Month: June 2011

A reader corrects my assertion that "No one [Weiner] corresponded with complained" by pointing to a piece written by Gennette Cordova, the recipient of the weiner shot:

The last 36 hours have been the most confusing, anxiety-ridden hours of my life. I've watched in sheer disbelief as my name, age, location, links to any social networking site I've ever used, my old phone numbers and pictures have been passed along from stranger to stranger. My friends have received phone calls from people claiming to be old friends of mine, attempting to obtain my contact information. My siblings have received tweets that are similar in nature. I began taking steps, though not quickly enough, to remove as much personal information from the Internet as possible.

Yes but they complained because of the scandal, not because of the original interaction. That's my point, although, of course, a sitting congressman should have anticipated the publicity his correspondents would have to deal with if it all became public.

New York's guardian of (for the most part) thoughtful conservatism, City Journal, piles on:

As for federal spending, Pawlenty has set an ambitious target of capping it at 18 percent of GDP (the current CBO baseline would put us closer to 24 percent in 2020; the Ryan budget backed by most House Republicans is over 20 percent for that year). Even if we managed to hit that number, Pawlenty’s tax plan would leave us with an unacceptably large structural budget gap—over 3 percent a year. It’s hard to imagine any situation where a federal tax code that collects less than 15 percent of GDP is sustainable.

So we have someone trying to be the moderate candidate and he proposes something even more fiscally reckless and unrealistic than Paul Ryan. This is not a opposition party as such. It is an alternate reality party – as the country faces a well-nigh unprecedented fiscal crisis, precipitated by the last Republican administration's "deficits-don't-matter" recklessness.

A reader writes:

I don't know what Pride parades are like in DC, but my experiences in NYC are anything but "enforcing some ghastly, single 'gay identity' memes". Rather, the range of ways to be gay on display is always impressive to me!  How can you think that Dykes on Bikes and the bears from The Eagle, along with the twinks with their club music on the bar and clubs' floats, next to the parents walking with strollers and those from PFLAG, followed by multiple groups from (nearly) every religious denomination, to the increasing numbers of men and women in uniform, to the drag queens walking miles in heels, don't already represent, " far more niches, sub-sub-cultures, individuals and experiments in living as possible?"

Look, we can all be real and say that after the parades stop being "great therapy and empowerment for those just coming to terms with being out", they are at the end of the day, a parade.  And like all parades, they become onerous affairs that compel people to navigate large crowds, find bathrooms and in June, cope with oppressive heat and humidity in the years when it's not pouring rain.  Those are reasons enough to avoid the parade, but pretending that it's an exercise in one way of displaying the appropriate way of being gay – well, that's what's gay!

PS – I look forward to the year when you and Aaron are invited to be the Grand Marshalls at the NYC Pride Parade.  I'm sure Dan never imagined it'd be him and Terry, so I'm sure it's not as out of the question as you think it is!  ;)

When hell freezes over. I've always tried as an independent writer not to be too associated with any group, or organization, especially big ones like pride parades of HRC. I'd rather focus on small effective organizations like Immigration Equality or the Trevor Project. And, look, I'm just not a parade person, ok? In Ptown, I have attended the annual carnival parade about twice in the last twenty years. Usually, I run away to a deserted beach. And I have no problem with gay pride marches, as long as I don't have to join in. Another makes the reader's point with more punch:

Sorry, Andrew, but your post raised my hackles – particularly coming from you – for quite a few reasons. Although I don't know where you and Aaron make your home in D.C., I would assume it's Dupont or Dupont adjacent. I definitively know, however, that you both spend a significant amount of time vacationing in Ptown each summer and loudly proclaim your identity as a bear. Given these facts, for you to say that Pride is too "gay" – after admitting that you haven't even been to a Pride festival for many years – is just a bit too much and indeed smacks to me of the often naked condescension that often exists between members of the leather/bear community, on the one hand, and twinks/those who might formerly be called Chelsea boys, on the other.

If you would deign to attend a Pride festival (or better yet something like Chicago's Northalsted Market Days), I think you might just discover that, just as "gay culture" and broader societal acceptance of homosexuality has changed quite substantialy over the past twenty years, so too has Pride. It's no longer just about those Chelsea boys showing off their impeccably sculpted bodies on floats sponsored by Bud Light or I.D. Lube (or whatever) prior to all-night, drug-fueled dance club bachannals; it's more about a multitude of people, gay and straight, getting together to celebrate difference and tolerance while simultaneously providing the myriad public service entities that focus on our community to educate and reach out to those potentially in need (whether homeless youth or crystal addicts or the uninsured poz).

Seriously, Andrew. "Too gay"?? Your post was homophobic and offensive, and I expect a lot better from you. (You are, after all, one of my icons, who's openness about being poz helped me immensely following my own seroconversion.)

Oh, please. No condescension implied or meant. I know pride has changd a lot, and I am glad for it. I do my bit in other ways. And look, I did write a widely cited piece on beardom, but it included these critical remarks:

Every time I try and write a semi-serious sociological assessment of the phenomenon, I find myself erasing large amounts of text. Part of being a bear is not taking being a bear too seriously.

I'm really a little past disliking other sub-sub-cultures. I was once a twink, dabbled in leather, have hung with East Village scraggots, love gay black dance clubs, am now a kinda-bear (not much chest hair, alas), and soon will be a cranky old Kramer. I'm not into crowds, I hate heat, and some aspects of gay culture make me cringe. Please don't hate me for it. And please have the best of times, while I read in a quiet air-conditioned room. As I've said countless times, the point of the gay rights movement is not to be gay, but to be yourself. I'm being myself.

(Photo: Officer Dan Choi attends the 2010 New York City Gay Pride March on the streets of Manhattan on June 27, 2010 in New York City. By Ben Hider/Getty Images)

This bad:

The Bush tax cuts were followed by low GDP growth, negative median wage growth, and little job growth. Even before the Great Recession, growth in the Bush business cycle was the weakest since World War II. And the cuts cost about $2.6 trillion between 2001 and 2010, according to the Economic Policy Institute—adding to a debt future generations of taxpayers will pay for, plus interest.

By Bush's own metrics, then, the tax cuts were a failure.

Alyssa Rosenberg ponders cultural intelligence:

One of the places cultural capital seems valuable is when it’s surprising, when two people doing a deal discover that, contrary to their expectations of each other, both love the same author, or a client finds out that the person who is responsible for entertaining them can talk knowledgeably about their favorite sports team. It’s the spontaneity of that mutual recognition that’s useful, and that’s hard to engineer or to hire strategically for.

A new giant oil field has been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. Kevin Drum says the news changes nothing:

One of the clearest indications that the planet is running out of oil is the fact that discoveries of giant oil fields have slowed so dramatically in the past couple of decades. … [H]istorically speaking, this is a pipsqueak [oil field], and we're finding damn few fields of even this size.

The Economist charts the global rise in demand for oil. The above chart, via Drum, is from Fredrik Robelius's 2007 doctoral thesis on giant oil fields.

If only the NYT had asked its readers to do the same with Wikileaks. Look: most of the good stuff has almost certainly been redacted. 2400 pages have been removed. Nonetheless it's good to see the MSM taking a tip from the blogosphere and crowd-sourcing research. You can help too. Details here. The Dish is always eager to shed light on this shadowy figure. Trig-related stuff – either debunking skepticism or deepening it – of particular interest. McGinniss quotes from his forthcoming book, "The Rogue":

Sarah Palin practices politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price.  Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred dollar bills into her g-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.

By the way, the emails were first asked for in 2008. Now how about similar records asked for even before then: medical records documenting Palin's pregnancy with Trig.

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella quote from a new article (pdf) in the New England Journal of Medicine:

The largest facilities housing psychiatric patients in the United States are not hospitals but jails. More than half of inmates have symptoms of a psychiatric disorder as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), and major depression and psychotic disorders are four to eight times as prevalent among inmates as in the general population — yet only 22% of state prisoners and 7% of jail inmates receive mental health treatment while incarcerated.

Last week, Suzy Khimm sized up the mental health system:

Over the past two years, some $1.6 billion has been slashed from non-Medicaid state spending on mental health, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. … According to University of Chicago Professor Harold Pollack, states deliver many mental health and behavioral services outside of Medicaid and are thus freed from federal coverage requirements — as well as matching dollars — making these services a more tempting target for legislators committed to fiscal austerity.

Posts may be a little shorter than usual today. Yesterday, I was walking down my ramshackle ladder from my blog cave when it gave way beneath me, and in catching my fall I broke my left pinkie which was then sticking rather alarmingly at right angles to my hand. Typos may also occur as I type with one right hand until the pain lets up in my other three available digits. Good times.