Leonard Pitts Jr. on The Murder of Mark Carson

Lotsa folks talking about why the murder of Mark Carson has created such a visceral reaction both in and out of the LGBT community, and as usual, Pitts gets it right.

Why Mark Carson Matters

by Leonard Pitts for the Miami Herald

Mark Carson was shot in the face because he's gay.

His alleged killer, 33-year-old Elliot Morales, is said to have confronted Carson, 32, and a companion, in New York's Greenwich Village last Friday night, yelling antigay slurs. When Carson walked away, Morales reportedly followed and shot him. Morales was arrested by police after a foot chase.

In pondering this tragedy, it is worthwhile to consider a couple things: where it happened, and when.

The "where" is just a few blocks from the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar where a 1969 police raid ("act of ongoing police harassment," would probably be the more accurate description) led to a violent uprising. It is regarded as the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.

The "when" is now, in the post-Jason Collins era.

He is, you will recall, the 34-year-old NBA journeyman who made history a few weeks ago when he became the first active player in one of the big four professional sports to come out as gay. While most of us were applauding, a few of us affected to treat the event with a collective shrug, sought to minimize it by pretending it was unimportant.

"Who cares?" wrote conservative blogger Crystal Wright.

"It means less than nothing to me," said Mike Francesca, a New York radio host.

"I do not care about Mr. Collins' sexuality," wrote columnist Armstrong Williams.

Methinks they doth protest too much.

Why does this matter?

Yours truly attempted to answer that question in this space when Collins came out. Sadly, Mark Carson provides a more viscerally convincing answer in the fact and manner of his dying.

Here's the thing: As gay rights have become more approved and inevitable, it becomes less socially acceptable to oppose them as loudly and brazenly as some of us once did. As recently as 2001, for example, Williams was arguing that gay couples were unfit to adopt.

Such arguments largely lost, he and others like him turn now to this new pose of ostentatious indifference that says in effect, "Fine." Be gay if you must, but why do you feel you have to announce your sexuality to the world?

It is an argument with the unfortunate advantage of seeming to make sense, even as it paints gay people as overly provocative and needlessly demonstrative. Don't put your sexual orientation in my face, it says, and I won't put mine in yours. Keep your sex life private. Don't ask, don't tell.

But the flaw in the argument is obvious: Straight people announce their sexuality all day every day. It happens when they canoodle in the park, walk hand in hand through the mall, place loved ones' pictures on the desk. These are small joys and we don't think of them as announcements of sexuality, but they are.

If you are gay, you don't do such things. Or, you do them strategically, thoughtfully, picking and choosing where and when it is safe to canoodle, hold hands, set out the pictures ... be. Because you realize the reaction may not just be derision, but violence. Even death.

So the decision to seize these small joys demands courage. This is what is provided when a Jason Collins announces himself. Or when an Ellen DeGeneres, a Zachary Quinto, a Neil Patrick Harris, a Jenna Wolfe, an Anderson Cooper, a Ricky Martin or a Wanda Sykes does the same.

Sometimes, when you step out on the ice, it helps to know someone else has already tested it. If you are going to demand the right to be, if you are going to accept the risk that doing so entails, it's good to know that at least you're not alone.

Why does this matter, they ask?

Well, in 2013, in America's biggest city, within steps of a gay rights landmark, it seems you can still be shot in the face for no other reason than that you are gay.

That's why.

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

Sophia Bush, actress, on marriage equality:
"When we’re talking about the ’60s, when my best friend couldn’t drink out of the same water fountain as I can because his skin is a different color than me … now, you’re talking about a different best friend of mine who can’t get married even though I could get married seven times in my life and he can’t do that because he is a different sexual orientation than me?! That’s absolutely a civil rights issue."

Putting it bluntly.
No matter what anyone says about special rights or traditional or religion, marriage equality is a Civil Rights issue.
Civil Rights ain't just an African American thing.

Colin Farrell, on the bullying of LGBT youth in Ireland:
"If there was one great wish I have for my country--for a land that I love and a people I so revere, it would be that school bullying were a thing of our past. So much has befallen us in our shared history as a people. The harshest of these times have threatened to take our dignity, or scald our hearts into closing. Most of our great trials, from soiled land to the institutionalized abuse of trust and power, were inflicted upon us, whether by nature or the power corrupt. Now with bullying, there is a clear choice and the choice is ours. Each individual, as a member of his and her community, must Stand Up! In the face of this appalling brutality that plagues our schools. In effect, bullying is no less than the systematic doling out of pain upon the innocent. It is literally laughing in the face of somebody as they fall into increasingly grave danger. It's not my place to draw parallels, but we have had enough of such hardships. The world has. Whether it be the attacking of Gay students, which I witnessed first hand happening to my own brother, or students who are in the minority as a result of race or religious beliefs or any other such characteristic that separates them from 'the norm', it is all wrong and has no place in a just and compassionate country such as I know Ireland to be.  We have always been praised as being the friendliest and most welcoming race in the world.  My wish is for us to prove it daily, in the school yards and playgrounds across this Great Land of Ours."

Hot. Sexy. Compassionate.
'Nuff said.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., on Dalan Wells and Brandon Morgan's Marine homecoming photo: 
"Or, as Fleetwood Mac once put it, 'yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.' And the sooner the Grand Old Party concedes that and stops pandering to the bitterness and fear of dead-enders and hard-liners still desperately clinging to the broken remains of Beaver Cleaver's white picket fence, the better off we all will be."

The past is past.
It's time to realize that times changes, and time to realize that we all must change.
Or be left behind, wondering....

Chris Gregoire, Washington governor, on how President Obama was her inspiration for Washington marriage equality:
"I think we probably have succeeded as much as we have because of his leadership. He's used the bully pulpit. He's been the inspiration that allowed the state of Washington to recognize that we need to have equality. It's because of what he's been able to do that I actually think in large part we were able to achieve what we did. So I don't criticize. To the contrary, I thank the president for his leadership on GLBT issues."

He's still evolving, yes, while Chris Gregoire has already evolved.
Hopefully, now, Christine Gregoire will become an inspiration for President Obama in the fight for full marriage equality nationwide.

George Clooney, on how he feels about the rumors that he is gay:
"I think it’s funny, but the last thing you’ll ever see me do is jump up and down, saying, 'These are lies!' That would be unfair and unkind to my good friends in the gay community. I’m not going to let anyone make it seem like being gay is a bad thing. My private life is private, and I’m very happy in it. Who does it hurt if someone thinks I’m gay? I’ll be long dead and there will still be people who say I was gay. I don’t give a shit."

Seriously.
We need more heterosexual allies to stand up like Clooney and shout from the rooftops that gay isn't bad.
We say it enough, but we need some straight people to echo the sentiment.

Ken Mehlman, former RNC Chair and, formerly closeted gay man, apologizing for the harming the LGBT community in his position as W's campaign manager:
“At a personal level, I wish I had spoken out against the effort. As I’ve been involved in the fight for marriage equality, one of the things I’ve learned is how many people were harmed by the campaigns in which I was involved. I apologize to them and tell them I am sorry. While there have been recent victories, this could still be a long struggle in which there will be setbacks, and I’ll do my part to be helpful.”

I've said it before, the most dangerous foe the LGBT community has to face isn't the religious right, or the Conservatives. It's closeted gay men and women in positions of power, who are so self-loathing that they work against us just to prove how "not gay" they think they are.

Kirk Cameron, on the media firestorm that occurred since his remarks to Piers Morgan over that homosexuality is "unnatural...detrimental" and "ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.”:
"I spoke as honestly as I could, but some people believe my responses were not loving toward those in the gay community. That is not true. I can assuredly say that it’s my life’s mission to love all people. I should be able to express moral views on social issues, especially those that have been the underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years — without being slandered, accused of hate speech, and told from those who preach ‘tolerance’ that I need to either bend my beliefs to their moral standards or be silent when I’m in the public square. I believe we need to learn how to debate these things with greater love and respect....I’ve been encouraged by the support of many friends (including gay friends, incidentally).”

Here's my take, like it or not.
He has the right to his opinion, whether it's based on ALLEGEDLY self-loathing, or based on his limited world-view and narrow religious belief.
He has the right to his opinion and the right to say it.
Juts as I have the right to say Kirk Cameron is a delusional self-loathing closeted homosexual religious wingnut,
Oh, and Kirk? You don't have any gay friends, because if you did, you'd be parading them around.

George Clooney, again, on marriage equality:
"It’s always been this albatross that stood out to me as the final leg of the civil rights movement. It really came to a head during the 2004 elections, when it was used as a wedge issue, and it was a very effective tool to keep the Republicans in office and to avoid talking about other issues. Well before Prop. 8, I’ve made the point that every time we’ve stood against equality, we’ve been on the wrong side of history. It’s the same kind of argument they made when they didn’t want blacks to serve in the military, or when they didn’t want blacks to marry whites. One day the marriage equality fight will look as archaic as George Wallace standing on the University of Alabama steps keeping James Hood from attending college because he was black. People will be embarrassed to have been on the wrong side. So it’s encouraging to know that this too will seem like such a silly argument to our next generation."

People will be saying, in ten, twenty years time, 'Why were we so against this?'
'What was the big deal?'
History has proved this already, many times, with every single march by any group towards equality.

Linda Harvey, on how same-sex marriage "destroys" opposite-sex marriage:
"The question is sometimes asked, how would same-sex marriage harm your marriage? There are several simple answers. One, it changes what is considered normal and legal throughout our culture and therefore what is taught and modeled to our children and grandchildren. Do we want little Morgan in second grade to learn that when she grows up she might marry a boy or might marry a girl and either one is perfectly fine and she won’t know until she’s older which she prefers, but that’s OK. Do you think Morgan will develop with a secure and stable idea about her identity as a girl and woman with this shaky and morally irrational guidance? No wonder our kids are anxious, stressed out and feel they have nothing to believe in sometimes, they are being told what they can see themselves is foolishness and being told to swallow these lies and stay quiet if you don’t agree."

What is considered 'normal' varies from house to house.
A single-parent house may seem abnormal to a kid with two parents. A gay parent household is different from a straight parent household. Different isn't necessarily bad.
As for Little Morgan, you cannot teach gay; you can teach what it means to be gay, but you cannot teach someone to be gay.
Born that way, remember? And if Little Morgan is told that whomever she chooses to love, and to marry, is perfectly all right, then Little Morgan will grow up to be perfectly well-balanced, open, and tolerant of everyone.
And that's what scares people like Linda Harvey so much.

Barbara Bush, on the GOP primary season: 
"I think [the 2012 presidential campaign] been the worst campaign I've ever seen in my life. I hate that people think compromise is a dirty word. It's not a dirty word. ... I think the rest of the world is looking at us these days and saying, 'What are you doing?'"

I agree, to a point.
The rest of the world isn't looking at all of us. They're just looking at the GOP and wondering what the hell is going on.

Michele Bachmann, pandering and fear-mongering on Glenn Beck's radio show:
"Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, she said that it's important that we have contraceptives because that prevents pregnancy, and pregnancy is more expensive to the federal government. Going with that logic, according to our own Health and Human Services secretary, it isn't farfetched to think that the president of the United States could say, we need to save healthcare expenses, the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family, or two babies to be born per family. That could happen. You think it couldn't?"

Yes, Michele, the President will soon be telling people how many babies to have, and of which gender.
That line forms right next to the one for the Death Panels.
Sit down, Michele, your stupid is showing again.

Jon Hamm, on fame and famewhores:
"Whether it's Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian or whoever, stupidity is certainly celebrated. Being a fucking idiot is a valuable commodity in this culture because you're rewarded significantly."

I.Love.Jon.Hamm.
That's all.
Oh...and Kim Kardashian responded to this, with, "So?"
Well, maybe not exactly, but that's what it amounted to.

Blake Shelton, on his "bromance" with fellow Voice judge Adam Levine:
"All I have to say is, it's true: I have a man crush on Adam. It blows me away people can pick up on that just by watching that on television. I want to kiss him. I want to kiss him so bad. I don't care if it's mutual or not. Can you honestly tell me that you don't have a little bit of a crush on Adam? He's sexy, is the word I'm using."

When i first read this, I thought it was a typical, yee-haw, good old boy, joke at the expense of the gay community. I thought Shelton would be mincing and making faces and laughing while he said this.
Wrong.
I searched out the YouTube video and he says this plainly and simply. No joke. No denigration, No shame.
I've never really cared for Blake Shelton. I may have to rethink.

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

President Barack Obama, speaking at the United Nations:
"No country should deny people their rights, the freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but also no country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere."

To the world he asks that LGBT people be respected and treated equally.
To the world.
And now, Mister President, let's bring that home, and work on making us respected and equal in our own backyard.
DADT is over. DOMA is on the ropes. Marriage equality should be the next big battle.

Clint Eastwood, on gay marriage:
"These people who are making a big deal about gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of ... Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want."

Simple and direct, like a Clint Eastwood performance or film.
It isn't a big deal, people.
Make Clint's day, and knock it off.

Stacy Trasancos, a scientist-turned-Catholic-homemaker, on how she can't even leave her house now because of all The Gays:
"I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore without worrying about what in tarnation we are going to encounter. We are responsible citizens. We live by the rules, we pay our taxes, we take care of our things. I'm supposed to be able to influence what goes on in my community, and as a voter I do exercise that right. But I'm outnumbered. I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality. We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy."

Wow.
Afraid to go outside because The Gays might be there?
Honey, we're everywhere.
We deliver your mail. We work on your houses. We mow your lawns, teach your children, drive the buses, write the articles, heal the sick.
We do the same things you do, except for that whole homophobic crap that you seem to enjoy.

Brad Pitt, on gay marriage:
"What are you so afraid of? That’s my question. Gay people getting married? What is so scary about that? It’s complicated. You grow up in a religion like that and you try to pray the gay away. I feel sadness for people like that. This is where people start short-circuiting—instead of being brave and questioning their beliefs, they are afraid and feel that they have to defend them. I don’t mind a world with religion in it. There are some beautiful tenets within all religions. What I get hot about is when they start dictating how other people must live. People suffer because of it. They are spreading misery."

Organized religion is all about using fear of "them" and the unknown, to keep their followers in line.
Think for yourselves.
Get out and meet a gay couple, a gay person, and see for yourself that we aren't all that different.
Live in the light, not in the darkness of fear.

Maggie Gallagher, pitting people of faith, and people of color, against the LGBT community:
"The majority of Democrats may not break with their party over an issue like gay marriage, but the most important voters are voters newly in motion, particularly core constituents willing to break party lines over a new issue. In NY-9, Orthodox Jews (and possibly Hispanics) played that role, and they broke party lines to protest Democrats' support for gay marriage. In North Carolina, look for a newly resurgent black church, almost all Democrats, to lead the battle for protecting our marriage tradition against those who dub it hateful, bigoted and discriminatory."

Maggie, honey, I'll keep saying this as long as you keep saying "traditional" marriage:
Marriage isn't traditional. it has changed in a  myriad of ways since the beginning of time, and same-sex marriage is just another part of that evolution.
Oh, wait, you probably don't believe in evolution, either.
Get a life, Maggie, and stay out of mine.

Leonard Pitts, on GOP cheering for Texas executions: 
"People dress that need in rags of righteousness and ethicality, but occasionally, the disguise slips and it shows itself for what it is: the atavistic impulse of those for whom justice is synonymous with blood. If people really meant the arguments of high morality, you'd expect them to regard the death penalty with reverent sobriety. You would not expect them to cheer."

Georgia just executed Troy Davis for ALLEGEDLY killing a police officer.
How is that murder is illegal, unless it's sanctioned by the state?
How is it that anywhere in this country we are still murdering people when so many have been discovered, because of advances in DNA and evidence gathering, to be innocent of the crimes for which they were murdered.
It isn't justice, it isn't execution.
It's murder.

Tony Perkins, Family Research Council head, on the repeal of DADT:
"FRC will continue to monitor the consequences of this reversal of 236 years of American military policy, limit the damage and demand that the Defense Department do the same. Expect to see celebrations from homosexual groups and fawning stories in the media about how 'the sky has not fallen.' That's only because there will be no press releases from the new victims of sexual harassment or assault, the soldiers exposed to HIV tainted blood, the thousands of servicemembers who choose not to reenlist rather than forfeit their freedom of speech and religion, and the untold number of citizens who choose never to join the military. It's clear this President is more interested in appeasing sexual revolutionaries than in fighting America's enemies."

You aren't just seeing celebrations from homosexual groups, you are seeing celebrations from people who believe in equality and fight for equality.
And you're seeing celebrations from people who no longer have to serve in fear of being outed and discharged from the service simply for being gay.
Join us, won't you, Tony, in the 21st century, and quit harping on 236 years ago. 

Rick Santorum, asshat and presidential-ain't-gonna-happen, still whining about Google and frothy Mix:
"I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it. If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country. To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle but I suspect that's not true."

Hey Frothy?
Build a bridge and get over it.
The more you talk about this, the more people will Google you and see the Frothy Mix.
You're the one promoting this, so quit blaming everyone from Dan Savage to Google.
Oh, and STFU.

Timothy Dolan, New York Catholic Archbishop, asking Obama to rethink his position on DOMA:
"Mr. President, I respectfully urge you to push the reset button on your Administration’s approach to DOMA. Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizens, millions of whom have gone to the polls to directly support DOMAs in their states and have thereby endorsed marriage as the union of man and woman. Nor should a policy disagreement over the meaning of marriage be treated by federal officials as a federal offense—but this will happen if the Justice Department’s latest constitutional theory prevails in court. The Administration’s failure to change course on this matter will, as the attached analysis indicates, precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions."

Dear Timothy,
I respectfully urge you to rethink the church's position on protecting pedophiles.
I respectfully urge you to rethink your position on ALLEGEDLY hiding some $130 million in church funds in order to avoid paying out massive child molestation settlements.
I respectfully urge you to STFU until you can do so.

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

Matt Damon, on his kissing scenes with Michael Douglas in the upcoming Liberace movie:

"I never thought I would get to kiss Michael Douglas. I kind of think of it in algebra terms, back to my high-school days. It's like the transitive property - by kissing Michael Douglas, I am making out with Catherine. I was actually kind of upset that I never got to kiss Catherine. But now I get to kiss Michael. I thought it would have been better if I could have at least kissed them both."

I battle with this because the idea of kissing Michael Douglas or his granddaughter, CZJ, appals me.
Kissing Matt Damon on the other hand.....
Or, well, you knew I'd go there, %&^$ing Matt Damon.

Chris Hemsworth, on bulking up to play Thor:

"I got the part and immediately started looking at the comic books, and the guy is 500 pounds or something and looks like Schwarzenegger. And I thought, ‘OK, I’m not gonna get to that.’ But I have to get bigger...I came back before we started the movie and had a final camera test and I put the costume on and within a couple of minutes my hands started going numb...it doesn't fit."

Oh, Chris, you never, ever, have to go Schwarzenegger.
You're a couple of perfect handfuls just the way you are.

_____, trampling that Birther nonsense further into the ground: 

"Hey look, you have no doctors that remember. You have no nurses — this is the president of the United States! — that remember. That ad that was placed in the Houston paper — that was placed in the paper days after he was born. So he could have come into the country. You know what I get a kick out of? The governor of Hawaii says, 'Oh, I remember when Obama was born.' I doubt it! I think this guy should be investigated. He remembers when Obama was born? Give me a break! He’s just trying to do something for his party."

Hey Donald, you pandering fuckwad, um, remember, he wasn't the president on the day he was born; he was just another kid being born. In Hawaii. In America.
You'd think someone with all that money could hire some people to beat the stupid out of him.
And could get a good haircut, too.

Haley Barbour, on reinstating DADT if he's elected president--excuse me while I giggle at the idea that Haley Barbour thinks he has any chance of being president:

"Let's look at the best evidence that we have. They did research to see what military people thought about this idea. The closest to the ground, the soldier on the ground, was the most opposed to this. And it's not necessarily over homosexuality. Its over the fact that when you're under fire and people are living and dying of split-second decisions you don't need any kind of amorous mindset that can affect saving people's lives and killing bad guys. You look at the data and it is the foot-soldier that is the person who is out there, boots on the ground, who was most against this. And it's because they live or die with this and that's who we ought to be listening to, that's who we ought to be caring about and that's why I am against it. I think it ought to be rolled back. I just don't see how you can take any other position if the person you are trying to protect is the soldier who is actually in combat."

So, um, Haley, let me get this queer.
Two soldiers, one gay, one straight, are side-by-side in a gun battle with some enemy, and you think the straight guy is going to be upset that the gay guy might hit on him at that moment?
And you think a gay guy would think, 'Hmmm, let me set my rifle down and see if he wants to go for a cappuchino'?

Duff McKagen, ex-Guns N' Roses bassist, on the "road gay":

"You're away from your wife and whatever, and I don't fuck around – but there are no women on the bus. All of a sudden, well, your bass player's got long black hair, he's wearing his little sister's pants, and out of the corner of your eye he looks like a hot chick. We call it 'road gay'. We don't actually act on it…"

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Duff.
And while you might not 'act' on it, there is probably a line for that little toilet on the bus, with all the guys grabbing ointments and tissues and spending a few minutes to long in there thinking about that rocker's ass.
Spanking little duff, you know.

Victoria Jackson, on homosexuality:

"Driving to the Atlanta airport, I thought about G, my lifelong college friend from Auburn. He drove with me cross country in my 1980 beat-up Toyota Starlet when I went to Hollywood to be an actress. He was the only person who believed in me. He knows all of my sins. I know a few of his. I always tell him I don't believe he is 'gay' – we went on a date once and even kissed. We wrote a screenplay together. He loves drama. I can picture him now laughing, 'Victoria, what are you doing?! Your career! You'll never work again in Hollywood! Oh, but Hollywood loves a scandal!' And, then the twinkle in his eye. I can see my best friend A, who I also tell is not 'gay,' saying in his British accent, 'Victoria, my shiny, shiny friend! I still love you!' and then the big hug!"

Oh, Victoria, a gay guy kissed you so he's not gay? Honey, he kissed you because he thought you were such a fruit loop that you'd never get kissed. It's the Pity Kiss From The Gay BFF.
And, as for your career, all you ever did was stand on your head and read moronic poems, or play the dumb bimbo, and.....oh, yeah, you're still doing that.
Quite a 'career'.

Victoria Jackson, on gay roles in Hollywood:

"Actors play murderers, robbers and gossips, but the gay lifestyle is always glorified. The other sins always seem to be punished or redeemed, but TV shows never show the downside to homosexuality: the loneliness, shame, broken families and marriages, diseases. The shame does not come from 'society' but from God. So, even if the gays get everyone in the world to accept their behavior as "normal," there will still be shame, because it goes against God. Unless sin numbs their soul and their heart turns to stone, they will hear the still, small voice of God saying, 'I have a better way.' I was asked to do a lesbian kiss in a show once, and I said no. But, I'm guilty of being part of a few movies that may have been a bad influence on young people. I'm very sorry to anyone I led away from God."

The gay lifestyle glorified?
What movies are you watching? Brokeback Mountain glorified the 'gay lifestyle'? One guy ended up alone and in the closet and the other ended up dead.
And for you to compare gay characters to murderers and robbers, as though they are the same, is just further evidence of your ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, stupidity, and utter lack of Christ-like behavior.
You're over, Victoria. Way over.

Mama Grizzly Bore™, on Bill Maher calling her a dumb twat:

"I'm through whining about a liberal press that holds particularly conservative women to a different standard, because it doesn't do any good to whine about it. Nobody ever promised life was going to be fair. And politics really isn't fair, the scrutiny, the double standards, and all that. I'm dealing with it I guess in a different way than others who want to bring more light to it and demand that Bill Maher apologize."

Oh, poor Sarah.
She can bash anyone she wants and all's fair, but anyone bashes her and it's poor me.
Narcissistic victim.
I cannot wait until she bombs big time in 2012. Maybe she'll go away for good.
Dumb twat. 

Leonard Pitts, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, on the increased support for marriage equality:

"We are gathered here today to look a gift horse in the mouth. It seems a majority of the American people now favor allowing gay men and lesbians to wed. That majority, according to a Washington Post survey released last week, is slender, just 51 percent. But even at that, it represents a significant increase from just five years ago, when only 36 percent of Americans approved....But lurking at the edge of celebration there is, for me, at least, a nagging, impatient vexation. That vexation is based in what is arguably an esoteric question: In extolling the fact that the majority now approves same-sex marriage, do we not also tacitly accept the notion that the majority has the right to judge?....That’s the pebble in the shoe, the popcorn hull between the teeth, that nags at the conscience when one reads polls tracking how many of us approve of other people’s lives and decisions. It’s all well and good that 51 percent of us support the right of gay men and lesbians to tell it to the judge, but really, what hubris makes us think we have a right to say yea or nay in the first place?"

Well said.
We bitch and moan about the majority denying us the rights to marry, a la California and Prop H8, but then we also celebrate when the majority view shifts to something more favorable about us.
The majority shouldn't decide equality, whether for it or against it.
Equality should just be.

Trent Franks, Republican wingnut from Arizona, on Barack Obama:

"For the first time in my life, when Barack Obama became elected, for the first time in my life, I am actually afraid that America may diminish to a point where it's just unrecognizable. Not just on the economic front, but where he puts people on the Supreme Court that have no fealty or loyalty to the Constitution and weakening our country to the extent that we may see nuclear terrorism, not in our childrens' generation, but in ours, in the near future. And any one of those could destabilize our country to the extent that it would not be the great beacon of freedom for the planet."

America won't be diminished, Trent.
It just won't be the America you want, where the rich get richer and the poor, and the middle class, get pushed aside, where big business is in government, where one religion towers over the rest.
That America, the one that you tout, will never come to be.

Ed Kennedy, at AfterElton, on the Chris Brown and GMA incident:

"Let me get this straight: Adam Lambert snogs a dude on the American Music Awards, and spends months banned from ABC shows like Good Morning America and The View. Chris Brown breaks a window and storms out of Good Morning America when he’s asked about his felony assault of Rihanna, and he’s still welcome to perform on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. So male-male kissing is worse than violence. Thanks for clearing that up ABC."

Does seem to be a double standard, doesn't it.

Leonard Pitts Column

I love a Leonard Pitts POV; especially this one from the Miami Herald:

Dear Sarah: Say it is so, run for president
By Leonard Pitts

Dear Sarah Palin:
I hear you're pondering a run for the White House in 2012. Last week, you told Fox news it would be 'absurd' to rule it out.

I'm writing to ask that you rule it in. I very badly want you to run for--and win--the Republican nomination for the presidency.

I know you're waiting for the punch line. Maybe you figure I think you'd be a weak candidate who would pave the way for President Obama's easy re-election.

That's not it. No, I want you to run because I believe a Palin candidacy would force upon this country a desperately needed moment of truth. It would require us to finally decide what kind of America we want to be.

Mrs. Palin, you are an avatar of the shameless hypocrisy and cognitive disconnection that have driven our politics for the last decade, a process of stupidification creeping like kudzu over our national life.

As Exhibit A, consider your recent speech at a so-called ``tea party'' event, wherein you dismissed the president as a ``charismatic guy with a teleprompter.'' Bad enough you imply that teleprompter use is the mark of an insubstantial man, even though you and every other major politician uses them. But what made the comment truly jaw-dropping is that even as you spoke, you had penned on your left palm, clearly visible, a series of crib notes.

Mrs. Palin, if Obama is an idiot for reading a prepared speech off a teleprompter, what are you for reading notes you've inked on your hand like a school kid who failed to study for the big test?

In the Fox interview, you scored Obama for supposedly expecting Americans to 'sit down and shut up' and accept his policies. But when asked when the president has ever said that, you couldn't answer. Obama, you sputtered, has just been condescending with his 'general persona.'

I found that a telling moment. See, ultimately what you represent is not conservatism. Heck, I suspect that somewhere, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan are spinning like helicopter rotors at the very idea.

No, you represent the latest iteration of an anti-intellectualism that periodically rises in the American character. There is, historically and persistently, a belief in us that y'all just can't trust nobody who acts too smart or talks too good--in other words, somebody whose 'general persona' indicates they may have once cracked a book or had a thought. Americans tend to believe common sense the exclusive province of humble folks without sheepskins on the wall or big words in their vocabularies.

I don't mock those people. They are my parents, my family elders, members of my childhood church. I honor their native good sense, what mom called 'mother wit.' But if it is insulting to condescend to them, it is equally insulting to mythologize them.

More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity like yours under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, intelligence, makes a person one of those 'elites'--that's a curse word now--lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense.

So no, this is not a clash of ideologies, but a clash between intelligence and its opposite. And I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue. That's why I'd welcome the moment of truth your campaign would bring. It would force us to decide once and for all whether we are permanently committed to the path of ignorance, of birthers, truthers and tea party incoherence you represent, or whether we will at last turn back from the cliff toward which we race.

If the latter, wonderful, God bless America. If the former, well, some of us can finally quit hoping the nation will return to its senses and plan accordingly. Either way, we need to know, and your candidacy would tell us. If you love this country, Mrs. Palin, you can do it no greater service.

Run, Sarah, run.

We Need A History Lesson About Nazis -- Leonard Pitts

by Leonard Pitts

I hope this column makes you sick.

See, we'll be talking about Nazis, something many of us are doing lately. Indeed, just this week a fellow named Joseph e-mailed me about a caller he heard on a radio show. The man, vexed over healthcare reform, likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Asked why, he said, "Hitler took over the car companies, then healthcare and then he killed the Jews.''

Said Joseph: "I almost swerved my vehicle off the road when I heard that.''

But the caller is hardly unique. Google "Obama + Nazis'' and you get almost seven million hits. Nor is the phenomenon new. Substitute President Bush's name and you get nearly 2.8 million.

An invasion of sorts

Even granting that many of those hits are benign, it seems obvious the Nazis have invaded American political rhetoric in a big way. As in Rush Limbaugh declaring healthcare reform "a Hitler-like policy,'' swastikas popping up at protest rallies, a poster depicting Obama with Hitler's moustache and a pamphlet that says: "Act Now To Stop Obama's Nazi Health Plan!

It's important to remember that the Nazis are passing out of living memory; U.S. soldiers of that era are said to be dying at the rate of 1,200 a day. Which makes it too easy, I think, for a nation of notorious historical illiteracy to remake the Nazis as some kind of all-purpose boogeymen for slandering political enemies and scoring cheap rhetorical points.

So I thought it would be good to make you sick, i.e., to spend a few minutes reminding some and teaching others what you invoke when you invoke the Nazi regime.

For the record, then: It was Nazis who shoved sand down a boy's throat until he died, who tossed candies to Jewish children as they sank to their deaths in a sand pit, who threw babies from a hospital window and competed to see how many of those "little Jews'' could be caught on a bayonet, who injected a cement-like fluid into women's uteruses to see what would happen, who stomped a pregnant woman to death, who once snatched a woman's baby from her arms and, in the words of an eyewitness, "tore him as one would tear a rag.''

Ideology over reason

That's who the Nazis were, ladies and gentlemen -- those obscenities plus six million more. They were the triumph of ideology over reason and even over humanity, the demonization of racial, religious and political difference, the objectification of the vulnerable other. And the authors of a mass murder that staggers imagination, still.

You would think, then, that where they are invoked to draw a parallel or make a point, it would be done with a respect for the incalculable evil the Nazis represent. You would think people would tread carefully, not because of the potential insult to a given politician (they are big boys and girls) but because to do otherwise profanes the profound and renders trivial that which ought to be held sacred by anyone who regards himself as a truly human being.

But in modern America, unfortunately, rhetoric often starts over the top and goes up from there. So fine, George W. Bush is "a smirking chimp.'' Fine, Barack Obama is "a Chicago thug.'' We have a Constitution, after all, and it says we can say whatever we want. It doesn't say it has to be intelligent.

Historical amnesia

And yes, you are even protected if you liken Obama or Bush to Hitler. Yet every time I hear that, it makes me cringe for what it says about our collective propensity for historical amnesia and our retarded capacity for reverence. Once upon a lifetime ago, six million people with DNA, names and faces just like you and I, were butchered with gleeful sadism and mechanistic dispatch. Six million people.

You and I may no longer respect one another, but is it asking too much that we still respect them?