The White Peril 白禍

This is one of the reasons I have issues with outing as a political tactic: Andrew Sullivan reports that a Virginia congressman, Ed Schrock, is dropping out of the election in his district over allegations that he's gay. It's hard to imagine that he'd be bowing out of the race if he were not gay; but you never know what's going through people's heads, and this just happened yesterday. The stuff at BlogActive does look pretty ethically damning, if it's all legit. The Christian Coalition doesn't give you a 92% rating if all you do is fail to support gay marriage, you know. But the only specific accusation (on the posts I looked at) is the part about ending "Don't ask, don't tell" for the purpose of rooting out the queers before they're able to enlist.

Where I get queasy about this stuff is at the point at which someone has to decide what "rights" are, because that's the only way to determine whether someone's legislative record on our "rights" is in conflict with his personal conduct. I don't consider marriage a right; indeed, as people are currently campaigning for it, I don't support gay marriage. Therefore, if someone supports legislation against gay marriage but engages in homosexual conduct, I don't see the necessary conflict. I do support the end of "Don't ask, don't tell"--yeah, right, tell me gay recruits would be rejected in the sort of last-ditch exigency with which conservatives most persuasively argue about unit cohesion. There's no word that Schrock was sexually active with men while in the armed forces, though. If everything about Schrock is true, I can't pretend not to be glad he's going down (so to speak). If nothing more than what BlogActive has published is true, though, I can't see any ethical grounds for outing him. There's no defense for exposing people's private lives unless they're breaking laws that they themselves have championed; mere hypocrisy is not a crime.

Added on 1 September: While editing the above for clarity, I may as well point out that Right Side of the Rainbow has a nicely pitched take on this, expressing awareness of the ethical problems with outing while warning conservatives who lead double lives that, in practical terms, they're not likely to be able to play both ends against the middle for long.

I've just discovered that, when making pan gravy while bopping around the kitchen to Taylor Dayne, it helps to pay more attention to the gravy than to the music. I had a good quarter-cup of drippings--and this week, there were lots of gorgeous little crackly bits, too. You just never know what the quality of the deglazings is going to be until you go ahead and bake your chicken parts, so I was very excited that I won the jackpot this time. Perhaps a bit too excited, because before I thought of it, I scooped up about twice as much flour as I had fat in the pan and threw it in. 1 second, 2 seconds...realization! Dammit! Of course, if I'd had the presence of mind, I would have just scooped some of the dry flour out of the pan and thrown it away. But my mind was elsewhere, so in my moronic haze, I figured I'd put in enough more butter to make the paste the usual consistency. I'm from Pennsylvania Dutch country, after all. "Add more butter" is stored somewhere in my brain near "Look both ways before you cross the street."

Well, suffice it to say, I had enough thickener for a good quart of gravy by the time all was said and done, but I decided to brazen it out with just 3-odd cups of milk. You can see the results here:





Note the eggshell finish, not the usual meat-juice shimmer, on the gravy. That's courtesy of flour overload, though of course I had the sense to keep cooking it until it didn't taste raw anymore. It stood up like soft whipped cream, too, rather than running lasciviously down the chicken and potatoes the way gravy's supposed to. Tasty, though. You can't beat butter, chicken fat, and crackly bits. Of course, even after I flooded the extra chicken leg with as much as seemed defensible before putting it away, I had a good cup of gravy left. I have this feeling that when it's chilled, I'll be able to slice it and eat it like aspic. Maybe on a baked potato?

Added 15 minutes later: I know what you're thinking. You're panicking and saying to yourself, Does he realize that that extra butter has cost him some of his discretionary calories?! Rest assured that I'm not about to contravene the wisdom of our bureaucratic betters and have allotted myself exactly three-eighths of a Hydrox cookie for dessert.

The Washington Blade has an editorial from NY Blade editor Steve Weinstein, effusing to Jim McGreevey about the lovely new life he's about to embark on. It's annoying as hell--the editorial, I mean. How annoying McGreevey's life is going to be, I don't know. Things don't look to be smooth in the short-term, though, and he's got the potential to stick around and annoy us for a while yet.

Weinstein does give the obligatory acknowledgement that not all gays are rich and effete...

Coming out is never easy. Whether you�re a privileged WASP, growing up in luxury in suburban Connecticut, or a poor kid struggling in the projects, the process always involves a lot of self-searching.

...but his vision of gay life is thus:

Now comes the good part. The one thing they never told you about, what you couldn�t have envisioned all those years you were striving to be something you�re not, is that being gay is fun.

Yes, it�s true. You know those guys on �Queer Eye for the Straight Guy�? We�re really like that! We really do drive cool cars. We have great taste in clothes. We decorate our homes with beautiful objects. We eat exquisite food. We know which wine goes with which dish. We know how to dance � and do we ever enjoy dancing.

Developing your Inner Gay will take some time. Be patient. Rome wasn�t built in a day � and neither will your wardrobe. [Clunk! I guess our prose, unlike our clothing, isn't always so cool or beautiful.--SRK] Anyway, you�re already one step ahead: You obviously work out.

Your one-stop shopping source for gay stereotypes, that Steve Weinstein is. By my reckoning, he's neglected only to tell McGreevey to buy a cat. And despite his invocation of central-casting Connecticut WASP's and people who live in housing projects, he appears to know nothing about the larger American middle. Those of us who grew up there weren't told that gay life isn't fun, in the clotheshorse, disco-hopping, witty-sarcasm-at-dinner-parties way. We were told that that's all it is.

Look, I have to acknowledge that the profile above is one that fits me pretty squarely. Well, I dress nothing like the guys on Queer Eye. And I'm not the see-and-be-seen resort type. And most of what I eat is my own cooking, about the exquisiteness of which it would be unseemly for me to make pronouncements. But anyway, I like what my working-class relatives call "nice things" and am glad to be able to afford them.

Given McGreevey's background, what Weinstein describes is the kind of existence he seems likely to opt for, too. But making gay life in its totality sound like some sort of country club--for once, the lefty warnings to acknowledge "diversity" seem to fit--is insulting to guys who are perfectly happy being gay even though they don't dance, don't care about clothes, and wouldn't know a jar of pesto if it fell out of the sky and bonked them on the head. What's fun...well, not always fun, but good and right...about gay life is the ability to enjoy and care for our friends and loves without having to skulk around about it. You don't have to set foot on Fire Island for that.

(Susanna and Toren, you'll like this one.)

With fantastic timing, another nuclear power plant has developed a water leak. Good thing no one is, like, spooked from any other such recent incident, or anything. And this time it's not Reuters but the Mainichi that has the misleading headline. It reads, "Nuclear Water Leak Delays Plant Reopening," which sounds to me like a problem with radioactive water (though would you call that "nuclear water"?). In any case, the article says:

A water leak found at a nuclear power station has forced Tohoku Electric Power Co. to delay the scheduled reopening of the plant, officials at the firm said.

...

The leaked water was not radioactive and there was no chance of radiation leaking outside the plant, officials said.

These things are important because worries that radioactive water actually will leak from a power plant are more than just theoretical. This past spring (the same day Atsushi and I found out he was being transferred to Kyushu, actually), the Ikata nuclear power plant disgorged one and a half tons of radioactive coolant water in Ehime Prefecture. And then--I can't believe that in my previous posts on the subject, I forgot to mention this--there's the fact that TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which as you might guess serves us here in Tokyo) falsified years of inspection reports, including those pertaining to the presence of cracks in its containers and equipment.

Wow. You usually don't see these lefty types being quite this up-front:

Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, said the message revolves around the word "no."

"We are saying 'no' to the Bush agenda, 'no' to the war in Iraq, 'no' to the regime change by our government, 'no' to pre-emptive war, 'no' to the economic policies," Cagan said.

There are times when defining things by negatives is a good thing. If, for example, you think of rights as being based on non-interference by the government while you freely go about your business, that in effect affirms your ability to pursue your own ends your own way. But Cagan unintentionally summarizes why even a lot of us "social liberals" and registered Democrats feel such frank post-9/11 revulsion for these groups. All they do is bitch about what the Republicans are doing, which is as easy as falling off a log. About as useful, too.

But it goes deeper than that. Americans know the value of restraint and self-discipline. But we also think of life as full--full of possibility, full of color, and full of worthwhile business to get on with. A message that "revolves around 'no'" in its entirety doesn't jibe with reality as Americans perceive it. It just sounds cranky and out of touch, which is unfortunate. There are plenty of legitimate questions to raise about Bush administration policies; associating them in the minds of a nationwide television audience with naysaying petulance makes it less likely that ordinary voters will take them seriously.

A question from a friend reminded me that I started a post about this Nikkei report on the RNC platform that I then didn't finish. The daily exposure to the things foreign media (mostly Japanese, in my case) think are important about goings-on in the US is one of the most fascinating things about living abroad, as you might imagine. The Nikkei starts with the part about terrorism and ends with economic proposals to increase house ownership and private asset holdings, but it's clear that the important stuff to the audience is in the middle:

外交面では日本を「主要なパートナー」と位置づけ「日本が引き続き地域及び世界的な案件を巡り主導的な役割を築くことを支持する」と表明した。一方、中国に関しては「軍備増強は時代遅れ。結果的には国家の繁栄を妨げる行為」とけん制した。

In terms of international relations, [the RNC platform] positioned Japan as a "vital partner" and stated, "We support Japan in the ongoing project of building for itself a leading role in regional and global security." On the other hand, with respect to China, it proposed a check: "We have lagged behind in strengthening our military preparedness. This behavior could have the effect of interfering with national prosperity."

I'm not entirely sure I'm parsing that correctly, though I don't see how else it could be interpreted. It sounds kind of cryptic to me out of context, and I can't seem to connect to the gop.com text of the platform to see the original English. In any case, it cannot be construed as displaying warmth toward the PRC. Since the Japanese don't care about actual party politics--That's not a criticism. Why should they?--the article says nothing about gay marriage or respecting differences.

The Asahi reports today that child violence in schools increased dramatically in the last fiscal year:

The number of violent acts committed by children at public elementary schools reached a record 1,600 in fiscal 2003, up 27.7 percent from the previous year, education ministry officials said Friday.

When the elementary school figure is added to the number of violence acts committed by students at public junior and senior high schools, the total stands at 31,278, up 6.2 percent from fiscal 2002.

It is the first time in three years that the total number has risen, according to the ministry.

"It is a serious situation," a ministry official said. "We must strengthen our instructions on how to control emotions."

The ministry official here is exactly the type that I was talking about earlier when Susanna Cornett asked about this: More children are flipping out violently on classmates and teachers? Obviously, the solution is to wind 'em up tighter.

Again, I don't want to act as if the problem here isn't real. The relationship between childrearing at home and education at school is changing in ways that no planners are in control of, and the transition is not going to be easy. But these new figures from the Ministry of Education and Culture show a troubling rise in violence, predictable based on the economic and social changes over the last decade, not a descent into chaos. Japan is a nation of 125 million, after all. What could ensure that it does become a permanent problem is dogged pursuit of policies that no longer work but everyone is used to.

Now, that's something. It's one thing for the Cheneys to talk about gay issues at a campaign stop--everyone knows their daughter is a lesbian, even if they don't make a big deal out of it. But Cheney's apparently going to appear in an HRC ad:

The ad will air next week during the convention in New York media.

It features portions of Cheney's remarks on gay marriage and ends with an announcer saying "He spoke from the heart for millions of parents. Discrimination is wrong. What if it was your child, Mr. President?"

There's a link to the ad in Windows Media format (which I can't get to work, even when I open it in IE instead of Firefox). This is weird timing, to say the least. It makes me wonder whether those people who've been suggesting that Cheney will be gently pushed aside for another nominee are on to something.

PS: Couldn't they get some gay guy who works in education or publishing to proofread that final, climactic, and errant use of the counterfactual? Sheesh.

Ooh, this is just too perfect:

A cleaner at London's Tate Britain modern art gallery threw out a bag of garbage which formed part of an artwork because it was thought to be trash, British newspapers reported on Friday.

This is aesthetics in modern life: It's possible to be a janitor who mistakes a bag of garbage for trash.

Like a lot of other people, I thought Peter Bagge's cartoon about modern art was pretty accurate, entertainingly raising points that one would have hoped were self-evident but unfortunately are not.

One of the reasons disturbing, unattractive art can be powerful is that it also seduces you with form, line, and color. It makes you weigh the degree to which you can trust sensory appeal over content, and that can be edifying in and of itself. Maybe I'm just fusty, but I find it hard to imagine looking at a bag of garbage on a table and thinking anything other than, Hey, that reminds me. Did I replace the bag in the little pail by the vanity? I always forget that one, and then I'm standing there with a tissue in my hand, and.... I mean, making art that forces us to look at everyday objects in a new way is a truly valuable undertaking, but we don't seem to be talking about Louise Nevelson here.

In any case, we can all rest easy. A new bag of trash garbage has been substituted:

The newspapers said the spokesman would not reveal how much the bag had cost to replace.

I should say not. If I recall correctly, the Tate is at least partially publicly funded.

Added after a bracing cup of tea: I've corrected the reference to a "bag of trash" toward the end of the post; as the article made clear, it was a bag of garbage that was thought in error to be trash. Nothing like exposing my philistinism to the world!

Given my skepticism about the CHILD CRIME WASHES OVER JAPAN LIKE TIDAL WAVE! motif on its upcycle in the media, it's only fair to point out this story:

Under current law, three courses of action can be taken against juvenile delinquents: They can be sent to a reformatory, placed in less restrictive "protective institutions," or based at home and required to meet regularly with government-appointed supervisors.

However, at the moment, only those 14 or older can be sent to a reformatory.

The planned revisions would abolish the age restriction, opening the reformatory door to virtually any minor.

...

The revisions would also expand the scope of police powers in investigating minors under the age of 14.

Under current Juvenile Law, police are not permitted to:

*Seize evidence;
*Search for evidence;
*Inspect the sites of the incidents; or
*Request the opinions of experts regarding possible evidence.

Because of these restrictions, police are often hamstrung in their efforts to make a detailed analysis of alleged criminal acts.

The revisions are designed to sweep away these restrictions, allowing police to deal with cases more quickly and effectively.

The Asahi article doesn't say that there's been any pressure, from the public or from the Diet, on the Ministry of Justice to toughen things up. That makes it hard to assess how much effect the recent high-profile crimes may have had on the proposed new policy. It's possible that the Ministry of Justice has been reviewing these things for years and is only now ready to submit changes to the Diet for passage, or that the review of search-and-seizure and sentencing laws spurred by the War on Terrorism has broadened to include all categories of offenders.

It's interesting that police powers are so delimited in the case of juvenile offenders. (I do realize, BTW, that sentencing guidelines affect judicial powers, not police powers, but I'm not really all that surprised about the way the institutional system is set up.) The Japanese police are famous for their liberal use of pressure tactics on suspects and, naturally and not unrelatedly, a confession rate that's about as high as the purity of Ivory soap. I suppose minors under 14 are treated differently, or at least the law is different.

Eight years ago today, I landed in Japan for the first time for a year-long program.

And I've lived here ever since. You just never know how things are going to work out, do you?

Sadly but not unexpectedly, a fifth worker injured in the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant accident a few weeks ago has died in the ICU of multiple-organ failure. His first daughter had just been born in May. I was going to say that I hoped he never knew what hit him, but the article says that despite being burned over 80% of his body, he escaped from the site of the pipe break on his own power (自力で). The poor guy. My father was burned in a pretty nasty accident at the steel plant when I was little. I don't remember it; he just described later going in and having the wounds scrubbed with wire brushes so they wouldn't scar over (this was the '70's); that sounded bad enough. Fortunately, one of the eleven injured workers was released on Tuesday, so maybe there's some hope for the remaining five.

The Japanese bid for permanent membership on the UN Security Council has been moving along, too. Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoriko Kawaguchi spoke to one of Kofi Annan's underlings a few days ago, and Prime Minister Koizumi announced today that the petition (I assume that's what it formally is) will go ahead with no promise to amend Article 9 of the constitution appended. I hope things work out.

So everyone from IGF to the expected gay blogger types to Virginia Postrel is talking about Vice-President Cheney's remarks about gay unions the other day. Some people are also reminding us of President Bush's statements on the only 3.5 seconds of Larry King Live in recent memory that haven't been devoted to Laci Peterson or Lori Hacking.

Apparently, there's some sort of inconsistency somewhere. Personally, I don't get it.

"That's up to states," Bush told CNN's Larry King Thursday night. "If they want to provide legal protections for gays, that's great. That's fine. But I do not want to change the definition of marriage. I don't think our country should."

When asked about federal benefits for same-sex couples Bush pointed to inheritance taxes which are lower for people who are married Bush said gays should support Republican moves to get of inheritance taxes altogether.

And here's Cheney:

"My general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want," Cheney, 63, said in response to a question at a campaign "town hall" meeting in Davenport, Iowa.

Cheney, whose daughter Mary is a lesbian and works for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said during the 2000 presidential race that he held homosexual marriage to be a state issue.

...

"I made clear four years ago when I ran and this question came up in the debate I had with Joe Lieberman that my view was that that's appropriately a matter for the states to decide, that that's how it ought to best be handled," Cheney said.

"But the president makes basic policy for the administration. And he's made it clear that he does in fact support a constitutional amendment on this issue," he added.

I've spent my whole adult life around people who say whatever's politically expedient at the time and force you to sift through every statement, flicker of an expression, and chance unstudied gesture to figure out what they really believe. I don't think I'm too naive to go looking for those hidden meanings when they're likely to be there.

But this strikes me as pretty straightforward. Neither Bush nor Cheney talks about not wanting government policy to "encourage" or "condone" homosexuality, which seems to be the favored formulation for those conservatives who don't want us taken out and shot but are perfectly happy to make our relationships as hard to sustain as possible. As Christians, the President and Vice-President probably think that homosexual behavior is wrong. But there's nothing to make that necessarily incompatible with thinking American gays who form long-term relationships should be able to take care of each other without interference.

Of course they're both treading carefully in political terms. That's what happens when an issue is made during an election year of something that's deeply controversial. I wish, based on my beliefs, that Bush hadn't supported the FMA; furthermore, I don't think he needed to, given what I can figure out of his own position.

His deciding that he did need to, though, wasn't clear evidence of illogic or a cowardly cave-in to the religious right. Every homosexual public figure that's twitched in the last year, it seems, has invoked "second-class citizenship" to characterize what people who oppose gay marriage want for us, with no middle ground. In that context, I'm almost grateful to Bush and Cheney for being willing to take on the subject in public at all, even if they are watching their backs politically.

Added on 28 August: Ann Althouse summarizes pretty well, I think, what we can glean from this recent clutch of soundbites about what the candidates think of gay marriage. Basically, even those against the FMA oppose it (of course, we don't seem to be hearing from Edwards about this).

Added five minutes later after avoiding impulse to put posthole digger through monitor: Flamin' Norah! I turned off TrackBack auto-discovery the other day, and when I posted this, no pings went through. Golden. Now I republish and the poltergeists decide they're going to ping five people. それって何のことだろうッ？！

Whoops. I thought I was being funny when I left a comment on this Joanne Jacobs post (how does our Ms. Jacobs keep a straight face while documenting this stuff?) about the use of non-red correction pens in schools to avoid bruising children's egos. Apparently, it's a bad idea to mark errors with a color that connotes mistakenness. Amritas caught me in an elementary PC slip-up, though [bracketed]:

Isn't anyone going to stick up for poor, marginalized indigo? After all, it has associations with South Asian vegetable dyes, so it recalls the thrift and nobility of the time-honored household labor of women [womyn, Sean, womyn! -A] of color. It's organic and cruelty-free, too.

Man, I spent 1991-95 as a comparative literature major. At Penn. How'd I miss that one? I feel like that guy in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes who asks for ketchup.

Maybe this is why my Atsushi has such contempt for The Asashi Shimbun. One of its op-eds today is by a veteran correspondent about Japan-China relations, which is a topic that certainly demands attention. I'm not so sure the "high-minded" approach recommended by Yoichi Funabashi has legs, though:

This summer, I met a number of Chinese officials and business people in Shanghai and Beijing who are well versed in Japanese affairs. Here's what some of them said:

"China is about to acquire reflexes not to make China-U.S. relations worse than they are from a strategic viewpoint and is learning to be patient. But China-Japan relations show no signs of maturing. I'm worried that they could fall into a bottomless pit." (A senior Chinese Foreign Ministry official)

Yeah, I bet China's "about to acquire reflexes not to make China-U.S. relations worse than they are from a strategic viewpoint"--also known as trying to destabilize and unseat a rival quietly enough to avoid arousing its suspicions. I mean, I'm no hardened geopolitical strategist, but I'm not a Pollyanna, either. Antagonizing China is a dumb idea--can't dispute that. Market liberalization in China, distorted and disfigured as it is by being filtered through the appalling corruption in every crack and crevice of its economic and political systems, will keep taking the country in all kinds of unpredictable directions. As a free market guy, I believe in making people, ideas, and capital mobile. But the unequal way its happening in the PRC is going to continue to cause unrest in the short term that could boil over. We can't afford to ignore that, however much we don't want the place to go back to its old policies.

But Funabashi glosses over the conflicts of principle. With unintentional comedy, he waxes nostalgic about a former high Chinese official:

In advancing such initiatives, we must not forget that China once had a leader who seriously worked at reconciling Japan and China. This person was former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Hu Yaobang, who aimed for political reform and was ousted. In my view, no postwar Chinese politicians had a higher opinion of Japan's postwar peaceful development nor made a greater effort to seek cooperation with Japan than Hu.

Three cheers for Hu, then. But, um, are we supposed to glide over that "aimed for political reform and was ousted" bit? Maybe I'm just tactless, but it kind of caught my eye. Granted that the China of today is not the China of 20 years ago, that doesn't mean that we can just buy that the only factor that makes Japan-Korea and Japan-China relations different is who's received a written apology for Japan's wartime abuses. That kind of thing shouldn't be underestimated, certainly--Japan, China, and Korea all set great store by ceremonial gestures of respect. Recommending that officials not visit the Yasukuni Shrine, or that they make public apologies to China for the occupation, is fine. But Japan and Korea, though no strangers to corruption, still have stable, dynamic free societies that make them more systemically compatible with each other than either is with the PRC. High-mindedness should not be indulged in to a degree that obscures that.

So the headline on this Reuter's story says, "US Military Sodomy Ban Upheld in Narrow Ruling-NYT." Okay. But then the article says:

In a limited ruling, the highest U.S. military court said that under certain circumstances, the military's ban on sodomy was constitutional, the New York Times said on Tuesday.

...

The case in question, United States v. Marcum, concerned the conviction four years ago of former Air Force Sgt. Eric Marcum on charges that included consensual sodomy, for his having sex with men under his supervision, the newspaper said.

He is on parole after first being sentenced to 10 years in prison, a term later cut to six years.

Marcum, a linguist at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, appealed the conviction on the consensual sodomy charge, saying the Lawrence case invalidated it.

The five judges gave considerable weight to military regulations barring sexual relationships between superiors and subordinates in the same command.

They said several subordinate airmen testified they engaged in consensual and nonconsensual sexual activity with Marcum, including one who said Marcum might have taken advantage of him. On that basis, the court said the Lawrence decision did not protect Marcum.

That "men under his supervision" puts a slightly different cast on things ("under certain circumstances"!), does it not? I'm not quite sure what the "considerable weight" part is; if you're not supposed to be banging your subordinates, that seems to me to settle it, vociferously committed to gay rights though I am. Emotional upheaval and conflicts of loyalty probably aren't as potentially disastrous in the linguistics department as they are closer to combat; but if Marcum's people can argue that Lawrence v. Texas invalidates the ban on homosexual contact between supervisor and supervised, why can't some straight Lieutenant who's screwing a woman underling (so to speak) get out of punishment by pointing out that heterosexual sex is legal nationwide?

I really, seriously hope I'm being an idiot and missing something here. I did look for the NYT story to see whether it clarified things a bit; unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be on-line. Past references to the case don't clarify things much for non-lawyer me. Maybe he wasn't originally tried on the supervisor-subordinate charge because the same-sex charge would so plainly hold up, making it not worth the bother?

Added on 26 August: I'd managed to miss this on 365gay the other day; it makes the reasoning behind the ruling seem clearer.

So you know how they were talking about redoing the food pyramid a few months ago? Apparently, they were not just fooling around. I had to read the opening of this CNN.com article five or so times before I was sure I was really seeing what I was seeing:

A federal dietary advisory panel is considering whether its revision of nutrition guidelines should let some people treat themselves to guilt-free desserts.

Such treats would be bonuses for healthful living, under proposals being considered by the advisory panel that's drafting an update of the nutritional guidance.

The experts are looking at what are called "discretionary calories." Those could be allowed for people who get nutritious meals while staying below the calories they need to burn for energy.

The panel is looking at ways to write discretionary calories into the recommendations that the government is to issue early next year, in tandem with an update of the food guide pyramid.

Discretionary calories are what's left when the calories needed to meet all of a person's nutrient needs are subtracted from the greater number of calories needed to meet energy needs.

To gain discretionary calories, people would eat a balanced diet of foods that are high in nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, but not high in calories. This could include vegetables and fruits, for instance, as well as protein from meat and carbohydrates from bread. But consumers would have to eat in moderation, so they get all their nutrients while staying below their energy ceiling.

The payoff: They could pick up the extra calories for energy without having to worry about nutrition. And this allows a variety of high-calorie fun foods. Ice cream would be one possibility, said committee member Joanne Lupton, a nutrition professor at Texas A&M University.

I've sliced out a bunch of paragraphs in a row because it was the overall effect that bothered me. Unless there's something here I didn't get, the content of all this is: (1) Dessert contains sugars that give quick energy. (2) If you want to eat dessert in a fashion that gives you access to its quick energy without suffering ill health effects from its otherwise empty calories, be sure your actual dinner consists of especially nutritious foods. (3) For those who haven't heard of it, ice cream is a food that some people might enjoy as a dessert. Why don't I ever get recruited for federal panels that can proclaim that fruits and vegetables are healthy and have it treated as news?

And then there's the creepy, solemn tone with which servings of "fun foods" are described as being "allowed" as "bonuses" to those of us the panel thinks can be trusted with "discretionary" calories. It makes me feel as if the home ec teacher had just singled me out for making the shapeliest lasagne in the whole eighth grade.

I realize that while this is pretty much a waste of tax money (reason enough to oppose it), it's not strictly coercive. But I have no trouble imagining that if, say, some of those inane lawsuits against fast food outlets result in settlements or--heaven forfend--victories in court, one way restaurants might conceive of to protect themselves against future litigants might be to make sure the set meals they offer can be shown to adhere to the new food pyramid.

Oh, yeah. I just remembered: The other night I was hanging out with some friends, and this new video by Wilson Phillips came on. It was a remake of "Go Your Own Way." Absolutely hideous, with the melody all denatured and slushed together with aaaahhhhh-ooooohhhhs and junk. You-all who are still at home are not, by permitting this stuff, making it easy for us patriotic expats to extol the wonders of America here, you know? I understand that, now that Madonna lives in England, you couldn't stun-gun her out of posing as Che Guevara for the cover of American Life. These things happen. But Chynna, Carnie, and Wendy are still on native soil, right in front of your noses. Work for us, already.

I guess it could have been worse. If they'd put their Montessori-schooled mitts on "You Make Loving Fun," I'd be on a plane to LA to scratch their eyes out right now. Then, too, my understanding is that they have some new concept album out about California, and the fabulous Christine McVie was from the British contingent in Fleetwood Mac, so she would have been mercifully inappropriate.

BTW, what did Carnie do to herself? I'm glad that, being morbidly obese, she was able to get surgery and bring her weight and health under control. But she used to have that gorgeous, glossy dark hair and mischievous eyes that were really set off by her plumpness. And she was the only one of the three with an actual vocal personality--Chynna and Wendy both looked and sang like Barbie dolls. Now all three of them have the same weedy hair and muddy make-up. It's a shame.

I know I have this tendency to point out Japan-related stories and then kind of drop them. I figure that interested people are probably looking at the same news sources I do. For anyone who's been wondering, though:

Charles Jenkins--US Army deserter, defecter to North Korea, and husband of Japanese abductee Hitomi Soga--is considering making a plea bargain to avoid being imprisoned by the US, with which Japan has a mutual extradition treaty.

Mitsubishi-Tokyo Financial Group and UFJ Holdings are moving ahead with their plan to create the Bank That Ate the World, despite noises from Mitsui-Sumitomo Financial Group about UFJ's broken promises and its own continued desire for a merger (especially the trust banks, I believe). UFJ is in bad shape; MTFG has actually officially repaid its federal bailout, so the idea is for money to start flowing UFJ-ward as soon as possible.

Speaking of banks, Ashikaga Bank (for anyone who knows The Princess Mononoke, that's the same compound as the hero's name: 足利) will be the object of first bank bailout in a few years. Ashikaga had bad credit totalling around 36,000,000,000 yen (US $327,000,000). I don't know whether there's a connection, but it's also well-known here as the only Japanese financial institution with normal relations with DPRK banks.

Amritas writes that Arthur Golden's book Memoirs of a Geisha is going to be made into a movie. Now that it's mentioned, I'm surprised it didn't happen long ago, when the book was an event.

Not that I'm sad the movie hasn't been made or eager to see it once it is. I hated that freakin' book. And for once, I'm not heaping the usual Japan specialist's disdain on someone who didn't get things right. Golden has a lot of experience in Japan, by all accounts--and while the cutesy, contrived is-it-fact-or-fiction controversy was annoying, there were many passages that seemed genuinely revelatory of contours in Japanese thinking. (I should note, though, that the book is set in Kyoto and all my experience in Japan has been here in the Tokyo-Yokohama area.)

No, what I detested about Memoirs of a Geisha were two things. One was its prose. People writing about Japan or in the voices of Japanese characters just can't stop themselves from giving each word equal rhythmic weight. You know, that every-syllable-is-a-cherry-blossom-petal-floating-softly-to-the-surface-of-the-lake -while-a-crane-glides-by monotone that's supposed to convey Zen-like contemplativeness, or something. There are writers whom it's hard to translate without slipping into that, even if you try to put some gusto into it; Kawabata Yasunari is notorious for being difficult that way, for example. In Golden's case, he was probably just giving the paying customers what they want out of their Japan fantasies.

I'd imagine that's the source of my second problem with the book, also. That is, Golden breaks faith with his readers from the very first paragraph:

Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, "That afternoon when I met so-and-so...was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon." I expect you might put down your teacup and say, "Well, now, which was it? Was it the best or the worst? Because it can't possibly have been both!" Ordinarily I'd have to laugh at myself and agree with you.

Surely Golden could reasonably assume that the way many in his book's potential readership were introduced to the very concept of the great novel was through reading Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities in junior high school (at least, those of us who managed to squeak through before Dickens was thrown over for Toni Morrison). It's hard to follow Sayuri into the world of the geisha when one is involuntarily giggling at the thought of putting down one's chocolate (dutifully fussed over by four servants, of course) with a rattle and demanding, "Well, now, which was it? The best of times or the worst of times? Wisdom or foolishness? Come on! Belief or incredulity? Which, then? Huh? HUH?"

But even for people who don't remember their Dickens, this opening is a micalculation. It's exactly because we've all felt simultaneously happy and sad, or triumphant and frustrated, that we go to novelists. The great ones, from Dickens to Austen to Melville, help us sort out and interpret and contextualize our own conflicts. The lesser-but-fun ones, like Agatha Christie, entertain us by turning human conflict into puzzle or drama. But whatever you're looking for in a novel, contradictory feelings are part of it. This passage requires you to confront, consciously, the certainly that Golden thinks either you or his own narrator is a simpleton. And that's before you even turn the first page.

Of course, things get worse from there. Golden can't be content to get some sexy good fun out of the fact that he's writing about geisha. Whenever something amusingly trashy happens--the heavy-handed way our heroine's rival descends from being one of the most popular and classiest performers to being a prostitute in the gutter is only the most obvious example--you're not allowed to just enjoy the pulpy soap-operaness. Golden has to have Sayuri jerk back into that reflective tone that signals Mysterious Oriental Wisdom, as if she'd taken a wrong turn and ended up in The Joy Luck Club.

All in all, an annoying read. The movie might actually be an improvement if it just gives way to stereotypes and, without asking to be taken seriously, titillates people for an hour or two.

Finally got around to putting the new banner up. Connie, if you're having trouble seeing it again, please let me know. There shouldn't be a problem, though, since this one isn't done with a background image.

Is Golan Cipel hot? That's not a rhetorical question that ends with an implied "or what, baby-baby!" I mean, you look at some photographs, and you're like, Hello! This dude really needs to do a photo session with Kobi Israel, barechested and sitting on a mattress (no sheets--just the ticking) and maybe eating a handful of sloppy joe from a paper plate.

Okay, fine. You've got a picture of two guys in dinner jackets who look as if they're going to start making out as soon as the photographer leaves. I'd probably be hot for William Demarest if you caught him in that kind of pose.

Even so, there are others that are like...okay, David Byrne with a little more meat on him and not so bug-eyed. Maybe I kind of see it. But couldn't the Gov. find someone to fill that bill in Bergen County?

A visitor from Susanna Cornett's site sent me a very polite inquiry about this story from down her way:

When Mike Johnson, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents conservative politicians and "pro-family" organizations, called Rawls a "homosexual," Rawls charged at Johnson. Rawls' voice rose and his face turned red, and he approached Johnson, pointed his finger at him and labeled him a "homophobe."

"I am not a homosexual," Rawls angrily told Johnson. "I am a gay man."

Rawls considers the term "homosexual" derogatory. "No one calls me the 'h' word," he said later.

Johnson said Rawls had berated him earlier that morning by calling him a member of the "radical, religious right" in a television debate they taped to be aired Sunday on WDSU-TV.

"He just went nuts. I was shocked by it," Johnson said of the courtroom encounter. "He lunged at me because I used the word 'homosexual.' I thought that was an appropriate term, I didn't know it was derogatory."

I wish this surprised me, but it doesn't particularly. It just happens to be the gay version of one of the most unpleasant features of contemporary American culture: the practice of fantasizing into existence one's own arbitrary system of etiquette and then going ballistic on people who unwittingly violate it. Janis Gore, who kindly gave me the link to the original story and then to her own take on it, sensibly says,

When did the term 'homosexual' become derogatory? 'Homo' has never been a neutral word, but 'homosexual' is a descriptive term, like its siblings 'heterosexual', 'bisexual' and 'asexual', isn't it?

It is a bit more complicated than that. One sometimes hears social conservatives proclaim that they refuse to use gay to mean "homosexual" because they're standing firm against the corruption of a useful word without any good equivalent. I find that explanation improbable. Considering their presumed civic-mindedness about the usage of our great native tongue, such people don't seem to get around to complaining much about the slipshod way people use infer/imply, or disinterested/uninterested, or momentarily/in a moment. And I have a funny feeling that when the slang use of gay to mean "homosexual" had connotations of promiscuity and chirpy light-in-the-loaferness, they might not have been such sticklers. What does seem to irritate them is that, unlike the medical homosexual, gay is neutral and doesn't retain even a trace of pathological implications.

I've been known to call such people on what I see as their disingenuousness--most of them don't exactly try to hide their disapproval of homosexuality, so why they need to make a great show of language persnicketiness to dress up this particular aspect of it is beyond me--but I don't really care what word they use as long as they don't try to keep me off my man. I probably reach for the word gay more often than I do homosexual, but on this site, I yak about gay stuff so frequently that if I didn't have more than one word to choose from, I'd start to sound like a broken record. Come to think of it, when I'm feeling especially playful or nettled, I throw the word fag around quite a bit. I think I've used invert here once or twice, too.

So Rawls's reaction doesn't make much sense to me, but some people will never miss a chance to work themselves into a froth of indignation. One might actually dispute his use of the word homophobia to characterize someone who wasn't expressing any skittishness, let alone irrational fear and hatred, toward homosexuality. But I can understand why Johnson either was too shocked to do so or just figured it was best to let the matter drop.

Added on 22 August: Mike A. from Ex-Gay Watch has a post relevant to the topic here that links to the predictable reaction to Rawls's outburst by World Net Daily.

Florida isn't the only place being hammered by bad weather. Typhoon 15 has been pounding western Japan; 5 people have been killed and 2 are missing. Actually, that was as of 6 p.m., so the number may be higher now. Luckily, Atsushi's city is getting wind and rain but is on the periphery of the storm. Let's hope there are no more casualties. Japan is, of course, mountainous; many areas are prone to mudslides.

Speaking of destructive forces, the juche ideal is doing its usual sterling job of keeping the people of North Korea fed and secure...so much so that yet again, 15 people have entered the South Korean embassy in Beijing seeking asylum. (BTW, there's a word for escaping from North Korea that...I think it existed before, but I've never seen it used in Japanese newspapers to refer to anything else: 脱北　["escape to the north"]. Desperation to get out of that hellhole is such a fixture of the news that it essentially has its own dedicated kanji compound.)

So it looks as if the recently announced US troop realignment in Europe and Asia will affect Korea but not Japan. (That second link goes to The Daily Yomiuri, which doesn't have separate URL's for each article. It's the one headlined "Govt Unfazed over Changes," and I was just lucky that I guessed which changes they were talking about.) Well, apparently, Korea and the US are "consulting" about the proposal to decrease by 12500 the number of armed forces personnel (currently 37000) in Korea and have come to a provisional agreement. The Asahi says that the number of soldiers stationed here may actually increase. The Yomiuri article also contains this comforting passage:

In the talks, the Japanese side repeatedly emphasized that the most important thing was to maintain the deterrent effect of U.S. forces in the region.

Even if U.S. forces in East Asia are reduced, a Defense Agency official said, "it's unlikely the realignment will prompt North Korea to cause a military emergency."

But there's also the PRC to worry about, especially since it's been making noises again over Taiwan's attempts to join the UN (or rejoin, since as CNN notes, the Chinese seat was taken from Taiwan and given to the Mao-era mainland in 1971).

The title, BTW, means that the post contains scattered thoughts. The compound 投票 doesn't mean "scattered thoughts." It means "vote," literally "cast" + "ballot."

*****

Ann Althouse has been writing about her idea of independent political views. She describes the people that partisans are getting impatient with for just being plain dithery when they know they're going to vote the way they always do anyway, and then says:

I'm really not one of those people. I'm one of the people whose politics were changed by 9/11. Prior to 9/11, my disagreement with the social conservatives kept me from having much of any interest in Republican presidential candidates. After 9/11, I became quite bonded to George Bush. If I had to vote today, I would vote for Bush, because at this point, I cannot trust Kerry on security matters. Kerry has allowed himself to stand for so many different things, according to what is expedient at the moment. I didn't buy the strong-on-security pitch of the convention, which I know was aimed at shoring up support from centrists like me. The problem there is that I just don't believe them. (And I note that I've just written "them" and not Kerry. I was going to edit that out, but I'm going to leave it in, because it signifies my queasy feeling that Kerry is a device for returning to power a party that doesn't stand for much of any of the things that were promoted at the convention.) What would appeal to me from the Republican side, along with a convincing case that they really are competent about the security issues we assume they care more about, would be a more libertarian approach to social issues.

There certainly are those who seem to get off on calling themselves "independent" because it connotes free-spiritedness, which makes them feel dashing. Others want to cobble together a set of beliefs on policy that feel good to them but aren't consistent with each other, and they're too lazy (or fearful of giving up comforting but untenable ideas) to sort them out.

Personally, I have no objection to being easily categorizable. I don't want people just presuming without basis that I think this or that, but I don't think eclecticism is a political value in and of itself. From reading Prof. Althouse, I think I may be somewhat to the right of her on social issues, though she would probably find it easier to be welcomed into the Republican Party if she defected. In any case, I feel much the same about the Presidential candidates and the Democratic Convention as she does. I don't mind that I don't agree 100% with either party's platform; that's life. I don't mind that there are people with whom I probably agree on 95% of policy issues who still see me as an enemy because of the gay thing. Well, I mind, but they have as much right not to budge as I do.

What I mind is the say-anything-to-get-elected-and-start-worrying-about-what-to-do-after-you're-handed-the-goody-bag mentality. I'm nothing close to a Bush fan, though he's a very likable kind of guy. It's hard to buy that all the compromises he makes are actually part of a grand rope-a-dope scheme to triumph over his opponents. I'm also not sent by the designation "man of faith," though I recognize that sincere religious conviction is often a welcome indicator of non-flakiness.

Perhaps Kerry would, once installed, be a non-flaky President, too. But at this point, I feel as if voting for Kerry would be buying a pig in a poke.

[Wait a minute. We don't talk like that where I grew up....]

I feel as if voting for Kerry would be an act of faith in and of itself. At least I know what I think Bush does well and badly, and I can be pretty sure we'll be in decent (not great, but decent) shape when he leaves office. This whole thing--never thought I'd see the day when I said this--is making me nostalgic for the 2000 election.

Okay, a few weeks ago, CNN reported that Democrats Abroad Japan was pulling out all the stops to recruit voters among American expats here. They mentioned--I swear it was mixed in with talking about people who'd come from the States to be celeb draws--that a Terry MacMillan was helping to get out the vote. I assumed it was the novelist who wrote, among others, Waiting to Exhale. Looks as if I spoke too soon; Terri MacMillan is a musician who lives here in Tokyo and is a higher-up with DAJ. I'd seen Terry McMillan (the novelist) interviewed a few times and just thought she'd done an image change, but I was wrong. Sorry about that.

Since I'm officially registered as a Democrat, and I'm in Japan, I decided to click on a few of the links at the right of the DAJ site. I sent to my county for my absentee ballot yesterday, but I was interested to see what the voter registration sites looked like. The one that most interested me was overseasvote.com. For reasons I can't quite identify, I was a little unsettled by the exhortations to non-US citizens to encourage their American friends to vote. That doesn't interfere in any way with the political process, so I'm not sure what the sticking point is.

It's probably part of my more general feeling that I'd rather people not vote if they have to be caressed and cooed and cajoled into doing so. I'm not speaking about ethics here, really; I know that it's DAJ's job to get as many people to vote Democratic as possible, and I don't think there's anything wrong with what they're doing. You know, the explanations and FAQ lists and things. (It's only fair to point out that Republicans Abroad Japan says this on its voter registration page: "RAJ maintains a strictly nonpartisan approach to our voter outreach and registration program. We do not ask Americans seeking to register to vote their party affiliation. Nor do we advocate voting stances on either issues or candidates. We believe that Americans, when allowed to decide for themselves, free of any political pressure, will choose to vote Republican." It'd be nice if the DAJ site struck that tone, but that's a quibble.) But one of the pages says something to the effect that most people don't vote because the process is confusing.

Oh? I mean, fine, it was a little complicated registering my first time. Those of you who've never lived abroad may not have had reason to think about this, but the residency you declare of course affects whose tax laws apply to you. For example, Pennsylvania doesn't tax you on money earned abroad; you don't even have to file a return. In other states, you do. We all have to file a federal return--you can run, but you can't hide--however, you get the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion on everything up to a specified amount. Some people haven't lived at home for years and are simply unsure where there residence is supposed to be. So there's kind of a crazy quilt of rules to think about. That's true enough.

Still, I'm sorry, it's not that confusing. If you're an intelligent person interested in exercising one of his fundamental rights as a US citizen, surely it's worth the five-minute mental exertion needed to figure out where your official residence at home is. If you Google "united states citizen abroad vote register," you can refer to pages based at US embassies around the globe that tell you what you need to do and what criteria you can use when you have to make judgment calls. It's a multi-step but not baffling process. I'm far from the first person to say this, but if you can't bestir yourself to take an hour or two (for someone who's lived a very complicated life) to figure out how to vote, I don't see why anyone should have to come after you.

You know, I still think of myself as a commenter on a handful of my favorite blogs who just happens to have a site of his own, dilettante-like, now. I kind of looked through the features my host had because I wanted to know how to set up e-mail at my domain and stuff. Didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the stats pages. But over the last few days, my host (Verve) changed servers, so the layouts and things are new, and I decided to see what I could see.

Sakes alive.

There are actually people reading this. Estimating as well as I can based on the fact that (like me) there are probably quite a few people who click through from different ISP's at different times of day, it looks as if I may have 100 regulars and change. Never expected that. I mean, of course, if I'd thought I was going to be writing pointless bilge, I wouldn't have started. But the combination of Japan expat + gay stuff + how-the-world-would-be-better-if-everyone-just-listened-to-me stuff seems to me to be a real niche among niche markets. But I suppose there are 100 people of just about any type you name in the world.

So anyway, I occasionally write gushy letters of thanks to my favorite bloggers, several of whom do me the honor of visiting here, for providing an American-style forum where you can debate ideas aggressively without people's taking things personally all the time. Thanks to them again for the links that probably brought most of you here. And thanks to the people who are reading. I have yet to receive a single disrespectful comment or e-mail--lest anyone get any big ideas, I'm not saying that to issue a challenge, though I know I'll get clobbered eventually, the 'net being what it is. To my knowledge, no one's linked to me for the express purpose of talking about what a stupid jerk I am. I've been very, very fortunate with the site, as with the rest of my life. Thanks to all.

The other thing I saw when I looked at my stats page was, of course, the search keyphrases that had led people to the site. There were, apparently, four searches for "sean kinsell," which means there could be people who know me from "real" life lurking here at this very moment. The one that made me laugh, though, was "how to detect a gay guy?" I'm not infoplease, and I don't know whether whoever put that phrase in has kept reading here. (I hope it wasn't Dina McGreevey, although if it was, she shouldn't still need an answer.) But just in case: If a guy has a pink, purple, and green website with a category labeled "i like men" in two languages, you should assume he's gay.

There, don't say you've never learned anything from me.

And thanks again for reading.

Narita and Kansai International Airports are talking about tightening up security again. They're going to create a single intelligence center to deal with information on illegal entrants and, presumably, terrorist suspects. This is a good thing; you wouldn't expect it in a country with such a highly-developed bureaucracy, but coordination among agencies (and departments with agencies) vertically is not something Japanese organizational structures are strong in. In my experience, the people who work at departures/immigration are very thorough, but I have little trouble believing that the information they work with on actual people is very scattershot. (As a point of reference, there were 8000 people denied entrance at those two airports last year, up 9% from 2002.) Let's hope the new body devotes itself to addressing the problem and doesn't get caught up in the cycle of finding new ways to score and spend appropriations.

BTW, I haven't really heard anything about the case of the al Qaeda associate they think might have been money laundering and setting up a cell in Niigata last year.

The requisite Jonathan Rauch piece about the McGreevey resignation is up at The New York Times. As is frequently the case lately, I agree wholeheartedly with about 80% of what he writes and have reservations about the other 20%. Rauch thinks that the bizarre circumstances surrounding McGreevey's climactic announcement make the whole thing so weird that it won't really affect gay advocacy, but he himself can't resist taking the opportunity to use it to plug for gay marriage. Here's the middle of the article:

I coped by struggling for years to suppress every sexual and romantic urge. I convinced myself that I could never love anybody, until the strain of denial became too much to bear.

Others coped differently. Some threw themselves into rebellion against marriage and the bourgeois norms it seemed to represent. Some, to their credit, built firmly coupled gay lives without the social support and investment that marriage brings. And some, determined to lead "normal" lives (meaning, largely, married lives), married.

At what point Mr. McGreevey realized and acknowledged he was gay I don't know. I do know that many gay husbands begin by denying and end by deceiving. Perhaps that was so in his case.

That's a nicely even-tempered way of putting it. But given that this is an op-ed, in which opinions and editorializing are expected, is it too much to ask for even a parenthetical acknowledgement that the kind of coping that involves long-term deception is wrong?

It's true that we don't know exactly when McGreevey realized he was a gay American [Cue: Rapturous applause by assembled press corps], but it appears that his sexuality has been pretty much an open secret for at least several years. No human being can make the best decision in every difficult circumstance he ever encounters. But even so, people don't just wake up one morning, after a lifetime of doing their best to live decently and honorably, to find that they have to deal with two sham marriages, accusations of cronyism and corruption, a possible sexual harassment lawsuit, and a sudden desire to resign as Governor of the ninth-most populous state in the Union. And while I understand that I don't know first-hand what life was like when the gay men and lesbians now in their 40's were my age and younger, the fact remains that 1979 was over some time ago. Fags get 365 days in a year just like everyone else; on any one of them before last week, McGreevey could have faced up to reality and started being honest.

In other words, if the accusations against him are true, McGreevey's problem is self-centeredness. That's a character flaw that, to coin a phrase, does not discriminate based on sexual orientation--as the reality of sex and corruption scandals among straight politicians attests. Nevertheless, the craftily self-serving among us gays have learned that they can get sympathy by playing the emotional-upheaval card when their misdeeds catch up with them.

It's a poor idea to abet such a maneuver. I think McGreevey's case makes an excellent argument for being honest with yourself and others, conquering your fears, and coming out of the closet sooner rather than later; it does not help the argument that gays are responsible enough for marriage.

Note: I guess I should point out that I know the reporters actually at his press conference weren't applauding; it was apparently the newsroom at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Look at this story. The headline says, "Cuba's Brilliant Ballerinas Wow Dance World." The spin of the story is that, unlike nasty, evil capitalist countries where people have to pay for dance lessons, Cuba has a national ballet whose grande dame plucks the talented from the streets and turns them, for free, into world-class performers. The article is positively choked with adulatory adjectives to describe Cuba.

But I'm used to that. What's funny to me is that all the dancers discussed in the article, except two, are men who talk about how Cuba's tradition of virility in dance has helped them in their art. Aren't they ballet dancers instead of ballerinas?

Colin Powell follows Richard Armitage's remarks last month:

"We understand the importance of Article 9 to the Japanese people and why it's in your Constitution," he said in an interview with The Asahi Shimbun and other Japanese media representatives here.

"But at the same time, if Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council and have the kinds of obligations that it would pick up as a (council) member, then Article 9 would have to be examined in that light."

Powell added, however, the decision is "absolutely, entirely up to the Japanese people to decide because it is in your Constitution, and the United States would never presume to offer an opinion."

I don't know. That sounds like an opinion to me. It's not an order, perhaps, but it's a pretty clear recommendation. Not that I think there's anything wrong with that. Renouncing aggression, by a country that had just tried to take over half the neighboring continent and had a known history of belligerence, was a good thing for the post-War constitution. At that point, Japan's job was to take its place among free societies.

Of course, we want any free society to be committed, as Prime Minister Koizumi said at his war commemoration speech last week, to a world without war. But times have changed. Japan is rich and influential and is a possible target for terrorists. The US is still its protector, but we may be planning to shift forces out of Asia. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong have become the Tiger Economies (and the former two have democratized, while the last remains freer than the Chinese mainland). And the PRC has awakened from its Mao-era economic disasters and is showing renewed geopolitical ambitions.

You know, it's funny. When you live in Japan, this little row of rocks at the edge of the Pacific, you suddenly realize that China is a VERY LARGE country. From the viewpoint of the US, China is an ocean away. It's big, but we're big, too. We do have a neighbor of larger land area to the north, sure, but Canada has always been an ally and has a very low comparative population. When looking at a globe or map means reflexively putting that "You are here" sign in Tokyo, South Korea and Japan start to look like morsels being dangled in front of the Red Chinese. (And I mean right in front, since most of China's power centers are in its east-central region.)

Yes, I'm overdramatizing--and I'm leaving out the even larger Russia, though the farawayness of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the vast wilderness of Siberia make it seem less psychologically threatening--but the point remains. It's all very well for Japan to resolve that it won't just up and start wars to take over more territory...I'm sorry...to liberate Asians from their Western oppressors, just because it's feeling neighborly. It's another thing to say that "self-defense" is practicable if Japan is always going to wait until existing conflicts actually arrive on its shores.

It's nice for Japan's UN delegation to keep submitting nuclear disarmament resolutions, but surely it hasn't escaped anyone's notice that the PRC and North Korea were among the abstainers when last year's model came to a vote. I think we could all "express concern about the existence of a black market in nuclear weapons technology," but now that it exists, something with a bit more teeth than "concern" will be needed to deal with it.

(BTW, I know I've said this a billion times, but I never, ever get used to the fact that North Korea is allowed to be a member of the UN.)

Clear we-had-to-do-it combat to protect citizens or infrastructure will probably always be hard to distinguish perfectly from the use of defense issues as a smokescreen for securing access to strategic resources. But officially remaining a sitting duck--even if, as most analysts seem to believe, Japan has been for years quietly developing the ability to project force outside the archipelago--may be erring excessively in the direction of avoiding the appearance of evil. The structure of the UN Security Council is decades out of date, but as long as it exists, it would be wise for Japan to position itself for permanent membership.

Classical Values did comment on the McGreevey thing, including the gay angle, overnight:

Tell me about my generation! I am three years older than McGreevey, I came of age in the 1970s.

The 1970s, folks! Free love, wild parties, orgying, and coming out of the closet.

Well, that needs to be qualified some. My parents were born in 1948 and 1951, and while they listened to psychedelic rock and played in cover bands after high school (that's how they met), they and their friends weren't orgying. The cultural eras called the '60's and '70's certainly happened, but they didn't happen equally everywhere in America.

Still and all, it sure is interesting that, until this week, McGreevey's choices in dealing with his "lifelong turmoil" always just happened to come down on the side of preserving his access to power and money. Even in small towns and conservative religious families, there are self-aware, self-critical people who are willing to come out and take the hit for it--before they end up with a line of spouses, children, conniving lovers, and shady wheeler-dealers to cope with when they're pushing 50.

When you live in Tokyo, you're the first to find out when there's an accident at a Japanese nuclear facility and the last to find out when the Governor of New Jersey comes out and announces his resignation.

Every gay guy linked to the left of this page, along with many others besides, has offered an opinion (well, not Eric at Classical Values, though I'd be interested to hear what he thinks). I think the one I agree with most is Agenda Bender, who wants to restore sexual purity and discretion to the Governorship of New Jersey by taking it over himself. I'll campaign for him.

But seriously, looking at the transcript of the speech, I worry:

I am also here today because, shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affair with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony. It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable.

And for this, I ask the forgiveness and the grace of my wife.

Discount Blogger says that yesterday's press conference may, not surprisingly, be a defensive move against coming charges of misconduct in office. We don't know yet. But just taking what the Governor said at face value, I have to wonder at some people's reactions. I don't see how McGreevey's speech can be construed as saying that gays are unfit for office. I also don't think that the pressure to be closeted, which I detest as much as any out homosexual, can be summarily blamed (though Right Side of the Rainbow does imply that McGreevey made a bad choice in a bad situation).

One of the arguments most gay marriage advocates use is that it would help keep gay guys from screwing around on their partners. McGreevey--looking at the content of his speech and leaving aside his sincerity, which we can't assess--believes that it was wrong to break his vows and screw around on his partner. Shouldn't people who think gay and straight relationships should be taken equally seriously be paying attention to that part, too?

Given what he says about the pain caused to his wife, it does not appear that she was the sort who agrees to look the other way while her husband picks up a guy every few weeks to keep the jones from driving him crazy. Pointing out that, in a better world, none of this would have had to happen...that's fine. But McGreevey accepted responsibility for a marriage and child, and he wants to avoid piling public scandal on top of private upheaval. If he believes that's more important than proving that out gay men can be respectable politicians, I have a hard time thinking ill of him for it. We'll see what happens.