Author: Andrew Sullivan

The first weekend of the contretemps, I emailed a top DC journalist to ask him what he thought about the story. His fundamental response – and one echoed in many Washington circles – was that it might well be true but he wondered "how this gets into the MSM."

Well, it is beginning to seep into the MSM, as with this story from The Week. The comments section seems evenly divided and are worth reading. Palingates has more on the slowly creaking dam of cognitive dissonance:

Our friend Phil Munger on Progressive Alaska published a babygate-related post on June 29 about the "Courage of Shannyn Moore", and our friend Ennealogic examined the thoughts of Phil Munger in her post "Critical Mass – Reaching for it" on her blog "Hypocrites and Heffalump Traps" on July 1. Even a surgeon in Ohio was brave enough to write about the babygate topic on his blog on June 30 and received lots of comments.

You know the MSM is more interested in preserving their reputations on the far right than in seeking the truth. So it's up to the blogs of regular people to keep these people accountable. All anyone is asking for is documentation and we can all move on. All I have ever asked for is for Palin to prove I am a fool for even asking.

Chris Orr reviews Shyamalan’s latest, The Last Airbender:

A slow-motion car wreck? A chronic illness that worsens and worsens without ever quite proving terminal? A night out on the town with Lindsay Lohan?

It’s hard work coming up with a metaphor equal to the task of describing the precipitous cinematic decline of M. Night Shyamalan. The writer-director’s career over the last dozen years has been like an exercise in entropy: from the critical and commercial success of The Sixth Sense; to the underrated Unbreakable; to the bold but ill-conceived Signs; to the escalating idiocies of The Village; to the risible Lady in the Water (a failure notable enough to occasion an entire book); to The Happening, a picture so terrible that it defied conventional criticism.

South Park saw this coming.

A reader writes:

Your reader stated, "if you choose to believe that homosexuality is chosen, and a sin, then a medical cure for homosexuality presents a legitimate challenge to that belief."

I grew up in a highly evangelical culture, and I can attest that your reader overstates the case that the finding of evidence for sexual orientation in-utero would conflict with evangelicals' beliefs. The hard belief that orientation is in no way biological was dropped years ago by nearly all evangelicals. That is why we have seen such a shift towards condemning homosexual "activity" or "relationships" instead of merely orientation. Proving that orientation can be predicted from the womb would merely solidify this trend, and do nothing to further acceptance. For the average evangelical, there simply would be no contradiction with believing "gay is bad" and also "gay is nature." In fact, it would be seen as God's gift to parents so that they could train their children to never ever act on their "temptations."

Another writes:

A Christian who affirms Original Sin ought not to be scandalized to learn that homosexuality may have a biological basis. That humans are compulsive sinners by nature is a core doctrine of the church and the reason why we are all in need of salvation. Indeed, the Apostle Paul chose "the flesh" as a core term in his writings about sin.

Another:

As a 23-year-old gay man raised evangelical Christian, I'd like to counter this reader.

A lot of conservative Christians have come around to the viewpoint that homosexuality may not be a simple choice. You may have been raised wrong and are trying to compensate for that – this is the current line peddled by most ex-gay groups (and, sadly, most evangelical parents with gay children). For instance, my own parents, for reasons explainable only by forced narrative and cognitive dissonance, accept this reasoning and have decided that my gayness is probably a combination of my personality and a somehow-defective upbringing, and my own subconscious response to that. But they still regard homosexuality as one of the most egregious sins known to man, just one in which those "making" the gay person bear some share of responsibility. There are lots of people who think like this, especially in the South. And although the younger generation is more accepting than their parents, quite some number of the youth have this view as well.

Another:

I just wanted to point out that their has already been some controversy within the Christian right about this. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, argued that homosexuality is probably biological in its origins, and that it should be changed in utero if possible. He does think that admitting homosexuality is a choice makes it any more acceptable:

3. Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God’s judgment.

4. The biblical condemnation of all homosexual behaviors would not be compromised or mitigated in the least by such a discovery. The discovery of a biological factor would not change the Bible’s moral verdict on homosexual behavior.

I hope that one day Mohler, and others like him will see that there is no sin and no harm in bisexuality and homosexuality, but I am doubtful that establishing a biological explanation will sway those who take as a given that homosexuality and bisexuality are sinful.

Josh Green reads favorables:

Palin’s poll numbers are nearly as horrible as George W. Bush’s–but only one of them launched two wars and destroyed the economy. That’s remarkable. But what’s more remarkable, in light of this, is that the idea of George W. Bush running for another term (were such a thing possible) would be greeted by gales of laughter from the political cognoscenti, while the prospect of a Palin presidential campaign is taken seriously.

Again, I sure hope Josh is right and from a purely rational perspective, he is. He knows much more about the machinery of electoral politics than I do. But has he noticed that the GOP base isn’t behaving exactly rationally lately? As the base shrinks and becomes more extreme and paranoid, the cultural and symbolic appeal of Palin is enormous. And she has an amazing talent for the performance art and hallucinatory version of reality that the tea partiers crave. She is both a religious and a secular fundamentalist, a walking slogan for the tea-partiers and a warrior princess armed with a child with Down Syndrome for the Christianists.

Romney’s unfavorables? 33 percent. Huckabee’s? 30 percent. But they have not been as exposed as Palin and her favorables are higher than either of them; she has 34 percent to Romney’s 32.5 and Huckabee’s 29. In primaries, favorables among the base are more salient than unfavorables among the broader population.

The other factor is, of course, the economy and the war. In normal times, she would be a joke. But in an era of high unemployment, growing populism, intensifying secular and religious fundamentalism, and the collapse of an adversarial mass media, all bets are off.

Jessica Dweck picks up a study we covered awhile back:

One issue that goes unmentioned in all of this analysis is the rapidly changing face of the fag hag. Cultural observers like Tablet’s Alana Newhouse and Salon’s Thomas Rogers have argued that while the “classic fag hags were theatrical, brassy, unconventional … the Liza Minnellis, Bette Midlers and Liz Taylors of the world,” influential shows like Sex and the City and Real Housewives have corrupted and commodified the once-sacred and singular bond between quirky women and their gay male confidantes. With the success of feminism and increasing inclusion of LGBTs in mainstream culture, women and gay men relinquished the sense of marginalization and otherness that had long united them.

The growth of the gay community to embrace both its masculine and feminine sides has also contributed to the decline, I’d suggest. I have yet to see many fag-hags at Bear week or at the gay rugby tournaments. And then there’s the real cultural catalyst behind gay culture’s accelerating diversity: the Internet. There’s less socializing in person, fewer bars and clubs, and thereby fewer opportunities for social fag-haggery. And no one wants a female friend to kibbitz with while scanning Manhunt.

(And, now, of course, I await the emails from the countless readers who do.)

Annalee Newitz questions Hanna Rosin's thesis:

It's unlikely that the female dominance of the working class will last very long. As Ann Friedman points out, the aspirations of job-seekers will shift with the market. Men who want a respectable working class income can certainly tackle nursing, child care, and food preparation with as much aplomb as women. What we're likely to see over the next decade is a shift not only in how many women are part of the working class, but what kinds of jobs all working class people do.

Male nannies and nurses, in the minority now, are likely to become more common. The question is really whether female engineers will become more common too – especially since engineering jobs are among the most highly-valued in the market.

He offers a very helpful guide to the newly popular theory that fiscal consolidation actually helps growth rather than smothering it. He's unconvinced:

I remain skeptical that immediate fiscal consolidation is desirable; I think the case for additional short-term stimulus is much stronger. (The necessity of long-term fiscal adjustment is unquestioned.) But if stimulus is effectively impossible, as I believe it is, we may have no choice but to test the theory that consolidation can be expansionary. I am inclined to think that there is a greater likelihood that we would be repeating the fiscal error of 1937, in which a sharp fiscal contraction brought on a recession, than that we will get the sort of results achieved in small countries starting with high inflation and interest rates. But if we go the consolidation route, we should at least try to concentrate as much of it as possible on the spending side of the budget, which is the one thing that every study says is essential for success.

Our favorite video site is adding a "skip ad" feature:

The idea is as simple as this: If an advertiser's commercial isn't captivating enough to watch in its own right, it'll be skipped by viewers. If viewers don't watch the ad, Google doesn't charge the advertiser.

And his sport …