Month: September 2011

Timothy Noah fact-checks Warren's claim about GE paying no taxes. Reihan isn't a Warren supporter, but his interest is piqued:

I guess I see Warren as the best, most articulate defender of a progressive vision that I don’t share. While perusing her “Priorities” page on her campaign website, I see attractive language that I can imagine using to describe policies diametrically opposed to those she supports, which is to say policies that I support. And so I’m intrigued. Warren is a worthy opponent. What remains to be seen is whether or not Scott Brown has the mettle and the political skill to defeat her in a state that is notoriously difficult for right-of-center candidates, including moderates.

Steve Kornacki outlines Warren's path to victory. Simon van Zuylen-Wood looks at the potential liability of her Cambridge persona.

They're offering her $11K over her vaccine nonsense:

University of Minnesota bioethicist Steve Miles is now offering $1,000 if the woman Bachmann described comes forward with medical proof that her daughter was left mentally disabled because of the vaccination. Art Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics and Miles' former boss at the U, went further — offering $10,000 if the woman's claim is verified. "These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm," Miles said of why he made the offer. "It's an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed." Miles and Caplan said they are prepared to pay should the medical records be released.

A reader takes the logic of Christopher Ryan one step further:

I’m getting married in three weeks, so I’ve been thinking a lot of family and commitment.  My wife-to-be and I aren’t going to have kids, but I wonder if there’s a surrogate that achieves what is described in this report: namely pets.  We have two dogs.  Like you with yours, we consider ourselves family; they are surrogate children to us.  Could I experience the same thing, but not with actual human children? Fascinating.

An Episcopal priest writes:

I find myself a bit flummoxed at the last couple of sentences in your piece about testosterone: "Marriage with kids, whatever else it's about, is not primarily about sex. A little more candor about that might help deal with delusional expectations." Marriage is about a multiplicity of things.

While not scientific, but important for our religious narrative about marriage, the American Book of Common Prayer 1979 says that marriage is "intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity." The rite goes on to talk about procreation of children (at times and in some cases) and bringing them up in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

Sex is a part of that "mutual joy" spoken of in the first purpose of marriage. The church of the High Middle Ages would have seen sex ONLY in a functionalistic way, i.e. ONLY for procreation. (Thank God we've turned the corner on that one.) 

Sometimes raising and nurturing children does interrupt or inhibit people's sex lives. It's good that mutual joy is not built on sex alone. That doesn't mean that married people with children somehow lead sexless lives. Nor does it mean that desire goes away when children arrive. Rather it often means that frequency of sex gets impeded, and especially when kids are little. 

What I'm flummoxed about in your statement, I suppose, is that I'm not sure I know any childless couples who's relationship is "all about sex." "Mutual joy" seems to me to be a whole lot bigger than just one's sex life. Further, I can't imagine a marriage that is all about sex or only about sex being without issue, but I've not known a marriage or partnership that has been all about sex.

The reader who wrote yesterday's email of the day will especially appreciate the above video – a teaser for the new sitcom "Up All Night", which debuted last night. Troy Patterson reviews. Another reader shifts gears:

I just read your essay "The He Hormone," and can certainly relate to a lot of what you say there. I have been living with AIDS and began TRT (Testosterone Replacement Therapy) back around 1996. This began during a normal quarterly checkup (with blood work) when I mentioned to my doctor that although everything in my life was going just fine, nothing seemed good or bad; that my life seemed like a "dial-tone", devoid of any ups or downs.

"Let's check your testosterone levels", he replied.

(By the way, the fact that people with HIV typically have depressed testosterone levels always struck me as evolutionarily counter-productive from the virus' point of view.  You would think the virus would want to turn you into a testosterone loaded maniac in order to ensure its reproduction.  But I digress.)

When I'm on schedule with my bimonthly shot, the horniness can be quite striking.  I often explain it to friends by saying, "I can see a squirrel walk by and I pop a woody". Social interactions during this time are fundamentally different.  I constantly find myself plotting, scheming, strategizing, and maneuvering to get whomever happens to present a blip on my sexual radar. 

But it certainly feels "alive"; anything is better than the "dial-tone".

Another speculates:

In case anyone is missing the link here, you might want to note that you were literally injecting testosterone during the period when you were caught up in the fever dream of Iraq invasion. As you explained how your emotions were dominating your sense at the time, you were under the influence of a drug for which one of the major side effects is anxiety and panic.

Andrew Exum has a long, wide-ranging, and fascinating interview with former fundamentalist Muslim and current terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. In response to a question about civility:

I’ve come to see civility as important for a variety of reasons, but honestly, practical reasons loom rather large. First of all, it’s generally hard to win a name-calling contest. If I call someone an America-hating pinko, they can fire back that I’m a right-wing tool of the military industrial complex. Those two insults seem essentially to cancel each other out: why give someone an area that can end up a draw if I believe that I can prove all of my other arguments to be correct? Second, I find that if I’m civil, I can actually (sometimes) persuade people I’m arguing against that they’re wrong about an issue. In contrast, if I begin a debate by insulting someone, it only further entrenches him in his initial position, thus making it more difficult to talk sense into him. …

Being polite isn’t the same as being a pushover, nor is it the same as false collegiality that needlessly avoids confrontation. Indeed, I think that kind of fake collegiality should be avoided: the review I published this year of Robert Pape and James Feldman’s Cutting the Fuse is probably one of the harshest critiques a graduate student has produced of a work of that stature. But again, it eviscerates their argument without really personalizing the matter.

The Glen Rice one-night stand has prompted one sports columnist to groan:

The next time Sarah Palin complains about her treatment by any media member, that reporter might want to inform her that at least he or she is not literally sleeping with sources. Because according to a new book, Palin violated the most basic of journalistic tenets, bedding college basketball star Glen Rice in 1987 when she was a young TV sports reporter for KTUU in Anchorage…

This is the stuff that drives legitimate women reporters nuts, makes members of AWSM (Association for Women in Sports Media) furious because it tears at credibility and plays to false stereotypes. Palin had learned her ethics the previous fall and spring as a journalism major at the University of Idaho – her fifth college in six years – where future Bulls coach Tim Floyd was coaching.

A reader writes:

Finally this thread has been moved in the direction of the true apprehensions regarding women in combat: rape. I find this apprehension invalid for two reasons. One, women in combat can be trained and prepared to deal with that experience, just as they might be trained to deal with torture. That doesn't mean that rape can be prevented, but the soldier can be trained in the best ways to deal with the experience. Rape will be an obvious risk to women.

But that is where I come to the second reason it is not a valid reason to keep  women out of combat – this can and will happen to male soldiers as well. Saddam Hussein's son was notorious for using male rape as an intimidation and punishment tool. Men ARE NOT immune to this threat. But men, particularly military men, will not talk about this danger or this reality, and therefore we allow it to apply to our conversations of women in combat only.

Another writes:

I remember after the first Gulf War seeing an interview with a female fighter pilot. She was asked about what would happen if she was shot down and captured. The interviewer wanted to know how she would handle the almost certain fact that she would be raped. She said two things that stuck with me (I'll paraphrase). She said first of all, men get raped too. Secondly, she felt like she had a chance of getting over being raped but knew she couldn't get over being dead. Rape against women has been a common tool in armies the world over. Why not arm the women and give them a fighting chance against such attacks?

Another:

The former Marine officer who wrote about the danger of female prisoners being raped really pissed me off.

Here’s why (if it isn’t obvious): men can be sexually abused also. What’s worse, it has been the US military and the CIA who have been the perpetrators. The Abu Ghraib photos were only a tame example. The US torture regime only makes the eventuality of US troops being raped all the more likely, one of the many reasons it was a horrible mistake. Of course women who serve will need to know the risks, and will have to choose for themselves. And this is why anyone who publicly defends torture should be shamed into obscurity.

Another:

I appreciated the post by the former combat-arms Marine officer. Which sort of opens up a whole new can of worms doesn't it? I'd point out that women in our own military are at more risk of getting raped by their fellow soldiers than they are in civilian life,  and more at risk to be raped by a fellow soldier than be killed by enemy fire. And that US military men also get raped by fellow soldiers. And that men across the world also get raped during wartime.

I'm pretty sure that women and men are well aware of the risks they take if they fall in the hands of the enemy. But it's pretty sad that many of them are not aware of the dangers within their own ranks.

Another:

This women-in-combat conversation is not adding up to me. I've never been in combat, I've never remotely thought of joining any sort of military organization, but I have been sexually assaulted. As have a huge percentage of the female American population. So hearing all of these men swooning over the very remote possibility of a female fighter being captured and raped … really? It's pretty clear that whatever is stirring them up has a lot more to do with surrounding circumstances than the actual event of rape.

You should excerpt that Gulf War article another reader linked to, because it is kickass, and illuminating, because it seems that Cornum is perfectly able to contextualize her own experience, thank you very much:

Major Cornum, who says her mission in the military is "to go to war," said it was puzzling and frustrating to see herself portrayed as a member of the weaker sex needing protection that combat cannot guarantee. The straight-talking major skydives, jumps horses, shoots beer cans and armadillos with a 9-millimeter Beretta pistol and gets her red sports car up to 130 miles an hour on the roads of rural Alabama.

In an interview at a bar in downtown Dothan, not far from Fort Rucker, where she graduated last week from the Air Command and Staff College, Major Cornum said the sexual assault in Iraq in that winter of 1991 "ranks as unpleasant; that's all it ranks."

Everyone's made such a big deal about this indecent assault," she said, in her first interview since the war. "But the only thing that makes it indecent is that it was nonconsensual. I asked myself, 'Is it going to prevent me from getting out of here? Is there a risk of death attached to it? Is it permanently disabling? Is it permanently disfiguring? Lastly, is it excruciating?' If it doesn't fit one of those five categories, then it isn't important."

Do you hear her? This is a lady I want fighting my wars, dammit. She's rational, she's prepared, she's awesome, and she seems to be rightly annoyed that a risk she considered and accepted when signing up is now being held against her by idiots who can't deal.

The part of the article covering male POWs is similarly enlightening. They all claim that if they were assaulted, they'd never tell, and that they might even kill themselves because of it. One also stunningly wants women out of combat because while he's dealing with his own POW experience, he doesn't want to have to deal with thinking about what the woman might be going through. Auuuuugh! Stop projecting! 

Are they worried that if a woman is being raped nearby, that treatment might ripple out to the male POWs? Is it a weird possession thing, where they consider women a resource and that raping "their" woman is somehow a victory for the enemy (which fits the general tradition of civilian rape in wartime)? Does this seem worse because in civilian life you can wave rape away if the woman doesn't shout enough, or is drunk, or dating the aggressor, or wearing the wrong clothes – all excuses that vanish in the POW scenario? I don't know. 

Bottom line: a woman going into battle knows what she's signing up for.

The reader follows up:

I'm not sure any conversation about women in combat can be complete without referencing the Jessica Lynch fiasco. A young, pretty blonde female gets injured, is brought to a hospital with broken bones, is treated … and then is rescued in a blaze of gunfire and machismo by a squad of soldiers. The imagery of a wan, bandaged girl being whisked away by uniformed men – how stirring! What a rescue! And then to hear that she was raped. The entire nation was frothing at the mouth over that storyline.

So many people still believe all that shit was true, even after Lynch herself disputed it; she was never raped, she was treated well, they tried to deliver her to a checkpoint but the ambulance was shot at, her nurse sang to her. The whole thing was cooked up by some propaganda wing of the military, which apparently decided that taking the Fox News recipe for blonde white girls in peril and pasting it onto a real live POW was the way to win the war.  

Fareed Zakaria beholds the unsupervised constituencies behind Rick Perry's rise.

Reza Aslan, for the proposition:

Israel maintains that the Palestinians cannot declare statehood and seal it through the U.N. Yet the Palestinians are merely following the trail blazed by Israel six decades ago. In 1948, after the U.N. voted for the partition of Palestine, debate among the world powers about how to divide the land dragged on and violence between Jews and Arabs grew worse. The Jewish Agency simply preempted negotiations and unilaterally declared the state of Israel; the United States immediately recognized it, and the U.N. accepted Israeli sovereignty the following year. The Palestinian Authority has come to the same conclusion that the Jews apparently came to in 1948: Negotiations will not lead to an independent state; the only way forward is unilateral action.

Robert Danin counters:

Having defied Israel, the United States, and possibly parts of Europe, the Palestinian leadership's UN gambit would cast them as acting unilaterally, a charge Israel has generally suffered. Palestinians' alleged provocative behavior would rapidly increase tensions on the ground, creating an extremely combustible environment. Meanwhile, a failure at the UN could easily spark violence on the Palestinian side as dashed expectations lead to rage. It would also deal the Palestinian leadership a huge public embarrassment. Such a development would be tragic, given the successes of the effort led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to build the Palestinian state from the ground up in the past few years.

Michael Cohen worries that the two-state solution may be sunk for good.