The Dish

A skeptical look at the Middle East Studies Association Conference.

CREATIONISM WATCH: The Grand Canyon National Park bookstore is the latest victim.

So when John Kerry says his aim is to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq within four years, he is merely aiding and abetting the enemy. But when Donald Rumseld says it, no one notices. And Rumsfeld, so he tells us, has no say over troop levels in Iraq. None whatsoever. The generals decide everything. And prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and in Afghanistan and with the Nay Seals has nothing to do with memos letting people know they could push the envelope. Nah. After all, that’s what Rumsfeld is known for – a completely hands-off approach to running the military. Tom Toles captures the Bush-Rumsfeld dynamic perfectly here.

There are, I think, more reasons to be cheerful than depressed right now. Just. My reassesssment is up at TNR. And it’s free if you use this link.

Buchanan cannot, I think, be described as a conservative. He’s an economic leftist with social fascist tendencies. Hence his preference for Putin’s power-grab over Yushchenko’s electoral victory. This column is as fascinating as it is revealing.

Here’s s philosophical tangle that gets to the heart of the debate about steroids:

[W]e see it as perfectly justified when someone with a good natural singing voice takes pride in his performance, although we’re aware that his singing has more to do with talent than with effort and training. If, however, I were to improve my singing by the use of a drug, I would be denied the same recognition (unless I had put a lot of effort into inventing the drug in question before testing it on myself). The point is that both hard work and natural talent are considered ‘part of me’, while using a drug is ‘artificial’ enhancement because it is a form of external manipulation. Which brings us back to the same problem: once we know that my ‘natural talent’ depends on the levels of certain chemicals in my brain, does it matter, morally, whether I acquired it from outside or have possessed it from birth? To further complicate matters, it’s possible that my willingness to accept discipline and work hard itself depends on certain chemicals. What if, in order to win a quiz, I don’t take a drug which enhances my memory but one which ‘merely’ strengthens my resolve? Is this still ‘cheating’?”

If we’re all chemicals, why prefer the ones we have by chance rather than those we have by design? Slavoj Zizek elaborates.

“To the extent that the left is still vibrant, I am suggesting that it has mutated into something else. If what used to be known as the Communist International has any rough contemporary equivalent, it is the global media. The global media’s demand for peace and justice, which flows subliminally like an intravenous solution through its reporting, is – much like the Communist International’s rousing demand for workers’ rights – moralistic rather than moral. Peace and justice are such general and self-evident principles that it is enough merely to invoke them. Any and all toxic substances can flourish within them, or manipulate them, provided that the proper rhetoric is adopted. For moralizers these principles are a question of manners, not of substance. To wit, Kofi Annan can never be wrong.” – Robert Kaplan, “The Media and Medievalism,” Policy Review.

THE PRICE OF DEFICITS: “Deficits don’t matter,” Dick Cheney casually remarked not so long ago. Well, maybe they do. This sobering piece from the Economist explains a simple truth:

The dollar has been the leading international currency for as long as most people can remember. But its dominant role can no longer be taken for granted. If America keeps on spending and borrowing at its present pace, the dollar will eventually lose its mighty status in international finance. And that would hurt: the privilege of being able to print the world’s reserve currency, a privilege which is now at risk, allows America to borrow cheaply, and thus to spend much more than it earns, on far better terms than are available to others. Imagine you could write cheques that were accepted as payment but never cashed. That is what it amounts to. If you had been granted that ability, you might take care to hang on to it. America is taking no such care, and may come to regret it.

The chances of a serious dollar collapse and a big spike in interest rates are by no means minimal.

They can’t get enough of it in the virtuous heartland.

THE STEROIDS DEBATE: It’s raging on the Letters Page. Here’s an interesting angle as well:

Steroids have their predecessors in athletics. One of the first elements to alter track and field records was the Fiberglass pole used in pole-vaulting. It had a natural spring in it that its predecessors lacked, lifting its user over substantially higher barriers than before. It got accepted at last.

Steroids will too, I think. Eventually.

BOZELL BUSTED: The professional hysteric, Brent Bozell, is, apparently, almost the only source of all that pent-up public outrage over naughty television. Jeff Jarvis has the goods.

THEO IN DENMARK: The country’s Muslim groups are now protesting that Theo van Gogh’s short film about the oppression of women in Islam has been broadcast on naitonal television. The beat goes on …

The Weekly Standard apparently disavows its previous contention that the popularity of lusting after the under-age is primarily a function of the gay rights movement. Now, it’s a hetero problem. Well, I’m glad we cleared that up. But isn’t there a distinction to be drawn between what is the sexual abuse of pre-pubescent children, and the attraction to under-age, post-pubescent teens? This is a distinction the social right were keen to make in the Church’s child-abuse scandal, with some reason. And it seems odd to say that adult lusting after teens is somehow newly chic. Not so long ago, in many states in this country, such “pedophilia chic” was known as marriage. Jon Rowe asks:

[I]s this behavior a product of post-60s sexual modernity? Hardly. In the heyday of social conservatism-the South in the 1950s-marriages between adult males and girls as young as 12 were allowed. Some prominent celebrity examples-both Loretta Lynn and Jerry Lee Lewis were involved in marriages where one party was an adult male and the other was a 13-year-old girl. We can assume many non-celebrity examples as well.

This is another example, by the way, of how civil marriage has changed beyond recognition even in this century. It recently celebrated what we would now call statutory rape (and some state marriage laws still do). Should we never have changed that particular rule? After all, 5,000 years of tradition and all that …

A TWO-FER: I win the “most annoying right-of-center blog” contest. Yay! And I come fourth in the “most annoying left-of-center blog” contest over at RightWingNews.com. I’m crushed. But then I also win the “most over-rated blog” competition. Did Mickey vote?

A GAY EVANGELICAL: One of the most celebrated of evangelical theologians was once Roy Clements. Until he was “outed.” Yes, the evangelical world is more complicated than some would like to argue. Here’s a link to Clements’ web-page and publications.

The real replacement for Cronkite, Rather and Brokaw. My latest Sunday Times piece – now online for free!

“I agree that we might as well accept steroids and perfomance enhancing drugs in sports. Professional sports are what they are, not much different than WWF. However, I think for the sake of the record books we should clearly demarcate when this acceptance took place. I would say we should put a giant asterisk on baseball records established after 1990. When people have discussions about the greatest baseball player ever we should add “enhanced” to the discription. We cannot compare Barry Bonds to say Hank Aaron, Willie Mays or Babe Ruth because we have no idea how good they would have been if they too were technologically enhanced. As a service to our children we should also, very clearly, show what happens to steroid users like Lyle Alzado or Ken Caminiti. They then can decide to take this ultimate gamble with complete disclosure.”

Absolutely. The other obvious problem is that some young athletes will be tempted to wreck their bodies by excessive amounts of steroids or other substances. They win now and die early later. My view is that as long as everything is disclosed and these decisions are made by adults, then fine. Eventually, some kind of equilibrium will result. Equally, if all sports figures are chemically enhanced, no one will have an unfair advantage. A reader notes a recent book that has covered this topic: “Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream,” by Carl Elliott.

TILLMAN: He died. They lied.

THE IRONIES: Here’s a fascinating tidbit:

One of the shows most popular with Republicans, especially Republican women ages 18 to 34, turned out to be “Will & Grace,” the sitcom about gay life in New York. As a result, while Mr. Bush was shoring up his conservative credentials by supporting a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, his advertising team was buying time on a program that celebrates gay culture.

Actually, I don’t find that a surprise. The gay characters on “Will and Grace” are either mainstream and sex-less, like Will, or the gay version of “Step’n’fetchit”, from an actor who refuses to say publicly that he’s gay. That’s exactly how many Republicans like their homosexuals. Just don’t ask to be treated like an equal human being.