The Evil Boyar Leads the Little Father Astray Yet Again

On the other hand, Representative Alan Grayson appeared on CNN and, more in sorrow than in anger, declared that Robert Gibbs knows Fox Talking Points and little else.



One commenter at Joe.My.God lent support to an earlier suspicion of mine when he complained that Grayson is "always, always in frothing at the mouth attack mode, and that kind of constant over the top response wears thin after awhile." Even if I grant that this was meant literally, it's an odd way to characterize Grayson's mild, smiling demeanor in this clip. (Another, Obamabot commenter called Grayson "too radical" -- this middle-of-the-road Democrat from a Southern state! -- and predicted that he won't be re-elected.) If you say something that someone else doesn't want to hear, you'll be characterized as "angry," "frothing," "extreme," no matter how mild your demeanor or how moderate your opinion.

I disagree with Grayson, though, when he blames it all on Gibbs for not doing a better job of representing Obama, of selling the President to the nation's voters. As though Obama couldn't direct his Press Secretary to take a different line, or failing that, to replace him! Given Obama's own expressed contempt for his left critics and his inability to understand why many of his erstwhile supporters have come not to trust him, I see no reason to believe that Gibbs wasn't speaking for his boss on that fateful day. Yes, it was a stupid move, but I think Obama refuses to believe that his actions could be alienating his base.

"Explicit Gay Overtures"?

I was going to write about Teh Obama tonight, but some distractions came up, so I got a late start, and I don't know how long it'll take to vent my wrath. So here are a couple of short bits till tomorrow. I hope.

One: I gave one of my Facebook friends a merciless drubbing last week, with some help from another of his contacts there, for whining that English is in "decline" because, supposedly, Americans have a smaller vocabulary than they used to. That seems to be a dubious claim. Without claiming a decline in the language, though, I've noticed more typographical errors and weird confusion of vocabulary during the past few years than I see in older publications, even in slick commercial media.

To keep it gay: Out magazine, one of the few gay glossies still publishing, included in its Out 100 for 2009 the wonderful English writer Sarah Waters, whose work I've been following since her first novel, Tipping the Velvet. (The photo of Waters above comes from that feature.) The item mentioned that The Little Stranger, her latest, is "her first project without explicitly gay overtures." I think they meant "overtones" there, but Waters doesn't put gay overtones into her work: they are "lesbo historical romps," as the author herself puts it, with plenty of hot-hot girl-2-girl action. In Velvet, for example, a young woman who has worked on the stage as a male impersonator (drag kings are not new) is dumped by her female performing partner and lover. Out of money, she goes out one night in her Guardman's uniform, and discovers that she can earn a living giving handjobs to men who think she's male. One night, though, she's picked up by an older woman who sees through her disguise, and takes her home to meet her collection of dildos. And that's just the first half of the book. There's no need to decode Waters's novels, or look for overtones or subtexts. I'd say that "explicit overtones" is a contradiction in terms, in fact, indicating that the writer didn't know the meaning of one or both of those words. That he or she didn't know the meaning of "overtures" is an added bonus, I guess. (I sent e-mail to the magazine but didn't get a reply; not that I really expected one.)



Two: This clip from Crooks & Liars (via Suburban Guerilla, via the Sideshow). Alan Grayson is not a progressive by all accounts, despite his accepting the label in this interview, though that's not entirely a bad thing given the way that Democrats have fled shrieking from even the milder "liberal." Grayson didn't even flinch. I would have been happier if he, or someone, had added that the Afghan people have paid enough too. But it's exciting to see a Democratic Congressman throwing down the gauntlet to his president like this. I don't know if Obama can be persuaded to end the American occupation of Afghanistan, but for the first time in a long time I feel some, well, hope.

Bonus track: Cuddlebear fundamentalist kingpin Rick Warren has refused to condemn (via Band of Thebes) a proposed law in Uganda that would impose the death penalty for homosexuality, saying that "it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations." Oh, really? He seems to have changed his standards since he called for the assassination of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about a year ago.