Month: May 2010

The Elena Kagan discussion last week has remained in my head, not because the issue is open any more, but because of what it revealed to me about the cocoon I also live in. Like many of us, I inhabit several over-lapping worlds of discourse, friends, family, background, neighborhood, etc. And one of those worlds is the gay one. Being out since my early twenties (a late-comer for today's generation), I've lived very comfortably, joyfully actually, in a gay world – and a straight one – much of my life. In Washington, being able to be part of these two worlds allows me one small but great advantage: I can have as much of a social life as I please without it being largely connected to my work. There are obvious overlaps, of course. You wouldn't believe what you find out on a Thursday night at the Duplex Diner where many plugged-in gay men congregate each week. But there are differences. What is talked about at the Diner stays at the Diner. And I'm a stickler for "off the record" facts in personal and private social settings.

But what's discussed at the Diner cannot help but remain in one's head. So what do you do when you live in both worlds and have a blog that tries to retain a no-bullshit rule of posting? This is a new zone because it has only really existed for a few years, and it is a zone where the conversational honesty of actual discourse interacts with the formal public truths one is ethically required to adhere to, if you're not just to peddle gossip. This was really my problem with the Trig thing.

I was caught between two very powerful impulses: the ethical desire not to say anything untrue or unverifiable and the ethical compulsion I felt to be totally honest with my readers about what I made of the passing scene from day to day. The conflict was so severe in the Palin question I simply decided not to blog for a couple of days while I wrestled with it. I may have been crazy but I wasn't going to bullshit my readers with phony thoughts because they were what I was supposed to think, or should pretend to think because of my reputation. And I could not wait or duck. A columnist can do that; a blogger cannot. To have stopped myself asking of Kagan's orientation would have been, to my mind, something of a rupture of trust between me and Dish readers. It would have erected a barrier between my own thoughts and what I allowed to appear on the blog.

But this where the two worlds collide. What seems like a simple question to me and my friends in a gay setting – "so is she gay?" – has no fraught complications, no element of touching something you never should. And the gay community has been buzzing about this, because it raises so many issues in a culture in transition. But in the straight world, the very asking of the question is deemed a dangerous, invasive, explosive thing. In the straight world, mentioning softball, cigars, and careerism about a single woman is to engage in hideous stereotyping. In the gay world, these stereotypes are totally talked about, cited, joked about and sympathized with. And this makes for a strange eddy as these two cultural forces collide in public discourse. My general position with respect to all this is rather like my mentors at South Park: tell it as you see it. But they have their characters to say what cannot be said. I only have myself.

The straight response in public to this question, in other words, is: "How dare you?"

The gay response in private wherever I have gone is: "Aww, c'mon."

It's between those two worlds that this blog hovers. And sometimes the gulf is simply too wide to handle.

(Cartoon from the wonderful xkcd blog.)

Conor Friedersdorf reports from Greater Phoenix.

Well, it's a free country:

Bristol Palin is hitting the speakers' circuit and will command between $15,000 and $30,000 for each appearance, Palin family attorney Thomas Van Flein said Monday… Bristol Palin, 19, is listed on the speaking group's website as available for conferences, fundraisers, special events and holidays, as well as women's, youth, abstinence and ''pro-life'' programs.

Between $15,000 and $30,000 a pop. Getting knocked up has never been so lucrative. And, according to the Johnston family, it was not an accident:

Levi and Bristol started dating about three years ago. They broke up a few times and there was a lot of jealousy, mostly from Bristol's side, but they always seemed to get back together. Levi was very much in love with Bristol and wanted to, not only marry her, but also start a family. They began actively trying to make a baby way back in late 2007, early 2008.

This was also around the time that Bristol was staying with Sarah's sister Heather Bruce because, according to Mercede, she did not want to leave Levi and move to Juneau with her family. Of course she still saw Levi quite often during this time, and Mercede says that their friends knew that Bristol and Levi were trying to get pregnant and that THIS is why the rumors that Bristol was already pregnant began to circulate in the beginning of 2008. Mercede swears that Bristol was NEVER pregnant before becoming pregnant with Tripp.

An update – via a conference call with Speaker Pelosi. Repealing DADT and passing a federal employment non-discrimination law, both supported by large majorities of Americans, are the issues at hand. Money Pelosi quote:

“I have no intention of losing on either of these.”

Lander, Wyoming, 8.52 am

Garry Wills spares no one in his elegant, brief, historically attuned demolition of the claims of the papacy to infallibility and total control. But I found his reason to remain a Catholic all the more powerful because of the simple honesty with which he confronts the appalling record of child-rape and cover-up that is now obviously a universal facet of absolute corruption in the Vatican:

I am asked, if I believe this, why I remain a Catholic. I do that precisely because I do not equate the people of God with the papacy. Well, I am told, other churches honor the Creed and the Gospel without the burden of a papacy as outdated as the medieval costumes it affects. I want to be at one with Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others; but I want all of these communions to come together, and I cannot do that by renouncing the Catholic membership in such an ecumenical Christianity, saying some churches are better than others.

When the disciples of Jesus came back from their first mission away from him, the apostle John reported, “Master, we saw a man driving out evil in our name, and he was not one of us, we tried to stop him.” Jesus asks why they did that: “No one who does a work of divine power in my name will be able the next moment to speak evil of me” (Mark 9:38-39). All of us who honor his name must come together. When a Catholic tells me—often these days, it is a young woman—that she can no longer put up with the male monarchical Church, I tell her, “Stay with us, we need you. The people of God need you.”

This is the ecumenical case for remaining Catholic. I have to say I didn't see that coming.

Former weapons inspector David Albright finds that the announcement of a nuclear deal "provides no reason to stop negotiating in the Security Council the imposition of sanctions on Iran." Joshua Keating adds:

Iran's apparent cooperation with the new agreement could make it less likely that Russia and China will support tougher sanctions against Iran in the U.N. security council and puts President Barack Obama in the awkward position of potentially rejecting a deal, nearly identical to one he negotiated months earlier.

And Michael Roston thinks he should reject it:

[B]y negotiating a deal with Brazil and Turkey, Iran is using the old tactic of packing the room with more parties, adding to the complexity of the negotiating process down the road. It’s no longer just the UN Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany jawing over Iran’s nuclear program – now we have to deal with political developments in Brazil and Turkey going forward.

Jeffrey Lewis grows weary:

I always feared the fuel swap was a waste of time — it has too many moving parts and doesn’t get at the real problem of clandestine facilities. This scenario is the perfect illustration of that objection; I only wish I had seen it so clearly at the time. The “fuel swap” was intended to delay an Iranian “breakout” capability by a year or so. But Iran can enrich uranium quicker than we can arrange for it to be sent out of the country. After eight months of haggling, Iran has doubled its stockpile of LEU.

Max Fisher rounds up more reaction. My own view is that it is simply impossible for this kind of thing to be controlled by the major powers, let alone merely the US, any more. Ahmadi and Khameini are deploying asymmetrical diplomacy, along with proxy asymmetrical warfare, to great advantage. Short of military invasion and attack – unthinkable in its consequences for a wider global war, Iran will become a nuclear power soon enough. Our task is to figure how to minimize the damage to the region and to the opposition within Iran. I.e. containment. 

(Photo: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty.)

Michelle Cottle sings the praises of "jungle primaries".

"If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism," – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, address to Harvard, 1978.

Colbert-bait and Dish self-parody, all wrapped up in one:

In Hopkins v. Uninsured Employers' Fund, 2010 MTWCC 9, WCC No. 2008-2152 (May 4, 2010), Worker' Compensation Court Judge James Jeremiah Shea found that Hopkins was, indeed, an employee of Kilpatrick, that Hopkins sustained compensable injuries arising out of and in the course of his employment, and that Hopkins' use of marijuana was not a major contributing cause of his injuries.

Hopkins' use of marijuana did not, therefore, disqualify him from receiving an award of benefits.

Judge Shea concluded that "[w]hen it comes to attacking humans, grizzlies are equal opportunity maulers; attacking without regard to race, creed, ethnicity, or marijuana usage." The judge characterized Hopkins use of marijuana to "kick off" a day of working with grizzly bears as "ill-advised" and "mind-bogglingly stupid."

There was no evidence, however, that the pot smoking contributed significantly to Hopkins' injuries.

No, I didn't just make that up.