WHY I'M NOT THE HARVARD CRIMSON: Digging out from under the blizzard of angry emails after my piece in defense of the estate tax, I can't help but be amused by the Harvard Crimson's defense of its decision not to run David Horowitz's ad on slavery reparations. "The ad was written in a style that seemed as though it sought solely to aggravate our readers, and we didn't feel comfortable running it unedited," said Crimson President C. Matthew MacInnis '02. Rest assured that every now and again, I will write something designed specifically to aggravate my readers. And everything you read here is always unedited. Unless you count my own, amateur page-proofing.

OUTSIDE.COM: Couldn't help but notice that after zillions of dollars' worth of hype, marketing, ad copy, editorial stars and on and on, Inside.com, according to today's New York Times, only gets about five times as many readers as this site. Hmmm. I'm not criticizing Inside.com as journalism. It just strikes me that the lesson of the past few years on the web is that smaller, quirkier and freer is better.

FINALLY: My own magazine wakes up and smells the coffee on the current consequences of Clinton. Check out the splendid editorial calling for the Dems to dump McAuliffe. It finishes with these wise words: "If Democratic bigwigs force McAuliffe out, it will spawn a week of stories about the party's disarray--and then give the Democrats a real shot at a post-Clinton identity. If they don't, the whiff of scandal will follow the party for the next four years, handing the Bush administration a patina of moral superiority that it doesn't deserve and a political advantage the country can ill afford."
- 4:10:40 PM
 
MERCKY AIDS PANACEA: If you listen to some activists, the answer to the world's AIDS crisis is simple. Just break international patent laws, rip off the drug companies, shower the Third World with protease inhibitors and all will be well. I wish it were that simple. The decision by major drug companies to sell their drugs to developing countries for no profit seems to me to be a sensible compromise between addressing a world health crisis and not killing off the financial incentives to find AIDS treatments in the first place. As long as the cheaper drugs cannot be reimported, Merck's proposal sounds promising. If we want to make the drugs even cheaper, then there's nothing stopping governments from subsidizing them. But then we have the real problem: how do you ensure effective administration of the meds? As anyone close to this epidemic knows, taking your HIV meds half-heartedly is arguably worse than taking nothing at all. HIV mutates swiftly around weak medicines and becomes resistant to them. Currently, the regimen is grueling. I take well over 30 pills a day, for example, and if I miss one dose by more than a couple of hours, I risk becoming immune. I'm not alone in feeling sick and tired after I take my pills - an inbuilt incentive to avoid taking them. My time spent volunteering in the local AIDS clinic here was enough for me to worry about how effective such treatments were for poor, underclass women, who had to juggle extraordinary pressures as well as a complex, nauseating drug routine. Now multiply that a dozen times for impoverished Botswanan farm-workers and you see the extent of the problem. That's why today's Washington Post op-ed by Barry Bloom is important. Better to save fewer people in monitored, TB-style enclosures and prevent resurgent, resistant HIV, than to try to help too many too indiscriminately and make the situation all the worse. There are some platitudes in the piece, but the analysis is sound.

PASTEL POLITICS: Check out this electoral map. It's a variation on the famous red-and-blue map, but adjusted so that each state is colored a different blue-red purple hue depending on the actual share of the vote each candidate received. It makes the point in color that I tried to make a while back in the New York Times. We're not quite as divided as we think. And we're all a fabulous shade of lavender!
- 12:37:02 AM

Thursday, March 08, 2001
 
JACKSON WATCH: Jesse Jackson has finally admitted that, yes, his Operation-PUSH/Citizen Education Fund organization did pay his former mistress, Karin Stanford, $35,000 in "traveling expenses" last year as well as a hefty salary of $120,000. Previous IRS filings for 1999 had somehow omitted both facts. The tax form section which asked whether Jackson's Citizen Education Fund employed anyone at over $50,000 in annual salary had "NONE" written on it. That will now be, ahem, amended. Stanford, by the way, wasn't the only employee kept off the list. Doesn't all this scream: audit? Surely the IRS needs to do a thorough investigation of Jackson's chaotic organization, and see whether these lies are simply the tip of the iceberg. By the way, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Jackson described his lifestyle as modest. He earns some $430,000 a year. Good news that selfless activism for the downtrodden has become so lucrative in recent years.

AMAZON UPDATE: In one week, you have donated $3866. I'm a little stunned. THANKS SO MUCH. It will go directly to paying back some of the expenses of setting up this site and the server costs involved in keeping it up. Depending on whether we keep this rate of donation up, which I doubt, we will at least have found a partial solution to how to make content pay in the web. To actually pay me something will probably require advertising of some discreet sort. But at the rate you're logging on, that shouldn't be too hard. We're on course for well over 125,000 unique visitors this month - a quadrupling in five months. If you haven't donated anything yet, and would like to chip in, click on the "Tipping Point" button on the right and all will be clear. But once again: THANKS. This adventure is something I would gladly do for free - but if we can make this model work on its own, we'll have done something to advance e-journalism a little. And since I'm not a leftie, I wouldn't mind an occasional pay check either.

BEING TAXED TWICE: I'm no fan of taxes, especially those that tax income, but I make an exception for the estate tax. I'll spell out my reasons in a piece posted tomorrow morning, or you can take a look at it on The New Republic's website here, but one thing I didn't mention in the piece is this notion of being taxed twice. Opponents of the estate tax argue that it's unfair because the money has already been taxed as income. But this is silly. Almost everything has been taxed at least twice. You go out for a meal and you pay sales tax. The money you use to pay it has already been taxed as income. You buy a packet of cigarettes with your pay check money, which has already had both income tax and FICA tax withheld. Then you pay a punitive sales tax as well. Ditto gas. Or you send a relative abroad a gift. The money you buy it with has been taxed at least twice as income, then there's a sales tax, then there's a customs duty: triple tax! To single out the estate tax as some sort of especially noxious form of double taxation is simply silly. In fact, it's less plausible than these other examples because, unlike all these other double and triple taxes - you don't actually pay it. Why? Because you're dead! The only people really indirectly paying the tax are your living beneficiaries and they pay it once and once only. So support the aboltion of the estate tax if you want. But don't use this phony argument while you do so.

SWEETIE DARLING, CAN DADDY HAVE A PARDON?: Hilarious piece in the New York Observer on the uncanny resemblances between Edina and Patsy of Absolutely Fabulous fame and Denise and Ilona Rich of Absolutely Scandalous fame. Ilona's a fashion designer, darling, and mother is thrilled to itsy bits. The difference between Denise and Edina is that Edina's daughter had the good sense to find her mother's stuck-in-the-70s schtick just a mite embarrassing. Not Ilona. You want to know why I don't live in New York City? Read this piece, sweetie, and you'll see.
- 8:11:53 PM
 
CHILL, DICK, BIG-TIME: As a big fan of Dick Cheney, I have to say it's worrying that he has put in a ten-hour day just two days after having a stent replaced in an artery. I know the complication from the angioplasty is not a function of stress; and I know Cheney feels the need to establish himself as an active player in a city where any physical weakness is regarded as some sort of failure. But giving absolutely no ground to a serious health condition seems to me to be a kind of Washington machismo that should be beneath Cheney. No-one would complain if he took a week off. Invasive surgeries are shocks to the system; stress, while not directly related to his current ailment, is nevertheless a factor in weakening one's physical well-being. One of the things I have learned from living with a serious illness is that it isn't always the smartest tactic to give it no ground. A tree that bends in the wind endures. A tree that will not budge will snap. Washington, like many other power-centers, is already a deeply unhealthy place. People work far too long hours; they are forbidden by the outdated rules of political propriety to seek psychological counseling; they are not supposed to be sick; they are barely allowed to sleep more than five hours a night. A pager or cell phone is attached to them at all hours, even on weekends, to keep their brain connected to their job. Rest, exercise, recuperation, sleep: all these are seen as failures of the will. This is hooey. (Yeah, I know I'm writing this at 1am, but I'll sleep till 10 in the morning.) I admire Cheney's calm acceptance of the largely genetic ticker problems he has to deal with. But someone needs to tell him to cool it, that less is more. W seems incapable of it. Isn't this what a spouse is for?
- 12:53:16 AM

Wednesday, March 07, 2001
 
SEE DICK DIE: I can't be the only person mildly perturbed by the glee with which two Slate writers have lampooned Dick Cheney for having heart problems. Tim Noah yucked it up within hours of Cheney's return to hospital, throwing in a few, tired, Bush-is-a-bonehead remarks that doubtless had some of his readers rolling in the aisles. "It goes without saying that George W. Bush isn't up to the job," Noah blithely remarked, pronouncing Cheney all but dead before he'd even had his operation. Then comes the usually impeccable David Plotz with a comic tale depending on the notion that a) Cheney is all but dead; and b) that Bush would happily milk this for personal gain. The humor-fantasy piece quotes from future press releases: "Time, July 23, 2001: It was an extraordinary scene: The vice president, just two days out of open-heart surgery, was wheeled on a gurney to the Senate floor to beg confirmation for the president's controversial supreme court nominee, Judge Kenneth Starr. Cheney, who couldn't speak, scrawled on a pad that "I will lose my will to live if you don't vote for Starr." Three Democrats, calling it their "patriotic duty," immediately announced that they would cast votes for Starr, ensuring his confirmation ... The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2001: President Bush today threatened "to unplug Dick from the respirator" if House Democrats don't go along with his plan to privatize Social Security and Medicare ..." I'm sorry but this isn't funny. A perfectly decent man is having health problems. Leave him alone.

BEAT THIS SENTENCE: "Geminates never lenite, unless they concomitantly degeminate." - Segmental
Phonology in Optimal Theory, edited by Linda Lombardi (forthcoming).
- 4:33:19 PM
 
I ASKED FOR IT: Two "beat this sentence" sentences, forwarded by some readers with too much time on their hands:

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power." - Judith Butler, "Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time," Diacritics (1997).

"Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self)." - D.G. Leahy, "Foundation: Matter the Body Itself."

It's actually possible to come up with this stuff yourself. A couple of bright sparks have set up a random post-modern sentence generator on the web. If you're dong "queer theory" in some goddawful graduate school and need to pull an all-nighter, this is the solution you've been waiting for. An instant, computer-generated meaningless, i.e. pomo, essay at your finger tips. Enjoy.
- 12:31:41 PM
 
NOW THEY TELL US: "As it happens, the level on which Bush is not intellectually impressive is the only one that most journalists respect: verbal intelligence, the ability to understand and manipulate logic and language. This is precisely the sort of intelligence Bush does not possess, and so, many journalists stupidly thought of Bush as, well, stupid. I include myself in this and hereby renounce and regret my repeated past use, in connection with Bush, of the word "pinhead." ... [His are] politics played on a high and nuanced plane of intelligence, the sort of level that signifies a natural ability -- natural political smarts. George W. Bush: smart guy. Who knew?" - Mike Kelly, by no means a Bush-whacker, but coming to see W's smarts, in today's Washington Post.

NOW THEY TELL US II: "The question is not one of Bush's legitimacy. The new President - so the highest authorities assure us - holds office by virtue of a process that was legal and constitutional." - Rick Hertzberg, the current New Yorker. By "highest authorities," I assume Rick is referring to the Palm Beach Post. Anyway, it's good to see two former New Republic editors, of very different ilk, come round to W. A little, anyway. Now all we need is Kinsley. Oh well.
- 12:09:30 AM

Tuesday, March 06, 2001
 
HAS ALAN GREENSPAN READ THIS?: A chilling memo from the epicenter of the new economy. It was first posted on Jim Romenesko's invaluable website. It's a memo sent from San Jose Mercury News publisher, Jay Harris. Can we say NASDAQ 1000?

Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 1:00 PM
To: ALL
Subject: Update on the Budget Situation
TO: All Mercury News Employees

"This is a letter I have worked very hard not to have
to write to you. It is a letter that brings news you
will not be pleased to receive. But the information
that follows reflects reality and, as always, I want
to make sure you know what's ahead.
"As you all know from reading the paper and my
recent e-mails to employees, the national economy
generally - and local high tech companies in
particular - are in decline. This continuing decline
has had a significant impact on our business.
"Most problematic is the reduction we've seen in
recruitment advertising. With fewer and fewer Valley
companies hiring, and more and more announcing
hiring freezes or layoffs, we are experiencing a sharp
drop in recruitment advertising.
"To understand the speed and size of the decline,
consider this:

"In January, our recruitment revenue fell $103,000
short of the same month last year. In February,
recruitment revenue fell about $2.5 million below the
same month last year."
Yikes.
- 9:31:45 PM
 
DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINATION: "The last time Marc Rich called off a party was in Spain, about five or six years ago. His Mossad-trained bodyguards were tipped off that his private jet would be forced down the moment it left Swiss airspace by Yankee F-16s, so he stayed put. No reason was offered back then. Although the US government was out to grab him, Rich had the proverbial ace up his sleeve. By giving lotsa moolah to Israel, he was being fed information by Mossad that even the top brass of the Pentagon weren't getting. Mossad knew that the snatch was on by listening in on the Americans. They tipped off the fugitive fraudster, a move that eventually made Bill Clinton rich, pun intended... Marc Rich, however, has done us a favour... By bribing everyone and sundry, ... [he] proved what we, soi-disant anti-Semites for daring to protest about soldiers shooting at kids, always knew. The way to Uncle Sam's heart runs through Tel Aviv and Israeli-occupied territory." - Taki, The Spectator [of London].

You might also be interested in Conrad Black's response to Taki in the following issue. Here it is.
- 7:53:06 PM
 
FUNNY GLASSES TOO: A short extract forwarded by a reader from the classic Elvis Costello song, with regard to our Robert Byrd discussion. Speaks for itself:

"Oliver's army is here to stay
Oliver's army are on their way
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today

There was a checkpoint charlie
He didn't crack a smile
But it's no laughing party
When you've been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger."
- 7:29:38 PM
 
NOW WE KNOW: A Democratic activist, Juanita Yvette Lozano, has been indicted for the theft of Bush's debate prep tape. Some obvious, immediate questions: How dumb was Mark Mackinnon to hire this woman? Did it really take the Justice Department this long to figure it out - or was it put on hold until John Ashcroft showed up? Would a low-level staffer do this on her own initiative with no imput or encouragement from the Gore team? Why did she pick Tom Downey as the recipient? Let the inquisition continue. Or as Matt Drudge would breathlessly say, "Developing ..."
- 5:37:43 PM
 
CRACKERS, NIGGERS, FAGGOTS, ET AL: Well, if that headline doesn't bring us some traffic, what will? Thanks for all the subsequent emails about Senator "I'm-Not-A-Racist" Byrd. They raise an interesting question: what happens when an offensive term for a particular group then gets generalized to others? Byrd's defense is that he doesn't think the term "nigger" is racial any more. It can apply to whites and blacks - so it's not racist. But its origins are clearly racist; and the term is clearly derogatory. Similarly, a 20 year-old reader points out, Chris Rock has a famous routine which starts with: "I love black people, but I hate niggers." Is Rock racist? And what's the difference between him and Byrd? Well, Rock is black, of course. And he's deliberately funny, unlike Byrd, who's merely a joke. But different standards for black and white discourse is a little, er, racist, isn't it? In my neighborhood, the n-word is ubiquitous. But it's a mainly black neighborhood and the word is interchangeable with 'dude'. I wouldn't use it in a million years -especially in the 'hood. There are similar problems with the term 'faggot.' In his early days, Eminem said he had nothing against gay people, just faggots. Just as not all gay men were faggots, not all black guys are niggers. The question is whether this is one step toward enlightenment or one step back toward bigotry. I'm inclined to think that, in the younger generation, the use of such terms need not be prima facie case of prejudice. It's quite common, for example, for high school kids to use the word 'gay' to describe anything they don't particularly like. It has no tangible reference to homosexuals - although it hardly bespeaks acceptance. But in general, the use of the term now is far less ominous than it would have been ten years ago. So let the linguistic waves roll and the racial, post-racial epithets mount. And let old Klansmen like Byrd look before they mumble.

BEAT THIS SENTENCE: "Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal - of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard."
- from Roy Bhaskar's "Plato Etc: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution." (Verso ) Nominations now open for the single most incomprehensible, pretentious sentence published in "English." This one courtesy of reader, Gerard Vanderleun.
- 5:29:15 PM
 
JACKSON SHAKEDOWN WATCH: The Chicago Sun-Times is on a roll. Their most recent story about Jesse Jackson's racket, ahem, charity, Operation-PUSH, features an unholy alliance between Jackson and Republican governor George Ryan. Jackson had long attacked Ryan for failing to do enough to enroll poor kids in the state health-care program for children, KidCare. Then Ryan awarded Jackson a $763,000 no-bid contract to promote KidCare to Operation PUSH kids. All Jackson and his acolytes need to do is promote KidCare three times a week in any context. No wonder Jackson responded by giving Ryan an operation-PUSH Peace Award. (The event qualified as one of the thrice-weekly KidCare promotions.) PUSH claims to have moved 151 families into KidCare in the first seven months of the contract. Let's say they can claim 250 families by the end of the twelve months. That's $3,000 an enrollment. Nice work if you can get it. Does Governor Ryan support websites as well? Or do I have to attack him first?
- 12:59:13 PM
 
BYRDY: Thanks to those of you offering definitions of Byrd's 'W.N.' Here are the most persuasive. One reader explains: "'White Nigger' is a pre integration southern term for the very worst white trash. The Bad guys in the movie "Deliverance" are archetypal White Niggers. I have seen a lot of old people regress into the prejudices and language of their youth as they become senile. It does not mean that he was insincere during the years he claimed to be a liberal, but that part of his mind is now gone." Another offers: "In the early 1980's I worked in a large discount store in a small town. In the lunch room a group of us were discussing our various religions. It was a good-natured chat, and I mentioned my Catholic upbringing - the altar boy days, the "dominus vobiscum" of the Latin Mass, the incense. I noticed an older worker at a nearby table visibly stiffen at my comments. This person, a rather odd, solitary guy, was known for being something of a survivalist of the Conspiracy bent. A few hours later I passed him in a storage section of the store. As we walked past each other he turned to me and said, "I always thought Catholics were white niggers." I was too surprised to say much of anything, so I just shrugged and went on my way. The next day, he walked up to me and whispered, 'N*****r.'" Well, the consensus seems to be that it's not very nice.
- 11:52:56 AM

Monday, March 05, 2001
 
FOOT IN MOUTH DISEASE: Senator Robert Byrd, one of the biggest embarrassments of the Senate, recently mouthed off about "white niggers." I've read several stories about this but I still haven't been able to deduce what he meant. I'm assuming he isn't referring to Norman Mailer's famous disquisition on the "white Negro," meaning the desire of some trendy whites to revel in what they regard as authentic black culture. Or is Byrd's colloquialism a version of Charles Murray's recent lament about the 'proletarianization' of elites? Or is it a comment on the close parallels between black underclass culture and white trash culture, illustrated daily on any cheesy talk show you happen to watch? But whatever Byrd meant, it was surely racist - certainly more racist than David Horowitz's ad about slavery reparations. The phrase requires you to believe that there is some uniform way of life that defines 'niggers' and that some white people, who should know better (Byrd implies), are copying this. If by racism, you mean a derogatory generalization about all people with a certain skin color, then this seems to me to be a pretty easy case of out and out racism. But so far, only Kweisi Mfume has spoken out about this. Where are all the other Democrats? Where's Jesse Jackson? Oh never mind. It strikes me that, in this respect, conservative paranoids are right. There is a double standard between Democrats and Republicans on the racial gaffe question. If Jesse Helms or Rick Santorum had said this, there would be hell to pay. Or am I missing something here?

CONFESSIONS OF A CLINTON-HATER: Perhaps the most common explanation of loathing for Bill Clinton, at least among the Clintonistas, is that many of them want to undo all the good that Clinton did. John Podesta described them on one of the Sunday talk shows recently as "people" who are "ever present" and who want to "destroy and undermine . . . all the good things [Clinton] did as president." So where do I fit in? I loved a lot of what Clinton did as president. I supported him on free trade, welfare reform, deficit reduction, to name some of his most notable accomplishments. At the very beginning, I was hopeful he would help gay civil equality and women's rights. I even think his foreign policy was defensible. I admired his ability to relate to African-Americans. I drew the line at his compulsive lies, betrayal, and sleaze. Can't Podesta understand that some of us just loathed the man - and what he did to our public culture of civility, honesty and dignity? To be sure, some were out to get him from the start. I wasn't - and many others wanted the best from his talents. Our dismay and outrage is not because he pursued goals with which we disagreed, but because he betrayed so many of his accomplishments with sociopathic behavior that he should have found a way to control. Clear now, John?
- 9:16:00 PM
 
PUNCH DRUNK: The ever-fair John B. Judis has an interesting piece in the current American Prospect. He's writing about electoral reform and wisely advises Democrats that getting rid of punch card machines is no panacea. The real reason is that, despite common misconceptions, punch-card voting machines are not concentrated in black and minority districts. According to a national study by two political scientists called Stephen Knack and Martha Kropf, 31.9 percent of whites live in punch-card districts, compared with 31.4 percent of blacks. The biggest error rate in the last election, Judis also points out, was in Illinois, not Florida. One of the main reasons for this was a recent law which banned straight ticket voting, where voters could simply pull one lever and vote for the entire Democratic ticket. Suddenly, Chicagoans actually had to think for themselves in the voting booth, a process that resulted in a doubling of invalid votes. This confusion would not be solved by optical scanners, which require, if anything, a slightly higher level of voter independence and competence. Bad news for Democrats. In many places last November, they were helped by punch-card machines, not hindered by them. Electoral reform could make their plight even worse. If the Democrats thought the 2000 election was unfair to them, they should brace themselves for 2002.
- 8:53:14 PM

Sunday, March 04, 2001
 
GANDOLFINI IS A GOD: Forget Brad Pitt. James Gandolfini is the sexiest man alive. He's also a much better actor than Pitt, as anyone who has seen "The Mexican," can attest. I saw it last night and concluded that the culture war over homosexuality is over. Sorry, Gary Bauer. We won. You can't see a TV show or a movie these days without some non-stereotypical homo stealing every scene. This is just a phase in our popular culture, of course, and it will probably die down. But what a relief from the days of Ellen, where homosexuality became the only thing the series was about - and homosexuality itself was some horrible, generic 'lifestyle' with a fully accessorized politics to boot. Gandolfini's portrayal of a mobster homosexual couldn't be more different. In a couple of hours, he just about destroys every anti-gay shibboleth you can dream of. Gandolfini's Leroy is gruff and dangerous and masculine and effective. He has a waistline even Richard Hatch would worry about. He has casual sex but he isn't immune to love. He murders but it isn't a function of any homosexual pathology. Yep, he does suffer the fate of most gay men in movies - he's dead soon enough. But since the cast of "The Mexican" ends up pretty much like the cast of "Hamlet," that's not saying much. And then the same actor pulls off his brilliance again in "The Sopranos," this time as a straight mobster. More and more, it seems, the categories are less interesting than the human beings they are trying to describe. More and more, gayness doesn't usurp someone's humanity - it's just a part of it. It has taken centuries and decades for our culture to reflect this reality. And as the culture also stops forcing gay men and women into defensive roles, their gayness will recede even further and their 'normalization' intensify. This is the real reason gay civil equality is inevitable. Reality bites - and liberates.
- 10:29:43 PM
 
SPINLESS IN SEATTLE: A Northwestern reader emails to signal his relief at the lack of empathy George W. Bush showed during last week's earthquake. There were no sudden presidential tours of the damage, no lip-biting empathy moments, no hugs, no tears. There was simply a brief presidential announcement of emergency funds being released to help with the aftermath. If part of the relief of the Bush presidency is what won't happen, this is surely one of the "won't happen" moments. Finally, American citizens in the aftermath of natural disasters are being treated as grownups.

BUSH'S TRIANGULATION: Looking back on that speech last Tuesday, I'm struck by how Clintonian it was. Bush was no Reagan. There were no calls to arms for the right; and there were absolutely no negative lines against Democrats - or even government. And yet ... Bush's triangulation, so far, is not like Clinton's. Clinton kept his party base loyal by symbolism and by sentiment. Ideologically, Clinton was unmoored - lunging from one co-opted policy to another. Bush, for all his soothing rhetoric, is keeping his party base close by giving them what they want. His top aides attend the bi-weekly confabs of the conservative movement in Washington, as Fred Barnes reports in the Weekly Standard. Bush's key strategist, Karl Rove, has an open line to the right-wing for input and advice. John Ashcroft is attorney-general. For all the pressure for Bush to moderate his tax cut, it is the same now as it was when he started his campaign. The hedgehog doesn't learn new tricks. He just adds new pricks. I keep thinking of Pope John Paul II. No, Bush is nothing like the Pope. But in a way, the current Pope, by his choice of name, sent a message that he was going to be a synthesis of the reformist radical Pope John XXIII and the consolidator Pope Paul VI. Bush, in some ways, is similarly showing himself to be a synthesis of Reaganite radicalism - in tax cuts, social security reform - and Clintonian triangulated centrism. He is President Reagan-Clinton. He has Reagan's instinct for smaller government, but none of his vision or clarity or intellectual depth. Equally, he has Clinton's eye for the political middle, for the concrete details of domestic policy that build majorities vote by vote, but without the psychopathic melodrama of the Clinton miniseries. Bush is Reagan cut down to post-Cold War size. He is Reagan's mini-me.

CLINTON AGONISTES: "A psychopath is not a lunatic suffering from disabling delusions or an obviously neurotic person displaying phobias and anxieties; rather he or she is an outwardly normal person with an apparently logical mind who happens to be an emotional cipher. Hiding behind what Hervey Cleckley called "the mask of sanity," the psychopath is the extreme case of the nonsocial personality, someone for whom the ordinary emotions of life have no meaning. Psychopaths lie without compunction, injure without remorse, and cheat with little fear of detection. Wholly self-centered and unaware of the emotional needs of others, they are, in the fullest sense of the term, unsocial. They can mimic feelings without experiencing them ... In addition, psychopaths are often thrill-seekers, not simply because they discount the bad things that may happen to them if they take risks, but because they are underaroused: that is, their emotional void leaves them bored and restless. Knowing little of true feelings, they cannot rely on their own feelings to supply them with much satisfaction, and so they seek it out from dangerous activities, wild parties, and an agitated sense for excitement." - James Q. Wilson, "The Moral Sense."
- 10:03:31 PM




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