Category: Old Dish

The Wall Street Journal has a chilling piece this morning on a relatively new phenomenon. Anti-abortion fanatics are increasingly staking out abortion clinics, taking photographs of those going in, getting some rudimentary details about them and posting them on the web. The objective is an ancient one: stigma. “Shame enough women into realizing that eternal damnation awaits them if they murder their baby and the abortionists won’t have any work to do,” explains one of the pro-life photographers. the women who have such abortions are in a public place when they are photographed and, under current law, probably have very little recourse. Privacy, in the sense that our parents and grand-parents understood it, is over. I’m working on a big essay on this subject, especially the way in which technology has transformed the context in which privacy can exist in a liberal society. This knows no ideological bent. The far left uses this tactic – in the smearing of journalists or politicians on the right. And the far right uses it – in reverse. Some truly enterprising smear artists – David Brock, anyone? – have managed to target both left and right in exactly the same privacy-trashing fashion. Even someone’s private medical records are under siege. All of these privacy-trashers are moralists of a sort – shaming sinners, outing alleged hypocrites, uncovering the seamy side of political enemies. But the web means that literally anyone can do this to anyone else. This is the age of the Scarlet Email. Just get the evidence on an ex-lover, bad boss, loathesome co-worker, etc. – a private letter, a digital photo, a stray email, a taped phone conversation – and post it pronto. If the evidence is true, libel laws are useless. And privacy laws are almost always trumped by the First Amendment. I don’t see any solution to this in a free society. But I do think this attack on privacy is essentially an attack on a freedom essential to the health of a liberal society. I hope to make the case more thoroughly some time this summer.

LAW OR TYSON: The PR trade journal, The Holmes Report, had an interesting poll today. When PR professionals were asked whom they’d least like to represent in the current climate, Mike Tyson came in first with 51.6 percent. But close behind came Cardinal Law, with 34.5 percent. He’s less redeemable than – wait for it – Kenneth Lay, who came in with a paltry 13.8 percent.

Now that we’ve got the “Bush Knew” canard out of our collective system, the need for a thorough investigation of how the CIA and FBI missed important signals before 9/11 is clearer than ever. I found Safire’s column yesterday entirely persuasive, and Sy Hersh’s account in the current New Yorker more than hair-raising. The trouble, of course, is that even a perfectly-tuned intelligence operation could still fail to prevent one lucky – and horrendous – terrorist attack. This is the tricky psychology of warfare against terror. Success means a significant decline in terrorism. Such a decline leads people into complacency. Complacency obviously empowers more terrorism. There is no way out of this pattern in a democracy, I suppose, except an exceptionally tough leader who ignores public sentiment and presses on regardless, and who’s merciless with those beneath him who screw up. My fear with Bush is that he’s not merciless enough. Tenet and Mueller have now presided over what should clearly be resignable offenses. But Bush likes them. He can be an establishment figure even when the establishment is screwing up. He should stop opposing an independent investigation into what went wrong on his watch and Clinton’s; and get ready to fire a few of those responsible for serious lapses.

THE SURRENDER? I’ve been well lashed by readers for losing faith in this president. For the record: I haven’t. But I’m worried. I stuck with him through the muddle of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. But it seems to me incumbent on those of us who support him to let him know what the parameters of that support are. Allowing Iraq to build weapons of mass destruction which could easily be transferred to third parties to wreak terror on the West would be a gross abdication of his responsibility. I’m also worried by further news of his going soft. The Times of London has just published an account of the terrorist Club Med at Guantanamo Bay. (Non-Brits now have to pay a subscription for access to the Times’ sites, so I won’t link). Here’s the claim:

Overreacting to the initial outcry at the apparently tough conditions in the Camp X-Ray detention centre – with its images of cages, chains and kneeling prisoners, and rumours of truth drugs and sensory deprivation – the Pentagon has set up a kid-glove regime. Suspected terrorists are allowed to treat their captors with derision – lying, chanting the Koran in unison, mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them. Americans are under orders not to react roughly. They even transport prisoners in golf carts. Guantanamo has been nicknamed “Eggshell City” by interrogators because of the political sensitivities of dealing with 384 captives from more than 30 countries, among them at least seven British citizens. Washington has become known as “Hand-Wringers’ Central” because the Pentagon worries constantly about international reactions. In the first breach of the military secrecy shrouding the interrogation process, William Tierney, an Arabic speaker who spent six weeks as an interpreter at Camp X-Ray, revealed the combination of inexperienced interrogators and stifling political correctness that has hampered efforts to extract intelligence about Al-Qaeda.

If we are being put in any danger because we are treating these detainees with the kind of concern only Guardian editorialists would muster, then we are simply not serious about this war.

BARAK’S DEBRIEFING: A fascinating essay in the New York Review of Books by revisionist historian Benny Morris. It’s essentially an elaborated interview with Ehud Barak about the failed attempt at a peace agreement at Camp David and Taba. Morris begins with comments made by former president Bill Clinton, after a classic New York Times pro-Palestinian “news analysis” by Deborah Sontag. Clinton apparently called Barak up and exploded about the Times’ reporter:

What the hell is this? Why is she turning the mistakes we [i.e., the US and Israel] made into the essence? The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict the American president put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism. That’s the real story-all the rest is gossip.

This version of the story – deeply, deeply damning to Arafat – is now Clinton’s and Dennis Ross’s. The rest of Morris’ article persuades me – as if I needed to be persuaded – that negotiations with Arafat are useless substantively and of only marginal use if engaged in cynically (to keep the Arab dictators quiet for a while). To be fair, you should also check out the response in the New York Review by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha. I found their spinning of the Palestinian failure to negotiate seriously unconvincing. But make up your own mind.

THE CASE AGAINST JOURNALISM: Why do I find myself sympathizing with Stanley Fish? The boyfriend just got tenure at his university, so I’m not sucking up. But this little essay rang true to me. Speaking of journalism, many of you find my professed skepticism about Gary Condit’s link to the murder of Chandra Levy to be puzzling. I’m not going over all that old ground, but I have yet to see hard evidence that he impeded the investigation in any serious way. I also tend to believe that although he might well be a “jerk,” it’s precisely for the sake of jerks that we have a principle called ‘innocent unti proved guilty.’ Hate him for adultery, sleaze, bad hair, whatever. But that’s no reason to publicly suspect someone of murder, and then find it “intensely disappointing’ if the evidence points in another direction.

EVEN THE SONGS MUST BE BOYCOTTED: Swedes and Belgians are told by television presenters in the “Eurovision Song Contest,” not to vote for Israel’s entry in the competition. I guess they’re consistent.

WHO KILLED CHANDRA? An emailer on DC’s cops:

As a daily Rock Creek Park runner I’ve had several experiences with crazy homeless men living near the trails. My girlfriend (also a runner, and a 25 year-old House staffer) was chased several times (once while the man was masturbating). She called the Park Police and DC cops twice, so did I. No response, even during last summer’s Chandramania. And the men kept menacing runners. I still run the trails, but she uses the treadmill.

THE GREENS FIGHT BACK:A late flurry of pro-enivronmentalism in the Book Club, along with what Pascal might have decided about global warming, and a sci-fi parallel from Mars. This is our last posting for this book. Bjorn will be responding to specific questions later this week. Next week … a new and distinctly summery alternative.

BOYZ 2 MEN: An interesting distinction made by Garry Wills in the New York Review. In his second article on sexual abuse in the priesthood, Wills takes on the notion
that ‘pedophilia’ and ‘ephebophilia’ are somehow distinct, and that the former is always far graver than the latter:

It is said that pedophilia is limited by some modern therapists to mean sex with prepubescents. That may be useful in sorting out different forms of treatment. But that is not the meaning of pedophilia in history nor in the broader culture … Admittedly, there is a difference between sex with young people before and after puberty. In the law, of course, they are both acts of sex with a minor. But the coercion is clearly greater with a child, and the adult is more clearly pathological. Nonetheless, the harm done is not of necessity always greater. Sex with a child, heinous though it is, may be for the child part of an inexplicable world not to be connected with other realities. Child psychologists point out that children can learn so much so rapidly because they are ruthlessly efficient in dismissing information not useful to them.[10] But Michel Dorais, in his close study of abused boys, argues that abuse of adolescents is especially disorienting because it occurs at a time of challenged identity, uncertain standards, and shadowy guilt. It is all too clearly connected with other realities, mysterious in themselves … Adolescent guilt and inhibition were especially powerful for Catholic boys raised in a culture of sexual ignorance and guilt. Nuns were reluctant to speak about sex except in vaguely threatening language. Priests were mechanically judgmental in the confessional. …What is shocking in the currently revealed cases is not the number of Catholic priests who have preyed on children-though that is dismaying enough-but the repeated loosing of these predators (whatever their number) for numerous repeated acts on such a vulnerable population as Catholic boys disarmed by benighted instruction or lack of instruction on sexuality. To say that this is not so bad since it is not “real pedophilia” is a further violation and abuse of the victims.

The use of the term ephebophilia has been insisted upon by some Church conservatives for several reasons, it seems to me. It can help make the scandal seem less appalling to the general public (so helping to exculpate the hierarchy); it can help shift the onus of responsibility away from the abusers and toward the victims (arguments like “those teenagers were complicit,” etc.); and it is a way to insist that this scandal is not about the abuse of minors or the abuse of power to cover such assaults up, but is in fact a function of the dreaded homosexuals, “conspiring” in the heated language of National Review’s pop-up book ads, to destroy the Church. I’m glad Wills has helped unveil some of that agenda. Victims of abuse are victims of abuse, whether they are 15 or 5. And no amount of linguistic inventiveness can hide that fact.

Mark Steyn worries, as I do, that the Bush administration is giving up on the war. I’ve done my level best to look on the bright side, but the omens are awful.

RAINES WATCH: Howell’s most reliable liberal flunky, Rick “DNC” Berke, has now become Washington editor. The Guardianization of the New York Times continues.

JOURNALISM’S NEW LOW: The always cogent Bill Powers nails the media’s “Bush Knew” hype of last week. It’s about the supremacy of scandal over truth.

KRUGMAN’S CLAIM: I know it’s an aside, but it’s a revealing one. Paul Krugman, whose criticism of the Bush administration on trade is largely right, still can’t resist this cheap shot:

The administration insists that it is simply standing up for U.S. interests. Robert Zoellick, the trade representative – who used to be a genuine free-trader, but these days sounds like a broken man – declared that “Uncle Sam is not going to be Uncle Sap for these people.” But if you believe that this is about the national interest, I’ve got a terrorist threat against the Brooklyn Bridge you might be willing to buy.

Is he saying that the administration made up a threat to Brooklyn Bridge? For domestic political reasons? That’s an extraordinary claim, a Michael Moore-type claim. Here’s a challenge to Krugman and his editors (does he have editors?). Back that up or withdraw it. Or is the Times op-ed page now a place where Chomsky-like smears are now de rigueur?

BOOK CLUB UPDATE: I’ll be posting the latest emails about Bjorn Lomborg this holiday weekend. Crack open a beer, munch a hot dog and get stuck into CO2 debates! We should have Bjorn’s answers to your questions some time next week. Next month: real summer reading. I promise.

MICKEY’S WEIRD VENDETTA: I guess he’s just being honest, but Mickey Kaus says it’s “intensely disappointing” that Condit might be legitimately cleared in the Chandra Levy investigation. Excuse me? Wouldn’t it be better, if facts warrant it, for the real killer, whoever he is, to be identified? But give the Mickster points for candor. Like many in the media, Mickey loathes Condit for other reasons and simply wants to nail him for murder. But doesn’t Chandra deserve a little better than that?

Dreadful news today that the president may be wavering in his intent to destroy the Iraqi regime. If true, then those of us who have supported the war on terror need to revise our assessment of this president. He told the German press yesterday that there is no plan to invade on his desk. He said it almost proudly. His military leaders, in a sign of their determination to risk nothing and achieve nothing, are now leaking to the Washington Post that they have all but scotched a serious military option in Iraq. The arguments they are using sound like they might come from a Gore administration. After all that this president has said, after all that he has asked, a reversal on this central question would be nothing short of a staggering betrayal of trust, a reversal of will and determination. Of course, there should be no peremptory, rushed or botched war. Of course, all options should be examined. But the signs are unmistakable. This president, having begun as an improvement on his father, is showing signs that he could end up as something even worse. It’s time he heard from his supporters that this is a critical matter on which there can be no compromise. If he balks, it will be worse than his father’s betrayal on taxes. It will be a betrayal of the very security of the American people.

THE WEAKNESS OF WEAKLAND: It might seem unseemly to pile on to Archbishop Weakland’s admission of a $450,000 hush-money settlement he paid to a man whom he allegedly sexually attacked twenty years ago. But here goes. The story of the “date rape” seems extremely hazy and not-so-convincing to me. The real story is that a bishop had a long and difficult affair with another man, eventually found the strength to return to celibacy – but then used the Church’s money to buy his former lover’s silence. That’s the scandal. What this is about is not sex as such. Weakland didn’t abuse a minor and, so far as I can tell, committed no crime. That puts this in a different category than the other recent revelations. And the violation of his privacy in this, including the publication of a deeply personal letter, is appalling. But what he did do – and recently – was use the church’s money to save himself some bad publicity. Not just any money – but almost half a million dollars! It seems to me that that money was stolen by the archbishop from his parishioners. It must be returned. More and more, these members of the hierarchy seem to think they’re immune to even the most basic accountability, that they can use the authority of the Church to buy themselves and their friends and underlings out of trouble. Weakland deserves compassion in as much as he had an adult emotional relationship which he clearly eventually ended. But he should not be excused for abusing the power of his office to rob the Church to protect his own reputation. The problem, as I have tried to emphasize, is not so much the abuse of sex as the abuse of power. And solving that dynamic is exactly what Rome has no intention of doing.

THE RAINES DOCTRINE: “We respect our readers’ right to express their opinion.” – Howell Raines, New York Times. Just not his writers’.

LEVY UPDATE: Well, we have now been told that, contrary to previous reports, the place where Chandra Levy’s remains were found had not been searched last year. And we’re told that the DC cops are playing down the idea that a man who had assaulted two women during the same period of time in the same part of Rock Creek Park had anything to do with it. Every time I criticize the DC police, I’m told that I don’t know what I’m talking about, that such complaints are second-guessing from amateurs, and so on. Still, I’m only passing on what we’re told. I hope the case gets another break soon.

THE CASE AGAINST EUROPE: I really should have linked to Michael Gove’s recent dismemberment of European pretension in the Times of London. Better late then never. As Bush deals with these faint-hearted states, this is mandatory reading.

LETTERS: Why some bloggers are a pain in the butt; why I’m a lefty on the overclass; why George W. Bush shouldn’t be let off the 9/11 hook; etc.

AN INTERN VENTS: A classic memo from an intern reprinted in the New York Post yesterday. I found it thanks to “Tapped,” the American Prospect blog. Everyone who has ever been an intern will know exactly what she means. Hearst should be ashamed of firing her. They should give her a column.

THAT EMAIL: I quoted from about Alterman’s narcissism was taken from an actual blog. I didn’t notice that in the email. Apologies. Here’s the site whence it came.

Drudge reports that a serial attacker of young women on exactly the same jogging trail that Chandra Levy used is now being questioned again by police. I wonder what all those hacks and TV moralists and web-pontificators who all but destroyed any shred of Gary Condit’s privacy last summer will say if it turns out he is completely innocent. Will Connie Chung apologize for one of the most sickening hours ever on television “news”? Of course not. The victims of these commentators pile up. The commentators merely pile on to the next one.

In today’s climate in France that the burning down of the Israeli embassy was the result of an accident? About as likely as president Chirac’s suggestion that there are no anti-Semites in France.

FLAUBERT ON READING THE NEW YORK TIMES: “I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed.” Or maybe it was Le Monde.

This time, a political leader wants to use the military to track down and deport people seeking asylum. The fascist right is clearly ascendant. Oh, hold on a minute, that’s Tony Blair.

CHANDRA, CHANDRA, CHANDRA: How comforting that name now feels. So September 10. We now know that she was probably killed. But that’s about it. We also know that the D.C. police combed that exact spot months ago – twice! – and didn’t find her. As my long-time readers remember, I was a lone blogger defending Gary Condit’s right to privacy and his right to innocence before being deemed guilty. But we’ll see now, won’t we? At least the grand jury investigation might get a new lease in life.

MORE PAPAL PRIORITIES: The Pope doesn’t want to deal with the profound issues of priestly celibacy, ecclesiastical abuse of power and sexual morality that are wreaking havoc in the American church. He has far more important things to do – like complain about some celebrities wearing crucifixes and tend to his sparse flock in Azerbaijan. There are two priests in Azerbaijan. Two. This papacy is now descending into self-parody. While Rome burns …

A LOVER LOST FOR WORDS? Here’s a device that Benedick could have used in his somewhat hapless “conventional wooing” of Beatrice. It’s a surrealist compliment producer. My favorites: “Sir, what exquisite breasts you have!” and “My eyelids belch with effluvial afterthoughts when you tease me with jello and chicken rinds.” Hey’ it’s a holiday weekend soon. Enjoy. (By the way, there are three more chances to catch “Much Ado.” We close Saturday night, and perform tonight and Friday night as well. If you’re in the DC area and feel like checking it out, click here for tickets.)

THE ABUSE OF MINORS – GIRLS: A reader sends in the following fascinating story from the Houston Chronicle. It’s a year-old story about an epidemic of sexual abuse of minors by athletic coaches in Texas. Almost every one is of a male coach and an underage girl. What I want to know is why there isn’t a debate about banning straight teachers from coaching opposite-sex students. I want to know why this hasn’t been debated or discussed by social conservatives who allegedly care about the problem of minor abuse, but only seem to really care when they can use it as a weapon to tarnish gays. Well I know the reason for their silence. Still, the Chronicle’s account is pretty devastating:

Bill Franz, who became director of the SBEC Professional Discipline Unit in March 2000, said he has been struck by the number of cases involving coaches and band directors.
“We don’t do a survey, but it just seems like there is a higher percentage of those two groups involved with sexual wrongdoing with kids than any other group,” he said. “And with coaches, you have the physical-abuse aspect. Maybe science teachers are represented at the same percentage. I don’t know. It just seems like we get an awful lot of (cases involving) coaches and band directors.”
Robert Shoop, a professor of educational administration and leadership at Kansas State University who has written extensively on the subject of sexual harassment in schools and has provided expert testimony in dozens of lawsuits, said he has gotten a similar sense from tracking cases on a national basis.
“I would say almost every case I’ve dealt with is either a coach or a band director,” he said.
Shoop said the trend is rarely noted because the issue of educator sexual abuse in general is something that people often choose to ignore.
“It’s incredibly destructive,” he said, “but it’s still pretty much the dirty little secret that hasn’t really gotten to the light of day.”

The insouciance of the abusers is similar to that among some priests (although I would argue that the priests’ betrayal of their trust is even deeper than that of secular teachers. Here’s a passage that set my hair on end:

A similar perspective comes from Lorraine O’Donnell, who recently left her job as principal at Clint High School to take an administrative position at the University of Texas at El Paso.
In less than two years as principal at Clint, 25 miles southeast of El Paso, she dealt with two cases in which male coaches were allegedly involved in sexual relationships with female students. She said both men acknowledged their actions but showed no remorse.
“Their lack of remorse and responsibility was truly stunning,” she said. “They showed no evidence whatsoever that they had taken advantage of young people who could very easily have problems with boyfriends, husbands, sons.”
Just as disturbing, she said, was the attitude of another coach at the school who had no connection to either incident.
“I had a coach come up to me and say, `Well, I see we’ve taken care of the situation,’ ” she said. “I said, `Yeah.’ He said, `Well, what about the student?’ I said, `Excuse me?’ He said, `What are we going to do to the student? I mean, it takes two.’ I said, `Look, that girl was a victim. I think enough has been done to her. So, no, we’re not going to do anything to the student.’
“This was a God-fearing, clean-cut, family-man coach. His wife is a coach. A pillar in the community. And this is what he says, `What are we going to do to the student?’ I was stunned.”

So am I. Those subversive heterosexuals. They really need help. How we let them into our schools and classrooms is beyond me. Hey, Messrs Dreher and Kurtz, get busy. Oh, never mind.

NARCISSISM DEATH MATCH: A reader notes:

Between Eric Alterman’s May 22, 2002 / 01:30 update and his first post, I count the word “me” 12 times, and the word “I” appears 62 times. Those posts total under 3,100 words (not counting the letters from readers). That means nearly 1 out of every 42 words is a personal pronoun.
Let us contrast this with Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. Taking the first 3,100 words from his page today, we’re left with entries between “Eric’s Spell Check” and part of “Now Take Gay Priests.” “Me” appears only three times, while “I” has 32 hits. In other words, by this objective test, Alterman is more than twice as self-absorbed as Sullivan.

And he still hasn’t corrected “incumbant.”

CAN KURTZ READ?: In his latest attempt to justify the exclusion of gay people from most mainstream institutions, Stanley Kurtz wheels out the old line that I secretly want marriage to be non-monogamous, and back same-sex marriage in order to undermine this vital social institution:

By far the most important thing about Sullivan’s reply, however, is not anything he says, but what he does not say. Sullivan has not availed himself of the opportunity to clarify his own position on marital fidelity. That is a tremendously significant omission, which leaves standing my characterization of his position. If, as seems evident, Sullivan still believes that the “ope
n sexual contract” [from “Virtually Normal”] that characterizes many gay unions will actually strengthen heterosexual marriage, then the worst fears of conservative opponents of gay marriage are entirely justified. Sullivan criticizes me for characterizing the gay-marriage movement as self-consciously subversive, but if he cannot convincingly disavow his earlier views on monogamy and fidelity, then it seems to me that Sullivan himself clearly exemplifies the way in which proponents of gay marriage mean to subvert marriage itself.

There is a simple reason for my not stooping yet again to rebut this lie about what I have written about marriage. It stems from a single, poorly worded statement in the epilogue of my book, Virtually Normal, which was pounced on by conservatives at the time as meaning I wanted monogamy abolished. I denied it, and apologized for my sloppy writing. In the afterword of the paperback, I even explained unequivocally that this interpretation was wrong, that I support monogamy as a principle in marriage – gay or straight. Here’s the passage on page 221 of Virtually Normal:

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… 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.

Now what does it tell you about someone’s intellectual honesty that even after those words have been in print for years, he still argues that I meant the opposite in my book? If Kurtz did not know this, he is simply negligent of basic reading and research skills. If he did know this, he is being deeply disingenuous. I emailed to ask him to make a correction. It will be a simple test of his intellectual honesty if he doesn’t.

The day after a blogger boasts that, unlike the other blogspotters out there, he has editors, he should probably avoid using spellings like “incumbant.” I’d forgive a lone blogger, and I make some spelling errors and typos myself. But then I’m not edited. Can’t the mighty editors at Newsweek or MSNBC spell-check Alterman? He’s also waxing lyrical about privacy rights. I agree with him about David Brock’s privacy. But here’s his harrumph: “And I say shame on those who claim a right of personal privacy for their own lives but then jump all over Brock’s life to advance their own political agendas. (One more cute move like that one, Drudge, and you’re off my links list. So there!)” But where was Alterman last year when my privacy was being destroyed by his ideological friends and allies? Joining in with the best of them – gleefully. Figures.

A reader sends the following email:

A couple of days ago you mentioned how the Weekly Standard hadn’t said boo about the scandal in the Catholic church. I just looked back a couple of issues where they did AN ENTIRE COVER STORY on religion in America today. They mentioned the Catholic priest scandal NOT ONCE! These McCainiacs are outrageous! Why isn’t the rest of the media calling them on it?
I’ve been a Standard subscriber for forever, and the Catholic slant in their Books and Arts section never bothered me, but this see-no-evil in the Mother Church is just ridiculous.

So tell us, Mr Enron, I mean Kristol, when is the Standard going to recognize reality? Or is its religious coverage deputed to Opus Dei?

THE ONION AND THE CHURCH: The best story yet: “Pope Forgives Molested Children.”

THE FRIGHTENING REYNOLDS: I meant that facetiously, Glenn. He’s a wonder. I’m frightened the way that mortals should be frightened in front of the Terminator. He blogs as often as most people blink. He will prevail. There will be no stopping him. By the way, the tedious Eric Olsen has been whining that I’m not a blogging team player by responding to his every email (they come almost every other day and I got exhausted responding, especially when they keep having URGENT in the contents line). Memo to Eric: reprint any 1000 words you like from my blog for your warblog book. Good luck with the project. Now please stop spamming my email tray. But can I say a word about the notion of a “blogging community” to which we allegedly owe obligations, deference and respect? Phooey. The reason I’m a blogger is because I’m a pesky individualist who simply wants to write what I think and have a great interaction with readers in real time. Every time I hear the word “community,” my bullshit detector goes off. And when I hear about “obligations to the community” blah blah blah, I wanna retch. I have nothing but respect for my fellow bloggers. I read them; I’ve encouraged others to blog; I link whenever I find something I find interesting; I believe in the genre; I’ve lost lucrative jobs for the medium. But please don’t start creating some sort of community of bloggers, and calling us on our dues. This is the Wild Web, buddy, not a condo association. Don’t tread on me. (As for the permalinks, I’m such a loser I didn’t even know what these were. Thanks to Eric and others, I do now. I’ll add them ASAP.)

Tom Friedman says the administration should cool it on warnings of a future attack. I fear he’s too blithe about the risks. But he cannot blame the Bush administration for now doing what the press has hounded them for not doing in the past. How can they win? If they don’t sound the alarm, they have Maureen Dowd accusing them of being on vacation. If they do, Tom Friedman tells them to cool it and Tim Noah suggests they’re faking it. They can’t win. Which, of course, is what the Bush-haters in the press, still seething at the president’s sustained popularity, have intended all along. I say: give them what they want. Scare the bejeezus out of MoDo. Day after day after day.

NOT JUST IN AMERICA: Another pedophile priest in England. This one, mercifully, didn’t physically harm any children.

AND I THOUGHT I WAS TOUCHY: A reader writes: “Skinny pouty faced kiddies with teen angst written all over their faces in $3,000 business suits as featured in men’s magazines have amused and irritated me for years. I’ve simply refused to do business with any company that presents its products in that way. I don’t buy or wear children’s clothing. Circumventing that whole load of crap, I’ve had my suits, shirts, ties, etc. made to order for years. Is the fashion industry wising up? We’ll see.” Now tell us how you really feel …

INSTAPUNDIT REVAMPED: This guy frightens me. He should frighten you all.

FORGET GAY MARRIAGE: Dave Barry has discovered a threat to the marital order that National Review has somehow missed: teachers and cops.

ERIC COME LATELY: For many months, Eric Alterman referred to weblogs as “vanity websites.” The he trashed the concept. Then he sharpened his criticism to say he loves weblogs, he just can’t stand mine, with all its narcissistic (code-word for gay) preening, and so on. He just can’t tolerate the idea of someone in a free country occasionally writing about his actual life, as well as public matters of comment and interest. But now, lo and behold, lovable Eric has decided to get his own blog. Imitation and all that. And the comrades at “Tapped,” the only readable product to come out of the American Prospect, have welcomed their brother-in-arms to the fray. I welcome him too, vanity and all.

DU BOIS AND THE GAY PREDICAMENT: A reader sends the following quotation from W.E.B. Du Bois in “The Souls of Black Folk,” that casts a shadow over the difficult emergence of gay men and women into the sunlight of actual visibility and formal equality. DuBois noticed how quickly others saw the problems of newly liberated African-Americans not as functions of their terrible experience of slavery and oppression but as proof of their inferiority, the threat they posed to marriage, to the military, to civilized society. I quote:

“[The Negro] felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,–not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systemic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.
A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but
rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower” races…
But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came borne upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,–and behold the suicide of a race!

The analogy is inexact. Homosexual Americans have not endured physical slavery and the obscene repression once meted out to African-Americans. But they have endured a slavery of the heart, an expunction of the deepest longings of their souls, the constant scrutiny of those always looking to find fault and never dignity, and the knowledge of their own failures, which can, if unaddressed, lead to a collapse of self-confidence and self-esteem. That’s why it is important not to acquiesce in the scape-goating of the moment, but to resist it, overcome it, and prove it wrong.