Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman is going to step down at the end of the year, CNN has been told.
In an unrelated(?) story, on Larry King Live, Bill Maher "outed" Ken Mehlman as being gay, during the 9:00 pm est. live segment. On their later rebroadcast, CNN edited it out.
See here for a brief description and here for footage of the edited and unedited broadcast.
Bill Maher will out more gay Republicans on this Friday's Real Time on HBO.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
Well, I don't have a problem with the Gay Old Party (as in, while not gay, I'm "gay friendly") - but that may be a good one to use in 2008. Their "base" foams at the mouth about gays.
On the other hand, I'd really like to see political discourse come above the belt - let's ax all issues dealing with consentual sex of any sort and get back to real "values" issues like feeding the hungry, educating kids, jobs for the unemployed (and don't quote me those low unemployment numbers - they just mean another million or so dropped off the roles when they ran out of unemployment benefits or they took a two-hour lawn-mowing job), healthcare for those without it, cutting the "K Street Connection" - and maybe we can even think about solving our prison-crowding problems by decriminalizing recreational drugs (inspect 'em, sell 'em only in package stores, and tax the hell out of 'em - solve part of our budget crisis at the same time). Nah. Makes too much sense. Oh yeah. And how about saving life on earth as we know it by getting off the oil tit and dealing with global warming?
Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:On the other hand, I'd really like to see political discourse come above the belt - let's ax all issues dealing with consentual sex of any sort and get back to real "values" issues like feeding the hungry, educating kids, jobs for the unemployed (and don't quote me those low unemployment numbers - they just mean another million or so dropped off the roles when they ran out of unemployment benefits or they took a two-hour lawn-mowing job), healthcare for those without it, cutting the "K Street Connection" - and maybe we can even think about solving our prison-crowding problems by decriminalizing recreational drugs (inspect 'em, sell 'em only in package stores, and tax the hell out of 'em - solve part of our budget crisis at the same time). Nah. Makes too much sense. Oh yeah. And how about saving life on earth as we know it by getting off the oil tit and dealing with global warming?
DOUG
Civil rights for gay Americans is just as much a real issue as these others, in my opinion. Outing Mehlman is not below the belt, it is a legitimate expose of Republican hypocrisy. If Mehlman was anti-drugs while using drugs, this would be a legitimate point. That he and his party are anti-gay while he and MANY other top GOP men (no pun intended...) are gay is the height of hypocrisy.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
Civil rights for everybody, gays included, is a very important issue and yes we should include that in the real "values" list. But the hypocrisy of gay Rs is something that just tends to make us feel smug about ourselves (WE'd never do anything like that). Outing them points out to the Rs that they have gays in their midst, but I've never noticed that having the positive effect of convincing homophobes that gays are regular folks - not only just like your neighbors, they ARE your neighbors. Having outed gays in their midst hasn't even broken them of the habit of equating gays and pedophiles. That's why pushing the "Gay Old Party" schtick is a cheap shot and not likely to improve the civil rights situation for gays. Aside from which, my comment was axing all issues dealing with consentual sex for political discourse in campaigning - not the rights of people to have consentual sex, homosexual or heterosexual. I can see that you might read it that way, since the right to have consentual homosexual sex, as Barney Frank reminded people, has only recently been decriminalized - at this point calling it legalized is stretching it a bit - but that isn't what I meant.
