*Instead of the human torch, you get a coffee machine that talks.

*Magneto drives a car with a big “M” on the front and speaks entirely in the third person, as all super-villains should.

*Magneto needs to stop for directions. And hates traffic jams, parking signs and people who interrupt him (even when his is not talking).

*Ultimately, he’s just looking to join the group. Brother just wants a JOB.

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points out this rage-inducing article

I thank all the Gods that I graduated before Columbine. America went more than a little crazy (er?) after the terrible acts of those two kids.

That we entrap kids in the surveillance culture from such an early age is just sickening.

“Zero Tolerance” is a politician’s phrase. It sounds tough and gruff, the sort of thing that brings in the law and order/hang ‘em high crowd.

In practice, its devastating. It treats children like criminals and turns teachers into prison guards. A whole generation raised with metal detectors, pat-downs and panics over someone getting an illegal aspirin.

Of course there are schools in dangerous neighborhoods that need heightened security to keep kids safe. But that’s the thing, it’s about getting those kids into the school where they can be safe from the threats around them. Not treating every student like an unexploded IED.

We’re not raising citizens who know their rights and and understand their value. We’re bringing up a generation who accept security theater with apathy and passivity. Dark days.

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It’s something I’ve given a great deal of time and thought to, and I hope you all understand the magnitude of what I’m about to say.

I’m…a…heterosexual.

I know, I know. “But MG, you’re bookish and love musical theater.” and “MG you volunteered in an AIDS hospice” and “You’ve been part of the gay rights movement since high school.”

Will no one think of the cows?

Yes, all true. But even so, I have remained…straight.

Don’t you dare judge me!

*Ahem*

It seems that Focus on the Family is now turning their hateful eyes to the issue of bullying. More specifically, the how “the gays” are using bullying as a way of recruiting

kids to their “agenda”.

Yes, trying to stop kids from being harassed and bullied is a vile scheme to make people think that homosexuality is normal.

They’ve even created a website (filled with PDFs, because they are clearly living in 1994) filled with nonsense, hysteria and general twaddle.

Oh and did you know that kids are learning “homosexuality lessons” in schools now? Is

that before or after lunch? Is it an elective? I mean, I want to take Sappho 102, but I really need that period to study for AP Satanism.

Staring at that site for more than a few minutes may make your eyes bleed. At very least it will drop your IQ a few dozen points. Suddenly, you’ll start thinking Glenn Beck makes a fine argument and that the Jersey Shore kids are just delightful.

The real sinister agenda here is coming from the FOF people. They want to empower bigots with a bunch of fliers and tracts (instead of facts) to make life all that much harder for GLBTQ kids. Because, y’know, it’s already a cake walk to be a teenager. Let alone a gay teenager.

The FOF (say it “fohfuh”) nutters have the wonderful notion that being gay is something you can be convinced of. Well, allow me to serve as proof that that is nonsense.

Lets see. I worked in an AIDS hospice as a teenager. I worked in a restaurant in a gay neighborhood as a teen as well. Was even hit on by a number of customers. My Mom worked at a bank with many gay and lesbian people, a number of whom were her friends. One of them, a lesbian, took me to guitar lessons when I was in high school. I got involved in GLBTQ activism in college. Recieved death threats and had my dorm room and car vandalized for speaking up about discrimination on campus. I’ve been to Pride parades, Market Days, gay night clubs and bars. Have had any

Too many numbers

number of gay and lesbian friends over the years. My favorite tv talking head is Rachel Maddow.

Yeah, I should be gayer than Neil Patrick Harris singing a medley of Queen songs on Glee.

But, I’m not.

Cause, for all that gay by association, I like women. Well, I love women. Specifically one woman, but I maintain a general appreciation for the whole gender.

I’ve never felt any “homosexual urges”. I’m straight, and all the gay in the world around me isn’t changing my mind.

Nor is it trying to.

These FOF idiots are dangerous because their bile is going to hurt kids. For all their talk about “tolerance” their main interest is in promoting their very narrow, very dogmatic view of morality. A view that dehumanizes Gay and Lesbian people. Hate isn’t a family value.

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Did you know that Al Sharpton heads the Black Panthers?

Wow…just…wow.

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Laura Schlessinger (who is not a medical doctor, and does not have a doctorate in psychology) claimed her “First Amendment rights were violated” after she was widely criticized for a racist tirade that included her chanting a racial slur 11 times. Sarah Palin hopped to her defense, which should make everyone giggle.

The bigots opposed to the Cordoba House Community Center (and mosques all over the country it seems) have been screaming and carrying on for a while, couching their hate in “freedom of expression”.

Glenn Beck and his tea-bagging pals are going to have a little Bund rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech this weekend. They’ve deflected criticism of the choice of location and timing with…yes, the first amendment.

Of course, none of these people’s actual first amendment rights have been threatened. Beck and Schlessinger are multi-millionaires with extensive media empires. The protesters have been allowed to gather and chant their vile nonsense, with police protection in many cases so that counter demonstrations don’t clash.

The first amendment is not a magic cloak that protects you from criticism. If you spout racist garbage, as Schlessinger did, people can call you out on it. If you spew nonsensical fear-mongering while selling worthless gold dubloons as a “safe investment investment against the coming apocalypse” like Beck does, you’re going to be widely mocked. If you carry bigoted, hateful signs and accost people for “looking muslim” you’re going to be held to account.

Should you be jailed or harassed by the government? Of course not. Should you be safe from critique? Of course not.

If someone in the government really was trying to silence any of these people I’d be the first to defend their right to speak. Of course, no one is doing that, and claiming that your rights are being violated because people think your opinions are laughable, or organize to protest against you, only makes your opinions ring that much more hollow.

My favorite free speech story concerns a politician who hated the ACLU. He wanted to get a license plate that read “ACLUSUX” and was denied.

The ACLU took up his case.

The first amendment is a beautiful punching bag, isn’t it?

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Picoult and Weiner’s point, in sum, that when a white guy writes about feelings and family and love and stuff it is SERIOUS LITERATURE but when women do the same it is “chick lit” is well observed. Franzen’s “The Corrections” is an excellent work, and his memoir “The Discomfort Zone” is one of the more carefully observed books on American life I’ve ever read.

But if he was a woman, would his work be given the same gravitas? Would he be held up as such a keen observer of the human condition? I don’t know, no one can.

It’s the vestigal idea that women are better suited for “feelings” and “emotions”, especially when related to familial relations. Where as when men dare enter the territory of emotion they are hailed as viking explorers daring the unknown wastes marked “here there be dragons”.

All this feels like a bit of a generational thing. In my writing I’m perfectly comfortable getting messy with feelings. I don’t feel that it makes me especially perceptive to write female characters who are fully-realized, not idols or mockeries. Writing about families feels natural to me. Though as someone whose parents are deceased, is an only child and maintains no contact with my extended family, much of my work relates to the speculative.

Reviews are nice, and lovely, but good writing will outshine bad reviews, and bad writing will not be sustained by good sales.

(apologies to Neil Gaiman for stealing the title of this blog post from his wonderful short story “Being an Experiment Upon Strictly Scientific Lines” from “Angels and Visitations”

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1994 deja vu? Thankfully, no.

In ’94 the ambulatory hair helmet Newt Gingrich was able to win back the congress. The vaunted “Contract with America” was little more than stagecraft to obscure the modern GOP slash and burn approach to government programs (wasteful things like the EPA and NIH) and general autocratic brutality that has come to define the party since, oh, about 1960 or so.

The modern GOP is not the party of ’94. For all their looming success, it is a desperate, wounded animal of a party. The Tea-Bag movement has reinvigorated the faithful while alienating moderates. There’s a game of “Who’s more arch-conservative?” going on, and everyone is going to be the loser there. Michael Steele is the head of the party in much the same way that Queen Elizabeth is head of state for the UK.

The hard right folks in the running, like Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, have some deeply bizarre views. Paul wants to undo the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (well, not really, but kind of, sort of, ok, yeah he does) and Sharron Angle has spent much of her campaign running away from her own hateful comments about the unemployed and “2nd Amendment Solutions” to congress.

If Silver’s math holds, the Senate will stay Democratic, though narrowly. Embolded, the GOP will make louder and louder louts of themselves. They’ve already spent the entirety of the Obama administration crossing their arms, holding their breath with intent of turning blue rather than getting down to the business of governing. Take for instance Louie Gohmert, the pride of the Lone Star state, screaming about “Terror babies” at Anderson Cooper. Texas has a 8.5% unemployment rate. It’s doubled in the past 2 years. But hey, hypothetical terror babies!

In some morbid way, I kind of hope the GOP takes the house and senate. Just for pure entertainment value, watching people like Paul and Ghomert come completely unglued on a national level would be deeply entertaining. Obama would be a lock for re-election, remember, Clinton stomped Dole by nearly 10 points in 1996. If anything it might refocus the administration, give them some much needed grit in their teeth. They’ve been trying to compromise with a rabble of right-wingers who are increasingly shrill and bizarre.

The GOP has no leading lights for 2012. Gingrich is putting himself out there, though when opens his head-hole to let noises escape he tends to humiliate himself. Sarah Palin would be funny. Joe Biden gave her the soft-touch in 2008, since he’s a polished statemen and she’s a rube. Obama would take her apart with surgical precision and make her look even more foolish. If that’s possible. And lord, is it ever.

Me? Oh, I’m a Greenie, dyed in the wool. Obama’s a fine guy, a true statesman, but he lacks the strength of his convictions. He walks a path of moderation, but even his moderation feels moderate. On the issues that matter to me (GLBTQ rights, ending the wars, humane foreign policy, investing in infrastructure/education) he’s been a meddling success. Again moderate moderation. A bit of a firebrand would be nice, especially on the left, where it seems we start out with the lowest bid and then negotiate downward. I vote my conscience, something we should all do as it’s the only way to get better choices.

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