The White Peril 白禍

Speaking of resignations that fail to make me cry: Gay Orbit reports that Cheryl Jacques is resigning as the head of the Human Rights Campaign, and contends that those who defend her record are misreading it. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that anyone's considering Michael himself as her successor, since that first post of his is one of the most economical statements of how gay activists need to frame and enact their positions that I've read in ages. (He also mentions the tricky what-do-the-'rents-get-the-boyfriend-for-Christmas problem. Last year, my parents hilariously solved it by getting us, jointly, an all-American Hickory Farms gift set. What made it hilarious was that they decided--I AM NOT making this up--on this one. As soon as I opened the box, I started guffawing so hard I couldn't inhale, and when I finally calmed down, I was like, "Darling, I would say this is a symbolic gesture of approval, but I don't think it was intended to have that much subtext." We kept the little condiment knife as a memento. I value it more than my Wedgwood cups. Where was I?)

My feeling is that the election will probably, in hindsight, prove to have activated quite a few gays who didn't go much for politics before--just not in the way leftists have been hoping for. Loud-mouthed activists tend to get little more than eye-rolling from most gays who are just living open-but-unshowy live and don't think the sky is constantly falling, which has allowed the recent record of intrusive public-school programs and marriage-or-bust campaigning to go relatively unopposed from within gay ranks. The 11 state marriage amendments that passed may, one can only hope, rouse a few quiet types to wonder just what that hell big gay organizations are pushing supposedly on their behalf. It's a shame that it has to be that way--I'd prefer government intrusion in daily life to be limited to the point that thinking about it all the time was not necessary in order to be an informed and responsible citizen--but the way things work is the way things work. The big-guns organizations need to know that they're being watched by constituencies beyond their usual urban groupies and yes-men.

1 December 09:51 EST

My news-gathering has been pretty lite this week, but Asahi has the results of its latest poll up, and they're interesting as always--particularly this nearly-even split:

Asked whether Koizumi should continue to visit Yasukuni, 38 percent of those polled said yes, and 39 percent said no.

Japan's neighbors have strongly criticized the visits to the Tokyo shrine that honors Japan's war dead, including Class-A war criminals.

...

Asked about China's stance, about 30 percent of the pollees said it was only natural, while 57 percent did not think so.

Those polled in their 30s and 40s were more opposed to Koizumi's visits, while more than 40 percent of those in their 20s or 70s and older said the visits should continue.

Among those who wanted Koizumi to continue his Yasukuni visits, nearly 60 percent said measures should be taken to win the understanding of the Chinese and South Koreans.

What, one wonders, did the other 40 percent say? Tell China and Korea to stick it? There's nothing much surprising about the age breakdown: those in their thirties and forties are the ones whose lives are most directly affected by the economic environment, and trade with China and Korea plays a major, major, major role in the current Japanese economy. People in their seventies remember the War; and people in their twenties, I suspect, just don't see what the big deal is one way or the other.

The poll also included questions about the Koizumi administration overall and the deployment of non-combat SDF personnel in Iraq specifically. Support/oppose figures haven't changed much for those.

Speaking of the Koizumi administration's performance in domestic terms, the three-pronged reform package has been finalized, naturally in much less aggressive form than was originally proposed. The amount of tax yen that will ultimately be spun off to regional and local collection is smaller than it appears:

Under the decentralization plan, the central government will transfer 2.4 trillion yen in tax-collecting authority-and thus spending-decision power-to local governments. But that figure falls short of the 3 trillion yen sought by prefectures and municipalities and includes 650 billion yen that has already been transferred in the current fiscal year.

As the Asahi mentions further down in the article, Koizumi--no fool, he--did not huff and puff and waste political capital fighting for every last coin, or even every last 10000 yen bill. But I think the changes will have the salutary effect of having framed government spending questions in terms of how much should be entrusted to local authorities, rather than how many hands money can be made to pass through on its U-turn from the provinces to Tokyo and back again.

30 November 10:29 EST

Tom Ridge, who comes from a state my pride prevents me from mentioning, is resigning as Secretary of Homeland Security. Obviously, he had a difficult job as head of a new post-9/11 department, but I don't think that excuses the resolute scattershot softness it took under his direction.

30 November 19:19 EST

So Eric Scheie's been sending me hits for the last 24 hours, and (borderline-hermit that I am) I just thought for the first time five minutes ago, Maybe I could...uh, like, capitalize on this. I could post something, right? The problem is, this is my veg day.

For the last nine days, I've been switched on all the time. Either I was hanging out with my parents, or we were out for dinner, or we were shopping, or I was reading to my friends' daughter (I read her Make Way for Ducklings soon after she was born a few years ago; this weekend she wanted me to read a book called Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!. We appear to be developing a bird theme. Just wait till she's fifteen and I introduce her to Hitchcock!), or my friends and I were reprising our college road trips in adult form by driving through Maryland while singing along with Graceland. Now, obviously, these were all things I enjoyed, with people I value greatly, and I'm grateful to be able to take two full weeks of vacation time together to do them at leisure. But I've had no alone time, really, and last night, after arriving at my friend's place (where I lived when I was in grad school) and going out to dinner with him and his lovely girlfriend, I realized I was going to go insane if I didn't spend today alone in a room.

So I did. I sat (mostly lay, actually) in the apartment, surrounded by the sounds of Murray Hill, and read some, and napped some, and ate nutrition-free food. The thoughts that ran through my head were on the order of Frusen Gladje ice cream used to be *so* yummy. It's a shame Haagen Dazs outcompeted it, especially with those naff containers.... Um, so, yeah. I've had a post kind of kicking around for the last few days, but it's not gelling. Much easier to quote news articles and muse over Japan-China relations.

I'm not sure where this is going, exactly. Maybe I should try to come up with My Super-Coolest Post Ever, or something, and that will keep me from sounding like a ditz. I mean, because I'll be working on rewriting and editing, I won't be publishing posts that make me sound like a ditz. In case you thought I'd post something non-ditzy, which is not very likely. Okay, Friend's Lovely Girlfriend has arrived home and is offering me, bless her heart, a glass of wine. I have this feeling it might make me more coherent.

30 November 19:05 EST

So today, between going from my college friends' place in DC to my college friends' place here in New York, I was able to meet Agenda Bender and Classical Values Eric in Philly. Eric has not changed in appearance and demeanor since Friday; Tom turned out to be, unsurprisingly, a big, strapping Irish guy. I'm getting the sense that, to be a Philadelphia-area gay guy with a blog, you're required to be (1) cute, (2) built, and (3) mellow. Which explains why the whole blogging thing didn't get going until I'd long been graduated and gone to another continent.

Speaking of which, living in Japan gets you totally unaccustomed to being blatantly cruised while, say, walking down the street or in line to buy a train ticket. Last night with my friends (in Adams-Morgan), and today in Philadelphia and New York, I kept thinking, Ooh! Cute boy! But what the hell's he looking at me like that for? My fly open, or something? I also keep waiting for cab drivers to open the door for me from inside the car; luckily, no one's actually concluded I'm a moron and driven away from me yet. Maybe by the time I'm ready to fly back I'll be used to all this again. Fun day, though.

29 November 23:30 EST

With a bunch of college friends in NJ, and probably going down to DC overnight before heading up to the City.

My poor friends in Dallas are wondering whether I'm actually planning to see them (still am!) or it was all just a scam. Someday I'll tell you about trying to use my JAL mileage club/credit card to get a ticket through JAL America. (See, it's a foreign-issued credit card--no, I'm not joking; I can't use my JAL card to order a JAL ticket on-line or over the phone if the flight originates outside Japan. You know, you think you have all the dumb-ass rules figured out after eight years of no-you-can't-do-that, but there's always one lying in wait somewhere. Luckily, there's a JAL office in New York, so I plan to stand in the middle of it and scream until someone issues me a ticket--with miles, honey--on the card issued by his own airline.)

28 November 11:30 EST

Oh, one last thing before I turn in: WTF is it with people not turning off their brights until you're close enough to shake hands? Over the last few years, it's happened to me more and more, and tonight coming back up from Bucks County, it was just dumbfounding. I mean, of the fifteen or so cars I passed, maybe three remembered to switch off their high beams from a distance of a few hundred feet. The rest were close enough for me to get a good look at their hood ornaments before they moved. I do understand that sometimes you don't see the next car until you come over a hill or around a bend where the woods are dense--the whole reason you need high beams is that back roads crest, dip, and curve all over the place, after all. And sometimes, you're just being absentminded and you forget until the oncoming car flashes its lights at you. I've been guilty of that myself. I find it hard to believe that was the case for a dozen people, practically in a row, on the same stretch of road, though.

27 November 04:33 EST

John Corvino, one of my favorite writers who post at IGF, has a terrific piece about the state of gay marriage advocacy after the election. It's a very even-handed call for self-examination. The only reason it doesn't hearten me more is that...well, it's not the people at IGF who are the problem. They may not always be right--and I don't think that, as a group, they were on the right side of the gay marriage argument--but the whole reason they're part of that organization is that they stand for independent thought. A willingness to face up to cold, hard reality tends to be a natural corrective to untenable positions.

The people I do worry about are the activist types (both lefty gays and their straight sympathizers) who may feel even more alienated from the center-right range of the electorate than before. They still seem to be kind of reeling, so where they're ultimately going to land is anyone's guess. But if marriage bans in 11 states are the point at which a critical number start seriously reassessing their approach, things could be prevented from getting too much worse.

27 November 04:03 EST

I met Eric at Classical Values in one of SE Pennsylvania's restored downtowns today, and he's as mellow in person as he is on his blog. Cute, too, even without the deal-clinching accessories, which I can assure you he didn't bring to Starbucks.

I, however, will never be mistaken for mellow, so our initial greeting ran, lamentably, something like this:

E: Sean? Hi! Glad to meet you!
S: Eric? How do you do? Can you believe the parking around here? I think I'm going to have to go down and move my car--I'm in this one-hour space at the bottom of the hill. There was one metered place open, acres of room, but I've never paralleled my mother's new jeep before, and I overdid my workout yesterday--my neck won't turn the whole way, yeah?--so I just had to find somewhere to pull in. I was going to go into the municipal lot here, but you know, it's full--I figured I'd circle back around a few times, because it's afternoon, and people are leaving, right? No luck, though. Total madhouse. So I figured it would suck if you were waiting 20 minutes and wondering whether you were going to be stood up, and I decided just to take the next opening I saw--let me tell you, it's in Ultima Thule. I totally ran up the hill--and over a few streets. I hope I can still find the thing. [breath] Uh, so how are you?

At this point, Eric could have been forgiven for assuming a cloudy look and saying, "I'm sorry, my name is Erik...uh, Williams. With a k. You must be looking for someone else. Hope you're not waiting here too long!" And then bolting. Luckily for me, he's a tolerant sort, and we ended up having a great afternoon and a charming end to Thanksgiving week.

26 November 21:24 EST

One of the main points of contention in the whole Yasukuni Shrine flap has been whether Koizumi (among other high-level government officials) is making his pilgrimages in his capacity as a public servant or as a private citizen. It matters, naturally, because the separation of church and state argument doesn't wash at all if he and his cabinet are just tradition-minded Japanese paying their respects. The latest development internal to Japan is that a court in Chiba has ruled that the visits are, in fact, official.

Reasonable enough. Also reasonable was this part (lower two paragraphs):

A court here Thursday ruled that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Yasukuni Shrine in 2001 in his official capacity, but it skirted the issue of whether the trip violated the constitutional separation of the state and religion.

The Chiba District Court also rejected a compensation claim from 63 plaintiffs who demanded the state and the prime minister pay 100,000 yen to each member for inflicting mental pain from the Aug. 13, 2001, visit.

The plaintiffs, including Christian and Buddhist priests, had argued Koizumi's homage to the Shinto shrine was an act to give privileges to a specific religion, thereby violating the Constitution as well as their rights.

America has many wonderful things to give to the world. Surely something we might consider keeping to ourselves until it mercifully dies off, however, is the habit of deeming any collision with an opposing idea "mental pain," which is a violation of one's "rights." There is nothing I am aware of to prevent Christian and Buddhist Japanese from performing their own kinds of prayers unobtrusively at the memorial, or from setting up their own memorial on dedicated ground of their own. The legitimate issues surrounding the Japanese government's treatment of its World War II conduct, which still has a major influence on its relationships with its neighbors, are only obscured by these shenanigans. And that's unfortunate, because they really need dealing with.

26 November 15:25 EST

Before I forget, Atsushi says Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. (He may have just meant everyone in my family, but I'll take the liberty of assuming he meant everyone I know in America. In addition to conveying his good wishes, I had to remember to give my parents the gift he sent along with me, since he couldn't make it, which was a rooster figurine. It wasn't a random choice: 2005 will be the Year of the Rooster according to the Chinese zodiac, which Japan also uses. Yes, I'm aware that rooster isn't the word that's usually used to translate it in this context, but it somehow didn't seem like the best idea to address my parents in bright tones with the line, "It's a cock from Atsushi, for good luck in the new year!")

Since we had, as always, the traditional turkey/cranberry sauce/football dinner with my father's side of the family on Sunday, today was open to play with a little. It being my first time home on Thanksgiving for a good seven years, my parents decided to base dinner around (1) what I don't get to eat much in Japan and (2) what Mom wouldn't have to clean up after. So we went out for steaks. My parents and little brother are fun to be around; there was hilarity as well as meat, potatoes, drink, and thanksgiving.

But unfortunately for me, whiskey + wine + port + jet lag = ZZZZZZZZ, and I ended up falling asleep before the best part of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. (What do you mean, "Which one?"? When Peppermint Patty flips out over getting cereal for Thanksgiving dinner, of course. Do I have to walk you guys through every flippin' thing?) Still, it was a good day overall.

The other part of jet lag is, having had a two-hour nap, I'm now ready for a workout. Maybe I'll take the flashlight and go for a walk--the rain seems to have died down.

Happy last few minutes of Thanksgiving, all.

25 November 23:54 EST

According to the president of the UN General Assembly (and foreign minister of Gabon), North Korea just wants to get along with everyone else, as always. If only we non-hermit states were more willing to cooperate:

North Korea gave a visiting U.N. official a "very positive message" about resuming stalled six-way talks on its nuclear programs, the South Korean Unification Ministry said Wednesday.

It also quoted Jean Ping, who is president of the U.N. General Assembly, as saying in a meeting with Unification Minister Chung Dong-young that North Korea asked him to tell Washington it wanted to co-exist with the United States.

Ping, who is Gabon's foreign minister, visited Pyongyang and Beijing before coming to Seoul.

"Ping said during the meeting he received a very positive message from North Korea about reopening the six-party talks during his visit to the North," the ministry said.

"North Korea asked him to convey to the United States that it wanted 'coexistence', and he said he plans to convey the message," the ministry added.

Well, that's all right, then. If the DPRK told the UN (which told the ROK) to tell the US that it wants to "coexist" with us, why let a half-century history of reneging on agreements be a stumbling block? Mustn't be uptight, or anything.

Of course, I say that, but in reality, continuing to negotiate is pretty much our only viable option. Invading North Korea (BTW, when did it become the fashion to call the DPRK "the Norks" or [hurl!]"NoKo"? Eight years in Japan has worn down my objections to cute-isms somewhat, but I still have my limits) would be a scintillatingly stupid idea, as would flatly refusing to acknowledge the Pyongyang regime's sovereignty, at least for the time being. Coolly treading a fine line between not indulging the DPRK and not arousing its unpredictable wrath is probably the best we can do right now, but it does get grating the way we all have to pretend to be so very pleased whenever the North Koreans make a diplomatic overture that mimes goodwill and good faith.

24 November 04:08 EST

If you're from New Jersey, Delaware, or Eastern PA, be sure you're sitting down when you read this: Camden, NJ, has been rated the most dangerous city in America, outdistancing such notables as Gary, IN, Detroit, and East St. Louis. Of course, no single ranking is infallible in strict countdown terms, but Camden has long been one of the most egregious dumps on the East Coast. And sadly, unlike cross-river neighbor Philadelphia, it doesn't have many well-maintained middle-class and rich neighborhoods left to keep the crime rate diluted and provide nearby safer places for poor strivers to move up to.

23 November 01:01 EST

Prime Minister Koizumi, in Chile for a 6-nation summit, has once again been asked by China to stop official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where the soldiers memorialized include war criminals. His answer seems perfectly reasonable on its face:

Japan's current state of peace was developed through the sacrifices of multitudes of men who went resolutely off to battle and laid down their lives for it. It is with those thoughts in mind that we make our pilgrimages [to the shrine].

I'd say that, in World War II terms, those who laid down their lives for peace in Japan as it exists today were actually on the Allied side. But the dead memorialized at the Yasukuni Shrine include those from conflicts dating back to the Meiji Restoration. Also, it's important to remember that there are fewer than 20 war criminals memorialized there, out of a total of over 2 million enshrined. Even those from World War II were mostly soldiers who were fighting for their country in its tradition of honor. It is sometimes said that, even so, official visits by politicians to the shrine violate constitutional law (which, like America's, prevents the federal government from establishing a state religion). That sort of argument has never impressed me; it's not as if anyone is trying to communicate with the ancestors for guidance about public policy. Well, as far as I know.

The real problem, I think--not that this is an original insight of mine, or anything--is that Japan has done a lousy job of persuasively showing remorse when apologizing and providing redress for its war crimes. That makes every little gesture of respect toward World War II-era leaders and soldiers feel like a a new affront to the rest of Asia.

It's possible that nothing would truly satisfy the Chinese, Koreans, and Southeast Asians. After all, World War II is only the most recent installment in the grand East Asian tradition of inter-ethnic hostility, recrimination, and contempt. Still, Japan's piecemeal approach makes it easy for diplomatic friend and foe alike to repair to events sixty years past as an excuse for not being cooperative, and the Japanese government appears disinclined to do much about it.

23 November 00:23 EST

Of course, the Japanese have been having transportation-related woes lately, too. JAL and ANA are still safe, thankfully, but Mistubishi Fuso has just...can you guess?...issued another recall. This is of the latest-year model of the truck that caused a deadly accident and a spate of fender-benders a while back. The metal wheel hub apparently still has a weakness that could make it fail, though apparently it's a different weakness from the one, dating back to 1995, that caused the prevous accidents.

22 November 02:16 EST

The PRC has had yet another commercial plane crash. This time, fortunately, it was a commuter plane with low capacity and only 53 people aboard. Except for flag carrier Air China, which had its first and only crash ever a few years ago in Korea, Chinese airlines are notoriously accident-prone. A friend who's lived there and in Taiwan believes the big problem is twofold: using equipment (such as planes and diagnostic machines) until its useful age is long past, and a work ethic that credits showing up and doing what you're told as much as it does good job performance. Safety standards have been tightened, and things are probably slowly changing for the better as carriers such as China Southern and China Eastern compete for international business travel. But we're very fortunate that in the West, our chief worry when we board an airliner involves the quality of the food, service, and in-flight entertainment.

22 November 02:03 EST

Via the Washington Blade, an interesting item about our junior senator here in PA (and for this week, at least, I do mean here in PA. BTW, Specter's conservative primary challenger, Pat Toomey, apparently has an in-state address right here in the same village as my parents. It's not a big village, trust me. Kind of weird). It's from The Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh:

Article I of the U.S. Constitution says, "No person shall be a Senator ... who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen." Rick Santorum last won election in November 2000, when he owned the house at 111 Stephens Lane in Penn Hills plus a house in Virginia. Where he was an "inhabitant" at the time only he can say.

He faces re-election in 2006, but if that election were held today, the two-term Republican would be hard-pressed to convince voters that he inhabits a house on Stephens Lane. Sure, he and his wife pay taxes on the house. They also use the address for voter registration, but so do two other people. When a Post-Gazette reporter visited the house last Friday, a young man came to the door and declined to comment. He wasn't Rick Santorum.

It gets worse. The two-bedroom house that the Santorum children called home for education purposes and that gives Mr. and Mrs. Santorum the right to vote in Pennsylvania lacks an occupancy permit. And the property tax break from the homestead exemption claimed by the Santorums on the Penn Hills house is allowed under law only if the dwelling is their "permanent home."

It's a strange case of political turnabout. In his initial House race against Rep. Doug Walgren in 1990, challenger Santorum attacked the incumbent from Mt. Lebanon for buying a house and raising his children in McLean, Va. Now Rick Santorum of Leesburg, Va., is saying that he is and he isn't a resident of Pennsylvania.

It's hard not to sympathize with elected officials who feel torn between being with their families and staying in Washington to do their jobs. Maybe Santorum has changed his mind and wouldn't use the same tactics against someone like Walgren if he were elected today. But rules are rules, and it doesn't seem unfair for Santorum's family to be obligated actually to reside in the state he represents. And in practical terms, Pennsylvania is as close to DC as you can get without being in Maryland or Virginia; he'd be much easier to feel really sorry for if he were from Montana.

22 November 01:47 EST

Arrived safely at my parents' place yesterday, after a turbulence-free flight but slightly rocky communication about where to pick me up. (I'd planned to rent a car, but I was feeling the lag already when we landed and didn't know whether I could trust myself on two hours of interstates right then.) Am drunk on the expansiveness of everything, from the roads to the cars to the food packages, as always when I first arrive. The cats, whose room I'm using, don't quite remember me from last year, which has led to a lot of disdainfully curious Siamese staring in my direction.

Also, did you know you can get Atkins Diet-approved versions of everything? Last night, I was like, "Uh, is this Carb Count Dairy Beverage something I'm right in considering...milk?" But I'm adjusting. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

21 November 10:18 EST

Michael Demmons gives the HRC's Cheryl Jacques a well-earned pummeling for that organization's endorsement of Arlen Specter's opponent in our recent Pennsylvania senate race. The pretense that supporting Joseph Hoeffel represented advocacy of the best interests of gays rather than Democratic party hackery was always tissue-thin, and the HRC's obstinate failure to recognize that it did something stupid is embarrassing. At least the Log Cabin Republicans appear to be engaging in better-late-than-never self-criticism. Something Michael points out that is obviously meaningful to him (as it is to me from the other direction): Specter could support the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, which I think is probably not politically viable at the moment but is a good idea to be circulating as part of the general gay marriage/civil unions discussion.

Where are all these people searching for "white peril" coming from? Did the History Channel run a special about colonialism in East Asia, or something? Did some OSU professor with an intro-level lecture class of 500 assign a paper about China's and Japan's encounters with Westernization? I'm not hubristical enough to think they're all looking for this site.

Okay, you caught me. I'm hubristical enough--but I'm not deluded. And in any case, you can't complain when people are blundering into your site by putting its title into a search engine...especially when (as anyone else with a blog can tell you) some of the searches you find in your referral logs make you feel you need a shower followed by an alcohol bath followed by irradiation. I'm no prude, but I'm positively grateful to the sicko contingent for having, so far this month, limited itself to the relatively benign "chikan videos groping."

Some updates on news items I usually post about when there are new developments.

First, yet another of the world's inexhaustible supply of expert panels making contributions to the obvious has...well, made a contribution to the obvious: namely, if a major earthquake hit Tokyo, there could be catastrophic damage. This particular shocker was dispensed to us through an NHK special last night that was nowhere near as cool as the one they broadcast a few years ago. As always, the predictions are carefully qualified because the amount of damage would depend not just on the Richter scale magnitude (total energy release) but also on how deep underground the focus is, which affects how bad the shaking is at the surface. The special this time around featured man-on-the-street interviews of people explaining what most frightened them about a potential earthquake. Is it the possibility of being trapped on the subway? Being trampled by panicky mobs of citizens? Being tossed around like clothes in a Speed Queen if you're on one of the upper floors of a skyscraper? It was, in a strange way, comfortingly ghoulish.

*******

The draft of the proposed constitutional amendment, designed to allow Japan to participate with allies in collective self-defense operations, has been completed by the ruling coalition's committee. It explicitly renounces nuclear arming (not a few people think Japan has quietly developed nukes already). That's actually not the only amendment up for debate. There's to be change in the way the Emperor's position is to be articulated, and there are a few individual rights made explicit. Japanese accounts don't seem to have good quotations from the proposal, but FWIW, the Nikkei's most recent report is here.

And for those of us who came of age in the '80's, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has endorsed the idea of a revision--he was a friend of Reagan at the end of the Cold War, so this is not a surprise--and has his own, slightly different proposal from the committee's.

*******

The Koizumi administration has gotten some hold-outs among the ministries on board for its subsidy-reduction plan. Education and welfare seem to be the remaining major points of contention.

*******

Oh, and I can't believe I neglected to say anything about this Monday--Atsushi e-mailed me about it the moment he saw the news report: Japan's ranking eligible bachelorette is engaged. Princess Sayako, daughter of the current emperor and empress, and sister of the crown prince, is 35. The media have been trying to put a polite mask over everyone's complete and utter disbelief, but it's not working too well.

Mrs. du Toit asked a question in a comment the other day:

[Jim McGreevey] cheated on his wife, committed fraud against the people he took an oath to protect and represent, lied about the lover because he was going to blow the whistle on him (making him the scapegoat for his fraud), and I'm supposed to be happy for the guy because he "came out"?

The question was rhetorical, but a friend (who has to remain nameless) obligingly sent a message that constitutes a reply, anyway:

The McGreevey mess illustrates classic tribalism at work. He is GAY, so he must be GOOD. The fact that he offends people (not necessarily because he's gay) gives him that kewl countercultural cachet that is a must for an icon.

Well, that's not the only issue, at least for the gay press. Coming out--being a private decision that, when added to those of others, can have a cumulative public effect--is an ethically thorny subject. The attempt to understand why other gays live differently is laudable, but it often devolves into the making of ethical allowances the same commentator wouldn't under other circumstances.

It's all very well to point out that the social changes of the last three decades were not in effect when men and women who are now around 50 and over were coming of age. Anyone who remembers how to subtract is aware of that. But an important component of personal liberty is self-criticism and self-awareness. It would be nice to see it also pointed out, occasionally, that gay liberation did not happen on some planet that guys like McGreevey haven't traveled to.

I don't fault people who believe their homosexuality is sinful, and try not to act on it, for keeping it hidden. Nor do I think there's anything wrong with being gay but thinking your sexuality is your own private business and not something you discuss. It's safe to say, however, that people who think in those ways are not the ones who end up coming out in front of a press conference and expecting everyone to read it as bravery.

And while I'm on the subject of coming-out-related lameness: another group that routinely drives me around the bend is the "I would come out to my parents if only..." crowd. These are not people who are on the fence about their sexuality. These are not people who have fathers who threatened to get out the shotgun if one of their sons turned out to be a faggot. These are not people who have mothers who are dying of cancer and can't take any shocks. These are people who know they're gay, who never have any intention of being anything but gay, and who take advantage of all the conveniences of urban gay life.

Trust me--it's not as if I were the type to ask whether and why someone isn't out to his parents. It's not any of my business. But if you're going to volunteer that you're still closeted and justify it with some face-saving rationalization, try to choose one that actually saves face for you. Hint: "See, my parents still give me some of the money I live on, and I'm afraid they'll cut me off if they find out I'm gay" does not save face for you. My primarily straight readership may be interested to know that I hear that one constantly, from people around or even over my age, in complete expectation that I'll be all understanding.

Well, sorry. Just as being perpetually broke and living on your friends' couches makes you charmingly raffish at 20 and a loser at 50--even though there's no single point on the gradient in between when you clearly stop being one and start being the other--not coming out is perfectly understandable when you've only known you're gay for a few years and ridiculous when you've known you're gay for a decade. Once again, I'm not talking about those who treat their sexuality, consistently in word and deed, as a private matter. I'm talking about the ones who bitch about how our activists are handling the marriage issue, who complain about places where domestic partner benefits are lacking, and who expect friends to recognize their relationships. These are people who clearly think they should be out but also want to wait until it's risk-free.

"But," I'm sometimes told, "it's easy for you, because your parents are understanding." Uh, yeah, and do you know how I found out my parents are understanding? By coming out at 23 and dealing with the consequences. I was actually close to 100% convinced that they'd disown me--not because they're nasty but because they're strictly religious, and I assumed they'd feel obliged not to countenance a way of life they thought was a sin. No longer getting them to supplement my grad school stipend was not the thing I was most worried about, but it did cross my mind. My plan if they withdrew their support, which I persist in thinking was rather clever, was to spend less money.*

Getting back to the McGreevey case, it's possible that his wife decided that, while their daughter needs her father around, she herself doesn't want to be married to a man who isn't bonded to her as she thought he was. It doesn't strike me as the most likely of the possible scenarios, but it's not unlikely, either. In any case, people who are initially sorry only about getting caught often do, if they have a conscience, learn to be genuinely remorseful about what they've done to themselves and those around them. (Screwing over an entire state of 10 million people is, of course, in a very special class of doings.) Putting McGreevey in a position of giving other people guidance seems to me not to be getting the order quite right, though.
* I suppose a truly honest account here would include the information that I didn't manage my credit cards so hot while I was in my mid-20's, but I paid everything off in a few years and don't carry any debt now besides a little left on my student loans.

Darn. Two interesting comments (one about the remilitarization of Japan, and the other, by e-mail, about how tribalism makes gay public figures close ranks to help out scumbags) in a single day, and I can't respond. I mean, I have the time, but all my mental energy is absorbed by work. I've been listening to Olivia's Greatest Hits, Volume 2 for what must be...jeez...a week and a half? And that's it. Olivia on Repeat All, because I'm in a groove that has to keep running for a few days. I've hardly been hearing what's playing into my ears, anyway. (Well, I did catch myself squaring my shoulders and giving the come-hither smirk at my monitor while mouthing along to "Make a Move on Me" once.) In fact, I haven't even remembered to press Skip when "Xanadu" comes on. And I always remember to skip "Xanadu" because I HATE THAT SONG.

Anyway, I'll be back to normal in a few days. Isn't it great that Arafat's still dead?

The deployment of Japan's Self-Defense Forces in a non-combat capacity in Iraq will be extended. The New Komei Party, which is the LDP's partner in the ruling coalition, is pacifist and balked for a while at approving the extension; things haven't gotten any easier since the hostage was beheaded. Things were resolved earlier this week, but the posting of the English summary at the Yomiuri is nice to see on Veteran's Day.

Fan-fricking-tastic. Jim McGreevey, no longer governor of New Jersey, is being courted by gay advocacy groups. And why not? All that alleged bad behavior was months ago:

Michael Adams, spokesman for the gay civil rights group Lambda Legal, said McGreevey's tarnished 35-month tenure would not taint his star power within the gay populace or among other special interest groups. "The reality is, we're a country that believes in rebirth and people moving beyond prior mistakes," Adams said. "Any community would look to 'What kind of contribution are you willing and able to make moving forward?' not 'What have you done previously?'"

The writer of the Advocate piece is only too happy to let bygones be bygones, too:

Some personal concerns are on McGreevey's upcoming short list: tending to his ill parents, helping his wife and daughter move into their new house in Springfield while he takes up residence in Rahway, and taking a little time off. "A lot of healing has to go on in that family," said Lesniak. "They want to use this to get closer as a family, not farther apart. There was a barrier before because of the governor's denial of his sexuality."

As a Georgetown-educated lawyer with a master's in education from Harvard, McGreevey has an enviable educational pedigree. But he also comes from a modest background--his father was a Marine drill sergeant, and his mother a nurse--so whatever he winds up doing, "he has to earn a living," said Lesniak. "The governor has never thought much of his economic welfare and he's not a flashy guy, so it's not high on his priority list. But it has to be a consideration."

Mom was in one of the caring professions! Dad was a man in uniform! Jim and Dina are moving into separate houses to draw closer as a family! And Sean is about to ram chopsticks into his ears and swirl them around to take the edge off the pain of reading this crap.

I mean, am I just imagining this, or is McGreevey accused of corruption? Did he or did he not have some guy he thought was a hottie in charge of anti-terrorist policy for a state with a population of 10 million, when the man wasn't a citizen and didn't have any security clearance? I'm glad McGreevey's finally being honest with himself, and if his family's willing to stick by him and make an arrangement that accommodates everyone as much as is possible, I think that's great. But gay advocacy is a public responsibility. Not as weighty as a governorship, no, but a duty to serve the interests of others nonetheless. It does not need another self-serving blame-shifter.

BTW, every link to "First Person" commentary on the front page of the Advocate site goes to some wanker piece about post-election depression. Has to be seen to be believed, but you can be excused for not bothering.

Via NichiNichi, a link to an article by Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Tokyo Bureau Chief. It's actually worth going to the Daily Kos to read it, if you're interested in problems with international journalism. It's long, and most of the points are familiar to those who've listened to reporters complain for the last several years. But she gives the impression of genuinely trying to be fair-minded.

The problem is...well, here's how she begins:

In November 2003, I had the rare opportunity to interview Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for CNN. The interview came at an important time as Japan wrestled with the question of whether to send non-combat Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq. ... The potential dispatch was also considered to be a political gamble for Prime Minister Koizumi - given that public opinion polls showed a majority of Japanese were against sending troops at that time. Thus, not surprisingly, most of my 30-minute interview with Koizumi dealt with the Iraq question. ... He believed that Japan must stand behind the United States against terrorism because this was simply the right thing to do, whatever his critics might say. It was a matter of good versus evil. However, he did have some constructive criticism for Bush: Koizumi hoped that the U.S. would cooperate more closely with the United Nations and do more to build consensus within the international community.

I remember the interview she's talking about. Not word for word, obviously, but she's right that it did get a lot of (justifiable) attention, and that it didn't show Bush in what you'd think of as a bad light. The upshot is that not even one soundbite was aired on CNN USA. Her explanation for why American viewers didn't get to see it:

As it turned out, the morning (according to U.S. East Coast time) that we sent in our Koizumi interview happened to be a very busy "news morning" for the CNN USA morning shows. There was CNN's first interview with Private Jessica Lynch, the young woman who had been captured by Iraqi soldiers during the war and then rescued. There was also an exclusive interview with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, and updates on the Michael Jackson Trial. I was told that while the International Assignment Desk editors had lobbied CNN USA show producers to include soundbites from Koizumi's interview in their programs, in the end the producers claimed they simply did not have room in their shows that morning to run even one Koizumi soundbite. Later in the day, there was major news in the U.S. about a court ruling on gay marriage, which "blew out" most other stories from the evening programming lineup. Thus Koizumi's words were not heard in the U.S.

(We queers just can't help causing trouble, can we?) As it happens, I agree very much that Koizumi's contribution to the WOT has been underreported in the American press and is probably, as a consequence, undervalued by many Americans who support it. Yes, part of that is that I live in Japan, so Japanese news has more "felt" importance for me than it does for other Americans. But I think I can distinguish between a pronouncement by Koizumi on the WOT and, say, Matsuda Seiko's latest, pathetic Madonna-like lunge back toward the spotlight.

But there are other things to consider. For one thing, CNN has a website. Was the interview posted there? MacKinnon doesn't say. For another, CNN declined to run her interview on that particular day. It's galling that she and Koizumi were dissed in favor of Michael Jackson, but did CNN consistently fail to give play to the fact that Koizumi's support for Bush's policies was given in the face of a lot of public opposition? At the time, I was watching CNN International with the rest of Japan, so I don't know. We sure as hell hear about it here, but then, we would, wouldn't we?


That brings me to another point. MacKinnon writes:

This is the case for viewers everywhere - be they American, Middle Eastern, South African, or Japanese. Based on my interactions with Japanese commercial broadcasters, I know that they are under the same kind of budget pressures and competitive pressures to boost viewership ratings as American broadcasters are. As a result, international news reports focus on what producers believe will keep Japanese audiences watching - which means that like in the U.S., many of the important but "boring" or complicated stories get passed over. Of course, public broadcaster NHK has a different mandate which includes extensive international news coverage. However I have been told by several reporters at NHK that they frequently encounter situations in which producers and assignment editors have been unwilling to contradict majority public opinion or sentiment in Japan. This has been particularly true on stories related to North Korea and to the Japanese citizens who were taken hostage in Iraq earlier this year.

This puts the lie to the Kos poster's take on MacKinnon's piece, which naturally is that news reporting must be removed from profit-seeking. It's an open secret in Japan that the major media have to curry favor with the government. They have to watch themselves around the unelected bureaucrats more than around the members of the Diet, it is true; but to the extent that legislators have pull, they tend to pull in the direction of pleasing their constituents. That's their job, after all. NHK is in that bind even more than other organizations. When you're publicly funded, the government has more direct ways to...you know, incentivize you. What's the solution? MacKinnon has it, in my opinion, though her dark tone indicates that she thinks it's hypothetical rather than actually working:

Before we leap to moral judgments or condemnations, we must be realistic. In truth, it is unrealistic to expect commercially-driven TV news companies to do anything other than to seek profit maximization - while at the same time selling a product that can still be defined as "news" in some way. The search for profit maximization means that these companies will shape their news to fit the tastes and values of the majority of their most lucrative potential audience. Citizens of democracies who want to be well informed must understand this. They cannot expect to be passive consumers of whatever news comes their way from a name-brand news source. They must question, contrast, and compare. They must demand better quality information.

Well, okay, MacKinnon only has part of the solution. The part she doesn't have is: Get national governments out of the business of running their citizens' lives down to every last detail. It's hard to be an informed citizen when understanding how Washington or Tokyo is micromanaging you requires you to be conversant with everything from education theory to the approval processes for pharmaceuticals. I'm all for intellectual curiosity, but I'd prefer to expend a bit less on figuring out which decisions have been premade for me and how. I don't know that shrinking government would make people less interested in junk news about pop stars, but it would certainly decrease the number of government pronouncements competing for airing. The part she has down is that citizens have to demand better information. Sure. But aren't we? The instances MacKinnon points to are genuinely disturbing if taken at face value--and I see no reason not to. But are there major stories that simply aren't available at all for those of us in Western countries with access to cable television, Internet connections, and publications? In the process of dealing with the question of whether the news networks are being honest when they package themselves as balanced news sources, she doesn't seem to register that it's possible to work around them, and that people are doing so. I subscribe to the Nikkei and watch NHK, but I also read three of the other major Japanese newspapers on-line, have CNNj, and can look at link-based blogs like Instapundit if I want to be pointed in the direction of things I might have missed. I mean, I know you all know that, or else you wouldn't be reading this page. But MacKinnon, who makes noises about wanting people to go to a multiplicity of sources for their news, in the end seems to think that CNN's arbitrary selection of what to broadcast is a Major Problem that most people are dangerously unaware of. It's baffling.

The Mainichi reports that a new poll shows support for the Koizumi administration's decision to stand firm on its Iraq policy in the face of the abduction of Shosei Koda last month:

A total of 57 percent of the 1,095 pollees said they supported the government's stance, even though Iraqi militants murdered Japanese national Shosei Koda after they threatened to kill him unless Japan withdraw the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) from Iraq.

Only 24 percent said they didn't back the government's decision to maintain SDF reconstruction activities in Iraq.

However, the poll also found that a majority, 51 percent, wanted Japan to withdraw the SDF from Iraq when its deployment expires on Dec. 14. Only 27 percent said the government should extend the dispatch of the SDF.

That sounds about right to me. The Japanese love their country and don't take well to seeing it treated contemptuously by foreigners. They are also big on stoically fulfilling your duty to your in-group--the Japanese may no longer be used to actual war, but they've retained that aspect of their famed warrior culture. Most people, I think, recognize that the US is part of Japan's in-group in geopolitical terms, even if they wish Koizumi weren't quite so willing to back Bush's policies with SDF personnel. On the other hand, this makes sense also:

The poll, carried out over the weekend, shows that the percentage of those who are in support of the government's stance to refuse a request of SDF withdrawal dropped slightly, compared to April, when other militants demanded the troops leave after kidnapping three Japanese people.

This drop in the percentage of people in support of the government's stance is apparently attributable to the shocking murder of Koda.

The Japanese frequently fall into the same trap the Americans do: because they sell goods and give out aid and send tourist money to everyone else, they don't understand why anyone would resent them. (In more Japan-specific terms, a shocking number of people simply cannot fathom why ill-will over World War II continues to the present day; that was a long time ago, the thinking goes, and we've been building factories in your country and employing your people for decades since then. Besides, we can't attack anyone again--it's in the constitution.)

BTW, there's been yet another aftershock in Niigata. (We felt it here pretty strongly; I was worried it might have been a good 6 somewhere else.) This one was 5 on the JMA scale and seems to have caused a few landslides, with injuries but luckily no deaths.

I've been thinking a lot about one of my very favorite Virginia Postrel columns, written after the 1998 midterm elections, this past week. See whether you can guess why:

I told you so. The party that hates America will lose. The party that imagines no positive future, offers no "vision thing," will lose. The party that thinks it is better than the American people, that makes large segments of the voting public believe they are its enemy, that convinces people it wants the government to boss them around and destroy the things they love, will lose.

On November 3, that party was Republican. The GOP went down to humiliating defeat, losing close race after close race, plus many that weren't supposed to be close. The party lost its solid grip on the South and collapsed in California. It managed to lose seats in the House, an extraordinary result that even Democratic pundits failed to predict.

And it deserved to lose. Republicans sold out their economic base...and ran as the party of scolds, pork, and gloom. No wonder their voters stayed home.

Sound familiar? The Republicans clearly got the message eventually, which is one of the reasons I think that, despite the hysterical immediate reaction, the Democrats will also. The biggest problem I can see is that the Democrats can't seem to bring themselves to drop the far-left wackos, presumably out of a lingering belief that loudmouthed dissent is somehow in and of itself heroic, populist, and sexy. But they lost big last week, and I hope the shock gets them thinking more pragmatically.

Muneo Suzuki, possibly the single most corrupt politician in this entire archipelago, has been sentenced to two years in prison. When he was first arrested, it was a blow to the credibility of the Koizumi administration. Suzuki did his power-brokering and cronyist bid-rigging for the LDP, the ruling party, and Koizumi's platform had promised reform and a break with politics as usual.

BTW, while I was looking for a link that might summarize the many and varied crimes of which Suzuki has been accused (this is as good as any, though it doesn't date all the way back to when the scandal started cooking), Google came up with this tidbit: He was a featured speaker on political ethics at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan this spring! Yes, I know, they wouldn't have been able to get him to talk if they'd openly planned to be adversarial, but still.

It has to be a parody, but this website is still good for a laugh. If it is serious, my deepest sympathies to our friends to the north (including my best friend from high school, who lives in Toronto). You're going to be joined by some real beauts.

(Found via Dean's World)

*******

Of course it's a parody. Whew! (Click on "Our hidden agenda".)

Mrs. du Toit has a post that recommends against pointing out that you don't fit the stereotype of a Bush voter in a fashion that sounds like, "I'm not like those rubes!"

I see where she's coming from, and I agree that it's wrong. But there's a flipside to what she's talking about that's also worth noting. (I don't think what she wrote is flawed because she didn't note it; it just wasn't the point she was making.)

I frequently find myself defending suburban living, SUV driving, smoking, hunting, and church-going by emphasizing that I don't do any of them myself. It's not because I'm frantically trying to avoid association with church-goers (or smokers, who may actually be even more reviled in the more sanctimonious liberal circles these days).

It's because I really, genuinely think it's great that we all get to make our choices, and I believe there should be room for those I wouldn't make for myself. One of the things I most despise the left for is the way it's turned diversity into a codeword for "full range of races, sexual orientations, and gender identifications + unanimity of ideology." Now those of us who really do like individuality of spirit in others have to avoid a perfectly useful word like the plague, lest our listeners assume we like "diversity" the way Lani Guinier does.

So when standing up for the suburbs, I generally point out that I myself walk or use public transportation to get almost everywhere and live in an energy-efficient apartment (translation: it actually has insulation, which is not something to bank on in Tokyo) in a neighborhood with nearly the population density of Manhattan. My hope is that the message that it's possible to see value in other ways of living than your own will get through.

In an election or more general political debate, there's a further point to be made: when assessing people's beliefs, you have to listen to what they say, not just play actuary and assume you have them figured out. I'm a registered Democrat who lives abroad. I grew up in a county that went for Kerry (Lehigh) in a state that went for Kerry (Pennsylvania). From there I majored in comparative literature at an East Coast private college, moved to New York (briefly) for graduate school, and now work in educational publishing. Unless I missed someone, literally all of my dozen or so close friends from since college voted for Kerry. All this is before we even get to the gay thing.

Based on my statistics, I should have been huddled in the corner weeping and tearing my hair out when Kerry conceded to Bush the other day, not having a victory bath. True, I've always been libertarian/republican in my beliefs and largely registered Democrat because of Pennsylvania primaries. But the fact that the DNC is not reaching me at all is something that you would think might start giving someone somewhere pause. Perhaps "Not everyone who voted for Bush is a social conservative" is not the most generous-minded way of putting it, but the Democrats can't just shunt responsibility for the drubbing they took off on people they weren't interested in courting anyway. That message matters.

Added at 2:50: All right, CNN just did a feature on how distraught New Yorkers are over the election, and something I've heard a bunch of times over the last few days surfaced in the on-the-street interviews. So before I turn in for the night, I would like to add just one thing here: You people who are talking about wanting to move to another country because Bush was reelected? Understandably, a lot of others are going to recommend that you go ahead and leave if you don't like it. But as a proud American living abroad, I hope you stay away. There are quite enough spoiled, whiny, high-handed expats making loud and implausible declarations of solidarity with the world's oppressed and fouling our international reputation with their behavior. You're the last thing we need.

It's yesterday's news, but for the record, Koizumi's reaction to Bush's reelection was the expected one:

The government Thursday welcomed U.S. President George W. Bush's reelection, expecting that his administration's policies toward Iraq and North Korea, both important issues to Japan, would be maintained.

Government officials said they would talk to the second Bush administration over a host of bilateral problems to be tackled with the U.S. government.

During the presidential race, the government was seriously concerned that the result could significantly affect the U.S. policy toward Iraq.

Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry's criticism of Bush's Iraq policy contrasted with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's strong support.

I noticed that, too.

Janis Gore, who occasionally sends me gently inquiring e-mails about the most contentious topics imaginable, asked what I thought of Andrew Sullivan's tone when discussing the election results. His take is, naturally, that Karl Rove used his evil Karl Roveness to lure all those anti-gay religious zealots out of their Alabama bunkers. I was going to comment at Ms. Gore's place, but I'm afraid I may get a bit riled up, which would spoil the respectful atmosphere she maintains.

So.

Here's her terse and (I think) accurate assessment:

No, Mr. Sullivan, gay activists thought this would be the perfect year to push for a new initiative. Talk about blowback. I suspect they've put rights back at least ten years.

What's she talking about? She wrote that yesterday, but I think it applies very aptly to Sullivan's latest series of posts. I'll start with the third part:

STAND TALL: But one more thing is important. The dignity of our lives and our relationships as gay people is not dependent on heterosexual approval or tolerance. Our dignity exists regardless of their fear. We have something invaluable in this struggle: the knowledge that we are in the right, that our loves are as deep and as powerful and as God-given as their loves, that our relationships truly are bonds of faith and hope that are worthy, in God's eyes and our own, of equal respect. Being gay is a blessing. The minute we let their fear and ignorance enter into our own souls, we lose. We have gained too much and come through too much to let ourselves be defined by others. We must turn hurt back into pride. Cheap, easy victories based on untruth and fear and cynicism are pyrrhic ones. In time, they will fall. So hold your heads up high. Do not give in to despair. Do not let the Republican party rob you of your hopes. This is America. Equality will win in the end.

I basically agree with this. I mean, I don't think the dignity of my gayness comes from God any more than from the tooth fairy, but I also don't think it depends on other people's approval. I wonder whether Sullivan actually believes it, though. Through his writing there's a clearly discernible thread of nagging desire for acceptance that I think seriously compromises his pro-gay marriage arguments.

I'm not coming at this as a principled non-conformist. I believe in living as you see fit; I do not believe in getting a rise out of people for the hell of it at every opportunity and then bitching when they shun you. I want people to like me, and my feelings are often hurt when they don't.

But that's not a matter for public policy. Which leads me back to where Sullivan started:

I've been trying to think of what to say about what appears to be the enormous success the Republicans had in using gay couples' rights to gain critical votes in key states. In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. I'm not surprised by this. When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. But it is deeply, deeply dispiriting nonetheless. A lot of gay people are devastated this morning, and terrified.

I'm neither devastated nor terrified. What I am is furious. 0° Kelvin furious. The gay marriage advocates decided it was a good time to get pushy and single-minded. They decided they'd figured out what marriage was about to most people and that further arguments from the opposition warranted no more than ritual responses. They were wrong. Those who oppose gay marriage have not just said that the Bible disapproves of homosexuality and therefore we should all reform. They've thought things through and come up with more sophisticated arguments. Those arguments need to be answered. (Don't expect me to do it--I'm not one of the people yammering for gay marriage. Hospital visitation and power of attorney are fine for me, though I'd like transferrability of social security and immunity from testifying against your partner, too. Call my relationship whatever makes you happy--that's the least of my concerns. In any case, if you're gay, is your partner worth devoting your life to? Then do it. And stop flooding us with bilge about how we can't live by moral values we ourselves supposedly hold "deep down inside," just because straight people refuse to throw rice at us! Gyah!)

Gay marriage activists need to remember that history did not start with the '60's and that, in the other direction, there will be gays in every generation after us who will inherit the environment we've helped to create. Thinking about straight children of the future every once in a while wouldn't hurt, either. In any case, the showdown mentality has shown itself to be self-defeating. Let's learn our lesson, okay?

Added on 5 November: I agree with Eric that the numbers from the election don't necessarily say what we're being told they say. I'm also reassured to see that someone smarter than I am has trouble doing math in his head. I was always the one in calc class who set up the function and graphed its shape correctly but got all the actual number values wrong. It drove Mrs. Moll crazy.

And I think Boi from Troy is right about the kaleidoscopic ways "moral values" can be interpreted as a reason for voting. Pretty obviously, gay marriage was one in at least 11 states, but that only indicates homophobia if you believe in such a thing as "marriage rights." I've groused enough about that for the time being, though.

Japan's three-pronged reform continues to generate controversy in the government; the most recent focus is on education. It's not exactly like the fight over voucher programs in the States, but there are similarities in that the main point of contention is whether federal or local governments are in charge of the public school system:

On Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda and Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Taro Aso had a heated discussion with Education, Science and Technology Minister Nariaki Nakayama at the Prime Minister's Office. The debate ended without a consensus being reached.

The dreaded lack of consensus! There are a bunch of issues here. One is that it's possible to interpret the Japanese constitution as placing the responsibility for education on the federal government:

Article 26 [Right to Education, Compulsory Education]

(1) All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as provided by law.
(2) All people shall be obligated to have all boys and girls under their protection receive ordinary education as provided for by law.
(3) Such compulsory education shall be free.

The constitution gives both sexes and all classes equal rights to education (according to their ability--the PC era wasn't yet a glimmer in Judith Butler's eye), but it doesn't really say who's in charge of delivering it.

On the other side, local governments sensibly note that with the aging population, the balance between funding needed for elder care and funding needed for child care is shifting. Their feeling is that they should be able to work with a pool of welfare money, using local knowledge to determine what proportion goes to whom. We'll see how things develop. The LDP is very keen on seeing its reforms go through, so expect compromises.

Charles Jenkins has been found guilty of desertion. That's not a surprise, but some of his family had been insisting that he must have been abducted himself, as his Japanese wife Hitomi Soga was 15 years later. His own plea was guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy and not guilty to treason and soliciting others to desert. He's likely to serve his sentence in what looks like minimal confinement. His wife's hometown is in Niigata; there don't seem to be any reports on how much earthquake damage it suffered. One hopes none, considering what she's suffered over the last 25 years.

Okay, guys, do you have a freaking macro for this on your computers?

It's difficult to see how any self-respecting gay person could vote Republican in this presidential election, but credit is due those who are unwilling to be driven from the party that reflects their general political philosophy. On top of dealing with overt hostility from within their party, these faithful gay Republicans then have to deal with the ridicule coming from fellow gays and commentators (Jon Stewart on gay Republicans) alike.

The reason it's so funny--however much it gets on my nerves--is that the latest entry on the Blade blog is this bewildered item (posted, to be fair, by a different contributor):

Perhaps the most surprising news for gay observers of the presidential election is that exit polls show President Bush received the exact same percentage of gay votes � 23 percent � as he did four years ago. This despite the president's vocal support for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Let's see. If a quarter of polled gays voted for Bush, and all the gay observers were puzzled, could that mean that...uh...like...maybe our activists aren't entirely representative of The Comprehensive Gay Ideology? Or that we don't all prioritize the same?

Why am I rupturing an artery over this now? It looks as if Bush won; no point in not resting a bit. There'll be plenty of time to get contentious again later. It's just sad to see people still running along the same old, tired groove already when not all the state tallies are even in yet.

Added on 4 November: Dean has noticed this, too.

I'm in one of my obsessive-workaholic phases: I bang away at the keyboard and Google and print and redline and swear under my breath and pace for hours and hours, and then I have to stop before my quality control starts to slip.

But by that point, I'm always so keyed up that I have to keep going. I do housework like a madman. I inhale my food. I gulp drinks (the other day I swilled a fresh cup of tea so quickly I thought I was going to asphyxiate from blisters in my throat). I walk like a locomotive up Meiji Avenue between Shibuya and Shinjuku. The other night, I arrived at one of my favorite bars after chugging for 50 minutes and was still so jazzed I ended up yammering about the election to some guy I hardly know. (At least it helped counteract my apparent general reputation for aloofness, but that's a topic for another day.)

What's really bizarre is that I don't need more sleep than usual. In fact, I was awakened by indigestion before dawn on Sunday and wound up pounding out a long, verbose post, then going back to bed and getting up at my normal time. The rest of the time Atsushi was home, he kept me relaxed and grounded as always. Only once while we were watching CNN did I make an ungallant comment at one of the reporters and stalk to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

But then he went back to Kyushu, taking his Force Field of Calm with him. Three hours later, when he e-mailed to say he'd landed, I was 1.5 liters of Coke to the worse and was flitting among a half-dozen books open on the coffee table. After I'd rehydrated, I had a workout and pounded the hell out of myself (in the challenging way, not the self-destructive way).

These stretches are always weird for me. I'm not nervous or worried or unhappy; there's nothing bad about the way I feel. I'm just so charged. I wonder whether following election day will help or hurt. I do know that if I have to keep listening to the inane patter on CNN, I will be pounding the hell out of something that is not my muscles. ("The candidates have been really working the swing states hard, but there are questions about whether they've been successful at convincing voters." Well, unless they persuaded people to stay home or go Nader, one of them must've been successful, you stu...uh...ma'am. See, Atsushi can keep me sort-of-calm, even from afar.)

Bill Hemmer is interviewing the DNC and RNC top men on CNN right now and just asked Terry McAuliffe why the country's still so divided. Think McAuliffe'll turn those lizard eyes on the camera, be honest and say, "Because of flim-flamming jerks like me, Bill!"?

No, of course, he didn't.

Good old Virginia Postrel. Her Bush endorsement has to be my favorite yet, and not just because I'm a fan of hers:

I'm not picking a boyfriend here...or, for that matter, an intellectual mentor. Given the current balance of power in Congress, there a