Jonathan V. Last

Bedford, New Hampshire
WESLEY CLARK CELEBRATED the 31st anniversary of Roe v. Wade today by appearing at a breakfast fundraiser sponsored by the Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Action Fund. During a brief set of remarks he declared that "no one has a right to come between a woman, her doctor, her family, and her God."

Manchester, New Hampshire, Tuesday, January 20

FOR A LONG TIME, it was "the movies" that people went to see. Then it was "films." And then "indie films." For a certain segment of the movie-going audience--and for critics stuck reviewing "Waterworld"--the indies were a godsend: highbrow fare that proved how much could be done with a literary script, unknown actors and a low budget.

IT HAS BEEN WIDELY OBSERVED that Dean for President--or, as the partisans call it, "Dean for America"--isn't so much a political campaign as a movement. But if that's true of the Deaniacs in general, it's doubly true of their virtual selves. The online Dean world isn't so much a virtual community as a cult.

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

*1*

As an academically trained statistician, it truly makes me happy to see Allen Barra's bad statistics put in their place. (Jonathan V.

THE REASON I checked out of "24," the intriguing Fox network series, was that the show suffered from Sudden Supporting Character Death Syndrome. Every interesting supporting character--the policewoman with the Macy Gray hair, the girl from "Roseanne"--was dispatched, often in a grisly manner, and normally right after the audience developed a strand of attachment to them. At first, this penchant for killing peripheral characters seemed laudable--the writers at "24" saying, "Hey, we're not messing around here! The stakes are high and people die!"

LONGTIME READERS will remember Allen Barra, formerly of the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Barra is the sportswriter who relies solely on math for his evaluation of athletics and worships at the high church of statistics. He is the bright light who, days before Super Bowl XXXVI, wrote:

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

*1*

With respect to the Stephen F. Hayes's response to Newsweek, I was surprised that Isikoff had used Vincent Cannistraro as a source (Newsweek's "Case").

THE ADAGE that every generation gets the president it deserves applies equally well to popular culture. We get the TV shows, pop songs, and cinema we deserve. Movie stars, too. The greatest generation got Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, and Cary Grant. (Bogart and Tracy served stints in the Navy.) For their sins, the Boomers were given Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, and Jack Nicholson.

MY BIG IDEA, the one that's going to let me to quit my day job, join the Metropolitan Club, and buy Kay Graham's old place in Georgetown, is this: A pay cable channel for kids. Think of it like HBO, but airing only kid shows, 24 hours a day. You could charge $15, $20, maybe $25 a month and parents would buy it because here's the hook: No commercials.

The anti-TV movement is only nominally about the content of shows. It's really about the advertisements.

YES, IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME ALREADY. Today "Elf" lands in theaters.

THE INITIAL IMPULSE is to declare that "The Matrix: Revolutions" does for "The Matrix" what "Return of the Jedi" did for "Star Wars." That isn't, however, entirely fair. It would be more accurate to compare "Revolutions" with "Attack of the Clones." After all, while "Jedi" might have cast aspersions on the worth of the original "Star Wars," it was "Attack of the Clones" which finally bulldozed the original trilogy's legacy.

"Revolutions" eats all of the goodwill built up by "The Matrix," and then some.