In Their Own Words
As we drag our sorry carcasses over the June finish line, I know this: I much prefer living in a world with LGBTQ pride parades than one without. This was the first year since 1995 that Michael and I didn't march with PFLAG in Portland's parade, thank you very much, effing coronavirus. But a ton of events happened online and we got ourselves a shiny new equality mandate from the Supreme Court this year, so all in all, not a total washout. Here are some parting words of wisdom as this year's Pride Month sashays away…
"The more I thought about it, the more I realized I'm not the only one who this is happening to. Someone has to stand up. I chose to stand up."
—Aimee Stephens, one of three plaintiffs who won their cases in a 6-3 decision before the Supreme Court this month, resulting in a ban on employment discrimination against LGBT Americans under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Stephens, who died last month, was fired after she announced her intention to transition from male to female.
Continued...
Pride continued...
"Eight years ago today when I went on Meet the Press, I was asked about how I feel about marriage equality. I wasn't thinking about moral courage, I was just thinking about an honest answer. What I did eight years ago took no courage. What took courage was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago when people had the courage to stand up and speak out. Enacting the Equality Act will be one of the top priorities I have.”
—Joe Biden, at a May 6 online town hall meeting with the Human Rights Campaign
“I don’t think you can say we believe in equal rights for some people but not for others. I think that’s what we call an oxymoron. I think if you believe in equal rights, you have to grant them to all the people.”
—Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and often called “the dean of the American civil rights movement." Lowery, who was one of the first civil rights era veterans to advocate for gay rights, died in March at 98.
"You cannot opt out of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum just like you cannot opt out of science or Black history simply because of ill-informed or closed-minded personal beliefs. LGBTQ history is a part of American history, and to hide or misrepresent who, how, and why we are here today means students would otherwise be learning fiction."
—Jon Oliveira of Garden State Equality, responding to the mayor of Barnegat's fight to disobey a state order to include LGBTQ events in history classes
“I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads [were] fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I’m affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there’d be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.”
—Harvey Milk
"Having such a diverse group of people coming into Congress is going to make a difference, because no matter if your experience is similar to mine or completely different than mine, it's just as real and just as valid. Your voice deserves to be heard just as much as mine and just as much as the people who have been in decision-making positions for so long."
—Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS), one of 160 LGBT candidates to win in the blue wave of 2018. How many will win this year? Stay tuned.
“I had the experience with The Joy of Gay Sex, when it was being distributed in Canada, that a woman thought she was buying The Joy of Cooking. She went home and looked up "chicken" and was absolutely appalled.”
—Author Edmund White
Next year, good lord willing, we march again.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Note: Hooray! It's C&J's annual Moment of Bunting!
And now it's over. Thanks. See you next year. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Weeks 'til election day: 18
Percent of Americans who say they left their home in the last week with a mask, according to a new ABC-Ipsos poll: 89%
Americans polled by Huffpost-YouGov who support laws that protect LGBTQ people against job discrimination: 69%
Percent in the same poll who support allowing undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to stay in the country: 57%
Percent of people on death row who are eventually proven innocent and released: 10%
States with a smaller population than D.C., were the district to become a state: 2 (Vermont, Wyoming)
Percent of D.C.'s population made up of black residents, versus 1.3% for Vermont and Wyoming: 45%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Let's play Hungry, Hungry Husky…
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JEERS to the straw the could break Cadet Bone Spurs' back. Donald Trump got away with five deferments to avoid service in Vietnam. He got away with the fact that his daddy threatened a podiatrist's livelihood if he didn’t gin up some fake bone spurs for his son’s delicate tootsies. He got away with using West Point cadets as props during a killer pandemic. He even got away with bumble-saluting a North Korean general. But looking the other way for months after finding out that Russia put a bounty on our troops' heads in Afghanistan? That could leave a mark:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded a briefing from leaders of the U.S. intelligence community on reports that Russia offered bounties to the Taliban for killing American troops in Afghanistan.
"Congress and the country need answers now," Pelosi, D-Calif, wrote in a letter Monday to President Donald Trump's CIA director and his Director of National Intelligence. […]
Lawmakers in both parties are demanding more information and answers from the Trump administration on what the White House knew and why no action has been taken to punish Russia.
Hmm. What did he know….and….when did he know it? If I recall correctly, those questions brought down another corrupt Republican president. And, like Trump, I believe he was also a big dick. (But in fairness, there's a big difference between the two: the previous president capitalized the D.)
CHEERS to order in the court. Did you know that Chief Justice John Roberts has a summer place up here in Maine? He does, and I had this crazy idea that if I could get close enough to touch his leg with a red hot poker, it might snap him out of his Federalist Society trance. It's still a bit early to know for sure, but joining the majority on LGBTQ equality and DACA was a good sign. And now, this:
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Louisiana's tough restriction on abortion violates the Constitution, a surprising victory for abortion rights advocates from an increasingly conservative court.
The 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court's four more liberal justices, struck down a law passed by Louisiana's legislature in 2014 that required any doctor offering abortion services to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. Its enforcement had been blocked by a protracted legal battle.
Roberts said he thought the court was wrong to strike down the Texas law, but he voted with the majority because that was binding precedent.
It's a victory for women's sovereignty over their own bodies. It's a victory for the principle of Stare Decisis (respect for precedent). It's a victory for Louisiana clinics and clinics in any state where Republican leaders were trying to pass the same kind of law. But most important, it was a victory for the defeat of justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and that other weird one who plays poker with Satan every Thursday night.
CHEERS and JEERS to gettin' outta Dodge. Triple-A ("Motto: Three times more A’s than the leading A") didn't fax out its usual July 4th holiday travel forecast this year, due to the you-know-what-demic. But last week they did Morse-code out a rough estimate of the overall summer travel season. The good news is, you'll have a bit more distance between you and the wackos on the road. The bad news: but not by as much as you might expect…
This summer, AAA forecasts Americans will take 700 million trips based on economic indicators and state re-openings. That number is down nearly 15% compared to last July through September and is the first decline in summer travel since 2009. AAA booking trends show Americans are making travel plans, though cautiously and more spur of the moment.
Car trips will see the smallest decrease in travel volume of just 3% year-over-year. Air travel will be off by about 74%, while rail, cruise ship and bus travel will slide by 86%. “While the amount people drive is still low for this time of year, we know millions will be taking road trips in the months ahead. The good news is, the congestion they will encounter is nowhere near what we typically see in a summer,” says Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at INRIX.
AAA expects the national gas price to average near $2.25/gallon for the third quarter of 2020, which will be a 15% decline from the $2.66 average seen last summer.
Triple-A also predicts that it will rescue a couple hundred thousand motorists during the July 4th holiday week. For reasons that will eventually be traced back to blind devotion to their GPS instructions, half of them will be rescued from lakes, trees, and quicksand.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to he who is laughing last. On June 30, 1520, Montezuma II was murdered as Spanish conquistadors fled the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Today he gets his "revenge" by inflicting a certain embarrassing malady on tourists who visit Mexico and drink the water. Now pay attention, class:
When you're slidin' into first and you feel something burst—Diarrhea! Diarrhea!
When you're slidin' into third and you lay a juicy turd—Diarrhea! Diarrhea!
When you're slidin' into home and your shorts are filled with foam—Diarrhea! Diarrhea!
When you're sitting in your Chevy and your pants are wet and heavy—Diarrhea! Diarrhea!
Look at that: history, sports, biology and industrial engineering. At C&J, even in the midst of a pandemic, school's always in session.
CHEERS to spending an hour with an American legend. I don’t believe there's been a day since I first heard the theme from Star Wars 43 years ago that I haven't either listened to or hummed a theme by John Williams. (To be fair, it's hard to go 24 hours without hearing his iconic 1985 NBC News theme.) If you're a fan of the countless notes he's put to paper (8 more Star Wars films, Amistad, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Schindler's List), heads up: he's being interviewed this evening (6PT/9ET) by L.A.Philharmonic music director Gustavo Dudamel—both from their respective shelters-in-place—on KUSC radio. John is like a walking, talking moment of zen—soft-spoken, easygoing, philosophical modest to a fault, supremely intelligent (so of course he's a Democrat) and at 88 a great storyteller of Hollywood lore of the 50s and 60s, when he got his start as a session pianist. Details and livestream button thingy here. Intriguing thought: was John’s theme for Jaws originally written for bagpipes and penny whistle? The answer may shock you.
P.S. Unlike the current president, John Williams never has trouble filling the seats, as he did in Vienna last January. Here’s one of the most nefarious and ceiling-rattling performances of Dick Cheney’s theme you’ll ever hear. This wasn’t on the original concert schedule because Williams thought it would be one piece too much for the Vienna Philharmonic’s brass section. But guess who begged to have it added? The brass section. And watch John at the end as he goes, “Wow!”
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Take that, Mozart.
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 30, 2010
CHEERS to the brightest bulb in the room. I mean it—Elena Kagan is lighting up the committee room at her Senate confirmation hearings. She's not entirely dodging answers, she's not defensive or hesitant as she speaks, and she's also pretty funny:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked the solicitor general where she was Christmas Eve during a discussion about the bombing attempt of an airliner in Detroit.
"Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant," Kagan quipped.
A woman after my own heart—and I'm Episcopalian. When you're confirmed, ma'am, the kung pao chicken with pea pods and crab rangoons are on me.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to today's sensible survival tips…from Deadeye Dick. I should know better than to post videos of Dick Cheney's theme (above), because he always seems to show up shortly after. But in this case—and I can't believe I'm saying this—it's a good thing! As if to hoist his decaying and crooked middle finger at the current occupant of the White House, the guy who shot a lawyer in the face (his only accomplishment that the uniformly applauded, Ha Ha Ha lawyer joke) wants everyone to be safe from the lethal bullets known as Covid-19 molecules by wearing a mask:
I gotta say, he looks pretty healthy. For a 666 year old.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Daily Kos's board has voted to remove the name “Bill in Portland Maine” from the blog's prestigious kiddie pool due to his "pro-candy corn thinking and policies."
—NBC News
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