aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
“Wonderful time”
An email from my friend John, who lives here with me in this rural Georgia town, tells this story:
Last Thursday the phone rang at 4 pm.
The caller said “John?”
I said, “Who’s calling”
She said - “This is Denise Parker (or some such) of the Republican Party.”
Stunned silence on my part, as I am a registered Democrat.
Then she said in a delighted voice “Isn’t it a wonderful time to be a Republican?”
“Not around here!” I answered. “You couldn’’t have found anyone more anti-Republican than I am if you had tried!”
“Oooooh...I’m SORRY...” she sighed and hung up.
Do you believe it?
Where did she get my name?
Do they just think everyone around here is a Republican?
And that cupie doll voice, “a won-der-ful time.”
Please.
The Washington Post tells another.
Via Kos.
Ford boycott suspended
A former chair of the Ford National Dealer Council is claiming primary responsibilty for the six-month suspension of the American Family Association’s boycott of Ford Motor Co.
Jerry Reynolds, the owner of three Ford dealerships in Dallas and Oklahoma City, learned of the boycott on June 1 when a customer informed him that he had received an e-mail about the action.
Reynolds immediately faxed a letter to the AFA. To his surprise, a response came within an hour and he and four other Ford dealers met with AFA chief Donald Wildmon in Dallas on Sunday.
Reynolds said he asked Wildmon, “If I can get some top Ford executives to sit down with you and your group, would you suspend the boycott?”
Wildmon immediately agreed, Reynolds said.
Reynolds said the meeting with Ford is being arranged. The aim is to “see what things most bother [the AFA] and what can be changed to make them happy,” Reynolds said.
“If the AFA has input into the marketing content, it could have benefits to both Ford and the AFA,” he said.
“I believe in family values, too. I’m a Christian, too,” Reynolds added.
They’re persistent, we’re not.
We won Disney. They won SpongeBob.
Here commerce is on our side. Even if a whole lotta families drive Fords, they make their money on Volvos and Range Rovers.
Pope speaks out against divorce, contraception and living together
Andrew Sullivan’s quote of the day:
“Now that the Pope has spoken, let only those Catholics who are without similar sin cast stones on gay marriage. If you wish to rely on the Pope’s decree with regard to gay marriage, you MUST also support what ELSE the Pope said in the same speech. In addition to condemning gay marriage, the Pope also condemned DIVORCE, ARTIFICIAL BIRTH CONTROL and TRIAL MARRIAGES. If you’re Catholic and relying on the Pope’s condemnation of gay marriages to support your own opposition to same-sex nuptials, you had better not be ... divorced, have ever used condoms or birth control pills and never have “shacked up” with a lover who was not your spouse. If you have, you have NO moral authority, at least based upon your Catholicism, to attack gay marriage without being considered a complete hypocrite. Pretty tough pill to swallow, huh?” - Chuck Muth, in his newsletter. He has an important point, made by Dan Savage as well.
The Boston Globe’s take on the speech:
In a speech to a conference on families held by the Diocese of Rome, Benedict made clear in strong language that he intends to pursue the hard-line defense of traditional Catholic teachings that made him controversial in his role as Pope John Paul II’s chief enforcer of church doctrine.
In fact, gay marriage would strengthen all marriages.
The illusion of legal abortion
If abortion is legal, how does this happen?
Nineteen-year-old Gerardo Flores of Lufkin was sentenced to life in prison Monday in a landmark test case of a state fetal protection law. An Angelina County jury deliberated just under four hours, finding him guilty on two counts of capital murder for his part in killing his unborn twins.
This is the intersection of stupid kids, stupid laws, mendacious legislators, and fanatical prosecutors. It’s what happens when states ban access to otherwise legal abortions and kids don’t know where to turn. And if circumstances and the law had been slightly different, Bauereiss probably would have prosecuted Erica Basoria too and sought the death penalty for both.
I really wish they had been willing or able to go to a doctor and have an abortion done. But abortion - whether it’s done by a competant medical professional, or by two stupid and scared teens - is not the same thing as murder, and life in prison for this is disgusting.
It seems to me the large middle of America isn’t seeing that abortion rights have already been chipped away to this extent. Who cares what happens at the Supreme Court level, they’ve won.
Nathan Newman is right. We have to win in the legislature. We have to get out there, start this fight over again, make our positive arguments and win on the merits. I’m pro-abortion. I think you should be too and I’m going to try to convince you of that in every way I can.
Conservative books
Jesse Taylor at Pandagon has a roundup of the books that have “taken down Hillary’s chances for ‘08” and rates their prospects of success as virtually nil:
(Oh, and as a member of the vast left wing conspiracy, I can tell you that relying on books to take down political figures has about as much chance of working as praying for the Asteroid Deity to strike them at a rally.)
Which sent me back to search the comments on Kevin Drum’s Conservative Books post:
A few days ago I mocked the Human Events lists of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries,” which included such works as Dewey on education, Friedan on feminism, Kinsey on sex, and Keynes on economics. I wanted to create a competing list of my own, but I just don’t have the historical chops to do it, so I figured that maybe my commenters would provide some good raw material.
As it turns out, though, not really...Not to be flip about it, but it makes me wonder if SqueakyRat is right:
“In trying to come up with a left-wing equivalent to the Human Events list, I’ve come to realize that the right has basically not influenced public opinion via books at all....”
219 comments and still none there.
Klein’s Hillary book “less than devastating”
The conservative buzz about Edward Klein’s forthcoming book on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton began two months ago, when Internet gossip Matt Drudge quoted “a source close to Klein” as warning that the book’s revelations “should sink her candidacy” ...Well, maybe. But an excerpt from July’s Vanity Fair is less than devastating.
Not all conservatives were buzzing, James Joyner was skeptical of those expectations from the start.
Yesterday Media Matters reported that the first detail on Klein’s anti-Hillary book is a lie:
According to NewsMax, based on an interview with Klein, “LeBoutillier writes” that the book will reveal Moynihan’s alleged resistance to Clinton’s candidacy, supposedly voiced to Clinton at a meeting with Moynihan, who died in 2003, and his wife, Liz, at their Watergate apartment:
Still, a few months later Hillary got what she wanted: the prized photo ‘op’ at the Moynihan’s upstate farm. There, as she announced her candidacy, Pat and Liz Moynihan stood and in effect gave their ‘blessing’ to this out-of-stater who was parachuting in to create her own base for an inevitable White House run.
Oddly, Pat Moynihan never uttered Hillary’s name—not even once—during this event. He could not bring himself to mention Hillary by name—but the press reported his ‘endorsement’ just the same.
But a CNN transcript from July 7, 1999, shows that Moynihan in fact said both “Mrs. Clinton” and “Hillary Clinton” in making his endorsement.
