From the right: Is Mueller Conflicted in Comey Probe?
Fired FBI Director James Comey “has emerged as the main figure” in what Democrats hope will be an obstruction of justice case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against President Trump, notes Byron York at the Washington Examiner. Which raises a question about the 15-year friendship between Comey and Mueller, who’ve been described as “brothers in arms.” Asks York: “Should a prosecutor pursue a case in which the star witness is a close friend” — not to mention “when the prosecutor might also be called on to investigate some of his friend’s actions?” Since the whole point of a special counsel is to avoid conflicts of interest, those questions “will have to be answered.”
Culture critic: Caesar as Trump Is Paying a Price
Shakespeare in the Park’s version of “Julius Caesar” isn’t long on subtlety, says Charlie Martin at PJ Media: Caesar “is played as a man with a bad comb-over and an overlong tie,” his wife is “a runway model with a Slavic accent” and he’s assassinated by the Senate’s “women and minorities.” The “Upper West Side friends” of the producer and director probably “assured them it was utterly, utterly brilliant,” but the reviews have been much less kind. And now comes the backlash: Sponsors Delta Airlines and Bank of America have pulled their funding. Yes, art is supposed to “make us see things in new ways.” But this production simply “plays to the sensibilities of people who read The New York Times and The New Yorker and The Nation in a trite and already-clichéd fashion.”
Historians: Reagan Berlin Wall Speech Still Resonates
It was 30 years ago this week that President Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, added a “phrase for the ages” that “encapsulates American exceptionalism,” say Craig Shirley and Scott Mauer at Fox News. On June 12, 1987, he visited the Berlin Wall to commemorate the city’s 750th anniversary. Addressing himself to the Soviet premier, he declared: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Some thought it was an overly provocative mistake; but Reagan had “looked the Soviet Union straight in the eye and did not blink.” In 1989, the Wall fell and Communist governments followed suit. Those nations “all looked to the fall of the Wall as an example of the power of the people against an oppressive government. And the people looked to Reagan as the fire to light that spark for freedom.”
Correspondent: America Needs Its Own BBC
The rise of Donald Trump “marks the apotheosis of American celebrity culture, its final merging with (and triumph over) politics,” argues James Kirchick at GQ. But Britain “has just as much, if not worse, of a celebrity trash culture,” yet the notion of “a Trump-like figure” becoming prime minister “is preposterous.” And a key reason why is the fact that “Britain lacks the highly partisan media landscape that has long defined the United States,” and enjoys “a credible, high-quality, trusted public broadcaster in the form of the BBC.” In this country, the First Amendment’s “constitutional provision for a marketplace of ideas . . . does not ensure that this marketplace will be of high quality.” Yes, the BBC has been accused of “an institutional left-wing bias.” But it provides high-quality journalism . . . and represents a cross-section of public opinion on contentious subjects.”
Economist: Hailing Massive End to Global Poverty
Most people are “unaware that extreme poverty has been declining over time” across the globe — a development economist Charles Hughes at Economics21 hails as “one of the greatest accomplishments of the modern world.” Fact is, “more people live longer, healthier, more peaceful lives today than anytime in the past.” Yet polls show most Americans actually believe global poverty is increasing, rather than having been “halved in the past 20 years.” True, many nations in Africa are moving in the wrong direction. But the fact remains that “in 1970, about 60 percent” of the planet was “still relegated to extreme poverty. Now, the figure is under 9 percent.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
