As for music this week, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Magnetic Fields lately. If you’re not familiar, Stephin Merritt just might be our greatest living songwriter. I’m not even exaggerating. And, as this is a Gay Website, I should point out that Stephin Merritt is a Gay. The lyrics of the two songs I’m posting couldn’t be more different (Google them, or listen closely), but for me, this week, they’re related for some reason. So we’ll start with “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” and “Papa Was A Rodeo,” and then, if you’re not all weeping after listening to the second song, we’ll hit shuffle on the iTunes (version 10, which is, I agree, ghastly), and see what happens. More videos after the Random Ten and the jump.
One more thing: Have a safe Labor Day weekend, whatever you’re doing. This especially goes for all of those of you that I know and love who are on their way to The Homosexual Olympics Southern Decadence in New Orleans.
Okay, music:
1. Barbra Streisand – “Move On” [Mom, Dad, um, I'm gay...]
2. Wilco – “At Least That’s What You Said”
3. These New Puritans – “We Want War”
4. Phantogram – “When I’m Small”
5. Cale Parks – “Wet Paint”
6. Tori Amos – “Fat Slut”
7. Joanna Newsom – “Soft As Chalk”
8. BT – “Running Down the Way Up”
9. Martha Wainwright – “Hearts Club Band”
10. Elvis Costello & the Attractions – “Clubland”
I love Sam Seder. He went to the Glenn Beck rally last weekend with a camera for his “That’s Bullshit!” series and talked to the attendees about race and racism. This is simultaneously the saddest, funniest, most pathetic video of the event I’ve seen so far. Pay special attention to the guy who thinks Glenn Beck is awesome, except when he says nice things about Martin Luther King, Jr., in which case, he sucks.
It’s like a little girl inviting Justin Bieber to the tea party she’s throwing with her dollies, and then being genuinely stung when the Biebs doesn’t show, except in this case the dollies are either bigots or spies for the other side.
Sorry, Pete. Glenn is too busy weeping his way to the bank, and he’s determined (correctly) that, even among his easily led fans, being an anti-gay bigot no longer sells the way it used to. Too many of them know one of us, at this point, and that will only tilt further toward the side of fairness and equality. And as we all know, the easiest way to figure out that the Religious Right has been lying through its teeth about gay people is to meet one of us, as our simple existence in people’s families, neighborhoods, schools, etc., is the complete negation of the fundamentalist worldview.
The LLL/Town Hell Posse could only be amazed at the high number of unhealthy, unhappy and aggressive people who turned out to help “Restore Honor”.
It’s almost a good thing Glenn Beck didn’t schedule a march, because he’d have been sued by the families of the nearly 100,000 heart attack and stroke victims among the roughly 100,000 who believed they Restored Honor on Saturday.
It was at this rally that the folding camp chair would become symbolic and synonymous with your slackly-rallying Teabagger.
Glenn Beck, offensively, thinks of himself as a new incarnation of Martin Luther King, Jr., a notion which nobody is buying. So wouldn’t it be handy if we had a way to compare and contrast King’s famous 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech and the 2010 Glenn Beck rally on its anniversary?
First, the quote, then analysis. He’s got his back up about Glenn Beck here:
A student at Augusta State University has just been thrown out of the school’s counseling program – with the approval of a federal judge, no less – because she believes that homosexual relationships are unnatural. Her opportunity to pursue the career of her choice in a helping profession has now been shot to pieces. What about her, Glenn? You are giving aid and comfort to those who are destroying her vocational future because they want people to be able to use the rectum for sex without criticism.
Glenn, Glenn, Glenn: if special rights are given to people just because they want to use the alimentary canal for sexual purposes, no social conservative will be able to criticize homosexual behavior on biblical or moral grounds without running the risk of legal punishment.
[...]
But Glenn, our “Divine Destiny” as a nation does not include societal approval for people who want to use the anus for sex. The “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” don’t endorse such behavior. And neither should you.
Note that Fischer isn’t just condemning people who DO use the anus for sex. He’s condemning all the people who simply want to use it for sex. He’s just condemned not only many gay men, but also a probable majority of the straight male population! My goodness, he may have condemned Glenn Beck! Also, his words apply to many Christian female college students who are “trying to keep their virginity intact.” And many, many others!
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan: Why do butts scare you so, and why do you hate everybody?
The rest of the piece is basically lies and insinuations about an imaginary American situation where old ladies are being imprisoned for life for hating gay people, or something. It’s the same four stories (five, now that they’re deliberately lying about the Augusta State story) they always tell about their “persecution,” but since the writer is Bryan Fischer, it’s really melodramatic and queeny. It’s really not worth reading, but if you feel inclined, knock yourself out.
A new ultra-nationalistic group, Zaitokukai, is shocking mainstream Japanese society with its extreme racist tactics and outrageous antics. According to a story, “New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign”, by Martin Fackler in today’s New York Times:
The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies. Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.
The organization also had another lovely protest terrorizing a child:
The Zaitokukai gained notoriety last year when it staged noisy protests at the home and junior high school of a 14-year-old Philippine girl, demanding her deportation after her parents were sent home for overstaying their visas. More recently, the Zaitokukai picketed theaters showing “The Cove,” an American documentary about dolphin hunting here that rightists branded as anti-Japanese.
Zaitokukai was founded by Makoto Sakurai and is following the lead of a well-known American movement:
Mr. Sakurai says the group is not racist, and rejected the comparison with neo-Nazis. Instead, he said he had modeled his group after another overseas political movement, the Tea Party in the United States. He said he had studied videos of Tea Party protests, and shared with the Tea Party an angry sense that his nation had gone in the wrong direction because it had fallen into the hands of leftist politicians, liberal media as well as foreigners.
Isn’t it amazing that the homegrown Tea Party and its Japanese knock-off are never racist or xenophobic, yet keep saying things that sound, well, racist and xenophobic?
Meanwhile, the Tea Baggers held a massive rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial featuring Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. The event, according to Peter at Right Wing Watch and Adele Stan of AlterNet, had an unusually religious tone for a Tea Party event. Indeed, at a FreedomWorks (this is Dick Armey’s outfit) gathering the night before the big rally , Beck appeared to sport a brand new God-complex. He told the packed house at Constitution Hall:
“My role, as I see it, is to wake America up to the backsliding of principles and values and most of all God,” said Beck. “We are a country of God. As I look at the problems in our country, quite honestly, I think the hot breath of destruction is breathing on our necks and to fix it poltically is a figure that I don’t see anywhere.”
Perhaps, the hot breath is that of Satan trying to pull Beck into hell before he can further screw up this country?
How much do you want to bet that Beck, an ego-maniac with a messiah condition, will eventually declare himself the grand political figure who is destined to be America’s magic savior?
This is a bizarre bit of TV, sure to make the Religious Right lose its collective mind:
It’s not that they’re actually supportive. It’s full of Glenn Beck’s wingnut stuff about the country “burning down,” and Bill O’Reilly’s moralistic mewling about some bullroar or another, but here’s the key passage in O’Reilly and Beck’s intercourse [grin] on the subject, viaMedia Matters:
O’REILLY: But let’s take the gay marriage deal. Big ruling in California. You really didn’t cover that much, right?
BECK: Nope.
O’REILLY: Why?
BECK: Because honestly I think we have bigger fish to fry. You can argue about abortion or gay marriage or whatever –
O’REILLY: Yeah.
BECK: — all you want.
O’REILLY: Yeah.
BECK: The country is burning down. I personally think these–
O’REILLY: But isn’t that one of the reasons because we are getting away from the traditional way we used to live into this progressive–
BECK: So let’s get back to — instead of arguing about these divisive things, let’s get back into our churches and our synagogues and–
O’REILLY: You’re not going to get people going back unless there is a reason to go back.
BECK: But here is the reason, America. Your country is burning down. I don’t think marriage, that the government actually has anything to do with -
O’REILLY: But they do have.
BECK: –what is a religious right.
O’REILLY: I know, but they do have something to do, because gay marriage is going to be a reality in this country in 10 years.
BECK: Why do they have anything to do with it?
O’REILLY: Because they choose to, and you’re not going to stop ‘em.
BECK: This is where we disagree.
O’REILLY: The Supreme Court may rule against gay marriage, very possible it would be a 5-4.
BECK: You’re willing to continue to go down the road of just accepting well that’s the way it is.
O’REILLY: I’m not accepting anything. I wrote a book about it! Don’t give me this “accepting.” Come on.
BECK: He’s so hostile.
O’REILLY: Yeah
BECK: Need a little Jesus?
O’REILLY: I have to correct you. I do. You are ignoring the profound change in the American family. In the way –
BECK: No, I’m not. No I’m not.
O’REILLY: But you are not covering it?
BECK: Because I think that the thing that needs to be covered — Bill, I believe in a symphony. If we are all playing clarinets we ain’t gonna get very far. A symphony needs to sound. I’m covering what I cover. You cover what you cover. Both of us are saying the same thing. Watch the culture.
O’REILLY: Do you believe — do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?
BECK: A threat to the country?
O’REILLY: Yeah, it going to harm the country?
BECK: No, I don’t. Will the gays come and get us?
O’REILLY: OK. Is it going to harm the country in any way?
BECK: I believe — I believe what Thomas Jefferson said. If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?
O’REILLY: OK, so you don’t. That’s interesting. Because I don’t think a lot of people understand that about you.
BECK: As long as we — as long as we are not going down the road of Canada, where it now is a problem for churches to have free speech. If they can still say, hey, we –
O’REILLY: Oppose it –
BECK: — we oppose it –
O’REILLY: Right.
BECK: — but we’re not trying to kill anybody or trying to –
O’REILLY: In Sweden they have that too. OK, so gay marriage to you, not a big a threat to the nation.
Huh. That’s bound to make Maggie Gallagher roar.
Also: tipping point, tipping point, tipping point.
An opinion piece by Kate Zernike in Sunday’s New York Times reveals the true nature and motivation of many Tea Party activists. Surprisingly, they are better educated than the general public, more likely to be employed and more likely to describe their economic situation as very or fairly good.
So, why all the anger over healthcare, the economy and bailouts for these well-to-do malcontents?
Perhaps, because all the ostensible bleating over economic issues is, for many Tea Baggers, a cover for their real passions – race baiting, anti-immigrant sentiment, opposition to LGBT equality and promoting America as a fundamentalist Christian nation. Consider these facts reported in Zernike’s New York Times op-ed about the wonderful “patriots” whining and screaming across the land: (Read More)
Remember a few months ago when it was snowing in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states and right wing commentators, such as Glenn Beck, were making fun of Al Gore and deriding climate change?
Well, this week, New York City is setting record temperatures. People are sweating and drinking ice coffee in April. Yet, no liberal commentators are claiming that this proves global warming will melt the globe. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are not opportunistically claiming the sudden heat wave portends the precipice of doom.
You see, the right and the left are not mirror opposites balancing a great philosophical see-saw. On the left you have smart people trying to make sense of a complicated world by using empirical wisdom and raw data to extrapolate the truth to the best of their abilities. To this group, science is important and the truth is where the facts lead.
The extreme right is different. You have paranoid, conspiratorial people who have created a fantasy version of reality and cherry pick facts to support a narrow worldview. This explains why the right opportunistically used the snowstorms this winter to bash Al Gore for his great work on climate change, while there is no similar effort on the left to exploit the spring heatwave.
– Watch the video of Glenn Beck lying and exploiting the snow as evidence that global warming was a hoax
An opinion piece by Kate Zernike in Sunday’s 
ember a few months ago when it was snowing in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states and right wing commentators, 
