Yet another blog post from TNC's blog on The Atlantic!

I'm kinda hoping that these guys will come here and remark. I'd love to get this conversation going on a more personal level! Here are the comments that I responded to, one of which was a direct response to my earlier post:

Erika,

I guess it comes down to abolishing something so sacred to many....and just removing the word marriage all together. Of course I am sure some of you guys will still protest about that too...why now? when gays come around you want to change the system huh? Its a religious thing....not personal..

Posted by HassaN | November 12, 2008 11:40 AM

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Very, very rarely do I see anyone point out the most obvious answer to all of this nonsense...remove the word "marriage" from all civil statute/regulation/law verbiage.

Mating pairs predate religion and religion predates nation-state governments. Marriage is a religious ceremony that got absorbed into government, not the other way around.

Take the word "marriage" out of all the laws and statutes and require those that want to gain the legal benefits get both the civil and the religious if they so choose. That pretty much ends the argument in a simple, pragmatic way.

However...there's a simple problem with that. If you're going to open what we now consider as "marriage" to mean more than a man and a woman because of "seperate but legal" or "equal protection" arguments, what do you then say to the woman who wants to marry two men, or the man who wants to marry two men (etc etc)? Why should a threesome "marriage" be any less valid than a twosome? I can think of many reasons why it would be BETTER to pool the resources of three incomes and efforts than it is for two. Why should multiple-partner marriages be valid as well?

Posted by Scott | November 12, 2008 8:29 AM

@ Hassa:

I really appreciate your response. I don't take anything you said personally, I responded because a lot of people are led to think that the current statuses are equal when in fact they're just not.

A very big thing for me, is that I highly respect people's right to worship as they choose, and I don't want to take anything away from anyone or desecrate something that is sacred to someone's religious beliefs... I just want to make sure that my family is protected *by the government* in a manner that is equal to the protections afforded other families. If they want to call it something else, I don't really care what it is called, they can call it a "big fat gay wedding" or a "totally non-religious government union" or whatever they like as long as everyone has the exact same protections!

There is no way that the government can force a religious organization to perform gay marriages if they are opposed to such a thing, so nobody's altars will have to be stained with the taint of gay-ness if the church so determines. :) At the end of the day, it is enshrined in our Constitution that government doesn't force religions to do things, and it also states that religions (even majority ones) don't inform the policies of government.

I can't speak for what some or all gays would protest, I can simply say what the legal arguments are and how a separate but equal civil status would likely play out in the courts. I personally don't think I would mind too much if I truly had all of the exact same rights, but it seems likely based on legal precedent that it couldn't stay that way for long. State by state progress is definitely encouraging, but it's kind of annoying to think that if my partner and I were married here, our protections would evaporate every time we went on vacation, unless we wanted to vacation in exotic Connecticut. :)

Anyways, I appreciate your honesty. :)


@ Scott:

If civil marriage is separate from religious institutional marriage (which it currently is in most senses), then there should be no need for anyone to receive *government* benefits based on a religious ceremony (which in fact is also the case now - you obtain the legal benefits by virtue of your government marriage certificate, with or without the religious blessing). You couldn't just go into a church, get married by a religious official, and be considered legally married without following up and certifying your civil marriage with the government.

In light of this, it actually makes a great deal of sense to have two different words for the religious ceremony and the legal compact. However, my guess is that many married folk would be annoyed to have their existing marriage somehow "downgraded" to a civil union, probably even more than they are annoyed that gay civil unions might be "upgraded" to marriages. Language matters to us a great deal, doesn't it?

Quite personally, and from a civil-libertarian standpoint, I take no issue with the idea that committed polyamorous people (ha, I almost typed 'couples') should be able to designate the scope of their own families for legal purposes. However, you clearly couldn't call that a marriage! ;)

Just kidding, I was trying to make a point. Call it whatever you want. Maybe that can be a "totally non-religious government union" too. It doesn't matter what I think about other people's lives and relationships, at least not from the standpoint of what the government does or how it acts. Why should it matter what we *personally* feel distasteful about or are religiously opposed to, when what we're talking about here are agreements between individuals and the government?

--------
Either of you, or anyone else, please feel free to comment on my blog if you want to discuss further, it's certainly not my intent to hijack the page!

PS - BIG thumbs down for ANYONE blaming AAs or some other random group for this electoral outcome. I promise you that this opinion, while it may exist among the ranks of gay people and others, is NOT a representative one, for whatever that matters. Our anger at this outcome would be much better directed at the specific efforts of organized religion, and it would be much better applied as outreach and informative efforts than as hate. How totally counter-productive it is to act hateful towards those who hate us, those kind of actions solve nothing and reap no positives!!!

More of my blogwork on Prop 8

The original comment on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog that inspired my response:

TNC,

I haven't quite digested the issues involved in Gay marriages. I suspect many African Americans went into the voting boots uninformed as well. In so far as the issue is about names, meaning gays are whining about the word marriage itself rather than equal benefits and treatments then I suspect there is no real discrimination... I don't understand why Gay's would be unhappy with the word Civil Unions or any other word such as Domestic Partnership for statutes that represent them, if they have equal treatments. Its quite ludicrous to demand names....its quite silly. And please don't equate this with racism, marriage is custom practiced by heterosexuals. I assure you this is not a way to discriminate you but you are gay....its reality...You should demand equal treatments and benefits not equal names....so silly.

Posted by Hassa | November 11, 2008 8:14 PM


My response:

@Hassa:

There are three reasons why "civil unions" and "domestic partnerships" are not an acceptable alternative, although they constitute an admitted improvement over no familial protections whatsoever...

1) With few exceptions, most DPs do not provide all the same rights of marriage within the state or locality that institutes them. Most civil unions do provide an equal level of protection, on the state level only. Which leads to....

2) Even if all 50 states had full-fledged civil unions, only the marriage rights and benefits controlled by the states would be applied. NO Federal rights of any kind would apply, and there are more than 1,000 Federally-sanctioned benefits to the status of marriage. A very relevant one for many people is being able to marry (or civilly unite with) your partner who is from another country. Impossible for LGBT people without full Federal marriage. Which leads to...

3) If at some point, there exists a Federal-level civil union status that is equal to marriage in all but name, it will be subject to the "separate but equal" legal argument; this argument was successfully used in the Connecticut Supreme Court to convert civil unions into equal marriage.

The practices and "customs" of "heterosexual" marriage are far less homogenous than anyone should suppose without plenty of research. And in the end, it comes down to more than a name, it comes down to a class distinction. How would you feel if AAs couldn't get married, but could only get "blarried", with limited rights and benefits as opposed to everyone else? Sure, you'd be pleased to have some protections, but some part of you would hope that someday, the government at least, and society at best, would recognize your "blarriage" as a marriage.

Also, and I can't believe I almost forgot this, the legal status of DPs and civil unions is so complicated in most places that GLBT folk are advised to seek legal counsel before entering into one so that they'll be aware of what they're getting into. For example: I live in Boston, but I'm moving next summer to go to law school. My partner and I could get married here, and our marriage would be fully legal in the state, but not for Federal purposes. If I go to school in NY, most institutions (but not all, and who knows which ones) will recognize our marriage. If I move to DC, we can have a DP, but who knows if we have to dissolve our marriage to get a DP, or if it automatically converts. If we move to CA, well, just who knows at this point LOL. If we moved to most other places, our marriage would simply cease to exist, but still be in existence in the state of Massachusetts. It's so complicated, and there's just no need when it is a government contract we are demanding and nothing more. There's very little about it that is actually "silly". :)

Having said all that, thank you for asking the questions. :)

What's the Best Way to Interrogate a Kid? Juliet Lapidos | Slate.com

Whew.... been following this case with something of a heavy heart and thinking about this article will just rock you. At least it has done so to me. WTF!

An 8-year-old Arizona boy charged with murdering his father and another man appeared in court on Monday. Police say the boy confessed to shooting the two men with a .22-caliber gun, but his defense attorneys told reporters that "there could have been improper interview techniques done." What's the "proper" way to interrogate a kid?

Read the full article here.

Giddy-Making

Professor Obama
Marcia DeSanctis | HuffPost

Barack Obama is now the face of the United States - the photograph we will see when we go through customs at JFK airport, or when we go to any U.S. Embassy on earth. The impact of this image, particularly at first, will be subtle, but immeasurable and its iconographic significance is multi-layered. He might refer to himself self-deprecatingly as a "mutt," but he is in effect, Globalized Man. With parts coming from all around the earth, passing through Asia on the way back to America, our new President now seems inevitable - this is the way the world is in 2008. But perhaps of even larger importance is that the leader of the world's greatest democracy was a professor of constitutional law and above all, a teacher. The Constitution - as in, the foundation of any functioning democracy - is his area of expertise. As such, he embodies the best possible advertisement for democracy at a time when the world needs it most and our country could benefit from, as Bill Clinton put it, the "power of example" rather than the "example of power."

Read the rest of the article here.

My response to the haters among us.....

Posted in response to the comments on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog:

As a gay white activist for many different sorts of causes, all I have to say is this: if, in fact, African-Americans voted overwhelmingly to pass Prop 8, as seems to have been the case, then that choice has far, far less to do with the color of anyone's skin than with the potent influence of religion on African-American culture.

We could all sit around for an eternity debating the minutiae of the results, who turned out to vote, how they voted, etc. In the end, we as a community either have to reach out to people of faith (of *all* varieties), or hope that the courts will overturn what seems to be an unconstitutional implementation of religious principle as public policy. Maybe better, both.

It's important to note that people of faith understand the fear of persecution just as powerfully as those who are perhaps more genuinely oppressed in our times. However, they have been taught to believe that we want to take away something that God gave especially to them... That sense of privilege will be difficult to overcome.

If it turns out that the judicial system has not yet evolved enough to fully support the equal recognition of the gay community, then our "target" should be the faith community, and the application should be one of outreach and establishing common ground, not blind rage.

I don't mean to say that the effort will be won on the ground, because like all other equal protection issues, this one will have to be decided in the courts in order to find enforcement. Regardless, we *can* benefit from broader support on the ground, and however amusing it may be to laugh at Mormons' magic underwear, or however easy it may be to target statistics about the African-American vote, directing our collective anger at narrow groups of people can hardly broaden our coalition. We have to channel this passion in productive directions.

Presidential Flava

'November 4th, 2008' by artist Patrick Moberg. Hi-res view here.
Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan

Traditional Marriage Perverts the Tradition of Marriage

This was borrowed from a friend of a friend. A bit late, I suppose, and a bit long, but it neatly sums up exactly what it is that "traditional marriage" proponents are trying to protect.

Traditional Marriage Perverts the Tradition of Marriage
By Jeff Goode (Californian)

About a decade ago, as a young playwright, I was hired to write a script for the Renaissance Festival of Kansas City. It was a period piece about knights and jousts and intrigues of the court, building up to a lavish royal wedding between a prince and a princess, restoring peace to the troubled land.

This was one of my first professional writing assignments, so I was really excited about doing all the research and making sure that everything was historically accurate, especially the royal wedding which needed to follow all the traditions exactly.

Over a summer of research, I learned a lot of surprising facts about the history of marriage and weddings, but by far the most shocking discovery of all was that the tradition of marriage-as-we-know-it simply did not exist in those days. Almost everything we have come to associate with marriage and weddings - the white dress, the holy vows, the fancy cake and the birdseed - dates back a mere 50 or 100 years at the most. In many cases less.

And the handful of traditions that do go back farther than that are, frankly, horrifying. The tossing of the garter, for example, evolved from a 14th Century tradition of ripping the clothing off of the bride's body as she left the ceremony in order to "loosen her up" for the wedding night. Wedding guests fought over the choicest bits of undergarment, with the garter being the greatest prize.

Savvy brides got in the habit of carrying extra garters in their bodice to throw to the male guests in hopes of escaping the ceremony with some shred of modesty intact!

It turns out that marriage, in days of old, was a barbaric custom which was little more than a crude exchange of livestock at it's most civilized, and a little less than ritualized abduction at it's worst. That's why you'll find no reference to white weddings in the Bible, or the union of one man and one woman. Because up until fairly recently, there was nothing religious about it.

You will of course find plenty of biblical bigamy, practiced by even the most godly of heroes - Noah, Abraham, David, Solomon - because that's what marriage was in those days. Even in more enlightened New Testament times, the only wedding worth mentioning (the one at Cana) is notable only for the miraculous amount of wine consumed.

In the 21st Century, we've heard a lot about the sanctity of marriage, as if that were something that has been around forever, but in reality the phrase was invented in 2004. Google it for yourself and see if you can find a single reference to the "sanctity of marriage" before the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions in that state. The proverbial Sanctity of Marriage sprang into being because opponents of gay marriage needed a logical reason to overturn an established legal precedent. And the only thing that trumps the Constitution is God himself.

Unfortunately, God is still pretty new to the whole marriage game (or he might have made an honest woman out of the Virgin Mary, am I right? Try the veal!)

The truth is that marriage has always been more a secular tradition rather than a religious one. Up until the early Renaissance, in fact, couples were traditionally married on the church's front doorstep, because wedding ceremonies were considered too vulgar to be performed inside the building: After all, there was implied sex in the vows and shameless public displays of affection. No clergyman in his right mind would have allowed such an unholy abomination on the premises.

But as times changed, ideas and attitudes about marriage also changed. So when people became religious, matrimony became holy. When people became nudists, clothing became optional. And so on throughout history.

And the wonderful thing about the institution of marriage - the reason it has remained strong and relevant through thousands of years of ever-changing times - is its unique ability to change with those times.

Marriage is, and always has been, a constantly evolving tradition that never fails to incorporate the latest shifts in culture and climate, changing social habits, fashions and even fads. (Because, seriously, that chicken dance is not in the Bible.)

Thus, in the 1800s when the sole purpose of marriage was procreation and housekeeping, marriage between an older man and a hard-working tween girl was considered perfectly normal. Today we call it pedophilia.

For thousands of years marriage was essentially a business transaction
between the parents of the bride and groom. But in the last century or so, we've finally seen the triumph of this new-fangled notion that marriage should be about a loving relationship between two consenting adults.

Followers of the Mormon faith can tell you that the traditions of their forefathers included a devout belief that polygamy was appropriate and sanctified. But modern Mormons generally don't support that vision of happiness for their daughters.

And during the Civil Rights era, when opponents of interracial marriage tried to pass laws making such couples illegal, we came to realize that they, too, were wrong in trying to redefine marriage to prevent those new-found relationships.

Always marriage has triumphed by becoming a timely celebration of our society, rather than a backlash against it. It's strange, then, to see "tradition" used as a weapon against change, when change is the source of all its greatest traditions.

Just ask the white dress:
In 1840, Queen Victoria of England married Prince Albert wearing a beautiful white lace dress - in defiance of tradition - in order to promote the sale of English lace! The image was so powerful that practically overnight the white wedding gown became de rigueur for the well-heeled bride. And then it became de rigueur for every bride.

By the dawn of the 20th Century, the white dress had also inexplicably come to symbolize chastity. (Even though blue was traditionally the color of virginity - "something borrowed, something blue...")

And the new equation of white with virginity eventually achieved such a rigid orthodoxy that older readers may remember a time when wedding guests who happened to know that the bride was not perfectly pure would have felt a moral obligation to demand that she change into something off-white before walking down the aisle.

Fortunately, as cultural norms eased during the Sexual Revolution, a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" policy took hold where all brides were required to wear white regardless of their virtue and the less said about it the better.

In recent years, as a generation of divorcees have remarried and a generation of young people have entered wedlock with some degree of "experience", the pretense of a connection between literal virginity and the bridal gown has become entirely obsolete. A colorful journey for a custom which has always seemed iron clad, even as it was evolving over time.

And not all traditions have to do with changing sexual standards. The long-time custom of pelting the newlyweds with birdseed did not exist before the 1970s when animal-lovers realized that songbirds were bloating on dried rice that they found on the ground after the former custom.

Economic times have caused families to rethink the age-old convention of the bride's father paying for the entire ceremony - a last vestige of the days of dowries when a young man had to be bribed to take a free-loading daughter off her parents' hands - that well-established custom has gradually given way to a more humane approach to sharing the financial burden.

Even religious traditions of marriage have experienced constant metamorphosis over the years. As more interfaith couples have wed, we have seen the emergence of multi-disciplinary ceremonies where couples have chosen not to follow the out-dated tradition of rejecting one or both of their faiths as a prerequisite of holy matrimony.

One of the most beautiful weddings I ever attended was between a young Jewish fellow and his Catholic fiancé, whose mother was born in France. The ceremony was performed by both a rabbi and a priest with intertwining vows in English, Latin, Hebrew and French. A perfect expression of the union of their two families, yet one which would have been unthinkable just a generation before.

But, again, marriage has such a long history of changing with the ever-changing times, that the last thing we should expect from it is to stop growing and changing. We know today that marriage is not a rote ritual handed down by God to Adam & Eve and preserved verbatim for thousands of years. It is, rather, an expression of how each community, each culture, and each faith, chooses to celebrate the joining of loved ones who have decided to make a life together.

Christians do not expect Jesus to be central to a Buddhist wedding, nor do Jews refuse to acknowledge Lutheran unions because they didn't include a reading from the Torah. Marriage is what we each make of it. And that's the way it always should be.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the traditional marriage argument is that it seeks to preserve a singular tradition that has, in fact, never existed at any point in history.

Because, honestly, which traditional definition of marriage do we want our Constitution to protect?

... The one from Book of Genesis when family values meant multiple wives and concubines?
... Or the marriages of the Middle Ages when women were traded like cattle and weddings were too bawdy for church?
... Since this is America, should we preserve marriage as it existed in 1776 when arranged marriages were still commonplace?
... Or the traditions of 1850 when California became a state and marriage was customarily between one man and one woman-or-girl of age 11 and up?
... Or are we really seeking to protect a more modern vision of traditional marriage, say from the 1950s when it was illegal for whites to wed blacks or hispanics?
... Or the traditional marriage of the late 1960s when couples were routinely excommunicated for marrying outside their faith?

No, the truth of the matter is, that we're trying to preserve traditional marriage the way it "was and always has been" during a very narrow period in the late 70s / early 80s - just before most of us found out that gays even existed: Between one man and one woman of legal age and willing consent. Regardless of race or religion (within reason). ...Plus the chicken dance and the birdseed. Those are okay.

But there's something profoundly disturbing about amending the Constitution to define anything about the 1970s as "the way God intended it".

A mixed bag

So. I'm obviously elated about Obama... and frustrated about Prop 8.

But.... I just spent a good little while poring over the petition that was filed today to prevent the enforcement of Prop 8 and, hopefully, to overturn it.

Let me tell you, it's good. It's really, really good. This single petition holds up a whole basketful of different reasons why Prop 8 should not stand. It's really... pretty dope! Not to mention, I have to believe that the Court would be frustrated by the efforts of a group of people, largely comprised of religious organizations and out-of-staters, to subvert its decision and to keep it from doing its job. The point is, even with things up in the air, there is a good deal of hope on the horizon. And it all makes me just gnash my teeth with eagerness to become a lawyer.... if only I could skip law school LOL.

Should anyone else wish to read the petition, it's available here.

Also: a really interesting non-technical legal analysis from Slate.com

The 6-4 Black Guy | HuffPost

This story breaks my heart, because I know it to be true.

For those who think racism is dead in this country and everyone now gets the same fair shake, run your eyes over this. Feel the fear, dread, and uncertainty. Think about "loving the bogeyman", the generic man of whom everyone is afraid, and who is everyone's target.

Happy-Making and Angry-Making, all at once.

Rep. Bachmann's Seat in Jeopardy Following McCarthy-ite Allegations The Nation
I, personally, HATE this woman.
I hate her as no good humanist should ever hate another human being.

It's not just that she stands in direct opposition to EVERY thing that I stand for. That, I'm okay with.


It is that she is a foul, putrescent, spewing, hateful, soulless example of a human being, who proudly calls herself a Christian. If the God I once believed in really does exist, she will rot in the lowest of hells.

I mean, ugh, just try watching her on the cable news shows. Give her a chance to make you hate her too. Flippin' Larry King has her on all the time. Seeing them side by side is horrifying: one side of the screen is the most horrifying vision to every part of me which is shallow, and the other side of the screen is the most horrifying vision to every single part of me that isn't.

And now...

She done gone 'n done it.
She was flapping her jaw like usual, probably thought nobody was paying attention, and basically accused all Congressional liberals of being involved in "anti-American" activities and had the gall to suggest that there should be an investigation.

Dumbass. What a throwback to the 50s!

Now she's also started lying about it and claiming she never said such s thing. Hi, there's tape. And some of us losers were watching live as it happened on MSNBC. Sputter, sputter, all you like. The upshot is... her Congressional opponent in MN, a relatively unknown Dem by the name of Elwyn Tinklenberg (you'll remember him now) has received close to a million dollars in new campaign donations since she went on her tirade! Go ahead, Bachmann, get kee-razy. Then you can leave the "secular" public service, and continue giving sermons about being HOT FOR JESUS, fo real do. Can I get an amen?

What I want to know is this.... which part of our national history leads these mental giants to believe that it is conformity that is American and democratic? Or that it is dissent and plurality which are dangerous and anti-American?

Morons. These are our LEADERS!!!!!!!!! Argh!

UPDATE: Even if you want to take my advice and give the estimable Rep. Bachmann an opportunity to make you despise her crazy behind by watching her night after night on cable news, you'll have a bit of difficulty these days. She has quite suddenly lost her prodigious love of appearing before the cameras every dang day and is now in hiding, issuing fevered statements about how she did not say those horrible things that they have video record of her saying live to Americans on the national news... Grand!

Uh-huh..... The truth is out there.

Palin Supports Federal Marriage Amendment | HRC

No big surprise, right? I guess the only way this could come as a surprise would be if you'd bought what she was so selectively selling at the VP debate.

Thoughts on the "born gay" debate

My posted response on another blog from earlier today:

As a student of biochemistry and neurophysiology, I feel compelled to comment on the "born gay" controversy. Some people say that homosexuals were simply born that way. Others contend that it is a matter of environment only. Both of these views are inaccurate, incomplete. Genetic heritability is much more complex than people realize, and what is accurate is to say that, like most other biological traits, an INTERACTION of genetic expression and environmental influence is the source of our orientation. For example, you may have the genetic material of a tall person, but environmental factors can lead to you being short. You may be genetically predisposed to being fair-skinned, but if you remain in the sun long enough, you may get dark. On the contrary, if you are fair, and your parents notice this, they may teach you to wear sunblock. Or, if you are genetically predisposed to be tall, and nothing stands in the way, your genes will be fully expressed, and you will be tall.

In my personal experience, the influence of one aspect over the other also varies from person to person, just like any other biological trait... Many feel they were born that way, that they can remember these inclinations and a sense of feeling different since very early childhood. Others are empowered by the sense that their genetics may have triggered their orientation, but that their identities, experiences, and choices are their own. Homosexuals do sometimes have a history of being victims of abuse, but then so do heterosexuals, and much more frequently, so this doesn't prove much. Regardless, if one believes that the touch of an all-powerful Creator resides in our DNA, then it makes perfect sense to believe that we are as God intended us. I accept that logic, and, for the record, I am gay.

Incidentally, it is worth noting that no admonishment of homosexuality ever crossed the lips of the Savior. The Old Covenant was washed away with the blood of Christ; that's why Jews are kosher and Christians aren't, folks. In the New Testament, all admonishments against homosexuality are either in the writings of Paul or the writings of his followers, and many scholars who are not literalists agree that Paul's time in Greece may have infused his philosophy with a "cultural conservatism" never intended by Christ. For example, Christ never suggests that women should go unadorned and be silent in church, but, uh, Paul goes there.
All right, let me have it. I asked for it. :)

News of the Day: Separate but equal edition

CT Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality | HRC
All content courtesy of HRC, more info and live links at the original story above.

BREAKING: The Connecticut Supreme Court announced this morning at 11:30 a.m. EST that it had ruled, in the case of Kerrigan et al. v. Commissioner of Public Health et al., that civil unions place gay and lesbian couples in an "inferior status," clearing the way for gay and lesbian couples to marry.

Here's the important part from the official court ruling:

We conclude that, in light of the history of pernicious discrimination faced by gay men and lesbians, and because the institution of marriage carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil unions does not embody, the segregation of heterosexual and homosexual couples into separate institutions constitutes a cognizable harm.

This is just gross, dude...

Michigan GOP Using Foreclosures To Block Black Voters | HuffPost

Because, you know, they were foreclosed on, so their addresses of record aren't good anymore.

Update: ACORN, what's the dealio?

A discussion of the ACORN problem, thanks to RBC & Prof. Mark Kleiman

Acorn Defends Itself | RBC

Thanks, man. I feel better.

Happy-Making

Barack-O'Lantern | RBC

Ode to Sean Hannity - by John Cleese

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

this is going viral and pretty funny so I thought I'd throw it in here.
Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan

Heart of Darkness

Andrew Sullivan just posted a bit about Conservapedia's hideous entry on Obama....

And the site is now unavailable. I was looking at it a moment ago, and it either crashed due to traffic or was pulled for revision.

Way to go, Andrew, you crazy wanker!

Hee

Credit to kdoug on DKos