The Week - commentary on current events, politics - Column

-- Mr. Gurbux Singh served until recently as chairman of Britain's CoCommission for Racial Equality, a government body devoted to the promotion and safeguarding of racial harmony on the scepter'd isle. Mr. Singh's tenure of that lofty position came to an end when he was fined $750 by a London court for threatening behavior, following an incident at a cricket match between India and England. India had beaten England by two wickets. Elated by this victory -- he appears to have been rooting for India -- and rendered somewhat "tired and emotional" (to use the old Fleet Street euphemism) by several glasses of wine, Mr. Singh, on leaving the stadium, accosted a police detail. He addressed some unfortunate and unprintable remarks to one of the officers, then fell to the ground. After being assisted to his feet, he shook his fist at the policemen, saying: "I'll have your jobs. Do you know who I am?" He then attempted to headbutt an officer. Setting aside the hilarity factor in this little story, it is nice to know that these "race relations" busybodies can actually lose their jobs like the rest of us. It has to be done nicely, of course: Mr. Singh got a golden handshake of $180,000 from his employers, the taxpayers of Britain.

-- No TV commercials on 9/11? The idea is afoot, and is drawing cocomment, from Tunku Varadarajan of the Wall Street Journal -- "silly and unhelpful" -- to James Bowman on NRO -- "however 'respectfully done' . . . an advertisement in such circumstances is a command to stop thinking about the dead and start thinking about laundry detergent." Is it too soon to be thinking about the dead, when the war on their killers is still unfinished? When, in other words, more are yet to die? That sobering thought did not prevent President Lincoln from speaking at Gettysburg in November 1863, four months after the battle, and almost a year and a half before the war's end. Lincoln on that occasion reminded his listeners of "the unfinished work" and "the great task remaining": no mere rhetorical flourishes, but a sober assessment of what lay ahead. If we can remember that on September 11, it won't matter whether or not people are thinking of detergent.

-- The U.S. Navy has belatedly promoted Gulf War combat hero Robert StStumpf to captain, seven years after the Senate Armed Services Committee bowed to feminist pressure and leaned on the service to deny him any promotion or command. Stumpf had the misfortune of being at the infamous 1991 Tailhook convention in Las Vegas. Although four separate investigations failed to find any evidence that he was involved in sexual harassment, the ensuing witch-hunt demanded his sacrifice. Republican and Democratic senators alike shamefully appeased the feminist gods (goddesses?). His career in shambles, Stumpf left the Navy in 1996 and has since flown for Federal Express. The Bush administration has now recognized that a nation in need of heroes ought to treat them honorably.

n Caesar Barber, a 56-year-old Bronx maintenance worker, has filed suit against McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, alleging that they are to blame for his obesity. "They said '100 percent beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," explains Barber, who has eaten at fast-food restaurants four to five times a week since the 1950s. "I trace it all back to the high fat, grease, and salt; all back to McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King -- there was no fast food I didn't eat, and I ate it more often than not because I was single, it was quick, and I'm not a very good cook." With so many parties clearly responsible for his present ills, however, we marvel at Barber's restraint in asking only the four fast-food giants for damages. Do all those health clubs -- whose ads failed to present regular exercise as a sufficiently attractive option -- bear none of the guilt? Or the cooking schools that never recruited him? And what about the millions of women who, by failing to marry him, left him vulnerable to the depredations of Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar in the first place?