Year: 2005

EMAIL OF THE DAY

“I haven’t written before, but I happened to land on your blog and want to make two points:
(1) I went to law school with Julie Myers, and she is an extremely capable, ethical person who would do credit to any agency or organization. I have not seen her in years, but hers is a face from my past that comes to mind when I — a classic gay liberal type — am tempted to stereotype Christian conservatives unfairly. It’s a true Washington coming-of-age experience to see a peer – and a damn good person – caught up in the tough politics of our day. I can’t speak to her experience since law school, but she’s never struck me as the type to court nepotism. I think the suggestion would mortify her – not that she would ever let us see it.
(2) I’m from Biloxi, MS, and my family is in Biloxi and Ocean Springs. They stayed for the hurricane, as they always do because they live on higher ground. They did not see a single state or federal relief worker, or national guard soldier, for four days after Katrina. They didn’t need relief help, but they were by far in the minority in that regard, and they sure would have appreciated some protection from possible looting. Haley Barbour was as much asleep at the switch as the New Orleans mayor and the President.”

YGLESIAS AWARD NOMINEE

“For the crime of noting that the president’s speech didn’t help his poll numbers, I’m getting battered by e-mailers who suggest, among other things, that I am somehow unmanly because I’m not “supporting” the president enough. I never thought a day would come when I — the author of a book entitled ‘Bush Country: How Dubya Became the First Great Leader of the 21st Century While Driving Liberals Insane’ — would be accused of being a fair-weather supporter of GWB. Let me just try to explain something to my e-mailers. The president gave his speech Thursday night in an effort to reverse the decline in his political fortunes… It appears his effort was unsuccessful, in part (I think) because he sounded like a Big Spender and alienated more Republicans without winning over more Democrats… Bush supporters don’t help him or themselves any by pretending his troubles are all due to the MSM. He has, for the moment, lost the country’s confidence.” – John Podhoretz, National Review Online.

BENEDICT AND A WAR CRIMINAL

It just keeps getting better.

THANKS, WAPO: Welcome, Washington Post readers. Hang out and read as much as you feel like. If you find enough interesting stuff, why not bookmark the page and come back often? And thanks, WaPo, for this experiment. Ironic, isn’t it, that the day the NYT shuts its opinion pages off from free access, the WP actually opens its doors to independent bloggers? By the way, I subscribe to the NYT on deadwood. So I went to TimesSelect to be able to read the sequestered stuff online for free. But I don’t know my “Home Delivery User ID” and I have no idea what my password is. Can I be bothered to call the toll-free number for internet access to Paul Krugman? Nah. Screw ’em.

MY HUSBAND, THE CATHOLIC

An emailer writes:

“I’m biased of course, but I know my partner, Gustavo, is a truly wonderful person. He is one of those people who truly don’t have a malicious or bad bone in their body. He emanates a gentleness, a caring and a sweetness which is quite rare, and virtually everyone we know, even just simple acquaintances comment on this very soon after meeting him.

As such he is a truly wonderful doctor, with an overflowing practice. He practices psychiatry, and his patients come from every background in our lovely City of Angels – Jews and Catholics, Asians and WASPS, everybody. They all love my husband! From an immigrant Mexican family, with 2nd grade educations, he worked his butt off at school, managing to get 4.0 GPAs, won scholarships to UCLA, and eventually made it to medical school, against all odds.

He has told me many times that his faith got him through all of this. He was born in the US but spent the first few years of his life back in Mexico, where his grandmother took him to the small Catholic church in their village every single day. He treasures those memories.

He believes deeply, and he was in fact a priests’ assistant, and seriously considered the priesthood. His love for his religion is great, and so many of his beautiful qualities were supported and enhanced by the teaching of the Catholic Church. He is all good, my man, and I treasure him.

After the death of John Paul, we were at a dinner party with another gay couple, and he got very angry when they started making derogatory comments about the pope’s treatment of homosexuality. Now, with Benedict, he is going through a slow mourning as he realizes that he is slowly losing his religion, or rather I would say, his religion is losing him quite rapidly. What a terrible loss for Catholicism to lose people like Gustavo, who are so much children of God. Strangely, I have grown closer to my own Jewish faith in the eight years of our relationship, because faith was always such a beautiful, wonderful thing for Gustavo, and he helped me overcome my own cynicism.

And so Benedict, supposedly a man of God, pushes away good people from this church. I have no doubt in my mind that what Benedict is doing now is a crime, a crime against God. If this were discrimination against Jews or blacks or any other group, it would be classed as fascist bigotry, and eventually the perpetrator would be brought to task by society in an appropriate way and exiled from their institution. Pope Benedict cannot get away from this crime against humanity. Whatever his or others’ personal views against homosexuality, to discrimate against a group in an institutional form is apartheid, is Nazism, is fascism, and nothing less.”

A pope dedicated to demonizing and excluding people from the unconditional love of God? It beggars belief.

YGLESIAS AWARD NOMINEE: “Both political parties are now willing and eager to spend tax dollars as if they were passing out goody-bags to grabby four-year-olds at a birthday party. The Democrats are already forging their 2006 and 2008 message: We will spend just as many trillions of dollars as Republicans, but we will spend them better than they do. After witnessing the first few Republican misappropriations for Hurricane Katrina, the Democrats may very well be right.” – Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal, today.

(The Yglesias Award is given to individuals brave enough to tell their own political side some uncomfortable truths)