Watch Anderson Cooper attempt to talk to a mentally handicapped person*

I'm torn between wanting to offer advice on crisis communications to the members of this church down in Catawba County, in the same way that an MD would feel a compulsion to correct someone doing CPR the wrong way, and slapping my hands over my mouth and letting them just go on and reveal themselves to be idiots.

I'm sorry, I can't help it. Do NOT go on live TV, ever under any circumstances, unless you've practiced. You will not come off well. You'll look like this.

I'm not making fun of this lady because she's a homophobe. It's a free country. I'm making fun of her because she's so obviously unable to understand the words coming out of Anderson Cooper's mouth. And Cooper's not exactly hitting hard here. He's not trying to sneak-attack her. Anyone who's ever had a discussion about the Biblical views on homosexuality knows exactly what arguments are going to be made. "It's in the Bible" will be met with "But so's this (eating shellfish, slavery, etc.)," and anyone who's ever had a single conversation on this subject will anticipate where the debate is going to go.

So, I can only conclude that this woman has never once had a conversation of any length with anyone who doesn't share her point of view. That's why, once she's even remotely challenged, she reverts to this victim role, as if Cooper is attacking her by asking questions - in an interview. The nerve!

By the way... how much do you want to bet that this church has seen at least one sermon about the godless liberal world's "war on Christmas"? As if saying "You do realize that there are people in the world who aren't Christian, right" is just like that time we all got nailed alive to a cross, but saying that we should round up gay people in concentration camps is merely a figure of speech.

*No, I don't think this woman is actually mentally handicapped. I think she's ignorant as hell, but I have no evidence about her relative IQ. Me calling her mentally handicapped in the headline there is what we arugula-eating elites call "hyperbole," and it's a wonderful literary device to have at hand. It's also most likely the term she was looking for at the top of the interview when she said that Pastor Worley meant what he said, sort of, but not literally.

Please don’t give up on North Carolina

Now I know how Arizona feels.

On May 8, my home state voted to okay a constitutional amendment stating that the only domestic union that the state will recognize is marriage between one man and one woman. Our state’s foundational document now bans not just marriage between same sex couples, but any civil union between any couple.

And this sucks. It sucks for my friends and colleagues who will be directly impacted. It sucks that this happened because a majorityof the 20 percent of registered voters who actually voted are allowed by law to strip basic rights away from families that they don’t even know. It sucks that the people who caused so much anguish this month did so because they think Jesus told them to, or worse, because they didn’t understand what they were voting for. It sucks that now, when you Google “same sex marriage laws by state,” North Carolina is on the list of 30 with statutes or constitutional amendments outlawing same sex marriage.

Most of all, it sucks that the actions of a few now represent our state in front of the entire world. I can remember talking with a friend back during the 2008 election and learning for the first time that ours was the only state in the South without the Bigot Amendment, and I remember being proud of this (even though we still had statutes barring same sex marriage). I remember a few months ago warning that, if we passed Amendment One, it would damage North Carolina’s reputation.

Well, in the least satisfying instance of “I told you so” ever, I can report that I was right. In the days after the primary election, people went so far as to call for the Democratic National Convention to be moved from Charlotte this September to punish the state. On that Friday’s edition of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” the always fair and nuanced host* referenced Billy Graham’s pro-Amendment ads in 14 newspapers throughout the state by saying, “North Carolina has 14 newspapers?”

AND THIS SUCKS. Because not only am I pissed off by the neighbors, classmates and co-workers who are on the other side, now I’m just as pissed off at some of the people who are ostensibly on the same side. Seriously. I don’t remember Florida getting this much crap, or Georgia or any of the other states who’ve voted this BS into their constitutions. On one hand, we can take this as some sort of twisted compliment, that the rest of the country thought we here in N.C. were among the sane, and so they’re that much more disillusioned that we of all people could fall for this.

But on the other hand, I’m far past over the Idiot HomophobicMinister of the Day going viral. Not just him – that should go without saying – but the reaction to him. “What do you expect from North Carolina?” is exactly NOT what any of us needs to hear.

“Why did this happen in 2012 and not in 2004 when every other state was doing it?” would be a productive question to ask. (Answer: because the national Democratic Party fracked off in 2010 and let the Koch Brothers wing of the GOP take a majority in the state house for the first time in more than a century.) “Why did the previously so-well-organized state Democratic Party let this BS end up on a ballot without a contested Democratic presidential primary in the first place?” (Because they’re head-in-ass morons.)

The passage of Amendment One was a political failure for North Carolina, not a moral one. North Carolina isn’t Mississippi circa 1964. We’re Florida circa 2000. We’re a swing state. We’ve been identified as obtainable ground for the most organized of conservative agendas. And the single worst thing that the rest of the country can do is turn their backs.

So, all y’all thinking and writing “North Carolina, ugh, I would NEVER live there” – congratulations, you’re part of the problem. You might as well have voted for Amendment One, because you sure as hell aren’t doing much to remedy it. We’re not a punch line, or click-bait for your blog. We are living this every day. And if you truly care about equality, then what North Carolina needs is your recommitment, not your disdain.

And I’m going to try really hard not to pick on Arizona again. Because this feeling sucks. 

*(Side rant…PROFANITY ALERT… fuck off, Bill Maher. Really.)

Just 'cause it's a full moon...

... here are some exhibitionist raccoons. 

You're welcome.

You, sir, are no Barack Obama

This didn’t occur to me right away.

This week, Mitt Romney’s campaign pushed a foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, into resigning. Grenell, who worked loyally for the Bush Administration, had been told to “lay low”.

Grenell is gay and out, and reportedly supports same-sex marriage rights. Religious conservatives screamed, and so now the guy who worked for our country’s ambassador to the UN is no longer working for Romney.

It was a comment on this post that made me think of something.

A little over four years ago, then-Senator Barack Obama made a speech in Philadelphia where he confronted head on the conversation about race that was bubbling all around his candidacy. The speech needed to happen, especially in response to videos of the Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright, making inflammatory remarks.

The conventional thing to do would’ve been to ignore Wright until something from the next news cycle replaced him, but that’s not what Obama did. Instead, he made this speech, a true “let’s cut the rhetoric and all say what we mean” moment that made me finally decide to vote for him. In the parlance of people who do what I do for a living, he pivoted, taking control of the conversation again by reframing it. 

Why didn’t Romney pivot? If he’d stuck to his guns, kept on the man he’d thought enough of to hire in the first place, and told the religious right to get over themselves (what are they going to do, vote for Obama?), Romney would’ve demonstrated such incredible leadership. Instead of sweeping Grenell under the rug, Romney easily could’ve pulled him into the spotlight as a way to start a conversation about his fairly moderate record. He could’ve said, “You know what, I’m glad you asked – yes, Richard is gay, and that’s totally irrelevant to the job I hired him to do.” But instead Romney went with “Richard? Who’s Richard? We don’t have a Richard here. See?”

Why am I going to put in the most important job in the world a guy who can’t even stand up to a shrinking bloc in the party who’s nomination he’s already sewn up? The president’s most significant job is hiring people – from the thousands of appointments he makes to staff federal agencies to Supreme Court justices. Whoever’s in that chair needs a pretty thick skin.

Moreover, it’s stupid politically. Romney just chose anti-gay fundamentalists over moderates and independents, who are usually the ones that decide presidential elections. I want my president to be smarter than that. I also expect him to have a spine.

The ultimate job interview question

People who frequently find themselves the butt of Jon Stewart’s jokes are right about one thing. Yes, “The Daily Show” is meant to satirize political reporting, but it is true that Stewart tends to target conservatives more than liberals. There’s a reason for that. Jon Stewart has to do stuff like this because nobody in the straight media seems to be willing or able to do so.

The Daily Show
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I mean, seriously. Days worth of sober, objective reporting on Mitt Romney’s accusations that President Obama is politicizing the killing of Osama bin Laden one year ago, and NO ONE else bothers to dig up, oh, I dunno, Dick Cheney telling 2004 voters that the U.S. is at risk if we elect JohnKerry?

Presidents get to brag about good things that happened on their watch, just like they get criticized for the bad things. That’s not shameful or exploitative. It’s the game.

And it’s not as if Obama is trying to take credit for something he DIDN’T do. He refocused defense and intelligence on bin Laden and al Qaeda, he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan, and he ordered the mission that ended with bin Laden floating in the Indian Ocean knowing full well that he might’ve been greenlighting “Black Hawk Down: The Sequel.” He didn’t stop an aircraft carrier in its tracks so he could have a badass backdrop for his speech; he just did the hardest job a president has to do. Something no one else managed.

And it’s not as if Romney DIDN’T say what the Obama ads are saying he said. While he praised “our military and the president” immediately following bin Laden’s killing, he did also say back in 2007 that it’s "not worth moving heaven andearth" to catch one person. And, this week, "Had I been president of the United States I would have made the same decision."

Perhaps. We don’t know, obviously, and it’s pointless for either side to argue about hypotheticals. Going not on hindsight, but on what Obama and Romney each said and did BEFORE bin Laden’s death was certain, all we know for a fact is that one of these men was ready to withdraw, and one was ready to send our professional military to get him by any means.

(Who’s he kidding? If “I own a Ford AND a Chevy” Romney had been president a year ago, the fateful transmission probably would’ve gone down like this: “Go. Or not. Actually, you know what? Both.”)

This IS a relevant issue. These aren’t your two best friends that you don’t want to choose between because they’re both great in different ways. They’re applying for the same job, head to head, and it’s our responsibility to compare and contrast them. The Obama campaign ad that mentions the events of one year ago doesn’t address Romney’s 2007 “heaven and earth” comment to be mean or question his mettle – or patriotism. It isn’t trying to scare Americans into thinking that a Romney presidency would put us at risk (like Cheney claimed about Kerry). It’s just pointing out the obvious: we know what one of these men did as president… we just can’t be sure about the other.