aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

(That via Billmon, who calls Kerry “the new, even more punchable Al Gore doll.") But then Kerry got lucky. Not only did Ted Haggard blow him out of the news cycle ( couldn’t resist, though Wolcott persuades me it’s the other way around) Haggard actually did manage to tell one thing that rings true:

As you know, um, John Kerry said some things and we all know he didn’t mean what they’re saying he meant. I don’t think he thinks our service personnel are dumb.

And neither do I. But I do think that the Bush administration has dumbed down the media, dumbed down science and is dumbing down the military.

Friday, November 03, 2006

He advertised himself as an escort

I bet most everyone believes this:

Jones claimed that Haggard, 50, paid him to have sex nearly every month over three years. He said he advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and was contacted by a man who called himself Art, who snorted methamphetamine before their sexual encounters to heighten his experience.

Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard and that the two last had sex in August.

He said he has voice mail messages from Haggard, as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash. He declined to make the voice mails available to the AP, but KUSA-TV reported what it said were excerpts late Thursday that referred to methamphetamine.

“Hi Mike, this is Art,” one call began, according to the station. “Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply.”

A second message, left a few hours later, began: “Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I’ll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever.”

Here’s the website.

He was only on a couple of calls

Does anyone believe him?

Q This Reverend Haggard out in Colorado, is he someone who is close to the White House? There had been reports that he was on the weekly call with evangelicals. Is that true?

MR. FRATTO: I’m actually told that that’s not true, that he has—in terms of a weekly call that he has? He had been on a couple of calls, but was not a weekly participant in those calls. I believe he’s been to the White House one or two times. I don’t want to confine it to a specific number because it would take a while to figure out how many times. But there have been a lot of people who come to the White House, and --

Q—when was he at the White House?

MR. FRATTO: I couldn’t tell you specifically. I know that there was a picture of him with the President in one of the TV reports, so obviously he met with the President at some point in time.

Look, this is a personal issue for someone. It’s something that Reverend Haggard needs to deal with, with his family and his church. And I’m not sure that there’s any comment beyond that that’s necessary.

Via TPM, Reverend who?

LATER, The Carpetbagger Report:

Let's set the record straight here. Every Monday, Haggard has participated in a West Wing conference call with evangelical leaders. He's one of only a handful of religious leaders with immediate access to the Bush White House. Here's a nice pic of Haggard and his friend Bush in the Oval Office. Haggard has personally (and successfully) lobbied the White House on policy issues more than once.

He didn’t inhale

Does anyone believe him?

He said he met with Mr. Jones and bought the drug. “I was tempted, I bought it, but I did not use it,” he said today. The station posted the video interview on its Web site.

Automated driving (reprise)

My TimesSelect weekend preview tells me that the NYTimes will offer “a slightly unsettling look” at auto electronics technology now arriving in showrooms. I’ll link, and comment, when it’s open to all. In the meantime a reprise of a post from July 2005. Automated driving is closer than we think...

I expect automated driving within a decade.

We already have adaptive cruise control, GPS navigation systems, and computer assisted braking and steering. It doesn’t take a giant technological leap to turn today’s robo-cars into fully automated vehicles.

My guess is we’ll add computer chips to those helpful reflectors embedded in the highway lane lines. The chips can be dumb, like buoys at sea, transmitting speed and navigation settings. The computing power is in the vehicle. Braking and spacing will be handled by a future iteration of the adaptive cruise control.

Such an automated vehicle will be able to operate side by side with older non-automated vehicles. Or HOV style lanes that require automation might operate at higher speeds and capacities. Eventually, I expect all roads to be automated. Traffic lights, stop signs and curve ahead signs can all be translated into chips that pass information to the vehicle.

I am reminded of this because James Joyner points to a vehicle technology in the UK today, a spy device to cut drivers’ speed by satellite. He calls it “an incredible invasion of privacy” over something “they have no business controlling.” As if our profligate flouting of speed limit laws is some kind of inalienable right.

I would think the conservative position is to either eliminate or change these traffic laws, not that it’s an invasion of privacy to enforce them. And I’d prefer uniform enforcement over the present system of whoever, wrong place wrong time, happens to get caught.

James also doesn’t like that London drivers are subject to congestion pricing--a regulatory mechanism I generally favor and would like to see expanded--and says congestion is government’s fault. It’s “because the government can’t maintain an adequate infrastructure.”

I assume he’s aware that many traffic engineers believe that building more roads only attracts more cars. I’d wager a bet that another lane on the Beltway won’t reduce traffic. Have you been to L.A.? Long Island? Roads seem to me to fall prey to a kind of tragedy of the commons. If that’s true, more regulation is the best way to benefit all users.

RELATED: Here I push my prediction back to 20 years, because it turns out that congestion pays.

Evangelical backlash

I listened to this podcast yesterday, before the Haggard story broke. It’s a nuanced and convincing assessment of evangelical disillusionment from Laurie Goodstein, national religion correspondent at the New York Times.

Dailyprincetonian.com:

“We are seeing the start of disillusionment round three,” Goodstein said. “This is not just evangelicals disillusioned with the Republican Party, but evangelicals disillusioned with politics.”

Goodstein’s research has found that many Christians are hesitant to categorize themselves as evangelicals because of the denomination’s political implications.

According to a recent Baylor poll she quoted, while 33 percent of Christians polled named their house of worship as an evangelical church, only 15 percent categorized themselves as evangelical.

“Evangelicals are not giving up these concerns,” Goodstein said of their traditionally conservative positions on issues such as sexuality in mass culture, abortion, birth control and homosexuality. “The difference is in terms of how to make those changes.”

Here’s the Baylor study. While the political Religious Right reads the findings as a function of a bigoted bias against evangelicals, Goodstein sees it as evangelicals distancing themselves from the more extreme political rhetoric of religious conservative political leaders.

An argument I find compelling and convincing.

Horny toad

My state senator believes (I know because he told me) that if you’re married with kids it demonstrates to his satisfaction that you can’t be having sex with men.

Maybe this will convince even the people here that he’s wrong:

Facing shocking allegations that he paid a gay prostitute for sex, prominent Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard placed himself on administrative leave Thursday from his church position and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a platform that made him a rising star in conservative politics.

Haggard, 50, said in a statement released by his 14,000- member New Life Church that he could “not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations made on Denver talk radio this morning.”

In interviews over the past two days with KHOW talk radio, 9News and The Denver Post, Michael Forest Jones, 49, of Denver alleges he had sex on a monthly basis with Haggard over three years. Jones claimed Haggard used the name “Art,” admitted he was married and used meth before the two had sex.

In an interview Wednesday with 9News, Haggard denied he’d used drugs or had gay sex, saying he’s been faithful to his wife. Haggard, who has five children, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Unfortunately, my state senator likely won’t change his mind. He genuinely believes that my “lifestyle...preference” is an immoral choice that I was able to make because of our deteriorated culture.

But I’m thinking, one by one, my neighbors who know me will come to understand that he’s wrong. And next time around they might just vote my state senator out.

RELATED: World O’Crap quotes from this Harper’s piece, “Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim.”

Foley’s Follies

Via Blogma.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Fox ratings tumble

Less comment on this in the blogosphere than I would have thought:

Fox News’s total audience fell 24 percent in the past year, to 1.3 million viewers from 1.7 million, and its key primetime audience, viewers ages 25-54, was down 7 percent in October on a year-to-year basis, to an average 363,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data.

In third quarter, Fox News suffered a 38 percent decline in 25-54s, to 409,000. In second quarter, that audience was down 22 percent and in first quarter it slid 28 percent. It is still No. 1 by a long shot.

Blame who? Roger Ailes? Not by name even though, like Karl Rove, he’s responsible for the unchanged strategy. Nope. We got bigger fish to fry:

Judy Daubenmier of News Hounds, a web site often critical of Fox News, agrees.

“Fox News has tied itself so closely to George Bush that when his approval ratings go down people don’t want to hear about him, so they don’t want to watch Fox News,” she says.

Jill Olmsted, associate professor of journalism at American University in Washington D.C., thinks viewers have grown tired of Fox’s adamantly pro-Bush rhetoric.

“This could be a backlash,” she says. “We don’t know what’s going to happen on Election Day, but indications are that people are tired of the partisanship and went to get on a more neutral, let’s-get-along agenda.”

Female Mutilation

"Call it what it is! The association with circumcision just waters down the brutality,” Doug hollered when we heard it on the radio. And, sure enough, there it is in the CNN headline:

Dad gets 10 years in first female circumcision trial in U.S.
POSTED: 5:08 a.m. EST, November 2, 2006

An Ethiopian immigrant was convicted Wednesday of the genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what was believed to be the first such criminal case in the United States.

Khalid Adem, 30, was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Prosecutors said he used scissors to remove his daughter’s clitoris in his family’s Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The child’s mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later. [...]

During her father’s trial, the girl, now 7, clutched a teddy bear as she testified on videotape that her father "cut me on my private part."

That father should pay. And The barbarity of the scissors is not the only price his daughter will pay:

According to UNICEF, at least 100 million women, largely in Africa, have been genitally disfigured. Two months ago, the World Health Organization reported that these women, compared to their uncut peers, were up to 69 percent more likely to hemorrhage after childbirth and up to 55 percent more likely to deliver a dead or dying baby. For every 100 deliveries, the WHO estimates that female genital mutilation kills one or two extra kids.

To those who try to equate the two, here’s one outcome for boys:

Four years ago, an analysis of 38 studies by the U.S. Agency for International Development, mostly in Africa, concluded that circumcised men were less than half as likely as uncircumcised men to get HIV, apparently because of the susceptibility of foreskin. Last fall, reporting on a randomized controlled trial in South Africa, scientists found that circumcision reduced female-to-male transmission by 60 percent. “Male circumcision provides a degree of protection against acquiring HIV infection, equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have achieved,” they wrote.

Chicken lovers

Apparently the KFC folks are trying to get Colonel Sanders’ visage on a postage stamp:

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/—Hollywood legends, American superheroes and Hall of Fame inductees grace U.S. postage stamps and now, Kentucky Fried Chicken has petitioned the United States Postal Service to add its legendary founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, to that elite group. To help make its case, KFC is asking for America’s stamp of approval.

Starting today, chicken lovers nationwide can visit http://www.KFC.com to sign an online petition asking the U.S.P.S. to honor Colonel Sanders, an American entrepreneurial icon, with his own stamp.

Chicken lovers? Here’s Michael Pollan on Free Range chickens:

I did go visit a large organic chicken producer here in California, and if you look at their label, there’s a farmstead with a little silo and a farm house and a farmyard and chickens running around, but if you go to the farm, the chickens are grown in these huge barracks as long as a football field. They’re indoors, there are 20,000 of them in a house, and running along this barrack is what looks like a little front lawn-mowed, maybe 15 or 20 feet deep.

There’s a little door at either side of the barrack where, theoretically, chickens could step outside and take the air. But they don’t. One reason is that the doors are closed until the chickens are about five weeks old.

The farmersâ€"if you can use that word, the managers-are concerned that the chickens might catch their death of cold or pick up a germ, so they don’t open the doors until the chickens are five weeks old. They smother them at seven weeks; so it’s not exactly a lifestyle. It’s more like a two-week vacation option. And the chickens don’t avail themselves of this option because they’ve never been outside before. They’re terrified of going outside. First of all, it’s not big enough for the whole flock. Second of all, the food and water is inside; they’re not used to it; they weren’t brought up this way. They’re like the cat in the Manhattan apartment; when you open the door they just stand there in terror wondering about the other dimension of reality outside that door.

Free range is a conceit. It’s to make us feel better about these chickens. It’s not doing anything for the chickens, as far as I can tell.

But they’re the lucky ones. Colonel Sanders’ birds are likely far worse off. This marketing stunt deserves to fail. Urge the United States Postal Service not to endorse KFC’s cruelty!

Thanks Sam!

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Crain on the sex-phobic network suits

Chris Crain on ESPN suspending Brian Kinchen:

The suspension has struck almost everyone as an overreaction. No gay voices, including the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), had spoken out against Kinchen, much less called for his removal.  Some gay sports enthusiasts, including Cyd Zeigler over at Outsports, have nonetheless suggested that gay groups have contributed to a politically correct climate that pressured gay-friendly ESPN to act.

I, for one, think ESPN’s reaction isn’t an example of pro-gay "political correctness" as much as it is the dysfunctional way we treat sex and sport, where the action on the telly can bear no relation whatsoever to the typical reaction of those watching. Kinchen wasn’t suspended for being "anti-gay"; he was punished for making a sexual remark. He suggested it was "kinda gay" for a receiver to be "tender" with his hands and "caress" the ball.

His remarks aren’t like the anti-gay slurs uttered (usually with impunity) by pro athletes and coaches, but more along the lines of Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super
Bowl halftime a few years back. Those of us watching in real-time noticed
something unusual happen, but it took a lot of prudish conservatives freeze-framing
their VCRs to see her naughty bits, and then came the predictably
apoplectic reaction.

ESPN’s response, like the FCC’s historic fine in response to Janet’s boob, wasn’t leftist politically correct. If anything, it was rightist politically correct, which demands censorship "in the name of the children" of any and all discussion of the human body that could be considered sexual. But as any episode of "The Simpsons" demonstrates, the subtlety is for adult consumption and goes right over their children’s heads.

My take here.

The Free Musketeers’ Bogus Broadband plan

The best thing I’ve seen lately on the astroturf groups, industry experts and bought academics is from Karl Bode in Broadband Reports on the bogus experts who have banded together to issue a free-marketeers a guide to a better broadband tomorrow and attack government oversight and municipal broadband

Their focus is not to increase broadband deployment.  That would require offering broadband services to rural portions of America, where their employer’s ROI would be dubious and stock prices would suffer.  Whether you can get DSL in the remotest regions of your Ohio suburb is the very last thing on the mind of individuals such as Joseph Bast and Sonia Arrison, or organizations such as the Heartland Institute.

The coalition’s suggestions for “maximizing deployment”, include the elimination of all “unnecessary regulations”, telecom taxes or fees (though as discussed many of these are phony and imposed by the providers themselves), as well as ensuring that municipalities are “prohibited from investing in, managing or operating broadband infrastructure and services.”

But wait: wouldn’t banning towns and cities from offering broadband be regulation?  And wouldn’t it be “un-necessary regulation” considering companies like AT&T have discovered they can simply compete in the muni-wireless sector?  Strange how such rabid fans of a free-market aren’t interested in allowing market darwinism to play out.

The reality is that these groups only oppose regulation when it runs contrary to the interests of their corporate financiers and their own portfolios.  For the right price, these groups would find regulations preventing the dumping of toxic chemicals into river water equally “unnecessary”.  They’d quickly offer expert analysis and statistics suggesting mutant frogs are a boon to the local ecosystem.

While there are certainly flaws with many municipal broadband models, these are decisions that should be made by the communities themselves, not subjective analysts on the payroll of major telecom providers.  Fans of a free market should be eager to see the organic free-market at work.  If these municipal broadband operations are such a flawed idea: let them fail.

While incumbent providers have every right to declare an area unprofitable, they should not have the right to then ban these communities from wiring themselves.  These broadband black holes were created by the providers.  They should either fill them or get out of the way, taking their cadre of subjective experts with them.

Via Slashdot. Thanks Joe!

Kerry botched a joke, they botched a war

So says James Carville, as quoted by The Caretbagger Report. I most particularly agree with Benen’s take on the media:

There’s no great mystery here. Kerry misspoke and said something he didn’t mean. But Republicans, desperate and without an agenda or vision for the future, have nothing else to say. The Bush gang, and their allies, literally want to create a massive political scandal out of a comment that didn’t make any sense, and which Kerry didn’t even mean to say.

Worse, the news networks treated this as if Kerry had shot a man. CNN and MSNBC devoted hours of coverage to a mistaken comment, apparently egged on by a White House which is so ashamed of its own record, it prefers to devote its energy to a verbal miscue of a man who isn’t even on the ballot this year. One gets the distinct impression that the media is overcompensating - after weeks of bad news (actual bad news) for the GOP, news outlets are treating the Kerry slip as a huge deal. All in the name of “balance.”

Emphasis mine. Has this story died yet?

LATER: Not yet, Samantha Bee on The Daily Show: “There you have it Jon, John Kerry losing an election he’s not even in.”

Kinda gay, but hey… that’s ok!

What the hell is this?

Former NFL receiver Brian Kinchen will not work as an ESPNU commentator this week because of a comment he made during last Saturday’s broadcast of the Northern Illinois-Iowa game.

Kinchen was explaining the need for receivers to make catches with their hands because they are “tender” and can “caress” the ball. He then paused and said, “that’s kind of gay, but hey ...”

“The comments were inappropriate, and we apologize for them,” said ESPN’s vice president of public relations Josh Krulewitz.

Kinchen’s future with ESPNU is under review, Krulewitz said.

What looks inappropriate (homophobic?) to me is the reaction! Who are they apologizing to? The macho sports fan that doesn’t want to acknowledge the existence of gay people?

Next we’ll hear Newt Gingrich argue that he’s been pulled off the air because they were afraid to offend gays. Popycock! (I bet you can’t say that on ESPN either.)

I’m hot. You’re hot. Let’s make out.

Rockstar games, creator of “Grand Theft Auto,” has a new game title, “Bully.” Reuters Friday:

“Bully" stars 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, who must navigate cliques, fights and young love at his new boarding school, along the way winning brawls, completing missions and plying girls with candy and flowers in exchange for kisses.

But Jimmy can also use the same approach with boys. When Jimmy approaches a tall, blond boy with some flowers, the boy replies: “I’m hot. You’re hot. Let’s make out.”

Alexander Sliwinski at Joystiq has more:

Depending on where you live on the planet Earth, you’re sure to get various versions of spin on the story. So, it’s a good time to go over some developments, and clear up some issues, since our initial piece:

• Joystiq has been in contact with Eliot Mizrachi, spokesperson for the ESRB, and he reaffirms that they were aware of the kissing when they gave a “T” (Teen) rating to Bully. The rating description clearly states “sexual themes” on the box.
  


• Bully is not the first title to have playable same-sex interaction. The Sims, which also has a “T” rating stating “sexual themes” on the box, allows for a lot more than just kissing. There is even same-sex adoption.
  


• Brathwaite said to Reuters, “It’s symbolic that the diversity that’s appearing in broader media is making its way to games in a way that’s not insulting or necessarily sensationalistic.”
  


• Everyone’s favorite anti-games lawyer Jack Thompson, sent a letter to ESRB President, Patricia Vance, “We just found gay sexual content in Bully, as Jimmy Hopkins makes out with another male student. Good luck with your ‘Teen’ rating now, Patty.” Let’s get something straight right off the bat—Thompson found nothing. His letter wasn’t sent until after Joystiq wrote about GayGamer’s video, and we know Thompson reads this site. Thompson was already in possession of Bully, which he requested as part of his political Miami lawsuit to block Bully. Thompson had his chance to make the kissing part of his lawsuit.
  


• The blond student consistently showed is not the only boy Jimmy Hopkins can kiss. Apparently one boy from each clique is kissable. There is an African-American geek who can be kissed. So, not only is there gay kissing, but interracial gay kissing as well. (Please sense the sarcasm in that bullet point)

Video here.