Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

People are complicated. Love is not.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

This blog will pay for itself.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

I was promised a recession.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / Things I Wish I Had Written

Things I Wish I Had Written

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Pierce on Portman:

If Will hadn’t come out, or if he’d been as straight as Nebraska highway, Portman wouldn’t have cared about the sons and daughters and brothers and sisters of all the other Dads who love them and want them to have the same opportunities? It’s not just the implied notion that discrimination is OK unless it inconveniences Sunday dinner with the Portmans. It’s also the relentless banality through which even “decent” Republicans struggle to come to simple humanity. Does any group of people have dark nights of the soul that are so endlessly boring and transparently insincere? It’s like listening to Kierkegaard sell flatware. I’m glad there’s another vote for marriage equality here. I’m also glad I didn’t have to listen to the full explanation behind it.

What he said. And the Kierkegaard statement is one for the ages.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    Hell, some people go from being right-wing nut jobs to being left wing blog kings. Paths are many, truth is one.

  3. 3.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    I’m bringing this from a prior thread comment:

    Fox News Story: “Both liberals and conservatives condemn Robert Portman for his changing views on homosexuality.”

  4. 4.

    scav

    Problem is, I now want to see the Kierkegaard flatware line. It too might be one for the ages.

  7. 7.

    Trollhattan

    Darn that Charlie and his high-fallutin’ paid-attention-in-class tricks!

    The man can flat-out write.

    Also, too, can I get a heh-indoozle?

    Romney’s speech may have been one of the most highly anticipated of the three-day convention — but not for everyone. Downstairs at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, far from the main ballroom where Romney was radiating patriotic optimism, a woman named Rachel explained why she was missing out on this rare public appearance from the man who, only months ago, was the GOP’s nominee for president.

    “I’m just hungry,” she said.

    Losing loser keeps losing. Unlike Dubya, he refuses to simply go away and so I must endorse continued, even continual Willard-whupping.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/mitt-romney-cpac-speech-lunch.html

  8. 8.

    Ash Can

    I’m sure that Portman’s punishment for learning compassion only when it’s forced upon him will come when he gets pilloried by all his new-found worst enemies on the right. Hopefully it’ll teach him the rest of the lesson he needs to learn.

  9. 9.

    Halteclere

    Republicans: “Pain and suffering of bad policy only matters when it affects me”

  10. 10.

    MCA1

    @Corner Stone: He would recite a seemingly endless, 500 page statement on flatware, starting from questioning whether or not flatware is even necessary, or whether it’s perhaps even evil, and, given the general pointlessness of our existence, well, I don’t know, maybe you should get flatware or maybe not but you should definitely consider it with the utmost sincerity and pursue the answer with great exuberance and rejoicing because maybe, just maybe, that will release some endorphins and lift the misery of living in this dank, dark winter climate for a few brief hours, but be careful not to get too swept up in that exuberance because when you come down from the high and realize the pointlessness all over again you might want to kill yourself, although that’s not necessarily wrong because OH GOD I’M SO CONFUSED LIFE IS SO FUCKING HARD!!!!!! But either way, the entire experience should be unnecessarily torturing, even if it’s the most mundane thing imaginable.

    Pierce has a lot of wonderful lines, but that one’s a Hall of Famer.

    I also loved the tweet out there today that Benen highlighted: some guy saying “If Republican legislators were also to someday realize their daughters are women, we’d be in pretty good shape.”

  12. 12.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Ash Can: That he should never go in front of a camera and declare that he’s changed his views on something other Republicans don’t like?

    @SatanicPanic: I should have included a disclaimer: I meant to imply that I could see that as a story, what with the way the left has gone after him.

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    @MCA1: {preparing to slit wrists and end it all}
    …oh…OH! Now I get it! Fuck that flatware shit. Where are my designer chop sticks?

  15. 15.

    gbear

    I’m going to add nothing new to the conversation but instead echo a comment from a previous thread: No matter how well Mr. Pierce covered this, he can’t top the beatdown that Wonkette delivered to Portman. Wonkette nailed him and then nailed him again and then kicked him a couple of times to remind him about the nailing.

  17. 17.

    Napoleon

    I half way think that Portman flipped because he can read polls and his son, who I read somewhere came out 2 years ago to them, is just a convenient smoke screen of a reason to flip.

  19. 19.

    Petorado

    Suddenly discovering empathy for the human condition only when it affects them personally is yet another symptom of the pathology that is conservatism. The only way to cure our political disfunction is to recognize the disease causing the affliction.

  20. 20.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    also, too, the kid came out to his parents, as I understand, two years ago. Why oh why didn’t Senator Portman come out to us then? I simply can’t imagine….

    and he was not one of the two elected Republicans to sign on to that famous amicus brief, was he? Will he now?

  24. 24.

    Ash Can

    @Napoleon: If that’s true, then that puts things in an entirely different light.

    Bottom line, I’m glad he switched. That much is a net positive no matter what. But it sure is a treat to see a conservative switch to a position of compassion and understanding without looking like a dick about it, and that isn’t quite what’s happening here.

  29. 29.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    While I’m glad to see a Republican who has changed their position on gay marriage and that Portman is accepting of his son’s sexuality, the point has to be made that Portman didn’t give a shit about equal rights for gay people until it “hit home” for him. That’s the problem with too many Republicans; they toe the party line until the party line affects them personally.

  33. 33.

    bemused

    @Trollhattan:

    Read the whole piece and had a good laugh. Trump didn’t seem to inspire much interest either from a photo I saw somewhere today…lots of empty seats. CPAC is turning out to be a rather lackluster event this year. The most enthusiastic reactions have been when a speaker has said repeal obamacare, abolish the Dept of Education or just AMERICA. That’s all speakers need to get wild cheering, buzz words. Sarah Palin will kill.

  35. 35.

    Keith G

    @Napoleon: I think you could well be right on this.

    A bit earlier I typed:

    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.

    I don’t care why. I only care that he finds a way to translate this into helpful action.

  36. 36.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Too bad Portman’s kid isn’t a biracial, transgendered, pot-smoking union member who drives a Prius, huh?

  39. 39.

    russell

    How would Kierkegaard sound if he was trying to sell flatware?

    pseudonyms would be involved.

    pierce is, hands down, the best.

  40. 40.

    Sly

    @Corner Stone:
    …. and this stainless steel set with a hammered pattern finish by Vera Wang goes particularly well with the absurd and paradoxical relationship between God and Man, and invites the eater to overcome the vagaries of mundane spiritualness and understand the transcendent human self as a perpetuating relational process.

  41. 41.

    Gex

    This last leg of the march towards full civil rights is going to be tiresome.

    Lynne Osterman (the MN legislator who admitted, weeping, that she voted for DOMA even though she knew it was wrong) is praising Rob Portman.

    I do so love having to watch the people who beat up on me over the last decade patting each other on the back for being late to the party.

    And it also sucks that venting our anger at him for what he’s done is criticized so. I get that it is not encouraging for them. I get that it’s smarter to react differently. But it is always the case where we have to cater to them, look out for them, accommodate them. Can’t be angry, lest they decide to keep on hating you. So suck it up and make nice with the douchebags that abused you, and would abuse you again in any other context if that context was that of an out-group.

  43. 43.

    gelfling545

    I’m reasonably sure that Portman is only one of many other GOP figures who recognize that their opposition to equality is both morally wrong and unconstitutional but fear being savaged by their appropriately named “base”. For Portman, the time had come to decide between maintaining his political fiction and supporting his child. I am happy that he put his son first, as many of his political colleagues would not.

  45. 45.

    low-tech cyclist

    Slushfund tietack kierkegaard!

    (Let’s see who picks up on that reference. Maybe Arglebargle IV or somebody else.)

  46. 46.

    Bob h

    Just as Republicans who have had severe illness in the family are a bit less fanatical about “government run” healthcare, and “market based solutions”.

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