Month: January 2013

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.)

"Now, if you ask an Israeli taxi driver, he will say, 'I want peace, but there's no chance of it in this or the next generation.' That is now the opinion of 90% of the public. And when people feel there's no chance of peace, the rightwing is more creditable than the left. Today the competition is between the right wing, the extreme right wing and the fascist right wing. They have a solid majority," – former MK Uri Avnery, on Israel's descent into militarism and far-right extremism.

Greenwald rightly seethes over the suicide of Aaron Swartz, who faced charges from federal prosecutors threatening several decades in prison and $1 million in fines – all for illegally downloading a bunch of academic files:

To say that the DOJ’s treatment of Swartz was excessive and vindictive is an extreme understatement. When I wrote about Swartz’s plight last August, I wrote that he was “being prosecuted by the DOJ with obscene over-zealousness”. Timothy Lee wrote the definitive article in 2011 explaining why, even if all the allegations in the indictment are true, the only real crime committed by Swartz was basic trespassing, for which people are punished, at most, with 30 days in jail and a $100 fine, about which Lee wrote: “That seems about right: if he’s going to serve prison time, it should be measured in days rather than years.”

My feelings entirely. The feds were almost deranged in prosecuting someone so ferociously because he dared to make more data – with no national security implications whatsoever – more accessible to more people. At some point, these federal cops need to understand that the world has passed them by. Glenn’s take on why the feds pursued Swartz so fiercely:

I believe it has more to do with what I told the New York Times’ Noam Cohen for an article he wrote on Swartz’s case. Swartz’s activism, I argued, was waged as part of one of the most vigorously contested battles – namely, the war over how the internet is used and who controls the information that flows on it – and that was his real crime in the eyes of the US government: challenging its authority and those of corporate factions to maintain a stranglehold on that information. In that above-referenced speech on SOPA, Swartz discussed the grave dangers to internet freedom and free expression and assembly posed by the government’s efforts to control the internet with expansive interpretations of copyright law and other weapons to limit access to information.

Andrea Peterson points out that “JSTOR made its peace with Swartz in June 2011 and just last week expanded its online Register & Read program, making more information available for free.” She concludes:

In death, Swartz can be a vehicle to transform the pain felt by the community into the kind of change he would have wanted. It’s unfair to diminish a life into a figurehead for an issue, and it is likely that other factors—not just the court case—contributed to Swartz’s decision to end his life. But there might be no better way to honor Aaron Swartz’s memory than continuing the dialogue about the future of freedom of access to information.

Previous coverage of the Swartz suicide, including remembrances by Lessig and Doctorow, here.

(Photo: Business partners Aaron Swartz, left, and Simon Carstensen, right, have a working lunch outside in Cambridge, Friday, August 31, 2007. By Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images.)

Saba Imtiaz examines Pakistan's passion for tea:

In a country polarized in every possible way – from disparities in wealth and education to differing views on politics and extremism – tea is the great social equalizer. Everyone drinks tea: government officials have an army of ‘tea boys’ at their disposal, investigators work through crime scenes with cups in hand, and journalists substitute tea for a proper meal. There are entire rituals built around it: arranged marriages, traditionally, feature prospective brides serving families cups of tea lain out on a trolley, and cops would never be so tactless as to ask for a straight-out bribe: they instead coyly ask for ‘chai paani’ (tea and water).

It's also "an increasingly pricey habit, given that a kilogram of loose tea costs Rs540 ($5.50)":

According to a 2011 government survey, 2% of Pakistani households’ average monthly expenses are tea, and another 24% is for milk products. Seven percent goes to sugar. That’s a whopping one-third of the total, but no one is pulling the plug on the kettle. Even in flood-ravaged parts of the Punjab province where thousands had lost their houses and possessions, survivors offered cups of tea to visiting reporters.

(Photo: Pakistanis drink tea at a roadside stand during a cold and foggy morning in Lahore on December 31, 2012. By Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images. Hat tip: The Morning News)