I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. I further believe that their right to express their group disapproval stops absolutely short of causing their chosen bugaboo any actual harm… as in, breaking the laws enacted by the larger secular state in order to protect all its citizens.  Those laws, we hope, evolve in specificity and efficacy as our understanding of what constitutes demonstrable societal or individual harm evolves as well. The American legal system has always possessed the power to control, modify or ban religious practices on these grounds: for example, in direct contradiction of Biblical precedent and many current religious beliefs, women are no longer owned by their husbands, twelve-year-old girls are off limits and public stoning for adultery has been replaced by Facebook flaming.

Another example: the general population, excluding certain Louisiana JOP’s, has eventually come to understand that a union between two people of differing overall skin pigmentation does not lead to apocalyptic plagues or children with multiple heads (also, that allowing humans to own other humans is a damaging economic construct, not to mention leading to some rather hard feelings in general). Had the original Southern Baptist Conference (and by “original,” I mean the SBC from 1845 until 1995) been able to retain a state-sanctioned grasp on the laws of the Southern states, slavery would still be legal, “miscegenation” would still be a crime and hundreds of thousands of lawn jockeys would still be on proud display across the land of Dixie. The Southern Baptist Conference was created to support these ideas: in defiance of the views of other Baptist congregations, but with the full support of Messieurs Leviticus and Nehemiah, to name only two. The Old Testament is all for concubines, slaves and massacres, but not intermarriage among tribes. Is this our best authority on human relations?

And what about the endless variations on marriage sanctioned by religions just as legitimate as Decent Christians Everywhere Inc? Why aren’t we respecting their traditions? Why are we letting widows remarry, those whores (Hinduism)? Why aren’t we letting Islamic American men who can afford it collect the four wives to whom they’re entitled? Who’s in charge here? The Founding Fathers, those whacked-out Deists, should have left us some instructions about which religion is right so we would know whose tenets to make law… oh. Wait. They did mention it. NONE OF THEM.

In a democratically-based society, the general idea is that we don’t let small groups dictate to everyone, in the belief that time, evolving understanding and the collective better judgment of a larger group of citizens usually works out better for everyone.  When small groups, or large groups, or individual states or Bible-beating rednecks do attempt to tar and feather someone, we can take their asses to courts which represent successively larger segments of the population and hope that somewhere along the line, better judgment and better education will prevail.

I don’t give a damn what happens in anyone’s church if the law isn’t being broken, if children aren’t being abused, if the Kool-Aid is untainted. And if a particular religious sect decided that I was by nature a lesser human being, I think I’d leave. Wait, make that I know I’d leave – that’s essentially why I don’t consider organized religion a tool that’s safe for most people to play with.  Any system of thought which approves and allows the dehumanization of certain other humans is risky stuff.

No religion owns marriage: the concept, the reality or the word itself. Religions have their own variations on the theme and every right to them. Marry (or don’t) anyone that you like (or hate (or sadly but firmly condemn)). Your religious definition, Ms. Christian or Mr. Sikh (and you do NOT want to go to the dictionary on this), is yours to live by. But please try to understand: pair-bonding predates religion; stable, wealth-creating, ably-parenting households are the true and demonstrable societal benefit of such bonds; and there’s not one iota of real evidence that a pair of the same gender doesn’t work just as well… and your talking shrubbery or flaming cow, while inspirational and possibly entirely real, is no excuse for ignoring science, history and simple justice.

Those 267,574 people who voted “no” — which would approve the same-sex marriage law — were not dissuaded by an anti-gay coalition of conservatives and churches wielding more than $3 million, including more than $2 million from out-of-state donors, according to a report by the National Institute On Money In State Politics.

Much of the sparring over the referendum was funded on both sides by groups outside the state of Maine. Given that gay marriage has been a wedge issue for years, that’s hardly surprising. But in Maine?

Those who backed the gay marriage law ponied up 12 to 1 over donors to the anti-gay donors and had more money — $5 million. But they lost. The institute’s report, written by Tyler Evilsizer, says:

The measure pitted conservative groups and churches against gay-rights groups, a few wealthy donors, and more than 10,000 smaller donors from Maine and around the country. Question 1 attracted over $9 million, or 72 cents of every dollar raised around Maine’s seven ballot measures. [emphasis added]

But press attention, money, and political capital focused on a wedge issue to divide people of good conscience and faith and divert their attention from far more pressing matters. Maine needs more attention to the condition of its roads, bridges and airports than it does in the bedrooms of loving, consenting adults who wish to make a lifelong commitment.

The blunt end of the money hammer used in Maine against gays was primarily wielded by a group called Stand For Marriage Maine. Like all political communicators and niche interest groups these days, it has a website. But its site is notably deficient. It does not have links such as “About Us” or “Who We Are.” Such links usually provide a list of financial supporters, coalition partners, and the names and contact data for organization officers and staff. Stand For Marriage Maine does not provide such information on its website.

Wading through the organization’s press releases and media stories is needed to learn that Marc Mutty is chairman of Stand for Marriage Maine, that Scott K. Fish is communications director (releases provide a phone number) and that Bob Emrich is a member of the group’s executive committee.

That lack of clear, easy-to-find disclosure makes it difficult for those interested in the issue to find out more about the bona fides of donors and supporters who worked to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.

Why not explain “Who We Are”? Only conjecture is possible. It is, perhaps, easier to operate in ideological shadows. According to Mr. Evilsizer’s report, here are the principal sources of money that drove the effort to repeal gays’ right to marry in Maine. A few groups are well known outside Maine.

StandForMarriageMaine.com | $2,650,052
Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland | $553,608
Focus On The Family Maine Marriage Committee | $114,500
Family Research Council Action | $25,000
Maine Marriage PAC | $11,539
Maine Grassroots Coalition | $9,410
Marriage Matters in Maine | $2,678
Maine4Marriage | $230
Proponents’ total $3,367,018

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, asked Maine ethics officials to investigate the organization. He said it was laundering money. His August letter

contained allegations religious organizations are hiding contributions to the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign. The letter reports how the National Organization for Marriage, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, the national office of the Knights of Columbus and Focus on the Family had contributors give the money to their organizations, and in turn gave the money to the Stand for Marriage Maine to hide the donors’ identity.

But a federal judge ruled on Oct. 29 that the “state can compel the National Organization for Marriage to disclose the identities of donors who contributed to its effort to repeal Maine’s gay-marriage law.” In that story, the Portland Press Herald said NOM — based in Washington, D.C. — had funneled $1.6 million to Stand For Marriage Maine. A resolution of the lawsuit was “months away,” the story said — well after the Nov. 3 referendum. Mr. Evilsizer’s report contains a breakdown of donors to Stand For Marriage Maine showing NOM’s $1,622,152 donation.

But his report notes that financial supporters of gay marriage in Maine “from Away” were also plentiful. Those who supported the gay-marriage law raised $5,678,579.

The Human Rights Campaign, which bills itself as “the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization,” donated $267,589 to the principal umbrella organization, No On 1 Protect Maine Equality. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force gave $139,056. Esmond Harmsworth, a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency in Boston and New York, gave $100,000. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders of Boston gave $91,258.

The website of No On 1 Protect Maine Equality also has a “Who We Are” page that lists its coalition partners. Its “Contact Us” page list its physical address, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address. Its campaign manager is clearly identified as Jesse Connolly.

The gay marriage caravan now moves on, it seems, to New York state. Gov. David Patterson wants a same-sex marriage bill, passed twice in the state Assembly, on the floor of the Senate for debate on Tuesday.

And the money, both for and against, will likely move on as well.

In a pair of recent opinion pieces, Lind asserts that we shouldn’t let women and gays in the armed services because if we do, “men who want to prove they are real men will not join.”

Lind’s relative manliness doesn’t necessarily add to or subtract from his opinion’s validity, but unnamed sources who knew him when assure me that the closest he ever came to wearing a uniform was dressing his G.I. Joe doll in one.

Gays and Dolls

As one might expect a social conservative to do, Lind laces his positions with a number of intellectual subterfuges, not the least of which is filing gay men and women in the same pigeon hole. The go-to argument against women serving in the military is that they are, on average, smaller and weaker than their male counterparts and they can get pregnant, a consideration that doesn’t apply to gay men.

If you think that gay men are intrinsically less physically capable than their heterosexual counterparts, and you want to take a trip to the emergency room, I invite you to walk up to a homosexual member of the American Ballet Theater and call him a faggot. I doubt if there’s a segment of the population more physically prepared for direct placement into elite commando training than male dancers. (There are such things as heterosexual male dancers, by the way, and they generally don’t lack for the companionship of women who wouldn’t give either Lind or me the time of day).

But there’s more required of a fighter than physical toughness, according to Lind. “Throughout history,” he prates, “some armies have fought a lot harder than others. The specific reasons vary widely, but one way or another they all come down to human factors.” The most important human factor, Lind assures us, “is that men fight to prove they are real men.” Their membership in fighting organizations is a “badge of honor” that says, “We’re not sissies or pansies. We are men who fight, serving alongside other men who fight.” An infusion of sissies and pansies among the company of real men, Lind warns, could damage “military unit cohesion.”

Mr. Lind has a selective sense of military history and/or a blind notch in his Doppler gay-dar.

As a carrier skipper I served with said when President Bill Clinton enacted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, “Sailors have been rubbing heinies since Sinbad reported to boot camp.” Soldiers have been sharing pup tents just as long.

The ancient Greeks believed that physical love between soldiers improved morale, bravery and overall battle efficiency. Plato, the philosophical father of the American political right, considered it utter stupidity to ban physical relationships between soldiers. “Wherever, therefore, it has been established that it is shameful to be involved in sexual relationships with men,” he wrote, “this is due to evil on the part of the rulers, and to cowardice in the part of the governed.”

In a song honoring the Lelantine War, Plato’s pupil Aristotle wrote that, “love…thrives side by side with courage.”

The Roman historian Plutarch noted that tribal ties were of little value “when dangers press, but a band cemented by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken.”

Lind cautions that gay and straight men can’t mix in “very close quarters” without “serous friction.” I’ve got news for Lind: gay and straight men have been mixing in very close quarters in the American military without serious friction since forever, including those World War II John Wayne types that conservatives like Lind have such a school girl crush on.

They’re queer, Bill. They’re here, Bill. Now drop and give me fifty pushups (heh).

G.I. Jane

The notion of women serving in the military is hardly new either. Plato favored it. He wrote in Republic that women must be taught the “art of war, which they must practice like men.”

“Is she capable of sharing either wholly or partially in the actions of men, or not at all?” he asked. “And is the art of war one of those arts in which she can or can not share?” Then “let [women] share in the toils of war and the defense of their country… Only in the distribution of labors the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same.”

Lind’s specific objection to letting women serve is that they might be allowed into “ground combat arms.” I’m not sure what he means by that. Women are and will be assigned to war zones in combat support capacities. So what? He may suppose that women inherently lack the “right stuff” for combat, but those Israeli Security Force babes who pull the trigger on those remote control machine guns along the Gaza Strip don’t appear to be lacking anything in the killer instinct department. If Lind is worried that women will elbow their way into Delta Force, he is, in Plato’s words, “plucking a fruit of unripe wisdom.” I don’t know of anyone who is seriously trying to make women into commandos, or of anyone who would take the notion seriously. Maybe Lind is confusing that movie where Demi Moore becomes a Navy SEAL with reality. Confusion about reality is, after all, a leading occupational hazard of conservatism.

I don’t claim that integrating women in the military has been a tribulation-free experience. In my day, the incidence of young single sailor girls getting themselves pregnant to get out of duties they didn’t care for was completely out of hand. We developed a pretty good solution though; all the single mommy strikers got discharged and sent home.

I’ve also known a fair number of female officers who benefitted from reverse discrimination, but not nearly as many as the number of male officers I knew who got where they got thanks to Uncle Admiral or Governor Grandpa or a godfather who had a village in the old country named after him. And never forget that whatever wartime leadership qualities George S. Patton possessed that allowed him to get away with his vainglorious shenanigans, he was also one of the richest dudes in the Army.

Lind’s bottom line isn’t that women and homosexuals serving in the military will impair America’s war making capability. He’s concerned about “cultural Marxism,” which is a code phrase narrow shouldered white male bigots intone when they sense that cultural Darwinism is about to bust them another pay grade or two down the social pyramid. By Lind’s criteria, emancipation was cultural Marxism, as was the ban on feeding Christians to lions.

There may be good arguments for barring women and gays from military service, but Lind doesn’t make them, and I haven’t heard any that make an ounce more sense than his do.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Scott Horton’s interview with Jeff at Antiwar Radio.

The Catholic League’s request to Leah Daughtry to ban the blogs BitchPhD and Towleroad from the Democratic National Convention came as something of a shock to those of us here at Scholars and Rogues. Frankly, Mr. Donohue, we are hurt. Our offices contain no balloon figures of Jesus, with or without genitalia (you say “apparently albino penis,” I say “loincloth” – oh wait! There’s the penis! Or should it be Penis?). Our site features no links to intensely homoerotic coverage of the hottest Olympic athletes, despite insistent lobbying from at least two of our staff members. Our humble blog, unlike Daily Kos, may never become the Internet apotheosis of evil radicalism. We know our place. We are what we are.

What we are, Mr. Donohue, is a blog at least ten times as offensive to the Catholic League as the so-called “patently obscene” publications to which you so vehemently object.

Had you bothered to do any in-depth research, were you the watchdog of God you claim to be, your list of blogs to be summarily uncredentialed would have been headed by the proud though lesser-known name of… Scholars and Rogues.

Perhaps it is not too late; in this hope, I offer you the following information about our staff, practices and standards. May you use it for the greater glory of the League, ignoring in your righteous wrath the craven tolerance and despicable humanity of the vast majority of Catholics worldwide.

1. If, as you quote Peter Viereck, “Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals,” editor-in-chief Dr. S has raised that pastime to an art by installing an actual Catholic baiting pit in the basement of S&R headquarters. Unlucky male representatives of the Faith are routinely chained to steam pipes and taunted for hours by voluptuous Wiccans bearing wine, condoms and the latest issue of Lesbian Vampire Nuns of Sodom. Oddly, many former victims later return voluntarily and must be chased away by special guilt-sniffing Rottweilers.
2. Dr. W, senior editor and sexuality expert, has divorced at least nine wives, four of whom are practicing Catholics. With a callous disregard for the traditions of their faith, Dr. W has refused to apply for annulments on the grounds of antecedent and perpetual impotence, thereby dooming these poor women to a lifetime of lesbian vampire sex behind convent walls.
3. Mr. W, editor, is an official lapsed Catholic and has been heard to loudly profane the name of the Holy Virgin while locked alone in his office for several hours at a time. Repetitive slapping noises and an impressive collection of leather flagellation devices may or may not be related to these obscene outbursts.
4. Ms. I, token female and possessor of the Moist Pink Gates to Hell, is an outspoken pro-choice advocate; like most of her fellow succubi she has used repeated casual abortions to facilitate her whorish lifestyle and prominently displays a series of commemorative post-D&C “thumbs-up” photos along one wall of her cubicle.
5. Ms. I also personally fucked Jesus at least twice, possibly three times if oral counts. She stated that although the Savior pronounced his name “hay-ZOOS,” she got a look at his driver’s license in the bar and is confident in her identification.
6. Mr. L, token homosexual or “quoken,” also claimed to have had carnal knowledge of that same Son of God. In the resulting bitchfight, Mr. L produced as evidence a semen-stained t-shirt bearing an eerie resemblance to the lower half of the Shroud of Turin. Challenged as to its authenticity, Mr. L casually dropped two words: Baby. Jesus. (NSFW) Ms. I ran from the room in tears, only to discover Hayzoos had given her a fake cell number.
7. Mr. O emphatically denies any unhealthy preoccupation with plaid skirts, knee socks or white cotton panties. He was, however, unable to explain to the S&R site administrator the near-constant traffic between his workstation and here; his excessive Kleenex and hand lotion consumption is also under investigation.
8. Finally, Mr. Donohue, virulent ad hominem attacks on the defenders of the Faith are an everyday occurrence at S&R, and you yourself are a favored target. A typically bigoted exchange:

Is it me or is he the pervy uncle who wants you to sit on his lap while he talks about the miracle of womanhood?

I don’t know, but he’s apparently obsessed with Jesus’s penis…

I would be, too.

Shut up, you smug bitch!

HEY, we’re ripping the Catholofascist right now, you two.

Whatever.

So what does he say about fucking choirboys?

Who, King Powerbottom Donohue?

Nothing. No comment. He’s like the Switzerland of the Catholic world.

Yeah, if by “Switzerland” you mean “hysterical misogynistic homophobic paranoiac.”

Just an affectionate nickname, bless his heart.

I can only hope, Mr. Donohue, that you will reconsider your choice of obscene and inappropriate blogs and add Scholars and Rogues to that roll of honor.

Thank you,

The Staff of S&R

Scrogues and scrogue sympathizers:

As the National Stonewall Democrats are expecting a record number of LGBT delegates at the upcoming shindig, and there will surely be no shortage of bloggers and journalists of all stripes looking to dance, drink and otherwise “something else” the madness away, the following installment for the rainbow-striped comes to you courtesy of Denverite Daniel Gonzales, whom you may know from the gayzette blog, Box Turtle Bulletin, Beyond Ex-Gay and Ex-Gay Watch.

Many a gay will descend upon Denver for the Democratic National Convention including but not limited to delegates, protesters, and Anderson Cooper. First I’ll break down the highlights of Denver’s gay social scene each night and and the end of the post hit restaurants and some other gay businesses and attractions.

Friday

On Friday nights the boys head a few blocks south of downtown to The Compound and Boyztown. Compound is a small dance club (no cover!) which has a diverse crowd (all ages, all ethnicities) shaking it to gay dance hits on this night. A few doors down the street is Denver’s only gay strip club, Boyztown (also no cover!). Also excellent this night is “Lipgloss” at La Rumba ($5 cover last I went). Lipgloss spins Indie, Brit-pop and Electroclash and to best blend in with the mixed crowed I suggest you buy your outfit at American Apparel, Goodwill or Urban Outfitters.

• The Compound – 145 Broadway
• Boyztown – 117 Broadway
• La Rumba – 99 W 9th Ave

Saturday

Saturday the 23rd Denver’s gay scene is partying like it’s Pride Weekend all over again. Tracks (Denver’s 22,000 sq. ft. flagship gay nightclub) is throwing the Unity Dance headlined by DJ Manny Lehman. Cover at Tracks will vary throughout the night from $10 to $25 — if the line is anything like Pride, expect to wait half an hour or more. For a less “circuity” party with no cover, just two blocks away is The Eagle where gayzette (a local gay rag) is throwing an “Atlantis” party. The Eagle is more of a cruisy fetish bar/club but the crowd is all ages and you won’t feel out of place if you’re in “normal” clothes, however guys in swimwear that night get drink specials. Also sure to be busy is Denver’s country western bar, Charlie’s and Latin club El Potrero.

• Tracks – 3500 Walnut St
• The Eagle – 1475 36th St
• Charlie’s – 900 E Colfax Ave
• El Potrero – 320 S Birch St

Sunday

Things start early on Sunday since you kids have to be up for the convention and us locals have to be up for work the next day. Bear bar The Wrangler draws in everyone from bears to twinks for their beer bust, which is most packed from 5-8pm. I’m told if you don’t want to wait in line, get there by 4. After The Wrangler you have two choices: either a rooftop pop-music dance party or Denver’s premier drag show. Club Vinyl’s massive rooftop is packed (prime hours 8-11ish) with every letter in LGBT (no cover!). Meanwhile the curtain goes up at the VIVID drag show at Charlie’s at 8pm featuring the most diverse drag talent in town.

• The Wrangler – 1700 Logan St
• Vinyl – 1082 Broadway
• Charlie’s – 900 E Colfax Ave

Monday

Denver isn’t very happening on a Monday night but if you want a relaxing place to grab a drink I’d suggest the flamboyantly designed yet impressive back patio bar at Hamburger Mary’s. Also Denver has several charming gay neighborhood dive bars including Broadways, R&R Lounge, The Barker Lounge and BJ’s Carousel.

• Hamburger Mary’s – 700 E 17th Ave
• Broadways – 1027 Broadway
• R&R Lounge – 4958 E Colfax Ave
• Barker Lounge – 255 S Broadway
• BJ’s Carousel – 1380 S Broadway

Tuesday

Tuesday night Denver’s hopping again. The dancers are back on stage at Boyztown fresh from their night off and it’s also underwear night at The Eagle (no cover at either!). The Eagle has a free clothing-check and there are drink specials for those willing to strip down.

• Boyztown – 117 Broadway
• The Eagle – 1475 36th St

Wednesday

Wednesday night Denver lets it all hang out. My personal favorite is Drag Queen Bingo at JR’s (free to play). JR’s website says the balls drop at 9pm but personally I’ve never seen things get started before 10 (drag time probably). Instead of watching a drag queen up there, if you’d rather be the one on stage it’s amateur night at Boyztown. Be there before 10 when the show starts and remember to leave at least one inch of fabric between those cheeks to keep it Colorado legal! Lastly, Denver’s other big drag show is more “touristy” and located on the 16th St Mall at Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret that night. Tickets are $17 (reservation accepted) and show-time is 9:15 on August 27th to accommodate people attending the convention.

• JR’s – 777 E 17th Ave
• Boyztown – 117 Broadway
• Lannie’s – 1601 Arapahoe St

Thursday

Thursday is the night of the twink, pretty boy and skater lesbian. Those old enough to drink go to JR’s for insanely crowded half price night (no cover!). Those too young to drink (and those interested in them) go to Tracks for the only 18+ gay club night in Denver. At Tracks that night you’ll enjoy dance remixes of pop hits and hip hop in the smaller lounge room. If you’re over 21 there’s no cover till 11pm and $5 after. Oddly Tracks doesn’t get crowded till at least 11 on Thursdays.

• JR’s – 777 E 17th Ave
• Tracks – 3500 Walnut St

Dining

Denver’s gay neighborhoods are spread out along the periphery of downtown but a stretch of 17th Ave. from Logan to Emerson has a concentration of excellent and very gay restaurants that include Avenue Grill (amazing buffalo steaks), AIX, WaterCourse Foods (vegetarian), Steuben’s (contemporary and hip takes on classic diner food) and Hamburger Mary’s. On weekends (Saturday and Sundays) I highly recommend Bump And Grind where the waitstaff serves brunch in drag for those willing to wait half an hour for a table. For Sunday brunch the other place to be is Kiva for its unique Southwestern brunch menu. On weekdays Denver’s socialites and power players take breakfast at Racines, commonly referred to as “Gaycines.” For Mexican cuisine Denver’s gays flock to Benny’s for Colorado style green chili and hard-shelled chili rellenos. Denver’s most well known Mexican restaurant is Casa Bonita which was portrayed with surprising accuracy on an episode of South Park (video link). Casa Bonita is sort of a mix between Medieval Times and Chuck E Cheese only with a Mexican theme. The food is terrible but the cliff divers are hot and the last time I went they did their damnedest to ignore the gayboys heckling them.

Other Gay Stuff

The gayest gym in town is unquestionably the 24 Hour Fitness at 4120 E. Alameda Ave (many of the dancers from Boyztown and gogos from Tracks work out here). For shopping head to the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. For shopping of a more sexual nature or to pick up the local gay rags visit The Crypt at 139 Broadway. For coffee check out DazBog at 1201 East 9th Ave and then walk four blocks east to Cheesman Park on weekends to play volleyball with the bears, kickball with the lesbians, or work on your tan with the twinks.

We were just having fun making posters. There was no time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I think most great art is created in a furious moment.

— Stanley Mouse, artistic partner of Alton Kelley; the pair created hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters and threw “the world’s first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman’s Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene”; Mr. Kelley died this week at age 67; June 3.

When it comes to issues like this, [corporations] don’t want to be anywhere near them and they will cave very, very quickly — anything to stop the pain, anything to stop the press from calling.

— Eric Dezenhall, the head of the crisis public relations firm Dezenhall Resources, on Dunkin’ Donuts’ decision to remove an ad from its Web site featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray after conservative bloggers complained her scarf resembled a keffiyeh, labeling it “jihadi chic“; May 30.

Tell people the truth, and then they have an easier time adjusting to it. The city is out of control. There is no law. There is no consequence for people’s actions. The whole attitude of ‘Me first and to heck with my neighbor’ has become the status quo here, and it is a serious, serious problem.

— J. Stan McCauley, a former Hartford, Conn., mayoral candidate and cable access television personality, likening Hartford to an alcoholic in the wake of “a Thursday hit-and-run accident that was caught on tape left Angel Arce Torres, 78, paralyzed, lying in the middle of a street under full view of passing motorists and onlookers”; June 6.

You cannot say what people are gonna like or not gonna like. You have to stick it out there and find out! If they taste it, and they like the way it tastes, you can bet they’ll eat some of it!

— Bo Diddley, “a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself,” on facing audiences; Mr. Diddley died this week at 79; June 2.

We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.

— from the 1976 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention by Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, who died in 1996.

We know questions are inevitable given the revelations in the sport. But that doesn’t trouble us for two reasons. One, there is a thing called conscience. Two, Usain doesn’t even want to take vitamin C. We know he is as clean as a whistle.

— Glen Mills, coach of 21-year-old sprinter Usain Bolt of Jamaica, after Mr. Bolt set a world record of 9.72 seconds at 100 meters in only his fifth professional race at that distance; June 2.

In all these crises that the Burmese face, there always is the teaser to take the pressure off the government. They seem like they are going to cooperate, and just as soon as comment dies down, anything that is going to be useful dies with it. Look back at the ‘saffron revolution,’ when they made all kinds of promises about what they were going to do and nothing happened.

— Josef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University, on attempts to provide aid to cyclone victims in Myanmar; the “saffron revolution” refers to “a peaceful uprising led by monks that was crushed in September”; June 2.

Cheers! Tears!! I’m here!

— a “tweet” from the the Phoenix Mars lander after touchdown to users of Twitter, a Web microblogging service; the tweets are written by Veronica McGregor, the news services manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; according to a Times story, “In the past few years, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s media team has adopted many Web 2.0 technologies, producing podcasts, posting videos on YouTube, blogging and setting up a Facebook page”; May 31.

Politicians think in four-year blocks, so it’s O.K. as long as it doesn’t run out on their watch. People think about it, but they don’t really think about what happens tomorrow. They don’t worry until they turn on the tap and nothing flows.

— Raquel Montón, a climate specialist at Greenpeace in Madrid, reflecting on a growing water crisis in Spain; June 3.

As President Bush’s health chief, Tommy Thompson trumpeted millions of taxpayer dollars to help workers sickened by the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, even amid complaints that his agency wasn’t doing enough.

Now, Thompson’s private company has won an $11 million contract to treat some of those same workers — the latest twist in a fitful government effort to determine how many people were made ill by the toxic debris — and to care for them.

— lede of a Washington Post story by Devlin Barrett reporting the award of a health-care contract to Logistics Health Inc., a La Crosse, Wis.-based company of which Mr. Thompson is president; June 4.

And the best way to [marginalize extremists] is to use our national resources to strengthen the institutions of freedom. Institutions, of course, include a democratic system of government, a vibrant free press, independent judiciary, a free enterprise system, places of worship where people are free to practice their faith. These institutions include an education system that provides citizens a link to the world, health infrastructure that combats plagues like HIV/AIDS and malaria, and women’s organizations that help societies take advantage of the skills and talents of half their population.

— from remarks by President Bush at the ceremonial groundbreaking of the United States Institute of Peace; June 5.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

— President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Europe, who planned D-Day on June 6, 1944.

I’ve been doing everything I can to kill him off for 30 years, but he seems to be coming back.

— Walter Williams, creator of Mr. Bill, who directed his Saturday Night Live character in a “Priceless” ad for MasterCard debit cards in which “Mr. Hands pours hot coffee on him (“coffee: $2”), a personal trainer launches him off a treadmill (“gym: $59/mo.”), and an opened briefcase flips him onto the windshield of a city bus (“briefcase: $120”); June 3.

I couldn’t believe it. I know they’re people too, but couldn’t they have gone on doing what they were doing without getting our community involved?

— Sofia Kamma, a resident of Tilos, a tiny island in the eastern Aegean Sea, after its mayor married two gay couples in defiance of “statements by a senior Greek prosecutor last week that such unions were illegal”; June 3.

Q: Dana, is the President disappointed in the South Korean President’s leadership now that he’s backed off his pledges to reopen the South Korean beef market entirely to U.S. beef?
MS. PERINO: Well, we are going to continue to try to work with and understand the South Koreans’ position, and work with our Congress and our industry as we try to move forward. Obviously the President’s position on the safety of American beef is well known. And so we’ll continue to work with the Koreans and monitor their process.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House press briefing; June 3.

The hype-to-reality ratio of that one is essentially infinity. Seeing an exponential change in the yield curve is unlikely.

— James E. Specht, a soybean genetics expert at the University of Nebraska, on the announcement by Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotechnology, that it would “develop seeds that would double the yields of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030 and would require 30 percent less water, land and energy to grow … [using] a new technique called marker-assisted selection”; June 4.

It’s going on big time. There is considerable interest in what we call ‘owning structure’ — like United States farmland, Argentine farmland, English farmland — wherever the profit picture is improving.

— Brad Cole, president of Cole Partners Asset Management in Chicago, which runs a fund of hedge funds focused on natural resources, on reports that “[h]uge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans … by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment”; June 5.

There are limits to which we can keep consumer prices unaffected by rising import prices. I know that the price increases we have had to announce today will not be popular, even though they are only modest. We remain dependent on imports. We are, therefore, vulnerable to global trends in oil prices.

— Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India, announcing “gasoline prices would rise by the equivalent of 55 cents per gallon, about 11 percent, and diesel by 32 cents, almost 10 percent”; India’s “state-run refiners and oil marketing companies … have been posting losses of about $1 billion a week”; June 5.

We’re at the edge of the cliff right now. It’s still at an embryonic stage, like where we were in 1973 or 1974, not as bad as things were in 1979. But it could move in that direction if the Fed isn’t aggressive.

— Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo, reflecting economists’ view that “[p]rices have been soaring long enough and fast enough … that the nation is at risk of a self-reinforcing cycle of inflation like that experienced in the 1970s”; June 4.

I never wear a tie. Because I believe when a woman gets dressed for the evening, she should leave at least one thing to the imagination.

— Fran Lebowitz, a satirist and “fixture in the fashion scene since the era of Studio 54,” quoting Coco Chanel at the annual awards night for the Council of Fashion Designers of America; June 3.

We have a strict non-discrimination policy at the Seattle Mariners and at Safeco Field, and when we do enforce the code of conduct it is based on behavior, not on the identity of those involved.

— Rebecca Hale, spokeswoman for the Seattle Mariners baseball team, after reports that “a lesbian complained that an usher at Safeco Field asked her to stop kissing her date because it was making another fan uncomfortable”; June 5.

Take a snip of this then play a little riff, don’t be afraid to try

Don’t need no airplane to get off the ground there’s more than one way to fly

Have a little taste, Baby, don’t hesitate, every hit don`t have to be a song

Gonna take you to the cosmos, Baby, and boogie with you all night long

— from “Cocaine” by the Grateful Dead.

art, photo credits:

• Janis Joplin poster: Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley
• Bo Diddley: Jeff Christensen, Reuters
• Mars lander photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower: U.S. Army photograph, No. SC 194399
• poster for 1967 Grateful Dead concert: Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

[P]erhaps the most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace.

— from a report by the American Association of University Women, “whose 1992 report on how girls are shortchanged in the classroom caused a national debate over gender equity,” that debunks the notion of a “boys’ crisis,” saying, “Girls’ gains have not come at boys’ expense”; May 20.

I would say the president really has a choice here to show how much he values military service.

— Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who has led the Senate’s efforts to expand education benefits for veterans, on President Bush’s threat “to veto a bill that would pay tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has served in the military for at least three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001″; May 22.

What’s this administration done? Nothing except to increase energy taxes.

— Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the assistant Republican leader, on March 12, 2000, as Senate Republicans blamed the Clinton-Gore administration for recent gasoline price increases; during the 2000 election season, reported The New York Times, “The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline, which was about $1.25 at Christmas, is now more than $1.35. This week, the Energy Department warned that the price would rise to an average of $1.80 and as high as $2 a gallon in some places by the time people go on summer vacations.”

The fact that the U.S. gasoline demand can be down and that the U.S. gasoline consumer is no longer driving world oil prices is a monumental event.

— Arjun N. Murti, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who met disdain in the summer of 2006 when he predicted a “super spike” of oil prices at $100 a barrel from $40; he now predicts oil will hit $200 a barrel and remain above $100 until 2011; May 21.

We used to have a grain economy and a fuel economy. But now they’re beginning to fuse.

— Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, a Washington research group, in a Washington Post story reporting that “the grain required to fill a 25-gallon sport-utility vehicle tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year’”; about a quarter of the American corn harvest is diverted to ethanol; April 30.

We are seeing a flicker of light after long darkness. We never imagined coal would actually make a comeback.

— Michio Sakurai, the mayor of Bibai, on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, where coal mining has been revived as oil hit $135 a barrel; The New York Times reported that “fears of future energy shortages … have been an unanticipated boon to the coal producing regions of countries like Japan that had written off coal mining as a relic of the Industrial Revolution”; May 22.

They came at night, trying to kill us, with people pointing out, ‘this one is a foreigner and this one is not.’ It was a very cruel and ugly hatred.

— Charles Mannyike, 28, an immigrant from Mozambique to South Africa, describing what a news report called “a spasm of xenophobia, with poor South Africans taking out their rage on the poor foreigners living in their midst. At least 22 people had been killed by Monday in the unrelenting mayhem …”; May 21.

The campaign has put a very strict policy in place and every member of the campaign is expected to be compliant with it. There may be perfectly good people that have situations that are not reconcilable. They will not be compliant with the policy.

— Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for presidential candidate John McCain, on reports that Sen. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, lobbied on behalf of foreign governments over the past seven years and met several times with Sen. McCain to discuss his clients’ interests; May 21.

[I]n both parties, the very extreme elements control the nomination process. And a tiny number of people in a few states make these decisions, and we’re left with these options that are increasingly not attractive to the American people. If you had found the right candidate in 2000 or 2004, and you could have put that man or woman, given them ballot access in September of the election year, they could have won the election. There was broad dissatisfaction with the choices that the American people have.

— Hamilton Jordan, chief of staff for President Carter, in a May 31, 2006, PBS interview; Mr. Jordan died this week at age 63; May 20.

As I watch Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s continuing campaign for her party’s nomination, I see a self-focused politician who, despite the reality of the situation, continues to stubbornly pour money that the campaign doesn’t have into a battle that it can’t win. And over these last several years, I have learned that these are the specific qualities that I do not want in our nation’s next president.

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times by J. Maynard of New York City; May 22.

Although age is not a determining factor in whether or not we detain an individual under the law of armed conflict, we go to great lengths to attend to the special needs of juveniles while they are in detention.

— from a periodic report by the United States on its compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child that “as of April 2008, the United States held about 500 juveniles in Iraq”; May 21.

Administrator Johnson was presented with and reviewed a wide range of options and made his decisions based on the facts and the law. Distraction-oriented political tactics of the committee will not keep E.P.A. from moving forward, tackling tough issues and putting into place the most health-protective standards ever.

— Jonathan Shradar, Environmental Protection Agency spokesman, on a congressional report that the administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, had “initially supported giving California full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions, but reversed himself after hearing from the White House”; May 21.

To those who attacked them we say, you will not find a safe harbor. We will find you and justice will prevail. America will not stop standing guard for peace or freedom or stability in the Middle East and around the world.

— President Bill Clinton, speaking at an Oct. 18, 2000, memorial ceremony at Virginia’s Norfolk Naval Base, home port of the USS Cole; The Washington Post reports that “[a]lmost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials”; May 4.

We’re already seeing a hurricane premium on gas of about five to 10 cents per gallon. Especially since Katrina, we’ve seen traders build that into prices.

— energy analyst Phil Flynn in a CNN story predicting that if “a Katrina-like hurricane were to hit in July, gas prices could go as high as $5 or even $6″; May 22.

Simply by chance, a pair of new cars fell into my hands last weekend that perfectly demonstrated the yin and yang of today’s auto industry. The Pontiac G8 was powerful, exciting, fun to drive — and as obsolete as the buggy whip. The Nissan Cube was homely, utilitarian and slow — and we all ought to get used to it, because that’s what most of us are going to be driving in the future.

— Alex Taylor III, senior editor of Fortune magazine, explaining that “an era of personal indulgence in automobiles — when prosperity and cheap gasoline made big and fast available to everyone — is rapidly being replaced by an age of limits“; May 20.

When the government attempts to intrude upon the personal and private lives of homosexuals, the government must advance an important governmental interest … and the intrusion must be necessary to further that interest.

— Judge Ronald M. Gould 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, writing for the majority in a decision that ruled the military cannot automatically discharge people because they’re gay; May 22.

There are few things that provide greater health benefits than quitting smoking. When considering the use of Chantix for their patients, health care providers should discuss the risks of smoking, the health benefits of quitting smoking, and the product’s efficacy and safety profile.

— from a statement issued by Francisco Gebauer, spokesman for Pfizer, maker of the anti-smoking drug Chantix (which had $883 million in sales last year), after the Federal Aviation Administration banned pilots and air traffic controllers from taking the drug — after the “Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory in February, saying that some Chantix users had developed a variety of serious psychiatric symptoms, and that some had committed suicide”; May 22.

I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network’s viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don’t hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.

— from a letter to NBC president Steve Capus from presidential counselor Ed Gillespie complaining about the editing of an NBC interview with President Bush; May 19; here are the edited and full interviews.

It is routine for them to write memos and scream and yell, it’s all part of the game. But when it goes public, it reflects a broader strategy to get something else done. Maybe it’s to put everyone on notice that we’re still here, or to put everyone on notice that you’d better be careful, we’ll embarrass you publicly if you get the story wrong. Or maybe it’s a political strategy to help McCain and help gin up the base. Or it could be all three. But it wasn’t a random act.

— Joe Lockhart, President Clinton’s press secretary, on the White House’s publicized complaint by Ed Gillespie, counselor to the president, accusing NBC of “deceitful editing” of an interview with the president; May 23.

Patrick J. Durkin, of Connecticut, to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation for a term expiring December 17, 2009 …

— from a May 22 nomination announcement by President Bush; Patrick J. Durkin, a managing director of Credit Suisse First Boston, was a two-time Bush Pioneer fundraising “bundler” of at least $100,000; Patrick Durkin is listed as a “Trailblazer” (bundlers of at least $100,000) for presidential candidate John McCain.

Q: Farm bill — where are we with the farm bill?
MS. PERINO: You tell me — or the Democrats tell me.
Q: What did he veto?
MS. PERINO: He vetoed — the President vetoed the bill that the Democrats sent us. And, look, I understand there’s a technical error and we’ll have to see what the Congress decides to do, but maybe it gives them one more chance to take a look and think about how much they’re asking the taxpayers to spend at a time of record farm income. The Congress had an opportunity to put forward — I’m sorry — to implement reforms, much needed reforms, and they decided not to. And I think with this move it shows that they can even up screw up spending the taxpayers’ money unwisely.
Q: What was that —
MS. PERINO: Said they can — they’ve proved that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers’ money unwisely. (Laughter.) Laughter by reporters. (Laughter.)

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House press briefing; May 22.

This younger generation, it’s not that they’re more relaxed about grooming — they still spend time at the salon — but the grooming rules are different.

— Kerry Diamond, a vice president for public relations at Lancôme, on a trend described by New York Times style writer Melena Ryzik as “Over the last few years — since the era of the skull print scarf, let’s say, or the (metaphorical) rise of the Olsen twins — having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness. Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it’s now part of a deliberate look“; May 22; emphasis added.

photo credits:
corn and tractor: Michael Williamson, The Washington Post
Hamilton Jordan: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
forecast graphic: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency
chipped nails: Robert Stolarik, The New York Times

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Of course, I’m talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Errr, wait … that’s not right. That’s not who I’m talking about at all.

No, I’m talking about the Rev. John Hagee and His Maverickness, John Dubya McCain.

You might recall (or you might not, since the Fourth Estate has devoted so few column inches to the story) that Preacher Hagee, a many-jowled man who does little to explode cheap stereotypes about fundamentalist Texans and whose public pronouncements are a living indictment against every academic institution he ever attended, decreed that Hurricane Katrina was a divine smiting against the city of Sodom New Orleans because it was planning to allow a public parade by a bunch of queers. To be sure, Preacher Hagee believes a great many interesting things (I mean, come on, he called the Catholic Church “‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system’”) so in context his New Orleans theory is actually fairly tame.

Besides, he’s been called to account for the outrage, with the nation’s top journalistic watchdogs walloping him no less than 8% as often as it has the Rev. Wright.

A Media Matters for America Nexis search* found that since February 27, the date that televangelist John Hagee endorsed Sen. John McCain for president, The New York Times and The Washington Post combined have published more than 12 times as many articles mentioning Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and Sen. Barack Obama as they have mentioning Hagee and McCain. The Post published 53 articles during that period that mentioned Wright and Obama, compared with three articles mentioning Hagee and McCain. The Times published 46 articles since February 27 mentioning Wright and Obama, compared with five articles mentioning Hagee and McCain.

Additionally, during the same period, the Post published 40 editorials or opinion pieces that included Wright and Obama while publishing two editorials or opinion pieces that mentioned McCain and Hagee. The Times published 22 editorials or opinion pieces that included Wright and Obama, compared with two editorials or opinion pieces that mentioned McCain and Hagee.

Now that’s fair and balanced!

Still, none of this matters because McCain is having nothing to do with Hagee. Ummm, hold on. No, no … that’s not right, either. McCain said he was right honored to have the good Reverend’s endorsement. Of course, he’s repudiated Hagee’s New Orleans remarks. But he’s still glad to have the endorsement.

I know what you’re probably thinking: here comes a “flip-flopper” crack. Nope. Flip-flopping is when you say/do one thing and them come back later and say/do the opposite. It hardly counts as flip-flopping when you’re saying/doing both things at the same time (and please watch the video). No, that’s some other kind of advanced forked-tonguery that the noise machines haven’t coined a catchy name for yet (although “Double-Talk Express” does have a certain ring to it). In the meantime, let’s just call it “lying.” Never mind having his cake and eating it, too – he’s having my cake and eating it, too.

In any case, at least Hagee has calmed his ass down lately. What? I’m sorry, hold on a sec …. he said what? You have got to be kidding me.

In a sermon given at his San Antonio, Texas Cornerstone megachurch that was telecast and available in up to ninety million homes worldwide, controversial pastor John Hagee, who has endorsed the presidential bid of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, Jr., claimed that American public schools provide abortion services. Hagee stated, “Your daughter can get an abortion in public school without telling you but she can’t get an aspirin without your approval.” The pastor also claimed that public school teachers can force their students to study a “precursor to witchcraft” and suggests that America has invited “satan” and demonic spirits into its public school systems by failing to display the Ten Commandments on classroom walls.

Well, surely the press is going to be all over this one. Right? [audio cue: crickets chirping in the wilderness]

One of Ronald Reagan’s nicknames was “the Teflon President,” because no matter what he said or did, and no matter how many cookie jars his people got caught looting, nothing ever stuck.

Are we now seeing the ascendance of The Calphalon Candidate? McCain flips and flops like a live trout on a hot griddle. He’s got a temper like an adolescent with roid rage. He called his wife – in public, with witnesses (and brace yourself for some intemperate language, if you would) – a “cunt.” Since no reporters are willing to ask about this bit of immoderacy, an attendee at an Iowa Town Hall event did.

No normal rabble rouser was the questioner, by the way. He was a Baptist minister. And he got tossed from the event for having the temerity to utter such blasphemy in the presence of, you know, adult voters.

I’m not sure what to say here that isn’t obvious. Maverick is clearly less the straight shooter than he wants us to believe and the nation’s press has no interest in holding him to the same standards it holds his opponents to. Welcome to The McCain Standard. Had he and Hagee been subjected to the same scrutiny that Obama and Wright have endured how very interesting these past few weeks would have been.

I’ve been resisting the urge to question why white Christianity is getting a pass while black Christianity gets pummeled. Why white whack-jobs of the first order can say any goddamned crazy shit that pops into their heads while distinguished military veterans with – and let’s be honest here – fairly legitimate questions about the plight of blacks in America get demonized like they thought up 9/11 all by themselves.

Of course, now I’ve gone and done it, I guess, but explain to me, if you will, how I’m being any less fair to the American press than they’re being to America.

I have no illusions that our nations reporters, editors and obscenely rich (and occasionally Australian) media moguls are going to act in the best interest of the country. Right now I guess I’d count it as a victory if they’d just pretend a little harder.

 Is legislation the answer to ending anorexia in the fashion industry?

“Project Runway” has been a mixed blessing for the fashion industry. On one hand, it’s given us the chance to become acquainted with some of its leading lights, such as designer Michael Kors and everybody’s favorite dominatrix, Heidi Klum. Not to mention the beloved Tim Gunn. (Can he be Secretary of Design in Obama’s administration?) Also, it helps you appreciate how hard aspiring designers work.

On the other hand, seldom before has the public gotten a good, long look at models. Not the slender, but still curvy, women who strut and preen through a Victoria’s Secret TV special or who grace the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, but your standard runway model.

You can just hear viewers going, “Wow, they really are that thin.” Especially in comparison with Heidi, who’s brimming with good health, the Project Runway models look like they were shaped by Bodies by Dachau.

Perhaps because death camps were on its soil, Europe has begun to recoil before an industry in which, instead of a metaphor, hunger to succeed is literal. In a recent Washington Post article, “France Takes Aim at Cult of Thinness,” Molly Moore and Corinne Gavad report: “This month, the French fashion industry signed an agreement to combat anorexia by promoting healthy body images in advertisements and on Paris runways.”

Sounds kind of grudging and perfunctory, doesn’t it? But the lower house of the French legislature just passed a bill which “now goes to the Senate [that] would make it illegal to ‘provoke a person to aspire to excessive thinness by encouraging prolonged food limitations.’” Come to think of it, not much teeth in that one either. How do you prove that one party “provoked” another’s “aspiration”?

Earlier though, three other members of the European Union took more quantifiable measures. Spain, according to Moore and Gavad, “banned models with less than a specified body mass index.” Italy now requires “all models to present health certificates proving they do not suffer from eating disorders.” And Britain calls for “models with anorexia or bulimia to prove they are being treated for the disorders before they can participate in London Fashion Week.” (From here on, at risk of being reductive, we’ll use anorexia as short-hand for all food disorders.)

Of the measures in her country, Isabelle Maury, editor of the French version of Elle magazine, complained: “A girl doesn’t become anorexic only because she sees skinny models in magazines. Anorexia is linked to personal stories, genetics, family environment and psychological traumas.” True, of course. Though she might have done Elle a favor if she’d left off her last sentence: “However, it doesn’t mean that we don’t feel concerned.” Generous of her — or just disingenuous?

Pressure on models to “make their weight,” as if they were wrestlers or boxers sweating off the pounds, is sometimes attributed to misogynistic tendencies among gay fashion designers. (Note: Commenters are advised to refrain from accusing this author of homophobia. He’s only trying to sort out these accusations.)

In his blog Center of Gravitas, Gayprof maintains that misogyny is as rife among gay men as straight. Whereas straights fear women’s power — or hate their mothers or whatever –- some gays nurse an “irrational fear and hatred of women’s bodies.”

“For many gay men,” he writes, “degrading women’s bodies as dysfunctional, inferior, or just plain icky becomes a means through which they attempt to build unity with other gay men.”

But aren’t gay fashion designers, who devote their careers to paying tribute to women, less likely than other men, straight or gay, to suffer from misogyny?

Perhaps the thinness a fashion designer decrees may not be intended to harm women. Instead, as others believe, he’s only engaged in a quest to reshape the female form into an ideal of his: the adolescent male. In other words, no need to worry — the designer is just a pedophile, not a misogynist.

However, this writer (certified LGBT-friendly!) is more comfortable giving him the benefit of the doubt and presuming neither. Still, it might behoove the designer to head such charges off at the pass by abolishing an ideal, excessive thinness, that’s either unattainable for young women or, when attained, turns out to be the exact opposite of ideal.

Any influence that fashion designers and editors might have on young women careening down the road to anorexia is welcome. Especially when coupled with psychotherapy, nutrition counseling, medication, and support groups. Meanwhile, doctors and therapists are unstinting in their efforts to unearth undiscovered causes and devise new methods to treat anorexia (not to mention, get rich off the parents of anorectics).

But since the cure rate, even for those who enter treatment early, remains around 40 percent, they clearly need help. As one who’s flirted with anorexia, the author feels compelled to weigh in. Action plan (as they say): Instead of just trying to build up the low self-esteem endemic to the anorectic, why not honor the affliction itself?

What? Honor — as in encourage — anorexia? There are already plenty of websites playing with fire by helping young women string out food disorders as long as can. It’s not a lifestyle, but a deathstyle, with the highest fatality rate of any psychological illness.

To be more exact, what the author suggests is honoring the impulse to anorexia. For those unfamiliar with the lore of Alcoholics Anonymous, founder Bill Wilson was once the recipient of a letter from Carl Jung. The revered psychology pioneer wrote of a patient’s craving for alcohol as “the equivalent of a low end of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness” or for “union with God.”

In other words, alcoholism may, in many cases, be an unchanneled spiritual longing. This is also true of drugs, of course. Hallucinogens are often ingested expressly to achieve spiritual experiences.

Among anorexia support groups, some, such as Eating Disorders Anonymous, are based on Wilson’s 12-step model. By implication then, anorexia too may be the precursor to a spiritual quest. Ultimately of course, the idea is to transcend alcoholism, drug abuse, or anorexia and let the spirit begin to soar in earnest.

In her groundbreaking book, “Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia,” a source of solace to a generation of anorectics, Marya Hornbacher hints at this. “And it becomes a crusade,” she writes, with which, “perfectly pure,” she was “wholly obsessed.”

In another book, “Starving for Salvation,” Michelle Mary Lelwica maintains that for many anorectic girls and women, a “media-saturated, consumer-oriented culture” has replaced the “primary images, beliefs, and practice” of traditional religion. In fact, she writes, “a network of symbols, beliefs, and rituals centering on bodily appetites and appearances constitutes. . . a ’secular’ salvation myth.” (Emphasis added.)

Then of course, there’s the time-honored religious practice of fasting. Based on the principle that nature abhors a vacuum, it operates on the assumption that spirit, and not a fool, will rush in to fill it. Also, it’s a method for gaining control — a concept that, however anathema to psychologists, is arguably key to most spiritual quests, especially Eastern.

Of course, not soon after you’ve got anorexia by the tail, just like alcohol and drugs, it whips around and bites you. But in the beginning, food disorders have been known to not only increase energy, but aid concentration and calm the nerves.

The anorectic is then in a better position to listen to his or her body, just like students of yoga and meditation are exhorted to do. Anorectics, however, are the equivalent of conservatives listening to echo-chamber disc jockeys on one radio station, while ignoring the emergency broadcast system at the other end of the dial.

Finally, however morbid, the anorectic might receive intimations unavailable to the average person of what’s it like to pass on, and, mercifully free of one’s body, become pure spirit. Of course, it’s at this point that the anorectic can be pretty sure he or she has gone too far.

Those anorectics philosophically opposed to all matters of the spirit may be uncomfortable with viewing their affliction as a spark that can be fanned into the flame of a spiritual practice. They’re free to think of it instead as evidence of a strong will just waiting to be let loose on the world.

Meanwhile, one of the advantages of honoring the impulse to anorexia is that when one is on a quest, he or she is more likely to not only accept, but seek guidance. If the high priests of Ms. Lelwica’s secular religion are fashion designers and editors, in the initial stages of recovery the anorectic might be more receptive to taking cues from them instead of counselors and therapists.

Thus it’s no help at all when, playing the fashion magazine editor as drama queen to the hilt, Elle editor Maury whines about the bill wending its way through the French legislature: “It may mean that we won’t be able to publish anything.”

However difficult to make them stick, she or someone else in the industry may one day be brought up on charges of aiding and abetting the death of an anorexic model. After all, it’s an episode of “Law & Order Special Victims Unit,” if it were to go on location in Paris, just begging to be written. Enterprising French public prosecutor finds smoking gun — like when screener for modeling agency tells applicant: “Vous êtes trop gros.”

You can’t have too many irons in the fire when dealing with food disorders. A relaxation of the fashion industry’s body-fat content is one; therapists and treatment centers another. Throw in honoring the impulse to anorexia and who knows? Anorectics far and wide might surprise those trying to help them with their response.

“I just wanted a little acknowledgment that I knew what I was doing. Now I’m ready to see if you know what you’re doing.”