Glenn Greenwald, mockingly, on the uproar over Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
White, right-wing Christian evangelical rage against America is understandable, respectable, and noble. Liberal black Christian anger towards America is scary, subversive, and despicable.
Queerty interviews Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, on the fall of Eliot Spitzer, the rise of David Paterson, and the outlook for equal marriage in New York State. Worth reading in its entirety. Here are some excerpts.
On politicians and the gay community:
Somehow people say [of elected officials], “They’re friends of our community because they came to our dinner or spoke to our crowdâ€. There’s also, “Well, they’re a friend of our community because they voted on a bill, but they didn’t sponsor it and these are our friendsâ€. I think we’ve lowered the bar for what friends are, but even if we raised the bar ten times where it should have been, the fact that Spitzer became the first governor in the country to introduce marriage equality legislation absolutely means something.
On how introducing a marriage equality bill helped us:
We would never have gotten a vote in the Assembly for marriage equality had the Governor not made this a program bill and a priority for his administration. Had Governor Spitzer not introduced marriage equality bill, we wouldn’t have had a bill in the Assembly, a bill that had the weight of the executive behind it, we wouldn’t have had a vote and wouldn’t be 2/3 of the way to winning 1,324 rights in New York. I know people who personally voted for the bill because Governor Spitzer sent it out as a program bill. I know that for a fact, because before the bill was introduced, we had 35 on the record supporters for marriage equality and when we introduced the bill, we suddenly picked up more sponsors.
On Paterson’s pro-LGBT views:
[T]his is a guy with whom I sat with last year on countless evenings going over with him a list of Assembly members who were either on the fence or had a soft “no,†and he would help me and the Pride Agenda press strategies where we went to individuals. Paterson would say, “Okay, this person said ‘yes’? Let me call them tomorrow and make sure that’s a real yes or a soft yesâ€.
On the day of the vote, which I have never seen in my history at Albany, the Lt. Governor showed up on the floor 45-minutes before the Assembly debate and personally talked to the people who supported the bill and then came up to the gallery to talk to the gay community and tell them he had our backs. That had never happened before in a decade that I’ve been going up to Albany. It was really incredible.
On how he feels about Spitzer now:
… LGBT New Yorkers are not only part of an LGBT community, but we’re also New Yorkers, so when I’m wearing my LGBT hat, then, yes, he’s absolutely delivered to our community. But I’m also a New Yorker, so if these allegations are true, I’m really angry that our Governor did this. I don’t think – if he’s proved to have done money laundering and other stuff he could be charged with, I don’t think that’s necessarily somebody we want to be with. No one’s saying he’s not a friend of our community.
I don’t know if you’ve seen a successful politician or business tycoon get drunk and make a pass at a woman. It’s like watching a St. Bernard try to French kiss. It’s all overbearing, slobbering, desperate wanting. There’s no self-control, no dignity.
These Type A men are just not equipped to have normal relationships. All their lives they’ve been a walking Asperger’s Convention, the kings of the emotionally avoidant. Because of disuse, their sensitivity synapses are still performing at preschool levels.
So when they decide that they do in fact have an inner soul and it’s time to take it out for a romp … . Well, let’s just say they’ve just bought a ticket on the self-immolation express. Some desperate lunge toward intimacy is sure to follow, some sad attempt at bonding. Welcome to the land of the wide stance.
Maybe they’d be O.K. if somewhere along the way they’d had true friends, defined as a group of people who share a mutual inability to take each other seriously. Maybe they’d be prepared for what is about to happen if they’d subordinated their quest for immortality to the joys of domestic ridicule.
But they are completely unprepared. And in the middle of some perfectly enjoyable dinner party, a woman will suddenly find a tongue in her ear.
So it turns out Temeka Lewis, the woman who arranged the sexfest between Spitzer and “Kristen,” is a ‘Hoo.
No, not a ho. A ‘Hoo. A graduate of UVA. Like me.
She graduated in 1997, two years after me.
Oh joy!
Hmm… this makes a really good point. Maybe it would be better for Obama to let the Florida primary results stand:
Suppose the results from the January primary are allowed to stand. This will net Clinton 37 pledged delegates, and therefore Obama’s pledged delegate lead will go from approximately 161 to 124. Now, even with this hit and a big loss in Pennsylvania, it seems unlikely that Senator Clinton can get within 100 pledged delegates of Obama (the popular vote, too, looks like a long shot for her). In this scenario I see almost no chance of Clinton getting the nomination.
But, what if there is a Florida revote in June? Clinton will probably win but only net, say, half as many delegates. But she will have won another big state, not to mention the last big contest heading into the convention. Is that talking point worth twenty delegates? I think it might be. Admittedly, it’s also unlikely that Clinton can win the nomination under this scenario, but it could be more likely. Clinton needs a game-changer, and a Florida re-vote in June might be the ticket. Again, I am not saying this is necessarily the case, but if I were Obama I might rather go into the convention with a 110 delegate lead and Florida a distant memory than with a 130 delegate lead and a slew of bad headlines.
Michigan’s Soviet primary is another story, where Clinton was the only named candidate on the ballot. “The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” Hillary Clinton said this morning. My god. She is beyond shameless.
It often seems to be the case that when a successful but egomaniacal politician resigns from office, he’s replaced by a less dramatic, less flashy, more likable person who winds up winning public favor and getting things done. That’s what happened in New Jersey when Senate President Richard Codey took over from Jim McGreevey. By all accounts Codey was a well-liked acting governor for over a year.
It looks like that’s also going to be the case with David Paterson. Republicans seem willing to work with him in a way that they weren’t with Spitzer.
Why does this happen? Probably because in order to win the highest elective office, you need to be a bit of a dick. So you alienate people. Also, we don’t really like overly ambitious types. We’re more impressed by the person who doesn’t actually seem to want the job, who has power thrust upon him.
Not that Paterson is not ambitious. He’s a politician, after all, and he was the New York senate’s minority leader for four years. But he gave up the chance to become the majority leader, in the event Democrats took control of the senate, for the position of lieutenant governor, which doesn’t have much power or prestige.
Even if he only completes Spitzer’s term and never runs in his own right, Paterson will still be governor of New York longer than Gerald Ford held the presidency. He can do a lot of good in that time. As long as he doesn’t let himself get… steamrolled.
New York Lieutentant Governor David Paterson, who would become governor if Spitzer resigned, “has typically been ahead of his time on gay issues over the years,” according to The Advocate.
Paterson has been on record in support of marriage equality as early as 1994. When Paterson was asked if he would take part in pushing through the marriage bill following his inauguration in January 2007, he told the New York Blade , “I’m not going to be in that fight — I’m going to be in front of that fight because my first day as [senate minority leader] was the day we passed the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act. One of the reasons we need same-sex marriage is because the statistics for heterosexual marriage are so bad; that might be a way to upgrade some of the success rates.â€
As far back as 1987, Paterson refused to pass a state hate-crimes bill that didn’t provide protections for gays and lesbians. “He was willing to let everything go down rather than to exclude us,†Sherrill recalled.
Ultimately, LGBT leaders with knowledge of New York’s political landscape suggested that a Spitzer resignation might be work in the community’s favor.
“If Spitzer resigns, it might be a blessing in disguise from an LGBT agenda point of view,†said the anonymous source. “Spitzer would likely be damaged goods whereas Paterson won’t have that baggage.â€
Well, this totally sucks for the state of New York. So much for political reform.
I like Spitzer a lot. But I don’t see how he survives this. Not when the Democrats are ONE SEAT away from taking control of the state senate for the first time in more than 40 years and kicking the awful Joe Bruno out of power.
I agree with Homer. We all do stupid things. The body doesn’t have enough blood to control the dick and the brain at the same time. Spitzer took a risk, and he got caught. Unfortunately, (1) this isn’t the 1950s, where the press will keep these things hush-hush; and (2) it was a prostitute (illegal), not just adultery (legal). Regardless of whether prostitution should be legal or not, the former attorney general flouted the law.
Anyway, I wonder what this means for gays’ right to marry. Spitzer is a strong supporter of marriage equality. I hope David Paterson is, too. Not that it will matter if the Democrats don’t take back the senate.
Somehow I don’t think this is the Emperor’s Club they’re talking about.
We saw a couple of shows last week. Both were great.
On Wednesday night, we saw Macbeth at BAM, starring Patrick Stewart. It was exciting and scary as hell, almost like a good popcorn movie. The theater looks like this, all exposed plaster and peeled paint (that’s not what the stage looks like for this production, though). I said to Matt that it would be a great place to see Follies.
We sat in the balcony, which is way, way, high up in that theater. I got vertigo as we walked down the steps to our seats. It didn’t help that we had to sit in upright rigid stools, so we couldn’t even lean back. The last time I felt such vertigo at the theater was when my mom took me to see Barnum when I was a kid and we sat in the balcony. (I don’t remember Barnum at all. All I remember is the terrifying vertigo.)
On Friday night, we saw Patti LuPone in Gypsy, currently in previews on Broadway after having transferred from the Encores production last summer. Oh my god. So brilliant. I love her as Mama Rose. And I love Gypsy. Is there a better musical? After almost 50 years it remains fresh. It was my fourth time seeing Gypsy – Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, last summer’s Encores, and this one. Patti LuPone is even better than she was last summer. Her “Rose’s Turn” is heartbreaking, and I’ve never seen the show end the way this production does (it’s different even from last summer).
There was one mishap, and it happened at a pivotal moment in Act II. Louise, played by Laura Benanti, was beginning her metamorphosis into Gypsy Rose Lee, putting on her long silk gloves, looking into the mirror, about to say to herself, “Mama… I’m pretty!”
And then a curtain came down right where she and the mirror were standing.
Benanti pushed the mirror through the opening between the curtains and tried to continue the scene. Then she stopped and disappeared behind the curtains. Then, from behind, a stagehand pulled back the mirror, which snagged on the stage right curtain and pulled it nearly all the way back, giving us a glimpse of Benanti standing there wondering what to do before it closed again. Then the curtain went back up, where we could see, too early, the “Garden of Eden” scrim. Benanti stood there, looking off stage right, and then we heard her say, “Stop the show. Stop the show.”
The main curtain went down and someone made an announcement about technical difficulties. About 10 minutes later, the curtain went back up, and the show picked up again from the mirror scene. Benanti continued as if nothing had happened, and the rest of the show went on to the end from there. Brilliant, really.
Anyway, Patti LuPone is wonderful, Laura Benanti is wonderful, Boyd Gaines as Herbie is wonderful.
God, I love this production. I may have to see it again.
Why does Professor Felicia Nimue Ackerman get so many letters published in the New York Times? She’s had 10 in the past year, and there’s an 11th in tomorrow’s Book Review. Jeez.
[Update: looks like I’m not the first to notice this.]
God knows why there are no polls for the upcoming Wyoming and Mississippi primaries (Saturday and Tuesday, respectively). But here’s a prediction of the results.
I was getting caught up on the New Yorker, reading an article about math and the human brain, and came across this fascinating passage:
Today, Arabic numerals are in use pretty much around the world, while the words with which we name numbers naturally differ from language to language. And, as Dehaene and others have noted, these differences are far from trivial. English is cumbersome. There are special words for the numbers from 11 to 19, and for the decades from 20 to 90. This makes counting a challenge for English-speaking children, who are prone to such errors as “twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven.†French is just as bad, with vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (“four twenty ten nineâ€) for 99. Chinese, by contrast, is simplicity itself; its number syntax perfectly mirrors the base-ten form of Arabic numerals, with a minimum of terms. Consequently, the average Chinese four-year-old can count up to forty, whereas American children of the same age struggle to get to fifteen. And the advantages extend to adults. Because Chinese number words are so brief—they take less than a quarter of a second to say, on average, compared with a third of a second for English—the average Chinese speaker has a memory span of nine digits, versus seven digits for English speakers. (Speakers of the marvellously efficient Cantonese dialect, common in Hong Kong, can juggle ten digits in active memory.)
The extended Democratic contest won’t necessarily be bad. In fact, it could be helpful. Ron Klain gives some reasons why: it will give the party more time to make sure it picks the right nominee, it will make that nominee a better candidate, it’s a great recruiting tool for Democrats (“identifying possible Democratic voters for the fall, expanding the party’s fundraising base and substantially growing its ranks of volunteers and activists”), and it keeps McCain from making any news. (The latter isn’t necessarily important, since come September both nominees will get equal coverage.)
So, take heart.
The other day I mentioned my crush on Chuck Todd.
Alessandra Stanley wrote in yesterday’s paper:
[O]n MSNBC, Chuck Todd, NBC’s political director, provided welcome restraint to the bubbly loquacity of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews; Mr. Todd, who is a whiz at delegate counting, is the designated driver of MSNBC’s political coverage, keeping his eyes on the road while the school boys get punch-drunk on exit polls.
Heheheh.
Ralph Nader on “Sesame Street,” circa 1998.
“A consumer advocate’s a person in your neighborhood…”
No, seriously.
Fine.
Clinton’s probably going to wind up getting the nomination through sheer determination. Florida and Michigan will hold revotes, and she’ll win them both, as well as Pennsylvania. Even if she doesn’t wind up with a delegate lead, she could wind up with a popular vote lead, and then she’ll convince the superdelegates to vote for her, arguing that she’d be a stronger nominee.
She’ll win that argument because as the weeks roll on, she’ll show that she’s right. Obama is beginning to run on fumes. This Rezko and Canada/NAFTA crap, real or not, caught him off guard. After the Clintons had to endure years of the Whitewater non-scandal, it’s breathtakingly hypocritical and cynical of them to push the Rezko thing. But they know how to get people talking about these things, and it adds to the perception that Obama hasn’t been fully vetted, even if these are ginned-up controversies. It’s meta-politics: look at all the problems you’re going to run into if you select Obama as your nominee.
As much as she pisses me off, Clinton seems to know how to go into attack mode. Obama doesn’t. God help us if we have another John Kerry who disdains attack politics and then gets clobbered by the Republican machine.
That 3 a.m. ad was good, because it played on fear and drew contrasts with Obama, and yet it wasn’t overtly negative. Obama needs to do something similar – some sort of hybrid ad. Of course, if he does that, he sullies his image, which is all he has going for him.
Clinton’s team, by its own actions, has shown the failure of Obama’s philosophy. Her team has shown that we can never reach consensus. Consensus requires cooperation from both sides, and if one side won’t cooperate, you’ve failed. Obama’s philosophy is based on the notion that the people are tired of the old politics and want change. But if majorities are falling for Clinton’s crap, then Obama’s philosophy is wrong.
We can never get past the old politics because the old politics is politics. The new politics is not actually politics. And democracy requires politics.
I feel personally wounded by all this. All my life, people have told me that I’m not practical, that I just don’t understand how the world works, that I’m naive. Or maybe it was just my parents who told me that. I wasted my law degree, I didn’t go for the high-paying job, et cetera. This just proves that people like my dad are right, that I’m an idiot, that I have no business being here.
I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s how it makes me feel: that you people who support Hillary are the smart ones, and that I’m a fool. Fine. I get it. Enjoy your candidate, revel in her victory, and I’ll just sit back here in my stupidity, because really, I’m just too dumb to know any better, aren’t I?
Andrew Sullivan says, regarding Clinton’s Ohio victory speech:
I couldn’t watch it. Sorry. […]
I just had a Jager shot, and hope to get drunk very soon.
