Showing posts with label Dan Savage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Savage. Show all posts

Friday, February 21, 2025

I Didn't Say It ...

Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator, media proprietor, and attorney, calling The Felon a liar:

“So here’s [The Felon] saying some stuff about Ukraine. [Plays clip.] I have some moral objections to the stuff that he is saying about Ukraine here because I don’t think that it is true. So for example, at one point during this press conference, he made the signally false statement that Ukraine started the war. This is not true. Ukraine absolutely did not start the war. You can argue with Ukrainian policy toward both Europe and Russia over the period 2013 to 2022. But Russia invaded a sovereign country and tried to take Kyiv and has killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. [And] here’s  [The Felon] suggesting sort of the opposite that somehow Ukraine is the problem here.” 

He's a liar; he’s Putin’s Puppet; he’s a traitor to America and a disgrace to the world.

And a conservative is leading the charge.

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Alexis Ohanian, Serena Williams’ husband, responding to ESPN's Stephen A. Smith who said if his wife—he’s single, never been married—danced on a halftime show like Serena Williams he'd divorce her:

“I get it—you’re 57, and life didn’t turn out the way you imagined. That kind of disappointment must be exhausting. You’re the embodiment of peaked in high school, spending decades chasing validation from strangers through Likes and Digital Hugs, only to find that no amount of external approval fills the void. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Criticism only fuels your victim complex, reinforcing the comforting delusion that there's some grand conspiracy against you and your "brave ideas"—when in reality, you've just got terrible takes. It’s a cycle: outrage, backlash, self-pity, repeat. This is a lonely road. There’s still time to rewrite the ending — start by working on yourself first. You'll find that if you wake up every morning trying to be a little better, a little more curious, you won't have time for irrational hating — you'll be too busy winning.”

I love when unmarried confirmed bachelors want to tell men how their women should act. Smith ought to get a wife, treat her like his property, and then see how that works out before he opens his yap.

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Jessica Tarlov, one of a few sane minds at Fox News, taking on The Felon’s grandstanding:

“If Joe Biden showed up to the Daytona 500 while Kentucky faced devastating storms. He would have been crucified. In times like these Presidents shouldn’t be driving around a race car track while people are living under emergency declarations.”

Well, it is Mitch McConnell’s state and Mitch is now standing against The Felon so, or course, The Felon would go to Kentucky … being so butt hurt.

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Pamela Anderson, on her “breakout” roll in The Last Showgirl after over thirty years in the business:

“The ending is obscure for a beautiful reason. It lingers with you, like a song whose lyrics aren’t spelled out or explained. Everyone, whether it’s the audience, the writer, the director, me, or the other actors, will have their own interpretation. That’s the genius of [Gia Coppola]’s depiction. Our own experiences color the ending, and that’s what makes it so powerful. I just hope people can see past the nonsense and recognize what Gia Coppola saw in me, and that is a woman bursting at the seams, eager to express herself artistically,” she said. “I needed a project like this, something raw and authentic, something that wasn’t about trickery but about truth. All my co-stars on this film quickly became family. We will forever share an intimate bond. We truly impacted each other and made each other better. I fell in love with Jamie [Lee Curtis], Kiernan [Shipka], Brenda [Song], Billie [Lourd], and Dave [Bautista]. They will always hold a tender place in my heart. There’s no violence, no exploitation, just a story about a woman, and that’s enough. Every woman is a movie all on her own. And I’m thrilled that people are returning to the romantic theater experience. In a world that can be so harsh, we need simple, human stories told with a pure heart and a shared collective soul. I hope this is just the beginning of my career. I’m like a sponge, absorbing everything I can. My pockets are full, and I want to see what I’m made of.”

It's funny that scrubbing off her makeup has made people take notice of her more than they had when she was just a body.

Good on her for finding herself.

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Judith Butler, a leading scholar of gender and identifying as nonbinary, on The Felon’s hate-filled executive orders:

“Amassing authoritarian power depends in part on a willingness of the people to believe in the power exercised. In some cases, [The Felon]’s declarations are meant to test the waters, but in other cases, the outrageous claim is its own accomplishment. He defies shame and legal constraints in order to show his capacity to do so, which displays to the world a shameless sadism. Many of [his attacks] express fascist passions. Denying rights to healthcare, legal recognition and rights of expressive freedoms for trans, intersex and non-binary people attacks the very foundations of their lives. Even the conservative supreme court found that discrimination against trans and gender non-conforming people constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. While there is every reason to be outraged, we cannot let that outrage flood us and stop our minds. The desire for a freedom equally shared; for an equality that makes good on democratic promises; to repair and regenerate the earth’s living processes; to accept and affirm the complexity of our embodied lives; to imagine a world in which government supports health and education for all, where we all live without fear, knowing that our interconnected lives are equally valuable.”

We can be outraged, and

angry and sad, but we need to harness those emotions to fight this tiny little man swinging his tiny little dick like it’s a redwood.

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Dan Savage, on fighting and resisting and dancing:

“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing.”

It’s still the dance we’re fighting for, even if it is a different fight, for our lives, our loves, our right to exist.

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Charles Pierce, American sportswriter, political blogger, liberal pundit and author, taking on The Felon:

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and say, ‘And we shall overcome.’ I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried, nonetheless. And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House. The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt. Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too. Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."

This is what criminals and grifters do, especially in a position of power, that We The People gave them.

Resist.

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Friday, May 17, 2019

I Didn't Say It ...


Pete Buttigieg, responding to another _____ taunt, that Pete is Alfred E. Neuman from Mad magazine:

“I’ll be honest, I had to google that. I guess it’s a generational thing. I didn’t get the reference. It’s kind of funny I guess, but, uh, he’s also the President of the United States and I’m surprised he’s not spending more time trying to salvage this China deal.”

Mic dropped.
Dan Savage, LGBTQ advocate, says he’s sick and tired of the deference being paid to Melania Melanie _____:

“God knows there’s enough hate in the world and I don’t want to add to the sum total, but forgive me, I have got to get this off my chest: I fucking hate Melania _____. [And] I’m not alone in loathing Donald _____’s third wife. She’s married to a misogynist after all. Odds are good her husband hates her too. But there are some folks on the left who not only don’t hate her, they view her as some sort of sympathetic figure. The pretty princess in the tower locked up by the orange ogre with the bad combover, a princess desperately blinking out distress signals during swearing-in ceremonies and inaugural balls. It’s definitely not true in this case. Mrs. _____ … is as ugly on the inside as she is pretty on the outside. She’s an immigrant who doesn’t give a sh*t about the plight of other immigrants. She’s famously a plagiarist. And she’s brought ruinous lawsuits against journalists and bloggers accusing them of among other things, potentially interfering with her ability to profit off her role as first lady. I don’t know if you can impeach a first lady or how that would work. But I do know that we would have found out pretty fucking fast if Michelle Obama had said the same during her husband’s presidency.”

I’m onboard! Melanie isn’t a victim; she made her bed, cashed the check and signed the papers; she knew what she was getting and as long as there were several zeroes on that check, she took it.
Those two deserve each other.
Brian Thomas, an Indiana parent trying to spare his transgender son the “humiliation and embarrassment” of being deadnamed at his graduation—a deadname is the birth name of someone who has changed it:

“My transgender child is a senior this year and will graduate in early June. He has been going by his preferred name since the summer between his freshman and sophomore year. Teachers, pastors, managers, family and friends know him as a boy named Wyatt. But at graduation, because of an unwritten standard the school administration is unwilling to change, he will be called by his dead name. What is meant to be a celebration will instead be yet another moment of humiliation and embarrassment. As Wyatt’s parents, we ask that our wishes be honored on behalf of our precious child. Call the name he will bear legally once the lengthy process of a name change is complete. Call him what his future university calls him. Call him what we and many others call him every day. Call him Wyatt. “

Thomas started an online petition, which garnered 15,000 signatures and was then closed after the school has agreed to call him Wyatt at graduation, and get that name on his diploma.
Michael Elizabeth Pence, supporter of adultery and pussy grabbing, saying Christians will be shunned for their beliefs:

“Some of the loudest voices for tolerance today have little tolerance for traditional Christian beliefs. Be ready. Throughout most of American history, it’s been pretty easy to call yourself Christian. It didn’t even occur to people that you might be shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible. But things are different now.”

There are different, because people like Mrs. Pence, and Mother Pence, are using their so-called faith as an excuse to discriminate, to deny services, to deny employment, to deny basic civil rights.
And that is not at all Christ-like,
Fucking faux Christian.
Pete Buttigieg, again, speaking to the Human Rights Campaign and warning Democrats to stay away from “identity politics” because they are creating a “crisis of belonging” in this country:

“It’s time for us to get comfortable once again talking about values … like freedom. We have allowed conservatives to monopolize the language of freedom. But we know that freedom isn’t just about freedom from, it’s about freedom to. Not just freedom from regulation, but freedom to live a life of your choosing. I  may be part of the LGBTQ community. But being a gay man doesn’t even tell me what it’s like to be a trans woman of color in that same community, let alone an undocumented mother of four or a disabled veteran or a displaced autoworker. But being gay just like every other fact about me means that I have a story and if I look to that story I can find the building blocks not only for empathy but for the impetus to action. Because the more you know about exclusion, the more you know about belonging, and we have a crisis of belonging in this country. Divisive lines of thinking have entered into the consciousness of my own party, like when we’re told we need to choose between supporting an auto worker and supporting a trans women of color, without stopping to think about the fact that sometimes the auto worker is a trans woman of color and she definitely needs all the support that she can get. he wall I worry about most isn’t the president’s fantasy wall on the Mexican border that’s never gonna built anyway. What I worry about are the very real walls being put up between us as we get divided and carved up. … And what every gay person has in common with every excluded person of any kind is knowing what it’s like to see a wall between you and the rest of the world and wonder what it’s like on the other side. … Yes, I am gay. And I am the son of an immigrant and an Army brat. And I am a husband. And I am a musician. And I am an Episcopalian, and I am a Democrat.”

In case you’d forgotten what it sounds like these past few years, this is the voice of common sense, the voice of us and U.S.
Andy Brennan, Australian footballer, coming out as gay, making him the first in his league to do so:

“It’s taken me years to get comfortable saying this—I’m gay. I was scared it would affect my friendships, my teammates, and my family. But the support of the people around me has been so great and helped me get to the final step; being completely open. Being open is the best way for me to feel most comfortable and be myself. So… carry on! You’ve got to realise that’s who you are and you’ve just got to be who you are— whether you’re gay or whatever, whoever you are. There will be people out there thinking, ‘Why has he got to voice his own personal whatever to the world?’. The reason I wanted to do this in the first place was to make me feel comfortable. It’s been a big lift off my shoulders and I can just focus on playing football. This isn’t a call for those people to come out and tell everyone who they are. They shouldn’t have to, shouldn’t need to. I did it this way because this is what is going to make me most comfortable—being open and honest with who I am.”

Welcome out, Andy, and please accept as our gift to you, the Official Coming Out Toaster Oven™ and a copy of The Gay Agenda.
Welcome out, Handsome.

Friday, April 28, 2017

I Didn't Say It ....

Ellen DeGeneres, on coming out on TV, and in real life, twenty years ago:

“It became more important to me than my career. I suddenly said, ‘Why am I being, you know, ashamed of who I am just to be successful and famous in society’s eyes?’ … And then I thought, the character on the show is clearly struggling. There’s no relationship. It was pretty clear it would be an easy transition for her to realize she was gay, which was why her relationships with men weren’t working out.”

And with those simple words—‘I’m gay’—spoken into a microphone at an airport, Ellen Morgan, and Ellen DeGeneres made history.
Shepard Smith, Fox News host, on the Flynn business and the _____ connection:

“The situation is unprecedented. Never in American history has a man so close to the president, on his cabinet, the national security advisor no less, been accused of committing a crime by taking money from a foreign entity, much less one connected to the Russians. At the core of all this is the Russians interfered with our elections. General Flynn received money through an entity that was from the Russians. And what they want to know is was there collusion? The White House at least is giving the appearance, according to these congressional leaders, of a lack of cooperation, which could give an overall appearance that they’re trying to cover something up. Why not quit with all the semantic juggling and stuff and get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible?” 

We can talk walls and Muslim bans and the EPA and any number of other things, but it’s gonna be Russia that sends _____ packing.
And I cannot wait.
Dan Savage, donating money from his resistance organizations to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and IRAP:

“This morning I had the distinct pleasure of mailing off checks to Planned Parenthood ($33,333.34), the ACLU ($33,333.33) and the International Refugee Assistance Project ($33,333.33)—money we raised selling ITMFA [“Impeach The Mother Fucker Already” buttons, t-shirts, hats, stickers, coffee cups, and lapel pins at ITMFA.org and ImpeachTheMotherFuckerAlready.comAnd I got to mail those checks out because nearly 10,000 Savage Love readers and Savage Lovecast listeners have ordered #ITMFA gear over the last eight weeks!”

Impeach the MotherFucker already!
I’m in!
Magic Johnson, reflecting on his son EJ Johnson coming out;

“I think it’s all about you not trying to decide what your daughter or son should be or what you want them to become. It’s all about loving them no matter who they are [and] what they decide to do. I was so happy for him and happy for us as parents. EJ is amazing.”

That’s it in a nutshell; your child’s coming out is never about you, it’s just about them, about happiness and self-acceptance.
Good on Magic and his wife.
Ryan Murphy, creator of Feud: Bette & Joan, on the last episode where Joan Crawford, hallucinates a visit by Bette Davis:

"So we know that Joan was talking to people in her mind, and what if one of those people was Bette. I wanted to give the audience something that Joan and Bette actually did not have: a sense of closure. They talked about it individually, like ‘Oh I wish I would have handled it better.’ But I thought what if they said that to each other’s face? Obviously that conversation never happened, but it could have happened in Crawford’s imagination [and] it was inspired in part by the fact that Bette Davis said she had regrets ... It was based on the Crawford death research and what Bette Davis told me."

I just think that if those two women had learned to understand one another, oh, the things they could have done in Hollywood. But the studios and the press created a feud, created the friction, and the two women bought into it never knowing what might have been ...
Marco Rubio, Republican Florida Senator, denouncing the detention, torture, and murder of gay men in Chechnya, on the Senate floor:

“Unfortunately this is not a new reality for those living under the brutal tyranny of the Chechen leader, who by the way happens to be a loyal ally of Vladimir Putin. There have been reports in the past of similar abuses, although these reports seem to be the most brutal and should provoke anger in all of us. We should never, ever tolerate human rights violations against any person for their political views, their religious beliefs, or their sexual orientation. ... The United States and other responsible nations should do more to ensure that all people are protected, and those who harm them are held responsible. We should use our voice on the global stage to call attention to these horrifying acts and to ensure that they are condemned in an appropriate way, and ultimately in the hopes that they will be stopped.”

I never thought I’d say this, but good on Marco.
I mean, he’s not running for reelection so this isn’t some kind of pandering, I don’t think.
Maybe he’s actually had an awakening.
Brian Sims, openly gay Pennsylvania state Representative, taking on a Facebook troll—first name David—who wrote the words "N****r F****t" on Sims' page:

“David, I can’t tell if you’re just a really dumb little boy or an angry bigot but I know for sure that you shouldn’t have posted your grandmother’s telephone number on your Facebook page. She and I just had a very disappointing chat about you. We’ll talk soon.”

Snap. Smack. Bam.

Friday, May 13, 2016

I Didn't Say It ...

Franklin Graham, on America's "moral bankruptcy":

"What happens when you remove biblical standards and leadership from a country? Moral bankruptcy, that’s what. … Headlines every day reveal what a sad state we’re in. CBS News just reported that Caitlyn Jenner will pose nude for the cover of Sports Illustrated, draped only in his Olympic gold medal and an American flag. There’s a lot wrong with that picture! … And, as if that isn’t enough, our cartoons aren’t even immune! Disney’s Frozen, the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, has some supporters calling for the heroine Elsa to have a lesbian girlfriend in the movie’s sequel. … Pray for our nation, and get involved by standing up for God's truth and His righteousness."

Someone’s in a twist and apparently believes in a God that hates, not a God that created all of us … though some of us a little less tolerant and a lot more bigoted than others.
Dan Savage, exposing the reason why the GOP and the far right are coming for our trans brothers and sisters:

[The GOP] couldn’t demagogue anymore about gays and lesbians because too many of us are out and too many people know us so they took the same old script – 'Oh they’re recruiting children, preying on children, threatening children, creeping in bathrooms.' That was what they said about gay men 40 years ago. And they’re just taking that now and applying that to trans women and it’s bullshit and trans women and men use bathrooms all over the country and have forever. And they have no cases to point to where a trans person has exploited a civil rights protection to prey on a child."

I’ve said this before myself; same-sex marriage is legal, more and more gay men and women are coming out and so who can the conservatives bash now?
Trans is the new gay, so let’s go after them with the same fear tactics we’ve used before.
Anne Coulter, wacknut conservative, on policing bathrooms:

“It’s not that transgender people are going to go and molest children, [but] once you say that men can go into women’s bathrooms – men who are out shopping with their little daughters and don’t have mommy to bring her in there. It’s not that the trans are going to molest them. It’s that a child molester now has the right to go into that bathroom."

Really, Ann? Because a trans female uses the women’s bathroom it legalizes a child molester’s access to those same bathrooms?
Seriously, Shut.Up.
Dan Savage, instantly smacking Coulter down:

"That’s bullshit. A child molester doesn’t need to put on a dress to go into a bathroom. You can Google ‘sexually assaulted in a restroom’ and you get thousands of examples of cisgendered straight men."

Savage, again, is one hundred percent correct.
Pat Robertson, on the DOJ suing North Carolina to stop it from implementing portions of HB2 and then blaming it all on … who else … Obama:

“How absurd can you get! How does this become a great civil rights issue? This is America and this is who you put in office. You elected [Barack Obama]. I didn’t elect him. You did.”

I imagine Pat also held his head and wrung his hands and whimpered and moaned about black people using the same drinking fountain as white folk … using the same bathroom as white folk. Now it’s trans women using bathrooms.
Same story, same asshat, but let’s end with a calmer head, and more fierce voice, and more open heart …
Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney General, on North Carolina's Bathroom Bill:

"Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward. Please know that history is on your side. This country was founded on a promise of equal rights for all, and we have always managed to move closer to that promise, little by little, one day at a time. It may not be easy, but we’ll get there together."

I had tears in my eyes listening to Ms. Lynch speak so eloquently of acceptance and tolerance and a need to understand anyone who might be different from others.
How is it that her message is portrayed as one of hate by certain so-called men of God and Christian conservative Republicans?

Friday, April 01, 2016

I Didn't Say It ...

Michael Sam, on Racism, and -isms in general, in the LGBT Community: 

“It’s terrible. People have told me I’m not gay enough, people have told me I’m not black enough. I don’t know what that means. You want to be accepted by other people but you don’t even accept someone just because of the color of their skin? I just don’t understand that at all. How are you saying that, ‘oh, I want people to accept me because I’m gay but I don’t accept you because you’re black, or because you’re white or because you’re Asian’.”

Racism, sadly, exists everywhere, even in the LGBT community because we’re just like everyone else.
Sadly, though, these LGBT racists don’t get the idea that, if we as a community are being discriminated against for being who we are, how can we discriminate against anyone else for being who they are?
Tis a puzzlement.
Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary, on that new law in North Carolina: 

“This Administration is strongly committed to advancing the cause of equality for LGBT Americans and to ensuring that they do not face discrimination simply because of who they are or who they love. Like so many others across the country, we are concerned about the potential harmful impact of this law, especially on transgender youth, and believe it is mean-spirited and sends the wrong message.”

Not much to say here, other than Josh is right, the White House is right.
And, yes, I have a crush on Josh Earnest.
Susan Sarandon, a Bernie Sanders supporter, on how she might consider voting for Donald [t]Rump over Hillary Clinton: 

“I think a lot of people are ‘sorry, I just can’t bring myself to [vote Clinton]’…I don’t know [what I’ll do]. I’m going to see what happens. Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately. If he gets in, then things will really explode. Some people feel that. If you feel it’s pragmatic to shore up the status quo right now then you’re not in touch with the status quo. The status quo’s not working.”

So, if Bernie is the best thing and he doesn’t get it, then the next best choice is [t]Rump?
Siddown Susan. I used to think you were intelligent but this is just ridiculousness.
Dan Savage, responding to Sarandon: 

“Can I just say I’m for Bernie, or Hillary, or both. Come November I plan to vote for the Democratic nominee whoever it is, because the lesser of two evils is less evil, and I don’t think Donald will bring the revolution.”

[t]Rump would bring chaos and hate and discord to the country.
The only choice is the Blue one.
Anderson Cooper. CNN host and My-Husband-in-My-Head, responding to Donald [t]Rump's claim that he "didn't start" the Wife War with Ted Cruz:

“With all due respect, that’s the argument of a five-year-old. Every parent knows a kid who says ‘he started it.’” 

Snap.
Gosh Randy Andy Cooper is hot.