Was it worth it?

Even the Bush administration's fiercest critics have to acknowledge yesterday's extraordinary results. In perhaps the most succinct defense of what the correct moral position for an anti-Bush supporter of the Iraq war to take, the New York Times' Michael Ignatieff writes in yesterday's magazine:

Liberals can't bring themselves to support freedom in Iraq lest they seem to collude with neoconservative bombast. Meanwhile, antiwar ideologues can't support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies and worse intentions. Finally there are the ideological fools in the Arab world and even a few here at home who think the ''insurgents'' are fighting a just war against American imperialism. All this makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates. The right name for such people is fascists.

Feminism or Victorianism?

In his latest column, George Will posits that one of feminism's most onerous side effects is instilling a Victorian-style prissiness in its disciples. It's his response to the brouhaha that erupted when Harvard president Larry Summers had the temerity to suggest that men and women's brains might be different.

A word from John Adams

In these perilous times, when both the left and right adduces the Framers to justify this or that outrage, it's important to remember the famously, lovably inconsistent John Adams. This is one of my favorite quotes, excerpted from one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, addressing the impossibility of relying on the Bible as a first source:

Books that cannot bear examination certainly outght not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws...as long as they continue in force as laws the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity as I understand it is eternal and unchangeable and will bear examination forever but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients [italics mine], which I think will not bear examination and they ought to be separated.

It all depends on what the meaning of "humane" is

Andrew Sullivan lampoons our next attorney general Alberto Gonzalez's rather slippery definition of "humane treatment" in today's post:

So "humane" care can also mean near-drowning, use of electric shocks, beating to a pulp, hooding and rape - as long as the victim has shelter, food, clothing and medical care. Well, scratch the clothing. We keep our prisoners naked these days. And the medical care is often needed just to keep the prisoners from dying at the hands of U.S. soldiers. Alas, that didn't stop over thirty inmates across the war-theater from expiring in suspicious circumstances. Anyway, it's just a useful defnition of "compassionate conservatism." Pummel someone's head in and then hang him from the ceiling. Just give him a sandwich later.

Torture

In this Sunday's New York Review of Books, Andrew Sullivan presents his case against the Bush administration's tacit approval of culture. Part of the problem was a series of overlapping command structures (CIA, military intelligence, officers in charge at Guantanamo Bay) so confusing that it becomes to understand what, in essence, the administration wanted done to its prisoners (many of whom were innocent or at worst guilty of minor crimes). The issue puts those of us who supported the Iraq war and a robust prosecution of Islamic terrorism in a quandary.

Most of those who made the most fuss about these incidents - like Mark Danner or Seymour Hersh - were dedicated opponents of the war in the first place, and were eager to use this scandal to promote their agendas. Advocates of the war, especially those allied with the administration, kept relatively quiet, or attempted to belittle what had gone on, or made facile arguments that such things always occur in wartime. But it seems to me that those of us who are most committed to the Iraq intervention should be the most vociferous in highlighting these excrescences. Getting rid of this cancer within the system is essential to winning this war

With casual aplomb David Greenberg destroys C.A. Tripp's case for a bisexual Lincoln. More importantly, he questions why critics who should know better (Gore Vidal only the most notable) have accepted Tripp's mixture of speculation and reductiveness so willingly (I haven't even mentioned how awful most of Tripp's prose is. If you're going to write about Lincoln, your prose should at least attempt to rival one of our greatest stylists.).

It's possible that they don't want to align themselves with a position that could seem naive or, worse, anti-gay. Plenty of Lincoln scholars have stuffily refused even to entertain the possibility of Lincoln's bisexuality, either out of an ingrained homophobia or a misguided reverence that borders on idolatry.

American Booksellers Association protests Patriot Act

Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books in South Florida (as well as president of the American Booksellers Association), had a letter published in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, in which he questions the efficacy of the Patriot Act. He parses his words carefully, but he's pretty firm. (Full disclosure: I was a former employee of Books & Books).

Gore Vidal on Lincoln

Gore Vidal reviews C.A. Tripp's Lincoln biography, which posits that Lincoln was essentially a bisexual man. Vidal accepts the premise with an equanimity that seems out of character, and even quotes a passage of Tripp's leaden prose with nary a disapproving sniffle.

Why we fight

Just when the doubts return about the Iraq war, Christopher Hitchens comes along and gives one a boost.

Below even the bin Laden level, however, there are those who insist that they prefer death to life, and who really mean it. Suicide is not so much their tactic as their rationale: they represent a cult of death and they are wedded to destruction. It's amazing how many people refuse to see this. They persist in saying that it's a protest against something, or a reaction to some injustice.

Sideways -- condescending and contemptuous

I suppose this is my way of trying to get people to go see Sideways for themselves, without listening to critical hyperbole (two critic friends already named it their favorite of the year). There's a great discussion going on at Slate's annual movie club. Great quote from Salon's Charles Taylor:

I don't know how you can watch the scene in Sideways where that fat waitress Church sleeps with has sex with her trucker husband without being bowled over by the contempt coming off the screen. A friend of mine gave the most generous reading of that sequence. He said he felt it showed the sexual openness of their marriage that the husband can respond to her infidelity as a turn-on. Believe me, if I thought the movie said that, I'd trumpet it, because American movies in general are so moralistic about sex. But for that reading to work you'd have to shoot these two people as something other than two more piles of debris in that trashed and trashy house. You'd have to get close to them, which is exactly what Payne, repelled by their fat, will not do.

Sideways -- The year's most overrated film?

In yesterday's New York Times, A.O. Scott takes Sideways to task for gratifying the desires of its audience, most of which, according to Scott, is composed of critics as nebbish-y as the Paul Giamatti character. I think it's overrated too, but for different reasons: director Alexander Payne can't resist pouring snide sauce when the emotional complexities begin to give him the heebies. That said, it's a well-observed film, and Virginia Madsen was a joy to watch.