I’m off to the West Coast for the season finale of Bill Maher’s Real Time on HBO this Friday night. I’m on with comedian D.L. Hughley and Noam Chomsky. God help me. Thanks also for the incredible readership over the past two days. Our previous traffic high was around 150,000 daily visits. Yesterday, we hit 330,000, and today something in the same ball-park. I remember blogging the last election (yes, I was blogging before it was so cool) and was thrilled to get 10,000 visits. I’d still be thrilled to get 10,000. But thirty times that number is sweet. Blogging really comes alive at times like these – because we’re all going through these things together in real time. Thanks for being there. As someone once remarked, it makes it all ress ronery.
TWO EMAILS: Reading my in-tray today has been an experience. It’s not just that I’m tired from being up all night. It’s that I didn’t expect the emotions I felt today. And readers have chimed in – well over a thousand emails. Yes, many have focused on the gay issue, and, given what has just happened, and the strategy that underpinned it, why not? Heading out to dinner last night, in a mainly gay neighborhood, I was struck by how many people looked shell-shocked, frightened, grim. Here’s an email I got minutes before I left that helps provide some context:
“I wonder if you noticed that yesterday all eleven states that considered the question of gay marriage voted to ban it. ALL ELEVEN. I think this sends a very clear message — true Americans do not like your kind of homosexual deviants in our country, and we will not tolerate your radical pro-gay agenda trying to force our children to adopt your homosexual lifestyle. You should be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that we even let you write a very public and influential blog, instead of suppressing your treasonous views (as I would prefer). But I’m sure someone like yourself would consider me just an “extremist” that you don’t need to worry about. Well you are wrong — I’m not just an extremist, I am a real American, and you should be worried because eleven states yesterday proved that there are millions more just like me who will not let you impose your radical agenda on our country.”
Then I got this:
“I’ll tell you, being a 16 year-old gay kid in Michigan just got a hell of a lot worse. When I woke up this morning and saw the anti gay marriage proposal had passed, I was shocked. I realized the situation I’m faced with everyday in school – the American people have just shown my classmates that it’s perfectly fine to discriminate. A direct quote from a ‘friend’ at school today: ‘It’s so cool that all these states just told all the faggots to eat shit and get the hell out…’ Because of the above events, I am at a crossroads … I’m the youngest card-carrying Republican in the county, and am constantly asked to get others involved for Bush/Cheney. Herein lies a problem, I can’t bring myself to do that. Bush totally lost all my support (I know I can’t vote – but I make a hell of a campaigner) when he supported the amendment to ban gay marriages, and I felt bad that in straying from Bush, I was abandoning Cheney, who I have an amazing amount of respect for. Many would say go Democrat… but I can’t do that (that signals the absence of a spine up here), and in the next year, I’m considering dropping my membership to the party. Especially this year, despite how undercut and violated I feel as a gay person, I couldn’t be happier that I am. I’ve got a stronger will because of it, and will lead my life just as strongly.
How do you stay calm and upbeat after two emails like that?
The Dish 