Month: March 2010

Larison piles dirt atop the coffin of the "special relationship":

Had Britain under Blair not become a lockstep supporter of Washington’s line on anti-terrorism, nonproliferation and regime change, and if Washington had therefore not had the fig leaf of British support and the political capital that came from Blair’s endorsement of the invasion, it is remotely possible that the invasion might never have taken place.

Regardless, it would have been entirely appropriate for Britain to have refused to participate in the war, as Britain’s role and its interests in the region are not identical to the U.S. role and interests as Washington understands them. What’s more, had Britain assumed the role of a critic and opponent of the invasion, that could have lent considerable weight to the antiwar case.

Britain would have been doing America a far greater favor by working to prevent our government from making a terrible blunder in 2003.

I think David Brooks gets this totally right this morning:

Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

As he notes, this isn't just sermonizing; we have reams of data to back this up. And that is why the right to marry has long been understood as integral to the promise embedded in the Declaration of Independence that all of us have the right to the pursuit of happiness.

One question: how many heterosexuals would believe they had the right to the pursuit of happiness, as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, if that right did not include the freedom to marry the person you love?

Now imagine the government actively prevents you from marrying the one you love, and having the stability and support and love and friendship that make life worth living? David gets this, which is why he supports marriage equality. But I'm not sure everyone else does. I remain with Hannah Arendt:

"The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."

(Photo: David McNew/Getty.)

Tom McNichol notes the parallels.

A reader writes:

One likely result of Iceland’s banning of stripping along with prostitution is that it will push these activities underground.  And underground strip clubs likely offer sex as well, because if both are illegal, the line between stripping and prostitution becomes blurred. Then of course the women participating will be far more likely to become victims of violence, STDs, etc. While I’m sure Icelanders would like to believe they are a more enlightened species who are making a wonderful stand for feminism, in the end I’m quite certain this will make life worse for more women than it helps.

Miriam at Feministing builds on that point:

A feminist victory, in my opinion, would be a highly regulated industry that made sure dancer’s rights were protected. One where workers were paid good wages, were able to unionize, had full benefits, were able to set boundaries with customers and have those boundaries protected. One that ensured that these immigrant women were not being brought to Iceland against their will. A feminist victory would mean access to jobs and economic opportunity that meant women had options other than strip clubs and sex work if they so chose.

Another reader writes:

The commentary around strip club bans in Iceland does neglect some of the local facts.  I visited  in August and learned a bit about the subject from our guide.

It came up after we went out in downtown Reykjavik. Two Icelandic guys drove their black-tinted window SUV partially up onto the sidewalk, got out with beers in hand, and swaggered into a club.  Naturally, we followed the mini-gangsters inside.  It turned out to be a lingerie dancing club –  a strip club minus the stripping.  The dancers were mostly central European or other foreigners.  There was no stripping, but it did seem as if there were private rooms with all that entails.

When we asked the next day we found out that strip clubs were outlawed in Reykjavik and there was only one real strip club in the country.  They were allowed in Kópavogur, a town next to Reykjavik, and Goldfinger, the one strip club there, enjoyed the frequent patronage of their controversial mayor.  There were investigations into nepotism that eventually forced that mayor to resign.  The way our guide talked about it, the mayor hung out at the strip club passing out funds to his friends and family.  Our guide didn’t know if Icelandic women stripped in the club, but he had heard it was a pretty big attraction for the weekend party tours from London and other parts of northern Europe.

It seems from the reporting that the lingerie clubs will stay open and it’s really only Goldfinger that’s affected. So there may be underlying reasons that the bill was passed that are different from protecting the dignity of women – no matter what spin the legislation is given.

What lies beneath your beard? Moving beardology forwards … And what might come from this knowledge with respect to continuing brutal discrimination against bearded-Americans? I'm working on the full-Tsar Nicholas beardage for the summer.

"It fell to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to play the role Khrushchev once played in toughening a young American president. The former Soviet leader thought he could browbeat Kennedy only to discover, in Vienna, that the Kennedy charm was not unalloyed to steel (“It will be a long, cold winter.”) Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to think he could steamroll Obama. He earned a frosty comeuppance," – Roger Cohen.

David Clohessy the director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, doesn't want Benedict to quit but to "disclose the records of the hundreds of predator priests he dealt with during the years he headed the Vatican agency charged with this sorry chore":

Benedict's resignation, at this point especially, would foster the tempting but naive view that change is happening. It would not address the deeply rooted, unhealthy, systemic dysfunctions that plague any medieval institution that vests virtually all power in a pope who allegedly supervises 5,000 bishops across the planet.

If the pope were to step down, like Cardinal Bernard Law did in Boston, it would create the illusion of reform while decreasing the chances of real reform.

Torshavn, Faroe Islands, 9 am

Priceless taped phone-call. Burps, “nuts” and “bunghole” are involved. This was LBJ, remember. And yes, Chris Matthews, this is partly for you.

Father Thomas Brundage, who oversaw the canonical proceedings against Milwaukee molester Lawrence Murphy, speaks out:

In my interactions with Father Murphy, I got the impression I was dealing with a man who simply did not get it. He was defensive and threatening. Between 1996 and August, 1998, I interviewed, with the help of a qualified interpreter, about a dozen victims of Father Murphy. These were gut-wrenching interviews. In one instance the victim had become a perpetrator himself and had served time in prison for his crimes. I realized that this disease is virulent and was easily transmitted to others. I heard stories of distorted lives, sexualities diminished or expunged. These were the darkest days of my own priesthood, having been ordained less than 10 years at the time.

It’s worth reading the entire thing. His main point is that Murphy died before a trial had been formally suspended (decades after the abuse of deaf children first started). His secondary point (which is well-taken) is that abuse cases were indeed handled more expeditiously and seriously once responsibility for them was shifted to Ratzinger’s CDF. He’s on weaker ground, I think, when he goes after the NYT, which he accuses of misquoting him:

Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying ‘odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people”. Also quoted is this: “Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation.” The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them.

As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct.

Additionally, in the documentation in a letter from Archbishop Weakland to then-secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone on August 19, 1998, Archbishop Weakland stated that he had instructed me to abate the proceedings against Father Murphy. Father Murphy, however, died two days later and the fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this.

Had I been asked to abate this trial, I most certainly would have insisted that an appeal be made to the supreme court of the church, or Pope John Paul II if necessary. That process would have taken months if not longer.

If you can’t access Catholic Anchor, theocon blogger, Damian Thompson has the letter in full here.