This week was a socio-politial blur! That's why we need to do a quick review of what happened the past few days.
You know, it's like we all got on a new ride in a new amusement park and discovered that the roller coaster was a little more . . . extreme than we had anticipated.
When we first hopped on, it was, "This is going to be so fucking great! Can you believe this? Wooo!" So much excitement as the roller coaster car started moving forward. You know those ones that you loudly and mechanically climb up and up, and when you get to the top you pause, still? And when you reach the pinnacle, you feel like you can see the clean curve of the earth, and the unveiled beauty of the quiet world is suspended, motionless, right there with you for one long gorgeous moment? And you think, "This really is fucking amazing!"
But then you suddenly remember the other side, and then you start falling and falling and getting rag-dolled from one side of the dangerously rickety car to the other? And the nauseating ride goes on and on, and you sink farther and farther down the dirty seat of the car until you become terrified of falling completely out of the car like that one Tennessee girl you read about? And all you can hear is the wind ripping at your ears and a few faint shrieks coming from somewhere behind you, so you hold on even tighter, with bruised hands, to the thing that is actually responsible for ruining your life?
Yeah, that was kind of how this week was . . . .
So, let's do that quick review of the best and the worst of the week because it's Last Call at AKA William:
The first glowing reviews for "Milk" come in
What happens to all of Obama's leftover campaign money?
Pork's Listen Up (New Music Tuesday)
A different kind of race -- What if McCain were black?
Superbarack kicks some supervillain ass!
Gays know just what Nene of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" feels like
Jon Stewart: "Your gay friends hate you"
Bittersweet win -- Obama elected, gay marriage taken away
Civil Rights take a hit: Prop 8 passes
Is your straight friend really gay? The sure-fire way to find out.
Pork's Chart Attack: Billboard News & Moves
Design e2: The PBS series rethinks architcture and how we inhabit cities
Thousands protest gay marriage ban in California
Rachel Maddow nears sainthood -- no kidding. She deserves her very own halo.
Probably the worst news of the week -- Racial slurs fly at Prop 8 protest.
And here is a list of the Prop 8 protests happening all over CA this weekend
I was afraid this would happen. This is awful. Rod 2.0 is reporting that during the recent protest in front of the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Westwood, some white anti-Prop 8 protestors began using the N-word against the people of color also at the protest:
The recent passage of California's Proposition 8 has exposed some of the latent racism of many within the LGBT community . . . Unfortunately the "blame the blacks" meme is being commonly accepted by some so-called "progressive" gay activists. A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night's marriage equality rally in Los Angeles.More after the jump.
Geoffrey, a student at UCLA and regular Rod 2.0 reader, joined the massive protest outside the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Westwood. Geoffrey was called the n-word at least twice. "It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks. YOU NIGGER, one man shouted at men. If your people want to call me a FAGGOT, I will call you a nigger. Someone else said same thing to me on the next block near the temple...me and my friend were walking, he is also gay but Korean, and a young WeHo clone said after last night the niggers better not come to West Hollywood if they knew what was BEST for them."
Los Angeles resident and Rod 2.0 reader A. Ronald says he and his boyfriend, who are both black, were carrying NO ON PROP 8signs and still subjected to racial abuse. "Three older men accosted my friend and shouted, 'Black people did this, I hope you people are happy!' A young lesbian couple with mohawks and Obama buttons joined the shouting and said there were 'very disappointed with black people' and 'how could we' after the Obama victory. This was stupid for them to single us out because we were carrying those blue NO ON PROP 8 signs! I pointed that out and the one of the older men said it didn't matter because 'most black people hated gays and he was 'wrong' to think we had compassion. That was the most insulting thing I had ever heard. I guess he never thought we were gay.'
. . . There is more than enough blame to go around—the homophobia of the black church, lack of outreach by mainstream LGBT organizations, reluctance by the Obama campaign, many blacks gays and lesbians in the closet, deep pockets of the social conservatives, take your pick . . . . "
Read the entire article over at Rod 2.0. Something needs to be done about this and quick. I'll update this post as new information comes in.
Conservative NYT Op-Ed columnist David Brooks believes in change, too
Republicans are still saying it wasn't that bad of a loss? Congressman John Boehner is.
Two gay Obama supporters assaulted near White House on election night
Amid Rising Unemployment, A Few Bright Spots for Job Seekers
Because you can never have too much Rachel, here is Rachel Maddow on The Colbert Report talking about Keith Olbermann via The Daily Beast. How's that for an impressive feat of information wrangling?
Obama really is recreating the world! Does this dog say "Obama?"
MP Iris Robinson, not related to Bishop Gene Robinson who won a Stonewall award for "Hero of the Year," voted "Bigot of the Year" at Stonewall Awards
A possible cure for AIDS:The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.
Melissa Etheridge says: "You can forget my taxes"
The 50 skills every geek needs
Ted Casablanca's "Blind Vice": As we have made abundantly clear, there are a ton of closeted gay actors and performers in this business. Some are more flagrant (Toothy Tile) than others (Crotch Uh-Lastic).HBO to air Obama documentary in 2009
Venus beats Serena in the quarters of the year-end Championships, Serena pulls out of tournamentLGBT Activists protest Simpson's episode? Aren't there more important things to worry about right now?
After Elton's "Best.Gay.Week.Ever" reviews everything gay
How can you not be deeply in love with Rachel Maddow? I mean, the whole world is! She's everywhere, and she deserves to be. From her interview in the new issue of The Advocate:
Rachel Maddow’s not only bringing thinking back to TV news, she’s assuring herself a spot on the Mount Rushmore of broadcasting, right next to Murrow, Cronkite, and Brokaw.More after the jump.
. . . Maddow clearly knows what she’s talking about, but she speaks plainly, with the familiar pop-culture dialect used in real-people discussions at the bar; she described the presidential debates as “non sequitur-y” and used the jack-o’-lantern to illustrate the economy’s collapse by comparing Lehman Bros. bigwigs to kids who gorge themselves sick on Halloween candy. When exposing the rhetoric and outright lies of politicians, she ditches courtroom-style accusations for barely contained mirth. She’s sarcastic, but not bitingly so, and everyone is in on the joke—even those from whom she’s gleefully demanding honesty. Whether by nature or keen observation, she’s broken from both the holier-than-thou and gloom-and-doom approaches to punditry and offers something different: truth, with a twist. She’s now the go-to gal for people too embarrassed to admit they were getting much of their news from Jon Stewart.
Even more exciting than having achieved this level of success as an out lesbian is the fact that her intelligence, wit, and fresh take on politics have overshadowed the fact that she’s an out lesbian.Read the full Advocate interview here. I swear, I am moments away from converting to lesbianism. Moments. (And I gotta say that I called her success explosion weeks and weeks ago!)
. . . There, over a perfectly made old-fashioned, Maddow -- out, proud, and unafraid to go head-to-talking-head with far-right Republican Pat Buchanan -- shows the first sign of not being completely at home in the spotlight. “I feel lucky to have all this attention and all of these people wanting to talk to me about what I’m doing,” she says. “The only hesitation I have is that I’m not interested in media about media. I feel like I sometimes struggle to be interesting in talking about how I got here.”
. . . That’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. Not only is Maddow in demand for being a sign of positive change, but she’s dedicated to being an agitator for truth. “I’m trying to make an uproar,” she says. “I’m at least trying to make jokes. If you talk about something in a funny way, people think about it.
Yglesias argues against the notion that gays pressed too hard and too fast for marriage by calling upon the judicial rather than the legislative branch to legalize gay marriage:
That aside, granting the backlash hypothetically, I never quite understand what the upshot of this sort of analysis is. Say you’re living your life with your partner and you want to get married. But then the local legal authorities tell you that you can’t get married. That seems like unfair discrimination to you, so you inquire with an attorney. The attorney says, yes, your state has never allowed a man to be legally wed to another man, but he agrees with you that it’s unfair. And not just unfair, illegal, a violation of your state constitution’s guarantees of equal rights. So you sue! Then the case comes before a judge and the judge thinks, yeah, the local authorities’ action is a violation of the state constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. Is the judge supposed to rule against you even though he thinks your case has merits, offering as his reasoning “it would be counterproductive to the long-term political strategy of the gay rights movement for me to offer the ruling I believe to be correct”? That doesn’t sound right.
The "True Blood" vlog "Blood Work" is late coming out this week (I think everyone is suffering from post-election fatigue), but it's worth checking out if you want to feel fully prepared for this Sunday's new episode. The Blood Work vlog really is the best breakdown of each episode of "True Blood." Um, but in this episide, just go ahead and ignore the whole cat thing. This episode runs about 13 minutes.