Prism Warden

Programming Note

2005-10-04T03:30:00.000-05:00

It is now offical. I have apparently been swallowed up by the blogging conglomerate known as The Malcontent. It's possible roofies were involved in all this. Something about a contract signed in a seedy club and using a certain cute husband to lure me into submission. Who are we to question the cut-throat tactics of the blogosphere?

I'm not sure what that will mean for this blog. For now, I plan on keeping it, possibly as an outlet for some of my more, ahem, vehement personal and political musings (read: apoplexies). It's a little strange to have only blogged for a month before wandering off for greener pastures, so I'll try to keep something in this space that will hopefully be just as interesting.

Hey, anything beats the endlessly tedious crap I put in my livejournal.

Politicians Pander to People Like Me

2005-10-03T13:25:00.000-05:00

I don't usually spend time on quizzes, but here I am:

You are a
Social Moderate
(55% permissive)

and an...
Economic Conservative
(61% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Centrist

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Not as right-wing as you'd think, is it?

h/t Gay Patriot

This is Time, Right?

2005-10-03T10:14:00.000-05:00

Entitled "The Battle Over Gay Teens," the cover story in the October 10th issue of Time Magazine takes on the contentious issue of gay youth and the political and cultural struggle to influence them. We know Time is deadly serious when they put the gayest youth they could possibly find in the cover shot. Honestly. A pink-striped shirt and a necklace rejected by Hot Topic for being just a little bit near.

The author gets the broad point out of the way right from the start:

. . .last year's big UCLA survey of college freshmen found that 57% favor same-sex marriage (only about 36% of all adults do). Even as adult activists bicker in court, young Americans--including many young conservatives--are becoming thoroughly, even nonchalantly, gay- positive.

Gay marriage is a foregone conclusion in this country. It is important to remember in a world of hyper-hysteria over the issue that young people in this country will pass gay marriage bills without blinking.

Still, the article is bizarrely balanced, even for Time. After noting the increasing acceptance of gay peers by heterosexual youth and the explosion of Gay-Straight Alliances in schools, the writer, John Cloud, turns endless sympathetic paragraphs over to the ex-gay movement and attendant Christian ministries.

Thompson never accepted a gay identity--"Heterosexuality is God's design," he says--and today he is a leading spokesman for young Christians rejecting homosexuality. Thompson says a new kind of bigotry has emerged--among gays. "Those of us who have chosen not to embrace this orientation are often misunderstood and sometimes even ridiculed," he writes in a pamphlet he distributes at campus speaking engagements.

Not only does he give religious conservatives equal time, the writer humanizes them:

Even those point scholars with the darkest stories of adversity, like Emory's Bryan Olsen, seem more buoyant than Point lets on. I heard Olsen speak to Point donors twice, once in New York City and again in Michigan. Both times he said that after his Mormon family learned he was gay when he was 15, he was sent to a boot camp for wayward teens in Ensenada, Mexico. Olsen says the facility, Casa by the Sea, required residents to wear shoes without backs so they couldn't run. He says that as punishment for a three-meal hunger strike, he was forced to sit in a stress position--cross-legged, with his nose touching a wall--for two hours. Olsen's small face, which is framed by a pop-star haircut that makes him look as though he's still 15, scrunches with tears when he gets to the next part: "I could only come home when I wrote my parents and promised to be straight and Mormon." There were gasps in the room the first time I heard him tell that story.

But much has changed since Olsen returned from Mexico in 2000. He and his parents haven't completely reconciled, and they aren't paying for his education. Olsen says they told him he had to choose between their financial help and "this lifestyle." But Olsen and his partner, Kyle Ogiela--they met in 2002--are welcomed at the family table every Sunday. Ogiela, 26, even works for Randy Olsen, Bryan's father, as the office manager of the family pest-control firm in Woodstock, Ga. As a Mormon, says Randy, 53, "I don't believe that men should be together. I never will. But I love him as my son. And he and his partner are good boys." Randy says his first reaction to Bryan's teen homosexuality was, "I'm going to find him the best hooker I can." But he says he and his wife sent Bryan to Casa not because he was gay but because he was a "totally unruly kid" who was "just so mean ... To go get that scholarship, I understand he had to be the poor little victim. But for three years, my wife and I were the victims." Seconds later, though, Randy yields again: "It's like God put a pair of new glasses on me ... I thought I could talk him out of [being gay]. But it's not something you can talk someone out of."

Time pulls off a near media impossibility in this article. It presents both sides of the issue, introduces both pro and anti gay figures as complex individuals rather than chariacatures, and reveals sexuality as a complicated social and familial issue rather than a mere label. People are allowed different beliefs and opinions without being labelled unmitigated human evil for having a disagreement.

A paragraph towards the end states it best:

Yet, according to Savin-Williams, most gay kids are fairly ordinary. "Perhaps surprising to researchers who emphasize the suicidality, depression, victimization, prostitution, and substance abuse of gay youth, gay teenagers generally feel good about their same-sex sexuality," he writes. A 56-year-old gay man with a slightly elfish mien, Savin-Williams has interviewed some 350 kids with same-sex attractions, and he concludes that they "are more diverse than they are similar and more resilient than suicidal ... They're adapting quite well, thank you."

If you find yourself with a little time near a news stand, give the entire article a read.

As a Southsider, I have to . . .

2005-10-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

Sox vs Sox

Oh, it's on.

Time to clean up the Wankees' mess.

AR Part Two: Me Me Me!

2005-10-02T00:25:00.000-05:00

This is an installment from the Adolescence Revisted series, started here.

I've been getting a little bit of grief over my comparisons of gay liberals with adolescents. Some believe it's an ad hominem attack beneath contempt. No, beneath contempt would be the various press releases of a certain task force.

My intention is not to call names, but to illustrate certain political approaches. When I think of politics, I try to reason my way through the swamps and swat aside the mosquitoes of emotion and midges of personal discontent. Politics oughtn't be an emotional business, though they almost always are. My guides are the Constitution and the Republic. No matter what my personal stakes or inconveniences, I try to discern what is the best way to go about something so that these things are kept intact. It is one thing to profess a love and respect for America and the Constitution. It is quite another to actually practice it. We hear plenty of the former while seeing little practice of the latter.

In the great gay debates, in the midst of it all, homosexuals often tell heteros "If you were me, if you had to live my life, you'd feel differently about gay rights and gay marriage!" That is the most often heard argument.

I'm gay. I live that life. I don't feel differently.

I have lived a life more affected by my sexuality than most people. If we're going to use our lives as a battering ram of reason, then indulge me as I delineate mine.

We'll call him V.

I had just come off one of the most psychopathic relationships I'd ever experienced. I wrote for various web publications. After I put out an article about an experience with the local police and the endless homophobic slurs I was subjected to in their presence, a boy, V, e-mailed me about it.

We hit it off. He was British, I, American. Over time, I grew more attracted to him, distance be damned. We smiled to each other every night over webcams and spent, literally, thousands of dollars saying hey on the phone. He bought a ticket and came to meet me in September, 2001. We spent a week of bliss before we dealt with the horror of Sept. 11th. Only by whim were we not in New York that day, as we had plans to visit that week but chose not to at the last minute. Even then, every member of his extended family and beyond called in desperation. It took us two weeks to find him a new flight home as he'd missed his in the grounding of the airlines.

Still, our relationship turned out to be very strong. I loved him and he loved me. But how could we make such a thing work? He had not finished British college, but we thought America offered us the best chance in terms of opportunity and career advancement.

We approached American immigration just as the INS disintegrated in the newly minted Department of Homeland Security. We found ourselves hitting barrier after barrier to his immigration. We consulted with every immigration attorney under the sun. We found the names of prominent gay-oriented immigration specialists who wanted endless thousands of dollars to even attempt immigration for V.

In a moment of desperation, we even drove to Canada, hoping his passport would be renewed for another three months. No deal.

It became abundantly clear that, given his level of education, V. immigrating to America was very much an impossibility. If we wanted to stay together, I had to move to Britain.

I did not want to move to Britain. I had a budding career here in the states. My aging parents had both fallen ill, and I didn't care to put 4,600 miles between us. Was that the choice facing me?

So it was. I bought a ticket and moved to Britain, leaving my entire life behind. I had no friends, no family, no job, no life outside of my boyfriend. Britain's laws are far more lax than America's. I could live there for six months, leave the country for a weekend, then re-enter and have my passport stamped for another six months. We continued on this way for years. Tony Blair and Labour had not yet passed an immigration act allowing for domestic partners, so it was not an option for us.

Though I set up a bank account and obtained credit cards, I could not work in Britain. I was reduced to free-lance writing for a meager income as we trudged along. I was effectively an illegal immigrant, a man without a home country, a nomad traveling across Europe trying to salvage some vestige of stability in a situation wrought by the lack of protections for gay relationships.

I spent nearly three years this way, my life in the air, my future the very essence of uncertainty.

No homosexual making a political argument can lecture me on the realities of domestic partnerships or gay marriage. I know. Not only do I know on the state level, but I was made painfully aware of it on the federal level.

And yet, I persist. There are methods to all of this. Yes, I would have liked it if the federal government recognized my relationship. It cost me beyond reckoning when it did not. I gave up everything because of it. My entire established life. When my mother had a heart attack, I was over four thousand miles away and helpless. There is no limit to the pain I suffered as a result of the situation.

But I believe in America and the Constitution. There are appropriate methods to get what we want. There are things above us, beyond us. There are institutions and systems that must endure when we've shuffled off this mortal coil. My personal pain and chaos is but one drop in the flood of the Republic. We cannot demolish that because I personally found discomfort and hardship. My wants and needs matter, but not so much that I'm willing to wreck the constitutional order and insist a few black robed arbiters with an agenda remake law and our foundations in their self-appointed images.

It is wrong. It is a recipe for governmental disaster. It is an attitude and an ideology that will have effects that will rain upon the generations to come. We, every single citizen, are the guardians of the Constitution. It is only ever as good as the viligance of the citizens.

Do not tell me it is your life. It is my life. And yet, I still understand the importance of the Constitution, the government, the Republic. It is not all about you. It is not all about me.

It is about those who come after.

And that is everything.

Last Constitution Hero

2005-09-30T11:04:00.000-05:00

President Bush on signing Campaign Finance Reform legislation:

. . . the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections.

I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.

I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.

Yet he signed the law anyway, only to see those things upheld in the courts.

Governor Schwarzenegger on vetoing the California gay marriage bill:

California Family Code Section 308.5 was enacted by an initiative statute passed by the voters as Proposition 22 in 2000. Article II, section 10 of the California Constitution prohibits the Legislature from amending this initiative statute without a vote of the people. This bill does not provide for such a vote.

The ultimate issue regarding the constitutionality of section 308.5 and its prohibition against same-sex marriage is currently before the Court of Appeal in San Francisco and will likely be decided by the Supreme Court.

When the head of an executive branch of government believes a piece of legislation is unconstitutional or presents even more constitutional problems to an issue clouded in murk, he does not sign it. That is the responsible course of action.

President Bush abdicated his executive responsibilities and handed this country campaign finance laws that are messier and more corrupt than ever with the advent of 503c groups. He did the easy thing to avoid negative press.

Governor Schwarzenegger has done the responsible thing, political blowback be damned.

Good for him.

h/t: MalContent

Hungry, Hungry Pinkists

2005-09-29T20:00:00.000-05:00

One of the great justifications of outing as a political tactic is the hypocrisy of it all. Having read endless screeds, rants, and denunciations from various left-wing blogs and message boards, I have reached one inescapable conclusion:

There are hordes of people in this world who cannot spell the word hypocrisy.

I just want to get it out there right now: I am firmly against hippocracy. We simply cannot allow our dread hippopotamus overlords determine the course of government. These are filthy river horses that think little white marbles are a form of sustenance for god’s sake.

That said.

Not only are half these gay radicals incapable of spelling the word, they’re also none too bright when it comes to understanding the concept.

If you believe homosexuals deserve protection under federal discrimination laws but vote against it, you are a hypocrite. If you believe homosexuals deserve protection under federal hate crimes law but vote against it, you are a hypocrite. If you are a gay man living in Boston who is married to another man, but you vote against gay marriage for someone else, you are a hypocrite.

Things like race, sexuality, and gender are not ideologies. They are characteristics. Sexual orientations do not take positions (ahem). Homosexuality is not liberal. Nor is it conservative or libertarian. It simply is what it is. Hypocrisy is an act of doing. One must do the opposite of what one preaches against.

Unchangeable characteristics are, by definition, incapable of being implicated in hypocrisy. A gay man may believe hate crimes are thought crimes and thus abhorrent law. A gay libertarian may reasonably believe discrimination law is unconstitutional. There are plenty of homosexuals on the Right and the Left who believe government has no business in marriage, and thus oppose gay marriage.

If a person is having gay sex, to be a hypocrite they must publicly state that people should not have gay sex. Simply having gay sex while being opposed to legislative proposals granting various kinds of status in discrimination, hate crimes, and marriage law is not a form of hypocrisy. By simple definition.

The hypocrisy argument is a tactic used by thought fascists who believe an immutable personal characteristic must dictate – without exception – the ideological and political state of a person’s mind.

So, this is the tolerant, open-minded Left, eh? We are all ideologically and intellectually bound to our genes and ingrained behaviors and must think accordingly, lest we be punished?

I remember this argument. White people used to make it. Against negro slaves.

Gay radicals who claim to be advancing a civil rights discussion in this country must be ever so proud of themselves.

(I promise this is my last post on outing and hypocrisy for awhile)

Andrew Sullivan - The Man With No Shame

2005-09-29T02:58:00.000-05:00

Almost one year ago, to the day, Andrew Sullivan wrote an excellent article on the perils and moral vacuity of outing homosexuals as a political weapon. Sullivan has himself been a target of the radical gay Left when his sexual activities were brought into the public sphere under the justification of - you guessed it - hypocrisy. In a piece filled with clarity and a deep understanding of the issue, Sullivan writes, in part:

. . . every moment we spend obsessing about the enemy within is one moment not spent spreading the message without. The thrill of exposure, the momentary feeling of self-righteousness and power that outing brings, may often surpass in excitement the daily grind of changing minds and witnessing to the truth. But only the grind moves us forward. And everything else ultimately takes us back.

Interestingly enough, Sullivan opens with an encounter with Mike Rogers, who he crowns "the new Robespierre of the gay world." As noted at the end of my post directly below this one, Rogers was highly involved in an attempted outing of Rep. David Dreier of California.

Surely, given his personal history with outing and his apparent distaste for Rogers' tactics, one would think Sullivan would condemn this activity and not give it the time of day.

You'd be wrong. Here is the Andrew Sullivan of today:

DREIER PUSHED ASIDE: Any bets that James Dobson and Karl Rove vetoed? Any bets why?

It seems attacking Republicans is a far higher priority for Mr. Sullivan than his principles. Once against the outing tactics of people like Mike Rogers, he now finds them a handy reference guide for grinding his political axe.

Andrew Sullivan - a man with no shame whatsoever.

The Politics of Outing

2005-09-28T16:28:00.000-05:00

It is a golden rule, universally acknowledged among my gay partners in crime, that the pettiest, cruelest thing one can do is out a closeted homosexual. It's a dictum taken so seriously, that violation threatens immediate excommunication from our circle of friends. It simply isn't done.

Our sexuality is one of the most private aspects of our lives. All of us, gay or straight, are motivated to reveal or withhold details based on a variety of factors that are unique to each individual. Though I am now out in every sense of the word, it took many years to come clean with my parents. My motivation, however, was not fear of disapproval, or being disowned, or shunned, or a hundred other things.

No, I really just didn't want my parents connecting me with any kind of sex in even the vaguest fashion. We're an awkward people, my clan, and sexual discussions are best had after several bottles of strong wine followed by long periods of sober avoidance. These are, after all, the people who threw a yellow book at me when I was 12 with a "Good luck, and godspeed."

People have varying degrees of comfort with their sexuality. I have friends who will eagerly relate their tales of conquest using fruit, napkins, drinks, and other available props in lavish re-enactments meant to amaze and arouse. I also have friends who spend late nights on sling rotationals in abandoned warehouses who would never breathe a word of it in any kind of company. Our willingness to be open is a matter of disposition and entitled to a certain degree of respect.

There are those, however, who have no such respect when they've coaxed the remaining tatters of conscience with the right motivation. The Malcontent recently nudged me towards this site, run by a stereotypically bitter gossip named Mike Rogers.

In Rogers' view, being Republican and gay are incompatible. Not only incompatible, but morally reprehensible. Surfing around his site, the phrases which leap out are standard gay lefty boilerplate. Gay Republicans are "self-loathing" people who "betray" their "brothers and sisters." Therefore, gay Republicans deserve outing if they are not already so.

Rogers claims the great motivator for these outings is hypocrisy. I have already posted at length on hypocrisy. It is the argument to be made when you have no other arguments.

I believe the real issue here is loyalty. People like Rogers demand strict loyalty among homosexuals to his fiercely partisan sensibilities. There can be no disagreement in ideas, methods, or priority. One commenter went so far as to compare gay Republicans to Uncle Toms (would the gay equivalent be an Aunt Patti?).

Homosexuals are not my brothers and sisters. My friends are my family, and they are my friends for a variety of reasons. I am not loyal to anyone out of a shared orientation. Neither am I loyal to white people due to the color of my skin. Were I to ever make a political argument that someone is betraying their brothers and sisters in the white race by supporting affirmative action, I would rightly be denounced as a virulent racist and bigot. It's an unconscienable mindset that should neither be encouraged nor supported.

Enforced racial, sexual, or gendered loyalty to one political party is a form of ideological slavery. People like Mike Rogers are the bounty hunters intended to use whips of gossip and privacy invasion to lash those errant thinkers back onto the plantation of partisan Democratic thought. Do not wander too far, lest you get the beating that is coming to you courtesy of Overseer Mike.

I have already noted that I am conservative and voted for Bush based on shifting priorities. While I am unabashedly pro gay marriage, I part with the gay left on the method and importance in obtaining it. There are simply greater issues facing the republic which demand my attention and vote. That does not mean I cannot compartmentalize the issues and work against the federal marriage amendment while supporting the broader goals of the conservative movement. That people like Rogers cannot separate gay marriage from larger issues is more a testament to his narrow-minded intolerance than any imagined self-loathing on my part.

These outings are about hatred and fanaticism. When you find yourself justifying delving into the sexual lives of political opponents, you are by definition radicalized. You are unleashing forces that are indisputably a double-edged sword. Under this standard any gay candidate for office is now open season. Our "brothers and sisters" are being pitted against one another in a very dangerous way. Do we really want to create an atmosphere within the gay community where we must fear each other to the point of paranoia? Do we want Republicans within the gay community tracking down a candidate's history of meth experimentation while Democrats start hitting up the sex clubs frequented by a Republican opponent?

The heterosexual world does that already. We must now do that to each other? This is considered looking out for our "brothers and sisters" in the community? Please.

There are other elements in the latest Rogers' story that strike an odd chord, like jarring a contemplative funny bone.

And, on top of the many sources above, this story has been confirmed by an individual who used to work with Mr. Berkowitz at, get this, Generation GOP. GenerationGOP is the organization created to recruit young people to the GOP platform (including the denial of civil marriage equality) and candidates.

My God, he's recruiting young people to be depraved Republicans! Replace the word Republican with homosexual, and that makes for an eerie familiarity in rhetoric.

Rogers claims one of the sources for his latest outing came from within the White House. If someone within the White House is not only aware of the person's orientation, but willing to share it with others, doesn't it track that the president or at least his advisors are aware of it as well? Wouldn't that grind against the notion that George Bush is a homophobic bigot who wants to cleanse the world of us all? (Not that I'd mind that train to Montana if Brokeback Mountain is any indication of what awaits).

Then there is the urging to contact the Jewish media. I realize Rogers is Jewish, but I cannot imagine what he hopes to achieve with this. As far as my experiences go, secular Democratic Jews seem to have little problem with homosexuality, and if he's banking on the fact they do, well, that's appealing to some pretty self-loathing impulses. If he thinks they're going to go wild over the "hypocrisy" of it all, well, good luck with that.

All that is aside from the fact that Jews tend to have some sort of pesky aversion to persecution in any form. It is a mystery.

People like Mike Rogers are anathema to the notion that what we do in our bedrooms is no one's business but our own. Had he limited this to merely political officials, his reasoning might make more sense. But notice his caterwauling that Anderson Cooper is not quite as out as Rogers would personally like him to be. Would he be happier if we all wore badges so the public may more readily identify us? Something in pink, perhaps? Three sides would be good. Oh, Mikey, but that's already been done, sugar.

People like Rogers deserve unabashed shunning within the community when they resort to these tactics. Not only does he break one of our most sacred codes, but he creates and nourishes an atmosphere that thrives on destroying the hard won sexual privacy of his so-called brothers and sisters.

This is no service to any of us, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican.

Note: I've contacted several gay rights organizations for comment. So far they have hemmed and hawed and seem very much like deer caught in headlights. We will see if the gay community will put their principles where their rhetoric lay.

Update: Karol at Alarming News notes the recently indicted Tom Delay will be replaced by Rep. David Dreier of California. Dreier was once subjected to a vigorous outing campaign led by Rogers. I think we can expect a reinvigorated attempt in coming weeks by those on the Left who have allowed themselves to be consumed by hatred.

h/t: Chad at Cake or Death

Welcome!

2005-09-28T01:51:00.000-05:00

I love this story.

DES MOINES, Iowa (Sept. 27) - A man who immigrated from Kenya to the United States found prosperity beyond his expectations on the day he became a U.S. citizen.

Shortly after Moses Bittok, of West Des Moines, took the oath of citizenship on Friday, he discovered he had a $1.89 million winning ticket from the Iowa Lottery's Hot Lotto game.

"It's almost like you adopted a country and then they netted you $1.8 million,'' Bittok said Monday as he cashed in his ticket. "It doesn't happen anywhere - I guess only in America.''

When I briefly emigrated to Britain, the oasis over the M6 offered me a free black, goopy mass consisting of dried blood that they insisted was some sort of breakfast comestible.

Pictures, Thousand Words, Etc.

2005-09-26T15:20:00.000-05:00

In a development everyone saw coming, Cindy Sheehan has been arrested in front of the White House today. The story, however, isn't half as interesting as the accompanying pictures:

Nothing epitomizes a mother's suffering quite like a diabolical, shit-eating grin.

It almost seems like a bit of childish fun, doesn't it? "Wheee, I'm going to be on TV again! Wheeeee!"

There she is . . . Miss anti-America . . .

Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She stood up and was handcuffed, then led to a police vehicle while protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching."

Yes, that is the point, after all. I suppose the greatest anti-war protest in all human history didn't generate the kind of media attention certain fame whores require.

It's a shame I have no vestiges of pity left for this woman, else this would have exhausted it. That's right, dear, embrace the crazy. After all your friends have left you and you're safely tucked away in the gentle white room, you'll find peace and a movie of the week contract.

They're Trying So Hard

2005-09-25T17:45:00.000-05:00

What happens when a major disaster doesn't offer up a racial feast the media can gnaw for weeks on end? Tch, you borrow one.

Rita's Victims ~~Wealthier~~ Whiter than Katrina's

I've read this article several times and cannot fathom its purpose.

Aside from, did you know Katrina's victims were mainly poor and black?

In case, you know, you missed it in the first several thousand stories.

In the Name of Sex, Booze, and Celibacy

2005-09-25T08:11:00.000-05:00

One of the most vivid memories I have of my freshman year at a Catholic university is that of a friend, Megan, standing in the boys' bathroom, tapping her black heels, and applying make-up thicker than most caulking. It wasn't unusual for a Friday night. She knew how to find the good parties and often left us all behind as she mixed with seniors at local bars, frat dens, or off campus housing. This time, however, she reached over every now and then between lipstick strokes to tug on my sleeve.

"You should come. You'd like these guys. They asked to meet you."

I leaned backwards out the bathroom door, throwing glances up and down the halls with a paranoia that only a recently decloseted homosexual possesses. "These are priests, right?"

An eye roll. "Noooo. They're in the seminary. They're going to be priests."

Confusion. "Is that . . . better?"

She knit her brow in puzzlement. "Well, they haven't taken their vows, right?"

"Uhm, right." Though I was already thoroughly convinced I was going to hell, going drinking with potential priests seemed like a final, clumsy vault into the inferno.

Three hours later, Daniel, a young seminarian, drunkenly leaning over me as we made out on the pier. It was a scene that would repeat itself throughout my freshman year.

I never went very far with Daniel. There is only so much Catholic guilt that may be assuaged by a fifth of rum. He seemed content to introduce me to other gay seminarians, and we'd often go as a group to Boystown to take in the bar scene. A little money and a well-connected would be priest gets you a fake ID pretty easily.

Whenever I hear about controversies like this, I think back on those days. Since then, I've often compared seminary stories with other gay friends who attended Catholic universities.

"My first was with a seminarian!"
"They always threw the best parties."
"It was like our own private gay club."

That seminaries are chock full of homosexuals doesn't seem like much of a controversy to me. They simply are. While there are no doubt many good, solid celibate gay priests, there also seem to be no small number who are decidedly not.

When 80% of sexual abuse cases reported since 1950 consist of adult men with adolescent boys, this seminarian subculture is worth more than an eyebrow raise or two. There is something deeply, deeply rotten involved in all this. It would be morally bankrupt for the Church to ignore the potential connections between seminaries full of gay men and the epidemic level of male-to-male pederasty incidents.

The Anchoress' thoughts on this matter seem to be my own. The Church must come down harshly on the seminaries to remove priests who do not seem predisposed to take their vows seriously. Sexuality ought to be a non-issue with a priest. It is the celibacy that is important.

In light of the Vatican taking a stricter look at a homosexual culture in seminaries, gay rights groups have - surprise, surprise - gone absolutely bonkers. When thousands of children have been irreparably damaged, this is not the time to get your PC freak on. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force could have chosen the constructive path by offering to work with the Vatican and the American Church to uncover and resolve the problem while still protecting celibate gay priests who honor their vows.

The NGLTF doesn't even get a full sentence into the press release before decrying the Catholic Church as "evil." The witch-hunt comparisons and medieval persecution metaphors come fast and furious.

Does this strike anyone as particularly helpful? Understandably, gay rights groups aren't exactly fans of the Catholic Church. However, thrusting sexually abused children aside to grind a persistently disreligious political agenda seems a little . . . misguided. Not only misguided, but disingenuous. I would be hard pressed to believe Matt Foreman doesn't know more than a few people who have experiences with seminarians similar to my own.

I do not blame those seminarians I had experiences with when I was younger. By then, I was an adult, capable of my own choices, even if they weren't always the wisest ones. However, the audacity, the sheer brashness of their behavior belies a religious organization that does not exercise control over the standards it is meant to protect.

I do not wish to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia as some might claim. Quite obviously, I do not believe there to be a correlation. However, in most of these abuse cases, we're discussing pubescent males. I'm sure there are a variety for reasons for this. My personal pet theory involves an arrested sexual development and entry into the Church as a method of self-control. However, that's all pop psychobabble bullshit.

The fact of the matter is, there is a subculture within seminaries full of gay men who are not celibate. Furthermore, the pederasty incidents are overwhelmingly male-to-male in nature. To attempt to separate the two seems irresponsible at best. People who do that are worrying more about their political sensibilities than the serious problems at hand.

When the Catholic Church finds out what is going on here, I fully expect them to go medieval on some asses.

It is, after all, what they do best.

Call Nicole Ritchie's Agent!

2005-09-25T02:54:00.000-05:00

This woman is the biggest fame whore since Paris Hilton.

i am watching cnn and it is 100 percent rita...even though it is a little wind and a little rain...it is bad, but there are other things going on in this country today...and in the world!!!!

Other things, like shivering in the cold dark while contemplating the horrific "if they mated" scenario this picture engenders.

Pixie Folk Music Is Also Discouraged

2005-09-23T18:09:00.000-05:00

I'm beginning to think I'm missing out by breezily dismissing the anti-war protests. But, hey, I couldn't even be bothered to look sideways at the recent Farm Aid concert even though it was, literally, three minutes down the street from me. I'm unable to get into activism for definitional reasons. "Activism" - from the French: a gathering of lunatics in dire need of a bath (hoses mounted on anti-riot trucks an acceptable substitute).

Still, the do's and don'ts of protesting make it all sound almost glamorous. This is not a parody. Some of my favorite bits:

Don't have a hippy drum circle:

There are few things more annoying and irrelevant than a bunch of dreadlocked Boulderites banging on drums while dancing around with erect nipples under their hemp shirts.

Don't have a gothic pagan chorus on the stage talking about mermaids:

This actually happened at the last November 3rd movement rally. It has nothing to do with the overall point of the protest. Rather it is just an opportunity for superficial hipsters to whine about "mother earth". They then leave to go get coffee and don't stay for the rally.

When the East Romanian Witches Alliance For Abortion Rights produces a herd of griffins, I'm going.

h/t Mudville Gazette

The Right-Winger Underneath

2005-09-22T14:11:00.000-05:00

Working from home today. The benefit? Being able to run around in your skivvies all day. The downside? There is nothing less arousing than doing mortgage calculations in your underwear. Cruising porn in this case would actually be a step-up in "really depressing things you do while practically naked at your computer."

I just realized something. These boxers I'm wearing have little piggies running around with money bags. As Queer Conservative noted, "Being a capitalist pig is good!"

So, yeah. I'm wearing right-wing underwear.

I'm not sure whether or not I should be worried about this.

Adolescence Revisited: Part One - Earn It

2005-09-21T18:57:00.000-05:00

I had no real intention of returning to this post, but the minor debate that has broken out in its wake seems to deserve another treatment with clarifications and, in some cases, elaborations. So, I’ll try to get up a series of posts, each individual one addressing certain issues in the liberal vs conservative divide.

I noted gay conservatives tended to be the ideological parents in politics, while gay liberals tend to approach these issues with a distinctively teenaged mindset. With that being said, let’s jump right in.

One thing almost all teenagers want as soon as they reach a certain age is a car. They have arrived at a point and place in society where it has been collectively determined they’re ready for the privileges and responsibilities that come with driving. However, the question isn’t merely one of whether or not they’re ready to drive, but whether or not they should have a car, and if so, how will they go about getting it?

Most teenagers want a car right away. If their parents can buy it for them, great. However, many parents believe their child should earn the car. If they earn it themselves, they will value it more, take better care of it, take seriously the responsibilities that attend ownership. Furthermore, a teenager having a car handed to them causes an awful lot of resentment among his peers. Earning it lends an appreciation that extends beyond himself.

Such is the divide over conservative and liberal homosexuals in the gay marriage debate.

Gay liberals want gay marriage right now. They don’t particularly care how they get it, just so long as they get it. When they don’t get it, they tend to throw temper tantrums of enormous proportions. Gay conservatives, on the other hand, realize the importance of how we get it. We know we cannot simply demand it and have it granted through the beatific wave of the magical judicial wand. We must argue for it, persuade for it, and convince others of why we must have it. The method is just as important, if not more so, as the final result.

Conservatives, in general, tend to be more constitutionally conscious than their liberal brethren. There is a reason our constitution has worked so well for as long as it has. It upholds, above all things, the rule of law. It is specifically designed to protect against emotionalism by making it supremely difficult to amend. These are our founding principles, the most basic machinery that runs the republic. Tinkering with it should be done reluctantly, only after a great deal of thought and consideration.

Taking the gay marriage issue to the courts in the hopes that four black-robed individuals will give us what we demand harms the constitutional order. We have that car, but at what price? What happens when a right-wing judge grants opponents to gay rights what they want, without asking the people, the electorate what they think? Without giving us recourse to decide for ourselves as a Republic whether or not it is a good thing?

We might have gotten what we wanted in Massachusetts, but the resentment unleashed in the wake of Goodridge vs Massachusettes is still washing over the land to this day. In direct response to that decision, states all across the country began passing protection of marriage amendments – amendments that will take years, if not decades to undo. Not only that, but those activists and the judges who agree with them have thrown gasoline on a raging political bonfire of anti-judicial sentiment that will lead to greater and greater numbers of conservative and right-wing judges being appointed to the bench. These justices can and quite possibly will repeal many of the protections currently enjoyed by homosexuals in our country today.

That is what has been done by the liberal, “I have to have it now, no matter what!” mindset.

So, well done there.

Conservatives, on the other hand, know the value of earning gay marriage. Not only must we convince legislatures, but we must also convince the electorate. Through ardent, but respectful engagement of the issue, we seek to slowly bend the political winds to our conservative will. By working through legislatures and the electorate, gay marriage will have more solid foundations. Opponents will have much less ground to stand on. The constitutional order will remain intact, limiting the potential of judges to overturn it. People will appreciate it more and see the value in it, because we will have shown we are responsible and serious about obtaining this societal privilege in a manner that is inclusive and respectful of the constitution and the people of this country.

That is a vital difference in ideological approach. Gay liberals, again, have done the childish, demanding thing, and it has blown up in all our faces.

It is time to take the adult approach and earn gay marriage through sound argument, serious discussion, and constitutional means.

See-Through Senate Spin

2005-09-20T16:53:00.000-05:00

I've always told people one of my biggest problems with Hillary Clinton is the simple transparency which permeates everything she does. Like a clear plastic anatomical model in high-school biology, there is little Hillary(!) does that doesn't recall a circulatory system filled with red dye laid bare for all the world to see. Every inner movement and internal engine is exposed. Even her supporters leap onto the Sunday shows and discuss at length how the former First Lady is "positioning" herself to appeal to this or that constituency.

I demand a little smoothness from my politicians. If you must feed me serving after serving of bullshit, drizzle it in honey. If you plan on wrecking the constitution and government, have the sense and sheer talent to frame it in such a way that I have no idea it's happened until it's too late.

It seems Senate Democrats are taking a play out of Hillary's book.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid announced his opposition to Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts on Tuesday, voicing doubts about Roberts' commitment to civil rights and accusing the Bush administration of stonewalling requests for documents that might shed light on his views.

Let's be honest here. The Democrats have lost control of every branch of government as well as a majority of state legislatures and governorships. A Senate filibuster to sway the course of the Supreme Court and other aspects of the federal judiciary is all they have. However, Judge Roberts is so well-qualified, so intelligent, and so just plain damn likeable, filibustering his nomination would be the final bit of sepukku for a party already bleeding profusely from dozens of self-inflicted wounds.

Instead, they must position themselves for the filibuster of the next nominee. Unfortunately for them, it's blatant:

"I'm inclined to vote for Roberts unless something else comes up," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. "It's a close call."

Reid said much the same about the narrowness of the decision in remarks that nonetheless pleased women's groups and civil rights organizations that had feared he would support Roberts.

"This is a very close question for me. But I must resolve my doubts in favor of the American people whose rights would be in jeopardy if John Roberts turned out to be the wrong person for the job," he said.

A moderate like Roberts is a "close-call." There are "grave doubts" and "serious questions" about his nomination. However, Democrats, being the stand up partisans that they are, won't filibuster his nomination. They're being nice, damnit.

Until the nomination of O'Connor's replacement. If that nomination is anywhere to the right of Cindy Sheehan, well, they'll just have to filibuster. They've already allowed one of Bush's nominations through, despite their very great concerns. How could they possibly live with themselves and their consciences if they allow someone even worse onto the Court?

We now have the set up. During the next nomination, we'll see if they can spike it. If history is any guide, I fully expect them to end up with a face full of net.

Shout to Time Life

2005-09-20T03:30:00.000-05:00

You know, I really want to buy those Songs 4 Worship CDs.

The commercials are hypnotic and, more importantly, the songs sadistically addictive.

I realize I'm hemorrhaging princess points for even considering this.

I can't help it.

I'm weak.

I'm sorry.

Whatever you do, don't pray for me.

Not At All Predictable

2005-09-20T00:35:00.000-05:00

Yet another gay rights group has come out in opposition to future Chief Justice John Roberts. Hrm. Yahoo puts this story far more euphemistically than I would. Time for some creative editing.

"Having carefully monitored the testimony during those hearings," Lambda said, "we have reached the unavoidable conclusion that Judge Roberts, despite being given every opportunity, has failed to demonstrate that he is a Democrat."

Lambda now joins the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays as part of a growing LGBT slide towards utter irrelevance.

A range of other progressive organizations, including pro-choice groups, People for the American Way and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, have also transformed their voices into the purest notes of shrill, harpyish shrieking.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on Roberts' nomination this Thursday, a vote that will almost certainly recommend the 50-year-old appellate court judge to the full Senate, proving once again that leftist gay groups must be politically retarded to have opposed this thing.

Judge Roberts may not have won much enthusiasm from the left - mainly due to his refusal to perform a live abortion during the proceedings - but he concluded his committee hearings without alienating the political center. He achieved this by maintaining silence on any issue that might be brought before the Court in the future, and by offering crowd-pleasing generalities about the rule of law in a strategy legal experts call "The Ginsburg Technique."

His polished confidence left Sen. Charles Schumer of New York babbling like a drunken baboon in a bad Armani suit. Schumer, one of the many, endlessly tedious, constitutionally vacant leftist-appeasers on the committee, called his appearance a "tour de force," but remained undecided until he had adequate time to calculate how his decision would affect future campaign contributions.

California's Dianne Feinstein, in turn, dubbed Roberts a "hot slice of beefcake," last Wednesday, telling the nominee, "I don't really know what I'm going to do." Declaring she needed time to meditate in her "parlor," Senator Feinstein promptly stumbled into a committee cloakroom.

Part of their dilemma lies in the prospect of a second nomination, the selection of a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Speculation about the O'Connor replacement swirls in all directions - mainly, in the direction of whether or not there will be a vagina - as does the analysis of how and why the left should position itself for the upcoming battle. Roberts, in an unsolicited remark, cited precedent and noted the position would likely involve being bent over and generously lubed.

In a conference call with LGBT reporters, Lambda's legal director, Jon Davidson, rejected the notion that catty, partisan bitchiness had a role to play in his organization's thinking.

"It seemed to us important to judge [Roberts] on the basis of what we assume about him," said Davidson. "He has not manifested, in the testimony that he provided, the sort of commitment to fur-trimmed rhinestone capes and the bacchinalian orgies that are important to our community to deserve to be confirmed. If they want our support for another nominee, they're going to have to nominate Noam Chomsky. That seems to be an important message to send."

Who says there's no accuracy in the media? Pffft.

Self-Parody Isn't Fair

2005-09-19T13:42:00.000-05:00

From the "It would be hilarious if it wasn't entirely in earnest" files.

Cindy Sheehan: "What Bush's Katrina shows once again is that my son died for nothing."

Random DUer: "Atheist/Agnostics: Do you ever get socially pressured to say grace at dinner?"

Not As I Do?

2005-09-19T01:22:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I finally managed to finish a bit of home improvement in between listening to long stretches of the Christopher Hitchens vs George Galloway debate.

Personally, I preferred the tediousness of caulking, tiling, and pipe-fitting. At least, when writing about that, I can make it vaguely sound like porn.

Suffice to say, there was very little to be learned from this debate. Mr. Hitchens came loaded with facts, and Galloway came loaded with opprobrious paragraphs full of invective delivered in his characteristically sonorous Scottish slur.

Galloway's entire argument, it seemed, was that Christopher Hitchens opposed intervention in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, thus supporting it now nullifies anything to be said on the topic. Similarly, Galloway's answer against the present war on terror seems to rest entirely on the realpolitik practices of the U.S. and Britain during the 1970's and 1980s. We helped create the situation, you see.

To oppose these various regimes now makes us hypocrites.

For many on the Left, hypocrisy is quite possibly the greatest crime one can ever possibly commit. Are the demogogues ever more gleeful than when a William Bennett has a gambling problem? If it were limited to personal failures, that would be something. However, to base an entire anti-war philosophy on the surface hypocrisy in an ever-shifting foreign policy?

It is a mark of the rank unseriousness and shallowness of thought that infects much of the anti-war left in our country. It is a teenager throwing a parent's past drug use in their face, as if it is a stand alone piece of logic. Whether or not the drug is harmful and the parent correct, it seems some people believe the hypocrisy in and of itself is adequate to nullify all arguments against its use.

To the adult mind, hypocrisy is a tool of great use and a mark of personal experience. A heroin addict warning school children against it is a hypocrite. He is, however, also correct. His experience lends a credibility. He is there. He knows. What better way to make amends and scavenge some meaning from his life than to use that experience to warn others, even if he is still in the grips of personal horror?

Similarly, 9-11 proved to the American government that the Middle-Eastern policies followed over the preceding three decades were seriously flawed. They believed they could put a lid on a pot of boiling water, and the smallest jets of steam might fire harmlessly off to the side. They did not expect it to blow up in their face.

Who now would know better the consequences of their follies? Who now would be better positioned to admit to having done wrong and doing their best to remedy it? Who now has the most responsibility to return to that region and make some atonement by undoing decades of policy which supported quasi-controlled dictators? If we are in fact guilty on any level for the oppression and fascism which permeates the Middle-East, is it not in fact a moral imperative that we enable and promote democracy when and how we can?

Instead, the anti-war movement believes this to be hypocrisy. A paralytic hypocrisy that must stall any attempts to take action in the Middle-East. In a similar vein, we often hear "If we cannot remove all dictators, we must remove none." For, in their eyes, removing one and not all is also a form of hypocrisy.

This is, quite simply, wrong.

Someone like William Bennett might very well be a hypocrite for countenancing a gambling addiction. However, his advice on character building is not necessarily incorrect as a result. While the hypocrisy certainly signals that we look at his words with a more studied eye, it is ultimately the words and arguments themselves which must endure the light of scrutiny.

America may now be behaving differently than it has in the past and recommending a course of action that is at odds with how foreign policy was conducted decades ago. However, the current arguments must be addressed on their merits. What we have done in the past is nothing more than experience, a guide, a history book we must read and understand. It is not a negating argument.

The hypocrisy argument is a dodge, a pass, a bob and weave against making serious arguments for or against the Iraq war. When one does not have reasonable or rational arguments, they must find some baser flaw that would seem to undermine the logic. Many believe hypocrisy is always effective as this flaw.

It is not. When hypocrisy is your main argument, it is because you have no others.

This Explains Everything

2005-09-16T11:59:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite assignments in college was writing a paper on the dual homosexuality in my favorite childhood cartoon, He-Man. On one side of the coin, you had Prince Adam, the very definition of effeminate in his pink and purple outfit and love of words like "fabulous." However, once he grasped his sword, he became He-Man, quite possibly the butchest man in the universe. Even the name, He-Man, drips with excessive testosterone.

A friend passed this along from slack circus, and it was too amusing not to share. Quicktime required.

Fabulous Secret Powers

Oh, this reporter is just so confused

2005-09-15T20:27:00.000-05:00

There is nothing sweeter than seeing an ABC reporter interviewing black New Orleaneans, asking questions fully intended to draw out criticism of the president, only to be met with tirades against the state and local governments and warm, unanimous support of the president.

On national television.

*sighs happily*

Update: Polipundit has another recap of the interviews and links to more reaction. (h/t Gay Patriot)

Update Update: Polipundit has also found the video and transcripts.

Tell Me Lies and I'll Love You Forever

2005-09-15T16:08:00.000-05:00

NorthDallasThirty has a bit of a debate in the comment section of his excellent post on the partisanship of gay Democrats. Many of the posts on his blog touch upon the often vicious political in fighting wracking the gay community at large.

There are three types of fights in this world:

There are fights among strangers. These are often over macro problems and large-scale ideologies. In the current War on Terror, the intricacies of Western and Islamic culture matter less than how these two entities interact on the world stage. While understanding the day-to-day lives of individuals within each culture is often helpful, it is not vital to know these things in order to be opposed to radically different systems of government that threaten to undermine basic Enlightenment values.

There are fights among friends. These are over issues large and small, exemplified by the liberal vs conservative, Democrat vs Republican battles being waged all across America. While we may often be at each others' throats over the role of government and what form that government will take, we are also distanced enough and given enough personal space and freedom to step away from these arguments, take a breather, and regain perspective.

And then there are fights within families. There are few things more devastating than an irreconcilable standoff within a family. There is not only a shared foundation, but a shared history, affection, and intimacy. Small disagreements may ripple for years through all quarters of life, breaching trust and building impenetrable walls of resentment. We cannot simply walk away, for we are inextricably entwined in this world, for better or for worse. Even if we seek some small solace in isolating ourselves from our families, there is always a simmering need to press against the bruise to see if it still pains us.

The ongoing battle between gay conservatives and gay liberals encapsulates this third kind of argument. Generally speaking, every action taken by a gay conservative or gay liberal has the potential to affect our lives at their most basic levels. We are, rightly or wrongly, perceived as our own separate group within American culture and politics. As a result, we take every disagreement with our gay opponents personally. Some homosexuals don’t like Pride festivals because they fear they reflect badly on us and affect the perceptions of Middle America. Others take issue with the concepts of marriage and monogamy, believing it is acquiescence to an obsolete heterosexual culture that should be flung into the dustbin of history.

No matter what our disagreements, we are forced through various pressures to live in the same homosexual house, and we all have different ideas about how that house should be run. Studying this, I have come to a conclusion:

Gay conservatives are the parents, and gay liberals are the teenagers.

The problem with the gay liberal mindset is that it is infested with a naïve idealism and penchant for wanting to see the world as how they wish it to be, not how it objectively is. The Democratic Party is their first true high school love, and like all true loves, the warts and faults have been smudged to a blurry shadow cast by their perceived Adonis. Even when their love pushes them aside in the crowded hallway between classes, these liberals swoon and shiver, running to their friends with excited declarations, “He actually touched me! He touched me!” Now the Democratic Party has come to tolerate them. They even allow our adolescent family members to carry their books on occasion; a job gay liberals are only too eager to do.

Like all great loves, it is impossible for any criticism to dilute the adrenalin of pure, unadulterated worship. “You know, he doesn’t really love you. He’s simply using you because it’s convenient,” bounces like so many pebbles against armor. “It’s not true!” they declare, a Kathy-Bates-in-Misery look creeping into their eyes. “Some day he’ll realize he really loves me! Some day he’ll see that we’re meant to be together always!” And, much of the time, that’s when we start slowly backing away.

Gay conservatives, on the other hand, are generally cynical adults. While some decry it as nothing more than jaded bitterness, cynicism is a characteristic wrought of experience and the wisdom that accompanies it. The Republican Party is not our true love, nor particularly a love. They are a friend we generally respect without feeling a need to be inexpressibly loyal to their every belief. We realize grown adults may reasonably disagree with one another without destroying a friendship and indignantly declaring, “You don’t love me!” before flouncing out of the room.

While I cannot speak for all gay conservatives, I know my place in the Republican Party. They are my allies on a variety of issues, which is why we are friends in the first place. But I do not paint them in shades of rose. There are a great many things I disagree with them on, and I have no problem saying so. What they dislike about me, I recognize. Though I will not change my life, I will neither reject them wholly.

You see, it is about being honest. Gay conservatives have no problem seeing their situation honestly. We know there is a large swath of religious evangelicals who are vehemently opposed to things like gay marriage and adoption. Instead of engaging in a shrill, emotional breakdown, we choose the path of reasoned discourse and steady persuasion.

Gay liberals don’t want a discussion. They want what they want, and they want it right now, to hell with everyone else. Should you deny them these things you are the enemy. You are mean, nasty parent who doesn’t understand them, and why don’t you love them, why do you hate them so much, and I’m never speaking to you again! Queue door slamming.

So, stupidly, we try to talk to gay liberals in a calm, rational tone of voice and are met with accusations and tantrums and “How dare you talk about my love that way?!” They don’t want to hear it. We cannot tell them that perhaps the anti-war movement isn’t a good idea, as it allies itself with multicultural forces that make the Religious Right seem positively gay-friendly. I can say I really dislike Pat Robertson, but few on the gay Left can will themselves to recognize the racist, anti-Americanism inherent in organizations like International A.N.S.W.E.R. Cindy Sheehan can declare the Iraq war a conspiracy of American Jews, and nary an eyebrow is lifted against this intolerance. With a driving need to be loved and accepted, the gay Left will swallow anything and everything they are told to swallow. Not only swallow it, but actively promote it.

The Democratic Party and attendant politicians can oppose gay marriage, support the repealing of gay rights, treat homosexuals with general disdain in private - if not in public as the Jeff Ganon episode revealed – and it just doesn’t matter. Gay liberals will lie to themselves and others, because they believe there is someone in this world who unconditionally loves them, and someday the rest of us will see it.

It just isn’t so. And when the necessary growing up is done and these illusions are shattered, I can say from personal experience it will be inexpressibly painful. But, like all parents, we conservatives will be standing by, as patiently as we possibly can, waiting to catch our family when they fall.

Until then, the battle to force them into adulthood continues.

Hello, My Name is Simon

2005-09-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

In a long history of frankly bizarre political ads, this one's pretty tough to beat.

As Chad at Cake or Death noted: "I love how the ad goes from bashing Bush, to a poorly photoshopped picture of him 'naked' and then right to the oh-yeah-and-here’s-my-partner-(that’s-right-I’m-gay) ending."

That, however, is entirely secondary, for this ad struck a chord in my symphony of gay conspiracy theory. When our vastly open homosexual closes with,"And this is my partner, Simon," I exclaimed, "Of course he's Simon!"

That's because almost every man named Simon is gay.

In fact, the name Simon is so gay, even if there is the odd heterosexual running around with it, he's tainted by the sheer fluorescent pinkitude. Allow me to demonstrate:

Simon Rex

Before this former twink and MTV VJ found mainstream appeal on the WB's Jack and Jill, he had appeal of a more sordid kind in a series of solo gay porn flicks. MTV wasn't pleased and canned him when news of his steamy past hit the papers.

Simon Cowell

He's snippy, he wears tight t-shirts, he has a lisp, and he's British. The first three alone would convict any wretch in queer court, but the Britishness seals it. Every man in Britain is gay (and invariably named Simon, bringing us into an infinite sequin-lined loop). When visiting this isle glittering with effete foppishness, leave your gaydar at the door.

Simon Belmont

A favorite video game character from my youth, Mr. Belmont enjoys wearing leather, furs, and rather fetching - yet masculine - boots. His weapon of choice is, naturally, a whip. Furthermore, his life is consumed with hunting vampires and, if Anne Rice has taught us anything, all vampires are gay. Only now do I realize Castlevania was nothing more than the lonely journey of a guy who forever yearned for a little man on man action. Drive a stake into the Count, indeed.

Simon Le Bon

Technically, not gay. And yet, we can't overlook the lead singer of Duran Duran. Any band reaching its zenith in the 1980's is gay by chronological proxy. Any lead singer is doubly suspicious. Plus, he's British (see above).

I think my theorem holds up pretty well under scrutiny, all things considered.

h/t GayPatriot for the video link

Feline Fuel Frenzy

2005-09-14T04:27:00.000-05:00

I think it's time we go back to worrying about the Germans:

A German inventor says he's found a way to make cheap diesel fuel out of dead cats.

I always thought crazy old cat ladies were suffering from dementia. Now I realize they're simply members of Greenpeace.

Spot the difference, eh?

What Comes After Hell?

2005-09-14T04:19:00.000-05:00

Every time I think the Islamofascists can't possibly go any lower, they top themselves.

A U.S. Army commander said Tuesday that extremist fighters battling for control of Tal Afar in northern Iraq had committed atrocities against civilians, including beheadings, torture and the booby-trapping of a murdered child's body.

"The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents; beheadings and so forth," Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said in an interview from Tal Afar with reporters at the Pentagon.

Remember, folks. The insurgency is just angry because Americans are there. These are valiant minutemen defending their country.

I have not the words.

The Betrayal

2005-09-13T16:49:00.000-05:00

This is really an addendum to this post, but I think it deserves its own space.

After giving it a great deal of thought, I've decided that I, Robbie, am a modern day Odysseus.

No, really, it's true. Consider the evidence. We both fought wars far from home; his literal against Troy, mine ideological for a time in Europe. We have both conquered our fair share of one-eyed monsters. We have both returned from our journeys to find our homes much different than we left them. And, whereas that heroic figure of Greek myth had his Trojan horse, I have fairly tragic hair that seems to pass for fashionable these days, allowing me to penetrate deep within the walls of the gay community.

Like Odysseus, when I returned home, I moved among friends and family in disguise. He chose the robe of the beggar, while I preferred the cloak of the democrat. He found his house infested with suitors who wished to corrupt his wedding bed. I found my ideological house infested with liberals corrupting the concepts of freedom and human rights.

The resemblance is really rather uncanny, all things considered.

When I finally cast aside my cloak and laid my conservative leanings bare, many of those closest to me registered shock and surprise. I was very angry with them. I let more than a few metaphorical arrows fly when I learned what had gone in my absence.

You see, liberalism was once my natural home. I firmly believe in human rights for all. I disdain oppression in all its forms. I want equality and justice and opportunity spread far and wide and the ideological extremism threatening these virtues met with cold, hard steel, both literal and rhetorical.

When I returned home, I could scarcely recognize the rooms. Who were these imposters apologizing for Saddam Hussein's regime, praising Iraq as a kite-flying paradise before the wicked American invaders arrived?

Who were these suitors with silver-tongues whispering that the American Republic was dead and gone, and now we must remove the president from his rightful office so that they might impress their vision on our country?

Who were these gargoyles pressing their fetid claws against our cheeks, that they might turn our faces away from the suffering and oppression in the Middle East?

Who were these bureaucratic beggars in golden robes urging us to leave the poor to their fates as they smuggle sacks of coin from their international castle in the dead of night?

Who were these homosexual charlatans protecting rulers who treat them no differently than the enemies they abhor so much?

This was not my home.

Since the election of George Bush and the events following September 11th, liberalism has been corrupted into a wretched mockery of what it once was. Are those really my friends arguing for leaving those suffering in the Middle East to their cruel fates? Is that really my family arguing that the greatest evil facing America is a democratically elected president rather than a vast web of Islamic extremists? Can it be that people I thought I knew so well are arguing for multicultural idiocies which protect some of the most oppressive law ever crafted while silencing those critics who would warn against it?

This is nothing short of a betrayal.

My gay friends believe I have gone to the Dark Side. When discussing politics and haranguing my ideological opposites, they often deride my constant use of terms like "The Left," "liberals," and "moonbats." They believe I have morphed into some kind of radical right-winger.

No, I tell them. You don't understand. Liberalism was my home. You've destroyed it in my absence, burnt it to the ground. Now you dance within the charred, skeletal remains as if you have just completed a grand renovation.

This hurts.

I don't feel the same enmity for the right wing. I am a Deist rather than a Christian. I have long argued for closing corporate tax loopholes, more stringent regulations to protect the environment, expanded rights for gays and lesbians, and on and on. In American politics, the Right had never been my natural tribe, it is not where I came from, it is not where my heart and my memories lay. The Right can never betray me because I never believed in them. They were never my kin, they were never where I turned in my times of questioning and need.

Now, when western civilization is under gravest threat as the Enlightenment foundations of our European roots crumble beneath decadence and moral relativism, my home is no longer a shelter. Worse, liberalism is rapidly becoming complicit.

Now, conservatism is that shelter. Conservatism has throw open the windows and let the light of truth shine into the darkest corners of our world, illuminating the most horrifying impulses of human nature.

I never really liked the Right, but now I save a very special form of disdain for the Left.

You betrayed me.

Of Fish and Men

2005-09-13T08:02:00.000-05:00

I have a great boss. Here is a woman who had the foresight to know that one day I would be hired, and when I was, I'd be needing cable on my office television so I could spend the time between clients doing things like crafting play-doh dinosaurs while watching tedious Senate confirmation hearings. And yet, I still feel only nominally more childish than Dick Durbin.

Yesterday after lunch, I found myself watching "Killer Storm" on the History Channel. Anyone who has ever seen the movie The Perfect Storm, starring George Clooney and a scruffy Mark Wahlberg, knows the gist of it. A recap never hurts, though:

In October of 1991 a storm stronger than any in recorded history hit the coast off of Gloucester, Massachusetts. This "Perfect Storm" — so called because it was three storms combined into one — created an almost apocalyptic situation in the Atlantic ocean, where boats encountered waves of 100 feet (30 meters) — the equivalent of a ten-story building. These storms are some of the strongest and most terrifying manifestations of nature's strength.

At the end of "Killer Storm," the camera pans across the Fisherman's Memorial Cenotaph in Gloucester. It is inscribed with over 5,000 names, a small tribute to those lost at sea.

Though I certainly knew deep-ocean fishing is dangerous, I didn't come to appreciate just how deadly a profession it is until I saw those names etched upon that wall. Every year, men and women drift away from the coast, perhaps looking upon their homes and their continent for the last time, and for what? So they can provide for their families, and I can munch a few Gordon's sticks with ketchup. It almost seems a little ridiculous when looked at that way. There is a scene in The Perfect Storm between the girlfriend of a fisherman soon to be lost, and the man who owns the boat. It sums up the situation at its heart-breaking best:

Christina: "My guy's out there, risking his life, and for what? For a bunch of stupid fish!

Governor: "That's the game."

Christina: "Then I hate the game. Do you hear me? I hate the god damned game!" *pounds and sobs against the Governor's chest*

What the governor understands is that Christina's boyfriend, Bobby, has made a choice. He has chosen to risk his life by signing onto the life of a fisherman and going out to sea. He has chosen to work on a boat captained by a man who may or may not make wise decisions when it matters most, when the lives of the entire crew hang in the balance.

He and thousands of others choose this path to support their families, and so that we the consumer can have our fish sticks.

So, the question is this. If we eat fish and support the fishing industry, an industry that is highly dangerous and results in many deaths each year, are we morally obligated to instead go fishing ourselves? After all, if we chose not to eat fish, there would be no cause for these men and women to risk their lives. If we're so keen on having a nice Friday night fry, shouldn't we be willing to risk our own lives for it?

It's a fairly ridiculous argument, but it is one the anti-war Left has been making on a daily basis over the last several years.

Almost since the beginning of the Iraq war, many on the Left have been painting any supporter of the invasion who has not enlisted a chickenhawk. I don't like that the word"chickenhawk" has been hijacked. Mainly because I now have no readily available means to identify the sixty year old at the bar who's exuding a creepy molestation vibe as he ogles the eighteen year old who just wandered in. I suppose I could call him Peter Ian Cummings, but that would be a bit on the nose.

That aside, looking at the recently released list of dangerous occupations, there are a great many things that we the people desire that others are willing to risk their lives to provide. While fish may seem trivial, things like national security, freedom, and the destruction of tyranny are not.

We have a military populated by men and women who have made a choice. Inherent in that choice is the knowledge they may be putting their lives at great risk to provide the American people with what they desire - in this case an end to the Islamofascism. They know they are signing up for a job that the rest of us are not required to do.

Obviously, chickenhawk is meant as an ad hominem slur, mainly directed towards the president and the vice-president. There is little doubt in my mind that if our executive branch were helmed by a cadre of retired generals, the anti-war movement would be shift gears and start screaming about the militaristic fascism of it all. Forget trying to explain the concept of civilian control of the military and why it is vital to the continuance of a constitutional republic. These people may have a vague impression that military coups are bad things, but only because they saw a particularly awful staging of Evita at the local Schubert.

Our men and women in the military bravely choose to perform a service for the American people that your average citizen is not prepared to do themselves. They know they are risking their lives to get what the rest of us want from the safe confines of our own homes. They know the value of civilian control of the military. They know they may never see American shores again. But they still do it. Even though they don't have to.

That's the game.

Some people may hate it, but it is the soldier's choice, not their own.

Let's Adopt Him

2005-09-12T12:00:00.000-05:00

I have to hand it to Judge Roberts. He is doing yeoman's work in pretending to be remotely interested in the long, sonorous grand-standing of Sen. Joe Biden. Roberts' supreme patience is on full display - he hasn't rolled his eyes a single time, not even as Biden performed his little Living Constitution tap dance.

Personally, I couldn't have managed it.

Roberts is sitting there now with a furrowed brow, jutting chin, and flat lips: the perfect expression to exude interest while actually day-dreaming of making half this committee weep when he ascends to the Chief Justice chair.

He's only changed facial expression a single time, when Biden criticized his past writings and decisions. For a moment, Roberts' eyes widened and his lower lip drooped ever so slightly.

It was the most adorable sad puppy face ever.

Can we keep him?

Why Gay Men Shouldn't Trust The Left

2005-09-11T13:45:00.000-05:00

You’d think, given today’s date, some people on the Left would give it a rest.

As Chad at Cake or Death notes, not so much.

When someone on a message board brought up American religious conservatives, I noted I’d sooner take my chances with Pat Robertson than your average European Muslim immigrant youth. Their response:

I’d rather not chance any of them. I see extremists as all the same, be they Christian or Muslim or whatever.

This is one of the core reasons I grew to distrust the Left, this need to draw equivalence between some of the most evil behaviors and belief systems in the world with the relatively pastoral religious conservatism of America. In their eyes, there is no atrocity committed in the world, no belief system so heinous, that they cannot stand up and say, “America is just as bad, if not worse!”

This doesn’t scare me. But this does. And this. And this. And this.

This kind of religious fundamentalism fills me with horror:

People may say what they will of conservative Christians in America. They may call some of them bigoted. There is certainly no shortage of ignorance and hatred in any belief system, be it conservative or liberal, religious or secular. I certainly cringed when some of the usual suspects asserted Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for a homosexual festival.

However.

Pat Robertson does not send planes crashing into buildings full of innocent non-believers. No one is loading up Kirk Cameron with C4 and sending him into the local Chuck E. Cheese. No governor of Alabama or Mississippi or Texas lords over a gallows as children are executed because of who they fall in love with.

No matter how many times our hearts break because a homosexual is killed in America because he is gay, the fact remains these crimes are perpetuated by lone human beings consumed with hatred. There are no churches with millions of members who run schools to teach young and old alike how to slit the throat of a young man walking down the street. Robertson and Falwell do not go on television agitating for the cleansing of homosexual sin through mass bloodshed. There is no government in America, local, state, or federal that will ever execute a homosexual for being gay.

Islamic fundamentalism is not equivalent with American Christian conservatism.

In a post-modern world of moral and multicultural relativism, this failure to distinguish between these beliefs systems and their consequences says to me that the Left has only the most tenuous hold on the reality of political and social situations around the world.

How can I trust a political ideology to combat evil if they cannot even recognize it?

Because We're Gay, Not Stupid

2005-09-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

The amazement of others never fails to amaze me. There is little more useful in observing people than taking stock of what surprises them. People caught unawares are revealing what makes them tick, it uncovers hidden prejudices, it enables you to peer through a tiny keyhole into the dark, dank chambers that house their worldview.

Take, for example, this post made in response to an entry on the ever readable Malcontent.

But I quickly picked up on the fact that this guy was gay and it is always nice to see what other gay folks out there are writing and ranting about, so I read a little. I was confused that the top post was making fun of liberals. Then as I read on, it dawned on me that I had stumbled into the lair of a gay republican. Soon as I saw the posting lauding GLAAD's helm being taken by a repub and linking to a post elsewhere criticising HRC for being too liberal, I knew I was in the wrong neighborhood. (emphasis added)

Like those heterosexuals who assume everyone is straight unless informed otherwise, this gay man seems to believe all homosexuals are liberal. If they are not he becomes rapidly "confused." He may also have been distressed, gob-smacked, filled with heart-ache . . . wait, I'm mixing up the gay men who I want to throttle at random.

Still, doesn't he realize by assuming gays are liberal that he is unconsciously reinforcing the systematic social oppression of a world that pressures us to be liberal?! How insensitive and close-minded, no, how hateful to place those kinds of expectations on us. Do you know how that wounds our soul?

Our confused citizen of the city of fabulous writes on:

I still have to pick my jaw up off the floor when I hear that a gay person is republican. You just have to be a special kind of selfish and deluded to be gay and vote republican.

Selfish, yes. Are we not supposed to be selfish when casting our votes? I may be hallucinating, but is not a major talking point of the Democratic Party that economically disadvantaged Republican voters are doing so against their own self-interest? Is not a major campaign tactic of the Left to convince those citizens to vote for a liberal party who they believe has their rather selfish monetary interests at heart? And do not homosexual activists expect other homosexuals to vote for Democrats in order to get what we want for ourselves?

He's right. If I were selfish and allowed my mind to be consumed by homosexual issues, I very well might vote for the Democratic Party. Alas, I seem to have aged beyond adolescent self-identity politics to the wider world of free-thinking adults. I am free of the shrieking homosexual activism and its filthy, grime-ridden claws of insecurity and self-loathing.

Allow me to explain.

On November 2nd, 2000, I found myself staring at a television screen through bloodshot eyes, my last cigarette smoked, the economy-sized jug of sangria mostly empty and rolling around the floor at my feet. It had been a long night, and I had been so certain Gore was going to win. Then, in the small hours, George W. Bush was declared the winner. I clutched the remote, dashing from channel to channel in sheer desperation. There had to be some mistake. But, no. One by one, the network graphics flashed onto the screen with a picture of Bush and the words "43rd President of the United States."

Tears streamed over my nose as I bent double and gave a great snuffling sob. In a moment as near to Calvary as I'm ever likely to get in this life, I cried out"Why does America hate me?!"

You see, back then, I was gay. Nothing but gay. Gay as far as the eye could see. If I were Kansas, I'd have been an endless field filled with rainbow streamers. I had almost exclusively gay friends, and went to exclusively gay bars. I listened to music mostly played in gay clubs. My politics were all filtered through the prism of my homosexuality. I was not male or white or a deist or a liberal or someone who liked history or soccer or books. I was not even Robbie. I was Robbie the Homosexual. If I had thought to buy a cape, I would have.

A Republican victory was not a repudiation of politics or belief, but a rejection of me, my entire person, everything that I was. It was as if I had been kicked directly in the stomach and cast to the curb, intentionally left there to suffer. I remained inconsolable for weeks.

And then I grew up.

A few days after Sept. 11th, I found myself at the usual local gay bar. After an emotionally exhausting week, I just wanted a bit of comfort, a bit of the familiar, a piece of the consolation that comes from being around others who feel as rotten as you do. As I thought they might be, my friends were filled with righteous fury, angry, livid, full of rage.

At America.

"We had it coming," one asserted.
"It's about time someone gave us a bloody nose," another nodded in satisfaction.
"This is karma for our imperialism."
"We deserved it," a fourth said with relish.

I quietly sipped my beer as my mind dully flickered back to the scenes of people leaping from the towers, to the reports of firefighters and police disappearing in a billowing cloud of death. That was their karma? That was what they deserved?

From that day forward, the spell of Leftism and partisanship had been broken. No longer could I blindly or willfully share in any ideology that could be filled with such hatred for one's own country, that could believe - on any level - that what happened that day was deserved in any form. After seeing the kind of people my friends were, with a little start, I began the slow realization that I was not like these people. I was different. No shared sexual orientation could ever bind me to their twisted beliefs. They hated too much and too easily. They hated Christians and conservatives and the rich and white men and corporations and the media. They hated everything about this country, and it seemed nothing and no one would ever come in the way of it. No true evil in this world could ever compare to the disdain they felt whenever they looked down at their own passports.

Free of the ideology, I began to see the world not as I believed it to be, but how it is. As I drifted away from my homosexual friends, I became free to concentrate on every other aspect of my life.

I attended union meetings with my father. These gruff, hard-working, dependable Democratic voters were as bigoted and hateful as any stereotypical evangelical Christian or southerner. Gathering after gathering full of beer, and politics, and "those niggers," and "them fucking faggots." No political party maintains a monopoly on racism and homophobia.

I began to work in earnest, spending sixty or more hours a week in the office. Every Friday, I'd receive my check and begin calculating the percentage of taxes. I rapidly learned I would be penalized if I worked too hard and too long. No political party should punish me for being productive.

I met a boy and moved overseas. When I became sick, I had to wait for treatment from Britain's NHS. Friends and family there warned me against seeing an NHS dentist. When I tried to find a private one, I learned they weren't taking any more patients: their appointments were booked up for the next year. When my boyfriend's grandmother became ill, she shrieked and sobbed and wailed. This four foot, nine inch, 90 pound Scottish woman would not be moved from her living room by two burly paramedics. She said NHS hospitals are where people go to die. No political party should be bringing such a system to my home country.

Abortion . . . Ok, as a gay man, I have no truck in the abortion debate. I have my own beliefs, but I admit to being entirely apathetic. Lesbians sometimes try to tell me I should have solidarity with my sisters. I'll make them a deal. You show me a bunch of butch lesbians at a father's rights rally, and I will take a gander at your NARAL pamphlet. Fair trade, no?

I just sat through an election where the Republican vice-presidential candidate said gay marriage issues should be left to the states while the Democrat claimed marriage is between a man and a woman.

Finally, for the last four years, I have seen leftist after baby-boomer leftist parade around this country in a pathetic attempt to recapture their Vietnam protesting youth. It would be almost adorable if it weren't so depressing. I watched these people apologize and excuse terrorists, fascists, tyrants, and the most sinister forms of government evil.

I saw the vapidity of multiculture equivalence silence liberal voices that should have been howling to the sky for the rights of women, gays, and minorities in every part of the world, especially the Middle East.

I looked on in sheer disbelief as the Director of LGBT Relations at the Human Rights Watch apologized for and excused the beating of a homosexual couple in the city of Amsterdam by a gang of fascistic, fundamentalist Muslim youths.

There are serious issues facing the Republic and Western Civilization, and someone is going to have the gall and base ignorance to tell anyone else that these things need be decided by something as inconsequential as who they have sex with?

Now that is a mindset I find confusing and jaw-dropping.

People are shocked by gay Republicans and conservatives? I am shocked as hell by gay liberals and Democrats. They are the ones being selfish by putting their delicate sexual sensibilities before the vital questions of government, country, and civilization.

There is more to this world than me and who I date. Perhaps someday I'll get married. Perhaps not. That is my choice, and I will make it whether the government approves or not. I will continue to be a homosexual. To this day, I still go to the clubs, and have gay friends, and probably live up to the promiscuous stereotype a little more than I ought to. But I also work hard and want to keep my money. I want better health care, not a shittier national system. I want freedom for everyone, no matter where they are in the world. I want the boot of the American military to smash the faces of the Islamofascists over and over and over again. I want the bigots and the racists in both political parties exposed and shamed.

If someone finds all this horrifically confusing, well kiddo, have a popper and nap. It's on me.

Oooooh.

2005-09-08T16:56:00.000-05:00

Chad at Cake or Death tipped me to this. I like this so much better than blogspot's default. It's purty.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. Huzzah.

Brutus used hedge clippers

2005-09-08T05:25:00.000-05:00

This week, the History Channel has been running an excellent series about ancient Rome as a bit of cross-promotion for the equally excellent series about Rome currently running on HBO.

So far, I've only caught the two hour special on Roman architecture and construction techniques, but it was pretty engrossing, in that sort of open-mouthed, a silvery thread of saliva is slithering out of your mouth kind of way.

Mainly I'm excited because the History Channel's long indentured servitude to Popular Mechanics appears to have been broken, if only for a few days. Last week, while nursing a mild plague-induced ear infection (It was the Black Plague, I know it was, and I'll hear naught another word about it), somewhere in my hallucinatory state I realized I'd spent an entire hour watching a program about the history of the lawnmower.

And you only wish I were kidding.

This was followed by the history of the muscle car, the history of the combustion engine, and possibly a three hour expose about spark plugs. I can't be certain. Television's always a little fuzzy when you're rolling on the floor, clutching your head in a silent scream, and having long internal dialogues with a vision of the Blessed Mother at Medjugoria.

Somehow the producers of this cable network seem to think this is a vast improvement over their years long Hitler fetish. Hilter's Secret Army, Hitler's Secret Youth, Hitler's Secret Youthful Army, Hitler's Secret Fascination with Young Boys Who Know All the Lyrics to Showboat. And on and on and on.

So, yeah, if you can tear yourself away from CSI, the new Rome series is worth checking out. If you're often enmeshed in the merciless tentacles of insomnia like me, they rerun it late at night.

Plus, a lot of the actors are hot. The casting director who found their Caesar is my personal idol. You just know there was a shirtless screen test involved. God, I hope so.

Rough and Tumble Cowboys

2005-09-08T00:20:00.000-05:00

Brokeback Mountain premiered at the Venice film festival this week. There are a few very readable links attached to main article. My favorite excerpt:

The "Day After Tomorrow" pinup says that kissing a boy -- in this case Aussie hunk Heath Ledger -- in "Brokeback Mountain" almost led to a broken nose.

"He grabs me and he slams me up against the wall and kisses me, and then I grab him and I slam him up against the wall and I kiss him," he said recently, adding that the love scenes were the most violent he'd ever done.

I, uh, may be completely unavailable throughout the month of December.

Variety has a review up. Requires registration.

Duelling With Jello

2005-09-07T18:21:00.000-05:00

When hurricane Katrina first hit, the documents detailing the cuts in federal funding for the levee system seemed to be, for the Left, the ultimate indictment of the Bush administration. It rapidly took its place as the centerpiece at a political dinner party attended by human corpses.

"How do you explain this, Robbie?! Where is your Republican savior now! Bwahahahaha! He's against gay marriage!" (Don't ask, that always gets thrown in there. My liberal friends are more concerned about my penis than I am. Which, while somewhat touching, is also invariably creepy).

My response from the beginning has been, "Well, it seems the funding would've made no difference whatsoever. The collapsed sections had already been completed, and they were only built to withstand a Category 3. Even if the funds weren't cut, the improvements wouldn't have been completed in time."

"Excuses!" they shrieked. "And did you know Bush is against gay marriage? Thought you should know . . ."

Thanks to AceofSpadesHQ, I've been directed to this article, a devastating expose on how Democratic government squandered funds meant for flood control and levee improvements. Naturally, I mailed this around. The response from a liberal I know:

It's also true that in a perfect world and the money was forthcoming and spent wisely, the levees would not have been done in time to stop this disaster - even if the repairs had started five years ago. . . Oh, and gay! Marriage!

Sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

You know, British humorist Mil Millington says it far better than me in his articles about arguing with his girlfriend. In this case, liberals can be flawlessly substituted for Margret.

An especially frequent argument argument, however, is the result of Margret NOT STICKING TO THE DAMN ARGUMENT, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. Margret jack knifes from argument to argument, jigs direction randomly and erratically like a shoal of Argument Fish being followed by a Truth Shark. It's fearsomely difficult to land a blow because by the time you've let fly with the logic she's not there anymore. A row about vacuuming gets shifted to the cost of a computer upgrade, from there to who got up early with the kids most this week and then to the greater interest rates of German banks via the noisome sexual keenness of some former girlfriend, those-are-hair-scissors-don't-use-them-for-paper and, 'When was the last time you bought me flowers?' all in the space of about seven exchanges. 'Arrrrrrgggh! What are we arguing about? Can you just decide what it is and stick to it?'

It's so true.

No Surprises Here

2005-09-07T08:36:00.000-05:00

Although I am puzzled by the use of tense in this article. They seem to think all of this happened in the past.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Did Neanderthals and the first ancestors of modern man ever meet?

Well, that depends. Did the Europe of 38,000 years ago have an extensive customer service industry? If so, I'm gandering yes.

Others still have suggested that they not only met but may even have interbred.

This explains so many branches in my family tree. Most notably the ones with the yokels who leap off three story buildings into four foot swimming pools.

The arguments have ebbed and flowed for generations -- fueled from time to time by new artifact finds

Like copies of the old fall schedules for the WB.

But the team of scientists writing in Thursday's edition of Nature believe they may have settled the dispute with analysis of tools discovered at different depths in the cave of the Grotte des Fees at Chatelperron in central France.

I guarantee they have the RonCo logo on them.

Chances Are They Never Read Hamlet

2005-09-07T08:13:00.000-05:00

Given what's happening in New Orleans, is it really wise to name a hurricane or tropical storm after a Shakespeare character who drowned herself? A little tact here, fellas.

Ophelia Threatens Florida

Anything But That

2005-09-07T08:03:00.000-05:00

It seems the dread, almost Sauronic powers of international diplomacy are about to be unleashed:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Kofi Annan will both face sharp criticism for allowing corruption and waste to overwhelm the Iraq oil-for-food program, according to a probe of the $64 billion operation.

Sharp criticism, that most potent of weapons in the U.N. arsenal. When informed he may also be in for a "mild scolding" and "stern talking to," nearby observers noted Annan visibly paled.

The Incredible Vanishing White Folk

2005-09-07T01:28:00.000-05:00

One of the favorite arguments of the Left in the aftermath of Katrina is that the Bush administration would never have taken so long to respond if the victims had been white people, religious conservatives, the rich, Republicans, etc.

Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi and Alabama in addition to Louisiana if I'm not mistaken.

Uhm, where does the Left think white conservative evangelicals come from?

So, Bush is a racist because he ignored the plight of minorities. Yet, while making this argument, the Left ignores some of the reddest of red voters in white southerners who are also devastated.

I'd laugh if I weren't choking on the irony of it all.

Update: That Gay Conservative linked to this piece in comments that comprehensively illustrates how wide-ranging the damage and how diverse the affected populations. Thanks for this. Everyone should send it out to liberal and non-liberal friends who are repeating the convenient media storylines that have been bouncing around throughout the week.

Life Has Themes

2005-09-06T22:22:00.000-05:00

Without going into detail, suffice to say there was an "incident" this past weekend where I found myself dripping in raw sewage down to my adidas. We'll just leave that alone for now.

This upcoming weekend, I've promised family I'd attend a cow patty to raise money for hurricane Katrina victims.

It almost sounds like it involves burgers, doesn't it? A BBQ out in a field somewhere, beer in coolers, country music, kids running around, water balloons. Though I'm a suburban/city boy through and through, I still enjoy rural life. Country people know how to kick back and take it easy.

City parties involve dressing up far too much, dancing until your legs give in, and the various anxieties of trying to interpret and misinterpret so many different signals that a U.N. convention threatens to break out at any moment. Country parties involve honest to god relaxation.

Well, I didn't know what a cow patty was.

This is a cow patty.

So, that'll make two weekends in a row where I end up drunk and knee deep in shit.

What are the odds?

Finally, Actual Men

2005-09-06T20:47:00.000-05:00

The trailer for Brokeback Mountain is finally making its way across the net (scroll down to the first comment after the link).

I must admit, when I first heard they were making a feature film out of this material, I wondered how they could make it work. Part of a collection by Annie Proulx, the original story is brief and full of a kind of writing as spare as rural Wyoming - it doesn't rely on ornamentation to be beautiful while still capturing deeper human truths.

When I heard Ang Lee would be helming the film, I sighed in relief. Not only is this a director familiar with gay material (The Wedding Banquet), but he is also a reverse Oliver Stone. Lee is a film-maker who never seems less than earnest. While someone like Stone uses homosexuality as a cheap vehicle for sensationalism and psuedo-controversy (see: Alexander), Lee always seems content to let his camera and characters speak for themselves. In this film, I think we can expect to see the sexuality of the characters subtly folded into their personalities, rather than propped like a gaudy piece of jewelry meant to draw the eye and shock the senses.

That alone is reason enough to see it, but there is something else here:

This is a story about actual men. Not only actual men, but actual love.

Much of gay "literature" and film revolves around sudden realizations that some people like cock, and then we're barreling down a strained, angst-ridden path invariably involving drugs, night clubs, a series of one night stands, and suicidal self-loathing. If I never read another novel or see another movie that involves someone on a three month, sex-fuelled meth bender, it will only be too soon. While issues of awakening to and accepting one's sexuality are inherently adolescent in nature, that doesn't mean writing about them has to be.

While some of these elements are no doubt present in Brokeback Mountain, there's the surest sense that these characters are not driven by the need for acceptance and a wish to just be who they are. Instead, we have two people who have suddenly and inexplicably fallen in love and are confused by how they feel this way. They cannot believe it, and because they cannot believe it, they have a grudging time accepting it.

While I've always heard stories by friends and boyfriends about always knowing they were gay, I've never been able to relate. My sexuality has always been one long, unfolding realization. My first great love was also my best friend. Closeness bred familiarity, and familiarity engendered love. That he was male seemed of far less importance than the fact that he was such an over-whelming part of my life. There seemed a time when the boundaries of platonic attachment must break under powerful, half-understood forces of attraction. It was about a need for an ever deepening closeness, until you can actually feel the other person inside your own soul.

Gay cinema has always misunderstood this component of love and attraction. The requirements here don't merely extend to "has cock" or an adolescent social anxiety. While two people certainly can and do get together because they both find each other hot, there has be a deeper shared splinter of understanding for love to work and remain believable. There must be a potrayal of the recognition that there is something in the other person that mirrors a cherished, long-hidden part of ourselves.

Most gay films and books concentrate on the shallow things. The initial physical attraction, the one night stands that seem more like Christmas morning - these people aren't undressing, they're unwrapping a present they've long window shopped for. After many drunken arguments and strained misunderstandings, perhaps the two main characters will walk down the street while holding hands. The credits will somehow roll up before a banner can appear on screen screaming "I like cock, and that's ok!" And yet, I always know those two characters will break up in roughly three weeks if my friends are any barometer. It just doesn't work like that.

That's why I'm pretty excited about this movie. It's about two men who aren't scrambling to gay clubs to find acceptance and dick. They are who they are, living their lives. Love is a startling, unexpected thing. You can't look for it, you can't go out and find it. It finds you, whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not. The only thing you can do is cope with it and deal with it the best you possibly know how.

So, yeah. Finally. A movie about real men, real people. I'll probably live in the theater during the month it comes out.

Plus, there are worse ways to spend time than watching Heath Ledger make out with Jake Gyllenhall.

I'm just sayin.

Maybe if he renamed it Urban Ethos

2005-09-06T17:05:00.000-05:00

Queer Conservative tipped me off to this local story about the rampant racism inherent in the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

GARY, Ind. -- The Gary branch of the NAACP wants an apology from Bureau of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Joel Silverman for "offensive and disrespectful" comments he made during a recent public hearing.

Silverman referred to members of a mostly black audience Aug. 17 as having a "city mentality," which many took as a racial remark.

"When you mention the term 'city mentality' to an audience consisting mainly of African-Americans, they're not thinking city mentality means 'regional.' They're thinking you mean the N-word mentality. That was a perception problem," said Tammi Davis, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The only ones taking "city mentality" as a racial remark are people predisposed to take everything as a racial remark.

Every time I hear the NAACP is outraged by a passing, inoffensive remark from a blindsided official, I'm reminded of every bad relationship I've ever had. Most people know how this goes:

You come home from a long day of shucking oysters or power rodding local sewer systems, like ya do, and you find your partner waiting for you in the living room. His arms are folded across his chest as his eyes bore into the television in a way where you just know the thing would explode if he had any telekinetic ability whatsoever. Still, you're tired, so you're paying little attention to the silent fuming and the wisps of steam rising from his head. You slump down in the kitchen and start tearing through the stack of bills, dreading what horrors await.

Somewhere between wondering if you can use your new soup bowls to collect rainwater for drinking and whether or not you really need electricity, you find the visa bill. Sighing in frustration, but still clinging to a shred of calm, you walk into the living room and wave the bill in air. "I know you had a lot of fun at the Dutch and German Dance Festival For Awareness of Transgender Acceptance - we all did - but I think next time we should avoid the $75 sequined culottes. We're going to have to buy food at some point."

Like every earthquake, you can almost see the S waves rolling across the carpeted floor in the split second before it hits.

"YOU DON'T LOVE ME!!! You hate everything about me!! Why are you always on my ass about everything!! My last boyfriend would never treat me like this!!" And with a half sob, Laura Ingalls Wilder gathers her skirts and flees from the room.

Just me? *awkward pause* Ok then . . .

Every time white officials say anything to a largely African-American community, they're treading a severely thin rope, one manned on both sides by Jesse Jackson types armed with scissors and shit-eating grins. No matter how innocuous or common sensical the comment, the officials are always at fault.

Anyone in Chicago knows about city vs regional conflicts. Not a day goes by without someone in Springfield bitching that there is an entire state of Illinois involved here. "Could you not keep pissing away millions on architectural lingerie for the John Hancock Building? We told you, the Sears Tower just doesn't swing that way." These arguments are simply a fact of life in an area where eight million people live in one neighborhood, and three or four folks have retreated to cow country.

This poor Indiana official, like all unsuspecting boyfriends, has stepped on a phantom landmine with very real shrapnel. Now he must grovel and apologize by attending "sensitivity training," that re-education camp of the Left. It will make no difference at all because, like all relationships, the situation is a minefield. When a largely minority urban area exists within a mainly rural white state, there are few criticisms that cannot be shunted into "What's really wrong." And what is always, always, always wrong is that every white official in the state is a virulent racist. The officials simply don't love them enough and hate everything about them.

It's just so obvious, isn't it?

The Soulforge

2005-09-05T11:44:00.000-05:00

On the evening of October 8th, 1871, the editors of the Chicago Tribune must have looked on in disbelief as the Cook County Courthouse collapsed, silencing its alarm bell and sending it plummeting into the basement below. By sliding down the tower banisters, the ringers escaped five tons of descending horror, only to find themselves in the streets of a city in its death throes.

For months, through one of the driest Indian summers in memory, the Tribune warned local and state officials of the disaster waiting to unfold. With over sixty miles of pine block streets, six hundred miles of wooden sidewalks, hulking lumberyards, furniture factories, and financial districts and tenements crafted almost entirely of timber, Chicago was an inferno in the making. When only two and a half inches of rain fell since early July, it seemed only a matter of time before fate struck its match and burnt the city to the ground.

Within hours of Mrs. O'Leary's legendary cow kicking over the lantern, the great cultural and architectural institutions of the city flared briefly, almost beautifully, before folding into ashen rubble, the steeples of the immigrant churches curling like so many spent wicks. Palmer House, the recently renovated Crosby Opera House, the Grand Pacific Hotel, post offices, and customs, and even the "fireproof" Tribune building itself vanished in a sheet of orange flames.

As the city smoldered, and the citizens took stock, the sight of another tower rose through the gray, smoky gloom. Behind their thick stone walls, the city waterworks performed far beyond their means all through the conflagration. When embers and debris the size of flour sacks alighted the tower roof, fire gutted the structure. Still, in a city now level with nearby Lake Michigan, one small piece still stood proudly, a beacon of hope that all was not lost in the disaster.

Today, the City of Chicago is nothing and everything like that place long ago buried. It is still a center of trade, finance, manufacturing, and culture. A downtown once built entirely wood is now piled high with mountains of steel and glass, their reflections glittering in the lake. The modern crown jewel of the city, Millennium Park - with its Cloud Gate seeming like a large mercuric jelly bean -, has taken its rightful place in the people's imagination.

And yet, walking north along Michigan Avenue, urbanites and tourists alike leave behind these metal sculptures and postmodern designs to find Water Tower Place. Hunkered in the shadow of the Hancock building and an upscale shopping center filled with the affluent, the beige limestone structure with crenellated ramparts still stands. Though gas lamps have been replaced by red and green spotlights, tourists still flock to the Old Water Tower, as passing locals puff up their chests and declare "One of the only buildings to survive the Fire!"

Many cities throughout the world have been through their own trials, destroyed by flames natural and man-made, buried under floods and volcanoes, bombed, and sacked, and raided, and ruined. Still, these historic gems survive and become spiritual points of pride for the populace. Are there any citizens prouder than Londoners as they look upon the great dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, it's ramparts still scarred and punctured by the horrors of the Blitz? Does anyone know a secret smile better than a Roman citizen as pillars and statues are recovered from that city's bottomless catacombs?

I admit to tearing up a little upon reading that New Orleans' French Quarter and Garden District have escaped Hurricane Katrina relatively unscathed. There will always be the Cafe Du'Monde with its sugared beignets, and the moldering mansions along First Street, keeping their eternal secrets while slumbering under the protective embrace of the oaks. The city that rises from this destruction may look nothing at all like the one that existed until last weekend. But the people there will have these cultural touchstones, these little bits of living history and tangible comfort as they struggle to bridge the old and the new.

The soul of a city is forged in the crucible of history. Though pieces may die, those parts purified through this suffering emerge as symbols of the strength and the spirit of a city and a people who will rebuild and live on.

Paging MI6. . .

2005-09-04T14:42:00.000-05:00

There's a reason they're called moonbats:

I want to be clear: at the beginning of this whole disaster I reminded the moderators to remove particular topics of discussion which we have removed in the past. This week has certainly demonstrated - again - that the Bush administration is criminally incompetent, but we are not going to be hosting discussions about weather control any time soon on Democratic Underground.

The one man who could have thwarted this evil scheme?

Fired two weeks ago.

Convenient, eh?

Less a Closet Than a Hall of Doors

2005-09-03T23:42:00.000-05:00

With a new blog, I've been casting about hopelessly for things to write about. The witty. The profane. The things not related to my on-going struggle with acceptance of what happened to Fairuza Balk's career. You know you've reached the underbelly of desperation when you begin to contemplate the mundane items in your own bedroom ("How Leftists Invented the Snooze Button: A Conspiracy Against an Industrious Society"). But when you start thinking about the items still in your bedroom over at your parents' house, we've waded past the shallows of desperation for the depths of personal mania.

Behind a door, beneath an organizer, there is a tupperware box. Squat, blue, with a coating of dust grummied by the occasional fingerprint. Few humans have heard the comforting ffffffwip that comes when you open it, because this box contains one of my most dread secrets.

It is full of Dungeons and Dragons books.

Not simply the $4.95 Dragonlance serial novels that spent at least 80 books raping the core storyline - that would be almost forgivable - but manuals and campaign boxed sets and the velvety Crown Royal sack full of enough shiny, multi-colored dice to distract a small legion of ferrets.

The small consolation in this personal geekery is that I was never much of a player. No, I really only liked the idea of playing. I spent hours writing campaigns and reading the various spell descriptions in the player's handbook, fantasizing about the chaos I could create if only I could web the senior hall between fifth and sixth periods. Soon I had spiral notebooks full of lists: lists of magic items, and plots, and deities.

Given that I was a fairly centrist teenager - not a nerd, not a jock, just kinda sorta there - there was no ready means to actually play the game. Those who did and were fairly open about it were a frightening sort. All emaciation and pale skin, wild, dandruff-ridden hair, and great bulging eyes forced to evolve outward to grasp light in a world accustomed to the angsty, gothic darkness of a curtained bedroom with only a computer monitor providing warmth. When you're middling on the high school social totem, the wrong association can consign you to that week's sacrificial pit, and I was always keen to avoid it.

Still, I harbored my secret as best I could, hiding my notebooks deep within folders within folders. I stole surreptitious glances at other people's notebooks whenever I passed the players' table at lunch. Every few Mondays, I would sit quite near them, eyes fixed forward as I idly listened to a harrowing account of how they rescued the hot daughter of the local duke, and she was only too willing to repay the characters' kindness in multiple sexual favors that were well out of the reach of the actual players.

Though I couldn't because of the fear of social consequences, I wanted to say something. I wanted to leap up and shout "You know, if you contingency a fireball on an hourglass, you could so create a time bomb!" With a need to share that great, it was only a matter of time before I let slip little comments that, had anyone been listening, would've let anyone know where my secret passion lay. When it finally happened, it became a nightmare of epic proportions.

It was a typical class in Honors British Lit. We had been assigned to write a satirical story in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, though the teacher gave no outline and few instructions about what he wanted. I was in the middle of a tale about downtrodden townspeople forced by their pompous lord to build a statue using no materials and no blueprints - because I've always been a smart ass like that - when a guy we'll call Mark began muttering to himself and furiously scratching out, drawing, and scratching out again something he was working on in his note book.

Glancing over, I whispered "If you leave a hollow space in the middle of the spiral stairs, you can make it so a false step will send the party into the spike trap below. Maybe even create a magic arrow trap to tip them over the edge. Use a dexterity check." Though I bent over my paper and continued writing, I was fully aware that his large, protruding eyes were watching me, seeing me in a different light. I finished the paper and continued on with my regularly scheduled existence.

But the slip had been made, the small admission. Suddenly, Mark was in the library when I was in the library. Mark would stand quite close to me as we lined up in gym. He was always behind me in line at lunch, watching me with hopefulness. Two weeks after the initial incident, I surrendered and asked how the trap worked out.

"Great! But only the half-ogre and human in the party fell into it," he replied despondently.

During the days and weeks afterwards, I made small talk now and then, but always careful never to seem too eager. Still, it was not long before I found him lurking around my locker between periods, notebook at the ready, excited to show me the latest horror he wanted to unleash upon his players. I'd glance around nervously, taking careful note of whether or not we were seen.

Finally, he committed the most unforgivable of sins; he approached my lunch table as I sat surrounded by friends. They looked to one another in confusion and alarm, the silent, flickering questions passed like notes over the lunch trays. With an expression more distasteful than the salisbury steak, I dismissed him as rapidly as possible.

From then on, I treated him with a nonchalance that went far beyond the borders of cold. I did all but shout, "For the love of god, go away!" He'd slink off into the passing crowd between periods, and I'd swallow the awful feeling that had traveled from stomach to throat. But, still, for another day at least, I had staved off the public realization that I was part geek.

Not long after this, I'd find myself standing at that same locker with the same frosty attitude as a lispy, limp-wristed blonde swimmer talked excitedly to me after I'd made a different admission. Instead of a small comment in English class, I'd made a rather large statement with my mouth and hands during a rum-fuelled party.

Today, I stand around balconies and gay bars, surreptitiously listening to various comments, waiting for the unlikely moment when someone says "Fuck Michael Moore!" or "I voted for Bush." As then, I still let little comments slip and see the same raised eyebrows and questions in response. The high schoolers may now be grown gay men, and the notebook now a blog, but I still write away, looking around, full of the same passion.

Today, I hope that another Mark or blonde swimmer will come along, knowing I'd give them anything but a frosty reception.

Gay men know more than enough about closets, as we've opened door after door after door. Conservatism is just another door, and as with the others, flinging it open brings with it a certain freedom to be just who we are, proudly and unapologetically.

Impeach Nature!

2005-09-02T08:38:00.000-05:00

The usual suspects are decrying the racism inherent in this week's hurricane disaster. Rightfully so. Mother Nature has long history of disdain for the poor and minorities that extends into the modern era. With the arrival of Katrina, her neo-con agenda became crystal clear. In a recent interview, we've uncovered revealing comments and the surprising political connections of a climate culture bent on oppressing the masses under a system of meteorlogical fascism, one which directly benefits Bushitler and his Satanic Oil Cronies.

PrismWarden: Well, you've been very busy this week, so I'd like to thank you for taking the time to sit down with us.

MotherNature: Oh, it's no bother. Frankly that spotlight hogging bitch, Cindy Sheehan, was beginning to think she was the center of the entire universe. I thought I would take this opportunity to disabuse her of that very misguided idea.

PW: Are you saying you object to her efforts to bring down the current regime?

MN: Do you think Texas heat just happens?

PW: Right. Regarding Hurricane Katrina. There are many here in America and around the world who wonder "Why here? Why now?" Many believe global warming has enraged you, instigating these kinds of devastating storms. How would you respond to that?

MN: I'd say these people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. I love global warming. Do you know what it's like to sit through a motherfucking Ice Age?!

PW: Er, no . . . but there was a really brutal winter here in Chicago a few years back . . .

MN: Don't be such a fucking pussy. I sat there for tens of thousands of years freezing my tits off. I don't want to hear this pathetic bullshit. "Oooh, it snowed. I'm so cold. Mommy, I think my dick broke off." Grow some fucking testicles already.

PW: So you're an active proponent of global warming . . .

MN: It gets me wet. The last time Halliburton received a fat government contract, monsoon season started early that year . . . if you know what I mean.

PW: I, uh, think I do. But if you're supportive of fossil fuel companies and their impact on the environment, why send Katrina to destroy a locus of the petroleum industry of the greatest energy-consuming nation in the world?

MN: It's like this, you see. America has needed more oil refineries for a long, long time. There's simply not enough cheap gas for all those pimpin SUVs and Arianna Huffington's private jets. I decided to use America's resilient, can-do spirit against it. Destroy the refineries, oil platforms and piplines and you ornery little weasels will only rebuild them even bigger and better than ever. You really are a bunch of predictable little shits.

PW: But won't increased prices drive down petroleum consumption?

MN: Perhaps, but the oil companies will be making record profits. Record profits mean more dollars for lobbying Congress. Besides, you people haven't seen the winter I have in store for you. It's going to make Siberia seem like an early autumn frost. ::laughs:: I'm not worried about consumption levels.

PW: Is this related to recent heavy Congressional lobbying activity by some 503c groups, particularly Swiftly Moving Arctic Fronts For Open Borders?

MN: I'm not layin all my cards on the table just yet, but I will say that not even weather systems want to live in Canada.

PW: Let's move on to another topic. Minorities and the poor. It seems they have been disproportionately affected by this latest disaster. Some have even accused you of racism. Let's be honest. When was the last time you deliberately targeted the European race for special fury?

MN: I don't have a racist lightning bolt in my atmosphere! I resent that accusation, you impertinent little shit. Did you not see that heat wave in Europe last year?

PW: Some might say it was not the weather but the ineptitude of the French that resulted in all those deaths.

MN: Duh. I was banking on it.

PW: Maybe so, but that disaster isn't anywhere near the scale of, say, the tsunami. Again, with Katrina, it seems like you reserved the potentially greatest natural disaster in American history for an area disproportionately poor and black.

MN: Disproportionately Democratic, you mean.

PW: Are you saying what I think you're saying?

MN: I admit nothing.

PW: I see. Well, this has certainly been an illuminating interview . . .

MN: Don't take that pissy tone with me. Illuminating is when I shove a lightning bolt up your ass.

PW: Er, could I ask you what future plans, if any, you might have?

MN: I heard Kennedy was objecting to wind driven power spoiling his precious view of the sea. I'll show that fucker wind power.

PW: Uh, great talking with you, Mother Nature.

Need I say more, my fellow progressives?