Rankled by Rudy
Scrapbook Rankled by Rudy When it comes to sniffing out trends, The Scrapbook is a virtual basset hound. And without trying too hard, we have detected one that ought to please Rudy Giuliani,...
...So much for the Washington Post Company...
...His skin-peeling tirades against reporters, politicians, community leaders, perceived enemies and those deemed too weak to fight City Hall were legendary,” wrote Capehart...
...Couldn’t have said it better ourselves...
...Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad said to you a moment ago...
...14, the start of the new Baghdad security plan, fell to 66, from 87 in the previous four weeks...
...Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, March 13, 2007...
...Ted Koppel Is Making Sense The former Nightline host is interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, March 11: koppel: “I made a little note here of something that [U.S...
...Also over the past four weeks, a higher proportion of military deaths from roadside bombs have occurred in Baghdad—45 percent compared with 39 percent...
...troops were to pull out of Iraq, that civil war could become a regional war between the Sunnis and Shia...
...It’s the one thing nobody talks about...
...Twenty-four years ago, the precursors of Hezbollah blew up the U.S...
...So the idea of pulling out of there and letting the region—I mean, letting the national civil war expand into a regional civil war, is something the United States cannot allow to happen...
...Here at The Scrapbook we’d be content with a president who avoids pain-inducing journalistic clich?s about burning and building bridges...
...The horror...
...And without trying too hard, we have detected one that ought to please Rudy Giuliani, at least...
...It would be a caricature of [mainstream media] behavior if the New York Times, instead of simply reporting this potentially good news, first constructed some bad news to swaddle it in, right...
...From [the March 16] Times: The heightened American street presence may already have contributed to an increase in the percentage of American deaths that occur in Baghdad...
...Now it was my turn...
...Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon...
...Soldiers,” Kaus points out, “presumably get attacked where they are, not where they aren’t...
...And the region, just in case anyone has forgotten, is the Persian Gulf, where we get most of our oil and, you and I have talked about this before, natural gas...
...That’s because our next president, according to Alter, “must be a tough-minded but flexible and humble chief executive with a talent for building bridges, not burning them...
...military deaths in Iraq have apparently declined by about 20% since the ‘surge’ began...
...I don’t see why that in itself is bad news, or even news news, if the overall casualty level is declining...
...Well, the Times is entitled to hope, isn’t it...
...Scrapbook Rankled by Rudy When it comes to sniffing out trends, The Scrapbook is a virtual basset hound...
...Does the NYT have to make some up before then...
...We just didn’t connect the dots...
...embassies in East Africa...
...Answer: Because it’s his own pendulum Giuliani’s out of sync with...
...He said the region will not be stable until Iraq is stabilized...
...Obama Messiah Watch “on the question of inner-city poverty and dysfunction, Obama proposes a suite of orthodox solutions— early childhood education, after-school and mentoring programs, efforts to teach young parents how to be parents...
...Exhibit number one: A recent column in Newsweek by Jonathan Alter to the effect that, while Giuliani “was a good mayor in many ways,” his decisive manner, short fuse, and general disinclination to suffer fools gladly “is out of sync with history’s pendulum...
...Always Look on the Dark Side . . . The Scrapbook may have nattered on too much recently about the media’s negative coverage of the Iraq war...
...The idea of an American president occasionally directing skin-peeling tirades at, say, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Pyongyang’s Dear Leader—or even at a hostile columnist— might strike many voters as refreshing, not disturbing...
...But more to the point: How does Alter know about America’s need for a flexiblebuthumble chief executive after 2008...
...Over all, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq from hostilities since Feb...
...In the meantime, as the Times winds up for the next pitch, stay tuned for the Maureen Dowd column that debuts a new sorority-house nickname for Giuliani, and the Frank Rich analysis that draws the connection between the exmayor’s onetime combover and a classic episode of “Mr...
...A few days later, as if on cue, Joyce Purnick of the New York Times weighed in with a thoughtful, gosh-darn profound Sunday morning essay—“Divining the New Moral Code”—which acknowledged that it’s “old news that divorce is no longer disqualifying for a [presidential] candidate,” but speculated that, perhaps, other private details (adultery, family tension, multiple marriages) “could spell trouble for Mr...
...With the 2008 campaign barely under way, America’s Mayor has managed to throw the chattering classes into full brow-furrowing mode...
...Notes Kaus: “U.S...
...For the meaning of this media micro-trend isn’t hard to deduce: Journalists are distinctly annoyed that a pro-choice, gay-friendly, thrice-married candidate (normally just their kind of demographic) seems to enjoy Republican support, including among some religious conservatives, and are eager to accuse him of just about anything (terrible temper, contempt for reporters), no matter how preposterous, to persuade a skeptical public that he shouldn’t be president...
...But with more soldiers in the capital on patrol and in the neighborhood garrisons, a higher proportion of the American deaths have occurred in Baghdad—36 percent after Feb...
...So we’re outsourcing this week’s complaining to Slate’s inimitable Mickey Kaus...
...14 compared with 24 percent in the previous four weeks...
...That was 1983, 241 Americans killed...
...If you look back at the elements of the war against terrorism, that war was going on and has been going on for the past 24 years...
...This war’s already been going on for 24 years...
...Exhibit number two: An op-ed column in the March 6 Washington Post by Jonathan Capehart, which revealed that Capehart had been a columnist at the New York Daily News in 1999, and then-Mayor Giuliani called him up one morning to berate him for 10 minutes about a column Capehart had written...
...There will probably be genuine bad military news to report from Baghdad soon enough...
...We were just a little bit slow to recognize it...
...Cole, you had the bombing of the two U.S...
...But he also emphasizes personal responsibility: ‘The framework that tends to be set up in Washington—which is either the problem is not enough money and not enough government programs, or the problem is a culture of poverty and not enough emphasis on traditional values— presents a false choice.’ “That’s the way Obama talks, by the way, in sinuous but precise sentences that practically diagram themselves as they go along...
...If we deploy more soldiers in Baghdad more soldiers will presumably be attacked, and killed, in Baghdad...
...In the interim, between then and now, you had two attacks on the World Trade Center, you had the blowing up of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, you had the attempt to blow up the U.S.S...
...In The Scrapbook’s opinion, this is evidence either of Giuliani’s potential strength as a candidate or the giant chip that rests on the shoulders of some political journalists...
...Either Giuliani doesn’t appeal to sensitive journalists named Jonathan, or perhaps there was a good reason for the mayor’s phone call...
...Everyone is concerned about the United States being in the middle of a civil war inside Iraq, but they forget about the fact that, if U.S...
Vol. 12 • March 2007 • No. 27
