Day: August 13, 2010

Finally – Mainstream Media Points Out That Gay Marriage Is Twice As Popular Now As Interracial Marriage Was When It Was Legalized in 1967

Jon Ponder

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is a factoid I have tried to get out there for a while now — and it’s shocking that it was Chuck Todd, one of the main regurgitators of conventional wisdom in the Beltway kool kids club, who put it on TV.

It’s wrong to base protecting people’s rights on polling, but if that’s how it is going to be done now, then it should at least be consistent.

Am I Illegal? Are You?

Trish

LibertyIf “birthright” citizens, as anti-immigrant Republicans and tea baggers call them, are declared illegal, how far back will we go? Will I, and other descendants of illegals, become retroactive non-citizens?

My mother’s father came to this country illegally from Italy in the World War I era wave that brought most of the people who later produced such cultural touchstones as the Godfather epics, Little Italies in major cities, pizza as fast food, and the reality show Jersey Shore.

On his first attempt to become an American, my teenage grandfather spent the crossing in the hold of the ocean liner George Washington alternately trying to memorize the identity on the papers he purchased illegally and vomiting from seasickness. When the boat finally landed, he was held at Ellis Island and found to be without papers — a WOP — and shipped back to Italy.

There is no point in trying to figure out who is worthy of a piece of the American pie

Many months later, after earning enough money to try again, he made a second crossing, studying his illegal papers until he had his false I.D. down perfectly. He had also made connections with Italians in this country who vouched for him at Ellis Island by telling the authorities that he had both family and a job here.

[…]

Finally – Mainstream Media Points Out That Gay Marriage Is Twice As Popular Now As Interracial Marriage Was When It Was Legalized in 1967

Pensito Editors

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is a factoid I have tried to get out there for a while now — and it’s shocking that it was Chuck Todd, one of the main regurgitators of conventional wisdom in the Beltway kool kids club, who put it on TV.

It’s wrong to base protecting people’s rights on polling, but if that’s how it is going to be done now, then it should at least be consistent.

Is Prop 8 Dead?

Jon Ponder

Judge Walker
Judge Walker
Yesterday, I characterized Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to keep the ban on gay marriage in place in California for another week as “whiffing” the stay. My immediate take was that Walker had postponed giving cities across the state the green light to resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in order to give the gay marriage opponents time to find a way to keep the ban in place until the issue had been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court — a decision that nearly everyone agreed was at least two years off.

I was wrong.

[…]

Verbatim

Pensito Editors

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word’s been thrown around —

[LAURA] SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.

CALLER: That isn’t —

SCHLESSINGER: I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it’s affectionate…

CALLER: So it’s OK to say “nigger”?

SCHLESSINGER: — and not enough sense of humor.

CALLER: It’s OK to say that word?

SCHLESSINGER: It depends how it’s said.

CALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?

SCHLESSINGER: It’s — it depends how it’s said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it’s OK.

CALLER: But you’re not black. They’re not black. My husband is white.

SCHLESSINGER: Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can’t do much about that.

CALLER: I can’t believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the “nigger” word, and I hope everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: I didn’t spew out the “nigger” word.

CALLER: You said, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.”

SCHLESSINGER: Right, I said that’s what you hear.

CALLER: Everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: Yes, they did.

CALLER: I hope everybody heard it.

SCHLESSINGER: They did, and I’ll say it again —

CALLER: So what makes it OK for you to say the word?

SCHLESSINGER: — nigger, nigger, nigger is what you hear on HB —

CALLER: So what makes it —

SCHLESSINGER: Why don’t you let me finish a sentence?

CALLER: OK.

SCHLESSINGER: Don’t take things out of context. Don’t double N — NAACP me. Tape the —

CALLER: I know what the NAACP —

SCHLESSINGER: Leave them in context.

– Right-wing radio talk show host Laura Schlessinger, speaking with an African-American woman who called in to her show last week. After the call was over, Schlessinger told her audience, “And what I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think — and it’s really distressting [sic] and disturbing. And to put it in its context, she said the N-word, and I said, on HBO, listening to black comics, you hear “nigger, nigger, nigger.” I didn’t call anybody a nigger. Nice try, Jade. Actually, sucky try.”.