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COLUMN
EIGHTY, DECEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
BY MAUREEN DOWD
1. THE SOUFFL? DOCTRINE
Subject: FW: The Souffl?
Doctrine
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 22:22:03 -0700
From: "venire" venire@znet.com
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
October 20, 2002
The Souffl? Doctrine
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON " The Boy Emperor picked up the morning
paper and, stunned, dropped his Juicy Juice box with the little straw attached.
"Oh, man," he wailed. "North Korea's got
nukes. Sheriff Musharraf was helping them. Al Qaeda's blowing stuff up again.
The Pentagon's speculating that the sniper might really be Qaeda decoy teams
trying to distract the law while they plan a bio-blitzkrieg or a dirty bomb
attack on the capital. Tenet's broken out in hives about the next 9/11. Powell
spends all his time kissing up to the Frenchies. Saddam's ranting about a river
of American blood. Jebbie's in a world of hurt. The economy's cratering. At
least Karl says our war strategy will open up a can of Election Day whoop on
Congressional Democrats.
"This is not the way my new doctrine was supposed to
work. We are supposed to decide who we pre-empt and when we pre-empt them. The
speechwriters called it an Axis of Evil, but it was really just a Spoke of Evil.
Condi and Rummy said once we finished off Saddam, nobody would mess with America
again. But everything's gotten fuzzier than fuzzy math. Some people are actually
talking about my doctrine leading to World War III!!! Karl says that would be
bad."
The Boy Emperor was starting to feel bamboozled by his war
tutors. He needed a fresh perspective. There was a guy on TV with a round face
and deep voice running around Provence, London and Berlin, where he suggested
Schr?der resign. He was pre-eminent on pre-emption. The Boy summoned him to
explain the Bush doctrine.
"Do I know you?" he asked his visitor.
"I am the chairman of your Defense Policy Board,"
an amused Richard Perle replied. "I am an adviser to Rumsfeld, a friend of
Wolfowitz's and a thorn in Powell's medals. Je suis un gourmand, Monsieur le
President. I have always dreamed of opening a chain of fast-food souffl? shops
based on a machine that would automatically separate eggs, beat the yolks and
combine them with hot milk and sugar, add the desired flavorings, whip the
whites until stiff, fold them into the mixture and bake in individual pots
without human intervention. Then conveyor belts would bring the glass-enclosed
ovens to the table and patrons would get to see their meals rise. I've never
found investors smart enough to realize the dazzling ingenuity of the Perle
Souffl? Doctrine. Meanwhile, I'm killing time trying to get your foreign policy
to rise. I'm known as the Prince of Darkness."
"Why?"
"I persuaded Reagan to ignore the weak-kneed,
striped-pants set at the State Department and buy every weapon in sight until
the Evil Empire was scared stiffer than a perfectly executed meringue."
"But why are we going after a lunatic in Iraq for
planning to make a bomb and not a lunatic in North Korea who already has
bombs?" the Boy asked.
"At the end of the day," Perle replied, his voice
dripping with patience for his student, "Iraq is an easy kill."
"But if North Korea can deter us by brandishing a
nuclear weapon," the Boy pressed, "why can't we deter Saddam by
brandishing a nuclear weapon?"
"You must puncture the souffl? before it rises,"
Perle instructed.
"Why are we mad at North Korea for flouting its
international agreements when we flout our international agreements?" the
Boy wondered.
"You cannot make sublime cr?pes suzette without a
fire," Perle lectured.
"Didn't you insist that Saddam and Al Qaeda were
linked?" the Boy persisted.
"We made that up," Perle shrugged. "You have
to be imaginative, as Audrey Hepburn was in `Sabrina' when she offered to make
Bogie a souffl? out of saltines and eggs. As the Baron told Sabrina: `A woman
happily in love, she burns the souffl". A woman unhappily in love, she forgets
to turn on the oven!' "
"Huh?" the Boy said. "Tony and Colin told me
to stop talking about `regime change' and instead say, `War is a last resort,'
and stop talking about a `pre-emptive strike' and instead say, `War is not
imminent.' "
"They're sissies," Perle said, his lip curling
with an epicene disdain. "You cannot deliver the sashimi unless you use the
blade."
The Boy Emperor was more befuddled than ever.
"Get me Condi!" he yelled. "And a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich."
Copyright The New York Times Company ##
* * *
2. RU-486 OR RU-4JESUS"
Subject:
With whom we're having the pleasure...
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:07:14 -0700
From: "Peter Coyote" <wdprod@earthlink.net>
Organization: Wild Dog Productions
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
October
9, 2002
By
MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
- W.W.J.D. at the F.D.A."
We
may soon find out, if W. David Hager becomes chairman of the powerful Food and
Drug Administration panel on women's health policy. His r'sum? seems more
impressive for theology than gynecology.
"Jesus
stood up for women at a time when women were second-class citizens," Dr.
Hager says. "I often say, if you are liberated, a woman's libber, you can
thank Jesus for that."
A
professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kentucky, he has a
considerable body of work about Jesus' role in healing women, and last summer he
helped the Christian Medical Association with a "citizens' petition"
calling on the F.D.A. to reverse its approval of RU-486, the "abortion
pill," claiming it puts women at risk. (RU-486 or RU-4Jesus?)
Karen
Tumulty reports in Time that the F.D.A. senior associate commissioner, Linda
Arey Skladany, a former drug-industry lobbyist with Bush family ties, has
rejected doctors proposed by F.D.A. staffers and is pushing Dr. Hager.
The
policy panel, which helped get RU-486 approved, will lead the study on the hot
issue of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women. As Time notes:
"Some conservatives are trying to use doubts about such therapy to
discredit the use of birth control pills, which contain similar compounds."
Dr.
Hager wrote "As Jesus Cared for Women," blending biblical accounts of
Christ healing women with case studies from his own practice. "Jesus still
longs to bring wholeness to women today," the jacket says.
He
writes about a young patient named Sparkle who gets a job at a strip joint in
Kentucky and becomes promiscuous and gets several sexually transmitted diseases.
Sparkle reminds him of "a woman Jesus met who was generally known in her
town as a sinner, but whom Jesus saw through eyes of love."
With
his wife, Linda, he wrote "Stress and the Woman's Body," which puts
"an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life"
and recommends Scripture readings to treat headaches (Matthew 13:44-46); eating
disorders (Corinthians II, 10:2-5) and premenstrual syndrome (Romans 5:1-11,
"Tribulation worketh patience.")
To
exorcise affairs, the Hagers suggest a spiritual exercise: "Picture Jesus
coming into the room. He walks over to you and folds you gently into his arms.
He tousles your hair and kisses you gently on the cheek. . . . Let this love
begin to heal you from the inside out."
Dr.
Hager is also an editor of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian
Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies, and the Family." One of
the pieces, "Using the Birth Control Pill is Ethically Unacceptable,"
says scientific data show that the pill causes abortions.
Dr.
Hager said he disagreed with that piece. He says he prefers not to prescribe
contraceptives to single women, but will if they insist and reject his advice to
abstain.
He
says he does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert
IUD's. "I am pro-life," he says. "I believe sex outside of
marriage is a sin. But I am not against medication. The fact that I'm a person
of faith does not deter me from also being a person of science."
But
unlike C. Everett Koop, who did not let his evangelical beliefs influence his
work as surgeon general, Dr. Hager has written that it is "dangerous"
to compartmentalize life into "categories of Christian truth and secular
truth."
Once
again, the Bush administration seems to be sowing skepticism about science for
the sake of politics. It has smothered the promise of stem cell research to
extend and improve life with the right wing's reverence for "life."
A
Washington Post article last month reported that the Bush crowd was
restructuring scientific advisory committees on patients' rights and public
health, "eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at
odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with
handpicked choices."
Dr.
David Kessler, the former F.D.A. commissioner who is now dean of the Yale
University School of Medicine, warns: "If the criteria to be on an advisory
committee are based on a political litmus test, that will set this country
back."
Are we so worried about medieval villains abroad that we no longer worry about medievalism at home?
Copyright The New York Times Company
##
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