The "brain trust" of the Right is a relatively elderly cohort and it's becoming clear that no one will replace them. Buckley's intellect was as much about pretense as anything, but certainly he was an educated worldly man with friends across the political spectrum. Compare that to George Will, the various nepotist columnists like Kristol's kid, Newt Gingrich (a historian, although it's easy to forget), or Charles Krauthammer (most laughable when he attempts to practice medicine). Even Irving Kristol felt compelled to say nice things about the Religious Right. It is no wonder that Moynihan retreated to a slightly eccentric version of New Deal liberalism. Lind is much to kind to the neocons. Kristol, et al. had more intellectual horsepower than the pople who followed them, but they articulated a political perspective that was built around a perpetuation of the Cold War, although they eventually found new enemies to replace the Russians. This is little better than libertarianism, which seems built around a horror of taxes and an unwillingness to stick one's neck out regarding civil liberties and other social concerns that supposedly motivate the libertarian faithful. Instead, we are stuck with a neo-feudal paleo-conservativism that subsumes the lost cause of the Confederacy, a poorly informed variant on evangelical Christianity, and a willingness to believe anything on Fox & Friends. The noecons contributed to this ignorant, arrogant, angry perspective and Lind has to live with that.

The biological differences between males and females are not unalterable and involve "overlapping distributions". More boys may do better at something like math than girls, but there are plenty of girls who do much better at math than most boys. Getting hung up on gender stereotypes or worrying if the blanket is blue or pink is less important than providing what children need: limits, nurturance, and exposure to a rich environment. There will always be macho males who like to cook and draw and girly girls who discover they're more handy at home than their husbands. Salon doesn't have a "boysheet" and it would be better off getting rid of the "broadsheet" which seems endlessly filed with twaddle like this.

It's about the odd interlude between the death of Joe McCarthy and the counterculture age of the 60s. It's Rob & laura Petrie country, not Ozzie & Harriet or Leave it to Bevaer whcih were becoming dated at that point. It was a time of great optimism, despite the Cold War; a time when people were starting to relax and and try to keep that glow of youth into middle age. Conventionality still ruled, but the promise of marriage, family, and the suburbs was slowly being challenged. Don's daughter seems to have angry hippie girl written all over her--I see anti-war protests and feminism in her future. The son will wind up listening to indie rock, getting stoned in his dorm room, and either being gay or marrying a whiner like his sister or a nag. Don is a drifter who doesn't like to be tied down--we were hit over the head with that last night. He's the kind of guy who probably will leave a resignation on his desk in about 1969 and disappear on a world tour with a backpack.

A number of the neocons started out as Trotskyites and there are echos of his intelletucalism and combative dogmatism in their approach to issues. His great-granddaughter is the head of one of the NIH institutes and has a similar rep, especially in the dogma & rigidity department.

So Mccain is back to packaging himself as a "moderate"? Is he also trying to act like a grown-up (but not like a geezer)?

McCain is loved by the media, which may help in this, but the arc of his career seems to be one of twists, turns, and temper tantrums. I'm a bit skeptical that he can help reshape the party. Candidates remain hemmed in by the need to please Grover Norquist and the Christian Right and I'm not sure these candidates will really do this, plus Whitman's discovery of civic life is rather recent. She seems like just another rich person who has decided that they'd be great in political office, despite a lcak of any relevant experience. perhaps McCain is concerned about his legacy--on close examination he really doesn't have one. He's cashed in his credibility on numerous issues such as campaign reform and torture, with little apparent anguish. Like Bush he's always been a mixture of family connections and emotional immaturity.

I recently finished "My Lives" which showed that White was an excellent writer, until he tried to explore people's motives and personalities--he clearly has no insight into himself or anyone else. One of the omissions in "My Lives" was any consideration of his peers--I guess that's what the new book is for. Vidal is equally narcissistic and often has silly opinions, but he can write rings about White. I think White would have had a good career writing Time-Life books (his first real job) or jazzing up university textbooks (his next job). Beyond that, he was lucky enough to be part of the first cohort of gay writers to have significant commercial success and mainstream critical attention. His novels are really much like those of his [peers in this group--coming of age, AIDS, aging (for the ones lucky enough to age). Any number of people are equally or more talented. After reading "My Lives", only a need for intense bitchiness or nasty voyeurism would make me want to read his new book, which sounds like frivolous score settling.

It's odd how many middling institutions are listed here. Why on earth would someone get a big salary to runa medium sized university of ok, but not outstanding rep in Stockton or Tulsa? The guy at University of the Pacific was a professor of mine, long ago and later department chair. I can't imagine paying him a million to do anything.