CATCHING UP TO THE TIMES :

The Sunny Side of the Street (BILL KELLER, July 27, 2002, NY Times)

What I'm about to propose reminds me slightly of the final scene in "The Life of Brian," in which the faux messiah and his followers, hanging crucified on a row of crosses, burst into happy song: "Always look on the bri-ight side of life!" But you don't really have to be in a Monty Python mood to think that the cascade of grim tidings from Wall Street is, in many ways, good for us.

I know the accounting scandals, bankruptcies and vaporized stock values have caused real pain. With deep sympathy for the victims, though, it seems to me this is one of those inevitable, chastening moments from which the country may benefit in important ways - is, in fact, already starting to benefit. [...]

There is no reason voters' wrath should be reserved for Republicans. Democrats like Tom Daschle and Joseph Lieberman and Chris Dodd and Charles Schumer, for example, have helped smother important corporate reforms, and there are plenty of Congressional Democrats who act like wholly owned subsidiaries of special interests.

But the Democrats enjoy the distinct advantage of running against a party and a president that put the lazy in laissez-faire, the party of the post-Enron shrug, the party of Harken and Halliburton, the party of the Enron-tainted Army Secretary Thomas White. The Democrats get to run against Harvey Pitt, who, whatever his skills as S.E.C. chairman, must be the most politically tone-deaf man to serve in Washington since Earl Butz, who memorably justified junk-food school lunch programs by declaring that ketchup is a vegetable.

In addition to making the absurd claim that declining wealth is worthwhile because it teaches us a good lesson--in much the same way one supposes that the Depression was a beneficial rebuke to Smoot-Hawley or famine in Africa a valuable commentary on Marxist economies or that AIDs teaches healthy lessons about sexual behavior or , as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were roundly condemned for saying, that 9-11 taught us about God's judgement on the decline of our culture?--I believe that Mr. Keller whiffed on the Earl Butz bit. As I recall, it was during the Reagan administration that the Ketchup hullabaloo exploded. Mr. Butz was Secretary of Agriculture under Gerald Ford and told a racist joke about blacks during a plane ride and it was revealed by a journalist. I assume Mr. Keller confused the two. If anyone edited the Times any more they might have caught that. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 27, 2002 9:22 AM