If I had all the time in the world
Jan. 26th, 2007 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs(Yes, I'm listening to the GoGos. Suck it.)
James Wolcott asks, Why are British Sex Scandals So Much Better Than Ours? He has a point:
Walter Michaels says something that I've been addressing for a while in the Journal Entries, but he says it differently. In his book, The Trouble with Diversity, he points out that identity politics and the "jargon of diversity" allows us to not talk about the increasingly rigid partitioning of our society among identity lines. Michaels is interested mostly about race, and I disagree with his terminology: diversity is a fine thing, it is the jargon of tolerance that wrecks the conversation: if "tolerance" means we're not allowed to challenge someone else's identity and we're not willing to allow others to challenge our own, then we have no way of finding common ground. We'll continue to fetishize melanin production as a form of alienation and we'll never form a consensus community.
A unfortunately fictional memo from the Sadr Army declares what their next steps will be in Iraq:
In an exchange with Wolf Blitzer, who once upon a time was a pleasant lapdog who could reliably say what the government wanted to say, Dick Cheney became testy when the subject came around to Mary Cheney's pregnancy and relationship with her long-term partner Heather Poe. Blitzer said it was a fair question and Cheney snapped that the question was "out of line."
I agree with Ed on this one:
James Wolcott asks, Why are British Sex Scandals So Much Better Than Ours? He has a point:
The Mark Foley congressional-page scandal took the Washington sexcapade to its ultimate dry point of diminuendo: It was a sex scandal without any actual sex. It unfurled almost entirely in the phantom zone where fantasy and virtual reality overlap. What could be more tacky or poignant than a middle-aged sad sack quizzing a former teenage page if he had spanked his Oscar Meyer that weekend?
. . .
Not only would a Dubya-Laura-Condi triangle have made for epic Potomac soap opera, with the twin Bush daughters providing a leitmotif as the Paris and Nicky Hilton of the piece, but it would have proved that his presidency had something coursing through its veins other than the pure heroin of power. I would prefer to live under a system of government where the overseers occasionally plunged into one another's arms rather than righteously plundered the Constitution and the commonweal to feed their habit.
Walter Michaels says something that I've been addressing for a while in the Journal Entries, but he says it differently. In his book, The Trouble with Diversity, he points out that identity politics and the "jargon of diversity" allows us to not talk about the increasingly rigid partitioning of our society among identity lines. Michaels is interested mostly about race, and I disagree with his terminology: diversity is a fine thing, it is the jargon of tolerance that wrecks the conversation: if "tolerance" means we're not allowed to challenge someone else's identity and we're not willing to allow others to challenge our own, then we have no way of finding common ground. We'll continue to fetishize melanin production as a form of alienation and we'll never form a consensus community.
A unfortunately fictional memo from the Sadr Army declares what their next steps will be in Iraq:
A third course of action would be to avoid challenging the American and government forces directly but continue to attack them with IEDs and snipers. There will be many more American targets on the street, and a continuing stream of casualties would further undermine American support. This has the advantage of keeping our fingerprints off such operations because the Sunnis will probably do this regardless of what we do. ... Clearly, America's time here is limited. Hurrying its exit at the cost of weakening our own position does not make sense. We have been patient for a thousand years; another year is nothing.
In an exchange with Wolf Blitzer, who once upon a time was a pleasant lapdog who could reliably say what the government wanted to say, Dick Cheney became testy when the subject came around to Mary Cheney's pregnancy and relationship with her long-term partner Heather Poe. Blitzer said it was a fair question and Cheney snapped that the question was "out of line."
I agree with Ed on this one:
I'm sure it makes him quite uncomfortable to be asked about a difference of opinion between he and his political allies, but that does not make the question an unfair or unreasonable one. It should make him uncomfortable, and frankly the moral thing to do in my view would be to blast those who are claiming that Mary is doing something wrong, or is immoral, or is trying to destroy our society or the family or whatever the idiotic rhetoric is today from the anti-gay crowd.
You don't have another election to face, Dick, your political career, for all practical purposes, is done; stand up for your daughter and for the millions of other gay and lesbian people who are just like her. Stand up for their rights and tell the Dobsons of the world to go to hell and mind their own business. It's what you should have done years ago, but you let politics trump what you know is right. You've made a few weak statements in her defense, but as a prominent conservative spokesperson, you could be a powerful voice for real equality. Stand up and do the right thing; it'll feel good, I promise.
