So after a couple days like that, Donald Trump turns up zombified and sniffing.
There is no point to the observation, yet, as we have yet to see if he brought anything other than concussed spite. But the first bit has been, shall we say, strange.
‡
Slog
The Pervert from Ward Four
At some point the question arises why it is that the outburst of perversity we’ve seen in recent years, resulting as such from the advancement of gay rights, actually comes in the form of the conservative, family-values crowd (ahem!) letting it all hang out?
Fayetteville Councilman John La Tour, a tea party member and recipient of Josh Duggars campaign funding, is being accused of threatening to expose himself to a female employee of a city restaurant. People who witnessed the incident say he approached the woman assuming she was transgender and told her that he was man and that could prove it by dropping his pants
(Busey)
Naturally, it’s everyone else’s fault; the Planet Transgender report notes he was in a restaurant where, “The music was overly loud despite his request to lower the volume, so he responded by dancing along with it, he said”. And why does it always start with some version of, “There I was, minding my own business, being oppressed for no reason, so I decided to just go along with it, and hey …”?
No, really.
La Tour said the incident began during his regular Friday morning stop at Arsaga’s to meet a group of acquaintances. The music was overly loud despite his request to lower the volume, so he responded by dancing along with it, he said. He intended to ask the employee to dance with him but wanted to confirm she was a woman first, La Tour said, citing the ordinance.
“You can declare you’re a man or you’re a woman, whatever you want to,” La Tour said. “I’m not going to ask a man to dance with me.”
An Earworm, With Love (Everybody Wants to Love You)
So … I need you to click on over to BandCamp and check out a song because it is very nearly driving me bonkers for being so damn awesome.
• Japanese Breakfast, “Everybody Wants to Love You”
Can I get your number? Can I get you into bed? When we wake up in the morning, will you give me lots of head? Everybody wants to love you. Everybody wants to love you!
No, really. This song is way too fun.
It is also true I have no connection to Japanese Breakfast or Yellow K records, and owe a sincere tip of the hat to Ciara Dolan of The Stranger. She was not kidding when she wrote, “This is one of the best songs of 2016 and we’re only three months in.”
The album is Psychopomp, due from Yellow K Records on 1 April. Oh, and they’re pressing clear vinyl.
Yeah. I know. People get ready. For certain.
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Image note: Detail of cover art for ‘Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast (Yellow K Records, 2016)
Dolan, Ciara. “Six New Bangers to Get You Through This Rainy Week”. Slog. 9 March 2016.
Required Reading (Brodonculous Boss Mix)
So, gentlemen … the note from Rich Smith of The Stranger is required reading:
If you’re anything like me, you think of Planned Parenthood as a giant women’s restroom. No boyz allowed. It’s some kind of sacred vagina temple where mystic labia wizards lay their hands upon pregnant women and pass on the ancient tales of womanhood.
But it turns out that’s all crazytalk. Planned Parenthood is for men, too. They do dude stuff. And they do it cheap.
You can get screened for STDs. You can get a general physical for school/sports. If you’re an older guy, you can get your prostate checked out and your balls screened for ball cancer. You can get a vasectomy. If you’re having troubles getting it up or coming too fast, then you can talk to somebody about that stuff as well.
Go. Read. Think.
A Paragraph Very Nearly As Awesome As the Music It Describes
“An objectively killer year for Seattle music became objectively even killerer today with the release of two fantastic albums by two fantastic bands that are both actually just one person (apiece). Telekinesis (a.k.a. Michael Lerner) has delivered Ad Infinitum, his/their fourth album, and a major departure from the first three. Not quite a Sex Pistols —> PiL departure, but more like if Cheap Trick had followed up In Color with Junk Culture by OMD.”
And on that note, hell, just go check it out.
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Nelson, Sean. “New Albums from Telekinesis, Say Hi, and Literally Hundreds of Other Artists Out Today”. Slog. 18 September 2015.
The Not-So-Gay Divorceé
The question of a divorceé has long plagued Christian supremacists who denounce marriage equality and gay rights, but, you know, really? Not only has Kim Davis already licensed transgender man and his pansexual wife, and most likely also issued plenty of marriage licenses to divorceés, but it also turns out that Ms. Davis is herself a serial adulterer.
On this point, Travis Gettys of Raw Story considers an appearance by Dan Savage on msnbc; the author, advice columnist, and editor of The Stranger, Mr. Savage spared no punches:
“I think Kim Davis is waiting to cash in,” Savage told MSNBC. “I predicted from the beginning that she would defy all the court orders, defy the Supreme Court, she would ultimately be held in contempt of court, lose her job, perhaps go to prison for a short amount of time. And then she will have written for her, ghost written books. She will go on the right-wing lecture circuit and she’ll never have to do an honest day’s work ever again in her life.”
“This is about someone hypocritically cashing in, and she is a hypocrite,” he added.
Savage referred to the defiant clerk’s statement complaining that courts were asking her to “violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage” — which the columnist dismissed as ridiculous.
“This is a woman who’s been divorced three times and married four times,” he said, reading from the US News & World Report article that pointed out Davis “gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband, (and) they were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second husband.”
“She’s now onto her fourth husband,” Savage said. “Jesus Christ himself in scripture condemned divorce, called it adultery and forbids it. Jesus Christ himself in scripture says not one word about same-sex marriage.”
Savage said the U.S. Supreme Court had already decided the issue of same-sex marriage, and he said Davis clearly should have followed the law all along.
“She’s not being asked to perform a sacrament, she is tasked with ascertaining that the people in front of her, the couple in front of her, have a legal right to get married and to provide them with that license,” he said. “She is not a minister. She actually thinks she works for God there in the county courthouse, when she actually works for Caesar — and someone needs to acquaint her with that fact.”
Or we might attend Mr. Savage himself, who recently blogged, among other notes:
I would say I can’t wait for a Muslim county clerk in, say, Dearborn, Michigan (which has a huge Muslim community), to refuse to issue a marriage license to a Christian couple on the grounds that the this kafir couple hasn’t been paying jizya… but that’s not going to happen. Religious minorities in this country intuitively understand that to empower religious bigots like Davis is to paint bullseyes on their own backs. So the Jesus-freak goons at the Liberty Counsel work to frame discrimination as a “religious freedom” because they’re confident that American Christians will be the ones doing the discriminating, not suffering from it.
This is an important point. Something about functional reality goes here.
A Note on ‘Curing’ Heterosexuality (Puppy Power Mystery Mix)
There is a long, hard joke in there somewhere involving basic Freudian propositions of differentiation between polymorphous equivalence in pleasure seeking and genital focus. And with a setup like, that, well, right. But it did come about that in the wake of an embarrassing trial and subsequent, obvious verdict against a conversion therapy outfit called Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), a friend mused on the thought of whether or not humanity might achieve a cure for heterosexuality.
The unfortunately requisite disclaimer here is threefold; there is an obvious cure, it is an obvious joke, and there are still people in the world who would take such a joke as some manner of genuine threat. No, we’re not coming to apply anti-straight conversion therapy.
To the other ....
Last weekend, I was hanging out at the Cuff, the leather bar at 13th and Pine, when a man to my left pulled out a pink rubber ball.
(Baume)
Something about a setup like that goes here, but here’s another morbid joke, and this one almost worth recounting. (more…)
The British Prime Minister Forking His Tube Steak
And here I thought American elections were rough.
Crude.
Petty.
Damn.
On Monday, David Cameron did something very brave. The British prime minister, facing what is likely to be an extremely close race for reelection May 7, went to a voter’s garden and had a meal. Braver still, he allowed the British press to take photographs of him eating the meal.
It sounds strange, but in Britain’s election season, food-eating has become political. And it didn’t take long for Brits to notice that Cameron was eating wrong: He was using a knife and a fork to eat a hot dog.
(Taylor)
Then again, yeah, it’s kind of easy to understand. Indeed, it seems a slightly worse gaffe than the time Mitt Romney declared his love of tube steak.
Sigh. Tube steak.
A note for Mr. Cameron: Gaffes are better if done with some sort of stylish entendre. Try asking the press what it matters if you like to fork your tube steak.
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Image note: Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has a bite to eat with Lilli Docherty and her daughter Dakota in their garden as he meets people who have benefited from tax and pension changes that come into force Monday, near Poole, on April 6. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP)
Taylor, Adam. “Britain’s prime minister ate a hot dog with a knife and fork, and it’s a problem”. The Washington Post. 7 April 2015.
Layne, Ken. “Proving He’s a True Republican, Mitt Expresses Love of ‘Tube Steaks'”. Wonkette. 4 September 2007.
Ryan, Adrian. “Free Paris, My Fanny, and a Lusty Message from the Cement Hotel!” Slog. 7 June 2007.
The Ted Cruz Show (The Stripper)
Note: Okay, this is the part where I feel really, really stupid. I hadn’t been paying attention, even while picking up on Matt Baume’s work at HuffPo. Welcome to the Emerald City, sir, and sorry for the late greeting.
So, anyway, Matt Baume, for Slog:
He treated the crowd to the usual foaming at the mouth about those gross homosexual marriages, but he also hinted that maybe the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality doesn’t have to be so, you know, supreme-ish.
What he was referring to is a little-known practice called “jurisdiction stripping”—yes, really, it’s called that. And the reason it’s little-known is that nobody’s managed to do it in 147 years.
In theory, Congress can pass a law stripping federal courts of their authority to rule on certain topics, and Cruz wants you to believe that he’s going to do that when it comes to marriage. Sure, Ted. Racist lawmakers weren’t able to stop Loving v. Virginia when the vast majority of the country opposed interracial marriage, but you’re going to be the one guy who manages to stop gays and lesbians from getting married in Laredo. Okay. Nice dream, bro.
Like so many folks in the stripping profession, Ted’s little performance is just a fun little tease. There’s no chance he’s actually going to go all the way.
It’s worth a read.
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Image note:US Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivers remarks before announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination to run for US President March 23, 2015, at Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia. (Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)
Baume, Matt. “Ted Cruz’s Strip Tease”. Slog. 7 April 2015.
Nostalgia: The Mingling Scents of Bluegrass and Excrement
Ah, Kentucky. To the one, it is true that I believed nobody could top the stupidity of Paul Clement, arguing for House Republicans in Hollingsworth that irresponsible procreation by heterosexuals was a good reason to ban gay marriage.
To the other, there is Kentucky.
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear says the state’s ban on gay marriage should be upheld in part because it is not discriminatory in that both gay and straight people are barred from marrying people of the same gender.
In an argument labeled absurd by gay marriage advocates, Beshear’s lawyer says in a brief filed last week at the U.S. Supreme Court that “men and women, whether heterosexual or homosexual, cannot marry persons of the same sex” under Kentucky law, making the law non-discriminatory.
The argument mirrors that offered by the state of Virginia nearly 50 years ago when it defended laws barring interracial marriage there and in 15 other states, including Kentucky, by saying they weren’t discriminatory because whites were barred from marrying blacks just as blacks were barred from marrying whites.
The Supreme Court in 1967 rejected that argument in the historic case of Loving v. Virginia, in which Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, were charged with a crime for marrying.
(Wolfson)
This Is 