Baseball Baffles Lieberman and Schumer; Sisulu's Rightful Titles

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 27, 2003

Byline: INSIGHT

In its long and glowing obituary of Walter Sisulu, the Washington Post declared of the late South African firebrand that "Sisulu held no title beyond that of hero." To the contrary, Comrade Sisulu held the titles of Communist, Hero of the Soviet Union and Terrorist Bomber, none of which was mentioned by the hero-worshipping Post.

* Speaking of Joe Lieberman's campaign for president, which has been ignoring the left-wing activists who control the Democratic National Convention, George Will reminds the Connecticut senator: "You cannot steal first base."

* Say it ain't so, Larry. Upon learning that documents captured in Iraq show that the French Foreign Ministry regularly informed its counterparts in Baghdad of the contents of private communications from London and Washington, former U.S. secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger said dryly, "France is not our friend."

* You know why Paris knows the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction? They still have the receipts.

* The world changes so little that when the New York City cops spotlighted the famed Monkey Bar (where Tallulah Bankhead, Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando used to hang out) for tolerating an infestation of hookers, the owner fired entertainer Michael Garin, who had performed there for nine years. Why me, he asked, "I'm just the piano player."

* Murdoch's Fox network led the basic-cable-TV ratings in April with 3.5 million viewers in prime time. CNN drew an average of 2.3 million and MSNBC 1.2 million.

* The French, Belgians, Luxembourgers and Germans have announced a brigade-size joint military force. Apparently, the other three convinced the Germans they all should surrender together.

* That old commie Fred J. Cook, a Cold War regular at The Nation, maintained to the end (at 92, shortly after April Fools' Day) that his use of the "Fairness Doctrine" to knock paid conservative broadcasts off the air during the 1960s was his own idea. But Fred W. Friendly, a former president of CBS and a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, revealed in 1975 that Cook fronted an effort by the Democratic National Committee and the Johnson administration to get the Federal Communications Commission to silence political opponents and thwart the fast-growing conservative movement.

* Of the 11.5 percent of the U.S. population that is foreign-born, 52 percent were born in Latin America or the Caribbean, 25.5 percent in Asia and only 14 percent in Europe.

* The five largest weekday newspapers in the United States during the last six months were USA Today (2.25 million), the Wall Street Journal (1.82 million), the New York Times (1.13 million), the Los Angeles Times (979,549) and the Washington Post (796,367).

* The latter three of those papers, all liberal, show declines. Fastest growing among the top 20 is Rupert Murdoch's conservative New York Post, up 10.2 percent to 620,800.

* The New York Post's Cindy Adams is a longtime friend of her city's top gag writers. She says current favorites are movies with Middle East themes: "Dances With Wolf Blitzer" and "Singing in the Bahrain." Also "Ku-Wait Until Dark" and the ever-popular "Amman and a Woman."

* Attention you doomsaying slippery-slopers! The Justice Department won warrants last year for 1,228 secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies. In 2001 there were 934 such warrants and, completely pre-9/11, there were 1,003 in 2000.

* Leave it to The Hill to provide such inside stuff as the revelation that Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a twice-divorced lefty who calls himself a Catholic, is really a vegan who keeps kosher to please Yelena Boxer, his girlfriend of eight years.

* New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, is up for re-election. A past master at manipulating ethnic voter blocs, he recently wrote a letter to Commissioner of Major League Baseball Bud Selig to urge that the Montreal Expos be moved to Puerto Rico. Let's see, and the Toronto Blue Jays to Tel Aviv, and the Arizona Diamondbacks to Ouagadougou and ...

* Sometimes nobody's watching the store. As May arrived, bad news reached virtue-advocate and gambler William Bennett that the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa had announced it will not allow the Gideons to put Bibles in its 2,002-room facility in Atlantic City. That same week, the folks at Coca-Cola weren't paying attention and distributed as a premium to customers in Hong Kong and England a novelty robot decorated with swastikas.

* And, finally, the insiders are saying that Hillary Clinton's zillion-dollar book, Living History, was cranked out for her by professional writers Maryanne Vollers and Lissa Muscatine. No word on whether they will get credit, but Hillary's ghost for It Takes a Village, Barbara Feinman Todd, got stiffed on the credit and reportedly received the last $30,000 installment on her $120,000 fee only after leading authors weighed in with the publisher. First printing for this hagiography is 1 million copies. That's one lot of hag.