THROUGH PLAYING GAMES. Andrew Sullivan gives a nod to Tech Central Station columnist James D. Miller, who says "avoidable information externalities" explain why, contra Santorum, legalized sodomy doesn't pave the way for legalized incest, and that you can accept the former without accepting the latter. On the one hand, he says,

....whenever incest occurs it creates an informational externality that makes it more rational for relatives to misinterpret non-sexual affection for amorous advances. Incest between consenting adults therefore harms society and consequently is not just a private affair.

Whereas:

Homosexuality can also create informational externalities, but these externalities are unavoidable and so do not provide a justification for criminalizing gay sex.

Also, "Criminalizing gay sex... would not reduce the number of homosexuals and would thus not decrease the probability of someone thinking any given heterosexual man was gay," he says.

It's not his purpose I question, but his argument. I don't know anything about game theory, but I don't think that's why I had a hard time following his logic.

People interpret or misinterpret gestures of affection all the time based on their experience, not social codes. In fact, while Miller says that "In a world in which incest is taboo and rare most people won't interpret a hug from a relative as a sign of sexual interest," I'm guessing that it's the rarity rather than the taboo that causes Niece Becky to interpret Uncle Joe's big, warm hug as avuncular rather than lecherous. And there are nieces who would take their uncle's hug as lecherous. Some uncles are, indeed, leching, and some nieces are damaged by prior experiences that would make them shudder at even an innocent, familial touch.

There are potent taboos, as well as laws, against the sexual abuse of children, and given the negative attention given to cases of such abuse in recent years, we can assume these taboos are stronger, not weaker, than before. But that didn't help the Ameraults and Kelly Michaels, whose insane prosecutions on bogus molestation charges were famously debunked by Dorothy Rabinowitz. These colossal "misinterpretations" were not the result of any weakening of the taboos. In fact, you could argue that they were caused by an obsession with them.

Again, Miller's heart is in the right place, but I don't think the slide-rule approach strengthens his case. In a way, I think his approach makes the argument against sodomy laws more abstruse and difficult.

A lot of the Santorum-centric discussion I've been reading has been about the harm to society, or lack thereof, of gay sex. I take that point as irrelevant, because to a large extent societies police themselves on that score.

It's certainly that way here. Few would dispute that American society is more comfortable now with gay people than it was twenty years ago. (That's why this discussion is hot -- maybe why it's taking place at all.) You couldn't say this development was caused by laws or taboos -- unless you were strongly against tolerance of gay people. Then you might argue that the sexual revolution, Roe v. Wade, Will & Grace, etc., were among those "informational externalities" that have weakened the nation's moral fiber and sent us hurtling down the road to Gomorrah. And you might, within that argument, call for strengthening those taboos by retaining laws against sodomy.

In other words, Miller and Sullivan are playing on the Right's turf. They're accepting the premise that morality is, and should be, as enforcible by law as utility, but raising a wan demurrer: that the externality represented by the homosexual state is "unavoidable," and thereby protected from the terms of that premise. Next, of course, someone will argue with "unavoidable," and we're off to the races again.

Like I said, I don't know about game theory, but I do perceive that sodomy laws do not protect as many real people as they harm, and I'm against them. And I'm frankly more respectful of the counter-argument that these laws give prosecutors extra leverage in convicting rapists than I am of most arguments based on anyone's theory. Because at least that argument's happening on planet Earth.

CHANGED MY MIND. I don't feel bad for Andrew Sullivan anymore. The Santorum interval is now apparently over for all good wingers: The Times reports, "Republican Lawmakers Back Senator in Gay Dispute," and records lovely quotes from Sullivan's partner-in-diversity, Tom DeLay ("It is very dangerous to say that whatever you do behind closed doors is your right to privacy... It undermines a lot of moral questions that we have in this country"). Sullivan appears to be down with the program.

Sullivan's prior angst over the Santorum thing has burned out, as seen in these recent and pathetic comments. He is so shit-out-of-luck in his search for companionable conservatives on sexual privacy issues that he commends as "very sane" James Taranto's extremely (and I mean extremely) lukewarm endorsement of gay civil rights. (Sample Taranto quote: "Many religious Americans are horrified by the symbolism of allowing same-sex couples to marry... Simply to sweep aside such concerns, as the advocates of same-sex marriage seek to do, would be arrogant and contrary to the spirit of American pluralism." Taranto also calls Bowers v. Hardwick "a politically wise ruling.")

Andrew Sullivan, who frequently says Democrats are insufficiently attentive to gay rights, is now reduced to running a geiger-counter over OpinionJournal columnists, looking for trace elements of tolerance.

He has also turned his attention to a whole host of other topics, among them the recent Conquest (which makes him giddy), dragons (which make him roar!), and "male hating" feminists -- which makes him what he's always been: a complete tool who, having perfected a good Bircher imitation to curry favor with his radical right audience, affects not to notice when he is rewarded with the back of their hand.

HUH?



Someone's been reading my mail!

FAILING THE ECLECTIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST. Sasha Castel has posted what I would call a Libertarian Purity Test. Most of the hot buttons are there, from gun ownership to abortion.

It's a great service and has inspired interesting comments. Let me share with you an internal response of my own that, were I actually responding to the quiz, I have a hunch I'd supress for a reason I'll explain later:

While I could give quick agreement to the first five items (yeah, even the guns), on the issue of education I am torn. I want to say yes to an uninfringed right to "educate my children according to my personal values." (I assume everyone does that anyway -- in most cases, with beatings and drunken mockery.) But part of me also feels that a public school system is a good idea, as a means of promulgating the minimal socialization and life skills necessary to keep us from turning into Lord of the Flies West, and that such a system cannot survive without a certain small but real amount of coercion. (Face it -- if school were optional, do you doubt that school attendance would drop to levels that would make the system unsustainable?)

Now, we could argue that point for hours, but I want to focus here on my own reaction. In my heart of hearts I wanted to get all the answers "right." And that's not such a bad thing. Like most people -- really -- I want Certain Inalienable Rights not only for myself, but for others -- everyone else, in fact -- because I understand that my own would not be safe without theirs.

Yet I find myself pulling back on that one issue. And I'm a little ashamed to admit it. Why? Because, let's face it, it's cool to be a libertarian -- so cool that even the guys at NRO pretend to swing that way (especially their resident frat-boy -- except, of course, when he's pretending to be contrarian-authoritarian). Maximum freedom is much more exciting and attractive than the sober, somber, on-the-other-hand-ism of the sort drearily embodied by most Presidential candidates.

Now, I'm going to fade to black on this shot of my hand hesitating over the levers next to Question Six, because what I think doesn't matter so much (no applause, please) as the instinct I described. Is it that I'm afraid of freedom (quick "YES!" from the LP guys), or is it that I'm afraid of purity?

Yes, purity. Let's say it's 1793. We're in France. We took the Tennis Court Oath. So we're old-school and totally down with the Revolution. We have watched with pleasure as all traces of the old tyranny are obliterated -- even the unfortunate but necessary regicide. In for a penny, in for a pound, we say -- no half measures for us. Then they start whispering against our friends. Next it's their heads on the blocks. Next, maybe ours...

This is not a fantasy against liberty, or even against the French Revolution, but against absolutism and its inevitable companion: momentum. What was the big difference between the French Revolution and ours? (Don't say "Frenchmen," please.) I think it was that we had a lot more pushback going against us -- and I don't mean the Redcoats. I mean we appreciated the old order (good, British order!), and the institutions they gave us (and largely maintained afterwards). But we also appreciated liberty, and decided with not a little sadness that circumstances demanded we sue for it, so we had to back away from some of our own best instincts in order to inaugurate a revolution. This made us, in a weird way, circumspect about our new prize of liberty -- whereas the French, bless them, went apeshit.

I'm not suggesting Nick Gillespie and Jacob Sullum will cheerfully wade through bloody gutters come the Revolution. I just mean that something about the Libertarian trip makes me nervous. It's not so much a politics as a creed, of the all-or-nothing sort -- You want the right to anal sex? Well, then you must not interfere with my right to charge dying Africans for water!

In general I think going "all the way" is a great thing on a personal level and a disastrous thing on a political level. But who knows: maybe you know a Messiah somewhere whose program will fix everything if I only follow Him to the ends of the earth. By all means write and let me know.

BALM IN MUDVILLE. The Mets suck so bad, they put the fact on the front page of the Times.

To brighten the day of fans who are true to the Orange and Blue (I know, it's an old song), I commend yesterday's New York Daily News, where the excellent David Hinckley writes about Ralph Kiner, the Hall of Famer and somewhat dim Mets color commentator whose relationship to the English language rather matches the historic relationship between the Mets and success: mostly dysfunctional, sometimes spectacularly so, but glorious and sweet when it works.

PERMALINKS. I think they work now. I got lazy about "republishing." I'm not used to WYSIWYG tools like this -- I code like I do everything else: hard!

GIMME SOME TRUTH. Interesting take on the WMD question from, of all people, Sgt. Stryker, who is generally as hardline on Iraq as they come. He starts out predictably enough:

Not even France claimed that Saddam didn't possess chemical weapons. Their contention was that UN inspectors backed by U.S. Forces in Kuwait (at U.S. taxpayer expense I might add) was enough to contain Saddam. No one on the Security Council then seriously believed that Saddam had disarmed, and I still don't.

But then the worm of doubt creeps in:

Something is not adding up here. Why would the Iraqis fail to account for tons of nerve agents and other chemical weapons, and then in the late 90's secretly destroy them? It would be in Saddam's vested interests to have destroyed any weapons in full view of the world, thus removing our primary cause for invasion. I mean, why comply with the UN accords without telling the UN about it? If Saddam had disarmed in secret, then having done so must go down in history as one of the stupidest, most self-defeating acts in history.

The whole point of the weapons inspectors was not to find banned weapons, but to verify the voluntary destruction of said weapons by Iraq. I'm suspicious that some sort of geo-political game or grand-deception is being played out here, exactly what I'm not sure yet.

It does seem strange, doesn't it? It would also seem strange that, having allegedly amassed weapons that were a clear and present danger to civilization itself, Saddam didn't use any of them as his country was overrun by enemy forces. Wouldn't the invasion of one's capital be an umistakable cue to break out the mustard gas?

I haven't heard a satisfying explanation for any of this, either. Some people, of course, are more easily satisfied, and they appear to be carrying the day, public-opinion wise.

I had dinner tonight with a friend who had been reading through some Lyndon LaRouche stuff. My reaction was, look, even if the guy is onto something, without a sackful of extremely hard evidence, as opposed to instincts and inductive reasoning, he can't ever bring us clarity -- he'll only bring us a heightened paranoia that exacerbates any problem he might have wanted to solve.

It's a sad state of affairs when most people with any brains simply take for granted that the Administration can't be trusted -- more sad, even, than the eagerness of many other people, some with brains, to take whatever this Adminstration says without even the tiniest grain of salt. The way things are going, between a fucked-up economy and a fucked-up Middle East, a lot of people will start wondering how the hell it came to this, and unless someone in a position of responsibility starts dishing out some truth, the voices that will come roaring out of the demos will make LaRouche sound like Hubert Humphrey.

MORNING EYE-OPENER.I shouldn't even be picking on WordNetDaily columnists -- half the time I think the site is composed by a bunch of playful liberals who want to give their buddies something to rage on -- but today's Doug Powers column about the Dixie Chicks really screams to have some air let out.

First, some basic fact-checking. "Sales of [the Dixie Chicks'] CD's have plummeted" since Natalie Maines made her infamous comments about Bush, says Powers. Plummeted? Last week they were number one on the Billboard Country chart, and this week they're number three -- respectable numbers for alleged pariahs.

"For some reason," says Powers, "with musicians and actors, 'artist' is the only career in which you should be allowed to open your blithering yapper free of consequence." This is rich coming from a guy whose career is based on such unfettered use of his own yapper. Why do so many of these spouters get mad when celebrities spout off? Is it the traditional jealously of the scrivening idealogue, convinced of his righteousness yet forced to admit that more people know what Alec Baldwin feels about global warming than he does?

As inevitably happens when conservatives talk about women, things get creepy toward the end:

Maybe the Dixies will understand what I'm talking about when they're waiting tables at Denny's, opining on current events to a customer who will probably respond to them in a way similar to how America did: "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Can we get some more ketchup over here, Natalie."

The Dixie Chicks are learning the hard way that, just like the guy at table 8, their fans just wanted some ketchup. In both cases, it'll be reflected in their tip.

I don't care much about the Dixie Chicks, but guys who think tipping is a way to wield power are assholes. And guys who fantasize about powerful women reduced to serving them burgers should put up a suitable ad at alt.com rather than unveiling their kink in political columns.

(Hm, that worked out my sleep-stiffened technique some, yet I don't feel really warmed up. Maybe I should try jogging.)

JOBLESSNESS AS HOLIDAY. Mr. Downs pointed me to an article from today's NYT, "Jobless and Hopeless, Many Quit the Labor Force," by Monica Davey with David Leonhardt:

PITTSBURGH, April 26 — Worn down by job searches that have stretched on for
months, demoralized by disappointing offers or outright rejections, some
unemployed people have simply stopped the search.

As the nation enters a third year of difficult economic times, these
unemployed — from factory workers to investment bankers — have dropped out
of the labor force and entered the invisible ranks of people not counted in
the unemployment rate...

"There aren't any jobs, just not any," Mr. Jacobs said. "I had been waiting
it out. I thought there was a strong possibility that I'd get recalled to
the plant, or I'd get something else, anything that paid at least $10 an
hour. But it turns out there is nothing. It's a dead-end street"...

Over the last two years, the portion of Americans in the labor force — those
who are either working or actively looking for work — has fallen 0.9
percentage points to 66.2 percent, the largest drop in almost 40 years.

The story isn't a total downer. (Who'd read it if it were? Only those who hate America!) Some of the folks interviewed by the Times have responded to the job dearth by going back to school or starting their own businesses ("Still, Mr. Guido said he was pleased to be back in school, learning about
things he cares about, and relieved to be on campus, far away from the
struggle to find a job...").

I can imagine a lot of readers will look at that and say, "See? Joblessness isn't so bad. You can always get your Ph.D., or become an entrepreneur, with the 50 grand you have stashed in your sock drawer."

But what if you don't have any capital for these kinds of activities, and can't get any? What if you actually, like, need a job? I know these days we all like to think of ourselves as economic superheroes, swimming in options -- look at all the financial services companies who advertise in prime time to that demographically desirable group of Americans that can afford to play around with their money (while the high-interest, last-chance moneylenders advertise late at night, when the economically stressed citizens are insomniacally flipping through the channels).

Still, the need to keep food on the table -- and creditors from seizing your car -- is a present, crushing reality for millions of people. With the stock bubble burst, the job market imploding, and the rate-cutting increasingly desperate and laughable, how many people are actually out there anymore that can say, "Ah, well, no jobs this year -- guess I'll study Engineering"?

From what I've seen and experienced over the past few years, we've got a growing number of people who, with all the will in the world, can't make ends meet, and a shrinking but still considerable number of people who are blocking this fact out -- because who wants to worry about the joblessness bogey-man coming after them?

Human nature being what it is, I suspect this latter group will go denying the problem, until the other group gets big enough to wake them up with a few electoral thunderclaps.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT. Now here's something that might just save Broadway:

One scene in the performance, by Spanish troupe La Fura Dels Baus, in which an actress appears to perform oral sex on a man from the audience, provoked outrage.

But co-producer and co-writer Carlos Padrissa hit back: "The production serves an educational purpose. It's good for people to be able to experience maximum freedom"...

[The play] centres on naive 18-year-old Eugenie who is introduced to sex by three tutors. It ends with her arranging for her mother to be gang raped.

Bring it over from London with all speed, lest another Rodgers and Hammerstein revival fill its place.

The show is called "XXX," by the way, and the company's title seems to translate as Fury of the Sewers.

(Found via this site, which is a whole lot more edifying than my usual source material.)

MOMMA DIDN'T RAISE NO GEARHEAD. I got around on my newly-purchased bike a bit today, a sweet Columbia Sports III. The springs in the seat are mighty stiff, and the kickstand (a difficult-to-replace model) was missing, but I got a good price on it, and was told it had just been tuned up. It's in my local shop now, though, because the gear cable popped. Some tune-up. I had to take my old bike, an ancient Robin Hood, in for gear-work every couple of months. Is this normally what happens to old three-speeds? Or do the repairmen just see me coming?

There are so many old, sub-optimal makes like mine on the street, ridden by people who aren't enthusiasts but just want to ride a few miles on sunny days instead of taking the subway, that I wouldn't be shocked to learn the bike-shop proprietors were, by unspoken agreement, practicing a little planned obsolescence in their repairs.

After all, the 1956 Sturmey-Archer manual says that "Sturmey-Archer hubs have been designed and built to give a life-time of trouble-free service on the understanding that regular attention is given to correct care and maintenance as outlined below."

Of course, I could stop scanning Google News every two hours, give up the resulting composition of blistering screeds, and take the time saved to learn the ins and out of Toggle Gear repair.

Which might makes things easier on all of us.

JULIA ROBERTS AS WILL AND IDEA. Good heavens. I just saw half an hour of the movie Pretty Woman. I usually manage to avoid such cultural touchstones during their first run, mostly by what the scientists call natural selection ("A new movie with Julia Roberts or an evening drinking in a dank basement? The choice is clear!"). And when I do catch up with them, I am usually disappointed. I saw, for example, Forrest Gump years after its release and found it a depressingly easy and dim-witted sneer against twenty years of American cultural upheaval -- in other words, pretty much what I expected, which is never the desired result of a trip to the Fantasy Factory.

But this movie is genuinely astonishing. A poor but honest prostitute meets cute and makes nice with a sensitive zillionaire john! How could I have missed it in the coming attractions! I wonder if my old friend Professor Hurley has seen it. I'm sure he would appreciate it. The zillionaire woos the prostitute by letting her drive his borrowed status car (that the pedals are close together make it better for women than for men to drive it, she tells him, because "women have smaller feet -- 'course, I'm a size nine-and-a-half"). He pays her for a night of subdued romantic dialogue and sex. I thought it was a bit much that he got sex, too -- after all, $300 is far less than the authors were paid for the subdued romantic dialogue -- but he makes up for it by paying a further $3000 to take over her life for a week. What a catch!

The john is quietly amused (and, from the wisps of foreshadowing blowing through the early scenes, would continue to be quietly amused) by the reaction of his fellow aristos and associated bourgeois to this diamond-in-the-rough-trade. If I were a deconstructionist, I would call this a landmark in the hard bargain made by the powers that be to lure the masses to the consumerism that still afflicts us all: they would allow a great deal more latitude in the area of sexual fantasy if it could be inextricably linked to money. I wonder if Rick Santorum has seen it. I'm sure every hip-hop artist has.

I couldn't keep watching -- my bile-flap inevitably began to quiver -- but I am content that I got the money-shot, as it were.

Now one of these days I'll see My Best Friend's Wedding and really break it down.

HEH. INDEED. UP YOUR ASS. Poor Andy's going apeshit. His beloved Bush can't -- won't, actually -- squeeze a Trent Lott moment out of the Santorum crisis.

But hark! Perfesser Rocky Top rides in on a white SUV to lay the blame at the foot of the Ay-rabs. He notes the resistance of Muslim nations to a UN homosexual human rights proposal. That's telling Ted Rall!

How sad for both of them. (Let me partially withdraw: I have professed sorrow for Sullivan, but the Perfesser is a bridge -- perhaps several -- too far for me.) Shaking the anti-Saddam fist has been a good gig for the Perfesser, but now our focus is on America, not desert shitholes, and it would seem the President's tepid response to the current contretemps cannot logically be softened by reference to Middle Eastern tyrants whose feelings toward sodomites, it is clear, are not very different from his own.

Dan Savage in the Times (fuck the links) is right: the GOP is not going to distance itself from a position that has stood it well in the hinterlands. They're waiting for it to blow over. And it will, with assistance from Poor Andy's buddies in the Republican Party. He'll fall into line soon enough, I'm guessing. But, romantic fool that I am, I'd be delighted if I were proven wrong.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DUMBASS. The Santorum schmegegge proceeds apace. NRO's Kurtz (again) and Enrich see it as an unnecessary distraction, as who could doubt their tolerance of sodomites? Andrew Sullivan, that's who. And maybe it's because, even though Kurtz says he's against sodomy laws, he must, it seems, add a demurrer to this admission, as here: "I feel I have some understanding of the basis of arguments in favor of sodomy laws. I believe that those arguments contain some sound sociological points, but I do not share their religious presuppositions."

I can understand Sullivan's frustration. He's been good to all these guys, lashing out ferociously against the traitorous Left, but when the GOP has a bigot eruption against gays (indeed, against anyone practicing something more than what George Carlin once referred to as "the old man-on-top-get-it-over-with-quick"), his erstwhile compatriots can only give his own basic humanity a most lukewarm endorsement.

They don't know that the reflexive backing-off gestures they always make when they approach this topic are not just political issues to Sullivan. They're personal. It's as if he thought they were friends, and suddenly some guy started beating the shit out of him and they just stood there saying, "Well, I understand the basis of this beating... it contains some sound sociological points."

Who wouldn't be stung by that? I mean, I can't even acknowledge that Sullivan is human most of the time, and I feel for him.

THE LAST REFUGE OF A NATIONAL REVIEW COLUMNIST. John Derbyshire made a few remarks sympathetic to Darwinism and received the (given his venue) expected angry letters. In trying to explain the scientific method to his hillbilly correspondents, he finally resorts to the wooden spoon, comparing them to analysands and Commies:

I think, in fact, that Creationism is part of the larger phenomenon of "science envy" that has gripped all sorts of branches of human knowledge this past couple of centuries. Science has been so stupendously successful at transforming the physical world, everyone wants to claim scientific status for his pet theory. Marxism and Freudianism, the most prominent pseudosciences of the 20th century, both claimed to be scientific. Likewise literary "deconstructionism," etc. etc. It's all science envy. That's the leaky boat the Creationists have got themselves into.

This is the idiot grandchild of the old liberal saw, "If we do this, we become just like our enemies." (Or, as Harlan Ellison put it, "Lie down with pigs, get up smelling like garbage.") Now, this can be powerful stuff if you're telling sensitive, enlightened folks that killing in response to killing is wrong. But what will Cletus at the keyboard think of Derbyshire lumping him in with the Freudians? Pitchfork Pat, come back!

LIAR'S POKER. I don't think Martin Sheen gets enough credit for his performance on The West Wing. Last night they showed him doing some high-stakes negotiating with the Russian President on the Hot Line. (Boy, that sentence makes me nostalgic.) When the first call, in which the President pretended a unmanned spy plane downed in Russia was only photographing "coastal erosion," fell apart, Sheen looked at the phone and said, "this isn't working," exactly as if he were regarding a defective toaster.

I thought about it today when I read this:

According to US State Department officials, the “blatant and bold” announcement that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, made to James Kelly, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs, was followed by the threat to test one.

One State Department official said that Mr Li, attending talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, turned to Mr Kelly after making the claim and said: “Now, what are you going to do about it?”

I can see why folks who like him admire Bush's apparent nonchalance. You want to think confrontations like this are supervised by people who don't sweat much. Now that the people we're playing around with are not penny-ante WMD wannabes (or never-weres), but nuclear-equipped hardline Commies, let us hope he and his know more than how to play poker -- let's hope they also know what they're doing.

NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY. Well, I see the Dixie Chicks are trying to stretch their winning streak. I can't say as I blame them. Making music is a hard dollar, so if a controversial remark by your lead singer causes an informal boycott of your band that mysteriously fails to make much of a dent in your CD sales, you probably should see it as an opportunity.

Their decision to strip as a means of making their point is probably going to be more effective than anything they can come up with verbally, if their quoted "Prime Time" remarks are any indication. (Would they have gotten so big if they looked like Alabama?) Still, the words will do their work -- alternately belligerent and contrite, they cover all their bases (like the words stencilled on their torsos).

Political commentators like to talk about it, but it was never about the politics. The only thing I can't figure is what Maines was thinking when she made that comment. I'd like to believe that she knew this all would come of it -- that it was a bald crossover move, like I think Evancescence's "controversy" was. Would that be paranoid of me? Or just giving them too much credit?

SPINNING SANTORUM. Stanley Kurtz’ piece on the Senator Santorum affair (weird comments about gays and incest) is very long and does not mention Andrew Sullivan. This is odd for a few reasons. First, it’s odd because Sullivan, for all his hideous faults, is the best-known conservative crusader against anti-gay discrimination (and the attendant sodomy-law concerns) within the conservative movement. It’s like talking about the Democratic Party in the 1990s without mentioning Clinton – a bald omission that makes sense only if by so doing you’re trying to make a point. Or conceal one.

The latter seems to be the case here, because Sullivan has blogged tirelessly on the subject of Santorum of late (perhaps in hopes of instigating a Trent-Lott-style, zone-flooding repudiation of him among the Right). You'd never know this by Kurtz’ NRO article, which is largely about how unfair the NYT’s coverage was, and, by extension (we might say hyperextension), how liberal journalism ruins everything it touches (“But so long as the mainstream media keeps producing the sort of partisan and ignorant nonsense it has deployed in its effort to destroy Sen. Santorum…”).

Kurtz better go tell Glenn Reynolds that he’s doing Howell Raines dirty work.

Trying to spin the statist, pro-sexual-repression gibberish of a Republican Senator into an attack on liberals is a noble bit of chutzpah, but Kurtz is going to have to do better than this.

CAUGHT MY EYE. In the Guardian today: "Tony Blair threw down to the gauntlet to Sinn Fein today with a list of three demands the republican movement must meet if next month's elections are to go ahead... Mr Blair also spelled out a new doctrine for negotiations, stating that from now on 'clarity is our friend. Ambiguity is our enemy.'"

I suppose this is Blair pulling a W -- black and white, with us or against us, etc. There's a key difference between Ireland and Iraq, though -- Ireland has already been invaded, occupied, and pissed off enough to mount armed rebellions.

Of course it's not impossible that the Iraqis will get there sooner than later.

ALT.JESUS UPDATE: METALLIC N.O. 'member how I said Creed wasn't too convincing as a Godband? Apparently the lead singer is being sued for having turned up on a Chicago stage under the influence of too much Caanan-feast juice:

The disgruntled concertgoers allege in court papers that the band's lead singer Scott Stapp was so 'intoxicated and/or medicated that he was unable to sing the lyrics of a single Creed song.

'Instead ... Stapp left the stage on several occasions during songs for long periods of time, rolled around on the floor of the stage in apparent pain or distress and appeared to pass out while on stage during the performance.'

The rocker's condition was clearly a result of an earlier drink or drugs binge...

I think Scott Stapp has several escape routes available. He could:

• Claim his state was due to a surfeit of anti-anxiety medication, taken in anticipation of an adverse ruling in the upcoming Bowers vs. Hardwick challenge and the resulting pain to Baby Jesus;
  
  
• Insist he was bamboozled by yobbos posing as Christians who had convinced him that Foster's Lager was the blood of Christ;
  
  
• Throw himself Swaggart-style upon the mercy of his fans, crying "I have sinned against you!"
  

The obvious question is: would anyone be suing Creed if it were not a Christian band? I'm not suggesting anti-Christian prejudice -- just Creed's obvious vulnerability to such a challenge because they're supposed to be tight with the Messiah.

Or maybe I'm wrong -- I was about to ask, "Who would sue the Stones or the White Stripes on similar grounds?" but, of course, in these times that just might happen. Not because we're a litigious society (although of course we are), but because we're increasingly a pussified one -- neither a band's penchant for, or history of, drug abuse, nor the once substance-friendly nature of rock 'n' roll itself, would prevent some moron from insisting that his rights as a consumer were violated because his bellowing egoist of choice did not come up to snuff due to Bacchic overindulgence.

Because in the commodified era in which we live, even the ancient exemption for rockin' wildmen is denied -- punters arrive expecting product, not anything so spontaneous as a Metallic K.O. Speaking of Iggy, think of the lawsuits he might have endured, were his youthful exploits fast-forwarded to the present day, on the grounds that he got peanut butter on some poseur's velour jacket.

Butt-fuckers trying to run my world indeed.