Scrapbook
Scrapbook The Annals of Softball Interviewing Pat Robertson did a remarkable interview with Li Zhaoxing, China's ambassador to the United States, on the November 10 700 Club, Robertson's...
...ROBERTSON: All right...
...Founded in the year of 1992...
...I see a car going down the street and I think, How can we replace the internal-combustion engine on that car...
...It is pretty new...
...First Al Gore told a decent joke on himself to the New Yorker's Joe Klein and Jane Mayer...
...So we can see that this is a man who is good at cheating people...
...Until February of this year, John Moyers was the executive director of the Florence and John Schumann Foundation...
...Because Falun Gong spooked the Beijing government earlier this year with a peaceful gathering in the Chinese capital that caught the authorities by surprise, the movement has been banned and its members are being jailed by the dozen...
...Still, it's a fitting tribute...
...Scrapbook The Annals of Softball Interviewing Pat Robertson did a remarkable interview with Li Zhaoxing, China's ambassador to the United States, on the November 10 700 Club, Robertson's long-running Christian Broadcasting Network show...
...LI: Well, the Chinese Constitution provides for the right of the citizens' freedom of religion...
...Li Zhaoxing, remember, represents a government that still jails Christians who don't bend to its will— a government that even now is engaged in a Maoist crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, spiritualists who meditate and practice faith-healing...
...Dad, after all, would understand...
...The main question raised by this performance is whether, when Robertson collaborates with Beijing's propaganda, he is simply complying with the terms of his charity's license, or does he just not know better...
...Moyers Family Values THE SCRAPBOOK'S favorite liberal columnist, Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix, last week updated the long-running saga of America's self-dealing PBS aristocracy, aka Bill Moyers, Inc...
...Perhaps publisher John Moyers can find out whether Florence Fund executive director John Moyers would be willing to fork over some more dough...
...And lo and behold, Michigan has now announced plans to name its School of Public Policy after Ford—apparently it hadn't occurred to them before this year to name it after the only U of M graduate to become president...
...It didn't take long for Ford to start receiving his just deserts...
...Bill Moyers got in trouble when it was revealed that his PBS reports on campaign-finance reform focused favorable attention on organizations to which the Schumann Foundation has given millions of dollars, such as the Center for Public Integrity...
...LI: of course he was lying...
...Not surprisingly for a Pentecostal evangelist whose CBN WorldReach is the self-proclaimed "first Christian charity to ever be licensed in the People's Republic of China," Robertson spent much of the interview on religious freedom...
...The Rehabilitation of Gerald Ford Gerald Ford has perfected the art of ingratiating himself with the liberal establishment that once scorned him for his pardon of Richard Nixon...
...is promising, but it's got a way to go before it will be taken seriously...
...Then, after the December impeachment vote, he outdid his previous effort by co-authoring another with Jimmy Carter, arguing for censure instead of conviction...
...And a—he deliberately changed his birthday from July the 7th to May the 31st...
...Besides that, he said he's—he's more elevated than China's founder of Taoism and he's more elevated by far greater even than Jesus Christ...
...It is very damaging and harmful...
...Battle of Wits There was a shocking outbreak of humor in the Democratic race last week...
...his father was and is the president...
...Students can now gather at the Ford School to debate whether racial preferences in Michigan admissions are, as Ford describes them, "eminently reasonable...
...Kennedy describes the origins of the new Web publication TomPaine.com, now being promoted with an ad campaign in the New York Times and elsewhere...
...This has got nothing to do with any religion because the Falun Gong is not a religion...
...LI: Well, because he wanted to show off to both that he was the reincarnation of the founder, because that founder was born on the day of May 31st many years ago...
...He was lying to the people...
...It is nothing but a cult...
...Bill Bradley told reporter Seth Gitell, "When my car drives by, I want people to wave and say, 'That's Bill Bradley's car, and we want to vote for him.'" E-mail THE SCRAPBOOK In response to popular demand, THE SCRAPBOOK is now reachable 24/7...
...But Gore's rival upstaged him...
...As recounted here a few weeks ago, Moyers moralizes at ponderous length about the malign influence of money on everyone's ethics but his own...
...Bill Clinton sees a car going down the street and he says, 'What are the political implications of that car?'" Gore said, with a chuckle...
...But he went astonishingly easy on his interlocutor...
...Could you tell us about that...
...After meeting with U of M president Lee Bollinger, Ford signed on to the school's defense that its policies are constitutional because race is only "one of many factors" considered in the admissions process (a factor that— if you have the right skin tone—just happens to count for more than your SAT scores, personal essay, and past community service combined...
...Now John Moyers heads the $5 million Florence Fund, spun off from the Schumann Foundation to back various reform efforts...
...ROBERTSON: The National People's Congress, I understand, passed a law prohibiting cults...
...ROBERTSON: There's a sect that has come up, I understand, that the government has felt could not be allowed to continue...
...Is this going to ever be applied to Christianity or Buddhism or some other religion...
...Last year, Ford put himself at the service of the "let's-find-a-responsible-way-to-save-Clinton" coalition, writing two New York Times op-eds...
...And his son, it turns out, is a chip off the old man's block...
...But the fullest display yet of Ford's "principled leadership" came this year...
...Maybe it simply needs more resources...
...LI: There is a sect, or indeed there is a cult, in China, by the name Falun Gong...
...Because the government of China has only outlawed the cult Falun Gong...
...This, it turns out, is fine by Robertson...
...The first urged Congress to avoid impeachment by bringing Clinton to the well of the House for a "harshly-worded rebuke...
...TomPaine.com is among the Florence Fund's beneficiaries, and the younger Moyers serves as its publisher...
...What's most interesting about TomPaine.com," he writes, "is who runs it: John Moyers, the son of Bill Moyers and a fellow traveler with his father in the murky world of bigtime foundations...
...He was quite a character...
...To paraphrase Alice Roosevelt Longworth, if you don't have anything nice to say, e-mail it to Scrapbook@Weekly-standard.com...
...This cult was led by a gentleman called Li Hongzhi...
...In August, he penned yet another Times op-ed, defending the (almost certainly unconstitutional) racial-preference admissions policies of his alma mater, the University of Michigan, currently the target of two lawsuits...
...But what is happening recently that you'd like to discuss...
...LI: Not at all...
...I went to the various churches and I was quite pleased at the level of freedom in China...
...Liberal lion Jack White wrote a column in Time declaring Ford the "Davy Crockett" of "affirmative action's Alamo...
...Some excerpts: ROBERTSON: When I was in China, I was assured that there was religious freedom...
...Indeed, at the moment we have maybe the biggest religious community among all countries in the world...
...TomPaine.com...
...Schumann also helps pay for public broadcasting, and Knight Ridder's Frank Greve reported recently that John Moyers was not averse to pressuring National Public Radio to cover projects of interest to him...
...ROBERTSON: Why did he do that...
...We have more than 100 million people believing in various religions such as Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and so forth...
...ROBERTSON: This leader deliberately changed his birthday to say I am the reincarnation...
Vol. 5 • November 1999 • No. 11
