Month: April 2007

Interesting context:

[Scott J.] Bloch, a devout Catholic, has been under attack for three years in leading the independent investigative agency because of his interpretation of statutes covering workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. He also has been publicly accused of hiring too many Catholics. Clay Johnson, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and another Texan brought to Washington by Bush, joined the attack on Bush-appointee Bloch. The case became a cause celebre on the right when Bloch was told by a prominent Catholic layman close to Bush that it would be better if he just resigned.

Now, the tables are turned, with Bloch investigating the White House.

So it’s payback time? I wonder if Bloch, who has seven children, is in Opus Dei, or close to Novak’s own Opus Dei guru, Father John McCloskey. And I wonder who the "prominent Catholic layman close to Bush" is.

We live in a male-loathing therapeutic culture. But the crudeness of the most common formulations is absurd (and yes, I include MoDo). Masculinity comes in many forms; and it’s a sign of our culture’s weakness that we tend to see it only in terms of violence, machismo, homophobia, disrespect for women, and so on. Hip-hop and the Bush-Cheney administration have more in common on this score than they’d like to think. Maybe gay men can be part of the solution, in developing a culture of masculinity that draws on classical virtue, rather than pop-cultural dreck. Here’s a simple expression of the distinction between toxic masculinity and virtuous manliness. Money quote:

The basic good code of a certain brand of masculinity, as opposed to macho, is that you don’t pick fights, and that you never tolerate the strong bullying the weak. Bullying, in fact, is seen as a declaration of weakness – if you were strong, you wouldn’t be picking fights with weaklings, now would you? And if you were confident, you wouldn’t need to prove anything, would you? Certainly you don’t back down from a fight – but you don’t go looking for it either.

Peter Hitchens – a rabidly right-wing version of his brother – reports:

Remember, this is a country that does have elections and those elections don’t always go according to plan, despite ruthless official rigging. I asked those present if they had supported Ahmadinejad in the presidential poll. All hands but one went up. Would they do so again? No hands went up. By the way, the women dominated this conversation.

On the other hand, we have this.

(Hat tip: Headline Junky.)

… or the War on Drugs. Pick one of the two. Sane terror-fighters in Afghanistan just got reprimanded by the UN. And NATO reversed its policy of winking at the sole source of income many Afghans have.

An alternative to a carbon tax:

One idea put forth by a physicist involved in climate-control discussions would involve bombarding the Arctic stratosphere with specially engineered particles to deflect the sun’s rays, thereby lowering temperatures. Alternatively, a fleet of crop-dusting airplanes could deliver the particles by flying continuously around the Arctic Circle. An astronomer suggested placing a huge fleet of mirrors in orbit to divert solar radiation.

Here’s the Wilson Quarterly essay that gives you the full monty – and the risks and drawbacks as well.

A female blogger asks and uses this tool to figure it out. Try it yourself. I entered several blog posts of mine, and came out as solidly testosteroned every time.

Congress could do it. Here’s how.

An awful, exhausted paleo-liberal idea. And Obama signed up for it. Mickey’s right on this one.

This is what he said two years ago to Bill O’Reilly:

"I’m in favor of civil unions. Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman."

When O’Reilly asked what Giuliani’s response would be to gay couples who think denial of marriage rights is state discrimination, Rudy replied: "That’s why you have civil partnerships. So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union, whatever you want to call it, and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn’t have." That’s exactly the argument that New Hampshire’s legislature and governor have made in passing their civil unions bill. So Rudy supports that, no?

Er:

"Mayor Giuliani believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Domestic partnerships are the appropriate way to ensure that people are treated fairly. In this specific case the law states same sex civil unions are the equivalent of marriage and recognizes same sex unions from outside states. This goes too far and Mayor Giuliani does not support it."

That’s from the New York Sun. So he was in favor of ending the discrimination by civil unions before – and he isn’t now. Romney isn’t the only flip-flopper, is he?

My friend Kevin Sessums has been on one for his heart-rending memoir, "Mississippi Sissy." On his blog, he captures the ineffable exhaustion of book tours, and the guilt-inducing selfishness they provoke, and the numbing isolation they conjure. One snippet rings as true as Kevin’s book:

I thought it would be easy doing a round trip in one day because it was Boston. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I am exhausted and frustrated and close to tears. I sold three books tonight at the store. I paid for this trip myself. My Amazon number is for shit. I feel like I’ve sort of reached my limit in sales – I pray I’m wrong about that – and I’m just treading marketing water now. I hate to sound so down but that’s the way I’m feeling. I live a pretty solitary life but this life-on-the-road has taken the loneliness I often feel and encased it with a meta-loneliness that is becoming increasingly difficult to cope with on a night like this.