect on America’s life expectancy.

  Just how biased is Weissert’s piece in favor of Cuba’s communist dictatorship? Consider this quote:

  “Sometimes you have all you want to eat and sometimes you don’t,” said Raquel Naring, a 70-year-old retired gas station attendant. “But there aren’t elderly people sleeping on the street like other places.”

  If an old American lady told a reporter, “Sometimes you have all you want to eat and sometimes you don’t,” is there any doubt he would write a story bewailing our country’s shocking neglect of the elderly, poor and hungry? Why are American journalists more favorably disposed toward an America-hating communist personality cult than their own country?

  Blast From the Past
  Dick Cheney recently criticized the Democrats, likening their push for defeat in Iraq to the party’s approach in 1972, when George McGovern ran for president on a platform of “acid, amnesty and abortion.”

  Little did Cheney know McGovern is still alive. In a scathing Los Angeles Times op-ed, the long-ago Democratic nominee defends himself and his party:

  There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney’s consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

  Who was the real loser of ’72?

  Wow, that is a provocative question. It really made us wonder if we’ve been wrong all these years. Accordingly, we went back and checked. Turns out the real loser was McGovern, just as we had thought!

  Lesson for the Gray Lady
  Ruth Sheehan, a columnist for the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., issues a forthright apology for her coverage of the Duke rape hoax:

  Members of the men’s Duke lacrosse team: I am sorry.

  Surely by now you know I am sorry. I am writing these words now, and in this form, as a bookend to 13 months of Duke lacrosse coverage, my role in which started with a March 27 column that began:

  “Members of the men’s Duke lacrosse team: You know. We know you know.”

  That was when Durham police and District Attorney Mike Nifong were describing a “wall of silence” among the men who attended the now-vaunted lacrosse party at 610 Buchanan Blvd. Nifong, now described by the state attorney general as a “rogue prosecutor,” was widely respected as solid, even understated.

  Though wrong, my initial column was cheered by hundreds of readers.

  Last weekend, our public editor, Ted Vaden, laid me low for that first column, and the second, which called for the firing of lacrosse coach Mike Pressler. According to Don Yeager, a former Sports Illustrated staffer who is writing a book about the case, Pressler blames me for his dismissal. I’m sorry he ended up coaching at a Division III school.

  As the Duke Chronicle reports, there’s a case to be made that another, bigger newspaper owes an apology:

  Often regarded as a national newspaper of record, The New York Times has recently come under fire for its coverage of the Duke lacrosse case. . . .

  “I think The Times’ coverage was heartbreaking,” said Daniel Okrent, who served as the first public editor of The Times from October 2003 to May 2005. “I understand why they jumped on the story when they did, but it showed everything that’s wrong with American journalism.” . . .

  Okrent said common journalistic protocol includes writing “rowback” articles, in which the newspaper corrects the record on an issue they presented inaccurately without necessarily acknowledging the mistake.

  He, along with other critics, said, however, that The Times presented too much faulty information before any sort of rowback was published, even then not addressing its alleged misrepresentation of the case. . . .

  “If and when The Times does a big story on what went wrong in the Duke case, unless they’re a part of the story, unless they report on themselves, it will be an incomplete story,” Okrent said.

  But Okrent’s successor, Byron Calame, published a column this weekend in which he offered what blogger KC Johnson, a leading expert on the case, calls the “scarcely credible thesis” that the “past year’s articles generally reported both sides, and that most flaws flowed from journalistic lapses rather than ideological bias.” Johnson offers a lengthy bill of particulars, but his overall point is this:

  Imagine the following scenario: three African-American college students are charged with a crime for which almost no evidence exists. One has an air-tight, public, unimpeachable alibi. Their accuser is a white woman with a criminal record and major psychological problems. They are prosecuted by a race-baiting district attorney who violates myriad procedures while seizing upon the case amidst an election campaign in a racially divided county.

  Does anyone believe that the Times would have covered the story outlined above with articles that bent over backwards to give the district attorney the benefit of the doubt, played down questions about his motivations, and regularly concluded with “shout-outs” regarding the accuser’s willingness to hang tough–coupled with sports columnists who compared the accused students to gangsters and drug dealers?

  The question answers itself, doesn’t it? It seems likely that the Times was engaging in some Terry Moran-style stereotyping, rationalizing that the erstwhile defendants were fair game because they were privileged jerks. But even privileged jerks are due the presumption of innocence.

  Use a Ham, Go to Prison
  “One student has been suspended and more disciplinary action could follow a possible hate crime at Lewiston Middle School, Superintendent Leon Levesque said Wednesday,” reports the Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine:

  On April 11, a white student placed a ham steak in a bag on a lunch table where Somali students were eating. Muslims consider pork unclean and offensive. . . .

  A 14-year-old Somali boy, whose mother asked that his name not be published, said he was eating lunch with four other Somali students on April 11. He noticed many others in the cafeteria “standing up, looking at us.”

  One boy came near, began laughing and threw a bag on the table while other students laughed and said, ‘Good job.’ ”

  “We didn’t know what was in this bag,” the boy said. “One of my friends reached inside it. It was a big ham steak. There were five of us at the table, all Somali. It was intended for us.”

  The boy said he looked up at students he thought were his friends. “I felt angered, offended.”

  He suddenly felt like he was alone. “At the school the next day, I didn’t feel safe. I felt like everybody was against me. Before I felt like I fit in, and everything was normal.”

  There’s no question this was an obnoxious act. The kid who did it probably deserved to be suspended. But for heaven’s sake, is a juvenile prank by a 14-year-old really a “hate crime”? Have the good people of Lewiston lost all sense of perspective?

  Then again, for legal eagles this may turn out to be an interesting case: a test of the proposition that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

  Zero-Tolerance Watch
  The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on more silly overreaction to the Virginia Tech massacre:

  It was a crude animation of one stick figure shooting another created for a school graphics class in Gloucester County last week.

  But during the same week of a shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, officials at Williamstown High School in Monroe found nothing innocent about the sketch. As a result, the student says a vice principal told him he would not be allowed to attend classes again until he passes a mental-health evaluation. . . .

  During a graphics design class on April 16–hours before the world knew that Seung-Hui Cho had killed 32 people at Virginia Tech–J.K. said he was asked to make animations for a program they were learning.

  J.K.’s sketch consisted of two stick figures, one with a raised gun that had dashes leading from it to the head of the other one.

  The next morning, he said, he showed the drawing to a teacher, but told her he was not done with it. In court papers, he said he planned to show the victim deflecting or destroying the bullet. But, he said, the teacher did not listen to him further.

  Two days later, he said, Vice Principal Paul Deal told him that he was not being suspended or expelled, but that he might be a threat to the school or himself. J.K. said he was told to leave and not return until being cleared by a mental-health professional.

  Sanity has more or less prevailed at Yale, however, where the Yale Daily News reports administrators have rescinded their ban on fake weapons in stage productions. But those producing such plays will be required to warn their audiences that they may see objects that look like weapons.

  But the Associated Press reports that a Boston college has declared itself a pointing-free zone:

  An adjunct professor was fired after leading a classroom discussion about the Virginia Tech shootings in which he pointed a marker at some students and said “pow.”

  The five-minute demonstration at Emmanuel College on Wednesday, two days after a student killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus, included a discussion of gun control, whether to respond to violence with violence, and the public’s “celebration of victimhood,” said the professor, Nicholas Winset.

  During the demonstration, Winset pretended to shoot some students. Then one student pretended to shoot Winset to illustrate his point that the gunman might have been stopped had another student or faculty member been armed. . . .

  The college issued a statement saying: “Emmanuel College has clear standards of classroom and campus conduct, and does not in any way condone the use of discriminatory or obscene language.”

  “Campuses Cope With Irrationality Every Day,” reads a headline in the News Journal of Wilmington, Del. You can say that again!

  What Liberal Media?
  “In an interview, [University of California journalism dean Orville] Schell said that after the Berkeley speech, he, his wife, Liu Baifang; ‘New Yorker’ staff writer Mark Danner; and NPR documentarian Sandy Tolan, joined Halberstam at Chez Panisse, where the five closed down the restaurant discussing the similarities between the Vietnam War and the current quagmire in Iraq.”–from the San Jose Mercury News’s obituary of journalist David Halberstam, April 23

  The Toilet Was Occupied by Zionists
  “Palestinian Minister Tries to Go”–headline, BBC Web site, April 23

  World Ends, You Know the Drill
  “After Adopting Term Limits, States Lose Female Legislators”–headline, Washington Post, April 22

  Breaking News From Last Month
  “Belarusian Opposition to Mark Chornobyl Anniversary With March in Minsk”–headline, RFE/RL Newsline, April 23

  Paying by the Pound
  “Study: Fat Workers Cost Employers More”–headline, Associated Press, April 23

  Why Barbie Is an Unhealthy Role Model
  “People Want Their Bodies Turned Plastic”–headline, Associated Press, April 23

  It’s Similar to Motown, With Hints of Rockabilly and the Beach Boys
  “Antitrust Modernization Commission Finds Antitrust Law Sound”–headline, CCH Trade Regulation Reports, April 12

  News You Can Use
  “Shelter Has Pets for Adoption”–headline, Times Union (Albany, N.Y.), April 24

  Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Vienna’s Sacher-Torte–Recipe Still Secret 175 Years On”–headline, Agence France-Presse, April 22
    
    
  • “Park Tower FAA Bulb Blows Again”–headline, Queens (N.Y.) Tribune, April 19
    
    
  • “Arrest Doesn’t End Talk of Bus Safety”–headline, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), April 23
    
    
  • “Aluminum Canoes Remain Afloat”–headline, Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal, April 24

  Environmental Movements
  We think we know why Karl Rove doesn’t want songstress turned global-warmist Sheryl Crow to touch him. Over the weekend the Washington Post published excerpts from a “blog”–that is a sort of online personal journal–on which Crow offered some rather unhygienic advice:

  I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don’t want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required.

  It almost reminds us of a “Seinfeld” episode. Crow must be really upset at the Florida Legislature for this effort described by the Miami Herald:

  Sen. Victor Crist, a Tampa Republican, is pushing legislation to require restaurants to supply toilet paper in every restroom stall. He has heard the no-paper complaint enough from female relatives.

  The final straw, he says, was when he walked into the restroom of a Chinese restaurant in Tampa last year. It had no soap, no running water and the toilet wouldn’t flush. Then he saw the chef walk out of the bathroom. . . .

  His colleagues approved the bill unanimously Monday in a Senate committee. It would codify standards of sanitation into law–mandating antibacterial soap, toilet paper and cleanable fixtures.

  You have to wonder, though, if Crow is conspiring with Karl Rove to make global-warmists look ridiculous. We thought there were at least a few serious scientists among their number.

  (Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Alan Ridgeway, Kathleen Sullivan, Ed Lasky, E.B.S. Hirsch, Doug Levene, Barry Harris, Jerry Saperstein, David Kimmelman, Michael Segal, Roy Moses, Thomas Dillon, Stuart Creque, Paul Smith, Christopher Anderson, Paul Boyer, Casey McEnelly, Marion Dreyfus, Lauren Solberg, Steve Karass, Michael Lindsay, Caryn Good, C.E. Dobkin, Dave Bosserman, Steven Getman, Charlie Gaylord, John Long, Steve Ginnings, John Knoeckel, Edward Tannen, Dan O’Shea, Paul Dyck, Mark Van Der Molen, Scott Yates, Robert Friedman, Jeff Meling, Fred Waterer, Paul Giasante, Blaise Rhodes, Frederick Bartlett, Louis Colombo, Benton Bain, Michelle Williams, Kathy Reitz, Steve Dillinger, Larry Hau, Mark Schulze, Dan Bodde, Sean Duggan, Bud Hammons, Charles Ogden, Cindy Gibson, Mike Hendrickson, Diana Highsmith, Johnny Lanctot, Greg Lindenberg, Marji Meyer, Thomas Smith, Robert Bass, Rodney Hoiseth, Jonathan White, Ethel Fenig, Mike Whitefield, David Max, Richie Powell and Jerry Skurnik. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

  

  Today on OpinionJournal:

  • Review & Outlook: HillaryCare installment plan: The Schip strategy for government-run health care.
  • Bret Stephens: “Full confidence” for an EU official despite a romp on a nude beach with an employee.
  • David Satter: Boris Yetsin’s rule was marked by lost opportunities and fearsome political corruption.
  • David Shaywitz: The power law shatters the bell curve.

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