|
|
|
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 |  |
|
Now and then Salon gets deluged by mail disagreeing with a story. They have posted a big stack of opposing letters on their piece 'The Trouble with Dean,' and it is encouraging to see such articulate responses from Dean supporters. A few of my favorite passages:
Most of us who are supporting Dean are fully aware of the issues on which we agree, and do not agree with him. I looked at the available candidates and loved Dr. Dean's candor, passion, and his principled decision to speak out about issues even as others around him disagreed with him. People suffering from Beltway blues such as John Judis are so blinded by Dean's antiwar position (and their own blind kowtowing to President Bush's disastrous foreign policy) that they fundamentally misunderstand why Dean has attracted such a strong, loyal following. Many of us have looked at his record, seen him as a centrist who is electable, and have become supporters.
It's the backbone, stupid.
-- Javier Morillo-Alicea
I think that last line really hits why a lot of people are behind him. Javier hit the nail on the head about the press: for so long all they could talk about was his anti-war stance and that building a following. That was so at odds with what I heard people who liked him talking about.
And this really made me chuckle:
When election day rolls around and we vote for Nader because we'd rather stick our heads in a shit bucket than vote for a worm like Lieberman -- whose only deeply held principle appears to be censorship -- you'll have only yourselves to blame.
It's truly frustrating the way some these various forces--most notably the idiotic media establishment--foists these shitbucket candidates upon us by winnowing the early field according to their infantile understanding of the public.
Wait! That's it! I've been struggling so long to figure out why the punditocracy is almost always so off base. They're just really bad, as a class, at understanding human behavior. Some people can really read a person, a crowd, a room, a culture, some people can't. I don't think a lot of journos have that gift. Not a lot of empaths that I've met working in the field. More often cold, jaded, uninvolved. I never even saw another reporter cry out at Columbine. In general, they're just not very good at reading people. No wonder they don't get it.
|
10:58:02 AM
|
|
|
Let's just dive right in with what he said this time:
Santorum talks homosexuality in article
July 15, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) --
Sen. Rick Santorum would advise his children to resist any "temptations'' of homosexuality, according to an interview published Tuesday.
In the interview with the magazine GQ, Santorum, R-Pa., was asked what he would do if one of his six children told him of homosexual urges.
"I would treat it like I would any other thing my child comes to me with,'' Santorum answered. "Try to deal with it in a loving, supportive way.''
Where to start. Temptation? If they're straight, would/will he advise them not to be tempted to members of the opposite sex, and to stay celibate their entire lives? It's not going to happen. And did God really give them these sex urges just to torture them.
But I'm more distraut by his loving/supportive response. It is possible that he'll find a way to do it in a loving, supportive way, but the main impact of him telling a gay kid--or adult--that those are evil urges and you have to squelch them is to convince them in a very deep way that they are a really bad person. It will be decades before the kids break free from all the self-loathing that will reinforce. Chances are the kid would start with a huge reservoir of it himself, and Dad has a major opportunity to do one of two things at the key moment he finds out: 1) lift a great deal of that loathing when the kid discovers that no, Dad doesn't see you as vile, so hmmmm, maybe I've been too harsh on myself, or 2) drive it home all the further.
This is no small issue. The dirty little secret of the gay community is that most of us are emotional/psychological basket cases for at least a decade before and after we come out, and many of us remain that way our entire lives. It's a rare gayguy who doesn't carry at least some echoes of it around with him. (Same for lesbians, though a lot less so, it seems. The culture is a lot less horrified about two women making it together, so most of them aren't ripped apart as deeply inside.) Gayboys generally try to keep this information to themselves--and in some circles from themselves--but the incredibly candid and always articulate fellow homo Dan Savage came clean with this in his Savage Love advice column last month:
Finally, um, and in conclusion, ahem—shit, I'm actually kinda reluctant to say this out loud, but, uh . . . on average, gay men tend to be more fucked up than straight men. Being gay and closeted and going through puberty and coming out and dealing with the family bullshit and the religious bullshit and the societal bullshit—that can be hugely traumatic. Some gay men never recover. When I was young and single, MISD, I regarded myself and my fellow gay men as battle-scarred Vietnam veterans. Are all Vietnam vets fucked up? Are they all drug-abusing mental cases who treat their lovers like crap? No, of course not. But they do tend to be fucked up at slightly higher rates than non-Vietnam vets—at least in the movies—and people who date Vietnam vets need to keep this in mind and be on the lookout for any signs that the vet they're dating is one of the fucked-up ones.
A little embarrassing to to admit, but just hang out with any random group of homos for a week or two and it will be painfully obvious. The last thing in the world a kid needs at the moment of truth when he faces up to the obvious, is for the single most important person in the world to tell him the instinctive urges running through his head obsessively night and day--and at that age, sexual urges are pretty much present every waking and sleeping moment--are pure evil.
That is not loving and supportive. Sugarcoat it all you want with a facade of love and support--"I love you but ..."--but you're still driving a stake through the kid's sense of self-esteem. You're never going anywhere in life until you start hating yourself. And he's describing a course to make the kid despise himself. It's really hard to understand how really bright people can't see that. Won't see that. Much easier to deny the obvious when it conflicts with their other beliefs.
Unfortunately, Rick Santorum is quite consciously offering advice to millions of readers out there, who will read the story or hear his remarks reprinted in the press. And unfortunately, he's given all his "Christian" friends a way to rationalize their abusive behavior; a way to nod and pretend they're all being very Christian about it. "Right, right, loving and supportive, that's what Jesus would do. And then he'd make sure to cripple the kid psychologically, preferably for the rest of his life."
|
|
9:53:19 AM
|
|
|
There's been a lot of talk lately about Dean's electability. And of course people wrote off Sharpton, Mosley-Braun and Kucinich long ago, which was pretty understandable, if not a bit premature. (Consider that Dean looked nearly as a dark a horse in the spring, and now he's at or near the front of the Dem pack.)
What I've never understood is why Dick Gephardt is so rarely thrown into that category. The man is a two-time loser already, with an incredibly old-school appeal that wasn't selling then and will only sell worse now. The man is a windbag with a very limited appeal: surrounding farm states, big labor and a certain old-school liberal following. That assures him of a good showing in Iowa, and a solid 5-10% elsewhere that keep him on all the pundits' contender lists, but no real chance of moving any higher.
This is scary for me to quote this, but I think the RNC site is dead-on in their description: "An Ineffective Leader And Traditional Liberal Democrat Who Is The "Keeper Of The Liberal Flame For Organized Labor And Party Activists." At the very least, that's his perception, and he's stoked the second half himself, and had it way too long to shake it. And it's a dead-in-the-water image.
I find it puzzling and irritating that the press ever took his candidacy very seriously. They're always willing to push all the previous losers to the front of the pack just because they have high name recognition--mainly for having lost. (And in this case, having a hand in losing the House as well.) Some of the smaller names may not work out, but at least they're untested candidates with possibility. We already know what the country thinks of Dick Gephardt. So why was he ever ranked so high. Those people drive me crazy.
And now, word that may finally put a stake in him. If you checked GoogleNews yesterday, you'd see just about every news outlet in the country was running the AP story w/ this headline and lead:
Gephardt fund raising falls far short
July 15, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) --
Presidential candidate Dick Gephardt fell short of his fund-raising goal by more than $1 million, raising questions Tuesday about his ability to excite Democratic donors and remain a top-tier candidate.
The former House Minority leader, who hoped to raise $5 million from April to June, collected just $3.87 million -- apparently placing him in a distant fifth-place among the nine Democratic contenders.
So now even the old faithful with the big bucks have deserted him. The $5 million was a weak goal for someone with his supposed status in the race, and his name recognition, and actual existing clout in Congress (which will draw a lot of old-money people to an expensive fundraiser to write checks). If he was a distant fifth then, think how much worse he'll do as the others catch up in name recognition. And as the momentum is sucked out of him for doing so badly.
He's also losing ground in Iowa, the one thing that kept him in the race the last two times he lost. Both Kerry and Dean are now close there and gaining fast. If he can't even win his one regional base state against two New Englanders . . .
I wouldn't expect a withdrawl anytime soon, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's eventually the first to drop out. He's also an old hand and knows that he's not going to inspire any new energy, so if he can't even get the old guard behind him he's a goner. And with a significant Congressional career already established, he's got a lot more at stake than a Dean or Kucinich. I don't seem him driving it into the ground and being humilated month after month as it gets bleaker and bleaker, sullying his reputation more with every pitiful fundraiser.
Gephardt is history, that' not really my concern. I'm just waiting for a whole new pundit class who will start considering potential, and not taking the easy way out of pretending or believing that the names we recognize are the names likely to win the thing. And I'm sure not holding my breath.
|
|
9:32:28 AM
|
|
|
Dutton (Penguin) in 2007. 