Brian is/was Ezra’s roommate. Sommer is Matt’s friend. Ezra is staying with Matt here in NYC while we are all up here for the Clinton Global Initiative. Alex and I are friends, as are Alex and Megan. Matt and Ezra and Megan went shooting together on Yom Kippur (bad Jews!), along with Dave, who is throwing a joint birthday party with Brian later this week. Also, Megan and Matt work together. And I used to work with Matt and still work with Ezra. And I think we are all Facebook friends.
Liberalism's future Maureen Dowds and Tom Friedmans hash out their personal differences. You know, they'll still be miffed about stuff like this - and still think it matters - 30 years from now. Assholes.
It was bound to happen: as blogging became professionalized, dinks from good schools took pride of place.
Which is not to say that it isn't worse than it's ever been: Somehow I can't imagine Russell Baker and Murray Kempton filling column inches with lengthy chortles over their revels at Studio 54.
For you the punters, I believe the choice is clear. You can invest your time with these credentialed feebs, or hang out with the real people. Here is a photo taken from my writing "desk." It is not posed or nothin'.
Just be thankful I didn't include a picture of my bathroom. Wait; here is a picture of my bathroom:
And I just cleaned it. Finally, here is a picture of me and my buddies in the hood:
If you respect yourself, respect the scene, and respect the Fantastik with Bleach, I'm sure you will eschew those callow wonks and give instead your custom to rough customers such as myself. Honestly, what would you rather read? Something like this:
Sameer Lalwani looks at some of the stories behind the stories out of Burma. I think he's particularly smart on the role of new technologies.
...Thence heav'd I the Maid acrosst the Table and ventur'd her Legs, which were Akimbo, untill they were Luxated; but at her Pudend found a Suppuration unknown to me, for all my Years of Learning; so vex'd, I rotated her and had my Way Anally. This Orifice was withal less than Hygenick, but there I understood the Nature of the Filth.
We offer this sort of thing every day, sometimes in modern English, and with links to Media Matters. We also have merchandise. Your way is clear, joy-poppers. This is the only blog that matters.
12:21 AM by roy edroso
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Friday, September 28, 2007 BORN TO LOSE. I don't think I have the gas to go to Shea and partake in Willie Randolph's "new season." Maybe if my lungs need clearing I'll go on Sunday and boo. I thank God that my years as a Mets fan and a Democrat have inured me somewhat to this kind of disaster. Still, Jesus Christ. They blew a 7-game lead in two weeks. I was stunned at first by Willie's sangfroid in the slump, but now I think his team was so freaked- and worn-out that he didn't dare spook them any further. I wonder what he thinks now. Poor Paul LoDuca seems to think he's going to pull the team into the playoffs by his teeth. Maybe he should pitch relief.
I believe Harvey Keitel speaks for all of us:
UPDATE. On the plus side, the O's have just tied the Yankees in the ninth on a triple by... Jay Payton. Sangfroid is over -- time to warm up the schadenfreude!
10:25 PM by roy edroso
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YET ANOTHER CODA. This sort of relates to the previous two posts: In the latest installment of their "debate," Andrew Breitbart engages in a B&D fantasy concerning David Ehrenstein:
If I could go back in time, I would go back to your childhood to beat up the boys who beat you up as you started grappling with your homosexuality. I'd go into your past to erase the "hate crimes" that now cause you to blame political conservatism for your deepest wounds. I want to breach the time/space continuum to find out what those young hoodlums were thinking when they went after you...
...at the end of the film, it's 2014 and I see that you and your partner have been nabbed by Chomsky-quoting al Qaeda fanatics who are getting ready to behead you in an abandoned auto factory in Michigan for the sin of brunching in Dearborn.
But the moment before they chop your heads off -- in the nick of time (just like in the Republicans' favorite show, "24," which we are grateful you guys allowed us to have) -- the good guys, in this case the U.S. Marines, bust through the doors to save you both. At this point, I will have drafted a powerful soliloquy for your character. It'll be a cinematic epiphany in which you show remorse for tilting at white, straight and conservative windmills...
Crumbs, Mary! Why don't you just kiss him already?
8:39 AM by roy edroso
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Thursday, September 27, 2007 MY FAVORITE FOLSOM STREET COMMENTER SO FAR. The Folsom Street thing is still going strong. Among the hundreds of chest-thumping Christers expressing their outrage:
"'Gay' activists disingenuously call Christians 'haters' and 'homophobes' for honoring the Bible, but then lash out in this hateful manner toward the very people they accuse.” My own experience with these people led me to conclude that while Christians profess to “love the sinner and hate the sin” the extremists of the Angry Gay Left “love the sin and hate the sinner.” Responsible gay leaders should speak out against the poster, but they will not, fearing the vicious attacks from the hatemongers of their own community.
Before (and after!) he was Jeff Gannon, the author was gay-escort/wingnut/"reporter" James Guckert -- GOP press pool shill by day, "Bulldog" by night! Now he spends a large amount of his time denouncing "homosexual jihad against Republicans," which apparently includes exposing homosexual Republicans:
Larry Craig did not invent the toilet culture for which he has been accused. Gays did. Not only did gays invent anonymous rendezvous –- the practice is a significant part of the homosexual subculture.
Whereas Gannon/Guckert's encounters were the opposite of anonymous -- he got the names and the credit card numbers!
Much as I love the original, isn't it about time someone remade Advise and Consent?
UPDATE. Fixed the faulty proper name of Gannon/Guckert.
1:28 PM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, September 26, 2007 NIHIL OBSTAT. At Beliefnet, Rod Dreher is mad 'cause some leather folk made a poster for a leather event that imitates the famous tableau of the Last Supper.
Dan Savage has the absurdity of this well-covered. In a way, I can't get too outraged about the outrage or the outrage over the outrage. This is fine intramural sport for all of us with time on our hands, and the worst I can say about it is it helps keep Bill Donohue employed.
Slightly more annoying and instructive is Dreher's follow-up, in which he tells us that while a lot of conservatives denounced Ann Coulter when she called Edwards a faggot, liberals never return the high-minded favor. He invites liberal Christians to perform an appropriate auto da fe, and denounce some liberal foibles in the spirit of post-Folsom comity. Dreher seems not to have noticed that there is a whole, credentialed flock of self-proclaimed liberal columnists who spend many of their column inches on such exercises. As Gavin observes:
Among the many variants of this style is that of the nominally liberal columnist (such as Thomas Friedman or Richard Cohen) who finds himself continually forced by events to repeat conservative talking points and express disdain for his fellow liberals -- message: "This hurts me more than it hurts you." When executed well, this routine can be repeated weekly for an indefinite number of years.
It's a marketable schtick. But demands that others emulate it without pay are rather rich, especially coming from someone whose anti-gay animus is obvious whenever he mentions homosexuals.
This is the sort of thing that gives moderation a bad name.
9:56 PM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, September 25, 2007 A CLOCKWORK BREITBART. The L.A. Times has engaged David Ehrenstein (film nerd) and Andrew Breitbart (culture warrior) to discuss Hollywood and the War on Whatchamacallit. (First twoparts up now.) We have gone round this particular mulberry bush many times before, but Breitbart's ravings are proving classics of the genre.
Most notable are Beitbart's mood swings between professions of conservative cultural impotence and professions of conservative cultural power. On the one hand he accuses "the politically correct architecture of the creative process in Hollywood," where "pro-victory voices are reflexively ridiculed, cold-shouldered and made pariahs of on the party circuit [! -ed.]," of "reverse McCarthyism" (Watershed! They're against McCarthyism now!). On the other, he declares that "my side has talk radio, best-selling books, top-rated cable news shows, blogs, Op-Ed columns and even the presidency to make our points," and that "millions of other American filmgoers" share his politics and find their needs ill-served by Hollyweird, despite record box-office figures.
At one point, perhaps a rare moment of equilibrium in his brain chemistry, Breitbart turns introspective on behalf of the Movement: "Yet the conservatives who defend and, to a great degree, prosecute this war [? -ed.] have only themselves to blame for not putting enough emphasis on popular entertainment, and refusing to get bloody in the trenches of Melrose and Vine," he says, before (alas) reverting to form and calling on Ehrenstein as a "gay expert on gays in cinema" to help him with a Hollywood "diversity" project.
There are many different ways to relieve a creative urge, and those of us who toil both in blogs and in other formats must be careful not to shoot too much of our wads on internet prattle. That's why I continue to hold out sympathy and hope for guys like Jason Apuzzo, whose rages against the Hollywood machine are punctuated by efforts to make the sort of movies he wants to see.
But as Breitbart's case shows, the pure culture warrior finds making actual culture a "bloody" business and beneath him. His talents are instead devoted to concocting syrups of outrage thick enough to suspend bombast-fragments like "heroin-addled reality star," "self-congratulatory award show pronunciations," and "Gulfstream-flying, eco-warrior billionaires" for the delectation of undiscerning goons. The hard work of pursuing a coherent idea from start to finish -- whether in a story, script, or even a blog post -- is for the gloopy ones, while the oomny ones use, like, inspiration and what Bog sends.
It seems clear that our culture warriors are not engaged in a war for culture so much as a war against it.
11:01 PM by roy edroso
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Monday, September 24, 2007 HOMAGE TO SHERLOCK HOLMES AND PHILEAS FOGG.Megan McArdle on some silly Times story on women who are uncomfortable dating men who make less money than they do:
Speaking as the Emissary From Your Thirties, you know that amazing guy who just got back from Africa and tells hilarious stories and dates, like, everyone you know? The one your best friend quit her job to go to Tuvalu with? The one who's been working on a really titanic novel for four years that he never quite finishes, and can't seem to hold down a long-term job? His dating prospects start heading rapidly downhill by his thirtieth birthday. By his late thirties, his studio apartment is getting very lonely at night. If he does get married to a woman more successful than he is, it's likely that their relationship will be controlling, resentful, and involve enduring quite a lot of contempt from her friends and family.
But it has nothing to do with money. [? -ed.] Men with some measure of success in their chosen fields have no problem finding spouses. And successful women have no cause to complain, either. After all, they have a bevy of unsuccessful but charming men to choose from, who will be more than happy to date them if they can overcome their biases. The unsuccessful men, on the other hand, are pretty much frozen out.
This is why I keep a cat.
McArdle's post is an odd mix of libertarian harshness and romanticism. On the one hand, it features a market explanation which seems to strike her as just. But the talk about loneliness and diminished prospects comes from some different kind of moral tale, perhaps a pamphlet or a children's story. One would hardly guess that our society is filled with people who, by her standards, are moral and economic failures. McArdle does acknowledge the existence of poor folk in a previous post on the same subject, but there the language reverts to econo-nerdspeak:
There is a growing male/female education and income disparity. But it is occurring several rungs down the SES ladder from the precious princesses in the story, clipping off price tags and hiding shopping bags lest He realize that she shops at Prada. This problem is afflicting mostly poor women, particularly black and latino women, who have seen their earnings prospects improve dramatically relative to those of the men in their communities.
In this demimonde, women suffer from the "problem" of improved earning power, while in the surface world we have companionless loser males with their Soup for One dinners and unfinished novels, clinging forlornly to precious memories of Tuvalu. It seems win-win, or lose-lose, depending on your perspective.
For all its confusion, this analysis clearly posits marriage as the ultimate prize. I wonder if the many citizens who fall in and out of marriages, and in and out of economic stability, see it that way. No doubt many of them do -- which is why they keep trying -- but some may have determined that life's a bit messier than that. If the prospect of penury and an unattended deathbed disturbs them, so too might the prospect of a job they despise and a "controlling, resentful" relationship. One of the glories of a free society is that we may pick and choose our regrets. In econometric circles, where marriage, income per capita, and procreation are exalted data-points, this does not signify. But if you have found some happiness in this world despite your lack of resemblance to the ideal, you may know what I'm talking about.
UPDATE. Jules Verne character name corrected; thanks, Anon.
11:04 PM by roy edroso
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FIRST AMENDMENT UPDATE.Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia. Much protest. Much coverage, largely negative (The New York Daily News headline: "The Evil Has Landed"). The Republic endures.
Just the other day National Review was telling us that "Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia has nothing to do with freedom of speech." Today at NR, Michael Rubin:
Lee Bollinger's introduction didn't make the news [in Iran]. But then again, why should it? Ahmadinejad's state-controlled press does not support such concepts as free speech and free expression.
I've noticed that, whenever they fail to cut off someone's mike, they murmur something like this about free speech as if it were some small consolation.
10:20 PM by roy edroso
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Sunday, September 23, 2007 FTW.Mark Steyn complains about Fred Thompson's characterization of America's goals in World War II:
FDR didn't take America to war in 1941 with the "disinterested intention of liberating others". He took America to war not to end the Holocaust or free Belgium or build a democracy in Japan but for reasons of hard-headed national self-interest. All the rest was the happy consequence of victory. Likewise, America didn't topple the Taliban because it was suddenly overcome by a burning desire to see more women legislators in the Afghan parliament: That, too, was a happy consequence of a war waged for selfish reasons.
This is an interesting admission because many, many conservatives automatically discount the idea that opponents of the Iraq war might also be putting America's welfare first and foremost, and accuse us of other loyalties. In fact Steyn himself does this regularly. In 2003 he discounted antiwar protestors as "enthusiastically subscribed" to the proposition that "whatever the problem, American imperialist cowboy aggression is to blame," and earlier in 2007 he characterized the "Slow-Bleed Democrats" as more interested in embarrassing Bush than in winning "America's war."
Hatred of America, or of Bush, has been always been their default explanation for the astonishing fact that some Americans disagree with them, and as the number of dissenters increases Steyn begins to think that the war party just hasn't explained it properly:
An awful lot of Americans see Iraqis waving purple fingers at the polls and shrug, "Nice. But not worth dead Americans." To sell this struggle to the electorate, you have to frame it in terms of the national interest. It has to be a war consistent with American ideals but fought for selfish reasons.
Like the new-edition Steyn, I care much, much less about other countries than I do about this one. That's why I retroactively endorse America's go-slow approach to the Cold War, which left hanging an awful lot of Soviet subjects who might have been more quickly liberated -- or incinerated -- by a more aggressive strategy. I think it's terrific that Israel provides a homeland for the most persecuted race in the history of the world, but I mainly support it because its existence suits America's interests. I think it's neat that Nelson Mandela went from prisoner to President of South Africa, but for me the money shot was the establishment of a viable democracy in a continent riddled with kleptocracies. Our interests demand a world that is increasingly less likely to blow up in our faces, and the hornets-nest we have aggravated in Iraq seems to me a giant step in the wrong direction.
Go ahead and call me selfish. Patriots have endured worse.
UPDATE. Much contention in comments as to whether our support for Israel suits American interests. I think a better policy toward Israel would be helpful, but withdrawing support would be catastrophic, and whatever reasons obtain, we have enough catastrophe as it is. The subject will be worth revisiting.
10:44 PM by roy edroso
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