Yes, it's a YouTube press conference. There were even antagonistic questions ("How do you expect people in this country to trust you when you've repeatedly broken promises that were made on the campaign trail, most recently the promise to have a transparent health care debate?" And, unsurprisingly, many of the questions were dissimilar to those asked by the press corps.
This is something cool (via Ezra Klein). You can zoom in and see the size of the smallest possible things and zoom out and see the size of the largest possible things.
With DADT coming, once again, to the fore of our national discourse, it's worth taking a gander at some of the, er, more interesting arguments for and against its repeal.
Michael Scherer says:
I am most interested in [the definition] of the "successful war-fighting culture" as an inherently anti-homosexual environment, or at least a strictly heterosexual one. Throughout Western civilization, it has not always been thus. This is how Plato saw it in Ancient Greece:Our own tyrants learned this lesson through bitter experience, when the love between Aristogiton and Harmodius grew so strong that it shattered their power. Wherever, therefore, it has been established that it is shameful to be involved in sexual relationships with men, this is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice in the part of the governed.
Plutarch wrote of the "Sacred Band of Thebes," an elite army unit made up of male couples.For when the going gets tough, tribesmen don't give much thought for their fellow tribesmen, nor clansmen for their fellow clansmen. But a battalion joined together by erotic love cannot be destroyed or broken: its members stand firm beside one another in times of danger, lovers and beloveds alike. . .
Suffice it to say, this Theban tradition did not continue through the centuries. But the non-sexual, emotional bond between men has long been much more the thesis than the antithesis of the war-fighting culture.
Somehow, I don't believe that this argument is going to be changing many minds, but, hey, whatever works.
Michael O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings Institute had this to say (via Glenzilla):
We can talk about this delicately or we can just be fairly dire. There are a lot of 18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys. They're often politically old-fashioned or conservative; they are not necessarily at the vanguard, in many cases, of accepting alternative forms of lifestyle.
Ah, yes, testosterone equals bigot. I forgot about that. I'll let Glenzilla play this one out:
First of all, O'Hanlon sounds like he just stepped out of a 1981 Moral Majority documentary. Who still talks about sexual orientation being an "alternative form of lifestyle"? That was always a dishonest and propagandistic phrase -- as though gay people intrinsically lead a different "lifestyle" -- and it's rare these days to hear anyone outside of Jim Dobson and Maggie Gallagher use it. And the apparent belief of O'Hanlon that there's an inverse relationship between masculinity and acceptance of gay people ("testosterone-laden men who are tough guys") is ludicrous, though, almost certainly, his saying this unintentionally reveals some disturbing psychosexual undercurrents that are driving O'Hanlon himself.
Second, O'Hanlon's views on the repeal of DADT were the same ones cited to oppose racial integration and an expanding role for women in the military (it's not me, but those primitive enlisted men, who will cause problems). It's also unbelievably disrespectful of the military itself and its rank-and-file, since it assumes that those who join the military are consumed with such uncontrollable bigotry and are incapable of adhering to its policies and dictates. That, too, seems to say much more about O'Hanlon than the "rank-and-file" members of the military whom he's disparaging.
Lastly, I'd like to point out that Dollhouse was kind of an amazing show. Of course, the first half of the first season was kind of awful. Normally I would say that if one quarter of a show is almost unwatchable bad, then don't watch it. I think I have to make an exception in this case. The second half of the first season was really good--a "Firefly" on the Whedon scale. The first half of the second season was pretty good--a "second season of Buffy" on the Whedon scale. The last half of the second season was some of the best television I've seen--it broke the Whedon scale.
Of course, it's worth noting that the show got dramatically better once it became more of an ensemble show and less reliant on Eliza Dushku. As someone (I think a friend of mine, but I can't remember) pointed out: it's not that she's a bad actor; it's that she's a distinctive actor. You don't forget that you're watching Eliza Dushku, so having her try to be a different person each show kind of falls on its ass.
Of course, that might be giving Dushku more credit than she deserves. She's a good actor when she's playing Faith or Faith-like characters. Outside of that, it's like watching Faith trying to act, which isn't all that fun.
Penciled by Sean Gordan Murphy
Oh, fuck these guys, Joe the Barbarian #1 (Grant Morrison's new strip) was beautiful, spacious, and entrancing, and anyone who says otherwise reads too many superhero books. The biggest complaint seems to be the five pages of internal house shots, which, as my friend Marc pointed out:
That five page walk from front door to bedroom is integral to the story; it shows how the house is a reflection of the kid's character, effectively an extension of him, giving us an emotional resonance with the fact that they've lost it.
Behave gentle reader(s) or I'll inflict a review of Joe on you.
|