Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), smiles during his arraignment at State Supreme Court in New York, U.S., on Monday, June 6, 2011. Strauss-Kahn pleaded not guilty three weeks after being arrested on charges of sexually assaulting and trying to rape a Manhattan hotel maid. By Allan Tannenbaum/Pool via Bloomberg via Getty Images
That was the last question I heard shouted by the press over the media din as Anthony Weiner copped to, er, sextweeting? The country is facing potential default, the leader of the GOP is a delusional maniac, the Middle East remains on a knife edge … and the question in the headline above is still ringing in my ears.
Weiner has not resigned and, frankly, I see little reason why he should. No one, so far as I can tell, was harrassed, no one was abused, no actual sex even took place at all. I'm not sure one can even find any hypocrisy here. Moreover, if online flirting is unforgivable, why isn't off-line flirting unforgivable? And what really is the difference? Apart from pictures that can be used to humiliate – and even blackmail.
Yes, I realize that one congressman recently swiftly resigned over a Craigslist shirtless pic, but that was a stupid response then and it remains a stupid thing now. It was and should have remained a matter between him and his spouse. Given the result of NY-26, maybe even the GOP is regretting its bout of puritanism now.
And yes, I sympathize. A similar thing was done to me a decade ago now – a sexually explicit personal for an HIV-only site was published by gay activists seeking to attack me for my politics – and it still stings. To be exposed in this way is humiliating. Watching Weiner today was painful; this is the result of raw culture war with no scruples or principles, designed purely to destroy. I don't view this as a partisan matter – I find it impossible to condemn Larry Craig out of hand and feel for Ted Haggard. And they were clearly acting hypocritically. There was also a shred of public reason for their humiliation. I don't see any broader argument being invoked here, except partisan revenge.
Should Weiner have done this? For an elected public official, it was unwise, inappropriate, stupid. For a human being, it remains well within the bounds of, well, human.
Yes, he absolutely should not have lied. He should never have lied. But he has now also copped to his lies. It would take a particularly pitiless person to pile on some more. And I am grateful that even Andrew Breitbart seems to have drawn the line there.
Asne Seierstad glimpses the state of trust under Assad:
Surveillance dominates every aspect of life. The secret police—the Mukhabarat—is divided into an intricate system of departments and subdepartments; no part of society is left unexamined. A network of agents spans Syria. Some have tenure; others work part time. Who could be a better observer than the greengrocer by the mosque or the hospital night watchman? Who can better keep tabs on a family than the schoolteacher who asks what Daddy says about the man on the posters?
Seierstad identifies them by their mannerisms:
They possess a way of looking that is inquisitive but not curious. It’s one-way; they want to take, not meet. Their conversation, or lack thereof, is the other giveaway. Between most people there is at least a little chitchat. These men hardly talk, and when they do, they do it without facial expressions, without a jab in the side, a poke on the shoulder. They don’t talk like people really talk. They are on assignment.
The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies hosted a blog forum that asked eight climate experts "whether they think there is growing evidence that human-caused global warming is contributing to an increased incidence of extreme weather — and to cite specific recent examples in their answers":
Their responses varied, with some contending that rising temperatures already are creating more tempestuous weather and others saying that more extreme weather may be likely but that not enough data yet exists to discern a trend in that direction. Scientists in both camps said two physical phenomena — warmer air holds more moisture, and higher temperatures exacerbate naturally occurring heat waves — would almost by definition mean more extremes. But some argued that the growing human toll from hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and heat waves is primarily related to burgeoning human population and the related degradation of the environment.
The scientists' succinct responses here.
(Photo by Meg Wachter. More bodega cats keeping cool here.)
For the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, Maryn McKenna recounts how the discovery came about. From her book Beating Back the Devil:
The man’s name was Michael. He was 33 years old, tall and good-looking, with short, peroxided hair and prominent cheekbones. He was a model, he confided; he’d had his face enhanced with cheekbone implants. He was also quite sick.
He had been ill since October with a fluctuating fever and swollen glands in his neck and under his collarbone. The glands had gone down, but the fever would not go away. He had lost a lot of weight, and now he was losing his hair. He had raw patches of fluffy white growths — candidiasis, a yeast-like fungus, as well as herpes virus — inside his mouth, between his buttocks, and on his index fingers. The medical ward had run some tests already: He had an organism called cytomegalovirus in his urine, his white blood cell count was low, and one particular class of white cell, the T-lymphocytes, were much fewer than they ought to be.
All the findings pointed to the same conclusion: His immune system was not working the way it should.
Amanda Marcotte pins the tail on the elephant:
I think it helps to understand that, for right-wing populists, this thing we call "history" is less about real people who did real things in the real world, and more like just the Bible Part II. It's a myth that can be manipulated to suit their purpose, which is usually to establish themselves as the only Real Americans. When Palin says she got it right, I believe she believes that, because her story wasn't really about Paul Revere. Her story was a thinly veiled allegory of the Tea Party worldview, and in it, Tea Partiers are Paul Revere and the British stand in for Obama, the foreign usurper who is out to take their guns.
(Image via BuzzFeed)
Jim Manzi sees no way to settle the GM bailout debate:
Paul Krugman believes that “the auto industry…probably would have imploded if President Obama hadn’t stepped in to rescue General Motors and Chrysler.” I disagree. Until we agree even roughly about this counterfactual world, we can’t agree about the effects of the bailout. But there is no method of analysis that we both accept that can be used to even roughly estimate this counterfactual world, so we’re stuck just disagreeing.
TDW:
With less than 50 days to go until HP7 part II hits theaters, YouTuber Genrocks
of Filmography 2010 fame employs her unique editing skills to take a pensive look back at a decade of Harry Potter films in a special retrospective featuring clips from all eight films set to a mashup of dredg and John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme.”
"Revere’s quote does technically get her off the hook. Of course, if you believe that this minor incident in the story of the ride is what she was thinking of when she answered the question then you are probably among the minority of Americans who think she deserves to be trusted with nuclear weapons. … Whenever pressed by an interviewer who is not there to puff her, she stumbles and usually blunders. The fact that some of her gaffes can wind up being rationalized in some manner does not justify the pretense that she is [a] person of substance," – Jonathan S. Tobin.
Again, Orwell was there first:
"She had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. 'The human sound-track' he nicknamed her in his own mind.."
Kyle Smith reviews Palin's upcoming flick:
[I]ts tone is an excruciating combination of bombast and whining, it’s so outlandishly partisan that it makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln and its febrile rush of images — not excluding earthquakes, car wrecks, volcanic eruption and attacking Rottweilers — reminded me of the brainwash movie Alex is forced to sit through in “A Clockwork Orange.” Except no one came along to refresh my pupils with eyedrops.
Even Ed Morrissey admits that it's a "terribly flawed film, especially in its sound editing" and that "only those who already passionately support Palin are likely to stick around for the whole movie." Matt Latimer, meanwhile, says it's effective and directed squarely at women:
"The Undefeated" was tested before focus groups of liberals who, according to the filmmaker, almost uniformly came away with a greater appreciation of Palin. This was especially true of women. Two different people told me that a liberal producer at a major television network (it was not Fox News) left the movie in tears after "realizing" how badly Palin had been treated by the media. Like all cold-hearted men, I confess that I was not in tears. But it is clear from the outset that I am not the film’s target audience. The movie really is geared to women. There are repeated references to Palin's gender, how she’s been discriminated against because of her dress and looks, and there is even an image of a campaign button that reads "You Go, Girl." But I won’t be able to ascertain the film’s true impact until I see Joy Behar weeping on air about how terribly she’s wronged the governor. And somehow I just don’t see that coming…
For some inexplicable reason, I was not invited to the screening.
The Dish 