The Dish

“For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks.” – Max Cleland, defeated by Saxby Chambliss in a race for the U.S. Senate. I’m just relieved that the mackerel in the moonlight isn’t also rotting from the head down.

THE CRIME THAT CONTINUES: A victim of clerical child-abuse, after years of torment, appears to kill himself. Some scars never heal. May he finally rest in peace.

“Well, the right isn’t entirely silent, it’s just that the blowhards are so loud it’s hard for the rest of us to be heard. Hannity is an overrated loudmouth whose debating skills are an embarrassment to the causes he is trying to represent. Your criticism of Kerry’s whining and trying to turn everything into an attack on his patriotism could equally be applied to Hannity, who tries to reply to every argument with the same overwrought clichés. I think the phrase ‘blundering punditry’ just about perfectly characterizes his meager contribution to the national debate. Where is WFB when you need him? Probably on his boat, come to think of it, and who can blame him?”

I just got through Larissa MacFarquhar’s obsequious and fawning piece on Michael Moore in the New Yorker. What was remarkable about the piece is that it documented dozens and dozens of clear falsehoods uttered by Moore and yet was never quite able to call them exactly that. It documented astonishing hypocrisy, human cruelty, and the most grotesque slandering of the United States and Americans in general in front of foreign audiences in a time of war, and yet couldn’t even bring itself to be shocked, let alone to criticize. It treated lying as if it were a kind of aesthetic achievement, to be commented on by critics of mendacity rather than by journalists interested in getting at the truth. It’s hard not to get depressed when even the New Yorker pulls punches in this way. And then, along comes Sean Hannity, whose new book has the following obscene title: “Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism.” Why obscene? It is obscene for Hannity to purloin a sentence from the Lord’s Prayer in order to advance his partisan political views. And yes, it is also obscene to equate terrorism and despotism with liberalism. Hannity isn’t worthy to speak the word “liberalism,” a long and complicated and deeply Western political tradition that is the only reason he can actually publish a book like this and face only criticism. To place it in the same context as “terrorism” reveals that this man has no understanding of what this war is about. It’s a war in defense of liberalism, in defense of pluralism, in defense of the various peaceful Western political traditions that Islamo-fascism would snuff out in an instant. Even if he wants the word “liberalism” to describe merely a kind of decadent left-liberalism, it’s still unconscionable. Peaceful Democratic leftists, however misguided, are not terrorists. Hannity, of course, is a thug. But that shouldn’t mean we should simply ignore this kind of slur. This moral equivalence is as disgusting when it appears on the right as it is when it appears on the left. So why is the right so quiet when it is displayed by one of their own?

So, according to John Kerry, every criticism of his record on defense, foreign policy and the military is somehow impugning his patriotism? Hasn’t it occurred to him and some other Democrats who leap – and I mean LEAP – to this inference that their very prickliness is actually far more revealing? If he’s going to win over wavering Bush-voters, Kerry has to show why he’s not soft on terror and not soft on defense. Instead, he resorts almost reflexively to this whining, overly-defensive projection. Not a good sign.

THE TAX ISSUE: My TNR colleague, Jon Chait, has written what I think is a pretty challenging cover story for The New Republic this week. It’s about our fiscal situation and conservative critiques of Bush’s spending. The bottom line of Jon’s argument is that conservatives are right about spending increases under Bush – but that these are not really responsible for the bulk of the deficit and trivial when you look at the bigger picture. Chait blames the Bush tax cuts – and, to some extent, he’s right. He also cites vast new spending on defense and homeland security. Again, to some extent, he’s right. Looking forward, you also have the new Medicare entitlement, which Chait likes (and so largely ignores). And then you have entitlement spending going through the roof as the boomers retire. All in all, our current mess looks like the fiscal situation in Spain as its empire began to collapse; or Britain at the beginning of the last century. Yes, Jon implies, we fiscal conservatives are right to be mad about Bush’s big non-defense spending binges – especially on Medicare, agriculture and pork. But if that’s all we talk about, we’re not confronting the real issue: the tax cuts and the military spending.

PAYING FOR THE WAR: So should we? My own view is that we’re not spending enough in the war on terror or homeland defense. I’m also viscerally opposed to tax hikes. But I can’t keep having it every which way, if I also believe in restraining the debt. I used to think that running deficits would itself restrain spending – and then we see a Republican president endorsing the Medicare expansion after sending the debt through the roof. So that theory goes out the window. I don’t believe in the supply-side notion that cutting taxes boosts revenue so much that the cuts pay for themselves (although I do think they help stimulate economic activity). So what’s the responsible thing to do? Ideally, I’d propose means-testing social security, raising the retirement age, ending agricultural subsidies and carving away corporate welfare. But none of that is likely to happen any time soon. So I’m gradually moving toward the belief that we should propose some kind of temporary war-tax. Levy it on those earning more than $200,000 and direct it primarily to financing the war on terror. Put in a sunset clause of, say, four years. It may be time for some fiscal sacrifice for the war we desperately need to fight. And we need to fight it without creating government insolvency which, in the long run, will undermine the war. I don’t love this idea; and I’m open to other suggestions. But it behooves us pro-war fiscal conservatives to propose something.

My gut reaction to the news that the self-righteous narcissist, Ralph Nader, will be running for president as an “Independent” is to demand that he cease and desist despoiling a perfectly respectable political position. He’s not an independent. He’s a far-left, paranoid Democrat who delights only in hurting his own party.

PRO-LIFE ORWELL: Not everyone who opposes abortion does so for religious reasons. Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, was one of the secular opponents. Here’s the money quote from the under-rated novel, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying,” where the protagonist consults a science text-book to think about the problem:

His baby had seemed real to him from the moment when Rosemary spoke of abortion…. But here was the actual process taking place. Here was the poor ugly thing, no bigger than a gooseberry, that he had created by his heedless act. Its future-its continued existence perhaps-depended on him. Besides, it was a bit of himself-it was himself. Dare one dodge such a responsibility as that?

Mark Stricherz explains more here.

GORE DID IT: The former vice-president’s un-Midas touch is now given even more credence by Joe Trippi, in the New York Times Magazine:

If you were to give one reason for the campaign’s collapse, what would it be?

TRIPPI: You have a party that’s tried to make every rule that it can to stop an insurgent. But at the same time — it’s not Al Gore’s endorsement — what I’m saying is, him endorsing us was a good thing. But at the same time, the unintended consequence of it was that the second Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean, alarms went off in newsrooms and at every other campaign headquarters. At the campaign headquarters, they all had meetings and said, ”We’ve got to stop Howard Dean right this second.” That’s what the Al Gore endorsement meant. It meant, We’ve got to kill this guy or he’s going to be the nominee.

C’mon, Joe. Stop being so nice. Gore killed off Dean. Some big Democrat should get Al to endorse Nader – soon.

“The ‘Rings’ films are like promotional ads for those tired old race and gender paradigms that were all the rage back in author J.R.R. Tolkien’s day.
Almost all of the heroes of the series are manly men who are whiter than white. They are frequently framed in halos of blinding bright light and exude a heavenly aura of all that is Eurocentric and good. Who but these courageous Anglo-Saxon souls can save Middle Earth from the dark and evil forces of the world?
On the good side, even the mighty wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) is sanitized and transformed from the weed-smoking, rather dingy figure we first meet in the “The Fellowship of the Ring,” into Gandalf the White, who, by the time of ‘Return of the King,’ has become a powerful military leader complete with pure white hair and an Eisenhower attitude.” – Andrea Lewis, Tolerance.org.

NO SIMPLE ANSWER: I asked a couple of days ago how it was that conservative Protestants have little problem with civil and religious divorce, while Jesus explicitly condemns it. I raise this simply because they’re often defending their position on the basis of obeying the literal word of the Bible. I framed it in the context of the religious right’s bid to amend the constitution to bar gay citizens from civil marriage. I’ve had many responses, for which I am most grateful. But almost all simply argued that Jesus probably did disapprove of homosexuality, but the Gospel writers didn’t think it necessary to state the obvious. Without dealing with that (perfectly valid) point, I have to say: that wasn’t my question. Others said that divorce was Biblically permissible if adultery had taken place. So why no campaign against no-fault divorce? And how do Protestant churches allow for re-marriage? No one has answered this – at least so far. One reader – an evangelical Christian – agreed:

I love the people in my church like I love the president, but certain issues of illogic are driving me nuts. And the selectivity in obeying some parts of the Bible devotedly, while ignoring what seem to be major other ones, is deeply troubling.
Homosexuality is one of these issues (though not the most important of them to me).
As a member of a conservative church and a heterosexual man, I am well aware of the sins of heterosexuals (myself included). The church pretty much ignores these; few pastors have the guts to stand up and say “I struggle with the temptation to view pornography” or similar things. But we all do. When is the last time you heard a preacher expound on “but if any of you thinks lustfully about another woman, he has committed adultery in his heart”? (Me, in 34 years of going to church every week: never. Occasionally at a Christian conference or retreat for men, a gutsy speaker will address this.)
But on homosexuality, of course, the church is righteously indignant. I have come to believe that this is so because for the vast majority of heterosexual Christians, homosexuality is the one sin that they are certain they will never commit. Murderous thoughts, adulterous hearts, sure. But never homosexuality. And that is why they point fingers.

I think this guy is onto something. Beat up on the Samaritans; let the Pharisees off the hook. For some people, that’s a literal reading of the Gospels.

This is what happens when an administration regards the war on terror as a mere matter of law enforcement:

Clinton had demonstrated his willingness to kill bin Laden, without any pretense of seeking his arrest, when he ordered the cruise missile strikes on an eastern Afghan camp in August 1998, after the CIA obtained intelligence that bin Laden might be there for a meeting of al Qaeda leaders.
Yet the secret legal authorizations Clinton signed after this failed missile strike required the CIA to make a good faith effort to capture bin Laden for trial, not kill him outright.

The Clinton administration’s feckless attempts to get Osama are, to my mind, a huge neon warning about what might happen if John Kerry becomes president.

Naomi Wolf versus Harold Bloom. With Camille on the sidelines.

AT THE END OF THE LINE: Here’s a documentary short of the line of couples in San Francisco waiting to get married. I found it revealing and deeply moving. The pictures of all those regular and not-so-regular couples waiting patiently in line for hours and hours and even days to get a piece of paper which probably won’t give them any rights at all – that’s revolutionary in the public consciousness. Suddenly, it’s not the gay pride parades and mardi gras festivals that illustrate gay lives. Suddenly, it’s love and patience and kids and umbrellas and bouquets and tuxedoes and all the other bric-a-brac of living. How hard is it to tolerate that?

Here’s a sentence from the latest Pew poll on what’s happening to Bush’s popularity: “The level of polarization in the president’s favorability exceeds that for President Clinton in September 1998, during the impeachment battle.” Gulp. In the Pew poll, Bush’s approval ratings are now at 48 percent. Ryan Lizza has more analysis here.

More signs of conservative extremism in Washington.