There was a time when Michael Kinsley was not a member of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill. Those like Paul Krugman (and me) banged our head against the wall as we saw a decade's worth of work stabilizing the finances of the American government trashed by Mayberry Machiavellis who didn't even know the value of what he was destroying. But back in those long-ago days, Michael Kinsley remained fair and balanced.
But time passed. The shrill found themselves growing shriller and shriller as they contemplated every single aspect of Bush policy: budget... tax... employment... social policy as reported by John DiIulio... global warming policy as reported Paul O'Neill... energy... environmental... the postwar reconstruction of Afghanistan... the Medicare drug benefit... Ahmed Chalabi and the INC... the diplomatic skill used to gather a coalition for the war with Iraq... the postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq... claims of presidential powers to imprison never even claimed by Henry VII... and so forth.
And then George W. Bush tried to kill Michael Kinsley--or, rather, tried to slow and succeeded in slowing down to a snail's pace the medical research that might in half a generation or more provide a way to deal with his Parkinson's disease.
Now Michael Kinsley is one of the Highest in the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the shrill:
Posted by DeLong at August 16, 2004 12:21 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postwashingtonpost.com: Dance of the Stem Cells: [L]ast week [Laura Bush] suddenly popped off about stem cells.... A lot of Republican politicians and operatives... miraculously making the same argument -- an argument so embarrassingly silly and disingenuous that it could only be an official campaign talking point.... As Laura Bush put it, George Bush "is the only president to ever authorize federal funding for embryonic stem cell research." She noted that "few people know" this. Few may have known it, but many might have guessed. It is true indeed that Bush's predecessors, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, failed to fund embryonic stem cell research. Even Abraham Lincoln. Not a penny for stem-cell research from any of them. Historians believe this might have been because it didn't exist yet. But that's just a guess.
George Bush gave this nascent research a tiny sliver of money and piled on a smothering load of restrictions. As Laura Bush did not note, that makes Bush the only president ever to authorize federal rules against stem cell research.... [T]he irony of justifying a policy on moral grounds and then, when it comes under attack, claiming that the policy is not having the very effect he is supposed to want. Meanwhile, it is characteristic of the Bush political machine to be utterly fearless about insisting that things are the way it would be convenient for them to be, despite all evidence that things are the way they really are.
The purpose of Bush's stem cell policy is to discourage medical research using embryos. Bush is supposed to think that these clumps of a few dozen cells are every bit as human as the people who will suffer or die from diseases that stem cells could cure. He had better believe that, because stem-cell research uses embryos being discarded by fertility clinics and doesn't actually add to the embryonic death toll at all. Only a deep conviction about the humanity of these microscopic dots -- which have fewer human characteristics than a potato -- could justify sacrificing real human lives to make the purely symbolic point that these dots are human too.
Scientists are in agreement that Bush's policy is succeeding. Stem cell research has been drastically slowed. Yet Bush surrogates now pretend that the policy's real success is its failure to stop this research completely.... Laura Bush scolded that "it really isn't fair to people who are watching a loved one suffer" to overplay the promise of stem cells. She said, helpfully, "We don't know that stem cell research will provide cures for anything."
As someone... who has the disease (Parkinson's) for which stem cells hold the most promise, please allow me to say: Thank you so much, Mrs. Bush, for trying to make sure that I don't get too hopeful.... [i]t is inspiring to have a first lady with the courage to say: Let's be pessimistic! Optimism is unfair!
But talk is cheap. While Laura Bush is destroying hope by the traditional method of spreading gloom and pessimism, her husband is bringing the pessimist's art into the 21st century by actually destroying the objective basis for hope. While she battles rhetorically against false hopes, he works to ensure that there is no hope at all.
OT:
Dr. DeLong-
One of your pet peeves is public misperception about offshoring and free trade in general. While I sympathize with you, I think it's pretty easy to see why free trade gets such bad PR when you have people like Forbes Magazine editor Mike Ozanian singing its praises. Take a look at this exchange:
David Asman: Like it or not, job outsourcing is here to stay, whether Bush, Kerry or even Nader wins the White House. Which companies do it best, boosting their bottom lines and growing their business?
Mike Ozanian, Senior Editor: I like Nike (NKE). They are the master of outsourcing. They use slave labor overseas...
David Asman: No, they don't use slave labor. They use hard working people overseas.
Mike Ozanian: Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. Then they sell the products over here for high prices. They have the best athletes, they have LeBron James. They just bough Starter, which will also give them Shaquille O'Neal. They've got Marion Jones, the track star. I love Nike.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,105148,00.html
Posted by: Brad Reed on August 16, 2004 12:31 PMmichael can take heart in that other countries are doing the research, including the country that solved the DNA puzzle.
Posted by: big al on August 16, 2004 12:48 PMI doubt the existence of a "Republican Party". Stem-cell research is a case in point: many, and various, "Republicans" have supported it in the past, and have done so as committed Republicans, but they don't speak up any more. But what's a party that can't sustain a debate among its members?.....Bush, of course, has no pertinent thoughts about stem-cell research, but what about that wife of his? Not to stand trial for killing her high-school quarterback was a most unhealthy decision, foreclosing the chance of her ever saying an honest word in public. Because courts exist, in part, to help us maintain our credibility with our fellow citizens.
Posted by: alabama on August 16, 2004 01:08 PMI just read a great quote, which seems appropriate to the Ozanian exchange.
"Libertarians are anarchists who want police protection from their slaves"
Posted by: CalDem on August 16, 2004 01:44 PMThanks every so much to the shrill. I am of them.
Posted by: anne on August 16, 2004 02:00 PMNot to beat this horse too much, but this column is not shrill at all. Instead, it is, as Kinsley's columns usually are, witty, sprightly, and yet devastating. Krugman didn't earn the label of being shrill because of his politics and his opinions. He earned it because his tone was so unrelentingly bitter and histrionic. Now, it may be that this tone is perfectly appropriate, given the behavior of the Bush administration. But there's no doubt that Kinsley is far more interesting to read.
Posted by: Steve Carr on August 16, 2004 04:16 PMI didn't find MK to be especially shrill. far from it, in fact. in anything, he's finally not his fucking cool and diffident self when he rips into the Repubs.
hope to see more of this.
Posted by: kit on August 16, 2004 05:55 PMI didn't find MK to be especially shrill. far from it, in fact. in anything, he's finally not his usual fucking cool and diffident self when he rips into the Repubs.
hope to see more of this.
Posted by: kit on August 16, 2004 05:56 PMI didn't find MK to be especially shrill. far from it, in fact. if anything, he's finally not his usual fucking cool and diffident self when he rips into the Repubs.
hope to see more of this.
Posted by: kit on August 16, 2004 05:57 PMWhat is wrong with Paul O'Neill and his words and actions on global warming? I haven't finished The Price of Loyalty yet, but he seems to be a step above the typical Republican when it comes to that.
Posted by: Brian on August 16, 2004 06:02 PMWhen O'Neill went to Africa with Bono, that alone put him a step above the typical Republican, in that he at least has an open ear. The Bushists on the other hand are con artists every one, and all who consort with them have to roll to see how many hit points they lose in reputation. Because as Dick Cheney said to Dubya, they won in 2000 and it's their fucking due.
Posted by: David W. on August 16, 2004 06:36 PMThere is no reason that stem cell research has to be done in the US. Scientists are forced to follow the money. If S Korea or Britain or Singapore are the first to develop stem cells into useful technology, the development money will flow to where the technology is, where there is a core of people trained to do the work. If the research is not being done in the US, the new industry is unlikely to develop in the US. This policy is exporting future jobs. Good jobs.
Posted by: bakho on August 16, 2004 07:03 PM> Krugman didn't earn the label of being shrill because of his politics and his opinions. He earned it because his tone was so unrelentingly bitter and histrionic.
No, he got the label -- he didn't 'earn' it -- because a few chattering nabobs and nincompoops decided that it was fun, in best junior high fashion. And he's been proved consistently right in his decision to put his head above the parapet.
As for stem cell research, Bush's policy relies upon the shallow understanding (in so many different ways) of his base. The amount of disinformation and sheer falsehood offered up by Republicans on CSPAN and local letters pages is a testament to a grassroots campaign that is based upon pure ignorance.
Posted by: ahem on August 16, 2004 07:15 PMWhat Bakho said. New industries are supposed to be the solution to the unemployment problem, but with the anti-intellectual in chief running things, how long will it be before we find a new idea which will not violate the interests of one of his cronies or his base?
Posted by: masaccio on August 16, 2004 07:20 PMOk, slightly off topic, but another reason one hears from Repubs on how Bush is "not restricting stem cell research" is that he has not encumbered private industry from pursuing the technology. Unfortunately, this is almost as dishonest an argument as Mrs. Bush's for obvious reasons. That is, industry does a poor job researching nascient technologies, because the time horizon to an actual product is too long and uncertain. Industry is about R&D, where the emphasis is on the D, a fact easily demonstrated by the decline of the great U.S. industrial research labs over the past 30 years.
Posted by: Pete Coffee on August 16, 2004 09:25 PMNot only an export of good jobs, but an export of real scientific progress. And at the hands of the religious fundamentalists!
Michael Kinsley, my heart goes out to you.
Thankyou for writing such a forceful article.
I'm going a bit OT here but ... the current situation in America reminds me of Hong Kong. Here're the similarities:
1. We both got a dim-wit with dubious business ties as Head of state/city. And both sucks in business.
2. Both were perceived to be 'nice guy' at the beginning. Both were picked by the establishment to be a puppet master.
3. Both uses the position to line the pocket of their friends.
4. Both failed to do anything to mitigate the aftermath of a bubble and blame the previous government for an 'artificial boom'.
5. Critics of the government were all labelled as ‘shrills’ and ‘unpatriotic’. In our case, patriotism = subservience to our big grandpa in Beijing.
6. Both tried to pass laws stripping away basic liberty. They didn’t manage it in Hong Kong due to a great middle class protest and the government suddenly discovers that the ‘shrills’ are the apolitical lawyers, accountants and doctors.
The punchline is, of course, no one in Hong Kong elected Mr. Tung, our chief executive. He's already serving a second term but we had no choice. Don't let the same happen to you.
Posted by: Weco on August 17, 2004 12:53 AMKinsley has been savaging Bush, in his own masterful way, since the beginning of the 2000 presidential campaign. He's not a newcomer at all.
Posted by: angry moderate on August 17, 2004 05:01 AMbakho-
That is the point I have been shrilly yelling at anyone that will listen to me. Seattle (read paul allen), and many other cities, are staking a great deal of their future economic development and diversification on biotech and health care advances. Yet how can we expect companies to move into our newly built state-of-the-art facilities, employ our newly minted (hopefully UW) biotechnologist, fill our patent books, and eventually spend their potential fortunes on local goods, real estate, and reinvest their capital in new emerging technologies, when the bush limitations are not saving lives of babies but simply pushing research overseas?
And they call Washington a swing state. We'll see
Posted by: Philip on August 17, 2004 11:40 AMJust more evidence that America is continuing to lose its hold as the leader of education in the world - the greatest US security threat of the 21st century.
Posted by: omonubi on August 17, 2004 12:27 PM