EDITOR’S NOTE: “Window on The Week” acts as our weekly, quick-and-punchy, “between-the-issues” survey of some of the hot topics of the day. “Window on The Week” gives you a sense of what “The Week” — a popular feature that appears fortnightly in National Review — looks like.
If the first Bush was “born with a silver foot in his mouth,” did Senator Kerry acquire one when he married Teresa?
John Kerry apologized for his “botched joke,” but only after fellow Democrats had pulled him off the campaign trail and distanced themselves from his remarks. It appears that Kerry actually
was attempting a notionally humorous, if arrogant and obnoxious, jab at Bush when he told a crowd of students that if they didn’t do well in school they’d get “stuck in Iraq.” But he left out any mention of Bush, and the “joke” came across as a slam of the military. Any other politician would have deserved the benefit of the doubt, but not Kerry. Calling soldiers dumb is mild compared with what he did during Vietnam, when he accused his comrades of routinely committing war crimes. Outrage at that smear, of course, is what motivated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to go after him in 2004. Unfortunately, all Kerry learned from that experience was to viciously attack any of his detractors, a mistaken lesson that he applied in the immediate aftermath of this week’s gaffe, only stoking the controversy. We doubt the incident will have any long-lasting effect, except to convince Democrats never, ever again to permit him to “report for duty” as their presidential nominee.
On Sunday,
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote that a loss on Tuesday for Sen. Rick Santorum would be “bad for the poor around the world.” Brooks cited Santorum’s work on welfare reform, AIDS in Africa, and Sudan. Santorum’s defeat would of course also be a loss for the country. He is a leader on the protection of life, the defense of marriage, and the preservation of religious liberty. His opponent, Bob Casey Jr., poses as a pro-lifer but has made clear he has no intention of challenging the abortion status quo. Pennsylvania conservatives should do the right thing: Show up at the polls and help reelect Rick.
The Cuban government insists that Fidel Castro is the picture of health. Rumors circulate that he is dying of stomach cancer. But Cuba will not escape the yoke of Communism even in Castro’s death. He will almost certainly be succeeded by his brother Raúl, widely regarded as the nastier and more ideological of the pair. And Raúl will almost certainly be excused and adored by Europe, Hollywood, and the American Left, just as his brother has been. Meanwhile, the Cuban people . . .
MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann awarded NRO’s Stephen Spruiell the bronze medal in one of his nightly “Worst Person in the World” segments (the gold went to Rush Limbaugh). Spruiell’s offense was to write that Olbermann’s “insistence on calling the president ‘Mr. Bush’ instead of ‘President Bush’ is his way of saying that Bush holds office illegitimately.” In an attack cribbed from the left-wing group Media Matters, Olbermann argued that William F. Buckley Jr. refers to the president in the same manner. But this argument misses the point. Lots of people call the president “Mr. Bush.” They do not — and WFB does not — utter those words with the sneering contempt that Olbermann does. Nor did they spend the weeks following the 2004 election recycling fringe left-wing websites’ allegations of voter fraud. In other words, they have not given people good reason to think that they believe the president holds office illegitimately.
It was revealed this week that British scientists have used stem cells to grow the world’s first artificial liver. This breakthrough would be hailed on the front pages, were it not for one thing: The stem cells used came from the umbilical-cord blood of newborn infants. As Maryland Democratic Senate candidate Ben Cardin made clear on Meet the Press last weekend, if it’s not embryonic stem-cell research — the kind that destroys human life, and has not yet yielded a single medical breakthrough — he and many others are simply not interested in stem-cell research. Perhaps Michael J. Fox could come to the rescue with an ad hyping cord-blood research.
Concerned nutritionists and city officials gathered at the New York City Health Department to discuss a proposed ban on the use of trans fatty acids in local restaurants. Witnesses were paraded by the podium to offer cautionary tales about the dangers of “TFAs.” Summarizing the case for the prohibitionists, city councilman Peter Vallone calmly explained: “Trans fats kill babies!” A columnist in the New York Times observed that, quantitatively speaking, fatty Girl Scout cookies have been deadlier than al Qaeda — hence the war on gourmandism. We’d prefer a ceasefire. TFAs contain only about 2 percent of our caloric intake. Saturated fats are much bigger belt-busters, accounting for 10–15 percent of calories and a much larger share of cholesterol problems. But then this misses the main point: In a free society, people should be allowed to eat whatever they damn well please. Sure, fat is bad for you. But for some, the gustatory rewards that flow from a mouthful of trans fats are well worth the health risks. A city that outlaws gluttony doesn’t deserve a flicker from the lamp of Lady Liberty. To the nurses of the New York council we say: Hands off our fatty acids.
