I am a solipsistic, self-absorbed, self-pitying, narcissistic and vindictive gay American

I am so not on Jim McGreevey's side in his nasty custody battle with ex-wife Dina Matos McGreevey regarding their young daughter Jacqueline. McGreevey, former Democratic governor of New Jersey, resigned the statehouse in August 2004 when scandal swirled when he, um, tapped his lover Golan Cipel for the job of Director of the NJ Dept. of Homeland Security. He wrote a coming out book about it all called simply The Confession in which he admits that, even when he was acting governor, he had quickie and anonymous gay sex at various rest stops along the Interstate. His ex-wife has now come out with her own version of their marriage, Silent Partner. McG wants little Jackie to spend at least half her time with him and his male lover, Australian money manager Mark O'Donnell, and in court papers filed he says her intent to block this shows her "irrational fears of his sexuality" (or perhaps all too rational fears). Quoth he:

"She is in deep denial. Why would she question what I have made clear? To try and lessen my gayness by making me bisexual is a clear form of homophobia." So now calling someone a bisexual is some kind of slur? and how did he have sex with her all those years?

What is going on in this guy's head?

How to push people right or left, political mind games

Rush bashing liberals, the liberals say we're not like that and so even they get pulled rightward instead of saying everything he says about us is true. The more they insist they are not pro-abortion the more obvious it is they are but they get sucked into Rush's rightward vortex and will say things like abortion is a bad thing, I don't know anyone who is for abortion, do you? never met the guy, must be a psycho or something to be for feticide. So you go against the criticism by moving in the direction of the critic and the same thing happens to the conservatives, the more the libs paint them as rabid anti-abortionists the more reasonable, dare I say, liberal they become, "oh no, even if Roe is overturned tomorrow rest assured most states will still allow the procedure and the whole country was moving in the direction of, em, reform on abortion policy, wait a minute, did I just say reform."

Beth is the only one I understand.

The masculine/feminine culture debate revisited

I blogged about this not too long ago but it has resurfaced in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Conservatives Michelle Malkin and Jay Nordlinger and now libertarian Neil Boortz are saying that when a group of people are threatened by one long gunman you're going to die anyway and so the best course of action would be to rush the guy and thus limit the carnage. Makes sense to me but Lionel, who recently said that he wants to hear and read EVERYTHING, said this is beneath contempt. Maybe his point has to do with how Malkin, Nordlinger and Boortz presented their argument as somehow blaming the victim or what he called "the wussification of America" but I sure hope he's not actually criticizing the validity of their point. It's true fear is a great paralyzer in such a situation and you almost need a telepathic consensus to pull this thing off, hey wait a minute, that happened on Flight 93 that was headed straight to Washington on 9/11, the heroes on board all gave up their lives but a far greater tragedy was averted (hard to see it this way in the context of the other similar events of that day). In a way we have become a nation of victims and I don't mean this disparagingly in any way, it's simply a statement of fact whether Malkin and company present it politely or not. So why is pushing people to defend themselves more so controversial? Why can't schools hold classes in how to defend yourself and others in such a situation? This is another reason why I much prefer a masculine to a feminine culture.

What's wrong with building a little mystery?

Since the subject of the loner is once again in the news here's another case where the past is considered a bad thing. The loner of the past was a mysterious individual but in a more positive and romantic sense than today, sexy even, in the movies he is the rugged individualist, the drifter through town. But when you get rid of the past you get rid of its poetry, its magic. So while it is important to talk about this national tragedy in terms of failures of security and whatnot let's clear the ground first of all media bias and debris against the past, let's rid ourselves of hostility against whole groups of people who aren't really bothering anyone. What the man lacked who did this terrible thing was a universal and objective moral code to live by which is why people with all types of grievances against society don't commit these acts.

The real issue is Right and Wrong.

Should we criminalize the past?

just like in 1984 and Brave New World

The past was about real romance, not match.com. The past had a breadth and depth to it that the modernists don't know they're doing away with. The past climate that is said to have produced an Imus is said to be bad and the past, pre-Clarence Thomas, that encouraged men to ask the same woman out more than once was bad too. Conservatives are about preserving the past and liberals want to change it. Why is the past bad?

From the New York Times for April the 14th, "Shock Talk Without Apologies", by Robert Wright. He's all for political correctness and feels Ann Coulter should be held to the same standard as Don Imus but the liberals of a bygone era said free speech means nothing if it doesn't protect the ugly and offensive. If people like Mr. Wright had their way things would be, well, perfectly boring. Anyway he makes this rather common but flawed point when he says:

"If social harmony is the goal sanctions should be focused along the ethnic fault lines that are most precarious. The black-white boundary is such a line given both the history of oppression and ongoing economic disparities between blacks and whites" (emphasis z's). I've lived close to a public housing project for much of my life and have noticed just as many poor whites living there as blacks. I myself, white as snow, have never lived high on the hog, most of the time I struggle like the rest of us. I wish I had a little more economic disparity to boast about, I would't have had to sell my used fishing boat a few years back because it was like having two cars.

Abandoning the past is not progress.

Finally some good writing on TV for a change

I've only sampled a few episodes of "30 Rock" on NBC, starring SNL's Tina Fey and actor Alec Baldwin, but the script crackles and pops with some bold writing. The show is about the goings on and inner workings at some sketch comedy show. The Tina character doesn't get along with some black guy and the guy says "you don't like me because I'm black" to which she replies "no, it's because you're a jerk. Why can't we all just not get along?" In another episode she falls madly in love with some guy she saw at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting who spills every secret in his life to his group and she later says she was faking alcoholism to meet him, "ok, I'm a real nut-Anne Heche job". Then to make it up to him she spills some of her own secrets like "come next election I'm going to tell my friends I'm voting for Barack Obama but secretly vote for McCain."

anything politically incorrect is dear to z's heart.

That other 9-11 conspiracy theory

Though for the record it can be said the Bush Administration never officially said the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein planned or had anything to do with 9/11 the idea that our campaign in Iraq was to avenge the events of that fateful day somehow took firm root in the popular conservative mind. A co-worker of mine, from the time the war started, said good, we're finally doing something about bin-Laden! On the other hand Bush never cleared the air on the matter and let the conspiracist notion float to the point where today we still think we're fighting a War against Terror that is connected to al-Qaeda and 9/11. It's a War against Terror in the sense that it's far better to have another democracy in the Middle East besides Israel but this is in a general sense. A real test for whether you are a true neocon - if you had to choose (and you can't choose both) which would you prefer, that we did what we did and captured Saddam and that the Iraqis hanged him or that OBL face ultimate justice?

conspiracy theories - and we make fun of Charlie Sheen. Now Rosie is a dope, she has demonstrated this well, of that there is no longer any doubt, but Bill O'Reilly is strongly hinting that she should lose her job over her saying that the U.S. government planned 9/11. This is very dangerous to a free country, that only those who think inside the box like O'Reilly should have full unabridged free speech rights, I mean where would the z-man be? This is very selfish Bill, very selfish.

I mean it's one thing to be a little edgy

Leftie commentator Christopher Hitchens has just published a new book damning all the world's religions, yeah, he's that same Hitchens guy who once wrote a book bashing Mother Theresa in The Missionary Position. Being edgy without being charming is an unpardonable mannerism of style, you're just a hater, you may as well just flush yourself down the toilet. I mean is there anyone or anything this man likes? He's like Dante's Lucifer in his Inferno in the innermost core of hell encased not in fire but in a block of ice. You'd hate to bring such a guy to see your aging father in some nursing home - "yeah, when I get in that condition I'll tell ya what, you all can have some fun and have a game throwing peanuts in my mouth." Nice guy.

When celebrities bitch and moan it ain't the same thing

"Today" show co-host Meredith Vieira is now complaining that she has to get up at 3 in the morning every weekday and be driven into Manhattan at 4:30 to do her show. She calls it sleep deprivation but I ain't feeling her pain. I too get up early every day but I don't have my lack of sleep compensated by millions of dollars a year. Celebs also court fame but hate the paparazzi. I ain't defending them but stop acting like Britney and Lindsay and Paris in public, be low-key and operate under the radar. I don't recall seeing too many stories and photos about Danny Aiello.

24 is starting to resemble a bad comic book

Milo has taken an interest in Nadia. Now they both have very important jobs to do at CTU preventing the End of the World As We Know It but somehow Milo sees himself as God's gift to the female species and cornered this Islamic hottie last week and planted a nice wet one on her face and she seemed to like it. I found the whole thing annoying, it's not the z-man's style, and then there's President Wayne Palmer who has been working diligently to foil Vice President Noah Daniels' plan to nuke the Middle East. Palmer keeps asking his doctor for adrenaline shots to keep him from lapsing back into a coma and letting Daniels take charge of foreign policy even though this is raising his blood pressure through the roof. Palmer didn't like Daniels calling him weak and decided to launch the nuke strike anyway to prove what a man he is. This Oval Office definitely needs a Dr. Phil type. The show is just jumping the shark every week and it wouldn't surprise me if this is 24's last real season. It's more a graphic novel now than a drama, wrap it up and call it a season, put it on DVD and put something else on next January.

Some people got upset because they lost their jobs

Travelgate was of course the nefarious work of the VRWC but today's AG scandal just bores me no end, I DON'T CARE, watching the news these days is like prison boredom. Most of the msm are now owned or run by corporations and so it's all the same product. The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, for example, reports uncritically on anything coming out of that formidable monolith known as the cancer industry. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer is the most objective, nonbiased mainstream organ of the press out there today precisely because PBS is not beholden to corporations, it is run by the public so to speak although for some reason you get alot of queen stuff on this channel at which time I surf on over to the Home Shopping Network.

The more modern a society becomes the more laws we pass. We like to feel nurtured and protected by the State especially women which is why they vote so heavily Democratic as compared to men. There's nothing like getting that ripe government teat overflowing with milk and honey. Laws are commonly passed of which we have no knowledge and what would be our views on burgeoning legislation are not always solicited. Congress has to relevant at all times in every nook and corner of our lives. We'll never get back what we lost, that original vision of the Founding Fathers of minimal government, our loss.

Secular Humanism - man is a god

A god, given thirty years starting when President Nixon declared an all-out war on cancer, would have cured it by now. This is not to put down all those sincere scientists diligently working for a cure but to make the case that secular humanism, or what Bill O'Reilly calls the secular-progressive movement, exalts and celebrates man but does not acknowledge his limitations (and also by extension his propensity for evil). This is brought to mind by the recent news that the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has a return of her breast cancer and now White House spokesman Tony Snow also has a return of the very cancer he had thought he beat a few years ago.

It's time to turn the page on the chemo and the radiation. I've known a few people who've had cancer and passed away and it seems that once they go for the conventional "treatment" it's pretty much a death sentence, the pattern is always the same, they have hope of improvement but in a few weeks time at best they are gone. Now a more conspiratorial-minded person might see this all as a subtle form of euthanasia but as for myself I open up the question - in such cases does the original cancer kill the patient or is it the "therapy"? This is why I don't give any money to the various cancer societies, I feel that one day chemo/radiation will be seen in the same light that electro-shock therapy is today, an attempt to do good because we really don't have all the answers and are desperate but barbaric nonetheless.

We now know that we all have genes in our bodies that can cause cancer to develop, such genes are called proto-oncogenes. Science is looking for the triggers but one theory goes that once a person wants to die the body breaks down. It's like the brain is a computer and sends out a program for everything to self-destruct. Perhaps this is a more holistic and philosophical approach but it doesn't bode well for the secular-progressives that the last dread disease we were really able to do something about was polio.

Man is a wonder in many ways but I'm with the Rev. Pat Robertson on this one, I can't worship such a creature and the movement based on it. We need something outside of ourselves and that something is usually called God. Man has an apparently limitless supply of opportunities for letting you down.

Broward County ME Joshua Perper's Sylvia Browne moment

Though she died of a drug cocktail of no less than nine (!) different prescription drugs including chloral hydrate and methadone the coroner assures us that foul play was not involved in the tragic Anna Nicole Smith case, not only that it wasn't even suicide which end a reasonable person might draw. Seminole tribal Police Chief Charlie Tiger seconds the motion and says no cause for concern here (would twenty prescription drugs in a person's system be the barest minimum for concern?). In the wake of the controversial Schiavo case it is now the politically correct thing to do to go out of our way not to demonize people even if this means we should ask far more questions than we do or even that justice has to take a back seat to sensitivities. To this day we don't really know with any metaphysical certitude what caused Terri to collapse on that fateful morning of Feb. 25, 1990 and likewise we cannot state with any metaphysical certitude, as Broward County ME Joshua Perper has done, that Anna Nicole's death at such a young age was purely an accident. Is our legal and justice system no longer intellectually curious anymore? Is enabling a person's drug dependency no longer a crime? Is it just easier these days to let the dead rest with their secrets? WHY must I rely on sources like the National Enquirer for really vital new information in the case?

What of Howard K. Stern?

The prisons are full of innocent people

I've never gotten greed. I mean I can understand lust but greed is well over my head, if I had 1/20 or even 1/30 of the salary of ex-Tyco chief Dennis Koslowski in his prime I'd be more than happy, you wouldn't hear a peep from me for the rest of my life, I might even be in a charitable mood and charter a few private jets and get the people subjugated under Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe the hell out of there (hey W is he on your list of foreign leaders to be overthrown? didn't think so). You can be warm-blooded but help the poor but greed just feeds on itself and devours your soul and it is not for nothing that the Good Book says the love of money is the root of all evil (I'd like to say simply money but people keep correcting me) and I'd rather go before the Lord in the end as poor as I am. But there was Mr. Koslowski in prison garb chatting with Morley Safer last night on "60 Minutes" (Morley still remembers what he was doing the day Honest Abe was shot). Now an innocent person wrongly sent to prison would be more angry and indignant about the whole affair but Kos just rather blithely said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "yeah, you know, I was railroaded." He said the timing of his trial for grand larceny was bad what with the other big corporate scandals in the news at the time, the Enron boys and Worldcom. He pretty much chalked it up to here he was, a big fat corporate pig CEO being judged by a group of average people, you know, how could there be any other outcome?

Our prisons are teeming with innocent people, it's a national scandal.

The age of voter romanticism

With his interesting multi-ethnic makeup he's Tiger Woods with a better personality but in a far more rational world a one-term Democratic Senator from Illinois would never be taken seriously as a presidential contender. What the rational pragmatists don't understand though is that when you're in love with somebody nobody else will do ("if I can't have you I don't want nobody baby, if I can't have you..."). To be sure this is in large measure the same romantic spirit that drives Rudy's supporters but in his case he is at least far more competent and capable. Barack Obama is too young and inexperienced to handle the world right now in its present state but that's besides the point. He gives you that magical feeling that McCain and Edwards are incapable of. The Goracle (to use a John Podhoretz phrase) might be a movie star now but he couldn't inspire lust in a woman going through a twenty year dry spell (and we're to believe he and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story)?. Now Barack working in a Giuliani administration, the two of them together, now that's dreamy.

The MSM on the couch

It is a major theme of this blog that everything can be psychoanalyzed and so let's dispense with the myth that we have an objective press in this country (the media professor Marvin Kalb's position), there is no such beast whether we are talking about FOX News or CNN which makes Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' recent refusal to participate in a FOX debate all the more hilarious. It would be far more honest and easier to swallow if shows like "Dateline" and "Primetime Live" preceded their broadcasts with this disclaimer - "what you are about to see is an opinion piece where facts and various 'experts' were selectively marshalled to make the case."

The msm are:

(1) Secular - religious stories important to other people are not even a blip on the msm radar screen. Interested in the life of St. Padre Pio? then go to EWTN, you niche people you.

(2) Feminist - this goes a long way towards explaining why so much of the msm are anti-porn but also pro-abortion, it's a Gloria Steinem thing. It also may help explain the media's heavy emphasis on crime stories of late especially as it affects women (men getting raped in prison ain't no big thing). In real life people may be lovesick and obsessed but in media land there is no such thing as the harmless stalker. In fact there is nothing but CRIME on CBS nowadays, real and imagined.

(3) Question authority at all turns, especially when it comes to matters of race - as in the tragic Sean Bell case which a Queens NY grand jury is now considering. On Nov. 25 of last year the 23 year old Bell, an unarmed black man, and his two friends, also black, also apparently unarmed, were shot by 5 NYPD detectives outside the Kalua strip club in Jamaica Queens. Bell, who was to be married later that day, was killed and his two friends were wounded but survived. With the notable exception of the more right-wing New York Post nobody in the NYC mainstream press bothered explaining how Bell allegedly attempting to drive over a cop who identified himself may have precipitated the whole thing. Now there is talk if the jury doesn't hand up the "right" verdict the fit will hit the shan.

Geraldo Rivera, more honest than most, when asked why he became a journalist famously said "to make the world a better place." Anyone else want to confess?

Newt dipped his toe in the lake

and it felt good but for those chilly currents swirling around Giuliani, wade slowly Newt, tuck your tummy in and splash some on your shoulders and then take your dive. The writing is on the wall, Rudy is not resonating with social conservatives, and whether Newt Gingrich's mea culpa the other day on the Rev. James Dobson's radio show was a result of

political calculation or moral epiphany (to use a George Will phrase)

he did what Rudy never did, admit to personal weakness and say, yes, adultery is technically wrong. While leading the charge for Clinton's impeachment then House Speaker Gingrich was cheating on his second wife with a woman who became his third (talk about a Giuliani parallel!) As one analyst said last night this probably won't bother Christian conservatives who are used to forgiving people anyway so long as Newt espouses a political philosophy that is close enough to theirs (I don't think it'll be a problema). You have to have a pair of brass balls (I'm talking about Giuliani here) if you're a Republican your whole life and say things like you'd pay for your daughter's abortion and then, years down the road, expect to get the wholehearted support of your base. Your political compass is in the Bermuda Triangle. Newt is smarter than that, without getting into the abortion quagmire he can simply repeat what he's always said, that Roe was a judicial abomination, a gross usurpation of the principles of federalism and leave it at that. Makes the cut in my book.

I'd vote for the guy.

Why Rudy still loses to Obama in '08

Dick Morris, as if to stay one step ahead of the z-man, says in today's column that Obama's support among the black leadership is not as strong as one might expect and that this in turn will lead to less black voter turnout for him in '08. The Morris analysis seems to be that he's too white but isn't this the same stereotype that Joe Biden recently engaged in? Is he supposed to be more like a rap star and say "a'ight"? At any rate if it's Rudy vs. Obama, as I suspect (as Beth says) that Hillary will beat herself out of the race, blacks will turn out for Obama or, put another way, they will vote against Rudy. I've heard African-Americans talk about Giuliani over the years and their dislike runs deep, he's a definite lightning rod for blacks. Blacks will not vote for him simply because, let's say there's a high-profile case of police brutality or the shooting death of an unarmed black man and the black leadership, feeling justice isn't being done, wants the Dept. of Justice to take over, it won't happen in Rudy's house.

There's also the issue of partial-birth which he supports, this hardly makes him a "moderate" on the abortion issue. He could therefore turn off pro-choice voters who want some restrictions placed on the practice but there is a new breed of conservative out there for whom the social issues are not as important as, say, the war or law and order, people like Sean Hannity. 9/11 does not entitle him to be president of the United States and anyway Americans are not going to elect someone who will prolong the Iraqi quagmire ad infinitum.

Bottom line, all things considered, by my calculus Rudy loses to Obama in '08. Take that Dick!

What exactly is our way of life anyway?

This comes to mind because conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza says that the radical Muslims don't like us for our coarse and pornographic anti-life culture. Leaving aside for the moment how could flying planes into buildings be considered pro-life D'Souza has touched a nerve with other "conservatives" tired of the culture wars, people like Victor Davis Hanson who calls it "one righty writer's terror tantrum." So how does one define our "way of life"? Are our soldiers dying in Iraq to protect legal abortion and hardcore porn? I myself would like to think they're giving up their lives to protect the nobler aspects of the American democratic experiment. Be that as it may why can't we just say Dinesh has the God-given American right to think out loud and leave it at that. Myself? I had a very bad day at work today.

Let's bring back the Charles Dickens workfare program

Remember not too many moons ago there was all this talk that we'd have more leisure time, technology would do our jobs for us? There was even talk of 3 day weekends whereas now the norm is one day off, in Japan nobody has a day off! Are Republicans running the show? Take chefs. Most chefs I talk to work something like 14 hour days on average and never take an official lunch break, 5 minutes maybe tops to wolf something down. In many jobs today, especially in retail, nobody takes 15 minute breaks anymore even though it's in the union handbooks, too much work to do and so people don't bring up the subject, your Republican boss certainly isn't going to. This is like a retrogression to an earlier era. This is a civilized, advanced society?

According to veteran conservative journalist Bob Novak the GOP, aka "The Stupid Party", doesn't want to listen to veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz who's been telling them how the public at large reacts to their ideas. Take NR editor Rich Lowry and conservative pundit-at-large Thomas Sowell, both bright guys but they now devote more and more inches of column space to defending the extremely wealthy like corporate CEOs and criticize those Democrats who take on greed (you see, even though greed is one of the 7 deadly sins it's really a good thing). Now Lowry and Sowell may have a couple of valid points to make but let's face it, the vast majority of people are nowhere near being rich themselves and will never be and can't relate to it. A Luntz piece of advice might be to talk less about the country club set and more about the middle class and even the poor. So Luntz is now persona non grata within his own party just like a Republican will be persona non grata in the next White House. People who masturbate your mind