Funny how this crops up all the time. A gay mafia has taken over the Church. A gay mafia has taken over Hollywood. A gay mafia – the “homocons” – have hijacked the gay movement. We may not have institutionalized anti-Semitism in the culture, but every aspect of the old anti-Semitism is being recycled – only this time, it’s about gays. Scapegoats for right, left and the merely paranoid. Who said homosexuals don’t perform a useful social function?
THE SURVEY: It’s back up. Don’t all go at once or you’ll crash it again. But let me know if you find anything interesting.
INSULARITY AND PSYCHOSIS: I hope you saw Barbara Crossette’s account of a new Arab study of Arab decline in the Times yesterday. To me the most staggering facts were: “The number of Arabs is expected to grow to between 410 million and 459 million by 2020 [from 280 million today].” And: “In the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, it concludes, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year.” So we have a new, massive generation of people, largely sealed off from outside cultural forces and fed a steady stream of extremist, anti-Semitics and anti-Western hate literature. I have a feeling that our current war could be just the beginning.
THE PLEDGE: “Every pundit, politician and op-ed page in America has blasted the pledge decision, but they all (yourself included) ignore the salient point – is the pledge constitutional? The timing may be rotten and there may not be many interest groups out there to be appeased, but it’s hard to see how the words “under God”, intentionally added by to the original pledge by congress in the 50s, could not be unconstitutional. If we feel so strongly as a nation that the pledge should include those words, let’s pass an amendment – it only takes 2/3 of us. Why is it that Republicans (and Democrats running for cover) can’t be bothered to look beyond the emotional impact to the underlying facts and call a rose a rose? Don’t you agree that the ruling’s detractors couldn’t be bothered to examine the prima facie question before responding with their usual outrage over all things “un-American”? I continue, with each passing day, to lose a little bit more of my long-frayed faith in the American way.” – this, several gay debate reviews, dissent on corporate corruption, and much more on the best Letters Page on the web.
RAINES WATCH I: How weird is it that the CEO of the New York Times publishes an attack on McCain-Fengold – in the Washington Post? And his byline includes the caveat, “The views here are his own”? Is even the CEO of the place denied a platform in his own paper, if his views don’t coincide with Howell Raines’? Suddenly I don’t feel so bad.
ISLAM, CLASS, AND WOMEN: I don’t know where to begin with this story, about a Pakistani girl gang-raped as punishment for her brother’s flirtation with a girl not from his social class. But we might begin by reaffirming that Stanley Fish is wrong. There can be universal reasonable standards that say some things are wrong, period. This is one of them.
RAINES WATCH II: Check out the p.c. nonsense even in the New York Times’ sports pages. I noted yesterday the telling story of the Pakistani shunned by his own country’s authorities because he played with a Jew. The Times wants to tell us that Americans would behave just as appallingly: “It is no difficult task, then, to ridicule the complaining Pakistanis, but it is also fair to wonder if Americans who still prefer patriotic fervor to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” would have cheered one of their own teaming with an Afghan last fall, or how the Israeli public, which has taken no issue this time, would respond to Hadad and a Palestinian of choice.” Excuse me. Weren’t we liberating the Afghans last fall? And I know of no evidence that Israelis would feel that way about a sporting event. This is just p.c. boilerplate to avoid criticism of a state and a culture that’s anti-Semitic to its core. And excusing or ignoring anti-Semitism is now, sadly, part of the New York Times’ ethos.
ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: A new allegedly anti-Semitic novel from a Holocaust skeptic sells out in one day in Germany. It sold 50,000 copies. I don’t think they were all Muslim immigrants.
HER GAY CAT: Just one of those wacko websites I send your way every now and again.
HIS FISHY TOILET: And here’s another!
The Dish 