Author: Andrew Sullivan

Ta-Nehisi joins the debate:

Let me be honest–like many African-Americans, I recoil a bit whenever I hear a white person say "nigger" in any situation, and any setting. It's the hurt of an ancient wound. But I actually recoil more at all the profound, escapist variations–n**ger or "n-word" or whatever. The old hurt is still there–I know what they're referring to–but it's compounded by a sense that I am, evidently, someone who lacks the rudiments of critical thinking. … At some point we have to start accepting that black people have the critical faculties to distinguish between someone trying to insult us ("Niggers go home!") and someone trying to describe something to us ("The sign said "Niggers go home!") I actually believe that a lot of black people are already there.

My mind is changing …

The ratings for Palin's reality show have plummeted.

Ben Smith defends himself by linking to Shmuel Rosner.  Rosner takes offense at my labeling him a Likud and neocon:

1. I never told anyone other than my wife which party I vote for (hint: It's not always the same party).

2. I don't think there's such thing as Israeli "neocon" – some people can testify that this isn't the first time for me to deny the viability of such definition.

Furthermore Rosner doesn't feel that the article is skewed:

I counted all the people interviewed for Smith's piece. Here's the final tally:

2 unnamed officials (maybe it's the same one, it's not clear). Party: Unknown.
5 people you might be able to count as "Likudniks" – even though not all of them are members of the party (Aid to Netanyahu, Kuperwasser, Begin, Dermer, Gold).
3 people associated with the Kadima Party – the opposition to Likud.
2 Palestinians (not one as Sullivan claims).
1 Michael Herzog – party unknown. He worked for Labor's Barak, his brother is Minister from the Labor Party, but he also advises Netanyahu. I can't speak for him, but am quite sure he'd be surprised to be considered a Likudnik.
1 "Veteran" of past negotiations. Party: unknown. It can be anyone. It can be the hawk Gold, or it can be the dove Yossi Beilin.
1 Rosner.

The main point Rosner is trying to make:

Sullivan was quick to denounce this piece because it stated what all Middle East analysts understand: Obama's policies didn't make much sense. And it's not just "Likudniks" saying this. It is also the Palestinians and the Israeli opposition. 

Completely historically accurate:

(Hat tip: Tucker)

“I know I can read a book, but then I’m up and checking Facebook. Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway,” – a high school student interviewed by the NYT.

Clive Crook:

The Republicans’ desire to meddle with, or even abort, the Start accord surprised even some cynics. Officials of previous Republican administrations support the deal. Valuable in itself, it is critical to cementing improved relations with Russia. If Mr Obama cannot rely on Congress to back such agreements, his capacity to negotiate abroad is destroyed.

Ben Smith reports:

Israelis follow American politics as closely as most Americans, and there was a great deal of curiousity when I was there last week about who is the likeliest Republican presidential nominee. Most Israelis didn't express a strong preference on that subject — all the leading Republicans have at least generically hawkish, pro-Israel stands — with a sole exception: Settlers love Sarah Palin.

Because she loves them:

I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.

A reader writes:

During a recent bout of 'flu, I had the lyrics to "Where Is The Love?" running around my head as terrible pop songs do, for hours and hours while I tried to sleep. It really is a horribly vacuous, pretentious song, from the faux-chin-scratching rhetorical emptiness of the title to the really horrific rhymes (And to discriminate only generates hate / And if you hatin you're bound to get irate … thank you, Will.i.am, for clearing that up) to the attempts at subversiveness: But we still got terrorists here livin / In the USA the big CIA  … Yeah, take that, establishment! 

But the real toe curler is the music video, in which a bunch of multi-millionaire pop stars wander around troubled parts of our poor suffering world and help out by, er, sticking question marks onto things (which is a good visual metaphor for how these people ever became and remained popular). It's like watching a bunch of high school kids who've just heard about the poverty in Africa put on a play about it, thinking themselves very noble and, like, deep.

Adam Serwer takes aim at advocates of repeal:

Depending on how it's done, repealing birthright citizenship would increase the population of undocumented immigrants from 11 million today to between 16 million and 24 million by 2050.

But if your goal is reducing the number of Latino citizens, rather than stopping illegal immigration, then the policy makes sense. It's still an unconstitutional symbolic gesture that won't do any good, but it's the kind of culture-war-driven governance that the conservative base is looking for.

Mark Peters defends the word "gay" as a synonym for "lame":

I … have trouble seeing what the “lame” sense of “gay” has to do with homosexuality. Does anyone in the world think gay folks are lame? As I understand the homophobic viewpoint, gay people are considered sinners and evil-doers—a lot worse than lame, right? If the collective gay people of the world could magically transform all “gays are abominations” sentiment to “gays are like, totally lame,” I have a feeling they would take that bargain, because nobody bothers to legally discriminate against the lame. Maybe gay people can commiserate with the physically lame, who lost the battle over that word years ago. …

But language is an amoral beast that operates and evolves on its own, and “retard” is just one of many terms for someone of low intelligence—like “idiot” and “moron”—that moved from medicine to slang. You can’t stop language change, and I think that’s OK. It’s more important to take care of people who are retarded than to police every use of the word “retard”—even when it’s used by morons.

Similarly, with so much real, horrible homophobia in the world, trying to censor the “lame” sense of gay is a waste of energy and a losing battle. Fighting losing battles is retarded. And kind of gay.