Best of the Web
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

OUT OF TOUCH After the Americans for Tax Reform gala, we put in a brief appearance at a nearby barroom gathering of Young Republicans. Outside were four protesters. Try to comprehend just how pathetic these people are: They think that other people meeting for drinks at a bar is an occasion for protest. And they don’t seem to realize that they’re only helping President Bush’s re-election effort. We don’t mean just in the obvious way, either. Consider this: If these people would stop protesting and spend the next two months looking for work instead, the unemployment rate would rise. As we walked toward the bar, we passed one of the protesters and we thought we’d say something provocative to see her reaction. We tapped her on the shoulder and said, “You know, assent is more patriotic than dissent.” We were surprised at what she said: “Don’t touch me. You don’t know me. That’s very rude.” Mind you, we tapped her on the shoulder; it’s not as if we gave her the Bill Clinton treatment. But there’s no way of knowing if it was the tactile contact or the challenge to her political prejudices that made her feel so threatened. Meanwhile, some of her fellow protesters have been doing more than just touching. “Police are bracing for more confrontations with protesters after a violent march to Madison Square Garden in which a plainclothes detective was pushed from his scooter and pummeled by a protester,” the Associated Press reports:
“People started tugging at his bike and pushing him around,” said Rob Raney, a 22-year-old Ohio college student. “Finally they just pushed him off his bike.” Hundreds of police in riot gear and on horses swept in to disperse the crowd, shouting, “Move!” Less than a dozen arrests were made as protesters yelled back, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Reuters, meanwhile, reports that “dozens of demonstrators heckled and jeered Broadway theatergoers on Sunday, seeking confrontations with Republican delegates who arrived in New York City to back President Bush’s re-election bid”:
Individual protesters kept tensions high, some of them hissing or cursing at well-heeled couples heading to popular Broadway musicals like “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Republican murderers go home and kill your babies!” one young man yelled at theatergoers….A second protester shoved a middle-aged woman in a black cocktail dress, shouting: “Bitch, go home! We don’t want you here!”
Imagine if some right-wing wackos were treating black Democrats this way. The cries of “intimidation” and “voter suppression” would be deafening. A “news” story in the New York Times makes this claim about the big rally on Sunday: “The faces appeared to be a cross-section of the American experience.” Obviously reporter Robert McFadden has never set foot outside the East Village. Then there’s this clueless Associated Press headline: “New York City Is Quiet Despite Increased Security.” Despite? Duh, why are so many people in prison when the crime rate is falling?
KERRY: I AM THE TROOPS CNN reports that some Republican delegates are making fun of Senator Kerry “by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them”: According to CNN, “Kerry’s campaign quickly responded to the purple heart bandages, saying the Republicans are ‘mocking our troops.’ “So Mr. Kerry thinks he’s “our troops.” The man reaches new heights of haughtiness every day.
THIS JUST IN A report from Agence France-Presse suggests it would be a mistake for Republicans to get too complacent: Democrats were hoping that two critical reports this week on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal will erode George W. Bush’s “war president” status….The reports on Iraqi prisoner abuse gave opposition Democrats new ammunition to blast the president’s handling of Iraq, with presidential challenger John Kerry calling for an independent commission probe. We looked into this, and here’s what we found: It turns out there was a kerfuffle, or possibly even a brouhaha, awhile back because some soldiers in Iraq abused some prisoners. So now we get it. This could really help the Dems – if only the press would give it some coverage.
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT EXPERTS? “‘It Just Kept Falling,’ Expert Says of Rain” -headline, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 31
INSIDE REUTERVILLE The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz (second item) picks up a story originally broken on National Review Online: After sending out a routine press release on abortion, the National Right to Life Committee received a stinging e-mail from Todd Eastham, a Reuters editor in Washington:
“What’s your plan for parenting & educating all the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world? Who will pay for policing our streets & maintaining the prisons needed to contain them when you, their parents & the system fail them? Oh, sorry. All that money has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit. Give me a frigging break, will you?”
NRO notes that the press release was actually on partial-birth abortion, a fairly rare and extremely gruesome procedure. Suddenly we understand why Reuters reports with such glee when people die horribly and why the “news” service goes out of its way to be “fair” to Osama bin Laden. Todd Eastham and his colleagues love anything that keeps the population down.
This column is adapted from the Best of the Web, which is issued daily at OpinionJournal.com. (C)2004