Snelgrove: sorry, Ms. O' Toole, but there's nothing "ironic" about the fact that a 21 year old college student was killed by an ostensibly non-lethal weapon: there have been numerous charges dating back years that so-called non-lethal methods of "crowd control," be they projectile (bean bag guns and rubber bullets) or ingested (tear gas, pepper spray) are far more dangerous than advertised. The crackdowns advocated by the police yesterday, who dumped nearly all the blame for Snelgrove's death on the riotous fans rather than on the police themselves, will doubtless exacerbate the situation more than they alleviate it, and it's infuriating that the police department can be as self-righteous as they were yesterday when a young woman is dead at their hands.



Kirchick: While i agree with Evan that today's column is far better than the norm, i also think that this passage:

We can debate the motives behind John Kerry's utterance until the

cows come home, but why both Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, decided

to bring up Mary Cheney is a minutia compared to the conservative reaction. For

Republicans in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, gays have usually been

a nebulous presence on the periphery of American life. It has always been easy

to imagine them as leather freaks or drag queens. That most gay people look like

Mary Cheney -- that is, no different from straight people -- is unsettling,

especially when you advocate that such people not enjoy equal rights.

besides the questionable grammar (minutia is plural), suggests Kirchick's abiding antipathy towards more radical forms of gender play and sexual expression, not to mention folks who identify as transgender or who have no desire to conform to the marriage norm, which Kirchick articulated in no uncertain terms in a column which he now seems to have removed from his website. I have a couple other problems with this paragraph, actually. It isn't really the case that "gays have usually been a nebulous presence on the periphery of american life." This has not been true since at least the 1960s and the gay pride movement, though, and i may be taking Kirchick out of context here . I'm also not certain that i agree with how he frames republican homophobia here. It almost seems like he's saying that it is the resemblance of gay people to straight people which ought to necessitate equal rights, which, and again, i may be misinterpreting him here, but i think i am not, is deeply problematic.