A couple of weeks ago, Ralph Nader used the term "Uncle Tom" to describe Barack Obama. Today comes revelation of a new (still to be fully vetted) audio recording featuring Al Qaeda's #2 lunatic, Ayman al-Zawahri. In it, the fundamentalist blood-sucker inveighs against Obama, calling him a "house negro" and complaining that he isn't enough like Malcolm X.
In an audio message which appeared on militant Web sites Wednesday, al-Zawahri said that Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X. He called Obama a "house negro."
He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
Ralph Nader should feel proud that he has found common ground with Al-Zawahri. Since it should be apparent to even Nader by now that he's never going to win any public office in the US, perhaps he should look into the possibility of becoming Al Qaeda's official consumer protection advocate. I hear some of the car bombs they're using are "unsafe at any speed."
Buh-bye, Ralph, and thanks for playing Spot the Looney!
With all of the joyful noise following the last Presidential election,it's sad to have to be reminded that there's still an old sickness in our cultural body that is yet to be cured. Still, it doesn't come as a surprise. Months before the election, the purveyors of hatred were already making their voices heard. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the threats have kept on coming and have gone beyond words to action in some cases. Now that America will have its first president whose skin isn't pinky-beige, whose hair looks a bit different than the Caucasian type, whose father was an African, the venom is ratcheting up.
...Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door...
Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that nigger in the head..."
At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."
Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted
Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur...
Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported...
Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
In Forest Hills, PA, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
It would be naive to even ask why this is happening. We all know why. The pathology has been around long enough. One might as well ask what causes the common cold or why the sky is blue. There are people in this country who, having accomplished nothing with their own lives, identify their own value — and by extension the value of other human beings — by some easily distinguishable physical trait, some bit of superficial biological coincidence. It's all they've got, and they'll cling to it for all they're worth because it is all they're worth. Call that bit of inconsequential physicality into question and you call their value as a human being into question. You make an enemy who may well take it upon himself to extract vengeance.
That someone who looks different, who doesn't share some valued hue of the flesh with such people, has achieved the nation's highest political office drives such people into a rage. Some meaningful privilege that they'd hoped and believed was connected with their appearance has turned out not to be so connected. It is for this reason that I expect at least one assassination attempt to be made upon Obama. It's a pathetic expectation, I know, but it would be just as naive not to think such an event will come as it is to question the motivation for it in the first place.
Sometimes I wished that I believed in Hell so that I could also believe that there was a special place reserved in it for jackasses who scrawled swastikas on Holocaust memorials.
The Holocaust Memorial in San Francisco's Lincoln Park has been vandalized for the second time in two months with swastikas penned on the bronze sculpture in the latest incident that city officials learned of Wednesday...
"The Holocaust," as the haunting piece by sculptor George Segal is titled, is made up of 11 life-size figures cast in bronze and then painted white. The figures are positioned behind a barbed-wire fence...
A vandal or vandals used a black ink marker to deface one of the figures, some plaques related to the sculpture and a nearby bench. The markings were similar, with the swastika drawn inside the Jewish Star of David symbol.
Last month, a swastika was scratched into the surface of the artwork, commission officials said. It has been vandalized other times, as well. Police were alerted to the latest defacement Wednesday morning...
Because I don't believe in Hell, all I can hope for is that the morons who did this are caught and given the harshest possible sentence under the law for their cowardly and inhumane act. Well, I can hope that they fall into a vat of honey and stumble into a hive of angry Africanized bees, too, but that's not nearly as likely.
Aside from the sheer hatred for others involved in vandalizing a memorial to victims of mass murder, one has to wonder what the point of doing it is in the first place. It's going to get noticed, after all (otherwise, why do it in the first place?) and fixed immediately. Other than making people possessed of something approaching mental health think you're a blatant anal pore, such an act changes nothing. It's not like someone is going to see your handiwork and think, "Gee, maybe the guy who drew the swastika on the depiction of a Holocaust victim has a point. I think I'll become a Neo-Nazi."
In case you haven't seen this video already, this redolent summation of the depths of ignorance and paranoia, watch it now. There will be a quiz.
As much as I find the video itself appalling insofar as what it reveals about just how much the stupid can burn, the recent passage of California's Proposition 8 and similar referenda in places like Florida, Arizona and Arkansas leave me asking the same question the benighted woman narrating it asked. What the hell is oozing out of our ground?
There is a meanness in these new laws, a cruelty that is most loudly voiced by the fact that California will not only put a halt to future same-sex marriages but there are those who are now attempting to void those which have already taken place. Surprise, surprise... they're based in Florida:
Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based conservative legal group, said last week that if Prop. 8 passes, Liberty Counsel would seek to invalidate all same-sex marriages already performed in California. Randy Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based SaveCalifornia.com, said his group would support any lawsuit.
"One of the main reasons for passing Prop. 8 was to have real marriage be a role model for the next generation," he said. "Since these are a bunch of false marriages and false marriage licenses, they are bad examples for little children."
Anyone who still harbors doubt that much of Florida is a percolating, roiling bowl of fundamentalist mythological contagion need look no further than the anthropoid vector of pestilence that is Matthew Staver and his Orwellianly-monikered Liberty Council to put those doubts to rest. Staver, by the way, is a dean at ignorance-factory Liberty University.
That there is no hope that someone like Staver will ever attain to a degree of empathy reminiscent of the better parts of the human race is without question. There are poisonous things in this world and there will always be poisonous things in this world. The question is not whether fundamentally sociopathic, inherently divisive and morally bankrupt people like Staver and Falwell and Don Wildmon can ever be reformed. I would submit that they cannot. Such people will always remain self-made enemies of the culture upon which they have declared war. This is the point of their existence. They thrive on pain and seek the increase of human suffering as a sign of upcoming divine intervention that will usher in a time when the better part of humanity will be tortured for all eternity by their invisible and vindictive father-figure in the sky. They feed on the decay, the hate, the division and the ignorance produced by their activities as surely as any leech slithering from a festering fen seeks to cling to and suck from the femoral artery of some victim. They are beyond all reproach in the perfection of their destructiveness.
In short, they are what is "oozing out of our ground." Still, they and those like them could not alone have passed the barbarisms that are these new laws, including Proposition 8. They must have had complicity in their efforts to corrupt the notion of human rights and the role of government intervention in the lives of others. I do not think that everyone who voted for new laws like Proposition 8 is a leech like Staver, but I do think that many of these people have been deceived, and deception is possible only in the presence of ignorance. The notion that people who prefer sexual interaction with members of their own gender would be in favor of pederasty, bestiality or any number of other outrageous perversions is precisely a product of that ignorance.
These warriors against rational and inclusive culture exploit this ignorance in several ways, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they exploit several varieties of ignorance. Let's face it — most Americans don't know many gay people, or at least aren't aware that they know any. To the bulk of the populace, gay people are an unknown. They're something that doesn't exist as a portion of their community as integral to its proper functioning as any heterosexual individual. They're something that one sees in the media, frequently as a caricature. They're an abstraction; gay people aren't human beings so much as a phantasm that is somebody else's "problem." By keeping them in the abstract, anything can be laid upon them. Gay people can be made out to be abnormal, villainous, scheming... in short, hobgoblins coming from some other reality, some other universe, with malicious intent, like some shadowy horde poised at the border and ready to sack the little villages in which far too many Americans fancy themselves to live. The American Family Association is particularly adept at exploiting this strain of ignorance, peddling videos like They're Coming to Your Town. The probability is that "they" are already in your town, have been there all along, and that your town — and any town — is all the better for it.
They exploit, too, an ignorance that puts forth the idea that the highest purpose of human existence is procreation. It's an assertion I see made time and time again — that homosexuality is a perversion because it doesn't result in reproduction, and that reproduction is the goal which gives purpose to all living things, thus making homosexuality itself a force that runs counter to life. What could be worse than that? What reasonable person could be opposed to the continuation of life itself!
The thing is, when one actually looks at life, that's not what we actually see, particularly as biological individualism gives way to social organization. In any number of truly social insects, for example, the vast bulk of the members of the society do not reproduce, yet they contribute essentially to the continuation of their society. When cognition enters the picture, sex often becomes less bound to reproduction and more a means of enforcing social bonds, too. Even among humans, we do not remember the important figures throughout our history because of the number of offspring they had. Indeed, most Americans would be hard-pressed to rattle off the names of the children of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or John Adams. We don't remember how many children Einstein had. Would it make any difference to us how we view such people if they'd never reproduced at all? We humans are not bound to our biology in the way that animals are bound to theirs. We can think, we can create, and we can go far beyond the limitations of our bodies. To say that the greatest achievement to which any one of us may attain is mere reproduction is to reduce all of mankind to animals in a menagerie. It robs all of us, even those who promulgate this nonsense, of the basic dignity of what it is to be human. We are more than molecular machines who eat and shit and fuck, and if we are not then we may as well tear down all the churches and all the laboratories and all the museums and stop distracting ourselves from this allegedly greatest good that any of us can spew forth from our various orifices. I, for one, think that we can be more than mere gamete factories. I think more of humanity, and I have a crazy notion that even those who have fallen under the contrary viewpoint would as well if they stopped and considered the sum total of civilization instead of having fallen prey to those who have declared war upon the better angels of human nature.
The questions that Proposition 8 and these similar referenda raise for me, and perhaps now for you, too, is whether we Americans will choose to see ourselves as something debased. Are we the product of a history that has finally cut us loose from the muck of basic biology, that allows us to aspire, to achieve, to no longer be identified in terms of merely what we contribute to some gene pool... or are we the product of some long-ago fall from grace that leaves every individual stained with sin? Will we use our powers of imagination and abstraction to cast one another as enemies, as "outsider" and "insider," to divide ourselves into camps that deserve to dwell either in sunlight or shadow based upon some accident of biology or — perish the thought — even some personal choice that involves no lives apart from our own, or will we use these boons to go beyond these superficial differences to find out that we are all essentially the same, that we all want the same things, and that we are all deserving of the same rights to associate with whom we will, to love whom we will, and to find in each of us that which we have to offer to the rest of us and so to allow every other member of our society the right to do the same?
We know what the Stavers and Wildmons of this country have to say on the matter. They are believers in the essentially impurity or each of us, a blood libel that began in a garden at the confluence of rivers. I suppose we know equally well (especially if you've read through all of this!) what those of us who don't believe in any such "fall from grace" and "original sin" think about it. But there is a great mass of American flesh and blood and mind between these two extremes that live their lives without ever seeing the effect that their decisions about "sanctity" have upon those who now must bear the weight of the stigma that they attach to them. Would they reach the same conclusions if they knew these people? If they saw what a same-sex marriage actually looked like in the light of day? If they came to know, on a personal basis, that the hearts and minds of the people who have entered into them were no different from their own save for the gender of the object of affection?
It is easy enough to be cruel toward an abstraction. Despite our fallibility, though, I think that most of us could not be so callous when called to look into the eyes of fellow human beings. Doing this will be a first great stride in doing away with not only one of the final malingering divisions in American social philosophy, but also in ridding ourselves of a pernicious war that allows a few men to exploit the shortcoming of many. America can be better than this. Just as some little bit of knowledge about the principles of refraction would remove the paranoid fears of the silly woman who made the video that began this entry, so would a little knowledge about what a same-sex marriage really is would remove the paranoia that the possibility "they're coming to your town" portends something terrible.
I am privileged to live in a place, one of only two states in this country, that allows same-sex marriage. I'm thinking of a way in which I might be able to use that happy coincidence in such a way as to lend some aid to those who do not enjoy it. I'll write more about that soon. It is enough to say, at this moment, that I feel like I have to do more about this than I have done until this moment.
During the course of the contest for the presidency now ended, I was pleasantly surprised to note the absence of Ann Coulter from the airwaves. Coulter's slide into obscurity since the publication of her paranoid and bizarre screed, Godless, is one of the things that have given me some hope that America may be returning to reason and repudiating the visceral hatred of the radical right.
Leave it to Ralph Nader to remind us, in Coulter's absence, that old-fashioned racism and bigotry is still very much alive and isn't the exclusive domain of wingnutters. In a quote from Nader discussed in an election night interview on Fox News, Nader accused Barack Obama of being an "Uncle Tom" in his relationship to corporate interests.
Whether or not one agrees with the assertion that Obama is too accommodating to big business, clearly the assertion itself could be expressed without one of the most incendiary references to his race possible. In fact, the unapologetic Nader has gone out of his way to include the slur in his statement. What does it mean, after all, to ask whether Obama would be an "Uncle Sam" in the first place? Nader could simply have said that Obama was misrepresenting himself; there was no reason to do this.
Still, Nader has a long history now of making racist statements. Some prior instances of this have been collected here, including such gems as:
There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American," Nader said. "Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white?
The assertion that Obama's ethnicity should make him predisposed to speaking a certain way and cause him to focus on a particular set of issues or to hold to some specific set of priorities is, without question, utterly racist. Obama, just like any other person in this country, is free to think about things in whatever way he wishes, to speak however he thinks best, and to prioritize things in whatever way he desires. The whole point of equality is that everyone enjoys the same freedoms and the rest of us get to agree or disagree without consideration of the coincidence of skin color. Clearly, Nader disagrees with Martin Luther King's contention that we should judge people based on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin.
I've previously made note of Nader's racist tendencies. This latest fuselade is in itself no longer surprising, just revolting. That it took an interviewer on Fox News, of all places, to call Nader out on his garbage should be an embarrassment to anyone who has ever put stock in the man enough to have even considered voting for him. At this point, Nader is no longer due any respect whatsoever from anyone at all. He should be cast onto the rubbish heap of history, right next to Ann Coulter.
In my recently less-than-sporadic efforts to bring you the latest news, I'm sure I'll be the first to mention that Barack Obama won the election and will be the next president. I'm glad for this. The alternative was clearly a very poor one and, of course, we're all aware by now about the historic context of his victory. This is big stuff, a sea-change, a climax in a struggle that began long before my own ancestors ever arrived in America.
I have followed the election closely for these past couple of months, even though I haven't had time to write about it. I have been all too aware of the hatred and panic, as well, that certain elements of our society have expressed over the impending turn in US history as my email box was besieged by dire and dirty "warnings" from Don Wildmon's American Family Association and their nethermost organ, OneNewsNow. To hear them tell it, we are all about to be swept up in a vast wave of stoned, gay, incestuous prostitutes in leather chaps, bearing pitchforks and crucifixes on the soles of their Birkenstocks. Their weather report, now that Obama has been elected, calls for periods of void-swallowing darkness followed by a rain of brimstone with a 30% chance of pale horses storming through the streets of America. In truth, or at least we need all hope, that these are the final fervent prayers and feverish visions of small people with tiny and malign minds, the kind that are ultimately drowned in the eddying currents of human progress.
In all honesty, one of the things that I most look forward to now that the election has been conducted and the ballots tallied is the impending absence of the whiny, shrill, nasal sound of Sarah Palin. I look forward, too, to the absence of scientific research being held up by the losing side every time they wanted to bring up an example of "earmarks" or "pork." Whether they understood basic research or not, the fact that McCain and Palin cited research into population genetic structure or molecular biology or a new projector for a planetarium — a place of science education — did not exactly endear them to this researcher. Had they won, I had visions of funding for research not entirely unlike my own simply vanishing in a puff of ignorance. They will not have the chance to do this, it seems. I count myself and my colleagues fortunate in this regard.
Aside from the historical coincidence (albeit an important one) of his ancestry, we have instead gotten a president elect who, as far as I can discern, is one of the most intelligent and well-educated in our history, and certainly in my lifetime. There are those to whom such qualifications make him, ironically, a member of the elite which, they believe, is a bad thing. There are those who will still judge the fitness of their governmental leadership on the basis of how much they'd like to have a beer with them, and those people will not shut up and go away based simply on the fact that their strange criterion has been repudiated by the electorate. On the other hand, I think that I would enjoy a beer with Barack. I would be very interested in sitting in a conversation with him without any beverages whatsoever, for that matter. We're not too far apart in age, after all, and more to the point I could easily envision a long and deep discussion of political and general philosophy with him. I felt no such thing in regard to McCain, certainly never have for Dubya, and I fear that were beer present during a one-on-one conversation with Palin, I might have sprayed it through my nose soon after she began wagging her chin. That would be rude, and I prefer not to be impolite when at all possible. The likelihood of any of this happening is nil, of course. I'm just Joe the Bio Grad Student and Obama has a government to run... and I have tarsomeres to measure. Still, my sense is that Obama gets it. He understands that the basic research of ten and twenty years ago is the technology of the present, and that once the pipeline empties it takes a long time to fill back up. America has dodged a bullet in a manner of which few people will ever be aware. It was a bullet aimed at our brain and the majority of my fellow Americans were smart enough to duck. Good for us.
So here we are on the first Wednesday in November. In about 60 days, ShrubCo at last begins its well-deserved dissolution and, we can be sure, a new track will be charted. We live in interesting times. Obama will need to exercise what I can only describe as greatness at a time when greatness may at best suffice only to staunch our collective bleeding as a nation. Anything less than greatness, anything short of a full application of his capacity to reason, to plan, to anticipate, is likely to result in a single term. Considering the smoking craters left by ShrubCo across our societal landscape, if Obama doesn't have greatness in him, it follows that we will need to find someone who does in four years' time. I am hopeful for now; the possibilities are endless and in most ways we have nowhere to go but up. Still, I am also a pragmatist, even in my idealism. I will say the same thing now to myself (and those who have read this far) that I said eight years ago: Let's see what this guy can do.
Having said all this, I do think it is important that Obama begin reaching out to the other side after this long and often fear-mongering contest. One way in which he could do this, I think, is to offer John McCain an appointment in his cabinet. As much as I loathe some of the tactics, even what passed for a strategy, in the campaign now ended, McCain should be given the benefit of the doubt and it should be recalled that he was not some fiend before the Ring of Power that was his quest for the presidency turned his Smeagle into our Gollum. McCain's strength, it has been said, was in foreign policy. He might be well-employed as a Secretary of Defense. Even making the offer would help to heal the divisions that were pried wide open in these past months. This might have another, even more important, effect in the near future.
Obama is in a good position, I think, to have an impact on the upcoming reformulation of the Republican Party. I believe that one thing that the GOP will learn from this election is that the base is not enough and, indeed, the very constituencies that make up what they have come to consider their base are, in fact, a polarizing power that precludes their having the support of more reality-based Americans. In the end, after all, McCain had to distance himself from Ted Hagee every bit as much as he sought to distance himself from George Bush. Obama could drive that point home with a few key appointments, I think. Few things could be healthier for this country, even for this civilization, than the showing of the door to the Dominionists and Millennialists by the party over which they have exercised enough influence to pry perilously loose from the reality of American life. We saw the base (and base they were!) "energized" by Sarah Palin, and we saw the GOP lose big. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan have recently said the same thing, so I don't think this idea is too radical. It's time to disentangle that which was supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism from the business of attempts to legislate morality. Giving Americans a choice of a party in which these two things are no longer intricately wound together will be a boon for all of us, even if we are not ourselves fiscal conservatives.
Which brings me, sadly, to the thing arising from this election that most drags upon my spirit this morning. It appears that Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in California, is going to pass by a narrow margin. It is for this reason that I prefaced this long and much overdue entry with the point that Obama's win marks a climax in a long struggle but not the climax. Just as there will continue to be intolerance to people of African ancestry in places in America, even though one will be our next President, just so we should keep in mind that others will still be marginalized as well. Even though they lost the Presidential election of 2008, those small-minded busybodies determined to stick their noses in everyone else's crotches as a test for righteousness are still very much with us and they may very well win this victory, as short-lived as it is likely to turn out, on the West Coast of the United States. They are, and will continue to be, dedicated to a "culture war" in which our own culture makes war upon itself. They will continue to seek to do harm in the name of nothing more than personal belief and preference.
They will be with us, I am sorry to say, for many years to come.
It took nearly 400 years for people somewhat like the man we have just elected President to get the right to self-determination, the right to own property, the right to vote as a whole human being (and not just some fraction thereof), and to marry whomever they liked. It took generations to get to this point, and it took sacrifice and struggle and, yes, the deaths of some very good people brought about by some of the worst people who opposed them. This is the course, too, that gay equality advocates have faced. It was once a crime punishable by death to prefer sexual friction with a member of one's own gender. It is not so now. As long as there are people courageous enough to speak out, progress will continue and the tiny, malign minds will, in the end, be swept away by the current of human history once again.
It really makes my day when I receive a "Dear Manmeat" letter from Don Wildmon, and the one I received yesterday afternoon was a particularly fun one. The American Family Association is in a lather because Hallmark has started selling greeting cards for same-sex marriages. Now, the friends of gay people can send the same sort of overpriced cardboard bits of sentiment that the friends of straight people can send. The horror!
Hallmark defends gay marriage cards - Urge your local Hallmark store to refuse to carry them
Take Action!
Urge your local Hallmark store owner to join others in refusing to carry Hallmark gay marriage cards in their stores.
You can find your local Hallmark store contact information here. [Note: I have changed the link to one directly to Hallmark; the one in the email tracks the clickthrough to give the AFA numbers it can claim as people objecting to Hallmark's policy even if the person clicking supports Hallmark's decision.]
Please be polite, but firm when you contact your local store.
August 25, 2008 Dear Manmeat,
Hallmark is reinforcing their decision to carry gay marriage cards with a message to supporters of traditional marriage – buzz off!
According to their website, corporate emails, and in response to phone calls, Hallmark is telling those who contact the company it will carry “cards that use specific language and images appropriate for same-sex wedding ceremonies.”
Same sex marriage is not recognized in 48 states, but Hallmark has chosen to become a corporate advocate in advancing homosexual marriage.
However, some local Hallmark store owners are refusing to carry them. Earlier this week, Jordan's Hallmark, which owns seven Hallmark Gold Crown stores in Idaho, announced its stores will not carry gay marriage cards in their stores.
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association
Ah, the dumbness, how shall I count the ways?
Let's start with the assertion that Hallmark shouldn't sell gay marriage cards because same-sex marriages aren't recognized in 48 states. How many states recognize bar mitzvahs with legislation that recognizes 13 year old boys as adults? And the survey says... zero. Precisely no states consider thirteen year olds as something other than minors, despite the fact that Jewish religious custom proclaims them to be adults. Hallmark had better stop selling greeting cards for that occasion. The same number of states also recognize officially your daughter's third birthday, your wedding anniversary, or the fact that your nephew got an A in math last year. In short, whether or not a given state has a law recognizing something is absolutely meaningless in this context. Hallmark is in the business of selling greeting cards, not of marking the passage of laws.
But let's pretend for a moment that Hallmark only sells greeting cards for occasions that are sanctioned by state laws. If this were the case, then Hallmark would sell same-sex marriage cards only in states where such unions were recognized, which is only a few. Not the two states which this latest "Dear Manmeat" letter asserts, however, but fourteen states in all which recognize gay marriage in some form or another, whether it is called "marriage" or "civil union" with the same rights as different-sex marriage or with some more limited number of rights. That's nearly a quarter of all the United States; a redundant statement to make, I know, but since the AFA's Grand Poobah appears incapable of distinguishing between two and fourteen, we shouldn't take for granted that he knows how many states there are.
But let's sink deeper into the AFA's fantasy world and pretend that there really are only two states — Massachusetts and California — that recognize gay marriage in some form. Should Hallmark not sell appropriate greeting cards for gay weddings in the other 48 states? Well, I don't know. Do people sometimes mail cards from one state to another? Hmmmm... anybody have statistics? This one's a real head-scratcher. I mean, it's not like someone living in New Mexico might have a gay friend in Massachusetts, right? Nobody from Florida could possibly know anyone in California! Surely, God has commanded that there shall be no mixing between states upon penalty of smiting.
Perhaps the most shocking news to Wildmon and Co. might be that (gasp) same-sex weddings take place even in states where gay marriages aren't recognized. Believe it or not, for a lot of people who get married, the main thing is commitment to one another, not the question of legal status. The fact that there are states heartless enough to deny the right of one human being to sit at the hospital bedside of a sick or dying loved one notwithstanding, people who happen to be of the same biological gender still have ceremonies to declare their mutual commitment in places that don't provide legal recognition of that commitment. Note that none of Hallmark's cards, for this or any other occasion, include phrases like "Congratulations on the government recognition of your relationship." Greeting cards mark personal occasions, not changes in legal status.
Case in point: a few years ago, two gay friends of mine and LL's had a wedding ceremony and reception in St. Petersburg, Florida. Florida doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, and their official civil union had actually taken place in Vermont. They did that in full knowledge of the fact that they would not have anything like the rights and privileges of other married couples when they returned to Florida... but they did it anyhow, as a statement to one another. As the majority of this couple's friends and family lived in America's nethermost realm, however, they also had a purely symbolic ceremony and reception when they got back home. Finding an appropriate greeting card for the occasion was a matter of some deliberation, and having had cards like those Hallmark now sells at that time would have been quite helpful. So, whether Florida had or had not recognized the legal status of this couple at the time, I would have bought such a card to go along with the very nice picnic set that LL and I gave them as a wedding present. You see, there's a difference between a committed relationship, a marriage and a wedding. I don't suppose that a bunch of dunces like the AFA, who apparently can't even count up to 14 successfully, would understand a concept as abstract as that.
So if Hallmark is really telling the AFA's deluded Paul Reveres, galloping clumsily through our cultural countryside and shouting their fool heads off that "The homos are coming! The homos are coming!", to "buzz off," then all I can do is mark the fact that they've made the right decision in this instance. I would have used a different four-letter word than "buzz," and it's quite possible that Hallmark did, too. The AFA's membership likes to pretend that they're too timid to use the more appropriate word "fuck" for "buzz," although any of us who have been on the receiving end of a fundienutter's vitriol knows what kind of language they really use when they think nobody's looking (and they can always pray for forgiveness, which they "know" they'll get... which is a big part of what makes them such immense pricks in the first place).
And about the graphics that accompanied today's daily dose of Donald Wildmon's "meanmeat" fantasy life; am I the only one confused by this? Is an image of two tuxedos too horrible to contemplate? Is that all it takes to shock the flock? Is the email implying with the second graphic that the 12 apostles were involved in gay marriages? I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were, and I wouldn't think less of them if it were the case that John had jammed his joystick up James. It's hard to think less of something than not at all. Nonetheless, I'm a bit surprised that Don Wildmon would be promulgating that sort of thing as historical fact. Then again, I was a bit surprised when I got an email from him asking me to make his dreams come true on a Saturday night in March, too.
In the end, like most of these moon-faced assassins of joy, Wildmon just needs reassurance that even with gay people getting married, he'll someday find the right man to fulfill his failingly-suppressed needs. He's got the same basic problem that all Christian literalists have. They've signed on to a cult that, on the one hand, is filled to the rafters with homoerotic imagery and on the other hand tells them to disregard the attraction they feel toward it, a conflict sloppily tied up with the promise that if they can just wait for it long enough that they'll get to sit back and watch the pain they've inflicted upon themselves all their lives acted out as sadistic fantasy by stern judges and bloodthirsty horsemen who will torture and behead those who actually enjoyed life. Without the sadism of the apocalyptic vision, which they demand we all believe is a truth rather than the product of asceticism driven to the point of hallucinatory madness, none of this pays off in the end. It is only through the infliction of suffering upon the other that they can derive meaning from the torture they inflict upon themselves.
Attacking greeting cards is no big deal when you're determined to spend eternity lending a hand at driving red-hot pokers into the eye sockets of real people, after all.
The 1913 law passed to prevent interracial marriages in Massachusetts, which went unenforced until invoked by Mitt Romney in 2004 as a means to prevent same-sex marriage, now has both feet in the grave. Our state Senate voted to repeal Massachusetts General Law Title III, Chapter 207, Section 11 on July 16. Today, the House did the same:
...The Massachusetts House voted 118-35 Tuesday to repeal a 1913 law that bans couples from marrying in the state if the unions would not be legal in their own states.
The Senate also voted for the repeal earlier this month, and Gov. Deval Patrick has said he would approve it...
By the end of the week, perhaps even tomorrow, Patrick will sign the bill and a piece of bad legislation, marginalizing and bigoted from the outset, will be no more. Any two unrelated people of the age of consent will be able to get married in Massachusetts.
On July 10, the American Family Association's feckless leader said that if same-sex couples could get married in California after Election Day, the Culture War would be over and that his side would have lost. This was the reason he gave:
The vote in California, Wildmon explains, will affect the entire nation. "California is a big dam, holding back the flood -- and if you take down the dam in California, it's going to flood 49 other states," he illustrates. "It will destroy marriage as it has been known for thousands of years, and with that the cultural decline that normally would follow."
However, if — no, not if but when — the 1913 law is repealed in Massachusetts this week, will not Wildmon's dam (and probably a few blood vessels) have burst? Even if Proposition 8 were to be approved in California, as increasingly unlikely as that may be, will it matter? The couple that would have gotten married there can still get married here.
I still wish I could believe it, you know. I still don't, though. Don Wildmon will go back on his word. He makes far too good a living at spreading hate to ever capitulate to a little thing like a victory for love.
I'm proud to be a MassachusetterMassachusettianMassachusettan Masshole.
What do you do if you're a county commissioner in Oklahoma up for re-election and facing criminal charges of felonious misuse of campaign funds? If you're Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart, you commission the creation of a 16-page comic book that looks like it was drawn by a sixth-grader, fill it with bigotry and allegations that your opponents are "pedifiles" working for Satan, set yourself up as a messianic figure at the center of a battle between angels and devils, and do everything you can to rally your local fundamentalists. You pretend that anyone who stands in your way is in favor of allowing gay men to rape Boy Scouts.
In short, you do as much to play upon hate, fear and ignorance as you can, all the while exhibiting your own embrace of the basest traits that humanity has to offer alongside your own illiteracy. Then you wrap it all up with a neat little ribbon and launch it toward the doorsteps of your jurisdiction.
Political candidates looking for an edge have employed all types of cutthroat tactics to sully their opponents, from TV ads depicting nuclear war and paroled murderer-rapists to flyers alleging interracial relationships and criminal fraud.
And then there was the 16-page homophobic comic book featuring Satan, angels, toga-wearing gay people and crude depictions of public officials discussing "anal sodomy" and "Pedifiles."
Brent Rinehart, an Oklahoma County Commissioner locked in a tough reelection race, spent two months creating the comic book and is preparing to send it out to registered Republicans in his district...
The book also attacks Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who filed felony campaign finance charges against Rinehart last year related to his 2004 campaign for county commissioner. Rinehart's trial is set to begin in September.
Edmondson is depicted holding a sign that says "Gay rights now!" while Rinehart's figure blasts the attorney general for his decision to "force the Boy Scouts to accept homosexuals as scout leaders, a pedifile's [sic] dream come true."
Though the book's content has stirred up scandal and been widely condemned by politicians in Oklahoma, Rinehart is unrepentant, misspellings aside.
"I'm proud of it," he tells ABCNews.com. "It's a novel way to tell a story about the last three and a half years. It's informative, entertaining and a good read..."
ABC News was kind enough to archive a copy of Rinehart's "comic book" at the link above. I used that copy to produce my own copy of the noxious campaign comic book, which I've annotated with a few comments but otherwise left in all its pristine, hateful, narcissistic glory.
If you thought that Oklahoma legislator Sally Kern was a vile and hateful malignancy infesting America's heartland, you're just going to love the hell out of self-appointed fundamentalist messiah and all-around example of what's wrong with American politics Brent Rinehart.
Dr. Donald Wildmon is founder of the American Family Association and an organizer of the Arlington Group. He says passage of the California marriage amendment is critical.
"If we lose California, if they defeat the marriage amendment, I'm afraid that the culture war is over and Christians have lost," says Wildmon, a 30-year veteran of the culture war. "I've never said that publicly until now -- but that's just the reality of the fact.
"If the homosexuals are able to defeat the marriage amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, then the culture war is over and we've lost -- and gradually, secularism will replace Christianity as the foundation of our society," he adds.
Californians are likely to uphold the right to gay marriage in the state by voting against a ballot measure that seeks to override a court ruling allowing same-sex unions, poll results showed on Friday.
The Field Poll survey firm found 51 percent of voters oppose the measure, which proposes an amendment to the state's constitution recognizing marriage as only between a man and woman, while 42 percent were in favor...
Could it be? Will the defeat of Proposition 8 in California really mark the end of the Taliban's influence so-called Culture War in America? Will Don Wildmon quietly close the doors and disconnect the phone banks of the American Family Association, pack his bags and move to whatever country is the Christian fundamentalist equivalent of Afghanistan circa 1999? Will Ann Coulter have to take a part-time job as a hat rack in order to make ends meet? Will Bill O'Reilly at long last answer to his true calling and become a Muppet? Will I actually live to see the day that the shrilling of those who use deity as a periscope to peer between the bedsheets of America and pass judgment upon what they find are no longer met with microphones?
I would like to believe it. For once, I wish I could believe something that oozed from betwixt the labia of Don "Dear Manmeat" Wildmon. I am not that naive, however. I know all too well that the eventual defeat of California's Proposition 8 will only trigger off more excited ejaculations from the radical right. I wish that I could believe that a day was coming as soon as this November that would mark the end of more than 30 years of the degradation of the promise of personal liberty upon which America was founded. I hope fervently to see a time in this country where whatever quirk of nature or nurture or personal choice or whatever it is that decides which gender attracts and which does not attract some person ceases to be a deciding factor in what share of the rights, privileges and responsibilities to which that person will be admitted. There has only ever been one issue in this Culture War, and it is that of who gets to define morality. It has always been about whether our culture will take it upon itself to decide on absolutes that would be applied to acts undertaken by consent of the parties involved that have no effect upon those who do not participate.
I want America's obsession with other people's relationships and other people's sex lives to end. I would like to see Wildmon's prediction about the end of the effort to impose a Christian shariah upon America come to pass. For all of the admonitions about America being a Christian country, I don't see the Wal-Marts and McDonald's empty on Sundays. As far as I'm aware, remembering to keep the sabbath per the third commandment doesn't mention anything about shopping being exempt and yet stores find enough customers to make it worth their while to stay open and nobody is putting propositions on state ballots to change this. Let's not kid ourselves as to what this has always been about and what the nature of this country is and what the nature of the Wildmons and Hagees and Robertsons of this land is.
There isn't enough space between these people and Fred Phelps to pass a thread as it is. The death of Proposition 8 will only push them further into the realms of fury. These Christian Culture Warriors have already come quite close to proclaiming that "God Hates America." What did they say when 3,000 innocent people died horribly in a Manhattan skyscraper? What was the reaction when a hurricane decimated New Orleans? What was it that Ray Comfort has to say about the reason that people are losing their homes and their livelihoods in the conflagrations that have dotted California — and largely in conservative areas, mind you, but it serves his purpose to make such statements?
They all come down to exactly the same thing that Phelps' incestuous little clan waves about on placards at the funerals of those who were shoved into danger's way at the behest of one of Evangelicism's own in the first place. "God hates America."
A little bit of prediction here. If (I think it is a matter of when, not if, but I'll let it go for now) Proposition 8 is defeated, we won't see the end of the American Culture War. We'll simply have Don Wildmon making some bizarre statement to the effect that Jehovah has come down from on high to whisper into his ear and urge him to stand and fight. We'll hear the screechings of the usual harridans and bullyboys as they pray publically for California to fall into the sea. That's all we'll get.
I do think there will come a time when this ends, when America finally tires of this stupid game of ruining people's lives and that last shudder finally runs down its collective spine as it finally shrugs off the last of these hate peddlers and casts them into the obscurity their ilk inhabited in more reasonable eras. I don't know whether that will be within the remaining 20 or 30 or 40 years of my lifetime, but everything I have seen, from the ascendancy of the Moral Majority to the present day, tells me that the defeat of one proposition in California won't be the end of this. I know that what Wildmon is doing is telling a lie to rally his stormtroopers. All is fair, after all, in love and war.
Someday, perhaps there will be a Culture Love instead of a Culture War. That day will not come upon us in November 2008.
The Massachusetts Senate has voted to repeal the 1913 Marriage Law that was designed originally to stop out-of-state interracial couples from getting married in this state if interracial marriage was illegal in their home states. On a historical note, such marriages have been legal in Massachusetts since 1843, but social norms at the time were such that enforcement of the 1913 law was rare if it happened at all. The reason the law was passed 70 years after Massachusetts legalized interracial marriage is cited by Senator Dianne Wilkerson in today's Boston Globe article:
The 1913 law has racist roots. It grew out of the national backlash over the interracial marriage of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, Wilkerson said. At the time, 30 of 48 states banned interracial marriage, and many other states, including Massachusetts, enacted provisions that would keep interracial couples from crossing borders to marry in their jurisdiction.
Next up is the state House of Representatives, which could vote to repeal the law as early as the end of this week. If it clears that hurdle — and it's expected to do so — the repeal will be signed by Governor Deval Patrick.
Same-sex couples from any state can already get married in California as that state didn't have a law like the 1913 Marriage Law on its books. Governor Ahnold had already extended a public invitation to those couple to do so. Moreover, New York's Governor David Paterson has already directed that state's agencies to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states. With the repeal of the law, couples from New York will have a shorter trip ahead of them.
Of course, the usual suspects are lining up to oppose the deserved demise of this moldy old piece of legislation. For instance,
Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston joined with the state's three other Catholic bishops in appealing to lawmakers to keep the 1913 law on the books for constitutional, religious, and cultural reasons. They said eliminating the law would infringe on the rights of other states to set their own marriage laws, and they emphasized their commitment to the traditional definition of marriage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stick to protecting your magical crackers and leave the questions about marriage to people who can actually get married and haven't taken on unnatural vows of celibacy. It's always heartwarming to see clergy sticking up for laws designed to "protect" society against miscegenation. Some things never go out of style, especially when one is a dedicated adherent to a belief system that still practices Iron Age ritual incantation. The fact is, other states don't have laws like this on the books and nobody was complaining about it. This has nothing at all to do with constitutional rights and everything to do with committed intolerance. Aren't priests as duty-bound to be honest as they are to keep their little bishops in their pants? I've never had much respect for clergy, but even my respect for people like O'Malley as human beings wanes that much more with dissemblance such as this.
And, of course, there's always a few of these in the crowd:
Kris Mineau, who has lobbied against the repeal as president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said he hopes the House will deliberate at greater length on the bill and consider the "legal quagmire" that could result for other states if their residents flock to Massachusetts to marry...
"We're going to be here until the cows go home," he said. "We're going to continue to advocate what we believe is right and what is in the best interest of our society and our children, and when the time comes that this Legislature starts waking up to reality, our voice will be there..."
The cows are going home, and Mineau should join them. The Legislature has already awakened to reality by euthanizing an outdated law that was born in bigotry and has lingered like a malignancy in the dark recesses of dusty law tomes until it was brought forth again in the 21st century to be used as a blunt force against a different set of marginalized people than those against which it was initially intended to discriminate. I do like that last line, though. The voice of Mineau and his Massachusetts Family Institute will only be there so long as the Legislature hasn't quite awakened to reality. Once they do so — and the Senate's vote certainly indicates that the alarm clock's gone off — then that voice will vanish in a mephitic puff of disintegrating dream-stuff.
I rarely find reason to praise government, but this is one of those instances. Not only is the repeal of the 1913 Anti-Miscegenation Statute the right thing to do, it will also bring money into the state. To that end, I hope that some of these couples will consider tying the knot in scenic Worcester. In fact, I hope they'd consider settling here. I'd rather see a gay-friendly enclave along the lines of San Francisco's Castro District than what now squats in the dilapidation of the Main South area; wouldn't anyone?
Don't be too concerned about the O'Malleys and Mineaus of our state; those cows are going home.
For all its problems, have to say are really like living in Massachusetts. Not only was it the first of so far only two states to legalize same-sex marriage, but now it seems that Massachusetts is finally getting ready to allow same-sex couples from other states to get married here.
The reason that they haven’t been able to up until now is due to a 1913 law that prohibits any couple from getting married in Massachusetts if their marriage would be illegal in the state in which they reside. What kinds of marriages were illegal in some states in 1913? Why, interracial marriages, of course! To be fair, incestuous marriages were also covered under this law, but the reason the law was passed early in the last century was very likely the then-scandalous marriage of a black boxer to a white woman. Besides, Massachusetts already had laws preventing such marriages (see Massachusetts General Law, Title III, Chapter 207, sections 1 and 2). There's little doubt that the 1913 Law was passed due to racist motivations.
The law wasn’t even enforced in Massachusetts until 2004, when governor Mitt Romney started thinking about running for president. When it came time for him to start worrying about pandering to the right-wing religious base of the Republican Party, he invoked as quintessentially racist law to make it look like he was opposed to gay marriage — even though he wasn't strongly opposed to at least civil unions as late as 2002 (note: the site I've linked to here is one run by one of the most conservative political action groups in Massachusetts, so this is not "liberal" anti-Romney material but conservative-generated info). The national spotlight seems to have changed that.
Our current governor and state legislature looked to be on the verge of kicking the 1913 marriage law off the books, and it’s about time. A vote on this may be held in the state Senate today and in the House by Thursday. If the law is overturned, it will be legal for a couple from any state to be married in Massachusetts if their union is legal in this state.
the best-known act of the Massachusetts Legislature of 1913 is a law denying marriage licenses to nonresident couples if their union would be illegal in their home states.
The measure has a miserable history. Though it resurfaced as part of the same-sex marriage debate in 2004, its origins lie in racial discrimination...
...Back in 1913, interracial marriages were legal in Massachusetts, but not in most states. Yet it's not at all clear that any interracial couples were ever turned away under the law. Instead, it fell into obscurity and only resurfaced four years ago, when Governor Mitt Romney cited it in telling towns to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples from out of state.
Other states can enforce their own laws. And if most states refuse to recognize some marriages that are legal in Massachusetts, that's their loss...
No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.
Section 12 then explains how out-of-state residents are to be prevented from getting married in a way that's legal in Massachusetts but not legal in, say, Oklahoma:
Before issuing a license to marry a person who resides and intends to continue to reside in another state, the officer having authority to issue the license shall satisfy himself, by requiring affidavits or otherwise, that such person is not prohibited from intermarrying by the laws of the jurisdiction where he or she resides.
This is probably why Section 11 was never enforced before it was dredged up from obscurity in the case of same-sex marriages. Enforcing something like this would have meant that any couple without a Massachusetts address would have needed a note from their local justice of the peace or lawmakers or what have you that explained the laws of some other state in order to get married here, in which case why would they bother to get married here at all? Essentially, this would have had the effect of barring anyone from out of state from getting married in Massachusetts.
As one might expect, the moon-faced assassins of joy are up in arms about the death of this bigoted blight on the Massachusetts law books. "But this will make Massachusetts the Las Vegas of gay marriage," whine people such as Peter LaBarbera, to which I can only reply, so what if it does? Right now, isn't Las Vegas the Las Vegas of straight marriage? Don't half of all opposite-sex marriage end in divorce? If concerned women like Bam-Bam are worried about Massachusetts becoming a Mecca for same-sex couples who want to have a go at a formal commitment, there's an easy solution; simply make their marriages legal in lots of other places. Then they wouldn't be forced to come here or go to California to get married. Problem solved. Of course, what the whiners are really opposed to is that these couples will be able to get married at all. This isn't about Massachusetts, it's about their watching their ability to prevent same-sex marriages from happening at all.
As far as I'm concerned, if every homosexual couple in the world decides they want to get married in Massachusetts starting next week, fine! Come on over! Welcome; sorry to have kept you waiting while our government got around to finally obliterating a law intended to enforce one form of bigotry that had been used to maintain another that has at last become a minority view after a four-year experiment has demonstrated that allowing two committed men or two committed women from wedding one another does not, in fact, cause invisible sky-giants to rain meteors down upon us all. Good luck and may you have many years of happiness together.
I know that Kirstie Hartle and Dean Johnson are a couple of great, stinking floaters in the gene pool that were left here because somehow Mother Nature forgot to flush.
People like this embarrass me as an American. People like this make me want to vomit blood and bile until the sensation they produce deep down in my guts goes away.
I have to get outside for awhile now. The stink that Hartle and Johnson's words have left in this room are too much for me to bear. I can only imagine how foul would be their physical presence.
I have long respected Ralph Nader's work as a consumer advocate but I have lost any shred of respect I have ever had for Ralph Nader the man in light of his comments about Barack Obama. Again, I would point out that I am a lukewarm Obama supporter at best and inclined to vote for him largely on the basis of his not being John McCain. It's the same situation I find myself in at every presidential election. I wind up voting against a candidate rather than for someone I think would be a good president. Nevertheless, I find Nader's recent statements in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News to be utterly repugnant, racist and stereotypical. Here is some of what he said that I find so objectionable:
There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white?
I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law. Haven't heard a thing.
He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician. He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.
I hardly know where to begin with this garbage. Who the hell is Ralph Nader to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be thinking, saying or doing? For what reason should a candidate be forced to speak more on one issue or another based on his or her ethnicity? Why is it that a black, half-black, quarter-black, or bright green candidate should address poverty with greater frequency or vehemence than a Caucasian candidate?
Comments like these tell us a lot more about Ralph Nader than they do about anyone else. Nader is stereotyping. Obama apparently doesn't fit into Nader's neat mental filing system of what people of various races should do and say and think. I agree that Obama should challenge the existing political power structure, but not because of his skin color or ancestry. We need people in office who are willing to challenge what has become a horribly corrupt system that no longer represents the interests of the people it was intended to look after. We don't need black people or white people or men or women to do this, we need viable candidates who will do this. The coincidence of the origin of their ancestors, what set of genitalia they happen to possess or what language their parents spoke is immaterial. For Nader to say that Obama should act a certain way, speak a certain way or think a certain way is nothing short of racism. Nader should be ashamed of himself, but his enormous ego precludes any realization of how loathesome his statements really are.
What difference it should make is that he would be more sensitive and determined to bring elevated visibility and concrete programs to deal with these issues. Wouldn't a woman president be expected to be more responsive to women's rights? It's just more natural...
He wants to come across that he's not politically threatening to the white power class and the liberal intelligentsia. It's been a brilliant tactic...
Brilliant, Ralph, just brilliant. Defending your racism by resorting to sexism is a true stroke of political genius. When I last checked, the current race is for president of the United States, not President of Dark-Skinned People or President of Women. Nader has revealed himself with these statements to be a relic, a thinker whose thoughts are every bit as fossilized as John McCain's. There is absolutely no good reason that we should expect that a female politician should be more concerned about women's rights than a male candidate. If anything, we should expect that a male candidate should be just as concerned with women's rights as he is with men's rights because both men and women are equally American and the office of the President is to protect and uphold a Constitution that applies equally to everyone. By the same token, it is more reasonable to expect that a Caucasian candidate should be every bit as concerned with the well-being of impoverished black citizens as he or she is with that of impoverished Caucasian citizens.
What Nader is saying here in point of fact is that the President should make the interests of one group of greater importance than those of others and that this prioritization is based upon whatever ethnic, religious or gender group of which that President is a member. In other words, the President is to govern based upon self-interest rather than the best interests of the nation as a whole. Oddly enough, we've already had eight years of that. The administration that is about to pass from power at last was one that gave its ear entirely to the special interest groups that ShrubCo of which itself was a member. We've had eight years of government for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans, eight years of faith-based programs that were a symptom of favoritism toward religious groups that agree with the theological ramblings of Dubya and his closest cronies. A Ralph Nader presidency — which I am happy to say shall never come to be — would look a lot more like another ShrubCo term than it would like the kind of change this country's leadership needs to make in its fundamental way of thinking about the nation and the world.
Let's extend Ralph Nader's insistence upon the special self-interest of politicians to Nader himself, then. Nader's ancestry is Lebanese. By ethnicity it would be fair to count Nader as Arab, even though he is a product of American society. Shouldn't Nader then be stressing the interests of Arabs over all else? As far as I can determine from his website, though, he hasn't a word to say about the situation of Arab Americans. People of Arab ancestry certainly face a good deal of prejudice in this country. Why isn't Nader forcefully speaking out on their behalf? Is Nader just trying to "talk white" by not challenging the liberal intelligentsia and power elite?
Or is it that I'm simply incorrect about Nader's ancestry? Judging by his comments, he seems to be speaking out strongly on behalf of jackasses. Could it be that if we were to delve into Ralph Nader's family tree we'd find that the majority of its branches are tipped by bigoted idiots?
An article from the New York Times and appearing in this morning's Worcester Telegram and Gazette provides a sketch of the number and state of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts after four years of it being legal here.
Four years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay couples to marry, there have been blissful unions, painful divorces and everything in between...
As same-sex marriage begins in California, Massachusetts's experience may offer hints of what is to come. For example, after an initial euphoric rush to the altar, the number of gay weddings in Massachusetts fell sharply, and has declined each year since. Of the more than 10,500 same-sex couples married here since May 17, 2004, 6,121 wed in the first six months. There were 2,060 weddings in 2005; 1,442 in 2006; and 867 in the first eight months of 2007, the most recent data show...
The census recorded 23,655 same-sex households in Massachusetts in 2006...
Nearly two-thirds of the weddings have been lesbian marriages... more same-sex married couples of both sexes are older — nearly a third are in their 40s...
"It's been a mixed bag," said Jacob Venter, a 44-year-old child psychiatrist... "Nothing turns out the way you imagine," Venter said. "There are no role models for gay marriage..."
"I feel totally different inside my skin," said Linda Bailey-Davies, 62, who married her longtime partner, Gloria Bailey-Davies, 67. With marriage, she said, "I felt legitimate in the world..."
"It makes me completely think differently about the relationship," said Lance Collins, 38, a colorist at a Boston hair salon...
but his partner does not want to marry. "I know he cares about me quite a bit," Collins said. "I just think he doesn't want to."
Collins said he believes his partner is his ideal match because he "gets as excited about seeing me as I get about seeing him," because "sometimes he'll do my laundry and fold it the way I like it," and because "he makes my coffee really well — one Equal with just a tablespoon of fat-free half-and-half..."
The article points up well how similar gay and not-gay people really are. More gay women have gotten married than have gay men, for example. Could it be that gay men and straight men both are more gun shy about commitment than are women overall?
Some of these marriages are working out, some of them aren't. That sounds familiar, too.
I think I'm beginning to see what those who are viscerally opposed to same-sex marriage have been so worried about, and it has nothing to do in the end with some metaphysical mechanism by which the marriage of one couple can alter the commitment of another unrelated pair. No, I think for a lot of the Matt Barbers of the world, the worry runs much deeper.
Maybe they're just scared that aside from their preferences in selecting a partner, it's turning out that gay people aren't significantly different from straight ones. I mean, these people are supposed to be demonic and wicked and doing all sorts of awful perverse things, working some sort of spell over we heterosexuals to turn us all into stereotypically mincing androgynes and cause churches to burst into flame and raping and pillaging their way across our cultural landscape, and here they are being just like us. Here they are worried about working on their relationships and compromising with their partners and making commitments and being afraid to make commitments and keeping in mind how their partners like their coffee.
If the nefarious scapegoats turn out to be like everybody else, then upon whom will the Concerned Women of America vent their spleens? At whom will Pat Robertson be able to point next time there's a mass murder and say, "We're being punished for what those people did?" Whatever is poor Don Wildmon going to do with his American Family Association if it turns out that the "homosexual agenda" isn't much more than wanting to be able to settle down, collect the same perks and penalties that other couples have long gotten, and then spend the rest of their lives getting old together and having the occasional argument over the bills and how to decorate the living room... or not succeeding and getting the same divorces that about half of all straight couples wind up getting? How can there be an "us" if there is no "them?" Won't somebody please think of Fred Phelps; what happens to the poor guy if the issue upon which he's practically built his whole life goes away and he has to get a real job? It's an American tragedy in the making!
It's so hard to find someone to hate these days, after all. Dark-skinned people can vote and one might even be elected president within the year. Antisemitism is just passé. Beating up the Amish is frowned upon. If it turns out that gay people are just like everyone else — just as happened with Jews and Blacks and Italians at various points in America's long history of not liking people who were somehow "different" — then what's left? It's so hard to pick the people who like spicy food out of a crowd...
Another fun fact about me is that I hate (and am terrified of) lizards. I hate the sight of them and I hate anything to do with them. I have never understood why people keep lizards as pets when they are obviously as ugly and disgusting as a giant 10-foot slugs...
Tycho is insulted. At his advanced age (he turns 12 in less than three months; that's like 96 in human terms), he's heard it all, including this sort of thing, and he can't understand it. Tycho loves humans. They feed him, they pet him, and they turn on the television for him. Tycho has nothing but positive opinions of human beings and he's hurt when they compare him to giant gastropods.
Comparing civilized reptiles to their wild cousins is like comparing the family cat to a leopard. For example, 2% of the population of the United States is bitten by a dog every year resulting in a dozen or more fatalities. When was the last time anyone in America was killed by a lizard? The numbers of people injured by domesticated lizards is so small that nobody even bothers to keep track. Tycho, in his extraordinarily long life, has never bitten even a single human — although he did once exhibit a powerful desire to take a chunk out of a clerk at the East Bay Vivarium in Berkeley. We still can't figure out what she had to do to provoke him to that extent, considering that he has always been willing to put up with all sorts of prodding and dress-up with no more than an "I don't like this" blackening of his neck sack. He'd rather lick the frosting off a cupcake, thank you very much.
Unlike stinky dogs that eat their own vomit or cats that shred the furniture, Tycho would like to remind everyone that civilized lizards are creatures of taste and refinement. Theirs is a life of satin blankets, fresh blueberries and public television. They are genteel and gentle creatures who wouldn't even hurt a tree frog that perched upon their head. They're immaculately clean, too. No self-respecting civilized lizard would soil their lair without a human nearby to clean up at once. Do you poop in your bedroom? Didn't think so.
Sure, wild komodo dragons pose a threat to humans. That has nothing to do with domesticated, educated lizards like Tycho, though. As anyone familiar with his internet celebrityness will tell you, he'd never stoop to drawing blood like some base animal. He'd much rather wait around for his human friends to cook him up some macaroni and cheese. That's what they're here for, after all. Unlike squabbling hominids, Tycho has no doubt about evolution. Humans are perfectly adapted to cooking and cleaning for bearded dragons, the real masters of this planet.
It is simply unreasonable to compare the urbane lizards of modern society to the backwoods, rude and unpolished lizards found on remote tropical islands. It's like lumping together Oscar Wilde and an Alabama klansman. The only thing they have in common is biology. The civilized lizards of today are creatures of refinement and dignity.
Tycho would like to remind you all that lizards are your friends and neighbors. Anti-lizard bigotry is unfair and hurtful. Thank you for your understanding.
Next year, a giant Confederate flag may tower above the tree line near the junction of Interstate 75 and Interstate 4.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans wants drivers in the Tampa area to see the massive flag — 30 feet high and 50 feet long — atop a 139-foot pole, the highest the Federal Aviation Authority would allow. It would be lit at night.
With the pole already in the ground and building permits in hand, the group is on its way to having what it calls the "world's largest" Confederate flag in place by mid 2009. The group just needs about $30,000 more, said Douglas Dawson, Florida division commander.
Several nearby business owners don't mind. It's history, they say, and it's on private property. Tampa resident Marion Lambert owns the small triangular plot just west of Interstate 75 along U.S. 92 E...
Quick pause here; of course Lambert doesn't mind. He's a typical revisionist who tells one of the typically revisionist fairy tales about why the Civil War started — some vague notion about states' rights. He's fond of the story that it only came to be about slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It's a lie that's readily debunked, which I'll get to below with a speech made by the CSA's Vice President two years before the Proclamation.
But when Hillsborough County NAACP president Curtis Stokes heard about the plans to have the flag flying next year, he was shocked.
"I'm surprised that they would allow something like this to go on in Hillsborough County," he said...
It's the commissioners' responsibility to make sure plans don't move forward, Stokes said. The flag would send the wrong message about the county and it would be embarrassing because many visitors use the roads, he said.
Stokes is correct at least insofar as something like this should be an embarrassment. The Confederate flag is, indeed, symbolic of racism. It may be symbolic of other things, too, but it cannot be separated from this other thing and simply wishing that it weren't so doesn't make it truth. Whatever else it may be, it is also a blatant endorsement of racism and the notion that one group of people has the right to own another in the deepest sense of that concept. Again, I'll get to this below using the words of the second most highly-placed official in the Confederate States' government.
Code enforcement officers won't be able to stop the project because flags were removed from county sign regulations in 2004. County Commissioner Kevin White, whose district includes the flagpole site, could not be reached for comment Friday....
Well, isn't that convenient? Think they did the same with swastikas? Isn't it a bit odd that the article also notes that "Plans for the flag... started about four years ago?" an we say thatKevinWhite is a reputable person, or can he be bought? Hmmm.
Adams insists the flag isn't about racism or slavery. "It's about honoring our ancestors and about celebrating our heritage," he said. "It's a historical thing to us."
He hopes people who are offended by the flag will drive to the memorial and view the plaques honoring Confederate soldiers. They plan to have one dedicated to black Confederate veterans, he said.
I bet it's just a huge plaque, too.
Adams can insist all he wants that the Confederate flag isn't about racism and slavery, and people who know something other than the laundered, sanitized-for-your-conscience revisionism he espouses can and should insist otherwise. That there were some slaves who signed up to fight for their masters having been promised that they would be freed or just given something resembling humane living conditions, that their families wouldn't be sold away from them, or that they wouldn't be beaten or executed if they agreed to do so, changes nothing at all. The nature of their conditions — it was illegal even to teach a slave how to read under Southern law — meant that most slaves were kept in ignorance of the larger world and were in no position to make an informed decision for whom they wished to fight if indeed they were in a position to make any decision at all. Adams and his plaque shouldn't assuage any doubts; instead, they give yet another testimony to the fundamental dishonesty in which the revisionists engage.
Mitch McDonald, the general manager of a nearby crane rental business, said he won't mind the flag. "The bigger, the better," he said.
But he's worried that it might offend a black employee of his, who was angered by the sighting of a Confederate flag on an earlier assignment...
So, McDonald is so worried that the flag offends a black employee that he's a "the bigger the better" proponent? Yes, he certainly sounds like a reasonable individual. If I were that black employee, I'd be looking for another job right about now. His boss is a racist. Truth be told, he doesn't give a damn about whether the flag offends his black employee — or every other black person, or every single person opposed to racism, for that matter. This is revisionist doublethink at its finest. He's so worried about the giant symbol of hate that will fly near his business that he hopes it will be even bigger than planned now — being the size of a Grayhound bus isn't big enough for this concerned employer.
Dawson, the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Florida commander, said he knows a giant Confederate flag flying 24 hours a day over two of the Tampa area's busiest roads will cause controversy.
"We can't do anything but explain to people what the truth is," said Dawson, of Pensacola. "If they don't want to accept that, they're closed-minded, and Jesus Christ couldn't change it."
Yes, if you don't accept a Sons of Confederate Veterans commander's baseless assertions about what a huge American swastika stands for, then your heart is closed to Jesus. Does anybody else see something profoundly twisted here?
But Dawson is absolutely right; if Jesus Christ came down from the skies upon beams of moonglow on a silken couch while an angelic choir played harps and backed him up with a "cumbaya" and he leaned over and whispered into my ear that the Confederate flag wasn't about slavery and bigotry, I'd be forced to tell Jesus he was as much of a dolt as everyone proponent of the thing cited in the article quoted here. That's for the simple reason that we have a historical record to which we can refer to demonstrate that the assertion is incorrect at every turn. Part of that historical record, as I promised to cite above, was given to us by Alexander Stephens.
Stephens was the Vice President of the Confederate States of America. On March 21, 1861, he gave a speech at a general store in Savannah, Georgia. This, as noted, was two years before the Emancipation Proclamation. In his remarks, which have come to be known as the Cornerstone Speech, Stephens lays out in no uncertain terms the reasons for Southern secession and the basis of Confederate law and social theory. Unlike modern revisionists, he makes clear that slavery and racism isn't some by-product of states' rights but the very core of the Confederate Constitution. It is the reason that the Confederacy has seceded. Just to quote a few pertinent points from the lengthy speech:
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other —though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution...
...The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...
They [abolitionists] assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just—but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails... They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal...
...May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another star in glory." The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief of the corner"—the real "corner-stone"—in our new edifice. I have been asked, what of the future? It has been apprehended by some that we would have arrayed against us the civilized world. I care not who or how many they may be against us, when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth, if we are true to ourselves and the principles for which we contend, we are obliged to, and must triumph...
...We are now the nucleus of a growing power which, if we are true to ourselves, our destiny, and high mission, will become the controlling power on this continent...
The surest way to secure peace, is to show your ability to maintain your rights. The principles and position of the present administration of the United States—the republican party—present some puzzling questions. While it is a fixed principle with them never to allow the increase of a foot of slave territory, they seem to be equally determined not to part with an inch "of the accursed soil." Notwithstanding their clamor against the institution, they seemed to be equally opposed to getting more, or letting go what they have got. They were ready to fight on the accession of Texas, and are equally ready to fight now on her secession. Why is this? How can this strange paradox be accounted for? There seems to be but one rational solution—and that is, notwithstanding their professions of humanity, they are disinclined to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor. Their philanthropy yields to their interest. The idea of enforcing the laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what they are after—though they come from the labor of the slave...
Nope, nothing about the Confederacy or that Confederate flag has anything to do with racism. I mean, as long as we can be ignorant or can ignore the words of one of the founders of the Secessionist Movement, we can say anything we like about states' rights and the nobility of the Confederacy. We can justify flying a flag, the symbolism of which so many people are "mistaken." We can say that the Confederate flag is all about rainbows and unicorns. Why, just look at this plaque that lists the names of all the slaves who fought for the CSA! The veterans and former government officials of the CSA were so impressed by their service that we immediately gave them the right to vote and to own property. That whole imbroglio in Selma and George Wallace standing on the steps of that school in Alabama and the necessity for a federal Civil Rights Act was all a big misunderstanding. Blacks loved Jim Crow laws!
When we disregard history, we can say anything we like. We can put a huge "fuck you" at the top of a giant flag pole and claim it's all about mom and apple pie and family values. We can fly a Nazi eagle and claim that its because we have so much respect for our German ancestry who, after all, fought for "states' rights" and national sovereignty and dignity. We can be proud of shameful things and, 140+ years after the fact, pretend to being an oppressed people instead of voicing the truth — that we're a people who longs for the oppression from which we once benefited.
With all due respect to the many good and decent people who, through no fault of their own, have come to inhabit the same state as these revisionist pretenders, I find myself frequently wondering just how a state can go so wrong. It seems like we get some story about the most profound ignorance from Florida every week. Why is this? It certainly suggests something gone fundamentally awry and then ingrained deep into the psyches of so much of the population of that state. Must be something in the water, maybe something in the air.
This blog is about whatever I'm pondering at the moment that I write in it. That may include anything at all. Mundane bits from my personal life, politics, science, fungi, genetics, media, dirty jokes, you name it. You're looking at the inside of my head when you're looking at this blog. Please don't litter and wipe your feet before entering. Thank you.
A couple of weeks ago, Ralph Nader used the term "Uncle Tom" to describe Barack Obama. Today comes revelation of a new (still to be fully vetted) audio recording featuring Al Qaeda's #2 lunatic, Ayman al-Zawahri. In it, the fundamentalist blood-sucker inveighs against Obama, calling him a "house negro" and complaining that he isn't enough like Malcolm X.
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