Queers for Ahmadinjead

I’ve been called a self-loathing homosexual for not liking Madonna and “Will and Grace.” So what then to make of the Columbia Queer Alliance, which tacitly defends Ahmadinejad in this repulsive email:

“We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely. Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as “gay”, “lesbian”, or “homosexual” to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms “same-sex practices” and “same-sex desire” in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad’s presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world.”

Instead of standing up for their gay brothers and sisters in Iran — where homosexuality is a crime and execution a state-sanctioned punishment — these gutless fags (they deserve the most derogatory of descriptions) have chosen to rationalize Ahmadinjead’s fundamentalist zeal. Who can possibly fathom, let alone explain, this mindset?

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Dupe du jour

Kevin Spacey is the latest star to cozy up to Hugo Chavez, visiting the dictator in Caracas on Monday. I guess he’s looking for some street cred from his fellow privileged radicals.

Queers for Ahmadinjead

I’ve been called a self-loathing homosexual for not liking Madonna and “Will and Grace.” So what then to make of the Columbia Queer Alliance, which tacitly defends Ahmadinejad in this repulsive email:

“We stand in solidarity with our peers in Iran, but we do not presume to speak for them. We cannot possibly claim to understand the multiple and diverse experiences of living with same-sex desires in Iran. Our cultural values and experiences are distinct, but the stakes are one and the same: the essential human right to express our desires freely. Moreover, we would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as “gay”, “lesbian”, or “homosexual” to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms “same-sex practices” and “same-sex desire” in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology. President Ahmadinejad’s presence on campus has provided an impetus for us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world.”

Instead of standing up for their gay brothers and sisters in Iran — where homosexuality is a crime and execution a state-sanctioned punishment — these gutless fags (they deserve the most derogatory of descriptions) have chosen to rationalize Ahmadinjead’s fundamentalist zeal. Who can possibly fathom, let alone explain, this mindset?

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Dupe du jour

Kevin Spacey is the latest star to cozy up to Hugo Chavez, visiting the dictator in Caracas on Monday. I guess he’s looking for some street cred from his fellow privileged radicals.

They exist, until you kill them

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” he said to howls and boos. “In Iran we don’t have this phenomenon, I don’t know who told you this.”

Yet Ahmadinejad received several ovations from the students and faculty at Columbia, despite the rather desperate dressing down he received from the university’s president.

By now we shouldn’t be surprised, but some on the left (perversely allied with far right anti-Semites like David Duke) were happy to see this fundamentalist thug get some face time.

I know I’m a Jewish lesbian and he’d probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon…

Okay, I admit it.  Part of it is that he just looks cuddly. Possibly cuddly enough to turn me straight.  I think he kind of looks like Kermit the Frog. Sort of. With smaller eyes. But that’s not all…

This delusional “Jewish lesbian,” writing on Daily Kos, offers the usual qualifiers as to why she can’t bring herself to sleep with a muppet, but her rationalizations are stupefying.

(She goes on to assert that Ahmadinejad “cares more about American troops than President Bush.” Yeah, and I guess he hates homos more, too. After all, Bush is the more evil than Hitler.)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend — think how that mindset has brought us to where we are today.

Where be the effing watermelon?

“I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”

There you have Bill O’Reilly’s impressions of the famous Harlem eatery. It gets worse.

On the same program, O’Reilly was describing his experience to NPR’s Juan Williams. “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea,’” O’Reilly said, adding, “You know, I mean, everybody was — it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

I’m assuming he brought his own silverware, because, as you’re no doubt aware, Afro-Americans eat with their hands.

At best, these comments prove him to be a patronizing rube.

Noted and quoted, takes one to know one edition

Apparently Barack Obama lacks the worldly inquisitiveness of our current president:

As for Obama, a senior White House official said the freshman senator from Illinois was “capable” of the intellectual rigor needed to win the presidency but instead relies too heavily on his easy charm.

“It’s sort of like, ‘that’s all I need to get by,’ which bespeaks sort of a condescending attitude towards the voters,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And a laziness, an intellectual laziness.”

Clinton bias

It exits — in their favor. Not that I’d expect much better from a celebrity rag like GQ, but editor Jim Nelson has lost all credibility after spiking a negative story about Hillary’s campaign.

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Might as well steal a page from the Book of Satan. Partisanship aside, the adminstrations of Bush 43 and Clinton 44 would share one striking similarity: a pronounced disdain for transparency.