THE DCCC’S DIRTY TRICKS When J.D. Hayworth took to the House floor last week in support of a campaign-finance amendment to ban non-citizens from making political contributions, he was characteristically blunt: “Well, now my friends, here is your chance to change the system. To say, lawful citizens can contribute. No more financiers of Red Pagoda Communist Chinese cigarettes; no more daughters of the head of the Chinese equivalent of the CIA who showed up in the Oval Office; no more sham corporations, Chinese shell corporations operated by the Red Army of China, doing their dirty work through soft money to a Clinton-Gore reelection campaign. If you’re serious about reform, stand up for national security, stand up for this perfecting amendment. But I know the Orwellian phrase will be, somehow this is a poison pill. Yes, I guess it is poisonous to disallow enemies of this state access to our political system.” And on he went–criticizing the Clinton administration and its illegal Chinese fund-raising. So imagine his surprise when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee responded with a press release that began: “Yesterday, during a debate on the Floor of the United States House of Representatives, Arizona Republican J.D. Hayworth likened Hispanic legal permanent residents to ‘Enemies of the State.'” Huh? Hayworth never used the word “Hispanic” in his brief speech–we’ve quoted about one-third of it above. Nonetheless, the headline on the press release reads, “GOP Says Hispanics are ‘Enemies of the State’–Democrats Fight Back.” At first we simply thought our good friends at the DCCC were a little confused. Then we came upon an audio file of Hayworth’s speech on the DCCC website. Funny thing: Hayworth’s main argument about the Chinese is gone, apparently deleted by a good editor. What remains is his “enemies of the state” reference. Again, the ever-magnanimous SCRAPBOOK gave the DCCC the benefit of the doubt. Surely some pimple-faced intern was playing a prank? Nope. A closer look at the DCCC press release reveals these comments from Rep. Bob Menendez: “Rep. Hayworth’s comment is the latest attack on the Hispanic community by the Republican leadership in Congress, who speak out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to increasing Hispanic participation in politics. What happened to a kinder and gentler Republican party? Fortunately, Republicans failed in their attempt to silence voices and exclude ethnic groups.” That Menendez would participate in such a smear was cowardly enough. What makes it even worse is that in 1998 he voted for the Illegal Foreign Contributions Act, which, Hayworth’s office points out, “would have barred non-citizens from making campaign contributions or expenditures.” Exactly what Hayworth was again proposing to do. Ay, caramba! THE THUGS WHO KILLED DANIEL PEARL When human-rights activists want to describe a dictator whose barbarism goes wildly beyond even the usual level of torture, kidnapping, and murder, they call him a “thug.” But with the murder of reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, we may have the first outbreak of literal thuggery in more than a century. The original thugs were the scourge of British India (and what is now Pakistan). The word thug means “cheat” or “scoundrel” in Hindi and Urdu and comes out of the Sanskrit sthaga, “to deceive.” Thugs traveled in bands and killed as a kind of a hobby. Their method was to win the confidence of a traveler, usually through hospitality. The elaborate ruses of Daniel Pearl’s killers–luring him with the promise of meeting an associate of terrorist Richard Reid–would not have been outside the 19th-century thugs’ repertoire. They compared their murders to hunting, and dishonesty–winning the trust of strangers through lies–was the sport of it for them. According to the testimony of one thug, recorded in James Morris’s “Heaven’s Command,” “You, sahib, have but the instincts of the wild beasts to overcome, whereas the Thug has to subdue the suspicions and fears of intelligent men and women, often heavily armed and guarded. . . . Can you not imagine the pleasure of overcoming such protection during days of travel in their company, the joy of seeing suspicion change to friendship, until that wonderful [killing] moment arrives?” In the early 19th century, Thugs were killing thousands of people a year. The Crown eradicated them in the 1830s by appointing the ruthless Captain William Sleeman an Imperial Superintendent for Suppression of Thuggery. Captured thugs were tried by special commissions, and either turned into informers, executed, or subjected to the tattooing of the word “Thug” on their eyelids. This unusually harsh treatment, said Sleeman, was “a deviation from the Regulations fully warranted by the crime of Thuggism, which justly places those who practised it beyond the pale of social justice.” The Scrapbook does not think he was wrong. CHOOSING COLORBLINDNESS According to the 2000 Census, California has 1.6 million multi-racial residents (and counting), a trend that threatens to make racial classifications in the state anachronistic. Hoping to hasten this process along, and finally put an end to the mischief of racial quotas, Ward Connerly is trying to qualify for the state’s November ballot a Racial Privacy Initiative, which would prevent the state from collecting racial data and classifying people by race (with some common-sense exceptions for law enforcement, medical research, etc.). The RPI already has the support of a broad range of Californians, including San Diego Padres owner John Moores, Connerly’s colleague on the UC Board of Regents. Moores isn’t exactly a raving right-winger–he’s been a donor to Governor Gray Davis, former President Clinton, and other Democratic candidates. Moores seems to have a better grip on California’s racial politics than the state’s Republicans, who are running away from the RPI just as they did from Connerly’s 1996 Prop. 209, which eliminated race and gender preferences in state hiring and college admissions. State GOP spokesman Rob Stutzman says the RPI “is not consistent with the priorities the party has in California.” (Given the party’s recent track record, you can insert your own joke here.) The Stutzman quote comes from a December Chicago Tribune story on the RPI. Here’s THE SCRAPBOOK’s favorite passage from the story: “Some civil rights activists around the country say the new [post-Sept. 11] sense of unity and patriotism is posing a major challenge for them, relegating certain race issues [such as slavery reparations] to the back burner.” We suspect if he gets his vote, Connerly, whose idea is that a sense of unity is the solution and not the problem, will carry the day. CALL FOR ENTRIES A new journalism award–and The Scrapbook takes the view that there can never be too many of these–is being launched by two worthy institutions and one worthy benefactor. The Paul Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the Media will honor journalism that critically evaluates and corrects distortion in other news stories. Top prize is $10,000; entries of distinction will be awarded $1,000. Mongerson, who put up the money for the awards, is an engineer, businessman, and sometime media critic. The award is administered by S. Robert Lichter’s Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington and Larry Sabato’s University of Virginia Center for Governmental Studies. The competition is open to professional journalists working for a U.S.-based newspaper, magazine, radio, TV, or cable outlet. Deadline for entries is March 1, so quickness in filling out entry forms will also count. But there is no fee, and the forms can be downloaded from www.cmpa.com.
