Gay Baptists On Heroin

The news that Snoop Dogg was just inducted into the songwriters Hall of Fame gave me hope. Back in the summer of '78 we toured our band, GBOH, through what I later learned was known as the "Bible Belt." We were not well recieved. Which was a pity. We had lyrics that could match anything Snoop has ever done. Alas, I suspect that due to the band's name, we were victims of homophobia. That's ironic. While a couple of bandmates may have dabbled in hard drugs, as far as I know, nobody was either gay or Baptist. We were literally appropriating a gay Baptist identity, which must have pissed off actual gay Baptists something fierce. Anyway, the Gay Baptists on Heroin have been lost in the mists of time, while Snoop Dogg is forever memorialized in the songwriters Hall of Fame. Life just ain't fair.

What trading a basketball player for an arms dealer says about US-Russia power dynamics

What it says to me is that one side holds a significantly more potent hand than the other. This exchange is a symbolic manifestation of American decline. Americans generally won’t notice. After all, every American knows Putin is evil, and freeing a Black lesbian from the clutches of an evil homophobic dictator can be sold to the US public as a triumph of Western values. You know; democracy, human rights, freedom of speech… all that good stuff that our ruling elite squelch at home but promote abroad. PM Fluffy is all for anti-government protests in Iran and China, but God forbid, not in freedom-loving democratic Canada. By all accounts, the Russian arms dealer was a serious person. He made serious money arranging the delivery of serious weapons to a variety of the enemies of Western values, resistance groups all over the world. The American basketball player was just a basketball player. This exchange occurs in the shadow of the US/NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. Western media have assured us Ukraine has been winning this war since February. It is considered impolite in the American vassalsphere to question that fundamental truth. After all, we have been treated non-stop to reportage praising the many glorious imaginary victories of the UAF. They drove the Russians out of Kyiv and Kharkiv and Kherson. They have the momentum! Momentum or not, their geography has shrunk by 20% and their GDP by 40%. How is that “winning?” How is that momentum? Ukraine lost this war in February. The collective “West,” the aforementioned vassalsphere, orchestrated by Washington, has invested many billions of dollars in keeping it going. If our US masters, leaders of the “free world,” trade a basketball player for an international arms trafficker, I’m reading weakness on the cusp of disintegration. American exceptionalism and the empire it spawned are well past their stale date. Canadians should consider how tightly they want to tie their ship of state to an empire in obvious decline.

Making homophobia cool again

Gay-bashing and fag jokes seem to be making a comeback. Is the tide of political correctitude finally receding?

Polite society has overtly shunned homophobia for at least a quarter century now, but apparently if you really really despise someone, well, it's once again OK to call them a fag.

I've noted this tendency before. How do intelligent people like Colbert and others justify queer slurs to get an easy laugh? It's enough to put me off watching their stuff, and if they're doing it and their audience finds it amusing, then maybe we haven't made the kind of progress these past few decades that we thought.

That ultimate bastion of mainstream liberalism, the New York Times, is now in on the gay-bashing.

Oh, look how clever we are!... we called out Trump and Putin as gay lovers!!! Aren't we just sooo witty!

Well no, you're not, actually.

Do you seriously think garbage like this hurts Trump or Putin? No, but it helps make life more difficult for innumerable young people who may be struggling with their identity. They've got more than enough on their plates without the NYT legitimizing their ostracization.

What's next?

Perhaps the n-word will make a comeback?

The Trump/Putin kiss

Here's the story at BBC.

Here's the image that BBC finds worthy of featuring:



So why is this newsworthy?

All I'm seeing is a juvenile pastiche of homophobia/Trump-bashing/Putin-bashing.

Frankly, I'm hoping that those two men can get along once Trump is POTUS.

And hey, should they become lovers, so much the better! They'll each be that much less likely to incinerate the other's extended family in a nuclear Armageddon!

The selective myopia of the "queer friendly" press

Why is it that any news story about Ontario Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne is more likely than not to mention that she is Canada's first "openly gay" premier?

Could it be that the media, almost entirely an organ of the neo-liberal right, seeks to mine the residual homophobia that might swing a few votes here and there?

The fact is that everybody already knows that Kathleen Wynne is gay and we don't need to be reminded of it every time we read a news story about Ms. Wynne, because NOBODY CARES!

On the other hand, the same media outlets never ever mention that John Baird is Canada's first openly gay Foreign Minister.

Baird gets a free pass because he is a stalwart of the most neo-liberal far-right government that Canada has ever had in the modern era.

And aside from an occasional crusade against a marginal player like Mike Duffy, that's not a boat the neo-liberal press is interested in rocking.