The Dish

I suppose it’s only fitting that a writer who has long blithely supported abortion on demand should now be straining to sympathize with Andrea Yates, who is accused of drowning her five young children in a bath-tub. Anna Quindlen’s logic-free discourses have long been hathetic masterpieces to me, but this latest one in Newsweek stood out. Yes, being a mother of young children can surely be hell at times. And we should surely not begrudge mothers from venting – or being honest about their mixed feelings from time to time about their kids. But killing them? It seems to me that even the severity of post-partum depression doesn’t excuse or mitigate this evil. I speak from some experience. My own mother had acute post-partum depression after my younger brother was born, and was hospitalized for months for it when I was four. She suffered terribly from a recurrence of this disease for many years, was hospitalized several times, and watching her long and dreadful ordeal close-up was one of the most searing experiences of my life. But she was still a mother – an amazing one, who loved her children beyond measure and did everything she possibly could for us despite her illness. Quindlen calls this achievement “the insidious cult of motherhood.” Well, sign me up then please. When I read Quindlen’s glib posturing, even equating her own privileged motherhood with Yates’ or with others’ who have had to deal with real mental illness as well as rearing kids, I felt like someone had gut-punched my sense of moral order. Yes, empathy for someone dealing with extreme stress and isolation is well and good. But nothing – nothing – can excuse what Andrea Yates has been accused of doing. If killing five young kids in a bath-tub cannot be simply and roundly condemned, what can?

WHAT A BROCK: Mickey Kaus and Jill Abramson get it just about right on David Brock’s latest piece of flim-flam. Abramson tells Howie Kurtz: “”the problem with Brock’s credibility” is that “once you admit you’ve knowingly written false things, how do you know when to believe what he writes? . . . It’d be awfully convenient to now say because what he’s writing is personally pleasing to me that he’s a 100 percent solid reporter. That would be a little disingenuous.”” Mickey lets it go with an ancient Chinese proverb: “Man who lies once for money and fame may lie again for money and fame.” I have a couple of other theories about Brock, whom I’ve observed from a distance in both gay and political Washington for over a decade. The first is that his current publicity stunt (we should all be grateful he didn’t take his shirt off this time) is a possible attempt to get the American Spectator sued. He confesses that he knowingly wrote an untruth in the magazine – a textbook case of libel. Will Kaye Savage and Anita Hill, whom he maligned and intimidated, sue him? Will Mayer and Abramson? Nah. If they sue anyone, it would be the Spectator itself. Even if nothing transpires, Brock must be enjoying the brief stress he has placed on his former protectors. The second theory is that Brock is a gay man who simply cracked under pressure. Knowing he was gay in the first place made him do things far more extreme than he was comfortable with in order to impress people he believed were homophobic and would only accept him if he were not just right-wing – but a right-wing hero. Hence his over-compensating attack-dog pyrotechnics. Note that this was largely in his own head. What matters is not whether his conservative allies actually were, as he charmingly puts it, “racist, homophobic Clinton-haters.” (Some probably were, but many were not.) What matters is that he thought they were and acted accordingly. So his original deceit was really a function of his homosexual insecurity in a right-wing world. With his Hillary book, Brock tried to see whether his conservative friends and allies would appreciate him for himself and his talents. When his book met with conservative indifference (actually, it met with universal indifference), he went off the deep end. It’s far easier to believe, after all, that you’re a victim of racist homophobes than that you simply wrote a not-too-interesting book. By then, the usual identity-mongers on the left were cooing in his ears and acceptance seemed finally achievable – by sucking up to liberals. Of course, he was wrong again. Liberals aren’t interested in him as such – as Abramson, Kaus and Noah have just shown – and I don’t blame them. Brock has demonstrated he cannot be trusted. He has confessed to being an opportunistic liar and character-assassin. Why would anyone trust him again? So this last little pirouette in a seemingly endless musical number will not settle anything. In fact, it makes me faintly nauseated. Using the word “conscience” in a book title when you have done what Brock has done is not confession. It’s spin. At long last, in his lack of center, in his need for love, in his contempt for ethics, he resembles almost perfectly the man he has fittingly come to embrace: Bill Clinton.

“Folks, we have a moral responsibility to get taxes down.” When did you last hear that kind of clarity? Of course giving people back real control over their own lives is a moral issue. If people want to know why Bret Schundler won the Republican primary for New Jersey governor last night, that sentence will tell them a lot. So too will these from his victory speech: “I want there to be a day when African- American children in the lowest-income sections of this state don’t feel that there is a wall separating them from the opportunities other children have. I want senior citizens to know that they will not have to worry about paying their taxes or feeding themselves or losing their homes. And I want each one of you to know that New Jersey will not become one great L.A. sprawl out to every corner and paving over every green space.” It’s a good conservative combo: school vouchers, social security privatization, environmental concern. President Bush placed a congratulatory call to Schundler last night. I hoped he stayed on the line a while to take some advice.

THE HEALTH POLICE STATE: When it was revealed by Daniel Forbes in Salon that the White House Anti-Drug Office had been quietly insinuating government propaganda into network television, there was a justifiable hue and cry over excessive government power. The program was subsequently aborted. But now it turns out, according to the New York Times, that the Centers for Disease Control have been proudly doing the same thing. A recent episode of Beverly Hills 90210 was doctored to put across the correct message about using sunscreen to head off skin cancer. The Times reports that “In addition to providing “tips for scripts,” in the C.D.C.’s lexicon, on topics that include things like chlamydia and secondhand smoke, the agency is offering its experts as unpaid short-term technical advisers to help television writers get accurate information. Last week, Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, director of the disease control centers, visited the Warner Brothers studios to kick around health topics with the writers and producers of “E.R.” and “The West Wing.”” Am I the only one to be disturbed by this? In recent years, legitimate efforts to improve public health, by the provision of good information and monitoring of diseases have been supplemented by a creeping authoritarianism. Whether it’s peddling bogus claims about second-hand smoke or censoring ads for anti-HIV drugs, government is gradually increasing its power to tell us how to live our lives under the rubric of ‘health.’ I don’t mind too much when it’s private entities peddling their nostrums – as long as there is full disclosure. What I do mind is tax-payers dollars going to bossy health propagandists – especially since health is now understood to include not just disease prevention but a whole range of prevention measures that add up to spectrum of lifestyle choices.

THEY ALSO SERVED: Here’s an email I just received that says more than I ever could about the injustice of our current military policy toward homosexuals. I think it speaks for itself. I have changed some details to protect privacy and anonymity: “About six years ago, I met a man who became a very good friend of mine. We were both volunteers for a local charity. He was out, very social and had many stories to share about his life. He shared stories about what it was like to be gay in the 1930s up until the 1970s. He met Presidents, celebrities, entertainers, and he also served in WWll. His military experience involved serving in the infantry in Europe right after D-Day and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He told stories to me of the freezing cold, going two months without changing clothes, of his foxhole buddy dying from shrapnel through his helmet right next to him. All of these stories were told matter-of-factly, as just a part of his life. He also keeps in touch with the members of his division and they have one or two reunions every year. If someone doesn’t show up, the others find out why and what is going on. Whole families attend these reunions, also widows and children. Well, last reunion my friend didn’t show up. He had an illness, and is still in recovery. He received many cards and calls from his concerned war buddies, which thrilled and I believe strengthened him. One phone message I heard when I was visiting him in which his buddy sent his “love” made him laugh with joy. As the case may be, my friend is not out to his military buddies. He is a product of his era, and also of the military and he is still not being asked and he is not telling. This doesn’t diminish the love and affection all of these men have for each other, but I still feel it is wrong. I am not passing judgment on my friend for not telling, nor on his friends for not asking. What I think is wrong is that this man fought for his country, in one of the most horrendous battles in one of the most grueling wars of this country’s history. What I feel is wrong is that today, my friend would not have had the opportunity to fight for his country, and I feel that his actions in the military in the past are going completely and disgracefully unacknowledged. This is not a sitcom, this is someone’s life. I have never written anything like this before, but I love, admire and respect my friend, and I think that the stories of our gay military heroes should and must be told.” Amen, soldier. Amen.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “Like the proponents of apartheid before them, these [pharmaceutical] companies acted to maintain the rules of a system that denies the value of black lives in favor of minority privilege. The result in Africa has been murder by patent.” – Salih Booker and William Minter, in an article obscenely titled “Global Apartheid,” in – where else? – The Nation.

I thought Barbra Streisand’s ‘Call to Conserve’ was the most hilarious recent example of Hollywood cant, but now along comes John Wells, writer-producer of the TV drama, The Left Wing, I mean, The West Wing, and E.R. Mr. Liberal is the West Coast president of the Writers’ Guild of America. But when it comes to his own writers, he screws them royally. Having promised raises to his writing staff, he waited till most other shows had already signed up their writers for the coming year and then reneged on the offer. Left-wing pol and ‘writer,’ DeeDee Myers whined and got her share. The less famous had to make do with the deal. Just a reminder that much of Hollywood’s liberalism is simply a pose. It has nothing to do with their own lives or values – just look at how ruthlessly they keep gay actors in the closet. Congrats to the New York Times for blowing Wells’ cover.

RATHERISM OF THE DAY: “A big boost for campaign finance reform – a U.S. Supreme Court decision puts pressure on Congress to act on John McCain’s call for change, opposed by President Bush.” – Dan Rather last night. Great catch by Mickey Kaus, who points out that this sentence, as well as being slanted beyond belief, is also largely untrue.

One of these days, someone will point out how sensible our current Supreme Court is. I’m not qualified to judge the precise Constitutional issues raised by the laws that barred immigrants from any legal appeal against deportation, but, at a very basic level, it seems to me that very few laws should be immune from some judicial appeal. Those laws which can change a person’s entire life – sending someone back to a country years after he has left it for minor reasons under U.S. law – should be especially suspect. In some ways, I think the greatest blot on the record of all politicians in the 1990s was immigration. The 1996 Immigration Act was a travesty of Anglo-American principles of fair play and due process. It undid decades of reasonable immigration policy in favor of a populist jihad. To be frank, I’m glad in a way that Pete Wilson turned California into a Democratic state by his anti-immigration stances. Perhaps that kind of political pay-back is the only check on anti-immigrant populism that actually works (would-be immigrants, after all, can’t vote). The law in question, however, was thoroughly bipartisan. Bill Clinton was as loathsome on immigration as he was on civil liberties. Perhaps this Court will help reorient American values back to an understanding that immigrants are the core of this country, in some ways the most American of Americans, and granting them due process and fair treatment is one of the hallmarks of a civilized and humane society. I wish George W. Bush would grasp this as well. It wouldn’t hurt his narrow political self-interest either.

HOW GREEN IS THAT BUSH?: A reality check on W’s brief environmental record. Bottom line: don’t believe the media spin – yet.

WE ALL HAVE AIDS?: One of the crassest, dumbest and most sanctimonious pieces yet on the AIDS crisis from one Donald Berwick (who he?- ed.) from something called the Institute for Health in today’s Washington Post. Hard to know what’s dumber – the facile equation of a disease with the man-made Holocaust, or the sophomoric idea that if all existing HIV medications were ‘free,’ whatever that might mean, the global crisis would be over. Then there’s the insulting notion that we all have AIDS. Sorry, bro, we don’t. Some of us have AIDS; some of us have HIV; others – the vast majority of the people on earth – don’t. Becoming HIV-positive in sympathy with those of us with the virus is a little different than asking an entire country to wear yellow stars to protect persecuted Jews. The first would ensure everyone suffers; the second ensures very few do. Yes, AIDS is a global emergency. Yes, we need human empathy. And yes, we need practical, feasible solutions (one of which is America’s free market in pharmaceuticals). What we don’t need are any more red ribbons, stupid analogies, hand-wringing and moral grandstanding. But all those, of course, are what we are going to have to endure for yet more years and years.

Invaluable and funny piece by the indispensable Rod Dreher of the New York Post on the latest hilarities of the Jackson-Sharpton contretemps. Favorite nugget: Jackson refers to his wife as the “First Lady” of Operation-PUSH. The populist rascal.

ON THE CAPE: I’ve been reluctant to write about this in order to head off a universal spasm of envy, but I write this looking out onto the dusk of Cape Cod Bay. Technology now allows me to do much of what I need to do to earn a living anywhere on the planet – as long as there’s a modem. A few years’ back, I bought a tiny little three-room shack and a deck on the end of a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Like any self-respecting homosexual, I renovated, knocked out various supporting walls and put a window where a window ought to be. It’s pretty basic and all of 250 square feet, but it’s right on the water, and at high tide the waves lap about ten feet from my bed. There’s nothing more relaxing than the sound of the sea at night, and few things more inspiring than the Cape sky in the dusk (I don’t do dawns). The beagle is in something short of heaven, viewing the beach as a kind of all-you-can-eat buffet, and watching her bound through the surf, her ears circling gleefully like mini-propellers, is about as satisfying a sight as any I know. Sorry to sound smug, but I’m really not. I’m merely happy to be here. I’ve been coming for twelve years now and each year before I arrive, I forget the place’s ineffable calm. It really does renew the soul.

PTOWN MOMENT: But P-Town is not just calm, of course. It’s also a riot. One of the reasons I love it is its genuine diversity. There are young families day-tripping from Revere, Portuguese fishermen, clusters of amateur painters squinting at their easels on the beach, drag-queens clomping in their pumps down the main street, young drop-out skate-boarders, stoner-waiters forgetting your order, and countless affluent and well-built gay men doing their best to look like the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. On Saturday, the Portuguese community had a big old parade, and the local priest went out in a boat to bless the fleet. The place also has its literary moments. Poets like Marie Howe or Mark Doty, novelists like Michael Cunningham and Norman Mailer, painters like John Dowd, journalists like Sebastian Junger or Adam Moss: they all circle around this place and make it what it is. But the best part are simply the old friends, coming back to something like summer camp year after year: joshing in the coffee shops, chatting on the beaches, cruising and carousing in the bars, growing older together, and now mercifully, not dying from one summer to the next. And then there are simply the moments that happen nowhere else. Last evening, I was walking the beagle on the town beach and saw something close to a vision. A young, stunning woman with a figure that women used to be proud to have – curvy, voluptuous, zaftig – emerged from a house on the beach. She had long auburn hair, lipstick and a tiny, bronze thong. Her considerable cleavage was barely restrained in a tight, short white tee-shirt, covered with a flimsy white bath-robe, and on her feet, she wore knee-length, white rubber boots. She was walking toward the water as if she were on a fashion-show runway. I looked out and saw her lucky boyfriend in a fishing boat – shirtless, young, preparing his tackle for an evening fishing. As she waded into the water and strode toward the boat, he looked up and smiled. And well he might.

Anyone who doubts that parts of the left are now indistinguishable from bigotry and authoritarianism should read this chilling account in the Honolulu Weekly. It’s about the local ACLU’s decision not to invite Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to debate ACLU national president Nadine Strossen. At first the board enthusiastically supported the decision to invite Thomas to a debate at the annual Davis Levin First Amendment Conference. But three local board members – all black – objected. Daphne Barbee-Wooten made the following arguments against Thomas: “Bringing Clarence Thomas sends a message that the Hawaii ACLU promotes and honors black Uncle Toms who turn their back on civil rights.” In subsequent discussions, this charge was amplified. Eric Ferrer, another black board member, said that Thomas was “an anti-Christ, a Hitler, and it’s like having a serial murderer debate the value of life.” Even worse, warned Ferrer, “There’s a chance, even a likelihood, that a lot of people might like his views.” Heaven defend us from free speech and persuasion. Former ACLU president, Roger Fonseca, opined that Thomas “is an asshole… If not Hitler, he is a Goebbels.” The final insult was the personal assault, now a staple of the left. Barbee-Wooten added, “I have the inside scoop on [Thomas]. Anita Hill wasn’t the only one. When he came [to Hawaii for a visit], he went to strip clubs. … He’s married to a white person.” Miscegenation! Maybe there should be laws against it. To her credit, Nadine Strossen has disowned the local ACLU board, and stood up for free speech, and for Thomas’ distinguished record on the court and courage in facing down the vilification from the left. As for the ACLU in Hawaii, the facts speak for themselves. Thomas remains uninvited; and the lunatics have taken over what was once an asylum for free speech.

CENSORSHIP CONTINUES AT THE FCC: First it was Eminem. Now it’s feminist rap-singer Sarah Jones. The FCC, under Michael Powell, is launching a new campaign to fine and censor what it considers offensive music. With Eminem, they missed the irony. With Sarah Jones, they miss the message. Jones’ hip-hop is designed to counter the misogyny so common in rap. “Your revolution will not happen between these thighs . . . the real revolution / ain’t about booty size,” Jones raps. Not entirely profound, but not exactly obscene and offensive either. Check out the full lyrics and context in this piece from the current Village Voice. It seems to me to prove an ancient and obvious truth. Governments are clumsy, stupid and often dangerous. Give them the power to fine, censor or judge free speech and it will be mere seconds before they commit a misunderstanding, an idiocy, or a fallacy. Michael Powell and the Bush administration seem to walking right into this trap – and it shouldn’t just be Village Voice lefties complaining.

SAFIRE ZINGS THE TIMES: Rare indeed that the New York Times’ conservative fig-leaf, Bill Safire, is actually forced to respond to his own paper’s anti-Bush bias. But his column this morning, while being typically polite, essentially argues that the Times’ recent poll, showing Bush’s poll ratings in a slump, is unsupported by other polls, namely the more-accurate Zogby and Gallup. Safire doesn’t go on to say that the questions posed by that poll were almost ludicrously loaded toward liberal prejudices – or that the blanket coverage of the poll, including an editorial, suggested more than truth-finding was behind the endeavor. Nothing wrong with that, of course – as long as the Times is happy to be seen, as it increasingly is, as a brashly partisan paper, at least as partisan as, say, Fox News. (One example, by the way, of what’s left of the Times’ good old-fashioned reporting and analysis was the extremely good cover-piece in the Times Magazine yesterday on Fox News and Roger Ailes.)

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “It’s well past time for liberalism to be declared a religion and banned from public schools. Allowing Christians to be one of many afterschool groups induces hysteria not just because liberals hate religion. It’s because the public school is their temple. Children must be taught to love Big Brother, welcoming him to take over our schools, our bank accounts, our property, even our toilet bowls.” – Ann Coulter, National Review Online.

Is it okay for a pundit to rethink an issue? I’m used to being raked over the coals for minor inconsistencies (difficult to avoid when you write as much as I do). But I also think it’s important for writers to be able to change, alter, or nuance their stances if good arguments and facts come along. With that in mind, I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the Helms Amendment – and here’s where I’m at. When the Boy Scouts of America said they were a private group and therefore should be exempt from state anti-discrimination policies in the Dale case, I sided with the BSA. I did so despite the fact that I find their policy on gay scouts and scoutmasters to be stupid and immoral. My point was one of freedom of association – which I regard as close to sacred. One of the anti-Scout arguments in that case was that because the Scouts used public facilities so much, they should be regarded as a public entity and so subject to public anti-discrimination laws. I was glad that that argument lost because I thought it threatened the Scouts’ freedom to associate as a private body. So isn’t it a little odd that having argued that they were a private group, the Scouts are now claiming all the privileges of a public group – in access to public facilities and so on? I don’t see why they should have it both ways – private when they want to be left alone, public when they want public funds and access.

NEVERTHELESS: I’m troubled by some of the anti-Scout rhetoric being used. The Scouts, on the whole, are a terrific organization. Their anti-gay policy, I believe, is a stain on their honor – and also a direct slap in the face to the countless gay men and boys who have done so much for the group over the decades. But I don’t think it helps to call the BSA bigots or to equate them with the KKK and so on (see the Begala Award below). That doesn’t get us anywhere. I’m also aware that when a school rents or shares its property with private groups, it essentially defines the class-room/gym/whatever as a public space and is constrained as to the criteria by which it can exclude or include certain groups. Singling out the boy scouts for exclusion could be seen as discrimination in response to discrimination. So I see the point made by those siding with the Scouts and the fact that Nat Hentoff, whom I deeply respect, has now sided with them has given me more pause. Still, I’m against the Helms Amendment for a couple of (to my mind) decisive reasons. The first is because discriminating against gay scouts and scout-masters is simply indefensible. The only coherent rationale is that every gay scoutmaster is a potential pedophile, an argument I find repulsive and wrong. Taken to its logical conclusion, it would mean no same-sex guardianship of boys or girls in any even vaguely intimate circumstances – a rule that would destroy much good mentorship and volunteerism in the Scouts and everywhere else. And that doesn’t even deal with the issue of discriminating against openly gay scouts themselves. I know some don’t agree with the notion that this is a profound piece of discrimination. But if the BSA suddenly decided to exclude black scouts or Jewish scoutmasters, do you think we’d be having this discussion? Sorry, but I believe these categories, though not identical, are morally equivalent. Secondly, I loathe the idea of Washington micro-managing local schools. This is a principle that is deeply weakened if you apply it selectively – as some conservatives want to do. Sue me for being a consistent conservative with regard to local control. So I guess I haven’t changed my mind completely – but I’m grateful for all the emails that have helped me think this through more carefully.

LIBERALISM A LA MODE: Kinsley gets the Patients’ Bill of Rights hooey just about right, methinks. All of which makes Mike mildly happy and me mildly depressed. Well, at least it isn’t HillaryCare.

BEGALA AWARD: “Most schools have zero obligation to cater to bigoted otherwise intolerant groups. This is the school’s choice. No KKK meetings, no Mormon brainwashing seminars, no creepy Promise Keepers rallies, no showings of German snuff films in the school cafeteria, no homophobic Scout troop meetings. Simple. So here comes Jesse Helms (extreme R, N.C.) and his horde o’ white wheezing chest-thumpin’ GOP hunks, oozing his viscid North Carolina malevolence across the nation as he spearheads a nasty little education initiative (tacked onto the larger education reform bill) that effectively bars government funds from schools that have barred the homophobic Scouts from using their facilities due to their anti-gay stance.” – Mark Morford, The San Francisco Chronicle. Thanks to Wall Street Journal Online for pointing this one out.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD: “Other critics [of the BSA], as we’ve noted – including some usually thoughtful observers – have dressed up their anti-Scout efforts in old-style segregationist code words (“local control” and the like).” – Wall Street Journal, Best of the Web Today. C’mon guys. “Local control” code words for segregationism? Would you say the same about Bush’s Education Bill? Wait till that one comes back to haunt you.

ABERZOMBIE AND KITSCH: Sorry about that headline. I forgot to mention that the punch-line of the A&F boycott is that it is endorsed by the usual religious right groups AND the National Organization for Women. Sometimes, Puritanism’s two wings join up for a single campaign. As to the propriety of A&F, I take the point that children should not be exposed to this. But I don’t see it as any less reprehensible than a Britney Spears video, Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit issue or a Victoria’s Secret catalogue – the secret pleasure of many a teenage boy. The difference is that A&F is sexually ambiguous – the group shots imply an acceptance of same-sex attraction, in a way that very few other catalogues do. That’s why it’s famous in the gay community. It’s also why – reading between the lines – it’s being singled out for condemnation. I just wish the opponents would be more intellectually honest and admit it.

I hate to do this but there’s always Barbra. For John Derbyshire, there’s always the Nation. For Mike Kelly, there’s Roger Clinton. For myself, hard to beat the 700 Club or anything by gazillionare socialist Katrina vanden Heuvel. For lefties of a certain age, there’s also always Nixon. A reader sent in the following extract from a wonderful Village Voice column which appeared after Nixon’s death. It’s by Tom Carson, and it’s about as definitive a statement of hathos as any. Alas, it’s not on the web, but here’s an extract: “How wrong [Nixon] was and still is. We’ll never get tired of kicking him around. Oh, how we hated him. New Frontier parents and their New Left kids can agree; no one was ever hated with the zest we brought to hating Nixon. Joe McCarthy aroused too much fear for hate to gain ascendancy; Ronald Reagan mostly inspired an ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ dread that one day we’d relax our vigilance and end up liking him, as lulled as everybody else. But hating Nixon was lovely. You felt good about life when you hated him. There are still millions of people in their 40s and older whose political self-esteem is founded on their hatred of Nixon. (I hated him first. Well, I hated him more.)”

A reader remembers a classic demonstration of hathos from a Seinfeld episode called “The Letter.” In it, two people are looking at a portrait of Kramer. (Cross-cutting to other scenes has been cut.)
“(Nina’s studio. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong are admiring Nina’s “Kramer.”)
MRS. A.: I sense great vulnerability. A land child crying out for love, an innocent orphan in the post-modern world.
MR. A.: I see a parasite.
MRS. A.: A sexually-depraved miscreant, who is seeking to gratify only his most basic and immediate urges. . .
MRS. A. : He is struggled, he is man-struggled. He lifts my spirit!
MR. A.: He is a loathsome, offensive brute, yet I can’t look away. . .
MRS. A.: He transcends time and space.
MR. A.: He sickens me.
MRS. A.: I love it.
MR. A.: Me too.”

STOP ABERCROMBIE NOW!: Well, we’ve had “Stop Dr. Laura.” Why not “Stop Abercrombie and Fitch?” Corinne Wood, lieutenant governor of Illinois was so shocked by the catalogue that brought William F. Buckley to an eloquent fit of elevated hathos that she has started a campaign against the company. Check out her website about it. I can’t help thinking of Sheila Broslovsky, of South Park fame, who launched the war against the corrupting influence of Canada in the South Park movie, “Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” Classic Sheila lines: “It’s time that we say enough is enough. If you will join me in this renewed call for a boycott by signing our online petition, we can show A&F that we mean business.” Good to know that it isn’t just some gay activists who are intolerant hysterics. They have their counterparts in the heartland too.

CALIFORNIA DREAMING: P.J. O’Rourke has a smart and funny piece on how the California state government screwed up its energy policy for classically Californian reasons. And now they’re trying to blame Bush. I also liked software entrepreneur Peter Voss’s comments about true artificial intelligence in Reason magazine. He said he would know whether a system was super-intelligent when “it is strong enough to educate California politicians about the laws of supply and demand … [although] there probably is no intelligence that will be that strong.”

HIV INFECTION RATE DOWN – CDC: Remember those hysterical headlines only recently about an “explosion” of HIV infections among gay blacks and young gay men in general? (Check out my recent dissection of the data, an article the CDC hasn’t rebutted or even responded to yet.) Last week along comes the CDC’s annual report on HIV infections at public HIV-testing sites. Here’s the full report. The famous recent study included a total of around 2,500 people. This study includes data from over 2 million people tested in 1997 and over 2 million in 1998. Here’s the bottom line: “The number of HIV-positive test results peaked at 57,879 in 1991 and decreased to 30,473 in 1998. The percentage of overall HIV-positive test results declined from 3.8% in 1990 to 1.3% in 1998.” That 1.3 percent is the lowest recorded. Now check out the more solid AIDS deaths numbers. The cumulative number in June 2000 was 16,292. For June 2001, it was 15,380. More declines. Are there any indications in the study of a leap in infections? Well, you could look at other STDs, which facilitate HIV transmission. From 2000 to 2001, gonorrhea cases dropped from around 150,000 to 125,000. Syphilis cases dropped from 2,800 to 2,300. What about racial breakdown? The percentage of blacks in 1997 who turned out to be HIV-positive was 2.3 percent (with a sample size of over 700,000). In 1998, the percentage dropped to 2 percent (sample size close to 800,000). Now, these numbers may not reflect the real population. Many people who are infected do not seek testing or treatment. It’s possible that a leap in infections is occurring even though these numbers are reassuring. But the trend in these numbers is pretty clear. And the sample size is exponentially larger than the tiny study that made headlines in the New York Times and Washington Post. So where were the stories on this huge study showing HIV infection rates still falling? They went to that place where all non-p.c. news goes: the trash.

Several readers have pointed out that the inimitable Alex Heard, a contributor to loads of magazines and writer of several books, coined the term “hathos.” He was kind enough to email me this morning. Here’s his definition: “I first used hathos in The New Republic back in 1985 or so, writing about the Rat Pack inaugural — featuring Frank Sinatra telling the media “You’re all dead.” The never-credited co-coiner of the word is a friend of mine named SCOTT RICHARDSON, who worked as a press aide for Bob Dole at the time. We were sitting around cringing about an entertainment-world travesty, started playing with “pathos” and “hate” … and voila! We argue bloodlessly about who actually thought of the word; given my track record on ideas, it was probably him. The word formally means: “The pleasurable sense of loathing — or, the loathing sense of pleasure — aroused by the ‘work’ of schlock celebrities.” But you’re right to assume that hathos extends beyond entah-tainment to journalism. Oh, yes! Ellen Goodman’s annual meditation-on-time column from Casco Bay, Maine, is a classic example of “print hathos.”” That gives me an idea. Let’s set up a HATHOS WATCH. If you come across an example of print hathos, or indeed anything else clearly hathetic, would you send it to me?