An editorial note

I have been pondering something, and have come to a decision. I am going to steal.

More specifically, I am going to steal a commenting policy from my friends and occasional hosts over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. They enjoy a healthy level of back and forth in their comments, but do so within the bounds of civility. I would prefer that we move toward a similar level of decorum here.

So, here are a few guidelines.

1) Let's try not to use swear words. At least, let's try to avoid using them about each other. If a particular public figure seems flagrantly guilty of spewing excrement, and you just have to use a synonym for same to describe it, I can live with occasional lapses. But otherwise, let's try to use polite terminology.

2) Let's try to avoid attacking the integrity of fellow commenters. Yes, I realize that there are certain regular contributors to the discussion who take a decidedly different viewpoint from the generally left-of-center tack I happen to take, and that can be a bit frustrating from time to time. I can dig it. But, from my perspective as the co-blogger of a very small blog with a similarly small readership, I'm glad to have regular readers period, and I'd like to avoid alienating anyone if I can help it.

3) Please try to stay on topic. If the main post is about the Sultan of Brunei, keep your comments limited to oil-rich states in the Pacific. I don't care how much you hate Nancy Pelosi, for example. Unless she's vacationing in Borneo or something, I don't want to hear about her in the comments. The blogosphere offers space aplenty for all manner of perspectives, and everyone can start their own Pelosi-bashing-blog free of charge.

I don't plan to ban anyone's IP address or switch to moderated comments, or anything drastic. I think we can all play nicely together, because we're all smart, cooperative people. Right? However, I reserve the right to blithely delete any comment I happen to find in violation of the spirit of this policy.

Cheers!

Again, likely true...but back it up!

Dan gave our last update in our ongoing series: Articles Dispensing Common-Sense Parenting Tips Purportedly Based in Scientific Fact, But Wherein the Author Draws Conclusions Unwarranted By the Cited Empirical Evidence. I do prefer this series to the Perform This Non-Common-Sensical Activity Repeatedly In Order To Avoid Cognitively Less Developed Kids, Also Purportedly Based in Scientific Fact But Not Backed Up by Empirical Evidence (see: Baby Einstein DVDs and the stroller wars).

Today, we have Jane Brody urging parents to talk to babies. Seems reasonable enough. But she does not cite one study that suggests that this is useful. The sum total of her evidence is that the AMA, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and a "speech and language specialist in New York" (who herself cited no data) urge such contact. Other evidence offered by Brody:

"All too often, the mothers and nannies I see are tuned in to their cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPods, not their young children."

(snip)

"And you can’t introduce books too early. I remember my niece at 3 months paying rapt attention as her mother “read” picture books to her, pointing out objects, their colors and what the characters were doing."

(snip)

"One, a former Spanish teacher, speaks to her three little boys only in Spanish; her husband and almost everyone else in their lives speak to them in English. The oldest, now 3, is fluently bilingual and readily translates into English what has been said to him in Spanish. If I ask him something in Spanish, he responds to me in English (he quickly recognized my limits with Spanish) and even corrects my mispronunciations of Spanish words.

So much for the notion that learning two languages simultaneously delays a child’s language development."

Well. I'm glad your sample size was big enough to draw that conclusion.

The thing is, I'm sure there are data on this. Meanwhile, please avoid the hectoring (the rest of the article is a lguilt-inducing laundry lists of shoulds and shouldn'ts for parents) and please stop speaking in tones of scientific authority when you have established none, and are just basing this in your own observations of a couple of kids you know and your neighbors. What a lazy, naggy article!

Dept. of Kudos

Wow. Lots of candor these past few days from the Right. Now is, I suppose, as good a time as any to offer up my hosannas.

First up, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He had this to say at the "First Draft of History" conference, sponsored by The Atlantic:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) offered unusually blunt assessments of the fringe elements of his party and conservative media on Thursday, calling the popular and bombastic Fox News host Glenn Beck a "cynic" whose show was antithetical to American values.

"Only in America can you make that much money crying," Graham said of Beck. "Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party. He is aligned with cynicism and there has always been a market for cynics. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers."

Appearing before a crowd of Washington's elite power players and opinion-makers, Graham spoke largely without filter, offering acidic takes on subject well beyond Beck. The Senator called the birther community that questions the president's U.S. citizenship "crazy" and implored them to "knock this crap off" so the country could get on to more important matters.

"I'm here to tell you that those who think the president was not born in Hawaii are crazy," said Graham, who went on to dispel another myth: that Obama is a closet Muslim.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/01/sen-graham-calls-beck-a-c_n_306434.html

Good on you, Sen. Graham. You have earned a good mark in my "not entirely insane" GOP ledger, and I will cut you some slack the next time you play along with your party's obstructionist agenda.

Next up, also at "F'DOH" (which seems like the place to be right now). former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt:

That famous infighting of the core McCain campaign versus Sarah Palin is still continuing, with former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt openly saying at the Atlantic's "First Draft of History" symposium that it would be "catastrophic" if Palin were to win the Republican nomination in 2012.

Schmidt said:"Most politicians of prominence write a book. My honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for president and if she was the results would be...catastrophic. It's fairly inconceivable she could be elected."

Why, yes! It is fairly inconceivable that she could be elected, and it would be catastrophic if it came to pass. Thanks, Steve Schmidt! It's almost enough to make me forgive you for foisting her on the American public in the first place. (Oh, wait. No, it's not.)

Last up, David Brooks. (OK, so Brooks' Right-wing bona fides are a bit tarnished of late. I still think it counts.)

Over the years, I have asked many politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he’s not.

[snip]

So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist. They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.

Nothing there we didn't already know, or kind of expect from Brooks. But still, nice to see it all so tidily laid out.

Thanks, fellows. Appreciate the honesty. Now, let's see if any of this makes any difference.

Update: (H/t Political Animal.) My, my, my. The hits just keep on coming. Now you, Joe Scarborough.

Chicago is a beautiful city that would have made a perfect backdrop for the Olympics. The President was right to fly to Copenhagen to try to land the games, not for the sake of his city, but for the good of his country. The fact President Obama failed makes me respect him more for taking the chance, and the fact many right-wing figures opposed the President's mission shows just how narrow-minded partisanship makes us all.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-scarborough/thank-you-mr-president_b_308022.html

Maybe I'm getting old

I have a small request for America's film-makers. Last night, while innocently watching Project Runway [and by the way, PR producers, that ending was pretty cruel], I was lucky enough to see an extended trailer for the upcoming disaster flick 2012.

And here's the thing. I really, really would prefer not to see any more movies where a major American city (scratch that... any major city) gets summarily destroyed. Particularly New York, of course, but I don't really bear LA any notable ill will (despite its concentration of Polanksi apologists) and I'd rather not watch it get all blowed up, either. Ditto Chicago. Or San Francisco. Or even Detroit.

You know what really struck me, though, as I sat there wishing I weren't watching live TV and could fast-forward through the carnage? While all the buildings were toppling over and cars were flying through the air, and trains were crashing into gigantic fireballs? We don't actually see any people getting killed en masse. I suppose it's a major buzz-kill for movie-goers, who'd just as soon cheer loudly while all the shiny buildings crash into each other, to imagine all the people inside who are perishing horribly. And I realize the experience is supposed to kick ass, instead of crushing one's soul, and nobody goes to a movie like 2012 expecting cinema verite. But maybe our entertainments would be less empty and oddly flat if they didn't present apocalyptic destruction as wildly enjoyable.

I'm not going to go all maudlin and moan about how "9/11 changed everything" and such, though I would recommend David Foster Wallace's "The View from Mrs. Thompson's" for an excellent meditation on that day and the resonance it had with contemporary film carnage. But whatever thrill I may have once had watching a metropolis crumbling into ruin is long gone, probably for good.

I suppose Joan Didion was unavailable

I think we're all impressed that Sarah Palin was able to "write" a 400-page book in four months. What kind of woman did she call on to help fill in some of the writing that she was "doing"? Well, what kind would you expect?

Sarah Palin's most consequential choice since leaving the Alaska governor's mansion may be her co-author - a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway.

[snip]

Vincent's past projects include co-writing the memoir of General William Boykin, who blasted the media and President George W. Bush alike for ending his career over his casting the war on terror in overtly religious terms. Her most political book, "Donkey Cons," describes the Democratic Party since its inception as "pro-gangster" and the "party of treason and subversion." Her work for World Magazine, where she was an editor, includes a description of President Barack Obama as the "minority survivor" of the "black genocide" - that is, abortion.

[snip]

She's also been - unlike Palin - an outspoken foe of homosexuality.

"In decades past, men and women routinely brushed off fleeting thoughts of homosexual behavior. Now, though, gay activists have succeeded in planting a seed that says people not only can but should follow such thoughts with exploration and action," Vincent warned last year.

Curse you, fleeting thoughts! You refused to flee fleetly, and have instead persisted throughout my entire life. And my, but those gay activists were wily with their seed-planting, what with my never having met nor heard of them until well after I finally came out of the closet. Stealthy!

I suppose it was too much to hope for that, pace Santorum, we would get a thoughtful tome. Glad to know Gov. Palin is still living up to my most consistent expectations of her.

Maybe the grossest thing I've read in a while

You know, I thought I had already said all I had to say about Roman Polanski and his current legal woes. There remains, of course, all manner of chatter about his arrest and possible extradition, some of which you can see collected here and here. But the outpouring of sympathy for him is making me ill.

This slideshow, in particular, makes me want to barf. (Confidential to Woody Allen -- buddy, if I were you, I'd keep my pie-hole shut when it comes to famous people and their inappropriate sexual practices.) My favorite line, of course, comes from the atrocious Harvey Weinstein's Op-ed:

Whatever you think about the so-called crime, Polanski has served his time.

What "so-called crime"? You mean statutory rape, Harv? With the alcohol and the drugs and the pleas for Polanski to stop? That one? Because that? That I would call a "crime," and would not bother with dismissive modifiers.

Honestly, Hollywood, you people are doing a fantastic job of reminding me why fame is something to be feared rather than coveted. Never have I seen such a morally decayed response to something so flagrantly wrong.

Rubber, meet road

Every so often, I muse about what it would be like to run for high office. And then I think about my penchant for sarcasm, and remind myself that Congress already has a snarky gay man, and think better of it. (Also, there is the distinct prospect of losing to consider. I would probably not enjoy that.)

However, it is my genuine pleasure to introduce to you a candidate I am proud to support -- Tommy Sowers. He's running for Congress in Missouri's 8th District against an entrenched and deeply conservative incumbent. As he mentioned in a recent e-mail to me, Rep. Emerson has a 0% approval rating from the HRC; I am surprised that she ranked even that high. (For those of you who aren't familiar with my entire backstory, my hometown happens to be in Missouri's 8th District.)

In addition to being a decorated Iraq War veteran and West Point professor, Tommy also went to high school with me. (The fact that he was [and obviously remains] orders of magnitude cooler than me is something I am willing to forgive him for, as is the fact that he is a year younger than me and could plausibly be a member of Congress in the next two years.) If you're interested in supporting a progressive candidate for the House who has served his country with distinction, and also happens to be incredibly intelligent, I hope you'll visit Tommy's page and make a contribution.