Newsflash from the Department of "Duh…"

I know this news will shock you — if you’ve been living on Neptune for the last decade:

Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.

Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.

“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.”

Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that President Bush “was no homophobe.” He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called “the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now.”

Even after working for George W. Bush, Ken Mehlman has still never heard of John Hagee, Louie Gohmert, Sarah Palin’s pastor, and the rest of the closet cases in this country who seem to think that they should decide whom others get to love.

Ken Mehlman, go fuck yourself.

Mr. Kirk, your pants are on fire

His military record appears to not be the only thing about which Mark Kirk is lying.

(Oh spare me your “hearsay” nonsense. This is what Mike Rogers does. And he has not been wrong yet.)

Wednesday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: Cover your keyboard with plastic sheeting and duct tape before reading edition

The other day I was reading this post at Jezebel about so-called “purity balls” and one of the fathers in the piece set of loud alarms and screeching sirens in my own personal gaydar. (If you go over there, you’ll see the one I’m talking about.) If I do say so myself, I have pretty good gaydar for a straight person. I’m not about outing, though, mostly because there are people who are so much better at it (and far more influential) than I am. But then there are those who transcend sexual orientation, who manage to get the point across without ever using the word “closet.”

I bring you, Gen. J.C. Christian, Patriot.

The first time someone gay is killed by the state in Uganda, these Christofascists will have blood on their hands

There just are no words:

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

[snip]

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Bullshit. Laughable bullshit. Scott Lively has a peculiar obsession with manly men. In this screed (h/t), he gives us a peek into what clearly makes him all sweaty and tingly:

Where is the masculine Jesus of the Bible in the life of today’s church? The Jesus who threw down the tables of the moneychangers and drove them out of the temple with a whip? The Jesus who faced down and tamed the Gerasene demoniac? The Jesus who, to their faces, excoriated the cultural and political leaders of the day as a “brood of vipers ” and “whitewashed sepulchers full of dead men ‘ s bones?” This masculine Jesus has been ejected from the American church. In His place is a false and emasculated Christ, as submissive and fearful of controversy as the men who now lead His flock.

Mmmmmmm…..Jesus with a whip. But it gets worse:

The church and this nation cry out for a revival of masculine Christianity, which is to say that we church leaders need to stop being such, for lack of a better word, sissies when it comes to social and political issues. We need to spend as much time confronting perpetrators as we do comforting victims. We need to do less fretting and more fighting for righteousness. For every motherly, feminine ministry of the church such as a Crisis Pregnancy Center or ex-gay support group, we need a battle-hardened, take-it-to-the-enemy masculine ministry like Operation Rescue (questions of civil disobedience aside). For every God-hating radical in government, academia and media we need a bold, no-nonsense, truth-telling Christian counterpart: trained, equipped and endorsed by the local church.

Yes, friends, misogyny and closetry in one hiding-behind-a-cardboard-cutout-o’Jesus package.

Now let’s look at Caleb Lee Brundidge, shall we? Brundidge is on the staff of Richard Cohen’s so-called “International Healing Foundation.” Remember Richard Cohen? He’s this guy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Brundidge is the “staffer” mentioned and pictured in Rachel’s introduction.

Ted Cox of Box Turtle Bulletin went undercover in Cohen’s organization and spent some time with Brundidge, who also claims to be able to raise the dead.

As for Don Schmierer, Tim Kincaid outlines BTB’s attempts to let Schmierer know exactly what he was getting into in Uganda, which makes his protestations that he had no idea what he was being used for more than a little bit disingenuous.

I’m getting sick and tired of watching a bunch of closet cases hide behind the Giant Phallus of Jesus as they spread hate and death around while talking about love and redemption. These people are trying to deal with their own issues about their own sexuality by using the language of therapy in conjunction with a love-based Christianity they DO NOT PRACTICE in an attempt to remove all temptation that might cause them to have to examine their true selves. All this twisting themselves into pretzels may now have real world consequences for real people. And when it does, Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge, Don Schmierer, and the hypocrites of “The Family” will have the blood of these real people on their hands. They don’t care, though, because in their view of Christianity, a Jewish guy was nailed to a cross over 2000 years ago so they could get a free pass and do whatever they damn please with no consequences.

Preserving the sanctity of "opposite marriage"

The guy who does my hair has been with his partner for over 30 years. They not only live together, but they also work together. I’ve been fortunate to watching these guys take care of each other since 1986, and that’s just a fraction of the time they’ve been together.

If these guys are a threat to traditional marriage, it’s only because a good portion of their clientele has become widowed during the decades they’ve been going to this salon. Of course their median customer age hovers around 78 at this point and one customer was widowed at the young age of 91 (and she’s still coming to the salon every week at 94), but I’m sure there’s a wingnut somewhere who would say, “See? They ARE a threat!”

Meanwhile, one of wingnuttia’s foremost advocates of the sanctity of “opposite marriage”, as that champion of monogamy, Carrie Prejean would say, has just ditched his SECOND wife, according to “family spokesperson” Dana Perino.

First of all, who the hell in private life has a “family spokesperson”? And what a comedown for Dana Perino, unless she’s already the third Mrs. Rove by injection, which is kind of difficult to imagine, given the rumors that surrounded Mr. Rove and the ferocious attempts to keep secret prostitute/fake reporter’s hundreds of visits to the White House during the Rove years.

At any rate, I eagerly await the explanation of how getting a quickie Texas divorce when you “plan to spend time together in the future” is consistent with the sanctity of one man, one woman marriage.

Shorter David Brooks

The military brass are worried that Barack Obama may not throw American kids into a meatgrinder indefinitely, the way that codpiece guy who made a thrill go up their leg did.

Can Barack Obama stick to a failed policy come hell or high water? That’s what they want to know:

They are not worried about his policy choices. Their concerns are more fundamental. They are worried about his determination.

These people, who follow the war for a living, who spend their days in military circles both here and in Afghanistan, have no idea if President Obama is committed to this effort. They have no idea if he is willing to stick by his decisions, explain the war to the American people and persevere through good times and bad.

Their first concerns are about Obama the man. They know he is intellectually sophisticated. They know he is capable of processing complicated arguments and weighing nuanced evidence.

But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.

There’s tenacity, and then there’s “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Clearly the military thinks that you should just keep digging indefinitely, until you hit a gas line and it blows you up.

We’ve been in Afghanistan eight years. Yes, a good chunk of that was a skeleton crew while George W. Bush was busy trying to resolve his daddy issues in Iraq. But Iraq is in no better shape:

Baghdad’s top government security official has announced the arrest of close to a dozen officers and around 50 members of Iraq’s security forces for alleged involvement or negligence in Sunday’s suicide bombings in the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi TV reported that Major General Qasim Atta, acting as a military spokesman for the Iraqi capital, announced the arrests of 11 officers and 50 members of the military and police for alleged responsibility or negligence in Sunday’s attacks in Baghdad.

About 155 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded in the massive explosions that rocked the Iraqi capital, gutting two government ministries and blowing out windows across the entire center of the city.

The explosions, which killed dozens of children near the government-controlled Green Zone, provoked widespread outrage. Several opposition members of parliament called on top ministers to resign and called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to testify to parliament about security lapses.

General Atta, who had spoken only recently of the improving security situation in Iraq, announced the crackdown to journalists. He said that both the military commander and the police chief of Baghdad’s Salhiya district, site of Sunday’s explosions, were under arrest, pending investigation.

How much “tenacity” is required? How long should this country, and its president, cling to a failed policy, feeding more of an entire generation into a meatgrinder because even decades after Vietnam, even with “birthers” and gun nuts and teabaggers and others calling themselves patriots while talking about overthrowing the government by force, we have still learned nothing?

David Brooks may have that peculiar homoerotic fascination with a man in a uniform with a bunch of medals that most pundits seem to have, but that’s no reason to regard a foolish consistency as some kind of virtue.

Credit where credit is due

It’s hard for a good liberal like me to applaud Meghan McCain. After all, her father wanted to perpetrate perhaps the biggest catastrophe that could ever have happened to this country by putting the idiotic Sarah Palin one heartbeat (or moose shot) away from having her finger on the button that could bring about the apocalypse that Christofascist zombies like her so dearly want. But it wasn’t McCain the younger that picked Sarah Palin, and I can hardly blame her for not going public and saying “Dad, what the fuck are you thinking?” And while I cringe every time she tries to paint her dad’s party as a young, hip, happenin’ bunch, there’s one area where she has been applauseworthy, and that is in her attitude towards those whose only focus is her (and other women’s) weight.

Apparently there was some fracas this week in which she put a photo of herself in somewhat revealing jammies up on Twitter. Like most women of some size (and Meghan McCain is only a size 10, for God’s sake), Meghan McCain has a rather impressive Rack of Doom. Apparently, among some quarters, most likely the kind of sexually-repressed quarters that represent the part of the political spectrum to which her father belongs, having breasts, and not wearing a tent to cover them, makes you a slut — at the same time as these very same quarters are no doubt alone in the bathroom with a copy of Juggs and a jar of vaseline. So McCain did some kind of Twitterish fightback, and now she has a blog entry about our society’s attitude about women and weight at The Daily Beast that no matter how foul and despicable her father is, is worthy of applause from our corner of the blogosphere:

Here’s what I want to know: What is it going to take and how many women have to die from eating disorders until things like this Jessica Simpson cartoon and doctored Ralph Lauren ads end?

This is something obviously very close to my heart because I have been mocked for my weight as well. And I always hit back. My most infamous moment was telling Laura Ingraham to “kiss my fat ass” on The View a few months ago. But here is the reality—as my public profile has grown and people recognize me more and more, an unsettling anxiety has set in, something that has come as a surprise to me. Every time I am on television, give a talk, or have a picture taken, inevitably the weight comments follow. It’s a new part of my life and by far the most consistent. I have started speaking at colleges and was recently asked why the media is so obsessed with my weight. I didn’t have an answer but I did say that I could probably cure cancer and solve all the Republican Party’s problems, and people would still make fat jokes. I am strong and stay strong because I have to be. But I have seen too many of my friends suffer from eating disorders and have seen firsthand how it can quite literally ruin a young woman’s life.

[snip]

My weight is the great constant in my life, no matter where I am or what I am doing it is an issue that comes up. People approach me in public sometimes to talk about their own body-image issues and commiserate about the cruel treatment I receive. Whether or not the media wants to face this, I believe some women are less likely to speak out publicly about their political beliefs because they see the way I am talked about. Why would any woman want to speak out on television when the inevitable result will be a merciless critique of her physical appearance? God forbid she is larger than a size 4 or under 5 foot 10, because then the way she feels politically is irrelevant. I worry about the long-term damage this kind of weight obsession is doing. We are grooming a generation of women who are less likely to speak out about their beliefs because of the assault that comes on their physical appearance as a result.

Of course she then goes on to equate the treatment of Hillary Clinton, a woman in her 60’s who has been subject to relentless hag/crone jokes since 1993 with the Rich-Lowry-sparkly treatment given to Sarah Palin, but McCain IS a young Republican after all, so you can’t have everything.

But the fact that Meghan McCain has to be the poster child for young Republicanism (an oxymoron if I ever wrote one) doesn’t obscure her larger point about how our society treats women who have curves instead of looking like 12-year-old boys.

I remember the kind of crap I used to read in newsgroups back in 1997-1998 when the movie Titanic had captured the public consciousness. It usually ran something along the lines of “Kate is fat and Leo is gay.” I would note the interesting juxtaposition of these two concepts side-by-side. And I would remember the brilliant Bob Goldthwait bit about gay-bashing:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:208384

…and then I would try to remember something from my Formal Logic class in college, and came up with the conviction that anyone who wrote any variation of “Kate is fat and Leo is gay” must think that a woman should be built like a skinny 23-year-old boy. And following that with “…and Leo is gay”, given that Leonardo DiCaprio at that time WAS a skinny 23-year-old boy, well, you do the math.

And so it goes today. Any male (and it’s usually males) who makes jokes about Jessica Simpson’s weight, or Kelly Clarkson’s weight, or for that matter, Meghan McCain’s weight, is telling us far more about himself than he does about the woman about whom he’s “joking.”

The closet cases of the media have a new man in a uniform to love

The highly closeted manly-men of media really haven’t been the same since George W. Bush took off the flightsuit with the sock-stuffed crotch and revealed himself to be the mean, small little man that the saner among us always knew he was. Now, as Digby reveals, they have a new lust object:

Let me first say that Sgt Crowley is an obviously intelligent person who is very confident in front of the cameras and makes a strong impression in a press conference. He will go far if he chooses to pursue a career in public life. He is also an intimidating son of a gun, putting the reporters in their places with a steely look and a stern “hold on, let me finish” that was sort of startling.

But the dizzy, gushy adulation on the part of the gasbags is so over the top I’m feeling embarrassed in that “oh no, I walked in on my grandfather watching a porno” kind of way. Dear God.

Lou Dobbs is drooling and smirking, Chris Matthews is (without success) trying to keep that thrill up his leg under control and Roger Simon literally squealed in delight the second the press conference was over. This is the most manly, macho, guys guy they’ve had the pleasure to pleasure since Junior Bush insulted reporters on a daily basis, and you can tell they’ve been missing it big time.

I think it’s pretty clear that if Obama wants to get the press back on his side he needs to start pushing them around. These boys just love a man who hurts so good.

Fear of a Progressive Planet

John Edwards really scares the bejeezus out of them, doesn’t he?

GIBSON: Our John Gibson program fraud alert today focuses on the biggest fraud running for president, and that takes some doing. We’re talking about the Breck Girl, Silky, the former senator from North Carolina, the baron of a 28,000-square-foot manse, the protector of the poor while ensconced on a pillow of 100 million dollars.

ANGRY RICH: A man who whored his wife’s cancer as a fundraising gimmick.

GIBSON: John Edwards today was going after other Democratic candidates, and by other he meant Hillary Clinton, for taking money as political contributions from Rupert Murdoch or from certain employees or executives of either the Fox News Channel or News Corporation, which owns the Fox News Channel. Edwards has a real kind of problem about Fox. He just — well, actually he doesn’t have a problem about Fox. He realizes there are a whole bunch of really far-lefters who hate Fox and he’s busy sucking up to them.

[snip]

GIBSON: — bull, bull, bull. I mean, first of all, he won’t come on Fox.

ANGRY RICH: Because he’s a pansy.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet your Republican Party. The above tells you a lot more about them and what they fear than it does about John Edwards.

Frankly, I think John Gibson wants to fuck John Edwards and he’s jealous of Elizabeth. But that’s just me.