The Dish

Yes – and on video as well. The chef is French, naturellement.

CONSERVATIVES ON IRAQ: The best guide I’ve read so far is from my trusty aide, Reihan Salam, in the New Republic.

INTEGRATION DAY, CONTINUED: Noam Scheiber profiles Barack Obama, the Illinois Senate candidate.

BACKLASH FIZZLES: A new Gallup poll shows an historic high for support for marriage rights for gay couples. To the question: “Do You Think Marriages Between Homosexuals Should or Should Not Be Recognized by the Law as Valid?” 55 percent said no and 42 percent said yes. That 42 percent is the highest number ever recorded. It was 27 percent in 1996, and had been 31 percent as recently as last December. The public remains equally divided on the matter of a constitutional amendment, even when it is framed in a positive formula, and is split down the middle on civil unions. All in all, the shift in public opinion is clearly in favor of those supporting marriage rights. We are slowly winning this debate. Two leading conservatives recognize this: Cal Thomas, who says this debate is over, and Max Boot, who represents the younger conservative generation’s attitude. Meanwhile, pro marriage-equality politicians in Oregon, including those in Multnomah County who were targeted by the religious right, just won re-election handily.

CONTRA KURTZ: Stanley Kurtz’s argument that marriage rights for gays in Scandinavia somehow led to a decline in marriage rates for heterosexuals or an increase in children born out of wedlock is thoroughly rebutted by M. V. Lee Badget in the current Slate. The evidence, to put it mildly, simply doesn’t exist. In fact, heterosexual marriage rates have stabilized and even increased after gays were allowed to marry. Money quote:

In Denmark, for example, the marriage rate had been declining for a half-century but turned around in the early 1980s. After the 1989 passage of the registered-partner law, the marriage rate continued to climb; Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they’ve been since the early 1970’s. And the most recent marriage rates in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland are all higher than the rates for the years before the partner laws were passed. Furthermore, in the 1990s, divorce rates in Scandinavia remained basically unchanged.

Badget then demolishes Kurtz’s bizarre assertions that giving gays the right to marry somehow causes straights to have children out of wedlock:

Parenthood within marriage is still the norm – most cohabitating couples marry after they start having children. In Sweden, for instance, 70 percent of cohabiters wed after their first child is born. Indeed, in Scandinavia the majority of families with children are headed by married parents. In Denmark and Norway, roughly four out of five couples with children were married in 2003. In the Netherlands, a bit south of Scandinavia, 90 percent of heterosexual couples with kids are married.

This mini-debate, at least, is now over.

“Paul Wolfowitz kept crowing last summer about how the US saved the Marsh Arabs from Saddam, but now that many of them have joined the Sadrists in Kut and Amara, Wolfowitz is having the Marsh Arabs killed just as Saddam did, and for the same reasons.” – Juan Cole, equating Paul Wolfowitz with Saddam Hussein, in an email to Mickey Kaus. Mickey finds this kind of rhetoric unsettling. I read Cole, because he obviously knows a lot. But his biases are so acute I don’t trust him an inch. Anyone who can write that sentence has lost whatever moral bearings he once had.

My favorite correction from the New York Times in a long time. Almost makes me nostalgic for the Captain Queeg era:

An article on Monday about the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that ended school segregation misstated a word in a paraphrase from President Bush, who attended a ceremony in Topeka, Kan. He called for a continuing battle to end racial inequality – not equality.

You couldn’t make this up. Speaking of which the cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is a Susan Sontag essay. Yes, she’s going to write about Abu Ghraib. And – yes! – the headline is: “The Photographs Are Us.”

It appears he will talk to the American people next week, laying out a detailed strategy for the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq. That’s good news – exactly what I was hoping for earlier this week. I hope he also explains what military strategy is in Falluja and Karbala and the south. Many of us are committed to winning this war, whatever it takes. But the endless stream of mistakes and setbacks, when placed in the context of no effective presidential communication, is no recipe for victory. There are three battles right now: the military campaign against the insurgency, the fight for political legitimacy in Iraq itself, and the opinion war in America itself. We have won much of the first, have largely lost the second, and are fast losing the third. We can still turn this around. But Bush has to lead the way.

FORTY FUNERALS AND A WEDDING: Thanks for all your furious emails about the wedding party. No, I’m not buying enemy propaganda. I wrote that the details were murky. But no one has disputed the fact of dead women and children. For skepticism about this story, check out the Belmont Club. I’ll do my best to stay on the case of what really happened.

It’s very hard to know the facts about the carnage on the Iraq-Syria border, but whatever the occasion, it appears that the U.S. military was responsible for the deaths of several Iraqi women and children. It was almost certainly a mistake – either of target or of provocation. But it’s another blow to the prestige of the U.S. military and their ability to avoid the kind of action which will, in fact, make their mission harder rather than easier. There are now many reports of U.S. soldiers feeling so beleaguered and jumpy that their first instinct is to fire, capture or mistreat captives. And so the cycle of distrust in some areas appears to deepen. As to the Iraqi custom of firing into the air in celebration, Zeyad has an interesting post on its history and meaning.

MASSACRE IN GAZA: Another blow to the anti-terror war: Israel’s military killed more civilian children in the Gaza Strip. Again, the details are murky, but this post (especially the map) is helpful in understanding the situation.

TAXING GAS: Tony Blair insists on increasing gas taxes, even in the current climate. In Britain, 74 percent of the price of gas is due to taxes. Just a reminder of how anomalous America’s cheap, cheap gas is.

EMAIL OF THE DAY I: “I’m a United Church of Christ minister in . . . well, maybe I shouldn’t mention the town . . . and that Onion story reminds me of some of the fine ladies in my church. Yes, I have had some of them come to me after a funeral and want to know ‘why did the family want THAT music/THOSE flowers/choose THAT casket?’ After one of my members died, a woman who had one son, another member made this remark after viewing the open casket: ‘If she had a daughter, she’d have some jewelry on. But you can’t rely on a man to think of something like that.’ Name it, I’ve probably heard some whining about it.
In my experience as a clergyperson, there is no limit to the verbal sniping human beings can level at one another. And, in the interest of full disclosure, funeral directors and clergy are just as capable of it as anyone else.”

EMAIL OF THE DAY II: “Hitch’s quote from the “Scarborough Country” show must have been unconsciously plagiarized from a wonderful scene in the novel Auntie Mame (not the movie or the musical) where Mame confronts the vicious anti-semitism of Claude Upson, the would-be father-in-law to her nephew and narrator of the novel, Patrick Dennis: ‘Claude,’ she said, ‘I’ve known dozens of Jews in my life and it has also been my sorry experience to have heard quite a few gentiles who have talked about Jews as you do. I know the adjectives–all of them. Jews, you will tell me, are Mean, Pushy, Avaricious, Possessive, Loud, Vulgar, Garish, Bossy people. But I’ve yet to meet one, from the poorest pushcart vendor on First Avenue to the richest philanthropist on Fifth Avenue, who could ever hold a candle to you when it comes to displaying all of those qualities.'”

SLIPPERY, SLIPPERY SLOPE: A helpful piece by Dahlia Lithwick, dissecting some of the most hysterical arguments against marriage rights for gay citizens.

An interesting radio interview for NPR. As on most foreign policy issues, I find myself in close alignment with Bill.

“But speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they’ve taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.” – Christopher Hitchens on “Scarborough Country,” last night.

A funeral looks cheap.

Finally, a description of what the administration itself believes has been the goal in Falluja:

“What we’re trying to do is extricate ourselves from Fallujah,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with U.S. strategy who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. “There’s overwhelming pressure with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the White House to deliver a successful Iraq transition, and Iraq is proving uncooperative.”

So the initial goal of removing the insurgents has been abandoned. Meanwhile, the president says: “My resolve is firm. This is an historic moment. The world watches for weakness in our resolve. They will see no weakness. We will answer every challenge.” So is the president telling the truth or is the anonymous “senior administration official”? Or has the administration official declined to inform the president?

IN BOSTON: I’m in Boston today (arrived yesterday). It was fascinating to observe the impact of Monday’s marriage moment. For the most part, it was celebratory. Polls are showing increasing support for equal marriage rights and sliding approval for governor Mitt Romney. The conservative Boston Herald didn’t even put the story on its front page. The major goal of the anti-marriage rights lobby was to provoke hysteria and backlash from the images of weddings for gay couples. But, in fact, the mainstream response has been either positive or neutral. Most people rightly fail to see how these couples’ committing to one another hurts anyone else. And if it doesn’t harm anyone, and brings such joy to so many, why stop it? That’s a powerful argument in a liberal society. Even conservative media were muted:

With neither candidate eager to join the debate, the weddings did not trigger an immediate “culture war” debate among editorial writers or pundits. The CNN “Crossfire” crew sparred over the topic Monday, but not before discussing the Iraqi prisoner scandal, potential running mates for Kerry, and other political matters. Bill O’Reilly tackled the matter on Fox News Channel but waited until the third segment of his show to do so.
Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers magazine, monitored conservative-dominated talk radio’s reaction to same-sex weddings and said the topic did not burn up the phone lines. Gay marriage “is still not a big emotional topic,” he said. “It’s not a hot, heated topic. It’s not life and death; it doesn’t affect the economy. . . . I find a lot of conservatives saying, ‘I can’t get too excited about this; my brother’s gay.’ It crosses a lot of lines.”

You can say that again.

“I’m afraid I have to agree with you on this one. I think that Bush’s instincts are sound in the War on Terror, but the man is no leader. God, how I long for someone like Roosevelt, someone who can speak. And the fiscal policy is just a disaster.
Even so, and even as a lifetime Democrat, I am afraid that I will have to vote for Bush. I don’t trust Kerry, and even if he put forth a decent alternative I would have no faith that he was sincere. How did the parties ever come to this, nominating such low quality candidates? There are people who impress me as better prospects: McCain, Giuliani, perhaps Edwards, but they seem to fade out of the picture for reasons I don’t understand.”