Repost: Black History Month: Icons

African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, but escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, and subsequently became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. 

Returning to the South more than a dozen times, she is generally credited with leading more than 300 slaves--including her parents and brother--to freedom, sometimes forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver. She became a speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit and a friend of the principal abolitionists; John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her.

During the Civil War, Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy, and in 1863 she played an important part in a raid that resulted in the freeing of more than 700 slaves.

African American civil-rights leader Julian Bond, was a student at Morehouse College, participating in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. In 1960 he founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--serving as its communications director until 1965, when he was elected to the Georgia assembly. Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam, but was reelected in 1966 and began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his right to hold office. 

A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator from 1975 until 1987. Bond led a group of Black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party's unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation. In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis. In 1998 he became chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

African American civil-rights leader Ralph David Abernathy was a Baptist minister who helped Martin Luther King, Jr., organize the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. 

He was treasurer, vice president, and, after King's assassination in 1968, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 

An advocate of nonviolence as a means to social change, he led the Poor People's Campaign on Washington, D.C., after King's death. 

African American contralto, Marian Anderson was the first African American to be named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, as well as the first to perform at the White House.

Anderson first sang in Philadelphia church choirs, then studied with Giuseppe Boghetti. She began her concert career in 1924 and achieved her first great successes in Europe. Her rich, wide-ranging voice was superbly suited to opera, lieder, and the spirituals that she included in her concerts and recordings.

In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest and sponsored Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

In 1955 Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera. She was appointed an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1958 and in 1963 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

African American author Ralph Ellison was a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute. Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved to New York City in 1936, where he met Langston Hughes, who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking.

Ellison's earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine.

His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man. A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author's experiences to detail the harrowing progress of a nameless young Black man struggling to live in a hostile society. 

African American playwright and poet August Wilson was a largely self-educated man. Wilson first attracted wide critical attention with his Broadway debut, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984--a play set in 1927 that dramatized the clash between the blues diva and a member of her band, and the larger conflicts brought about by racist American society.

Wilson's plays center on the struggles and identity of African Americans and the deleterious effect of white American institutions on Black American life. Wilson's works draw heavily on his own experiences growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto where nearly all of his plays are set.

His characters are ordinary people whose histories, frustrations, and aspirations Wilson astutely portrays. His cycle of ten dramas written over a period of more than 20 years include various overlapping characters and themes. In addition to Ma Rainey, it includes Jitney in 1982; Fences, a Pulitzer prize winner from 1987; Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 1988; The Piano Lesson the 1990 Pulitzer prize winner; Two Trains Running from 1992; Seven Guitars from 1995; King Hedley II in 2001; Gem of the Ocean in 2003; and Radio Golf in 2005.

Acclaimed as landmarks in the history of Black American culture, these works focus on the major issues confronting African Americans during each of the decades of the 20th century. In 2003, Wilson starred in a production of his autobiographical one-man play How I Learned What I Learned. 

African American James Lafayette Armistead was a patriot of the American Revolution. A slave in Virginia, Armistead sought and received permission from his master, William Armistead, to enlist under General Marquis de Lafayette, a French officer who joined Washington's army during the Revolutionary War.

Lafayette was seeking men to spy on British general Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown. Impressed with Armistead's intelligence, Lafayette had Armistead pose as a laborer looking for work.

He was hired at Cornwallis's camp and was able to relay information about Cornwallis's plans to Lafayette. Armistead also earned the trust of Cornwallis, who asked him to spy on the Americans. As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical information that enabled the general to intercept Cornwallis's much-needed naval support and ultimately defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive battle that ended the Revolution.

After the war, Armistead returned to the Armistead plantation as a slave. He met with Lafayette in 1784, when the general visited the United States. Lafayette wrote a glowing recommendation for his former spy, which Armistead used when he petitioned the Virginia House of Delegates for freedom.

He was finally freed on New Year's Day 1787, and assumed Lafayette as his surname. He spent the rest of his life as a farmer in Virginia. 

African American Stokely Carmichael lived in New York City after 1952 and graduated from Howard University in 1964.

Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality's “freedom rides” in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--in Alabama. As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of controversy by calling for “Black power,” a concept he elaborated in a 1967 book. His increasingly separatist politics isolated him from most of the civil-rights movement, and he emigrated to Conakry, Guinea, in 1969.

There he spent the rest of his life, calling himself a pan-African revolutionary but largely relegated to the political fringe. 

African American Alvin Ailey, Jr studied dance in Los Angeles with Lester Horton, whose strong, dramatic style and views about multiracial casting influenced his choreography and artistic direction.

Ailey moved to New York in 1954, where he studied dance with Martha Graham and Charles Weidman and acting with Stella Adler. In 1958 he formed his own company, the American Dance Theater, which, multiracial since 1963, has been internationally acclaimed and has brought recognition to many African-American and Asian dancers via works that combine elements of jazz, modern, and African rhythms. 

African American Joycelyn Jones Elders briefly served as the surgeon general of the United States under President Clinton. 

She was confirmed in September 1993 and angered conservatives from the get-go, as she was vocal in her support of sex education, the distribution of condoms in schools, abortion rights, and the medical use of marijuana.

But it was her December 1994 statement that “masturbation is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught” that prompted President Clinton to seek and receive her resignation. 

African American Crispus Attucks was an American revolutionary patriot of mixed African and American Indian ancestry; Attucks was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Massachusetts.

He escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships. On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence of British troops, and Attucks was the leader of the 50 men in the protest, shouting “Don't be afraid,” as they advanced on the British.

The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks and four others in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The bodies of the dead lay in state at Faneuil Hall for three days before receiving a public funeral attended by 10,000 people. Although the soldiers were acquitted of the shootings on the grounds that the sailors were inciting a riot, Attucks and the others became heroes. 

African American civil rights activist Ella Baker was a driving force in the creation of the country's premier civil rights organizations.

After graduating as valedictorian from North Carolina's Shaw University in 1927, Baker moved to New York City, where she lived in utter poverty, the result of the Great Depression. She and a group of others founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy products and services at reduced cost.

In 1935, Ella Baker joined the NAACP as a field secretary and later served as its national director. She scaled back her national responsibilities with the group eleven years later but still worked at the local level to improve and integrate New York City's schools. Baker and several Southern Black ministers and activists established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--SCLC--in 1957; the SCLC was a major force in organizing the civil rights movement.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the group's first president and Baker was the director, though she mainly worked behind the scenes, while King was its spokesman. In 1960 Baker left the SCLC when she helped students organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--at her alma mater, Shaw University. The SNCC's purpose was to give young Black people a more organized voice in the civil rights movement. 

African American writer and performer, Maya Angelou toured Europe and Africa in the 1950s in the musical Porgy and Bess. She sang in New York City nightclubs, joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and took part in several off-Broadway productions, including Genet's The Blacks and her own Cabaret for Freedom.

During the 1960s she was active in the African-American political movement; she subsequently spent several years in Ghana as editor of the African Review.

Her six autobiographical volumes, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, have generally been well-received. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including And I Still Rise. Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.

Julian Bond: RIP ... And Thank You

Julian Bond, Civil Rights leader, activist, politician, professor and writer died yesterday at the age of seventy-five.

From the 60s the the 21st Century he fought for change, for equality. He helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] and he served for over twenty years in the Georgia House of Representatives and its Senate. He was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC]; he was selected as chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and stayed on until 2009 when the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. 

For Bond Civil Rights means rights for everyone, and he was as outspoken an advocate for the LGBT community as he was for the African American community. He publicly stated his support for same-sex marriage and even boycotted the funeral services for Coretta Scott King — who supported LGBT rights — on the grounds that the King children had chosen an anti-gay church as the venue; he was a lot of things, to a lot of people, but let’s have Julian Bond tell us who he was in his own words:

African Americans ... were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now.... Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn’t change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable.

The civil rights movement didn't begin in Montgomery and it didn't end in the 1960s. It continues on to this very minute.

Discrimination is discrimination no matter who the victim is, and it is always wrong. There are no special rights in America, despite the attempts by many to divide blacks and the gay community with the argument that the latter are seeking some imaginary special rights at the expense of blacks.

If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married.

I do think that some of us began to realize that this was going to be a long struggle that was going to go on for decades, and you’d have to knuckle down. A lot of people in our generation did that. They didn’t drop out and run away.

Most of those who made the movement were not famous, they were the faceless. They were the nameless, the marchers with tired feet, the protesters beat back with fire hoses and billy clubs, and the unknown women and men who risked job and home and life.

If your Bible tells you that gay people ought not be married in your church, don't tell them they can't be married at city hall. Marriage is a civil rite as well a civil right, and we can't let religious bigotry close the door to justice to anyone.The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others.

There is no coloration to rights. Everybody has rights. I don’t care who you are, where you come from. You got rights. I got rights. All God’s children got rights. We could make a song out of this. But anyway, I think this discussion is more a diversion than anything else. Because we all have rights. And they are human rights because we are human beings. And that’s just it for me.

RIP … and Thank You

I Didn't Say It ...

Rachel Maddow, on the Hobby Lobbied Supreme Court:

"These groups want their religious beliefs to excuse them from having to follow the law on, not just contraception, not just health law rules, but on non-discrimination. They now, because of this ruling, want a religious exemption from laws that say you can't fire someone for being gay. They want to be able to fire people for being gay because they think God wants that."

I think the next big fight will be religion versus the law, and we will endure countless debates from illiterate, ill-informed, Bible-thumping Republicans about how God made America for Christians.

Sigh.

Richard George Kopf, US District Court Jude, also on the Hobby Lobbied Supreme Court:

"To most people, the decision looks stupid ’cause corporations are not persons, all the legal mumbo jumbo notwithstanding. The decision looks misogynist because the majority were all men. It looks partisan because all were appointed by a Republican. The decision looks religiously motivated because each member of the majority belongs to the Catholic Church, and that religious organization is opposed to contraception. While “looks” don’t matter to the logic of the law (and I am not saying the Justices are actually motivated by such things), all of us know from experience that appearances matter to the public’s acceptance of the law. …  Next term is the time for the Supreme Court to go quiescent–this term and several past terms has proven that the Court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the Court has the power to avoid. As the kids say, it is time for the Court to STFU."

Wonder if we can get Kopf on the Court?

Julian Bond, on the LGBT rights movement, and the Hobby Lobbied Supreme Court:

"As LGBT people have gained greater equality under the law, we are hearing similar objections to the ones I heard in response to the civil rights gains of African-Americans in the 1960s. We hear people asking for exemptions from laws - laws that prohibit discrimination - on the ground that complying would violate their religious beliefs. ... There are some who feel that ENDA must allow religiously affiliated organizations - far beyond churches, synagogues and mosques - to engage in employment discrimination against LGBT people. We haven't accepted this in the past, and we must not today."

Discrimination is wrong; especially when based on something the discriminated person has no control over, like gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation.

It seems pretty queer to me.

Brandon Smith, a Republican state Senator from Kentucky, on climate change:

“As you (Energy and Environment Cabinet official) sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of."

Mars is just like Earth, y’all; except there’s no people or cars or factories or man-made pollutants up there.

Oh, but, yeah, the average temperature on Mars is about -80 Fahrenheit.

So it’s colder, I guess.

I Didn't Say It.....

Madonna, on her process of choosing a mate:

“It’s about finding a man you can look up to, and comparing them to archetypes that I obviously adore—John Travolta in ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ Bruce Lee, Abraham Lincoln. I name people who I look up to and admire. I compare the object of my affection to all these people.”

Is it just me, or did anyone else realize that two of her choices are ALLEGEDLY gay men?

Rethink MDNA.

Barack Obama, on the Trayvon Martin case: 

"I think about my own kids. and you know, I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. And that everybody pulls together, federal, state and local, to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened. so I'm glad that not only is the justice department looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the state of Florida has formed a task force to investigate what is taking place...My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon. and, you know, I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

I don't understand all the uproar over his comments.

Newt said he was race-baiting, but, um, if you;re a Black man and a young Black teen is murdered, wouldn't you think, 'Hey, that could have been my son.'

I think Newt is the one playing the race card.

Adam Savage, Mythbusters host, on atheism at the Reason Rally:

"I have concluded through careful, empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me. Keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less then I ought, giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I am capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think and they still love me and I’ve concluded after careful consideration that this person keeping score is me."

Isn't it funny, in this day and age, that we are still discussing freedom of, and from, religion. Haven't we moved beyond the idea that all people must think alike.

If Savage believes he is repsonsible for his own life, choices, destiny, and someone else thinks that God, or gods, or goddesses, or, whomever, is responsible for their life choices, shouldn't we all just let it be?

Maggie Gallagher, on Starbucks refusal to came to her lumbering, blubbering hate machine, NOM:

"Starbucks has voluntarily decided -- as a corporation -- to associate its brand with a major political issue, the CEO just confirmed. I was in the room. I heard him. Customers across the world have a right to know that contrary to the promises made by the corporation in the Middle East and elsewhere, Starbucks does subsidize political causes. Drinking a cup of Starbucks coffee, sadly, means supporting gay marriage. Speak out, and stop being invisible to powerful men like Schultz. The business of America may or may not be business, but the business of corporations is to make an honest profit by serving all their customers well, both those who favor and those who oppose gay marriage."

Maggie's boycott has drummed up about 20,000 goosesteppers for hate, while nearly half a million have signed a petition thanking Starbucks for their pro-equality stance.

Oh, and their stock is soaring while NOM's is falling [see below].

Samuel Wurzelbacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, playing the Why is everybody always picking on me card like his idol:
"Remember how the leftwing media crucified Sarah Palin in the 2008 election? Well, now they've made Joe the Plumber their new target. Since winning my primary, the media has made it their number one mission to discredit my candidacy and annihilate my character. I've been painted as a bigot, told I'm not qualified to serve in Congress, and lectured on live TV as if I'm a schoolboy in the principal's office. No, I didn't earn a degree at Harvard, I haven't worked on Wall Street, and I don't make a six-figure salary. I'm a normal American, just like you. I served my country in the military and I've worked day and night to provide for my family. If that doesn't qualify a man to run for Congress, I don't know what does."

Poor Joe.
No, being in the military and caring for your family does not qualify you to run for office. At least not by themselves,
You also need a brain and a political stance, not just a few seconds left on your Fifteen Minutes of Fame clock.
Asshat.

Josh Elliott, Good Morning America anchor, on his father's coming out:
"When I was 13 years old, my dad came out and he died when I was 15, but for two years I got to see him as a man fulfilled and a man in full... I just want to say this: I took from him his love of storytelling; I took from him the importance of being an advocate for those who need it; and I took from him what it means to be a man."


Lovely.

Keith Ellison, Democratic Representative from Minnesota, on the recently revealed NOM strategy of pitting the Black community against the Gay community:
"Today, we learned from previously confidential documents that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is intentionally working to divide Americans across racial lines to advance their political agenda. The exposed documents reveal that NOM’s ‘strategic goal’ is to ‘drive a wedge between gays and blacks – two key Democratic constituencies.’ Our nation was founded on the principle of liberty and justice for all people—regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. NOM is clearly opposed to these basic ideals that so many Americans hold dear. I call on people from all backgrounds to speak out against NOM’s agenda and vote NO on the anti-marriage amendment this November."


First Starbucks poured a Macchiato all over NOM and now they are crumbling beneath their own bigotry and hatred.
The mirror has two faces, Mags. And they're both repulsive.

Julian Bond, Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP, on the latest NOM scandal:

"NOM's underhanded attempts to divide will not succeed if Black Americans remember their own history of discrimination. Pitting bigotry's victims against other victims is reprehensible; the defenders of justice must stand together."


NOM. Using hate to gain some kind of bigoted foothold in their doomed fight to "protect" marriage..
Ain't gonna happen.

Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman, also on the NOM scandal:
"Black folks, this is a message for you: The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the country’s preeminent group fighting against same-sex marriage, really, really likes you. They even want to make some of you famous! Have NOM’s principal leaders, former president Maggie Gallagher and current leader Brian S. Brown, stood up for African Americans before? Well, not so much. But it turns out that they’ve decided that you’re actually very important....NOM isn’t the first organization to use such cynical marketing ploys, schemes that seem to have little do with the interests of the people they claim to represent, and it certainly won’t be the last. But the revelation of its bald attempt to exploit black people and Latinos should help end the idea that NOM is an honorable group that would never engage in race-baiting. Because that is precisely what it has done."


It's one thing, NOM, to have an opinion, a political belief, a moral viewpoint. But to try and pit people against each other, hoping to prevail, is disgusting and hateful, and, well, totally you.

I Didn't Say It........

Julian Bond, on marriage equality, the Black community, and Maryland:

"Standing for the freedom to marry is about supporting all families, but I would be remiss without highlighting the impact that this inequality has on black same-sex couples, who statistically are already economically disadvantaged compared to their straight sisters and brothers. In comparison to black opposite-sex couples and white same-sex couples, black same-sex couples are more likely to parent children and earn a lower annual income. The lack of marriage rights negatively affects black same-sex couples because they are also more likely to work in the public sector, relying on health insurance that is often only afforded to married couples. Furthermore, I firmly believe that marriage strengthens communities. Allowing more couples the opportunity to marry will strengthen the communities — and families — that most need it.
I served for 20 years in the Georgia State House and Senate; I recall difficult decisions my colleagues and I had to make, often torn between conscience and public opinion. I hope the General Assembly will stand for what's right and bring the freedom to marry to Maryland."

Pay attention people.
This is what common sense sounds like.
This is what progress sounds like.
This is what equality sounds like.

Lady Gaga, on target about Target:

"That discussion was one of the most intense conversations I've ever had in a business meeting. Part of my deal with Target is that they have to start affiliating themselves with LGBT charity groups and begin to reform and make amends for the mistakes they've made in the past ... our relationship is hinged upon their reform in the company to support the gay community and to redeem the mistakes they've made supporting those [antigay] groups."

I'm glad Gaga is working with Target, but I am not so optimistic that Target will change it's ways.
Target is about profit and the bottom line.
And they've pledged to work with the LGBT community before, and then opted to stop that altogtehr.
If I buy Gaga's music, it won't be at Target.

Dan Savage, on Rick Santorum and his outrage over Dan's Santorum website:

"You have to love how Santorum is out there mewling about being the victim here and about civility—this from the man who compared people in stable, loving same-sex relationships to dog fuckers and kiddie rapists, this from a man who would make gay and straight sodomy illegal, ban gay marriage and any other protections for same-sex couples, and prevent loving same-sex couples from adopting children who need homes. This from a man who would literally destroy my family if it were within in his power to do so....There has been no effort to strip Rick Santorum of his civil rights, no moves to nullify his marriage, no one has suggested that his children be taken out of his home, no one is trying to prevent him from having more children. No one has compared Rick Santorum to a dog fucker or a pedophile. Compared to Rick Santorum, my readers and I have been models of decorum and restraint. And don't think you're fooling us, Rick. Now that you're running for president—eight years after we redefined 'santorum' — you're whining to attract a little attention to your campaign and because your advisors think that maybe you'll get a little traction playing the pansy-assed victim card, à la Sarah Palin, and rake in a few bucks. Oh, look at all that mean gay dude—one of the guys I want to oppress—he's picking on meeeeeeeeeee!"

I could add my two cents, but Dan don't need no help.

Democratic Representaive Jackie Speier's emotional and personal rebuttal during a debate, and GOP asshat Chris Smith, who read aloud graphic descriptions of abortion only moments before:

"I really planned to speak about something else. But the gentleman from New Jersey just put my stomach in knots. Because I'm one of those women he spoke about just now. I had a procedure at 17 weeks pregnant with a child who moved from the vagina into the cervix. And that procedure that you just described is a procedure that I endured. I lost a baby. And for you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous."

I've said it before, and will say it again: If you don't beleieve in abortion, don't have one.
And, to that, I will add, If men were the ones who got pregnant and gave birth, abortion would have been legalized in teh Constitutuion.
This is just another way for men to exert control over women.

Wyoming Republican--Yes, Republican--state senator Cale Case, who proposed a $200,000 appropriation for road signs that would alert visitors from out-of-state: "Warning: your marriage or civil union may be void or voidable in Wyoming. Proceed with extreme caution" on Wyoming's string of anti-LGBT measures:

“We should kill this bill. We should kill it right now. We should kill it because it’s not very well thought out. It has enormous practical implications....What about the millions of people that visit Wyoming? That just come for vacation. We’re so proud of our visitors, now we’re going to say all of you visitors who happen to be from another state, when you come across the border, you’re magically not together any more. ‘Poof.’ It’s gone. Don’t get into a car wreck. If you’re in a hospital and you’re dying, and your partner is with you, we’re going to have to call your mother because that’s the nearest relative that we’re going to recognize under Wyoming (law) to make decisions about your life....Gays and lesbians live and work among us. They’re also soldiers in the military. They’ve been here and talked about their service in Iraq and...now you’re going to deny them the benefits (of marriage of civil unions).”

Oh wow!
A Republican standing up for the LGBT community?
And in Wyoming, no less?
Stand tall Congressman Case. You're on the right side.

Maggie Gallagher, on Marriage Equality in Maryland, and thie idea that NOM is "going to win there, one way or another":

"To me, it’s amazing, given the array of forces pushing for gay marriage and the weak response of most conservative politicians, that the American people have stubbornly dug in their heels on this question: Are two men in a union a marriage? The answer is 'no,' and people really do know it. Marriage is the union of husband and wife — for a reason. Creating a world where people are treated like haters or bigots for standing for marriage is irrational, and people know that, too. An America in which Genesis is akin to racism is an America that will be unrecognizable. Ideas have consequences, and this idea cuts us off from our roots and makes the future much harder."

Oh Maggie, you douchebag.
Look at a poll, and i don't mean the rusty pole you keep in your bedroom for, um, your amusement.
The tide is changing.
More and more people are accepting of marriage equality, until you spin your pedophile/bestialty line of bull shiz.
Your days of being anything more than a sad clown are just about up, and then what, ot who, will you go after?

 Playgirl's Daniel Nardicio, on Nick Gruber, the 21-year-old lover of Calvin Klein:

"I had contacted him a long time ago about posing in Playgirl, before he was outed as a porn star. I kept trying to meet up with him and he kept blowing me off, with monosyllabic texts, yet he said he'd do Playgirl as long as he got the cover. Finally, in frustration I texted him to forget it, and he came back with 'You only want me because of my fame, so you can go fuck yourself.' To that I told him that in three years when Klein tired of blowing him, he'd be just another bottle blond looking for work, so he should be more respectful of people trying to give him work."

Hey Playgirl.
We all know your models are mostly gay porn stars, so quite trying to market yourself as entertainment for women,
The men in your magazine only want women to do their hair.

Porn actor and Calvin's lov-ah, Nick Gruber, on Playgirl editor Daniel Nardicio:

"You only want me because of my fame, so you can go fuck yourself. Calvin [Klein] is my partner -- you don't understand because you don't have that. I am famous now, and people want me for my fame, and you should be careful 'cause of the people I know and what they could do to you."

Hmm, porn star threats?
Is he gonna have someone 'blow' Nardicio away?
Fluff him to death?
Seriously, this little man's fifteen minutes as Calvin's plaything are almost up, because, I'm pretty sure Calvin is now dreaming of some luscious 18-year-old that he simply must have.

Lady Gaga, on how she spent 72 hours in the egg before the Grammys:

"I was in there for about 72 hours. It was a very creative experience...It was time for me to really prepare and think about the meaning of the song and get prepared for the performance. I really wanted to be born on stage. The creative vessel was helpful for me to stay focused. We had it backstage so that I was able to really stay in this sort of creative, embryonic incubation."

I'm slowly getting over Gaga.
She tries to make it sound like she lived in the egg for three days before, um, hatching at the Grammy's, but take a close look at the red carpet egg, and the stage egg.
They are two very different eggs.
Plus, um, is it like an egg condo, because Gaga changed from a black outfit to her incubus dress in there!
Seriously, Gaga, spend more time writing songs and less time promoting yourself.
Seriously. 

Black History Month

African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, but escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, and subsequently became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. Returning to the South more than a dozen times, she is generally credited with leading more than 300 slaves--including her parents and brother--to freedom, sometimes forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver. She became a speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit and a friend of the principal abolitionists; John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her. During the Civil War, Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy, and in 1863 she played an important part in a raid that resulted in the freeing of more than 700 slaves.

African American civil-rights leader Julian Bond, was a a student at Morehouse College, participating in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. In 1960 he founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--serving as its communications director until 1965, when he was elected to the Georgia assembly. Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam, but reelected in 1966, he began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his right to hold office. A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator from 1975 until 1987. Bond led a group of black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party's unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation. In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis. In 1998 he became chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

African American civil-rights leader Ralph David Abernathy was a Baptist minister who helped Martin Luther King, Jr., organize the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. He was treasurer, vice president, and, after King's assassination in 1968, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). An advocate of nonviolence as a means to social change, he led the Poor People's Campaign on Washington, D.C., after King's death. African American contralto, Marian Anderson was the first African American to be named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, as well as the first to perform at the White House. Anderson first sang in Philadelphia church choirs, then studied with Giuseppe Boghetti. She began her concert career in 1924 and achieved her first great successes in Europe. Her rich, wide-ranged voice was superbly suited to opera, lieder, and the spirituals that she included in her concerts and recordings. In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest and sponsored Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial. In 1955 Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera. She was appointed an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1958 and in 1963 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. African American author Ralph Ellison was a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute. Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved to New York City in 1936, where he met Langston Hughes, who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking. Ellison's earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine. His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man. A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author's experiences to detail the harrowing progress of a nameless young black man struggling to live in a hostile society. African American playwright and poet August Wilson was a largely self-educated man. Wilson first attracted wide critical attention with his Broadway debut, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984--a play set in 1927 that dramatized the clash between the blues diva and a member of her band, and the larger conflicts brought about by racist American society. Wilson's plays center on the struggles and identity of African Americans and the deleterious effect of white American institutions on black American life. Wilson's works draw heavily on his own experiences growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto where nearly all of his plays are set. His characters are ordinary people whose histories, frustrations, and aspirations Wilson astutely portrays. His cycle of ten dramas written over a period of more than 20 years include various overlapping characters and themes. In addition to Ma Rainey, it includes Jitney in 1982; Fences, a Pulitzer prize winner from 1987; Joe Turner's Come and Gone in 1988; The Piano Lesson the 1990 Pulitzer prize winner; Two Trains Running from 1992; Seven Guitars from 1995; King Hedley II in 2001; Gem of the Ocean in 2003; and Radio Golf in 2005. Acclaimed as landmarks in the history of black American culture, these works focus on the major issues confronting African Americans during each of the decades of the 20th century. In 2003, Wilson starred in a production of his autobiographical one-man play How I Learned What I Learned. African American James Lafayette Armistead was a patriot of the American Revolution. A slave in Virginia, Armistead sought and received permission from his master, William Armistead, to enlist under General Marquis de Lafayette, a French officer who joined Washington's army during the Revolutionary War. Lafayette was seeking men to spy on British general Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown. Impressed with Armistead's intelligence, Lafayette had Armistead pose as a laborer looking for work. He was hired at Cornwallis's camp and was able to relay information about Cornwallis's plans to Lafayette. Armistead also earned the trust of Cornwallis, who asked him to spy on the Americans. As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical information that enabled the general to intercept Cornwallis's much-needed naval support and ultimately defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive battle that ended the Revolution. After the war, Armistead returned to the Armistead plantation as a slave. He met with Lafayette in 1784, when the general visited the United States. Lafayette wrote a glowing recommendation for his former spy, which Armistead used when he petitioned the Virginia House of Delegates for freedom. He was finally freed on New Year's Day 1787, and assumed Lafayette as his surname. He spent the rest of his life as a farmer in Virginia. African American Stokely Carmichael lived in New York City after 1952 and graduated from Howard University in 1964. Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality's “freedom rides” in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--in Alabama. As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of controversy by calling for “black power,” a concept he elaborated in a 1967 book. His increasingly separatist politics isolated him from most of the civil-rights movement, and he emigrated to Conakry, Guinea, in 1969. There he spent the rest of his life, calling himself a pan-African revolutionary but largely relegated to the political fringe. African American Alvin Ailey, Jr studied dance in Los Angeles with Lester Horton, whose strong, dramatic style and views about multiracial casting influenced his choreography and artistic direction. Ailey moved to New York in 1954, where he studied dance with Martha Graham and Charles Weidman and acting with Stella Adler. In 1958 he formed his own company, the American Dance Theater, which, multiracial since 1963, has been internationally acclaimed and has brought recognition to many African-American and Asian dancers via works that combine elements of jazz, modern, and African rhythms. African American Joycelyn Jones Elders briefly served as the surgeon general of the United States under President Clinton. She was confirmed in September 1993 and angered conservatives from the get-go, as she was vocal in her support of sex education, the distribution of condoms in schools, abortion rights, and the medical use of marijuana. But it was her December 1994 statement that “masturbation is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught” that prompted President Clinton to seek and receive her resignation. African American Crispus Attucks was an American revolutionary patriot of mixed African and American Indian ancestry; Attucks was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Mass. He escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships. On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence of British troops, and Attucks was the leader of the 50 men in the protest, shouting “Don't be afraid,” as they advanced on the British. The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks and four others in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The bodies of the dead lay in state at Faneuil Hall for three days before receiving a public funeral attended by 10,000 people. Although the soldiers were acquitted of the shootings on the grounds that the seamen were inciting a riot, Attucks and the others became heroes. African American civil rights activist Ella Baker was a driving force in the creation of the country's premier civil rights organizations. After graduating as valedictorian from North Carolina's Shaw University in 1927, Baker moved to New York City, where she lived in utter poverty, the result of the Great Depression. She and a group of others, founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy products and services at reduced cost. In 1935, Ella Baker joined the NAACP as a field secretary and later served as a its national director. She scaled back her national responsibilities with the group eleven years later, but still worked at the local level to improve and integrate New York City's schools. Baker and several Southern black ministers and activists established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--SCLC--in 1957; the SCLC was a major force in organizing the civil rights movement. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the group's first president and Baker was the director, though she mainly worked behind the scenes, while King was its spokesman. In 1960 Baker left the SCLC when she helped students organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--SNCC--at her alma mater, Shaw University. The SNCC's purpose was to give young blacks a more organized voice in the civil rights movement. African American writer and performer, Maya Angelou toured Europe and Africa in the 1950s in the musical Porgy and Bess. She sang in New York City nightclubs, joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and took part in several off-Broadway productions, including Genet's The Blacks and her own Cabaret for Freedom. During the 1960s she was active in the African-American political movement; she subsequently spent several years in Ghana as editor of the African Review. Her six autobiographical volumes, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, have generally been well-received. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including And I Still Rise. Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.