Many of you probably have heard about the recent deadly earthquake in China. I was looking at some photographs of the situation on the New York Times website. I came across this photograph of two boys trapped in the rubble. The caption for this photo is "Boys trapped under a collapsed building awaited rescue"


This photo of these two boys who are not being helped by the photographer reminds me of artist Banky's rendition of a similar theme:


Let's stop treating people--especially children--like news stories. They are humans--who are suffering and need assistance more than they need glamor shots.

Labels: banksy, children, China, earthquake, media, New York Times, reporters, segen

Note: The following exercise in Obama wankery and bitching about the media is only for those with a high tolerance for such things. All others should use caution. In other words...

We won, bitches! Suck it!


Buck B: Can I just say that this is the fucking awesomest thing ever?

Brian Pierce: I keep thinking that it's finally, finally over, and then realize there's a whole general election campaign left

Buck B: Yes. But I was a lot more worried about Hillary than I was about whoever the Republicans nominated.

Brian Pierce: I'm not worried as much as I am exhausted. But, yeah, it's a fun night. Nice to see none of the nonsense the past few weeks has hurt him.

Buck B: Amazing, really. Maybe people are actually. waking up.

Brian Pierce: Yeah, for all the talk about Obama not responding effectively, it seems like in reality he has an almost uncanny ability to cut through bullshit in a way that is actually persuasive to voters.

Buck B: It's called "telling the truth".

Brian Pierce: No kidding! I think it's not so much that people are waking up, but that the media has this weird view of what "regular people" think that kind of assumes they're all really dumb. So you hear a lot of talk about, "Well, Hillary may be totally full of shit on the gas tax holiday, but it's good politics!"

Buck B: Right. The media won't just give the candidates to the people directly and let them make up their minds, they think they have to analyze it for them. It's hard to build a convincing case in 15-second sounds bites followed by five minutes of analysis.

Brian Pierce: And analyze it not based on what's true, but what's "effective."

Buck B: Yup. With "effectiveness" based on absolutely no empirical evidence.

Brian Pierce: I mean, it should be extraordinarily offensive every time some pundit says that this gas tax holiday stuff was good politics and then in the same breath say that it's bad policy. Yet they say it totally un-self-consciously. Even though there's no way that could be true unless you are saying, "The American people are too stupid to understand they're being lied to."

Buck B: Well...unfortunately, that's at least partly true. But that's why it's so important the media take on the role of informing them. And not reporting on them like they're some sort of amusing beast.

Brian Pierce: Yeah, it's true to great extent because the media doesn't even attempt to ascertain whether the claims politicians are making are true or false. Every time I see Tim Russert chuckling about spin I want to punch him in the face.

Buck B: That's why I prefer partisan media.

Brian Pierce: Ideological media.

Buck B: I don't like wasting energy trying to figure out how a reporter is responding to spin. I want to know what his position is from the start. Who the fuck's side is Russert on? What is he doing? No one knows.

Brian Pierce: And because Tim Russert doesn't have a particular stake in anything, there's much more of a focus on game-playing.

Buck B: Yes. Surprisingly, taking a particular side makes you focus more on issues and less on politics.

Brian Pierce: In part because a focus on politics leads the public to view everybody as being the same, because it's just this confusing haze of spin. But if you're trying to advocate one side, you're going to be jumping up and down trying to draw clear distinctions on issues.

Buck B: And because you assumably believe in what you're advocating, you're going to want to build sound and convincing arguments.

Brian Pierce: That's why I used the term "ideological media" before, rather than "partisan." If you're advocating a particular point of view (as opposed to being purely partisan), you will be willing to call even candidates of your own party on shit you don't like. Fox News is just a partisan version of CNN, but with all the same flaws as CNN that we're talking about.

Buck B: Good point. That kind of distinction might be the eventual death of the two-party system.

Labels: Barack Obama, media, politics

So I'm watching MSNBC for the Pennsylvania results, and Rachel Maddow makes the sensible and largely uncontroversial point that how Barack Obama performs against Hillary Clinton in a Democratic primary has little relation to how Barack Obama might perform against John McCain in a general election. Pat Buchanan then responds by calling this a "Marxist dialectic." Maddow then looks at Buchanan like he's a mental patient. Priceless stuff.

Labels: Brian, entertainment, media

A new Rasmussen poll has this to report concerning the recent "news" about Obama and his pastor:

Overall, voters are evenly divided as to whether Obama should resign his membership in the Church—42% say that he should while 40% disagree.

Is it just me, or is that sentence truly sickening? We're really a country that feels that comfortable telling a politician to resign his membership in a church?

Just out of morbid curiosity, do any readers here really, truly, actually care about this at all?

This is a pretty good rundown of the absurd media coverage of this story, particularly about 4:20 into it when it shows a pretty great exchange among Chris Wallace, Sen. Dodd, and Sen. Schumer on Fox News Sunday.

All this looks like it could be leading to this becoming the new attack on Obama: saying "What do we really know about Barack Obama?" over and over again.

Is that unfair? I'd say so. Is it racially charged? Absolutely. Does it make Geraldine Ferraro look like a moron? Clearly.

But I guess this is just the way it goes. Unless, by some chance, voters choose to reject it and actually vote for the guy running the kind of campaign they always say they want to see run.

On a lighter note, here is Tracy Morgan commenting on the racial politics of this presidential campaign on Saturday Night Live. Pretty quality.

Update: This news that Obama will be giving a major speech tomorrow on Wright in particular and racial politics in general makes me excited. (And honestly, how often can anybody - even political junkies - say they get excited to hear about a politician giving a speech? This is that whole "hope" thing people keep talking about.)

Later Update: This is spectacular.

Labels: 2008, Brian, media, politics, race

The Clinton campaign has been complaining for a long time that the media has been biased against her and has largely been giving Obama a free pass. And I want to say at the outset that I absolutely agree with that.

But at the same time, why is Hillary Clinton at this point not being treated the same way that Mike Huckabee was treated? For a very long time, Huckabee's name was not mentioned by pundits without immediately noting that it was almost mathematically impossible for him to win based on the delegate count. It is a similarly impossible-seeming battle for Hillary Clinton, and yet there is much less bewilderment on the part of the media as to her choosing to stay in the race right now. Again, I think Hillary has every right to rail against the media's treatment of her through much of this race. But right now, the media seems to me like the only reason she's still breathing. In this way, while she's gotten unfair treatment due to the fact that (1) she's a woman and (2) she's not particularly charming, she's also gotten an unfair advantage due to the fact that she is a famous establishment figure in the Democratic party.

Labels: 2008, Brian, media, politics

Okay, so as I've said before, I liked this first song, but this one is both annoying and kind of creepy, isn't it? The whole "Obama" repetition makes me feel like it's more about worshiping this one human being rather than what I think is the more sensible position of being excited about an energized and mobilized electorate.

Labels: 2008, Brian, entertainment, media, politics

I'm twenty-two years old. I don't have any kids. I don't even have a boyfriend. Taking care of a family is the furthest thing from my mind. So I fully recognize that this Hillary Clinton ad is not directed at people like me:



My question is: are the people this ad is directed at (mothers) going to find this persuasive? I mean, somebody looking at it from my perspective with my cultural biases looks at this and thinks it's really hokey and dumb. And when I hear Barack Obama respond to it by saying, "I will never see the threat of terrorism as a way to scare up votes," I want to cheer. But, again, I don't have any "children sleeping safely in bed" or whatever. I do live in Washington, DC, and I do go to school down the street from probably the highest-priority target for a terrorist attack in the world (the Capitol Building), but I'm also young and invincible and don't think about stuff like that.

I know there aren't a huge number of parents who read Urbanagora, but for those of you who are out there: does this have any persuasive power at all? If not, is it just because you don't find Hillary's case for why she would be the best person to "answer the phone at 3 am" compelling, or is the ad itself just not persuasive (in other words, if it were a John McCain ad, would you be more persuaded?)? Just curious.

Update: Ezra Klein points out here that the maker of this Hillary ad is the same maker of the famous Mondale "red phone" ad that attacked Gary Hart.

Labels: 2008, Brian, foreign policy, media, politics

David Shuster is now back on the air with MSNBC's Hardball. A quick recap: He was temporarily suspended for saying that he thought it was unseemly for the Hillary Clinton campaign to have Chelsea on the campaign trail, and specifically he said the campaign was "pimping her out." After initially trying to defend his remarks, he apologized. Hillary Clinton's campaign threatened to pull out of an MSNBC debate if MSNBC didn't take action, and Shuster was suspended. As a brief aside: while Hillary was threatening to pull out of the MSNBC debate, she was urging Obama to do a debate on Fox -- a network which, apparently, has never said anything negative about the Clinton family.

I watch MSNBC every morning, and have it on in my office throughout the day. David Shuster is a dull, uninspired, unoriginal personality who has yet, in any of the thousands of hours I've watched MSNBC, to say anything even remotely insightful. The only thing remarkable about him is that he is so consistently unremarkable. He is by far the weakest link in MSNBC's power house political team. I didn't think he should have been suspended for the stupid "pimped out" comment, but he should be fired for sucking so hard. He belongs on CNN alongside Wolf Blitzer, for the folks who prefer their political commentary devoid of flavor.

Shuster is now saying "I was thrown under the bus for the sins of the father." Referencing his bosses recent controversial statements, which were perceived by some as sexist. The difference is, Matthews is indispensable to MSNBC, and he's fun to watch. He may not always be politically correct, but his coverage is full of insights and observations colored by a previous career actually working at the highest levels of government.

Shuster, how about manning up and taking your suspension and coming back trying to be a little better at your job? Wouldn't that be a better approach than being a boring, whiny little tweak. And how about showing a little loyalty. I'm sure Matthews thought this PC nonsense suspension was ridiculous, although he probably also thought your underlying point was stupid, as he is a superior political mind and would recognize that there is nothing unseemly about kids wanting to help their parents' campaigns.

Don't forget it's called "Hardball with Chris Matthews" not "Hardball with Chris Matthews and David Shuster." You haven't yet risen to the level of even being a Robin to his Batman, so stop being a fucko and support your boss.

Labels: Augur, death to the PC police, media, MSNBC

No, this is not about "green" living. Or Earth Day. It's about stuff I've written already, but there's a good chance you didn't read it, because you probably don't read my blog (or my Tumblr, but you should! I swear it's mindless fun and updated daily). So, here goes some fun reading for you fine folks.

First up, comparing presidential donations for Republicans and Democrats via a Google Maps mashup. Lots of blue money in Chicagoland. Red money, not so much.

Going into Super Duper Fat Tuesday, which I spent wandering through Chicago trying to find election parties at bars and came up short, Barack Obama's servers got destroyed by hope.

This prompted me to take a look at site traffic for Obama's and Hillary Clinton's campaign sites. My observation? Clinton supporters are fewer, but her site tends to have a "stickiness" factor that keeps them there longer. This is despite Obama's social networking features. It's not just Change vs. Experience, it's depth of content vs. Web 2.0.

And reaching way back in the oldies but goodies jar, I wrote this piece right after Obamagirl's video came out, discussing social networks, politics and class as the Internet becomes less democratic and more factionalized (I don't think that's a word, but I'm sticking with it).

Hopefully this keeps you occupied for a bit until I have something revolutionary to contribute here of political interest. If you get really bored and love to think about how the Internet is changing the newspaper industry, then check out my posts about the media. There's some fun reads in there that I think are a bit thought provoking.

With that said, it's nice to be here. I have about three work days left in journalism until I start my new job. Should be insightful and I hope to be able to share some of my experiences with you.

Labels: internet, media, politics, social networks, statistics, web 2.0

From Tom Toles at the Washington Post:

Labels: 2008, Brian, media

There are any number of things to discuss about last night's Democratic presidential primary debate, and consider this post an open thread to talk about it.

To summarize my view:

It felt very strange seeing literally everybody on the stage gang up on Hillary, and I have no idea whether that helps her or hurts her. I'm betting she takes a hit in the polls, but not a big one, and not to any other particular candidate's distinct advantage. Some people who were Hillary supporters probably became undecided, but at the same time, some people who were Obama supporters probably lost some confidence in his ability to go for the jugular. At least, that was his effect on me. If this is how Obama performs when he's on the attack, I worry about what would happen when Giuliani/Romney/whoever started gunning for him were he to get the nomination.

Basically, this debate encapsulated all of my thoughts on the race up to this point: I agree with Obama more on the substance (particularly foreign policy), and I think he would represent the greatest change from Baby Boomer-style politics. On the other hand, I have complete confidence in Hillary's political competence, and the extent to which I favor Obama on the substance might be too marginal if I lose confidence in his ability to fight off attacks by Republicans. I haven't lost that confidence yet, thanks largely to the fact that I think any Democrat is going to be in a very strong position no matter what, but I would definitely feel more comfortable if Obama were able to show me something more than what he put on display last night.

More importantly, however, I want to emphasize how awful Tim Russert was as a moderator. This column in the American Prospect by Paul Waldman explains what is wrong with him pretty well, particularly this excerpt that talks about a question from Russert in a September debate which asked for each candidate's "favorite Bible verse":

Russert's Bible question encapsulates everything wrong with him, and with our political coverage more generally. It seeks to make candidates look bad rather than finding out something important about them (if you want to explore a candidate's religious beliefs, you don't do it in pop-quiz form and give them just ten seconds to answer). It substitutes the personal anecdote for the policy position, the sound-bite for the substantive answer. It distills the debate into a series of allegedly symbolic, supposedly meaningful moments that can be replayed.

This type of debate question is not about what the candidate believes and would actually do in office, but about how clever the moderator is for cornering the candidate. And above all, it takes a genuinely relevant matter (a candidate's view of the universe) and crams it through a channel by which the thoughtful candidate will be pilloried and the shallow, pandering, overly rehearsed candidate will garner praise.

I have a fantasy that at one of these moments, a candidate will say, "You know what, Tim, I'm not going to answer that question. This is serious business. And you, sir, are a disgrace."

The stuff about favoring sound-bites over substantive answers is a lot less Russert's fault than the general format of televised debates, especially primary debates. But the stuff about how Russert is only looking tough without actually being challenging in a valuable way is dead on.

Labels: 2008, Brian, media, politics

This, via the very impressively redesigned American Scene, made me laugh:

Also from the Dept. of Amusing Probably Only To Me, but I’m currently preoccupied with imagining a sit-com based around Christopher Hitchens. Tentatively called “Everybody Pisses Off Hitch,” it features a wacky female neighbor who, even though she works some great prop comedy and hilarious visual gags, never manages to amuse the star, who sits at the kitchen table drinking Scotch and blinking like a mordant eagle caught in the rain. The show’s signature catch-phrase is, “I find that boring and irritating,” and on a very special holiday episode Hitch gets very drunk and regales the neighborhood kids with the story of the lost weekend he and Kingsley Amis spent in Tijuana.

Not that anybody cares, but speaking of the American Scene, I've updated my blogroll in the sidebar to more accurately reflect my current reading material.

Labels: Brian, entertainment, humor, media

Is Madeleine Albright stealing from Billy Joe Mills, or is Billy's notion of "militant moderacy" just as unoriginal as it is irritating and banal?

Whatever the case may be, I largely agree with the commentary in the first link above from Ezra Klein, especially when he says:

[I]t's telling that in this era of far right foreign policy making, when the liberal critique has been proven right again and again, Albright still feels compelled to ostentatiously announce her distance from those bad leftists -- whoever they are, whatever they believe -- as well.

It is yet another example of the intellectual laziness of looking at two sides of an issue and assuming the right course must lie somewhere in between. This same laziness is what causes the mainstream media to ceaselessly fail in their attempts to adequately report the news because they cannot escape from the ideological prison that forces them to feed every single issue to the American people in a "he said, he countered" format that slavishly adheres to balance without any regard for objectivity (indeed, the MSM seems to be under the impression that balance and objectivity are the same thing).

The American political spectrum is always shifting, which means any one place on it cannot always be right. In recent years, that spectrum has shifted dramatically to the left. Have Billy's opinions shifted in kind? Have the opinions of other "militant moderates"? Or are they merely appealing to some illusory notion of a fixed middle point in our ideological discourse that doesn't really exist but sounds so warm and fuzzy?

The notion of "militant moderacy" is, by and large, a cheap political trick designed to win over all those Americans who want to "wash their hands of the political mess" and "put a pox on both their houses" and spout off other similarly empty-headed political credos that justify a refusal to engage in genuine political debate - debate which requires the dirty business of taking sides.

Labels: Brian, media, politics

I was sitting in the basement of the Illini Union an hour ago and opened my copy of the Chicago Sun-Times to an actual Roger Ebert article (a rarity during his long recovery.)

It's Studs Terkel's ninety-fifth birthday today.

I have to spend some time this afternoon raving about this man--the person whose writing, whose insight, I have grown to love over the past thirty years. Although I am growing into my father's son in so many ways, I wish instead to become like Studs when I finally become the man that I want to be.

I was working in a factory when another hippy handed me a copy of Working: What People Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. I was hooked instantly. Studs had an amazing ability to encourage people--the famous and the simple--to tell their stories to an old man with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He just set it down in front of them and distracted them from its operation with a few select questions and we were off in a study of the American heart and soul.

I have learned from him on every page. From Working I learned that the measure of success did not lie in one's salary or influence, but with a deep-seated sense of satisfaction in a job well done. From Hard Times I finally understood the quirks of my grandmother and so many others who had been young parents during the 1930s. Race made me realize that I was treating black and disabled people as invisible. After I changed my paradigm in that respect I began getting smiles and surprised looks from people that I encountered in daily life that had grown enured to being unnoticed except as part of the background.

He has always been an unapologetic radical--a major Red, he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He's still going on in that manner--in 2006, he was part of a class-action suit against ATT for turning over phone records to the NSA. (He lost in District Court.) I find it fascinating that he went to all the trouble to get a Law Degree from the University of Chicago, but instead decided to use the mechanisms of print (and later radio and television) media to bring about social change, rather than get involved in government himself. Hmm. Perhaps there are others out there who could benefit from this example? (I believe that I loaned one of his oral history books to Augur as a matter of fact--How you doing on that, bro?)

I'll give you an example of how this man, deaf as a post, and at the ripe old age of 94, completely dominates an interview with someone who is well-known for maintaining control over his show. Even after all this time, I cannot watch this clip without falling off my chair laughing.

Every day he stays with us, the world is a slightly brighter place. Happy birthday, Studs, and may you have as many more as you wish.

Tom

Labels: heroes, history, media, radicals, Tet

Not to beat a horse until it is well past dead, but Christopher Hitchens today wrote in Slate the best response-to-the-response-to-Virginia-Tech that I have read thus far. I strongly encourage you to read it. It is provocative, honest, as cynical as Hitchens always is, and absolutely correct. An awfully long excerpt to get your attention:

The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle. They were random and pointless. Those who died were not soldiers in any cause. They were not murdered by our enemies. They were not martyrs. But—just to take one example from the exhausting national sob fest of the past few days—here is how the bells were tolled for them at another national seat of learning. The president of Cornell University, David J. Skorton, ordered the chimes on his campus to be rung 33 times before addressing a memorial gathering. Thirty-three times? Yes. "We are here," announced the head of an institution of higher learning:

for all of those who are gone, for all 33. We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another place, not by their own choice. We are also here for the one who has also passed. We are one.

For an academic president to have equated 32 of his fellow humans with their murderer in an orgy of "one-ness" was probably the stupidest thing that happened last week, but not by a very wide margin. Almost everybody in the country seems to have taken this non-event as permission to talk the starkest nonsense. And why not? Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle. Try this, from the eighth straight day of breathless coverage in the New York Times. The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argot of the day, "to make sense of the senseless":

Ms. Verbrugge recounted breaking through the previous week's numbness as she stopped on a morning walk and found herself yelling at the mountains and at God. Though her shouts were initially met with silence, she said, she soon was reassured by the simplest of things, the chirping of birds.

"God was doing something about the world," she said. "Starting with my own heart, I could see good."

Yes, it's always about you, isn't it? (By the way, I'd watch that habit of yelling at mountains and God in the greater Blacksburg area if I were you. Some idiot might take it for a "warning sign.") When piffle like this gets respectful treatment from the media, we can guess that it's not because of the profundity of the emotion but rather because of its extreme shallowness. Those birds were singing just as loudly and just as sweetly when the bullets were finding their targets...

[big snip]

...One should express a decent sympathy for the families and friends of the murdered, a decent sympathy that ought to be accompanied by a decent reticence. Because Virginia Tech—alas for poor humanity—was a calamity with no implications beyond itself.

Labels: Brian, crime, media, society

About a year ago I got flamed by several people and groups with whom I am generally in strong agreement when I wrote that the Danish Muhammad cartoons that caused so much trouble should not have been reprinted in the Daily Illini out of sensitivity to the Muslim community. It was one in a series of events that led to me developing a reputation for being anti-free speech.

In recent days we have all been reeling from the massacre at Virginia Tech. We have also been fascinated and repulsed by the video of the killer that NBC released (and, with the type of cynicism characteristic of a massive media conglomerate, branded with the NBC peacock to force free advertising on other news outlets carrying the video). Spokesmen from NBC, from Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to the president of NBC, have defended the airing of the video as essentially newsworthy, or at least newsworthy enough to air over the objections of police officials and family members of the victims.

The airing of the video is, of course, exactly what Cho wanted. More importantly, the airing of the video and the media bonanza that the Virginia Tech massacre spurred are exactly what future killers will want for themselves. Nothing, of course, will prevent these sorts of events from ever happening again. But it is probable, if not a certainty, that copycat killings will occur as a direct result of the mountain of attention Cho received for his acts.

Consequently, I must live up once again to my reputation and join those arguing that, as a matter of journalistic responsibility, NBC should never have aired Cho's video. Indeed, it seems sensible even for journalistic outfits, as they report on these tragedies, to not report as little as possible about the killer. Journalists will like to portray the issue as an ethical dilemma, but what really have we gleaned from Cho's video that can be described as so newsworthy that its airing is worth the future loss of lives and the future anguish of families of victims? What have we gleaned from seeing his face or knowing his name? Why should we give this man a microphone and thereby encourage other psychos to emulate his violence? Is it really worth it?

A List of Those Who Agree With Me (At Billy Joe Mills' Request)

• Peggy Noonan thinks Billy doesn't have common sense: "It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won't help."
• Mickey Kaus thinks Billy doesn't have a brain: "It seems less like an 'ethical challenge' than a no-brainer. Why encourage other potential Cho's to try for a similar publicity bonanza?"
• ABC News thinks Billy's views are a social catastrophe: "This is a social catastrophe. Showing the video is a social catastrophe."
• The National Review thinks Billy wants copycat killings: "Surely they know it will spawn copy-cats. So are they showing it because they would rather enjoy copy-cats?"
• The National Review also thinks Billy is sending a bad message: "But NBC News is about to give Cho an audience of around 10 million people for his deranged rantings. What kind of message does this send to other isolated, disturbed and angry youths who entertain the same violent thoughts as Cho?"
• The Huffington Post thinks Billy has no possible explanation for himself: "What is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho's self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air?"
• MSNBC thinks Billy is disrespectful: "Airing the video ultimately was disrespectful to the victims and their families. It also was exploitative of Cho's condition and that of all severely mentally ill people."
• A guest on Andrew Sullivan's blog thinks Billy will cause more mass murders: "In the next few weeks and months, even over the next few years, expect to see copycat killings inspired by Cho's actions. The more saturated the media coverage, the more such events we are likely to get."
  
• Our very own Daily Illini thinks Billy has poor judgment: "Better judgment should have been used, especially considering that the images that have been aired cannot possibly be used for a greater understanding of this seriously disturbed individual or the havoc he wrought. What has happened this week has only helped to immortalize this murderer."

That's all I'll list for now, but not because there isn't a wealth of other people who share my view. Oh, two important groups I forgot: the families of the victims and the police officials involved in the case.

Anything else, Billy?

Labels: Brian, crime, media, society

I know she'd probably get around to it eventually, but I wanted to put it up now because I enjoyed it so thoroughly: "Death Should Hold Meaning: Why You Should Be Reading an Obituary Instead of this Column." It's a beautiful piece of writing.

Labels: DI, Lally, media, philosophy

My column this week is up and has already this morning generated some comments on the DI website, so it looks to be a discussion-starter: "Protecting the Covert with the Overt: The Real Problem with Ann Coulter's F-Bomb."

In the time since I wrote this column, two stories have arisen which highlight my point. The first is Gen. Peter Pace's patently absurd defense of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy by saying the military shouldn't condone homosexuality because it is immoral. The leading two candidates for the Democratic - the Democratic - presidential nomination were both unable to cleary state that homosexuality is not immoral, by the way.

The second story is a smaller one, but still pretty amazing. Garrison Keillor wrote an outrageous, hypocritical column about marriage and homosexuality that includes the following:

And now gay marriage will produce a whole new string of hyphenated relatives. In addition to the ex-stepson and ex-in-laws and your wife’s first husband’s second wife, there now will be Bruce and Kevin’s in-laws and Bruce’s ex, Mark, and Mark’s current partner, and I suppose we’ll get used to it.

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men—sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That’s for the kids. It’s their show. (emphasis mine--I mean, holy fuck!)

Dan Savage smacks Keillor down hard here (highly recommended you click that link).

Labels: Brian, DI, LGBT, media, society

(bumped up above the previous post so it doesn't get hidden)

My DI column is up this week: "The Exaltation of Ourselves: How We Could Be the Generation that Ruins Everything."

Labels: Brian, DI, media, politics, role of government, society

I'm in this week's Point-Counterpoint in the DI. Peruse it here, if you're so inclined.

Labels: Brian, DI, media, society