Month: November 2006

Devo’s "Whip It." No idea what’s going on. But the song’s a classic. And those hats …

Click here to see the other entries…

A self-respecting African-American writes:

"We do not need protection.

There is not one individual on this planet who can make a black into a n***er. We can only do that to ourselves. Yet aided and abetted by fear of the right and largess from the left some are all too happy to be accomplices in their own demise.

This is where gays got it right. There was a time when queer was a harsh pejorative for homosexual. But instead of trying to force people into using convoluted phrases such as "the Q-word," they embraced the word queer. Gays stole it from their enemies, waved it like a captured war flag which they then strung from the standards of pop culture: Queer as Folk. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. By flogging it endlessly they took away its intended sting. So, then, go on and call a gay queer. At worst they will laugh and shake their heads. At the least they may say: "yes, thanks."

Acceptance of the word does not end homophobia. It does not stop the hate mongers from trying to inject bigotry into the Constitution. However, unlike some in the black community, upon mention of the once dreaded word gays will not drop into a fit of histrionics.

Of course, by bowdlerizing the word, I do what the writer wishes I didn’t. But I’m not black; and that word is too toxic for me. As for the q-word, I can understand the idea behind coopting it. But it doesn’t coopt me. I prefer to think of myself as a fag.

The more I think about it, the more this seems to me to be a huge issue. If Republicans want to rescue conservatism from its corrupt image, they might follow Ronald Reagan’s advice and tackle it. This last election saw only a few seats change hands. Here’s some hard data on the House:

In five midterm elections since World War II – in 1946, 1958, 1966, 1974 and 1994 – the president’s party lost more seats in the House than the GOP did this year. The losses in two midterm years were comparable to this year’s, while in eight they were smaller. On the Senate side, the president’s party lost more seats four times, the same number once and fewer seats 10 times.

The most common comparison to 2006 is 1994, the year of the last "wave" election, when the GOP picked up 55 House seats, nine Senate seats and control of both houses. But political scientists are divided on whether 2006 stacks up to 1994.

Judging by the number of seats gained, 2006 clearly does not, but other figures suggest it does. The average vote received by the Democratic candidate in the nation’s 435 congressional districts was 55 percent this year, compared with 51.6 percent for Republicans in 1994, according to Andrew Gelman, a professor at Columbia University.

That should surely have translated into a landslide victory. It didn’t because of gerry-mandering. Much of it has recently been done by the GOP, but the Democrats have been complicit in the past as well. With that in mind, here’s a bleg. What can feasibly be done about it? Or is the entire system too complicated to be fixable?

A reader writes:

I’m curious how your HIV status has affected your philosophical development; perhaps you‚Äôve addressed this elsewhere. Your mention of it in your book made me remember how my HIV diagnosis changed my perception of religious conservatives.

When my new partner and I decided to get tested in 1990, I went to our campus health clinic and was shunted to a small office containing a severe-looking grandmotherly counselor. She was obviously uncomfortable with the topic, the procedure and openly gay men, and I was uncomfortable with her prominent crucifix necklace and Jesus-themed knickknacks on her desk. She drew blood and gave me the perfunctory lecture on safe sex, and sent me away to await the results. Ten days later, I sat down with her to open the lab report.  It was negative, she said (as I expected). She then gave me another perfunctory admonition about safe sex, while I was imagining she wanted to tell me that I had narrowly escaped God‚Äôs wrath. I went home to await my parter to share the good news. 

About an hour later, I got a frantic call from the counselor; she insisted that I come back over to her office that minute, and that she couldn’t tell me why over the phone. It was past closing time at the clinic, but the doors were still open, and she was seated in her office. She was holding my lab report, and her hands were shaking and she had been crying. She had misread my report; she had never had a positive patient before, and she had mistakenly sent me off thinking I was negative, and now had to call me back and tell me the mistake. She tried to explain her error, but broke down sobbing. So there I was, in the first few minutes of HIV+ life, and my first task was to hug and console and administer Kleenex to this chubby, sobbing, crucifixed heterosexual. I assured her I was going to be fine, and that it was a simple mistake and it was her first time, and soon we were both hugging and sobbing and pulling Kleenex. A doctor hovering outside finally knocked on the door and asked if we were ok, and she called out "Yes, I think I’m going to make it".

In many ways, my session with her was a real gift. At that moment, it made me realize that I just might have prejudged this woman, and perhaps she truly was concerned for me, and that perhaps I was the bigot. It also forced me to realize that being HIV+ didn’t give me even a temporary license to wallow in my own problems and ignore others. Somehow, being prodded at that moment to care for this stranger and comfort her was the best therapy possible.

I ran into this woman about three weeks later at the checkout counter in the drug store. We were both a little uncomfortable, and I watched her reaction as she looked down and saw the box of condoms in my hand. She smiled and gave my arm a little squeeze and said, "You two be careful, now".

I still think Ratzinger might be beyond redemption, though.

A psychological analysis of "reaction formation."

A reader writes:

I read with great fascination and a great deal more frustration of Fr. Neuhaus’ erroneous perception that we gay Americans are not part of, nor do we live in, America. I am a 59 year old gay man who lives with his 62 year old partner in one of the largest retirement communities in Arizona. I can assure Fr. Neuhaus that we are everywhere. Our circle of friends can easily muster 50 or 60 gay men and women for a friendly get together. That is without ever breaking a sweat!  Give us more time and we could just overwhelm Fr. Neuhaus with our numbers. 

Among our friends we are the newly partnered having been together only nine years. Most of our friends have been together for more than 20 years and one couple recently celebrated 52 years together. We represent retirees from many different businesses, professions and areas of the country. We recently lost a dear friend unexpectedly at the age of 56. He and his partner were together for over 27 years. There were over 300 people, gay and straight, at his funeral. We continue to care about and care for each other. Yes Dr. Neuhaus, this is America!

Off to a terrible start.

"When Tom [DeLay] and his bunch first ran, they campaigned against the cesspool in Washington. After a while they looked around and said, ‘Hey, this isn’t a cesspool, it’s a hot tub,’" – Richard Viguerie, conservative bomb-thrower.

It’s a good question and while I do not agree with everything in this essay by Austin W. Bramwell, there’s meat on its bones. Money quote:

After 9/11, neoconservatives championed any war that we waged in reaction. In this, they were acting opportunistically but not hypocritically: in their view, 9/11 is what happens when the United States suffers any challenges to its authority. The rest of the movement knew only that it wanted a ruthless response. Neoconservatism just happened to provide a convenient ideological infrastructure with which to justify metonymic revenge against some Muslim Arab or other. Before 9/11, the movement was praising modesty in foreign affairs; after 9/11, it did not so much embrace neoconservatism as blunder into it by accident…

What they need is analysis: the skeptical tradition extending from Machiavelli to Hobbes, Hamilton, and Burnham that seeks to understand the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be. 

Sound familiar? Bramwell wisely decides that the "conservative movement" is now dead. Conservatism as a philosophy and as a tradition is not, however, dead. How the one comes to reconcile with the other is the question now before us.

A reader writes:

Your Sunday Times column "That way, son" was on point. Only Shakespeare could have done this story justice. If Clinton was a comedy, W. is, clearly, a tragedy. And you’re right – that Wednesday after the election was W’s lowest moment:

"The moment of discovery or ‘anagnorisis’, which comes at the end of the tragic plot, is not simply the knowledge by the hero of what has happened to him . . . but the recognition of the determined shape of the life he has created for himself, with an implicit comparison with the uncreated potential life he has forsaken." – Northrop Frye, "The Mythos of Autumn: Tragedy", page 128.

I could not but reflect, however, on the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqi lives – not to mention our own troops – lost to fuel this family psychodrama. And I wonder when we as a nation will experience our anagnorisis.

This last election was it. Now we have to deal with the wreckage, good and bad.