Metro Weekly

Shticks and Stones

Cheap and easy shots may make for entertaining political outbursts, but it's damaging the nation's discourse

There’s the old Woody Allen joke about how being bisexual can double your chances of getting a date. It’s not terribly funny, but it gets to the heart of the self-defined bisexuals: maximum opportunity, minimum commitment. For those of us who are simply gay, the term bisexual is a joke on its own. We may allow the ”B” in our politically correct rainbow, but honestly, we think you’re just faking it.

Pulling back the curtain on one fraud, we may as well take a look at the T, the caboose in our crowded acronym. While any gender-confused – it is Gender Identity Disorder, after all – is entitled to the happiness that may come his or her (or whatever that crazy, genderless, possessive pronoun is that students use on hippie college campuses) way, the transgender onslaught into the gay-rights movement is a drag, literally. It’s men and women in drag, and they’re dragging the rest of us down. How are we normal gay and lesbian people going to get much further with Congress when we’ve got somebody like a transgender ”female-to-male” woman getting pregnant for People magazine. How can that not make us look like a freak show?

And speaking of freak shows, would you people in the chaps mind toning it down a bit? You’re ”liberated.” We get it. I feel liberated wearing stained sweatpants and a ripped T-shirt – at home. Do you think I’d actually invite my mother to come to a Pride parade when your ass and nipple-clamps are part of the show? It makes us all look bad.

What makes people look worse, however, is lobbing snarky insults and distorting the truth for attention. (See above.) In reality, I advocate for the bi, trans and leather communities’ complete inclusion to the point of celebration, even if that may not be as entertaining as hateful blather. Consequently, the likes of Glenn Beck lead the charge in turning the American town square into something as meaningful as a monster-truck rally.

From Ann Coulter: ”The only man causing President Obama more headaches than Joe Biden these days is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, coincidentally, was right after Biden on Obama’s short-list for V.P.).” Hilarious.

From Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt: ”President Obama pledges in his State of the Union address to promote open homosexual aggression within the ranks of the military….” Open homosexual aggression?

From Texas GOP Rep. John Carter: ”If we lose [this election], we will face a horror of a nation with a new class of politicians and cronies … with the rest of us being forced into second-class citizenship like those currently imprisoned under radical Islamic regimes.” It’s you or the Taliban?

And from Jason Mattera of Young America’s Foundation: ”Our notion of freedom doesn’t consist of snorting cocaine, which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama.” You know cocaine jokes only make us think of George W., right?

”We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern!” says Sarah Palin. What the hell does that mean, aside from anyone with collegiate credentials is suspect?

American political discourse has always been full of barbs and spin. But as the Tea Party gang prepares to return to D.C., April 15, I’m reminded of all those ”Obama is the anti-Christ” and ”Healthcare reform kills Grandma” posters. What was once spin has evolved into populist mantra. It’s as if our Beck-loving culture is celebrating the illogical and loud as folksy sincerity. Stupidity is the new black.

Fun, cheap and easy it may be, but it’s bad for America. From AIDS to the environment, the economy to civil rights, this country has plenty of serious issues on its plate. Conservative solutions need to be part of the discourse. In these serious times, the catchy shtick and propaganda pedaled as political insight are as wholly un-American as Confederate flags.

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