I may not know Joe (Scarborough) but I know homosexual panic when I see it

What is it with Joe Scarborough?

His answer to every ill, whether the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Murder Inc. Op in Iraq or the fall of the economy, his pointed finger as to blame is ALWAYS summed up in two words:

BARNEY FRANK

I'm not gay, so you can't throw that "Oh you're just understandably paranoid but you're not objective" denial crap at me.

But I have worked and socialized around enough gay men and women in TV, movies, and theater to recognize the weirdness that comes across such doofuses as Scarborough -- and are willing to allow to show when with a hetero male -- when they know that hetero male doesn't seem to care if a person he is working with is gay or straight -- the exception is the intense disrespect that this hetero male has for the gay-bashers who ARE gay and who deny it, which brings us back to Joe Scarborough -- who I truly believe is NOT gay, BUT he doesn't know it and seems to be still going through some post-adolescent ongoing homosexual panic.

The banks refuse to tell the public what they're doing (or not doing) with the $250 billion already dumped on them? Well, hell -- it must be Barney Frank's fault because he was warned in 2002.

Mortgage defaults? Must be Barney Frank's fault because he wanted Americans to be able to have their own homes.

The failure of the adventure in Iraq? Barney did it.

This is not political commentary -- this is something that might be described in a reference work like Psychopathia Sexualis.

What's it mean when a big young male with beady eyes and an attitude a mile long is obviously preoccupied (if not obsessed) in a negative way with an older man, a gay man who has no problem with everyone knowing he's gay? Let the amateur psychologists run amok with it.

Especially when that young man is -- unlike his bugaboo, who is a successful and powerful congressman -- is a failed congressman who repped the sugar interests of the Florida Panhandle until he resigned "to spend more time with his children" (although most children I've seen with an overbearing know-it-all father don't really mind if daddy is nowhere around, in fact, prefer it) and now runs a morning TV show where his sidekick is a young woman who has -- remarkably -- a father who is incredibly dominating and overbearing and (Scarborough) gets to silence her, talk over her and treat her like home-made shit, possibly making her feel the way her own father used to make her feel and still seems to do (when they discuss Zbiggie's guesting on that or a future show) -- seems to be something she needs, something she craves, something most people who work with battered women know and call "comfort abuse."

He behaves the same way in varying degrees to other women who are either in the news or who come on the show -- doesn't seem to like women much at all (which is NOT homosexual but what is known as homoerotic -- all us boys together in the locker room snapping towels at each others' asses, no girls allowed) and while he has that attitude to all women, at least so far as I have been able to stomach him long enough to see, Mika Brzezinski is the pet he gets to abuse the most.

Back to BARNEY FRANK, Scarborough's Professor Moriarty -- the man who is the Secret Ruler of the World, the source of ALL EVIL, the Dictator Bush had said HE wanted to be, the man who is a giant powerful monster who can NOT be denied...

Ahhh -- too much time even thinking about JOE -- so JOE -- get over it -- just get over it -- just grow the fuck up.

Oh the alarms were all ringing, and Bushies were singing...

...because, with only a few weeks left, they got Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke to help Monkey Boy pull off one more BIG GIGANTIC HISTORICALLY MONUMENTAL FINAL THEFT ...

and all the Bushie Cabalists are getting THEIR final bonuses -- and of course none of the big banks are willing to even say what they've done with the billions because no one with authority is trying to make them do so.

These people never understand that the REASON the people get violent is when legal remedies are denied them. (Or, of course, because they like it and dont care if there are legal options, which, in this case, there really aren't.)

I am old enough to:

(1) not get violent any more, and

(2) Remember seeing the cycles go around enough times to realize that such news wonders as sniper shootings on Dallas freeways are related to what the giganto sleazoids on Wall Street are doing between theft and layoffs... ("We only know he was described as a short, bald, middle-aged man..." Remind anyone of Michael Douglas in his one movie where fear of women wasn't the theme?)

The bottom line? They can't AFFORD to let soldiers and marines come back from Iraq to find their homes, jobs, families, etc all gone and them with no skills but special weapons training.

A success: I watched the Bush Family Christmas Skit and didn't throw up

Great God Almighty --Georgie and Laura and the girls and Barney did a little skit -- it was on the level of a High School Play -- no, not the Broadway ones the Juniors and Seniors put on like "The Importance of Being Ernest" or "Our Town" or "Picasso at the Lapin Agile or even the incredibly bad prehistoric ones they put on in the 50's like "Time Out For Ginger" or "Seven Keys to Baldpate" or whatever ... not those -- it was more a skit than a play, the kind of skit Seniors write for themselves for the Spring Festival -- supposed to be clever and fun, but mostly dopey, poorly executed and with lame, wooden lines written by a moron to be read by people of the same mental capability --- (Wow! Does this mean Monkey Boy is actually writing his own stuff?)

It even used the wonder of digital graphics and had a really primitive bit of animation with Barney, and a scene with Georgie talking sternly to him about how we needed to get things done during these final days -- but I was walking back into the room during that last one and couldn't see the screen, so I was certain it was Earl's Brother Randy, the mentally and reality-challenged character Ethan Suplee plays on "My Name is Earl" ("Wow," I thought, "what's HE doing on the news?")

And at the end, Laura, the anatomically correct Stepford Plushy mouthed the lines she was reading about how great it was and what a privilege it has been "to serve America these last 8 years."

At first I thought, glib smartass cynic that I am -- "Yeah, serve America a giant steaming plate of shit."

But then, on further reflection, I put everything I'd seen and heard during the 8 years that Bush and Cheney performed their impression of the Nova Mob* and remembered the classic sci fi story in which the alien visitors were surprisingly kind and generous and gave us all the mommy-daddy stuff we would wish for -- food and clothing and technological wonders -- and they used a reference book called To Serve Mankind**

Remember? Remember the end? The man shouting: "It's a COOKBOOK."

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*Nova Express by William Burroughs

** Actual title: To Serve Man -- it was a short story by Damon Knight, published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in 1950 and 51 years later, in 2001, was given the 1951 Retro Hugo Award for best Short Story.
It was adapted for The Twilight Zone and broadcast on March 2, 1962 and has been sent up and referred to in a passel of movies and TV shows (The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Killer, Madagascar, Married... with Children, et al)

Thanks to Ted Kane and Dick Lupoff, each of whom gave me facts that I've included in the correction above.

He didn't actually say that, did he?

In one of the many "I'm polishing my legacy" interviews, someone put it that it has been well established that Al Quaeda did NOT exist in Iraq until AFTER we invaded ...



And the smirking Monkey Boy actually said: "So what?"




Polishing your legacy? Polishing your own knob is more like it.

George Schaller on the shoe thrower ... hmmm .. haven't we heard that brand of supercilious crap before? Oh right, in the 60's, from the straight guys

My comments on Mr Schaller's finger-pointing article are interspersed and identified with italics.

Monday, Dec. 15, 2008 10:46 EST

Lionizing the shoe thrower

"A rally was held in Baghdad in support of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the al-Baghdadiya TV reporter now in custody who threw his shoes at President Bush.

"As you surely heard by now, al-Zaidi threw first one shoe and then the other at Bush during a press conference Sunday. He shouted, "This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

"Look: Bush has wreaked havoc on Iraq. Death, dismemberment, disfiguring, displacement and political disarray are all part of his tragic legacy. Al-Zaidi has many legitimate reasons to be angry.

OK, get ready -- here comes the windup for the punkout --

"But his actions and the subsequent lionizing of him are not helpful. If anything, the incident created sympathy for Bush (myself included, yes) who is on his way out the door and doesn't deserve it.

---Are you kidding???Sympathy? Poor little Georgie W Bush is a monster with no conscience at all.. oh yeah, we all have lots of sympathy for the man who says, after authorizing mass murder for 8 years, that he didn't have anything to do with it -- and out the door? Looks more he's making a getaway -- memos have established the fact that he personally authorized torture of the people they SAY are enemy combatants -- declaring that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply -- this falls under the aegis of the Yamashita Principle, the precedent established by Dugout Doug MacArthur that says he can be tried for crimes against humanity and if convicted (HERE's my sympathy for W, since it would be easier to find an objective jury for a trial in which O.J. and Saddam Hussein are co-defendants) -- IF convicted, hang him.

"- all so that one television journalist, acting unprofessionally, can draw attention to himself. And don't say he did it to draw attention to the plight of Iraqi widows and orphans. Americans, and the world, know what's going on in Iraq, even if some prefer to ignore it.

---Yeah. living in the middle of chaos and destruction where anyone who actually has a job has no idea if his wife, children, or house itself will be there, or if the Blackwater mercs have gunned them down, he couldn't possibly have issues with the war itself.. and really Thomas -- neither most Americans nor the world in general (except the French and Germans and Russians who opposed our Yahoo-in-Chief's adventurist insanity because they saw what it was really like during WWII) none has the merest idea of what that thing that Schaller and his ilk speak so casually of -- does everyone know the smell of blood or what it sounds like when a living human being is instantly reduced to garbage -- screaming with last breath, or how loud artillery actually is, so loud you can't hear YOURSELF scream.. certainly neither Bush nor Cheney knows anything about it, but Schaller assumes this guy is out only for himself) But back to the man who knows everything:

"If he wanted to be a political agitator, al-Zaidi could have quit his job and joined the ranks of the political protesters. Or he could have used the power of the media to opine.

---this is pure 60's corporate BS -- I remember the suits saying why don't you quit your job so you can protest full time? You know people would listen to you more if you cut your hair and dressed up. Well hell, Tommy Boy -- perhaps you might try to remember the story about Emerson visiting Thoreau in jail (for civil disobedience and protest) and Emerson saying, chidingly "Why Henry, what are you doing in there?" And Thoreau, looking at the man who had influenced him tremendously, and this having been an act of conscience said "Why Waldo -- what are you doing out there?" And not taking a stand against a discernible wrong)

So "Mr Schaller, areYOU saying you feel that mass murder isn't an adequate motivation to stop pontificating about other people's motive and actually say something meaningful?"

"Sure, he got our attention. But Bush cleverly turned that attention into an opportunity to reiterate a point he's made before about how political expression is now possible in ways it was not previously -- which, while true and not without meaning, does little to reduce the real-life effects of all that death, dismemberment, disfiguring, displacement and disarray.

"Further developments and reflections:

"It is not surprising that al-Zaidi is being hailed as a hero in the Arab world. (And, presumably, much of the Muslim world, too.) But, I'm sorry, American journalists and commentators should not be joining the chorus.

Thanks for telling us how we should view that event, i.e., "Are you going to believe your own lying eyes and ears and mind or trust me and think what I tell you to think."

"In a column entitled "A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi" (and the teaser super-headline of "Finally, A Journalist We Can Look Up To!"), Counterpunch's Dave Lindorff opens with this:

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should have done years ago.

And he's right, they should have, and if they did, if they had, the cheers from coast to coast would have been so loud as to collapse buildings.

"Is he joking? Would he say the same thing if an American journalist heaved something at the head of state of some undemocratic regime that engaged in human rights abuses on its own people?

And if that foreign leader's army had invaded America and we were attending the press conference surrounded by foreign troops with automatic weapons? Goddamn right he would.

"Perhaps I missed something one of them wrote, but a quick check of some of the top liberal bloggers -- none of whom are inclined to dial back their criticisms of Bush -- reveals that none have championed what al-Zaidi did. They may have said the video deserves watching; it does, maybe a few times, because let's face it, there is something naturally funny about a shoe being thrown, twice no less, at any president or head of state. But I didn't see anything from Kos, Atrios, Digby, or John Amato in the way of cheerleading for this guy. (Commenters on these sites do not count, natch.)

I don't like Bush. He's been terrible. January 20th cannot arrive fast enough. Our reputation around the globe will take decades to repair. But when somebody throws a shoe at the president, even a horrible and incompetent and insecure president who covers for his insecurities by being horribly incompetent, that person is throwing a shoe at my head and yours, too.

(Maybe your head, not mine. The man who stole two elections and lied and lied in order to start an act of national murder is not MY president -- at first some people pointed that the real reason we invaded was connected to the Banco Lavoro scandle, and Saddam had so many documents addressing the kickbacks of BILLIONS he gave to George HW Bush during the Iran-Iraq war, and he was getting senile, and his two sons, Bozo and Mumu, were planning to making them public)

"And, again, it just lends sympathy and credibility to a president and administration that deserve neither, especially on the issue of Iraq.

(So you're saying "Awww, it was just good clean fun. Those 500,000 dead, many of them kids under 12 who died of dysentery just can't take a joke.")

"As for the lionizing of the TV reporter in the Arab and/or Muslim world, I'm not sure what to make of that. On the one hand, I can understand the frustration. If I had a chance to be close to somebody who caused friends or family members to be killed or injured, I'd want to do more than heave a shoe or two. And I'm all for al-Zaidi being released, without harm, as quickly as possible, because it's the right thing to do generally and also politically, so as not to turn him into a martyr.

But the shoe-bombing by this television journalist was just plain stupid."

Thomas Schaller

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Right. Hey Schaller -- if hypocrisy was gold, you'd be one incredibly rich fellow.

Another post-Prop 8 thought

To put it simply, I am ineffably tired of the argument between the Homophobes and Christers* on one side and same-sex people on the other side.

(I am a heterosexual Old Fart, but whenever there's ANY sort of contest between "This is what I have to do" and "This is what YOU have to do" I will almost always come down on the side of the person discussing his or her OWN life).**

And the most tiresome and boring part of this argument is the part in which the homophobes are yelling: "It's a life-style CHOICE!" and the homophiles are yelling back "It's genetic -- it's NOT a CHOICE."***

That's not the issue, it's a distraction -- the REAL issue is freedom.

Whether it's nature or nurture, inherent in the person from birth or adopted by a person for any one of an infinite number of reasons or no reason at all, there's something I have not heard ANYONE say out loud, not even the people who call themselves Libertarians so I say it to ALL people who oppose same sex marriage, LGBT rights, LGBT employment, ministry, military enlistment, etc:

"Whether it's Genetic or Lifestyle -- who cares? Either way, I can only say to those who oppose either: 'It's none of your fucking business.' "

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*"Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it."
George Bernard Shaw

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** "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live.
It is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
Oscar Wilde

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***Maybe the real issue is that the Fundies just disapprove of CHOICE itself.

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