Category: The Dish

He’s going to win it if the ornery and mischievous start voting; and she’s going to starve.

Gawker has a contest.

The editor of the Washington Blade weighs in. He makes some fair points. But two questions remain unanswered, and they merit an answer. The first is about Senator Clinton’s speech to HRC. Pace Kevin Naff and John Aravosis, no one has claimed that Clinton was the only candidate invited to address HRC’s board. The real question about the speech is: why was it not announced beforehand? Why was the press not told? Why was it not on the senator’s public schedule?

The content was no secret – a video of the event appeared almost instantly on the web. So why were the press thrown off the scent? You’d think HRC would be thrilled with the attention. You think Focus on the Family would hide the fact that a leading Republican candidate addressed them? Please. The official explanation is that it was a Board Meeting and thus closed to the public. The usual exclusiveness and secrecy. So why release the video? My fear is that either HRC (the group) or HRC (the senator) believes that wide press coverage of Senator Clinton addressing HRC would be damaging to both. So they did it on the downlow. They’re intimidated by the far right. It’s the same defensive crouch we saw when Clinton could not even rebut Peter Pace’s comments on the "immorality" of homosexuality a couple of weeks later. The implicit message is: Clinton will back us but only if we keep it quiet. This is a political version of the closet, and it simply won’t wash. If HRC wants to endorse Clinton, fine. But welcome her and endorse her in the open in the light of day. Have her address the group with the press present. Get clear promises from her. Hold her accountable in office. Instead, we got a classic example of HRC’s dysfunctional secrecy, cravenness and partisanship. And we risk the same mug’s game that we went through with her husband. If Clinton isn’t comfortable standing up in public in front of the press defending gay rights to a gay group, then she has no business addressing it in the first place. Cut out the defensiveness. And cut out the secrecy.

The second question is one posed again by Naff. It’s simple. How many members have paid the recommended minimum membership fee of $35 in the last year? HRC has the answer. They won’t tell us. They feel contempt for the press and for much of the gay movement. In Naff’s words:

HRC should answer the questions raised about its actual membership and resolve this distraction once and for all.

How about it?

"While I breathe, I hope" – my reader’s inspiration (from the same Latin root) – is a phrase not from the Bible but from Cicero. It’s also the state motto of South Carolina.

Which party has the edge? It was once a truism that it was the Republicans. After this crew, and their bungled wars, it’s a different story.

A reader writes:

I was diagnosed with kidney failure before I was 22. I was so young. I can barely conceive of such youth, now. I was not really diagnosed. It was more like being mauled by a bear, or hit by a truck. I was out of my head and unconscious for a few days, but the sickness was easy for doctors to diagnose.

In the beginning, as I realized the gravity of my illness, I did not take it well. I was completely disoriented and confused. Only my mother and father kept me going. Gradually, as I adapted to this new way of life, I struggled to cope.  I saw people give up when there was still hope, and they died. I started to think "don’t give up hope, when there is still hope left." Later, I found a quote which I have held as my own, "while I breathe, I hope." I don’t know where it came from, perhaps from the Bible? I don’t know.

The summer I got sick, I had just graduated from college and I would begin graduate school in the Fall. The nephrologist who was assigned to me was a young man. He told me that I was not to worry, that he would do all my worrying for me. He told me not to cancel my plans for graduate school, that graduate school was the best place for me. I did not take him up on his offer to do all my worrying for me, but I did go to graduate school.

I am thinking about this because of John and Elizabeth Edwards’s decision to continue their campaign. It is a good decision.

I agree. When I went through a similar experience, I found this book by Anatole Broyard particularly helpful. Only the Gospels helped me more.

It’s another institution that could do with a lot more transparency and accountability. This story seems pretty damning to me.

Concerned Women for America’s Sandy Rios got into a major spat with governor Mitt Romney over marriage equality at a small gathering with various religious conservatives. She talks about her private confrontation with Romney here on her radio show. Money quote:

"He was absolutely furious with me. He completely lost his composure and his temper."

She goes on to say that she won’t support him and would prefer Giuliani over Romney because "whatever is convenient at the moment seems to be the position [Romney] endorses."

A smart-ass reader adds:

So she prefers Rudy because she wants a guy who can control his temper and won’t flip-flop for political expedience. There’s a brilliant choice.

An interesting analysis of the Lancet study I linked to earlier. A reader states the obvious:

The results seem pretty self evident to me. As someone who has done his fair share of drinking and smoking marijuana, I know which one had significant negative effects if I did too much of it. In short, smoking too much pot just made me sleepy. It never made me emotionally volatile, or had me doing things I regretted the next day. It never caused me to spend hours in the bathroom vomiting. It never left me incapacitated with a terrible hangover the next day.  All of my worst party-related experiences in college were the result of too much booze, not too much pot.

As for gateway drugs, I did cocaine once in my life, over a decade after I smoked my first joint, and, interestingly enough, at the end of a night of heavy drinking.  I never felt the urge to do stronger drugs after smoking marijuana.

What is wrong with our politics that the bleeding obvious has to be denied by almost every single politician?

Every time his awful face and moronic humor arrives on the television screen, one lunges for the remote at light speed. He’s dumb, racist, and unfunny. But other comics claim he’s also a plagiarist of others’ jokes. I posted a pretty damning YouTube on this a while back. Now check this out: a side-by-side comparison between a joke by Bill Cosby and a joke by Carlos Mencia (not his real name). See for yourself: