Year: 2013

On using the debt ceiling as ransom, it's hard to put it better than our newly re-elected president:

To even entertain the idea of this happening, of the United States of America not paying its bills, is irresponsible. It’s absurd. As the speaker said two years ago, it would be — and I’m quoting Speaker Boehner now — "a financial disaster not only for us but for the worldwide economy." So we got to pay our bills. And Republicans in Congress have two choices here: They can act responsibly and pay America’s bills or they can act irresponsibly and put America through another economic crisis.

But they will not collect a ransom in exchange for not crashing the American economy. The financial well-being of the American people is not leverage to be used. The full faith and credit of the United States of America is not a bargaining chip.

And they’d better choose quickly because time is running short. The last time Republicans in Congress even flirted with this idea, our triple-A credit rating was downgraded for the first time in our history, our businesses created the fewest jobs of any month in nearly the past three years, and ironically, the whole fiasco actually added to the deficit.

I like this new forcefulness, don't you? He's not uncompromising on new deficit reduction measures – just on refusing to pay the bills Congress has already incurred. And he's right to take the fight to them – because the GOP is the single greatest threat not just to the American economy right now but to the global one as well. There is no party in the democratic West that comes close to their extremism: the British Tories have spent the last years doing all they can to avoid a credit downgrade; ditto the French right. But these fanatics want to save this country's fiscal standing by destroying it. They must be stopped – and the president is not the one who can really do it. Only we can. Public opinion must rally like never before to expose and defang the lunatics running the GOP asylum. And fast.

"I want to sit down and get his view points on Israel, our greatest ally. I want to see… why he chose to oppose the Iraq War, which I think was a wise choice now that we know all the conditions," – Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

"Our greatest ally"? Greater than the UK, whose soldiers died and are still dying in large numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or every other NATO ally, committed to regard an attack on any member as an attack on itself? Or the many Arab states who fought alongside the US in the first Gulf War?

But at least we know that Manchin's foreign policy judgment is sound. After all, who would doubt that the Iraq War was, in retrospect, a "wise choice"?

Update: I think I read Manchin's statement incorrectly. It's not completely clear but it's more likely as I now see, thanks to readers, that he was referring to Hagel's opposition to the Iraq war as the "wise choice." Apologies.

We have received about 4,000 emails since our declaration of independence on January 2, mostly from readers having just signed up for the new Dish. I have been trying to respond to as many as I can, while the Dish staff has been helping to compile all of your constructive feedback regarding our new experiment. So a lot more of your ideas and criticisms are still to come. But first, here are some of the most touching emails from our in-tray:

I just paid $500 in equal measure to the frustration, humor, and intelligence the blog has brought over the last 11 years I've been reading.  I might not donate that much again, but this time I owed you. You were very kind a few years ago to post a number of posts of mine on an anti-gay speech/assembly/etc bill in Nigeria, effectively identical to the one in Uganda.  It meant a lot to a lot of people to get that kind of exposure so quickly in the US.  I still hear from "pen-pals" in Nigeria.

Good luck with the experiment!

Another:

First time writer here. I want to applaud your team's decision to move to a subscription service. The Dish has been a part of my daily routine through college, while I was an expat in Sierra Leone (where your site took 5 minutes to load) and Syria (where your site was often blocked), and now as a policy analyst in DC. In fact, it may be the only thing that has stayed stable across the years and continents. At $20/year, this subscription has the best use-value of anything I'll purchase this year (so much so that I tossed in a bit extra). Good luck and come back and ask for more if you need to. I'm sure most of us would be willing.

Another:

I just completed the purchase of a $100 membership and hope all of your readers who can afford it will buy in at a higher level. I can imagine new startups are expensive, even if it involves blogging. I am an avid Dish Head, and as a 60-year-old African-American woman living in Indiana, I probably don't fit your typical reader profile. I don't do Twitter, but if I did I would be following you and Josh Marshall over at TPM. You both are the best in the blogging business. Good luck with the new venture. I have no doubt it will be a tremendous success.

Another:

I've been dismayed at how few truly successful journalists – the kind of people who can actually afford to take professional risks – have taken management positions or created a single job for an up-and-comer. Now, we're not all born managers, of course, but do I think that we journalists often lose sight of the fact that starting a business is often a deeply noble act.

I'm proud of the Dish because I realize that you guys could surely have negotiated a more lucrative contract with another publisher, made a ton of money, and continued to do great work. You'll do great work, I know, but this new path has the potential to be so much more. The fact that you're turning down easy money (and the easy respectability of operating under a large media company) and taking a risk to create something new is just so damn inspiring. Thank you.

I just gave you 50 bucks and, whatever the ultimate price is, I'm looking forward to reading your work for many, many years to come.

Another asks:

Have you thought about taking us all on a cruise like they do at the NRO?

Er, no. I have thought of taking all the award nominees on a cruise and as soon as it debarks, climbing into a lifeboat pronto. Previous reader reaction to the launch here and here. If you would like to become a founding member of an independent, ad free Dish, subscribe here for just $19.99 a year (or more if you are able and feeling generous).

(Image created by a Dish reader, natch)

Ryan Little did his research into the taxonomy of DC’s bear scene and “related archetypes—cubs, muscle bears, otters, chasers.” A great little fact on the “standard greeting among friends: the kiss, belly rub, and occasional ‘woof’”:

Some bears say it stems from the actress Madeline Kahn—perhaps not a gay icon, but close enough—in her role as Elizabeth in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. When the monster wordlessly propositions her, and after an initial shock, she notes the impressive bulge in his pants and exclaims, “Woof!” The same humor and insinuation underlie the term today, which is an apt fit for a bear gathering: an atypical but exciting sexual situation that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Here’s one thing I miss about DC: Bear Happy Hour at Town. It’s a bigger, better bear party than any in New York (with the possible exception of Sunday Happy Hour at RockBar.) At my age, like many bears, late nights are less and less attractive as options. But I fear whatever bear cred I ever had is disappearing. Since going gluten-free a year and a half ago, I’ve lost close to 15 pounds; and since I started the new anti-lipodystrophy drug, Egrifta, the internal fat created by HIV/meds has withered and dropped my waist line by 3 inches. I’m not bragging – I feel a little scrawny to be honest. But the great thing about Bear Culture – at least before some of the muscle bears came long – is that everyone is welcome. My favorite greeting in a bear context, by the way, is the beard rub. Or that gentle rub on the back where you can feel all that fur move under the flannel shirt.

P.S. My original piece on Bear culture – a decade old now – is here. The trailer for Bear City 2 – featuring my hubby as sex symbol – is here. Guess which one he is.

Commenting on the White House's refusal to create a Death Star, Seth Masket sees "a great opportunity here for the Republicans that they have yet to exploit":

The White House has just come down firmly against an important new military weapons system. They basically just put Dukakis in the tank. They've left us defenseless against our future extraterrestrial invaders. These attack ads write themselves. I predict — and welcome — massive polarization on this issue.

Full transcript here. Her date last night, believe it or not, was wife-abusing, homophobic anti-Semite, Mel Gibson. Would you entrust your young sons to a man with Gibson's violent and vile history? A highlight of her narcissistic, self-loving speech:

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, co-workers, and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now, apparently, I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a prime-time reality show.

What unadulterated bullshit. She never came out until, very obliquely, in 2007. And virtually every coming out these days is low-key, simple and no-drama. I do not remember Anderson Cooper's press conference, fragrance or reality show. She goes on:

[S]eriously, if you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then, maybe, then you too would value privacy against all else. Privacy. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was. I have given everything up there, from the time that I was 3 years old. That’s reality show enough, don’t you think?

"How beautiful it once was"? When gay people were put in jail, or mental institutions, or thrown out of their families – all because of the "beauty" of privacy for Hollywood royalty like Foster? And she honestly believes it's courageous to come out in a retirement speech? Well I guess we should be relieved she didn't leave it for her obit. I defer to a reader's open letter:

Dear Jodie Foster:

There's nothing wrong with not publicly acknowledging the open secret of your sexuality for decades as you so chose. There's also nothing wrong with choosing to kinda-sorta discreetly come out by thanking your partner in a speech in 2007. Yet there is something very tragic and self-contradictory about a bitter diatribe criticizing how other people choose to come out, officially announcing your sexuality on your way out the door of the industry in a non-coming-out speech because you came out "1000 years ago" – while simultaneously defending your fierce desire for privacy – in a brazen attempt to get some of the praise and love you now see the younger gay generation getting for their fearlessness of/indifference to being out… all while being escorted by one of the most well-documented anti-Semitic, homophobic, bigoted assholes in Hollywood history, claiming he "saved" you. If that was indeed your retirement announcement, what a sad end to a stellar career of a brilliant artist. If ever there was a closet you needed to stay in forever, it would be the one marked "Mel Gibson's friend."

J. Bryan Lowder defends Foster:

As far as I’m concerned, as long as a gay person hasn’t been actively pretending to be straight (like a number of people in that hall tonight are probably doing), I don't think she is required to be an activist or even a "role model" for younger LGBT people if she doesn’t wish to be. It is, of course, wonderful when big names like Zachary Quinto and Anderson Cooper have the courage to give up their hetero-privilege in a public pronouncement, and undoubtedly the increasing recognition that so many of our culture-makers are gay has the power to challenge perceptions. But in the midst of the noisy demand that celebrities be “loud and proud,” as Foster put it, the ostensible endgame of the LGBT equality movement can get drowned out: the ability to live our lives as we wish, freely and gently, in peace.

Yes, yes, yes. But the only way we were ever going to get past that oppression was through it. I'm thrilled Foster can now live a fuller life with less fear. I'm saddened she waited until others far less powerful had made the sacrifice to make that possible. And that she waited for the safest moment of all – winning a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award – to do so.

Can we book Kevin Kline on Piers Morgan? Noseybonk offers tips on how Americans can argue with Brits online:

When either arguing or agreeing with a Briton, the American blogman should refer wherever possible to his opponent/ally as a ‘European’. “I know you Europeans love soccer, but…” will cut any trueborn Englishman to the quick, containing as it does a grain of hideous truth.

‘Tis true. The one thing that always sets me off is calling me a European. I’d rather be called a Republican.

While assessing Nixon’s full legacy, I argued that for “one generation [Nixon] will always be evil” but that for “the next he may be more complicated.” Jonathan Bernstein doubts it:

In the long run, no one is going to remember Nixon for China; they’re certainly not going to remember him for the EPA and other laws he accepted from a liberal Congress. Nixon isn’t similar to Lyndon Johnson, who really is developing and deserves a “complicated” reputation because we attribute quite a bit of responsibility to him for both the major achievements and disasters of his presidency. The Nixon-era achievements, assuming that they are seen as significant achievements down the road, won’t be like that.

No one thinks — or will think — that Nixon actually cared about the environment, or thinks of him as having primary responsibility for most of these domestic policy enactments. To the contrary: the odds are pretty good that many currently overstate Nixon’s domestic policy record because they like playing up the contrast with contemporary Republicans. That distinction may not matter much to future historians. Indeed, a somewhat similar vogue for Nixon’s foreign policy matched the peak of Ronald Reagan’s latter-day Cold War presidency, but has now (I think) faded, so that now we’re just as likely to blame Nixon for his Vietnam policies as we are to praise him for detente and China.

No, specialists in diplomacy and Cold War history will debate Nixon’s contributions to those things, but for everyone else Watergate is going to overshadow all that. And rightly so.

I don’t think I disagreed much in my original post. But take the environment and healthcare: Nixon founded the EPA, he was the first president to mention environmental policy in his State of the Union, he set up OSHA, and the National Environmental Policy Act that reviewed federal projects for environmental harm. In 1974, his healthcare reform proposals were far more expansive than Clinton’s or Obama’s. Yes, his crimes will always be and should always be front and center. But domestically, he makes Obama look incredibly timid.

It's a fantastic development – and a ballsy one – for one simple reason: the sharpest and most humane social satirists of our time can now do whatever the fuck they want. No more desperate pleas to Hollywod studios, no more bullshit interventions in their artistic process: just the freedom to innovate and create and keep much more of the rewards than in the past. Sound familiar? The Dish is an Internet minnow, compared with these geniuses' output on TV, web and stage, but regular open-ended conversations with Matt was one reason I found the courage to do this on a much tinier stage myself.

This must surely be the future: in which the agencies and companies and studios and newspapers and magazines can no longer simply own talent; talent can now own itself and produce with greater freedom and more rewards. We need more of this as the means of communication are controlled less and less by bullies with money and more and more by creators with followers.

And while I'm at it, good luck in London. I have a feeling the Brits will love the Book of Mormon more than any other population – and will also have to grapple a little with their too-often smug condescension to religious life. And that's why the Book of Mormon is so right for London. It tugs every string of anti-religious bigotry the Brits smugly revel in and then smacks them right back in the face. If any country could do with such a whiplash, it's my resolutely anti-religious homeland.

(Photo: South Park writers/creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker arrive at 'South Park's' 15th Anniversary Party at The Barker Hanger on September 20, 2011 in Santa Monica, California. By Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.)