Month: April 2011

A friend last night also alerted me to the video by Louis CK below. It's the sanest treatment of the subject of the use of the word "faggot" I have ever heard (and this, while I'm at it, is equally good on the subject of race):

Yes, I understand Jon Amaechi's point. But I also worry that policing the language to this degree (while there are contexts in which the word "faggot" is obviously ugly, and meant to gay-bait and deserves censure) gets tiresome very quickly. I just don't think Kobe Bryant meant to call a referee a homosexual. That does not make me a homophobe.

We're primates with way too much intelligence for our own good. We are never going to lose words that in-groups use to describe out-groups. Let's resolve actual formal legal inequalities and then democratize our hate-words so that everyone gets to use some. And they hurt all of us less.

By the way, if you want to see a positive affirmation of gays in sports, Ben Cohen's example seems to me to be the right one to follow. Instead of policing language for offense, promote openness as a virtue. Watching a straight, professional, jock campaign for getting past stupid homophobia is a thing of beauty. As Ben Cohen is, as well, I might add.

Nate Silver analyzes CNN's new poll, which finds majority support for marriage equality. The bigger picture: 

[T]his does put Republicans in a tricky position. Their traditional position on gay marriage is becoming less popular. But to the extent they disengage from the issue, they may lose even more ground. One way to read the trends of the past few years is that we have passed an inflection point wherein it is no longer politically advantageous for candidates to oppose same-sex marriage, which in turn softens opposition to it among the general public, creating a sort of feedback loop.

If New York State legalizes it soon, and sustains it, as now seems possible, I suspect the momentum becomes unstoppable. It's hard also not to see the power of conversion stories like Louis Marinelli's. Yes, you can change your political orientation on marriage equality!

And we've already gone one round with the penis jokes, so knock it off at the back of the class, will you? But, yes, if you must, marriage equality now has some graphic foreskin.

It's a Dish twofer.

Andrew Romano points out that several GOP presidential candidates raised taxes while in office:

The point isn't… that Romney, Barbour, Daniels, Pawlenty, and Huckabee have done something wrong. In fact, quite the opposite. In the months ahead, as the great deficit debate takes shape and the 2012 campaign begins in earnest, voters should remember the reality of Republicans and taxes: that even the politicians now vying to lead the most taxophobic party in U.S. history decided to implement tax hikes when they actually had to balance a budget. It's some of the strongest evidence yet that we can't afford to take any budget-balancing options off the table—even if the people who provided it would like to pretend otherwise.

Huckabee has almost owned this. Daniels gets it. But Grover, for some reason, retains a veto. But it seems to me that a shift on this – even a minimal shift like embracing revenue-positive tax reform – really would help the GOP win over the middle. It's just very, very hard to persuade a non-ideologue that we need to cut off future grandmas from open-ended healthcare when we are also refusing to ask both the wealthy and the entire boomer generation to make any sacrifice at all.

That argument won't fly. Why not acknowledge that? And actually have more credibility on fiscal matters than Obama?

Spencer Ackerman asks whether the West can "stop short of joining the fight on the ground" in Libya:

The rebels want a lot more. Their emissary to Washington wants NATO to destroy Gadhafi’s military. And while the rebels once ruled out foreign ground forces themselves — desiring the glory of overthrowing Gadhafi — now they’re reconsidering. “[T]hat was before we faced the crimes of Gaddafi,” a member of Misurata’s governing committee told reporters. With Misurata suffering under a two-month siege that’s getting worse, “we need a force from NATO or the United Nations on the ground now.”

And the Brits, French and Italians have now put their foot in the door. If there is a more text-book case of mission creep, I'd like to see it. Worse: those arguing for mission creep can claim they always wanted us to act sooner and more decisively. So even many supporters of the current mission are actually pro-creep, not anti-. And Obama's position – while morally and intellectually  powerful – is, in the real world, hard to sustain.

Maybe everyone in this debate will eventually be able to say "told you so." And all – and none – of us will be entirely persuasive. Which, in my view, makes the case for strategically clean, if morally dirty, non-intervention stronger.

Geoffrey Dunn revisits the story that, far from dying, is gaining traction:

Hoping to disprove the conspiracy theory when I initiated work on my book–and to put the story to bed once and for all–I interviewed several close associates of Palin's, including her friends and political allies. I was anticipating, perhaps even hoping, that they would tell me conclusively that Trig was her child. I was shocked by the response.

One close friend of Palin's–a widely respected woman who had given birth to several children as well and who had close contact with Palin in Juneau up until the time of Trig's birth–told me that "Palin did not look like she was pregnant. Ever. Even when she had the bulging belly, I never felt that the rest of her body, her face especially, looked like she was pregnant." When I asked her point-blank if she was certain the baby was Palin's, she said, "No. I don't know what to believe."

Me neither. And that is – and always has been – my position. If Rebecca Mansour wants some publicity for her boss, clearing this stuff up would be a great way to reboot a campaign for president. It should be easy-as-pie. As I've said from the get-go: make me look like a fool for even wondering. Please.

(Hat tip: MemeBase for the photo.)

Adam Serwer blames the GOP for Donald Trump's newfound prominence:

Trump’s candidacy is largely a problem of the GOP’s own making. It’s a symptom of circumstances Republicans have spent the last two years tacitly cultivating as an asset. Republican leaders have at best refused to tamp down the most outlandish right-wing conspiracy-mongering about the president and at worst have actively enabled it. The result: A substantial portion of their base believes a complete myth about the president’s birth certificate, and Republicans are stuck with a candidate shameless enough to exploit the issue without resorting to the usual euphemisms more respectable Republicans tend to employ when hinting at the president’s supposed cultural otherness. 

And yes, there is something strange about Rove and Krauthammer dismissing this blow-dried creep as somehow unserious. You mean less serious than Palin, whose ticket you both endorsed last time around? You endorse unqualified crazy; you'll get even more unqualified crazy. But this time, with enough money to buy and bait his way into the affections of the unhinged base.

Listening to these Republican "elites" after the last ten years on Trump is a little like listening to them on the crippling debt. They helped create both nightmares. Some of us have not developed total amnesia.

Lady Gaga's new song declares she is in love with Judas (and has some identification with Mary Magdalen). The video is scheduled for release on Easter Sunday. This, predictably, has thrilled enriched empowered angered some professional money-grubbing two-old-white guys-with-a-fax-machine Catholics – especially (I hope you're sitting down) Bill Donahue. John Marks contemplates the "the strange and hypnotic power of the pop superstar":

Their authority doesn’t come from scripture or votes or force of arms or money. It rises out of the way that their music envelops us, gets past our natural defenses, before we’ve had a chance to hear the argument it’s making. This is as true of Hank Williams, Sam Cooke, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Madonna, and Kurt Cobain as it is of the latest diva.

I get the general point. The song, "Imagine", for example, has two equally strong effects on me. On the one hand, it makes me ill by its glib, utopian, cloying levels of smug. On the other, there are times when its sheer musical genius swamps my resisting frontal cortex. The combination of the two usually results in some kind of sputtering, angry, pffft.

But I am simply not going to discuss Lady Gaga in the context of Cline, Springsteen or Lennon. This latest "diva" is a costume in search of musical innovation. And what's dismaying about this latest stunt is not its bravery (ha!) or its wit (please) but its dumb derivative barrel-scraping predictability. Madonna was sometimes prey to this, but a song and video like "Like A Prayer" actually did assert a form of spirituality that challenged a church grown stale. It had its moments. Gaga is a pale, plagiarizing echo of this. There's a particularly irritating appropriation of gay culture for general consumption, perhaps guiltily over-compensated by Gaga's crashing every gay rights event known to man. Perhaps this happens with every civil rights movement. In the end, the outsiders raid the insiders and give it back to them at 0.99 cents on iTunes. And I sure wouldn't stop anyone on this well-trodden path.

But sometimes, it gags. I mean: "Born This Way" was daring – even moving – when sung by Valentino and Carl Bean in the 1970s. Gaga makes everything she touches profoundly, commercially safe.

And no, Ms Germanotta. Ciccone you ain't.

Welcome to spring:

If you ever wondered how a penguin would feel when tickled. It is not unlike the sound that emerges from yours truly when completing a full all-three-star level of Angry Birds.