Taranto is a thug who would not think twice about publishing a home phone number of a dying young mother just because he disagreed politically with her husband (Peter Brimelow).

Nothing Taranto does surprises me.

I checked out that story some time ago. Linked below is Taranto’s explanation of it, and in fairness it’s different from the accepted version of the story that has circulated among immigration reformers. Taranto linked the page at the WhoIs site which shows the owner of vdare.com, who is Brimelow. He says he did this not to publicize Brimelow’s home address and phone number, which happened to be on that page, but to establish—in connection with Taranto’s criticism of Brimelow for publishing a certain article at vdare—that Brimelow is in fact responsible for vdare.com. Brimelow, after realizing that he had placed his own home phone number and address on a publicly viewable web page, then removed the information, and Taranto continued to link the page. Taranto is certainly an irreverent wise guy, but I’m not sure that he deserves to be indicted as a thug who would seek to expose a dying young mother to prank phone calls in order to embarrass her husband whom he politically opposes. It seems to me, rather, that he was linking publicly available information in order to establish a fact that was pertinent to a story he was working on as a journalist.

It’s possible, of course, that after he found the vdare registration page, and saw Brimelow’s home information on it, that he deliberately linked the page knowing that it would irk Brimelow, instead of just informing his readers of the fact that vdare is registered in Brimelow’s name. If that was Taranto’s intention, then he deserves the names that people have called him. However, I must say that his explanation sounds truthful to me. In which case, the worse that can be said of him in this case is that he acted thoughtlessly by publishing the link to a page that happened to include Brimelow’s home information.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110002371

Taranto had no problem last year making fun of all the elderly folks in France who died in that historic heat-wave that hit most of Europe. Air-conditioning, for whatever reason, is not wide-spread in Europe, so his pleasure over these deaths escapes me.

Now it’s my turn to defend Taranto. He did not “make fun” of the deaths of elderly Frenchmen in a heatwave, but actually made the profoundly conservative point that it is depraved for the French intelligentsia to maunder on about the accidental death of a handful of Iraqis in the course of liberating their country from tyranny while they overlooked the completely preventable deaths of their own kin from heatstroke because of their refusal to look after their parents when they went on endless socialistic vacations.

I was as appalled as Mr. Auster to read Taranto’s message of congratulations. Can we please criticize him for this obvious affront rather than make up dubious ones?

Agricola, Taranto implied that the French government lied, made up the figure of 3,000 deaths from heat-releated problems because the U.S. lost 3,000 people on 9\11. Did you even read his original post ? The French lost 6000 to 10,000 elderly due to heat-stroke. My post, which I should have made more clear, took Mr. Taranto to task for being so damn flip about all those deaths. So, no, the French government did not make this up, and Taranto is off the wall to state that this event might never have happened.

Taranto’s first post on the French deaths was Thursday, August 14, 2003. He said nothing else about the French leaving their old people to die in that blog entry. You may have mixed his comments up with Mark Steyn who said something like the above statement you left. My point stands.

Taking as a separate incident, publishing Brimelow home phone/address can have a more benign explanation as Mr. Auster suggests. I will concede this. However I have read enough of Taranto ravings to reject that explanation. Man is a rude and crude ideologist and his writing are never fair.

If Taranto likes American conservatives who disagree with OpenBorders religion of WSJ any better than he likes Saddam Hussein, he never shows that.

I stand by my opinion, guy is a thug. I can think about only one another thug in the same category, James Carville.

Back to the main point. Where’s the humanity —whatever that is, in congratulating what you ostensibly believe to be misbehavior? Taranto just doesn’t make sense. Is it all just a parlor game where we congratulate each other at the end for playing nice, or does it actually matter who wins this debate?

If you read the Taranto entry in context, he is trying to put John Kerry on the spot by saying, “John Kerry is trying to play this issue down the middle. As a result, he can say that they are exercising their rights by getting married, but he wants to avoid endorsing the practice. Thus, he won’t congratulate the newlyweds, as you would normally congratulate newlyweds. I, the grand Tarantoad, will be one up on John Kerry by congratulating the newlyweds. Think what an embarrassment this must be to Kerry, that he cannot congratulate them while I, a conservative, can!”

As is typical of neocons, it is all about positioning oneself along the political spectrum in relation to other people, rather than deciding what you believe and acting on your beliefs.

Mr. Coleman is correct about Taranto’s motivation, but there’s more to it than that. What Taranto is really indicating by his congratulations to the “newlyweds” is that his own supposed opposition to homosexual marriage is merely pro forma—JUST AS KERRY’S IS.

Taranto’s post on the French heat wave is here:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110003888

Mr. hagan is entirely correct that my attribution of a conservative point to Taranto is wrong. On the other hand, Taranto didn’t make fun of anybody, nor did he express pleasure over anybody’s death.

It’s too simple, usually, to attribute sheer malice to our ideological enemies. Taranto’s problem, and that of those whom he represents, unfortunately lies much deeper than the fact that he may or may not be a jerk.

I will concede that my feelings about Taranto & the French incident are somewhat subjective. I do attribute bad intentions to his post questioning the French government on the heat-stroke releated deaths last year. His history is one of snide, unfair attacks, and like Mr. Auster pointed out: pro forma positions on important issues of the day that matter to conservatives. The WSJ, in its own way, is as bad as the Boston Globe or the NYT, as there will be no real questioning of the open borders & free trade philosophy by ANY of the regular staff.

Had Mr Taranto been reporting in the late 1940s, would he have dared to congratulate the couple “married” in this story? (It starts 13 short paragraphs from the bottom.):
http://www.citypages.com/databank/22/1076/article9696.asp?page=2

(Anyone with interest, time and stomach can get the context from page 1:
http://www.citypages.com/databank/22/1076/article9696.asp )

Mr Taranto is a creature of his times. The main difference between that Truman-era campfest and Monday’s events is the threat to law and society— and good taste.

The first known legal application took place in the same county a generation later in 1970. An informative, if heavily biased in favor, account can be read here: http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1015

An excerpt: “Gay marriage was not exactly a brand new idea, even back in 1970. Jean Genet described one in a novel in 1943 and John Rechy did so in 1963.There were big differences, however. The Baker-McConnell wedding involved same-sex appearance. It was intended to produce social stability like a straight marriage. By contrast, the Genet and Rechy gay weddings were staged to look like opposite-sex marriages and designed to scoff at society. They were not intended to produce social stability. “

Contrast this nonsense with the controversial marriage of Tony Randall, who died last night at 84, leaving 7- and 5-year-old children. As unusual as that coupling was, it was entirely natural, and the selection process— how many septuagenarians can woo a twenty-something?— ensures a number of ongoing benefits for the tragically fatherless children.

Gay marriage is not at all a modern invention. From Suetonius’ Life of Nero, ch. 28:

Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married women, he [Nero] debauched the vestal virgin Rubria. The freedwoman Acte he all but made his lawful wife, after bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth. He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his home attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. And the witty jest that someone made is still current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero’s father Domitius had had that kind of wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the courts and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time.

Mr. j.hagan writes:

“The WSJ, in its own way, is as bad as the Boston Globe or the NYT, as there will be no real questioning of the open borders & free trade philosophy by ANY of the regular staff. “

As far as OpenBorders and FreeTradeUberAlles religions are concerned, WSJ is as bad as Pravda was in its Soviet days or Granma today. Not even a slightest deviation from Party line is allowed.

It is interesting that despite totalitarian control WSJ editors exercise over their writers, there are some (many?) WSJ alumni who are far left. The lattest is Pascal Zachary whose big shtick now is independence for San Francisco Bay Area - do not laugh, it is true.

Stanley Kurtz has an excellent piece at NRO about the foolishness of thinking that federalism can be counted on to deal with “gay marriage”. With rampant defiance of the law at state and local levels, only a Constitutional amendment will suffice: http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200405200836.asp

In regard to “same sex marriage”, an obvious inherent contradiction , let me pose this question. If the Supreme Court of the United States of America decrees that henceforth, we must call all motor vehicles frisbees, will we then be able to throw Fords and Chevys around in the park and have our dogs fetch them? Marriage is the union of a man and a woman. It cannot be changed by addition or subtraction, nor by bizarre interpretations. I guess what I am trying to say is that essence cannot be altered by semantics.