SECTION FOURTEEN
EMAIL PAGE SIX 

sm
COLUMN EIGHTY, DECEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)

BY MAUREEN DOWD
1. THE SOUFFL? DOCTRINE

Subject: FW: The Souffl? Doctrine
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 22:22:03 -0700
From: "venire" venire@znet.com
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

October 20, 2002

The Souffl? Doctrine

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON " The Boy Emperor picked up the morning paper and, stunned, dropped his Juicy Juice box with the little straw attached.

"Oh, man," he wailed. "North Korea's got nukes. Sheriff Musharraf was helping them. Al Qaeda's blowing stuff up again. The Pentagon's speculating that the sniper might really be Qaeda decoy teams trying to distract the law while they plan a bio-blitzkrieg or a dirty bomb attack on the capital. Tenet's broken out in hives about the next 9/11. Powell spends all his time kissing up to the Frenchies. Saddam's ranting about a river of American blood. Jebbie's in a world of hurt. The economy's cratering. At least Karl says our war strategy will open up a can of Election Day whoop on Congressional Democrats.

"This is not the way my new doctrine was supposed to work. We are supposed to decide who we pre-empt and when we pre-empt them. The speechwriters called it an Axis of Evil, but it was really just a Spoke of Evil. Condi and Rummy said once we finished off Saddam, nobody would mess with America again. But everything's gotten fuzzier than fuzzy math. Some people are actually talking about my doctrine leading to World War III!!! Karl says that would be bad."

The Boy Emperor was starting to feel bamboozled by his war tutors. He needed a fresh perspective. There was a guy on TV with a round face and deep voice running around Provence, London and Berlin, where he suggested Schr?der resign. He was pre-eminent on pre-emption. The Boy summoned him to explain the Bush doctrine.

"Do I know you?" he asked his visitor.

"I am the chairman of your Defense Policy Board," an amused Richard Perle replied. "I am an adviser to Rumsfeld, a friend of Wolfowitz's and a thorn in Powell's medals. Je suis un gourmand, Monsieur le President. I have always dreamed of opening a chain of fast-food souffl? shops based on a machine that would automatically separate eggs, beat the yolks and combine them with hot milk and sugar, add the desired flavorings, whip the whites until stiff, fold them into the mixture and bake in individual pots without human intervention. Then conveyor belts would bring the glass-enclosed ovens to the table and patrons would get to see their meals rise. I've never found investors smart enough to realize the dazzling ingenuity of the Perle Souffl? Doctrine. Meanwhile, I'm killing time trying to get your foreign policy to rise. I'm known as the Prince of Darkness."

"Why?"

"I persuaded Reagan to ignore the weak-kneed, striped-pants set at the State Department and buy every weapon in sight until the Evil Empire was scared stiffer than a perfectly executed meringue."

"But why are we going after a lunatic in Iraq for planning to make a bomb and not a lunatic in North Korea who already has bombs?" the Boy asked.

"At the end of the day," Perle replied, his voice dripping with patience for his student, "Iraq is an easy kill."

"But if North Korea can deter us by brandishing a nuclear weapon," the Boy pressed, "why can't we deter Saddam by brandishing a nuclear weapon?"

"You must puncture the souffl? before it rises," Perle instructed.

"Why are we mad at North Korea for flouting its international agreements when we flout our international agreements?" the Boy wondered.

"You cannot make sublime cr?pes suzette without a fire," Perle lectured.

"Didn't you insist that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked?" the Boy persisted.

"We made that up," Perle shrugged. "You have to be imaginative, as Audrey Hepburn was in `Sabrina' when she offered to make Bogie a souffl? out of saltines and eggs. As the Baron told Sabrina: `A woman happily in love, she burns the souffl". A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven!' "

"Huh?" the Boy said. "Tony and Colin told me to stop talking about `regime change' and instead say, `War is a last resort,' and stop talking about a `pre-emptive strike' and instead say, `War is not imminent.' "

"They're sissies," Perle said, his lip curling with an epicene disdain. "You cannot deliver the sashimi unless you use the blade."

The Boy Emperor was more befuddled than ever.

"Get me Condi!" he yelled. "And a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

                           Copyright The New York Times Company   ##

* * *

2. RU-486 OR RU-4JESUS"

Subject: With whom we're having the pleasure...
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:07:14 -0700
From: "Peter Coyote" <wdprod@earthlink.net>
Organization: Wild Dog Productions
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

October 9, 2002

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON - W.W.J.D. at the F.D.A."

We may soon find out, if W. David Hager becomes chairman of the powerful Food and Drug Administration panel on women's health policy. His r'sum? seems more impressive for theology than gynecology.

"Jesus stood up for women at a time when women were second-class citizens," Dr. Hager says. "I often say, if you are liberated, a woman's libber, you can thank Jesus for that."

A professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kentucky, he has a considerable body of work about Jesus' role in healing women, and last summer he helped the Christian Medical Association with a "citizens' petition" calling on the F.D.A. to reverse its approval of RU-486, the "abortion pill," claiming it puts women at risk. (RU-486 or RU-4Jesus?)

Karen Tumulty reports in Time that the F.D.A. senior associate commissioner, Linda Arey Skladany, a former drug-industry lobbyist with Bush family ties, has rejected doctors proposed by F.D.A. staffers and is pushing Dr. Hager.

The policy panel, which helped get RU-486 approved, will lead the study on the hot issue of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women. As Time notes: "Some conservatives are trying to use doubts about such therapy to discredit the use of birth control pills, which contain similar compounds."

Dr. Hager wrote "As Jesus Cared for Women," blending biblical accounts of Christ healing women with case studies from his own practice. "Jesus still longs to bring wholeness to women today," the jacket says.

He writes about a young patient named Sparkle who gets a job at a strip joint in Kentucky and becomes promiscuous and gets several sexually transmitted diseases. Sparkle reminds him of "a woman Jesus met who was generally known in her town as a sinner, but whom Jesus saw through eyes of love."

With his wife, Linda, he wrote "Stress and the Woman's Body," which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends Scripture readings to treat headaches (Matthew 13:44-46); eating disorders (Corinthians II, 10:2-5) and premenstrual syndrome (Romans 5:1-11, "Tribulation worketh patience.")

To exorcise affairs, the Hagers suggest a spiritual exercise: "Picture Jesus coming into the room. He walks over to you and folds you gently into his arms. He tousles your hair and kisses you gently on the cheek. . . . Let this love begin to heal you from the inside out."

Dr. Hager is also an editor of "The Reproduction Revolution: A Christian Appraisal of Sexuality, Reproductive Technologies, and the Family." One of the pieces, "Using the Birth Control Pill is Ethically Unacceptable," says scientific data show that the pill causes abortions.

Dr. Hager said he disagreed with that piece. He says he prefers not to prescribe contraceptives to single women, but will if they insist and reject his advice to abstain.

He says he does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUD's. "I am pro-life," he says. "I believe sex outside of marriage is a sin. But I am not against medication. The fact that I'm a person of faith does not deter me from also being a person of science."

But unlike C. Everett Koop, who did not let his evangelical beliefs influence his work as surgeon general, Dr. Hager has written that it is "dangerous" to compartmentalize life into "categories of Christian truth and secular truth."

Once again, the Bush administration seems to be sowing skepticism about science for the sake of politics. It has smothered the promise of stem cell research to extend and improve life with the right wing's reverence for "life."

A Washington Post article last month reported that the Bush crowd was restructuring scientific advisory committees on patients' rights and public health, "eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices."

Dr. David Kessler, the former F.D.A. commissioner who is now dean of the Yale University School of Medicine, warns: "If the criteria to be on an advisory committee are based on a political litmus test, that will set this country back."

Are we so worried about medieval villains abroad that we no longer worry about medievalism at home?

Copyright The New York Times Company   ##

* * *

CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMN EIGHTY

CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMNS

The Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
info@blacklistedjournalist.com
  

THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ