Month: December 2004

One of the best, relatively new participants in the blogosphere is “The American Scene,” a blog set up and run by three young writers, all of whom, in my humble opinion, will be heard from far more in the years to come. They’re Reihan Salam, who also edits the Letters Page of this blog, Steve Menashi of the New York Sun, and Ross Douthat of the Atlantic. More about them here. If you haven’t been a reader of their blog, your loss. But it’s also my gain. The three of them will be blogging here for the next couple of weeks until after the New Year. I’ll be dropping by now and again, but will be taking it easier for the holidays, and finishing up a review-essay that’s overdue. Don’t forget to check in as well for the annual year-end awards ceremony for 2004, in which all your various nominations in every award category will be judged by a distinguished panel. All in their pajamas. Merry Christmas.

The latest left-wing p.c. campaign in Europe: against men who relieve themselves while standing up. Money quote:

A newspaper called The Australian quoted a young woman named Jessica, a biologist, from the Swedish city of Uppsala: “All my friends demand that their husbands or boyfriends sit down,” said Jessica.”I think it shows respect for the women who clean. “My brother, for example, would not dream of standing up. Among the young, leftish intelligentsia, there is also a view that to stand up is a nasty macho gesture.”

Is this a spoof? I fear not.

THE ARC OF PETER COOK: A lovely, if cranky, memoir of the comic genius from Richard Ingrams.

A RELIGIOUS RIGHT DISSIDENT: Here’s an interesting take on how the leaders of the religious right have betrayed their own faith by conflating Christianity with the politics of a single administrationn and president. It’s more striking coming from someone whose social and political views are very hardline conservative. No, he’s not Mobying.

One of the least noticed aspects of the social right’s campaign against gay relationships is the sheer scope of the effort. The leaders have long insisted that they have nothing against gay people or gay couples, they just want to “protect” civil marriage as a heterosexual institution. And yet eight states, under the pretense of merely banning marriage rights for gay couples, have in fact put bans in place that remove all civil protections from gay relationships. Now check out the wording of the state constitutional amendment being proposed in California:

“The rights, responsibilities, benefits, and obligations of a marriage shall only be granted, bestowed, and conferred upon a man and a woman joined in a valid marriage, and may not be conferred upon any other union or partnership.”

This is also the position of writers like Maggie Gallagher and Stanley Kurtz. To her credit, Gallagher has written explicitly about this:

If asked, I would have recommended that state marriage amendments not try to bar civil unions either. (I’d vote for any of the versions I have seen, however).

So Gallagher is against state amendments that would ban civil unions and domestic partnerships, but would still vote for amendments that ban civil unions and domestic partnerships. Got that? Since the election, I emailed Maggie to ask her for clarification. She has the same view: “I don’t support civil unions, but also I do not think they should be ‘constitutionalized’: benefits for individuals or relationships that are not marriages should be left up to state legislatures. (So the FMA should not try to ban civil unions. I would prefer the same be true of state marriage amendments, but I would not have voted against the state marriage amendments.)” The FMA, of course, does ban court-prompted civil unions in its second sentence, potentially ending Vermont’s and Massachusetts’ protections. We should be clear here. One side favors marriage rights for gays. The other side favors the removal of any legal protections for gay couples, including civil unions, domestic partnerships, legally enforceable private contracts, and anything that might give legal standing and dignity to gay relationships. That’s the current choice.

VERKLEMMT EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Doubtless, if the reference was to a sentence spoken in German, you would be correct. Or as spoken by an Anglo American! From a yiddish speaker I think not. In my 60 year old memory of my grandmother and her yiddish speaking friends what I hear in my head is “Fahklempt”. With an “F”. Not a “V”. An “F” followed by an “ah”… “Fah” not “ver”.. And I definitely hear that “P” before the “T”. Fahklempt. What I so often feel having read the Dish for the day…. :)<." More feedback on the Letters Page.

NRO’s Kathryn Jean-Lopez often exhibits the slightly paranoid strain of theoconservatism. “It’s About Time,” she harrumphs at Time’s pick for Person of the Year. And then implies that Time got its liberal kicks with an odd photo on its website. Huh? Time picked George W. Bush for POY back in 2000 as well. They could easily have gone with Rove alone, or even together. I agree with their pick. But the only president to have beaten Bush is FDR, with three picks. Chill.

One more time: the data doesn’t support the notion that banning marriages and civil unions for gay couples made any difference at all in Bush’s victory. Money quote:

In states that voted on the gay-marriage ban, Bush increased his vote share from 53.33% in the 2000 election to 54.17% in the election just past. That’s an increase of 0.84%. In states where gay-marriage bans were not on the ballot, Bush increased his vote share from 48.82% to 50.78%. That’s an increase of 1.96%. Bush’s vote share rose more than twice as much in states where voters didn’t have a chance to ban gay marriages.

Rove’s smart enough to know this.

Mike’s encounter with the new world of the collective blog-brain can be read here. Thanks for helping. I particularly admire this observation:

What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to the editor. What we don’t get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement — mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession — with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.

Yep. You guys are the real stars of the blogosphere – the interlocutors and readers and writers who were once consigned to relative silence, but now have a medium all your own. The bloggers are conduits, forums, niches, designed to unleash the broader wisdom of the online crowds. That’s one reason a Hayek-Oakeshott Tory like me loves the blogosphere so much. Not so much spontaneous order as the endless pursuit of a million intimations – a constant conversation, with peaks and lulls, discourtesies and jokes, outbursts and rants, meditations and quips, and all going nowhere in particular. And in the end, some truths do emerge, if you have the balls to acknowledge them. It’s the purest form of democratic discussion yet devised. It’s a big fucking deal. But if you’re reading this, you probably know that.

ALI’S BOMBSHELL: Ali quits the Iraq The Model blog, with dark warnings about his shift of political agenda:

My stand regarding America has never changed. I still love America and feel grateful to all those who helped us get our freedom and are still helping us establishing democracy in our country. But it’s the act of some Americans that made me feel I’m on the wrong side here. I will expose these people in public very soon and I won’t lack the mean to do this, but I won’t do it here as this is not my blog.

Troubling. But having spent the last few days immersed in the various official government reports on the conduct of some U.S. personnel in Iraq, I cannot say I’m terribly surprised.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This is the disheartening tale of a noble people ignobly led. The Administration is both author and protagonist of that tale, and to the Administraiton must be read this indictment and this prophesy:
You have deceived once: now you must deceive again, for to tell the truth would be to admit having deceived. If your better judgment leads you near the road of rational policy, your critics will raise the ghost of your own deception, convict you out of your own mouth as appeaser and traitor, and stop you in your tracks…” – a critic of George W. Bush? Nope. Oxblog reveals the author.

Very sorry to hear of Michael Gerson’s health problem. He’s a wonderful person, principled, eloquent and sincere – one of the president’s greatest assets and one of the best presidential speech-writers of modern times. Here’s hoping he’ll be fine soon enough. God bless.

Are they in cahoots on Rummy? Josh has a sliver of evidence.

When I get concerned at widespread public acquiescence in the military’s use of abuse and torture in the war on terror, I have to remind myself how many Americans really feel about the war we’re in. This poll should relieve us of any lingering illusions:

The survey found 44% favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way. The survey showed that 27% of respondents supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29% thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising. Cornell student researchers questioned 715 people in the nationwide telephone poll conducted this fall. The margin of error was 3.6 percentage points.

Michelle Malkin isn’t alone. And these beliefs were held most strongly by those with strong Christian belief. What version of the Gospels are they reading?

THE PRINCE AND ISLAM: Prince Charles has been doing his small bit to encourage inter-faith dialogue and discourse. He is unfairly maligned in my opinion. His recent effort has been to encourage Muslims not to execute apostates. Now this was a small aspect of political I slam I was actually unaware of. If you’re a Muslim convert to Christianity in many Islamic states, you can be executed? In rpivate discussions with British Muslim groups, Charles was told essentially to stay mum:

It is understood that the Muslim group, which included the Islamic scholar Zaki Badawi, cautioned the prince and other non-Muslims against speaking publicly on the issue. It argued that Islamic moderates could have more influence on the traditional position if the debate remained largely internal. A member of the Christian group said yesterday that he was “very, very unhappy” about the outcome.

Isn’t freedom of religion something we should insist upon in Iraq?

MISC: It turns out that the correct spelling is “verklemmt” …

if you spell it the German way, which I think most people would. The Yenta character on Saturday Night Live used the word as if it were Yiddish, but it’s not–it’s high German for “overwrought”–it just sounds Yiddish and funny to the English ear.

And, in our continuing series of corrections to obscure ’80s album titles, the group was Missing Persons, the album title was “Spring Session M”, and the song was “Walking in L.A.” Yes, we care about accuracy here.

ALL-TIME MALKIN AWARD NOSTALGIC ENTRY: How could we forget the classic Pat Robertson fund-raising pitch:

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Now, that’s how it’s done, ladies and gentlemen.

“There is no theocracy in the United States, and we remain one of the freest and most open countries in the globe; but what happens when the party that once promised to guard this freedom transforms into its detractor? In the late 1990s Bill Clinton shifted domestic politics to the right BECAUSE he was a Democrat (and could). What happens when the party of the right leans away from the defense of liberty and toward the despicable martial art of book burning?” – John Coleman, a self-declared member of the religious right, worried about what is happening to conservatism.