cannedjam

USA 2 - SPAIN 0!

JAM Off Topic

Today the Obama administration backed the Defense of Marriage Act, much to the disappointment of the gay community.

In an article on theAtlantic.com a concerned reader was wondering what obama was thinking.

I’m floored by the Obama Administration’s stance on DOMA. It doesn’t make any legal sense. The only two plausible explanations i can think of:

Obama is taking a hard line on marriage to protect himself from the attack dogs when he ends DADT.

or The language in this brief was written by the previous administration, and inadvertently and/or lazily regurgitated here, with or without his knowledge. I simply cannot fathom Elena Kagan arguing this with a straight face.

The author of the article agrees.

Me neither. My best bet is that it was a decision not to force a federal judicial ruling on DOMA yet, and was written with no real understanding of how it would impact already rattled gay supporters.

If that’s true, there is a clear absence of political coordination on gay issues in the White House. [...] In the absence of any legislative action from Pelosi or Reid and total silence from Obama, the viciously anti-gay rhetoric in this brief can easily be misread, and could do substantive harm to gay couples and our fight for civil equality.

The alternative explanation is that Obama actually wants to kill marriage equality in favor of separate but equal civil unions. But he cannot do that after so many states have already granted marriage equality. And he surely cannot believe that’s what he was elected for.

That last part of his response is quite telling. Speculating almost as an afterthought, he is questioning whether Obama actually wants to kill “marriage equality in favor of separate but equal civil unions.” Umm… am I missing something here, or was that not exactly what Obama’s stance was during the campaign?

I see this as a prime example of Obama delusion syndrome, despite the fact that he ran as an anti-gay marriage candidate, some (perhaps many) in the gay community feel let down that he has followed through with an anti-gay marriage act. Either they were not paying attention to him during the campaign, felt he was just being disingenuous to get votes, or that he had somehow changed his mind about the issue.

I am just baffled how any gay American could vote for a man with an anti-gay marriage stance, then feel let down or confused by him when he does not back gay marriage. That’s like me voting for Obama then feeling let down when he started spreading the wealth instead of cutting taxes.

JAM Politics Gay Marriage, Obama

A funny thing happened last night. I was accused of being a Liberal troll sowing the seeds of discord on a conservative blog I occasionally comment on, ha imagine that.

The topic of discussion was David Letterman’s hideous joke about A-Rod statutorily raping Sarah Palin’s 14 year old daughter (google it if you want, I am too tired to provide a link). After reading through the long and passionate thread, I decided to comment on a a group of people who were facetiously (but at length) “plotting” a shoe throwing attack on Letterman by infiltrating his audience and capturing the event on a cell phone video. My suggestion was that this kind of talk only brings them down to the level of the liberal fringe whose tactics they would be emulating. 

This comment of mine touched off a string of accusations about how I was a liberal in sheep’s clothing or a “Kum baya” singer trolling the thread as some secret tree hugger. I guess the point was lost on some that I was only suggesting that “fighting fire with fire” as they called for, is not always appropriate, especially when it brings you down to a lower level. 

Just as every Obama apologist’s first rebuttal is “George Bush did this…”,  that kind of logic only perpetuates bad behavior. If people continue to justify stupidity by pointing out the stupidity of others, the only thing we are left with is, well, stupidity.

Besides the amusement of being called a liberal (for the first time in my life by the way), I found it ironic and perhaps illuminating how a group of smart people can succumb to the pitfalls of thinking while outraged. This is the trap that we all are best to avoid, no matter how audacious and vicious someone attacks you (David Letterman, really have you no shame?), do not be tempted to stoop to their level as the only means of an “effective” response. And I say this not as someone who refuses to get dirty, but as someone who refuses to perpetuate the hypocrisy of “he did it first”.

JAM Off Topic, Personal, Politics David Letterman