In defense of Mother Teresa.

And another from the e-mail box:

The "role-model" value of Mother Teresa doesn't depend on what she actually did; what matters is what people think she did. That, in my opinion, is what is being canonized in her case: her public image.

This isn't entirely a bad thing; if people are awed by the thought of someone sacrificing everything to care for the utterly wretched, some of them may behave more charitably than they otherwise would have, which is a good thing. The principal drawback to canonizing the public image of a modern-day figure is that such an image can be debunked, and then everyone is worse off than before, and there goes another chunk of the Church's credibility. -- Sylvia Li

Today's gems:
Hesiod on Cheney (and I've got to read that Josh Marshall article)

Kevin on affirmative action.

Seeing The Forest on taxes (okay, it's Sunday's gem -- I'm a little behind.)

Natasha on the slippery meaning of patriotism.

I live in a fairly small college town that, a decade ago, had three bookstores (not counting the two used bookstores and the campus store). There was a little, undistinguished independent; a big independent with great selection in every area I was interested in (good literary fiction, poetry, history, and politics), besides being a cozy, inviting place to browse; and the best children's bookstore I've ever been in (and I never going anywhere without visiting the local children's bookstore.)

Then Barnes and Noble opened up downtown. The big independent, which unfortunately had just moved to a larger store across the street, putting it in a precarious financial position, was out of business within a year. So was the children's bookstore. The little independent, with not much going for it other than a pretty store front on a pretty main street that draws a lot of tourists, is still around. The owners have been trying to play on local guilt since Barnes and Noble opened (If you don't shop here, the big nasty corporations win!) but while liberal guilt trips and anti-corporate sentiment usually work very well on me, it's no sale here. I can go to Barnes and Noble, which has a wide selection, and feel guilty about feeding the corporate beast, or I can go to a little card and gift shop with a few shelves of novels, and nothing else I'm interested in (I have enough cookbooks, thanks.) The book lover in me beats the liberal every time.

Or it used to. When Barnes and Noble opened, I hated it because it was big chain, and a year later I hated it because it because it put two good stores out of business. The children's bookstore was truly irreplaceable. Barnes and Noble has a decent selection of children's books, although not nearly as good as the specialized store it drove out. But it doesn't have an owner who knows and loves children's books and is always ready to make suggestions for customers she gets to know. More importantly, what Barnes and Noble does have is a way of displaying the junkiest books (and the toys that go with them), so that my daughter and I have to plow through aisles of garbage that screams Buy me! to a seven-year-old in order to get to the real books. And every time I shop, there are more Captain Underpants and fewer real books.

And the same thing has happened with adult books. At first, to be honest, as frustrated as I was about losing my favorite bookstore, I had to admit that Barnes and Noble's selection of literary fiction was, if anything, better than the local independent's. And the books were displayed at the front of the store, so I could always see what new novels (and, amazingly, even books of short fiction) had just come out. Little by little, those books have moved to the back of the store, replaced by computer books and right-wing screeds, and they must be ordering fewer because more often than not I end up at Amazon now. Did people really suddenly stop reading real books and start reading Ann Coulter, or is something else going on?

That's one of those questions I don't have an answer to.

What brought all this to mind was a fascinating post on bookstores over at Electrolite, followed by a fuller exploration of the topic by readers (this is what comments boards were made for!)

There has always seemed to me to be something deeply dishonest about conservatives citing Dr. King's dream of color-blind society in their attacks on affirmative action, but I could never explain why. Ampersand explains why.

News from abroad that it would be nice to see in this country

Lula to use defence funds in famine fight
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who took office as Brazil's president this week, on Friday postponed a US$750m defence programme by a year to finance emergency social spending. José Viegas, the new defence minister, said the purchase of 12 fighter aircraft would be delayed and funds used in hunger eradication projects...

According to a new book, "High and Mighty," SUV drivers "don't care about anyone else's kids but their own, are very concerned with how other people see them rather than with what's practical, and they tend to want to control or have control over the people around them." They are also "willing to endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety," and are too dumb to notice that those safety gains are illusory. They don't like minivans because they're driven by "nice" people who volunteer for their churches and carpool other people's kids, and they don't want anyone to think they are "nice."

I know...duh!

But while reading this, it occurred to me that SUVs are not only the symbolic vehicle of the coming war because of the enormous amounts of gas they consume, but because of the personality traits they legitimize and encourage. Once you've bought an unsafe car because it makes you feel big, important and a little dangerous (and if you're big, you must be safe, right?) and have convinced yourself that it doesn't matter that you're endangering other people's lives because you feel safer, and that's all that really counts, it's not a big deal to go to war because you might be in danger, even though a glance at the facts would tell you that going to war won't make you one bit safer. After all, other people's kids don't matter, do they?

An example: To illustrate the kind of selfishness that marks some SUV drivers, Bradsher finds people who rave about how they've survived accidents with barely a scratch, yet neglected to mention that the people in the other car were all killed. (One such woman confesses rather chillingly to Bradsher that her first response after killing another driver was to go out and get an even bigger SUV.)

It must have been a very traumatic experience. I'm sure she'll feel better after invading Iraq.

When was the last time you heard a rational person on talk radio? Go visit skippy and he'll tell you what to do about it.

The poor give us so much more than we give them." -- Mother Teresa

"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises." -- Archbishop Oscar Romero

Surprisingly, I didn't get a single angry letter about my agreeing with Christopher Hitchen's attack on Mother Teresa. (Tentatively agreeing -- I'm still open to anyone really defending Mother Teresa, something beyond how "everyone knows" what good work she did.) My three conservative Catholic readers must have taken the weekend off. I did, however, get several letters from people who agreed, and said they'd been frustrated for a long time with the difference between popular image and reality in Mother Teresa's case.

Matthew Yglesias wonders if "some little thing like so-and-so should be a saint" really matters. Obviously it matters to millions of Catholics, and to millions more non-Catholic Christians who look up to her as a model of a life of faith. But I think it should matter even to an atheist like Matt.

A saint's life offers an example of how to live, and defines holiness for Catholics. But some saints have cross-over appeal, and Mother Teresa, with her long and deep hold on the popular imagination clearly falls into that category. Ask most Americans, of any religion, to name an irreproachable person, someone who embodied goodness, and I suspect the first name that will come to the vast majority of minds is Mother Teresa's.

But Teresa represented a particular -- and political -- notion of faith and holiness. Although she was associated with the poor of Calcutta, Teresa's deepest alliance was with the rich and powerful -- sometimes the relatively benign rich like Princess Diana, and sometimes thugs like the Duvaliers. Her ministry was primarily to them -- she offered them a way to save their souls, by giving money to ameliorate the lives of the poor without questioning why the poor were poor. And, as Hitchens documented in Missionary Position, his book on Mother Teresa, that amelioration was far less than most people believe. For Mother Teresa, poverty was necessary, for if it didn't exist, how could the rich demonstrate their goodness?

Think of President Bush, whose policies have done so much to harm the poor, doing a photo op at a food bank and encouraging Americans (presumably the poor don't count as Americans) to give more to their suffering fellow citizens, and you have a red, white and blue version of Mother Teresa's view of charity. It's a view with a strong appeal for powerful people who want to feel good, but don't want to see any real change. The canonization of Mother Teresa contains a political message as well as a spiritual one. As Hitchens notes, the speeded up canonization process for Mother Teresa is odd, and suggests that the Vatican is anxious to send that particular political and spiritual message.

Another Catholic associated with the poorest of the poor is on a slower track to sainthood. Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered in 1980 while celebrating Mass, could not have been more different from Mother Teresa. His real allegiance was with the poor. At the time he became Archbishop in 1977, small groups of poor Catholics were banding together to worship and study the gospels and their implications for society. Uneducated peasants organizing, choosing leaders and speaking of social justice in the name of Christianity made landowners uneasy. Death squads roamed the country, killing the leaders and the priests and nuns who worked with them. Archbishop Romero, who before he became Archbishop was considered a moderate conservative, cast his lot with the poor and with the fight for social justice. He didn't tell the powerful that they could go on oppressing the poor as long as they threw them a few crumbs from time to time. He told them that the Church "says to the rich: do not sin by misusing your money. It says to the powerful: do not misuse your political influence. Do not misuse your weaponry. Do not misuse your power. It says to the sinful torturers: do not torture. You are sinning. You are doing wrong. You are establishing the reign of hell on earth."

It remains to be seen whether the Church really does say those things to the powerful. The canonization of Mother Teresa would say exactly the opposite.

Mother Teresa and Archbishop Romero represent two very different views of what it means to care for the poor. The offer polar opposite models to follow. Mother Teresa was honored by the powerful, Oscar Romero was killed by them. And that's one of the reasons it matters which one first becomes a saint.

A survey done at St. Louis University, paid for in part by several orders of Catholic nuns, found that about 40% of nuns in the United States have been victims of some form of sexual abuse or harassment, in a significant number of cases by priests. The researchers believe that the numbers probably underestimate the prevalence of sexual abuse because many nuns feel shame and guilt, and fear speaking out.

What's especially disturbing about the story is that the study was done in 1996, and published in two small circulation religious research journals in 1998, but the findings were never reported in the mainstream press -- not even in a year in which sexual scandals in the Catholic Church received wide coverage.

Many people in and out of the Church have felt that over time the pedophilia scandal developed into a witch hunt directed at gay priests. Sexually abused nuns didn't fit the storyline. Does that have anything to do with why we haven't heard about them until now? And will we stop hearing suggestions that if the Church just eliminated gay priests, the problem would go away?

I suppose I should be grateful to the Los Angeles Times for at least mentioning the fact that the sanctions imposed on Iraq do more harm to ordinary Iraqis than to Saddam Hussein, even if the mention comes in an article this stupid. But honestly, this is just plain offensive. It's never been possible for the media to mention sanctions without rushing to add that there would be no sanctions if Saddam would just behave, which, while undeniably true, is also beside the point. Saddam was just as greedy, just as monstrous a dozen years ago, when there were no sanctions and Iraq was a relatively wealthy country. It gives no credit to Saddam to admit the sanctions are not doing what they were designed to do. They aren't touching Saddam; they are killing ordinary Iraqis.

This LA Times piece, though, carries the argument to the highest levels of nonsense. They start by affirming that the sanctions keep Iraqis from getting needed medicines, and move on to point out that obviously it's all Saddam's fault, because he has plenty of money and material to build mosques.

Run that one by me again? If someone needs antibiotics, bricks and mortar don't make ideal substitutes. I'm sure Saddam, the old secularist, is laying down mosques at record rates to try to paint himself as a good Muslim and distract people from their misery. Of course it's an enormous con job. But that doesn't mean that if he stopped pulling that con he could use the money to buy medicine for Iraqis. Under the sanctions, Iraq can't spend its oil revenues on domestically produced medicines. And Iraq is not allowed to buy certain medicines from other countries. Just last week the UN Security Council placed tighter limits on doses of antibiotics that can be sent to Iraq. It doesn't make any difference how much money you have if you're forbidden to buy what you need.

In 1999, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did a series on the effect of the sanctions called Life and Death in Iraq. They updated it late last year. Read it. We're on the verge of war with a country where the population has been devastated by sanctions, and for a number of reasons there has been virtually no preparation for what almost everyone recognizes is an approaching humanitarian disaster. The LA Times ends their article with a little sanctions humor. But if you read the whole story, it's pretty hard to find anything to laugh at.

"The more you examine the religion [Islam], the more militaristic it seems. After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus." -- Kenneth Adelmen

I've read dozens of variations on that statement, and every time the logic, or lack of it, drives me mad. Never mind mentioning that Christianity has its own militaristic streak, does it make any sense whatsoever to argue that Islam is violent because Mohammed was a warrior, and Christianity is peaceful because Jesus was a peace advocate, and therefore, as followers of Jesus we must attack?

I know I'm setting myself up for angry mail here, but I think Christopher Hitchens makes a good case against sainthood for Mother Teresa.

Can you do fiction on a blog? I'm primarily a fiction writer -- or I used to be, before this blog started consuming my writing time -- and I've often wondered about that, and considered trying it. Kevin Raybould, who's already proven his ability to write clear and well-reasoned political commentary at Lean Left, has taken up the challenge with a science fiction novel he has begun serializing at The Story Point. If you're interested in fiction, especially sci-fi, you might want to go over, take a look, offer some encouragement, or even make suggestions. Or just read and enjoy.

Gene Healy has pulled together the strongest case I've seen against the national security argument for invading Iraq. (You might also be interested in reader comments on the essay posted at STAND DOWN). My only quibble with the piece is that Gene early on dismisses both the humanitarian argument for war and the notion that "venal or frivolous motives lie behind the administration's push for war." I think focusing primarily on the national security argument is the right approach, both because that is the argument the administration has emphasized, and because it is the one with the most resonance for ordinary Americans. If Americans support war with Iraq, it will not be because they are concerned with the human rights of Iraqis, but because they fear the possibility of a nuclear attack on the United States, and believe that is a genuine threat.

Nevertheless, I don't think it's fair or wise to completely dismiss the humanitarian argument. A concern for human rights may not move the majority of Americans, but many liberals take it seriously. I take it seriously. And it is the crowd-pleaser Bush is using to rally the troops, telling them that we will be "liberating" the Iraqi people. And while it's possible to make a case against humanitarian intervention without mentioning the administration's venal motives, its history of hypocrisy, corporate bootlicking, lack of concern for human rights, failure to follow through on reconstruction in Afghanistan, and just plain, old-fashioned lying, drive a stake through the heart of the most compelling human rights argument for invasion.

Eve Tushnet has just completed a long and interesting series of posts on race. It begins here and ends here, and in between, you're on your own, but it's worth tracking down the pieces. There's much I agree with, and a few things I disagree with, but they're thought-provoking posts, and well worth your time.

By now you've read skippy's talk radio rant, I'm sure, but don't miss the follow-up, not to mention, in a related vein Digby on Michael Jackson (the other Michael Jackson).

And by the way, Sisyphus says that The Washington Post would like to know what you think of Little Green Footballs?

Oink.

The most interesting takes I've read on the proposal to bring back the draft have come from Kevin Drum and Jeralyn Merritt -- and Jeralyn's also includes interesting comments from readers.

I don't think the draft is likely to return, and I think there are more good arguments against it than for it -- from both a moral and a practical standpoint. But I agree with Kevin that far too many Americans have a great sense of entitlement, and I would add a lack of interest in anything that doesn't effect them personally. Jeralyn mentions being in college in the late sixties and seeing young men's lives ruined by the draft. She's certainly right. But I remember being in college a few years later, trying to help organize opposition to the resumed bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong Harbor in 1972 (in supposedly radical Berkeley) and being met with a who cares, let's party response from the majority of students I talked to. There were large demonstrations in Berkeley that spring. But activists who had been there a few years told me that the response was not what they expected, and they chalked it up to the fact that because of the change to a lottery system, more students felt comfortable that the draft wouldn't touch them. It only got worse when the draft was eliminated in 1973.

A draft, whether for military or other national service, makes me very uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. But I'd love to hear some better alternatives for making Americans pay attention to the rest of the world and realize that there are human costs to pay for our government's actions.

UPDATE: Max has more on the topic. But, hey, I liked Country Joe.

Yesterday I mentioned that the Department of Labor had decided to stop publishing information about factory closings . Today Sam Heldman and Nathan Newman explain why it is important, and how the decision demonstrates not only the administration's love of secrecy, but its profoundly anti-labor agenda.

George Bush's addiction to secrecy -- and his ability to get others to feed his addiction -- stuns even those of us old enough to remember Richard Nixon. Adam Clymer has a noteworthy article in today's New York Times about that addiction, which is so extreme even Republicans are objecting.

Clymer seemed to miss one important issue, though. He recalls the administration's fight to keep records from Ronald Reagan's presidency from being made public:

On March 23, 2001, Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel, ordered the National Archives not to release to the public 68,000 pages of records from Ronald Reagan's presidency that scholars had requested and archivists had determined posed no threat to national security or personal privacy. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, the documents were to become available after Jan. 20, 2001, twelve years after Mr. Reagan left office. Mr. Reagan's administration was the first covered by the 1978 law.

The directive, which also covered the papers of Mr. Reagan's vice president and the president's father, George Bush, was to last 90 days. When Mr. Gonzales extended the sealing period for an additional 90 days, historians like Hugh Davis Graham of Vanderbilt University attacked the delays, saying they were designed to prevent embarrassment and would nullify the records law's presumption of public access to those documents.

On Nov. 1, 2001, President Bush issued an even more sweeping order under which former presidents and vice presidents like his father, or representatives designated by them or by their surviving families, could bar release of documents by claiming one of a variety of privileges: "military, diplomatic, or national security secrets, presidential communications, legal advice, legal work or the deliberative processes of the president and the president's advisers," according to the order.

Before the order, the Archivist of the United States could reject a former president's claim of privilege. Now he cannot.

The order was promptly attacked in court and on Capitol Hill. Scott L. Nelson of the Public Interest Litigation Group sued on behalf of historians and reporters, maintaining that the new order allowed unlimited delays in releasing documents and created new privileges to bar release.

House Republicans were among the order's sharpest critics. Representative Steve Horn of California called a hearing within a few days, and Representative Doug Ose, another Californian, said the order "undercuts the public's right to be fully informed about how its government operated in the past." The order, Mr. Horn said, improperly "gives the former and incumbent presidents veto power over the release of the records."

On Dec. 20, the White House sought to silence the complaints by announcing that nearly all the 68,000 pages of the Reagan records were being released. Legislation introduced to undo the order never made it to the House floor, where leaders had no interest in embarrassing the president. And a lawsuit challenging the order languishes in Federal District Court before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

In other words, the administration played a little game with the records: By releasing most of the papers, they took off the pressure to release all of them -- still managing to keep control of what would and would not be released.

Clymer notes that the administration's control of information could effect how history is written. He might have added that it effects how journalism is written as well. The Washington Post recently published a stunning article on US complicity in Saddam Hussein's war crimes, focusing especially on Donald Rumsfeld's role. The Post's information came from Reagan-era declassified documents. But at least one significant piece of the puzzle is missing:

The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran... Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West."

In essence, the Washington Post can't tell the whole story because Bush has managed to keep the document describing Reagan's policy toward Iraq classified. That's convenient for Bush, but it's an outrage for the rest of us.

Hey thanks, guys and gals -- although, personally, I'd vote for Jim. And I hope everyone goes over to thank Dwight for coming up with the idea and putting in a lot of work. Next year we have to come up with a way to do this so that PLA gets included in the nominations.

 I had one of the first Barbies, back in the early '6Os. The one with the narrow, evil eyes. (Think George Bush with a lot of mascara.) The one in the knitted zebra-striped bathing suit. Unfortunately my Barbie never had a wardrobe beyond that impractical bathing suit, because poor girls get poor Barbies, and Goodwill didn't yet have a Barbie collection.

And in many ways, that was an advantage. I never got Malibu Barbie or Dr. Barbie, but I had fabric scraps Barbie, toilet paper Barbie, and -- best of all -- aluminum foil Barbie. The fabric scraps came from a brown dress my mother tried to sew for me when I was in second grade. My mother could not sew if her life depended on it. Believe me, Goodwill was an improvement. Thank God I wore a Catholic school uniform five days a week and only had to put up with that ugly brown dress on Sundays. But the scraps that were left over, draped over my angry-eyed Barbie, had a fringed-leather look, which I decided made my Barbie an Indian. I also had a cowboy doll, which Barbie regularly beat up. Her stilettos were lethal. In my world, Barbie the Indian princess defeated all the cowboys.

Wrapped in toilet paper, Barbie was an Egyptian queen. She had absolute power. No one would dare defy her or she would send them away to build pyramids. She also defeated the cowboys.

And if your imagination was stifled by a Barbie with all the accoutrements, you may not realize that aluminum foil makes perfectly believable armor. Think of the pen name I use to write this blog, and you can probably guess who aluminum foil-clad Barbie was. She defeated the cowboys as well.

All of this came flooding back to mind when I read Max's Barbie post, particularly about his concern with finding "professional" looking dolls. Doctor Barbie rather than cheerleader Barbie. I admit, I do the same thing when I choose dolls for my daughter. The last one I bought was Pilot Barbie (she came with a suitcase and a passport, but no gun). But when I think about it, I realize Max and I can probably both relax. As long as there have been Barbies, those dolls have led more interesting, heroic lives, and shaped girls' values in more eccentric ways, than most people realize. Forty years later, I'm still determined to defeat the cowboys.

Gimme shelter
Reconstruction of Afghanistan apparently doesn't include homes. Half a million refugees in Afghan cities are homeless, and will spend the Afghan winter in tents, ruins, and half-built structures.

For women, the problem of homelessness is compounded by misogyny. RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) operates shelters for women in Afghanistan and for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, not just for those fleeing abuse, but for unmarried and abandoned women, and former prostitutes, who desperately need the literacy training and work skills RAWA offers. But the shelters have to operate secretly, out of fear of resurgent fundamentalists. RAWA is not even allowed to run overnight shelters. If women need a place to stay, they're taken over the border to Pakistan. Last June, the first Afghan minister for women's affairs, Sima Simar, a powerful advocate for women's rights, was driven out of her job, in part by death threats from fundamentalists who view any protection for women as a threat to their power. The current women's affairs minister insists that Afghanistan has no need for women's shelters, since any problems women can be dealt with by the women's families.

This article cuts to the heart of the Bush administration's approach to bad news: Factories are closing, what should we do? Let's keep it a secret.

Devra has some interesting thoughts on the continuing appeal of Bill Clinton

I'm sure you already know this, but the most eagerly awaited blog arrived yesterday and it's already so good I feel like I can just stop writing now (you notice I didn't post anything yesterday -- you think that was a coincidence?). Drop by and visit Hullabaloo. The name, unfortunately, brings to mind a really dumb music tv show from my childhood back in the Middle Ages (otherwise known as the '60s). Now Shindig would have been a good name...

Devra has a must-read post on Jim Crow laws outside the South.

I agree with Elayne: There is something fundamentally wrong about turning the ashes of murdered people into a warship. Making the building of that warship an $800 million dollar pork project for Trent Lott's home town just compounds the indecency.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden demonstrates that you're not required to buy into your "heritage."

I think I have a similar ancestry on my father's side, although I'm not sure. My family's always been too poor, shiftless, and embarrassed to be aware of what came before. I don't know anything about my relatives -- not even names -- before my grandparents. But my father's from Tennessee, the family's been there since well before the Civil War, and there were a lot of photographs of people in uniform floating around my grandfather's house, so I've always assumed there was a hidden Confederate back there somewhere.

But I don't have to go back that far to find race hatred. That's my "heritage" as much as the spectral Confederate. As a child, I heard my father make statements that Archie Bunker would have considered going too far. And not just racist ones. Like Archie, my father was an equally opportunity bigot. I heard every anti-Papist slur in the air. And of course my father was married to a Catholic from Ireland -- which is probably one of the reasons I consider the psychology of bigotry infinitely complex.

Colleen Rowley may be one of Time magazine's Persons of the Year, but Ted Barlow discovered that the F.B.I. reserved its honors (and cash) for the man who blocked her.

Matt Yglesias looks at (and tentatively supports) Charles Rangels' proposal to reinstitute the draft, and his readers offer several objections well worth considering.

I have to admit that as the terrified mother of an 18-year-old boy, my first thought is, "Don't even think about it." And I'm not sure I buy in to Rangel's exhortation to "shared sacrifice." Society needs people to do many dangerous jobs, but that doesn't mean we expect every able-bodied person to put in time as a police officer or fire fighter. The important issue there (as should also be the case with the military) is that we should make sure people in those jobs have the tools and training to make the job as safe as we can make it, and should pay them adequately for their work.

But I think Matt is right in suggesting that there's a connection between the draft and the seriousness with which people take foreign policy. It is simply harder to convince people to go along with reckless wars if their own lives, or the lives of their children will be put on the line.

Julia's hate mail is worse than my hate mail. But I'm glad she mentioned it because it's a reminder of what uppity women deal with.

So how long do you think it will be before John Ashcroft looks into the connection between right-wing Christians and al-Qaeda?

I'm a word person. Numbers usually whiz right past my brain. But these numbers break down even my resistance:

Three million people died of AIDS this year, 80 percent of them in Africa.

One out of every five people in southern Africa is HIV-positive. In Zimbabwe and Swaziland, more than one-third of adults live with HIV.

In less than twenty years, 70 million Africans will die of AIDS.

That number -- 70 million people -- ought to trigger the same kind of response a looming genocide invokes: the knowledge that we won't be able to live with ourselves in the future if we don't do something to stop it now, that in a few years we'll be asking ourselves the same question we ask now about Rwanda -- how in God's name did we manage to sit by and watch that happen?

Fifty-eight percent of AIDS victims in Africa are women. That isn't significant because women's lives are in any way more valuable than men's lives, but because it extends the reach of the disease far beyond the victim. Seventy to eighty percent of food in Africa is produced by women. In times of famine, women have traditionally been the ones to set up networks to distribute food. But sick and weakened women inevitably devote less time to planting and harvesting crops, and to helping with food distribution. When the people who produce the food die, the entire community suffers. And of course it's a vicious cycle: malnutrition takes a toll on the immune system and speeds up the development of AIDS in people who are HIV-positive.

In Africa, you can't separate the AIDS issue from the hunger issue. People are starving because of AIDS; HIV-positive people develop AIDS because they're starving.

Yesterday's New York Times had an important piece by Kofi Annan on why current efforts to fight the famine in southern Africa depend as much on HIV and AIDS prevention as on traditional food assistance. It's a good piece, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. There are some important pieces of information that the secretary-general of the U.N. is too diplomatic to mention:

The president is too busy to care about Africa. Bush had scheduled his first trip to Africa as president for early next month. The Congressional Black Caucus urged the president to use the trip to promote awareness of AIDS in Africa, and to begin a US initiative to fight AIDS, but recently the president cancelled the trip. His focus is on Iraq. Africa has lost even the minimal amount of attention it ever had.

"Compassionate conservatism" is as much a scam abroad as it is at home. While sending Colin Powell out to lecture the world about fighting AIDS, the administration pledged only $500 million dollars to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS (the U.S. would need to give $2.5 billion to make its contribution equal that of Europe in terms of the size of the economy.) Bush fought a proposal by Jesse Helms, of all people (together with Bill Frist), for another $500 million for a program for HIV-positive African children, and when it passed anyway, he signed it only after convincing Frist to chop $300 million out of it.

Condescending, even racist, assumptions are built into the Bush administration's response to AIDS in Africa. Andrew Natsios, the head of America's foreign aid program, has argued against giving antiretroviral drug treatment to African AIDS patients because, Africans supposedly "don't know what Western time is" and are incapable of taking medicines on schedule. Antiretroviral treatment has been successful in Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and Uganda, proving this racist assumption utterly absurd.

Corporate contributors come first. Rich countries, especially the US, continue to block efforts to loosen WTO patent rules so that poor countries can afford generic drugs, including AIDS medicines. Research by Oxfam shows that the availability of generics cuts costs dramatically. The pharmaceutical companies, despite promises, never lower their prices until faced with competition from generics. But the US has threatened sanctions against several countries with severe AIDS problems that have tried to obtain medicines, and has joined with other countries that are home to major pharmaceutical companies in opposing a pledge not to enforce the WTO agreement dealing with patents in cases of health emergencies like the African AIDS crisis. (American Prospect has a good article on the administration's choice of drug company profits over the lives of people in developing countries.)

Corporate contributors come first. (I know, I'm repeating myself. But that single sentence covers a lot of ground when you're talking about the policies of Bush, Inc.) The U.S. and Europe provide enormous subsidies for agribusiness which make it more difficult for farmers in poor countries to compete. We protect our own businesses, while insisting poor countries cut subsidies to their farmers.

You can hardly pick up a newspaper without reading a story about how hard it is to solve health problems and food shortages in Africa because of African governments' corruption and misplaced priorities. But let's be honest: Corruption and misplaced priorities are hardly unique to Africa.

Save the Children/ Oxfam Report on HIV/AIDS and Food Insecurity in Southern Africa (pdf)

Doctors Without Borders Background Information on HIV/AIDS Treatment in Developing Countries (pdf)

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy his own heart? -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

First, read this. Scroll down to the December 18th post if the links are being fussy, but read it before you read anything I have to say.

And now I have one quick comment to add. I will gladly join the battle against the hard core racists and the (to me far worse) people who exploit racism to foster their ambition. But there's a danger in doing that, and it isn't overreaction (you can not overreact to racism). The danger is that we all start to believe that racism is something over there, in some other part of the country, or in the heart of some other guy, and if we just get rid of those people, all the problems will go away. I want to get rid of Lott and Ashcroft and that creep who won a presidential primary in South Carolina by waving the Confederate flag, stroking BoJo University, and running with a rumor about his opponent's dark-skinned daughter as much as anybody else. But when they're gone, the problem won't disappear. You don't grow up in America without racism, and the legacies of slavery and segregation, effecting the way you view the world. Racism shapes the world all of us live in.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about this when I think about it some more. But the basic idea has been in the back of my head since the Trent Lott story broke, and Dominion's post made me want to at least bring it to the surface today.

Michael Kinsley on Bill Frist: He won his seat from an incumbent Democrat by using television commercials full of racial innuendo. Frist is undoubtedly a better person than his use of those commercials would suggest. Does that make them better or worse?

Worse. And are those commercials still kicking around?

A coalition of civil rights, religious and labor groups plan to deliver a message to Bill Frist: You say the Republican Party has changed, prove it by opposing judges with "records of deep hostility to core civil rights principles," supporting hate crimes legislation, and making a real commitment -- backed up with cash -- to election reform that insures that every vote actually gets counted.

UPDATE/ COMMENTS: I didn't comment on this item immediately, because my first thought was simply "Bravo," and that seemed pretty tepid and pointless. An hour or so later, the only way I can see a down side to this kind of pressure is if the Democratic Party lives up (down?) to our worst expectations. Either we keep out hateful judges, get hate crimes legislation passed, and make sure every voter has an equal chance to register and vote, and all the votes are equally likely to be counted (which is one of those wonderful issues where the morally right and the politically advantageous come together), or it is made clear not just to black voters (whose voting record suggests they don't really have any difficulty with the concept to begin with), but to white soccer moms and dads who get queasy around hardcore racists, that the Republican party's outreach to minorities is as phony as it gets. That's assuming the Democratic Party and the beltway liberals don't let the Republicans get away with calling opposition to civil rights "conservatism," (an insult to principled conservatives if ever I heard one) and pretending that problems with voting procedures (not to mention deliberate attempts to hold down minority voting) aren't forms of discrimination. But that's not going to happen, right?

Three blogs I'm adding to the blogroll (and a sample of terrific work)

Antidotal on the difference between fantasy and reality.

Long story; short pier did a post on the INS arrests that combines passion with a good deal of research on the history of INS abuses.

Burningbird explores an issue that intrigues me: What constitutes good weblog writing, and are the standards different from what makes print writing good?

No one is sure exactly how many Iraqi Americans there are (somewhere between 200 and 400 thousand), and their discomfort about expressing opinions makes measuring their political leanings virtually impossible, and yet the Bush administration "operates under the delusion that the majority of Iraqi Americans favor a war," as the vice president of the Arab-American Discrimination Committee puts it.

I'm not so sure "delusion" is the right word. This administration tends to believe -- or at least pretends to believe -- whatever is most convenient. And certainly the belief that a huge majority of Iraqi nationals support an invasion is convenient. If true, it would suggest that even people whose friends and families would be endangered by a war realize that there is no other way to get rid of Saddam.

But according to The Times, while there is certainly a base of support for invasion among Iraqi intellectuals, most Iraqis are more conflicted. They felt, even before the war talk began, that they were being asked to choose between two horrors: Saddam and the sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and they fear now that a war will make the lives of their friends and families even worse. They're not buying the argument that things will suddenly be better when Saddam is gone and not to worry about what it will cost to eliminate him.

In other words, they're in the same position as many other Americans who want to do the right thing and see nothing in front of them but horrible choices. The only difference is that, for the Iraqis, the choice is frighteningly personal.

Some Iraqi Americans are speaking out against the war, and the sanctions, but many are too afraid to do so, afraid that they are "poised to become the face of the new enemy," and that if they question American policy, their loyalty will be questioned. I suspect the fear is justified. The administration has an interest in selling the story that, as some State Department officials claimed, 80 to 90 percent of Iraqi Americans supported invasion. Given recent INS arrests over mangled paperwork, I'd be nervous about messing up Bush's storyline, too. Their fearful silence is very convenient.

I recently wrote a bit of memoir to explain why, emotionally, I don't think that charity is a substitute for a social safety net (which, in turn, is only a shabby substitute for genuine social justice). Molly Ivins lays out the facts of the issue. Because of Bush's policies:

* 36,000 senior citizens were eliminated from meal programs.

* 532,000 families lost their heating assistance.

* 50,000 children will be forced out of after-school programs.

And there's more. Dented cans (or even perfect ones), a few frozen turkeys, and a toy for the tot can't make up the difference. That doesn't mean you shouldn't donate to charity, but it's a band-aid, not a real solution. And making the poor poorer and then posing for pictures while you toss them a few crumbs is just plain mean.

The evolution of a southern strategy
"When you're from Mississippi and you're a conservative and you're a Christian, there are a lot of people that don't like that." -- Trent Lott

"I know that Republicans around the state are hurt and angry about the way Senator Lott has been treated. I encouraged them to take out their frustrations next year at the ballot box by electing Republicans from top to bottom, from governor to coroner." -- Jim Herring, Mississippi State Republican chairman.

Sam Heldman offers evidence from personal experience that Bill Frist's invocation of Marion Barry was an appeal to racism. Sam's post stirred up an odd thought: I'll start to believe the coded racial appeals have disappeared when I realize that it's been a long time since I've heard California politicians outside of San Francisco running against Willie Brown, or Republican pundits giggling about Al Sharpton as a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Believe it or not, some people were blogging yesterday. Fortunately, you can still catch up on it today.

Alas, a blog starts with a simple summary of the discussion going on at Eschaton over whether, now that Trent Lott has accidentally dragged the Southern Strategy into the light, it is better to focus on exposing blatant Republican racism like voter intimidation and neo-Confederate ties, or on Republican policies that harm minorities. The first are easier to make people see, the latter are more important. You can always count on Barry to go deeper than the obvious, of course, and he does, making an good case that the fundamental issue is whether it is more important to help the Democratic Party, or raise issues of racial injustice.

Following up a wonderful Christmas Eve post on Republican tolerance of racial bigotry, PLA continues with an analysis of the Southern Strategy has played in presidential elections since 1968.

The Watch honors the spirit of Christmas with a post on the power of non-violence.

An introduction to modern corporate ethics
When 40 tons of toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India,in 1984, it killed 8,000 people in three days -- 20,000 in all so far. 120,000 people were left chronically ill. Eighteen years later, stockpiled chemicals are still leaking poison into the ground water.

In 1984, most Americans couldn't really comprehend the horror of thousands of people dying in one harrowing event. Unfortunately, now most of us can.

Bhopal was an accident, but a preventable one. Union Carbide had tried to cut costs at the factory by reducing safety measures. The safety siren, meant to alert the community, had been turned off. The company immediately evacuated their employees, but took three hours to inform the police about the leak, and did nothing to warn local people or give any advice on measures they could have taken to protect themselves from the gas.

Union Carbide paid an average compensation of $500 to each of the living victims of the disaster. That will cover their medical costs for five years. After that Union Carbide walked away, merging with Dow Chemical, which refuses to accept responsiblity for Bhopal.

Earlier this month, on the 18th anniversary of the leak, Bhopal survivors and international supporters brought "contaminated soil, water and brooms," and a demand for remediation measures, to Dow India in Bombay.

Dow's response? It's suing the survivors for ten thousand dollars.

"And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Merry Christmas

A lump of coal in his stocking just isn't enough
The daughter of Sisyphus has a Christmas wish for the president.

Would you like to hear my Ebeneezer Scrooge impression?
Thank you, Devra. You've beautifully and righteously vented on something that's bothered me most of my life -- the distinct lack of charity in a lot of "charity." I've never sorted toy donations, but I've done canned food drives, and clothing donations, and at some point I always end up mumbling to myself, "Exactly when did you people come to the conclusion that the poor aren't human?" The one donation to clothing drives that sends me round the bend is torn underwear. What kind of people think the poor are so desperate they'd wear someone else's old underwear? And are they sitting at home basking in the warm glow of their generosity?

Sorry -- charity drives bring out my most uncharitable side. And bad memories as well.

I have to admit, this is partly a personal issue. I went through a period as kid when Christmas was ruined every year by the guy from the church (not our church, some other damn church) pulling up in a station wagon loaded with food boxes. My mother was too polite to turn him away.

It started when I was eleven -- just old enough to begin reading adult body language. A man with a crew cut, wearing a bright red cardigan, carried a cardboard box into the apartment and set it on the kitchen table. My mother was in her robe, her hair in curlers, getting ready for work. She worked night shift. I could tell that she was in hurry and embarrassed to be seen like that, and that she wanted the man out of the apartment fast. But he hung around, asking stupid questions and glancing at everything out of the corner of his eye. I remember realizing that my mother was trying to maneuver to get him with his back to the couch, because the couch had a spring sticking out. She had covered it with a towel, but you could still see the outline of the spring, and the towel looked ratty anyway. Every poor person fixates on one thing that makes them feel especially poor, an objective correlative of poverty, and for my mother it was that sofa. She could buy her clothes at Goodwill and go without food at least once a week, she could handle being awakened by phone calls about my father's gambling debts, but somehow she felt less poor if she thought no one saw the sofa.

My mother was from Ireland. I once read that during the potato famine, Irish peasants who realized they were about to die would find a corner of the houses that couldn't be seen from the window, and huddle there to wait for the end, humiliated by their starvation. And, strangely, I smiled when I read that sad detail, because it reminded me of my mother. You're all right as long as no one sees.

The man in the red cardigan just didn't get it. He hung around chatting, as if he were waiting for something. And eventually my mother figured out what he wanted and gave it to him. She asked if he had a lot more deliveries to make. I think she was just trying to remind him to get going, but that question turned out to be exactly what he wanted. He started rambling on and on about how many people his church helped at this time of year and how proud he was of all those fine people, and how good it made him feel to help. My mother kept looking at the door. And then he said that what he had in the car was for the people in our building, and he looked at a piece of paper and told my mother which other apartments he was spreading his Christmas cheer to.

Kids who grow up in violent homes learn to pick up the exact moment an adult becomes angry -- before they do anything. When the man named the other charity cases in the building, I could see a change in my mother's expression that I'm sure the man couldn't see. She kept smiling, but anger was building under the surface, made worse by the fact that she had to keep smiling and playing the part of the grateful poor lady.

The anger came out after the man left. My mother screamed and cried that he was going to tell half the people in the building that she couldn't even feed her kid. And all the time she was jerking the curlers out of her hair, because priorities are priorities, and she was late for work. And anyway, she screamed, headed for the kitchen, that was a lie. A no-good lie. We always have food, except the day before payday, and we don't need their garbage. She took cans out of the box -- some dented, some labelless, others just useless. Beets, lard, hollandaise sauce. I remember looking at that little yellow can and wondering what it was. Did it come from Holland, and was it made of daisies? My mother picked up the small frozen turkey. "I don't want this garbage," she screamed -- and she threw the turkey to the floor, and stormed out of the kitchen. She'd thrown it so hard, it dented the linoleum.

She left for work, and I put the canned charity away. There was one large box of kiddie cereal. The bottom of the box had gotten damp, and when I picked it up, it split open, and all the cereal scattered across the floor.

Whenever I hear about welfare taking away people's dignity, I always remember crawling around on the kitchen floor, trying to pick up the sugary colored rings of private charity.

I thought of the man who sucked the air out of Christmas a few days ago, as I was reading an article about President Bush urging Americans to give more to the needy. I'd second the idea, of course. It certainly wasn't his plea for time and money that bothered me. It was a president being photographed putting canned peaches and spinach in a bag, without thinking about the fact that there are more important and effective things he could do to help the needy. But of course that assumes that the point is to help those in need, and not to provide photo-ops for presidents, and chances for the middle class to feel good about themselves while getting rid of their garbage.

Thank you to everyone who sent me ideas for fixing my archives yesterday, including Dwight Meredith, who suggested burning candles and chanting nursery rhymes in Arabic (don't know any Arabic, so I went with Gaelic prayers and Italian lullabies). After trying a dozen different suggestions, I finally followed the advice of my favorite conservative, Eve Tushnet -- I ripped out my archives link and made new links myself. And now, thanks to Eve, I have archives!

This entry has also been posted at Stand Down -- the anti-war blog that explores reasons for opposing war with Iraq from multiple politcal perspectives. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here.

The Liberal Media in Action
Thank you to Donald Johnson for pointing out to me that the New York Times got around to publishing something this morning on a topic Kerim Friedman wrote about a few days ago and I picked up on yesterday: the outing of companies that did business with Iraq, providing support for Saddam's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. Oddly, the Times quotes "American officials and private weapons specialists" who say Iraq's weapons declaration includes the names of 31 foreign suppliers, including two small American companies, both of which are now out of business, and one of which was owned by an Iraqi immigrant.

The Times' numbers are decidedly out of synch with those published a few days ago in the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung (and picked up by The Independent), which include 24 US companies -- Honeywell, Unisys, Sperry, Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, Eastman Kodak, and Bechtel among them -- and 150 foreign companies in all. In all honesty, I have no way of knowing whose numbers are more accurate, but it seems dishonest to me to cite one set of figures, and one list of companies, without at least noting that others have been named. The oddity is compounded by the fact that at the end of the article, the Times quotes Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project On Nuclear Arms Control, who argues that any company that did business with Iraq deserves to have its identity revealed: "If you look at the scale and frequency of the exports of some of these companies, it's clear that they were deeply involved in Iraq's chemical weapons program. They must have known what was going on."

That's a bold statement. So, New York Times, where's the rest of the list?

Can somebody on Blogspot with functioning archives help me? For some reason, my archives expired in September. That's a bit of a problem because I occasionally get e-mails from people saying, "Remember that thing you wrote a few weeks ago on [fill in the blank, but it's usually Nigeria]? How do I get that?" And unfortunately my answer is always "Your guess is as good as mine." I can find everything I've written on my editing page, and I've even e-mailed old posts to people who've asked, but I have no idea how to get them to show up on the site. Ampersand even blogged about my late lamented archives (okay, that wasn't the most important part of his post, but the topic did arise.)

I just looked around and realized this is not just one of the things you have to live with if you're stuck on Blogspot. CalPundit has archives. Ignatz has archives. PLA, Rittenhouse, and Two Tears all have living, breathing, up to the minute archives (and good ones at that). Am I doing something wrong? My settings are on weekly archives (I'd change it to monthly, but since it's not working anyway, there doesn't seem to be any point.) I've tried republishing the archives so many times over the past few months it's ridiculous. Does anyone have any suggestions for bringing my archives back from the grave?

More awards! Jesse Taylor has opened nominations for The Year's Most Annoying Conservatives. I think his readers pretty much have it covered already, but go over and see if you can think of anybody who's been getting to you all year to add to the list. Personally, I'm with the reader who said Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Osama bin Laden should tie for first place -- people who sell the idea that God is full of hate should be lumped together, even if they call their hatred by different names, and they certainly top my list of people I wish would just go away.

CHAPTER 3
Everything you always wanted to know about John Ashcroft*

John Ashcroft's opposition to school integration in Missouri may have been politically motivated, but it sometimes had a gratuitously mean edge. In 1984, when he was in his final year as Attorney General of Missouri, and was running for Governor of the state, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals voted to uphold most of the school desegregation plan that Ashcroft had vigorously fought during his tenure as AG, including a voluntary transfer program which permitted students from predominantly black suburbs to attend schools in predominantly white suburbs. The court did agree with Ashcroft that the state should not pay for the that part of the program, since it didn't have anything to do with integrating schools in the city. Ashcroft immediately moved to cut off payments for the 311 African American students in the program -- a move that, if implemented, would have forced them to return to their former schools with only three months left in the school year. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called Ashcroft's action a "cruel way to deal with students who had placed their educational hopes in their new schools." Fortunately for the students, the court ordered the state to continue the payments until an agreement could be worked out between the state and the suburbs. Ashcroft called the decision allowing the black students to stay at the same school through the end of the year "a gross miscarriage of justice."

...........................

*but were afraid to ask.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

That Western companies helped Saddam Hussein build weapons isn't news. But some bits and pieces of information about that assistance that have filtered out over the past few days disturb me, even though I haven't figured out how much weight to give them, and how to string them together yet:

* According to Die Tageszeitung, Iraq's report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies -- including American, British, German, and French -- who provided Saddam Hussein with equipment and expertise for his weapons program from 1975 on, including support for building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

* Some of the companies were providing support as recently as last year.

* The dossier documents methods the companies used to cover up their activities.

* Information about foreign companies' involvement with Saddam Hussein was collected by UN weapons inspectors between 1991 and 1998. However, the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France and China -- have blocked release of the relevant information.

* The non-permanent members of the Security Council received an expurgated version of Iraq's weapons declaration report, with the names of foreign companies blacked out, although the censors did an incomplete job and left the names of some German and Swiss companies in the report.

* Die Tageszeitung quoted sources close to Dick Cheney as saying the Bush administration was hoping to prove a German company was continuing to co-operate with the Iraqi regime over the supply of equipment allegedly useful in the construction of weapons of mass destruction.

* Relations between Germany and Washington are strained because of Germany's outspoken criticism of a possible military strike against Iraq.

* Among the American companies listed are Honeywell, Unisys, Sperry, Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, Eastman Kodak, and Bechtel.

* British officials said the list of companies appeared to be accurate.

* Most of the sales were legal and often made with the knowledge of governments. In 1985-90, the U.S. Commerce Department licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses.

* I can't find any articles on the subject in either The New York Times or The Washington Post -- and I'm hoping that has something to do with my lousy research skills.

.................

More information and comments at Stand Down

........................

Sources:
Leaked report says German and US firms supplied arms to Saddam

Parts of declaration cut from Iraq weapons report

Arms report names Western suppliers

U.S., others aided Iraqi nuke program

Die Tageszeitung's List of Companies
.

Obviously the Republicans want Trent Lott out because he hurts their carefully crafted image. But there's another reason percolating under the surface. I've been thinking about it for a few days, because hints of this other motive peeked out in a couple of conversations I had with Republicans, and now the Christian Science Monitor has picked up the thread: They're afraid that with Lott around, the party (and, indeed, Lott himself) will have to be so sensitive that they're forced to move left on racial issues. The administration's backing off on support for the Supreme Court case challenging racial preferences at the University of Michigan, and Trent Lott's statement on BET in favor of affirmative action make conservatives nervous. What are they going to have to do to avoid the appearance of racism? Are there right-wing judicial nominees who might have squeaked through before Thurmond's Centennial who won't past the smell test now? And will that reduce the party to hunting for moderates? Will cutting millionaires' taxes while education, welfare, and health care wither suddenly be seen in a different light -- and force Bush to do the unthinkable: put the needs of the most vulnerable citizens (of all races) ahead of the wish lists of his corporate friends?

Relax, Republicans. It's not going to happen. I wish it would, but it won't.

The party is going to have to be a little more careful about race than it has previously been, whether Trent Lott goes or stays (but having him around scratches the wound and complicates matters). In many ways, that's a good thing for the country. Assuming we still have a remotely functioning press -- a big assumption, I admit -- the Southern Strategy just got harder to play. Bob Jones University may find few politically powerful speakers. Interviews with Southern Partisan magazine are probably not going to pass unnoticed by the mainstream press. It will get a lot more difficult to play footsie under the table with bigots. Your South Carolina strategy will be noticed in Southern California. And that's a good thing -- a small rip in the fabric of hypocrisy.

But when it comes to policies, nothing will really change. Genuine change requires understanding that the effects of slavery and segregation continue to gnaw holes in the promise of America, in psychological as well as economic ways, and that we have a continuing moral obligation to look for ways to undo the damage. The modern Republican Party, even at it's best, has never believed in that obligation. It's been about tokens, and twisting the language of justice to unjust purposes. In the CSM story, there's a revealing remark. An affirmative action opponent who believes the Bush administration will eventually file a brief opposing the Michigan program, offers a way of selling that opposition: "I think the way this drama has played out actually puts the president in a very good position.... He can say, 'I think racial discrimination is wrong..., and for exactly that reason, my administration is filing a brief telling the Supreme Court that they should rule against racial discrimination in college admissions.' "

Yes, we think discrimination is bad, and therefore we're going to put all our effort behind ending the massive discrimination against white people. Republicans think that will sell, and they're probably right. But the fact that they're thinking of that even now, while the fruit of that thinking is on the front page of the paper every day, says a lot about how deep their understanding of the problem goes.

I'm an odd sort of political junkie in that I tend not to pay much attention to electoral politics until I absolutely have to. I suppose when it comes right down to it, I'm too much of a moralist to feel comfortable with all the compromises involved, and so firmly on the left that I don't expect to have a real choice. I can count on the fact that my favorite candidate is not going to win. I haven't voted for a presidential candidate I actually liked since George McGovern (and I thought he was a bit too conservative.) Most of the time, I'd prefer to vote Green, but I understand that the Republicans also prefer I vote Green. You never saw a grin as smug and satisfied as the one that appeared on the face of one of my husband's Republican friends when my husband said he was considering voting for Nader. (The grin changed my husband's mind -- you've got to watch your body language, Republicans, you're giving the game away). Basically my attitude is, I despise Bush and therefore I'll hold my nose and vote for any Democrat you put in front of me.

I am capable of being embarrassed by my ignorance, though. Recently someone asked me what I thought of Howard Dean, and my answer ("Uh, the guy from Vermont, right?") was rather humiliatingly stupid. I would have been better prepared if I'd read this London Times article, which seems to me a good, fair, and simple (I need that) introduction. Count on the Brits to explain American politics in a way that even a politically clueless American like me can understand.

And the next time someone asks me about Howard Dean, I'll be able to say, "That's the best we can do, huh? Well, at least he's not Bush." (Once the campaign really gets going, rather than put on a bumpersticker for my favorite candidate, I may just have one made up that says, "Not Bush." That pretty much covers the possibilities I can live with.)

Score one --