Possibly becoming a political junkie
1. I admit it -- I now read politicalwire.com a lot. We love Charles Rangel. Which reminds me of something I forgot to mention about Election Day. I'm signed up for news alerts from CNN.com, so I sometimes get e-mails with the subject line "CNN Breaking News" and the body text has a one-line summary of the story. Obviously this is intended for news stories so big that you want to know about them ASAP rather than wait until you get around to checking the web site on your own. So on election day, I saw "CNN Breaking News" in my Inbox and sprang to attention, since I assumed it was something major to do with the election like maybe Cheney having a heart attack at his polling station or Bush conceding. Imagine my burst of relief and warm feelings when I opened the e-mail and read: "Britney Spears files for divorce from her husband Kevin Federline, citing irreconcilable differences." Thank God CNN.com has its priorities straight.
2. Dan Savage had a great piece in the New York Times about the Ted Haggard scandal and male prostitutes' code of silence. In the bad old fully-closeted days, "You could rely on the discretion of your sex partners because they were relying on yours. It was the era of mutually assured destruction... Your partner couldn’t reveal your secret without revealing his own." But now it's socially acceptable to be openly gay: "While once all the best gay men were closeted, now the only adults you find in the closet are the fearful, the pathetic and the hypocritical." Like for example the self-hating, gay-marriage-bashing Haggard. AND of course the debate wouldn't be complete without a studied comment from Pat Robertson, who said of Mark Foley, “Well, this man’s gay. He does what gay people do.”
3. I guess because of the Rumsfeld thing plus my recent post about antidepressants, a line from a political comic kept coming back to me, but I couldn't remember anything more about it. Thanks to the miracle of Google, I found it (fourth one down). It's a back issue of Get Your War On by Dan Rees, which is very angry and profane but often hilarious.
4. I was reminded about the news last spring of the Exxon-Mobil CEO getting a $400 million retirement package when I was browsing back issues of Get Your War On and clicked on a link Rees provided... hubba hubba!
2. Dan Savage had a great piece in the New York Times about the Ted Haggard scandal and male prostitutes' code of silence. In the bad old fully-closeted days, "You could rely on the discretion of your sex partners because they were relying on yours. It was the era of mutually assured destruction... Your partner couldn’t reveal your secret without revealing his own." But now it's socially acceptable to be openly gay: "While once all the best gay men were closeted, now the only adults you find in the closet are the fearful, the pathetic and the hypocritical." Like for example the self-hating, gay-marriage-bashing Haggard. AND of course the debate wouldn't be complete without a studied comment from Pat Robertson, who said of Mark Foley, “Well, this man’s gay. He does what gay people do.”
3. I guess because of the Rumsfeld thing plus my recent post about antidepressants, a line from a political comic kept coming back to me, but I couldn't remember anything more about it. Thanks to the miracle of Google, I found it (fourth one down). It's a back issue of Get Your War On by Dan Rees, which is very angry and profane but often hilarious.
4. I was reminded about the news last spring of the Exxon-Mobil CEO getting a $400 million retirement package when I was browsing back issues of Get Your War On and clicked on a link Rees provided... hubba hubba!
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