Category: Old Dish

Good question. (See “London Calling” two items down.) I had a chat today with a London friend, Danny Finkelstein, big Tory macher, about just that, over a luke-warm steak and kidney pie. A reader directs me to a British slang directory that says that a wally is an idiot. Not bad. Not quite a gumby or a wanker; or even a tosser. Something less effectual than a berk. All clear now?

MTV recently ran a day-long program on the spiraling hate crime crisis in America. The Human Rights Campaign, aka the Democratic Party’s gay front organization, has made a hate crimes law a top priority in spending the millions it rakes in from well-meaning gay voters and philanthropists. Even the Log Cabin Republicans back this pointless and illiberal law. But the evidence for the last decade is damning: there is no hate crime epidemic, as I pointed out last year in my New York Times Magazine cover-story, “What’s So Bad about Hate?”. (The essay is included in “The Best American Essays 2000.”) Today, the FBI released the latest stats and they tell the same story. To listen to all the hoopla over Matthew Shepard’s awful murder, you’d think gay people were being killed on a daily basis for their orientation. Nuh-huh. In 1999, with over 12,000 law enforcement bodies on the look-out, a grand total of around 8,000 ‘hate crimes’ of all types were recorded in the entire country and three – yes, three – gay hate crime murders. Assume conservatively that gays represent about 3 percent of a total population 280 million. That’s 3 murders per 8.4 million a year. That’s three murders too many of course – but each is already illegal and subject in many states to the death penalty. And this is HRC’s top priority. Don’t you think more gay lives would be saved if HRC campaigned for tougher enforcement of seat-belt laws or safer airplanes or spent more money on an unbreakable condom? But then they wouldn’t be able to unleash the thought police on the country and use the tragic case of Matthew Shepard for more shameless fund-raising.

I’m amazed at Newsweek’s poll showing 67 percent favoring Bush’s tax cut. It confirms my long-held view that people rarely tell pollsters that they want tax cuts before an election, but vote for them anyway. We feel guilty because we’ve been lectured for years that spending our own money – rather than handing it over to politicians – is somehow mean-spirited or selfish. (Of course, it can be mean-spirited or selfish if all you do is buy yourself a new Blackberry.) But I also like David Broder’s idea for rolling tax cuts consonant with a gradual reduction in the national debt. I don’t think it’s in the country’s interest – or the Republicans’ interest, for that matter – to associate economic freedom with national insolvency; and if supply-siders really believe that this is a non-issue, isn’t this the best and most secure way of proving it? I think Bush should stick to his long term goal – no broken tax promises – but after two years, he should peg continued tax cuts to continued debt reduction. I can’t think of a better way to prove he’s a new kind of conservative. Or a better way to get a true bipartisan tax plan out of Washington.

I’m always relieved when reality lives up to stereotype. Since I’ve gotten to London, it’s done nothing but rain. Sideways, downwards, upwards, everywhere. I’m impressed by how many Londoners walk around in what feels like a freezing, torrential downpour with nothing on their heads. I’ve had a classic few cabbies as well. Most of them assume I’m American and it always amuses me to ask them about the city as we drive around. Last time I was here, I was being driven through the West End and inquired about some of the buildings. “Oh, yeah, mate,” one said. “Some of these buildings ‘ave bin ‘ere fah faaazands of years.” Today, I gently inquired of a cabbie what he thought of William Hague, the Tory leader and subject of my assignment. “‘E’s a prick, innee?” he said. “‘Course they all are, innit? I don’t really care much for politics meself, guv. Booze, football and birds. That’s all I give a tosser about.” I’m not making this up. A recent poll in the Daily Telegraph had as one question, “Do you think that William Hague is a bit of a wally?” A hefty plurality agreed. They don’t call it Cruel Britannia for nothing.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “If there had been no so-called scandals, does anyone doubt who would be sitting in the Oval Office today?” This piece of wisdom comes from Bob Shrum, a lovely man whose politics seem stuck somewhere around 1976. Read the quote again. What on earth can it mean? Is he saying there were no real scandals under Bill Clinton? And if there weren’t, why did they cost Gore the election? Does Shrum think the voters are idiots? Or were there actual scandals worthy of the name? (And if lying under oath – which even Bill Clinton now almost concedes he did – isn’t a scandal, then what is? Spilling your DNA on an intern’s dress in the Oval Office? Or was that “so-called” DNA as well?) Well, at least Shrum isn’t pretending, like some others, that Gore actually did win the election. All this to divert attention from the fact that Shrummy helped Gore run possibly one of the worst campaigns in living memory. Actually, make that a “so-called” campaign.

THE THAW: I’ve always had a soft spot for David Horowitz. He has guts. He was also one of the very first converts from the Left to the Right to see that the gay world was not monolithically left-wing or bitter or angry or opposed to family values or economic freedom. I will always remember that. While he’s right to attack some of the extremism of the gay left, he has never tarred all of us with the same brush, as so many conservatives sadly have done. So it’s a real delight to see his magazine, Front Page, feature a truly smart article by a lesbian writer I’m ashamed to say I’ve never heard of: Beth Elliott. It’s called “How Gays And Conservatives Can Work Together.” You’ll recognize some of the themes if you’re a regular here, but they are written with passion and intelligence. It’s also such a relief to find a lesbian saying these things. For some reason, groupthink seems even more entrenched among lesbians than gay men. The exceptions are, of course, glittering: Camille Paglia and Fran Lebowitz are my faves. There’s also a terrific young lesbian writer called Norah Vincent you’ll be reading much more about in the future. Anyway, enjoy. It’s the kind of intellectually refreshing, honest, and brave piece about gay politics that you’d never find in, say, the Weekly Standard.

No, I’m not bitter. Honest. You can read the same themes in the last chapter of my book, Love Undetectable, which was not written after a break-up. Anyway, I still have my beagle (although she’s not here with me in London. Sniff.) A reader sends in the following passages from a book by Philip Slater, called The Pursuit of Loneliness. I think they’re right on the mark: “I like to think of romantic love as a rather glamorous disease like tuberculosis, that often turns ugly in its terminal stages. Its pathology is betrayed by its rigidity: a single act can be lethal to it. This is because it’s based on dreams, and dreams are fragile. With people who simply love each other as people, one event is rarely destructive or final or unforgivable. But in romantic love, one can do it, since there’s no flexibility when people are trying to force reality into a fantasy … Since romantic love thrives on absence, one is forced to conclude that it’s fundamentally unrelated to the character of the loved one, but derives its meaning from some prior relationship. ‘Love at first sight’ can only be transferred love, since there’s nothing else to base it on.” Amen, brother. Then there’s this fascinating insight: “Romantic love is rare in primitive communities simply because the bond between child and parent is more casual. The child tends to have many caretakers, and to be sensitive to the fact that there are many alternative suppliers of love. The middle-class American child, brought up in a small detached household, usually doesn’t have this sense of many options. His emotional life is heavily bound up in a single person, and spreading this involvement over other people as he grows up is more difficult. Americans must make a life task out of what happens effortlessly in many societies.” Makes complete sense to me. Happy Valentine’s Day on Wednesday.

My friend Chris Matthews, among others, thinks Jesse Jackson should be given a pass for his little daughter because he has been honest about it and taken responsibility. I’m not sure Chris is aware of the following press release issued on March 19, 1999, pointed out to me by the New York Post columnist, Rod Dreher. The release has been buried on the Operation-PUSH site and is extremely hard to find. But here’s the relevant passage: “Dr. Karin L. Stanford, director, Washington Bureau/vice president, programs Citizenship Education Fund (CEF), heads the public policy division of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and CEF. A former assistant professor of political science and African American studies at the University of Georgia, Stanford has received numerous accolades. Her greatest reward yet, remarks the director, will be the birth of her first child with Atty. James Simmons in May. Stanford, who is also a breast cancer survivor, takes maternity and family leave April 1.” So PUSH didn’t only deny Jackson’s paternity – but fingered someone else! To be fair, maybe Jackson wasn’t sure. But that doesn’t justify asserting it was someone else’s daughter. Again: I have no desire to judge Jackson for his affair. We’re all human. But honesty is important – especially in a public figure lecturing others about family values and counseling a president for hiding a sexual liaison.

The Democratic Leadership Council is back. Has anyone noticed their post-election resurgence? First there was the p.r. coup in organizing a crammed National Press Club meeting on the theme, “Why Gore Lost.” This was useful for a couple of obvious reasons. The first is that some Democrats still can’t get it into their heads that Gore did actually lose. The issue here is not over-votes in some Florida county no-one had ever heard of before last November. It is that Gore blew what should have been a landslide by a suicidal embrace of populist claptrap devised by Stanley Greenberg and Bob Shrum. I’m surprised the DLC isn’t more enraged at Gore. Didn’t he owe a great deal of his ascendancy to DLC credibility as a centrist alternative to paleo-liberalism? At least Clinton, for the most part, didn’t betray the party on policy grounds. The latest encouraging fusillade to prove that the center isn’t dead is the emergence of Evan Bayh as the new DLC head. His tax policy position is the only Democratic posture that can survive the Gore juggernaut. In his first speech as DLC chair, Bayh said, “I embrace the president’s call for a tax cut that will benefit every American because I believe in freedom.” Freedom, huh? When was the last time you heard a Democrat support that idea with conviction? Then he added a fiscally conservative note: “Many of us do not want to go back to the days of deficits. We don’t want to go back to the days of increasing the national debt upon the back of our children.” This is exactly the posture the Democrats need to take in countering Bush’s so-far-brilliant p.r. offensive in defense of tax cuts. My only worry is that there is no-one out there in the media to defend Bayh.

In London, all anyone is talking about is the fate of Peter Mandelson, gay centrist ally of Tony Blair. Mandelson, former Northern Ireland secretary, was a key player in reorienting the old Labour Party to embrace conservative economics, while still sticking to support for the creaking British welfare state. He was just forced to resign over a small piece of corruption – the kind of thing Bill Clinton would do before breakfast each morning. He allegedly made a call to help a wealthy Indian businessman get a UK passport after the said businessman coughed up some cash for the hideous Millennium Dome. After denying, then admitting, then denying the charge, last week, Mandelson endeared himself even more to the Labour leadership by campaigning for his innocence in a series of visits to Tory newspaper offices – just while Blair was unveiling an agenda for a second Labour term. Today’s papers reveal the Labour boot going right into his privates, as they say over here. “I hope he goes away and has a wonderful time with Reinaldo,” one senior Labour party official told the press. Reinaldo is Mandelson’s Brazilian lover. It wasn’t exactly an “outing” since Mandelson is one of those weird characters who is known to be gay, won’t deny it, but won’t say it either. But it was a classic piece of homophobic vitriol that the Left still knows how to deliver when it needs to. The Right is worse, of course. The Tory press here still routinely refers to buggers, poofters, benders, and so on. But it seems clear to me that those gay men and women in public life who don’t simply come out and say it, and then move on, are always going to be vulnerable to this kind of attack. The answer – for pols on right and left – is unashamed candor and then a matter-of-fact transition to other issues as a public person. It’s the strongest defense. Honesty, in my experience, almost always is.

We’re working on it. I’m sorry but I can’t reply to everyone who has emailed me in support of the idea. There have been hundreds of emails. But we hope to have something up and running in the very near future. Once again: I’m really, really grateful for your support. It seems almost certain, if you put your buck where your emails are, that this site will be going for as long as we all want it to.

So I spend two hours answering emails on the plane and there’s another 150 when I get to Jolly Old! It’s wonderful to get these; and even more wonderful to find how many of you are prepared to help keep this show on the road. But I have now got the message. There isn’t enough tea to keep me awake long enough to answer them all promptly so please be patient. Below you’ll find a weird function of our limited funds. My trusty volunteer techie and designer, Vince Allen, has taken a week off, so I can’t post real pieces till Monday, when he returns. I can only do the Dish. So I’ve added my Jackson TRB to the Dish today, rather than wait four days to get it online here. Normality will return when Vince does. Now I’m going to bed. It’s morning here and after my ritual kippers and fried bread, I’m hitting the sack.