Editorials/See No Evil/Downright Scary
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS See No Evil by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. H oward Kurtz, the Washington Post reporter whose beat is media, has come up with a howler to be placed atop another howler and savored. The other...
...Tee hee—Yuppie humor...
...The urban poor have moved from poverty to wretchednessand bloody anarchy...
...For that matter, why did most of the national press ignore the story a few weeks back when the Clintons' third White House counsel in less than three years suddenly left...
...In Texas he confided to an audience of high-toned Democrats that, Aw shucks, fellers, "Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that [1993] budget because you think I raised your taxes too much...
...The black leadership has moved from bravery and intelligence to mountebankery, and the liberals have only applied "scary" and "cockamamie" to those Americans who conclude that something different needs to be tried...
...Well, in mid-October a lunatic arrived in Washington...
...Park Police dispute his claim that "more than one million" attended his march...
...When he was caught, naturally the White House denied any impropriety...
...Watkins was caught flying presidential helicopters on golf outings...
...Expect nothing better in the White House in the months ahead, and expect the press to continue to avert its patriotic gaze...
...Had a Reuters reporter not foregone the enchiladas, the world might never have discovered that our great big lovable lug of a president remains as much a lug today as when he first tripped into the White House over two and one-half years ago...
...cuisine during Clinton's Texas speech...
...Yet his top aide, Patsy Thomasson, remains, as do many of the other Klinton Klutzes...
...The Washington press corps has seen enough Clinton buffoonery...
...Dale to continue to run the Travel Office in the early months of the administration, but did not give him any specific goals...
...Thomas Sowell writes superb books analyzing the destruction of black community and he is ignored or disparaged in terms that do not apply to him...
...Why should Rowan denounce Farrakhan...
...Then he said that "for the first time in years you've got a Congress and a Supreme Court that are hostile to black people...
...Maybe the president went down there because he had been tipped off that his draft board was sending a much-delayed draft notice...
...That's scary," they would say, though they were adults and perfectly safe in the TV studio or editorial office...
...Scary" is the word the liberals applied to the "religious right" and to the likes of Newt Gingrich...
...The Clinton crony who effected the firings was the Hon...
...Our patriotic press is embarrassed...
...Moreover, according to the GAO report, Watkins "does not know if any Financial Integrity Act reviews were done of the Travel Office in the past two years...
...Then he blamed the Republicans—another lie...
...and the president of the United States hightailed it to Texas to respond to him...
...Do you remember back in May of 1993 when the White House fired the entire White House Travel Office because of what it called "gross mismanagement...
...David Watkins, then White House Assistant to the President for Management Administration...
...Distinguished blacks who advocate that something different are either ignored or shamelessly vilified...
...It turned out that Watkins had been tying up not one but two helicopters when he golfed...
...The columnist Carl Rowan is the kind of liberal who has been given to using words like "scary" and "cockamamie" when the herd approves...
...Meanwhile Sowell, Williams, Thomas, and other distinguished Americans apply themselves to the serious tasks of society and endure the guff...
...He is not familiar with the Financial Integrity Act...
...You can be sure that in the aftermath of this travesty the one thought general to the minds of all the Chavises, Farrakhans, and Jacksons is "what can we get out of this...
...From the fringes of American society he emerged mixing good sense with poppycock and hate...
...Complete with bow tie, he is the dandy of hate politics...
...He arises to the microphone...
...A full seven months after the firings he consented to an interview with the General Accounting Office...
...Watkins does not know the 16 The American Spectator December 1995 definition of the term 'procurement official.' However, he does obligate funds for government goods and services...
...The liberals get the leaders they deserve...
...The press plane landed at San Antonio International Airport...
...Seated to his right, hands prayerfully supporting his firmly set chin, is Farrakhan...
...CI Downright Scary 18 The American Spectator December 1995...
...A year after the firing of the theretofore perfectly competent members of the Travel Office, Mr...
...The other night on "Inside Washington" he took the approved liberal line on Farrakhan, the smartly tailoredstatements interspersed with downright lies, claiming that the trips were absolutely crucial if the president was to go golfing secure from sneak attacks...
...Presumably in May of 1993 he was the genius who thought up the accusation of "gross mismanagement...
...Another nonce word popular with the giants of this city was "cockamamie...
...The family values crowd might introduce prayer into public school to compete with sex education, sensitivity training, and the other absurd and demonstrably failed innovations of the 1960s boobs...
...The realization is sinking in that the Klinton Klutzes have been moving from pratfall to gaucherie to pratfall again since the last inaugural ball, and the klutzes are not getting any better...
...Watkins is no longer with the government...
...Republicans and Democrats alike blew up at the untutorable greenhorn in the White House...
...Air Force One landed at Kelly Air Force Base...
...Have the liberals who found the "religious right" and Newt Gingrich "scary" or even "cockamamie" had a hand in the sudden notoriety of Farrakhan...
...The very day Clinton blurted out his admission that his 1993 tax increase was excessive (October 17), his White House Travel Office directed the press plane that accompanied Air Force One to Texas to the wrong airport...
...Then he fired Dale and his associates for "gross mismanagement" with criminal behavior implied...
...Now that this narcissistic revelation has reverberated through Washington, the town's political seers are agape...
...The other day, when President Clinton committed one of his episodic blunders on the campaign trail (howler numero uno), most of the press assigned to his travels were off chomping down peppers and tortillas at a Mexican restaurant (howler numero duo...
...The newly cast black leadership appears on television mixing truisms with platitudes, all interlarded with the bigoted and the irrational...
...Watkins expected Mr...
...For thirty years they have been propitiating the indignant, the enraged, the irresponsible, while slandering people who raise legitimate questions about liberal policies—policies that have fattened and spread apace with the growing misery of their clients, America's poor...
...Goody-goody liberals such as Rowan have been misrepresenting those who disagree with their welfare policies for years, transforming a discussion of public policy into a mind-reading session from which they can call a conservative a racist or "hostile to black people...
...What was the second one for—his bags...
...Hundreds of black ministers espousing the traditional Christian message that carried blacks through times of real persecution and poverty—much as Judaism carried the Jews through similar times—get the liberals' cold shoulder...
...Dale [Travel Office head...
...This is what Watkins himself told the GAO...
...Ben Chavis, recently ousted from leadership at the NAACP for financial irregularities, piously stands in front of the microphone lecturing America on all the values that in his life he has so manifestly failed at...
...That's cockamamie," they would solemnize...
...If Farrakhan will argue something so clearly observable as this, he will argue anything...
...Now the liberals have given us the smartly tailored Farrakhan and his equally well-tailored, if somewhat frumpy praetorian guard...
...First he blamed Democrats on the Hill for forcing the huge tax increase on him—a patent lie...
...The Park Police, using aerial counts and records of Metro ridership, estimate the number at 400,000 with a twenty percent margin for error...
...Rowan politely disapproved of him...
...Yet why was the press downing Mexican Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...From the dignity of black leaders like A. Philip Randolph, to the moral seriousness of Martin Luther King, to the clownish self-promotion of Jesse Jackson, and now to the loony hatreds of Farrakhan, the liberals have been complicitous in a steady decline of black leadership...
...He is not aware of the Procurement Integrity Act or if he is subject to it...
...This is not only the most corrupt White House in history, it is the most incompetent...
...Well, is this latest blunder an improvement...
...leader of the Nation of Islam...
...I have the answer...
...He is threatening a law suit...
...That revelation was too much, and he went quietly into retirement...
...After firing the professional bureaucrats in the Travel Office, the Clinton administration demonstrated its knack for abusing power by prevailing on the FBI to allege criminal misbehavior to these innocent men...
...It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too...
...He was invited to speak on television...
...It prevailed on the White House Military Office to release a series of misleading D o you remember some months back when a popular word tumbling forth from the lips of all Washington's talking heads and pundits was "scary...
...And forget not the unconscionable diabolizing of one of the noblest of today's public figures, Justice Clarence Thomas...
...And there is more: "Mr...
...Walter Williams gets the same treatment...
...According to the GAO report, "Watkins did not set any specific performance expectations with Mr...
...They are averting their gaze...
...Rowan's exaggerations have lent Farrakhan ammunition...
...The Park Police say his million would spill out far beyond the area actually covered...
...He is indignant that the U.S...
...Scary" is also the word that the liberals apply to those in Congress who would slow the growth of the federal government, though that government cannot afford any more growth and is already mired in deficit...
...How in keeping with the liberal solution for all man's problems—a law suit, then pay day...
...Racism, white supremacy and hatred for Louis Farrakhan disallows them from giving us credit," is Farrakhan's petulant complaint...
...Well, if that is the case perhaps Fan-aid-Ian's hatred is justified, and his calls for a separate black nation somewhere across America's fruited plain is actually a blow for racial harmony...
Vol. 28 • December 1995 • No. 12
