***

But we don’t need programs to strap an extra finger onto all of our children to let them experience life as a polydactyl. We don’t need to create a polydactyl community to advocate for sixfinger rights so that every aspect of our lives is adapted for six-fingered people. It may be perfectly natural for a person to be born with six fingers, it may be considered effectively normal, but that doesn’t mean that society has to create rules to enforce its acceptance as normative.

Well, quite. Society doesn’t need to enforce these rules, because society gets on fine without them. And while hexadactyl (or, to take a more common example, left-handed) people may have certain difficulties in a pentadactyl and dextrous world, no one (nowadays) calls them evil, sinister. That battle’s been won.

The battle for gay acceptance, I’m afraid, has not been won. In a perfect world, special programmes would not be needed. As it is, let’s deal with the real world.

Theoretically, all forms of bullying are equally bad: making fun of redheads is just as wrong as taunting gays. In practice, redheaded kids aren’t getting nearly as much abuse, and aren’t getting screwed up inside by it. Step down from your theoretical abstraction and enter the real world for a minute. By all means let us have comprehensive, fully inclusive anti-bullying programmes; but let’s also concentrate most energy on the forms of bullying that actually happen.

As Emily writes,

But in the meantime, kids are still killing themselves because their school and home environments are so hostile and unsafe. In the meantime, you can be fired for being gay in thirty states; for being trans, in thirty-nine.

TRiG.

(Disclaimer: I am most definitely not a libertarian.)

Ken: Yes, yes, ok, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t too bad in “Colors.” But I can’t take him seriously when it comes to politics, even if I am softer on Cuba or Venezuela than the next guy. I just can’t buy celebrities who become politically active. It’s such a sham.

I think there’s a baseline assumption we have to make, which is that 99% of celebrities, when they open their mouths to the media about something outside of their professional field, are idiots. But there is a continuum which progresses as an inverse relationship between the extent of their talent and the extent to which we are, or at least I am, able to ignore their idiocy. Alec Baldwin, for example, says some of the most moronic things imaginable about politics, yet his skill as an actor is such that I’m willing to forget whatever stupid thing he’s currently going on about in the press. If for nothing else, his Barney Frank impression gets him off the hook for just about every stupid appearance he makes on political chat shows.

Then again, sometimes I wonder if I’m completely wrong and most celebrities are actually crafty publicity hounds following the Mae West dictum.

And this seems to have fallen even out of FOX News, just as Anita Dunn comes around. Are we giving up because we can’t keep up?

Yes, there was much more depth to that Topper Harley role than in his “guy bombed out of his mind in the police station” role from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Maybe if that bomb he dropped on Saddam Hussein in “Hot Shots: Part Deux” had actually worked the world wouldn’t be in such a bad state these days? He might have even won the Nobel Peace Prize….

Penn has shown some acting skill

Yes, yes, ok, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t too bad in “Colors.” But I can’t take him seriously when it comes to politics, even if I am softer on Cuba or Venezuela than the next guy. I just can’t buy celebrities who become politically active. It’s such a sham.

“Chavez, dude, my dad’s a t.v. repairman. He’s got this ultimate set of tools. I can totally fix your problems with the media.”

That was gold. I got a stomach cramp from laughing so hard.

Ken: Ha! Funny as they were, if that is the high-point of his career then he can only hang his head in shame.

In reviewing his body of work, I think you’ll find that they were the high-point of his career.

Ken: Brings to mind something I thought when I saw Sean Penn in Venezeula on TV once. He said something about how he was on a “fact-finding” mission or whatever…I was just waiting for him to go, “AWESOME! TOTALLY AWESOME!” and congratulate Chavez on hurling a pot of hot coffee in someone’s face. Alas, didn’t happen.

“Chavez, dude, my dad’s a t.v. repairman. He’s got this ultimate set of tools. I can totally fix your problems with the media.”

To be fair, Penn has shown some acting skill, which mitigates some of his idiotic political ranting.

Starless,

Ha! Funny as they were, if that is the high-point of his career then he can only hang his head in shame.

Brings to mind something I thought when I saw Sean Penn in Venezeula on TV once. He said something about how he was on a “fact-finding” mission or whatever…I was just waiting for him to go, “AWESOME! TOTALLY AWESOME!” and congratulate Chavez on hurling a pot of hot coffee in someone’s face. Alas, didn’t happen.

They may have sung “Wooly Bully” together, though. I didn’t watch the whole report…

Throbert McGee: Based on a little Googling, I suspect that Scott Tucker was writing here from the perspective of a very young adult who just a few years earlier had been a horny and willing teenage “catamite” for a much older man.

Oops, forgot to add: …but also based on Googling, circa 2000 (which is to say, 15 years after he wrote that blurb for A Witchhunt Foiled), Scott Tucker was still deeply immersed in progressive politics and Queer identity, so there’s not much reason to think that he would’ve recanted his earlier position that age-of-consent laws are a form of sexual abuse.

J Starr: You would do well to google up ‘fistgate’ and note the Jennings connection;

J Starr, there was a discussion of Fistgate several days ago, on the “Memo to Media Matters” thread.