Category: Culture

Categories
Connecting

True gifts

Years ago, as soon as Thanksgiving ended I would be scouting for the best Christmas tree, or up on the roof hanging lights, or in the kitchen making enumerable trays of cookies for friends and co-workers. I would have planned to have all my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving, but never did and about now I would be with the crowds going from store to store looking for the best presents.

Years ago when I had less money, I would spend more time wrapping the presents, creating cut outs and designs in the ribbons, making packages that people would open last because they were so pretty. As I became more successful I had more money to spend on nicer presents but less on cooking and wrapping and eventually I would find the professional gift wrappers and have them wrap the packages for me as I continued to shop in a mania of buying.

Then in 1997 we moved to a home on a couple of acres of land on an island in Vermont and I again had less money but more time because I was devoting myself to writing, my beloved writing, rather than working on yet another application that would be dull before the edge was finished cutting. In this old ranch house with its huge kitchen and big windows looking out on an old apple tree, I would bake little fruit tarts made of buttery pastry, candy grapefruit peel to use for baking and eating, and decorate cookie after cookie – gingerbread, sugar, date balls, oak leave cookies, or ones flavored with lemon or chocolate.

We had a tree in the foyer in front of the front door because in the country, no one comes to the front door, they always go around to the side to the mud room. We also had a huge beautiful fir tree in the middle of the field, surrounded by two feet of crystalline white snow, that we decorated with old fashioned fat bulbs that didn’t blink or play songs, but just glowed with rich colors – ruby red, sun orange, lime green, and that deep cobalt blue. We strung the same lights around the eaves, and smaller lights around the windows and that night we turned it all on and stood outside a moment looking at the home, on a snow covered hill overlooking the frozen lake, lights shining out in the dark. Then we went in and had hot mulled cider made fresh not from a mix.

We’ve not really celebrated Christmas since. Sometimes I miss it – baking cookies for friends, sharing warm times and cool egg nog with people I cherish. I also miss the scent of cranberry candles mixed with that of orange and pine, but I don’t miss the shopping and the presents. Especially the presents.

In California, I bought a poinsettia and turned on all the lava lights and lit a candle and made fudge, but that was a reaction to the loneliness not the season. It was at that time I looked around at all the expensive things that crowded my small apartment, and remembered the blur of shredded wrapping paper of the years previous, and wondered at what age did I learn that at Christmas it is excess we embrace and kiss under the mistletoe.

This year I decided to again celebrate Christmas, but there will be no tree and no lights, and definitely no gaudily wrapped presents. But there will be gifts.

Next week I go to Indiana to spend a week with my father so that my brother and his wife can have a holiday. Dad and I will share afternoon tea like we did when I was younger, and I’ll listen to stories of the War, and hear them again for the first time.

When Mike returns I’ll head home but am off almost immediately for additional travels. Contrary to my usual custom, I plan on traveling less than 10 hours a day, and taking frequent breaks. I’ll drive more slowly, and pay attention to my surroundings rather than trying to read the map while I drive.

For my Mom, I made this book of my favorite essays and photographs. Is this a childish thing to do? Possibly, but at her age and mine, shared time sparkles more brightly than another useless crystal bowl.

I have a bag of quarters and everytime I pass a red Salvation Army pail, I’ll throw some in. It might be more efficient to send a check, but if I were a bell ringer, I’d rather have the quarters.

For others, I’m going to shut up. I’m going to listen. I’m going to forgive. I’d also like to hold my hand out to the people who I’ve hurt or disappointed this year, but I hesitate because they may not reach back and then I’ll have to buy a poinsetta and make fudge again, and the lava lights are gone. So instead, I’ll just give them space, with a clear view of an open door.

No, I won’t be shopping at Wal-Mart, so that it may continue abusing its employees. And I won’t be buying another geegaw I don’t need that will only collect dust, or expensive trinket to impress friends and family. I will not begin to build a new mountain of debt, nor will I feel sadness at not getting what I secretly wished for come Christmas morning. I will stop wanting.

However, I am not completely without avarice. I might treat myself to a new music CD, and nibble a gingerbread cookie and sip a cup of hot spiced cider while I listen to it. Maybe I’ll even splurge on a candle scented with pine, and cranberry.

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Best blog with a female spirit

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

This is too tedious for words because I have things I need to be doing, but I would not be me, which would be remiss and inconsistent and therefore uncomfortable for you and that’s to be avoided at all costs (at least on a Tuesday, shaking your world being allowed on a Wednesday), if I did not make some form of response to this newest of weblog awards, the 2003 Weblog Awards. Normally I find these events to be, well, rather uninspiring except for the fact that the creator has created a Best Female Authored Blog award, as compared to we can only presume, Best Blog’s almost guarantee of male winnership.

Among all the plethora of nominations there would seem to be one criticism, whereby the author wrote that the award struck them as a Pretty Good Blog…For a Chick award. Both Misbehaving and Netwoman have responded, but my favorite response came from Feministe who wrote, after seeing herself nominated:

This is a sticky subject – being notable for being a female writer. I’d rather just be a marginal writer than a notable female author. While it hints of sexism, I have to acknowledge that I feel pride in being female, or feminine, or whatever, as I define it. I also feel pride in my writing. But they aren’t exactly related. While one informs the other, they are not correlational.

Thanks for nominating me, guys, and I apologize if I seem ungrateful. I just don’t want it suggested that I’m just okay.

For a girl.

Of course, one could say that this award is the result of conversations we’ve been having about women’s writing and weblogging and lack of acknowledgement for women’s writing. Many a man is probably slapping his head right now going, They wanted acknowledgement and we created their own special category. What more do they want.. True we do seem to be picky about such things and I realize that we are tedious with our demands to be seen.

How odd, though, that I read about this award following an evening spent watching National Geographic specials focusing on women: first one on the life of a Geisha, followed by one on taboos that focused on gender specific issues, such as the fascinating story of the Sworn Virgins of North Albania – women who eschew their feminine side, formally, in order to participate in all activities normally only allowed to men. It was an amazing contrast in stories: going from women who epitomize the art of femininity so strongly that this image transcends cultures; to women who with the blessing of the village become seen as men from the day they make their decision, and treated as such. So much so that they may hold any job and afterwards, sit down and have a beer and smoke a cigarette with other men in a place where women rarely leave their homes without shawls wrapped around their heads.

Completely opposite stories, and yet, they are strangely similiar because both feature women who wear a costume, of one form or another, to successfully compete in a world virtually dominated by men.

But returning to the Best Blog written by Female award. Rather than join in the voices raised in consternation at the seeming sexism apparant in this award, I want to congratulate the creator because, in my opinion, he hasn’t created an award to differentiate women’s writing from best writing – he’s created an award to recognize that which epitomizes the female spirit in our writing, regardless of our gender.

Or at least, that is how I seek to view it, and based on this I would like to offer some nominations of my own of weblogs who best demonstrate the spirit of Women’s Writing:

  • Mike Golby because no one better demonstrates the power of passionate commitment than Mike, and women’s writing is, above all, passionate.
  • Stavros the Wonder Chicken whose embrace of life in all of its highs and lows shows us life is not meant be accepted with trepidation, and women’s writing is the very verbalization of embracing life.
  • No one is better able to demonstrate the subtle awareness of others that is so characteristic of women’s writing than Joi Ito, with his tact and diplomacy.
  • Dave Winer because the best of women’s writing contains a little bitchiness.
  • Love of a child represents a sense of wonder in women’s writing and no one loves their child more than Papa Scott or Gary Turner so I must list them both.
  • Women’s writing focuses on true courage as compared to contrived – the type of bravery that rarely gets medals. This is best represented by Kevin Walzer who demonstrates courage by quitting his job to support his full time poetry publishing business.
  • Within some of the best women’s writing there is the figurative grandmother, the wise woman who sits in the corner spinning yarn and tales equally, and in the process helping to continue traditions without which our lives would be so much duller. But it is hard to find candidates from among the worthies who best exemplify this so I must list them all: Euan Semple, David Weinberger, AKMA, Tom Shugart, Rev Matt, and Steve Himmer.
  • The women’s touch is said to be delicate, so women’s writing can be no less, delicate and balanced like stones tumbled just so into art in a cold, clear stream. There is no better at this than Jonathon Delacour, Oblivio, and Wood s lot.
  • I don’t wish to imply that women’s writing is all that is noble and grand because women can also be sly in their writing; words flickering like reflections caused by stones dropped into a glassy lake, or the tongues of snakes smelling the air. To be assertive or even aggressive in writing is to court degradation or death and so women’s writing can be at best subtle, and at worst, devious. However, to nominate those who are good at this passive aggression would be an aggressive act, and therefore negate the categorization.
  • Women in their writing are aware of the past but they must by necessity be facing forward because women have long been held to be the care takers of the future while the men seek to influence the past by destroying the present. Three writers consistently demonstrate this concern for the future with their very strong awareness of the times today: Doug Alder, Allan Moult, and Norm Jenson.
  • Women write of what interests them and this interest can be natural and scientific, worldly and not. Technical writing is not beyond us, though we are not known for it. There are fine technical voices to nominate for this aspect of women’s writing but they are mentioned so frequently that they must be exhausted, and so we’ll let them rest this time.
  • My list of attributes of women’s writing would not be complete if I did not mention writing that nourishes the soul, with equal parts life and poetry, food and sex, with just a touch of mask, mysticism, and madness and for this I would have to pick Loren Webster, Joe Duemer, Wealth Bondage, Rageboy, wKen, and Jeff Ward. I will leave it to you to differentiate who writes about what.

And at the end of the list I can see so many more candidates for this award, and I sorrow leaving them out, but the list grows over long and I grow over tired. In fact, there is not a person I do not read, male or female, who does not demonstrate in one way or another the ancient and fine spirit of women’s writing, earning the only award I can bestow – my time.

And now a return to my offline contemplations, and women’s writing of a different kind.

Categories
Art

Looking for Lighthouses

In response to Philip Greenspun’s ironic question/link bait: Why pretend to care about others when we have professional therapists?

A friend criticized me for being unsympathetic regarding a concern of hers that I thought was irrational. She believed that a friend ought to care simply because another human being is apprehensive, even if that apprehension is not justified. During this exchange it occurred to me that there is actually no reason for the layperson to be sympathetic or emphathetic in any modern situation.
…
Three hundred years ago friends needed to empathize with one another. Today anyone who wishes to get symphathy for his or her troubles can simply buy it from one of the hundreds of thousands of trained professionals in the therapy industry.

From three hundred years ago, a non-ironic answer:

 

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all….No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Excerpted from John Donne’s Meditation XVII, 1624

lookingforlighthouses.jpg

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Wearing a Polite and Conciliatory Mask

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I woke this morning at 3:30 and I was determined that at least for the next four days, I was not going to make anyone angry, or hurt, or disappointed. While most of my fellow webloggers from the USA were stuffing themselves on turducken, I was, instead, going to regale my readers with delicious bon mots of wit, poetry, a little bit of technology as enticement, maybe even a tad bit of sex — verbal flashing of my breasts if you will. But I was not, in any circumstances going to engage in battle or respond to any other writing except in a complimentary sense. I was, in effect, going to put on a conciliatory mask, like these Japanese photo masks.

Well, thankfully, a couple of comments and a trackback cured me of such foolishness.

I wrote about Steve Gillmor’s response to Dvorak and the fact that he listed several ‘big time bloggers’, nine to be exact, without once mentioning a women blogger. Gina at misbehaving.net also wrote on this, which made me feel pretty good — my position on issues such as this usually doesn’t land me in a crowd. Donna Wentworth agreed in comments that it was pretty depressing, but I think Meg made the most telling comment:

He doesn’t realize that he just did a good ‘ol boys network thing yet. He’s just a dude writing about his favorite blogs, at least they weren’t all football related.

Football aside, Meg’s comment about the ‘network thing’ again, was dead on. Steve is interested in weblogs by technologists, geeks as it were. But there are weblogs by women who write about geek stuff — why is it that when people rattle a list of tech bloggers off the top of their head, they never mention a women tech blogger?

One comment, was that, Female bloggers can’t or won’t produce content that is interesting to men, which of course was an obvious troll. And yes, I did respond to it — the devil made me do it. The tone was troll, but what about the words — is that it? We don’t produce content that’s interesting to men, at least in technical venues? Or is it because when we are in this venue, we don’t speak the same language as the guys, and therefore are just plain not heard?

Still, this was a virtually anonymous troll and I wasn’t going to respond — that conciliatory mask thing, remember? I was going to be a good little girl and not bore the nice people with writing on this topic, at least for four days. I wasn’t that is, until I got a trackback from Richard this morning, bright and early. Richard wrote a post starting out with:

Okay, it’s getting stupid when you can’t even state a preference for one thing over another without being pecked to death by everyone who disagrees or finds your opinion not good enoug for public consumption.

Richard, what do you think weblogging is? We peck everything to death. If we didn’t, I’d have left this scene years ago out of boredom. If you put your opinion online, especially in a major publication, we are going to be crawling all over that thing like ants at a picnic. What do you think Steve’s response of John, you ignorant slut to Dvorak is?

There was little that Richard wrote I wanted to respond to except for a tiny bit he made in comments, when he wrote:

Of the people he did mention, there is an senior editor for Linux Journal, a person who was part of bringing us Groupware and who helped port Visicalc – the first spreadsheet. The co-inventer of the spreadsheet is there, as is one of the people mentioned in any discussion of the history of the XML spec. These are big time geeks, and people that Steve chooses to read.

If you know of GEEK blogs that are female authored, feel free to send them to Steve – steve_gillmor@ziffdavis.com.

Leaving aside the fact that some of those bigtime names mentioned have been blogging a year or less, Richard’s point about knowing of any GEEK blogs that are female authored, and sending them to Steve Gillmor is ironic considering he made the comment at misbehaving.net with a complete sidebar filled with women associated with technology.

However, he has a good point, and I’m sending a copy of this weblog posting with a link to my various GEEK writings to Mr. Gillmor — just to make sure that he knows that sometimes pocket protectors stick out.

Men have long used oppressive techniques to get women to stop talking, including labeling us shrill, unfeminine, making the word ‘feminist’ into an insult, deriding us when we do talk, and rewarding us when we don’t. They even encourage us to turn against each other, because if women teamed up, truly teamed up, all hell would break lose.

We also add our own problems to the mix. We are brought up to be ‘polite’, never pointing out that a man’s fly is open in the figurative sense. Sheila Lennon wrote about finding out her permalinks had been accidentally put behind a paywall from a comment in JD Lasica’s blog, pointed out by Tom Mangan. I knew this was so from linking to her the week before, but I was too polite to point this out, not wanting to give Sheila a hard time about it. Even between two strong women, the silence of politeness holds sway.

However, the most effective technique for silencing a woman is to not hear her speak — even when she’s shouting in your face. There’s no greater wound to a writer than to have her words bounced against a wall of indifference.

I came so close to shutting down all my technical writing this year. I have been battering at the gates of the tech weblogs and the tech publications for years now and just didn’t seem to be making any dents. Three years of weblogging about technical stuff, twelve books about computer technology, and a couple of dozen articles in major publications, and it seemed like I was standing still in my career. It was so nice to get positive comments on the photographs and the other writing, and I found myself drifting that way more and more. But though I am a writer, and a poetry lover, and a hiker, and a politically active person, and a photographer, I am still a GEEK; I’m not going to be abandon this aspect of myself because I haven’t made an impact. Yet.

And I’m not going to take on a ‘male’ persona to do it, either.

The only way we will make a dent in this world is to talk and keep talking and keep pointing things out and keep breaking into conversations, and disrupting networks, and annoying the guys until they give in from sheer exhaustion, if nothing else. Good stuff, bad stuff, doesn’t matter, as long as we keep talking.

Update

And though Anil doesn’t much like me — I do that to people a lot, it must be my own particular brand of charm and my even tempered nature — I appreciate his good writing, such as this Chicken Story:

Reheating some leftovers this evening, I was wondering why the chicken place seemed so familiar, despite its discomfiting social mores. It is a deeply misogynistic environment, filled with people paying a pittance and begrudging that they weren’t getting more for free, prone to arguing with and shouting at each other in a cacophony of languages while never bothering to even listen to the points they were arguing against. And somehow its allures were enough to keep drawing me back in. I’m realizing they probably should have named the restaurant after the place it most resembles: The Blogosphere.”

Maybe that’s what we women need more of — chicken.

Second Update

Seems that Dave Winer has checked into comments at misbehaving.net with:

Karlin, I consider you a friend, I’ve pointed to you many times, because you often have something to say and are professional about it. I don’t worry that I’m going to regret having pointed to you. I don’t point to Shelley because she’s very abusive of me, on a personal level, and I don’t want to, in any way, support that. And for the rest who are posting here, I honestly am not familliar with their work. If you want to start a blog to highlight the work of women technologists, I’d subscribe, and when something interesting pops up, I’d happily point to it. But if you use it as a place to bash men, I’ll unsusbscribe immediately. There’s already plenty of that in the world, I don’t need more.

So, imho, you’re wrong if you think it’s sexism, with Shelley and a few others (who are men, btw), it’s fear that keeps this blogger from pointing. Otherwise I just don’t know of any women technologists doing interesting stuff in weblogs. Hopefully you’ll take that at face value and won’t go somewhere personal with it. But if you do, there’s the demo of why you aren’t getting anywhere.

I didn’t want to respond to this in misbehaving.net’s comments — I guess I’m the kiss of death when it comes to dialog. But what Dave is doing here is using the carrot and stick I talked about earlier: do what I say, and I’ll link to you; start up with that ‘male bashing’ stuff and you’ll displease me and I’ll never link to you and you’ll stay obscure. This goes back to the conversations I’ve had about some A-Listers using the power of their link to control and manipulate the flow of information within our communities.

I’ve long decided that a link from Dave comes with too high a price tag. However, I consider his statement about not linking to people who are personally abusing rather quaint considering how much he’s linked to Mark Pilgrim lately, and I think we can all agree that whatever I’ve said or done about Dave, Mark’s beat me.

No this is a perfect example of the environment that Anil described in the Chicken Story — the men may argue among themselves and be abusive, but if a woman intrudes, even politely, the intrusion is never forgiven.

This wall of silence is what I referred to earlier and is the number one weapon to use against women who speak out in weblogging. Hell with that — it’s the number one weapon used against women who speak out, period.

And what’s sadder is that this wall is supported by women as much as men.

Categories
Diversity

Use the board, Luke

What’s the best way to get a man to fall over? It isn’t by hitting them with a board, and hoping you have enough strength and they have enough vulnerability to fall over. It’s by finding the board that they’re leaning against, and then pulling it away.

I wrote that in a comment to the “Beating Swastikas into Nose Rings” post, and it forms a good introduction to this one. What I was saying, in effect, is that you if you want to get people to change, you have to bring about change using language they can understand and accept – not batter at them repeatedly with concepts both confusing and threatening.

To use ‘Nazi’ to describe Bush’s use of media today will not cause Middle America to suddenly come awake and decide that Bush’s actions are a threat to our way of life. There is too much baggage associated with this word for it to be used effectively, as either comparison or possibility of threat. Tommy Franks introduction to the possibility of the Constitution being discarded and martial law being put into effect based on terrorist actions does far more for invoking the appropriate concerns and responses than a thousand uses of ‘Nazi’ and ten thousand uses of ‘Fascist’.

(Some would say my battering the bandwidth with continued exhortations about inequality of women will not lead to change among those that dominate our immediate environment – primarily white middle-aged (over) educated men. I would agree, but frankly, I’m not trying to get these men to change; I’m just trying to sour the milk for the ‘boys only’ milk-and-cookie fests. I’ll leave it to others to use the girly-girly approach to get these men to change.)

That’s why I so admire David Brooks recent op-ed at the New York Times. Brooks writes:

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

The most pugnacious opposition to same-sex marriage in this country will come from the Fundamentalists, the Christians who have a deep and abiding belief in their faith, and, unfortunately, an equally deep and abiding set of rules to govern how we all should act. They have already started their campaign with claims that homosexual marriage will be the destruction of home and family, and the door to promiscuity and sin.

Brooks, who understands these people’s language, has couched this issue in terms they can not only understand but accept: that gay marriage, rather than leading to promiscuity will enforce a standard set of behaviors as regards sexuality on all people in this country – straight or gay. He’s found the board on which the fundamentalists have based their battle, and pulled it away before there war was even begun. Absolutely brilliant.

Every gay woman or man in this country, and every straight woman and man in this country who believes in equality regardless of sexual orientation should send this man roses. Instead, at least within weblogging, we’re treated to an exhibition of virility that, if pooled into liquid form, could scent every tree between me and China.

Glenn Reynolds and others respond to Brooks’ statement:

Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.

Reynolds responds with:

Actually, I had quite a few years like that before I was married, and I consider it a good thing, though I’m quite happy to be married now and wouldn’t have wanted to live that way forever. (But I think that one reason that I’m happily married now is that I did live that way for quite a while first). But I agree with David Brooks that gay marriage is a good thing, and actually strengthens traditional values rather than harming them.

What Reynolds said, paraphrasing him is, I agree with Brooks, but I don’t want you all to think I don’t like sex. I like it. I like it a lot.

Later, when he’d received several emails condemning his free-spirited ways, Reynolds wrote:

Yeah. But my point was that to arrive at what is, in fact, the kind of marriage that Brooks describes (except perhaps for the “I am you” angle, which seems a bit creepy to me), I had to pass through the kind of conduct he deplores. Only I think that I couldn’t have the one without the other. I’m deeply suspicious, frankly, of people who assume that all sex outside marriage is somehow depraved or corrupt or instrumental. Perhaps they are projecting, or perhaps they are just ignorant. It certainly seems to me – as I indicate above – that sex is to some on the right what violence is to some on the left: something seen as so dangerous, and so powerful, that if it is not kept entirely in check, it is sure to go completely out of control. I regard both kinds of thinking as misguided.

From there, the issue then became a matter of ’sex’ rather than equality, with Stephen Green (VodkaPundit) writing:

But some people don’t like sex. Or at least they don’t like it when unapproved couples are doing it in unapproved ways at unapproved times under unapproved auspices. Those are the folks who sent the InstaPundit a “surprising amount of hatemail” over the weekend.

Glenn always struck me as the kind of blogger who wouldn’t get a whole lot of hatemail —reasoned, calm, and often sympathetic on hotbutton issues. Yet a simple admission that ‘ gasp! ‘ he enjoyed his not-asexual single days gets his inbox filled with angry letters. And I’m not going out on a limb here, guessing that those angry people probably agree with the good professor on a lot of things. Just not about sex.

Lest you think this is a boy’s only milk-and-cookie fest, Reynolds also referenced Beth Green who wrote:

Sex is the greatest thing ever. Trust me, facing a year without Nerdstar around sucks beyond imagination, missing out on our sex life is a big part of why. I spent a few years celibate by choice – being so not by choice is the worst.

This was not about sex. Not really. This was about communicating for change using the tokens of language the intended target will understand. Brooks didn’t tailor his op-ed to the stud muffins among the warbloggers – he was trying to reach out to those most opposed to gay marriage, using a shared form of communication. For once I must agree with Andrew Sullivan when he writes about Brooks, He leaves me awed..

Brooks’ also wrote:

When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.

He’s right on again – many in this country who are for gay marriage, or against Bush’s re-election for that matter, tend to use our terms and concepts in attempts to communicate our fears and worries to those unlike ourselves. We use ‘Hitler’ in comparison with Bush to reflect each man’s use of fear to obtain and keep power; and ‘Nazi’ in comparison with the Bush Administration to reflect the manipulation of media to control viewpoints of events. No matter whether we are just expressing our viewpoint (elegantly), or trying to invoke in others our own fears, the use of these ‘loaded’ terms works effectively, and consistently, only with those most likely to share the same internalization of these terms. Outside of this sphere of common understanding, the opposite reaction can, and does, occur.

I read the essays written by both sides of the fence and am struck again and again how many skilled pro-Bush journalists use terms and scenarios that would be identifiable by the so-called masses, with appropriate hooks to same. I compare this with their anti-Bush compatriots who tend to use recitation of the same facts, over and over, speaking with such intense ernestness about the evil of Bush that they are literally left puzzled and frustrated when people don’t immediately respond with, “Of course. You’re right.”

(For a demonstration of the conservative journalistic ability to adapt brilliantly, like ideological chameleons, see Sam Schulman’s Gay Marriage – And Marriage.)

But before I end this, I did want to assure one and all that, yes, I like sex, too. A lot.

(Thanks to wKen for the -Pundit links.)