From the Archives (5 January 2007) Raging gas prices and Borat guffaws and the Pentagon prayer memo. An Inconvenient Truth and Abu Ghraib and North Korean nuclear testing. Mutilated American soldiers burning in the streets of Yusufiya and Spike Lee reminding us of When The Levees Broke.
The White House declining to provide Hurricane Katrina papers to investigators trying to determine what went wrong and that poseur James Frey portraying himself as a badass. Gitmo suicides and the judicial system informing the president that he can't just hold prisoners in cruel and degrading conditions indefinitely without ever charging them with a crime.
Radio talk show bobbleheaded bimbos declaring those judges radical liberal activists. A potentially activist US Supreme Court. Military tribunals and illegal black houses and Boeing transporting prisoners overseas for torture. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in an American air strike.
Haditha, where American soldiers executed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. Coercive interrogation techniques and the cowboy who used his silver spoon to avoid Vietnam now trying to legalize torture. Molly Ivins highlighting Texas's ridiculous sex toy laws. Cindy Sheehan and the self-same cowboy who declared the Constitution just a goddamn piece of paper.
Americans bidding farewell to habeas corpus then turning back to Survivor. Danish cartoonists poking fun at (now rioting) jihadists (proving, again, that religious freaks can dish it out but they sure can't take it).
Coretta Scott King breaking her earthly bounds along with Lloyd Bentsen. (Bentsen's best line, spoken to Dan Quayle in the VP debate: I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.) Katie Couric trying to morph herself into seriousgrrl. Magazines splashing Branjolina across every major supermarket aisle while ignoring the atrocities in Darfur. An Indonesian earthquake and Pedro Almodóvar's Volver and Penelope Cruz still looking mmm, mmm good.
Ann Richards' farewell—her best line: Poor [king] George [the former]. He can't help it if he was born with a silver foot in his mouth—and Medea wondering who inherited Ann's kewl Harley.
Tom "the hammer" DeLay getting busted at last, then trying to reinvent himself online. Jason Cooper, the American reservist, hanging himself after returning from Iraq. Seventy-some other PTSD-suffering American soldiers also committing suicide once they're back on "safe" soil.
A Day without Immigrants and poor Ilan Halimi, kidnapped and tortured and murdered for being a Jew.
Pat Buchanan and Mel Gibson and Michael Richards spouting their white-man bigotry—again—as stupid conservative dingleberry legislators floated ideas for building a wall around the whole dang country in an effort to keep them suspicious fuuuuurners out—apparently forgetting that the servants who keep their gated communities repaired and clean and spic (um) and span are mostly underpaid foreigner workers.
American soldiers setting another Iraqi woman on fire after raping her in Mahmudiya. Seattle extremes: rave murders and flooding and mudslides in my favorite part of the country and let's don't forget the Seattle non-profiteer who was murdered for being a Jew.
Lawrence Summers finally leaving Harvard and those unprepared Mount Hood hikers.
Abeer Qassim Hamza, the young Iraqi girl whose name means "fragrance of flowers," raped then murdered by even more American soldiers (who had already killed her family).
Tee Corinne, pioneering lesbian artist, erotic photographer, and author of the vagina coloring book, dying without insurance. Addvwaitya, the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old giant aldabra tortoise whose name means "the one and only," dying in a dusty India zoo.
OJ confessing what everyone already knew and Rupert being pressured into pulling his noxious book. Floyd Landis pissing away a Tour de France victory and Lou Rawls dying too.
Lim Jeong-hyun posting his amazing version of Pachelbel's Canon online and those sorry poseurs who rushed to claim his glory.
Ken "Enron" Lay and his criminal folksiness dying. (If only they could throw Pat Robertson and his eye-twitching hokeyness in there with him.) Tabloids showing Americans more than we ever wanted to know about TomKat's cover-up-my-queerness-marriage.
Meanwhile, Darfur.
A culture of violence seeping its way into an unwired Amish schoolhouse. James Brown getting on the bad foot and dying in Georgia. Robert Altman dead. Eleven-year-old Haleigh Poutre suffering massive brain injuries after the state of Massachusetts repeatedly failed to protect her.
Reagan welcoming Caspar "Iran-Contra Affair" Weinberger into the metaphorical fires of Hell as the American poor let out a collective satisfied sigh, knowing full well that the man who all but demolished Johnson's Great Society programs in the name of higher profits was finally dead dead ding dong dead, the greedy warlock. Dead.
Reagan greeting Slobodan "The Butcher of the Balkans" Milosevic there too and Shelley Winters dying (causing old-timers to hum to themselves there's got to be a morning after, It's waiting just outside the door. The White House listening in to private conversations and claiming the right to detain American citizens without a trial or formal charges. Creeping presidential powers. Mark Foley and Ted Haggard and other prominent Colorado Christianists revealing their reckless homophobic hypocrisy.
Fat-ass misogynist Rush Limbaugh attempting to hide his Viagra. The Duke lacrosse team behaving badly. Again. (My hunch? The exotic dancer got righteously pissed when those Richie Rich pricks complained about having to watch a black—gasp!—exotic dancer dance).
I think the prick who told the dancer to thank her grandiddy for his nice white cotton shirt crossed the proverbial line, so she decided that the assholes deserved what she could give them.
Americans flocking to watch Ang Lee's hunky cowboys get it on, then voting to define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman (plus a whole lotta divorce lawyers and child psychiatrists) only.
New Jersey courts (eventually) making that nonsense null and void.
Saddam breaking his neck (oopsie!) and Jeffrey Skilling getting his and Wilson "Mustang Sally" Pickett—poof!—gone in the midnight hour.
Another Kennedy making the news by crashing his car in the middle of a drug-induced whoopie night. US soldier deaths exceding the 3,000 mark and casualties exceeding 50,000. (Prosthetic sales are up, they say, while the number of dead Iraqi civilians exceeds anyone's estimation.)
American soldiers forced to buy their own protection while Haliburton profits soar. Exxon boasting record profits while citizens go broke filling their tank and oilmen in the Oval office pat each other on their hairy hoary backs for helping big bidness. McCain deporting another 35,000 troops while Bush&Co reconsider the draft in an effort to stay their ridiculous course.
Young Republicans praising their monkeyboy president from the privileged safety of the blogosphere—convinced, no doubt, that any president who would cut benefits for soldiers in harm's would never ever draft his own kind.
Generals discovering a clever new way to kill two birds with one stone by rejecting their previously favored Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.
Joe "Comback Kid" Lieberman proving again that vanilla GOP wannabes can get themselves re-elected in TV Land.
Donald Rumsfeld finally getting the boot after Democrats seized control of the House and Senate and even the White House was forced to acknowledge their debacle.
Now, jeezuslawd, would those legislators fucking do something!?!
Friday, April 18, 2008
270. THE JEEZUS DIARIES
From the Archives (2 January 2007) For some reason, my little sister "forgets" that I am a dyke and, whenever I return to my mom's house—let's say for Christmas, with my new lover—brings some dufus guy over on the sly for what she believes will be a blind date.
This past Christmas, she mentioned that she had invited Bart, an eccentric guy who drives an old teal-and-white Bel Air around town at 25 m.p.h., to come over and "hang out with" me.
I told her "Fine. And now you can just cancel the date," to which she replied "but he's had a crush on you ever since you worked together in the hospital cafeteria [in 1981], Medea."
Well yeehaw man! That's good enough for me. Let me just dump my lovely grrlfriend in the basement so I can hook up with the Bartman to ensure that my sister is comfortable with who I am.
Did I mention that this is the same little sister who speaks in tongues under duress (the latest piece of evidence that she has inherited my mother's paranoid schizophrenic diorder)? Or that she believes that women should not carry out the trash or use birth control or do whatever else her misogynistic "women should submit graciously to men" church tells her to believe?
Hard to parse this with her being a soldier, but she has managed to work that inconvenience out somehow.
This is the person who always asks to borrow money to pay off her credit card after using her paycheck to get pedicures and manicures, the same person who says that demons and angels talk to her and tell her what to do. And yes, she has access to AK-47s and could be in a war zone one day soon.
This certainly helps ME sleep at night ... and let's don't even TALK about how much her imminent deployment or the fact that she peppers her conversations with "well, if I die, Mama and Carmen will be set for life" is doing to keep my mother's paranoid tendencies in check or to keep my young niece from worrying instead of sleeping.
Oh yeah. And did I mention that she gave me a 2-CD gospel music set for Christmas? Yep. Gave it to a woman whose favorite holiday pastime is decapitating nativity scenes and leaving the plastic baby Jezus heads in the sheep's mouths.
But maybe I just have one too many bad associations with the Southern twitch Baptist church of my childhood to handle this very well.
Meanwhile, Keep The Faith delivered to my bulk mail folder today an email with the subject line Free Guardian Angel Bear—Because God Loves You.
I considered writing Mr. Keep The Faith to explain that creativity is my religion—it has saved me more than once—but, hey, we're talking about someone whose religion is on the level of stuffed bears.
Too bad the spam angel didn't tell him about dictionaries or the proper use of semicolons before he sent this little poem. My guess is the little thumb-sized thang has bent wings and ain't getting enough air down in this guy's stinky pocket.
Anyway, here's the precious poem:
Huh. How quaint.
LISTENING TO: Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" (they're trying to wash us away...)
READING: A New York Times article about the Simply Droog: 10 + 3 Years of Creating innovation and Discussion exhibit. Hope I can go.
SANG IN SHOWER: Lucinda Williams's "Blue" (perhaps because I had to return to work today)
This past Christmas, she mentioned that she had invited Bart, an eccentric guy who drives an old teal-and-white Bel Air around town at 25 m.p.h., to come over and "hang out with" me.
I told her "Fine. And now you can just cancel the date," to which she replied "but he's had a crush on you ever since you worked together in the hospital cafeteria [in 1981], Medea."
Well yeehaw man! That's good enough for me. Let me just dump my lovely grrlfriend in the basement so I can hook up with the Bartman to ensure that my sister is comfortable with who I am.
Did I mention that this is the same little sister who speaks in tongues under duress (the latest piece of evidence that she has inherited my mother's paranoid schizophrenic diorder)? Or that she believes that women should not carry out the trash or use birth control or do whatever else her misogynistic "women should submit graciously to men" church tells her to believe?
Hard to parse this with her being a soldier, but she has managed to work that inconvenience out somehow.
This is the person who always asks to borrow money to pay off her credit card after using her paycheck to get pedicures and manicures, the same person who says that demons and angels talk to her and tell her what to do. And yes, she has access to AK-47s and could be in a war zone one day soon.
This certainly helps ME sleep at night ... and let's don't even TALK about how much her imminent deployment or the fact that she peppers her conversations with "well, if I die, Mama and Carmen will be set for life" is doing to keep my mother's paranoid tendencies in check or to keep my young niece from worrying instead of sleeping.
Oh yeah. And did I mention that she gave me a 2-CD gospel music set for Christmas? Yep. Gave it to a woman whose favorite holiday pastime is decapitating nativity scenes and leaving the plastic baby Jezus heads in the sheep's mouths.
But maybe I just have one too many bad associations with the Southern twitch Baptist church of my childhood to handle this very well.
Meanwhile, Keep The Faith delivered to my bulk mail folder today an email with the subject line Free Guardian Angel Bear—Because God Loves You.
I considered writing Mr. Keep The Faith to explain that creativity is my religion—it has saved me more than once—but, hey, we're talking about someone whose religion is on the level of stuffed bears.
Too bad the spam angel didn't tell him about dictionaries or the proper use of semicolons before he sent this little poem. My guess is the little thumb-sized thang has bent wings and ain't getting enough air down in this guy's stinky pocket.
Anyway, here's the precious poem:
ANGEL IN YOUR POCKET
I am a tiny angel
I'm smaller than your thumb;
I live in people's pockets
Thats where I have my fun.
I dont suppose you've seen me,
I'm too tiny to detect;
Though I'm with you all the time,
I doubt we've ever met.
Before I was an Angel
I was a fairy in a flower;
God, Himself, hand-picked me,
And gave me angel power.
Now God has many Angels
We become His special tools.
And because God is so busy,
With way too much to do;
He said my assinment
Is to keep close watch on you.
When He tucked me in your pocket
He bessed you with Angel care;
Then told me never to leave you,
And I vowed always th be there.
Huh. How quaint.
LISTENING TO: Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" (they're trying to wash us away...)
READING: A New York Times article about the Simply Droog: 10 + 3 Years of Creating innovation and Discussion exhibit. Hope I can go.
SANG IN SHOWER: Lucinda Williams's "Blue" (perhaps because I had to return to work today)
269. FOIL-WRAPPED PROPAGANDA
From the Archives (20 December 2006) I suppose I could think of this as preparation for Danishgrrl's and my looming trip to the truly frightening Jehovan-dripping borough of South Carolina, but I am nevertheless annoyed at this holiday card that someone placed in my mailbox:
The holly-bordered exterior reads
and the interior reads
The holly-bordered exterior reads
BELIEVE IN MIRACLES
The Virgin Birth...
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child ... and they shall call His name Emmanuel ... God with us." Matthew 1:23
The Resurrection...
"...Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen..." Mark 16:6
The Soon Return...
"...I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:3
and the interior reads
Wishing you the joy of believing ... the celebration of life ... and the peace of eternal hope in Jesus Christ.
May Your Christmas Be Blessed.
" ... He who believes has eternal life." John 6:47 NASB
To me, seeking real-life solutions to the particular difficulties of our earthly existence (random disease and limited lifespans and human frailty and violence and ignorance and loss and perplexingly annoying religious commands to cut my hair or never cut my hair or wear a dress or or wear a burqa or whatever) instead of bowing prostrate before some made-up yahoo that religious leaders use to extort money from their congregation is humanity's best shot at curing disease and finding real redemption, so how 'bout you keep your superstitions out of my mailbox Yo.
Meanwhile, Danishgrrl's kids are guilt-tripping her about "ruining" their holidays by introducing change and refusing to invite her ex-husband to spend the day with us and we don't like this one bit. The jerk is encouraging this too while e-lecturing her about honoring the fact that the kids don't want change—and this from the man who couldn't be bothered to purchase a real tree for them.
Grr!
So here's my pre-New Year's resolution: I will not be silent if my bigoted Aunt Becky has anything to say about my so-called sinful life style this year. I have lost my patience and have armed myself with the HRC's "Answers to Questions about Marriage Equality" that I can hand to her if she starts. (I'll also threaten her with donating them to her church's library in her name—maybe THAT will get a reaction!)
I’m also thinking of making a bumpersticker that says "Can I Vote on Your Marriage?" and affixing it to my car before the trip.
So yeah. Here I sit, dreading Christmas down south, dreading Danishgrrl discovering the sad situation that was my childhood, but very glad that the bullethole my mom put in the kitchen ceiling way back in 1979 when she tried to violently off herself was at least patched a few years back, so we don't have to stare at it or the blood spots on the ceiling anymore.
268. THE GLOBAL O
From the Archives (16 December 2006) Here's a twist. Globalorgasm.org is sponsoring the First Annual Solstice Synchronized Global Orgasm for Peace. This event will um culminate in the 2012 Winter Solstice, when the Mayan Calendar ends and a new era theoretically begins (or, if you're one of those Roswell people, when the little green Mayan aliens return to our tepid Earth.
Taking this at um face value appeals to me, so I plan to add my own surge of "concentrated and high-energy positive input" into the Earth's energy field sufficient to reduce the "current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world" next Friday.
Our slogan can be We came in peace.
All joking aside though. Yeah. Well. Isn't it great that these seemingly earnest hot-tub sex educators are promoting a publicity stunt that honors connection and sexual freedom and all that?
Really. It is. Here's reality though: my very real sister is in very real danger because she could not find a post-college job that pays enough to satisfy her student loan repayment plan, and John McCain has just announced that our incompetent administration now intends to deploy another 35,000 soldiers. my sister has already received her pre-deployment shots and could be staring down a real gun or stepping on a real bomb within the next 36 hours while Bush&Co dick around with such "expendable" lives for their continued high profits.
So let's be frank here. Jilling off ain't gonna do jack about this one.
I appreciate the sex educators' quixotian naiveté though and support anything that brings sex out into the open in these repressive times.Once again though, Susie Bright says it best:
Taking this at um face value appeals to me, so I plan to add my own surge of "concentrated and high-energy positive input" into the Earth's energy field sufficient to reduce the "current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world" next Friday.
Our slogan can be We came in peace.
All joking aside though. Yeah. Well. Isn't it great that these seemingly earnest hot-tub sex educators are promoting a publicity stunt that honors connection and sexual freedom and all that?
Really. It is. Here's reality though: my very real sister is in very real danger because she could not find a post-college job that pays enough to satisfy her student loan repayment plan, and John McCain has just announced that our incompetent administration now intends to deploy another 35,000 soldiers. my sister has already received her pre-deployment shots and could be staring down a real gun or stepping on a real bomb within the next 36 hours while Bush&Co dick around with such "expendable" lives for their continued high profits.
So let's be frank here. Jilling off ain't gonna do jack about this one.
I appreciate the sex educators' quixotian naiveté though and support anything that brings sex out into the open in these repressive times.Once again though, Susie Bright says it best:
Anything that promotes connection, and dissuades prejudice, is going to diminish violence. I'm with them on that. But liberation is a philosophy, and without action, any philosophy looks stupid staring up barrels. Who needs more dilettantes: spiritual, orgasmic, or otherwise? Human consciousness sits around like an unplugged vibrator if you don't DO something about it.
267. THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS...
From the Archives (21 November 2006) Voltaire’s birthday and snow flurries are falling this AM. The air is brisk and electric and cold and here we are on the cusp of a five day holiday.
Danishgrrrl and her kids and I are excited about cooking for and entertaining 12 this Thanksgiving.
I’ve always enjoyed planning and preparing (and eating) big meals and look forward to getting busy in the kitchen despite the fact that I currently have four blisters and 2 sensitive fingertips on my dominant hand because I stupidly grabbed the handle of a hot pan with my bare hands.
So yeah. I’ve been flipping through cookbooks and foodie magazines for weeks now, cutting out recipes and gathering centerpiece ideas and salivating happily.
(Yeah yeah. I know I don’t seem like a Martha Stewart type, but I do love to cook and, hey, I think it’s cool that I now know how to cut a sunburst into the top of an orange and make the thing into a votive holder that will look great surrounded by bay leaves … which are surrounded by garlic mashed potatoes and barbecued turkey and sugar-glazed ham and dried-cherry-and-sage-and-apple-and-pecan stuffing and green beans with pomegranate seed/mustard sauce and baked winter squash and homemade pound cake and apple pie and… well, maybe this IS the best of all possible worlds . . .
•
Garrison Keillor described Voltaire’s world on the Writer’s Almanac today, and I was struck by the similarities between his France and today’s America—a landscape in which the country’s leader (Louis XIV/King George the Lesser) persecutes people who worship differently (Protestants/Muslims/atheists/iberal Christians) and turns the country into a “ferociously intolerant society, with little freedom of speech or religion”—a place where torturing and imprisoning people who challenge these strictures (in Bastille/Gitmo … black houses … your own home) … is accepted and intolerant citizens report Muslim clerics who are seated on a plane together as possible terrorists …
… not that I believe that others should forced into silent participation in someone else’s religious rituals just because we happen to share the same public space.
I object when my coworkers pray to their mythological god before a common work meal and I object when a guy on a plane makes me listen to his prayers that he can say to his own damn self and leave me out of it.
Anyway it’s still icy cold outside but I gotta get back to work now so Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Danishgrrrl and her kids and I are excited about cooking for and entertaining 12 this Thanksgiving.
I’ve always enjoyed planning and preparing (and eating) big meals and look forward to getting busy in the kitchen despite the fact that I currently have four blisters and 2 sensitive fingertips on my dominant hand because I stupidly grabbed the handle of a hot pan with my bare hands.
So yeah. I’ve been flipping through cookbooks and foodie magazines for weeks now, cutting out recipes and gathering centerpiece ideas and salivating happily.
(Yeah yeah. I know I don’t seem like a Martha Stewart type, but I do love to cook and, hey, I think it’s cool that I now know how to cut a sunburst into the top of an orange and make the thing into a votive holder that will look great surrounded by bay leaves … which are surrounded by garlic mashed potatoes and barbecued turkey and sugar-glazed ham and dried-cherry-and-sage-and-apple-and-pecan stuffing and green beans with pomegranate seed/mustard sauce and baked winter squash and homemade pound cake and apple pie and… well, maybe this IS the best of all possible worlds . . .
•
Garrison Keillor described Voltaire’s world on the Writer’s Almanac today, and I was struck by the similarities between his France and today’s America—a landscape in which the country’s leader (Louis XIV/King George the Lesser) persecutes people who worship differently (Protestants/Muslims/atheists/iberal Christians) and turns the country into a “ferociously intolerant society, with little freedom of speech or religion”—a place where torturing and imprisoning people who challenge these strictures (in Bastille/Gitmo … black houses … your own home) … is accepted and intolerant citizens report Muslim clerics who are seated on a plane together as possible terrorists …
… not that I believe that others should forced into silent participation in someone else’s religious rituals just because we happen to share the same public space.
I object when my coworkers pray to their mythological god before a common work meal and I object when a guy on a plane makes me listen to his prayers that he can say to his own damn self and leave me out of it.
Anyway it’s still icy cold outside but I gotta get back to work now so Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
266. PRAYER FROM AN ATHEIST
From the Archives (16 November 2006) Dear Random Matter and Antimatter Swirling All around Me, Convincing Some People to Believe That You are a Divine Creator Instead of, at Most, Alterable Energy,
I have this car, see? A shiny one. Cute. With groovy dashboard lights in neon colors.
It's cute. And fun to drive. Zippy.
Only there are long periods of time when I don't drive it. Ever. Because the car is a lemon. Really. A bright yellow gawdawful glowing lemon. Faulty electrical systems? I got one. Some say all VWs have them. And this one certainly does.
It breaks down. Often. And leaves me stranded. And poor. And it leaks. Gas most recently. A potential kaboom. Expensive new gas lines. Nearly 1K.
The last straw. Now car for sale. Still zippy. And cute.
Buy it. Please. It’s parked. Waiting.
I have this car, see? A shiny one. Cute. With groovy dashboard lights in neon colors.
It's cute. And fun to drive. Zippy.
Only there are long periods of time when I don't drive it. Ever. Because the car is a lemon. Really. A bright yellow gawdawful glowing lemon. Faulty electrical systems? I got one. Some say all VWs have them. And this one certainly does.
It breaks down. Often. And leaves me stranded. And poor. And it leaks. Gas most recently. A potential kaboom. Expensive new gas lines. Nearly 1K.
The last straw. Now car for sale. Still zippy. And cute.
Buy it. Please. It’s parked. Waiting.
265. LIVING LA VIDA JIHAD
From the Archives (15 November 2006) Stop42’s ad against raising the minimum wage in jihadist Colorado features Moses and the Judeo-Christian god:
MOSES: We need divine intervention. They want to chisel Amendment 42 into Colorado's constitution where it doesn't belong.
GOD: What on earth are you talking about?
MOSES: An annual minimum wage increase in stone for eternity!
GOD: When inflation and recession come, it will be a catastrophe!
MOSES: It's a plague we'll face every year.
GOD: We can't let the people make this mistake. Go. Spread the word. Vote no on 42!
In response to this ad, Barbara Ehrenreich notes that
perhaps God, for all his omniscience, hadn’t noticed that the states that already had higher minimum wages haven’t yet plunged into “inflation and recession.” Or that the 1997 hike in the federal minimum wage wasn’t followed by nationwide economic calamity. It’s stranger still that the deity would choose to weigh in on the side of the Colorado Restaurant Association and against the poor and downtrodden.
Or maybe no one noticed that, while Bush&Co may have convinced the so-called godly to support their imperialist policies for the past 6 years, even American jihadists seem to have wised up to the fake cowboys.
Word to Bush&Co: screw the people long enough and they will realize that they are being used.
They will also vote—at least in 24 states—to increase the minimum wage you reject in order to take care of their own.
(You know what they say: If the leaders won’t lead...)
But wait. There’s more post-election good news!
Bill Maher outed hypocritical RNC chair Ken Mehlman this past weekend Larry King Live. CNN managed to edit the segment out of later rebroadcasts but, hey, it was too late then.
So there you have it: another imperialist homophobic hypocrite unveiled (and how do they keep managing to convince people to promote legislature that adversely affects them?).
Lindsay Beyerstein notes on Alternet
The outing of Mehlman, after all these years, is proof of the institutional implosion of the Republican Party. Nobody wants to cover for a closeted gaybasher, and Mehlman is no longer powerful enough to command complicity.
Meanwhile, last week ultra-conservatives in Jerusalem forced organizers to cancel their Pride parade by clashing with the police, burning bins of trash, and throwing stones. The jihadists also announced that holding the parade would be “surrendering to mental illness” and, no big surprise, declared queerness a crime.
(Ah, they do like to pretend that they get to define the law of the land for everyone, don’t they?)
The irony of their throwing stones is definitely not lost on Medea, but don’t you wonder why an army as well-trained as Israel’s couldn’t quell a few fundie trash-burners? Obviously, the will to defend queers just wasn’t there.
So there we have it: another example of jihadists using selective Bible verses to further their cause.
Meanwhile, Pam’s Spaulding notes that the Houston landscaping bidness Garden Guy Inc. (“Treating you with respect and honesty are the cornerstones of our reputation”) picked up $40K in new bidness but lost a mere $1K in bidness (that’s 2 customers) after e-mailing a queer client to inform him that Garden Guy Inc. chooses not to work for homosexuals.
“Why can’t people handle it when you say the truth?” co-owner Sabrina Farber asked after receiving angry e-mails and phone calls in response to her actions.
Indeed Sabrina. Why can’t you handle the fact that, when you exhibit hate, then outrage gets flung right back atcha? It’s called a vicious cycle, Hon, and, guess what, you're on the side of hate and intolerance and you got called on it. Publicly.
So take note: You and your homophobic husband have just provided the world with yet another example of why US courts are still required to enforce protection of minority groups in this land of the (purported) free where jihadists such as yourself target others based on irrational and religion-stoked hate.
Meanwhile, a chorus pal who is selling her condo recently discovered that some asshole broke in, shit on her floors, and left a Watchtower with scribbled homophobic messages on it for her reading enjoyment.
(FYI Sabrina. That’s a hate crime. And it invokes public outrage, even down here in the Southland.)
•
So. My obvious segue here is to thank all those prognosticators who wrote off liberal southerners as dispendable irrational irrelvant hicks. But thanks really are not enough. So I’ll invite them to read Bob Moser’s “New Southern Strategy” in the Nation instead. (You know, the article that begins “The South—aka “Jesusland”—has a message for those national Democratic wizards who advised writing off the South: ... Fuck you.”)
Check it out at http://www.alternet.org/stories/44085/
•
Meanwhile, Jamie had her first chemo treatment yesterday and I was relieved to see her out and about and cracking jokes afterwards—particularly because Tree's first treatment went so badly. A relief too to hear her laughing too. “You pulled the C card, didn’t you?” she said to her ex (who, indeed, sis pull the C card to get what she wanted, as she said, laughing back).
Guess you gotta remember to laugh when the world throws you the stinkin' C ball.
264. THROWING STONES
From the Archives
(12 November 2006)
(12 November 2006)
One of the basic guidelines I use when meeting new people is to never ever trust someone who identifies themselves as a “Christian” within the early throes of casual conversation. They believe they are communicating their higher moral standing, but what I hear them clearly saying is “I have a serious mental disorder.” – DBSHOLES
The National Archives recently either uncovered or strategically published (in the hopes that someone would recognize a corresponding zeitgeist when it stared them in the eyes) some 800 photographs that Dorothea Lange took of the more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent whom our government imprisoned in filthy horse stalls and drafty tar-paper shacks back in the so-called glory days of patriotic yore. Like Lange’s Depression-era photographs, these images capture a shameful moment in US history at a very personal level.
The War Relocation Authority hired Lange to document the internments, then restricted her lens before finally confiscating her internment photography altogether. Their instructions were clear: No objects that might identify a concentration camp as a concentration camp—no wire fences or watchtowers or searchlights or whips or starving people or armed guards herding detainees—allowed. Instead, she was allowed to capture the sale of interned people’s belongings while giving a human face to the enforced poverty and misery that our government imposed on these people’s lives.
Imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to be captured and imprisoned by your country merely because your racial heritage has suddenly become suspect and to watch as your very personal belongings—that funky clock you purchased from an artist in grad school, the painting your ex gave you on your first anniversary, your laptop, your photographs, your grandmother’s rings, your prized first editions of all your favorite books—are sold.
I try to ask myself who benefits from specific exertions of power, especially when they involve fear-mongering—and fear was definitely behind the frenzy of post-Pearl Harbor Jap-hate editorials and speeches that spurred this round-up of Japanese American citizens, just as fear and the flimsy promise of protection are behind our current willingness to neuter habeas corpus in a post-9/11 world.
Bush&Co would of course argue that Americans benefit when this administration imprisons and tortures Others because their coerced confessions could stop a terrorist attack on our consumer-driven way o’ life. Of course, most thinking people would argue that Bush&Co have done more to threaten our way of life than anything bin Laden or Saddam could ever do.
Question: Who benefits when a president claims that Americans do not torture prisoners, then pushes through legislation that forgives the torture he has already authorized?
Answer: A lot fewer people today than did on Monday, thanks to the American people, who have spoken and spoken loudly ... despite the GOP’s attempts to silence us with robo-calls; despite the officials (in mostly Democratic precincts) who had no clue whatsoever how to operate those pesky voting machines; despite the conservatives who threatened Latino Democrats in Colorado with arrest if they attempted to vote; despite the Maryland GOPers’ false ballots; despite hate radio encouraging callers to tie up the Democratic fair-vote phone lines; despite Bush&Co’s ridiculous assertion that a vote for Democrats is a vote against your country or any of those other jaw-dropping GOP fascist declarations.
... which reminds me: I saw a bumpersticker this morning that said Bush won’t stop lying until you stop believing.
Here’s what I believe: Ted Haggard’s outing (as a hypocrite) hot on the tail of Mark Foley’s outing (as a hypocrite) hot on the tail of myriad other GOP hypocrisies hot on the tail of all this GOP truthiness may have convinced the Oxford English Dictionary to finally designate truthiness a word (and they SHOULD have convinced Republicans that their leaders are hypocritical shucksters who are sending democracy down the tubes a a very fast rate).
So now, a partial list of other conservative hypocrites:
• William Bennett, who attempted to remold our free-thinking founders as Bible-thumping conservative moralists and espoused the importance of moral conduct while on an out-of-control gambling binge;
• J. Edgar Hoover, who publicly persecuted queers while maintaining a forty-four-year homo relationship (and, probably more than any recent American, branded the idea that gay men are lurking pedophiles into the American psyche)
• those conservative Catholic priests who place restrictions on women’s bodies (despite having now clue what it is like to have to choose) and blame queers when they get caught covering up for pedophiles
• those GOP leaders who turned a blind eye to Foley’s trolling while running ads that accuse Democrats of being “soft on child molesters”
• hypocritical fundie religious leaders who accept illegal trips to Scottish golf courses from lobbyists
• Bill Frist, who feigned the ability to diagnose brain function from a video even as Terry Schiavo’s doctors insisted that she was in a persistent vegetative state. (As Molly Ivins says, “that whole Terry Schiavo debacle was like waking up one morning finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.”)
• Republinazi Rush Limbaugh, who describes himself as a moralist while popping pills uncontrollably
• Ralph Reed, the baby-faced fundie hypocrite who manipulated people of faith for his own financial and political gain for so years (and probably while jerking off to pictures of those Northern Mariana sex slaves he secretly supported)
• Sen. Sperm Thurmond (from Medea’s very scary state of origin), who promoted racism while secretly supporting a black daughter he shared with the then-underage African American woman who worked in his home
• those holier-than-thou GOP assholes who demanded Clinton’s head on a silver platter for his extramarital relations but who have since been revealed to be adulterers themselves
• those holier-than-thou religious freaks who succeeded in passing the so-called marriage protection amendments in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin on Tuesday by citing the sanctity of their so-called holy unions EVEN THOUGH evangelicals have the highest divorce rate of any group in this country and EVEN THOUGH our Constitution plainly states that ALL citizens are entitled to the same rights.
And now, let us celebrate
• the South Dakota voters who defeated attempts to ban abortion and
• the Arizona voters who defeated their state’s so-called marriage protection amendment and
• the Missouri voters who, like Californians, voted to pay for stem cell research themselves since their so-called national leaders are too beholden to the fundies to back this vital research themselves.
And let's close with a song: Ding dong. Santorum is gone. The evil Rick is gone. (And Rumsfeld too. Ha Ha.)
Goodbye and good riddance to a few representatives from the current crop of fascists.
(Oh and by the way maybe your marriage bans stand today, but New Jersey put the writing on the wall and openly queer candidates won in Alabama (!), Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, (over sixty-six elected) and HRC reports that the people also elected over 200 officials who publicly support equality.
So, as Susie Bright says, “Let the Corporate and DLC Ass-Kicking Resume!”
READING: The New York Times, which reported the Lange story. Alternet, which does a good job of outing the GOP hypocrites; HRC’s election coverage.
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