Reflections  

Artful conflict — Newsweek published a rumor that copies of the Koran were flushed down the toilet in Guantanamo, causing riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Apologists within the media started speculating what would happen if someone flushed a Bible down a toilet. A Muslim who wanted to do this could probably get an NEA grant. He could get a manager, open a one-man show, and the New York Times art critic would hail the show as the greatest piece of performance art since "The Vagina Monologues."

We love our religion here in the United States, we just don't take it too seriously. Someone at a gallery in New York actually made a picture of the Virgin Mary out of elephant dung, and other than a few protests, there was little controversy. In the Muslim world, it's a crime to make a picture of Mohammed out of watercolors. — Tim Slagle

Bounced Czech — On May 20, Czech Senator and former Chancellor Karel Schwarzenberg was escorted from his hotel in Havana, Cuba and expelled from the country. His offense: planning to attend a meeting of Cuban dissidents, quaintly entitled the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society. Schwarzenberg said — and given his experience in Czechoslovakia, he ought to know — "This is typical behavior of a totalitarian state."

"Totalitarian": I like that word. Don't let it go out of use. There have been states that attempted to totalize their power over the people. Such states still exist, and plenty of them. And any state or movement that aims at political correctness bears watching, because the seeds of totalitarianism are alive within it. Cuba, which has spent the last half-century showing what happens when the college is run by the student council, is still capable of revealing, for all who are willing to look, the gorilla-like body beneath the sexy "Che" imprint. And for that, I suppose, one should be thankful. — Stephen Cox

Pyramid power — Ponder, for a moment, our feline government. In the light of day, it does nothing but consume resources and produce waste, which it buries and leaves for someone else to clean up. In the dark, it works diligently to get into things forbidden to it when people are watching; when it is caught, it hides and waits for the outcry to stop so it can try again later. On the rare occasions that it gives something back to those who make its existence possible, it does so as ostentatiously as it can manage, expecting praise for its skill and cunning.

For cats, this means dragging in a half-eaten gopher carcass and depositing it on the most expensive rug in the house. And though government officials seldom walk to the podium at gala press conferences to spit rodent corpses at reporters, the recent present given to taxpayers by the Federal Department of Agriculture (which, I assume, has an entire bureau devoted to rodent corpses) showed much the same esprit.

The FDA's gift was a new food pyramid: a graphic depiction of their recommended nutritional guidelines. At least, that's what they claim it is. The logo itself conveys no information, so without going to the MyPyramid.gov website, there's no way of knowing whether the sideways rainbow stands for nutrition, or gay rights advocacy, or appreciation of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." I could reprint it here, since government graphics are in the public domain, but in black and white it's impossible to distinguish between some of the color shades.

The first food pyramid was designed to present the FDA's complex nutritional guidelines in one easy-to-understand chart. Sure, it looked hokey, and it relied on a mysterious unit called the "serving," but at least it got the basics: go easy on fats and sweets; eat grains, fruit, veggies, and some sort of protein, and drink a couple glasses of milk to wash it all down.

Then the FDA decided that this was too simple, that people were getting the idea that nutrition was something they could handle without thinking too hard. So the department flipped the pyramid on its side, tossed out the words, and added a jaunty, pointy-limbed androgyne. (This last bit is meant to indicate "exercise," though it looks more like an Aztec priest stomping up a ziggurat.) The website was the only place where the new scheme was explained: there I found out that there are actually twelve food pyramids, and I had to plug in some variables to figure out which one I should follow — at which point I figured my nutritional goals would be better met if I went and played basketball.

Of course, other people — those who think the government should not only give nutritional advice, but ban products that aren't healthy — aren't content to just mock the FDA and move on; they've started a campaign for a better, more stringent logo to replace what they call "McPyramid." Junk-food lawsuit guru Marion Nestle has condemned it as typical of the "philosophy of this administration . . . they're all about personal responsibility."

As I shot free throws, I wondered: if Ms. Nestle's cat dropped a mole torso on her Bangladeshi jute rug, would she get rid of the remains, or would she tell the cat to bring her a squirrel instead? — Andrew Ferguson

Village pulls wool over knit-pickers' eyes — Our little village two miles south of Sleepy Hollow has become a knitters' Mecca over the past couple of years, as trendy Manhattanites catch the shuttle northward to take knitting classes and shop for yarns at our local knitting shop. Business has been so good that the proprietress of Flying Fingers has gradually expanded into three different rentals on Main Street. Finally, she purchased a roomy storefront building that had been home to our local stationery and gift store for 30 years, anticipating the luxury of having enough space to store her inventory of yarns and offer her classes all in one location. But to do it properly, she would have to expand the back of her building, because she didn't want to store the yarns in the musty basement. City fathers nixed the idea for a variety of reasons. First, it would bring too much traffic to our sleepy little town (even though Manhattanites don't drive); second, it would raise the roofline of the block (even though other buildings on the street have already been raised and modified); third, and most recently, it can't be changed because it's an historical landmark (even though it's just a dull flat rectangle, and the architect says it isn't safe without structural renovation).

Now the battle is over. After six months of fighting city hall, the knitting lady has decided to move her business to Tarrytown, two miles north of us, leaving behind three vacant shops too small for most businesses and a vacant historical landmark that used to be our stationery store. The Manhattanites won't be eating lunch in our pricey little restaurants any more, nor will they be buying clothes, art and antiques from our cute little boutiques. But it will be quiet. Oh yes, it will be quiet. — Jo Ann Skousen

Intangible dividends — n 2002, after the scandals at Enron and WorldCom, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It wasn't designed to punish those responsible for the scandals — there were already laws to take care of that. (Had there been no such laws, it would have been interesting to watch our elected officials pontificate about why the constitutional prohibition of ex post facto laws is not actually a prohibition of ex post facto laws.) It was designed to stabilize the stock market in the short term, and in the long term to protect the economy from similar debacles.

Given the act's explicit intent, it's clearly appropriate to evaluate its success by measuring its effect on the stock market. One paper, by Ivy Xiying Zhang of the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester, figures the net cost to stockholders at $1.4 trillion. That's almost $5,000 for every person in the United States. Net.

Has this calculation overlooked some of the benefits? The act has been a boon for accounting firms, who are reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in increased revenues, and they are among its strongest supporters. When asked about the economic benefits of Sarbanes-Oxley, however, they use words like "intangible" and "hard to quantify." If accountants can't quantify the benefits, how about one of the act's co-sponsors? Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) responds to the question with one of his own: "How can you measure the value of knowing that company books are sounder than they were before?"

There's only one way, Mr. Oxley, and as chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, you should know it. You look away from the campaign speech you're writing — just for a second, it won't take long — and you check the price of the company's stock.

Unless the market is up by at least $1.4 trillion, you owe the taxpayers an explanation. — Mark Rand

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

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