THE DIMMEST KENNEDY? Ever since the New Republic labeled Joe Kennedy, the now-retired Massachusetts congressman, “the Dumbest Kennedy,” family-watchers have fiercely debated: Can this possibly be fair? After all, competition for that distinction is stiff. Indeed, THE SCRAPBOOK has always been partial to representative Patrick Kennedy, trasher of yachts, mauler of airport security guards, son of Teddy (or, as the Boston Herald’s Howie Carr once put it, “the runt of the runt’s litter”). Our boosterism comes not just because Patrick’s own mother once described him as a “slow starter.” Or because he said that as a Kennedy, he’d never have to worry about “making mends meet.” Rather, Patrick is our man because of performances like the one he gave at a recent congressional hearing, in which Louis Freeh was supposed to be getting grilled about the FBI’s bungling of the Timothy McVeigh case. Never one to bypass an opportunity for cheap partisan grandstanding, Patrick steered the inquiry into a ditch by demanding to know Freeh’s position on capital punishment. What this had to do with the price of potassium chloride in Terre Haute wasn’t clear, but it did allow Kennedy (who has twice switched positions on the death penalty — he’s currently against it) to get off some howlers, such as, “What is your answer to the fact that…minorities and poor people have a greater likelihood of being put to death than they have of getting cancer from smoking?” When we asked Kennedy’s office to give us the specific reference for his executed-minorities-to-smoking-deaths ratio, they gave us a statement from Kennedy, explaining that the information originated with Richard Dieter, author of The Death Penalty in Black & White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides. Dieter states that “Race is more likely to affect death sentencing than smoking affects the likelihood of dying from heart disease.” Oops — not exactly the same. “He kind of paraphrased it,” explains Kennedy spokesman Larry Berman. There is, however, good news for the Rhode Island Democrat, who’s seen his home-state favorability rating drop so precipitously that Republicans believe they might have a crack at his seat. There may be a new contestant in the Dimmest Kennedy sweepstakes. Cousin Max, who’s considering a run for cancer-stricken Joe Moakley’s seat, gave a Patrick-like coming-out speech the other day to the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps. The Boston Globe reported that Max “lost his place, appeared confused, and, at one point, erupted in nervous laughter for no apparent reason.” Later in the day, he described former Supreme Court justice Byron White, whom Uncle John appointed to the Supreme Court, and who retired in 1993, as a current justice. While one of Kennedy’s supporters described the event as being “one of those times when you want to close your eyes,” Max said, “I had fun.” We’ll all have fun if he runs for Congress, something that shouldn’t be difficult since, with his family’s extensive donor network, Max should have no trouble making mends meet. _ BEIJING 2008=BERLIN 1936? Scripps Howard reports that the Bush administration will “make nice with China by declining to oppose Beijing’s bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.” When the International Olympic Committee meets July 13 to choose between Beijing, Paris, and Toronto, the “White House has decided not to blatantly inject politics into what is supposed to be an apolitical process.” That “supposed to be” is rich. The history of selecting Olympic host cities shows it to be an almost exclusively political process, when it is not a criminal one. Still, let’s hope the IOC snubs Beijing, with or without U.S. pressure, so that the world can avoid the most demoralizing propaganda show since the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Those games were a triumph for the Reich, as related in compelling detail in Ian Kershaw’s Hitler biography: “Hitler attended almost every day — underlining the significance of the Games — the crowd rising in salute each time he entered the stadium. The German media coverage was massive. Over 3,000 programmes were transmitted worldwide in around fifty languages; over 100 radio stations in the USA alone took transmission….Many more millions had read reports of them, or seen newsreel coverage. And of paramount importance: Hitler’s Germany had been open to viewing for visitors from all over the world. Most of them went away mightily impressed. ‘I’m afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda,’ noted the American journalist William Shirer. ‘First, they have run the games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, they have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen.’…The enthusiastic Hitler Youth activist Melita Maschmann later recalled young people returning to their own countries with a similar positive and peaceful image of Germany. ‘In all of us,’ she remembered, ‘there was the hope in a future of peace and friendship.'” By all means, Beijing should host the Olympic games. But not until the current regime, still propped up by torture, fear, and deadly force, has been replaced by a democratic one. _ JEFFORDS CONFLICT AT THE NEW YORK TIMES Mickey Kaus, editor of the indispensable kausfiles.com, spotted this excellent bit of discord between the news and editorial duchies at the New York Times. “The House voted to approve [an education bill] which calls for a 29 percent increase in spending to $24 billion for next year. The measure was written by Republicans and Democrats using President Bush’s plan as a blueprint.” — NYT, page A1, 5/24/01. “Mr. Bush’s rejection of increased education spending in the budget has made a mockery of his pledge to ‘leave no child behind.'” — Howell Raines’s NYT editorial page, same day. “It’s lucky,” Kaus notes sarcastically, that “the guy who produces that sort of unthinking hackneyed propaganda isn’t taking over the whole paper!” DAFFY QADDAFI As THE SCRAPBOOK reported a couple of weeks ago, the Bush administration is being lobbied to end the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, up for renewal this August. On May 25, Vice President Cheney seemed to suggest that lifting sanctions on Libya, Iran, and Iraq might be under consideration as part of the administration’s energy strategy. “There’s going to have to be some other change in the climate, in the environment over there and the conduct of those governments, I would think, before Congress is going to be comfortable lifting those sanctions,” said Cheney. “But we are looking at it.” One thing they might look at before being bewitched by the sweet fragrance of Libyan oil is dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s recent arrest of six Bulgarian medical workers. Since February 1999, Qaddafi has held them on suspicion of infecting 393 children with the HIV virus at Benghazi children’s hospital. The five nurses and one doctor could face the death penalty. At an African AIDS summit last month, Qaddafi explained the origins of the virus: “The answer is that the laboratories of the U.S. Secret Service, the CIA, have used viruses in biological wars which led to the birth of the AIDS virus. Yes, this is the astonishing truth. That is why they are avoiding the question and the answer. They carried out experiments in their laboratories by injecting this virus on prisoners in Haiti, because they were blacks from Africa. They were used as guinea-pigs. They infected them with this virus and kept watching them. These prisoners died of AIDS in Haiti.” And what about those Bulgarians? Who put them up to this? Says Qaddafi, “Some said it was the CIA. Others said it was the Mossad Israeli intelligence.” We say it’s all in his twisted mind. Let’s keep the sanctions.
