Month: July 2010

The WSJ reviews "The Kids Are All Right":

"Gay marriage is a hot-button issue, but "The Kids Are All Right" doesn't push buttons or advance an agenda. The film plays fair with love in its myriad forms, and insists on the need for close and stable connections, whatever the home's configuration may be; in that sense it's almost conservative."

Mercifully, they do seem as if they are finally taking sexual abuse as seriously as they should. But in the same document, according to insiders, they also elevate another act to that of  "most grave crimes." The act in question? Attempting to ordain a woman as a priest.

Abusing children and ordaining women? The same level of obloquy from Benedict. That tells you a lot, I think.

A reader writes:

The answer to The Unstoppable Sarah Palin is in the post directly below it. If she becomes president I will freeze myself until it's over. The scary part is thinking about what I would wake up to.

It tells you something about the laws of unintended consequences (something missing from the neocon handbook) that the man they championed as Iraq's "democratic" leader, Nouri al-Maliki, recently went to Beirut to pay his respects to a Hezbollah mullah regarded as a terrorist by the neocon chorus. It also tells you something that the neocon attempt to impose crippling sanctions on Iran is now being undermined by … large amounts of oil supplies getting to Iran by road via Iraqi Kurdistan.

What has neoconservatism achieved? In Afghanistan, the best possible option is a country dominated by an increasingly Islamist and nuclear-armed Pakistan. In Iraq, the best possible option is a country dominated by Shiites far more aligned with Iran than many Sunni Arab states. And so the upshot of the Bush-Cheney years is an empowerment of both Iran and Pakistan, the two Muslim countries either with or close to nuclear capacity. That is the end result of a policy designed above all to prevent WMDs getting into the hands of terrorists. I mean: you couldn't make this up.

And still they want more war. In fact, they are now angling for American support for Sunni Arab states (and Israel) to launch a war against the Shiite power of Iran. Not content with enmeshing the US in two intractable wars, they actually want America to take sides in the ancient intra-Muslim feud between Shiite and Sunni. Yes, that sounds like something brilliant doesn't it? No unintended consequences could come from diving into that briar patch.

And, remember, nothing in the neoconservative mind exists that can actually take account of flaws in their own thinking. Because neoconservatism is a doctrine, and a doctrine cannot have flaws, just as neocon columnist can never make errors, or account for them.

Family Guy could win an Emmy for the song, "Down's Syndrome Girl."

An infographic that devastates the outrageously reckless British multinational.

The autotuned version is awesome. And the dude is already attracting imitators and mashups. Austin Carr nabs an interview with the "professional cagefighter-turned-nature-love." Gabe pulls several money quotes, including:

When I asked what he would do with his newfound popularity or influence, [Paul] Vasquez [aka "Yosemitebear Mountain Giant"] wasn’t certain: “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Last night I went to an Indian sweat and I prayed really hard about this. When I shot the video, I was not high at all, I was not having sex, and I was not hiking, as a lot of people assume. This is my land that I bought in 1988. Wait, what was the question?”

John Culhane sinks his teeth into the DOMA ruling:

The one new justification that the government raised was protection of the status quo. The court demolished — I mean, demolished — this argument, noting that the “status quo” had been for the feds to recognize states’ definitions of marriage, so that DOMA radically changed that status. And the practice of recognizing, and deferring to, local law on marriage, had been unaltered throughout our history, even in especially contentious cases such as interracial marriage. That practice, in turn, was grounded in the long-standing recognition that marriage and family law is one of the most fundamentally state law issues of all.

And Joe Carter wonders why my case for marriage equality has always been a conservative one.

That case is as follows: it is conservative not to eject people from the fabric and tradition of their own families; it is conservative to support emotional and financial stability which the daily discipline of marriage fosters; it is conservative not to balkanize citizens into groups based on identity; it is conservative to discourage gay men and women from marrying straight men and women on false pretenses and then ending up in divorce; it is conservative to include everyone into the social institutions that stabilize society; it is conservative to promote mutual responsibility and care-giving to avoid too much dependence on government; it is conservative not to trample states rights and amend the federal constitution when such things are grotesquely unnecessary; it is conservative to adjust to social change by adapting existing institutions, like civil marriage, than inventing totally new and untested ones, like civil unions.

But Carter isn't listening. He's a Christianist, not a conservative. For him, doctrine is what matters. For Burke, unyielding doctrine in politics was the problem.

Mom and Dad are fighting (a little). In one corner of the living room, we have Jim Fallows, whose combined facility for penetrating analysis and scrupulous journalistic manners has always left me slack-jawed. In the other, we have Mike Kinsley, who parented me into journalism (although I hasten to add bears no responsibility for my subsequent provocations) and is the funniest, rudest columnist I know. Fallows' rule of journalistic etiquette is as follows:

Write as if you might run into the person afterwards. And when you run into people, be comfortable owning up to what you've said and where you disagree.

Oh God. Do I really have to be that nice to Bill Kristol? What happens if I bump into John Yoo? Kinsley mercifully comes to my rescue:

Write about what you think is important. Write the truth. And if you see someone coming you’d just as soon not run into, feel free to run away instead.

I do, I do. Kinsmo hedges this a little today, saying he meant no implicit criticism of Fallows' uber-mensch standard and hazards that there might be some journalistic advantage to knowing the powerful. (I have to say that if refusing to write a bad review of a book is integral to not being a "bully-coward", then count me out. I much prefer reading negative reviews to positive ones, and I've written plenty of both.) 

My own general view has, over the years, become I.F. Stone's: just make sure you never run into the people you cover or have much to do with them socially. I am one of the more feral Washingtonians, allergic to parties, incapable of schmoozing (without total nervous exhaustion afterwards), bored by acquaintances, and addicted to my real friends, who have nothing whatever to do with what I do for a living. I know this makes me seem terribly rude and/or arrogant by the Village's standards. But it seems to me more important to remain in good graces with my readers than with the objects of my criticism. I really would rather hang with my beagles than with the president.

And so, I am not in Aspen this week – which is better for Aspen as well as for me. And at those secret media elite dinner parties, my role as the turd in the punchbowl is now almost a tradition. And yes, I did attend one with Karl Rove. And no, it wasn't pretty. There are some low-lifes to whom it is almost an ethical requirement to be rude.