Just reported this evening on FOX News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” is a new poll out of my state of North Carolina — with our election looming for Democrats next Tuesday.

HILLARY CLINTON:  44%
BARACK OBAMA:  42%

Insider Advantage survey of 571 Likely Democratic Voters in NC
Poll Taken – April 29
Margin of Error:  +/- 3.8%

Given that on Election Days throughout this race, Obama has underperformed by about 5% in actual votes versus the pre-vote surveys…. Team Obama has got to be nervous about the once solid North Carolina election next week.

Stay tuned… Operation Chaos is in full Tar Heel mode right now!

[RELATED STORY:  Jimmy Carter talks up Obama.   Is this really HELPFUL to Barack before votes in North Carolina & Indiana?   After all, it isn't too far on the ideological spectrum from Rev. Wright to Jimmy Carter.]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Ever since Gene Robinson was consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church in November 2003, it seems to have become de rigeur for gay organizations to have him speak at their confabs or appears at public events alongside their president. He has addressed Log Cabin, appeared at a press conference with Human Rights Campaign (HRC) head Joe Solmonese and spoke most recently to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s (NGLTF) Creating Change Conference earlier this year.

As he speaks to these groups, Robinson, the first openly gay non-celibate individual to attain such a lofty clerical position in a mainstream church seems to be becoming more a gay celebrity than spiritual leader. Note, my use of the verb “seem” in the preceding sentence. He may well be doing excellent work in his New Hampshire diocese–and I certainly hope that he is.

It seems, however, we only read about him in articles and blog posts on gay issues — and not theological ones. I fear that becoming a gay celebrity, he is compromising his chances to change the image people of faith have of gay men and lesbians.

If after all the hullabaloo over his election had passed and he just focused on his job, people would see this bishop not as a man who dwells on his sexuality, but as a bishop like other bishops, just one who happens to be gay. They would thus better see that when one lives openly as a gay man (or lesbian), one’s sexuality is not the defining factor of his life, but just one aspect of it.

The more often he appears at gay confabs, the more likely it becomes that people see him as defining his life by his sexuality.

Seeing Robinson as a gay celebrity reminds me of the trajectory of the career of my favorite TV talk show hostess, Ellen de Generes. Whenshe came out with similar hullabaloo in 1997, making the cover of Time, she appeared to dwell on her sexuality. Nearly every episode of her sitcom the following year had a lesbian theme. Fewer and fewer people watched the show; it was canceled at the end of that season.

Five years later, she launched a daytime talk show where, instead of focusing on her own sexuality, she focused on her guests, using her own good humor and stage presence to draw them out, engaging them in thoughtful and amusing discourse while entertaining her audiences.

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In the current issue of National Review, John J. Miller writes that Mark Salter, who has helped John McCain write his books has much writing to do “between now and November,” including the presumptive Republican nominee’s speech accepting the party’s presidential nod at this summer convention in Minnesota. I trust Salter realizes that this is perhaps he important project on his plate.

As that speech is likely to get more media attention than any other scripted address John McCain deliver in the next six months, Salter needs write something which defines the Arizona Republican to the American people and rebuts Democratic attempts to discredit that good man. This speech must reassure an anxious conservative base while convincing independent voters who already have a high opinion of the Senator but are wary of again leasing the White House to a Republican.

To appeal to both groups, McCain can’t break with the Republican who currently lives there, but does need to distance himself from that good man, but flawed president.

In 1988, without repudiating the then-incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush attempted to distance himself from Ronald Reagan with his reference to “a kinder, gentler America.” Many conservatives (including this one) saw the line as an unwarranted jab at the Gipper, suggesting his America were harsher and meaner, but the tone of the speech helped the then-Vice President bounce back from a deficit in the polls to a lead which he would enjoy until November.

Salter needs craft a similar speech with a passage somehow acknowledging the incumbent’s shortcomings, but, at the same time, showing respect for his accomplishments and appreciation of his national security leadership. McCain needs make it difficult, it not impossible, for the Democrats to present him as promising a third Bush term. Tying McCain to W, they believe, will bring down the Arizonan’s high favorables.

Mark Salter clearly has his work cut out for him. He needs perhaps write a memorable line which would juxtapose McCain’s independence, the numerous times he has parted company with his party, with his commitment to essential Republican principles, notably a strong national defense and decreased federal spending.

Should Salter succeed, he could well help shift the dynamic of the fall campaign in favor of the Republican nominee. Given his wordsmithing skills, there’s a good chance he will.

Only yesterday did I get around to reading an article which Glenn Reynolds linked on Saturday. Reading that piece, I learned that Eleanor Cliagree and I have some common ground; we both think Ms. Hillary wins ugly. That Newsweek columnist observes that in the remaining months of the campaign for the Democratic nomination there’s “time enough for Hillary to win ugly, if that’s what winning takes.”

It seems that for Ms. Hillary political victory and the power that comes with it are the be-all and end-all of her life’s purpose. Not commitment to principle or any higher ideals, but to herself.

As Clift observes:

If the Clintons get back into the White House, it will be retribution time, like the Corleone family consolidating power in “The Godfather,” where the watchword is, “It’s business, not personal.”

As many have observed, with her back up against the wall, Hillary has emerged as a tenacious campaigner. Frequent Clinton critic Bill Kristol finds she “has turned out to be an impressive candidate.”

Yet, watching her and (begrudgingly) impressed with her tenacity, I find my opposition to her grows. If she were fighting for some noble cause, I would see her as a true leader, a real American heroine. But, instead of waging a principled campaign for the highest office in the land, she has chosen the low road, switching her position on any number of issues and misrepresenting her own past, even misrepresenting her past positions on those very issues.

Even as Hillary has improved her chances at securing the Democratic nomination, her credibility continues to crumble.  Many of her erstwhile allies now see her as an opportunist. Is this an individual American women would want as a role model?

When I read Charles Kaiser’s response to (what I called in this post) “a raft of e-mails faulting him for failing to talk to a single gay Republican in his Out magazine article, ‘Washington’s Gay War,’” I knew the organization had scored a major success.

Their call to action (both on the web and in an e-mail blast to members) generated enough correspondence to get that magazine to take notice and respond.

For as long as I have been involved in Log Cabin, particularly when I was a club president in the late 1990s, I faulted the national office for not doing enough to challenge the anti-Republican bias of the gay media.

Many gays may well see gay Republicans as self-hating or otherwise “traitors to the cause” because our media offers slanted coverage of us, highlighting the most hypocritical, relying on stereotypes drawn from books, plays or their own imagination. Gay publications (and even some in the MSM) rarely offer accurate pictures of real live gay conservatives.

If we want our fellow gays to have an accurate picture of us, we need to do something to change the way the media covers us. Kaiser’s article was not the first biased piece, but just another example of shoddy reporting of gay Republicans.

In a welcome change from the past, Log Cabin’s national office refused to take this one lying down. They took action, pointing out the flaws in the article, asking members to contact the magazine. And they got results.

I daresay that the next time Out magazine commissions a piece on gay Republicans, it will turn to someone more willing to interview gay Republicans, listen to us and quote us in his article.

I’m delighted at how swiftly Log Cabin responded to this “hit piece.” They deserve major kudos for their efforts. This is a welcome change. It shows how much we can accomplish when we speak up. And dare to make waves.

Now on to the Advocate.

Seems Obama supporters are really trying to mitigate the damage of the media focus on his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. First, they find gay-baiting in a clumsy remark by a Hillary supporter and now we learn (via the Washington Blade‘s Blogwatch) of yet another voice on the left decrying John McCain’s alleged hypocrisy for his association with John Hagee.

In yesterday’s Huffington Post, Valerie Tarico said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee had “positioned himself as a hypocrite” when he called Wright’s remarks “beyond belief.” Tarico claims that Bill Moyers “in an hour long interview last Friday showed the world the broader context in which the remarks were made.”

Actually, Valerie, Moyers used that interview to try to justify Wriight’s hate speech. Hugh Hewitt put the remarks in context by providing the text of the sermons. As Hugh put it, “The pastor could help us all if he would release recordings of all of his sermons, and Moyers ought to have asked for just that. If you are going to mount the defense of ‘out of context,’ then provide the context.”

After attempting to claim that the Moyers interview exonerated Obama, Tarico reminds us that McCain “posed for the camera with John Hagee” who has uttered some pretty hateful (and nonsensical) things about Catholics and gays. Then, she asks, “why didn’t we hear Hagee’s ugliest remarks over and over on the air?”

Valerie, that’s because John McCain didn’t sit in Hagee’s church on a regular basis for two decades and call him his “spiritual mentor.In fact.” it appears the Arizona Senator met with the Texas pastor only once–when he received his endorsement.

There’s a huge differnce between getting the endorsement of a narrow-minded preacher and associating with one on a regular basis over a twenty-year period.

Let me get this straight (excuse the insulting word, by the way). Gay activists are up in arms because NC Governor Mike Easley used the word “pansy.”

Well, God help us all. If Gay Americans don’t learn to get a tougher skin…their heads are going to be lopped off even easier than straight Americans when the Islamists are in power in Western Europe.

For all of the wailing from the Left over their claimed “non-issues” like flag-burning, wearing the flag on your chest, and supporting the troops — Pansygate makes the Gay Left look even more ridiculous and irrelevant than ever.

If Gay American activists were constantly up in arms about the worldwide threat to our community by an organized group of murderous Islamists, I might have more sympathy to those “completely offended” by Gov. Easley’s “pansy”.

I am not. Grow up, and get over the victimization mentality, folks.

PS – And don’t even start with me about how the American Religious Right is akin to Islamists. If you do, you must provide videotaped evidence of American Christian groups beheading or hanging gays. There is no moral equivalence in a worldwide pogrom of gays being spearheaded by radical Islamists.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan): Seems Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff agrees with Bruce, writing in the Blade’s Blog, “Are we really so thin-skinned and politically correct that we’re offended by use of the word “pansy?” His advice: “Get over it, people. There are far more offensive things to worry about than an awkward turn of phrase.”