Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Tag: Politics Page 1 of 5

Voting, Peep Shows and Glory Holes

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On November 8, 2022

In Politics

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.

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Methotrexate Patients and Post-Dobbs Fear

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On July 5, 2022

In Complaints

Apologies for the conversational detour here—new film or TV content is coming later this week. There is something I need to rant about, and this is as good a place as any to do it.

For the second time in two years, Republican lunacy is scaring autoimmune disease patients. You might recall the great hydroxychloroquine stupidity of 2020, a craze eventually replaced by mass consumption of ivermectin. What we have now is a little different: Confusion over the continued availability of methotrexate.

In the case of Plaquenil, some patients really did face shortages. I was fortunate: my supply never ran out, even as idiots like my uncle (physically healthy, mentally not so much) attempted to order a side of hydroxychloroquine with their MyPillows. My methotrexate refill isn’t due for another month, and hopefully there are no disruptions. I’ll provide an update once my prescription’s in hand.

It will be weeks before my next rheumatology appointment, and who knows what anecdata the office will have to share by then. My first opportunity to speak with a prescriber came today, at a routine GI appointment. To the best of my doctor’s knowledge, none of his patients have yet encountered difficulties obtaining methotrexate. He has seen some of the same “the end is nigh” tweets as me, and we both felt there was something incomplete about at least a couple of those stories.

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Betty Buckley Insults John Cornyn on Twitter

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On October 17, 2020

In Twitter

You never quite know what you’ll find when you glance at Twitter, whether it’s Elayne Boosler referring to SCOTUS as SCROTUS or octogenarian Ruth Buzzi repeatedly dining indoors at restaurants during a pandemic. There’s also Bebe Neuwirth’s frequent sharing of cat videos and George Wallace’s jokes about gonorrhea parades to entertain you.

Something I didn’t expect to encounter on a lazy Saturday afternoon was the legendary Betty Buckley, she of Carrie gym teacher, Eight Is Enough, and Tony Award-winning fame, attacking Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). In response to Cornyn’s tweet that “A 104-seat U.S. Senate is on the agenda if Democrats sweep the election,” the 73-year-old Buckley replied “You better fuckin’ believe it, you demented throw back!!”

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Inside Rielle Hunter’s Illicit Love Affair with Salad

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On August 25, 2014

In Books

Ahem: “John Edwards, Salad, and Me.”

If you were unfortunate enough to read Rielle Hunter’s What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me (I didn’t have much choice; some things in life are beyond our control), the first thing you probably noticed is that she’s an absolute idiot. The second is that she loves salad.

With each new chapter of this slender — but not slender enough — volume, it seems she’s traveling to yet another dreary hotel for an assignation with Edwards. (She calls him “Johnny” almost as relentlessly as she eats salad, for “Johnny” is what’s on his birth certificate and thus most representative of his true self. If you search the Kindle edition of her book for “Johnny,” the device will pant and wheeze before the results exceed 500 and it stops counting.) He is so busy with campaign commitments and marital spats that a bored Hunter has no choice but to console herself with salad. Lots of salad.

Let’s stroll with her down a lettuce-strewn memory lane, shall we, and revisit these tender scenes from her past.

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About the Whole Jane Addams Lesbian Thing

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On January 21, 2009

In BFFs

As Michael Abernethy notes when mentioning Addams’ recent induction into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame: “That Addams was a lesbian is a matter of speculation, as Addams wasn’t gracious enough to leave an entry in her diaries that said ‘I’m a big ole lesbian.'” Still, I can’t believe that in the year 2009 grown men and women continue to debate whether she was gay.

Let me tell you a story about Jane Addams. When I was in fifth grade my history class learned about child labor legislation, settlement houses, female involvement in social and political activism, and all of that. Jane Addams was a big part of the unit. At the time I was an oblivious kid who’d yet to pick up on the fact that my aunt and her female roommate were more than roommates, but after reading a few paragraphs about Addams my gaydar started going off like Fannie Flagg — Match Game era Flagg, the gayest of them all — had entered the room.

The people who think Addams wasn’t gay, the ones who can somehow keep a straight face while trying to sell us that “romantic friendship” line, they’ll say that a ping (or twelve) on the gaydar is meaningless. Sometimes they’d even be right. But aren’t they also being kind of deliberately obtuse? The fifth-grade teacher who taught me about Jane Addams was a mild-mannered man in his mid-thirties who had never been married to a woman, professed not to have a girlfriend, but wore a wedding band anyway. He shared a house with, and routinely traveled with, his long-term male roommate.

What would the historians who are reluctant to concede that Addams was likely gay (after all, they’ve never seen Paris Hilton-style video footage of her having sex with Mary Rozet Smith) make of my teacher and his “roommate,” a man who was still in the picture years later when a friend’s sibling took the same class and had the same teacher? Would they try to act like the two men were just very close pals, or would they do a collective spit-take and shout “Bitch, please!” if asked to believe they weren’t a couple? I’m not a historian myself, but you can mark me down in the “Bitch, please!” camp when it comes to both Addams and my teacher.

Reminder: Don’t Be Gay in Senegal

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On January 9, 2009

In In the News

Engaging in homosexual acts in Senegal can get you eight years in the hoosegow. Which brings us to two questions that I’ll now pose in no particular order: Why does the word “hoosegow” only appear on approximately 71,100 web pages (per Google, and if you remove the quotes the number is an only slightly more respectable 77,000)? “Hoosegow” deserves more love than that.

And what constitutes a homosexual act? If you’re a guy in Senegal and you attempt to watch Funny Girl, is that enough to land you in the joint? (Watching Funny Lady would naturally carry a lengthier sentence.) Or what if a gay guy ties his shoes, is that a gay act? I was gay this morning when I made the bed and fed the cat. I was gay a few minutes ago when I signed for a UPS package. How many years in a Senegalese prison is that good for?

And another reminder: Stay away from Nigeria and Gambia while you’re at it. From the New York Times:

Antigay sentiment has been on the rise across Africa in recent years. Nigeria’s Parliament tried to pass a law last year that would restrict the rights of homosexuals to even meet to discuss their rights. Gambia’s president threatened to behead any homosexuals found in his country. And even in Senegal, one of the most liberal and tolerant countries in Islamic Africa, tensions over homosexuality have been on the rise.

Makes our homophobic Republican politicians seem Kathy Griffin league gay-friendly in comparison, doesn’t it? At least they’ll sit down and chat with known homosexuals without decapitating them or having them arrested.

The Strange Hair of Rod Blagojevich

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On December 10, 2008

In Politics

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.

Larry Kramer on Proposition 8

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On November 23, 2008

In Uncategorized

From Maureen Dowd’s Sunday column about gay marriage (and Harvey Milk):

I e-mailed Larry Kramer, the leading activist for gay rights in the era that followed Milk’s, to get his read on Prop 8. (In 1983, I interviewed Kramer about the new scourge of AIDS, and he read me a list from a green notebook of 37 friends who had died. )

“DON’T WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS?” he e-mailed back, blessedly cantankerous. “I AM ASHAMED OF YOU THAT YOU HAD TO ASK ME THAT QUESTION.”

That’s a very good response.

Candace Gingrich Calls Out “Hater” Brother Newt

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On November 23, 2008

In Uncategorized

Being a jerk myself (just ask anyone who knows me!), I’d have preferred something nastier — maybe a dig at Newt’s three marriages, two divorces, history of infidelity, or the way he treated his first wife when she was battling uterine cancer — but she sums things up nicely at the end when she writes:

What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That’s really so ’90s, Newt. In this day and age, it’s embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.

Then again, I’m pretty sure that any “new political climate in America” that has room for Michele “Krazee-Eyez Killa” Bachmann can accommodate Newt Gingrich and his enormous head (and even bigger ego) as well.

What Would Kit Bond Say?

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On November 14, 2008

In Uncategorized

Remember how Senator Bond, Kit Bond, tried to rile up a crowd at a Sarah Palin rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri last month by telling them that Barack Obama, if elected president, would threaten the very (starchy white, with a pointed hood) fabric of our democracy by possibly appointing judges who don’t hate “the teenage mom, the minority, the gay, the disabled.” That was fun, wasn’t it?

You know what else is fun? Joining outraged citizens across the country in protesting the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which people will be doing tomorrow. In Cape Girardeau.

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