Does anyone really care what John McCain wears?  Or Joe Biden?  Or Barack Obama?

(In answer to the latter, the answer is generally no, unless the question of an American flag lapel pin is raised.)

Hillary Clinton says that’s an example of the sexist media:

“I think you have to ask yourself and it’s a little exercise I’d like everybody in the press, and really all of us, to go through: Would the same thing be said about a man in a similar position and the answer 99 times out of 100 is no. I think it’s been a long time since anybody covered what Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or John McCain wear or their hairstyle or any other personal characteristic like that.”

So I have a little exercise for Hillary.  For a full year, she should do the following:

1. Stop getting her hair done.  Settle on a particular, simple hair style that never changes.  Nothing too poofy, nothing with any kind of dramatic sweep.  The way Bill wears his hair.  Just don’t follow John Edwards’ lead with the $300 haircut.  Any man who spends more than $40 for a haircut — I spend $15 on mine — is going to get talked about in the press, too. (And for that matter, any candidate for president who seems to delight in calling his opponent “elitist” but wears $520 shoes is going to find his fashion choices talked about, too.)
2. Stop wearing jewelry.  A wedding ring is fine.  Nothing else.
3. Stop with the makeup.  A little foundation is acceptable, because in public appearances, any politician is likely to slap on a little powder if he or she knows cameras are going to be around.
4. Stop with the colored pantsuits.  Navy blue, black and grey are fine.  Orange, red, jade and baby blue must go right out of the closet at once.  When did you see Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden or any other male candidate wear an orange suit?

In other words, if you want to be treated like a man, make yourself look like a man in every respect possible.  Is that unfair?  Before you answer, look at Hillary’s own words:

“I think you have to ask yourself and it’s a little exercise I’d like everybody in the press, and really all of us, to go through…”

All of us?  Why, Hillary?  Is it possible — just possible — that it’s not so much just the press that’s being sexist, but our society as a whole?  In many, many ways, the press is a mirror on society:  the press doesn’t create discrimination, but it does very often reflect what’s already there.

If women in politics really want to be treated like men, by virtue of not having their hair and wardrobe talked about, then why would they dress in a way that’s different from men?  You don’t blend in by trying to stand out.

Hillary wants to project her own personal style, yet have no one notice it.  She doesn’t want to look like “one of the guys,” yet resents it when it’s pointed out that she’s not one of them.

Sounds like a double standard to me.

Before the women in my audience start jumping on me about this, let me be clear:  as a voter, I don’t care what Hillary wears.  And I really think that most people don’t care, either.  But when a candidate comes out wearing an outfit the color of a pumpkin, for example, we’ll all notice it.  Most of us will notice it for a few seconds and move on.

To be fair, I don’t notice a lot of coverage about Hillary’s outfits.  Letterman is always good for a laugh on the pantsuits, but no one is considering David Letterman part of the news media, are they?

But if you’re the candidate and you don’t want any notice made of it, wear something else.

It’s only human to notice what’s the same and what’s different about us.  It’s unfortunate, because so many of us have hangups about individual differences that have no bearing on the person at all.

But you can’t make yourself stand out then complain when someone notices what’s different about you.  If your qualifications and your beliefs are the most important thing about you, then make that the first thing people notice about you:  not how well you’ve accessorized.

South Carolina has dropped out of an ad campaign that was designed to lure gay tourism dollars to the state. The state’s Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department had previously agreed to spend $5,000, not a huge amount of money as ad dollars go, to market to gays in London.

Charleston’s Post and Courier describes one ad that appeared in a London tube station as showing a historic rural home under the headline, “South Carolina is so gay.”

True to form, bible-belt red-state South Carolinians reacted by flying off the deep end. Sure, they want tourist dollars, but just not from them. Even though “them” is a relatively powerful tourist force, according to a Philadelphia study a few years ago, which revealed that for every dollar that city spent on gay tourism advertising, gay tourists spent an average of $153 on hotels, shops and more. At the time, gay tourists were said to spend about $54 billion a year on travel. That’s billion. With a B.

And it’s just a guess on my part, mind you, but I’ll wager those billions are still green like everyone else’s. And still spends, in a sluggish economy, the same.

The problem, according to PRT excuses, was that international advertising wasn’t subjected to the same review process that national advertising is because in this case, a third party firm developed the ad. Does that explanation make any damn sense to anyone? PRT only cares enough to be mindful of the image it is projecting to places like Iowa or Oregon or Minnesota, but doesn’t give a hoot about pulling in tourism dollars from the rest of the planet? And unless PRT has its own ad agency and never uses any third party firms here in the state — which is unlikely — most of their ad projects are ultimately produced or executed by third parties.

And isn’t that what we’d expect, no matter what an international ad said? Who’d know what would appeal to any specific segment of London’s population better than a London-based firm, or at least someone here is from there?

Sounds to me like an excuse about as logical as something a kid would make up after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Is the ad wrong to use the term gay? Well, let’s look at it this way: would there be any objection from gay groups if South Carolina hoped to attract bible belt tourists to the state with the line, “South Carolina is so straight?” If anyone would have a problem with that, but not the gay line, then what we’re dealing with here is a nice little double standard.

Of course, then there are the ones who’ll try to downplay the whole thing by hiding behind dictionary definitions. Gay has different meanings, they’ll say.

True.

Gay means happy and carefree, although it is used less and less for that these days because “them homasexshals” took over the word.

Gay is also used, mostly by people who aren’t, to refer to something that is screwed up, backwards.

Some would argue after this little display of homophobia and/or sloppy procedure and/or poor judgment, depending on your personal point of view, that maybe, one way or another, the headline isn’t so inaccurate after all.

Want to watch a candidate for president squirm?

Piece of cake: I submit for your perusal Sen. John McCain being asked if he thinks it’s unfair that insurance companies would pay for Viagra but not birth control.

Just past the 1:00 mark, while desperately trying to come up with some way to get out of this mess of a question, he makes a wonderful face that seems to say, “Oh, crap, I’m screwed.”

By someone on an overdose of Viagra, no doubt. Just sayin’.

Wonder if those specific angry women who have said they’d vote for McCain solely because Hillary isn’t the Democratic nominee are well-versed in McCain’s positions on such matters.

Somehow I doubt it.

And to those who like to talk about how the media “never” covers such things, you’ll note that this particular clip aired on CNN, which, last time I checked, is part of the media.

This almost sounds like a joke straight from Jay Leno or David Letterman. Sadly, it isn’t.

Two of the latest lawmakers to co-sponsor one of those ridiculous “Defense of Marriage”-type laws that define marriage as a union between man and woman have themselves demonstrated a somewhat unconventional standard within their own commitment.

First, there’s Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, the man arrested a little more than a year ago in a Minneapolis airport terminal on charges of lewd conduct. Craig entered a guilty plea to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct after allegedly attempting to signal a male in the next stall that he wanted to engage in sexual activity. He has since attempted to withdraw the plea, but has so far been unsuccessful. He never even told his wife about the arrest, according to reports, until the story was made public.

The second lawmaker with the odd background is Louisiana Sen. David Vitter. In July of last year, Vitter was identified as a client of a prostitution firm owned by the woman dubbed “The DC Madam.” In a statement, he apologized for what he called a “a very serious sin” in his past for which he had apologized to God and to his wife.

I realize that there are a lot of people out there who still believe that marriage needs to be “protected” via the male-female definition. Until a few recent court rulings making way for same-sex marriage in a few areas, this country’s long history of the male-female definition by practice still managed to rack up a divorce rate somewhere around 50% or higher (depending on whom you ask). You’d have to believe, if you think same-sex marriage would destroy the institution, that these men and women who are so committed to fighting for the right to marry the person they want to spend the rest of their life with will somehow forget every ounce of commitment they displayed once the ring is on their finger.

But for those of you who still are so convinced of such a preposterous notion, does it at least seem odd to you that the institution of marriage needs the help of people who have been accused of either being unfaithful or taking the first steps toward infidelity?

Sure, I know what they say about forgiveness and redemption, and it’s great that these two politicians have seen the error of their ways and are surely committing themselves, through acts like these, to be good boys for the rest of their lives.

But if you are really interested in protecting the institution of marriage from all its various threats, and if you really want everyone to believe that you aren’t just being homophobic or blindly toeing a party line just so you can ignore really important issues like the economy or Iraq, you might wonder why there’s no proposal to punish adulterers; it seems to me that marriage needs a shot in the arm to protect the institution from them first.

Remember when Barack Obama referred to a female reporter with the nickname, “Sweetie”?  It was the “Sweetie” heard ‘round the world, the definitive example of what the real Obama was all about, the disdain and contempt he feels for all people of the female persuasion.

Hillary Clinton’s staunchest supporters, the over-the-top feminists who were only interested in seeing a woman in the White House heard that word, they couldn’t make the “We’re not your ‘Sweetie’” t-shirts quickly enough.

And they declared that if their girl didn’t the nod, they’d vote for John McCain instead.

If we want to be fair, and I’m sure those people don’t, we ought to take a look at what “terms of endearment” the senator from Arizona might have used toward any member of the fairer sex.  After all, what’s good for the black gander is good for the white gander, right?  Especially if no goose is around.

My regular readers have heard me reference Linda Hansen before.  She’s a dear friend, my “second mom” and a terrific writer, and, despite being female, happens to support — gasp! — a male candidate: Obama.

Oh the horror!

Linda has written a wonderful piece on these Clinton supporters who are so willing to vote for the guy from the other side to “further” their own cause.  And I think when you read it, and judge these facts against McCain the same way the sudden McCain supporters have judged Hillary’s second-place showing and the “Sweetie” remark against Obama, you’ll be quite surprised at how shoddy the reasoning for throwing support towards McCain appears:

22% of women–“feminists” all–who supported Hillary Clinton swear they will not vote for Barack Obama. Why? They’re angry at sexist pundits and a sexist media, none of whom gave Hillary a fair shake. She lost the nomination, they insist, only because she is a woman. Barack Obama, they declare, is a sexist, too; part of a vast, left-wing conspiracy against a woman running for POTUS. If not for him…

John McCain is stepping into the Democratic feminist void, wooing these disaffected women like a randy suitor after an invite to the Sadie Hawkins’ Day Dance.

What’s scary is that some of these women are ready to do-si-do with him.

John McCain is a war hero. No doubt about it. But he is no great friend to women. In a 2000 interview with Tim Russert, McCain said he would support a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions. All abortions. That would mean no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Russert asked repeatedly if he understood the issue in question–that it meant all abortions, even therapeutic ones. McCain answered, “Yes, sir.”

The man means what he says.

In 2003, Senator McCain voted against legislation that would have required insurance companies to provide coverage for prescribed contraceptives. For birth control. This hit home with me. One of my daughters was paying a hefty full retail price for birth control pills because her husband’s health insurance provider would not cover contraceptives. They would, however, cover Viagra. Erectile dysfunction was clearly a priority.

Preventing an unplanned, unaffordable pregnancy? Not so much.

An argument, in that case, could be made for abstinence. If you don’t want to risk a pregnancy, be a good girl. Don’t have sex. That dog won’t hunt. When the provider is footing a chunk of the cost for Viagra so men can perform in bed, they’re sure not selling celibacy. They’re selling a good time for the good ole boy and expecting women to pay the piper.

McCain voted to terminate Title X family planning programs. Title X provides low income women with both birth control and cancer screenings. The old “ounce of prevention” theory for the have-nots.

On the issue of a woman’s reproductive rights, he’s got us coming and going. He’s not willing to keep us covered for contraceptives to prevent pregnancies and he’s not willing to consider any abortion as necessary.

He’s such a man. Does he have much respect for women? How does this man treat the woman who’s been his partner for decades, given birth to his children, kept the home fires burning?

In 1992 John McCain hit the campaign trail in Arizona, seeking re-election to his senate seat. On a campaign stop, in the presence of three Arizona reporters, his own aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullet, husband McCain surfaced publicly:

Cindy McCain playfully twirled John’s hair. “You’re getting a little thin up there,” she teased. Candidate John’s face went scarlet. “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c@#t!” he snapped.

C@#t, for those of you who don’t get it, starts with “C” and rhymes with runt. It’s one of the most vulgar terms that can be used when speaking to or about a woman. A “trollop” is a disreputable woman, a promiscuous woman, a streetwalker.

McCain’s explanation for the obscene rant against his wife? He’d “had a long day.” That’s tough. Apparently he thought it was reason enough to humiliate his wife.

Whatever his virtues, this guy has little to offer American women. No understanding, no protective or preventive health care benefits and, by any measurable standard, no respect.

Incidentally, when Linda emailed me to let me know I had her permission to run the post, she asked me to add this:

“I have real trouble with that ‘C’ word–rather cut out my tongue than say it, cut off my fingers than write it. … I loathe that word–my generation of women (ask your mama) never heard that word or the ‘F’ word spoken aloud until we were exposed to R movies in our forties!”

One might wonder, after reading how far off the mark the Hillary supporters’ “second choice” seems to be, if it isn’t a good thing that Hillary didn’t get the nod; that is to say, if this is how women really think….

It’s a great relief, however, that the majority of women, a clear majority, took no time at all to realize that a male Democratic candidate who values women’s issues is better than a male Republican candidate who obviously doesn’t.

If that 22% who haven’t, as yet, taken time to think rationally ever do so, I suspect they’ll come to the same conclusion.

And to their senses.

As if South Carolina ranking #1 in text messaging while driving, we’re also getting national attention because a high school principal has decided to resign after being asked to allow the formation of a club he says goes against his “professional beliefs and religious convictions.”

The club in question is a Gay/Straight Alliance. His resignation will take effect in June of 2009, at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. I can’t help but wonder, if he’s so offended, why he didn’t set his date of separation to be June of this year.

The organization that creates such clubs nationwide describes its vision of the future as “a world in which every child learns to accept and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Doesn’t sound so terrible, does it?

The principal in question says his school focuses on abstinence-based curriculum, and feels that a Gay/Straight Alliance would imply “that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

¿Que?

First, let me get the abstinence issue out of the way. Abstinence-based curriculum stresses the importance of waiting for sex until after marriage. It’s what most Christian organizations like to push for in our schools, because it allows parents to sit back and feel that kids are getting the “right” message. But as everyone who has ever been a teenager knows, being told that you should wait for something almost certainly guarantees that you don’t want to wait for it. Add to that the typical peer pressure students face, and a curriculum that urges abstinence with less-than-realistic instruction on protection for those students who choose not to wait, and you have a scenario that is basically facilitating the real possibility of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. It doesn’t take a college degree to see that.

The opposite of abstinence-based sex ed is comprehensive sex ed:

“There is good evidence, from studies of programs implemented in the US, UK and other European countries and countries in Africa and Asia, that comprehensive sex education can reduce behaviors that put young people at risk of HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy. Studies have repeatedly shown too that this kind of sex education does not lead to the earlier onset of sexual activity among young people and, in some cases, will even lead to it happening later.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the quote:

“…that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

I can guarantee that every student in this principal’s school will choose to engage in sexual activity with the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes at some point…whether there is a Gay/Straight Alliance or not. The only exceptions will be those who decide to be celibate for life, or those who prefer relations with something other than humans, and I’d as soon think no more of that. If he could just figure out what needs to get said to make the members engage in sexual activity one day with members of the opposite sex only, his little “problem” would be solved, wouldn’t it?

If the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance is enough to make people want to have sex, shouldn’t even abstinence-based sex education be banned as well? After all, if just the mere mention of the topic — which is apparently this principal’s concern — is enough to send students over the edge, isn’t sex education itself also a danger? Even if students are pressured not to have it until later, they’re still telling them something about having it, and that must be asking for trouble!

Maybe sex education in his school should be replaced by good old Home Ec. Baking chocolate chip cookies and sewing on buttons probably wouldn’t get anyone all that hot and bothered. (Unless they got too close to the hot oven.)

The executive director for Faith in America, a group that fights religious bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans, issued a statement that read in part:

“We truly believe it is unfortunate that this principal cannot see the immense harm that is caused when a social climate of rejection, condemnation and violence is justified with misguided religious belief. To make such a choice over simply allowing gay youth a forum to meet and talk, alludes to the apparent deep-seated prejudice that must exist in the religious mindset of this person.

“It is unfortunately very similar to the time in our history when segregation in schools was once allowed to flourish because of the deep-seated prejudice that existed in our institutions and the religious mindset of many people during that period.”

Or, to put it another way, discrimination is discrimination, no matter what makes the targets of it different from the “rest.”

The article from Columbia television station WIS-TV also quotes the parent of a student at the school:

“We are not putting them like, ‘ugh. You know you’re lepers.’ But we have to stand for what our foundation of our nation was about.”

Huh?

I might have to go dig up my history book, because I don’t recall reading that our country was founded to discriminate against gay high school students. I do, however, happen to vaguely remember something about the desire for religious freedom being a motive.

Religion does play a big role in this. There are plenty of Christians who refuse to call homosexuality anything other than an abomination. Many of them latch on to issues like this so that they can deflect their own sins that they don’t like to talk about. It’s human nature, after all. Rather than take the blame for something you’re doing that’s wrong, it’s so much easier to point a finger at someone else you feel is worse.

They also are convinced that homosexuality — and heterosexuality for that matter — should be the classifications of one’s sexual preference, not sexual orientation. As if anyone really wakes up one day and chooses which he’ll be.

Think about this for a second.

How old were you when you decided to which gender you were attracted? How many long days and nights did you labor over the decision? How long was your list of pros and cons for each gender?

Surely, if it was solely a function of choice, you must have spent a long, long time carefully considering which “team” you’d be “playing” for.

I can’t help but wonder why these religious zealots who are so against a club designed to open dialog wouldn’t welcome it. They should want straight students talking with gay students. They should want gay students — or in their minds, students who are choosing to be gay — to be exposed to straight students, those who are doing the “right” thing, so that they may see how happy and perfect the straight students’ lives are, and be positively influenced to rethink their “choice.”

That is to say, they should want those “good, sinless” straight students to rub off on those gay students. (No pun intended.)

Dialog, they should believe, could make all the difference in turning these gay students’ lives in the “proper” direction, right?

If they’re so convinced that it works for abstinence, then what’s the hang-up about homosexuality? They should be eager to quash two “problems” at once.

That is, if they’re giving it any real thought at all.

My friend Linda wrote a new column recently called, “Sexism, Racism, Politics and Double Standards,” in which she argued that this year’s election has bared all of our hypocrisy. She writes:

“We deny it, but there are plenty of us who just can’t get comfortable with the notion of a woman in the White House. She might be smart enough, but with PMS and menopause–well, you know. Women are too emotional. A man is a safer choice. Right? Wrong. Men get by with things that women don’t. A tough-talking man is bold. He’s assertive. A good thing. A tough-talking woman? She’s a b*tch. She’s aggressive. Not a good thing. A man who won’t keep his fly zipped? Honey, there’s a real man. He’s too much man for just one woman. ‘Boys will be boys…’ There’s your conventional wisdom at work. Boys are expected to be bad. There is no ‘Girls will be girls…’ mantra to hide behind. A woman with a yen to stray isn’t ‘too much woman for just one man.’ She’s a tramp. There are no words like “tramp” or “slut” for a promiscuous male.

“An equal number of us are skittish about electing an African American president. We white folks have been slow to accept the lofty idea that the color of a man’s skin has no bearing on his worth, his character or his intellectual capacity. We don’t like admitting to bigotry, but we’re guilty nonetheless.”

It goes further than this, too.

There are some women who are only supporting Hillary because they want to see a woman elected. There are some blacks supporting Obama only because he’s a man of color. I’ve seen black female voters talk about how conflicted they were about which of the two to side with, as if picking Obama makes them less of a woman and picking Clinton makes them less black.

And all along, what they should have been focusing on is which one more closely matches their political views.

There are even some blacks who secretly want Obama to win, but are hestitant to vote for him for fear that a crazy white will try to harm him and that they, the black voters, will somehow share in the responsibility. They’re letting generations of fear and racial targeting influence who they’ll cast a vote for in November.

There are Christians who are hiding behind those “rumors” about Obama being Muslim — and how anyone can believe that after all of the repeated blowups over Obama’s Christian minister, the wrong Rev. Jeremiah Wright is beyond me — and using those rumors as an excuse to vote for someone else. Some of these same people said they’d never be able to vote for a Mormon. Mitt Romney could have attended church ten times as much as these narrow-minded bible-thumpers, and could have lived a life a hundred times more moral, but he wasn’t in their sanctuary, so he wouldn’t have gotten their vote.

Recently, over at The Blue Voice, one of the contributors wrote a piece about her frustration about all the calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race. This was before last Tuesday, when the nominee was all but decided once and for all. But this particular writer said something that really set me off: If Hillary were a man, there wouldn’t be this pressure to step down.

Really?

I get so tired of Clinton’s female supporters trying to play the gender card all the time. Tell Mike Huckabee that if Clinton were a man, no one would question why she was still holding on despite mathematical improbability. I bet he’d raise his eyebrows at you and then say something seemingly sweet but with a nice little bite, as we Southern Baptists have been known to do at times. Long before it became mathematically impossible for Huckabee to be the nominee, people were already looking at him like he was a lunatic for even bothering to show up at his own political rallies. And the selection for a nominee has gone swimmingly by comparison for Republicans.

I have been backing Obama, not because he’s black or because he’s a man; I have backed him because research indicates that he and Clinton’s positions are the closest to my own.  When I was able to narrow it down to the two of them, I selected Obama because I believe him more:  I think Hillary too often says what she thinks we want to hear.

If you haven’t selected a candidate, and are secretly wrestling with some kind of bias, I’ll wrap this post up with Linda’s ending:

“How should these simple truths impact our votes? We vote for the candidate who’s smart enough, whose positions on the war, the economy, education, health care and the environment most closely represent our own priorities. If you’re a bit sexist, but like Clinton’s political stance, vote for her tough male half. If you’re a tad racist, but you like Obama’s vision, remember his mama. Vote for the white half.”

Sometimes the truth can sting a little.

Actors Van Hansis and Jake Silbermann aren’t a gay couple, but they play one on TV. Actress Cate Blanchett isn’t male, but she played one in a movie. Actor Robert Downey, Jr., isn’t black…

Can you guess where this is going?

Yes, Downey is now portraying a black man in a new motion picture directed by Ben Stiller. The film, Tropic Thunder, is about a group of actors hired for a movie about Vietnam who find themselves dropped in a real jungle in the middle of a battle they don’t realize is real. Downey plays a black actor.

But it isn’t the same scenario as the 1980s flick Soul Man, in which C. Thomas Howell’s character made himself up as a black man to be able to attend college on a black scholarship; the audience is supposed to assume from the beginning that the character — and presumably the actor portraying him — is indeed black.

A still released ahead of the movie shows the successful make-up job and I suspect that the casual observer would never recognize Downey if they didn’t know who he really was. But fancy disguises aside, the casting is already causing controversy, and Downey has prepared himself for more, according to The Daily Mail, which reports some initial reactions:

“I’m not black and I find it offensive; are there not any talented enough black actors out in the world that they feel the need to hire a white guy to do a black guy?”

“They are infering that there are no good enough black actors to play a black person.”

There were similar reactions in 2006 when producers of CBS’s soap As The World Turns introduced a storyline in which Hansis’s character, Luke, came out to his parents, longtime characters Lily and Holden. And as the storyline has heated up, including the appearance of a love interest in the form of Silbermann, who plays Noah, so has the controversy.

But in this case, time has changed the direction of the talk, from questioning why the 52-year-old soap couldn’t hire actors who are actually gay to why the show hasn’t allowed the couple more than a single attention-getting kiss. It seems that not only gay fans of the show, but women as well, want to see more sparks between the characters, whom they have nicknamed “Nuke.” (That detail provides men with the answer to a question they’ve wondered for years: apparently there are some women for whom the thought of guy-on-guy action is as appealing as girl-on-girl action is to some men…but I digress.)

Then there was Blanchett, who revealed last year that she strapped down her breasts and “went for it” to portray rock icon Bob Dylan in the biopic I’m Not Here. She was one of seven to play Dylan in the film, and was the only female.

I don’t recall any men complaining about that casting. If anything, I heard that people actually were looking forward to seeing the performance, though I suspect many anticipated it the way a Nascar fan goes to a race anticipating a major pile-up.

Is it reasonable that only black actors should play black characters? Or that only gay actors portray homosexuals? Or even that men can’t play women and vice versa?

I don’t think so. I think different performers can bring different things to the table in a roll. And firsthand familiarity isn’t a necessity for other aspects of an actor. An actor need not kill someone before he can play a murderer on CSI:. An actress isn’t required to cheat on her real-life husband just so she can play an adulterous vixen on Days of Our Lives.

It’s supposed to be about what an actor brings to a role, even when that roll might be a bit of a stretch.  It’s so ridiculous to suggest that a situation like Downey’s is an admission that there are no black actors “good enough” to play a black man that I am amazed anyone would make the argument; how does a black actor “play” black?

The question should be about how a white actor would “play” a black man: I can understand the potential for offense if he were to portray a black man as a jive-talking “brotha” right out of 1970s stereotypes.  It doesn’t appear from what has been said so far that this was the intent in Downey’s case.  But I wonder how many who are protesting will actually go see the film to find out for themselves.

Are any of these scenarios — gender-bending, race-bending or orientation-bending — particularly offensive to you?

In an election year, there are actually some groups of people who find themselves on the receiving end of more blame than those of us who work in the media. In the latest edition of The Blame Game, we find an Israeli official blaming recent earthquakes in the region on the Israeli government’s apparent “acceptance” of homosexuality:

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

Israel decriminalised homosexuality in 1988 and has since passed several laws recognising gay rights.

Two earthquakes shook the region last week and a further four struck in November and December.

So by this line of reasoning, bad things aren’t happening because gay people exist and go “gay” things. Bad things like earthquakes only happen when a government grants equal rights.

That’s an interesting excuse to discriminate, isn’t it?

Hat Tip to Signal 46

America paused to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. today.  Here are a few words of King’s wisdom, every bit as applicable and important today as when he first delivered them.

“When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

“Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” 

The first of two critical primaries in South Carolina is over. John McCain was the victor, with Mike Huckabee following closely behind. Rudy Giuliani actually receieved fewer votes here than Ron Paul, as if the state’s two top picks didn’t make for a frightening-enough thought.

The sad thing for me is that the candidate I tend to agree with most on the Republican side of things these days is Giuliani, perhaps because he’s the most “middle-of-the-road” of the red team.

I can’t really take McCain seriously since he made that now-infamous tour of Iraq to prove how safe it is. And despite his assurances that it is safe, he somehow feels that it would be fine to stay in Iraq for another 100 years. If it’s safe enough for him to be able to walk its streets without fear (and with a small armada that he wants you to forget), why, exactly, would we need to stay in Iraq for another century? If it’s suddenly that safe, why does Iraq need even its own military?

Then Huckabee said something just last week, referring to the need for amendments that would ban abortion and define marriage as being between a man and a woman, that sounded alarms in the back of my head. He would be fine with making the Constitution more of a document God himself can be proud of.

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”

Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister. I was raised Southern Baptist. But please don’t assume that I’m in even slight agreement with this notion. I’m not. It strikes me that everyone, especially the more religious among us, should be very afraid of such an idea.

In fact, if you’ll forgive the pun, it should scare the hell out of you.

I am reminded of a simple little bible verse every time I hear some politician trying to rewrite the Constitution for such a reason. You may already know which verse I have in mind, but in case you don’t, it’s found in 2 Corinthians 9:7:

“So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Why would God care, as long as he’s getting his due, whether the giver is cheerful or whether he resents his perceived obligation to give? It’s simple: if you do something because you feel it’s the right thing to do and because you want to, it means something. If you do something that you are forced or coerced to do, what does the action itself really mean? It has no value.

So let’s look at the proposal for constitutional amendments banning abortion and gay marriage. Would banning them really make us a more God-like country? Would our Heavenly Father show his favor upon us more if we forbade anyone to have an abortion and refused to allow same-gender couples to wed?

If you think so, you and I aren’t on the same page at all. And that’s because of this pesky little thing called free will, something that God gave His people.

It would have been so much easier — since He’s God — to have given us the brains of sheep; we’d simply go where He wanted us to go, do what we were told, and not stray from the fold. (If we did, a good shepherd would come along, gently guide us back, and we’d go on with life, happy as ever we had been.) We’d have been prevented, through our very design from ever possessing the capability to doubt God or anything we think He stands for. We’d believe what God wanted us to believe at all times.

But God gave us free will. Why? Because He knew that it means more when you go to church or worship or pray because it’s something you have decided you want to do, not because someone is making you do it. And the really miraculous thing is that you get more out of it, too. Win-win.

And you can thank that dusty old Constitution for our right to worship as we please, up to and including not worshipping at all. We have the right never to set foot in or monetarily support any church. That, I’m sure you will recall from your middle school history classes, is one of the primary reasons our founding fathers decided to separate church and state to start with. It had nothing to do with stores saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” It had to do with being a cheerful follower rather than a hostage.

If you believe that abortion is such an unacceptable choice, you should be more concerned with educating people about alternatives than limiting their liberties. If you find the thought of two people who love each other and who happen to be of the same gender a threat to your own marriage, which is a ridiculous idea, you should at least be coming up with a way to give them the legal rights a traditional married couple enjoys while calling it something else: civil union or whatever you prefer. Otherwise, it’s not really about liberty or freedom: it’s about you trying to control someone else’s life.

I am concerned about the competence of any electorate that places things like abortion and gay marriage as being a more important problem than education, yet here in South Carolina, I saw a poll the other day that listed education as less of a priority than the other two.

How can we not care about education? If we pretend we care so much about children being allowed to be born and live in “moral” families as the bible defines them, how can we not give a damn about what they’re learning in their schools? Does that make sense to anyone out there?

I can’t bring myself to support a candidate for the highest office in our nation who has in his bonnet the rewriting the most basic rules of our country to be intentionally discriminatory. And whether you’re young or old, black or white, religious or non-religious, gay or straight, if you truly value those freedoms you act so prideful about every July 4th and that you thank our veterans for securing for us every Veterans or Memorial Day, you ought to feel the same way.

It’s funny how discrimination is perceived. Sometimes, we’re sure we’re the targets of it, even when those slights we are so convinced are directed at us aren’t really slights at all.

Earlier this month, a federal judge expressed concern over the suggestion that our current system of currency discriminates against the blind. Blind people have difficulty distinguishing between the dollar bill and, say, a $50 dollar bill. That presents an obvious problem, and forces them, pretty much, to rely either on caregivers, the kindness of strangers, or debit/credit cards.

Some courts have determined, therefore, that our system of currency discriminates against the blind.

The aforementioned judge wasn’t so sure:

“‘Where does this stop?’ asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph. Are postage stamps illegal? Government Web sites? When mail carriers leave handwritten notes on front doors, are they discriminating against blind people?

“‘The National Gallery is having a Hopper exhibit,’ Randolph said. ‘Those paintings, do they violate the Rehabilitation Act?’”

What lengths have to be taken to create completely equal access without “discriminating” against the sighted?

Should art galleries close their doors or be penalized because the blind cannot use their services? Sure, it seems like a silly question. But here’s one that maybe isn’t as silly: should such institutions lose governmental funding because a certain percentage of the population is unable to use them?

The sad reality is that not everyone is equal: there are handicaps. (I’m sorry if that word is offensive, but I’m not sure what the current “politically-correct” substitute for handicap, when used in general terms, is at this particular moment.) Maybe, if I were blind, I might feel differently. I suspect, however, that I would accept the fact that there are limitations that I just have to deal with. Just as I must deal with certain limitations based on my size and fitness level. I don’t demand, for instance, that local municipalities stop funding events like marathons because I haven’t always been in good enough shape to participate.

Our constitution says that all men were created equal. But everyone does have his own unique set of gifts and deficiencies, and no matter how hard society works to equalize those disparities, there’s only so much that can be done.

Am I comparing apples to oranges? Maybe…I’m not sure.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Brian Williams recently came under fire after a comment he made on the air and on his Daily Nightly blog over at MSNBC.com. Continue reading “When Is It (Really) Discrimination?”

Imagine the scene: two news videographers trying to get the shot from nearly the same position, one bumping the other, and during the jostling for position, one smarts off to the other, calling him an “[expletive deleted] n—–r.”

Even in the heat of the moment, some would say, the “n-word” is never appropriate.

The second videographer, who turns his camera toward the first during the verbal assault, captures his remark on tape. Apparently offended, he takes the tape to his station’s management, who calls the other station. That station, shocked by the remark, suspends the first videographer for a week without pay.

Does that sound like a reasonable punishment in this day and age of growing intolerance for the dreaded “n-word?”

Before you answer, there’s one more little detail that might change the whole picture: Continue reading “Suspended for the ‘N-word’”

There is news — long-awaited news, in fact — that the 17-year-old at the center of the “Jena 6” controversy in Lousiana, has finally been released from jail on a $45,000 bond after ten months.

Mychal Bell’s release came a week after 20,000 protesters from across the country, including well-known civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, converged on the tiny Louisiana town of Jena.

USA Today reports that the $45,000 bail was posted by a Lake Charles, Louisiana man who doesn’t know Mychael Bell.

Moments after his release, Bell appeared at a news conference in front of the courthouse, flanked by his parents, attorneys, Shapton, Martin Luther King III and supporters.

Here’s what I don’t understand:  why did it take a complete stranger from Lake Charles, at this late date, to post Bell’s bail?  Where were Jackson and Sharpton’s checkbooks?  If you’re going to lead protests about what you describe as a blatant injustice, why do you allow that injustice to continue by letting Bell sit in jail while you do television appearances?  Isn’t that, in the most generous terms, allowing a bad situation to continue?

Back in January, Joe Biden was caught on tape referring to Barack Obama as a “clean” candidate, raising the eyebrows of those who felt he was being racist. Obama said he understood what Biden was trying to say, and because he knows Biden personally, didn’t assume that the intent was racism.

Rev. Jesse Jackson said pretty much the same thing about Biden, adding that he did call Biden just to make sure.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it as off-color, but it is certainly highly suggestive,” Jackson said in an interview with CNN.

On Tuesday, according to The State newspaper in Columbia, Jackson’s latest comment about Barack Obama was far beyond “highly suggestive.” The paper reports that Jackson accused Obama of “acting like he’s white” about the Jena 6 story.

Surely you know by now to what the Jena 6 refers, unless you’ve been so busy circulating those chain emails asking why “the media” isn’t covering the story that you’ve actually missed the coverage. Apparently, that’s happening a good bit. So if you’re of that opinion, I might suggest that you start visiting the websites of media outlets like ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN and Fox News to read up on the story that some people still seem to think no one is touching.

Essentially, in case you still don’t understand what has happened so far, the story comes to us from the small town of Jena, Louisiana, a predominantly white community of about 3,000. Back on August 31, 2006, a few black students sat under a large tree that happens to be a spot where white students typically congregate. The day after this event, which shouldn’t have mattered to anyone, several small nooses were found hung in the tree, an obvious reference to lynchings, and presumably a threat to make it clear to any “bold” black students who might be eyeing a spot under that “whites only” tree.

No, in case you were wondering, we haven’t entered some kind of time warp; it’s still 2007.

The three white students who were found to be responsible for the placement of the nooses were recommended for expulsion from school, but the school board deemed in-school suspension a reasonable punishment.

On September 4, 2006, a white student was allegedly beaten unconscious by six black students. The white student was treated and released from the hospital, and the black students were arrested and five of the six faced attempted murder charges, leading many to suggest that their potential punishment didn’t fit the crime and was a far cry from the minor punishment the white students who had hung the nooses received.

More details about the case can be found here.

Regardless of how you feel about the case, it appears that in Jackson’s world, there really are two kinds of people: everything always is black or white. Never black and white. If you’re white, you can find nothing to be concerned about in Jena. If you’re black, you can only find things to be concerned about. And never shall common ground occur.

The only thing more ridiculous about his remarks is the news that Obama’s response to Jena — the very response that Jackson so clearly disapproves of — seems to have been the product of great discussion and counseling, and some of that came from Jackson’s own son, Jesse Jackson, Jr.! Maybe Jackson, Sr., should have talked one-on-one with Obama before trying to smear him (and unknowingly, Jackson’s own son) to a reporter.

If he could place a call to Biden, after all, it seems reasonable that he could have placed a call to Obama.