Personal Asides: One Who Runs Second Should Succeed in a Vacancy…The Sun-Times Faints Dead Away: Bush Said a Naughty Word!...Henry Hyde a Knight of St. Gregory…and What Paleos Apparently Stand For

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Running Second.

The giant hand of Cook county Democratic autocracy has picked Alderman Todd Stroger as nominee for the Cook county board presidency. And somehow, inexplicably, somebody’s Republican hand (nobody is owning up to who) picked Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate after Jack Ryan withdrew. Certainly a state law should mandate the runner-up gets the price when the winner resigns. Which would have given the GOP Senatorial nomination to Jim Oberweis in 2004 and the Democratic nod for Cook county board presidency to Forrest Claypool. The Todd Stroger nomination with Big Daddy Bill Beavers pulling the strings of the marionette should empower Republicans and a good number of disgruntled independents and Democrats to vote for Tony Peraica, the Republican nominee. Peraica is a smart fellow, very articulate and a highly deserving nominee even if he has alienated some along the way in bruising inter-mural politics.

...and the headline yesterday PRESIDENT'S FOUL-MOUTHED LUNCH CHAT OVERHEARD

George W. Bush said a naughty word in a supposed confidential conversation with Tony Blair and the word was communicated to the world via a microphone that hadn’t been turned off. In many papers, including the Sun-Times, there was a hush, a look of horror and the headline yesterday: . The word was a common vulgarism for excrement. For a newspaper just a tad north of the National Enquirer with half-dressed luscious babes whose breasts overhang the paper’s nameplate seemingly every morning on its front-page…whose prurient headlines screaming that the latest Batwoman is gay and makes her debut in a lesbian comic-book kids can easily read…whose aptly named “Glare” celebrity page foists us up front a cozy twosome of Oprah and Gayle King while telling us and our grandchildren they’re not gay…which runs a full color comic for kids showing two attractive boys kissing…whose mod version of Ann Landers, a grinning “Ask Ellie” is headlined HUBBY WANTS MORE OOMPH IN BED…

…which ogles a half-page, full-color near-naked Jessica Simpson struggling with an evening dress she is either wearing and trying to get out of or naked, out of and trying to get in…for this newspaper to maintain that use of an expression common to English usage since Chaucer, a word that wasn’t intended for publication is foul-mouthed when contrasted with its own scandalous flirtation with tastelessness every morning is like hearing criticism of a rare sour note by the Chicago symphony from a group of dwarfs who hum “Lovely Rita Meter Maid” through combs covered by toilet paper: the height of hypocrisy.

Having written this, the Sun-Times is still Chicago’s better newspaper because it knows what it is: the city’s Democratic newspaper of record which has determined to register sales through squalid commercialization of sex through soft porno that exploits women and homosexuals through lascivious winks and grimaces. Notwithstanding I still find it the superior paper because it gets there first with the news and most importantly has found its identity. Rather like the drunken old crone slurping whiskey at a bar who, when accosted by a man who shouts to her “harridan!” responds, “No, Harrigan!” She was right: Harrigan. This Harrigan who knows what she is happens to be lurid but still tops the Tribune which is a bloated corporate enterprise with no soul and because it is confused as to its identity is often tagged out in reporting the news.

Hyde.

Congressman Henry J. Hyde who has symbolized the pro-life movement legislatively since its beginning and who has paid a severe price thanks to a young White House staffer named Rahm Emanuel in the Clinton impeachment, has just received a rare accolade from the Vatican. Hyde was named a Knight of St. Gregory, an award that is not conferred according to the donations expended from one’s purse but for signal valor in battle in behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. Other knighthoods—Malta, Holy Sepulcher et al—are okay and signify fidelity to the Church. Hyde’s is for extraordinary valor. It is significant that neither newspaper’s religious department made reference to it. Ms. Falsani of the Sun-Times is too concerned with the effects of Hinduism on the art of motorcycle maintenance. And the other newspaper which does not know its identity, appropriately, has a religion editor who does not write but shuffles paper so how can one expect it to know who Henry Hyde is?

Paleos.

Just as with the left, the paleo right believes it does not need the luxury of outlining concrete positions apart from a vague wish that the followers of Pat Buchanan can join with those of Ralph Nader to effect a united coalition. But one can deduce what paleos believe by reading its magazine, The American Conservative. The latest issue (July 31) starts off cheering the Supreme Court for ruling against the Bush administration to try Guantanamo detainees (as does the left)…It then supports the fact that Hamas now wants “a two-state solution,” mourning that “millions of Palestinians have no electricity, no services, no government,” ignoring all the excesses of Hamas that have blocked negotiations in the past (as does the left)…Then it is depressed by the defeat of immigration hard-liner John Jacobs in the Utah Republican primary to Congressman Chris Cannon, ignoring the statement by Jacobs that Satan is involved with Jacobs’ opposition…

…A column by Buchanan recommends we get out of Korea now (“The way to Guam and home lies open”) which is also supported by the left…Economist Paul Craig Roberts, a paleo new recruit, worries about the looming deficit but was caught blind-sided after publication with the announcement that the deficit has dropped from $423 billion to $296 billion, largely due to the Bush tax cuts which Roberts in his former incarnation used to celebrate. No mention of the tax cuts in his pessimistic piece which apes the left…It minimizes any information turned up by the NSA that has been data-mining telephone, fax and e-mail transactions (as does the left)…It pronounces the Afghanistan effort as “a model only for disaster” (as does the left)…It defends The New York Times in publishing the facts of the Terrorist Finance Tracking program, saying that “today’s conservatives are eager to trade freedom for security” warning that the Bush administration cannot be trusted to defend our freedoms (as does the left).

…It publishes approvingly an article by liberal Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) attacking Wal-Mart’s low prices that have come from free trade, warning that these prices come at “a high economic cost” and declaring that “corporate greed is selling out America” in small towns where Mom and Pop stores cannot compete with the giant and hence are closing, the recommendation being that Wal-Mart must be stopped and prices hiked…

…The same issue of the magazine reviews a book Where Did the Party Go? . It’s a book that bashes Hubert Humphrey for being too anti-Communist. The reviewer, Bill Kaufman, says Humphrey “hated pacifists, isolationist and radical American dissenters and purged them with the fervor of Tailgunner Joe.” As one who knows something about Humphrey and knew him, I would say that’s correct—and not a derogation, although Kaufman insists it is. He says Humphrey persecuted drove harmless populist Farmer-Laborites out of his Democratic party and what a shame that was. The only ones who say this now are the few radical leftists still alive in Minnesota who rue the day the followers of pro-Communist governor Elmer Benson were shown the gate by Humphrey. As I knew who they were and Kaufman doesn’t, I can congratulate him on buying the old Commie jargon that Humphrey was a conservative in sheep’s clothing. You will find that same estimate in the favorite organ of the left, The Nation…

…Finally, as a final piece, a snide put-down of conservative scholar and intellectual Paul Johnson for his book The Creators. So in one issue just about the entire panoply of issues favored by the left is glowingly presented (one exception: it is pro-life). The attack on Humphrey particularly appalls me: “Humphrey never was found on the populist side of an issue.” As one who covered him, particularly on the farm issue, I was so mis-led I didn’t recognize it? “He red-baited ferociously in the late `40s and sponsored legislation to outlaw the Communist party USA.” That’s a criticism now in Pat Buchanan’s magazine as it most assuredly would be in any leftist publication. “He opposed the traditional Farmer-Labor party in the mid-`40s.” That group was supporting Henry A. Wallace against Harry Truman. [He opposed] “the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party in the mid-1960s, the New Left and counter-culture in the late 1960s…” Guilty as charged. Then the reviewer projects a hope for realignment between the paleos and the Green Party on the left. There would be trouble fusing it together because of social policy, he says, but then brightly recommends the fusion anyhow. “Let San Francisco be San Francisco and let Utah be Utah. Mind your own damn place.”

Wonderful. Elect the paleos and the Greens and let `er rip. To those who occasionally write here in defense of paleo-conservatism (and you’re welcome) what do you have to say about that? All that’s missing is an article by Kevin Phillips denouncing our theocracy—but he was in last month’s issue.