I Didn't Say It ...

Pete Buttigieg, on Stonewall:

“Fifty years ago, early on a Saturday morning, police came through the door of the Stonewall Inn. That raid gave rise to a resistance, which in turn helped launch the arrival of LGBTQ consciousness in America as we know it.

My candidacy is possible today only because of the hard work and sacrifice, the literal blood, sweat, and tears, of LGBTQ activists and leaders who worked to create that moment and those that rose up in its aftermath—leaders like Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, Edith Windsor, and Harvey Milk.

The story of Stonewall teaches us that sometimes you’ve got to take a stand and fight back if you want things to change. That was the defiant message of the Stonewall rioters—fed up with abuse by law enforcement and marginalization by society—who responded with fists, beer cans, and even a chorus line. (One protestor, encouraging other New Yorkers to join the riots and perhaps embrace their own sexuality, ran up and down the street slyly shouting, “Come out, come out!”).

But the story of equality since Stonewall also tells us that we can’t make change alone. Allies stood at our side, from civil rights leaders to the women’s movement to organized labor, including allies from unlikely places—from the faith community, figures in both parties, and from the American heartland. It’s a reminder that all of us need to stand up for any among us who are targeted for mistreatment, for hate, for disadvantage. Because we never know who will be next if we fail to stand up; and because we never know how far we might move forward when we all do it together.

We still have a long way to go, as we are reminded with every LGBTQ young person living on the streets, every trans person killed simply for being themselves, every candle we light to remember those lost while we race to find a cure for HIV and AIDS. So we need to redouble our efforts, working to pass hate crimes laws in every state, enacting a federal Equality Act, and ending the war on trans Americans from the military to the workplace to healthcare. As Chasten likes to say, every pat on the back we give ourselves should serve as a push forward.

Yet as I travel this great country, as I reflect on this momentous anniversary, I am filled with hope. At the beginning of this decade, it was certain in my state that you could either serve in elected office or you could be out, but not both. When I joined the military, it was a matter of law that you could either be in uniform or you could be out, but not both. As recently as a few years ago, in most states, you could be in a same-sex relationship or you could be married, but not both. And today, in that same decade, it is possible for a war veteran and top-tier presidential candidate to campaign with his husband at his side.

If we hold fast to that hope—if we take up the unfinished work of achieving true freedom and dignity for every American—then what began half a century ago with broken bottles may yet end with more broken barriers.”

Perfection.

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Jeanine Pirro, on her rambling, near incoherent, Fox “News” show, talking _____:

“Donald _____ is transparent, unlike other politicians, that’s why he was elected. That’s why people love him. Now, as someone who has run for office five times, if the devil called me and said they wanted to set up a meeting to give me opposition research on my opponent, I would be on the first trolley to hell to get it. Not that anyone from a foreign country has even offered me opposition research, but my position on it has been the same for years. The devil never offered me anything, but now it’s the Democrats dancing with him in their evil plot to subvert democracy and take down a president they simply hate.”

Yeah, you’d sell your soul to the Devil, but since he never offered you any dirt, clearly even he doesn’t think you’re right for public office, you traitorous skank.

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John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, making the case for impeachment:

“[I]t seems the president obstructed justice, then obstructed justice again to obstruct the investigation into his obstruction of justice. It’s ridiculous. … I know that this might seem like a legal technicality, and a couple of phone calls that didn’t go anywhere, but here’s why this really matters: But for Don McGahn, _____ might have stopped an investigation into himself. And if a president can shut down an investigation, he can basically do anything with no consequences. It’s a big, big deal. Every asshole succeeds until they finally don’t. [Eighteen] months before he resigned, Nixon had sky-high rating approval of 67 percent. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day he definitely wasn’t. James Holzhauer was stealing all of Alex Trebek’s money until one day someone finally put a stop to it. I can’t guarantee that impeachment will work out the way that you want it to,” added Oliver, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Because if nothing else, we’d be standing by the basic, fundamental principle that nobody is above the law. For any Democrat whose main concern is that pursuing impeachment could be the reason they lose in 2020, please relax. It’s just one of many ways the Democrats could lose. Maybe _____ is caught on tape saying the n-word, but then two weeks later, Elizabeth Warren accidentally calls a veteran a veterinarian, and people get twice as angry about that. There’s so many ways that this could go wrong.”

‘Every asshole succeeds until they finally don’t.’

It’s time to end this.

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Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, saying he can’t understand why Jon Stewart is angry over the handling of health care funding for 9/11 victims:

“We have never failed to address this issue, and we will address it again, [but] I don’t know why [Stewart’s] all bent out of shape.”

Perhaps it’s because Republicans stayed away from the hearing, signaling that they weren’t interested?

And because they’re unfeeling asshats.

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Dwyane Wade, on supporting his son at Miami Pride:

“I don’t really talk about it much because it’s Zion’s story to tell. I think as a family, we should support each other. That’s our job. And my job as a father is to facilitate their lives and to support them and be behind them in whatever they want to do.”

For those who still don’t get it, it’s just that simple.

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