Category: The Dish

It’s getting just a little weird. They ridiculed Saddam, and he was deposed. They depicted Mel Gibson as a deranged sado-masochistic anti-Semite, and … well, now we know. They took on Tom Cruise, and he went down the Paramount plughole. So this script from 1999 was always a little unnerving:

[Cartman’s house. A television is heard. The screen shows an Australian crocodile hunter narrating his adventures as a woman pilots his boat down a river.]

Aussie: As we steer our boat down [the boys are on the sofa looking at TV], looking for these dangerous predators‚Ķ Boy, there’s a king croc right here. [it slips into the water] He must be four meters; 12, 13 feet long at least. [it looks up at him] This croc has enough power in its jaws to rip my head right off.

Kenny: (Oh, no!) [tightens his hood up]

Aussie: I’ve got to be careful. So, what I’m gonna do is sneak up on it and jam my thumb in its butthole.

Stan: Holy crap. dude!

Aussie: If I get bit out here, I’m 200 kilometers from the nearest hospital: I’d better be real careful jamming my thumb in its butthole. [jumps in and grabs the crocodiile] Oh, boy, it’s pissed off now.

Kyle: Go, dude, go! [excited, the boys jump on the sofa]

Aussie: I’m gonna jam my thumb it its butthole now! This should really piss it off! [reaches down with his left thumb to do it. The croc jumps up in pain and drops] Oh, yeah, that pissed it off, all right! [the boys cheer] I’ve gotta be careful!

Stan: This guy rules!

Kenny: (He actually killed it!)

Cartman: I told you guys.

Aussie: [with left arm now bandaged and in a sling] Well! That was quite an angry croc! But I managed to escape with only a few bruises and a shattered left testicle. Next week we’ll look for more of these beautiful creatures, so we can learn more about them by pissing them off immensely.

Enter one immensely pissed-off sting-ray.

Manhattan, 6 pm. Back to work.

Only a decade ago, the Republican senator was very chummmy with the macaca-free Council of Conservative Citizens. Uh-oh.

Here’s a tart critique of the Mark Steyn column I posted on here, courtesy of Glenn Greenwald. Money quote:

The ironies of this disturbed war dance are virtually infinite … but the most striking irony is this. So much of the neoconservative warrior cries are built on an ethos of deep fear, of exactly the desperate desire to be protected and saved which Steyn and company claim is the hallmark of the girlish, soul-less West. As they strike the warrior pose, they are desperately willing, even eager, to fundamentally change the character and principles of our republic and to sacrifice the core liberties which define it because they are scared and want, more than anything else, to be protected.

I might add that I and many others witnessed the the true character of the "girly, soulless" West in the days after 9/11; and it was neither weak nor afraid.

It now seems likely that conservative Judaism will soon end its ban on gay ordination and same-sex marriage. Reform Judaism has already reformed to reflect our new knowledge of human nature, and the God-given dignity of gay people. The predictable backlash is underway.

A reader writes:

I just read your description of your book – how it differs from Derb’s description of the second part of it – and was struck by how your hope for a church free from "excessive doctrinal obsession, minute moral regulation, and constant guilt," squares beautifully with today’s Gospel reading from Mark:

So the Pharisees and scribes questioned him, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?" He responded, "Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:

This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.

You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition."

Wonderful.

Today’s Christianists have one major problem in their recasting of Christianity as a partisan politics and a set of inviolable laws and moral regulations. That problem is the message of Jesus.

Here’s a fascinating new insight into a state of mind called "whiteness." Meanwhile, the Derb tackles one of the most politically contentious issues of our time: the resilience of aggregate differences in racial groups. It’s well worth reading – although it is, alas, graced with the expected occasional ugliness. I think the small but sometimes salient aggregate differences between humans from various genetic backgrounds are worth debating and examining without fear – if only because the process might prompt us to revisit one of the great social poisons of our time: affirmative action.

My book isn’t out for a month and yet the far right is already attacking it. I find that a good sign. They’re worried. In an astonishingly dishonest passage, Mark Steyn, who has not read the book, purloins a couple of sentences to imply that I represent Western weakness against Jihadism. Money quote:

If you’re a Muslim, the video [of two Western journalists mouthing fealty to Islam] confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling – that the West is weak, that there’s nothing – no core, no bedrock – nothing it’s not willing to trade. In his new book The Conservative Soul, attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one, Time magazine’s gay Tory Andrew Sullivan enthuses, "By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live – now, which is the only time that matters." That’s almost a literal restatement of Faust’s bargain with the devil:

"When to the moment I shall say
‘Linger awhile! so fair thou art!’
Then mayst thou fetter me straightway
Then to the abyss will I depart!"

Actually, the passage he quotes is from a gloss on the Martha and Mary story in Luke’s Gospel (pages 206 – 209 in the book). It’s about Jesus’ admonition of Martha to stop fussing in the kitchen, worrying about a future meal, and his urging her to be with him now in the manner of her sister, Mary. It is in a theological section about some core concepts in Christianity and has nothing whatever to do with the fight against Islamism. The book as a whole, moreover, is a full-throated defense of the free, skeptical West against its enslaved, fundamentalist foes. Steyn doesn’t know that because he hasn’t read the book and I’m guessing he grabbed that quote from Derb – but what does Steyn care if the context disproves his smear? To go further and interpret a Gospel reading as a Faustian pact with the Devil is hackery beneath even Steyn’s usual standards. Memo to Steyn: attack the book’s contents if you want. But read it first, will you?

(Pre-ordering is available now. It’s out in four weeks.)

It’s truly heartening to read one small story of success in Iraq, where much larger numbers of U.S. and Iraqi troops actaully succeeded in bringing a modicum of tenuous order to a Baghdad neighborhood called Dora. How did they do it? Money quote:

In a country long on disappointment and short on hope, Dora represents only the embryo of progress. It was the first of several violent neighborhoods covered by a new Baghdad security plan — which seeks to create walled-in sanctuaries where economic development can grow in an environment of safety — and American and Iraqi officials are still struggling to make residents feel safe enough to let their children play in the streets.

The local progress is coming as death tolls across the country have been soaring, up more than 50 percent in recent months, according to the latest Pentagon assessment. And in Baghdad as a whole, the toll has been high, with the city’s morgue reporting more than 334 people killed or found dead from Aug. 24 to the end of the month.

Most of those deaths occurred in areas without a reinforced military presence.

My italics. Even now, after three years of spiraling anarchy, sufficient troop levels can provide the security and order without which democracy and progress are impossible. Can you imagine what we might have achieved if this president had actually committed the resources to win in Iraq? Can you imagine how a secure and democratic Iraq could now be isolating Iran, rather than the other way round? Last week, in an intellectually barren and politically vile speech, Don Rumsfeld accused opponents of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy of being "appeasers." The truth is the opposite. Rumsfeld is the true appeaser, along with the president and vice-president: men who faced a defeatable enemy and chose to send just enough troops to lose. They are the true Chamberlains of our time: too weak to commit to victory and too proud to let others do the job instead.

(Photo: Franco Pagetti/Time.)

Trey Ratcliff took portraits of yours truly, Matt Stone and Trey Parker in Amsterdam a week or so ago. His photo-blog is beautiful.