Sunday, November 07, 2004

I’m not Pollyanna, but…

The recent election didn't turn out altogether as I'd hoped it would and so I'm left pondering, as I heard Roy Blount put it today, how exactly I fit in this new, post-11/2 world. I'm dismayed and a little angry at the prospect of another four years of a George W. Bush presidency but, except for Clinton, no candidate I've supported ever won, so the feeling is familiar if not entirely comfortable.

As ever, I'm attempting to retain the sense of humor that has seen me through nearly 36 years so far. In that spirit last week, I was often quoting my favorite political rhyme:

The election is over, so
let peace come to pass.
I'll hug your elephant
If you'll kiss my ass.

So. Moving on, I have a few requests.

Could we please all stop referring to "red states" and "blue states"? That us versus them mentality is deceptively reductive and the fact is, most of the states are, in fact, as purple as the prose the pundits have reeled out post-election in vain attempts to describe what the hell is going on. Red versus blue is just the latest rhetorical trick to keep us from thinking of our fellow citizens as people, to wring nuance out of the political process and force us to view every issue in stark relief.

"We're more alike than different" is a chestnut that's easy to trot out in times like these, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. Americans are a lot of different colors, but none of them is bright red or blue or purple. The more time we spend reducing the political spectrum, the less we have to devote to finding common cause or, at least, detente. Red and blue thinking frees us to stop listening to each other altogether and that's one freedom we could stand to give up.

I'm a white guy with a lavender lifestyle in a blue city in a red state and it's put me in a brown study.

A lot of people, some of them close friends, have made noises about moving: to other states, to Canada, to the grand duchy of Luxembourg. I'm staying put. It's not that Canadian men aren't attractive — I'm looking at you, Jean-Paul — or that the thought of starting over in a new place is frightening. It's that I was raised to believe that you don't run away from a fight, especially a fight you can win.

There's another election just around the corner and Missouri is going to need all the help it can get.

If you must move, at least go somewhere where you can do some good. My friends are all talking about heading to New York or San Francisco or Portland or Chicago. I'm more inclined to think we should be sticking around and convincing more folks to move here. And to Oklahoma. And Utah. And Montana. And Texas.

Unless you're only interested in your own comfort (and why do otherwise sane individuals vote for tax breaks and increased military spending anyway?), why move to a place where the hard work has already been done? Have fun dishing with the boys in Chelsea or planning a day trip to Napa. We'll miss you, sure, but meanwhile, the Show-Me State is down two good voters and we'll have to work ten-fold as hard to fill your shoes here.

So consider this an invitation: St. Louis (the aforementioned blue city) is a pretty decent place to live, all things considered. Gay folks can't get married here, okay, sure, but we've got a darned nice anti-discrimination ordinance in the city and you can't beat the cost of living. Nice looking folks here, too, and a lot of them are whip-smart. We're still working through a lot of our issues and, candidly, we're still one of the most segregated cities in America. But we're getting better and we could use your help.

Anyway, I won't be packing my grip and heading for the Castro. Where things are the worst, there is the greatest possibility for change. And I get off on change.

Finally, let's stop pitching around the words "evil" and "stupid" all willy-nilly, shall we? There are very, very few truly evil people in the world, and a lot of those aren't even Democrats or Republicans. Just because someone belongs to a different group than you doesn't automatically make them evil, and most of the folks who voted for George W. Bush aren't stupid.

Heck, even George W. Bush isn't stupid, really. Misguided, yes, I'd say so. Not particularly thoughtful or considerate or deliberate? I'd say that too. And there are some issues and pronounciations that he isn't well-informed about. But he's not stupid or evil. He's just the wrong guy to lead the country right now.

If we keep thinking of everyone who doesn't agree with us as stupid, we give ourselves a pass to dismiss them as unworthy of even attempting to engage in debate. We write them off and continue preaching to a smaller and smaller choir. They're not stupid. They just haven't learned yet and, if we think we know better, we have an obligation to respectfully teach.

The next two years, four years, decade or so, won't be easy or even particularly pretty, but we'll get through them. We'll get through them together, I hope, and we'll do it by seeing each other not as colors or campaign planks but as people.

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Franco, American-style

We might as well face it. We're in for an unparalleled display of faulty short-term memory, as the nation's newscasters and pundits fall over themselves to give slobbering blowjobs to a corpse.

For the next week, at least, CNN and every network news program is going to sound like an inferior rerun of a Saturday Night Live skit from the mid-70s.

"This breaking news just in: Former President of the United States Ronald Reagan is still dead."

If I were the producers of the satiric news program The Daily Show, I'd get Chevy Chase and Garrett Morris booked as soon as possible.

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

Dear Mr. President

Dear President Bush,

As a citizen, I am extremely concerned about what I perceive to be a lack of leadership and conviction on your part in dealing with the growing threat to the institution of marriage in the United States. It is incumbent on you, as our avatar of morality and freedom, essential principles upon which this republic was founded, to take swift and decisive action in this matter.

But as renegade mayors and county officials, bureaucrats and minor functionaries in cities such as San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; and some little backwater burg in New York state take it upon themselves to radically redefine marriage, you're just not doing as much as you could to address the crisis.

What have you done, Mr. President? You made a speech and said you would support an amendment to the Constitution, definitively describing marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. That's it.

Hey, it's the right idea, as far as it goes, but think about it. Do you have any idea how long it'll take to pass a Constitutional amendment? A long time! First you have to get big chunks of the Senate and House of Representatives to vote for it. That could take weeks. And then you've got to get a bunch of the states -- thirty-some, I think, but you've got a staff to look that up for you -- to approve it too. It could be well into September or October before that's all wrapped up.

But meanwhile, those little self-righteous peckerwoods like Gavin Newsom and Diane Linn are breaking the law right now, flouting the Defense of Marriage Act and holy scripture, permitting hundreds of gay and Lesbian couples to marry. And they're going to keep doing it! All the while, you dither and prattle on about a Constitutional amendment to stop them.

Months, Mr. President! You're looking at months before you can ram through an amendment and meanwhile, the institution of marriage is going to take one whale of a beating as more and more deviants get hitched. Divorce rates are already skyrocketing. Just a few hundred more queer marriages and who knows what sort of chaos could follow?! You've got to do something now.

You've got to send federal troops to California, Oregon, New York and anywhere else this insanity is going on and put a stop to it.

I'm serious. Marriage is in danger. The law is not being upheld. You must act with force and dispatch. And you can do it, too, if you just grow a pair and pick up the phone.

President Kennedy did it in 1963. He federalized the National Guard in Alabama to make damn sure the University there would let black folks attend classes. They weren't going to do it, you know, in clear violation of an order to desegregate. What they were doing was patently illegal and Kennedy sent those troops to uphold the law.

OK, sorry, that's probably a bad example. I know a bit about electoral politics and I'm nothing if not pragmatic. I guess you really can't be seen to be following the example of a beloved liberal icon like Kennedy, even in the cause of ensuring justice and the rule of law. And I know you aren't fond of working with the National Guard.

Look at President Eisenhower, then. He dispatched 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 to enforce desegregation at Central High School there, and he was a Republican. Heck, that's probably where President Kennedy got the idea in the first place.

So the idea of using the military to enforce the law, particularly in times of national strife, is a solid one. It's a historically proven one. It's even a Republican one. You have to do this, Mr. President. My faith in your leadership, my pride in my country and, most urgently, my decision about whether I can support you in the coming election, depend on it.

If I don't see tanks rolling up Market Street and bayonet-bearing boys in uniform breaking up gay marriages by, oh let's say Friday, I may be forced to conclude that you're not serious about defending what you've called a sacred institution. I may even infer that you're merely using the confusion and hysteria surrounding this issue to gain political ground.

That would disappoint me deeply, Mr. President. You took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the uphold the laws of this great nation. If those laws are just, as you believe, and if marriage as we know it teeters on the brink of oblivion, as you say, you must act. If you're going to have a culture war, make it a war.

Send in the Marines. I can't wait to see the pictures.

Yours truly,
Brad L. Graham
American

Monday, September 17, 2001

Observed

A few observations and comments:

• I am an American and, as such, bound by honor to support my President in times of crisis. On matters of almost every type of policy, I disagree to some extent with George W. Bush. I fervently hope, however, that he finds wise counsel and strength from his peers and the citizenry. Smaller tragedies have made greater leaders of lesser men. It can happen again. One thing I know certainly: I wouldn't want his job.
  
• I support the reinstatement of the draft in an extremely limited form. Specifically, I think the President should draft Aaron Sorkin as his speechwriter, and should petition the Congress for sufficient funding to keep Aaron supplied with 'shrooms or whatever pharmaceuticals he needs to craft the inspirational rhetoric he gives the fictional President on The West Wing every Wednesday.
  
• Recently, the President and several government spokespeople have asked the nation to prepare for a fight against terrorism that may last "several years." I keep expecting a reporter to ask Mr. Bush just how many years, exactly, he's thinking it will take. "Oh, I'd say about eight," I imagine Bush replying. "Maybe twelve, if Dick's ticker holds out."

Monday, January 29, 2001

Meeting out a punishment

The Giant Queen has just come from a meeting of a local gay political group and, even before he places his order for a "double anything", his frustration is evident. If he were a cartoon character -- and of all of my acquaintances, he is perhaps the nearest to being so -- there would be little exclamation points emanating from his skull to indicate stress.

"How did the meeting go?" I ask.

His drink is gone in two gulps and another is ordered before he turns to me. "I don't care what the fucking religious zealots say," he says. "AIDS is not a punishment from God. If God really wanted to kill gay men, he would put us all in a room with three lesbians and not permit us to leave until we reached 'consensus'".

Thursday, January 18, 2001

Words matter

So I've got to think that a lot of the problem folks in California are having with the electricity crunch is just a matter of perception, an exercise in public relations spin. Here's what you do: Put the circuit queens in charge of the grid. Stop calling them "rolling" blackouts. They should be called "rockin' blackouts" at least, or "impromptu Lights-Out parties." Somebody dig up Donna Summer and get her to record a new 17-minute dance mix of "Dim All the Lights" and use it as a PSA. Point out that darkness and diffuse lighting significantly improves almost everyone's appearance, based on a years of empirical research in shadowy gay bars. Switch off, boys! It's a turn-on!

Thursday, December 07, 2000

Words matter

Hollywood makes me proud to be an American. More and more, Washington DC doesn't.

It used to be that the glittering majesty and ceremony of the city on a hill enticed me. I would visit our nation's capital city at least once or twice each year, usually to protest some thing or the other, but also to soak up the energetic atmosphere of the seat of democracy. I was inspired by the Jefferson memorial. I was moved by the sprawling fields of stone at Arlington Cemetary. I was fascinated by every last detail on view in the Smithsonian museums. I distinctly recall standing on a street corner as a high school junior in the heart of the District, hundreds upon hundreds of people passing by with each signal change, and wondering at the throbbing pace of the place where our laws were made and meted out.

Somewhere along the way, though, probably very shortly after Bill Clinton stopped running for president and became president, the city and what it stood for lost its lustre. It stopped speaking to me. Literally.

All of this occurred to me last week while I was watching an episode of The West Wing, a NBC television program about the dramatic doings in a fictional White House. I came late to this show, didn't watch a single episode in its first season, and have only now made it a weekly habit. That's surprising, really, since other fictional representations of the Presidency and the White House are staples on my video shelf: Dave, Air Force One, The American President.

It's a great show -- not particularly soaring drama, but the words! The passion behind the true beliefs and the rhetoric of the faux-prez portrayed by Martin Sheen and his staff, the cadence of their compassion and conviction sorted out in speeches the like of which most of the American people have not heard in this generation outside the realm of fiction.

I am highly susceptible to a persuasive speech, a well-made point and well-wrought turn of phrase. Alone among contemporary orators, I would follow Mario Cuomo and Ann Richards anywhere and do anything they asked of me on the strength of their communications skills alone, their ability to touch a place of passion, pique and promise in me. Mario could advocate baby-eating, Ann could step up and say we should all wear purple smocks with yellow spots and I would do it unquestioningly, because they could make it sound so damned appealing a prospect.

George Bush can't do that. Neither can Al Gore. Aaron Sorkin can.

Sorkin 2004? I am so there.

Thursday, November 09, 2000

Our emerging democracy

OK, I'm really just thinking out loud here, fascinated as I am with the on-going news coverage of the still-pending presidential election. They're recounting the votes in Florida, the linchpin state in the electoral morass that will decide who won and who didn't win, so all of the Democrats and the Republicans are watching that process pretty closely. The GOP sent former Secretary of State James Baker down south to watch Hollerith cards; the Dems chose another former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, to be their watchdog. I caught a few minutes of President Carter on C-SPAN, urging the nation to be calm and let the process play out and, quelle surprise, the Rev. Jesse Jackson is decrying the disenfranchisement of West Palm Beach citizens into any microphone that gets within 20 paces.

So it occurred to me: These are all the same folks we send into other countries to monitor their elections, presuming that newcomers to the democracy game might not be playing it on the up and up. We've got a lot of smug superiority going on here in America -- and, it must be said, over 200 years of hard-gained experience -- and we figure we can teach the world a thing or two about carrying on a fair election.

Wouldn't it be interesting and a bit ironic if the world decided to return the compliment? After all, our neighbors to the north, south, east and west have almost as much invested in the outcome of our elections as we American citizens do. How would we react if the government of, say, Yugoslavia decided to send over some "observers" and parked 'em down in Dade County, just to make sure our math is right? Do you suppose President Clinton would indignantly refuse if the Canadian prime minister suggested a neutral third-party might be better suited to police the polls now that things are getting sketchy?

I'm certainly not suggesting that we're on the verge of revolution or even constitutional crisis, and I'm pretty damned sure it will take more than a few missing ballots before the military revolts and tanks surround Blair House demanding the immediate egress of Al and Tipper. Still, we exert a lot of time, money and manpower making sure that emerging democracies are staying within the lines. If I were the leader of one of those countries whose ballot boxes we'd been backing, I'd certainly give some thought to sending an envoy or two to check in on the most powerful nation on Earth. Wouldn't you?

Besides, when you think about the whole of human history and the rise of democracy among nations in particular, we upstart Americans are still "emerging" too.

Wednesday, November 08, 2000

What the hell was that?!

Watching the election returns last night was like the last episode of Survivor, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the Academy Awards (wherein the speculation about the Electoral College replaced dish about Cher's outfit) combined. Fortunately, I chose to view the televised election coverage while getting hammered with a few dozen homosexuals at a local watering hole.

(Watching television in a gay bar makes just about any program vastly more entertaining. Except Veronica's Closet. Nothing could help that godforesaken piece of crap.)