Over the weekend, the New York Times published a “scathing” article accusing President Howdy W. Doody of playing a major role in the mortgage meltdown. Um….duh. But the White House thinks it’s a bum rap. (Um….huh?) The White House actually sent TWO e-mails, defending their Fearless Feckless Leader. Rather than spending the time (and taxpayer resources) defending the indefensible, you’d think those folks would be busy packing…which is much more time-consuming when your head is perpetually hanging down in shame.
As you may know, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I have been a supporter of Barack Obama from nearly the beginning of the campaign…shortly after Oprah, but well before Caroline Kennedy Schlossssshkyposky.
And I have had no reason to doubt my feeling of support until this Rick Warren thing. I have tried to listen to Obama’s appeasing explanation about how we’re all supposed to get along even if we don’t agree. And I still think Obama is the best hope we have right now. But if his intention was to make his enemies feel included, I don’t think he needed to do it by making his supporters feel excluded. And I can’t reconcile this issue any other way. It gives me chagrin and a soupçon of betrayal.
Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) put it succinctly. He said in a broadcast interview:
“Mr. Warren compared same-sex couples to incest. I found that deeply offensive and unfair. If he was inviting Rev. Warren to participate in a forum and to make a speech, that would be a good thing. But being singled out to give the prayer at the inauguration is a high honour. It has traditionally given as a mark of great respect. And, yes, I think it was wrong to single him out for this mark of respect.”
I may like to snark here and there, but I try to refrain from really putting the hate on. However, I may have to make an exception for a man who already did so much to tarnish our country…and is now back for round two.
I remember where I was when the Star Report was released. I remember hearing the consecutive gasps in my office as each of us reached the “cigar” passage. I remember the endless witch hunt against the Clintons, and the supposedly “impartial” scoundrel behind it.
That same person is now back, as lead counsel in a case to make sure that the same-sex couples who already married in California before Prop 8 are forced to UNmarry. I found Prop 8 itself intolerant and vile in its violation of human rights. I find this latest move, to actually UNmarry people, unspeakable. And the common link between these two dark passages of American history?
I was more than a little disappointed when I heard that Barack Obama chose the un-homo-friendly Rick Warren to be religulous at the inauguration.
The first impulse is to think that this might be how the whole administration will be, back-seating the liberal agenda to kowtow to the judgmentals–I mean, the conservatives.
But I’m gonna try to give Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt, and a little slack. In point of fact, this is just a symbolic act, and not legislation. He can still be saying that he acknowledges religious diversity (and for a Democrat, the Warren school of religion better be considered a diversity), while at the same time making sure about equal rights for all.
Nobody’s gonna get everything they want in the first 100 days. But I have to believe that gay people won’t be getting the back of the bus. Or that the issues that matter so much to sentient beings will be ignored in favor of corruption-as-usual. And I damn well know that we’re all better off than any of the other alternatives that were possible…even if some of Sarah Palin’s best-friends-that-she-never-met were “different.”
Tom “there are Thetans in my underwear” Cruise has that Noble-Nazi movie coming out, so he’s appearing on all the shows trying to rehab his career. He hasn’t tried this before because, when his handlers told him he had to go to rehab, he said no…no…no. Here he is rehabbing away on Letterman. But I still refuse to pay money to see him in Bolt. Oh no wait — that’s the other one.
Pres. Howdy W. Doody made a “surprise” trip to Iraq. He gave a press conference, and somebody threw a shoe at him:
“This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” shouted the protester in Arabic, later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.
The journalist stood up and threw the shoe from about 20 feet away. Bush ducked, and it narrowly missed his head. The second shoe came quickly, and Bush ducked again. In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt.
While I admire the journalist’s pithy choice of moment to relinquish his journalistic objectivity, a few things come to mind. First, unless the Arabic world spends a lot of time kissing their dogs, isn’t the expression “This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” mixing a few metaphors? Also, if you’re gonna throw a shoe at a world leader, shouldn’t your after-plan be something other than, “I think I’ll throw the other shoe at him, now!” Not that I don’t appreciate the single-mindedness.
Of all of the many “quirks” of Illinois Governor Rod Blagoyovich (yeah, I could look up the real spelling of his name, but he’s such a slimeball…why bother?), no one was saying anything about his hair. Until last night’s Weekend Update on SNL.
1. It looks like he’s wearing a toupee that’s also wearing a toupee.
2. It’s like he has a proceeding hairline.
3. Is that really his hair, or did he grow out his eyebrows and comb them up?
4. It’s like someone put the hair on backwards on one of those Fisher Price people.
5. The first time I saw him, I thought he was walking away.
6. You’re supposed to put the Rogaine on the crown, not the forehead.
7. I thought he had a bad temper, but maybe his head is just hot from being under that bearskin rug.
I haven’t been a big fan of Survivor for these past several years, in fact I haven’t even watched it at all for a while. But I have been watching the current Gabon season, and I’m intrigued by how differently I feel about the “strategies” these days.
In the first season, that Richard guy won because he was the shiftiest, vilest, and most unscrupulous player…and even though nobody on the jury liked him, they couldn’t argue with him when he said he should be given the title of winner because he had played the game well enough to be there till the end. I guess this happened sometime in the ’80s, the Me Decade, and Dynasty was still glorifying the opportunism and greed that Ronald Reagan was embodying. Or maybe it was later, but greed was still in fashion. And getting ahead at all costs.
