Now Back to the Wall: Flyer, your point on technicalities is correct, which is why I lean toward gay marriage. My best-of-all-worlds solution is about as likely as, well, the government giving up any of the other silly and pointless authority it has snapped up. No, there isn't much difference between marriage and civil union; in fact, I'd argue that the difference should be simply religious. If you want to be married in your church, mosque, synagogue, or whatever, you abide by their rules. The government, on the other hand, could have a single standard for all comers. Pulse? In addition, I don't see anything wrong with, say, two spinster ladies, who happen to be sisters or cousins, getting a civil union to simplify their financial or caregiving relationships. But the principle of the matter, in the end, is not so much civil rights as it is government distribution of benefits or drawbacks to certain relationships via, for example, tax policy. The current situation boils down to sorting out the unintended consequences of bad social policy.

Kerry/Drudge: I was going to withhold comment for a while. Drudge is good at reporting what people are whispering, and after his apology to Sid Blumenthal, I don't doubt he's a little more circumspect. But this could drift away like the talk in '92 that Poppy Bush was at one time rather, eh, close to a female staffer. Didn't pan out. As Flyer says, it's a long way from Drudge to 60 Minutes.

Should it matter? I don't think so. A lot will depend on how Kerry handles the story, should it blow up. My problem with Clinton was never his peccadillos, to put it mildly; rather, I think he committed crimes as president while covering up for one. The real question will be how Kerry tries to put this behind him. If it's not true, no problem. If it is true, can he get over it with the big sit-down, cry-it-out interview? Maybe, but Clinton had some natural skills in that area. He was fantastic when it came to hangdoggy, lip-sucking shame (even if it was false shame). Kerry seems like a different type.

So far, it's a non-story; most of the reporters following Kerry right now won't jump on this, even if they want to. Who wants to blow their access to the man with a question that can be shrugged off? "It's Drudge, after all," is the only answer a reporter will get -- just before he finds himself unofficially barred from talking to Kerry for good.

"And we'd laugh, laugh, laugh": Teresa Heinz Kerry on infidelity:

"I don't think I could have coped so well" with a mate's philandering as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has. "I used to say to my husband, my late husband, 'If you ever get something I'll maim you. Not kill you, just maim you.' And we'd laugh, laugh, laugh." Heinz adds that she has never had any reason to suspect either of her husbands. "Not for one day, because what I expect of them, they have a right to expect of me. Maybe I'm into 18-year-olds."

Great, nine months of waiting for the Lorena Bobbit moment. At least somebody will be laughing.

Sense of duty: Hillary's, that is.

"The right wing extremists that have slandered the good name of a decent, caring man to protect the seat of power for themselves, will be shown the door when the people speak. And I will proudly accept their call to take up the fight that Senator Kerry started, and run for President of the United States of America!"

Or something like, it's just a rough draft. Or am I crazy for thinking that she'd capitalize on the moment in such a way, or even that there could have been some chicanery involved in the back rooms of the DNC? Anyway, that was my first instinctive reaction, which says something, I guess, though I'm not sure what.

Actually, there is a long way to go before this becomes a death blow to Kerry's campaign. It's a long way to go from Drudge to a weepy Barbara Walters interview. But interesting is certainly a tepid adjective.

Federal marriage: Eno, I'm much in favor of your suggestion, removing governmental benefits and preferences vis a vis marriage. Religious institutions, the traditional body performing the ceremony and recognizing the status of marriage, have the right to make their own rules and discriminations and people have the right to disavow organizations they don't agree with. The problem is that many modern marriages are not performed by religious figures, but rather by a civil authority (hmmm, civil...where have I heard that word before).

I think you would agree that a marriage ceremony performed by a government authority, be it judge, politician, or the captain of the good ship Lolly Pop, ought not care about the sex of the participants. I don't think there's much difference between a marriage and a civil union, but the difference is important for at least symbolic reasons to gays. It may be a technicality that is the deciding factor, but legal decisions are often rendered based on technicalities in our system. Let it be so in this case, then.

Cherchez la femme: As Balko said, "things just got interesting": Go read Drudge. Alternative lede: "You saw this coming a mile away."

Who is the Harriet Tubman of gay marriage?: Problem with gay marriage vis-a-vis gov't interference is that conservatives will always want to legislate morality, and liberals will always want to create laws protecting the rights of people to do whatever they want (of course the liberts just want tax cuts). Marriage is simply the most visible (perhaps after abortion) embodiment of that struggle. Each side views it as its moral duty to engage in the fight over who can marry whom. Conservatives figure that marriage is the last thing they have a strangle-hold on (since Tom is now free to bone Jim in whatever orifice he sees ummm fit), and so this is their Leningrad - the enemy is at the gate and it is in the form of two lumbering, sandle-wearing women with short hair and bad vests.

The Boston Turmoil: The shouting and the sloganeering over gay marriage went to 11 at the Old State House yesterday -- and that was just the noise the politicians made. (The thousands demonstrating outside had their own say in the wall-to-wall print and broadcast coverage.) Some of the rhetoric is really starting to bother me. For example:

Senator Dianne Wilkerson recalled growing up black in Arkansas, where the public hospital did not allow her mother to deliver her children.

I know the pain of being less than equal and I cannot and will not impose that status on anyone else," a teary-eyed Wilkerson said. "I was but one generation removed from an existence in slavery. I could not in good conscience ever vote to send anyone to that place from which my family fled."

Andrew Sullivan cites this testimony approvingly today, but this kind of rhetoric does nothing more than diminish the civil rights movement with false comparisons. Look, I'm for gay marriage, but this isn't Jim Crow. Not the same thing, not the same principle, not even the same ballpark. In fact, the only reason I think gay marriage passes constitutional muster is that the government has a) taken control of marriage at, generally, the state level; and b) the government has, at several levels, made the institution a determining factor in deciding relative tax burden. If marriage were no more than a religious institution (even with the government, at some level, as recorder thereof), gay couples would clearly have no right to marry. To put it another way, if the government did not use the special relationship of marriage when determining benefits, privileges, or tax rates (which for many years favored not marrying; that's begun to change), I wouldn't be convinced that gay couples deserve marriage.

So, for me, gay marriage wins on a technicality. I don't think it is inherently a basic civil right, as Ms. Wilkinson's tearful performance implied, except for the fact that the government has put its fat thumb on the scales. The best-of-all-worlds solution is for the government to simply remove that thumb, rather than trying to fiddle with the scale so that it appears fair despite the thumb.

Shipping Jobs Overseas For Fun and Profit: Drezner has a good roundup on the reaction to Gregory Mankiw, head of the president's Council of Economic Advisors, who is getting it from all sides for saying this:

The benefits from new forms of trade, such as in services, are no different from the benefits from traditional trade in goods. Outsourcing [i.e., to another country, or "offshoring"] of professional services is a prominent example of a new type of trade. The gains from trade that take place over the Internet or telephone lines are no different than the gains from trade in physical goods transported by ship or plane. When a good or service is produced at lower cost in another country, it makes sense to import it rather than to produce it domestically. This allows the United States to devote its resources to more productive purposes.

As Drezner points out, this is the economic equivalent of "the sky is blue," even among economists who oppose the Bush administration on just about everything else.

Diversity in the Academy? Via Arts & Letters Daily come the links to the debate on "intellectual diversity" on campus. Here is the article, with position statements by David Horowitz and Stanley Fish. Generally, Horowitz thinks the academy is liberal, and that an "Academic Bill of Rights" fostering "intellectual diversity" is needed to keep universities and colleges from becoming halls of indoctrination. Fish, opposing, disagrees that intellectual diversity is a worthwhile goal, and adds that Horowitz's bill is open to misuse by partisan politicians (of either side) to advance an agenda.

I'm with Fish on this one, even though a rereading of many of his points, substituting the words "racial diversity" for "intellectual diversity," is a telling exercise. Try this one, for example:

Now if intellectual diversity is not an academic value, adherence to it as an end in itself will not further an academic goal; but it will further some goal, and that goal will be political. It will be part of an effort to alter the academy so that it becomes an extension of some partisan vision of the way the world should be.

I agree with Horowitz that the left dominates academia, often to the point of ridicule of non-conforming opinion. I have had attended classes in which the syllabus might as well have listed the requirement that students accept certain controversial assumptions as prerequisite to participation in discussion and essay topic selection. This is not always out of bounds, though. Sometimes participation in a discussion requires a certain suspension of dispute. (The professor teaching feminist readings of the Torah, a class I once took, does not have time in the schedule to debate prime movers. If you dispute the premise, you might want to skip the class.) I also recognize that when formulating the curriculum, certain assumptions will be deemed fair while other will not. Holocaust denial is right out. Unfortunately, too many in the academy would put critics of Marxism (or, more specifically, the social science assumptions that are derivative thereof) in the same category.

But Horowitz is self-consciously arming against the left with the left's own aegis. If you dispute the vagaries of "hostile environment" and "diversity" claims in other matters (as I do), then intellectual consistancy requires that you not make an exception here. So higher education is leftist? Unfair, but so is life. We don't (unless we're leftists) legislate against unfairness. We may fight it, but we hardly seek restriction or oversight as a certain remedy; in fact, we may more commonly see restriction as compounding the problem. Thus, Horowitz's point is fair, but Fish is also right that the point is merely a debating point, that it highlights certain farfetched notions of the educational establishment (i.e., that diversity of race -- meaning more black people -- is essential to an educational institution) by proposing a related farfetched notion (i.e., that intellectual diversity -- meaning more conservatives -- is as well).

Bleeding Hearts On the Air: I think we've discussed before (but i'm too lazy to go find evidence thereof) the difference between conservatives and liberals (please, excuse the broad paint strokes, but we have to for this discussion). My thesis is that conservatives are much more interesting, but viewed through an evil filter - meaning that usually their motives are ascribed to some untoward purpose. Liberals on the other hand, are deathly boring, yet typically viewed as benevolent benefactors (even if that benevolence will ultimately cripple an economy for example). So to re-state: conservatives = evil but interesting; liberals = inept but well-meaning.

Let's just accept this premise for the moment, shall we? I know you can point to many evils of the liberals and many noble points of the conservatives, but still, I think the premise has some merit for caricature purposes. Liberal talk radio is therefore doomed to much more narrow audience. If we take Rush as the ultimate in conservative talk, then my hypothesis is upheld. The man, for all his many personal and ideological faults, is interesting. He's well-read, witty and able to more than hold his own in debate. He picks good topics, has intriguing angles, and, most imporantly, his dogma, while repititious, holds intellectual water. This, if nothing else, draws in more listeners who may just want to hear what he has to say, even if he's attacking their heartfelt beliefs.

On the other hand, I've heard a few liberal talkies, like Jim Hightower, say (who bills himself as "America's Number 1 Populist" - catchy, no? Ugh.). He and his ilk always come across as whiny, complaining and rather effete. "Why can't we all just get along?" or "We all need free healthcare/prescriptions/retirement because it's the right thing to do!" Basically, the liberal speaks in platitudes about fairness, which, frankly is boring. The conservative rails against the behemoth that is the government in favor of self-improvement, taking the initiative, and pulling oneself up by one's coattails. That is compelling to listen to.

See, it's not that liberals don't have good points; they do (at least in this writer's opinion), it's just that they sell better on the stump than on A.M. If you want give and take over ideas, then there's only so many ways you can say that people "deserve" X or Y. Now, a liberal talk show will do better when there's a GOP President and Congress, but only because of contrast and to give an outlet to those who feel the need to vent over the airwaves. But, when it comes down to it, it's just a collective pat on the back (not that Rush and his fuc*king dittoheads don't do this all the time). There's little intellectual tension or even intrigue.

Okay, it's just my hypothesis, but can you even imagine Gore given the p.m. drive slot? As he drones on about how he would have forced Kyoto to be ratified you can just picture the cars ramming into trees and one another; the drivers blissfuly unaware.

Lileks:

I'm so old I actually remember when the Democrats cared about Iraq.

Liberal Chatter: TNR has put online its cover story on the coming of liberal talk radio. It's generally an excellent, fair article, so I won't nitpick. I'm curious to hear Razor's opinion, since he has admitted a certain respect for the talents of Rush Limbaugh. (One very interesting section of the article questions whether Limbaugh is in fact political, or whether he is just an opportunist who saw a niche for a conservative voice and modulated accordingly; he was, by many accounts, apolitical prior to his show's success.)

My caveat to the liberals would be to warn against cargo-cult methodology; that is, they may try to ape all the "obvious" keys to the success of Rush without understanding what actually made the show a success. Whatever Limbaugh's true level of political committment, he was an organic phenomenon. If there were a market for liberal talk, I think it would have been filled already. TNR does, unfortunately, quicly dismiss some of the serious theories explaining the relative successes of Limbaugh and, say, Jim Hightower.

One is that conservative and liberals have different media habits and needs. Demographers could tackle this question better than I.

Another, favored by conservatives themselves, is that "the networks" already fulfill the liberal media needs. This isn't so much a matter of media bias as it is of media content. To focus on radio, I abhor the slant of NPR, but it is objectively more interesting than Limbaugh's show -- more variety, more solid content. I see why educated, wealthy liberals listen to public broadcasting: high quality, great human interest stroies, effective use of the medium. I honestly don't think most liberals are going to switch off Diane Rehm to listen to Janeane Garafolo; the former is informed, intelligent, and consistent (though with perhaps the worst radio voice ever), while the latter is ignorant, embarrassing, and poorly equipped to be entertaining every day. (One of Limbaugh's great strengths is that he can deliver relatively sophisticated political analysis without sacrificing entertainment value.)

So liberal talk, like the metric system, is always this close to making mainstream success. Maybe. I'll wait until they roll out some content. They seem to be putting a lot of faith in the ability of unproven, loose-cannon types like Al Franken to attract backers/sponsors. But radio takes a lot of discipline, and talk radio all the more so. I should know: I tried briefly to run the morning-talk format in my days at a certain public broadcasting station in the backwaters of Northern New England. I had ideas. I had determination. Unfortunately, I just plain sucked.

Dean's demise: Joe Trippi thinks the open-access internet was the downfall of Howard Dean's campaign.

The transparency of the anti-establishment Dean campaign made it hard to respond to political attacks from his eight other Democratic opponents and media criticism of the candidate's missteps, he said.

"We couldn't figure out how to tell people we had a problem without raising the wrong impression. Part of the problem is that the press are reading our blogs (Internet journals)," he said.

Of course, without the "internet bubble" of Dean's campaign, he'd just be a former New England governor with no chance of becoming president. Which is what he is now, even if he won't admit it.

Bird Flu and Other Tales: Why do I get a bad feeling from this?

China banned U.S. poultry imports Tuesday to ease growing fears about bird flu, announcing in an emergency notice that any American fowl that have already arrived at its ports would be returned or destroyed . . . In December, China banned beef products from the United States after a case of mad cow disease was reported there. That prohibition has not been rescinded.

I'm no expert on the issue. Perhaps someone could tell me how this doesn't necessarily escalate to a sort of back-door protectionism.

Presidential Hatred and Politics: Andrew Sullivan has an interesting take on the pathology today. He thinks Bush hatred is peaking:

So the legitimate WMD issue has finally enabled them to vent more freely, to come out of the shell of restraint that patriotism and unpopularity once imposed upon them. That may also be true for many of us who were alarmed by the fiscal situation during the war but kept mum for similar reasons (although I was on the case for much of last year). We're venting now. But what that might also mean is that the anger might soon dissipate.

Like I said, interesting idea, but likely wrong. We know a couple of things about Bush hatred, especially when seen through the filter of Clinton hatred in the 90s:

1. It is totally unresponsive to reasoned argument. Whatever else it may be, it is not about issues; in it's own way, it's not even about partisanship, since it is removed from policy. Even when the GOP finally was able to "vent" over Clinton, it never seemed to help. Perhaps they found the wrong issues for venting (fellatio on the taxpayer dime, for example, ended up doing more to out hypocritical GOP philanderers than to weaken the president).

2. As the president seeks accomodation with the opposition (triangulation, as Dick Morris called it), the hatred increases, rather than decreasing. Thus can Clinton direct, for most of his two terms, a centrist -- perhaps even center-right -- agenda and still enrage the GOP stalwarts. The "victory" the GOP gained by winning its issues was viscerally undermined by the insult of seeing a president applauded for successfully co-opting a Republican issue; the GOP, in response, walked away from its popular agenda and took to dwelling in the weeds of self-consciously divisive cultural issues, scandal mongering, and viscious attack. Thus can Bush conduct a generous, centrist agenda and be thoroughly reviled (even before the war) as another evil Republican who's here to take away granny's monthly check to reward cronies.

From those points, I think it becomes clear that such a reaction is counterproductive. The GOP abandoned its public mandate and popular agenda soon after the '94 revolution, and became the party that defined itself as "not-Clinton" or "anti-Clinton." I think this fueled a renewal in the power of the religious right, since cultural wedge issues were the easiest club with which to smack Clinton. None of this was good for the GOP, and the 90s were almost entirely wasted.

Likewise, I think that the Bush hatred is destructive to the Democrats. Notice the clear lack of agena, the kneejerk oppositionism, the tone, and the themes this year; it all adds up to "not-Bush" or "anti-Bush." The difference (and I say this with a little sadness) is that the Republicans do not have a competent candidate who can take advantage of the Democrats' disarray, the way Clinton was able to take advantage of the GOP's. If the GOP had an incumbent president with the political skills of Ronald Reagan, this latest burst of pure anti-Bush frenzy would be the death rattle of a dinosaur party, beholden to too many narrow interests to be nimble, at least temporarily in financial dire straits by their own soft money ban, and increasingly a megaphone for voices that offend the mainstream of American culture. Part of the science of political war is being able to take advantage of your enemy's missteps. Karl Rove, for all his reputation as Lee Atwater's cold-blooded political step-brother, has yet to show any semblance of a plan to fend off what has been so far a self-indulgent, issueless Democratic campaign. What the hell will he do if the Democrats find some discipline coming out of Boston?

More Beatles: Another thing that goes unmentioned, regarding the Beatles, is that the growing influence of Music Hall tradition on their style is no more unusual than the growing influence of folk music on their American counterparts. Music Hall is the "folk" music of Britain, arguably. Is it odd that the Beatles might draw upon the popular and typically maudlin folk ballad ("She's Leaving Home"), carnival-tent atmospherics ("For the Benefit of Mr. Kite"), or barrelhouse piano ("Martha My Dear")? No more odd than Dylan drawing on Guthrie, Seeger, or Leadbelly. (The obvious difference here being that American folk is emphatically more rural and, in some cases, ethnic.) Or the Byrds singing Ecclesiastes. Or the Beach Boys doing the creole folk song "Sloop John B."

For some reason, though, a very obvious put-on piece like "When I'm 64" or "A Little Help from My Friends" is pushed aside as filler, while folk-influenced music in the U.S. is given an immediate "street cred" boost, even if played by musicians who were predominatly white, middle class, and urban or suburban. (At least the Beatles were working-class blokes, after all, and not pretend proletariat like Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan.)

Razor, as for your Guadalcanal Diary question, I think that song suffers without the ringing Rickenbacker sound of the original -- but it is one of the few excellent Beatles covers, in the company of Joe Cocker's "Bathroom Window" and, believe it or not, Dionne Warwick's "We Can Work It Out" (which could make one disbelieve that the song wasn't written intentionally as a major soul workout).

Beatles: Well, Eno has forgotten more about The Beatles than I'll ever know, so I really can't say much on the piece of much use. I like the idea however that maybe they just did run out of good ideas. Also, it's hard not to accept the premise that with all the outside distractions homing in on the group (Yoko, Eastern mysticism, harder drug use, their own cult of personality) that it had to be harder and harder to "bring it" with each album (and when you consider how much fu*king music they pumped out in 7 years...yea gods!).

Also, is it wrong to admit that I still like Guadalcanal Diary's "And Your Bird Can Sing" better?

Meet the Beatles: Forty years later, a new generation meets the Beatles. Here's the piece that Reason chose to mark the occasion. It's central thesis, that the Beatles became a central force in rock music by abandoning rock and roll, is not an original one. But the author, Charles Freund, makes the point well, acknowledging the infectiousness of the Beatles' melodies while noting that the music was occasionally sentimental, treacly, and anachronistic.

There's some interesting stuff out there on the subject. Beatles biographers seem to agree that McCartney was rather conservative, Edwardian, and establishment, making no attempts to hide his love for British Music Hall tradition. But he couldn't carry off something like "When I'm 64" without a dose of cheeky irony. And certainly songs like "Helter Skelter," tape loop projects (like the ones he brought to George Martin for Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows"), and concepts like Sgt. Pepper and the quasi-Kesey Magical Mystery Tour (despite the absolute failure of the film to be interesting) showed that he was no reactionary.

On the other hand, Lennon's reputation was pure rebel, no doubt a lot of it an affected James Dean pose. But Lennon's own body of work shows its own strong tilt toward sentimentality. "Good Night" (from the White Album) sounds like it could have been generated by the Disney machine, characterized as it is by swelling strings and mawkish melody. One must admit that Lennon's legendary "Imagine" is only a small, unironic step up from there. Lennon apparently thought, at first, that McCartney's sonic experimentation was no more than a lark, but he soon caught the progressive side of it. But if McCartney balances his streak of tradition with irony and experimentation, Lennon came to balance his with flat-out iconoclasm ("Revolution #9," "Two Virgins," etc.). Both had great faults. McCartney's more subtle, winking style could sound like uncritical, reactionary art. Lennon's in-your-face moralizing and pontificating often made his own art sound humorless and fatuously self-righteous. The old saw is that they balance one another in the group, but became self-indulgent on their own. Perhaps.

Maybe they just ran out of good ideas. It's hard to imagine the John Lennon who wrote songs like "Norwegian Wood" or "And Your Bird Can Sing" being proud of the crap he put out in the 70s -- although, as I've argued, if you strip away the Yoko stuff, Double Fantasy sounds for all the world like the work of a mature artist, unashamed of his own sentimentality and tired of poseur iconoclasm. Likewise, McCartney must have some reservations about the section of his solo catalog that might have been politely called "Adult Contemporary." To McCartney's credit, when he chooses producers and collaborators who aren't sycophants, the results can still be excellent. (See, for example, the streak of songwriting he did with Elvis Costello in the 80s and 90s, including tunes like "Veronica," "Shallow Grave," "You Want Her Too," and the haunting "So Like Candy.")

But the Beatles stuff still works well; forty years later, it still sounds fresh in a way that neither Wings nor the Plastic Ono Band do. There was something original and quite daring to the Beatles, despite the long history (blues) and pedigree (MusicHall/Pop) of their influences.

Dean's Tumble: I tell you, every time I read of another caucus/primary being blown by Dean I'm still amazed. Just think: only three weeks ago, he was the prohibitive favorite. Now, he's pinning his chances on Wisconsin, even though he can't even win in Maine, which is uhhh, next door to that other state, Vermont or something. For god's sake, Kuchy came in third in Maine, yet Dean doesn't win it.

I've heard the theories over Dean's fall from grace; that he was they guy who could spark interest, but not carry the party; that his ideas were good for debate but not for implementation; his scream turned off voters. I suppose those all have their merit, but why was Kerry written off all summer? I mean, if Dean wasn't the real-deal, fine, but Kerry was given as much chance as Sharpton. Clearly, the media has no clue, and fair enough, it never really does. But I'm still mystified how Dean goes from de facto nominee to not even a VP choice and Kerry goes from eating everyone else's dust to prohibitive nominee.

If the war is the big issue, then again, Kerry seems like an odd choice given that he votes against the popular Gulf War and for the unpopular one. Sure, he's against how the war was handled once initiated, but find me a Democrat who isn't?

My working thesis is that when it got down to pulling a lever, people liked that Kerry was a war hero and had significant experience in the Senate (experience doing what is another topic). Dean, when viewed closely, was a doctor who once ran a tiny state full of hippies. I think it's the gravitas test, and while Kerry is a dull bore and a waffler, he does possess (so far) unassailable creds on war topics and character (meaning no Monicas). That may be enough for the Dems. Scary though.