If I were John Kerry, here’s what I’d say about the gay marriage amendment in a debate:

There he goes again. George Bush — the uniter, not the divider — is using this issue as a wedge to drive Americans apart by making this complex question of morality, religion, states rights, and love into a simple yes-no, “you’re either with us or against us.” Americans are smarter than that, Mr. President. We can handle tough questions in all their complexity. And, frankly, it’s a failure of leadership and of vision that you can only see things in black and white.

Then I’d pants W.

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Because I’m at an airport, I bought a copy of USA Today, a newspaper I am trying to be unashamed of liking. It’s actually as serious as most regional papers.

So, today the front page feature was on the political impact of same-sex marriage. My take-away from it is: Man, is this issue complex! There arent that many different positions one can take — it’s a relatively small matrix of civil union vs. marriage, state vs. federal control, ammendment vs. statute. But the reasons for supporting the box you happen to X are as complex as our attitudes towards sex multiplied by our beliefs in the role of the government, divided by how we think God is immanent in the world, to the power of our experience of our parents’ marriage times our view of our own marriage modula the marriages we see on TV.

Yet, Bush is using it as a wedge issue to force a divide that brings the wavering to his side. But with the fault lines on this issue are like the marbelizing of a windshield when it runs into a truck. For a significant percentage of us Americans, the attempt to reduce this to a simple yes or no — the attempt to use it as a wedge — will pull us further toward a candidate who recognizes that nuance is the only thing that lets us survive as a society.

I hope.

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Mark Fiore‘s animated editorial cartoon for 7/7/04 is pretty funny.

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Shelley wonders how many of the bloggers credentialed are women. Good question.

How many women applied? Did the credentialers notice or care? And was political position one of the considerations? And where’s the list of those who got credentialed? We really need more transparency from the folks who did the credentialing…

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CyberJournalilst.net is keeping track of which bloggers were credentialed for the Democratic Convention. So far, we do seem to be a homogenous lot — I believe we’re all likely to vote for Kerry, but with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Cyberjournalists asks, if the media are not credentialed according to their beliefs, why are bloggers? But is that the case? I’ve heard that 35 bloggers were credentialed. Do we know of any unfriendlies (so to speak) who were turned down?

Mike Lidell, in an article in the Washington Post article, does not list viewpoint as a criterion:

It is not clear how the Democratic Party will decide among the more than 60 bloggers who have applied for credentials. Convention officials said they are considering three criteria: the size of the blogger’s audience, the “professionalism” of the site and the amount of original material it includes. It is subjective and a little vague. But then again, Liddell said, no one has tried this before. “We don’t have a guide to go by,” he said.

Since we are unlikely to get a list of the 25 bloggers who were turned down, I don’t feel I can have an opinion about the possible vetting of bloggers by viewpoint until we see a longer list of who was accepted.

Of course I’m bothered by the skew towards the A-List. How great would it be for bloggers with smaller readerships to function as hometown reporters of a sort? I understand the convention planners thinking that they can’t just let anyone in who has set up a blog somewhere. But are we at the point yet? Yo, credentialing committe, how about some transparency about the criteria? How about blogging about it?

In any case, the credentialing process is further evidence that blogging is forming a continuum, filling in the gap between professional journalists and people writing letters home. Inevitably, the Big Time media pay too much attention to the side of the spectrum where bloggers are like journalists and columnists without portfolio, missing the vast bulk of the blogosphere where blogs are forming a new network of thought, conversation, identity and community.

Jeez, I could have sworn that I blogged a whole bunch more after that original posting, appending it here, including more from Jay Rosen and Dave Winer’s community blog for people attending. But now it’s gone. What the hell happened to it? Or am I just dreaming it?

Anyway, here’s more from Jay. Search for “Schnure” on his page to see the DNC’s response to the question of whether they vetted bloggers according to their political slant.

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From the NY Times:

When a questioner noted that Mr. Edwards had been described as charming and a “nimble campaigner” and asked Mr. Bush to compare the one-term senator to Vice President Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush snapped: “Dick Cheney can be president. Next?”

I understand the argument that Edwards isn’t experienced enough to be president – although he’s got more experience than W had in 2000 – but does the Bush campaign really want us to dwell on the testicle-shriveling possibility of President Cheney?

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I just received a letter (paper and everything) saying that I’ve been credentiaed to blog from the Democratic Convention. Woohoo!

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The right-wing National Review is already telling itself that Edwards is bad news for the Kerry ticket. Since I’ve never been right with a single political prediction (All hail presidents Dukakis and Dean!), it doesn’t matter that I think Byron York’s article is wrong, but I do.

York’s reasoning is that Edwards made his national bones with his “Two Americas” stump speech that said nothing about terrorism. Edwards polls just ahead of Kucinich on the issue, according to York. And this is election is going to be about terrorism. Hence, Edwards hurts the ticket.

IMO, the Democratic ticket can’t afford the Bush-Cheney ’04 gambit of putting an affable, detached values-guy at the top with the reassurance that there’s a hard-ass grownup to guide in him in the #2 spot. Kerry will win this election by being a candidate Americans trust to run the government he’s leading. If we think Kerry isn’t credible on terrorism, then it doesn’t matter if he appoints Thor as his vice president, he’s going to lose. (But, Kerry is credible on terrorism – I feel safer just having him run than I do with the Bush crowd of gasoline-tossers running the show.)

Appointing a war vice president would have played into the Republican strategy of defining this election as being only about who is harder on the bad guys. The Edwards selection says that terrorism is not the only issue we need to confront. Nor can we afford to confront it in isolation from the rest of what’s going on in our country and in the world.

I think it’s a great selection. I look forward to eight years of Kerry followed by eight years of Edwards.

Go Kerry!

Halley puts well one reason I like Edwards: “Edwards knew when to be quiet and not trash his opponents. He knew it during the torturous campaigning last fall and winter and he ended his campaign with his dignity in tact — no small thing in that contentious free-for-all.”

And then there’s what Jeneane wrote way back in January about Edwards’ truth-telling, blogging wife: 1 2.

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Steve Johnson has a terrific review of F9/11. It’s about 3 stars short of a rave.

Steve reduces the movie to a silly conspiracy theory and an unreeling of images that we need to see if we are to be morally accountable. I agree that the movie is both those things, but I think it’s also more than that. Moore blurts out conspiracy theories with alarming frequency, and I agree with Steve that they generally don’t stick. (I do want to read the book about the Bushes’ relationships with the Saudis, though.)

But I didn’t read the intellectual content of the movie as being about those theories. Rather, they are there to help make the case that we got into this war under false pretenses. These guys lied to us. So, if we didn’t invade Iraq to fight the war on terrorism and to keep us safe from those WMD’s, then what was it for? Moore doesn’t give us a good answer to that question, and I agree with Steve that Moore skips one of the most important ones: neocons are idealists – chickenhawk idealists. Moore sloppily throws at the screen every bad reason he can think of. But his aim is, I believe, first and foremost to tell us that our administration lied and then lied again. Then they lied through their teeth, and then they forced Colin Powell to lie through his.

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I wrote in my review of Fahrenheit 9/11 that a mother’s grief for a dead soldier isn’t an argument against a particular war although it may be an argument against all wars. Likewise for grisly photos of the war dead and injured. That there will be horrendous suffering is intrinsic to war, so that doesn’t tell you that a particular war is right or wrong; justified and unjustified wars iinevitably produce griving mothers and horrendous suffering.

But Britt Blaser speaks with a gravity I cannot. I know Britt through the Dean campaign and came quickly to trust and respect him, as well as to enjoy his company. Now he blogs vividly about one particularly bad day in Vietnam. It is a reminder that wars are not to be entered into casually…a reminder the way a punch in the stomach can remind you to mind your manners.

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