Month: March 2011

He joins Lincoln in the growing ranks of great gay men in history.

Just in case no one notices. Yes, he had a role as a liberal voice. But such a boring, familiar voice. There was something about his writing that simply forced you to stop reading, even when his motives were obviously honorable, his compassion deep, and his solutions sincere, if invariably trite.

Two responses to the musical illustrate just how culturally clueless the right now is. Both Terry Teachout and Bill Donohue dismiss the show as made for "12-year-old boys who have yet to graduate from fart jokes to 'Glee.'" Amazingly, they call Matt and Trey cowards for not doing a musical about Islam! Yes, two geniuses who have actually been subjected to death threats because of their refusal to kowtow to Islamist threats are now "cowards."

Teachout is just unable to comprehend what's going on. To imply that Parker and Stone picked Mormonism for a musical because they found out by bitter experience that they could not get away with a musical about Mohammed is as absurd as it is untrue. Almost no pop-cultural artists have pushed the Muslim envelope more than Matt and Trey; and their profound amusement at Mormons goes back all the way to their movie, Orgazmo.

Teachout has to concede that the cast is marvelous, and that "Tuesday night's preview audience shrieked with frantic joy all night long," but is so p.c. he cannot grasp why. Bill Donohue, on the other hand, simply writes another homophobic screed, without even seeing the show. Money quote:

Real men would admit they love bashing Mormons. But the critics are also mere boys. Sullivan praises the musical for its "humaneness." The Los Angeles Times boasts of its "good intentions." AP calls it a "pro-religion musical." Newsday writes that it "seems smitten" to "do good."

The reaction of homosexual reviewers is always fun to read. Sullivan justifies the Mormon bashing by saying we should judge "Mormonism by Mormons." Ben Brantley of the New York Times is hot over the scene where there are a "few choice words for the God who let them [AIDS victims] wind up this way." But if we were to judge homosexuals by what they do, we would know who caused them to wind up with AIDS. That would take real guts.

The people with AIDS in the musical, of course, are straight and got HIV by heterosexual intercourse. But that would deny the hoary old bigot a chance to sneer at gay men, or rather, as every rancid bigot calls the male objects of his hatred and fear, "boys."

P.S.: bonus Charlie Rose interview with the two "boys" here.

Vorjack excerpts Thaddeus Russell's A Renegade History of the United States:

During the War of Independence, deference to authority was shattered, a new urban culture offered previously forbidden pleasures, and sexuality was loosened from its Puritan restraints. Nonmarital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was rampant and unpunished. Divorces were frequent and easily obtained. Prostitutes plied their trades free of legal or moral prescriptions.

Vorjack concludes:

This is the paradox of American freedom: self-rule allows much greater repression than a monarchy. When the community itself is promulgating the law, it is much more effective at reining in the individual.

(Image: George Washington Zombie Hunter by Sharp Writer)

A glimpse into the darkness beneath in Qaddafi’s Libya, as a woman barges into the foreign press dining room to bear witness to the trauma she has undergone:

“They say that we are all Libyans and we are one people,” said the woman, who gave her name as Eman al-Obeidy, barging in during breakfast at the hotel dining room. “But look at what the Qaddafi men did to me.” She displayed a broad bruise on her face, a large scar on her upper thigh, several narrow and deep scratch marks lower on her leg, and marks that seemed to come from binding around her hands and feet.

She said she had been raped by 15 men. “I was tied up, and they defecated and urinated on me,” she said. “They violated my honor.”

She pleaded for friends she said were still in custody. “They are still there, they are still there,” she said. “As soon as I leave here, they are going to take me to jail.”

The harrowing video is here.

It's indisputably a huge strategic and psychological victory for the Libyan rebels, and an encouraging sign for the success of Odyssey Dawn so far:

In Ajdabiya, hundreds of cars were seen streaming toward the strategic town, which had been in the control by government forces for almost two weeks. Three large tank transport carriers also headed toward the city. There were reports of pockets of fighting, and heavy damage could be seen in the eastern part of the city as the rebels advanced. “People are celebrating,” said Najib al-Mukasabi, who was driving out of Ajdabiya north toward Benghazi. “The west and east gates are liberated. They’re back in Brega,” he said, referring to the government troops.

Of course, it resolves very little about the end-game. But those concerned that the rebels simply were no match for the Qaddafi machine may breathe a sigh of relief today. And if momentum gathers, Obama could be seen as extremely shrewd both in waiting for the rest of the world to take responsibility for this humanitarian nightmare, and in then swinging American power behind it.

One thing I didn't believe would happen: jets from both Qatar and the UAE have been flying through Libyan airspace.

(Photo: The wedding band is seen on the finger of a dead fighter in leader Moamer Qaddafi's forces as he lies under a blanket in the courtyard of a hospital in the city of Ajdabiya on March 26, 2011, as Libyan rebels seized control of this strategic city marking their first significant victory over Colonel Kadhafi's forces since the launch of the Western-led air strikes a week ago. By Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images.)

Julia Felsenthal recounts some of the more extreme ways used to validate an agreement:

Cutting off a lock of hair and giving it to someone else was one way to seal a contract. Around the 13th century, agreements were sometimes marked with a slap, or some other traumatic act. The theory was that both parties would remember not only the injury but the accord that was reached on its infliction.

A compilation of tour de force title sequences, set to RJD2's “Ghostwriter:

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

Marc Parry interviews net neutrality proponent Tim Wu:

[T]hroughout modern history, Wu's book argues, every information industry has been hijacked by some "ruthless monopoly or cartel." It happened to the telephone. It happened to radio. It happened to film. Now, as all media converge on one network, Wu warns that "an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear." Already, a group of "new monopolists" seems to reign over whole regions of the Internet: Google in search, Apple in content delivery, Facebook in social networking. And the question is whether the Net, like new media of the past, will come to be "ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of 'the master switch.'"