What is going on at The Washington Blade?

I do not miss The Washington Blade of the eighties and nineties, which routinely published anti-gay-male screeds while graciously deigning to take gay men's advertising dollars. Now, however, The Blade often reads like a suburban advertiser newspaper, publishing advertisements disguised as articles for everything from real estate to Botox.

The Blade needs advertising because businesses need revenue sources and because newspapers have lost that money fountain known as the personals section. Nonetheless, the newspaper that calls itself "America's leading gay news source" is taking a big hit to its journalistic credibility by pursuing its present course.

Maryland isn't New York.

In the wake of the passage of New York's marriage law, people are calling on Governor O'Malley to follow in the footsteps of Governor Cuomo. The people making that call need to remember one big difference between the political cultures of the two states.

As I noted yesterday, Cuomo managed to gain the support of Republican financial backers because of "their more libertarian views." Where is the libertarian streak in Maryland's political culture, and who is Maryland's Paul Singer, Cliff Asness, or Daniel Loeb? Applying New York's lesson to Maryland will involve more than a simple one-to-one translation.

Religious right or P.C. left? Quote 26

In this series of blog posts, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read each quote and guess, before doing a Web search, whether someone in the religious right or the politically correct left said it.

26.

Things like "objectivity" and "rationality" and "logic". ... the men that want to argue in those terms!!!

Republican money men and same-sex marriage

From hearing the queer lefties talk, you'd think that moneyed interests spend all day thinking of new ways to expand their Europhallocentric, heteropatriarchal reign of terror. But look at this article in The New York Times:

Would the donors win over the deciding Senate Republicans? It sounded improbable: top Republican moneymen helping a Democratic rival with one of his biggest legislative goals.

But the donors in the room — the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Daniel Loeb — had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.

Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million.

* * *

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

Things often look different when you take off the politically correct blinders.

Quote of the week

"I believe you can be wiser today than yesterday." — New York State Senator Mark Grisanti, explaining his change of position on same-sex marriage

Writing effective letters to the editor

A letter to the editor of a periodical can easily get one’s message to a wide audience. Nonetheless, many publications have low rates of publication of such letters, e.g., 1.5% for The New York Times. Since my success rate has been considerably higher, I offer the following advice to those who wish to write letters to the editor.

1. Figure out what point you want to make, and focus on it. Having to say something is not the same thing as having something to say, and a focused letter has a higher likelihood of publication than a stream-of-consciousness rant.

2. Do your homework. Even if you do not know the subject well, one of your readers likely will, and speculation about the subject may well set you up for public humiliation. More than once, I have had letters published in response to letters, in which I corrected the previous letter writers’ understanding of the very things that they had sought to defend. For the same reason, once you have the facts, resist the temptation to cherry-pick the facts to misrepresent the subject; a half truth is a whole lie. If you determine that a fair reading of the facts does not support your point, go back to step 1.

3. Make your point, and make it plainly. The more work you require your readers to do to figure out what you are saying, the less likely that your letter will have an impact or will even be published.

4. Write your letter in an appropriate tone. Write as though you were writing a business letter, not a quick e-mail note to a friend. In particular, leave out the content-free rhetorical flourishes that so impress you; they will likely impress no one else. Also, avoid insulting others — your opponents, the author of the article to which you are responding, and, most importantly, your potential readers.

5. Don’t just tell your readers why you believe something; show them why they should agree with you. Appealing to your own emotions, while popular among the politically correct crowd, is an excellent way to get everyone else to ignore you. Instead, use examples and solid, dispassionate reasoning to make your point. In short, show your work.

6. Proofread, and boil down your prose. Check your letter for facts and logic, not just for spelling and grammar. Also, since periodicals typically have limited space for letters to the editor, make every word count, and eliminate those that do not. From my conversations with the people who select letters to the editor, I have learned that they almost never reject letters for being too short.

7. Do not fear constructive criticism. Someone from the periodical may suggest changes to your letter. If that person thought that your letter completely lacked merit, she would not waste her time making those suggestions.

While I cannot guarantee success, I believe from my experience that by following the above points, you will increase the likelihood that your letters are published and read.

The Emperor's new argument, or: Oh, so that's why we should all be lefties

In this article on John Edwards, the author explains why we must accept liberalism as a whole:

Because one reason I was eager to back Edwards was there was no conflict in his campaign between the three tiers of modern liberalism, which often do fight each other. I see the three as:

1) Economic justice. This is labor movements, anti-poverty initiatives, fair taxation, health care reform, social services, government that is functional, etc. Anything that helps secure the middle class, bolsters the economy, and lifts people out of poverty.

2) Social justice. Feminism, anti-racism, gay rights, anti-colonialism, things like that---anything that divides people against each other on the basis of identity hierarchies.

3) Environmentalism and rationalism. Preserving the planet, promoting science, basically using the now to work towards a better tomorrow.

Obviously, a smart person sees how these are interrelated and that you really fail at anti-racism if you don't think about poverty and that you're not a good environmentalist if economic justice isn't part of your worldview, and you're not an effective feminist if you treat science like it's a lark.

In addition to the many proofs by assertion, the author throws in the "Emperor's New Clothes" argument (technically an appeal to personal interest), "Obviously, a smart person sees" that she's right. Try again.