Tears of a clown

As Dennis Miller noted, at this rate, Obama is going to admit he was born in Kenya sometime next week. Did I not tell you in 2008 that his administration was going to be more entertaining than a barrel of monkeys?  And note that as a general rule, history tends to indicate that the conspiracy theorists often err on the side of being insufficiently pessimistic.

UPDATE: You know it’s bad when even the administration enthusiasts at the New York Times are desperately casting about for something positive to talk about, but wind up throwing in the towel: 

 Maybe, while he’s crisis-managing, the president could also figure out a way to show people government working at something other than reorganizing troubled agencies. Maybe he could start off with passing a bill that’s supereasy. I notice that in state legislatures, when times are tough, parties are sometimes able to get together in order to pick a new state thing. You know, state bird, state animal. Some states find this so relaxing they never stop. (New Mexico has an official state guitar, state tie and state aircraft, which, unfortunately, is the hot-air balloon.)

The United States has a few of these items, like a bird and an anthem, but there’s plenty of territory to cover. The president could demand that Congress pick an official national rock.

The cognitive dissonance of Saint Gay

Bret Easton Ellis isn’t overly impressed with the lavender media’s insistence on whitewashing the sexually abnormal In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves:

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody’s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool. Jason Collins is the future. But the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay still seemed to me, as another gay man, like a new kind of victimization. (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.) In another five years hopefully this won’t matter, but for now we’re trapped in the times we live in. The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude, is—lamentably—still in media play.

The Gay Man as Magical Elf has been such a tricky part of gay self-patronization in the media that you would by now expect the chill members of the LGBT community to respond with cool indifference. The Sweet and Sexually Unthreatening and Super-Successful Gay is supposed to be destined to transform The Hets into noble gay-loving protectors—as long as the gay in question isn’t messy or sexual or difficult. The straight and gay sanctimoniousness that says everyone gay needs to be canonized when coming out still makes some of us who are already out feel like we’re on the sidelines. I’m all for coming out on one’s own terms, but heralding it as the most important news story of the week feels to me, as a gay man, well, kind of alienating. We are apart because of what we supposedly represent because of… our… boring… sexuality—oh man, do we have to go through this again? And it’s all about the upbeat press release, the kind of smiling mask assuring us everything is awesome. God help the gay man who comes out and doesn’t want to represent, who doesn’t want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it. Where’s the gay dude who makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly) or express their hopelessness in seeing Modern Family being rewarded for its depiction of gays, a show where a heterosexual plays the most simpering ka-ween on TV and Wins. Emmys. For. It?

I find the Saint Gay thing offensive myself, less because it is a societally damaging attempt to normalize the sexually abnormal, disease-ridden, and not-so-secretly self-loathing, and more because it is an insult to the intelligence of even the intellectually subnormal.

I always find the charge of homophobia from the likes of McRapey to be amusing because I’m far more comfortable around gays than most men are, and not in that fake, perma-smiling, I’m-liberal-so-I-MUST-be-tolerant, politically correct way. I worked at Dayton’s when I was fifteen. I was signed to a gay record label making electronic dance music. I’ve been accustomed to gay men making puppy dog eyes at me as long as I can remember and it doesn’t bother me in the least. Sexual attraction is a compliment and a form of flattery, after all; that’s why women constantly seek it from men towards whom they do not reciprocate it in any way.

Rabbits like McRapey are simply incapable of understanding the difference between the personal and the political, between the micro and the macro. 

It is because I have known many gay men and I know the darker aspects of their psychological profiles and lifestyle that I have such contempt for the Saint Gay propaganda. Being homosexual is hard, not due to “Minority Stress” and other people making it hard, but because reality makes it hard.  Some find it ironic that a number of those who have made It Gets Better videos subsequently killed themselves, but that’s exactly what one would expect.  Gay Pride propaganda has killed far more young homosexuals than the largely mythical gay-bashing ever has; Pierre Tremblay presented a 2000 paper at San Diego State in which he noted: “Empirical data indicates that, to
the age of 16 or 17 years, the lifetime “suicide attempt” incidence for
HOM youth has risen about six-fold, from about 5 to 30 percent from the
1950s to the 1990s.”

Repeatedly beating the young over the head with the idea that something problematic is not only okay, but good, creates a fundamental cognitive dissonance between what they believe they are supposed to believe and what they actually believe.  The Saint Gay approach is nothing more than magical thinking; I’ve exchanged a number of emails with the man I call The Gayfather, the self-proclaimed architect of the Gay is Good theme, and he readily admits that there is nothing empirical, scientific, or even philosophical about his theme.  It’s simply a postulate.  Gay is Good, ergo Gay is Healthy, ergo Gay is Moral, ergo Gay is Normal.

But calling RGB 255,255,255 black doesn’t actually change the color on your screen, no matter how many people you convince to follow your example.  Such propaganda is not impotent, but neither is it capable of reshaping reality.

Coming out as homosexual should not be condemned nor should it be celebrated.  It should be considered more like a diagnosis of diabetes; something that isn’t fatal in its own right, something that may or may not be curable, and something that won’t necessarily prevent the individual from living a reasonably happy, normal life if managed properly.  Even if one doesn’t believe in the existence of sin or its wages, one should be able to grasp that the celebration of Saint Gay has been accompanied by a body count that considerably exceeds that of the dark days of the notorious closet and question its legitimacy on that basis.

Wait, they’re the GOOD guys?

I don’t think the Obama administration was particularly keen in following the neocon cheerleading for yet another American invasion in the Middle East, this time in Syria.  But this sort of thing will pretty much eliminate any public enthusiasm for one, especially in light of the disastrous “Arab Spring” that, as I correctly predicted, led to rule by the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the much-ballyhooed secular democratic liberalization that was supposedly in the works:

The unverified clip, posted by a pro-government campaign group shows Khalid al Hamad-  who also goes by the name Abu Sakkar – the well-known founder of Homs’ Farouq Brigade – standing over the uniformed corpse in a ditch while ranting against President Bashar al Assad.

Using a knife, the man hacks open the torso and removes two organs before holding them up to the camera and declaring: ‘I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.’

He then raises one to his mouth and takes a bite.

Of course, even if the US military doesn’t invade in order to put men like this in power and import a few hundred thousand of them as the usual consequence of a modern military invasion, the devotees of the Diversity Gospel shouldn’t despair.  They can still hope for men like this to acquire green cards and marry their daughters. Nothing says tolerance like a pagan cannibal from Canaan for a son-in-law.

The idiot whistle

Whether the subject is equality in the distribution of wealth, sex, or marriage, you can always be certain of one thing.  The appeal to equality is simply the idiot-whistle being blown to summon the support of the unthinking, it has absolutely nothing to do with the objectives of those appealing to that mythic state.

A homogamy aspect is confident enough to admit what was always obvious from the start:

It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.  The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.

Vladimir Ilyich had a term that accurately describes those non-activists who support “marriage equality” for reasons of fairness.  Useful idiots.  What the sexually abnormal mean by “marriage” is not what it means to most people, and by expanding the definition they are actively and admittedly seeking to destroy both the institution and the sacrament.

Don’t you have bigger problems, Taiwan?

I’m not sure that attempting to pick a fight with the Phillipines is the right strategic move for the Republic of China.  Especially given the way larger wars tend to start from smaller ones, what on Earth do the Taiwanese think to gain from this?  Is this the geopolitical equivalent of the physically hapless geek rolling his eyes and saying “see, you don’t want to mess with me, man, I’m KRAZY!”

While most consider the Middle-East a hot-bed of geopolitical risk (prone to flare at any moment), it seems hot money flows and territorial disputes are rapidly turning the South China Sea into a powder-keg. As Japan vs China is off the front pages for a moment (and US and South Korea engage in joint naval exercises) it seems Taiwan and the Philippines are escalating rapidly following the death of a Taiwanese fisherman last week after Filipino military fired on his vessel in supposedly disputed territory between Taipei and Manila. The situation is evolving rapidly as the Philippines’ un-apology (though they sent their condolences) may prompt Taiwan to send F-16 fighters, Kidd-class destroyers, and three or more warships, according to The Liberty Times. The threat of escalation is premised on a formal apology coming within 72 hours. As Stratfor notes, Taiwan’s territorial ‘claims’ are “outrageously ambitious” but the various island nations all appear set on rattling sabres as mainland China stiffens its resolve against Japan over the Senkakus.

This is akin to brandishing a fist against the squirrel in your backyard as you steadfastly ignore the very large and hungry tiger sprawled out on your porch.  It’s the sort of thing you read about in the history books and think: “nah, no one these days could possibly be THAT stupid.”

John Piper’s strange god

I wonder what devotees of the Diversity Gospel will make of this admission by one of the leading architects of diversity in Europe:

Labour sent out ‘search parties’ for immigrants to get them to come to the UK, Lord Mandelson has admitted. In a stunning confirmation that the Blair and Brown governments deliberately engineered mass immigration, the former Cabinet Minister and spin doctor said New Labour sought out foreign workers. He also conceded that the influx of arrivals meant the party’s traditional supporters are now unable to find work….

Lord Mandelson’s remarks come three years after Labour officials denied claims by former adviser Andrew Neather that they deliberately encouraged immigration in order to change the make-up of Britain.

Mr Neather said the policy was designed to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’. He said there was ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.

Senior Labour figures have been reluctant to concede they deliberately engineered the influx of migrants who have transformed communities over the past decade.

By the open admission of its most powerful advocates, “diversity” is a purposeful, destructive and genocidal program intended to destroy traditional European Christian culture. And it is John Piper’s bizarre claim that his god desires diversity, even more than his ‘Killer Jesus’ teaching, that demonstrates the very high probability that John Piper’s god is not simply the Christian God of the Bible, but rather a rationalized amalgamation of that God and the god of diversity, who is also known as The Prince of This World.

The Bible says: “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”  That is the Christian’s litmus test. And both diversity and John Piper clearly fail that test.

Perhaps this will wake up the media

The Obama administration is spying on them too:

As it turns out, the big Friday story of Bloomberg journalists snooping on its clients was just amateur hour compared to what the AP was about to serve. In fact, the Watergate affair may soon appear like a walk in the park compared to the First Amendment shitstorm that is about to be unleashed following the just reported news that the US Department of Justice had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.” First amendment? Freedom of speech and press? Surely not when it comes to the Nobel-peace prize winning President and those who dare to expose his secret ways. And what’s worst, is that the AP breach has all the makings of a spiteful hack driven by personal vengeance against one of America’s premier news outlets.

Probably not.  La carte noire, don’t you know. The media will find it very difficult to turn on Obama unless he starts sending killer drones after AP reporters, and even then, the likes of Eleanor Clift will be babbling about how targeted media assassinations are popular moves that make the president look “decisive”.

This comment at Zerohedge cracked me up: “Obama has a free ride from the press and he is even going to fuck that up….classic.”

Mailvox: of Game Informer and Calvin Klein

Conan asks my opinion about some old friends:

Have you ever met the group at Game Informer?  I could ask many questions, like how y’all mixed (as they come across as SWPL in their mag) but not really that important and probably boring anyhow.

We got along exceedingly well.  Paul was Big Chilly’s younger brother’s best friend, so I used to see him all the time at Big Chilly’s house when we were in high school.  Andy and Paul usually came to our parties at the Digital Ghetto, and I still have pictures of me at one of Andy’s band concerts.  Big Chilly and I didn’t actually mix with them all that much professionally, however, since they were console and we were PC.  I don’t think they ever wrote about our stuff, whereas CGW did, although they knew all about it and sometimes played the pre-alpha stuff when they were over.

In all the years I knew them, and hung out with them, I can’t remember once ever discussing anything political with either Andy or Paul.  We talked about games, music, girls, and botany projects, but never politics.  I suppose we all had too much in common.

If I recall correctly, Andy made some noises about me writing for GI ages and ages ago, but since I was in the St. Paul Paper and nationally syndicated in my own right as a game reviewer at the time, it wasn’t something that ever interested me.  To be honest, we tended to think of their magazine as a cool little thing, but not a truly big deal like CGW or Electronic Entertainment.  I wasn’t always clear on how it was different than, say, Nintendo Power.  I remember it being really, really, thin, actually, since it was put out by a game rental operation or something like that.

It’s amusing that Andy is a bigger deal in the industry than any of us now, although Micron is doing well as the audio director at Epic.  I’m absolutely pleased for Andy.  He did a remarkable job in building up that magazine from almost nothing and he’s one of the few people about whom I have literally nothing negative to say.  I mean, quite literally, nothing.

Paul was a very funny guy in a quiet way.  The kind of guy who would say something with a totally straight face and you’d suddenly start laughing a few moments later when you realized what he’d said. He was also astonishingly good-looking and somewhat embarrassed by it.  A funny story about him: Joel West, the Calvin Klein model, was a friendly acquaintance of mine and accompanied me to the Game Informer offices one day.  After meeting Paul, Joel told him he could have a lucrative career in modeling and should consider coming to New York with Joel to meet with Calvin Klein.

Paul just looked at him as if he was completely and utterly insane.  He didn’t even say anything, he just snorted and shook his head.  Joel didn’t try to argue with him, Paul was clearly no more inclined to pursue a career in underwear modeling than one in infant cannibalism. His ALS and death at 38 was just ridiculously tragic and unfair.

Impeach Obama

It won’t happen due to his all-important carte noire.  But as George Will points out, by past standards, there is little question that Obama now merits impeachment on the basis of the IRS actions:

George Will joined the chorus talking about the prospect of impeachment for President Barack Obama after last week’s admission from the Internal Revenue Service that it had targeted groups with the phrases “tea party” or “patriot” in their tax-exempt applications for extra audits….

Will noted that one of the items in the 1973 impeachment articles of then-President Richard Nixon, which ultimately led to his resignation, described the Nixon administration’s use of the power of income tax audits in a “discriminatory matter.”

“This is the 40th anniversary of the Watergate summer here in Washington,” Will said. “’He has, through his subordinated and agents, endeavored…to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner,’ — Section 1, Article 2, the impeachment articles of Richard Nixon.

Now, I very much doubt Obama knew anything about the audits; I doubt he knows very much about what is going on under the aegis of “his” administration.  He has never been anything more than a tool for certain Chicago interests and their allies.  But he is still nominally in charge, he is still the man sitting in the Oval Office, and he is therefore responsible for the actions of the administration.