1700 PERCENT HYPED
Human Rights Watch is just out with a 41-page report on the “severe wave of backlash violence” directed against Arabs and Muslims here in the United States after last year’s terrorist attacks. Though it acknowledges that federal, state, and local officials “responded quickly and vigorously to” this post-September 11 “ferocity,” the organization complains that America should have been better prepared for a “1700 percent” increase in anti-Islamic hate crimes, “which included murder, assault, arson, and vandalism.”
Where to begin?
First off, we suppose, it should be pointed out that Human Rights Watch’s scare statistic–a 1700 percent increase!–is disingenuous. That figure is derived from the FBI’s annual “Uniform Crime Reporting” tabulations, which counted 28 “anti-Islamic” bias crimes in 2000 and then 481 of them in 2001. From such a low base, of course, any numerical increase will produce a (misleadingly) gigantic percentage. But even in numerical terms, UCR hate-crime data are notoriously fuzzy; Human Rights Watch’s extraordinarily sloppy researchers confirm as much in the fact-checking notes they have failed to remove from their final, published text: “JS: is it correct as edited?” And then there’s this: 481 bias crimes, in a nation of 290 million people, isn’t all that many. The FBI reported more than twice that number of “anti-Jewish” bias crimes in 2001, for example. Was that a “severe wave” of violence? No, it was not. Especially since the vast majority of incidents at issue, for Jews and Muslims both, were entirely non-violent.
Human Rights Watch skips rather casually over this last and–you would think–crucial detail. Its report focuses instead on a handful of specific horror stories, raising a particular eyebrow about seven murders. Three of which concededly involved no real evidence of ethnic motivation whatsoever. And one of the others involved a Yemeni gentleman shot to death while in bed with the jealous gunman’s ex-girlfriend.
Even a single crime of violent bigotry in the United States would be too much to tolerate. Why is it necessary to exaggerate those few such crimes as do exist?
Especially since, when the Human Rights Watch “exposé” gets picked up by newspapers and television stations in the Arab world, nuance and underlying truth will inevitably be lost, and all that will remain are stories about the “ferocity” of American “violence” against innocent children of Allah. Once those stories start appearing, anybody want to bet what will happen? Thousands of American soldiers and civilians already risk their lives on a daily basis in the Islamic Middle East. Human Rights Watch has just made things more dangerous for them.
HARVARD GROWS A BACKBONE
Congratulations to Harvard’s Lawrence Summers, who is rapidly becoming The Scrapbook’s favorite university president. Last Tuesday, after “discussions” with Summers’s office, the Harvard English department rather abruptly canceled, and publicly apologized for having scheduled in the first place, a poetry reading by Oxford University professor Tom Paulin–which was to have taken place last Thursday. Paulin is the man who this past April told Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly that American-born Jews who’ve settled in Israel and the West Bank are “Nazis” and “racists” who should be “shot dead.” English department chairman Lawrence Buell, who had previously defended the Paulin invitation, now says his colleagues “sincerely regret the widespread consternation that has arisen.”
Right. And see that it doesn’t happen again.
THE GOP’S WAR ON SEX
Mark Morford, a columnist on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website and a self-described “neo-pagan gleaner of screaming delicious naked nuances,” has just pulled off the political scoop of the year. Everyone else in American journalism has missed this story:
“Dark storm clouds of sadness and savage spiritual pain [have] settled in over the collective soul of the country and indeed much of the world . . . as the Republican party snatched total control of the American government,” Morford writes. No, that’s not the scoop; that part’s right out of the New York Times. This is the scoop: Morford reports that the GOP has “really honestly promised to further its agenda.” Which, apart from “fear” and “war” and “intolerance” and “white-power laws,” turns out to include “bad sex.” The new Republican Congress, Morford reveals, plans to crack down hard on anyone who “really cares about . . . authentic orgasms.”
White House sources tell The Scrapbook that President Bush will wait until the Inauthentic Orgasm Act of 2003 is formally introduced before announcing his position on the legislation.
LARGENT’S LOSS
Amid the Republican glee over this year’s election, there was a loss both sad and surprising. This was the defeat of Steve Largent in the race for governor of Oklahoma. Largent, 48, is a former congressman and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And he was universally regarded as a rising star among conservatives, even a potential candidate for national office. He has a large following especially among religious conservatives.
What happened? As late in the campaign as six days before the election, Largent held an 11-point lead over his Democrat foe, state senator Brad Henry. Then a number of factors caught up with him, including a referendum on cockfighting. The question of banning cockfighting produced a huge turnout in rural Democratic counties, thus aiding Henry. (The ban, by the way, won.)
But two other factors were more important. Largent ran the sort of campaign that good government types love. He stressed substantive issues and didn’t run any negative TV commercials. Allies urged him to answer the attack ads aired against him, but he refused.
The other factor was independent candidate Gary Richardson, a renegade Republican trial lawyer who spent $3 million on the race. He won only 14 percent of the vote, enough to keep Largent from winning. “I do think Gary Richardson’s candidacy probably benefited me by taking votes from Steve Largent,” Democrat Henry told the Daily Oklahoman. “It took votes away from me too.” Gary Copeland of the University of Oklahoma agreed Richardson hurt Largent more. One Richardson TV ad was particularly harmful to Largent. It showed his response to a TV reporter who asked his whereabouts on September 11, 2001 (he was on a hunting trip). Largent, a devout Christian, used the word “bull–” in dismissing the question. Too bad.
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