Personal Update

Work is coming along, though Spring Break is going to be mostly an exercise in catching up (and this is any different than usual how?). Made an offer on a house and we're moving forward, but the inspection inevitably found a few things, so now we're in the negotiations about who pays for what. So it's far from a done deal and could still fall through in any of several different ways. Something had to go overboard, and it was mostly blogging. Meh. Life happens. Oh, and I haven't had as much time to devote to the all-important webcomic reading either. I am SO going to have to get caught up over break....

Assisting Mark Kleiman

In a post about a topic I'm not informed enough to have an opinion on (yes, there are a few of them), Mark Kleiman wonders if there's a form of the term "bimbo" that applies to men.

The term I've heard used is "himbo."

Glad to be of service.

Still alive...

And kicking, more or less... Also house-hunting, which takes up an inordinate amount of time...

Shorter Kathleen Parker

Just because Obama won, doesn't mean the voters liked his ideas; they just didn't like McCain very much. If he's serious about bipartisanship, he should do whatever the Republicans want.* And it's foolish for the President to take on someone as powerful as Rush Limbaugh, because he can get the Republican base very riled up.

*Remember, that's what 'bipartisanship' means--Democrats doing what Republicans want.

=====

Yes, I know, it's insanely out of touch and irrational. But there it is. For Obama to act as if he's got political capital, just because he won, is no different than Bush's 2005 declaration of how much capital he had because he squeaked by into a victory that didn't have to be handed to him by the Supremes.

If it weren't so sad, it'd be funny.

And yes, I know, no posts for a month. I'll try to do better.

Tolerance is not immunity to criticism

Noah Millman on religious tolerance:

[C]orporate bodies to exist at all must define their boundaries: this is who we are, this is what we believe, this is how we behave. And this requires an implicitly if not explicitly excluded “not that.” This being the case, if freedom of religion means, most fundamentally, the freedom to be a heretic, it equally means the freedom to declare that the other guy is a heretic. In a very real sense, a social environment that is hostile to religious intolerance must necessarily be hostile to religious freedom.

But this is only true if that intolerance calls upon the power of the state for its enforcement.

If someone says, "OUR magic sky-fairy only accepts white, heterosexual, blonde-haired blue-eyed worshippers who make at least $50K," fine. Go for it. Have fun. But when you run around telling certain "other" people that the magic sky-fairy thinks they're no different from pedophiles, that the magic sky-fairy says they're evil disgusting sub-humans, and the magic sky-fairy wants the gummint to make sure they aren't treated equally under the law--you're going to be criticized for it. Politicians who give you a platform are going to be criticized.

That's only "hostile to religious intolerance" in the sense that public statements and public actions are open to public criticism.

As far as I'm concerned, the Saddleback Church is completely within its rights to exclude gay members. I wish they wouldn't, but they certainly have the right to do so and there's no particular reason they should listen to me on the subject--after all, I don't claim to follow their magic sky-fairy or to be an authority on magic sky-fairies in general. Rick Warren is perfectly within his rights to say everything he's said. And I'm perfectly within my rights to point out the hateful bigotry in those statements. It's not the religion that's the problem here, it's the bigotry. Bigotry on behalf of a particular magic sky-fairy is still bigotry. If his magic sky-fairy tells him to be a bigot, that's his business, not mine. When he starts organizing and fundraising to take away my civil, secular, legal rights, it becomes my business.

A religious body is perfectly free to be intolerant. But when they express their intolerance through public discourse and the political proces, they become subject to public criticism. If your religion tells you to be intolerant toward certain things or certain people, fine. If you're too cowardly to face criticism from others who don't share your belief, keep them to yourself.

But religion doesn't give you the authority to run around criticizing everyone else while being immune to any such criticism yourself.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

Speaking of people I like...

Christopher Hitchens' column over at Slate is a winner, as well.

As Barack Obama is gradually learning, his job is to be the president of all Americans at all times. If he likes, he can oppose the idea of marriage for Americans who are homosexual. That's a policy question on which people may and will disagree. However, the man he has chosen to deliver his inaugural invocation is a relentless clerical businessman who raises money on the proposition that certain Americans—non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, homosexuals, nonbelievers—are of less worth and littler virtue than his own lovely flock of redeemed and salvaged and paid-up donors.

This quite simply cannot stand. Is it possible that Obama did not know the ideological background of his latest pastor? The thought seems plausible when one recalls the way in which he tolerated the odious Jeremiah Wright. Or is it possible that he does know the background of racism and superstition and sectarianism but thinks (as with Wright) that it might be politically useful in attracting a certain constituency? Either of these choices is pretty awful to contemplate.

I've read several different explanations of how this is actually shrewd politics, a healing gesture, whatever. No, it isn't. Wrong messenger, wrong message. By an amazing coincidence, once again it's the gays being told to keep a lid on it, never mind the symbolism, we all have to put aside our personal issues and come together in unity and all that... but how come no one else has to do much adjusting?

Is this really just a cynical move? Do something to get the gays in an uproar, to gain credit for being a centrist who's willing to anger his base? A Sister Souljah moment? I can believe there was some of that present. I can't believe the Obama team fully expected the depth of the reaction, because they misjudged the depth of the hurt in the gay community. Having your civil rights put up for a vote, and taken away, to the tune of vile, hateful rhetoric, can do that. And inviting a major fundraiser who spewed more than his share of that bile to give the invocation, and thus implicit sanction....it's simply too much. It goes too far. Marc Ambinder's wrong about this, by at least half. And Andrew Sullivan is obviously seeing something I'm not; the "earnestness and sincerity of his campaign" are belied by the hamhandedness (or blatant cynicism) of this invitation.

As I told a friend of mine: I knew Obama would disappoint me. It's inevitable; every winning politician must, inevitably, disappoint his or her supporters. I just thought he'd be in office before it happened.

I know, I know. He's a politician, from Chicago. I never bought into the walks-on-water enthusiasm of some. But I thought he was a cut above the typical politician.

I'm not so sure now.

Why I [heart] Glenn Greenwald

His spot-on column today about how Obama's "new politics" is actually the same old politics, and how poorly it's worked in the past.

Go read it, it's good.

It's the end of the world as we know it....

In another sign of the impending Apocalypse, I find myself in agreement with Charles Krauthammer, at least on the Caroline-for-Senate thing.

If Princess Caroline wants a seat in the Senate, let her do it by election. There's one in 2010. To do it now by appointment on the basis of bloodline is an offense to the most minimal republicanism. Every state in the union is entitled to representation in the Senate. Camelot is not a state.

Zing!

Oh, well, never mind, then.

Kathleen Parker has a vaguely-unhinged column up at today's Post explaining that questioning Caroline Kennedy's qualifications for the Senate is reasonable, but there's a simple reason why those who oppose her on those grounds have got their facts wrong. You see, unlike those who opposed Palin on the grounds that she was "anointed--cynically selected without proper vetting", Caroline Kennedy would only be a Senator, would only be one person among 100, and would have to stand for election (eventually) anyway.

The thing of it is, Parker clearly understands, at least on an intellectual level, the argument against appointing Kennedy:

The real rub is that she hasn't earned it. The sense of entitlement implicit in Kennedy's plea for appointment mocks our national narrative. We honor rags-to-riches, but riches-to-riches animates our revolutionary spirit.

Palin paid her own passage unfreighted by privilege. But I and others opposed her spot on the Republican ticket for good reasons, some of which resemble concerns now aimed at Kennedy.

To wit: It isn't enough to want the prize. One must be up to the job, in a league with one's fellow actors.

Excellent summary! Couldn't have said it better. So what could possibly outweigh this argument?

In Kennedy's case, those actors would be senators, not heads of other, potentially belligerent, nations. If appointed, she would be a single vote among 100 and otherwise a placeholder until 2010, when she would have to run for election as any other.

Oh, well, in that case, it's okay, I suppose. After all, she can't launch nukes, so why shouldn't she have it, just because she wants it?

Hey, I have an even better idea. Since a Senate seat is no big deal, a House seat, where you're one person in 435 and have to stand for election every two years, must be next to nothing. If someone in a prominent family decides they'd like one, why don't we just let them have it? After all, you can't launch nukes or anything. And in fact, we could simply say that certain families have first dibs on the seat. We could pass them down through multiple generations! Won't that be exciting! Think about the fairy-tale endings we could put on our media narratives! And we could give those families special titles to show they're part of the aristocracy! Oh, wait, there's that little matter of the Constitution. Well, the last eight years have shown that it's mostly just suggested guidelines that don't really need to be taken seriously anyway.

Sorry. But simply being a Kennedy and deciding she wants to be Senator aren't enough. For Palin to rise to the Governorship in spite of her apparent lack of qualifications says a lot about her political chops and her determination, if nothing else. If Kennedy wants the seat, let her campaign for it.

Would Hillary have won if she weren't Mrs. Bill Clinton? Probably not. But she still campaigned. She met with voters, she pressed the flesh, ate the ethnic food and pretended to like it, the whole thing. Why should Caroline Kennedy have the seat for even two years, and the benefit of incumbency in the upcoming election, simply because she wants it? If there were a track record of elective office, of something beyond boards and fundraisers, it wouldn't reek so much. And if a prominent socialite not part of the Kennedy clan were interested in the seat, they wouldn't be getting this much serious consideration.

Of course, I'm not a resident of New York, so my opinion matters somewhere between diddly and squat. I don't know where Kathleen Parker lives. But to whatever degree she's trying to influence opinion, including the opinions of those who do matter on this question, her reasoning is shallow, waving away with an airy la-de-da some very real concerns about the corrosive effects of dynastic politics. For someone who tries to consider herself a conservative, she doesn't seem to understand basic political theory all that much.

What's the price going to be?

John A. cites anonymous but allegedly inside sources that the decision to invite Rick Warren came from Obama himself, that this wasn't from Feinstein or a staffer. Assume for the moment that's true.

Part of why Obama's felt free to disregard the left is that they gave him their support cheaply. As Congressional Democrats have demonstrated repeatedly, when there's no penalty, no price to be paid, for disregarding your concerns.... your concerns get disregarded a whole lot.

So. What's the price going to be? What sort of concession is going to be demanded? Early action on DADT? Federal recognition of state-level domestic partnerships? It should be something more than just some speechifyin'. He wouldn't have to devote his entire first term to LGBT issues--the Inauguration invocation, while a big deal, isn't an earth-shaker--but there has to be something.

And if he isn't held to it, made to pay a price for going out of his way to insult a constituency--then that constituency has no one and nothing but itself to blame.

This is ridiculous.

Every winning candidate must sooner or later disappoint his supporters. It's inevitable.

Backing the idea of Joe Lieberman staying in the Democratic Caucus was annoying. But Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inaugural? WTF?

The election is over. I thought Obama's appearance at the Saddleback forum, unhealthy for democracy as it was, was an unfortunate example of a candidate doing what had to be done to win. But this is outrageous. The reasons are laid out very well by Joe at AmericaBlog, John at AmericaBlog, at Pam's, by Mark Kleiman over at RBC. I don't have much to add to what they've said.

We've heard oodles and oodles about how Obama's transition team is the savviest political team ever assembled. I can therefore only assume that this was deliberate. Has Obama made a calculated decision that the support of the LGBT community is not needed, that its loss will be more than offset by the uniting picture of a popular right-winger at the Inauguration?

Well, he's a politician. And he won the election. That means he gets to make such decisions.

But I don't have to like it. And I don't.

Most of his cabinet appointments have been good, and I don't share the general amazement that he's picking a team of centrists and relative insiders. That's pretty much the platform he campaigned on. But Rick Warren isn't centrist. He's Dobson with better PR. And putting him up on the podium sends a very clear message.

Message received, Barack. Loud and clear.

Kleiman update

Re: The previous post, which was originally about this post.

Mr Kleiman posted a comment pointing out a factual error in my post (my bad, I gotta stop posting late at night) and laying out his position in more detail. I was, in fact, misreading him in places, and his proposed solution has quite a bit to recommend it. I don't think it's likely to happen politically (govt recognizes partnerships, under some different name, for everyone, gay & straight alike, and religious organizations decide for themselves what 'marriage' means), but it would be a cleaner solution, and Mr Kleiman doesn't seem to think it's likely to happen immediately either. Anyway, go read the comment, it's worth it.

Thanks for the quick & courteous reply. I'm still sometimes amazed to realize I'm not just talking to myself on this internet thingy....

Trying to have it both ways

Mark Kleiman has a generally very good post over at RBC discussing gay marriage and his lack of sympathy for Maggie Gallegher, who resigned from the Coyote Grill in Hollywood after it was boycotted over her contributions to Prop. 8.

Most of the post is very good, pointing out that the boycott was about her public political acts, not her private religious beliefs, and that disapproving of something is not the same as wanting to use the power of the state to prohibit it.

So far, so good. However, in the last paragraph he reveals how little he really gets it:

Not that it matters, but I'm not especially a fan of legal recognition for same-sex marriage. I agree with Barack Obama that the state should recognize and protect committed pairwise domestic partnerships regardless of what they are called, and leave the definition of "marriage" to be worked out in civil society without the interference of the state. But that wasn't the question on the ballot.

But that's the problem. As the experience of New Jersey is showing, saying "it's a protected committed pairwise domestic partnership but not marriage" leads to all sorts of problems. Lack of insurance coverage, hospital visitation and consent-to-treat issues, and more, because the relevant (Federal, for the most part) regulations use the M-word exclusively. If it's not marriage, real marriage, it's separate and very much unequal. Leaving the definition of "marriage" to be "worked out by civil society" is playing with the lives of the people he claims to care about.

Leaving it to the states lets the states serve as policy laboratories. that's the classic Federalist argument for non-involvement. In this case, the experiment of almost-but-not-quite marriage has failed. It has not produced equality under the law for gay couples. Saying "civil society can work it out without government involvement" is impossible in an economy and society in which the government is as involved in our lives as it is. (Should it be less involved? Maybe. But that's not the question on the ballot, to borrow a phrase.)

If Mr Kleiman means that some sort of domestic-partnership status is a necessary waystation on the road to full equality, I'm skeptical but willing to be convinced. But unless I'm misreading him, that's not the point he's trying to make. He seems to be arguing in favor of benign neglect, of leaving the issue fallow because, after all, it's just so messy and while he doesn't personally have any objections, you understand, he just doesn't see the need to make it official. The states can set up something separate but equal (because we all know how well that works out) and "civil society" (by which he appears to mean straight society) can decide whether or not it's ready to allow queers to use the m-word. And if there are specific legal privileges that are tied to the m-word, well, um, I guess the queers will just have to wait, and be grateful for what they can get.

I wonder how many signatures we need to put the validity of Mr Kleiman's marriage on the ballot. We are going to get to vote on that, right? Or is he comfortable with the idea of the majority voting on minority rights because he's confident that it won't be his rights that are taken away?

I dunno. It's late, I'm in finals-week grading, perhaps I'm being unnecessarily uncharitable. But when someone who's usually so sharp says something so obtuse, it stands out.

Ruth Marcus Loses It

Ruth Marcus's column today on why Caroline Kennedy should be named Senator for New York starts off trying for some fair-and-balanced by discussing several very good reasons why she should not be named:

I always find it a bit creepy when children follow the career paths of their parents.... even though politics as family business has a lengthy pedigree in American history, I recoil from political dynasties.

For one, dynasties tend to illustrate the phenomenon of reversion to the mean: It's rare that the second generation outperforms the first....

More unsettling, political dynasties are fundamentally un-American. This is not -- or is not supposed to be -- a country in which political power is an inherited commodity. The notion that Caroline Kennedy could simply ring up the governor and announce, or even politely suggest, her availability grates against the meritocratic ideal. After all, even the children of politicians generally take the time to climb the usual rungs rather than parachute into top jobs.

Right on, Ruth. She gets it. Caroline for Senator would be a bad idea. If she wants to attain high elective office, let her go through the rigors of a campaign. Let her demonstrate her competence and let the voters decide if she's worthy.

A big bundle of cash -- see, for example, Jon Corzine, former Goldman Sachs chairman, former senator from New Jersey, now New Jersey governor -- is helpful for vaulting your way over the drudgery of doing time on the state Senate subcommittee on pensions. Ditto other forms of celebrity -- see, as an example, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Before getting all huffy about Caroline Kennedy's qualifications for the job, let's take a breath and remember Jesse Ventura and Sonny Bono.

But, again, they all campaigned. They all went through the process. They had to come out with positions on issues that weren't their pet causes, they met the voters, they did what they were supposed to. Yes, they had advantages. All other things are never equal. But U.S. Senator wasn't their first elective office. Even Hillary went through the process. Did she run on Bill's coattails? Duh, of course. But she also did fundraising, and campaigning, and the other things that gave her legitimacy.

So, why is Caroline so uniquely qualified? What makes her the best person to fill that position and represent New York in the Senate at this time?

What really draws me to the notion of Caroline as senator, though, is the modern-fairy-tale quality of it all....The lucky little girl with a pony and an impossibly handsome father. The stoic little girl holding her mother's hand at her father's funeral. The sheltered girl, whisked away from a still-grieving country by a mother trying to shield her from prying eyes.

In this fairy tale, Caroline is our tragic national princess. She is not locked away in a tower but chooses, for the most part, to closet herself there....She is the last survivor of her immediate family; she reveals herself only in the measured doses of a person who has always been, will always be, in the public eye....

I know it's an emotional -- dare I say "girly"? -- reaction. But what a fitting coda to this modern fairy tale to have the little princess grow up to be a senator.

Actually, no. Not if it's by being named to the position with little significant accomplishment in public life. (Yes, she's written a book. Better than nothing, but is that enough? By that standard, Bill O'Reilly is better qualified.) For her to enter politics and build on her family's legacy, by achieving something significant in her own right? Absolutely.

But of all the ways of choosing Senators, and of all the reasons to choose a particular person to fill a vacant seat, "it would make a perfect fairy-tale ending" is one of the worst. It isn't (or shouldn't be) about happy endings to stories we tell ourselves, it should be about the best combination on ideology and competence to get done what needs to be done now. I suspect Ruth Marcus knows better and, on reflection, will come to her senses.

Who, exactly, are these "reactionary liberals"?

George Will's column today is on the perils to the Republic posed by the threat of reviving the Fairness Doctrine. I'll let him summarize it:

[T]he doctrine required broadcasters to devote reasonable time to fairly presenting all sides of any controversial issue discussed on the air. The government decided the meaning of the italicized words.

He points out, quite correctly, that the original argument in favor of the Doctrine was scarcity of spectrum; with only a relatively few stations, and those stations using the public's airwaves for private profit, they had a responsibility to present different sides of an issue. (From his comments, it appears Will found the rationale unpersuasive, but that's a separate issue.)

And he observes, correctly, in an era of 100-channel cable packages, exploding talk radio, and that there Internet thingy, the scarcity argument doesn't carry nearly as much weight as it used to. BUT... check out the last few paragraphs. Note what's there, and what isn't.

[S]ome liberals now say: The problem is not maldistribution of opinion and information but too much of both. Until recently, liberals fretted that the media were homogenizing America into blandness. Now they say speech management by government is needed because of a different scarcity -- the public's attention....

And these worrywarts say the proliferation of radio, cable, satellite broadcasting and Internet choices allows people to choose their own universe of commentary, which takes us far from the good old days when everyone had the communitarian delight of gathering around the cozy campfire of the NBC-ABC-CBS oligopoly. Being a liberal is exhausting...

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine. Having so sullied liberalism's name that they have taken to calling themselves progressives, liberals are now ruining the reputation of reactionaries, which really is unfair.

So I have a question: Who, exactly, are these "reactionary liberals"? Part of why I read Will is his careful research, his willingness to name names, cite sources, and in general provide a factually-grounded as well as well-reasoned argument. (I seldom agree with him, but his columns are always thought-provoking.)

Yet here he simply invokes the right-wing bugaboo of "reactionary liberals." Um, I spend a fair amount of time cruising through the left blogosphere. Not all my time--I do have a life, such as it is--but I'm simply not seeing a groundswell from the Left for reviving the Fairness Doctrine. I'm hearing a lot of bloviating from the right about how restoring the Doctrine is going to be Barack Hussein Obama's first step in turning America into a Socialist Muslim Atheist Marxist Dictatorship. The Lefties I'm reading are more concerned with the economy in free-fall, the Iraq mess, and health care, than with restoring the Fairness Doctrine.

So who are these people, Mr Will? What are your sources? Or, to keep your readership up with the base, do you just occasionally take a Limbaugh rant, edit it for tone, and run it?

Roger Ebert on Ben Stein

A wonderful take-down of Stein's awful creationist movie. Here's a sample:

This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

And there is worse, much worse.

For the entire buildup, to see how he reaches that point, go read the entire thing.

[With a big h/t to Princess Sparkle Pony!]

Giving Thanks

Gail Collins reminds us of the things to be thankful for that we may not have thought of.

Though if I can find the Thanksgiving Prayer that Heather Havrilesky wrote for Suck.com back in the day... that's still one of my favorites ever.

the Lieberman decision

Disgust does not BEGIN to describe my reaction to this. The Democratic "leadership" has decided that expecting Joe Lieberman to pay a price for supporting the Republican nominee, demonizing and questioning the patriotism of the Democratic nominee, and being the least effective committee chair in the Senate would be unreasonable; after all, that would make Joe all frowny, and we can't have that.

So now the lying opportunist hack is still caucusing with the Democrats. Argh.

Glenn Greenwald has documented some of the extent of Joe's perfidy and the excessive degree of "bipartisanship" that made the Democrats nothing but a punching bag for Republicans, a role they seem determined to keep playing. John Aravosis has some insights as well.

What they said.

I kan too has profundity

This morning's lead article on Salon is an attempt to explain the phenomenon of lolcats to those who have been living in caves the last couple of years. (Obsession with the election isn't a valid excuse, as there were sites dedicated to lolmccain, and lolmccain and lolobama sites up before the election. A lot of them seem to be gone, but some are still around.)

It's an attempt at deconstruction, but it's the most shallow, facile attempt at deconstruction I've ever read, an overly-earnest explanation of how the humor works, how it's actually symbolic, you see, so they're not really cats, they're symbols, all leading to the conclusion (are you ready for this?):

They're people. They're us.

Wow. That's really the best you could come up with? Seriously, anyone who needed that explained to them probably isn't a Salon reader in the first place. The thing I regret most is that reading the article took me about eight minutes, and I'll never get that eight minutes back.

Or, in lolcat:

EPIC FAIL. KTHXBAI.

Quote of the day

From a commenter on one of the blogs at WaPo:

Being in the majority means responding to the weakening cry of "Liberal!" with the loud and overbearing oath, "Dimwit!"