You can't make this stuff up!

During the Monica Lewinsky mess, there was a lengthy list of right-wingers who supported the impeachment and who also turned out to have infidelities in their past. Those of us who followed the impeachment closely can probably still recite the list. Henry Hyde was the favorite of many: he claimed "youthful indiscretion" as the justification for an affair he'd had in his mid-forties. (A few years later, he admitted what a lot of Republicans still haven't: that the real motivation for the impeachment was getting even for Watergate.)

In the years since then, I know some folks on the right who will immediately recite "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." as an excuse for anything Bush et al are caught doing. In response to that, a lot of us on the left will say we miss the days when there was even time to worry about politicians' sex lives, as opposed to major cities being destroyed and illegal wars and such.

Lucky for us, those days aren't gone completely:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, have signed on as co-sponsors of a proposed Marriage Protection Act that would amend the constitution to declare that marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

What is there to add to that? I am going to miss seeing Mr. Wide Stance in stories like this, but at least we'll have Diaper Dave to kick around for another two years or more.

Quote of the Week

"The federal government should not be in the public education business."
-Jason Chaffetz

Who is Jason Chaffetz? He's a gadfly, insurgent candidate who ran for Congress in Utah this year, challenging a six-term incumbent in the Republican primary. As an underfunded longshot challenger to a longtime incumbent, he didn't surprise too many people with his extreme rhetoric. That happens all the time in primaries with incumbents. The loon gets 10-15% of the vote and is soon remembered only by people who buy those books of dumb quotations by politicians of the party they don't belong to.

Except in today's Republican party, if the incumbent doesn't hate immigrants.

That's right, Chaffetz won. The Utah 3rd is the single most Republican district in the country (Bush got 77% of the vote there in 2004), so next January we are all but certain to have Chaffetz come to DC to share pearls of wisdom like that for at least two years. Given how conservative the area is, I guess it's not too big of a shock, really. Rep. Chris Cannon barely survived the last two primary seasons as well, because he ran afoul of immigration hardliners in his district. (This is politically incorrect, but I am honestly pretty surprised immigants aren't more popular in rural Utah. More Mormons just waiting to be converted, after all.)

I don't feel too bad about the outcome, really, for three reasons. First, the Dems have been doing the same thing with mushy-middle representatives in safe Democratic districts (most recently in Maryland in February) and I've been a big supporter of that, so I don't feel I should complain now with the shoe on the other foot.

Second, Cannon won the seat in the first place in an anti-environmentalist protest vote in 1996. (The area was, amazingly, represented by a Democrat back then; Cannon won the Republican nomination when it looked worthless, but then Clinton declared much of the district off limits to development that summer. Cannon ended up with 51% of the vote because he had an R after his name.) While Chaffetz will probably be even worse on environmental issues, at least he won't be the area's congressman specifically because he opposes keeping beautiful Southern Utah beautiful.

Third, if there are going to be places that are that deep red on the Congressional map, I'm all for them being represented by the most extreme right wingers the GOP can possibly dredge up. It'll make it that much dicier for the likes of Chris Shays and Dave Reichert to explain why their moderate-to-liberal constituencies should be sending them back to DC when that amounts to putting guys like this in the majority.

Okay, four reasons. That quote is really funny, and I'm looking forward to many more like it. Utah has long been a great source of such things. I've written before about my work for Rep. Jim Moran's first campaign when I was in high school...shortly after he took office, I recall reading in the newspaper that he was involved in a fender-bender on the way into DC. The driver of the other car was a woman who worked for one of Utah's senators (I can't recall which one offhand), and Moran said later that she joked about how the accident was a hint from God about Moran's support for abortion rights.

It is an amazingly beautiful state. "This is the place" indeed.

And now for something nonpolitical (and I hope funny)

I am currently a party to an ongoing online discussion of made-up terms. When it started, my first thought was that I didn't have any, except the occasional political one. But as the thread has worn on, I've come to realize I actually have quite a few. I've been thinking I ought to write them all down so I'll have the list to refer to next time around, and some of them are pretty amusing. You'll notice that many of these are based on people's names...rest assured that I won't be referring to anybody there's any risk of my crossing paths with again. Nor do I particularly care if any of the people I do refer to here happen to read this (which they almost certainly won't) and recognize themselves (which is even less likely).

Pulling a Wilda - Criticizing somebody for doing a lousy job on something when in fact they did a fine job, and you're reaping the rewards of their work without even realizing it. Wilda was an ex boss of mine who once gave me a lecture about how I shouldn't have rearranged the mail flow in our office because everybody was used to the old method. As she was hassling me about this, she filed a stack of letters in about half the time it would have taken before I made those changes she hated so much. You might not think this happens often enough to warrant a term of its own, but there is a reason why Dilbert and The Office have been so popular for so long.

Don't be a f***, bring it back! - A cry of frustration in hopeless situations. Inspired by an incident in college where I left a slice of pizza in the dorm refrigerator and of course it disappeared before I came back to collect it. Just to be funny (and let people know there was a moocher in our midst), I put up a sign on the fridge: "Whoever the f*** took my pizza Sat night, don't be a F**K, bring it back!" Various girlfriends have since found this uproariously funny, or have used it as an excuse to tell me to get a life, or both.

The Suzanne Dance - (I didn't make this one up; I just used it rather frequently with those who did.) Stand with your legs apart, bent at the knees, and wiggle back and forth looking agitated and uncomfortable. Swing your arms one by one up against your forehead, slapping yourself gently with the back of each hand, and say things like "Oh! My life is over! Oh no! I'm ruined!" in a high, tragic voice. That's the Suzanne Dance. I would like to explain Suzanne to you all, really I would, but I can't. If I told you even one of the numerous illustrative anecdotes about her, you'd just insist that I must be exaggerating or that she must have been joking. Those who knew her could tell you otherwise, but they don't need me to tell them anything about her.

Something in the Mail - A euphemism that hides its meaning too well, so that nobody knows what you really mean and you end up embarrassing yourself more than you would have if you'd just said the real thing out loud to begin with. "Getting something in the mail" was my ex's favorite euphemism for her period. The first time she used it with me, I thought she was hinting at a credit card bill she didn't want to have to see or something like that.

Itsplaining - Trying to smooth over hurt feelings without actually apologizing, in a situation where you know you really should just apologize but won't do it for whatever reason. (This happens all the time in DC, not surprisingly.) This one comes from an office meeting I sat in on just before Thanksgiving several years ago. A newly married colleague mentioned that she and her husband were staying in town for the holiday rather than going home, but she wasn't looking forward to cooking dinner and maybe they wouldn't have one. She lived in the same neighborhood I had lived in back when I first came to DC, and there was a great Mexican restaurant just a few blocks from her building which had been a T-Day tradition for my friends and me. I told her about it and suggested it as a possible alternative, but she rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, I hate that place!" Realizing a second too late that she'd been rude (which happened a lot with her!), she quickly added, "I mean, it's plain. Don't you think it's plain, Dave?" Naturally, I didn't answer. She knew perfectly well that I didn't think it was plain, otherwise I wouldn't have recommended it!

Missed by an enchilada - To just miss something very unpleasant. This one comes from the same Mexican restaurant mentioned above. One Thanksgiving, I went to a big group dinner at an estate out in Maryland. When we got back to DC, three friends and myself decided to go to said restaurant for a midnight snack. (It was the only open restaurant in the neighborhood; even McDonalds was closed.) Everybody else who had been to the estate for dinner got food poisoning, but the four of us were fine.

No-trayers - People who ask for something without really knowing what it is, and who then get upset when they get exactly what they asked for. This one goes all the way back to Arby's. I probably got at least three customers a day who, when I asked if they wanted their food "for here or to go," would answer "to go," but when I presented their food in a bag, they'd snap, "What, no tray?!" Another example of no-traying at that job was people who ordered a Super when they really wanted a Giant. That was even more common, but I never came up with a pithy term based on that one. Supering? Nah. My own determination to never be a no-trayer is such that I ate a raw steak once in Luxembourg, having ordered it by accident. It was actually pretty good.

Can't-do-everythinging - When you call a co-worker on his or her failure to complete a job on time and the response is "But I can't do everything, when the real problem is that s/he hasn't done anything. That's can't-do-everythinging.

Gina bad - Gina was a colleague of mine from when I was teaching. She had a real mean streak, and the kindergarten kids were terrified of her. When a kid misbehaved, it was standard procedure to send hir to a different classroom for a time-out, but we didn't send them to Gina's room unless they had really been way out of line. Talking out of turn, not finishing your lunch quickly enough, not sharing the toys...these were minor infractions, and they deserved only a mild punishment if that. But if somebody hit another kid, threw food, yanked up a girl's dress, etc., well, that was being Gina bad.

A Jeff apology - In honor of my ex-best friend/roommate from hell. A Jeff apology is essentially, "I'm sorry it happened, but it's really your fault and there's nothing I can do about it now anyway." (He actually said that to me once after locking me out of our room when I was in the shower.)

Rachelisms - Extremely lame excuses for not doing your homework, i.e. "I meant to do my part of the group project that's due today, but there was this party I just had to go to, and I got back at 4:00." The Rachel who inspired this one was not the one I knew in DC or the one I worked with in Taiwan, so if you knew me during either of those periods, it's not who you think. Interesting, though, that I knew these three different yet like-named women in the space of less than six years and they were all incredibly irritating in one way or another.

I see your true colors...

Reportedly for sale at the Texas GOP convention:



Can't wait for November!

Doesn't anybody ever remember anything in politics?

I know I'm reaching the age where I can't really say I'm "young" anymore, but really, 1990 wasn't that long ago. Every now and then, though, I'm reminded that for people who depend entirely on the Internet for political news and history, it might as well be 1890.

I just experienced one such moment when I read about this on Daily Kos. Ol' Claytie Williams and his "rape joke" were huge news at the time. How on earth could that have escaped the attention of everybody in the McCain campaign who could have put a stop to it? I don't get it. Some of you are probably expecting me to argue that Republicans in general must not find rape jokes offensive, but my opinion of the party overall isn't as low as my friends tend to think. They're not all that bad. Which makes me wonder how they could have let the ball drop on this one. But that link has McCain's spokesman saying the campaign "was unaware" of the notorious remark.

Sadly, I do find I can believe that McCain himself wouldn't find Williams' "joke" all that bad. He might not have really said "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c**t" to his wife in public (I admit I find it suspicious that word didn't get out for sixteen years and then three people were willing to come forward at the same time), but then he might have. He did make that tasteless joke about Janet Reno being Chelsea Clinton's father about ten years ago (and, to his credit, he apologized...but still, he said it). This fits that pattern all too well.

By the way, another thing I remember - but which that link fails to mention - is that Williams' loss to Ann Richards was not because of the rape joke. He continued to lead in the polls for months after making the joke, and Richards pulled ahead of him only after he refused to shake her hand at a debate. Apparently it was okay to make light of violence against women in general in Texas, but you still had to treat an individual lady like a lady. That makes it just a little bit easier to understand why their next governor after Richards was who he was, doesn't it?

The McCain Clinic

">Brilliant!

It still irks me when I think of the newscast I saw on Election Day 2000, with the all-female focus group in suburban Chicago...one woman after another chirping "I disagree with Bush on abortion but I'm going to vote for him anyway because I trust him not to be actively against abortion." Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?
This is what I love about the progressive blogosphere; no more faux moderation!

If the embedded video doesn't come through on your computer, see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arw-yNas2xc

Of dirty tricks and old wounds

As some warn victory, some downfall,
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all except hatred

-Bob Dylan, "It's All Right Ma, I'm Only Bleeding"

After a rather nasty e-mail exchange I had this morning, I'm curious about what others think of this.

I was reading an acquaintance's blog post about Obama's possible running mates. John Edwards was listed among them (rather disingenuously, since he has already said he doesn't want the VP slot again), and he was immediately shot down as a poor choice because he "attacked Cheney for having a gay daughter" in 2004.

Now, I already felt Edwards would not be the best choice for Obama, mainly because he didn't do a particularly good job as the VP nominee in 2004. (I hate to have to say that, and I did support him for president this time around, but it's true all the same.) But the claim that he "attacked" Cheney is just ludicrous in my opinion. For what it's worth, here is an account of the exchange in question. And the "offending" remark from Edwards:

I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can’t have anything but respect for the fact that they’re willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It’s a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

Now, I do see how that can be seen as a bit passive-aggressive. It reminds me a bit of Clinton's brilliant comeback against Bush Sr. in the first 1992 debate regarding the "issue" of his patriotism ("But a senator from Connecticut stood up to Joe McCarthy, named Prescott Bush! Your father was right...") Both were obviously more about rousing the base than addressing the real issue at hand. But then again, one could argue that there was no "real issue" in the first place in both cases: Clinton's patriotism was only ever in doubt among people who hated his politics, and unfortunately, Kerry and Edwards were only marginally less hostile to gay rights than Bush and Cheney were. But still, does that make it "an attack for having a gay daughter"?

I don't see how, unless you're a homophobe. I really don't. I do think it's fair to call it an attack on someone for being a bigot against a group that includes a member of his family, but why is attacking that a bad thing? More to the point, why is an Obama supporter making excuses for Cheney's bigotry? I see it all too often, really: people who claim to be Democrats - or at least not Republicans - will feel compelled to regurgitate GOP propaganda like that. I call them the "I'm not a Republican but" crowd, and I really wish I could understand what inspires them. For one thing, maybe people like me could get through to them better if we could understand their perspective.

I did try to reason with this person about that. It didn't work, but this person did, I think, end up revealing a bit more than intended. Apparently Edwards was unreasonable because we can still love our children even if we "don't approve of their lifestyles." True, but that still doesn't make the above an attack on somebody for having a gay relative.

In any case, that exchange having devolved into a round of gratuitous insults without finding any common ground, I am curious as to what others think. I'm a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to make my own case any more articulately (is that a word?) than I did, but I guess that's what happens when two people look at the exact same quotation and see two completely different things. Was I off base? If so, why?

Oh, and the final parting shot from my friend? "It's my blog and I can write what I want there!" Yes, yes you can.

A tale of EPic proportions

I got my Singapore Employment Pass yesterday.

It had been in the works for quite a while, of course, but the deal wasn't finalized until yesterday. We received the requisite letter about two weeks ago, but the boss reminded me that I needed to go get a physical exam at a local medical clinic. I went off to the clinic to do so, only to read the fine print on the way there and discover for the first time that I did not need a physical. Apparently that is usually a requirement but it wasn't in my particular case for some reason. With that out of the way, I settled on Monday to set aside an afternoon to sit in the consulate waiting for my number to be called.

Monday came, I waited, and finally got to the desk with all my papers. The lady behind the desk said everything was there except the "white card" from immigration that I needed to fill out when I got off the plane. Nobody had told me up to that moment that I would ever need that card again, naturally. Luckily, that's just the sort of thing I have learned never to throw away, so I found it in my desk that night and then headed back to the immigration ministry on Tuesday. This time, another lady behind the same desk told me that I also needed my certificate from Yale. I had the HEC one with me and I thought I also had the Yale one, but I didn't.

That's where things start to get interesting. I went home and couldn't find a hard copy of the diploma translation anywhere, but I did have a scan of it saved. So yesterday morning I came to the office just long enough to print out the scan, hoping they'd accept a copy.

They did, but there was definitely a communication breakdown along the way. When I got to the desk, yet another woman took a look at the translation and asked me for my certificate.

"That's an official translation of it," I told her.
"No, this isn't a certificate."
"The diploma isn't in English. That's the official translation."
"We don't need a diploma, we need a certificate."
"What exactly do you mean by 'certificate' if it's not a diploma?"
"It's a...certificate!"

Now, I never did learn quite what she thought a certificate was. When I made it clear that I had no idea what she wanted, she told me to wait and went back to speak to someone or other in the back office. When she returned, she asked me to write on the copy where the original was and sign it. I wrote, "Original diploma is in USA and is not in English."

She looked at it. "USA, does that mean France?"

I'm not joking. Neither was she. Nearly everybody in Singapore speaks English fluently. Leave it to one of the few who don't to end up in a job that involves dealing with people in English all the time!

Nevertheless, the papers were processed at that point and I got the EP later on yesterday afternoon with no further troubles. I think she may have been confused by the fact that I had one degree from an English speaking country and one from a non-English speaking country, but the latter correspondence was in English in the original while the former wasn't. (In keeping with Yale's deliberate pretentiousness about almost everything, its diplomas are in Latin. This is not the first time that has gotten me caught up in red tape.) I doubt she ever quite caught on to my situation, and I still haven't got a clue what the difference between a certificate and a diploma is.

It was still a lot easier than it was in France!

RIP General Odom

For the past eight years and change, I have had a problem a lot of people would probably welcome, and which I find I can't complain about too much. I'd rather have it than not have it, I suppose, but there are times when it can be irritating all the same. The problem: inability to refer to where I went to school by name without people accusing me of snobbery or worse. My friends can refer as casually as they like to "a friend of mine from GWU/Georgetown/Duke/etc.," and nobody will bat an eye. But the minute you refer to Yale, you're a pretentious, namedropping blueblood.

I got a taste of it even before I actually started there...in that otherwise great spring and summer of 1999, I recall any number of times I told people I was going back to school "up in Connecticut," whereupon a friend in the know would say, "Stop being so modest, he's going to Yale!" So after a while, I went ahead and said that...but no matter how low-key I tried to be about it, it was never enough for some people. It was a no-win situation if there ever was one. Surprisingly, that doesn't seem to apply to all of the other Ivy League schools, as I knew long before I had anything to do with Yale. How did I know? Anybody who went to Grinnell will tell you, 95% of the time when you tell people you went there, they think you said "Cornell." Annoying as heck, but nobody ever gave me a hard time about that one. (If anything, it was the other way around..."No, Grinnell, in Iowa...no, not the potato state...no, it's hundreds of miles from Cleveland...") No, it's something about Yale that makes people think you ought to keep your fond memories for the tables down at Mory's - wherever that may be - to yourself.

Of course, some of them were probably just jealous. Which is okay. But still, it could be annoying, and still can.

But there are times when it's only right to refuse to let such things bother you. Sadly, such a time is upon us, with the passing of Gen. William Odom. If you've followed the anti-war movement over the past few years, you've probably heard of him. Such are the perks of Yale that, fair or not, he's not just a name on the blogs to me. I had the honor of sitting just a few seats down the table from him once a week in the spring of 2000 in a class on security policy. And what an honor it was!

I did not look upon it quite so kindly at the time, I must admit. To be honest, I can't even recall exactly why I was interested in the class in the first place. Yale has what they call a "shopping period" during the first week or so of the semester, during which you can go to as many classes as you like and make a more informed decision on which ones you want to take. Odom's class was one of several that I sat in on during that particular shopping period in which far more people showed up than there were spaces in the class. He therefore had everybody fill out index cards with their contact information and a paragraph or so on why they wanted to take the class.

Although his lecture was quite interesting during that first session, I was somewhat indifferent about taking the class by the time it was over. Then, just after it was over, something happened that made me decide I definitely didn't want to take it: a female undergrad approached Odom and made a direct appeal to be allowed into the class even though she was a freshman (and thus at the biggest disadvantage of all for getting in) because she was hoping to transfer to West Point after that semester. Odom, himself a West Point grad, let loose with a barrage of just about everything short of "machine guns and PMS don't mix" (and I imagine he was thinking that too) about why women shouldn't be going to West Point. Anybody who knows me can imagine what I thought of that.

Nevertheless, when I unexpectedly got into the class, I ended up enrolling. Like I said, I don't remember exactly why. It might have been something as mundane as how it fit with my other courses, most of which were rather tedious that semester. In any case, I took the class and ended up loving it. He was blunt (in the "I can laugh about it now" department, I made an incorrect point about Clausewitz in my first paper for him, and he wrote "Poppycock!" in the margin), but not as unreasonable as that outburst the first day had made me expect. I did end up locking horns with him on women in the military and some other issue that was near and dear to his heart - I can't recall what it was, but I do remember there were two incidents that made me conclude I'd never get an A but it was worth it to stand up to the guy. As it turned out, I got an A anyway, or maybe even because of that. And yes, there were war stories, including some tales of Oliver North and how Odom knew he was trouble years before any civilian had even heard of him.

Along the way, I picked up that, gender issues aside, he was anything but your typical career military guy politically speaking. Nice surprise! So it wasn't such a big surprise when he emerged as a voice of opposition to the war. Every time his name has popped up since then, I have gotten a kick out of imagining Bush's cabinet sitting around his classroom table and him letting them all have it. (Odom was not at Yale back in the '60s, by the way - he was at Columbia then - which is too bad, as the idea of Dubya himself as a "student" in his class is just priceless.)

Getting back to my earlier point, when I've seen his name in the news since the war, I have often been tempted to mention that I studied with him, but have mostly restrained myself to avoid any accusations of wearing Yale on my sleeve. But not today. Thanks for the memories, General, and thanks for doing what you could to get the truth out about the war!

I'm sure he'd be disappointed in me if I didn't add that I still think he was a sexist pig. But what an education.