{"id":4825,"date":"2010-11-30T12:39:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T19:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=4825"},"modified":"2010-12-04T14:28:16","modified_gmt":"2010-12-04T21:28:16","slug":"another-breezy-update-now-with-vampires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=4825","title":{"rendered":"Another Breezy Update . . . Now with Vampires!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My Nook e-reader came with a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula<\/em>. Although prudishly Edwardian, it’s still a great read, full of fascinating vampire lore.\u00a0 I thought I knew all that stuff from movies I’d watched as a kid, but after reading the original, I realize the movies got a lot of it wrong.<\/p>\n

Since reading Dracula<\/em>, I’ve fallen into a vampire vortex.\u00a0 I downloaded and devoured Justin Cronin’s The Passage<\/em>, a novel about apocalyptic end times brought on by vampires; then Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan’s The Strain<\/em>, a thriller about vampires taking over Manhattan.\u00a0 Now, in hopelessly old-fashioned ink & paper format, I’m reading Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In<\/em> (pulled in by the fantastically creepy excellence of the movie, which I watched a few weeks ago, right about the time I started reading the original Dracula<\/em>).<\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 Vampire overload.\u00a0 I promise to quit, as soon as I a) finish Let the Right One In<\/em>, <\/em>b) develop a thirst for blood (whichever comes first).\u00a0 But I don’t mean to leave you with the impression it’s all-vampire-all-the-time at my house . . . I’m also (episodically) reading The Autobiography of Mark Twain<\/em>, Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain<\/em> (a real weeper if you love dogs), Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs<\/em>, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard<\/em>, and some surprisingly mean-spirited stories and essays by David Sedaris.\u00a0 Still on the shelf: Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections<\/em>.\u00a0 If you enjoy reading the book reviews I post to Paul’s Thing, you can rest assured many more are coming.<\/p>\n

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When I was a major on the joint staff during the mid-1980s, every morning I’d read messages sent to HQ USAF by our air attach\u00e9s at embassies around the world.\u00a0 The messages contained frank, candid descriptions of foreign officers and leaders, accompanied by assessments of foreign military capabilities, policies, and intentions.\u00a0 Messages, in other words, similar to the diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks<\/a>.\u00a0 The messages I read were classified, and though I had the appropriate clearances, I had no need to know.\u00a0 And yet there the messages were, day after day, and I was expected to read them and initial a routing slip showing I’d done so.<\/p>\n

Should I be shocked that, a quarter-century later . . . and nearly a decade after 9\/11 . . . a young enlisted man with no need to know would have access to classified messages and cables from State Department personnel?\u00a0 I suppose I should be, but I’m not.<\/p>\n

Nor am I all that excited about the release of this information.\u00a0 Sure, some diplomats and heads of state will be embarrassed.\u00a0 Too bad.\u00a0 Will this leak someday assume the importance of the Pentagon Papers<\/a>?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 Once the dust has settled, will Julian Assange and WikiLeaks be heroes or goats?\u00a0 They appear to be goats right now, but when the next data dump comes out, a promised leak of confidential internal documents from Bank of America<\/a>, I’m betting they’ll be regarded as heroes by most Americans.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday, listening to an NPR report on the DoD’s Don’t Ask\/Don’t Tell survey<\/a> of military personnel, it hit me that if gays are permitted to openly serve, the thorny issue of same-sex marriage will soon follow.<\/p>\n

I probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t believe federal civil service employees can claim benefits for spouses unless they’re legally married.\u00a0 Six states<\/a> currently allow and recognize gay marriages.\u00a0 That suggests to me that the same-sex spouse of a federal employee who was legally married in, say, Massachusetts, would be eligible for benefits, but that the domestic partner of a federal employee from Illinois, where gay marriage is still illegal, would not be.<\/p>\n

Would it work that way in the military?\u00a0 You can have a same-sex spouse . . . and all the benefits other married couples receive in the military, which are many . . . but only if you were legally married in one of the six states that allow gay marriage?\u00a0 What if you were legally married in Massachusetts but are now posted to a military base in Illinois?\u00a0 What if you are posted overseas to a country that persecutes gays?*<\/p>\n

And if the military does allow gays to openly serve (however this may come about, through congressional action, executive order, or a unilateral move by the DoD itself), it will inevitably permit at least some gay members to marry and claim benefits for their spouses.\u00a0 Will this help move things along in the 44 states where gay marriage is still illegal?\u00a0 Or will it put pressure on the president, the congress, or the courts to override state laws and declare same-sex marriage legal across the land?\u00a0 One place to look would be the racial integration of the military back in the late 1940s.\u00a0 Did the integration of the military change things in any of the states where segregation was still practiced?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Did the federal government finally override state laws and make segregation illegal?\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

The more I think about it, the more I realize how big a deal repealing DADT is going to be.<\/p>\n

Of course, the really big deal, at least to John McCain and his pals, is what happens when same-sex couples start showing up at NCO and officers’ clubs . . . holy shit!\u00a0 Truly the end times are upon us.\u00a0 All we need now are gay vampires!<\/p>\n

* In the 1950s, Iceland insisted that the US military not station black soldiers in that country<\/a>, and we went along with it.\u00a0 The secret agreement was exposed in 1959 (a few years before Wikileaks came into existence, I might note), and Iceland was forced to drop the policy.\u00a0 Still, several more years passed before the US military began stationing black troops at bases in Iceland.\u00a0 This suggests, to me, the likely model the US military will adopt with regard to stationing gay troops overseas.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Nook e-reader came with a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although prudishly Edwardian, it’s still a great read, full of fascinating vampire lore.\u00a0 I thought I knew all that stuff from movies I’d watched as a kid, but after reading the original, I realize the movies got a lot of it wrong. Since reading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-military","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4825"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4849,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions\/4849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}