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Ok, Lee, Now is the Time to Step Away from the Computer…

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Self-parody cannot describe the place that Lee Siegel has gone. I must admit that I now have deep sympathy for anyone working in the offices of the New Republic. Watch out for the crazy old man, Brad, and this time I don’t mean Marty Peretz. We now learn that the Democrats are out of power because, apparently, they condone pedophilia…

Is it any wonder that conservatives run the country when liberals respond like growling Pavlovian dogs to any suggestion that people cannot indulge their every sexual appetite?

[…]

And all the liberal automatons, these clueless knuckleheads, who have been programmed by some Woodstock genome to applaud any sexual impulse, praise Kincaid’s concern for children, and for innocent citizens persecuted by the law.

In his rage, Siegel has forgotten to provide even a hint of evidence that James Kincaid condones pedophilia, nor does he bother to show that liberals are inclined to “applaud any sexual impulse”. All he can manage in inchoate rage, lashing out at imagined demons. But it gets worse:

I hope I won’t upset anyone’s world-view if I say that in regard to fucking and to various other sexual practices, I am an unbridled, even unrestrainable, enthusiast

This is exactly the last piece of information that I ever wanted to receive about Lee Siegel. I thought that “Descent” was kind of scary, then I come home and find Siegel ranting on about his raging libido. Not good. Not good at all.

This last paragraph I just couldn’t make out at all. It seems like a group of unrelated sentences strung together. I leave it to your interpretation:

I also believe that progressive politics or social attitudes have absolutely nothing to do with open sexual expression. Some of the biggest creeps I’ve known screw with total abandon, and some of the most decent people I’ve known are not sexual at all. Do you want a Democratic president, and a Democratic Congress? Cut the cord between progressive politics and the ethics of cultural abandon. The tortured debate over abortion isn’t about the biological status of a fetus. It’s about the limits of sexual permissiveness. Which, in the case of pedophilia, is about commodifying helpless persons.

If I’m reading the last part right, Siegel is not only confirming Scott’s argument that opposing abortion is really about constraining female sexuality, but is suggesting that this is the only meaningful justification for abortion laws, and, moreover, is arguing that abortion and pedophilia are more or less the same. Did I get that right, or am I misinterpreting?

UPDATE: Ezra has done some remarkably rich research. Apparently Lee remains troubled that he did not become aroused in the face of a flirtatious, 16 year old Uma Thurman.

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