My application to be Miss California and be embraced by the Religious Right

I will now wait by the phone until the offers to evangelize start pouring in.

–WKW

David Odgen Steirs to make a living as a gay man

Former MASH star and long-time character- and voice-over-actor David Odgen Steirs has come out of the closet. At age 66. Why did he stay a closeted gay man for so long? Because, like so many gays and lesbians, he just wanted to continue to make a living.

From Urban Swirl:

In the twilight of his career, “M*A*S*H” actor David Ogden Stiers has finally come out, saying he’s no longer afraid to be gay.

In a recent interview, the Emmy-nominated actor, 66, told the Oklahoma City blog gossip-boy.com, “I am [gay]. Very proud to be so.”

Ogden Stiers joined the cast of “M*A*S*H” in 1977 as the arrogant but charming aristocrat Charles Emerson Winchester III. In addition to starring in the sitcom, he voiced the characters of a number of Disney movies, including Cogsworth in “Beauty and the Beast” and the Archdeacon in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

The actor said he kept his homosexuality under wraps for years because he feared coming out would hurt his career. But being that he has not experienced any anti-gay discrimination in the movie industry recently, Ogden Stiers is reconsidering what exactly made him stay in the closet for so long.

“I haven’t witnessed such things occurring in a long, long time,” he said about anti-gay discrimination, adding that his personal concerns may have clouded his views. “I should say in regards to this that many of my fears were in modern times self-invented. I’ve been working internally on whether they were the problem, or if I just continued using them as an excuse.”

He said he thought staying quiet about his sexuality would keep his income secure.

“I enjoy working, and even though many have this idealistic belief that the entertainment industry and studios like Walt Disney are gay friendly,” they weren’t always, he said. “For the most part they are, but that doesn’t mean for them that business does not come first. It’s a matter of economics. … A lot of my income has been derived from voicing Disney and family programming.”

Congratulations and welcome to a much freer life, Mr. Steirs.

–WKW

Hate Crimes Law passes, yet Orson Scott Card remains free

When anti-gay religious activists (who were and are protected by Hate Crimes Legislation) fought to keep gays and lesbians off of the latest update to Hate Crimes Legislation, they were adamant that the legislation would translate into some type of “Thought-crime” situation that would punish them for being hateful.

“Hate crimes laws may make you a lawbreaker! Such laws, while claiming to promote tolerance, actually lead to the end of free speech! Powerful articles and NPN’s new video expose of hate crimes laws in Canada and the United States provide you with the vital tools necessary to combat this imminent threat to freedom. This video is especially important as acts of terrorism extend the power of “Big Brother” to monitor what you do, say, and think.” – National Prayer Network.

The legislation is intended by its sponsors to protect homosexuals and transgendered people from violent hate crimes by expanding a list of federally protected groups (Bill Note: That includes religious groups) to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.

But the 1,400-member National Religious Broadcasters says Christian broadcasters and even pastors covering culturally unpopular views, such as preaching homosexuality as sin, could face prosecution just for expressing their religious views because their teachings could be blamed for inciting violence.

“Bottom line is we think that the bill under this language, while it’s touted as something as designed to crack down on violence and hate-inspired crime, in fact can be used to prosecute non-violent crimes,” NRB senior vice president and general counsel Craig Parshall told The Christian Post. “The bill has a chilling effect on the right of communicators to articulate and preach the full counsel of God.”

Parshall said if the hate crimes legislation is made into law, Christian communicators could face prosecution for religious speech through already existing federal incitement and conspiracy laws.

— Church Executive Magazine.

Luckily, for those fearful that expressing their hate will be outlawed, former novelist and current hate-monger Orson Scott Card decided to test this theory.

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage…

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books…to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens.

Basically, in one deft move, Card manages to be treasonous while encouraging his followers to commit acts of violence against those in the LGBT community by dehumanizing them.

So, for the anti-gay activists out there, feel free to drop the “hate thought” meme. Because if a treasonous homophobe like Card is allowed to spew his Islamic/Mormon nonsense, the rest of you are probably safe to continue hating in non-violent ways as long as you please.

–WKW

Nothing frightens the media more than pointing out a liar

Over at Crooks & Liars, they have a link and video to Joe Klein’s comments about Wanda Sykes’ performance at the White House’s annual “Let the media touch us” banquet. Notably, Klein hammers the hell out of Rush Limbaugh and how on Sykes’ most blue day she could never do as much damage as Rush.

But while the blasting of Limbaugh was fun, what caught me was how Howie Kurtz almost immediately got the vapors when hearing the word “lies.”

KLEIN: So could Rush. He could be in a lot better taste on a daily basis in which he is delivering misinformation, lies to a large audience in America. That is far more serious than telling a couple of jokes at a banquet.

KURTZ: “Well, “lies” is a strong word, but we’ll come back to that another time.”

Now if the veteran Kurtz is fearful of someone else calling Rush Limbaugh a liar, and needs to step in to stop the madness, there are only two reasons as to why: 1) He’s a complete incompetent, or; 2) He’s just another righty afraid to piss off Limbaugh.

Because if you’re a journalist with any integrity whatsoever, it should be a given that Rush Limbaugh lies. His lies have been well-documented. He is a liar.

But this isn’t about Limbaugh. It’s about a mainstream media that will not call anyone a liar, even if they lie directly to their faces for eight consecutive years. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, the L-word has no place in their world, no matter how lavish or stupid the lies fed them.

But this is a problem for real journalists to address, not politically motivated pundits. Because Kurtz can claim he’s not in the back pocket of the right all he likes. But we know he’s lying.

–WKW

Yes, Jeff Zeleny, you did kill the New York Times

We Americans are currently at an interesting time of history. It is the time historians will look back at as the era where the New York Times desperately tried to hold on, but finally collapsed all together.

There are multiple reasons, for NYT’s downfall, of course. Being that I’m a “Start-from-the-top” and work down kinda guy, I’d have to say ownership and management are a big reason. You also have the arrival of the Internet, the drop-off in quality of the mainstream media as a whole, and finally, a washed-out economy as reasons.

But history won’t look back at these factors. No, history will find a scapegoat who can spend the rest of eternity withe the mantle of “Person Who Killed the New York Times.” And being that this will happen regardless, I already have my choice – Jeff Zeleny.

You may remember Zeleny from his breakthrough performance at Barack Obama’s press conference, where he asked the infamously stupid question: “During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?”

Just by itself, that question should have been enough to force NYT editors to board-up the windows and call it a day. But the fact is that Zeleny has been doing this for some time now. Keep in mind, Zeleny wrote a 700-word NYT article about what Obama ate during a Hawaiian golf outing. Zeleny is also the reporter that Obama had a “testy exchange” with on the campaign trail (except that, you know, it wasn’t testy at all.).

I’m sure there are many other examples of Zeleny’s single-handed destruction of the U.S., but he does switch between articles that are blindingly stupid, and articles that are primarily transcription.

So, folks, get to know Jeff Zeleny. Because one day your kids will ask why the New York Times collapsed. And it’s much easier to blame it all on him than by examining the nuances of a complex industry.

–WKW

A tortured debate not worth having

The year was 1998, and just a couple years following a damaging strike, Major League Baseball was back. Millions of fans went to baseball games and millions of others watched gleefully from home, as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hit home run after home run, breaking records and jacking up crowds as the media transcribed it all in full orgasmic myopia as to what was actually happening.

That we knew it was all a farce never even entered our mind. Or better said, was self-forced from our minds. Two great guys were hitting homers. Sure, both looked as if they had been assembled in a Terminator factory, but they were nice guys who could hit remarkable home runs and sell milk. They would never cheat. And even if they did, we’d promise to play along by not noticing.

A decade later and everyone notices performance-enhancing drugs, and McGwire and Sosa are looked at as drug kingpins of a game they decided to dominate by injecting themselves with horse tranquilizers and the like. And everyone who stood and cheered McGwire and Sosa’s achievements of 1998 does their best to fool themselves into believing they weren’t complicit.

This episode of Americana comes to mind when seeing the debate over torture in the U.S. Mostly, it struck me full force when watching Shepherd Smith go off on torture apologists on Fox News. And while Smith was deservedly praised for being a man with principles who wouldn’t bend under an avalanche of torture apologists, there was something distinctly kabuki about it all.

Because America tortures. America has tortured for a long, long time. And there’s absolutely no reason for any of us to think otherwise. The proof is all out there, simple to find. Naomi Klein lays it all out for you in the pages of “The Shock Doctrine.”

According to declassified training manuals, SOA students – military and police officers from across the hemisphere – were instructed in many of the same “coercive interrogation” techniques that have since gone to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib: early morning capture to maximise shock, immediate hooding and blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep and food “manipulation”, humiliation, extreme temperatures, isolation, stress positions – and worse. In 1996 President Clinton’s Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that US-produced training materials condoned “execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment”.

As does A.J. Langguth in the L.A. Times:

The Brazilian people did not deserve what they got. The military cracked down harshly on labor unions, newspapers and student associations. The newly efficient police, drawing on training provided by the U.S., began routinely torturing political prisoners and even opened a torture school on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro to teach police sergeants how to inflict the maximum pain without killing their victims.

One torture victim was Fernando Gabeira, a young reporter for Jornal do Brasil who was recruited by a resistance movement and later arrested for his role in the 1969 kidnapping of Charles Burke Elbrick, the U.S. ambassador. (Elbrick was released after four days.) In custody, Gabeira later told me, he was tortured with electric shocks to his testicles; a fellow prisoner had his testicles nailed to a table. Still others were beaten bloody or waterboarded. When Gabeira’s captors said anything at all, they sometimes boasted about having been trained in the United States.

As does The New Yorker:

Within the first year of the war, news of atrocities by U.S. forces—the torching of villages, the killing of prisoners—began to appear in American newspapers. Although the U.S. military censored outgoing cables, stories crossed the Pacific through the mail, which wasn’t censored. Soldiers, in their letters home, wrote about extreme violence against Filipinos, alongside complaints about the weather, the food, and their officers; and some of these letters were published in home-town newspapers. A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”

And on and on. It’s all out there. We as a nation just refuse to see it.

Basically, what’s troubled me most about the so-called “torture debate” is that it’s based on outright falsehoods. Outright falsehoods that Americans are more than willing to ignore in order to maintain the belief that prior to 9/11, the U.S. was an honorable nation that would never stoop to the actions of terrorists. But we have, for a long time. And we will again, if we aren’t doing it right now.

We have allowed the debate on whether America tortures to be streamlined into easy-to-chew-and-feel-ok-about bites: After 9/11, George W. Bush and his administration went rogue, terrified of Islamic Terrorists and willing to do whatever it took to stop them, even torture. And those that did it, or other torture apologists, are just fine with that because they kept us all safe. Those against it are basically hippies that have no clue about the real world.

And here in the real world, Barack Obama is Mark McGwire and Sammy Soma in their prime. The nation is in love with him, and even his critics understand why. He has it, just like 1998′s Bash Brothers. The man can seriously move some milk, so to speak.

But that doesn’t make him any less complicit in covering up a history of torture in America. That doesn’t make him less complicit in the acts of torture that will surely follow, regardless of any laws or edicts he’s signed.

Because while McGwire and Sosa forced the sports world to delay its fight against performance-enhancing drugs, now Obama is forcing the U.S. to put off real debate against the history of torture by the U.S.

The torture charges against the Bush Administration are not some great “we lost our way and must move forward” incident. It was a defining moment of the U.S. showing the world that torture is, in fact, our way. Because the Bush Administration didn’t do anything out of the normal when it comes to using torture against its enemies, real or perceived. They just didn’t take into account for cell-phone cameras.
In the end, it comes down to a final baseball analogy. Because fans of Major League Baseball, and professional sports in general, have a decision to make – Do they work to flush performance-enhancing drugs out of the game, or just look away again.

This is where the “Torture debate” has led us. The time is now to truly research and understand how Americans have long used torture. Or it’s just time to look away again, and keep believing that America is a moral nation, regardless of the evidence against. Because as of now, we are involved in a tortured debate that’s just not worth having.

–WKW

To 50 wonderful years

i

Today is my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. They were real people with real lives and problems, but they had the epitome of a strong and happy marriage. My dad is with family today, looking back at what an amazing wife my Mom was. Like everything else she did, she thrived as a wife. Happy Anniversary, Mom & Dad.

–WKW

One-Liner: Say hey

Watching the New York Times stumble through its final days as a print powerhouse has been somewhat eerie in its similarity to the end of Willie Mays’ career in New York. Both were giants of the game, but the game ultimately passed them by, even though they took a long time to realize it and flailed away with increasing impotence on each swing.

–WKW

One-Liner: When Google won’t help

If you ever have a report on “Anal sex attitudes of young adults,” my advice is to avoid looking to Google for help. It really skews the data.

–WKW

Kissing deep in the ass of Texas

This is to all the Texans out there. Folks, this thing has gotten out of hand. We -and when I say “we” i mean, everyone outside of Texas – have treated you poorly during a time of confusion. Texans are unhappy. But probably not most Texans, and probably most of the angry Texans really aren’t that angry.

So, as I sat here trying to think up witty and clever ways to throw more poop on Texas, I decided to look up some Texas history. What I found changed everything: Tommy Tune, Joan Crawford and Carol Burnett ere born in Texas. And I thought to myself “hey, maybe Texas isn’t so bad.”

Then, I spent several minutes thinking about doing more research on Texas. I never did any, but I did reflect on how Texans had treated me in one of my few times to their state. Pretty well, actually. Texans seem a little football crazy, but the BBQ makes up for any of their flaws. Basically, Texans are pretty nice people.

So Texas, let me just say I understand that times are tough and sometimes we need to let others express themselves. You are a valued part of the United States, and we want you to stick around. You just needed to express yourselves. So, you know, just stop doing that and it’s all cool.

HT Bloggess

–WKW

Iraq issues invites for Fred Phelps and Michael Savage

After being denied entry into England, the sovereign nation of Iraq has offered visas to right-wing leaders Fred Phelps and Michael Savage. The two were banned from entering the England for allegedly fostering extremism or hatred.

Phelps and Savage both are in the the lucrative hate industry, with Phelps leading a religious cult, while Savage has cleaned up after changing his name from “Michael Weiner” and moving from the herbal medicine selling game to hate radio. Both have commented none stop on the banning.

“Fags!!!” said Phelps, as Savage nodded in agreement while popping some echanichea.

Denying charges that he was bringing in the infamous pair to “give all Iraqis a common enemy,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he looked forward to a positive exchange of idea.

“I believe allowing those two to speak in Iraq shows that we are again a great country,” said Zebari. “Plus, this is throwing red meat to the extremists. They love those guys.”

–WKW

Hitler is welcomed back into polite consversation by Fox News

Big news, everyone. The word and name “Hitler” has now jumped the shark of tasteless and can be now used in polite conversation in various forms. Basically, Godwin’s Law has been rendered official. Due to Fox News celebrities like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and others shooting out terms like “nazi, Hitler and baby-killing-Nazi-Hitler-Islam-commie” as if they were on a quota, the terms have now lost their emotional punch. Evidence for this can be found in the lack of interest in this “Hitler-Speak” by groups like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.”

So now that Fox News and the rest of us have been freed the emotional baggage that once came with “Hitler” and can use the word liberally for whatever reason, I have decided to give you a few ideas on how to incorporate a little Hitler into your vocabulary. Please note, however, that like the word “bad,” “Hitler” can have either positive or negative connotations.

For sports: Their defense is totally Hitler!

Random meaningless shit: “You are so Hitler and you don’t even know it.”

For rappers: “I’m down like Hitler, overthrow Poland and get witcha.”

For political discussions: “That Hitler is trying to nazi-up our health care.”

For pot smokers: “Dude, you’re Hitlerizing my buzz.”

More random meaningless shit: “Dude, I am so gonna get my Hitler on tonight.” (Acceptable response: “Sig Heil, bitchez!”)

For discussions on the media: “Damn, Rupert Murdoch is Hitler.”

–WKW

No one expects a blogaround: Just chatting edition

The Joshua Blog: Senate Democrats deny Specter committee seniority.

Atomic Poet: Social media does not equal chat.

The Wild, Wild Left: Meet Diane. She has strong opinions about Fox News.

Phillip Barron: A tale of two headlines.

FanHouse: Shane Mosley wants him some Manny Pacquiao.

Rising Hegemon: It must be easy to put out scintillating columns like Maureen Dowd when you can just pull facts directly from your ass.

–WKW

One-Liner: Headlines

A headline you will likely not read today: “More than 6 billion non-swine flu sufferers panic over every sniffle.”

–WKW

One-Liner: Angels

If there really were angels, they’d have to be placed under the protection of Hate Crimes Legislation. Because people are messed up like that.

–WKW

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