Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 246

Cantor Can’t No More

Thank you! “@Buddy743: After watching your rally with Dave Brat at Randolph Macon we voted for Brat today! Fingers crossed!” –LI

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 10, 2014

Draft Boehner Statement: “I for one welcome our new talk radio overlords.”

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) June 11, 2014

 

So after all the obits for the Tea Party, we get the stunning news that Eric Cantor has been ousted from his Congressional seat by an anti-amnesty professor, touted by Laura Ingraham. This appears to have been a factor:

In an interview just last Friday, Cantor suggested he could work with President Obama to allow a path to citizenship for some children of illegal immigrants already in the country. In the campaign’s final days, Brat criticized Cantor for siding with Obama on the contentious issue.

His district had also been extended recently to include some more conservative areas around suburban Richmond. But this race – which Cantor once won by 79 percent in a primary – wasn’t even close. 56 – 44 is pretty much a landslide.

Here’s a glimpse of Dave Brat, introducing himself at a fundraiser last February. This was his intro:

This is his core pitch:

It doesn’t get more Tea Party than that: debt and amnesty, with a real populist, anti-big-business message. Notice also the anger at the big banks, the loathing of Wall Street, the populist equation of the Republicans and the Democrats, and the appeal to average and middle income “little guys.” Cantor was portrayed as an “insider-trader.” And yet this appealing message from an appealing and effective figure didn’t get much support from national Tea Party groups, as Laura Ingraham is now venting on Fox.

Does this completely end the chance of immigration reform in this Congress? Surely it has. In the next Congress? I’m beginning to suspect so. Does it cement the rightward-still passion of the GOP base? Yep. Does it give it an appealing, populist, insurgent message of change? You bet it does.

Notes On Doubt

In a review of Stephen Budiansky’s new biography of Charles Ives, Jeremy Denk discusses how doubt informed the composer’s work:

Many of Ives’s most important pieces are about blurred or doubtful perception. The beloved song “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” depicts a morning walk in haze and mist, while hearing a hymn from a church across the river. The loss of information, the disintegration of the tune, is essential to the beauty, like the crackle and hiss of old recordings: a failure that connotes authenticity. Toward the end, the river heads to the sea (a gigantic mass of notes) but this climax is followed by a wonderfully quiet afterimage, a remnant of the hymn—an ending that disputes the very idea of ending. Most of Ives’s works end with beautiful but undermining echoes, instead of audience-pleasing affirmation.

Ives turned doubt to artistic insight, but the doubt turned back against him.

He was an unusually insecure pioneer. When he published the “Concord” Sonata, an act of supreme confidence, he also released a companion book (Essays Before a Sonata) as a preemptive defense. It’s hard to imagine Beethoven supplying a program note to his late quartets. Ives also had serious doubts about notation—unfortunate, since that is more or less the foundation of Western music: “After you get an idea written down it’s no good. Why when I see the notes I write down on the page and think of what I wanted it to sound like—why—it’s dead!” Budiansky describes the difficult process when, in the flush of fame, it came time to make a revised edition of the “Concord”:

An eight-year saga…. Ives’s deteriorating eyesight and his endless agonizing…drove the editors at Arrow Press to distraction…. Harrison Kerr at the press told [the pianist John Kirkpatrick, who gave the first full performance] in despair in 1940 that “Mr. Ives had been putting in sharps and flats and taking them out again all summer.”

It is just there—where the classical composer is supposed to “land” his move, to crystallize the work into a masterpiece—that Ives seems most uncertain, most ambivalent. As a result, many of his works deserve asterisks; they retreat away from the final, single form toward a set of possibilities.

The Nature Morte Diet

Dan Bannino captures celebrity fad diets as classical still life:

With this series my aim was to capture the beauty that lies in this terrible constriction of diets and deprivation, giving them the importance of an old master’s painting. I wanted to make them significant, like classic works of arts that are becoming more and more weighty as they grow older. My aim was to show how this weirdness hasn’t changed even since the 15th century.

The caption for the still life seen above:

Beyoncé Knowles – “Master cleanse diet,” lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, salt, and laxative herbal tea

See more of his work here and here.

London’s Lay Of The Land

Tyler LeBlanc revisits the last decade of Jack London’s life, noting that the author best known for the literature of roughing it sought out futuristic techniques to cultivate his beloved Beauty Ranch:

[London biographer Earle] Labor says many of the innovations London introduced on his farms – he ended up buying multiple properties in the area as his love of farming grew – were widely respected at the time. He refused to use chemicals or pesticides on his crops, favoring natural fertilizers he stored in large concrete silos – the first concrete silos west of the Mississippi. He adapted crop-terracing techniques he witnessed in Asia and insisted on only purchasing and breeding livestock that were suited for the climate.

Of his innovations, arguably the most impressive was the pig palace, an ultra-sanitary piggery that could house 200 hogs yet be operated by a single person. The palace gave each sow her own “apartment” complete with a sun porch and an outdoor area to exercise. The suites were built around a main feeding structure, while a central valve allowed the sole operator to fill every trough in the building with drinking water.

London wrote that he wanted the piggery to be “the delight of all pig-men in the United States.” While it may not have brought about significant change in the industry – it is said to have cost an astounding $3,000 (equal to $70,000 now) to build — it was one of London’s greatest innovations, and, unfortunately, his last. He died the following year.

Face Of The Day

A Reynolds High School student is reunited with her mother after a shooting at her school in Troutdale, Oregon on June 10, 2014. Authorities said one student was fatally shot and the gunman was found dead. By Natalie Behring/Getty Images.

How Does America Get Its Citizens Back?

Shane Bauer, who was held hostage by Iran between 2009 and 2011, wants to know what the US government did to secure his release. He filed a lawsuit to find out:

For the two years that I was in prison, I wondered constantly what my government was doing to help us. I still want to know. But my interest in these records is more than personal. Innocent Americans get kidnapped, imprisoned, or held hostage in other countries from time to time. When that happens, our government must take it very seriously. These situations cannot be divorced from politics; they are often extremist reactions to our foreign policy. Currently, Americans are being detained in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba, and other countries.

What does our government do when civilians are held hostage?

Sarah’s, Josh’s, and my family, like others in similar situations, were regularly assured by our leaders—all the way up to the Secretary of State and the President—that they were doing everything they could, but our families were rarely told what that meant. Why is this information so secret, even after the fact? It is important to know how the government deals with such crises. Is there a process by which the government decides whether or not to negotiate with another country or political group? How does it decide which citizens to negotiate for and which not to? Are the reassurances the government gives to grieving families genuine, or intended to appease them? Do branches of government cooperate with each other, or work in isolation?

Watch Shane discuss his capture and captivity in our Ask Anything series. Meanwhile, as if on cue, North Korea appears to have detained another American citizen:

The country’s state-run news agency reported that the man, identified as Jeffrey Edward Fowle, “entered the DPRK as a tourist on April 29 and acted in violation of the DPRK law, contrary to the purpose of tourism during his stay.” A Japanese news outlet, Kyodo, said he was part of a tour group and was held after leaving a bible in his hotel room.

“He Never Admitted He Was Wrong”

Reviewing the new documentary, Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia, David Schmader finds that the late writer’s literary achievements are “perhaps given short shrift” – but the politics are plenty:

Born into high privilege to a father who “dreamed of being the Henry Ford of aviation” and taught his son to pilot a plane by age 10, Vidal followed most naturally in the footsteps of his grandfather, a US senator who overcame his blindness by having his young grandson read him all necessary documents. Vidal came away with a lifelong fascination for the workings of the American political system, which he explored from the inside during two unsuccessful runs for office and investigated from the outside through a lifetime of ferocious writing and commentary.

As the subtitle suggests, [director Nicholas] Wrathall’s film focuses on the decades Vidal spent denouncing the American political machine, from a jarring critique of the presidency of his beloved friend JFK (whose photo Vidal kept framed in his office as a reminder to never again fall for a politician’s charm) to endlessly articulate screeds against the “American Empire” and beyond. (Forget 9/11—Vidal believed Pearl Harbor was an inside job.)

Hence the sad, twisted embitterment of an American scion. I’d like to admire Vidal – and his early novels are breathtakingly good. But the precious posturing, the all-too-defensive lambasting, and the cheap sneers always force me to keep my distance. As for Pearl Harbor, well, sheesh. And we’re supposed to admire someone for this conspiratorial nonsense? (My own review of his novel on the American mid-century, The Golden Age, is here.) Meanwhile, Ted Scheiman marvels at Vidal’s precocious early writing about homosexuality:

At 19, he wrote his first novel, Williwaw, while convalescing in the North Pacific, where he served for three years during World War II. Writing in the Times in 1946, Orville Prescott gave a triumphalist review, and Vidal had arrived, terribly young, in the world of letters. The glittering accomplishments of Vidal’s youth are more impressive, even moving, when we consider that Vidal published The City and the Pillar just two years later, in 1948—an explicitly gay novel that the Times refused to review….

In his earliest television appearances, culled here with sensitivity by Wrathall, the young Vidal is remarkably composed and confident as he declares the difference between gay and straight to be “about the difference between somebody who has brown eyes and somebody who has blue eyes.” He was an outspoken pioneer on dangerous territory despite being—to believe Jay Parini, Vidal’s literary executor and the documentary’s M.C.—“really quite shy” at the time.

Except, of course, that he subsequently insisted that there was really no “gay” and no “straight.” My own direct experience of him on the matter was his steadfast opposition to marriage equality in the 1990s and 2000s. Even the director of this fawning film, Nicholas Wrathall, notes Vidal’s crankiness on the subject in the years after The City and the Pillar‘s publication:

I think he felt that was a fight he fought at a different point in his life. He had written The City and the Pillar, and he had been outspoken at the time. He’d never been in the closet. He had a lifelong relationship with Howard [Auster], which was a sort of marriage in its own way. He has been criticized for not being at the forefront in the fight against AIDS and now, more recently, in the marriage equality situation. But I think he had let go of it a little bit and didn’t want to be pigeonholed—although it was a big part of his life—but I think marriage was something he didn’t have a lot of fondness for. His parents’ marriage had been a disaster. I asked him about marriage equality and he said: “Why shouldn’t everyone share in the misery of marriage.”

Zooming out, Tricia Olszewski wasn’t impressed as some with the documentary, calling it “hagiography”:

Archival footage of Vidal’s television appearances, photos of his mingling with 20th-century glitterati, and interviews with the man are punctuated—a little too often—with his Oscar Wildean bons mots. Every element showcases Vidal’s quick wit, eloquence, and astoundingly insightful, often prescient editorials on whatever hot topics the zeitgeist offered. There are also documentary-requisite comments from fans and colleagues (including Tim Robbins, literary executor Jay Parini, and, naturally, Hitchens) that tend toward drooling (except, naturally, Hitchens).

The cumulative effect is worship overload. Vidal was undoubtedly an impressively well-rounded and accomplished human being—though it should be noted that he was born into privilege—and he all but says so in the film. It would be surprising if he ever admitted he was wrong. And while such confidence may have drawn people—a lot of people—in, it’s nearly unpalatable here. Vidal spoke regally (a missile was a “miss-aisle”) and expected to be regarded that way, too.

Read our coverage of Vidal’s death, in 2012, here, here, and here.

The Best Of The Dish Today

The above message is definitely NSFW. But contains a more eloquent statement of the truth than I was capable of earlier today. Words are just words: as powerful as our minds want them to be and no less. No, I don’t favor deliberately giving offense, or being ill-mannered, or callous or cruel. But in a classroom or in the public arena, I do favor minimal sensitivity when debating core issues. Why? Well a reader summed it up well:

The poet William Stafford had a habit of occasionally issuing an invitation – around the dinner table, or in the classroom – that went like this: “Let’s talk recklessly!” As his son Kim Stafford recalls: “This meant tiptoeing in polite banter was done. We were to dig deep, gossip freely about our uncertainties and strange beliefs, and lean forward and tumble into the liveliest possible interchange. I always felt this kind of verve matched his habit as a writer: to speak boldly through fear, reticence, or even the need to be strong or eloquent. ‘I must be willingly fallible,” he said once, “in order to deserve a place in the realm where miracles happen.’ And part of such necessary fallibility required trying out wild things in language, and speaking with the tang of zest and adventure.”

When people are afraid to talk about anything in a classroom, the potential of a university is diminished. I’m not talking about deliberate demonizing of others or threats of violence; I’m not talking about prejudice or bigotry. I’m talking about being able to say words freely in order to think more freely. That’s the animating spirit of this blog – and it allows us to discuss subjects like compassion for virtuous pedophiles, as we did today. Or the link between testosterone, men and violence. Or the latest inflammatory evidence throwing doubt on the idea that three simultaneous deaths in Gitmo were all suicides, undetected for two full hours. No one should be afraid of honest, open attempts to figure out the truth. Period. Including about those formerly affectionately known by many as “trannies.” (By the way, it’s a word barely ever used on the Dish, and never without irony or affection. Check out the archives yourself.)

Today, I also felt better about airplane turbulence and worse about our robot future. I gave some unsolicited advice to Hillary – run as a “tough old broad” – and despaired of the American refusal to disown and destroy the Gitmo torture and detention camp.

The most popular post of the day was Engaging The T, Ctd, followed by my take on the latest bombshell in the Gitmo “suicides” case.

See you in the morning.

Book Club: Sensing Too Much

A reader emailed prior to Maria’s intro today:

Afternoon! I am finding On Looking fascinating in so many ways! Two of my children were diagnosed with sensory processing disorder (along with Aspergers) and it is difficult for them not to notice everything. Hypersensitive to noise means they hear things that most of us have learned to filter out – same goes for light, touch, smell and taste. Like most people with SPD, their diagnosis came after years of extremely picky eating, complaints about scratchy clothing seams and tags and silky linings in coats, refusing to see movies at the theater and, in our case, having one of them bolt and get lost at an amusement park when he sensed the fireworks were about to start (even though we were on our way out of the park).

Living with my boys means that the rest of us are forced to take note of what we hadn’t. Often we realize just how much we are missing with our so-called properly functioning sensory system. True, they often find themselves with what can only be described as a traffic jam of sensory input in their brains (and that often leads to scenes that are not pretty), but they also notice first when the spring peeper frogs are awake, that the water system needs salt, that Daddy is home (in a Prius), and that the night-light bulbs are about to burn out.

We prefer the word “challenge” rather than “disorder” when talking about their Aspergers and sensory issues because while it can be overwhelming at times and even debilitating, it is who they are. And we kid that they can use their powers for good rather than evil! Their powers of sensory observation sometimes astound and add layers to the ordinary that would otherwise have been totally missed. Coupled with what I have read so far in On Looking, I can’t see any journey being ordinary again.

The Dish has covered sensory processing disorders before - here and here. By the way, a reminder of Maria’s appeal to readers earlier today:

Perhaps the greatest gift of a book club is that we get to share our private realities around a common point of interest – the book – and in the process enrich the collective experience. With that in mind, what is one facet of your day or aspect of your usual daily routine – your apartment, your commute, your dog walk route – that On Looking helped you see with new eyes?

Email your personal observations – and photos when relevant - to bookclub@andrewsullivan.com and we’ll pick the most interesting ones to post. And we’ll be discussing On Looking for up to the whole month of June, so you still have plenty of time to buy the book and join the conversation.

Has Griffin Struck Again?

I haven’t seen The Case Against 8 yet, because they won’t send me a screener, but this review is a beaut. Two passages stand out:

Chad Griffin, founder of AFER and since 2012 the president of the Human Rights Campaign, wonders—when the group faces initial opposition from other campaigning groups who think in 2010 it is “too early” to pick marriage as the central gay rights fight to have—why gay groups spend more time fighting each other than “right-wing nut jobs.”

One hopes this is just a misunderstanding. Marriage had been the central gay rights fight since president George W. Bush announced support for the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004. No one ever disputed that. The only question at issue by 2010 was whether it was worth trying to get the Supreme Court to issue a federal ruling on the entire matter at that juncture. Griffin, Boies and Olson bet on that – and lost, when their case was dismissed on the minor ground of standing. Which brings one to the following paragraph from the review as well:

The directors told me the most difficult scene to film was the last. The couples had just won their 2013 ruling in the Supreme Court, which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and rejected Proposition 8, and now they wanted to get married—the women in San Francisco and the men in Los Angeles.

But the couples in Perry did not succeed in striking down DOMA; and one hopes the Beast will run a correction. The review tells us that there is no account of the other side in the case, there is no criticism of the Prop 8 team -  “We are not only on the side of the good guys, but we are only ever on the good side of the good guys”, and that there is nothing actually revealing on the couples involved. In other words, it appears to be exactly the propaganda Griffin tried to peddle through Becker. Well, I guess they’ll let me see it at some point, won’t they?