Category Archives: Homosexuality

Update III: Tossed and Gored By Gore Vidal

Constitution, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democrats, Homosexuality, Intellectualism, Liberty, Literature, Military, Propaganda, Reason, Terrorism, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

Despite his surprisingly mundane and misguided ideas on politics and economics, brilliant belletrist Gore Vidal, at 83, still manages to dazzle with his original insights. In a country in which homegrown retardation is more pressing a problem than homegrown terrorism, that’s quite something.

Vidal recently gave an interview to the British Times from which it was clear that he no longer sees signs of the divine in Obama. Nevertheless, absent from the dismal score card he gave the president was a realistic appraisal of the putative gifts of Obama, a charmer who was elected based on his ability to sweetly say nothing much at all.

To his credit, Vidal is scathing about Obama’s talismanic, “solve that [war] and you solve terrorism” treatment of the Afghanistan war. At the same time he wants to see Obama, Lincoln-like, lord it over the people (especially with respect to health care). But those kinds of images go with the homoerotic territory.

In any event, his weak protestations over Obama are the least interesting of Vidal’s comments, the ones about Timothy McVeigh and the love that dare not speak its name the most interesting.

Read the interview.

Update I (Oct. 1): Some respect for Gore Vidal, please. He belongs to a generation of intellectuals who SERVED. Bravely. As a matter of interest, “Some 450 out of 750 Princeton graduates in the class of 1956 served in the military.” Samuel Huntington, one of America’s greatest scholars, served in the army. “All four of the Kennedy brothers served in the military; not one of the thirty Kennedy cousins has.” [Excerpted from Are We Rome?The Fall of An Empire And The State of America by Cullen Murphy, 2007, p. 82.]

Most of the neocon-minded war mongers have not served.

Of course, “our freedoms,” such as they are, do not come courtesy of our armed forces leveling this or the other far-flung protectorate abroad. That’s yet more neocon nonsense on stilts. Cheap sloganeering.

Update II: The proverbial Orwellian Ministry of Truth decrees how the peons think about the issues of the day. When it comes to Timothy McVeigh they’ve had the same degree of success as in ensconcing Rosa Parks as the new Founding Mother of America.

Vidal is rare and courageous in recognizing the legitimate effrontery against life and liberty that motivated McVeigh to commit his crime. He is also unique in acknowledging that McVeigh was not a rube, but a thoughtful man who had fought for his country and was familiar with its foundational principles and documents. Here is McVeigh on the American experiment gone wrong (haven’t you read the interview?):

I think it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We’ve gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that’s where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced.

The characters involved in the Waco massacre—our “brave” law and order officers and their puppet masters—deserved to be put to death too, but were not. Vidal has my respect for recognizing what the decidedly mediocre mind of a Rich Lowry has been incapable of. If Vidal were of a younger generation (like myself), his iconoclasm would have consigned him in mindless America to obscurity.

Update III: MORAL/INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENCE. Conflating the causes for which McVeigh committed his cruel crime against agents and family of an oppressive government is akin to conflating MY causes with those of, in Myron’s taxonomy of the evil, the “Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin,” and I would add Al Gore (to round off the profile, and to poke at the humorless).

What sort of moral relativism is this? What kind of messy thinking is this? The causes and theories of the Unabomber, Hitler, Stalin (and Al Gore) were wrong on their logic and facts; McVeigh’s causes and motivation, if not his deeds, were right. What’s so hard about that? Kudos to Vidal, however confused he is about all else, for recognizing this.

Updated: Goons Against Gays, Gun Owners & Other Good Folks

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Feminism, Gender, Homosexuality, Law, Military, The Military, The State

I’ve been concentrating quite a bit lately on the way the State moves swiftly and speedily against good, patriotic Americans, who’ve transgressed some or another petty rule. But to dangerous or undesirable aliens—the very people upon which the state must clamp down and control — it almost always grants immunity and inordinate privileges.

Consider the latest SCOTUS decision that encourages and incentivizes identity theft. Or the many cases where a gun owner is nabbed for self-defense or for nothing much at all.

Deporting or bringing to book an illegal criminal takes forever, and often doesn’t take place at all. On the other hand, the military, a lumbering complex, moves against gays and lesbians who’ve come out at the speed of light.

Dan Choi, West Point graduate, Arabic linguist, and a Lieutenant in the United States Army, was fired for coming out in no time at all. No sooner did it become known that Choi was gay than he was dismissed.

The same goes for “Sandy Tsao, who was booted from the military after telling her superiors she was gay in January.”

That’s one fast and efficient bureaucracy.

Now, homo or hetero—you ought to keep you sexuality to yourself, and out of my face, be it in the army or in the office. I’ve lamented before that, sadly, “The closet has come to signify oppression, rather than discretion.”

Moreover, women ought to barred from the military completely, unless they are lesbian Amazons; a rare breed which can almost match men in physicality, and is unlikely to have the toxic effects straight women have on esprit de corps (and on rates of illegitimacy and welfarism).

Still, the way the state has hounded and proceeded against gays and gun-owners so quickly and callously goes to show again that in a corrupt, fascistic country, the law protects the outlaw, not the law-abiding.

Update (May 11): The Israelis use women in auxiliary roles; not as equals on the battle field or as candidates to consider for The-Right-Stuff sort of missions. I will say, that I’ve watched an Israeli woman (on American TV) instruct American men in face-to-face combat. She was as good as a man. But more importantly, Israeli women are different from American women; they’re tough, no-nonsense types, who do not whine much, speak quite well, and don’t report for duty with breast implants and painted finger-nails. The women I’ve seen who rise to prominence there inspire confidence; which is more than I can say for the flaccid empire’s females.
There are exception, of course. CNN featured a few tragic stories of upbeat, wiry little American girls, minus a few limbs, who graduated from military academies and were just gems. Still, these exceptional young women (tiny and nowhere near as resilient as a fit young man) do not belong near the battle fields, other than in supporting roles.

If you’re interested in the subject, STEPHANIE GUTMANN, a very good writer, whose book “The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy,” I recommend, wrote the best book on the topic. Fred Reed praised her books too.

Updated: Goons Against Gays, Gun Owners & Other Good Folks

Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Feminism, Gender, Homosexuality, Law, Military, The Military, The State

I’ve been concentrating quite a bit lately on the way the State moves swiftly and speedily against good, patriotic Americans, who’ve transgressed some or another petty rule. But to dangerous or undesirable aliens—the very people upon which the state must clamp down and control — it almost always grants immunity and inordinate privileges.

Consider the latest SCOTUS decision that encourages and incentivizes identity theft. Or the many cases where a gun owner is nabbed for self-defense or for nothing much at all.

Deporting or bringing to book an illegal criminal takes forever, and often doesn’t take place at all. On the other hand, the military, a lumbering complex, moves against gays and lesbians who’ve come out at the speed of light.

Dan Choi, West Point graduate, Arabic linguist, and a Lieutenant in the United States Army, was fired for coming out in no time at all. No sooner did it become known that Choi was gay than he was dismissed.

The same goes for “Sandy Tsao, who was booted from the military after telling her superiors she was gay in January.”

That’s one fast and efficient bureaucracy.

Now, homo or hetero—you ought to keep you sexuality to yourself, and out of my face, be it in the army or in the office. I’ve lamented before that, sadly, “The closet has come to signify oppression, rather than discretion.”

Moreover, women ought to barred from the military completely, unless they are lesbian Amazons; a rare breed which can almost match men in physicality, and is unlikely to have the toxic effects straight women have on esprit de corps (and on rates of illegitimacy and welfarism).

Still, the way the state has hounded and proceeded against gays and gun-owners so quickly and callously goes to show again that in a corrupt, fascistic country, the law protects the outlaw, not the law-abiding.

Update (May 11): The Israelis use women in auxiliary roles; not as equals on the battle field or as candidates to consider for The-Right-Stuff sort of missions. I will say, that I’ve watched an Israeli woman (on American TV) instruct American men in face-to-face combat. She was as good as a man. But more importantly, Israeli women are different from American women; they’re tough, no-nonsense types, who do not whine much, speak quite well, and don’t report for duty with breast implants and painted finger-nails. The women I’ve seen who rise to prominence there inspire confidence; which is more than I can say for the flaccid empire’s females.
There are exception, of course. CNN featured a few tragic stories of upbeat, wiry little American girls, minus a few limbs, who graduated from military academies and were just gems. Still, these exceptional young women (tiny and nowhere near as resilient as a fit young man) do not belong near the battle fields, other than in supporting roles.

If you’re interested in the subject, STEPHANIE GUTMANN, a very good writer, whose book “The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy,” I recommend, wrote the best book on the topic. Fred Reed praised her books too.

Updated: Conservatives Add Another Blond To The Brain Trust

Celebrity, Christian Right, Conservatism, Gender, Homosexuality, Intelligence, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Michael Musto, the Village Voice’s machine gun, on Miss California: “This girl is a ding-dong. She’s not just a boob, but a fake boob. (An allusion to Carrie Prejean’s breast augmentation.) A beauty contestant with falsies and an opinion. Let the babe who needs a brain implant deflate. You’re telling me a lot of beauty contestants are fake? Next you’re going to be telling me their personalities are artificial too. There is no talent, no personality to these contestants, just parading down the runway like a ding-dong trying to cure cancer and find the right handbag to match her navel.”

Ding-dong has been stumble-bumbling on the morning shows. Expect Hannity’s Great American Panel to be next, the slutty Kim Kardashian having already blazed a trail with her famous tail on that Fox News show. I never thought I’d come to think of “Hannity and Colmes,” “Hannity” in his previous incarnation, as an intellectual high-water mark for this “news” program.

From the bimbo burlesque, let’s move on to the ding-dong’s area of expertise, same-sex nuptials. This is from my “MARRIAGE AND THE MANUFACTURING OF RIGHTS”:

“Not conferring the benefits of marriage on homosexual unions does not violate the rights of gays. Not if we adhere to the libertarian definition of rights as the inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Since these are the only rights libertarians wish the state to enforce, equality under the law is thus the requirement that the state not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process. …

“If we define rights properly, we must conclude that gay couples are not being denied their individual rights.” …

“Ideally, government should be entirely divorced from the nuptial business. But from the fact that the state upholds traditional marriage, why does it follow that it is violating the individual rights of same-sex couples who clearly don’t fit the definition or the profile?”

“Religious institutions ought to act as the ministers of marriage. If marriage were privatized, conservatives would have to accept that some liberal churches and synagogues (the mullahs in their mosques would resist) will wed homosexuals.”

Update (May 1): To read about other “conservative,” blond, ding-dongs, see:

A Cow Is Born

Elizabeth Hasselbeck