The Dish

This important and detailed report from the Washington Post makes for unnerving reading. Yes, as the story details, we don’t know for certain whether the reports of defectors are completely true and our satellites cannot determine with complete accuracy whether new buildings and construction are designed to build weapons of mass destruction. So the question becomes: who gets the benefit of the doubt? A dictator who has used such weapons and declared the United States as an enemy or a democratic country that has already experienced terrorist catastrophe? Meanwhile, Tom Friedman balances the Times’ recent relentlessly dovish coverage with the counter-factual omitted from the Times recent story on the economic impact of an Iraq war. What if a victory in Iraq were to lead to far lower oil prices? And what if not tackling Iraq meant at some point we’d have to rebuild Washington D.C. or Manhattan? It seems to me that a critical element in this debate has to be September 11. We’re not discussing hypotheticals any more.

KERRY’S OBVIOUS FLAW: For all the Times’ puffery, isn’t it a critical problem for John Kerry that he voted against the first war with Iraq? If he couldn’t stand up to Saddam and the enemy after a brutal invasion of another country, why should we trust him to defend our security today? I’d say that’s a fatal weakness.

Why is it front page news that secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld thinks air-strikes alone can’t disable Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction? Hasn’t this been obvious for ever? We’ve been treated to several competing alleged leaks for ground invasions of Iraq over the past few weeks, as Jack Shafer has noted. Does the Times think that ground troops of 50,000 to 250,000 will be deployed from the air? Shafer asks the question of why these leaks are occurring but misses an obvious one: the doves in the Pentagon are allying with the doves at the major papers to wage a public campaign against the necessity of war against Iraq. The point of the Times story today is simply to get the following sentence on the front page: “A growing number of lawmakers from both parties are voicing concern that the administration is heading precipitously toward war.” The Los Angeles Times chimes in as well. Hearings begin today. But the campaign to protect Saddam’s weaponry began a long time ago. Those of us who think the majority of Americans decided last September that war with Iraq was essential to our present and future security had better be prepared. The opposition is determined and organized, and they are passionately opposed to using American power to defeat the forces of state terror. What if the U.N. opposes it or doesn’t endorse it? Many visceral doves in Washington will rally. If they can isolate the administration from the allies and the Congress, then there’s a good chance appeasement will gain even more momentum.

STOPPING THE WAR II: A central enabler of Serbian genocide opposes the war in Iraq. Figures.

STOPPING THE WAR III: King Abdullah of Jordan tells the British prime minister he mustn’t support the Bush administration’s war against Saddam. The pressure on Blair – internally and externally – is getting truly intense.

GEEKS ON ISRAEL: A useful statistical analysis from Tech Central Station on casualties in the Middle East.

Michael Ledeen writes to add some perspective on the prospect of legalized prostitution in Iran:

Andrew, your good cheer over the prospect of legal prostitution in Iran misses the whole point. Iran is so degraded under the mullahs that prostitution is rampant, this being the only way many women can–excuse the expression–make ends meet. It is heartbreaking and grotesque, not something to be celebrated. That the mullahs would permit such a debate to take place at all shows how events have run away from them. But no one, above all you, should be confused about what’s happening. The country is ruined, the people are desperate, and in their desperation they are selling their bodies.
It is absolutely not to be compared to Heidi Fleiss.

Point taken.

This is not a story from the Onion.

The anti-war coverage is getting really intense now. We’ve had the Powell puff-piece, the Powell editorial, the cover-piece on why the Kurds fear a war, and now a piece about how a war will hurt the economy. Here’s the classic editorial paragraph stuffed into a news non-story:

Already, the federal budget deficit is expanding, meaning that the bill for a war would lead either to more red ink or to cutbacks in domestic programs. If consumer and investor confidence remains fragile, military action could have substantial psychological effects on the financial markets, retail spending, business investment, travel and other key elements of the economy, officials and experts said.

Could it get any more obvious? One question: wouldn’t lots of military spending help the economy? Meanwhile, having blasted the market slide from the rooftops for days on end, the Times now buries the current rally inside. I guess when you have broadcast a bubble correction as the consequence of the Bush administration, it’s embarrassing when a rally gathers steam. When do you think Howell Raines will commission a poll to see if the public credits Bush for higher stock prices?

THE REAL TADPOLE: In a case in Washington State, a woman gets prison time for a sexual relationship with a fourteen year-old boy. Both families are wrecked; and a young life is in jeopardy. I wonder whether Anthony Lane thinks this is the best a kid can get. Or if Mary Eberstadt even noticed.

THE LEFT’S CIVIL WAR: Here’s a refreshingly vicious piece by paleo-liberal Robert Borosage attacking the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. Put it together with Lieberman’s attack on Gore’s phony populism in the 2000 campaign and you have a real split emerging among Democrats about how to appeal to the country at large in November and beyond. Worth a real story, no? Certainly a more solid story than the cockamamie notion that the religious right is gunning for John Ashcroft. But my guess is you won’t see this debate fleshed out in, say, the New York Times.

IRAN WATCH: Wait for it. They’re gonna legalize prostitution. At least they’re discussing it. Wouldn’t it be amazing if Iran managed to achieve this sensible reform before America did?

THOSE SEXLESS BRITS: “The day I arrived in London, my American flatmate picked me up at the airport. During the drive to Hammersmith from Heathrow, she gave me a piece of unsolicited romantic advice. ‘The first thing you should know about English men,’ she said, ‘is that what they secretly want most in the world is to be with other English men.'” No, they’re not gay. They’re just English. A woman laments the erotic desert of London.

THOSE LESBIGAYS: Your responses were thoughtful. To enlarge the sample, I’ve been bugging random gay/lez friends here in Ptown. So far, there isn’t exactly a lengthy list of common cultural indicators between gay men and lesbians. Some lesbian comedians have gay followings: Sandra Bernhard and Ellen Degeneres, for example. But Bernhard, it seems to me, is really a gay man with left-lesbian politics. Someone suggested selling real estate as one area of common interest. That’s pushing it. Pets too – but that’s a little universal to make much sense and then you get into the whole cats/dogs debate. Then there’s HBO’s “Six Feet Under.” (I’ll ignore the smart-ass who wrote: Q: What do gay men and lesbians have in common? A: They are the only two groups on earth who care about what gay men and lesbians have in common.) Musically, one reader suggested the following:

There are a bunch of bands that gay boys and baby dykes both love. They are mostly girl-led rock bands like Luscious Jackson, Slaeter-Kinney, Cibo Mato and such. The last Luscious Jackson show I went to was almost all lesbians and gay guys under 30. Tori Amos also has a pretty huge base of gay and lesbian fans (miserable, whiney gay and lesbian fans, but they are united in their angst). Similarly, cool young gay boys and baby dykes are united in their contempt for Pansy Division, purveyors of gay themed elevator punk.

You learn something every day. But these gay men tend to be the Northwest types, united by Naderist crunch. They come from the kind of sub-sub-culture described here, and it’s not only West Coast:

There’re places all over the country with vibrant and mixed lesbian/gay communities – places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Northampton, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; and Ashville, North Carolina. In this new world, the bars and coffee houses have huge numbers of homos – boy and girl – and the non-gay folks blend in well enough so that even the trained eye can’t really tell them from the gay ones. The common currency is usually the music (Sleater Kinney, Sonic Youth, Johnny Cash, Gillian Welch) and a culture that celebrates what’s great about America–cookouts, softball, beer, beaches, frisbee. Practically every gay guy I know has a lesbian best friend. Another example is the Eastern Oregon town where I spent my adolescence. There, it was a small community of gay men and lesbians that took me under their wing. They invited me to their potlucks, hired me to babysit their kids, and helped me to meet my first boyfriend. They introduced me to their brand of good-humored, practical politics – we were fighting Measure 9 – and taught me how not to give up hope that people’s anti-gay attitudes can change. As for music, it was either Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton, and Melissa Etheridge.

What interests me here is that lesbian culture can attract many politically liberal gay men, but it’s rare for that to happen the other way round. How many lesbians, for example, show up at a circuit party? Or a leather bar? Even at most gay male gyms, there are many more straight women than lesbians. Similarly, most gay-lesbian organizations have found that one way they can truly integrate gay men and lesbians in their membership is by being run by lesbians, or having strict gender-parity, even though gay men outnumber lesbians by two-to-one. The National Gay Lesbian Task Force, for example, hasn’t had a man in seven of its last seven executive directors. And the Human Rights Campaign has a mainly lesbian leadership. Why is that combination the most effective, I wonder?

Slate took on Robert Rubin (with whom editor Jake Weisberg has a top dollar book contract). Now it offers us a positive review of new Apple ads bashing Microsoft (which subsidizes and owns Slate). I’ve heard of journalistic integrity, but this is getting ridiculous. Seriously, mazel tov.

“But, unlike the Gulf war, the Afghanistan campaign was not and could not be the entire conflict. It was the beginning of a war, not its end. With the first Bush, the main political domestic risk was in fighting the war in the first place. With the second Bush, the main domestic political risk is in not continuing to fight the war.” – continued in my latest piece here.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO THE EURO-WEENIES: “Iraq? Stay put – we don’t necessarily need or desire your help. The Middle East? Shame on you, not us, for financing the terrorists on the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority and Israel? You helped to fund a terrorist clique; we, a democracy – go figure. Racism? Arabs are safer in America than Jews are in Europe. That 200,000 were butchered in Bosnia and Kosovo a few hours from Rome and Berlin is a stain on you, the inactive, not us, the interventionist. Capital punishment? Our government has executed terrorists; yours have freed them. Do the moral calculus. Insensitive to the complexities of the Middle East? Insist that the next Olympic games are held in Cairo or Teheran, and let a deserving Islamic Turkey into the EU.” – From Victor Davis Hanson’s brutally acute analysis of the current Euro-American divide. Don’t miss it.

EVEN OP-EDS GET NEUTERED: I’ve edited plenty of columns and articles in my time and there’s often a gripe from authors when their treasured prose gets altered in some way. But in general, the rule for opinion pieces is to edit to make their point more clearly, rather than to change the point entirely. Check out this account from the Jerusalem Post of how New York Times editors allegedly did all they could to neuter, change or soften an op-ed criticizing the U.N. for its bias against Israel. Eye-opening.

THE TIMES AND STALIN: Stunning sub-headline in the New York Times Book Review yesterday. Let’s run it through the usual test, as blogger Counter-Revolutionary suggests:

“Nobody likes Hitler, but Martin Amis seems to have a thing about him. In his new book, ‘Adolf the Dread,’ he attacks the monster as if he were current. Then he offers some tender reflections about Kingsley Amis, his father, who was once a Nazi. What’s up here?”

Would that headline ever run in the Times? Would anyone ever even think about it? Parts of the American Left still haven’t recovered from their softness on Communism, have they? Kinda proves Martin Amis’ point, doesn’t it?

TWO SUPERB REALITY-CHECKS: Who says I can’t praise the Times? Their invaluable reporter Adam Nagourney reminds me today of why it still publishes superb, measured journalism. Here’s one smart piece of analysis. And one little scoop.

The Guardian seems alarmed by the possibility of an early, 50,000 troop initiative to rid the world of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. I find it encouraging. Meanwhile, in the latest leak, the “inside-out” strategy appears to be a serious one. Or is this a bluff? Either way, it’s good news. It suggests we’re nearing the point when real decisions are about to be taken. Not a moment too soon.

GOOD SOLDIER PURDUM: Now we see why Todd Purdum wrote that silly no-news puff-piece on Colin Powell earlier this week. He was told to. The follow-up came yesterday with a Times editorial calling on Powell to engage in insurrection against “the sharks” among his fellow cabinet members. Why “sharks”? Even the Times doesn’t say they’re trying to get rid of the secretary of state. I think this was just an insult. Meanwhile, the ground is being laid for the Times to oppose the war against Iraq.

DEPENDS WHAT THE MEANING OF “GREED” IS:

“‘Blaming Clinton is absolutely ridiculous,’ ex-Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin told me. ‘We all have our faults, and Bill Clinton has his faults. But money and greed are not among them.'” – from Gloria Borger’s recent U.S. News column.

“The news that the Clintons are seeking government help to erase some of their substantial legal debts, first reported by ABC News, comes one month after Mr. Clinton reported earning more than $9 million last year by making 59 speeches in more than a dozen countries.” – New York Times, July 27.

ROVE WATCH: Another awful and completely political decision from the Bush administration: withdrawing funds from the United Nations Population Fund. Why? Because it is claimed that such funds support forcible abortions and sterilizations in China. The only trouble is that there’s no hard evidence that the funds do indeed do that. A State Department report, according to David Broder in yesterday’s Washington Post, stated that, “We find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC [People’s Republic of China]. We therefore recommend that . . . the $34 million which has already been appropriated be released to UNFPA.” The white House still punted. This is pandering to the Gary Bauers of this world – even when there’s not even a solid basis for doing so. Will there come a point at which Karl Rove realizes that sometimes the most naked piece of interest group politicking is not, how shall we put this, good politics?

THE OVERLAP: We dropped by a small lesbian band Saturday night, which was performing cover songs at a local restaurant. And at one point, I think I identified one small common denominator between gay men and lesbians. Helen Reddy. The epiphany occurred as I watched several gay men and lesbians moving their lips together as they sang along to the unforgettable lyrics of “Angie, baby.” Of course it isn’t a perfect overlap. Lesbians take her seriously. We don’t. They think the song is creepy. We think it’s hilarious. But for one blissful moment, that oxymoron, “the gay-lesbian community,” had a scintilla of reality. (If anyone has any other thoughts about what exactly gay men and lesbians culturally have in common, drop me a line. After Patsy Cline and k.d. lang, I drew a blank.)

WELCOME, ALAN: An old friend and Tory MP finally comes out to the general public. The times they are ‘a changing.

SAFIRE’S MISTAKES: Bill Safire is a wonderful columnist and he also makes mistakes. We all do, buddy. Over the past two years or so of writing sometimes more than 1000 words a day, I’ve made my share. But the old media is hardly innocent. Last February, Safire conceded he had misplaced the context of a quotation by Shakespeare, miscalculated the odds of several politicos, misunderstood the real meaning of “parlous,” got the name of a Conan Doyle watchdog wrong, and so on. Nothing wrong with that, and his corrections column was gracious, if far less prompt than most bloggers’. All this is simply to say he should get off his old media high-horse. I know it’s tough to have online competition, but hey, you’re a libertarian, Bill. Start enjoying it.

CAMILLE, ME, AND YOU: The dialogue is continuing offline. It took a little longer than a week. I hope to post the interview starting next Monday. Thanks for your patience.

They are, alas, not up to the accurate standards of “reliable old media.” After all, if it weren’t for the Times, we wouldn’t know that global warming had caused the Alaska temperature to rise 7 degrees in thirty years, would we? Or that the U.S. war to liberate Afghanistan had caused the deaths of so many innocent people. Others, mercifully, are beginning to understand what this new journalism in a new medium is really all about. Check out this piece from American Heritage, which compares today’s bloggers with the founders of modern newspaper journalism. U.S. News’ John Leo also sees the significance of the blogosphere, especially in keeping tabs on old media distortions and agendas:

Keep an eye on bloggers. The main arena for media criticism is not going to be books, columns, or panel discussions, and it certainly won’t be journalism schools. It will be the Internet.

But even J-Schools are teaching blogging now. Vive la revolution.

FOR PEACE IN ISRAEL, REMOVE SADDAM: A simple, persuasive and powerful case for war against Iraq in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

It’s not so bad, says this correspondent. I may think I want to trade off longevity for a more vibrant today, but when the time comes for shuffling off this mortal coil, I might change my mind a little:

While I understand your statement, “Would you rather live till you’re 85, gradually sinking into torpor and sexual collapse or have a great time and conk out at 65? I guess for me, the choice is an obvious one,” I do want to interject an observation of my own. I, too, believe that there is more than a little Puritanism in the fields of medicine, diet, environment, etc., but I have found, as grow older, that there is no “OK” time to die (as long as I’ve had some big time good times, etc.). I am now 61. 65 looks a little too close to say, well, I’ve had my innings and they were good (they were in fact very good, better than most, I think). Frankly, 85, even with a little oxygen and a walker, sounds pretty cool to me right now.

That’s not to say that dying happy and in the prime of my senescence, so to speak, is somehow too terrible to contemplate. I am a believing Christian and I do believe that a better life awaits me. But as I grow older I keep finding things out, new things. I keep gaining new insights. I keep thinking and writing. I am now teaching at University (I don’t even have a college degree!). Things keep happening. I’m going birdwatching in Oz next Spring. And I am here to do and see and comment and understand. Or try to. I have a wife. I have nieces and nephews, a grandson.

I had a bout with cancer that left me a ball short of a pair. My testosterone is down some. I have to take pills. It’s not that I’m afraid, but that I don’t want to miss anything really wonderful that hasn’t happened to me yet. Even something awful could be pretty interesting (see testicular cancer, above). I saw a girl today that set me to fantasizing like a 19-year old. It was lovely, really. There is no “sexual collapse.” That’s a figment. Sex is a brainwave anyway. I’ve never stopped having sex.

So, I do hate the hectoring of the professional classes, the finger-wagging at my casual cigarette smoking, my intake of ice cream, my lack of proper exercise, etc.? Well, yeah. I do. I’m not intent on living forever anymore than you are. But there is no age that would be fine to die. I can’t see it that way anymore. Because as soon as I set an age, bang!, I’m two or three years away from it and not ready to go!