AmbivaBlog

10:17 and. . .

Kerry is making a much better impression than I thought he could. The debate format is more alive and contentious than it sounded like it would be, and the touches of human civility (dad to dad) have been most welcome. Diehard partisans on both sides will see, and spin, this debate as confirming their preconceptions. But for swing voters like me, Kerry may have made a mark.

His best point on Iraq, I thought, was that it is important to convince the Iraqi people that we're not there to stay indefinitely. While we mustn't cut and run and abandon them in this chaotic interregnum, in the long run and in principle, they don't want us occupying them.

- amba

The Last Cyber-Naïf

Today I was telling my friend who cuts my hair at Bumble and bumble* about blogs, and -- he'd never heard of them! When I expressed my amazement, he told me he had a boyfriend a while back who was unpleasantly, sneakily addicted to the Internet, and it so put him off that he only finally got over it and got online three months ago.

So he knows what kind of computer he wants, and he knows it's called a "flaptop." (Makes more sense than the actual name, right?) So he goes into the computer store, sees a sign that says "Laptops," and he's like, "Where's the f ?"

He asked me, "So, what do you do when you go to a . . . ? Glob?"

I told him that you can put your toe in any one of them and it leads to the whole ocean. Since he's as tortured about this election as I am, I suggested he start with Andrew Sullivan's glob.

It was touching.

- amba

*No, I'm not rich. My mom sends me gift certificates because she knows taking care of a 6'2", 250-pound disabled man can be a bit of a tough slog sometimes, and that getting a really, really good haircut cheers me up. She isn't even rich herself. (She also just sent me Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Thanks, Ma!)

Raunchy, sexy, bitterly funny

Everybody else is obsessing about the debates. Until 9 PM when reality has to be faced, I'm gonna curl up, suck my thumb and console myself by obsessing about my current favorite TV show: "Rescue Me."

You have to understand that "The Sopranos" ruined television for me. I used to watch stuff like "NYPD Blue" and "ER," but "The Sopranos" just leaves even the "best" of regular TV in the dust. The writing is so swift and dense and witty, the dilemmas so mortal and universal, the hilarity so mordant, the characters so morally piebald -- compared to something like "CSI-NY," "The Sopranos" looks like life itself. (One telling reaction I have to it: I have to see every episode -- and then I never want to see it again. It's past "entertainment." It's too real. I don't want to replay Tony and Carm's separation any more than I'd want to replay my own.) I've tried to watch ordinary series since "The Sopranos" spoiled me, but I can't. I can usually see every plot point coming ten miles away, and even when I can't, the surprises are gratuitously bizarre. I get bored. I don't care.

So when they started advertising "Rescue Me" as "the best thing on TV since 'The Sopranos,'" I was like, yeah, right. I tried watching it, though -- there was nothing else to watch but cable news -- and at first, I didn't like it much. The pacing was so spacy and laconic, and Denis Leary was so inert. He doesn't really act, he's just there, even in sex scenes. I didn't get any real sense that his character, fireman Tommy Gavin, was seething with suppressed emotion. He just seemed inexpressive and affectless.

But boy, has the show grown on me. The first thing that got to me was, it's funny. (Well, I'd hope so, Leary's a comedian.) Actually, funny/sad/funny. (This is what they call a "dramedy" -- a dreadful word that sounds like it means a shot of Scotch taken to prevent seasickness while riding a camel.) It's the first show that really captures the taste and tang of life in NYC after 9/11 -- that memory of smoke on the tongue. But no matter how potentially poignant the situation, the balance always tips toward laughter. When a character attempts suicide by carbon monoxide on this show, he fails -- because there's only an eighth of a tank in the car. Next episode, he's got a new scheme for betting on the horses. Tommy's screwing the widow of his cousin and best friend who died in the towers, and because he feels guilty about it, he gets into a fistfight with his priest, which you just know is Part II of a schoolyard brawl from 30 years ago. There are enough deadpan, throwaway lines in "Rescue Me" to give "The Sopranos" a run for its money. For instance, describing a mid-op transsexual who's climbed a tree in Central Park as a protest, one of the firefighters says, "He's got two tits and he's saving up to buy a vagina." Tommy says under his breath, "Isn't everybody?" If you weren't listening carefully, you could miss it. I love writing that demands and rewards that kind of attention.

"Rescue Me" is wonderfully politically incorrect (Tommy tells an obnoxious woman firefighter she has two uses as far as he's concerned -- "you can give me a blowjob or you can make me a sandwich"), bracingly obscene -- sex, of every persuasion, seems to be these guys' biggest diversion, drug, joke and solace -- and aromatically male. I don't know if this is must-see TV in firehouses, but what I maybe like best of all about the show is the way it feels like New York firefighters are the audience Denis Leary really wants to please. (According to a review reprinted at firehouse.com, "Leary himself lost a firefighter cousin in an earlier incident and has set up a foundation that aids firefighters and their families.")

And as if all that weren't enough, the man is as sexy as an alleycat.

- amba

Dragging toward the debates

I'm not drawn in by the artificially jacked-up media hoopla about tomorrow night's debate. Of course the media still need the election to be a horserace (as in Chris Matthews' candidly titled "Hardball Horserace") to keep us all watching. And I will watch, although I anticipate it with sheer nausea. But I'm sure it's over, that Kerry is a goner by his own hand, that Bush will win handily on Nov. 2, despite the high levels of unease about his reckless handling of Iraq and the deficit. This is the Democrats' doing (or undoing), and an astonishing anti-achievement it is.

- amba

Who faked those memos, anyway?

This forthcoming Atlantic Monthly piece by Joshua Green makes it clear that it is not so very far-fetched after all to speculate that Karl Rove might have been behind the faking of the Rathergate memos. In this race, even paranoids have one very ruthless enemy.

A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove's client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. [. . . ] Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed up -- absent any trace of who was behind them -- viciously attacking See and his family. "We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people," the staffer says. "You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags.' So I borrowed a buddy's car [and drove] down the middle of the street ? I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I'd cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees." The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order "to create a backlash against the Democrat," as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. "They just beat you down to your knees," Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove's attacks. See won the race.

Me and My Meme

I've always thought it would be cool to inaugurate a meme -- to watch anonymously as some fashion trick, slang expression or bumper-sticker slogan you'd coined in a moment of minor inspiration leapt from your family and friends, reached critical mass and raced through the culture. (Who first came up with "Phat"? Eyebrow-piercing? "Re-defeat Bush"?) Well, I finally did it - but it's not exactly what I had in mind.

The first time I tied my laundry bag to the handle of the dryer in which my laundy was whirling, I did it just because I had to run some errands and didn't feel like carrying the bag around with me, but didn't want to leave it lying around unclaimed for someone perhaps to walk off with. That was a couple of months ago. Now, I walk into the laundromat and see bags of all kinds -- canvas, plastic -- stuffed into or tied to the handles of their respective dryers, something I'd never seen before. I'm guessing that the idea of staking a territorial claim to your own dryer -- putting a unique personal marker on it, so you could find it fast and others would not -- was irresistible. Since bags are as various as their owners, it's even a little flaunt of individuality in the ranks of identical machines.

I feel as absurdly proud as if I were the first monkey to wash a potato, but the truth is, it's not a very adaptive meme. The heat of the dryer could damage some kinds of bags; maybe it's even a fire hazard. Eventually the Korean guy who owns the laundromat will probably have to put a stop to it, and my meme will die a natural death right there in the Collegiate Laundromat where it was born.

A Defense of Marriage

Here, in the 9/26/04 New York Times Book Review, is the best piece on gay marriage since David Brooks' column, although my gay friends may not like my saying so. (The small pain in the butt is that you have to register, free, at the Times website to read it. The big pain in the butt is that one day soon it will go into the archives, and then you'll have to pay $2.50 to read it. So get it while it's hot.) It's Slate political correspondent William Saletan's review of two new books on gay marriage. Historian George Chauncey's Why Marriage? documents the reality that, pace the religious right, the definition of marriage is far from God-given and immutable, but has changed repeatedly over the centuries, and will inevitably change again. (You don't have to go very far back, for instance, to find a time when wives were property and "spousal rape" was an oxymoron.) Legal advocate Evan Wolfson's Why Marriage Matters makes the antidiscrimination case for gays' equal right to marry. But Saletan points out that both Wolfson and Chauncey want to have their wedding cake and eat it too: all the rights and dignity of marriage without drawing the clear (if often enough crossed) line between sexual liberty and sexual commitment that today is the beleaguered heart of the meaning of marriage. Both authors apparently paint the expectation of fidelity as an oppressive, meddling moral tyranny. And that, not the gender of one's partner, is the change that goes too far for mainstream acceptance, in Saletan's view. In the utopia of universal tolerance and easy honor these writers envision, he says,

you would be forbidden to treat others differently based on their behavior. You would be free to express anything but your morals. . . This larger menace -- the abolition of moral discrimination -- is what frightens reasonable people . . . They worry that marriage is losing its meaning and being supplanted by less stable relationships. Wolfson and Chauncey vindicate their fears. . . . None of this radicalism, confusion or fear is necessary. We can absorb gay marriage into our society not because it's gay but because it's marriage. It's compatible with the moral distinctions we already understand and treasure. We don't have to honor every lifestyle we tolerate or treat cohabitation like marriage. It's the enemies of gay marriage who want to make this debate an all-or-nothing, order-or-chaos proposition. Let's not help them.

In other words -- and Saletan directs this at shacked-up straights as well as gays -- if you want the name and all its perquisites, play the game. Make a commitment more noble and difficult than "as long as we both shall feel like it." And then give it your earnest best.

- amba

UPDATE: Note that gay people didn't invent having your wedding cake and eating it too. There's polyamory, open marriage, swinging. Still, I think it's accurate to say that heterosexuals who intend to have multiple sexual partners generally honor the institution of marriage by staying out of it.

Double ouch

It's not often that Andrew Sullivan and Michael Moore agree, but here's Sullivan on why Kerry is losing despite widespread unhappiness with Iraq and the economy:

There are many theories, but the simplest explanation may be the best. John Kerry is a lousy candidate. Just watch him. His voice is a downer; his body-language is stooped and defensive; he appears aloof and prolix. He never says in ten words what he can say in thirty. He sums up a lot of the characteristics of many failed Democratic candidates over the years - from the cramped vision of Michael Dukakis to the torpid drone of Walter Mondale. . . . when people took a close look at Kerry, they winced. I mean, even Democrats winced.

And here's Moore, in a widely circulated e-mail:

If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win!

Moore nonetheless harangues Democrats to "quit complaining and work with what we have." Sullivan recognizes that the general Democratic sentiment is, "He'll do. And we have to get Bush out." But Andrew shakes his head: "It's not enough." He concludes that many people are now calculating, "Better to be strong and wrong than indecisive and paralyzed."

What a choice!! And more fodder for my repeated contention in this blog that it may just be time for the Democratic party to die and make room for something more viable.

(Read also Sullivan's 9/23 posts "Bush's Latest Argument" and "Bush Haters for Bush.")

- amba

"Pull our troops out and nuke 'em"

A conversation at the veterinarian's yesterday during surgery. One of the vets (male) had watched the horrific new beheading video, "because I think we ought to know what's really going on out there," and it had stoked his rage. "Man, when I see something like that I think maybe we should just pull our troops out of there and nuke 'em."

"Nuke whom? Like you're only going to get the guys who did it? If we're no better than 'them,' what's left to defend?"

We came up with a better fantasy: élite, Arabic-speaking Special Forces, infiltrators and assassins as prepared to kill and die for the cause of freedom as the jihadis are for the cause of death, only far more selectively. But isn't life in a wealthy democracy too soft to produce such warriors to defend it?

According to a friend, a Special Forces Vietnam vet who spent two decades in military intelligence and is still deeply connected, the answer is "No." It's not just a fantasy.

Job one: Get Zarqawi.

-amba

Ouch

Mark Steyn on John Kerry:

If Karl Rove had labored for a decade to produce a walking parody of the contemporary Democratic Party’s remoteness, condescension, sense of entitlement, public evasiveness and tortured relationship with military matters, he couldn’t have improved on John F Kerry.

And:

Howard Dean was a dull centrist governor pretending to be nuts, John Kerry is a nut passing himself off as a dull centrist.

I haven't had the heart to blog on Kerry's manufactured new "forcefulness." I heard him on NPR in the car today. The man doesn't know the difference between a speech and an interview. Instead of answering questions thoughtfully and spontaneously, he kept coughing up these canned "aggressive" lines from his stump speech. They were ridiculously out of context. He sounded so mechanical, as if somebody had wound him up and told him what to say. I couldn't stand the sound of his voice. (Thanks to travelingshoes for reminding me that I also heard him evade the question of whether he would send more troops to Iraq if the military leadership asked for them -- implying that he would not, plainly because he thinks that's what the Democratic base wants to hear. Again, the calculation, the dodge, audible in his voice. No wonder I can't stand it.)

It looks like the Bush arc has to play itself out, one way or the other. If Iraq miraculously stabilizes, Bush will look like a hero and a visionary. If it disintegrates, he will look like a reckless idiot. Who would wish for the latter outcome even to say I told you so? The insidious trap Bush has boldly led us into is this: we must display resolve and determination for Iraq to have even a chance of pulling through. But how far do we take it? Since we cannot afford to lose, will we just get dragged deeper and deeper and deeper into war? We seem to be betting that our enemy's strength is shallow, that this all-out attempt to derail elections is something of a bluff and will be spent if we hang tough. We've misunderestimated them before. If we're wrong again, then it's a no-win situation. If we leave, we lose, and if we stay, we lose. (And of course the Iraqis lose the most. By going in without sufficient force to secure the peace and the infrastructure, we damn near "destroyed their country in order to save it.")

Here's how high the stakes are: if the liberation of Iraq fails, at the cost of thousands of American and ten times as many Iraqi lives, it will be added to the long list of atrocities committed in the name of ideals. Crusade, anyone?

- amba