Penguin Family Values? Ludicrous. Monkey Socialism? Profound
September 23, 2005
Penguin Family Values? Ludicrous.
Monkey Socialism? Profound
"Those who start looking outside the human family for old-fashioned values, in
fact, will need to quickly narrow their search terms. They will surely want to
ignore practices observed in animals like dolphins (gang rape), chimpanzees
(exhibitionism), bonobo apes (group sex) and Warner Brothers cartoon rabbits
(cross-dressing). Casting a wide net for chaste and saintly creatures, the mind
flails, then comes up mostly empty. Yowling tomcats? Lazy, sexist lions?
Preening peacocks? Better stick with the penguins."
- From a September 18 editorial, "Penguin Family Values," mocking
conservatives for hailing the movie "March of the Penguins."
vs.
"Give a capuchin monkey a cucumber slice, and she will eagerly trade a small
pebble for it. But when a second monkey, in an adjoining cage, receives a
more-desirable grape for the same pebble, it changes everything. The first
monkey will then reject her cucumber, and sometimes throw it out of the cage.
Monkeys rarely refuse food, but in this case they appear to be pursuing an even
higher value than eating: fairness.in a week when fairness was so evidently on
the ropes - from the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancn, which poor
nations walked out of in frustration, to the latest issue of Forbes, reporting
that the richest 400 Americans are worth $955 billion - the capuchin monkeys
offered a glimmer of hope from the primate gene pool."
- Times editorial writer Adam Cohen, September 21, 2003.
Starring Barbara Bush as Fagin
"An orphan, Oliver lands first in a workhouse (its resemblance to a
concentration camp is hardly accidental), and before long finds himself
apprenticed to a weak-willed coffin maker. At every turn he is menaced by adults
whose grotesqueness, while comical, is also a measure of their moral deformity,
and of the ugliness of the society that makes them possible. The worst thing
about these villains, who tend to occupy positions of at least relative power,
is that they believe their sadism and lack of compassion to be the highest
expressions of benevolence. Like Barbara Bush after seeing the 'underprivileged'
citizens of New Orleans exiled to the Astrodome, they insist on telling Oliver
that things are working out pretty well for him."
- A.O. Scott in a review of Roman Polanski's "Oliver Twist," September
23.
Cindy Sheehan, American Idol
"When they finally arrived, Ms. Sheehan, whose son Casey, 24, was killed last
year, was treated like a rock star, as children and adults crowded around her,
clamoring to shake her hand or get an autograph. The church was an appropriate
setting for a protest, said the Rev. David W. Dyson, who helped organize the
event. Built in 1857, the church was created as part of the abolitionist
movement, and tunnels below were twice used to shelter runaway slaves as part of
the Underground Railroad. Mr. Dyson said many people showed up because they
respect Ms. Sheehan's willingness to speak out for what she believes."
- Marc Santora, September 19.
Katrina: All Washington's Fault
"But if the [Hurricane Katrina] speech helped [Bush] clear his first hurdle
by projecting the aura of a president at the controls, it probably did not, by
itself, get him over a second: his need to erase or at least blur the image of a
White House that was unresponsive to the plight of some of the country's most
vulnerable citizens and failed to manage the government competently. Whether he
can put a floor under his falling poll numbers, restore his political authority
and move ahead with his agenda will determine not just the course of his second
term but the strength of his party, which by virtue of having controlled both
the White House and the Congress for more than five years has trouble credibly
pinning the blame elsewhere."
- From a September 16 "news analysis" by White House reporter Richard
Stevenson.
Apocalypse in the Park
"What, then, killed the glacier, and how long did it take to die? 'We don't
really know,' said Dr. Schaefer, a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory at Columbia University. Though his methodical quest could seem of
interest only to geology buffs, it may shed new light on the accelerating and
persistently controversial phenomenon of global warming, which has chased
glaciers into retreat across the planet and could bring New Orleans-style
flooding to coastal cities around the world."
- Glenn Collins on a researcher analyzing a boulder deposited by a
glacier in modern-day Central Park in Manhattan, September 14.
Alessandra's Fun Feminist Fantasy
"'Commander in Chief' is a liberal fantasy, but at a time when conservative
Republicans rule and Democrats are on the defensive, it's fun to imagine a woman
with a feminist agenda in the situation room while her husband decorates the
White House Christmas tree.
- TV-beat reporter Alessandra Stanley on the new ABC show starring Geena
Davis as America's first female president, September 11.
At Least Bumiller Has Her
Priorities Straight
From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina destroyed
more than an enormous swath of the Gulf Coast. The storm also appears to have
damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush's political
adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the
Republican Party for decades to come.
- Elisabeth Bumiller, September 12.
Playing the Race Card
"Behind the president's public embrace of [former FEMA head Michael] Brown was
the realization within the administration that the director's ignorance about
the evacuees had further inflamed the rage of the storm's poor, black victims
and created an impression of a White House that did not care about their lives."
- Elisabeth Bumiller, September 10.
Worthy of MoveOn.org
"The populism of Huey Long was financially corrupt, but when it came to the
welfare of people, it was caring. The churchgoing cultural populism of George
Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House
of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics
and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts."
- Former Times Executive Editor Howell Raines in a column for the
September 1 edition of the Los Angeles Times.
No "Amigos" for John Roberts at
the Times
"Explaining his decision on Judge Roberts, Mr. Reid said in his Senate speech
that he simply had 'too many unanswered questions' about the nominee, who he
complained had refused to distance himself from seemingly callous writings while
a lawyer for the Reagan administration, including a memorandum in which he used
the term 'illegal amigos' to refer to illegal immigrants."
- Sheryl Gay Stolberg, September 21.
