Also known as the “Man Code.” Incredibly, C. W. Nevius, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, appears never to have heard of it.

[A] funny thing happened after the headlines [about Mayor Gavin Newsom's affair] hit and the buzz began: Many women said they were ready to forgive and forget.

Not men, though. No way. Many said they would never trust Newsom again as long as they lived. Some were livid; many were incredulous.

The difference? Apparently it is the Man Code, a set of rigid but unwritten boundaries over which no man may step. Break the Man Code, and you’re toast.

“It’s a huge betrayal,” sputtered Jason Mundstuk, 67, a business owner from Oakland who got upset just talking about it. “It’s big. It’s mythical.”

C’mon, you say, what is this, a TV beer commercial? Evidently not. These guys were dead serious. Make no mistake — having an affair with the wife of a trusted male colleague is an irrevocable Man Code violation.

My inner sociologist has many, many qestions for C.W., beginning with:

Are you serious? (Okay, that wasn’t my inner sociologist.)

How old are you?

Have you ever heard the expression “crime of passion“?

Why do you have a job?

It’s a rare day when environmentalists and Israeli settlers join forces, but that’s exactly what is happening as the Ministry of Defense continues to plan the route of the security fence:

The Judean desert.
Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Environmentalists and settlers have joined forces to persuade the Defense Ministry to find an alternative to the security fence in the region. They had argued that the security fence would scar the landscape, harm wildlife and disrupt the ecosystem of the area.

Initially, the Defense Ministry agreed to halt work there and explore other options to secure the area. But on Monday, security officials told South Hebron Regional Council Chief Tzvika Bar-Hai that Defense Minister Amir Peretz had not been swayed by the alternative options presented and that he was still of the opinion that the security fence was the best idea.

Hmm. Perhaps if settlers are willing to set aside their security concerns for the sake of the environment, then they are also willing to negotiate and compromise on other issues. (Not that there aren’t other “obstacles to peace” between Israel and the Palestinians, but still: the settlers and settlements are a sticking point.)

Just a thought.

Did you hear this? Shhhhh. Bradley Burston is a … Zionist:

I believe that a Jewish country need not be racist. I believe that a Jewish country must not be racist.

I believe that Jews have every right to a state of their own, no less than the Palestinians. I believe that the Palestinians have every right to a state of their own, no less than the Jews.

I believe that if one side denies the other the right to a state, it does direct and permanent harm to both peoples.

I believe that in a world in which there are dozens of Islamic countries, some of which cannot abide the corporeal presence of the Jew, there is room for one Jewish one.

I believe that in a world in which the flags of 13 nations bear a cross, the flag of one nation can bear a Star of David.

I believe that a people at war commits crimes. I believe that a people at war tends to see its own crimes as legitimate. I believe that war breeds racism on both sides, and that racism fuels war.

I believe that the process of dividing and sharing the Holy Land will be agonizing for both peoples. Both peoples have seen what civil war will be like, the Jews in Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians in Gaza in 2007.

I believe that the process of forgiveness will be painful, in some ways cruel. I believe that it will be next to impossible.

I also believe that it will happen.

I believe that a time will come when the sides will come to recognize what each has been saying to the other - often in the worst possible ways - for a lifetime now:

We’re here. That’s final. Get used to it.

The ads for the Super Bowl reflect the fact that we’re a nation at war, says the NYT’s Stuart Elliott, who seems surprised:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

Soon Neal Gabler and a raft of other media watchers will be out there blaming Bush for turning a formerly peace-loving people into a nation of drooling warmongers.

I, of course, have noticed a change in the culture as reflected on television, too. We are a much, much tougher people than we were on September 10, 2001. But this has been evident for a long time—it certainly didn’t start with yesterday’s halftime commercials. More about this another time.

David Carr has a bordering-on-lugubrious column in the New York Times this morning. He’s rather amazed that after starting the Valerie “Flame” Bonfire, Robert Novak is left standing without so much as a singed eyelash:

“He is like Typhoid Mary,” Edward Wasserman, a professor of journalism at Washington and Lee University, said of Mr. Novak. “Everybody is keeling over around him and he just keeps skipping along.”

I haven’t been following this stupid case. I’m sure it says something about me, but I’m just not interested. I am interested, however, in Carr’s description of how things have shaken out so far:

Given the outcome for the other journalists involved in the case — they fought the law and the law won — Mr. Novak’s decision not only seems self-serving but canny at a time when government is able to use subpoena power to get what it wants. He is joined on the margins of the case by Karl Rove, the president’s political aide who once looked like he might end up in the thick of things.

Excuse me: when is “government” not able to use subpeona power to get what it wants?

Is this not the very essence of the stand Judy Miller took when she went to jail?—that “government” shouldn’t be able to get what it wants from reporters, who are privileged?

Carr continues:

It’s hard to blame Mr. Novak for surviving — prospering even — but plenty of people in the media secretly do. [Well, it's not much of a "secret" anymore  --ed.] Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper were backed, at least at the beginning, by large media organizations and squadrons of lawyers. What good would have been served by Mr. Novak going it alone against the government and drawing a line in the sand that would have ended up being blown away over time?

Indeed.

Even Mr. Corn, who has been in a prolonged debate with Mr. Novak, reserves judgment on his choice. “What he did is between him, his conscience and his wallet,” said Mr. Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation, a weekly that skews left-of-center. “There are no good guidelines for this new world we are living in, and journalists are having to ad-hoc their way through it. He chose to not get into a confrontation with the prosecutor.”

Well, they could start by not granting anonymity to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who leaks. It seems like a pretty common-sense guideline to me.

But I will say that I respect Judith Miller. So there.