Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Everything Is So Gay (Except Politics) Help me to understand something.  How can it be that gay themes are exploding all over the entertainment industry with fantastic results, and yet we seem to be heading toward a national referendum of sorts on gay marriage? We've got TV shows like Queer Eye and Will and Grace that are huge ratings successes.  People watch them in huge numbers.  We've got ABC, owned by Disney, no less, giving primetime coverage of Melissa Etheridge's wedding.  Each year, more states, if not voting to extend domestic partner benefits, certainly consider the question.  Every couple of years, another state votes to recognize gay marriage.  The Supreme Court recently struck down Bowers v. Hardwick. Certainly, homosexuality is still a divisive issue in this country, but clearly the tide is turning. So, cue the referendum.  We know there is a segment of our population, the Family Research Council, Rick Santorum and the like who vehemently oppose anything to do with gay rights, and certainly don't approve of gay marriage.  This idea is smack-dab in the middle of Bush's conservative base. But the problem with this referendum, as Donkey Rising pointed out last November, is that the numbers don't jibe with the results Bush likely wants.  Only the most hardcore factions of his base support putting these kinds of limits on gay marriage, roughly 10 percent of the population as opposed to 32 percent who say they support gay marriage.  Not only that, but recall the Bush Administration's relative silence after the Bowers decision and the Massachusetts law came down?  It was stunning to moral conservatives that Bush did nothing, but the record shows that Bush (and certainly Cheney) have never been too inclined to think they have a dog in this fight.  I think the fact that they moved to promote an ammendment is a sign of desperation on their part, but I guess I don't understand why such desperation would be necessary.  I mean, who the hell else is his conservative base going to vote for? I don't understand this schism in our country.  We are more accepting of gay rights and gay people every year, and the momentum is clearly in that direction.  And they want to make this an issue now?  I wonder if this is just window-dressing for the election run-up, something that Bush hopes to drop from sight as we get down to the wire. The Dems shouldn't let that happen.  The polls are clear: On balance, people don't support a constitutional ammendment to ban gay marriage.  All but the most extreme people see it as unnecessary, or cruel, or discriminatory, or all three.  The Dems should make it loud and clear that the GOP is the party of the people who would reenact Bowers v. Hardwick if they could, and who are so afraid of something that can't hurt them that they would alter the Constitution to squash it. I think most Americans have already decided how they feel about it.  The Dems should take advantage of that. 4:00:03 PM    Say what?[]

Linus and Lily on the Golden Carpet A Girl and Her Dog In The Dark Of The Morning I don't need an alarm clock much these days.  I have my daughter Lily to rouse me.  We have a two-bedroom house, and so Linus sleeps in his room, and Jane and I set up a half of our room for Lily.  She sleeps the night away in her crib, most nights.  She'll wake up every now and then, but it's usually not from anything anyone else does.  Almost like clockwork, Linus will climb into our bed around 2:00 AM, and despite the fact that he slams his door shut, then slams our door shut behind him, it never seems to wake her. And then, in the dark of the morning, I will start to hear Lily.  I'll hear her stir in her blankets, and then I'll hear her kick her legs high into the air and slam them back down on her mattress, over and over again.  She's waking her body up, little by little, pushing out against the blankets above her body and the bed below. And then the most amazing thing starts to happen.  She just lies there and babbles.  She'll start the day with little "coo" sounds, then little grunts and growls, and just in the last couple of weeks, full-fledged "B" and "K" and "M" sounds, all strung together with so much liquidity and seeming purpose that you would think it was a language if you heard it from a grown-up in a strange land.  I wake to this sound most every morning now, coming from that corner of our room that used to contain the computer and dust bunnies.  She's so happy in the morning, so content to lie there and make noise in the dark and kick her legs down as hard as she can.  I just lie there and listen to her.  Understand, I'm the kind of person who would wake up, see that I had another three minutes till my alarm went off, and try to get in another solid three minutes of sleep.  But now, when I hear Lily babbling in her crib, it's like I'm hypnotized.  It puts me in such a great mood, and I only realized all of this this morning, when I took the pictures above. It won't always be this way, of course.  She'll grow up, just as Linus has.  We'll eventually want them out of our bed, our room, and at some point, probably even our house. But for now, I lie in bed and listen to her and smile.  I feel the warmth from Linus and Jane laying in the bed next to me.  I watch the sky gradually start to lighten and I think about how nice it is to be alive and well and tucked in with my family. 1:07:56 PM    Say what?[]

Bad Feelings A few random thoughts while watching the ABC coverage of the State of the Union last night... Best Moment: Peter Jennings, during the moments before the speech when they show various luminaries, on a sitting Dick Cheney: "There is Dick Cheney, in the charge...Excuse me, in the chair."  Yeah, we all know Dick's in charge, but you're still not supposed to actually say it, Peter. As for the speech itself, I have very little to say about it, other than I can't recall when I've heard a smattering of boos in a State of the Union, as Bush heard when he discussed his tax plan last night.  He was clearly surprised by the applause from the Dem side of the aisle when he said the tax cuts were about to expire, which I thought was a pretty great moment.  But Bush handled it well enough, charging ahead with his speech with an even greater emphasis on renewing the tax cuts.  It would have been so much more entertaining had Bush just had a complete meltdown and started screaming "Stop it!  Stop it!  Do not defy me!".  But unfortunately that didn't happen. OK, I've called this post Bad Feelings for a reason, and there were two very specific Bad Feelings I got last night.  The first was while watching the Democratic response.  The Dems should do themselves a favor and never, ever let Nancy Pelosi or Tom Daschle in front of a camera again.  I was mesmerized by Pelosi's omnipresent teeth, and I fully expect to see a Rachel Dratch parody of Pelosi this weekend on SNL.  Just a very awkward and forced speaking style, which tends to obscure the message.  More on the message in a moment. Daschle?  My wife seems to think he's a handsome man, but what do I know?  "Dashing Daschle", she calls him.  I just couldn't get over his glacial speaking pace last night, nor the fact that he was doing some weird Mr. Rogers imitation with his voice.  It was like he was on Thorazine, or else he thought his audience was. But my biggest beef was the content.  I applaud them for saying we should support veterans, and all the rest of it.  I'm solid with the positions.  But I'm sorry, if I'm giving a Democratic response to that State of the Union speech, the first thing I say is "Well, he talks a great game going into his fourth year.  But why should we believe he is going to support any of these programs?  Remember AIDS and Africa?  Empty mandate.  No Child Left Behind?  Empty mandate.  And while it sounds great to put money into job training, remember that this Administration had been taking money out of those programs for its first three years, and that's why it's so bad off." Why won't the Dems hold these guys accountable?  I just thought the response had no teeth to it, other than Pelosi's pearly whites. But the worst feeling I got came when Jennings was interviewing John Kerry from New Hampshire.  I can't quantify this, and I obviously could still be proven wrong, but there is no way Kerry can beat Bush.  No freakin' way.  Have you seen the guy give an interview?  It's not fun.  The first problem is, you can't really see his eyes.  The second problem is that he's so wooden he needs to be treated for termites.  Just lifeless.  The third problem is that he's not good on his feet, in terms of ad libbing a transition, or relating an anecdote.  It's all from the script.  None of this even gets at his image as a CEO'ish liberal Northeasterner, which he doesn't play down at all in person.  I just really think it will be hard for people to relate to him on TV. Which is a shame, because I love a lot about the guy.  His best moment came when Jennings asked him why he was one of 14 Senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act in '96.  He said that it was a protest vote, that it didn't reflect his feelings on marriage at all.  He voted against it because it was pure political gay-bashing, and he wasn't going to be a part of it.  I applaud the stand, and I applaud his continued willingness to state it as such.  But does America agree with that stand?  I have doubts. Where does that leave the Dems?  If I don't think Kerry can win becaue of his presence, and I think Dean's presence is too intense and scary for most people, that leaves Wes Clark and John Edwards.  I think the jury is still out on Clark, who I believe is brilliant, but may not be telegenic enough or have enough experience. Which leaves Edwards.  He's smooth.  He's from the South, complete with the accent.  He's positive.  He's young.  He's getting out a working-class message, without making it sound like class warfare.  I'm not saying he's Bill Clinton, but he sure does have some similarities with the man, both personally and situationally.  In fact, the similarities are starting to get a bit freaky.  He doesn't have the money, and he needs to show well in New Hampshire and win South Carolina. I'm beginning to think Edwards might have the best chance to beat Bush.  10:23:23 AM    Say what?[]

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