New standards in journalism

This handsome gentleman on the right here is the new star of WorldNetDaily. Despite the evidence to the contrary -- namely, the obvious color coordination problems between the hat and the last-pressed-in-1987 shirt--this man asserts that he is indeed gay (or, as WND would say, "gay written in quotation marks because gay still means 1890s happy to us, dernit") and once had a cocaine-fueled tryst with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a Minnesota hotel.

Despite the crackerjack reporting done by WND on this case, which apparently consisted of watching this guy's YouTube video, the mainstream media has not yet picked up on this breaking story. Not even a Drudge siren yet. But just wait. This guy's going to prove his case by using a polygraph test. Basically, we'll be holding him to the same standards as one of the fine ladies and gentlemen who would appear on MTV's "Exposed."

Using WND's same standards of journalism, however, let me attempt to play a bit of devil's advocate, here. Using my imaginary reverse aging machine to determine what the man in question, Larry Sinclair, looked like in 1999, when he was a spry lad of 37 or so, let me just say -- not a chance. Sorry. Even if Obama had been trolling around upscale Chicago lounges in his limo for crack and tricks, perhaps thinking that Y2K was just going to end it all anyway, the odds of him picking up someone that looked like Sinclair, even a de-aged-by-eight-years Sinclair, are zero. There's a reason the guys from the escort services don't look like that. Not exactly a high-demand item, let's just say. The chances, in fact, are probably about as big as the chances that Sinclair would be able to get past the velvet rope of an upscale Chicago lounge.

Now, some might say WND is just throwing whatever slime it can, hoping some of it eventual sticks to the wall, particularly since another top headline on the right is "Obama mentor identified as communist." And there's another whole story about Obama's campaign, surprisingly enough, refusing to comment on this.

But nay. Go on, WND. Pursue this story and prove us all wrong. By the way, here's a scoop: Mike Huckabee and I once shot up crystal meth in a Wheeling, W.V. Knight's Inn, followed by seven hours of reciprocal fisting and a room service order of squirrel taquitos. Truly. I look forward to seeing your interview request in my inbox tomorrow.

(Sorry for the graphic imagery, but hey -- they started it!)

What would the founding fathers do? Keep quiet.

I'm now convinced that Richard Brookhiser, senior editor of National Review, works out at my gym. Or at least a darn good doppelganger. As I finished up my ab routine this evening, I could have sworn he was the one next to me who took the big ball away when I was finished.

The thing is, he's the level of celebrity you can never be sure about. You certainly can't go up and ask. If it's not him, it's not like you just asked if he was Anderson Cooper or even Paul Rudd. He's not going to say, "No, but I get that a lot." In all likelihood, he's not going to know who Richard Brookhiser is and think you're quite odd.

On the other hand, if it is him, you're immediately suspect for recognizing him, too, especially when you don't exactly fit the average National Review demographic. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have even thought it if I hadn't seen him on Colbert last night, although I've been familiar with him since we had to read his Washington biography back in freshman university political science.

Supposedly, Matt Damon works out at my gym when he's in town. Why don't I ever see him, darn it? Ah, well. I wonder: If a conservative writer works out at Crunch, specifically doing ab crunches, does that make him a Crunchy Con?

Happy Super (um, Duper) Tuesday!

I went back and forth several times, but I cast my vote this morning for Hillary Clinton. And, should Barack Obama ultimately pull it off, I'll have no problem supporting him in the general election.

This is the first time I've ever voted in a presidential primary where it actually mattered. I just missed the 1996 primary because I was too young, although I was old enough for the general election (not that the primary really mattered by the time it got to Texas, anyway). In 2000, I threw a vote to Bill Bradley, whom I really liked but was already long gone from the race. In 2004, there was a really tight race in my county for sheriff that was going to be decided in the Republican primary, so I held my nose and voted in the Republican primary, skipping the presidential section (and ardently stopping the election volunteers from stamping an "R" on my voter's registration).

With that behind me, I look forward to eating hummus and watching the returns tonight. I even switched a show ticket I had so I could be home for it. Isn't that incredibly dorky? If it's a bad night for the greased-up Wink Martindale clone, as I hope it is, it will all be worth it.

A side note: CNN was at my polling place this morning, but as they obviously were there to gauge Latino voter opinion, they paid me no attention.

Self-abuse made easy

I have, on several occasions, written about the off-the-wall columnists on display at WorldNetDaily. Honestly, I could do an entire blog on nothing but that if I had a stronger stomach. Here's a nice little sampling of the wisdom set forth in the past several days:

• RingmasterJoseph Farah asserts that one of the presidential candidates is mentally ill, namely suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. It's an exclusive! (for anyone who hasn't already read the Mayo Clinic page on the disorder). Now, he doesn't want to say which one she is...I mean he or she is. Her...I mean, his or her rhymes with Billary Hinton, but he's not going to be so classless as to name who he's talking about. Farah then proves his point by listing the symptoms of the disorder, which applies to pretty much anyone who has ever sought public office higher than state railroad commissioner. Oh, and he ends the column with a record 16 questions in a row. That's called nagging personality disorder.
• Political science mastermind Chuck Norris implores everyone to vote for Mike Huckabee because preventing gay marriage is one of the most important issues facing our country. I assume that because it's mentioned four times in the column. It turns out he's trying to push the gay rights movement back to the 70s because that was the last time his moustache was in style. Chuck Norris doesn't write bland columns. He opens the dictionary and the words assemble into them out of fear.
• The beyond adjectives Ann Coulter mourns her father as anyone would: by bashing liberals. Because, you know, politicizing a death is tacky only if the guy's last name was Wellstone.
• The homo-obsessed dotard Les Kinsolving regurgitates a Wikipedia entry on the Episcopal Church in Colonial times to complain about sodomy.

And so on. And this is the top tier. Some other guy challenged Huckabee to a fist fight, but I can't even remember his name now. It's pretty scary when the most coherent columnist on a site is Pat Buchanan.

Farewell, independence

I forgot to mention yesterday that I'm now officially a New Yorker. And also officially a Democrat.

Yes, just before leaving for the holidays, I finally got around to getting my New York driver's license, simultaneously registering to vote. Apparently, to vote in the primaries here, you have to be registered in a particular party. And there's no way I'm going to allow an R by my name.

I haven't made up my mind yet about my choice, though. I'm watching Barack Obama give his victory speech in Iowa as I type this, and he's still probably my top choice. Yeah, there was that whole ex-gay Gospel singer thing, but--as I apparently never blogged on my thoughts about that--my end feeling about the situation is that it was the singer who was compromising, not Obama. John Edwards just creeps me out sometimes with that Joel Osteen vibe. Hillary Clinton could still change my mind again, and I'd love to see those Clinton-hating veins pop out of the Limbaugh et al foreheads over the next four to eight years. The rest would just be a wasted vote. This is coming from someone who voted for Bill Bradley in the 2000 Democratic primary in Texas.

As for Mike Huckabee? Well, he turns my stomach a lot less than Mitt Romney. I'll give him that. Considering he once called for the quarantine of AIDS patients, this says a lot more about Romney than it does about Huckabee. Plus, Limbaugh and Ann Coulter hate him, so there's a plus.

I guess there could be one silver lining to a Huckabee presidency. It's a lining about the width of a cell wall, but a lining, still. Finally there would have been a U.S. president who shared my name. You know, since that homophobic, doltish dwarf from Massachusetts blew his chance back in 1988.

Les Kinsolving: The muttering dotard of the White House Press Corps

As fascinating as the World Net Daily rogues gallery of writers is -- Grandpappy Joseph "Uses More Questions Marks Than Periods" Farah, Star "Quarantine All Sodomites" Parker, Ted "'Bee Movie' Promotes Satanism" Baehr, Hal "I Know I Said It Thirty Years Ago, But We're In The Last Days, Really" Lindsey, Pat "Nothing In Quotation Marks Could Come Close To The Real Horror" Buchanan -- nothing compares with the piece of work known as Les Kinsolving.

The name probably doesn't ring a bell, but anyone who's ever watched a White House press briefing in the last several decades has seen him. Or any regular watcher of "The Daily Show," for that matter. He's the old goat who always rattles off some tinfoil hat question that whomever is handling the conference quickly bats away.

For anyone who's ever attended a City Council meeting, think of him as the zany lady who always sits in the front row, reeking of McCormick Gin and cat litter, and has a 15-minute diatribe prepared on the city's coyote problem or some other matter that's conflated to a crisis in her head only. The one to whom the mayor always nods politely to after the speech but would run like hell if he ever saw her on the street.

At any rate, World Net Daily is up in arms because White House spokeswoman Dana Perino brushed off the "questions" about AIDS that Kinsolving had prepared in honor of World AIDS Day. Here's the exchange:

KINSOLVING: "Two domestic questions. The Media Research Center – with the Centers for Disease Control's statistics that HIV/AIDS in the U.S. is still a great deal higher among men who have sex with men �"

PERINO:: "Let's move on to the next question. I'm not even going to dignify�"

KINSOLVING: "No�"

PERINO: "I'm not, Les, unless you want to just move on altogether. What's your next question?"

KINSOLVING: "All right. In major cities like Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, there are reports that gay bathhouses facilitate�"

PERINO: "Okay, Keith, go ahead. Les, it's inappropriate�"

KINSOLVING: "Inappropriate?"

KINSOLVING: "AIDS isn't that�"

PERINO: "Just stop it, stop it."

This is actually interesting for what it says about both the actors involved. Kinsolving absolutely hates homos to the point that he'd like to see them in ovens. Meanwhile, Perino is stuck with that White House policy to talk about AIDS without ever, ever mentioning the gays. And World Net Daily spins the whole thing to say that the White House has banned questions about AIDS altogether. No, they just don't want to listen to a senile nut rattle off Brent Bozell's doctored statistics about it. And they don't mention the gays EVER, except in cloaked language about marriage amendments.

Synchronize your bigotry, guys. It's embarrassing when you show up to a party in clashing outfits.

Presence makes the heart grow harder

Prior to living in New York, I was, for the most part, ambivalent to Rudy Giuliani. With the exception of his appearance in that one Rage Against The Machine music video, he seemed like an affable enough guy. Being a Texan, I thought any Republican who didn't hate the homos was kind of a cool novelty.

Then, I moved here and noticed the deep-seated contempt so many long-time New Yorkers had for the man. That made me take notice. After all, I disliked George W. Bush long before he had the chance to show his true colors in the White House.

Now that ambivalence is gone. He's crossed the line into the unforgivable. Most egregious was his decision to kiss the butt of Family Research Council executive director Tony Perkins -- who, by the way, has some ties to white supremacist groups in the not-so-distant past -- by coming up with some bizarre circumstance under which he'd support a federal marriage amendment. The other was his equally bizarre decision to root for the Red Sox. He explained that one away by saying he'd always support the American League team in the World Series, unless, perhaps, the Mets were involved. You hear that Houston, St. Louis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Washington, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, Denver, Miami and the sad half of Chicago? He automatically hates your teams.

Seriously, though, do you know how much of a spit-in-the-face it is to Yankee fans for him to come out for the Red Sox? Giuliani had better hope his next appearance at a Yankees game isn't on Bat Day. And I wonder what that gay couple -- you know, that one who took him in after one of his many marriages failed -- thinks of his sudden support, albeit tepid support, for a marriage amendment? Politicians pander. I know. But these turncoat moments are so egregious that I'll bet even Mitt Romney's embarrassed for him.

Impotent insults

Dealing with idiocy turns me into a nit-picky bitch. Just for fun, let's take a look at a voice from my hometown:

There are reasons people support Republicans

Glenn Kamprota writes of the GOP, “With its mismanagement of Iraq, Katrina relief, the budget and Social Security ‘reform,’ as well as its demonizing of gays and immigrants and hypocritical hysteria over family values, the GOP might very well have deserved what it’s getting.”

Demonizing gays? You mean the same gay agenda (read hysteria) that is trying to ram their lifestyle down everyone’s throat no matter our beliefs. Or the (illegal) immigrants who take the jobs (many which Americans would take), don’t pay taxes, send billions to Mexico and clog up the health system. I used to be a Democrat before they turned to the far left. I never loved the big busines GOP, but at least most of them are against abortion, gay militants and trying to keep some family values.

The GOP will get my vote unless a good third party should arise.

Paul Pousson, Angleton

You know, I could mention that in three mere paragraphs, Mr. Pousson -- who it seems used to love Democrats until they started to get to chummy with the fags, Mex'cans (and not said here, but presumably, the uppity blacks) -- managed to misspell both the name of Glenn Krampota (great guy, by the way) and the easily-fixed-by-spellcheck word "business." Or that Mr. Pousson -- a red-blooded, non-immigrant name if I ever heard one -- uses "gay agenda," a singular noun that doesn't fit with the later plural possessive pronoun "their." Or the absolute idiocy of basing a vote on the things that the GOP, when you look at it, haven't really done a great job of making progress on, anyway.

But I won't mention those things. What I will mention is the unintentional hilarity of the last sentence in the middle paragraph. There are two ways to interpret it as written. Either the Republicans are all gay militants who are trying to preserve family values while fighting abortion, or the Republicans are against three things: abortion, gays and the preservation of family values. Keep your compound constructions parallel, kiddies. Grammar lesson for the day.

Perhaps I'm being too mean here. After all, Mr. Pousson isn't a professional writer. So let's look at someone who is. Ann Coulter -- whom we recently learned is a perfected Jew, or Jewess, as she would probably say -- doesn't care much for Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee. In fact, Huckabee and Thompson both had the audacity not to hate Bill Clinton so much they smell the stench of his cologne while they sleep at night. Says she:

Huckabee teamed up with that guy to talk to children about healthy eating habits. Ironically, the obesity campaign kicked off almost exactly nine years from the very Palm Sunday on which President Clinton used a cigar as a sexual aid on Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.

Ann, how, pray tell, is that ironic? A coincidence, perhaps, but where is the irony? Did C. Everett Koop recently publish a paper indicating that cunnicigarus causes weight gain? 'Cause otherwise, I'm not getting it. I know the word has been diluted of all meaning by pre-teens blogging on MySpace -- "I went to see 'Bratz,' and my BFF Lindsey was there that day, too! Isn't that ironic?????" -- but William Safire would totally kick your ass if he ever stooped to reading WorldNetDaily or the handful of podunk papers that still carry your column. Healthy eating habits, by the way, means actually eating something every once in a while. Try it sometime!

OK, now I have to go scour this post for errors. That's the one danger in writing something criticizing others' grammar and language. If you made a mistake while doing so, that would be, like, ironic.

Oh, and one more song down on the theme song situation. No Liszt's "Liebestraume." Darn it.

*knock knock knock* Housekeeping!

The truly observant might notice I just made a few long overdue adjustments to my links. Mostly, I needed to add some fabulous folks who visit here regularly and actually talk back to me -- and if I forgot anyone, slap me now.

Unfortunately, I also had to delete one. I won't even say which one. This was a rather large blog that didn't even know I existed, so me even mentioning it is about like somebody saying "I'm going to boycott McDonalds. That'll show 'em!" But this is my podium, so I'll bitch anyway.

The reason for the deletion was not even for anything the blogger him/herself particularly had done. However, posts about the whole Folsom Street Fair/Miller ads situation, which I don't even feel like addressing myself, gave way to some of the nastiest, most homophobic comments I've seen since, well, Ja Rule, I guess. One commenter went so far as to suggest that there was no need to worry about the people in the ad in question, because they'd all be dead of AIDS next year, or something like that. Strangely enough, this blog was one that went on and on about DailyKos commenters being over the top and was calling on freaking Democratic politicians who have nothing directly to do with Kos to revoke them. Yet the AIDS comment and several like it sat untouched for days. And there was no recourse to flag such nasty comments. So, bye, babe.

Seriously, if anyone REALLY wants to figure out which one, it's not that hard. I did a post long ago about all my links. Mazes on TGI Friday's placemats are tougher to crack.

ENDA scare tactics

Here's yet another ignoramus discovered in the sewer of World Net Daily: the neck-less Mychal Massie, perhaps the recipient of Jerry Falwell's donated jowls upon his death.

Today, he's terrified of the potential ramifications of passing the Employee Non-Discrimination Act:

In layman's terms, said lawyer-speak means, if ENDA becomes law (and I am in no way attempting to inject humor here), (Mike's note: Good, because if you were, you failed miserably) the branch manager of your local bank could, without fear of penalty, come to work looking like "Boy George in Liza Minnelli 1980s drag makeup, complete in his working girl commuter-friendly disco sneakers." And there wouldn't be a thing the bank could do or say about it – no matter how offended its customers might be or how uncomfortable it would make the other employees.

Passage of ENDA means that the surgeon scheduled to perform your operation could decide to do same in his blond wig with full mascara and his Playtex plus-size bra, and there wouldn't be a thing the hospital could say or do.

It means that your child's second-grade teacher could decide she was going to dress like a man, complete with makeup to simulate facial hair, and the school would have no recourse. And it goes without saying that the owner of a local Bible bookstore would be powerless to prevent a homosexual employee from holding hands with his or her homosexual lover within the workplace. Any attempt to prevent said behavior would result in immediate litigation.

Now that he's sufficiently frightened Bertha Sue from Peoria into think that Varla Jean Merman is going to dropkick Mr. McFeely out of the way and start showing up every day with her special deliveries, allow me to inject a little rationality here. ENDA means NONE of those things.

You see, Mr. Massey, corporate America, school districts and hospitals have these crazy things called dress codes. Just like the bank branch manager isn't showing up to work now in orange crocs, tattered sweatpants and a "No Fat Chicks" T-shirt and the surgeon isn't performing vasectomies in a top hat and tails. People are expected to dress a certain way for certain jobs, and ENDA wouldn't change that.

Massey is purposely melding campy drag acts with transgendered people when, in reality, or at least in my experience, those are two circles of a Venn diagram that have very little overlap. Most transgendered people I have known have dressed rather conservatively, in fact.

Nor would ENDA give Steve and Andrew the right to start groping in front of a shelf full of Joel Osteen's latest self-help advice book to the horror of Christian bookstore patrons. Workplaces are allowed to have rules against public displays of affection, and ENDA wouldn't change that.

I can't decide whether Massie is just a moron, or he assumes anyone who reads his column is a moron. Or both. Whatever. I'm done now, anyway. I'm at work, and it's really hard to type with these Lee's Press-On Nails on my fingers.

The smutty professor

In a blink-and-you-missed scandal, Jerry Lewis used the word "fag" in an aborted joke in a late-hour segment of his annual telethon (specifically, he called either an invisible person or a camera an "illiterate fag," but the clip was rather baffling). He subsequently issued an apology, and that seemed to be the end of it. And honestly, that's fine with me.

So why was I not as forgiving with Ann Coulter and Isaiah Washington when they used the word to a much broader outcry? It's not because I'm particularly a fan of Lewis. He was fine but not outstanding in a production of "Damn Yankees" I saw years ago, but his movies have always annoyed the hell out of me. But every once in a while, I let the "leave the poor old man alone" defense stand.

Perhaps this is because of my grandmother. Gaga, as we called her (thanks to my oldest sister), died more than 11 years ago, but she was the only grandparent I ever really knew. She was already in her 60s and somewhat feeble by the time I was born, but I always knew she was a powerful woman. Her husband, my mother's father, was a rather rough man by the limited accounts I've heard, and he died when my mother was only 12, leaving my grandmother to raise her daughter alone. She didn't run to another man. She worked and raised my mother on her own, which was pretty darn good for rural Texas in the early 1950s.

Gaga, however, was a product of her time and place, and in matters of race, would often say some jaw-droppingly awful things in that regard. Loudly. In public. Sometimes it was unintentionally funny. She used to call her cleaning lady her "colored girl." Near the end of her life, when she had to move in with my parents, she also referred to our cleaning lady as my mother's "colored girl." And my mother's maid was white.

Even the worst things she said, however, were not hateful at the core. Just ignorant. I never saw her treat anyone badly. In fact -- and I hope this doesn't sound like one of those "some of my best friends" comments, because that's not what I'm intending -- her physical therapist near the end of her life was black, and they became close enough to the point that she wept when she heard my grandmother had died.

Maybe that's why I'm fairly forgiving of Lewis. He's a goofy old man raised on Friar's Club roasts and smoky backrooms. He's said stupid things before, like saying that no female comedienne -- is that redundant? -- has ever been funny. But I don't think he's hateful.

Coulter had a long line of horrible comments behind her -- things like saying she had gay friends, but she knew they were going to hell and such -- when she said faggot, and she was proud of her remark. Washington hemmed, hawed, apologized, backtracked and went all over the map afterward. Lewis quickly admitted he was wrong and apologized. Good for him.

But I'm still turning off the TV any time "Cinderfella" comes on.

No, you da ho!

I simply cannot get my dander up about Larry Craig. I mean, if I had to nail down my feelings about the situation and ensuing coverage, I guess it would be similar to my thoughts on Mark Foley last year. But while the Foley situation made me angry, the Craig situation, well, is just damn hilarious.

I mean, to hear Sean Hannity and the like having to talk about foot-tapping in restrooms is reward enough. Pages of editorial cartoons featuring toilet-bound elephant Savion Glovers is icing. Any speech that can juxtapose "Thank you for coming out" with "I am not gay, I never have been gay" easily beats "I am a gay American." And all this took place in a state in which you can't spell the capital without "boi."

Really, what do I care whether the dude resigns? It's not like the governor is going to appoint anyone better...oh, the governor. That's the best part. I didn't realize until today that the governor of Idaho was named Butch Otter. Wow. Two gay slangs for one! Here's a picture of him with either a potato or a very optimistic condom:


Funny thing about Butch Otter is that he appears to be neither.

Idaho. So much more than Ruby Ridge. Who knew?

Presidential forum a wash

The Human Rights Campaign/Logo presidential candidate forum on gay issues isn't quite over yet -- Hillary Clinton just took the stage -- but even with the worsening streaming video from Logo's Web site, the nut of this event is already pretty clear. Gay rights issues will not be a deciding factor for me in the upcoming Democratic primary.

Every candidate has the same song and dance: No to marriage, yes to civil unions, yes to employment discrimination laws and yes to repealing "don't ask, don't tell." True, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich are to be applauded on being the only ones to supporting full marriage equality, but being realistic is a bitch, isn't it?

Were I grading the individual candidates, John Edwards seemed the most uncomfortable and Clinton as of now seems most at ease, followed closely by Barack Obama. Of course, Clinton's on the friendliest of territories, with the HRC obviously in her corner.

As for the forum itself, I knew it would be -- pardon my French -- a circle jerk, and it didn't disappoint in that regard. Bill Richardson got the toughest questions for his support of DOMA and his use of the word "maricon" on a Don Imus appearance, and he handled them poorly. So why did Edwards and Clinton, both of whom have had some equally dubious moments in this regard, get a free pass? And why the heck was Melissa Etheridge asking Richardson about bark beetles?

Pity the Republican candidates all declined an offer for a similar forum. Now that would have been entertaining.

Mike Huckabee almost gets it

So, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-Quixotic) responded to Michael Moore's latest film "Sicko" with the retort, "Well, he's fat." OK, he said a little more than that. Quoth he, per The Associated Press:

"Frankly, Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs so much in this country. He clearly is one of the reasons that we have a very expensive system. I know that from my own personal experience," said Huckabee, who lost more than 110 pounds and became an avid runner after he was diagnosed with diabetes.

Well, yes, actually, that's not a bad point, Mikey, despite the childishness of the premise that, in order to retain a higher ground, is preventing me from making any Arkansas jokes. And he goes on:

"Anything we could do to help steer people to healthier habits comes back to us many times over and that's a real focus that needs to happen," Huckabee said. "Right now, insurance companies will pay $100,000 or more for a quadruple bypass but wouldn't pay a couple hundred dollars for a person to have nutrition counseling and maybe to work with an exercise physiologist to determine how to get those extra pounds off. ... It's a lot better to spend some more money on the prevention side than it is on the intervention side."

Again, a good point. I'm lucky enough, in fact, to have insurance that covers my yearly check-ups in full. But guess what? Do you think all those uninsured people have the money to spend those hundreds of dollars for nutritional counseling for their whole family? Do you think they even can afford regular doctor visits so that their first medical treatment is a severe problem in the emergency room, when the enormous bill gets shifted over to the taxpayers anyway?

Perhaps it's time for the government to take that last bit of advice, eh?

WND: Bush is a mind-boggling loser

Sometimes it's hard to pick out a good title. So why not use two? Here's the title Joseph Farah used for his column on Bush today:

And here's the title for that same column that appeared -- on the same page -- as part of the column links on the side:

Always go with your first instinct, I say.

Farewell Falwell

Grave-dancers always make me feel a little ghoulish, to be honest. I try to think of a redeeming moment from just about anyone when they die. And in this case, it's difficult. Jerry Falwell championed segregation and fought against civil rights, showed zero compassion for AIDS victims, pushed a dangerous dominionist agenda for the country and took the effort to dehumanize and stigmatize people like myself to almost sublime levels of absurdity (see Tinky-Winky).

About the best I can come up with is those first days after Matthew Shephard's murder. It was Falwell who agreed to meet with Rev. Mel White's Soulforce in an effort to try to tone down the rhetoric against gays and lesbians to perhaps quell further violence. It was a damage control move, I'm sure, because remember: This was when many of us were getting our first look at the nasty underbelly of Fred Phelps -- who, by the way, was no fan of Falwell either and will undoubtedly be picketing his funeral. And, as far as I can see, it didn't really change anything. But it was an effort that showed a shred of decency, at least.

However, those who are wringing their hands over some of my progressive brethren's lack of compassion about Falwell's death, let's recall those few days after Sept. 11, not 24 hours after Congress members from both sides of the aisle stood together at the capitol building and sang "God Bless America." It was Falwell who fired one of the first partisan shots, blaming the attack on the ACLU, atheists, gays and the rest of that laundry list of the far right's enemies. He obviously cared little about our mourning then, so I can hardly condemn those who care little about ours now. I'll also be sure to visit the hand-wringers should Michael Moore or Jimmy Carter drop dead anytime soon.

At any rate, rest in peace, Rev. Falwell. Here's hoping that God shows you a bit more compassion than you showed a good portion of the population during your lifetime.

Wrexis nexus

While I'm sending out positive vibes, I'd like to send a few out to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, for whom casting my vote was one of my last official acts as a New Jerseyan. I never saw a wreck on the Garden State Parkway that wasn't horrific, mostly because everyone, including state troopers, will pass you like you're standing still if you're driving 80 mph. Compared to the wrecks I used to drive by, he came out lucky.

My own luck with cars has been about as good as my luck with pets, so I always have a special empathy for car crash survivors. Those dreadful car insurance commercials in which the people having some sort of banal conversation in their car get sideswiped are quite disturbing to me. Take a look at my roster of vehicles:

Car #1: 1994 Plymouth Sundance
As a stupid 16-year-old, I made the error of letting an unlicensed 15-year-old friend borrow my car for a drive to the store less than a tenth of a mile away. She promptly backed into the car behind her. Knowing the parental ramifications of letting someone else borrow my car, I said I was driving and took the blame for that accident. God, I hope my parents never find this blog. The car was repaired, but three years later, when I was a sophomore in college, I totaled the car when I sped into the back of a truck at 50-something miles per hour on I-45 in Houston. That wreck gave me nightmares for quite a while.

Car #2: 1998 Plymouth Breeze
Less than a year after I got this car, I T-boned an uninsured woman on Westheimer in Houston who had suddenly decided to make a right turn from the left lane. It was a pretty minor accident, but it put my car out of service for a few weeks and it was never the same again. The axles were off, I think, so I managed to get eight flat tires in the course of a few years. I finally sold it.

Car #3: 2005 Nissan Altima
This was another car that lasted about a year. Pretty much the same thing happened as with the Breeze, save this was a lost Pennsylvania tourist who made a left turn from a far right lane and that this one was at about 60 mph on the Atlantic City Expressway. The car, again, was totaled. My insurance payoff--from the woman's insurance, not mine--on this one was pretty sweet, actually, and eventually helped me finance my move to New York.

Car #4: 2006 Nissan Altima
This one actually made it until I moved to New York, whereupon I gave it to my parents.

So, to keep count, that's four accidents, three of them bad enough to deploy airbags, two cars totaled and one trip to the hospital. Amazingly, my only injuries were a few deep cuts from the airbag in the second wreck and a sore chest in the fourth. That unbreakable Bruce Willis character has nothing on me. But I should also point out that only one was really my fault!

What is a mandatory elective, anyway?

As Texans try to decide whether the Bible should be taught in every public school, one renegade mayor might be doing more harm to his own cause than anything the ACLU could muster up.

Fresh from his national news-grabbing move to ban the n-word via resolution, Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley and his City Council have now passed another loaded resolution, this one demanding that public school reinstate daily prayers. Never one to mince words, the mayor uses the usual defense of such a move in saying no one would be forced to pray, but adds this:

“Non-Christians can pray, too, if they want to,” Corley said. “Who knows, maybe we can convert some of these non-Christians.”

The mask didn't stay on long, did it? A neutral study of the Bible is ultimately a good thing, and I value the courses I took on it in college. But somehow, I figure suddenly asking every school to put in a Bible study elective will force districts to throw the load on teachers who probably aren't prepared for such a course. And grandstanding like that doesn't do much to erase that cynicism.

Besides: The rock-solid fundamentalists would never stand for a true neutral teaching of the Bible, anyway. Do you think they want their kids to learn the similarities between Noah's ark and Gilgamesh? Do they really want a historical perspective of all of those Old Testament stories? Or would they rather everything be taught as a literal historic retelling without any context? Because teaching the Bible as an infallible document ain't a neutral study. Sorry. True study of the Bible should cause one to question the blind faith they've been taught all their lives, and many high schoolers aren't mature enough to do so. So be careful what you with for, fellas.

Close to the maddening crowd

The year of the pig, indeed.

Honestly, by themselves, I couldn't care less about Ann Coulter's latest comments. Read the second paragraph in what I said about Tim Hardaway. Was anyone really surprised? I mean, she's already called Al Gore a fag and insinuated that both Bill and Hillary Clinton are gay. So why should her comments suddenly ascend above a third-grade level now? Meanwhile, as I noted in this blog's early days, the unmarried Coulter has been known to pal around in West Hollywood with lesbian conservative Tammy Bruce -- whom I stupidly called Tammy Baldwin in that post to which I'm referring. Totally different person.

I'm also not a big fan of the demanding a renouncement game from everyone aligned with a certain political movement, a practice I most commonly associate with Sean Hannity. However, to their credit, a lot of conservative bloggers--including The Lone Star Times' David Benzion and, of all people, Michelle Malkin--had harsh words for Coulter. But of course, a lot of folks out there were quick to jump on any dissenters in an effort to protect their right to call people a faggot -- which they have, of course, but I suppose free speech to them means freedom from criticism as well. And that got me to thinking: This just hasn't been a great year for the gays so far. Let's see:

1) Some pipe-wielding monster in Detroit beats a 72-year-old guy to death after calling him a faggot.
2) A guy gets beat up after leaving a PATH train because he was wearing pink pants.
3) Michael Savage equates Melissa Etheridge raising a child to child abuse.
4) The Tim Hardaway nonsense.

This is all in the course of a matter of weeks. And to think none are related to the other is folly. Degrading someone to subhuman status in speech trickles down the idea that it's OK to beat such a person with a pipe. Perhaps as this nastiness reaches a crescendo, we'll continue to hear more sane voices from the right like Benzion who at least know how to disagree respectfully.

In happier gay news, I didn't realize until now that this guy came out the other day:


Christian Chavez. Never heard of him? He's a singer with pop group RBD, which spun off from the soap opera "Rebelde." Don't ask how I knew who he was. But welcome to the fold, Christian!

Another nail in the coffin of nuance

A few months ago, I mentioned my admiration for Leonard Pitts Jr. while lamenting the lack of decent columnists around anymore (one less, in fact, with the recent death of Molly Ivins). Unfortunately not only are writing skills no longer a requirement to be a published columnist, apparently neither is understanding of basic facts.

Let's take today's column by Larry Elder, entitled "Global Warming Turns People 'Gay'" -- got to love how World Net Daily always has to put the word gay in quotation marks, by the way. It begins as such:

Global warming alarmists – despite their best efforts – seem incapable of convincing the Bush administration. So here's my suggestion. Make the scientists tell the president that global warming turns people gay.

The idea came to me after seeing a Super Bowl Snickers commercial and learning of the "controversy" that followed it. In the ad, two guys chewing on either end of the candy bar inadvertently touch lips. Shocked, they decide to do something "manly" and demonstrate their heterosexuality. How? They pull down their shirts and rip off their chest hairs. A pro-gay-rights group called the ad homophobic and demanded the Snickers people stop showing it. Clearly, America runs rampant with gay-haters.

So, imagine if scientists simply told Bush that global warming made people gay.

On the surface, it's a surrealist premise that doesn't even work, an attempt to tie together two news stories that have nothing to do with one another without providing sufficient reason why. It's kind of like my beginning directing project in college, in which I spliced together footage of Dali paintings and scenes from "Carrie" to a Natalie Merchant song. I scored well on it at the time, but looking back now, I wonder, "Why in the hell did I ever do that?"

More problematic, however, is the fact that the opening assertion is absolutely wrong.

The furor over the Snickers campaign was never about that one individual commercial. If Elder had bothered to pay attention to the story, he would have realized that most had no problem with the commercial until seeing the additional material Mars put around the promotion on its Web site. In addition to showing footage of football players acting repulsed when seeing the original commercial, it also provided an alternate ending in which the men reacted to the accidental kiss by drinking motor oil and one beating the other senseless with a wrench.

Alas, however, we now must be able to boil everything down to one sentence. Gay groups thought a Snickers ad was homophobic. Al Gore said he invented the Internet. Record cold temperatures on one day in Michigan prove that global warming is a hoax.

None of those sentences accurately describes its respective situation, but I guess they all make great thesis statements, eh, Larry?