The Dish

My case now posted at TNR.com.

The exit of Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas Finneran and the elevation of a pro-marriage rights rival suggest a real moment in the battle over marriage rights. What it means is that it’s unlikely now that the establishment of such rights will be overturned by a state constitutional convention or amendment. Money quote from the Globe:

“It is pretty much over,” said Senate minority leader Brian P. Lees, a Springfield Republican who cosponsored the amendment with Finneran and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini. The House and Senate, sitting in a constitutional convention, must vote a second time in the next session before it could go to the voters on the 2006 ballot.
“In fact, there will be a question as to whether the issue will come up at all,” Lees said. He said the issue has faded to the “back burners of Massachusetts politics,” because few problems have surfaced with the implementation of the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage.
“With the fact the law has been in effect for a number of months and with the change in the House leadership, it would appear any change in the constitution to ban marriage is quickly fading,” Lees said.

The real reason is that the change has become a non-event. The relatively small number of marriages for same-sex couples has barely made a dent in the social fabric and the upheaval of a constitutional amendment seems to many too big a deal for such a minor social change. Still, I hope the amendment moves forward. I would love to see a democratic majority back equality under the law, and I think that will happen in Massachusetts.

A new book says so. The key is the way in which these murderous theocrats are now killing more Muslims than infidels. Would any sane Muslim want to live in Falluja? Money quote:

“The principal goal of terrorism – to seize power in Muslim countries through mobilization of populations galvanized by jihad’s sheer audacity – has not been realized,” Kepel writes. In fact, bin Laden’s followers are losing ground: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been toppled; the fence-sitting semi-Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia has taken sides more strongly with the West; Islamists in Sudan and Libya are in retreat; and the plight of the Palestinians has never been more dire. And Baghdad, the traditional seat of the Muslim caliphs, is under foreign occupation. Not what you would call a successful jihad.

You can buy the book here.

“The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack.” – Napoleon, quoted by Karl Rove in a memo to a candidate in a campaign in 1986. “Compassionate conservatism,” meet the Swift Boat Vets.

HOW ROVE OPERATES: Josh Green’s new piece in the Atlantic is a must-read for anyone trying to understand this campaign. It’s a thorough investigation of Karl Rove’s record of smearing, sliming and demagoguing to win elections, as well as a respectful analysis of Rove’s indisputable political skills. I was struck by one anecdote about how Rove tried to destroy one of his opponents:

[Alabama Supreme Court Justice, Mark] Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children’s Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove’s signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.
Some of Kennedy’s campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. “We were trying to counter the positives from that ad,” a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. “It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information,” the staffer went on. “That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that’s one of the ways that Karl got the information out – he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out.” This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. “What Rove does,” says Joe Perkins, “is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin’, tobacco-chewin’, pickup-drivin’ kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take.”

Mark Kennedy, despite having fended off Rove’s attacks, decided not to seek re-election to Alabama’s Supreme Court. Who can blame him?

POSEUR ALERT: “Pop musicians live in a world of symbology. You live and die by the symbol in many ways. You serve at the behest of the audiance’s imagination. It’s a complicated relationship. So you’re asking people to welcome the complexity in the interest of fuller and more honest communication.” – Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stone.

Another account of nutty left-wing relativism – at Duke.

BUSH’S CONSERVATISM: The emergence of debt-ridden, big-government conservatism is perhaps the real innovation of the first Bush term. I used to be surprised. But, of course, much of his base is socially conservative and fiscally liberal: the red states have been draining the resources of the blue states for a very long time. A new study reveals just how welfarist much of Middle America is.

ANKLE-BITERS?? I thought it was a gay slur at first (hey, I can bite my own ankles!) but then I realized it was just another pissy MSM guy mad that more people read blogs than technology columns in Newsweek. But Levy’s point isn’t crazy. Yes, there are blogs that trade on invective and hysteria and gotchaism. And there are others that don’t. In other words, it’s time to drop the idea that the blogosphere is in any way homogeneous – in form, content, style or authorship. Right now, for example, this blog is one of very few that have openly swung from one candidate to indecision. I know I’ve lost some die-hard Bushite readers, but I’m not good at lying. Besides, I’ve always believed that losing readers is a good sign that you’re committing journalism. But I can already feel my incentives shifting. As you can see, I’ve signed up for Blogads – the wonderful collective ad machine that will soon provide a real revenue stream for this site. (Please advertize! See the ad strip on the left.) But suddenly I have a financial incentive to gain big reader bumps. Should I start outing people? Should I mainline the Swiftboat vets? Rathergate-all-the-time? Piss ’em off at Free Republic or Daily Kos? Endorse Bush? The temptations abound. So keep me honest, will you? Let me know if I’m delivering what you’re looking for, and I’ll do something to change it.

IRAQ AND BUSH: Here’s a disconcerting analysis of the disconnect between what just came out of the president’s mouth and something called reality.

ANOTHER ONE: Here’s yet another anti-gay crusader whose own daughter is gay: Sadie Fields, state chair of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, who pushed the constitutional ban on gay marriage through Georgia’s General Assembly earlier this year. So two chief campaigners against gay equality in two big states, California (Pete Knight) and Georgia, have gay offspring. My favorite example (apart from Phylis Schlafly) is Charles Socarides, the chief advocate of “reparative therapy” for gays, whose main contribution to the literature (see my book, “Love Undetectable”) was to argue that fathers are to “blame” for gays sons. Yep, his own son is gay. Actually, the son, Richard, was the Clinton administration’s liaison to the gay community!

I haven’t read Frum in such a lather for quite a while. I don’t agree with everything he says about the liberal blogs, but he’s onto something about the way in which rancid partisans on the web have undermined their own side:

The left-wing blogs have to take a considerable share of the blame for this disaster. They were a crucial part of the in-group conversation by which the most partisan Democrats convinced each other that the country feared and hated George W. Bush as much as they did. This delusion – combined with the decision to nominate a man to whom haughty disdain came all too naturally – pushed the Democrats to mistake after mistake and blinded them to opportunity after opportunity.

That goes for some of the bile on the right as well, mind you. The good news is that the blogosphere has grown so large and robust that we can now slag each other off with abandon. Attaguys!

Yale just convened a two day conference studying … Michael Jackson.

“Obviously there will be people who have never been convinced about the original decision. But the fundamentals of the situation in Iraq are absolutely clear. You have a government supported by the United Nations. You have got massive reconstruction. You’ve got an attempt to bring democracy to the country and you’ve got these people trying to stop it. I can understand why people still have a powerful disagreement about the original decision to go to war, but what ever that disagreement, surely now it is absolutely clear we have to stay and see it through. Because the consequences of not doing so is that global terrorism will get a tremendous boost. By contrast, if we succeed and defeat these people and help the Iraqis to get what the Iraqis want, then global terrorism will suffer a defeat… So my point to people is: which side should we be on now? You might have disagreed about the conflict, but there is only one side to be on now, and that’s the side of people who are trying to bring democracy and hope to the country, not trying to plunge it into terror and chaos.” – Tony Blair, yesterday. The most recent polls show the (increasingly anti-war) Tories with a minuscule lead.

ATTENTION STEYN: Here’s more troubling data on the tenacity of the Iraq insurgency, as compiled by a private security firm:

Reports covering seven days in a recent 10-day period depict a nation racked by all manner of insurgent violence, from complex ambushes involving 30 guerrillas north of Baghdad on Monday to children tossing molotov cocktails at a U.S. Army patrol in the capital’s Sadr City slum on Wednesday. On maps included in the reports, red circles denoting attacks surround nearly every major city in central, western and northern Iraq, except for Kurdish-controlled areas in the far north. Cities in the Shiite Muslim-dominated south, including several that had undergone a period of relative calm in recent months, also have been hit with near-daily attacks… On Wednesday, there were 28 separate hostile incidents in Baghdad, including five rocket-propelled grenade attacks, six roadside bombings and a suicide bombing in which a car exploded at a National Guard recruiting station, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 50… [A]ccording to the Kroll reports, recent violence appears to have been widespread rather than limited. On Wednesday, for instance, attacks in Salahuddin province occurred in Taji, Balad, Tikrit, Samarra, Baiji, Thuliyah and Dujayl — the seven largest population centers in the area.

Not quite Mark Steyn’s view that in most of Iraq, “life is as jolly as it has been in living memory.” I’m not saying that this a reason to give up on what we are currently doing – attempting to build up Iraqi defense forces, police, and trying to hold elections at the end of January. I am saying that the president is either dissembling to the American people about the scope of the problem there, or dangerously uninformed. Under the circumstances, I’d be more reassured if he were dissembling.

Here’s an interesting paper that examines Michel Foucault’s enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution in 1979. The story of how an avowed leftist came to support a movement that aimed at destroying human freedom, enslaving women, persecuting Jews, murdering homosexuals, and waging Jihad is not without its echoes today. The far left’s flirtation with Jihadism is alive and well – and it’s as good an insight into their moral vacuousness as any.

DATING FOR DOGS: The Brits pioneer a new personals service. I recall an ad a colleague once drafted for his own dog: “Well-hung pug seeks bitch who takes it from behind.” It never ran. Alas.

BRODER’S HARRUMPH: Much of David Broder’s worrying about the decline of the mainstream media is well-taken. But then he writes something daft like this:

When the Internet opened the door to scores of “journalists” who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering, the bars were already down in many old-line media organizations. That is how it happened that old pros such as Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.

Huh? Without the blogosphere, the arrogance and folly of Raines and Rather would have continued long past their expiration date. And the emergence of journalistic “stars” long predates the arrival of the blogosphere. It was mainly a 1990s phenomenon – and fueled by old media figures like Tina Brown and, yes, Howell Raines. Blogs have heped bring these “stars” back to earth. Which is partly why Tina is so pissy. I mean: what would you rather be doing – writing a fun blog that makes a difference, or appearing on an unwatched and largely unwatchable cable news chat show?

“I am a political junkie, as my husband will attest. I am a 33 year old wife and a mom of a 15 month old boy living in a wealthy liberal enclave of Los Angeles called Hancock Park where people go to the farmers market on Sunday, discuss the “plight of the poor” as their nannies stroll their young ones in Bugaboo Frog ($800) strollers on the magnolia tree shaded sidewalks on Fridays, and bash Bush, well, everyday. My husband (much less interested in this election than I am) and I are the only Bush-voters on the block, I believe.
So, here we are channel surfing and when my husband leaves the room to get a soda, I go to CNBC. I like Tim Russert. Well, there you and Christopher Hitchens are having a truly salient and honest Iraq discussion. First off, I cannot believe that Mr. Hitchens isn’t wearing a scarlet letter at Vanity Fair. I loved Vanity Fair: the celebrities, the dishy stories, the politics, the photography. Truly, it has become a Bush-hating guide and the Moveon.org bible (although I can’t really determine who is worshipping who). It is as if they are saying, “If Kerry can’t win this on his own, we gotta at least be unofficial PR managers for him ourselves…”.
Anyway, as you begin talking I think, terrific, a Bush supporter where you never expected one! And then in the midst of your brilliant thoughts, honest assessments, fair criticism and straight talk, I realize that you will not vote for Bush and I wince. I even begin to look more to Christopher to be the lone spokesman for my views. And then I stop. Hold on! Are your views any less brillant because you won’t vote for Bush? No. Are there still areas of agreement? Yes. Are you still clear and focused on the issues? Yes. Am I afraid of the bad news in Iraq that may hurt my candidate?…yes…
I realized Andrew, that I am somehow afraid of it all for an election and that you and Christopher were swimming in a bigger pool of thought. Regardless of the election, there must be leadership, stewardship, and focus for Iraq to succeed. However noble the goal, the success is in the doing. I was so afraid to admit that Bush hasn’t done all the “doing” that I almost shut out a staunch war advocate (in this case) just because he wasn’t towing party line. With new eyes I watched the final 15 minutes and loved them. Here were 2 journalists not discussing some petty quirk of Bush, but policy. You were not slamming Bush at every turn, but admiring the coherent goal and admonishing the failings of the pursuit of that goal. It was empowering as a viewer to watch the optimism without losing the realities.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.