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This Is What Democracy Looks Like
Today's Note From a Madman
January 19, 2009
Happy Inauguration Day!
It feels like the day of New Year's Eve - like an additional December 31st after
the toughest year of one's life. All you want to happen is for it to end and the
new year to begin.
That's what these final few hours before Barack Obama is sworn in as the
forty-fourth President of the United States (POTUS) and the people of the United
States (also POTUS) get to plant a Bush in Texas.
The potential energy is staggering as are the expectations. But make no mistake
about it - it isn't going to come fast and it isn't going to come easy.
Destruction is easy - Building is hard.
There are two stories to be written about the upcoming inauguration: The first
is the beginning of hope; the second is the end of despair. They both, we hope,
begin at the same time.
Watching the seemingly never-ending coverage of the talking head cable channel
news shows as they lead up to "the moment", one wonders when the ball is going
to drop and people are going to begin kidding in Times Square... or around the
Reflecting Pool.
It feels longer than two months and a few days since we elected then-Senator
Barack Obama as POTUS 44. Whereas time flies when you're having fun, the past
two-plus months have been anything but. If "Change" was the one word term that
helped make President Obama, it's "hope" and "anticipation" that has to guide
him for our sakes.
As President Bush tries to change history and re-write his legacy, President
Obama will take the oath and begin what Bush promised eight years ago. Some of
what Bush said back in 2001 sounded so well, but in the dull light of eight hard
years, those empty words are just sour noises:
"This is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and
opportunity,"
"If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer
most,"
"All of us are diminished when any are hopeless,"
"Many in our country do not know the pain of poverty, but we can listen to those
who do,"
"I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with
civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater
justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well,"
There was no justice; there was little opportunity; our economy isn't adrift,
but it has sank. Most of us are hopeless and the pain of poverty inflicts many
more today than when he took office eight years ago. No one who needed to listen
actually listened and responsibility was, and is a foreign word to the Bush
administration, a.k.a. The Administration of Diminished Responsibility.
Here's an interesting thought as the final hours of President Bush's pardon
powers disappear into the night. Surely the thought has crossed his mind that
both his former Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales; and near-done Vice President
Dick Cheney might have to come out in front of Congress and defend the decisions
that led us to become a nation which tortures, exposes its undercover operatives
and allows a place like Guantanamo Bay to exist.
With hours left in his presidency, one wonders if President Bush could offer up
pardons for anything done by the pair, and anyone else associated with the lies
and bad deeds done in the name of "freedom" during his time in office.
What would the new Congress do if that were to happen? Regardless of what
President Bush decides to do (or not to do) about pardoning those at the top of
his administration for their misdeeds, Congress has the responsibility to find
out the truth. Calling Gonzales and Cheney before them via subpoena must be the
path they choose to get there.
And if they refuse, arrest them like the criminals they are.
President Bush will go down as the worst President in my lifetime. His
incompetence makes Richard Nixon's paranoia look like palpable by contrast while
his intentional ignorance leaves Bill Clinton's libido as the joke it should
have been.
It's time for actions to take precedence over rhetoric, and that is the promise
of January 20, 2009.
-Noah Greenberg
THE LAVENDER TUBE: NIP, TUCK
by Victoria A. Brownworth
copyright c 2009 San Francisco Bay Area Reporter, Inc.
The inaugural extravaganza is over. Now it’s a whole new mini-series. We’re
pretty sure we’ll like this one a lot more than the last.
Of course, a new president doesn’t really change the TV landscape, unless
President Obama actually delays the digitalization set for Feb. 17, as he is
trying to do.
A new president does alter the tone, however, but what does that mean for
comedy? Where will Jimmy Kimmel be without YouTube clips of George Bush walking
into things and making up words? David Letterman’s “Great Moments in
Presidential Speeches” was only funny with Bush juxtaposed to, well, real
presidents.
Of course, it will be nice to have a president who isn’t a running (or walking,
or bicycling or eating pretzels) joke. Jimmy Kimmel summed up his thanks to Bush
for the laughs of the past eight years in a video tribute. (Check it out at
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfwjnpRKKjI )
Bush himself had a different take on his presidency, as his farewell address (13
minutes–think that number just came out of a hat?) and his final press
conference attested. If ever there were a man who just didn’t get it, that man
is Bush. Apparently he lies as much to himself as he has to the rest of the
country.
The final ABC and CBS news polls on Bush’s approval ratings were out Jan. 16:
Only 22 percent of the nation approved of Bush. We did wonder who those people
could be, since his family isn’t *that* large, but then we saw one of his
apologists on David Letterman.
One wouldn’t expect PBS’s Gwen Ifill, now touting her book about Obama, to be a
Bush fan. Which is why we were absolutely gob-smacked to hear her version of the
Bush presidency in relationship to Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Letterman noted that Clinton was possibly the smartest person he had ever met
and added that whenever the former president had been on the show he was blown
away by his brilliance. Ifill made a face.
Later, in discussing Bush, Ifill said “to be fair” Bush had had a series of
terrible problems to deal with, while Bill Clinton had presided over an
economically prosperous and peaceful administration.
“To be fair?” To Bush? Who had problems to face during his administration while
Clinton did not?
As Homer Simpson would say, that’s not how we remember it. We remember Clinton
inheriting the worst deficit in American history prior to the current one. We
remember Bush inheriting the economic prosperity the Clinton Administration
created, as well as a semi-stable Middle East and international good will, then
trashing all of it.
Perhaps Ifill is so used to parroting the lies promulgated during the Bush
Administration that she doesn’t actually remember the facts. Let’s hope that she
gets help for that problem before she starts reporting on the new
administration, otherwise Obama might find himself being blamed for the mess the
Bush II folks left him just as Clinton was blamed for the mess from Bush I.
That blame-the-new-president show is not a rerun we want to see.
Speaking of reruns we didn’t want to see, albeit a lot less serious, we were
very disappointed to discover that “Grey’s Anatomy” has once again dumped a
lesbian/bisexual character. Sadie (Melissa George) was set to become the new
love interest for Callie (Sara Ramirez) after the show unceremoniously fired
Brooke Smith (Erica), her previous lesbian lover.
Although George has done a more than creditable job at infusing a high level of
sexual energy into the show and definitely made us believe she was interested in
Callie, for reasons undisclosed by the show, she is out. Immediately. Like
Smith.
George said it was her idea to leave the show. The show says her story line
“came to a natural end.” A natural end? She was signed for three years and ended
up with a handful of episodes. She never got past the hair-twirling stage with
Callie.
Allegedly it’s not homophobia. As it wasn’t with Smith or with Isaiah
Washington. And yet, three strikes tends to look a lot like an out. Just stop
watching this show. Really.
Speaking of homophobia, we liked the exchange Wanda Sykes had with Craig
Ferguson on his Jan. 16 show. Ferguson said, “I heard you got married.” Sykes,
who married her lesbian partner in October in California, said she had and noted
that Ferguson had also married over the holidays.
“Are they trying to overturn *your* marriage?” Sykes asked. Ferguson replied,
“Just to be safe, I got married in Vermont...I married someone from the other
side.” Sykes replied, “Oh, you went old school.”
The always acerbic Sykes queried why people didn’t focus on breaking up their
own marriages instead of hers. Sykes also suggested that capitalizing on the
revenue from gay weddings would be a good way to save the economy. “Especially
with gay men–we’re talking millions of dollars in ice sculptures alone.”
Speaking of gay men, we were *so* disappointed that Luke and Noah finally slept
together on “As the World Turns.”
Yes, disappointed. Why? Because after a two-year courtship that would have put a
purity circle to shame, when the two finally got back together after undergoing
endless misery over the holidays, their big love scene was....off-screen.
It began with lots of kissing and then the ritual stripping off of the shirts
and the subsequent bare-chested hugging. When next we see the pair, they are
fresh from the shower and toweling off, talking about how they were glad they
waited. That’s the only way we know they had sex.
“ATWT” has done a good job of making Luke and Noah a realistic couple. The
writers even added some gay infidelity. But to cheat loyal viewers who have been
watching this romance for two long years of the consummation is simply wrong. Or
it’s bowing to homophobic pressure from sponsors. The same show has lots of sex
between heterosexual couples. But for the gay couple, “ATWT” seems to have
stopped breaking ground after the full-mouth kissing.
The kissing has been fabulous, but we deserved the full Monty for the actual
consummation of this long affair. Or at least to see Luke and Noah in bed
together. Like a couple in love, which they are.
Another reason we’d like to see charming and very normal Luke and Noah together
is to off-set the number of freakish gay men we are seeing on other shows. Last
week’s “Criminal Minds” featured two men married to women but in love with each
other who were serial killers. Their foreplay was torturing and killing young
women.
Then “Law & Order” had an obvious gay man as a killer attorney who was taking
victims of an airliner crash for all they were worth.
And even “ATWT” has had the closeted Brian, who married Luke’s grandmother while
actually being in lust with Luke. Brian has since come out–thanks to Luke–but
for months he was just another sleazy, down-low, screw-over-your-wife
closet-case weasel.
Of course when shows like “Dr. Phil” insist on promoting the idea that
homosexuality can be “cured” and that it’s something that should be, it’s not
surprising that there’s a twisted perspective about gay men on the tube.
Last week “Dr. Phil” did a follow-up show about transgendered and gay kids. His
“experts” included a researcher from Focus on the Family–the same Focus on the
Family that helped fund Prop 8–and a psychologist from Focus on the Family who
specializes in sexual repatriation–that is making queers think they are
straight.
Yikes.
The therapist explained how the “problem” is often that mothers are
suffocatingly close to their sons and thus gayness or transgender identity
happens, but is really a false identity caused by the mothers’ smothering.
How very 1950s.
This approach was presented as real alternative therapy and given the majority
of time on the show. There were two accredited psychologists who were brought on
in the last ten minutes, but by that time the damage was done.
There may be a new administration in Washington, but it’s the same old
homophobic nonsense on the tube. Gay men are portrayed as twisted and pervy
while lesbians aren’t really lesbians at all, but bisexuals just waiting for the
right man, as on “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House.” The only real lesbians on the
tube seem to be the ones on “The L Word,” which just opened its final, shortened
season.
The perils of homophobia and how homophobia impacts gay men and lesbians cannot
be overstated, which is why shows like the “Dr. Phil” episode are so dangerous.
On Jan. 24, Lifetime premieres “Prayers for Bobby,” a made-for-TV film starring
Sigourney Weaver as Mary Griffith in a tale about the tragic suicide of
Griffith’s son, Bobby. Griffith was a fundamentalist Christian who told her gay
son that he would burn in hell for the sin of homosexuality. The pain of trying
to pretend he was not gay became so great that Bobby finally jumped off an
overpass onto a highway and was killed. His suicide transformed his mother.
Weaver, who co-produced the film, told reporters, “There’s still so much
ignorance about what homosexuality is, and such a lack of compassion for young
people who are making these very difficult decisions about what to tell a
family.”
That lack of compassion is still evident on top-rated program like “Dr. Phil”
and clearly influences the writing on other TV shows. How many queer viewers,
especially younger ones, are confused to the point of despair by these mixed
messages on the tube? How damaged are they by the negative portrayals of gays
and lesbians on TV and how many more Bobby Griffiths are being created?
Stay tuned.
In response to, "Miracle on the Hudson was more of a response to training,
design and planning than miracle in the end," Dorothy Schwartz writes:
I am guessing that additional planning in the future will include all passengers
peering out their windows looking for geese. And I for one will pay closer
attention to those instructions about where my life vest is.
Send your comments to: NationalView@aol.com
-Noah Greenberg