Jeremayakovka

Passionate Arson In Alaska

With a recent attempt to burn down Gov. Sarah Palin's church (and whoever happened to be inside it at the time), this is a good time to revisit The Passion Of The Death Threats Against Jerry Falwell.

McCain Speaks With LGBT Media

Here's a lengthy, detailed interview of McCain by the Washington Blade.

Q: Why doesn't Obama sit down for a lengthy discussion with socially conservative, even "anti-gay," opinion journals?
A: Because McCain is the moderate in this election.

Wasillans Reportedly Gay-Tolerant

says The Advocate, quoting from several quarters, including native Wasillans:

I have never, ever had a problem being openly gay in that town, he says of Wasilla. I have brought two men up there to meet the family in the past five years, and no one's even batted an eye. He contrasts this with reactions he’s received in some of the country’s most celebrated gayborhoods.

Sandra Does Sarah

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You can put lipstick, pearls, and even a cocktail dress on a self-pitying, rage-filled, liberal snob of a Jewish dyke, but it's still a self-pitying, rage-filled, liberal snob of a Jewish dyke.

Sandra Bernhard on Sarah Palin:

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Not included in the video: Bernhard's boast that Palin, in New York, would be gang-raped by blacks. The threat (or, more perversely, the taunt) of rape to keep disagreeable women in their place. Original.

Later Bernhard explains: [The gang rape comment] is part of a much larger, nuanced, and yes, provocative (that's what I do) piece from my show about racism, freedom, women's rights and the extreme views of Governor Sarah Palin, a woman who doesn't believe that other women should have the right to choose, Bernhard told the Daily News today.

Women deserve better, she continued. I certainly wish Governor Palin no harm. I'd just like her to explain to me how she can hold such outrageous views - and then go back to Alaska.

[Update: Women do deserve better - better than you, that is. S.E. Cupp replies in the Daily News.]

Palin's "extreme" and "outrageous" views are hers alone and she owns them. Her influence with them as vice-president would be slight, and even as president, while real, would be far from absolute. One aspect which Bernhard ignores, as do most pro-choice advocates, is that to people who are pro-life, any abortion is extreme.  (And to people of mixed opinion, either extreme is dispiriting to listen to for very long.) If Bernhard were serious about wanting an explanation from Palin, she would ask politely but firmly, then listen. She would not turn her comedienne's stage into a bully pulpit. Further, it's not as if explanations of pro-life positions aren't readily available. It's just that seeking them out would mean Bernhard would have to do some legwork to understand how somebody who disagrees with her thinks.

Bernhard's claim that she wishes Palin no harm is highly disingenuous. Of course she wants Palin "harmed": humiliated (which all threats of rape are - humiliations - in this case even more so because it's public) as a preliminary step to being politically diminished, neutralized, and - if possible - banished from the national stage. As for physical harm, what Bernhard means is, I wish that Palin comes to no physical harm as a direct result of my comedy routine. Shit, then I'd be in real trouble!

That trope of  criminally rebellious black men (or boys) being Bernhard's "brothers" - as rapists-on-call or as a tangental, amorphous punishing force or as some kind of Black Avenging Angels - is contemptible. It's worn-out "black Orpheus" or "white Negro" attitudes that poisoned the Western intellectual well the moment Sartre and Mailer poured them in over 50 years ago. In short, Sandra Bernhard needs to grow up. Finding her own power will have little to do with put-downs that trickle down from "Fight The Power." But if she insists on buying in to the myth of demonic, black moral and sexual potency (or supremacy), then emptor caveat: Give V.S. Naipaul's Guerillas a go before going any further, girl.

Oh, and Governor Palin went back to Alaska because that's where her home, her job, and her family are. Of course, I realize that what Bernhard means is Get the hell away from New York!

This is timely, Gentle Reader. At stake right now is that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, is insisting on representing America, alongside certain New York Jews and in solidarity with the State of Israel, to castigate the Islamic Republic of Iran for its nuclear, jihadist, and genocidal ambitions. So don't let any media hype surrounding Sandra Bernhard, nor any other snobby, liberal Jews in New York, divert you from what Governor Sarah Palin, one righteous gentile, is trying to do.
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The Womanization Of America, c. 1962

Late Night Thought #231 re Norman Mailer (updated):

Often tagged as "reactionaries" or accused of being unthinking apologists for the "radical Right," many so-called "neoconservatives" simply (but doggedly) preserve or re-examine or simply call attention to sometimes forgotten, often virile strains of 20th Century American liberalism.

One thing that often gets lost in today's culture war over persistent claims being made for gender and sexual identity(-ies) is the fact that men need to become men. In the 1950s Simone de Beauvoir dared proclaim that One is not born a woman, one becomes one. In 1962 Norman Mailer offered an indirect reply (or simply restated the case) in "The Womanization of America," a series of comments that appeared in Playboy magazine:

Masculinity is not something given to you, something you're born with, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men. The mass media, for instance .... give people an unreal view of life. They give people a notion that American life is easier than it really is, less complex, more rewarding. The result is that Americans, as they emerge from adolescence into young manhood, are very much like green soldiers being sent into difficult terrain ignorant of the conditions. A lot of virility immediately gets massacred.

Particularly famous for the punch and circumstance that couched his career, it's also been pointed out that there wasn't a whole lot in Norman's oeuvre that was astonishingly original -- the originality, on the whole, was to be found in his life. His writing style could be indebted quite nakedly to recent precedents, as it was to Dos Passos and Drieser in The Naked and the Dead. This was true later, during his high-Beat and Camelot phases, when he cribbed a bit clumsily from an American literary scene claiming to know God through sex, drugs, and jazz, and an absurd French one which proclaimed God dead, then  moralized on every subject under the sun. A lack of originality lingered even later, as when he undertook long projects to re-examine Marilyn Monroe or Henry Miller or Pablo Picasso or Jesus Christ. 

Still, as the above quote suggests, this buffalo in the china shop of post-World War II American letters (in fact, he middle-named one of his sons "Buffalo") could spill shelves and smash dishware as much as any bull.

Married to the Mob

Pat Buchanan's world is "Post-Christian America" and we're just living in it. He may be an incorrigible antisemite whose "America First" stances are too stark. He also firmly puts his foot down against gay marriage:

Homosexual marriage is not in the California constitution, else someone would have discovered it in 160 years. Where, then, did the state Supreme Court find this was a right?

Four of seven justices unearthed this right by consulting what Orwell called their "smelly little orthodoxies." They then decided to overturn the expressed will of the voters, declare their opinion law and order the state of California to begin recognizing homosexual unions as marriages. And they did it because they know the Times types will hail them as the newest Earl Warrens.

Related: Gay Patriot asks whether he's a Nazi sympathizer?
Previous JMK post on Buchanan.

Lesbian Tammy Bruce Calls Today's Mainstream Media A "Gestapo"

From You I Get Opinions, From You I Get The Story

Through December 9 Gay Patriot is soliciting nominees for Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.

Busted! Senate Democrat Sought Sex With Prepubescent Boy

[T]he [cooperating witness] and [James] McHaney [aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)] were conversing online Friday afternoon when the [cooperating witness] asked whether McHaney was interested in engaging in anal sex with a 13 year-old boy.

Read the rest.

The Passion Of The Death Threats Against Jerry Falwell

** Welcome, Conservative Grapevine and Political Party Poop readers. **
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In the early 1980s homosexual savages* [scroll to the end], inspired by 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn bar, made death threats against this influential opponent of gay civil rights, over 100 pages of recently released FBI files suggest. From the Washington Post's "Investigations" blog:

[Jerry] Falwell's FBI file contains a 1983 letter sent to his television ministry that concluded with the words, "Hoping you will die soon." It was accompanied by a small plastic box containing a live scorpion. One threat involved calls to Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg in 1983, warning that a $10,000 reward had been offered for Falwell's "assassination" and that it was to be carried out by "gays in Cincinnati." One caller advised, "I know this is true, because my brother is one of them." Said another, "I intend to be the one to collect that money."

As disturbing as these threats (and one attempt, if you count the scorpion) is that WaPo phrases the item (and frames the issue) in banality bordering on the fickle and the reckless. Called simply, "Exclusive: Jerry Falwell's FBI File," the blogpost begins:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell , founder of the Moral Majority, stirred up passions with his attacks on abortion and homosexuality. Now, the FBI's confidential file on Falwell, who died in May at age 73, reveals that he also stirred up death threats....[emphases added]

Think about it. No matter how much authority the verb "to stir up" implies, only something pre-existing can be set in motion. Which is to say that neither Falwell nor the Devil made those ostensibly "passionate" homosexuals do it. (Granted, the Reverend might have disagreed with my take on the Devil's role in the matter.) People prone to passion will be found on each side of any debate, but making death threats catapults one beyond the pale of what is acceptable (indeed, of what is possible) as civil discourse. Because death threats destroy civil discourse. Like the bullying which taunts and torments another who is perceived to be "different," death threats against a public personality convey an aggressive contempt for the targeted individual. They also convey a cowardly disdain because they attempt -- always in futility, I should add -- to coerce through terror what one shrinks from achieving through debate.
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Unfortunately WaPo's "stirred up" phrasing suggests that deficient from Falwell's manner were reason, civility, and a certain love that dare not speak its name in the mainstream media, Christian love. Yet among the first news reports after his death was, from Falwell's most prominent public opponents, testimony to the contrary.

Pornographer Larry Flynt:

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person ... Jerry Falwell and I became good friends.  He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

Openly-gay activist Rev. Mel White cried at news of the death of this adversary whom he also considered "a friend": 

"It breaks my heart," he said. "I feel sorry for his family. He had a huge presence in this town [White lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the vicinity of Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church] and the country."... He said while Falwell often condemned him from the pulpit, he would say hello every time he saw him around Lynchburg.... White said if anyone needs to learn anything from his and Falwell's relationship, it's that people should get their private and public lives in sync.

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Should WaPo's 400-word blogpost take pains to refer to Flynt's and White's statements? Probably not, Gentle Reader, but I feel I have to, even if it takes three times as long. Because the way WaPo reports those death threats accommodates their intellectual violence, which compromises the information conveyed. Why does the blogpost state in its short space twice that no assassination attempt had been made? If any had, then the attempt(s) would already be public knowledge, and even part of the public lore. Long ago they would have boosted Falwell's visibility; vividly they would have been evoked during our public remembrances. Obviously none had been attempted. So why does WaPo overstate the obvious? To understate what it intends to be less obvious: that gay radicals are a philosophically violent lot with latent and at times overt tendencies.

Sometimes this violence turns against their own. Many Americans, for example, know that two assassination attempts were made against President Gerald Ford. Not many know that one of them was thwarted by Oliver Sipple, a man who happened to be gay (and closeted). Gay radicals, including Harvey Milk, urged the compliant mainstream media to out him, which they did. That led directly to Sipple's estrangement from his family, and indirectly to his precipitous health decline and premature death. Even a framed letter from the White House didn't help him much (not in this life, anyway). The lesson to be learned here is not the insidiousness and ubiquity of "homophobia," but that any movement desperate for heroes is also a movement desperate for martyrs.

Sipple's heroic intervention on behalf of President Ford (indeed, on behalf of the country) had been back in 1975. Responding in 1983 to one of the assassination threats against Reverend Falwell, the FBI managed to locate an "informant" within Cincinnati's gay community. The facts he provided, quoted verbatim in the blogpost (grammatical errors included), read as sardonic mockery of the Bureau's interest and ability in obtaining any relevant information, whether about attested assassination threats or about the gay community generally. The quoted passage concludes, Source restated the general dislike for Falwell within the Cincinnati area, before the blogpost paraphrases another document, [T]he informant led the agents through the history of New York City's Stonewall riots -- a watershed in the early gay rights movement.... Even without access to any of the 100+ pages of Falwell's FBI file (a portion available here), an inquiring mind would figure that the ones WaPo references are not those most relevant to unearthing who, exactly, was behind these assassination threats. For example, spelled out in at least one other document (imaged above) is that one potential assassin had been a candidate for Congress in Santa Cruz, California in 1982. Surely that deserves further attention.

Instead of sifting through the most salient details of these assassination threats -- including, in fairness, asking whether any were made by heterosexuals (or even closeted gays) seeking to defame LGBTetc. people -- the Washington Post's "Investigations" blog cultivates in the reader's mind the image of a presumably "powerless" homosexual presumably "speaking truth to power." Whatever the ideological or agitational purposes that might serve, serving them up in a disorienting sentimentality ignores, if only temporarily, real evidence of crime and real clues as to the crime's origin and magnitude. The contemporary LGBTetc. movement would call this "queering" the profession of journalism. It's also what that movement would call "queering" the civic duty of cooperating with the FBI. The effect of all this "queering" is to make WaPo refrain, counter-intuitively and unprofessionally, from asking hard-hitting questions about a number of blood-thirsty, presumably merry gay homosexual pranksters -- and potentially murderous plotters.

WaPo, WaPo, why hast thou forsaken truth?
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[*]: Some readers have expressed apprehension at the phrase "homosexual savages."

It recalls a point Robert Bork makes early on in Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline: Every new generation constitutes a wave of savages who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches. (Chapter 1, "The Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians.") Whether "families, schools, and churches" civilize our young regarding LGBTetc. issues, or rather how they do so, is obviously a crucial dispute in "the culture war." Certainly anyone with an appetite for violence needs to be civilized.

I also have in mind two French films of the 1990s, Les Nuits fauves (Savage Nights) and, to a lesser extent, Les Roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds). The latter, a slow-paced, art house triumph, is the delicate coming-of-age tale of four adolescents, one of whom is just recognizing his homosexuality. Savage Nights on the other hand is about a young bisexual man, HIV-positive, hellbent on avoiding maturity and mortality. Its succes de scandale was enhanced when writer-star-director Cyril Collard died of AIDS just three days before the film took home four Cesar awards (the French Oscars).

One of Savage Nights's more irksome moments is when it snatches a line from the notoriously homoerotic writer Jean Genet. Collard acknowledges who wrote the line while ignoring where it originally appeared. It's from "Violence and Brutality" (included here), an essay which has nothing directly to do with the story of Savage Nights, and which is, in fact, an apology for terrorism: Violence alone can put an end to the brutality of man....  

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A Cassandra in Europe

* Updated (11/26) *

Gay expat critic, poet, and journalist Bruce Bawer appears to have recently launched a blog, Memo From Europe. The initial posts display political and cultural commentary, plus the occasional undying reminiscence. Check it out. If you like it, let him know.

* Update * Bruce emails that Memo From Europe has been up and running for some time. Here are links to MFE's archives from earlier in 2007 and from 2006. We should all feel fortunate that Bruce has a presence on the Internet (where I learned about him). The unique, erudite, and timely perspective of a gay American in Norway would have made Henry James and Orianna Fallaci equally proud.

His most current title is the National Book Award-nominated While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Within. Other notable works include Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy (editor) and A Place At The Table. He's also written the best demystification of Edward Said I've yet come across.

Giving New Meaning To The Old Euphemism "Sexual Preference"

Psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who in the 1970s led the effort to depathologize homosexuality, defends research which vindicates "reparative therapy" according to this 2003 article: The current, politically correct view is that this therapy never works. I think it doesn't work a lot of the time but in some people it does, said Spitzer. I do believe that people who are bothered by their homosexuality have a right to have this therapy.

Entering the Ex-Gay/Ex-Ex-Gay Debate

* Update (10/18) * Psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, who in the 1970s led the effort to depathologize homosexuality, defends research which vindicates "reparative therapy."

Last week I inserted myself into a comment thread at Ex-Gay Watch and in the process elicited several responses. Most responses were, uh, testy, and only a handful appreciative or constructive. The thread in question is a take-down of "reparative therapist" Richard Cohen, brought to you in part by The Daily Show. Cohen offers psychological counseling to men who are (or who think they are) homosexual and who want to be (or who think they want to be) heterosexual. The ex-gay "watchers" mock Cohen while I introduce coherent criticisms, trying to tease the same from the site's regular commenters.

Thanks, Jim Phelan, for your complementary remarks, and thanks, Asher, for linking to it. Your constructive feedback, Gentle Reader, is welcome.

Civility In The Face Of Criticism Is Cowardice

By yielding to a false form of 'civility,' we sometimes allow our critics to intimidate us. As I have said, active citizens are often subjected to truly vile attacks; they are branded as mean-spirited, racist, Uncle Tom, homophobic, sexist, etc. To this we often respond (if not succumb), so as not to be constantly fighting, by trying to be tolerant and nonjudgmental -- i.e., we censor ourselves. This is not civility. It is cowardice, or well-intentioned self-deception at best.
-- Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute,
quoted in "The Education of Clarence Thomas"
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Gay Marriage and The Constitution

Here's The Guy From Boston considering the question of gay marriage before the Constitution -- the U.S.S. Constitution, that is.

The reasoning could be tweaked just a little, but it sums up my feelings.

There Is "A Gay Agenda," Isn't There?

Alan Chambers of the "ex-gay" Christian ministry Exodus International asks "Is There a Gay Agenda?".  The 1987 gay strategy paper which Alan reprints, "The Overhauling of Straight America," plus a few introductory remarks, allow for comments to fly.

The first clue that there is "a gay agenda" is that the 1987 article claims that there is a "straight America" -- as if the United States is anything other than one nation ("under God," as some of us pledge our allegiance). Since a house divided against itself cannot stand, why don't we come together and read Alan's post.

Other salient (and contentious) clues:

* Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims.

* The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome.

* [W]e intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.

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Not unlike yesterday's post -- in which I pointed out that ACT-UP founder Larry Kramer admitted factually (though not morally, not as a declaration of conscience) to his agency in propagating the HIV virus -- "The Overhauling of Straight America" provides a rare, candid glimpse into not just why but how our public discourse and common culture have been and continue to be overhauled before our very eyes.

Also: Alan Chambers interviewed on NPR (audio) this past June.
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Being Larry Kramer, Self-Confessed Left-Wing Mass Murderer Of Gay Men

In between bitter complaints and sweeping denunciations of Republican victories in the 2004 elections, this lifetime gay radical admitted his role in what Michael Savage recently termed "the homosexual dance of death":
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Larry Kramer and Vladimir Lenin:
Separated at birth? Perhaps. Joined in death? Definitely.

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I have recently gone through my diaries of the worst of the plague years. I saw day after day a notation of another friend's death. I listed all the ones I'd slept with. There were a couple hundred. Was it my sperm that killed them, that did the trick? It is no longer possible for me to avoid this question of myself. Have you ever wondered how many men you killed? I know I murdered some of them. I just know.
-- gay novelist, activist, and ACT-UP founder Larry Kramer
speaking November 7, 2004 in Greenwich Village
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the worst of the plague years....
Which years? Early 80s? Late 80s? 90s? Which years were "worst"? What made them "worst"? When gay men were dying at the highest rates (by which time, refraining from promiscuity would have been advisable)? Were there "better" years? Or "less worse"? What made them so?

I listed all the ones I'd slept with. There were a couple hundred.
A couple hundred. And how many did they sleep with...?

Was it my sperm that killed them, that did the trick?
What he means is: Had they already been infected prior to his having sex with them? If so, then he would have an excuse to not feel as apprehensive, or (Heaven forbid!) as guilty for having less-than-loving encounters and/or ones that no doubt involved semen-t0-blood (or -mucous, or -saliva) transmission. Encounters that involved, with near-dead certainty, HIV-transmission.

It is no longer possible for me to avoid this question of myself.
What took you so long, Larry? Has your "normal heart" undergone a change of heart? If so, How? What makes your declaration of such a change trustworthy? When was it ever possible? Elaborate, mein Freund. Bitte.

Have you ever wondered how many men you killed?
Me? No.

I know I murdered some of them. I just know.
You didn't say, "kill," as in, "infect unwittingly." You said "murder," which implies intention, knowledge, motive -- even hatred. Yet with malice aforeskin, even circumcision is no guarantee of circumspection. The whole thing reminds me of one of James Baldwin's more cutting observations,  A secret life is usually a secret only to the person who's living it.  Well, Larry, now you begin to know what some of us have always known.
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From the same speech:
I love gay people. I think we're better than other people. I really do....
Oh really....
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Related: "The 20th Anniversary of an American Killing Fields"
(David Horowitz on the  "radical holocaust" of the AIDS epidemic):

You will read many stories about the heroic efforts of activists in the gay community, to lobby the government for more AIDS money, and to care for the sick and dying. None of these efforts should be confused with public health methods for combating epidemics, however. What you will not read is a single story about those methods, or how epidemics were combated – often successfully -- for a hundred years prior to 1981, before gay activists inserted themselves into the public health system. What you will not read is how the proven public health methods were opposed by AIDS activists, and how public health officials surrendered to the activists’ demands for veto-control over which methods were acceptable and which were not, or how they then colluded in subverting the system that had proved so successful in the past.

What you will not read is any evaluation of the AIDS campaigns – mainly "education" – that the activists demanded in place of the proven methods. Yet the harrowing figures released on this anniversary show these politically-correct, billion-dollar campaigns have failed miserably to contain the epidemic or to prevent it from spreading into other communities, particularly the African-American and Hispanic communities....

More Savage: On Homosexuality and Western Cultural Decline

* Update * (09/27) Welcome, Bookworm Room readers! Please see also "Being Larry Kramer, Self-Confessed Left-Wing Mass Murderer of Gay Men"
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Matt put together a slide show that is just as eloquent as the five-minute Michael Savage monologue it accompanies.

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The comments at YouTube are mostly talking at, not to, each other, but at least it's kicking up discussion. Of course, yours truly entered the fray.
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Related: Gay Anglican priest, dying of AIDS, sought experimental drug treatment denied by Canada's nationalized health service, but available in free-market U.S.

From DC to Anbar, CPAC Honoree Honors Martyred Sheik

Matt Sanchez, whose media spotlight earlier this year provided a great opportunity for me to "come forward" about homosexuality in a new, critical, and appreciative way, has been reporting for several months now as an embed from Iraq, the Gulf, and Afghanistan. As more proof of the need for and rise of the New Media, Matt conducted what most unfortunately became the last interview Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi gave to the press. Sheik Sattar, who apparently craved to live in a civil Iraq and for Islam to be a civil religion, recently received media when al-Qaeda savages assassinated him. Hopefully there will be more from Matt on the martyred sheik.

Why Step Out Into The World When So Much Of The World Deserves To Be Stepped On?

From one of the most influential American novels ever written:

-- Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay.
-- How? By being stupid?
-- I mean, for instance, didn't you enjoy meeting the young men?
-- What men? There wasn't a man there I couldn't squash ten of.

(Written during a time when "gay" meant happy, light, care-free, etc.)

Where Have You Gone, Anita Bryant?

* Updated *

A day without Anita Bryant is like a day without sunshine.

Anita Bryant is like Rodney Dangerfield -- she don't get no respect. Not in elite cultural circles, that is, and not even on the internet. Her myspace page seems to be the only unabashedly affectionate web page out there. If you read it you'll learn that she toured overseas with Bob Hope to perform for American troops, sung "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" at the Super Bowl, recorded several pop albums, and wrote several books. All this while being pretty, articulate, and charming -- not at all by being sleazy or profane or by parading some gyrating sexual suggestiveness.

Yet because Ms. Bryant uncompromisingly and successfully took a public stance, consistent with her Christian beliefs, against gay rights legislation she found herself the target of death threats, assault, career-ending boycotts, and wholesale vilification. [* Update * Note, e.g., the film short, "The Assassination of Anita Bryant," (1976) (whose director died of AIDS in 1992).] Like Ann Coulter, she said it as she saw it and did not back down -- the result was almost complete banishment from the entertainment industry and an almost insurmountable reputation as a purveyor of "hate."

Note the video, below (found at her myspace page). It's made entirely from footage taken this past July in Ms. Bryant's native state of Oklahoma, at a commemorative benefit for victims and survivors of the battleship named after it, the USS Oklahoma. (The Oklahoma was sunk by the Japanese in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941; 429 servicemen died; no memorial has yet been established for it, or them.) Note about 2 minutes into the clip the pledge Bryant steadfastly makes and the song she proudly performs. If you don't, Gentle Reader, no one else will. The scene is too old-fashioned -- too simple, too kind-hearted, too regional, and too patriotic -- to draw attention, even grudging attention, from the MSM or any major cultural institution.
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In the 60s Simon & Garfunkel rode the the folk-pop wave, packaging baby boomer "angst" by singing Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. After watching Anita Bryant sing for USS Oklahoma vets and survivors, you'll wonder Where have you gone, Anita Bryant....? But don't ask her; Ms. Bryant doesn't have to answer for anything.  She never left America. America -- or rather, left-wing America -- left her.

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Further: Buried on page 9 of Google hits for "Anita Bryant" is Anita Bryant Ministries International, located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Previous: "I Believe You, Anita!" "A Pie For A Pie Makes Whole World Blind, Deaf, Dumb"

Related: A "gay patriot" and an "ex-gay journalist" walk into a bar.....

I Believe You, Anita!

(No, not Anita Hill.)

Further reading:

"The Gaycott Turns Ugly"
(originally published November 21, 1977 in Time)

"Exorcising the Ghost of Anita"
(originally published September 18, 2002 in the Chicago Free Press)

Pim Pied

In a follow-up to the gay radical assault on Anita Bryant post of August 28, here's a video of a 21st Century twist on that tactic: a shit-filled cream pie hurled at gay, Dutch politician and patriot Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn, a firm opponent of Muslim immigration and the Islamicization of Europe, would eventually be assassinated by a fanatic leftist in 2002.
(H/T What Would Charles Martel Do?)

(If the video doesn't work properly, try this link on "The Myth of Liberal Tolerance." Am workin' on the vid....)

Overheard in a Public Restroom in Minnesota

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I da ho?... Naw. You da ho!!
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Very bad judgment on Senator Larry Craig's part, bad in so many ways. For one thing, boasting to the officer about being a Senator suggests he's used his prestige and privilege to skate through compromising situations in the past. The Romney campaign did the smart and right thing to distance itself from him.

But should he resign? Predictably, many conservative pundits think so: Hewitt, Malkin, Hawkins, Musclehead, Gay Patriot, and probably more. If GOP talent is waiting in the wings to be appointed or can run next year for the seat, then maybe. But if Craig can get his priorities straight, there are good reasons for him to fight to keep his office: on the one hand, Democratic pols like Gerry Studds, Ted and Patrick Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and dozens more; on the other, next year's razor-tight race for the Senate. Republicans sucking their teeth and shaking their heads doesn't have to be the end of the affair. Regardless of what play the Republican huddle comes up with, they still have to do an end-run around being hung out to dry for some MSM-labeled "conservative crisis."

McGreevey resigned, but his affair had compromised New Jersey and national security. Craig has corrupted many things, breaking (in affairs of the heart) laws more unwritten than written, but so far as we know, not national security. Still, if he has a closet-full of skeletons ready to be thrown open (insinuations of secretive gay relationships or trysts, including with pages, have dogged him for years), he should think long and hard about why and how to fight for his office.

I know! Maybe next year he'll run for re-election as an independent. It worked for Joe Lieberman....
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* Update * Chris Crain weighs in with circumspection (and also a legal opinion):

The gay and leftie blogosphere is, of course, gleeful, as is practically every gay person I've talked to in the early hours after the scandal broke....  I just don't understand why we don't see the contradictions in how we cheer on the politics of personal destruction, however self-inflicted.

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FTR, the arresting officer's report.

A Pie For A Pie Makes Whole World Blind, Deaf, Dumb

* Updated *

Well, at least it's a fruit pie.
-- Anita Bryant

This 1977 clip of two four gay activists hurling a cream pie in Anita Bryant's face is the earliest instance of which I am aware where a cream pie has been used (to attempt) to humiliate and silence a right-wing political personality and to quash free speech as we know it.

The "legend" lives on:

* Gay.com calls it "a historic document of political strategy." Riiight.
* "Fringe" theater show Pie Face melodramatizes it ad nauseam.
* "[I]n addition to pie parties throughout the gay neighborhoods of the city that evening, people took a moment of silence and bowed down and prayed to the new holy spot in the East, Des Moines, a new, gay Mecca."
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In the years leading up to the emergence, post-Stonewall, of radical gay activism, "anti-establishment" activists had innovated ways of using props for aggressive, agit-prop street theater. Father Philip Berrigan, apostle of the Catholic Left and convicted felon, protested American commitment to a free Vietnam by trespassing on private and government property and stealing and setting fire to draft records. Frequently he poured blood on his target of choice. (Left, Berrigan pours napalm on draft records, May 1968.) Whether it was human or animal blood, and how exactly the blood was obtained, I don't know.
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One of Abbie Hoffman's most noted stunts was to "nominate" a pig as for president outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. (Right, Abbie mugs your reality for the camera; below, the rather unimaginatively named "Pigasus.")

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In the Anita Bryant case, gay radicals perform street theater sleight of hand when they become ever more aggressive while at the same time seeming ever more harmless, even hilarious.  Their assault with a tasty weapon isn't just pushing on a door marked "open," it's ramming it -- left-wing radicals abusing Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech by breaching all decorum and even commiting a crime. (Unfortunately neither Ms. Bryant nor her fellow spokesman pressed charges.) But there's neither redemption nor pride in the hilarity, only contempt and humiliation. It's yet another way the radical left tries to have its cake (or pie) and eat it too (or have you eat it).
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Left-wing pie-assaults of more recent note:

Coulter Horowitz (text only)

The Coyote Call And The Howling Winds Wail

You say "potayto," I say "potahto."
They say "Brokeback," I say "The Cowboy Song."

If you don't know Thin Lizzy ... it's time you did.

Islamo Fascism Awareness Week - October 22-26

* Update (8/25) * Welcome, Tampa/St. Pete readers and listeners of the Schnitt Show (93.3FM WFLZ and NewsRadio 970 WFLA)!
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This just in from the David Horowitz Freedom Center:

Islamo Fascism Awareness Week: Is your alma mater on our list?

We are now planning what will be the largest campus demonstrations ever staged by conservative students for October 22-26. We are calling the event Islamo Fascism Awareness Week. We already have student coordinators on 150 campuses and we are hoping that the event will touch close to 200 universities and colleges across the country. We are offering these campuses a full menu of activities including panel discussions on the origins and implications of Islamo Fascism; keynote speakers such as former Sen. Rick Santorum, Christopher Hitchens