I’ve been reading the blogs from the actual convention and I have to sya they’re telling me nothing new or interesting. Here’s a particularly desperate missive from Reason’s usually excellent blog, trying to find something to write about:
One Exceedingly Trivial Thing You Probably Didn’t Know About Larry King. He doesn’t walk, he sashays — left hand on hip, pinkie and ring-finger sticking out at dramatic angles, as he swivel-shoulders down the hallway with his jacket collar half flipped up. Looks like a 70-year-old former Teddy Boy who is very comfortable with his feminine side.
Sooo glad I know that. In Boston, hacks outnumber delegates by four to one. Mickey is reduced to quoting cab drivers. Jonah is writing about his hotel. What a complete waste of time and money. Look, I think these conventions should be televised for two hours a night on the networks. Both political parties should have a chance to present themselves and their candidates as effectively as possible. But the notion that being there has any real journalistic merit is preposterous. Next time, the bloggers should save the money and switch to C-Span.
GAYS FOR BUSH: Finally, an argument that made me turn my head:
It amazes me that you have become so disturbed by the Republican rhetorical attacks that you are throwing away strategy in favor of useless emotional retribution. Every recent extremist Republican maneuver against gays has served only to assist the gay rights agenda. Whether it be the anti-gay anti-sodomy state laws that were overturned or the rejection of a vote on the FMA. The conservatives are aiding the gay cause by creating a legal paper trail of defeats for their side.
Additionally, having radical anti-gay conservatives polarizes Americans in favor of gay rights. Not to sound too much like the Shining Path, but creating a vastly unfair current situation can be a faster method of eventually reaching the goal of fairness than patching up the inequity with half solutions (civil unions.) Separate but equal had a very long life span in race relations; we don’t want the same to happen with gay rights. Supporting democrats who support the ‘separate but equal’ standard is a step back in achieving equality.
I think this reader has a point. Gays have two options: a party that despises their civil rights and a party that takes gay votes for granted. There are risks on both sides. But when you have people like Rick Santorum leading the crusade against gay dignity, gays win. When someone like Bush appears to be coming from the 1950s in his attitudes toward gays, gays win. The danger is that these people actually get things passed – stripping gays of civil rights, of the right to form private contracts, of the right to serve their country, penalizing people with HIV in immigration law, and so on. But their extremism is so palpable that they often fail and their prejudice is so obvious that they turn moderates off. Clinton, on the other hand, made anti-gay discrimination acceptable – by signing DOMA (while he was committing adultery!), by doubling the rate of gay discharges from the military, by making HIV-positive immigrants illegal, and so on. I have similar worries about Kerry. But I’m not sure a gay person can risk the damage the Republicans would do to gay lives, security and civil rights. Bush clearly wants to deny gay couples any legal protection for their relationships, and will never stray from the dictates of James Dobson and Rick Santorum on the issue. It would take an awful amount of cynicism to reward that.
The Dish 