Windsor Mann's Blog

In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, a white man and a
black man with a knife have a brief but heated conversation about
race.

White man: Hey, who are you calling a goofy white [guy who has
sex with mothers]?

Black man with a knife: You, you goofy white [guy who has sex
with mothers]!

The white man, despite this affront, is less concerned about
being insulted than he is about getting stabbed. Lesson: Words
hurt, but not as much as knives do.

The recent imbroglio over Riley Cooper has reaffirmed this
point. Cooper, a (white) wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles,
became famous and infamous late last month for having said, after
an altercation with a black security guard at a Kenny Chesney
concert, the N-word. More specifically, he said, “I will jump that
fence and fight every [N-word] here, bro.”

After a video of his comments went viral, Cooper
said he was “extremely sorry” for having behaved “extremely,
extremely poorly.” He
called his actions “inexcusable” and his words “repulsive.”

To no one’s surprise, everyone agreed. Even the mayor of
Philadelphia chimed in,
calling his remarks “repugnant, insensitive and ignorant.” He
wasn’t referring to Cooper’s words in toto but rather to
his use of the N-word in particular. (Thought experiment: What if,
instead of using the N-word, Cooper had said, “I will jump that
fence and fight every African-American here, bro”?)

Eagles owner Jeffrey Laurie
said, “His words may have been directed at one person, but they
hurt everyone.” The idea, widely promulgated in the press, is that
everyone is supposed to feel everyone else’s pain, so long as the
pain isn’t physical. As an act of contrition, Cooper
said he knew “how many people I’ve hurt, how many families I’ve
hurt, how many kids I’ve hurt.” In the interest of precision, one
should point out that, whether or not Cooper did indeed “hurt
everyone,” he did not commit genocide, fratricide, homicide or
infanticide. He hurt people’s feelings, not their bodies.

But most of all, he hurt himself. Words, like knives, can cut
both ways, hurting not only feelings but also reputations and
careers. One ESPN commentator said that Cooper showed “his true
colors” — white presumably foremost among them — when he
“unleashed” the N-word “out of the bottom of his heart.”

Rather than sending Cooper to a cardiologist, the Eagles sent
him to sensitivity training, the purpose of which, according to a

statement released by the team, was “to help him fully
understand the impact of his words and actions.” The evidence,
however, suggests that Cooper understood the impact of his words
even before his four days of sensitivity training. There were no
reports of his having blurted out racial epithets in the past,
around his teammates or to anyone else. That he said this
particular one at a country music concert — rather than at, say, a
Jay-Z concert — suggests he had at least a vague idea of the word’s
impact.

Harvard Professor Randall Kennedy, who has written a
book on the subject, has called the N-word “America’s
paradigmatic ethnic slur.” While it is doubtful that Cooper has
read Kennedy’s book or knows what “paradigmatic” means, he surely
knows by now that certain words have serious consequences, both for
those who hear them and for those who say them.

What else has he learned? He has learned that marginally famous
people can become infamous overnight; to watch what he says, not
because he might say something insensitive but because he might say
it to someone who is recording him; that professional athletes need
sensitivity trainers as well as personal trainers; that political
correctitude is a prerequisite for job security; and, lastly, that
he, as a white man, can’t jump — to race-based conclusions.

Halloween is a big party. It is the third biggest political
party in America. This annual holiday is a nonpartisan event, but
politics shows up like everyone else --  cloaked
and masked. Not everyone parties with politics, but liberals are
most inclined and best equipped. They have the best reasons to love
Oct. 31. Here they are:

1. Halloween compels diversity. Everyone feels
pressure to create a unique costume. Consequently, everyone becomes
artsy. Halloween mandates that you pretend to be something you are
not, much as red-state liberals do during political
elections.

Downside: The creative diversity gets competitive (read:
unfair and mean). People often pick their costumes in order to win
prizes and contests such as "Wildest Costume" or "Best John Edwards
Lookalike." Such contests discriminate against those who cannot
afford $400 haircuts, paternity tests, and public humiliation
(assuming they do not know Maury Povich).

2. It is an opportunity to express your inner
child. Liberals have a thing for psychobabble,
and psychobabble and psychopaths go well together. Halloween is for
kids, who are not yet fully able to distinguish between reality and
make-believe. Any adult who loves Halloween is someone with an
inner child that needs expressing. Such people have aged but not
completely matured. Halloween lets them prove it.

Downside: If you express your inner child too much, your
own children may start to view you as their equal and not as an
authority figure. This could make it harder for you to teach them
how to recycle and how to respect every culture other than their
own.

3. It alleviates hunger. Halloween is the only
day of the year when millions of Americans go out of their way to
feed complete strangers. They buy food for the explicit purpose of
giving it to people they may or may not know and who may or may not
need it. If every day were Halloween, famine would disappear (as
would memories of Live Aid).

Downside: The downside to
the "mi casa, su
candy" pledge is the second element. Candy
contributes to childhood obesity, which Michelle Obama says is
really, really bad.

4. Ask, and ye shall receive. On Halloween, all
you have to do to get free goodies is knock on a door. In other
words, all you have to do to get other people's stuff is ask for
it, and these people will happily give it to you out of social
obligation. Halloween is welfare without the paperwork.

Downside: Most Halloween goodies come wrapped in paper or
plastic, which environmentally unconscious people will turn into
litter.

5. It has no patriotic or Christian undertones.
Its lack of nationalistic and Judeo-Christian themes brings people
together. Halloween is a perfect day for internationalists
(citizens of the world) and devil worshipers (citizens of the
netherworld) to unite. This must be why so many people want to hear
"We Are the World" at Slayer concerts.

Downside: It is not easy to be a Satanic humanist who
slaughters humans. At least that has been my experience.

6. It promotes walking over driving.
Trick-or-treating is a neighborhood activity. By walking
--  not driving --  from house
to house, trick-or-treaters reduce carbon emissions and help save
the environment.

Downside: Walking is not possible for the wheelchair-bound
and other physically disadvantaged groups. For them, ramps and/or
candy delivery services are preferable. Check with your local Meals
on Wheels.

7. Gay activists love it. For various reasons,
Halloween is big in this community. The day offers an occasion for
sexual nonconformists to act not as "someone else" but as
caricatures of themselves, openly and without apprehension. If you
want to dress in drag, you can do so without fear of harmful social
repercussions.

Downside: Drag queens are a form of hierarchy.

8. It allows for witch-hunting. In a
pre-Halloween television ad last October, then-Republican Senate
candidate (and self-confessed former "dabbler" in witchcraft)
Christine O'Donnell declared, "I'm not a witch"
--  a line so effective in establishing innocence
that thousands of lives could have been spared during the
Inquisition had anyone thought of it at the time.

Downside: None.

9. It's an excuse for feminists to flout their
femininity. Even the bra-burning Gloria Steinem can show a
little skin on Halloween, the one night of the year when all women
can dress as strippers without damaging their ideological
credibility. Indeed, on no other day is it so easy to reconcile
women's rights and fishnet tights. You can stand for the former and
strut in the latter.

Downside (for men): Feminists don't make for the best eye
candy.

That's why liberals love Halloween. Though it may be just
a one-night stand, the two are made for each other. The pretense of
disguise lets liberals be themselves. Luckily the affair happens
but once a year.

My neighbor poisoned my cat. Therefore, I'm going to travel to
New York City, sleep in the streets indefinitely, and surf the web
on my MacBook. I am going to be just like hundreds of other people
who are now "occupying" Wall Street.

Voluntary homelessness is on the rise in the Big Apple thanks to
"Occupy Wall Street," a self-described "leaderless resistance
movement" representing just about everyone. "We are the 99
percent," it humbly claims on its website.
But even as its numbers have grown, Occupy Wall Street is as
message-less as it is leaderless. More and more people are
occupying Wall Street, and fewer and fewer people know why.

The stated grievances range from corporate greed and social
inequality to housing, health care and pollution. The 99 percenters
say they "are
getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything."
Occupy Wall Street is an anti-greed crusade by self-interested
individuals with a long list of nonspecific wishes. They are the
non-silent majority taking aim at a minority.

The protesters have been camping out in Lower Manhattan since
September 17, and they have no plans to stop. With no exit strategy
in sight or mind, they have made "occupation" their occupation.

It seems odd to target Wall Street, a small strip of land with
no leaders of its own. It is not an institution but represents a
large and diverse collection of interests and individuals. But --
as a 19-year-old protester
said -- "people on Wall Street have all the power."

According to the protesters' logic, the best way to wrest power
from Wall Street is by moving Halloween up a few weeks. Hundreds
recently descended on the New York Stock Exchange dressed as
"corporate zombies," much as anti-nuclear activists did in the
early 1980s. But unlike today's protesters, they at least knew why
they were protesting.

"I'm angry because I don't have millions of dollars to give to
my representative, so my voice is invalidated,"
said 21-year-old college student Amanda Clarke. Among her
complaints are "that I'm graduating with tens of thousands of
dollars in loans and there's no job market."

The fight, however, is not merely between college students and
their future bills. It is so broad that it is indecipherable. "This
is not about left versus right,"
said Christopher Walsh, a 25-year-old photographer. "It's about
hierarchy versus autonomy."

What makes the Wall Street occupiers so frivolous is their utter
lack of purpose. Their deep-sounding words mask their arrant
superficiality. Furthermore, anyone who uncritically claims to
speak for 99 percent of the populace is -- 99 percent of the time
-- deluded and incorrect. Occupy Wall Street is less for the
downtrodden than it is for the bored and self-important, which
explains why so many kids and actress Susan Sarandon are getting
involved.

In an interview this week, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
said the protests are "about freedom of speech [and] the right
to assemble." In other words, the protests are about
protesting.

What the late Irving Kristol observed about the student
radicalism of the 1960s applies to the events in New York. There is
"a passion behind the protests that refuses to be satisfied by the
various topics which incite it." That's because the only thing
Occupy Wall Street is about is itself.

Occupy Wall Street is for those who romanticize the act of
protesting. These are people to whom protesting over an issue is
more important than the issue itself. They see protests not as a
means but as an end.

The protesters in New York talk incessantly about getting their
"message" across, yet they have no intelligible message. They want
their "voices" to be heard, but all their voices say is that their
voices should be heard. Yet again, it is those who have the least
to say who are saying the most.

Rarely does a protest succeed in persuading people outside its
ranks. What protests do is give protesters what P.J. O'Rourke
called "a nice sense of false accomplishment." When they go out and
"do something," they feel as if they are (actually) doing
something. For such people, nothing feels better than an inflated
sense of one's importance.

Annie Duke, a 34-year-old protester, when asked what she did for
a living,
replied, "I'm a revolutionary." Her answer is simultaneously
flippant and over-serious. When you fill out a form and list
"revolutionary" as your vocation, you are giving no information as
well as too much information.

And just what, by the way, does a revolutionary do?

Oscar Wilde defined revolution as "a successful effort to get
rid of a bad government and set up a worse." This definition
obviously does not apply to Occupy Wall Street, which has achieved
no success because it has no intention of replacing our current
government with another one. Its purpose is unconstructive
criticism.

"It's about taking down systems," one woman
explained. "It doesn't matter what you're protesting. Just
protest." That's "revolution" in a nutshell: protesting for the
sake of protesting and taking down systems because they are
systematic.

Unfortunately for the protesters, they do not live in an
oppressive society. There are no gulags in Iowa or concentration
camps in Maine. America has issues but no totalitarian horrors. Its
wrongs, if you listen to the Wall Street occupiers, are frequently
abstractions. Along with the lessening of transgressions comes a
trivialization of complaints. There is no Gestapo, but the NYPD can
be a little rude from time to time.

When injustices are on the wane, it becomes harder to whine.
This is a problem for professional protesters, who -- to quote
Bruno Bettelheim -- "have nothing to push against because
everything gives way."

"In democratic societies," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, "each
citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty
object, which is himself." To a large extent, self-centeredness is
a necessity for survival, which explains why the protesters are so
self-centered. When they say their voices are not being heard, they
are saying their relevance is vanishing. They think they are 99
percent of the country when in reality they are closer to 0.99
percent.

America is riddled with disease, and your child is probably
infected. You may already know this. After all, much like leprosy
and acne, obesity can be detected from a few yards away, and the
opportunities to observe it are everywhere.

In the United States, potbellies and thunder thighs are
the look that never goes out of fashion. The Centers for Disease
Control
estimates that 17 percent of children and adolescents are now
obese. As for adults, 30
percent were obese in 2000, as compared to 13 percent in 1960.
Despite its growing prevalence, obesity is a trend without a
friend. People lose their patience with love handles the more of
them they find.

If you forget about the glut of oversized guts, the
government will remind you. September was America's first-ever
Childhood Obesity Awareness Month -- the same month, as it happens,
that kids go back to school and resume their bullying and teasing
of each other. Increasingly, though, it is adults doing the
finger-pointing.

It starts with the first family. In February, Michelle
Obama announced an initiative called "Let's Move!" -- a scheme for
"solving" childhood obesity "within a generation" and for giving
the first lady something to do with her time. On the same day,
President Obama created the first-ever White House Task Force on
Childhood Obesity, which no one noticed and therefore everyone
endorsed. As always, trivial pursuits by the government escape
ridicule by escaping attention.

The first lady put this to the test on September 25, when
she went on Nickelodeon and told
viewers to "to shut down your computers, put down your cell phones
and turn off your TVs." Nickelodeon and its three sister networks
(Nicktoons, Nick Jr., TeenNick) not only permitted her request but
also advanced it, by going off the air for the next three hours
(noon-3:00 p.m.). This was all part of the "Worldwide Day of Play,"
which involves boring kids to the point of making them go outside,
run around, and burn calories.

Why should kids do this? Because being young and fat is
terrible, say a bunch of people whose main physical activity is
running around and annoying everybody else.

Take MeMe Roth, a mother of two and the president of
National Action Against Obesity, who
accused the Girl Scouts of "using girls as a front to push
millions of cookies onto an already bloated population." Her
complaints about school food were so exhausting that a P.T.A.
member sent her an email saying, "Please, consider moving." Ms.
Roth, who has described
herself as being "mad, like crazy," believes
that obesity is "the most pressing health crisis of our
time."

Few in the Obama administration or the Obama family would
disagree. After launching "Let's Move!" Mrs. Obama
said, "We have to decide as a nation that physical activity and
nutrition and all that stuff is just as important as test scores
and good grades, textbooks and everything else we make the
trade-off for." If we don't, she warned, we "can kill our kids"
(interesting words from a woman whose husband promised to end the
politics of fear).

But there is always hope with the Obamas in charge. "With
everyone working together," Mrs. Obama
said, "it [childhood obesity] can be solved." That's
comforting, or at least it's supposed to be. Children can be
slenderized, we are told, but only with everyone working
together -- a hint, perhaps, that taxpaying adults will be
financing the weight loss of people who were just born.

And why not? "Our kids didn't do this to themselves," as
the first lady
pointed out, thereby raising the question of who did.
Naturally, "society" must have.

Obesity is being rebranded accordingly. A few years ago,
officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began to push the
idea of a "nature-deficit disorder" as a cause of childhood
obesity. Nature-deficit disorder is nothing new. It used to be
called "being inside too much." Its new name is part of a larger
trend, which is the formalization of everything obesity-related
into official-sounding jargon.

Anti-fat activists often describe obesity as an
"epidemic." Given that an epidemic is an infectious disease, it is
hard to see how double chins qualify. MeMe Roth and others say
obesity is "socially contagious," which explains less than it
obscures. You can't "catch" obesity the same way you catch the flu.
Also unlike the flu, you will not recover from obesity simply by
lying in bed for a few days.

There is no doubt that obesity is socially rampant and
little doubt it will disappear soon. If current trends continue,
according to a 2008 study
in the journal Obesity, 86 percent of American adults will
be overweight by 2028, and 51 percent will be obese, making fat
people a public majority and public enemy No. 1 at the same time.
Even grimmer was a
report in September by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, which predicted that three in four
Americans will be overweight or obese in 10 years.

Preventing this outcome, many people contend, requires
collective measures. Two obesity gurus, Tom Farley and Deborah
Cohen,
put it simply: "If fat people and their doctors can't cure
obesity, as a nation we ought to prevent it."

As troubling as widespread obesity is, widespread obesity
prevention sounds much worse. Even at the state level, such efforts
irritate more people than they trim. In May, a 10-year-old girl at
a Texas elementary school was given a week of detention for the
offense of possessing a Jolly Rancher. School officials explained
that they were merely following a state guideline banning "minimal
nutrition" foods.

When things like "nature-deficit disorder" are the
problem, environmental changes are offered as the solution. Dr.
Maria Brown, a Baltimore pediatrician who thinks the great outdoors
are just great,
said, "If this is going to succeed, we've got to advocate for
more green spaces." And so eating your greens and the Green Party's
platform are now one and the same.

Most of the anti-obesity schemes floating around have one
aspect in common: Their ultimate goal is to redesign American
society, not American individuals.

Some of the specific proposals sound banal enough:
subsidizing fruits and vegetables, forcing restaurants to display
calorie counts on menus, and more strenuous regulation of food in
schools. Others are more far-reaching: banning advertisements of
junk food to kids, taxing junk food, regulating the location of
stores that sell junk food, and requiring sidewalks and bike paths
in every single neighborhood.

For many social dieticians, unhealthy eating and passive
living are only part of what bothers them. They also have a problem
with consumption in general. NYU nutritionist Marion Nestle, in
trying to identify the causes of obesity,
found them deeply entrenched: an "overly abundant food supply,"
"low food prices," "a highly competitive market," and "abundant
food choices" -- things enjoyed by people who like saving money and
not starving.

"Rather than making us steadily happier, our increasing
affluence and consumerism seem to have trapped us," writes J. Eric
Oliver in his book
Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity
Epidemic. "[A]s the obesity epidemic shows, maximizing our
choices does not necessarily maximize our freedom or
power."

But letting the government restrict our choices
does?

If the weight of every body becomes everybody's concern,
the regulatory antidotes will spread at obesity-like speed,
creating yet another epidemic, but one that can be easily averted.
All we have to do is do nothing. Is that too much to
ask?

The other night, after consuming two microwavable White Castle
cheeseburgers, I started to agonize. One serving contains not
only adequate taste but also 600 milligrams of sodium -- 25
percent of the government's suggested daily allotment -- leaving
me with only 1800 milligrams to spare for the remaining 21 hours
of the day. Following the government's nutritional advice, as I
discovered after a few minutes of trying to do so, is
debilitating.

This may have been my "castle," but every kitchen is the
government's home.

Earlier this year, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
unveiled the National Salt Reduction Initiative, a set of
"voluntary" guidelines to cut the amount of sodium in processed
and restaurant foods by 20 percent over the next five years. At a
press conference, Bloomberg
said, "We're trying to extend the lives and improve the lives
of people who live in this city."

As he sees it, the best way to do that is to eat 40 percent
less sodium in cereals and canned vegetables, 25 percent less
sodium in processed cheese, 30 percent less sodium in popcorn,
and 25 percent less sodium in peanut butter and hot dogs. In
order to make 308 million lives worth living, a mayor is telling
a country how to consume grilled cheeses and frankfurters.

Though the guidelines are officially voluntary, they may
not stay that way. "If there's not progress in a few years, we'll
have to consider other options, like legislation," the city's
former health commissioner, Thomas R. Frieden, said.

Some lawmakers already are. On March 5, New York State
Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced
legislation that would "prohibit restaurants from using salt
when preparing customers' meals." A restaurant would be fined
$1,000 each time a chef cooked with salt.

This is the latest case of salt hysteria. In 1976, the
president of Tufts University said
salt was "the most dangerous food additive of all." According to
the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), salt
is
"perhaps the deadliest ingredient in the food supply." Bloomberg
recently
compared salt to asbestos.

Even so, the mayor doesn't want to get rid of salt
altogether. The New York City Department of Health and Mental
Hygiene stipulates:
"A company selling three equally popular lines of crackers could
keep one type extra salty as long as its overall cracker
portfolio met the target for crackers, measured in milligrams of
sodium per 100 grams of cracker."

Ask yourself: Is this a sentence the government should
make?

Many people think so. The NSRI "will save tens of thousands
of lives each year," the health department
predicts. For public officials, there is always the
temptation to save people whose lives are not at risk.

That's the problem with this non-problem: There's no
conclusive proof that salt is bad for you, or that eating less of
it is good for you. In 1988, a massive intrapopulation study
involving 7,300 Scottish men showed that sodium had no effect on
blood pressure. A 10-year follow-up to the Scottish Heart Health
Survey found no connection between salt intake and health
outcomes, suggesting that salt is irrelevant to the Grim
Reaper.

Scots, despite 13th-century English accusations to the
contrary, are no different than other humans. Italians consume
almost 11 grams of salt per day, and yet they rank among the
world's best in cardiovascular health. In 1999, an analysis of
the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial database, 14 years in
the making, revealed there to be "no relationship observed
between dietary sodium and mortality."

There is, however, evidence
that salt acts as an antidepressant, which would explain why
couch potatoes are so happy sitting around and eating
Doritos.

The science of salt is far from settled. Norman K.
Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School believes
"the influence of salt intake is too inconsistent and generally
too small to mandate policy decisions at the community level."
Finding "the association of sodium intake to health outcomes" to
be "modest and inconsistent," Michael H. Alderman, a hypertension
expert at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, concluded:
"[N]o single universal dietary recommendation can be
scientifically justified."

But it can be politically justified.

The Bloomberg administration is presenting its salt
reductions as an expansion of consumer choice. Its health
commissioner, Thomas Farley,
says: "If they want more salt, they can put it on. They can't
take salt out of the food they buy." As logical as this sounds,
it still doesn't make salt the government's business. Insofar as
restrictions expand freedom of choice, the motto might as well
be: "We Choose, You Decide."

Many companies, it is important to note, have already
jumped on the low-sodium blandwagon. Campbell Soup Company has
cut the sodium in its soups by half since the 1980s. In that same
decade, Kellogg released low-sodium versions of Corn Flakes and
Rice Krispies, which were such a hit that they were dropped four
years later.

"Once you start saying you've taken salt down, it's
basically equal to, 'It's not going to taste good,'"
said Douglas Balentine, director of nutrition and health for
Unilever NV.

Taste, needless to say, is important when deciding what to
eat. A few years ago, Paul Eastham, a Daily Telegraph
correspondent, reported that his 14-year-old daughter had stopped
eating vegetables after saltshakers were banned from her school
lunchroom. For many people, salt makes healthy food bearable.
Yes, they can still add it onto their zucchini, but foods lose
their appeal the more adjustments they require. To this extent,
salt reduction may mean vegetable reduction.

Politicians who disregard unintended consequences do so at
other people's risk. Pregnant women were once told to limit
weight gain during pregnancy. However, as a study in the journal
Hypertension noted,
"limiting weight gain in pregnancy increased fetal morbidity and
mortality rates. Women are no longer advised to limit weight gain
in pregnancy."

Public health, which hinges on politicized science, is a
matter of many lives and many potential deaths, and lives are not
saved when personal commandments are made political
commands.

Bloomberg, a mayor for whom the political is personal,
hates salt -- except when he uses it. Not only does he salt
pizza, but he likes his popcorn "so salty that it burns others'
lips," as the New York Times put
it. He even salts saltine crackers. When you salt salt, the issue
is yours and not society's.

One wonders if Bloomberg's salt fetish is related, in some
oblique way, to his nationwide salt reductions. If everyone
consumes less salt, the mayor will have plenty of hands to hold
as he confronts his salt gluttony. Or maybe he just wants to make
sure there is enough salt to supply his heavy doses. The
implausibility of this scenario does not invalidate the principle
underlying it: In the Big Apple, the buck starts where it
ostensibly stops.

For Bloomberg, deprivation begins in the public square and
ends at home. Luckily for him, the government's kitchen is his
castle, and he doesn't have to stomach his own recipes
alone.

I don't understand the point of exercising, which I'm told has
something to do with health and wearing Umbros. Yet, as mystified
as I am when watching Sweatin' to the Oldies 3 on VHS, I
am not as confused as Barack Obama is when talking about missile
defense, a topic much easier to comprehend than Richard Simmons.
It's also more controversial.

President Obama knows that missile defense is a touchy subject
internationally, as underscored by Russia's protests against the
planned deployment of anti-missile systems in Poland and the
Czech Republic. Within hours of Obama's election, Russian
President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to deploy missiles of his
own in Kaliningrad, which borders Poland, if America goes ahead
with its plans.

The administration, wavering, says it needs time to think it
over, which is consistent with the "wait and see" approach that
Obama espoused during the campaign. He said he will deploy
missile defense (a) "only when the system works" and (b) only if
it's "pragmatic and cost-effective." That sounds sensible enough.

Waiting and seeing are fine things to do, but a problem arises
when the person doing the waiting keeps his eyes closed, as any
restaurant manager will tell you. Obama is willing to wait on
missile defense, but he refuses to look at the evidence in its
favor. And so there is little reason to think he will backpedal
on his campaign pledge to "cut
investments in unproven missile defense systems."

Though far from flawless, missile defense is even further from
"unproven." In December, the Missile Defense Agency successfully
shot down a long-range ballistic missile that was launched in
Alaska (roughly 3,000 kilometers away), in what was "the largest,
most complex test we have ever done,"
according to Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, the director of MDA.
It was the 37th successful "hit-to-kill" intercept out of 47
attempts since 2001, proving that the shield is mightier than the
sword (four times out of five).

Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, MDA's previous director, said,
"Our testing has shown not only can we hit a bullet with a
bullet, we can hit a spot on the bullet with a bullet."

Which is simply awesome. Even better, it's affordable. The system
proposed for Eastern Europe is expected to cost $4 billion over
seven years, a sum the Congressional Research Service called "relatively
small in U.S. defense budget terms." In terms of Obama's domestic
budget, it's microscopic.

Obama, who promised to increase foreign aid and to "treat allies
with respect," should be absolutely giddy about missile defense.
Its purpose, after all, is to prevent Europeans from getting
blown up by ballistic missiles. That certainly sounds like aiding
foreigners.

At least it does to our NATO allies, the same ones Obama claims
to care about. On December 3, every last one of them signed a
statement
saying that missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic
would make a "substantial contribution" to keeping them alive,
roughly speaking.

Why in the world is Obama dithering?

His queasiness stems from a simple fact: He really wants to be
popular, a goal he openly admits. He aspires
to be "respected and admired abroad," seeing himself as the
successor to Bono rather than to Bush.

How inconvenient to face controversy so soon. Missile defense is
an unequivocal symbol of American supremacy, something that
former superpowers tend to resent. Installing it in Eastern
Europe, as Obama knows, would infuriate an already irritable
Russia, and making Russians mad doesn't make them like you.

Obama, a sensitive guy by nature, is doing his best not to
discomfit the Russians, whose inferiority complex is matched only
by their paranoia. (A poll in 2007 found
that 43% of Russians believe the U.S. seeks "the total
destruction of Russia.") The essential point to keep in mind,
however, is that this "controversial" weaponry -- a radar in the
Czech Republic and ten missile interceptors in Poland -- is
designed to hurt no one. The only thing it would hurt is Russia's
feelings.

What disturbs Russia is not the anti-missile missiles themselves
-- which everyone knows are no threat to its 850 ICBM's -- but
the encroachment of American power into its former satellites.
The Russians call it encirclement, but a better word is
embarrassment.

Russia used to dominate Eastern Europe. Now, with NATO and
American weapons systems moving eastward, the entire region
(minus Belarus) has turned its back on Moscow, and Mother Russia
is sick and tired of nobody looking at her.

Now, all of the sudden, here comes Obama, ready to stare and gaze
indefinitely. It's all part of his wait-and-see strategy. "Let's
talk it out" is his operating philosophy.

Like Obama, Vladimir and Dmitry want to talk until their mouths
fall off, and why wouldn't they? When everyone talks, no one
decides. An international talkathon, precisely because it will
resolve nothing, serves Russia's interests as well as Obama's,
ridding him of an awkward decision: protect American interests or
flatter foreigners?

It's sweet that Obama wants to befriend nation-states, but
geopolitics is not junior high, sadly, and chitchat isn't always
cheap. The more time we spend blabbering for its own sake, the
more time Iran has to continue its nuclear "research," right
before it starts studying for its AP Biology exam. According to
an IAEA report released last week, Iran possesses 460 more pounds
of uranium than previously thought, giving it "enough atoms,"
per
a senior U.N. official, to build at least one nuclear bomb. How
comforting, then, that we will continue assuming the best
intentions and worst capabilities of trigger-happy psychopaths.

As long as Iran keeps researching its way into the nuclear club,
shouldn't America "research" its missile defenses over to Poland
and the Czech Republic? Given who we're dealing with, it only
makes sense to plan ahead for worst-case scenarios. If you knew
O.J. Simpson had it out for you and was on his way to the safe
where he keeps his revolver, wouldn't you take some precautions
(such as running away or buying a bulletproof vest) rather than
just trying to talk him out of owning a firearm?

To be sure, preemptive self-defense may offend the "international
community," which raises an important question: So what? No one
said being the world's policeman meant keeping 6.7 billion people
in a good mood. That's what prescription drugs are for.

Prozac, however, is useless against ballistic missiles, and
missile defense is quite naturally the best defense against them.
The logistics are complex, but the issue isn't. Instead of
agonizing over the impact it will have on his global reputation,
President Obama should approach missile defense with the same
attitude I take to physical fitness: Don't sweat it.

WASHINGTON -- I'm not a big fan of "working." That's why I
regret not signing up for D.C.'s Summer Youth Employment
Program.

"We don't do nothing," said Samantha Baskin, a 14-year-old
participant.

That's my kind of job.

Too bad I missed out. Late last month was the final day of the
ten-week program, which ostensibly provides "meaningful work
experiences" to D.C. youth between the ages of 14 and 21. This
summer, a record 21,018 kids signed up -- nearly quadruple the
number from five years ago.

Mayor Adrian Fenty vowed to give a summer job to every kid who
wanted one. But it turned out there were more jobs than there was
work to do, forcing many kids into made-up vocations that consisted
of nothing more than receiving government paychecks.

By mid-July, the program had already run out of money. With
several weeks remaining, Fenty asked for $20.1 million in emergency
funding, which the program subsequently received, bringing its
total cost to $52.4 million -- almost four times its original
budget ($14.5 million).

Yeah, but so what? I mean, we're talking about children here,
aren't we?

Not necessarily. According to a released after an internal investigation
of the program, 104 registrants were either too young or too old
even to apply -- some "youths" were over 50 years old -- yet they
were paid. Another 207 "participants" aren't even District
residents -- and they were paid. In addition, 1,881 dropouts --
those with "perfect absenteeism," as the report phrases it -- were
still receiving salaries even weeks after they quit. This taught
them a lesson: Showing up to work is no prerequisite to having a
job.

Other kids weren't so lucky. Those employed by the Washington
East of the River Academy, which was four weeks late in getting
started because of administrative miscues, had an unusual
assignment. "We just go to a classroom and sit all day," said one 17-year-old. "We can't even talk to
each other." Some 700 kids were forced to sit, just sit, in a hot
auditorium for roughly a month. Instead of acquiring "job skills,"
they got to experience what detention feels like. That alone should
prepare many of them for this fall semester.

OF THOSE WHO BOTHERED to show up, countless kids didn't work, often
through no fault of their own. Either they arrived only to be told
there was nothing for them to do, or the city assigned them to
nonexistent worksites. As the report puts it, "youth did not know
where to go to work, and DOES [Department of Employment Services]
did not know where to send them."

Meanwhile, the city -- out of confusion, negligence, and
outright fraud in some cases -- was paying kids who skipped work
and underpaying others who did what they were told. Time and
attendance records were so shoddy that officials had no way of
knowing who worked and who didn't.

Not wanting to shortchange anyone, the administration erred on
the side of overspending -- a natural consequence of overpromising
-- by awarding a salary to everyone who registered for the program,
regardless of whether they actually worked or not. This meant, in
effect, that requesting a job was enough to get paid for one. As a
result, the program ended up costing $31 million more than planned.
Oops.

Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who created the program 29 years
ago, called this year's "the most mismanaged
programmatically and financially in the history of the
program."

Don't worry. Mayor Fenty said his administration is taking steps to
"ensure these problems will not happen again." What a relief. Yet,
if history teaches us anything, it's that whenever government
learns from its mistakes, it finds a way to make new ones.

Supporters of the program would have us believe this year is an
anomaly. As appalling as it was, it followed the historical
pattern. Consider these old headlines: "Youth Job Drive in Deep
Trouble Before It Starts" (1980), "1 in 3 Eligible Youths in
District Fails to Appear for Summer Job" (1980), "City Summer Jobs
Program Off to Its Usual Glitch-Riddled Start" (1981), "D.C. Summer
Jobs Coming Up Short" (1997), just to name a few.

THE PROGRAM IS continually plagued by glitches because it is
premised on a fallacy. Its reason for existence is to employ the
unemployable -- kids who, by definition, have minimal skills and
little to no experience. Many of them have anger-management issues
to boot. "Sure, some of our young people have attitudes," Alexis
Roberson, former director of the Department of Employment Services
(DOES), once admitted. "If you have a young person with a bad
attitude, help them change it."

That offer is unlikely to entice many employers.

That's not the point, say advocates of subsidized child labor.
As they see it, D.C.'s summer jobs program exists not so much to
make kids productive as to prevent them from being
counterproductive. It is a method of crime prevention, supposedly.
"Youth offending is directly correlated to youth employment,"
claims City Administrator Dan Tangherlini.
Earlier this year, Mayor Fenty told a group of business leaders, "So many young
people can get into trouble when they're not challenged, when
they're not busy."

Fair enough. But the whole point of staying busy is to suppress
boredom, and it's obvious these summer jobs don't suppress boredom
but, in many cases, intensify it.

If there is a solution to this dilemma, it is to stop devising
solutions. D.C.'s summer jobs program, like many of its
participants, doesn't work. As its numbers increase, so do its
failures. However, it does succeed in one respect. By teaching kids
that it pays to do nothing, it is preparing them for, if nothing
else, future careers in the public sector.

"Where are the white women at?"

That's a line from Blazing Saddles. It's also the
question, indelicately phrased, now facing the Obama campaign.

With Hillary Clinton out of the race, her supporters are up for
grabs. The question is how to grab them.

For Barack Obama, the strategy is simple: Act like a girl. In
other words, keep doing what you're doing.

With millions of women on the rebound, Obama is in good shape to
make a pass at them. He leads John McCain 51 to 38 percent among
women, according to a recent Gallup survey, and an NBC/Wall Street
Journal poll shows him
ahead at 52 to 33 percent. Among Clinton's former supporters, Obama
leads by a walloping 61 to 19 percent.

None of this should be surprising. Obama and Clinton split the
female vote, and there's a reason why the margin was so close:
Women wanted to vote for a female candidate, and they all did.

They just disagreed on who that was.

SINCE THE CAMPAIGN started, Obama has been more convincingly female
than any other presidential candidate, including Sen. Clinton. Yes,
she meets the biological requirements, but he has all the
intangibles.

Consider: He loves to talk, he is obsessed with "healing" and
hates fighting, he is queasy about guns, he is more style than
substance, he is easily intimidated by his spouse, and he stinks at
bowling.

And Oprah endorsed him. What more proof do you need?

While Obama was tossing bowling balls into the gutters, Hillary
was guzzling beers and downing shots, speaking fondly about guns
and hunting and sniper fire, and not wearing skirts. She ran as a
fighter and compared herself to Rocky.

Clinton kept saying how much "stronger" she was than Obama, whom
she attacked for being credulous and naive (i.e., a stereotypical
woman). Her brand of feminism was, one might say, conspicuously
masculine. Whenever she began a sentence, "As a woman...," you had
every reason to think she was lying.

Despite talking endlessly about womanhood, Clinton rarely
exhibited it. There were two exceptions: in New Hampshire, when she
shed tears, thereby showing her emotional side, and on the Senate
floor, when she displayed some cleavage, though not on purpose, she
later made clear.

For once, we could believe she wasn't lying.

IT'S A LITTLE strange when you think about it -- a woman
out-machoing a man. And yet it's already happened twice to Barack
Obama.

Michelle Obama leaves no doubt as to who wears the pantsuits in
the Obama family. Unlike Hillary, who was adamantly defended by her
spouse, Barack has been enthusiastically ridiculed and belittled by
his.

From Mrs. Obama we learn of her hubby: He snores. He has bad
breath. He is nerdy, strange, and pathetic. He can't "put the
butter up when he makes toast." She speaks vaguely of her husband's
strengths and very specifically about his flaws.

It's nice to know she has his back. Rather than standing by her
man, Michelle prefers to stand behind him, the easier to push him
around.

"I've spent my life trying to convince him not to be a
politician," she said recently. "It's like teach, write, sing,
dance. I don't care what you do. Just don't do this."

She does, however, have one job in mind for him.

"I don't know if Barack knows yet," she told
an audience in Wisconsin. "We can announce it on the news tonight.
He's going to be the First Lady."

Ouch.

MICHELLE IS JUST "joking," of course. But every joke or quip
contains an element of truth, and what her stand-up comedy routines
reveal is a compulsion to emasculate her husband, who delights in
the abuse.

"He relishes the fact that I'm not impressed by him," she
revealed. But what he lacks in machismo, he
makes up for with masochism. "Thank you ma'am, may I have another?"
seems to be a common refrain.

All this will raise questions down the road, if not sooner. If
Barack can't stand up to Michelle, how is he going to keep Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad from slapping him around?

Obama's whole shtick is, "I'm not like other guys." It's a
favorite at nightclubs and senior proms, but in this case it's
true. Obama isn't like other guys.

He is even more unique than he first let on. Not only does he
transcend race, he transcends gender as well. Now it's up to the
voters to determine if he's the right -- er -- person for the
job.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Do public schools ever remind you of the
movie Police Academy? In the film, the police are forced
to accept all willing recruits because of a new policy instituted
by the mayor. Anyone can join, and no one can be thrown out. A
bunch of misfits show up, and the only way they can leave is if
they quit. Think about it: a government institution full of
delinquents who cannot be fired.

See the resemblance?

Unless they hold a student at gunpoint, public school teachers
are also very hard to fire. They can, however, be encouraged to
quit.

That's what D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is doing. She
wants to replace the staff at 50 public schools facing either
closure or academic overhaul, but her options are limited. She
can't fire them, so she is encouraging them to leave by bribing
them with money. Under her plan, as many as 700 teachers can
receive bonuses ranging from $1,000 to $20,000 provided they leave
the school system. However, only 289 teachers have applied. One
teacher said she was "highly insulted" by Rhee's buyout
offer, because it "infers [sic] that teachers are the problem." Be
that as it may, the problems are still getting paid. All they have
to do is go away.

Problems are worse in New York City, which is spending $81
million on hundreds of teachers who don't teach. Quite a bargain.
Under a contract negotiated in 2005, teachers who are removed, or
"excessed," from public schools are placed in the "Absent Teacher
Reserve," which is sort of like the National Guard only with fewer
guns. Under this arrangement, teachers are paid to show up at
school and fill in as substitutes -- or not. No one knows for sure
what they do. Meanwhile, they continue to collect full,
taxpayer-funded salaries (some in the six figures) and benefits,
even though some of them haven't had full-time jobs in as long as
two years. These are teachers who, as a group, are six times more
likely than other teachers to have received an "Unsatisfactory"
rating in their careers. Not exactly cream of the crop.

Nevertheless, some are getting tenure, according to a new report
by the New Teacher Project, "despite serving for relatively short
periods as full-time classroom teachers." In other words, they are
being rewarded with job security despite not having jobs. Many
haven't even looked for jobs, and some have actually turned down
job offers. It's hard to blame them. "I'm happy now," said one non-teaching teacher. "I don't have to
prep, I don't have to grade tests, I don't have my own class. I
don't really have to do anything."

Hundreds of other teachers are paid to do even less. The city
spends another $65 million a year to prevent them from
teaching, seeing that many of them face charges of incompetence and
even crimes. Instead of teaching they sit in "rubber rooms," where
they play cards, knit, practice ballet, fall asleep, and watch
movies on portable DVD players. Evidently, this is what "investing
in children's education" looks like. Better yet, they still receive
full salaries, ranging from $42,500 to $93,400 a year, in addition
to health benefits. David Pakter, a former "Teacher of the Year,"
used his $90,000 salary to buy a new Jaguar -- his reward for, as
he put it, "doing absolutely nothing."

Why don't they fire them? Easy: They can't. Contractual rules
set by the teachers' unions make it "just about impossible" to fire
bad teachers, according to New York City Schools Chancellor Joel
Klein. In a national survey of teachers conducted by Education
Sector, 55% say it is "very difficult and time-consuming to remove
clearly ineffective teachers." Last year in New York City, for
example, only ten out of 55,000 tenured teachers were fired for
incompetence, which was up from previous years. One teacher was
caught sending sexually explicit emails to his 16-year-old student.
Yes, he was fired -- six years later and after the school paid him
$350,000 in the interim. "We have had to pay him," said Klein,
"because that's what's required under the contract."

HERE'S A THOUGHT experiment: What would happen if you left work,
went to a strip club, and filled out an expense report saying you
should be reimbursed $372 for what you claim was a "planning
meeting"? Would your boss be pleased? No? Well, clearly you don't
work in the D.C. public school system.

An audit conducted last fall of a D.C. after-school program
revealed that two employees had taken more than $13,000 from the
program's "student activity fund" to buy themselves two years'
worth of lavish meals and cheap women. How did their boss react?
She called them "extremely talented" and proceeded
not to fire them. (She asked only that they pay back the $518 spent
on alcohol.) Take that, fellas.

The problem with public education is that it is unaccountable to
the public. Educators are a privileged class. They get to play the
victim and the savior simultaneously. They do so much, they argue,
and yet they are still underpaid and underappreciated.

Luckily for them, earlier this month was National Teacher
Appreciation Week -- that special time of year when we are supposed
to pay homage (and tax dollars) to those who have made our public
schools the envy of the third world. It's one of those
pseudo-holidays invented by teachers to remind everyone how
indispensable they are. One flyer proclaimed: "They serve you every day because
they love and care about you! (They're not doing it for the
money!)"

Here's proof: In Fairfax, Virginia, budgetary limitations this
year forced teachers to choose between a 3% salary increase and
reducing class sizes. They went with the salary increase,
presumably out of concern "for the children."

Teachers' unions have convinced the public that what's good for
them is good for students. Bigger salaries for teachers? Yep,
that's just what kids need. That and a week to appreciate
teachers.

Students are, at least in theory, forced to repeat a grade if
they fail. Yet teachers succeed even when they fail. Once you bring
them in, it's tough to make them leave. If teachers were held to
the same standards as students, some would be forced into
unemployment or -- God forbid -- actual employment somewhere
else.

According to teachers, it's a tragedy whenever teachers are
displaced for any reason. "They need to know they have jobs,"

said Candi Peterson, a member of the Washington Teachers'
Union. "There's no need to be forced out, unless they want to
leave." It is accepted wisdom that teachers should be "guaranteed"
jobs, along with constant across-the-board salary increases.
Anything less is tantamount to child abuse.

UNIONIZED TEACHERS complain as if it were their job, and I
sometimes suspect it is. But they don't have it that bad. The
average teacher works 190 days a year. In New York City, a
teacher's workday is 6 hours and 50 minutes on the dot, as required
by law. (According to Randi Weingarten, president of the United
Federation of Teachers, this "is what normally happens in the private
sector.") Plus, you can be inept and still make a living. If we are
willing to pay bad teachers to teach, why not pay them to stop?

A few years ago Virgin Records paid Mariah Carey $28 million to
end her contract -- that is, $28,000,000.00 not to sing, not even
"Emotions" or "I'll Be There." They found her voice so dreadful
that not hearing it was, in their judgment, worth 28 million
smackers. There's a lesson here for teachers: If you are bad
enough, unemployment can be a lucrative line of work. In many
public schools, the way to succeed is to fail really badly.

Not all teachers are bad, of course. Some are adequate. But the
problem with good teachers is that they are not rewarded for being
good -- they are rewarded for getting old. Seniority, not skill, is
what matters when salaries are allotted. The longer you're there,
the more you make. "People get paid the same," explained Joel
Klein, "whether they're outstanding, average or way below average."
Merit is as irrelevant in public schools as it is in Police
Academy. There is, however, one crucial difference: One is a
slapstick comedy, and one only deserves to be.

Education is too important to be left to teachers. As costly as
it is to keep them around, paying them to leave is a
no-brainer.

Nothing instills credibility like conceding defeat. As Al Gore
proved after his 2000 concession speech, there’s something lovable
about a loser.

This even applies to undemocratic rulers, who have a lot to lose
from winning elections. Consider two wannabe tyrants — Venezuela’s
Hugo Chavez and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — who emerged from
national elections this past week. The victory of Putin’s United
Russia party only underscored Putin’s illegitimacy, whereas
Chavez’s narrow defeat achieved just the opposite effect.

Losing the constitutional referendum allowed Chavez to win in
the world court of public opinion. Even skeptics took delight in
seeing that freedom isn’t totally dead in Chavez country. President
Bush said Venezuelans had made “a very strong vote for democracy,”
which is an important admission: it acknowledges they had the
freedom to choose it.

Had it passed, the constitutional referendum would have allowed
Chavez to serve as president for life, declare arbitrary and
indefinite states of emergency, ban human rights groups, and build
a society based on “socialist, anti-imperialist principles” —
traditional components in anti-American repression.

Chavez framed the election in nationalist terms. “Whoever votes
‘yes’ is voting for Chavez,” said Chavez, “and whoever votes ‘no’
is voting for George W. Bush.” By a (supposedly) narrow margin,
Venezuelans chose the latter. Like the Russians who inexplicably
chant “Rocky” at the end of Rocky IV, Venezuelans opted
for an American devil over a homegrown savior. Indeed, Chavez was
“humiliated by his own people,” said the Daily Telegraph.

Paradoxically, this humiliation has gained him newfound
respectability. “He proved his democratic credentials by accepting
an electoral defeat,” said Bart Jones, author of Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to
Perpetual Revolution. Losing gives Chavez something no
victory could have possibly bestowed: a sense of legitimacy. He
somehow would have seemed less authentic had he won, because
dictators always win. By admitting defeat, Chávez
proves that democracy still exists in Venezuela and thereby
mitigates concerns about his authoritarian designs. “There is no
dictatorship here,” he can now boast.

As Chavez’s defeat generated sighs of relief, Putin’s triumph
brought gasps of despair. The West reacted to Russia’s
parliamentary elections with heightened distrust of Russian
“managed democracy.”

Though Putin has ruled out serving a third presidential term, he
says the win gives him the “moral right” to serve indefinitely as
Russia’s de facto leader, as “father of the nation.” Putin is a
popular figure in Russia, which makes it even weirder that he would
rig the elections in his party’s favor.

Things happened in Russia that just don’t happen in normal
democracies. In Chechnya, voter turnout was a mind-boggling 99.5%
(578,039 out of 580,918 registered voters participated). Numbers
like these are unthinkable in America; such political absolutism is
typically only found in the lands of the unfree. Lilia Shibanova,
head of the only independent Russian vote-monitoring group,
said the high turnout numbers “only show that
electoral laws were violated.”

Western governments are similarly skeptical. “The election was
not fair and failed to meet standards for democratic elections,”
concluded the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
and the Council of Europe in a joint statement. A German government
spokesman said flatly, “Russia is not a democracy. The elections
were not free, not fair and not democratic.” The results, said the
Czech Foreign Ministry, “will always cast a shadow over the future
lineup of the Russian parliament.” Translation: the Russian
government is illegitimate. See what winning does for you?

Dimwitted despots are convinced that holding and winning an
election or two is all it takes to earn a pass from the West. But
if you look at the record, their subterfuges rarely succeed.

In October 2002, Iraq held an election. The ballot contained
only one question: “Do you agree with Saddam Hussein’s continued
rule?” Of the 11,445,636 eligible voters, every single one of them
voted “yes” — a minor improvement over the 1995 election, when the
Iraqi leader received a meager 99.96% of the vote. So sure of the
outcome were the Iraqi authorities, they declared the day a
national holiday even before all the votes were tallied.

The ploy failed — badly. White House press secretary Ari
Fleischer said it was “not a very serious vote, and nobody places
any credibility on it.” “It is not even worthy of our ridicule,”
added State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Sure it is, especially when you consider the explanations given
for Saddam’s landslide. “Someone who does not know the Iraqi people
will not believe this percentage, but it is real,” argued Izzat
Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council.
“Whether it looks that way to someone or not, we don’t have
opposition in Iraq.” Of course, this claim had the plausibility
rating of a Baghdad Bob horoscope.

“This is a unique manifestation of democracy, which is superior
to all other forms of democracy,” asserted Ibrahim.

There’s nothing unique about dictatorships masquerading as
democracies. When elections were held in North Korea in 1962, the
reigning Workers’ Party won by a 100% vote. Even in its less
menacing forms, this kind of nouveau riche democracy — where
everyone participates, as an act of national braggadocio (“Hey,
look at us!”), and everyone agrees — is the antithesis of
democracy. Dictators know they have to feign popular support to
maintain any sense of legitimacy. However, their mistake is in
overachieving; they fail by succeeding too much. They think the
greater the number of votes supporting them, the more conclusive
the evidence of democracy and therefore of their legitimacy. But
the truth is just the opposite.

Voter neglect is a sign of democratic health. Not caring about
politics doesn’t mean the system is broken; usually, it indicates
things are just fine.

A key ingredient in democracy is imperfection. Real existing
democracies don’t (and can’t) produce the sort of unanimity that
dictatorships can achieve through force and intimidation. As a
result, huge victories can dispel a ruler’s legitimacy more than a
narrow defeat ever could. The only thing worse than losing a rigged
election is winning one.

Some advice for dictators: Try losing. It will do wonders for
your image.