At Least He Gives of Himself
Scrapbook At Least He Gives of Himself THE SCRAPBOOK’s heart goes out to Joe Biden. He’s about to be raked over the coals by the media for his level of charitable giving, just as Dick...
...How dethpicable...
...As Paul L. Caron noted at the TaxProf Blog (from which we drew the figures for the chart here), “It is jarring that a couple earning over $200,000 per year would give as little as $2 per week to charity...
...And in THE SCRAPBOOK’s experience, there is a point at which that anger is directed away from the Republican and straight at the disappointing Democratic candidate...
...A Biden spokesman pointed out that he and his wife “do volunteer work with military families...
...In our Nexis search, only four of the 162 stories we turned up mentioned the Gores’ embarrassing 1997 tax returns, which showed a total of $353 in giving from an income of almost $200,000...
...Peter has just published his second thriller, L’Assassin (St...
...Martin’s, 288 pp., $24.95), which, like his earlier French Country Murder, features the exCIA operative Louis Morgon, who has retired to a quiet village in the French countryside where he finds that all the wine and cheese in the world cannot insulate him from his shadowy past...
...It’s a matter of private choice...
...During the same period, the Obamas’ tax returns show that they gave 5.8%-6.1% of their income to charity...
...red in the face may soon be turned against the candidate of hope and change...
...As we go to press, the New York Times hasn’t yet turned its big guns on the good ship Biden, but we’re sure it’s only a matter of time...
...Good Grief Now that Barack Obama has been shown to be vulnerable, THE SCRAPBOOK is ready to dust off one of its favorite political theories: Namely, when Democratic presidential candidates sink in the polls, their supporters undergo a psychic process not unlike Elizabeth K?bler-Ross’s famous “five stages of grief...
...So THE SCRAPBOOK’s advice to Senator Obama is this: Watch your back...
...Cheney replied: “I think that’s a choice that individuals have to make in terms of what they want to do with their resources...
...Dionne Jr.—at random to see what THE SCRAPBOOK means...
...THE SCRAPBOOK, in its customary way, devoured both books in a single sitting, and attests that you’ll learn things you didn’t know in Stephen Schwartz’s The Other Islam and won’t soon forget the twists and turns of L’Assassin...
...Adam “Big Time” Clymer of the New York Times, noting that Cheney was a multimillionaire, asked him at the time, “What do you think is a proper level of giving for someone who has millions of dollars, in terms of percentage...
...This giving compares very unfavorably to John McCain, whose tax returns show that he gave 27.3%-28.6% of his income to charity in 2006-2007...
...It’s not a policy question...
...Bush beat Michael Dukakis with the help of Willie Horton and the ACLU, and George W. Bush booby-trapped Al Gore’s voting machines and “swiftboated” John Kerry...
...Because a decade’s worth of their tax returns, made public by the Obama-Biden campaign on September 12, showed that they reported giving less than two-tenths of one percent of their income to charity...
...Given how harshly the media judged the Cheneys, you can well imagine what the Bidens are now in for...
...For the media, which have invested so much in Senator Obama, this may not be the equivalent of a death sentence, but it’s something like being scheduled for hemorrhoid surgery...
...and Stephen Schwartz, whose passionate prose has informed STANDARD readers on subjects as diverse as Arthur Miller and Iranian politics...
...You might call this the sixth stage of Democratic grief: recrimination...
...If you will indulge us, we will repeat here what we said in September 2000: “THE SCRAPBOOK considers it an appalling invasion of privacy, not to mention an invitation to the worst sort of Tartuffery, that we require our political leaders to disclose their charitable giving in their tax forms...
...It’s a private matter...
...McCain,” writes Dionne through clenched teeth, “is running a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign of distraction and diversion...
...Dionne Jr...
...And, we would add, Biden has made a gift of himself to his country...
...Scrapbook At Least He Gives of Himself THE SCRAPBOOK’s heart goes out to Joe Biden...
...THE SCRAPBOOK agrees...
...A tip of THE SCRAPBOOK homburg to two of our stellar contributors: Peter Steiner, whose wry cartoons have adorned this page for many years...
...Author, Author...
...But given that we do, last week’s anti-Cheney frenzy in the press was amazingly onesided...
...You need only read two of our favorite Washington Post columnists— Eugene Robinson and E.J...
...Cheney, you may recall, was criticized for being “meager” and less than generous with his gifts...
...But if the polls continue to fall, and your candidacy looks terminal, the fury that turns E.J...
...K?bler-Ross, but we have to admit that there are certain parallels in the politico-journalistic world...
...Who can put a dollar figure on that...
...Readers should bear in mind that, in the world as seen by Robinson, Dionne, and friends, Ronald Reagan won the presidency by hypnotizing the electorate with his acting skills, George H.W...
...In the two weeks since the Republican National Convention and the emergence of Sarah Palin, John McCain’s poll numbers have gone up and Barack Obama’s have declined—in some instances, putting McCain ahead of Obama, and still rising...
...He’s about to be raked over the coals by the media for his level of charitable giving, just as Dick Cheney was eight years ago...
...The problem is that after Democrats arrive at the depression stage—think the morning after Election Day 2004— they stay there indefinitely, or worse, never emerge from the anger period...
...Accordingly, our favorite pundits have lately been combining denial with anger, and showing no signs of moving into the bargaining phase...
...Over a 10-year period, the Cheneys had donated an average of just 2.14 percent of their income to charity...
...You’ve had an amazing four years of press adulation, Newsweek covers, and emotional tributes to your sacred qualities...
...Every day, the McCain campaign brays anew with over-the-top indignation at ‘the outrageous attacks’ on Palin’s family,” fumes Robinson...
...Frankly, we have our doubts about Dr...
...This happened to poor Michael Dukakis in 1988, and it certainly explains the furious complaints that John Kerry failed to respond to criticism four years ago...
...Consider present circumstances...
...If you’re keeping score at home, the Bidens’ rate of giving is one-tenth that of the Cheneys...
...K?bler-Ross wrote a popular book in the late 1960s called On Death and Dying in which she declared that terminal patients move through five separate emotional experiences—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance— when they learn that they cannot live...
...So you can imagine how the reporters are going to dog the senator from Delaware in the coming days...
...Stephen’s latest is The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony (Doubleday, 288 pp., $24.95), a fascinating guide to the mystical side of Islam and a key to understanding a reformed faith that is truly a “religion of peace...
Vol. 14 • September 2008 • No. 2
