OPINION
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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2016
Donald the dove, Hillary the hawk
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times News Service
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
We live here
Social media doesn’t check
facts; journalists do
eople who blithely talk about revolution seldom under-
stand what they are asking for. Winston Churchill said
that it takes 200 years for a nation to recover from a civil war.
When the Bundys and are vetted. The editorial con-
their followers occupied the cluded: “Opinions are one
Malheur National Wildlife thing. Facts are another. In
Refuge
headquarters, the modern era of informa-
southeast Oregon endured tion technology, a journalist
social-political trauma that that can tell the difference is
lasted 41 days. Long after more important than ever.”
the occupation ended and
Writing in The Oregonian
the national media departed, last Wednesday, Samantha
a residue of anger and mis- Swindler offered a useful per-
understanding endures. It spective on the small-town
is especially noticeable in journalists who live with the
neighboring Grant County, fallout from the Malheur
where Sheriff Glenn Palmer occupation. Wrote Swindler,
gave tacit support to the ref- “I spent most of my career in
uge occupiers.
small, rural newspapering and
Sheriff Palmer himself has I consider it, perhaps, the high-
become the object of investi- est form of journalism. You
gation by state law enforce- are truly accountable to the
ment regulators.
people you write about. You
While the Malheur occu- never write something about
pation becomes yesterday’s a person you wouldn’t say to
news, the media that serves that person’s face — because
Grant and Harney counties in a small town, you’ll be see-
must live with the aftermath, ing that face again. It doesn’t
day in and day out. Our sis- mean you can’t write pointed
ter newspaper, the Blue things; it just means you’d
Mountain Eagle, last week better stand by them.”
addressed community ten-
That’s the nugget of why
sions in an extraordinary edi- news organizations like the
torial. It described the gap Eagle, The Daily Astorian
between social media and and the Chinook Observer
journalism, in which facts matter. We live here.
P
Speak now on coal
exports upriver
Already more than 200,000 comments
on coal-export proposal
owlitz County and
the
Washington
Department of Ecology
received more than 217,500
public comments on the
$600 million Millennium
Bulk Terminals-Longview
coal-export proposal.
The agencies’ draft envi-
ronmental study, now in a
45-day comment period,
says the terminal for up
to 44 million tons a year
of coal from Wyoming’s
Powder River Basin would
have positive economic
value for the Longview-
Kelso area. It would cre-
ate jobs for about 135 peo-
ple and generate a variety
of taxes. (See tinyurl.com/
Millennium-draft.)
The terminal would cre-
ate numerous environmen-
tal risks. While past prac-
tice in our region has been
to minimize the importance
such impacts in the interest
C
ASHINGTON — It seems
odd, in this era of gender
luidity, that we are headed toward
the most stark X versus Y battle
since Billie Jean King and Bobby
Riggs.
W
Donald Trump exudes macho,
wearing
his
trucker
hat,
retweeting
bimbo cracks,
swearing with
abandon and
bragging about
the size of his
manhood, his
crowds,
his
Maureen
hands, his poll
Dowd
margins,
his
bank account, his skyscrapers, his
steaks and his “beautiful” wall.
He and his pallies Paul Manafort
and Roger Stone seem like a latter-day
Rat Pack, having a gas with tomatoes,
twirls and ring-a-ding-ding. The beauty
pageant impresario’s coarse comments
to Howard Stern, rating women on
their breasts, fading beauty and ability
to take the kids off his hands, reverber-
ate through the campaign.
In Indiana, Trump boasted that
“Iron” Mike Tyson and “all the
tough guys” had endorsed him. The
chair-throwing Bobby Knight backed
Trump with the brass-knuckles enco-
mium that Trump, like Harry Tru-
man, would have the guts to drop the
bomb. When his rallies become Fight
Club, Trump boasts that it adds a little
excitement.
Hillary Clinton’s rallies, by contrast,
can seem like a sorority rush recep-
tion hosted by Lena Dunham, or an
endless episode of “The View,” with a
girl-power soundtrack by Katy Perry,
Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato. The
ultimate insider is portraying herself as
an outsider because she’s a woman, and
the candidate who is considered steely
is casting herself as cozy because she’s
a doting granny.
Her website is chockablock with
empowerment gear, from a hot pink
“woman’s card” to a “Make Herstory”
T-shirt to a “Girls Just Wanna Have
Fun-damental Rights” tote bag to “A
Woman’s Place Is in the White House”
throw pillow. She says her favorite
shows are “The Good Wife,” “Madam
Secretary” and “Downton Abbey,” and
she did a guest shot on “Broad City.”
Trump’s most ardent supporters,
white men, are facing off against Hil-
lary’s most loyal supporters, black
women.
Clinton and Trump have moved on
to their mano a womano ight, leaving
behind “the leftovers,” as Trump labels
delated rivals.
Already, it’s unlovely.
“It’s going to be nasty, isn’t it?”
says Obama Pygmalion David Axel-
rod. “Put the small children away until
November.”
A peeved Jane Sanders called on
the FBI to hurry up with the Hillary
classiied email investigation. A des-
perate Ted Cruz cut a deal with John
Kasich, who then put a bag over his
head and acted as if he didn’t know
Cruz. Then Cruz latched onto Cruella
Fiorina, accomplishing the impossi-
ble: inding a Potemkin running mate
who’s even more odious. We can only
hope that Cruz, who croons Broadway
show tunes, and Carly, who breaks into
of economic development,
the draft study is a clear-
eyed look at an inherently
dirty industry.
Handling and eventu-
ally burning all this coal
would equal about 8,100
additional passenger cars City torn apart
on the road inside Cowlitz
am alarmed. This wonderful residen-
tial community of Gearhart is being
County each year, and
torn apart by people using it for pure
the equivalent of about investment purposes. These are peo-
672,100 more cars when ple who don’t live here. For the most
the coal is burned to pro- part, they don’t work here. They are not
interested in preserving the liveability
duce electricity, mostly in and character of Gearhart. They only
Asia. The study calls these seem to care about the “cold, hard cash”
in it for them.
impacts “significant and — what’s
I know this phenomenon of Airbnb
is taking the world by storm, but people
unavoidable.”
residential towns. Havens to come
Coastal citizens on the need
home to. Comfort for our souls. Gear-
front lines for sea-level hart has these residential zones desig-
increases and more violent nated. The zones, unfortunately, have
not been respected.
storms should speak up.
People have been purchasing homes
Comment online at www. in the residential zones with the sole
of turning them into com-
millenniumbulkeiswa.gov, purpose
mercial businesses. Owners of gro-
or via mail to Millennium cery stores are trying to turn them into
Bulk Terminals EIS, c/o ICF brew pubs. We need housing and gro-
cery stores for residents. Not dormito-
International, 710 Second ries that sleep 12 and bars.
PENNY SABOL
Ave., Suite 550, Seattle, WA
Gearhart
98104.
song at the lectern, will start doing duets maiden foreign policy speech in Wash-
from “Hamilton.”
ington last week, adding, “A superpower
In one of the most gratifying understands that caution and restraint are
moments of an unhinged campaign, really truly signs of strength.”
former Speaker of the House John
These Kumbaya lines had the neo-
Boehner told Stanford University stu- cons leaping into Hillary’s muscular
dents that Cruz was “Lucifer in the embrace.
lesh.” Satanists immediately objected,
If the neocons get neophyte Repub-
saying it was unfair to their deity.
licans on the presidential ticket, they
Even though Trump is the one who prefer ones like Dan Quayle, W. and
has no governing experience, he will Sarah Palin, who are “educable,” as Bill
suggest that the irst woman at the top Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Stan-
of a major party ticket is unqualiied by dard, once said of Quayle.
charging that she lacks “strength” and
Trump may have a lot to learn about
“stamina” and claiming that if she were the issues, but he’s not malleable.
a man, she would not get even 5 percent
In his new book, Alter Egos, New
of the vote.
York Times White House correspon-
During his unburdening at Stanford, dent Mark Landler makes the case that
Boehner imitated Clinton, saying, “Oh, the former Goldwater Girl, the daugh-
I’m a woman, vote for me.”
ter of a Navy petty oficer and a staunch
But such mockery merely plays into Republican, has long had hawkish ten-
Clinton’s hands. As former Jeb Bush dencies, relected in her support for
super PAC strategist Mike Murphy told military action in Iraq and Libya and a
MSNBC, “Her big judo move is play- no-ly zone in Syria.
ing the victim.” And as former Jeb aide
“It’s bred in the bone,” Landler told me.
Tim Miller noted to CNN, Trump’s
“There’s no doubt that Hillary Clin-
numbers with women are so bad that ton’s more muscular brand of Ameri-
the only way he can win is if he man- can foreign policy is better matched to
ages to repeal women’s suffrage before 2016 than it was to 2008,” Jake Sulli-
November.
van, Hillary’s policy adviser both at the
Once you get beyond the surface State Department and in her campaign,
of the 2016 battle of the sexes, with its told Landler.
chest-thumping versus maternal hug-
But Hillary never expected to meet
ging, there’s a more intriguing gender this mix of dove, hawk and isolation-
dynamic.
ist. She thought she would
On some foreign pol-
Marco Rubio, a more
Trump face
icy issues, the roles are
traditional conservative who
reversed for the candidates seems would out-hawk her. Instead,
and their parties. It’s Hillary
she’s meeting Trump, who
less
the Hawk against Donald the
is “a sheep in wolf’s cloth-
Quasi-Dove.
ing,” as Axelrod put it. Like
Just as Barack Obama macho a free-swinging asymmetric
seemed the more feminized
Trump can keep Hil-
than boxer,
candidate in 2008 because of
lary off balance by punch-
his talk-it-out management Hillary. ing from both the left and the
style, his antiwar platform
right.
and his delicate eating habits, always
You can actually envision a for-
watching his igure, so now, in some eign policy debate between Trump and
ways, Trump seems less macho than Clinton that sounds oddly like the one
Hillary.
Obama and Clinton had in 2008, with
He has a tender ego, pouty tweets, Trump playing Obama, preening about
needy temperament and obsession with his good judgment on Iraq, wanting an
hand sanitizer, whereas she is so tough end to nation-building and thinking he
and combat-hardened, she’s known by could have a reset with Russia.
her staff as “the Warrior.”
Despite gossip when she was irst lady
The prime example of command- that she did not like people in uniform, the
er-in-chief judgment Trump offers is truth is the reverse: She gravitates toward
the fact that, like Obama, he thought the “nail-eaters,” her aides told Landler, and
invasion of Iraq was a stupid idea.
loves the gruff, Irish, bearlike demeanor
He can sound belligerent, of course, of Jack Keane, a retired four-star general
saying that he would bomb the exple- and the resident hawk on Fox News who
tive-deleted out of ISIS and that he helped deine her views on military issues
would think up new and imaginative and is still in touch.
ways to torture terrorists and kill their
As secretary of state, she hit it off
families.
with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and
But he says that in most cases he David Petraeus. And she loved to have
would rather do the art of the deal than a stiff drink with Bob Gates and John
shock and awe.
McCain.
“Unlike other candidates for the
She has a weakness for big, swag-
presidency, war and aggression will gering, rascally he-men.
not be my irst instinct,” he said in his
Like Donald Trump.
Open forum
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Terrorism’s roots
Editorials that appear on this page are written by
Publisher Steve Forrester and Matt Winters, editor of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business Journal, or staff
members from the EO Media Group’s sister newspapers.
The New York Times
In a two photo combination, Republican presidential hopeful Donald
Trump, left, in Iowa on Jan. 30, and Democratic presidential hopeful
Hillary Clinton in Washington on March 21, at right. The Clinton-Trump
battle of the sexes is already getting ugly and is only going to get
worse as November approaches.
aith/religion is the conduit in which
terrorism inds its roots. I often
hear from the faithful that these hei-
nous crimes are not faith-based. But I
say faith brings to the fold the mystical
F
imaginary, whose existence can in no
way be substantiated, and is, in fact, the
catalyst for terrorism.
Men and women around the world
preach speciics about what the hereaf-
ter is like. Not only do they not know
what the hereafter is like, they can’t
know. On the other hand, believers
accept their depiction as fact, thereby
bring into the equation a third party,
god. So when a young Muslim decides
to become a suicide bomber, god is his
guiding light. The hereafter promises
him 35 virgins at his disposal, so he will
spend eternity in a perpetual orgasm.
The Ku Klux Klan, a Chris-
tian-based organization, as a group
lynched blacks; each was convinced
he was actually promoting justice and
doing god’s work. George Bush lied the
country into killing thousands for god
and country. People believe that their
life is self-owing to the generosity of
god, which personally relieves them of
being responsible for their action and
life’s decision — it’s god’s will.
Individuals were imprisoned or exe-
cuted for defying god’s rule, which
declared the earth is lat. A conclusion
that earth was, in fact, round and orbited
the sun, derived by observation and
mathematical ciphering, was ignored
for millenniums by religion — a belief
that hasn’t altered the facts.
The zealot Christian individual who
murdered Dr. George Tiller — the abor-
tion doctor from Wichita, Kansas, who
was killed while attending church that
infamous Sunday morning — declared
on the witness stand during his trial that
god would welcome him with open
arms.
We need desperately to hold religion
accountable. We could start by requir-
ing a disclaimer following sermons
(like the drug companies side-effect
declaration), that what you just heard
is not supported in fact. Above all we
need to address, and hold accountable,
the very root of terrorism — religion.
MURRAY E. STANLEY JR.
Astoria
Great job, Port
think the Port of Astoria is doing a
great job at trying to keep the sea
lions off of the docks. After the new
rails that Knappa High School stu-
dents are building get put on, we’ll see
how effective the rails actually are. I
believe the rails are the solution to the
problem.
I know some people don’t want to
see the sea lions leave, but if they’ve see
what kind of damage is inlicted, then
they would understand the problem
with the sea lions. Great job to the Port
of Astoria and the Knappa High School
students. Keep up the good work.
JAMES HENDRICKSON
Astoria
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