The Dish

“No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar.” – Professor Donald Foster, recanting a previous argument of his own research in the New York Times today. What an uplifting sentiment.

THIS IS A RELIGIOUS WAR: I’m going to re-read Stanley Fish’s critique of my essay last fall in the new Harper’s before responding in detail. But it sure was refreshing to read an honest, open and careful argument (unlike the Goldstein screed). One of Fish’s points is that there can be no rational dialogue along universal, objective lines with Islamists. Therefore we cannot say we are right and they are wrong in any absolute sense. Here’s a quote from the mother of a “suicide murderer”. What Fish is arguing is that we cannot say that her sentiments are simply wrong:

“I am a compassionate mother to my children, and they are compassionate towards me and take care of me. Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr’s death for the sake of Allah… Jihad is a religious obligation incumbent upon us, and we must carry it out. I sacrificed Muhammad as part of my obligation. This is an easy thing. There is no disagreement [among scholars] on such matters. The happiness in this world is an incomplete happiness; eternal happiness is life in the world to come, through martyrdom. Allah be praised, my son has attained this happiness… I prayed from the depths of my heart that Allah would cause the success of his operation. I asked Allah to give me 10 [Israelis] for Muhammad, and Allah granted my request and Muhammad made his dream come true, killing 10 Israeli settlers and soldiers. Our God honored him even more, in that there were many Israelis wounded. When the operation was over, the media broadcast the news. Then Muhammad’s brother came to me and informed me of his martyrdom. I began to cry, ‘Allah is the greatest,’ and prayed and thanked Allah for the success of the operation. I began to utter cries of joy and we declared that we were happy. The young people began to fire into the air out of joy over the success of the operation, as this is what we had hoped for him.”

“This is an easy thing.” In this, perhaps, Fish is onto something. How can we understand the logic of this deepest form of religious faith? On the other hand, if we cannot say that this is wrong, what useful thing can we say?

BLAIR TAIL-SPINS: The British prime minister better hope England beats Brazil on Friday. He’s now suffering from Clintonitis – a sense among voters that he simply cannot be trusted, that he is more concerned with spin than substance, that rhetoric matters more than delivery. Blair is not immune to the general European impatience with the center-left in power. Alas, the Tories still seem unable to provide a cogent opposition.

THE MARKET VERSUS SEX: Sean Gallagher notes how television shows featuring lots of sex tend to lead to viewers not noticing the commercials. Here’s the Washington Post story on the same phenom. For the first time, I see evidence that freer markets don’t lead to more sexual material being available to more people. Now if only I’d stop getting spammed by “teenage Japanese girl sluts.”

JEWS IN FRANCE: This report made my hair curl. Could it get any worse? I guess I don’t want to know the answer to that question.

ANTI-ANTI-STEROIDS: Testosterone therapy saved my life. But there’s no doubt that excessive steroid use can be deeply damaging to people’s bodies in the long run. The problem is that steroids work – amazingly well. And they will only get more sophisticated and less onerous in the future. So what to do about steroid use in sports? The always interesting Steve Chapman argues – persuasively in my view – that there’s nothing we can practically do. The financial incentives for football players, for example, to get bigger than 300lbs are exponential, which is why we have more and more of these monster athletes. One option – in football – is simply to create a maximum weight for players, and allow them to pump whatever chemicals they want into their bodies, as long as they stay below that weight. It would be more honest than the current sham.

GOLDSTEIN RETRACTS: An email from Richard Goldstein:

I just read your posting and wanted to respond. I certainly had no intention of twisting your words. The quote I attributed to you has been in wide circulation for some time. When I first used it, in a piece last year, I found it in several other writers’ pieces–in precisely the context I described. Still, repeating an error is an error, and I’m sorry to have done that. I would much rather contest your statements as they are.

Well, he deserves points for conceding he completely distorted the meaning of my words in the Nation – and relied on third hand smear artists for his research. Alas, in his book, he does it again and again. In one section, he details how I am “appalled by camping, prancing, or any expression of effeminacy.” Elsewhere, he claims that my ideal society would be “a singularly muscular place, where anyone who didn’t fit the mold can be medicated to enhance his masculinity.” He claims that I have “contempt for those who deviate,” and that I have said that drag queens and androgynes are “at war with their nature.” His source for this last quote is a lecture he attended last year under the auspices of the New York Times. Happily, I have a recording of that lecture and tracked down the actual quote and its context. It was part of a question and answer session. See what you think:

YOURS TRULY: I have no objection to people wanting to be queer or being queer. I have no objection to that. That’s a choice and, in some respects, it’s a wonderful choice.
Q: But it’s unnatural?
AS: Well, it’s at war with their basic nature.
Q: People who aren’t butch enough or androgynous: they’re at war with their nature?
A: No. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that. That’s not true for everybody. There are some people’s natures that are naturally, biologically androgynous, or more geared to being queer or effeminate or masculine or up-ending certain social roles, because that’s how they feel their nature is. And, my God, do I defend their right and would I defend their right to be who they want to be; and nothing I say about the importance of encouraging most gay men and most gay women to embrace their own gender means that we should therefore exclude people who do not feel that way. There is an absolute central part in our community for the drag queen as well as the leather bar. And my own commitment to the First Amendment and to true diversity means I will defend them too… It doesn’t have to be either-or. It does not. Just because the vast majority of gay men think of themselves as men doesn’t mean they have to punish or exclude those who don’t feel that way… We can bring everybody along. Leave no drag queen behind.

My point is obviously a subtle on
e, an attempt to find a way both to bring gay people into the center of our society without oppressing those whose difference may result in hostility or alienation. But Goldstein – even though he heard all those words of inclusion – takes five words I did not say in order to argue that I mean something far cruder. This is not intellectual debate. It’s conscious deception.

Why does reading this story make my saying anything about this editorial seem somewhat superfluous?

WHY I HATE BILL GATES: I just downloaded Internet Explorer 5.2. He swiped my homepage and replaced it with MSN. I wonder how many hits Slate just got. Does Microsoft know how incredibly irritating this is? Every other bookmark is retained – but my homepage. And Mr Gates has to muscle in and change that. It feels like e-burglary. Grrr.

WHAT CHERIE REALLY THINKS: Cherie Blair, Tony’s wife, is a devoted Guardian reader. Like Hillary Clinton, she is to the left of her husband and shares with our Hillary the notion that those people to the right of her are simply tacky, malevolent or stupid. So her remarks yesterday about the latest suicide bombing did indeed represent the classic political gaffe. Cherie said what she believes, which is that the crisis in the Middle East is largely caused by Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Actually, this is what she said: “As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.” She later apologized for her remarks, but she really should not have done. The pretense that European elites think of Israel as a fellow democracy besieged by terrorism should be abandoned. These elites believe that Israel is to blame for the violence, and that Israel must be prevailed upon to make more concessions before any terrorist activity should cease. Suicide bombers are understandable. Israel’s self-defense isn’t. Thanks, Cherie, for clearing the air.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “W has the vocabulary of a 12-year-old, though most 12-year-olds have an infinitely stronger grasp of world affairs. Our spaniel press makes Herculean efforts to pass over the fact in tactful silence, but the truth is that George W. Bush is the laughingstock of the world, by dint of the obvious fact that his maximum level of competence was that of greeter at the ballpark in Arlington, which, as the blues piano player Dave Vest recently remarked, is the only real job he ever had before he met Ken Lay. Nixon had policies, strategies. Bush has notes (often contradictory) from his staff, which he bears no sign of comprehending for longer than the brief moments in which he lurches his way through them in some public forum.” – Alexander Cockburn, New York Press.

THE LEFT AND PATRIOTISM: Anne Applebaum kicks the soccer debate a little further down the field in a stirring little essay in Slate. Her best point is how in Europe, football is increasingly the only venue in which patriotism can be legitimately expressed, and therefore it takes on somewhat fraught forms. She makes an Orwell-like point about the trouble the left still has with simple patriotism, a problem that remains one of the biggest obstacles to a vibrant popular liberalism on both sides of the Atlantic:

Britain, even what Americans would consider to be ordinary patriotism is often suspect. When Tony Blair first entered the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street, in 1997, he staged a little parade of well-wishers, all of whom were waving the British flag, the Union Jack. The British chattering classes howled their disapproval of this unsightly show of nationalism-one friend told me that the Union Jack always made him think of right-wing extremists-just as they had earlier howled their disapproval of the Blair campaign’s brief (and quickly withdrawn) use of the traditional British bulldog. This summer’s Jubilee, the 50th anniversary celebration of the queen’s reign, has been accompanied by some flag-waving-but some opposition, too. One Independent columnist wrote that her friends are “studiously ignoring the event,” since national symbols such as the queen and the flag “bear uncomfortable overtones of racism and colonialism.” Patriotism, she went on, is seen as “profoundly down-market, like doilies and bad diets.”

Or to translate this into American: Love of country? So white trash.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Aren’t the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorising each other? The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis … they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism.” – Ted Turner, vice-chairman, AOLTimeWarner, the Guardian.

ALASKA RAINES: Thanks for the emails from Alaska. One reader writes:

I did not even bother to read the NYT piece I knew that they would leave out the simple fact that the Van Allen Radiation belts that protect the earth from solar storms are weakest towards the poles and that the sun has been blasting out some of the biggest Coronal Mass ejections ever recorded. The Solar Max period of sun spots and other activity is lasting longer and is more intense than ever. Check out the new book “Storms from the Sun.” The NYT is never to be trusted on any issue where science could get in the way of their politics.

Another Alaskan has nothing but good things to say about the recent warming trend:

Look, if you ask any Alaskan about global warming, the response will be “BRING IT ON!” If it is getting so damn warm these days, why did Anchorage have record snowfall for March? Who does it still get no warmer than 25 in the winter? Look, if it is warmer by a few degrees… it is still freakin’ cold all the live long day!!! It is so easy for New Yorkers to tell us Alaskans what is good for us, heck they have have had a ton of practice with regard to ANWR. My response to the article was whatever!! But don’t get me started about the Spruce bark beatle. The number of dead trees on the Kenai is staggering, and it is truly horrific. But, thanks to stupid Forest Service managers, this is disaster that was permitted to happen. When we could have done something about it (such as spraying, or cutting a swath of forest as a break, or even clearing the dead logs) we were not allowed. No, the policy was completely hands off. I mean, some squirrel or a herd of moose might get bummed out in the process. Quick action was needed about ten years ago. Now, it is just a big fire waiting to happen. And when it does, blame the USFS. There are millions of trees that are waiting to blow up, literally, and burn the entire peninsula. And when it happens, then the healing will begin and the forest will start to grow back. But look to pay around half a billion dollars in the process, because it will not be pretty.

Michael Novak has, as usual, an intelligent take on the Dallas conference in National Review. (Although I’m a little bemused by his description of “smarmy homosexual sex.” Smarmy? Is that a sexual position? Can one have unsmarmy homosexual sex?) He homes in on the question of dissent and rightly tracks the Church’s current decline to 1968 and Pope Paul VI’s decision to go against the growing Catholic consensus in favor of birth control. Novak himself once dissented from the Church on this (although it’s not clear from the article what his current position is). But his conclusion is that the sincerely dissenting priests and laity should simply have knuckled under, ignored their doubts and attempted to defend the Church’s increasingly strained teaching about the evil of any non-procreative sex. But what if that teaching is wrong? Should Galileo have shut up? Should John Courtney Murray, who challenged the Vatican’s once-firm views against religious toleration, have never written? Should Novak have never criticized the Vatican’s socialistic economics? Novak is right about one important thing: 1968 is the lynchpin. It’s silly to talk about contraception and homosexuality, for example, as separate issues. At root, they’re the same: the refusal to engage the notion that not all sex should be procreative. Wouldn’t it be great to have a real debate about this – for millions of Catholics who use contraception to share their experiences, for gay couples who practice love and fidelity to give their testimony, for the entire wealth of human experience that needs to be brought to bear on this subject to be aired? That includes, of course, those straight couples who have always upheld the Church’s position (and their multiple offspring). Perhaps we could also hear from those infertile Catholics who are allowed to have non-procreative sex without having their marriages termed a “lifestyle.” But of course, this is the debate we cannot have. Debate itself is anathema to the Church hierarchy. But without reasoned debate, there can be no reasoned assent. What the current papcy is ensuring is the permanence of dissent in the American church and the inevitability of decline. What a legacy.

RAINES WATCH: When I read the New York Times account of rising temperatures in Alaska, I felt more than a twinge of skepticism. The numbers struck me as wildly unconvincing. I put it down to more Raines malfeasance. Sentences like these – “While President Bush was dismissive of a report the government recently released on how global warming will affect the nation, the leading Republican in this state, Senator Ted Stevens, says that no place is experiencing more startling change from rising temperatures than Alaska,” – signaled that this was yet another political hit-piece rather than a serious article. But the stats still surprised: “Climate models predict that Alaska temperatures will continue to rise over this century, by up to 18 degrees.” That’s a bigger rise than anything I’ve seen in even the most alarmist enviro tracts. (That tell-tale “by up to” might be an escape clause.) Of course, you can’t disprove predictions. But the past warming trend also seemed excessive: “To live in Alaska when the average temperature has risen about seven degrees over the last 30 years means learning to cope with a landscape that can sink, catch fire or break apart in the turn of a season,” the Times opined. Seven degrees in thirty years? Here’s the data from the Alaska Climate Research Center. They show that mean temperatures at four distinct measuring sites in Alaska over the last thirty years show increases of between 1 and 4 degrees, with a mean of a little over 2 degrees Fahrenheit. This chart of the last century is even more striking. It shows an average temperature rise of 2 degrees in Fairbanks over the entire last century. So who are you going to believe – Howell Raines or the Alaska Climate Research Center?

“But the trouble with this is that the same arguments can be applied to Israel, though there are no US plans to bomb Tel Aviv or depose Ariel Sharon. Israel actually has nuclear weapons, whereas Iraq – so far as anyone knows – is still trying to acquire them. In terms of flouting UN resolutions and international law, many would argue that Israel’s behaviour is a more serious threat to international stability, at the present time, than that of Iraq.” – Brian Whitaker, the Guardian, first noticed by Jason Rylander.

BUCHANAN AS DEEP THROAT? Josh Marshall thinks it could be.

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR: “While we are a long way from a ‘Tiger Woods market,’ we don’t always have to be in the rough,” said Larry Wachtel, market strategist at Prudential Securities. “But we have been through too many failed flurries to suddenly remove the batting helmet.” – Wall Street Journal.

SCOTT SHUGER: I’m a little stunned to hear of the untimely death of journalist Scott Shuger. Everything Mike Kinsley says about him is true. When I edited Scott at The New Republic, he was a total prince – a straight guy who wrote some of the first and best material about the persecution of gay men and women in the U.S. military. His “Today’s papers” for Slate was superb. He died in a scuba diving accident at the age of 50. May he rest in peace.

MARGARET THATCHER AND A BIG BUNNY:This website is very silly. But pretty cool, too.

Finally, some candor from the American Prospect. The Kuttner claim that they had 500,000 subscribers to their magazine has been reduced to 50,000. This discrepancy has been blamed on a reporter for the Boston Business Journal. They have also conceded that their claims of 450,000 unique visitors a month may be a function of counting unique visits as unique visitors, as I suspected. They promise to come up with a new number soon. But their server company advises that the new methodology (i.e. accurate counting) may “reduce the visit count quite a bit, but it is a much better representation of reality.” I can’t wait for the new numbers. Score one for blogging pressure: without me and Mickey on their asses, do you think they would have ever conceded error? Remember that when I first raised the question, they accused me of being a “creationist” because I couldn’t care less for empirical data. I’m too hardened to expect an apology, but if they haven’t reported real new numbers within a week, I’ll keep at ’em.

In the U.S., it’s undermining media tyrants. In Iran, it may be destabilizing real tyrants. Here’s a wonderful story about how women’s blogs in Iran are terrifying the ayatollahs and Islamists. It started with one lone blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, blogging from Canada:

Hossein created one of the first blogs in Persian last year. “It’s a good tool to get to know what is happening in Iran,” he told the BBC programme Go Digital, “what the youth are talking about, what are their problems.” He had so much interest from Iran that he decided to write a simple guide in Persian, to help others set up their own blogs. Seven months on, there are more than 1,200 Persian blogs, many of them written by women. “For the first time in the contemporary history of Iran, women can express themselves freely, even if it is not in their real name,” said Mr Derakhshan. “They have found the courage to speak about themselves and how they see the world.”

Isn’t it marvelous that blogs here have helped galvanize support for the war on terror and that in Iran, they’re doing something almost the same – but from within?

THE EU AND HIZBULLAH: The French are still unwilling to designate Hizbullah a terrorist organization. At least they got knocked out of the World Cup.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND ISLAMISM: They’re natural allies in many respects – the belief that women should be subservient to men, that homosexuality is an abomination, and so on. And they have every right to co-operate at the U.N. But why the Bush administration should want to ally itself with Islamist states in this fashion is beyond me, except pandering to their extremist wing. How can the First Lady champion women’s rights in Islamist countries, while her husband blesses those in America who find such repression of women something to admire and aspire to?

PITY THE PRIESTS: An interesting take from Australia.

The bad news is that we still have the same roster of bishops and cardinals. But we’ll see. My bet is that some of these delinquents will find a way to leave their august offices soon. But the good news was far more striking. The Gregory statement clearly indicated that the Church hierarchy grasped the real issue here: the negligence of the leadership, and the abuse of church power. The policy of removing any priest who is credibly accused of any single act of abuse from active duty seems smart to me. Defrocking would actually run into all sorts of difficulties and delays, delays that might actually make it harder to keep abusive priests from further criminality. But more important was what the bishops did not do. They did not scape-goat gays; they did not say that this scandal has anything to do with homosexuality per se; they did not rise to the bait of the Catholic far right. The two lay-people who addressed them were mainstream to liberal, Vatican II supporters. There will be no attempt to use this scandal to drag the Church back from its post-Vatican II acceptance of gay priests and laity. Of course, this could be reversed. But it seems to me that the Dallas conference was conducted maturely, sanely and humanely. The enforcement may be hard. But the first moves toward healing this particular wound have been made, without making the wound worse, or the pain greater.

MEDIA BIAS WATCH: “During his time in politics, moreover, Mr. Raffarin worked in a ministry dealing with small and medium-sized businesses, and that gives him a particular slant on the notion – embraced in President Chirac’s campaign rhetoric – that French business should be set free from bureaucratic constraints. In this town, in a supermarket restaurant crammed with supporters, he evoked the idea of small businesses and stores serving as magnets to bring together people living in big city solitude. Such businesses, he said, sounding little like a person of the center-right, would bring “more humanism to society.” – Alan Cowell, New York Times, reiterating the Raines doctrine that all non-liberals are inhumane.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “Democracy in the United States has not always embraced everyone, and we have a long history to prove it, from slavery and ‘Indian wars’ to the 2000 presidential election.” – Robin D. G. Kelly, “Finding the Strength to Love and Dream,” Chronicle of Higher Education.

ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER: On a rainy day last week, the boyfriend and I rented some videos – Sopranos, South Park, Clueless – and then got responsible and watched the riveting documentary “One Day In September,” about the Palestinian terrorism at the Munich Olympics. It seemed so contemporary. The scene that gripped me was of the coffins of the terrorists being brought back to Tunisia. They were greeted rapturously. They’d managed to kill some Jews! Asked to justify his grotesque murder of innocent athletes, one of the perpetrators told the camera that it was about publicity for their cause. Barak was right. There is no morality here. Thirty years later, why are we re-learning the same lessons? Here’s a story from last week that shows something even grimmer. It’s by David Tell at the Standard. Even now, the depravity deepens.

REACTIONARIES RIGHT AND LEFT: I picked a great week to chill out (literally, is been freezing up here). I was able to miss reading Mary Eberstadt’s hysterical screed in the Weekly Standard, and Richard Goldstein’s hysterical screed in the Nation for an entire week. Of course, reading them is a little superfluous. From the subject matter and the authors, you could almost write the pieces yourself. But what strikes me is how similar they are. Both Eberstadt and Goldstein are reactionaries. One wants a return to the 1950s in which gays were in the closet or jail; the other wants a return to 1971, when gays were in the closet or all countercultural lefties. Alas for both, this is 2002. The vast majority of gay men abhor pedophilia, and the vast majority of non-bigoted straight people know this. Eberstadt’s attempt to jump-start a 1950s style homosexual witch-hunt by tarring them as all potential child-abusers or supporters of child abuse has no constituency outside the swamps of the far right. And Goldstein’s attempt to smear all non-leftist gays as somehow hypocrites or fascists or psychos depends largely on his not actually reading them, or grotesquely distorting what they have actually written. Both Goldstein and Eberstadt are deeply uncomfortable in our complicated world, desperate to revive the Manichean certainties of the past. One of them imagines a secret cabal of gays, quietly attempting to make child abuse legal and to destroy the Catholic Church. The other imagines a secret cabal of gays, quietly attempting to reverse gay equality, stamp out diversity, and enforce some code of stifling moral uniformity on them all. It’s depressing that major organs of the right and left would pander to such paranoid nostalgia. But, alas, unsurprising.

GOLDSTEIN’S METHODOLOGY: I’m going to debate this next week at the New School in New York. So I won’t go into much detail now. But to give you an idea of Goldstein’s methodology, I cite one simple statement of his in the Nation. It’s part of his attempt to argue that I have always been a defender of only one legitimate life-style model for gay people: monogamous marriage. Anyone who has read my books or my work over the years will know this assertion is simply bizarre. While I support civil marriage for homosexuals, and believe such marriage should be monogamous and will probably reduce sexual adventurism, I have never condemned other relationships, those who choose not to marry (which would include me), sex before marriage, and I have written positively about casual and even promiscuous sex. In fact, this record has gotten me into all sorts of scrapes with conservatives. My last book included a long section defending sexual freedom in the AIDS era, as well as a defense of condom-free sex between two HIV-positive men. My first book extolled the virtues of some open relationships and explicitly argued that “[there is something baleful about the attempt of some gay conservatives to educate homosexuals and lesbians into an uncritical acceptance of heterosexual normality.” (Goldstein claims that my defense of sexual freedom can be dated from the invasion of my privacy last year. The sentence I just cited was published in 1995.) So I was surprised to see myself quoted in the Nation as follows: “Marriage, Sullivan has written, is the only alternative to ‘a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation.’ ” When I read this, I stopped short. It didn’t sound like me. Then I tracked down the passage Goldstein is quoting. It’s from my last book “Love Undetectable,” and follows a critique of the Christian doctrine of “hate the sin, love the sinner” – a formula I found morally and experientially incoherent in the case of homosexuality. Here’s what I actually wrote:

“So the sexual pathologies which plague homosexuals are not relieved by this formula; they are merely made more poignant, and intense. And it is no mystery why they are. If you teach people that something as deep inside them as t
heir very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets.”

In other words, Goldstein is quoting from a passage in which I am overtly criticizing the very argument he imputes to me. There is no room for misinterpretation here. The passage is as clear as day. I subsequently went through his book to check the other quotes attributed to me. Almost every single one followed the same pattern: a conscious attempt to make stray words and phrases mean the opposite of their plain meaning in the text. How does one respond to this? It’s one thing to have someone criticize your work and arguments. It’s another thing when he actually invents arguments you never made. All I can do, I guess, is show how Goldstein has engaged in staggering intellectual dishonesty and how the Nation eagerly published it.

TAP, TAP: Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, no word yet from the American Prospect about their alleged web stats. Yes, this isn’t the most important issue in the world. But it seems significant to me that a magazine designed to advance honest argument and debate would misrepresent something so basic as their web traffic. Are they doing this to their advertisers? Mickey Kaus notes that Bob Kuttner recently even claimed his print magazine had 500,000 subscribers. Have they all gone nuts? We have to conclude, in the absence of any public or private response to my or other inquiries, that the American Prospect is lying about its web traffic. And that they do not think such dishonesty is a big deal.

A DIFFERENT FATHER’S DAY: A beautiful tribute from a dad in Seattle.

Provincetown is quiet; the hammock is irresistible; the beagle beguiling. I’m going to take the whole week off. Here’s my latest essay on the Church’s crisis. Enjoy. I can’t tell you how nice it is not to read the paper thoroughly every day, and to spend some quiet time snoozing and reading a novel. But I’ll be back Monday with guns blazing. See you then.

I’m taking the next few days off for a brief summer break. I’d manufacture some filler for you, but it seems smarter just to recommend you to my links page. My latest Sunday Times piece was posted this morning, and tomorrow you’ll find my new Time magazine essay on the Church’s current crisis – which I argue is merely a symptom of a deeper one. I don’t have a boss any more, so I have to be own disciplinarian. But I haven’t had a break since Christmas, and the boyfriend and beagle deserve some quality time. See you later this week. (Of course, the last time I vowed to take some real time off, I broke down after a day. But I’m going to try and last till Thursday.)

Josh Marshall has a deeply depressing item about the DC police and the Chandra murder. I keep asking myself: I’m paying for these cops?