During the course of his speech, in which Sorba falsely claimed among other things that Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity was not a "correct study" and had not been cited by other researchers, including Paul Vasey and Volker Sommer (Biological Exuberance was cited by Vasey and Sommer thirteen times), a group of gay folk got up and began chanting and banging pans to drown him out. He eventually had to leave the stage.
Kyle Bristow, the chairman of the MSU chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, said, "Sexual deviancy poses as a dire threat to our civilization; is an affront to God; corrupts culture with decadence; and is an attack on the institution of the family, which is the crux of our society."
They say the glbt progressives will not allow free discussion of homosexuality, especially by Christians. They compare glbt techniques of silencing Christians to Hitler in the 1930’s. I think the Freepers go overboard. But there is no doubt that the Smith students and the Toledo University President are stifling Christian oppositional speech against homosexuality.
Just like we would stifle speech advocating slavery, anti-Semitism, or racism. When Andy Humm, the host of Gay USA on Free Speech TV, found himself on a TV Talk Show opposite a reparative therapy counselor, he refused to speak with the counselor. Instead he spent the entire time speaking with the host of the show. He wanted to know how the host dared invite such an irresponsible person as the reparative therapist to the TV show. Andy went on and on about how the therapist and others like him hurt so very many people … but he never engaged the therapist … he ignored him completely.
I think Andy’s tactic was brilliant. I have to admit, I think those bloggers who criticized the Smith women were wrong. The Smith lesbian were right on the money. We do NOT need to invite crazy people to our campuses, churches, or civic centers. The whole western world already knows that homosexuality is completely normal. The jury is back, the verdict is in, the case is over. Case closed. Debate over.
The wingnuts can argue among themselves. They can hold the debate right along side an explanation of the world being only 6,000 years old and the earth being flat. Have at it.
Increasingly, one finds people on both sides who object not merely to their opponents’ position but even to engaging that position. Why debate the obvious, they ask. Surely anyone who holds THAT position must be too stubborn, brainwashed or dumb to reason with.
The upshot is that supporters and opponents of gay rights are talking to each other less and less. This fact distresses me.
It distresses me for several reasons. First, it lulls gay-rights advocates into a complacency where we mistake others’ silence for acquiescence. Then we are shocked—shocked!—when, for example, an Oklahoma state representative says that gays pose a greater threat than terrorism—and her constituents rally around her. Think Sally Kern will have a hard time getting re-elected? Think again.
It distresses me, too, because dialogue works. Not always, and not easily, but it makes a difference. Indeed, ironically enough, healthy dialogue about our issues helped move many people from the “supportive – but – open – to – discussion” camp to the “so – supportive – I – can’t – believe – we’re – discussing – this” camp.
Corvino is right of course in the basic idea: dialogue works. But was Sorba engaging in dialogue?
The born gay hoax was invented in 1985 by pro-sodomy activists in effort to overturn anti-sodomy laws by way of minority status.
If that amounts to dialogue, then I suppose so is a burning cross.
Yes…dialogue works. Absolutely. When it’s dialogue. But dialogue has one inescapable prerequisite: good faith. I have three conditions for dialogue with anyone on the other side of the gay rights issue. I think they are reasonable ones.
Stop lying.
Stop lying.
Stop lying.
When you have a talk with someone who angrily waves Paul Cameron’s junk science in your face, and you point out to them how Cameron’s facts cannot be trusted, and they concede the point and stop waving Cameron in your face, but then go on to angrily wave something else just as bogus in your face…yes, actually, you Are having a dialogue. There is a willingness there to at least listen, even if it is a very slight one. They really are engaging you…albeit between bouts of finger pointing at the perverted gay lifestyle. But if that same person later goes on to wave Cameron in Someone Else’s face as though they’d never conceded the point at all when they were talking with you, there was no dialogue. You need to see that for what it is. There was no dialogue. You may have thought there was, but there was no dialogue. And there is no dialogue possible with that person because they are not and never were engaging you in good faith. What was going on there is if Cameron doesn’t work on you, he can still work on someone else. What was going on there is if they can’t make you hate yourself at least they can try to make other people hate you, and if enough people hate you then no matter how proud you are, you will still be afraid.
That’s what’s going on behind the anti-gay mask of dialogue. Not having an open and frank discussion of the issue, but hate mongering. And you need to know the difference because when you sit down with hate mongers, people who have a history of falsifying the evidence, hiding the truth, ignoring the facts, you are elevating them by virtue of your own willingness to be persuaded. You are granting them a status they have not earned, do not deserve, and in any case do not want apart from its usefulness as a tool in their Kulturkampf . They are not interested in being persuaded. They are not interested in listening to you. That measuring gaze in their eyes as you tell them your story isn’t listening. It’s calculating. They are interested in only one thing: demonizing homosexuals. The world must hate us, as much as they hate us. That is all that matters to them. And if they can get you to help them demonize you, so much the better.
This isn’t rocket science. Starting in 2003, various anti-gay sources started peddling, as an argument against same sex marriage, a study by Dutch researchers led by Dr. Maria Xiradou which they claimed proved that not only were gay relationships very short lived, none that lasted longer then a few years were monogamous. And indeed, none of the gay male relationships in that study were long lived, or monogamous. But as Jim Burroway later found out by…well…actually reading the study…that would have been hardly surprising as it was intended to show how HIV infection was spreading through the young gay male population of Amsterdam and the researchers excluded older couples and monogamous couples from the study.
When you see people doing that kind of thing it is telling you all you need to know about the possibility of dialogue with them. You cannot sit down and have a dialogue with someone where you are trying your level best to understand their point of view and tell your own side of the story as simply and as honestly as you can and they are looking you right in the eye and lying through their teeth. That is not a dialogue, and you are being used. It is not that there is no point in sitting down with hate mongers. It’s that sitting down with hate mongers makes them seem like something they are not, and that allows them to keep right on spreading their poison into the dialogue the rest of the human family needs to have.
Earlier this year the Vermont legislature appointed an 11-member Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection to explore the idea of gay marriage and hear how Vermonters feel about it. They conducted hearings all over the state, and something amazing happened. The conversation was civil. There was no cat-calling, no screaming and shouting, no personal attacks. Why? Because the anti-gay opposition boycotted the hearings. They weren’t silenced. They weren’t shouted down. They weren’t censored. They simply chose not to participate, claiming that the hearings were stacked against them. But with the hate mongers out of it, the people were able to have what they weren’t supposed to have, what the hate mongers didn’t want them to have. Dialogue. See how that works?
Religion doesn’t matter. Party doesn’t matter. Education and culture do not matter. Only one thing matters when it comes to dialogue and that is good faith. Unless that one thing is present, there is no dialogue. At best there is only flag waving. At worst, all you are doing is helping hate mongers to destroy the possibility of dialogue. Because, yes, dialogue works. Dialogue brings people together. Dialogue kills hate. And that is why the hate mongers want to be wherever there is a chance of dialogue occurring.
In this country even hate has a right to speak it’s mind. And that’s well and good. Better hate comes out into the open where it can be seen for what it is. But that doesn’t mean we need to engage hate as though it is something it is not. I am perfectly willing to have a dialogue. I am all about dialogue. But if you want to wave your hate flag you will have to do it all by yourself because I was not born into this world just to help the likes of you make people hate me. Here are my conditions for having a dialogue about homosexuality:
I had to take a closer look. The column from Craig Smith begins promisingly…
Before you know it November will be upon us, and we will be required to choose a new president. But as in all elections, we will also vote on certain proposals and ballot initiatives. So I suspect it is only a matter of time before we hear the voices of the gay and lesbian community demanding the right to government-sanctioned "marriage," and this year I am all for it!
Homosexuals should enjoy the same rights and privileges married couples have experienced since the beginning of time: To be able to love and cherish, to have and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, ’till death do they part.
But this is a Wing Nut Daily column of course, so actually Smith is being sarcastic here. His real point is…
Thus I suspect if married gay couples honored their vows, within two to three generations we would not have any more gay babies being born. Given most gay people say they didn’t choose to be gay but were born gay, it would eliminate innocent people being born into a world that homosexuals deem so hostile toward them. It would settle once and for all the argument that homosexuality is genetic and not a choice. Nature, not nurture. If there is no procreation, there is no passing of genes and, thus, the species does not survive.
Darwin would have been right!
…
Let’s get serious. Homosexuality is a choice. And the choices people make are their business. What goes on in your bedroom is your choice. But when a group or person attempts to force society into condoning their choice or demands that their choice be taught to future generations as a "normal" lifestyle, I have a problem.
If you want to take the position that homosexuality is not a choice, then let’s experiment with my idea. We will know rather quickly who is right and who is wrong for nature itself proves the whole genetic argument invalid.
We’re having a Darwin moment here I see…
From: Bruce Garrett
To: Craig Smith
Subject: Darwin and Homosexuality
You write, "If you want to take the position that homosexuality is not a choice, then let’s experiment with my idea. We will know rather quickly who is right and who is wrong for nature itself proves the whole genetic argument invalid".
You need to take a little better interest then this in how the natural world really works. Perhaps this AP article from 1999 will help you out a tad…
Why Do Peacocks Stick Together in Avian `Singles Bar’?
Groups of peacocks strut their stuff in hopes of attracting the finest peahens, but only a few lucky guys will find a willing mate in the wild kingdom’s equivalent of a singles bar.
Scientists have long wondered why the unsuccessful peacocks stick around the same group year after year when the hens tend to select the same few males each breeding season.
Research published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests a sound evolutionary reason: Many of the bird buddies within individual groups are brothers. By working together, the brothers are increasing the odds that their genes will be passed to another generation.
"By helping your relatives to attract mates, your genes are spread," said Marion Petrie, a researcher at Britain’s University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The research sheds light on why some peacocks seem unconcerned with sex and are content to be hangers-on in the animal singles scene: Larger groups of peacocks attract more females, so some of the peacocks are there just to make the group bigger.
"The benefits of helping closely related dominants to attract more females may outweigh the subordinate males’ own meager mating opportunities," said Cornell University researcher Paul Sherman in an accompanying Nature commentary.
Petrie and her colleagues studied about 200 free-ranging peafowl in Whipsnade Park north of London. Using DNA fingerprinting, the researchers found birds inside the strutting groups are more likely to be related to each other than those outside the group.
But how do the related birds find each other? That’s unclear, but it is not because the peacock brothers grew up together.
In fact, the researchers found that when peacock brothers were separated before hatching, and then were released into Whipsnade Park when they were yearlings, the brothers still tended to group together.
The mechanism by which the birds found their relatives is unclear. It could be by odor, feather patterns or the sounds the birds make.
"There is some way in which kin can be associated, which doesn’t require learning or environmental clues," Petrie said. "They didn’t know their fathers or mothers. They could not possibly learn who their brothers were. They had no reference points to where they were born, but they still found each other."
If you don’t pass on your genes, but you help your siblings pass on theirs, your family genes get passed on, and that’s good enough as far as natural selection is concerned. If you help make your family, or your tribe look desirable, then the genes in that pool, which likely include a good many of yours too, get to go a few more rounds. If a trait is recessive, not everyone in the group needs to express it, for it to get passed along too, with all the others. If this is not true, then the mating rituals of Peacocks would not look the way they do.
Here’s a little something else to ponder when considering Darwin and homosexuality: the humble prostate gland. When you massage it, which is what happens during a certain kind of male to male sex, you can bring a human male to a right dandy orgasm. I doubt that massaging any other gland in the human body will produce anything other then pain, let alone sexual pleasure, but that one particular gland, in that one particular part of the male anatomy is different that way. You need to pay attention to that, because militant homosexuality didn’t do that, godless secularism didn’t do that, the Warren court didn’t do that, millions of years of adaptive evolution gave that to every human male who ever walked this earth, whether they had any use for it or not. And let’s be honest here, most don’t. The vast majority of human males have utterly no use for that.
Yet there it is.
So…actually, you’re probably sitting on all the proof you need for the genetic argument at this very moment.
—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.
I was too polite to tell him that as long as he’s got his head up his ass he should look around.
The Difference Between Mainstream American Journalism And European
Two news stories today about the commonplace schemer whose fantasies were used by the Bush administration to gin up support for president Nice Job Brownie’s splendid little war.
First, from the network that white washed the murder of Matthew Shepard, ABC News:
Curveball’s false tales became the centerpiece of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech before the United Nations in February 2003, even though he was considered an "unstable, immature and unreliable" source by some senior officials in the CIA. The CIA has since issued an official "burn notice" formally retracting more than 100 intelligence reports based on his information.
Notice, they’re not even doing their own reporting there on the source of the claim that Saddam had those mobile biological weapons labs.
Now…from the people who actually did do some reporting…Der Spiegel:
Above all, however, the spymasters failed to do what is indispensable in the intelligence business: They did not sufficiently examine “Curveball’s” personal record. Perhaps they could have learned early on that, for a time, Rafed tried to make a go of manufacturing eye shadow. Later he stole 1.5 million dinar-worth of gear from the partially state-owned film and television company Babel TV, where he was responsible for equipment maintenance. A warrant for his arrest had been issued as a result — the real reason why he bolted from Iraq in 1998.
The BND would not even have had to go to Iraq to learn about Rafed’s real character — he remained true to form in Germany as well. Despite an explicit ban by BND authorities, Rafed worked for a time in a Chinese restaurant, and even behind the counter at a Burger King restaurant. He quickly attracted attention to himself. Several Iraqis described him to SPIEGEL as a "crackpot" and "con man."
Notice any difference? Go read both of those and see if the difference doesn’t just leap out at you and laugh in your face. The American News Network is tactfully refraining from holding its own government accountable for its behavior in that affair. If anything, ABC News is suggesting that was all the fault of those wily Germans. The German news magazine on the other hand, is almost blistering in holding its own government to account.
All through this goddamned war I’ve had to read European news sources to learn what’s going on over there. For an American with just a shred of appreciation that there is, in fact, a world beyond our shores, that’s not necessarily surprising. I’ve never once set foot outside of the continental United States, but many hours of my childhood were spent sitting raptly in front of a shortwave radio, listening to the BBC or Radio Netherlands and marveling at how much there was to know about the rest of the world that I simply didn’t get from the home grown broadcasts. That a more complete picture of foreign events would come from foreign news sources is unsurprising. What’s really pissing me off now is that I get a more complete picture of what my own government is up to from foreign news sources.
Heroes Of The Culture War…(collect the entire series!)
They way the religious right stands up to our modern decadent secular morally relativistic culture to uphold the values of truth and decency is just…just…breathtaking. Sorta like the way catching a whiff of an open sewer is breathtaking…
I have a whole freak’n stable full of Culture War Heroes for you today. First, from Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters comes the usual suspects Peter LaBarbera and Matt Barber, and Laurie Higgins who doesn’t want the the little snowflakes at Deerfield High School in Michigan to read the play Angels In America. Laurie, bless her heart, is responding to Superintendent of Schools, George Fornero’s fact sheet about the controversy anti-gay hatemongers have been stirring up in his schools over the play. Specifically, accusations that the play is obscene, that it is homosexual pornography, that children as young as 14 years of age would be reading it, that parents were never informed that their kids would be reading it, and that students are being required to read it against their parent’s wishes. Point by point, Fornero dispatches each of these. Higgens, responds thusly:
Students studying the play are second semester seniors in Advanced Placement English.(Translation: “We save the most offensive tripe for the most intelligent.”)
In other words, why no actually, only the oldest students in the school would be reading the play…not the 14 year olds. You can see how the rest of this is going to go can’t you…
This play has been taught to similar classes in other high schools.(Translation: “Everyone else is doing it, and we’re lemmings and conformists who cannot think for ourselves.”)
The College Board oversees all Advanced Placement testing; the class syllabus, including all readings was approved through the Board’s audit process.(Translation: “Of all the readings offered through the College Board, we’re including the most offensive.”)
Parents received information about Angels in America that specifically addressed the mature content and potential for offense. (Translation: “We’re using the inaccurate euphemism ‘mature’ for the more accurate term “obscene.”
…and so on and so on. But pay attention, really pay attention, to all the ducking she’s doing there. Fornero directly contradicts one party line after another there and Higgens responds not with facts to counter any of that, but venom. Facts don’t matter, when you’re on a mission from God…
Parents were asked to make an informed decision about the text their child would read. Two viable choices were presented: Angels in America and Albert Camus’ The Plague. They were also given the option of having their students read both texts. Letter to parents requested that they provide permission for their student to read the selected text(s). (Reality: Many parents have neither the time nor interest in reading the entirety of Angels in America; This teacher is much beloved by students, and teens are rebellious, therefore, even parents who don’t want their children to read Angels may feel the force of social pressure, compelling them to allow their children to read the provocative, controversial text.
In other words…why yes, as a matter of fact, parents were notified.
According to Lake County State’s Attorney Mike Waller, the reading and discussion of the material is not a violation of the obscenity laws, or any other laws, of the State of Illinois.(Reality: The fact that it may not technically violate obscenity laws does not mean it is not obscene.
The play is not obscene. It is not homosexual pornography. It is not required reading. Only the most gifted second semester seniors would be reading it. And parents were notified. But never mind…we’ll just keep saying that the school required 14 year old students to read obscene homosexual pornography without parental notification.
Vis:
Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, recently assigned the pornographic book “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes” to students as young as 14 as a required reading. –Mike Adams, Town Hall.
And…by the way…LaBarbra’s anti-gay web site is titled, Americans For Truth.
Atrios called them zombie lies, in that no matter how many times you shoot at them they just keep going and going. Thing is, your gay and lesbian neighbors have been seeing this behavior for a lot longer then when the Bush administration came to town. In fact, I don’t think anyone could possibly have been less surprised by the behavior of the republicans since they took over the government then the gay community. It’s not that facts don’t matter to them, it’s that Eric Hoffer was right when he said that propaganda doesn’t fool people, so much as allow them to fool themselves.
And speaking of TRUTH…
Recall that after Oklahoma representative Sally Kern’s anti-gay bile fest was made public, she immediately began claiming that she was getting death threats in her email…
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is looking into death threats against a state lawmaker who told a political group that the gay agenda poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than terrorism and "is just destroying this nation," an OSBI spokeswoman said Tuesday.
…
OSBI agents met with Kern, of Oklahoma City, at the state Capitol Monday afternoon after she received thousands of e-mails and telephone calls from people reacting to her comments to a group of Republicans about gays and their lifestyle.
"I’m not gay-bashing. But according to God’s word that is not the right kind of lifestyle," Kern said in the recorded comments.
"Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than a few decades," she said. "It is not a lifestyle that is good for this nation."
Kern said a few of the e-mails she received supported her comments but that most condemned them and some contained death threats and obscenities.
"I hear what you said and you should be killed…," said one e-mail.
Well of course when a government official starts receiving death threats it’s a matter for the police. But the problem with that is then the damn police will be wanting to see…you know…the Evidence…
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is sorting through nearly 7,000 e-mails that were sent to a state lawmaker after she said homosexuality is a bigger threat to the United States than terrorism.
Comments by Rep. Sally Kern, recorded several weeks ago but placed on the Internet site YouTube only late last week, have caused a national outcry, resulting in more than 500,000 hits on the Web site.
A fellow lawmaker contacted the OSBI on Monday and suggested that agents go through the e-mails, some of which might be threatening, OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown said.
Kern said Monday that she had not received death threats. On Tuesday, she said, "It’s changed," but she did not elaborate.
Brown said Tuesday, "There are a lot of e-mails to the representative that say, ‘You ought to die,’ rather than, ‘I am going to kill you.’
"I wouldn’t characterize them as death threats," she said.
No society that embraced homosexuality ever lasted longer then a couple of decades. Homosexuality is a bigger threat to America then terrorism. Homosexuals are going after two year olds in our schools. Homosexuality is a cancer on our nation that will destroy it. I’m getting emailed death threats. No…wait…don’t look at my goddamned inbox!!! …hey…I didn’t really mean death threats as such…
And via Box Turtle Bulletin…we find that Focus On The Family is Still pushing the death threats story, and just never you mind that there weren’t any…
Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern reportedly has received up to 7,000 e-mails and hundreds of phone calls — including death threats — since speaking out about homosexuality at a Republican event in January.
"According to God’s word, that is not the right kind of lifestyle," she told the group.
…But lying through your teeth is when it’s for God.
Truth. Morality. Values. The Bible. Jesus. Aren’t we so blessed to have people such as these fighting for them…
We’ve Decided, After Much Prayer, To Stop Calling Them Stripes…
Behold, Exodus International’s ministry to persons afflicted with Same Sex Attractions…
…or Was at least, if you take their word for it. You know you can take them at their word don’t you…?
In August, 2007 after a lot of prayer, deliberation and listening to friends and critics alike — but mostly the Lord — we decided to back out of policy issues and our Director of Government Affairs took a position with another organization.
Jim Burroway has more Here. Peterson Toscano notes the shift in Exodus policy in his blog post Lovely Shifts And Dramatic Changes. Allow me to be the grouch here. Take another look at that anti-hate crime laws poster. It’s a damn lie. And they knew it was a damn lie while they were creating it. And in that, it is eminently typical of the quality of Exodus International’s relationship to honesty with regard to…well…goddamn near everything. Homosexuals… homosexuality… Teh Gay Lifestyle… ex-gay therapy… They have lied in the past. Brazenly. Ingeniously. Unashamedly. Unhesitatingly. But we can trust them now, can’t we?
Um….no. Let’s look at what’s being said here. Really look…
It may sound nuanced but we weren’t really involved in “politics.” We never worked for the direct election or defeat of a candidate.
No Alan…that doesn’t sound ‘nuanced’. It sounds duplicitous. Never mind that lobbying politicians and voters on policy issues is politics too, observe the telltale adjective…the Direct election or defeat of a candidate? I’m laughing in your face Alan. Exodus has always been a republican tool in election campaigns. Why have so many of Exodus’ "Change Is Possible" billboard campaigns been waged in swing states, with relatively small gay populations? You know goddamned well why. The republican candidate bashes the democrat over their stand on gay rights issues. You folks come along and tell the voters that homosexuals don’t have to be homosexual if they don’t want to anyway, thereby allowing the republican gay basher to blame gays for their own persecution, and the voters to tell themselves that by voting against gay rights they’re not hurting anyone, because the gays can always stop being gay when they’ve had enough.
The primary function of Exodus has always been to make political gay bashing palatable to voters. I mean…look…you don’t actually Change very many homosexuals do you? If I ran a corporation whose main product failed miserably so often I’d have gone out of business long ago. But Change isn’t your product. Animus toward homosexuals is your product. And by that measure, you’re still worth the money the religious right spends on you, if not quite as much as before.
Ever since John Smid had that brilliant idea of dragging gay teenagers into ex-gay therapy against their will, you folks have had to endure a lot more critical scrutiny then before, and one fall out of that is that people are starting to notice all the political activism you’re doing tends to contradict your ersatz message of love. You’re more effective for the anti-gay right when people really believe that all you’re trying to do is help all those poor victims of Same Sex Attraction Disorder who hate themselves because…well…because of all the goddamned lies your kind likes to spread about them. Hence, the costume change. And notice how it went from "We are not a political organization" to "We are not a political organization Anymore." Nice. But…yes…you are…
One area that we found to be incredibly beneficial was simply sharing our stories with lawmakers. If and when there are opportunities to do that we will.
The word for that is Lobbying Alan.
I know…I know…it’s So Hard to remember what words really mean after spending so many years as a mindless cog a lie factory…isn’t it. But they Do mean things, existence exists, reality is real, and when all is said and done that’s the enemy you’ve been fighting all your life right there, not teh gay, not teh liberal, not teh secular.
The Great Orange Satan:
The more she’s attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she’ll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they’ve gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe’s mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don’t know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can — by voting for her.I don’t know if reaction to the media treatment of Clinton had anything to do with voter choices yesterday, but I certainly know people in real life who a) don’t want Clinton to win and b) are tempted to vote for her every time they’re exposed to the way she’s treated by the deeply broken monsters in our mainstream media.
Given my druthers I would rather not see Clinton as the democratic nominee. She’s weak on gay rights issues, weak on the Iraq war, weak on corporate accountability. I’m afraid she would govern by triangulation much like her husband did, to the bitter regret of a lot of people who voted for him. But the vitriolic hate being directed at her and her husband from certain quarters (Hi Andrew!) recalls me back to the whole goddamned impeachment fiasco and if there is one thing the republicans and their news media enablers should be avoiding more then Bush’s record this coming election, it’s reminding people of all that.
Nobody cares how much you hate the Clintons Andrew, except the KulturKrieger and…geeze grow a brain willya…they hate you too. Remember what Truman Capote said about homosexual gentlemen.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation has once again named two San Antonio companies among the country’s best places to work for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers.
Media company Clear Channel Communications Inc. (NYSE: CCU) and telecommunication company AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) earned spots on the 2008 "Best Places to Work for GLBT Equality."
The designation is given to those companies that earn perfect scores on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index. It is a measurement, the organization says, that ensures that 10 million employees have protections on the job on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Yay! Let’s hear it for Gay Friendly Clear Channel!
Clear Channel, rejecting Howard Stern’s claims that he was canned for slamming President Bush, says its radio network does not have a political agenda.
But new political contribution data tell a different story about Clear Channel (CCU) executives. They have given $42,200 to Bush, vs. $1,750 to likely Democratic nominee John Kerry in the 2004 race.
What’s more, the executives and Clear Channel’s political action committee gave 77% of their $334,501 in federal contributions to Republicans. That’s a bigger share than any other entertainment company, says the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Mitt Romney founded Bain & Co. in 1984, and today its spinoff — Bain Capital — is the third largest private equity firm in the country. Today they boughtClearChannel, a company that owns over 1100 radio stations and 30 TV stations.
This is why media consolidation issues are so important. One rich guy who wants to be president can buy a media empire overnight. Now of course, Romney will argue that he didn’t buy Clear Channel, his private equity company Bain Capital did. And of course, there is no conflict of interest because Romney doesn’t tell Bain Capital what to do as he’s no longer officially with the company.
Still, seeing as how Clear Channel hosts Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity and controls over 1,000 TV and radio stations nationwide, does anyone here really think Romney won’t use this newfound pedestal to promote his candidacy, however subtly?
Sounds kind of like Romney’s relationship to Bain is like Dick Cheney’s to Halliburton. There certainly was never any problem there.
Okay…let me get this straight… The Human Rights Campaign Fund has given its award for "Best Places To Work For GLBT Equality" to a company whose executives works tirelessly to promote the party that works tirelessly to deny GLBT people equality in the workplace. A company that is owned in part now by a leading republican candidate for president, who has declared his opposition to just about any and all gay rights initiatives, Including the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act…
Lopez: And what about the 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Republicans where you indicated you would support the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and seemed open to changing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military? Are those your positions today?
Gov. Romney: No. I don’t see the need for new or special legislation. My experience over the past several years as governor has convinced me that ENDA would be an overly broad law that would open a litigation floodgate and unfairly penalize employers at the hands of activist judges.
This is the company HRC is giving an award to for "Best Places To Work For GLBT Equality"…and giving them a perfect score no less…???
Look…I appreciate that they want to be seen as non-partisan. But when you have two parties, one of which will at least consider supporting gay equality, and the other adamantly opposed to it, there isn’t much you can do…except sell out your membership for the sake of appearances…and invitations to cocktail parties in Georgetown and Chevy Chase.
Most of the Western press had evacuated, but a small contingent remained to report on the crumbling Iraqi regime. In the New York offices of NBC News, one of my video stories was being screened. If it made it through the screening, it would be available for broadcast later that evening. Producer Geoff Stephens and I had done a phone interview with a reporter in Baghdad who was experiencing the bombing firsthand. We also had a series of still photos of life in the city. The only communication with Baghdad in those early days was by satellite phone. Still pictures were sent back over the few operating data links.
Our story arranged pictures of people coping with the bombing into a slide show, accompanied by the voice of Melinda Liu, a Newsweek reporter describing, over the phone, the harrowing experience of remaining in Baghdad. The outcome of the invasion was still in doubt. There was fear in the reporter’s voice and on the faces of the people in the pictures. The four-minute piece was meant to be the kind of package that would run at the end of an hour of war coverage. Such montages were often used as "enders," to break up the segments of anchors talking live to field reporters at the White House or the Pentagon, or retired generals who were paid to stand on in-studio maps and provide analysis of what was happening. It was also understood that without commercials there would need to be taped pieces on standby in case an anchor needed to use the bathroom. Four minutes was just about right.
At the conclusion of the screening, there were a few suggestions for tightening here and clarification there. Finally, an NBC/GE executive responsible for "standards" shook his head and wondered about the tone in the reporter’s voice. "Doesn’t it seem like she has a point of view here?" he asked.
There was silence in the screening room. It made me want to twitch, until I spoke up. I was on to something but uncertain I wasn’t about to be handed my own head. "Point of view? What exactly do you mean by point of view?" I asked. "That war is bad? Is that the point of view that you are detecting here?"
The story never aired. Maybe it was overtaken by breaking news, or maybe some pundit-general went long, or maybe an anchor was able to control his or her bladder. On the other hand, perhaps it was never aired because it contradicted the story NBC was telling. At NBC that night, war was, in fact, not bad. My remark actually seemed to have made the point for the "standards" person. Empathy for the civilians did not fit into the narrative of shock and awe.
The facts didn’t fit the narrative…so the facts were jettisoned. This is how the corporate news media operates. I’ve asked this before…let me ask it again: what is more degenerate…a the puppet news media of a totalitarian state, or a news media in a democracy that sells out?
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(Time Magazine Edition)
One of the things people were wondering about when Time Magazine hack and republican useful idiot Joe Klein published his column accusing congressional democrats of coddling foreign terrorists, was why the hell didn’t the democrats respond?
Well…as it turns out…they did. Time Magazine simply refused to publish their rebuttals…
The disgraceful behavior of Time Magazine in the Joe Klein scandal has been well-documented. But new facts have emerged that reveal that Time‘s behavior was far worse than previously thought.
First, Sen. Russ Feingold submitted a letter to Time protesting the false statements in Klein’s article. But Time refused to publish it. Sen. Feingold’s spokesman said that the letter "was submitted to TIME very shortly after Klein’s column ran but the letters department was about as responsive as the column was accurate."
Just to reveal how corrupt that behavior is, The Chicago Tribune — which previously published the factually false excerpts of Klein’s column and then clearly retracted them — yesterday published Feingold’s letter. As Feingold details — but had to go to the Chicago Tribune‘s Letter section to do it — "Klein calls the Democrats’ position on reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ‘well beyond stupid’ but without getting his facts straight." Feingold also said that "Klein is also flat out wrong" in his false claims that there was some "bipartisan agreement" on a bill to vest "new surveillance powers" that House Democrats ignored.
Second, Rep. Rush Holt — before he published his response in The Huffington Post detailing Klein’s false claims — asked that he be given the opportunity to respond to Klein’s false column directly on Time‘s Swampland, where Klein was in the process of making all sorts of statements compounding his errors. But Time also denied Rep. Holt the opportunity to bring his response to the attention of Time‘s readers.
According to Zach Goldberg, Rep. Holt’s spokesman: "Rep. Holt had an email exchange with Mr. Klein about FISA and his column. During the exchange, Rep. Holt made a request to respond with a Swampland post to clarify what is really in the RESTORE Act. Mr. Klein noted he already issued a public apology and did not accept the request."
Let’s just ponder for a second how lowly Time‘s behavior here is. It refused the requests of two sitting members of Congress, both of whom are members of the Intelligence Committees and have played a central role in drafting the pending FISA legislation, to correct Klein’s false statements in Time itself. What kind of magazine smears its targets with patently false statements and then blocks them from responding?
Go read the rest of it, for a sickening glimpse of how the corporate news media, in this case Time Magazine, deliberately pushes the republican party line while silencing the democrats. This behavior on the part of the corporate news media may have a lot to do with why capital hill democrats are perceived as being perceived as silent and mute before the Bush administration onslaught. They may look like they’re not fighting back, because the voters aren’t being allowed to see them fighting back.
Via Brad DeLong … Something to keep in mind as you read the news stories about intelligence reports indicating that Iran had stopped its nuclear program some years ago: When George Bush started rattling the saber at them over their nuke program…he knew there wasn’t one…
Robert Waldmann points out that corrupt Washington Post stenographers Peter Baker and Robin Wright know how to write an honest, factual lead paragraph–they just usually choose not to:
By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A01
President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.
Now that is what I call a lead*. The contrast couldn’t be more sharp with Baker’s recent effort to thoroughly inform all readers who get to paragraph 8 that Karl Rove is a liar about which I posted at the linked post…
Oh…and here’s the pathetic Washington Post headline that Waldmann is referring to:
Rove’s Version of 2002 War Vote Is Disputed
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 1, 2007; Page A06
Former White House aide Karl Rove said yesterday it was Congress, not President Bush, who wanted to rush a vote on the looming war in Iraq in the fall of 2002
As numerous people on the net have pointed out…Rove’s version is a flat-out lie. To say it is "disputed" would, in any reality but a beltway journalist’s indicate that there is some way of honestly disputing it and there isn’t. It’s classic, vapid, idiotic, brain dead "he said, she said" journalism. How about "Death Of George Washington Over 200 Years Ago Is Disputed" What the fuck?
In case you haven’t been following it…Time Magazine, courtesy of its columnist Joe Klein, has been giving the nation a textbook example of the problem with American corporate journalism. Some days ago Time columnist Joe Klein huffed that, basically, the democrats were once again coddling terrorists.
Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.
Note that this verbiage has now been…altered…on their website since the netroots started blasting Klein and Time over the original text’s blatant, in-your-face-falsehood. In fact, the bill did no such thing as even a child with third grade reading skills could clearly comprehend. Glenn Greenwald has been on it relentlessly since Klein’s bullshit column hit the newsstands…
"Well beyond stupid" is a good description for what Klein wrote here. "Factually false" is even better. First, from its inception, FISA did not "protect the rights of U.S. citizens only." Its warrant requirements apply to all "U.S. persons" (see 1801(f)), which includes not only U.S. citizens but also "an alien lawfully admitted [in the U.S.] for permanent residence" (see 1801(i)). From 1978 on, FISA extended its warrant protections to resident aliens.
But Klein’s far more pernicious "error" is his Limbaugh-copying claim that the House bill "require[s] the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court." It just does not.
The only reason why Congress began considering amendments to FISA in the first place was because a FISA court earlier this year ruled that a warrant was required for foreign-to-foreign calls incidentally routed through the U.S. via fiber optics. Everyone — from Russ Feingold to the ACLU — agreed that FISA never intended to require warrants for foreign-to-foreign calls that have nothing to do with U.S. citizens, and thus, none of the bills being considered — including the bill passed by the House — requires warrants for such foreign-to-foreign calls. Here is Rep. Rush Holt, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the key architects of the House bill, explaining what the House bill actually does:
* Ensure that the government must have an individualized, particularized court-approved warrant based on probable cause in order to read or listen to the communications of an American citizen. . . .
The RESTORE Act now makes clear that it is the courts — and not an executive branch political appointee — who decide whether or not the communications of an American can be seized and searched, and that such seizures and searches must be done pursuant to a court order.
Under the House bill, individualized warrants are required if the U.S. Government wants to eavesdrop on the communications of Americans. Warrants are not required — as Klein falsely claimed — for "every foreign-terrorist target’s calls."
While the government (in order to prevent abuse) must demonstrate to the FISA court that it is applying its surveillance standards faithfully, the warrant requirement is confined to the class Rep. Holt described. Klein’s shrill condemnation of the House FISA bill rests on a complete falsehood (that’s not surprising; the last time Klein wrote about FISA, he said that "no actual eavesdropping on conversations should be permitted without a FISA court ruling" and then proceeded to defend a FISA bill which, unbeknownst to him, allowed exactly that).
What Time Magazine did, essentially, was smear the democrats as terrorist coddlers in the minds of millions of Time Magazine readers, and if you think that was accidental or merely a case of slipshod journalism you are not paying attention.
Klein’s broader point is even more odious. Along with most of the "liberal" punditocracy, Klein has been singing the same song for years and years and years now. The salvation for Democrats lies in following Republicans on national security issues. He’s been warning Democrats from the very beginning of the NSA scandal that they had better stop condemning Bush’s illegal spying on Americans or else they will justly suffer the consequences, and he issues similar lip-quivering warnings about Iraq: Democrats better stop opposing the Leader’s War or else they will lose.
The big joke here you have to realize, is that Klein is Time’s Liberal columnist. The corporate news media has been playing this game for decades…dragging the American political dialogue ever further and further to the right, by pitting hard core movement conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and outright lunatics like Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter against ersatz liberals like Joe Klein. Democrats and progressives are never represented in the corporate news media dialogue, and indeed are usually portrayed as extremists, while the likes of Ann Coulter are given plenty of time to spread their venom in the name of "Balance".
And in that environment, where the playing field is relentlessly tilted toward the right, actual policy differences between the republicans and the democrats have been consistently represented in a "he said, she said" format, where actual facts are never discussed, never even sought. For years now, the republicans have been able to push any damn lie they wanted into the public discourse, with absolutely no fear of being contradicted by the press. And this latest Joe Klein column has been a perfect example of how that not only works, but how the corporate news media remains doggedly determined to keep it working that way. After days and days of being raked over the coals for the blatant in-your-face factual inaccuracies in the Klein column, Time Magazine finally prints a…correction…but not…
Time Magazine has done a superb service for the country by illustrating everything that is rancid and corrupt with our political media. After I emailed Time.com Editor Josh Tyrangiel asking why the online version of Joe Klein’s column remains online uncorrected given that — as Managing Editor Rick Stengel now says — the article contains a "reporting error," this is the "correction" Time has now posted to the article. Seriously — this is really it, in its entirety:
In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.
Leave aside the false description of what Klein wrote. He didn’t say "that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets." He said that their bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court" and "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." But the Editor’s false characterization of Klein’s original lie about the House FISA bill is the least of the issues here.
All Time can say about this matter is that Republicans say one thing and Democrats claim another. Who is right? Is one side lying? What does the bill actually say, in reality?
That’s not for Time to say. After all, they’re journalists, not partisans. So they just write down what each side says. It’s not for them to say what is true, even if one side is lying.
In this twisted view, that is called "balance" — writing down what each side says. As in: "Hey – Bush officials say that there is WMD in Iraq and things are going great with the war (and a few people say otherwise). It’s not for us to decide. It’s not our fault if what we wrote down is a lie. We just wrote down exactly what they said." At best, they write down what each side says and then go home. That’s what they’re for.
That our typical establishment "journalist" conceives of this petty clerical task as their only role is not news. But it is striking to see the nation’s "leading news magazine" so starkly describe how they perceive their role.
After watching our corporate news media passively allow the election of 2000 to be stolen by the republicans, after watching them cheer Bush on as he lied this nation into a war that has killed hundreds of thousands, ruined our economy, and thoroughly trashed our moral capital, after watching them help Bush cover up the outing of one of our CIA agents in an act of cold, calculating political retribution, none of this should surprise anyone. Journalism is dead and rotting in America, everywhere but in the alternative press, and on the Internet, which, not coincidentally, is the one place corporate America cannot dictate the rules of the game.
You should go read Glenn Greenwald’s evisceration of this whole sorry episode, starting Here, and then moving on Here, Here, Here, and Here. You need to see, all Americans need to see, how the news media many of us grew up reading and watching, has bellyflopped itself into the gutter.
At least Fox doesn’t own nearly all the TV stations in most places. But in many parts of the country, a Clear Channel radio station in one format or another is all you get.
When the republicans set out to abolish FCC media monopoly rules, many people warned that it would lead to a stifling of variety on the airwaves. Sure enough, only those of us who can afford now to have a satellite radio in the car can get something approximating the breadth that was once there to be found on the radio dial. Clear Channel has single handedly killed radio for most of us. But it would be a mistake to think that it’s just about peddling junk music to the lowest common denominator for profit. Oh, no. Consider the new Bruce Springsteen album, Magic, which has been a hit just about everywhere…except on radio for some strange reason. Fox News attempts to spin it thusly…
Bruce: Magic Refused Radio Play
Bruce Springsteen should be very happy. He has the No. 1 album, a possible Grammy for Best Album of the Year for "Magic," an album full of singles and a sold-out concert tour.
Alas, there’s a hitch: Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it’s OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA."
Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio.
Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, "is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they’ll never know these songs if no one plays them."
"Magic," by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. That’s not a small achievement these days, and one that should be embraced by Clear Channel.
But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. The rock songs aren’t on rock radio, and the two standout "mellow" tracks — "Magic" and "Devil’s Arcade" — aren’t even on "lite" stations.
The singles-kinda hits, "Radio Nowhere" and "Living in the Future" — which would have been hits no questions asked in the ’70s, ’80s and maybe even the ’90s, also are absent from Top 40.
No shit sherlock. Here’s the opening lyrics to Radio Nowhere…
I was tryin’ to find my way home
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite
Crushin’ the last lone American night
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
I was spinnin’ ’round a dead dial
Just another lost number in a file
Dancin’ down a dark hole
Just searchin’ for a world with some soul
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
Is there anybody alive out there?
Sound like the sort of thing your friendly neighborhood republican media monopoly wants played on Their Radio Stations??? Here’s Living In The Future…
Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray
Beneath a dirty sun, I whistled my time away
Then just about sundown
You come walkin’ through town
Your boot heels clickin’
Like the barrel of a pistol spinnin’ ’round
Don’t worry Darlin’, now baby don’t you fret
We’re livin’ in the future and none of this has happened yet
Don’t worry Darlin’, now baby don’t you fret
We’re livin’ in the future and none of this has happened yet
The earth it gave away, the sea rose toward the sun
I opened up my heart to you it got all damaged and undone
My ship Liberty sailed away on a bloody red horizon
The groundskeeper opened the gates and let the wild dogs run
I’m rollin’ through town, a lost cowboy at sundown
Got my monkey on a leash, got my ear tuned to the ground
My faith’s been torn asunder, tell me is that rollin’ thunder
Or just the sinkin’ sound of somethin’ righteous goin’ under?
Clear Channel will play this kind of thing when hell freezes over, or President Nice Job Brownie grows a conscience, whichever comes first. This sort of thing doesn’t fit very well into their format. For Bruce to get any airplay on Clear Channel, he needs to be more positive. Give the audience something like this…
The phrase "brought to you by Clear Channel" is partly cut off there, but this is what Clear Channel was splashing all over the nation’s highways after president Junior launched his excellent adventure in Iraq. Says it all, doesn’t it?
What to do? Columbia Records is said to be readying a remixed version of "The Girls in their Summer Clothes," a poppy Beach Boys-type track that has such a catchy hook fans were singing along to it at live shows before they had the album. Bruce insiders are hopeful that with a push from Sony, "Girls" will triumph.
I’m not so sure.
Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.
It’s not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana’s new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.
Like Springsteen, these "older" artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations — i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.
Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn’t interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no… not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year– across all genres and demographics– radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he’s pro-censorship.) I spoke with an old friend who heads a record company and preferred to speak off the record.
"When you have artists like the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen who have overtly spoken out against this Administration, they are taken to task in spite the clear and undeniable indications from the marketplace that people want to hear their music. What seems to be happening– if sales are any kind of a barometer of what the marketplace is– is that these politically-connected radio networks like Clear Channel are not looking to succeed as radio stations as much as pushing forward some political agenda.
Another friend of mine distinctly recalls the Senate hearings on radio consolidation in light of the Dixie Chicks boycott where Barbara Boxer and John McCain heard testimony including an internal Clear Channel memo threatening "Just wait and see what happens if Springsteen tries this." I guess we’re seeing that right now.
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