Tuesday, March 6, 2001 12:41 P.M. EST

(Heart) Attack Politics
Vice President Dick Cheney is out of the hospital after a procedure to clear a partially blocked artery. No sooner did he check in yesterday than Slate's Timothy Noah penned a gleeful column speculating about "who would run the Bush administration should Cheney suddenly be rendered unavailable":

It goes without saying that George W. Bush isn't up to the job. . . . The more you ponder it, the more all roads point to one man: Donald Rumsfeld.

Imagine you're Dubya. You're in a blind panic because you've lost the guy who winds the key in your back every morning. You want Cheney. But you can't have Cheney. What's the next best thing? The guy who invented Cheney! Who actually served as chief of staff to Gerald Ford before Cheney did!

Now Tim, making fun of someone's medical problems is in poor taste. We don't mean to be a scold about this; the world would be a dull place indeed if everyone rigidly observed the boundaries of propriety. But if there's no payoff for your transgression--if you say or write something that is crass without being funny--you only make yourself look pathetic. And frankly, while the Bush-is-dumb gag may have been amusing the first 947 times it appeared in Slate, by now it's about as fresh as beef jerky.

Salon's Jake Tapper also weighs in, and his contribution is less puerile but no less problematic than Noah's. Tapper interviews a cardiologist, Douglas Zipes, who says Cheney's condition is more serious than the vice president's doctors are revealing: "No, you're not going to do [a heart catheterization] on a precautionary basis," Zipes tells Tapper. "You do it when you have information about the patient's chest pain that makes you think that it might lead to a heart attack or an unstable angina--which is a precursor to a heart attack. The doctors then take the patient to the cath lab to prevent a subsequent heart attack."

Hmm, that sounds precautionary to us. In any case, it is risky for a physician to render a diagnosis about a patient he hasn't treated, based solely on news reports. And you'd think Dr. Zipes would have learned this lesson, for it turns out he has a track record in this regard. Consider this excerpt from a news article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 20, 2000:

Shortly after Mr. Cheney's [November] heart attack, for instance, Douglas Zipes, chief of cardiology at Indiana University School of Medicine and president-elect of the American College of Cardiology, was downright gloomy. "I don't want anybody panicking, but I sure as hell would have an automated external defibrillator in his office or close by, and people who know how to do [cardiopulmonary resuscitation]," Dr. Zipes told Newsweek magazine.

But he changed his tune after Jonathan Reiner, Mr. Cheney's personal physician, submitted to an interview by Eric Topol, chairman of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic. The interview, which provided a few additional details about Mr. Cheney's condition, is posted on an Internet site called theheart.org that is targeted to cardiologists. Now, Dr. Zipes says, "I have become much more reassured."

Inside Jackson's Pot of Gold
Jesse Jackson discloses his finances to the Chicago Tribune, which reports that four organizations he leads pay him a combined annual salary of $120,000 a year. Jackson also "has earned $5,000 a week from hosting a TV show on CNN and undisclosed sums from speaking engagements," the newspaper says. The four groups also spent $614,000 on Jackson's travel, more than $450,000 of which was covered by Democratic Party committees as part of its "get out the vote" efforts in a campaign year. Jackson's new chief financial officer, Billy Owens, tells the Tribune that there is a "high probability" that the groups will have to amend a financial document filed with the federal government in connection to at least one of the organizations, the Citizenship Education Fund. Owens said the claim in the document that there were no employees of that group that earned more than $50,000 a year was "probably" inaccurate.

Punch Drunk
Remember when Democrats were crying that states employed punch-card voting systems in poor and black neighborhoods in an effort to disfranchise voters there? Now comes an article by John Judis in The American Prospect revealing this this claim is, well, full of holes. Two political scientists, Stephen Knack and Martha Kropf, "discovered that, nationwide, 31.9 percent of whites and 31.4 percent of blacks live in counties using punch-card technology, and that punch cards are more likely to be found in wealthier counties than in poorer ones--in other words, the very opposite of what many Democrats assume." (There's also a lot of nonsense in the Judis article, which claims that Republicans who banned "straight-ticket voting" were aiming "to squelch the minority vote in Chicago.")

A press release about the Knack-Kropf study reports that "counties with punch card systems tend to have higher incomes, higher tax revenues, and larger populations than do counties with more modern voting equipment" and that "controlling for county size and other variables, a larger African-American population significantly reduces the probability that a county uses punch-card voting equipment."

EEOC: Expel Every Old Codger
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces antidiscrimination laws, is being sued by two employees who say the agency forced them into retirement because of their ages, 56 and 62. "The EEOC now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of being sued for discrimination in U.S. District Court by the attorneys who shepherded through court the agency's civil actions against private employers throughout Georgia," according to the Fulton County Daily Report.

Another EEOC employee, who says he was demoted for refusing to fire the two other employees, is also suing, One supervisor suggested to that employee that his legal staff file "garbage" civil cases that had little or no merit, his complaint contends. Productivity at the EEOC was measured by the number of antidiscrimination cases filed. Finally, another two EEOC staff attorneys in Atlanta, ages 57 and 50, have filed internal harassment complaints alleging that they, too, have been discriminated against because of their age. Overlawyered.com noticed the case. The EEOC is using the standard "disgruntled former employee" response.

Lowry vs. Clinton?
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, is considering a run for mayor of New York as the candidate of the Conservative Party. He'd be following in the footsteps of the magazine's founder, William F. Buckley, who ran for mayor in 1965.

If Lowry runs, he may face some formidable competition. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson writes that Bill Clinton is "the Winter-book favorite to be the next Mayor of New York City. Wow! The Big Apple press will love this one. It is like getting what you always wanted for Christmas--a guaranteed Nasty headline every day of the week. It is a Gossip-monger's dream."

Not that Clinton has to be mayor to attract the attention of the gossips. The American Spectator's online Prowler column reports that the ex-president spent more than $400 on neckties during a visit to Barneys New York. "They were these very glitzy, very loud ties that we can't even sell to some of the tourists who come in looking to buy 'something from Barneys,' " a store employee tells the Spectator. "The salesman tried to steer him to others, but he said he loved the colors."

While Clinton was waiting for his purchases, he wandered the floor, introducing himself to passersby, even those who appeared to be going out of their way to avoid him, the Spectator reports. "He practically tackled one gentleman who clearly didn't want to meet him," says the Barney's clerk.

'Light in His Loafers'
The Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, Dick Harpootlian, issues a press release calling Rep. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, "a little too light in the loafers" to succeed Sen. Strom Thurmond. Graham says the phrase "was intended to slander me"; Andrew Sullivan sees it as an example of "liberal gay-baiting." Harpootlian says he didn't know the phrase referred to homosexuality.

How About a Taliban Ban?
In a column pegged to the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues by Afghanistan's fanatical Taliban regime, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen engages in a little fanaticism himself:

I am appalled by the Taliban. But I can see no more reason to argue with them than with the Talibanic Pat Robertson, who warned the city of Orlando, Fla., that it would suffer some sort of natural catastrophe if it allowed a celebration of gay pride. I would not quibble, either, with William F. Buckley Jr., who wrote in his 1997 book, "Nearer My God," how the older Buckley children were summoned in 1938 to England, where their parents then lived, because as he later learned, their mother might die in childbirth. She had been warned, but had proceeded with her pregnancy anyway. It was her 11th. Such is faith.

Robertson's odd remarks may strike Cohen as offensive, as may Buckley's mother's decision not to abort her pregnancy (though we're not sure where Cohen gets off second-guessing a woman's choice). But there is no evidence that those Cohen mocks as "Talibanic" have ever failed to abide by the rules of the pluralistic society in which they live. In contrast, here is a partial list of Taliban atrocities, taken from the State Department's annual human-rights report:

The Taliban carried out summary justice in the areas they controlled, and reportedly were responsible for political and other extrajudicial killings, including targeted killings, summary executions, and deaths in custody. . . . The Taliban's Islamic courts and religious police, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice (PVSV), enforced their ultra-conservative interpretation of Islamic law. The PVSV has carried out punishments such as stoning to death, flogging, public executions for adultery, murder, and homosexual activity, and amputations of limbs for theft. For lesser infractions, Taliban militiamen often judged accused offenders and meted out punishments, such as beatings, on the spot. . . . Women and girls were subjected to rape, kidnaping, and forced marriage.

Calling Pat Robertson or William F. Buckley's mother "Talibanic" is about as accurate, and as enlightening, as calling Ronald Reagan a Nazi or Bill Clinton a communist. We'd like to propose a moratorium on such slanders, which are a poor substitute for thought.

Turning a Blind Eye
The headline of the week appears in the Times of India, over a wire report about ambitious mountain climbers. It reads: "Blind, Disabled Among Climbers Eying Everest Peak."