The Dish

Several of you are highly skeptical that that memo surfaced by chance:

Not to accuse Our Hero of sly tricks, but this sounds to me like a warning shot to the Party: trouble ahead–you super-delegates better start thinking now about how to avoid the incredibly damaging floor fight the Clintons will engineer to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations when this comes down to the Convention–and it will come down to the Convention.

One way to avoid Armageddon–probably the only way–is to somehow swing the uncommitted super-delegates (about 50% of the total) behind the leading candidate–and, Obama is saying, "That will be me. I’ll be up 30 delegates, up in states, up in money, up in mo, and up in the polls over McCain. So start planning now–because I will take this down to the Convention and through any floor fight if necessary. You don’t want that drama."

Accident or not–that’s the message.

What McCain’s victory might mean for Obama.

So good it’s illegal:

Not quite Mexican and not quite American, the bacon-wrapped hot dog, like the city that so fervently embraces it, has a curious romance about it. You can smell one from blocks away. The grilled bacon, twisted around a wiener, is topped with grilled onions and a mountaintop of diced tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Then one whole grilled green poblano chile is plopped impossibly on top. You take a bite and think, This is so good, no wonder it’s illegal!

Not good to have their confidence about the imminent contests broadcast to the world.

Re-reading Romney’s speech, that is how he describes a vote for the Democrats. He has become the vessel for the furthest of the Dolchstoss right. It’s a very sad denoument, despite some parts of his speech with which I fully agreed. More later …

New data suggests that the male competitive edge may be primarily culturally-based:

Our experimental results reveal interesting differences in competitiveness: in the patriarchal society women are less competitive than men, a result consistent with student data drawn from Western cultures. Yet, this result reverses in the matrilineal society, where we find that women are more competitive than men. Perhaps surprisingly, Khasi women are even slightly more competitive than Maasai men, but this difference is not statistically significant at conventional levels under any of our formal statistical tests.

If you missed Jon Stewart’s interview with Project Runway’s Tim Gunn last night, check it out. Mr Gunn really is a breakthrough cultural figure in my book. He’s drily hilarious, extremely smart, courteous beyond measure, and … civil and humane. Yes, we only catch glimpses of him on Project Runway. I didn’t care for his own new series (less is more when you are watching a minimalist of manners). But his character really shines through the cracks of reality television. 

It is thrilling to have openly gay men of such erudition and accomplishment and manners in the public square. Neither brandishing their sexual orientation nor hiding it, a handful of mature adult men are forging a new understanding of how integral gay people are to the broader society. The men who come to mind – Tim Gunn, Tim Gill, Peter Gomes, Michael Cunningham, David Geffen, Barney Frank, Alan Ball, Alan Bennett, among many others – represent to me, at least, role models for gay men who are at ease with social responsibility and adult maturity. They inspire me – and many others. None of them has in any way denied his sexual orientation, and yet all have integrated it into something much broader and bigger and complicated. This is not the first time that gay men have achieved these cultural and social heights, of course. Far from it. But it is the first time a critical mass have done so openly and proudly and increasingly without any affect. For men in their 50s or older, this was an achievement. They survived a plague among their peers, and thrived. We owe them.

Michael Moore says his Catholicism forbids his voting for Senator Clinton in the primaries.