The Progressive Puppy

The Final Act

My Life In Five Acts

Act One - Growing up in the East Texas Bible Belt
Act Two - Party Days:  Leaving Home and Moving to Houston
Act Three - Meeting my life partner Art, Attending College, Working in the Theatre
Act Four - Dodging Hurricanes: Our Decade on the Beach, the Joy of Labrador Retrievers
Act Five - Returning to East Texas with the Love of My Life, our Friend Greg, and my Beloved Furkids

On our first visit to the property Art said, "I feel like this place is hugging me."  It was an astute observation.

The bid was accepted, loan approved, contract signed, inspections done. We expect to move before the summer is over. The house sits on sixteen acres at the edge of the Davy Crockett National Forest. The property is surrounded by grazing pasture on two sides and dense woods on the other. The pond is stocked with fish. There's nothing really fancy here, just a modest country house with trees and a field for the dogs to run and play in.  Even so, this will be our forever home and I'm as happy as a possum sucking on a prune.  I can't wait for the furkids to see their new stomping grounds.

We're not anticipating a warm welcome from Southern Baptists and other evangelical denominations - but then my faith in the kindness of red state America has dwindled ever since the Republican Party placed committed same-sex couples in its crosshairs.  This is, after all, the buckle of the Texas Bible Belt.  Art, Greg and I plan to adopt a low profile - by design, not fear of intimidation - and we hope our rural neighbors will return the favor.  We certainly don't see ourselves living as hermits.  If there's a community theatre within 20 miles, I may broadcast my backstage bona fides and offer to direct a play.  (I wonder how the area's arts council would respond to a production of The Vagina Monologues?)  On a more serious note, we will of course be contacting local animal rescue shelters and apply to foster difficult and special needs dogs.  There will be weekend outings.  I intend to frequent flea markets and antique shops and really any place where progressives might gather. 

If there is a conflict with Bible thumpers I will write about it.  If we are treated with respect and discover new friends, I will write about that too.  I am open to all possibilities because, well, isn't this what life is about?  (More after the jump...)

Arianna Huffington, Her Moderate Highness - A Betrayal?

Patrick Gavin reports for the website Politico:  This week's news that AOL would acquire Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post website is causing some nervousness among progressives who fret what the move means for the future of their message, since the website has traditionally been viewed as a liberal — and, perhaps more important, popular — counterpart to the more conservative Drudge Report. 

I haven't yet commented on AOL's takeover of Huffington Post.  I've been standing on the sidelines, waiting to see how much marrow that dog sucks out of the bone.  But one of HuffPo's feature writers, Jason Linkins, has sacrificed precious time from cosseting the media empress to explain to us sad clueless bloggers the Importance of Being an Earnest Author for Arianna's Online Empire. 

Below, I have juxtaposed Linkins' rigorous itinerary with my own modest approach to citizen journalism.

Linkins writes:  "Being a paid employee comes with many expectations and responsibilities. Let's run some of them down, shall we?"

Propup:  Being an unpaid blogger comes with few expectations and no responsibilities.  I just stuck two french fries up my nose.

"First of all, there's this expectation that on a daily basis, you will show up and do work. In an office and everything!"

Sometimes I type blog posts while sitting on the toilet.  I apologize for the image that evokes, but needs must when the devil drives.

"There you are subject to things like deadlines - you actually have to produce writing on a regular basis."

I try to add fresh content every 24 hours.  I used to brood if I missed a day - but no longer.  Shortly before the spine surgery when I was taking more pain meds than Rush Limbaugh and Lindsay Lohan combined, I was obliged to abandon my daily schedule.  (You might notice some grammatically horrifying blog posts from June and July of 2010.)  Since recovering from the operation and being pain-free for the first time in eight years, I am able to enjoy life again.  If I miss a day or two on the laptop, the world doesn't end.

"You receive assignments, from editors, that you are expected to fulfill in a timely fashion."

My posts are inspired by news reports and progressive websites, although Art and Greg occasionally toss out topics for consideration - or a reader will email me with an idea that pricks my interest.

"You participate in editorial meetings. You coordinate your efforts with your colleagues."

If I'm puzzling over a particular stylistic device, I may try out alternative phrasings on Sugar or Maggie Moose.

"You try to break news. You try to cultivate sources. You go, whenever you are able, to where news is occurring."

Like packaged meat, I don't travel particularly well - although I am looking forward to searching for farm property before the end of this month.  As things stand, there are four homesteads our realtor plans to show us in the coming weeks.  Next year, I hope to be cultivating crops not news sources.

In a recent conference call with reporters, Ms. Huffington (not unlike President Obama) twisted a knife into the backs of her liberal followers by crooning:  "We don't see ourselves as Left."  When someone that has long presented themselves as a progressive voice suddenly disavows your shared ideology, it hurts.  You feel betrayed.  But there is not much you can do about it.  I will probably continue perusing HuffPo's website - at least until (as happened with Politico) the comments section becomes overwhelmed by radical right-wingers and their hateful brethren.  Once this occurs, HuffPo contributors (again, similar to Politico) will be composing essays aimed at America's misinformed mainstream masses.  At that point I'll assume Ms. Huffington views my custom as unnecessary, and I'll head for greener, er, bluer pastures.

Being mean just for the sake of being mean.

I used to visit the wildly popular website TMZ for a guilty chuckle or two, but I deleted the bookmark earlier this year because, frankly, TMZ has become just too boorish.  It is Rush Limbaugh sitting on the toilet, Carrie Prejean undulating in her underwear, Michele Bachmann doing anything, a framed issue of the National Enquirer hanging over the mantelpiece.  It just fails the taste test - and I'm a guy who has watched Pink Flamingos three times.

Tracey Gilchrist at SheWired provides a recent example of the defamatory tas d'ordures:  The gossip site TMZ, run by openly gay Harvey Levin, is often offensive in its frequently less-than-humorous down-and-dirty tabloid posts. But the website reached a new low in applying its inherently fucked up interrogative, "Who'd You Rather?" to Obama's latest Supreme Court pick Elena Kagan and trans celebrity Chaz Bono. While the "Who'd You Rather" offense occurs daily and occasionally involves straight men, the choice is typically between two, often attractive women like Eva Longoria or Eva Mendes (let's skip the racism and misogyny in that pairing for now).  However, in recent weeks Levin and the gang have seen fit to use Bono more than once, asking readers if they'd prefer to sleep with Johnny Weir or Chaz Bono and opening up an entirely new can of trans and homophobic worms. 

As of this afternoon, over 70,000 people had voted in the Bono vs. Weir and Bono vs. Kagan surveys. For what it's worth (and this information is worth exactly what you're paying for it), Chaz Bono is losing in both polls. 

This is pretty skanky stuff, even by TMZ's journalistic standards.  Judging from the many comments left on the "survey," fans of the website love to make fun of people's sexual identity and physical appearance. I'd like to believe that Levin, being a gay man himself and having experienced verbal taunts in his younger years, would hesitate before setting up other queer folk for ridicule.  Below are some all-too-typical responses from readers:

• These two are all the reason you need that God made man and woman for a reason. These two are his creation gone amok.
• Where's the option " Rather VOMIT on both!"
• I doubt that Cher remembers birthing that "son". He/she finally has accomplished what he/she wanted. He/she looks like a Teamsters truck driver.  As for that other thing, it's just a mess.
• YUCK!! These Two are totally GROSS THIS IS WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE WHEN you start messing Around with your sexuality! EVIL!!
• Thanks a lot TMZ because I just threw up a little in my mouth.
• I'd take my hand and tissues ANY DAY over these shims.
• I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon.
• Cher's DAUGHTER, FREAKAZOID EXTRAORDINARY WHO CHOPPED HER BOOBS OFF AND GOT SOME THINGETTE HANGING NOW IN HER THINGIE AND LOOKS LIKE she needs to vomit all she has eaten in the last two years, seriously, folks at TMZ, you need to add a NEITHER! OR KILL THEM BOTH.
• These two vile freaks ought to be snuffed.
• I'd rather chew my leg off and take a vinegar bath.

And so forth.  Pages and pages and pages of nasty remarks.  A few posters called out Mr. Levin for enabling the haters.  I particularly appreciated this comment:  "Harvey is this really necessary?  Or are you and your boyfriend in your office giggling about this?  Either way it demeans you, TMZ and your readers. Not to mention Chaz and Johnny."

So... TMZ or the anti-gay American Family Association?  Who'd you rather?   (Pictured Top: Harvey Levin)

Court: Student Can Sue Cyber-Bullies for Threatening His Life

The Nuts and Bolts:  A 15-year-old launches a website hoping to promote an entertainment career after landing a role in a movie and recording an album.  His fellow students at a Los Angeles high school wrongly assume that the kid is gay, and they start flooding the site with hateful comments.  When the comments deteriorate into overt threats against the boy's life, police suggest that the parents take their son out of school.  The family relocates to an undisclosed location in Northern California.  Is there any legal recourse for the youth?  A California court ruling says yes, and now the boy is suing six students and their parents for hate crimes, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Bob Egelko reports for the San Francisco Chronicle:  A state appeals court says a 15-year-old boy whose Web site was flooded with anti-gay slurs and threats can sue a schoolmate who admitted posting a menacing message but described it as a joke.  In a 2-1 ruling Monday, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles said the violent language of the message - threatening to "rip out your heart and feed it to you" and to "pound your head in with an ice pick" - conveyed a harmful intent that is not protected by the right of free speech.  The dissenting justice, Frances Rothschild, said no one who read all the messages posted on the Web site - in which youths tried to outdo the others in outrageous insults - would interpret any of them as a serious threat.  (But this wasn't about mere "insults."  Would Rothschild be so forgiving if an online bully wrote that he was going to stab her daughter's face with an ice pick?)  The case is one of the first in California to examine the boundaries between free expression and cyber-bullying. The court majority said a message that threatens physical harm, even if it wasn't meant to be serious, loses its First Amendment protection and can be grounds for a lawsuit.

One of the cyber-bullies named in the case said he didn't know the victim personally but was offended by the website's self-promotional tone.  Apparently this was reason enough for him to threaten the life of his classmate.  He continues to insist that his messages were "just a joke."  His lawyer plans to appeal the majority ruling to the State Supreme Court.

Back to Egelko:  The state law allows a defendant to win early dismissal of a suit that chills free speech on a subject of public interest and has little chance of success. The court majority said the law didn't apply to (the victim's) suit because the messages contained threats that were unrelated to any issues of public interest.

From the LA Times:  The 1st Amendment doesn't protect hostile Internet banter among teenagers if the messages can be taken as genuine threats of harm, a California appeals court has ruled in a case that more clearly defines when free expression crosses a line into cyber-bullying...  "The students who posted the threats sought to destroy D.C.'s life, threatened to murder him, and wanted to drive him out of Harvard-Westlake and the community in which he lived," the appeals court concluded in denying the motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by one of the defendants on the grounds that the postings amounted to constitutionally protected speech on a public issue... "It's very important that the court here is recognizing the real harm and power of anti-gay speech that has become very common in cyber-bullying and in schools," said Douglas NeJaime, a Loyola Law School professor and expert in sexual-orientation law.

Just watch. It won't be long before religious conservatives rush to the defense of these cyber-bullies.  Any court ruling that might restrict their own "God-given right" to threaten and intimidate LGBT youngsters is considered anathema to Bible thumpers - so I'm betting that Christian fundie groups will get involved in this case before the month is out.  I suspect the homo-hating lawyers at MassResistance are already licking their lips in prayerful anticipation.

Zina Saunders Paints Same-Sex Love Stories (Part One)

I can think of no artist who's better at capturing the expressiveness of the human face or the subtle intricacies of body language than native New Yorker Zina Saunders.  Her work has been featured in venues such as The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Wall Street Journal and Foreign Policy Magazine.  I started corresponding with Zina about a year and a half ago, when she first gave me permission to use her illustrations on The Progressive Puppy.  Over a period of time we developed an online friendship that I've grown to treasure.  So I'm particularly proud to announce that Zina has begun work on a new series of paintings called "Love Stories" showcasing same-sex couples in New York City.

This is the first in that series. 

Writes Zina:  I was dismayed earlier this month when the New York State Senate voted down the gay marriage bill, and I decided to interview and paint long-standing gay couples, both men and women, and ask them about their stories and their relationships and what marriage means to them...  On a recent rainy afternoon in Brooklyn, I sat down to talk with writer and communications specialist Nancy Goldstein and syndicated cartoonist Joan Hilty, whose marriage in Provincetown in May of 2004 has been recognized in New York State since July of 2006.  With their dog Juno trying to get in on the conversation, Nancy and Joan talked about love and marriage.

Check out Zina's website for her entire interview with these two fascinating women.  And while you're there, feast your eyes on Saunders' critically acclaimed series, Overlooked New York.

Conservative "Little Green Footballs" Denounces RW Crazies

Charles Johnson is a major conservative voice in the political blogosphere.  On his incredibly popular website, Little Green Footballs, Johnson never shies away from speaking the truth as he sees it, even when that means aligning himself with progressives on certain issues.  He is what I would call a rational conservative - and God knows there are few enough of those in the henhouse these days.  Yesterday he posted this:  

Why I Parted Ways With The Right

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)
2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)
3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)
5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)
6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)
7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)
10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.  I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

Charles Johnson's manifesto is generating a lot of Tweeter hatred from the right-wing crazies who have wrested control of the Republican Party.  (And just take a gander at some of the crude comments directed at him by Politico readers.)  I might not agree with everything - or even most things - written on Little Green Footballs.  But I sure admire Johnson for drawing a line in the sand against the extremism of the modern-day GOP.