Misplaced Patriot

I was tinkering with my layout and at some point, the page started crashing IE 5.2 on the Mac. I'm a fairly experienced CSS hacker, and it took me over an hour to debug this problem. I wonder how users who have no CSS knowledge manage to change their layout. Perhaps they just don't know when they crash on the Mac.

So, the Saudi ambassador was informed about the decision to go to war with Iraq before the United States' Secretary of State was told? Isn't the Secretary of State responsible for communicating with foreign governments?

Of course he is, but this was a special case, because the Saudi ambassador was being treated more as a representative of an oil company than as a representative of a nation, and the US President and Vice President were representing major American oil interests, rather than the American people. This was a corporate meeting.

You know, I'm beginning to wonder if the Saudi ambassador is one of the people on Cheney's energy task force list - it would explain why he is holding that list so close.

Or, what are the right wingers defending?

I think I finally figured our what the folks who oppose gay marriage are resisting, and it is not gays. Gays are incidental to their objection.

The resistance, rather, is to the finalization of the equality of husband and wife in straight marriage.

Already, man and wife are pretty much identical from a legal point of view. Are there many legal differences in any states? The 20th century radically changed marriage in the United States, and primarily that has meant the diminishment of the power and rights of the husband.

But there is still an inherent asymmetry in the heterosexual marriage, so that culturally quite a few people believe that the roles of "husband" and "wife" are quite different, even if their legal standing is the same. If gays are allowed to marry, however, then who is the "husband" and who is the "wife?" Who is the patriarch? Who "wears the pants" in this family? Gay marriage gives a model of an equal marriage to a society that resists it.

That is why they say that marriage is threatened. To them, marriage is still about the power of a man over his family. Gay marriage threatens this by eliminating the roles of "husband" and "wife."

Shortly after 9/11, I started seeing flags all over the place. This was, for the most part a good thing, but sometimes, I'd see a flag in an ironic place, or that had been left draped on a building in such a way that it grew tattered. The flag, after all, is a symbol, and where we place the flag is supposed to indicate our feelings about our country.

The flag pictured to the left was hanging in my local grocery store, where it stayed for over a year and a half. I titled the picture "Misplaced Patriotism," and have since used "Misplaced Patriot" as my moniker when commenting on other blogs.

This is all by way of explaining why I chose the name "Misplaced Patriot."

Welcome to Misplaced Patriot. I've been posting occasionally to the comments of other blogs, but I thought I'd add some thoughts occasionally here. I tend to cover politics, but may occasionally post about movies and culture in general.