Androphiles of the world unite!

I try to use the word "androphile" whenever appropriate, in place of "straight women and gay men." It's more efficient, and includes bisexuals too. Unfortunately since I'm one of the few people who uses the term, it isn't that efficient after all, since I always have to explain what it means. Even to presumably well-educated, cultured people. I would have thought the meaning was obvious.

An androphile is someone who is sexually attracted to men. A gynophile is someone who is attracted to women.

The world is a more hospitable place for gynophiles, after centuries of patriarchy, especially modern, homophobic patriarchy. The ancient Greeks were totally patriarchal, but they certainly were not homophobic.

In fact, the Greeks had boy beauty contests and a popular theme of Greek vases was a painting of a nude or semi-nude young man with the inscription "Kalos" on the vase, usually along with the boy's name, which meant "[boy's name] is beautiful."

But patriarchy AND homophobia are a deadly combination for androphiles. Thanks to homophobia, gay men are constrained from expressing their admiration for the erotic charms of men, and thanks to patriarchy, women are only permitted to be the objects of desire, not the desiring subject. Evolutionary psychologists even try to claim that women are not "visually oriented" - in typical evolutionary psychology fashion they turn the causal arrows around: it isn't that the Patriarchy is hostile to female desire it's that females aren't interested in male beauty.

This "women are not visually oriented" meme is so strong that it trumps even homophobia. Images of sexually attractive men are almost always designated "homoerotic" and even usually hipper Sue Johanson pushes the concept.

steely dan my old school

Arguably the best pop song ever written.

In yo face, "natural family planning" advocates!

LONDON (AP) -- Women on the birth control pill are protected from ovarian cancer, even decades after they stop taking it, scientists said.

British researchers found that women taking the pill for 15 years halved their chances of developing ovarian cancer, and that the risk remained low more than 30 years later, though protection weakened over time. The findings were published Friday in The Lancet.

''Not only does the pill prevent pregnancy, but in the long term, you actually get less cancer as well,'' said Valerie Beral, the study's lead author and director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University. ''It's a nice bonus.'' The study was paid for by Cancer Research UK and Britain's Medical Research Council.

More at the NYTimes

One of the things the Catholic anti-abortion protestors used to harp about, back when I did clinic defense, was the dangers of "artificial" birth control.

Shakespeare Slash

This will blow your mind

More about this thing called "Slash"

Summertime

Janis Joplin... just because...

Once again Bob Herbert misses the point

UPDATE - the idiots who run Google banned this post, probably because they are now using AI to do their moderating. I was responding to an editorial published in the NYTimes. It was OK for the NYTimes but not OK for Blogger's AI.

I will be migrating this blog to a different platform at my earliest convenience. I assume that's what Google wants, since they have decided to make the least effort to moderate Blogger content by using AI. What losers. 

Herbert's column "Politics and Misogyny" misses the point because of his obsession with prostitution. This time it's the unpleasant working conditions of prostitutes in Nevada.

It just so happens that the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning this week in the misogyny capital of America: Nevada. It’s a perfect place to bring up the way women are viewed and treated in this society, but don’t hold your breath. Presidential wannabes are hardly in the habit of insulting the locals.

Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada and heavily promoted even where it’s not. In Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but flourishes nevertheless, Mayor Oscar Goodman has said that creating a series of legal, “magnificent” brothels would be a great development tool for his city.

The fundamental problem in all of this is that women and girls are dehumanized, opening the floodgates to every kind of mistreatment. “Once you dehumanize somebody, everything else is possible,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

A grotesque exercise in the dehumanization of women is carried out routinely at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas. There the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to an electronic bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. At the sound of the bell, the prostitutes have five minutes to get to an assembly area where they line up, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who has happened to drop by.

What does Bob Herbert think of Hooters, I wonder. I don't like Hooters myself, especially after seeing its Employees Handbook at The Smoking Gun. But I sure as hell wouldn't compare the misogyny of a Hooters with women being raped and murdered, the way Herbert compares - really conflates - rape and murder with prostitution and pornography.

And here's a question that the anti-legal-prostitution people always REFUSE to answer: if going to a prostitute is a man's expression of misogyny, what does it mean when a man goes to a male prostitute? Misandrony? Self-hate?

Or do they just want to have sex and can't find a willing volunteer?

I love me some Carl Forsman

He is saying exactly what I've been saying for years. People like Forsman are the true radicals in a theatre culture of mindless zombie Mamet imitators and admirers who insist that theatre must be brutal, violent and cruel.

And for him beauty is more than just pleasantry. "I've thought for a while now that maybe true theatrical rebellion isn't saying, 'And then a guy raped a 4-year-old and shot his mom,'" he said. "That’s not radical anymore because we're so desensitized. Now I think true rebellion is saying anything optimistic or positive about humanity. Hope is radical."

Mr. Forsman said his attitude has been met with skepticism. "I was at a fund-raising cocktail party once," he said, "and a man said to me, 'You're a Pollyanna.' And I said, 'I'm a Pollyanna because I'm championing these virtues?’ It doesn’t seem Pollyanna-ish to believe in compassion. It's only Pollyanna if you believe the reverse isn't also possible."

He continued: "There's no question that the cynical viewpoint is viewed as more sophisticated. There's a real fear, especially among the intelligentsia, of generosity and compassion because they look like the acts of someone who’s naïve."

I would hasten to add - they fear they look like someone who's not manly enough. We live in a culture where telling someone they "have balls" is the highest compliment. And the equation of bravery with masculinity is done without any self-consciousness whatsoever. And yet there's still so many idiots who won't STFU with their endless whining about "political correctness."

I believe I will go and subscribe to the Keen Company.

More at the NYTimes

Misogynist of the year - Pat Oliphant

Over at Pandagon, Amanda and friends got into an uproar over Gloria Steinem's recent NYTimes column (I blogged about it recently) about how gender discrimination is worse than racial discrimination.

To realize how right Steinem is, just consider if Oliphant had published an editorial cartoon which was as racist as this cartoon is sexist. There would be a media shitstorm over it, and Oliphant would probably lose his job.

And somebody should tell Oliphant that at Senator Clinton's age, PMS is probably not an issue. What a fucking moron.

Quick! Take the Dowd Antidote!

You simply cannot live in a world where a grade A fancy ninny like Maureen Dowd is considered an important pundit without taking a regular antidote.

My antidote of choice is Bob Somerby of the DAILY HOWLER. I couldn't resist quoting his entire January 9 howl of anguish over her mind-boggling Dowd-osity.

ASTOUNDING: Obviously, there is nothing left to say about Maureen Dowd. On December 30, the nation’s most visible public crackpot wrote a deeply strange year-end column about having a faith healer come to her home to “clear” it of karmic disorder. (And no, she didn’t seem to be joking—click here.) This morning, she gives us a look at the giants among whom she works. Incredibly, her extra-long piece is headlined thus: “Can Hillary Cry Her Way to the White House?” Even we were startled:

DOWD (1/9/08): When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.

A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the ''humanized'' Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. ''We are at war,'' he said. ''Is this how she'll talk to Kim Jong-il?''

Another reporter joked: ''That crying really seemed genuine. I'll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.'' He added dryly: ''Crying doesn't usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.''

Bill Clinton was known for biting his lip, but here was Hillary doing the Muskie. Certainly it was impressive that she could choke up and stay on message.


There you see them, swapping quips in their small, cramped part of the palace.

Jesus, what a gang of losers! Clinton was “doing the Muskie,” Dowd says. Of course, as we recently noted, David Broder acknowledged, long ago, that Muskie quite likely didn’t “do the Muskie” himself (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/28/07), but people like Dowd never drop preferred stories. Indeed, she may be showing professional courtesy; “the Muskie” is one of the few confections about Major Hopefuls of the last half-century which she herself didn’t invent. (Al Gore said he inspired Love Story! And: George H. W. Bush asked for a splash of coffee! And: John Kerry said, Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR! The crackpot helped dream them all up.)

Beyond that, note the portrait Dowd provides of the people around whom she works. (It’s odd to think that she goes to an office to write about her ghost-busting.) A security expert thinks the next president will be chatting it up with Kim Jong-Il. Others offer hackneyed quips about the way Clinton was faking—although she obviously wasn’t. (If you don’t know that, you don’t understand why acting schools exist.) But the dopes who write our big newspapers instinctively rush to such speculations. (They did the same with Romney in the past few weeks.) Maybe the faith healer has a good friend who can freshen the air inside heads?

Dowd’s whole column today is appalling, even by her own bizarre standards. (Clearly, the Times has gone way past the point of embarrassment.) Her remarks about LBJ are utterly stupid. (“Living Democrats” know that Johnson was a giant of the civil rights movement, despite the tragedy of Vietnam. Dr. King also knew that.) She offers the standard non-analysis analysis of the Kyl-Lieberman vote. (Do you think she has any idea what the measure may have entailed?) She says Bill Clinton put Bush in the White House through his affair with Miss Lewinsky, who must appear in all such columns. (We agree with Dowd’s assessment. But did she herself put Bush in the White House when she invented the Love Story blather, months before we’d heard of Monica? When she wrote, from the soul of her spreading illness, that Candidate Gore “is so feminized...he’s practically lactating?”) And then too, inevitably, there’s feigned non-comprehension:


DOWD: [I]n the end, she had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim, both of Obama and of the press. Hillary has barely talked to the press throughout her race even though the Clintons this week whined mightily that the press prefers Obama.

Should Clinton engage the press more? It’s hard to say. But duh! Targeted pols avoid the press because they know they’re targets. To state the blindingly obvious, that’s why Gore had to stop talking to reporters after Dowd invented the Love Story claptrap—after it became abundantly clear that every trivial, accurate comment would now be used against him. Often, we liberals still don’t seem to understand these dynamics; we echo complaints like this by Dowd—and we haven’t yet come to understand that we have to defend all our leaders, even those whom we might not prefer. Of course, life-forms like Dowd will always pretend they don’t understand this game either.

There’s very little left to say about this gruesome figure. But we liberals still haven’t publicly defined Dowd’s cohort, whom we mock among ourselves as “the Villagers.” Average people still haven’t heard about their culture—this average person, for example:


LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (1/3/08): I have been a daily Times reader for nearly 40 years, beginning with my first subscription at my New England preparatory school in the 1960s.

The opinion section has always drawn me into thoughtful discussion, with distinguished columnists from William Safire to Maureen Dowd, and from Paul Krugman to David Brooks (about whom I still have doubts).

But surely something has gone wrong when The Times embraces William Kristol, one of the neocon architects of the Bush administration's failed first-strike Iraq strategy, and an unapologetic hawk on similar aggression against Iran.


Good God. This reader still thinks Dowd is a “distinguished columnist” offering “thoughtful discussions.” Liberals should flesh out our ideas about “the Village”—and make sure that such voters have heard them.

For decades, people like this have been told that the Dowds are driven by a vile “liberal bias.” They’ve heard it over and over again; indeed, they still seem to think that the press is “too liberal” when it covers elections (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/20/07). We mock Village morés—among ourselves. We need to do what conservatives did—we need to find ways to tell the public, not just ourselves, about this broken-souled clan.

Go Gloria!

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects "only" the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more "masculine" for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren't too many of them); and because there is still no "right" way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

More from Gloria Steinem in the NYTimes

And the assholes rush to prove her right: Protesters Ask Clinton to Iron Shirts
Calling them "protestors" gives them far too much respect.

Righteous smackdown of moronic 'men are from mars women are from venus' play

This is what you get once you start letting women review plays

The outdated assumption of Matt Morillo’s two-character play at Theater for the New City is that girls just want to get married...

...Mr. Morillo, who also wrote and directed “Angry Young Women in Low-Rise Jeans With High-Class Issues,” seems to be reaching for some up-to-the-minute social observation. What he has done instead is channel some ghosts from lame old comedies.

No wonder the male-dominated NYTimes and the male-dominated NY theatre world have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the scary 21st century, where female voices are heard more often than 5 - 7% of the time!

What am I, gay?

The top ten search words that lead to this blog, according to my Site Meter are:

1. guys gone wild
2. gay
3. ladyboys
4. gay men
5. gay dude
6. girls gone wild
7. smurfette
8. gays
9. gay guys
10. ladyboy

Eight out of ten are directly about The Gay. Although I'm hetero I'm certainly not against the gay. But I only have like one post each about ladyboys and guys gone wild. Just goes to show you how popular it is to search for those things. And now this post will increase my gay traffic by 100% most likely.

Quite a few of these gay searches come from Iran. Oh, wait, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (here is his official web site) said there are no homosexuals in Iran. Must be some kind of scholarly research.

Snagglepuss - Live and Lion

Heavens to Mergatroyd - it's Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle.

Snagglepuss becomes a vegetarian it seems. And he teaches Yakky how to exit, stage left.

wow, what a concept for a radio show

On BBC Radio 4 Advice to the Living: "People who only have a short time left to live give advice to the rest of us about what matters and what doesn't, and about enjoying every moment."

I'd listen but I'm afraid I'll either end up depressed, or I'll be exhorted to live each moment to the fullest - which sounds great in theory, but on a practical level must be exhausting.

Big Bad Republicans

This blog post at Cogitamus is genius

Republicans match Buffy universe bad guys.


The Mayor
They're both clever and generically slick politicians, programmed to appeal to middle America. I can't watch Mitt without thinking of the Demon Mayor of Sunnydale, and that's what inspired this whole list.

Alton Brown and Delicious

Well I started the new year with yet another dream about Alton Brown. Although this dream was not nearly as erotic as the first one, there was definitely an undercurrent of desire.

Alton Brown is the host of the Food Network show "Good Eats and is the They Might Be Giants of cooking*. Or as the Village Voice called him, Dorkus Majorkus.

But it isn't just the science nerd aspect of Brown that I find attractive, it's his wacky sense of humor. And his charisma. (See the video posted below.)

And although he is totally masculine - he's got a square jaw and nice solid build - the Village Voice, in another article notes:

On his popular series Good Eats - an eccentric cooking show riddled with sketch comedy and scientific explanations - Brown flaunts his wimpiness like a badge of honor. In one running gag, his PTA-president sister orders him to make dozens of doughnuts for a bake sale; Brown meekly complies with her ever changing wishes, even when she insists he buy all the leftover doughnuts himself.

Not to mention uttering his trademark Winnie-the-Pooism "oh bother." No wonder he drives me wild with desire!

Another favorite phrase of his is "golden brown and delicious" which he inevitably abbreviates to GBD.

And I'm not the only one who notices Brown's alluring je ne sais quoi:Alton Brown is too sexy


===================
They Might Be Giants recorded a song called "Why Does the Sun Shine" that begins:
"The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace.
Where hydrogen is built into helium at temperature of millions of degrees."

Good Eats S3E6P1: Three Chips For Sister Marsha

How many other cooking show hosts would throw out a phrase like "another socio-culinary quagmire"?

Oh their prophetic soul...

Back in January 2001, The Onion predicted the future under the guise of "humor."

WASHINGTON, DC – Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street. "

How did I miss this weeks ago?

It turns out that the Nobel-winning geneticist who was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” is inherently 16 percent African, or an amount of “someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” according to a scientist who made the discovery.

more at the NYTimes

I wonder what those racist freaks at GNXP have to say about that? I'll go over there eventually... when I haven't just eaten...

Well I went over there - big surprise - they somehow failed to mention it throughout the entire month of December. Although you do get to see how much they love Lawrence Summers and hate Jared Diamond. Another big surprise.

GNXP - your source for "scientific" racism on the web.

Watch The Trailer for Michael Moore's 'SiCKO'

If you haven't seen SiCKO yet, SEE IT!!!! You'll develop the deep and abiding hatred for the American health care system that is step 1 in changing it.

If you don't tear up in the last half hour of this film, when they are in Cuba, you are made of stone.

step 2: don't vote for a Republican under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!

their beloved Invisible Hand

Roy at Alicublog is often brilliant, but never more so than recently, when he said:

That, comrades, is capitalism. Ad agencies don't get their strategies from Satan or the Democratic Party -- they get them from market data, laboriously collected and analyzed. And they employ them because they bring in money.

Conservatives often seem to miss, when raging about the stuff on their teevees, that it's really their beloved Invisible Hand that's slapping them in the face. They would rather believe it was Betty Friedan. If they stopped to consider how much of the damage they perceive to their "culture" is actually done by the free market, it would drive them mad.

Ben Brantley reminds us the theatre world is still completely male-dominated

Especially when it comes to "serious" plays. Not one of his top ten favorite plays this year is written by a woman. But Brantley loves him those manly man playwrights. The more brutal and manly the better.

Almost every aspect of human endeavor is less male-dominated than theatre. How fucked up is that.

Mary Poppins

Votes for Women - step in time!

This is why Mary Poppins is a very good movie.

Krugman & I

We are on the same wavelength!

“Fed shrugged as subprime crisis spread,” was the headline on a New York Times report on the failure of regulators to regulate. This may have been a discreet dig at Mr. Greenspan’s history as a disciple of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism known for her novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

In a 1963 essay for Ms. Rand’s newsletter, Mr. Greenspan dismissed as a “collectivist” myth the idea that businessmen, left to their own devices, “would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings.” On the contrary, he declared, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.”

When I read that headline I thought exactly the same thing - a reference to Ayn Rand!

Is there a Pulitzer for Best Headline?

HELP HELP I'M BEING REPRESSED

"I mean if I went round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!"

Dar Williams -

"The Christians and the Pagans"
This should be a holiday standard.

I confess this song has choked me up a few times.


The lyrics

Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay"
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three
He told his niece, "It's Christmas eve, I know our life is not your style"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it's been awhile"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said, "The pies are burning," and she hit the kitchen
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian"
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And where does magic come from, I think magic's in the learning
Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning

When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother"
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here"
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve saying
"Can I be a Pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold

A handy list of Yule Rituals for all you pagans

Family Yule Ritual

Solitary Yule Ritual

She-Wolf Yule Ritual

Winter Solstice Ritual

Yule at Wikipedia

Coven Yule Ritual

Mr. McFuzz is a star

Watch his Quicktime reel

Mr. McFuzz is his stage name. His actual name is Spike.

He has also appeared in kittenwars.com

My other cat, Willow, refuses to perform or pose for the camera.

Nudity Required, No Pay

Nudity Required, No Pay is an excellent blog for actors, especially female actors, all about the exploitation of actors in the theatre world.

You can get a sense of the attitude towards actors by some theatre producers here - this email was written by the director who took a copy of my script, slapped his stage directions on it, then sued me for violating HIS copyright when I went to produce my play. He doesn't have any respect for playwrights either.

I'm thinking of moving to Minnesota

Yay for Al Franken!

Those naughty ancient Greeks

Red-figure pottery is the best.

ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD

Pardon's the word to all_!
[Footnote 1: "Cymbeline," Act v. Sc. 5.]

Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remembering that when these faults appear in others, it is our follies and vices that we behold. They are the shortcomings of humanity, to which we belong; whose faults, one and all, we share; yes, even those very faults at which we now wax so indignant, merely because they have not yet appeared in ourselves. They are faults that do not lie on the surface. But they exist down there in the depths of our nature; and should anything call them forth, they will come and show themselves, just as we now see them in others. One man, it is true, may have faults that are absent in his fellow; and it is undeniable that the sum total of bad qualities is in some cases very large; for the difference of individuality between man and man passes all measure.

In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but _my fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres_! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life--the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow.

Schopenhauer, in an exceedingly compassionate mood.

As Jane Eyre said...

"There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort."

Even if the creatures is mainly cats.

More from Jane Eyre here

On the Problem of Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer is my favorite philosopher. For pure readability, as well as clarity of thought and originality, there's none better. Except on the issue of women. Schopenhauer was convinced of women's inferiority. I like to think that, just as with the evolutionary psychologists, Schopenhauer mistakes the social construction of female inferiority with innate inferiority. Although Schopenhauer went even further than EPs, suggesting that males are more physically attractive than females. As an avowed female heterosexual I might be convinced of it, but no EP will be.

In any case, much of his work is now available for free online (what DID we do before the Internet?) and I'll be posting various nuggets here from time to time.
Here's from RELIGION: A DIALOGUE, ETC.

PHILALETHES

That is certainly the strong point of religion. If it is a fraud, it is a pious fraud; that is undeniable. But this makes priests something between deceivers and teachers of morality; they daren't teach the real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if they knew it, which is not the case. A true philosophy, then, can always exist, but not a true religion; true, I mean, in the proper understanding of the word, not merely in that flowery or allegorical sense which you have described; a sense in which all religions would be true, only in various degrees. It is quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of weal and woe, honesty and deceit, good and evil, nobility and baseness, which is the average characteristic of the world everywhere, that the most important, the most lofty, the most sacred truths can make their appearance only in combination with a lie, can even borrow strength from a lie as from something that works more powerfully on mankind; and, as revelation, must be ushered in by a lie. This might, indeed, be regarded as the cachet of the moral world. However, we won't give up the hope that mankind will eventually reach a point of maturity and education at which it can on the one side produce, and on the other receive, the true philosophy. Simplex sigillum veri: the naked truth must be so simple and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its true form, without any admixture of myth and fable, without disguising it in the form of religion.

DEMOPHELES

You've no notion how stupid most people are.

The most useful show on television

Sex Talk with Sue Johanson - watch and learn.

The only complaint about this "A Spot" tutorial I have is that she doesn't say whether the man is supine or prone when you insert.*

I found this diagram to be helpful.

Thank you Sue and the Ohio State University Medical Center. You have provided a valuable public service.

*based on the angle of Sue's hand, the answer is prone (on his belly)

NYTimes Racist Reagan Speech Battle, Round 4

First the mighty Paul Krugman got the ball rolling with Seeking Willie Horton:

Ronald Reagan didn't become governor of California by preaching the wonders of free enterprise; he did it by attacking the state's fair housing law, denouncing welfare cheats and associating liberals with urban riots. Reagan didn't begin his 1980 campaign with a speech on supply-side economics, he began it - at the urging of a young Trent Lott - with a speech supporting states' rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.

Well the right wingers weren't going to stand for that, so Bobo Brooks stepped up to defend Reagan, on behalf of conservatives everywhere, with this retort:

Today, I'm going to write about a slur. It's a distortion that's been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states' rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

The truth is more complicated.

Bob Herbert was not about to take that Reagan pity party lying down:

Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.

To see Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in its proper context, it has to be placed between the murders of the civil rights workers that preceded it and the acknowledgment by the Republican strategist Lee Atwater that the use of code words like "states' rights" in place of blatantly bigoted rhetoric was crucial to the success of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy. That acknowledgment came in the very first year of the Reagan presidency.

Ronald Reagan was an absolute master at the use of symbolism. It was one of the primary keys to his political success.

The suggestion that the Gipper didn't know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed. Wishful thinking would be the kindest way to characterize it.

Today Krugman jumps in to support Herbert: Republicans and Race:

More than 40 years have passed since the Voting Rights Act, which Reagan described in 1980 as "humiliating to the South." Yet Southern white voting behavior remains distinctive. Democrats decisively won the popular vote in last year's House elections, but Southern whites voted Republican by almost two to one.

The G.O.P.'s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization." So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.

And Ronald Reagan was among the "some" who tried to benefit from racial polarization.

True, he never used explicit racial rhetoric. Neither did Richard Nixon. As Thomas and Mary Edsall put it in their classic 1991 book, "Chain Reaction: The impact of race, rights and taxes on American politics," "Reagan paralleled Nixon's success in constructing a politics and a strategy of governing that attacked policies targeted toward blacks and other minorities without reference to race — a conservative politics that had the effect of polarizing the electorate along racial lines."

Thus, Reagan repeatedly told the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen - a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud. He never mentioned the woman's race, but he didn’t have to.

There are many other examples of Reagan's tacit race-baiting in the historical record. My colleague Bob Herbert described some of these examples in a recent column. Here’s one he didn't mention: During the 1976 campaign Reagan often talked about how upset workers must be to see an able-bodied man using food stamps at the grocery store. In the South — but not in the North - the food-stamp user became a "strapping young buck" buying T-bone steaks.

Now, about the Philadelphia story: in December 1979 the Republican national committeeman from Mississippi wrote a letter urging that the party's nominee speak at the Neshoba Country Fair, just outside the town where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964. It would, he wrote, help win over "George Wallace inclined voters."

Sure enough, Reagan appeared, and declared his support for states' rights - which everyone took to be a coded declaration of support for segregationist sentiments.

Reagan's defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We're talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.

Why does this history matter now? Because it tells why the vision of a permanent conservative majority, so widely accepted a few years ago, is wrong.

The point is that we have become a more diverse and less racist country over time. The "macaca" incident, in which Senator George Allen's use of a racial insult led to his election defeat, epitomized the way in which America has changed for the better.

And because conservative ascendancy has depended so crucially on the racial backlash - a close look at voting data shows that religion and "values" issues have been far less important - I believe that the declining power of that backlash changes everything.

Can anti-immigrant rhetoric replace old-fashioned racial politics? No, because it mobilizes the same shrinking pool of whites - and alienates the growing number of Latino voters.

Now, maybe I’m wrong about all of this. But we should be able to discuss the role of race in American politics honestly. We shouldn't avert our gaze because we’re unwilling to tarnish Ronald Reagan’s image.

Ouch! Looks like David Brooks is gettin' his ass kicked! Well, only an arrogant fool like Bobo would challenge the mighty Krugman.

How Reagan-lovers must love our current president - only he can make Reagan look smart, competent and honorable in comparison.

What's wrong with Christopher Buckley

The fact that he's a Buckley automatically makes you assume he's incredibly pleased with himself, and incredibly smug.

I just caught his movie "Thank You for Smoking" after being told how great it was. I had avoided it because, well, Buckley.

So I watched it, and most of it wasn't as bad as I expected... although what I expected was cynicism and an "even-handed" approach to the issue of smoking. Lobbyists are bad but so are reporters, cancer victims, politicians, anti-smoking activists, etc. etc. Well of course, many lobbyists are Christopher Buckley's friends, or friends of his father.

Buckley's approach to right-wing evil is best described in his own words:

I voted for George W. Bush in 2000. In 2004, I could not bring myself to pull the same lever again. Neither could I bring myself to vote for John Kerry, who, for all his strengths, credentials, and talent, seems very much less than the sum of his parts. So, I wrote in a vote for George Herbert Walker Bush, for whom I worked as a speechwriter from 1981 to ’83. I wish he’d won.

Washington Monthly
He knows Bush is wrong for the country, but Kerry is not cool enough so he does something completely pointless instead.

Or as a reviewer in Salon says:

Besotted with its dazzling protagonist and committed to equal-opportunity attack, the film has no point of view beyond the position that everyone concerned is either amoral or an idiot or an amoral idiot. Aiming at all targets and hitting none of them, the movie is as harmless and inconsequential as a candy cigarette.

But Buckley reveals his true nature by what happens to the lobbyist and the reporter who gets the inside scoop on his activities. Although the lobbyist is completely amoral he winds up on top at the end. The reporter, who had sex with him while getting the scoop, is demoted to doing the weather, and the movie gleefully shows her reporting from the middle of the storm.

That's Buckley's true, unvarnished, unmediated emotion right there on the screen - punish the bitch. Sexual women are the true evil in this world. He is a true son of the Catholic Church. And always will be.

Secret Science Club

An idea whose time has definitely come!

Secret Science Club blog

The article in the NYTimes where I heard about it.

Origin of the Alison Bechdel Rule

Also known as the Alison Bechdel Test.

I just recently learned of this at Pandagon.

Clearly most animated movies for children (see below) will fail this test - even if you substitute "female" for "woman."

Yes, Natalie, we live in a patriarchy

But I'm glad the NYTimes finally addressed the issue - people who make animated movies, generally assumed to be aimed at children, not only skew the male to female character ratio heavily in favor of males, they actually go out of their way to misrepresent the natural world in order to do it. As Natalie Angier notes:

By bowdlerizing the basic complexion of a great insect society, Mr. Seinfeld’s “Bee Movie” follows in the well-pheromoned path of Woody Allen as a whiny worker ant in “Antz” and Dave Foley playing a klutzy forager ant in “A Bug’s Life.” Maybe it’s silly to fault cartoons for biological inaccuracies when the insects are already talking like Chris Rock and wearing Phyllis Diller hats. But isn’t it bad enough that in Hollywood’s animated family fare about rats, clownfish, penguins, lions, hyenas and other relatively large animals, the overwhelming majority of characters are male, despite nature’s preferred sex ratio of roughly 50-50? Must even obligately female creatures like worker bees and soldier ants be given sex change surgery, too?

Class, anger and blogging

Cathleen Shine reviews Katha Pollitt's Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories in The New York Review of Books and it is a massive improvement over the Ana Marie Cox review of Pollitt's previous Virginity or Death! in the NYTimes. Although that's not especially high praise since Ana Marie Cox is trying to be the sucessor to the shallow catty Maureen Dowd.

Barbara Ehrenreich has a great response to it.

I haven't read Pollitt's latest book in its entirety, but have read many of the individual essays.

I'm a long-time fan of Pollitt but one thing that tends to annoy me about Pollitt is that her views are shaped by her upper middle class upbringing. She's lived a bit of a sheltered life which is a primary reason why she didn't learn to drive until she was 52. She learned to drive because she bought a house on the Connecticut shore. I learned to drive because public transportation in South Jersey is a joke and I needed to drive myself to a series of crappy low-paying jobs in third-hand junkers - one of those jobs was driving instructor.

Not to pick on Pollitt - inevitably the people who make a living as writers come from comfortable backgrounds. Because the decision-makers come from that class, and as with any career, it's who you know.

But at least, as a liberal, Pollitt doesn't let her own good fortune blind her to the harsh realities of the poor - one of the major differences between well-off liberals and well-off conservatives.

I have to wonder if her idealism causes her to get the arrows of causality wrong in her interview with Terri Gross. She and Gross discuss rambling guys and how women are supposedly attracted to rambling guys. Pollitt suggests that women are attracted to rambling guys because women want to be rambling guys themselves. This is pure idealism, and has nothing to do with the realities of sexual economics.

Rambling guys aren't sexy because they ramble, rambling guys can ramble because they are sexy. If the rambling guy wasn't sexy to begin with, few or no women would get involved with him. There are sexy guys who don't ramble - but sexy monogamous guys can easily find a partner. Which often leaves women who can't find sexy men with the option of settling down with non-sexy guys, or taking up with sexy non-monogamous guys. And since sexy rambling guys will ramble into many women during the course of their years of sexual attractiveness, it makes sense that many women will end up having some kind of contact with those guys.

This is not an idealistic empowering view of women. Although it isn't non-empowering either. It's rather neutral - it reflects the reality of the scarcity of sexy yet trustworthy men.

But it does piss me off - a leading thinker of feminism doesn't get that reality. In fact, I don't know of any professional thinker who does. They all have some idealistic explanation for the ways of the world, that are only marginally better than just-so stories of the evolutionary psychologists.

If it wasn't for this blog, I'd be even more frustrated and angry about this state of things. Not that I think my readership compares to Pollitt's. But it beats writing letters to the editor.

go atheists!

Stanley Fish's occasional columns on God and Religion tend to become freethinker free-for-alls.

Fish's recurring theme is that atheists are meanies:

In short, these books neither trivialize their subject nor demonize those who have a different view of it, which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.

The long tradition of deists consigning non-believers to eternal torment, if only in their fevered imaginations, seems to bother him much less.
My co-non-believers are a bright bunch, and it's hard to top them. So this time around, I won't try, I'll just quote them:

The summary statement praises the two books for not demonizing opposing views. Wouldn't it have made a better summary statement then, when rejecting atheistic ridicule, to also reject religious hatred of atheism?
- Posted by Suzanne

The question of belief in a Personal God is addressed by Ehrman. The question of belief in God as Starter-Pistol is addressed by Flew. These are different lines of inquiry and cannot be easily compared and contrasted. Is a man who accepts God as Creator but rejects a Personal God an Atheist? The term "Atheist" needs to be defined carefully to have a meaningful discussion on this subject.
- Posted by Mike Marks

Antony Flew is an old dude who’s been hoodwinked by the godnuts into questioning reality. In their fear of losing their grip on the masses, the godnuts have succeeded in ensnaring this poor old man in their delusion: That there IS a heaven and hell,god and the devil. There is, there is, there is! If only you could make something be true by repeating it. It’s time to move on and embrace reality. Perhaps we can still save ourselves from ourselves before it's too late.
- Posted by Anna Galvin

"How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends [and] self-replication capabilities? […]
The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such 'end-directed, self-replicating' life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind."
A pity to have such an interesting question answered by simply postulating God’s existence. I also wondered why God lets bad things happen when my dog was put down, but I was 10 and have since grown up and learned to think for myself. If we are indeed plagued by an 'inherited [sic] virus', I’d say it is the faith-in-God one.
- Posted by Theodora (meaning, of course, God's gift!) Terzidou

I’ve been contemplating a statement made–I cannot recall where–in rebuttal against those who "gleefully" conclude there is no God: the science-religion debate is immeasurably enriched when materialists do not dismiss religion but engage with "sincere and learned persons" to reflect on the vitality of religious perspectives in conversation with materialist ones. That sounds nice. It seemingly comforts, let’s say, those who consider themselves to be open-minded Christians in debate with modern materialists. Now what about Astrology? Will astronomers be enriched by engaging sincere and learned astrologers in conversation about the influence of the positions of stars and planets on individual human destinies? I’m curious: how many astronomers regularly read their daily horoscope? How many astrologers faithfully follow the latest discoveries in astronomy? Are these two areas of study mutually exclusive?
- Posted by Ken Frank

Here in 2007, the right answer to questions like Why is there something rather than nothing, or how does consciousness work, is "I don’t know" or “We don’t know” (yet), not, "There must be a god."
Primitive peoples all over the world posited creatures like Echo, who yells back at you when you stand and call out. Today we know the physical explanation of echoes, and no one believes in Echo anymore.
From ignorance, nothing follows.
- Posted by tjallen

Most arguments for and against a god-presence in the cosmos assume a supernatural, father--igure. Perhaps one of our problems is that we are unable to fathom something entirely different. If we did I think we might have a much more interesting conversation. The one we are presently having has gotten old and boring.
Gordy
- Posted by Gordon Alderink

You learn something new every day

It turns out I'm a member of the Sawn family tree
They even have my dad's obituary.

And WOW - thanks to this web site, I just realized that my great great grand parents were Yorkshire neighbors of Charlotte Bronte - I'm currently working on an adaptation of Bronte's Jane Eyre. My great-grandmother's grandparents, Robert Parkinson and Sara Fairburn were married in Dewsbury, Yorkshire in 1851. Charlotte died in Yorkshire at age 39, in 1855.

Before he was given a parish in Haworth, Charlotte's father Patrick was a curate in the Parish of Dewsbury.

TAM LIN 2007

For the fifth year in a row, TAM LIN will be presented in Manhattan. This time it will be in the form of a reading at NYCPlaywrights.

What's Al Franken been up to?

Running for Senate.

Al has a blog

Al, back in the day:

More pix

Bob Herbert's strawpimps

Those who wish for prostitution to remain illegal don't have logic on their side, and so must constantly imply that those who think it should be legal are somehow in denial about the exploitation of women and the international slave trade. Bob Herbert:

Those who think that most of the women in prostitution want to be there are deluded. Surveys consistently show that a majority wants very much to leave. Apologists love to spread the fantasy of the happy hooker. But the world of the prostitute is typically filled with pimps, sadists, psychopaths, drug addicts, violent criminals and disease.

Jody Williams is a former prostitute who runs a support group called Sex Workers Anonymous. Few women want to become prostitutes, she told me, and nearly all would like to get out.

“They want to quit for the obvious reasons,” she said. “The danger. The physical and emotional distress. The toll that it takes. The shame.”

More at the NYTimes
Just who are these people "who think that most of the women in prostitution want to be there"? Bob Herbert doesn't say - probably because very few people would make such a claim.

The real problem for those who want prostitution to remain illegal is, as Jody Williams says "the shame."

Workers are exploited all over the world. Herbert & co. don't use that as the reason for suggesting that work itself should be made illegal. When it comes to non-sexual work, they are able to think clearly. They are against the workers being exploited, not the work itself.

And that's what it comes down to. The anti-legalization people have a problem with prostitution because it is about non-marital sex, far more than they have a problem with the exploitation of women and children. It's about "the shame" because the workers being exploited are doing sex work. There is no shame in being expoited as a fruit-picker, although conditions might be every bit as horrendous.

Women and children aren't only exploited through prostitution - young girls are sold or coerced into marriage in places all over the world. And traditional marriage is based entirely on the idea of women selling men sexual services in exchange for food and shelter. It still happens all over the world. I think that's a horrible exploitive situation - and so I think the exploitation should end. I am not calling for the criminalization of marriage.

Bob Herbert demonstrates that when you throw non-marital sex into the picture, some people's brains just go haywire.

And why doesn't Bob Herbert write a column about all the men who create the demand for prostitution - and don't care whether the prostitute they're screwing is a sex slave or not? Surely a few of them read the NYTimes. I'll wager some of them write for the NYTimes.

Awesome - evolutionary psychology bingo

Right here at Punkass blog.

Racists say the darndest things

As soon as I saw the article about the racist remarks of James Watson (of Crick & Watson DNA fame) I rushed over to Gene Expression, the premiere web site for science-minded racists and sure enough it was topic number one.

Top racists Steve Sailer and Razib (aka Newamul Khan) are entirely predictable in their reactions in this comment thread which can be summed up by the headline of a Wired article: Angry IQ Tester: Watson's Critics Are Socialists!

That was exactly Steven Pinker's reason for dismissing the scientific opinions of Stephen Jay Gould when he criticized evolutionary psychology. As I've blogged before, Pinker has no qualms about being interviewed by Gene Expression. Well why not, they are huge fans of his.

But what did the Sage of DNA say that has so confused those poor misguided media commies?
First he said:

"All our social policies are based on the fact that their (African's) intelligence is the same as ours (European's) - whereas all the testing says not really,"

THEN he said

In a statement given to The Associated Press yesterday, Dr. Watson said, "I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. There is no scientific basis for such a belief."

So, scream the GNXPers he was misquoted!

But his publicist, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, would not say whether Dr. Watson believed he had been misquoted. "You have the statement," she said. "That's it, I am afraid."

More at the NYTimes.
The GNXPers are so in love with Watson's racism that they completely overlook that fact that he's a batty old coot!

Yes, we've been expecting it for years

October 19, 2007, 11:48 am
Say What?
By The Editorial Board
More from President Bush's Wednesday press conference. File this under "Jokes that really aren't that funny."

Q: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said, recently, that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there.

BUSH: I've been planning that myself.

Check it out - and note the howls from the right-winger commentors: But if Bill Clinton had made the same joke eight years ago, you would have remarked on his delightful sense of humor despite all the abuse he had taken the rightwing conspiracy.

Might it be because the Bush people have demonstrated that there is nothing so mean, lowdown and illegal that they won't try to get away with it?

Iraq war contractor corruption scandal...

..will no doubt go down in history as the worst corruption scandal in the history of this country. Frank Rich:

The cost cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame. Its essence was summed up by Col. Ted Westhusing, an Army scholar of military ethics who was an innocent witness to corruption, not a participant, when he died at age 44 of a gunshot wound to the head while working for Gen. David Petraeus training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad in 2005. He was at the time the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

Colonel Westhusing's death was ruled a suicide, though some believe he was murdered by contractors fearing a whistle-blower, according to T. Christian Miller, the Los Angeles Times reporter who documents the case in his book "Blood Money." Either way, the angry four-page letter the officer left behind for General Petraeus and his other commander, Gen. Joseph Fil, is as much an epitaph for America’s engagement in Iraq as a suicide note.

"I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars," Colonel Westhusing wrote, abbreviating the word mission. "I am sullied."

More at the NYTimes

We've all been hip to this for years, but it's good to have a social scientist confirm it

In an idealized view of the fashion and art world, the gatekeepers of taste coolly evaluate the work they see according to Platonic criteria. Currid's conclusion, based on dozens of interviews, is less sublime. "There is very little that gets done in New York that is merit-based," a musician told her. "It boils down to the same maxim: 'It's all who you know.' " And in order to know the right people artists and designers inevitably gravitate to New York, because it's where previous generations of artists and designers, now powerful, gravitated to. The result is a classic case of what economists call network effects: success in the past creates success in the future.

From an aesthetic standpoint, "It's all who you know" may be a grim conclusion, but from the perspective of New York's economy it seems an entirely happy one.

More at the New Yorker

This explains why there's so much bad theatre done by people who get paid well for it - all the decision-makers are their pals, and you can't give your pals the red light.

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Krugman to Mergatroyd...

But when you're great, you're great

What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?

Partly it's a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job - to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda's recruiters could have hoped for - the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the "ozone man," but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, 'the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam." And so it has proved.

But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn't just inconvenient. For conservatives, it's deeply threatening.

more at the NYTimes

The Good Deputy

Now that the JANE EYRE production is underway, it's time to start writing a new play. While JANE is all girly-girly - although I personally think that the concerns of women are universal concerns, NY theatre critics don't see it that way - this new play is manly. It's THE GOOD DEPUTY and it's set in the Old West with a primarily male cast. Any connection between the plot and Bush Co's adventures in Iraq are purely intentional, although hopefully not too obvious or preachy - I want it to be an entertaining story too.

The inspiration is based on my wondering what would have happened if Colin Powell did not do the bidding of the Bushies. We have some idea what might have happened, based on the experience of Joseph Wilson and the outing of his wife, spy Valerie Plame by douchebag of liberty Robert Novak at the behest of the Bush administration.

David Hare already covered the territory of the actual Iraq war buildup in his play Stuff Happens. He was very literal, though, with people playing Bush, Cheney, Rice, etc.

My play was also inspired by my friend Greg Oliver Bodine, the brilliant actor/playwright, who played a cowboy recently, as you can see in this picture. I plan to have him portray the Deputy. We'll be doing a reading at NYCPlaywrights next week.



Plus, I always like having an excuse to post a cute guy picture on my blog.

Frank Rich challenges the Krugman for best editorialist

Frank Rich:

I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press - the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration's case - failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.

As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.

Not meaning to brag, but I don't count myself among "the American public" who were fooled into the war in Iraq. I was one of the anti-war protestors. I still have video from the huge anti-war rally that I will eventually put online.

Meanwhile, Steven Colbert appears in Maureen Dowd's column, improving it 150%

I'd like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she's watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn't have to think about. It's all George Bush's fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I've written Frank Rich's column too.

So why I am writing Miss Dowd's column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can't remember if I'm supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she's actually easy to beat, or if I'm supposed to be scared of her because she's legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can't remember if I'm supposed to support him because he's the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I'm supposed to support him because he's legitimately scary.

And Fred Thompson. In my opinion "Law & Order" never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don't mean Al Gore (though he's a world-class loomer). First of all, I don't think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don't need to care about science, literature or peace.

The right-wing bully machine

Krugman:

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they're "phony soldiers"; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he's faking his Parkinson's symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he's a fraud.

Krugman in the NYTimes

Nobel Al Gore

Hooray for Al Gore!

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and a United Nations panel on the environment won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about the threat of climate change.

Jane Eyre

My production of JANE EYRE is coming up in February 2008.

jane-eyre.org

The Law's Delay

In his be/not be soliloquy, Hamlet lists the following as possible reasons for suicide:
the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong,
the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love,
the law's delay,
The insolence of office,
and the spurns That patient merit of th' unworthy takes

Waiting for the US Copyright Office to cancel Edward Einhorn's unauthorized copyright registration on his derivative, and laughable "blocking and choreography" script on my play TAM LIN makes me understand why.

The fact that the Copyright Office granted Einhorn the registration is a clear sign there is something wrong with the U.S. Copyright Office itself. Because Einhorn NEVER had my authorization, and was not required by the Copyright Office to provide any proof of authorization whatsoever. Just the say-so of himself and his brother, the lawyer.

It makes the requirement of "authorization" meaningless. And it means that anybody with money can victimize anybody without money through this method - because once the registration is granted, it is up to the author of the original work to prove that it was not authorized.

My ex-partner Jonathan and I were involved in a lawsuit with Einhorn over this, with the expectation that Einhorn's ill-obtained registration would be cancelled during the course of events. It seemed reasonable to believe so. Apparently the US Copyright Office is far far more Kafka-esque than could possibly be believed.

And so The Strange Case of Edward Einhorn v. Mergatroyd Productions continues.

Edward Einhorn would like to believe that the case is over, clearly evident in this public exchange at Playgoer

Anonymous said...
Edward Einhorn? Watch out! He's gonna sue!

Saturday, August 04, 2007 11:55:00 AM
Edward Einhorn said...
I find that an oddly hostile (anonymous?) comment to appear after my posting regarding the Public. It's true that I was involved in a lawsuit a while ago regarding a play I was never paid for that also included some copyright issues. That suit was resolved and I was paid. But that lawsuit was a relatively small incident in my larger writing/directing career and certainly has no relevance to this issue.

I did not post the anonymous comment - apparently Einhorn's reputation precedes him.

With a wave of his hand like a latter-day Marie Antoinette offering dietary advice to peasants, Einhorn proclaims the suit "was resolved." Guess again Einhorn. It will never be resolved until YOU GIVE UP YOUR UNAUTHORIZED DERIVATIVE COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION ON MY PLAY TAM LIN!!!!!

Maybe you think that you have managed to sneak a "directors copyright" in the back door by the persistence of this ill-gotten registration. You think wrong. We will do whatever it takes, through whatever branch of government it takes - to get it cancelled. Because if you get away with this, what's to stop any creep with an agenda from trying the same thing?

Now why don't you go online somewhere and claim that I am defaming you, Einhorn? Oh, that's right, you've already done so, believing you can cow people into silence through their ignorance of the First Amendment.

I have never defamed you, Einhorn, because what I've said is either my opinion of you - which is protected speech - or THE TRUTH - and usually backed with court transcripts - which is also protected.

***

But perhaps I am simply being impatient. It's possible that we won't have to take further legal action, and that the Copyright Office, like any bureaucracy, is simply taking its sweet time. It's the law's delay - and I just have to ride it out.

I don't care what they say about me in the papers as long as they spell my name right...

Alas...

The play, adapted by N.G. McClearnan, follows the familiar story of Huck and Jim on a raft, even as it peers into Huck's internal struggle between right and wrong. Playwright McClearnan said she eliminated all but a few references to Tom Sawyer in the book because he "certainly was not a good boy."

"In fact," she said, "he was a big jerk."

While not evil, Sawyer causes problems for the freed slave, Jim, and jeopardizes more than a few people in his field of influence. So, for McClearnan, Tom's out and Huck's in.

The article is referring to my essay What about Lil Lizabeth?

Apparently the "as long as they spell my name right" quote is of unknown provenance...

Good News Delivered by Thunder

"Good News Delivered by Thunder" is the name of this song It's such a cool evocative name - I have to write a play with this title some day.

More on the album "Splendid Jubilant New Year - the Collection of Chinese Festival Music" - other great song titles: "Frantic Dances of Golden Serpent" and "Splendor Night Vision"