CINCINNATI CALLING

Just came back from the heartland where I spent a day at Xavier University, a terrific private Jesuit school. I was there to talk about how schools like this one can try to minister to their gay and lesbian students. Jesuits have always tried to combine their educational mission with social justice, and so it’s only fitting, I think, they should be trying to pioneer a conversation on this difficult topic. I’ve also been lucky enough to talk about this subject at Notre Dame, Boston College, Marquette University, and Georgetown – and I’ve left all of them feeling immense hope for the Church’s mission for its gay members. For those who think these issues shouldn’t be discussed in a Catholic context, I can only refer to the Holy See’s official position (from a 1986 letter from the Vatican) that “the phenomenon of homosexuality, complex as it is and with its many consequences for society and ecclesial life, is a proper focus for the Church’s pastoral care. It thus requires of her ministers attentive study, active concern and honest, theologically well-balanced counsel.” That was the spirit of the meeting – one in which one could feel the ground shifting under our feet. Xavier now has a student-faculty group called the Xavier Alliance, a gay-straight social group, pioneered by the kids. Among the most impressive is the founder of the group, and his partner, who joined me for dinner later. Here’s a junior, 21 years old, openly gay, intelligent, brave, and Catholic. His boyfriend – they’ve been together monogamously for three years (with a brief hiatus for four months) – is 26. Their love for one another is palpable just being around them. It’s at moments like this that I realize the silliness of my somehow being a role model for them. In fact, they are a role model for me – the first gay generation to overcome their early pain soon enough to have a full and love-filled life. That’s why some of us are doing what we’re doing. We’re doing it for the kids who are only now showing us how to live – and the generations yet to come who will startle us even more.

TRUTH PATROL I

“[Kerrey] said his squad was fired upon at night, that it returned fire and that children and women died. At the same time, he conceded that their bodies were found grouped together in the middle of the tiny village of Thanh Phong in a manner suggestive of an execution… Asked if the grouping of the bodies contradicted his account of a firefight with an enemy force, Kerrey, a former candidate for the 1992 presidential nomination, nodded. “I can’t explain,” he said. “I do not have an explanation for that.”” – The Washington Post. Do we really need to know anything more?

HIMSELF: The extraordinary ordinariness of George W. Bush. See the new TRB, posted opposite.

TRUTH PATROL II: “It’s not the drug cocktails that are going to enable us to overcome this major, major social problem,” says Dr. Fred Sai, Ghana’s top AIDS expert. “It can only be done by education, preventive health measures and creating better living standards. I am afraid that the big U.N. conference on AIDS in June is going to get hijacked by this clamor for drugs, drugs, drugs, when the answer is prevention and building better societies.” – from Tom Friedman’s excellent column on Africa’s AIDS crisis, the first piece of common sense on the subject yet to appear in that increasingly ideological newspaper.

BEGALA AWARD WINNER: This week it goes to the editorial board of the New York Times for the following ludicrous sentence about the Bob Kerrey scandal: “It is a story that – with its conflicting evidence, undeniable carnage and tragic aftermath – sums up the American experience in Vietnam and the madness of a war that then, as now, seemed to lack any rationale except the wrecking of as many lives as possible on both sides.” As Mickey Kaus pointed out, even opponents of the Vietnam War might concede that those who favored it were not simply seeking “to wreck as many lives as possible.” The regime that accomplished that was the Hanoi dictatorship that prevailed. Ask the boat-people.

AN UNUSUALLY GOOD SPINNER

Check out this revealing piece on Inside.com (while it still exists). Bob Kerrey apparently called two old journalistic friends of his, Dennis Farney of the Wall Street Journal and David Kotok of the Omaha World-Herald, to get ahead of the New York Times story about his alleged war-crime. He hadn’t talked to them in years, but they had accompanied him on one of those trips down memory lane to Vietnam a few years back. The more I read about Kerrey’s spin-operation, the tackier it seems. (It worked, of course. Both Farney and Kotok cite only Kerrey’s recollections.) I’m also a little surprised at how many conservative outlets have reflexively backed Kerrey. The Journal even tried to smear reporter Gregory Vistica as a lefty, as if that in itself debunks the testimony of Gerhard Klann. John McCain writes a moving defense of Kerrey in today’s Journal, but he doesn’t address the main accusation against him, in fact, he comes close to assuming it’s true. (Doesn’t the fact that Newsweek killed Vistica’s story shore up his conservative credentials?) The truth is that plenty of good soldiers served in Vietnam, a war I consider just and defensible, without committing war-crimes. Defending Kerrey as somehow representative of all of them is a disservice to many who served without such atrocities. And plenty of good soldiers, reflecting on a terrible ordeal in their past, do not try to spin the story years later to their own personal advantage. Of course, as Mickey Kaus has observed, Kerrey’s victims can’t spin anything. Except in their graves.

PEELING THE SHRIMP: Can Kinsley get any funnier? Can his targets get any dumber?

FEASTING WITH PANTHERS: This’ll give Tina Rosenberg and Barney Frank a headache. Had a pleasant social evening at the Republican Unity Coalition’s reception for the new AIDS honcho, Scott Evertz. Lots of booze, cute guys, and, best of all, pharmaceutical company reps. Can you imagine the Democrats inviting the people who actually create the AIDS drugs to a reception of this kind? Gore would have appointed a hack who would have done nothing but hound them. Then on to dinner with more drug company reps. There’s a war on, after all – a war against the innovation and enterprise that saves lives – that will prompt even me to pass up an evening passed out with the beagle in favor of discussions about fusion inhibitors. These people need solidarity against the socialists at the New York Times. Still, the omens are not good. One of the things you hear from many drug company officials and researchers is how they are slowly pulling out of HIV research. Why? The “activists” who demand new drugs all the time at lower and lower prices have finally worked the researchers’ and investors’ last nerves. There’s more money in other diseases with far less hassle. I can’t really blame them but it’s chilling just the same. Good on yer, Tina. Eventually, you’ll have reduced the price of every anti-HIV drug to a pittance – only to find that none of them work any more. The next generation of meds? Oh, sorry, there isn’t one.

REALITY CHECK I

Two wonderful emails that can’t wait for our email section. The first is about internment, the solution to the treacherous immigrants John Derbyshire sees all around him (not to speak of allegedly treacherous African-Americans). It speaks of what internment of American citizens simply because of their racial or ethnic identity or origin actually means: “My grandparents were interned during WWII at the famous camp in Manzanar, CA, along with my father and his two siblings. I mostly had to research it myself through books, and found out the conditions in those camps were nothing close to comfortable as Mr. Derbyshire seems to think. Such hardships, however, eventually fade in the memory. I would imagine that the wound that never quite healed for my grandparents, esp. my grandfather who was born in this country and educated K through 12 right here in the Los Angeles school system, is the betrayal. It’s hearing all about freedom and the American dream all your growing up years and believing it’s always going to be true for you too, then a war comes along and suddenly the rules of the game have all been changed. Now at age 30 you and your family can be yanked out of your home with only 10 days’ notice from the government and bussed off without knowing where you’re headed or when you’ll return, allowed to take with you only what you can carry on your back. Then, when you do return 2 1/2 years later, whatever of your possessions you weren’t able to sell off at dirt cheap prices before your hurried departure (the neighbors all knew you were being sent away and could bargain down the prices as far as they wanted) was looted from your property, and you have to start your life all over again. Yeah, I’d say that kind of experience is a pretty serious violation of one’s civil rights.” Amen. I’m no p.c. thought-policeman, and I have no objections to talking about the possibility of internment, but to glibly propose it for many ethnic groups in this day and age seems to me to be a hideous form of prejudice and an attack on the possibility of non-racial American citizenship itself.

REALITY CHECK II: An email from an Orthodox priest who responded to my column on Timothy McVeigh and the importance of witnessing death to fully understand it. “I’ve been with a lot of people who died. I first had the experience – more of it than I could handle, actually – as a young medic during the Vietnam war. Then, the proximity to death made me feel “marked” somehow. People sometimes confessed things to me then, as if they made me a priest before I was one or wanted to be one. As a priest as well I’ve been with people many times as they died. It just happened again tonight. I think you captured the unexpectedly banal edge of the experience very well. What always affects me are the FLUIDS. Holding somebody as they expire, you are drenched. The first thing I do when I return home is go down the basement, throw all those black rags in the washing machine, and rush up the stairs, naked, to shower. It feels like a deliverance, however temporary.”

THE “COUP” CONTINUES

At first, the partisans who refused (and still refuse) to concede that George W. Bush won the last election urged the Senate to deny Bush his cabinet appointees. Now they’re arguing for a complete Senate bloc on any court appointments. The two-prong offensive from liberal Cass Sunstein in the New York Times and leftist Bruce Ackerman in the Los Angeles Times is too fortuitous to be accidental. Ackerman is the most offensive. In an article attacking alleged Court-packing, he turns to FDR, the Court-packer of all time, as an authority! Then there’s this Begala-ism: “The current judicial majority has already put the nation on notice of its revolutionary agenda, striking down the Violence Against Women Act and seriously weakening the Americans With Disabilities Act. Once rejuvenated, the majority can be expected to thwart efforts to secure genuine equality for all Americans, create new constitutional limits on environmental protection and impose the religious right’s fundamentalist morality on just about everyone.” It’s now “revolutionary” to scrutinize an act that clearly takes us even further down the path (already paved by hate-crime laws) toward a balkanized justice system and an act that places unprecedented demands on private employers, builders and entrepreneurs. It’s amazing how simply looking at laws passed very recently that curtail very real liberties is now to be placed beyond the pale of the Supreme Court. Who’s the real revolutionary here?

OOPS: For a few hours, I referred to Bob Kerrey as John Kerrey. Happens sometimes when you’re writing at 2am, with no copy-editors. Sorry.

KERREY’S KILLING

What are we to make of the news that Bob Kerrey killed at least 13 unarmed civilians in a mission in Vietnam three decades ago? Reading the New York Times Magazine article about it, I guess I am first grateful that we now know. I am in no position to judge such a decision and wouldn’t try to. And I’m in no position to know exactly what happened. But my gut tells me, after reading the story, that the testimony of Gerhard Klann, and, more importantly, several Vietnamese witnesses, may have more truth to it than Kerrey’s account of a completely accidental massacre. Klann argues that the killing was a deliberate massacre of civilians to protect the troop’s retreat on a moonless night in the Vietnam jungle. The reason for my leaning toward believing Klann is that Kerrey has changed his story several times in ways that are not plausible as simply faulty memory (he never volunteered any information until now, he described the incident first as an accident, then as a “firefight”); that he has tried to get ahead of the publication by presenting his side of things in advance (why would someone go to such lengths to spin something in which he was just guilty of a horrible mistake?); and that he has clearly been haunted by this incident for a very long time (in a recent speech about the subject he commented cryptically about discussing war-crimes issues with an expert a week ago: “It’s the first time I had read the rules of war. I certainly wasn’t trained in them.” But a simple accident is not against the rules of war. Conscious killing of civilians, including women and children, is.) I’m also struck by Kerrey’s decision to omit his Bronze Star, given to him after the incident, from his formal biography. This is consistent with his own account of a harrowing accident; but it makes more sense if Klann and the Vietnamese witnesses are telling the truth. I don’t know. Only the people there know. And many in his squad back Kerrey up. One thing is clear, though. Kerrey was right to decide against running for president after he first heard of this investigation; and he would be crazy to do so in the future. If there is any credibility to the argument that Kerrey committed a war-crime, he cannot be President of the United States. Meanwhile, somber congratulations are due to Adam Moss of the Times Magazine (my editor and friend) for publishing such a thorough, important and gripping piece. I’m still reeling from it as I write.

DAN FORBES WAS RIGHT: President Bush is set to appoint an unreconstructed drug warrior as the new federal drug dictator. After many years of complete failure in the “war on drugs,” Washington is set to ramp up exactly the failed policies of stigmatization, unequal and racially unjust sentencing, and a virtual military invasion of Central and Latin American countries for the crime of providing goods large numbers of Americans are still quite eager to buy. Watch for even more citizens to be piled into over-crowded jails (we have half a million drug-offenders now under lock and key), and the same lugubrious pomposity, pioneered by Bill Bennett, to be foisted on the country from D.C. Watch as drugs more benign than alcohol, like marijuana, are equated with truly dangerous substances like crack cocaine. Watch for HIV to spread more rapidly through minority populations because Walters adamantly opposes needle exchange programs. Watch as more precious taxpayers’ dollars are thrown down the toilet of prohibition. I thought Barry McCaffrey was bad enough. But even he finds Walters desire to cut back even the miserly resources we currently spend on treatment as “shocking.” The only relief is that Walters’ desire for president Bush to use the bully pulpit to excoriate recreational drug-use will surely not amount to much. How on earth can a man who has yet to be candid about his own past drug-use see fit to lecture the rest of the country on the subject?

ON THE OTHER HAND: There are signs that Attorney-General John Ashcroft may be maneuvering to drop the insane federal lawsuit against tobacco-manufacturers. Insane because a) no-one now smoking could conceivably be unaware of the risks when they started; b) by dying younger than most people, smokers actually save our society resources rather than elevating health-care costs; and c) who needs to give trial lawyers even more money to corrupt the Democrats? Now if only Ashcroft could extend his apparent tolerance of nicotine to marijuana …

ZERO TOLERANCE WATCH

The Wall Street Journal Online has a splendid series of webnotes tracking stupid zero-tolerance efforts against normal school-kid shenanigans across the country, like playing with toy guns and the crime of playing while male. But they should add a new item from their own news pages. The Journal reports today (sorry, there’s no free link) that the Bush administration has decided to rigorously enforce a provision in a 1998 education spending authorization bill that denies any federal education aid for anyone with a prior drug conviction. Mere possession of tiny amounts of weed will bar you from any federal aid for college. Now, you can commit any other sort of crime and still qualify. You can even murder someone and still get some federal aid in prison for rehabilitative education. But recreational drug use? Nuh-uh. This strikes me as particularly stupid even if you like the ‘war on drugs,’ since it actually prevents rehabilitation. Former drug-users who want to remake their lives are barred from federal help. Is this a good signal? Even the original sponsor of the provision wants it reversed. “The last thing I want to do is reach back and punish” applicants with prior records, Rep. Mark Souder told the Journal. “That’s like saying, ‘Once a criminal, always a criminal.'” Amen. But does the former drug-user who is now president of the United States care about this? Or is he the only one to get federal help in his rehabilitation?

CORRECTIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS DEPT: The great thing about the web is that your thinking can change or alter and it’s ok to admit this. I’m especially grateful to all of you who keep telling me I’m full of it by email. Every now and then, you’re even right. Three small things: I think it’s pretty clear that grade inflation, while a long-term phenomenon, went into warp drive in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and although affirmative action might have something to do with it, the Vietnam War is almost certainly the biggest factor. No professor wanted to flunk students into the draft. Similarly, a small clarification on gay pride events. I shouldn’t have been so dismissive. There’s a legitimate reason for gays, especially in beleaguered towns and cities, to want to march in public – to demonstrate pride, freedom, self-respect. What concerns me is that the exhibitionism inherent in any march focused on sexual orientation tends to make what should be private public and do more harm than good. I’d defend any drag queen or leather-dyke marching down the high street, but to turn around and then ask civil protection on the grounds of our interchangeability with straights is surely a confused message. Mercifully, many such parades are morphing into less exhibitionist displays, featuring church groups, parents’ groups, charity organizations and the like. And some more generic carnival-type parades, in which sexual exhibitionism, gay and straight, is celebrated, have taken over some of the functions of the old gay pride marches. So things are improving. The point is that cultural celebration and political advocacy are two separate enterprises. And mixing them may do harm to both. One last point. My loose phrasing of the term “anti-Semitic Gospels” was unfortunate. There’s little doubt that some of the Gospel writers were keen to distinguish Christians from other Jews in the battle for legitimacy in the Roman empire. But this effort was later interpreted for more curdely anti-Semitic ends. To speak of anti-Semitism in terms of the earliest Christian church is an anachronism. I thought I was being cute. I was, in fact, being careless.

TAKING BUSH SERIOUSLY

I just read the Washington Post interview with the president. Go read it. Tell me when you’ve read it if you still think, as many of you tell me in emails, that he’s a bumbling fool who doesn’t have a clue what’s really going on in his administration. I was also gratified to see that he backed my own interpretation of his absence in Washington State for the return of Hainan detainees and his decision not to speak out on the Cincinnati riots. “I’m a person that believes – I believe in sharing credit, and I do not believe in stepping on somebody else’s story,” Bush says. “I believe if somebody is in charge of the situation and is doing a fine job, that person ought to deserve the credit. And your question is more than just, obviously, race relations. It’s how I’m going to handle myself for the next four years in terms of when I show up. And the answer’s going to be if I think it’s appropriate. And I may think it’s less appropriate than other presidents, frankly. It’s the same question that came up about why if I’m so strong on the military, why didn’t I show up when the troops came back from China. You can make the same exact connection between the issue and my appearance.” Two other points: he doesn’t back down in drilling in the ANWR and he makes a lot of sense. Ditto on Kyoto. There’s also a refreshing candor about his remarks and a clear confidence in his own judgment. I hope I’ve not been completely suckered – and I may be basking in post-Clinton euphoria – but this guy is impressive. Impressive in his delegation, in his humor, in his grasp of what he is trying to do. So sue me for saying so. At the eve of his first hundred days, I’m glad I endorsed him – and gladder still he’s president.

GAY PRIDE AND GAY RIGHTS: A few of us have taken some hits for urging the end of gay pride parades. They’re dated, pointless and often hugely embarrassing. But no-one has yet put the case better than the Onion. Check it out.