Month: June 2011

After reading this WSJ interview, Ezra Klein expects Michele Bachmann to "quickly emerge as the acknowledged leader of Tea Party America":

Bachmann is a better politician than Palin, a better policy wonk than Palin, and because she’s a better politician and a better policy wonk than Palin, she’s actually able to be a bit more extreme than Palin, as Palin rarely gets specific enough to do such precise ideological positioning. Put simply, Bachmann is the candidate Palin was supposed to be.

Chait's on the same page:

[S]he may be crazy, but she does have a strong grasp of political reality. The problem with so many radical candidates is that they lack political sense as well. Bachmann is a potent combination of substantively radical and politically shrewd, much like Ryan. And if Ryan does not run, Bachmann could make some noise.

Andrew Leonard compares Palin and Bachmann's reading lists.

Surfing by starlight:

(Hat tip: LikeCool)

“The speeches that Charles Lindbergh made and Oswald Mosley made in the 1930s are the same speeches that are being made today, only slightly more politely: ‘The Jews are bringing us to war. Perhaps we should give their state away.’ The liberals in my neighborhood wouldn’t give away Brentwood to the Palestinians but they want to give away Tel Aviv,” – David Mamet.

Does anyone know of anyone in mainstream America who wants to give Tel Aviv away in a two-state solution? Seriously? The position held by president Obama and every president in modern times – that there be a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with land-swaps – is anti-Semitism? Yes it is! Will he vote for Palin? In a heartbeat!

Daniel Nassar, over at Gay Middle East, imparts the dangers of Tom MacMaster's hoax:

This attention you brought forced me back to the closet on all the social media  websites I use; cause[d] my family to go into a frenzy trying to force me back into the closet and my friends to ask me for phone numbers of loved ones and family members so they can call them in case I disappeared myself. … You took away my voice, Mr. MacMaster, and the voices of many people who I know.

To bring attention to yourself and blog; you managed to bring the LGBT movement in the Middle East years back. You single-handedly managed to bring unwanted attention from authorities to our cause and you will be responsible for any LGBT activist who might be yet another fallen angel during these critical time[s].

A reader has a very different take:

Why do we have to see this as paternalistic, Orientalist, or exploitative?

Is the blogger guilty of making a simplistic caricature of an educated, conflicted, articulate female homosexual struggling with the drama in Syria?  Can the gay  community condemn this portrayal simply on the grounds that it is fictionalized?  The reader that the blogger himself was somehow sexually aroused by his the ability to act this persona, in the same way that men on chatrooms pretend to be female in order to exchange pictures or talk dirty … frankly that's absurd, and even a cursory reading of the material on the blog makes the claim ludicrous.

Criticism can be leveled that by creating a narrative reality about Amina, the blogger wasted the serious efforts of real people to try to rescue her, support her, etc.  I suppose criticism can also be leveled that it is possible that the Syrian authoritities may have cracked down on certain circles in order to silence this voice.  The latter could be true, but one can hardly imagine that the regime needed excuses for brutality; and anyway, such a position seems to indicate that it's favorable to repress political speech for fear of bloodshed. Which allows the regime to win. 

The former seems hardly to matter in the last analysis; how many peopel were brought to a heightened level of awareness, were educated, were involved in some way in becoming active in the struggle for Syria because of this blog?  That is, after all, what the blogger himself seems to have set out to do – why can't we believe him? – and I believe he has succeeded.  To be bitter about the hoax is to miss the point.

On the eroticism question, Amina/Tom's recent poem, "Testimony of Jasmine," is worth pondering. Money quote:

We push and we pant
Your sex is so soaking
I delve and devour
And mine it is shaking

Perhaps one of the most remarkable documents in the truly surreal life of Sarah Palin is her letter to Trig's family and friends written in the voice of God. Now, most politicians who decide to write or say something from the perspective of the omniscient omnipotent Godhead might be deemed a little odd. But Palin's letter, which is indeed moving, has been taken at face value. There's nothing new here, I thought, when reading it in the newly released email trove. I'd read it before in "Going Rogue." But Jesse Griffin notes two new wrinkles that really do make some small news. We now know that Palin composed this some time before she sent it on April 7. We also know that it included this remarkably prescient paragraph:

I let Trig's mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy so she could enjoy every minute of it, and I even seemed to rush it along so she could wait until near the end to surprise you with the news – that way Piper wouldn't have so long to wait and count down so many days – just like Christmastime when you have to wait, impatiently, for that special day to finally open your gift? (Or the way the Palins look forward to birthday celebrations that go on for three, four day.. you all really like cake.) I know you, I knew you'd be better off with just a short time to wait!

So God "seemed to rush it along" and made Trig's birth premature so as to relieve Piper's excitement. More to the point: Palin was told by God that Trig would be born prematurely on April 7, ten days before her water allegedly broke. This is odd enough. It's even odder since the following surreal passage occurs in "Going Rogue":

My pregnancy was going fine, and with five weeks to go, I felt great. But at 4 am, a strange sensation low in my belly woke me and I sat up straight in bed.

It can't be, I thought. It's way too early.

But if God had already told her at least ten days earlier that Trig would be premature and would "rush [the pregnancy] along," why would she be surprised at all? Had she already forgotten God's message to her? And why would she further doubt God's decision and not get to a hospital immediately – if she had been forewarned about a premature pregnancy? More to the point, the passage in the email about God "rushing" the pregnancy along is edited out of the letter as published in "Going Rogue." Maybe it was edited out for length. Or maybe Palin makes so much stuff up she can't keep her stories straight and has to retroactively cover her tracks.

Your call.

“Weiner’s America or Palin’s America – That Is The 2012 Choice,” – from a Palin fan on the release of the non-redacted or withheld Palin emails.

 

Beinart insists that Weiner should resist the overwhelming calls to resign:

We love to see the powerful humiliated because it proves that they were no better than us to begin with. Yet we simultaneously imagine that because they're powerful and famous, they don't need the empathy that we'd desire were we in their stead. Instead of being moved by their suffering, we revel in it.

How many of the pundits mocking Weiner have marriages that could survive the kind of scrutiny they have been giving his? The realization that everyone’s private life is messy and flawed should produce humility and compassion. Instead, pundits enter the public arena as disembodied Olympian figures, entitled to render the harshest of verdicts, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever investigate their most intimate of domains.

Michelle Goldberg misses sexual privacy:

It’s one thing to argue that Weiner should step down for being stupid enough to bring this kind of attention on himself, his family, and his party. It’s another thing to subject someone’s sexual fantasies to a political litmus test. Weiner is hardly outré in the way he eroticizes power. … There is something totalitarian about examining people’s erotic lives for ideological deviance. That’s why human beings—even exhibitionists—need privacy.

Chris Bragg reports on Weiner's reelection chances if he refuses to resign. Evidently there's an Andy Sullivan gunning for his seat.

Three Democratic state senators in New York have now switched to support marriage equality. Still:

No Republicans have publicly come forward to back the measure and Mr. Cohen did not identify any who had privately committed to voting for it.

The latest theory to explain why someone horny might send dirty pics to virtual girlfriends.

Brian Beutler asks whether the rest of the Republican field will endorse Pawlenty's insane economic proposals:

No doubt the leading conservatives on stage Monday evening — Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Herman Cain, etc. — will try to match or surpass Pawlenty's mark. The question is whether, as time goes on, the entire field will have to genuflect to the Pawlenty plan. If so, this will turn into a defining issue during the general election campaign — and, if Obama is defeated, well beyond then.

The Dish will be watching.