Hardaway Explains

The poor guy thinks he committed a "hate crime." More reason to hate hate crime laws. He also uses this somewhat unfortunate metaphor:

I don’t have a hate bone in my body.

Ahem. Money quote:

You know, we were brought up to not even condone or associate yourself with a gay person. If you knew of a gay person, disassociate yourself with them.

But Tim, you’ve been in Miami for years now and there is a strong and public gay community there. How have you still held on to that same mentality while living in Miami all of these years?

I just get away from it. I just walk away. I see it, I just go the other way, cross the street.

So at no point did you ever try to understand their lifestyle or way of life?

No. Never did. Never wanted to.

I have to say I’m impressed with Hardaway’s honesty, and defend his right to his opinions and beliefs, even if I don’t share them. I hope he sees that he’s missing a lot in excluding gay people from his life, but it’s his life, not mine. Leave him alone.

Face of the Day

Civilunioncolinarchergetty

Degn Schubert, 40, with hair stylist Kristina Pinto as he prepares for his civil union ceremony with partner Mark Rado that will take place at midnight February 22, 2007 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The couple had a domestic partnership formed in California June 28, 2003 and celebrate that date as their anniversary. Schubert says, "I’m happy for the couples that are doing it for the first time, but for this one, we’re doing it because it allows us more rights." (Photo by Colin Archer/Getty Images)

“Acting White”

This African-American blogger does not recall that in his high school, black achievers were ridiculed for "acting white." But he knows many other African-Americans who testify that this is indeed a damaging phenomenon and that Barack Obama is right to talk about and tackle it as a cultural burden on young black Americans. Then James Forman Jr notices a possible explanation for the discrepancy between his experience and so many others’: he went to an all-black school. Data back this up.

Beards!

Linden014

Here’s more than you ever wanted to see or know. But I’m completely hooked. Beards are not easy things to grow, groom or tender. But this site helps you stay focused; and even provides several success stories. Here’s one, for example. Money quote:

Has the site’s information on beard grooming been useful?

I’ve tried many times to grow a beard – and never really understood the importance behind grooming or choosing a style that added to the shape, contours and symmetry of my face. In early attempts, I always trimmed back my beard by simply shaving the areas where I wanted to shape an outline of what I thought would look good — this was universally unsuccessful and would always result in my shaving the entire beard off (leading to much comment from work colleagues, family and friends — usually accompanied with a "thank god" or "that looks much better" — without the beard). As I finally let my beard grow, grooming became a deliberate expression of some personal aesthetic. I invested in a beard trimmer after six scruffy weeks and quickly learned how to keep my beard shaped and defined in a way that pleased me.

Mark Steyn’s is hot, by the way. I hope he never culls it.

The Dangers of Fake Faith

One of the problems of the weakening of traditional religion is the emergence of fake religions. Michael Burleigh’s book on "Sacred Causes" links the rise of pseudo-religions like Soviet Marxism and German Nazism to the vacuum created by declining traditional religious commitment in twentieth century Europe. There’s a useful summary of the book in today’s WSJ. (The book, alas, is not Burleigh’s best.) But this is not, I think, a defense of some of contemporary American evangelicalism, let alone contemporary Wahhabism or Salafism. Some strands of today’s American evangelicalism are as phony and as fake as any atheistic alternative from the last century. The "Prosperity Gospel," for example, is not Christianity. It’s a form of capitalist self-help under-pinned by emotional manipulation, legitimized by the patina of Christian scripture. Similarly, a Christian faith that is primarily about politics and social policy is not authentic faith either: it’s Christianism, not Christianity. That’s one reason, I think, that non-fundamentalist Christians should stay in established traditional churches and resist the fundamentalist onslaught. Institutions matter. Religion matters. A society that severs the two is prone to dangerous bouts of ill-considered zeal and far-too ideological politics. We’re not there yet. But the danger signs are flashing red.

Steyn and Bosnia

More evidence that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about:

I agree with your reader’s assessment of Bosnian Muslim and Serb dynamics in your post. My mother suggested evidence from the Croatian point of view, as well. She’s from Zagreb. She said the Hercegovinian Croats who moved to Zagreb were much more ambitious and "good at business" than the Croats from Croatia, and for that reason resented. But she said that the Muslims in Bosnia were considered to be even more ambitious and better at business than the Croats there–they were called "the Jews of Bosnia" (ironic, considering the generalized antipathy between Jews and Muslims today) for their business and financial prowess.

Memo to Steyn: some anti-Muslim bigotry is a lot like the old anti-Semitism. You need to be a little more careful who you’re rooting for.