homophobia

Hillary Clinton was grinning from ear to ear while North Carolina Governor Mike Easley endorsed her by saying she's no "pansy."

It's the kind of veiled homophobic slur wingnuts use. We remind you that both Easley and Clinton are Democrats.

Never mind the innuendo directed at Barack Obama. What about voters who happen to be homosexual, or happen to think homosexuality is in fact not a mortal sin?

Ryan J. Davis on HuffPo:

Now, I know from spending many recesses in middle school being called a pansy that it's just a subtle way of saying "faggot." Clinton stood by while Easley made that comment, smiling away. Speaking to a prominent gay journalist friend of mine this morning, he expressed his frustration with her campaign. "Hillary doesn't care about the gays. It's that simple. We're a political tool, like everything else in that family's orbit."

Clinton owes the gay community, which she has shamefully used as an ATM during her campaign, an apology for gay-baiting. We're waiting, Hillary.

Joe Aravosis on Americablog:

Oh, so Hillary has launched a "culture war" against Obama. And what are the three elements of the culture wars? God, guns, and gays. Hillary already pulled the God and gun card on Obama in Pennsylvania, where she couldn't even say when she last went to church, and then claimed she was a hunter after a lifetime as one of America's top gun control advocates. And now she's gay-bashing.

So will she denounce Governor Easley? Will the media press her on it, after hounding Obama about Reverend Wright?

Oh, but let's not pick on Hillary. She's had such a hard life.

Joe Sudbay on Americablog:

Think about your daily existence and compare it to Hillary's "tough" life.

When was the last time Hillary Clinton:

Went to the grocery store?

Pumped gas?

Had to argue with her health insurance company about a bill?

Had to wait for the cable guy?

Had a spontaneous, unscripted moment?

The woman has lived in a protective bubble for over 16 years. She and her husband have hauled in over $100 million over the past seven years. Everyone around her is either paid to be around her -- or pays to be around her. And, she has paid Mark Penn a lot of money to tell her about the lives of real people, gleaned from focus groups and polls. That's her reality and she's not exactly roughing it.

Via AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth:

So many people so insecure about their sexual orientation that they demand a Constitutional Amendment! So Rudy Giuliani has flip-flopped his position and now finds room for Constitutional homophobia in his vision of a police-state America:

Still liking Giuliani, all you moderates out there? Giuliani was against bashing gays in the US Constitution before he was for it. What a freaking hypocrite, the man is pretending on every single issue to be a "real" conservative when he's simply lying. Giuliani just might give Romney a run for his money as the biggest phony and flip-flopper among the GOP candidates....

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, told The Hill Saturday that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I suppose that's one way for social conservatives to prevent themselves from "choosing to be gay."

While the Larry Craig scandal post-mortems move over all sorts of Via arcane, almost pointless speculations, I'm left wondering whether this is at all a political win for progressives.

Yes, the GOP is imploding over its holier-than-thou right to hate ______________ (fill in the blank), but is giving the "crime" of Craig's sexual orientation such political validity through all the chest-thumping really a "win"?

Yes, Craig seems to be a cheat. But cheats led the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. What's so different now? Because Craig is gay?

This is part of the sad spectacle of American politics that goes back in my memory at least to the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas, when a clearly unqualified not-quite-a-judge was challenged not over his lack of qualifications but rather over sexual misconduct. Anita Hill may have suffered, and I'm inclined to believe her, but was her suffering really to the point? Clarence Thomas sits on the bench, writing inane opinion and dissent, one after the other, like some grumbling old curmudgeon clinging to the dogmas of his angry view of the world, all because the Democrats would not challenge him on the issue at hand: competence.

And now we see the crowing over the fall of Senator Craig, who is all too typical of the fragile conservative male who needs to pass law after law to prevent him from being himself. And we crow over his fall.

But isn't it a bit tragic? War, bloodshed, corruption in the billions of dollars, domestic and abroad, and the only casualties we see are over sexual "deviance" as defined by a bunch of fearful men afraid of their own shadows.

Some victory. Like standing on the top of the hill that's falling into a deeper and deeper hole.

After all, shouldn't a decent red-blooded conservative be allowed to use violence to prove just how not-gay he is?

Carlson said, "Having sex in a public men's room is outrageous. It's also really common. I've been bothered in men's rooms." Carlson continued, "I've been bothered in Georgetown Park," in Washington, D.C., "when I was in high school." When Abrams asked how Carlson responded to being "bothered," as Abrams and Scarborough laughed, Carlson asserted, "I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the -- you know, and grabbed him, and ... hit him against the stall with his head, actually." The laughter continued.

Carlson's comments, coupled with laughter from Abrams and Scarborough, suggested to viewers that physical violence is an appropriate response to an unwelcome overture. This is dangerous and wrong.

MSNBC has yet to acknowledge Carlson's comments or address why Abrams and Scarborough laughed while Carlson recounted his actions. Instead, MSNBC has treated Carlson's comments as a laughing matter, re-airing the portion in which Carlson claimed to have been "bothered," but omitting the portion in which he seemed to boast of physical assault.

Typical liberal media bias -- er, liberal blog bias, trying to oppress decent homophobes! Don't the violently-not-gay people in this world have the right to express themselves, too?

After all, it must be so hard for all these conservatives who had to choose not to be gay in the first place.

Via TalkLeft, it seems Joe Klein is tilting windmills. As one of "those bloggers" who mainstream media and Beltway insider types just love to paint with just such a label, I thought I'd run through the checklist.

A left-wing extremist exhibits many, but not necessarily all, of the following attributes:

--believes the United States is a fundamentally negative force in the world.

Nope.

--believes that American imperialism is the primary cause of Islamic radicalism.

Ha!

--believes that the decision to go to war in Iraq was not an individual case of monumental stupidity, but a consequence of America’s fundamental imperialistic nature.

Utterly stupid, by an imperial fundamentalist president.

--tends to blame America for the failures of others—i.e. the failure of our NATO allies to fulfill their responsibilities in Afghanistan.

Not!

--doesn’t believe that capitalism, carefully regulated and progressively taxed, is the best liberal idea in human history.

That would be silly.

--believes American society is fundamentally unfair (as opposed to having unfair aspects that need improvement).

On the contrary.

--believes that eternal problems like crime and poverty are the primarily the fault of society.

Haven't seen a cure for these in any system.

--believes that America isn’t really a democracy.

Still is so far, I think.

--believes that corporations are fundamentally evil.

That would be a problem, considering I am a part business owner.

--believes in a corporate conspiracy that controls the world.

No, though corporate interests do carry a lot of weight.

--is intolerant of good ideas when they come from conservative sources.

Why?

--dismissively mocks people of faith, especially those who are opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

I do have a problem with people who insist on controlling others' private lives. If you are against abortion, don't have one. If you are against gay marriage, don't marry a same-sex partner. That seems "straightforward" to me, and not at all a matter of faith. (If it is, let's revisit the First Amendment, shall we?)

--regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives.

Once upon a time I was a moderate. Now I don't know what these terms mean. "Conservative" used to mean Barry Goldwater, but today he couldn't get elected dog-catcher via the Republican Party. After all, "conservatives" used to be for limited government, but now they seem to want the government to control every aspect of everyone's lives.

In comments, Acid Jones writes:

Wow. It's immensely telling that many of those "extremist beliefs" are right-wing caricatures of left-wing positions.

Cut to Ann Coulter.

By now, many of you have probably already seen this, or at least heard about this: Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot." (Why, I have no idea. If the epithet fits anywhere, it's on the homophobic politicians who so obsess over other people's sex lives. But anyway...)

What's truly telling is the reaction of the audience. These are conservatives -- or at least the loudest conservatives out there.

I'm quite certain there are many people who see themselves conservative and don't suffer from trembling homophobia.

Links:

• C&L run-down
• Think Progress on Mitt Romney's praise of Coulter
• Pam Spauling, on Pandagon, lacerates the Democrats for failing to confront how the conservativist agitators debase the entire political dialogue:
  

  I can’t even begin to address the fact that the Edwards campaign used this as an e-fundraising tactic right out of the box. It cheapens the message beyond all reason. This required a separate response not tied to an ATM request.

And yet, as the likes of Bill Donohue, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and James Dobson continue to get loving camera time from mainstream media -- you know, the people that like to crow about how superior they are by focusing on "what's important" and all that -- there seems to be precious little push-back.