Gulfstream: 18 May 2004

Timothy Noah compiles a list of excuses for Abu Ghraib from putative right-wing commentators: it’s the fault of moral relativism, gays, porn, feminists… I would have guessed that the left’s first (or second) thought would have been to offer similar excuses for the involvement of women, but I haven’t seen any of this. Indeed, a remarkably forthcoming Barbara Ehrenreich, writing in the LA Times, admits that the photographs disabused her of the notion that women were morally superior to men (or at least the idea that women have “a lesser inclination toward cruelty and violence”).