Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 286
April 30, 2014
April 29, 2014
The Best Of The Dish Today
At 6:33 the doctor said Lockett was unconscious and then at 6:34 Lockett began to nod, mumble move body.
— Bailey Elise McBride (@baileyelise) April 30, 2014
A botched execution in Oklahoma just (finally) killed a man:
Director Robert Patton says inmate Jerry Massie died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett’s execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He says there was a vein failure. Lockett was writhing on the gurney and shaking uncontrollably.
Horrifying. And in other uplifting news, the Israeli government celebrated the end of the peace process by bulldozing a mosque.
Some faves of the day: visions of resurrected loved ones; John Kerry had to apologize for telling the truth – a fact that speaks volumes about the dysfunctional US-Israel relationship; Egypt’s coup government continued to impose the death penalty for hundreds at a time; and humankind’s most lethal – and unlikely – predator. Hint: not lions.
The most popular post of the day was Sarah Palin: Anti-Christian (see also: this update), followed by John Kerry Tells The Truth … Therefore he has to apologize.
See you in the morning.
Loving Ladies, Banging Bros, Ctd
A reader writes:
The bisexual guys I’ve dealt with were completely capable of giving and receiving emotional support in addition to blowjobs. They could be caring, nurturing, and empathic just as capably (or incapably, as it were) with me as with the women in their lives. They just didn’t want to do so publicly. The problem gay guys often have with “bisexual” guys is not that these guys are incapable of being emotionally “available” in a guy-guy relationship; it’s that they are merely unwilling.
Sometimes that unwillingness is mostly justifiable: Having biological children is truly something only women can offer a man. But more often the “emotional incompatibility” is not between one man who can love another and one who cannot; it’s an internal incompatibility between a man’s romantic desires and his fear of social judgment.
Another:
I’m a self-identified bisexual man who has exactly the opposite desires to those mentioned in your post. I’ve never, at any point in my adult life, had any romantic interest in any women. I also don’t generally get into them on an aesthetic basis. But I’ve certainly had sex with quite a few and enjoyed every minute of it.
By contrast, I’ve been sleeping with other guys since I was in my mid-teens, find guys to be sexually and aesthetically interesting, and have only ever fallen in love with other males. So does this make me bi, gay, or just, as one of my friends likes to say, simply horny? To me, I’m bi. But I understand that others might disagree.
Another:
How about the reverse: Loving Bros, Banging Ladies? I’m a straight woman, married to a (seemingly) straight man and this post has crystallized for me what’s been missing from my marriage all these years that I’ve never been able to identify before.
That is, my husband is sexually very attracted to women but emotionally and intellectually attracted to other men. In our relationship, this issue has always presented itself as a problem of time: that my husband has many social, male-oriented hobbies that he spends a lot of time on and gets a lot of pleasure from. An ideal version of our marriage for him would be having a lot of sex with me and spending a lot of his time on his hobbies and with his friends. As a woman who is very sexually, emotionally, and intellectually attracted to men, I experience this arrangement as a deficit in our relationship because I don’t get similar levels of satisfaction and connection by spending time with my female friends. I enjoy it, but it doesn’t make me feel loved in the way I think it does for him.
I have no idea what this means for our relationship. I imagine you have caused a lot of women to have similar aha moments.
That sounds more like a case of bromance than romance with bros.
Borderline Justice
Nate Blakeslee reports on members of the US Border Patrol using deadly force against rock-throwers, suggesting that part of the problem lies with the structure of the agency itself:
Policymakers and senior officials at the agency seem torn about whether the Border Patrol is an army or an enormous police force. The seeds of this identity confusion were planted shortly after 9/11, when the Border Patrol was subsumed under the newly created Department of Homeland Security and recast as one of many regiments in the nation’s war on terrorism.
The Border Patrol’s new mission was said to be aligned with that of the Army or the Navy or the NSA: to protect us from foreign invaders bent on our destruction. But while having 21,000 agents on or near the border no doubt has dissuaded some foreign elements from entering the country overland, fighting terror is not principally what those agents do. The Border Patrol arrested 364,000 people in 2012. Not a single one was an international terrorist. The vast majority were migrants in search of jobs. An agent spends most of his or her time chasing would-be nannies, construction workers, and landscapers. Even the drug mules, los mochileros, are not generally armed or dangerous.
The difference between a soldier and a police officer is more than a semantic one, and the Border Patrol’s identity crisis has genuine consequences. War and police work are fundamentally dissimilar, explains Christopher Wilson, a border-security expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “When you’re told your mission is national security, and the people you’re interacting with are not citizens – meaning they’re not the people you’re accountable to in a democratic structure – that does replicate to a certain extent the situation the military faces,” he said. “Nonetheless, they are law enforcement. And what that means is you use the minimal force needed to do your job.”
The Weekly Daily Show
John Oliver’s interview with General Keith Alexander, from Last Week Tonight‘s debut episode:
James Poniewozik feels that the first episode “hewed so closely to the fake-news format and Oliver’s past work on TDS that it might well have been called The Weekly Show With John Oliver–an extra, weekend-magazine-length version of what fans have enjoyed on Comedy Central for years”:
That is, of course, not a bad thing at all. The first installment of Last Week Tonight was very much a one-man show, the bulk of it taken up with an extended news-desk segment—like Stewart’s, but with room for more segments and more time to build momentum. (It was such a familiar setup that as it went on something felt strange, and I realized I was unconsciously waiting for, phantom-limb-like, the Comedy Central commercial break.)
Esther Breger wishes the show took more risks:
I feel a bit peevish criticizing a show that is both hilarious and thoughtful this early in its run—and yet I can’t help feeling disappointed by this new series’ lack of ambition.
Unlike “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and “Late Night,” Oliver’s show airs only once a week—Sunday night at 11 p.m. The schedule puts “Last Week Tonight” at risk of rehashing its competitors’ material—last week’s news, literally—but it’s also an opportunity. Last Thursday, Oliver stopped by “The Daily Show” to boast about the luxuries of HBO. “Oh my god, are you kidding me? Paid cable is amazing,” he told Stewart. “No advertisers—you can do whatever you want.” But with all these resources and freedom, Oliver delivered more of the same. At times, last night’s episode felt like playing a “spot the difference” puzzle. A white, uber-minimalist logo adorned a set that otherwise could have been imported directly from Comedy Central. Oliver can now curse without basic-cable censors bleeping him out. (“Who gives a shit?” was his exasperated comment on 2016 election coverage.) And the most obvious difference: no commercial breaks, letting the show run 30 minutes.
David Hagland sees potential:
[A]s much as the show is clearly a work in progress, I don’t think it’s far from something that could work well for years. The closing interview [seen above] with the recently retired director of the National Security Agency may have been the most Daily Show–like thing Oliver did, but it was still worth doing. The opening string of topical one-liners wasn’t great—and that style, as we should all know after decades of late-night monologues and ho-hum Weekend Updates, simply doesn’t lend itself to consistently good comedy. Oliver might be better off finding a “Word of the Day”–style feature that can kick things off in a more inventive fashion.
And Danny Vinik appreciates that Oliver shamed the American media for failing to cover the Indian elections:
Oliver provided short biographies of the two leading candidates in the Indian elections, Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. He mocked the uproar over Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal in comparison to Modi’s own scandal: that, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, he failed to stop the 2002 anti-Muslim violence that killed more than 1,000 people in his state.
“Is that enough of a scandal for you?” Oliver said. “Because bear in mind how much time we spent in this country covering a story about a bridge-based traffic jam in which the worst that happened to any Muslims involved is that they were slightly delayed.
“We should care about this story. If polls are to be believed, we may be throwing state dinners for this guy in the near future.”
The full first episode can be viewed here.
Quote For The Day
“The best response to Forcing the Spring is to refuse to take the bait. To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, Jo Becker cannot punk the LGBT world without their consent. The power of this book lies only in its ability to provoke. As history and journalism, Forcing the Spring would be a spectacular embarrassment,” – Tobias Wolff, in a review that calls Jo Becker “the Sacha Baron Cohen of journalism.”
The book’s Amazon responses are fascinating. It currently has 15 one-star reviews and eleven five-star reviews. A typical gay review:
I am flabbergasted by its complete annihilation of actual history.
A typical straight review:
A phenomenal book and easily the best historical nonfiction book I’ve read in 2014!
In those two quotes you begin to see the sheer audacity of this travesty … and its likely success.
From Page To Table
Popova recently excerpted Dinah Fried’s new book Fictitious Dishes, which features still life photography of 50 culinary scenes found in literature. How Fried thinks of the connection between reading and eating:
Reading and eating are natural companions, and they’ve got a lot in common. Reading is consumption. Eating is consumption. Both are comforting, nourishing, restorative, relaxing, and mostly enjoyable. They can energize you or put you to sleep. Heavy books and heavy meals both require a period of intense digestion. Just as reading great novels can transport you to another time and place, meals — good and bad ones alike — can conjure scenes very far away from your kitchen table. Some of my favorite meals convey stories of origin and tradition; as a voracious reader, I devour my favorite books.
Reviewing the book, Laura Miller explains the project’s charm:
The foods a character consumes often convey something about his or her identity and station in life, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s gruel or the dainty lemon cakes loved by the unworldly Lady Sansa Stark in “A Game of Thrones.” But I suspect that for me literary meals speak most eloquently to that old, buried childish desire that the story I’m reading be “really real,” that the people and events in it not be just the arbitrary products of some writer’s imagination. If the characters demand to be fed before going on to do whatever it is the author has lined up for them, then they seem to have some sort of independent existence.
In an interview, Fried discussed the challenges of one shoot in particular – the apple pie and ice cream from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road:
I had to create it quite quickly because the ice cream would melt. I think I probably went through a few plates. But I wanted this photograph, naturally, to feel very American, as is the novel and apple pie and ice cream itself. So I went for a red diner place mat and wanted it to feel really classic and simple.
Once I had those elements in place, then it was about baking this pie, which was my first apple pie that I’d ever baked. I’ve never really been a baker. I’m more of an improvisational cook, and usually that doesn’t work so well for baking. So I baked the pie, and I set it all up. Like I said, the ice cream was quick to melt. I think it’s just the right amount melty in the photo. The pie was delicious.
Helen Rosner notes Fried’s caption for the photo featured below, drawn from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces:
In A Confederacy of Dunces, a hot dog sets the protagonist’s heart aflutter. “It’s sort of a disgusting
scene,” says Fried of the photograph’s inspiration. “The protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a grotesque character, a slovenly guy who lives with his mother. In this particular scene, he follows his nose to the hot dog, inspired by the scent of it on the air. The book takes place in the late 1970′s, so the prop styling was a challenge: I wanted a Coke can that didn’t have the pop-tab that we have now, which could have been quite a search. But my husband has a lot of stuff that used to be in his grandfather’s basement, and we happened to find in a cabinet a Coke can that was from this precise era. I kept stumbling upon things that felt just right. I’d find myself collecting different types of paper napkins wherever I went, and among them were the perfect napkins. I want the props to feel time- and place-appropriate. My favorite thing about this whole project was fixating, being obsessed with finding something, and then discovering exactly what I was looking for.”
Previous Dish on Fried’s work here. Buy her new book here.
(Photos courtesy of Dinah Fried. Caption for the top one: “Setting up the Gulliver’s Travels photo.” For more, check out her tumblr.)
Military Suicides Come Home
Thor Benson notes that suicide is now more common in the National Guard and Reserve than in the active duty Army:
National Guard and Reserve members do have access to mental health treatment, but they don’t have the same kind of environment that encourages them to use it. National Guardsmen and Reserve members are often not protected with the same level of attention that active troops might get. After they’re out, “They don’t get the long-term benefits of VA support that active duty folks get,” [Veterans 360 founder Rick] Collins says.
The kinds of problems these Guardsmen and Reservists face can be dire. “Their previous employers are supposed to hire them back, but often times they don’t,” he says. Collins explains that Reservists and Guardsmen returning to civilian life are often left jobless, broke, and suffering from PTSD.
Face Of The Day
Woman-finds-dog-in-tornado-rubble is my news crack http://t.co/gbK72F22DL pic.twitter.com/MJfwdR8zm0
— Brian Ries (@moneyries) April 29, 2014
Book Club: Relating To Resurrection
A reader writes:
Something in How Jesus Became God that resonated personally was the discussion in Chapter Five regarding After-Death Communications as an explanation for the visions of the resurrected Christ that some disciples received. Our son was born with a severe heart defect and had to undergo open-heart surgery at age two. We were told there was a 90% chance of his survival. Two days after the surgery, he suffered heart failure in the ICU. We went through several weeks of alternating between hope and despair as to what could be done for him,
including receiving a heart transplant, but eventually we had to decide to remove all life support. He died in our arms, slowly, hour by hour, as we watched his vital signs decline to nothingness.
Neither my wife nor I had ever experienced anything so emotionally tortuous. We both fell into depressions, and in my case I began to experience dreams that I was being visited by my son. What was exceedingly real about these dreams was the physical sense of holding him in my arms, his cheek next to mine, listening to him babble. A tremendous sense of contentment flooded over me, knowing that he was alive. I would wake up at peace, and it would take five or more minutes for me to understand I was back in a different world of pain and sorrow. These dreams persisted for a few months and then stopped entirely.
I’m not a believer in an afterlife, but I am a believer that experiences such as these could convince anyone that someone close to them who had died tragically and unexpectedly, was alive in a real sense – not here on earth, but in heaven (if they believed heaven exists). This could have happened to any number of Christ’s followers, and it was a very short step for them to then exalt Jesus as being at the right hand of the Father, since his disciples had spent three extremely intense years speculating that this unique and remarkable man could very well be the promised Son of Man, or even the Son of God.
My own effort to explain how I view the Resurrection of Jesus is in my last post in the Book Club here. But I also have personal experiences that are similar to my readers, and I wrote about them at length in my book about 
surviving the plague of AIDS, Love Undetectable. I was diagnosed with HIV six weeks after one of my closest friends at the time had been diagnosed with AIDS. He had kept it a secret, until one afternoon he asked to meet me at the fountain in Dupont Circle, where he told me his diagnosis as I told him mine. The coincidence had us both smiling. We were already both Catholics and both writers and both gay in a terrifying era very different from today. But from that moment on, we bonded even more deeply, and over the next two years, I and his other close friends took care of him as he slowly slipped away from us. I saw him turn into a walking skeleton; I saw him pound the floor in pain; I saw him wracked by intense and unremitting fevers; I saw his breath literally taken away from him; I saw as cancer lesions speckled his body and advanced relentlessly toward his lungs; I saw the unspeakable shock and pain of his family; I listened to his voice, racked with fear and pain, over the phone at night; and I was entrusted with the details of his funeral. Watching my dear friend die at 31 of an agonizing disease will never leave me. And I will always, somewhere deep down, feel in some ways guilty for having lived, while he died.
But after his death, I felt his presence strongly at times. He appeared to me in symbols – like the sea-gulls that flew over the bay where we had released his ashes, or one gull that kept recurring in my life on the Cape and elsewhere as an almost sacred sign of his presence. He appeared to me in my dreams – and in one unforgettable one, I didn’t at first recognize him.
He was Patrick and yet no longer Patrick. His tormented shell of a body, racked by slow starvation and countless lesions, was now resplendent. His face was clear, his body more luminous than in life, all flaws removed. And he was happy. Weeks would then pass and I would suddenly be arrested by a sense of his presence – on the sidewalk, reading a book, sleeping on the beach. I cannot fully explain this, although a modern mind can always analyze it from the perspective of grief, survivor guilt, wish-fulfillment, and the like. And over time, Patrick’s presence diminished. But I experienced it as very, very real for as long as it lasted.
So, yes, I can indeed see the disciples having similar experiences – and they have been attested to in countless other lives as well, in studies and surveys over the years, as Ehrman notes. I infer from mine that Patrick is alive and well, and that one day, we will be together again. Perhaps at that fountain in Dupont Circle. And we will be laughing. And happy. And free from death and the fear of death. That is my faith. And I believe it was the faith of the disciples as well. It is what I mean by resurrection.
(Read the whole Book Club thread on How Jesus Became God here. Please email any responses to bookclub@andrewsullivan.com rather than the main account, and try to keep them under 500 words. Painting: Pietro Lorenzetti from the basilica in Assisi.)
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