Category: Old Dish

“I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,” – General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq’s new intelligence services. I don’t think I’ve read a more depressing statement than that in long time. We may not have lost the war in Iraq yet, but there’s little doubt that we are currently losing it. Solutions? Juan Cole has an interesting post on why partitioning Iraq would not solve our problems. I’m trying hard to be optimistic about Iraq but the relentless murder and mayhem propagated by the enemy is difficult to ignore. The difficult truth is that these fanatics can strike almost at will, even in the heart of the capital. They have infiltrated the Iraqi forces, when they aren’t murdering them. A few months ago, I blogged my worries that the Green Zone was no longer secure. Those worries now seem, to use Gonzales’ description of parts of the Geneva Conventions, “quaint.” But do we postpone the elections? Almost certainly not. Do we watch as lines of voters are gunned down at voting places? Massive American presence around ballot boxes would be counter-productive. Infiltrated and terrified Iraqi security forces will be largely helpless. Is there some way through? Could the insurgents over-play their hand and help galvanize the electoral process? Will we somehow see the actual act of democracy achieve a change in public consciousness so that progress can be made? These are the hopes we have got to cling to. What else can we do?

Here’s Daniel Okrent’s defense of why the New York Times omitted the fact that Susan Sontag was a lesbian:

Spurred by challenges and queries from several readers, I looked into the charge that The Times had willfully suppressed information about Susan Sontag’s relationship with Annie Leibovitz. My inquiry indicates that the subject was in fact discussed before publication of the Sontag obituary, but that The Times could find no authoritative source who could confirm any details of a relationship. According to obituaries editor Chuck Strum, “It might have been helpful if The Times could have found a way to acknowledge the existence of a widespread impression that Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz were more than just casual friends. But absent any clarifying statements from either party over the years, and no such corroboration from people close to her, we felt it was impossible to write anything conclusive about their relationship and remain fair to both of them.” Ms. Leibovitz would not discuss the subject with The Times, and Ms. Sontag’s son, David Rieff, declined to confirm any details about the relationship. Some might say that such safely accurate phrases as “Ms. Sontag had a long relationship with Annie Leibovitz” would have sufficed, but I think anything like that would not only bear the unpleasant aroma of euphemism, but would also seem leering or coy. Additionally, irrespective of the details of this particular situation, it’s fair to ask whether intimate information about the private lives of people who wish to keep those lives private is fair game for newspapers. I would personally hope not.

The closet remains intact. Privacy? Sontag informed the world about her cancers and even an abortion. And her relationships with several women were not state secrets. Recall also that Sontag’s career took off with her rightly celebrated essay on camp, an essay that she would had a hard time writing without intimate familiarity with gay life and culture. The golden rule here is to ask what the NYT would have done if Sontag had lived with a man for a couple of decades on and off, and had written essays on various aspects of sex, love and heterosexuality. Do you think they would have never mentioned her actual love life? Or if she had had serious relationships with a variety of male artists and thinkers, some of whom had influenced her work. Would this be regarded as an invasion of her privacy? The question answers itself. (More discussion here.)

“Andrew, I know from reading your site that you are intelligent, but you really put your foot in it with your comment. You must not have your brain fully engaged after your vacation. Your quote of the day from LCDR Whitsitt misses the point completely.
EVERYONE in the military would rather be saving lives than taking them. More important, most military personnel don’t see any difference between the mission in Iraq and the mission in tsunami-stricken south Asia. The goal is to help people who have been ravaged by forces beyond their control to get back on their feet and join the community of nations so they won’t continue to be a burden (or danger) to us.
Relief work is hard and dangerous and unpleasant. No one enjoys the stench of rotting corpses, whether its in Fallajuh or Banda Aceh. Military personnel will be exposed to any diseases that break out. Working in the tropics with only rudimentary living conditions (as those assigned onshore to the cleanup and reconstruction will face for months) is no picnic. Flying supplies off of ships to remote locations over miles of ocean and jungle will not be accident-free.
LCDR Whitsitt’s point is, he’d rather risk his life helping the Indonesians than fighting in a place where some of the very people he’s risking his life for are indifferent at best, and gunning for him at worst. However, like virtually every other person in the military, he’ll do his best to accomplish the mission assigned to him by the nation’s leaders… in Baghdad or Banda Aceh.
I, for one, am extremely proud of the US and the US military and the job they are doing in south Asia… and the job they are doing in southwest Asia. You should be, too. What other country could bring relief to the suffering on the scale that we can? What other country would even try?” – more feedback on the Letters Page. My point is not that bringing relief to stricken people is somehow less worthy than fighting wars. My point is that the military is primarily about fighting and winning wars – not disaster relief.

TAX REFORM FIRST: My case for Bush punting social security reform in favor of tax simplification. (You need to subscribe to TNR online to read it.)

MARIJUANA AND HIV: Here’s an interesting new study that suggests that marijuana can greatly help people stick to nausa-inducing anti-HIV drug regimens. Sticking to the regimens is critical for preventing viral resistance and progression of AIDS. But the feds would rather people with HIV accelerate their deaths than give any sort of approval to pot.

I’m not the only one to notice how the big media has essentially lied by omission about Susan Sontag’s life. An op-ed in today’s L.A. Times notes the following:

An unauthorized biography written by Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock and published by W.W. Norton in 2000, reports that Sontag was, for seven years, the companion of the great American playwright Maria Irene Fornes (in Sontag’s introduction to the collected works of Fornes, she writes about them living together). She also had a relationship with the renowned choreographer Lucinda Childs. And, most recently, Sontag lived, on and off, with Leibovitz.

Even Hitchens mentions only her ex-husband. Privacy? From a woman who detailed every aspect of her own illnesses? From someone whose best work is redolent with homosexual themes? But, of course, Sontag understood that her lesbianism might limit her appeal in a homophobic culture – even on the extreme left, where she comfortably lived for decades. That was her prerogative. But that’s no reason for the media to perpetuate untruths after her death. And it’s certainly reason to review her own record in confronting injustice. Just as she once defended the persecution of gay people in Castro’s Cuba, she ducked one of the burning civil rights struggles of her time at home. But she was on the left. So no one criticized.

Here’s a sign that the Republican leadership on the Hill know that hubris is a real danger. DeLay is ruthless. But he’s not dumb. The Republicans know that their public support is tenuous; that their increased numbers were primarily a function of gerrymandering. Bending ethics rules for their own purposes was never going to fly. As one of them noted, “Constituents reacted. We’re blessed with a leadership that listens.” The listening will have to continue. Or else.

GONZALES AND TORTURE: In my opinion, no one who has enabled and sanctioned the potential and actual use of torture should become attorney general of the United States. But I’m not the president; and he doesn’t see it that way. And the people who re-elected him had plenty of opportunity to avail themselves of the fact that this administration has quietly enabled torture of inmates in American custody, and that Gonzales played a critical role in making the legal case for such previously outlawed practices. The Bush administration’s use of torture – to the point of death in at least five cases and possibly 23 more – was one reason I found it impossible to support the president’s re-election. But this is a democracy. And my candidate lost. Gonzales isn’t being nominated to the Supreme Court; he’s being nominated to become the president’s chief law enforcer; and, in general, the president deserves the benefit of the doubt on his own picks. Should the Democrats make a stink? Of course they should. The hearings are an opportunity to raise awareness of what this administration has done in dozens of hell-hole prisons around the globe – some of which we will never even know about. The Gonzales argument that the president has the right to circumvent all anti-torture laws because, as commander-in-chief, there should be no limits on his conduct of the war is an argument worth airing. So let’s air it. Let the president and his attorney general defend it. In public.

I have to say I’m amazed at the fact that almost all the obituaries for Susan Sontag omitted her primary, longtime relationship with Annie Leibovitz, the photographer. Of 315 articles in Nexis, only 29 mention Leibovitz, and most of them referred merely to their joint projects. Leibovitz was unmentioned as a survivor in the NYT and Washington Post. It’s striking how even allegedly liberal outlets routinely excise the homosexual dimension from many people’s lives – even from someone dead. But perhaps it is reflective of Sontag’s own notions of privacy and identity. She championed many causes in her day, but the gay civil rights movement was oddly not prominent among them.

THE BLOG EXPLOSION: Jeff Jarvis has a great post on what has happened. As what might now be thought of as an “old-timer,” I have to say that my own experience in the blogosphere has changed. I used to be able to keep some kind of grip on a lot of what’s out there. But it’s hopeless now. Even Glenn can’t manage it. Our little village is now a fast-growing exurb. I’m not complaining. But I’m trying to adjust. And the decentralized nature of blog-world can make that harder.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY I: “I’d much rather be doing this than figthing a war,” – helicopter pilot Lt. Cmdr. William Whitsitt, helping the survivors of the south Asian tsunami. Earth to Whitsitt: you’re a soldier.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “[‘Desperate Housewives’] has nothing to say about the vicissitudes of the average or even the well-to-do American stay-at-home wife; it is neither feminist, nor pro-feminist nor proto-feminist nor post-feminist. Feminism has as little to do with Desperate Housewives as it did with Sex and the City. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine in either case what outright misogynists would have done differently.” – Germaine Greer, in the Guardian.

A journalists’ standing ovation for an anti-Bush tirade by Norman Mailer.

The Cornerites are taking a whack at Christie Todd Whitman’s assertion that “Bush’s three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection.” Does this mean much? Well, it’s better than being beaten, as some have remarked. But it is also indicative of the fact that the voters didn’t weigh up the incumbent this time around and come to the conclusion that he fully deserved re-election. Most of the time, that’s what they do with incumbents up for a second term. Remember Eisenhower’s, Nixon’s, Reagan’s and Clinton’s re-election margins? Bush didn’t win a big majority; he remains much less popular than most re-elected presidents; if he’s smart, he’ll understand this. But he is smart and seems intent on a major go-for-broke two year legislative agenda that both assumes the fragile public support he has and utilizes his institutional power in a one-party government. Same as the first term, actually. And since he doesn’t need to get re-elected again, less risky for him. As for the GOP, their interests may not be so well aligned with the president’s. That’s the plot-line for the next two years, I’d say. The high water-mark for unified conservative dominance has already happened.

MURDER IN AMSTERDAM: The New Yorker had the brilliant idea of sending Ian Buruma to investigate the van Gogh murder and its ramifications.

A word of deep thanks to Reihan, Steve and Ross for doing such a fantastic job while I was in blog de-tox for a week or so. Hard to find a more enthusiastic, brilliant or unpredictable trio of young thinkers. Don’t forget to check in on them in their own forum, The American Scene, in the coming days and weeks. And thanks again, guys. I had a wonderful time off – lazy, lazy, lazy. In trying to get a handle on the time-management issues a blog inevitably entails, I may be blogging a little less frenetically in the new year. I have a book to write, and my New Year’s resolution is to finish it by the end of this year. My other, post-CPAP resolution is to get up each day by 9.30 am and not to stay up so late. No, I’m not following John Derbyshire’s advice. But my boyfriend deserves a little better than being a blog widower; and evenings are better spent than in front of a computer screen. Of course, I’ll probably break all these resolutions soon enough. Just watch.

THE FINAL TALLY: This blog contained around 522,000 words in 2004. Maybe six big books. Just for the record. And 2005 will be the fifth year that this blog has been around. Thanks to Blogads and you for the support to keep going.

BUSH AND MORAL VALUES: Here’s a simple question: isn’t it a matter of morals not to fiddle the books? The Bush administration has made some promising noises about reducing domestic spending in the last couple of months, but this news is not encouraging:

To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security. To make Mr. Bush’s goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year’s actual shortfall of $413 billion. By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.

How can anyone take this administration’s fiscal intentions seriously when it engages in this kind of flim-flam? We’re now used to the fact that the administration doesn’t count the war in its fiscal calculations (what’s a few hundred billion when it’s other people’s money?), but that doesn’t make it any the less preposterous. And the strong case for partly privatizing social security is undermined by the president’s inability to concede that it will require serious short-term borrowing. All of this is as much a moral failure as an economic one, which is why I’m still befuddled by the anemic conservative outrage. Or is sex the only area in which Republicans care about morality?

MOVIE WRAP-UP: When I read this A.O. Scott piece on the over-rating of the movie, “Sideways,” I was relieved. I wasn’t nuts, after all. It’s great to see a reviewer finally copping to reviewers’ own biases – in favor of movies celebrating older, dweeby, neurotic characters who unsurprisingly resemble … many critics. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was far better than most – and was superb at times. Charles wasn’t crazy. But it was too long, a little too precious, and the halleluia chorus greeting it far too loud. (It also reaffirmed my own pet peeve with many movies: that male characters are almost always far less attractive then the women they date and/or marry. Again: that’s surely a function of the fact that many movie producers and directors are aging neurotics and movies are their way of reversing reality.) Maybe the encomia for “Sideways” are primarily a function of just how truly terrible most movies now are. But I’m glad to see this little film knocked down a few pegs. Still, compared to “National Treasure” … I did, however, finally get to see “Garden State” on video. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but it was one of the few movies last year that seemed to me in touch with reality. The reality I see around me anyway.

Cass Sunstein has written eloquently and persuasively on the dangers posed by emerging media technologies. Specifically, Sunstein fears that elaborate sorting mechanisms will allow consumers of news “to wall themselves off from topics and opinions that they would prefer to avoid,” to create a personal echo chamber tailored flawlessly to one’s own prejudices and predilections. Despite the proliferation of ever-angrier partisan news outlets, I’m optimistic on this front. The greatest thing about Andrew’s blog, for me, is that readers come spoiling for a fight. The blog infuriates readers, and yet they come back to get enraged all over again. They come to be surprised and engaged and challenged, not to be patronized or coddled. I find that pretty inspiring. Taking the reins these past few days has thus been a humbling, and at times bumbling, experience. We’re very grateful.

— Reihan