Month: October 2007

Well, if I end up having to pick between the small man in search of a balcony and Nixon in a pant-suit, I’d go for Colbert myself. So, it seems, does everyone younger then me:

In the match-up with Giuliani and Clinton, Colbert draws 28% of likely voters aged 18-29. He draws 31% of that cohort when his foes are Thompson and Clinton. In both match-ups, Colbert has more support with young voters than the GOP candidate.

Larry Craig was an innocent. This photograph is one of a series:

Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photographs of Japanese having sex at night in Tokyo’s public parks, which ran at the Yossi Milo gallery in New York and now moves to the Doug Udell gallery in Vancouver on November 22, are revelatory in much the same way. They would simply be tawdry and exploitive if they weren’t also, like the Craig saga, so odd and funny. The behavior they record has to my knowledge never been recorded before on film. In an essay that accompanies a reissue of The Park, the long out of print book that for most people has been the only source until now about Yoshiyuki and his work, the critic, Vince Aletti, calls them "among the strangest photographs ever made".

Taken between 1971 – 1979 at a time when sex all over the world was more crazy-casual than it is now, the pictures show both straights and gays getting their rocks off under trees and on the bare ground.

Yoshiyuki shot with infrared film and a discreet electronic flash so that he himself was all but invisible. The figures loom in the foreground as bright smears, their limbs entangled and eyes glowing monster-like from the tiny explosions of light. Faint traces of the city can be seen in the distance in a few pictures. But civilisation is for the most part beyond the frame, as black night swallows the actors in primeval darkness.

(Hat tip: 3QD.)

He places a call to Hillary Clinton’s de facto gay campaign chair and tries to head off the flap over an anti-gay Gospel singer on a campaign tour. The gesture is adding an openly gay singer to the tour as well. A workable compromise. I don’t know how McClurkin got invited. A staffer should have done due diligence and avoided the pick. But I can’t say I find this a big deal, and Clinton’s gay surrogates, i.e. HRC, have made hay out of it. That’s politics, of course, and Obama needs to get better at it.

That’s Chris Edwards’ view:

I managed to get through the introduction and first chapter of Mr. Chait’s book. Alas, I could read no more. Here are some of Chait’s characterizations of supply-side economists and supply-side economics–from the 1970s to the present day–in those first 44 pages:

“Pseudo-economists”, “cult of fanatical tax-cutters”, “amateurs and cranks”, “patently ludicrous ideas”, “preposterous ideas”, “theological opposition to taxation”, “ideological fanatics”, “insane”, “detachment from reality”, “extremism of their agenda”, “triumph of the extreme”, “a cult”, “quasi-religious”, “totalistic ideology”, “crank doctrine”, “sheer monomania”, “plain loopy”, “magical”, “sheer loons”, “deranged”, “wingnuttery”, “utterly deluded”, “crackpot economic theories”, “lunacy”, “ludicrous,” etc.

You get the idea.

Chait is a brutal polemicist at times. But accusing him of being on the same plane as Coulter is beyond the pale.

The blogosphere keeps producing new ideas, new writers, new amateurs who do it better than many professionals. Here’s an appreciation for a blog devoted merely to the images and art found within an on books:

One of the most significant things to be learned from BibliOdyssey is how the Internet can open astonishing new worlds to anyone. Paul has no background in the visual arts (his résumé mentions experience in nursing, biochemistry, the insurance business, and teaching English as a second language, but no design background). Wide-ranging curiosity and a natural gift for spotting memorable art, combined with the modern miracle that lets us search archives around the globe, have made possible something as engaging as this site.

The man behind the screen isn’t reaping any financial gain from his work, other than some advertising revenue. He calls the site his "online manifestation of a personal midlife crisis," joking that it’s an obsessive hobby that "keeps me off the streets." His Web browsing is never topic based; the primary goal is just to find what he considers "artistically viable" images that catch his eye and appear in enough numbers to merit a post. "I can react to something if it’s bizarre or elegant or gorgeous or smart," he says. "But I can — and very often do — find beauty or interest in the minutiae: the technical virtuosity of an engraving or the possible meanings of some motif in an allegorical picture, or simply the exquisite beauty of a particular color. I like obscure and weird, certainly — images that are often less well known — but, like everyone, I have a wide potential for visual interest."

And now: a book!

The seas are unable to absorb all the carbon dioxide we’re producing:

The study’s lead author, Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, explained "Fifty years ago, for every tonne of CO2 emitted, 600 kg were removed by natural sinks. In 2006 only 550 kg were removed per tonne and that amount is falling. In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slow down of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in carbon intensity."…

"There are regional differences in the efficiency of natural sinks. Half of decline in the efficiency of the ocean sink is due to the intensification and poleward movement of the westerly winds in the Southern ocean", said contributing author Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia.

Worried:

Did Mukasey mean that the Constitution authorized the president to ignore FISA’s warrant requirements, as his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, argued? No matter how many times he was asked, Mukasey wouldn’t say, instead retreating to the lame argument that Congress, without realizing it, amended FISA by authorizing the use of military force against the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks.

Even as the administration continues to insist that the NSA’s warrantless surveillance was legal, it is pressing Congress to give the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the program retroactive legal immunity. Immunity for what? For assisting the government with its perfectly lawful surveillance?

Clearly, Bush wants to give these companies a free pass for breaking the law in the name of national security. They shouldn’t get one, and neither should he.

Washington, DC, 4.30 pm.

A reader writes me a wrenching email. Money quote:

I don’t know if you realize how terrifically murky the waters are for well-meaning Christians these days—how to speak the truth in love, when the media increasingly defines our truth as hate. I’m sure I’ll be confronted with many more outings in the future, and I’m sure some will respect my beliefs and others will brand me a bigot. But if "bigotry" is the price to pay, then I will have to pay it, because the cost of abandoning my principles is incalculable.

The question for me is: what principles? If it’s the principle of Biblical inerrancy, then it requires an explanation for any number of other questions that so many evangelicals seem indifferent toward. If it’s the principle of natural law, then I make my case in the first chapter of Virtually Normal. But I understand that some evangelicals really do want to maintain legal proscriptions against gay relationships, while affecting tolerance in everyday life. Does that make them "bigots"? Not all of them, I’d say. Just reasons for us gay people to explain ourselves a lot better. Anyway, here’s the full email:

Recently, one of my friends from a foreign culture came out to me. Even though he’d talked about dating women before, I’d long suspected he was gay. So after I feigned surprise for a few moments, he then asked a series of questions: “Does this mean we can’t be friends? Can we still sit next to each other at the movies? Is this awkward for you?” etc.,

He admitted that I was the first, straight American male he’d come out to, and he was completely oblivious to our culture’s protocol on straight/gay same-sex friendships.

I assured him as vociferously as possible that our friendship was still intact and strong, and that, yes, of course, we could go to the movies together. “I worked at an art gallery on Market Street in San Francisco”, I told him and then we laughed.

What made the exchange more poignant is the fact that I’m an evangelical Christian who believes homosexuality is wrong. He knew I was an evangelical Christian, and for some reason, chose to test the waters of tolerance with me. Later, I was on the phone with my sister—a Christianist if ever there was one—I told her the story, and she immediately asked if I’d told him homosexuality was wrong   

“Of course not,” I answered, “Do you think, at one of the most difficult moments in his life, I was going to turn it into a nightmare?” I stood squarely for my friend and against my sister.

And yet, my conscience neither condemned nor condoned me for not speaking out.

This is the dilemma for many evangelical Christians. We are passionate about Biblical inerrancy and strongly believe Revelation when it says that those who practice homosexual behavior will not be allowed into heaven. And yet we are also (some of us, anyway) passionate about “speaking the truth in love.” For us, the Bible is the Truth and from that standard everything flows.

You yourself, obviously, have a moral set of values that informs everything you believe—from your passion against torture to your passion for individual freedom—and we also have a moral set of values that we cannot abandon or else we will have compromised our metric for truth. Many of your conservative friends have no doubt pressured you to accept or tolerate “advanced interrogation techniques”; no doubt, you’ve considered some of the moral ambiguities surrounding these techniques, because while the techniques themselves may not be ambiguous, the context in which they’re used and the purpose for which they’re constructed may sometimes cast a pall of uncertainty.

And yet, against this, you have stood firm and unwavering in your fundamental, moral conviction that torture of any ilk is wrong. Some would likely accuse you of sacrificing our lives for the lives of admitted killers. Some would accuse you of being un-American. And with each accusation, you likely bristle—I’m passionate about America to a fault, I’m passionate about security, about preserving innocent lives. And while you might be tempted to compromise, you cannot.

We evangelical Christians are in a similar position. Every time we condemn homosexual behavior, liberal elites accuse us of desecrating the spirit of the very one to whom we claim fealty. Christ was loving, tolerant and open! They would say. Yes, but Christ also said he came to bring division and that he would pit brother against brother. Christ was both loving and firm in conviction, and as followers of Christ we’re to imitate his example.

That is why it’s difficult for me to know how to respond to my friend who outed himself. I want to love him purely without compromising my moral imperative to speak the truth. And in a media climate that is increasingly equating tolerance with promotion, it has become very difficult for evangelical Christians to tolerate without appearing hateful.

I’m for gay marriage, I’m for gay rights, I have many gay friends and bristle when my Christianist friends mention “They were gay, but really nice” or “He is gay, but seems like a great guy”, as if homosexuality is somehow incompatible with any other virtue.

But I cannot keep from standing on the ground to which my morals are attached. And so, on some distant day, once my friend has realized I still love and care for him, I will also have to tell him what my religious beliefs dictate concerning homosexual behavior. To stay silent would be to live as morally compromised a lie as those who choose not to come out of the closet.

I don’t know if you realize how terrifically murky the waters are for well-meaning Christians these days—how to speak the truth in love, when the media increasingly defines our truth as hate. I’m sure I’ll be confronted with many more outings in the future, and I’m sure some will respect my beliefs and others will brand me a bigot. But if "bigotry" is the price to pay, then I will have to pay it, because the cost of abandoning my principles is incalculable.