April 30, 2008
In 1992, I was twelve years old. Precocious young Democrat that I was, I decided one day it’d be funny to scribble over the “BUSH-QUAYLE ‘92” sticker on the cover of a classmate’s notebook. When my deed was discovered, our teacher was called in to mediate the situation, and quickly threatened the entire class with loss of our recess if the offending party didn’t confess to their crime. Because of my high moral standards—or possibly because of a few knowing glares from other students in the class—I admitted my wrongdoing and paid the price of a recess suspension and a bit of embarrassment over how juvenile what I’d done really was.
So I was irritated, but not exactly angry, when I saw that someone had ripped the Obama bumper sticker off my brother’s pickup truck this morning. Unfortunately I didn’t have another to replace it, so I decided to place an order, and make a well-timed donation before the end of the April reporting period.
So that stunt kind of backfired.
The experience of young gay men venturing into marriage is the subject of a long, but well-written and insightful article by Benoit Denizet-Lewis in this week’s New York Times Magazine. The article follows the experiences of a handful of gay couples, each adding their own insight and humor to this relatively unexplored topic. My favorite bit from the piece:
If I was lucky enough to find love, I thought, I’d better hold onto it. And part of me tried, but a bigger part of me wanted to pitch a tent in my favorite gay bar. I wasn’t alone. Everywhere I looked, gay men in their 20s — or, if they hadn’t come out until later, their 30s, 40s and 50s — seemed to be eschewing commitment in favor of the excitement promised by unabashedly sexualized urban gay communities. There was a reason, of course, why so many gay men my age and older seemed intent on living a protracted adolescence: We had been cheated of our actual adolescence. While most of our heterosexual peers had experienced, in their teens, socialization around courtship, dating and sexuality, many of us had grown up closeted and fearful, “our most precious and tender feelings rarely validated or reflected back to us by our families and communities,” as Alan Downs, the author of “The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man’s World,” puts it. When we managed to express our sexuality, the experience often came booby-trapped with secrecy, manipulation or debilitating shame.
This is the best expression I’ve ever read of a feeling that I’ve had often in my adult, post-closet life—that growing up in a small town, where being openly gay is hazardous to one’s health, stunted my growth as a social being, leaving me to try to learn in my late 20’s what most heterosexuals picked up in high school.
Also, the accompanying photography by Erwin Olaf is pure, unadulterated fab.
Randi Rhodes out at Air America
According to John Scott, PD of Clear Channel talk KKGN/San Francisco, suspended talker Randi Rhodes and Air America network have parted company as of Wednesday (April 9). In a posting on the station Web site Scott says that on Monday (April 14), “it will be our pleasure to announce the return of Randi Rhodes to the Green 960 family.”
Randi Rhodes was Air America’s biggest name and smartest talent. I imagine now that she’s no longer tethered to the disappointing attempt at a liberal radio network, she’s just going to get bigger. The way Air America dropped Rhodes when the YouTube video of her remarks about Clinton and Ferraro got out was ridiculous. Air America is using Rhodes’ remarks as an excuse to dump her contract, while pretending to be offended by her ultimately tame (particularly when compared to right-wing talk radio) remarks.
Atheists Can’t Get No Respect
From the Chicago Tribune, quoting Illinois State Representative Monique Davis:
This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children. What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous … I am fed up! Get out of that seat! ... You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.
Always a pleasure when the contempt American politicians have for the secular community bubbles to the surface.
