SOBRAN'S -- The Real News of the Month May 2002 Volume 9, No. 5 Editor: Joe Sobran Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications) Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff Subscription Rates. Print version: $44.95 per year; $85 for 2 years; trial subscription available for $19.95 (5 issues). E-mail subscriptions: $39.95 for 1 year ($25 with a 12-month subscription to the print edition); $65 for 2 years ($45 with a 2-year subscription to the print edition). Address: SOBRAN'S, P.O. Box 1383, Vienna, VA 22183-1383 Fax: 703-281-6617 Website: www.sobran.com Publisher's Office: 703-255-2211 or www.griffnews.com Foreign Subscriptions (print version only): Add $1.25 per issue for Canada and Mexico; all other foreign countries, add $1.75 per issue. Credit Card Orders: Call 1-800-513-5053. Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of your first issue. {{ Emphasis is indicated by the presence of asterisks around the emphasized words.}} CONTENTS Features -> The Moving Picture -> The Obsession -> Wilder and His Betters Nuggets (plus Exclusives to this edition) List of Columns Reprinted FEATURES The Moving Picture (pages 1-2) Desperate, agonized e-mail messages from the West Bank remind us that Christians are among the innocents caught in the crossfire between murderous Israeli forces and West Bank Muslims. Even the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, one of the world's holiest sites, is under siege; its Franciscan custodians, despite the danger to themselves, are afraid to leave it temporarily, lest it be destroyed. One priest has already been killed, several nuns wounded. Apart from the Pope, Western Christians are showing little interest in the plight of their co- religionists. * * * Prematurely hailed as "a great wartime president," G.W. Bush has now shown that he isn't up to the job of global emperor. (See below.) This may be a blessing for the globe. Israel's crazed prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is too much for him; it's like a dude ranch visitor trying to ride a furious Brahma bull. Without Sharon's cooperation in pacifying the Palestinians, Bush won't get cooperation from the Arab states whose support he needs for war on Iraq. So Sharon's belligerence may save us from a disastrous widening of the "war on terrorism." * * * Bush, it appears, has no will of his own, or at least no idea of how to impose it. He reacts to events and does as little as possible. Like most American Christians, he thinks the world can be ruled by sermons -- banal, platitudinous, studiously "even-handed." His Middle East policy seems to be guided by his hope of carrying Florida in the next election. You have to feel a little sorry for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, NATIONAL REVIEW, the WALL STREET JOURNAL, and other Republican pundits who are duty-bound to pretend to portray Bush as an avatar of American strength and savvy. * * * Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East mission was a total flop: all the Arab governments were adamantly opposed to war with Iraq. In fact, nearly all European governments are equally opposed to it. In fact, of all the governments on earth, only one would whole-heartedly support the United States against Iraq. * * * Optimism is the mother of war. The hawks are all assuming not only that the United States could defeat Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, which is plausible, but that this would settle everything, which is preposterous. No U.S. puppet government would be legitimate or secure; the Arabs have many faults, but stupidity isn't one of them. The region's perpetual turmoil would merely move into a new phase. * * * In his column for the New York DAILY NEWS, A.M. Rosenthal has smashed his own record for ... well, Rosenthalian excess: he suggests that France is preparing concentration camps for Jews. You suspect exaggeration? Here: "Jews, listen and you will hear the sound of breaking glass.... Breaking glass, burning synagogues, and diplomats making filthy anti-Semitic remarks mean that a sickening number of people around the world, many in high office, would have no great objections if the concentration camps arrived again, and would even take pleasure in speeding their coming.... This year, a French ambassador to England described Israel as feces.... It means the blueprints for the new camps are probably already drawn." * * * Bill Clinton now tells NEWSWEEK that he regrets pardoning Marc Rich: "It wasn't worth the damage to my reputation." Well, maybe. But it was damaging because it was so congruent with the reputation he'd already earned. If he'd been known as an honest man, like Jimmy Carter, it would have been seen as an anomaly -- well-meaning, gullible bumbling, perhaps. The problem was that even Clinton's most dogged defenders saw it as entirely Clintonesque. * * * Yet another left-wing academic fraud has been exposed. ARMING AMERICA: THE ORIGINS OF A NATIONAL GUN CULTURE, by Michael Bellesiles of Emory University, made a big hit with the gun-control crowd two years ago by showing, contrary to popular belief, that gun ownership was rare in the early days of the Republic. Unfortunately, somebody checked Bellesiles's footnotes and discovered -- get this -- that his sources didn't even exist! He'd just made them up out of his haid! Meanwhile, such heavyweight historians as Garry Wills and Edmund Morgan had vouched for his scholarship and praised him for debunking a right-wing myth. * * * As for gun control generally, the Second Amendment is clear enough: it assumes that the "right" to keep and bear arms is natural and inviolable, not created or granted by the state. Alexander Hamilton speaks of self- defense as the right that is "paramount" to all others. But the Tenth Amendment should make all such arguments needless anyway: it says that powers not "delegated" to the Federal Government are denied to it, and the Constitution gives that government no power to limit the ownership of weapons. * * * The scandal rocking the Catholic Church has occurred in part because Church officials chose to regard homosexuality and pedophilia as sicknesses rather than sins. They put their faith not in Christian doctrine, but in psychotherapy, with its false promises of cures. Penance? Grace? Reparation? No, they trusted modern quackery, and they are paying the price. * * * Let's not overlook the media's role in pushing this scandal. They are avoiding any reference to homosexuality, preferring to call the problem "pedophilia" -- though the great majority of the victims have been teenaged boys. Church officials have allowed an aggressive homosexual network to capture the seminaries and infiltrate the priesthood. But as someone has well said, this is a case where the media "love the sin and hate the sinner." * * * Yasser Arafat is constantly told he must "renounce terrorism." Fair enough. (Though he has done so several times, only to be accused of lying about it.) But nobody has demanded that Sharon disavow any purpose of expelling -- or "transferring" -- all Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories he claims for Israel. Far from abhorring such a policy, Sharon has welcomed cabinet ministers who openly advocate it. The Obsession (pages 3-5) Now and then I get letters and e-mail messages asking why I am so "obsessed" with Jews and Israel. The question amuses me. It would be one thing if I often wrote about Mali, or Honduras, or Borneo, or any other nation or country most people remember only as a name from geography class. I should think it's obvious that I'm *responding* to an obsession -- an obsession of contemporary culture, politics, the media, the arts. We have been getting 24/7 coverage of Jews, the Holocaust, and Israel for years now. The front pages, the evening news, the magazine covers devote so much attention to Israel -- a country the size of New Jersey on the other side of the world -- that you could get the impression that it spans several time zones and includes much of the world's population (plus a few gentiles). Many columnists write about it more often than I do: Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Cal Thomas, Paul Greenberg, Mona Charen, and George Will, to name a few. Of course they write uncritically about Israel, so they aren't considered obsessed; Eric Alterman of THE NATON has compiled a list of more than 60 well-known pundits who "reflexively" support Israel, while finding only 6 who are frequently critical. Every American president has to spend a disproportionate amount of his time coddling Israel and denouncing or actively fighting Israel's enemies. It's become part of the job description, as much as if it were written into the Constitution -- or more so, since constitutional obligations have become optional and *this* obligation is definitely not. At the same time, no president or any other politician may suggest that the American-Israeli alliance imposes undue risks, costs, or burdens on the United States. Journalism still devotes so much attention to the Holocaust that, as I once quipped, "The NEW YORK TIMES should be renamed HOLOCAUST UPDATE." Books and movies about it continue to pour forth; bookstores have whole sections on the Holocaust, and universities consecrate entire departments to "Holocaust studies." Holocaust memorials spring up everywhere. Elie Wiesel preaches that we *should* be obsessed with the Holocaust, as he is. Churches, accused of silent complicity in, and even ultimate responsibility for, the Holocaust, do their best to repent and atone. Current Jewish sufferings are treated as specially tragic facts, extensions of the Holocaust itself. When Arab terrorists seized an Italian ship, the Achille Lauro, and threw a Jewish passenger overboard, a leading American composer, John Adams, wrote an entire opera, THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER, about the incident. "Anti-Semitism" has become the chief of sins. It's seldom helpfully defined, but it seems to take a thousand forms, from outright genocide to indiscreet bons mots about Israel. Many gentiles live in dread of being labeled anti-Semitic, a charge against which there is no real defense or appeal: to be accused is to be guilty. The burden of proof, as I've often pointed out, is on the defendant -- and a difficult burden it is, since he hardly knows what he's being accused of. How can you prove your innocence of an undefined crime? By the same token, there is no penalty for false charges of anti- Semitism, since a meaningless charge can't be proved false anyway. No gentile is quite safe from the charge. The Gospels, Catholicism, and the papacy have been indicted; so have Chaucer, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Edmund Burke, Dickens, Henry James, Henry Adams, Dostoyevsky, Mark Twain, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Hemingway. (So far Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson seem to have escaped the accusation.) Then there are whole anti-Semitic nations, among them Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Germany, France, and Spain, lately joined by most of the Arab nations (thereby proving it is possible to be Semitic and anti-Semitic at the same time). Billy Graham was recently roasted for anti-Semitism when it transpired that he'd made a few disparaging comments about Jews in the media during what he'd thought were private conversations with President Richard Nixon *30 years ago!* Perish the thought that there might have been a grain of truth in what he'd said; Graham dutifully groveled, then, when Jewish groups indignantly complained that this was not enough, he groveled again. A few years back, even that Hollywood icon Marlon Brando had to do a tearfully groveling retraction of some mildly critical comments about Jews in Hollywood. And they wonder why I'm obsessed. Of course I have my own special reasons. In 1986 I had my own run-in with fanatical Zionists, earned the dreaded label, and refused to perform the mandatory grovel. I won't retell the whole story here, except to say that my own ardent support for Israel had ended in 1982 when I realized what Israel's cruel invasion of Lebanon, led by Ariel Sharon, meant for America and for my family. For America it meant that the Jewish lobby, including some of my neoconservative friends (as I thought them), had gotten this country into a sticky situation: an alliance that was morally dubious and very dangerous. We were being steered into a needless war with the Arabs, hotly desired by Israel and its supporters but contrary to our own real interests. As for the Sobrans, two of them -- my sons Kent and Mike -- were in their teens. If, as seemed likely, the military draft was restored, they might be sent to fight the war the Zionists were seeking. I began arguing in my syndicated column for American disengagement from Israel. Shortly afterward I ran into Ben Wattenberg, one of my friends (I thought), who said he'd heard I'd "gone off the reservation on Israel." It was the first time I'd been informed that I was on a "reservation," but I soon learned what he meant. Despite various warnings and pressures -- veiled threats, really -- I wasn't about to back down or retract anything. As far as I was concerned, I was fighting for my boys' lives. But if I wanted to thrive in journalism, I was expected to put Jewish interests ahead of everything, or at least keep quiet. As I told Bill Buckley at the time, the Jewish- Zionist interest amounted to an unacknowledged third party in American politics. Though it had been traditionally liberal, it had sprouted a "neoconservative" wing since 1967. In truth, the neoconservatives were hardly conservative at all. For most of them, Israel was everything and overrode all other issues. You could agree with them on nine out of ten issues, but if the tenth was Israel the other nine didn't matter to them. You were the enemy. You couldn't really feel the power of the Jewish Party until you ran up against it. With amazing speed it had thoroughly satellized the largely Christian conservative movement, thanks in large part to Buckley. He wasn't about to let me imperil his position. He tried to tell me so, in his indirect and avuncular way, but I couldn't take a hint. Luckily, I was a fairly small fry in the movement, and the Jewish Party had far bigger antagonists to target for destruction. I didn't get the full treatment Buckley would have gotten if he'd said what I had said, or the treatment Pat Buchanan did get. Still, when the blowup came I felt deserted -- and in some cases betrayed -- by my fellow conservatives. Much as I wished they would rush to my defense, I also wished that if this was too much to ask, they would at least see the *meaning* of what was being done to me. Put simply, I was paying the price for *defending American interests* (and conservative principles). If, as the neocons insisted, American and Israeli interests were more or less identical, they should have called me anti-American, not (or not only) anti-Semitic. But of course they never did; they weren't that subtle, and in some ways they were deeply confused. Without realizing it, they were tacitly admitting that I was right: that American and Israeli interests were very different -- even conflicting -- things. Why else would Israel need a lobby in America at all, except to promote its interests to the detriment of our own? This should be obvious, but most people don't get it. Of course there is no American lobby in Israel to look out for our interests, regardless of the impact on Israeli interests. This is only one of the many unnoticed asymmetries of the situation. Double standards can succeed in their furtive purpose only when they pass unobserved. But to call attention to double standards favoring Jews is "anti-Semitism." According to Zionist rhetoric, of course, only anti-Semites apply double standards -- though in fact Zionism's first principle is that ordinary standards of justice don't apply to Jews. As one Israeli rabbi has put it, "A million Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail." That sounds like a defiantly brutal denial that "all men are created equal." The rabbi may have meant that it would be better to murder a million Arabs than to tolerate the slightest Jewish loss. But he might have meant something much less bellicose, something even pacific: that the current tradeoff of Jewish and Arab lives is a terrible thing for the Jews, even if far more Arabs than Jews die. Nobody really wins a war that diminishes both sides. It may be said that all this amounts to a caricature of the Jews. In fact, I'll say it myself. It's really a self-caricature of the Jews, drawn by the prevalent part of the Jewish community. It reflects neither the older tradition of the Orthodox, which is rooted in the hard objectivity of Mosaic law rather than modern sentimental victimology; nor the immense variety of Jewish intellectuals, who are as the sands of the sea but who don't usually subscribe fully to the oversimplified myths of the Holocaust and Zionism. The Orthodox Jew, faithful to an ancient and rigorous tradition, commands respect. So, in a different way, does the nonobservant intellectual Jew, who greatly enriches the life of the mind in the modern West; he remains unobsessed by the Holocaust and skeptical of, even embarrassed by, Zionism. In some cases, both the Orthodox Jew and the unaffiliated intellectual Jew may be downright anti-Zionist. The plague-carriers, so to speak, are the secularized, liberal, middlebrow Jews whose vulgarity sets the tone for American politics, public discourse, and popular culture. Some of them, like Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand, have real talent, of sorts; most of them are good at making money and aggressive in using it for their pet causes. Above all, they have a low genius for propaganda -- for shaping the popular mind and its characteristic platitudes. This is the prevalent body of Jews, our unacknowledged third party -- the party of Zionism, Holocaust promotion, secularism, sexual license (including "gay rights" and legal abortion), and an aggressive U.S. foreign policy (in the interests of Israel, not the United States itself). The Jewish Party, only a small fraction of the U.S. population, donates more than half the money received by the presidential candidates of the two major parties. It also dominates the major news and entertainment media. The Jewish Party's inordinate power, though unmentionable in the major media, explains why gentiles, especially the ambitious, dread the label of "anti- Semitism." Some of the most perceptive, sensitive, and effective critiques of Jewish power -- that is, of the Jewish Party -- have been made by Orthodox and intellectual Jews. One danger of the present situation is that the Jewish Party will become synonymous with "the Jews." And this is exactly what the Party wants: to be recognized as the only authoritative Jewish voice, with all dissenting Jews marginalized. Under the brutal rule of Ariel Sharon, Israel's image in the West is worse than ever before. Today it's startling to remember the radiant aura it enjoyed in the days when its chief international spokesman was the urbane and eloquent Abba Eban. Those days are gone forever. The old image of a humane, democratic Israel was largely myth -- a myth Sharon himself still exploits -- but at least the Israelis made some effort to maintain its plausibility. Now, as Israeli soldiers shoot Arab women in labor without official rebuke or regret, the ugliness of Zionism has become visible to anyone with eyes to see. Shouting "Holocaust" and "anti-Semitism" can no longer disguise the facts. Despite all the rhetoric, Israel is a "democracy" only in a Pickwickian sense. It began by expelling most of its Arab majority, seizing its homes, and refusing it reentry. That created a Jewish majority, which has been maintained and increased by extending to every Jew on earth the "right of return" to a land where few of those Jews (or for that matter, of their ancestors) had ever lived in the first place. Yet the fiction of Israeli democracy is still honored by the United States. The Great Obsession has become a huge embarrassment for the Bush administration. It can't repudiate the U.S. alliance with Israel, even as it needs international -- especially Arab -- support for the "war on terrorism." Of course that war itself is a result of the Obsession, which has shaped American foreign policy for decades. The embarrassment is also a Laocoon-like entanglement. Polite diplomacy flounders in the vain quest for a peaceful settlement; Rome and Carthage are trying to destroy each other, and both sides are invited to a tea party. As suicide bombings alternate with disproportionate yet unavailing retaliations, the daily news from Israel is so painful that we all yearn for a solution. But it's probably too late. It has been wisely said that even the greatest chess player can't take over a misplayed game after 40 moves. This game is clearly destined to end -- or to continue indefinitely -- in tragedy. The only question is how many millions of people will be engulfed in its flames. Wilder and His Betters (page 6) Billy Wilder's death at 95 summoned generous eulogies, and most of them rang true. He was an excellent writer-director, one of Hollywood's rare originals. At his best -- in perhaps a dozen of his many films -- he displayed a caustic wit unusual in that sentimental, formulaic medium. And who else in the film industry could have produced movies as different as DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE APARTMENT? I use these two movies as illustrations for a specific reason: both of them cast the same comic actor as a villain, to brilliant effect. His name, of course, is Fred MacMurray, best remembered for the warm sitcom MY THREE SONS. In DOUBLE INDEMNITY he plots with Barbara Stanwyck to murder her husband in order to collect on a phony insurance policy; if there is anything implausible about this red-hot plot, it's the idea that a man could even imagine living happily ever after with Stanwyck. But the plot twists make you overlook that; anyway, the irresistible desirability of a wicked dame is a given of the film noir genre, which Wilder never returned to despite this great success. In THE APARTMENT, a bittersweet comedy more in keeping with Wilder's other work, MacMurray plays a philandering business executive who cynically uses his mistress, played by Shirley MacLaine, and breaks her heart. Would anyone but Wilder have had the insight to see how perfect this light comedian could be in both these heavy roles? Wilder's other successes show his versatility: THE LOST WEEKEND, SUNSET BOULEVARD, STALAG 17, SOME LIKE IT HOT, and THE FORTUNE COOKIE. But his failures could also leave a bad taste. IRMA LA DOUCE, an attempt at a "sophisticated" European-style sex farce, is disgusting in conception and made worse by Jack Lemmon's foolish performance. Wilder, a European Jewish refugee, was refreshing in his wry disdain for Hollywood banality, yet he could sometimes combine cynicism with his own kind of bathos -- an unhappy mixture. Like most people I love movies; but just because they are so popular we make too much of them as an art form. We tend to forget that the very nature of the genre is inhospitable to genius. The greatest painter needs only a canvas and paint; the greatest poet needs only a pen and paper. But a movie requires, in the first place, a lot of money and so many talents that it's not altogether clear who deserves chief credit for the final result -- actors, director, writer, producer? The public usually goes to see the actors, the "stars." But among intellectuals, the fashion is to credit the director, the "auteur." And some directors do put their stamp on their films: Renoir, Welles, Hitchcock, Capra, Lean, Kurosawa, Kubrick, and Spielberg, to name the most obvious. But the writer may be even more important, yet few screenwriters are known to the public. The producer is the one who assembles all these diverse talents, but he is regarded as a mere businessman, of no artistic significance. Wilder made the question of credit fairly simple: he was usually producer, director, and co-author of the script. That's as close to total control of the project as one man usually gets. He leaves no successor, as they say, but I like to think there is one comparable talent in the American movie industry: the Coen brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen, a pair of Jews from Minnesota, write their own scripts, Ethan produces, and Joel directs. Their first film (nearly two decades ago already!) was BLOOD SIMPLE, which was quickly hailed as the most brilliant debut in ages. Debut or not, it's a terrific thriller, done in a distinctive style of eerie wit, about a man who hires a detective to kill his wife and her lover. You don't know where it's coming from until the very end; meanwhile, it delivers several shocking plot twists. Despite its low budget and lowlife Texas setting, the color cinematography is rich, verging on gorgeous. RAISING ARIZONA, their second movie, is a comedy about a childless couple who kidnap a quintuplet. Given that premise, it's hardly necessary to add that the comedy is offbeat. It's also hilarious and surprisingly warm, full of funny menace and witty dialogue -- two regular Coen touches. My favorite remains their third film, MILLER'S CROSSING, a neo-noir job roughly based on THE GLASS KEY. Albert Finney is tops as a lovably growling gangster betrayed but ultimately saved by his best friend. The movie abounds in funny nostalgia, eccentric characters, and period slang, none of which dissipate the electric tension of the plot. Since then the Coens have produced a half-dozen films, diverse in genre and atmosphere, but all of them bearing their unique style. BARTON FINK and FARGO have been the most successful, but nearly all of them are beautiful to watch and -- the rarer thing in movies -- delightful to listen to. It's far too early to sum up the Coens' work, but for my money they have already surpassed Wilder's lifetime achievement. NUGGETS HISTORY LESSON: In his pro-Israel history of Zionism, THE SIEGE, Conor Cruise O'Brien mentions that the "moderate" founders of Israel, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, viewed the proposed 1948 partition of Palestine as an interim measure, not a final settlement; in other words, a foot in the door. Ben-Gurion wrote privately that even a small "Jewish State in part of Palestine is not the end but the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish State will serve as a means in our historical efforts to redeem the country in its entirety." Weizmann likewise wrote (also privately), "The Kingdom of David was smaller; under Solomon it became an Empire. Who knows? C'est le premier pas qui compte." Remember that the next time you hear that the obstinate Arabs missed their chance to have a state when they rejected the 1948 partition. They apparently knew just what they were dealing with. (page 5) MORDANT REFLECTION: To think! Two of the Beatles are now Dead White Males. (page 7) ERNEST VAN DEN HAAG, R.I.P.: If cruelty to liberals were a crime, Ernest van den Haag, who died at 87 in late March, would have done life without parole. As I once put it, at a roast for this great, grouchy logician: "Bill Buckley gave us the romance of conservatism; Ernest gave us the S&M." He was great fun, and he died in the Catholic Church. He also had his faults, and I enjoyed every one of them. (page 9) ECUMENICAL NOTES: In Powhatan, Virginia, two private schools -- Blessed Sacrament and Huguenot Academy -- have merged to form, yes, Blessed Sacrament Huguenot School. (page 9) QUERIES: Why is democracy holy? Why did it take the human race so many centuries to realize its self-evident holiness? Why does only a small fraction of the human race realize it even now? And, by the way, what *is* democracy? YOU CAN'T WIN: Conor Cruise O'Brien says that G.K. Chesterton was a Zionist *because* he was anti-Semitic. I know it's anti-Semitic to disagree with the Jews; but I get confused when I'm told it's also anti-Semitic to agree with them.(page 12) Exclusive to the electronic version: DAREDEVIL: Bill Buckley has shocked some readers by attacking (after a fashion) Ariel Sharonıs "crackdown on terrorism." I am unshocked. In the first place, Bill has always known what's what in Israel, even when he played dumb. In the second place, his criticism is more tactical -- the crackdown will hurt *Israel* -- than moral. Still, he deserves credit for sticking his neck out: he has risked being fired from the staff of NATIONAL REVIEW. "WHIZZER" WHITE, R.I.P.: Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, a relic of the Kennedy years, has died at 84. His occasional resistance to the Court's more bolshevist rulings -- notably on abortion -- won him an exaggerated reputation as a conservative. But he did give us a memorable phrase: he called the Court's 1973 abortion ruling "an exercise of raw judicial power." REPRINTED COLUMNS (pages 7-12) * Can This War Be Won? (March 19, 2002) http://www.sobran.com/columns/020319.shtml * Bad Explanations (March 21, 2002) http://www.sobran.com/columns/020321.shtml * Bad Hair Night (March 26, 2002) http://www.sobran.com/columns/020326.shtml * Big Lies (March 28, 2002) http://www.sobran.com/columns/020328.shtml * The Catholic Position (April 4, 2002) http://www.sobran.com/columns/020404.shtml * Shakespeare and the Snobs (April 9, 2002) http://www.sobran.com/columns/020409.shtml ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All articles are written by Joe Sobran You may forward this newsletter if you include the following subscription and copyright information: Subscribe to the Sobran E-Package. See http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml or http://www.griffnews.com for details and samples or call 800-513-5053. Copyright (c) 2002 by The Vere Company -- www.sobran.com. All rights reserved. Distributed by the Griffin Internet Syndicate www.griffnews.com with permission. [ENDS]