homo superior blogs

And no, it’s not a flexing muscle twink this time.

Click the pic to watch.

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Andrew Sullivan isn’t the only good gay blogger in the world, nor he is always the one I agree with the most consistently on matters of politics, but he is the most interesting as a character, a thinker and a writer and I don’t care who thinks I am somehow a traitor to leftist causes because I feel that way. Leftist causes never had much use for my brand of contrarianism anyway.

I’m quite proud that an out and proud, married, 4o-something gay man has become known as much for his tireless and uncompromising coverage of torture and The Green Revolution in Iran as he is for pounding the drums, almost daily, for marriage equality. No other gay blogger engages me so completely or compels me to read him every frakin’ day. Indeed, my tumblelog can sometimes deserve the subhead, Quotes from the Mind of Andrew Sullivan.

Still, he’s right more often than he’s not. He was right about marriage equality being the civil rights issues of our times, despite the reluctance of our national gay rights leaders to ever take it on. In this video, he lambastes Joe Solmonese, the director of the broadly named Human Rights Campaign Fund, for basically saying that gay folks have no right to criticize Obama for failing to fulfill his promises to the gay community until 2017, after the expected two terms.

What bullshit. What presumption. What cowardice.

I’m with Sullivan: Solmonese is craven. That statement proves he’s a tool of the Democratic Party establishment and that he should resign.

(And who’s that handsome older daddy interviewing him? Hubba hubba!)

Andrew Sullivan wonders about the environmental effects of capitalism and if the current downturn isn’t a blessing:

Don’t you wonder, as this massive global event gathers pace, if there isn’t something inherently healthy about some of this retraction?

I don’t mean to discount the real human suffering involved, the poverty that will come back, the jobs destroyed, or the lives interrupted. I just mean that the capitalist machine we had built, when harnessed to the entire world since the early 1990s, had begun to overtake itself. The immense complexities of international finance have been shown to be terrible weaknesses as well as strengths, and the entire planet becoming America was clearly pushing the climate past the point of no return. Our values had become distorted, and the almost addict-like demand for the spigots to stay open suggests they are distorted still.

From a longer term perspective, this sudden collapse in momentum may look like a global attempt to digest change so rapid and bewildering it needs to be ratcheted back to a level where it does not overwhelm our capacity to control it. Or maybe I’m just looking too eagerly for a silver – and green – lining.

The Depression And The Environment

I dunno but I’ve been feeling that way since, as a teenager, I read Silent Spring. Over time, I’ve experienced a growing and unshakable conviction that the planet would be a lot better off with oh, about a billion less greedy human beings. And we are greedy by nature; capitalism just harnesses that nature much more effectively than any other system. Greed is the final measure of all morality under capitalism.

What other species is capable of waging war, not just on other tribes, cultures, and countries but on the planet itself, causing the deaths of rivers and lakes, the extinction of entire species? Further, witnessing Nagasaki, Gaza, Darfour, Auschwitz, Tiananmen Square, The Gulags, Tuskegee, or any other killing field in any other part of the world, I have to ask: What’s so great about humanity anyway?

My buddy Craig, of GayVentures, makes The Daily Dish:

DOMA should be renamed the “Homosexual Discrimination Act of 1996″ or HDA. It is the most discriminatory piece of legislation passed in the last 50 years, and a Democrat signed it into law. DOMA’s reach is vast and affects legislation even today.

Read more: The Poison Of DOMA

And yes, I’m jealous.

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[Congrats to Mr Siegel for inspiring a new feature, Frak You! I'm really, really surprised I haven't done this before, aren't you? Submit future nominations here.]

I don’t usually watch the Oscars ceremony. Certainly, not in its entirety. Although I am as interested in the movies nominated there as I am interested in any other movies — I like watching bad movies, after all — instead I’ve really been trying to catch up on all the stuff I’ve missed while hiding away from film art in the Czech Republic for the last 5 years. [Except for the ten days a year in Karlovy Vary, that is.] And, for obvious reasons, I’ve been trying to educate myself about Argentinean cinema.

Still, I’m just as weary of the self-serving snark that pundits, journalists and bloggers aim at the Oscars as I am of the self-congratulatory smarm that radiates off the podium on a typical Oscar night. (Stephen Soderbergh, I’m looking at you.)

First, we get Andrew Sullivan’s dismissal, which, besides slanting negative what was actually a sympathetic review, also, as usual, reads like envy. Yes, Andrew yet another party to which you were not invited, attended by people with whom you share absolutely no political affinities whatsoever. I’m sure.

Worst, however, was this bit of displaced anger on the part of The Daily Beast’s Lee Siegel:

The Worst Oscars Ever – The Daily Beast

I’m glad Mickey Rourke lost, sorry but hardly surprised that Langella didn’t get it, appalled yet again by Sean Penn’s smugness and arrogance—he was so caught up with bravely flaunting his opposition to Prop 8 (you could just see the entire foreclosed, unemployed, defrauded, confused, and frightened country roll its eyes) that he didn’t thank his wife, his children, or anyone unrelated to him professionally in his acceptance speech. He did, though, make sure to offer a conciliatory hand to Rourke, whom he called “my brother.” Penn’s private drama. [My emphasis.]

I guess Siegel expected Penn to stick in something about the stimulus package? To empathize with his fans? I dunno. And as a correction to that omission, Siegel sticks in his own homophobic non-sequitur. Exactly whose homophobia it is were supposed to guess, I guess.

(And by the way, Siegel said he watched the speech, but then said Penn did not thank anyone “professionally-related to him”. Well, I read the transcript and it seems he did. Maybe a skinback is in order? Ya think? Or should The Daily Beast simply let that lie stand?)

It’s not possible, apparently, for large swaths of the American public to both object to institutionalized injustice and wish for a way out of the economic mess they’re in. The inability to walk and chew gum at the same time, like Andrew said. Which reminds us of the similar attitudes of a certain out gay Republican and his clueless, brown-nosing, blanket-e-mail sending staffer.

Left out of Siegel’s blog post, and Andrew’s blog, for that matter (Isn’t “God loves you, too,” one of Sullivan’s hobby horses? Nope, no similarities there.) , was the most passionate, timely acceptance speech of the evening: Dustin Lance Black’s for winning the best adapted screenplay Oscar for Milk. Click the pic to view.

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I’ll let you wonder why Siegel left that bit out.

But I do have some advice for him: Do what I do, just don’t watch.

Also, take a look at Sean’s speech and see if he comes off as the gargoyle Siegel wants him to be:

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[Sullivan has now mentioned Black's acceptance speech in a recent post, admitting it was "superb." But he still goes on to slam Penn's speech. I dunno; I don't hear smug in Penn's words or manner at all. But wait, did Sullivan watch the damn thing or didn't he?]

• Obama’s new man calls time on US torture | Andrew Sullivan – Times Online

  With him in place and with Obama in the White House, we now have something very, very precious back in the government of America. It’s called trust and lawfulness. As they say in some of the most beleaguered places on the planet: know hope.

  tags: Obama, torture, reading list, Andrew Sullivan, Leon Panetta, CIA

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Photograph of a gay Iranian tortured by the morality police.

The point of torture is always torture.