Affluent Professionals vs. Fundamentalist Backwaters - September 2, 2003
Times Watch for September 2, 2003
Affluent Professionals vs. Fundamentalist
Backwaters
In anticipation of the
Labor Day weekend, Times movie critic Stephen Holden profiles some acclaimed
summer movie fare, including Andrew Jarecki's documentary "Capturing the
Friedmans," on how a child pornography scandal ruined a Long Island family. In
the process, Holden reveals some art-house snobbery.
Capturing the Friedmans
pointedly leaves things open-ended, letting the audience work out what really
happened. But Holden knows where to point the finger of blame: at
fundamentalist-style hysteria over sex: What's most disturbing about the film
is what it says about the hysteria surrounding sex and children in American
culture. Great Neck, where the events took place in the 1980's, is a town of
affluent professionals, not a fundamentalist backwater cowering in fear of
Satan. Yet the community uproar surrounding the Friedmans smacks of a witch
hunt, and its consequences are tragic.
Thereve been many
well-documented cases of witch-hunts based on false allegations of sex abuse,
documented most notably by Dorothy Rabinowitz, as in her article about the
Amirault family titled Only
in Massachusetts. (Is Massachusetts a fundamentalist backwater too?) But
despite Holdens snotty dismissal, one doesnt have to be a fundamentalist
hysteric to be concerned about pedophilia.
For the rest of Holdens review,
click here.
Having
Words With Bush
Mondays story by Warren Hoge, datelined London,
provides a good rundown on the row between Prime Minister Tony Blairs Labour
government and the BBC. BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan is under fire
for a story accusing the government of publishing dubious claims about Iraqi
capability over the objections of intelligence chiefs.
Hoge sets the scene: The
BBC, the world's largest and best known public service broadcaster, sends out
millions of words daily, but its long-nurtured reputation for accuracy, fairness
and objectivity is being challenged for just 20 of them. On May 29, the defense
correspondent of its morning radio news show, Andrew Gilligan, said that the
government had inserted into its dossier of intelligence on Iraqi arms the claim
that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons that were deployable
within 45 minutes. Mr. Gilligan went on to say that actually the government
probably knew that that 45-minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to
put it in. The phrase took only seconds to utter, at 6:07 a.m., but the effect
has been long lasting.
Hoge seems to find it
ironic that a reputable news organization like the BBC would be hammered so
hard over 20 words. Yet that didnt stop Times columnists, editorial writers and
reporters from assailing Bush over the 16 words in his State of the Union
speech regarding Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa. (For the record,
here are Bushs words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.)
On July 12, the Times
editorial page found Bushs words on Africa and uranium quite significant as a
symptom of a deeper rot: Much more went into this affair than the failure of
the C.I.A. to pounce on the offending 16 words in Mr. Bush's speech. A good deal
of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp in the
administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and
that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of
the House of Representatives last January.
Columnist Nicholas Kristof
followed up July 15
in a piece titled 16 Words, And Counting. Kristof wrote, the problem is
not those 16 words, by themselves, but the larger pattern of abuse of
intelligence.
Christopher Marquis
July 20 piece
puffed it into a Watergate-sized scandal: Today, those 16 words haunt the
administration. They are the best-remembered flourish in a portrait of Iraq that
today seems unrecognizable. They are a leading rationale for a war that has
resulted in the death of 224 Americans. And they are either unsubstantiated or
based on a lie.
Finally, a July 27 James Risen
story on CIA director George Tenet carried this baleful headline: Those 16
Words Threaten the Tenure of the Long-Serving C.I.A. Chief. Sometimes a few
words do mean a lot at the Times.
For the rest of Warren Hoges story on the BBC,
click here.
