Opinion: In today’s pages: Immigrants, the Internet and whales
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Columnist Gregory Rodriguez rolls his eyes at Pat Buchanan’s most recent political prophecies:
You have to admit that there’s something unseemly about citizens of history’s most powerful country — economically, militarily and culturally — always fretting about their coming demise. Sometimes it gets downright pornographic.
Meanwhile, author Eric J. Weiner sees a glimmer of hope for homeowners at risk of foreclosure. Contributing editor Max Boot questions Republican candidates’ immigration hysteria at the GOP presidential debates, and author Peter Heller decries Japan’s ‘researching’ (and killing, and eating) of threatened and endangered whales. Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies gives a visual recap of the GOP debate.
The editorial board bemoans the Internet as a powerful tool for smear campaigns, even as it praises the writers’ strike for ‘hasten[ing] innovation in online media in part by revealing the complacency and senility of some traditional media.’ Finally, the board calls out Republican candidate and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani on his factual fluidity:
Campaigns are not known for their strict fidelity to the truth ... But Giuliani’s stretches are noteworthy for at least two reasons: His candidacy is predicated almost exclusively on his record as mayor — the same record he’s misrepresenting — and he likes to set himself apart from his rivals by claiming greater precision — this while being imprecise. That pushes Giuliani’s misstatements beyond mere inaccuracy into the realm of hypocrisy.
Readers respond to an editorial on the CNN/YouTube Republican debate. Sujatha Jahagirdar writes that the ‘overriding message ... was that young people don’t matter. And we wonder why youth voting rates have not exceeded 50% in the last several decades.’ Lenard Davis lays out his beef with the ‘Bible question’:
Apparently neither the questioner nor any candidate has much familiarity with the Constitution, which states in Article VI: ‘No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.’ The fact [that] no one had the courage or conviction to say so is an indication of how unsuitable any of them are to be president.