Jesse over at Pandagon wrote this morning to tell me about a controversy brewing over the "wilding" story and especially over some thoughts I had about it. Actually, there are several controversies, but the most important one revolves around my statement that young black men were stigmatized by the story.

Before I get too far into the controversy, let me just back up on that a bit -- mainly because it was not a point in a carefully developed argument, but part of a post musing on some of the issues I felt the story raised. I had noticed that people were drawing a lot of lessons from the story, and I was trying to sum up some of what I'd read in various forums. I wanted to understand why people were approaching the same story from so many different angles, why even people who believed that the story revealed a great injustice focused on different aspects of that injustice. The effect on black men other than the young men who were arrested was one of the issues people were discussing.

It's not an issue I spent a lot of time on, not because I don't think it's important, but because, as a middle-aged white woman, I'd feel pretty stupid and arrogant trying to put the thoughts and feelings of young black men into words. I simply set down what was obvious from my reading -- that many black men were angry, and that I certainly understood that anger and, in an abstract way, shared it. "In an abstract way" because obviously it's not my experience, and no matter how hard we try, there are impediments in the way of truly appreciating what someone else lives through.

Many young black men felt that the Central Park story made their lives even more difficult, made people look at them in a more distrustful way. I generally take people at their word when they're talking about their own experiences. Obviously I know that racism did not begin in 1989, but when black men say something changed when that story became part of our national myth, I have no reason not to assume that they know a great deal more about it than I do. To every thing there is a season -- a time to argue, a time to shut up and listen.

Jesse pointed me in the direction of a post by Diane E. at Letter from Gotham, the gist of which is -- as Jesse succinctly described it to me -- "Young black men commit a lot of crime, and everyone was afraid of them. ThereÕs no problem whatsoever with this." Jesse himself responded ably to Diane E., and I urge you to read his comments on reasonable and unreasonable uses of racial profiling.

But other aspects of Diane E.'s argument interested me. First, she quotes some statistics about the percentage of crime committed by young black men, and I'll leave it to someone whose eyes don't glaze over at the first sight of numbers to discuss her figures and what to make of them. But then she goes on to relate a personal experience of being mugged twenty years ago by two young black men. She notes that when the police showed her a photo album of possible "perps," all of them were black. There seems to be a suggestion here that all of the criminals were black and you'd be hard pressed to find a white criminal in New York, but that would be a pretty nasty point and Diane E. doesn't strike me as a nasty person, so I'm going to assume that either she isn't making herself clear or I'm tired and am just misreading and misunderstanding. It would hardly be the first time I just didn't get it.

(Jesse notes, by the way, that it is normal police procedure to group photos by skin tone for easier identification. I'll bow to his greater knowledge, and simply add that since Diane E. identified the men who attacked her as black, it would seem logical that the police would not bother to show her photos of white criminals.)

In any case, Diane E. goes on to tell an intriguing story. After she was attacked, she noticed an elderly black man hesitate to take a seat on a train next to a young black man. She sensed that the young man was no threat, but she assumed the older man didn't entirely trust young black men and so she offered him her seat (see, I told you she seems like a nice person), but she didn't take the seat next to the kid either.

I could go after that statement and suggest that since Diane E. knew that there was nothing threatening about the young man, but still stayed away from him, the only explanation is racism -- but I know that's not true. In fact, I'd say that the fact that after such a traumatic experience she was able to look at a young black man and recognize that he was not a threat was, if anything, a pretty good sign of an absence of racism. Staying away was, I suspect, one of those dumb little superstitious protections we all engage in to make us feel safe when our safety nets have been punctured.

I'm just not sure how you pass from "I have a fear of black men based on my experience" to there's no problem when people look at black men and assume they are criminals.

It got me thinking about two experiences of my own, and about how we draw political and social lessons from our experiences. I was also mugged, when I was a college student in the seventies. The muggers were two young black men. The situation was more frightening than genuinely dangerous. They knocked me to the sidewalk and stole my purse. I'm sure they were disappointed in the amount of money they found in there. Weirdly, I remember one of them asking me, right before they ran off, if I had any cigarettes on me. Very casually, as if he were walking up to me on the street and asking for the time. I also remember that I said, "No, I'm sorry, I don't smoke," which, when I thought about it later seemed like a very bizarre thing to say under the circumstances.

The thing is, I never drew any conclusions from the race of the men who attacked me because it wasn't the least bit surprising. Not because I expect young black men to be criminals, but because I was in Oakland. Any experience I had in that neighborhood was probably going to be with a black person. The man who handed me a job application to fill out a little while before I was mugged was also black, as were most of the waitresses in the restaurant where I was applying.

I somehow didn't develop a fearful prejudice out of that experience, and yet I have to admit I did under another circumstance. I grew up, as I've written a little bit about before, in a violent family, watching my father bruise and batter my mother and knock out her teeth, never knowing when I'd be grabbed by the hair or have a heavy object thrown at my head. Once we got free of my father, I always lived in apartment buildings where the only tenants were women and children, and so I had little experience with men other than my father. I assumed that's what all men were like and even as a young adult I would freeze every time I heard a man raise his voice. I expected unstoppable violence to erupt.

My father was from Tennessee, and to this day I'm a bit uncomfortable when I hear a man with a southern accent. I'm not sure it rises quite to the level of a prejudice, but deep down I know I trust a man who sounds like he's from New York faster than one who sounds like he's from Tennessee. (It didn't stop me from voting for Gore).

The point is, I could move from there to statistics. Men are far more likely to commit crimes than women, especially violent crimes. There's a good reason for my fear, isn't there? Maybe I should just look at all men -- especially men from the South, because that's where my negative experience lies -- and assume that they are dangerous until they prove otherwise.

Of course I'd never get away with that. If I tried to prove that my negative experience with a Southern man, combined with statistics on male violence, added up to something that "people have no choice but to deal with," as Diane E. says about crime by young black men, everyone would tell me I'm letting my experience get in the way of seeing the world whole. They'd say my feelings were understandable, but not reasonable.

And they'd be right.

I never said, "Thou shalt not think." -- God

Éand other words of wisdom

Many church leaders in the U.S. have come out against war with Iraq, but of special interest is a statement by Jim Winkler, general secretary of the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society: "Our church categorically opposes interventions by more powerful nations against weaker ones. We recognize the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among nations." Both George Bush and Dick Cheney are members of the United Methodist Church.

Jesus wept.
The definition of the word blasphemy.

Via Atrios

Dumb de dumb dumb
When I'm wrong, I'm really wrong.

On Thursday, writing about the Central Park jogger case, I said that when the young men on trial claimed their confessions were coerced, we should have been listening. The point I was trying to make was that even above and beyond the fact that such claims should always be taken seriously, in this case, the claim had special merit, since one of the detectives on the case admitted, during the trial, that he had lied to obtain the confession.

That's what I meant to say. Unfortunately, it came out like this:

Yes, every criminal says he's innocent, but the case was weak from the beginning and liberals especially should have been paying attention.

I suspect I was trying to be terribly moderate, and "grant" the cliche in order to make the point that even if the cliche were true, it was irrelevant in this case. I've gotten quite a bit of e-mail from people making exactly that point, and my response has repeatedly been, you may very well be right, but in this case it doesn't matter. I wasn't really thinking about whether or not that argument had any merit, because in this case it seemed to me beside the point.

The problem, as both Avedon Carol and Jeralyn Merritt point out is that the claim that every guilty person swears he is innocent is not only untrue, but dangerous, and should never be tossed aside.

Avedon first:

Plenty of people admit they are guilty, plenty of people do not contest the facts, and even those who attempt to evade responsibility via the courts usually stop claiming innocence the moment they are convicted. When people have been in prison for years and are still claiming their innocence, there is actually a reasonable possibility that they are saying so because they are. That doesn't mean that everyone who does so is innocent, but that whole "that's what they all say" canard doesn't deserve the respect it so easily gets.

Jeralyn takes up Avedon's point and greatly expands it. I'm sure I would muddle her argument if I tried to summarize, so I'll just urge you to go read it.

After reading Avedon and Jeralyn, I realized that by letting pass what seemed to me an irrelevant point in this case, I was undercutting everything else I said. One of the most important safeguards against this sort of injustice happening again is paying attention to the clues that something is wrong. As Jeralyn points out, false confessions account for 20 percent of wrongful convictions. That's an unconscionable number. Anytime someone says that their confession was coerced, we should take the claim extremely seriously. And nobody should get away with saying, "Yeah, that's what they all say." And no one should blindly accept it when other people say it.

Including me.

I will be out of town and computorless for a few days, but I should be back on Monday. In the meantime, check out a few blogs on the right (the right side of the page, that is, not the political spectrum) that you haven't visited before. There's some great stuff over there.

A weird sense of humor must be in his genes
My son found this quote in the L.A. Times yesterday, and thought it was hilarious. I told him he and I were probably the only ones who would think it was funny, but he insists I'm wrong.

George Bush: "I'm deeply concerned about a leader who has ignored the United Nations for all these years, refused to conform to resolution after resolution after resolution, who has weapons of mass destruction."

Hey, when Bush is right, he's right. I'm a little concerned myself.

There is a statement in the Voice article (see the post below) that got me thinking. The author states that the fact that the real perpetrator of the crime was left free to rape again (he ultimately murdered a young woman) is even more troubling than the unjust conviction and imprisonment.

It struck me that there are so many disturbing things about this case that it is impossible to rank them, although inevitably people will insist on doing so:

* Five young men lost their reputations and several years of their lives because of a crime they did not commit -- a personal tragedy.

* The real criminal was free to commit more crimes, including murder.

* The fact that the confessions were coerced does not speak well for our system of justice. (Yes, we know this kind of things happens. That doesn't stop us from being shocked when such a glaring example of it is revealed.)

* The fact that the boys said at the time that the confessions were coerced and everyone assumed they were lying does not speak well for us as a society. Yes, every criminal says he's innocent, but the case was weak from the beginning and liberals especially should have been paying attention, should have noticed that something didn't smell right here. I didn't. We didn't.

* A generation of young minority men -- especially black men -- was unfairly stigmatized. (It should be noted, of course, that the stigma would have been grossly unfair even if every detail of the story most of us believed was gospel truth, but the fact that it was a lie compounds the injustice.)

* Americans built a myth out of a lie.


What's the most important issue here?

I've recently found myself in an interesting position when it comes to following reaction to the story. Because first Atrios, and then Cursor, linked to my post on the case, more than three thousand people came to this site over a three day period, the vast majority of them, I'm sure, looking for that story. The links in my referrer log come not just from Atrios, Cursor, and other blogs that have picked up on the story, but from many forums (I've long since lost count of how many) -- several of which I've looked at, because I was curious about what people were saying about the news.

It's hard to pin down the reaction. (I'd link to some of them, but my referrer log only keeps the last hundred links, and they've already passed into oblivion). A lot of conservatives (and, God help us, some feminists) are clinging to the old story, insisting that they have no "sympathy" with the convicted "rapists" because, first, no one has proved them innocent (I don't think that's how justice is supposed to work, but let's let that one pass) and anyway, even if the boys are innocent of that crime, they were no angels and if they were sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit, who cares? They probably committed some other crime they should have gone to prison for.

(If that sounds a bit incoherent, I apologize, but you know how forums are.)

In the kinder and more rational conservative neighborhoods, you'll find the argument that, yes, an injustice was done, but the truth eventually came out, so why do liberals focus on the injustice and fail to notice that we live in a great country where the truth eventually emerges? (Permit me, if you will, a somewhat off the wall thought: that argument reminded me of people like Chomsky saying, within days of September 11, that Americans need to understand that people around the world experience tragedies on this level all the time, that we are not unique in our suffering. There was a kernal of truth in Chomsky's statement, but his timing was tone deaf, to put it as kindly as I can manage. To both Chomsky and the conservatives who would like us to celebrate the good, just America that uncovers the truth, all I can say is, you're probably right, but give me a chance to grieve and rage before you ask me to agree with you.)

And then there is the liberal reaction, which was captured by Sisyphus Shrugged -- Oh, my God!

I'm not sure most of us have figured out yet exactly what we mean by that cry to heaven. Are we furious at the injustice of what was done to those boys? Partly, but that can't be the whole story. If it were, we would have the same punched in the gut feeling when we read about men released from death row because of new DNA evidence. And I don't think most people do feel that way. I don't. I think, in those cases what the more intelligent conservatives would like me to think in this case -- thank God justice was eventually served (although in the back of my head I'm nursing the obvious thought that those conservatives would be less happy with -- the death penalty is too enormous and final a tool to put in the hands of fallible human beings.)

Do we feel angry that the real criminal went free? I haven't seen anybody focus heavily on that one yet. Maybe because the kind of people most likely to fixate on that have not yet given up the old story. Maybe that will be their next stage. (And I will not be the least bit surprised if the story they come up with is -- the liberals let this scum go free.)

Do we worry about what it tells us about the unfairness of our justice system? Or are we embarrassed by our own willingness to believe the story? Are young black men understandably angry and the rest of us feeling guilty?

All of the above.

If I were a lawyer, I would probably care most about the first three disturbing things about the case, and be wondering what could be done to make sure it never happens again. That's the most important thing to think about in this story.

But I'm not a lawyer. I'm a writer, a storyteller. And what interests me is the last thing I mentioned -- the myth. It's a theme that weave through a lot of stories I write -- the way a belief, often a mistaken one, influences the choices we make, the world we create.

I said when I first wrote about this that the Central Park jogger story was one of those myths that change the way we view things. Following the discussions of the story in forums, I can't help but be aware of the tenacity of myth. A story is a powerful thing. It may be more powerful than any law -- and even harder to change.

More on the Central Park jogger case from The Village Voice. Prosecutors are still clinging to the original story, despite the new evidence:

According to reports, investigators are now exploring four scenarios: that Reyes acted alone as he says he did; that he was with a group that attacked the jogger; that he attacked her before or after she was attacked by a group. None of these scenarios, except Reyes acting alone, are consistent with the evidence to date. To push forward any other theory would contradict accounts of the attack as depicted in the confessions that form the basis of the initial convictions, and thus would enhance the position that the confessions were forced.

Meanwhile, some women over at Ms. magazine demonstrate how hard it can be to abandon a myth, even when facts shred it. Skepticism is a wonderful quality, but many of these women are simply making up "facts' like non-existent eyewitnesses in order to hang onto the old story.

Thank you to Ampersand (and Salty) for not letting the myth stand.

God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson
You can't keep a good Irish woman down.

Reading Is Fundamentalist
In a speech yesterday, Pope John Paul II stated something every reasonable person would certainly agree with -- that nothing could ever justify the murder of thousands of innocent people. But he went on to make a potentially far more controversial plea for "new political and economic initiatives capable of resolving the scandalous injustices and imbalances which continue to afflict many members of the human family, creating conditions favouring an uncontrollable explosion of the desire for revenge." More than that, he asked for prayers of "mercy and pardon" for the attackers.

That seems like a fairly clear message to me, although one that most of us would have a difficult time living up to.

But I guess I have a very weak understanding of papal language, because apparently those words were meant as a rebuke of opponents of American foreign policy and a call for punishment for the hijackers' supporters.

Theology is so complicated sometimes.

UPDATE: Rabbi Benjamin Blech offers a moving and thoughtful counterargument to the pope's call for forgiveness.

SECOND UPDATE: In regard to the pope's plea for prayers of forgiveness, Hesiod wrote to ask an excellent question, "Isn't it true that before one can forgive one's enemies, your enemy has to seek such forgiveness. Otherwise, what's the point?"

I think it's actually a fairly complicated question, and one I don't have a good answer to. It's an issue I've thought about a lot, but I've never been entirely satisfied with any of my own conclusions.

But then that's the nature of spiritual and moral issues for me -- they always raise more questions than they answer.

It depends, first of all, on how you view forgiveness. If you see it as a gift to your enemy, then certainly it would be absurd and perhaps immoral to grant that absolution to someone who hasn't even asked for it, let alone atoned for his sin.

I'm not even sure that I think forgiveness is always a good thing, even if the enemy asks for it and is sincere in his contrition. One of the most awe-inspiring and disturbing books I've read in recent years is Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower. The first half of the book consists of the story of Wiesenthal's encounter, in a concentration camp, with a dying Nazi soldier who asked for his forgiveness, not for anything he had done to him as an individual, but for his crimes against other Jews. Wiesenthal walked away, unable and unwilling to grant the request. The second half of the book consists of the responses of various people -- theologians, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and others -- to a question Wiesenthal poses: Did he do the right thing?

One of the things that disturbed me about the book was that, despite the fact that I grew up Catholic, and still consider Christianity (and, in fact, Catholicism) a strong part of my spiritual tradition, I was put off by the responses of virtually all Christians in the book, who answered that Jesus taught that we are required to forgive. The contrition may or may not be sincere, but we have to leave that up to God and assume that it is sincere. That seemed a very smug and cheap answer to me.

(I apologize if that's not a perfectly accurate summing up of the points made. It's been five or six years since I read the book. But a great deal of it, as you can probably tell, continues to haunt me.)

I simply can not accept that we're required to forgive whenever we're asked to do so. I don't think that any act is ultimately unforgivable, but I think Wiesenthal's response -- that he had no moral right to forgive a crime that had been committed against others, and since the others were dead, the possibility of forgiveness on earth died with them -- is far more moral than the "Christian" response. The Pope's plea for forgiveness, or at least asking us to ask God to forgive, reminds me of my discomfort with the Catholic response to Simon Wiesenthal. Not only do I not believe I have a moral obligation to forgive Mohammed Atta, I don't believe I have a moral right to do so. I don't believe anyone living -- not even the families of the dead -- have a right to do so. The possibility of forgiveness on earth was consumed in flames at the World Trade Center.

If there is a Hell, let him rot in it.

But there's another side of forgiveness -- although I'm not sure "forgiveness" is quite the right word. It's putting aside the anger, the need for revenge. And that's not a gift to your enemy, it's a gift to yourself. In that sense, asking God to "forgive" is -- and please bear with me, I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying here -- a way of saying, take the burden of vengeance from us. We put the issue of forgiveness or the lack of it into Your hands, and will not allow the hatred and rage that consumed Mohammed Atta to find a place in our own hearts.

And in that kind of forgiveness -- if that is what he was suggesting -- I think the Pope was right.

THIRD UPDATE: Hesiod has pointed out to me something I'd forgotten -- the pope's famous public forgiveness of the man who tried to assassinate him. Does this act give the pope a certain moral authority to speak about asking for forgiveness that he otherwise wouldn't have? Does having demonstrated such Christian forgiveness add to his persuasiveness?

I don't think so. Only the Pope can decide in his own conscience if he can (and should) forgive the man who injured him. But I don't think that gives him the moral authority to ask forgiveness for someone who has murdered others.

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.
The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. -- Psalm 34:14-15

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. -- Romans 12:17-19

And make not Allah because of your swearing by Him an obstacle to your doing good and guarding against evil and making peace between men, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing. -- Koran 2.224

Faith

Hope

Charity

Reflections

Brian Doyle's Leap

September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Ampersand at Alas, a blog has called my attention to an interesting discussion brewing over on the right wing of the blog world. It began with a post by Dawn Olsen, arguing that many of the bigger bloggers have a "condescending attitude toward women bloggers" and don't link to them as readily as they do to male bloggers. She also takes Glenn Reynolds to task for linking to her only when she's writing about something sexual, never to her more thoughtful posts, and she complains that he usually takes what she says out of context, in a way that comes off as "condescending or even vaguely insulting."

Diane E. at Letter from Gotham adds that, while it is true that there are a lot more men than women writing blogs, the bigger problem is that there's an enormous "double standard" in how seriously ideas are taken:

Whatever certain male bloggers say is accepted and worthy of the blogosphere richochet; whereas if a woman were to say it, it would have been dismissed or ignored. And -- when a woman speaks with knowledge on a subject, using logic and evidence, she is ignored.

She offers as an example the fact that Steven den Beste is much more widely linked to than she is, even though she is more knowledgeable and a better writer. (Immodest, maybe, but undeniably true. I disagree with her most of the time, but she is a first-rate writer.)

Ampersand adds some interesting non-blog related research on scientific credit and job applications that lends credence to what Diane E. says: Men's accomplishments seem to get more credit than equal accomplishments by women.

Reading all this as an abstract argument, I'd have to agree that there seems to be rampant sexism on the Web. And why should that be surprising? Why would anyone expect the virtual world to be more just than the real world?

But a funny thing happened to me on the way to that conclusion. I ran smack into myself. Ampersand uses the "paucity of links" to my blog, in comparison to "many less thoughtful and interesting blogs" to demonstrate the same kind of sexism existing on the left.

I'm pretty clueless about links, and I don't care about them as much as many people seem to, but I don't think that's true. I admit this is not a normal day, but the idea that I'm not widely linked to struck me a little funny this morning because I had almost 900 visitors to this site yesterday, primarily because of some "big" links -- mainly from Atrios. And I've had more than 3000 visitors this week because of a variety of other links -- all of them, with the exception of one from Avedon Carol, from men. I have no idea how many people go to other sites, but that's significantly more than my usual numbers, and to me it seems like a whole lot of people. I've published stories in some literary journals that have fewer than 900 subscribers.

Maybe there's a lot more sexism over on the right (no surprise there), but a lot of men with blogs have been extremely generous in their links to me and quite a few have written me nice, encouraging e-mails over the three months that I've been writing this blog. Believe me -- and this is coming from a woman who has identified herself as a feminist since she was sixteen -- if the left-wing male bloggers made up the powers-that-be, the world would be a better and more just place.

I'm not remotely dissatisfied with the number of links I've gotten. If anything, in fact, I've been stunned by the number of people who come here regularly. I started writing this blog in June, more or less on a whim, and with no intention of aiming for an audience. For years, I've been in the habit of getting up very early and writing. It started when I was nursing my son (who is about to go off to college) and couldn't get back to sleep after the 4 a.m. feeding. Figuring I might as well make use of the time, I started writing in a journal, writing whatever vague and random thoughts came to mind. Some of it was political, some spiritual, some personal, some off-the-wall, and a lot -- and this was the category that always interested me most -- was an unclassifiable mixture of the four. Some of those scribblings developed into short stories that I published. But most of it stayed in my notebooks. Thousands of pages, literally, of stuff that didn't seem to fall into any category. For years, I've thought that a lot of the "stuff" in my notebooks was as interesting as any of my stories, but unfortunately wasn't remotely publishable.

Writing "Body and Soul" gave me another way of journal writing. I knew it was public, in a way, but for quite a while I didn't believe anyone was really looking at it. But little by little other bloggers started linking to me. Every time they did, my stats would shoot up for a day or two, then settle back to normal. But I noticed that "normal" kept getting higher and higher. Each time someone big linked to me, new people found me, and some of them -- for reasons I have yet to fathom -- kept coming back.

The point is, I guess, that I'm doing this mostly for myself, and anyone else who wants to venture in and join a kind of mental and spiritual journey (I apologize if that sounds terribly Californian, but stay with me -- I promise not to mention yoga or granola). Every once in awhile I write something of interest to people who aren't really part of my journey from idea to idea, and if they come for a day and don't come back until someone tells them to, that's fine. I'm not going to do anything different just to draw those people in.

Ampersand described my blog as "thoughtful," Thank you -- I think that's a good description. Lots of thoughts. Many incoherent, but thoughts nonetheless. And "thoughtful" in the other meaning of the word as well -- I care a great deal about kindness and politeness. I have no desire to pick fights with anyone, and I won't bother to respond if someone tries to pick a fight with me (a few people have tried) -- I regard it as the blogging equivalent of panhassling. I understand that fights drive up the numbers, and I don't care.

If I have fewer links than some other people, I suspect thoughtfulness has more to do with it than my gender. There are many other blogs written by men -- Alas, a blog among them -- that don't seem to be linked to as often as they deserve to be. Among them are many first-rate writers: Yuval Rubinstein, for example, Dominion, Sam Heldman, and Joseph Duemer. Gender has nothing to do with it. Thought and reason can be a disadvantage among bloggers, if you're looking for numbers. But I suspect none of these people care much about it anymore than I do. Perhaps that's a stereotypically "feminine" trait, but it's one plenty of wonderful men share.

Question Mark # 15: Freedom

Chilling and brilliant. Using the most effective piece of political protest music ever was a stroke of genius. Go see it. Now.

Via Lean Left

In defense of my gloriously crazy state...

Just for the record, that great "California cliche" Norah Vincent is a New Yorker. Egocentrism and shallowness recognize no geographical borders.

First stop Iraq, then on to the Vatican...
John Ashcroft will be holding a press conference this afternoon to announce that Pope John Paul II has been declared a terrorist sympathizer.

One of the most disreputable things the Bush administration has done is force Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, out of her job as UN human rights commissioner, in which she has served as a gloriously articulate and outspoken advocate for human rights (which pretty much explains why Bush objected to her). May her voice endure. Rath De ort, Ms. Robinson.

**************************
On a related note, over the weekend I cobbled together a newstracker on human rights issues from Moreover, because they aren't isues that the newspapers I regularly read cover as well as I'd like to see them covered. If anyone else is interested, you'll find it here, and I'll try to get it into my links pretty soon.

Sometimes heroism comes in the form of a quiet, one-time illegal immigrant, armed with nothing but a squegee. I love this story.

Women aim to increase role as global peacemakers

Why women need to be involved in peace negotiations:

* The effects of war on women often differ from those on men.

* "Women tend to look at an issue from a more family-oriented stance, and it's in our nature to think about what will happen to the children. And most women Ð not all women Ð prefer peaceful alternatives to war."

* You can't expect warlords to develop a formula for lasting peace.

Via Sisyphus Shrugged

If you're old enough to remember back to 1989, the story is probably embedded in your memory, with the emotional resonance of a parable or a fairy tale -- a cautionary tale for women, a sign of the brutality of our times for everyone, and, for too many, a justification for racist fears.

In 1989, a 28-year-old woman was jogging in Central Park late at night, when she was attacked by a gang of teenage boys who had gathered for a night of "wilding" -- roaming the park and attacking people at random. She was beaten so severely, she lost three-quarters of her blood and was in a coma for 12 days. When she came to, she had no memory of the attack.

Thirty teenage boys were arrested. Six boys, ages 14 to 17, were tried for the assault. Five were convicted.

The young woman was white. The boys were black and Hispanic. That shouldn't matter, but of course it always does.

The story confirmed everybody's worst fears about young men, race, class, and urban life. It confirmed something many conservatives wanted to believe and most liberals were doing their damnedest not to allow themselves to believe -- that there were growing numbers of young men (most of them -- oh, God, do we have to admit this -- minorities) who had no moral center whatsoever. Animals.

Thirteen years later, there's one more detail that needs to be added to the story: It was a lie.

In January, Matias Reyes, a man not originally charged in the crime, confessed to the rape and attempted murder. Recent DNA analysis backs up his story. Moreover, key pieces of physical evidence that helped convict the five teenage boys have been discredited through DNA tests.

There was a rape. There was a brutal assault. There were no gangs of animals destroying everything in their path for pleasure.

There have been more horrendous stories, of course -- people who spent decades in prison, or even came close to execution, only to have their innocence established by DNA testing. The boys in the Central Park case were sentenced to between 5 and 15 years, and all of them have been released.

And yet somehow this story seems worse to me, because its effect was not only on the lives of those five teenagers -- as horribly unfair as that was -- but on all of us.

A lot of people say that September 11 changed everything, which is nonsense, of course, but it changed a lot of things, among them Americans' willingness to set aside the Constitution and launch wars that no one can explain. Some stories change the way we view the world, and the story of the Central Park jogger was one of those. It emboldened people who were already filled with hate, and made those of us who weren't a little more defensive. I, for one, grew more embarrassed by people like Al Sharpton, who seemed to cry racism at every turn. (It should be noted now -- for whatever it's worth -- that one of the few people to stand up for the Central Park "rapists" was Al Sharpton). I became less likely to wonder if racism lay behind an arrest. I assumed the boys were guilty. And I became more likely to assume that if a nagging suspicion that something was wrong tugged at me, I was simply guilty of having an embarrassing "bleeding heart."

The revised story wasn't widely covered. It won't have an emotional impact on as many people as the original story had. It probably won't change anything big.

But it will make me trust my bleeding heart again. And nobody's going to make me feel embarrassed or defensive about it.

Never let it be said that I passed up an opportunity to praise a member of the Bush family who says something intelligent. I don't get many opportunities to do that, but one just arrived: George Bush has a very smart wife.

If you're looking for a nice place to stay on your next vacation in Afghanistan, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose previous hobbies have included crushing prisoners under tanks, has a brand-new indoor swimming pool. The poolhouse includes a dozen chandeliers, pillars inlaid with colored glass, and a diving board with a spiral staircase. Siderooms contain saunas and a pool table. A greenhouse is in the planning stages.

General Dostum claims he built the structure to entertain foreign guests, and, indeed, he shares his pool with U.S. Special Forces soldiers -- except for the women, because of course that would be immoral.

Meanwhile, outside the poolhouse, life goes on.

There's something I've been wondering about. Many times I've heard Republicans make a conservative point and argue that it must be true because the idea was acknowledged even by the "liberal Washington Post." I was just wondering if anyone had ever read the liberal Washington Post. Where I live, they only seem to sell the conservative one. If you know anything about the liberal version, let me know. I'd like to take a look at it.

I suspect there is a special place in heaven reserved for lawyers who (1) use their skills to balance the scales a bit on the side of the less powerful, and (2) can explain what they do in English. Sam Heldman explains everything a non-lawyer needs to know about labor law as it relates to the possible dockworkers' strike that could shut down west coast ports, and why Bush's threat to send in military scabs is so outrageous.

On a side note, Ignatz seems to be holding as the name of Sam's blog, so I'm changing the name in my links as well.

Salon ran an odd piece today on people's "forbidden thoughts" about September 11 -- the improper, in some cases just plain nasty, thoughts people have had, and for the most part kept to themselves. Most of them should have stayed hidden, but I found this story interesting:

"I volunteered downtown for a few weeks right afterwards with a group of actors. They put me in a coffee shop. Most of the people were doing it as a social outing, a way to get publicity, a way to make themselves important. There was a lot of talking on the cell phone. There were a lot of propositions. A 21-year-old national guardsman proposed to me.

"It was there where I started to hate cops and firemen. The cops in the middle of the night were kind and friendly and appreciated the coffee and the food and the company. We all shared being freaked out together. But come daybreak? A bunch of fat cops throwing our food around because it wasn't good enough -- we didn't have skim milk for coffee, or it wasn't the right kind of bread.

"I'm sure some people treat service people that way, but it was beyond my comprehension -- especially while they talked, not quietly, about retiring because they were making so much overtime and their pensions were based on their previous year's earnings. All while we stood out there all night for free making them hot coffee and soup.

"And really, what's all this shit about the fireman being heroes? That's their job, to be heroes. That's why they signed up. Once a month you go run into a burning building and grab a cat and the rest of the time you sit in the firehouse and play cards.

"I used to think all firemen were hot. I now think they are slimy. At least four times last October I was in a bar where a fireman was so forward and sleazy, saying things like 'It's been so hard. You can't believe it' while pawing me. I'm sure his buddy who died running into a building on fire would feel vindicated by this slimeball getting laid, but I'm not going to participate." -- Anne, 31, an advertising sales manager in New York

I have an uncle who's a retired fireman and a brother-in-law who's a cop, and they're both great people, but these comments struck a nerve, because I know to the bone that she's right. The biggest problem with worshipping "heroes" is that at some point we stop letting them be human beings. We forget that the same guy can rush into a burning building to save a life one day and the next day beat his kids, cheat on his taxes, and grope the waitress who brings his lunch. If any of the bad stuff comes out, there are only two possible responses. Either we all insist it's not true, and get angry at the person who revealed it, (how dare you talk about a hero like that! ) or we turn on the "hero," deciding he wasn't what we thought he was.

We're still at the how dare you stage with police and firefighters, but we turned on the victims' families long ago. You want money? You want more information? You want the press to leave you alone? How dare you? What kind of heroes are you?

To fit someone into a hero mold is, ironically, to take away his humanity. To believe in, and insist on, perfect plaster saints, is to lose a great deal of our own. There isn't a human being on the planet who isn't a complex mess of traits. Thank God.

I don't think Anne has the whole story, despite her admirable honesty. Maybe she doesn't know enough working class New Yorkers to realize how often uncomfortable and unfamiliar emotions hide behind propositions and bragging about money. Her story reminds me of my brother-in-law, who's a plumber. The last time we stayed at his house (in New Jersey), he went off to work each day carrying massive amounts of food, swearing it was all for him -- he worked hard and got hungrier than we could imagine, he insisted. It was pretty obvious that he was bringing lunch for the men who worked for him -- all immigrants (which my brother-in-law is as well, he's just been here longer), all of whom he called the most godawful racist names (not to their faces), insisting that he didn't give a shit about them. Giving is really hard for some people, and they can't do it without doing everything in their power to let their inner asshole shine through.

Sometimes that's just the way heroes are.

Younger than Jack Benny

Everyone should be entitled to a small fib now and then. I think we should make a deal with Ann Coulter. If she stops lying about liberals, she can continue to claim to be 38 for the rest of her life and all we'll say is, "And doesn't she look young for her age?"

Lots of people bash Andrew Sullivan. Ted Barlow Googles him to a bloody pulp.

A few more members of the nasty riffraff

I've added a few weblogs I like a lot over on the right (not a comfortable place for any of these people, but I have enough template trouble without trying to move them to the left):

skippy the bush kangaroo -- This one kept turning up in other people's links, but I resisted looking at it because I just assumed I couldn't possibly like a blog called "skippy the bush kangaroo." Smartass one-liners and juvenile humor, right? Well, yeah, pretty much. Except that the one-liners are really funny and the humor is sharp. And he sneaks in a lot of smart analysis between the jokes. Now if he could only capitalizeÉ

Ungodly Politics -- Politics and religion "from a Godless American point of view." Reading my blog, some people might be surprised that I include this one among my favorites. But I love people with a questioning attitude toward religion, the comments by "Lazarus" (I assume that's a pen name, not a surname) are insightful, and he discovers lots of obscure but interesting stories. It's pretty new, but already good.

Sam Heldman -- Yesterday afternoon, he changed the name of his blog to "Wolves Howling," by evening it was "Ignatz." I have no idea what it will be today, so I'll just stick with "Sam Heldman" -- a lawyer from Alabama who writes about the law and labor issues in a clear, non-lawyerly way and still has time for comics, Bob Dylan, and Andrew Sullivan bashing. A true Renaissance man.

Today I've been Atriosed, Nielsen Haydened, Searled, Rylandered, Barlowed, and Frantzed. Don't you just love being a member of the nasty riffraff? The best part of all is that so far today I've had more visitors than the Jackson Browne fanzine.

I ought to be mad at Andrew Northrup for making me laugh so hard I spit coffee on my computer screen, but what's done is done. Read Ani DiFranco On My Radio Blues (I can't get a permalink, so scroll down if necessary) -- just don't have anything in your mouth when you do.

Alas, a blog has a wonderful and wise essay about why Peanuts is better than Garfield. It's as much a celebration of the human spirit as Peanuts at its very best was, and an argument for why kindness is better than meaness (an argument no one should have to make, but nowadays it is a necessity.) And I'm not going to tell you any more than that about it, because I just want to force you to go read it.

The Christian Science Monitor has two excellent pieces today about the need for skepticism when it comes to "evidence" offered in times of war fever. The first, by Tom Regan explores the discredited story of Iraqi soldiers tossing babies out of incubators that, while it didn't provide a true casus belli, manipulated people's emotions to make them more ready to listen to the "evidence" of Saddam's threat to Kuwait and the entire Middle East before the Gulf War.

The second piece, by Scott Peterson, looks at the intelligence information the first Bush administration presented as proof of the Iraqi threat, which turned out to be, in the words of a reporter who examined the evidence, "a pretty serious fib."

The article also makes a convincing case that the current president has inherited his father's ability to stretch the facts (or even make them up out of thin air) to get what he wants.

Who would have guessed there could be so much wisdom in games? Recently, Brad DeLong drew interesting lessons about the nature of democracy out of a computer game. Today, Nicholas Kristof looks at a Pentagon simulation game that sent the United States against an enemy in the Persian Gulf. We got creamed.

The Pentagon put a nice (and extremely creative) spin on it -- by replaying the game and learning from mistakes, we eventually won. Unfortunately that required a couple of tricks that probably won't be available in a real war -- ordering the enemy to disclose its troop locations and having the ability to bring dead soldiers back to life.

One retired lieutenant general Kristof interviewed, however, did seem to get the deeper lesson of the games. He said that "excessive faith in technology, inadequate appreciation of the fog of war, lack of understanding of the enemy, and simple hubris" -- the "mindset in Vietnam" (and, I would argue, the mindset of a president who avoided going to Vietnam) -- made him nervous.

Me too.

UPDATE: The Guardian has more coverage of the Pentagon's game, including an interview with retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, the Vietnam veteran who pointed out the workings of the "Vietnam mindset" to Nicholas Kristof.

With Focus Shifting to Iraq, Domestic Issues Fade

The prospect of weeks of debate in Congress about granting President Bush the authority to oust Saddam Hussein means that events abroad, rather than the domestic issues pushed by Democrats this summer, could dominate the nation's political discussion for easily half of the general election campaign this fall.

Several Republicans said today that the focus on Iraq would serve the political needs of their party going into the close Congressional elections.

Any comment would be superfluous.

If Margaret Dumont had a blog...

Old Norah:

Web logs are infuriating because they are thoughtful alternatives to the self-important New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and their toady satellites, much of whose reporting has become hardly less biased than the bloggers'. Bloggers at least have the honesty to admit their biases up front. They don't pretend to be objective.

But they do provide a healthy criticism of the liberal establishment's hopelessly arrogant monotone. What's more, they make news interactive, so that we can all stop yelling at the television and actually do something. Readers can opine, as well as argue, grapple or exchange expletives with their host. That's something you'll never get in print.

As one popular blogger, Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist James Lileks, put it: "The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation." Amen.

New Norah:

But, I must say that the so-called blogosphere, liberating as it can be, is -- as I have had the misfortune of discovering in recent days -- also full of nasty riffraff and wannabe pundits who because they haven't an earnest, original idea in their heads, fill their empty existences sniping impotently at legitimate targets. By legitimate targets I mean people who have actually had some measure of success in their professional lives, people who get published regularly in the mainstream press because, yes, they have a certain degree of talent, but moreso because they have something more to say on a weekly basis than 'boo hoo' or 'look ma, no hands.'

Sadly, as one friend of mine put it recently, the internet is something of an 'echo chamber,' and this means that even the flimsiest vitriol gets posted and reposted, annotated and updated ad nauseam until the accumulated pettifogging becomes a kind of beslobbered palimpsest that looks and reads like a snot rag.

You've got to hand it to Norah Vincent. She managed to say two utterly contradictory and irreconcilable things and both of them were stupid. That does, I must admit, take "a certain degree of talent."

I'm so jealous of that talent. And don't you think Nasty Riffraff would be a good name for a blog? I think the last person to use the word "riffraff" convincingly was Margaret Dumont (the dowager snob in the Marx Brothers movies, for readers who are younger than I want to think about).

How King Fahd Spent His Summer Vacation

The 81-year-old Saudi King Fahd is vacationing on Spain's Costa del Sol with an entourage of more than 3,000. Apparently he has different ideas about what room service should provide than most of us.

Several Spanish media outlets reported that a British agency has provided a large group of women to accompany the Saudi men during their vacations in Spain, on two conditions: the women must be young and blonde, and must be replaced every 15 days.

Although prostitution is legal in Spain, procuring is punishable by law. Nevertheless, no authority or organization has moved against the British agency, even though the contract was made public.

While in Spain, the King is expected to meet with Colin Powell, to discuss future US actions against Iraq, as well as a lawsuit that a group of Saudis are preparing against the US government and several media outlets for "psychological and economic damages" suffered since September 11.

I guess the girls are there to ease the poor Saudis' psychological distress.

This morning 15 people were killed by a car bomb in Kabul.


Later, Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt in Kandahar.


It's not clear yet whether the two attacks are connected, but both are being blamed on remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who may have joined forces with disaffected warlords, including former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who denies he has linked up with al-Qaeda, but has called for a jihad against Karzai and foreign forces in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar has been implicated in many bombings in the country since he returned from Iran early this year. The CIA attempted to assassinate him last May.


I have no great wisdom to offer about this news, which is still coming out in bits and pieces, but several things need to be said, at least tentatively.


The first is that Hekmatyar was one of many mujahadeen who received funding from the US government and the CIA. I'm not suggesting that having supported him in the past, we are in any way hypocritical to oppose him now, or somehow reaping what we sowed. I am certainly suggesting, however, that there is a lesson here about turning a blind eye to the crimes of our "allies" that ought to be kept in mind both in our relationships with other countries (Pakistan, for instance) and with lawless forces like the warlords we are using in the continuing hunt for al-Qaeda.


I chose the warlords and Pakistan as examples for a reason. Karzai has been pleading for months for an expansion of the International Security Assistance Force. But the political goal of a stable Afghanistan is in conflict both with the military goal of using warlords to hunt for al-Qaeda (so that American troops won't have to) and George Bush's political goal of not getting bogged down with "nation building" in Afghanistan. The personal threat to Karzai's life is not the most important issue. He is, after all, under constant watch by American bodyguards -- a privilege obviously not extended to most Afghans. He seems like a genuinely decent man who might have a chance to create a functioning government in Afghanistan, if the world (and the US in particular) would only give him the tools to do it. But the lawlessness of many of our proxies makes his task impossible. We are using the warlords to chase al-Qaeda, and putting Karzai's government at risk, but if Karzai fails, terrorists will once again have the conditions they need to thrive.

We made a mistake with Hekmatyar. We seem to be making the same mistake again.


Now the Pakistani connection. According to the NY Times of September 2:

Last week, Abdullah, the Afghan foreign minister, appealed to senior Pakistani officials in Islamabad to halt what the Afghans contend has been a new pattern of support for Mr. Hekmatyar from Pakistan's military intelligence organization, Inter-Services Intelligence.

The Pakistani agency developed close ties with Mr. Hekmatyar during the years when it was funneling substantial American military and financial aid to Mr. Hekmatyar's guerrilla group.

Afghan officials said the Pakistani officials listened to the appeals without confirming or denying that there had been fresh contacts with Mr. Hekmatyar.

The twists and turns of culpability are mind-boggling here, but it comes down to this: We are supporting a country which is in turn supporting a man who is attempting to overthrow a country that we are also supporting.

Now somebody explain to me once again about this new era of moral clarity we're supposed to be in. I don't think I'm quite clear on the concept.

Via Sisyphus Shrugged

Do the Bush Brothers have something against women and children?

First, Jeb Bush puts a man who believes bruising children is a religious duty in charge of children's welfare. Now his big brother plans to appoint to the committee that advises the federal government on domestic abuse law two representative of the Independent Women's Forum, a group that opposes the Violence Against Women Act and supported a lawsuit challenging it.

Listen carefully, because this is so bizarre, it's hard to take in: Two women who believe that "the battered women's movement has outlived its useful beginnings" and are convinced that the Violence Against Women Act wastes money and encourages battered women to mistrust men (it's okay, Nicole, just trust O.J.), women who believe rape and domestic violence statistics are wildly exaggerated, and who are terribly amused by programs that "educate" judges (those are their dismissive quotation marks) about domestic violence, will be advising the Justice Department and Health and Human Services on programs providing shelters and hotlines, tracking abusers, and preventing rape on college campuses.

Their solution to violence against women? Give them guns. (Of course we can count on the Independent Women's Forum to provide legal defense for the more than 1 million women who are battered severely enough to reach police attention and are told, "Nothing we can do, honey. Get yourself a little gun.")

I guess as long as George Bush sits in the White House, we can expect that every time the issue of women's rights comes up, the response will be, "We got rid of the Taliban, what more do you want? Jeez, women always expect too much from guy."

The letters to the editor in today's LA Times (especially the first one) show why the Catholic Church's problems aren't limited to a few bad priests.

"Never underestimate the women of the world." -- June Zeitlin, executive director, Women's Environment and Development Organization

There were plenty of disappointments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (starting with our own fearless leader's fear of exposing his delicate ears to words like "sustainable development"), but there was one small but important success.

The health care paragraph of the plan that came out of the summit initially included boilerplate language about health care services being consistent with "cultural and religious values" but left out the rest of the boilerplate -- that it must also reflect "human rights and fundamental freedoms." The second phrase is needed to prevent "religious values" from being interpreted as supporting things like genital mutilation and denial of health care to women.

The Bush administration wanted "religious values," but not "human rights." (In my religion, that would be the same thing, but apparently not in the president's). But delegates from Europe and Canada fought back, and the "human rights" language was included.

For women in poor countries, the right to reproductive health care is a matter of life and death. This time, life won.

Brad DeLong has an eloquent and topical discussion of computer game values with his children. (Too bad George Bush the First wasn't this smart of a father).

I can't quarrel with Hesiod's comment that liberals have a "tendency to form a circular firing squad," and I don't expect to find much wisdom in web forums, but I'm not quite as offended as he is by the Democratic Underground "debate" over the possibility of Bill McBride choosing Alex Penelas as a running mate. Not yet anyway.

Since I'm obviously not remotely as knowledgeable about Florida politics as Hesiod is, I don't know how "conservative" Penelas really is. But I have to admit, when I saw his name, the first thought that came to mind was, "Oh my God, are they talking about that Alex Penelas -- the "Democrat" who helped stop the Miami-Dade recount? If Penelas turns him down, who's McBride's next choice -- Ralph Nader?

Anger is a reasonable response here. Really staying away from voting is not a reasonable response. Nor is putting out one iota less effort than you normally would. But you gotta say what you gotta say.

Believe me, I know about lousy political choices. If Gray Davis doesn't sign the bill authorizing binding third party arbitration for farm workers, I will scream at the top of my lungs that he is nothing but a worthless corporate stooge. But I'll still vote for him. Better a culturally liberal corporate stooge (who, to be honest, remembers from time to time what his party affiliation is) than a corporate stooge with loony Christian right tendencies. No contest.

There's a line between being honest about your frustration with the corporate-friendly wing of Democratic Party and being so holy and pure that you see the smallest capitulation on the part of the Democrats as "proof" that they are no better than the Republicans. And in Florida, I think, there's a line between an instinctive Gaaaad, no and a snotty refusal to vote for a less than perfect candidate.

Now's a fine time for anger and frustration. As long as people know when it's time to end it.

Some intriguing numbers from a well worth reading New York Times Magazine article on young Iranians:

* Fraction of Iran's population that is under 30: 2/3

* Percentage of Iranians who think their system of government is fine the way it is: 11

* Number of Iranians with access to the Internet: 1.5 million

* Expected number in 5 years: at least 5 million

* Number of underground music studios that have appeared in Tehran in the last five years: 30

* Price of an abortion in Tehran: $500

* Price to have a woman's technical virginity "restored": $50

* Price to be smuggled out of Iran: $5,000 - $6,000

The More Things ChangeÉ
There's an old story (which is probably apocryphal, since I've heard it told about Lyndon Johnson, George Wallace, and -- rather unconvincingly -- Jimmy Carter) about a southern politician who lost an election to a race-baiter and vowed never to be cast as less racist than his opponent again. Times have changed -- kind of. Two Republican Congressional candidates in Georgia are apparently competing for the title of most homophobic.

If Bill Simon moved to Georgia, he'd fit right into that race.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Bill Clinton wouldn't have a chance in that election, bless his heart.

I don't know what came over me the other day when I said that a lot of left-wing writing was boring. Okay, I do know what came over me, and a lot of it is boring. But as long as the sharpest, most entertaining political writer in the country is on our side, I shouldn't complain too much. And in her latest column, the woman is definitely wearing her kick-ass boots.

I admit there is a lot of competition, but I think Ungodly Politics has found the single most offensive piece of merchandising to appear this year.

Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here. -- Brian Doyle

I rarely watch television, but I may make an exception for PBS's Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero tonight. Although I'm inclined to stay even farther away from television than usual in the next week or so, this show sounds like it has the potential to offer some genuine reflection and illumination. The range of people interviewed suggests more depth and breadth than you normally find in the press (especially television) when it deals with religion. And how often am I likely to find, on television, people with more questions than answers about God? Seriously, when was the last time you saw a "religious leader" on TV asking questions, not acting like God had personally handed him the tablets with all the answers?

If there is one thing I have absolute faith in it is lack of certainty.

The show's website also has a link to one of the most moving pieces (I'm not sure whether to call it an essay or a prose poem) that I've read in a long time -- Brian Doyle's Leap, which accomplishes the miracle of forcing you to look again at horror and nevertheless coming away with hope and faith.

An editor tells Ann Coulter we don't welcome haters, Ann, and that's what you are.

Just a thought: Editors are unlikely to take a principled stand that some rhetoric crosses the line, but is it possible that editors will realize that once you get past the brief titillation that comes from someone saying shocking things, hate speech just starts to bore readers? In order to hold her readers, Coulter would have to keep getting more and more shocking -- which, short of passing out weapons and unambiguous murder instructions, would be pretty hard to do. Within her brief moment of fame, she's already played out most of the permutations of hate. She shot her wad. In the end -- and I think it will be soon -- she won't go away because she crossed the line, or because her lies have been revealed, but because she's boring. There just aren't that many ways to say "I hate liberals" -- and that's all she's got.

Richard Goldstein has a beautiful and thoughtful piece in The Village Voice about the anniversary of September 11. He suggests that "the state of reflection at the heart of Yom Kippur" is both more appropriate and more attuned to the way most Americans feel at the moment than the mix of sentimentality, militarism and merchandising we will probably witness. It's an exquisite ode to the value that genuine religious traditions continue to hold.

Separated at birth?

Sisyphus Shrugged has notice a similarity between a certain son of an evangelist and a son of a president (and no, I am not going to tell you what else they are sons of -- I've told you many times, I'm a nice Catholic girl).

"As one who believes there is much merit in this Populist heritage, it always seemed to me perfectly logical that government should play an active role in the nation's business affairs, and I have never lost faith in the government's ability to guarantee economic justice to all people." -- Albert Gore Sr.

The Los Angeles Times truck overturned in Ventura yesterday so I got the Sunday Times a day late, but better late than never.

The Times had an interesting piece by Kyle Longley, who has a biography of Albert Gore Sr. coming out soon, which suggests that Gore Jr.'s populism is not only not fake, it's the very core of who he is, handed down from his father.

It's a fascinating piece, with a very different view of Gore than I've seen anywhere else.

The Christian Science Monitor ran an interesting article recently which argued that the press has matured over the past year in the way it covers religion. I think there's some truth in that. It wasn't very long ago that the press had only two models of religion -- the perfect Mother Teresa and the wicked televangelists. In between was a foggy gray area inhabited by people who believed in God and maybe even went to church every week, but unless those people voted as a group or tried to ban some books or movies, the press wasn't terribly interested in them. Everything fit neatly into heaven, hell or purgatory -- maybe it was the religious model itself that inspired such simplistic thinking.

In the past year we have learned everything there is to know about the worst horrors religion is capable of dealing out (at least we pray that we have), from slaughtering thousands to shredding children's lives. Any decent and reasonable person could be excused for tossing up his hands and muttering, the hell with it. If this is what religion is, may it die a quick and unmourned death. Not even Mother Teresa could balance the scale on this evil.

An understandable response -- and yet not many people seem to have resorted to it. And the press especially has moved back from that precipice. The press, the CSM article points out, has been unbending in its coverage of religious evil, from "the phony assertions of Islamic terrorists about their religion's mandate" to Catholic leaders who "waffled in the face of unspeakable crimes." (The adjective, I suspect, is more apt than the writer realizes -- the crimes were committed precisely because no one could speak of them.) The press this year has "demonstrated its capacity to force religion to reckon in democracy's public square." And though the CSM doesn't make the connection, I can't help but wonder if tough coverage of priestly pedophilia (coverage the press avoided for decades at least in part because of fear of being perceived as anti-Catholic) grew out of the way it was brought home to us last year that no one ought to get away with evil by calling it holy. No one. Ever.

But while the press has become more willing to take on religious power, the coverage has also become, ironically, more sensitive and nuanced.

A week or so ago, I had the television on Phil Donahue's show while I was making dinner. I wasn't paying much attention. It was background noise while I flattened and breaded the chicken. Phil lectured Gary Bauer, Bauer lectured back, and I flattened a breast with my wooden mallet. All of us pounding -- it kind of blended to together. When I grew tired of Phil and the fundie, I went over to turn off the tv, to replace the pointless religious hostility with Coltrane (a good rule for the spiritual life -- turn off the fundamentalists and turn on music: there is more of God's voice in a few bars of Coltrane than in an hour of Bauer). Before I got a chance, though, a woman joined the conversation. I don't even know who she was, but she asked a question that intrigued me, "Where is the great religious middle?"

Good question. I'm not sure it's hit television yet, where the fundamentalists still manage to pass themselves off as the voice of religion (if not the conscience of God himself). But in print, over the past year, it seems to me I've read more about that middle than I can remember seeing in my lifetime.

The crisis in the Catholic Church seemed to sum it up, because the conflict didn't play out as religious vs. secular, but as religious vs. religious: a Church bureaucracy in conflict with the people it betrayed, people as deeply religious as the pope. The press suddenly had to deal with enormous varieties of religious experience -- abused boys (and girls -- unfortunately the press has virtually ignored them) who reached adulthood struggling to balance a sense that God had betrayed them, with a faith that would not go away, and people who had their innocent faith in their Church shattered, and yet seemed to grow overnight into a deeper, more questioning, more adult faith.

That's a lot more complicated than Mother Teresa is good, Tammy Faye Bakker is weird. But it's also a much more interesting story. If the press has gotten a little better at dealing with religion this year -- and I think it has -- maybe all along it was just waiting for a good story to tell.

Go, T.J.!

For the first five years after my mother and I moved to California, we lived in Chula Vista, which is just this side of the Mexican border. I haven't been back in a long time, and I've heard it's gentrified a bit since I left, but in the '60s we called it "Chuchu" (if it comes out sounding like what a little kid calls a train, you said it wrong, say it as if it were a proposition) or "Chulajuana" because while San Diegans assumed it was a suburb of San Diego, the locals knew it was really a suburb of Tijuana. That wasn't just because a big chunk of the population had arrived fairly recently from Mexico. Even if you weren't Mexican, going "downtown" never meant going to San Diego, an ugly, right-wing little Navy town back then, it meant going to T.J. -- a much cooler, brighter, looser place.

Newsweek International Edition just came out with a list of some of the most vibrant and creative cities in the world (some of them pretty surprising -- Kabul?), and second on their list, right after Austin, is good old Aunt Jane. The freedom and mix of cultures that was just a hell of a lot of fun when I was a kid is producing a flourishing arts cultures lately.

Congratulations to my teenage hangout.

I think I have the beginning of an answer to my question yesterday about whether or not Tony Blair's joining the campaign to pressure companies to reveal payments to foreign governments was as big a step forward as it appeared to me.

The answer: Not really, but keep the faith.

Some of the NGOs that have supported the plan pounced on the voluntary nature of Blair's proposal yesterday, and said that only binding regulation would have any effect.

But Blair suggested that binding regulation was a possibility next year.

Maybe I'm not quite cynical enough, or maybe I'm shell-shocked after almost two years with a president who doesn't seem to have the needs of people in poor countries as part of his mental universe, but a head of state who is even aware of the connection between poverty and corporate corruption seems to me a small miracle.

This interests me, although I'm not sure how much to make of it: It looks like Tony Blair is latching onto the campaign by George Soros and several NGOs to pressure oil, gas, and mining companies that do business in underdeveloped countries to reveal how much money they give to those governments in taxes, fees and royalties. That would give citizens of poor countries where money has a long history of being siphoned off by dictators a tool to fight the looters.

Blair is pressing right now for companies to voluntarily reveal the information, but has suggested that he might take stronger steps -- including measures to stop non-compliant companies from being listed on the British stock exchange -- if the voluntary measures don't work.

That sounds to me like a wonderful thing, but does it have any real teeth or is it just public relations?

As if you didn't already have enough reasons to vote against George Bush in 2004, here's the mother of all reasons: Time Magazine is reporting that Colin Powell plans to leave at the end of Bush's first (and, please God, onlyÉ) term. Imagine George Bush with no reasonable adult to explain things to him and try not to cry.

Demosthenes' reasonable remark that the right wouldn't care about Islamic women's rights (I'll just let you go over there to find his infinitely more colorful way of phrasing it) if they weren't looking for an excuse to go to war drew some rather prickly responses, including one noting that "liberal women's studies programs" only talk about mistreatment of women but it took a conservative to do something about it and all those silly women don't even have the good grace to be "happy" about it.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that only a conservative man would think coming into a country, announcing that all the women are now free, and then looking around for more cool battles to fight accomplished anything. There is still a enormous amount that needs to be done, but apparently the Republicans have lost interest. I'm sure Afghan women, like women everywhere, understand that if you start a job, you finish it and you clean up the mess you made afterwards. If only George Bush were female.

Women in Afghanistan don't need big strong Republican men to save them. What they need are the conditions in the country that would allow them to do it for themselves.

UPDATE: Alas, a blog has a great piece on RAWA and why it is important to directly support Afghan women's groups.

A Skeptical Blog has a great history lesson for Labor Day.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. -- George Orwell

Joseph Duemer has a fascinating post up at Reading & Writing exploring the connection between language and thought, focusing specifically on the often incoherent speech of George Bush, and asking whether his inarticulateness has some significance beyond simple ignorance.

It's not a new question. Mark Crispin Miller devoted a book to the topic, and James Carroll recently explored the idea in the Boston Globe. But Joseph had an interesting insight into the moral qualities (or lack of them) in Bush's twisted language:

We can use language to either sharpen or dull our perceptions & concepts: whether we choose accuracy or muddle depends, not upon language, but upon how we use language. That is, our use of language reflects our moral & ethical constructions. By this argument, GWB's morality is as incoherent as his syntax. Which is why American soldiers may very soon be engaged in house-to-house combat in Baghdad.

The last sentence involves an awfully large mental leap that I'm not quite willing to take. I don't think we'll end up at war just because of Bush's fuzzy language and fuzzy morals. But I do think there's a connection between language and ethics. There is an arrogance woven through Bush's refusal to bother explaining himself, an assumption that he's too important to make the effort, and lesser mortals will just have to work to figure out what the hell he means. It makes his language muddled, but it also shows up in his priorities, and in the way he treats other people and other countries. Our way or else. Whatever he says goes. He can't be expected to think through the consequences and understand that anyone else might have a different point of view. If you don't get it, it's your problem, not his.

You could argue that Bush's arrogant language merely reflects his arrogant mind, and I wouldn't entirely disagree, but I think it works the other way as well. The habit of speaking arrogantly (and getting away with it) encourages greater arrogance.

And that's true for all of us, not just for presidents.

All of this got me thinking again about something I wrote yesterday regarding the dullness of a lot of leftist writing, and why I don't think the solution to that is to take up the vituperative style of the right wing. It just hit me that the main reason I don't like that idea is that I think there's a connection between language, thought, and action. If we choose name-calling and distortion, it influences the way we view the world. I'll be glad to tear apart any lies Ann Coulter spreads, and to point out the hypocrisy of her statements. I won't call her Ann Thrax, or even make fun of her thinness. (I called her a whore yesterday, but in context I think the metaphor makes sense). A lot of what I hate about the Republicans is their nastiness, the coarsening effect they have on the culture. It's not just an aesthetic issue. I think when mockery and meanness rule, compassion and justice fall by the wayside.

The left is nothing without compassion and justice on its side.

What I'm getting at is that I can't find a way to argue that anyone should care about anyone else -- whether its farm workers in California, Nike employees in Indonesia, elderly people who can't afford their medicines, or abused altar boys -- in a smartass voice. One undercuts the other.

At some level, we become the language we speak. I have no desire to become like George Bush.

Is President Bush even aware that we have a Congress?

First he told us he didn't need the approval of Congress to go to war with Iraq, now he says he can give federal money to religious charities "even if Congress does not approve."

If they're talking about helping churches get money that they're legally entitled to but don't know about or aren't sure how to apply for, I don't see anything sinister or underhanded about it ( although it would be nice if they gave the same consideration to veterans and poor people).

But one of the suggestions the head of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives makes to churches is to give their charities "neutral-sounding" names -- in other words, hide the fact that they are churches.

Ironically, that means that federal money will flow to churches headed by the kind of people who don't see any ethical problems in twisting the truth for money, people who believe, like George Bush and Ken Lay, that rules are for little people, and the smart guy knows how to get around them.

Enron ethics in the pulpit. That might be George Bush's religion, but it isn't mine.

Dan Knauss at Locust Eater calls attention to a series of Bible study materials related to current news events that Christianity Today is selling, and expresses skepticism that the materials will encourage study group members to "think outwardly in relation to the larger world and complex issues."

Just looking at the titles of the materials and the overviews that are offered online, I share the skepticism, and I think the focus of the materials points up a basic difference between conservative and liberal notions of religious values.

Look, for example, at the series entitled Corporate Integrity Begins At Home. Corporate integrity is certainly an issue any person of faith should be thinking about at the moment, and I commend them for taking it on. But two of the "teaching points" -- " Moral uprightness has to begin on an individual level" and "Personal integrity promotes corporate (national) moral responsibility" -- suggest to me that it will be difficult if not impossible for anyone using such materials to get to the real ethical issues.

Conservative Christians, by focusing all their attention on individual integrity, miss what left-wing Christians know in their bones: that evil is not always a darkening of one person's heart, but is often built into the system. If you live with an economic system that encourages and rewards greed, the message of Jesus is not that you do whatever you need to do to get by, try not to be worse than anybody else, and count on God to forgive you because your heart is in the right place. The message is, as Archbishop Romero once expressed it, to "reject all that cannot be just in the world" and to see the face of God in the victims of injustice. That's a commitment that just praying for kinder and gentler CEOs doesn't come close to meeting.

I wonder, for instance, what members of a study group working with CTs materials would make of this article :

Poor countries will suffer massive losses of food production and agricultural land as global warming takes hold but North America will benefit, a United Nations report released at the summit said.

The conclusions Ð which add a new dimension to the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change Ð show food production declining sharply in up to 73 countries during the next eight years, even as their population grows.

It says growing wheat will "virtually disappear from Africa", and decline by up to 95 per cent in South-east Asia and up to 75 per cent in the Indian sub-continent. Other crops such as sugar and roots and tubers crops will also decline, though not by so much.

The article goes on to state that the United States and Russia will gain land and be able to "substantially" increase food production. The number of starving people will increase, and they will become more and more dependent on the United States for food.

If all I'm asked to care about is my own personal integrity, that article shouldn't bother me. Surely God's not going to blame me for global warming. And if some people gain and others lose, well, maybe that's just all part of God's plan.

But it's not so easy to dismiss if you believe that you are morally responsible for the injustice that grows out of your government's actions. Under those circumstances, fighting the American government's indifference to global warming becomes a moral imperative. Liberal Christians can't squirm off the moral hook quite as easily as conservatives.

I'm so proud of myself. Someone googled "Sean Hannity's lies" and I came up eleventh on the list. The ten ahead of me were all right-wing sites or book sellers that mentioned "Hannity" and "lies," but didn't connect the two. So now I can honestly say I'm number 1 in connecting Sean Hannity and his lies. Hooray for me (okay, and Atrios, who pushed me up the list by connecting to that post)!

I apologize for the absurd overuse of quotation marks in this post, butÉ

Several people have written to tell me that I have a "problem" with the "characters" on this site -- my quotation marks and apostrophes get replaced by umlauted O's or O's with a tilde (that little squiggle over the Spanish n, for non-linguists).

I have a similar problem when I read a few of my favorite blogs, notably The Rittenhouse Review (which is so good, making it all the more frustrating to have to read around the apostrophes that turn into accented i's), so I sympathize.

A reader suggested that I type everything on Word with "smart quotes" disabled, and then cut and paste onto Blogger, which is what I'm doing right now, testing to see if the apostrophes and quotation marks are coming out "right."

Of course I have no way of knowing if it's working, since on my computer they've always looked just fine. So if anybody has been having problems with foreign characters appearing on this site, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know whether this post shows any improvement. Thanks.

UPDATE: I would also appreciate it if anyone had suggestions for how to accomplish the same thing directly on Blogger without having to pass through Word.

That old leftist State Department is at it again...

The State Department has invited about 20 scholars to a two-day conference in September to hear their views on why the United States seems so unpopular around the world.

Richard Boucher, a department spokesman, said the conference - on September 5 and 6 - was the culmination of a project that looked at anti-Americanism in Europe, Russia and in the Muslim world, and how it could be addressed.

Apparently trying to understand the roots of rage is no longer anathema. Or is is only liberals who aren't permitted to try to understand the reasons we're hated?

An old '70s slogan of female pride pointed out that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did -- only backwards and in high heels. Update that to the 21st century: A woman can do anything a man can do -- even in full Islamic dress.

If I canÕt dance, itÕs not my revolution. -- Emma Goldman

Any leftist who writes (yes, blogging counts -- just because you do something more for love than money doesn't mean you can't try to do it well) ought to read John PowersÕ piece in this weekÕs L.A. Weekly on the dreariness of left-wing writing. In a way, it picks up on the Media WhoreÕs Online controversy of awhile back: Does leftist writing lose its soul if it adopts the vituperative tone of the right?

I think it can. I donÕt lament the lack of a left-wing Coulter or Limbaugh. In fact, I think itÕs a contradiction in terms. Leftist politics has its roots in compassion; weÕll never be comfortable or convincing selling meanness and hatred. More than that, I think in the long run, nastiness is counter-productive. Ann CoulterÕs political pornography may feed the lusty anger of bigots and gun nuts, but I doubt sheÕs ever lured a single person off the fence. SheÕs a whore, not a siren. There may be some value for the right in holding the interest of its angry, resentful base, but the leftÕs base isnÕt angry or resentful. ItÕs frustrated and ready for change, but it isnÕt inherently angry. It isnÕt entertained by hostility. And that leaves very little for a left-wing Coulter to feed on.

WhatÕs interesting about PowersÕ piece is that heÕs not complaining about the lack of a left-wing demagogue, but about the lack of a Weekly Standard, with its wit, style, great cover art, and, above all, its willingness to go after the loonier side of its own wing. He contrasts it with The Nation which, while I donÕt think itÕs nearly as dull as Powers makes it out to be, certainly doesnÕt look as good as the Weekly Standard and often seems out of touch.

Powers cites John NicholsÕ touting of Dennis Kucinich as a serious candidate for President as an example of the NationÕs cluelessness, but I think even worse was the response of Katha Pollitt (normally a terrific writer), who not only took the suggestion seriously, but responded in such an orthodox and predictable way (but heÕs pro-life, I donÕt want to hear any more about it!) that it seemed like a parody of the left written by a right-winger. IÕm normally a semi-religious reader of the Nation, but that week was depressing even for me.

LetÕs face it: Sometimes, in our earnestness and with all our good intentions, we seem to be parodying ourselves. I donÕt think we can copy the right-wingÕs style, but we sure as hell have to work on finding our own.

Chris Bertram at Junius takes up an interesting issue: the idea that "just war theory" should not be taken into consideration in deciding whether or not to go to war with Iraq (since itÕs a "Christian" doctrine and foreign policy shouldnÕt be determined by religious beliefs.) Chris notes that "just war theory" isnÕt a church doctrine, but a theory that developed within Christian tradition.

HeÕs right, but the objection can be taken even farther than that. Augustine didnÕt invent just war theory. Nor did Thomas Aquinas. They just produced systematic expositions of a tradition that went back to the earliest wars. Some acts of war have always been considered beyond the pale. The need to justify war is almost as old as war itself. As soon as you feel the need to give reasons, you inevitably start asking yourself, "Are they good enough reasons?"

I have some problems with just war theory, as IÕve discussed before, but the only way you can ignore it completely is to suggest that ethics and morality mean nothing when youÕre at war. IÕd love to see the vociferously Christian George Bush go on television and try to make that case.

Do you ever come across an article in the newspaper that you take personally, even though it has no immediate bearing on your life?

Until I was in third grade, I lived in the Bronx, in Highbridge to be more precise, a short distance from Yankee Stadium. We moved a lot, from apartment to apartment, but always stayed pretty much in the same neighborhood. I've never understood why we moved so often. Irish Catholic kids in the '60s would not presume to ask their parents, "Why do we have to move?" But moving within the neighborhood wasn't unusual. One of my best memories from childhood is of the times when a family rented a U-Haul and loaded everything they owned into it. If you knew a kid in the family, you could finagle a ride on the U-Haul, the whole three or four blocks it traveled. A bunch of kids sitting atop boxes and chairs, shoving at each other and feeling important up so high -- it was like being grand marshall in the world's shortest parade.

The last year we lived in the Bronx was one of many years when my mother got tired of being beaten up, packed a suitcase, dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and took off. I remember walking down Woodycrest Avenue in the dark with a sweater on over my pajamas, and I remember the gratings over the store fronts making me think of jails.

My mother's younger sister took us in. For a little over a year, we lived with my aunt, her husband and their three kids -- seven of us in a two-bedroom apartment.

I've been thinking about that time since I read this article, about homeless families with children housed in a converted wing of the Bronx House of Detention for Men. Above and beyond the fact that it's a gloomy, stinking place where contagious diseases spread easily, it's a jail. A jail. If there is one thing I know from unwanted experience, it's that a child on the run is convinced she's done something wrong. I don't care how few options you have and how small your resources are, you don't put her in a jail. The message that sends is despicable.

The world has changed for the better in so many ways since I was a child. A lot of cultural conservatives nurse the fantasy that there were "good old days" with nothing but two-parent, relatively happy families and somehow that nice world exploded somewhere between Ike and Woodstock. They desperately want it back. But, of course, it never existed. They just got to pretend that it existed because of the silence of women like my mother. At some point, my mother got sick of trying to hide her black eyes under sunglasses, and so did a lot of other women.

People aren't as silent about family problems as they used to be, and that's a very good thing. But just about the time women stopped keeping quiet, the resources they had to fall back on dried up. I know there's no logical connection, but it seems like a punishment: if you won't shut up and let us pretend, we'll take away your food stamps and let your children's schools decay.

We have come to the point where we put children without resources in a jail. I keep thinking about those children, how some of their lives aren't that different from what mine was like, but the consequences of having that kind of life have become so much worse, so Dickensian that you don't even want to think about it. Unless you take it so personally that you have to.

Two articles that seem to speak to each other:

New Survey Reveals Surprising Potential for Nonviolent Intifada 80% of Palestinians would support a large-scale non-violent protest movement and 56% would participate in its activities.

Islam's Kahn a teacher of peace Both Christianity and Islam have both violent and pacifist traditions. Instead of lecturing the Arab world about civilization and development, shouldn't we be learning and building on indigenous influences like [Muslim pacifist Badshah] Kahn's to help bring us all closer to peace?

"My spirituality boils down to that there is a God, and it ain't me. That's what's important for me to remember. Our attempts to be God are where we fuck up." -- Steve Earle

Salon has an interview with Steve Earle today (and it's not premium -- so you can read it even if you don't subscribe) that's a lot longer and more interesting than last Sunday's mini interview in the NY Times Magazine. The Times' interview is mostly about the controversy over "John Walker's Blues," and the relationship between politics and music. In the Salon interview he talks about politics, drugs, different art forms, Ireland, Texas, religion, haiku and bonsai. Even if I weren't a huge Steve Earle fan, I'd find it an great portrait of a quirky and intriguing artist's mind at work.

Top 10 Police Excuses for Pepperspraying Infants

Just when you think fundamentalists can't get any weirder...

I thought Jeb Bush had pushed religious idiocy to its outermost limit when he tried to get away with calling opposition to a man who defended child abuse "religious bigotry." But Jerry Sibley, coordinator for Jewish ministries with the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, has him beat.

To its enormous credit, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently issued a statement that "campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church." Citing an appreciation for Jewish tradition that has grown since Vatican II, the bishops concluded by by "urging Jews and Christians to articulate a common agenda to heal the world."

Jerry Sibley calls that "an extreme form of anti-Semitism."

Yes, I understand the theology behind that. If you believe that only Christians are "saved," then to give up on "saving" Jews is anti-Semitic.

Spare me. If we haven't learned anything in the past year about the dangers of dividing people by religion, we don't have a learning curve. If we focus on the differences between religions instead of nourishing the fundamental impulses that join them, religion will add far more evil to the world than good.

I'm glad Hesiod is on our side, because when he's on your case, he doesn't let go.

He's on Jerry Regier's case.

His latest discovery is that the man Jeb Bush appointed to head Florida's troubled child welfare department, allegedly because of his strong record on child welfare isssues in Oklahoma, turns out to have had an embarrassing record on child welfare issues in his home state. According to the most recent federal studies, Oklahoma was not only below the national average on most measures of child welfare, it was below Florida. The rate of child abuse in Oklahoma's foster care systerm was twice the national average. Florida isn't bad enough? You want a guy whose standards are lower than Florida's?

Jerry Regier is an incompetent man with dangerous ideas about families and children. No whining about "religious bigotry" can cover that up.

The LA Times has a front page article today about Zambia's refusal to accept genetically modified corn, despite the fact that millions are dying of starvation.

It's one of those stories that makes you despair of anything good ever evolving in Africa. The corrupt government stories that make people give up on aide donations (What's the point? It will only end up building a mansion for the latest incarnation of Idi Amin.) The stories of superstition and sharia.

The problem is, the story is misleading -- and I think fundamentally racist.

To be honest, I don't know enough about genetically altered food to have an opinion on the topic. In fact, I know enough about myself to feel confident that my feeble understanding of science will keep me from ever having an intelligent opinion on the topic. I wouldn't presume to express an opinion on whether Zambia's policy is a good one or a bad one.

What I do know, however, is that it is not a matter of starving Africans turning down perfectly good food because of their silly fears and superstitions -- which is the way the Times portrays it. They point out that the United States, United Nations and humanitarian aid groups -- in other words, everyone whose opinion the Times considers worth listening to -- say the food is safe, but still the Zambians won't take it. They're starving, why not take a chance? How can the health risks of altered food outweigh the risks of starvation?

What the Times' article barely mentions is that the Africans' biggest fear is not the immediate impact of the genetically altered corn, but the long-term one. If the corn is planted, it could contaminate their natural varieties. That doesn't seem like a reason that countries whose economies are based on grain exports can afford to brush aside.

I'm not arguing about whether the Zambians should or should not accept altered corn. I am suggesting that a newspaper (especially one as good as the Times usually is) should not fall back on the racist assumption that Africans don't make rational decisions. Their reasons may be wrong, but they certainly are arguable -- and they deserved a better hearing than the Times gave them.

UPDATE: A reader directed me to this Washington Post article which deals with Zimbabwe's difficulties in dealing with the same issues that were raised in Zambia. Far more balanced than the LA Times piece, the WP article demonstrates that the fears African governments have about the corn's long-term impact on their economies are not only reasonable, but involve considerations the governments would be negligent to overlook.

Moreover the WP article raises ethical issues that the LA Times avoids. Is the United States using the African food crisis to get U.S. gene-altered products established in a corner of the world that has largely resisted them? And if we really care about starvation in Africa, are we willing to pay the cost of milling the grain so that it cannot be used for seed, thereby overcoming many of the Africans fears?

It's a complex issue -- both in scientific and ethical terms. The LA Times over-simplification simply pandered to racist stereotypes.

A few days ago, , I wrote about the controversy over bringing children to demonstrations. I just wanted to add that Drucilla Blood has posted some interesting thoughts on the subject over at Blog Sisters, and her readers have followed up with some thoughtful comments of their own.

"When the man who feeds the world by toiling in the fields is himself deprived of the basic rights of feeding, sheltering and caring for his own family, the whole community of man is sick." -- Cesar Chavez

What can you buy for $1.5 million? Let's hope it's not Gray Davis' conscience.

When Davis speaks to Hispanic groups in California, he often cites Cesar Chavez as a major influence in his life. The United Farm Workers have always supported him, although not with money (Seventy-five percent of California farm workers make under $10,000 per year -- that doesn't leave a lot for campaign contributions).

They need him now. A bill arrived in his office yesterday that would permit binding, third-party arbitration when negotiations hit an impasse. That happens a lot. Since 1975, when Jerry Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, farm workers have voted for the UFW at 428 companies. Only 158 have signed contracts with growers. With a steady supply of labor coming from Mexico and workers who move frequently, all the growers have to do is drag out the bargaining process, and the farm workers never get the union contracts they voted for. These are the most vulnerable and oppressed workers in the state. Besides low pay, ninety percent of them have no health insurance. They desperately need another tool.

The bill on Davis' desk (SB 1736) would force growers to bargain in good faith or face having a contract imposed by an arbitrator. You can't live in California (at least not in the central part of the state, where I live), without witnessing the backbreaking labor these people do. You can't send children to school without being aware of the difficult lives of some of the children who share their classrooms. If you have a conscience, any shred of a conscience, they pull at it. Protecting their interests ought to be the rock bottom minimum level of decency you can expect from a Democratic governer in a relatively liberal state. Californians don't oppose this bill, only a handful of growers do. But at the moment it doesn't look like Davis will sign it. He has until September 30th to decide. Agribusiness has a lot of money on its side. All the farm workers have is justice.

Support the farm workers.

Faith in America gets wonderfully crazy sometimes. The Brits could learn a thing or two from us.

Yesterday was Women's Equality Day, which commemorates the day the 19th Amendment passed, giving women the right to vote. President Bush used the occasion to laud the suffragettes who "risked attack and arrest to organize marches, boycotts, and pickets, while mobilizing an influential lobbying force of millions" (which must be the first time on record the president has praised marches, boycotts and pickets -- but since he has grown so fond of them, perhaps a few thousand American citizens could be persuaded to show him even more of this brand of democracy). He also seized the opportunity to remind American women how much things have improved since 1920 and to provide the obligatory reminder of how bad things were for the women of Afghanistan before he so chivalrously saved them.

All well and good, but now that the ceremonial celebration of womenÕs equality is over, I had some thoughts on ways the president might really do some good:

1. Have a talk with Jeb. It's hard to convince women that enormous progress has been made and we're no longer oppressed when the president's little brother is busy humiliating women and sending them the message that they should consider working outside the home as "bondage," that adultery and desertion are the only legitimate reasons for divorce, and that feminism "has damaged the morale of many women and convinced men to relinquish their biblical authority in the home.''

2. Stop using the plight of Afghan women to burnish your credentials as someone who cares about women's rights, unless you mean it.

3. Whether in Nigeria, or Saudi Arabia, don't let oil stand in the way of the United States speaking up loudly and clearly for women's rights. (Make it easy on yourself, just add one item to todayÕs agenda .)

4. Fight AIDS in Haiti. Train midwives in Algeria. Save women's lives. Restore funding to the United Nations Population Fund.

5. Save more women's lives and make those lives worth living. Support ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

6. Make a contribution.

Imagine there's no countries...

The West-Eastern Divan is an orchestra consisting of 78 young musicians, roughly half of them Jewish, half from Arab countries. It is the creation of Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian-American writer Edward Said. Last week, the orchestra was in Seville, where it is considering locating permanently, rehearsing in a Catholic seminary.

God did not comment, but He is said to be pleasantly surprised.

I received a thought provoking e-mail this weekend, from a reader responding to my post about the video of the Oregon protests. Her response -- and I think it's a very reasonable one -- is that, while it is unconscionable for a policeman to pepper spray children, the parents were not very wise in bringing their children to that demonstration. These days, the risk of the situation getting out of control is too great.

I'm torn about the issue. I must admit, I had the same thought the reader did. I have a seven-year-old daughter, and there is no way I would bring her to a demonstration. Even in my quiet little town, the potential for danger (or at least a situation uglier than anything I'm willing to expose her to) is too great. At the same time, a part of me feels that saying that parents shouldn't bring children to a peace demonstration is kind of like saying a woman shouldn't go out alone after dark or else she's risking being raped or killed. It's undeniably true. But it's equally true that a woman ought to be able to go out at night, and parents ought to be able to expect that they can express their opinions as citizens and not put their children at risk. People should be careful, but we have to be equally careful not to blame the victim.

Women ought to be careful. But they also have a right to be angry that they have to be so careful. Parents should protect their children. But they ought to be angry that one of the things they have to protect them from is their own government.

I'm also concerned that if ordinary people, elderly people, handicapped people, people with children, people at greater risk in dangerous situations, stay away from protests, the protesters who people see on their televisions (on those rare occasions when protests are acknowledged by the media at all) will all be 19-year-olds with blue hair and piercings. I have nothing against 19-year-olds or blue hair (piercings, however, give me the willies) but theyÕre a lot easier to dismiss than middle-aged moms. An army of mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers saying "no" can be very powerful.

And in a strange way, I feel like I'm cheating my daughter by not allowing her to participate in demonstrations. Not long after the bombing of Afghanistan began, I mentioned one night at dinner that there was going to be a demonstration downtown the next day. I had no intention of going. My feelings about the war at that point were still amorphous. I couldn't say I thought it was wrong.

But my daughter wanted to know what a demonstration was. I told her that some people thought the war was bad and they wanted to tell other people that. My daughter suddenly announced, with astonishing passion, "I think war is bad." And she asked me if we could go. I gave her the usual evasive mother answer, "Maybe some other time."

But I kept thinking about the passion with which she responded. She doesn't really know what a war is, of course. At the time I was reading her a children's book that takes place during World War II, and the small deprivations of war are mostly what she imagines. She had also seen bits and pieces of the news from Afghanistan and what she saw seemed to bother her so deeply that we simply banned TV news from the house for awhile. Even now, if she sees a picture of a desolate place, she asks if that's Afghanistan, and do they still have a war there, and did anybody die.

Yes, sweetheart, people died.

Kids?

Kids, too.

I told her not to worry, she was safe. We would always take care of her. That's what they tell you you're supposed to say.

It doesnÕt help , though. I have the kind of child who worries as much about children she's never met as she does about herself.

She asks how many children died. I tell her I don't know. (And I bite my tongue before telling her that nobody knows and precious few people seem to care.)

She got a lot of patriotism in school this year and that's fine. In a way, she loves it. She loves flags and the Pledge of Allegiance and singing America the Beautiful. She sings America the Beautiful to me at least a few times a week, and stands up very straight and proud when she sings it. But she also knows the flags and the songs have something to do with war, and she hates war, and I think at some level she's already gotten the message that it's not o.k. to say that.

When she heard that some people were going to say "war is bad" she wanted to say it too. She wanted to see for herself that she's not the only one who feels that. It would have been good for her to get the chance.

But knowing that, if I had the chance to do it again, I still wouldn't take her. And yet I wouldn't blame any parent who made a different choice.

Spinsanity's stabs at plague-on-both-your-houses fairness are looking increasingly pathetic. Today's Salon has a piece by Ben Fritz and Bryan Keefer raking through the lies in Sean Hannity's new book. That's their good deed for the day. But, after noting that Hannity lies about President Clinton's famous Georgetown University Speech, in which Hannity claims Clinton blamed America for September 11th (he did nothing of the sort, of course), Fritz and Keefer try to balance their criticism of Hannity by arguing that many conservatives disseminated that same lie for awhile, but had the "class" to back down after they read the full speech. Fritz and Keefer's example of conservative "class"? Andrew Sullivan.

The closest Sullivan comes to apologizing to Clinton for mischaracterizing his speech is to admit "it's not Noam Chomsky." But mostly, in this post, Sullivan, backed into a corner after being caught jumping to conclusions, if not out and out lying, simply whines that while he was wrong, he wasn't really wrong.

He was really wrong, and he didn't have the class or the guts to admit it.

I'm sorry, but you can't criticize Media Whores Online for being over the top and then use Andrew Sullivan as an example of class.

Shafeeq Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, who went to college in the United States, has written an ode to America's greatest strength:

In graduate school, in the 1980's, the most Zionist of all my teachers would listen with empathy to my opinion and my difference of perspective, then argue. This opened the way for respect, learning and understanding. Tolerance, even without accepting the other view, does have a moderating power on people and permits for the repetition of the cycle of understanding. Tolerance breeds tolerance. As a professor of political science at Kuwait University, I practice my old professor's technique on my own fundamentalist students.

A willingness to listen can sometimes be a weapon of breathtaking power.

Today someone googled "Ethiopian models showing their body" and somehow ended up here. I did have a post recently about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but somehow I don't think that's what the googler had in mind. My heart goes out to him. He must have been really disappointed.

This is an interesting development: The Kurds of northern Iraq have traditionally been moderate Muslims and they've created a relatively open and free society with many of the foundations of democracy. But Islamic fanatics, linked to al-Qaeda, have occupied several Kurdish villages near the Iranian border in recent months, where they've established brutal, misogynist, Taliban-style administrations. They're having some success attracting young supporters among the Kurds through a campaign of hardline preaching tied to schools and charities funded by -- you see the end of this sentence coming already, don't you? -- wealthy Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia.

Protecting the Kurds from al-Qaeda attacks could easily provide George Bush with a legitimate reason to begin the war with Iraq that he seems to want, but be unable to justify. The enormous irony is that the best way to "fight" that war is not to wait a few months and send in the military to fend off an army of fanatics, but to stand up right now to the "allies" who are paying for those fanatics' recruitment program.

Thomas Friedman explains today why our oil addiction means that isn't going to happen. In Friedman's apt phrase, "Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers."

Don't ask me how to..

Today's Observer has an interesting little piece in which they asked several famous people what they they know nothing about or are unable to do. The most revealing answer, to me, was Andrew Sullivan's. He admitted to having read "alarmingly little fiction."

Chalk my reaction up to injured pride, if you like -- I write fiction and so I'm a little frustrated with the (ever-expanding) number of people who never read the stuff -- but somehow I'm not surprised that Sullivan's not a fiction reader.

I've always liked Sartre's comment that reading fiction is an act of generosity, because you can't do it unless you're willing to let another person inhabit you. I don't think fiction readers are necessarily better people than non-readers, but I don't think it's possible to read good fiction regularly without developing a certain subtlety of mind -- tolerance of others' foibles, compassion for their lives, willingness to look beneath the surface of actions, understanding the complexity of motives. I don't read Sullivan much, but on the rare occasions I've waded into his rants, I haven't found those qualities much in evidence.

A woman I know, a devoutly Catholic novelist, once told me that she hit a crisis in writing her first novel when she realized that her main character was going to have an abortion. She was shocked. She did not approve. But at some point she realized that characters, like people, make their own choices, and whether you approve or not, you have to let them. You can't push your characters around. You can't tell them what to believe.

It's a lesson every fiction writer worthy of the name learns quickly, and one I think, at some level, good readers intuit.

You can't bully people into doing what you think is best. You can't harrangue them into sharing your way of seeing the world.

Andrew Sullivan should definitely curl up with a good novel. I can think of quite a few politicians I'd like to give novels to as well.

My bloglist is getting so long, and I hate HTML so much that I'm really reluctant to add any more unless I can't resist. These two I can't resist:

Alas, a blog is smart and well-written on a wide variety of subjects, feminist (please, god, more feminists on the web -- especially ones who have a sense of humor and can write), full of great cartoons (check out Mickey's copyright rant especially) and is just plain pretty to look at.

Sisyphus Shrugged's Journal is tough and funny, personal and political, and (thank you, god) unapologetically feminist. And she can "coulter in a good cause." (I don't know if she's the first person to use coulter as a verb, but I like it and plan to steal it and disseminate it everywhere.)

I have very mixed feelings about abortion, but this makes me angry:

Abortion Foe Plans to Violate WomenÕs Privacy on Television Show

Dave Leach, an anti-abortion extremist and candidate for the Iowa House of Representatives, plans to air footage of women entering and exiting a Des Moines Planned Parenthood clinic on his local cable access show "The Uncle Ed Show." "By shining a light on wickedness, IÕm hopeful people will be awakened," said Leach, according to TheIowaChannel.com. The cable company that airs LeachÕs show, Mediacom, has said that it will not air the show unless the womenÕs faces have been obscured. However, Leach objects to this requirement because his stated purpose is to keep women from going to the Planned Parenthood clinic, according to the Associated Press. "The Uncle Ed Show" has been the subject of controversy in the past because of episodes which demonstrated bomb making techniques and discussed killing doctors who perform abortion, according to the Des Moines Register.

The Des Moines Register has more.

Bush: DCF chief's critics use `double standard'

Hesiod and Atrios are both right on the mark in hitting Jeb Bush over his attempt to paint criticism of Jerry Regier -- the child abuse-friendly "Christian" Bush appointed to head Florida's child welfare department -- as religious bigotry.

Sorry to be a broken record on this subject, but criticizing someone's beliefs is not religious bigotry. Calling child abuse a religion is.

Jeb Bush claims that a person describing himself as lacking in faith would not get the same scrutiny Regier is getting. Setting aside the obvious fact that it would be a rare act of political courage for a governer to appoint someone who described himself as "lacking in faith" to any public position, someone who expressed Regier's opinions without trying to put a veneer of religion over it would have been dismissed long ago as a monster or an idiot. God is not a monster or an idiot. Jerry Regier should defend his strange ideas if he can, and stop trying to hide behind God.

Joseph Duemer has a beautifully written piece on Ann Coulter's phony populism over at Reading & Writing.

Hesiod has a link to a video from the Oregon protests that's very disturbing. As he recommends, scroll ahead a little more than half-way to the place where a woman tells about an incident in which children were pepper sprayed.

Ernest Hemingway once said that the one trait every writer needs is a built-in, fool-proof "bullshit detector." Mine isn't foolproof by any means, but it's always been pretty reliable, and it's telling me that the way this woman recounts the story is trustworthy to the bone. To be honest, my "bullshit" radar is little uncomfortable with the man interviewing her. He's trying to push her to say things she's not ready to say. But the woman could not be more believable.

Several things jumped out at me. The first was the way she corrected herself after she said the police pepper-sprayed three children. She immediately backtracks and says that he actually only sprayed two of the children. That's not the way people talk when they're telling a rehearsed story. That's the way people talk when they're struggling to describe accurately an emotional and chaotic situation and trying to be fair.

The second telling detail was the way she used an obscenity in talking about the police. It's not the obscenity itself, it's the way she says it, with a small hesitation before, and a slight look of discomfort after. She's trying so hard to speak calmly and gently (she reminds me, in that, of a nun or a preschool teacher). And yet she spits the words themselves out from a place of deep anger and hurt.

The woman is forty-something, like me, a mother, like me, and I recognize that hesitation and that look -- I know what they feel like on the inside, and I know what they mean. If you're not a forty-something mother, let me translate. Obscenities don't come as easily to the lips of women of my generation as they do to many younger women, especially those of us who've spent years with children, being very careful about what we say. (The soft and clear way the woman speaks is a signal to me that she's spent a lot of time talking to children.) Like me, this is not the kind of woman who calls someone an obscene name just because he cut her off in traffic. We hoard our obscenities, as if they were precious objects. The words, which don't feel entirely comfortable in your mouth, come only when there is nothing left in polite language that will capture what you feel about what you've witnessed.

And finally, at the end of her interview, there is her response to the question about how she feels about her country now. I watched the video twice, and I was in tears with her both times. She says she always thought this was a "good country," and leaves hanging in the air the change in her feelings, which she clearly still can't articulate. She's unwilling and unable to say anything negative, but also unable to reaffirm her old feelings. All that's left is tears.

That's exactly how I feel after watching the video -- unwilling to resort to a scathing reproach of what is happening in my country, a reproach that might come easier if I were twenty years younger. But I want to cry.

And I want to know why this story isn't in the press. I searched the Washington Post. Not a word. The LA Times has very brief AP coverage. The NY Times website has the same AP story, and another quick summary from Reuters. As for its own reporting, the paper of record covered, in a positive light, Bush's defense, in Oregon, of his indefensible new logging policy (if the president would like some sensible free advice on the topic, I can't think of a better place to start than this Lean Left post), but the protests tumbled to the article's final paragraph:

Mr. Bush was greeted in Portland tonight by hundreds of protesters outside his hotel protesting his talk of an Iraq invasion and his environmental policies. It was one of the largest groups of demonstrators Mr. Bush has encountered since Sept. 11.

The Portland Oregonian has good, even-handed coverage (once you get past the somewhat less than objective headline). They acknowledge both the diversity of the protesters -- a few looking for trouble (anyone who has ever participated in a demonstration knows they're always there), most of them ordinary Americans expecting simply to have their peaceful objections to war and assaults on the environment heard -- and controversy over the police tactics. They estimate the crowd at about 1300 -- considerably more than the "hundreds" the NY Times suggests.

But this is not a local story. If the editors of our major newspapers consider police firing rubber bullets into crowds of ordinary Americans and pepper spraying children so run of the mill that it's hardly worth mentioning, something's seriously wrong.

Shocker of the day: I agree with L. Brent Bozell III, the president of the right-wing Media Research Center. Not about liberal bias in the media, of course, but about the way the movie industry undercuts parents by marketing stuff to kids that isn't appropriate, and employs a rating system that is increasingly useless.

I haven't seen the movie Mr. Bozell writes about -- the latest Austin Powers. The first was so-so, I'm not going to bother with the sequels. But I know what he's talking about. Every parent has had the experience of watching a PG video with kids and suddenly thinking, I'm sorry. This is not the kind of language I want my child exposed to. Okay, maybe not every parent. But I've thought it often enough to make up for the slackers.

There's an odd phenomenon I've noticed over the years in casual conversations with other parents who I don't know very well. They think I'm more conservative than they are. You'd be amazed at some of the people who think I'm more conservative than they are. Years ago, waiting for a PTA meeting to start, I had a conversation about children and movies with the mother of one of my sons' third-grade friends, a nice woman on a personal basis, but also an extremely conservative Christian who'd made a pain of herself by objecting to half the books in the school library (okay, I'm exaggerating -- but she did try to evict Natalie Babbitt and Roald Dahl).

We agreed, in general, that some parents were just plain too permissive about what they let their children see. But then I, stupidly, decided to get more specific. I had just -- with some trepidation -- let my then 8-year-old son rent his first PG video, and while it was a great movie, I told her, I thought some of the language was a bit too much for a third-grader.

The movie was E.T.

E.T.? You're in trouble when a right-wing Christian is laughing at you. They aren't a cheerful group as a rule. You object to E.T.? I'm gonna have to tell my husband that one. You make me look like a flaming liberal.

Terrific. A woman to the theological right of Pat Robertson, a book banner, for God's sake, thinks I'm too conservative. I never got a chance to say that I like E.T. I just don't want my 8-year-old to call anybody a "douche bag."

The interesting thing is that I've also thrown a lot of these people for a loop when anything political comes up. I don't ordinarily bring up the topic, but sometimes they bring it up, assuming, I think, that since I'm a stay-at-home PTA mom who objects to unsuitable language in movies (at least for kids), I must be a Republican. Over the years, I've had lots of snide comments about "liberals" whispered to me, that seemed to come with the assumption that I'd agree. I get stunned looks when I don't, as if I were one of those people with strange mixtures of ideas no one can make any sense of. You know, like gay Republicans.

Where did this come from?

Stupid question. It came from years and years of right wing propoganda that says liberals are all a bunch of over-educated, over-paid professional snobs who don't have time for families. The success of that propaganda is why I find myself watching a certain smug, young, blonde woman on television, one who obviously devotes a great deal of time and attention to her appearance and career, telling me I'm a snob and she understands the needs of ordinary people. She's the one on television making a fortune selling hatred and mile long legs. I'm the one frosting cupcakes for the class party. What's wrong with this picture?

Which brings me to this article, which probably bothers me more than it should. Polls show white working women who didn't go to college are moving away from the Democratic Party, mainly, according to a Democratic pollster, because of "values" issues -- they're more socially conservative, more religious, and more pro-life than well-educated women.

As a practical matter, it probably doesn't matter. More and more women are going to college, and non-college women will be a smaller and smaller pool of voters.

But they're a pool of voters the Democratic Party has stood up for going back to when my mother was a kid (when, she once told me, election day was celebrated in the Bronx by burning in effigy whoever was running against Franklin Roosevelt.) It would be bad enough if the Democratic Party lost those voters because it stopped standing up for them. But they're losing them because of very effective lies.

You know those bumper stickers that say "I'm pro-life and I vote"? I want one that says "I bake cookies and I'm a Democrat."

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Some people have accused President Bush of doing favors for the state of Florida only because his little brother is governor of the state. Republicans leap to his defense. Nepotism has nothing to do with it, they say, Bush is just trying to buy votes for 2004 in a shaky state.

Gee, it's great to see ethics back in the White House.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see the president back down on Iraq. But he's going about it in such a childish way -- trying to pretend he never said what he's on the record saying. Kids try to pull that scam all the time --I didn't say I'd be home by 10, mom, you must have imagined it. -- but they don't seriously expect to get away with it, and no grown-up should either. Surely we ought to be able to count on a little more maturity from a president.

Just under a year ago, Bush vowed he would get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Some of us said maybe that wasn't the best way to phrase it, that he might be "painting himself into a corner with his rhetoric" and that focusing too much attention on one man might prove counterproductive. It was an argument some of our staunchest allies agreed with. But most of us learned quickly that making that obvious point would quickly get us branded as terrorist-sympathizers, and stopped talking about it. We figured Bush would realize it for himself eventually, and of course he did. Having failed to catch bin Laden (for which he certainly should not be blamed), he never mentions his name anymore and pretends that catching him was never all that important in the first place.

Now, having realized that every time he mentions Iraq even his closest friends start looking pale, and Americans, now that they've had a chance to think about it, are growing less and less comfortable with the idea of a war, he's trying to get away with "Who me? Did I say anything about Iraq? I don't even know where Iraq is." He acts as if he is amused by press speculation about "the particular country that you seem to be riveted on." Donald Rumsfeld calls Iraq-talk (the press's, not theirs, of course) a "frenzy."

Hey, don't look at me, mom. I don't even know anybody named Saddam Hussein.

Unfortunately for them, it wasn't all that difficult for the LA Times to compile some old quotes.

Here in California, we will be watching the next couple of days to see how skillful a politician George Bush is. Can he come to the state, raise a few million dollars for Bill Simon's collapsing gubernatorial race, convince right-wing Californians (already on the endangered species list and desperate for a few kind words) that he loves their boy and is one of them, and at the same time not been photographed standing next to the priviledged son of a prominent Republican politician who is looking at a $78 million judgment in a corporate fraud case -- which might raise a few discomforting comparisons?

Bring your jogging shoes, Mr. Bush, you may have to move fast.

UPDATE:


Oops. Not fast enough.

FAITH KEPT STRANDED MAN ALIVE

There is an article in today's LA Times that I find both moving and strange. It expresses so much that is intriguing about the nature of faith.

Luis Cruz, a Salvadoran native who lives in the San Fernando Valley, was stranded for 12 days in Angeles National Forest with a fractured back before being rescued last Tuesday. Yesterday, from his hospital bed, he told reporters, "I was never afraid to die. I was in real pain, real tired...but God never left my side. I was never alone."

What I find strange is the preceding paragraph, in which the Times' reporter sums up the young man's statement. According to the reporter, he said that "he never lost his faith that he would survive the ordeal."

I suppose it's possible that Luis Cruz made two statements, one, which the reporter quoted indirectly (and which became the dramatic sub-head of the story), about his faith that he would survive, and a second about not fearing death. But the way it's written, it sounds as if the reporter didn't realize those were two very different, even contradictory statements. The first one you see all the time in newspapers, the second one far more rarely.

Whenever someone survives the seemingly unsurvivable, someone will say, "God must have been there," without thinking of the cruel flip side to that statement: Does it mean God was not there for all the innocents who have died? I certainly wouldn't criticize anyone else for saying such a thing, because I'm sure I've said it myself a few times. Although, if questioned, I'd have to admit I don't really mean it. I don't believe in a wish-granting, here-for-some-and-not-for-others God. A God like that would not be worthy of faith.

But for an awful lot of people who tell pollsters they believe in God, that's about all faith amounts to -- God as the uber-fairy godmother (or fairy godfather, I guess, since people who trot out their faith only when they have a wish to make would probably be uncomfortable with the concept of God as a mother, although "godfather" has some unfortunate cinematic connotations they might want to stay away from). The Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz school of theology.

But Luis Cruz's statement that he never feared death is the essence of faith. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Cruz describes an acceptance and a source of strength that can't really be found outside a life of faith. I can't be sure, but there is something in the tone of the article that makes me think that the reporter could not tell that Luis Cruz was talking about that kind of faith, not the more common and superstitious variety.

There is one other thing I found intriguing about this story. There's a picture of Luis Cruz with his cut and bruised hands holding a wooden rosary. That wouldn't be anything to remark upon, except that the article describes him as a "born-again Christian." Born-again is not a phrase that comes readily to the lips of Catholics I know, so I assume Luis Cruz is one of many Latin American converts to an evangelical church. And yet, wounded and in pain, he reaches for a rosary.

It seems to me that in some way a born-again Christian fingering a rosary might just be the quintessential image of what faith will look like in the 21st century. People will reach out to churches that make sense to them, that reflect their understanding of God, or will pursue their own ways of worship, and at the same time cling to old images and rituals that retain some spiritual meaning. Or they will stay in old churches, with comfortable rituals, and push the boundaries of those churches to see how far they'll stretch before they break. Luis Cruz's example says it works.

But it won't be easy. In a recent New Republic there was a review of Garry Wills' Why I Am A Catholic, which argued that Wills was fighting a losing battle in trying to be a liberal, open-minded, critical Catholic: "too loyal to be the best kind of critic and too critical to be meaningfully loyal." Poor Garry Wills. Conservative Catholics don't quite trust him (some even loathe him) and non-Catholics think he's wimping out. Personally, that alone makes me like him.

I definitely fall into the "too critical to be meaningfully loyal" category. I've been wounded by the Catholic Church so many times and in so many ways that for me to return to it would be like a battered woman returning to an abusive husband. I don't care how much he changes and finds religion, a woman is a fool if she goes back to a guy who beat up on her. And what is true for men is equally true for churches.

(I didn't choose the simile lightly. I am the battered daughter of a battered wife, who went back again and again largely because the Church told her to. The coddling of pedophile priests is not the only sin the Church needs to atone for.)

But I find Garry Wills' combination of loyalty and trueness to his own way interesting, inspiring and utterly worthy of respect, not all that different, really, from the struggle of the brave young woman whose name I borrow when I write here, hoping that she will also lend me a little bit of her courage and integrity.

I am not a Catholic. My hero is a Catholic saint. Like a born-again Christian reaching for a rosary.

Of course, there will be people who tell you that evangelical faith and Catholic ritual is a silly theological mix, and that you're either Catholic or you're not, believe it all without question, or get out.

But I'm not buying it, and I think fewer and fewer believers are. I live in California, the land of Jewish Buddhists and pagan Christians (Not a new concept, really. I often wear a small, gold Celtic cross, a cross with a circle around it, which I was told as a child, merged the Celts' old "sun" god with their new "son" god. I later learned that the story is probably a myth, but I don't care. I like it and I'm sticking by it.) I won't even blink twice the first time I meet someone who tells me she's a Jewish Muslim. What's the use of faith without miracles?

If I managed to make you feel guilty a few days ago about helping women in Afghanistan (causing guilt -- that's what I'm here for), but not quite guilty enough to call the White House to complain about President Bush's cut in the funds Congress appropriated for them, the Feminist Majority is making it really easy to do a good deed: Click here and it will take you a few seconds to e-mail the White House with your support for Afghan reconstruction. That's as cheap and easy a way of buying a clear conscience as you're going to find.

The era of Britney Spears in officially over. I don't know what is happening to her singing (or moaning, really) career, and I couldn't care less, but her real career -- teaching little girls how to dress and move -- is over. Dead. Don't bother to send flowers.

A year ago, my daughter, entering first grade, made a transition every mother dreads. When I took her to buy school clothes, I found that she'd moved out of the little girls' section (sizes 2-6X) and into the big girls' (sizes 7-14). Mothers confronted with this change have one universal reaction: What do you mean she's not a baby any more? She still has most of her baby teeth. Look at this baby fat. This is not a big girl.

Unfortunately, my daughter hit that transition in the worst possible year to officially become a big girl -- the year clothing manufacturers, who gear larger children's sizes to the taste of twelve-year-olds, decided that any self-respecting pre-adolescent (ranging down to chubby first graders) had only one goal in life: dressing like the beloved Britney.

Believe me, you do not want to see a six-and-a-half-year-old in see-through fabrics with her navel hanging out and BRAT written in spangles across her chest (and if you do want to see that, I don't want to know you).

Britney is bad enough. My daughter tried on clothes (which she did not get to take home) that made her look like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver.

Last year, a friend and I were talking in the school parking lot about the difficulty we'd had buying school clothes that summer, and my friend suddenly banged the hood of her car and yelled, "What ever happened to smocking? I want smocking!"

Smocking is back. Peter pan collars are back. Little plaid jumpers that the Brady Bunch girls would have worn are back. The closest thing to weird my daughter bought was an embroidered peasant blouse that looks like something I wore in high school. But I'll take 1971 hippie over 2001 hooker any day. She can have tie-dye, if she wants it -- as long as it covers her navel.

Little girls in little girls' clothes. This is what heaven looks like.

Last year, I dragged my daughter from store to store to store, thinking Please, God, a pair of cotton pants and a shirt that covers her stomach -- is that too much to ask?

This year -- one store. A little over an hour and the whole ordeal was done. There was so much to choose from that the hard part was not finding things, it was mustering the will power not to buy too much. Oooo, this one is so cute. Can't we just buy one more outfit? (Unfortunately, that was my question, not my daughter's. A model of mature shopping behavior I am not.)

My daughter goes back to school next Tuesday, and I am so looking forward to walking up the main hallway to her classroom the first day, and seeing hundreds of children looking like children.

You can go home now Britney. Maybe we'll let you come back if you promise to wear smocking.

I've just added two new links to my weblog list. Liberal Oasis not only has consistently interesting comments, it's got a pretty design as well. Ginger Stampley's What She Really Thinks is smart and entertaining, and combines the political and the personal in an always interesting way.

Jesus is the most controversial human being to ever walk the face of the planet, and people don't want to hear his name. -- Franklin Graham

If that were true, a man who said Jesus was his favorite philosopher would not be president and would not have asked Franklin Graham to pray at his inauguration. The Pope would not be on the front page of the newspaper. Tim LaHaye's books would be on the remainder tables.

Over the centuries, Jesus' name has proved itself to be a money-maker and a power-builder. Many people have become rich and powerful hiding behind that name.

It's not the name, it's the ideas people have a hard time with.

U.S. to Seek Mideast Reforms

The Bush administration intends to launch an effort this fall to promote democracy in the Middle East, combining the president's ambitious rhetoric -- and moves such as last week's rebuke of Egypt's human rights performance -- with dollars meant to improve political institutions and public debate in often repressive societies.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as early as next month will unveil a program aimed at promoting economic, education and political reform, including $25 million for pilot projects and additional millions for training political activists, journalists and trade union leaders, according to U.S. officials.

A central goal of the effort, which would include a review of the effectiveness of $1 billion in U.S. foreign aid to the Middle East, is to develop economic opportunities and political safety valves in a region that is home to significant anti-American sentiment.

This is potentially such good news that I'll tell that cynical little voice in the back of my head that says it's just p.r. to shut up for awhile. I knew some good would come of Colin Powell sticking it out and continuing to chip away Bush's ignorance and arrogance.

Of course words aren't enough. Bush will have to have the cajones to stand up to American "friends" in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. So far, he hasn't shown any sign of that courage. But this is a good first step. It's a verbal commitment to democratization. Let's hold him to his promise.

.......................
In a related vein, Thomas Friedman has a great piece today on why it is just as important to press for democracy in Saudi Arabia as it is in Iraq. It's provides a good background on the importance of this apparent change in policy.

Reporting from Afghanistan last week, Robert Fisk noted that while Americans have a well of Afghan good-will to draw on, the well isn't bottomless and it's showing signs of getting low. Afghans are growing increasingly frustrated with American arrogance. Today's NY Times reports a similar story, but in a more optimistic way. The Pentagon, the Times reports, is aware of the potential for alienating Afghans and is doing everything in its power to hold that support, including a greater commitment to avoiding civilian casualties.

I'm sure the Pentagon is aware of the problem and I'm sure they're doing their best. No one doubts the good intentions of American soldiers. Fisk's reporting suggests, however, that they may be trying to do a job they're unsuited for -- humanitarian intervention -- and interfering with the work of organizations that know what they're doing in this area. The military's alliance with thugs preying on their fellow Afghans doesn't help either.

I'm glad the Pentagon is aware of the problem, but I wish they were showing a little more awareness of their own contributions to it.

Amendments Give Musharraf Power to Dismiss Parliament

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said on Wednesday he would have the right to dismiss parliament as part of a package of constitutional amendments finalized after weeks of debate.

The decision restores to the president a key constitutional power which was taken away by the government of the last prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

In remarks carried by state television, Musharraf said that his plans for a National Security Council, a civilian-military body to monitor future governments, would be upheld despite strong opposition among political parties and many Pakistanis.

"The majority of people spoke against it. Some also spoke in its favour, but honestly, I think this (council) is very important and this will be done," he said.

Musharraf, who came to power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, said that the president would also have the right to name the chiefs of staff and the head of the joint chiefs of staff committee.

The proposed amendments were put forward in June but were rejected by mainstream political parties and legal bodies, who said they would cement the grip on power of the military, which has ruled Pakistan more than half its 55-year history.

Musharraf is clearly losing his hold on Pakistan and believes he can hang on if he tightens his grip.

I realize dealing with Pakistan is very complicated. No matter how committed we are to our faith in democracy and human rights, any rational person fears the results of a truly free election in a nuclear power teeming with hardline Islamic fundamentalists. And the democratic opposition to Musharraf is weak.

Musharraf's actions, though, look less like an attempt to keep the fanatics under control than an effort to keep genuine democratic opposition from offering alternatives to both theocracrats and military rulers. In the long run, that's a tragedy for Pakistan, and a danger to the rest of the world.

President Bush, to his credit, recently decided to turn down an increase in aid to Egypt to protest the jailing of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian pro-democracy advocate. It would be wonderful if that were the first step in a change in American policy in which we support moves toward democracy, not increasing dictatorship, in the Arab world. Bush's reaction to Musharraf's move will be interesting to see.

Ann Coulter says "her people" live in Queens. A resident of Queens replies, and demonstrates some of the lessons Coulter might have learned if there were any truth in her claim.

NOTE: Thank you to the reader who recommended this story to me.

UPDATE: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I didn't realize that the reader who called my attention to this story was also its talented author. Thank you to the author/ reader (who wishes to remain anonymous), for permission to link to your post, and for writing such an honest and moving story.

The Republican Party loses another voter

''After the terrorist attacks, I was so angry that I really didn't care to learn anything about Muslims. But I know now that refusing to learn is what causes more anger and confusion.'' -- Matthew Dale, 18, a freshmen at the University of North Carolina after a discussion of Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, a book a conservative Christian group asked the court to block.

No wonder they wanted to block the book. If it weren't for anger and confusion, who would vote Republican?

Thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden for pointing me in the direction of this insightful piece on religion and politics by Sam Coopersmith at Liberal Desert. It's a topic that's been gnawing at me for a long time, too -- the way politicians call themselves Christians (or, in a few cases, deeply religious Jews -- anyone come to mind, here?), wrap themselves up in a mantle of faith (with its presumption of virtue) and expect people to take their religious faith into consideration when they go into the voting booth, and yet somehow it's considered bad form, even bigoted, to criticize a politician because of those beliefs.

For me, the worst example of that was when, during the election, George Bush called Jesus his favorite philosopher. The press took the remark badly, but it seemed to me they did so for the wrong reason. The press on the whole is far less religious than most Americans, and they often act as if the only way you can keep church and state separate is if politicians have no religious beliefs at all, or at least have the good grace not to mention them in anything beyond the most ceremonial and trivial way.

I have no problem with Bush talking about Jesus' influence on his life. But once he raised the issue, he should have had to explain it. He should have had to explain how Jesus taught him to use his business connections to scam investors and to mock a woman on death row who asked for clemency. If Jesus is so important to him, he ought to have to explain what Jesus would have to say about a follower who seems so anxious to play at war and does not show any interest in the victims left in the wake of that war.

And if he can't give convincing answers, the rest of us ought to feel perfectly free to say, sorry, but that isn't any kind of Christianity I recognize.

When President Bush decided last week to block 5.1 billion dollars in spending approved by Congress, it got a lot of negative press, mainly because several of the things being cut were politically popular. Cutting money for firefighters and ground zero rescue personnel, veterans' medical care, and domestic security doesn't seem like the smartest political move ever made.

When a president makes mistakes on that level, it's easy to miss smaller, or at least less politically deadly mistakes. So another cut didn't get a lot of notice: 134 million dollars for Afghan humanitarian aide, including 2.5 million dollars for the Ministry of Women's Affairs, which planned to use the money to build women's centers focusing on health, education, and vocational programs.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that Laura Bush was on the radio telling us that "The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women. " I guess at some point, when we weren't paying attention (and how often do we pay attention to the needs of poor women?) that stopped being true.

Two organizations -- Women's Edge and CARE -- are organizing a call-in campaign to the White House urging the release of the aide money. I'll make my obligatory call, mainly because I'd feel guilty if I didn't (hey, what good is Catholic school if it doesn't make you feel guilty the rest of your life when you don't do the right thing?)

But I don't feel very hopeful about this. If this president considers fire fighters and veterans expendable, what chance do Afghan women have?

A few years ago, Maureen Dowd won a Pultizer Prize for commentary for op-ed pieces on the Lewinsky affair that had no purpose except as a vehicle for Dowd to display her cynical and nasty cleverness. The Pulitzer Prize Committee could redeem itself after that moment of insanity by recognizing the remarkable achievement of Paul Krugman, whose stunning prose, willingness to say what no other mainstream voice has the courage to say, and ability to make complex issues comprehensible without sacrificing their complexity has been a godsend in recent months.

Krugman is especially good today, discussing the fake populism of George Bush. Don't miss it.

Conservatives are mad at the NEA. I suppose thatÕs somewhat redundant, isnÕt it? Conservatives come into the world angry and spend the rest of their lives hunting for places to pin that anger. For some reason, teachers always make a handy target.

The anger, in this case, is fairly specific.

September 11th will arrive not long after the school year begins. Two or three weeks with a new group of kids -- kids teachers have barely gotten to know -- and they are going to have to face a horrible anniversary with those children.

Welcome to school, boys and girls. We're going to have a wonderful year. Now let's talk about death. Let's try to make sense of evil.

Teachers are free to ignore the anniversary, of course. They can pretend that children donÕt watch television after they go home from school and that they donÕt notice the odd looks on their parentsÕ faces all day.

(I was ten years old when John Kennedy was shot, and my most vivid memory of that day is the way, when you asked a grown up a question, they just stared at you, and stared, and stared, and staredÉas if language itself had died.)

You can try to ignore it -- if you are an absolutely worthless teacher. People without children and people who are too important and too busy for their children (you know, the "family values" crowd) believe the schools are full of such teachers. I have two kids in school, and IÕve seen very few worthless teachers.

(One thing I have learned over the years: the less time people spend in schools, the more they think they know about them. Those of us who work and volunteer in classrooms are far less certain than people who haven't been in a classroom in decades.)

September 11th is an anniversary teachers are dreading and wondering how to deal with far more than the rest of us -- and the topic wasnÕt covered in education classes. Somehow Piaget and Dewey didnÕt foresee Osama bin Laden.

So the National Education Association decided to help those teachers out with suggestions for how to recognize the anniversary, depending on the age of the students.

Conservatives read about this in their conservative paper, The Washington Times, which told them that the lesson plans would encourage teachers to "discuss historical instances of American intolerance," so that the American public avoids "repeating terrible mistakes."

What seems to have angered The Washington Times so much is a potential lesson on Tolerance in Times of Trial, which asks students to consider the ways legitimate anger at a countryÕs actions more than fifty years ago sometimes translated into a racist hatred of Americans who had originally come from that country. It asks students to understand both the anger (write a letter from the point of view of a "parent or spouse of a U.S. soldier killed by German or Japanese soldiers during World War II") and the innocent and misplaced victim of that anger ( write a letter from the point of view of a "recent German or Japanese immigrant, living in the U.S. during World War II" ). That history has some pretty obvious resonance in our time. And looking at the reaction of Americans more than a half century ago and comparing it to the response of Americans this year says something very good about this country, something that ought to incite more genuine patriotism than all the flag factories combined: we havenÕt made the same mistake. And as IÕve said before, a good deal of the credit for that goes to someone conservatives claim to admire.

And yet somehow conservatives, hearing that American children might be asked to take seriously the presidentÕs plea to distinguish between evil people and good people who share their religion or ethnic background, came to the conclusion that asking children to understand racism and intolerance would teach them that "America is racist, sexist, and imperialist" and would drive from their innocent minds the knowledge that America is "a place where the FDNY and the NYPD selflessly put themselves in harms way to save the men and women trapped in the World Trade Center."

Conservatives apparently believe that intolerance keeps the patriotic fires burning.

Or maybe they simply believe that American children are so small-minded and small-hearted that they cannot simultaneously care about more than one group of people at a time.

LetÕs give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume simple ignorance. They overlooked the lessons on patriotism and heroism. Certainly they overlooked the part of the lesson plan entitled Remembering the Uniformed Heroes at the World Trade Center, which asks students to choose one hero to write about, so that they can truly understand the enormous loss of each individual human being and celebrate their heroism. The lesson reminds students that when the history books are written, they will probably only list numbers of casualties. It reminds them that those numbers (like all the numbers they learn in their history books) represent human beings.

ThatÕs something liberals do -- we look past numbers at human beings. We care about individual human lives. IÕm sorry if that offends conservatives. IÕm sorry if they find that politically incorrect. ItÕs a little peculiarity of ours -- we care more about people than symbols, numbers and abstractions.

That isnÕt the only thing the lesson will ask of students, of course. It asks them to think about what it means to be a hero and what is an appropriate way to deal with our grief and memorialize those who died. Those seem to me questions that we are all asking ourselves. They've been in our heads and our conversations for almost a year. I don't see any reason to exclude high school students from the conversation.

As a mother, IÕm deeply offended by conservatives carping about my kidsÕ teachers' attempts to do a very difficult job. I wish they would just put their anger to rest for one day. On that very difficult day, teachers all across this country are going to be accomplishing something better than anything most of us will do in our lifetimes. They will try to help children feel safer, stronger and more in control in a threatening and confusing world. I have very little respect for people who think they have accomplished something by making that job harder.

(Story via Atrios, Max, and especially Kevin Raybould, who's written the definitive comments on the topic.)

I have cousins in Tennessee who think Elvis will always be king, but Saint Elvis?

Talk about a change of heart. A year ago, David Corn wrote a piece in The Nation headlined Al, Don't Run, arguing that Gore was a horrible campaigner and an unbelievable populist, and that Democrats ought to do everything they could to discourage him from running. His latest piece is called All For Gore in '04. The reason for the change is not a re-evaluation of Gore's populist credentials, but a sense that only Gore can stop Joe Lieberman from running.

At this point, I'll take any Democrat, including Lieberman, over Bush. But I think David Corn's change of heart is interesting and may reflect an increasing willingness of people on the left to accept the good and not hold out for the perfect.

I hope so.

Just to start Monday with some good news

Freedom House reports that the number of freely elected governments in the world has continued to climb, reaching 121 of the world's 192 independent countries this year.

More good news about the growth of democracy around the world.

On blogging as an art form and a writer's worst nightmare

I don't have a place for comments on this site for two reasons. One is ineptitude. I once wasted a couple of hours trying to add them and it just wouldn't work. My computer skills are minimal, to put it mildly, and I figured if it was going to be that much trouble, it wasn't meant to be.

But the truth is, if I were one hundred percent convinced I really wanted them, I probably would have kept playing with the HTML until I got it right. My incompetence just provided an excuse to do what my instincts were already telling me: don't give up control.

I'm a writer in part because I'm a control freak -- and writing is something you can control. (Unless you have a really bad editor -- and I'm the only writer I know who doesn't have a single bad editor story to tell.) I polish stories until they are as perfect as I can make them. I've had a few stories land on the page needing little revision (thank you, God), but in most cases, I do hundreds of drafts. Galleys are hell for me, because at the last moment I always see far more changes I'd still like to make than I know even the kindest editor will let me get away with.

Blogging is already a loss of control. It's fast and unpolished, closer to journal writing than traditional published writing -- and yet it's public. Unless you have an ego far larger than mine, an absolute conviction that every word you write is gold, you realize that you've just invited people in to look at the messy and sometimes incredibly dumb contents of your brain. I usually proof-read what I write a couple of times, but for someone who's used to spending months on stories, and even a few days doing last minute proof-reading before putting a story in the mail, that doesn't feel like much. I hit publish, and send posts out into the world (a small world, admittedly, but the world nonetheless), knowing there are uncaught typos, misused words, awkward phrasings, and spelling errors a sixth grader shouldn't have made. Worse, there are ideas that if I'd thought about them for a day or so would make me recoil at their shallowness or wrong-headedness. I've looked at several posts a few days after I've written them and thought, What in the world made me say that?

I feel obligated to leave the dumb ideas there as well as the reasonable ones. I'm not sure why. When I write what I realize is a hopeless story, I have no mixed feelings about throwing it in the trash. But somehow this is different.

Comments would take away even more control. I like getting e-mail from people about things I've written, but I'm not sure I want to open it up to the point that anyone can put anything they want on here. I feel about this site the way my daughter feels about her teddy bear -- this is mine, nobody can touch it.

Yet I sometimes find other people's comments fascinating. One of the best threads I've read recently began with Patrick Nielsen Hayden's comments on the debate over Spinsanity's attack on Media Whores Online. Patrick's initial remarks -- basically agreeing with Spinsanity -- were interesting, mainly because they differed from almost everyone else's, but they weren't detailed. At first, I agreed with all the defenders of MWO, although my own defense was pretty tepid, reflecting, I think, some rather mixed feelings about MWO.

Reading through the comments on Patrick's post, though, my mixed feelings started hardening into the anti-MWO camp. I won't get into the reasons I changed my mind. If you read through the thread and watch Patrick refine and develop his idea, I think he makes the case eloquently and convincingly. I have nothing to add.

What interests me right now, though, is not so much the idea itself as the way it came about -- developed and deepened by the give and take on the comments board.

I got interested in doing this blog in part because it's a kind of writing I don't know how to do. In fact, it's a kind of writing nobody knows how to do yet. Everyone is still sort of figuring out what works and what doesn't. Can you mix the personal and the political? How much and in what way? How creative can you get with links before it starts getting merely annoying? Are there any real rules and forms at all? (Probably not yet, but eventually there will be. What constituted a novel stayed a pretty open concept for awhile -- and those early is this a novel? novels are some of my favorites.)

I know how to write an essay, a story, a prose-poem, a sonnet and villanelle. I have no idea how to do what I'm doing at the moment, and if you love writing, that not knowing is exciting.

It's also exciting when you begin to see a form develop. A comments board, at its worst, is nothing but people cutting each other, but at its best, it's a kind of group essay that forces everyone to think and rethink until it comes to a meaningful end. In a really good personal essay, you usually see the writer's thoughts evolve. On a good comments board, you watch several people evolve, overlap, come together, and come apart. Sometimes it works so well -- as it does in the comments I mentioned -- that it's hard to believe it's organic. It looks choreographed.

I have a feeling this may be one of those posts that embarrasses me the day after I write it -- old comparative literature students have to find some strange way of using their useless skills at literary analysis -- but I find something really intriguing and potentially artistic in that.

UPDATE My iffy feelings about comments, however, just hardened into a definite no. I just got my first truly nasty (and semi-literate) e-mail. I'm afraid that sort of thing brings out the English teacher in me. Semi-literate bothers me at least as much as nasty (and anyway, I'm a firm believer that there's a connection between the two.) I'm not putting anything on my site unless I can red pencil the errors.

But I appreciate it when other people do it. I guess that's my own little piece of hypocrisy.