Comments on: We have met the enemy and he is gay

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 21:52:06 +0000

And why, pray tell, does the BBC insists on using this slimy bastard (Frum that is) again and again and again?

By: John Bragg

John Bragg — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 12:57:29 +0000

Hoo, boy. Can’t put one over on Frum, can ya? He’s realized that someone wants us to think that Arafat has AIDS, some rival in the Palestinian leadership. http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp

By: nick

nick — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 23:18:23 +0000

Does David Frum have oral diarrhoea? Yes.

By: john bragg

john bragg — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 15:29:23 +0000

First of all, thank you to Vik, and Doug Muir, who actually helped answer the question. SEcond of all, as an atheist rightwing nutjob, I’d say that Frum would happily transmit rumors that Arafat had syphilis, or alcohol poisoning, or trichinosis from eating pork, or anything that would drive a wedge between Arafat and the Islamist members of what we might call the worldwide anti-Zionist terrorist coalition. BTW, Doug Muir, I’ve been slowly noodling the last few weeks about an alt-history where Gore runs in 2000 as the candidate of Peace, Prosperity and a President With Pants, (instead of as Harold Ickes 2000), winning a Bush-style “landslide” in 2000 and dispelling the Democrats-are-anti-American-wimps trope. Probably a big Nader-McKinney vote in 2004, for one thing.

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 04:37:02 +0000

Correction: the gay365 correspondent posted the article on Nov 1st, after Frum. But he ran with it, regardless!

By: enthymeme

enthymeme — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 04:26:02 +0000

S_bethy: “Am I tracking the logic here correctly?” Whose? If your own, then maybe; since Frum said nothing along those lines. John: “That’s why I’m worried about the links being made in the far right wing mind about this. To you and me it doesn’t make any difference whether he is gay or straight, but to a more twisted mind, it’d serve as evidence of Satanic endorsement of Islam and homosexuality, and it’d link the two. That’d be a bad thing.” And did Frum make any such connection? Or did he, in fact, assert the contrary in noting that the “Islamic world” is “anti-homosexual”? Indeed, the source breaking the story seems not to be the Great Right Wing Slur Machine but a gay365.com correspondent – See: http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/11/110104arafat.htm Poor Gay365 correspondent – blamed for his efforts, possibly responsible for “rightwing” type sentiments and – god forbid – bigotry! Oh, and sinking as we speak into the murky depths of the Mariana Trench. And of course, to Henry, Instapunditry is “scuzzy innuendo”, while his own exercise in impugning Frum’s motives isn’t. Methinks CT needs to work the bitterness out of the system, and stop lashing out blindly. Friendly fire, and all that.

By: Ethesis

Ethesis — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 04:20:29 +0000

No offense to anyone, but the description of his problems sounds a lot like leukemia. http://www.leukemia.org/hm_lls for more information.

By: s_bethy

s_bethy — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 01:58:28 +0000

Roy Cohn died of aids, and concealed the fact. Roy Cohn was a Bad Man and a Jew. Roy Cohn worked for Joseph McCarthy, therefore Ann Coulter is an insane bitch. Am I tracking the logic here correctly?

By: Greg

Greg — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 01:26:48 +0000

I was astounded by Frum’s line about the odious Richard Littlejohn who he hails as “Probably Britain’s best-read political columnist”. Um, no, really.

By: John

John — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 01:03:14 +0000

Arafat = bad man and terrorist Arafat = homosexual homosexual = terrorist That’s why I’m worried about the links being made in the far right wing mind about this. To you and me it doesn’t make any difference whether he is gay or straight, but to a more twisted mind, it’d serve as evidence of Satanic endorsement of Islam and homosexuality, and it’d link the two. That’d be a bad thing.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 23:55:53 +0000

The comment about arsenic, above, echoes something I’ve been thinking. I’m surprised the Islamic ‘street’ isn’t saying that he was poisoned by Mossad.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 22:34:12 +0000

Life Outruns Satire: I remember when the US Army in Iraq shot up what appears to have been a wedding party, Steve Bell published a cartoon in the Guardian in which the US spokesman Kimmit posed in front of a video of the guests, intoning ‘this was no normal wedding, this was a Gay Terrorist Wedding’. Oh, and re this: ‘I claim Dan Hardie’s £50!’ ‘That’s $50, chiseler.’ It was £50, me being British an’ all, it was on offer to a halfwit defending another halfwit from the charge of making false statements about Martin Luther King, and, alas, the money is safe.

By: Decnavda

Decnavda — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 20:26:52 +0000

“We know he has a blood disease that is depressing his immune system. We know that he has suddenly dropped considerable weight – possibly as much as 1/3 of all his body weight. We know that he is suffering intermittent mental dysfunction. What does this sound like?” Um, a really, really old guy?

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 19:42:19 +0000

Ai yi yi. 1) Arafat, homosexual encounters, Romanian intelligence: plausible. There are several independent sources for this. The most famous one is Ion Pacepa, former chief of Ceaucescu’s DIE —the external intelligence agency, Romania’s equivalent to the CIA or Mossad. Pacepa defected to the US in 1977; he was the highest-ranking spy ever to defect, from either side, during the Cold War. Pacepa published numerous accounts of his life with the Ceausescus and their friends. The most famous is his book Red Horizons, written in 1988 and still in print. Red Horizons is very, very self-serving—Pacepa depicts himself as an honest man disgusted by Ceausescu and his decadent antics—but otherwise, the book has held up remarkably well. Several of the more lurid anecdotes, implausible on first impression, were confirmed when the archives of Ceausescu’s Securitate were (briefly and partially) opened. For instance, in 1988 it was hard to believe that the President of Romania loved grainy, black-and-white amateur porn, the sleazier the better, and watched it almost every day. But by 1990 it was known that this was exactly and precisely the case; the new Romanian government displayed Ceausescu’s tape collection for several weeks after the Revolution. Perhaps more to the point, nobody has ever convincingly disproved or refuted any of Pacepa’s assertions. His descriptions of Ceausescu’s family and associates are all very accurate, as is his chronology of events. What do experts think of the book? Well, I can’t speak for the intelligence community generally, but my former Security Policy instructor at Yale—ex-general and former NSA Director Bill Odom—considered it a useful and reliable text. (This is the same Bill Odom who has become quietly famous in the intelligence community for his scathing critiques of the Bush administration.) Furthermore: here in Romania, Pacepa is widely disliked and despised as a traitor. But the veracity of his descriptions is universally accepted. Even people who loathe him concede that he’s telling the truth. So, when Pacepa describes listening to tapes of Arafat “making love to his bodyguard, roaring like a tiger”—I’m inclined to believe him. If you read the book, you’ll find that this description comes in the middle of a long and remarkably well-informed analysis of Middle Eastern politics c. 1977, with particular attention to Arafat’s relations with Jordan and Egypt. It’s a sensational detail, but it’s more or less a throwaway line in a general description of Arafat’s character and goals. (Pacepa’s summary is succinct: “I’d never seen so much cleverness, blood and filth all in one man.”) IMO that makes it even more plausible, but if you’re really worried about it pick up the book—it’s widely available—and decide for yourself. Note: the book is published by Regnery Press. Does the argumentum ad hominem apply to publishers? Regnery is a right-wing house that publishes a great deal of crap. Remarkable, awful, stupid crap. Nevertheless, I say again, the book stands on its own merits. 2) Arafat, AIDS: Oh, for shit’s sake. The encounters described took place in 1977. Further: even if Arafat had a homosexual hidden life for the next 27 years… well, to die of AIDS in 2004, he would need to have contracted it after about 1993, and more likely after 1997. (The incubation period for HIV varies widely, but very rarely goes over 10 years without treatment.) This was a very public period in Arafat’s life; he was also already well into his 60s. I suppose it’s remotely possible that he was keeping gay lovers on the side while living under intense scrutiny in the West Bank, but it seems a stretch. Final thought: he was 75 years old. That’s old anywhere; it’s very old for an Arab man of his generation. (I say “Arab” only because there’s some dispute whether Arafat was fully Palestinian or part Egyptian. Either way, there aren’t too many of the 1929 birth cohort still around.) 75 year old men drop dead all the time. The fact that he was boinking his bodyguard in Ceausescu’s spare bedroom 27 years ago has, very probably, not a damn thing to do with it. Sheesh. Doug M.

By: Richard Bellamy

Richard Bellamy — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 19:37:29 +0000

“what’s wrong with the hypothesis that Arafat has AIDS? Search Google News for where these speculations are being published and you’ll see.” I tried. This was my first hit. http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=9&id=4583