Year: 2006

REACHING A HUMAN

Jeff Bauer: ‘We really shouldn’t be doing business with companies that keep us from speaking to someone in their organization. But in practical terms, you can’t exactly cancel your account with Con Edison or Medicare. So Paul English has launched a new website: gethuman.com. The site also features consumer rankings of companies and other tips for deal with intransigent customer support departments.’

ZILLOW.COM

John in Atlanta: ‘All data re my house were wrong – I mean all.’

John Seiffer: ‘The estimates on houses I know about in Connecticut were high by about 25-50% but the ones in Texas (where there’s no bubble) are priced about right. Guess they’re still getting their algorithms worked out.’

VICE

John Peterson: ‘You printed a quote today which implies that all Texas hunters drink while hunting (or before they hunt). I am a hunter in Texas. Alcohol is never allowed before or during my hunts and I have lots of hunting friends with the same rules. The implications of that quote (that we all drink abusively) are insultingly prejudicial to many of us. I am no fan of Mr. Cheney, but he pretty much just messed up like humans do sometimes. Just like someone who makes a driving mistake and injures someone. Texas is a big state. People writing about it (James Moore in this case) should not pretend that we are all the same. (For example, my part of the state went huge for Kerry in the election.)’

☞ No disrespect intended. Accidents do happen, but more frequently, I think, when faculties are impaired. It seems to me that wheeling around and shooting a friend in the face and heart may not be something a sober, responsible hunter would do even by accident.

Mike Lynott: ‘My fellow Idahoans are not sympathetic to the VP’s plight. Thought you’d like to hear a red state paper’s view:’

Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident could easily have been avoided if he followed basic rules, said Idaho Hunter Education Association President Walter Rost of Homedale. . . .

“I am sorry to say, but there’s no such thing as an accident when it comes to firearms,” [fellow hunter education instructor Bob Lytle of Boise] said. “You or someone has to pull the trigger; it doesn’t go off by itself.”

Dan Flikkema: ‘My favorite quote from the Vice President’s office: Mary Matalin, adviser and spokesperson for the Vice President, said he felt ‘bad, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violated any of the rules. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.’ See, now I would have thought shooting someone in your hunting party would fall into the category of ‘things you aren’t supposed to do.’ If there is no ‘rule’ against shooting your fellow hunters I politely suggest we make it one.’

Carol Vinzant, author of Lawyers, Guns, and Money: One Man’s Battle with the Gun Industry (America has more licensed gun dealers than gas stations): ‘Drunk hunting isn’t necessarily a crime. Depends on the state. Unlike with cars, there’s often no set alcohol limit; you get a hunting license by written, not physical, test; guns have no oversight by the Consumer Product Safety Commission; and owners aren’t required to buy insurance. Another interesting thing about the Cheney shooting: Unlike the typical shotguns that spray a wide pattern, his fancy one shoots a 30 inch circle at 35 yards. So what are the chances Whittington got accidentally in that 30 inch circle with the birds as opposed to Cheney hearing Whittington, turning around and shooting before he identified his target?’

Warren Spieker: ‘Without apology for what happened during Cheney’s hunting accident, quail hunting is known to be one of the most dangerous kinds of hunting – why do you think everyone wears orange vests/hats/etc? I won’t bore you with all the details, but quail hunters are in relatively tight quarters, with no indication which way the quail might ‘flush.’ The hunters then try to track a very fast, very low-flying bird to shoot it. It is both difficult and dangerous.’

Joe Cottrell: ‘Great bumper sticker: ‘I’d rather hunt with Dick Cheney than drive with Ted Kennedy.”

☞ Several of you sent this. To me it says you still haven’t forgiven Ted Kennedy after 35 years but you’ve already forgiven Dick Cheney. Why?

And I have another question (first raised by Maureen Dowd, I think): With Iraq and Katrina still such enormous problems, and North Korea and, well, so much else – doesn’t anybody work on weekends? Quail hunting? This truly is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America – unless you happen to be mistaken for a quail.

PAUL HACKETT

Neil (and others): ‘I’m upset by the Paul Hackett story coming out of Ohio. I think he deserves to have equal support in the primary as any ‘inside the beltway’ good old boy. I’m pissed as hell to see this sort of nepotism AGAIN. The reason this party loses is largely because we aren’t raising up dynamic young talent like Paul. Shame on the Democratic establishment. Sorry to rant, but you are the only whipping post I have.’

Lucky me.

Paul Hackett attended Charles’s fashion show last Tuesday, where I got to meet him, and – bang – now this happens. But just so you know . . . For every passionate Dem rightly disappointed by this, there is another who yells at us for not being tough and disciplined, like our opposition – because THE WHOLE WORLD IS AT STAKE. To those critics, it’s hugely important to avoid destructive primary fights . . . using that time (and the millions Democrats would have spent fighting each other) to win the general election and perhaps the Senate. So while I’m not certain those who pushed Hackett out were right or wrong – both choices sucked mightily – I don’t believe we should be angry at them for making this very tough choice. I think it was born of pragmatism, not nepotism.

Just my two cents.

Stephen Gilbert: ‘This is why people like me find it hard to care about your party: ‘For me, this is a second betrayal,’ Mr. Hackett said. ‘First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me.’ I know that Hillary or Al Gore or even John Kerry would each be better than George Bush, but not enough better for me to be very excited about the Democrats.’

☞ That’s where we differ. ‘Excited’ might not always be the word, but for me ‘resolutely committed’ certainly fits – because to me the difference between rushing to attack Iraq and not, degrading FEMA and not, favoring the ultra-rich and not, allowing the coal mining industry to regulate itself and not, impeding stem cell research and not, teaching intelligent design in Science and not, nominating judges in the mold of Scalia and not, addressing global climate change and not – these (and more!) are just too important not to stay in the game.

Tomorrow: Something (anything!) less preachy.

But first . . .

ZILLOW.COM

Shane Hubbard: ‘Find out what your home, and the homes of your neighbors, are worth on this free site, launched last week.’

☞ This is amazing. When I tried it on some Florida homes I know, the estimate was low but the level of detail was remarkable, and the ability to edit for corrections / improvements – well, knock yourself out.

VICE

Doug Mohn: ‘Do you still think its wrong for Scalia to go hunting with Cheney?’ [Yes – A.T.]

Harry Mark: ‘Was there any evidence Cheney was drinking? That would make it a criminal matter.’ [Dunno. Would it?]

Wallace: ‘I have quail hunted all my life and never come close to seeing anyone shot. There is probably a little truth in what you read (by James Moore) below.’

I don’t know anything about the personal habits of the vice president of the United States . . . I do, however, know something about hunting in Texas. And it’s not just about huntin’. It’s also about drinkin’. If you are going to a ranch in the brush country of South Texas to shoot birds, you are almost certainly packing guns and Jack Daniels and some big coolers of beer. . . .

The smart hunters start putting the guns up as they take the bottles down. Not all hunters are smart, though, and, of course, alcohol clouds judgment. There is much about the Cheney shooting incident that demands more questions. First, the person holding the gun is always responsible for knowing where the other hunters are. Harry Whittington was not at fault for his failure to let Cheney know his location. Before the covey of quail was flushed, Cheney should have considered who or what was on his right and left. He ought not to have brought his gun up unless he was completely aware of the location of all the other hunters. . . .

It’s naïve for anyone to think there wasn’t alcohol on the scene, too, or at least consumed in the ranch house before getting in the truck and driving into the brush. That’s how it’s done. And ask any of the people in the Bush administration who have been hunting on that ranch through the years and they will have to admit to that fact. The Armstrong Ranch has been used as a retreat, a fund-raising headquarters, a recruiting office, and a place to drink and hunt.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. There was no reason to delay reporting the incident to authorities unless Cheney was worried about a blood alcohol test. He had just shot a man and if the local police showed up and the vice president of the United States of America had booze on his breath, we would be talking today about something more than jokes on The Daily Show. There would almost certainly be political fallout and charges of irresponsibility.

But this is a well-managed White House. The sheriff decided not to even go to the scene when he heard and the deputy didn’t talk to the VP till what — 16 hours later? Sobriety by sunrise. Anne Armstrong went out to spin the reporters who had shown up and made “blasted by a shotgun” into the lesser “peppered.” She had been on the phone the night before with Karl Rove. Nice message work, pal. . . .

SO?

Don Rudolph: “When in hell are the Democrats going to stand together and fight back?”

☞ I would argue that we’re already fighting back (read, for example, the transcript of Howard Dean on Sunday’s “Face the Nation”).  And we largely stand together.  But both the fighting and the standing are hard when you don’t have one leader, and – ours not being the British system – the out party doesn’t have one leader.  There’s not agreement within the party on everything.  That’s just real life.

It’s true of the other party as well – take their split on stem cells or the teaching of evolution, for example, or their split on torture and warrantless wiretaps.  But they all know who’s boss, for better or worse, and the entire press corps is there to cover whatever he chooses to say.

Even so, the other party almost lost the White House last time – which would have been the first time a sitting war-time president running for reelection had ever lost – and they may lose one or both houses of Congress in November.  Their numbers are bad these days, as more and more voters question the competence and priorities, and in some cases the integrity (and marksmanship), of the Republican leadership.

Remember that Newt Gingrich unveiled his 1994 “Contract” just six weeks before the 1994 election – not 37 weeks before.  So . . . I share your anxiety, but am trying to channel as much of it as possible into constructive action.  For example, consider buying a Democracy Bond here, and/or setting up your own ePatriots fundraising page here.  (Have you written a letter to the editor lately?)

CORRECTION

Jon Frater:  “Your claim that the maximum 45% tax rate on estates over $3.5 million takes effect next year is a teensy bit premature: that tax rate won’t become law until 2009. From 2006 to 2008, only estates over $2 million pay the tax, at slightly higher maximum rates.”

☞ We’re both wrong, but my error was worse than yours.  If this set of tables is right, the 45% rate does kick in 2007, as I said; but – you are quite right and my face is quite red – the $2 million exclusion does not jump to $3.5 million until 2009.

But first . . .

don’t forget the flowers, candy or card
(Happy Valentine, Sweetness)

Speaking of which (thanks, Roger) . . .

1. HER DIARY

Tonight I thought he was acting weird.

We had made plans to meet at a bar to have a drink. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment. Conversation wasn’t flowing so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed but he kept quiet and absent. I asked him what was wrong; he said nothing. I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said it had nothing to do with me and not to worry.

On the way home I told him that I loved him, he simply smiled and kept driving. I can’t explain his behavior. I don’t know why he didn’t say I love you too. When we got home I felt as if I had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there and watched T.V. He seemed distant and absent.

Finally, I decided to go to bed. About 10 minutes later he came to bed, and to my surprise he responded to my caress and we made love, but I still felt that he was distracted and his thoughts were somewhere else.

He fell asleep – I cried. I don’t know what to do. I’m almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.

2. HIS DIARY

I shot the worst round of golf in my life today, but at least I got laid.

And since it is a day for true love . . .

Yet one more reason to spend less than $1 a week on Times Select – namely, so you can read columns like this:

February 10, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys
By DAN SAVAGE
Seattle

FIRST, a little of that full disclosure stuff: I have not actually seen “Brokeback Mountain” or “End of the Spear,” both of which I’m going to discuss here.

But since when did not seeing a film prevent anyone from sharing his or her strong opinions about it? Before the posters for “Brokeback Mountain” were even printed, everyone from the blogger Mickey Kaus to the Concerned Women for America to gay men all over the country had already said a lot about the film. (Their opinions were, respectively, con, con and pro.)

So, let’s get to it: Remember when straight actors who played gay were the ones taking a professional risk? Those days are over. Shortly after Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, both straight, received Oscar nominations for playing gay cowboys in “Brokeback Mountain,” conservative Christians were upset when they learned that a gay actor, Chad Allen, was playing a straight missionary in “End of the Spear.”

“End of the Spear” tells what happened after five American missionaries were murdered in 1956 by a tribe in Ecuador. Instead of seeking retribution, the missionaries’ families reached out to the tribe, forgave the killers and eventually converted them to Christianity. An evangelical film company, Every Tribe Entertainment, brought the story to the screen. In a glowing review, Marcus Yoars, a film critic for Focus on the Family, noted that the “martyrdom” of the slain missionaries has “inspired thousands if not millions of Christians.” But after conservatives took a closer look at the cast list, the protests began. Many felt Chad Allen’s presence in the film negated any positive message.

The pastors claim they’re worried about what will happen when their children rush home from the movies, Google Chad Allen’s name, and discover that he’s a “gay activist.” (“Gay activist” is a term evangelicals apply to any homosexual who isn’t a gay doormat.) They needn’t be too concerned. Straight boys who have unsupervised access to the Internet aren’t Googling the names of middle-aged male actors gay or straight – not when Paris Hilton’s sex tapes are still out there.

Frankly, I can’t help but be perplexed by the criticisms of Mr. Allen from the Christian right. After all, isn’t playing straight what evangelicals have been urging gay men to do?

That’s precisely what Jack and Ennis attempt to do in “Brokeback Mountain” – at least, according to people I know who have actually seen the film. These gay cowboys try, as best they can, to quit one another. They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don’t, and can’t, ever really love them. “Brokeback Mountain” makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.

That world didn’t exist when Jack and Ennis were pitching tents together, but it does now – even in the American West. Today, the tiny and stable percentage of men who are gay are free to live openly, and those who want to settle down and start families can do so without having to deceive some poor, unsuspecting woman.

Straight audiences are watching and loving “Brokeback Mountain” – that’s troubling to evangelical Christians who have invested a decade and millions of dollars promoting the notion that gay men can be converted to heterosexuality, or become “ex-gay.” It is, they insist, an ex-gay movement, although I’ve never met a gay man who was moved to join it.

This “movement” demands more from gay men than simply playing straight. Once a man can really pass as ex-gay – once he’s got some Dockers, an expired gym membership and a bad haircut – he’s supposed to become, in effect, an ex-gay missionary, reaching out to the hostile gay tribes in such inhospitable places as Chelsea and West Hollywood.

What should really trouble evangelicals, however, is this: even if every gay man became ex-gay tomorrow, there still wouldn’t be an ex-lesbian tomboy out there for every ex-gay cowboy. Instead, millions of straight women would wake up one morning to discover that they had married a Jack or an Ennis. Restaurant hostesses and receptionists at hair salons would be especially vulnerable.

Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don’t think Chad Allen can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren’t actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that’s their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.

If anything, supporters of traditional marriage should want gay men out of the heterosexual marriage market entirely. And the best way to do that is to see that we’re safely married off – to each other, not to your daughters. Let gay actors like Chad Allen only play it straight in the movies.

Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

And now . . .

SMART AND SIMPLE FINANCIAL STRATEGIES FOR BUSY PEOPLE

This is the title of my friend Jane Bryant Quinn’s new book. Jane, in case you didn’t know, is a wonderfully practical, responsible, engaging financial writer. If you are interested enough in your finances to want to be handling them sensibly – but not interested in spending even an hour more than that – this book is a very good choice.

Of course, if this does describe you, then you must be here largely for the politics. Or else it doesn’t describe you, and you want to get rich faster. That’s not really what this next item is about, but it seemed like a good way to draw you in.

GETTING RICHER FASTER

Andy Frank: ‘I suspect the Republican tax cuts for the rich are more a tool than an end in themselves. My suspicion is that their primary goal is a dismantling of the last century’s programs that help the poor. As they cannot come right out and say this, they first institute tax cuts which most people shortsightedly approve. These tax cuts result in a large deficit. Then, to reduce the deficit, we see these reductions in programs that help the poor. The result is one entirely against the religious teachings most Republicans claim to be guided by.’

☞ Bingo. (Except that they could have achieved the same goal slashing middle class taxes. Instead, most of the tax reduction went to people at the top. So it’s not just moving back to a more Darwinian, every man for himself, pre-F.D.R. sort of arrangement. A lot of it really is about helping the very rich – who during the Clinton era were already getting richer faster than everyone else – to get richer faster still.)

In fairness, I don’t think even the coldest-hearted Republican wants to hurt the poor. They just don’t see why it’s their problem. And/or, they just think that people will be stronger and do better if they are forced to provide for themselves.

Because they are right about this much: You don’t always do someone a favor by making him dependent on you. But where welfare-to-work (signed by President Clinton) was, I think, needed to correct the unintended consequences of good intentions gone awry, so many other Republican positions – freezing the minimum wage for ten years while executive pay doubles; opposing hikes to the earned income tax credit while more than halving the tax on dividends; cutting student aid while providing tax breaks for the purchase of $100,000 Hummers – are not about encouraging poor people to boost themselves up, they are about the rich taking care of their golfing partners.

Did you know that, adjusted for the cost of living, the minimum wage today is 28% lower than it was in 1956?

It is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America – and the Republicans want more. For one thing, they want to eliminate the federal tax on giant estates. (Your estate is not at issue here – it will either be entirely untaxed, as 98% of estates are, or else lightly taxed. Trust me: this is not about small family farms or your RotoRooter franchise.)

THE ESTATE TAX

Alex: ‘The problem with using Warren Buffett to argue for keeping the estate tax is that he plans to avoid it by leaving his assets to a foundation controlled by his family. When his wife died recently, less than 1% of her estate went to pay taxes. A similar situation exists with Bill Gates: he dodged the Gift Tax for his donations and wound up as ‘Person of the Year,’ when it could be argued he was the ‘Tax Avoider of the Year.’ If we’re going to have an Estate Tax, the rich should actually pay it: otherwise, we wind up with a situation where to paraphase Leona Helmsley, only the little people pay estate taxes.’

☞ Well stated, but I disagree. When someone ‘avoids’ the tax by giving 100% of his money to charity, that is a good, not a bad, social outcome. That person is throwing 100% back into the community chest rather than the 46% top rate (going down to 45% next year) currently required.

One might argue that Buffett’s or Gates’s giving choices won’t be as wise or sensibly prioritized as Congress’s would be. But I like the current system because I think (a) sometimes their choices will be even wiser; (b) at 100% instead of 45% they are giving back more than twice as much; (c) it gives them the personal freedom to make these choices themselves – unless their choice is to give their fortune to just a handful of the already best off (their own kids, say), in which case, yes, the community comes and grabs roughly half (above the first few million) as its share.

Buffett’s point is that the community deserves a share, because his success would not have been possible without the community. We are all building on, and benefiting from, the contributions and hard work of millions and millions of people who came before us, and who joined in what – for all its precious individual freedoms and opportunities, which I cherish as much as the next guy – is in many ways a shared effort.

Another point Buffett and others have made is that eliminating the estate tax would widen the gap between the plutocrats and everyone else, widen the power gap between the very-rich top fraction of one percent and everyone else . . . and concentrate capital in the hands not of those most talented at deploying it (like Buffett himself), who have gained control of it by their talent and drive, but rather in the hands of (typically) off-spring who may be chips off the old block – but who may not be. Buffett, I think, believes meritocracies are likely to provide more prosperity for large numbers of people than aristocracies or plutocracies will.

The final point I can imagine Alex wanting me to address is the difference between giving it all away at once – to the Red Cross or to Tulane or wherever else – versus the giving it to a foundation that bears your name and retains control of much of the money for what may be perpetuity (doling out only income, rather than principal, from the fund).

For all the world’s pressing needs, I, for one, am really happy there are endowed institutions like the Ford Foundation and, yes, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (and, one day, the Buffett Foundation), that take the long view, largely immune from political pressure. To the extent their boards may do a less wise job than Congress would have done in allocating their resources, I say again, well: better to get 100% than just 45%, so there’s a pretty good margin of error.

So to me, the case for retaining the estate tax more or less where it ends up in 2009 – a 45% top rate on estates over $3.5 million – if you index that limit for inflation (and recognizing that with by-pass trusts the $3.5 million becomes, in effect, $7 million) is overwhelming. And the relentless push by the Republican leadership to cut the rate to zero – while they are totally entitled to favor this – speaks volumes about their priorities and their vision. Are you sure this is the party you are comfortable with? It’s taken an awfully sharp turn to the right, even as the leadership of the Democratic Party, over the last couple of decades, has moved pretty much to the center.

SO?

Don Rudolph: ‘When in Hell are the Democrats going to stand together and fight back?’

☞ An excellent topic for tomorrow.

$57,000 PEN

Roberta Taussig: ‘In case you have $57,000 left over after buying that watch, and your Bic is running out of ink, check this out. After all, Valentines Day is less than a week away.’

THE TOP REPUBLICAN PRIORITY: TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH

It sounds wildly partisan, but a review of the past five years suggests – to me at least – that it is true. For those making millions of dollars a year, this has been a grand time indeed to have the Republican Party controlling everything.

ANOTHER WAY TO MEASURE PROGRESS

‘The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.’ – Franklin D. Roosevelt

So why do the Republicans fight so hard to get rid of the estate tax, which impacts only the rich (instead of, say, the sales taxes that also ‘double tax’ the money you’ve earned)?

ONE WISE BILLIONAIRE’S VIEW

Jeff Bauer: ‘Warren Buffett meets with many student groups each year. Here’s one of the responses from a University of Kansas MBA student last December.’

Question: Could you discuss your views on [the estate tax] and how you will allocate your wealth to your children?

Buffett: It really reflects my views on how a rich society should behave. If it weren’t for this society, I wouldn’t be rich. It wasn’t all me. Imagine if you were one of a pair of identical twins and a genie came along and allowed you to bid on where you could be born. The money that you bid is how much you had to agree to give back to society, and the one who bids the most gets to be born in the US and the other in Bangladesh. You would bid a lot. It is a huge advantage to be born here.

There should be no divine right of the womb. My kids wouldn’t go off and do nothing if I give them a lot of money, but if they did, that would be a tragedy. $30 billion will be generated from estate taxes, which will go to help pay for the war in Iraq and other things. If you take away the estate tax, that money will have to come from somewhere else. If not from estate taxes then you inherently get it from poorer citizens.

Less than 2% of estates will pay the estate tax. They would still have $50 million left over on average. I think those that get the lucky tickets should pay the most to the common causes of society. I believe in a big redistribution. Wealth is a bunch of claim checks that I can turn in for houses, etc. To pass those claim checks down to the next generation is the wrong approach.

But for those that think I am perpetuating the welfare state, consider if you are born to a rich parent. You get a whole bunch of stocks right at the beginning of your life, and thus you are sort of on a welfare state of support from your rich parents from the beginning. What’s the difference?

The idea of bidding on where you are born becomes even more compelling to me if the genie allows you to bid based not in absolute dollars, which would be hard, but in percentages. Would you offer up 39.6% of all your ordinary income beyond the first $250,000 or so . . . and 20% of all your long-term capital gains . . . and half the estate you eventually amassed (above the first $5 million, say) to be born in the U.S. instead of Bangladash or Botswana? If so, consider that this is in effect all your country was asking of you under the Clinton/Gore tax regime — money you would willingly have offered to be born here instead of there. (So stop griping?)

ARE YOU YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY?

But let’s get back to self-interest – I’m all for it, in moderation. Here is the transcript of a wise and engaging lecture by UC Berkeley Professor Terrance Odean that – if you pick stocks yourself – should be well worth your time. Men, particularly, need to read this (because men, the data show, suffer more than women from overconfidence).

I know most of you come here for the fashion tips, so here’s one from yesterday’s Newsday:

FRESH PRINCE: What a welcome return to the runway for Charles Nolan, who sent a savvy, fresh collection of strong day and night looks down his runway yesterday afternoon. He says that he wants “women to tell me they love wearing my clothes.” Trust us, they will. Superb jackets, sweaters and skirts with a slight equestrian flavor read fashion forward but not fashion victim. – Anne Bratskeir

Or perhaps you’re more the Girlawhirl type:

Girlawhirl’s heart was singing when the first few models headed down the runway of the Charles Nolan show. It was like the best of Audrey Hepburn, with a little bit of ‘That Girl’ thrown in, and then completely modernized for today’s world. One after another, outfits passed in front of her that she was mentally categorizing, providing a fabulous base for her fall wardrobe…

Or want to see the photos.

This is all very confusing to me, because it’s freezing in New York, the Spring collection is on sale, and these are the Fall clothes everyone is raving about.

It’s like 1997, when Kramer went to store balloons – all blown up – in Jerry’s apartment for the Millennium party he was planning.

It’s also ironic, inasmuch as I spent the first 45 years of my life trying desperately to know as little as possible about women’s clothing – and now here I am linking you to Girlawhirl.

Eight hundred members of the international press and assorted friends, family, high-end customers and celebs gathered in the Big Tent behind the New York Public Library.  Paul Hackett, the Iraq War vet running for Senate from Ohio, was there, “60 Minutes’” Lesley Stahl was there, Vanity Fair’s Marie Brenner, Parade’s Lisa Birnbach, Diana Lichtenstein, Diane Levinson, Peggy Kerry . . .

My role was to write up an interview to go into the packet on everybody’s seat.  You can’t possibly have time to read this yourself – you are not stuck waiting half an hour for the lights to dim and the show to start – so skip this ill-concealed advertisement for the family business and head straight for the BiDil prescription stats at the end of the page.

But, just for the record, here it is . . .

CHARLES NOLAN: The Interview
By Andrew Tobias

Q:  You want me to interview you?

A: You’re the writer.  You’ve interviewed lots of people.  Why not.

Q: I don’t know anything about women’s clothes.

A: That doesn’t matter.  It will save us money to have you do it.

Q: Ah.  [The interviewer, an investor in CHARLES NOLAN, LLC, brightens.]

A:  The idea is you doing what you do, helping me explain and brand what I do.

Q: You make people cry.

A:  I do not make people cry!

Q:  Charles.

A:  We’re Irish.  We’ve always been comfortable expressing ourselves freely.  In eleven years, have I ever made you cry?

Q:  No.  But I have cowered.

A:  All right.  Start asking questions.

Q:  Why are you a fashion designer?

A:  I don’t really know. I have always loved to make clothes.  I love the whole process of choosing the cloth and then letting it tell you what it wants to be.  I’ve always wanted to do this but I’m not sure I’ll ever quite know why.

Q: The cloth tells you what it wants to be?

A: You know what I mean. It’s a bit cliché, but my mom had terrific style. She loved clothes and the whole ritual of dressing.

Q: Do you have a philosophy when it comes to your work?  Do you come out of a particular “school”?  Other than F.I.T.

A: That’s a good question. I love making clothes . . . the whole process . . . but it’s important to me that they work for the wearer.  I think I’m a very practical guy.  (I know you don’t think so.)  The basic idea is to make something as simple as possible while making the cut and construction as interesting as possible.

Q: Tetrahedrons?

A: Simple, clean lines.  The period that really impacted me was 1960 to 1965.  It was such a time of change.  All the fins came off the car. The simpler dress was always on the leading lady.  It was all about neat and pretty and sleek.  It was still fun and young in a very sophisticated way.  You had this reaction to Fifties groupthink that led to the idea of self-exploration . . . and by the end of the Sixties it’s all about “do your own thing.”

Q: You were three in 1960.  How could this period have impacted you?

A: [Interviewee rolls eyes, mutters something about “the 4:30 Movie every day after school” . . . inaudible . . . continues:] “Darling,” the 1965 movie with Julie Christie, completely captures that moment.  All the characters make completely selfish choices. The aesthetic is great.  It is so fresh.   Still romantic, but it’s easy.

Q:  Did the cloth tell you to say this?

A:  You really have no feel for this, do you?

Q:  None.

A:  It’s all about the fabric.  And the fit.  And finding that element of serendipity that adds a spark.  I drive people crazy over the fit because that’s the absolutely most important thing.  I want women to tell me they love wearing my clothes; that they feel comfortable.  But I also want them to get compliments.

Q:  What about the serendipity?  Is this why you were baking a dress in our oven?

A:  That was a pleated skirt from last Fall’s collection.  It’s an ancient way of creating a pleat – you wet it, twist it really tight into a ball and knot it, and then slowly bake it just enough to set the pleat. But the serendipity, or the spark, or whatever you want to call it, can come from anywhere.  It’s what draws the customer’s eye to buy the garment – I hope – and then gets her the compliments when she wears it.

Q: What about big feathers?  I’ve never seen you use big feathers. Wouldn’t that be great?

A:  I used feathers last Fall and you don’t even remember?  I made a turkey feather skirt.  Do you even see the clothes?  You’re really just trying to annoy me, aren’t you?

Q: [Cowers, slightly.]

A:  I’ve always shied away from pieces with too much fuss and excess decoration.  I like to keep decoration very simple – but if you’re going to do it, it should be strong.  And all this while never losing sight of the fit.  No matter what the fashion or the season or who I’m designing for, one thing never changes:  the clothes have to be comfortable.

Q:  Is being a designer a choice, or were you born this way?

A:  [Interviewee rolls eyes.]

Q: I seem to remember from writing FIRE AND ICE that Norman Norell was really Norman Levinson from Indiana, and that Halston and Bill Blass grew up in Indiana, too – and my sense was that they must have escaped from the heartland, dissolved all family ties, and become . . . NORELL!  And HALSTON!  And BILL BLASS!  Did you grow up in Indiana?  Tell us your real name.

A:  This is my real name.  I grew up on Long Island, the fifth of nine kids, and moved into the City when I was 16.  We are a very tight-knit family, as you well know, having become enmeshed in it.  My brother Kenneth is also a designer and my closest advisor.  My Sister Carola helps run my shop.  My 11-year-old niece Emma accompanied my mother out on the runway of our Spring show, and then your mother walked down the runway –

Q:  – the first runway show she’d been in since modeling for Judy & Jill at $75 a pop in 1939 –

A:  – and I regularly enlist the rest of my four sisters and four brothers, and their kids, as well.  We sometimes drive each other crazy, but we’re a very close family.

Q: What was the very first thing you remember designing?  Where were you?  How old were you?

A:  I’m sure it was costumes for a play. When we were kids we were always putting on plays and revues for our parents who would sit through them and pretend to enjoy it.

Q: You once designed a ball gown for Arianna Huffington out of table cloths and a roll of aluminum foil.  Tell that story.

A: You know that story.  You made me do it.

Q: Tell it anyway.

A: It was hardly a ball gown.  Arianna was supposed to be the Queen of England in front of 1,000 people in an impromptu New Year’s Eve skit.  You all gave me three hours to make her costume.  I had to work with what I had.

Q: She looked great.  What about Tipper?

A:  I had more time for that.  I got to design the dress she wore the night Al Gore was nominated in Los Angeles and gave her that famous kiss.  That was cool.

Q:  And Queen Rania?

A: I’ve never made clothes for Rania. You hear me talk about her because she champions a group I support – FINCA.  A really great organization that does micro-lending to women in the Third World.  For me it’s all about empowering women.  Men have had their turn and screwed it up.  But now look at Germany.  Look at Chile.  Look at Liberia.  Look at Geena Davis.  It’s the women’s turn.

Q: How much is this show costing us?

A: We’re done.

DON’T SELL YOUR PUTS

Nitromed had a presentation for Merrill Lynch yesterday morning that you can listen to here.  I missed it, but the stock closed down 66 cents for the day at $11.78.

The 7-day rolling average of BiDil prescriptions written for the week ending Monday climbed to 263.  We don’t know how many were written under the company’s super-discounted “voucher” program for the uninsured.  Assuming none were, you have annualized sales of $16 million or so – against annual expenses projected at $95 million.

One curious thing is that about two-thirds of the prescriptions always seem to be new prescriptions, typically for a 30-day supply.  On its face, that would seem to be good – the more new BiDil customers, the faster sales can ramp up.  But, one wonders:  if only 90 or so of the daily prescriptions these days are refills for existing patients . . . what happened to all the new patients from August, September, October, November, December and early January?  If things are going well, shouldn’t that pool of once-new patients not require more than 90 refills a day?

Anything is possible; but with NTMD currently valued at $360 million – for a company whose sole product simply combines two widely prescribed generics readily available at a small fraction of the price – I say: don’t sell your puts.

WHY I DON’T ANSWER YOUR E-MAIL

‘Lack of time’ is sometimes the answer, but all too often it’s because . . . drum roll . . . you don’t enter, or mis-enter, your e-mail address. So I can’t. This is particularly frustrating when you’ve written something I want to thank you for, or have a quick question I actually (rare!) know the answer to.

SO YOU WANT TO WATCH A LITTLE MONGOLIAN TV?

Or TV from anywhere else in the world? Click here. (Thanks, Alan.)

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

As you know, Democrats who question our policies in Iraq or with warrantless wiretapping* have been accused by the Administration of having a ‘pre-9/11’ view of the world.

*Everyone favors court-approved wiretapping, and would allow that approval to be obtained retroactively.

‘The real problem,’ said Senator Russ Feingold at the Alberto Gonzales hearing Monday, ‘is that the president seems to have a pre-1776 view of the world.’

King George.

It is the view of the current Administration that the President is above the law in times of war. And the war on terror, President Bush has told us, may never end.

From the American Progress Action Fund:

The Washington Post writes, “Fortunately, a bipartisan group of senators expressed the view that the warrantless surveillance is either legally or politically untenable as currently practiced. While agreeing that intelligence agencies should have the authority to monitor suspected al Qaeda communications both in and outside the United States, Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sens. Mike DeWine (R-OH), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among others, pressed Mr. Gonzales to consider reforms.” Specter told Gonzales, “You think you’re right, but there are a lot of people who think you’re wrong,” adding later that the administration’s position “defies logic and plain English.” Graham called the administration’s legal argument “very dangerous in terms of its application for the future.” Graham added that the danger of the spying program is that there seems to be “no boundaries when it comes to executive decisions in a time of war.”

‘Now, by the way,’ the President told America in 2004, ‘any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way.’

One might conclude he was lying (which he’s allowed to do because we’re at war), or he was telling the truth and wiretaps do require a court order (but he’s allowed to break that law because we’re at war).

During the hearing Monday, Senator Feingold confronted Gonzales about his own misstatements to the committee in January 2005, when he dismissed the warrantless wiretapping authority of the president as a ‘hypothetical situation.’ In fact, Gonzales was authorizing the use of the program at the time.

There will be those – not, apparently including Republican Senators Specter, DeWine, Brownback and Graham – who would just as soon we expanded the powers of the Leader at the expense of Congress and the courts.

But there will be those who, when they first encountered this list of 14 criteria, thought it was silly even to consider . . . yet who now wonder whether it isn’t a list worth reviewing periodically, lest we tilt too far. Click on the list and decide for yourself – if you can pull yourself away from Mongolian Idol.

I don’t usually follow football, but given the mess at Ford and GM – largely management’s fault, not the fault of the workers – I was rooting for Detroit last night. When I got back from dinner, I was sad to hear that Pittsburgh had won. Poor Detroit! So I just wanted to say I hope Ford and GM license the Chorus motor and, one day, leapfrog Toyota, so we won’t have to feel bad when they lose.*

*Okay. I know. But barely.

PRETTY SCARY

If democracy is your thing, you will want elections that can’t be hacked by eighth graders. This should be true regardless of your politics. Click here for one assessment of the seriousness of the problem. And ask your Congressperson to support their colleague Rush Holt’s efforts in this regard.

PRETTY WOMEN

Click here to see Charles in the Washington Post (crows his proud partner), or here to see his Spring collection, or here to shop for his clothes at SAKS on-line . . .

PRETTY INTENSE

. . . unless, that is, it’s your view Charles and I will go to hell for being partners, or that (more to the point) you will go to hell for wishing us well.

I raise that for having just read this fervently well-intentioned but wildly flawed review of ‘Brokeback Mountain.’ (Oh, and by the way – if you’ve been avoiding ‘Match Point’ because ‘it’s a Woody Allen movie’ and you don’t like those, trust me: it’s not a Woody Allen movie [even though it is] and you will like it. Maybe even more than ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which for all its strong points, I found kinda slow.)

‘Brokeback Mountain’:
Rape of the Marlboro Man

Editor’s note: Recently, WND Managing Editor David Kupelian, author of the best-selling book, “The Marketing of Evil,” was widely quoted in the news media for his criticism of the new film “Brokeback Mountain.” Here, Kupelian explains how and why the controversial movie is one of the most powerful homosexual propaganda films of our time.

“Brokeback Mountain,” the controversial “gay cowboy” film that has garnered seven Golden Globe nominations and breathless media reviews – and has now emerged as a front-runner for the Oscars – is a brilliant propaganda film, reportedly causing viewers to change the way they feel about homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage.

And how do the movie-makers pull off such a dazzling feat? Simple. They do it by raping the “Marlboro Man,” that revered American symbol of rugged individualism and masculinity.

We all know the Marlboro Man. In “The Marketing of Evil,” I show how the Philip Morris Company made marketing history by taking one of the most positive American images of all time – the cowboy – and attaching it to a negative, death-oriented product – cigarettes.

Hit the pause button for a moment so this idea can completely sink in: Cigarette marketers cleverly attached, in the public’s mind, two utterly unrelated things: 1) the American cowboy, with all of the powerful feelings that image evokes in us, of independence, self-confidence, wide-open spaces and authentic Americanism, and 2) cigarettes, a stinky, health-destroying waste of money. This legendary advertising campaign targeting men succeeded in transforming market underdog Marlboro (up until then, sold as a women’s cigarette with the slogan “Mild as May”) into the world’s best-selling cigarette.

It was all part of the modern marketing revolution, which meant that, instead of touting a product’s actual benefits, marketers instead would psychologically manipulate the public by associating their product with the fulfillment of people’s deepest, unconscious needs and desires. (Want to sell liquor? Put a seductive woman in the ad.) Obviously, the marketers could never actually deliver on that promise – but emotional manipulation sure is an effective way to sell a lot of products.

The “Marlboro Man” campaign launched 50 years ago. Today, the powerful cowboy image is being used to sell us on another self-destructive product: homosexual sex and “gay” marriage.

In “Brokeback Mountain,” a film adaptation of the 1997 New Yorker short story by Annie Proulx two 19-year-old ranchers named Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) have been hired to guard sheep on a rugged mountain in 1963 Wyoming. One night, the bitter cold drives Ennis into Jack’s tent so they can keep each other warm. As they lie there, suddenly and almost without warning, these two young men – both of whom later insist they’re not “queer” – jump out of the sack and awkwardly and violently engage in anal sex.

Too embarrassed the next morning even to talk about it, Ennis and Jack dismiss their sexual encounter as a “one-shot deal” and part company at the end of the sheepherding job. Ennis marries his fiancée Alma (Michelle Williams, Ledger’s real-life girlfriend) while Jack marries female rodeo rider and prom queen Lureen (Anne Hathaway). Each family has children.

Four years later, Jack sends Ennis a postcard saying he’s coming to town for a visit. When the moment finally arrives, Ennis, barely able to contain his anticipation, rushes outside to meet Jack and the two men passionately embrace and kiss. Ennis’s wife sadly witnesses everything through the screen door. (Since this is one of the film’s sadder moments, I wasn’t quite sure why the audience in the Portland, Oregon, theater burst out in laughter at Alma’s heartbreaking realization.)

From that point on, over the next two decades Ennis and Jack take off together on periodic “fishing trips” at Brokeback Mountain, where no fishing actually takes place. During these adulterous homosexual affairs, Jack suggests they buy a ranch where the two can live happily ever after, presumably abandoning their wives and children. Ennis, however, is afraid, haunted by a traumatic childhood memory: It seems his father had tried to inoculate him against homosexuality by taking him to see the brutalized, castrated, dead body of a rancher who had lived together with another man – until murderous, bigoted neighbors committed the gruesome hate crime.

Eventually, life with Ennis becomes intolerable and Alma divorces him, while Lureen, absorbed with the family business, only suspects Jack’s secret as they drift further and further apart. When, toward the end of the story, Jack dies in a freak accident (his wife tells Ennis a tire blew up while Jack was changing it, propelling the hubcap into his face and killing him), Ennis wonders whether Jack actually met the same brutal fate as the castrated “gay” cowboy of his youth.

Ultimately, Ennis ends up alone, with nothing, living in a small, secluded trailer, having lost both his family and his homosexual partner. He’s comforted only by his most precious possession – Jack’s shirt – which he pitifully embraces, almost in a slow dance, his aching loneliness masterfully projected into the audience via the film’s artistry.

Yes, the talents of Hollywood’s finest are brought together in a successful attempt at making us experience Ennis’s suffering, supposedly inflicted by a homophobic society. Heath Ledger’s performance is brilliant and devastating. We do indeed leave the theater feeling Ennis’s pain. Mission accomplished.

Lost in all of this, however, are towering, life-and-death realities concerning sex and morality and the sanctity of marriage and the preciousness of children and the direction of our civilization itself. So please, you moviemakers, how about easing off that tight camera shot of Ennis’s suffering and doing a slow pan over the massive wreckage all around him? What about the years of silent anguish and loneliness Alma stoically endures for the sake of keeping her family together, or the terrible betrayal, suffering and tears of the children, bereft of a father? None of this merits more than a brief acknowledgment in “Brokeback Mountain.”

What is important to the moviemakers, rather, is that the viewer be made to feel, and feel, and feel again as deeply as possible the exquisitely painful loneliness and heartache of the homosexual cowboys – denied their truest happiness because of an ignorant and homophobic society.

Thus are the Judeo-Christian moral values that formed the very foundation and substance of Western culture for the past three millennia all swept away on a delicious tide of manufactured emotion. And believe me, skilled directors and actors can manufacture emotion by the truckload. It’s what they do for a living.

Co-star Jake Gyllenhaal realized the movie’s power to transform audiences in Toronto, where, according to Entertainment magazine, “he was approached by festival-goers proclaiming that their preconceptions had been shattered by the film’s insistence on humanizing gay love.”

“Brokeback Mountain,” said Gyllenhaal, “is that pure place you take someone that’s free of judgment. These guys were scared. What they feared was not each other but what was outside of each other. What was so sad was that it didn’t have to happen like that.” But then, said the article, Gyllenhaal jumped to his feel and exclaimed triumphantly: “I mean, people’s minds have been changed. That’s amazing.”

Changed indeed. And that’s the goal. Film is, by its very nature, highly propagandistic. That is, when you read a book, if you detect you’re being lied to or manipulated, you can always stop reading, close the book momentarily and say, “Wait just a minute, there’s something wrong here!” You can’t do that in a film: You’re bombarded with sound and images, all expertly crafted to give you selected information and to stimulate certain feelings, and you can’t stop the barrage, not in a theater anyway. The visuals and sound and music – and along with them, the underlying agenda of the filmmakers – pursue you relentlessly, overwhelming your emotions and senses.

And when you leave the theater, unless you’re really objective to what you’ve experienced, you’ve been changed – even if just a little bit.

Want to know how easily your feelings can be manipulated? Let’s take the smallest, most seemingly insignificant example and see. Sit down at a piano and play a song, any song – even “Mary Had a Little Lamb” – as long as it’s in a major key. Then, play the same song, but change from a major to a minor key; just lower the third step of the scale by a half-step so the melody and harmony become minor. If you watch carefully, you’ll note this one tiny change makes the minor-key version sound a bit melancholy and sad, while the normal, major-key version sounds bright and happy. (As the expression goes, “Major glad, minor sad.”)

Now take this principle and apply it to a feature film by expanding it a million-fold. A movie’s musical score has one overriding function – to make the viewer feel a certain way at strategic points during the story. And music is just one of dozens of factors and techniques used to influence audiences in the deepest way possible. Everything from the script to the directing to the camera work to the acting, which in “Brokeback Mountain” is brilliant, serve the purpose of making the movie-makers’ vision seem like reality – even if it’s twisted and perverse.

Do we understand that Hollywood could easily produce a similar movie to “Brokeback Mountain,” only this time glorifying an incest relationship, or even an adult-child sexual relationship? Like “Brokeback,” it too would serve to desensitize us to the immoral and destructive reality of what we’re seeing, while fervently coaxing us into embracing that which we once rightly shunned.

All the filmmakers would need to do is skillfully make viewers experience the actors’ powerful emotions of loneliness and emptiness – juxtaposed with feelings of joy and fulfillment when the two “lovers” are together – to bring us to a new level of “understanding” for any forbidden “love.” Alongside this, of course, they would necessarily portray those opposed to this unorthodox “love” as Nazis or thugs. Thus, many of us would let go of our “old-fashioned” biblical ideas of morality in light of what seems like the more imminent and undeniable reality of human love in all its diverse forms.

A “Brokeback”-type movie could easily be made, for instance, to portray a female school teacher’s affair with a 14-year-old student as “a magnificent love story.” And I’m not talking about the 2000 made-for-TV potboiler, “All-American Girl: The Mary Kay Letourneau Story,” about the Seattle school teacher who seduced a sixth-grade student, went to prison for statutory rape, and later married the boy having had two children by him. I’m talking about a big-budget, big-name Hollywood masterpiece aimed at transforming America through film, just as Hitler relied on master filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to make propaganda films to manipulate the emotions of an entire nation.

In place of “Brokeback Mountain’s” scene with the castrated homosexual, the “adult-child love story” could have a similar scene in which, as a young girl, the future teacher’s mother took her to see the body of a woman who had fallen in consensual “love” with a 14-year-old boy, only to be brutalized, her breasts cut off, and bludgeoned to death – all by Nazi-like bigoted neighbors. (So that’s why she couldn’t be honest and open about her later relationship with her student.)

Inevitably, such a film would make us doubt our former condemnation of adult-child sex, or at least reduce our outrage as we gained more “understanding” and sympathy for the participants. It would cause us to ask the same question one reviewer asked after seeing “Brokeback Mountain”: “In an age when the fight over gay marriage still rages, ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ the tale of two men who are scarcely even allowed to imagine being together, asks, through the very purity with which it touches us: When it comes to love, what sort of world do we really want?”

OK, I’ll bite. Let’s talk about love. The critics call “Brokeback Mountain” a “pure” and “magnificent” love story. Do we really want to call such an obsession – especially one that destroys marriages and is based on constant lies, deceit and neglect of one’s children – “love”?

What if I were a heroin addict and told you I loved my drug dealer? What if I told you he always makes me feel good, and that I have a hard time living without him, and that I think about him all the time with warm feelings of anticipation and inner completion? And that whenever we get together, it’s the only time I feel truly happy and at peace with myself?

Oh, you don’t approve of my “love”? You dare to criticize it, telling me my relationship with my drug dealer is not real love, but just an unhealthy addiction? What if I respond to you by saying, “Oh shut up, you hater. How dare you impose your sick, narrow-minded, oppressive values on me? Who are you, you pinch-faced, moralistic hypocrite, to define for me what real love is?”

Don’t laugh. I guarantee Hollywood could make a movie about a man and his drug dealer, or an adult-child sexual relationship, that would pull on our emotions and create some level of sympathy for the characters. Furthermore, in at least some cases, it would make us doubt our conscience – a gift directly from God, the perception of right and wrong that he puts in each one of us – our inner knowing that this was a totally unhealthy and self-destructive relationship.

Ultimately, propaganda works because it washes over us, overwhelming our senses, confusing us, upsetting or emotionalizing us, and thereby making us doubt what we once knew. Listen to what actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Jack, told the reporter for Entertainment magazine about doing the “love” scenes with Heath Ledger:

“I was super uncomfortable … [but] what made me most courageous was that I realized I had to try to let go of that stereotype I had in my mind, that bit of homophobia, and try for a second to be vulnerable and sensitive. It was f—in’ hard, man. I succeeded only for milliseconds.”

Gyllenhaal thinks he was “super uncomfortable” while being filmed having simulated homosexual sex because of his own “homophobia.” Could it be, rather, that his conflict resulted from putting himself in a position, having agreed to do the film, where he was required to violate his own conscience? As so often happens, he was tricked into pushing past invisible internal barriers – crossing a line he wasn’t meant to cross. It’s called seduction.

This is how the “marketers of evil” work on all of us. They transform our attitudes by making us feel as though our “super uncomfortable” feelings toward embracing unnatural or corrupt behavior of whatever sort – a discomfort literally put into us by a loving God, for our protection – somehow represent ignorance or bigotry or weakness.

I wrote “The Marketing of Evil” to expose these people, and especially to reveal the hidden techniques they’ve been using for decades to confuse us, to manipulate our feelings and get us to doubt and turn our backs on the truth we once knew and loved. Indeed, whether they’re outright lying to us, or ridiculing us for our traditional beliefs, or trying to make us feel guilty over some supposed bigotry on our part, the “marketers of evil” can prevail simply by intimidating or emotionally stirring us up in one way or another. Once that happens, we can easily become confused and lose the inborn understanding God gave us. We all need that inner understanding or common sense, because it’s our primary protection from all the evil influences in this world.
As I said at the outset, Hollywood has now raped the Marlboro Man. It has taken a revered symbol of America – the cowboy – with all the powerful emotions and associations that are rooted deep down in the pioneering American soul, and grafted onto it a self-destructive lifestyle it wants to force down Americans’ throats. The result is a brazen propaganda vehicle designed to replace the reservations most Americans still have toward homosexuality with powerful feelings of sympathy, guilt over past “homophobia” – and ultimately the complete and utter acceptance of homosexuality as equivalent in every way to heterosexuality.

If and when that day comes, America will have totally abandoned its core biblical principles – as well as the Author of those principles. The radical secularists will have gotten their wish, and this nation – like the traditional cowboy characters corrupted in “Brokeback Mountain” – will have stumbled down a sad, self-destructive and ultimately disastrous road.

☞ Let’s start by applauding the author’s anti-Marlboro efforts.  He and I share that much.

But smoking causes cancer (among other rotten things), and second-hand smoke does, too.  A loving, supportive relationship between two men or two women causes no harm to anyone.  Indeed, by discouraging promiscuity and promoting interdependence, it makes society stronger.  (And let’s not forget that for the two people in question it facilitates the pursuit of happiness.)

Mr. Kupelian rightly notes the trauma often wrought on families when husband leaves wife and children for a man.  But neither Charles nor I are in danger of doing that because we’re gay and so didn’t marry women and have children in the first place (we have spectacular nieces and nephews), as Jack and Ennis felt they had to do.

When they fall in love, neither one was married or had kids.  If people like Mr. Kupelian hadn’t pressured them, the damage he rightly recoils from would not have happened in the first place.

If they had had kids together – as many gay couples now successfully do – they’d have been no more likely to split up and cause the trauma of divorce than heterosexual couples occasionally do.

Perhaps Mr. Kupelian should fix the straight divorce problem before trying to find a way to force gay men and lesbians to live unhappy lies.

He doesn’t come out and say it, but Mr. Kupelian seems to believe that being gay is a choice – and perhaps for him it was.

But most of us, I think, don’t have much choice over whom we fall for.  So . . . much of the harm he fears from the society’s increasing acceptance of gay unions is unfounded.

(The real concern here may be those men – often those most threatened by homosexuality – who are straight enough to make traditional family work, but wishing they could be with men instead.  This is a problem.  But I would suggest, first, that it’s mainly a problem for them to work out themselves, not for Mr. Kupelian to supervise . . . and, second, that the chances of their being thrown together on a cold night in a pup tent with someone looking like Jack Twist – let alone with the attraction being mutual – well, I’m not sure this kind of temptation is likely to come along often enough to threaten civilization.)

And, yes, you probably could make a movie that left the audience feeling empathy for an adult having an affair with a child.  But as with cigarettes – and unlike a relationship between two adults – adult-child relationships are objectively harmful.  Adults – most insidiously parents or uncles, but any adults, obviously – should not molest children.

What does that have to do with “Brokeback Mountain?”

A friend writes: ‘On page 2 in today’s Times Tourneau has an ad for a watch (not a house) with prices starting at $57,500. What happens if you want a second hand?’

☞ Another friend just paid $800 for his watch . . . to be cleaned.

It is a grand time to be rich and powerful in America. But never fear: Extending and deepening the tax cuts for the wealthy will allow the purchase of more $57,500 watches . . . which will boost the economy of Switzerland . . . which will enable the Swiss to buy more American movies . . . which will boost employment in California . . . which will have ripple effects throughout our economy. See how well this works?

Eliminating the estate tax – as the President hopes ‘Congress will act responsibly’ and do (by making permanent the tax cut that currently eliminates it for only one year) – is the next great thing that cries out to be done to help the average American family. The short-sighted will see this as a sharp shift in favor of the mega-wealthy. But whatever student aid and health care needs to be cut back to make up for the lost revenue, think of all the $57,500 Swiss watches will be sold, and how that will ultimately benefit you.

GAS GUZZLING

You heard the President commit to reducing our dependence on foreign oil by aggressively funding alternative energy research programs. Soon his spokesfolks were back-pedaling – not least because . . .

From yesterday’s New York Times:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget. A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation’s oil imports. . . .

And from today’s Times, Paul Krugman:

There’s a common theme underlying the botched reconstruction of Iraq, the botched response to Katrina (which Mr. Bush never mentioned), the botched drug program, and the nonexistent energy program. John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy, explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron Suskind how this administration operates: “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. … I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues.”

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That’s why the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It’s why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it’s why the state of the union – the thing itself, not the speech – is so grim.

☞ It’s deeper than the current Administration. The leadership of the Republican Party – some moderates notwithstanding (and not part of the leadership) – believes government is the problem. Other than protecting their property, and stepping in to try to overturn certain state laws, like Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (twice passed by referendum), government has no constructive role to play. Social Security, Medicare, mine safety regulation . . . real men don’t need stuff like that. Only ‘bureaucrats’ (spit the word) care about things like global climate change. And tobacco regulation? Tom DeLay’s replacement as Republican Majority Leader is best known for having passed out tobacco lobbyist checks to his colleagues right there on the House floor.

Meanwhile . . .

STEM CELLS

‘Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research – human cloning in all its forms – creating or implanting embryos for experiments – creating animal-human hybrids – and buying, selling or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator, and that life should never be discarded, devalued, or put up for sale.’

– 2006 State of the Union Address

Bernie Siegel: ‘Translated, that means the White House supports the ‘Brownback Bill,’ named after the Kansas senator, which calls for criminalization of SCNT, a form of stem cell research that would create patient-matched stem cell lines. That bill is an assault on public health. If a researcher makes a stem cell line using this technique, he would be subject to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. If YOU arrange to send your sick nephew overseas to get an injection of these stem cells for treatment of diabetes or other medical condition, YOU would be subject to the same penalty.

‘The ‘creating’ of embryos, to which the President refers, is taking a patient’s single body cell (we have 100 trillion cells in our bodies) and placing it inside a donated human egg with its nucleus removed. While in the Petri dish, the microscopic embryo is subjected to an electrical current and is transformed from a body cell into an embryonic stem cell that can then differentiate into any type of tissue in the human body, matching the donor’s own genetic make-up. No sperm involved, no pregnancy, only treatments and cures.

‘Could the potential cure for all diseases be banned in the United States? The President has his pen in hand waiting to sign the ban into law.

‘Prohibiting the creation animal-human hybrids could be interpreted as preventing the placement human cells in mice or other animals needed to make treatments safe for human beings. My Uncle Oscar walks around with a pig valve in his chest. Should we ban this, too?

‘Telling us we can’t discard embryos is tantamount to saying 400,000 frozen embryos, surplus from InVitroFertilization treatments, should remain in cold storage forever. The fact is that they will be eventually discarded or disintegrate. If donated to medical science, those cells in a dish would not go to waste.

‘Bush’s exaltation of the embryo is really a veiled threat to regulate IVF medicine out of existence and drive such infertility treatments off-shore, a situation which has already occurred in Italy.

‘At least Bush was honest about his motives. Unlike most foes of embryonic stem cell research who resort to ‘false alternative’ arguments, misrepresenting the potential of adult stem cell research (something every legitimate scientist knows not to be a reason to delay research on embryonic cells), the President invokes the views of the Creator to justify his position. Of course, it is HIS view of the Creator’s intent.

‘But I remember the words of Nina Brown, a stem cell activist from Houston battling Parkinson’s, who has another view. She told a meeting of stem cell activists last June, ‘I believe God has given us this window of opportunity before cells begin to differentiate, as His gift to sustain life and relieve human suffering.’

‘A father, whose daughter has diabetes, wrote the President: ‘These fertilized eggs do not have a brain, or a spine, or a heart…they do not have a soul or a conscience…they do not feel pain… they are not human beings, but rather potential human beings. But they will never realize their potential, because they will be discarded. It is heart wrenching to think that rather than discarding these embryos who will never reach their potential, our government will not fund research that would possibly help my child reach her potential. For she does have a brain, and a soul, and a heart…and does feel pain.’

‘Where time is measured in human suffering and death, the politicians holding back funding for embryonic stem cell research and demonizing other potentially life-saving research should be held morally responsible.’

DEFINING CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Michael Fang: ‘Having to wade through your political views to get to your financial ones?’