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I was informed recently that Frank Rich, longtime expert in the glorification of the banal from his perch as a New York Times theater critic, began writing about politics. I was surprised to learn of this transition — why would one want to stop talking about dance routines and vocalists or consulting for HBO, where his water-carrying biases might actually be relevant, to pen irrelevant and ignored opinions about politics? Surely there are other people at the NYT capable of writing “everyone who opposes Obama’s health care policy is a racist” columns, or the far more entertaining “you’re all a bunch of Stalinists” columns.

In this week’s column, Rich chose to engage in exactly the kind of muddled attack which plagues anyone paid to opine on matters about which they know little or nothing — an ill-advised assault on David Blankenhorn, the centrist Democrat who heads the Institute of American Values. Rich levels two criticisms against Blankenhorn in response to his court testimony regarding California’s Proposition 8, which was approved by 7 million Californians (52% of the vote) in 2008: that Blankenhorn is an unqualified commentator on social policy, and that Blankenhorn is a well-paid (Rich quotes his salary) tool of the right-wing.

Rich would’ve been better served searching the archives of his own paper before teeing off on Blankenhorn, a magna cum laude Harvard grad, Vista volunteer and center-left community organizer. In 1998, no less a source than the New York Times published a glowing profile of Blankenhorn, describing him as a “consensus builder for a moral base in society.”

[Blankenhorn's] quest for the moral basis of society came after graduating from Harvard and working several years as a community volunteer in the Boston area, railing against high utility rates and organizing low-income residents to fight City Hall. After seeing firsthand the effect of single-mother families on children, he began writing articles on the importance of traditional fatherhood, and spent three years fruitlessly knocking on doors, trying to get centrist and liberal academics interested in families. Finally, in 1989, he put together the first of several conferences on the subject, beginning to popularize a notion of a more civil society that was not necessarily based on divine revelation.

Had Rich bothered to ask anyone who works in social policy, he would’ve learned that Blankenhorn is a southern-born acolyte of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, not some fire-breathing right-winger. An Obama supporter unafraid to make this case to an evangelical audience, Blankenhorn has been at the leading edge of the fatherhood movement, promoting the efforts to reduce the number of broken homes (particularly in the inner city) as a positive aim of public policy and as a social good. What’s more, as a supporter of a compromise solution on same sex marriage with Jonathan Rauch, Blankenhorn has been more than willing to take stands that put him at odds with both the right and the left.

Rich’s accusations are not just inaccurate — they are jarringly so, at odds with the facts known by anyone more than passingly familiar with Blankenhorn’s work, and petty: unable to find any crazy remarks (because there are none), Rich instead stoops to printing David’s salary (well in line with the heads of similarly sized thinktanks) in a kind of cheap insult more appropriate for backstage whispers than the pages of a once-respected newspaper.

Thankfully, Rauch himself is on the case — his letter to the NYT is worth quoting in full:

Frank Rich, for the third time since February, unfairly criticizes David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and a witness in the trial over Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage. The implication of these columns has been that Mr. Blankenhorn is antigay.

But Mr. Blankenhorn, with whom I’ve debated gay marriage for years, is the sort of decent, moderate opponent we could use more of. He favors civil unions for same-sex couples. He supports gay adoption. And he has publicly and repeatedly stood up for “the equal dignity of homosexual love.”

Those are not the words of an antigay bigot — and believe me, I’ve heard my share.

Mr. Blankenhorn’s desire to help gay couples while stopping short of marriage may be the wrong answer, as I believe. But it reflects the thinking of millions of centrist and unbigoted Americans who will ultimately determine the fate of gay rights and gay marriage. Treating those moderates as if they were haters only drives them away.

Exactly right, and more proof why Rich should go back to being petty and ignorant about theater, instead.

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My last Washington Times oped of the year is here:

Soon there was a growing pile of pictures of newer Christmases, but fewer and fewer from home. These were images from distant lands, small trees propped up with small ornaments in his drab quarters in Korea, Vietnam, Panama. My grandmother was in more of them, pale and smiling next to his tanned features. A handmade book from the end of their first year of marriage, full of notes and doodles drawn for her benefit, told how much time they’d spent apart and how much he loved her. A blurred picture of the two of them entwined and smiling in their old trunks on some unnamed Caribbean beach showed more heartfelt affection than I ever recalled seeing them demonstrate in public. In another, she posed against one generous gift, a gray Studebaker parked on the dusty road of a military base, her arms outspread with pride.

I hope you’ll take the time to read it.

>> A quick aside on Barack Obama’s new tax plan, as described by Obama advisors Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman, which is purportedly in response to polls saying he was losing on the issue (unlike, of course, all other Obama policy shifts).  Essentially, they say President Obama would bring back the old and not missed 39.6% tax rate (as opposed to the current 35%) and a new payroll tax on top earners, because of course raising taxes on the entrepeneurial class will really help the country by taking away the disposable income they would otherwise reinvest in the economy. This is all kind of pointless, though, because essentially what Obama’s proposing is the same as what will happen when the Bush tax cuts expire – he doesn’t have to lift a finger to make them law, and none of these hikes will pay for the grandiose governmental expansions he favors in other areas (hello, trillion dollar deficits).

But it’s in the New York Sun’s hard-hitting editorial on the plan that we see an astonishingly anti-woman element to it that Austan and Jason aren’t particularly up front about, and that I had missed myself on first glance:

Meanwhile, the most astonishing sentence in the op-ed is this one: “His plan would not raise any taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year, nor on any single person with income under $200,000.” It amounts to a declaration of war on two-income families, a marriage penalty of punitive proportions. If those two single persons with income just under $200,000 get married, Mr. Obama is going to hammer them with a huge tax increase. If the second earner, who in many cases is the woman, is going to have to give 54% of what she earns to the government, she might as well stay home with the children.

Ah, the full-throated return of the marriage penalty.  Here’s the problem with this area of tax policy, which has had a huge impact on society (read this Blankenhorn essay for more): the marriage penalty discourages people from getting married, economically – but it also encourages them to be a one-income household, with the kind of societal benefits on health, education, lifestyle, etc. that social conservatives (and the populist working class) approve of wholeheartedly.

Yet there’s no question here that Obama’s tax plan is, at its heart, anti-woman.  Forced to choose because of our tax structure to either stay at home and care for the kids or stay in the workforce, the overwhelming majority of married couples has mom stay at home, and dad go to work.  I’m frankly amazed that Obama’s policy shop has a blind spot on this, as this is the ideal sort of issue for McCain to point out in front of Hillary supporters (that, and he should announce as soon as possible as big an increase in the child tax credit as is feasible – he currently has said he intends to double the dependent exemption, but there’s tons of available political ground here by supporting a pro-family tax code).  This is amateur hour.

A little more than a month ago, my grandfathers – both of them – passed away. One passing was expected, but the other was not. They were both men blessed with long life and loving families. They were both proud to be Americans, serving their country in different ways during their lifetimes, at home and abroad.

John Domenech, my father’s dad, was a highly decorated military veteran, serving thirty years in the U.S. Army and retiring at the rank of colonel. Born in San Juan in 1923, he spent most of his military career defending freedom and democracy in Korea and Vietnam, earning numerous commendations – including the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal (twice), the Army Commendation Medal (six times), and the Combat Infantryman Badge.

We will bury him, with full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery. We have to wait our turn — so many of these older veterans are saying their last goodbyes now, so there’s a long line.

When an older family member dies, it seems like you always find out a story or two you didn’t know before — a family secret, a piece of gossip, a whisper that the old folks finally pass along to the younger ones. Coming from an old Puerto Rican family with multitudinous cousins, there are plenty of stories to tell. For my grandfather, one particular story we found out about serves a perfect indication of the kind of man he was, and the kind of attitude he had toward this country…and what’s more, an indication of how the times have changed.

It turns out that my grandfather changed his name when he was a young man, from the Puerto Rican Juan to the Americanized John.

All the times he insisted that people speak English, that they hoist the American flag higher than every other, that he expressed his disgust with La Raza and similar organizations — knowing this, it all came into focus. This wasn’t a change made out of a desire to get ahead in the service, live in comfort on the mainland, or deny his ethnic background. It was a change he made because he wanted to make clear that his pride as a Puerto Rican would always come second to the pride he felt as an American, a citizen and servant of the greatest nation in the world.

He was a patriot, first and always, and he knew what that meant. Such is the legacy he passed on to his family, and we will do our level best to heed it.

(Originally posted by Ben on July 5, 2006)