Bruce Garrett Cartoon
The Cartoon Gallery

A Coming Out Story
A Coming Out Story

My Photo Galleries
New and Improved!

Past Web Logs
The Story So Far archives

My Amazon.Com Wish List

My Myspace Profile

Bruce Garrett's Profile
Bruce Garrett's Facebook profile


Blogs I Read!
Alicublog

Wayne Besen

Beyond Ex-Gay
(A Survivor's Community)

Box Turtle Bulletin

Chrome Tuna

Daily Kos

Mike Daisy's Blog

The Disney Blog

Envisioning The American Dream

Eschaton

Ex-Gay Watch

Hullabaloo

Joe. My. God

Peterson Toscano

Progress City USA

Slacktivist

SLOG

Fear the wrath of Sparky!

Wil Wheaton



Gone But Not Forgotten

Howard Cruse Central

The Rittenhouse Review

Steve Gilliard's News Blog

Steve Gilliard's Blogspot Site



Great Cartoon Sites!

Tripping Over You
Tripping Over You

XKCD

Commando Cody Monthly

Scandinavia And The World

Dope Rider

The World Of Kirk Anderson

Ann Telnaes' Cartoon Site

Bors Blog

John K

Penny Arcade




Other News & Commentary

Lead Stories

Amtrak In The Heartland

Corridor Capital

Railway Age

Maryland Weather Blog

Foot's Forecast

All Facts & Opinions

Baltimore Crime

Cursor

HinesSight

Page One Q
(GLBT News)


Michelangelo Signorile

The Smirking Chimp

Talking Points Memo

Truth Wins Out

The Raw Story

Slashdot




International News & Views

BBC

NIS News Bulletin (Dutch)

Mexico Daily

The Local (Sweden)




News & Views from Germany

Spiegel Online

The Local

Deutsche Welle

Young Germany




Fun Stuff

It's not news. It's FARK

Plan 59

Pleasant Family Shopping

Discount Stores of the 60s

Retrospace

Photos of the Forgotten

Boom-Pop!

Comics With Problems

HMK Mystery Streams




Mercedes Love!

Mercedes-Benz USA

Mercedes-Benz TV

Mercedes-Benz Owners Club of America

MBCA - Greater Washington Section

BenzInsider

Mercedes-Benz Blog

BenzWorld Forum

Archive for October, 2013

October 4th, 2013

Oh Sure…

@JohnnyGWeir: “I’m sorry to you all for wearing daisy dukes in October.”

Pics or it didn’t happen.

by Bruce | Link | React!

October 2nd, 2013

Pistol Whipping A Dead Gay Kid Because They Can

Debunking Stephen Jimenez isn’t hard…he was involved in the ABC 20/20 whitewash of Matthew Shepard’s murder and makes the same claims here that 20/20 did years ago.   But it is necessary, not only to defend a kid who can no longer speak for himself, but because it is a trope of the anti-gay industrial complex that hate crimes against gay people are nothing the nation need concern itself with.   Nothing to see here folks…the homosexuals bring it on themselves…and even like it.   There is no pattern of violence.   Homosexuals are not being targeted.   Nothing to see.   Nothing to see…

Debunking Stephen Jimenez’s Effort To De-Gay Matthew Shepard’s Murder

Journalist Stephen Jimenez’s  The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard makes the bombshell claim that illicit drug use, not homophobia, was the central factor in the gay University of Wyoming student’s brutal 1998 murder.  Shepard truthers in  the  right-wing media have pounced on the book to  assail hate crime legislation and the larger push for LGBT rights. But Jimenez’s argument is tainted by its reliance on wild extrapolation, the use of highly questionable and often inconsistent sources,  paranoia that critics of his work are engaged in a “cover-up” of politically sensitive truths, and the cavalier dismissal of any evidence that runs contrary to  his central thesis.

Go read the whole thing…you are going to be hearing more about it soon. His book comes out on the anniversary of the murder because that is the perfect time to spit in the faces of people who are still appalled at what happened that night, and determined to put an end to the hatred that fueled it. Jimenez and his soul brother Andrew Sullivan need everyone to stop making such a big deal out of one little gay kid because, perhaps for different reasons, perhaps not, they think it ridiculous.There’s a nugget in this article that I hadn’t understood before, which might explain Sullivan’s need to whitewash Shepard’s murder…

For an author trying to make the case that homophobia played no role in Shepard’s murder, his killer’s use of crude, anti-gay language would seem to pose a significant problem. Not so, Jimenez assures us. McKinney – who described himself as a “drunk homofobick [sic]” in a letter written from prison – was merely trying to imitate the thug image of the gangsta rappers he admired, according to Jimenez. This explanation  is  just as implausible as Jimenez’s bizarre speculation that President Bill Clinton spoke out on Shepard’s murder and championed hate crime legislation in order to divert public attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

(Emphasis mine). So it’s about Sullivan’s Clinton hatred again.   Or back when the 20/20 episode was production it was, and now he’s just sticking to it because it’s out there, and anyway, isn’t all this outrage about what happened to a little twink a bit overwrought? Sullivan has always been an outspoken critic of hate crime laws, and the narrative that hate played any role that night in Laramie had to be debunked.   Because…liberals.

There is nothing mysterious or hidden about the murder of Matthew Shepard. The trial transcripts themselves show clearly, convincingly and overwhelmingly that Shepard not only did not know his killers, but that they beat the 112 pound Shepard mercilessly to the brink of death precisely because he was gay.   Some have said, a tad more plausibly, it was merely a robbery gone bad. But they targeted him because he was gay, and I have been to Laramie, I have driven the route that McKinney and Henderson took as they drove Shepard out of town to the isolated place where they tied him to a deer fence and beat him…I drove it at night around the same time…and I promise you that if you do the same you will, if you are even slightly open to the evidence, come to the only possible conclusion: that they had more than robbery on their minds on their way to the killing place.

Who can say why some people prefer their comfortable conceits to reality. Stephen Jimenez may simply be a publicity seeking asswipe. Or he and Andrew Sullivan may really believe that the facts in front of one’s nose are merely a veneer behind which the hidden conspiracies and plots that really move human events lurk. Perhaps they find the idea that the beating death of a pretty gay boy might genuinely shock anyone ridiculous, the thinking being Shepard was a little twink who went looking for rough trade and got what was coming to him. He’d already allowed himself to be raped once didn’t he? Whatever the motivation, ask yourself who is deeper in the human gutter, the knuckle-dragging killers who hated or the respectable upright whitewashers of hate.

by Bruce | Link | React!


I’ll Take ‘Who Poisoned The Well’ For $1000 Alex…

This, from Der Spiegel this morning…

German Press Review on US Government Shutdown

“What Washington currently offers up is a spectacle, but one in which the spectators feel more like crying,” writes the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.”Because Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, Congress and president could not agree on a stop-gap budget, hundreds of thousands of federal employees were sent on involuntary leave and many agencies were forced to shut down,” continues the editorial. “The main actors in this dispute, which brings together many factors, both ideological and political, took a huge risk and, unhindered, proceeded to validate everyone who ever accused the political establishment in Washington of being rotten to the core — by driving the world power into a budgetary state of emergency. The public is left wondering how things could have been allowed to get to this point and why there is so much poison in the system.

(Emphasis mine…)   Poison in the system…did you ask…?


I became an American citizen only so I could own some U.S. TV stations…

Oh…I dunno…

by Bruce | Link | React!

October 1st, 2013

My Own Private Dark Corner, In The Happiest Place On Earth…

This came across my Facebook stream just now…

Deceptive Clichés: Oktoberfest  and Bavaria’s Recipe for  Success

Non-Bavarians and other foreigners tend to believe that the raucous festival amounts to nothing more than a collective drinking binge, a massive party with rollercoaster rides and erotic displays of tight dirndls and deerskin trousers set to the oompah-pah of brass bands. But there is something more refined going on beneath all the noise and clinking of beer mugs.   Oktoberfest is actually a 35-hectare (86-acre) stage where performances of great importance play out simultaneously.

They are about the odd, prosperous southern German state of Bavaria, which at its heart has remained a small, proud nation. They are about the state party, the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), which, in the frenzy of costumes and successful election campaigns, portrays itself as the legitimate successor to the abdicated monarchy. They are about a society’s touching devotion to tradition and local celebrities. And they are about a city where six global corporations listed on Germany’s blue chip stock exchange, the DAX, compete for power and influence — and thus as many seats as possible in Oktoberfest beer tents…

Ah yes…   the odd prosperous southern German state of Bavaria.   It is not the Bavaria you see in Epcot Germany.   Something I learned: You can take the boy out of Bavaria, but not Bavaria out of the boy.   He might flee to Disney’s Bavaria, which as you would expect is a happier, small world after all kinda place.   But that is the Disney version, in a place where dreams come true, and all the ever afters are happy, and the Bavaria in the boy will always remind him that it isn’t real, dreams are merely dreams, life is short and bitter, but at least there is beer.

Prost!

by Bruce | Link | React!

Visit The Woodward Class of '72 Reunion Website For Fun And Memories, WoodwardClassOf72.com


What I'm Currently Reading...




What I'm Currently Watching...




What I'm Currently Listening To...




Comic Book I've Read Recently...



web
stats

This page and all original content copyright © 2024 by Bruce Garrett. All rights reserved. Send questions, comments and hysterical outbursts to: bruce@brucegarrett.com

This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.