Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 Read online

  Now, I know it’s not the fashion to prefer the original sources to current, revisionist views of history, but what can I say, I went to the University of Chicago, and we’re old fashioned that way. So when Benito Mussolini—Fascist before Fascism became so popular no one went there any more—describes the “Fascist negation of socialism, democracy, liberalism” as a doctrine of the right, I tend to give credence to the man’s word.

  Which is to say: not only was Mussolini dubbed a fascist because he formed the Fascists, Fascism is a right wing doctrine because Mussolini, who founded the movement, designed it to be. Therefore, Mussolini: right-wing and fascist! And self-admitted to both. You can read it for yourself.

  I know, I know. Why should I believe anything Mussolini said? Dude was a fascist. We all know how they are. He probably called himself right-wing just to mess with the liberals and socialists. But when you remember that he dealt with liberals and socialists by actually killing them and then bragging about it on the floor of the Italian Parliament, you figure pulling literary pranks of this sort might have been a little subtle for him. Mussolini—fascist back when being fascist meant something, damn it—was all about the action. He’d tell you that himself, were he not eventually whacked by firing squad while trying to sneak out of the country and then hung upside down by meat hooks in the Piazzale Loreto for the general populace to abuse.

  (To be fair to Goldberg, Mussolini did indeed do time, and prominently so, as a socialist. But eventually he stopped being one. You know why? Because he went and created the Fascist Party. Which was anti-socialist and right wing. Just ask the founder of it. I’ve not read Goldberg’s book so I’m not entirely sure what alchemy he uses to argue that a right-wing, anti-socialist political movement is and always was actually a left-wing socialist political movement, but I do suspect whatever argument it is, Mussolini himself would have found it less than satisfying, and being as much the political journalist as Goldberg is, would likely have offered him fair argument on the point, if he didn’t just have him, oh, shot.)

  So. What have we learned today?

  1. Fascism: Right wing authoritarian movement. Says so right there on the label.

  2. When speaking in public about fascism, try not to forget why Mussolini, founder of Fascism, arguably a fascist movement, was called a fascist. Even for just a minute or two.

  3. When declaring someone is a lifelong socialist and not right-wing, it helps not to have that person’s own words and writings (and actions, really) actively contradict you.

  4. Original sources are jazzy and fun, and everybody should read them!

  5. If you’re going to complain about people snarking without substance, don’t give them something substantive to snark about, too.

  Done for now.

  BREASTFEEDING

  GOD

  PETA wants to promote breastfeeding in Mississippi with billboards showing the Baby Jesus suckling at the Virgin Mary’s nipple. This is a bit like the Beef Advisory Council promoting their product by placing a burger in each of the many hands of Shiva. You could chalk it up to miscalculation and ignorance, but it’s PETA, whose grand plan to promote their cause in the United States seems to boil down to “enrage meat eaters to such a degree that they choke on their steaks.” Miscalculation isn’t part of the plan.

  Were I a meat-bearing animal (and unless I’m schlepping groceries, I’m not), the folks at PETA are just about the last people on Earth I’d want promoting my cause, since the short-term result of this sort of intentionally antagonistic marketing approach is that someone’s likely to have protest grill-a-thon right under the billboard. You can see it now: Eat a sausage for Jesus. Clearly, this wouldn’t help. Someone needs to do a study to see whether meat sales go up after every PETA stunt; I think we all might be surprised at the results. I don’t think PETAs cause is unjust in the least, I just think the end result of their tactics is likely to be higher bacon consumption.

  However, PETA is correct on two points. The first is that human breast milk is far better for infants than cow’s milk (which is the point of the billboard) and in fact cow’s milk can be bad for very young babies: Far too much sodium, for one thing (you can do a number on a baby’s kidneys). There are also too many nutrients at too many different levels relative to the mix a newborn needs. I remember that while Athena was being born, a very good (childless) friend of ours who was feeding our pets also bought us two gallons of whole milk so we could be prepared. I certainly appreciated the thought (and still do), but I’d have been about as likely to pop open a can of Sprite and put that in our newborn’s bottle as I would be to give her milk from the store.

  PETA’s billboard is fatuous to the extent that any pediatrician or ob/gyn who did not get a medical degree from a box of Trix already knows all this and will have communicated this information to their expectant mothers (as will have the instructors of their birthing classes, who comprise a veritable La Leche League mafia). So its only true value is to piss off religious conservatives, which is entirely why PETA did it anyway. But technically, it’s not wrong.

  The second point where PETA is correct is that the baby Jesus did breastfeed off the Virgin Mary. It was 2000 years ago, baby formula had not yet made inroads into the parenting market, and while there almost certainly was a cow around (Jesus was camping out in the animal’s food bin, after all), chances are very good Mary guided Jesus to her breast instead. That’s what breasts are for. Mary may have been a virgin, but she wasn’t stupid.

  The real question is why religious conservatives are so incensed by the portrayal. I don’t mean this in the entirely fake way PETA officials are pretending to be shocked, shocked that anyone could see something as natural as a mother suckling her child as offensive, since if it hadn’t have been offensive, PETA simply wouldn’t have done it. They would picked some other outrageous image; this being the South, I imagine a billboard of General Sherman torching Atlanta, with the tagline underneath: Haven’t You Had Enough of Barbeque? That’d get them going down in Dixie (Note to PETA: Steal this, and you’ll get a call from my lawyers. They’re carnivores).

  PETA counted on it being offensive, but, fundamentally, why should it be offensive? Jesus was divine, but also human. He was a baby, he had to eat. Mary was the Mother of God but also a mother; she gave birth, her body pumped out milk so she could feed her baby. Mary suckled the Baby Jesus. Deal with it.

  The response: We know she did it, we just don’t want to see it or think about it. And of course, the answer here is: Why on Earth not? Well, for one thing, it’s a breast— and we all know that looking at boobs arouses thoughts of sex. Sex leads to sin, sin leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. So we just can’t have the Virgin Mary going topless. The kids will riot.

  As you can imagine, this line of reasoning makes me giggle. For one thing, there’s undoubtedly a special seating area in Hell for people who have lustful thoughts about the Virgin Mary (excluding, possibly, Joseph). Everybody knows this, so anyone who glances at the picture and thinks “Huh huh huh—the Virgin Mary is totally hot” is already feeling Satan’s tines sticking his ass and has other problems to worry about.

  For another thing, breasts being used for breastfeeding are unsexy in almost exactly the same way a vagina being used for birth is unsexy—indeed, it’s a vivid reminder that God, in His wisdom, evolved dual uses for just about every fun-providing part of the human anatomy, and that second use is definitely not about having a good time. So I think we can shelve the “Boobs = sex” line of reasoning here. The Virgin Mary suckling the Baby Jesus is about as far from sex as we’re likely to get, even without throwing in the nature of Mary’s impregnation.

  The other issue may simply be that Christians don’t like dwelling on the human aspect of Jesus and Mary—just as any person prefers not to dwell on the grosser (in every meaning of the word) aspects of the humanity of their idols. But I have to say this doesn’t make much sense to me. Christian theology is built on Jesus’ dual nature as
divine and human: Toss out one half, and the other half doesn’t work. Jesus’ suffering was rooted in his divinity—he was called on to redeem the sins of the world—but the actual suffering part was predicated upon his human nature. Being nailed to a cross to die doesn’t work if He Who is Nailed doesn’t have the humanity required to suffer.

  Aside from Jesus, other major Christian figures relied on their humanity to confirm their divinity as well. You can’t throw a rock in a room full of early Christian saints without hitting one martyred for his faith (depending on who you hit, in fact, the rock throwing bit is nothing new to him). Martyrdom is physical and painful, a reflection of Jesus’ human pain on the cross. And of course there’s Mary herself, chosen to carry Jesus for her essential humanity.

  Dwelling on the humanity of Jesus and Mary doesn’t weaken their divinity, it strengthens it. Showing a picture of the Blessed Mother and Child as the latter is breastfeeding off the former shouldn’t been seen as sacrilege or blasphemy, but an acknowledgment of part of what makes them special, loved and revered. I think that people who are enraged by the picture should take a few moments and reflect on that fact. Jesus was human as much as divine, and it’s simply wrong to deny His humanity, and the things that come with it.

  It doesn’t mean you have to walk around with a picture in your wallet of Jesus suckling from the Virgin Mary, mind you (or of Jesus performing any other human functions you might not care to think about on an everyday basis, because, you know, Jesus did those things too). But this way, when someone shoves a picture like this in your face as a cheap way to piss you off, you can laugh it away. And then you can have a nice slab of pork round. See who’s more pissed off then.

  FUN WITH

  THE GMH

  One of the things that really chaps my ass about the people who oppose gay marriage is that so many of them seem to believe that allowing guys to marry guys or gals to marry gals will tumble the entire nation into a festering cesspool of carnal inequity, in which everyone suddenly turns into lustful raveners who engage in group marriages with dogs and close relatives, like recursively genetic unfortunates or characters from a late-era Robert Heinlein novel. Aside from being patently irrational, it also points to a certain worldview that is simultaneously fearful, smug and insulting:

  1. It suggests that the gay marriage-haters (henceforth referred to as “GMH”) believe that the vast majority of people in the country are sexual degenerates who can only be kept from pets and the consanguineous purely by hard rule of law.

  2. Or, should we wish to be charitable, it suggests that the GMH seriously believe that the rest of us cannot see or reasonably formulate a moral or legal difference between allowing a man to marry another man, and allowing a man to marry a bichon frise. This suggests the GMH think we’re all stupid and unreasoning and therefore need to be guided by our intellectual and moral superiors, i.e., them.

  3. It clearly suggests that the GMH believe that gay men and women are morally and legally equivalent to dogporkers and uncleboinkers, despite so many of the GMH who suggest they’re perfectly fine with gay people, it’s just those dirty nasty unfathomably evil gay acts they do that are so darn bad. Actually, they do hate and/or fear and/or feel disgust over gay people specifically, it’s just that with the exception of Fred Phelps and a few drunken frat boys cruising the streets outside gay bars with pickups and bats, they realize that announcing that fact to the rest of us marks them as unsavory and intolerant, which should be a hint but is not.

  4. It likewise clearly suggests that the GMH live in constant and overweening fear for their own personal morality in the face of differences in others; i.e., that should they encounter a legally married gay couple, their personal moral compass might swing so wildly askew that the next thing they know it’s 3 am and they’re being bent over an interstate rest stop picnic table by a leather bear named Chuck while a fetching chocolate lab is licking their heroin-dusted nipples. They didn’t want it to happen. But they just couldn’t help it.

  Now, naturally, I entirely expect the GMH to violently object to this, and maintain that they don’t think the rest of us are brain-damaged perverts or that they’re morally weak fag haters. But if you don’t and if you aren’t, well, then, what is the problem? Really. What is the big deal, here? If we’re not all glory-hole-seeking morons, how will the prospect of happily-married gay people change us? And if you’re not all prejudiced and on the verge of a lapse of sexual ethics, how does possibly getting an invitation to the marriage of Sue and Jill threaten you?

  (Please don’t come at me with the arguments that marriage is about the possibility of procreation or that God says it’s between men and women. There are a number of religious denominations, Christian and otherwise, which offer religious blessing on same-sex unions, and unless you’re willing to ban the infertile from marriage, the second goes out the window as well.)

  Allow me to make a radical suggestion here, which quite obviously I don’t think is radical at all. I submit that I believe that gay marriages, on average, are likely to be more stable and happy than straight marriages—that is to say, more likely to be “model” marriages in which the two partners are committed to each other in a loving fashion. And the reason for this, naturally enough, comes down to sex, as in, sex is not why gays and lesbians will get hitched.

  Come on, you abstinence types. You know sex plays a significant role in marriage among the conservatively religious, who trend toward marrying younger than other groups. Indeed, it’s one of the selling points: You can have all the sex you want! And God approves! But I submit that someone who marries for access to sex—or has it in his or her unspoken top three reasons, as I strongly suspect any heterosexual human who reaches his or her early 20s as a virgin might— will find he or she has a weak pillar in the marriage after the first bloom of sexual activity wears off. And you know how humans are when it comes to sex. They’re all screwy for it. It makes them do things like have affairs and try to serve divorce papers on their wives in hospital recovery rooms and whatnot.

  Now, take your gay couple. He and he (or she and she) don’t have the same hangups about sex and marriage, for the simple reason that gay people have never had the need or expectations regarding marriage and access to sex. They have ever had their sex independent of the marriage institution. So it would seem reasonable to suggest that if a gay couple decided to marry, the fevered idea of finally getting to have sex (and the irrationality such a desire can bring) would not be one of the major motivating factors. Instead the decision would be based on other more, shall we say, considered factors, like basic compatibility, shared life goals and expectations, and a genuine and well-regarded appreciation for the other, in the relationship and out of it.

  Let’s be clear that I am not suggesting marriages between the religiously conservative are doomed once the rush of newlywed sex wears off (they’re not) or that every gay person who marries will do so in a sober, well-considered manner (they won’t). But I am suggesting that those gays who do decide to marry have one less distorting pressure on the marriage vow than many straights do.

  For now, at least. Because here’s the really interesting blind spot the GMH have on the matter of gay marriages—they have the potential to make people rather more “moral” than less. After all, if gays and lesbians have the right to marry, the GMH, who we may reasonably assume have a large overlap with the religiously conservative and those who wish to promote abstinence before marriage, may then do just that—promote sexual abstinence to gays and lesbians in a reasonable manner.

  Let’s grant that in their heart of hearts, most GMH wish gays and lesbians didn’t have sex at all, and would go through their entire lives miserable and sexually thwarted (see point number three above). But realistically, that’s just not gonna happen. So allowing gays and lesbians to marry is the next best thing, since it creates a structure that allows the abstinence-loving not only to limit gay and lesbian sexual activity on an individual basis but also on a larger scale. After all, t
he gay teenager who commits to abstinence before marriage is one less gay teenager having sex with other gay teenagers, and wallowing in the ancillary gay culture. It also quickly and efficiently stuffs the gay person into a monogamous relationship, thereby trimming away the promiscuity that (to the religiously conservative) defines the whole “gay lifestyle.”

  True, these people are still gay. But at least they’d be gay like the rest of the religiously conservative is straight. Honestly, for a religious conservative, that’s as good as it’s ever going to get.

  But of course, I don’t expect the GMH to see it that way (I also don’t imagine gay men and women will go for the abstinence thing in any higher numbers than straight men or women, but that’s another matter entirely). What I expect is for the GMH to continue to declaim that gay marriages will bring on zoophilia, incest and polygamy (or polyandry—I mean, why not?), and to continue to hate and fear and hate and fear and hate and fear some more long after the rest of us have welcomed the new gay married couple down the block to the next neighborhood cookout and traded wedding and proposal stories and have then gone on to other reassuringly mundane topics of conversation.

  And to the GMH I say: Knock yourself out, kids. Just don’t do it near me. Also, when your moral compass gets whacked off course because you just couldn’t fight off the decadence, stay away from my dog.

  MR. NICE GUY

  There’s no pleasing some people. I spent yesterday’s Whatever slagging Dubya, and the mail I get pounds on me for a throwaway comment I make about Dubya probably being a nice man (I specifically wrote: “I don’t doubt Dubya’s a nice man and not traditionally what one describes as stupid, but his thought processes are shallow and stagnant, like week-old water in a unused kiddie pool.”) Apparently calling the sitting President the most incompetent resident of the White House since Warren Harding, and doing so in an interesting and creative way, isn’t enough. One has to maintain he’s soul-warpingly evil as well, just the sort of guy who takes welfare babies, strangles them with wire, runs their tiny corpses through a deli slicer, pan fries the cold cuts and then feeds them to his Rottweilers, which he’s kicked for three hours a day since they were puppies in order to make them extra vicious when he sics them on poor, wrinkled Helen Thomas at the next White House press conference.