I Didn't Say It ...

Barack Obama, after the shootings of the last few days calling for gun control:

“It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so. It will take time to root out the disaffection, racism and misogyny that fuels so many of these senseless acts of violence. But we can make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war. We can overcome opposition by cowardly politicians and the pressure of a gun lobby that opposes any limit on the ability of anyone to assemble an arsenal. We can, and we must. A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country. It’s time for leaders everywhere to listen to the American people when they say enough is enough.”

Nice words, but we’ve been saying ‘enough is enough’ for years, and our elected officials in DC are too far deep in the pockets of the NRA.

That’s the change we need; no more NRA!

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Jeanine Pirro, the chardonnay-drinking, perhaps drunk on air, Fox News hack, says migrants are a “lower level of human being”:

“We’re spending 86 million dollars for 1,200 families to get them hotel rooms, while we’ve got 10 million Americans out of work? We’ve got 10 million Americans who are going to be competing with people for jobs? It’s not about politics. When that sheriff said to me, ‘Jeanine, this is modern-day slavery.’ The bringing of these children into this country, where they will be forever connected to a cartel, is slavery. What we’re doing here is we are promoting a lower level of human being, who will be controlled from other countries. So stop trying to make this about this is who—not who we are. This is about crime coming into this country and it’s a reality. And we’re losing.”

It’s stunning to me that a pundit, even an idiot like Pirro, can say the most racist things on a news show and her bosses don’t come for her.

Ain’t that America? We won’t end racism until we silence the racists.

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Jody Hice, [Q-GA], believes Washington DC should not be granted statehood because … :

“D.C. would be the only state, the only state, without an airport, without a car dealership, without a capital city, without a landfill, without even a name on its own, and we can go on and on and on.”

Washington, D.C. is home to more than 700,000 residents, which means it has a greater population than Wyoming, but, shoot, no car dealerships.

Damn.

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John Oliver, taking on Meghan McCain for saying Thing #45’s use of the racist ‘China Virus’ would help him get votes in 2020 and then Tweeting for an end to anti-Asian violence in 2021:

“Oh good! Meghan McCain doesn’t have a problem with it. Listen not to the scores of Asian Americans telling everyone that the term is dangerous and offensive. Instead, gather around and take the word of a wealthy white woman who’s dressed like she’s about to lay off 47 people over Zoom. Meghan McCain posted this week, ‘Stop Asian Hate,’ with three broken hearts emoji, which is a fine sentiment to throw up on Twitter after the fact, [but] there has to be an understanding that saying, ‘I don’t have a problem with calling it the China virus’ is very much giving space for hate to grow. The minimization of racist rhetoric plays into the harmful stereotype of Asian Americans as a model minority pitting them against other minority groups and pressuring them to swallow their experiences with racism, without making a stink because that’s how you earn white acceptance, and that is something that takes its toll. Our long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and the fact that it often peaks during times of crisis is the exact reason why, just last year, many were loudly warning that [the twice-impeached, one-term loser] calling COVID names like the ‘China virus’ was likely to lead to a rise in violence against people of Asian descent—an argument that not everyone, at the time, seemed to find convincing.”

Bang on, John.

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Meghan McCain, apologizing on Twitter for her anti-Asian statements:

“I condemn the reprehensible violence and vitriol that has been targeted towards the Asian-American community. There is no doubt [the twice-impeached, one-term loser]’s racist rhetoric fueled many of these attacks and I apologize for any past comments that aided that agenda.” 

What’s the deal with McCain? A supposedly educated woman who spouts such ignorance. She spends more time apologizing for being a moron than she does making sense.

PS Now apologize for stealing Barbara Eden’s I Dream of Jeanie hair.

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Stella Keating, a transgender high school student, speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee, about the Equality Act:

“Good morning. My name is Stella Keating and my pronouns are she/her. I am 16 years old, and I live in the state of Washington. I am a sophomore in high school and just got my driver’s license which was a great day! What happens if I want to attend college in a state that doesn’t protect me? Right now, I could be denied medical care or be evicted for simply being transgender in many states. How is that even right? How is that even American? Right now, I live in a state where I have equal protection under the law. And as a high school sophomore, I’m starting to look at colleges, and all I can think about is this: less than half of the states in our country provide equal protection for me under the law. What if I’m offered a dream job in a state where I can be discriminated against? Even if my employer is supportive, I still have to live somewhere. Eat in restaurants. Have a doctor. And why am I having to worry about all of this at the age of 16?”

Out of the mouths of babes comes simple truth.

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I Didn't Say It ...

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, formally coming out as gay:

"While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me. Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple ... When I arrive in my office each morning, I’m greeted by framed photos of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy. I don’t pretend that writing this puts me in their league. All it does is allow me to look at those pictures and know that I’m doing my part, however small, to help others. We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick."

Each of us has a brick to lay on that path for those who come behind.

Jody Hice, “pastor” and newly elected Georgia Congressional wingnut, on the Penn State child abuse sex scandal:

“The whole issue is a morally bankrupt nation is where we are. And you can go back decades as we first kicked the Bible out of schools and then prayer out of schools. And we've just basically been going downhill since then and you get what you get -- you know, you kick God out."

So instead of blaming what happened on now-convicted serial child abuser Jerry Sandusky, or our nation's obsession with football, Hice said it’s all because of God and the Bible?

Oy.

Gareth Thomas, Welsh rugby legend, on how and why he came out as gay:

"I didn't come out because I wanted to be the first person to do it. I came out because I came to the crossroads of living or dying, and that's why I decided to come out. Because I wanted to live. I get stopped, even today, constantly on the street by people I have never met in my entire life, and they'll say to me, 'I Just want to thank you for helping my brother, mother, father, sister, auntie, uncle, because you gave them the strength to be who they want to be...I have won every trophy that I can ever dream of winning but when you affect somebody’s life, in a way that this person is going to have a life that they never thought they could have because of me, stupid old me, because of that they could do that, it’s amazing."

It’s Thomas’ brick on that same path.

David Letterman, on the midterm elections and the Obama bashing on both sides of the aisle:

“This is what happens when we have the midterm elections. The Republicans, of course, have turned against Obama, and the Democrats have also turned against Obama. That’s a lonely, lonely gig being president, ladies and gentlemen. … Take a look at this: gas under $3 a gallon – under $3 a gallon. Unemployment under 6%, whoever thought? Stock market breaking records every day. No wonder the guy is so unpopular.”

Thanks Dave.

Sophia Loren, on giving Jayne Mansfield's dress the side-eye:

"In my face you can see the fear. I’m so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow — BOOM! — and spill all over the table. There may be other photos, but this is the picture. This is the one that shows how it was. This is the only picture."

A truly iconic picture, and proof that Mansfield was ahead of her time.

That dress would be daring today.

WTF Tuesday! Georgia

Republican … naturally … Paul Broun has been a fixture in Georgia politics for seven years now, and is one of the biggest rightwingnuttiest, asshatted, dicks out there, even in Georgia. He says biology is all “lies straight from the pit of hell” and believes President Obama has created a secret national police force to push a Marxist dictatorship.

Like I said, he’s a dick. But now that dick is leaving his job as US Congressman and running for US Senate and Jody Hice, the man hoping to take his place, makes Broun look positively lovely.

In a 2012 book, It’s Now or Never: A Call to Reclaim America, “pastor” and talk show host, Hice says that The Gays have a secret plot to recruit and sodomize children; he also states that supporters of abortion rights are worse than Hitler and sings that old GOIP standby about gay relationships being like bestiality and incest. Oh, and he says Muslims be stripped of their First Amendment rights because, you know, all Muslims were in on 9/11.

Hice claims homosexuality causes shorter life spans and depression, and insists same-sex couples cannot raise healthy children; you know, like his parents raised him. But I will give him a wee bit of credit, because he actually offers an answer to that age-old question, “How will same-sex marriage affect traditional marriage?”

He says it’s like asking the question, "'How does a trashy neighborhood affect you?”

Well, let’s get this queer, Hice, The Gays have been known to buy into those so-called trashy neighborhoods and gentrify them, making them better places for all, so, maybe you’re saying we can do the same for marriage? You know, raise the value of it?

And of course he ponders the question of love, calling it a “shallow and insufficient basis for marriage” and saying we can love all sorts of things, cars and dogs and kids, but we cannot marry them simply because we love them.

Yeah, he rang the “if we allow gays to marry then people will marry dogs” crazy bell.

But the biggest problem I have with Hice, and it’s not his anti-LGBT ideas, or anti-Muslim foolishness, or anti-Obama GOP goose-stepping rhetoric, it’s the fact that in his own book he quoted at length from a 1987 column by Michael Swift, a gay writer, to suggest that gay people prey on children:

“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.”

Oh dear, this makes The Gays sound awful, except …

Hice omitted first sentence of Swift's column, which noted that the entire essay was satirical.

Seriously, Georgia? This is your chance to rid the state of Paul Broun and one of your choices is Jody Hice? I mean, you can be anti-gay; I don’t care because in the long run, or more likely, the short run, you’ll be on the wrong side of history. And you can demonize an entire religion based on the actions of a few, but then where’s your outrage at the Catholic Church over their handling of pedophiles; or the Methodist church for the actions of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City?

But, when you “write” a book and take parts of another piece of writing by someone else and edit out the part where the writer clearly says this is a piece of satire, and you publish it as your homophobic gospel, well, I just can’t with stupid.

And you shouldn’t either Georgia.

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