Political theater

Rick, get a gay clue

After he triumphed in a razor-close victory in the Iowa caucus, former PA Senator Rick Santorum is close to the top of the GOP heap and his campaign is $1 millions richer overnight. The next day, Santorum was singing his same old songs to students at the College Convention in Concord, NH, he faced boos and hisses when a young woman asked him how he could be against same-sex marriage and for individual freedoms, he so cherishes as put forth in the US Constitution.

In Rick Santorum’s world, the question of the legitimacy of gay relationships is put in his own hypothetical meat grinder that if you are talking about two men or two women getting married than why not 6 men, four cats, siblings, polygamists and in fact whole communities of people who love to watch reruns of All in the Family.

As soon as the young woman asked, he was countered by the response “we’re not talking about polygamy’ that’s not what we’re talking about’ he shut down the Socratic session ‘I ask the questions and I call on you,” he said, obviously miffed. (Just for the record Rick, Socrates was gay.)

Of course, Santorum was infamous when he was PA Senator, for his homophobic views and his antigay agenda, more than anything else he did. Although he is claiming to have brought a $1 billion in urban renewal revenue to the blighted Chester, Pa., which bears repeating if it is in fact, true. He’s been singing this marriage equality threatens real straight marriage as a logical dictum to anyone who will listen.

But now I feel like it can’t be dismissed as morbid stupidity. Santorum is obviously a mouthpiece for the ultra-conservative, evangelicals who get rich demonizing gays. What Santorum does in effect is not address the fact that you can’t win elections by demonizing a class of people in 2012.

Rick, do you really think that millions of GLBT identified, tax paying, law-abiding Americans are going to stand by and let you trash them with hackneyed myths and lies about their lives in a national presidential campaign? Who does he think he is going to be facing on stump speeches in New York City, San Francisco and other gay populated metropolis? He also completely ignores their thriving communities, locally, statewide, nationally and internationally.

No matter how hard you try Rick, the world if full of people with same sex attractions and they are going to live their lives. The closet will exist only in tyrannical, oppressive regimes, not in ostensibly free societies. You forget, even in the queer baiting 50s and 60s, of J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy, when gays were summarily rounded up and thrown in jail (a right of passage for gays, lesbians and drag queens of a certain age) the sub-culture thrived and grew into the political force it is today. No one is talking about marriage to their pets, or multi-partners ala old-time Mormonism, they are talking about committed consenting adults, who in some cases have been together for decades.

Marriage equality will not lead to the disintegration of the institution of heterosexual marriage. Straights will still be able to get weekend arranged Elvis officiated weddings in Vegas in between Barry Manilow shows. Marriage equality is a reality that is happening all over the globe.

But, Rick, politically, if you want to advance, you are being too stupid to be an idiot. Even Michele Bachmanm, the other hysterical homophobe among the candidates, immediately started to pull out of her previous antigay statements, because she knew that even though that queer baiting money got her where she was, it would cost her on the national political stage.

Yes, Rick, even if you do end up at the bottom of a Romney ticket you still have to accept that there are radical, lesbian, feminist Americans who have a power base now. The military didn’t fall apart when DADT was repealed and when there is marriage equality everyone who is in a healthy heterosexual marriage is going to continue on. That Rush Limbaugh even paid the biggest queen in the world $2 million to sing “Your Song” at his wedding.

You have survived in your homophobic, no contraceptive bubble for so long that you refuse to accept certain facts. If you want to continue your campaign, seek therapy for your homophobic tendencies, it is not normal to harbor such negative views about individuals that you obviously know nothing about.

Stage

Showing much theatrical bravery is Freedom Club, a new play by Adriano Shapin, mounted by Philly-based troupe New Paradise Laboratories and New York’s Riot Group as a Live Arts centerpiece. Their collaboration is certainly provocative, mirroring the festered political boil that American politics has become.

Act I plays with our collective psyche with no less a sacred image than Abraham Lincoln skulking around as in a Greek tragedy, wracked with uncertainty that he presides over a broken empire. (The year is 1865.)

As Lincoln, Elliot Drew Freidman goes for much more that a haunted image of the president. The play’s back half is set in the future, with some not so shocking self-fulfilled prophesies about where we will be as an even more divided nation.

Director Whit MacLaughlin keeps the action at a fevered pitch in the front half. Lincoln looms, top-hat bowed in shame – one of many symbolic images that punches you in the gut. It brings to mind ’where did we go wrong?’ from our perception of Lincoln’s vision. From those startling contemplations, we are then treated to a sexually repressed Abe and Mary Todd pathetically, if not humorously, trying to get each other off. So much for Walt Whitman.

Loitering in his own follow spot is John Wilkes Booth, played with volcanic intensity by Jeb Kreager. Kreager is masterfully stealth in a mannered interpretation of a political monster that Shaplin makes appear to come out of our current political landscape. Ambitious material, without doubt.

Lincoln ruminates on a country divided by race and reflects on his attempt at reparations to black Americans, as if it could possibly make up for the atrocities they withstood. He grieves with the knowledge that the country is forever divided and that he is authoring a pipe-dream union.

Booth lunges toward Shakespearean madness, concocting an internalized manifesto of political vengeance. All rationale is aimed at hurling racist bile (and the ’n’ word) as he lusts over his sister or fornicates anything in a hoop-skirt.

Aside from Kreager, six other players take various roles in Booth and Lincoln’s orbit. The staging is witty with its use of 19th century silhouettes in key moments and mime. And there’s inspired comic relief: one moment has a goofy Lincoln watch two actresses in My American Cousin taking pratfalls immediately before he is shot; another has Booth finish a rant with Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell (intoning more, more, more). But, things get clammy as the Shaplin’s breathless polemics take over, as as the act careens toward Lincoln’s fait accompli.

In Act II, abortion is the political flashpoint as a feminist militia tries to create a safe passage for women seeking them. In Shaplin’s future world, liberals have been politically castrated, the religious right has taken over the halls of government and women have no rights over their bodies. None of the characters communicate, but everybody is ranting.

MacLaughlin, so inventive in the first half, can only stiffly stage the action as the rhetoric engulfs like wildfire. Freedom Club ultimately limits itself to carpet-bombing the audience with the same message. Still, for this take-no-prisoners political play in perilous times, NPL and TRG is to be commended.

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Barack Obama started his presidency the day in 2008 when his Republican rival, John McCain ‘suspended’ his campaign (such a drama queen, I’ve heard more convincing dialogue from Palmer on All My Children) to save Wall Street. McCain was too stupid to realize he was an idiot, as Obama took the meeting away not only from him, but Bush and the leaders of both parties. Obama was leading before he was the leader.

During the Bush – Obama transition, an observer said (its) “begun with Kumbaya and ended with the music from Jaws.” This theme is the refrain in The Promise by Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter‘s play by play of the first year of the Obama administration.

Alter is aware of all of the lies being floated about Obama the man and his 1st year in office and he wants some of the record corrected. The telling subtext of The Promise is the ugly portrait of those who want, at all costs, to make Obama fail.

The book’s very insider accounts of already famous incidents connected to the Obama presidency are fully chronicled. Ted Kennedy‘s meltdown with Bill Clinton over Ted’s crucial endorsement of Obama. Candidate Obama taking advantage of McCain’s desperate campaign tactics. Rahm Emanuel dealing straight with the radioactive hack Rod Blagojevich, who tried to sell Obama’s Illinois Senate seat- just to name a few.

New details about Obama’s reacting with ’cold fury’ over conflicting statements by Gen. Stanley McCyrstal, Adm. Mike Mullen and David Petrarus over leaks and war strategy in Afghanistan. Alter reports that he dressed them down in the Oval Office in a manner between a President and the military not seen since Truman sacked MacArthur.

Rahm ‘begging’ the President not to take on health care reform in the first year because of the political cost to the president. Obama knowing early on that his political capital was draining fast as he pushed for more and more legislative measures to save the economy from collapse while pushing his own agendas.

This is a profile of Obama’s explosive dominance on the political landscape and the President’s mostly Zen master approach to solving the country‘s problems.

Alter is an authoritative political writer, and sometimes too meticulous, sometimes weighing down the book. He itemizes and wonks through seemingly every thought Obama had as he was putting his cabinet together. An appendixes for this detailing would serve the book better.

The story really picks up steam when he dissects what went into convincing his recent rival, Hillary Clinton, to accept his offer to be Secretary of State.

Under direct attack by obstructionist Republicans fanning the politics around the financial disaster and the cultural backlash of health care legislation show Obama’s MO of cool under fire on the front political line.

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The GOP 2012 potential frontrunner gov. Mike Huckabee reinterated his stance against gay marriage, but beefed it up with comments equating gay marriage to polygamy, incest and drug addiction. He is obviously bending over backwards for the religious right who want to keep alive myths about gays.

Again this bizarre and idiot point that gay marriage would allow polygamists, for instance, to be allowed to get married. Doesn’t that happen anyway in the US.  He wants to construct a slope that doesn’t exist. We’re not talking about any other group than gay American couples who pay taxes and are in commited relationships and want to be civilly recognized. It has nothing to do with drugs, pedophilia, beastiality or polygamy. Huckabee is playing to the basest of politics and I’m glad he is the frontrunner, because we will see what we’re really up against. I’d call him Fuckabee from now on, but it would insult a whole species perfectly respectable drones.

A new tactic of the religious right is to put in people’s minds the most prurient, fetishistic images of gay sex. The question of whether any consensual sex act between adults that doesn’t harm anyone is technically legal (at least for now) and is done in private, seems to be a moot point.  Huckabee and followers know sure as the Old Testament forbids shellfish meals God doesn’t want any butt fucking between mens.  It works in building an ick factor at the ballot box. Rather than talking about the real civil rights issues of fairness under the law in civil rights, they want to make sure that gay marriage equals evil sex acts.

Wild about Harry

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has a lot of image problems, he comes off as cold, when he is actually very passionate about his liberal views, he’s mild-mannered and that is viewed as smarmy, he wears ugly suits.

Not helping last week are revelations of quotes from Reid in the new political potboiler bestseller ‘Game Change’ about the backstage dramas of the 2008 election. He is quoted as saying President Obama’s Presidential chances are good because candidate Obama has light skin and uses “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

After the story broke, to the glee of Republicans, Reid issued his mea culpa- “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words.” Well, he should be because, as it is contextualized, there are so many things wrong with his words and their implications. On the face of it, it seems like he is looking past Obama’s political talent and suggesting that his looks are more important than his ability to be president.

Then there is the negative connotations in a broad reference to African American dialects and syntax. Even if Reid was absent during the 90s debate on the existence or nonexistence of Ebonics, African American and Black as terms are on the national cultural hard- drive for a couple of generations. Get with it Harry. The phrase ‘Negro dialect’ is just unseemly in any context outside of a revival of Uncle Tom’s Cabin or a discussion of Huckleberry Finn.’

Reid’s comments may or may not be tainted with racism, but he should check himself to find out if there is some personal hubris lurking. But, the comments could just have been a crass observation of the political realities in America.

And in fact after a weekend of Reid bashing, the conversation has moved to that point. They could in fact be completely innocent reaction to the image component of what of what a black candidate is dealing with running for president. So inadvertent possibly that even George Will barked back on This Week, “Finally, Harry Reid says something no one can argue with.”

Will, blustered at Liz Cheney’s accusations of a Democratic double standard and that Reid was showing his true colors behind closed doors. She went on to say that that might be the way liberals talk in private and that her political camp doesn’t. A stretch to say the least. As usual, Cheney’s political rhetoric lurches in the big-foot steps of her dad.

Meanwhile, Michael Steele, head of the Republican Party is calling for Reid to step down over his comments. Steele may be deflecting attention from rancor from forces in his own party who question his leadership. Steele is under fire for his non party- line views. In his new book he writes that the Republicans might not walk away with wholesale election victories, so was in the GOP dog house.

By Monday night President Obama put the matter in perspective- “This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history. For him to have used some inartful language in trying to praise me and for people to try and make hay out of that makes absolutely no sense..I guarantee you the average person, white or black, right now is less concerned about what Harry Reid said in a quote in a book a couple of years ago.” Obama said in a TV interview.

It is ironic that the this has gotten more play than Obama’s historic speech on race relations in America at the National Constitution Center before his election, which was downright profound in its insights and candor.

If you grew up in America, you were indoctrinated or exposed to layers of racism and bigotry institutionally, cultural and socially. The best we can do is face those morbid prejudices in ourselves and decide how we really feel about racial issues. Unfortunately, it takes flashpoint incidents in the media like this for us to get the dialogue going.

Will it go back to the eternally rhetorical question? Can we really talk about racial divides in this country or is it all non- verbal communication? For now this issue is not the issue it’s the fight about the issue.

The Republican Rag

Speaking of hyposcrisy. Republicans stick to the script of accusing Dem of backroom deals and influence and favors to Senators in their own states over the health care bill. I have a few words for them starting with Halliburton and Blackwater Mercenaries.

In the NYTs todayPaul Krugman uses political scientist Barbara Sinclair broke down the filabuster dance that renders the Senate virtually disfunctional because of Republican obstructionists.

In the 60s, threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation

 the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent.

after 2006 when Republicans gained minority status 70 percent.

Krugman assesses_ “Bush-era Democrats weren’t nearly as determined to frustrate the majority party, at any cost, as Obama-era Republicans. Certainly, Democrats never did anything like what Republicans did last week: G.O.P. senators held up spending for the Defense Department — which was on the verge of running out of money — in an attempt to delay action on health care.”

So, they have been delaying, using every dusty procedural wrench they could to derail any legislation, And they are such sore and vengeful loosers, they insisted that the latest consessions be read out loud in Senate, then accuse the Dems of manipulating a middle of the night vote to keep the details secret.

That mental giant Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) gravely pronounced, “Our friends on the Democratic side seem determined to pursue a political kamikaze mission toward a historic mistake.”

Well Lamar the AMA disagreed with you today and that and your party’s tactics will not go unnoticed.

politic tic tic

The obstructionist is there again. The wedger. The Ego. Yes, it’s say it ain’t so Senator Joe Lieberman again. He supported the idea of expanded Medicaid in the distant past and as recently as three months ago. 

I would love to hear him deny that he is beholden to his state’s insurance money and influence. Oh, that’s right, he’s already done that!

All the cameras are on him now that he can twist the collective Democratic balls if they don’t drop the Medicaid idea as an option to the public option. The man is a political whore in heat.  Joe, there are two things that I hate about you…Your FACE!