1) Here's the 1974 Commentary piece on Watergate that everyone's so excited about. RC2 likes the opening sentence. "A sustaining myth of journalism holds that every great government scandal is revealed through the work of enterprising reporters who by one means or another pierce the official veil of secrecy." More, speaking of Woodward & Bernstein's book about how they cracked the case:
"In keeping with the mythic view of journalism, however, the book never describes the “behind-the-scenes” investigations which actually “smashed the Watergate scandal wide open”—namely the investigations conducted by the FBI, the federal prosecutors, the grand jury, and the Congressional committees. The work of almost all those institutions, which unearthed and developed all the actual evidence and disclosures of Watergate, is systematically ignored or minimized by Bernstein and Woodward. Instead, they simply focus on those parts of the prosecutors’ case, the grand-jury investigation, and the FBI reports that were leaked to them."
Hey, that's right. Never thought of it that way before.
2) Forgot to note: Yay, the Dutch also turned down the EU Constitution. 63% or something like that against, with a huge turnout. (Ahem. RC2 is tempted to say, "Unless God sustain the structure, in vain do the builders labor." Is this JPG's third miracle? Or just his revenge?)
3) A close friend is getting married Saturday, and the goils got together for dinner this evening --our last before she succumbs. On the way home, NPR carried an interesting report on a show called "Euroquest," produced out of the Netherlands. It was about French worries about the loss of civic life and an effort to forge a common sense of citizenship between young native skulls full of mush and a burgeoning immigrant population. Their main weapon? The Marseillaise --they hope to teach and/or awaken patriotism by teaching the Marseillaise and its meaning in all the schools.
They played cool versions of it --including a hip Reggae version (trés amusing) and an Arabic one. And of course the usual suspects complaining the words are too violent and should be changed. We face the same problem defending our national anthem to the PC crowd. Although "bombs bursting in air" is not difficult to defend, whereas, "may their impure blood run in the streets" and "the streaming blood of women and children" is not the kind of thing a 21st century homme wants to align himself with, it seems (except the newly-arrived Arabs, but let's not go there). The difference in lyrics is as good an example as any of the difference between the American & French revolutions. But I digress. I only meant to say it was interesting to note French efforts to recover their culture.
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