Opinion: In today’s pages: Big Oil, Pat Buchanan, George Carlin
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg explains how isolationist Pat Buchanan was rehabilitated into a liberal darling for opposing the Iraq war:
Buchanan claims to be a man of abstract foreign policy rules -- in his case, the notion that we must act from objective national interest. As a result, he has earned a strange new respect among antiwar liberals and self-described realists for his opposition to the war in Iraq in recent years. He is a man of principle, we’ve been told. In reality, Buchanan is a wonderful example of how those who claim to follow a strict set of abstract foreign policy rules are often just disguising their own biases.
National Interest senior editor Jacob Heilbrunn says Big Oil isn’t the problem, and efforts to go after producers won’t help us. LAPD chief of detectives Charlie Beck argues Sheriff Lee Baca was wrong to say race is the motivating factor for gang violence.
The editorial board urges action against Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, discusses the state Legislature’s struggle to approve mortgage reforms, and remembers George Carlin:
Carlin, having begun his career as a clean-cut observational comic...enjoyed a long, lustrous career as the kind of beloved anti-establishmentarian you’d trust to play Thomas the Tank Engine’s Mr. Conductor. His funniest routine -- a side-by-side comparison of baseball and football -- wasn’t even dirty. The comedian didn’t push the limits of free speech so much as explore the borders of our word choices and the ludicrousness of those who would regulate those choices.
On the letters page, readers discuss urban planner Vaughan Davies’ suggestion for a Central Park for L.A. Len Frank of Los Angeles says, ‘Vaughan Davies appears to be adept at using other people’s money.’ But Sherman Oaks’ Mark Donnelly calls the idea ‘brilliant and innovative.’
*Cartoon by Scott Stantis, Birmingham News