SELF-PARODY WATCH

“For the last hour or so I’ve been blogging from the tire place. Found a flat tire on the Passat, pumped it up with a hand pump (no small job) and drove it over to get it fixed. There’s no wifi here, but the Verizon wireless card has worked great, letting me post to the blog and do research for a law review article I’m finishing up.” – Glenn Reynolds. I should add I don’t intend this in any way as negative. Glenn is a blog-hero. But he’s as funny sometimes when he doesn’t intend to be as when he does. The blog-widow would observe that this is just as true of me.

MORE TROOPS, PLEASE

We need to add more troops to our volunteer military. When you’re asking seventy-year-olds to serve, something is surely awry.

THE MICHAEL MOORE PROBLEM: Peter Beinart’s essay keeps getting attention, but I’m a little tired of these jaded conservatives predicting complete failure for the project of injecting a national security spine into the Democratic party. why is failure inevitable? I agree with Peter that abandoning liberalism’s inclusive social policy would be counter-productive. It’s one area where history is obviously on the Democrats’ side. A strong Democratic leader who took on the Michael Moores of the movement, while retaining the Democrats’ appeal to the excluded and marginalized, would do extremely well. Remember one Tony Blair, who took a far more ruined party and turned it into the natural party of government in a few years? And the Republicans – as fractious as they are currently hubristic – will soon over-reach. Beinart’s right. He just needs a leader. Right now, I see none. But no one ever does ahead of time, do they?

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Your recent piece on the high rate of divorce in supposedly “family values” red states missed an important point, of which I was reminded by today’s blog item on teen marriages. I’ve lived in the South for 30 years. Given the heavy religiosity in this part of the country, there’s a cultural emphasis on “no sex without marriage.” If you teach your kids to believe in Hell, and then teach them that they’re headed there if they engage in sex without being married, you reduce marriage to not a well-considered bond between two adults, but a license for two scared kids to screw. Of course, any marriage entered into out of fear of the devil or of social condemnation typically lasts until the participants find out there’s a lot more to life than fucking. Add to that the societal attitude that two kids getting married is a cause for celebration, rather than a life-ruining tragedy, and Christian fundamentalism pretty well foreordains the red states’ high divorce rates. It’s amazing they’re not higher.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “It’s like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn’t want to go. I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don’t want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we’re going to take it back.” – Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, New York Times, today, comparing “liberals” to al Qaeda terrorists. Sean Hannity must be proud.

THE WOMEN OF IRAN

Judith Klinghoffer is doing sterling work bringing attention to the plight of women in Jihadist societies, especially Iran. And Iranian women are also finding their voices on the web in stunning and occasionally beautiful fashion. Check out this flash site by one “Pouya”. Here’s a translation, provided by Judith:

Her tearless cries would pain anyone. With sweat on her face she says: “My husband is a simple worker. We have seven children. He is an angry and heartless man. We have been married for ten years and he has been beating me all along. But this last time it was pretty severe. He left me with broken ribs and bruised legs.” When she lifts up her dress a big fresh scar appears with blood all around it. This is not another boring topic. This is a problem that has rooted in our families and society. This is a painful reality!! Women are the silent victims of physical abuse which is being forced on them by the society, family and even themselves… This abusive behavior also destroys the victims’ soul. Unfortunately, because of our society and culture these women keep silent and the problem does not leave their surrounding walls. At the end it either kills their spirit or it becomes a flame that suck the victim in with all her physical and emotional pain.

The battle against Islamism is not simply for our own protection. More broadly, it is an attempt to liberate souls now bludgeoned into a form of spiritual death.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE I: “The Iraqi killer of Reserve Navy Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman has been brought to justice in an Iraqi court. Although he has since changed his story, he at one point admitted to killing Jones-Huffman with a bullet through the back of the neck while the latter was stuck in traffic in downtown Hilla. The assassin said that he felt that Jones-Huffman “looked Jewish.” The fruits of hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza against the Palestinians and in south Lebanon against Shiites continue to be harvested by Americans.” – Juan Cole, in a new low, on his blog.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE II: “The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that’s a good thing. I don’t mean that the loss of American and Iraqi lives is to be celebrated. The death and destruction are numbingly tragic, and the suffering in Iraq is hard for most of us in the United States to comprehend. The tragedy is compounded because these deaths haven’t protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis. They have come in the quest to extend the American empire in this “new American century.” So, as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat for a simple reason: It isn’t the defeat of the United States — its people or their ideals — but of that empire. And it’s essential that the American empire be defeated and dismantled.” – Robert Jensen, Dallas Star-Telegram.

CHILD MARRIAGES

Here’s under-age sexual behavior endorsed by the “abstinence-only-until-married” school: teen marriages. This article in the Chicago Tribune suggests it’s becoming more popular with the rise of abstinence-only education programs. The nut-graf explains:

One of the few studies of teen marriage in the United States, carried out by the Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington think tank, found that the number of married teenagers in the U.S. surged by almost 50 percent during the 1990s–the most significant jump in early marriage since the 1950s. The report pegs the growing attractiveness of early wedlock in the U.S. to a complex variety of factors: the spread of abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education at American schools, a shift toward cultural conservatism among some teens and a growing fear among youngsters of contracting AIDS through promiscuity.

Question: is it pedophilia for a forty year old man to have sex with a fourteen-year-old girl – or is it marriage? I was struck by these stats:

According to records at the Texas Department of Health, Liset was one of nearly 60 girls in that state who married in 2002 at the tender age of 14–the minimum age in Texas with parental consent. (A handful of other states sanction extremely early marriages with parental consent: In Alabama, South Carolina and Utah, girls can marry at 14; in New Hampshire it’s 13; in Massachusetts and Kansas, 12.)

Twelve? Shouldn’t these laws be repealed?

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: A major AIDS summit for African-Americans. Here’s a quote that tells you a lot: “I’m a straight guy. I can get their [the churches’] attention.” The scandalous role that black pastors have played in minimizing AIDS, perpetuating homophobia and shunning the truly needy is something that needs real attention. ACT-UP was too p.c. to say anything. Maybe now some black spokesmen will take these charlatans on.

MARTYR WATCH: “You criticize anybody, you challenge anybody, then you are a bigot. And that’s the — that’s why nobody does it. That’s why nobody sticks up for Christmas except me. Did Peter Jennings stick up for Christmas last night? I don’t believe he did. How about Brian Williams, did he? Did Rather stick up for Christmas? How about Jim Lehrer — did he? Did Larry King — hello — I love Christmas — did he? No.” – Bill O’Reilly, bravely taking a stand for Christmas.

THE ARMY YOU HAVE

Peter Scoblic buries Rumsfeld’s inane rhetoric.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE I: “There are certain things you want to avoid like an aloof Beacon Hill windsurfer with a crazy gypsy wife, crazed lunatics like Michael Moore sitting in the seat of honor at the convention, shadowy billionaires like George Soros paying for everything — I mean, why that didn’t play in the heartland I’ll never understand.” – Mark Simone, WABC radio host.

MALKIN AWARD NOMINEE II: “Criminal lawyers and all the mushy rabble of do-gooders and bleeding hearts in society and politics have marched under the Freudian flag toward the omnipotent state of Karl Marx.” Newburgh City Manager Joseph Mitchell, as cited by Mickey Kaus.

JIHADISTS VERSUS WHORES: You know whose side I’m on, don’t you?

A CHOMSKY CHRISTMAS

National Lampoon lists the ten least sucessful Christmas specials of all time. My favorite:

This PBS/WGBH special featured linguist and social commentator Chomsky sitting at a desk, explaining how the development of the commercial Christmas season directly relates to the loss of individual freedoms in the United States and the subjugation of indigenous people in southeast Asia.
Despite a rave review by Z magazine, musical guest Zach de la Rocha and the concession of Chomsky to wear a seasonal hat for a younger demographic appeal, this is known to be the least requested Christmas special ever made.

Michael Moore was unavailable for Santa?