Frank’s Case Book

Much of modern Conservatism vigorously sprouted from the fecund mind of William F. Buckley. In 1955 he succinctly expressed, for many, the role of modern Conservatism to “stand athwart history, yelling STOP, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who do.” That was almost 50 years ago. Not even Buckley’s inventive mind could have predicted the social and cultural changes that have reshaped our lives in the intervening time.

Given the congenital libertarianism of most Americans and the concerted effort by the entertainment industry to favorably portray homosexual behavior, it is politically inevitable that we will in some way grant legal recognition to same-sex partners, despite the loudest protests of “STOP.” One important concern now is of process. We are at a point where we may repeat the same mistakes with respect to same-sex unions that we made with regard to abortion law.

The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 forbade states from regulating abortion (at least in the first trimester). At that time, 17 states were already permitting abortions and the trend was in the direction of further liberalization. In 1972, the year before the Supreme Court acted, there were nearly 600,000 legal abortions so the procedure was not rare. If the Supreme Court had allowed individual states to come to grips with the issue, it is likely that virtually all states would now have some form of legal abortion. Some would be more liberal than others. Different states would have regulated abortion during different periods of pregnancy. Different states would have written different laws concerning parental notification and the age when a young woman (girl?) could opt for an abortion. There would have been different rules concerning counseling requirements and waiting periods. These laws would have reflected different solutions and approaches and we could have empirically observed which were the most effective.

Importantly, everyone would realize that the laws represent the collective wisdom of the polity as opposed to the social preference of judges who succumb to the temptation of the law and conjure up rights that do not exist in the Constitution to create the outcome they want. The level of political animosity would have been reduced. The selection of judges for the higher courts would not involve the same rancor and political combat they do now. Major changes in social policy would not depend on the decision of a few judges or the president that might appoint them, but rather by the democratic process. Changes would arrive through political persuasion, not through endless infighting to produce judges that will rule a particular way on one particular issue — a corruption of the judge appointment process introduced in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century.

Are we now on the verge on making the same mistake with respect to same-sex unions, the Supreme Court inflicted upon us 30 years ago? The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution has been twisted like a pretzel recently. During the last Supreme Court session, the Court found that selecting students dominantly by race was consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment despite its plain wording that “No state shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This is a clear demonstration that there is no limit to the wreckage possible by fertile legal minds on a crusade. If the US Supreme Court stretches the equal protection clause to compel states to recognize same-sex marriage, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court did with the Massachusetts state constitution, it will have unforeseen and undesirable consequences. By unnecessarily wielding the sledge hammer of the Fourteenth Amendment, there would be no principled way to prohibit marriages of more than two or among closely related people. What are we to do if groups of three people show up in San Francisco demanding a marriage license? If we institutionalize individual sovereignty in demanding formal legal recognition for private choices, there would be no principled way to deny such recognition.

Certainly, no law prevents any two or more people from making private legal arrangements that largely mimic marital rights in financial and some legal matters. If some states wish to codify such relationships as civil unions or marriages, there is no constitutional impediment at the federal level, though we may have to deal with the issue of recognition across state lines at the Federal level.

State regulations will reflect varying judgments about justice and efficacy, but in manner consistent with the workings of a representative republic. If legislative mistakes are made, it is relatively easy to pull back and modify legislation. If we make dramatic errors in Constitutional interpretation, it may require decades to pull back or force otherwise unnecessary modifications to the Constitution. The legislative process among the different states permits experimentation before we lock in long term social changes. Perhaps we will even be able to avoid national acrimonious fights over judges into the middle of the century.

When Buckley was shouting “STOP” to inexorable change, those on the cultural Left were arguing that marriage was only a “piece of paper,” that love was the true binding force that was somehow diminished by the necessity for a “license” and the approbation of society. Now those on the far side of the cultural divide have come to appreciate the importance of marriage and the necessity for societal support of the institution, ideas that Conservatives insisted upon and the Left disparaged, perhaps the Left will now listen to Conservatives before irreparable damage is done to the culture and the Constitution.

“Benefits are acceptable, while the receiver thinks he may return them; but once exceeding that, hatred is given instead of thanks.” — Tacitus.

Sympathetic, yet critical friends, can sometimes help us look at ourselves in enlightening ways. In 1831, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States with a view toward explaining American democracy to his countrymen. The result was the seminal book Democracy in America, a remarkably prescient work. The French failure with popular sovereignty during the French Revolution made the French naturally curious as to how the American experiment was proceeding. In retrospect, the Americans may have simply been the beneficiaries of the fortunate circumstance of having a George Washington; a leader strong enough to unite disparate states, yet unwilling to become an American emperor. De Tocqueville found many reasons for the success of the American republic including a free press, the discretion for inheritances to pass to all children rather than just the eldest, and even “the superiority of their woman.”

Modern communications have made it much easier for the French to understand Americans and the Americans to understand the French. This does not mean, however, that we have availed ourselves of the capacity. Recently in Anti-Americanism, Jean-Francois Revel, philosopher and member of the French academy, has endeavored to explain the anti-American animosity that has increased recently, but has been a continuing theme during the entire post World War II era. Revel is writing primarily about the French to the French and unfortunately the English translation can be a little stilted in places. Reading the book is like eavesdropping on a family argument. Yet, with each page one is more grateful that the book has become a bestseller in France.

Among Europeans, the French suffer the most virulent form of the anti-American pathology. The British share a common language and culture and are far more pleasantly disposed toward the United States. The Germans underwent such a culture-wrenching experience with the Nazis, the post Cold War era, and difficulties with reunification with East Germany that they are ill-positioned to be too critical of anyone.

While acknowledging that there is a “big difference between being anti-American and being critical of the United States,” Revel explains how, “Europe in general and the Left in particular absolve themselves of their own moral failings and their grotesque intellectual errors by heaping them upon the United States.” Much anti-Americanism is reflexive and warmed-over rhetoric from Socialists and Communists still simmering from the Cold War. It is still hard for the Left to accept that they were so wrong about the economic advantages of socialism or even the evil nature of Soviet Communism. During the Cold War they habitually repeated the insanity of proclaiming the advantages of socialism, while at the same time urging aid for the Soviet Union from the West. This makes it easy to now criticize the US’s economic system while at the same time bemoaning American economic hegemony. Apparently, skill at repeating arguments that are contradictory improves with perpetual practice, until mendacity becomes a comfortable frame of mind.

America, especially in the European media, is continually stereotyped as a capitalist jungle, populated by uncultured Yahoos. According to Revel, anti-Americanism is primarily a consequence of American success. Some loathe America because “for over half a century she has been the most prosperous and creative capitalist society on Earth.” Americans are viewed like the rich uncle who wears loud and unfashionable suits, drives a large garish car, and whose idea of high culture is anything that can fit into a large screen television. It is comfortable for Europeans to assuage feelings of inadequacy with notions of cultural and moral superiority. However, it must be frustrating to adhere to this mythology while seeing ubiquitous American movies dominating the free choices of Europeans, despite heavy government subsidies for European-made movies.

What is most disheartening is the European willingness to believe the worst about America based on scant or even conjured evidence, revealing an eagerness to be deceived. In March 2002, shortly after the September 11 attacks, Thierry Meyssan published L’Effroyable Imposture (The Frightening Fraud), a grotesque and insulting book that asserted that no plane struck the Pentagon. One wing of the Pentagon was supposedly struck with a missile as part of a US plot. This fabrication is reminiscent of a small-scale Holocaust denial. It is not so bad that this book was published, but that so many of the French were sufficiently convinced of its veracity to make it a bestseller there.

Much of this anti-Americanism is intellectually incoherent and contradictory, unified only by reflexive and blind animosity. Revel provides several examples. At one point, the US was criticized as being “isolationist” for not engaging sufficiently in the Middle East. Just months later, the US was criticized for imperialistically insisting the Palestinians hold elections to choose a successor to Arafat. It is possible to be isolationist or imperialist, but difficult to be both.

On one hand, the French whine about free trade and globalization bulldozing French culture. Yet they complain just as fervently if the US erects trade barriers inhibiting free trade? Are American critics for free trade or not. American self-confidence in the universal applicability of its founding principles and in economic freedom are labeled as arrogant, while the French celebrate France’s “universal radiance” as the “country of human rights.” French culture has made many contributions, but modesty has never been one of them. It is more than disingenuous for the French to call Americans arrogant.

In many ways, there is little that Americans can do about anti-Americanism. Indeed Revel concedes that anti-Americanism is self perpetuating. Revel explains that “By criticizing the Americans whatever they do, and on every occasion — even when they are in the right — we Europeans compel them to disregard our objections — even when we are in the right.” By always opting out of leadership and always choosing complaint and pique, Europeans compel Americans to believe that Europeans are not really serious.

Until Europeans manage to free their culture and economy from the stifling state and until they are willing to embrace freedom and free trade, they will fall further behind the US economically, militarily, and even culturally. Unfortunately, the larger the gap the greater the animosity will likely be. Moreover as Revel concludes, “The fallacies of anti-American bias encourage American unilateralism. The tendentious blindness and systematic hostility of most of the governments that deal with the United States can only lead to their own weakness … condemning themselves to impotence … [and] strengthen the country they claim to fear.”

In the popular fictional epic The Lord of the Rings, four Hobbits or Halflings, venture forth from the Shire and help usher in a new age by playing an indispensable role in the defeat of the evil forces of Mordor. However, when they return to the Shire they find that it has fallen under the tyranny of thugs and ruffians. After a few feeble attempts at resistance, the Hobbits who had remained in the Shire had been intimidated and demoralized. They were demoralized in the sense of being disheartened and having lost confidence in their ability to stand up in defense of themselves and their homes. They were also literally “de”-“moralized” in the sense of loosing their moral bearing, of not appreciating the difference between good and evil enough to understanding there are some values worth risks to personal safety.

When Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin finally returned to the Shire they brought with them not only the fighting skills they acquired during their quest, but a confidence and moral integrity that informed and underpinned their unwillingness to be bullied or intimidated, to be forced to work in the service of thugs, or to yield their personal freedom. They brought with them the most precious treasure of their adventures: moral clarity. Ultimately, the four organized their fellow Hobbits to expel the “Chief” and his minions.

J. R. Tolkien, of course, was not writing geopolitical epic, but a morality tale of good and evil, about the temptations of evil and the ease of acquiescence to malevolence. Nonetheless, he illustrates important themes about the nature of evil, applicable to whether dealing with the Dark Lord of Mordor, 20th century Nazism, or 21st century Islamofascism. Perhaps the most important realization is that moral clarity is necessary for triumph over evil.

President George Bush’s most important virtue is his moral clarity; a clarity that is infuriating to his adversaries whose moral vision has blurred into shades of gray. Bush’s clarity is not fathomable to opponents whose fiery red passions for good have faded into the soft pastels of “getting along.” In his November 19th speech at White Hall Palace, the President explained that terrorist attacks, particularly against civilian targets are “…part of the global campaign by terrorist networks to intimidate and demoralize all who oppose them.” In this context, Bush probably used the word demoralize in the sense of dishearten, but demoralization in the sense of a loss of moral clarity is perhaps a more apt description.

It is still not clear whether the West and other liberal democracies will be able to summon the moral confidence and courage to overcome rather than attempt an accommodation with Islamofascism, an accommodation doomed to failure. Perhaps, we are culturally exhausted after a world war against Nazism, a forty-year marathon struggle against global Communism, to have much moral energy left to confront the challenge of Islamofascism. Unfortunately, we are seeing signs of a flagging of moral fortitude and only a flaccid moral consensus.

While self-criticism and self examination remain important and salutary elements of free societies, when there is more anger by some on the Left that Bush did not manage to acquire full United Nations sanction for the liberation of Iraq, than relief for release of the Shiites and the Kurds from ethnic and religious oppression, we must recognize a loss of moral clarity.

We know now that formerly trusted news sources like the BBC deliberately misrepresented the progress of the Iraq War, and CNN guiltily concedes that it withheld information about Iraq in order to gain access to the regime. When at the same time neither organization focuses on the 150 newspapers publishing in freedom now in circulation in Iraq, we must recognize a loss of moral clarity.

When protesters bravely confront American and British police, while not venturing to the streets of Baghdad and Kabul (or even the streets of Washington and London) to protest bombing of civilians, we must recognize the loss of moral clarity. Where are all the human shields on the Left who vowed to protect Iraqis with their persons? Why are these human shields not standing in front of United Nations or Red Crescent installations in Iraq?

When civilians are deliberately targeted by Islamofascists and American arrogance or globalization is blamed, we must recognize a loss of moral clarity. Islamofascists are deathly afraid of Western democracies because they know that given a choice, Muslims like others will embrace freedom and modernity. Do we recognize the same truth?

In many ways, Britain and the United States are out of moral step with (actually several strides head of) much of the rest of Europe who have forgotten the moral underpinnings of their freedom and consequent affluence. France and Germany have smugly embraced realpolitik as if it were a sign of maturity and statesmanship. They engage in desperate accommodation with illiberal forces while paying lip service to human rights. By contrast as Bush explained, “The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings.” Where some see arrogance, others seem moral clarity, humble and modest in the assumption that freedom is not just the privilege of a few. France and Germany have been demoralized in both senses of the word.

President John Kennedy in a different context once proclaimed, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The fact that this assertion which underpinned US Cold War fortitude would now be considered by many to be an arrogant self assertion of American values of liberty evidences a loss, particularly on the Left who once embraced Kennedy, of moral clarity.

Fortunately, in the past leaders there arose leaders like President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill in World War II and President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Cold War who were able to instill a sense of courage and commitment to liberal ideals. Their efforts were sufficient to overcome doubt and lassitude. It is still an open question whether Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair will be able to duplicate the success of their predecessors. Their meeting last week confirms their commitment to protect the West from terrorism by expanding the empire of liberty. We might have thought that the assault of September 11 would have washed away self doubt and uncertainty about the necessity of routing out the forces of terror. However, time has attenuated indignation and certainty. The question is whether Bush and Blair can now lead their countries and bring the rest of the world with them on their quest.

There may be arguments about whether there is a Liberal or Conservative bias in the press. In many cases, the conclusions about such a question reveal as much about the perspective of the person making the assessment as they do about the media. However, there is a consensus that there is a “bad news bias” in the media. Bad news tends to be more exceptional and therefore news worthy. Thousands of commercial aircraft take off each day and safely land. The day when one plane fails to land safely, it becomes the leading news story.

This bias is not necessarily a bad thing. The single case of a plane crash does not persuade most people that flying is unsafe. The reason is that we have an experiential context within which to evaluate that particular news. Nearly all of us have flown or know people who successfully flown many times. One plane crash does not overwhelm our outlook or give us a skewed perspective of airplane safety. Experience provides a counter weight to the bad news bias.

However, the shield of experience is less effective for those situations where we lack experience. The case of the aftermath of the Iraq War represents one such case. Few of us have first hand experience or know those who do and can help us evaluate the news from Iraq, much of it bad. What is the real picture of post-war Iraq? Is Iraq a country making slow and steady progress towards reconstruction, security, and political stability, punctuated by sporadic violence by a few unwilling to embrace a free Iraq? Or, is Iraq a fundamentally unstable and violent country barely held together by overstretched American troops?

A piece on CBS News on September 19, 2003 took us into the lives of a poor Iraqi family victimized by violent thugs. The patriarch of the family explained how he was going to obtain a weapon to protect his family because Americans were not providing sufficient security. After a couple of minutes of interviews and imagery, Dan Rather cautions that there are places in Iraq that are safe and secure. What kind of context is this? Is a majority of the country secure, with pockets of violence or is violence dominant with only isolated secure zones? Rather’s remarks did not balance the minutes of preceding imagery nor did they provide any significant context to assess the situation in Iraq.

What we need is systematic data to help place into context the inevitable bad news from Iraq. Indeed, Iraq is a case of no news being good news. If a bomb goes off near an oil pipeline or a school, it is immediately reported. Like the planes that land safely, the oil that flows or the children that attend schools daily do not make the news. This is what makes the recent report by the polling organization Zogby International, sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, so interesting and valuable.

Zogby International attempted to assess the perspective and outlook of the Iraqi people themselves; the people who collectively can provide some of the day-to-day context we are missing from so far away. Of course, Zogby International had to take care in selecting a representative cross section of the Iraqi people, from Sunnis near Baghdad, to Shiites in the south, to the Kurds in the north. However, this is a minor difficulty. An inherent problem with polls of people accustomed to living in a totalitarian regime is their understandable reticence in being completely candid. Some may be fearful of retribution by remnants of the old regime. Others may be overeager to offer answers they anticipate will please the questioners.

Zogby International consulted pollsters from former Eastern Communist Block countries to learn how to approach citizens accustomed to concealing their opinions to elicit the most candid responses. In addition, Zogby International was careful to use appropriate translations to its questions.

What emerges from the pollster’s efforts is a picture of Iraqis who are at once optimistic for the future and realistic about what it might take to improve their lives. Fully 70 percent of the respondents believed their lives would improve over the next five years and a third thought it would be much better.

Unlike the French who a week ago were insisting that the Iraqis assumed total control of the country in thirty days, two-thirds of Iraqis believe that the Americans ought to remain for about a year.

Even more heartening than this touch of realism is that Iraqis want a secular democratic government and not a theocracy. This is even true for the Shiites who are perceived as the most religiously observant Iraqis. When asked what country they would most like to be like, no country received a majority, but the US was considered worthy of emulation by a plurality. This was especially true among younger Iraqis.

Now that the US is in Iraq, we have assumed important responsibilities. This recent poll suggests that most Iraqis are sympathetic to our efforts and want us to succeed in helping create a free and democratic Iraq. Iraqi optimism needs to be nurtured as well as conveyed to Americans to help balance either bad news trickling out or no news when positive things happen. We Americans have about a year to get things on the right track. This should be our focus. The fact that attacks by insurgents have been focused on Iraqi infrastructure and on its interim governing council suggests, for the Iraqi people to win, Americans have to win the peace.

“You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.” — Vicomte de Chateaubriand. “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” — Hermann Hesse.

Jonathan Chait is now a senior editor for the New Republic, a left-of-center political magazine, but it’s not that far left. The magazine is on the 40-yard line of the left side of the political gridiron. Though Chait comes from background likely to breed political Liberals (He graduated from the University of Michigan and was an editor at the American Prospect magazine.), he is not known as being particularly rabid. It is, therefore, surprising that he writes in a New Republic article entitled “Mad About You:”

“I hate President George Bush…I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. I hate the way he walks — shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo….I hate the way he talks — blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang… [W]hile most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.”

I may be easy to please, but I sort of like Jonathan Chait. I like his direct and colorful writing and his use of imagery. I like his lucidity of thought and his usual equanimity. Despite the fact that I disagree with much of what he says and that he writes columns inordinately preoccupied with personal rather than political critiques of President George Bush, if I got to know him personally, I would probably like him even more. It is possible to separate political from personal disagreements.

Now, no one suspects that Chait really hates Bush in the sense that he hopes some personal calamity befalls Bush, though he may wish for Bush’s political prospects to dim. However, Bush’s political fortunes are linked to the nation’s fortunes. If the economy does well and if by election time there is a consensus that the situation in Iraq is radically improving, Bush’s fortunes are enhanced. It must contribute to Chait’s frustration that for Bush to fail, other Americans must suffer. Chait’s political desires are tied to expectations (and we pray not hopes) of economic disaster and increased danger for American troops abroad.

Chait chronicles in his article a list of policy disagreements and reveals an abiding aggravation that Bush is perceived as a moderate conservative, while Chait and his friends at the New Republic and the American Prospect view Bush’s tax cuts as “radical.” However, these remain just policy disagreements. Why is there a growing visceral animosity on the Left for Bush? It is not matched by anything felt for Reagan, though by most reasonable measures, Reagan pulled the country to the Right far more than Bush.

Chait represents the conspicuous and visible tip of the Left-wing iceberg of anti-Bush enmity. They are beginning to appear like the anti-Clinton zealots who could not settle for his obvious and provable failings, but had to believe that he was responsible for murder and other nefarious deeds. Websites have emerged decrying the “Bush Family Evil Empire” or the “Bush-Cheney Drug Empire.” The Internet and the general lubrication of communications have made it possible for extremists on all sides of the political spectrum to advertise their perspectives. However, there is something more here than the usual rantings of extremists. Under normal circumstances, the New Republic would not feel comfortable advertising hatred, but anti-Bush animosity has become too much part of the mainstream Left. Under normal circumstances, you would not have Howard Dean in a recent Democratic debate refer to Bush as the “enemy” not simply as a political “opponent.” For the Democratic faithful, Bush is indeed viewed as the enemy.

Part of this intractable animosity may be linked to the 2000 presidential election where Bush eked out a victory over Al Gore. Despite the fact that subsequent recounts have indicated that using reasonable counting rules, Bush would have won Florida and then the election even without the Supreme Court intervention, the mythology of the Left continues to hold dogmatically that they were cheated out of the election. The Left has largely ignored the advice in Al Gore’s concession speech that “what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside.”

More than that, however, the problem may be cultural. Chait hints at it in his piece when he writes “I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements.” Chait goes on to complain that Bush reminds him of, “of a certain type I knew in high school — the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it.” To some on the Left, Bush represents the party frat brother who makes it big and gets the girl while all the smart serious students remain in the dorms, unacknowledged and dateless.

Moreover, Bush takes his Christianity seriously and personally and comes from the supposedly unsophisticated Midwest. To some on the Left, Bush is the embodiment of the “family values” that might constrain the gay rights or pro-abortion agenda. Bush remains the “enemy” because he represents the traditional values side of the “culture wars.”

Ironically, Conservatives are in a similar position as Liberals. Those on the Left are torn between wishing for the best for the country and realizing that if the best happens, Bush’s political star will rise. Those on the Right might be content to complacently stand aside as those on the Left forgo their chance to win next year’s presidential election, consumed in their hatred of a president whom many genuinely like and admire. Even those who are sympathetic to the Left are repulsed by mean-spirited whining. There may not be much that the Right can do about it, but serious people on the Right should not desire such a self-destructive outcome. Bush hatred will undoubtedly polarize the electorate unnecessarily raising the political temperature at a time when we should soberly consider difference approaches to dealing with our real enemies: those who are willing to use violence to reject modernity and spread illiberal theocracy around the world.

Chait, I am sure, knows this. He has a legitimate claim to the excuse of temporary insanity.

One of the joys and pleasures of foreign travel is experiencing different ways of living and sharing different viewpoints. Such exchanges can grant greater perspective on typically American ways of doing things; what things can be improved upon and what things we should be grateful for. By and large, especially when visiting Europe, it is amazing to see how broadly and remarkably similar Western cultures are. The range of cultural differences between the US and among the countries of Europe is certainly smaller than it was a century ago. How different can places be when globalization permits us to watch the same movies, buy the same cars, and even eat at the same restaurant chains. However, it is still not clear whether the ability to buy beer at a McDonald’s in Europe compensates for the fact that in Europe McDonald’s charges for each individual package of ketchup.

Some of this homogenization is resented. France, ever desperate and fearful of its loss of cultural distinctiveness, recently decided that the term “e-mail” cannot be used in official French documents. The official term is “courrier electronique,” literally “electronic mail” or “courriel” for short. But we live in a democratic age. What is right is not is determined by linguistic heritage or consistency but by popular usage. The use of “courriel” will likely only remain a monument, as if another is needed, to French snobbishness.

Despite the fact that people will determine their own practices and ideas, popular perception can be driven by media coverage and this coverage seems to differ between the US and Europe more than cuisine. It is, therefore, particularly disheartening, after a week in France, to see the persistent and almost maliciously negative coverage of the United States in the foreign press. In fairness, my French is not good enough to listen to French coverage with an ear attuned to subtleties, so my perceptions apply only to watching CNN (directed from their British offices) and the BBC.

Of course, all news is slanted by decisions on what to cover. The pursuit of those stories that editors and producers consider important can definitely affect the overall perspective the public receives. Within this context, CNN-Europe and the BCC do a credible job covering the straight news at the top of the hour. They report the latest news from Iraq and other news centers, the current levels of the stock market indices, and the worldwide weather.

However, during the intervening times, the news hosts discuss the news with guests and it is here than biases become even more apparent. Last week, the major news surrounded the killing of Saddam Hussein’s cruel and brutal sons Uday and Qusay, after a shoot out with American troops. On the first day of coverage, even before the details of the shoot out became clear, there was rather idle speculation about why the sons were not captured rather than killed. All this speculation came before it was known whether such a capture was even possible. It only came out later, that at least one of the sons probably committed suicide. Of course, if a delay in the siege of the building holding Uday and Ousay allowed the sons to escape, that too would have been viewed as an American failure.

The day after Uday and Qusay died, BBC rattled on about Iraqi incredulity about the deaths and how the US would have to provide proof that the sons were dead. As some have suggested, Iraqis were in the same positions as the Munchkins in the movie the Wizard of Oz, incredulous as to whether the their tormentor, was “morally, ethically … spiritually, physically … positively, absolutely … undeniably and reliably dead!” The BBC assured us that photographs confirming the death of the sons were necessary to assuage the Iraqi fear of retribution from the former regime.

The next day, CNN and BBC waited breathlessly for the release of photographs of Uday and Ousay and broadcast them as soon as they possibly could. Although the photographs were not particularly appealing, they were not in my judgment, as gruesome as CNN and BBC warned us. However, not twenty-four hours later CNN and the BCC were prattling on about how the US was violating its own rules in releasing the photographs. If there was something unethical or inhuman about showing those photographs, surely CNN and the BBC were complicit since they showed little reticence is displaying and regularly re-displaying those images.

Liberia was also an issue during the past week. CNN and the BBC relentlessly warned of the chaos and the need for US military intervention. One can be sure that following any such intervention CNN and BBC will be at the forefront showing problems with such an intervention without ever returning to the original context that they helped provide.

Finally, the BBC interviewed Senator Bob Graham from Florida, the Co-Chair of the Joint Inquiry on the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks who made some very critical remarks about the Bush Administration. While Graham is certainly a reasonable person with important contributions to make on issues of security, not bothering to mention that Graham was also running for the Democratic presidential nomination withheld from the viewers important if not crucial context for weighing Graham’s remarks.

In short, foreign news coverage made the US’s PBS look like Pat Robertson’s CBN. The only unifying theme of the foreign coverage was whatever the US government (and in particular the Bush Administration) did was wrong; even if the news coverage previously encouraged it. It was nice to return back to the US and watch Fox News coverage. I can now even appreciate CNN-US and MSNBC coverage. There is nothing like a trip to a foreign country to make one grateful for what one has at home.