Times Watch for September 11, 2003
Toby Keith, Country Star and Demagogue
Ben Ratliff reviews a
concert by country superstar Toby Keith for Wednesdays Arts section thats
headlined: Keepin the Nation Strong, the Gals Quiet.
Ratliff seems
uncomfortable with Keiths assertive patriotism. His review of Keiths Holmdel,
NJ, concert begins: Toby Keith's country-music persona surrounds him like
welded steel: a beefy, rakish farm boy who lives by intuitive certainties. And
in his remarkably well written songs, which have improved as he gets deeper into
his 40's, he keeps introducing himself by telling you what he likes and what he
dislikes. Thumbs up: slow-going living, his country and its armed forces, his
favorite bar, the memory of his father, freedom (a key word in the lexicon)
and women whose words are consistent with their actions. Thumbs down: fast and
complicated living, most other countries, women who send mixed messages and
women who talk too much. (What is it with the Times insistence on putting the
word freedom in
contemptuous quotation marks?)
Ratliff continues: He
spread his retributive politics thick, invoking his country in between-song
asides where it wasn't strictly necessary. Of course, Times reviewers hardly
complain when left-leaning bands spread redistributive, as opposed to
retributive, politics.
Echoing the maxim that Theres a sucker born every minute, Ratliff writes,
[Keith] has grasped that an entertainer seldom goes broke by playing Captain
America. Toward the end of the show he switched to a stars-and-stripes guitar to
play Merle Haggard's Fightin' Side of Me, a dove-baiting song that fits
perfectly in Mr. Keith's repertory, and his own Courtesy of the Red, White and
Blue (The Angry American), easily the most belligerent popular song to have
been written after Sept. 11.
Finally, Ratliff notes
with relief that Keith dedicates one song to the potency of Willie Nelsons
marijuana: That one was relieving, in a way: it reminded you that Mr. Keith,
despite all his demagoguery, is just a musician.
For the rest of Ben Ratliffs review of the Toby
Keith concert,
click here.
The
Times Gets Standards
On Wednesday the Times announced the appointment of
Assistant Managing Editor Allan Siegal as the paper's first standards editor.
Reporter Jacques Steinberg explains: Mr. Siegal will organize training sessions
for new reporters and editors in fact-checking, overall accuracy and ethics, as
well as oversee the writing of new guidelines on using unidentified sources and
on byline and dateline policies. In addition, he will follow up on complaints
that are received or initiated by the newspaper's public editor, or reader
representative, soon to be appointed. The creation of the standards editor is a
response to issues raised last May, when The Times acknowledged that one of its
reporters, Jayson Blair, had committed acts of journalistic fraud, including
plagiarism and the fabrication of quotations, in at least three dozen articles.
For more on Siegals appointment and the Times new
standards editor position,
click here.
Everyone
Hates Us, And Its All Bushs Fault
Thursdays front-page story by Richard Bernstein is
headlined Foreign Views of U.S. Darken After Sept. 11. Guess whose fault it
is?
The story, written by
Bernstein with contributions from ten (countem, ten) other Times reporters,
opens: In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as
a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given
way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world
opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.In interviews
by Times correspondents from Africa to Europe to Southeast Asia, one point
emerged clearly: The war in Iraq has had a major impact on public opinion, which
has moved generally from post-9/11 sympathy to post-Iraq antipathy, or at least
to disappointment over what is seen as the sole superpower's inclination to act
pre-emptively, without either persuasive reasons or United Nations approval. To
some degree, the resentment is centered on the person of President Bush, who is
seen by many of those interviewed, at best, as an ineffective spokesman for
American interests and, at worst, as a gunslinging cowboy knocking over
international treaties and bent on controlling the world's oil, if not the
entire world.
Among the several
anti-Americans quoted is a Frenchman, Jean-Charles Pogram, 45, a computer
technician, who says: The United States can't see beyond the axiom that force
can solve everything, but Europe, because of two world wars, knows the price of
blood. (For a country that
knows nothing about the price of blood, the U.S. certainly shed a lot on
Frances behalf during World War II.)
Later Bernstein writes:
Gone are the days, two years ago, when 200,000 Germans marched in Berlin to
show solidarity with their American allies, or when Le Monde, the most
prestigious French newspaper, could publish a large headline, We Are All
Americans.
But as Fouad Ajami notes
in
Foreign Policy (in a useful corrective to the Times credulous acceptance of
foreign criticism), such sympathy was exaggerated: But even Colombani's column,
written on so searing a day, was not the unalloyed message of sympathy suggested
by the title. Ajami goes on to note how by December, There was nothing to
admire in Colombani's United States, which had run roughshod in the world and
had been indifferent to the rule of law. Colombani described the U.S. republic
as a fundamentalist Christian enterprise, its magistrates too deeply attached to
the death penalty, its police cruel to its black population.
Twice the Times suggests
that going to the United Nations would boost the opinion of the U.S. overseas:
The subject of America in the world is of course complicated, and the nation's
battered international image could improve quickly in response to events. The
Bush administration's recent turn to the United Nations for help in postwar Iraq
may represent such an event. Even at this low point, millions of people still
see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in
Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.
Later, Bernstein writes
the possible UN move indicates Bush may finally see the need for restraint: We
would love to see America as a self-limiting superpower, said Janusz
Onyszkiewicz, a former Polish defense minister. Perhaps the administration's
decision to turn to the United Nations to seek a mandate for an international
force in Iraq reflects a new readiness to exercise such restraint. The
administration appears to have learned that using its power in isolation can get
very expensive very quickly.
For the rest of Richard Bernsteins story on how
everyone hates the U.S.,
click here.
Next
Week: A Plague of Locusts
Thursdays follow-up story by David Halbfinger on
Alabamas anti-tax vote, With Tax Plan Rejected, Alabama Braces for Cuts, sees
grim tidings in voters rejection of Gov. Bob Rileys huge tax hike: Today, as
legislative leaders emerged ashen-faced from a meeting with Mr. Riley on the
extent of the fiscal crisis, it appeared that his dire forecasts would come
about: prisoners turned loose, nursing-home patients turned out and
schoolchildren denied textbooks.
For more of the anti-tax aftermath from Alabama,
click here.