Marx Would Weep; Fur Doesn't Fly

What's worse, the Seattle meeting won't be contested?not effectively and honestly. Yes, Seattle this week will be a circus of granola protest. Teach-ins will be led by such intellectuals as Body Shop chairwoman Anita Roddick; the ancient Jim Hightower will appear at a rally; street theater will materialize, complete with puppets; zanies will dress as turtles and other beasts threatened by the WTO's environmental depredations. But it won't come to anything, because the elite left that's mobilizing against the WTO is itself as globalist, and as offended by the idea of local control and democracy, as any multinational corporation. That's what Marx would have called a contradiction, and it's a hobbling one.

Think about it. Here's a left that can be expected to scream every time California voters pass a ballot proposition that offends Upper West Side sensibilities (and not only that, but also to defy the popular will in court), gathering in Seattle to complain about...arrogant elites defying the popular will. Here's an antinationalist left that has sanctified shibboleths like "globalism" and "internationalism," and that libels any expression of American nationalism as a perversion of rural fascists, gathering in Seattle to whine about...globalism and internationalism and the disappearance of national identity. Incredible.

One of the most remarkable publications we've come across recently is The Nation's 12/6 "Special WTO Issue," which contains an article by Ohio Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich entitled "States' Rights and the WTO." States' rights are suddenly a good thing to elite leftists. With this sort of disingenuousness infecting its discourse, how can the left expect to get anything done?

Rest easy, ministers of the WTO. The coast is clear.

Fur Doesn't Fly Last Friday, when many of you were out shopping, we were here at 333?stuck here, actually, for a couple of hours, because nine young protestors had chained themselves together and blocked the entrance. They represented the Animal Defense League, and it was Fur Free Friday, their annual day of demonstration; we share the building with a number of furriers. Now, some of us think nothing makes a woman look like a Russian mafioso's whore like a full-length mink. As a fashion statement, fur is for cheap vulgarians. And we don't mind seeing young people take to the streets. It's a better use of their semester break than football bonfires (even if the ADL's mindless cheerleading and rote gestures did make it seem just a pep rally the punks and nerdy kids could call their own).

However, we do wish they'd select better causes. There is much to protest in the world?starting, perhaps, with the barbarous annual slaughter of innocent humans caused by self-serving warmongers, including the President of the United States. By comparison, the slaughter of innocent minks and bunnies strikes us as the safest, silliest cause the kids could espouse.