Senator John Warner of Virginia will announce tomorrow whether he will retire after his current term, and he’ll do so at my beautiful alma mater.
Category Archives: General
Greenwald on Vitter & Craig
In comparing Republican reactions to the Larry Craig and David Vitter scandals, Glenn Greenwald makes a great point, one that has been made many times but bears repeating.
The only kind of “morality” that this [right-wing] movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations — from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage — are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in “Traditional Marriage” while their “third husbands” and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.
They’re all willing to cheer on the “rules of traditional marriage” which do not impose on them in any way (marriage must have a man and a woman — no problem there). But no “Family Values” politician could possibly survive politically by seeking to enshrine with the force of law all of the other equally important prongs of “Traditional Marriage” (all of that dreary, outdated “until death do us part” business which would deny the “right” for Values Voters to dump their wives and move on to the “next wife” when the mood strikes, or remain shacked up with their various girlfriends and the like).
In other words, it’s always easy to demonize The Other.
Freelancing
I went to Jere’s birthday gathering last night at Marie’s Crisis. (It’s one of David’s favorite places in New York, but alas, he lives in Missouri.) I had the pleasure of finally meeting Tim, who moved to New York a year ago with his boyfriend and lives in a far-off land called Bushwick.
We all stood in a small clump near the bar and away from the piano, talking and listening to the piano player tinkle the out-of-tune ivories and the group around the piano sing along. One of Jere’s friends said it was his first time at Marie’s Crisis in 10 years and that as far as he could tell, nothing had changed at all, including the guy behind the piano.
It was good to get out and do something social. I’ve been feeling really bleah lately, but I was cheered up by being around a group of nice guys.
At one point, Tim remarked to me that my blog has been kind of angsty lately. I laughed and admitted that, yeah, that was probably the case, and I explained that I’ve been caught up lately (again) in trying to find my purpose in life. Of course, while I was (mercifully briefly) talking about this, I realized that the piano player was playing, and the people gathered around the piano were singing, “Purpose” from Avenue Q.
Digression: I can barely play the piano at all, so I shouldn’t talk, but can I just say how much I hate it when a piano player plays the wrong backup chords to a song being sung? Well, it’s not that I hate it, because I have sympathy for the accompanist as he tries to keep up, and again, I’m one to talk. It’s that my ears hate it. It drives me nuts.
Earlier this week, I’d decided that I’d hit on the solution to all my problems: I should become a freelance writer in my spare time, and eventually work my way up to things like the New Yorker and Harper’s and things like that. But after looking at various websites and books about how to be a freelance writer, I’ve come away with a nauseating impression of the whole thing. I get the impression that most freelance writing occurs for publications like Woman’s Day or Pet Fancy and so forth and consists of very practical-oriented and consumer-oriented articles. Numbered lists and so forth. And my admittedly unscientific perusal leads me to believe that most freelancers are women and that they love being able to write for Woman’s Day or women’s health magazines or parenting or pregnancy or cooking magazines.
Picture me sticking my finger down my throat and making a gagging sound. (If you could picture a sound.)
My impression of freelance writing might be completely wrong. But if it’s accurate, it’s totally not the kind of writing I want to do – completely disposable stuff. I’m interested in politics and culture and ideas, in which case I should try to write for publications that publish that kind of thing.
Instead of publications that publish Eighteen Practical Ways to Get Along Better With Your Pet!