Category: Old Dish

His biographers chip in their thoughts.

“My anxiety about the blog world is not that it will put us out of business but that it contributes to an erosion of middle ground, that it accelerates a general polarization of the nation into people, right and left, who are ardently convinced and not very interested in exposing themselves to facts or ideas that contradict their prejudices.” – Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, in an email to Jeff Jarvis, who dissents. The point, surely, is that the blog world can go either way. It’s not a utopia. It’s subject to the same polarizing forces that beset a deeply divided polity. Jeff’s blog is one that manages to build some kind of dialogue between the two sides, in his own internal discourse. But that’s rare, isn’t it? And isn’t it rarer now than it was a year ago?

Here’s an email that made me think:

Your latest two pieces of writing have the same underlying foundation: isolation in our current society.

It is not chance happening that the crystal meth crisis in the gay community has occurred. The generations that became afraid to have sex during the 1980’s and 90’s have found consolation behind a computer screen. The computer offers a safe place to connect for instant porn, in-and-out sex (yes, just like a fast food fix), and if the drugs make us feel that much better about the whole process, then what the hell. The problem lies in the isolation that accompanies online sex, dating, and life nowadays. The drugs comfort that need, and increase the isolation. Not to mention how quickly crystal becomes physically addictive…

So what’s next? Peer pressure like in the 1980’s does not have the same effect because we are so much more socially isolated than we were twenty years ago. I know I am, my Mom is, my friends are; aren’t you? Since our society is being eaten away by isolationism, how do we get people back from behind their iPods into society? How do we get the boys back into the bars? In a country where we do not have strong social traditions, where do you go to reintroduce cultural socialization. In Italy, they walk in the evenings; In Germany, they gather at beergardens; In France, cafes. Yesterday, I went to my local coffee house in the bohemian section of Boston, Jamaica Plain, and like you, found myself alone amongst a flock of wired people.

I don’t know about you, but I am getting pretty lonely. I trashed my last MP3 player, and after reading your article, have been rethinking giving into the mass media iPOD craze. Must we rip these people (including the tweekers of the gay community) from behind the computer screen to experience life and share the world?

He’s onto something.

When all else fails, try and use gays to advance your agenda. This is almost self-parody.

Ryan Sager looks at the extremists at the Conservative Political Action Conference and worries. Money quote:

Make absolutely no mistake about it: This party, among its most hard-core supporters, is not about freedom anymore. It is about foisting its members’ version of morality and economic intervention on the country.

Yep. That what Bush has accomplished for conservatism. Ramesh responds – but his response is primarily political not philosophical. But what if Bush really is successful politically – and entrenches big government, moralizing paternalism as the Republican core for a new generation. What happens to real conservatism?

METH AND HIV: More evidence of a dangerous connection: meth makes people far more susceptible to becoming infected and makes infected people far more infectious by ramping up their viral loads. Add to that the fact that meth users on HIV meds do not follow their regimens fathfully enough and you can see how drug-resistant virus can mutate and be spread more easily. It’s amazing, given these facts, that HIV infection rates among gay men have been stable or declining.

What is happening to serendipity and socialization in a world where everyone has white wires coming out their ears? My latest column for the Sunday Times is now up.

ALTMAN WALKS BACK: Larry Altman, whose uneven reporting on HIV has been debunked before, is now walking back his paper’s hysterical series of articles on an alleged HIV strain that is not new and whose virulence has not been proven. What’s really shocking to me is that we finally have evidence for why the health authorities panicked. Here’s the money quote:

At the time [the single patient involved] tested HIV-positive, his CD4 cell count — a gauge of the health of his immune system — was lower than 100, a sign of advanced AIDS. A normal CD4 cell count is more than 650, and U.S. patients generally are infected 10 years before the CD4 count drops that low.

This is baloney. In fact, it’s extremely common for newly infected people to see their CD4 counts plummet very fast in the early stages before their own immune system bounces back. If they’re chronic crystal users, that immune system may be shot and may take some time to recover. In other words, this kind of drop in CD4 counts is routine among the newly infected. I’ve known dozens of cases where just-infected men see their CD4 counts drop to scary levels and viral load soars. But soon they recover. Again: more evidence that this “story” is no story. If health authorities want to warn people of the dangers of crystal meth use and of unprotected sex, then they absolutely should. But they shouldn’t use this kind of unsubstantiated scare tactic. It will only discredit the authorities. Would I buy anything New York’s health commissioner, Thomas R. Frieden, says in the future? Put it this way: he no longer has the benefit of the doubt. That’s not good for a public health authority.

ESTRICH VS KINSLEY: The exchange has to be read to be believed.

It will now post notices of ‘civil partnerships’ between gay couples, civil marriages in all but name, in its august pages. In Britain, marriage rights are imminent for gay couples, as is increasingly the case in most of the civilized world. Today was the first announcement.

“For those of us who believe we should train our daughters according to Titus 2, 1 Peter 3, and other Biblical passages, my answer is “Yes, it is not good.” I propose that sports greatly hinders the development of godly, Biblical, feminine character. Parents today expend extraordinary amounts of time and energy taking their daughters from one sports event to another, week after week, even to the point where it exhausts the family and family resources. The fruits we see are that today’s Christian women are often ill- prepared to be Biblically obedient wives and mothers. This brings to mind a couple of questions: “Why do we spend so much time preparing our daughters to play sports?” and “What does it prepare them for in the future?” My answer is that sports prepare women to be more like men. Instead of spending all that time preparing our daughters as the Bible directs, we are training them to be like men so they can better compete with men in traditionally masculine roles – i.e., compete with them in the workforce, in politics, in the military, and in sports.” – Scott Jonas, in Jesus-Is-Savior.com, outlining fundamentalist opposition to women in sports. No one should be under any illusions that gays are not the only targets of some Christian fundamentalists. The freedom of women to live lives as they see fit is also anathema to these activists.

“For those who have marveled at baseball’s homoerotic rituals – the butt-slapping, the excessive man-hugs – let Jose Canseco, author of “Juiced,” add a more intimate encounter. Canseco claims that while he was playing for the Oakland A’s in the late 1980s, he and teammate Mark McGwire would lock themselves in a bathroom stall and inject each other with steroids. Pause on that image for a moment. Canseco was 6 feet 4 inches and weighed in the neighborhood of 250 pounds; McGwire was 6 feet 5 inches and adding beef like an Arby’s franchise – for the two of them to squeeze into a men’s room stall must have presented something of a geometric challenge. Now imagine McGwire gently lowering his uniform pants while Canseco (“I’m a good injector”) hovers over his derriere with a syringe, and add the fact that these men are enjoying this ritual immensely, even laughing about it, and there you have an enduring image of the Bash Brothers. Back, back, back, back, back-side!” – Bryan Curtis, Slate.

I let rip on the academic Stalinists baying for Summers’ blood on the Chris Matthews Show this weekend. I cannot believe the hysteria. Well, actually, the sad things is I can believe it. But if Summers goes down, the chilling effect on intellectual freedom in this country will be intense. That’s what the far left wants – turning universities into propaganda tools rather than centers for genuine intellectual inquiry. The idea of the university, to purloin Newman and Oakeshott, is under attack. This is about far more than university politics. It’s about the future of free inquiry.