Treat Or Treat?
Lucy doesn't like to leave anything to chance.
Bush Was Too Busy Nation-Building
"We thought Bush was going to produce Bin Laden, but Al Jazeera produced Bin Laden."
--New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on Real Time With Bill Maher
Sullivan Travels
Andrew Sullivan makes his endorsement.
A Debutante Awaiting Her Costume
A dog-u-tante, that is, pre-Halloween.
Testicle Toss Anyone?
A "secondary search" by the TSA of a San Diego woman turned out to be a demand to cop a feel. A government-approved demand, to boot. Jeff Ristine writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune that the TSA is now requiring their employees to feel beneath, between, and above women's breasts:
Now Ava Kingsford wants other women to know just how uncomfortable the "secondary screening" process can become.Kingsford, 36, was traveling back to San Diego from Denver International Airport with her 3-month-old son when she was flagged for a pat-down search, possibly because of an expired driver's license.
She took the procedure in stride until the female Transportation Security Administration screener announced, "I'm going to feel your breasts now."
Kingsford, wearing a snug-fitting tank top, objected to what she considered an unduly invasive search. More security agents arrived, warned her that she couldn't board her flight without submitting to the final step of the search, and the situation escalated.
"I was crying; I was shaking," she said. And just after she tugged down the top of her shirt just a bit to show that she wasn't hiding anything, the agents told her she wasn't going anywhere. She ended up renting a car for a two-day drive home.
"It was unbelievable," Kingsford said. "I think there is a line they cannot cross."
But Transportation Security Administration officials say their screeners did nothing wrong and that Kingsford's experience reflects a brutal new reality in passenger checkpoint screening.
The agency announced the extra security measures Sept. 16, just a few weeks after two Russian jetliners exploded in midair, killing all aboard. Authorities believe two women smuggled explosives onto the aircraft, possibly in "torso packs" underneath their clothing.
The last thing I want is some big, ugly stranger at the airport grabbing my boobs. Gross! That said, I have less of a problem flashing them some tit in the name of national security. Look, don't touch, and please slip your dollar bill under my bra strap when you're done.
Hmmm...what's next? Body cavity search? They close down the dingy sex dens in downtown Manhattan and other urban areas across the country -- and reopen them in bright, fluorescent light at the airports? What will your response be when they ask to grab your balls (and surely they will, in the name of sexual fairness in bomb searches), or stick a flashlight "where the sun don't shine"?
(boob feel-up link via Reason's blog)
This Is A Fear Election
In an interview with the CBC's Carol Off, Bill Maher talks about what Americans will be voting for in the coming election:
This is an election that has been framed along the lines of ń elect this guy or you'll die. Don't, don't vote for the wrong guy. Or you'll be dead. Johnny Jihad will drive a car bomb into your house if you elect a Democrat. So, I think the last polls showed that about 42 per cent of Americans still think that Saddam Hussein was directly involved with the attack on 9/11. You know, we're bad enough on domestic issues, ignorance-wise. When it comes to foreign affairs, I mean, forget it. But you know, that's the only thing Bush can run on. His domestic policy is praising Jesus and cutting Paris Hilton's taxes. So he's got to run on you know, be afraid, be very afraid.
(via Dullard)
Don't Think Of It As An Election
Think of it as an I.Q. test. And guess which idiots, uh, voters, still believe WMD were found in Iraq...
(via Metafilter)
Why Do Fundamentalist Nutbags Drive Huge SUVs?
Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, was the first to let slip the religious fanatics' justification for anti-environmentalism, writes Glenn Scherer, in Grist magazine:
(He) told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan's interior secretary was; you're unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views. But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.
We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress.
Yes, in the 21st Century, a bunch of people who are guided by some seriously nutty shit are making enormously important decisions about our lives and what becomes of the planet. Bill Maher sums up the mess we're in:
"It's like half this country wants to guide our ship of state by compass -- a compass, something that works by science and rationality, and empirical wisdom," quipped comedian Bill Maher on Larry King Live. "And half this country wants to kill a chicken and read the entrails like they used to do in the old Roman Empire."
What's a member of the non-chicken-entrail-reading rational minority to do? Scherer has a suggestion:
In the past, it was not deemed politically correct to ask probing questions about a lawmaker's intimate religious beliefs. But when those beliefs play a crucial role in shaping public policy, it becomes necessary for the people to know and understand them. It sounds startling, but the great unasked questions that need to be posed to the 231 U.S. legislators backed by the Christian right, and to President Bush himself, are not the kind of softballs about faith lobbed at the candidates during the recent presidential debates. They are, instead, tough, specific inquiries about the details of that faith: Do you believe we are in the End Time? Are the governmental policies you support based on your faith in the imminent Second Coming of Christ? It's not an exaggeration to say that the fate of our planet depends on our asking these questions, and on our ability to reshape environmental strategy in light of the answers.
(via Metafilter)
Still Buff At 90
Read about Jack LaLanne's nutritional principles, from a very entertaining interview by Mark Edward Harris, in LA Times Magazine. The still-buff, pint-sized elder-hottie LaLanne gave up flour and sugar more than 70 years ago:
I'm a big believer in, if man makes it, don't eat itócakes, pies, ice cream, fries, soda pop, that's what's killing people. Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a doughnut? You've got to eat more natural foods in their natural state. And you've got to take supplements. Your canned stuff, your fried stuff, most of your vegetables are picked green, then stored. Most people bring them home, boil the stuff and put the water down the drain. They end up with a healthy drain.
His complaint about most old people? They sit around and overeat:
The only thing they think about is, "Ah, the good ol' days." The good old days are this second. Seize the moment.
You go, Jack!
Ovitz' Whiny Tale Of Woe
Read Nikki Finke's hilarious observations of Mike Ovitz' testimony -- "verging perilously close to acute paranoia and utter mendacity" -- in the lawsuit brought by Disney shareholders about his hiring and firing as Disney president:
They were all out to get him, every last one of them. All that was missing from his Captain Queeg mimicry was spittle about the strawberries.
Click on the link above for further details. Well, except if you'd like to hear about the shareholders' interests. Clearly of no concern to Mad Mike.
George Bush: The President Who Never Met A Bill He Didnít Like
ěGeorge W. Bush is a conservative in the same way Britney Spears is a virgin: only when it suits his marketing,î writes Quin Hillyer, a columnist for Alabamaís Mobile Register. Bush has yet to veto a single bill. Ever. He has all the hallmarks of being anything but a conservative. For example:
Within just the past few weeks, BushÖproposed a new policy on immigration that, whatever other bells and whistles it contains, amounts to yet another amnesty program that would reward those who already have broken the law to enter the United States. Even conservatives (myself included) who welcome some expansion of legal immigration are blanching at the thought of coddling illegal immigants.As with almost every other domestic initiative of this president, this proposal is aimed at buying off another constituent group -- in this case, Hispanics. For the steelworkers, there were protective tariffs against steel imports. For the farmers, a new boondoggle of subsidies and pork that killed the last vestiges of free-market reform of agriculture policy. For supply-siders, to the president's credit, there were tax cuts. For social issue folks, he nominated (but won't fight for) good would-be judges. For big businesses, all sorts of new corporate incentives time after time after time. For corn farmers (again), ethanol subsidies in a horrendously bloated energy bill (now tied up by filibuster) -- but unfortunately, without Arctic drilling.
Last month's second snub of conservative sensibilities is the Bush call for a return to the moon, and then a mission to Mars. Actually, putting a man on Mars is a wonderful idea and a worthy long-term project. But not if it can't be paid for while we're fighting terrorists on Planet Earth. Is there anything at all, pray tell, to which this president will say no? This second President Bush might be far better, on foreign policy and on taxes, than his father was. He's certainly better than any of the Democratic alternatives. But when it comes to other domestic concerns, he's positively Johnsonian and Nixonian: Politics first, and all fiscal concerns blithely ignored in a quest for re-election. As Richard Nixon once told his Cabinet, so too does George W. Bush choose to operate: Whenever in doubt, "Go spend some money."
Health Insurance The Car Insurance Way
While we're on the topic of paying one's own way: If you have children, and you aren't dirt poor, how about you pay for their education? The state can soak us all to pay for the poor. It's a must, actually, so we'll have an educated populace to sweep up whatever shards of our democracy remain after the Bushies get done with it. But...but...the "right" to have children shouldn't be based on having money! Sure it should. Same as the "right" to live in Bel Air. Ladies, if you can't afford a child, or another child, board up your womb until you can.
And please: Don't any of you parents out there bother trotting out that old, tired argument about how your spawn are going to pay for my Social Security. Number one, it's highly likely Social Security will be gutted before I see a dime of it. Number two, if that's your overindulged brat, a few entries below, in the toy Hummer, I'm sure he'll be too busy cold-cocking me and stealing my handbag.
We Can Export Democracy To Iraq...
Whether we can hold fair elections in our own country, however, is dubious, writes Andrew Gumbel in The Independent:
Last week saw the start of early voting in Florida and a clutch of other states, and with it came a plethora of problems. In three heavily populated counties - around Tampa, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale - the network connection used to verify voter identifications broke down on the first day, creating hours of delay. In Jacksonville, where poor ballot design in 2000 knocked out the votes of 27,000 poor, predominantly black, predominantly Democratic voters, the county elections supervisor chose the first day of polling to resign, citing ill health. He had come under fire for failing to make early voting available in the city's African-American neighbourhoods - something his interim successor is now going some way to remedy.Elsewhere, there were computer breakdowns during early voting in Memphis. Pre-election testing of electronic machines in Riverside County, California, and in Palm Beach County, Florida, led to multiple computer crashes. Elsewhere, machines have manifested problems handling basic addition - especially when asked to display instructions in a language other than English. Several county administrators have chosen simply to skip the non-English language part of the test.
In Nebraska, dead people were found to have applied for absentee ballots. In Ohio, a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was found to have offered crack cocaine to a known drug addict in exchange for completed voter registration forms, which he duly submitted in the names of Mary Poppins, Janet Jackson and Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious cannibal serial killer.
...In Florida, Secretary of State Glenda Hood has been repeatedly accused of doing the political bidding of the man who appointed her - Governor Jeb Bush, the President's brother. Her more recent exploits include directing county supervisors to throw out registration forms where applicants have signed a statement declaring they are US citizens but have forgotten to check a citizenry box elsewhere on the form. This, too, is seen as a vote-suppressing mechanism. It, too, is now in the courts.
Secretary Hood has also been waging a months-long campaign to ban what limited manual recounts the electronic voting machines permit. Her initial ruling was struck down by the courts, but now she has come up with a staggeringly devious rewrite. The state will now permit analysis of the computerised machines' internal audit logs in the event of a close race, she said, but if there is any discrepancy the county supervisors are to go with the original count. In other words: we will do recounts, but if the recounts change the outcome we will disregard them.
Secretary Hood's actions illuminate the real attraction of the electronic voting machines in the states where they have been introduced. They may work no better than the old punch-card machines - studies suggest they fail to record as many votes as their predecessors. In the absence of an independent paper trail, how- ever, all evidence of problems is hidden away in the binary code of an electronic black box and is, to all intents and purposes, invisible.
This raises intriguing and troubling questions about what a post-election contest might look like. One can reasonably anticipate - based on past experience - an avalanche of stories about voters turned away from polling stations, told they are on a felons list even if they have no criminal record, or kept waiting for hours because of technical glitches. No doubt people will tell some of those thousands of lawyers how they pressed the screen for one candidate, only to have the other's name light up.
The problem is, even if lawyers for the losing candidate are able to prove that the system failed, they will find it very difficult to talk specific numbers and demonstrate that enough votes were lost to alter the outcome.
How the courts will react to this hypothetical state of affairs is anybody's guess. They could accept the given election results, however flawed. They could allow the arguments to rage until December, when the electoral college is supposed to meet, or even into the new year, when an undecided election would be thrown into the House of Representatives.
Or they could be trumped, once again, by the Supreme Court. The most disconcerting possibility is that the highest court in the land could remove the electoral process from the voters altogether and turn it over to the state legislatures. Technically, they can do this under Article II of the Constitution, which offers no automatic right to vote. We know from the deliberations in 2000 that two, possibly five, of the nine justices have doubts whether the people should be the ultimate arbiters of presidential elections - a strict, literal reading of the Constitution that no modern Supreme Court countenanced before the current crop of ultra-conservatives. "After granting the franchise in the special context of Article II," the majority declared in its Bush vs Gore ruling, "[the state] can take back the power to appoint electors."
Were this scenario to play out it would leave the fate of many of the electoral battlegrounds in the hands of Republican-controlled state legislatures (in Florida and Ohio, for starters), who would promptly hand the election to George Bush. Talk about a nightmare scenario - which is why every elections official and every "small d" democrat in the land is praying it won't get that close.
Ý
Ayn Rand's Trash Can
(Just kidding. It was a present from Lena...to ME!)
"Creationism In A Lab Coat"
The primitive people are out in force in Ohio:
...140 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, 75 years after John Scopes taught natural selection to a biology class in Tennessee, and 15 years after the US Supreme Court ruled against a Louisiana law mandating equal time for creationism, the question of how to teach the theory of evolution was being reopened here in Ohio.
Big surprise, the "Intelligent Design" wingnuts say that biological life is so complex, there must be a god. Duh...because something is inexplicable to you doesn't mean you can drop god in as the explanation, totally without proof. I mean, why not Julie Andrews, Charlton Heston, Courtney Love, or Barney? And, guess what:
...Darwin's theories can account for complexity ... ID relies on misunderstandings of evolution and flimsy probability calculations, and ... it proposes no testable explanations.As the Ohio debate revealed, however, the Discovery Institute doesn't need the favor of the scientific establishment to prevail in the public arena. Over the past decade, Discovery has gained ground in schools, op-ed pages, talk radio, and congressional resolutions as a "legitimate" alternative to evolution. ID is playing a central role in biology curricula and textbook controversies around the country. The institute and its supporters have taken the "teach the controversy" message to Alabama, Arizona, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, and Texas.
The ID movement's rhetorical strategy - better to appear scientific than holy - has turned the evolution debate upside down. ID proponents quote Darwin, cite the Scopes monkey trial, talk of "scientific objectivity," then in the same breath declare that extraterrestrials might have designed life on Earth. It may seem counterintuitive, but the strategy is meticulously premeditated, and it's working as planned. The debate over Darwin is back, and coming to a 10th-grade biology class near you.
One more reason to avoid voting for George Bush or anybody who parrots the fundamentalist party line. I say this as somebody who finds John Kerry, at best, an unfortunate choice for president, but finds George Bush an extremely terrifying one.
Early Onset Asshole
Bush World
It's nice, even commendable, for a person to have a rich fantasy life...unless, of course, that person happens to bring it with him to work, where he's the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet. Bob Herbert takes Bush to task in The New York Times:
Does President Bush even tip his hat to reality as he goes breezing by?He often behaves as if he sees - or is in touch with - things that are inaccessible to those who are grounded in the reality most of us have come to know. For example, with more than 1,000 American troops and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians dead, many people see the ongoing war in Iraq as a disaster, if not a catastrophe. Mr. Bush sees freedom on the march.
Many thoughtful analysts see a fiscal disaster developing here at home, with the president's tax cuts being the primary contributor to the radical transformation of a $236 billion budget surplus into a $415 billion deficit. The president sees, incredibly, a need for still more tax cuts.
The United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The president responded by turning most of the nation's firepower on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. When Mr. Bush was asked by the journalist Bob Woodward if he had consulted with former President Bush about the decision to invade Iraq, the president replied: "He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to."
Last week the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said in a report:
"During the past year Iraq has become a major distraction from the global war on terrorism. Iraq has now become a convenient arena for jihad, which has helped Al Qaeda to recover from the setback it suffered as a result of the war in Afghanistan. With the growing phenomenon of suicide bombing, the U.S. presence in Iraq now demands more and more assets that might have otherwise been deployed against various dimensions of the global terrorist threat."
There are consequences, often powerful consequences, to turning one's back on reality. The president may believe that freedom's on the march, and that freedom is God's gift to every man and woman in the world, and perhaps even that he is the vessel through which that gift is transmitted. But when he is crafting policy decisions that put people by the hundreds of thousands into harm's way, he needs to rely on more than the perceived good wishes of the Almighty. He needs to submit those policy decisions to a good hard reality check.
Even Pat Robertson Is More Rational Than George Bush
Reportedly, when Robertson told Bush to prepare the nation for casualties, Bush replied, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."
No, none at all! Give or take a thousand...so far.
Of course, there is that chance Robertson is fibbing. Then again, he's a Bush fan, isn't he?
Brothel, Bath, & Beyond
Mary Cheney Is A Lesbian For A Living
She's what I call "professionally gay" -- employed as the gay and lesbian liason for Coors. In other words, her very job description centers around being out of the closet -- in the most public way. Frank Rich asks the right question:
So you have to wonder what motivated the Bush-Cheney brigade to go ballistic over Mr. Kerry's "outing" of Mary Cheney after it had ignored not just John Edwards's previous "outing" but also the earlier "outings" by Bush campaign allies like the Concerned Women for America and the Republican senatorial candidate Alan Keyes. Unlike the Democrats, who spoke respectfully of gay sexual orientation, these right-wing activists trashed the vice president's daughter for sowing anti-family values. But as Andrew Sullivan has pointed out, even when Mr. Keyes attacked Mary Cheney in August for practicing "selfish hedonism," the same Mrs. Cheney, who, "speaking as a mom," called Mr. Kerry "not a good man," spoke not at all.To understand what strange game is playing out here, you must go back to the equally close 2000 election. In the campaign postmortems, Karl Rove famously attributed his candidate's shortfall in the popular vote to four million "fundamentalists and evangelicals" in the Republican base who didn't turn up on Election Day. A common theory among Bush operatives had it that these no-shows had been alienated by the pre-election revelation of Mr. Bush's arrest for drunk driving years earlier.
The current Bush-Cheney campaign clearly believes that for these voters, Mary Cheney's sexuality could be a last-minute turnoff equivalent to Mr. Bush's D.U.I. history. When Rich Lowry of National Review said on Fox that "millions and millions of people" were not aware that Mary Cheney was gay until Mr. Kerry brought it up, it was clear just which four million he was talking about. Mr. Kerry, his critics all speculate, was deliberately seeking to depress voter turnout among Mr. Rove's M.I.A. religious conservatives by broadcasting Mary Cheney's sexuality to them for the first time.
What was most telling for me, in Lynne Cheney's claws-bared response to Kerry's remark, was the fact that she clearly thinks being gay is something to be ashamed of -- some dirty secret about her he was (supposedly) letting out of the bag. Or, is it simply that she's a sleazy political operator, doing her part to help Karl Rove bring in the fundamentalist fruitcake vote? Or both?
Too Bad There's No Oil In Sudan
Nicholas Kristof laments, in The New York Times, how little we're doing about the genocide in Sudan:
We in America could save kids like Abdelrahim and Muhammad. This wouldn't require troops, just a bit of gumption to declare a no-fly zone, to press our Western allies and nearby Arab and African states, to impose an arms embargo and other targeted sanctions, to push a meaningful U.N. resolution even at the risk of a Chinese veto, and to insist upon the deployment of a larger African force.Instead, President Bush's policy is to chide Sudan and send aid. That's much better than nothing and has led Sudan to kill fewer children and to kill more humanely: Sudan now mostly allows kids in Darfur like Abdelrahim to die of starvation, instead of heaving them onto bonfires. But fundamentally, U.S. policy seems to be to "manage" the genocide rather than to act decisively to stop it.
The lackadaisical international response has already permitted the deaths of about 100,000 people in Darfur, and up to 10,000 more are dying each month. We should look Abdelrahim and Muhammad in the eye and feel deeply ashamed.
Why I No Longer Live In New York City
From Craig's List, NY.
(via Metafilter)
Free Martha!
Harry Browne on why Martha was wrongfully convicted.
"The Show Is Nothing But Sex, Sex, Sex..."
Complains an American Family Assn. official. Good reason to watch Desperate Housewives, the Sunday night (8pm PST, on ABC) show whose advertisers all the fundamentalist groups are boycotting. Chances are, they're none-too-happy about the depiction of women living in suburban misery either.
Creative Science
The Bush Administration is tailoring science to meet their political goals, and scientists are speaking out -- including 48 Nobel laureates who signed a statement endorsing Kerry, writes Andrew C. Revkin in The New York Times:
Many career scientists and officials have expressed frustration and anger privately but were unwilling to be identified for fear of losing their jobs. But a few have stepped forward, including Dr. Hansen at NASA, who has been researching global warming and conveying its implications to Congress and the White House for two decades.Dr. Hansen, who was invited to brief the Bush cabinet twice on climate and whose work has been cited by Mr. Bush, said he had decided to speak publicly about the situation because he was convinced global warming posed a serious threat and that further delays in addressing it would add to the risks.
"It's something that I've been worrying about for months," he said, describing his decision. "If I don't do something now I'll regret it.
"Under the Clinton-Gore administration, you did have occasions when Al Gore knew the answer he wanted, and he got annoyed if you presented something that wasn't consistent with that," Dr. Hansen said. "I got a little fed up with him, but it was not institutionalized the way it is now."
Under the Bush administration, he said, "they're picking and choosing information according to the answer that they want to get, and they've appointed so many people who are just focused on this that they really are having an impact on the day-to-day flow of information."
Jagged Little Presidency
You probably know where George Bush stands on abortion. But do you know where he stands on birth control?
Creepy, Creepy Karl Rove
And his sleazy election tactics. From a story by Joshua Green in The Atlantic:
A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove's client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed upóabsent any trace of who was behind themóviciously attacking See and his family. "We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people," the staffer says. "You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags.' So I borrowed a buddy's car [and drove] down the middle of the street Ö I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I'd cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees." The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order "to create a backlash against the Democrat," as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. "They just beat you down to your knees," Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove's attacks. See won the race.Some of Rove's darker tactics cut even closer to the bone. One constant throughout his career is the prevalence of whisper campaigns against opponents. The 2000 primary campaign, for example, featured a widely disseminated rumor that John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, had betrayed his country under interrogation and been rendered mentally unfit for office.
In the Alabama judicial campaign, Green writes that Rove used one of his "signature tactics" against Mark Kennedy -- "(attacking) an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable":
Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information outóhe knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."
"Save The Republicans, Vote For Kerry"
From a letter to Andrew Sullvan, posted on his blog, "a classical conservative who feels completely abandoned in this campaign by the Republican platform" has a pretty good idea:
Have you ever thought a Kerry election might actually save the party from the Fundamentalist Idealism that plagues the current administration? I think a witty slogan on your site might be: Save the Republicans, Vote for Kerry. Maybe a Kerry election will force the Republican brass to see they can no longer win national elections catering to their bigoted and close minded base, and thereby force them to adopt a more Reaganite approach to economic policy as well as finally dismissing its attacks on certain groups to enrage and engage this base.
Bound For Gory
What a puzzle:
ěThe U.S. military runs about 250 convoys a day, involving up to 3,000 vehicles, to supply and equip its troops in Iraq and they are frequently attacked by insurgents....The U.S. army is investigating why the men refused to take their unarmored fuel tankers on a supply run from Tallil in southeastern Iraq to Baghdad last Wednesday.
Hmm, let's not spend too many dollars digging up the dirt on this one.
The Church Of Hot Monkey Love
"You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals/So let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel."
--Lyrics of "Bad Touch," by the Bloodhound Gang, included in testimony to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee a few years back by a frightened creationist. Spotted in Steven Pinker's brilliant book, The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial Of Human Nature. Highly recommended. The book and the hot monkey love.
Then again, I'd hate to be species-ist.
Government By The Fanatics, For The Fanatics
Ron Suskind's New York Times Magazine piece on how George Bush governs with god:
Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . "
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''
One of the dangers of people who believe in god entirely without reasonable proof -- ie, the proof they'd require if you told them you got carried off by a flying elephant on the way to work -- is that it's not that big a step to make them believe, entirely without proof, that god wants them to kill the infidel or discrminate against gays. Here's a scary example from Suskind's story of how the unthink of fundamentalists like Bush translates in the political arena:
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ''You were right,'' he said, with bonhomie. ''Sweden does have an army.''
Yeah, and The Oval Office is occupied by a naked guy, and no little boy to point out the obvious. Let's hope that doesn't last much longer.
Hung Like A Tic-Tac?
Tucker Carlson Is A Dick
And John Stewart told him so, in an appearance on Carlson's "Crossfire." Here's a summary from Salon:
Jon Stewart: Crossfire "hurting America""I think you're a lot more fun on your show," said Tucker Carlson to "Crossfire" guest Jon Stewart this afternoon. "And I think you're as much of a dick on your show as on any other," Stewart shot back. It wasn't the faux avuncularity we've come to expect from Stewart on "The Daily Show" but there, of course, he's playing a role. Here he was himself -- and he wasn't buying any of it.
From the moment Stewart sat down he made no secret of how repugnant he found the show. In fact, he said to Carlson and co-host Paul Begala that he had been so hard on the show he felt it was his duty to come on and say to their faces what he has said to friends and in interviews. What he said was that their show was "hurting America," and he was being only slightly hyperbolic. Stewart told them that when America needed journalists to be journalists they had instead chosen to present theater.
Carlson, trying to affect an air of dry amusement that a comedian would presume to lecture him, important pundit that he is, but looking as if his bow-tie were about to start spinning, could barely contain his outrage. In an absolutely mind-boggling moment, Carlson tried to counter Stewart's criticism by pointing out that during John Kerry's recent appearance on "The Daily Show," Stewart asked the candidate softball questions. "If you want to measure yourself against a comedy show," Stewart said, "be my guest."
Paul Begala tried to put a more conciliatory face on things by pointing out that theirs was a "debate" show. Stewart was having none of it. "I would love to see a real debate show," he said. And went on to tell them that instead of holding politicians' feet to the fire by asking tough question, "you're part of their strategy. You're partisan -- what's the word? -- uh, hacks."
It's almost a cliche by now to talk about "The Daily Show" being more trusted than real newscasts, but Stewart showed why. He pointed out to Carlson that he had asked Kerry if he really were in Cambodia but "I don't care," and when Carlson asked him what he thought about the "Bill O'Reilly vibrator flap," Stewart said, "I don't." It was as concise a demonstration of the triviality of the media as you could hope for.
"I thought you were going to be funny," Carlson said toward the end of the interview. Stewart responded, "No, I'm not going to be your monkey." And that was what was so bracing.
Stewart's "Crossfire" appearance is going to generate talk about how prickly he was, how he wasn't "nice" like he is on "The Daily Show." But prickliness is just what was needed. If you've built your reputation as a satirist pointing out how the media falls down on the job, you're not going to make yourself a part of their charade.
I've heard people talk about "The Daily Show" as an oasis of sanity, a public service. I couldn't agree more. Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire" was another public service. He went on and acted as if the show's purpose really was to confront tough issues, instead of being the political equivalent of pro wrestling. Given a chance to say absolutely what he thought, Stewart took it. He accomplished what almost never happens on television anymore: He made the dots come alive.
The Bush Bulge
A whole slide show of Bush bulge shots here...not all of them convincing...plus photos of earpieces, radio controls, and medical devices that could be under there.
(via Metafilter)
Distributing Dollars On Faith
Faith-based care brought to you by our "compassionate" "conservative"-in-chief. Do note the quotes around "conservative." You'll see why they're there once you read Amy Sullivan's Washington Monthly piece on how George Bush shovels dollars at religious organizations -- which really have no better record than secular ones -- if you look at real data instead of anecdotal evidence. Here's an excerpt from her piece:
Bush alone is responsible for supporting the distribution of taxpayer dollars without requiring proof that the funding produces results, for establishing a new government bureaucracy to give special help to a "discriminated" community that has always been on equal footing with everyone else, and for encouraging religious organizations to rely on government funding instead of encouraging private donations. It turns out that a "compassionate conservative" is a different kind of Republican after all. Just not the kind we expected.
Death In Venice
California, that is. Spotted by Lena Cuisina on a gallery on Abbot Kinney Boulevard (at Santa Clara).
Love Hurts
Literally. Check out this hilarious letter from today's mail bag:
I have been seeing this girl for about four months (Iím 40, sheís 32), and during sex she has very long orgasms where she is becoming more and more violent. She has ripped out chunks of my hair (by the roots), bitten me on the cheek leaving bruised teeth marks, slapped and punched me and left deep scratches on my face. She knocked out my tooth and cost me $400 at the dentist. I have repeatedly asked her to mellow out, be gentle, calm down, etc. And she promises not to get carried away every time before sex, but always loses control and beats me. Am I supposed to like this? Sheís very nice and quiet and polite at all other times. What the heck is going on here?--Whipped In Memphis
The Mumbo Jumbo Of Excluding Gays
Bush says he wants to ěprotect marriage as an institutionî...îbetween a man and a woman.î Let me get this straight. An ěinstitutionî is what? An abstract way of referring to something more concrete? (ie, the purposes and practices of the couple who is married -- lifelong commitment, setting for raising children, and lots of other dull stuff.) Why would you want to protect ěan institutionî? And, come on: How could it possibly hurt any hetero married couples if gay people are allowed to share in the legal protections the state grants straight people (who partake of the delusion that committing to somebody for a lifetime makes sense)?
Maybe it has something (or everything) to do with the insitution of marriage being solidly based in religion. Promoting the viewpoint that gays shouldnít be allowed to marry is the antithesis of separation of church and state.
And then there's all this "slippery slope" stuff. The fundamentalists gasp, "Well, what if people were allowed to...marry more than one person!?" Well, why shouldnít they be allowed to? Why, in fact, shouldnít consenting adults be allowed to do whatever they please, with whichever consenting adults they please?
By the way, like Bush's seemingly bizarre mention of Dred Scott during the last debate (which Slate's Timothy Noah suggested was fundamentalist code for Roe v. Wade), all this "protection of the institution of marriage" crap is code for another institution: continuing discrimination against gays by a bunch of primitives who are secretly inserting as much of their religion into the governing of this country as they can. Here are a few words from religious right powerhouse Paul Weyrich on how to turn the country into the fundamentalist nation:
1) Falsehoods are not only acceptable, they are a necessity. The corollary is: The masses will accept any lie if it is spoken with vigor, energy and dedication.2) It is necessary to be cast under the cloak of ěgoodnessî whereas all opponents and their ideas must be cast as ěevil.î
3) Complete destruction of every opponent must be accomplished through unrelenting personal attacks.
4) The creation of the appearance of overwhelming power and brutality is necessary in order to destroy the will of opponents to launch opposition of any kind.
Sound familiar?
This week, while writing a column about "coming out" in the workplace (the girl wanted to bring her partner of five years to work functions just like everybody else), I learned something chilling:
ÝInÝ36 states,Ýit is legal to fire someone based on their sexual orientation.
Yes, it's hard to believe, but you can literally be fired for being gay.
Those who experience this form of discrimination have no recourse under current federal law or under the Constitution as it has been interpreted by the courts.
This is America? Be terrified. Be very, very terrified.
The World's Shortest Blog Has A Question
"How many times have you been arrested, Mr. President?" They're offering a bounty, in dollars, to any person who asks the president this question in a public forum.
(via Romenesko letters)
Kevin Drum On Swift Boat Lies
How the Swift Boat vets went to Vietnam to dig up dirt on Kerry -- and how they didn't find any.
Case in point. In August the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth charged that John Kerry had lied about the events that led to his Silver Star. In order to figure out if the SBVT account was true, Nightline sent a crew to Vietnam, where they visited the hamlets of Tran Thoi and Nha Vi and interviewed the local villagers to get their recollections of what really happened 35 years ago. You can read the resulting story yourself, but it's summarized pretty easily: Kerry was right and SBVT honcho John O'Neill wasn't.
Von The Money
I've always said I'll wear "Donna Karan" on my chest the day I see Donna marching around in an "Amy Alkon" shirt. For this one, however, I'd be tempted to make an exception.
Shut Up! Shut Up!
That's advice Bill O'Reilly probably should have given himself, if the allegations in Andrea Mackris' sexual harrassment suit against him are true. Smoking Gun urges you to pay special attention to the Caribbean Shower Fantasy section, in which Mr. Populist appears to go a bit ethnic, employing falafel as a sex toy.
The Problem With Daily Newspapers
The London Independent's Johann Hari knocks dailies for reader ass-kissing:
...itís a misunderstanding of what a newspaper is to think that your job is simply to reflect the readersí prejudices. If the majority of readers think that asylum seekers eat swans or commit rape, the job of the newspaper is to report the facts even if ń especially if - they contradict the readersí misconceptions. I think youíve got to take what you do as a journalist very seriously. You have always got to test that what you write is consistent with your principles and consistent with reality. Public opinion has to be formed on the basis of fact, and if the media tell people a pack of lies, as they do about asylum, itís very dangerous.
"Asexuality: It's Not Just For Amoebas Anymore"
A new study says one in 100 people is asexual.
Olbermann Blogs The Debate
Keith Olbermann live-scores the "Tempest In Tempe":
10:16 p.m. ET Round seventeen: Kerry receives on further need of Affirmative Action. Kerry jabs saying it's still needed and Administration failed to lead fight on discrimination that could've obviated need for Affirmative Action. Kerry is straining, but says we have a long way to go. Kerry says there is still the stark resistance of racism. Says Bush is first President never to meet with NAACP. Point to Kerry, but truth squadding needed here. Bush says he met with Black Congressional Caucus, mumbles about quotas. Wobbling now, invokes Pell Grants again, hasn't answered question, now into Small Business Loans. Now Bush pounding podium. Round, Kerry 1-0.10:12 p.m. ET
Round sixteen: Bush responds on why he didn't insure extension of the assault weapon ban. Says it wouldn't have passed. Fancy footwork towards prosecution of those who commit crimes with guns. Kerry turns neatly. "I'm a gun owner," endorses second amendment. Stunning point to Kerry as N-R-A cheers. Twice refers to hunting, says he heard a story of an AK-47 while hunting in Iowa. Neat footwork. Says terrorists can buy assault weapons in America. Point to Kerry. Says he wouldn't have settled for politics.
Round, Kerry 2-0.
Tonight's George-Bush-makes-me-toss phrase: the "armies of compassion" he's supposedly going to send out to "heal" the country. Excuse me, but aren't they all on stop-loss orders in Iraq?
Let Your Vagina Be Your Voting Booth?!
Why is it that so many women's organizations seem like outpatient asylums for idiots? Check out the insulting voter registration campaign targeted at women, with embarrassing sayings like, "Step into your vaginas and get the vagina vote out!" and "Are there are any registered vaginas in the house?" (As opposed to all those renegade cooters crawling the streets at night?) Wendy McElroy addresses the idiotic idea that women vote as one great big pussy posse:
Looking at just one election issue -- abortion -- there is no consensus among women who seem to be split equally into pro-choice and pro-life camps. Only by demeaning pro-life women as being "unenlightened to their own vaginal interests" can the advocates of shared-identity politics explain this schism.Women don't seem to vote on the basis of their genitalia. Instead, they vote for the candidate most closely aligned with their view of the world. Indeed, it seems bizarre for gender feminists to argue that a woman should think and vote as a sex organ. Whatever happened to their anger at the objectification and portrayal of women as body parts?
Nor is it obviously true that women's interests differ dramatically from those of men. For example, it is difficult to see how pivotal election issues such as gun control, Iraq, the price of oil, better schools or terrorism are more important to one sex than the other or have a significantly disparate impact on either one.
Ladies, if you must vote, please use the big organ you'll find directly above your shoulders -- I mean, if it hasn't gotten too dusty due to overattendance of NOW events.
Parsing Farce
In Romenesko letters, David Kiley bitch-slaps broadcast journalists for sound-biting the facts instead of adequately explaining them:
(Chris) Matthews is as lazy as most other broadcast journalists who have for months repeated a shorthand version of John Kerryís Iraq position this way: "First, he voted for the war and then he voted against the funding for it." I donít recall the RNC complaining that this shortchanged Kerryís position. Am I the only journalist in America who thinks broadcast journalists of every alleged political stripe have short-changed Kerry on this by eliminating the context and details of the votes. I never needed any tortured clarification of these votes. He voted to authorize the President to invade Iraq. He did not VOTE FOR WAR. There is a difference. But figures like Matthews and NBCís Tim Russert, as well as the predictable righty pundits, have continually called it "voting for the war." His vote against the $87 billion was very clearly a vote against how the spending was to be funded (adding to the deficit and not out of a rolled back tax cut) and because of the sweetheart contract to Halliburton. It was a protest vote. Yes, I know this is Kerry position. But itís valid, and it deserves to be represented each and every time a non-partisan moderator brings it up. I don't expect Sean Hannity to voice the context. But I do expect it of Russert, Matthews, Greenfield, etc. To not do so is to merely carry water for the RNC and B-C campaign. The excuse not to, I imagine, is that it would take an additional eight to ten seconds of explanation. And broadcasters canít be bothered with "wasted" seconds. Shep Smith, after all, keeps his pencil sharp to eliminate verbs from his copy. Just because a position can"t be put on a bumper sticker doesn"t give broadcast journalists or commentators a pass to only give as much time to explaining an issue as they would to reading a bumper-sticker.Second: The most distressing aspect of this campaign is the sound-bite battleground. Everyone from the RNC to Tim Russert is in such a heated frenzy to get the "gotcha" contradictory sound-bite that context is lost more often than it is not. If I spent two weeks researching Bushís sound-bites and strung them together like the Bush campaign does I could make GWB look like a gun hating, same-sex marriage loving, Texas BBQ hating, quiche eating candidate. But such a portrayal wouldnít be accurate. Neither is it accurate to help paint Kerry as a flip flopper (a word right out of the Rove campaign that has been embraced by journalists writing about the campaign) because he voted for the $87 billion in committee but against it on a floor vote. If I were an editor overseeing political coverage, I wouldnít allow the term "flip-flopper" to be used in objective copy as a descriptor unless it was in a quote that was on point. The Bush campaign chooses a buzz-word, "flip-flopper," so journalists start accepting it in their lexicon like it was a "Sopranos" reference?
Daughter In A Bottle
Reading Between The Lies
Terrific Matt Welch article in Reason on dissecting the truth from the political propaganda -- a responsibility the mainstream media tends to ignore:
"Never, in the best part of two decades, have I had to reject, throw away or send back for rewrite so many letters filled with so many frauds and character assassinations," wrote Tim White, editorial page editor of the Fayetteville, North Carolina, Observer, in an exasperated August 15 column. "I have as much respect for the attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans as I have for the barrages of Whoopi Goldberg and Michael Moore. None."The reaction is tempting but wrong. Michael Moore, sloppy and propagandistic though he is, packages hundreds of facts in his polemic entertainments; he also bellows crucial populist oxygen into perfectly legitimate topics such as the cozy relationship between the Bush dynasty and the vile House of Saud. The Swift Boat Veterans, even while kicking off their campaign with an advertisement that centrist Slate columnist Jacob Weisberg decribed as "pack[ing] an impressive amount of deceit into 60 seconds," helped unearth one interesting and potentially important bit of real news: that John Kerry was not in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968, as he had claimed at least four times (on the floor of the U.S. Senate, among other places).
...In an unintentionally hilarious "9-point checklist" for "Swift Boat genre" stories, Aly Colon, "ethics group leader" of the hand-wringing Poynter Institute, wrote that the first four questions a newspaper should ask in such a situation are: "Whoís making the accusation/allegation? Why now? To whom are they connected? Where does the accuserís funding come from?" All four just happen make the Swift Boat Veterans look sketchy. Colon left out a question that might be more pertinent: "Is it true?"
Hurry Up And Wait
According to an LA Times front-pager by Mark Mazetti, major attacks on Iraqi strongholds won't be made until after the American election -- perhaps altering the dynamics of elections in Iraq:
The Bush administration plans to delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallouja and Ramadi ó where the insurgents' grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the highest ó until after Americans vote in what is likely to be an extremely close election.
"When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously," said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications" of a large-scale offensive, the official said. "We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."
Any delay in pacifying Iraq's most troublesome cities, however, could alter the dynamics of a different election ó the one in January, when Iraqis are to elect members of a national assembly.
With less than four months remaining, U.S. commanders are scrambling to enable voting in as many Iraqi cities as possible to shore up the poll's legitimacy.
U.S. officials point out that there have been no direct orders to commanders to halt operations in the weeks before the November 2 U.S. election. Top administration officials in Washington are simply reluctant to sign off on a major offensive in Iraq at the height of the political season.
Decorating Twist(ed)
Children Of Gay Parents Come Out of The Closet
According to the 2000 Census, more than 150,000 same-sex couples have at least one kid under 18 in the home. And that doesn't account for kids with a gay parent living outside the home, says a Newsweek story by Dirk Johnson and Adam Piore -- which also draws on the research of my friend, Judy Stacey, now an NYU sociology professor:
For every child, adolescence can be exhilaratingóand hellish. For kids of gays, the vast majority of them heterosexual (research shows that kids of gays are not more likely to be gay themselves), it can mean being caught between two worlds and feeling at odds with both. These are kids who love their parents and fear that bigots will hurt them, or that the courts will try to remove them from their homes. Beyond that they feel left out of the discussion. Bystanders in the culture wars, they are often reduced to caricatures: social conservatives tend to see them as damaged goods being reared by immoral pseudoparents; liberals are eager to cast them as comfortable and carefreeóthe Huxtables with a minor wrinkle. In fact, these kids often know isolation and fear of rejection from peers, as well as the shame and anger that come with lying about your family.At first, Christine Bachman, a blond teen with a sunny disposition who lives in suburban Boston, found that hiding the truth was easy. Her father, who is gay, had gone to live in New York when Christine was little. She spent many weekends with him, but simply told friends her parents were divorced and that her dad lived elsewhere. Ultimately, though, she began to feel disloyal about making her dad invisible. She didn't know what to expect when, in the eighth grade, she screwed up her courage, and read a letter she wrote to her class. She spoke of the dad "I love so very much" being gay. Suddenly, a thunderous roar of approval swept the room. "They gave me a standing ovation," she says with glee. "I was very surprised."
The stress on these kids can come as much from within the home as outside it. Kids of gays say their parents often unwittingly, and with good intentions, place high demands on them to show that gay parents can raise children who live up to the all-American ideals of their straight counterparts. For Kyle, that pressure came from within herselfó"so you can prove," she says, "your family's not so bad." In her bedroom, adorned with posters of the bands Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, she spends hours studying to earn top marks. She is on the school debate team. She runs the video camera for the cheerleading squad at Friday-night football games. She volunteers at an elementary school on Saturdays. She teaches dog training on Tuesdays. She did find time to attend her first homecoming dance with her boyfriend Anthony. Even as she soars, she feels the burden of having to be a model kid.
Studies have generally found few differences between children raised by gay parents and those reared by heterosexual ones. In one of the most widely cited reports, sociologists Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz in 2001 found that kids of gays have as much self-esteem as those of straights. But the former University of Southern California scholars also found, not surprisingly, that sons and daughters of gays tend not to be as rigid about traditional sex roles. The boys of lesbiansómost of the research has centered on kids raised in female same-sex householdsówere found to be more nurturing than their counterparts, while the girls were a bit more aggressive. These girls were also a bit more sexually adventurous, the boys somewhat more restrained.
Elizabeth Wall, 15, of Lawrenceville, N.J., whose fathers just celebrated their 25th anniversary, says kids of gays are just like their peers, but have been taught to be more tolerant of differences. "We might be more open because we grew up taught to love everyone," says Elizabeth. It's not always easy. She recently organized a day of silence at her school to mark the deaths of people to homophobic violence. A dozen or so kids from a church group surrounded her and her friends, chanting "It's not OK! It's not OK!" Elizabeth tries to shrug it off. But she's just a teenager. "It's hard," she acknowledged. "You want people to like you."
People on both sides of the issue agree on one thing: the number of kids raised by same-sex parents will continue to climb.
Bush's Hometown Paper Makes Its Presidential Endorsement
For Kerry -- citing the war in Iraq, turning budget surpluses into record budget deficits, and Bush proposals on Social Security and Medicare. Snicker. Snicker.
Migrating Emoticons
This check, from a meal Gregg and I had yesterday, reminds me of a John Callahan cartoon: On the left panel, a New Yorker, shouting "Fuck you!" (Translation: "Have a nice day.") On the other side, an Angeleno, smiling and saying, "Have a nice day!" (Translation: "Fuck you!").
In case you're wondering (from the 5:57 time-stamp), we eat lunch at 6pm, and dinner at 10pm, making it somewhat hard to find open restaurants in Los Angeles. It's hardest to find them in the Valley, where everyone apparently goes to bed after drinking a glass of warm milk at 8:30pm.
We once went to a French restaurant on Ventura Boulevard at 9:30pm, and the maitresse d' told us we could only stay if we ordered immediately and were out by 10pm. Of course, we were out in about 30 seconds, and ate instead at CafČ Bizou, well-noted in Zagats by the customer reviewers (and perhaps friends and employees of the restaurant?)...because the cuisine was, at best, Wyandotte French. (The scary Wyandotte just downriver from Detroit, that is.) (corrected from "east side" thanks to Gregg)
Buy Crest
And Bounty, Tide, Mr. Clean, Clairol, and Arm & Hammer. And all the other products Proctor & Gamble makes. Show your support for their support for gay rights -- and equal rights for all people -- in the face of a boycott from the religious fanatics seeking to take over our country and remake it according to their bible:
Conservative Christian political groups are calling for a boycott of Proctor and Gamble after the consumer products company urged its workers to support the repeal of an anti-gay charter amendment in Cincinnati.In an open letter to all employees, the Cincinnati-based multi-national said "P&G joins a number of other major businesses, in the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, civic, religious and community leaders in supporting repeal."
The 1993 charter amendment made Cincinnati the only U.S. city to ban enactment or enforcement of laws based on sexual orientation, effectively tying the hands of the city council from enacting laws protecting gays and lesbians against discrimination.
Citizens to Restore Fairness an umbrella organization of mainly gay civil rights groups has forced a referendum on the charter article. The question of whether to scrap it will appear on the November ballot.
The letter to P&G workers was signed by Dick Antoine, Global Human Resources Officer, and Charlotte Otto, Global External Relations Officer.Ý
It says that the charter amendment "prevents Cincinnati from developing a reputation as an open and welcoming community."Ý The letter also says that it "negatively impacts the city and regionís image and therefore limits P&Gís ability to attract and retain the best talent to help build our business."
Both the American Family Association and Focus On The Family are promoting a boycott:
"P&G said they 'will not tolerate discrimination [against homosexuals] in any form, against anyone, for any reason.' To keep homosexuals from being legally married is discrimination for good reason, which P&G says they will not tolerate. Taking them at their word, P&G supports homosexual marriage," AFA said in its statement.Focus on the Family founder and chairman Dr. James C. Dobson called the Proctor & Gamble letter "an affront to its customers."
"It's tough to make a dent, financially, in a corporate giant like Procter & Gamble," Dobson told millions of listeners to his Christian radio program. "But we can send a very strong message to the men and women in the corporate offices: 'Not only have you lost your moral compass, but you have lost our business. And you're not going to get it back until you stop insulting us and disregarding our values.' "
Proctor & Gamble has been a longtime supporter of the gay community.Ý It has one of the strongest workplace equality policies among American companies and is a frequent advertiser in the LGBT media, including 365Gay.com.
In addition to Tide and Crest, P&G makes dozens of consumer products including Bounce, Bounty, Cascade, Eukanuba dog food, Febreze, Folgers coffee, and Head & Shoulders.
Buy 'em all! And e-mail them and tell them you support them.
Correcting Cheney
Kevin Drum runs down what Cheney said while debating Edwards, and, ahem, what he really must have meant.
(via RawkusCaucus)
Olbermann Scores The Debate On One Of An Apparently Growing Number Of "Internets"
At one point in the debate, most hilariously, Bush referred to rumors of a draft that he's heard on the "Internets." Keith Olbermann does a terrific play-by-play, complete with scoring, on every round of the debate, including that one:
9:34 p.m. ET Round six: Bush receives from Robert Farley about prospects of a draft. Says he's heard rumors on the "internets." Bloggers can be heard howling over the multiple. Minus one point to Bush. Stumbles in claiming he's replacing troops with weapons and equipment and unmanned vehicles. They'll save "manpower and equipment." Veers back to say there'll be no draft. Kerry is on the ropes here, now lists the military leaders who support him. Sounds a little too much like thank yous at a Friars' Roast. Minus one point to Kerry. Now Kerry backs out of clinch and says there's already a backdoor draft and says his military policy will be like Reagan's and Eisenhower's. One point to Kerry. But Bush is off his stool before Gibson authorizes him to and he's yelling at the ref -- always a bad idea. Minus one point,. Bush. He also leaves himself open by invoking Poland as an ally when Poland is pulling out -- Kerry scores point by noting it. Round, Kerry +1 to -2.
Charlie McCarthy For President?
Dave Lindorff of Salon stares at Bush's bulge -- the one visible underneath his suit, from the back, in Fox News' footage of the last debate. (You have to sit through a Salon commercial to see the photo.) Was the bulge the control portion of a secret radio-controlled mic/lifeline to Karl Rove? Or was it simply an official mic pack for the debate or the outline of a bullet-proof vest?
Bloggers stoke the conspiracy with the claim that the Bush administration insisted on a condition that no cameras be placed behind the candidates. An official for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which set up the lecterns and microphones on the Miami stage, said the condition was indeed real, the result of negotiations by both campaigns. Yet that didn't stop Fox from setting up cameras behind Bush and Kerry. The official said that "microphones were mounted on lecterns, and the commission put no electronic devices on the president or Senator Kerry." When asked about the bulge on Bush's back, the official said, "I don't know what that was."So what was it? Jacob McKenna, a spyware expert and the owner of the Spy Store, a high-tech surveillance shop in Spokane, Wash., looked at the Bush image on his computer monitor. "There's certainly something on his back, and it appears to be electronic," he said. McKenna said that, given its shape, the bulge could be the inductor portion of a two-way push-to-talk system. McKenna noted that such a system makes use of a tiny microchip-based earplug radio that is pushed way down into the ear canal, where it is virtually invisible. He also said a weak signal could be scrambled and be undetected by another broadcaster.
What's your guess? Charlie McCarthy for president? Bullet-proof vest? Or does Bush simply have one extra-large, rectangular vertabra amongst all the others?
Michael Lacey On The Two Lame-Asses Running For President
200 million people in this country, and we have these two losers running for head of state? Here's an excerpt from Lacey's take on it:
Every four years I endure a presidential campaign that leaves me estranged, feeling like an illegal, a mojado, in my own country. The choleric isolation is worse this year because of the choices and the consequences. Here stands the morbidly irresolute John Kerry. And over there is George W. Bush in all his bantam banality. In the corner wetting himself is the ascetic conspiratard, Ralph Nader.These are not my countrymen.
When asked who I will vote for, I shake my head in disgust and reply, "Yo soy Mexicano."
Friends and colleagues expect me to vote for John Kerry. But they misjudge me. Kerry does not deserve to be president. In the weeks leading up to the first debate, he could not protect his own combat medals and Purple Hearts from the pranks of a draft-dodging college cheerleader and his allies on the Swift Boat controversy. How the hell will Kerry protect Americans from the razored tactics of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
I do not feel that Kerry or Bush is competent to lead us through a religious war waged by terrorists.
With nearly 3,000 Americans dead in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., I wanted Osama bin Laden's blood. With another 1,000 soldiers fallen in Iraq -- and the inevitable pictures of slaughtered innocent civilians -- I also longed for a vigorous, honest examination of how we got here. Instead, the president fought the 9/11 Commission tooth and claw. His opponent is no better. As a jibe, flip-flopping hardly captured the number of stiff-limbed sentiments Kerry expressed on Iraq. Kerry adopted so many positions on the war that when viewed side by side, the sheer number of clumsy policies gave one the same queasy feeling as looking at a photograph of Mia Farrow and her brood of Third World kids.
And in some ways we got the leadership we deserved. There is a willful ignorance amongst voters that is staggering in scope. In mid-September a poll found that 42 percent of Americans still believe, despite all of the contrary evidence, that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 attacks.
Lacey recommends digging into The 9/11 Commission Report ($8 at Amazon). He says it reads "like a noir thriller," and he's right. It's fascinating stuff. Lacey goes on to spill the beans on self-proclaimed friend of the working man, Michael Moore:
I met Michael Moore in 1980 when he stopped at the alternative press convention en route to his new job as editor of Mother Jones. He had yet to make a movie. But he was the same sleazy, self-absorbed liar that he is today.He attacked the editors and publishers present for daring to publish Best Of guides to their cities. Moore considered Best Of issues a sellout. This is, of course, typical leftist dogma that goes something like this: Best Of issues are a wet kiss to businesses and advertisers when what you should be doing is showing how THE MAN is keeping poor people down.
The fact is that Best Of guides, when executed with integrity, act as a practical guide to a bewildering urban landscape. Yes, you identify your favorite Mexican food joint, and the owner of that establishment feels kindly toward the newspaper. Certainly. But the other 200 restaurants that sell burritos and that didn't get selected bear a grudge. And no matter what advertisers might think, it is the single most popular issue of the year with readers and represents less a sellout than a break from the other 51 issues of doom and gloom.
But Moore's simple-minded, clenched-fist rhetoric isn't what bothered me.
This clown had just folded his newspaper in Flint, Michigan. All of his writers, editors, salespeople, circulation staff and business support were left to fend for themselves without so much as a severance package to see them through while he dashed off to the job at Mother Jones in San Francisco (Mother Jones would show him the door before his cup of coffee had a chance to cool). Perhaps if he'd paid attention to the needs of his staff, took care of business and published the occasional Best Of, his paper would still be alive.
Instead, he begged money off liberals. He had musicians like Harry Chapin do fund-raising concerts. The problem was, his rag was never good enough journalistically to sustain the charity.
When he wore out his welcome in publishing, he turned to movies and proved himself a natural.
-- Every single fact that I state in Fahrenheit 9/11 is the absolute and irrefutable truth," claims Moore. "Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying."
In fact, Moore's movie begins with a forgery that would shame even Dan Rather. The film is so filled with lies, distortions and half-truths that sorting out the truth is a cottage industry on the Web.
At the start of the movie, Moore trots out the conspiracy theory that Bush stole the election in Florida. Never mind that a six-month-long probe by a consortium of media that included the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN contradict Moore.
As the film opens, a newspaper from Bloomington, Illinois, the Pantagraph, is flashed on the screen. Dated December 19, 2000, the headline over the story reads: "Latest Florida Recount Shows Gore Won Election."
But there was no such story in the Pantagraph on December 19. There was no such story ever in the Pantagraph.
On December 5, there was a letter from a reader alleging that Gore won, and that letter had a headline, "Latest Florida Recount Shows Gore Won Election."
So Moore cut and pasted a headline on a letter to the editor. He blew up the letter's headline, then ran that headline under the newspaper's logo to make it appear as if it were the headline on a news story.
At least Dan Rather was duped by forged documents; he didn't create forged documents.
Moore's distortions are more clever than his lies.
Bush is infamously captured at a dinner of elegant swells telling the obviously idle rich, "I call you the haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite; I call you my base."
One cannot help but think of Bush, what a smug puissant.
But this is just Moore's class warfare meant to seduce an audience whose members suspect that they have not been invited to the country club.
The film footage is, in fact, from a charity dinner with a tradition of having speakers mock themselves and the audience. Rather than breaking bread with robber barons, Bush was helping to raise more than a million dollars for the medically indigent. Al Gore attended the same dinner on October 19, 2000, and he also lampooned himself: "The Al Smith Dinner represents a hallowed and important tradition, which I actually did invent."
Instead of actually looking at the president's foolish tax policies, which purport to create jobs by giving refunds to the rich, Moore prefers to fuel the fantasies of the bobbleheads who thrill to his documentaries.
I think playing to the prejudices of boobs coarsens the discussion.
Standard election procedure, these days.
(via Romenesko)
If I Wore T-Shirts
I'd be wearing this one.
The (Sort Of) Lowest Airfare
Charlie Leoha slaps newspapers for letting readers think the "lowest fares" chart is much more than an airline ad:
We've all seen the tables of "lowest air fares" in the Sunday papers. I remember using them regularly. But I've never really examined them for accuracy. I always assumed they were a true listing of low fares.Not so. They're often flat out wrong.
In fact, the charts I just examined in the Boston Globe (and many other newspapers) are often wrong and misleading.
Just after Independence Air began flying to Boston from Washington, I took a look at the "lowest round-trip air fares chart" in the Boston Globe. Strangely, Independence Air wasn't mentioned at all. And jetBlue wasn't mentioned anywhere as having the lowest air fares.
Then I noticed flights from Manchester, N.H., and flights from Providence, R.I., and noted that no Southwest flights were listed.
How can a Lowest Air Fare Chart not even mention these three airlines? Independent Air, jetBlue and Southwest are the epitome of low cost airlines and in most cases lead the low fare fray. Without them, we would still be paying $800+ for a walk-up fare to Philadelphia and thousands of dollars for transcontinental flights.
Upon closer examination, I noticed that the fine print at the bottom of the Lowest Round-trip Air Fares Chart said, "Air fare information is supplied by Orbitz on the internet at www.orbitz.com."
Ah ha!
Orbitz doesn't list Independence Air, jetBlue or Southwest. Hence the chart in the paper is a product of journalistic laziness. Heaven forbid, that a newspaper journalist research flight costs between various points by checking out more than one Web site.
Leoha's just one of the columnists on Ticked.com -- along with Chris Elliott, my favorite on the site. Lots of insider information on travel. And here's another one of my travel secrets -- BiddingForTravel.com -- to figure out how low you can go in bidding for Priceline and Expedia flights, hotels, and more.
Bye-Bye Abortion Rights
Look, I'm no Kerry fan, but voting for Bush could very likely be voting to send ourselves back in time -- to a time when women were baby pods -- whether they liked it or not. Here's the Fox "News" link to the AP story:
Thirty states are poised to make abortion illegal within a year if theÝSupreme Court (search)Ýreversed its 1973 ruling establishing a woman's legal right to an abortion, an advocacy group said Tuesday.The pro-abortionÝCenter for Reproductive Rights said some states have old laws on the books that would be triggered by the overturning of the landmarkÝRoe v. Wade Ýdecision. Others have language in their state constitutions or strongly anti-abortion legislatures that would act quickly if the federal protection for abortion was ended and the issue reverted to the states.
"The building blocks are already in place to recriminalize abortion," said Nancy Northup, the center's president.
The group's report comes less than a month before the presidential election, which those on both sides of the abortion issue say will be critical in determining the future of the Roe decision.
Currently, it is believed that five of the nine justices supportÝabortion rights (search), but that balance could be tipped if President Bush, in a second term, nominates a new justice who reflects his anti-abortion views. Democratic contender John Kerry is a strong supporter of abortion rights.
And I'm a strong supporter of Kerry. Get the government out of the hands of the fundamentalists. It's scary to think what they could accomplish in four more years.
Letters From Iraq
Okay, so these letters went to Michael Moore (after Fahrenheit 9/11 was released). But, the letters sound for real, and some of them have first and last names on them -- names of disillusioned, war-weary, and enraged American soldiers over there. Compelling stuff. Here's one of them:
From: Michael W
Sent: Tuesday July 13 2004 12.28pm
Subject: Dude, Iraq sucksMy name is Michael W and I am a 30-year-old National Guard infantryman serving in southeast Baghdad. I have been in Iraq since March of 04 and will continue to serve here until March of 05.
In the few short months my unit has been in Iraq, we have already lost one man and have had many injured (including me) in combat operations. And for what? At the very least, the government could have made sure that each of our vehicles had the proper armament to protect us soldiers.
In the early morning hours of May 10, one month to the day from my 30th birthday, I and 12 other men were attacked in a well-executed roadside ambush in south-east Baghdad. We were attacked with small-arms fire, a rocket-propelled grenade, and two well-placed roadside bombs. These roadside bombs nearly destroyed one of our Hummers and riddled my friends with shrapnel, almost killing them. They would not have had a scratch if they had the "Up Armour" kits on them. So where was W on that one?
It's just so ridiculous, which leads me to my next point. A Blackwater contractor makes $15,000 a month for doing the same job as my pals and me. I make about $4,000 a month over here. What's up with that?
Beyond that, the government is calling up more and more troops from the reserves. For what? Man, there is a huge fucking scam going on here! There are civilian contractors crawling all over this country. Blackwater, Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton, on and on. These contractors are doing everything you can think of from security to catering lunch!
We are spending money out the ass for this shit, and very few of the projects are going to the Iraqi people. Someone's back is getting scratched here, and it ain't the Iraqis'!
My life is left to chance at this point. I just hope I come home alive.
Adrian Leeds' Sleazy Travel "Writer" Come-On
For just $1,397, you can attend a workshop that promises to get you free travel, and maybe even a career as a travel writer. Here's Adrian Leeds' pitch:
All you have to do in exchange is take good notes about what you did and where you went and then recommend -- or discourage -- others from following in your footsteps. What's more, you'll earn a few hundred... maybe even a few thousand... dollars for your trouble.Sound too good to be true?
Yes. Because it is. Generally speaking, in any legitimate travel publication, professional travel writers are not allowed to accept freebies. Daily newspapers, for example. Travel & Leisure, for example, which prints its policy here:
Neither editors nor contributors may accept free travel.
Here's a pretty clear statement of journalistic ethics from a story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin:
For most media, free trips -- known as press junkets -- are generally unacceptable.The Society of Professional Journalists has an ethics code that says journalists should "Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment" and "Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money."
The Radio-Television News Directors Association has a code of professional conduct that says journalists should vigorously resist undue influence from "outside forces, including advertisers, sources, story subjects, powerful individuals and special interest groups."
Nevertheless, Adrian Leeds, of International Living, an international real estate sales venue dressed up to seem like a travel magazine, is seeking a few good fools who can be parted from their money in her travel writing workshops. The way she puts it, pretty much anybody who wants to can become a paid travel writer (knowing that the non-journalist has no idea how little even those at the top of their game get paid), and get free travel by taking her course.
Now, there may be some gullible hotel or restaurant owners in the world who will comp people who stroll in and say they write for some travel newsletter that somebody photocopies in their living room. But, as a professional writer who's syndicated to over 100 newspapers and writes for magazines, let me tell you -- 1. It's not easy getting work, even for professional writers. 2. Writing, when you count the research and work time, doesn't pay well. 3. Again, I'd venture that there are almost zero legitimate travel publications that allow their writers to take free travel offers, as doing so completely delegitimizes any claim their writers might have to being objective in their assessments.
As for these workshop attendees Leeds brags about?
...Duane and Harlene aren't trained journalists. In fact, before the Ultimate Travel Writer's Workshop they attended in Paris, they were just ordinary retirees -- bored with golf and looking for a sideline to keep them busy. Neither one had ever penned an article. But now they are working travel writers... and not the only ones who turned this conference in Paris into a new career.
Yeah, right. Please -- all you professional writers who read this blog -- you must comment below on the apparent ease of establishing a writing career, sans experience, sans clips...and late in life, as a bored retiree! Here's more:
When Tim O'Rielly came to Paris, he'd never written an article in his life. But as a freelance photographer he has occasion to travel, and he was looking for a way to get more mileage (and more money) out of his journeys.Already he has. As soon as he got home to California, he put the lessons he learned to the test and sat down to write. Two months later, his first full-length feature article about travels in the Mayan World appeared in Vision Magazine. Since then, he's written two more cover stories for that publication. He told me, "Your course really spurred me to take action and risk hearing a 'no' or a 'yes' from an editor."
Vision Magazine is a free rag out of San Diego that didn't seem to bother to even edit this piece of poor O'Rielly's -- a 1481-word article on Jerusalem, short on punctuation and writing skill:
In Hebrew Jerusalem is called Yerushalayim or ěCity Of Peaceî and in Arabic it is called al-Quds or ěThe Holy,î yet Jerusalem, as one of the oldest and most sacred cities on Earth is still attempting to find peace within itself. Considered holy by the three great monotheistic religions of the world, Judaism, Islam and Christianity it has been conquered 37 times in its 5,000 year history by myriad empires and religious groups including King David, King Solomon, the Kings of Judah, the Babylonians, Macedonians, Egyptians, Seleucids, Greeks, Jewish Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, Crusaders, Mameluks, Ottoman Turks, British, and Jordanians. Historically within Jerusalem there has never been a separation between religion and warfare. In a land that has arguably been bestowed with divine and mystical force there is an equally harsh juxtaposition of reality. Until tolerance and compassion become more viable than violence and fear, both the Israelis and the Palestinians, two peoples struggling to find their mutual identities and security, will not find the true meaning of both of their faiths, shalom and salamaat, meaning peace.
Of course, being a writer and simply writing are two different things -- two things apparent to anyone who reads the article above. And, as for Leeds' contention that worshop attendees will earn "a few hundred" or "maybe even a few thousand (dollars)" -- a major daily in a chain of major dailies told me they pay freelance travel writers $100 for a 2,000-word travel article. That's all-too-typical. And only to professional writers, with a career behind them and solid clips (published articles they've written for noteworthy publications), who don't take freebies.
If Leeds' workshop attendees do get some comps, they're probably cheating the people they're getting them from, who surely aren't offering comps simply because they're benevolent, but because they're looking for a big upsurge in business. That said, there can't be a whole lot of innkeepers and restaurant owners who are stupid enough to toss a "writer" a free stay or a free dinner for a mention in a some rag that isn't exactly CondČ Nast Traveler. Of course, there is still that promise of a stellar career in travel writing. "Our Graduates Boast Extraordinary Successes," says Leeds' sales pitch:
Barbara Bode took our Paris program, too, and she sold two pieces she wrote during it to In Touch, an upscale membership magazine for a women's networking organization called Women of Washington/Los Angeles/PasadenaÖnow she writes a regular column for that publication. A recent transplant from Washington to Malta, Barbara sold a story about her new home to Transitions Abroad. Then, in the market for a refresher course -- and some fun -- Barbara joined our Travel Writer cruise down Mexico's Pacific coast. While on board, she wrote a piece about swimming with dolphins and has since sold it to another women's publication.
Perhaps that sounds big to an aspiring writer and freebie-seeker. Here's how it sounds to a professional writer: After one course, Barbara writes for a newsletter. Woohoo. I'm sure she's making a mint -- or enough to buy a pack or two of mints. After a second course, probably costing her another $1,000-plus, she sold a piece to a travel Web site. Did she get $35? If she's lucky, she did. Finally, she sold to another "women's publication." (I'm sure it's the Travel & Leisure of community newsletters.) Don't put the downpayment on that yacht just yet, Barbara. But wait, there's more from Leeds:
Recently, I received a note from Laura Gagnon in New York. A bass player in a band by trade, she travels the world on tour and was looking for a way to spend her daytime, off-the-stage hours more productively, so she came to Paris for a crash course in travel writing.In her e-mail she says, "I have two restaurant/lounge reviews published on www.sheckys.com, which is an online guide to nightlife in New York and LA.ÝThey were works-for-hire, so writers aren't credited for each review.ÝBut there is a print edition of the guide coming out this fall, and in that I'll be listed as a contributor. The editor was great to work with, and they even paid promptly. Once again, the Paris writing course was fantastic.ÝIf you ever do a 'Part 2' let me know!"
Gagnon's grand score -- writing a couple of unbylined blurbs for an online guide (what did they pay, $15 each?) -- is mentioned on one of International Living's sister sites. This is really sad. Please, all you writers (pros, I mean) who read this blog -- you have to weigh in. And any editors dropping in here, too -- especially features or travel editors -- please comment below.
**Here are more shenanigans from what appears to be a sister company of International Living -- called Agora -- selling "press" passes to those who have nothing to do with the press.
FYI to those who'd pay for such a thing: Unless you're a White House, Senate, etc., or metro reporter (credentialed by the NYPD, for example), or you're playing a reporter in a movie, you don't need a press pass to write a story or gain access to anyplace you should legitimately be. In fact, you'll look like an utter ass if you run around flashing one -- especially if anybody sees it's one you paid $300 bucks for to somebody who has no real authority to issue them.
When Good Housekeeping Goes A Little Too Far
I don't know about you, but I've never had the desire to turn my upright vacuum into a bunny or any other form of "decorative conversation piece." From time to time, I have felt the urge to turn my toaster oven into two raccoons humping each other -- but I can't seem to find that cover anywhere.
Is Your Orgy Government Approved?
Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who recently came out in favor of orgies for tension relief (I'm not making this up, either), tossed out a few other less amusing tidbits at Harvard, reports Naked Drinking Coffee:
ěThe Supreme Courtís recent decisions protecting abortion rights, upholding the legalization of assisted suicide and striking down anti-sodomy laws represent a ëdangerousí trend, Justice Antonin Scalia told a Harvard audience last night.î (Quote from a Daniel J. Hemel article in The Crimson.)I know I was pissed when women were given the right to choose. You give them an inch and they take a mile. Next thing you know women will want to be able to vote or theyíll want equal pay for equal work or some other hippy bullshit like that. Come on Scalia, letís you and me keep them in the kitchen and the bedroom. Right where they belong.
And why should we have assisted suicide? 104 year olds with terminal cancer that are in severe pain every second of the day should just toughen up and stick it out. I mean that canít have that much longer to go right?
And I say bring back anti-sodomy laws. What two consenting individuals over the age of majority do in their own bedroom on their own time should totally be dictated by the state. Iím waiting for the official ěGovernment Approved Sexual Positions And Actsî to come out so that I know exactly what I can and cannot do in the bedroom. I need my sex to have the official government stamp of approval. The government can hire a ěsex inspectorî and come into the bedroom every time I have sex. That way, if I slip up and do something too freaky the government can be sure to let me know.
Draft=Slavery?
From a press release from the Ayn Rand Institute:
Once again a proposal to reinstate the draft is being floated by various politicians. ěThis would be one of the worst violations of individual rights since slavery,î says Dr. Andrew Bernstein, a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, ěbecause in fact involuntary conscription is a form of slavery.îIn the current proposal, the draftee could opt for community service instead of military service. ěThis choice exposes the truly hideous premise of the drafters: your life belongs to them, to the state, to the community--to anybody but you. Whether the government forces you to fight and die in Iraq or lets you ěvolunteerî to clean sewers doesnít really matter to them--as long as you accept that your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are theirs for the taking.î
How is it possible, asks Dr. Bernstein, ě228 years after the Declaration of Independence that the politicians of this country still have not understood or accepted the idea of inalienable individual rights? Those who propose to reinstate the draft do not deserve to be elected or re-elected to any office.î
Truth In Advertising
They only had parts of dead freaks, actually, at this New Orleans store called Sideshow. They claimed to have Pancho Villa's trigger finger, preserved (but not all that well-preserved, in my opinion) in a glass box, and Blackbeard's booger, also under glass. Thankfully, nobody has yet to advertise more than Britney Spears' used chewing gum on eBay.
The Transformation Of Christopher Hitchens
Why Christopher Hitchens left The Left, from an interview by Johann Hari:
He explains that he believes the moment the left's bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. "The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists." He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali's books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. "It's explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings."Hitchens - who has just returned from Afghanistan - says, "The world these [al-Quadea and Taliban] fascists want to create is one of constant submission and servility. The individual only has value to them if they enter into a life of constant reaffirmation and prayer. It is pure totalitarianism, and one of the ugliest totalitarianisms we've seen. It's the irrational combined with the idea of a completely closed society. To stand equidistant between that and a war to remove it is?" He shakes his head. I have never seen Hitch grasping for words before.
Some people on the left tried to understand the origins of al-Quadea as really being about inequalities in wealth, or Israel's brutality towards the Palestinians, or other legitimate grievances. "Look: inequalities in wealth had nothing to do with Beslan or Bali or Madrid," Hitchens says. "The case for redistributing wealth is either good or it isn't - I think it is - but it's a different argument. If you care about wealth distribution, please understand, the Taliban and the al Quaeda murderers have less to say on this than even the most cold-hearted person on Wall Street. These jihadists actually prefer people to live in utter, dire poverty because they say it is purifying. Nor is it anti-imperialist: they explictly want to recreate the lost Caliphate, which was an Empire itself."
The Dentist Made Her Do It
Ellen Fein, one of the authors of "The Rules" (which I like to subtitle "How To Erase Your Personality In Order To Trap A Wallet Attached To A Man's Body"), blames her divorce on "gigantic teeth" a cosmetic dentist gave her. Snicker, snicker. Sure, Ellen.
"Is Someone Controlling The President Like A Ventriloquist"?
Here's the question from Metafilter:
Is George Bush being quietly coached while he's speaking in public? There's a weird moment during the debate (one of many) when George Bush says "let me finish" but wasn't being interrrupted. Indymedia has a post on it too, including an mp3 of the moment. So, is Bush being coached, even during the debates, and more to the point, how did he lose when he was being fed what to say?
Here and here are more links, suggesting George Bush wears an earpiece while "speaking."
Putting The Tart In Tartan
"Politics Has Always Been A Contact Sport"
That's what Pulitzer-winning syndicated columnist, Leonard Pitts, Jr., said about politics in America when he spoke to a group of newspaper editors (and me) in New Orleans on Friday. He quoted a litany of political insults, including Teddy Roosevelt's referring to Taft as a "fathead" with "brains less than a guinea pig." I wish I could remember some of the others. His personal favorite was a takeoff, by LBJ's camp, on Goldwater's campaign line, "In your heart, you know he's right"...which became "In your guts you know he's nuts."
So why is it, Pitts wondered, that people in America suddenly seem more politically divided than ever? He doesn't think the majority of people in America actually are hard right or hard left, drawing on then (?80s?) and now Gallup polls for comparison. (Most scary of these was the one where he noted the percentage of people who think gay sex should be legal. No, he wasn't even talking gay marriage, but people who, very generously, would allow other consenting adults the right to have sex with whichever other consenting adults they so desire. I can't remember the exact number he said, but maybe it was 52%? Boy, are we a backward, Puritanical nation.)
But, back to the environment of political divisiveness, which he blames on the "all news all the time" media, where you "have to shout to get attention," and noted that "it's impossible to shout and be heard at the same time." He was most peeved about the temptation to label everyone either "left" or "right"; an oversimplification he calls "bumper-sticker mentality." He attacked sleazy liars like Michael Moore and Ann Coulter, who appeal to the lowest common denominator by "painting a picture of the nation that is not the nation," and caricaturing an argument until it's not the argument at all, then attacking the caricature. It's "loud and simplistic extremism that sheds more heat than light." I'm with you all the way, Mr. Pitts.
Pitts talked about how Reagan used to have Democratic Speaker Of The House Tip O'Neill over for drinks. How civilized...and how hard to imagine now. I'm adding Pitts to my list of what I call "common-sense moderates" like Matt Welch and Cathy Young. I asked Pitts for other columnists he felt fit the same bill. David Broder, William Raspberry, Clarence Page, and Cathy Parker were the ones he named.
Orgy In The Court
I kid you not, Supreme Court justice Scalia just spoke out in favor of orgies:
"I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."
