The latest Evans-Novak Political Report says that "a rumor running through the political community" now puts former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in the lead to be Sen. John McCain's vice presidential candidate. "But Romney has many critics in the McCain inner circle, and we don't think the decision has been made."
There is also speculation McCain could name his veep early "to step up fund-raising before the national convention."
Oh, man, do I love this possibility.
Mitt Romney would be a terrible veep for a whole host of reasons. First of all, he and McCain hate each other -- actually, I don't know that hate is a strong enough word. The New Hampshire debates were astonishing, given the amount of flak McCain threw Mitt's way. Second, there's the Mormon thing. I don't care that Mitt is a Mormon -- he can believe in whatever phony-baloney God he wants to as far as I'm concerned -- but there are a whole host of rabid Christianists in the GOP who think Mormons are almost as bad as atheists. They will not be happy that Mittens has returned.
And third, Mitt is still Mitt, meaning that he is still the flip-floppin', insincere douchebag that even Republicans loathed. And this is the reason he makes no sense whatsoever: Mitt's flip-floppery would only serve to underline and star McCain's flip-floppery. Johnny Darling has thus far skated by relatively unscathed by his inconsistent relationship with consistency. But add Mitt in, and the parallels start piling up: both men changed their tune on a host of issues in order to try to win the GOP nomination. And now McCain would be picking a man he clearly doesn't like for veep, in yet another bit of flip-floppery.
Add to this the fact that Mitt is kinda creepy, and you've got the worst possible V.P. candidate this side of Alan Keyes. Which is why I can only say: please, John, pick Mittens. I triple dog dare you.
Have you ever read something and just pretty much failed to understand how such a thing could even be? Yeah, Pam Spaulding brings us news about utter insanity:
A public high school principal who posted the names of two boys on a list of students believed to be couples, revealing their relationship to their parents as well as other students and teachers, violated the students’ constitutional right to freedom of association, the American Civil Liberties Union charged Tuesday.
In a letter to school board officials in Memphis, the ACLU demanded that the school reprimand the principal and take steps to ensure such actions never happen again.
In September of 2007, the principal at Hollis F. Price Middle College High told teachers she wanted the names of all student couples, “hetero and homo [sic],” because she wanted to monitor them personally to prevent students from engaging in public displays of affection.
The two students now represented by the ACLU, Andrew and Nicholas (who have asked that their last names not be revealed), were two A students who had been seeing each other for a short time and were attempting to keep their relationship quiet and private.
Sweet Chocolate Jebus, what the hell is that principal smoking?
Look, I understand that it's got to be tough to keep hormonally charged teenagers from going overboard, and I don't envy the principal who's got to keep public displays of affection to a minimum. But...criminy, what good would a list of all student couples do her anyhow? The half-life of a high school relationship is about three weeks; by the time the list made it to her desk it would be woefully out of date anyhow.
And quite frankly, what the hell business is it of hers who's dating whom? Yes, I know, she wanted to tail student couples to make sure they weren't giving into temptation at school. But it's not like new couples couldn't form at any time, or couples could atomize and reconfigure, or two people who don't even particularly like each other could hook up...I mean, I know this simply by having lived through high school, so why is an education professional so fracking clueless?
Well, there is one possibility, and the one I suspect is true: she isn't clueless at all. She was specifically looking to get dirt on gay students -- hence, the emphasis on "hetero and homo" couples. She was looking to know who the gays were. Why? I don't know, but given that this happened in Tennessee, I can think of several negative reasons, and few positive ones.
Maybe there's another reason, but there isn't one I can think of right now, at least not one that makes any sense. You want to cut down on PDAs in school, you start punishing students caught engaging in PDAs. You don't harass everyone who's dating someone. That's what their friends are for.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.
Federal investigators cite undersize steel plates as the "critical factor" in the collapse of the bridge. Heavy loads of construction materials on the bridge also contributed to the disaster that injured 145 people on Aug. 1, according to preliminary findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.
"The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money," McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. "The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects."
Something tells me the lunatic right-wing "conservatives" in the U.S. are going to start liking McCain more and more. Using the death of 13, the misery of their families and the 145 people that were injured in the bridge collapse in order to push his pandering, unrealistic and stupid "Earmarks, never again" platform? He's proven his point. He's as sick and demented as the rest of the "conservatives" that never met a death they wouldn't exploit.
I'm one of those film fans that always loves the villain more than the hero. Come on, they're more interesting, they've got cooler catch phrases, and they've got far more taste when it comes to decorating. And let's face it, "The Joker's Lair" sounds so much cooler than "Stately Wayne Manor."
So, Shakers: Who's your favorite movie villain?
I always cheat, so I'll name three.
The Joker is actually my favorite villain, but I wasn't all that pleased with Jack Nicholson's portrayal. (Can't wait for Heath Ledger's performance this summer!)
First: Favorite suave villain- Vincent Price in The House on Haunted Hill. When speaking of his much-loathed wife, he sneers "She's so amusing," and if contempt had mass, you'd be knocked over the back of your couch.
Second: Favorite frightening villain- Peter Lorre in M. That whistle. Those of you that have seen it know what I mean. If you haven't... rent it!
And finally, the most evillest, most nastiest, most cruellicious, most vicious-ical villain of all time...
Many of you probably recall that a few weeks ago Misty wrote a post regarding Reading is Fundamental; the program was in danger of losing all funding thanks to Dubya, "The Education President."
Well, Shakers, writing is fundamental, too. Thanks to letters, e-mails and calls from citizens to their members of congress, I was very pleased to receive this email from Carol H. Rasco, President and CEO of R.I.F. today:
RIF’s 5th annual Dear Colleague campaign was a success thanks to the overwhelming number of supporters who asked their members of Congress to sign the letter to appropriators to save RIF’s funding. The combination of more than 45,000 e-mails, phone calls, letters, and faxes from supporters across the nation bolstered our effort to highlight RIF’s services and accomplishments throughout this year’s campaign.
A notable achievement of this year’s campaign is the increase in the number of members of Congress who signed RIF’s funding letter. This year’s impressive increase can be attributed to all who gave their time to contact their members of Congress and voice their support for RIF. This ensured that members of Congress became educated about the important work RIF does in their districts and states and made a compelling argument for saving RIF’s funding.
Whether your legislator is a new supporter or a continuing supporter, it is important to let them know that their work is appreciated. Please see if your member of Congress is on the co-signer list and take a moment to send a personalized thank you note.
Send your thank you letters to RIF’s Government Relations team, and they will hand deliver them to Congress to ensure the letters are received in a timely manner.
Mail to: Reading Is Fundamental C/O Government Relations 1825 Connecticut Avenue Suite 400 Washington, DC 20009
Thank you for your continued support, and please visit RIF.org to participate in our May children’s letter drive to Congress with easy to use instructions and templates.
This is good news. Great work, Shakers!
However, I must add that I am greatly disappointed to see one name not included on the list of co-signers: My Senator, BarackObama.
It's no secret that I've been feeling greatly betrayed by my Senator since happily and proudly casting my vote for him in '04, and I'm unapologetically hard on him. I'm just flabbergasted that a man who has made his work for the poor in Chicago a large part of his campaign rhetoric (quotes regarding helping the poor in Chicago are right at the top of his "poverty" page on his campaign website) couldn't manage to lend his support to a program that helps give books to these very people.
Yes, a living wage, access to jobs and affordable housing are all important when it comes to tackling poverty. But so is education. And reading, as they say, is fundamental.
What would you do? I'm asking everybody, not only the not-so-privileged. This could happen whenever you stand up for someone, whether it's yourself or someone else. Here's the situation:
I had something forwarded to me through email that was supposed to be high-larious. As these things go, it was pretty minor, but I didn't care for it. Since the guy who sent it has always struck me as smart and insightful, I thought it might be worth pointing out that it wasn't universally funny. I said I'd found it offensive and would be glad to explain if he'd like. He said, absolutely. He'd had no intention of being offensive.
Well, good, I thought. The right attitude. So I spent about half an hour explaining clearly and concisely what the problem was. (Being concise always takes longer.) I got a message back saying, "Thanks. I don't agree with any of it."
It made my blood boil. Much more so than the original joke. Sending that could have just been stupid. Telling me "you're full of it" after I go to the trouble of explaining is just plain rude. Seems to me, even if he thought so, the thing to do would be to make polite noises along the lines of "thanks, that's given me some new angles to think about."
Besides, you can't tell someone you disagree with their feelings. You can say you don't understand them, or don't care about them. But you can't disagree. Those feelings are a fact, and he's being told what they are by the authority in this case: the person who has them. Me. That's a whole nother philosophical issue, but I think that may really be why the response made me so mad. He's telling me, "I don't give a flying toaster for how you feel." (Given how crystal clear my explanation was, there's no chance he didn't understand. ;) )
So, anyway, my question is how do you deal with timewasters who add injury to insult? Ignoring them is the easy solution, the one that lets you forget about it. It's also the one that enables the whole damn shooting match. But doing anything, even pointing out the minor etiquette improvement, is likely to make dealing with the guy a real pain.
Is there any productive way of handling this? Is the only real alternative when dealing with coworkers to let them get away with anything that's not absolutely criminal? How do you do your bit towards raising consciousness and still have a life? Or a job? I guess what I'm trying to say is how do you tell someone they're full of it, and not make their blood boil?
Sorry I've been AWOL today, Shakers. Since the candidatez are crawling all over Indiana these days, and since the last Democratic presidential candidate spotted in these here parts was Bobby Kennedy (seriously), which was before I was even born, Kenny Blogginz and I decided to do a little participating in our participatory democracy today! We went to see Hillary, who was in our general vicinity—and we're hoping to see Barack, too, if and when he swings back in our direction. (No appearances are scheduled right now, unfortunately.)
It was a townhall-style event, so Hillary gave a short speech and then took questions from the audience. (The guy who introduced her said she had "testicular fortitude," which prompted her to note when she took the mic that both women and men could have fortitude of their own—and she has it! Lots of applause.) She was totally compelling, extraordinarily competent, a great extemporaneous speaker with an unbelievably detailed grasp of the issues, and funny as hell. ("I wouldn't trust the Bush administration to organize a two-car parade." This gave me the image of Bush and Cheney each driving clown cars in different directions, which sent me into fits of giggles.)
The one thing KenBlogz and I just couldn't. get. over. was how profoundly not the Dragon Lady she is, despite what we are meant to believe. KenBlogz's comment was, approximately, "The way the media represents her is a complete lie; they might as well say she stabbed someone onstage, which would be just as truthful as the way she is represented." This, from an 18-year-old. The reporter in front of us (we were in the media section) reading The Drudge Report through most of her speech would no doubt be shocked by his observation.
In person, from about 10 yards away, Hillary was as warm, friendly, charming, and engaging as any politician I've ever seen. And the crowd—way more diverse than I expected—adored her. She got several standing ovations.
In the parking lot afterwards, I heard a woman—middle-aged, wearing a union t-shirt, either white or Latina—telling her friend she was glad she came. "She totally won me over," she said. Wheeeeeeeeeeee! Yay, democracy!
That's probably nothing special to you Shakers in Iowa and New Hampshire, but it's been 40 YEARS in Indiana, yo! It was a good day for a political junkie—and lots of people who want to feel like they're remembered in D.C., too, but rarely are.
You can't tell in my pix, but her blazer was a lovely pink.
Philips is using a transvestite dancer to sell a new line of women’s razors, an unexpected advertising stunt, but without a doubt the reason it’s getting as much press as it has. “The ad for the Satinelle Ice Epilator features an LA-based transvestite dancer, Karis, using the epilator,” Brand Republic says.
I think this is well-done advertising. It doesn't portray transvestitescross-dressers as caricatures or belittle them in any way. Just a guy/lady going about the day and has some excess hair to remove.
I will say this, before I learned to accept my hair, epilators HURT!
Let's see, the Iranians don't seem to notice that the U.S. is in the middle of an occupation of its next-door neighbor. They also don't seem to notice the machine-gun-fire spray of threats aimed at them from every last politician in the U.S. And they weren't paying attention when the President of Columbia called their democratically elected president a "petty and cruel dictator" after inviting him to speak at his university. What does it take to get the Iranians to notice the U.S.?
Hmm, how about we park another aircraft carrier in their backyard to remind them that the U.S. plans to bomb the crap out of them and kill millions of its citizens.
MEXICO CITY (AFP) — US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Tuesday the deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf should be seen as a "reminder" of US military power in the region.
But Gates flatly denied that the United States was preparing the ground for military strikes against Iran.
"I don't think we'll have two carriers for a protracted period of time. So I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder," Gates told reporters here during a visit with Mexican officials.
The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf follows a noticeable hardening in US rhetoric against Iran for meddling in Iraq and playing a destabilizing role in the region.
John McCain proposes to fix health care by making it "market-based."
Sen. John McCain on Tuesday rejected calls by his Democratic opponents for universal health coverage, instead offering a market-based solution with an approach similar to a proposal put forth by President Bush last year.
McCain's belief in the power of the free market to meet the nation's health-care needs sets up a stark choice for voters this fall in terms of the care they could receive, the role the government would play and the importance they place on the issue.
Wait; President Bush proposed a health care plan? Really? How's that working so far?
McCain's proposal is similar to one that Bush put forth in his 2007 State of the Union address. That plan, which would have replaced employer tax breaks for health insurance with a $15,000 tax deduction for married couples, flopped in Congress, failing to get even a committee hearing.
Oh.
Mr. McCain really is quite the maverick, isn't he?
Here's some quick news for those of a certain persuasion. HA!
A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women. Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name. Yahoo
Hooray! Mister Petulant finally got a full night of sleep. I will exclude the interruption at 3 A.M. by oldest kitty, Delia, who decided that she wanted her belly rubbed. I had to answer that call. The unfortunate thing is that I have to wake up to this crap.
Saudi governor orders haircuts for men who hit on women.
Children like rape according to a new study. (Bangkok)
McCain talked about his health care plan yesterday. Surprise, Surprise. It is remarkably similar to a Bush version and won't provide a damn thing. (NY) (CNN)(WP)
Gay rights groups across America have breathed a sigh of relief after the homophobic ‘Day of Truth’ failed to make an impact on American schools. (PINK)
Iran's culture minister has urged writers to censor their books if they want to be published in the Islamic republic, which applies strict vetting on literature and other arts. (Telegraph)
I want you to think of President Mondo Fucko's total shock at hearing gas would hit $4/gallon and how blissfully isolated his precious ass is from actual Americans as you read this item:
Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.
To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.
…At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year-ago period. Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster acknowledged the increasing popularity of selling all sort of items on the Web, but said the rate of growth is "moving above the usual trend line." He said he was amazed at the desperate tone in some ads.
Like a Georgia teenager whose mother lost her job and whose ad pleaded, "Please buy anything you can to help out." Or like Alabama mobile home resident Ellona Bateman-Lee, whose husband was disabled in 2006 by an electric shock on the job as a dump truck driver: "Among her most painful sales: her grandmother's teakettle. She sold it for $6 on eBay."
Now, according to conservative philosophy, private charity is supposed to step in and help these struggling Americans in their time of need. That's the whole plan: Let people keep their tax money, starve the government, subcontract welfare to via faith-based initiatives to private charity, who will be phat with donations from the Americans who have been allowed to keep more of their income care of tax breaks.
But guess what?
The trend may be hurting secondhand stores too. Donations to the Salvation Army were down 20 percent in the January-to-March period. George Hood, the charity's national community relations and development secretary, said that was probably partly because people were selling their belongings instead.
There's your trickle-down economics at work, right there.
Hans Reiser, a programmer known best for the Linux filesystem that bears his name, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser. Last seen on September 3, 2006 after dropping their kids off as Hans Reiser's house, she was supposed to meet her best friend that evening, but never arrived. Her minivan was found six days later; her purse was still in the van and bags of groceries were rotting inside. Friends started a website (ninareiser.com; site is currently offline) and billboards were posted in Oakland to spread the word and enlist the public's help in finding Nina.
Eventually, police narrowed their investigation to Nina's husband, Hans Reiser. On October 10, 2006, Hans was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The prosecution based their case on strong circumstantial evidence. Some of Nina's blood was found in Hans' house; Hans removed and disposed of the passenger seat of his car, and washed out the inside with so much water that almost an inch of standing water was still in the car when police examined the car. Hans Reiser bought books on police investigative techniques after Nina's disappearance, engaged in "counter-surveillence techniques" in avoiding the police on September 18 , 2006, and when he was arrested he was carrying almost $9,000 and his passport. Hans Reiser spent $5,000 on retaining a lawyer even before Nina's disappearance was blamed on foul play. Both Hans' and Nina's cellphones were found with the batteries removed.
The defense waffled between asserting that Nina wasn't dead—she was kidnapped, faking her death, or fled back to Russia—and asserting that if Nina was dead, Hans wasn't the one that killed her. The defense tried to pin Reiser's unusual behavior on what is coming to be known as the "geek defense"; Reiser is simply a misunderstood programmer with poor social skills and an overly analytical mind. Hans was disruptive in the courtroom; his lawyer had to ask witnesses to restate their answers because Hans kept asking him questions, and at one point the judge threatened to bar Hans Reiser from his own trial. Hans took the stand against his lawyer's advice and offered one highly-implausible reason after another for his behavior. (For an "obessively logical" computer geek, Hans Reiser appears not to be familiar with Occam's Razor.)
The missing car seat? Hans was sleeping in his car and removed the seat for extra space.
The standing water in the car? One of Resier's kids spilled food in the car, so he washed it out and he assumed that the manufacturer would have placed drain holes in the floorboards. (This was the same car that he removed the seat from so he could sleep in it.)
Why did Hans show up to pick up his kids from school the day after Nina was last seen, when it was her day to pick them up and Nina wasn't even presumed missing? He was just stopping by to place his mother on the list on people allowed to collect the kids.
The books on murder investigations? He's a computer geek! He was curious to know how murder investigations worked, just in case the police decided to question him about killing Nina.
Why did he try to evade police? Hans believed the police were out to get him.
On April 28, 2008, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder; in an interview, one juror stated that the strong circumstantial evidence as well as Hans' behavior after and lack of sympathy for Nina's disappearance led to his conviction.
The truly appalling part of the story is the attitude of Reisers' many admirers, which reads like a laundry list of excuses for male privilege.
A blog appeared proclaiming "Hans Reiser is Innocent", predicting his eventual acquital and claiming that Nina owed money to the Russian Mafia and "clearly faked her death".
ArticlesonSlashdot quickly filled with wild conspiracy theories—Nina faked her death! Nina fled back to Russia! Evidence was suppressed! You can be convicted for being a geek!—and tried to minimize the seriousness of the charges. (Hans Reiser is a talented programmer! What has his wife done? They should give Hans a laptop so he can keep programming in prison!)
In the minds of his supporters, Hans' unusual behavior could be explained away as ADHD, Asperger's, or being "too geeky". In the face of every opinion to the contrary, Nina was a scheming shrew who only married Hans to gain a USA visa, ruined his business by embezzling money (unproven) and sleeping with his business partner, and was an unfit mother. Nina's restraining order against her husband proves that it's "too easy to get a TRO". Police officers who testified that Hans was a danger to Nina were conveniently ignored. Sean Sturgeon—Hans' former business partner with whom Nina had an affair—confessed to the murders of eight other people during the trial; despite the fact that Sean Sturgeon was not convicted of murdering anyone (police have been unable to link Sturgeon to any murders), maintains that he did not kill Nina, and was never called to testify in Hans' trial, Hans' supporters trumpet the judge's decision to bar Sturgeon's confessions from being mentioned to the jury as proof that Hans is being railroaded.
I don't know Hans Reiser other than through his work on Linux filesystems and did not bear any animosity to him prior to this, even though he frequently clashed with other programmers and computer enthusiasts over ReiserFS and Linux and gained a reputation for being egocentric and difficult to work with; the final fate of the code that bears his name has yet to be determined.
In my opinion, the jury came back with the correct verdict; the saddest part is that Hans' and Nina's children will likely never know what happened to their mother; Hans Reiser maintains his innocence and will likely appeal the verdict, and to date Nina's body has not been found.
My friends, it is time I admit to a hidden truth. I am 62 percent Muslim.
I'm not sure how it happened. Deep in my heart, I believe Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all quite similar to Scientology - as cults. The "Big Three" just has the advantage of having been around so long that people accept them as respectable. But they're all the same to me.
Nonetheless, it turns out I am 62 percent Muslim. Which makes me 62 percent more likely to be enslaved and tortured in a U.S. internment camp like Guantanamo Bay, or somewhere in the hills of Romania. Hopefully, I'll catch a break as despite being 62 percent Muslim, I am really, really a crappy Muslim. Hell, I'm eating a pork sandwich as I type this.
But I respect the fact that 62 percent of me is a non-believing, non-practicing Muslim. I'm not sure what the rest of me is, but my latest trip to the doctor leads me to believe a good portion of the other 38 percent is pure cholesterol.
Anyway, I just wanted to be open and honest about how I break down on a percentile basis when it comes to being a Muslim. Feel free to find out how Muslim you are at Are You a Muslim?
I did a little test earlier to see how long I could last without turning on one of the computers. I lasted for 3.5 hours before the sweats started. I have gone an entire day or two before, but that was because my ISP sucks.
Chuck "Murray" Todd says what's on the mind of every flag-waving, lapel pin-wearing, Bible-carrying, patriotic American: "[Obama] had to look like he could stand up to his pastor. I mean, let's remember, we're electing a commander-in-chief. If you can't stand up to your pastor on views you don't agree with, are you going to stand up to another world leader?"
Bush says no magic wand to lower fuel prices: "U.S. President George W. Bush said on Tuesday there was no 'magic wand' to bring down record-high fuel prices… 'I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course,' he said during a news conference."
No magic wand? No shit, Sherlock. Howsabout a time machine so you can go back to 2003 and not start a war that tripled the price of oil?
Just a thought: some have said (I'm looking at you again, Hitch) that you can get away with saying anything in the United States provided you have the word "Reverend" in front of your name. The Jeremiah Wright affair shows that this is not exactly true. What you can get away with saying and doing, Reverend or not, is anything, no matter how outrageous, that conforms to the image of the USA that the media constantly portrays, the right-wing narrative that buttresses it, and the corporate interests that depend on it. McCain's pal Hagee usually says and does such things. Wright does not.
None of which is to say that it was a bad idea for Obama to distance himself from Wright. It's just to note that there are double standards, even of outrageousness.
The stimulus checks are arriving just in time to pay for gas that has gone up over 50 cents a gallon since the bill giving the money away was passed.
Since this stimulus is a one-time deal, I'm reminded of the old saying, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for a lifetime." (Actually, if you teach him to fish, you end up with a bunch of guys out in the Gulf Stream drinking beer, but that's another story.) This won't do anything for the economy other than create a one-time blip, and chances are most of the people will use it to pay down their credit cards, which means that the money will go right back where it came from: the banks that are shoring up the massive debt of the government. All they're doing is tossing people a fish when what they should be doing is fixing the system so that a teacher making $45,000 doesn't pay more in taxes per dollar earned than Bill Gates.
It also strikes me as ironic that the Republicans, who always criticize the Democrats for throwing money at a problem, are the ones who came up with this scheme to hand out "free money" to everyone. Do I suspect that there's some political motivation behind this blatant attempt to cover up their complete clusterfucking of the economy for the last seven years? Why no, not at all. Oh, look at the kitty!
"What Mister Science cannot see while peering through the microscope is his wife's look of utter boredom."
The presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain looks under a microscope during a tour of the Moffitt Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. His wife Cindy is in the background. (AP Photo/ Scott Iskowitz,Pool).
It's a curious fact that in the United States, which thinks of itself as one of the most religious countries on Earth, 75% of the population thinks that the statement, "God helps those who help themselves," is in the Bible. It isn't. It's an aphorism by Benjamin Franklin [Update: Adapted from Aesop, as Mustella rightly points out in comments].
So, I'm willing to bet that few will remark upon this bizarre moment on Faux Noise:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your favorite Scripture that you kind of lean on that sort of keeps you going?
GARRETT: Obama's answer not exactly rooted in Scripture but in the ballpark.
OBAMA: -- the Golden Rule. It's very simple. I mean, it's a very simple concept. I think what he asks of me is that I treat my brother as -- and my sister -- as I would have them treat me.
The Golden Rule, "not exactly rooted in Scripture"? Huh.
Know what? I'm betting that a large percentage of Fox's audience didn't even notice.
"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church. They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I might not know him as well as I thought, either."—Barack Obama, throwing Reverend Jeremiah Wright under the bus, for reasons Bob Herbert explains here.
This several-day exchange has been painful to watch. I don't really have anything to say about it other than that, except that I feel quite bad for Obama at the moment. It doesn't matter that I have no particularly affinity for Wright; Obama obviously did—and I can empathize with the gut-twisting feeling of being disappointed and betrayed by someone you once admired.
Worse yet, I feel like I can't get through a single fooking hour, no less a whole day, without having to document some egregious example of sexism against a woman who has the unmitigated temerity to think she can run for president. If it's not some tosser comparing Clinton to a pregnant bride-to-be, then it's some other tosser comparing her to Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction.
On the April 27 edition of CNN's Sunday Morning, National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin, during a discussion about the Democratic presidential primary race, stated: "[L]et's be honest here, [Sen.] Hillary Clinton is Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. She's going to keep coming back, and they're not going to stop her." In response, co-host T.J. Holmes said: "What, Ken?" Rudin replied: "Well, we'll figure that out, there's a lot of ways to imagine that." Rudin returned to the analogy later, stating of Clinton, "[T]here may be a lot of pressure on her from the party bigwigs, whoever they are, to say, look, it's time to go, but she'll say, look, I'm in it until the end. I expect her to be in until the end, as Glenn Close was."
For those unfamiliar with the film, Media Matters helpfully explains: "In the 1987 film, Close plays a woman who begins stalking her co-worker, played by Michael Douglas, and his family following a one-night stand with him. In the film's climax, Douglas' character seemingly drowns Close's character in the tub, until she suddenly springs from the water wielding a knife. She is finally shot dead by the wife of Douglas' character."
Goddess Echidne, who gets the hat tip, points out that there are two ways to interpret Rudin's message:
The kinder one (yes, this is the kinder one) is that Hillary Clinton can't be stopped by anything less than being killed by Michelle Obama, that she is an almost unkillable monster.
The less kind interpretation has to do with what that particular movie was all about. It was a parable about bad women: working women, uppity, independent, demanding; and about good women: mothers who stay at home and support their husbands through thin and thick. It was a movie about the loathing, fear and hatred of women who don't follow the "good woman" code of behavior, and what happens to those women at the end.
It could always be the case that Rudin is unaware of that interpretation. And pigs also fly almost every day.
Yes, the less kind interpretation is that uppity women should be killed, and, as we've seen, there are men in the media (Keith Olbermann, Jack Cafferty) who are patently willing to go there. Just jokingly, of course, hardy har. Thing is, these days you can't get most people to go along with the idea that uppity women deserve actual murder, or even the voluminous public humiliation preferred by polite society (death of a promising career), just for having the audacity to seek equality—so the less kind interpretation is also predicated on casting uppity women as deserving of their deathly punishment by virtue of their being vindictive, simultaneously hysterical and sociopathically cold, robotically calculating, crazy, and generally unlikable.
Because I need to say this every time I post about Clinton, yes, I think there are reasons to not support Hillary as a candidate. (If I didn't, I wouldn't have worked for John Edwards, now, would I?) But the media's coverage of Clinton is so relentlessly entwined with misogynist frames that I quite genuinely believe that it takes some conscious effort to diligently sort through all that stuff and carefully extricate legitimate objections to Clinton's candidacy from prepackaged hatred delivered via vaguely reasonable-sounding media memes.
Before this campaign season started in earnest, I held a lot of reflexive opinions about Hillary Clinton's candidacy that were really just half-baked misogynist horseshit. I still have policy disagreements with her, but my list of objections, reduced to what's fair, is a hell of a lot shorter than it was before I spent some time giving it a long and critical look.
I sincerely doubt I'm the only one whose perspective was in need of an adjustment, who was decidedly foolish to not consider that a media which regularly trades in sexist swill wouldn't magically set that aside for any woman, even a presidential candidate.
Then again, maybe I am. In which case, consider this series my penance.
Our recipe this week comes courtesy of Shaker bekitty!
Garlic Foccacia
Ingredients:
3 cups flour 1/4 cup garlic olive oil 1/2 tsp salt 4 tbsp crushed garlic 1 cup warm water 2 tbsp powdered yeast 1 tbsp sugar extra salt and oil for drizzling
Method:
Stir the sugar into the water and sprinkle the yeast on top. While the yeast is rising, put the flour in a large bowl and add the salt and garlic. Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in the oil. Rub oil into the mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.
When the yeast mixture is bubbly, pour it into the flour mix. Stir, adding more water if dough is too dry. Your dough should be a smooth ball. Cover and leave to rise for about an hour in a warm place.
When the dough has doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for a few minutes. Shape and place into a floured 8" pan. Brush with garlic olive oil and sprinkle with salt - I usually use coarse manuka smoked rock salt, but that's quite hard to find outside New Zealand; hickory smoked salt has the same kind of smell if you can find it, or plain rock salt is fine.
Bake for 30 minutes at 425F (220C). Leave to cool for about ten minutes, covered with a dish towel.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me (and include a link to your blog, if you have one!) at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
OK, folks. This ol' Space Cowboy is going to be headin' down south to Houston for a couple of days on business.
My question for all of the southern Shakers (or anyone really familiar with Houston): Where's the best place to eat?
I already know about Mark's American Cuisine, but I'm still looking for other options just in case. None of the dinners involve clients or impressing people. My boss and I just want to have some really great food.
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley formally endorsed Hillary Clinton's White House bid Tuesday, saying the New York senator "gets it."
…Easley, a popular two term governor who is unable to run for re-election because of term limits, also praised Clinton for her persistence. "I've been accused of being persistent, and down right aggravating…but this lady right here makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy," Easley said.
"Pansy" is one of the many, many homophobic slurs that is infused with a heavy dose of misogyny—because it's generally used to mean not just any gay man, but specifically an effeminate gay man. Ya know, because being anything like a woman is the worst possible thing a man can be.
So while casually insulting gay men, Easley also managed to insult women, all in the process of trying to praise Hillary Clinton's fortitude.
In the Morning Readings, Pet briefly touched on the AP's refusal to use the word rape in their coverage of the FLDS polygamist compound in Texas, despite half of the teenage girls being pregnant.
Via email, Shaker Reba points out that the AP coverage also includes the ridiculous passage (emphasis mine):
The sect, which broke from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more than a century ago, believes polygamy brings glorification in heaven. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is revered as a prophet. Jeffs was convicted last year in Utah of forcing a 14-year-old girl into marriage with an older cousin.
Um, no—he was convicted of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. Rape is the criminal act to which he was found guilty of being an accomplice and for which he was sentenced to two consecutive terms of five years to life. Not "forcing a girl into marriage."
The aversion to using the word "rape" is just farcical at this point, when even a man who has been convicted of being an accomplice to rape is protected from an association with the word.
Four U.S. Troops In Baghdad Are Killed by Rocket Fire: "Four U.S. soldiers were killed in two rocket attacks in Baghdad on Monday as clashes between U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen intensified, the military said."
And here I thought that the surge worked, because my president keeps assuring me that it did, but 44 troops have died in April, making it the deadliest month since last September.
It's true! I learned all about it from DeWayne Wickham in USA Today, who tells me: "If Democrats are going to win the White House in November, they need a shotgun wedding in June."
That's the actual opening line to one of the most vapid, idiotic pieces yet about the supposedly insurmountable rift between black voters and white women voters. Wickham's thesis is that the Dems "stand a good chance of suffering a humiliating defeat in the general election" if the party doesn't run Clinton and Obama together on one ticket. The merits of such an orchestrated maneuver are arguable; I'm more interested in the imagery Wickham uses to convey his idea—a knocked-up Clinton with baby daddy Obama, forced together at gunpoint by Clinton's papa the party elders?
Oy.
Only a person irrevocably insistent on looking at everything through the broad lenses of sex and race could come up with an analogy that carelessly invokes appalling sex and race stereotypes, and treat it as serious political discourse. It's no wonder the whole primary has played out in the unimaginative, uncritical, pithy-ass media like Demographixxx: Beyond Thunderdome!!!
With commentary this absurd, it's no wonder the commentariat persistently fails to realize that the Actual Voting Public is far less permanently polarized and immovably entrenched than they presume.
And, yeah, there are some people who will refuse to vote for one or the other, but, in the final analysis, most lefties will—like every other election—hold their noses and vote for whatever vaguely-to-largely objectionable candidate the perennially stupid Democratic primary process has yielded as its nominee.
I know that narrative's not as "fun" and "horseracy" and "Beyond Thunderdome" and "lacking in critical thought" as the media generally prefers, but it would be nice if they could suspend their desire to have fun long enough to realize that perpetuating the idea of imminent sex- and race- wars in the Democratic ranks actually means something—to the country, to the party, and to the people to whom divisiveness is being unfairly attributed.
It's all fun and games for the people who will never get hurt.
The rest of us would appreciate a little seriousness for a fucking change, though.
The overall topic of the piece, interestingly enough, is McCain's legendary temper. Given Hitchens's own perpetually pissed-off persona, I suppose this is something he identifies with. And indeed, Hitchens does admit that there are some things to worry about.
One reason that I try never to wear a tie is the advantage that it so easily confers on anyone who goes berserk on you. There you are, with a ready-made noose already fastened around your neck. All the opponent needs to do is grab hold and haul. A quite senior Republican told me the other night that he'd often seen John McCain get attention on the Hill in just this way. Not necessarily hauling, you understand, but grabbing.
Serious stuff, eh? McCain might get angry and launch a nuclear attack grab somebody's tie! But, Hitchens spends most of the column telling us there's really no reason for concern. McCain's temper, he assures us, is probably funny, possibly overstated, and maybe even noble.
He does this in three ways: first, by defusing the portrait of McCain's temper with ironic detachment:
However, we are still obliged to ask ourselves whether the senior senator from Arizona is a brick short of a load or, as heartless people in England sometimes say, a sandwich or two short of a picnic.
[...]
Again, one hopes that the nominee has been doing this for emphasis rather than as a sign that he is out of his pram, has lost his rag, has gone ballistic, has reported into the post office that he's feeling terminally disgruntled today. (Or, as P.G. Wodehouse immortally put it, if not quite disgruntled, not exactly gruntled, either.)
These comic euphemisms have the effect of making McCain's temper seem funny and therefore charming and harmless: more like Roderick Spode than an actual person, more of a comic sideshow than a potential problem in governance.
Second, he cherry-picks one particular witness to McCain's temper, and spends a lot of time mocking him:
[F]ormer Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., who opined that McCain's rage quotient "would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger." I once went on a TV panel with Smith and passed some green-room time with him, and I can assure you that premature detonations of any kind would certainly not be his problem. He combines the body of an ox with the brains of a gnat. Indeed, if his brains were made of gunpowder and were to accidentally explode, the resulting bang would not even be enough to disarrange his hair.
No other witnesses are mentioned; no mention is made, for example, of the incident in which McCain called his wife a "cunt" in front of others (maybe Hitchens just thought that was funny).
And third, he assures us that, really, McCain's anger may be the anger of a righteous man -- possibly Washingtonian in its nobility -- and anyway, who are we to judge in the end?
About two decades ago, facing a group in his state GOP that resisted proclaiming a state holiday for Martin Luther King Jr., he shouted, "You will damn well do this" and rammed the idea home with other crisp and terse remarks.
[...]
Thomas Jefferson used to note of mild George Washington that there were moments of passionate rage in which "he cannot govern himself." We often forgive what we imagine, to use Orwell's words about Charles Dickens, are the moments when someone is "generously angry." Yet how are we to be sure that we can tell the hysterical tantrum from the decent man's wrath? The answer ought to be that we cannot know in advance of a presidency what causes people to become choleric, so anger management is yet another name—and yet another reason—for the separation of powers.
I particularly love the King state holiday story: it's a very clever way of ignoring the incident in which McCain was forced to apologize for opposing the King holiday at the federal level -- for doing, in other words, the very thing that Hitchens depicts him as passionately resisting.
Now, let's just compare all of this to how Hitchens (who is not a conservative and we mustn't ever call him one) describes the two Democrats in the campaign. On Hillary Clinton:
Those of us who follow politics seriously rather than view it as a game show do not look at Hillary Clinton and simply think "first woman president." We think -- for example -- "first ex-co-president" or "first wife of a disbarred lawyer and impeached former incumbent" or "first person to use her daughter as photo-op protection during her husband's perjury rap."
Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been "our first black president."
Odd how there's nothing funny or charming or noble about Clinton's alleged anger and that of her supporters, is there?
Obama wants us to transcend something at the same time he implicitly asks us to give that same something as a reason to vote for him. I must say that the lyricism with which he does this has double and triple the charm of Mrs. Clinton's heavily-scripted trudge through the landscape, but the irony is still the same.
What are we trying to "get over" here? We are trying to get over the hideous legacy of slavery and segregation. But Mr. Obama is not a part of this legacy.
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool.
[...]
And why is a man with a white mother considered to be "black," anyway?
[...]
Sen. Obama is a congregant of a church in Chicago called Trinity United Church of Christ. I recommend that you take a brisk tour of its Web site. Run by the sort of character that the press often guardedly describes as "flamboyant"—a man calling himself the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.—this bizarre outfit describes itself as "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian" and speaks of "a chosen people" whose nature we are allowed to assume is "Afrocentric."
Rather cleverly, Hitchens manages to insinuate both "scary black man" and "Halfrican" without ever saying either one. But, naturally enough, he depicts Obama as a big hypocrite for allegedly being both of these things, and he especially sneers at liberals for being the real racists -- for acknowledging that race is still a reality.
Of course, Hitchens has already made it pretty clear how he's going to vote this November:
I shall not vote for Sen. Obama and it will not be because he -- like me and like all of us -- carries African genes. And I shall not be voting for Mrs. Clinton, who has the gall to inform me after a career of overweening entitlement that there is "a double standard" at work for women in politics; and I assure you now that this decision of mine has only to do with the content of her character.
So, I guess all this is no real surprise. But the man's hackery continues to impress.
I'd have more respect for him if he just came out and admitted he's now a Republican and a conservative (albeit a quirky one). But no. He's not a conservative and we mustn't ever call him one, even when he joins in the media praise of John McCain.
Caller: "We have a couple of men sitting out on the bench that have been kissing and drooling all over each other for the past hour or so. It's not against the law, right?"
Operator: "Not to the best of my knowledge it's not."
Caller: "So there's no complaint I could make or have?"
Operator: "I imagine you could complain if you like ma'am. We can always send an officer down there."
And they did . . . . The officer told our couple that the police dispatch received a call because the two of them were making out.
"Just don't do that in public," he told them before leaving the scene.
There was the woman who said:
"I would actually want our kids to grow up in a place where they would see various types of people engaging in behaviors that [are] loving."
And then there were the people who took a whole different "think of teh childrenz!" tack:
"I don't really find it inappropriate, especially during the day when schoolchildren aren't running around. They might get confused and want an answer for what's going on," bystander Mary-Kate told us. The majority of the people who spoke about children seemed to echo Mary-Kate's feelings."
Which means, basically, these folks are fine with "Gay PDA" -- as long as they don't have to face the uncomfortable, icky business of explaining to their children that not everybody on earth is like mommy and daddy.
Which kind of sucks.
But please, read on. My partner and I rarely engage in kissing in public (even around our friends), but that's a personal choice based on our desire to keep our sexual intimacy extremely . . well . . . intimate. When we kiss, we like to kiss for real, and that's for us. (And yes, it is hot, thank you very much. And no, you may not watch.)
However, I doubt that most straight, cisgendered people think about, or notice, how frequently they touch their partner in public in ways that are not necessarily "sexual" (in addition to kissing, cuddling, and the odd bum-squeeze) -- ie. holding hands, walking with an arm around the waist, smoothing the other's hair back out of their eyes -- nor do I think that most straight, cisgendered people are probably aware of the fact that when I touch my partner in public, it's nearly always a considered act.
I don't obsess about this -- as in -- it doesn't eat up my days and nights -- and I'm probably about as "out" as a queer can be in this country -- but every single time I take my partner's hand on the street, or toss my arm over her shoulder or around her waist, hug her goodbye or hello, I do a little, tiny "security sweep".
I notice who is around, and where I am, and what the energy feels like -- before I touch her in public. It's a tiny amount of attention, most often, but it's there.
I just noticed recently that in an unknown situation that seems "sort of" safe, (like walking in a crowded mall) I'm more likely to curl her arm through mine than to hold her hand -- which may seem counter-intuitive, since arm-in-arm actually affords much closer body contact -- but after I thought about this, I realized that walking "arm-in-arm" is something that I see straight girl-friends do more often than holding hands (after they're 12, anyway). In considering this choice, I also realized that in many situations, I'm happy to give any possible bigots in an uncertain setting the option of assuming that we're just a couple of straight girls.
Which sorta sucks.
I recognize this as the internalized homophobia that it is, but I can't deny that it's present in me. The fact is, that I stop, look, and listen before I demonstrate physical affection toward my beloved in nearly every public setting that is not clearly "queer safe".
I'm butch, and I seem butch (even to people who will tell you that their gaydar is hopelessly mis-calibrated). I seem butch no matter what I'm wearing, or what length my hair is. It's fairly difficult for me to "pass" -- even when I want to. My gait is stompy, and my demeanor, direct. I've always been that way -- from little on. My favorite colors in clothing are black and blue (Couture D'Bruise, as I like to call it) -- partially because my color sense sucks ass, but mostly because I have better things to do than figuring out what to wear.
My partner is androgynous-to-femme. She often wears dresses because she genuinely likes wearing them, and usually sports smashing combinations of floral tones or deep purples with highlights of teal.
And we adore each other.
If you caught us in an unguarded moment, this adoration would probably be very visible to you, whether we were snogging away like sex-crazed maniacs or sitting across the room from one another reading our respective books -- so moving out into the world also involves, for me, some adjustments beyond whether I touch her physically or not.
I notice that, in public, I seem to have an automatic timer that warns me not to gaze at her as long as I might at the privacy of our dining room table, a subtle mask that shifts the set of my smile when I respond to hearing her laugh, and an inner language editor that reflexively erases "honey", "my love" and "darling" from my lexicon as I'm calling to her across a parking lot.
I want to make it very clear that I don't think about these things.
These adjustments have become so internalized that I rarely, if ever, notice them -- until I sit down to write a post like this.
They are part of the enculturated self- censoring that most queers learn in order to assure their own safety in the world (and sometimes, their very survival). In fact, I had to "unlearn" many other, more rigid, tendencies to automatic hiding when I finally made the decision to be completely "out" as a lesbian.
I don't edit myself this way because I am ashamed of being a lesbian. I do it because I'm afraid that someone else, who thinks I ought to be ashamed of being a lesbian, might hurt me -- or worse, hurt my beloved.
Back in 1988, when I came out completely and publicly via a two-part article in the Oregonian, the nutcase Lon Mabon was mounting the first of many campaigns to curtail LGBTQ rights in the state of Oregon, in the guise of "Measure 8".
My oldest and best friend (a straight, married girl) poo-pooed the whole thing, saying "we've come farther than that, the Measure will never pass, tempest-in-a-teapot, blah, blah, blah" -- and stated that she couldn't understand why I was so upset about the whole thing.
This friend is the sister I never had. I loved her (and love her still) dearly, and her inability to see how the Measure 8 (which was passed that year) was likely to affect me and my family was incredibly painful to me. I remember weeping in her living room as I tried to explain something that was, to her, completely invisible. I talked to her about how scary it had been to come out publicly after having led a fairly comfortable life as a closeted queer, and she just didn't seem to get why it should be a big deal at all.
So, I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I'll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):
Spend an entire week pretending that you're not a couple. Don't write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being "friends". Refer to yourself only in the singular "I", never in the "we". When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a friend, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go intentionally into the closet as a couple. For a week.
They took my challenge.
They lasted exactly three days.
My friend returned to me in tears on day four and said: "I'm sorry. I had no idea what it is like for you."
[For those of you straight allies who are not coupled, but who want to play along, your challenge is (perhaps) simpler: Spend one week in which you make no mention and give no hint of your sexual orientation at all. When straight people around you are parsing the hotness of the opposite gender, go silent, or play along in a way that makes it seem as if you are part of the gang, but never reveals any real personal information. If someone asks you about your love-life, be evasive and non-committal. If you went on a date, and you're talking about it later, de-genderize all the pronouns, or consciously switch them (him to her, her to him, etc.).]
That is how I lived for the first 32 years of my life, whether I was single or coupled.
And while my current self-editing is not nearly as extreme as it was before I made the choice to live as an out lesbian, it's still self-editing.
I am still alert in public settings and default-cautious with strangers around revelation of my sexual orientation, no matter how much self-esteem I possess. Every time I meet someone new, I silently (and mostly, unconsciously) assess how I think they will handle the information that I am a lesbian.
That's one reason that I like my handle (PortlyDyke) -- because people's immediate response to it (friendly or foe-full) usually gives me some information in that initial assessment process, and saves me the trouble of "coming out" to them. I also let potential clients know, via my business website, that I am a lesbian -- right out front -- and figure that if they still hire me, well, they knew what they were getting.
It's one of the reasons that I've chosen to live in a small town that is known for its liberality and quirkiness -- where it is unlikely that I'm going to get hassled on the street for looking butchy, and where, if I was hassled, there would probably be some people around who would help me out (I hope) -- but also one of the reasons that I would not consider setting foot in the road-house near the paper mill unless I were accompanied by two or more straight friends.
In truth, these assessments and considerations are so much a part of my existence that I barely notice them, and the availability of the choice to either remain closeted or come out (a choice which is available for many, but not all queers) is one of the things that can make homo-/trans- phobia a very tricky sort of "-ism" to deal with.
[A thought which arises at this point: I imagine that these types of behavioral adjustments and choices are also made by people of color who can "pass" and mixed-race couples.]
The queer couples smooching for ABC had a camera crew and back up. The city officials and police departments had signed off on the experiment. I'd really love to hear an interview with those couples about whether the public affection they displayed is typical of how they would act on any street, at any time, or if they noticed subtle or overt changes in how they interacted because they had "permission" to be fully de-cloaked as queers.
In examining all this, I realized that, for me, choosing the closet, even in this incredibly subtle way -- by taking my beloved's arm instead of her hand on the street -- is simultaneously a direct participation in the heterosexist system that would deny me equality, and, often, a prudent move to preserve my safety.
Underneath Karl Rove's latest diatribe at Newsweek is the bio:
Rove, former senior adviser for President Bush, is a NEWSWEEK contributor.
That Rove actually works with the John McCain campaign is of obviously little or no importance to those running Newsweek, as they seem pleased to run Rove's propoganda, all journalistic ethics be damned.
Rove's latest one, "My Advice to Barack Obama," shows concern trolls around the globe how it's done. Some of Rove's advice:
In the coming months, say that you'll appoint Republicans to your cabinet and get a couple to say they'd serve. Highlight initiatives Republicans can agree on. Most importantly, push for a bipartisan issue now before Congress.
... spend less time campaigning and more time working the Senate.
Recapture the optimistic tone of your start and discard the weary, prickly and distracted tone you've taken on.
Stop the attacks. They undermine your claim to a post-partisan new politics. You soared when you seemed above politics, lost altitude when you did what you criticize. Attacks are momentarily satisfying but ultimately corrode your appeal.
Wow. Thanks for the advice, Karl. Obama's presidency is insured if he just follow your advice. And, of course, thank you Newsweek for giving the American public one of the greatest GOP criminals of all time, and avoiding to mention that he works for John McCain.
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Mitt Romney would be a terrible veep for a whole host of reasons. First of all, he and McCain hate each other -- actually, I don't know that hate is a strong enough word. The New Hampshire debates were astonishing, given the amount of flak McCain threw Mitt's way. Second, there's the Mormon thing. I don't care that Mitt is a Mormon -- he can believe in whatever phony-baloney God he wants to as far as I'm concerned -- but there are a whole host of rabid Christianists in the GOP who think Mormons are almost as bad as atheists. They will not be happy that Mittens has returned.
I am beginning to feel like a broken record.
