Reading Paul Krugman's column about civility reminded me of a fantastic essay written several years ago by playwright Tony Kushner about the murder of Matthew Shepard. Like Krugman, Kushner touches on the role of "civil discourse" in dealing with the right wing. Not surprisingly, Kushner's essay is phenomenal and makes Krugman's column seem soft and inconsequential by comparison.

The penultimate and crucial paragraph of Kushner's essay (from the November 11, 1998, issue of The Nation) is as follows:

A lot of people worry these days about the death of civil discourse, and would say that I ought not call the Pope a homicidal liar, nor (to be ecumenical about it) the orthodox rabbinate homicidal liars, nor Trent Lott a disgusting opportunistic hatemonger. But I worry a lot less about the death of civil discourse than I worry about being killed if, visiting the wrong town with my boyfriend, we forget ourselves so much as to betray, at the wrong moment in front of the wrong people, that we love one another. I worry much more about the recent death of the Maine antidiscrimination bill, and about the death of the New York hate crimes bill, which will not pass because it includes sexual orientation. I worry more about the death of civil rights than civil discourse. I worry much more about the irreversible soul-deaths of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered children growing up deliberately, malevolently isolated by the likes of Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich than I worry about the death of civil discourse. I mourn Matthew Shepard's actual death, caused by the unimpeachably civil "we hate the sin, not the sinner" hypocrisy of the religious right, endorsed by the political right, much more than I mourn the lost chance to be civil with someone who does not consider me fully a citizen, nor fully human. I mourn that cruel death more than the chance to be civil with those who sit idly by while theocrats, bullies, panderers and hatemongers, and their crazed murderous children, destroy democracy and our civic life. Civic, not civil, discourse is what matters, and civic discourse mandates the assigning of blame.

Marc Cooper interviews Gore Vidal for the L.A. Weekly. As usual, Vidal is fabulously contemptuous of the Bush cabal, and he calls out the US political process for what it is -- utterly corrupt.

So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It's not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism. It is the sort of authoritarian rule that the Bush people have given us. The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with -- even using much of the same language. In one of my earlier books, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, I show how the language used by the Clinton people to frighten Americans into going after terrorists like Timothy McVeigh -- how their rights were going to be suspended only for a brief time -- was precisely the language used by Hitler after the Reichstag fire.

Read the full interview.

Wesley Clark says that, as president, he would seek an end to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and support civil unions and domestic-partner benefits. Lieberman and Edwards declined to answer the question about civil unions. Um, is that like taking the Fifth?

Responding to a number of questions asked by the Human Rights Campaign of all the Democratic Candidates, and released today, Clark said, " I would ask the military to craft and implement a policy that ensures that everyone who wants to serve their country is permitted to do so with honor and dignity. I would ask the military to look seriously at the British policy, which prohibits sexual misconduct by both heterosexuals and homosexuals. I would then submit the new policy to Congress to replace the current `Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law."

Read the full story here.

Read full story here.

Despite a sputtering Tar Heel economy and continuing casualties in Iraq, a new poll suggests that President Bush remains positioned to carry North Carolina in 2004, even if his Democratic opponent is Sen. John Edwards.

The poll, commissioned by The News & Observer, showed that Edwards would lose his home state to Bush, 52 percent to 42 percent, if the election were held today.

Bush also would defeat retired Gen. Wesley Clark of Arkansas, the only other major candidate from the South, by 50 percent to 40 percent in North Carolina. And Bush would carry the state by 54 percent to 40 percent against former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, now widely viewed as the party's front-runner.

Read full story here.