Gay N Gay: 2011

The Impossible Takes Longer

Once again RWA1 has come through for me (unintentionally, of course), this time with a link to a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the "GOP's Payroll Tax Fiasco: How did the Republicans manage to lose the tax issue to Obama?"The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy

The Impossible Takes Longer

Reagan: The Other Third Rail

Thanks to my Tabloid Friend on Facebook, I know that Ron Paul was foolish enough to criticize Ronald Reagan some years ago. First below is the 1987 quotation from Paul, then Politico writer Ginger Gibson's commentary.“I think we can further thank Ronald Reagan for doing a good job [on furthering the Libertarian Party]. He certainly did a good job in 1980 pointing out the fallacies of the

Reagan: The Other Third Rail

Grace in Division

I'm not really a good judge of these matters, but I think the South Korean government handled the question of condolences for the death of Kim Jong-Il rather well, as the Hankyoreh reports it: Regarding the death of North Korean National Defence Committee Chairman Kim Jong-il, the South Korean government stated on Monday, “We offer our consolation to the citizens of North Korea. We hope that

Grace in Division

Wisconsin first grade teacher sets great example for dealing with gender variance among children

Thanks to Shannon Minter for alerting me to this heartwarming account of a Jackson County, Wisconsin teacher's experience with a gender variant first grader. Melissa Bollow Tempel, in "It's Okay to be Neither," sets an amazing example of how to deal with gender issues in the classroom, including a girl, Allie, who was often taken as a boy. Equally heartworming, the girl's parents were accepting

Wake Me When It's Over

After a bit of a lull, RWA1 has been linking again. Much of it of course was about the deaths of Christopher Hitchens and Vaclav Havel (nothing about the death of Kim Jong-Il, though -- yet), but the fun part was this article at The New Republic, "Why Obama's New Populism May Sink His Campaign," by William Galston, a hack from the Brookings Institution. "Vain hope that this will be heeded,"

Wake Me When It's Over

Boy Culture in the Nineteenth and a Half Century!

I've been reading H. Bruce Franklin's Future Perfect: American Science Fiction in the Nineteenth Century (revised edition, Oxford University Press, 1978), which turns out to be more of an anthology than a critical study. It's worth reading because of the commentary he supplies; he's written a good many books on various subjects, including Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction (Oxford,

Boy Culture in the Nineteenth and a Half Century!

There Goes the Sun King

Kim Jong Il is dead, as I'm sure everybody in a position to read this blog knows by now. (Judging from what I've been reading online all day, it might be helpful to some readers if I explain that East Asian names usually put the surname first. So Kim was the dictator's surname or family name, Jong Il his given name; Jong Il Kim in Western order.) I certainly don't mourn him, but it's hard to

There Goes the Sun King

What If Bach Was One of Us, Just a Slob Like One of Us

An old friend of mine posted a link on Facebook today to an article on the worst pop song lyrics of all time. The article attempted to provide the top (or bottom) ten, but many deserving examples didn't make the cut. No Stevie Wonder? No Prince? No Neil Young? No Paul McCartney? No Ira Gershwin? All the examples were relatively recent, and thanks to the "Golden Age" program on our local

What If Bach Was One of Us, Just a Slob Like One of Us

My Evening Constitutional

One of my readers wrote to suggest that I was "slightly wrong" when I wrote about Bob Garon, the sixty-something gay Vietnam veteran who got all up in Mitt Romney's face a couple of weeks ago:The U.S. Constitution doesn't say anything about marriage, so it's not correct to say that denying him marriage denies him his Constitutional rights.My correspondent pointed out that while the Constitution

My Evening Constitutional

The Grinches of the Far East

Those wicked Chinese! According to this vigilant piece at The Week, if you can't afford as many Christmas gifts as you'd like this year, it's all their fault. And why? Because greedy Chinese workers are getting paid more than they used to.Economists note that labor costs in China have been on the rise for years, but they are now reaching a point where exporters can't simply absorb them and

The Grinches of the Far East

Those Who Are Tardy Do Not Get Fruit Cup

Does Jesus haz a sad? This is being passed around on Facebook today:Jesus: Santa.Santa: Yes?Jesus: I'm sad.Santa: Why are you sad? It's Christmas right? It's your birthday!Jesus: Yeah. That's the pointSanta: Why? Jesus: Because whenever its Christmas the kids only wait for you and not me! They only celebrate Christmas because of you! Why Santa, why not Jesus? -Dec. 25 is for Jesus not for

Those Who Are Tardy Do Not Get Fruit Cup

"What Is Truth?" Said Jesting Pilate

Another fun tidbit: FAIR has a blog post by Peter Hart about Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes fussing over new polling data which showed that a majority even of Republicans believe that there is "too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations." Fifty-three percent of Republicans believe this, compared to 91 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Independents, or 77 percent

"What Is Truth?" Said Jesting Pilate

There Are People Who Do Not Love Their Fellow Man

I don't know much about Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. I probably wouldn't even if I watched TV, since reality programs about religious nuts are not my cup of tea. What little I do know comes primarily from voyeuristic liberals who throw tantrums about them but at the same time can't or won't avert their eyes.This sort of thing always reminds me of something that happened in the 1960s, when I was

There Are People Who Do Not Love Their Fellow Man

Extremists to the Right of Me! Extremists to the Left of Me!

Speaking of Tabloid Friend, he linked to this image today:With this text below it:Register residents to vote, get out the vote and insure that there is a high electorate turnout in 2012 because President Barack Hussein Obama needs to be re-elected, 70 democratic U.S. senators and 300 U.S. representatives need to be elected to perform the "People's" work. The 112th U.S. congress will go down as

Extremists to the Right of Me! Extremists to the Left of Me!

New Jersey judge awards full custody of twins born through surrogacy to gay father

The New Jersey case of A.G.R. v. D.R.H. & S.H. is a story of much that can go wrong. At the center of the case are two twin girls, born in October 2006. There has been litigation about their parentage and care since they were five months old. The girls were born to AGR, who was a gestational surrogate for her brother, DRH, and his partner, SH, who is the children's biological father. AGR

Who Cleans Up After the One Percent?

I meant to put up that corner banner before, but had trouble getting it to work. I tried again today, and it worked, so there it is. It would be easy to think that Occupy has passed its moment, with the police clearing out the occupations (though not everywhere, not yet), and the media are sure to tell us it's all over. That might account for the drop in donations to OWS recently. But it's

Who Cleans Up After the One Percent?

They're Taking Over, Dammit!

I'm not really interested in keeping up to date, but I figure I've dawdled enough on this one.Given Takei's history of tongue-in-cheek video clips, I'm not sure how seriously to take this one. As a joke it's a good one. It works as a jape at the old sf trope that humanity would drop our petty international quarrels and band together if we faced an extraterrestrial threat, but given the current

They're Taking Over, Dammit!

The Gaze Militant

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo playerHere's an interesting exchange (via). It's fun and easy to laugh at Romney's discomfiture here, but one thing jumped out at me: if this Vietnam veteran is going to make same-sex marriage the deciding issue when he votes, he won't be able to vote for Barack Obama either. Obama has always made his opposition to same-sex marriage clear and

The Gaze Militant

Decent Exposure

A friend linked to this blog post as her Facebook status, and as I read it I realized that it seemed to be entirely beside the point. The blogger, a Christian psychologist, reported this exchange with a student:"I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God."I responded, "Why would you want to do that?"Startled she says, "What do you mean?""Well, why would you want to spend any

Decent Exposure

Bring the Sentinel Home (Bring Him Home!)

A good many Americans rejoiced when Barack Obama became President, on the grounds that they no longer had a president who embarrassed them before the world. That didn't last long, not because Obama isn't embarrassing, but because his devotees will defend anything he says or does.This one is relatively mild compared to his new Facebook ad promising to outbid any Republican candidate on aid to

Bring the Sentinel Home (Bring Him Home!)

Bike Paths of South Korea

One of the things I love about Korea, and one of the reasons I want to live there, is the institution of the public bicycle: you can check out a bicycle from a neighborhood site as you would a book from the library. I admit that I'd be nervous about riding a bicycle in Seoul traffic, but the bikes are also available outside the most congested areas. There also a good many bike paths. Several

Bike Paths of South Korea

California appeals court upholds parentage determination for Colonel in US Air Force Reserves

On Friday, in S.Y. v. S.B., the California Third Appellate District upheld a trial court order that found S.Y. to be a parent of two children adopted by her partner, S.B. This case is signifcant because S.B. argued that her partner had not "received the children into her home" as required by statute because she maintained a separate residence for almost the entire 13+ years of their relationship

What the Fuss Was All About

After reading several reviews of The Eagle that compared it unfavorably to Neil Marshall's Centurion (2010), I decided to see what I thought. Centurion was in at the public library, so I checked it out and put it in the player.The two movies are very similar: not only are they set in the same period and place (the early second century CE, Scotland), they're different approaches to the same basic

What the Fuss Was All About

Wisconsin courts foil bio mom's attempt to overturn her partner's adoption of the children

Here is another "lesbian bio mom behaving badly" case, and another court --this time the Wisconsin Court of Appeals -- that does not let her get away with it. (This case was decided in July, but I'm behind on some of my posts and I haven't seen it written about elsewhere).The case name is Shelly J. v. Leslie W. Lesbian couple, Shelley and Leslie, began their relationship in 1996 and decided to

Copyeditor's Eye for the L33t Guy

A little while ago a Facebook friend posted this image as her status.It led to a smug little thread that began with "ZING! Nice comeback by whoever posted the response to that dolt. [chuckles]" "'Dolt'?" I asked in a comment. "Yup," said my friend. "Nope," I said. She conceded that the questioner was at least "aspiring."I myself am a recovering grammar neurotic, and stuff like this annoys me

Copyeditor's Eye for the L33t Guy

Planned Statehood

I just finished reading Building a More Resilient Haitian State, a Rand Corporation report that was published in the wake of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti. It is somewhat better than I expected it to be, since it acknowledges the destructive roles that both France and the US have played in Haitian history -- up until the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Presidency in 1990,

Planned Statehood

Premature Exaltation

I don't feel much like writing tonight, or doing anything much tonight for that matter, probably because I have too much I need to do.But anyway, President Obama apparently delivered a campaign speech the other day that has his fans all aflutter. Steve Kornacki was so worked up that he posted two pieces on Salon, Monday's "What a president with a strong hand sounds like," and today's "The

Premature Exaltation

The Pot Calling the Kettle FOX

My Tabloid Facebook Friend posted a link to an article called "Fourteen Propaganda Techniques Fox 'News' Uses to Brainwash Americans," which put me in mind of the Rules of Communist Revolution that used to circulate in mimeograph back in the good old days before the Internet, when you could believe everything you read. The Communists had only ten rules, Fox has fourteen! That shows the

The Pot Calling the Kettle FOX

European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) hears another second-parent adoption case

Last week the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard the case of X. & Others v. Austria, its second case on the availability of second-parent adoption. A webcast of the oral argument in the case -- translated into English -- is available on the ECHR website here. I wrote about the hearing in Gas & Dubois v. France last April; that case has yet to be decided. In Gas & Dubois, the child was

Lost in Translation

I'm still plowing through Gay and Lesbian Subculture in Urban China, which in fact is the second academic book in a row that I've taken on. (The previous one was Sun Jung's Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption [Hong Kong University Press, 2010], to which I may return sometime.) That may account for some of the impatience I feel with it. It occurred to me today that academic

Lost in Translation

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom

I'm in the middle of a reading push, as I think you could call it, trying to get through a pile of books that I've had out from the library for too long. (Not overdue; I've just been renewing them a lot.) It's been successful in that I'm making good progress, but I've found it difficult to make time to write. You'd think that retirement would have eliminated such time conflicts in my life, but

Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom

The Ten Best "Ten Best" Lists...

I didn't realize I was serious until I read to the end of the first screenful of this article:Are there too many of these lists? Not enough? Do most run-downs succeed in delving deeper than the year’s biggest blockbuster releases? Which rankings are the most interesting, idiosyncratic or trustworthy — in short, the best?But the writer was serious. Reality trumps satire once again.P.S. And

The Ten Best "Ten Best" Lists...

Deja Vu All Over Again

Plus ça change ...Most towns in Britain are without an adequate independent bookshop. The distribution of books and magazines, outside a few fortunate centres, is in the hands of powerful chains of shops. These chains apply to books and magazines simple tests of quantity. Below a certain likely selling figure, they are not interested, and will not even offer the item for sale. (They are said

Deja Vu All Over Again

The Birth of the Uncool

I happened to be sitting near a radio tonight that was tuned to NPR's Marketplace, and caught an interview with Thomas Hayden, a blogger whose essay "Ixnay on the iPod: In Praise of Crap Technology" has been getting some attention. Appearing on the radio will probably help! The interviewer seemed a little baffled by Hayden's attitude: I mean, who wouldn't want all of the blessing that St.

The Birth of the Uncool

Giving the People What They Want

(photo by Steve Rhodes via)Someone pointed me to this item about a survey which found that, contrary to the propaganda line about overtaxed, over-regulated small businesses, taxes and regulations are quite low on the list of small business owners' concerns. What's particularly intriguing is that the people who conducted the survey evidently expected to get results that fit their right-wing

Giving the People What They Want

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

So, the Vatican threatened legal action over Benetton's photoshopped image of Pope Rat kissing Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed El-Tayeb.I wonder why. This one, genuine not faked, didn't seem to be a problem:Nor did this one:Though this one, of course, is beyond the pale:(That's the Popemobile in the background, bravely ignoring the kiss-in.)I guess there are just some mysteries man was not meant to

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

Book by psychology professor Abbie Goldberg is most comprehensive yet on children of LGBT parents

If you want to read one book about the research on children of LGBT parents, the best choice is Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children, by Clark University psychology professor Abbie Goldberg. Dr. Goldberg is also a researcher in her own right. She presented her current research on adopted children at a session sponsored by the Williams Institute earlier this month in Washington, DC. There

A Boy Has to Have Standards!

The largest exhibit at the Nimitz, "History Walks of the Pacific War," features "three acres of World War II artifacts, tanks, guns, and large relics" in the words of its brochure. This "Walk" avoids the history of the war in favor of an obsession with the nuts and bolts of the war's machines and of obtaining and preserving these specimens." I watched as a veteran of our armed forces (but not

A Boy Has to Have Standards!

Major Suckage, Y'Know? I Am Like So Sure

So, this Kansas high school senior named Emma Sullivan went to Topeka "as part of Kansas Youth in Government, a program for students interested in politics and government." She reported on her Twitter account that she'd (via):Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.Now, this was the girl's personal Twitter account, with about 60 followers, so that

Major Suckage, Y'Know? I Am Like So Sure

Traditional Intelligence Researchers Strike Back

Glenn Greenwald recently linked to a post by Andrew Sullivan lamenting liberals' lack of love for President Obama (hey, you "conservatives" can have him, Andy!). After I'd looked it over I noticed that Sullivan had written the day before about "The Study of Intelligence." I knew he'd had some stupid things to say about that in the past, so I decided to bring myself up to date.Sure enough: The

Traditional Intelligence Researchers Strike Back

There Are Starving Children in Korea Who'd Love to Eat the Pepper Spray You're Complaining About!

Seoul police used water cannons the other night on demonstrators who objected to the passage of the Korean-US "Free Trade Agreement." (It still hasn't been signed by President Lee, but it's hard to imagine what would stop him after he's pushed it so long.) According to the Hankyoreh, this happened in sub-freezing weather:Participants struck by the cannons said the cold was such that the water

There Are Starving Children in Korea Who'd Love to Eat the Pepper Spray You're Complaining About!

Every Knee Shall Bow and Every Tongue Confess the Name of Nike

Today I'm reading China in Ten Words (Pantheon, 2011) by Yu Hua. Born in 1960, Yu grew up during the Cultural Revolution in conditions of moderate poverty (which means he was hungry most of the time, but not hungry enough to die of it), though both his parents were medical doctors. In these essays, he contrasts his memories of China's recent past with its drastically changed present, but he's

Every Knee Shall Bow and Every Tongue Confess the Name of Nike

The Shamelessness of the Powerful

From Lenin's Tomb:We understand the sheepishness about speaking of violence in social movements. It is not a comforting or politically sympathetic thought that popular violence has been productive; that without it, unjust systems would not have been overturned. Yet, aside from the fact that the automatic assumption against violence is actually an assumption against popular violence, the

The Shamelessness of the Powerful

Literally Literate

I wanted to do a post on this subject before, but I think I'll sneak around on it from the back, briefly. I'm reading Conversations with Octavia Butler, one of the University Press of Mississippi collections of interviews with a wide range of writers. It includes a transcript of a joint appearance by Butler and Samuel R. Delany at MIT in 1998 (which, happily, is also available online). The

Literally Literate

Know Your Place and Like It

Some songs give me the creeps. This one, for example.I liked Johnny Cash when I was a kid, but I never heard this song until the 70s or 80s. It didn't make me hate him, and I still like a lot of his music, but it took me aback. The little shoeshine boy is never said to be black, though he exhibits some minstrel tendencies: big wide grins and natural rhythm are a traditional part of white

Know Your Place and Like It

Mises Pieces

Paul Krugman's latest column has been getting some favorable attention, because he forecasts the failure of the Supercommittee, the Obama-Boehner chimera that was supposed to end our deficit woes. The Week cited it enthusiastically, and I quote this excerpt from their quotation:Eventually, one side or the other of that divide will get the kind of popular mandate it needs to resolve our long-run

Mises Pieces

Bold Independent Thinkers

Today there was another letter in the local paper asking rhetorically why the Occupy Wall Street protesters don't occupy Washington DC? I've seen this trope quite a bit in the past couple of weeks, by people who think they've really caught those hippies in their own hypocrisy. Another popular trope the letter-writer used was "stop whining and vote!" Why yes, we found out how well that worked

Bold Independent Thinkers

Moving On

What I noticed most about Mayor Bloomberg's defense of his cleansing of Zuccotti Park was that he mentioned only freedom of speech. "The First Amendment protects speech," he said at his press conference. "It doesn’t protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space."Let's look at the First Amendment for a moment.Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of

Moving On

A Nation Built on Faith

So, when does God season open?As you can see by the headline below the caption, though, this 4 a.m. service is about something else. One hunter declares that he "will mix sacrifice with relaxing sport. He will donate whatever he kills to families needing food.""I know there are no cynics in this room," said the Rev. Martin Wright, senior pastor. "You wouldn't come here at this hour if you

A Nation Built on Faith

Cullum

I'm not sure how I heard of E. Arnot Robertson's Cullum and decided I wanted to read it. I must have found it mentioned and discussed online somewhere, but even though it was only a couple of months ago, I can't remember where. No matter; I just finished reading it, and I'm knocked out by it.Robertson (1903-1961) was a broadcaster, lecturer and film critic as well as a novelist. Cullum was her

Cullum

It Looks Pretty From Up There

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.(via)But down below, in Greece and Italy, Goldman Sachs is on the march:What is taking place is nothing less than a financial coup d’etat by the Eurozone’s rentier class. And it is one of history’s sad ironies that, at least in the case of Italy, this is all being engineered by an ex-Communist, who likely would

It Looks Pretty From Up There

Single woman may sue Michigan fertility clinic for denial of IVF services

The Michigan Court of Appeals has released for publication its September opinion in Moon v. Michigan Reproductive and IVF Center. In that case, Allison Moon sued a fertility clinic because it would not provide services to her as a single woman. Reversing the trial court, the Court of Appeals ruled that the clinic was subject to the state's anti-discrimination law and could not avoid litigation

Whose Ox Is Being Gored

The official backlash against Occupy Wall Street and its many offshoots is well under way. Last night the New York City Police went on a rampage against the people camped out in Zuccotti Park, ordered and defended by the corrupt billionaire mayor himself. It's a sign of the thuggishness of the assault that the police and "hundreds of sanitation workers" tossed protesters' belongings, including

Whose Ox Is Being Gored

Passing the Love of Women

I picked up Anthony Heacock's Jonathan Loved David: Manly Love in the Bible and the Hermeneutics of Sex (Sheffield Phoenix, 2011) at the library to see what current scholarship was saying about the subject. What I learned was that the nature of the relationship between Jonathan, the son of King Saul, and David, Saul's successor to the throne, is ambiguous and will probably never be settled for

Passing the Love of Women

Relatively Fabulous

I promised to post this last week, so here it is. I wrote it for a local gay newspaper that didn't give me much space, so it's more compact than most of my writing, but I think it says all that needed to be said about the book.The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture, by Daniel HarrisNew York: Hyperion, 1997$22Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, there was a gay culture. It was made up of willowy

Relatively Fabulous

Okay, Let's Go!

As I walking home this afternoon from the public library, reading as I went, I became aware of movement on my left. I glanced up from my book and saw a man getting into the passenger side of an old van (somewhere between a panel truck and an SUV, actually). He said cheerfully, "Okay -- let's go!" I looked again and saw a very little kid, two or three years old, sitting on the driver's side with

Okay, Let's Go!

It's the Only Thing

The child-rape scandal at Penn State continues to unfold, and I confess to some relief that for once, words that are often thrown around too freely, like "pedophile" or "rape" itself, are actually the right tools for the job. "Pedophile" has been been inflated to the point where it is used any time there's a notable age-difference between partners, even if the younger partner is thirty; but this

It's the Only Thing

"Oh, Didn't You Know I'd Been Ruined?" Said He

Right after Steve Jobs died, I did a long post which touched on the human cost of economic development in other countries, though it also applies to the US. Much like Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown before he can kick it, there's a recurring pattern of excusing the inhumane treatment of workers (long hours, dangerous working conditions, low pay) by promising that things will

"Oh, Didn't You Know I'd Been Ruined?" Said He

When Cyborgs Collide

Nathan Jurgenson was back at Salon last weekend with another, even more vacuous post on the power of Teh Social Media. Though he admits that OWS "is most certainly not an Internet Revolution. Much more than a 'digital' protest, the movement has been fundamentally concerned with taking over geographic space, mobilizing bodies in an area, yelling, walking, breathing, sleeping and doing what

When Cyborgs Collide

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old ... Oops, Too Late!

The AV Club linked to this video:You can find an English translation of the lyrics here, along with some background information about the program. The blogger who put it up called it "The most bizarre cover I've ever seen," but I beg to differ. This at least gives it a run for its money (no embed, alas). Gore Vidal once said of Tennessee Williams that because he could no longer die young, he

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old ... Oops, Too Late!

How the Mighty Have Fallen

According to an editorial in the Hankyoreh, when South Korean President Lee Myoung-bak visited the US last month, he "relied heavily on a U.S. speechwriting firm for the text of his major speeches and statements ... The Korean Embassy in the United States reportedly paid $46,500 (around 51 million won) to the Washington-based company West Wing Writers, primarily for draft writing and revisions

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Word Salad with Oil, Vinegar, and May I Grind Your Pepper?

So, Friday night I began reading Richard Canning's second volume of interviews with gay (male) novelists, Hear Us Out (Columbia, 2003). I love reading interviews with writers, and these promised to be meaty and substantial.Unfortunately Canning allows himself to chatter away in the introduction, and at one point he writes this (xi-xii):Too many academics in our field have preferred to write

Word Salad with Oil, Vinegar, and May I Grind Your Pepper?

T-T-T-Talking 'Bout Your Generation

Actually, not quite: Stickman's problem with the MTV Generation is probably himself. Especially since I can't help wondering how he can measure the length of someone else's attention span with a glance, and how he knows that attention spans in general have shrunk.I liked this New York Times Magazine piece.And speaking of sitting silently without fidgeting: that’s essentially what we want of

T-T-T-Talking 'Bout Your Generation

The Protection Racket

This isn't exactly news -- even at the time, there were skeptics about it -- but it's always good to be reminded. At his blog A Tiny Revolution Jon Schwarz quoted "this description of Obama's March 27, 2009 meeting with the heads of thirteen major banks" from Ron Suskind's controversial new book Confidence Men :The discussion moved swiftly across topics, such as the general soundness of the

The Protection Racket

This Woman Was a Prophet

Ellen Willis's writings are trickling onto a Tumblr run by her daughter, though the links keep breaking almost as soon as they are linked. But it gives me the chance to see some of her articles I hadn't seen before, like this New York Press piece on the Elian Gonzalez controversy. For those who've forgotten the case, five-year-old Elian was rescued from the waters off Florida after his mother

This Woman Was a Prophet

A Television Don in Newsweek

RWA1 linked on Facebook tonight to this article by the economic (?) historian (?) Niall Ferguson, with the endorsement "Ferguson is a good historian, and the analysis rings true." I'd heard Ferguson's name before, thanks probably to his infotainment PBS and BBC tie-ins, but till now I hadn't read anything he'd written and knew nothing about him.The Daily Beast piece doesn't inspire much

A Television Don in Newsweek

When lesbian mothers split up -- latest results from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study

The December 2011 peer-reviewed journal Family Relations reports the latest findings from the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) on the well-being of children whose mothers split up before they were 17. The NLLFS has been following 85 children of lesbians born through donor insemination beginnning in the 1980's. Information about the study and its earlier published research is

Super-Omma: The Guilt Museum, Korean Style

Just a quickie for now: the latest book I've read is Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mom (Knopf, 2011), very well translated from the 2008 Korean original by Chi-young Kim. It's the story of an old woman who goes missing one day in Seoul Station, while visiting her grown children with her husband. Anyone who's struggled their way through rush-hour subway crowds will understand how someone

Super-Omma: The Guilt Museum, Korean Style

All the News That Fits

There are times when I vaguely regret not having cable or satellite for my TV, if only to be able to check on what the networks are not covering. The BBC news feed shows nothing -- oh, I take that back, this just appeared:Thousands of anti-corporate greed demonstrators have closed one of America's busiest ports. A spokesman for the Port of Oakland in California said maritime operations

All the News That Fits

South Carolina appeals court reverses custody award to father that was based in part on mother's abortion

Since the mid 1970's, gay rights advocates, and advocates for children, have argued that a judge's view of the morality of a gay or lesbian parent should not influence the judge's decision on custody or visitation. Gay and lesbian parents do continue to lose custody or face vistitation restrictions in some counties and states, but rulings explicitly based on morality are rare. Of course some

The Mark of Cain

Herman Cain has been attacking Planned Parenthood, claiming that its sole purpose is to prevent the birth of black babies, and accusing both the organization and its founder, Margaret Sanger, of racism. First, who would believe anything Herman Cain says? Second, such a claim would most plausibly have the result of causing the Republican base to make large donations to Planned Parenthood.Today

The Mark of Cain

The Redistribution of Blessings

Those who read this blog regularly may have wondered what my first Right Wing Acquaintance, RWA1, has had to say about the Occupy Wall Street protests. Not all that much, and it's predictable enough. Early on he was critical of their anti-Wall Street, anti-corporate stance; I pointed out that they had that in common with the Tea Party, which he'd defended. They're both guilty, he replied, but

The Redistribution of Blessings

I'll Have One with Sparkles

Anne Rice continues her long downward slide with this comment (via/via) on Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series:Lestat and Louie feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town ---- anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires

I'll Have One with Sparkles

Violence Begets Violence, or the Other Way Around

Here's another one of those things that reveals a strange attitude in our media -- strange when you think about it, anyway, or when I think about it.The Huffington Post posted a story on the Occupy Wall Street protests, headlining the corporate media's favorite Catholic fascist and former Nixon toady, Pat Buchanan. For a supposed extremist, Buchanan has enjoyed a very comfortable ongoing

Violence Begets Violence, or the Other Way Around

There's an Echo in Here!

Ah, I knew there was something else I'd been meaning to write about.Kim Brooks, whose reflections on the uselessness of high school English classes I discussed some time ago, returned to Salon last weekend with weeping and lamentation over ... erm, well, her own narrow-mindedness and intolerance on Facebook. The given title was "Is my Facebook page a liberal echo chamber?"She'd found herself in

There's an Echo in Here!

The Production of Ignorance

I'm almost caught up on topics I've wanted to write about, though some have just slid away and been forgotten. This one will almost bring me up to date. For this week.Last Sunday one Nathan Jurgenson published an article on Salon claiming that Noam Chomsky is "wrong about Twitter." His chief source was an interview Chomsky gave to a fanboy blogger last March, though he did link to a 1997

The Production of Ignorance

IRS nods towards surprising interpretation of civil union/domestic partnership...you may be "married" for tax law purposes

Pat Cain, tax law expert extraordinaire, shared an astonishing piece of news on her blog yesterday. The IRS Office of Chief Counsel has written a letter indicating that a different-sex couple in an Illinois civil union is considered married for purposes of filing a tax return at the federal level. The letter says nothing about same-sex couples, presumably because DOMA blocks treating a

The Other 99 Percent

From today's Hankyoreh:Independent opposition candidate Park Won-soon won the Seoul mayoral election on October 26 handily, and he's already on the job -- he even took the subway to the office.This was an off-year election, with the big one coming up next year, and there's good reason to expect that the ruling Grand National Party will take a beating then. President Lee Myung-bak has been

The Other 99 Percent

From the Original French

Oh yeah, that was what I wanted to write about tonight! Today I began reading Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? by Dany Laferriere, published in 1994. The title had caught my eye, but alas, Laferriere doesn't have anything much to say on his subject. (The original French title was Cette grenade dans la main du jeune Negre est-elle ou un fruit?, which is even worse, I think; a better

From the Original French

Application for social security card recognizes possibility of same-sex parents, but...

A same-sex couple will no longer have to puzzle over filling out an application for a child's social security card. Where it used to call for "mother" and "father," it now asks about "mother/parent" and "father/parent." But there is a catch. The "mother/parent" space asks for name AT BIRTH, while the "father/parent" space does not. Would it be so hard to ask for the name at birth of both

Occupy New Delhi

I just finished reading Arundhati Roy's Broken Republic: Three Essays (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 2011), about the uprisings in India's forests against government-corporate depredations. The highest-profile rebels are led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), and though Roy discusses other groups, the Maoists are her focus in this new book. In the second essay she recounts a time she spent

Occupy New Delhi

In Media Res

This was good to see, though I don't quite agree with Avedon that Hedges "gave better than he got." Why should he get flustered just because some corporate toady calls him a "left wing nutjob"? I'm not all that concerned about such labels, and I have the impression that most of the OWS people aren't either, but I don't feel defended when Hedges says that those who oppose the corporate state

In Media Res

More and Better Opposition Candidates!

From the Hankyoreh:Merchants of a traditional market in Busan’s Saha District carry out a campaign to urge voting, Oct. 24, two days before the by-elections. They hold signboards reading, “You casting a vote is beautiful!!” “Make sure you urge others to vote!!” and “State your opinion through voting.”An editorial from the Hankyoreh:According to an analysis of social indicators released this

More and Better Opposition Candidates!

New report on LBGT families with children a must-read

Today the Movement Advancement Project, Center for American Progress, and Family Equality Council released the report, “All Children Matter: How Legal and Social Inequalities Hurt LGBT Families.” This is not just one more report on children of LGBT parents. It is, instead, the gold standard against which every other assessment of the needs of children of LGBT parents will be measured for well

Joker Toy Review (with my cute straight friend- Rich aka TheSuperboy)

Non-Corporate Media Stumble

Okay, see how this looks to you:The Obama administration has announced plans to withdraw nearly all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year after failing to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government. The United States had discussed keeping thousands of troops in Iraq, but had insisted their immunity be extended as a pre-condition. After the Iraqi government refused, the

Non-Corporate Media Stumble

Evan Donaldson Adoption Institute report identifies best practices in adoption...but supports same-sex marriage for the wrong reason

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute issued a new report this week on Research-Based Best Practices in Adoption by Gays and Lesbians. It includes the results of a survey of 158 adoptive parents. What the researchers learned from those parents, combined with information from other sources about LGBT adoption, produced a series of recommendations. These includes creating an atmosphere

When Bad Presidents Happen to Good Democrats

Though I may be giving them too much benefit of the doubt there.Michael Tomasky has a piece on the Triumph of the Obama at the Daily Beast, celebrating not only the death of Qaddafi but how foolish the neocons look now. Obama, weak? Not in foreign policy, bitchez!It’s worth stopping to realize that this Libya operation is, so far, not only a big success, but also a historic accomplishment in

When Bad Presidents Happen to Good Democrats

In the Latter Days There Shall Arise Many Anti-Obamas

There's another Facebook friend of mine, let's call him the Tabloid Friend because of his fondness for linking to stories of sensational crime stories and sex scandals. He's a devout Obamanian -- in fact a few weeks ago he urged me in evangelical terms to let Obama into my heart, it would change my life the way Obama had changed his -- so he also links to Obama apologetics and material that

In the Latter Days There Shall Arise Many Anti-Obamas

People Are Not Excess

I finally got a copy of Fred Barney Taylor's 2007 documentary The Polymath; or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, and watched it tonight. TLA Video had it on clearance, so I snapped it up, but it can be ordered directly from the filmmaker. It's an odd sort of documentary, consisting largely of Delany talking over solarized footage of water, rivers, train tracks, and the like;

People Are Not Excess

Gay rights lawyer Beth Robinson appointed to Vermont Supreme Court -- becomes 4th lesbian high court judge in the last 12 months

Yesterday, Vermont governor Peter Shumlin appointed gay rights lawyer and marriage equality advocate Beth Robinson to the Vermont Supreme Court. That brings to four the number of open lesbians appointed to state supreme courts in the last twelve months. The other three are, in chronological order, Monica Marquez, appointed December 2010 to the Colorado Supreme Court; Sabrina McKenna, appointed

American Interests?

Glenn Greenwald has a good, if by-the-numbers piece on Obama's hypocrisy in condemning Iran for hypocrisy. It's good to have the quotations, but there's nothing really new in it; anyone who hasn't noticed Obama's hypocrisy either isn't paying attention, or doesn't want to see it.Obligingly, an Obama apologist with the screen name JC Watts leapt into the fray. His rebuttal is also by-the-numbers

American Interests?

"Anecdote" Is Not the Singular of "Data" ...

... but anecdotes can still be significant, and at the very least interesting. Here's an anecdote.I went to the public library today to get out of the house, do some work, see some friends. I set up my laptop on a table, near another table where a neatly dressed older (mid-60s, I guess) white man was working with his laptop and a scanner. He got my attention because his cell phone kept going

"Anecdote" Is Not the Singular of "Data" ...

Are You Or Have You Ever Been a Negro, Dr. King?

This (via) is fascinating. Thanks to FAIR for posting it on their blog.Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyThe full program is divided up into segments, so if you can, click on the second one where there is some very intelligent discussion. What particularly struck me about the excerpts from Meet the Press in 1960 and 1965 is that in a just world they'd put

Are You Or Have You Ever Been a Negro, Dr. King?

The Guy in Blue

I considered writing about this yesterday, but I'm glad I waited until today.Yesterday Salon.com ran this photo that was making the rounds.It was accompanied by an article by Justin Elliott on "Occupy Wall Street's struggle for nonviolence." Apparently the right-wing media had jumped on the photo as proof of OWS's violent tendencies. Numerous commenters on Elliott's article pointed out how

The Guy in Blue

Why Do They Hate Our Freedoms?

One of my right-wing classmates on Facebook posted a link to this article from the American Spectator, a charming little rag whose main function appears to be to make the National Review look moderate. My friend commented on the link:If we are so upset with our Government ... Why do 80 % of incumbents win re-election. ...... Read the article below "Breaking the Ruling Class"The link came via a

Why Do They Hate Our Freedoms?

Inappropriately Touched by E.T.

Someone shared this image on Facebook today, with the header "Seriously !! Still believe we are alone ?"It looks like you can see it, and the comments, without being logged into Facebook, which is handy. (It was posted by Milky Way Scientists, apparently affiliated with NASA, who also posted this smokin' beefcake photo of Albert Einstein. Maybe they should put out a calendar along those lines?)

Inappropriately Touched by E.T.

Don't Have a Cow, Jane

There's a very strange article about Gertrude Stein on the BBC site by one Jane O'Brien, who announces at the outset that she started out not knowing who Stein was. Which isn't a crime, though maybe writing an article (and presumably getting paid for it) about someone of whom you're completely ignorant ought to be.But hey, maybe you don't know who Stein was either. Okay: born in Pennsylvania in

Don't Have a Cow, Jane

To See Ourselves As Others See Us

What I was looking for when I found that previous story was the latest Dan Savage column (which I first read at the Onion AV Club). It contained a letter from a scared, gay college freshman:I'm still unable to admit my sexuality to my friends, teammates, classmates, and hallmates. I have thought about joining the LGBT organizations, but those guys are too "out" for me. Not that there's any

To See Ourselves As Others See Us

One More High School Kid Victimized by Administrators

I was looking at The Stranger (Dan Savage's home ground) for something else, and found this. Another school administrator went looking for trouble, and seems to have found it.A male cheerleader said he was kicked off the squad and suspended after he was caught kissing another male student on campus. The young man spent countless hours practicing every day for years to make the varsity cheer

One More High School Kid Victimized by Administrators

That's Tellin' 'Em!

Max Udargo, a blogger at DailyKos wrote a response to the 53 Percent tumblr, which despite its slightly condescending tone is reasonably sound. (And certainly a fine young specimen of American manhood like the boy he's addressing will be respectful to his elders and welcome condescending advice from them, right?)One commenter, who billed himself a "conservative," had this to say in reply.Those

That's Tellin' 'Em!

I the People, You the People -- Them, I'm Not So Sure About

A right-wing blogger has started a site called "We Are the 53 Percent", to which people are encouraged to post their stories of hard work, and to denounce the Occupation movement as a bunch of lazy whiners. It looks like it's astroturf, like the Tea Party before it: started by a well-to-do right wing operative, working with right-wing foundations that probably enjoy corporate funding and a

I the People, You the People -- Them, I'm Not So Sure About

Texas Supreme Court lets stand lower court order registering the parentage judgment of a gay male couple

On September 30, the Texas Supreme Court denied review in a case brought by the nonbiological father of a child born using his ex-partner's sperm to a California surrogate mother. The couple, Jerry Berwick and Richard Wagner, lived in Texas, and had a child in December 2005 pursuant to a gestational surrogacy contract in California. Berwick is the biological father. Pursuant to agreements filed

Say "Good Night," David

The good folks at FAIR found this exchange about Occupy Wall Street between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and ABC news hack David Gregory:GREGORY: ... Is demonizing Wall Street the way to create an environment... EMANUEL: Well... GREGORY: ...to get the banks to hire? EMANUEL: The--it's not... GREGORY: Is this not a reverse tea party tactic?It doesn't get any more coherent from there. So high

Say "Good Night," David

Keep Telling Yourself: It's Only a Cartoon ...

I very rarely disagree with XKCD's cartoons, but this one baffled me. The explanation here doesn't help.Yes, I know, it's a cartoon, not a philosophical or scientific argument. But the cartoonist is very serious about his math and his science. And so much here is wrong.I'm sure that gliding in a wingsuit like the one depicted is fun; I've fantasized about free flight myself, many times. But

Keep Telling Yourself: It's Only a Cartoon ...

Supreme Court denies cert in Adar v. Smith, leaves child without accurate birth certificate

This morning the US Supreme Court declined to review Adar v. Smith, the ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (en banc) that Louisiana need not issue an amended birth certificate naming as the child's parents an unmarried couple who adopted the child in another state. A gay male couple had adopted the child in New York. I have written about the case extensively here, including the

And That's the Way It Is

What a day! Nothing very exciting happened, some frustrating things happened, but it was busier than I expected, so I wasn't able to get certain things done. For now, then: I recently bought the new Criterion DVD release of The Times of Harvey Milk, Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen's brilliant 1984 documentary about the martyred San Francisco politician. On the supplemental disc there's an

And That's the Way It Is

Mikey Welsh In Memoriam

Mikey Welsh | Weezer bass player Mikey Welsh

The Present Is a Disputed Area

I've been putting off rereading Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time for the same reason anyone hesitates to return to a much-loved work from the past: for fear it wouldn't be as good as I remember. But if anything, it's better.I first read it in the fall of 1976, a few months after it was published. A friend had taken me to hear Piercy reading her poems, and then to hear her talking to a

The Present Is a Disputed Area

Sawing Off the Limb You're Sitting On, and Other Tactics of Professional Politicians

The Daily ShowGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on FacebookMaybe I'll get one of those Union soldier caps myself.Stewart has some good jokes there, at the expense of the right people. It has also occurred to me that Occupy Wall Street actually can claim to speak for a majority of Americans, while the Tea Party really only represents the lunatic

Sawing Off the Limb You're Sitting On, and Other Tactics of Professional Politicians

Paula Ettelbrick dies after a life of service to LGBT rights; NY Times obit emphasizes her skepticism about marriage

After battling cancer for over a year, Paula Ettelbrick died this morning in New York. She was 56.I met Paula when she joined Lambda Legal in the 1980's. In the group of gay rights lawyers from around the country that met regularly at the time, we both opposed prioritizing marriage. She and I shared an expansive definition of family and a broad vision of social justice. I remember when she called

In My Back Yard

The above image makes a good point, but there are some problems with it. For one thing, while there is too much hunger in the world, 99% of the population don't look like the children in the lower half. The worldwide maldistribution of wealth has as much to do with relative standards of living as with catastrophic famine, but it is really not a good idea for everyone to use as much electricity

In My Back Yard

Also, Chocolate Rations Will Be Raised From Thirty to Twenty Grams

What a shameless liar he is.President Obama: "Today also begins a new chapter in the relationship between our two countries. Two years ago we saw a coup in Honduras that threatened to move the country away from democracy and, in part because of pressure from the international community, but also because of the strong commitment to democracy and leadership by President Lobo, what we have been

Also, Chocolate Rations Will Be Raised From Thirty to Twenty Grams

The Pitcher Cries for Water to Carry and a Person for Work That Is Real

I just finished reading John Holt's last book, Learning All the Time (Addison-Wesley, 1989), and while it's full of interesting ideas and stories, this especially caught my attention:Schools, top-rank or low-rank, have always operated under the wonderfully convenient rule that when learning takes place, the school deserves the credit ("If You Can Read, Thank a Teacher"); and that when it doesn't,

The Pitcher Cries for Water to Carry and a Person for Work That Is Real

The Power of Barackamania

As I've written before, though they perpetrate more than their share of outright falsehood, a lot of what is wrong with corporate media is distortion, tone, and viewpoint. Even Noam Chomsky, a harsh media critic, insists that many journalists are serious, professional, and competent; what gets in their way is the structure of corporate media -- though that structure does include hiring many

The Power of Barackamania

El Paso has inclusive definition of domestic partners; Mayor and council members face recall

I've got a special connection to El Paso, given that my partner and I have a residence across the New Mexico border in Las Cruces. El Paso is our local airport. It's also a city hard hit by the Mexican drug wars across the border in Juarez, something we were following as a local story for years before the national press picked up on it.Well El Paso has been in the news for another reason. The

A Nation of Laws, Not of Men

I saw this on the BBC site yesterday, but emptywheel has a lot more information.Raymond Davis is to make a second appearance in a Colorado courtroom today, as prosecutors have upgraded the assault charge against him from misdemeanor to felony level. The charge arises from an argument and fight over a parking space at a suburban Denver bagel shop on Saturday morning. You see, you can kill a

A Nation of Laws, Not of Men

What Do You Do With a Drunken Atheist?

A couple of weeks ago I upset a few Terry Pratchett fans in comments at another blog because I disrespected his much-reported remark that he'd rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel. Cults of personality are everywhere, so I guess that even someone like me who owns all his books (and the new one is due next week!) and has been recommending them to people for decades must tread softly, for I

What Do You Do With a Drunken Atheist?

How Do You Expect to Succeed Today Without a Good Education?

You just can't satisfy some people. Yesterday on NPR's comedy quiz program Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!, one of the panelists told host Peter Sagal she'd heard the Occupy Wall Street protesters "the most overeducated group of protesters that's ever assembled" (at 6:06 in the podcast), which I guess is a bad thing. She must have forgotten the students and teachers who opposed the Vietnam War,

How Do You Expect to Succeed Today Without a Good Education?

Arkansas law on same-sex couples raising children is...complicated

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to carry on a sexual relationship in their home. So do different-sex couples. That's what the Arkansas Supreme Court said in Cole v. Arkansas, the case striking down the ban on adoption and foster parenting by anyone living with a nonmarital partner. The court's ruling was based on the Arkansas constitution. (For more about the case, read here).So

But I Won't

I heard this song on one of the community radio station's Saturday "roots music" programs today. I'm surprised I hadn't heard it before; it goes back a ways.I don't think I've ever heard anything like this before. It's all the more surprising because it was also recorded by Iris DeMent, who's recorded whole albums of gospel songs, and this isn't typical gospel either. Compare it to this song,

But I Won't

I Say We Take Off and Nuke the Entire Site from Orbit

It's the only way to be sure.Band of Thebes, where I got this clip, asks, "Do the bullies run completely unchecked in feral packs?" Of course they do. Parents and teachers and administrators stand by and do nothing; sometimes they join in. I've written before about this.Reading Pascoe's account of what she calls "the rape paradigm," or remembering the Speakers Bureau volunteer who tells how

I Say We Take Off and Nuke the Entire Site from Orbit

Believing What You Know Ain't So

I just finished reading Bruno Latour's On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods (Duke, 2010), and am still stirring it around in my head. Latour is (in)famous as an anthropologist of science, whose fieldwork consists of observing the savage scientist in his natural habitat, the laboratory. I haven't yet read any of that work; all I'd read before was We Have Never Been Modern (Harvard, 1993),

Believing What You Know Ain't So

Fashionable Stubble and Cocaine Fueled All-Nighters

Last weekend I wrote about an article at Onion's AV Club that complained about the treatment of Christians in independent cinema, and also about Weekend, a new movie about two gay men that has been getting good reviews. This week the AV Club has a review of Weekend by Allison Willmore, the same writer who cried a river about Christians in movies.The review is highly positive, but it isn't

Fashionable Stubble and Cocaine Fueled All-Nighters

No One Who Puts His Hand to the Plow and Looks Back Is Fit to Serve in the Obama Campaign

There's been a fair amount of reaction to Melissa Harris-Perry's accusation that white liberals are "abandoning" Obama because they're racist. She admits that she's talking about "a more insidious form of racism," though, since she names no specific culprits nor any specific examples of racist practice or discourse. What her complaint boils down to that Obama has suffereda swift and steep

No One Who Puts His Hand to the Plow and Looks Back Is Fit to Serve in the Obama Campaign

In the Room the Bottoms Come and Go

I'm reading Jeffrey Escoffier's history of gay porn, Bigger than Life (Running Press, 2009), and it's a good, informative read, but things keep catching my attention. Like this, describing the filming of a famous early hardcore feature, Boys in the Sand:There was no top, no bottom -- indeed those rigid distinctions had not yet evolved among gay men ... [98]Then, a few lines down on the same page

In the Room the Bottoms Come and Go

Whatever the Market Will Bear

It's true, I'm a hateful, bitter, cynical negative old man. What would I be without brand recognition? (Speaking of which, I was accused of cynicism and negativity in alicublog's comments again the other day. Which, as I pointed out, is like being chided for incivility by Ann Coulter fans.)Another one of my Facebook friends posted a link to a Lakota-dubbed version of The Berenstain Bears.

Whatever the Market Will Bear

Did You Know There Was, Like, an Adoration Chapel Around the Corner There?

There's a strange new article at the AV Club this weekend. Well, it's really strange because it's at the AV Club, whose writers generally show more sense.Writer Allison Willmore begins "What If They Just Plain Believe?" by describing the reception of Kevin Smith's "religion-baiting" new movie Red State at Sundance earlier this year. Red State, however, "was just one of a crowd of films there to

Did You Know There Was, Like, an Adoration Chapel Around the Corner There?

While I'm On the Subject ...

Band of Thebes has a post today about a new gay film from the UK, Weekend. It's been getting a lot of good press, such as this review by admitted heterosexual Andrew O'Hehir of Salon, so I mean to see it when I get the chance.But I was put off by some of the statements in BoT's post, especially some made by the filmmaker as quoted in the New York Times by Dennis Lim:“Weekend” is the exception

While I'm On the Subject ...

The Battle Cry of Freedom

From Glenn Greenwald this morning:In fairness, the U.S. is fulfilling President Obama's pledge that it will "not stand idly by" in the face of a tyrant's oppression of his own people, as the U.S. is actively feeding that regime new weapons; that, by definition, is not "standing idly by." In his U.N. address, President Obama praised the regime ("steps have been taken toward reform and

The Battle Cry of Freedom

This and That

'Sfunny, even though I'm retired I don't seem to have any more time than I did before. I'm reading a lot, though. Just finished reading a novel called Swallow (Northampton MA: Interlink Books, 2010) by the Nigerian writer Sefi Atta -- her third book apparently. It's another one of those things I just noticed on the new arrivals shelves, picked up and checked out. I was impressed, though not

This and That

The Value of Human Life

I'm listening to Democracy Now's coverage of the vigil outside the Georgia prison where Troy Anthony Davis, accused of killing a police officer in 1989, is scheduled to be executed. It's now over an hour past the time when Davis was supposed to be killed, but apparently the execution has been delayed.There is strong evidence indicating that Davis was wrongly convicted: several witnesses have

The Value of Human Life

End of DADT improves life for the children of same-sex couples

In all the glee over the end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, there's a constituency that has received littled notice: children with a gay servicemember nonbiological parent. Those parents have been unable to adopt their children, or sometimes even to live with them, for fear that knowledge about their family circumstances would trigger a discharge. That fear is now lifted. The children will now have

Something Else About Heroes

I wrote last week about my increasing distaste for superhero stories, and then I came upon this interview with the late Octavia Butler, whose Patternist series I just reread. Discussing her 1979 novel Kindred, about a contemporary African-American woman who's mysteriously thrown back in time to antebellum Maryland and must try to survive as a slave, Butler explained why she wrote the book.What

Something Else About Heroes

A Critique of Pure Reasonableness

Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor, and as a fairly devoted Obama loyalist, representative of the type. Today he's arguing that being abused by the GOP has "positioned Obama well to battle the GOP on taxes." The outcome of the battle over the deficit -- y'all remember that, don't you? -- was that while Obama's "reasonable man" strategy succeeded in getting the populace to regard the

A Critique of Pure Reasonableness

The Monogamous Reader?

Rainy Days and Mondays

President Obama is on the campaign trail for sure now, as he makes populist noises about raising taxes on the rich. See Whatever It Is I'm Against It for the usual dissection of Obama's incoherent rhetoric, though not if you're prone to motion sickness.As Glenn Greenwald wrote today,He does that precisely because everyone -- especially the rich -- knows it will not and cannot happen. We're now

Rainy Days and Mondays

Wait, Steve's hot? (Kidding!)

Just giving my bf some loving cause he deserves it from time to time. The guy in this blog talks about my boyfriend and says he's hot. Is Steve hot? Oh yeah he is. Everyone, leave a comment on his blog so my boyfriend gets some support! Here's the link to his blog:Robert Sayre

Wait, Steve's hot? (Kidding!)

Constitutionally Deficient

I read somewhere recently that the Tea Party is offering coloring books about the U.S. Constitution to schoolchildren (try this, little girl -- the first one's free!) to jumpstart their Constitutional literacy. That wouldn't be a bad idea, though of course the Tea Party, like most Americans, should begin with themselves.I admit that until I read Roy Edroso's latest post, I'd almost forgotten

Constitutionally Deficient

All the Boys I've Loved Before

Just a quick note tonight. I read Stan Persky's Buddy's: Meditations on Desire (New Star Books, 1991) today. Persky is a Chicago-born political philosopher, about ten years my senior, who lived and taught in Vancouver for many years but now is apparently based in Germany. (His website has the .de suffix.)Buddy's is about what its subtitle promises: a collection of short prose pieces on love,