Year: 2005

A case for lengthy wars.

THE BUYING OF INTELLECTUALS: This has to be a new nadir for the intellectual right.

The control-queen in the Vatican continues his harrassment of local churches who do not subject themselves to the full control of his acolytes. Excommunication is a major deal. And to do it over the question of controlling a parish’s finances?

You may have read the original Catholic News Service Review I linked to yesterday. Well, the Vatican was not pleased. And so the review has been changed. The rating given originally was “L” for “appropriate for limited adult audiences”. The new rating is “O” for morally offensive. The reviewer’s name has been taken off the review. The theocon website, a conduit for the most reactionary forces in the Church, i.e. Benedict, Neuhaus, et al., exults here. Here’s the old cache for the intellectually honest review. Here’s the censored one.

THE VATICAN AND BROKEBACK: You can see why this movie may pose a threat to Benedict’s anti-gay crusade. I haven’t seen it yet, alas, but just read the gut-wrenching and beautiful short story on which it’s based. It’s an astonishingly beautiful piece of writing. The story is about love: human love. Not homosexual love; or heterosexual love. Just love. And the immense psychic pain and cruelty inflicted on countless human beings for so many centuries because of whom they fell in love with. I haven’t seen the movie yet, because it hasn’t reached DC yet. But the story’s message is, to my mind, one of the more eloquent rebukes to the current Vatican. You know, the Vatican that speaks, at its most compassionate, of the “affliction” of “deep-seated homosexual tendencies.” Change one word and you see the truth the Church hierarchy refuses to see. How about “deep-seated homosexual love?” In Annie Proulx’s inspired story, that becomes something deeper and grander: “deep-seated human love.” That’s what the Pope is so afraid of. And why, in the end, he will lose this argument. Love and truth are on the other side of the debate. And our Catholic faith assures us that love and truth win in the end. Popes come and go; but the truth remains. And slowly, painfully, the truth is coming nout.

IS BUSH ABOVE THE LAW? It would appear so.

Last week, my other half and I rented the original King Kong, just to get a feel for the epic before Peter Jackson’s remake. The original was far better than I expected and heralded the beginning of Hollywood spectaculars and special effects. We saw Jackson’s Kong yesterday, and I have little doubt that the gloom-sayers about its box office prospects are wrong. It’s an astounding achievement of cinematography: more graphic, involving, spectacular and emotionally resonant than any movie of its kind ever made before. I’m not a huge fan of the big epics, or even CGI-dominated event movies. But this is different. Naomi Watts is gorgeous and vulnerable and credible; Jack Black is wonderfully, enthusiastically amoral; the beast itself a miracle of emotional expression without anthopomorphic distortion. It’s a tour de force. I predict that word of mouth will soon propel it to box office success. But then, I’m often wrong about these things.

“Is Reynolds kidding? Being unspecific is his entire M.O. His blog consists of little but broad agreements with the opinions of others (“indeed”) and vague endorsements of Rove and Bush-isms written in a passive voice (“if I were Rove I might not do ____”)
If anything, you’ve been irritatingly SPECIFIC on this subject, quoting endlessly from reports on torture, the McCain bill, etc.
I think you need to inaugurate the ‘Glenn Reynolds Unintentional Irony Award.'”

Heh.

Instapundit finds me “consistently, pompously, and annoyingly moralistic and irritatingly unspecific” on the question of torture. I’m sorry about that. But I can promise him my position had nothing to do with “brand differentiation,” as he calls it. Believe it or not, opposing torture was and is a deep principle of mine, sincerely held, and I think the record shows I blog according to what I think, even if it loses me readers and alienates people who would otherwise be allies. I’m sorry that Glenn, over the last year and half, said he opposed torture but did nothing to help stop it. In fact, he did much to excuse and ignore it or look the other way, as well as denigrating or condescending to those of us who fought against it. He even argued that vocally opposing torture would only help legalize it, because most Americans were in favor. Mercifully, the American people, as represented in the Congress, have proven him wrong. He lacked faith in American decency. Some of us didn’t.

FOR THE RECORD: And just for the record, let me correct one statment that Glenn has posted about my work on this issue. He has written that I “count” wrapping a Muslim in the Israeli flag or smearing fake menstrual blood on them “as torture,” and recently went further and cited my alleged “repeated treatment of those subjects as ‘torture.'” (My italics.) His evidence is the following sentence:

A simple question: after U.S. interrogators have tortured over two dozen detainees to death, after they have wrapped one in an Israeli flag, after they have smeared naked detainees with fake menstrual blood, after they have told one detainee to “Fuck Allah,” after they have ordered detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head, is it completely beyond credibility that they would also have desecrated the Koran?

It seems clear to me that in that sentence, I distinguish between torture (which I use to describe actual murder) and other interrogation methods which are indeed “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” but not torture. All are banned under U.S. law and military code and the Geneva Conventions. But obviously, someone uttering “Fuck Allah!” – however depraved – is not torture, and I didn’t suggest it was. Ditto with the “fake menstrual blood” issue. Reynolds links to James Taranto’s ugly rants to back him up. Well go read the full evidence. Find one instance where I count fake menstrual blood as “torture,” let alone any “repeated treatment of those subjects as ‘torture.'” Even Taranto concedes I didn’t call it “torture.” He says I called it an “abuse” and described such tactics as “inhumane,” “immoral” and “disgusting”. I challenge Reynolds to cite one single instance where I “counted” such techniques as “torture.” It’s one more piece of flim-flam from the good professor to disguise his own sad failure to have the courage of his own alleged convictions. Sorry, Glenn. But the record speaks for itself.

A man says farewell to his soldier husband as he heads back to war.

A priest with integrity.

“Neither Per nor I is as scandalized as NPR apparently is [by allegations of voter fraud in Kurdistan]. The elections here went off without a hitch. No bombs. No violence at all. Quiet. As orderly as things get in Iraq. And, man, were the Kurds ever thrilled to vote. Per told me that in one rural village outside Erbil, info on registration procedures never got out, and hundreds of villagers were turned away from the poll. They were devastated. Democracy is life to these people — or, as one Kurdish Christian named Jacob told me: “Democracy is the best religion for mankind.” He meant that, and most Kurds agree with him. There will always be fraud and corruption in Iraq. (In one desperate moment, a cabbie here charged me 1000 times the normal rate for a short trip!) Nevertheless, these elections have been a resounding success.” – Noah Schachtman, blogging from Kurdistan.

Two fascinating and largely positive reviews from the Catholic News Service and Christianity Today. My favorite line from CNS:

While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true.

Hard to summarize better the contradiction at the heart of the Church’s teaching on homosexual dignity.

END OF GAY CULTURE WATCH: Casper, Wyoming, has an openly gay mayor. Zzzzzz.