Conservative Groups Accuse Dan Savage Of
‘Bullying’ After He Highlights Their Hypocrisy

Dan Savage

Christian conservative groups are condemning Dan Savage — the founder of the anti-bullying It Gets Better project — for “bullying” religious students who walked out of a recent lecture in which the popular sex columnist pointed out “the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible and insisting that we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.”

Savage made the remarks at the National High School Journalism Conference, causing a group of students to walk out as he began discussing the moral problems contained within the religious document:

SAVAGE: We can learn to ignore the bullshit about gay people in the Bible the same way have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish about slavery, about dinner about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waived Bibles over their heads during the civil war and justified it…We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong. …If the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong, slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent.

“You can tell the Bible guys in the hall, they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible,” Savage said before moving on to his next topic, “It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-ass some people react when you push back.” Watch it:

Savage has since apologized for describing his detractors as “pansy-ass.” “I wasn’t calling the handful of students who left pansies (2800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walk-out itself,” he said. “But that’s a distinction without a difference?kinda like when religious conservatives tell their gay friends that they ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’… Likewise, my use of ‘pansy-assed’ was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it.”

Ironically, this story about Savage’s comments broke on the same day that Joel Osteen — the leader of the nation’s largest Christian Church — told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he believes homosexuality is a “sin” because “my faith is based on what I believe the scripture says and that?s the way I read the scripture.?

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/04/30/473365/savage-bullying-pansy/

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Arianna Huffington Defends Mitt Romney’s
Attacks On Obama Campaign’s Bin Laden Ad

In 2007, Mitt Romney injected himself into the Democratic primary campaign and criticized Barack Obama for vowing to go after “high-value intelligence targets” in Pakistan with or without permission. Romney said “I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours.” Here was the August 4, 2007 headline from Reuters:

In April 2007, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” Last May, President Obama ordered the raid that killed bin Laden and last week, the Obama campaign produced a video highlighting the president’s decision, while noting Romney’s 2007 comments.

The Romney campaign attacked the ad, claiming it was trying to “divide” the country.” And this morning on CBS’s The Early Show, the Romney campaign got an unexpected supporter, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington:

HUFFINGTON: I agree completely — I agree with the Romney campaign. I think that using the Osama bin Laden assassination killing the great news that we had a year ago in order to say basically that Obama did it and Romney might not have done it which is the message. … I don’t think there should be an ad about that. … [T]o turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do. It’s the same thing that Hillary Clinton did with the 3 a.m. call. You know, you are not ready to be commander-in-chief. [...]

HOST: In a campaign aren’t you supposed to tout the accomplishments of what you’ve done?

HUFFINGTON: But this is not just what this ad did, does. What the ad does is questions, if we’re talking about the same ad. … It quotes a snippet from Romney in ’07 and uses that to imply that Romney would not have been decisive. There’s no way to know whether Romney would have been as decisive. And to actually speculate that he wouldn’t be is to me not the way to run campaigns on either side.

Watch the clip:

Huffington doesn?t seem to think it?s fair to speculate what Romney would have done as president based on what Romney said he would (or in this case wouldn?t) do. But the ad is stating two basic facts. One, that Obama ordered the raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader and two, that Romney said in 2007 that he wouldn?t have done the same. So is it really ?despicable? to wonder whether a President Romney would have ordered the raid on bin Laden given that he said he wouldn’t do it while campaigning for president?

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/04/30/473596/arianna-huffington-defends-mi
tt-romney/

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Obama Jokes About GOP’s All-Male
Contraception Hearing

President Obama poked fun at the GOP’s all-male hearing on birth control at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday, joking, “Jimmy [Kimmel] got his start years ago on the Man Show. In Washington, that’s what we call a Congressional hearing on contraception.” Watch it:

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/30/473528/contraception-hearing/

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A Conversation With Novelist Saladin Ahmed About
Muslim Fantasy, Transcending Tropes and Writing Women

Saladin Ahmed wrote my all-time favorite essay about race and Game of Thrones, so I was terrifically excited to read Throne of the Crescent Moon, his first novel. The first installment in a series, the book follows Dr. Adoulla Makhslood, a hunter of monsters called ghuls who do terrible violence for the men who create them. Raseed bas Raseed, his dervish apprentice, struggles with his religious devotion even as he admires some aspects of the more profane Adoulla’s life and work. The world in which they do their work isn’t ours, nor is the religion that shapes their lives Islam, at least not precisely. But Throne of the Crescent Moon is a riff on and a response to everything from our contemporary conversations about Islam to the tropes of the Western fantasy canon. Ahmed and I talked about everything from his mythological influences to the way he thinks about writing women. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

When you started thinking about the novel, I?d be curious what kind of research you did into the mythology? I feel like Western readers are familiar with non-Western myths like djinns as they?ve been shoehorned into the edges of fairy tales, but they?re not often at the center of the frame.

In some ways, it?s two separate questions. What the research was going in was a hodge-podge. Growing up in Arab immigrant communities, my grandmother would, in halting Arabic, try to tell me stories. But [I also read] also translations of the Koran and stuff like that. Some of it was from my heritage. And some of it is integrating bits of, dare I say, Orientalist use of quote unquote Eastern mythologies…It?s very Arab-American novel in the mix of mythology that?s in there. And that made it easier to connect with a Western audience because there are a whole swath of things in there that nerds who read a lot of Western fantasy recognize.

The monster stuff, a lot of it?s my own stuff. The ghuls, which are the main creatures in there, they?re really just using the name. In actual Arab mythology, ghuls are sentient, and they?re dimwitted but cunning. They?re cannibals. I?ve had a lot of people in there use the zombie metaphor for them. They are these kinds of mindless hordes of creatures, but they?re not raised from the dead in the same way. They?re more like golems than anything else. There is probably some intra-Semitic mythology going on there…There?s definitely a take on the djenn in the later books…I?m interested in the theology issues that the Koran has with the djenn.

Similarly, a lot of fantasy relies on readers having some cursory knowledge of European history and geography, like George R.R. Martin?s use of the War of the Roses as an analogue for the concepts in Game of Thrones. What kind of knowledge did you assume on the part of your readers?

It?s a funny thing becuase so many aspects of this book, and discussing this book are counterpoints to European fantasy this and European fantasy that. Most people don?t actually know that much about European history, and most European geography. [In Western fantasy novels] where?s people?s terror of salvation, for instance? That seems like it would be a pretty big thing. I’m pretty much assuming nothing [about what people know]. In some ways, that?s freeing. This is very intentionally not historical fantasy per se, because it felt extremely constraining in ways I didn?t want to be constrained. The kind of straight-up analogues will start to come in more in later books. There?s a central Crusades analogue that will come up in books two and three. And the [series' version of the] standard trope of a dark army that?s on the rise where there will be the final clash will be the Crusader analogue. But hopefully I?m not just flipping the sides. In the Muslim world, [the story of the Crusades is that] there?s these savages that came. That?s not entirely accurate either. It?s proving thorny to write.

Dervishes are, of course, a real thing rather than a fantasy or cultural creation, but it?s not quite clear in the book whether your characters are Muslim or not, or whether they follow an analogous but not identical faith. How much did you want the novel to be directly tied to and function as a reflection on contemporary understandings of Islam?

That?s been probably one of the most interesting things that?s kind of been raised and discussed about this book. Some people reading the book feel like they?re mentioning God every couple of pages, it?s getting annoying. It?s a secular reading that wants an anachronistically secular reading of pre-industrial fantasy world. And there are some people who are reading it who say ‘I expected it to be more Islamic.’ It?s a secondary world. It?s a made-up world. It?s not Islam. It?s not the Middle East. It?s not Earth. It?s a made-up world in the way that Robert Jordan or George R.R. Martin, that most people writing today are writing in made-up worlds. It might look like historical periods in our own Earth, but they?re made up. And that?s very intentional. And I didn?t want to wrie a book that?s about Islam. I?m choosing to write a religion that looks like a religion that gets maligned a lot in the culture the book is being read in. At the end of the day, this is an adventure fantasy novel that can?t bear the weight of truly depicting Islam in such a problematic world on its little shoulders.

But I feel like we?re in the midst of a nice boom in fantasy set in the Muslim world, whether it?s Matt Ruff?s alternate history novel The Mirage, or G. Willow Wilson?s hackers-and-djinn novel Alif the Unseen coming out this summer. Do you feel like your work, and that boom, is responding to the broader cultural conversation into which that work is published?

I?m not that writer who will say I?m a mystery writer, or I?m a horror writer, but I happen to be black, or I happen to be Puerto Rican, or I happen to be a woman. I?m not that person. Being Arab and being a Muslim is part of my consciousness on a daily basis. You?re telling your story in a world where stories are always being told. There are small attempts in this flimsy form of an adventure fantasy [to say something different.]…

Not to say that there?s not all sorts of oppression that?s specific to Muslim women, but there are fears and hatreds that are very specific to Muslim men in our culture. And on the other side, there are these stories about genre heroes, and what men should be. And a lot of my fiction straddles that line. I?ve got a story where there?s a Muslim gunslinger. This book is about a badass Paladin with a sword, to use my Dungeons and Dragons history here. Part of the sadly radical gesture, that phrase about feminism being the radical notion that women are people, a lot of my work is about the fact that Muslims and Arabs and people who look Arabic are heroes.

I really loved your essay on race and Game of Thrones, a franchise I love but that just utterly falls down on this issue. Do you think there?s a way to make the Western fantasy tradition more diverse? Or is it just a matter of getting to a point where Westernized fantasy isn?t the default position when we talk about the genre? I?m often finding myself super-bored by the standard complement of knights and witches.

I have dear, dear friends, Elizabeth Bear who has just put out a novel called Range of Ghosts, Howard Andrew Jones has written Arabian fanstasy called The Desert of Souls. There are white writers writing diverse settings, and I think we need more of that. I also think we need more writers of color in this field. I?m one of a few guys of color and not many more people of color writing fantasy novels and getting them out to national markets. That?s kind of a problem…And even in the meat and potatoes fantasy, I?d like to see more range of skin tones…First, the Middle Ages was much more diverse than people understand. Second of all, these stories aren?t set in actual historical fantasies. There?s a whole tradition of fantasy that?s really not interested in historical details. But even to people to whom that is important, there are things they ignore. The physics of dragons, it just can?t happen. But somehow, that exception can be made, but some brown people here, that?s alarming…If you can have a setting where half your characters don?t have scroffula and aren?t worried about eternal salvation, you can make that exception.

Speaking of writing experiences that aren’t yours, you’ve spoken publicly about some of the challenges you’ve faced in writing women.

I?ve been thinking about it a lot very recently because I?ve gotten a couple of blistering reviews about the gender depictions. There?s some of it that I internalize and say yeah, that?s probably true. And there?s some of it where I say they don?t really understand. There?s that danger of mansplaining here. There are a whole bunch of cultural angles for me. When you start telling stories, the very specific stories about Arab and Muslim women, and about their relationships with Arab and Muslim men..There?s all sorts of constitutive mysoginy in Arab culture, as there is in American culture. But the fetishization of that story is something I am very, very reluctant to add to.

It?s why I?m practicing what I preach in creating warrior women and badass grandma alchemists. I punted to a degree in that the book spends more time thinking out loud about class and religion than it is about gender…I found that I had a fine line to walk in terms of depicting their fears in a preindustrial society they?d face that men don?t face. And I probably erred on the side of Xena. I like liking my characters, I like enjoying reading the book. I like going with the option that?s not purely grim.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/04/30/473050/a-conversation-with-novelist-sa
ladin-ahmed-about-muslim-fantasy-transcending-tropes-and-writing-women/

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Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: May Day

By @KYYellowDog

More than the first Monday in October, the first of May is the traditional day for working people to mark who we are and why we fight.  Celebrate May Day tomorrow.

Peter Rothberg at The Nation has his list of Top Ten May Day songs.


Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/5W4jp0_wbrY/songs
-to-fight-the-plutocracy-by-may-day

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Former Republican Party chairman furious over
reminders that Mitt Romney was wrong about bin Laden

The Obama campaign video that has Republicans so madLike John McCain last week, former Bush aide and current Romney adviser Ed Gillespie is hopping mad that the Obama campaign dared to remind voters that the president was right and Mitt Romney was wrong about Osama bin Laden:

Appearing on NBC?s ?Meet the Press,? Gillespie was asked for his reaction to a video clip in which Vice President Joe Biden last week told a campaign audience ?Thanks to President Obama, bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. You have to ask yourself: If Gov. Romney had been president, could you have used the same slogan in reverse??

Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, responded: ?This is one of the reasons President Obama has become one of the most divisive presidents in American history. He took something that was a unifying event for all Americans ? an event that Gov. Romney congratulated him and the military and the intelligence analysts in our government for completing the mission in terms of killing Osama bin Laden ? and he?s managed to turn it into a divisive partisan political attack.?

There's really nothing in the world that's easier than rebutting this argument. Republicans milked the horror of 9/11 for everything it was worth, not just to win at the ballot box, but also to justify an entirely unrelated war. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is claiming credit for having brought the guy behind the 9/11 attacks to justice?and pointing to the entirely accurate fact that Mitt Romney severely disagreed with the strategy that brought it about. And unlike Republicans, the Obama campaign isn't turning this into an issue of patriotism, which actually does divide the country: they've raised this as a matter of policy.

But maybe the best response to the howls of outrage from Republicans about "politicizing 9/11" comes from Mitt Romney himself:

Rudy Giuliani will appear at an event with Mitt Romney on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the assault on Osama bin Laden, a campaign aide confirmed to CNN.

Yeah, Mitt Romney is so desperately against politicizing 9/11 ... that he's going to mark the anniversary of bin Laden's death by campaigning alongside Rudy 911iani.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/a7N9PUkHPcE/-Former-Republican-Par
ty-chairman-furious-over-reminders-that-Mitt-Romney-was-wrong-about-bin-Laden

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NYT Blasts NCs Amendment One: Bigotry on the
Ballot

In its editorial, the New York Times places the fight to defeat the discriminatory Amendment One in the national spotlight it deserves. At its core, this is about the professional forces of craven bigotry so blinded by their hatred of gay and lesbian[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/_i_volmPEdw/

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NYT Blasts NCs Amendment One: Bigotry on the
Ballot

In its editorial, the New York Times places the fight to defeat the discriminatory Amendment One in the national spotlight it deserves. At its core, this is about the professional forces of craven bigotry so blinded by their hatred of gay and lesbian[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/_i_volmPEdw/

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Austerity in the US!

The defining feature of Republican economic policy for the short-term is immediate austerity?big spending cuts to social programs, coupled with tax increases on lower-income people, and a reduction in the size of the federal workforce. Conservatives claim that this will lead to immediate job growth and a more robust recovery.

The problem, of course, is that all available evidence points to the opposite. In Europe, austerity has renewed the economic crisis?the United Kingdom, for example, is growing at a rate slower than it saw during the Great Depression. At home, austerity at the state and local level?by way of balanced budget requirements?has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and a significantly weaker economy. Writing for the Washington Post, Zachary A. Goldfarb gives the details:

Since the beginning of his term, state and local governments have shed 611,000 employees ? including 196,000 educators ? according to government statistics. Unlike the recovery in private-sector employment that Obama and his reelection campaign often cite ? with businesses adding 4 million jobs since hiring hit its low point in 2010 ? the jobs crisis at the state and local level has continued throughout his term. [?]

?There?s a big body of research showing that a lot of the things that state and local governments spend their money on have long-term effects on the economy and society as a whole,? said Nicholas Johnson, vice president for state fiscal policy at CBPP. ?Cutting school funding now can hurt the education of a future workforce.?

As Goldfarb describes, the administration knew that state fiscal relief was one of the best measures to keep the economy on track for growth, but the categorical obstruction of Republicans in Congress?and the skepticism of conservative Democrats?led them to go in other, more politically feasible directions.

The least you can say is that this was disasterous; if states and localities had the funds to keep all, or most, of the jobs they?ve shed over the last three years, the economy would be in much better shape, and the recovery would be on a stronger path. But this is one of those areas where the administration didn?t have much control; given the extent to which Republicans have rejected friendly compromises over the last year, there was no chance that they would accept tens of billions in new relief for states.

Mass layoffs for teachers, police officers, and other public servants?this is the inevitable consequence of GOP budget cutting, should Mitt Romney win the election. Someone should ask the former Massachusetts governor how he intends to ?fix the economy? with his coked-out version of European austerity.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/austerity-us

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Marco Rubio has a dream ... that President Obama
is the one blocking immigration reform

Marco Rubio endorsed the guy who said Arizona was a model for immigration policyAs if Marco Rubio's half-baked concept of a Republican DREAM Act weren't enough of a joke in its own right, on Thursday he tried to blame President Obama for the fact that House Republicans have already killed it even before its arrival. The White House, Rubio said, is "actively trying to torpedo my efforts" to build Republican support for an initiative on immigration.

But as the White House reminded Rubio today, Republicans are the ones blocking progress on immigration?and they couldn't be opposed to Rubio's proposal because he hasn't actually offered any details to oppose.

?The notion that somehow the president or Democrats would be the roadblock to any progress on immigration is ridiculous,? a White House official told TPM. ?If this proposal fails, the reason will be the Republicans.?

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied Rubio?s charge that the White House has been ?actively trying to torpedo my efforts? on a compromise DREAM Act, as Roll Call reported. The aide said the White House would need to see an actual proposal before weighing in.

?We can?t speculate on what may or may not be in the proposal. There is no proposal,? the official said. ?So there?s nothing that we can be trying to torpedo.

Indeed, notes TPM's Sahil Kapur, the White House is open to legislation that would grant legal status to immigrants while work continues on compressive immigration reform. But the chance of Republicans even agreeing to that? Nil, with or without Rubio. Just ask John Boehner.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/uqCagWCmsH8/-Marco-Rubio-has-a-dre
am-that-President-Obama-is-the-one-blocking-immigration-reform

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