When you apply for a license to practice homosexuality, you are asked to tick a box stating whether or not you are a fan of Dolly Parton. My license is usually renewed on highly conditional and shaky status, but I always pass the Dolly test with flying colors.
However, I think she’s overreacting just a bit with her recent broadside against Howard Stern.
To recap: On Howard Stern’s May 6 radio show, he played “excerpts” from Dolly’s audiobook that appear at first blush to be incredibly offensive, as she opines in a racist way about her love of black men’s penises, speculates about Kenny Rogers’ possible NAMBLA predispositions, and how Johnny Carson and Burt Reynolds would double-team young boys during commercial breaks of “The Tonight Show.”
The media always dances around this shit, so I pulled the full clip for you below to make up your own mind.
But as has also been reported, the celebrity audio books are part of a long-running Stern show comedy bit. Stern lackey Richard Christy spends hours with the actual audio and slices and dices it, sometimes even cutting words into individual syllables, and then rearranges them for comedic effect.
Stern and his crew don’t really make much effort to pass these clips off as genuine. (In the clip below, Stern even makes a comment along these lines.) And with other audiobook bits, they have even more blatantly discussed how the clips are not real, and the editing process involved.
But more than that, no rational human being could listen to the choppy, stilted soundbites and think that those words were actually spoken by the authors in that order.
William Shatner was on the Stern show this week, and they played for him some doctored clips from Shatner’s own audiobook, equally outrageous and offensive. Shatner got the joke, and even played along a bit.
I tend to judge people by whether they “get” the humor of at least two entities: Monty Python and Howard Stern. I love Dolly, but I wish she “got it” too.
BEWARE: The audio clips are NSFW just about everywhere. And if you’re one of those who don’t “get” Howard’s humor, you’ll probably be offended too.
Does anyone know who the one or two most credible and reputable groups are that will be opposing a constitutional amendment to overturn what California’s supreme court did today, should that proposal be deemed ballot-worthy? Will there indeed be any?
Who are the groups with demonstrable track records of success, the ones who spend their money wisely, and who are going to go balls to the wall to defeat the anti-gay wackos in November in California?
I want to give them money, and I want to urge others to do so too. (And if you’re going to say “HRC,” save your breath.) This victory is too important to be turned back.
I agree with Robbie: California did the right thing, and I retract most of my former criticism of Arnold for opposing any attempt to roll back today’s decision. I’m hoping this means that my Massachusetts marriage will now have protection in the nation’s biggest state, where I have family and friends.
I think it’s also worth pointing out that this happened in a Supreme Court where six of the seven justices are Republicans. Damn those people and politicians like Schwarzenegger for complicating the tired storyline of the gay left! (And I say this even though I recently changed my voter registration from “Republican” to “independent.”)
To mix two similar metaphors, today’s decision is a sea change, and the tide has turned in this debate. As California goes (such as tax revolts) so goes the nation, quite often. Same-sex marriage will soon be a non-issue.
The long-awaited ruling can be found here.
While I’ve always been somewhat reticent about using the courts to advance social legislation (as they really only served to strengthen the anti-gay amendment process and wreaked political havoc), California has always presented a unique case. The proposition banning it never necessarily said what anti-marriage forces claimed it said, and the legislature and executive branch have long been favorable to using democratic means to advance marriage. So, hooray for California.
Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin.
So I was bouncing around downtown this morning, like I do, all yuppified with Sketchers and Starbucks, when two homeless looking gentlemen accosted me outside a liquor store.
“Hey man, we ain’t gonna lie. We got the shakes. You got any change?” I had to admire their honesty. They wanted booze, and by god, who am I to deny anyone a healthy dose of alcoholic pleasure?
Except I never have change. Does anyone? In a debited, credited, sanitized electronic world, there is almost no reason to carry around cash in any amounts. I would have given them a handful of change, but after digging around in my backpack, I came up with about three cents and a half-used bottle of poppers (we’ll really not discuss why those were there. It’s a long story, and it doesn’t actually involve porn - or my using them).
Which is why I think we need an electronic homeless person card. Stay with me on this. We get a small electronic swipe thingy (thingy - from the Icelandic meaning “sophisticated electronic equipment”) and give them to the homeless at various shelters. Commuting, professional types, if they are so inclined, can purchase little pre-paid cards that, when swiped, credit the homeless person’s thingy with a dollar. At the end of the day, the homeless can go to little stations and have their swipes reimbursed for cash.
I would totally use this. Put ten bucks on a card, and if the mood strikes, swipe the equivalent of the pan-handler atm as I’m walking by.
I’m just saying, in this day and age, it would seem to me much harder for the disdomestically situated to earn their living by haranguing others when said others are working in an increasingly cashless economy. I’m sure some municipality somewhere would actually give this crazy-assed idea a go. Probably San Francisco. If anyone does, I’ll take 5%. Call it a gift.
As much any gay Yankee Catholic can, I try to be fairly patient and tolerant of American southerners. Unlike most gays, I’m not one to heap tired, stereotypical scorn on the rural folk and their, ah, evangelical eccentricities. I have a general fondness and affection for the region and the people, and I genuinely enjoy visiting whenever I’m able.
That being said.
Was there some kind of Banjo and Cousin festival in Chicago over the weekend? I had to clock roughly six hours on the local expressways, and car after car after car with southern plates and a veritable library of religious bumper stickers and symbols insisted on cruising right in front of me without reprieve.
Now, I’m not given to touring through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama with “Hooray for abortion!” or “Sodomy is amazing!” plastered on my vehicle - at least, not without a handgun. Is it too much to ask that evangelical tourists not print, say, the entire Bible on their car?
Some might posit that perhaps all this Christian imagery appearing during my various commutes might just be a sign from God. Maybe so, but I patently refuse to worship any deity who would send messages while changing lanes sixty-four times without signaling, trying to kill me by slowing down for no reason whatsoever, and using the gospels to distract from the vitally important task of driving the car while reading a book and eating Subway.
It’s the Dan Ryan, not the pulpit, and you are not a God-sponsered Nascar driver for Christ, no matter how many Jesus decals you have. If you promise not to paint your car a soothing off-crucifixion, I promise I’ll keep my hedonism in the Great Lakes region. Deal?
Kara’s too obvious. My money’s on Zak.
I stumbled across a fascinating, new Web site today.
Well, I was about 80 percent right with my prognostications, which isn’t a bad percentage for baseball, but I’ll be keeping my day job anyway.
I said Hillary had much more at stake last night than Obama, which she clearly did. I said she needed a knock-out punch, which was admittedly obvious. I said if she didn’t win both Indiana and North Carolina that superdelegates would start to break for Obama, and it sounds like they will. And I predicted a Hillary win in Indiana and an Obama win in North Carolina, each by a “few points.” OK, I was half right about that one.
Hillary’s razor-thin margin in Indiana combined with getting blown out in North Carolina proved me wrong about it being a “wash” and a race that would continue at least until June 3 and possibly until the convention. Granted, it might yet, but Hillary’s victory scenarios are getting beyond ludicrous:
ABC: Stephanopoulos said despite the race going on “this nomination fight is over,” Obama’s lead “can’t be overcome” in elected delegates. Says she’s depending on Oregon, seating full delegations of Michigan, Florida and a “revelation” on the scale of another Rev. Wright controversy to see any sort of comeback.
In case it weren’t already clear, I’ve made my mind up: I’m for McCain. So as much as I would like to see Hillary soldier on and tear her party apart, and to prove right those of us who believe she puts personal power before country or party, the writing will be on the wall in increasingly large fonts in the days ahead.
This has been a year with some of the greatest stunners in modern political history: the precipitous collapse of a Democratic front-runner who would have been forgiven for measuring the White House draperies as early as 2006 or 2007, the rise of an African-American candidate who was sitting in a state legislature barely three years ago, and the miraculous resurrection of a man whom everyone thought time had long since passed by, a man who got the nomination despite the popular belief that only the most hard-line of a conservative would be acceptable to the modern GOP.
I think it will be a humdinger of a general election: Two men with substantial appeal beyond a narrow base, two men who have demonstrated civility to a degree in their campaigns that made them seem almost unelectable, two great and positive campaigners. But we will also have a stark choice: on Iraq, on a host of domestic issues, on a record that is rife for dissection versus a virtual cipher, on “youth versus experience,” on “hope” and “change” versus a known quantity.
For the first time in a long time, I do not dread the prospect of a November in a year divisible by four.
People in the Midwest are made of much stronger stuff than most of us here on the East Coast. They have to be; they have real earthquakes there.
Here in DC, we spend the whole day debating whether it even was an earthquake. (No, I didn’t feel a thing.)