February 2005 Archives

I've gone and done it, up and moved. I will continue my daily blogging at the new site, aTypicalJoe.com. But please, before you go, be sure to peruse any posts you haven't read here. This site and its 150 posts will remain in place.

I've built up my own little micro-audience: 430 pages and 117 visits a day this month. No real way I know to easily factor out me or the robots; if 25 to 50 people visit that's grand.

The new site has Site Meter statistics. A little scary as I start all over again from scratch. I look back fondly on my brush with Wonkette and Phillip Nobile and look forward hopefully to some real development both as a blogger and as a destination site. They say it takes a good long time. I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

Frank Rich is grateful that Janet Jackson did not bare both breasts:

On the first anniversary of the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction that shook the world, it's clear that just one was big enough to wreak havoc. The ensuing Washington indecency crusade has unleashed a wave of self-censorship on American television unrivaled since the McCarthy era, with everyone from the dying D-Day heroes in "Saving Private Ryan" to cuddly animated animals on daytime television getting the ax. Even NBC's presentation of the Olympics last summer, in which actors donned body suits to simulate "nude" ancient Greek statues, is currently under federal investigation.

Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz.

We're off to Atlanta for dinner at The Pleasant Peasant then to see the national touring
production of Little Shop of Horrors at the fabulous Fox Theater. Progress today on the
new site, coming soon. Back for blogging late tomorrow!

If you watched media coverage of the State of the Union speech you may have come away believing that those Democratic boos were unprecedented. That's what reports and pundits said. Media Matters for America has the quotes, and then proves them wrong by documenting the Republican heckling Clinton took in four State of the Union addresses.

From The Village Voice:

Today, a New York trial judge handed down an unprecedented ruling that says the state must grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marriage. The court's decision, stemming from a case filed by Lambda Legal, a national LGBT civil rights organization, on behalf of five plaintiff couples, says that the state's constitution guarantees gay men and lesbians the same basic freedoms available to straight couples.

Here is the historic and beautifully written decision. Here is the Lambda Legal Defense news release.

It's a State Supreme Court decision, which in New York is the lowest court, so it's bound to be appealed. But a significant victory nonetheless. My friends in New York are happy and proud.

UPDATE 2/6/05: The city is appelaing the ruling. In doing so

[Republican Mayor Michael] Bloomberg said he personally favored gay marriage. It was the first time, according to his aides, that he has so clearly stated his position in public. He went further last night at a dinner held by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, where he told the guests at the Waldorf-Astoria that he would "work with you to change the law" in Albany if the lower court ruling - which he called "something to celebrate" - was struck down... Lawyers said the ruling on Friday, combined with the mayor's decision to appeal it, virtually guaranteed that the state's highest court, the seven-member Court of Appeals, would make a definitive ruling on gay marriage for the state.

A well respected and knowledgeable friend who has written a book on Social Security told me months ago that nothing would happen on Social Security reform. I believed him and have thus not fretted much over the current debate. I can only hope he's right for if it were to pass, at age 50 I sit squarely on the cusp:

The great middle band of the Social Security debate agrees perhaps only...that the president's plan, for better or worse, has put them on the cusp - too old to see much benefit through the miracle of compounding in a private retirement account, too young to have any guarantees.

There is no Crisis. Really. Check it out. For more read Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly, a most articulate and vocal oponent of the President's plan.

I've been bugged the last few days by Norah O'Donnell's Today Show stand-ups. Today from Omaha wasn't so bad, but on the White House Lawn yesterday:

Today the president is going to try to capitalize on some of the momentum from last night, launching a five-state campaign-style blitz throughout the nation in order to sell his plan directly to the American people... Now on the Middle East, the president boldly says he believes that peace is within reach for the Israelis and the Palestinians. He warned Iran to end its support of terror and promised Iranians seeking liberty that the US will stand with them.

Ok, so it sounded worse than it reads. Then here's the day before:

The president will lay out a bold blueprint for his aggressive second term agenda. He will challenge Congress to tackle some politically divisive issues, and he will ask the world to join him in a new effort to help rebuild Iraq. Preparing for tonight's State of the Union address, the president wants to chart a new course, pledging diplomacy abroad, and championing the spread of freedom with the elections in Iraq. But advisers say he will not yield to growing demands to offer an exit strategy for US troops.

Hard-hitting, deep-digging, objective, independent reporting? It sounds more like she's regurgitating White House Communications Office agitprop to me.

Andrew Sullivan asked the other day, in the first of many post-hiatus posts, why not an anti-abortion amendment? In light of the president's gay-marriage-mention in last night's speech, I thought it worth pondering. Is gay marriage even more important than abortion to the Religious Right? Really?

I finally have the GMail account I craved. Thank you The Last Minute.
Now you can write me at jwindish-AT-gmail.com. I'll let you know how I like it. I may even get the opportunity to give you a GMail account...

UPDATE: Heeding the advice of my commenter I have modified the email address posting to thwart robots.

Though largely ignored in the post-speech analysis I've seen, it was there nonetheless:

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be redefined by activist judges. For the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.

I read of Chicago's Millenium Park when it opened and thought I'd like to visit. But New(Sub)urbanism says the park is "Chicago's most privatized public space" and points to the story of a photographer stopped from snapping pictures because he didn't have a permit.

A reporter looking into the incident was told: "The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist." Not a selling point.

UPDATE: a follow-up post clarifies, "The real reason for the city's shakedown is that the city has exclusive licensing rights for selling images of Millennium Park."

Apparently, the city does not want to endure competition from entrepreneurs who may go and photograph Millennium Park enhancements and place the images on postcards, t-shirts, etc... Some use of public space, huh?

Dean's World suggests playing with the Visual Thesaurus. So I did. If it were free or advertiser supported, I'd be a regular visitor. For $2.95 a month, $19.95 a year, I'm not sold. Here's more.

I only became aware of Oregon's Measure 37 when I heard an ad on local radio hawking "How to" kits for bringing Measure 37-like initiatives to "your town." This is a very big deal here in Red America.

In his New Yorker review of Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Malcolm Gladwell suggests just where such actions might lead:

Supporters of the law spoke entirely in the language of political ideology. To them, the measure was a defense of property rights, preventing the state from unconstitutional "takings." ...The thing that got lost in the debate, however, was the land. In a rapidly growing state like Oregon, what, precisely, are the state's ecological strengths and vulnerabilities? What impact will changed land-use priorities have on water and soil and cropland and forest? One can imagine Diamond writing about the Measure 37 debate, and he wouldn't be very impressed by how seriously Oregonians wrestled with the problem of squaring their land-use rules with their values, because to him a society's environmental birthright is not best discussed in those terms. Rivers and streams and forests and soil are a biological resource. They are a tangible, finite thing, and societies collapse when they get so consumed with addressing the fine points of their history and culture and deeply held beliefs...that they forget that the pastureland is shrinking and the forest cover is gone.

Diamond looks at the Norse and Inuit colonies in Greenland. The Inuit survived, the Norse didn't. Why? Diamond thinks its because they clung to their Norwegian ways. They farmed and used the forests for fuel and construction. They didn't adapt to the land they lived on and so they stripped it bare. They clung to their cultural survival without concern for the biological. And in the end, they starved to death. Gladwell again:

The lesson of "Collapse" is that societies, as often as not, aren't murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death... To call Measure 37--and similar referendums that have been passed recently in other states--intellectually incoherent is to put it mildly. It might be that the reason your hundred-acre farm on a pristine hillside is worth millions to a developer is that it's on a pristine hillside: if everyone on that hillside could subdivide, and sell out to Target and Wal-Mart, then nobody's plot would be worth millions anymore. Will the voters of Oregon then pass Measure 38, allowing them to sue the state for compensation over damage to property values caused by Measure 37?

If a Measure 37 could happen in Oregon, where enlightened land-use restrictions successfully limited suburban sprawl and protected coastal habitats, it could happen in my town. And yours. That's what the ad on the radio promised. We best believe it's true.

Jerome Armstrong explains beautifully why Dean and Chris Bowers says it's time to celebrate, even as his commenters warn that he's jumping the gun. But it sure does look like victory is Dean's.

The President will tell us tonight about his plans for Social Security privatization. (There is no crisis. Really. Check it out.) Meanwhile, Medicare's a disaster. And what is the latest news there? The new Medicare prescription plan is going to cover sexual performance drugs such as Viagra. Some are not happy about this, mainly conservatives. Why not my fellow liberals? It looks like a sop to the Pharmaceuticals industry to me. Go get 'em Michael!

Ana Marie Cox, aka Wonkette, is writing a book. I don't know if she has it in her. But then, Fox's Chris Wallace didn't have it in him either and he wrote a book. ("It was a kind of collaborative effort. My -- a fellow, an agent, Bill Adler (ph), came up -- called me up and said, Have you ever thought of writing a book? And I said, yes, but I never have had an idea." I'll say.) I digress.

I couldn't write a book. Writing a blog and writing a book are very different talents. Tom Wolfe is an accomplished writer, but that doesn't guarantee he would write an interesting blog. And Cox is great as Wonkette, a foulmouthed, hard-drinking, sex-obsessed politics junkie. But... I've seen Cox on cable and C-SPAN panels and read interviews and, well, she's not always the most articulate. And while Andrew Sullivan is gone for "say, nine months" to write his book, Cox is taking just one.

Don't get me wrong, I like Wonkette, love her politics, and am grateful that her guest blogger caught me in a dumb mistake just a week after I started blogging. That sent my traffic through the roof and earned me a Google ranking I had been trying to achieve for months. Not to mention great cocktail chatter.

I bet the book will sell; I'm not so sure I'll be buying.

Andrew Sullivan is going on hiatius for "a few months."

Why? The simple answer is that I want to take a breather, to write a long-overdue book, to read some more, travel to Europe and the Middle East, and work on some longer projects... It's not so much the time as the mindset. The ability to keep on top of almost everything on a daily and hourly basis just isn't compatible with the time and space to mull over some difficult issues in a leisurely and deliberate manner.

I don't always agree with Andrew, in fact I often don't, but I like his writing and I read his blog regularly. He's pointed to things others don't and often has a fresh and different perspective.

I subscribed to The New Republic while he was editor and tend to enjoy his magazine pieces more than his books. I agree with him most on the subject of gay marriage, though even there we part ways from time to time.

Friends in New York consider him the devil and will ignore the news. Not me. I hope he finishes his book and returns as promised "to blogging full-steam with perhaps a new direction or approach to refresh the material."