Outgoing Portsmouth Mayor Evelyn Sirrell was to be the Book Corner guest today. But a funny thing about mayors is, they don’t have much time to read for pleasure. Mayor Sirrell said she hasn’t read a book for pleasure in quite a while, though she intends to very soon.
So, what has she been reading lately?
“The Medicare drug plan and AARP plan,” she said.
“I take those two to bed with me, and when I wake up I don’t know any more.”
Sounds like the mayor has been having a little too much fun.
If you want to read what Mayor Sirrell’s been reading, you can go here and here.
If you want to read something even more boring, you can go here.
Or here.
If you want to do something more boring, you can go here.
Days after Gov. John Lynch blasted Congress for not approving a $2 billion increase in home heating assistance, we find that requests for that assistance in New Hampshire are higher than last year, but nowhere near the levels predicted.
Young women vastly outnumber young men on America’s college campuses, suggesting that young American men are headed for a poor economic future. Yet college administrators and the federal bureaucrats who preach the gospel of diversity care not, reports Melana Zyla Vickers in The Weekly Standard.
I haven’t seen the PBS “American Experience” biography of Ronald Reagan, which airs on NHPTV tonight at 9. But if it conforms to its synopsis, it promises to be yet another lefty hit piece. Here is how the official synopsis from the WGBH Web site:
“In 1988, after two terms in office, Ronald Reagan left the White House one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century — and one of the most controversial. A failed actor, Reagan became a passionate ideologue who preached a simple gospel of lower taxes, less government, and anti-communism. One by one, his opponents underestimated him; one by one, Reagan surprised them, rising to become a president who always preferred to see America as a “shining city on a hill.” Produced by Austin Hoyt and Adriana Bosch. David Ogden Stiers narrates.”
First, Reagan was beloved, not controversial. Only the far left considers him controversial. Second, a “failed actor”? Reagan was credited in 60 films from 1937 to 1963 and was one of the best known character acters of his day. Most actors never achieve the level of success Reagan had. If he’s a failure, so is Joseph Cotten. Simplistic vision, preferred to see America through rose colored glasses, yada, yada. These are the standard left-wing diatribes against Reagan. If the film is anything like this outline, it will be an outrage.
The Washington Post has a story today on the DNC’s attempt to change the Presidential primary calendar. Nothing really new in it, except a couple of quotes from some outside experts who disagree over whether it really will amount to a more front-loaded nomination process.
Heard about the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth student who was investigated by federal agents just for checking out Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book? Well, it didn’t happen. The student has admitted he made the whole thing up.
The story had all the earmarks of a hoax, but that didn’t stop the likes of Ted Kennedy from repeating it, although he claimed the book in question was “Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Manifesto.” That makes at least two fact errors in the Kennedy piece.
I’d be interested to know why the student chose Mao’s Little Red Book, or why he claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents (there are none). I also wonder if he owns a Che T-shirt.
The Boston Globe interviewed him last Thursday “but decided not to write a story about his assertion, because of doubts about its veracity,” according to The Globe’s Saturday story reporting that the student had lied. Too bad the paper’s op-ed page didn’t have the same doubts before running Kennedy’s column, which repeated the student’s claims, on Thursday.
The Globe does not say why it withhold’s the 22-year-old student’s name. He is an adult, and presumably not a superhero or undercover agent, so there would appear to be little justification for keeping his identity secret.
The American Library Association, which posted an account of the student’s claims on its Web site last Wednesday, has yet to remove the post or identify the claim as a hoax. Tha staff might still be on Christmas vacation.
In his column, Kennedy claimed, “Incredibly, we are now in an era where reading a controversial book may be evidence of a link to terrorist.”
Not true. We are in an era when (not where, Sen.) being a terrorist might get one’s books looked at. That’s a big difference.
That’s the new question of the moment in the Oil for Food scandal. Kojo Annan bought a Mercedes in his dad’s name, got a big discount on it, and now the car cannot be found and dad won’t answer questions about it, writes a Times of London reporter.
A Boston Globe story about new Hampshire’s congressional delegation voting against the GOP leadership on some key issues takes the angle that those votes are motivated by John Kerry having won New Hampshire and the delegation being scared to align themselves too closely with an unpopular President and GOP. As Dem. Chairman Kathy Sullivan said, “They’re scared.”
That’s good spin, but not true. Sen. Sununu put it well when he told The Globe, “Has the electorate shifted significantly to the left or the right? No. Hampshire has always been a center-right, independent-minded, and somewhat libertarian electorate. Period.”
The Montgomery Advertiser comes out against moving Alabama’s Presidential primary from June to February or March to compete with New Hampshire’s for a very New Hampshire-like reason. It would cost Alabama taxpayers $1 million.
Marty Kaplan, who managed Walter Mondale’s Presidential campaign and now is associate dean at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, smeared the Union Leader in a Dec. 13 blog post. He wrote that we have no wall separating our editorial and news sides and we use the newsroom to promote our editorial point of view. The charge is entirely without merit.
Our executive editor, Charlie Perkins, pointed out the obvious untruthfulness of the comment, and Kaplan did an interesting thing. He actually read our paper. Afterwards, he updated his original post, writing, “the paper is today squarely in the journalistic mainstream.”
We regularly get accused of championing conservative causes on the news pages. I’d say that most of these charges come from people who live out of state. From New Hampshire readers I hear far, far more complaints that we don’t champion conservative causes on the news pages. At least a few times a month I get phone calls from people complaining that the Union Leader is too liberal. And that’s on top of the several letters to the editor we receive each month making the same charge.
Some readers get the impression that the editorial page and news pages are jointly crusading on an issue when we have strong editorials following a series of news stories. But it doesn’t work that way. The editorials always follow the news coverage, and as editorial page editor I have no access to that coverage until it is published. I read it at the same time everyone else does. I have no say in what stories get covered or how. I just comment on them afterwards.
I probably will get a phone call or e-mail from someone who has read this piece complaining that 1) the Union Leader does slant its news coverage to the right, or 2) the Union Leader slants its news coverage to the left and that never would have happened back in Bill Loeb’s day. (I’m amazed how many readers personally knew Bill Loeb and, therefore, are better qualified than I am to run the editorial page.)
The truth is, Kaplan got it right after having read the paper. The Union Leader’s news coverage is in the journalistic mainstream. The paper just happens to have a conservative editorial page, which, unfortunately, is not in the mainstream.
I thought I’d do something different for this Christmas edition of Friday Book Corner and link in one place some of the annual Christmas book lists that are floating around cyberspace. It might help anyone looking for last-minute gifts or for a good book to read by the fire on Christmas afternoon. Merry Christmas, and happy reading.
Thomas Sowell
Molly Ivins
The Claremont Institute
New Hampshire Wildlife
The Washington Post Book World
The Times of London
Business Week
The Atlantic
