The Dish

The portrait of George W. Bush being anointed by Lincoln and Washington and framed by a cross is just one of many religious paintings by one Ron DiCianni. You can view his work here and, for the most part, it’s completely conventional spiritual artwork. But as with the anointing of Bush, some paintings suggest a fusion of American force and Christian theology that is troubling in a secular society, and especially in a war where we need to do everything we can to avoid the appearance of a "crusade." In that light, check out another painting by DiCianni above. It’s called "Chariots of Fire." It may spring from good motives, but it’s troubling to me to see the military so sectarianized.

There’s no question that it’s happening. A reader writes:

Thanks for the thought-provoking article about the moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding the potential detection homosexuality, or homosexual predilection, by genetic means. Your vision of a world in which some babies are aborted for being gay is indeed frightening, but not I’m afraid that hard to imagine. Look at what’s done to fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome. While reports vary, some literature  I’ve seen online suggests termination rates of over 90 percent for fetuses in which Down Syndrome is detected.

When I read that article, I found myself thinking about the last time I saw a child with Down’s. When first recognized, normal incidence was perhaps one in a thousand births. Here we are in 2006, after mainstreaming and an end to mandatory institutionalization, but rarely do I see a child with Down’s – just adults.

Another adds:

Clearly, if ninety percent of fetuses with Down syndrome are aborted, most of the people who claim to oppose abortion are unwilling to undergo the inconvenience, expense and – let’s face it – the public embarrassment of having a mentally disabled child.  Why should we assume that it would be any different with gay fetuses? After all, where nobody really gives much thought to Down syndrome children, there is widespread antipathy towards homosexuals. Even heterosexuals who support gay rights feel something between mild unease and outright revulsion at the thought of two men having sex (just ask Mickey Kaus).

In short, we really do live in interesting times. On the one hand, we are the first generation of gay men who has had a shot at living something like a normal life; on the other, we may be the last generation of gay men to have a shot at living.

A looming gay genocide? A grim thought.

The writer who got the Iraq war right beforehand describes the leaked "surge" strategy as "fantasy."

A reader comments about this post:

Somewhere out there Stephen Colbert is kicking himself that he didn’t think of this first.

R.W. Johnson surveys the human wreckage of Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship. Money quote:

Suffer the little children is a phrase never far from your mind in today’s Zimbabwe. The horde of painfully thin street children milling around you at traffic lights is almost the least of it: in a population now down to 11m or less there are an estimated 1.3m orphans.

Go to one of the overflowing cemeteries in Bulawayo or Beit Bridge and you are struck by the long lines of tiny graves for babies and toddlers.

A game ranger friend tells me that hyena attacks on humans, previously unheard of, have become increasingly common. “So many babies, not all of them dead, are being dumped in the bush that hyenas have developed a taste for human flesh,” he explains.

A split within the CIA has emerged over the policy of sending terror suspects abroad to be tortured and interrogated. It’s important to remember that many, many people in the CIA and the military do not support the brutalist policies of Bush. And they’re fighting back.

It seems to have emerged from the chaos. This one doesn’t show the actual hanging, but shows the body afterward and detail of what the rope did to Saddam’s neck. It’s gruesome, so don’t look if you’re squeamish. But here’s the link.

Jon Chait cleans up his act.

Just when you thought Sean Hannity could not descend further into fascistic diatribes, he unveils a new Sunday show feature: "Enemy of the State." No word on whether Hannity will be requiring two minutes’ hate to accompany it. A reader adds:

Wow. It makes me wonder if Hannity has anything above a 4th-grade level education when it comes to the history of totalitarian movements. Seriously, "Enemy of the State"? Who doesn’t immediately associate that phrase with Communism or Nazism?

I guess the best I can say is that at least Hannity doesn’t have the authority to send the secret police to arrest the weekly "Enemy of the State", but it does show you the mindset behind most of the far-right’s media thugs.

The far-right blogosphere cops to yet another fact-free smear.