A few months ago, we saw it as a “promising” development that Neil Giuliano, a former Republican Mayor of Tempe, Arizona had been tapped to be president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Well, that hasn’t prevented them from overreacting to critical comments made about a gay movie. Now that organization is calling Today show movie critic Gene Shalit’s review of Brokeback Mountain “defamatory.”

In a press release on Thursday, GLAAD faulted Shalit for calling Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist a “‘sexual predator’ who ‘”tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts.’” While I’m no fan of Gyllenhaal’s performance in the flick, I think Shalit’s comment is a little extreme, but clearly not defamatory. He was just offering his view.

His view is neither “ignorant,” “irresponsble” nor “offensive” as GLAAD also claims. It is GLAAD who is being irresponsible in suggesting that Shalit called Gyllenhaal’s character a “‘sexual predator’ merely because he is romantically interested in someone of the same sex.”

After all, Shalit is the proud parent of an openly gay son about whose coming out he wrote lovingly in The Advocate in 1997. The Today show movie critic noted how his son recalls the concern his father showed for “his physical safety and the consequences to his career.” (The younger Shalit came out in 1973.) In that piece, he offered some sage advice:

Many parents lie awake at night wondering if they played a role in the sexual orientation of their children. I think they should go back to sleep. Each child is an individual.

While acknowledging in and “editor’s note” that Shalit had an openly gay son, GLAAD did not mention The Advocate article in their news release.

While, I believe Shalit’s criticism miss the mark, many critics, even good ones, have been known to read things into movies which are not there. It seems Shalit is doing that here. (Maybe the character reminded him of a man who pursued his son. Or maybe that’s how he saw their relationship. Or maybe he, like I, didn’t find any chemistry between the two men. Who knows?)

Since GLAAD can provide no evidence that Shalit made the “sexual predator” remark merely because Gyllenhaal’s Twist was pursuing another man, this group is simply reading anti-gay animus into Shalit’s review. While Shalit may have misrepresented one character’s actions in the movie, GLAAD has clearly misrepresented one film critic’s negative review.

Just because somebody is critical of something gay doesn’t mean they hold negative feelings against all things gay. We don’t advance a positive image of gays by labeling any criticism of any gay (or lesbian) person (or character in a book or movie) as “defamatory” or “ignorant” merely because we disagree with it. Before making such accusations, we should first have solid evidence that the person harbors anti-gay sentiments. As I found tonight in a google search (taking less than a minute), Gene Shalit clearly does not.

(more…)

But we shouldn’t have gone to war with this tyrant after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, right? (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

Saddam’s Terror Training Camps – Weekly Standard

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

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The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

Hey, Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Reid & Rep. Murtha — don’t let these facts get in the way of your coddling our enemies with your rhetoric.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m seeing news reports in the past hour that Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay has given up his pledge to return to his leadership post once his legal trouble subside.

The only thing I can say is …. GOODBYE TOM!

Just last evening, I was fretting to PatriotPartner that if the House (and Senate) GOP don’t start taking care of their problems and remembering why we sent them there in 1994… that I felt as if there was a good chance the Republicans could lose at least the Senate this November.

I’m not the only Republican voter feeling that way as I spoke to an equally angry North Carolinian on my flight yesterday. And I couldn’t agree more with this Wall Street Journal piece.

Cleaning House – Banish the Abramoff Republicans – OpinionJournal.com

This week’s plea agreement by “super-lobbyist” Jack Abramoff has Republicans either rushing to return his campaign contributions in an act of cosmetic distancing, accuse Democrats of being equally corrupt, or embrace some new “lobbying reform” that would further insulate Members of Congress from political accountability.

Here’s a better strategy: Banish the Abramoff crowd from polite Republican society, and start remembering why you were elected in the first place.

Republicans won’t escape voter anger by writing new rules but only by returning to their self-professed principles. Gradually since 1994 they’ve decided they want to reform and limit government less than they want to use government to entrench their own power, and in the case of the Abramoffs to get rich doing so. If Speaker Dennis Hastert, interim Majority Leader Roy Blunt and other GOP leaders are too insulated to realize this, then Republicans need new leaders, and right away.

I think the disappearance of Tom DeLay is a good first (and only first) step.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from GPW): It’s uncanny sometimes how Bruce & I think a lot alike. I had hoped to post on this, seeing this as a good sign for the GOP. And a sign of Tom DeLay putting his party ahead of his own ambitions. But, alas, I had been having problems logging onto to our page and so couldn’t post. While I admire many of DeLay’s political and leadership skills, he had, in the end, become a liability for the GOP. He clearly saw the writing on the wall.

First, Chad @ Cake Or Death? informed us that Canadian officials had begun to blame the United States for a record year of gun deaths in Toronto. (Perhaps a fence to the north is needed too? Fine with me!)

Well, according to a new Stanford environmentalist, perhaps the Canuck forests are fighting back and raining doom down on all of us…

Forests may be bad for planet, controversial US study says – Edmonton Journal

Canada’s forests may actually worsen global warming rather than cool the planet, says a controversial study by a Stanford University physicist and environmental scientist.

This doesn’t mean we should bulldoze forests to fight global warming, says Ken Caldeira. Forests are still valuable ecological features in many ways.

But he says it’s “premature at least,” and maybe even dead wrong, to plant new forests and maintain existing ones in the belief that this will cool the Earth. If we want to stop global warming, he says, we’d better begin by burning less fossil fuel.

So let me get this right. Now the tree huggers have stabbed their pulpuous allies in the backs by destroying the forests in order to cool the earth!! That is so rich.

You know, I’m starting to lose track. The envirowackos tell us that severe heat is a symptom of global warming! Then bitter cold! Then drought, but then floods… .every weather condition the earth has experienced for billions of years is now evidence of global warming. Well, you can’t have it all ways. It is either warming or cooling. Pick one!

And now trees are causing global warming! Among other things yesterday, hearing this story on Rush Limbaugh nearly caused me to wreck my car. As one caller said, “what is left for the liberals to hug?”

-Bruce (GayPatriot)