Goldberg and Guthrie

So, I haven't blogged much, if at all, during the past month. I apologize to our loyal readers, but I haven't had anything to say as politics just sort of makes me sick to my stomach.

Take this article about the anti-gay marriage movement in the New York Times. It ends with this little vignette:

When I met Polyak [a pro gay marriage activist], she told me how, when she first testified before a legislative committee, an anti-gay-marriage activist, a woman, confronted her with bitter language, asking her why she was ''doing this'' to the woman's children and grandchildren. Polyak said the encounter left her shaken. A few days later, as I sat in [anti gay-marriage crazy person] Evalena Gray's Christmas-lighted basement office, she told me a story of how during the same testimony she approached a blond lesbian and talked to her about the effect that gay marriage would have on her grandchildren. ''Then I hugged her neck,'' she said, ''and I said, 'We love you.' I was kind of consoling her to some extent, out of compassion.''

I realized I was hearing about the same encounter from both sides. What was expressed as love was received as something close to hate. That's a hard gap to bridge.

That's right, the problem is that both sides don't understand each other. Oh, except that's not the problem at all. The problem exists only on one side of the "debate," and the problem is that all people on that side of the debate are fucking morons. They hate people who are different than them and they view gay marriage the same way a racist white family views a black family moving into their neighborhood - as a threat to their way of life.

Also, fuck the New York Times for presenting this story in this way. A crazy person walks up to a gay person on the other side of a debate, tells them that by gaily loving their partner in a public way they are hurting America's children and then grabs their neck and says "I love you." The only gap that needs to be bridged here is the gap that divides the normal, sane world and abnormal, insane Evalena Gray.

Earlier in the piece, one of our anti-gay activist friends says this:

Not long after this period in which she came to feel a new sense of purpose, Laura read about the pro-gay-marriage action in Massachusetts, and she found herself e-mailing news articles about it to friends. She looked at the development not as an effort by members of a minority to win rights that others have long enjoyed but as an attack on society's most basic institution by forces bent on creating an amoral, anything-goes culture. ''The gay activists are trying to redefine what marriage has been basically since the beginning of time and on every continent,'' she said. ''My concern is for the children -- for the future.''

She believed that what happened in Massachusetts could happen in Maryland. ''My first reaction was frustration,'' she said, ''knowing that this is a legislative issue and the court in Massachusetts had overstepped their bounds.'' Laura had never been an activist before, but now she wanted to get involved, so she contacted the national headquarters of the Family Research Council, and they put her in touch with a local group called the Family Protection Lobby, which has monitored state legislation from a conservative Christian perspective since 1980. She talked with Doug Stiegler, a retired plumbing contractor turned Christian missionary, who has been head of the Family Protection Lobby since 1993. Stiegler began to initiate her into the ways of the state government.

Seriously, you have to be dumber than fucking dirt to believe this shit. You live in this world, with all of its problems, and the first thing that makes you want to get involved with politics is that fact that some gay people are getting married in Massachusetts? What in the name of holy fuck is wrong with people?

Well, that's how I feel anyway, and I can't see why anyone would want to read such rants, apart from their comedic value. Despite reader RD's comment of a month or so ago, I don't think I pepper my posts on this blog with the self-loathing that is the basis of most of my humor (in "real" life) and was the basis for most of the artistic endeavors I engaged in back in "the day". Because who wants to read that shit, you know? Not me, for one. And sometimes I just get disgusted with the political debates of the day, and that disgust perhaps borders on rage. While I actually think this is healthy it makes for boring blogging and it's pretty self-indulgent. (One thing I always hate is when art becomes therapy. I guess the same can be said of political blogging.) Also, I'm lazy as shit. But in this case, I actually typed several posts but ended up deleting them because they didn't make sense and I don't know what to say.

Also, I know it's wrong to feel this way about people. And it doesn't make any political sense. I incomparably close by citing the Daily Howler.

Howard Dean just "hates" Republicans. Dr. King always asserted the dignity of Sheriff Bull Connor. And one more thing - Dr. King won.

That's a powerful, complicated point. And of course the Daily Howler is right, and I say this as one of Howard Dean's biggest fans.