Scrapbook
Scrapbook All the News that Castro Wants Printed On Feb. 5, the New York Times gave a 160-word "brief" on page A20 to one of the bizarre moments in the case of 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian...
...Santeria, maybe...
...The indefatigable campaigner for flat taxes, medical savings accounts, and many other sensible conservative reforms pulled out of the race for the Republican nomination last week...
...Here's the summary from the ad: "Many American lives were damaged during the notorious McCarthy Era following World War II, with individuals' reputations and careers often attacked and shredded...
...Reagan weighed and rejected a presidential run in 1968, and it didn't seem to do his career any harm...
...Without unpacking the deep layers of mendacity here, it's fair to ask: And this has what exactly to do with the Holocaust...
...After an order of oatmeal, scrambled eggs, home fries and rye toast, Hillary ordered an additional "two scrambled eggs with cheese," he said...
...Consider that Bill Clinton will probably be crashing at his presidential library after he leaves office...
...Ignoring that fact made the story reminiscent of the worst journalism of the Cold War, in which gullible journalists treated the tyranny of the Communist world as an excuse for incuriosity, and the freedom of the West as a tool-kit for beating up on it...
...In the aftermath of that controversy, Walter Reich, the director who courageously opposed the Arafat visit, was ousted...
...The Times noted that his two grandmothers had admitted to "playfully biting the boy's tongue and unzipping his pants" during their reunion with Elian in Miami...
...But until we've heard it, we'll merely note that the last time Attorney General Janet Reno heard of such treatment of children, she ordered an attack on a religious compound that killed 80 people...
...Restaurant owner Alex Mitrousis said it was "an honor" to host the first lady...
...Holocaust Memorial Museum...
...Once an institution starts lending its reputation to extraneous political agendas, it apparently finds it hard to stop...
...The overseers of the museum seem to have extracted from this whole experience the lesson that they can do whatever pleases them...
...She had two servings of eggs," Mitrousis recalled...
...We're going to call it the first lady's special...
...All four were practicing politicians and owed their leadership in some significant part to their political success...
...Among those discredited by the House Un-American Activities Committee and ultimately blacklisted— prevented from fully participating in postwar American life—were many African Americans, including Harry Belafonte, Paul Robeson, Canada Lee, and Jackie Robinson...
...And if the Times knows any grandmothers who bite their grandchildren's tongues— "playfully" or otherwise—we'd be surprised...
...There's no disgrace in testing the water and drawing back if it's too cold...
...The story had little to do with Elian...
...The snippet closed with a quote from one Uva de Aragon of Florida International University who said such behavior was "the same as if she were tickling him or trying to see his muscles...
...Two years ago, the Clinton administration roiled the administrative ranks of the museum by enlisting it for use as a prop for Middle East diplomacy, specifically for a photo-op tour of the facility by PLo leader Yasser Arafat...
...As Barbara J. Saffir reported in the Washington Times, "the locals have been talking about little else since Tuesday, when [Hillary] stopped for breakfast after making a speech about how New York's farmers 'are really hurting these days.'" The stiffed waitress "makes less than the minimum wage and pays for her own health insurance," Saffir noted...
...The Clintons, truth be told, are better known as freeloaders than as purchasers...
...Army Archerd of Daily Variety reports that Wolfgang Puck, Theo Bikel, Billy Wilder, and Arnold Schwarzenegger—all of whom qualify as "Austrians in Hollywood"—have, for one reason or another, chosen not to attend...
...Consider all the times they've vacationed gratis with their friends...
...As David Frum argued in these pages last September, "Since World War II, there have been only four national conservative leaders: Taft, Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich...
...Even more devastating, some members of the Foreign Language Committee for the Academy Awards boycotted last week's screening of Austria's lone entry, Northern Skirts...
...It closed with a quote from a professor that Elian's Cuban father "should win [the custody battle] hands down...
...Thus it probably should not have been surprising last week to see an advertisement in the Washington Post for a lefty documentary, Scandalize My Name: Stories from the Blacklist, now showing at the U.S...
...And consider that Hillary last week at one of her first campaign stops in Albion, N.Y., left no tip for the single-mom waitress after her free breakfast at the Village House diner...
...Maybe that has something to do with the fact that "public records" aren't open to the public in Communist dictatorships...
...Forbes for Senate...
...There could be an explanation for this weird behavior...
...Hollywood Hits Haider When it comes to showing Austria that its right-wing coalition government will not be tolerated, the European Union doesn't hold a candle to Hollywood...
...From Holocaust to Blacklist The politicization of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum proceeds apace...
...What the grandmothers did, and joked about on Cuban television, was pull the boy's penis out of his trousers to examine whether it had "grown" since he'd been on American soil...
...Maybe, if he's not too sick of the grind, he will now consider the suggestion of many well-wishers that he turn his sights to his home state of New Jersey, which still lacks a serious Republican candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Frank Lautenberg...
...At least, there was no evidence of any attempt to discover the criminal records of Elian's family still in Cuba...
...No—it was a mere laying-out of the police records of those of Elian's relatives who want to keep him in the United States, including the drunkdriving convictions of two great uncles and the robbery convictions of two first cousins once removed...
...Not exactly Triumph of the Will...
...Kilborn's story was effectively a legal brief for returning Elian to Cuba...
...Three days later, the Times ran a mammoth front-page "news" story by Peter Kilborn, complete with three photos and a pull-quote, called "A Bumpy Path for Cuban Boy's Miami Kin...
...Now, that's a nice way of putting it...
...The problem is, though the purpose of the boycott was to express outrage over Haider and his Freedom party, the movie revolves around a young group of friends of various ethnicities, living in Vienna, trying to make it big...
...She's No Tipper Bill Clinton certainly got a lot of mileage out of cheap wordplay with the name of his hometown, Hope, Arkansas...
...This turned out not to be Steve Forbes's election cycle...
...On the contrary, it's an unwillingness to run for anything other than the big prize that kills a would-be president's prospects...
...5, the New York Times gave a 160-word "brief" on page A20 to one of the bizarre moments in the case of 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez...
...Far be it from The Scrapbook to make easy jokes about riverfront land purchases, or purchasing a night in the Lincoln Bedroom...
...Austrians in Hollywood," a dinner to be held this month by Austrian consul general Werner Brandstet-ter and his wife, is facing a few no-shows...
...So what could Hillary Clinton have been thinking, The Scrap-book wonders, when she kicked off her official candidacy for the Senate last week in the town of Purchase, New York...
Vol. 5 • February 2000 • No. 22
