…but I have to say that in the context of the “I got mine, Jack” quality of Rob Portman’s conversion, I prefer this as the reason a conservative discoverers a reason to support marriage equality:
Yeah — it plays to all the stereotypes, and it is undoubtedly college aimed-humor, with all the besettings thus implied. But unlike the Portman story, at least it made me laugh.
__
Like everyone else, I’m glad Sen. Portman has seen the light. But like everyone else (I respect) I find it hard to give someone a medal for admitting the necessity of equal treatment to the world at large if and only if some blood kin says “yo dude.”
__
Maybe this is a fine moment for an open thread.
Spankyslappybottom
Has Michelle Bachmann seen this?…Oh, wait…too late…
El Cid
Maybe this will inspire more black children to choose to be born to white Republican politicians, at least the ones willing to publicly acknowledge their paternity.
arguingwithsignposts
That was pretty funny. Hasn’t that been around a while? I missed it the first time. So many memes. Also, someone mentioned below that Portman’s known his son is gay for two years now. What took him so long?
shortstop
@Spankyslappybottom: They say every potential first family is mentally measuring the drapes in the WH. But Marcus had the fabrics, brackets, rings and rods completely envisioned.
Gin & Tonic
@arguingwithsignposts: He was running for office, for Pete’s sake!
shortstop
@arguingwithsignposts: He’s had some stuff to do, like a) fail to survive the vice presidential vetting due to his gay son, b) spend five minutes thinking about why the GOP lost in 2012 and c) scan his plummeting favorability ratings in Ohio.
Gin & Tonic
Since it’s an open thread, I’m sure Hell will welcome its new permanent resident, Ieng Sary, who died yesterday/today. Of that entire cohort of privileged, Paris-educated cadres who very nearly destroyed a country, only one peon has had to face earthly justice.
The word “evil” is over-used, but he and his cohort were beyond evil. Burn forever.
West of the Rockies
Sorry to gripe, but the post two below this one is an open thread. Is there a purpose to having two so close together?
raven
@West of the Rockies: You’re not sorry.
arguingwithsignposts
@West of the Rockies:
Are you new here?
scav
Speaking of things coming out of people’s mouths, Trump seems to be calling for a second invasion of Iraq in order to take their oil and ‘pay ourselves back’. Plus other stellar Home-shopping Infomercial blather. TGOC
IowaOldLady
You have a deep empathy deficit if you can’t imagine what life is like for someone outside your own family or limited circle.
West of the Rockies
@arguingwithsignposts: No, I’m not, and you’re right, I guess multiple open threads happens a lot. Guess it just struck me as especially odd today.
Okay, so since it’s an open thread, did you all see this Tweet by twit Erick Erickson: “I used to believe that Led Zeppelin was an amazing band, but then I found out my son liked rap, so I changed my views.” – Sen. Portman
— @EWErickson via TweetDeck
(found at Daily Kos)
Why aren’t there any serious repercussions to such idiocy? Why can’t a piece of space junk land on this moron’s office?
Tonybrown74
@scav:
Isn’t that racist dick also calling for the importation of more
white peopleEuropeans to balance the offset of immigration reform?Jim, Foolish Literalist
this could be… interesting. From TPM
Do you think they were just being snotty and smart-assed when the used the name of Birther in Chief in the panel title, or are they that dim? With CPAC, I could see it either way.
Trollhattan
Busy news days lately and I’d missed this incident of, well, as Wonkette put it, Dianne Feinstein punching Ted Cruz in the cock.
Also, too, Cruz is “jim DeMint without the charm.”
http://wonkette.com/506387/dianne-feinstein-goes-to-ted-cruzs-work-slaps-tea-party-dick-from-his-mouth-hole#dF4K1oIGAOEPv8CH.99
Keith G
Good for the Senator. Good for the Portman family. Good for all of us. This one thing won’t change the world, but it will be added to a bunch of other one things that eventually will.
And if Rob Portman continues to learn from his son’s life and evolves, like others we know, good will certainly come of this. And we will get a chance to see if the Senator has the integrity it takes to honor the humanity of is son and of so many others.
Roger Moore
@scav:
Only seems to be. What he’s really calling for is attention. Don’t give it to him.
Soonergrunt
@West of the Rockies: Sometimes we do that just for shits and grins.
scav
@Tonybrown74: Among other things, including complaining about not being able to build a ballroom in the back yard of the White House and plugging his golf courses. Still, opening the flood gates to socialist nationalized health-care European voters? Consider. . . .
Anniecat45
Would you prefer that Portman disowned his gay son and didn’t learn anything at all from his experience?
That is what drives me the most nuts about the conservatives in my family; that they have learned nothing from years of experience. One of them still thinks abortion should be illegal in spite of the disastrous unintended pregnancy of his own daughter. I have other examples but I’ll restrain myself; I’m sure everyone here has some similar relatives.
Trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Things got “out of hand?” They’re supposed to be the scripable, adult political party.
I still wish we had Betty blogging from there. Here’s hoping TDS sent Samantha Bee.
dance around in your bones
Well, here ya go! Another jerk-off playing with his gun kills his own kid.
Kerist.
Ok, no more news-reading for me.
arguingwithsignposts
@West of the Rockies:
It is one of the mysteries of the universe how Erick von Ericksonsonson manages to figure out the Twitter machine, much less type such noxious bullshit continuously with no repercussions.
shortstop
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And didn’t Rubio spend his CPAC session complaining about being called a bigot for believing not all Americans should have equal marriage rights? This fucking country is going down the toilet. You used to be able to oppress people right and left without getting all this drama and mean-spirited name-calling in return.
scav
@Roger Moore: My attention on a blog isn’t enough to feed that man’s thirst. Useful spotlight on the CPAC shopping channel, that’s all.
Deuxièmement, it’s at the Guard, so welcome to part of the internationally recognized face of American politics.
Trollhattan
@dance around in your bones:
Goddamnit, when are they going to start handing out consequences for this shit, instead of the same old, “Hasn’t the family suffered enough?” If he’d killed that poor, poor child driving drunk, he’d go to prison. Because no, he hasn’t “suffered enough.” In either scenario, those surviving children are safer with him not there.
Fuck.
Keith G
@shortstop: Ouch. Not all of us are decorators.
jl
amusing video. Thanks. I assume it is for men in general population who oppose equal rights. It seems like old and done news for number of GOP movers and shakers.
shortstop
@Keith G: I actually had five bucks on you responding that way. To which I would say: I know, you know I know, and this was in the spirit of the above video.
Litlebritdifrnt
Did you guys see the story on this racist (and sexist) POS at the CPAC minority outreach panel?
More at the link
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/15/1729331/cpac-slavery-minority-outreach/
arguingwithsignposts
@Litlebritdifrnt:
What is this, I don’t even …
Suffern ACE
@scav: I thought that was a critical part of his foreign policy from last year’s book. There’s neoconservatives who act like imperialists and then there’s actual colonialists and Trump is one of those.
shortstop
@arguingwithsignposts: Breathe deeply. It has a membership of two guys.
shortstop
@Litlebritdifrnt: I applaud them saying this kind of thing. Get it out there. We can use the ad creative budget for other things.
Suffern ACE
@Litlebritdifrnt: I can’t look. I just can’t. Is there some movement in Africa to grant our voters the franchise?
scav
@Suffern ACE: Might be best not, there are some gems though
shortstop
@Suffern ACE: I believe he’s suggesting “repatriation.”
Soonergrunt
@Anniecat45: “Would you prefer that Portman disowned his gay son and didn’t learn anything at all from his experience?”
No, but that doesn’t translate to him getting any benefit from his selfishness.
Enlightened self-interest is still self-interest.
Keith G
@shortstop: I just hate that that is part of the gay genome that skipped me. I still have no idea what color periwinkle is.
scav
@Keith G: Uuurp! It’s a Vinca!.
Of course I had to go look it up.
shortstop
@Keith G: Here, sugar. I’m here to help.
shortstop
@shortstop: I actually would call that more of a violet shade, but I couldn’t find any photos of periwinkle drapes, and I needed that for the joke. Here’s periwinkle as it’s commonly understood.
dance around in your bones
@Trollhattan:
I don’t fucking get it either. Gun culture, ‘Murka, NRA, all that crap.
I know if I had ‘accidentally’ killed a random stranger, I’d be in jail in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
Also, this CPAC coverage (Hardball, MSNBC) is raising my blood pressure to an alarming degree. Maybe I’ll have to switch over to those cute Property Brothers.
jamick6000
turned on NPR, bobo and ej dionne were talking about the news. I guess it’s pledge drive time, so two guys came on after Brooks and Dionne were done and had roughly this conversation before saying how much money they needed to keep this valuable programming on the air:
LMAO, totebaggers these days.
Rabo Karabekian
Ewick son of Ewick followed up his previous outburst with telling Jamie Kilstein his hypothetical gay son would go to hell, but he would “love” him. Then of course he blocked me for inquiring about his sincere Christian values.
Nicole
@Gin & Tonic: My stepmom is Cambodian and spent years in a labor camp after her husband (Cham, or Cambodian Muslim) was executed when the Khmer Rouge took over. She finally escaped the country with my two stepbrothers- as she put it, one night packed up her sons and the bit of jewelry she had hidden, started walking and kept walking. One tough lady. Though she blamed Nixon for creating a situation where the Khmer Rouge could take power, I will always remember her first visit to the Statue of Liberty, about ten years ago- she went up and kissed the pedestal. Still makes me weepy to think about it.
Trollhattan
@dance around in your bones:
I suspect I know why the bride and daughter are hooked on that show, but their typical nitwit home-shopping client-couple does a number on my blood pressure, so I usually have to walk away. Does not support the notion Canadians are pleasant and not the least self-absorbed.
Trollhattan
@Nicole:
Wow. Story warrants capturing in detail, both as critical family history and as witness. We’ve not seen our last Khmer Rouge.
dance around in your bones
@Trollhattan:
It’s because the Property Brothers are cute, and you get to see the one guy swing around a sledgehammer. Muscles! Competence! (I love that in a guy).
The buyers are irrelevant. (And I hate the granite counter fixation).
Trollhattan
@dance around in your bones:
Don’t think the grrlz are watching it for dryrot ID tips, nomsayn? I kind of get a kick out of the exotic heating systems–nothing like that out here in Californee.
Roger Moore
@arguingwithsignposts:
Fixt.
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
Of course that’s only truly useful for people with calibrated monitors. If you have a typical uncalibrated monitor, the hue will be off./photogeek
Anniecat45
@Soonergrunt:
Enlightened self-interest is at least marginally better than un-enlightened self-interest.
Besides, how do people change their minds on issues? I seriously doubt it’s usually out of pure altruism. Usually it’s because something hits them where they live and makes them think about things in a way they never had to before.
I know a little bit about this because I grew up in the South while it was still segregated and nearly all my relatives were stone-cold racists and the few who were not got shouted down by the others. I have had to dig a lot of that garbage out of my brain and learn new ways of looking at the world and I like to think I’ve made progress. But something had to happen to show me that what most of what my family said — and most of what I heard from everyone else around me — was wrong and needed to be rooted out. I like to think this all started when some of my “Christian” relatives were openly happy that John Kennedy was killed, and I remember thinking that was kind of weird because in Sunday school they told us murder was wrong, but that sure did not complete the process.
dance around in your bones
@Trollhattan:
I actually get a lot of info out of the show so that in the (extremely unlikely) case where I ever buy a home I might have a clue.
And I have lived in SoCal and Baja for many many years with pretty much zero heating. Just not necessary for most of the year. You can always get a stand-alone radiator chingadera. Which is most convenient for the kittehs you rescue on the side of the road :) They like to lay on top of it.
hal
Wow. That audience listening to chumps speech was huge. Must have been two dozen people there.
Nicole
@Trollhattan: The more years pass, the more she opens up about it. I hope to eventually piece together the full story from her. Her sons both grew up to be pretty terrific guys and she and I are very close (after a horrendous first few years, but I chalk that up to my being a teenager and the very, very different cultural attitudes towards childrearing, especially daughters, that she grew up with).
JoyfulA
@Trollhattan: I agree that’s a story that should not be lost or forgotten.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: Meh. We’re not looking for a Pantone match here. “Periwinkle” encompasses a reasonable range of blue-purple hues.
Trollhattan
@Nicole:
I can appreciate her reluctance to speak about it, for a whole tangle of reasons personal, cultural and patriotic. Meeting a Holocaust survivor was a life-changing experience and sadly, I suspect Pol Pot’s reign of terror may fade into a historical glimmer if we allow it to.
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
I may be straight, but I take color seriously enough to have a calibrated monitor. If you’re not calibrated, you’re not seeing the right color. Of course if you are calibrated, you still have to worry about stuff like the gamut of your monitor…
shortstop
@Roger Moore: Roger. Sigh. I have a calibrated monitor. (I couldn’t not in my line of work.) Even if Keith doesn’t, he’s going to be closer to understanding the concept of “periwinkle” than he was before. (Have we sucked all the fun out of this yet?)
Roger Moore
@shortstop:
No, I’m sure there’s still some fun to suck out of it yet. I’m not as sure that I’m up to it.
dance around in your bones
I just got some periwinkle velour pants from Amazon – they look kind of like faded lavender? Is that right?
Anyway, they are comfy.
Jay in Oregon
Is there a reason I’m seeing anti-fluoride protests in Portland today?
Is there some new scientific evidence I’m not aware of or is this more Strangelove-ish crackpottery?
Nicole
@Trollhattan: I went to Cambodia with her in 2002 and there are a fair number of memorials, but they sure could use some $$ for preservation. Tuol Sleng the school that was turned into a prison/execution site was especially upsetting. Each of the prisoners was photographed before execution and the photos adorn the walls, along with a list of very strict instructions the guards had to follow (“Never speak to the prisoners,” etc) solely designed to keep them from seeing the prisoners as individuals. In several of the photos of women, you can see the top of a baby’s head in their lap.
Metavirus
yet again republicans like portman reveal their infinite void of empathy. it’s great to have all sorts of mavericky Republicans coming out of the woodwork and helping to shift the Overton Window toward justice. But I’ll be damned if I ever stop heaping scorn on a bunch of stratospherically self-righteous assholes who only come to realize that they’re being gigantic assholes when the things they’re being assholes about come to affect their lives in some way.
Barney
‘This’ appears to be a video hosted on Facebook, looking at the HTML source for this page. It just appears as blank space for me – not even a black rectangle.
Does this mean Balloon Juice is going to make me sign up to Facebook just to get the jokes from now on? Please tell me you haven’t joined the pod people.
Mnemosyne
@Barney:
It may be your browser, because I can click and play it in Safari.
Or, if you’re a damned foreigner, it may be one of those annoying videos that doesn’t play outside of the US.
kay
Oh, Portman is horrible. A deceptive, fraudulent candidate in 2010.
There are examples, here’s one:
“Fair trade” has a specific political meaning among a certain group of populist, labor-friendly voters in Ohio (and elsewhere). Everyone knows this. Not the complex policy meaning, but a kind of shorthand, like “pro choice” is to abortion.
You have fair trade and free trade, broadly, Left and Right.
Sherrod Brown is fair trade and Rob Portman is free trade. Broadly.
Portman had this pack of hired “supporters” running around Dem rallies in 2010 telling people Portman was for “fair trade”. I ran into them at a rally and listened to them for 20 or so minutes.
It’s the equivalent of a pro-choice Democrat running around the Bible belt claiming to be pro-life.
He’s a con man. He claims this bullshit “moderate” mantle that has nothing to do with his beliefs. Further, this ISN’T a hard switch for him because he gives not one shit about any issue other than low taxes, deregulation and low wages.
kay
Also, this sanctiminious, serious, heart-felt thing is his stock in trade.
He makes all of his announcements with this same weary “I am so principled” air, and they’re usually banal, lock-step hard-Right positions where he’s saying things like “we must get spending under control”
He acts like that’s some sort of brave stance: “we must LOWER tax rates”, like 100% of wealthy people and 80% of media aren’t parroting the same lines.
Keith G
@shortstop: Did some say ‘suck’?
I’m sorry. Trader Joe’s Pino Grigio +(whatever)
Anyway….you’re always fun.
Paul Turner
It is naive to imagine that Portman’s conversion came when he learned that his son is gay. Parents know. This was a calculated move. I’m still happy to see it, but don’t believe the cover story.
Paul Turner
It is naive to imagine that Portman’s conversion came when he learned that his son is gay. Parents know. This was a calculated move. I’m still happy to see it, but don’t believe the cover story.
ottercliff
Rob Portman deserves the Dick & Lynn Cheney Medal for Self Centered Dogma Deviation.
The fact that he delayed his “conversion” until after his chance to be the VP candidate had passed shows that he truly would have been the right pick for Romney – another soul-less self-marketing machine and morally empty suit.
Barney
@Mnemosyne: I am indeed a damned foreigner, so maybe that’s it (though I’d have expected Facebook to be a bit more international, given their plan for world domination; and normally I at least get a “this video is only for the pure-of-heart Americans, not the ungodly world” message for things like that (thank you, Daily Show)).
My browser is Firefox – I’d expect more people to have problems if it were that alone.