Month: July 2010

The Tablet calls several writers who have criticized Israel's assault on Gaza and refusal to freeze the settlements on the West Bank "Jew-baiters." I, Glenn Greenwald, Stephen Walt, and Philip Weiss are operating an "open sewer of hate," for arguing that US interests lie in getting a two-state solution sooner rather than later, and in our outrage at the way in which the Israeli government has shown contempt for the US president in the last couple of years, egged on by many neocons. There are no substantive arguments in the piece, and there are no quotes in the piece from any of the bloggers and writers concerned that could even faintly be called anti-Semitic. There is just cherry-picking of vileness that often shows up on comments sections (which this blog does not even have). I mean: seriously. To argue from a bunch of selected comments on other sites that I have made a "career as a Jew-baiter" is so disgusting and transparent a smear it refutes itself. 

Meanwhile, the current Israeli prime minister has just been caught on tape saying in 2001 that he openly deceived president Clinton and has this view of how to deal with the Palestinians:

“beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable.”

Why is Netanyahu not an "open sewer of hate"? None of the writers the Tablet cites has ever written anything even faintly as disgusting or as racist as that.

Jonathan Rauch compares them. The whole thing is worth a read. Here is part of his conclusion:

I believe that, slowly but surely, family values are renormalizing and will continue to renormalize around later family formation and an ethic which stresses responsible childbearing over abstinence from sex—if only because economic and cultural forces are pulling so hard in that direction. At a time when even many young traditionalists (evangelicals, for example) take contraception for granted, are unable to abstain from sex until marriage, and are unwilling to accept shotgun weddings, it is hard to see how the old unity of sex, marriage, and procreation can be sustained. In today’s world, progress has got to lie in the direction of discouraging early family formation and encouraging (and improving) education.

Therefore it is hard to see how limiting marriage to heterosexual couples can continue to make much sense even in Red America. I don’t think excluding gay couples from marriage will do anything to strengthen or restore the old sex/marriage/procreation unity, and I think trying to hold homosexual couples to the old norm while heterosexuals live by the new one will be counterproductive as well as unfair.

(Image: Kate Kuykendall (L) and her wife Tori Kuykendall (R) with their daughter Zadie attend a gay rights rally against the Proposition 8 measure at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles park on March 4, 2009. By Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

Thank you for posting about how the Palin endorsement has impacted the Georgia race for Governor.  As you know, Karen has shot to the lead in the polls after floundering in second or third in the race to make the runoff in several weeks.

As a side note, Ms. Handel has a somewhat sordid history with the Atlanta LGBT community.  In her first two races for a seat on the Fulton County Commission (Atlanta) she actively sought the LGBT vote, going as far as joining the Log Cabin chapter here and pursuing an endorsement from Georgia Equality.  She said she supported domestic partner benefits for Fulton County employees and said she was not opposed to adoption by gays and lesbians. 

Well, as you might expect, she did a 180 soon after winning her seat on the commission and setting her eyes on statewide office.

She voted against domestic partner benefits for county employees, then ran successfully for Secretary of State in 2006 while completely denying she ever joined Log Cabin, pursued an endorsement from Georgia Equality, or said she supported gay adoption. The Journal-Constitution documented all of this here, here, and here.

In addition to being one of the worst kind of political opportunists, Ms. Handel is like Ms. Palin in other ways; she can’t seem to serve a full term for any elected office; she quit the county commission to become Secretary of State and quit as Secretary of State to run for Governor.

And it's paying off:

[Handel] came in first in Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial primary Tuesday evening and will face Nathan Deal, a former Congressman, in an Aug. 10 runoff.

A reader writes:

I know you have aired the "so what" view in the past, but given your rehashing of the issue after returning from Bearville, I think it deserves another go.

So what if Trig is not Palin’s biological child? If you published conclusive proof tomorrow, Palin would just go on Oprah and confess. She would tell Oprah all about the big bad liberal media, and claim that her story was fabricated for the sake of the real mother and Trig. The audience claps at her bravery, her followers cry, and a few months later everything would return to normal. Her base would love her even more after the Oprah interview than they do now.

Palin’s family dysfunction endures her to her followers. It proves she’s "real" and not an "elitist." The rest of the world would see her confession as another sign of her dysfunctional family, but that’s how they see her now anyway, particularly after the whole Levi/Bristol debacle. One of my best friends was raised by his grandparents, under the guise that they were his biological parents. It’s more common than you think in certain areas of the country.

Yes, Palin brings Trig to campaign events and book signing. Yes, she uses Trig to prove she’s a "real person" and "conservative" and "pro-life." So what? Worst case scenario is that she voluntarily took it upon herself to adopt a child with down syndrome and raise Trig as her own, which supports the "real person" and "conservative" and "pro-life" message anyway.  The mainstream media would treat the issue as too sensitive to push during the debates, and the whole thing would go away.

If this is an odd lie, it’s not the same as proving a pro-life Christianist had an abortion, or a "family values conservative" had an affair.  It's not a moral failing like John Edwards, or even Bill Clinton. In the end, the American people can forgive a lie of this type because the truth is not immoral and not directly hypocritical.

I can see this, and am sure it might redound in her favor, which is why many liberals in the MSM are as adamant about not exploring this as the conservatives. My view is simply that a broad swathe of sane people will realize that someone who perpetrated such a fantastic hoax, if indeed she did, who stuffed pillows up her dress, who claimed the mantle of giving birth to a child with Down Syndrome while doing nothing of the sort, would destroy her as a candidate for president.

Her base would rally, but shrink. But my interest in this is simply to get the full evidence to resolve it – regardless of its unknowable consequences. I would very much like to be proven wrong in harboring any doubts about her story. In fact, I see no downside for her in disclosing what she has in her possession. If you wanted to shore up your base, why not pwn for good and all that demented blogger who hates America?

Jonathan Glancey profiles London's tallest residential tower and the world's first building to incorporate wind turbines into its structure:

The plan was first made public six years ago and work is unlikely to be completed before 2020. It's a colossal challenge, as well as an opportunity, and the £113.5m Strata, the first of three skyscrapers planned for here, is a symbol of the dynamism and energy the project demands. And that energy must, of course, be seen to be green. It's early days, but if the turbines work as planned, and aren't too noisy for residents in the pricey penthouses beneath them, they should generate 8% of this 43-storey building's energy needs. This is roughly enough to run its electrical and mechanical services (including three express lifts and automated window-cleaning rigs) as well as the lighting, heating and ventilation of its public spaces, which include an underground car and cycle park.

Pity it's so butt-ugly.

(Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

While we're all atwitter about Breitbart etc, the president signs another huge piece of reformist legislation. It is hard to think of a more substantive domestic first two years for a presidency in recent times. At some point, when the full public tunes in, this will surely matter.

We tend to think of Israel as a Western country and in many respects it is. And then you read a story like this. More here.

Climbing Sweettooth? On another front, the wedding is delayed.

Larison reminds the Dish that Romney, no matter how unseemly he might have been, defeated the three women he ran against:

There also seems to be the suggestion that it is Romney who is at a disadvantage in any intra-Republican contest in which gender becomes a significant issue. That is an odd thing to assume. Palin’s “Mama Grizzly” routine works well enough when the perceived attackers are coming from outside the GOP, but my guess is that it will fall flat and will come across as mere whining when she uses it to fend off Republican rivals.

Do we really think that most Republican primary voters are more likely to nominate a woman for President than Democratic voters were two years ago? Do we really think that Republicans would prefer the less qualified candidate because she is a woman? Wouldn’t many Republicans want Romney to succeed to prove that the GOP is not dominated by religious conservatives who will not support a Mormon candidate? Wouldn’t that impulse to show religious tolerance overwhelm any impulse to promote Palin beyond her ability just to get credit for nominating the first woman nominee?

If the 2012 nomination contest comes down to a head-to-head fight between Romney and Palin, there appears to be every reason to think that Romney prevails.

(Cartoon via Conservatives4Palin)

Tricia Romano profiles the post-racial sex appeal of the Old Spice Guy:

Interestingly, Old Spice had another black spokesman before [ex-wide receiver Isaiah] Mustafa: Terry Crews. The hyperactive ad series featured the ex-NFL linebacker topless and yelling in an intense (and funny) way. Chideya says of Crews: "He's not as handsome as Isaiah, but he's also really funny in a way that's more within the black vernacular." Of Mustafa, she says, "This guy is no doubt black, but he's someone who is the modern, urbane, living-in-a-post-racial-Fort Greene kind of a guy."

While Obama braves the fast-moving political tide (we love him, we are irritated and disappointed with him, we loathe him, we love him again), here is this other stunningly handsome, funny black man on our TV, transcending color lines, with—it should be noted—a Muslim name.

The gays love him too:

He's not “hot for a black guy,” he’s just hot. He's hot enough to make celebrity lesbian Ellen DeGeneres giggle like a school girl when he visited her set, causing her to beg him to recite his Old Spice lines. Ellen isn’t alone—gay men love the Old Spice Man, as much as straight women apparently do. An AfterElton.com staffer picked Mustafa as one of his 10 hottest men, writing, that Mustafa "almost makes me want to buy some Old Spice. Almost."

Joe Berkowitz chronicles Mustafa's rise after watching all 180 of his spin-off ads.  Mashable rounds up the ten funniest. The actor has already signed a talent deal with NBC, so a sitcom could be in the works.