Category: The Dish

"Bishop Robinson will now be a recovering alcoholic. Good. If only he were also a recovering gay," – Richard John Neuhaus, First Things.

But it was done by a Muslim gang in France, so no anti-Semitism was involved.

The p.c. left on the faculty may despise Larry Summers, but a new poll shows that the students are fine with him.

Josh Marshall gets personal and nasty with Dick Cheney.

It’s one of the most important documents yet released in the battle against detainee torture and abuse by the United States. It’s the memo written by then-Navy general counsel, Alberto J. Mora,
desperately trying to stop the moral and strategic disaster of the decision by the president to endorse abuse and torture in the war on terror. It’s contained in this must-read Jane Mayer piece that contains some of the best reporting yet on how a cabal within the Pentagon highjacked America’s honor and circumvented regular procedures to enable torture. Read both the piece and the memo, and then recall Rumsfeld’s testimony to the Congress after Abu Ghraib and the president’s repeated insistence that "we do not torture." Ponder. And repeat. I’m still absorbing the material before further comment. More later. Marty Lederman has a brief reaction to some of what we have just learned here. One note of thanks: Mayer’s work on this subject, along with Dana Priest’s at the Washington Post, are examples of impassioned, dogged journalism at its best. The truth will out in the end – thanks to reporting like theirs’.

A reader writes:

"I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the electability of Rice among Republicans. Is she pro-life enough (especially if she were teamed with Rudy)? Are Republicans really ready for a woman, let alone a black woman? And a single woman, as well? How would a Rudy-Condi ticket play with the "family values" crowd? He’s divorced, an adulterer, and pro gay rights; she doesn’t have children or a husband and has expressed an interest in being NFL commissioner (I am not at all implying she’s gay, but others will likely infer that). Lots of twists and turns with this combo."

Yes, yes, and yes. But both now poll extremely well with Republican voters, despite all these things. I tend to believe that the actual voters in the Republican base aren’t nearly as closed-minded as their leaders. The polling of evangelicals on gay marriage showed them to be largely uninterested in the topic, until Karl Rove and James Dobson organized a massive campaign to scare and mobilize them. Still, I’m not predicting anything. And I’m not endorsing anyone. But Rudy and Condi do seem to be emerging as candidates with formidable potential. (I should add that I forgot Rudy’s first, annulled, marriage. Between the two of them, Giuliani and Rice have three marriages. Maybe that would satisfy the "family values crowd".)

A reader writes:

"You ask: ‘Isn’t it amazing that the one thing that can unite Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Christians is hatred of gay people’"

No, it’s not. Those religions aren’t propagated by persuasion and reason, like geometry or geology. They aren’t popular because they offer individuals a better way of life, like the South Beach diet or meditation.
The Abrahamic religions survive primarily by indoctrination of the next generation of children. That is why these religions don’t just celebrate birth, coming of age, and marriage, but turn them into the most sacred of rites. Homosexuality is a threat to this order, because if people can decide about something so basic as what gender they prefer, they might start thinking twice about circumcision, baptism, bar mitzvah, confirmation, and before you know it, the next generation doesn’t believe quite enough to follow the old pattern, and the generation after that is secular.
The religious right is quite correct to identify gays, public schools, science, secular literature, cohabitation, premarital sex, and liberal education as threats to their religion. Abrahamic religion piggy-backs on human reproduction: follow the rules, get married, have children, baptize them, teach them the rules, and take joy that they believe like you do. Everything listed above is a threat to that pattern. The Catholic Church differs from the protestant evangelicals in this regard only in that it knows it can’t really expect to win against science. Once bruised, twice shy. But sanction gay sex? Or marriage?? The Catholic Church would first give up on the divinity of Christ. That is not so essential to how it survives."

I’m sorry, but I’m not that cynical. By the way, the best thing I’ve read on the relationship between religion and science in a long time was published yesterday in the New York Times. It’s Leon Wieseltier’s superb dissection of scientism.

The movie just won the BAFTA award for best picture. It beat out the Brit favorite, "The Constant Gardener." BBM has now earned close to $70 million domestically, far ahead of any other Oscar contender, and $107 in total global take. Its budget was $14 million. Its domestic take has collapsed in the last week or so – but less so than the other Oscar contenders.

Beyond AWOL. Now imagine what the emails that haven’t been released show.