It does seem they’re ever eager to cover protests of a left-wing bent, even if they draw crowds barely breaking into the double digits. I mean, heck those protests draw more media than protestors.

Need we say anything more about their failure to cover the “tea party” protests.  Heck, at the LA Tea Party I attended, held during the workday at a spot far from centrally located and not well-publicized, we had more people than the combined number of reporters and protesters at the anti-AIG “Richhunt.”

UPDATE:  Seems that the “real energy” is in the “tea party” protests:

Today two events occurred roughly ten miles apart in suburban Connecticut outlining where people stand in their outrage over America becoming Bailout Nation.

I’m sure the MSM won’t report this, but the far bigger demonstration was of fiscal conservatives , not anti-business radicals.

For the better part* of Andrew Sullivan’s career, he was something of an iconoclast.  While he identified himself as a conservative (he still does), he was really more of a conservative by default.  He got his start in American journalism, writing for The New Republic, the flagship magazine of serious liberal thought, but he was anything but an American liberal.  Nor did he fit within the mainstream of conservative thought, yet in his heyday (from about 1989 to 2004), he was philosophically closer to contemporary conservatism than he was to Anglo-American liberalism.

What distinguished him more than anything was that he was the first (or at least the most prominent) gay public intellectual to write about gay issues in a way that challenged the gay orthodoxy.  And for that he earned the scorn of those with whom he liked to socialize.

An intellectual by day, Andrew enjoyed (and I presume still enjoys) frequenting gay haunts at night. He summers in Provincetown, long a retreat for East Coast gays, nearly all of whom (the outspoken ones at least) hold left-of-center political views.  And while Andrew, like all of us (or most of us at least), didn’t push his political ideas during every hour of the day, many of his ideological adversaries were determined to define him by his departures from said gay orthodoxy.

Instead of finding his off-time as a respite from the rigors of his working life, his angry adversaries used it to remind him of his unorthodox opinions.  They insulted him in bars, threw drinks in his face and, if one account is to believed, even spit on him.  Other gay writers and activists were no kinder, regularly ridiculing him as a traitor to the cause.  One such individual made Andrew’s private life a source for public censure.

Such nastiness takes its toll even on the hardiest of human beings.  And Andrew is, if anything, human, very human.

That’s one reason I think he has, in recent years, gone so far to the left, more out of a sense of fatigue at being the outcast among his peers than anything else.

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I just completed Amity Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression and expect I’ll offer a more complete review as some later date, but for now will offer a more concise review:  Read this book as it shows the many parallels between the actions of President Obama and his predecessor in the 1930s.  Obama, like Franklin Roosevelt, seems to be temporizing in response to the economic meltdown of his day.  Both men borrowed the rhetoric of class warfare and seemed indifferent, if not hostile, to private enterprise.

At the same time that the book points to FDR’s failure to revive the faltering economy of the 1930s, it shows the roots of his later success in leading the nation to victory against the Nazis.  Even as Americans were isolationist, Roosevelt understood the imperative of international engagement.

While troubled by the “godlessness” of Communism, in 1933, “he ended a sixteen-year U.S. policy toward Russia, and recognized the Soviet Union:”

At a moment when people were still hungry, the deal seemed pragmatic–as president, Americans understood, Roosevelt had to choose the lesser evil.  In Danzig, a port city, the Nazis that winter were tossing newspaper editors in jails; they were also taking over the courts of the Saar.  Recognizing Russia was a way of counterbalancing the Germans.

Like Britain’s Churchill, he recognizing early on the threat Nazism posed to Western Civilization.

Much as we conservatives are eager to cite the failure of the New Deal, we must also recognize that Roosevelt was more than his economic policies.  He ranks among the greatest of U.S. presidents for his leadership in helping the nations which would become our Allies before the American people were ready for war.  And for his leadership once they were.

Even as he was flailing around in the 1930s, failing to find a solution to our economic woes, he was showing signs of understanding the geopolitical situation.

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on the President:

Sorry, I don’t want my President joshing about the Special Olympics on Leno. I don’t want him on Leno at all in his perpetual PR mode. I don’t want him drawing  out his picks for the final four on TV. I don’t want him paid for rewriting/revising/ condensing/whatever his earlier book while he’s supposed to be President, or ribbing Gordon Brown about his tennis game in patronizing fashion, or giving the British a pack of un-viewable DVDs after they, in exchange, offered a tasteful gift of historic importance.

Hanson offers more, much more in his post, all of which merits your attention. But, for now, I wanted to draw you attention to his criticism of President Obama for it offers one of the best short summaries of his failings.

(H/t: Instapundit.)

Today, I realized yet again that I must one day write my memoir, even if no one will ever read it.  Given my fascinatingly strange coming out story, I believe I have something to offer about the gay coming out experience as a metaphor for self-discovery, individuation.

I fear, however, that some who might otherwise warm to my story would reject it because of one element, the political aspect of my journey.  But, that is only one ingredient in the strange mix of my experiences.

The real strangeness of my own experience has nothing to do with my politics, but instead that my coming out story, like many good movies, has a villain who seems drawn from central casting, an arrogant man in perfectly tailored suits who, in the guise of helping me, gave me nothing but bad advice.  And he happened to be gay.

My thought today was on the importance of mentors in our lives which is of course related to the subject of my doctoral dissertation, how the goddess Athena serves as a mentor to nearly all the Greek heroes who achieve success in their endeavors.

She reminds us of the importance of good guidance as we strive, struggle even, to realize our goals.  Perhaps, more on this anon.  My own story shows that bad advice often delays the realization of those goals.

No wonder Democrats are tripping over themselves to denounce the bonuses paid to AIG executives.  They’rre trying to try to deflect attention from their votes to guarantee such bonuses (when they voted for the “stimulus” which included a provision doing just that).

Michael Barone sees their grandstanding as a “moment of panic for House Democrats” and presenting an opportunity for Republicans:

This was a moment of panic for House Democrats. Almost all of them, and not a single House Republican, had voted for the stimulus package which specifically authorized such bonus payments. A bill that no one was given the opportunity to actually read. You don’t have to be a political genius to see what peril that poses for just about every Democratic incumbent and the opportunity it presents for every Republican candidate.

Emphasis added.

The fact that Democrats rushed the passage of this multi-hundred billion dollar boondoggle is going to hurt them as much as the bill’s content.

What Ann Althouse said about Chris Dodd will soon apply to those Democrats who voted for the “stimulus.”  The Connecticut Democrat contended he would have rejected a provision allowing for AIG bonuses had he “known at the time that there were any A.I.G. bonuses involved.”  Senator, it’s your job to to know what’s involved in the legislation your vote for and propose.  That’s what your constituents elect you to do.

And Althouse said Dodd’s was an “impossibly lame excuse. It’s his job to know. He holds a public trust. Which he doesn’t deserve.”

That applies to all those who voted for the “stimulus,” particularly those grandstanding about the AIG bonuses.  And who knows what else they find cause to criticize when the public becomes aware of other provisions slipped into the “stimulus.”

As the Obama Administration puts off until April a government efficiency plan promised in February, we’re reminded yet again that the president still has not filled the top positions at the Treasury Department.  Given that economic woes our nation faces (about which he continually reminds us), shouldn’t that be his primary focus?

Today completes the second month of Barack Obama’s presidency and it’s not just key positions in that key Department which remain unfilled.  Not just that, two of his cabinet appointees, Kathleen Sebelius to HHS and Gary Locke to Commerce, have yet to be confirmed.

So, let’s compare Obama’s record in picking a cabinet with that of his much maligned predecessor, recalling that the incumbent had five more weeks to staff his Administration before taking office than did George W. Bush just over eight years ago.

As Wikipedia provides the days the various Department Secretaries took office which I summarize below.  In preparing this chart, we see that Bush did a better job of staffing the upper echelons of his Administration than the incumbent has done.

Check below the jump to see the appointees and the dates they took office:

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As a Jew, I shudder every time I see Bernie Madoff on the news.  Even though most of the people whom he bilked were also Jewish, I fear some people may attribute his misdeeds to his faith, even though his professional actions violated so many tenets of Jewish ethics.  He is not only a bad man, but also a bad Jew.

Similarly, as a gay man, I cringe when I see such people as Barney Frank take the public stage.  There is no doubt that Mr. Frank is a very, very bright man who perhaps comes up with more clever quips than any of his congressional colleagues, yet he is also a vicious partisan with a very fixed vision of the world.  He rarely admits his mistakes.

Watching him join what Michelle Malkin has called The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage, grandstanding over executive bonuses at the troubled company while silent on worse outrages at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I wonder how the American people see his hypocrisy.  And if they do take note of it, will their unfavorable opinion of him translate into a negative opinion of gay people, given that he is the most prominent openly gay politician in America.

Having read some of my posts on the Massachusetts Congressman, Blogger Bill Jacobson asked me to consider whether “Barney Frank is bad for gays.”  In offering his thoughts on the matter, Jacobson notes how Frank’s political prescriptions are reminiscent of “political witch hunts” which cheapen public discourse.

In sum, I think he is.  While most gay activists focus on the prominence of this openly gay man as the chair of an important House committee, I see instead a man ever eager to engage in partisan warfare and always ready to blame his ideological adversaries for whatever problems face the nation.  If people identify gay people with Frank, they will see us a group who fails to take responsibility for our actions and instead continually blames others.

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Whenever a prominent Republican does something which offends the sensibilities of the politically correct gay élite, they rush to release a statement condemning said individual in particular and the Republican Party in geneeral. At times, they do with good reason as a number of Republicans over the years have said some pretty obnoxious things about gay people and proposed some pretty odious policies.

But, when a Republican shows a degree of tolerance for gay Americans, indicating perhaps that he (or she) believes we should welcome gays into the party’s ranks, he is met mostly by silence from the major gay organizations. Yeah, a few might say something ever once in a while, especially if the MSM picks up on it, but their words seem forced, perfunctory.  And to be sure, some of the left-of-center gay blogs will pick up the story. Towleroad and Queerty have a pretty good record on things like this.

How many gay organizations, for example, praised Mary Cheney for giving more money to defeat Proposition 8 than did Matt Foreman, the immediate past executive director of the far left National Gay and Lesbian Task Force?

On the whole, any openness a prominent Republican shows to gay men and lesbians does not draw the attention as does intolerance. It simply doesn’t fit their narrative of narrow-minded Republicans.

And sometimes, Log Cabin, an ostensibly Republican organization, eager to join the chorus of criticism of a politically incorrect Republican, remains silent when a prominent Republican reaches out to gays.

In today’s Washington Blade, two former Log Cabin officials, Christopher Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, provide yet another example of this phenomenon. After the new Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele indicated opposition to an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage and his support for “legal protections for gay couples,” he was met by silence from leading gay organizations:

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He refuses to criticize his successor:  “There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence.”

So asks writer (and GayPatriot reader) Charles Winecoff in a piece, Love, War – and Gay Marriage, on Big Hollywood.  In it, he comes to a conclusion consistent with something I’ve blogged about on a regular basis for quite some time–the mean-spirited attitudes all too many gay marriage advocates toward those who disagree with them.  Sometimes, it seems they’re acting like commissars from the Soviet Union in its heyday:

But the Gestapo tactics over Prop 8 – McCarthy-style blacklists, boycotting of otherwise gay-friendly businesses, apologies coerced out of individual supporters who made the “wrong” choice, enforced politically-correct donations to the Human Rights Campaign – clarified it for me.

Charles wonders why this animosity given how much things have improved for gay people since he came out as a teenager in 1977.  He describes his own disenchantment with the gay movement, observing how it’s become more about left-wing politics than gay issues.

The movement, or should I say urban gay culture, didn’t seem to be about being gay anymore; it had become fixated on hating US authority – not so much Big Brother as “Big Daddy,” some imaginary, omnipotent, no doubt conservative patriarchal figure in the sky (obviously the product of a lot of transference).  Spoiled American gays were running out of oppressors to attack – so they found a convenient new target just within reach: themselves.

Case in point: the mystifyingly misguided group “Queers for Palestine.”  In their mechanical hatred of all things Bush-related – well, almost all things – these good little left-wing soldiers stand in perverse support of possibly the most homophobic regime on earth.  Once upon a time, even I used to glibly spout that a gay person voting Republican was like a Jew voting Nazi – but Queers for Palestine go straight to the source.  Talk about internalized homophobia.

These gay activists seem to have found a real enemy, not those who persecute gay people, but those who espouse a political philosophy at odds with their own:  Republicans:

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Sen. Dodd and President Obama have repeatedly lied about the policy and process which permitted the AIG bonuses to be paid out.  Obama’s Stimulus Package is the vehicle that allowed this scandal to happen.

At least Dodd admitted he’s been lying today.

So Chris Dodd admitted he misled CNN, telling them on Tuesday he had nothing to do with the loophole that mysteriously found its way into legislation and paved the way for AIG’s bonuses to be paid.  The following day, Dodd confessed to CNN’s Dana Bash that he in fact wrote the loophole, though he said he did it at the behest of the administration and with the knowledge that he would lose the amendment altogether if he did not comply.

Will President Obama admit this evening with Jay Leno that he too has lied to the American public?  That he lied about how he permitted bonuses to AIG execs to proceed when he signed the Stimulus Package?  That he never read the legislation that he signed that was so important to save the economy?

Are pigs flying in Burbank?

Barry — this one ain’t Bush’s Fault (TM) whatsoevah.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I don’t think I’m the first person to ask this question, but it occurred to me as I was reading about global warming alarmists.

Has the former Vice President ever publicly debated someone who diasgrees with his views on global warming?

If so, I’d like to see the transcript.  If not, I wonder why he’s willingn neither to hold up his views to scrutiny from an intellectual adversary nor to challenge said adversary’s arguments.

When, during or just after last year’s presidential campaign, I talked to or read about young voters enthusiastic about Barack Obama, I found that a healthy percentage, perhaps as high as 80%, had little idea what their man stood for.  They were enthusiastic about the “new kind of politics” he was going to bring to Washington, how he was going to change the ways things were being done in our nation’s capital.

When I asked for specifics, I either got blank stares, repetitions of campaign clichés or discourses on how Obama was different from George W. Bush.

It wasn’t just the young Obama supporters who had little idea what their candidate stands for.  Lately, I’ve been hearing from some friends in Hollywood that their liberal Obama-supporting colleagues are dumbfounded by the amount of spending their candidate is proposing as president.  They didn’t think he’d so increase the federal debt.

Given the spending and regulation inherent in the Obama governing agenda, the Republican Party has a golden opportunity to pick off a good number of Obama supporters, particularly among the young.  That’s why I believe Michael Barone’s Examiner column which I quoted yesterday should be must-reading for anyone who wants to rebuild the GOP. (I hope he sent a copy to Chairman Steele.)

Pointing out that voters over 30 esssentially broke even in last fall’s presidential contest, Barone notes that Obama won younger voters by a margin of 66-32.  But, he also finds that younger Americans “are used to making their own choices, setting up their own networks, taking their own initiatives.”  This is not the first time he has addressed this issue.

And the Obama agenda discourages individual initiative.

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This is awesome.  While the Left is fawning over the change of policy regarding the UN Declaration (good move, Obama — truly), some promininent gay Republicans are noting the vicious irony.

From a press release yesterday: [GP Ed. Note: This press release did NOT come from Log Cabin Republicans-- the "official" gay Republican organization.  Rather it is a statement from two former LCR staffers.]

“It smacks of tokenism to sign a U.N. resolution on the treatment of gays and lesbians, while opening the door to closer relations with the brutally anti-gay regime in Iran,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, a Republican activist and former Policy Director for Log Cabin Republicans.  “While the Obama administration should be applauded for signing this resolution, the resolution is meaningless if they pursue a foreign policy that appeases tyrants like Ahmadinejad.”

According to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the crime of homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran.  “If the Obama administration is serious about stopping the persecution of gays and lesbians across the globe, then they will make it clear that they will not deal with states like Iran where the penalty for being gay is death,” said Christopher Barron, the President of CapSouth Consulting and the former Political Director for Log Cabin Republicans.  “If the U.S. is going to be a leader in defending human rights, it’s going to take much more than a toothless U.N. resolution.”

Now here are my two cents:

Obama also wants to engage with the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah…. shall I go on?

It is important that the US join the world bodies in such action.  But it is MORE IMPORTANT that gays are not left hanging (pun intended) as Obama begins his campaign of appeasing the Islamists around the world.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Looks like TOTUS has its own blog now. (h/t – Cassy Fiano)  Which is important since he/she is the one apparently running the country.

I just watched Braveheart, a movie I have long enjoyed, for the first time since learning of Mel Gibson‘s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006 when pulled over for driving under the influence.  Given Gibson’s comments, I feared I might not see past his past behavior.  I was wrong.  The movie overcomes any negative image I had of its lead actor.

To be sure, when Gibson first appears on screen, I did not readily warm to the character (as I had when I watched the film in the past), but it was a lot like my reaction to Elijah Wood as Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring.  When I first see him, his youth strikes me.  While in the books, Frodo was the oldest of the four principal hobbits (himself, Samwise, Merry & Pippin), in the film adaptation, Wood is the youngest of the four actors playing said hobbits. As you focus on the film, you concentrate in what’s in front of your eyes and if the acting, visuals and/or storytelling. are good enough, you usually lose sight of any objection you might have.  At least while you’re watching the film.

So it was with Mel Gibson.  Soon, I forgot his anti-Semitic slurs and focused on his screen character, William Wallace and his fight for freedom.  “It’s all for nothing,” he said, “if we don’t have our freedom.”

I don’t think they made any films about crusaders for equality, well, there was that movie about John Reed.  Still, I can’t imagine a scene of a dying hero crying out, “Equality,” having any resonance.

Freedom is an idea which resonates.  to secure it many heroes in many lands and many ages fought very bravely, sometimes futilely.  But, their stories are told and retold because we understand their goal.

And that is one (among many) reasons, Braveheart holds up despite the sometimes boorish behavior of its lead.

Earlier this month, when I was talking with my friend Dale Carpenter, that distinguished columnist and law professor held that many gay activists see gay marriage as a “trophy in the cultural wars.”  That is, they’re not so much interested in the ancient institution as in the political victory of winning state recognition of same-sex marriages.

Dale’s words came to mind as I considered my letter asking my Congressman to refer Barney Frank to the House Ethics Committee because of the Massachusetts Democrat’s romantic relationship with a man who worked for an institution (Fannie Mae) while Frank served on a committee which oversaw its operations.

Shouldn’t this conflict concern those who value relationships?

If gay activists saw marriage as more than just a political trophy, they would understand that state recognition of marriage while conferring benefits on the relationship, also demands obligations from the partners.  Their obsession with the notion of equality should mean they want to hold gay marriages to the same standards as traditional ones.

Now, granted Frank was not married to Herb Moses at the time the latter worked for Fannie Mae.  Indeed, at the time, no state recognized gay marriages.  But, they were in a committee relationship.

Shouldn’t it concern advocates of gay marriage that the most outspoken and publicly visible gay politician had such a conflict of interest?  Wouldn’t they, in calling him on it, show their commitment to a standard of gay relationship equal to that of heterosexual ones?

I doubt any of them gave even a second thought to the revelation last fall of this conflict, if they had even heard of it.  That (D) after Frank’s name renders him immune from criticism.

But, I think it’s more than just his partisan affiliation.  It seems some of them haven’t thought through thoroughly what marriage means.

It would be a good test of their commitment to gay marriage to see if they would publicly at least criticize Mr. Frank for his conflict of interest, if not joining me in asking their Representative to refer this matter to the House Ethics Committee.

I have some e-mails to write.

You see this.

Tim Geithner’s hands are all over the AIG bonuses, the legislative language to protect them (in the Obama Stimulus Bill), and efforts to rein them in.  (You mean I’m agreeing with CODE PINK?!?  Unreal.)

Oh yeah, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank need Tea Party protests in front of their district offices.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m not entirely sure my choice to dub Michael Barone the Hepheastus of punditry works as well as it seemed when I struck me how the columnist, like the god of the forge, is a master of detail.

Today, in his blog posts and column, he shows some prophetic qualities of Apollo, the god to whom I compared to Charles Krauthammer.

On poll numbers showing that the GOP has closed the ballot gap with Democrats, he writes,

Note that this also represents a decline for Democrats, not a gain for Republicans. . . . I think there’s a danger for Republicans in over reliance on these numbers. . . . Republicans need to present alternative public policies and their vision for the future.

Emphasis added.  Exactly.

On the disrespect President Obama has shown for Latin American leaders, he asks, “Where Are the Bush Critics?”

Cheap shot attacks on the Bush foreign policy as dictatorial and disrespectful of other nations have continued even after Bush has left office, as in this column by the usually sophisticated Fareed Zakaria. Perhaps such gratuitous insults are required for admittance to Manhattan salons. What if anything do Bush critics have to say about the disrespect shown by the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress for Brazil and Mexico?

Emphasis added.

Finally, on the absence of choices in the President’s program:

The Obama program would have been well suited to the mid-20th century America, where people were happy, after the success of World War II, to work as small cogs in giant organizations run by big government, big business and big labor. But it is not well suited to 21st century America, where people, especially young people, are used to making their own choices, setting up their own networks, taking their own initiatives. Republicans should stop channeling Ronald Reagan — a remote figure to the young — and start offering young Americans policies that are in line with our times.

Maybe he’s right that we should stop channeling the Gipper and instead focus on the ideas he articulated.  For Ronald Reagan did want government to get out of the way so the private sector could offer those choices.

Oh, and, it should go without saying that with anything by Barone, just read the whole thing, well, in this case, things.