The Dish

A reader wants to know what the silence is all about:

The radio silence on Lebanon from the left-wing blogosphere (i.e. Kos, Atrios) is fascinating, and your reader from the ‘Liberal Blogs and Israel‘ post had it about right. To sympathize with Hezbollah would expose these bloggers to a potentially career-damaging backlash. However, to take the mainstream Democratic line of say, Chuck Schumer, would be to seriously alienate a chunk of their readership.

And for sure, Hezbollah sympathizers do exist on the left. One only has to listen to KPFA, the ‘free speech network’ broadcast out of Berkeley to get a taste of unfiltered Hezbollah propaganda, in which Mullah Nasrallah is characterized as the new Che Guevara. The Weekly Standard might have done better to listen to some of these transcripts, rather than to desperately fish around the diaries on Kos.

I’ve actually been skeptical of beating up on Kos on this. But I just read the last three pages of posts on the main site, and there’s only one even vaguely alluding to the crisis with Hezbollah. That’s just plain weird. I know we’re not supposed to notice silence on blogs – people are free to ignore all sorts of stories. But the silence can be instructive (hey, I studied with a Straussian). This is Atrios’ second-hand excuse:

I’ve said nothing about war in Lebanon or Ethiopia because I have nothing to add, and also because – as you may or may not be aware – the United States is actually involved in a hugely bloody war right now, and this is more of a pressing concern to me personally. I don‚Äôt know the secret formula for unshitting any of these beds – I promise I wouldn’t be shy if I did – but I currently only have to sleep in one of them; and, as it turns out, that’s the one bed where I actually have some miniscule chance of influencing the situation. So that‚Äôs my concern.

This would make sense if there were no connections between Hezbollah and Iran and Iraq. Are lefties unable to grapple with complex regional wars? Nah. They’re just wimping out. My reader gives one plausible reason why. Is there a more persuasive one?

This blog predicts that Washington State’s highest court will rule on marriage rights for gay couples today. So does this one. The decision is due at 8 am. The text of the decision should be available here by 11 am.

Maryland’s black GOP candidate for the Senate describes the Republican label as a "scarlet letter." His polling cannot be encouraging.

A Connecticut reader vents:

Reading the interview with Kos made me want to throw up. As a Connecticut native (and Lieberman supporter), I wonder where he gets off trying to play God in our elections. He says, "I don’t think Joe Lieberman would have anything to worry about had he tended to his constituents back home. His job is to represent the people of Connecticut."  What kind of view of Connecticut’s politics does he think he has from San Francisco, exactly?  Representing "the people of Connecticut" is exactly what Lieberman has been doing, which is why he is crushing Lamont and the GOP candidate in a 3-way general election with over 50% of the vote. What Kos wants, of course, is for Lieberman to represent his vision of what the Democratic Party should be. He goes on to say that Lieberman would not be abiding "by the democratic will of the people of Connecticut" if he loses the primary and wins the general election. Right, because "people of Connecticut" = "20% of Connecticut’s registered Democrats who turn out for the closed primary in the middle of the summer." Spare me.

Fired by the CIA for opposing waterboarding on her classified blog, Christine Axsmith has done the sane thing and started a public blog. Money quote:

What can I say? Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong.

And the United States almost certainly continues to use waterboarding. Except that none of us is actually allowed to know whether the Bush administration practises torture.

When a legal deposition goes off the rails … (Warning: lively language.)

A reader asks:

Does it really mean losing Iraq? The goal of a unified Iraqi government as originally envisioned may be lost – but three separate confederated states bound by shared geography, culture, and a central city (Baghdad) may be possible. I think Galbraith raises a possible way of achieving that. The Shiite areas if secured and made independent may not automatically spin into Iran’ s clutches (Iranian mullahs have a hard enough time controlling Iran and don’t underestimate the Arab-Persian differences). Provided Sunni areas do not become an al Qaeda haven – I could see us working out some sort of compromise there too.

I agree Rumsfeld and Cheney screwed this up – but we have to deal with what we have now, not what we had several years ago.

I’m loath to predict anything at this point. But Galbraith’s proposal does seem to me a sane and least worst one. And the result, if successful, may not be so bad.

I’ve long been struck by the memory of president Bush’s encounter with a transgendered member of his own Yale class at a reunion. Bush intuitively understood that transgendered men and women deserve respect and acceptance:

Louise Casselman, who was at that White House Yale reunion with her husband, Kirk Casselman and a Bay Area contingent, says that although Yale was still all-male in 1968, one alum has since had a sex-change operation. "You might remember me as Peter when we left Yale," said the woman upon coming face to face with the president. George W. didn’t pause for a moment, reports Casselman, grabbed the alumna’s hand, and said "Now you’ve come back as yourself." Casselman says the host was generous and open.

That is, of course, how civilized, educated people behave. Now compare it to the sophomoric prejudice proudly displayed at National Review. You have a cover-story whose image is Rudy Giuliani in drag as a symbol of everything "conservatives" would find distasteful in a Giuliani candidacy. To be clear here: a straight man dressing up as a woman for pantomime purposes is just … a straight guy comfortable with his masculinity having fun. It’s been done for ever. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation or being transgendered or even cross-dressing as a form of personal expression. It’s just high jinks. There’s no conceivable reason why any sane conservative would object to a leader having a good time, and not taking himself too seriously. And yet Kathryn-Jean Lopez believes it’s

a great image to get to the heart of conservative misgivings about him.

What can she mean? That Giuliani is publicly tolerant of and comfortable with gay people and supports civil unions for gay couples? But what does drag have to do with that? Does K-Lo equate all gay love with drag? John Podhoretz, scion of New York Jewish intellectuals, speaks for the Christian heartland:

I  understand that liberals think conservatives are so stupid they won’t be able to draw a distinction between a stunt and the real thing. But not conservatives themselves!

Fair enough – but does JPod therefore mean that the "real thing" would indeed be a problem? Or should be? And what is, for JPod, the "real thing"? Someone who is transgendered? Is that something inherently offensive to "conservatives"? Notice we’re not talking about any policy position here – just a prejudice toward a tiny minority of people who are different from the rest of us. Empirically, there may well be a case that such a person could never command any popular support. But NR seems to go further than that. Rather than resisting such prejudice, they accept and foment it, deploying images designed to exploit homophobia for political ends. JPod’s contempt for gay people as such is demonstrable. And this is what conservatism, in some quarters, has now sadly become.

The latest nightmare scenario from Iraq. I’m told Maliki will also make a strongly anti-Israel comment in Washington today. He’s demanding an end to the impunity of U.S. troops and a firm opposition to Israel’s actions in Lebanon. It’s going to be an interesting day.