Quote of the Week

“The Jews in Central Europe welcomed the Russian Revolution but it ended badly for them. The tacit alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian right is less easily understood. I can imagine a similarly disillusioning outcome…The radical right and the radical left see liberalism’s appeal to reason and tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology. Every democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and reform. Without it, the survival of democracy is at risk. Every genuine conservative knows this.” – Fritz Stern, scholar of Nazism, in the New York Times.

Foie Gras and Arab Women

An insight into how many Arab men appreciate rotund women and are force-feeding them into obesity. They start at the age of 8, according to a report in Wall Street Journal Europe, brought to my attention by Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes. Money quote:

“Ms. Ethmane says she was required to consume four liters of milk in the morning, plus couscous. She ate milk and porridge for lunch. She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk, followed by a prebreakfast feeding at 6 a.m. If she threw up, she says, her mother forced her to eat the vomit. Stretch marks appeared on her body, and the skin on her upper arms and thighs tore under the pressure. If she balked at the feedings, her mother squeezed her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable. ‘I would devour as much as possible,’ says Ms. Ethmane. ‘I resembled a mattress.’

“Force-feeding is usually done by girls’ mothers or grandmothers; men play little direct role. The girls’ stomachs are sometimes vigorously massaged in order to loosen the skin and make it easier to consume even greater quantities of food. Local officials say some women are so fat they can barely move. In [a Mauritanian] survey, 15% of the women said their skin split as a result of overeating. One-fifth of women said one of their toes or fingers were broken to make them eat.”

Kudos for Daniel Pipes and the WSJ for bringing attention to this problem. Where, one wonders, are Western feminists?

De-gaying Susan Sontag

Here’s Daniel Okrent’s defense of why the New York Times omitted the fact that Susan Sontag was a lesbian:

“Spurred by challenges and queries from several readers, I looked into the charge that The Times had willfully suppressed information about Susan Sontag’s relationship with Annie Leibovitz. My inquiry indicates that the subject was in fact discussed before publication of the Sontag obituary, but that The Times could find no authoritative source who could confirm any details of a relationship. According to obituaries editor Chuck Strum, ‘It might have been helpful if The Times could have found a way to acknowledge the existence of a widespread impression that Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz were more than just casual friends. But absent any clarifying statements from either party over the years, and no such corroboration from people close to her, we felt it was impossible to write anything conclusive about their relationship and remain fair to both of them.’ Ms. Leibovitz would not discuss the subject with The Times, and Ms. Sontag’s son, David Rieff, declined to confirm any details about the relationship. Some might say that such safely accurate phrases as ‘Ms. Sontag had a long relationship with Annie Leibovitz’ would have sufficed, but I think anything like that would not only bear the unpleasant aroma of euphemism, but would also seem leering or coy. Additionally, irrespective of the details of this particular situation, it’s fair to ask whether intimate information about the private lives of people who wish to keep those lives private is fair game for newspapers. I would personally hope not.”

The closet remains intact. Privacy? Sontag in formed the world about her cancers and even an abortion. And her relationships with several women were not state secrets. She had openly discussed her bisexuality in the press, although consistently denied a relationship with Ms. Leibovitz. Recall also that Sontag’s career took off with her rightly celebrated essay on camp, an essay that she would had a hard time writing without intimate familiarity with gay life and culture. The golden rule here is to ask what the NYT would have done if Sontag had lived with a man for a couple of decades on and off, and had written essays on various aspects of sex, love, and heterosexuality. Do you think they would have never mentioned her actual love life? Or if she had had serious relationships with a variety of male artists and thinkers, some of whom had influenced her work. Would this be regarded as an invasion of her privacy? The question answers itself.

Grimness in Iraq

“I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,” – General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq’s new intelligence services, in the Times of London last week. I don’t think I’ve read a more depressing statement than that in long time. We may not have lost the war in Iraq yet, but there’s little doubt that we are currently losing it. Solutions? I’m trying hard to be optimistic about Iraq but the relentless murder and mayhem propagated by the enemy is difficult to ignore. The difficult truth is that these fanatics can strike almost at will, even in the heart of the capital. They have infiltrated the Iraqi forces, when they aren’t murdering them. Is there some way through? Could the insurgents overplay their hand and help galvanize the electoral process? Will we somehow see the actual act of democracy achieve a change in public consciousness? These are the hopes we have got to cling to.

Mr. Sullivan writes every day for www.andrewsullivan.com.