More links

This time Mark Steyn appears in The (London) Spectator: "The Kerry tack [leftward] might be effective. But I can’t see the message itself — ‘We’re losing anyway, so I’ll surrender faster’ — having much appeal to the American people." A fun column.

In a piece appearing on the Daily Standard website, US Army Lt. Col. (and counter-terrorism guru) Powl Smith may be onto something: "Iraq is Not Vietnam, It's Guadalcanal."

Sign of the times: the international media want guest columns from US bloggers. Such as Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds, who wrote this piece in The (Sydney) Australian. His conclusion: the traditional media are insular and doomed.

MediaResearch.org reports that Newsweek's Howard Fineman told Don Imus Wednesday that CBS producer Mary Mapes was "obsessed" with nailing the TANG story to "save the world from a George Bush presidency." (Hat tip to Instapundit.)

Syndicated columnist Linda Chavez in today's Washington Times: "CBS just doesn't get it. It's not enough to say you're sorry when your network's most prominent and trusted journalists tried to influence the outcome of an election."

National Review online editor Jonah Goldberg suggests that the established media are responding to Rathergate with two separate theories, neither workable.

I can't really improve upon the headline the New York Post editor attached to Amir Taheri's column: "Kerry's Answer: Cut & Run."

Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson is outraged by John Kerry's attack on Iyad/Ayad Allawi and characterizes Kerry as a "disgrace." Roger Simon calls it "shameful." I tend to agree with both.

Feminist Naomi Wolf credits Karen Hughes for getting Pres. Bush a much greater share of the women's vote than anyone would have expected. (Hat tip to JTO)

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer does not know why John Kerry is snidely alienating Australia, perhaps our best friend in the world, while simultaneously kissing up to France and Germany, who have very publicly undermined us. Good question.

New York Post columnist John Podhoretz examines the hysterical Kerry campaign's reaction to a Bush ad ridiculing "The Whining Windsurfer." Kerry even has produced his own ad to complain about it. Podhoretz: "I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that the source and generator of this ad and the hysterical McCurry comments was John Kerry himself. There's more than a hint of injured pride and injured dignity here (rather than prudent political thinking), and that could only have come from Kerry."

Beldar defines "good faith." CBS's conduct can be defined another way.

Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor reports that "literary tourists are descending in droves on Paris, intent on cracking The Da Vinci Code by following in the footsteps of the heroes and villains in Dan Brown's bestselling historical murder mystery."

Bruce Anderson, one of the few sane men in the UK media, provides the London Spectator with this piece about the French/British rivalry. Savor this gem: "Mr Chirac has been in the Élysée Palace for more than nine years. I asked a foreign diplomat what the President had achieved in that time. He seemed baffled by the question. Twenty minutes later he came up with an answer: 'Chirac wasn’t trying to achieve anything. He just wanted to stay in office.'" Or this one: "During the war, Harold Macmillan was acting as an ADC to Churchill when the PM had a bilateral meeting with de Gaulle. The two eminences went into the conference room, and almost immediately, raised voices were audible. Suddenly Churchill’s head appeared round the door. 'Quickly, Harold, tell me: what is the French for the opposite of vive la France?'"