Bill Buckley's great sense of humor

Readers Note: The following post first appeared in November, 2005. I hope you enjoy it.

John
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When I paid tribute to William F. Buckley's many contributions to America, I didn't mention his great sense of humor, but it's surely another wonderful Buckley contribution.

Four examples of his humor follow: two from memory, and two from a Jeff Jacoby column.

Buckley once said that given a choice between being governed by the Harvard faculty or a Congress composed of the first 500 people listed in the Boston phone directory, he'd opt for the phone directory.

He received a letter from an irate National Review reader telling him in great detail what a miserable editor he was. The letter ended with "cancel my subscription."

Buckley wrote back that he certainly had shortcomings and would try to do better. But as for canceling the subscription, he told the reader, "Dammit, cancel it yourself."

When asked why Robert Kennedy was refusing to appear on his Firing Line interview program, Buckley dryly countered with "Why does baloney resist the meat grinder?"

A National Review editorial comment began: "The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno."

Bill Buckley, a great American and a very funny guy.

The Churchill Series – Aug. 10, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Yesterday’s post related Randolph Churchill’s recollection of a night spent gambling with his father at the Cannes Casino. They left the casino at five in the morning and couldn’t find a cab back to their hotel.

Churchill said they’d walk back to the hotel. He told Randolph it was “only four or five miles.” So off they went.

The year was 1935 and Churchill was sixty-one.

I think it’s quite something when a sixty-one year old who’s been up all night starts off on such a walk at five in the morning.

It’s also a reminder of something I haven’t said here recently but which bears repeating: Churchill possessed enormous physical energy right up to the last years of his life.

As a youth he was a golfer, played tennis, rode horses and swam in rough, tidal Channel waters.

He played polo until he was fifty-one. His principal bodyguard during WW II, Inspector Walter Thompson, recalled that Churchill regularly walked for exercise, sometimes even during the blackouts.

When we think of all Churchill did during WW II and after, it’s worth remembering that at the time he became Prime Minister in 1940, he was eligible for a government old age pension.

Moving on.

I don’t know whether any of you live in Chapel Hill, NC but there’s something called a “Power Triathlon” being held there tomorrow.

If you’re thinking of entering, there’s good news: temperatures here have dropped from 104 to 93 degrees.

Whatever you do this weekend, I hope some of it’s enjoyable and cool.

John

Who Trusts the N&O?

Blog friend Mike Williams regularly sends outstanding electronic letters. Here's most of what he sent today - - -

A heads up for the MSM:

More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a [Pew Research Center]poll published Thursday showed.

The poll also showed this:

More than half -- 53 percent -- of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for "failing to stand up for America".

Now take a look at this headline and lede in today’s N&O:

Bush rejects raising tax to fix roads

After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the president says, Congress needs to adjust its spending priorities

Yep. A bridge collapses in Minneapolis, our national transportation infrastructure is heading to hell in a hand basket, and it’s all because of Bush. Except that folks in Minnesota at least don’t seem to think raising taxes is the best way forward. For some objective, fact-based reporting on the Minneapolis bridge collapse, go here.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Nice work, Mike, but be ready.

The N&O folks who control news reporting will tell you they treat President Bush just as fairly as they treat white male Duke students.

And when they say that, that's one time they're telling the truth.

The same N&O editors producing stories now about Bush and bridges were not too long ago assuring readers Crystal Mangum was a victim who'd endured a night of sexual violence.

That's a scary thought, isn't it?

But it helps explain those Pew results.

Message to JiinC readers: I'll be posting again on the Pew Research findings, including saying I think Pew spun their own numbers to make their liberal/leftist MSM allies look less bad than the numbers suggest.

Stay tuned.

The New Republic's Perfect Fit

After O. J.’s acquittal, he said he’d find the real killers.

After Dan Rather was exposed for using forged documents and lying about it, he said he’d prove they were authentic.

Will The New Republic’s editors say they’ll prove Beauchamp’s fabrications were true?

Their going the way of O. J. and Rather would be a perfect fit, wouldn’t it?

N&O & That Bathroom

Regular visitors know I’ve asked news organizations and individual journalists to provide us news reports with pictures or videotapes of the bathroom that Crystal Mangum claimed was the place where she struggled to fight off three Duke lacrosse players who brutally beat, strangled and gang-raped her for thirty minutes.
I’ve explained here why it’s important that happen.

What follows is my latest effort to persuade a news executive to make it happen.

John
_______________________________________________________

Melanie Sill, Executive Editor for News
The Raleigh News & Observer

Dear Melanie:

In your April 9, 2006 Sunday column you said:

“District Attorney Mike Nifong, the only person who can explain his office's decisions on the case, cut off interviews early last week, blaming an overload of requests.

That's not just a problem for reporters. It's keeping information away from people who live in this community.

Fortunately, Duke and Durham aren't territory that can be cordoned off. Some faculty, students and community members have spoken for themselves.

Journalism's purpose is to inform communities about important issues. The Duke story matters here, to Durham and the greater Triangle.
It also matters to Duke's alumni nationally and others concerned about college behavior, race and class.

I was relieved, Melanie, when DA Nifong’s cut off interviews, but otherwise I agree with everything else you say.

Regarding “keeping information away from people,” why did the N&O decide not to publish any photos of the bathroom which Crystal Mangum claimed was the scene of her brutal thirty minute beating and gang-rape by three white Duke students?

On April 2 the N&O published the face photos and names of 43 of the 46 white members of the Duke lacrosse team after Duke said it had removed those photos from GoDuke.com because of fears for the players’ safety.

The N&O also published a photo of the Duke students entering the Durham Police building for DNA testing. They were walking single file and had covered their heads with sweaters and jackets upon advice of adults who, like Duke, feared for their safety once they were photo ID’ed by certain people and groups.

N&O reporter Joe Neff has says the photo reminded him of a Mafia perp walk. Many people had the same reaction.

The N&O obviously believed both photos contained “information” it didn’t want to keep “away from people who live in this community.”

But you’ve never published a photo of the bathroom in which the woman you said was “the victim” claimed she she was brutally beaten, strangled and gang-raped by three white male Duke students for thirty minutes.

Why not?

The N&O regularly publishes photos of alleged and actual crime scenes. I’ve heard both police and crime victims complain that your photographers have sometimes entered victims’ private homes without permission to photograph a crime scene.

Surely a photo, preferably one showing four adults in the bathroom if it’s possible for them to all squeeze in at the same time, would provide information that shouldn’t be kept “away from people who live in this community,” and which you should have provided us with last March.

The N&O’s failure to date to publish a single informative photo of that bathroom leads any reasonable person to wonder just why you don’t want N&O readers to see it.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

Duke's numbers & alums

Readers Note: Below is a letter which appeared today in the Durham Herald Sun under the lead, Check Duke’s numbers. It’s followed by a double star line after which I offer some commentary.

John
_______________________________________________________

To the editor:

In a recent story, The Herald-Sun relied on a Duke University press release touting a record $380 million in gifts.

This total must be examined carefully in light of the pressing need of President Richard Brodhead and his administration to proclaim good news in order to survive their handling of the lacrosse debacle.

Exactly half of the increase over the previous year came from an installment payment by The Duke Endowment toward its one-time pledge of $75 million for scholarships. With this surge omitted, the increase did little more than cover inflation.

When measured against the university's budget growth, far exceeding inflation, the impact of the gifts actually diminished. The news release boasted about Brodhead's Financial Aid Initiative.

The claim that more than 75 percent has been pledged is distorted by over-subscription in areas like athletic scholarships. The undisclosed secret: only half of the money for need-based undergraduate aid is in sight, which puts the big goal of the initiative in jeopardy.

Finally there's clever, concealing wording about the Alumni Annual Fund. For 31 consecutive years news releases said the fund "exceeded its goal." This year, the Annual Fund merely "exceeded its previous year's total" with parts like the Law School ominously short of objective.

Overarching these details, to identify the $380 million as "philanthropic gifts" is seriously misleading; for example a large portion is for sponsored medical research, which is to say payment for work to be done. Significantly, the university made no announcement of total contributions for perpetual endowment -- the heart of Duke's enduring strength.

Ed Rickards
New York City

Duke '63,
Duke Law School '66

***************************************************************************
***************************************************************************

Rickards letter adds very important information to the Herald Sun’s story. It also raises serious issues which the University and Duke Endowment need to address.

Anyone using alumni annual giving as an indicator of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with President Brodhead and Board of Trustees Chair Robert Steel’s management of the University’s response to the obvious lies Crystal Mangum told and the terrible events that have followed them, should know this: Duke has carefully fed alums bafflegarb while telling them little or nothing about important matters which don’t reflect well on Brodhead and his administration.

So along with other alums, I’ve gotten letters and emails from Brodhead and Steel. They keep hitting the same themes. Things were tough but all is well now. Brodhead spoke up for the lacrosse players. Look to a bright Duke future under Dick’s leadership and move on.

Duke Magazine has been so "rah-rah Brodhead" it ought to be delivered with pom-poms.

But I’d ask my fellow alums if any of those emails or Duke Magazine has ever told them why Brodhead refused to meet with the lacrosse players’ parents when news of Mangum's lies first broke? Or why he continued to refuse to meet with them for many months thereafter?

For that matter, can any alum recall a Duke communication that's even mentioned Brodhead’s refusal?

I doubt if 5% of alums know Brodhead and the trustees said nothing when “activists” came on campus and circulated “Vigilante” posters which targeted 43 white students and added to the danger they were already facing.

Brodhead and Steel have never explained why they decided to say nothing when a Duke student, Reade Seligmann, was the target of death threats from members of the New Black Panthers Party and other racists. Or why they’ve said nothing since about their silence.

Who doubts that at least one reason Steel, Brodhead and the administration have worked so hard to, as one alum friend put it, “keep alums dumb” is their very reasonable calculation that if the alums knew more of what’s gone on at Duke, annual giving would drop significantly while a cry would go up for administrative and trustee changes?

If Duke alumni weren’t outraged once they really learned what the Brodhead/Steel leadership did and didn’t do following Mangum’s lies, what kind of people would they be?

There’s more I could say, but I’ll give other people a chance and “listen.”

The Churchill Series – Aug. 9, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Churchill was a gambler. And I don’t mean only that he often took huge political and government policy risks.

I mean he loved the casinos. There are many accounts of his spending most of the night at the casino tables in Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo.

Here’s one of them. It was dictated by Churchill’s son, Randolph, and recorded and later published by Martin Gilbert in In Search of Churchill: A Historians Journey (John Wiley & Sons, 1994):

In 1935, while staying at the Chateau de l’Horizon in the South of France, I want one night with my father to the Casino in Cannes. By five in the morning I had won 200 (pounds) and my father 500 (pounds).

We left the casino, but could not find a taxi. “Let’s walk back along the beach, it is only four or five miles,” my father said, and off we went, reaching the Chateau at half past six.

My mother, who had never approved of my father’s gambling, was asleep. Father went into her bedroom, woke her up, and showered her bed with 1,000 franc notes. (p. 25)

Gilbert calculated the combined winnings of father and son were the 1994 equivalent of 18,000 pounds.

I don’t know how to convert that sum into a 2007 pounds equivalent, but I can tell you that at the current pounds to dollars exchange rate, it’s a bit more than $36,000.

See you in Cannes.

The Chronicle & “off the record”

Readers note: On August 5 I posted To The Chronicle’s New Editor . The post is republished below.

In the post I asked questions of The Chronicle’s new editor, David Graham.

Graham’s response, which he labeled “off the record,” follows the post.

Since I’d never had any contact with Graham prior to our exchange, I sent him an email explaining why his “off the record” without prior discussion and agreement between us was problematic. That email follows Graham’s.

I end this post with some further comments.

John
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TO THE CHRONICLE’S NEW EDITOR

Readers Note: Trinity junior David Graham is the new editor of The Chronicle. In a recent article he introduced himself to the Duke community and outlined what he hopes The Chronicle will accomplish under his editorship. If you haven’t already done so, I hope you take a look at what Graham wrote.

I've just sent Graham the following electronic letter.

_____________________________________________

David Graham, Editor
The Chronicle

Dear Editor Graham:

I read with interest your July 25 article, Living up to the billing.

I wish you well as you begin your editorship. The goals and Chronicle services you highlight are impressive and important for Duke. I support them with just a few exceptions.

I’ll share one of those exceptions with you now.

You say:

For those of us who write for The Chronicle, it was also a very exciting time, as we competed and rubbed elbows with top-notch reporters and got to follow a story of national interest. At the same time, it became almost a single focus for us, consuming much of our time and the pages of this paper.

But with Nifong out of office, charges dismissed and most of the loose ends of the case tied up, both Duke and The Chronicle are ready to move on.

Ready to move on?

The Chronicle? OK, you're the editor.

The Allen Building? For sure.

But Duke?

As the last academic year was ending, Duke students took ads in The Chronicle calling on the Group of 88 to explain why they did what they did and to apologize. About 1,000 students endorsed a full-page ad that asked President Brodhead to finally stand up for them.

I wonder whether many of those students weren’t thinking of things like Brodhead’s silence on May 18, 2006 when racists, including members of the New Black Panther’s Party who openly boast of carrying guns, shouted threats, including death threats, at Reade Seligmann.

Brodhead has never explained why he didn’t speak out then and hasn’t since.

Has The Chronicle ever reported on Brodhead’s silence? Or the silence of all but a few faculty then and since? What about the silence of every trustee then and since? And then there's The Chronicle's own editorial silence.

We can agree, Editor Graham, there was a time many American universities abandoned their students when they were threatened by racists. But that stopped during the Civil Rights marches in the 60s.

Is there even one university which in the last 40 years has abandoned a student as Duke under Dick Brodhead abandoned Reade Seligmann on May 18, 2006?

If there is, how did that university "move on?"

Beginning on March 24, 2006 and for many days thereafter, the Durham Police repeatedly told the public about horrific crimes they said were committed at a party hosted by Duke students.

We don’t know why the police did that. We haven’t even identified and held accountable the police supervisors who approved the false statements the police spokesman was making.

We do know DPD’s repeated and shocking lies about Duke students stirred tensions and angers in the community, thus making Duke/Durham a more dangerous place. While that was true for all of us living here, it was and remains especially true for Duke students.

Shouldn't President Brodhead and "Dick's senior team" get some answers from DPD before they and The Chronicle decide "There's nothing to see here. Move on. Go back to your classrooms. If anything turns up, Sgt. Gottlieb will send us all an email?"

Editor Graham, I don't want this to get too long, so I'll move on now myself.

I look forward to your response, which I’ll publish in full at my blog. It's read by a good many members of the Duke community as well as some journalists and authors.

I’ll also be in touch in a week or so with other concerns generated by your column.

Again, good wishes.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina
www.johnincarolina.com

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GRAHAM’S RESPONSE

John,

[Off the record] I guess I'm curious as to what sort of response you were
seeking. I believe the coverage that we provide throughout the school
year will speak for itself and would caution against any reading of the column
that would suggest that we won't aggressively report on issues related to the case.

I hope you enjoy and are enlightened by it and imagine I'll be hearing
from you about it as we go along.

Thanks,

DG
--
David Graham
Editor, The Chronicle
President, Duke Student Publishing Company

***************************************************************

MY RESPONSE TO GRAHAM

Dear Editor Graham:

Thank you for your prompt but problematic response.

Why did you lead with "off the record?"

We never agreed your response would be "off the record."

If bloggers and journalists went along with university administrators, faculty and others who began their responses with "off the record," what would happen to informative reporting?

I hope Chronicle staffers don't let administrators, faculty and others begin their responses with "off the record" and then treat the responses as such.

I hope you agree I shouldn't, either.

Because this is our first exchange, I'll delay publishing your response until 2 PM tomorrow so as to allow time to hear anything you feel I've not taken into account that I ought to have.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

************************************************************

Folks,


Graham is young, but not so young that as the editor-in-chief of a college newspaper he can’t be expected to know you don’t drop “off the record” before your answer and expect it to count for anything with reporters seeking information for their readers.

If that kind of “off the record” was allowed to count, journalists from the high school level on through the top ranks of the profession could regularly and easily be compromised with “information dumps.”

Yes, some of that goes on but people concerned with news reporting, be they advisors to high school newspapers or editors at major newspapers, fight it.

I was ready to see Graham’s “off the record” as what the Brits call a “one off.” I hoped he’d respond to my second email with something like: “Sorry. It was a busy day. Now on the record …..”

Graham’s initial “off the record” and his subsequent failure to respond are troubling.

I’m going to send Graham a link to this post. I hope he agrees that what I expected from him is no more than he expects from every Chronicle reporter and editor.

Heaven forbid that it’s not.

I'll invite Graham to respond and will publish his response in full.

I’ll keep you posted on what I hear back.

John

AP’s latest on TNR & Beauchamp

An AP story today begins:

A magazine gets a hot story straight from a soldier in Iraq and publishes his writing, complete with gory details, under a pseudonym.

The stories are chilling: An Iraqi boy befriends American troops and later has his tongue cut out by insurgents. Soldiers mock a disfigured woman sitting near them in a dining hall. As a diversion, soldiers run over dogs with armored personnel carriers.

Compelling stuff, and, according to the Army, not true.

Three articles by the soldier have run since January in The New Republic, a liberal magazine with a small circulation owned by Canadian company CanWest Corp.

The stories, which ran under the name "Scott Thomas," were called into question by The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine with a small circulation owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

The Standard last month challenged bloggers to check the dispatches.

There’s more in the AP story here.

Glenn Reynolds says TNJ “looks awfully bad” in the story. I agree.

How about you?

I plan to comment later today on TNR, Beauchamp and related issues.

The Churchill Series - Aug. 8, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

A recent series post reported the decision of England’s curriculum authority to drop Churchill from the list of historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools.

The Churchill Center, an organization based in Washington and dedicated to promoting Churchill schorarship and public awareness of his contributions to free society issued a press release concerning the decision. Excerpts follow:

Considerable misinformation attended a recent announcement that Churchill, Gandhi, Stalin, Hitler and Martin Luther King, were deleted from a suggested list of historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools.

The story would be disturbing if accepted at face value. The facts are more complex.

In the past, England's curriculum authority has not only specified subjects to be taught, but has issued detailed instructions. The new policy frees teachers from those instructions.

Both World Wars remain compulsory in English secondary schools. To cover them without covering Churchill would be impossible.

"It is just conceivable that behind this lies the notion that 'great personages' can be taken out of history, which would certainly be a mistake," states Professor Paul Addison of the University of Edinburgh, a Churchill Centre academic adviser and author of two books on Churchill. "But the rest of Churchill's life has never been on the curriculum at all. If it were, it would demonstrate among other things the power of the media to distort the record—with Churchill as one of the main victims."

Sir Martin Gilbert, another Churchill Centre adviser and Churchill's official biographer, adds: "Paul Addison and I have long believed that there was more to Churchill than World War II (important though the war years are in his life and achievement). Both of us have written about many other aspects and periods of his long career. It would be good if the whole of Churchill's story could be taught. Perhaps it is, in different parts of the curriculum."

The Churchill Centre believes there is no anti-Churchill intent behind these changes, any more than an anti-Gandhi intent.

England has had an over-centralized system, giving teachers far too many instructions and trying to dictate the content of every hour of the school day. In the information age, the practice was too limiting.

Today, young people curious about why China, Russia, Britain and France are permanent Security Council members, but not Japan, India, Brazil and Germany; or why Israel is at such pains to defend itself; or how Ireland won freedom; or why the Middle East is what it is, and the borders of Iraq what they are; or where the Union of South Africa came from, will inevitably encounter Winston Churchill.

You can read the entire press release here.

In the next few weeks I’ll be saying more about the curriculum authority’s decision as well as the teaching of history in America. Most of what I post won’t be part of the series but I’ll give notice here when I do.

Thanks,

John

Krauthammer, Barone & “the best”

In a post the other day linking to one of his columns, I said Michael Barone is one of my favorite pundits.

An Anon commenter said he/she thought Barone was the best pundit in America.

I think the Anon is an informed judge, but I can’t fully agree Barone’s “the best.”

I’ll tell you why in two words: Charles Krauthammer.

He’s at least as good as Barone.

Example:

On Fox News with Brit Hume tonight, Krauthammer provided commentary on the launch of Endeavour.

With liftoff only a few minutes away, he was prompted with questions about “NASA’s recent troubles” and “reports of drinking by astronauts” while on screen the camera was close-up on the space shuttle.

Krauthammer ignored the questions.

He spoke instead about what a marvelous creation the shuttle is, while noting it had aged and needed replacement.

He called attention to the skill and bravery of the astronauts about to launch. He mentioned the shuttle and space station have not lived up to expectations for what they’d help us learn.

As for what astronauts think as liftoff approaches, he recalled the astronaut (I didn’t catch the name) who’d told him that just before liftoff he sat in the capsule thinking: “Every piece of this was built by the lowest bidder.”

Krauthammer reminded us that we’ve grown accustomed to the launches. That’s dulled us to “what spectacular achievements they are.”

About 10 minutes later, with Endeavour now 400 miles down range and the camera close in on the shuttle, he spoke again of what an awesome, complicated, dangerous and inspiring event we were watching.

He told viewers there are plans for shuttle launches during the next three years, after which the program will be ended.

“Everyone ought to see a launch,” Krauthammer said. “The ground actually shakes beneath you. You feel only pride and admiration for those who put it together and those who are riding on it.”

The 1927 Yankees were lucky to have Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Americans are lucky to have Barone and Krauthammer.

We’re also lucky to have Fox News with Brit Hume. It’s very good on it’s “own legs;” besides regularly bringing us Krauthammer and, occasionally, Barone.

The networks wouldn’t do that. They know how vapid Katie Couric and Brian Williams appear now. They’d never put them on beside Krauthammer and Barone.

Now a good voyage for Endeavour and a safe return.

Nifong’s Apology: “On rye?”

Most of you know there’ve been differing reactions to Mike Nifong’s apology during a July 26 court hearing concerning criminal contempt charges pending against him.

I posted my initial reactions here.

Now a few other comments:

Some folks were dissatisfied with what Nifong said. They feel he should have said more about what he did wrong. Others wonder why the attorneys for David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann accepted his apology and agreed to drop their request that he reimburse them for the time they’ve spent preparing for the criminal contempt hearing.

I can understand why Nifong isn’t more forthcoming now about what he did wrong. If there’s a criminal investigation into his conduct (as there should be), his knowledge of what he did wrong will be a useful “bargaining chip” should investigators believe they have grounds to recommend his prosecution.

Any sensible person in Nifong’s situation wants to be able at the right time to possibly trade information and cooperation for leniency.

Something else: he was not in court on July 26 as a prosecutor and officer of the court. He’s been removed from office and disbarred. He was there as a defendant and private citizen.

I hope there comes a day when we can reasonably expect from Nifong full disclosure along with an apology.

Nifong’s July 26 apology is, I think, one of the few things he’s done in connection with the Hoax case that’s in his own best short- and long-term interests.

Short-term it appears to have reduced the anger directed toward him by North Carolina’s public. It’s likely also done some of that with the people he’s most harmed – the players and their families.

And to some he appears less haughty and more sympathetic. That’s always good for defendants.

As to the defense attorneys accepting his apology and agreeing to waive their request for reimbursement, I think they were looking past July 26 and had a long-term goal in mind.

You all know that when you’re trying to negotiate a hostage release, you don’t begin by demanding the release. You try to start working back-and-forth with the hostage taker(s), first about something small and easily done. You want reasonableness and cooperation.

“We can send in food.”

“OK, hostage-taker, I’ve got you down for a tuna sandwich. Is that on rye?”

Excepting those who conspired with him, it’s in everyone’s interest – Nifong’s, the players’, their families’, the public’s, - for Nifong to be reasonable and cooperative.

It’s a safe bet one thing the attorneys were doing on July 26 was something like saying: “Is that on rye?”

Durham’s Gangs & Nifong’s Legacy

A few days ago a Raleigh N&O story on crime in Durham included the following:

Stith was the first of several [Durham City] council members to mention threats made by a gang member sentenced to life in prison for murder last week.

Tyrone Dean told jurors who convicted him that he would have people follow them home to retaliate for their verdict.

Stith said he has heard from people with "a real concern and real level of fear" that the threat was not idle. Chalmers didn't offer specifics but said, "We will be looking at individuals, and there will be consequences. […]

"What I'm fearful of is if something happens to one of our jurors, what kind of message would that send to people who are asked to serve on any jury, but particularly those involving gangs?" council member Eugene Brown said.[…]

Gang violence is a major problem in Durham. Gang-related crimes are growing in number and boldness. Shootings are committed in broad daylight and near schools and shopping areas.

The cops on the street will tell you they’re now battling gangs that are larger and better organized for crime than a year ago.

With all that in mind I recalled a Johnsville News post from October 3, 2006 which began:

Street gangs or gang-rape, which one should be the real issue in the November election for Durham district attorney?

Durham has a growing gang problem, but the November 7th election is a referendum on Mike Nifong and his prosecution of three innocent Duke lacrosse players. The street gang problem is being ignored in favor of focusing on a racially charged rape hoax. That's too bad for Durham, which could use a full debate about solutions to its gang, gun, and drug problems.

That Johnsville News post, Durham’s Gangland , is the best piece of news reporting and commentary on Durham’s gang problems I’ve ever read.

It’s informed and detailed. It reminds you of the kind of reports top-notch “crusading” newspapers do to inform their communities about major problems that are not getting the attention they deserve.

Johnsville makes clear that at the start of 2006 Nifong thought the May Democratic primary campaign would focus on gang problems. That would force the DA’s office to be very active in prosecuting gang-related crime. It would also focus public attention on gang problems and ask voters to decide whether Nifong or his primary opponent, Freda Black, would make a better “gang-fighting DA.”

But that all went by the boards when Nifong decided to frame three white Duke students rather than take on gang-related crime.

People are right. Nifong's legacy includes diminished public confidence in our justice system. Also, he's made things more difficult for actual rape victims.

And then there’s Durham’s growing gang-violence: that, too, is part of Nifong’s legacy.

I’ll be posting again on The Johnsville News’ Durham’s Gangland.

Great work, Johnsville.

The Churchill Series - Aug. 7, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life Winston S. Churchill.)

Folks, I'm "recycling" a post that first appeared on Nov. 1, 2005. I'd love to hear from any of you who were reading the series then and remember this post.

John
__________________________________________________

In late December, 1941 Churchill arrived in Washington to meet with Roosevelt and begin joint Anglo-American war planning.

With the exception of a brief trip to Canada, Churchill remained in America for almost four weeks. While in Washington, he stayed at the White House.

The British government and people were understandably very interested to know what was transpiring with the Americans.

When Churchill flew back to England, landing at Plymouth on Jan. 17, 1942, a train was waiting to take him to London where at 10 PM that evening, the War Cabinet assembled to hear his report.

The minutes of that meeting include this:

The Prime Minister thought that (the Americans) were not above learning from us provided we did not set out to teach them.

Cited in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory, 1941-1945, (p. 43).

N&O Public Editor Responds

Readers Note: Yesterday I posted asking “ Will N&O public editor Ted Vaden answer any of the following seven questions?"

Vaden has responded.

What follows is first the email I sent Vaden which you can skip, read or use for reference as you think best.

My email ends at the double star line, after which Vaden’s response in full begins.

In cases such as this, I leave the response up for at least a day before I respond. That's to give readers a chance to look at what the responder said without my jumping right in.

I plan to respond to Vaden in a day or two. In the meantime, I've thanked him for the promptness of his response.

Readers are welcome to have their say right off, so long as they observe the rules.

Almost everyone who comments here does. The few who don’t are deleted.

The most important rules: Be civil. Be fact-based. No ad hominems.

Thank you.

John
___________________________________________

Dear Ted:

As you know, on April 12, 2007, the day after the Attorney General had declared the three young men innocent, the N&O for the first time reported that during her interview with the N&O on March 24, 2006, Crystal Mangum” said the second dancer was also sexually assaulted at the party but didn't report it for fear of losing her job. Also, Mangum said the second dancer “would do anything for money.” And more the N&O didn't report.

Questions:

1) Why did the N&O d say nothing about any of that when it reported on the interview in a front-page, above the fold story headlined Dancer gives details of ordeal? (3/25/06)

2) Why did the N&O for thirteen months withhold from readers and other news organizations crucially important news the public should have had, and which was so exculpatory for three young men the N&O must have realized very early on were being framed?

3) When did you first learn of your paper’s news suppression and its cover-up of same; and what did you do about what you'd learned?

4) You’ve so far failed to comment publicly on what the N&O did. Why is that?

5) When can readers expect you to comment publicly on what the N&O did?

6) Does the N&O intend to apologize to the three young men, their families, its readers, other news organizatons and the community for what it did beginning on March 25, 2006, and for thirteen months thereafter?

Most people I talk to, including journalists, think an apology is the least the N&O should do.

Thank you for your attention to these questions. I’ll publish your answers in full at my blog.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina

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Hello John,

I first knew the content of the other comments made by the accuser when I read them in the article of April 12, 2007, that you refer to in your post. When I interviewed The N&O's editors shortly after the March 25, 2006, interview story was published, I was told that the story was limited to comments supported by information in the public record, i.e, police reports or court records. The allegations about the other dancer were not in the public record.

I do not know if The N&O intends to publish an apology. As public editor, I would not be involved in that decision. Ruth Sheehan, as you know, did write a column apologizing to the lacrosse players.

I have commented publicly about The N&O's coverage of the lacrosse case in at least five columns in the year after the story was first reported, most recently in an April 15, 2007, column assessing the coverage.

You can find it at http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/vaden/2007/story/564152.html

Sincerely,

Ted Vaden

Terrible, but not a crime

That's the title of an op-ed in The Guardian yesterday, August 6. It's sub-head:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be remembered for the suffering which was brought to an end

The op-ed by Oliver Kamm, author of Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy, is a "must read" and "clip and save." It begins:

Today is Hiroshima day, the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

As the wartime generation passes on, our sense of gratitude is increasingly mixed with unease regarding one theatre of the second world war. There is a widespread conviction that, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America committed acts that were not only terrible but also wrong.

Disarmament campaigners are not slow to advance further charges. Greenpeace maintains that a different American approach might have prevented the cold war, and argues that new research on the Hiroshima decision "should give us pause for thought about the wisdom of current US and UK nuclear weapons developments, strategies, operational policies and deployments".

This alternative history is devoid of merit.

New historical research in fact lends powerful support to the traditionalist interpretation of the decision to drop the bomb. This conclusion may surprise Guardian readers. The so-called revisionist interpretation of the bomb made headway from the 1960s to the 1990s.

It argued that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were less the concluding acts of the Pacific war than the opening acts of the cold war. Japan was already on the verge of surrender; the decision to drop the bomb was taken primarily to gain diplomatic advantage against the Soviet Union.

Yet there is no evidence that any American diplomat warned a Soviet counterpart in 1945-46 to watch out because America had the bomb. The decision to drop the bomb was founded on the conviction that a blockade and invasion of Japan would cause massive casualties. Estimates derived from intelligence about Japan's military deployments projected hundreds of thousands of American casualties.

Truman had to take account of this, and dropped the bomb for the reasons he said at the time. Contrary to popular myth, there is no documentary evidence that his military commanders advised him the bomb was unnecessary for Japan was about to surrender.

As the historian Wilson Miscamble puts it, Truman "hoped that the bombs would end the war and secure peace with the fewest American casualties, and so they did. Surely he took the action any American president would have undertaken."

Recent Japanese scholarship provides support for this position. Sadao Asada, of Doshisha University, Kyoto, has concluded from analysis of Japanese primary sources that the two bombs enabled the "peace party" within Japan's cabinet to prevail.

Kamm has more to say. You can read it all here.

Do you agree the op-ed's a "must read" and "clip and save?"

Sarkozy: Then and Now

I can’t be sure when and where I first heard the name of France’s current President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Thinking back, it must have been sometime in the 90s in France. I’m pretty sure my impression was positive.

Then came early 2003 and France’s effort to prop up Saddam while undermining our diplomatic efforts to get him to go into a luxury exile.

Anti-Americanism was popular among French politicians. President Chirac went out of his way to denigrate America and our allies.

Most French politicians followed Chirac’s lead. Almost all the French media and a good deal of the MSM here cheered them on. Sarkozy stood apart.

I appreciated that.

A few years later, when riots broke out in Paris and other French cities, the leftist French press found many reasons for them.

Sarkozy found one they’d overlooked: the rioters.

When he ran for President, Sarkozy made no secret of his admiration for this country. Mon dieu!

Now we read:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy lost his temper with two American news photographers covering his vacation Sunday, jumping onto their boat and scolding (sic) them loudly in French.

The confrontation came Sunday afternoon as Sarkozy and companions were headed for open water in a boat on Lake Winnipesaukee when he spotted Associated Press photographer Jim Cole and freelancer Vince DeWitt aboard Cole's boat, which was outside a buoy barrier monitored by the New Hampshire Marine Patrol. [. . .]

Hours earlier, Sarkozy had spoken to reporters and said in French, "I am naturally ready to answer all your questions, and maybe afterward you will resume covering the news and other topics, and leave me tranquilly with my family."

An AP reporter taped Sarkozy's remarks and had them translated, but the photographers did not hear the translation until after the altercation.

After Cole and DeWitt promised to stop shooting photos for the day, Sarkozy calmed down, reboarded his boat and continued out onto the lake with his party, followed by a boat carrying U.S. Secret Service agents.

The French government in Paris had no immediate comment.

Sarkozy and his family have been vacationing at a lakefront estate in Wolfeboro owned by former Microsoft Corp. executive Michael Appe. The president was previously photographed relaxing dockside in his swim trunks.

You’ve got to know I was disposed to like Sarkozy before the incident with the bothersome photographers.

Now I’m more so disposed.

Sarkozy had spent some of a vacation day giving the press “a story and photo op.” He asked to be left alone for the rest of the day.

Who wants camaras pointed at them all day, especially when they’re on vacation?

These photographers weren’t “recording history” or engaged on behalf of “the public’s right to know.”

They were trying to make money at the expense of Sarkozy's privacy. If he had tripped, patted someone on the bottom or opened a beer can, they'd have "caught it" and their day would have been made.

I’m with Sarkozy on this one.

You can read the entire AP story here.

Message to those photographers and the AP: How about coming to Durham and taking pictures of the bathroom in which the Duke hoaxer Crystal Mangum said she was ….. ?

We need to see those photos. You should have provided us with them in March, 2006.

The Churchill Series – Aug. 6, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

This one is from the top of my head, but I’m sure of it. It’s our man.

In October, 1922 Churchill’s appendix had to be removed. In those days an appendectomy was a quite serious operation.

He came through the operation fine. As he began to regain consciousness, his first request was to see the newspapers.

A short while later his surgeon entered Churchill’s room to find his still groggy patient struggling to read a newspaper. He told Churchill he was to rest and ordered the papers removed.

A few hours later the surgeon returned to check on Churchill. He found him sleeping peacefully with four or five newspapers scatted about the bed and floor.

In this hot weather

when we’re getting ready to drive somewhere, we take small, water-filled plastic bottles out of the frig and put them in the car.

A few are for us; the rest are for the panhandlers who “work” the traffic light intersections.

We almost never give those folks money but in this weather . . . (you all can finish the rest of it).

A few will wave the water off and ask for money but most, if you say, “I only give water. It’s real cold,” take the bottle and thank you.

I know in some places panhandlers can be so aggressive, you don’t want to open your window.

But in these parts (central North Carolina) very, very few are.

Some people who do what we do, just buy packs of bottles at the supermarket.

Other folks find they can wash out plastic bottles and fill them ¾ full (again you can finish it).

They’re recycling in a very admirable way.

And doing a double good!

Well, there you are.

Will N&O public editor

Ted Vaden answer any of the following seven questions?

If you think he will, how do you think he’ll do it?

I’ll post any answers I get back from Vaden.

But I should tell you that from what other N&O readers tell me and from my own experience, Vaden is one public editor who often doesn’t respond to readers, even when their questions are important, fair and fact-based.

John
_____________________________________________

Dear Ted:

As you know, on April 12, 2007, the day after the Attorney General had declared the three young men innocent, the N&O for the first time reported that during her interview with the N&O on March 24, 2006, Crystal Mangum” said the second dancer was also sexually assaulted at the party but didn't report it for fear of losing her job. Also, Mangum said the second dancer “would do anything for money.” And more the N&O didn't report.

Questions:

1) Why did the N&O d say nothing about any of that when it reported on the interview in a front-page, above the fold story headlined Dancer gives details of ordeal? (3/25/06)

2) Why did the N&O for thirteen months withhold from readers and other news organizations crucially important news the public should have had, and which was so exculpatory for three young men the N&O must have realized very early on were being framed?

3) When did you first learn of your paper’s news suppression and its cover-up of same; and what did you do about what you'd learned?

4) You’ve so far failed to comment publicly on what the N&O did. Why is that?

5) When can readers expect you to comment publicly on what the N&O did?

6) Does the N&O intend to apologize to the three young men, their families, its readers, other news organizatons and the community for what it did beginning on March 25, 2006, and for thirteen months thereafter?

Most people I talk to, including journalists, think an apology is the least the N&O should do.

Thank you for your attention to these questions. I’ll publish your answers in full at my blog.

Sincerely,

John in Carolina