It's All Our Fault
Scrapbook It’s All Our Fault Thank goodness for Karen De Young. THE SCRAPBOOK, it seems, has badly misunderstood U.S.-North Korean nuclear diplomacy. We had been under the impression that...
...It has taught American nationalism a terrible . . .” (Leon Wieseltier, New Republic, October 8...
...Hence, the diplomatic concessions and energy assistance were awaiting the submission by North Korea of a nuclear declaration that would not elicit howls of laughter even from those at the State Department who are eager for a deal— any deal—with North Korea...
...Now that he is running for vice president, and seems to have put the shoe polish away, Biden’s hair system— except for that artificially straight forelock—looks almost, but not quite, persuasive...
...Finally, we had assumed that an important moment in the history of U.S.-North Korea nuclear dealings was the discovery last year that North Korea had provided nuclear technology to Syria, the world’s second-leading state sponsor of terror...
...We have now lived long enough to be informed that Senator Biden—goofy, gaffe-prone, evergrinning, yackety Joe Biden—lends “gravitas” to a national ticket, and that the days of distinguished bald national candidates—think Dwight D. Eisenhower vs...
...Yet I was impressed by the fact that the carpet—unlike, say, Thurmond’s— didn’t cover every square inch of the landscape, allowing Biden to comb over a strategic bald patch on the top of his head...
...North Korea’s program, frozen under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration, was restarted in 2002 after the Bush administration accused Pyongyang of violating the terms of the accord...
...And in those days, at least, Senator Biden was prone to augment his high-tech system with some color approximately the shade of brown shoe polish...
...Sentences We Didn’t Finish ‘The Bush administration has been singularly lacking in a sense of the earth, in a feeling of planet ariness...
...Which is to say, Joe Biden underwent a hair transplant in the 1980s...
...If the Democratic ticket should prevail in November, the United States will boast its first vice president—just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, as they say—who has benefited from what Sy Sperling of the Hair Club for Men calls a “high-tech hair system...
...Thus we understood that when the Bush administration “said it needed to verify the assertions in the declaration,” it was merely following up on the only real condition of the deal, and that when it “let slide” the diplomatic concessions requested by North Korea it did so because the North Korean declaration was so inadequate that it failed even to please the pro-Nork diplomats at the State Department...
...it had been our impression that North Korean first vice foreign minister Kang Suk Ju admitted his government was operating a secret uranium enrichment program—a blatant violation of the 1994 Agreed Framework, and proof that the Norks’ program hadn’t really been “frozen...
...Like all transplant jobs, it featured a rigid, straight hairline across the forehead which, of course, is never found in nature...
...Our colleague, Literary Editor Philip Terzian, takes it from here: “Late one evening, two decades ago, I was on the Metroliner sleeper from Washington to Providence, and decided to head toward the club car for some sustenance...
...When it let slide the August date for removing Pyongyang from a terrorist list—which bans defense sales and restricts trade, foreign aid and financial transactions— the North Koreans announced they were suspending the dismantlement of the reactor and said last week that they were preparing to restart it...
...Adlai Stevenson— are gone, probably forever...
...And we believed that the 60-page “declaration” in June was in fact incomplete and answered very few of the questions the United States and its partners had posed in negotiating the 2007 deal...
...Which leads THE SCRAPBOOK to conclude, as always, that politics is a strange business...
...Scrapbook It’s All Our Fault Thank goodness for Karen De Young...
...Moving slowly down the gangway, I suddenly realized that, dozing comfortably in his aisle seat to my right, was Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, on his famous nightly commuting run to Wilmington...
...Gone Today, Hair Tomorrow THE SCRAPBOOK, ever mindful of our nation’s past, hastens to point out that this election is historic for reasons having nothing to do with John McCain’s age, or Barack Obama’s race, or Sarah Palin’s sex...
...Ah, much clearer now...
...But DeYoung, senior diplomatic correspondent and associate editor of the Washington Post, helpfully corrected our misimpressions in an article last week on North Korea’s decision, once again, to restart its nuclear program...
...We didn’t realize the Bush administration “accused” the North Koreans of violating the 1994 Agreed Framework...
...Now, we concede, Biden was not the first senator to disguise his shining pate with strategically implanted follicle plugs—that was William Proxmire of Wisconsin in the 1970s—nor is this a practice confined to Democrats...
...DeYoung didn’t include that in her account, but given what we’ve learned from her piece, we assume that this, too, was somehow the fault of the Bush administration...
...Borat Goes to Russia Important news from the science section of the English-language edition of Pravda, September 25, 2008: “Sunbathing topless not recommended for fatty and not pretty women...
...Last year, a deal was struck between North Korea and the five partners [China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States] in which Pyongyang agreed to dismantle its weapons program in exchange for diplomatic concessions and energy assistance...
...In 2006, it exploded a small nuclear device...
...Having once stood behind Strom Thurmond on an escalator, which afforded me a bird’s-eye view of his orange-tinted transplants, I recognized that this was a rare opportunity...
...The late Strom Thurmond’s legendary virility was, no doubt, enhanced by his own high-tech hair system...
...In addition to medical nuances, sunbathing topless also involves an element of flirting, psychologists say...
...The Bush administration, whose senior ranks have long been divided over how tough to be on North Korea, said it needed to verify the assertions in the declaration...
...In June, North Korea turned over a 60-page declaration that included details of its plutonium production and blew up the cooling tower at the shuttered Yongbyon facility...
...And so, pretending to adjust my shoelaces, and rearrange some errant luggage, I lingered in the aisle long enough to get a good scientific glimpse—mere inches away—of Biden’s ersatz locks...
...Pyongyang then reactivated the Yongbyon reactor and produced enough plutonium for a half-dozen weapons...
...But no senator with a wig (the late William Roth of Delaware) or flamboyant combover (Carl Levin of Michigan) or dye job (the two Californians, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein) has ever come so tantalizingly close to national office as Joe Biden this year...
...Many women like it when men stare at them...
...Among other reasons cited in the unbylined article, “mammalogists strongly disapprove topless beach leisure...
...We had been under the impression that North Korea became a nuclear power largely because of the obsessive desires of its erratic dictator, Kim Jong Il, that he had been willing to starve his population in order to make himself the head of a nuclear state and shake down the civilized world for enough money and aid to keep the Hermit Kingdom afloat...
Vol. 14 • October 2008 • No. 4
