“But human rights campaigners said the Iraq prison abuse scandal proves that the US needs to be held to account.

‘Given the recent revelations… the US has picked one hell of a moment to ask for special treatment,’ said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch.” (BBC via the null device)

Matthew Yglesias:

“I’m a bit surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion of the overwhelmingly male (on the order of 80%) cast of political blog readership. At first glance, one might think of this as an internet issue, related to hardy perennials regarding women and technology in general, but I think it’s a manifestation of the broader fact that women don’t seem very interested in politics. All the political magazines have overwhelmingly male readerships, and surveys consistently show that women are less informed about politics than men, even when you do controls for income and educational attainment. I saw one book which alleged that women are even less likely than men to be able to correctly identify a candidate’s position on abortion, despite the CW that women care about this more than men. Indeed, the research even showed that women do care about this more than men, in that among those who knew where the candidates stood, it was more likely to be a factor in women’s voting decisions.

So I have no idea why that is, and it probably has some deep and mysterious roots out there somewhere. On the other hand, one thing I’ve long thought is that following politics is less the manifestation of high-minded concern for public affairs that we junkies would like to think of it as, and more like sports fandom — a semi-arbitrary decision to follow something and develop an emotional attachment to a team just because it’s fun. Certainly women don’t watch as much sports as men, even though there’s been tremendous growth in women’s participation (which has a pretty different appeal — I wouldn’t care to play tackle football, but it’s fun to watch) in athletics over the past several decades.”

Looking at the comments to Yglesias’ challenge, I think the difference is real and facetious attempts to put it down to a difference in online polltaking miss the boat. In so doing they prevent us from acknowledging the meaningfulness of the observation.

Both the comment about politics being like sport and the comment about the different modes of discourse men and women use are part of the answer (not that there is one answer that explains it all). Psychologically, Carol Gilligan explained several decades ago the developmental roots of fundamental psychological differences between males and females. Although I am being reductionistic, women are embedded in relationship and maintain interpersonal liaison, while men are confrontive and competitive and their relationships more often disjunctive.

The modern political process in the US is relentlessly mean-spirited, amplifying of distinctions between oneself and one’s opponent, and conciliation and concession are seen as weakness. Statistically, this would be abhorrent to more women than men, although the male “sissies” on the Left who are better able to embrace the feminine in themselves share their female compatriots’ disdain more often for the little men (usually white) playing with their toys in Washington with a deluded sense of their own importance. (Months ago, I published a link in my weblog to a piece of software that claimed, by analyzing a prose sample, to tell if the writer was male or female. A large element of what it looked for was the syntax of disjunction vs. the syntax of connectedness. By the way, I was complimented by its opinion that my writing was feminine…)

I suspect that in more mature democracies than that of the US, the disparity between men’s and women’s participation would be lessened, especially in those where (a) political discourse remains civil, and (b) coalition is necessary to govern.

What do you expect from someone who idolized Strom Thurmond and was stupid enough to advertise the fact? (The Washington Monthly)

Atrios is right.

I read Gore’s speech and thought of the Presidents who become elder statesmen after they leave office, unencumbered by the need to build a national constituency and able to speak from truth instead of power. Gore seems to have bypassed the President phase and gone right to the statesman-like. He eloquently encapsulates the extent of Bush’s betrayal of American ideals with a quiet but sustained outrage and concludes with some between-the-lines regret that he acquiesced to the theft of the Presidency from him by the Supreme Court in order to “do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office.” Has there been any talk of what role he might have within, or as an advisor to, a Kerry administration?

US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war:

Rock of Ages: “”Youth is a quality not unlike health: it’s found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. (And not all young people are lucky enough to be young. Think of those people at your college who wanted to be politicians or corporate lawyers, for example.) I’m not talking about the accouterments of youth: the unlined faces, the washboard stomachs, the hair. The young are welcome to all that — what would we do with it anyway? I’m talking about the energy, the wistful yearning, the inexplicable exhilaration, the sporadic sense of invincibility, the hope that stings like chlorine. When I was younger, rock music articulated these feelings, and now that I’m older it stimulates them, but either way, rock ‘n’ roll was and remains necessary because: who doesn’t need exhilaration and a sense of invincibility, even if it’s only now and again?

When I say that I have found these feelings harder and harder to detect these last few years, I understand that I run the risk of being seen as yet another nostalgic old codger complaining about the state of contemporary music. And though it’s true that I’m an old codger, and that I’m complaining about the state of contemporary music, I hope that I can wriggle out of the hole I’m digging for myself by moaning that, to me, contemporary rock music no longer sounds young — or at least, not young in that kind of joyous, uninhibited way. In some ways, it became way too grown-up and full of itself. You can find plenty that’s angry, or weird, or perverse, or melancholy and world-weary; but that loud, sometimes dumb celebration of being alive has got lost somewhere along the way. Of course we want to hear songs about Iraq, and child prostitution, and heroin addiction. And if bands see the need to use electric drills instead of guitars in order to give vent to their rage, well, bring it on. But is there any chance we could have the Righteous Brothers’ “Little Latin Lupe Lu” — or, better still, a modern-day equivalent — for an encore?” — Nick Hornby, (The New York Times Op-Ed)

I don’t know about Hornby, but as an over-50 listener to rock-and-roll I am still finding alot in my listening, new and old, that inspires exuberance and a singing-out-loud (but when I am alone in the car with the windows up) type of joy… Having an iPod and finding alot of new music through the mp3-blogs has put me onto alot of indie rock that amazes me, and I have yet to hear anything about Iraq or child prostitution.

Oh, and, while we’re at it, if us old codgers are able never to outgrow our rocking, why can’t some of you young upstarts get into classical music? (Boston Globe op-ed)