Senator Edward M. Kennedy was rushed from his Hyannisport home to Massachusetts General Hospital this morning after an apparent seizure. One government official said the 76-year-old senator suffered a second seizure aboard a helicopter transport flight from the Cape to Boston.

Kennedy’s Senate office released a written statement just after 2 p.m. today offering the first official confirmation, saying, “It appears that Senator Kennedy experienced a seizure this morning. He is undergoing a battery of tests at Massachusetts General Hospital to determine the cause of the seizure. Senator Kennedy is resting comfortably, and it is unlikely we will know anything more for the next 48 hours.”

…The Cape Cod Times published a photograph of Kennedy, strapped to a gurney, being carried onto the chopper by paramedics.

BOSTON, MA- Senator John Kerry today released the following statement in regards to Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Kerry is currently at Massachusetts General Hospital with Senator Kennedy and members of the Kennedy family.

“Ted Kennedy is beloved and respected on both sides of the aisle in the Senate in which he’s been a giant for close to half a century, a legend in Massachusetts, and a dear friend to me and Teresa. He’s also been a fighter who has overcome adversity again and again with courage, grit, and determination. Teresa and I are praying for Teddy, Vicki and all of his family and we know that everyone in Massachusetts and people throughout the nation pray for a full and speedy recovery for a man whose life’s work has touched millions upon millions of lives.”

Well, at least they didn’t kiss.

I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama.

Don’t look at me. David “Mudcat” Saunders, Edwards’s former rural adviser, came up with the idea, saying Obama should kiss Edwards on the lips “to kill this 41-point loss,” referring to Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in the West Virginia primary.

Instead, the two men exchanged a manly air-hug to commemorate the moment when Edwards threw Clinton under the upholstered sofa on his grandmama’s front porch.

It’s tough to list all the things that make this column so mind-crushingly stupid, but let’s give it a shot:

• Parker begins the column by calling Edwards and Obama fags.

• Then, not having the courage to stand by this novel and poignant insight, she claims that it wasn’t her idea to call them fags, but was instead the idea of one of Edwards’ advisers. But hey, they’re still gay homo fruits who like to take it up the homobutt.

• Next, she pulls out the oldest trick in the Wingnut Punditry Bible: she lectures us about what Real Americans think! Never mind that she’s spent her entire working life on the Wingnut Welfare circuit - she’s got her hand on the pulse of The People, baby!

• And what do Real Americans think, you ask? Why, they’re apparently super-duper happy about the state of the country! Even though, like, 85% of them are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. And even though Bush’s approval rating stands at a sterling 28%. And even though the Republicans just lost a goddamn seat in freaking Mississippi.

]]> http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/05/17/good-old-republican-obama-edwards-fag-baiting-wapo-op-ed/feed/ http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/05/17/compulsive-heterosexuality-its-on-your-permanent-record/ http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/05/17/compulsive-heterosexuality-its-on-your-permanent-record/#comments Sat, 17 May 2008 16:27:06 +0000 Amanda Marcotte Education Boggles the Mind Signs of the Non-Apocalypse Feminism http://pandagon.blogsome.com/2008/05/17/compulsive-heterosexuality-its-on-your-permanent-record/

This is extremely bizarre. A Staten Island high school has banned girls from the prom if they don’t have a male date. It’s a girls-only school, which probably means that proms generally have a huge number of girls and not that many guys. Maybe the principle is pitying the boys at the prom, feeling they shouldn’t be outnumbered. There’s other speculations.

“That makes sense only because it probably controls the chaos,” Valente said. “You know you’re there with somebody, you’re less likely to go crazy.”

So, there’s a grave danger of high levels of squealing and circle dancing. I say, good practice for the weddings the principle presumably wants them to have in the future.

By the way, explanation for the academicese in the title: compulsive heterosexuality isn’t just about compelling people not to be gay. It’s about the social pressures to perform heterosexuality that are put on everyone, regardless of sexual orientation. Even if you’re straight, you can be subject to this pressure if your straightness doesn’t conform to the get married/have kids/participate in the rituals of American heterosexuality. And so a straight girl who is banned from the prom because she wanted to go with girl friends instead of a date is getting smacked with compulsive heterosexuality, as is the lesbian student who is now banned from going with her actual date.

This article also drives home how high school is, no matter how the music and fashions change, stuck in this bizarre time warp. For example, this quote:

Added New Brighton resident Mimi Quillin: “That’s really sad, because I thought we’d just gotten to the point where boys and girls, if they wanted to do it stag, alone, whatever, they could do it.”

Emphasis mine, because the word “stag” is a shining example of the real world anachronisms of high school culture. Now it’s gender-neutral, which is ironic because the term “go stag” is a very early-t0-mid-20th century phrase that described young men who attended events like proms without dates. (I suspect young women were both not allowed and not willing to go to these events alone, because of the social shame or danger. Correct me if I’m wrong.) In the context, the word “stag” tended to denote events where men hung out in male-only groups. Stag dinners and stag parties come to mind, where they showed stag films (i.e. porno). The fact that men in the past would get together in groups to watch porn amuses me. I mean, I guess we still have some kind of stag parties like that, but most porn nowadays is consumed in private.

But I digress. The point is that no one in the world outside of high school uses the term “going stag”, except as a joke. It’s a dead piece of slang. But still used unironically in high school. High school is just an anachronism-loaded time. Your textbooks seem to think history ended sometime after the New Deal, the marching band plays the greatest hits of decades before to be hip and with it, and at least when I was in school, most everyone is driving a car of the vintage persuasion, because their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t spring for more.

By the way, we’re going to Houston overnight, so if your comments aren’t getting moderated as fast as usual, don’t freak out.

“Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures.”
–Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.
That Captain Obvious winner shows up in Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column “Pity Party.” This where the real spin begins, as she distances herself from the rest of the apologists and GOP cheerleaders for Dear Leader for the last seven years. She’s the one with 20/20 vision about the disastrous political bind the Republicans are in. The Democrats aren’t the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead.

For all their fractious fighting, they’re finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They’re busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

…Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they’ve publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

“This was a real wakeup call for us,” someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.” And those issues would be? “We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,” he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

I say watch the former Bush faithful. If there’s one thing the GOP is good at, it’s the taking the long view of how to make a comeback. Look at what else Davis says to Noonan — after the jump.

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is “an airplane flying right into a mountain.” Analyses of its predicament reflect an “investment in the Bush presidency,” but “the public has just moved so far past that.” “Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis.” Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: “He can’t articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it.” The party, said Mr. Davis, must admit its predicament, act independently of the White House, and force Democrats to define themselves. “They should have some ownership for what’s going on. They control the budget. They pay no price. . . . Obama has all happy talk, but it’s from 30,000 feet. Energy, immigration, what is he gonna do?”

Read the rest of Noonan’s piece. She’s telegraphing the 2012 GOP game plan, folks, and I’ve talked about it before. The GOP knows the ship is sinking, and in some ways, I think they want Obama to win the White House and the Dems to have strong control on the Hill. Taking a time out is the only way to reposition that party to wash its hands of the myriad Bush f*ckups and his knee pad-wearing Congress.

I spoke this week to Clarke Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent Republicanism in the South. When he started out, in the 1950s, there were no Republicans in his state. The solid south was solidly Democratic, and Sen. James O. Eastland was thumping the breast pocket of his suit, vowing that civil rights legislation would never leave it. “We’re going to build a two-party system in the south,” Mr. Reed said. He helped create “the illusion of Southern power” as a friend put it, with the creation of the Southern Republican Chairman’s Association. “If you build it they will come.” They did.

…Is the Republican solid South over?

“Yeah. Oh yeah.” He said, “I eat lunch every day at Buck’s Cafe. Obama’s picture is all over the wall.”

***

This is slightly off topic, but relevant — another observation about a unique negative that Barack Obama will have to face if elected, and we will likely not see it manifest itself in the MSM, but it will be embedded in the criticism he faces. It’s a common phenomenon a lot of POC who have worked in environments where you’re the first racial minority encounter. Your job performance is likely to be used to pre-judge other people of color who follow you. A white person will not face this because of white privilege, the default or norm being whiteness. This is not a statement of malicious intent — though that is certainly purposeful at times — but it represents a reality for those in the dominant culture. It’s simply because of our country’s tortured inability to discuss race, and a high level of denial about white privilege.

Another example of this would be some of the interesting defenses raised during the Imus “nappy headed hos” nonsense, for instance. I received emails from people asking why I was not attacking the misogyny in hip hop as a counter (an assumption of people who obviously hadn’t read my blog very long, since I had commented on the topic long before Imus opened his piehole). The odd running theme seemed to be that I was deemed responsible for defending a slice of black culture regardless of whether I was a fan of hip-hop, that I was automatically hypocritical on the issue because I am black and are perceived to be ready to “defend the tribe” under any circumstances. Bizarre, but I knew and expected that feedback was coming.

An interesting, smaller-scale example of this was a NC Democratic Party Bloggers Conference I attended in 2007 (I blogged about the event here). I was the only person of color in the room — and one of only a couple of women invited. At one point in the discussion, the conversation turned to bringing in more minorities into the blogosphere dialogue, specifically offline successful local black grassroots activist types. All eyes turned to me — I’m not kidding — as if I had a hotline to the who’s who of NC black political infrastructure (I don’t), or had a “black Rolodex” to whip out to clue them in.

That’s obviously not malicious behavior, but the actions/reactions assume there’s some sort of automatic groupthink or communication in minority spheres. It’s borne of white privilege that’s embedded in our larger culture, and it’s impact is rarely acknowledged or discussed. It just pops up in uncomfortable benign moments like that.

You’ve seen it this in the election cycle as well, with these various, weird “fear of a black planet” statements that intimate an Obama presidency will mean the end of the gravy train of white privilege, that he harbors a Secret Black Radical Trojan Horse Agenda to exact retribution on whitey for past historical wrongs, and deny them positions of power. That’s why you’ve seen little analysis of the irrational fears and the death grip it holds on some people (I like Jacki Schechner’s take on the more overt manifestation of it):

Jon Stewart’s A block was laugh out loud funny last night. The Chris Matthews/Terry McAuliffe bit (6 minutes in) is a must-see if you missed it. But the portion that got me thinking was the part about the media coverage of the West Virginia primary results. Stewart highlights the dance-around-it dance describing why Clinton came out on top:

“her working class base”
“working class whites”
“white voters earning less than $50,000″
“blue collar whites”
“white regular people”
“white rural Americans”

Stewart’s report also showed soundbites from three West Virginian women who possibly unknowingly outed themselves as racist and grossly misinformed.

Why is it we can’t just call it like it is? White, uneducated, poor voters in West Virginia don’t identify with the suburban-raised, Wellesley and Yale Law educated former First Lady and Senator from “the big city.” A majority voted for Clinton because she’s white. Or to be even more blunt, because she’s not black.

I know anchors, reporters, and pundits can’t come right out and say it - as Stewart spent 5 minutes pointing out - but I don’t know why. Racism is shameful and the behavior of ignorant, close-minded people. We may be hesitant to label someone a racist, but if someone won’t vote for a black man because he’s black, then guess what? Here’s your nametag, Princess Bigot.

I actually think pretending otherwise is a problem. Maybe if people didn’t think it was acceptable to hate based on race, we’d spread a little good. Ignoring the issue isn’t going to make it disappear.

Euphemisms only perpetuate the myth that we’re somehow past the ugly, naked truth. And the results from Tuesday’s primary - where many poor, uneducated, white folks voted for the millionaire white woman because they saw no viable alternative - prove we are buried deeper in the racist muck than anyone in the media cares - or dares - to admit.

I know I’m supposed to find the character of Pepper Potts in Iron Man offensive and sexist. As the main female character in the movie, she’s, well, a servant. From one perspective, she’s like a fantasy wife-for-hire—hot, devoted, thoughtful, and submissive. She never brings the coffee cold and relieves Tony Stark from his duties for running the dull, domestic parts of his life, freeing him up to conquer the world. But I liked Pepper a lot. She was smart, wry, and professional, and her attraction to Tony seems to be a result of her being a workaholic, and she snaps out of it at the end of the movie. She’s brave and clever under fire. But I was ashamed to put it that way, because none of that really addressed the fact that she’s still a personal assistant.

And then I read this thread, where a discussion about whether or not Pepper is negatively portrayed as materialist hinged on her purchase of an evening gown with Tony’s money for her birthday. I actually thought the dress incident had nothing to do with materialism, and Pepper’s choices were cast in a flattering light. I’d say the dress incident in the movie has two plot functions: to show that Pepper has really good taste like she always said (we usually see her wearing all black) and to show that she has this whole inner life that Tony wasn’t aware of. There was no intention to shame the character for materialism.

Then it hit me: A personal servant who knows the boss better than he does himself, a servant who is portrayed as hyper-competent, unceasingly professional (Pepper has a code of honor as a personal assistant that seems too professional for our modern times), who wears black all the time, who has astoundingly good taste, who has a wry sense of humor and a devotion to the job that elevates it from being just a job to an art form? That works for a boss whose casualness and lack of competence in his daily affairs is both her challenge and main source of exasperation? That finds herself having to reach beyond the call of duty normally expected of a servant, and who always rises to the occasion because she’s so clever?

Pepper Potts is Jeeves. Her direct action and her good taste in clothes make her closer to the original Jeeves character in the P.G. Wodehouse stories than most of the butler characters—including Alfred in the Batman stories—that have been modeled on the original in the intervening years.

I only have my own internalized and unwanted sexism to blame for why I didn’t see it before that thread. I kept trying to compare Pepper to other female characters, which prevented me from seeing that the archetype she fits is actually one that’s been predominantly male over the years. Considering that her character type is usually a male character, it does change the discussion about how sexist the role is, though. Obviously, it’s not sexist to have a man playing a butler, so can we say that putting a woman into a role previously reserved for a man is sexist? From one sense, yes, because it’s a servile role, and so not much of a stretch in our culture. On the other hand, there’s a delicious gender-bending in the fact that a woman has been put into such a classically masculine archetype.

They apparently had to change a lot of stuff up from the comics in order to make Pepper a Jeeves-type character. In the comics, Tony has a butler and a secretary, and Pepper is his secretary. In the movie, the butler is moved out the way by turning him into the AI computer that Tony uses, opening up the spot for Pepper to move in as his personal assistant, a modern day version of the butler. They didn’t have to do this, so I have to assume that the changes to make Pepper the butler character instead of a secretary were intentional.

It also explains why I felt warmly towards her the second I saw her bustling around Tony’s house onscreen. I love the Bertie and Jeeves stories, and so seeing someone update the Jeeves character in a new and fresh way like that pleased me, even if it took me awhile to figure out why.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

38 posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008 1:37:53 PM by Lancey Howard

Related:
* Noose found at Secret Service training center
* Dallas: weapons screening halted at Obama rally
* Other posts on the security breach

What’s even more entertaining is the bile O’Reilly’s fans unleashed into Markos’ mailbox — out comes the violent schooyard faggotry taunts from the intellectual giants. A sampling is below the fold.

In Kos’s mailbag:

You are a queer little fucking retard!! Stay gay you cock sucker!!

Hey Fagg, Go let your Gay lover buttfuck you to death and quit taking up bandwidth!

You classless fucktard. You’re the fucking problem with this country you cocksucking asshole. I hope some one beats the living shit out of you and that Mahler3 scumbag soon. Drop fucking Dead!

Markos commented:

Hmmm, a bizarre obsession with homosexuality, as if being gay is bad and being called gay is an insult (it’s not and it’s not). Mix it in with hatred toward my Latino heritage (some of it even directed at my one-year-old daughter). Some standard-issue threats. Unhealthy anger levels. Fake bravado. And, without a doubt, an unprecedented level of hatred.

But my favorite is this one:

Markos is a pig,and a certain secret society is watching you. And we dont like liberal Pigs like you, and the people that read this shit.The left are few,the right are many, and Pigs like Liberals will never run America.And your boy Obama is a Pig like the rest of you scum.

You know who else is a member of a “secret society” which doesn’t like people like me (immigrants) and Obama (black)?

David Duke.

Bill O’Reilly and his illiterate fans are truly comic relief.

Those are real pinheads. I receive equally entertaining mail, though none from O’Reilly’s freaks (though there could be overlap - since we’re talking about the 20% hardcore Bush supporters who probably spend good Cheetos-stained shirt time on Free Republic). A pastor named Billy Ball sent me this greeting for July 4th:

And he has me on his calendar — when Valentine’s Day rolled around, he sent this:

* And less of all the other shit, Chris.

He’s basically cried uncle in terms of protecting the word “marriage,” and wants to get back to basics, which sounds a lot like extermination, if you ask me. Homos have been compared to all sorts of things, but I don’t think I’ve been referred to as a weed polluting a lawn. Via email from Blender Herb, who’s on the CCLM mailing list:

Some people are suggesting that California’s ridiculous Supreme Court decision on “marriage” yesterday is reason to renew Maine’s push for a constitutional amendment. Those people are dead wrong.

While I support any real efforts to amend the Federal Constitution to protect marriage, I don’t support a Maine constitutional amendment at this time. Anyone who has been paying attention to this issue in Maine for the past two decades knows that the entire Maine political establishment is in “love” with “gay” special interests.

The fight is over if we are going to protect the word marriage only. Most recommendations I hear for constitutional amendments will protect only the word marriage, and allow for civil unions and domestic partnerships. A cursory reading of the Massachusetts and California court decisions will reveal the folly of this approach.

We must attack this problem at its root. If you want to get rid of a weed you don’t pull off the leaves. You destroy the root. The root idea of so-called same sex marriage is special rights for citizens on the basis of sexual wrongdoing. That is where the fight must be engaged.

Our only hope in the short term is the people. If everyone will get behind the League’s referendum we can begin the process of righting the ship of state more quickly.

I call on all people of good will to support our referendum today. It is the loving thing to do. Let’s support marriage and equality. We can’t afford to wait.

1. What is the gay rights movement?

The gay rights movement is a highly-organized and disciplined effort to radically transform law, politics, culture, and society in general. Although there are many aspects to the gay rights movement, the most important aspect to consider at the present time is the effort to gain legal status for societal relationships based on homosexuality, in particular, same-sex marriage and so-called ‘gay adoption.’

2. What is the origin of the gay rights movement?

The gay rights movement, contrary to common belief, is not a new phenomenon. The first gay rights movement of which we have a record was the social upheaval in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Bible scholars have pointed out that the events in Sodom and Gomorrah have many parallels in modern times, and these include the tumultuous gatherings of vocal advocates of homosexuality and an insistence on imposing one’s views on others. Recent demonstrations in major American cities, with Christians barricaded behind doors, while crowds of unruly “gay” activists protested in the streets, are very reminiscent of the Biblical account of the events in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The problem we face today:
- Several states are considering the sanction of homosexual marriages.
- Gay couples are granted the privileges of married partners when it comes to insurance
coverage.
- There are laws prohibiting the “discrimination” of homosexuals.
- The military has a “Don’t ask … don’t tell” policy.
- Christians are being labeled as “homophobics”, and criticized when they exercise their free speech rights in opposition to homosexuality, as being uncaring, unloving, judgmental, and hateful.
- Gay-Rights parades are being promoted on city streets.
- There is a “Gay Day” at Disney World.
- It is politically incorrect to be against homosexuality, and doing so can jeopardize a political career.
- The Boy Scouts of America were criticized, and lost funding, because they refused to accept an openly gay Scoutmaster.
- Television programs are rampant with gay issues - new programs regularly emerge with openly gay characters, gay makeovers, etc. They are being portrayed as NORMAL.
- The American Psychological Association has threatened to revoke the license of any psychologist or psychiatrist who counsels a homosexual to change his lifestyle.
- Sex change therapies on children are being offered.

***

A reminder that the Blend has also received endorsements from the CCLM. Heath’s colleague Mike Hein was enthusiastic:

The Christian Civic League of Maine’s Mike Hein calls Pam’s House Blend:
“a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy.”
He is “praying that Pam Spaulding will “turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior.”
(CCLM’s web site, 10/15/07)