Semi-Daily Journal

Mark Kleiman Sees Another Hopeful Sign:

Mark Kleiman sees some very hopeful signs in the reaction to the White House's attempt to smear reporter Jeffrey Kofman:

Mark A. R. Kleiman: CULTURAL LAG A story is told, whether canonical or not I don't know, about Georges Clemenceau. Apparently a veteran Clemenceau met at a memorial service after the war was over shouted at him:

"C'etait les juifs!" ["It was the Jews!"]

Instead of arguing, Clemenceau replied,
"Oui. Les juifs, et les bicyclistes."

Puzzled, the man asked,"Pourquoi les bicyclistes?"

Clemenceau shrugged and said, "Et pourquoi les juifs?"

I was reminded of that by a detail of the Jeffrey Kofman affair, brought to my attention by Austin Cline of "About Atheism."

According to the Lloyd Grove story in the Washington Post, one of the commanders of the 3rd Infantry apparently said to the reporter, whom the White House tried to "out" as a gay Canadian, "Are you really ... Canadian?" And Matt Drudge did roughly the same thing, headlining his link "ABCNEWS Reporter Who Filed Troop Complaints Story is Canadian."

It seems to me -- though I may be overinterpreting -- that both the soldier and Drudge were making the same gentle joke: rejecting the White House's attempt to denigrate Kofman in terms of his sexual orientation by focusing their reaction on his nationality instead.

Whoever in the WH press office tried this stunt seems to have run into a little bit of cultural lag. He (or she) struck with a weapon that used to be sharp but has, rather suddenly, become dull.

Thirty years ago, and to some extent even ten years ago, homosexuality was what Erving Goffman called a stigma: a "spoiled identity," something that people were ashamed of and wanted to conceal. In some quarters, it still is.

But in elite circles, even right-wing or military elite circles, being homosexual mostly isn't considered shameful any more. Even though some heterosexuals are still uncomfortable with it and some homosexuals are still ashamed of it, that discomfort and shame are not respectable, and therefore are not to be spoken. (It's about where being Jewish was in, say, 1960.)

Really, that's such a profoundly cheerful thought I almost want to laugh out loud.

Of course, one could equally well draw negative conclusions from this: it tells us something that we all know but that is nevertheless very unpleasant about the kind of people who work in this White House.