This month’s book club selection is Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” It’s not brand new. But it fulfills all the requirements for our book club. It’s provocative; it’s scholarly and meticulously researched; it tackles a burning public issue; and it helps break down some of the more hackneyed right-left debates. Lomborg is a Green; he believes passionately, as I do, in protecting the health of our planet. But he’s also got a brain and he’s skeptical of some of the more outlandish and pessimistic claims of the Green movement. He began his book attempting to refute professor Julian Simon’s work debunking the notion that the earth’s environment is getting worse. To Lomborg’s amazement, he couldn’t refute it. He’s a statistician by training and found that the stats simply didn’t correlate with deep environmental pessimism. This book is the result of his subsequent research. He’s been attacked – sometimes physically – by the old Green guard. He has been pilloried by other environmentalist scientists. He has been cut off from his old allies. And yet he has found some unlikely fans in the reviewers in the mainstream press and from magazines like the Economist. In any event, it’s a book I’ve long meant to buy and read. So why not join in and read alongside me and other andrewsullivan.com readers? Bjorn has agreed to participate – and we’ll also be linking to sites critical and supportive of his work. The only difference is that this is a longer book than our first two – over 400 pages. But it’s such a ground-breaking and stimulating book that I didn’t think that should bar it from being part of our online experiment in book reading and debate. For that reason, we’ll take a full month to read it and start the discussion May 6. So don’t delay. To join the debate for this month, click here to get the book. It promises to be an education and a political stimulant.
CNN PUFFS MOORE: Here’s the most egregiously celebratory puff-piece on the embittered leftist, Michael Moore – from CNN, natch. The prose is priceless: “If some leaders had their way, Moore might be brought up on charges of treason for his critical remarks about the conservative agenda and the Bush administration,” CNN argues. Which leaders, exactly? Then there’s CNN’s attempt at balance in visiting a Moore book-signing:
“He’s wonderful,” said Traverse City Mayor Margaret Dodd. “He cares about the things America is supposed to care about, and he has the courage to do something.” Erin Chamberlain, an organizer of the newly formed campus Green Party, said Moore was a role model. Shannon Hemingway, a volunteer with the college radio station, praised him for presenting complex issues in simple terms. “He’s genuine,” Hemingway said.
Remember that this book has chapters called “Kill Whitey,” and “Idiot Nation.” It argues that president Bush is the beneficiary of a coup. In case you haven’t got the message that Moore is a vital dissenter, brave and true, opposed only by the crazy far right, there’s a puffy book review as well. Let’s say there’s a similar figure on the far right. How about Patrick Buchanan? Or even, say, Ann Coulter? Can you imagine in a million years a similar soft-lens approach being meted out to him or her? Walter, you’ve still got some work to do.
ANOTHER WONDERFUL CATHOLIC BLOGGER: Check this guy out. He calls his blog Sursum Corda.
HOME NEWS: Great news, actually. Traffic last month was 805,000 visits, from 210,000 separate web addresses. And my e-partner Robert just did the accounting, and discovered that we went into a clear debt-free profit in January and that the profit has now risen steadily each month. It’s only a few grand – but hey, it’s something! All because of the book club and your generosity. Another way of looking at this is that this form of Internet journalism went into profit within 18 months. If we stay completely still, and don’t grow at all, I will be able to pay myself a salary more than comparable to my salary at The New Republic. It won’t make me rich, but it sure will pay the rent and then some. This is your achievement, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it’s a small milestone in e-journalism. We may not have made much yet – but this site has now made more profit than Slate and Salon combined. Thanks again – and please keep this success growing. You’ve proved the nay-sayers wrong. Which is why the anti-blog backlash from the established media is now underway. Methinks they’re a little rattled. As well they might be.
OUR GAY CHURCH: I guess I should make it clear, after much discussion on this site and elsewhere, that I am in no way trying to deny that a large majority of the Church’s sexual abuse cases appear to be same-sex in nature; or, for that matter, that most seem to be with post-pubescent youngsters rather than children (which makes the offense less awful, to my mind, but still reprehensible). The difference I have with the likes of Rod Dreher is that I do not believe that this makes it a homosexual problem. It is an abuse problem. Repeatedly describing it as a gay problem unfairly smears the many good gay priests who manage to perform their duties without sexual abuse.
THE SHOE DROPS: But if you read the anti-gay Church conservatives closely, you also realize one amazing thing. They have all but conceded that their beloved Church – in one of the most conservative eras under John Paul II – is predominantly a gay-run institution, at least in America. And since the numbers will tell you that only a small minority of these gay priests have committed sexual abuse, the conclusion surely is that the Church in America relies now to an extraordinary extent on gay priests. Gratitude? Don’t count on it. Sympathy? You’ve got to be kidding. These gay priests are lucky not to be exposed and kicked out – let alone thanked. The sneering tone adopted by some toward these indispensable stewards of the faith shows how deep their contempt for gay men truly is. It also acts as a means to resist the obvious implications of all this.
THE PLIGHT OF GOOD GAY PRIESTS: Think about it for a minute. What gay priests have to do is serve a church that also says that their fellow gays are “intrinsically disordered,” that any attempt by gay men and women to have sex or intimacy or committed relationships is simply a capitulation to evil, that society is justified in permitting discrimination in housing, employment and all manner of occupations to gay people, and that even violence against gays can be understood (if not condoned) in some contexts as a result of gays pushing their agenda too far. Now imagine what that does to the souls and minds and spiritual health of many gay priests. It eats them up. They know this demeaning attitude toward gay people is corrosive of the church and destructive of their own vocations. This internal psychic stress surely has something to do with the small minority who break down and do what actually are ‘evil’ things. But if there is no difference, from the point of view of the church, between the evil of gay intimacy and the evil of sexual abuse, is it any wonder that some conflicted souls act upon that assertion? Or that some get los
t in spiritual, sexual and ethical confusion? This doesn’t excuse their sins and crimes. But the psychological torture wrought upon gay Catholics by their own Church’s doctrines reaches its cruelest peak when applied to gay Catholic priests. It would be nice if some Catholic conservatives, even if they insist that gays in the clergy and laity must be condemned to the martyrdom of loneliness and sexlessness that the Church believes is the only authentic homosexual vocation, acknowledged that this is a very hard cross to bear. It would be even nicer if these conservatives were then able to thank these brave and conflicted souls, who not only bear the deep burden of deep emotional and ethical conflict but have kept their church alive when others haven’t. But I won’t hold my breath.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “If we reasoned better about war, there could be less of it. An example of bad reasoning is the conventional premise that an adversary who targets innocent civilians is too evil to be worthy of a hearing and a negotiated peace. The goal of less war and less terrorism would be helped by reasoning about what causes terrorists to become terrorists, what their goals are, and whether their goals could fit into a mutually beneficial peace settlement. This essay will make four points about the killing of innocent civilians:
One, the conventional belief that civilians in a democracy are innocent is false.
Two, the rule of war that civilians are not to be targets of military violence is inconsistent.
Three, the rule of war that civilians are not to be targets of military violence is counterproductive.
Four, this inconsistent rule of war is counterproductive because it is used to demonize the enemy and increase the emotions for war.” – Clark Rieke, defending terrorism, on the clarifying anti-war left site, Nonviolence.org. By non-violence, they mean no response to terrorist violence. I think.
WHEN WHITE KIDS RIOT: It’s somehow a sporting tradition, especially after the universally approved NCAA championship. When black kids do it, it’s crime. Michelle Cottle has a point, methinks.
AN AMERICAN PROBLEM?: An Irish bishop has just quit because of the way he handled sex abuse cases in the past. He’ll be headed to Rome this week to finalize his departure. This follows a similar incident in Poland. But this is a minor matter of interest only to those “pansexual” Americans. Yeah, right.
BEING FAIR TO MOORE: Several of you have alerted me to the fact that I was wrong to criticize Michael Moore for not mentioning the war on terror in his latest screed. The book apparently went to press on September 10 and therefore couldn’t be changed. I’m sorry I missed this fact. Nevertheless, it still strikes me as somewhat unconvincing. If Moore had wanted to address the issue, HarperCollins could easily have adjusted its press run, added an extra chapter, or some such exigency. They had several months to make changes. But hey, I should have noted the press run issue in the piece. My apologies for that.
The Dish 