The White Peril 白禍

Eric doesn't like being labeled, and not for the usual tiresome I'm-too-free-spirited-to-be-defined reasons:

While I can say what I think about most things, experience shows that adopting any label invites conformity to it. (Especially criticism from those who claim it.)

Once you say what you are, some a**hole will come along and say that you're not, because he is.

Similarly, once you say what you aren't, some a**hole will come along and say that you are, because he isn't.

It's convenient that (small-l) "libertarian" suits me fine, because it tends not to set people off. I like "classical liberal," but (today's left) liberals often seem to think you're trying to dress up as one of them while being a closet fascist. ("Yeah, you're a liberal in the sense that, like, Mill would have meant it," someone sneered at me once.) And while my positions on many issues align with what we now consider "conservatism," I'm not fundamentally a conservative. (Well, I am when some gross guy is hitting on me. Then I identify myself as a "conservative" in a clear, forceful tone and mention that I'm a registered Republican. You movement conservatives don't mind the fib, do you? It's to the end of preventing casual homosexual intercourse, after all. And I really am a registered Republican.)

The only problem with calling yourself a libertarian--besides, as Eric alludes to, being invited by supposed fellow travelers to engage in poker-faced debates over the most inane hypothetical situations imaginable--is that a lot of people don't understand that it doesn't mean "libertine" or "anarchist." I can't count the number of times I've had to explain that no, I don't think all governing bodies should be dissolved so we can frolic naked in meadows all day and subsist on game and wild berries. In general, though, even those who conclude I'm just a closet right-winger seem to give me a fair hearing without rancor.

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My buddy grabbed my arm the other night and asked whether I'd seen Julie Burchill's inevitable column about the new Madonna album yet. He summarized it as "If I spent four hours a day at the gym, I'd look better than that bitch!" Not too far wide of the mark:

Madonna is everywhere, reigning over the just and the unjust, friend and foe alike; loving her or hating her is as futile as loving or hating the rain, wind or snow - it'll happen anyway.

...

If Madonna didn't devote her life to harassing us, what would she do with herself all day? Remember, this is a woman with so much time on her hands that she can spend four hours a day working out. I know I'm fat, but I have to say that if I spent four hours a day working out, I'd want to look a damn sight hotter than Madonna does; those vile veiny hands, that sad stringy neck - yuck!

Madonna has the sort of body that tends toward the plump/luscious side; you can see it in her early videos. Endomorphs like that who diet and exercise themselves into having no body fat often end up with skin that has a weird stretched look.

The rest of the column is the exact same thing Burchill writes whenever a Madonna record comes out, and it's as funny (and bawdy) as usual.

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Surprise! Hillary Clinton once said something nasty behind closed doors about white, working-class Southerners (via Ann Althouse):

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

And since some things never change, Clinton's spokesman responds with contempt when asked about the authenticity of the quotation:

A spokesperson for Clinton said the quote was taken out of context and did not reflect her true political philosophy. "This quote differs from the recollection of others who were in the room at the time this comment was allegedly made," said Jay Carson. "To be clear, that's not how she felt then and it's not how she feels now, and the proof is in how she has lived her life, the work she has done and the policies she has pushed and pursued over the last 35 years."

Asked to produce a witness who would say that Clinton had been misquoted, Carson wrote: "So, you've got two guys we've barely heard of remembering a verbatim quote from 13 years ago?... Sounds totally and completely reliable."

Remember the Clinton administration, when we were subjected to that kind of smear-and-spin routine almost daily when something or other threatened to blow up in the happy couple's faces? We could be mere months from going back to it!

Eric also noticed this story. (He didn't say much about it, but, then, he had to go to New Jersey, so he had plenty of pain to contend with already.)

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I don't think this post has enough parentheses.

Does anyone out there know where my evening shirt is?

Well, what good are you?

I thought I always kept it inside the dinner jacket on the same hanger, but unless it's invisible, it's not there. I hope I didn't leave it in Atsushi's closet when I moved out.

*******

How is it possible for one man to have so many vases? If there were ever any doubt that I'm gay, it's been dispelled by the four boxes of decorative housewares I've just packed. Mind you, they don't include anything you could eat off or store something in.

*******

It's time for me to break a pair of sunglasses. Or maybe lose them. I can feel it. The weather keeps going from sunny to cloudy, so you need them sometimes and then not others. They end up in a pocket or dangling by one slender arm from my bag. I seem to have a thing for dropping them in cabs or putting them down on tables and putting something heavy on them. I school myself resolutely to keep them in their little crush-proof cases, but it never works.

*******

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have The Descent in the DVD player, and I'm finding it oddly comforting to have it playing while I'm packing. Given the increasing claustrophic-cave-like-ness of my apartment, you'd think it would make me afraid of confronting a throat-biting humanoid in the bathroom or something, but I actually find it rather cozy. And I used to be of those people who were completely unable to handle horror movies. (When I was growing up, all the talk of demons waiting to getcha we got in church affected my over-active imagination a good deal.)

BTW, if you like suspense and have a strong stomach, The Descent is a great little movie. It's bloody and seriously scary at times, but you don't leave it feeling cynically worked over. It's thoughtful and raises interesting questions without being pretentious, and the cave scenes are very persuasive even though they were all shot on a soundstage. I love hypertrophied old Hollywood glamour-orgy productions as much as the next gay man, but there's a lot to be said for a movie made by people who relied on ingenuity, skill, and conviction rather than piles of money.

Stephen Miller at IGF posts about an Advocate column responding to the murder at school of a cross-dressing fifteen-year-old who lived in a facility for troubled youth.

Of course, it's partially Bush's fault. No, really. Here's part of Neal Broverman's Advocate piece:

"Part of the role of a school is to teach young people how to function in a democracy," says Kevin Jennings, a former teacher and the founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, a national organization working to ensure safe schools for LGBT students. "In a democracy we protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Where are they going to get that lesson? They've got to learn it in school." [Note unassailable logic of preceding sentences--SRK]

But they don't. At least not in the way they did before the No Child Left Behind Act was enacted by Congress in 2002 at the Bush administration's urging.

"There's been a real retrenchment of antibullying and diversity programs since No Child Left Behind," says Jennings. "What that's done is establish standardized testing as the only measure of good schools. In the late '90s there was a lot of momentum around multiculturalism and diversity. That was really reversed by this imposition of standardized testing. A lot of educators are frustrated because they understand the importance of addressing some of these larger [social] efforts, but when they try to they're told, 'You've just got to get the math scores up.'"

Is standardized testing the only measure of school performance that's currently given weight? I'm no education expert, but my understanding is that schools are still rated according to their safety standards; it's hard to believe that a pattern of violent bullying that goes unpunished wouldn't be factored in there--assuming the reporting administrators are being honest. Keeping schools from finding ways to cook the numbers to make themselves look better has been a major issue since the program was first implemented. Still, that doesn't mean the shift from trying to teach kids huggy multiculturalism to trying to teach them math is in and of itself a bad one.

There was a violence prevention program in place at the school that attempted to teach kids how to manage their emotions and empathize with others. Would a gay-straight alliance or more explicit attention to tolerance of gay kids have helped? Possibly.

Broverman delivers the usual coarse generalities about "violence as a solution to conflict" (bad, very bad), but he raises the common-sense point that maybe King's elders should have taught him a bit more caution when it came to wearing heels and eye makeup and adopting a flippant, teasing persona in a school full of teenagers. Miller reports that a cadre of social welfare busybodies naturally flipped out:

Braverman [sic--his name is Broverman according to the by-line] raised serious issues that are certainly worth discussing. But his piece provoked strong criticism from certain activist quarters, as in this Open Letter to The Advocate from "lawyers, advocates, and child welfare professionals" who declare "hiding fuels hatred" and that "We cannot keep children safe by hiding them. Succumbing to fear creates an environment in which hatred thrives. Invisibility is just another, more insidious, killer." [A dumbfounding thing to say in connection with a child whose flamboyance just got him shot--SRK]

That sounds a awful lot like the kind of sloganeering that is meant to stifle open discussion rather than foster it. Gay adults know that, if they choose, they can walk hand in hand down a street of a non-gay neighborhood--and they know that in a great many neighborhoods they will risk getting beaten (or worse) for it. That's a choice adults can make.

I think Miller shows impressive restraint. What kind of moron do you have to be to go around telling children that they can just go around expressing themselves however they like and expect the world to love them for it? Or even to expect those who do love them for it to be able to bail them out every time they land themselves in trouble? I daresay that most people go through junior high school hiding what they are to some extent; that's how you get along. Teenagers learn through trial and error, as their personalities are gelling, how much they're willing to hold back in order to avoid making waves and how much they're not. This is not just a gay issue.

In a free society, the authorities aren't policing everywhere you go and everything you do. You can go about your business as a law-abiding citizen without being watched all the time, but the trade-off is that you can get yourself into dangerous situations when no one is in a position to help you. It only takes minutes to get beaten up, and less than that to get stabbed or shot. (In this particular case, one of the issues is how McInerney managed to get a gun onto school property undetected; but then, if he was that much bigger and stronger than King, he could probably have broken his neck or banged his head hard enough to kill him without a weapon.) Eliminating the real dangers gays face is not going to be achieved by griping that they shouldn't exist and teaching young people to pretend they don't.

Added on 2 April: I originally characterized the junior high school in the story as being for troubled youth because, for some reason, I read the article that way. Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for pointing out that it appears actually to have been a regular old junior high school with some kind of anger management program. I've excised the two misleading sentences above, and while I hate to be told I've made a stupid mistake, I'm actually kind of glad to learn that particular information about the school. I was originally utterly baffled that counselors would tell a fifteen-year-old that a school for troubled kids was a good place for him to start cross-dressing. I still think they were irresponsible, but I guess I'm a bit less baffled now.