That’s the best line in James Cameron Mitchell‘s graphic but not sexy new movie, Shortbus, delivered by a character who’s a thinly veiled version of Ed Koch. The scene: a sex club cum performance space cum lounge for “the gifted and challenged” called Shortbus, in honor or the short yellow buses that ferry special needs kids to schools. It’s the best scene in the movie, which is basically about the way New York City is full of damaged people with dark secrets who are unable to talk about them, but nonetheless seeking communion and intimacy. I’m not sure that’s a globally true fact about the city — there’s also that huge population of people who talk endlessly about everything — but the scene where the Koch character effectively asks for forgiveness from the city of New York for the way he handled the AIDS epidemic is really moving, especially if you remember the AIDS epidemic during the Koch era, which was when the first person I knew who died of the disease passed away.
“And what did you do?” the Koch character asks a young man, whose face darkens at the realization that he’s been found out. (All lines from memory.) “New York is where everyone comes to be forgiven,” he says to the man by way of explanation, as if it goes without saying that the young man, Ceth, would not be there unless he did something the memory of which toments him. But if you grown up in New York, says the Koch character, you can find that the city can be a very unforgiving place. Where is he supposed to go to be forgiven? The answer that Mitchell comes up with is to place the mayor at the sex club, seeking redemption from the gay community on a person by person basis. “I did the best I could,” says the character of the former mayor. Then Ceth kisses him.
It was a ballsy artistic move, and the movie is so graphic that there’s no risk of there being a cross-over audience or widespread screenings, which could cause Koch to sue Mitchell. Still, the gay litigator friend with whom I saw the movie tells me that it remains a tort in New York State to falsely accuse someone of being gay, thanks to a very, very old law that remains on the books. (Not that that’s a case the former mayor would want to have to make, of course.)

James Fallows posts one of the most clear-headed, depressing reviews of the state of affairs between America in Iraq that I’ve read yet:

What “winning” now means is some combination of: (a) leaving without appearing to be chased out; (b) leaving without an immediate upsurge in violence; and (c) leaving without al Qaeda-etc trainers quickly filling the vacuum, especially in the Sunni regions. Yes, we can’t afford any of those things. But — because of misjudgment, mismanagement, and failures we will be ruing for years — they appear to be what’s in store.

If it is not in our power to prevent these disasters, then it is better to do as little extra damage to ourselves as possible before they occur. Sure, it is theoretically in our power to do more in Iraq. It’s just not possible in the real world. To start with: we’re not going to double the size of our military to sustain an open-ended presence in Iraq.

So the choice is between a terrible decision and one that is even worse. The terrible decision is just to begin leaving, knowing that even more innocent civilians will be killed and that we’ll be dealing with agitation out of Iraq for years to come. The worse decision would be to wait another year, or two, or three and then take that terrible course. If we thought a longer commitment and presence would lead to a better outcome, then the extra commitment might be sensible. But nothing occurring in Iraq in the last year has given rise to any hope that things are getting better rather than worse. (This, by the way, is the reason I have changed my mind: the absence of evidence that the chances for a “decent” departure will improve.)

So maybe the Study Group is made of geniuses after all. Begin leaving, as they (will) recommend. Don’t say exactly when you’re going (what’s the point?). Do as much as you can with the other regional powers to minimize the ripple-effect damage. And, as the study does not say, recognize that the United States has inflicted grave harm, including on itself.

The idea that we’ve created a problem we can’t fix no matter what we do is contrary to the American can-do spirit. And yet, there it is.

Remember how a couple of months ago Hillary Clinton wasn’t going to run for president if the Democrats retook the Senate because she was going to make a bid to be the first female Senate majority leader and quietly wield power from that position instead of making a big noisy fuss by running for president? Yeah, well, today’s slightly more credible fantasy from the “dear God, please don’t let her be running” camp is that Clinton may not run for president if Barack Obama decides to get into the race.

Maybe she will run and maybe she won’t, but whatever happens I have a sneaking suspicion Obama is not going to look nearly as golden a year from now as he does today. Even senators who have won reasonably serious contests can wilt under the glare of presidential-level scrutiny (See: Allen, George Felix), and the one advantage Clinton has over Obama is that her coals have already been pretty well raked over. Today, for example, we learn via FOX News (clip via Crooks & Liars) that Obama’s middle name is Hussein. Now, Obama managed to win in Illinois in 2004 despite a name that’s just one letter off from that of America’s most wanted, but let’s also recall that Allen’s collapse began with a focus on his middle name by the Jim Webb camp. According to an analysis on MyDD earlier this month, Obama has more room to grow than any other Democratic presidential contender, in that he wins support from such a high percentage of those who have already heard of him while also falling well short of universal name recognition. But it’s unrealistic to think his negatives won’t be made to grow as his fame does, as well.

To be cross-posted at Tapped once the site is back up.

Laura Rozen has reported that there’s chatter in military circles about picking a side in the burgeoning civil war in Iraq. I have also heard this option described as the “pick a winner” strategy, with the idea being that the U.S. could forge an alliance with whoever appears to be likely to win the conflict and then help them crush the opposition in a short and decisive war, thereby creating a state with enough of a monopoly on the use of force to have internal stability (though not necessarily justice). Should this strategy be pursued, all signs point to the U.S. allying itself with the Shia in Iraq, since they are the dominant population, and also less involved in the anti-American insurgency. In today’s Washington Post, however, Saudi national security advisor Nawaf Obaid throws a wrench into the works and makes clear, once again, the conundrum of our present position. If the U.S. picks a side, he warns, Saudi Arabia will have to pick one, too:

In February 2003, a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, warned President Bush that he would be “solving one problem and creating five more” if he removed Saddam Hussein by force. Had Bush heeded his advice, Iraq would not now be on the brink of full-blown civil war and disintegration.

One hopes he won’t make the same mistake again by ignoring the counsel of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who said in a speech last month that “since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited.” If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis….

remaining on the sidelines would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia. To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia’s credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran’s militarist actions in the region.

To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks — it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse.

A strategy that serves to further unite the Sunni world — which birthed and nourishes Al Qaeda — against the U.S. and which draws Saudi Arabia into a broader regional war cannot be said to have solved the problem of Iraq or helped America in the fight against terrorism. Part of the appeal of the “pick a winner” strategy, as I have heard it described, is that it seems to offers a simple solution to a problem so complex that it has the qualities of a morass. But that is, in fact, the problem with it. It’s highly likely that all simple solutions on the table with regard to Iraq will, in time, be revealed to be illusions, and to have complex consequences we can only hope we forsee before we set a course.

Cross-posted at Tapped.

Sticking with pop cult for a moment, today saw the most extensive celebrity wardrobe malfunction since Janet Jackson flashed her breast on national television. This scandal, however, unfolded wholly on gossip web-sites uninhibited about posting graphic pictures of one-time ‘tween star Britney Spears getting into Paris Hilton‘s car while wearing an extremely short skirt, under which she was naked all the way up to her C-section scars. Hilton is one of those people who can be safely ignored — her life is like a reality television show that takes place in still shots and which is better watched on mute — but Spears has had real cultural power over the past decade. She and her handlers were larely responsible for the belly-baring craze of the mid-’90s and significantly contributed to the lowering of waistlines on women’s pants and the Bratz-style sassification of pre-teen clothing. And that’s not even considering her music, to which I was basically impervious, but which was exceptionally popular with very young girls and young women around the world, making her a huge, gigantic, ginormous star. And also someone they looked up to.

I never liked Spears because I always thought she had dumb, flat, brown eyes, and no matter how she was dressed up or posed or trained to perform she was always undermined by that flat, ignorant gaze of hers. Sometime after she turned 20 she started having some kind of breakdown in public, acting out in the way a former child star might, and eventually wooing her back-up dancer away from his pregnant girlfriend and marrying him. The choice of partner seemed to indicate a real lack of character on her part, not because of his background or education or station, but because she didn’t seem to have any concern for his already pregnant girlfriend, the mother of his first child. After they married, you could see Spederline, as the couple became known, on the various tabloids and TV shows — and really, it was impossible to avoid seeing them — and there was something about them that made it seem that their whole relationship was about her having been intoxicated by her own sensuality in that way that young women can be. She seemed drunk on the discovery of her own body, and also, because of her history as a performer, incapable of seeing herself in any way other than as the object of universal adulation. And so her long, slow decline began.

She hasn’t been able to get it together since, though she did have two children. Some took her recent filing for divorce as a sign of some kind of sense having been knocked into her. But no. The flat dumb eyes of her teen years may control millions of dollars, but the ignorance, sensualism, and inability to create anything that is truly her own remain. Today she is still a product of whoever she is around (such as, now, Hilton), but possessed of so unruly a spirit that she can’t even pull of their dumb stunts or adopt their recommended fixes for long. It’s sad.

Early internet sensation Mahir Cagri of “I kiss you!” fame is now claiming that Sacha Baron Cohen‘s character is based on him. Check out his old site — he’s got a point. The moustache, the broken English, the ping pong, the tiny bathing suit, the bragging about having basic acctrouments of Western modernity — it’s all there. Cohen’s character was apprently developed earlier than Cagri’s site, but it was not fully fleshed out until after it and it’s hard not to see the similarities.