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Thread ID: 3864 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2002-12-05

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Ed Toner [OP]

2002-12-05 16:55 | User Profile

[url=http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_how_i_was.html]http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_how_i_was.html[/url]

Autumn 2002 | Vol. 12, No. 4

How I Was Smeared

Harry Stein

t probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, as a conservative of fairly recent vintage, I’ve seen how easy it is for liberals, assisted by a compliant press, to cast ideological foes as moral reprobates and thus avoid engaging their ideas. Hadn’t it happened to a slew of judicial nominees, from Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to, most recently, Thomas Pickering and Priscilla Owen—as well as to a long line of conservative politicians and social critics? Such attacks, coming as they do from those who assert their passionate tolerance, succeed because they are so hard to respond to. They are like the classic below-the-belt question: “When did you stop beating your wife?” But today’s underhanded question—“When did you become a sexist or a homophobe or (worst of all) a racist?”—is even more lethal: the accusatory word cuts short any argument and puts the target on the defensive, as those whom you’d expect to stand firm for principle melt away.

Again, I knew all this theoretically. But I truly didn’t know how bad it could be.

Then it happened to me.

To be sure, mine was a rather small-time case, a kind of mini-smear. Perpetrated in faraway Texas, it never made national headlines. Still, trust me, it was a gruesome thing to go through.

It came about as a result of a speech I gave in early May at the behest of a Dallas-based group called the National Center for Policy Analysis. Before receiving its invitation, I’d never heard of the NCPA, but its website described it as “a non-profit public policy research institute seeking innovative private sector solutions to public policy problems,” which sounded just fine, as did the honorarium. The group’s literature features photos of people like Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor Paul Gigot, and the other speaker on its “Spring 2002 Event Schedule,” co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, due later in the month.

I’d been invited to talk about a book of mine, called How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace). As the title suggests, it is a good-humored approach to a serious subject: the journey that I, like so many others these last 20 years or so, have taken, often to our own surprise, from the precincts of the Left toward neoconservatism. Having by now given eight or ten talks on the subject, I’d worked up a solid 20 minutes or so, a balance between personal anecdotal stuff and ruminations on the state of the culture and republic. It had always gone over well.

Thus it was that, at noon on May 9, I found myself in the auditorium of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. On hand, in addition to NCPA members and those from the Dallas Fed, I was told, was a contingent from the Federal Reserve’s San Francisco branch, with whom the Dallas bunch had been meeting that morning. At the pre-speech lunch, I was seated beside the individual responsible for my being there, a most agreeable guy named Bob McTeer, president and CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve. As McTeer explained in his introductory remarks, he’d run across my book by chance, found it amusing and provocative, and thought I’d have some interesting things to say.

He didn’t know what he was getting himself into any more than I did.

As always, I began by reading from my book’s back cover a list of “How to Tell if You’ve Joined the ’Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy' ” —things like:

—“You’re actually relieved that your daughter plays with dolls and your son plays with guns.”

—“You sit all the way through Dead Man Walking and at the end still want the guy to be executed.”

—“At your kids’ back-to-school night, you are shocked to discover the only dead white male on your tenth-grader’s reading list is Oscar Wilde.”

—“And by the end of the night you realize the only teacher who shares your values teaches phys ed.”

These got the requisite laughs and some nods of recognition, and I moved on to the meat of the talk. I described my hard-core left-liberal suburban childhood, how I grew up hearing of.............

Lots MORE :

[url=http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_how_i_was.html]http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_how_i_was.html[/url]

weisbrot

2002-12-05 19:33 | User Profile

Classic!

Stein thrashes about for understanding, failing to understand (or ignoring) that he's been out-Jewed. He was treated miserably by dat ol' objective journo, but he deserved it and continues to deserve it for idiotically holding on to his cherished neocon principles of racial justice (whatever that is) and egalitarianism.

Screw him and all the Norder's of the world, too.

weisbrot

2002-12-05 21:11 | User Profile

Copyright 2002 Star-Telegram Newspaper, Inc.
Fort Worth Star Telegram

May 15, 2002, Wednesday FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1110 words

HEADLINE: Political talk irks Fed members

BYLINE: MIKE LEE;MARIA RECIO; Star-Telegram Staff Writers

HIGHLIGHT: FEDERAL RESERVE: The flap over a speech at the central bank's auditorium in Dallas has spread from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.

BODY: DALLAS - Federal Reserve Bank directors from the Dallas and San Francisco districts were stunned when a conservative author's luncheon speech at the Dallas bank turned into a lecture about political correctness, blacks, gays, and women who put their children in day care.

At least one board member from the San Francisco district walked out in protest, and the San Francisco bank's president released a statement calling the remarks "offensive and inappropriate."

Bob McTeer, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, quickly apologized to his colleagues, but the flap has reached officials in Washington, D.C., where McTeer, popular for his folksy manner and steadfast belief in free markets, has been considered a possible successor to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

"I personally didn't think he [the author] was out of line," McTeer said, but added, "I regret it and I'm sorry that it happened." For the past four years, the Dallas Fed, which by law is expected to be nonpartisan, has co-sponsored a series of luncheons with the National Center for Policy Analysis. The policy center is a Dallas think tank sponsored largely by donations from wealthy individuals, including the Hunt family of Dallas, and is associated with President Bush.

The lunch speakers have been conservative, and most have been economists, a center spokesman said. Thursday's speaker was Harry Stein, author of How I Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace).

In the book and in his speech in Dallas, Stein tells how he went from being a '60s radical to a neoconservative, after he was criticized for questioning what he called the prevailing liberal wisdom.

In the speech, which was videotaped, Stein said his parents were so liberal that "I grew up rooting for certain teams according to how many blacks were on the roster."

He gave what were supposed to be humorous definitions, including:

The Democratic Party: "Morally corrupt to the core. Preaches hope and decency. Practices cynicism and racial and gender extortionism."

Multiculturalism: "A movement that pretends to promote tolerance by rewriting history and otherwise debasing standards."

On gay issues: "The drive to question and mock 2,000 millennia of religious teaching, to dismiss it out of hand ... is tragic."

Feminism: "Has poisoned the culture by a relentless war on nature."

He also described an argument his son had with a teacher about Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and repeated a racial slur that is in the book.

During a question-and-answer period after the speech, William Jones, chairman of the Fed's Los Angeles branch and the owner of an investment company, said he was "very personally offended by your jokes about black people and your seemingly rationalizing the use of the word 'n---.'

"I'm a businessman, my wife is a prosecutor, my children go to college, we pay our taxes. The overgeneralization doesn't really help to further what I think you really want, which is understanding," said Jones, who is African-American.

He later walked out of the room, according to McTeer and others at the luncheon.

Stein said in an interview that he didn't understand why Jones was upset.

"When I was telling the Huck Finn story, he just heard the n-word," Stein said. "Ninety-five percent of the people in that room got it."

Jones did not return calls to comment.

Most members and directors of the San Francisco and Dallas regional Federal Reserve boards who heard the speech have declined to comment.

However, Carol Eckert, a spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issued a statement from Robert Parry, the bank's president and chief executive.

"Our president found the speaker's choice of words to be offensive and inappropriate for a gathering held at a Federal Reserve bank," Eckert said. She declined to elaborate.

One director of the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve's San Francisco bank, who was not at the Dallas meeting, said that several directors who attended said they were uncomfortable with the speaker's remarks.

"I understand it got fairly quiet in there," said the director, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A number of the directors felt they would have rather been somewhere else."

This director was "shocked" that there would be a controversial speaker since "we deal with economic issues."

"I've never been to a meeting where a speaker has spoken on social issues. This is so highly unusual," the director said.

McTeer said he asked the policy center to invite Stein after reading his book. The speech was in the Dallas Fed's auditorium, but the center paid for the event.

"No public funds were involved," McTeer said.

The San Francisco board members were in town for a joint meeting with Dallas board members on Thursday morning. McTeer said he asked for the meeting to adjourn at noon so the members could attend the luncheon and speech.

The Federal Reserve Board sets U.S. monetary policy, regulates banks that are federally chartered and administers federal fair banking laws, such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The Dallas Fed is one of 12 Federal Reserve districts nationwide, and covers Texas and parts of Louisiana and New Mexico. McTeer also serves on the Federal Open Market Committee, which influences short-term interest rates.

Robert Auerbach, a professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin who is writing a book about the Fed, said the Federal Reserve Bank has a history of defying congressional oversight.

Fed officials have argued that the bank is only a quasi-governmental body because it is actually owned by its member banks. But Auerbach said the regional banks carry out government functions, including regulating private banks in their areas.

"I believe there has to be a lot more oversight," he said.

McTeer is occasionally mentioned as a successor to Greenspan, and some observers believe he is backpedaling furiously from the controversy to keep his name in play.

"McTeer made a great blunder in inviting this person to speak in the inner sanctum of the Federal Reserve," a high-level banking industry source said. "The Fed should not be inviting politically incorrect people to major internal forums."

USA Today said in February that "Dallas Fed Bank President Robert McTeer is a Republican and is often mentioned as a possible successor but is not as celebrated an economist as some other candidates."

PHOTO(S): Head shot of McTeer

LOAD-DATE: May 15, 2002

Texas Dissident

2002-12-05 21:20 | User Profile

**This director was "shocked" that there would be a controversial speaker since "we deal with economic issues.  I've never been to a meeting where a speaker has spoken on social issues. This is so highly unusual," the director said. **

What a bunch of panty-waists! These Fed economists act like teenage girls getting their feeling's hurt about the least little thing. Suck it up. It's embarassing.

DRSLICEIT

2002-12-27 22:28 | User Profile

When someone calls me a Homophobic for my abhorrent views on Homosexuality, I simply respond by labeling them as "Hetrophobics", those who suffer from extreme resentment of the opposite sexual genitalia and can seldom be cured.

That is one of my solutions to political correctness gone mad. :D

Frederick William I

2002-12-27 23:10 | User Profile

Originally posted by Ed Toner@Dec 27 2002, 19:25 ** Political Correctness is Destroying the US **

Destroying the U.S. after all was the goal of P.C., as conceived by the Frankfurt School. But ideas don't destroy concrete entities - people do.

More properly, it is politicians and opinion makers who are knowingly destroying the U.S. by support multiculturalism and P.C.