Category: The Dish

A reader writes:

I am an American expat in Italy, and I share the perspective of your other reader.  There is a widespread assumption among people in America, and in Italy, that gay couples actually have most legal rights.  My expat situation, thank goodness, has been facilitated by a huge multinational company, so my employer has been very supportive of doing everything possible to keep me and my partner together.

The surprise?  The HR people that have been handling this all assumed that the US Government and the Italian Government would treat us as a couple!  Here you have human resources PROFESSIONALS, on two sides of the Atlantic, who didn’t realize that the laws of two major Western democracies abandon some families to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

In the end, the hard work of my heroic colleagues in HR have given us a modicum of household security.  But they should have known that a bit of heroism would be necessary.

These readers are onto something. Most heterosexuals do not understand that it’s illegal to get married in 49 states in the US for gay couples; they don’t understand that even if you have a legal contract with your spouse, your legal next of kin can and will challenge it, if you die or get sick; most heterosexuals have no idea that America bars gay spouses from immigration, and bars all HIV-positive non-Americans from even entering the country (a policy that the Bush administration, for all its action on AIDS abroad, has not changed in eight long years).

The main reason for this, I think, is not so much homophobia, as the fact that most heterosexuals simply cannot imagine falling in love with someone, and being told by their own government that they cannot marry him or her. The experience of gay couples is simply beyond most straight people’s experience. If it happened to any of them, there would be outrage. Splitting husbands from wives, tearing children apart from their parents, using government to  attack and punish and stigmatize family life: it’s unimaginable. And yet, with gay couples, it’s the law. And it’s government policy. And one political party routinely celebrates attacking and demonizing gay couples and using every legal tool to undermine our families and relationships.

Which means we have much, much more work to do. And only gay people can do it.

You have to hand it to him. If only for the photo.

Introducing a phone that stretches, curves, and can fit around your wrist if you feel like it.

Obama swamps the March 4 states with money.

Some further thoughts. Visceral hate of Tim Russert seems to have protected Obama from the weakness of his Farrakhan answer. Josh Marshall says it was Russert’s lowest moment:

As a Jew and perhaps more importantly simply as a sentient being I found it disgusting. It was a nationwide, televised, MSM version of one of those noxious Obama smear emails.

Matt makes a similar point:

The way Russert handled the Louis Farrakhan issue was, I thought, pretty egregious but about what I expect from him. Clinton’s classless handling of the aftermath was also about what I expect from her at this point.

Marc sees fault in Obama’s answer but blames the circumstances:

There are some things you just don’t do in American politics: calling Farrakhan “minister Farrakhan” is one of them. He’s been declared persona non grata by everyone in the mainstream of our politics. It seemed to take badgering by Clinton for Obama to reject it explicitly (although he did not embrace it and had distanced himself from it before). I don’t think Obama’s at fault here. I think the circumstances conspired against him, but it just didn’t sound right.

Joe Klein thinks Obama barely saved himself:

Bad moment by Obama, later redeemed. Russert asked if he rejected Farrakhan’s support. Obama said he denounced Farrakhan’s antisemitism–which was to say, I don’t like him but I won’t kick away his (or the Nation of Islam’s) support. Incredibly, Clinton saved him by mentioning that she had rejected the support of an anti-semitic fringe group in 2000. He responded brilliantly, "I would reject and denounce." There is a growing, despicable movement to denounce and defame Obama among right-wing Jews and this would have given them ammunition. He escaped, narrowly.

Whence the love? I asked; you answered. Many of you shared this reader’s reaction:

For one thing, they tend to be more racist than younger Americans.

Other readers made this point:

I think as voters get older they favor the familiar, and are more open to messages that harken back to the past, to a day they may remember (rightly or wrongly) as better.

And yet others took this route:

Hillary’s base is skewed female.  And as we all know, men die off first.  There are a lot more women over 65 than men.

This anecdote seems closest to the truth:

Growing up near Pittsburgh, which has an elderly population among the highest per capita in the nation, I think that seniors support Clinton largely because they remember the struggles of the last 50 years insofar as civil and women’s rights are concerned.  They remember all the opposition along the way, and they feel that opposition still exists to an extent today. 

My father is 68, and has said vehemently that — although he might support Obama — he just doesn’t believe the nation is ready to vote for a black President.  Another long-time family friend, almost 70 and Jewish, told me that he thinks there are still too many racist people in America, and that Obama doesn’t have chance in the general electorate.  He told me this over dinner one night, and I said to him, "I hope you’re wrong."  He said, "So do I, but I doubt it." 

Today on the phone with my father — who has also been a broadcast journalist in Pittsburgh for almost 50 years — he told me that it looks like Obama will get the nomination but that McCain will "blow him out of the water."  To him, Obama is too young, too black, and too different to win. 

It’s a cautious cynicism.  It’s not anti-hope, but it is hope-weary. I think Barack simply still has some muscle left to show and some inspiring left to do.

Clinton from last night:

‘Imagine if FDR made Social Security voluntary. Imagine if LBJ made Medicare voluntary.’

We can dream, can’t we?

Another lovely Clinton campaign moment.

K-Lo:

He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.

Kirchick:

He seems so anachronistic now, in this age of blogs and non-stop cable news. Amidst the shouting matches, spin, and ad hominem attacks that dominate our political debate today, it’s difficult to remember that a man like Buckley and forums such as Firing Line ever existed.

Rod:

He was the kind of man who, though absolutely clear in his dismissal of liberal ideas, would not stoop to trashing someone’s character for the sake of political gain.

Ambers:

His was a conservatism of doubt.

Joe Klein:

His book, The Unmaking of a Mayor, an account of his own wry run for mayor of New York in 1965, is not only hilarious but also an early – and accurate – critique of the political correctness, unionized sclerosis and wasteful bureaucracy that almost killed the world’s greatest city in the 1960s and 1970s.