The Dish

"Hardaway’s comments are both unfortunate and inappropriate. They provide political fodder for those who wish to paint all opposition to the homosexual lifestyle as being rooted in ‘hate.’ [….] It’s perfectly natural for people to be repelled by disordered sexual behaviors that are both unnatural, and immoral [….] Hardaway’s comments only serve to foment misperceptions of widespread homosexual ‘victimhood’ which the homosexual lobby has craftily manufactured," – Mickey Kaus,  Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues at Concerned Women For America.

Noel, that is. Clive Davis, reviewing a theatrical British book, conveys this priceless Cowardism:

Once, crossing Leicester Square, Morley and Coward saw a poster for an adventure movie starring Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde entitled The Sea Shall Not Have Them. "I fail to see why not," Coward remarked. "Everybody else has."

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, says Giuliani is a non-starter for the religious base. Money quote:

While Giuliani’s moderate to liberal stances on social issues are beginning to be discussed more and more in conservative circles, Land said the mayor’s annulment, divorce and subsequent third marriage will seal the deal against hizzoner for social conservatives.

"It’s got to surface at some point," Land said. "There are too many social conservatives talking about it, and it applies to [Newt] Gingrich, too."

Land talks often about the weight social conservatives carry within the Republican Party, citing exit polling and warning GOP candidates that they can "no more win without conservative voters than a Democrat can without overwhelming support from blacks."

"That’s the reality of politics in the early 21st century," he said.

Land’s new book has a foreword written by Joe Lieberman.

A reader writes:

I also play in the basketball league with LZ. It’s at the Reebok Sports Club close to Lincoln Center. The interesting thing about the league isn’t that there are openly gay players, it’s the fact that one of the teams is composed almost entirely of male models, who, to demolish another stereotype, play the game as hard and fearlessly as anyone. A few months back I wrote a piece about "Team Zoolander" that I thought you might enjoy.

Team Zoolander indeed.

A Republican Christianist heckles a Mormon candidate in Florida. Romney responds as follows:

We need to have a person of faith lead the country.

How is that not a religious test for the presidency? The anti-Mormon bigotry displayed is ugly and wrong – but it will come up again. Bush and Rove have built a Republican party on a sectarian base – and Romnney is of the wrong sect. But instead of standing up to this sectarianism, and affirming the right of anyone of any faith or none to be president, Romney panders to religious bias. It seems to me that it is equally bigoted to say that a Mormon should not be president as it is to say that an atheist should not be president. Romney has chosen to fight bigotry with bigotry. We are finding out that he will say anything – anything – to get elected. That is not the mark of a person of faith. It is the mark of a person shot through with cynicism.

(Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty.)

A reader writes:

The shower discussion is making me laugh at loud. I am a straight guy who worked in gay-owned cafes while in college. I was the token straight boy. I was checked out and flirted with relentlessly by the staff. I made great tips letting the customer’s check me out as I took their order. They were all harmless – the older trolls, the young sex kitten, the brilliantly dark smart one, the muscle boy, the biker boys (as in River and Keanu, not Harley’s), the theater boys, the preppy Republican gay guy … they all checked me out and I loved it and profited by it. I never turned out gay, not even close. You are right, the attention is flattering as hell. It is not different than straight guys checking out girls. Not one bit. Guys are horny, it doesn’t matter what they put their penis into. But that doesn’t mean they go around porking everything that moves.

The only reason I would feel threatened showering with gay guys would be that they might look better than me when they are naked. Of course, when showering with the gay guys you can ask them what moisturizer they use to get that smooth skin without catching shit for it.

There’s an economic niche here, if someone wants it. If you’re a good looking straight guy in need of easy money, find a gay restaurant or bar and become a waiter or bar-tender. Gay men are great tippers, and they’re even better tippers if you’re hot. (Don’t even think of getting tips from lesbians. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, look elsewhere.) I have a straight friend who made a small fortune as a deck-chair dude on the beach in Rehoboth. As so often, capitalism is the true corroder of prejudice.

"The fact we must face is this: We have already been defeated in Iraq. Perhaps not in literal truth; a better policy, better implemented, might yet bring about a stable, democratic country. And certainly not in historical terms; Iraq is only an early chapter in what must be a long struggle against global Jihadism. But, at the very least, the battle for perception of the Iraq War has gone entirely against the United States. In the eyes of both the American public and the Islamic world, we have lost – and lost badly.

The reason is President Bush. His administration has mishandled the logistics of the war and the politics of its perception in nearly equal measure, from Abu Ghraib to the execution of Saddam Hussein. Conservatives voted for George W. Bush in 2000 because they expected him to be the opposite of Bill Clinton-and so, unfortunately, he has proved. Where Clinton seemed a man of enormous political competence and no principle, Bush has been a man of principle and very little political competence. The security concerns after the attacks of September 11 and the general tide of American conservatism carried Republicans through the elections of 2002 and 2004. But by 2006 Bush had squandered his party’s advantages, until even the specter of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House was not enough to keep the Republicans in power," – Joseph Bottum, despondent theocon, in First Things.

Here’s Rumsfeld’s unhinged plan for 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by 2006. You can read the full memo here. Looking at it today provides an insight into both the utopian derangement in the Bush administration before the Iraq war – but it still doesn’t fully explain why the administration refused to start over as soon as this plan revealed itself to be absurd.

Some headlines just write themselves, don’t they? Peter Berkowitz has a must-read on Alan Wolfe in the Weekly Standard. The piece is not a defense of Dinesh D’Souza but an attempt to apply Wolfe’s censorious logic with respect to D’Souza on Wolfe himself. Since I’m in the midst of writing a real piece on this issue, I won’t comment further. Except to say that Berkowitz seems to me to get the better of Wolfe on the issue of Carl Schmitt; but that Peter under-estimates the authoritarian strains among elements of the American right.

Let me give one example from only recently. Hugh Hewitt’s blog once had the slogan: "The Power of the Democrats Must Be Destroyed." Not countered; out-argued; or debated. But destroyed. I agree with Peter that this kind of rhetoric is not strictly Schmittian; but I don’t agree that it isn’t corrosive to the spirit of liberal democracy as conservatives have long understood it. I do believe that the conservative endorsement of torture, contempt for constitutional processes, indifference to habeas corpus, and naked hatred of the opposition represent real and dark developments. Peter is too sanguine about them, in my view. Yes, the left has its counterparts. In fact, there are strains of intolerance and illiberalism on the left that are just as dark. But the left hasn’t been in power for so long; and hasn’t been turbo-charged with war-powers. Wolfe over-reached. But Peter has under-reached.