Month: September 2011

A reader writes:

I've been writing a song and posting it on YouTube every day since January 1, 2009. On September 28, 2011, I will be commemorating my 1000th song by releasing an album. The first single and video from the album is "Are You A Real Person," about a friend request I received from an attractive girl who looked vaguely familiar. The video for the song, directed by Albert Birney, combines live action, animation, and family portraits Albert found on the side of the road. The goal was to convey the unsettling experience of wondering whether a pretty face online is a real person you know – or a spambot.

A dilemma for the ages.

Gordon Adams says that Obama's cuts in military spending are fictional. Peter Suderman explains:

The CBO's scoring rules assume that war spending remains at a constant level growing with inflation—even in the midst of a troop drawdown. So deficit fakers can take advantage of this by instructing the CBO to account for an already-planned troop reduction.

A reader writes:

To the reader who counters the gay superstar debate with Martina Navritolova, I should note that not only does the underlying article point this out and concedes the enormous, longstanding contributions of out-lesbians to the sports world, but the reader misses the point entirely.  Without putting too fine a point on gender roles within and outside of the LGBT community, femme women are not expected to excel at sports, and the Venn diagrams of "athletic women" and "lesbians" has a not-inconsiderable overlap.  Gay men, however, are anathema to the world of competitive team sports.  Athletic men are supposed to be (at least in some circles) the male ideal – virile, strong, macho, heterosexual.  Gay men throw a wrench into this equation.  Gay men are also much rarer in the world of team sports (the Venn diagrams of "gay men" and "guys who like/follow/participate in sports" having very little overlap, generally speaking) and are seen by the world at large as fey, weak, uncoordinated. We throw like girls, as they say. 

So, not to take anything away from the contributions of lesbians to athletics, but lesbians in athletics are not exactly forging new territory.  In fact, lesbians comprise such a large number of WNBA players and what may be a majority of WNBA fans that out-lesbianism isn't worth blinking an eye.  It's convenient for the reader to claim this is another example of "men never tiring of thinking that the only important events in the world are done by men," it's flat out wrong here. 

And, P.S., this isn't even getting into the controversial but worth-having-at-some-point argument that, as far as the heternormative world views the LGBT community, the bias goes in the other direction.  Out-lesbians are socially acceptable in the entertainment industry; gay men not so much.  Straight men get off to lesbian porn and think generally the idea of lesbian sex is "hot"; straight men are repulsed by the mechanics of gay sex. (And guess what? Straight men are still the holy grail for advertisers).  So, yeah.  I'm not buying this reader's argument at all.

Another is more succinct:

There's no denying Navratilova's courage. Even years later, openly-gay tenniswomen like Amelie Mauresmo still have to face homophobic comments (Martina Hingis' "She's half a man" is the most famous). Nevertheless, Navratilova doesn't count. An openly gay sports superstar would make a big difference because so many think of sports as the very embodiment of masculinity and think of gay men as the antithesis of masculinity. To someone who thinks along those lines, a gay woman in pro sports is, if anything, a confirmation of their prejudice. ("Ah, she's gay! That makes a lot more sense!") But when they learn that male superstar XYZ is gay, they are forced to revisit their assumptions.

Another:

The reader wrote, "When you think of who has come out in sports and entertainment, the groundbreakers are almost all women." Okay, but that's not what we're talking about here. Just as SLDN (one of the main organizations behind the repeal of DADT) chose to use muscular, strong, and overtly masculine men in its photos and PR, this problem is about marketing. A lesbian woman who becomes a superstar in the field of sport, where men are thought to dominate, is as expected, however sadly, as a gay man who becomes the talk of the fashion world. 

The point here is not that we just need to demonstrate that there are gays and lesbians in different fields. The point is that we need lipstick lesbians (as girly and feminine as can be) to walk in a Victoria's Secret Fashion show; and we need aggressive and athletic males to dominate a sport like football or basketball (the two most culturally masculine and homophobic sports in the US). Is it right that we need these two examples just to prove a point? Hell no. But is it part of the marketing plan if we need to ultimately win the war of ideas and kill the stereotypes? Damn right. 

(Photo:  John Amaechi of the Orlando Magic shoots the ball over Kenny Thomas of the Houston Rockets during a game at the TD Waterhouse Centre in Orlando, Florida on March 24, 2000. By Andy Lyons/ALLSPORT. Amaechi, following his retirement, became the first openly gay NBA player.)

You want to know why some Wasillans asked for the same anonymity in “The Rogue” as Colin Powell gets from Bob Woodward? Maybe ask an Alaskan:

McGinniss addresses the climate of fear the Palin camp has created in the Wasilla area since the mid-1990s, better than anyone else has.  Far better.  He lived through it. Here’s one example.  My longtime friend (since 1974, in Seattle, before he moved to Alaska), Dewey Taylor, used his truck to bring some chairs over to McGinniss’ new rental next to the Palins.  Apparently, some of Palin’s advocates took note:

Then I hear that at about four o’clock this morning somebody shot out the driver’s side window of Dewey Taylor’s truck, which was parked in his driveway.

I call him and offer to pay for a new window.  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, “it was probably just a coincidence.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“About twenty years.”

“Ever had a problem with a vehicle parked in your driveway before?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

A couple of interesting things should be noted here.  I see Dewey a lot.  He’s never discussed this incident with me.  Strange, eh?  Maybe not, as three months earlier, Palin-loving vandals (a week after this incident) had drained the oil from my Subaru (probably using a Jabsco pump), cut the oil warning light wire, and cost us $3,500.00.  And I’ve never shared that with Dewey.  We’re both “I’ll move on” kinds of people.  Dewey more than I.  But did fear of even dwelling on the vandalism help us keep our mouths shut?

How many other stories like that are there out here in the Mad Zoo?  The climate of festering fear or immediate retribution here – not just from the Palins, but from the nutty right-wing and Christianist zealots – should not be underestimated.

Who do you trust – the MSM in DC or Alaskans who know the truth? Here’s the bottom line:

The Rogue may be the best close look at how a small town in America related over a period of 20 years to a politician who had an uncanny ability to draw upon hatred, superstition, gang organizing and media incuriosity since Sinclair Lewis’ novel of 1935, inspired by Huey Long, It Can’t Happen Here.

Sex sells:

Anne-Marie Slaughter puts forth some analogies:

In plain English, the Cold War world was like chess. The 21st century world is more like tennis, where the wind, heat, possible rain delay (climactic factors that are themselves the product of complex adaptive systems), and your opponent's relative health and form on any given day (health and form that are themselves a function of whom your opponent has played prior to your match) all affect the speed, trajectory, and spin on the ball coming at you. Sometimes you get to choose your actions independently, for example when you serve, but mostly you adapt and respond. Or take surfing, where you really can't predict when the wave is coming or what it will look like. But when the conditions are right you can be sure that a wave will come and you can do a great deal to position and prepare yourself to ride it all the way — or at least not to get smashed under.

Over the weekend, Paul Gigot reported that Chris Christie is reconsidering a run. Jennifer Rubin drools at the thought:

Let’s consider for a moment Christie in the GOP debate. Can you imagine what he’d say about Perry’s backpedaling on Social Security? Could you imagine him letting Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) get away with nonsense about America bringing 9/11 on itself? Ooof. I imagine he’d brush off Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) with a shake of the head and a sly remark. (“Michele, that’s cuckoo land stuff. Mental retardation isn’t caused by a vaccination.”) And as for Romney, Christie would have a solid case to make that you really can govern as a full-throated conservative in a blue state.

Bill Kristol's actual Christie dream here. Peter Robinson pushes back against the possibility, noting that "Christie isn't nearly as conservative as Republican primary voters now believe."

Beinart imagines a likely future:

One day, when America has less power to protect Israel than it does today, and when Abbas has given way to Palestinian leaders less interested in being Israel’s subcontractor against Palestinian terror, I suspect American Zionists will look back nostalgically upon this month’s bid for a Palestinian state, a bid that legitimizes Israel inside the green line in return for a Palestinian state beyond it. By then, if the occupation becomes permanent, the Jewish state may indeed dwell alone. In his 2003 book, Sleeping on a Wire, David Grossman wondered how long Israel could treat its Arab population like “an enemy without in the end actually turning it into one.” Grossman was thinking too small. If Israel continues on its current course, it will conduct that experiment with the entire world.

I can't improve on Glenn Greenwald's piece on the vindictive, brutal decision by far right judges on the 11th Circuit – so go read it. An American citizen, seized and tortured for four years, is eventually given a trial where all evidence of his torture is withheld, and where the original charges – being involved in a "dirty bomb" plot – were completely dropped by the government. His 17 year sentence – on top of four years of torture that reduced him to a shell of a human being -  is nonetheless too lenient for the Republican right. So the men who authorized his torture go on The View, and the victim of torture gets extra punishment.

Look: Padilla is a bad guy, who got involved in Jihadist circles, but was never pinned to any actual terror plot. He deserves to be in jail. But no US citizen deserves to be tortured without a trial – and then all but framed by the rules applied to it, and now doubly punished by what can only be called judicial cruelty. And no US citizen deserves to have the label "dirty bomber" attached to him by CNN and ABC News when no such charges were ever brought against him, let alone proved.