What does 'Brokeback Mountain' have to do with Abu Ghraib?

God bless the blog editor. Instead of letting us putter around in our own playgrounds, she sends e-mail like this to Loose Canon and me:

I would appreciate it if both of you would blog on the latest images from Abu Ghraib. The angles I would like you to explore: The fact that they reveal the depths of sadistic behavior among Iraq's putative liberators; the fact that they add more fuel to the fires of Muslim outrage toward the West. What is the appropriate response among people of conscience?

As many of you know, LC posts every day, I post once a week. So when we get these e-mails, LC usually posts first. I have said it before: This gives me an unfair advantage. That is, I have more time to think. And then too, I have the benefit of LC's off-the-wall responses.

On Abu Ghraib, LC found herself.... inconvenienced by the topic. The pictures are, she begins:

....not new in the sense of being new but new in the sense of being old photos that were not published during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

LC supports "the right to carry these pictures." But she suspects the motives: "Most likely many editors view these pictures as a golden opportunity to show U.S. personnel in Iraq as sadists more than liberators and thereby undermine the whole effort to bring a new way of life to the Middle East." And yes, no doubt about it, we do have a "noble goal in Iraq."

And then she sort of.... dithers off on another topic. But that's okay. She's said enough. If she looked at these pictures at all--and I'm betting she didn't--they bored her. You know: same old same old. Just more noise from America's enemies. Best to go back and knit a scarf.

In her blog, LC asks: Why publish the Abu Ghraib images widely--but not the Danish cartoons?

Good question. I'm going to sidestep it today. Because I see a better question--and another, more urgent point.

Why is LC bothered more by "Brokeback Mountain" than she is by Abu Ghraib? What is it about a man laying a loving hand on another that raises her blood pressure while a man brutalizing another really doesn't? In our own lives, we know there is a deep spiritual connection between sex and love--why does LC see only the sex? And what about the sexuality of the Abu Ghraib photos--why can't LC see both a hatred of homosexuality and a sick attraction to S&M in those pictures?

I'll address these below. First, some facts....then the commentary.