I support gay marriage yet I found myself made unexpectedly happy by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling. I’m elated. Woohoo!

I like marriage. It’s a great thing when it works: being married has made my life into something even I like. And I no longer can see what the serious objections are to gay marriage, assuming that “Seeing men kiss on the lips is creepy” doesn’t count as a serious objection.

So, let me repeat: Woohoo! (And now begins the fight to avoid a constitutional amendment that would annul today’s joy. Sigh.)

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I’m continuing to guest blog at the Corante Many-to-Many site and just posted something on which parts of the new social/political network being created during this campaign season are likely to survive the campaign.

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Jay Rosen, in a fine piece on what’s wrong with politics, quotes Vaclav Havel:

Many of the traditional mechanisms of democracy created and developed and conserved in the modern era are so linked to the cult of objectivity and statistical average that they can annul human individuality. We can see this in political language, where cliche often squeezes out a personal tone. And when a personal tone does crop up, it is usually calculated, not an outburst of personal authenticity.

Sooner or later politics will be faced with the task of finding a new, postmodern face. A politician must become a person again, someone who trusts not only a scientific representation and analysis of the world, but also the world itself. He must believe not only in sociological statistics, but also in real people. He must trust not only an objective interpretation of reality, but also his own soul; not only an adopted ideology, but also his own thoughts; not only the summary reports he receives each morning, but also his own feeling.

And here’s a snipped from Jay:

It cannot be the case that one-to-many man is destined to run campaigns forever. (And when the fall comes it will be swift and total, like the collapse of the system that threw Havel in jail.)

It cannot be the case that insulting the citizen’s intelligence (“Joe-vember to Remember”) is the smart way to go. (Once someone demonstrates that definitively, we will marvel at how long the premise held.)

But don’t be satisfied with snippets! It’s a damn fine piece.

Rick Klau, well-known Deaniac, has a report that’s partisan yet open-minded and observant, about the Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner where most of the Democratic candidates showed up. (Telling detail: It took 43 buses to bring the Dean supporters in; the campaign had to get a parade permit just to let them to roll in.)

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Peter Kaminski runs the Reuters photo of Bush signing the “partial birth” abortion ban. It is striking, as Pete says, because all the on-lookers at this photo opp are dignified old white men. Hey, thanks, guys!

Pete’s also got some cogent comments on the bill.

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Halley wonders if the letter-writing event I’m hosting is still on for this Tuesday.

And how! It’s at 7pm and if you’re in the Boston area and feel like coming by to write letters to undecided voters in Iowa about why you’re supporting Dean, you’re invited. Send me an email for the details.

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Lou Dobbs – money reporter for CNN – gave a talk at the Open Text Conference I’m at that was entertaining enough. (Yup, me and Dobbs, fellow keynoters.) I didn’t mind the general Republicanism of it. I didn’t even mind his greeed-is-good-ism; I like money, too, and I wish everyone had more of it, particularly poor people. But I do think it’s a problem when a national journalist says matter of factly that we were told at the time that we were going in to Iraq in order to bring democracy to the region. As I recall, we were told we were invading Iraq because Hussein posed an imminent danger what with his weapons of mass destruction and all. Dobbs should leave the revisionism to the politicians.

I mean, what does Dobbs think he is, a blogger?

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Chris Lydon wants us all to write The Blogging of the President.

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Music for America makes the connection between music and politics.

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Sen. John Edwards is blogging at Lessig‘s place. His normal campaign blog is here. The stuff Edwards wrote for the Lessig blog is a pretty stiff, but, hell, Dean’s Lessig-blogging was highly starched. No one is born knowing how to blog, and not everyone can – or should – learn.

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On Nov. 18 at 7pm, you’re invited to a party at our house in north Brookline to write letters to undecided voters in Iowa telling them why you’re supporting Howard Dean. There is something peculiarly thrilling about writing these letters. If you’re interested in coming to our little party, let me know.

No, I am not inviting people who want to write letters to the same folks explaining why they’re not supporting Howard Dean. So now we know where the limit of my liberalism is.

If you want to host your own party, click here. Parties are being organized for the 18th and 22nd of every month until the first primaries. Parties on the 18th write to Iowans; those on the 22nd write to New Hampsherinis (New Hampsters?).

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