Obsidian Wings

Nice Guys

by hilzoy

A few notes about my last post (the one on Maureen Dowd): I didn't mean to suggest that there were any character traits, let alone major virtues, that are the exclusive province of men. I just read the comments Dowd quoted, about men not having any occasion to display their manliness etc., and thought: they seem to have something in mind, and it would be churlish to reply: so I take it you've stopped being an exhibitionist? or something like that. What is this something? Apparently, it seems to have to do with things like strength and courage. But why would anyone think that there is no occasion for strength and courage, rightly construed? I was assuming that any decent version of manliness would not actually be defined as "what women are not", but would involve some positive ideal worth pursuing in itss own right, whether or not women were doing something similar. Debitage suggests that I am wrong:

"The macho impulse is a drive not just to do things that are intrinsically good for men, but to do things that distinguish men from women. This is why so much of machismo is wrapped up in policing border-blurring behavior, such as homosexuality and uppity women. Therefore it's only manly to have strength if women are typically weak. If women can be strong too, men will have to find a different reason to be strong (and plenty of such reasons exist)."

If so, then I agree that men should give up on this whole set of motivations. No one's psyche should actually require the weakness of others. I was hoping that there was a better way to respond to the guys Dowd quoted; but if I'm wrong, well then, I'm wrong.

(I also did not mean to suggest that my being single was the result of my not being pert, winsome, etc. (Wouldn't it be convenient to think so!) I tend to put it down to a combination of My Many Faults and the vagaries of my personal history. I'm just not in a good position to be a counterexample to Dowd's thesis, is all.) (Also: I should know better than to write posts while I'm rushing around getting ready to catch a train.)

All that said: the comments on that thread have now turned to a discussion of these comments:

(a): "Those of us who aren't bastards typically find that most women take no romantic interest in us"

(b) "As a lesbian, of course, I have no direct interest in this matter. But I can tell you that the straight women of my acquaintance say the worst turn-off is a man who makes a big point of how much of a nice, non-sexist guy he is, and then expects women to be grateful and appreciative of this. A remarkable number of men don't seem to have grasped the point that women don't like to be told, either explicitly or implicitly, that they should be grateful to men for treating them like mature adult human beings."

My take on this question below the fold.

Alito

by Charles

CNN reports that Bush has chosen Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.  Given the nickname of Scalito, this will comfort conservatives and not go over well with many Senate Democrats, and it remains to be seen how the Gang of 14 will decide.  Over the coming days, we're going to hear a lot about Planned Parenthood v. Casey (a conservative take here, and a better one here).  Memeorandum has a pretty decent round-up.  I don't have any nifty analysis.  Just wanted to get it up on the board.

The President's Foreign Policy Speech

by Charles

With the Harriet Miers controversy and CIA leak indictments getting the media full-court press, it was easy to miss the fact that the president gave an historic foreign policy speech on Wednesday.  Bringing us back to the days of the Reagan era, he stepped up and proclaimed that one of the country's most nettlesome nations should no longer exist.  World leaders reacted harshly to this bit of war-mongering.

Question Of The Day

by hilzoy

Answer: Yes.

So why, exactly, did Maureen Dowd need to write an entire book about it? I suppose the answer must be: because she needed to have place to put things like this:

"Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise longue, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness."

Now: I am in no position to question the accuracy of what Dowd says. I am no good at pert tosses of the head, dewy eyes, etc., etc., and guess what? I'm still single. Maybe if I were better at saucy, winsome, and so on, things would be different.

But I don't think I'm going to try to find out. And this is not just because I'm no good at it, and because it would be incredibly boring, but because I think that this whole picture of gender relations is just insulting not only to women but to men. I like men. Some of my best friends, and all of my exes, are men. But none of them would have said something as idiotic as this:

"When I asked a young man at my gym how he and his lawyer girlfriend were going to divide the costs on a California vacation, he looked askance. "She never offers," he replied. "And I like paying for her." It is, as one guy said, "one of the few remaining ways we can demonstrate our manhood.""

Excuse me? I, in my naive little way, thought that manhood was about strength, decency, honor, courage, and the like. The world is full of ways to demonstrate one's manhood: occasions to step up and do the right thing, to take responsibility for your actions, to go out of your way to be decent to someone who needs it, to have the guts to do what's right even when you'll be ridiculed for doing so.

One way to display one's manhood would be to refrain from saying things like this:

"At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?"

Personally, I know a lot of guys who are stronger and braver than this. Because I do, and because I love and respect them, I will not buy into an idea of manhood so diminished that its only possible manifestation is paying for vacations, nor will I look into buying a lacy handkerchief to drag languorously across my eyes. I will say this, though: after reading the excerpts from Dowd's book, and in particular the quotes about guys and their supposedly fragile egos, I am more convinced than ever that the answer to the question "Are Men Necessary?" is: yes. We need people with courage and decency and generosity and kindness and strength, now more than ever.

Patrick Fitzgerald

by hilzoy

"Fontenelle says, "I bow before a great man, but my mind does not bow." I can add: before a humble common man in whom I perceive uprightness of character in a higher degree than I am conscious of in myself, my mind bows, whether I want it or whether I do not and hold my head ever so high that he may not overlook my superior position. Why is this? His example holds before me a law that strikes down my self-conceit when I compare it with my conduct, and I see observance of that law and hence its practicability proved before me in fact. ... Respect is a tribute that we cannot refuse to pay to merit, whether we want to or not; we may indeed withhold it outwardly, but we cannot help feeling it inwardly."

Kant, Critique of Practical Reason 5:76-7.

I watched Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference, and it was very, very impressive. For those of you who didn't see it: I am not a lawyer, but I would be very reluctant to read much of anything into what he did or didn't say. He struck me as a completely straight, decent, and principled person, who is political in the broadest and best sense (concerned with the nature and preservation of the structures that allow us to live as one society), and for that very reason recognizes that, given his role, he cannot be political in the narrower, partisan sense. He was extremely clear about what he could and could not say, according to the law, and despite the best efforts of journalists to provoke him into disclosing more than he should, he flatly refused, while being consistently gracious about it. He also explained why: because grand juries are empowered to find out information about people that it would be wrong to reveal publicly, unless that information forms the basis for an indictment. He seemed to me to be without bias: he consistently emphasized the presumption of innocence when speaking about Scooter Libby, refused to say anything at all about anyone else, and emphasized that there had been no attempt at any political interference with his investigation; but he was also eloquent about the seriousness of obstruction and perjury charges. He was not only extremely sharp and very good at explaining what was in the indictments, but also a very persuasive advocate for the rules that govern him and us.

As far as I could tell he was, in short, a completely honorable man, and a very skilled and competent one. He was given a job to do, and he did it to the best of his considerable abilities, without leaking or spinning, without any apparent concerns about going after powerful people, and also without any apparent desire to carve their notches on his gun. It has been amusing watching various pundits try to figure out what to make of someone who is simply not interested in what they say about him: it seems to leave them completely at sea. Similarly, he has left both Democrats and Republicans who might otherwise complain about the outcome of his investigation without a leg to stand on. I admire him enormously.

Think about the extraordinary temptations he must have faced: not just the obvious ones, like making whatever call he might have thought would advance his career, but the subtler ones, like self-importance, or the idea that it was important to teach a lesson or provide an example of something other than someone doing his job without fear or favor. I think it would have been incredibly hard not to allow some motive to corrupt one's work in his position: some temptation to grandiosity, or to produce an effect. It would have been easy to take yielding to that temptation to be the right thing to do: after all, how often does anyone get the sort of podium that Patrick Fitzgerald just had? And wouldn't it seem natural to try to use it for some purpose beyond doing his job? And yet, as far as I could tell, he did not. He just did his job as well as he possibly could. In the midst of endless verbiage, his silence has been stunning; and in the midst of so many egos on parade, he managed to combine complete self-possession with an equally complete absence of self-importance.

My mind bows.

Libby 5; Rove ?

by Edward

The NYT is reporting that Libby's been indicted on 5 counts:

Vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter' Libby Jr. was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case.

Karl Rove, President Bush's closest adviser, apparently escaped indictment Friday but remained under investigation, his legal status a looming political problem for the White House.

The indictments stem from a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into whether Rove, Libby or any other administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame or lied about their involvement to investigators.

Our friends Some folks on the right are already screaming about how this is unfair to Rove (the irony is intoxicating). Press conference at 2:00 EST.

UPDATE [1:13 EST]: CNN is reporting Libby has resigned.

"Up or Down" Dead, Dead, Dead

by Edward

John Cole on RedState tries valiantly to save the GOP's right to resuscitate the recently departed talking point that all Bush's nominees deserve an up or down vote in the Senate, but it's the most faithless sort of wishful thinking and as such deserves debunking. In response to this post by Kos, using the GOP's own words against them, Cole takes out his hair-splitter and tries to find a difference in how the GOP derailed Harriet's turn before the Judiciary Committee:

When Republicans and conservatives speak of a desire for an up or down vote for judicial nominees, it is born out of the frustration of the recent past in which nominees were bottled up in committee in perpetuity, were never given hearings, were never given a vote, and simply had their nomination blocked through procedural maneuvering. In fairness, this occurred under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, and in Senates led by Republicans and Democrats.

But that is not what happened in the Miers case, and to assert otherwise is to engage in a flight of fancy. A desire for an up or down vote for judicial nominees is in no way anathema to the desire (and, I might add, right) to loudly voice one's displeasure with a nominee.

Harriet Miers was nominated to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She was given a date for confirmation hearings (they were to begin on November 7th), she had meetings with Senators, she was filling out questionnaires for the Judiciary Committee. She would, one could safely assume, have had a vote in the Judiciary Committee at the commencement of the confirmation hearings, and predicated on the outcome of that vote, a vote would have been held in the Senate at large.

In other words, she was going to get her 'up or down vote.' There were no calls to 'blue slip' her, there was no move to filibuster her (indeed, the Gang of 14 stated they would break any filibuster attempts), there were no attempts at procedural moves to block her nomination, and she was not going to be bottlenecked in committee forever.

What's most laughable about this is this bit: "she was going to get her 'up or down vote.' " It's laughable because web site's had been set up and the call went far and wide that what the base wanted was not an up or down vote but her nomination to be withdrawn. In fact, on the Withdraw Miers website, they list the folks calling for the withdrawal and list the Senators who had expressed "Reservations," long before the hearings had offered Harriet a chance to answer her critics, including

Senator Rick Santorum
Senator Sam Brownback
Senator Trent Lott
Senator George Allen
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Jeff Sessions
Senator David Vitter
Senator John Ensign
Senator John Thune

So who exactly is it in the GOP that still believes the President has the right to have his choice, his chosen nominee, receive an up or down vote? Cole would like you to believe they never stopped believing this was the proper process, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Well, crap

by von

First the blog double-posted my bit on Iraq; now it won't let me delete the second post -- leading to this replacement.  Consider this your "well, crap" open thread.

Yes, Virginia, It's Turning Around

by von

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AGO, I wrote that a successful Constitutional Referendum -- whatever its outcome -- would start to turn around Iraq, because it would invest the Sunnis in the political process.  Today, we begin to see evidence of exactly that:

NORTH OF BAGHDAD -- For weeks before Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote -- and vote against the constitution.

"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."

For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Two years of boycotting the process had only marginalized Sunnis while Iraqi's Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb's entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives.

So at 6:30 a.m. on the day of the referendum, Oct. 15, Theeb was already at the polling center in his village, which he had scouted out days in advance. Two of his fighters took up positions. Abu Theeb and the rest of the fighters, more relaxed, propped their Kalashnikov rifles against walls or placed them on tables.

"No one will attack," Abu Theeb assured a reporter. "I made sure some wrongdoers are protecting the school," he said, jokingly referring to al Qaeda loyalists. To head off any violence, he had co-opted the group by enlisting two of its supporters as his polling site guards.

The War in Iraq has been longer, harder, and tougher than it should have been.  There are legitimate grounds to say that it never should have been fought in the first place.  But don't close your eyes to the fact that -- slowly, painfully -- we are winning in Iraq.  The Iraqis are winning.  Don't give up the cause.

Ah, How It Takes Me Back...

by hilzoy

From Brad DeLong:

"When the Fifteen-Year-Old asked, "Why is so much of Africa so poor?" he was not expecting--and did not react well to--a dramatic reading of parts of James Ferguson (1999), Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley: University of California: 0520217020)."

Growing up as the child of academics definitely has its interesting moments. My Dad was generally quite good at age-appropriate explanations. I particularly recall (though obviously I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotes; please attribute any total idiocy to my memory) the time when I, aged eight or nine, asked what they were talking about on the news, and Dad said: Apparently, President Johnson thinks he can pay for the war in Vietnam by printing money. It had never previously occurred to me that the President could print money at will, so I asked: can he? Actually, no, said Dad, but he can tell other people to do it. I then asked why that wouldn't be a perfectly good way to pay for things. There followed an explanation that went like this: suppose that Dad and I were the only people in the world, and I had a dime and he had a candy bar. How much would I be willing to pay for the candy bar? Now imagine that I found another dime. How much would I be willing to pay then? Would I get any more candy for my money? Would my purchasing power have been increased in any way at all by my suddenly having twice as much money?

(Note: we did get to the many disanalogies between this example and Johnson's economic policy when I was older. Like I said, he's good at age-appropriate explanations.)

My Mom was also generally good at these things, but since she both totally loves books and is a deeply generous person, she was sometimes led astray by her eagerness for us to arrive at the point where she could share all these wonderful books with us. Thus it was that she recommended that I read Lord Jim when I was nine; thus also her idea of cheering me up, when I was about the same age and had a fever, by reading me Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, in their entirety; later illnesses produced readings from Cicero and Seneca.

So, Brad, this is what you have to look forward to: the Fifteen Year Old writing about all this in a blog of his or her own. Hopefully, the Fifteen Year Old will then add: being a faculty brat definitely had its peculiar moments, but the benefits vastly outweighed the occasional oddities.