Priests: New & Used
Okay, so I was reading some story ["Church war on gays" by Cristina Odone, at Times Online]. Sure enough, there were the ubiquitous "Ads by Google", but I was a little startled by the one that read:
Priests
Great deals on new and used items. Search for priests now! -aff
www.eBay.com
Priests available on e-bay! New and used, no less.
Perhaps the Anglican schism is further along than we thought.
[I'm not making this up, you know!]
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Is Anglican Schism Worth It?
The BBC News, in a story " Gay priest row 'threatens Bible' " about a meeting of 35 of the world's 38 Anglican primates in Newry, County Down, reports:
However, Dr Jensen [Archbishop of Sydney] said those who opposed homosexual practices in the Church were prepared to split over the issue.
"The idea that we break from one another is a painful one, and very, very sorrowful," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Thursday.
"But there do come times when the authority of the Bible is at stake – and this is one of those times – where to stay together becomes a great difficulty.
Frankly, I'm all for a schism since I'm a cynical atheist; I think the fireworks would be entertaining, and I generally support any moves that major religious denominations take to weaken their self-perceived moral superiority.
But in a more objective fashion, I would counsel Dr Jensen to think very, very carefully about whether this issue is really worth a schism, or whether it's just been blown way, way out of proportion.
If it's one thing history tells us, it's that once a split occurs, it's ever so much harder to put it back together again. Another thing that history tells us is that virtually no one remembers the reasons for this or that historic religious schism, or if they do, they don't understand it anymore and can't imagine how it ever seemed so important in the first place.
This will end up the same way, and it won't be long before, as some say, it becomes clear that those pressing for schism will be seen to be on the wrong side of history with no way to reunite with their estranged community.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, described as "appealing for unity", needs to find the face-saving compromise that averts the potential schism (which is more likely just a feint, but can he chance it?) but that nevertheless does not compromise the progress that his church is making on equality of treatment for all those made in their "God's image". It's not an easy task, but that, presumably, is why he's Archbishop of Canterbury.
They concluded their report with these perceptive observations from Colin Slee:
The Dean of Southwark, Colin Slee, considered a moderniser, said division was being pushed by American-funded right-wingers.
"The Christian right, particularly funded from North America, is generating very severe divisions in the Baptist and Anglican and indeed the Roman Catholic churches," Mr Slee told Today.
"I think this is a deeper social occurrence that is occurring right across the spectrum of culture and is to do with people seeking after purity and thinking there can be such a thing as a pure church, which there can't be and never has been."
Personal Yen Accounts
In a New York Times Op/Ed column, "Honey, I Shunk the Dollar", Thomas L. Friedman describes how
The dollar is falling! The dollar is falling! But the Bush team has basically told the world that unless the markets make the falling dollar into a full-blown New York Stock Exchange crisis and trade war, it is not going to raise taxes, cut spending or reduce oil consumption in ways that could really shrink our budget and trade deficits and reverse the dollar's slide.
Boy, do I have a proposal!
Please consider these facts:
- The dollar is falling; therefore
- Foreign currencies are rising; not to mention that
- There are too many retirees for Social Security.
I think the answer should be obvious by now: Foreign-Currency Privatization, or what we might think of as "Personal Yen Accounts".
Allowing people to "invest" a portion of their social-security dollars in foreign currencies not only will build a better retirement for many Americans, it will strengthen the US by demonstrating our faith in global free-market economies at the same time that it helps keep the price of manufactured goods down — seniors live on a fixed income! — by moving all those expensive manufacturing jobs overseas where people still love democracy and are willing to work for less to pay for it.
Personal Yen Accounts: Making Cents for America's Retirees.
Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell: At a Loss
My friend John Cox wrote in an e-mail:
[Read "Move To End 'Don't Ask' As GAO Reveals Gay Ban Cost $200 Million"] and see how much money the Don't Ask, Don't Tell military ban on gays and lesbians has cost us American taxpayers. Incredible! What has always perplexed me is the coalition in Iraq: Americans are the only ones who ban Gays from serving because Gays "cause morale problems." Yet other armed forces in the coalition have Gays serving openly, side-by-side with Americans and there're no "morale problems." How does this happen?
John Cox, who holds an MSW, is a former US Army Sp 5/E-5.
[Quoted with permission of the author.]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Sandra Dee, RIP
Sandra Dee really is dead, and no fire-and-brimstone speeches by James Dobson are going to bring her back.
[Frank Rich, talking about the Right's self-righteous decency crusade, from "Hollywood Bets on Chris Rock's 'Indecency' ", in the New York Times.]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Republicans Love Gay Hookers
This BuzzFlash editorial frames the Gannon Affair its own way:
But the real issue here is that the White House Republican noise machine has now come out in defense of prostitution — and gay prostitution in particular — as a private issue, which Republicans are entitled to practice without being exposed by mean bloggers. Maybe the White House is scared of Gannon's little black book filled with client names? Or we've just always misunderstood that they were earnest and committed supporters of gay hookers.
So, let's hear one for the Republicans, the hobgoblins of hypocrisy. Who would have thought that they would have embraced gay prostitution as a personal choice and privacy issue?
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
The New Ideology of Evil
From CNN quoting Reuters quoting Pope John Paul II from his new book Memory and Identity:
"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this [gay marriage] is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.
(Is it just me, or is this a bit over the top on the homophobic hysteria meter?)
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
The Tyranny of Morning People
Someplace in the last few days, I read an op/ed type column from some guy giving his opinion about why students someplace should be forced to get up earlier and go to school. These students were all snivelling lay-abouts and it would be good for them, he pronounced. What rubbish! Although he failed to lay all his cards on the table, he was clearly a morning person. I hate morning people.
Morning people, like extroverts, have no empathy and believe everyone must be made like them. "Just walk up and introduce youself", the extrovert says, never comprehending the incredible challenge to the introvert that may be insurmountable. Morning people are also like Republicans in believing that the world would be a distinctly better place if only everyone behaved like them.
I deny any obsessive fascination with "definitions", but over time I've found these to be useful:
- Morning People wake up with their energy at its peak; they use the energy through the day and stop at night when they run out, going to sleep to recharge.
- Night People wake up with very little energy; they gather energy throughout the day and reach a creative productivity peak late at night, so that going to sleep seems an intolerable intrusion, a loss of creative powers that will mean starting all over again the next morning.
Morning people, in their uncritical love of all things like them, usually make these two specious arguments against the sensible practise of getting up at a reasonable hour:
- It's so quiet in the morning, when no one else is there, that those are my most productive hours — you should try it!
- If all those lazy heads just got up a couple of hours earlier, think how much more work we could get done (during those quiet, early hours)!
First, let's set aside the obvious: if everyone got up earlier to take advantage of those early, quiet hours, then they wouldn't be quiet, now would they?
Remember that morning people are morning people, and quite naturally they claim to be at their creative, productive best first thing in the morning. Fine, go for it, but remember that not everyone is like you, and it's childish to behave otherwise.
Besides, experience tells me it's all a lie, a giant conspiracy of the bright-eyed and bushy tailed. There have been times, very rare times, when I have awakened unusually early and decided to head on in to my place of employment, in order to catch the benefit of some of those early, productive hours and see what all the real morning people are up to with all their alledged perkiness.
What I find is a bunch of surprised people — surprised that I have caught them in their pretense! — since they're generally either slumped over their desks, snoozing, or else desparately trying to figure out how to make the coffee machine work. They tend to sit around, doing nothing (except take cat naps), just waiting for all the late arrivals to arrive, when they then actually have to start working, after telling fabricated stories about how productive they've been for the past two hours. They seem to feel that it's natural and to be expected that one spend two hours "easing into the work-day" instead of working. Wouldn't we all be more productive if they, like the rest of us laggard late-arrivals, actually started working when they get to work?
Now, as for everyone just getting up a couple of hours earlier, my counterproposal is this: if only everyone would stay up two hours longer, we'd all get much more done.
Here the morning people make the foolish mistake of thinking that anyone who gets up later than they do is a sluggard, a lazy person. Morning people believe that night people want to spend all their life in bed, and sleep far too much. It's incredible, but morning people universally believe that night people sleep more, and are therefore bad people.
The reason for this mistaken notion is simple: lacking empathy, morning people simply can't imagine that we night people actually stay awake long after they have fallen asleep! In fact, we usually look forward to these late evening hours when all the whiney morning people have finally fallen asleep in their easy chairs and it gets nice and quite and we can really get things done.
You can see their self-delusion in operation with this argument, too, just like with that silliness about dawn's productive hours. Think about the number of times you've listened, say, to construction workers say "yeah, I like to get an early start, so I can knock off around 3"? And what is it when they get home so delightfully early with all those extra hours stretching before them? They take a nap, because they're exhausted from getting up so ridiculously early in order to be on the job at 6am. Note: they still go to bed early because they have to get up early. So, where's the thrill in coming home early so you can have a nap? Isn't it more efficient just to stay in bed a little longer when you're already there: less overhead wasted in getting up, getting dressed, getting undressed, getting into bed, etc.
The last-gasp argument of the morning people usually goes like this: fine, sleep if you want to waste your life in bed, but real people have to be at real jobs in the morning because everyone else does it. So there!
True, somewhere along the way morning people siezed power long enough to decide that the business day should start at some unnatural hour like 8 or 9 in the morning and thus force everyone to follow their unnatural sunrise lifestyle. But mark my words: come the revolution, they'll be the first with their backs down against the bed.
"Bloggeurs de Gauche"
This article, "Les relations ambiguës de Bush avec les journalistes" , from Le Monde, came to my attention via John Aravosis of AMERICAblog.
The story is about the current administration's dislike for the press, and its attempts to manipulate the news. Naturally, it mentions the Jeff Gannon affair.
The fun part is at the end. First, they recount the story of a Washington Post reporter (charged with the "delicate" mission of reporting on the series of inaugural balls) who made a serious transgression by stepping outside the area designated for journalists, in order to phone in his first impressions. As a result, a woman threw herself at him and tried to tear away his cell phone:
… Un journaliste du Washington Post avait été chargé de la délicate mission de relater la série de bals organisés pour l'investiture du président, le 20 janvier. Au cœur de l'action, il téléphone au journal pour dicter ses premières impressions, quand une femme se jette sur lui pour lui arracher son portable.
Le malheureux avait commis une faute : il était sorti de l'espace réservé aux journalistes. Au-delà de cette limite, ceux-ci devaient être escortés, "du buffet à la salle de danse et même aux toilettes". Il raconte qu'une personne avec laquelle il parlait s'est figée quand elle a vu qu'il était "accompagné". On ne sait pas si Jeff Gannon, qui a fait de la publicité pour un site d'escort boys, était au bal "accompagné".
They end by pointing out that every reporter was to be accompanied everywhere outside the bounded area (even to the toilet), thus demonstrating that they had been, effectively, vetted for conversation by being "accompanied".
The joke in the last sentence says (their italics) that "one doesn't know whether Jeff Gannon, who became famous for a site of "escort boys", was himself "accompanied" to the ball.
To echo Aravosis' sentiments: you go Le Mond!
A little addendum. There was a useful bit for the right-wing bloggers, too. Earlier in the piece they wrote
La question n'a pas effrayé M. Bush, mais des bloggeurs de gauche ont disséqué le curriculum vitae de l'auteur, Jeff Gannon, qui a été contraint de démissionner du site Internet qui l'employait : TalonNews.com.
Although the word "gauche" means "left", as in "left hand" or, indeed, "left wing", "gauche" has taken on different meanings in English. Nevertheless, I would think that right-wing bloggers (or "bloggeurs de droit") would hoot at the idea of "bloggeurs de gauche".
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
Buckley's Blind Spot
There was a time when I had some respect for William F. Buckley, although I can't for the life of me remember why. I was much younger then, and more naive; I probably was impressed by all the words he managed to write, and that funny way he has of talking without moving that part of his mouth where one would normally find lips on most people.
In his piece "Look Who's Voting" that I read at Yahoo! News, he apparently was excited about the voting in Iraq that was going on when he wrote it. To celebrate, he began by ruminating on the nature of democracy:
Some years ago my guest on "Firing Line" was Gen. Vernon Walters. … He remarked, in passing, that no democratic government had ever initiated aggression against another nation.
Fascinating! I thought. Walters' remarks were, of course, made long before our current President elected to invade Iraq for reasons that remain unknown to reality-based people like myself. Here, I thought, Buckley is going to have a few astringent words of criticism for our war-monger-in-chief. Obviousy, the fact that I might even entertain that notion makes clear that I've been brainwashed to a squeaky-clean shine by the "liberal media".
He got off to such a good start, too:
I was stunned by this statement, and as the exchange proceeded, attempted to run my skeptical memory over it. Surely it could not be so? But so — it is. And that revelation by Gen. Walters orients us properly in the matter of the election in Iraq on Sunday.
Of course, the "but so — it is" did manage to slip quickly and deftly around the counter-example that's so large, Buckley apparently can't see it: America's own invasion of Iraq.
Tsk tsk. The rest of the piece turned into some limp-worded bagatelle about how wonderful it is that democracy has at last begun (one doesn't want to be over hasty) to arrive in Iraq, and shouldn't Iraq's neighbors breathe more easily now that Iraq is a democracy and, applying the Walters Theory of Invasion, no longer a threat to them, and why aren't the europeans more grateful to us for that which we have wrought?
What's wrong, can't they see the obvious when it's right in front of them?
A View from Kansas
A voice of reason from the state of my birth:
Kansans in April will probably approve a state Constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, but it is only a matter of time before it will be repealed or struck down and society's attitude toward the issue changes, a former legislator said Sunday.
"Ten years from now, in 2015, we will be amazed that we were ever sitting in this room and having this discussion," said David Adkins, a former Republican state legislator from Leawood.
[Excerpt from The Lawrence [KS] Journal-World, "Former senator speaks against gay marriage ban", by Mike Belt.]
In: All, Common-Place Book
Legislating Underwear
Often, to counter that nagging "is it just me?" feeling that comes from living here as close as I do to the center of the anti-reality-based forces in our country (i.e., Washington, DC), it's useful to have a voice from the heartland (where I was born and raised, I'm happy to say).
Here is the Peoria [IL] Journal Star editorializing about recent legislative silliness in nearby Virginia:
Meanwhile, in another state capital, legislators have given up on another weighty effort, passage of a bill making it illegal to show off one's underpants (while wearing them, of course). The legislation was aimed at the low-riders popular among young people.
The Virginia House passed the bill two weeks ago, but a Senate committee quickly killed it, claiming that the publicity had made the state a laughingstock. Hard to believe that, especially when one considers the high-toned nature of the debate.
Pro: "Underwear is called underwear for a reason."
Con: "Please let these kids express themselves.'
Pro: "Virginia does want to set an example of what character should be."
From sleepless in Springfield to beltless in Richmond, being a lawmaker is sobering work these days.
In: All, Common-Place Book
The Fifth Estate
Commenting on the initial inattentiveness of the mainstream [American] media (MS) to the "Jeff Gannon" affair, and it's continued pussy-footing and inability to see the actual story, The Guardian [UK] observed (apparently in a story by Paul Harris in New York):
On the internet, the mainstream media is derided and scorned. One question is dominating US newsrooms and television studios: ignored, scandalised and now corrupted, just what is America's mainstream media for anymore?
Suddenly, an interesting and pressing question. When the "media" is either red-brained screaming heads who insult anything that approaches rational thought, or else lap-dogs of the White-House's "news"-manipulation machine, what credibility does even the old-guard, "liberal" press have? Not much, by this point. I don't believe I'd started thinking of the MSM as irrelevant yet, but I've been getting closer.
For me, the crisis began with the "run up" (I hate the idiotic jargon that flows out of the White House press office) to the president's elective war in Iraq. When it was clear that all the White-House mouthpieces were lying about the reasons why we should start the war with such urgency, the MSM spent its time quoting the mouthpieces as though truth fell through their lips (if you quote 'em, it's real!), rather than investigate actual facts. Yes, I live in a hopelessly "reality-based" world of facts and truth.
Later from the same piece:
The Gannon case is a prime illustration [of the shift to the right of the MSM and of its increasing irrelevancy]. If, during the Clinton administration, a fake reporter from a Democrat front organisation, using a false name, had been exposed as attending White House press conferences it would have been a national scandal. If he had then been shown to be a gay prostitute, the scandal could have threatened a Democrat presidency. With 'Gannon' and Bush there has been no such outcry. The mainstream media has approached the story warily, while right-wing organisations such as Fox News have largely ignored it.
That has created a vacuum in the US media. It is a space being filled by 'bloggers' from both left and right who write personal journals, or weblogs, on the internet. It is here that the real media battles are now being fought. The internet has become a sort of Fifth Estate as the Fourth Estate of the mainstream media has slid toward irrelevance. […]
I just wanted to save that bit about the "Fifth Estate", in case I become a "blogger" some day. In the meantime, let's see whether any real journalists will show up with the investigative balls [metaphorical balls, of course, since I intend to be gender neutral in my challenge] it will take to bring some honor back to The Fourth Estate.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
"I'm Not Going to Kick Gays"
The New York Times reports "In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President", by David D. Kirkpatrick, about conversations between the then-governor-of-Texas, G.H.W. Bush, and his "old friend" Doug Wead, who secretly taped them. Wead shared some of those tapes recently with "a reporter".
Without further comment for now, here is a single, unedited excerpt from that story:
Early on, though, Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.
But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"
Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."
"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."
In: All, Common-Place Book
Knowledge-Based Learning
I was reading some article tonight that made a reference in passing to the current administration's obsessive fascination with "abstinence-only" programs for "sex education" (i.e., no sex education). These programs are known to lead to increased teen pregnancy when compared to the results of teaching about, e.g., condom use.
How could this possibly be, the confused but pristine reactionary must be wondering. After all, we all know that doing nothing is the only approach guaranteed to avoid pregnancy and STDs.
And then it struck me: perhaps the approach of the red-brained ones is succeeding too well.
Consider these two reactionary goals for "sex education":
- Never mention sex, don't talk about it, don't use the words, make sure images of naked people are never seen, and under no circumstances promote homosexuality or even mention anything having to do with it either; if they never hear about "it", they won't find out about "it".
- Implement "abstinence-only" programs, explaining that "the only sure way is no way" [I offer this motto to that guy being paid by the administration to promote such programs, in return for a modest royalty].
Do you see the trap here?
With "abstinence-only" programs, we tell our kids not to do "it", which they may even be willing to give a go, but we are exceedinly careful never to tell them what "it" is. As we now know, that leads to experimenting and increased pregnancy, not to mention boys who grow up to be president convinced that oral sex isn't sex (certainly not "it"!), not to mention all the girls who grow up worried that oral sex can lead to pregnancy.
Now that we think on it, it's pretty obvious that teaching kids what "it" is and how "it" is done is the best route to avoiding unwelcome pregnancies after all. What a surprise: knowledge-based learning really works! (Next stop: "creationism" and "intelligent design".)
What Would be Free?
Excerpt from "Right of free speech walks a fine line", by David Horsey in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Jackie Devincent of Seattle sent in a counterargument expressing indignation that some take offense at explicit sex rather than the pervasive violence in entertainment. "Until Americans are willing to question why bloody corpses are sanctified as free speech while nudity and sexuality are condemned as obscene," Devincent says, "we don't even have freedom of thought, let alone freedom of speech."
In: All, Common-Place Book
Marriage and the Mists of Time
Someplace — I forget where now — during the height of the pre-election gay marriage "debate", I was keeping track of new records claimed for the length of time over which marriage had remained "traditional" and "unchanging". Generally, it looked like the claim was peaking at around 2,000 years. People seemed willing to risk guessing back that far, presuming that Jesus had invented the one-man + one-woman thing. They were wrong, of course — that the M+W concept is steeped in tradition and its origins lost to the mists of time is a naive modern concept — but it was fun to watch the competition. One could calibrate the piety and sanctimony of the speaker by noting the length of time he or she claimed for most the fundamentally important institution of our society.
But wait! The game is not over. We have an exciting new entry!
In his article "Activists undermine gay marriage pitch" from the Bucks County [PA] Courier Times, J.D. Mullane reveals startling information.
For context: you can tell from the title of his opinion piece that Mr. Mullhane is freely offering some objective advice as a sensitive heterosexual kind-of-guy to the gay-rights movement, at least to a group there in Bucks Country who apparently are about to scuttle the entire equal-rights movement for the rest of us. I can still remember a time when I was in secondary school and groups of earnest white guys would talk about the dangers of the latest negro escapade and how it wasn't helping their movement any.
Come to think of it, I remember when I was in graduate school (this was at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, around 1979, about 10 years after Loving v. Virginia), and the undergraduate newspaper ran editorials with titles like "Is Inter-racial Dating an Eyesore" without any apparent embarrassment. I'd kind of like to know how those authors feel today about how they "debated" that vitally important social issue.
Anyway, after he finishes laying out his remedial suggestions for the gay agenda, Mr. Mullhane sums up with some sweeping statements. First,
Suggesting in public that straight opposition to gay marriage is attributable to blatant discrimination or closet homosexuality is a cheap shot.
I have some difficulty with this, since I'm not accustomed to thinking of the truth as a "cheap shot": it is discrimination however you look at at, albeit discrimination that some people think is justified. But this isn't the good bit.
The next thing is this startling statement:
Most of the students I spoke with cited the Bible, their faith, their values or simply 6,000 years of human tradition as reasons why they oppose gay marriage.
Fascinating! To think that we can know about "traditional" marriage as far back as 4,000 BC, a time that is commonly referred to as the beginning of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the cross-over period in Britain from hunting-gathering to farming. It seems, then, that M+W marriage arrived with the "Dawn of Civilisation" [in the British spelling] in Britain. In Egypt, it was the "Pre-dynastic Period", and possibly the first use of paper; the earliest Mesopotamian cities were appearing, no doubt with cute bungalows for traditionally married couples; and China during the Longshan (or Dawenkou) period, since they'd already discovered metallurgy, were probably already traditionally marrying fools. It was still over 200 years to the first year of the Jewish calendar, so it's hard to say what they were up to.
This was also the time, it turns out, when the horse was first domesticated in the Eurasian steppes, no doubt helping to create domestic tranquility.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Splenetics
Hypocritical Ripples
I'm quite enjoying this whole Jeff Gannon / Jim Guckert story and all the stuff swirling about it. Recall: "Jeff" (we now have to use the quotation marks so you know it's a pseudonym, although I think "Jeff" is a perfectly good name myself) is the [apparently] gay-male prostitute who pretended to be a journalist and was inexplicably given press credentials by the White House so that he could ask remarkably easy and partisan "questions" of the press secretary and the president. What's fun is not really the stone thrown into the pond, but all the ripples on the pond that grow out from the disturbance.
Predictably, the reactionary press is dabbing at its crocodile tears and lamenting the fact that a top-notch journalist who happens to be "conservative" could be hounded out of his job by nasty, mean-spirited liberal bloggers who are no better than communists, really. And besides, in this day and age, why must a nice, respectable homosexual in a respectable profession (the oldest one in the world!) be vilified by a bunch of people who were thought to be homo-lovers anyway? (Why, it's as bad as all those racist Democrats who would vote against Condolezza Rice or Alberto Gonzales just because they are black and hispanic!)
Of course, this is all bullshit, and obviously so. On the other hand, it is thigh-slappingly entertaining to listen to this whole bunch of reactionaries going on about how everyone's hounding this poor, defenseless, honorable guy who happens to be queer. It's also a lovely demonstration of the operating of the reactionary smoke-and-mirror machine, since the seriously important issue here has nothing to do with any of that.
In fact, there's a whole lot of stuff that Gannongate has nothing to do with:
- Gay-male prostitution — I'm sure it titillates a number of people, and "Jeff" is not unpleasant to look at, but so what? Unlike all those who proclaim that it makes no difference to them while, secretly, they are shocked at the idea of a GMP (gay-male prostitute), I don't really care. I'm gay, and I write pornography for fun and [very little] profit. If I could make money selling my body, I probably would.
- Closeted Gay Republicans — I have no sympathy for closeted republican homos, and I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of outing the hypocrites for their complicity in the continued denial of civil rights to gay people; however, that has little to do with the Gannon case since, quite evidently, he's not all that closeted to begin with, and it's pretty clearly not the gay revelations per se that have driven him undergound, although many people would like us to think so and, in so thinking, look no further.
- Softball Questions — get over it! Do reactionary mouth-pieces really think that we progressive, right-thinking types could prossibly waste this much indigniation over some faux reporter because we're upset that he asks easy questions? They misunderestimate us if they do.
- Hypocrisy, or Don't Blame the Messenger — It's not Gannon who's the target of the interest here anyway. He's the agent, the catalyst, a mere synecdoche for immoral and illicit White-House activities. Consider the case of the sanctimonious abstainer proclaiming "Lips that touch alcohol shall never touch mine" turning out to be an ahcoholic: you hold the alcoholic responsible, not the liquor.
No, the question here focuses on the White House. Why in the world would they, in all their homophobic zeal, keep giving press passes to a gay-male prostitute pretending to be a journalist using a pseudonym that the White House claims not to have known wasn't his real name? (NB: Either they claim that they didn't know, in which case their security systems are totally inadequate to uncover what anyone with an internet connection can see, or they did and they chose to overlook it for reasons yet to be adequately explained.)
Hypocritical though it is, it's not the hypocrisy of the White House that's the point, either. Rather, the hypocrisy is like the flashing lightbulbs on the giant, illuminated arrow pointing at the White House saying "there's something funny going on over there". That's where the real question is.
Preserving Press Freedom
An editorial in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Protecting Press Freedom", is justly concerned about the actions of a US appeals court ("activist judges"?) in upholding contempt citations against reporters who refused to reveal sources. In summary remarks, they say
No administration in power is happy to read what newspapers write or what's reported on television. But the system of an independent, vigorous news media has served this country well since its beginning. It's a tradition worthy of preserving for future generations.
I support that statement, and want to remind the journalists and newspapers that they themselves have a critical part in preserving their independence. This is my short list for today of shortcomings I see with the Fourth Estate:
- Too Much Bootlicking — the press has, for whatever reason, come to value "access" to the White House and other centers of political power so much that they are losing their independence. They have come to rely too much on unquestioning acceptance of press statements made by those in power, to the detrement of fair and accurate reporting of the facts. Press statements are not statements of fact, but statements to be checked and investigated. The Press needs to regain its skepticism and stop worrying about the "access" that isn't worth the paper that the press pass is printed on.
- Indifference to Facts — reporters need to report facts, not the pseudo-facts that have become so popular with "journalists" who have a partisan ax to grind: journalists should be friends to no party, no politicians. Instead of gathering and then stating facts, today's journalist toady fabricates a story and a "viewpoint" by quoting others when they say something quotable, regardless of its veracity: it's not necessarily a fact even if it's a fact that someone said it. Lose the quotation marks and give us the facts!
Change the World Instead
This is too beautiful.
This excerpt is from "Gay Rights Advocate Blends in and Stands Apart", by Robin Finn, in The New York Times, a profile of Susan Somer, "the lead lawyer for Lambda Legal's landmark, if unresolved, litigation to secure the right for same-sex couples to marry in New York City" (who, as it happens, is not herself a lesbian, but she's happy to let people think so).
"We were at a gathering after the birth of my first son, and there was a family there with twin 4-year-old boys, and one was running around like a warrior and the other was playing with dolls," she recalls. When she complimented the parents on their twins' individuality, they told her they planned to take the doll-playing son to a specialist, not because he might turn out gay, but because they worried he would have a complicated life if he did. "They said it bothered them that he wouldn't have the same rights as his brother, wouldn't be able to get married if he wanted to."
The conversation stayed with her. "I had that new-parent feeling that I didn't want my child growing up in a world like that," says Ms. Sommer, who grew up in Roslyn Heights on Long Island and graduated from Yale Law School. "I thought that what we have to do is change the world around the child. […]"
In: All, Common-Place Book