KATHLEEN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE In last week’s cover story on Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Matt Labash told you everything you wanted to know about Maryland’s gubernatorial hopeful and, according to a few Kennedy-reviling readers, several things you didn’t. But owing to space considerations, there were two fun facts we neglected to mention–facts which, if deployed correctly, will make you a star at any conservative cocktail party: (1) Bobby Kennedy, Kathleen’s father, not only worked for and regularly socialized with Senator Joe McCarthy, but he even asked Tailgunner Joe to be Kathleen’s godfather. (2) Townsend is famous for attracting out-of-state celebrity money, with donors including everyone from Marvin “The Entertainer” Hamlisch to the Trollope of autopsies, Patricia Cornwell. But by far, her most unexpected supporter would have to be the American Spectator’s editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., tormentor of Bill and Hillary Clinton and poster boy of cigar-and-brandy conservatism. In 1994, the Washington Times reported that Tyrrell sent a $100 check to the Parris Glendening/Townsend campaign (Glendening ran for governor, Kathleen for lieutenant governor). “He’s a friend of hers,” Tyrrell’s assistant explained to the Times. “He had received a letter from Townsend, and he sent the check in support of her. It’s because of his friendship with her.” Townsend confirmed to us in an interview that she used to dine sporadically at Tyrrell-sponsored gatherings in the late 1980s. It seems an unlikely affinity, considering that Tyrrell once wrote of the Kennedy family in his book “Public Nuisances” that by the 21st century, “The brats will have come of age and Camelot will thus be carried on towards the twenty-second century. It is enough to make one yearn for the crack of doom.” In Maryland, doom’s crack might be nigh. Townsend’s lead over her Republican opponent Bob Ehrlich has dwindled to three points, and she has enraged many black supporters by not selecting a black running mate. If her liberal base gets wind of her taste in godfathers and dining companions, she might be looking for a gig at the risen-from-the-dead American Spectator. (By the way, welcome back, fellas.) FRIENDS WHO HATE A couple of weeks ago, Slate’s Michael Kinsley complained about “a general smothering of debate about, or even interest in, the decision to go to war [with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein] among citizens in general.” We think this misreads the mood of citizens in general. It does, however, capture the malaise of certain members of the foreign policy elite (both inside and outside the Bush administration), more of whom seem to be antiwar than their fellow citizens probably realize. That’s because, if you’re against the war, complaining about the absence of debate is easier than joining the losing side. The complaint is code for, “I’m desperately unhappy that most of the American people, George W. Bush first among them, are ready to dispatch Saddam Hussein. Won’t somebody else please talk some sense into them?” And after parsing some of their debating points, you can see why they might decide discretion is the better part of valor. Here, for instance, is Morton Halperin of the Council on Foreign Relations–an eminent veteran of several top positions in the Clinton administration foreign policy apparat–testifying on July 31 at Joe Biden’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on war with Iraq: “It is not an accident that most of the terrorists came from countries deeply friendly to the United States that we have worked with for a very long time. And I think the danger that, if we have a friendly Iraqi regime, it will become for the first time a breeding ground of people who go elsewhere and plot to kill innocent Americans, is not only a risk but in my view is extraordinarily likely.” Umm–does anyone who hasn’t practiced years of State Department voodoo believe that Saudi Arabia is “deeply friendly” to the United States? Is it conceivable that “a friendly Iraqi regime” will breed greater threats to Americans than the current regime? Is this the debate Michael Kinsley had in mind? Let’s help Halperin out: America, he fears, can’t do better in Baghdad than the creepy regime we connive with in Riyadh. And let’s stipulate that he’s onto something. That “deeply friendly” Saudi monarchy has a lot to answer for. But that’s no reason to lay off Baghdad. It’s a reason to raise questions about any country that proves to be a “breeding ground of people who plot to kill innocent Americans.” Nobody says the war on terror is going to be cheap, or easy, or short, or lacking in complications. Only that it’s a war we have to fight and have to win. DEMOCRACY–NOT YET From our friends at the Far Eastern Economic Review comes the following story: At a media event in Beijing announcing the U.N.’s annual Human Development Report–“Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World”–a Chinese political scientist stated that “democratic or good governance is an unshakable goal of China’s political development.” Asking the obvious follow-up was a Japanese journalist who inquired: “Is it really possible to talk about democratic reform in China, when it still looks a long way away when the average person will be able to select the Jiang Zemins or the Li Pengs who actually rule the country?” Good question. Too bad Kerstin Leitner of the U.N. stepped in at that point to protect the Chinese academic from having to answer, saying, “This has nothing to do with what we are discussing here.” Yes, and we might add, the U.N. has nothing to do with human development, either. “TEAR DOWN THIS FIREWALL” The House Policy Committee has now taken up the cause of Internet freedom around the globe–the cute title above is from their new report, which denounces restrictions on Internet access under non-democratic regimes around the world. The usual suspects–Cuba, Laos, North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Tunisia–are rounded up as the most notorious violators. In North Korea, dictator Kim Jong Il has forbidden all servers or Internet connections to the outside world, making it, the report points out, “the only country on Earth where the Internet doesn’t exist.” In the other nations, ISP access is owned by the state and content carefully controlled, or e-mail addresses are made prohibitively expensive to discourage widespread use. Attention to the problem of global Internet censorship is long overdue, as The Weekly Standard has pointed out on several occasions (see especially Ethan Gutmann’s “Who Lost China’s Internet?” Feb. 25, 2002), so we’re pleased to see Rep. Christopher Cox’s committee taking up the cause. The report rather dramatically claims that “the future of human rights, democracy, and freedom throughout the world depend on” a U.S. policy of global Internet freedom. But it shortsightedly claims that the private sector, including for-profit corporations and non-governmental organizations, provides the best mechanism for defeating the various forms of government censorship. In fact, as the China example has shown, the private sector can be overly eager to collaborate with despotisms, if doing so beefs up the bottom line. Still, admitting you have a problem is the first step toward a cure. And most of the recommendations are fine. The U.S. government, the committee urges, should make “public and prominent” denunciations of Internet censorship, complain to the U.N., and compile “an annual report on countries that pursue policies of Internet censorship, blocking and abuses.” And maybe some public-spirited hackers can pitch in, too.
