Mink Stole saw something nasty in the woodshed voting both in Pecker.
Many years ago, when this blog and I were young and didn’t have to slather ourselves in retinol cream every night to look less like our grandmother, I wrote a lot about politics—enough that a gay magazine offered me a spot as a political columnist. One of the many reasons I fervently wanted Obama to win was so that I could, at least temporarily, think less about politics. I did a one-off piece about the 2008 presidential election and left it at that.
This morning I walked through piles of leaves to my polling station and thought, as I always do on election days, of the dark and miserable morning of my first-ever presidential election as a voter. It was 2004 and the wind whipped at my face and numbed my hands as I stood outside for 90 minutes, hoping to vanquish an illegitimate incumbent prone to using my sexuality (at the behest of a vile and shameless gay traitor) as a wedge issue to increase Republican voter turnout. When George W. Bush was reelected, I wasn’t sure how I’d make it through the next four years.
To be gay, to be a woman, to be a non-Christian in America, is always fraught with a danger made more insidious by its relative invisibility. You accept this as a fact of life if you belong to any of those or other minority groups and possess even the slightest self-preservation instinct. These days I live in a liberal enclave, surrounded by elite academics with earnest yard signs assuring passersby that they believe in science and civility; signs testifying to their conviction that racism is wrong. In casual conversation, they reveal gaping blind spots: “Trump doesn’t really believe what he says,” was a common refrain, right up to the day of the insurrection.
Will Rod Blagojevich overact in court as much as Treat Williams did in this movie?
Disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s hair has been troubling me for years now, but I’ve never had a reason to post about it — until today, when his corruption became a national news story. As a St. Louisan, I’ve seen Blagojevich on the local news almost nightly for many years now (once they’ve covered all the day’s shootings in St. Louis and shown a few mugshots of the latest meth addicts to be busted for violently robbing old people or beating their kids to death, all that’s really left to talk about are massive lay-offs, the Rams sucking, and the latest political intrigue in Illinois), and the only thing about him that is more eyebrow-raising than his shadiness has always been that huge helmet hair of his.
The man’s style icon — not just when it comes to his ridiculous hair, but often in matters of casual dress as well — is Treat Williams circa Prince of the City. Think about that for a second. The governor of Illinois was modeling his image on a corrupt cop (albeit one who later turned informant) from a movie that came out in 1981 and was set in the ’70s. Rod Blagojevich’s hair told the story of his downfall, in a sense. Things were never going to end well for him; his destiny always involved being led off in handcuffs and having that awful coif mussed by a gruff FBI agent as he was pushed into the back of a dark sedan.
Wendy and Lisa ought to bitch slap this crazy-ass mofo right off his platform heels. Truly, it cannot be just any old bitch slap. It has to be a zinger. Because now that the artist formerly known as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince,” that once nameless paragon of, uh, robust heterosexuality, has found religion (I understand it had been hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, where you’d normally find a small plastic horse), he is turning his back on his gay fans.
That’s right, he has forsaken us to climb into bed with the businessman and hatemonger Philip Anschutz (in a non-sexual kind of way, one would guess, since the only hard-on Anschutz has for homosexuals has to do with oppressing us — but who knows, maybe they’re into a bondage scene together!), and recently told The New Yorker‘s Claire Hoffman that Democrats are making a mistake by supporting gay marriage.*
With a Huffington Post blog entry on Saturday, writer and actor Evan Handler has joined the growing list of celebrities registering their disgust with Californians who voted yes on Proposition 8 on Tuesday. I’m not going to quote anything from it, because you should click the link and read it in its entirety, but I especially liked his response to his Sex and the City boss Michael Patrick King’s ludicrous suggestion that a performance art protest is in order.
It shows that Handler understands what we’re up against, and it’s a nice companion piece to this angry Harvey Fierstein essay, also posted at HuffPost, that reads in part: “While we dance in the streets and pat ourselves on the back for being a nation great enough to reach beyond racial divides to elect our first African-American president let us not forget that we remain a nation still proudly practicing prejudice.”
The Associated Press has also put together an article about celebrity reaction to the passage of Prop 8 that includes comments from Sean Penn, Melissa Etheridge, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Christina Aguilera, and Samantha Ronson. At the time of this posting, more than 500 people who read the piece on MSNBC’s website had inexplicably given it an average rating of 2.5 out of 5 stars. One of the highest-rated stories on the website, earning 4 stars out of 5, was called “Bullies may get kick out of seeing others in pain.”
Another night of no middle-class mentions from John McCain, and “maverick” was finally off the table. As promised, my thoughts on last night’s debate, roughly as it happened:
Oy vey with Joe the Plumber! Is he fucking John McCain or something? Is he related to Joe Six-pack? (He can’t be related to Joe Lieberman, or McCain would’ve mentioned it.) If only there was a fourth debate, John McCain could’ve told us a story about another old buddy of his, Joe Mama. (BTW, Joe the Plumber’s a real prize.)
Barack Obama says “profligate.” I love the word “profligate.”
John McCain is not George Bush … he just votes with him most of the time.
“You overcook it, it’s no good. It defeats its own purpose.”
Now that the third and final presidential debate is over, can we address the “knockout” issue?
The people who write about political debates and talk about them on TV after the fact love to bring up knockout punches. It’s a subject they’re so fond of that if you Google the words “debate” and “knockout punch” together, you get something like thirty billion results. You get more results for the words “debate” and “knockout punch” than you do for “Britney Spears” and “naked.”*
They didn’t think one was landed in the vice-presidential debate; they didn’t think any were landed in the first two debates between John McCain and Barack Obama; they don’t think any were landed tonight. Here’s the thing the pundits have been reluctant to admit, on the right because they’re hopelessly stupid and on the left because they’ve been afraid to jinx themselves: John McCain knocked himself out in August when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.
John McCain knocked himself out again on September 15 when he said “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” So far he has spent the month of October knocking himself out on a daily basis with his schizophrenic smear ads and the way he has allowed his rallies to turn ugly and vicious. What is left of John McCain at this point for Barack Obama to punch?
My meager thoughts on the substance of the debate are coming sometime tomorrow, but in the meantime I had to vent my “knockout” frustration somewhere.
*That was a lie. Sorry, I thought I was John McCain for a minute. If you Google “debate” + “knockout punch,” there are currently just under 47,000 results. “Britney Spears” + “naked” gets 8,400,000. Remove the quotes from the naked word and you’ll get another million results.
Today’s Boston Globe has an article about foreigners seeking asylum in the United States to escape homophobia, and it’s impossible to read Brazilian Genesio Oliveira’s story without getting angry. Laws in this country need to be changed so that gays and lesbians can sponsor their spouses for legal U.S. residency the same as heterosexuals. That this wasn’t done years ago (and probably won’t happen anytime soon) is shameful. And for asylum-seekers without American partners, the issue here is the same as in Canada — how do you prove you’re gay, and how do you prove your life is in danger if you’re sent back home? From the article:
Offering a haven for gays and lesbians is an emerging field of law in the United States and around the world, lawyers and advocates say, awakening foreigners to the option to live in the United States that was previously unknown. But the practice is raising concerns, as critics cite the potential for fraud and advocates worry that possible homophobia or lack of international experience might lead some judges and government officials to send foreigners back to dangerous lands.
In a 2003 case, an immigration judge in California denied asylum to a Mexican national, saying it wasn’t obvious the man was gay. The man appealed and won asylum last year.
There is fraud all over the place when it comes to immigration. People are still allowed to immigrate. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Bill Wright, the government doesn’t keep statistics on how many gays and lesbians are granted asylum. So far, no one has suggested that there’s an epidemic of scheming heterosexuals masquerading as frightened gays and lesbians in search of U.S. residency.
So why do I have a sinking feeling that this is something Fox News numskulls will eventually blow way out of proportion, claiming that it somehow damages America? They need a new “War on Christmas”-esque stunt, and seeing as they love to scream about both homosexuality and immigration, this could prove as tantalizing as a loofah or falafel to Bill O’Reilly.
One thing to be relieved about: No one in the article was quoted as saying anything as stupid as Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, who believes that gays are safe in Iran. (Never mind that by her own admission, gays don’t feel safe enough in Britain to report hate crimes to the police.) On the other hand, I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of the Jacqui Smith response as gay asylum becomes a bigger issue in the United States.
My parents’ yard sign was stolen, much like the 2000 election.
Note: If the time line seems screwy, it’s because this post was originally written on Saturday night.
Last night my dad did something he’d never done before in his life: He put up a political yard sign. He’s approximately one trillion years old (or maybe he’s closing in on 50 — it’s easy to lose track), so it’s something he avoided for a long time. The whole time I was growing up, in fact, I remember him rejecting the very idea of yard signs.
He’d see them pop up around the neighborhood as elections approached and he’d get that ‘blah, blah, blah, boring dad stuff’ tone of voice that would make me close my eyes and think of things I liked, like Beach Boys songs or Edina drunkenly falling out of a car on Absolutely Fabulous. Faintly he’d drone on in the background, pointing out miserable truths like “a campaign only lasts a few months, but you’ll be living next door to your neighbors for a long time after that.” Best not to ruffle feathers, then, over something as deeply personal as politics.
What was different about this election that he felt compelled to stake a sign in his lawn? I think what finally did it for him, what made him feel he had to take a stand, was the wave of disgusting rallies John McCain and Sarah Palin held this week. The tenor of those meetings turned his stomach, and to step outside his own house each day and see McCain-Palin signs in his neighbors’ yards only added to his outrage. My mom, who’d normally do anything to avoid attracting attention, agreed: they needed a sign of their own.
And so they got one. In my official capacity as the family’s paranoid cynic, I predicted it would be stolen within 24 hours. “Attach a personal alarm to it, something the thief won’t see, so it scares the hell out of him when he tries to steal it,” I advised. They seemed to think I was overreacting. But I know what kind of people their neighbors are, and they’re not as friendly as they try to appear. I also know what kind of kids their neighbors raised. (Beasts, almost all of them. Racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic little brats who thought nothing of reheating whatever Rush Limbaugh rhetoric their parents regurgitated at dinner each night and making the rest of us inhale its putrid fumes on the school bus and in the cafeteria the next day. These were kids who’d earnestly declare between bites of tater tots that Jews are “God’s chosen people,” then solemnly inform me that I’d be damned to the fiery pits of hell if I didn’t hop aboard the Jesus train.) There was no way that sign was lasting longer than 24 hours.
So … 24 hours later, the sign is gone. Someone waited until it was dark outside, trespassed onto my parents’ lawn and stole their $8 political statement, which had been the only Obama-Biden sign on their street. (It would’ve been stolen even sooner, I think, had it gone up before nightfall yesterday.)
There’s a problem with this, beyond the obvious issues of laws being broken and rights being violated. Two problems, actually. The first is that my dad is stubborn. Really stubborn. Incredibly, impossibly stubborn. If you think that I’m a stubborn jerk — and just about everyone who knows me will tell you I’m a big one — multiply that by ten and you have the beginnings of a composite sketch of my father.
The second problem is a much bigger problem, at least for the area thief. You see, my dad owns a print shop. Not one of those rinky-dink operations college kids use to make copies of black and white flyers, but a serious, professional print shop. One that’s filled with all kinds of high-end equipment he can use to print anything he wants, from books and business cards and brochures to posters and signs (including, yes, yard signs) and large outdoor banners. If he tires of paying for something that keeps getting stolen, he might be tempted to take matters into his own hands and turn his entire yard into an Obama sign of his own creation. Stealing someone’s entire yard would be pretty hard, don’t you think? You can’t exactly swipe it when no one’s looking and disappear into the night.
Not that I’d advocate doing anything that flamboyant. (Hell, I’d never get a yard sign of my own to start with. I don’t want my neighbors to know anything about me. My desire for privacy is such that I regularly put on a Reagan mask or Groucho Marx glasses and nose just to get the mail.) My suggestion was to put up a new sign that says “Stealing My Sign Won’t Change My Vote.” Too confrontational for my parents, but it’s also beside the point: They won’t settle for anything less than “Obama-Biden ’08” in their yard, and have already put up a second sign. How long until this one disappears?
March, 2024 updates (yes, I’m updating an update’s updates) below.
Leggings, sash, a pince-nez… Could Mayor McCheese be any gayer?
03/18/24: A new review is coming tomorrow, with Patty Duke in a role that didn’t require crash dieting or child-beating. Apologies for not sharing an update here sooner; time got away from me a bit. The good news is that I wasn’t incarcerated or involuntarily committed, but the bad news is that Nancy McKeon’s Firefighter was next on the agenda and I’ve run into a problem — the print currently on Tubi has some sort of copyright protection that prevents screenshot captures.
My commitment to these retrospectives is such that I even tried my luck with a manufactured-on-demand DVD copy of the film. That, too, is locked down like Fort Knox. While I understand that piracy is a problem and agree that studios have to protect their investments, I question the wisdom of guarding a forgotten TV movie from 1986 more fiercely than popular new releases.
This leaves me with a couple options, should I proceed with the review: I can commission Crankenstein to doodle McKeon fighting fires or I can attempt to take photos of my screen. If I go the latter route it’ll probably be the gayest thing I’ve ever done, and I say that as both a woman with a wife and as someone who recently paged through Eve Arden and Arlene Dahl paper doll booklets.
