The Dish

The man just can’t let go. My favorite Clintonista quote from Rick Berke’s piece: “He does not want to appear to be upstaging Bush.” Don’t worry, Bill. You won’t.

NOT SO BEAUTIFUL MIND: A.O.Scott puts the boot in this morning: “Of course any movie that traffics in biography must edit, foreshorten, emphasize and condense, but “A Beautiful Mind” goes further, becoming a piece of historical revisionism on the order of “J. F. K.” or “Forrest Gump,” and manifesting a depressing lack of faith in the intelligence of the audience.”

You think “Europe” is ready to take a lead in world affairs? Robert Kagan gets it just about right.

YOU AND DERB: Thanks for all the letters. It seems from some of them that I’m always talking about what I do in the “bedroom.” I bet I’d get more hits if I did. Why is it that for some people heterosexuality is all about your spouse, girlfriend, family, kids, etc. but homosexuality is only and ever about ‘disgusting’ anal sex? When a movie has a sweet ballet-dancer kid who turns out gay, it’s propaganda. When movies have been produced for decades as if gay people simply didn’t exist, that’s entertainment. I give up. If you start from the premise that someone is defined by ‘disgusting’ sex, even if they have no more and no less disgusting sex than anyone else (you think heteros only use the missionary position?), then there’s simply no way to argue back. When someone like me comes along and mentions my boyfriend coming to Thanksgiving or something harmless like that, I’m shoving it in your face. When Jonah Goldberg casually mentions that his wife leaves in the morning and comes home at night in his column, he’s just humanizing his prose. Man, I’d love it if homosexuality were a non-issue. But when I write and behave as if it is, some of you have a cow. I think that’s called a no-win situation. I just have to believe there are some straight people out there who get it. Mercifully, many of my straight readers do. I’m grateful for your open minds.

A resident confesses: we’ll tolerate anything but Republicans.

David Geffen has always known how to keep gay guys in their place. While coddling Bill Clinton for eight long years, telling the president he needn’t worry about gays in the military, advising him that no gays really want marriage rights, refusing to support the campaign for marriage, he was always there for us. Now his studio is producing a movie, “A Beautiful Mind,” that actively removes any reference to the lead character’s homosexuality. The book on which the movie is based is completely frank about such themes, and helps contextualize the life of a great mind. Still, it’s important to ensure that straight movie-goers don’t associate intelligence – let alone, Russell Crowe – with homosexuality. That would be “shoving it in their face,” wouldn’t it? This is what gets me about some Hollywood liberals. Throw a benefit for gay rights and they’ll be there, red ribbons and all. Ask them to take a financial risk to deal honestly with the lives of gay people in a major mainstream movie, and they run a mile.

UPDATE: It turns out that the actor who played Billy Elliott’s gay friend in the movie of that name has just signed up for the British Army. For John Derbyshire’s screed against gays, read the current National Review. Derb has clearly come to terms with being a proud bigot. Every single piece of anti-gay propaganda is shoehorned into the piece – even the myth of our alleged recruitment of children. Our loves and relationships are reduced to “weird things” we do in our bedrooms. His view is that gay people are lucky not to be actively persecuted for our disgusting behavior and should be grateful for it. He doesn’t address the only criticism I made of him, but then how could he? Then he preposterously claims to wish us a loving Christmas. I once had some respect for this man. How can anyone now?

THE DIALECTICIZER: The latest entries from the amazing web dialect machine are below. I think that’s enough, don’t you?

ELMER IVINS: “Haiw and faweweww, O Enwon! What a fwameout. De Estabwishment media, sucking its cowwective thumb wif unwonted sowemnity, is tweating us to meditations on two themes: “How the mighty have fawwen” and “Who wouwd have thunk it?” Pawdon me whiwe I snowt, in wieu of wudew noises, and offew two themes of my own: “What took so wong?” and “Anyone wif an ounce of common sense.”

REDNECK SULLIVAN: “Ah knows whut Cohen means. Ah was talkin’ t’a friend in th’ gym today, a man who is mild-mannered t’a fault, an’ he said thet he wanted t’shoot bin Laden hisse’f. Varmintally, I’d like t’pummel bin Laden’s haid in fo’ a while fust. But th’ truth is, ah’s ashamed of this hyar impulse. ah was a li’l ashamed when gabbin’ wif friends t’other day, ah was axed whut I thunk we sh’d does wif th’ Taliban stragglers. Ah said, “Three wo’ds: kill them all, ah reckon.” Mah faif tells me thet these impulses is not simply wrong but sinful, ah reckon. We kin fo’give but we kinnot excuse them, dawgone it. Fo’ years, ah have tried t’channel whut is pow’ful a profoun’ rage at th’ way society has treated gay varmints fo’ so long into sumpin mo’e cornstruckive an’ reasonable.”

THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT: “I dun did not gots sexual relashuns wid dat honky chick, Miss Lewinsky. Slap mah fro!” – president Clinton in “Jive.”

Wrap your head around that one. Ken Starr who thought it necessary to detail every second of president Clinton’s sex with Monica Lewinsky manages to sympathize with a traitor. His initial reaction to Mr. Walker was one of “empathy and sympathy.” According to today’s New York Times, Starr saw Walker “as ‘a young kid with misplaced idealism’ who appeared to have gone off with the intention of learning more about Islam, not joining Al Qaeda. While he saw Mr. Walker’s actions now as ‘troubling,’ Mr. Starr added, ‘He doesn’t seem like a Benedict Arnold.'” And Mr Starr doesn’t seem to have his priorities straight.

The French ambassador to Britain refers privately to Israel as a “shitty little country,” that is the root of today’s global unrest. “Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?” he allegedly said at a private dinner party in London. I think we call that by the French word “gaffe.” I wish I could say I’m shocked.

Judith Miller puts some more pieces together for us on Iraq.

JERRY JIVES: “I real recon’ dat da damn pagans, and da damn abo’shunists, and da damn feminists, and da damn gays and da damn lesbians who is actively tryin’ t’make dat an alternative lifestyle, de ACLU, Sucka’s Fo’ de American Way – all uh dem who gots tried t’secularize America – ah’ point da damn fin’a’ in deir face and say “ya’ helped dis happen. ‘S coo’, bro.” – Jerry Falwell, from the Sept. 13 edition of “700 Club.” Translated into jive.

LETTERS: Derbyshire’s hetero credentializing; why Chesterton is full of it; and gay history month?

KINGSOLVER AS THE SWEDISH CHEF: “I vunt tu du sumetheeng tu help reeght noo. Boot I cun’t geefe-a bluud (my hemetucreet elveys roons tuu loo), und I’m tuu fer vey tu geefe-a unybudy shelter oor a dreenk ooff veter. Hurty flurty schnipp schnipp! I cun oonly geefe-a vurds. Um gesh dee bork, bork! My ferbel hemuglubeen nefer seems tu vune-a, su vurds ere-a vhet I’ll ooffffer up in thees teeme-a thet esks ooff us zee best ceetizenship ve’fe-a ifer moostered. Bork bork bork!” – Barbara Kingsolver. She loves Sweden, doesn’t she?

“”The covetous, racist, and hated Jew Shylock, who cut the [pound of] flesh from Antonio’s chest with the knife of hatred, invades you with his money, his modern airplanes, his missiles, and his nuclear bombs. You must face a hard question: Do you, Christians and Muslims, wish to live, survive and fulfill your convictions? Or are you Abraham’s bleating lambs on the threshold of the Jewish altar, who are led to be sent to the Hereafter?” – Dr Ali Aqleh Ursan, chairman of the Arab Writers Association, in the Syrian publication Al-Usbu’ Al-Adabi, February 5, 2000, as reported in a terrifying piece in the Guardian.

ONE LAST THING, JONAH: I don’t want to drag this out, so this is really my final small word. Jonah is a wonderful writer, fair-minded, hilarious when he wants to be, and civil to a fault. So I don’t mean this personally. But one sentence he wrote haunts me. It’s this: “By having a single public standard that was inconvenient to everyone, but not tyrannical in its implementation – Oscar Wilde’s gaol time notwithstanding – there was no moral tragedy of the commons.” Jonah is referring to the Victorian standard of everyone adhering to a public norm of marital heterosexuality while doing anything they wanted to in private (Gladstone getting whipped by whores, etc.). Jonah rightly says that this is now a non-starter, but I think he is way, way too blithe about what he’s describing. Gay men and women were not given an easy break in any Anglo-American society until very recently. Thousands were jailed, humiliated, murdered without real recourse, demonized, or subjected to lives of such misery and shame that they could barely function. This was a form of tyranny. Some rose above it – see Oscar Wilde. But many, especially of poorer backgrounds, went through unspeakable private pain. Either forced into sham marriages or into the underground or the Church or education where their public lies each day diminished their dignity and integrity, these men and women were subjected to terrible cruelty. They were denied the saving power of love and the wonder of sex – without fear of exposure, imprisonment, violence or social death. I don’t believe that Jonah would ever countenance such cruelty; but he needs to come to terms with its moral legacy. There was indeed a “moral tragedy of the commons.” And only now, fitfully, is it being addressed and accounted for.

Now, it’s official.

Alistair Cooke, God bless him, still does his homework. It convinced him to support military tribunals.

PONNURU RULES: A judicious and completely persuasive analysis of foreign policy by Ramesh Ponnuru in the current National Review. Don’t miss it.

A CANADIAN GETS IT: Could politics be changing up north?