LOSING DAVID BRODER….What’s the modern day equivalent of "losing Walter Cronkite"? Perhaps losing David Broder?
In today’s column he doesn’t quite come right out and say that we need to withdraw from Iraq, but he sure wiggles up to within kissing distance of it. Will the rest of centrist Washington follow?
This is painful for someone who grew up watching Walter Cronkite to read. You just see in it so horribly the decline of the American spirit since the Reagan years. I doubt Drum was thinking in those terms when he wrote that…he’s probably thinking in terms of the environment of the inside the beltway kool kids. And he’s probably right. For the D.C. kool kids, loosing Broder may well be, in a sense, like loosing Walter Cronkite. And this very nicely sums up what’s wrong with the mainstream news media today, and in particular, the shitfaced pundocracy. Comparing David "they came in and trashed the place" Broder to Walter Cronkite is like comparing the Matterhorn to Walt Disney’s recreation of it. One’s a real goddamned mountain and the other is a hollow fake created purely for entertainment. And that’s Broder. And that’s why he’s thought well of by the D.C. cocktail party crowd. He entertains them. If, as Broder said, Bill Clinton came in with his trailer trash crowd and "trashed the place", Broder was the man to tell them all their cheapshit Georgetown conceits were insightful and high principled pearls of wisdom. As Atrios points out:
The country doesn’t care what David Broder thinks. He reflects the conventional wisdom of his clique back at them. That’s his audience.
Just so. Broder’s audience is his own Washington inside the beltway clique. The same mindless soulless lapdogs who have been breathlessly kissing the feet of anti democratic republican thugs ever since Kenneth Starr started sniffing Bill Clinton’s underwear. What we’re seeing in the beltway pundocracy now, is that Deer In The Headlights expression of a person watching a catastrophe rushing at them like an out of control semi, bearing their own words on its bumperstickers.
In the months and years to come remember: these people mindlessly, witlessly, cheered President Junior on his way to war, when anyone with half a brain and a functional conscience could tell it was bullshit. These people mindlessly, witlessly, roused American passions for war. Saddam was a threat to our national security they said. And defended Bush and the republicans when they began shredding our consitution. The war would be over in days they said. They’ve been making excuses for why it’s been relentlessly killing people for going on four years now. The Iraqis would shower our troops with flowers they said. They’re killing and maiming more and more every day now. The tyrannies of the middle east would all fall like dominos they said. Now an anti-human religious fanatisism sweeps the entire Arab world, taking its moral authority from everything Bush has done to destroy democracy in America and ignore treaties on the conduct of war, and the practice of torture. And now it’s become too much, even for the likes of David Broder. Second thoughts? No. He’s looking for a way to deflect his share of the blame. They all are.
They’ll say they were all bamboozled by a bunch of terrible, wicked men. But…no. They were willing to be fooled. They held the Clintons in the same contempt Imelda Marco held her shoe shine girl, worshipped the republicans for the same arrogance of power that brought us war, corruption, and an America divided against itself like it hasn’t been since the civil war. They roused the mob, not because they believed in Dubya, but because they loathed the democrats, and their prissy preoccupation with the rights of common people, and that bleeding heart liberal crap about liberty and justice for all. Their support for President Junior was more a gesture of contempt for liberalism then a hurrah for republican oligarchy, but it did its work.
Now president Smirk is egging the Israelis to make war on Syria, and rumbling that maybe we should start another one with Iran. With what troops and with what money who knows…but the republicans don’t care about details like that. They’re Big Picture folks. Broder and the entire inside the beltway kool kids crowd hated liberals and democrats too much to notice or care who they were sanctifying, but it wasn’t their father’s republican party. It is the party of Pat Robertson and James Dobson, men who think the end of the world will begin in the holy lands. Now that they have the power they’ve always wanted, it’s too late to politely suggest to them that they’re making a mistake. They think they’re doing God’s work. They’re ushering in the Second Coming.
Broder and his audience could have used their position to make this country a better place. Instead they pissed on it, and blamed the democrats. They didn’t think it mattered who governed America, as long as it wasn’t common trash who didn’t know how to throw a proper Georgetown party. And now a terrible wind is blowing at the foundations of everything America ever stood for, everything America was, everything America could ever have become, and worst of all, it is bearing their own words back to them.
"Extremism is a powerful alliance of fear and certitude; complexity and humility are its natural foes. Faith and life are essentially mysterious, for neither God nor nature is easily explained or understood. Crusades are for the weak, literalism for the insecure."
“I know that critics of homosexuality do not consider themselves to be hateful. They would say they "love the sinner but hate the sin." If the shoe were on the other foot, however, and someone were attacking their families, trying to take their children away, and constantly working to pass legislation to deprive them of basic civil rights, at some point they would understand that "homophobia" is too mild a word for such harassment. "Hatred" is the only proper term.
I was raised in Dallas, Texas and had classmates who were in the Klan. I remember that they did not consider themselves to be attacking other people. They perceived themselves to be defenders of Christian America. Their "religion" consisted of an unrelenting attack on people who were black, Jewish or homosexual. If anyone challenged these views, these Klan members considered themselves under attack and believed that their right to free exercise of religion was being threatened. In other words, they felt that harassing other people was a protected expression of their own religious faith."
Please Know From My Heart That I Am Not An Anti-Semite. I Am Not A Bigot.
Sure thing Mel…
"For 1,950 years [the church] does one thing and then in the ’60s, all of a sudden they turn everything inside out and begin to do strange things that go against the rules. Everything that had been heresy is no longer heresy, according to the [new] rules. We [Catholics] are being cheated… The church has stopped being critical. It has relaxed. I don’t believe them, and I have no intention of following their trends.It’s the church that has abandoned me, not me who has abandoned it."
Mel Gibson, in an interview with El Pais in January 1992, discussing why his brand of Traditionalist Catholicism does not subscribe to the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 rulings on various subjects including who was responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.
"Why are they calling her a Nazi? …Because modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it’s a lie. And it’s revisionism. And they’ve been working on that one for a while."
On criticism of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a nineteenth-century nun whose writings influenced his portrayal of Jesus’ death. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
"That’s bullshit…I don’t want to be dissing my father. He never denied the Holocaust; he just said there were fewer than six million. I don’t want them having me dissing my father. I mean, he’s my father."
On allegations that his father is a Holocaust denier. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
"I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
In The New York Post, January 30, 2004
"They take it up the ass. This [pointing to his butt] is only for taking a shit."
When asked what he thinks of homosexuals in an interview with El Pais in January 1992
"With this look, who’s going to think I’m gay. I don’t lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?"
When asked during the El Pais interview if he is afraid of being mistaken for a homosexual, because he is an actor.
"I have no idea how anti-Semitism entered into it. But I do feel that gay people will burn in hell. Their way of life goes completely against God’s plan for procreation."
"Fucking Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
During his arrest for driving under the influence, July 2006
"What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?"
To a female sergeant during his arrest for DUI
"In its representation of its Jewish characters, The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing, or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of anti-Semitism, in art and in film. What is so shocking about Gibson’s Jews is how unreconstructed they are in their stereotypical appearances and actions. These are not merely anti-Semitic images; these are classically anti-Semitic images."
It’s worth noting that The Man Without A Face, was produced after Gibson’s homophobic outburst in El Pais, and was widely taken at the time (mostly by heterosexuals sympathetic to Gibson) as a kind of apology to the gay community. I’ve read the book the film was based on, I still have it on my shelves. The story is about a young boy growing up in an emotionally abusive family, who turns to an older neighbor for support and guidance. As their relationship develops, the boy finds himself experiencing a nascent sexual awakening and desire for the older man, which the older man gently but firmly turns aside. He is not interested in having a sexual relationship with the boy, he just wants to help him through a difficult time in his life, despite the suspicions of the local townsfolk. The final confrontation in the book comes when the boy discovers that the man really was a homosexual, and he lashes out at him in fear and confusion over his own sexual orientation.
The story is about growing up, trust, and what it is to genuniely love someone. It’s about accepting differences in others, accepting yourself and not running away from your life. The punchline is that the man was gay, and so was the boy, yet the man did not take advantage of him. There was real love and friendship there between them, that was taken away and destroyed by fear and prejudice. The prejudice of the townspeople, and the boy’s own fears and doubts about himself. Gibson, in making the film, turned the man into a heterosexual who had only been mistaken for a homosexual once in his life, when he was falsely accused of having an affair with a former student, effectively nullifying the book’s point that to be homosexual isn’t necessarily to be a child molester, and thereby weakening the impact of its message about love. The townsfolk were right about the man…and yet they were wrong. The boy lashed out at the man from fear of something within himself. This is what prejudice does to us…it tears us apart from within, tears neighbor from neighbor, friend from friend. But Gibson could not bring himself to make that film. So he turned the story into a tale about the unjust persecution of a heterosexual. Yet to this day people point to this film, Gibson’s directorial debut, as some kind of proof that Gibson really isn’t a homophobic bigot after all.
So when Gibson offered to make a film about the Holocaust after the outrage over Passion of the Christ…I laughed. Some blogger wag whose name I cannot recall just now, joked that in his script for his Holocaust film, Gibson changes the story to make it a bunch of Jews who kill six million Nazis. But no…he would have made a very nice film about the crimes against the Jews by the Third Reich, and few would have noticed that the film’s basic premise was, as Gibson’s father insists, that the killing of Jews by the Nazis wasn’t anything special or systematic, because a lot of people died during world war II.
At the root of prejudice is a terrible blindness to the humanity of the hated other. The hated other is not really human, so the things that happen to them are not remarkable. It is only injustice when bad things happen to real people. Not when it happens to Jews. Not when it happens to women who challenge the authority of men. Not when it happens to homosexuals. That is the message of every film Mel Gibson has ever made. It is what he believes. It is his bedrock. You saw it again last week in Malibu, without the silver screen makeup.
So is the breakfast toast in the congressional cafeterias, with both fries and toast having been liberated from the appellation "freedom."
Three years after House Republicans trumpeted the new names to get back at the French for snubbing the coalition of the willing in Iraq, congressmen don’t even want to talk about french fries, which are actually native to Belgium, and toast.
Neither Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio nor Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, the authors of the culinary rebuke, were willing this week to say who led the retreat, as it were, from the frying pan. But retreat there has been, as a casual observer can see for himself in the House’s basement cafeterias.
"We don’t have a comment for your story," said a spokeswoman for Mr. Ney.
Welcome back to planet earth, jackass. Remember when they were saying the war would be over in a matter of days? Flowers, they were going to shower our troops with. And…and…the oil we got out of Iraq would make the war pay for itself. Well…no. Here’s how you pay for war…
By Brian MacQuarrie
The Boston Globe
August 2, 2006
WASHINGTON — President Bush came and sat by the side of Sergeant Brian Fountaine, a 24-year-old tank commander from Dorchester, a gung-ho soldier who had lobbied to be deployed a second time. Now Fountaine was among the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, his legs amputated below the knees after an explosion June 8 ripped apart the Humvee in which he was riding.
The president chatted about the sergeant’s beloved Red Sox, but made no reference to the war, the soldier said.
If the topic had come up, the president might not have liked what Fountaine had on his mind. In a dramatic change of heart, Fountaine now considers the war a military quagmire in which American soldiers are caught in a deadly vise between irreconcilable enemies.
In his view, troop morale has plummeted, suicide has increased, and the sacrifices being made in American blood and treasure suddenly seem questionable.
The war began with the justifiable goal of toppling a reckless, dangerous dictator in Saddam Hussein, the soldier said. But as the country slides toward civil war, Fountaine added, the goal of a democratic Iraq seems more distant by the day.
"You have to wonder, what exactly are we doing?" Fountaine said. "In my opinion, [Iraq] is a country that has been at war with itself and with other enemies for thousands of years. And we’re supposed to make them happy? I don’t think so. I don’t see it happening."
When asked if history will justify the life-altering sacrifice he has made, Fountaine paused for several seconds, lowered his head, and slowly replied: "If in 10 or 20 years, if Iraq is in the same spot and America is still losing boys over there, then, no, I think my sacrifice will be as futile as anyone else’s."
That sacrifice has been profound, excruciatingly exacted from Fountaine’s body by two large bombs on a dusty road a dozen miles north of Baghdad.
The pain has been both physical and psychic. On June 30, while visiting the Marine Corps War Memorial in a wheelchair he was still learning to use, Fountaine lost control and fell over. Nothing he experienced in the explosion outside Taji — not the searing burn, not the loss of blood, not the experience of binding his own mangled legs with tourniquets — equaled the humiliation of that moment.
…
"When you swing your legs over the side of the bed, you wonder why your feet don’t hit the floor," Fountaine said. "And then you remember: It’s because you don’t have feet, stupid."
When historians question how the United States of America managed to get itself dragged by a smirking spoiled silver spoon jackass brat into a useless pointless war that eventually turned the entire middle east into a raging conflagration, these four words will explain it all: Freedom Fries…Freedom Toast…
Dan Savage got a chance to give Washington state supreme court Justice Gerry Alexander a little grief over his role in that court’s grotesque decision against the rights of same sex couples. The occasion was a previously scheduled interview with reporters from The Stranger for the upcoming election (supreme court judges in Washington state have to answer to the voters). The Stranger website has audio excerpts of the confrontation. There is a moment in these recordings that has to rank among the most telling of the gay civil rights struggle, and it isn’t even anything anyone actually says. It is a sound.
Posted by Unpaid Intern at 02:59 PM
Weeks ago, we—meaning I—scheduled interviews with the state’s Supreme Court candidates in preparation for our annual endorsement issue. Then, one day before the interview, the justices announced they were upholding the gay marriage ban. Coincidence? Entirely. Fortuitous? Very.
Imagine a justice who voted to uphold DOMA trapped in a room with Dan Savage (wielding a framed picture of his son, DJ) and the rest of the Stranger Election Control Board, for an entire hour Well, you don’t have to just imagine the showdown! Here is Justice Gerry Alexander starring in “An Inquisition”:
It’s nine minutes long, so here are some highlights: use of the phrase “child-rearing” (0:34), the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table (0:50), discussion of “suspect class” (5:19), eight-second pause as Alexander ponders response to “Is homosexuality an immutable characteristic?”(5:55-6:03)
…the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table… This would be in front of a justice who signed on to a decision writing same sex couples into second class citizenship because they cannot make babies when they fuck. By that logic every heterosexual couple who use contraception, or whose children were adopted, or who have no children of their own, or cannot have children of their own, shouldn’t be legally married either. But of course, we make exceptions for our fellow heterosexuals…
This has been a month in which the courts have simply walked away from their responsibility to uphold justice and protect the rights of minorities. One court after another has just thrown up its hands and announced that the basic civil rights of homosexual Americans exist only at the pleasure of the heterosexual majority. Justice is a concept that only applies to heterosexuals. What homosexuals get is forbearance.
But we are human beings too. We fall in love. We take our mates. We make our households, grow families, build lives together. Just like real people. And the silence of the courts to the injustices inflicted upon us, upon our homes, is shattered by the sound of a picture frame being placed on a table, before a man whose job it was to protect that family too.
Just over three years after the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, and the middle east is a horrific mess. Say…weren’t the Iraqis supposed to welcome us with roses? Wasn’t democracy supposed to spread like wildfire across the middle east? We’ll be cleaning up after president codpiece’s excellent adventure for generations. But that’s not to say all the news from the middle east is grim. Sometimes it’s funny-grim.
Take the case of Danish imam Ahmed Akkari, of Lebanese birth, who single-handedly instigated months of raging anger in the Muslim world over twelve cartoons of the prophet Mohamed published in a Danish newspaper. The twelve cartoons not being offensive enough, the good imam traveled throughout the Muslim world showing people pictures of things he claimed were images of the prophet produced by the Danes, that actually weren’t. There was a picture of a man wearing a pig mask, that Akkari claimed was a Danish man mocking Mohamed. It turned out to have been a newspaper photo taken at a pig calling contest. Akkari claimed another photo showing a cartoon of Mohamed as a pedophile was also printed in Jyllands-Posten. It wasn’t. Lying through your teeth to incite mob violence is standard operating procedure for all religious zealots, regardless of the specifics of the faith. For his trouble, Akkari got the Danish embassy in Lebanon burned down.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark and Sweden were front-runners in the race to rescue foreigners fleeing the violence in Lebanon, nearly completing the evacuations of more than 10,000 citizens Friday while many other countries struggled to get their nationals out.
The Scandinavians credited new crisis response plans streamlined after bitter lessons learned during the tsunami disaster in 2004.
"It would be fair to say that what we’re able to do now is something we learned from the tsunami," said Lars Thuesen, coordinator of the Lebanon evacuations for the Danish Foreign Ministry.
By Friday morning, Sweden had already evacuated 6,400 citizens while Denmark had shipped out 5,000 nationals from Lebanon — more than any other countries. Both governments said only a few hundred of their citizens remained.
By contrast, the U.S. evacuation efforts were just entering high gear Friday…
…
The Danes got a test run in crisis management earlier this year when newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad triggered violent protests against Danish embassies in Muslim countries.
One of the Danish Muslims who spearheaded the rallies against the prophet drawings, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari, was among those evacuated from Beirut on Thursday.
"My impression is that the transportation has been safe and that no one has been suffering," Akkari told Denmark’s TV2 channel as he boarded a Greek ferry chartered by Denmark.
How nice that no one is suffering Akkari. No thanks to you and your kind. And while you’re riding your boat to safety, say thank you to the nice Danes, who despite your inciting mob violence all over the world and getting their embassy burned to the ground, were willing to give a gutter crawling murderous lout like you a ride out of harm’s way.
Say hello to the cartoonists whose lives you put in jeopardy when you get back to the safety of Denmark fella.
As it was last year, there are far, far too many cute longhaired computer geeks here for my own good. And as it was last year, the foreign guys are just a tad sexier. I think that’s because they just feel more comfortable inside their own bodies. One of those little ways that American sex-negative religiosity shows though, is in the way American guys dress below the waist.
Portland’s having a bit of a heat wave, and some of the guys here are in shorts or cutoffs, and you can reliably tell who are the American guys and who are the foreigners, by the length of their shorts. The American guys (generally) won’t wear shorts that are cut well above the knee. Can’t be showing a little thigh or people might think you’re gay.
I was watching some guys swimming in the hotel pool late yesterday, and swear their swim trunks reached down past their knees, halfway to their ankles. Except for one cute blond who was wearing a speedo style trunk. I ran into him at the hotel restaurant and he turned out to be from Spain. It’s like American guys are wearing below the waist burkas these days.
This is how you get to Catalina. They have regular jet-catamaran boats to and from the island, and they are comfortable and fast. Even on a fairly rough sea you don’t feel much. But the sea was very calm on the trip out and back.
At the entrance to Avalon harbor. At the very top of the hill is, I’m told, the Wrigley Mansion. That’s Wrigley as in the chewing gum. The family owns most of the island I’m told.
One of the streets of Avalon looking west. Most of the island is a wilderness preserve. Avalon is the largest town on the island and it ain’t big. Everything the people who live on the island need has to be trucked in by boat. But there is a nice tourest zone right at the beach with good food, a few clubs, shopping, and stuff to do. I’m told there is surfing on the western side of the island. Avalon is on the eastern side, and doesn’t get much wave action at all. The main activites around Avalon seem to be boating, fishing and scuba diving. My brother and my nephew did the scuba park by the casino while I was wandering around taking pictures.
Looking from the end of the Avalon Pier, back to Avalon, as the sun sets.
Boats docked in Avalon harbor. Some of those moorings, I’m told, sell for over a million dollars. Yes…that’s a million bucks just to park your boat..
Avalon harbor from the Casino. It’s not a gambling casino, it’s an old, grand movie theater.
This is the way most folks get around on the island. They don’t like having cars over there, although you’ll see some. Mostly people use these golf carts and small lawnmower engine powered light trucks (and I mean light). Instead of car garages, most houses that have them, have golf cart garages or parking spots.
Many of the nice houses here are built on quite steep hillsides.
Finally…the catamaran trip over and back takes you past the Queen Mary, which is now doing duty as a beautiful art deco hotel. If you like anything art deco, you Have to go see the Queen Mary sometime, it is just amazingly beautiful inside (and out…it’s a lovely ship from the days of the grand trans-Atlantic ocean liners). On the trip back one of those new cruse line ship things was parked nearby, so I snapped this shot of the two of them together. A contrast in Ocean going eras.
More postcards later. I’m on my way now to Portland Oregon for a software developer’s conference. I’ll post more photos of my trip when I get settled in up there.
Our friend Eric Rofes died two weeks ago, and his memorial was held here in San Francisco on Saturday. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 52, completely unexpectedly. He was a leading gay activist and scholar and his memorial was shattering- terribly, terribly sad, with a palpable sense of bereavement felt not only by his friends, but by an entire community. It was most heartbreaking to see and hear the agonized grief and bravery of his partner of 16 years, Crispin Hollins.
Eric and Crispin were of course at the forefront of the Gay Marriage movement. They had long held Californian domestic partnership, and also married when (briefly) we believed that San Francisco law permitted us to do so. They had made for one another all the necessary legal arrangements: powers of attorney, mutual wills, etc etc. All their bases were covered, so they thought. As soon as he heard the news, Crispin had flown straight out to Provincetown, where Eric died, to make funeral arrangements. A friend who accompanied them said that when Crispin began to detail the requirements for the cremation and commitment at the funeral home in Provincetown, the funeral director drew himself up and demanded to know what the basis of their relationship was. He told Crispin: "I don’t believe you will be making the funeral arrangements". It required the intervention of NGLTF lawyers and lawyer friends on both coasts to convince the funeral home that he was indeed authorized as a legal partner to make the arrangements. Crispin requested an autopsy, which was contested by the Medical Examiner on the same grounds, and the cremation was subsequently questioned as well (they called during the funeral to argue the case with Crispin).
This stands as a lesson to all of us. We are continually told that as Queers, we do not need to be allowed to marry because all legal avenues of partnership are open to us as domestic partners. For Christ sake- this happened in Massachussetts! They had the gall to question a 16 year old relationship, legally bound as far as two gay men can go. At a time when Crispin was utterly bereft and distraught they had the temerity to impugn his and Eric’s relationship, which was as closely legally covered as they could make it. (Eric’s family, by the way, have too much respect for Crispin to intervene- they would not, I think, dream of subverting his moral authority to decide the arrangements).
It makes me so fucking angry. Give us our bloody civil rights! Enough of this fucking heterosexual gobbledygook denying that our relationships are as worthy as a man and a woman’s- we are sick of arguing- just do it: not some paltry second-best, lesser citizen crumb from the hetrosexual table: give us what we deserve- marriage.
Right. Fucking. Now..
The republicans have there way and we won’t have Any legal recourse when people start fucking with us while we’re in grief. Hell…that’s the bet time to put the knife in and twist it and they know it. That’s why they are so vehemently against giving us the right to marry. It isn’t about protecting the sanctity of marriage or any of that crap. It isn’t about how marriage is a god ordained sacrament between and man and a woman. It isn’t about how children are better off being raised by heterosexual parents. It isn’t about any of that. It’s about freedom to twist the knife in the heart of a homosexual, because you just can’t stand homosexuals. It’s about the freedom to twist the knife. Nothing else.
I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth…just hanging out with my brother in Oceano California and de-stressing. Which is why I’m not posting a whole heck of a lot lately. It’s very easy to forget the world when you’re walking the sands and looking out at the beautiful California coastline around Pismo Beach. And the even more beautiful California surfer boys.
In the meantime I’ve managed to finish the next episode of A Coming Out Story. Yes, I brought my drafting supplies and a scanner along with me.
…in which our hero discovers that libidos aren’t easily dissuaded. Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or Here, to go to the main page.
This is the kind of thing I was taught about homosexuals nearly all through grade school. They taught me that homosexuals usually kill the people they have sex with. They taught me that homosexuals prey on young boys, but will sometimes lure an unsuspecting heterosexual man into the woods too. They told me that homosexuals almost never have sex with another homosexual because they know how dangerous it is. This was in the 1960s, in the school system of a well do do suburb of Washington D.C.
That film brings back memories all right. That is what I grew up knowing about homosexuals. I suppose a lot of people from my generation were taught those things. I suppose a lot of people from my generation still believe them. The only thing that saved me from a lifetime of fear of my sexual nature and self loathing was that it was so extreme I just knew it was not me, and the conclusion I drew throughout most of my school years, even while I was severely stressing out over a certain male classmate, was that I was not a homosexual. I just couldn’t be. I wasn’t anything like what they were telling me homosexuals were. Therefore I was not a homosexual.
They’re not teaching boys to be careful around strangers in that film. They’re teaching them to fear and loath homosexuals. They’re teaching the gay boys to fear and loath themselves. And they are taking from the gay boys, all the awe and wonder and joy of that first high school romance, and for many of us of my generation, the possibility of love altogether. What they took from us is incalculable, and unforgivable.
For the time being, the political cartoons are going on an irregular schedule. I know…I know…as if they haven’t been already. But I’m making it official now, so as to reduce expectations for the time being. I’ll still be producing gay rights themed political cartoons and posting them here…just not on a regular basis for a while, until I can get some more work done on A Coming Out Story…and until I can get some balance back in my perspective. I haven’t had any community newspapers running my cartoons since January, so this decision isn’t affecting anyone’s publication schedule that I know of.
I’m too angry these days for my own good. There was a time when doing the cartoon helped vent a lot of that. Now when I sit down to draw what’s on my mind I just get even more angry and that’s not good personally or artistically. I need to get some balance back in my perspective, perhaps do more artwork about life and love to balance out the artwork about the struggle against hate and prejudice. That’s another good reason to focus more on A Coming Out Story, and also do some work like I was doing back in the 80s, on the topic of first love.
I had been finishing up the political cartoon late Sunday evening, listening to Pat Marino’s Sunset Cruise. Hearing all those heartfelt love song dedications while I was working on these cartoons about our struggle for freedom and justice made me work all the harder at what I was doing, and for a time gave me some necessary perspective on it. As long as there is love in the world, there is hope. But now I just get too angry. I need to go take a long walk in a happier place and get some balance back. It’s no good being angry all the time.
I’m not abandoning the political cartoon. It will just be a catch as catch can kinda thing for a while. I’m going to be working most of the time for the rest of this summer on A Coming Out Story, and some other artwork down in my art room that is about love, not anger. But as I need to vent a little from time to time, I’ll post something in the political cartoon page. When I have something new up there I’ll notify all of you here.
* One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. (Michael Sinz)
* Once you get started, you’ll only stop because you’re exhausted.
* It takes another experienced person to really appreciate what you’re doing.
* Conversely, there’s some odd people who pride themselves on their lack of experience.
* You can do it for money or for fun.
* If you spend more time doing it than watching TV, people think you’re some kind of freak.
* It’s not really an appropriate topic for dinner conversation.
* There’s not enough taught about it in public school.
* It doesn’t make any sense at all if you try to explain it in strictly clinical terms.
* Some people are just naturally good.
* But some people will never realize how bad they are, and you’re wasting your time trying to tell them.
* There are a few weirdos with bizarre practices nobody really is comfortable with.
* One little thing going wrong can ruin everything.
* It’s a great way to spend a lunch break.
* Everyone acts like they’re the first person to come up with a new technique.
* Everyone who’s done it pokes fun at those who haven’t.
* Beginners do a lot of clumsy fumbling about.
* You’ll miss it if it’s been a while.
* There’s always someone willing to write about the only right way to do things.
* It doesn’t go so well when you’re drunk, but you’re more likely to do it.
* Sometimes it’s fun to use expensive toys.
* Other people just get in the way.
I’m back on the road again, heading out to California for a visit with my brother, and then up to Portland for the OSCON open source software developer’s conference. I’m in Memphis at the moment, hoping to touch bases with Morgan Jon Fox, who is working on a documentary of the Love In Action protests. Then it’s a straight shot off to California, and soaking up some California mellow while watching the cute surfer guys by the beach. I don’t see myself spending much time in the four corner’s area this trip, although I’ll probably stop at a few of my regular trading posts along the way.
The trip home should be interesting. I’ll be driving mostly across the northern half of the country, which I haven’t seen much of.
I’ll post of photos along the way. Right now I’m just trying to get as far west as I can.
Oh…and cartoons. I’ve brought some drawing boards and supplies with me, and my small Epson scanner, so I can keep working on A Coming Out Story. I have the next episode half penciled. The political cartoons however, are probably going to go on a much more catch-as-catch-can schedule, so I can concentrate on A Coming Out Story. More on that in another post.
I have to say that this "news analysis" in the NYT of the court decisions in New York and Georgia is one of the dumbest pieces of journalism I have read in a very long time. "For Gay Rights Movement, A Key Setback"? In some ways, I think the New York Court of Appeals decision will help, rather than hurt, the cause of marriage equality in the long run. Why? Because it will force the issue into legislatures, where it is best tackled, and where we will eventually win, and in one case, California, have already won.
If Sullivan thinks that this country could have overcome race segregation at the polls in the 1950s and 60s, had the Warren court reaffirmed the constitutionality of race segregation instead of striking it down, he’s smoking crack. Some states Still have those laws on the books, and voters have doggedly refused to remove them, even though they are no longer enforceable…
Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds
School Segregation Remains a State Law as Amendment Is Defeated
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — On that long-ago day of Alabama’s great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that his state’s constitution forbade black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
He was correct.
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close — a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million — that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment’s saga has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.
The outcome resonates achingly here in this college town, where the silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and lift their arms when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church — a short drive from Wallace’s schoolhouse door — don’t have to strain to remember riding buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to the all-black school.
"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a retired school administrator. "They’re holding on to things that are long since past. It’s almost like a religion."
If the supreme court suddenly reversed itself on race segregation, you would, never doubt it, see some states rushing to put the Whites Only signs back up. Perhaps not a majority of American states would do that. And yes, those that did would suffer economic consequences, as people and corporations began to boycott them. But you have to have seen racism in America, seen how endemic it is, seen how even poor white people will reliably vote against their economic interests to maintain their status over blacks, to appreciate its intractable power. I’ve witnessed it first hand. Without the courts again and again overruling the popular will of the voters, without a doubt we would still have legal race segregation in America today.
The roll of the courts is to protect the rights of the individual against the power of the other branches of government. The other branches of government speak for the people. The courts speak for the constitution. They abdicate that responsibility, and all we are left with is mob rule, and that is what Sullivan is arguing for here. The argument that Sullivan is making can also be made for letting the states decide on sodomy laws, which puts us right back where we were before Lawrence, criminals literally in some states, and second class citizens everywhere else. Sodomy laws were used to justify discrimination against gay Americans in everything from custody battles to employment to equal housing laws. Those laws reached across the borders of their states, and into the lives of gay Americans no matter where we lived. These state laws and amendments banning same sex marriage will do the same. Note how, even though same sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, out of state gay couples cannot marry there if their home states do not allow it. This is the situation mixed race couples faced, before Loving v. Virginia, another court decision that overruled the clear will of the majority of Americans. The Lovings’ case came to the courts after the couple married where it was legal, and were arrested for doing so when they returned to Virginia. The day is coming, when a same sex couple will find themselves under arrest, for exactly the same crime, and Sullivan is arguing that this is a good thing, and the courts should stay out of it.
Perhaps eventually gay citizens could find themselves one day in an America that was, for them, nearly half free and half not. But we will never be completely free as Americans, until we are as a class equal to our heterosexual neighbors, in every state. That will only happen, when the courts decide to do their fucking jobs, and defend the promise of liberty and justice for all in our constitution, against the tyranny of the mob.
In another post, Sullivan says we just need to "chill". But as William Lloyd Garrison once said, tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm.
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