How do you spell ’double standard’? by Roger Kimball

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In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age.

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Feb 15, 2005 07:56 AM

How do you spell ’double standard’?

by Roger Kimball

Well, look at the U.N. Remember the oil-for-food scandal? If it doesn’t figure prominently in your consciousness, it’s because, despite the valiant efforts of some talented journalists, it just didn’t have traction with the Mainstream Media: The New York Times, Reuters, CBS, CNN, the BBC, their epigones and offshoots, little brothers, cousins and imitators. Now, the oil-for-food scandal was the largest humanitarian aid scandal in history. The last time I checked, we were talking about $111 billion. Halliburton loses a requisition form for a truckload of gasoline and the MSM is all over it 24/7: "scandal," "corruption," "crisis," etc. (Do you want to know the real scoop? Check out Byron York’s piece "Halliburton: The Bush/Iraq Scandal that Wasn’t.")

It’s the same with the U.N. Sex Scandal. You remember: U.N. staffers in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and the Congo preyed on refugees. Pedophilia. Rape. Prostitution. Sure, it’s reported. Heads wag. But where’s the "flood the zone reporting" that would be brought to bear were some unanointed organization involved? Mark Steyn, writing in The Daily Telegraph, gets it exactly right:

on a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece. Didier Bourguet, a UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic, enjoyed the pleasures of 12-year-old girls, and as a result is now on trial in France. His lawyer has said he was part of a UN paedophile network that transcends national boundaries.
Now how about this? The Third Infantry Division are raping nine-year olds in Ramadi. Ready, set, go! That thundering sound outside your window isn’t the new IKEA sale, but the great herd of BBC/CNN/Independent/Guardian/New York Times/Le Monde/Sydney Morning Herald/Irish Times/Cork Examiner reporters stampeding to the Sunni Triangle. Whoa, hold up, lads, it’s only hypothetical.
But think about it: the merest glimpse of a freaky West Virginia tramp leading an Abu Ghraib inmate around with girlie knickers on his head was enough to prompt calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation, and for Ted Kennedy to charge that Saddam’s torture chambers were now open "under new management", and for Robert Fisk to be driven into the kind of orgasmic frenzy unseen since his column on how much he enjoyed being beaten up by an Afghan mob: "Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi," wrote Fisk. "No sadistic movie could outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with just one tug on the leash."
Who’s straining at the leash here? Down, boy. But, if Lynndie’s smashed to pieces our entire morality with just one tug, Bush’s Zionist neocons getting it on with Congolese kindergarteners would have the Independent calling for US expulsion from the UN - no, wait, from Planet Earth: slice it off from Maine to Hawaii and use one of those new Euro- Airbuses to drag it out round the back of Uranus.
But systemic UN child sex in at least 50 per cent of their missions? The transnational morality set can barely stifle their yawns. If you’re going to rape prepubescent girls, make sure you’re wearing a blue helmet.

As I noted in The New Criterion last fall

some institutions--and indeed some individuals--enjoy a sort of plenary indulgence in the court of liberal opinion. They are by definition "saintly." The UN enjoys this semi- beatified status. So do Oxfam, the BBC, and Amnesty International. So do Kofi Annan, Princess Diana, Bob Geldof, and Bill Clinton. So, far that matter, do Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and, ex officio, Karl Marx. If they do wrong it is only because they are endeavoring to do good. Their intentions are noble, hence their malfeasance at all is automatically exonerated--indeed, it is not really malfeasance but an excess of "idealism." Your mother probably told you that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Your mother was right. But her wisdom is too deep--or perhaps it is not deep enough--to impress the politically correct partisans of benevolence.

Of course, saintly institutions and individuals cannot subsist in isolation. They require, to maintain their saintliness, the foil of demonized institutions and individuals. As I put it in the piece cited above,

A world populated by "saintly" figures and institutions would be incomplete without the converse: demonized figures and institutions, entities that are regarded as evil not because of what they do but because of their assigned role in the passion play of liberal self-promotion. Who are todayï¿½s demons? It is a familiar lot. . . . Exxon (greedy multinational oil corporation), the British Conservative Party (partisans of greed and selfishness), and the Roman Catholic Church (for about eighty-seven different reasons). But the chief demon, the Satan who presides over an unholy host, is America, epitomized by George W. Bush and his administration.
European anti-Americanism is a familiar feature of the cultural landscape today. But what is extraordinary is not so much the virulence of the phenomenon as the aura of ineluctability that attends it. America occupies an indispensable place in today’s politically correct cosmology. Along with a supporting cast that includes Israel and the demonized institutions mentioned above, America is the repository of the shattered dreams and wayward programs of the Left. If there is misery in the world, the root cause is, somehow, America: its power, its influence, its supposed irresponsibility, its stupidity, its cupidity, its very being.

It’s a sorry situation, a duplicitous and mendacious situation; it is even a dangerous situation, since the reflexive exoneration of the saintly conspires to ignore real damage just as the reflexive demonization of other institutions and individuals threatens to disrupt the genuine help they can offer. It’s more than a double standard. It’s a disgrace.