¿Normalization?

This is a sentence that ought to thrill hearts: “America may be closer to a post-gay state of politics than most realize”. Alex Roarty’s report for Roll Call either begs certain questions or else desecrates them; matters of perspective abide.

The St. Jerome Fancy Farm Picnic is an annual showcase for Kentucky’s top politicians to give (they hope) a funny, sharp-elbowed speech at the other party’s expense. While they speak, hundreds of loud-mouthed partisans are encouraged to yell and scream as loudly as they can―as if the American political id was caged in a small pavilion two hours from a major airport.

“I want to introduce myself to Sen. McConnell,” he said, looking over to the Senate majority leader seated a few feet away, who minutes earlier had given his own speech. The Republicans, whose voices drowned out the sound of nearby thunder, chanted “Go away Gray!”

The candidate continued: “He earlier called me a ‘nobody.’ Well, let me introduce myself, senator. I am Jim Gray, and I am the guy who is going to beat Rand Paul.”

What went unnoticed this recent Saturday afternoon was that Gray was probably first openly gay person to speak at Fancy Farm. Records aren’t easy to come by for something that began in 1880, but veterans of the event say they can’t recall an openly gay speaker.

This is how Gray’s campaign has gone: He’s making history, and nobody seems to notice. Or, for that matter, care.

Accommodation

There is some murmur and buzz going ’round this week because a professional boxer said something mean about homosexuals:

Boxing legend Manny Pacquiao is backtracking after claiming that “it’s just common sense” that homosexuality is a sin against nature, after having earlier asked whether anyone has ever “seen any animal having male-to-male or female-to-female relations?”

He initially claimed that animals were superior to people — or members of the LGBTQ community, at least — because “if you have male-to-male or female-to-female [relations] then [you] are worse than animals.”

(Kaufman)

To the one, it is, indeed, discouraging to find ourselves this far into the Gay Fray only to be reminded just how badly we’ve retarded the societal discourse in order to accommodate conservatives who really, really need some kind of warm fuzzy by feeling smarter than they are.

To the other, Manny Pacquiao gets punched in the head for a living.

Thus, we would beg mercy for the professional brute as a disability accommodation; it is unfair to expect Manny Pacquiao to be intelligent.

On the upside, it does set a standard. The professional fighter might be thrashed to stupidity, but that speaks nothing of other bigots. So, yeah, you know, when you hear someone talking like this, feel free to ask them about their disability, that you might, in the American spirit, seek to provide some reasonable accommodation.

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Kaufman, Scott Eric. “Manny Pacquiao, boxing legend and Phillipine Senate candidate, denounces gay people for being ‘worse than animals'”. Salon. 16 February 2016.

A Conservative Malady

Is there any sight in the world that could possibly compare to a diva pitching a blind ego tantrum?

Mr. Bill has been dismayed by the relentless barrage of homosexicans cramming gay marriage down supple Christian throats, and the unstoppable onslaught being waged against our nation’s brave bigot bakers.

Our valiant warrior for Christ has decided to take a stand, but not a stand in the way that a normal, constructive human being would do. Rather, he is taking a stand in the same way that those college Republicans do all the time with their racist bake sales: by being a spiteful prick.

In an effort to prove that the gays are just as hateful as Christians and therefore QED ispo facto it’s totally cool to not let them have rights, Mr. Bill has filed a discrimination complaint against a Denver baker who denied him his civil rights of having “God Hates Gays” on a cake.

Or so explains Fare la Volpe explains for Wonkette, and you know, we might pause to wonder about that tendency among conservatives to go around pitching this sort of fit and simply failing to comprehend the difference.

So, this is my offer: Tell you what: We’ll give you what you want. You can be just as big a social disease as you want. But there’s a trade-out. To make certain people aren’t abusing the priviliges, we’ll need to create a registry. Just bring evidence that you are a registered Republican, and we will give you a placard, you know, blue with a little white wheelchair on it. And being dangerously, comedically stupid will be the special accommodation you get for admitting you have to be psychiatrically disabled in order to believe the crap you’re pushing.

The Electric Jonestown Clusterbumble

This was inevitable:

You’ve probably heard the expression, “He drank the Kool-Aid.”

Arianna Huffington once used it to describe supporters of George W. Bush’s economic policies. Bill O’Reilly said it of his critics (“the Kool-Aid people,” he told listeners, “are going nuts”). In 2012, Forbes called it a top annoying cliché used by business leaders.

There’s a problem with this flip word play though: That expression was born of a nightmare.

Thirty-seven years ago today, 918 people died in Jonestown, a Guyana jungle settlement, and at a nearby airstrip. Some of us knew the victims. I grew up with one of them, Maria Katsaris.

(Richardson)

Alright, then, you heard the man.

And in truth, his reason is no worse than any other, even for those of us who found the phrase offensive for its blithe lack of distinction. That is to say, drinking electric Kool-Aid is a variation on the theme, and much more useful than the Jonestown variation, but from the outset it has been subject to a certain sort of (ahem!) “affirmative action” whereby a conserative drinks the Kool-Aid by believing in a tinfoil wingnut conspiracy theory, but a liberal believes the Kool-Aid by disagreeing with conservatives. At some point, conservatives need to just come right out and demand reasonable accommodation under the ADA.

Yet this is how far we’ve come.

And who knows, perhaps before all this is over, Republicans will fulfill the Jonestown version, too. You know, “Second Amendment solutions”, and all.

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Richardson, James D. “The phrase ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ is completely offensive. We should stop saying it immediately.” The Washington Post. 18 November 2014.

Waldman, Paul. “The real problem with Joni Ernst’s quote about guns and the government”. The Washington Post. 23 October 2014.