Friday, February 27, 2004
The weather outside is sunny and warm, a promise of spring to come. And spring is, according to common legend, mating season. Which means…that’s right! It’s sex day!
As you all know, the government is cracking down on all forms of sex not approved by the Republican National Committee. These include: Sex on television, sex on radio, and sex with someone you’re not married to, even if it’s someone you’d really like to be married to but the government won’t let you. A couple of years ago, Republicans were going after sex on the Internet, but ever since Congress and the RNC got broadband, they seem to have lost interest in banning web porn. Maybe they’re too busy downloading movie trailers.
Anyway, the reason for this sudden, puritanical outburst of rhetoric and doomed legislation is the Republican desire to protect marriage. I say, “Bravo,” though I think that if you really wanted to protect marriage you’d outlaw happy hour in hotel bars.
Another idea: Pass a Marriage Preservation Act that outlaws low-cut silk blouses and pockets in dress pants that allow a fellow to reach down and maneuver his genetalia so that it pokes out in a way that makes it look larger than it really is.
Marriage is, as the Republicans understand, entirely about sex. Sex sex sex all the time, that’s married life. It’s a wonder the vacuuming ever gets done. Why, just this morning as I was climbing off my wife I said to her, “Well, that’s one down, only nine more to go today.” To which she replied: “I’m outta here,” and left to visit her sister in Texas.
Now, as you can see, my marriage is more threatened by heterosexuality than homosexuality. The only way that homosexuals could pose a threat to my marriage would be if they controlled the scheduling of sports programming. Which, I’m guessing, they don’t.
My lack of fear of homosexuals could be because I’m an overweight middle aged man that no homosexual in his right mind would ever be attracted to. But it could also be because, and I don’t know how to say this without coming right to the point, I’m not gay.
I know this because years ago I worked in Hollywood, which is lousy with homosexuals of all kinds. For example, once I was a the Comedy Store, and I watched two incredibly attractive female homosexuals make out in the back of the Main Room for a half hour. While I found myself incredibly aroused, I don’t think that necessarily makes me gay.
Another time, a homosexual producer friend of mine said to me that he found me attractive. This is not something that anyone of any gender or species had ever said to me before, even out of pity. I was flattered, yes, but the more important question is: Was I tempted? Did his mischievous smile and twinkling eyes and ample back hair entice me into leaving my wife and family?
No, it did not. My marriage survived and my homosexual producer friend, apparently heartbroken, lost a bunch of weight, grew a goatee and moved in with a hunky stock broker in Redondo Beach. They’ve lived together for years and, in what I and Republicans are sure is a desperate second-wave attack on my marriage, pledged to eternally love and care for each other in a ceremony attended by friends and family.
It’s interesting to note that there are many kinds of sex that Republicans don’t see as enough of a threat to marriage to be included in the Constitution, including: Sex taking place over lunch in very expensive hotel suites, sex between older rich men and younger female hotties, and sex between men named “Newt” and women who work in their Congressional office. (I'd amend the Constitution to outlaw that last one in a heartbeat.) So I’m left to wonder: Why do Republicans think homosexuality is so much of a threat to their marriages?
Clearly, Republicans are really, really worried that they might be gay, and that just one happy homosexual couple might push them over the edge into a life of degradation and tastefully appointed sitting rooms.
Which is why I’m here: To help.
First of all, being heterosexual, I grasp for a sports metaphor. “Mr. Republican,” I say, patting the poor, agitated husband and father of three on the shoulder in a manly and non-threatening way, “the best defense is a good offense.” Or is it the other way around? I can never remember. But for right now, assume the best defense is a good offense.
Anyway, Rule #1 of keeping your marriage strong is that you never want to get yourself in a position where your heterosexuality is in question. And the key to that is The Doctrine of Preemption.
You've heard of that, right?
The Doctrine of Preemption is why I'm patting this particular rhetorical Republican on the shoulder in a manly and unthreatening way: If you perceive a threat, act. Maybe the threat is imagined. Maybe you misread an innocent gesture. Maybe my pat on the back wasn’t as manly as intended. Whatever. A the first sign of danger, the Doctrine of Preemption says, lash out.
The Doctrine of Preemption is why men don’t go to the bathroom together the way women do.
“I’m going to the bathroom, Chuck. Would you like to join me?”
That is not something men say to each other, because to us public bathrooms are a threatening and violent wilderness filled with predators. We are on our guard at all times when surrounded by porcelain, and it is entirely within our rights to lash out at any perceived threat to our heterosexuality. Of course, it’s also within anyone else’s rights, so we’re really careful in the john. One false step, we know, and someone’s getting his face smashed in on the back of a toilet tank, even if all someone did was to innocently ask the guy peeing next to him if he was circumcised.
Given the Doctrine of Preemption, the wonder to me is not that there are so many bathroom-related incidents of violence against perceived homosexuals. It’s that guys back in the 1950s didn’t make beating up homosexuals an Olympic sport, like Ice Dancing, but the opposite. Currently, in the world of homosexual cruelty, Brazil is the world champion. Now, one might speculate about the fact that Brazil seems to excel at a lot of sports that involve primarily kicking, which is how girls fight, but there it is.
Preventing homosexuality from intruding on your marriage is not just a physical challenge, of course. You need to prepare mentally because, as Yogi Bera inevitably said, 90% of the game is half mental.
Fortunately, there’s a website that sells books that will help you and yours prepare for that almost irresistible moment when homosexuality comes a knockin’ on the old back door of your otherwise entirely secure marriage. The website’s selection of not-at-all-paranoid books includes, Homosexuality: Legitimate, Alternative Deathstyle, which, according to the description on the site, “debunks homosexual arguments in an engaging, comic-book format.” Which I htink says something about the literacy level of the target audience.
No matter how vigilant we all are, a few good marriages are going to fall prey to attractive, wily homosexuals like this. If that happens to you, keep a clear head. Don’t let anyone take pictures, even if it’s “just for the files.” Don’t carve your names in a heart on a tree. And certainly don’t move to Key West and open a bed and breakfast. Just lay forward and think of England, and it will soon enough be over.
Now you’ve got work to do, because you’re gay and you need help. There are, fortunately, many ways to get back on the straight and narrow. Here’s a list of some of them, and I'm sure you'll find them very reasonable and humane. You can, for example, get a lobotomy, which until the 1950s – the most Republican of decades – was used to keep homos from getting sexual.
And if that doesn’t work, go to this website and check out animals with really, really huge penises. Nothing would put me off homosexuality like a ten foot hard-on, that’s for sure.
As you all know, the government is cracking down on all forms of sex not approved by the Republican National Committee. These include: Sex on television, sex on radio, and sex with someone you’re not married to, even if it’s someone you’d really like to be married to but the government won’t let you. A couple of years ago, Republicans were going after sex on the Internet, but ever since Congress and the RNC got broadband, they seem to have lost interest in banning web porn. Maybe they’re too busy downloading movie trailers.
Anyway, the reason for this sudden, puritanical outburst of rhetoric and doomed legislation is the Republican desire to protect marriage. I say, “Bravo,” though I think that if you really wanted to protect marriage you’d outlaw happy hour in hotel bars.
Another idea: Pass a Marriage Preservation Act that outlaws low-cut silk blouses and pockets in dress pants that allow a fellow to reach down and maneuver his genetalia so that it pokes out in a way that makes it look larger than it really is.
Marriage is, as the Republicans understand, entirely about sex. Sex sex sex all the time, that’s married life. It’s a wonder the vacuuming ever gets done. Why, just this morning as I was climbing off my wife I said to her, “Well, that’s one down, only nine more to go today.” To which she replied: “I’m outta here,” and left to visit her sister in Texas.
Now, as you can see, my marriage is more threatened by heterosexuality than homosexuality. The only way that homosexuals could pose a threat to my marriage would be if they controlled the scheduling of sports programming. Which, I’m guessing, they don’t.
My lack of fear of homosexuals could be because I’m an overweight middle aged man that no homosexual in his right mind would ever be attracted to. But it could also be because, and I don’t know how to say this without coming right to the point, I’m not gay.
I know this because years ago I worked in Hollywood, which is lousy with homosexuals of all kinds. For example, once I was a the Comedy Store, and I watched two incredibly attractive female homosexuals make out in the back of the Main Room for a half hour. While I found myself incredibly aroused, I don’t think that necessarily makes me gay.
Another time, a homosexual producer friend of mine said to me that he found me attractive. This is not something that anyone of any gender or species had ever said to me before, even out of pity. I was flattered, yes, but the more important question is: Was I tempted? Did his mischievous smile and twinkling eyes and ample back hair entice me into leaving my wife and family?
No, it did not. My marriage survived and my homosexual producer friend, apparently heartbroken, lost a bunch of weight, grew a goatee and moved in with a hunky stock broker in Redondo Beach. They’ve lived together for years and, in what I and Republicans are sure is a desperate second-wave attack on my marriage, pledged to eternally love and care for each other in a ceremony attended by friends and family.
It’s interesting to note that there are many kinds of sex that Republicans don’t see as enough of a threat to marriage to be included in the Constitution, including: Sex taking place over lunch in very expensive hotel suites, sex between older rich men and younger female hotties, and sex between men named “Newt” and women who work in their Congressional office. (I'd amend the Constitution to outlaw that last one in a heartbeat.) So I’m left to wonder: Why do Republicans think homosexuality is so much of a threat to their marriages?
Clearly, Republicans are really, really worried that they might be gay, and that just one happy homosexual couple might push them over the edge into a life of degradation and tastefully appointed sitting rooms.
Which is why I’m here: To help.
First of all, being heterosexual, I grasp for a sports metaphor. “Mr. Republican,” I say, patting the poor, agitated husband and father of three on the shoulder in a manly and non-threatening way, “the best defense is a good offense.” Or is it the other way around? I can never remember. But for right now, assume the best defense is a good offense.
Anyway, Rule #1 of keeping your marriage strong is that you never want to get yourself in a position where your heterosexuality is in question. And the key to that is The Doctrine of Preemption.
You've heard of that, right?
The Doctrine of Preemption is why I'm patting this particular rhetorical Republican on the shoulder in a manly and unthreatening way: If you perceive a threat, act. Maybe the threat is imagined. Maybe you misread an innocent gesture. Maybe my pat on the back wasn’t as manly as intended. Whatever. A the first sign of danger, the Doctrine of Preemption says, lash out.
The Doctrine of Preemption is why men don’t go to the bathroom together the way women do.
“I’m going to the bathroom, Chuck. Would you like to join me?”
That is not something men say to each other, because to us public bathrooms are a threatening and violent wilderness filled with predators. We are on our guard at all times when surrounded by porcelain, and it is entirely within our rights to lash out at any perceived threat to our heterosexuality. Of course, it’s also within anyone else’s rights, so we’re really careful in the john. One false step, we know, and someone’s getting his face smashed in on the back of a toilet tank, even if all someone did was to innocently ask the guy peeing next to him if he was circumcised.
Given the Doctrine of Preemption, the wonder to me is not that there are so many bathroom-related incidents of violence against perceived homosexuals. It’s that guys back in the 1950s didn’t make beating up homosexuals an Olympic sport, like Ice Dancing, but the opposite. Currently, in the world of homosexual cruelty, Brazil is the world champion. Now, one might speculate about the fact that Brazil seems to excel at a lot of sports that involve primarily kicking, which is how girls fight, but there it is.
Preventing homosexuality from intruding on your marriage is not just a physical challenge, of course. You need to prepare mentally because, as Yogi Bera inevitably said, 90% of the game is half mental.
Fortunately, there’s a website that sells books that will help you and yours prepare for that almost irresistible moment when homosexuality comes a knockin’ on the old back door of your otherwise entirely secure marriage. The website’s selection of not-at-all-paranoid books includes, Homosexuality: Legitimate, Alternative Deathstyle, which, according to the description on the site, “debunks homosexual arguments in an engaging, comic-book format.” Which I htink says something about the literacy level of the target audience.
No matter how vigilant we all are, a few good marriages are going to fall prey to attractive, wily homosexuals like this. If that happens to you, keep a clear head. Don’t let anyone take pictures, even if it’s “just for the files.” Don’t carve your names in a heart on a tree. And certainly don’t move to Key West and open a bed and breakfast. Just lay forward and think of England, and it will soon enough be over.
Now you’ve got work to do, because you’re gay and you need help. There are, fortunately, many ways to get back on the straight and narrow. Here’s a list of some of them, and I'm sure you'll find them very reasonable and humane. You can, for example, get a lobotomy, which until the 1950s – the most Republican of decades – was used to keep homos from getting sexual.
And if that doesn’t work, go to this website and check out animals with really, really huge penises. Nothing would put me off homosexuality like a ten foot hard-on, that’s for sure.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
I have a new favorite website: Grouphug.us. It's a place where people go to make anonymous confessions. Here's one that's more-or-less typical:
Today's youth: Can't even handle more than one substance abuse problem at a time.
I think I'm going to start posting confessions, although I have concerns that my confessions wouldn't be very interesting. Let's try:
Not very good at all. Maybe I'll make something up. Here's one:
Naw, maybe not.
i was so drunk the other night that i peed on my dorm floor. My roomate saw the whole thing and didnt even bother to help me to the bathroom. Now our whole room smells like urine and i hate her. its not my fault that i cant handle my liquor, weed and coke...
Today's youth: Can't even handle more than one substance abuse problem at a time.
I think I'm going to start posting confessions, although I have concerns that my confessions wouldn't be very interesting. Let's try:
I pretend to be friendly but don't like most people at all. I'm more concerned about my teeth falling out than I am about AIDS in Afica. My underwear has holes in it and sometimes my weiner sneaks out and wanders around my pants.
Not very good at all. Maybe I'll make something up. Here's one:
I lied to a whole country and got us into a war. I'm never going to be as cool as my father. My wife thinks I'm a ninny but she won't admit it because she likes living in a nice house.
Naw, maybe not.
Amending the Constitution can be fun! For those of you who think that our political leaders feel any hesitation at all about adding to the Constitution in service to whatever their political-position-of-the-moment might be, here's a list of Constitutional amendments proposed in the last thirteen years.
Keep in mind, these are not amendments proposed by sandwich-board-wearing lunatics haranguing traffic out on the corner. No, these are amendments proposed by actual elected officials.
Among my favorites: An amendment to ban the early release of prisoners, an amendment to require the re-confirmation of federal judges every six years, and an amendment that would give every person the right to a home of their own. I have a wife and two kids; do we get four homes? Can we have them close to each other so we can visit?
In order to make a more perfect Union, Howard Stern is now off the air on many radio stations across the country. This is not censorship, of course; it's simply corporate policy. It's also a perfect example of why FCC Chairman Michael Powell's (Colin's son) single-minded crusade to increase the number of media outlets that can be owned by a single corporation is so scary. One executive makes a decision, and Howard Stern is knocked off the air in 120 markets.
As George Will says: Yes, well. Howard Stern today, "treasonous" dissent tomorrow. You don't believe that? Ask a Dixie Chick. The Dixie Chicks, of course, learned that when three radio station groups that control the mass of radio stations in the country decided that their Number 1 record was no longer suitable for airplay after lead singer chick Natalie made a wisecrack about President Bush on stage. The lesson: You'd better stay in line with the President that those radio station group owners and managers donate to.
Powell, given his way, would let single companies own TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers in the same market, further concentrating control in the hands of a few powerful executives. Conservatives, who understand what it is like to marginalized in the media, object to this, as do most liberals. But the business-first Bushies -- who never met a Republican-owned, for-profit enterprise they didn't want to rewrite the law in favor of -- think consolidation is just dandy. After all, it's their friends who are going to own the media outlets.
To defend their policy, they look at the resulting media marketplace from the top down, pointing out that each company could only control multiple media outlets in something like 30% of the markets. But looking at things from the bottom-up -- from, say, the individual markets that each of us actually lives in -- paints an entirely different picture. It doesn't matter if a media group controls only 30% of the national market if it controls nearly 100% of my local market. That group controls what my community sees and hears, and when they make decisions -- you know, like "We don't like Howard Stern" or "the Dixie Chicks aren't patriotic" -- that means I don't have a choice. I don't get what they don't want me to get, and if I don't like I can change the channel...to another one of their stations.
OK, well, maybe I can move to another city.
And I don't even like Howard Stern.
Keep in mind, these are not amendments proposed by sandwich-board-wearing lunatics haranguing traffic out on the corner. No, these are amendments proposed by actual elected officials.
Among my favorites: An amendment to ban the early release of prisoners, an amendment to require the re-confirmation of federal judges every six years, and an amendment that would give every person the right to a home of their own. I have a wife and two kids; do we get four homes? Can we have them close to each other so we can visit?
In order to make a more perfect Union, Howard Stern is now off the air on many radio stations across the country. This is not censorship, of course; it's simply corporate policy. It's also a perfect example of why FCC Chairman Michael Powell's (Colin's son) single-minded crusade to increase the number of media outlets that can be owned by a single corporation is so scary. One executive makes a decision, and Howard Stern is knocked off the air in 120 markets.
As George Will says: Yes, well. Howard Stern today, "treasonous" dissent tomorrow. You don't believe that? Ask a Dixie Chick. The Dixie Chicks, of course, learned that when three radio station groups that control the mass of radio stations in the country decided that their Number 1 record was no longer suitable for airplay after lead singer chick Natalie made a wisecrack about President Bush on stage. The lesson: You'd better stay in line with the President that those radio station group owners and managers donate to.
Powell, given his way, would let single companies own TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers in the same market, further concentrating control in the hands of a few powerful executives. Conservatives, who understand what it is like to marginalized in the media, object to this, as do most liberals. But the business-first Bushies -- who never met a Republican-owned, for-profit enterprise they didn't want to rewrite the law in favor of -- think consolidation is just dandy. After all, it's their friends who are going to own the media outlets.
To defend their policy, they look at the resulting media marketplace from the top down, pointing out that each company could only control multiple media outlets in something like 30% of the markets. But looking at things from the bottom-up -- from, say, the individual markets that each of us actually lives in -- paints an entirely different picture. It doesn't matter if a media group controls only 30% of the national market if it controls nearly 100% of my local market. That group controls what my community sees and hears, and when they make decisions -- you know, like "We don't like Howard Stern" or "the Dixie Chicks aren't patriotic" -- that means I don't have a choice. I don't get what they don't want me to get, and if I don't like I can change the channel...to another one of their stations.
OK, well, maybe I can move to another city.
And I don't even like Howard Stern.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
The concept of a Christian Left seems to have blown a few people's minds, judging from my mail. So, as a public service, here is a vastly more informed blog than mine bemoaning the inert politics of the Christian Left:
Couldn't have said it better myself, which is why I had to steal it from TheRightChristians.org.
I'll leave the intelligent debate to people like that. I'm going to go write some booger jokes.
This timidity has allowed conservative Christian leaders like Albert Mohler to set the debate in terms of “religious” versus “secular” and “eternal truths” versus “postmodern relativism.” Mohler, who heads the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and wields considerable influence in the Southern Baptist Convention, writes that the gay marriage issue “reaches the deepest questions of Christian identity and biblical authority.” Indeed it does, but the real competition is not between the religious and the secular but between two sets of religious values that are both represented in the scriptures.
Couldn't have said it better myself, which is why I had to steal it from TheRightChristians.org.
I'll leave the intelligent debate to people like that. I'm going to go write some booger jokes.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
You know, this is the time of year I grow nostalgic. Down south, spring training is going on. Ballplayers are gathering on green grass, and all around them kids and dads are looking on, taken away by the wonder of a sport that is almost mystical in its hold on some of us.
At the same time, I'm bombarded with imagery from the far north, of ice sculptures that remind me of my youth in a place where kids played hockey on frozen ponds and the snow piled up into mountains along the sides of country roads.
But mostly, right now, I find myself nostalgic for a Republican Party that believed in state's rights. In fact, I'm nostalgic for a Republican Party that believed in anything more important that forcing the rest of us to live according to their stunted, repressive interpretation of The Bible. Amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage? Are these people nuts? Do they recognize no limits?
Of course not. All that talk about states rights...blanced budgets...individual liberty...limited government power...that was all politics. You don't htink they actually believed all the stuff, did you?
What the Republicans are all about is fear. It's a party of scared people who see the world around them changing and want to go back.
I'm a Christain, by the way. You might not be able to detect that because my voice, these days, is dripping with contempt. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, I say. And then I start throwing stones and hoping that no one notices.
I'm a bourbon-drinkin', lustin'-in-my-heart kind of Christian who goes to church almost every week, teaches Sunday School, and serves on the Congregation Council at my church. Most importantly, I believe that it is by faith and the grace of God that we are saved.
And I'm horrified by the cabal of fundamentalists that has taken over our government.
While the reaction of many is understandably to take a reflexive whack at all Christians, since it's Christianity that is in many circles being used to justify the Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage, it's worth remembering that there's such a thing as the Christian Left, as well. It's also worth noting that millions of Christians are going to get on their knees tonight and pray for the enlightenment of those who see love and react with fear. We're going to try to control the anger we feel at those who would repress others, because we know that we, too, are guilty of sin.
And, to be honest, a lot of us wil fail and get really, really angry.
But it is the understanding that none of us is without sin that is the heart of the tolerance that makes possible American freedom: We forgive others because we know we need forgiveness as well. Biblical Christianity is a live-and-let-live faith that is more liberal than any other. How it gets twisted around to serve the neurotic needs of bigots is absolutely beyond me, but it does.
So, just remember: Please don't condemn all Christians in the same breath you use to condemn President Bush and his Republican Taliban.
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to protect rights. The Republican Party keeps coming up with new amendments designed to restrict rights. Do you think maybe they're just a teensy bit confused?
At the same time, I'm bombarded with imagery from the far north, of ice sculptures that remind me of my youth in a place where kids played hockey on frozen ponds and the snow piled up into mountains along the sides of country roads.
But mostly, right now, I find myself nostalgic for a Republican Party that believed in state's rights. In fact, I'm nostalgic for a Republican Party that believed in anything more important that forcing the rest of us to live according to their stunted, repressive interpretation of The Bible. Amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage? Are these people nuts? Do they recognize no limits?
Of course not. All that talk about states rights...blanced budgets...individual liberty...limited government power...that was all politics. You don't htink they actually believed all the stuff, did you?
What the Republicans are all about is fear. It's a party of scared people who see the world around them changing and want to go back.
I'm a Christain, by the way. You might not be able to detect that because my voice, these days, is dripping with contempt. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, I say. And then I start throwing stones and hoping that no one notices.
I'm a bourbon-drinkin', lustin'-in-my-heart kind of Christian who goes to church almost every week, teaches Sunday School, and serves on the Congregation Council at my church. Most importantly, I believe that it is by faith and the grace of God that we are saved.
And I'm horrified by the cabal of fundamentalists that has taken over our government.
While the reaction of many is understandably to take a reflexive whack at all Christians, since it's Christianity that is in many circles being used to justify the Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage, it's worth remembering that there's such a thing as the Christian Left, as well. It's also worth noting that millions of Christians are going to get on their knees tonight and pray for the enlightenment of those who see love and react with fear. We're going to try to control the anger we feel at those who would repress others, because we know that we, too, are guilty of sin.
And, to be honest, a lot of us wil fail and get really, really angry.
But it is the understanding that none of us is without sin that is the heart of the tolerance that makes possible American freedom: We forgive others because we know we need forgiveness as well. Biblical Christianity is a live-and-let-live faith that is more liberal than any other. How it gets twisted around to serve the neurotic needs of bigots is absolutely beyond me, but it does.
So, just remember: Please don't condemn all Christians in the same breath you use to condemn President Bush and his Republican Taliban.
The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to protect rights. The Republican Party keeps coming up with new amendments designed to restrict rights. Do you think maybe they're just a teensy bit confused?
