2009-06-24 15:12:43

LYING HYPOCRITES!

Filed under: Democrats, Eliot Spitzer, Evangelicals and Politics, Mark McKinnon, Mark Sanford, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Ted Haggard, politics
Posted by: John

This press conference is a consequence of disobedience to god?! Did the governor of South Carolina just say that in public in his soft, sorrowing voice?

Hmmmm. It’s a consequence of other things, too, like cheating on his wife with a gal named Maria. That’s my interpretation anyway, but I’m a fiction writer, not a theologian.

In a way, I’m sympathetic to Sanford. Too long we have paraded private virtue as political power. It never works that way. Powerful people, no matter their convictions, will always cheat on their loved ones and fly down to Argentina or drive across the Jersey state line to have illicit sex. In that sense, Sanford is one more victim of the world’s most dangerous political organ, but the rest of us are the real dupes.

Take Republican strategist and pundit Mark McKinnon, for instance.

I wonder if Mark McKinnon still considers mealy-mouthed, lying, hypocritical South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford a hardy contender for the GOP presidency in 2012.

He is wonderful, isn’t he, Mr. McKinnon, this stalwart example of “family values” virtue? He was so brave when he refused to let South Carolina have that stimulus money! So brave, so true!Marching down the Appalachian trail, did you imagine him with a straight back and an upthrust chin? You were close, except he wasn’t hiking. He was making love to Maria. Slight rejiggering of the image, I know, but it still kinda works.

As he works his way up to revealing the lie in this video clip, do you want to apologize for acting the fool? For presuming too much? Are you going to resign for turning him into a political hero so quickly, without even waiting for the hero’s return?

For the last time, the media isn’t the problem here, though plenty of pundits–who are emphatically not journalists–suggested that it was the nasty media that created much ado about nothing. The governor was hiking! How dare we impugn his honor?

Self-rightous conservatives, wake up! Moral crusaders of all stripes, wake up! Your sexual hypocrisy has become an addiction. You can’t give up the illicit sex. That’s clear. It’s the sweet and necessary oil of your faith. You have to give up the hypocrisy, though, of brandishing “family values” as a weapon against gay people who want to marry and as an argument in favor of a better, cleaner, more virtuous America. Then, at least, you can pursue these rites of degradation and purification in private, where they belong.

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2009-05-31 08:15:46

PURPLE: TALLAHASSEE CITY COMMISSIONER ALLAN KATZ ON THE GREATER GOOD

Filed under: Allan Katz, Craig Detweiler, Eliot Spitzer, Florida, John Marks, Republicans, The Purple Interview, politics, purple state roadshow
Posted by: John

Welcome to Purple, the first in a series of Sunday interviews-slash-conversations that will become a regular feature on this website. The conversations will cover the gamut of subjects, but we will always circle back to the question of cultural, social and political division in this country and the world.

There are no simple answers, of course, but in our attempt to wrestle with the national wrestling match, we’ll feature thinkers, artists, musicians, politicians, pastors, journalists, judges, historians, novelists, scientists and playwrights, to name just a few.

For our first chat, we’re turning to the basics of civil society, a conversation with a veteran of American politics at the national, state and municipal level, and one of our sponsors on a recent visit to Florida.

Commissioner Allan Katz is currently serving his eighth year as a Tallahassee City Commissioner. Allan formerly served on the staffs of Florida Congressman Bill Gunter and current Wisconsin Congressman David Obey. He is a former member of the Democratic National Committee and was one of President Barack Obama’s earliest and most active supporters in Florida.

In 2005, Allan was the lone City Commissioner to oppose City of Tallahassee buy-in to a proposed pulverized coal plant. Allan lead the opposition in a ballot initiative to approve the plant, calling the option to own part of the plant “like investing in the last buggy whip factory.” Ultimately, new events proved Allan’s opposition prophetic and the plant was not built. Allan recently found himself disagreeing with some of the very people he worked with opposing the plant in his support of a proposed Biomass plant.

He later joined with some of his most prominent opponents in the coal fight to form the nonpartisan public forum “The Village Square,” dedicated to civil discourse and fact-based decision-making across the partisan divide (http://www.tothevillagesquare.org). For “visionary leadership” on environmental issues, this April Allan was the first recipient of the “Champion for Climate Change Award” given by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Florida Wildlife Federation. He is a partner with Akerman Senterfit, one of Florida’s largest law firms.

Commissioner Katz was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to respond to our emailed questions.

Commissioner Katz, you’ve been in public service at the national, state and local level for decades. Can you remember a time when political opponents behaved toward each other with mutual respect? Or is that just one of those Golden Age dreams that never really happened?

I think that there was a time when there was a different type of dialog. There was always a shrill aspect out there but it was a less dominant sound, it was much more on the fringes and as a result there was a respectful dialog in the middle that basically tested the different ideas about the appropriate role of government was. Should we either be protected by government or left alone by government? I think those days have changed and our debate has evolved into something much more damaging. For example – if you are concerned that prayer in the public schools is a problem because of children feeling excluded or coerced, then you are attacked for being anti-religion. At the same time, people who believe that prayer in the public schools is appropriate are being branded as religious zealots. Unfortunately that has become far too much of the common lexicon among far too many of the people in our society.

How much civility do you see in Tallahassee politics now?

In our local politics, we have a fair amount of civility. As far as state politics goes – which takes place in Tallahassee – I think we have a remarkable lack of civility. Again, that varies with different leaders at different times. In Tallahassee, we have a pretty normal bell curve… On the extreme left and extreme right you have people who are demonizing everyone who doesn’t agree with them. But for the most part I think people have a relatively common set of values. And while I’m not particularly enamored of the way some people describe people who are on opposites sides of an issue from them – from time to time – but I think generally speaking, it’s relatively civil. It could be improved and hopefully what we’re doing with The Village Square will help us get there.

These days, our national dialogue on a wide range of difficult issues seems to get worse by the day. Partisanship has turned vicious. I know there are many roots to such a complicated and deep-seated problem, but in your mind, are there one or two factors that have been most influential in poisoning the atmosphere?

At the national level, in some ways, it is getting better. I give a lot of the credit to the new president, who has done several things that I think are interesting. First of all, he’s been willing to tell people things they don’t want to hear, which I think is always a good thing. Also, he’s been willing to deal with a number of volatile issues in a dispassionate way in an attempt to work with what you have to solve the problem. His speech at Notre Dame was a good example of this. He, on the one hand, chastised everyone for demonizing people who disagreed with them and at the same time recognized the obvious point that this is an issue on which some people will never agree. And that’s something we really haven’t had anyone the stature of the President do in a really long time.

Abortion is one of the top three most significant issues that have created this inability to listen to each other. People who are pro-choice think that people who are opposed to abortion are abortion nuts. And people on the other side think pro-choice people are pro-abortion. And no one I know is pro abortion, it’s a question of how we deal with the issue. As someone who considers himself pro-choice, I’m sympathetic with people who think abortion is murder. There is a significant diversity of opinion on abortion within our society so the issue isn’t really how we’re going to convince each other, it’s how we’re going to live with each other.

Another issue that has clearly helped create some of the nastiness is the issue of gay rights. While it has been used to inflame people ][to oppose gay rights] in a negative way, ironically, as you look around the country, clearly that paradigm is shifting and its almost done the opposite, particularly with younger Americans (who many believe have a sense of entitlement which is not particularly attractive). On the positive side they seem to be color-blind and, to them, a difference of sexual orientation is insignificant.

On your campaign website, you write about yourself as someone who takes on the controversial issues. That means, presumably, you get right to the heart of the most contentious spirit in politics. How do you manage personally to keep your cool and build relationships across party and ideological lines?

Frankly sometimes I don’t keep my cool. And it’s hard to build and keep relationships across the divide. We feel strongly about issues usually not just for intellectual reasons, but for emotional ones as well, which makes it more difficult when people on the other side not only don’t accept your reasoning but they are indifferent to the emotional attachment you have to the issue and in many ways that is the hardest part to deal with. Sometimes you just have to work to not allow it to interfere with the other aspects of the relationship. The story I like to tell is the first time I met Barack Obama he said “Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they don’t have any good ideas.” While that sounds fairly simplistic, it’s important to remember. People who I’ve fought on opposite sides of local issues have remained my friends, not because I believe any more than I did in the beginning that they were right. I believed they were wrong and continued to be wrong and in some cases they chose to ignore the facts. However, that doesn’t affect my ability to be their friend or my ability to learn other things from them. And hopefully, they feel the same way about me.

You are one of the founding members of an organization called To The Village Square. That organization promotes dialogue across the divisions. It came about when a few members of both parties, Republican and Democrat, sat down as friends and started to talk about what they had in common. Right? How hard was it to get to that point, and do you see your act of community as a role model? If so, is that realistic?

It hasn’t really been difficult because we chose people to be involved that already had a shared relationship with each other. It’s important to note that a number of these people were part of a group that began sitting down before the Village Square was conceived of in an attempt to deal with some of the community issues, even though we came from diverse backgrounds. You have to be a role model in the community if you’re in a position of leadership and responsibility. In my opinion, it’s not enough to figure out which way the crowd in going and run to get in front of them. It is a question of trying to get with other people who are well-meaning and accept the axiom that if you don’t care who gets the credit, you get a lot more done.

We found a group of people in this community who want to do this and now we’re trying to take an idea into this community and hopefully some day into other communities that says there are ways we can communicate with each other where we talk about ideas and gain information and when we’re through, we may not believe one thing differently than when we started. But the process itself doesn’t just enrich us as individuals, but more importantly, we’ve enriched our community by creating a framework for people to be able to discuss things that are often very contentious. If you look at the old town hall meetings in communities in the northeast, all these people come and you’re allowed to not agree with some one and you’re even allowed to sometimes even get angry, although we try to discourage incivility. Even though we find it frustrating when we don’t agree with someone, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong, for one, or that they have nothing valuable to say.

What are the consequences of failure?

If we don’t fix this, we’ll continue to spiral downward in our ability to have meaningful political dialog in this country. It makes the zero sum game approach to policy issues that much more extreme. And when that happens in a society what you’re really doing is you are threatening an unraveling of the ability to peacefully resolve differences between us. And that is frightening. Generally what happens first is the rhetoric, so you need to attack it while it’s still rhetoric. And if we’re unwilling to do that, wherever it goes from here will not be good.

If you could give someone new to politics a word of advice about how to proceed with civility, what would it be?

It never hurts to be respectful to people with whom you disagree. I think it’s also much more credible if you’re willing to tell people things they don’t want to hear. I’ve had people come to me sort of say “Well what are you going to do for me?” And my answer is always the same: “Not a damn thing. Because it’s not about you, it’s not about me, and if you don’t understand that, we don’t have anything to talk about.” I think that the more of us in elected office who are willing to say that, the more chance that our communities will realize really something they already know. It doesn’t mean we agree on everything, it means we have common set of notions of what our community can look like, then we work together to get there.

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2008-06-01 18:32:25

PURPLE STATE OF SEX

Filed under: Eliot Spitzer, Faith, Sex
Posted by: John

Most people outside of New York City probably haven’t read the recent New York magazine piece about lust in the dust in the Big Apple, so that’s my excuse for being late with my take on it. If I need another peg, this weekend’s premiere of the Sex and the City movie should do the trick. Women turned out in big numbers and made it a hit.

Sex is back on our collective mind–is it ever off?–and so now seems as good a time as any to bring up a subject that all too rarely takes off its clothes on the Purple State website.

If you haven’t read the Philip Weiss article, entitled “The Affairs of Men: The Trouble with Sex and Marriage”, which might as well be subtitled “Why Married Men Cheat” check it out here. After you’ve read the story itself, you may want to have a gander at the kinds of discussions generated by this story in the mainstream blogosphere, and for that, stroll on over here. Slate’s Tim Noah poses the question “Why Don’t Women Cheat More?” and gets interesting answers from fellow Slate posters, mostly women.

We’re not talking about anything new (David and Bathsheba, I’m talking to you), though the New York article did have a theoretical news peg in that it was inspired by the Eliot Spitzer affair, suggesting that a new round of soul-searching is underway among the urban bourgeoisie in New York on the subject of adultery.

As I read the article, I kept having the same thought. Once upon a time, urgent and open discussion of adultery and pornography might have been limited to places like New York or San Francisco. No more. In my four years of research on the subject of evangelical Christianity, I discovered, of course, the opposite to be true. When it comes to the subject of sex, America is New York, and New York is hardcore. Christians, no matter how much they want to talk about family values, deal with the problem of sex in exactly the same averages and percentages as the so-called secular public. We’re all in this orgy together.

What a relief. Looking for solutions, Weiss goes for at least one tired old chestnut. European men (meaning French), with their mistresses and pacts of silence with their mates, have it better. They get to have sex outside marriage, and no one really minds. Has he watched a French movie lately? The woman in contemporary French cinema don’t seem quite as sympathetic as in former times. Most are either planning murder or catatonic with repressed rage or going to bed with much younger men or women on their own time. In reality, I doubt the system works for more than a few.

With apologies to an understandably distressed Philip Weiss, let’s drop that wet dream about wise French cheaters into the trash bin, along with the idea that the Swedes have the best economy in the world, and America is the greatest democracy. These are ardent wishes, not fixed realities, and we shouldn’t confuse the two.

I was thinking what I might add to the debate, other than my own prurient interest, and I came to the conclusion that Americans, educated or not, well-off or not, religious or not, tend to be as lazy about sex as they are about food, health and intellect. Great numbers don’t want to work hard at much of anything outside of work and are more likely to grab the low-hanging fruit than they are to cultivate their own garden. In marriages, for instance, how often do couples work on their sexual imaginations? Do they simply assume that the same sex they had at twenty two will be sufficient at forty two?

Eroticism is difficult. It is not a Snickers bar that you buy at the grocery store. It’s a fine meal that you prepare yourself. If it’s any good at all, it will include wine and dessert.

Men supposedly think of sex more than woman; ten to one hundred to a thousand times a day, compared to women, who supposedly think about it sporadically. Sex data is notoriously hard to trust. I’m betting from my own experience that the number for men is closer to between ten and a hundred times a day, with variations in the spectrum, and is probably higher on average for males than females. That’s a huge amount of brain energy spent on one subject, and reading the New York article, it’s easy to believe that all of that wattage goes towards thinking about the same act with different women rather than different acts with the same woman.

Is a false glorification of choice part of our problem? In this country, we love to tout our smorgasbord. We think highly of the fact that we have fifty brands of cereal and a hundred kinds of bread, even though the cereal and the bread are so similar that the variety often looks like a fraud. Maybe, when it comes to eroticism, it’s time to start thinking about our glamorization of choice. Why is it that we believe that a new or different choice in bed is necessarily better than the choice we’ve already made? I’m not speaking here as a Puritan or a believer or as a moralist, coming down on the people who cheat. I’m writing here as a hedonist entertaining the notion that adultery is a lazy way of avoiding the challenge of eroticism.

In the end, no matter how we try to fix the problem, I love the fact that evangelicals in Kansas City, Kansas, and intellectuals in New York, New York suffer exactly the same sexual torment in roughly the same numbers and fail equally to deal with it. Pastors, governors, New Yorker movie critics: which side of the red or blue divide makes no difference.

That’s a beautiful fact in light of the ongoing culture wars between these two groups. Life, like sex, is so damn sticky.

Who has the moral high ground here? No one. Welcome to the Purple State of Sex. It’s where you live.

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