Category: Old Dish

In the U.S., it’s undermining media tyrants. In Iran, it may be destabilizing real tyrants. Here’s a wonderful story about how women’s blogs in Iran are terrifying the ayatollahs and Islamists. It started with one lone blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, blogging from Canada:

Hossein created one of the first blogs in Persian last year. “It’s a good tool to get to know what is happening in Iran,” he told the BBC programme Go Digital, “what the youth are talking about, what are their problems.” He had so much interest from Iran that he decided to write a simple guide in Persian, to help others set up their own blogs. Seven months on, there are more than 1,200 Persian blogs, many of them written by women. “For the first time in the contemporary history of Iran, women can express themselves freely, even if it is not in their real name,” said Mr Derakhshan. “They have found the courage to speak about themselves and how they see the world.”

Isn’t it marvelous that blogs here have helped galvanize support for the war on terror and that in Iran, they’re doing something almost the same – but from within?

THE EU AND HIZBULLAH: The French are still unwilling to designate Hizbullah a terrorist organization. At least they got knocked out of the World Cup.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND ISLAMISM: They’re natural allies in many respects – the belief that women should be subservient to men, that homosexuality is an abomination, and so on. And they have every right to co-operate at the U.N. But why the Bush administration should want to ally itself with Islamist states in this fashion is beyond me, except pandering to their extremist wing. How can the First Lady champion women’s rights in Islamist countries, while her husband blesses those in America who find such repression of women something to admire and aspire to?

PITY THE PRIESTS: An interesting take from Australia.

The bad news is that we still have the same roster of bishops and cardinals. But we’ll see. My bet is that some of these delinquents will find a way to leave their august offices soon. But the good news was far more striking. The Gregory statement clearly indicated that the Church hierarchy grasped the real issue here: the negligence of the leadership, and the abuse of church power. The policy of removing any priest who is credibly accused of any single act of abuse from active duty seems smart to me. Defrocking would actually run into all sorts of difficulties and delays, delays that might actually make it harder to keep abusive priests from further criminality. But more important was what the bishops did not do. They did not scape-goat gays; they did not say that this scandal has anything to do with homosexuality per se; they did not rise to the bait of the Catholic far right. The two lay-people who addressed them were mainstream to liberal, Vatican II supporters. There will be no attempt to use this scandal to drag the Church back from its post-Vatican II acceptance of gay priests and laity. Of course, this could be reversed. But it seems to me that the Dallas conference was conducted maturely, sanely and humanely. The enforcement may be hard. But the first moves toward healing this particular wound have been made, without making the wound worse, or the pain greater.

MEDIA BIAS WATCH: “During his time in politics, moreover, Mr. Raffarin worked in a ministry dealing with small and medium-sized businesses, and that gives him a particular slant on the notion – embraced in President Chirac’s campaign rhetoric – that French business should be set free from bureaucratic constraints. In this town, in a supermarket restaurant crammed with supporters, he evoked the idea of small businesses and stores serving as magnets to bring together people living in big city solitude. Such businesses, he said, sounding little like a person of the center-right, would bring “more humanism to society.” – Alan Cowell, New York Times, reiterating the Raines doctrine that all non-liberals are inhumane.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “Democracy in the United States has not always embraced everyone, and we have a long history to prove it, from slavery and ‘Indian wars’ to the 2000 presidential election.” – Robin D. G. Kelly, “Finding the Strength to Love and Dream,” Chronicle of Higher Education.

ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER: On a rainy day last week, the boyfriend and I rented some videos – Sopranos, South Park, Clueless – and then got responsible and watched the riveting documentary “One Day In September,” about the Palestinian terrorism at the Munich Olympics. It seemed so contemporary. The scene that gripped me was of the coffins of the terrorists being brought back to Tunisia. They were greeted rapturously. They’d managed to kill some Jews! Asked to justify his grotesque murder of innocent athletes, one of the perpetrators told the camera that it was about publicity for their cause. Barak was right. There is no morality here. Thirty years later, why are we re-learning the same lessons? Here’s a story from last week that shows something even grimmer. It’s by David Tell at the Standard. Even now, the depravity deepens.

REACTIONARIES RIGHT AND LEFT: I picked a great week to chill out (literally, is been freezing up here). I was able to miss reading Mary Eberstadt’s hysterical screed in the Weekly Standard, and Richard Goldstein’s hysterical screed in the Nation for an entire week. Of course, reading them is a little superfluous. From the subject matter and the authors, you could almost write the pieces yourself. But what strikes me is how similar they are. Both Eberstadt and Goldstein are reactionaries. One wants a return to the 1950s in which gays were in the closet or jail; the other wants a return to 1971, when gays were in the closet or all countercultural lefties. Alas for both, this is 2002. The vast majority of gay men abhor pedophilia, and the vast majority of non-bigoted straight people know this. Eberstadt’s attempt to jump-start a 1950s style homosexual witch-hunt by tarring them as all potential child-abusers or supporters of child abuse has no constituency outside the swamps of the far right. And Goldstein’s attempt to smear all non-leftist gays as somehow hypocrites or fascists or psychos depends largely on his not actually reading them, or grotesquely distorting what they have actually written. Both Goldstein and Eberstadt are deeply uncomfortable in our complicated world, desperate to revive the Manichean certainties of the past. One of them imagines a secret cabal of gays, quietly attempting to make child abuse legal and to destroy the Catholic Church. The other imagines a secret cabal of gays, quietly attempting to reverse gay equality, stamp out diversity, and enforce some code of stifling moral uniformity on them all. It’s depressing that major organs of the right and left would pander to such paranoid nostalgia. But, alas, unsurprising.

GOLDSTEIN’S METHODOLOGY: I’m going to debate this next week at the New School in New York. So I won’t go into much detail now. But to give you an idea of Goldstein’s methodology, I cite one simple statement of his in the Nation. It’s part of his attempt to argue that I have always been a defender of only one legitimate life-style model for gay people: monogamous marriage. Anyone who has read my books or my work over the years will know this assertion is simply bizarre. While I support civil marriage for homosexuals, and believe such marriage should be monogamous and will probably reduce sexual adventurism, I have never condemned other relationships, those who choose not to marry (which would include me), sex before marriage, and I have written positively about casual and even promiscuous sex. In fact, this record has gotten me into all sorts of scrapes with conservatives. My last book included a long section defending sexual freedom in the AIDS era, as well as a defense of condom-free sex between two HIV-positive men. My first book extolled the virtues of some open relationships and explicitly argued that “[there is something baleful about the attempt of some gay conservatives to educate homosexuals and lesbians into an uncritical acceptance of heterosexual normality.” (Goldstein claims that my defense of sexual freedom can be dated from the invasion of my privacy last year. The sentence I just cited was published in 1995.) So I was surprised to see myself quoted in the Nation as follows: “Marriage, Sullivan has written, is the only alternative to ‘a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation.’ ” When I read this, I stopped short. It didn’t sound like me. Then I tracked down the passage Goldstein is quoting. It’s from my last book “Love Undetectable,” and follows a critique of the Christian doctrine of “hate the sin, love the sinner” – a formula I found morally and experientially incoherent in the case of homosexuality. Here’s what I actually wrote:

“So the sexual pathologies which plague homosexuals are not relieved by this formula; they are merely made more poignant, and intense. And it is no mystery why they are. If you teach people that something as deep inside them as t
heir very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets.”

In other words, Goldstein is quoting from a passage in which I am overtly criticizing the very argument he imputes to me. There is no room for misinterpretation here. The passage is as clear as day. I subsequently went through his book to check the other quotes attributed to me. Almost every single one followed the same pattern: a conscious attempt to make stray words and phrases mean the opposite of their plain meaning in the text. How does one respond to this? It’s one thing to have someone criticize your work and arguments. It’s another thing when he actually invents arguments you never made. All I can do, I guess, is show how Goldstein has engaged in staggering intellectual dishonesty and how the Nation eagerly published it.

TAP, TAP: Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, no word yet from the American Prospect about their alleged web stats. Yes, this isn’t the most important issue in the world. But it seems significant to me that a magazine designed to advance honest argument and debate would misrepresent something so basic as their web traffic. Are they doing this to their advertisers? Mickey Kaus notes that Bob Kuttner recently even claimed his print magazine had 500,000 subscribers. Have they all gone nuts? We have to conclude, in the absence of any public or private response to my or other inquiries, that the American Prospect is lying about its web traffic. And that they do not think such dishonesty is a big deal.

A DIFFERENT FATHER’S DAY: A beautiful tribute from a dad in Seattle.

Provincetown is quiet; the hammock is irresistible; the beagle beguiling. I’m going to take the whole week off. Here’s my latest essay on the Church’s crisis. Enjoy. I can’t tell you how nice it is not to read the paper thoroughly every day, and to spend some quiet time snoozing and reading a novel. But I’ll be back Monday with guns blazing. See you then.

I’m taking the next few days off for a brief summer break. I’d manufacture some filler for you, but it seems smarter just to recommend you to my links page. My latest Sunday Times piece was posted this morning, and tomorrow you’ll find my new Time magazine essay on the Church’s current crisis – which I argue is merely a symptom of a deeper one. I don’t have a boss any more, so I have to be own disciplinarian. But I haven’t had a break since Christmas, and the boyfriend and beagle deserve some quality time. See you later this week. (Of course, the last time I vowed to take some real time off, I broke down after a day. But I’m going to try and last till Thursday.)

Josh Marshall has a deeply depressing item about the DC police and the Chandra murder. I keep asking myself: I’m paying for these cops?

A B grade, I’d say. He’s still awful at these stand-ups in front of the camera. The phrases were a little wooden; and no president should start talking about how federal agencies interact. On the bright side, Bush didn’t seem defensive or political (although he’s being both those things, of course); the plan seems a no-brainer to your average guy; he’s still likable and real. But this is the last Karen Hughes guided speech. If Andy Card’s deranged mutterings to Esquire are any guide to his political skills, it’s all downhill from here.

IS SHE KIDDING US? Sorry, but I found this ABC News interview mind-blowing. Mohammed Atta might as well have worn a sandwich board saying “I AM A TERRORIST WITH WILD STARING EYES AND WANT TO RENT AN AIRPLANE!!!” I guess hindsight is easy – but sometimes it’s also obvious.

RAVELSTEIN AS SEEN BY THE FRENCH: Look at this cover-jacket to Saul Bellow’s recent little gem. And, president Chirac assures us, there is no anti-Semitism in France.

ROONEY BACKS BERNIE: The first CBS major figure to confirm the obvious truth that Bernie Goldberg may be impolitic but he’s right:

LARRY KING: A couple of other things. What did you make of Bernard Goldberg’s book, critical of television liberal bias, and especially harsh on some of your folks at CBS.
ROONEY: I thought he made some very good points. There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I’m consistently liberal in my opinions. And I think some of the — I think Dan is transparently liberal. Now, he may not like to hear me say that. I always agree with him, too. But I think he should be more careful.

Did you know Andy Rooney was a liberal?

THE WASHINGTON POST’S LIGHT TOUCH: Another sign that this paper is now a must-read – this wonderfully tart description of a certain Palestininan leader, in a news story lede no less:

Yasser Arafat, fresh from a morning nap, surveyed the wreckage of the presidential apartment in his ruined West Bank headquarters with a well-practiced look of concern.

When bias is conveyed with that deftness, you almost want more of it.

THREE CHEERS FOR LOU: More truth blurted out on CNN. I loved this comment from Lou Dobbs, who seems to have been reading the burly beer buddy, Jonah:

“The government and media for the past nine months have called this a war against terror. So have we here. But terror is not the enemy. It is what the enemy wants to achieve. So on this broadcast, we are making a change… in the interests of clarity and honesty. The enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists. That’s why we are abandoning the phrase, “War Against Terror”. Let us be clear. This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them. If ever there were a time for clarity, it is now. We hope our new policy is a step in that direction.”

Perfectly put. If we cannot name the enemy, how can we properly fight it?

OFF TO PTOWN: Headed up today with beagle to join the boyfriend on the Cape. andrewsullivan.com corporate headquarters will be relocating there for the summer as well.

I guess Mickey won’t be writing for the New York Times any time soon either. His piece today, following up on my short take on the New York Times’ left-liberal parody version of the Census story yesterday, is extremely smart, as usual. Check it out.

TAP’S “TRAFFIC”: There’s a site on the web that does rough and ready traffic rankings for sites. It’s not representative of all Internet users, doesn’t count anyone on a Mac and has lots of other biases (like weighting pageviews which discriminates against personal home-pages). So I’m skeptical of its accuracy. Nevertheless, it ranks the American Prospect at 23,581, a little lower than The New Republic at 22,840. Now, TNR claims 275,000 monthly unique visitors; while TAP claims 450,000. Fishy, no? I believe TNR. Readers, however, have come to TAP’s defense. One writes:

I, for one, find the Prospect’s claims quite plausible. Not the part about 14,000 unique visitors a day, the part about the vast majority of people who go there not wanting to go back for at least a month.

TAP has yet to respond to these questions in detail. I wonder why. Yesterday they were complaining that they couldn’t think of anything to blog about. Well, guys, here’s a suggestion.

Here’s an interview with an Israeli woman who lost both her mother and her infant daughter in a recent terrorist attack. I found the interview via the American Kaiser blog. I cannot begin to imagine the emotional impact of such an experience, but her analysis is cool and clear enough:

CNN: How do you see the future? How do you see this unfold?
Chen: I’ll tell you how I see the future: I think Israel is like the canary in the coal mine, and that’s what the Europeans – and I am sorry, I know this goes to Europe, and I said different [more positive] things to America [on CNN-USA] – but we in Israel are dying now. We are slaughtered on a daily basis, but – you’re next! You’re next, buddies. I understand that you have a lot of Muslim minorities. That’s OK, everybody should live where he wants – but you are appeasing terrorism! And you hope that if you tolerate it, and try to understand its motives, and you give it reasons, whatever they are… I ask the Europeans: Do not tolerate murder! I don’t want to use the word terrorism, because it’s banal. Do not tolerate murder, do not appease the terrorists! Not for oil, and not because you’re scared – because the more fear you show, the faster it’s going to be on your doorstep – and then, G-d help you, because you gave it legitimacy. And my baby’s blood is just as precious as any French blood — G-d help these hypocritical people…”

Doesn’t that say it all?

THE SIMPSONS ON SOCCER: A reader kindly sent me the following Simpsons transcript on soccer. More eloquent than I:

TV Announcer: The Continental Soccer Association is coming to Springfield! It’s all here–fast-kicking, low scoring, and ties? You bet!
Bart: Hey, Homer, how come you’ve never taken us to see a soccer game?
Homer: I…don’t know.
TV Announcer: You’ll see all your favorite soccer stars. Like Ariaga! Ariaga II! Bariaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!
Homer: Oh, I never heard of those people.
TV Announcer: And they’ll all be signing autographs!
Homer: Woo-hoo!
TV Announcer: This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth: Mexico or Portugal!

Well, maybe not Portugal any more. They just got their asses kicked.

SIMPLY NO CIRCUMSTANCES: A terrific piece from Larry Grafstein in TNR, reminding us of the moral basics of youthful suicide bombings. They are depraved in any context. Amazing it’s necessary to write that. That’s another reason why the Israelis are right to hold Arafat responsible for the latest such slaughter of innocents. If Arafat cannot stop this violence, then he is simply irrelevant to any peaceful solution to the conflict. If he can stop this violence and won’t, ditto. All of which means that there can be no progress until Arafat is removed. His very irrelevance on the ground combined with his relevance in diplomacy guarantees that the stalemate will continue.

EUCLID UPDATE: An email from her new owners:

She is doing well. I took her to the vet for shots and they performed some routine tests and found that she had heartworms. She was treated this week and came through the treatment with no problems. The vet said that she had very hearty appetite, and told us to feed her as much as she wants to each, and to change her to a mix of canned and dry food. (I wish my doctor told me I could eat as much as I wanted.)
She has only barked twice more since you last saw her, once when she got stepped on, (sorry, Euclid) and the other in excitement to ‘Does Euclid want to go for a walk?’
She has learned a number of things: how to find the most comfortable spot on the living room couch; how to jump up on the bed from a very slippery hardwood floor; how to signal us that she wants to go outside to go potty; how to eat all the canned food from around the dry; and how to wrap two middle-aged men around her little paw.

You see. Another argument for gay adoption.

THOSE WEB STATS: Curious about the American Prospect’s alleged web supremacy, touted by none other than the Columbia Journalism Review and Eric Alterman, I emailed the estimable Nick Confessore for more details. I asked, for example, what the daily unique visitors number was for the American Prospect. He told me it varied between 10,000 and 26,000. Let’s split the difference and make it 18,000. For TAP to get 450,000 unique visitors a month, as they claim, of the 18,000 they get daily, around 14,000 of those would have to be completely new to the site each day, and not log on again in the month. That’s a simply phenomenal turn-over, and, frankly, unbelievable. My suspicion is that they are simply adding up their daily unique visitor totals for the whole month – as if none of these visitors are repeats. To give you a comparison. I get somewhere between 19,000 to 25,000 daily unique visitors on weekdays. But my monthly unique visitor total is around 240,000 – because many of those daily visitors are repeats and not “unique” for the month. A long time ago, I made a mistake and added up my dailies, which would give me a monthly total of around 650,000 – nearly three times the correct total. Some of you remember that I quickly corrected my error and apologized. Maybe The American Prospect really does attract up to 14,000 brand new visitors a day. Nick says he will ask someone with more expertise in this department than he has. Watch this space …

“To call [president Bush] a fascist is to flatter him,” – literary critic, Harold Bloom, New York Times.

Amazing prosperity. Yes, he wasn’t the only person responsible, and the Republican Congress from 1994 on helped maintain growth, but the statistics on income just released by the Census really do seem impressive. To wit:

The census numbers do indicate, however, that the prosperity of the 1990s had a broad, positive effect. Lower-income counties posted greater gains than richer ones, and the proportion of households at the low end, with less than $15,000 a year, shrunk as those people brought in more money. The nation’s 34 million people in poverty represented 12 percent of the population, a slightly smaller share than in 1990. The greatest declines were among people 65 and older, but poverty also declined for children. The poverty line for a family of four in 1999, the year measured by the census, was $16,895.

Perhaps welfare reform helped; perhaps expanding the EITC helped; doubtless declining deficits and lower interest rates and freer trade worked. But these numbers should undermine the notion that free markets and free people cannot generate wealth without immiserating the poorest. Wealth really does trickle down and up – even when a country is absorbing unprecedented numbers of poor immigrants. And Bill Clinton helped make it happen. For a look at how leftists can still spin this as failure, check out – surprise! – the New York Times version of the story. They even quote Marian Wright Edelman, trying to spin a decline in poverty as a rise.

LONG TO REIGN OVER US: When even the Guardian has to concede that on yet another day, a million patriotic Brits showed up to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in London, then you know the monarchy’s obituary is a long, long way off. Look at this photograph in the Telegraph. When I was in London a few months back, all the chattering classes were abuzz with the notion that the Jubilee would be a huge flop. One more reason not to buy the spin of the BBC, the Guardian and the rest. Tony Blair got the national mood right, as he did when Diana died, proving once again that he is the master of the political surface: “We know that you are, without falter or hesitation, totally committed to serving us, the British people,” he said. “Whatever the vicissitudes of your own life, whatever dramas or crises are played out around you, no one ever doubts that commitment to serving Britain.” I think the British people understand that about their odd, but indispensable institution. And I’m glad for it.

RAINES WATCH: Looks like I was right about Bush and global warming. Mickey Kaus adds some persuasive nuances. This, indeed, looks like a set-up. Some enviro groups figure out a way to embarrass the president, by finding minuscule discrepancies between presidential statements last year and a bureaucratic report this year, feed it to their friends at the Times, who then run an editorial and a cover-story on the phony “news.” Rush and Drudge fall right for it. Is Raines a left-liberal ideologue, Mickey asks? I don’t think so. He’s just a big-footing Democratic partisan, who wants the Times to wound the president and wage populist or liberal campaigns. Remember the Enron poll that said the public was blaming Bush? Exactly the same scenario. There’s a theme here, surely.

SELF-PARODY WATCH: “Special Report: Zambian Copper,” – a headline from this week’s Economist.

SOCCER AND AMERICA: Yet another view about this country’s aversion to football:

It’s true – most American’s don’t like soccer. The reason? Possession. We Americans like our things….we like our possessions. And in soccer possession is fluid. It drives us crazy. Look at your basic American sports. In baseball, football, and basketball possession is so important that ‘turnovers’ (i.e. loss of possession) are considered nothing short of disastrous. They are counted by statisticians, and those deemed responsible are taken to the woodshed after the game. This reaches its most extreme in baseball. It is perhaps the only team sport where possession is fixed: a turnover in baseball is IMPOSSIBLE. Is it any wonder it’s known as the ‘American pastime’? Possession is fluid in hockey (not, mind you, an American sport), but since it’s fast and they beat the crap out of each other, speed and violence provide adequate compensation.

That would help explain the aversion to rugby as well, although they also beat the crap out of each other on rugby pitches (I have nightmares from my schooldays to prove it). Then there was this notion proferred by another red-blooded Yank:

As I strolled by a local park the other evening, I watched a group of young boys trying to keep a large ball in the air using only their feet. I asked one of the adult supervisors what was going on, and he informed me that they were having “soccer practice”. Observing this exercise a while longer, something jogged my memory. I said to myself , “Soccer practice, my ass. They’re learning how to goose step.” Did Adolf and Uncle Joe have their young socialists playing real football? Hell no!! They were teaching them how to crush freedom in Eastern Europe under the guise of soccer… Wake up America!!! First, they take away real football in Ann Arbor or Tuscaloosa and make you play games without using your hands. Next, they’ll come to confiscate your guns. And before you know it, there’s no more free press, religion or speech and you’re being marched off to the nearest feminist sports collective to get estrogen shots. Remember, it starts with soccer.

I think he’s kidding.

LADS AND SOCCER: By the way, a reader alerted me to a truly hilarious piece in the new issue of “Gear,” Bob Guccione’s lad magazine, on the subject of footer (that’s what they call it in the English north). I particularly liked the sidebar on tips for staying awake while trying to watch the World Cup:

“1) Almost all of the players have extremely hot wives… bald French goalkeeper Fabien BNarthez was married, until last year, to rainbow-haired supermodel Linda Evangelista. Think about that as you watch him flap his textured gloves and bark inaudible instructions at a teammate 500 yards away. 2) Remember that Colombian guy who scored the own-goal in the 1994 World Cup? Dude, they killed him. That’s how much this matters. It’s life or death, baby. Seriously. 3) Barthez included, every national-team goal-keeper is completely insane and liable to start dribbling the ball suicidally towards the enemy goal at any moment. 4) Someone might score.”

Gear is the first men’s magazine in a long, long time that I found positively hilarious and intelligent. It got me all the way to Philly on the Metroliner this afternoon. (In comparison, I’m sorry to say, the New York Sun was positively soporific.) Gear has a writer called Bruno Maddox who’s a real star. They even had the most honest Moby review I’ve yet read (“18 is exactly the kind of thing you want from an artist whose last album, Play, was a masterpiece: more of the same,”) and alerted me to the existence of http://www.derekandclive.com. (If you’re in any way of a sensitive dispensation, don’t go there. But it’s the best thing Dudley Moore ever did.)

BROKEN WHEELCHAIRS: A sad, but somehow instructive, tale of Western aid gone awry in the developing world.

THE ALABAMA FOOTBALL TEAM ABUSE CASE: “Thank you for providing the link to the ESPN Magazine Article about the football players at UAB. But I have one serious problem with your summary: it is clear from the article that the University did not look the other way. No, they may not have put four, full-time bodyguards around the poor girl or explicitly told the football players to stay the hell away, but the administration did warn the athletes and they tried to intervene with the girl. She chose to lie to them and said nothing was going on. Tell me, where was the impetus for them to investigate further? Speaking as a woman who was sexually assaulted while at college, I can say without a doubt that UAB did more for her than my university did for me…” This letter continued, a defense of Lord Kimberley and Tony Kushner, and the American Prospect’s odd web statistics – all on the Letters Page.

I’M ABNORMAL: Stop the presses! But are you?