Month: February 2007

What really happened:

In emails, you occasionally offer up unsolicited demographic info. Here’s one:

My demographics: white, straight, 53, filmmaker, daily reader, former fundie (charismatic, tongues-talking), Hitch fan, parent, disillusioned-beyond-belief-by-Bush (DBBBB), southern (5th generation), libertarian (eagle?), Grateful Dead, smoke pot (am I being redundant?), Imus fan, Dish fan (not mutually exclusive!).

Fine by me. And yes, you’re being redundant.

Another gay couple ties the knot. Here’s the rationale:

"The object of this law is that unions of people of the same sex be legally regulated and recognized, so that they can have some security in their future."

But that means treating them like human beings!

A reader gently corrects:

Defending federalism, you said of Alabama accepting homosexual marriage, "I feel sure they will one day, just as they eventually dropped slavery." Ahem. Alabama did not "drop" slavery. They fought one of the world’s bloodiest wars, with the purpose of enshrining slavery and extending its reach, and they gave up that practice only when they were denied it by an occupying army. There are many arguments for federalism. But slavery is the argument against it. The old south didn’t just come around on the issue of slavery, or later on the issue of civil rights. The south might very well still have slaves today, and if not slaves, an apartheid government, had federal soldiers and federal courts not told it otherwise, first after the Civil War, and a second time, a hundred years later, after the early civil rights decisions.

A reader writes:

That’s no mere drunk frog … that’s the great Serge Gainsbourg, THE drunk frog. An incomparable songwriter, master of suave wit and understatement in performance (excluding his destroyed final days, witnessed in the clip you posted), agent provocateur and shatterer of sexual taboos. I defy anyone to show me another modern musical artist who wove such elegant and original magic out of sleaze and perversity. Okay, fine. Isaac Hayes, in his prime… the black-American, anglophone answer to Gainsbourg’s French, Jewish classy-creep persona.

Heh.

"I do think my judgment is superior to [Cole’s] when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn’t want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let’s make a bet. I predict that Iraq won’t have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I’ll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there’s another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I’m all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc," – Jonah Goldberg, February 8, 2005.

I apologize for missing this a couple of days ago. Jonah wrote last Wednesday that the issue is moot because Cole declined to take the bet. But the underlying issue isn’t moot, is it? Goldberg made the bet to prove that his judgment was superior to Cole’s. As a simple empirical matter, it wasn’t. And the salient fact is not that Jonah got something wrong – we’re all human – but that he isn’t man enough to admit it, and make an accounting.

Update: I missed this accounting. Here it is, for the record. My bad.

Some fashion hints for Saturday night:

A church rebuilds after a tornado destroys it. Some see a cross in the clouds. Slide-show here.

Who are you going to believe? Mark Steyn at 11.18 am on Obama’s foreign policy "experience" or what he wrote at 1.45 pm on Obama’s foreign policy "interest"? C’mon, readers, you gotta keep up.