The Democrats Cave, Again

And once again the Democrats give the Decider what he wants, because otherwise he'll say mean things about them...

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Mukasey's nomination to be President George W. Bush's next U.S. attorney general is headed toward Senate confirmation after two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced they would support him.

Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, who recommended that Bush nominate Mukasey, and Dianne Feinstein of California said they will vote for the 66-year-old retired federal judge when the panel considers the nomination on Nov. 6.

"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked."

In this case, the incompetent who are supposedly protecting us from the wicked.

Guffaw-worthy quote of the day

For some reason, I have never felt it incumbent to tell anyone what their view of existence should be.

--Andrew Sullivan

Still not that simple...

Mike Rogers on Hardball keeps up the "Larry Craig is lying or in denial" meme....

But it's not that simple...

Andrew Sullivan discusses the Larry Craig case, showing his usual combination of incisive insight and stunning obtuseness.

At this point in their lives, to allow the possibility that Craig is indeed homosexual, that he has sustained, lived, internalized a fundamental lie for his entire life, and involved his wife and children in that lie, would be to destroy themselves. I am not going to exonerate the man from hypocrisy because it is impossible. But I do think his problem is far deeper.

Perhaps. Such a case could be made. But Sullivan hasn't made it.

He grew up in a different time, and a different place, where even the possibility of being gay was inconceivable.

Agreed.

I don't think he even thinks of himself as gay, or has any idea what being gay might actually mean.

He's getting onto thin ice here. Agreed, Craig probably doesn't think of himself as gay. But what does Sullivan mean by "being gay"? As an identity? As an essentialist reduction, something you either are or aren't, and if you have sex with men then you are? Apparently...

I think he thinks of his sexual orientation as a "lifestyle" (to use that hideous term Lauer kept referring to) that can be overcome the way one overcomes smoking or poor eating or sexual compulsion. And he constructed an identity in opposition to this "lifestyle" early, out of pain and defensiveness and terrible fear.

Sullivan is assuming an awful lot here. Specifically, that Craig is gay as Sullivan understands the term; that Craig is misinformed at best, deluded at worst, if he doesn't see himself that way; and that his denials are a defense against the intolerable fact of being a gay man.

Craig was seeking in that toilet stall a connection, a shard of intimacy, that the world would not give him, or that he could not give himself.

Or maybe he just wanted a blow job.

No one should have to live without that intimacy and dignity - no one. Living a life like that - a deeply lonely, compromised, painful interior existence - is a very sophisticated form of hell. No human can keep it up for ever. No human should have to keep it up for ever.

He is a hypocrite; and he made his choices. I am not going to dispute that. His voting record helped sustain the misery for others that he lived with himself. He is for ever responsible for that.

But he is also a victim. And to see such a victim's pain exposed brutally in a public restroom pains me. He needs help. So do millions of others.

Yes, agreed. The closet is nasty and toxic. BUT.

After seeing the SNL "Oh Really?" video and the claymation "I am not gay" vid (to the tune of YMCA, and it's scrolled off whatever blog I found it on, can't find the link, my bad), I'm just noticing a rampant assumption that I'm not sure is valid.

As Sullivan correctly notes, Craig grew up in a different time and place. And yes, it may be just as Sullivan describes it. But is that the only possibility?

There's a general assumption that Craig is gay, and is simply lying or in denial about it. That either you are gay or you're not, and that if you were seeking sex with men then you are and that's that.

It's not that simple, though. The current definition of gay as an identity, with a social role attached to it (some behaviors prescribed, others prohibited), as an exclusive orientation, is a 20th-century phenomenon. (Actually, late-19th century England and Germany, or so my friend Harry who's studied this much more thoroughly than I have, says.)

But it's not the only possibility.

It's not the understanding the Greeks had, for instance. They had fairly elaborate rules about who could do what with whom, based on social class, rank, and a few other things. Feudal Japan had a different set of rules. South Asia today has a different set. I came across an online collection of photos of young Taliban in Afghanistan that are just now making their way out of the country. Many of them are vaguely homoerotic, the men are clearly expressing affection for each other, yet I'm willing to wager that few if any of them define themselves as 'gay' in the Western sense. Even though they're having at least a little sex from time to time.

Is this what Craig's getting at with his denials? Doubtful. Just as I doubt Ahmedinejad was showing his familiarity with queer theory when he maintained that there are no gays in Iran.

But it's not just a simple "you either are or you aren't, and you are, so admit it and get out of the closet, queen." And Sullivan, of all people, should know better. It's also possible Craig looks at gay culture--metrosexual, style obsessed, politically liberal--and doesn't see himself in any of it. That when he says "I'm not gay" he's simply saying "I'm not part of that culture." And gay culture is very upper-middle-class, very white, very urban. (There are reasons for that, but this post is long enough already.) He sees gay culture and not only doesn't see himself in it, he doesn't see anything he'd want in it, so of course he rejects it. And because he's been hiding from it, his view of gay culture is probably biased--centered around the highly-visible extreme minority. (Senator, for whatever it's worth, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence don't speak for me, either.)

Identity is extremely complex. We know this. Why are we so obsessed with putting people into labeled pigeonholes?

I'm not about to go off onto queer theory--and don't get me started with what all is wrong with Foucault--but this is ridiculous.

I think we survived

Our accreditation site visit wrapped up yesterday. Because of the rules about the confidentiality of the process, I can't say much more than that, other than woohoo! glad it's over...

Oh, and also, I have not been asked to clean out my office. I choose to take that as a good sign as well.

Blog whoring

Check out my comment over here... Just because. Science fiction and porn... two of my favorite subjects.

Hell of a job you're doing, Bushie.

What a legacy.

Wish I'd Said That

Or at least, Wish I'd Found That Quote....

Some optimists say that in Army Gen. David Petraeus, Bush has finally found his Gen. Grant. That may or may not be true, but it is beside the point. The problem is that Petraeus has not yet found his President Lincoln.

But, alas, Mark Kleiman beat me to it.

It just never stops...

I've been offline a few days dealing with personal stuff...and what do I find when I get back? Priests trying to seduce young men... An accidental death during autoerotic play... What IS it with closeted clergy, anyway?

Never mind. I know. It's about the self-loathing and shame of the closet, and the institutional hypocrisy that pretends everyone in the hierarchy is 100% straight, or simply asexual. Other expressions of sexuality simply do. not. exist.

And while we're worried about this, the killing in Burma continues.

Update: The priest in question now says he was only pretending to be gay, in order to flush out other homosexuals within the church. The desperation continues as he searches frantically for someone to throw under the bus, before he himself gets thrown.

More Liars For Jesus

They have them in Europe, too... A bunch of Dutch creationists are importing BBC nature documentaries and translating the voice-overs into Dutch. So far, so good.

However, they're also doing a few selective edits:

"Instead of saying "70 million years ago, something happens," they say "a very long time ago something happens". They also omit paragraphs such as: "This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,"

And certain episodes and topics simply don't exist:

In particular, she singled out the EO DVD "Het Leven van Zoogdieren" - The Life of Mammals. The series is presented as written and "presented by David Attenborough. Yet it is censored and Episode 10, about apes and humans, is absent. In short, he said, it appears "in a mutilated form, cutting or rephrasing all passages relevant to evolution."

The problem, as the Telegraph article points out, is that it's still being presented as a BBC documentary, not an edited or adapted version.

This is within BBC rules, apparently, as the edits total less than 5 minutes per hour. But "legal" and "right" aren't the same thing. Or so a carpenter from Galilee is alleged to have said.

[hat tip: PZ]

It's hitting the rotary air-circulating device

Our accreditation visit is in about two weeks... Postings may be even more sporadic than usual.

You have been warned.

I'm not dead yet...

Had some time to blog last Friday, but blogger wasn't feeling well & wouldn't respond. Busy all weekend, and the articles I'd bookmarked last week to comment on all seem a bit...well... stale. Like week-old news. And some articles are worth commenting on even well after the fact. These aren't.

So no comment, except to say that there's no comment.

Standing up for principle

Or not, as the case may be. More here. As Pam notes,

There is no dignity in viewing lesbian and gay couples as "less than," but that is their church and their belief.

Don't talk to me about how you're protecting my dignity while you're telling me to go to the back of the bus.

Reliability of science

Or, how do we know what we think we know, and is it true that up to 25% of published scientific studies turn out to be wrong?

Frolicking in the shadow of hell

Orac has some interesting commentary on the recently-discovered cache of photos of Auschwitz SS officers and their families in their casual moments--decorating Christmas trees, picnics, taking a smoke break, etc.

Truly disturbing.

Updated ratings

Incidentally, that last post put me over the line, what with all the references to sex and all....

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• abortion (2x)
• queer (2x)
• pain (1x)

The word pain tags the blog as possibly "adult"? Who writes this stuff?

Misplaced priorities

Sullivan takes a cheap shot at the left regarding the email sent out by the Columbia Queer Alliance about Ahmadinejad's visit.

Ever since Michel Foucault's repulsive embrace of the Iranian revolution, the pomo gay left has had a soft spot for Islamo-fascists.

I'm hardly a fan of Foucault; for the most part, he gets his facts wrong, then reasons poorly from them. And queer studies is hardly the Foucault-worshipping monolith Sullivan implies. Especially since the email he cites begins by refuting his thesis:

"We condemn the human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian government under the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We admonish the policies that make same-sex practices punishable by torture and death, as well as those that restrict the freedoms and self-determination of women.

But the point isn't Sullivan's cheap shots, or illogic, of which this is only one example.

What is it that really has the CQA up in arms?

We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran....The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad's presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."

That's right. What they're really upset about is that we're using the word "gay," when the current conception of gayness is pretty much a Western concept and so doesn't necessarily apply to people in Iran.

Which is fine, up to a point. The modern conception of "gay" as an identity, referring to a roughly peer-equal affectionate/sexual relationship with someone of the same gender to the exclusion of such relationships with the opposite gender, is a phenomenon of 19th/20th Century Europe. It's certainly not what the ancient Greeks believed; they had strict taboos regarding who could do what with whom, based mostly on class and relative social standing. Likewise with the Romans, who legitimized certain practices but in the context of establishing/demonstrating/enforcing power relationships. (Fone's Homophobia: A History is a useful source here.) Up until at least the 50's or so, men could identify as heterosexual and still carry out certain same-sex acts without threatening their heterosexual identity. As long as they 'acted male,' as it were, there wasn't an issue of being anything other than a heterosexual man.

After kicking this around with a friend of mine (Hi, Harry!) via some emails this afternoon, it finally fell into place what annoys me about the CQA's email. They're right that the term "gay" as we understand it may not be entirely accurate in describing those in Iran (though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say we have no possible basis for saying anything at all).

But why are we having this conversation now? People are being executed, and we're worried about what adjectives we're using in the newspaper? When the killings stop, I'll be willing to discuss the terminology question.

The phrasing of the letter comes too close for my comfort to the sort of facile moral equivalencing resulting in "Well, Stalin also accomplished a lot of good for Russia." There's an implied moral equivalency that simply isn't there. When there's 2 sentences denouncing public executions (with those executions having the obvious purpose of keeping others terrorized & silenced), followed by a long (and rather condescending) paragraph on how we need to use the academically-correct term, I start thinking someone's priorities are messed up.

People being killed is a more important question, and more important fact, than that the people being killed are being described with the wrong adjective in the media. If believing that marks me as a reactionary old technocrat, then I'll wear that label with pride.

Why are we moving nukes?

Larry Johnson stays on the case, including a letter showing just how much had to go wrong for the "accidental transfer" of several nuclear warheads to have occurred.

The more things change....

The biggest IT/business trend of the last 20 years, of course, has been the outsourcing of work to India.

Of course, all that demand for programmers in India is driving up wages, and the influx of foreign investment is strengthening the Indian economy and therefore currency. What's an enterprising Indian company to do?

Outsource its outsourcing, of course.

Or, as Ashok Vemuri, an Infosys senior vice president, put it, the future of outsourcing is “to take the work from any part of the world and do it in any part of the world.”

[snip]

Such is the new outsourcing: A company in the United States pays an Indian vendor 7,000 miles away to supply it with Mexican engineers working 150 miles south of the United States border.

And so it goes....

Why are we afraid of these people?

Why do we act like such nervous Nellies, as if we think American democracy is so weak it can't afford to live up to its own values? So Ahmadinejad was allowed to speak, and lo and behold, the ramblings of a religionist dictator didn't cause the collapse of the American republic.

Yes, he's trying to play it for all the propaganda value he can. True, he's not interested in a real dialogue. But putting him up on stage helps expose him for the fraud he is. Keeping him out of the country just makes him a martyr, which is exactly what he wants. Instead, give him a platform and let him explain that homosexuals don't exist in his country and that the Holocaust is a theory, not fact. Expose him for the weak-minded fraud he is.

As usual, President Doofus can be counted on to miss the point:

"...[A]nd yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I’m not sure I’d have offered the same invitation.”

Of course you wouldn't have. You'd have let him play you like a cheap fiddle.