Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

I was hanging out and letting my kid play after school one day. I found a spot near the play structure to spread out my newspaper on the ground and read for a bit while he blew off some steam. A girl who must've been in fourth or fifth grade stopped and looked down at me.
"What's that?" she asked.
"A newspaper," I replied.
"What's it for?"

So there's your future, newspapers. Sorry.

Newt Gingrich and Callista Gingrich pose for photos during the 33rd Annual Kennedy Center Honors at the Kennedy Center Hall of States on December 5, 2010 in Washington, DC. By Kris Connor/Getty Images.

Bruce Schneier has a modest proposal:

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there's no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options, but I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They're afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism — or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity — they will be branded as "soft on terror." And they're afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred. Perhaps they're right, but what has happened to leaders who aren't afraid? What has happened to "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?

An empty Washington Monument would symbolize our lawmakers' inability to take that kind of stand — and their inability to truly lead.

I like Bruce's attitude. We have to have someone in political leadership prepared to say that at some point a free society will have to tolerate some level of terror. Or cease being free.

$36 billion? $3 trillion? Scott McConnell homes in on the deeper issue:

The essence of the relationship is not its dollar cost, but the fact that the United States has come to perceive its interests in the Middle East through Israel’s eyes. This is what renders it special.

Looking ahead:

In the coming years, as the prospect of a two-state solution disappears, it is likely that Israel will continue its inexorable march toward becoming a state between the Jordan River and the sea, with one set of laws for Jews, who will have the rights of citizens, and another for Arabs, who will be denied full citizenship. What will it cost America’s broader relationship with the Muslim world to maintain a special bond with a state based on this kind of ethnic discrimination? That also would be difficult to quantify. And yet this scenario may be impossible to escape. The threat of Israel’s turning itself into a nuclear-armed desperado striking at will at the oil states in the Gulf cannot, alas, be entirely dismissed. That may be, as Ariel Roth argues, a compelling reason to maintain the special relationship pretty much unchanged. 

 

Like Chatroulette – only devoted to Wikileaks and without all the penises. Seriously, the funnest way to peruse the cables.

Brendan Tapley has written one of the stranger defenses of DADT:

As recently as 100 years ago, men talked about their love for each other freely. In fact, the desire for intimate fraternity was considered more than just normal for a male life; it was believed to be essential. Men acted on this desire without fearing prejudice or ridicule. Here's a fairly common example from the 1830s, taken from the journal of Albert Dodd, a Yale student, about his friend John:

"I regard him, I esteem, I love him more than all the rest… it is not friendship merely which I feel for him, or it is friendship of the strongest kind. It is heart-felt, a manly, a pure, deep, and fervent love."

As open homosexuality emerged, however, it became masculinity's foil, its antithesis. Men grew skittish about wanting to express sentiments like Dodd's or participate in environments where fraternization was now equated with gayness. And so men stopped acting on their fraternal impulses, in spite of the fact that they did not go away. In fact, quite the opposite happened: The fear of being gay, effeminate, the anti-male—take your pick—has created a more intense, if repressed, longing in men to find and experience those rare environments where men can be close to other men without "forfeiting" their masculinity.

Tapley later claims that repealing DADT "threatens this [sort of brotherhood] because in bringing even a hint of homosexuality into this community, a man must once more lead that paranoid, self-conscious existence."

I sympathize with Tapley's general point, but think he's gotten things exactly the wrong way round. Yes, when categories such as homosexuality and heterosexuality did not exist, a kind of exuberant, manly affection was more possible – and benefited everyone. But just because those categories did not exist in the public consciousness doesn't mean that homosexuality didn't exist at all. It just meant that this kind of male-bonding was premised on gays' lying about who they were – with all the Brokeback pain and deception and mixed messages that entailed. 

So how to regain male intimacy without the "taint" of homosexuality, while accepting that the closet has been effectively abolished? I don't think artificially recreating the closet via fantasies like DADT is an answer. The answer is to have more interaction and honesty between openly gay men and straight men, and a willingness to move past these boundaries to areas where male bonding is perfectly possible.

It's possible, in my view, because gender is much more powerful a force than orientation – and because homosexuality spans the gamut of behavior, from hyper-feminine to hyper-masculine and every variety in between. Those gay men able and willing to bond with straight guys – even while joking about their own gayness – are perfectly capable of this kind of camaraderie. That's especially true in the military. It's how you can come up with a quote like the classic from the Pentagon report:

“We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He’s big, he’s mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.”

And once you acknowledge it and don't care about it, that heartfelt, manly love becomes possible again – but on the basis of reality and candor, not oppression and deceit.

I know the transition can be tough. But I'm equally sure it's doable. A dose of self-deprecating humor on both sides is particularly helpful in this respect.

The hope is that the great exception to the reality of more publicly embraced and appreciated male-male love will one day be seen as the era we have just gone through – in which homosexuality was uniquely both recognized as a category and stigmatized. We cannot remove the category because it is true and cannot be unthought. But we can remove the stigma if we want to return to a more durable and honest form of the nineteenth century homosociality. Remove the prejudice, add a little discretion, mix in an amount of deference to majority straight culture, and we can all move forward – in sports, the workplace, and the military. As, in fact, we already have.

(Photo: Walt Whitman by Thomas Eakins, 1891.)

Building off my post, Steve M. points out an MSM blindspot:

[T]here's an MSM take on Republicans that strengthens the GOP: namely, that no matter what the party does, it's a legitimate party interested in governance. It's one of our major political institutions — it can't ever be talked about as if it's gone off the rails, as if it's thuggish and deliberately acting in opposition to the national interest. Major political parties just don't do that with malice aforethought.

Steve Benen agrees:

In the world of serious discourse, it's entirely appropriate to say a major political party is wrong. It's equally acceptable to accuse the party of having a misguided agenda, or being incompetent, or even having corrupt leaders.

But the point Andrew and Steve are emphasizing is qualitatively different. This is an observation predicated on the notion that a major political party is now operating less as a party and more as a nihilistic, borderline dangerous, gang.

I suspect the vast majority of Americans aren't especially aware of any of this.

 

Apologies for the crazy shipping costs attached to every item in the Dish store. There was a technical glitch and the expedited rush shipping price was the only one available. It's fixed now – with saner, cheaper options. Our apologies. The tote above is $16. While supplies last.

I kid you not, via Goldblog. But Israel need not fear:

It's hard to disagree with Sargent: if the White House and Reid want to go the extra mile to get DADT repealed before Christmas, they can, if they extend the calendar. Which means they must extend the calendar. It's now or … who the hell knows? And our troops deserve support.