A reader of Andrew Sullivan's blog opines:

The photo of the Iranian men wearing green hijabs to honor Majid Tavakoli made me think of the great Middle English epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
During his quest, Gawain broke his promise to share everything he acquired in Sir Bertilak's castle in order to conceal and keep a lady's green girdle, which he was told had the magical power to save his life. For that very human and understandable lapse in chivalry, the Green Knight nicked Gawain's neck slightly with his axe, when he would otherwise have spared him entirely. Ashamed of his partial failure, Gawain wore the girdle as a baldric and told the whole court at Camelot of his shame. Impressed by his bravery and humility, all the Knights of the Round Table decided from that day forth to wear green baldrics in fellowship with Gawain, to honor him.
They are very different stories from very different times and cultures, but the parallels -- a hunted man wearing a woman's garment to escape mortal danger, that fact being held up as a mark of shame, and his peers wearing similar garments (green, even) to turn them into a badge of honor -- are fascinating to me. I wonder if the Gawain story once had some basis in fact, and if the heroes of the Green Revolution will one day be the subject of Persian epic poetry.

I hope so. Maybe the story of Rostam and Sohrab will be bundled with Majid and his Green Companions and sold cheaply whereever Iranians live.

The average December precipitation for Madison is 1.32 inches. We just got 16 inches of snow (and today's high was around 8 degrees F).

My advice to the supporters of marriage equality in New Jersey:

All the phone calls in the world won't sway a legislator who is taking money or favors from the Catholic Church. Speak out in public places instead, and throw tomatoes or other soft fruit at those who vote NO.

The heavy hand of bigotry fell upon the New York State Senate today, as a bill to legalize same-sex marriage was voted down 38-24.

I applaud Senators Adams and Parker for their fervent arguments in favor of the bill. The spirit of Martin Luther King was on them today.

As for Ruben Diaz (the only senator who attempted to explain his 'no' vote), since you love your g--damn Bible so much, let me quote Matthew's gospel (18:19-20).

Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

I have a mixed reaction to Obama's Afghanistan speech. One thing I am very glad he said was this:

"...these men belonged to al Qaeda, a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents."

So long have we waited to hear someone in power tell us that suicide bombers are no more representative of Islam than Timothy McVeigh is of Christianity. In the aftermath of the Fort Hood murders, it would have been very easy to avoid this subject. I tremble to think what John McCain would have told the cadets--how many times he would have used the word 'crusade,' for instance--poisoning the chance of any operation's success before it even began.

Some stereotypes never die, they just flit from minority to minority. This is from Herman Melville's book Benito Cereno:

There is something in the negro which, in a peculiar way, fits him for avocations about one's person. Most negroes are natural valets and hair-dressers; taking to the comb and brush congenially as to the castinets, and flourishing them apparently with almost equal satisfaction. There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this employment, with a marvelous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its way...

Hand of Fraud?

And Ireland's Justice Minister wants a rematch. I'm sorry, Ireland, but if we were to insist on playing all games marred by a 'missed handball' again, soccer would not be the world's most popular sport any longer. You lost to the country whose republican institutions, flag, and obsession with linguistic purity you copied wholesale; the least you can do is be graceful.

PS I shudder to think what they would demand if they had lost to England.

Andrew Sullivan (see this blog's links) wrote today:

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it - and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided - is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

Some of Sullivan's readers have criticized him for his 'obsession' with Sarah Palin--I support his work on her, and I can understand his sense of responsibility as a (perhaps lapsed) Republican to investigate her claims. This is the woman, after all, who started the meme about Obama's 'death panels.'