Tuesday, August 5, 2003

Bishop Bashing

Here's kind of a disturbing story — disturbing because the charges involved sound so utterly phony. The full story from the AP is available here and the opening goes something like this...

Aug. 5, 2003 — A clergyman seeking to become the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church was apparently cleared of 11th-hour allegations of misconduct, a church spokesman said Tuesday. The bishop leading the inquiry into the Rev. V. Gene Robinson will report later Tuesday on the results of his preliminary investigation and a vote will be taken, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold said in a brief statement Tuesday. Allegations emerged Monday that Robinson had inappropriately touched a man and that he is connected to a group whose Web site can indirectly link users to pornography.

That last charge, the thing about the website, is one of those charges you make against someone when you want to attack them and have no genuine evidence of wrongdoing. Any website can indirectly link you to pornography. If I post a link here to Google and you go there and enter a so-called "dirty word," you can be at porn in two hops from this page. On my other site, I used to have a link to a page of movie trivia but the owners of that page let it expire and the web address was bought by a porn site. So for six months, or until someone tipped me off, I had a link that would have taken you to porn had you clicked it. Unless someone posts a direct, deliberate link to another site with something offensive (like this link), it is fraudulent to claim they're somehow involved with it or tainted by the smut. In fact, it's a cynical fraud because it's designed to drum up outrage among people who don't understand how the Internet works.

(To make matters worse, both Robinson and the founder of the website in question deny the accused reverend had anything to do with the website. Even if he'd run it, that would not mean he was connected to pornography...but look how distant the sin is from the accused person. He was connected to a group — actually, he claims to have founded it — which has a website via which someone could indirectly link to pornography. This is the worst thing they could find to say about this gay reverend to attack him?)

Well, actually the worst is the claim that that Reverend Robinson "inappropriately touched a man." That sounds like he grabbed someone's genitalia, probably in private, and if he did, then it's probably a gross miscarriage that he was cleared. But according to this story and others, the alleged touching was of "the man's shoulder, upper back and bicep" at a public event. Bishop Gordon Scruton investigated the claim of a man named Lewis and here, according to this account, is what the investigation revealed...

Scruton said he spoke with Lewis by phone Monday afternoon and Lewis told him that, at a public church event in November 1999, Robinson "put his left hand on the individual's arm and his right hand on the individual's upper back" as Robinson answered a question Lewis had asked. Scruton said the other encounter occurred when Lewis turned to make a comment to Robinson and the clergyman "touched the individual's forearm and back while responding with his own comment."

Does that sound like a sexual assault to you? He touched the man's arm while they were having a conversation! If that's true, I was assaulted about fifty times at the Comic-Con in San Diego. Sounds to me like someone is very homophobic and that the earlier newspaper account should have been more explicit. Without that little detail, doesn't the phrase "inappropriately touched a man" give you the wrong impression? Especially as part of a investigation into serious misconduct?

Bottom line here is that someone was trying to smear a gay clergyman who was about to ascend to bishop. They took two utterly harmless facts about him and spun them as offenses serious enough to suggest, as some have the last few days, that he resign and go away. Pundits like Fred Barnes have been out there flogging it as a scandal that demands action. I'm going to take what seems to me like the only appropriate action. I'm going to stop reading Fred Barnes.

And by the way, the website on which you can read Fred Barnes' piece is owned by Rupert Murdoch's company, which also has a controlling interest in the satellite provider, DirecTV. DirecTV broadcasts real hardcore pornography into homes all across America.

• Posted at 5:06 PM · LINK

Your Name Here, There and Everywhere

I apparently have the 14th most common first name in the U.S. today. How does yours stack up?

• Posted at 3:21 PM · LINK

One Tin-Foil Hatted Soldier Rides Away

If you've been waiting for a heroic and brave leader to come forth and suggest the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, wait no longer. Billy Jack is stepping forward. In fact, he's gone ahead and started the impeachment trial.

• Posted at 3:14 PM · LINK

Yet Another Hope Article

This one's by Larry Gelbart, who seems to be still alive.

• Posted at 3:06 PM · LINK

Time is Running Out!

Better hurry if you want to file to run for Governor of California! Don't delay! You don't want to be the only one on your block who isn't on the ballot!

• Posted at 2:56 PM · LINK

Hope Outlived Another One

As we noted here, the main New York Times obituary of Bob Hope was written by its drama critic, Vincent Canby, who died October 15, 2000.

Continuing in this grand tradition, Fred Hembeck informs me, the new Newsweek has a tribute to Hope written by its longtime drama critic, Jack Kroll.

Mr. Kroll died June 8, 2000. I smell a conspiracy.

• Posted at 11:56 AM · LINK

115 Days Later...

Not that long ago, a gent named Hans Blix and approximately 250 weapons inspectors went to Iraq to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. After 111 days and no nukes to show for it, G.W. Bush declared "They've had enough time," and a lot of Americans mocked them as incompetent, inept, etc. The inspections ceased and the invasion began.

Well, then. It has now been 115 days since the U.S. occupied Iraq. Those now searching for such weaponry have considerably more manpower and considerably less standing in their way. Yet, apart from a few pieces of bric-a-brac that Bush and his loyalites have tried to pass off as threatening, no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been unearthed. They weren't even used during the invasion when they might have mattered.

Are there any? I don't know. Like most, I'm skeptical that any will ever be found and also skeptical that if they are, most of the world will ever believe we didn't plant them there. But I'm willing to be convinced Iraq was as much of an immediate threat as some said, and depending on how things go there over the next few years, even willing to agree that the invasion was a good thing. I think it's way too early to say that the U.S. lives and resources were well-invested. That will ultimately have to be judged by those who have no vested interest in spinning the outcome to help or hinder Bush in the next election.

In the meantime, I can only wish we had the kind of political discourse in this country where the folks who said, "Blix is blind. We must invade before Saddam nukes us all" could admit that, however illogical it might have seemed at the time, perhaps the inspectors were correct. This is what happens too often in our politics and maybe in some of our lives: That tendency to take a position and defend it to the death, denying all evidence to the contrary. Alas, politics has gotten so cutthroat in this country that no one dares be statesmanlike enough to admit that maybe the other side isn't or even wasn't full of crap. At best, they occasionally retreat to the passive voice and admit, "mistakes were made," without admitting what they were or who made them. Or they say "I accept the responsibility" after making crystal clear that someone else was really to blame.

My opinion of our so-called leaders has never been high and I'm afraid it's getting lower with each passing month. So is my respect for people who see these flaws, but only in the opposition — for example, people who think Clinton was a liar but Bush is honest. I used to imagine that a politician would come along who could rise above such rhetoric and bridge the partisan divide. I'm not sure I even want that person, if he or she even exists, to emerge nowadays. They'd eat him alive.

• Posted at 11:51 AM · LINK

Duck Vs. Wabbit

On August 16, Cartoon Network is running a 12-hour marathon of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons, including those that pit the two of them against each other. Here are some details and a complete list.

• Posted at 2:39 AM · LINK

Comic Artist Website of the Day

The late Mike Roy (not to be confused with the very-much-alive Mike Royer) was a veteran comic artist whose work dated back to Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies, Inc. and work with Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett. Roy's name is probably not known to most comic fans. He worked, sometimes ghosting for others, on a number of newspaper strips and on comics that didn't give credit, mainly for Dell and Gold Key. He died in 1996 but someone's set up a website to recall his work and to sell his last creation, a graphic novel about Native Americans. Never met the man but I always admired his handiwork.

• Posted at 12:14 AM · LINK

August 6, 2003 • Current • August 4, 2003