Category: Old Dish

MARY, MARY

The two real Marys in the Republican Party – Matalin and Cheney – have obviously been working hard. First was Dick Cheney’s astonishingly enlightened defense of gay relationships in the vice-presidential debate. Now, it’s Lynne’s turn to dent the image she gained of being unsupportive of her lesbian daughter in the wake of Cheney’s nomination. In an interview in yesterday’s Washington Times, Cheney is asked whether she will continue to speak out against inappropriate and hateful products from the popular culture: ‘Q: Any people you’re thinking of speaking out on? A: I haven’t really focused on anything except for the amazing prospect of a man like Eminem, who is so full of hate and so outspoken in his hatred of women and gay people – that’s just really got my attention focused right now. That he’d not only win not just a Grammy [award] but, apparently, the biggest Grammy.’ A defense of gay people from wanton hate-speech. What next? After Eminem, will Lynne finally take on the Weekly Standard?

BRITISH UNDERSTATEMENT AWARD

The control freak Tony Blair has finally gotten his way and abolished fox hunting. I have no fondness for what Oscar Wilde called the ‘unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable,’ but I dislike the illiberal sentiment behind banning an ancient past-time in a free country. My beagle, Dusty, is particularly dismayed and has slipped into what appears to be a coma shortly after the news broke. But my favorite snippet from the news stories is from the report commissioned by Blair to examine the practice. The report details how poor foxes are hunted until they drop from exhaustion, at which point they are torn by hounds limb from limb. This experience, the Brits concluded ‘seriously compromises the welfare of the fox.’ Death usually does. Tea, anyone?

SPEAKING OF MARGO

A reader sends in a passage from John Lukacs’ ‘Confessions of an Original Sinner’ which brought to mind the kind of people now making jokes about W and looking down their Harvard-Cambridge noses at someone from another planet. It’s a perfect Blue Zone moment: ‘I remember, too, how about 1948 at an upper-class liberal dinner party in Philadelphia I ventured to say that Roosevelt’s view of Stalin had not been very realistic, and that I was harrumphed down by a high-powered social medico who, as I had gathered from his conversation, was a local snob of great assiduity and precision, qualities that I hope also marked his practice with his patients. Going home I was racking my brains as to what kind of man this American doctor reminded me of. Then it came to me: of the kind of self-satisfied bourgeois patron of the arts who in a fashionable seat at a fashionable concert or opera asserts himself amidst the applause by shouting a Bravo!’ Yep, he sure did vote for Gore.

HOMOPHILIC ASHCROFT

Yes, I nearly fell out of my chair. When Senator Feingold asked John Ashcroft whether he will continue a non-discrimination policy for gays in the Justice Department, Ashcroft said yes! Not only that, he would retain DOJ’s gay pride organization. My point about how important it is to bring these evangelicals into the business of governing the actual country, gays included, is stronger than I anticipated. Of course, this could all be another example of the brilliant passive-aggressive strategy Bush has so far used to maneuver his way through the recount and the transition, but surely this is a promise that Ashcroft will have to keep. Not only single matron attorneys general can be gay-friendly, it seems. (I’m referring to the famously sexually ambiguous Janet Reno. Well, she wasn’t all that ambiguous, but whatever). Next thing we know, Johnny Ashcroft will be hanging a disco ball from the ceiling. Go, Log Cabin!

THE RACIAL RUBICON

Among the lugubrious Senatorial fawning over Colin Powell, whose mystique continues to escape me, was an interesting interchange between Powell and Jesse Helms. Helms, the old segregationist, was on good form. He never says something you can’t understand, once you’ve mastered the drool and the accent. I listened for a while, intermittently chuckling, until something occurred to me. Here was a man who had built a career on racial fears in the South respectfully questioning a black nominee for secretary of state. If W does nothing else, this was a milestone. And it was all the more a milestone for being unspoken, unelaborated and unforced. While the Democrats continue to foster racial resentment and hatred in order to shore up their base, George W has quietly trumped them. It took me until today to appreciate the importance of this. But I’m now allowing myself a small dose of racial optimism for the country.

THE COUP CONTINUES

Out of 716 cabinet nominations submitted to the Senate since the beginning of the republic, how many were voted down? Nine. How many within sixty days of a new president taking office? One. How many were denied to a new president for purely political reasons? None. Zippo. Except now. All statistics courtesy of the Senate Historical Office.

THE LEAHY STANDARD

‘Senator Ashcroft has often taken aggressively activist positions on a number of issues that deeply divide the American people. He had a right to take these activist positions. We have a right to evaluate how those positions would affect his conduct as attorney general.’ – Senator Patrick Leahy. Well let’s take two areas fraught with controversy: abortion and the death penalty. Ashcroft wants to save every fetus and kill every criminal convicted of a capital offense. Both positions are certainly controversial and divisive. But the current attorney-general has similarly divisive views – just diametrically opposed. She supports abortion at any time and any place for any reason, including that of partially-born infants. She has said that she thinks the only purpose of the death penalty is ‘vengeance.’ Both positions are also controversial. What was the Senate vote on Reno’s confirmation? National Review Online reminds me that it was 98 – 0. Leahy is full of it.