Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

The lights are all blinking red.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

“woke” is the new caravan.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Let’s finish the job.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / Open Thread: RuPaul Is A Wise Soul

Open Thread: RuPaul Is A Wise Soul

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And I’m not just saying that because he’s a Clinton supporter (though that doesn’t hurt). In light of his first Emmy nomination, NYMag‘s E. Alex Jung interviewed RuPaul:

… What do you think about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats?
[Laughs.] I fucking love them. I have always loved them. And let me just say this: If you’re a politician — not just in Washington but in business and industry, you have to be a politician — there are a lot of things that you have to do that you’re not proud of. There are a lot of compromises you have to make because it means that you can get this other thing over here. And if you think that you can go to fucking Washington and be rainbows and butterflies the whole time, you’re living in a fucking fantasy world. So now, having said that, think about what a female has to do with that: All of those compromises, all of that shit, double it by ten. And you get to understand who this woman is and how powerful, persuasive, brilliant, and resilient she is. Any female executive, anybody who has been put to the side — women, blacks, gays — for them to succeed in a white-male-dominated culture is an act of brilliance. Of resilience, of grit, of everything you can imagine. So, what do I think of Hillary? I think she’s fucking awesome. Is she in bed with Wall Street? Goddammit, I should hope so! You’ve got to dance with the devil. So which of the horrible people do you want? That’s more of the question. Do you want a pompous braggart who doesn’t know anything about diplomacy? Or do you want a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done? That’s really the question…

I wanted to talk about the shooting at Pulse in Orlando. You made a statement at the Trailblazer Awards, and I wanted to hear about when you first heard the news and how it impacted you.
I have a long, long relationship with Pulse nightclub for years and years. It’s a safe space. It’s a safe haven — a place where people can meet our tribe. It always has been. To have it encroached by such an evil force hurts very deeply. I’m 55. I’ve witnessed so many assaults — emotional assaults, physical assaults, all of that. I was assaulted after the first attack, assaulted again just by how the media handled that stuff. So, it was a hurtful situation, and even more hurtful that I don’t believe that we as a people, as a culture, have really learned from it and how to deal with it.

What do you think needs to happen?
We need to talk about the subconscious mind. We need to talk about the hateful darkness that lives in each of us. We don’t all have it to that extent, but we definitely need to shed light on that area of us. All of us have been sold this idea that we deserve the whole world, and that everybody’s going to get the big house, the big cars, the two and a half children, and all of this stuff that the media sells us. And then people who don’t get it get angry. And they say, “Dammit, if I’m not going to get mine, no one’s going to get it!” So we get angry, and from the anonymity of a keyboard online, we troll people, we put them down. Some people go to the extent of killing people or being horrible in that way. And that’s obviously the extreme. But we all have that element. I think the way we approach this is we need to acknowledge that area of our consciousness that lives in all of us, and we need to start that dialogue. We need to recognize it when it pops up.

It’s all throughout the whole Trump thing: Ego wants to divide us up. Ego wants to believe that we’re separate from one another, but the truth is there’s only one of us here. So for us to move forward, we have to acknowledge that element in us, and then when it comes up, say, “Thank you for sharing, but I’m going do this, because I’m not going to act on my fragile ego.”…

Reader Interactions

100Comments

  1. 1.

    JanieM

    Great stuff. Reminds me of a quote I love, from Solzhenitsyn:

    “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

  3. 3.

    Hal

    I love Drag Race. It’s so much fun, with a group of people with artistic and creative ideas and expressions you don’t get to see everyday. Plus some great one liners. And Rupaul is full of great advice.

    RuPaul – Verified account ‏@RuPaul

    Mama said “Unless they gonna pay your bills, pay them bitches no mind”

  10. 10.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: Notes From the New Wave Queer Underground

    As a kid in the ’70s, I was in several groups – the church choir, the Boy Scouts, the KISS Army. Still, I never felt like I had a tribe. In 1980, I finally found my people when my best friend, neighbor and schoolmate Todd Butler introduced me to “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the Silver Screen cinema in Atlanta’s Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. Todd was 16, I was 15.

  18. 18.

    Schlemazel

    I have never been much impressed with RuPaul, I not a flash over substance kind of guy. But I may have been underestimating him, that is a pretty fucking accurate description of the situation.

  20. 20.

    satby

    I’m getting rain and laughing at the latest salvo from Jim Wright on FB.

    Know what I do when I read something I don’t like? I stop reading. Then I go read something I DO like. Life’s too damned short to be miserable. Secret of the universe, Kids. Write that down, it’ll be on the test.

  21. 21.

    raven

    Anthony Lee Ervin (born May 26, 1981) is an American competition swimmer who has won three Olympic medals and two World Championship golds. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal in the men’s 50-meter freestyle, and earned a silver medal as a member of the second-place U.S. relay team in the 4×100-meter freestyle event. He is the first swimmer of African descent to medal in Olympic swimming.[1]

    Ervin stopped swimming competitively at the age of 22 in 2003,[2] auctioned off his 2000 Olympic gold medal on eBay to aid survivors of the 2004 tsunami,[3][4][5] but he began to train again in 2011.[4]

  25. 25.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    Saw this on Vintascope and thought of Ted Cruz. Certainly brightened up my Friday.

    I’m bummed the American womens’ soccer team lost in the quarterfinals.

  26. 26.

    dmsilev

    Apparently Putin’s pet hacker team just released a whole slew of personal documents of Democratic Representatives and staffers. Not emails, but stuff like home addresses and cell numbers. And this:

    For instance, one account for a subscription to conservative political commentator Glenn Beck’s website was protected with the password “nutbag,” while the password for many media sites was “dccc2016.”

    While the personal doc stuff is pretty nasty, if the worst bit of “dirt” that can be dug up is that the DCCC thinks Glenn Beck is a nutbag, well I’m not sure there’s much that will impact the elections.

  29. 29.

    trollhattan

    RuPaul speaks much truth. No scales over those (fabulous) eyes.

    I want Hillary to leave Trump’s dessicated husk on the killing floor come November, sprinkled with his enablers skulls.

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    @schrodinger’s cat:
    He also does TSA. He was flying into the US and was detained at LAX. This is the third time in 3 arrivals that it has happened. Apparently nobody in TSA knows who he is.

  31. 31.

    Helen

    @Adam L Silverman: I saw that on one of the NBC stories. Schooling’s dad asked Bob Bowman (Michael Phelps coach) for a recommendation for a US swimming school. He recommended the Bolles School in Jacksonville, FL. “And the rest is history”

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dmsilev: Also too (FYWP for not allowing me to edit my previous comment to include this) I am shocked, SHOCKED that DCCC staffers might impugn the mental stability of a great American patriot like Glenn Beck.

    (Note to one DJT: this is sarcasm, asshole.)

  38. 38.

    ? Martin

    @Joel: No. RuPaul is sort of on the other end of the spectrum in the sense that transgendered tend to identify strongly with gender while drag is more about rejecting that strong identity, sometimes mocking people who strongly identify. Typically a very different viewpoint on gender.

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: They were in for well over a year, but it was kept quiet/compartmentalized because the cyber guys had an ongoing investigation:
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/reuters-dnc-hack-lawmakers-briefing–2
    The initial stuff was spearfishing attacks. Because of the duration of the incursion, its depth, and breadth, there’s no way to no if they got silly stuff like this or something else. The are three big issues here. 1) What kind of and how much personal identifying information do they have? 2) Do they have anything that is compromising? For instance, evidence of infidelity or evidence that someone is closeted -things like that. Either of the first two could be used to try to turn someone or that would put someone’s clearance eligibility at risk through no fault of their own. And 3) are they going to doctor what they have before they release it? So they didn’t get anything that would be an issue if released (though Alex Jones, Jim Hoft, and Matt Drudge would still scream bloody murder because that’s their schtick), so they alter it to make it appear that there’s an issue.

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    I heard him say that it involves James Madison so I know EXACTLY which story he’s going to tell. I won’t ruin it, but people who read the Chernow book know which one it is and who the other player is that drops the mic on Madison.

  42. 42.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Joel: RuPaul is a dude who dresses up as something that could be said to resemble a lady, for art, fun, and profit.

    Cross dressers and drag performers are (generally) not trans. Most cross dressers are straight actually

  45. 45.

    bluefish

    RuPaul is a national treasure. And one very very smart person. Hillary has never been defended with such vigor!

  46. 46.

    Mnemosyne

    Oddly, I feel like RuPaul and John Lewis must have very similar senses of having been participants in history and watching the entire world change around them at a rapid pace. When RuPaul first became famous 20+ years ago, almost no one thought that same-sex marriage would happen in our lifetimes.

    Look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now …

  48. 48.

    Helen

    I am going to a cook out tomorrow at my friend Grace’s house in New Jersey. I know nothing about NJ except that if I get on a bus at the Port Authority I will end up there. Anyway, it’s gonna be 100 degrees tomorrow and I said to Grace “It’s gonna be in the house, right?” Because Grace is from the Islands she said “What?”

    Well at least the food will be good.

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    I always misunderestimate how popular the Olympics really are. Evening threads are dead because everyone else is off watching the Games!

  52. 52.

    Peale

    @Villago Delenda Est: I’m shocked that there might be meetings and planning sessions. That aren’t public. N contested elections! Where there’s competition.

    Next up. There’s more to football coaching than just giving inspirational speeches before the game.

  57. 57.

    Peale

    @Adam L Silverman: so what is Russia up to? I don’t get it. Revenge for their idea that any time anyone is disassatisfied with A dictator that the CIA must be behind it? So they’re mucking up our elections?

  60. 60.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Peale: I think Putin genuinely wants Trump in the White House, because the United States will cease to be an effective check on his power.

  61. 61.

    Prescott Cactus

    I took my father to the DMV. He received a renewal. 84 and all they do is an eye check. His license is good for 5 more years. Thankfully he doesn’t drive, not even a golf cart. He’s tried the grocery cart scooter once and thankfully he scared himself (and others) with recklessness.

    It’s was about empowering him to have choices. He won a gold medal in his own mind today.

  63. 63.

    dmsilev

    @Major Major Major Major: One imagines that there’s a sign hanging on the wall in Trump headquarters: “35 hours since our last insane statement!”

    The sign only has room for two digits; it’s never needed more.

  64. 64.

    Peale

    @Matt McIrvin: yeah. I guess. But it’s so sloppy and obvious at this point that I’m baffled. It’s more brazen than Netanyahu in 2012. So I’m baffled. It’s like a wile e coyote scheme. We’re eating the birdseed now, so where is the anvil that we’re not supposed to see?

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Peale: Putin appears to be working from the old KGB apparatchiks manual that detailed how to destabilize NATO, the EU, and the US. The KGB wasn’t good at it/able to do it because of the higher level of vigilance during the cold war. Putin has been funding, overtly and covertly, all the neo-Nationalist/far right/neo-fascist parties and movements across the EU. He’s tied into the biggest of the Texas secessionist parties on the far right fringe of the Texas GOP. He has a presidential nominee/candidate who is mirroring his positions on NATO, the EU, other multinational and bilateral alliances, US foreign, defense, and trade policy. He has at least three people that are within two links/connection of him and Trump working for/advising Trump. One of whom is a former senior intelligence official and retired three star general. This connection is, perhaps, the most worrisome as LTG Flynn had access to all of the highest intel and information the US has. So having his intel agencies conduct this type of cyber warfare to destabilize the party that isn’t the one of his preferred candidate, to impugn his preferred candidate’s opponent, and to further the erroneous belief that US elections are rigged, there’s widespread deception and fraud, and everything is fixed so that the US is no better than a banana republic is just part of his maskirovka to further his goal of destabilizing the US.

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m curious as to how well those kind of tactics work in a society that’s currently divided the way ours is. (Obviously, I’m leaving aside the whole “suborning retired generals” part.) He’s basically trying to rile up a minority of the population while pissing off the majority.

  72. 72.

    Peale

    @Adam L Silverman: unfortunately it means the crazy is well funded and will continue. But I wouldn’t mind some inkling that there was some plan to start thwarting the plan. Relying on voters to elect Non-Putin backed candidates may work this time, but it’s hardly a solution.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I never said the KGB was any good at this stuff back in the day…

    Honestly I have no idea. If you can enhance the cleavage lines and inflame the grievances you can do a lot of damage.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: @Adam L Silverman: I want to add something. We’ve already got a significant portion – albeit a minority – of the citizenry, on both the left and the right that believe that government at every level, though for different reasons, is illegitimate. We also have a significant portion – albeit a minority – of the citizenry, on both the left and the right that feel left out of how the country has developed over the past 40 years or so. And there’s overlap in these groups. At the same time you have one of the two political parties we allow ourselves/the structure of our system allows to exist that has, for partisan advantage, chosen to break government at the Federal level. When you put these dynamics together, then a destabilization strategy can achieve a lot of results that can’t otherwise be achieved.

    At this point all of our allies and partners are now in fear of one of our two political parties. And they have to be wondering just how much popular support there is for this ultra, neo-nationalist and protectionist position. That’s now baked into the strategic environment the US has to exist within, and good, bad, or otherwise, lead in.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Peale: I have no idea what counterintelligence and countercyber operations are being done, but I have no doubt they are being undertaken. In terms of countering this in the campaigns, I’m sure the Clinton campaign is on it.

  79. 79.

    ? Martin

    Rick Hasan thinks that Trump may have broken the law with the comments on voting and election observers, violating a consent decree against the RNC going back decades when the DNC sued them over voter intimidation and won.

    In the consent decree, “The RNC agreed that the RNC, its agents, servants, and employees would be bound by the Decree, ‘whether acting directly or indirectly through other party committees.” Does Trump count as the RNC’s agent in these circumstances? They are certainly acting in concert, and it is plausible to argue that Trump and the RNC are agents of each other for purposes of this election. Also, the activity Trump is talking about engaging violate the consent decree? One thing the consent decree says is that they must:

    (e) refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting; and the conduct of such activities disproportionately in or directed toward districts that have a substantial proportion of racial or ethnic populations shall be considered relevant evidence of the existence of such a factor and purpose…

    Trump would have difficulty arguing that he wasn’t working on behalf of the RNC given that he’s the nominee of the party, and he was introduced by Reince.

  80. 80.

    Adam L Silverman

    @? Martin: Almost no one actually knows about that agreement. And even the Republicans that do continually break it and get hauled back into court and smacked over it. The issue is going to be how to put the wine back into the bottle. He’s planted the idea that his supporters need to go, observe, and be vigilant because there will be fraud at the elections; especially in urban areas. So he’s just confirmed to almost exclusively white, older voters, most of whom are suburban to rural that the people of color within the cities are going to try to steal America from them. The damage is done. Even if the Federal court in NJ is asked to weigh in, it can’t stop the signal.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR7PLdetvwA

  84. 84.

    BR

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I keep thinking how much more nuts can he and his campaign get, and they keep finding creative ways to get more nuts. Even right-wing GOP political operatives (who aren’t Trump fans, but still) are now aghast at this, like:

    This election is totally rigged. We need observers, and strong action. pic.twitter.com/caIw7MWVs0— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 13, 2016

    Does it come with a fetching uniform? https://t.co/bvgLE6aZGO— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 13, 2016

  85. 85.

    Chris T.

    @JanieM:[Solzhenitsyn quote]

    But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

    All the Republicans for Voldemort, of course.

  87. 87.

    BR

    Though this is also true:

    He's actually erratically veering from "We must revolt" to "Whatevs. I'll go back to selling timeshares." https://t.co/rnYCKx38Le— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) August 13, 2016

    Is this some sort of amplifying see-saw between manic episodes and depressed episodes, where each extreme gets more intense?

  88. 88.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m kind of assuming that Putin isn’t interested in getting Trump elected anymore (assuming he was ever truly interested in it in the first place) and is just going to try and cause maximum damage and/or mayhem.

  90. 90.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I do not know. I’ve never been a Kremlinologist or Russia hand, I just had to get real smart on him, his ideology, the ideology/ideologists behind his ideology, for some work I was doing in 2014.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m just working on a basic assumption that Putin is neither stupid nor insane. But, hey, that’s what our allies tried to do with George W Bush when he was president and that didn’t exactly work out.

  93. 93.

    Lizzy L

    @dmsilev: From CNN:

    Donald Trump declared Friday that there’s only one way he could lose the state of Pennsylvania: if he’s cheated out of it.

    “We’re going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times,” he said at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania. “If you do that, we’re not going to lose. The only way we can lose, in my opinion — I really mean this, Pennsylvania — is if cheating goes on.”

    Trump said that Republican leaders in the state “are very concerned” about the possibility of cheating — adding that “we have to call up law enforcement, and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching.”

    Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls in Pennsylvania is solid — a Quinnipiac survey of likely voters released Tuesday found Clinton leading Trump 52% to 42%.

    That’s a huge Clinton lead. At this point, Trump saying he “should” win Pennsylvania is like Trump saying he should win New York. It’s total bullshit.

  96. 96.

    ? Martin

    @Adam L Silverman: Well, they break it at the state level, but the RNC has generally stayed out of it (as best as we can tell). The decree was due to the DNC suing them, so I think we can trust the DNC will be on this, especially with WI, TX, NC, and whatever other states getting killed in the courts over their voter ID laws.

  97. 97.

    Elizabelle

    RuPaul for the win

    I am with the badass bitch who knows how to get shit done

    Thank you for highlighting the article.

  98. 98.

    Scotian

    @Adam L Silverman:

    @Mnemosyne: @Adam L Silverman: I want to add something. We’ve already got a significant portion – albeit a minority – of the citizenry, on both the left and the right that believe that government at every level, though for different reasons, is illegitimate. We also have a significant portion – albeit a minority – of the citizenry, on both the left and the right that feel left out of how the country has developed over the past 40 years or so. And there’s overlap in these groups. At the same time you have one of the two political parties we allow ourselves/the structure of our system allows to exist that has, for partisan advantage, chosen to break government at the Federal level. When you put these dynamics together, then a destabilization strategy can achieve a lot of results that can’t otherwise be achieved.

    At this point all of our allies and partners are now in fear of one of our two political parties. And they have to be wondering just how much popular support there is for this ultra, neo-nationalist and protectionist position. That’s now baked into the strategic environment the US has to exist within, and good, bad, or otherwise, lead in.

    This.

    A thousand times, THIS!

  99. 99.

    Procopius

    Great explanation of what politicians have to do.

    If you’re a politician — not just in Washington but in business and industry, you have to be a politician — there are a lot of things that you have to do that you’re not proud of. There are a lot of compromises you have to make because it means that you can get this other thing over here.

    But, you know, sometimes that compromise you are asked to make over here really isn’t worth it to get that thing over there. It’s going to end up costing you a lot more than that thing over there will be worth to you. You really, really shouldn’t do it. So I can live with Hillary being in bed with Wall Street and even with Big Pharma and Big Energy, but I’m really, really worried about her embrace of Bibi Netanyahu and pledge of allegiance to Israel and Likud, and her seeking out endorsements from Kissinger and Negroponte and Oliver North and all the neocons who got us into Iraq and have been working so hard to provoke a shooting war with Russia because apparently they think we can win a nuclear war. It scares the hell out of me. Because I think they could co-opt Trump in a heartbeat, so it looks like they’re going to win this election whichever candidate wins.

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