The Passion of the Sullivan

I haven't looked in at Homo Superior much lately. He's changed the layout several times, it seems, in interesting but still sometimes confusing ways. On the other hand I've neglected several places I used to visit almost daily, like a chat room where I used to be a contentious regular; I looked in there and found to my pleasure that it's still busy when most chat rooms have dried up. Now that

The Passion of the Sullivan

I haven't looked in at Homo Superior much lately. He's changed the layout several times, it seems, in interesting but still sometimes confusing ways. On the other hand I've neglected several places I used to visit almost daily, like a chat room where I used to be a contentious regular; I looked in there and found to my pleasure that it's still busy when most chat rooms have dried up. Now that

His Eye Is on the Cruise Missile

Glenn Greenwald, who's been posing some good questions about Obama's Libya speech as a revelation of his (that is, Obama's) belief in American exceptionalism, linked today to a recent post by Andrew Sullivan, calling it "long and thoughtful." Well, he was half-right. It's about as thoughtful as most of Sullivan's writing, which is not very.Sullivan is sure that the US-led attack on Libya is a

His Eye Is on the Cruise Missile

Glenn Greenwald, who's been posing some good questions about Obama's Libya speech as a revelation of his (that is, Obama's) belief in American exceptionalism, linked today to a recent post by Andrew Sullivan, calling it "long and thoughtful." Well, he was half-right. It's about as thoughtful as most of Sullivan's writing, which is not very.Sullivan is sure that the US-led attack on Libya is a

You Can't Sow a Million Seeds Without Reaping One Potato ...

... And even Andrew Sullivan makes sense now and then. He posted this blistering rejoinder to Juan Williams's vicious remarks on FOX:"Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first

You Can't Sow a Million Seeds Without Reaping One Potato ...

... And even Andrew Sullivan makes sense now and then. He posted this blistering rejoinder to Juan Williams's vicious remarks on FOX:"Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first

Concentrate on the Future, Not the Past

It's Gay Pride Day, the forty-first anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Riots, and I've been reading parts of Philip Gambone's Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ America (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010). It's a collection of interviews with more than forty GLBTQ+ π Americans, ranging from young-ish to old, male and female and all points between. Unfortunately the

Concentrate on the Future, Not the Past

It's Gay Pride Day, the forty-first anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Riots, and I've been reading parts of Philip Gambone's Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ America (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010). It's a collection of interviews with more than forty GLBTQ+ π Americans, ranging from young-ish to old, male and female and all points between. Unfortunately the

Social Justice for Me, But Not for Thee

Once again Andrew Sullivan demonstrates his aggressive fondness for disinformation. As he advances toward his 50th birthday, that becomes less and less excusable because of his youth.In a June 16 post Sullivan writes:The salience of the drag queen revolt in the West Village in June 1969 is not in any historical dispute. It was a cultural and psychological breakthrough - an empowering moment

Social Justice for Me, But Not for Thee

Once again Andrew Sullivan demonstrates his aggressive fondness for disinformation. As he advances toward his 50th birthday, that becomes less and less excusable because of his youth.In a June 16 post Sullivan writes:The salience of the drag queen revolt in the West Village in June 1969 is not in any historical dispute. It was a cultural and psychological breakthrough - an empowering moment

Travel / Posting Advisory and Eternal Life

I'll be leaving for Korea on Friday morning, so things are going to be hectic until after the weekend. Hell, they're hectic now, and I should be at home getting ready instead of sitting here in the Pourhouse typing. But that's procrastination!Meanwhile, I found this at Homo Superior, and the link indicated that it had come from Andrew Sullivan.The Christian notion of eternal life just doesn’t

Travel / Posting Advisory and Eternal Life

I'll be leaving for Korea on Friday morning, so things are going to be hectic until after the weekend. Hell, they're hectic now, and I should be at home getting ready instead of sitting here in the Pourhouse typing. But that's procrastination!Meanwhile, I found this at Homo Superior, and the link indicated that it had come from Andrew Sullivan.The Christian notion of eternal life just doesn’t

Moral Relativism for Professionals

Andrew Sullivan muses on the current abuse scandals troubling Holy Church:

It's very odd - and deeply revealing - to see theocons dancing with moral relativism and cultural context on the issue of child abuse.

What's so odd about it? Theological conservatives have always used moral relativism when it suited their purposes, and as Sullivan has also acknowledged (via), the sexual abuse of children has been covered up for a very long time, not by liberals but by the conservatives who run the institutions. And I won't do more than mention physical abuse of children -- beatings, overwork, starvation, et cetera -- which is a tradition of great antiquity.

Up through the period when Meibom composed his De Flagorum Usu, flogging was the standard method in Europe of punishing unruly children. In early modern England, both in homes and schools, across the boundaries of social class, the birch rod - as administered by parents, servants, nurses, tutors, or teachers - became the conventional instrument of retribution. Both boys and girls were expected to be unremittingly deferential to their elders and were beaten routinely for a great range of offenses: disobedience, obstinacy, laziness, a missed stitch, a flubbed Latin conjugation. And the punishments varied enormously in severity, from a gentle hand slap to prolonged, violent whippings that sometimes resulted in the death of the child. For the determined castigator, the child’s hand, mouth, face, and buttocks (either naked or clothed) were fair game. In addition to the birch rod, a ferula - a wooden slat with a large rounded end and a hole in its middle - could be used to raise a large and painful blister. Lawrence Stone notes that in the grammar schools (which drew a far greater number of boys than they had during the late Middle Ages) the standard method of administering the rod required one active and two passive participants: a boy would be beaten “with a birch” by his master “on the naked buttocks while bent over and horsed on the back of another boy.” Even in universities, young men were regularly submitted to public whippings, floggings over a barrel, or detention in the stocks. ...

(David Savran, Taking it like a man: white masculinity, masochism, and contemporary American culture. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 17-18.)

Moral Relativism for Professionals

Andrew Sullivan muses on the current abuse scandals troubling Holy Church:It's very odd - and deeply revealing - to see theocons dancing with moral relativism and cultural context on the issue of child abuse.What's so odd about it? Theological conservatives have always used moral relativism when it suited their purposes, and as Sullivan has also acknowledged (via), the sexual abuse of children

Moral Relativism for Professionals

Andrew Sullivan muses on the current abuse scandals troubling Holy Church:It's very odd - and deeply revealing - to see theocons dancing with moral relativism and cultural context on the issue of child abuse.What's so odd about it? Theological conservatives have always used moral relativism when it suited their purposes, and as Sullivan has also acknowledged (via), the sexual abuse of children

Sullivan's Drivels

Homo Superior has changed his format, but he's still linking to Andrew Sullivan, who's been complaining about the current state of the Right.

Once upon a time, the intellectual conservatives in this country cherished their dissidents, encouraged argument, embraced the quirky, valued the eccentric and mocked the lock-step ideological left. Now they are what they once mocked. And they have the ideological discipline of the old left.

Like HomoSup, I wonder which "intellectual conservatives" Sullivan has in mind, and when this Once Upon a Time golden age could have been. Homo Superior mentions William F. Buckley, who was as much of an intellectual second-rater as ... well, as Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan doesn't know his history very well, particularly of the American Right, but that's hardly news. What I find funny is that Sullivan himself started out as a hard-liner except for his homosexuality, and filled the pages of The New Republic with right-wing mediocrities like himself (remember Ruth Shalit?); he no doubt likes to think of himself as "quirky" if not "eccentric," but he has never been someone you could read for substance. When George W. Bush took the Presidency, Sullivan was exultant, jeering at the anti-corporate leftists who were going to rage impotently under the new dispensation; some years later Sullivan endorsed Barack Obama, which was not really that much of a change.

Not that I have anything against hard-liners; I suppose I'm one myself, though I'm not sure which line I'm hard about. Homo Superior goes on to say:

Having said that, I have had more valuable conversations, ones without judgment or ire, with people like Buckley than I have had with those on the lock-step ideological left, and that includes many, many on the Queer Left.

Like anyone with extreme viewpoints, their definition of dissident is someone who agrees with them.

I realized I didn’t belong in the left and sometimes call myself a lapsed lefty. I now embrace the descriptor, contrarian.

(The video clip above comes from Noam Chomsky's 1969 appearance on Buckley's PBS program Firing Line. Buckley's offer to "smash you in the goddam face" is a reference to his then-recent offer, made in earnest, to do the same to Gore Vidal. Here it's supposed to be a joke, though I've never gotten its point. It's the sort of thing that should be borne in mind, though, when Buckley is eulogized. So should Buckley's vacuous debating style.)

Maybe I should embrace "contrarian" myself, but the word has been dirtied more than a little since Christopher Hitchens began touting himself as one. I don't see my own positions are particularly contrary, if I understand the word correctly, which to me implies simply staking an opposing position; I find myself over yonder somewhere. And what happens when two contrarians clash? Do they cancel each other out like matter and anti-matter?

I don't know if I "belong in the left" either, but I do know that most of the thinkers and writers I've learned the most from have been associated with the left, and that left writers and media are those I can reliably look to for accurate information about politics and culture. The few right-wingers with whom I find some common ground are those who are least lock-step themselves, like William Buckley calling for the legalization of drugs (probably the only issue on which I agree with him). On the other hand, I'm not wedded to the word "left", anymore than I am to the words "gay" or "queer."

I'm particularly amused by the notion that the left is lock-step, considering how often people on the left complain about the deep divisions, the sectarian squabbling, that divide our portion of the political spectrum. And while I'm being amused, the use of the word "extreme" as a cussword is always good for a giggle. (I'm reminded of an old joke where a man accusingly asks an uppity woman, "Are you a lesbian?" and she counters, "Are you the alternative?")

I know very well about homophobia on the left, which is detestable and gives me opportunities to express my own hard-line extremism. Harry Hay founded Mattachine after he was expelled from the Communist Party of the USA for being a queer; Black Mountain College, a lefty-liberal experimental college of the 1930s through the 1950s, fired some queer faculty, notably the anarchist writer Paul Goodman, who wrote in a famous essay called "Memoirs of an Ancient Activist",

Frankly, my experience of radical community is that it does not tolerate my freedom. Nevertheless, I am all for community because it is a human thing, only I seem doomed to be left out.

On the other hand, my homosexual acts and the overt claim to the right to commit them have never disadvantaged me much, as far as I know, in more square institutions. I have taught at half a dozen state universities. I am continually invited, often as chief speaker, to conferences of junior high school superintendents, boards of regents, guidance counsellors, task forces on delinquency, etc., etc. I say what I think right, I make passes if there is occasion -- I have even made out, which is more than I can say for conferences of SDS or Resistance. [Len Richmond and Gary Noguera, eds.,The Gay Liberation Book (Ramparts Press, 1973, p. 24]

I especially like that bit about favoring community but always being left out of it, but then I've generally found myself not wanting in to the available communities. I've generally been content to deal with communities through their writings. If I'm marginalized, well, it's a dirty job but someone has to do it, and more often than not it's because I've sidled over to the margins rather than stay close to the people who are at the center or core or mainstream -- whatever you want to call it. ("I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me for a member" -- but there's not a club made up of those of us who identify with that line, either.) I've been a little disappointed to find that I don't necessarily get along with other misfits because being a misfit is not in itself enough to have in common; but that too has been a useful lesson. And despite all this, I've never been a total isolate either. I have something resembling community, and it serves to keep me going.

What to do about American politics, though, I don't know. As an intellectual I have little to say to the Teabaggers, but then anti-intellectualism is endemic to American society, including many intellectuals. Debate is hard, disagreement is generally painful, and most people prefer not to deal with either. Andrew Sullivan has done little to improve things; I've done even less. We're probably doomed.

Sullivan's Drivels

Homo Superior has changed his format, but he's still linking to Andrew Sullivan, who's been complaining about the current state of the Right.Once upon a time, the intellectual conservatives in this country cherished their dissidents, encouraged argument, embraced the quirky, valued the eccentric and mocked the lock-step ideological left. Now they are what they once mocked. And they have the

Sullivan's Drivels

Homo Superior has changed his format, but he's still linking to Andrew Sullivan, who's been complaining about the current state of the Right.Once upon a time, the intellectual conservatives in this country cherished their dissidents, encouraged argument, embraced the quirky, valued the eccentric and mocked the lock-step ideological left. Now they are what they once mocked. And they have the

The Cat With Eyes as Large as Saucers

Homo Superior links to this Quote for the Day:

The Republican party right now is largely bonkers. The Democratic party is a lily-livered hackfest of mediocrity. I remain of the view that Obama is the best thing going for this country.

And asks, "Who could argue with this?"

I could ... George ... I could. So could many others. And that's leaving out the succeeding sentences:

But between the insanity on the right and incoherence on the left, he is marooned in a lonely center. Maybe in the long run, this is a better place to be. Right now it is making governance close to impossible, at a moment when we need all hands on deck.

(Tee hee hee, he thinks that the Democratic Party is the left!)

But the thing to remember is that a few short years ago, Sullivan would have said roughly the same things about George W. Bush.

(image)

The Cat With Eyes as Large as Saucers

Homo Superior links to this Quote for the Day:The Republican party right now is largely bonkers. The Democratic party is a lily-livered hackfest of mediocrity. I remain of the view that Obama is the best thing going for this country.And asks, "Who could argue with this?"I could ... George ... I could. So could many others. And that's leaving out the succeeding sentences:But between the insanity