Category: Old Dish

Yes, there are two different countries within a country right now. But it’s not red and blue exactly. It’s not even secular and religious. Or north and south. More accurately, as blogger FrozenNorth explains, it is between those who believe we are at war and those who believe we aren’t. I’m in the former camp. So are some Democrats, Republicans and Independents, despite their deep differences over other issues. As 9/11 recedes, I’m not even sure this is a vote-winner for Bush; but it strikes me as essential that he make it the central issue in the campaign and that Kerry be forced to tell us why he believes it is not a war, and how he believes we can defeat terror while returning to the “law enforcement” policies of the 1990s. I may be unable to support a president who would defile the constitution. But equally, no one should support a candidate who cannot be trusted to take the war to the foes of this country. Before they take the war to us – again.

You don’t need to read this report to know that this country has a problem. Just walk through any airport and observe the throngs barely able to move or breathe or sit in a regular chair. I’m a libertarian kind of fellow, so I see no need to get harrumphy about this. The experience of obesity cannot be in any way pleasant for the person involved – physically, psychologically, emotionally. It must be a prison for many, a prison that in many cases should prompt sympathy and support; and the huge profits to be made from diet pills, diet fads and exercize programs reveal the extent of the phenomenon. What’s to be done on a collective basis? I have an idea: nothing. If people want to eat themselves into misery and early death, it really isn’t anyone else’s business. If businesses want to cater to getting people fat and then helping them get thin, and no one is committing outright fraud, what’s the problem? It’s a free-ish country, and the gluttony and vanity industries are part of what keeps this economy going. I fear, however, that Big Food is soon going to be getting the same treatment as other perfectly legitimate industries, such as Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol. McDonald’s has already removed their Super Size options. Who’s next? Ben and Jerry’s? Friendlys? The usual scolds are already prepping their jeremiads:

“If the government said, ‘You really ought to cut back on soft drinks and juice drinks,’ those lobbyists would go berserk. They don’t want to take on the food industry,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition and public health at New York University.

Of course, I would take this view because I’m libertarian on these kinds of issues. But I am a little perplexed by the silence of the religious right. I mean, isn’t gluttony a deadly sin? Shouldn’t fat people be shamed, denounced, or loved and saved? This affects far, far more people than, er, well, you know where I’m going here. How many sermons have you heard inveighing against extra fries? Just asking.

COULD MOORE RUN? Tim Noah tries to encourage the Ralph Nader of the religious right.

SANITY ON THE RIGHT: If you need to be reminded of how low much of American conservatism has now stooped in its vulgar embrace of anything that suits its culture-war purposes, then read William F. Buckley on Mel Gibson’s idiosyncratic splatter-fest.

One important issue in John Kerry’s past has been studiously avoided this election season. It’s the annulment of his first marriage to Julia Thorne. The Catholic church declared the marriage void – despite the fact that it lasted eighteen years, produced two children, and the annulment was fiercely contested by his first wife. How can such a marriage be understood to have never taken place, as annulments imply? Here’s how a story in the Washington Blade explains it:

Political opportunity arose again after Paul Tsongas announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate in 1984. Kerry won the race to fill that seat and entered into what current wife Teresa Heinz called his “gypsy phase,” commuting between apartments in Washington, D.C. and Boston, and dating actresses Morgan Fairchild and Catherine Oxenberg as well as a former law partner.
Kerry and Thorne finalized their divorce in 1988. After Thorne requested an increase in alimony in 1995, Kerry sought an annulment of their marriage from the Catholic Church, a move observers saw as retaliatory.
Kerry eventually received the annulment from the Boston diocese despite Thorne’s vehement objections. Past media reports did not indicate the grounds on which Kerry sought to annul his marriage of 18 years, after it produced two children, and the campaign also declined to provide any explanation.

Hmmm. I’ve long felt that the annulment issue in the Catholic church has never been fully debated. Who gets an annulment? How is that different from a divorce? It gets at many double standards on marriage and divorce (straight and gay) that the Catholic church and John Kerry and many others have.

BACK-LASH-LASH: A Washington Post poll finds growing support for legal unions for gay couples, but the issue is still highly volatile. Nevertheless, it’s clear that a majority opposes the extreme step of amending the constitution to prevent any state anywhere from enacting civil marriage rights for gay couples. When people realize that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not affect civil marriage, I think their opposition will grow some more. And it’s also clear that president Bush’s endorsement may actually have solidified opposition to the amendment, as anti-Bush Democrats have come around on the issue (their qualms about civil marriage for gays may well have been trumped by their suspicion of Bush and the religious right). You can make too much of these polls. The shifts are minor. The polls may shift again, depending on events. But the data show one claim from the social right disproved. They argued that this issue would rally the country behind George W. Bush, swing Democrats their way, and decide the election. So far, no dice. Bush has flatlined in the polls; opposition to the amendment has firmed up; all the publicity has led some to think seriously for the first time about marriage rights.

“The assumption that there must be a single national definition of marriage — traditional or open-ended — is mistaken and pernicious. It is mistaken because the existing constitutional framework has long accommodated differing marriage laws. This is an area where the slogan “states rights” not only works relatively well, but also has traditionally been left to do its job. We are familiar with the problems of integrating different marriage laws because for the last 200 years the issue has been left, fairly successfully, to the states. The assumption is pernicious because the winner-takes-all attitude that it engenders now has social conservatives pushing us down the constitutional-amendment path. For those who see the matter in terms of gay rights, this would be a tragedy. But it would also be a tragedy for those who genuinely favor local autonomy, or even those of us who genuinely favor keeping the constitutional text uncluttered by unnecessary amendments.

If today’s proponents of a marriage amendment are motivated by the fear of some full faith and credit chain-reaction set off in other states by Massachusetts, they needn’t be. If they are motivated by the desire to assert political control over what happens inside Massachusetts, they shouldn’t be. In our 200-year constitutional history, there has never yet been a federal constitutional amendment designed specifically to reverse a state’s interpretation of its own laws. Goodridge, whether decided rightly or wrongly, was decided according to Massachusetts’ highest court’s view of Massachusetts law. People in other states have no legitimate interest in forcing Massachusetts to reverse itself — Massachusetts will do that itself, if and when it wants to — and those who want to try should certainly not cite the Full Faith and Credit clause in rationalizing their attempts.

Unlike most other hotly contested social issues, the current constitutional marriage debate actually has a perfectly good technical solution. We should just keep doing what we’ve been doing for the last 200 years.” – professor Lea Brilmayer, Wall Street Journal, today.

I’m not sure they’re worth much right now. All they’re measuring is short-term ups and downs. We won’t get a real sense of the race until the summer or early fall. But I’m struck by how the constitutional amendment endorsement has not had any measurable upward effect on Bush, as some might have predicted. Although he has an advantage on the general issue of marriage rights for gays, that advantage disappears when he changes the subject to amending the constitution because of it. I was struck by this finding in the Washington Post poll. To the question “Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling – The issue of same-sex marriage?” the respondents broke 52 percent disapproving and 44 percent approving. Now that could mean that some disapprove of his support for the amendment, or that some think he hasn’t been supportive enough of the amendment, or any number of permutations. But it does convey the sense that this issue isn’t an easy one for the president. It’s volatile. Bush’s positioning can seem cynical or extremist or weak. Bush’s gut instinct – which was to leave this issue alone – was and is the right one. We’ll see if he sticks with it in the months ahead. He’d be far better off campaigning on education and taxes and the war against terror. (By the way, the issue on which Bush gets the worst grade is … the deficit! The voters aren’t dumb.)

In domestic policy, that is, with particular regard to trying to bribe Democratic constituencies with tax-payers’ money. It’s one major worry of fiscal conservatives. Kenneth Rogoff does the math. (Hat tip: Dan.)

Another terrible consequence of the war to depose Saddam is that some democrats in other Arab dictatorships are beginning to get some crazy ideas:

At least 30 arrests were made during a sit-in before the Damascus parliament building, says a Syrian rights group. The protest marks the 41st anniversary of the day Syrian Baathists seized power, declaring a state of emergency.

Yes, the Arab fascists took over in 1963. In Damascus as well as Baghdad.

GREAT MOMENTS IN BRITISH JOURNALISM: Hard to beat this one:

The Mirror account was written by Bill Borrows, an editor at large for Maxim U.K., who said in an interview that he could not recall, exactly, where he got the information that Charlie [Churchill’s alleged parrot] used to swear about Hitler, but that he might have read it on the Internet. He said he had not met Charlie in person, but had tried, unsuccessfully, to conduct a telephone interview.
“The bird didn’t say anything, but I’ve had worse,” Mr. Borrows said.

Jayson Blair has a future, if only he’d cross an ocean.

STREAMING BLAIR: Did you miss his awesome speech on the war against terrorism? C-SPAN is now streaming it here.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The Americans constitute a real danger for France – a danger different in kind from the threat represented by Germany, and the threat that may eventually emerge from Russia… The Americans can always prevent us from making the necessary revolution and their materialism does not even have the tragic grandeur of the materialism of the totalitarians. If they cling to a veritable cult of the idea of liberty, they do not feel the need to liberate themselves from the sevitudes that their capitalism entails.” – Hubert Beuve-Mery, the future founder and editor of Le Monde, 1944, (thanks to a reader).

RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM WATCH: The fundamentalist cleric most respected by Malaysia’s Islamic parties has just said that anyone who votes against the Islamists will be going to hell. No, he’s not called Pat Robertson.

All good Internet fun.

MICRO-AGGRESSION AND THE TALMUD: “There is another way to look at micro-aggression which does not reflect a pomo universe. The Talmud–not exactly a pomo book to be sure–asserts that we are responsible for causing someone pain inadvertantly through speech. “If someone has had a relative executed by hanging, do not say please hang this up for me.”
In this tradition one is never off the hook for hurting one, even inadvertantly, even if one was really misunderstood. It is true that Islamo-fascists should be seen as distinct from mainstream Islam, but even a mainstream believer in Islam feels pain by association because she feels that not everyone in the room is capable of making that distinction–even if you did.
It is not so simple that just because you meant no harm–that no harm was done. There is obviously no easy solution to this problem, and one can argue that one can only be responsible for one’s intent, however, surely, it’s not a bad thing to make people feel responsible for the feelings of others in hopes they will use their words more carefully. It is not so easy to psychologically disassociate yourselves from a sub-group especially when you know others are going to see your swarthy skin and your headcovering as evidence that you are in sympathy with them.” – more micro-aggressions against yours truly on the Letters Page.

BENNETT’S DISTORTION: Bill Bennett went on Bill O’Reilly last week and tried to defend his hostility to marriage rights for gays. O’Reilly was pretty devastating. But in the process, Bennett badly misrepresented my position. Here’s the interaction. O’Reilly had been asking the obvious question: how does letting two gay guys get married undermine a straight person’s marriage? Bennett punted for a while and then reached for yours truly:

BENNETT: Well, again, it affects the definition of marriage. And I’ll tell you why. Are they making the same promises and commitments that you are making? Andrew Sullivan, who’s one of the most articulate and intelligent advocates for gay marriage, talks in his book about the differences in gay marriage. He talks about the openness of the contract. What the heck is the openness of the contract? I know, in my marriage, there’s no openness in the contract.

O’REILLY: Well, I think what he’s saying is it’s a secular arrangement, that very few churches are going to sanction these marriages.

BENNETT: I don’t think so. I think he means something else. So I have a question. In gay marriage, will the commitments be the same? Has fidelity got the same standing?

Bennett is referring to a sentence I wrote in a ruminative aside in the epilogue to “Virtually Normal.” It became notorious for about five minutes, and it was mainly my fault. I wrote sloppily about gay male relationships outside of marriage, and spoke of some of them being “open.” Some conservative critics pounced on this and argued that it meant that I was favoring non-monogamy in civil marriage. I can see how my sloppiness might have led them to infer that (although it would have gone against the entire argument of the book as a whole), so I took pains to correct the record. I wasn’t endorsing any different standards in civil marriage for gays and straights, I said. Same institution. Same rules. I was just reflecting on differences between gay and straight relationships outside of marriage. In the Afterword to the paperback edition, I even wrote:

These reflections have been interpreted to mean that I want to incorporate into legal marriage the practice of adultery. So let me be clear: nothing could be further from the truth … [I was] referring in this instance to gay male relationships as they exist today – without the institution of marriage to support and inform them… But in case my point is not clear enough, let me state it unequivocally so that it cannot be distorted in the future: it is my view that, in same-sex marriage, adultery should be as anathema as it is in heterosexual marriage. That is clearly the implicit argument of Chapter Five. Now it’s explicit.

This is not to say we should be policing adultery, straight or gay. It’s merely what I understand by a civil, cultural marital norm. It need not apply to non-marital relationships, and such relationships can and should, in my view, be defined and determined by the two people involved in private howsoever they wish. But here’s the thing. This issue has come up before with Bennett. It even came up even when we were both on live television, and he made this very claim. I explicitly stated in front of him that he was misreading my book and misrepresenting my position on civil marriage and asked him to stop distorting it in future. He said he was glad to accept my clarification. I asked him again later in private not to distort my position in future. He is still doing so.

Here’s how to confront our looming fiscal crisis. If the president were really interested in promoting the “responsibility society,” he’d spend this election campaign showing how he’s going to save future generations from crushing debt. Instead, we get gauzy, feel-good ads designed to obscure the challenges we really face.

IT CAN BE AVOIDED: Bob Barr, uber-conservative foe of Bill Clinton and architect of the Defense of Marriage Act, reiterates his opposition to the anti-gay constitutional amendment: “I just don’t think the federal government should use the Constitution to start defining social relationships. And I say that as a very strong opponent of same-sex marriage. But to me, just because you have a problem — that’s not a reason to amend the Constitution.”

The violence in Iraq – even the horrifying sectarian mass murders last week – have failed to derail the tortuous political process. That’s hugely good news. It’s not surprising that there should be last-minute renegotiations, brinksmanship and the like in forging a new constitution in a fissiparous country. That’s called politics. It hasn’t been practised in Iraq for many, many years. Its emergence – however imperfect – is wonderfully good news. Instead of lamenting this wrangling, we should be encouraged. What we’re seeing is something you simply don’t see anywhere else in the Arab-Muslim world: negotiation trumping violence. This isn’t a path to democracy. In important ways, it is democracy. The first true post-war victory is ours – and, more importantly, Iraq’s.

THE PANDESCENDERER: John Kerry’s history of political acrobatics makes Bill Clinton look resolute. My take, now posted opposite.

THE CHURCHILL PARADOX: Winston won a war and lost an election. Bush hasn’t even won the war yet … but the lessons could still apply.

BLAIR ON ‘IMMINENCE’: The British prime minister devastates the conspiracy theorists and retroactive spinners on why he went to war:

It is said we claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to Britain and was preparing to attack us.
In fact this is what I said prior to the war on 24 September 2002: “Why now? People ask. I agree I cannot say that this month or next, even this year or next he will use his weapons.”
Then, for example, in January 2003 in my press conference I said: “And I tell you honestly what my fear is, my fear is that we wake up one day and we find either that one of these dictatorial states has used weapons of mass destruction – and Iraq has done so in the past – and we get sucked into a conflict, with all the devastation that would cause; or alternatively these weapons, which are being traded right round the world at the moment, fall into the hands of these terrorist groups, these fanatics who will stop at absolutely nothing to cause death and destruction on a mass scale.
“Now that is what I have to worry about. And I understand of course why people think it is a very remote threat and it is far away and why does it bother us. Now I simply say to you, it is a matter of time unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together, and I regard them as two sides of the same coin.”

When I read this man’s speech with its clarity and foresight on the terrifying nexus of WMDs, terror-states and terrorists, I am both relieved and depressed. Relieved because a leader of the moderate left understands that this should not be a right-left issue. It is a life-death issue. Depressed because John Kerry seems utterly immune to Blair’s perspicacity.

HOW LIBERAL IS KERRY? Not as liberal as Clinton or Carter or Kennedy. Or so says a poli sci professor.