The Inquiring Manatee

WHAT'S WRONG WITH "DANCING WITH THE STARS"?

ABC's "DWTS," TV's top-rated show, kicked out 76-year-old Florence Henderson on Tuesday night while "saving" Bristol Palin and propelling the former Alaska governor's single-mom daughter into Week 6 of the season. The show's three judges had scored Bristol lowest in Monday night's competition with a dismal score of 18. Supposedly, viewers had made up for that with call-ins and texts in the young woman's favor. So out went Henderson, a musical-comedy pro and the beloved mom on old-time TV's "The Brady Bunch," even though her somewhat stiff dancing has improved and she is no worse on the floor than the handsome, 6-foot-7-inch former Laker, Rick Fox.

Maybe the producers are telling the truth about the combined votes of the judges and the millions of viewers that produced the good news for Palin and the bad news for Henderson.

Or maybe, and this is simply my opinion, they aren't. In either case, how are we to know? There is no real accountability. The producers don't give us any numbers from the public. It could be that decisions on whom to keep or discard are insider decisions, based on demographics, politics and, of course, ratings. The producers are acting entirely arbitrarily in asking us to trust them for an honest count. But they risk the show's credibility, which -- and this is merely my opinion -- could be on a par with that of one of Hamid Karzai's Afghanistan elections, for all I know.

It's not hard to figure why the producers would want to keep Palin in, as awkward as she is (the poor, game, over-her-head thing) on the dance floor. She's in the youthful demographic that advertisers covet. By contrast, advertisers stupidly figure that nobody in their 70s watching the show, Henderson's demographic, ever buys anything. (Disregarding the age-old fact that older people have a lot more money than teenagers.)

Another motive might well be the mixture of politics and ratings. Sarah Palin has a huge, worshipful Tea Party following. Why else would the producers have cast Bristol Palin in the first place? Keeping that big potential audience segment of extreme conservatives on board as long as possible (while building network goodwill with these knee-jerk media-haters) is clearly an appealing course for ABC and the show's runners.

All in all, it appears that Bristol Palin would have to go into a fainting collapse from the first beat to disappear from "Dancing With the Stars." But as the weeks go on, the cynicism about her survival is sure to grow.

Putting Breitbart in His Place: Legally Liable for Defamation

   So I see where Shirley Sherrod, the USDA official ousted from her Georgia position thanks to a misleadingly edited video posted by Big Government.com blogger Andrew Breitbart and trumpeted by Fox News, is thinking of suing Breitbart for defamation.

  Unfortunately, under the Supreme Court's 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan defamation decision, Breitbart might well win the lawsuit because Shirley Sherrod as a USDA official addressing the NAACP on a public issue easily could be deemed a "public figure." As such, she cannot recover damages for slander without proof that Andrew Breitbart published the tendentiously edited video with knowledge of its falsity or with "actual malice" -- publication with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.  

   Still, as a lawyer myself, I'd love to take the case because (1) the unprincipled Breitbart has some comeuppance coming, just as his obnoxious little ACORN  protege got his in Mary Landrieu's Louisiana office, (2) it could easily be argued that Breitbart published with actual knowledge of falsity, promoting the purposely false impression that Sherrod was a racist who was denying government services to white farmers, in reckless disregard for the effect of his misleading actions upon her career.   

    Breitbart's lawyers might be forced to fall back upon a final line of defense: No real damages suffered by plaintiff Sherrod. She got publicly and humiliatingly canned, but everyone involved -- from President Obama to Tom Vilsack to the NAACP -- has just as publicly apologized. Her reputation has been entirely vindicated. She's been offered a government job back, and if she takes it, where are the real damages?

McChrystal: The Three Unsaid Words That Would Have Saved Him

     Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out. Rolling Stone and contributor Michael Hastings (ex-Newsweek, like me) are basking today in the professional glory of revealing information that shook the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan to its foundations.

     The trouble over the snarky, Bud Lite-fueled remarks by McChrystal and his entourage over their civilian overseers on the Obama administration's national security team could have been so easily avoided. All it would have taken is three little words: "Off the record."

     There is no excuse for McChrystal and his top aides not being aware of how news interviews work. If you don't mind remarks being published but you don't want them attributed to you, you simply say "not for attribution." If you don't want them to be made public at all, you say "off the record." The reporter is obligated by ethics, custom and professional reputation to sit on those remarks. They can't be used. Period. At best, if McChrystal and his people had gone off the record, Hastings could come no closer than writing vaguely that around the four-star general there was at times the impression of an attitude bordering on disdain for the competence of some unnamed civilians involved in the war effort. That way, McChrystal is left with the defense that he's not responsible for a reporter's mere, alleged impression. 

    It's astounding that the sophisticated soldier had not taken to heart what New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm once said about journalists: We are always selling somebody out. Give us a sword, as Richard Nixon might say, and we will carve you up.

    McChrystal inexplicably was as clueless as the late, unfortunate Earl Butz, the Jerry Ford agriculture secretary who lost his job in 1976 after saying jocularly amid the camaraderie of a plane ride: "You know what the colored man wants? Loose shoes, a tight pussy and a warm place to shit." He said this in the presence of John Dean. Dean was not only the best-known American snitch of the 20th Century, he was then writing a piece on the 1976 Republican national convention for -- guess who? -- Rolling Stone.  Butz knew this, but went ahead. Today, score another one for Rolling Stone.

    From now on, generals are going to give a lot less access to reporters, and will be tight-lipped during any periods of access that are granted. That's a loss to the public.

   And that's on the record.

Helen Thomas Spells it Out

   For six years, 1991-1997, I was in the White House press corps with the redoubtable Helen Thomas, then of UPI. An institution, she had been covering the presidency since 1960.

    Everybody thought she was a grand lady. I drove her home to her condo across the street from the Shoreham Hotel, not far from my place, a number of times.

    But there was one thing I began to notice about her. A Lebanese-American, she devoted virtually every news conference question she asked to Middle Eastern issues. And she always got in a barb or two against Israel. She clearly had an agenda and she clearly was biased. Everyone seemed to overlook this. I found it quite irritating and off-putting, despite my admiration for Helen.

    Well, on May 27 Helen finally let it all hang out at the age of 89. In a video-recorded interview with a website called rabbilive.com (now, why was she speaking to them in the first place?), she is seen saying that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go somewhere else, such as "Germany, Poland or the U.S." She later apologized, but some damage has been done to her reputation. A Bethesda, Md., high school cancelled her appearance for a graduation speech. 

    Helen promptly announced her retirement.

    Unlike Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, I am willing to accept her apology. The saddening thing is the ignorance with which this intelligent woman spoke. Germany? Poland? Why did she think Israel was founded in the first place? To give Jews an escape from the hatred and death in Germany, Poland and elsewhere in Europe, that's why.

   The whole thing is sad. But in a way it's good to see that the whole world now knows what was on Helen Thomas' mind this whole time. Now I'm not the only one who realizes it.

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Israel's Watery Screw-up

    Who is running Israel's security policy -- Lucy Ricardo?

    Sending commandos rappelling down from helicopters to the lead ship of the let's-help-Hamas flotilla sounds like one of Lucy's harebrained schemes -- or, as Ricky would pronounce it, one of her "hare-brenned skims."

    The "raid" was unnecessary, in the first place. The pro-Palestinian activists, mostly Turks, fully expected to be intercepted at sea by Israeli naval vessels, arrested and taken ashore. Their actions were provocative and insulting, but not an act of war. It was civil disobedience. They were met by an over-the-top military response. Sending out the navy ships would have been enough.

    Over the top, but at the same time underprepared. The Israeli story is that the soldiers were armed only with paintball guns. If this is even true, it's absurd. They should have expected at least some troublemakers among the activists to have the fighting implements and knives that allegedly greeted the soldiers.    

    To have this amateur-hour exercise descend into mayhem and homicide was foreseeable and should have been foreseen. Heads should roll in the Israeli Defense Forces over this one.

    Israel has the worst international PR this side of North Korea, and she keeps going far to lose the few international friends she has. It's time for the Zionist nation to wake up and install a peace party in power. 

    But let's not give the screaming Turkish government a free pass in all this. The Erdogan government is a bunch of Islamists, awaiting every opportunity to turn Turkey from a free, secular and modern republic into the next Saudi Arabia. Ankara went out of its way to back the flotilla, and, like Israel, should not have been surprised when things went wrong.

How to Get Back at North Korea

     An international investigation has found conclusively that a North Korean submarine torpedoed the South Korean naval patrol boat Cheonan in March, killing 46 sailors. Seoul has been wringing its hands over what to do about it, not wanting to get into a war with the truculent, nuclear-armed north -- which denies any involvement -- but deeply angry and eager to demonstrate that the south won't take such outrages lying down.

     More sanctions against the already isolated North Koreans and haling Pyongyang before the UN Security Council are the steps taken so far. But nothing truly punitive is likely to get past China. So what to do?   

     The solution is: a ship for a ship, then a lie for a lie. I don't know whether Seoul has any killer submarines, but the U.S. does. A killer sub from South Korea or the U.S. could silently track and sink one of North Korea's four or so submarines. When the sub goes missing and North Korea screams about it, everyone would just emulate North Korea, look innocent and deny having anything to do with it.

   Nasty for the North Korean submariners, to be sure, but they or their buddies engaged in an act of war -- a violation of the 1953 armistice agreement between the UN and Pyongyang that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. An act of war is what they would get in return, but on the terms set by North Korea -- a sneak attack, then a mendacious denial.
     What could the North Koreans say about it?

     

Britain's Got Balls

   I'm rooting for British Education Secretary Ed Balls to succeed the soon-departing Gordon Brown as prime minister and leader of the election-battered Labour (sic) Party.

   Balls is the best candidate because his accession will give the lie to those who think Britons have no Balls. In particular, a recent book badmouths the valor of British soldiers during World Wars I and II.

   Also, I can't wait to see the years of inadvertent smirking on the faces of female TV news anchors who have to read Balls' name every night on the air.

Jesus H. Crist

     Shame on the Republican Party for cratering to the blinkered old farts of the "tea party," driving Gov. Charlie Crist out of the GOP primary in Florida and into an independent candidacy for the U.S. Senate in November.

     Long a popular, moderate governor, Crist had no chance in the Republican primary after the GOP establishment raced after tea partyers in embracing the opportunistically conservative young Marco Rubio. Now it will be Crist and Rubio battling probable Democratic nominee Kendrick Meeks, a U.S. House member, for the seat vacated early by Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.     

    Crist will lack money and organization but with his high name recognition and pragmatic record of accomplishment could win a close three-way race, as Joe Lieberman won as an independent in Connecticut in 2008 after Democrats turned against him. At the least, Crist could split Republican votes and deliver the election to Meeks, just as Teddy Roosevelt's principled, third-party Bull Moose candidacy in 1912 hurt Republican William Howard Taft and made the Democrat Woodrow Wilson president.

     If Rubio loses, it will serve the Republican Party and the tea party right. Today's development provides yet more evidence that the GOP has been entirely taken over by hot-eyed extremists with a narrow agenda, blathering about loss of "freedom" at the slightest show of increased government spending -- which is necessary to help lift the United States out of recession.
     The price of purity may be election losses, but the tea party doesn't care, and like lemmings even longtime Republican officials are following the trail of purity to the possible demise of their party as it heads ever rightward and away from the center, where most votes are. Independents already turned off by the Hezbollah religiosity of today's GOP now have yet another reason to recoil in disgust.
      Charlie Crist is a good guy and doesn't deserve this banishment from a party he has served so well. Let intelligent, educated Floridians mark this day and resolve to send a message in November rejecting the overzealous, the intolerant and the rigidly ideological.

     

Welcome to Weimar

    The atmosphere in this country is beginning to smack of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and Adolf Hitler's accession to power in 1933.

    In that era of turmoil, German defeat, crippling inflation and worldwide depression, the struggling German democratic government based in Weimar was faced with repeated challenges from both left and right -- in the end, most strongly from extreme nationalists whose message of blame, scapegoating and hate appealed to lower-middle-class masses who felt threatened by change and by economic loss.
    In the United States at that time, and even more so through the Franklin D. Roosevelt years of the 1930s, democracy was under attack from the same populist Know-Nothing elements that have arisen in every national economic crisis dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion. Demagogues ranging from Huey Long and Father Coughlin to Fritz Kuhn of the German-American Bund kept the pot of civic discourse boiling with hatred.
    Nowadays, just as Nazis and their growing bands of sympathizers could not accept German defeat in World War I and the costs imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, suddenly booming extremist groups do not accept the legitimacy of the 2008 election, President Obama or any policy proposal of the Democrats. In short, having lost in 2008, they trumpet their loyalty to democracy but refuse to let the winners govern. We are witnessing the temper tantrums of ignorant, noisy, easily led children.
    Have you had enough of the wildly anti-government "tea party" types and "Christian warrior" militias like the vicious, deluded Hutaree? I have. It's time to call these intolerant, screaming mobs what they are. If they are not fascists, they are fodder for fascists. Spittle, insults and bricks flying, they are out of control -- and getting excessive media attention that attracts even more of the mentally unstable to their ranks.
    The stench of fascism is in the air. These people want to destroy the elected American government as the Nazis wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic.

    To which I say: Never again.

TALK ABOUT BAD LUCK

This guy is out for a run on the beach at Hilton Head, minding his own business Monday, when a sputtering lightplane lands on the sand -- and kills the guy. What are the odds? Sounds like my kind of luck. It's hard to fault anyone in this situation, but I can't help faulting the pilot. That's a pretty big beach down there, and it seems to me he could have done more to avoid the runner. As a runner myself, I mourn this death.