The song I’m starting the shuffle with is “Sore” by Annuals, simply because it’s truly one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in months. The only tangential relationship it has with anything that’s gone on this week is that I moved this week, and I am Still Sore. So, here, introduce yourself to an amazing band while I try to get rid of this pain in my aching, elderly back. If you listen to the words and watch the video and tear up a little bit, then you are normal.
More songs/videos after the jump.
1. Thom Yorke – “Atoms for Peace”
2. The Drifters – “Save the Last Dance for Me”
3. Fever Ray – “Now’s the Only Time I Know”
4. Band of Horses – “Blue Beard”
5. The Sundays – “Here’s Where The Story Ends”
6. Jamie Lidell – “Compass”
7. Sarah McLachlan – “Time”
8. New Kids on the Block – “Hangin’ Tough” (Shut up.)
9. Wilson Phillips – “Reason to Believe” (Continue to shut up.)
10. Tori Amos – “Flying Dutchman”
A less honest blogger would have pretended #’s 8 and 9 weren’t there and skipped them, but no, that is not how I am.
Seriously though, one of my favorite things to do, when the weather is nice and I have somebody in the car with me (when I am cruising with my bros in my Trans Am), is to crank “Hangin’ Tough” as high as it will go at stoplights. If the people in the car next to you laugh and start dancing and singing along, you know that they have a sense of humor about life, and that they are fun people. If they start exchanging condescending looks with each other and saying, “Oh muh guh, Jennifer,” then they are obviously unworthy.
Fundamentalist Islam is entirely incompatible with American values. Nothing could be clearer. But so is fundamentalist Christianity, or any fundamentalism, no matter the faith. This is the lesson we should’ve learned on 9/11 but somehow, we continue to apologize for homegrown extremism.
Yes.
For a little context, that quote comes from ACG at the Submitted to a Candid World blog. He mentioned Newt Gingrich’s outrage over a (quickly reversed) court decision which exonerated a Muslim man for marital rape, citing Shari’a law. It was a mistake, obviously, but that will never stop an opportunistic, angry wingnut like Newtie from pouncing and scaring old, ignorant white people into thinking that the Mooselems are coming for them, and they’re bringin’ thar Shar-EYE-uh laws wit ‘em! But then, smartly, the writer compared that event to the matron of the Religious Right, Phyllis Schlafly, and her consistent, longstanding belief that marital rape simply does not exist.
I say it all the time. The extremist Muslim worldview is not all that different from the fundamentalist Christian worldview. The only reason the Christians don’t bomb things (yet) is that they’re moderated by modern society, which is largely absent in the places in the Islamic world where extremism flourishes. Shari’a already exists in the United States. The fundamentalist Christians just call it something different, like “Judeo-Christian valyews.”
JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox deputy mayor plans to march 50 donkeys through the streets of the Holy City to coincide with a gay pride parade on Thursday, his office said.
“This expresses what we think — that this is a beastly act,” Rabbi Yitzhak Pindrus, who represents the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party on the city council, told the Ynet news website.
His spokesman Menahem Zaide declined to link the donkey march to the parade, saying only: “Donkeys also have rights to be recognised as couples.
“We are in favour of donkey rights,” he told AFP.
So basically, they’re replicating NOM’s bus tour with animals.
Now we have, in video form, David Pakman’s interview with Peter, which I wrote about/commented on yesterday. It’s even more fun to watch, because you get Dave’s facial expressions.
I wonder if there are, like, NOM groupies who follow the hate-tour around and jockey for space in Maggie Gallagher’s bus harem.
Anyway, Bil Browning met up with Maggie and Ryan McCann, the fresh-faced (you know what I mean) “Director of Public Policy for the Indiana Family Institute” on the Indianapolis leg of NOM’s Summer of Poorly Attended Bigotry, and got both of them on tape saying some very interesting things. Also, apparently Bil Browning and Ryan McCann are dating, but under the guise of “winning bets with each other”? That’s gay as hell.
Old Scott Lively got the Daily Show treatment for his malevolently stupid assertion that the Nazis were a gay movement, therefore gays shouldn’t be able to serve in the military, because we are too “brutal.”
It’s the fault of the entire gay blogo-webs. None of us everreportwhathesays. That’s one of many things our friend David Pakman learned when he interviewed Peter LaBarbera today for his program “Midweek Politics with David Pakman.” You can listen to the entire program here, or download the podcast for yourself. The Peter Part starts 17 minutes in, if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing (but you should, because David is A Good Thing). Videos will be available tomorrow.
Forthwith, a few notes about what happened, with a few editorial comments:
1. Peter has met FIFTY “former homosexuals” in his twenty-year anti-gay career! This is interesting, because he usually says there are THOUSANDS of them. Out of those fifty, how many have ended up back in gay? Inquiring minds want to know.
2. Peter says that there is more than one way into homosexuality, and also more than one way out. I tried to plug this into my GPS, but the computerized voice coughed out the word “bullshit.”
3. It takes him four minutes to mention his favorite man-crush of a gay activist, Wayne Besen.
4. Peter complains several times that David’s producer should have told Peter that the show he was going on today was pro-gay. This is because Peter does not have access to Google, and couldn’t find out anything about the show for himself.
5. Also, everybody censors Peter, and also so-called “ex-gays.” Apparently in Peter’s world, “censorship” is reporting his words without refuting/making fun of all of them. Impossible. That’s part of the First Amendment too, babe. I would point out that this blog gives a hell of a lot of airtime to so-called “ex-gays,” probably more than any other major blog out there.
6. Peter denies several times that he covers/photographs leathersex conventions and street festivals, before admitting that yes, he covers/photographs leathersex conventions and street festivals.
7. And then there’s Uganda. Peter says he does not support anything that “could be construed as violence or hatred toward gays.” You know what’s (correctly) construed as hatred toward gays? Yes, that’s right, Pete’s website is an SPLC-certified hate site! So, basically he issued a disclaimer against himself right there. But strangely enough, Peter suggests that in Uganda, the laws should be written so that the penalties for, say, raping a child, are the same whether or not the perpetrator is gay or straight. In other words, Peter is saying that gays and straights should be treated equally. I don’t think he meant to say that, though.
8. According to Peter, Fred Phelps is a wingnut. It’s funny when one wingnut calls another wingnut a “wingnut.” That is my only thought on that.
Oh, Rob Tisinai, the Royal We heart you so much for this. As NOM runs around the country trying to claim the mantle of victimhood for their hateful cause, and as Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown struggle to paint anti-gay people as good, loving Americans, the true animus of the anti-gay set is nonetheless coming through loud and clear. The following sign showed up at NOM’s pathetic rally in Indianapolis:
Nice. So Rob decided to fix NOM’s current logo, to better reflect their beliefs:
That makes more sense.
Rob also has video of an interview with the guy who brought that sign, who is hilariously wearing a baseball cap that says “No Marriage No Sex Exodus 20:14.” Can we mass produce those? Because that hat makes me giggle.
UPDATE: Oh my god, you have to watch the video. At first I was like “Oh, just click over,” but now I’ve watched the whole thing, and the fact that this old guy admits that he’s been “tempted” by attraction to men is just epic, I tell you, EPIC. This is the epitome of arrogant and stupid.
Madison, Wisconsin, is one of the most liberal towns on this planet. I hope Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher weren’t actually surprised by what happened when they pulled the hate bus into town. The NOM Tour Tracker reports:
…a hand-counted crowd of 466 pro-equality supporters, my friends. Four hundred and sixty-six. Easily the biggest crowd yet!
NOM’s side? Arisha counts 54.
(…)
Poor Brian. Just as he and his family decided to re-join the tour, NOM was met with its largest equality counter-demonstration to date. 466 equality activists marched down the streets of Madison and up the steps of the State House to greet a decent-sized crowd of NOM supporters – relative to their other tour stops – that at one point reached 54 people.
Nonetheless, the massive upstaging of NOM couldn’t go by without a little spin from NOM’s speakers.
“Thank you all for coming,” Julliane Appling , a representative from Wisconsin Family Action began. “[We hoped our turnout would be larger], but our people actually have jobs.”
Maggie and Brian both cheered.
Ha ha, that’s great. When confronted by the fact that hordes of young people support love and equality, they’re forced to apologize for the absence of the chairborne shut-ins who support them by making pathetic comments about how all their people are “at work.” Riiiiiight.
Picture evidence:
There are lots more pictures at the above link, as well as one of Maggie Gallagher glomping her be-purpled body all over a podium, surrounded by her three biggest fans and some guy who just happened to be passing through the area. What adorable failures!
He’s referring to it as “our boycott,” which has me worried that he’s teetering on the precipice between his usual insanity and all-out, strait-jacket required, mental illness. Also, he is glad he is boycotting McDonalds, because it’s keeping him from getting fatter. Also, he dares the gay community to “negate our boycott,” but warns that we will get fat if we do.
This is all over that French “Come as You Are” commercial, by the way. He is very mad at McDonalds for promoting the “disease-producing lifestyle” of gayness to French teenagers. Apparently no one ever taught Peter how to put on a damn condom.
To sum up: Peter LaBarbera, not currently eating at McDonalds, mad about a French teevee commercial, wishes the gays would negate his boycott so he could be the skinny girl in school for the first time, like, ever.
