The Invisible Counterpoint

When the Washington Examiner's Byron York asked Michele Bachmann if she was submissive to her husband at the Fox News GOP debate Thursday night, the crowd gasped and booed. That's because wifely submission -- also known as complementarian theology -- is central to the faith of many evangelicals. York's question wasn't about religion per se, but was an attempt to probe whether, if Bachmann became president, America would be getting Marcus' decisions and not hers. [. . .] Submission theology is built around the notion that God has a "design" for men and for women; that they are unique from each other and have their designated, God-given roles. The husband is the spiritual head of the household, the wife his obedient "helpmeet," the vessel for their children, devoted mother, and warrior for the faith. By committing themselves to those gender roles, evangelicals believe they are obeying God's commands. They see the wife's obligat...

With the details of the pending debt deal now emerging (and for a very good explanation of the key terms, see this post by former Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein ), a consensus is solidifying that (1) this is a virtually full-scale victory for the GOP and defeat for the President (who all along insisted on a "balanced" approach that included tax increases), but (2) the President, as usual, was too weak in standing up to right-wing intransigence -- or simply had no options given their willingness to allow default -- and was thus forced into this deal against his will. This depiction of Obama as occupying a largely powerless, toothless office incapable of standing up to Congress -- or, at best, that the bad outcome happened because he's just a weak negotiator who "blundered" -- is the one that is invariably trotted out to explain away most of the bad things he does . It appears to be true that the President wanted tax revenues to be part of this...

The thing that had a radicalizing impact on me began after [Hillary lost in] Iowa. Because there was this pile-on, and to me it was mind-bending. It was coming often from people on the left. It was like something they had been keeping inside as they bit their tongues and covered this woman who had the gall to be the front-runner and the "inevitable" candidate, which was the word that they threw out there. And finally she had shown weakness, and they were just going nuts. [. . .] Eventually I became a lot more aware of the ways in which not only Hillary but also her supporters were being talked about. I became increasingly sensitive to the scorn directed at her, and it built and built as she continued to fight, and it drove me nuts. Because I thought her continuing to fight was awesome and hilarious. I thought it was completely redefining how we view women and our expectations for them in public and political life. She would not comply. She would not give in. She would n...

(Hofstadter pointed out that the left is certainly not free of this mind-set, and so Dick Cheney and Halliburton have often served as the designated superhumanly competent malefactors for the other side, as in the 9/11 "Truth" movement.) [. . .] Is it any wonder, then, that a growing number of Americans insist on believing that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim? This fantasy is the last piece needed to make an imaginary international Islamic conspiracy fit the formula for political paranoia laid out by Hofstadter 46 years ago. (Laura Miller, “The paranoid style in American punditry,” Salon, 15 Sept. 2010) liberal crazies The thing to be careful of is equating the crackpots--the "extremes" on both the right and the left. If they're on the right, they are those of such psychic fragility that they cannot stand when society changes or grows too much, so when it does they cannot but come untethered. If they're on the left, then they're those of such ...

There is oil gushing into the ocean and people are killing humanitarian aid workers and the earth is still warming. Those things are on a different plane of sad and have already left us all terribly afraid and depressed and angry this early summer. I didn't know I had any room at all to care about the Gores' relationship, but maybe because it's something so much smaller, so much more personal, a headline so much easier to absorb than the other larger tragedies playing out around the globe that this small piece of political gossip turns out to be such an unbelievable freaking bummer. (Rebecca Traister, “the sadness of the Gore split,” Salon, 1 June 2010) Giving way On the bright side, it makes it that much more likely that we'll never need to doubt Obama's marriage -- our dependency on its beauty is now upped a further notch, so that he could actually have been a Tiger Woods, a thousand skeletons could begin to funnel out of his closet, and we know we'd collectiv...