The Dish

On CNN’s Crossfire last night, Tucker Carlson confronted David Brock with an anecdote parlayed by Brock in his recent book, “Blinded By The Right.” The anecdote was about something Carlson allegedly said to Brock. Carlson simply denied it outright and accused Brock of being a bald-faced liar. “Ought you not be embarrassed, making this up and facing me on the set?” Carlson asked. “Looking me in the eye and saying you really said that?” Brock responded, “I will look you right in the eye. That is exactly what you told me.” Who to believe, huh? Luckily, that exchange was followed by the following friendly chat with James Carville:

CARVILLE: …because we’re going to post it on the much ballyhooed grand web
site mediawhoresonline.com. And this is what they had to say… “Conservative media outlets…have tried to ignore Brock’s truthful revelations, putting him on what looks like a blacklist, refusing to review his book, refusing to have him appear on their broadcasts, hoping that he and his book will just GO AWAY.” Does that ring true to you, David?
BROCK: Yes, absolutely. As I was saying to Tucker, the conservative magazines have not reviewed the book. Conservative dominated talk shows that love my previous work won’t talk about it. And I think the conservatives are in denial.
CARVILLE: How many talk shows have you been on let’s just say the Fox network?
BROCK: I have not been on Fox at all.
CARVILLE: But no one invited you on?
BROCK: No.

This one, actually, is not that hard to figure out. Brock is lying. Here’s a link that will actually show you a photograph of Brock being interviewed on Fox News about his book on March 18. Who are you going to believe? David Brock or your own lying eyes?

“[T]o live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” – Cardinal Newman.

A CASE OF SEPTEMBER 11: Peggy Noonan has a rather telling insight into Karen Hughes’ departure from the White House today. Well, certainly more telling than the tedious hand-wringings over what it means for feminism. (Short answer: nothing.) Noonan’s view is that it’s about clinging to life, in its normalcy and ease and day-dreaming:

I realized, again, that Sept. 11 had given me a case of Judith Delouvrier. Judith Delouvrier was a wonderful woman who was my friend; our boys went to school together and she was a fine mother and a happy spirit and she loved her husband and they’d just left their apartment and bought a house in my neighborhood. She had a million plans. She jumped on a plane one summer day and never came back. It was TWA 800.
It was all so impossible, so jarring, so unnatural. And in the months and years after her death, if I was walking along and saw something nice–an especially cute dog, a sweet moment between humans, a pretty baby, a beautiful pair of shoes in the window–I’d feel my usual old mild pleasure. And then I would remember that Judith couldn’t see this boring common unremarkable thing. And it made the boring common unremarkable thing seem to me more like a gift, more precious and worthy of attention and appreciation, and even love.
So Sept. 11 did to me what Judith’s death did, only deeper and newer.

I think I know what Peggy means. I discovered it in a different way, when a doctor told me almost nine years ago that I could be dead in a few years. I got a beach-shack; I wrote a book; I got a beagle; I took more time for friends and family and bike rides and late mornings with coffee and newspapers. In some ways, this giddy diversion into Shakespeare is part of the same thing. What better way to let yourself know that, even after the mind-changing moment of last September, life still goes on, that you can take time to be in a play, meet new people, try new things? Day draws near. Another one. Do what you can.

ALWAYS OUR CHILDREN: Michael-Sean Winters has a superb and measured piece in the current New Republic on the current crisis in the church (whence I purloined the thought for the day above). He gets most of it – especially the ludicrous notion that somehow the 1960s created pedophilia. But he’s really acute about how the church was unable to see sexual abuse of children except as an extension of the adult’s sexual sin:

In fact, it was the bishops’ refusal to see pedophilia from the child’s point of view – their tendency to see it as merely a sin of the flesh rather than a radical betrayal of trust – that lies at the heart of the current scandal. And that refusal has deep roots. The relevant canons (Church laws) lump pedophilia together with other sexual acts and make no consideration of the victim at all. Most people are, rightly, forgiving of sins of the flesh. But when one uses a position of authority to coerce sexual relations from a minor, or even from a young person of majority age who is nonetheless a parishioner or an underling, this is a sin of the spirit, a betrayal of all that the Church says sexual love should express–the free gift of self in equality and freedom.

Amen. And this is why celibacy is relevant to this problem. One deep understanding of sexuality that only the non-celibate laity can fully grasp is that central to the understanding of moral sexual expression – indeed, I would argue, its guiding moral center – is the notion of equality and freedom in sex. To coerce someone into sex through physical force or social power is far more immoral in my mind than having sex without procreation. But only if you have experienced sexual relationship, as opposed to simple sexual release, can you fully absorb why this is so. If the Church is to stick to its policy of universal celibacy for the priesthood, then it should at least allow lay people to exercize greater authority in determining and discussing sexual morality than is now the case. Some things have to be experienced in order to be fully internalized, and their nuances understood. And the strange, lonely, unrelated sex lives of celibate priests makes them uniquely unqualified to understand what sex in this sense actually is and how it can be best morally expressed. That’s not their fault; it’s just a function of their condition. (And don’t tell me they have no sex lives. They all have sexual fantasy, they all ejaculate, they all masturbate. Celibacy is not about not having a sex life. It’s about having as limited a sex life as you can – alone.)

CALLING THE SAUDI BLUFF: Man, I hope president Bush managed just the right mixture of defiance and politeness to Prince Abdullah in private yesterday. The usual blather that the Arab world will rise up if the U.S. doesn’t stand up to Israel is, well, the usual blather, as Bernard Lewis points out today. I have to say I think my recent piece in defense of Bush’s deft management of the Arab-Israeli crisis holds up pretty well. Pity the Arab world seems to agree with me – which might require more bluff from Bush at Crawford. The appearance of distance from Sharon is strategically useful. Meanwhile, let’s get ready for the real problem. Reuel Marc Gerecht gets it just about right (as usual) in the current Weekly Standard. This paragraph nails it, methinks:

With his decisive victory on the West Bank–and it is decisive just because Sharon did it and everyone in Israel and the Arab world knows that he will do it again–Sharon is in the process of pushing the Arab idea of coercing and dominating Israel into the distant future, beyond the immediate passions of young Palestinian men and women, who live for the present. Probably far sooner than most people imagine possible–a few years, not decades–the defeat of Israel through terrorism will become for most Palestinians what the conquest of Constantinople was for the medieval Arab world, an appealing image that no longer sufficiently inspires. When that happens, some kind of peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza will become possible.

ARE GAYS PEDOPHILES? Many Catholic rightists seem to think so, believing that purging gay priests and re-stigmatizing gays as unmentionable and sick will end the child-abuse problem. Here’s an email I just received offering a different view. I think it speaks for itself:

My brother did time for abusing a four-year-old boy. He devasted our family, did time in prison, and is still in counseling. He did a terrible thing and got off fairly lightly in my book. But if there is redemption in Christianity at least he is seeking it.
The main point of this note, though, is the nature of his sexuality. I never knew him to be gay. And he told me he is not gay. The abuse wasn’t about male or female erotic pleasure, but more about being in power and about the intimacy, however perverse. Although he is not gay, he is a loner who has a hard time in relationships. Kind of a celibate, but not by choice.
I think that Lowry is calling something a homosexual problem when it is something else – even when the abuser and abused are same sex. If a man molests a little girl, is that a manifestation of heterosexuality?
I think a gay priest in a city of any decent size can find an easy, and discreet enough sexual release, should they choose to do so. I just cannot see the abuse of children as a homosexual issue.

Seems quite simple, when you read a letter like that. And it makes the efforts of Lowry, Dreher et al that much more distressing and unfair.

AIDS STATS REVISITED: Some of you may remember my skepticism a while back of the many studies that have emerged proclaiming massive increases in HIV infection in various sub-populations in America. My quibbles were with the size of samples, the inferences drawn, and the enormous incentives for groups looking for public funds to exaggerate the scale of the crisis. None of my criticisms was rebutted, although I had to endure the usual abuse from the AIDS lobby and parts of the gay left for even raising questions. Still, I never thought that some of the studies had actually been deliberately falsified. The San Francisco Department of Public Health, which sponsored some of the studies I criticized, has now been found guilty of doing just that. The U.S. Public Health Service has now disciplined one researcher in that department for deliberately switching randomized samples to get the desired result.

“In these awful days, George W. Bush has become the American Yasir Arafat, an empty, repetitive, shifty public personality who talks out of both sides of his mouth, with little or nothing to say from either of ’em.” – Nicholas von Hoffmann, New York Observer.

GORE’S ARSENIC LIE: If you want a good example of how Al Gore has turned into Terry McAuliffe, check out Spinsanity’s dissection of Gore’s repetition of the simple lie – that president Bush tried to increase the levels of arsenic in the drinking water. Gore knows this is untrue. He’s not dumb. But he says it anyway. You can expect the repetition of such untruths from the likes of Michael Moore, but from Gore? After what he learned (or didn’t learn) in the last campaign?

“NOTORIOUS”: Some of you have written to say that the American cardinals’ use of the word ‘notorious’ to distinguish some sexual abusers from others is not as ominous as I might have thought. The distinction is designed to separate priests who have merely been accused and those who are already exposed in the public sphere as child-abusers or minor-seducers. I take the point. But I still do not see why the public nature of any accusations should affect treatment in any way. This is not about p.r. It’s about protecting the abused. The criteria for laicization of priests should be the same regardless of whether that priest’s misbehavior is well known or a complete secret. Until the hierarchy can stop thinking about ‘reputation’ and start thinking about morality, little will change.

They still have no clue, but then why should we be in any way surprised? The hierarchy of the American Catholic church has now a long paper-trail of protecting child-abusers rather than protecting children, and today’s communique, for all its expressions of regret, esentially maintains that posture. No-one will step down. Cardinal Law couldn’t even be bothered to attend the press conference. And abusive priests won’t be automatically thrown out. Here’s the adjective I find inexcusable: “notorious.” Here’s the section of the Cardinals’ text that beggars belief:

2) We will propose that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recommend a special process for the dismissal from the clerical state of a priest who has become notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory, sexual abuse of minors.
3) While recognizing that the Code of Canon law already contains a judicial process for the dismissal of priests guilty of sexually abusing minors, we will also propose a special process for cases which are not notorious but where the Diocesan Bishop considers the priest a threat for the protection of children and young people, in order to avoid grave scandal in the future and to safeguard the common good of the Church.

Why should “notoriety” have anything to do with whether a priest should be disciplined? These church despots are still worried about their reputation rather than children’s lives. And if you read between the lines, a priest who is discreet about his abuse or who has only committed it once may escape censure. The laity has to make it perfectly clear that this isn’t good enough. Abuse of children or minors is not a peccadillo. It’s horrifying in anyone, appalling in the priesthood. If someone committed such a crime in the past and seems genuinely to have experienced remorse, contrition, and paid a criminal penalty, then he shouldn’t be permanently barred. But any future instances of abuse, properly investigated and proven, should surely be treated as de facto resignations from the priesthood.

COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM: I hope today’s story in the Washington Post detailing president Bush’s support for mental health parity in health insurance is accurate. Yes, I know it’s expensive. But health-care costs should not be suppressed by an arbitrary exclusion of a real and terrible array of illnesses. Their very exclusion is symptomatic of a stigma toward mental illness that has no basis in fact or science, and that keeps many people from seeking and getting the care they need. And that should apply not simply to extreme cases of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the like, but also to crippling low-level depression that can be treated both pharmaceutically and in talk therapy. Mental illness can impede a person’s ability to work and function just as effectively as a physical ailment. Removing those terrible barriers will eventually pay dividends, not just to the individuals themselves, but to the broader society in which they can find a way to play a larger part.

THE RIGHT’S GAY-BAITING: Check out Will Saletan’s as usual excellent dissection of the Catholic Right’s attempt to use the church’s abuse crisis to sustain their own agenda of re-stigmatizing homosexuals. The complete illogic, double-standards and general incoherence of their arguments are as apparent as their underlying animus. Saletan points out, for example, that these conservatives claim that a tiny proportion of sex abuse cases among gay priests makes it a gay problem, but that a tiny proportion among priests doesn’t make it a priestly problem. I’m used to Richard John Neuhaus claiming that simply because abuse of minors is with the same sex, that makes it a question of homosexuality. (I doubt whether he would use the prevalence of rape as pointing to the question of heterosexuality). But I was particularly shocked to hear Rich Lowry say, on CNN, that the abuse of male minors makes this a homosexual problem, and that this is “just not something heterosexual men do.” Does he mean abuse minor males or just minors? If the former, he’s just playing with semantics. If the latter, he’s nuts. Either way, he’s deliberately fanning the flames of anti-gay prejudice. To what constructive end? I have no idea.

MUCH ADO: Well, we’re up and running. The critics come this weekend. I’m finding that with every run, things get a little smoother and my attempt to figure out my character both easier and harder. I keep finding new angles in the words! That damn Shakespeare. So sexually ambiguous. The opening night audience, to my simple shock, seemed to love it. But I’m far too close to the show to have any kind of reliable judgment. If you’re interested and live in the D.C. area, here’s the website for tickets.

RELEASE: How to describe the joy imparted by a new Pet Shop Boys album? The latest, “Release,” doesn’t disappoint. The sad uplift of the lyrics, the mystical ambience of the techno-arrangements, the elevating sound-track quality of even their throw-away ditties, and the lyrics, the lyrics. Neil Tennant has surpassed himself this time. There’s a hilarious satirical song about a supposed tryst with Eminem, counter-poised by the touching, simple words of “Here:”

We all have a dream
of a place we belong
The fire is burning
and the radio’s on
Somebody smiles
and it means “I love you”
but sometimes we don’t notice
when the dream has come true.

Or this message, both sentimental and hard-edged, sad and determined:

He’s gone
You’ve lost
Stay behind
and count the cost
You try
You lose
You don’t fall in love by chance
You choose

I know I’m a sucker. I’ve been devoted to their music for two decades, their songs a strange sound-track to periods and moments in my life that resonate still. I’m lucky to have found such muses, and they’re not for everyone. This album is also graced with some wonderful guitar work by Johnny Marr. Yesterday, on a stunningly crisp Spring afternoon, it made my day.

Sorry, but I’m taking today off the site. We opened last night, and I need a little time just to get some personal air, pay overdue bills, hang with the beagle, etc. This production has been a little like finishing a marathon, except another marathon is also just beginning. I’ll be back tomorrow. Promise.

I think that Paul Krugman believes that president Bush is the American equivalent of Jean-Marie le Pen. At least that’s the obvious inference from his column this morning. There’s not even a ‘to be sure’ paragraph, pointing out that the president is not an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, racist thug. Unsurprising, given the extreme shrillness of Krugman’s hatred of this president. But shocking to read it on the op-ed page of the Times this morning – a new low in abuse, I think.

HOME NEWS: Alas, I’m called in for re-runs all day today, so there’ll be no more Daily Dish till tonight (late).

We owe Monsignor Eugene Clark some thanks for his homily at St Patrick’s Cathedral last Sunday. His views are shared by many prominent conservatives in the Church, especially among many older Catholics who grew up thinking of homosexuals as unspeakable, and still cannot acquiesce comfortably in their open presence in society. He’s misrepresenting Church teaching, however, by saying that the notion that some people are born gay is “not true.” In fact, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has specifically used the word “innate” to describe some homosexuals’ orientation. The trouble is, there has never been a widespread discussion of the church’s teachings on homosexuality within the church. To my amazement, when I’ve spoken at colleges like Notre Dame or Boston College on the subject, I’ve found that I was the first person ever even to delineate the church’s actual position in such a forum. Most Catholics are not even aware that their Church has broken with Protestant fundamentalists in describing many people’s homosexuality as an unchangeable, innate orientation. You can see why the silence exists. Conservatives are understandably squeamish about declaring so many of their fellow priests as ‘disordered’ and so many of their parishioners as uniquely susceptible to evil. Some good might yet come from this fiasco if this subject could become less taboo in the church. The pope must speak about it – since up to perhaps half of his own priests experience it directly. When an institution so disproportionately gay as the Catholic church cannot even discuss the issue of homosexuality, the kind of crisis we’re now witnessing will never end peaceably – except in immoral discrimination or widespread sexual laxity among the clergy. For a middle way to emerge, we have to talk. It’s a pity heretical bigotry should inflame the discussion, but at least it might get more in the hierarchy to talk openly about what can be ignored no longer.

THE BEING OF ACTING: “Working your way through a character’s evolution can therefore become, I discovered again, a little digression through your own needs and wants. It can let you say things you’d never say in real life but that make you feel more complete for articulating. It’s safe therapy, I suppose, in which you can feel things and say things and even believe things without ever having to take personal responsibility for them. You can call that acting. But you can also call it a kind of freedom.” Check out the rest of my piece on acting here. As I write this, I’ve just come back from our first dress rehearsal in front of an audience. The good news is: we finally did it. The bad news is: we open tomorrow night. Forgive the light dish today; I’ll supplement later. But I had to get a drink with the rest of the cast after tonight’s cathartic opener. I have to say that, however the play turns out (and it’s still needs work), it’s been such a great experience meeting and becoming friends with a crew of such surpassing kindness, talent, and hilarity that I barely care how it all ends up. We’ve had a great – if at times grueling – time.

In what looks set to be the beginning of a more active political presence, the daughter of the vice-president, Mary Cheney, has just joined the board of the Republican Unity Coalition. The RUC is a new group in the Republican Party, designed to advance the inclusion of openly gay men and women in the party’s ranks and leadership. It’s spear-headed by Charles Francis, a close gay friend of the president, and a good friend of mine and supporter of this site. According to Charles,

Mary’s main focus will be to help the RUC reach out to gay and lesbian voters, as well as build bridges to all within the Republican Party. This summer, she will work with us to build the RUC membership network across the country. Mary’s experience, both in her past work at Coors and with the Bush/Cheney campaign, provides the RUC with a whole new level of judgement and political savvy. We are so proud to have Mary Cheney stand with the RUC.

Cheney puts it this way:

RUC is an organization that reflects my fundamental beliefs and principles. Working together we can expand the Republican Party’s outreach to non-traditional Republicans; we can make sexual orientation a non-issue for the Republican Party; and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans.

This is splendid news. It seems to me a quite amazing fact – and devastating to the David Brocks of the world who want to keep gays on the Democratic plantation – that the most prominent openly gay member of a first or second family in American history is a Republican. This reflects a simple truth: that gay people come in all shapes and sizes, from all backgrounds and religions, and from every political shade and hue. Rather than be terrified of this, we should welcome it. From all accounts, Cheney is also no believer in traditional gay rights victimology and may, with any luck, begin to give a prominent voice to what many regular, non-activist gay people believe: that we want no special favors, just simple equality; and that the right to marry is a critical and non-negotiable part of that struggle. Welcome, Mary, to the even more difficult part of coming out as who we are: not just that we are gay, but that we are complicated, diverse and often non-leftist in our politics. Now let’s see if the religious right and gay left unite in decrying this hopeful sign of changing times.

THE FRENCH THUNDERBOLT: What to make of the far right’s amazing success in France? You’ll read plenty of jeremiads in the usual places about this being a sign of resurgent anti-Semitism, racism, and so on. In so far as le Pen represents these things, these jeremiads are not out of place. But his highest ever level of support – still only 2 percent more than seven years ago, by the way – should, I think, be read more broadly. It’s a sign that the French left, having attempted to move to the center, is, as a result more incoherent than ever (although it may still do fine in the legislature, thanks to the French voting system). Jospin was hurt by his leftist rivals as severely as Gore was by Nader. But more profoundly, this was clearly a vote propelled by a populist revolt against the autocratic, anti-democratic and dangerous power of the European Union and the leftist platitudes – all immigration is good, crime cannot be defeated, the nation-state is dead, the need for a strong military is anachronistic – that are now routinely expressed by European elites as almost theological certitudes. His victory speech last night was an appeal to “the excluded, you the miners, the steelworkers, the workers of all those industries ruined by the Euro-globalization of Maastricht, you the farmers forced into ruin, you the first victims of crime in the suburbs and cities.” Some of this is protectionist claptrap, but some of it is also a revolt against policies devised for, of, and by the European liberal elites. Le Pen’s most radical position is that his country should quit the European Union altogether, and has described the euro as “the currency of occupation.” When a mere 51 percent approved the currency in the first place, you can see why he has appeal. He has also abandoned some of his vile anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant positions, in favor of more mainstream beliefs that immigrants should adopt the national culture of their new country. In fact, it may well have been the Muslim anti-Semitism that led in part to the violence and vandalism of the last month that gave his anti-crime message even more potency. I’m not defending le Pen; his past and present bigotries render him unelectable. He won’t win the presidency, thank God. But if Chirac doesn’t hear what this vote portends, then we can expect more unrest.

EUROPE’S RIGHTWARD MARCH: In a broader context, le Pen’s victory is even more striking. In Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Italy,and Belgium, right-of-center anti-immigrant, Euro-skeptic parties are all in the ascendant, as this helpful piece in the Guardian explores. In some ways, you can see the victory of our friend Pim Fortuyn as a symbol of these trends as well. As for the American implications, I’d say any trend that can help weaken the pretensions of the EU to becoming a transnational rival to the U.S. is a thoroughly healthy thing. I’d also say the clout of voters in Europe alarmed by some elements in radicalized Muslim communities in their own countries could bode well for the long-term struggle against Islamo-fascism. And given the new strength of the Christian Democrats in Germany, the incipient resurgence of the Tories in Britain, and the Berlusconi government in Italy, the full picture should give even more sustenance to president Bush. When he wages war against Iraq, he could have far friendlier allies in government in Europe than he seems to right now.

DOES THE POPE GET IT? No, not about the sexual-abuse scandals. About the threat of Islamo-fascism. Here’s what he said this weekend to Nigerian bishops:

I must also raise an important issue which I know is a source of grave concern to you and your people. There are certain parts of the country where proponents of Islam are acting with ever greater militancy, even to the point of imposing their understanding of Islamic law on entire states within the Nigerian Federation and denying other believers the freedom of religious expression. I strongly encourage and support your every effort to speak out courageously and forcefully in this regard.

So it’s only when Jews confront these militants that he has a problem?

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “After midnight, when most of their elders – and most of the press – had left, the crowd began to boogie. In coats and ties, or rugby shirts, they looked like young Bush Republicans – albeit better dancers, whirling each other across the blue carpet against the blue walls.” – Donald G. McNeil Jr., of the New York Times, describing supporters of the neo-fascist rightist, Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the French equivalent of Bush supporters.

ROSS ON ARAFAT: If you didn’t catch it yesterday, check out this extremely revealing interview with president Clinton’s chief Arab-Israeli negotiator, Dennis Ross, on the genesis of the failure of the accords presented at Camp David and later at Taba. It’s a devastating account of Arafat’s simple refusal to deal plainly, to take the opportunities offered him, and confirms my view that there can never be a negotiated peace with this man. Here’s the money dialogue:

HUME: What, in your view, was the reason that Arafat, in effect, said no?
ROSS: Because fundamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict. We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that clause was, this is the end of the conflict.
Arafat’s whole life has been governed by struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open, never close a door. He was being asked here, you’ve got to close the door. For him to end the conflict is to end himself.

KELLER’S THEOLOGY: John Ellis (friend/supporter) makes a good point about Bill Keller’s latest column. It’s such a revealing insight into the collective mind of the New York Times’ curia, a kind of recitation of official theology. And that theology believes that the Democrats are only failing to get political traction – despite the Enron scandal, if you can believe it – against president Bush because they’re not paleo-liberal enough. His amazing memo therefore urges the Dems to campaign against capital punishment, against the Pentagon’s nuclear policy, and in favor of Castro. (He has a brief digression in favor of tax ‘simplification,’ whatever he means by that. Somehow I doubt he wants a flat tax). Now there are plenty of good – if to my mind unpersuasive – reasons for doing all of the above. But what planet are you on if you really think that this paleo-left combo will rally the masses to turf out a war-popular president?

MUCH ADO: Well, we’ve yet to have a preview because the technical intricacies of this production have overwhelmed our time to master them. We took Sunday off because we were all exhausted. Today, we continue to tech-run the last third of the show and hope to pull off our first full run-through tonight (not to paying audiences, if any). Take it from me: this has been a grueling marathon – physically, mentally, emotionally. To give you an idea, the main stage has about 15 trap doors from which almost every entrance and exit is accomplished. Every scene has interpolated light and music cues. There is singing, dancing, a disembodied voice, watering cans and shaving bowls. And then there are two other stages. The audience moves from one space to another in the course of three acts, from Dante’s heaven to, er, hell. Mastering all this well enough to be able to focus on acting the play simply takes time. Trying to rush it simply made it worse. For this reason, I’m very sorry to say I’ve had to cancel my appearance tomorrow at an AEI colloquium on Josh Muravchik’s new book, “Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism.” My apologies. But the show must go on. All day and all night, so far.

An exhausting six and a half hour technical run-through of the play tonight has me writing here at 3am. Basically, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I guess these kinds of things happen in the theater all the time. I must have blocked all those experiences from my brain. But my favorite moment tonight came when I tried something new in a scene with my silk cravatte (hey, I’d never wear one in real life). For the play, I’ve shaved completely so I can add (with toupee glue) a thick and somewhat Starbucks employee-like go-tee for the first act. (I have to shave it off as a plot twist in the second.) Anyway, my acrobatics with the scarf managed to remove the beard prematurely, and for most of the scene, it was floating around the set like a small rodent searching for a home. Eventually, I tracked it down and stuck it back on. Better glue next time.

MORE BROCK LIES: David Horowitz writes a devastating account of yet more David Brock lies in the current FrontPage magazine. This particular lie is relevant because it targets the very moral integrity of Horowitz. Brock claims in his book that Horowitz, despite public hostility to anti-gay prejudice, was in fact a secret homophobe, uttering anti-gay slurs in private. Horowitz denies it; and quotes the only source he can think of denying it as well. I’m not surprised by this latest revelation. For the gist of this incident is central to the point of Brock’s book, which is to do all he can to corral gay men and women back into Democratic Party ranks where such luminaries as Sid Blumenthal and Bob Shrum think we all belong. In fact, it’s hard to under-estimate how much some on the left despise the idea of gay men and women leaving the Democratic plantation. They refuse to believe that some of us may actually support some (but by no means all) Republicans (as well as some Democrats) because we actually believe in the principles of small government, a free society, market economics, and a strong defense. So we must either be completely screwed-up hypocrites and closet-cases; or we must be simply oblivious to the pathological hatred of gays that exists among all Republicans.

THE DEMOCRATIC PLANTATION: So when a gay-tolerant Republican/conservative heterosexual emerges, it’s imperative he or she be exposed as a secret hater. And when a non-leftist gay writer, thinker or politician emerges, he or she must be exposed as a hypocrite or nut-case or slut or some mixture of the above. (Never mind that every homophobic trope is deployed by the left in this fashion. If it’s in defense of the left, it can’t be bigotry!) What a few on the gay-left have tried to do to me for a decade – smear, expose, defame, marginalize, blackmail, etc. – they must also do to any gay-friendly hetero figures on the right. All of us threaten their monopoly on gay votes and loyalties. Hence the outing of my private life. Hence the smearing of Horowitz. All gay Republicans must be seen as hypocrites (even if they’re nothing of the sort) and all gay-tolerant Republicans must be exposed as simple phonies who secretly hate gays as passionately as Fred Phelps. The Democrats are terrified of dissent and debate in this area, as much as they are on race, since without these monolithic special interest group blocs, they can’t get anywhere near a majority. So any deviation from party loyalty is immediately punished as “Uncle Tom” behavior, and the more influential you are, the worse the smears. (Clarence Thomas gets the all-time prize for this.) I understand why some gay non-leftists, who poke their heads above the parapet for a while, crack under this pressure. There are few on the right who genuinely support our positions and provide emotional support, even if there are fewer outright homophobes among them than some would have you believe. I can even understand why some – Brock being first among them – would give up the fight and choose the easier path of defecting to the warm embrace of Frank Rich, Sid Blumenthal, and the like. I wouldn’t wish this kind of psychological pressure on anyone, and, in some ways, I sympathize with some of the stress Brock must have found himself coping with over the years. But the truth is: that doesn’t excuse his lies, smears, and distortions. The world is more complicated than he and his fellow partisans want it to be. What I and others have been trying to do for years is not smear gay Democrats – many of them have a principled and highly plausible politics – but to insist that alternatives are conceivable, and even beneficial in as much as they increase the ideological space for all gay people to maneuver in. Some leftists appreciate this and respect those who disagree with them – even enjoying the diversity of debate (I think of people like Urvashi Vaid or Paul Berman). Others – more partisan figures, or those who see politics as an arena for personal warfare more than political debate – simply want to shut this discussion down and engage in ugly smearing, ‘outing’, and defamation. Alas, this has always been what David Brock has been about. He once did it from the right. Now he’s doing it from the left. The only difference is that now that it suits the agenda of Rich, Blumenthal, Hertzberg et al, it, it’s more respectable in the mainstream media. But it isn’t. It’s still disgusting. As well as deeply, deeply sad.

THE END OF THE THIRD WAY: It was good while it lasted. Tony Blair promised to revamp socialism by never returning to tax-and-spend liberalism. He argued that a big, publicly-financed European-style welfare state could be compatible with American-style low taxes. Now he’s surrendered, as he always would. Gordon Brown, who is busy maneuvring to despatch Blair to history immediately after if not before the next election, this week unveiled a budget that will clobber British tax-payers with higher taxes in order to fund the 1940s behemoth called the National Health Service. Brown is also quietly playing to anti-Americanism in Labour Party ranks and watching gleefully as Blair’s attempt to support the war on terror meets a ferociously anti-Israel press and public. It’s no accident Brown’s speech was massaged by Bob Shrum. Neither Labour nor the Democrats have fundamentally changed their view that government knows best, that bigger government is better government, that terror should be appeased not opposed, and that higher taxes – not tax reductions – are the wave of the future. What this shows more deeply, I think, is that New Labour and the New Democrats were chimerae – designed as window dressing to get back to power after the rightward shift in the 1980s and 1990s. But underneath, nothing has changed. Look at Gore. His moderation in the 1980s and 1990s was a deliberate lie. He’s now liberated to say what he truly believes. It’s only a matter of time before Blair is sidelined and Britain’s Labour government echoes the Shrum-Greenberg-Brown-Gore line: pay your taxes, and do what you’re told.

EUROPE VERSUS THE JEWS, PART DEUX: “The question is whether the West will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel in its war against terror or whether it will side with terror against it. At present the signs are ominous. The leitmotiv of the state of Israel, forged after the world looked the other way from the Holocaust, is ‘never again’. The West has now given its response: ‘Yes, again’; and if they are destroyed, the Jews, as ever, will be to blame.” Don’t miss Melanie Phillips’ trenchant analysis of anti-Israel sentiment in Britain and Europe.

I love this medium. Y’all do my research for me. A friend sent me the relevant passage from ‘A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.’ I read it as a Catholic teenager and it obviously resonated. I’m sorry my addled brain ascribed it to Waugh rather than Joyce. It makes much more sense than Waugh. Here it is:

— Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics would strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegious communion?
— The God of the Roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fear more than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul by a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of authority and veneration.
— Would you, Cranly asked, in extreme danger, commit that particular sacrilege? For instance, if you lived in the penal days?
— I cannot answer for the past, Stephen replied. Possibly not.
— Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?
— I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?

I take his point.

CAN LAW FUNCTION? He can’t even go to a graduation. Rome’s self-interested attempt to keep him on – to prevent the deluge – seems to me to be an exercise in short-term preservation at the expense of long-term self-destruction. But we’ll see, won’t we?

GAY MARRIAGES LAST LONGER: Fascinating, if small study, reinforces the lesson from Scandinavia – that same-sex marriages, far from weakening marriage, could strengthen it. They seem to last longer than straight marriages. But shhhh. Don’t tell the social conservatives. They have their preconceptions to protect.