The Weekly Standard's Thoughtful Perspective on Transgender Rights

    Eliza Gray
    June 30, 2011 | 4:50 pm

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/91152/the-weekly-standards-thoughtful-perspective-transgender-rights

The Monday after my cover story on transgender rights went to print, I was eagerly awaiting feedback on how it was received. I figured there would be positive and negative reactions. But I wasn't expecting the kind of feedback I got when, a few minutes after I sat down at my computer, a colleague plunked an issue of The Weekly Standard on my desk. On the last page of the issue, the magazine had simply reprinted TNR's cover, labeling it "Not A Parody"--the joke apparently being that the very notion of transgendered people deserving rights is inherently ludicrous, so much so that the argument in my piece does not require refutation.

I emailed Bill Kristol, the magazine's editor, thinking that perhaps he could tell me why the Standard found this particular human rights issue so hilarious.