No true Martian… or, the myth of the true fan

September 12, 2018science fictiondiversity, fandom, fans, fantasy, inclusion, sci fi, science fiction, wingnutsfontfolly

I find that if I dither over a blog post I feel strongly about, eventually someone else writes something on the topic that says some of what I want to say much better than I have been. I don’t find the phenomenon frustrating, in fact often the publication of these posts help me hone in on an aspect of the topic which I feel most strongly about in such a way that I can express the idea better. This week, there were multiple posts on the topic of what constitutes a “real fan” that are worth sharing. For instance, Camestros Felapton posted: You don’t control who gets to be fans in which he talks about people who, when faced with evidence that a majority of people like things that they don’t, look for ways to exclude those people from fandom:

“It’s the same con-game as used by Palin, Sad Puppies and most recently by Vox Day… declaring themselves the champions of the ‘real’ fans or the ‘real’ people. If you are leftwing or heck, just want to read comics with more realistic women in them, then magically you aren’t real anymore and your purchases don’t count.”

Many years ago this phenomenon was referred to, in fannish circles, as the True Fan Fallacy. Who gets to decide who is a true fan and who isn’t? But it isn’t just in fandom where it happens (which is one of the point Camestros makes in the above linked post).

From a fairly early age I was frequently teased, harassed, dismissed, and/or bullied for not being a “normal boy.” I was called sissy by other kids, and I was called a faggot and a sissy by various adults—including teachers and pastors—because I was interested in things or acted in ways they didn’t think a boy ought to. Then I was accused of not being a real Christian when I pointed out contradictions between things some religious leaders said and the actual words of Christ recorded in the Bible. Then I was accused of not being a real American for a wide variety of reasons (my favorite is still being told I wasn’t a real American because I believed in the separation of Church and state—you know, a concept championed among the Founding Father’s by both the author of the Declaration of Independence {Thomas Jefferson} and the author of the Constitution and Bill of Rights {James Madison}, and further actually enshrined in the Constitution itself!

Just as this last year I found myself being accused by some people of not being a real Star Wars fan because I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi? Me! Who saw the original Star Wars in theatres on Opening Night as a teen-ager in 1977, and then scraped together money from my part-time job to go see it in the theatre twelve more times that summer. And then stood in line over night to see Empire Strikes Back and two years later again for Return of the Jedi on their opening days. I’m not a real Star Wars fan, though, because I disagree with these man-babies who actually think the original trilogy, which was all about a Rebellion against an Empire, wasn’t political???

And yes, I understand that my invoking my history with the original trilogy sounds an awful lot like gatekeeping. But here’s the thing—I don’t believe that anyone who wasn’t alive back then and didn’t see the movies the same way I did are not fans. I admit that I’m giving those who are so clueless as to think the original trilogy wasn’t about politics some serious side-eye, but I’m not saying they aren’t fans of the original series.

I have a good friend who was barely one year old when the original movie came out—and he’s one of the most passionate Star Wars fans I know. It doesn’t matter that he came to the movies later than me. It doesn’t matter than he and I disagree about some things in the various movies. He’s a fan, and the myth of Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and Obi Wan belong to him just as much as they belong to me.

This discussion of who is a real fan and who isn’t lately centers around stories where white straight men aren’t the only characters who get to be heroes. Guys are upset that a black man, or a woman, or a non-white woman may get to have major roles in the story. And heaven forfend if some of these characters in the spotlight are queer!

Back in 1983 I was sitting in a theatre on opening day for the Return of the Jedi and I was very confused early on in the movie. Why, oh why, was Jabba the Hutt, a slug-like alien, so lasciviously interested in two different mammalian female characters? I mean, I realize that in a universe with many sentient races, there will be some characters no matter what species who get off on putting any other sentients in leashes, but what possible reason would Jabba have to put Leia in that damn metal bra? It made absolutely no sense to me at all.

I understand that thousands (or maybe millions) of straight fanboys in the audience didn’t notice that discrepancy. I understand that it jumped out at me because I’m a queer guy and I wasn’t distracted by Carrie Fischer’s bared midriff. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a valid quibble for me to have with the movie.

Also, for each of the original movies that I saw in those theatres, at every single showing it wasn’t just guys in the audience. There were just as many girls and women in each crowd as there were boys and men. And even in the very whitebread part of the Pacific Northwest where I was living at the time, it wasn’t exclusively white people in those audiences, either. Furthermore, I wasn’t, by any means, the only person sitting in all of those theatres back in 1977 who went home to fantasize about Luke and Han hooking up romantically.

Queer folks, and women, and people of color have been fans of sf/f for as long as there has been science fiction and fantasy. We love those stories and those characters and those worlds just as much as any other fan. We’re buying books and going to movies and watching the series because we actually enjoy those books and movies and series. We’re not pretending. I don’t have the time to watch movies I don’t really like, and I certainly don’t want to spend money on books that I don’t enjoy reading.

You don’t have to like the same things I do, just as I don’t have to like the same things you do. But if the only fiction you object to winning awards is stuff that is written by people of color or women or queer people (and you insist that those authors’ sales are the results of “affirmative action” or “virtue signalling”) you aren’t fooling anybody. Everyone can see your bigotry, and we’re not impressed.

Hurricane Maria Killed More People Than Katrina and 9/11 Combined

September 11, 2018historylife, natural disaster, news, queer, terrorfontfolly

Cover story: https://www.advocate.com/cover-stories/2018/9/11/stories-911s-lgbtq-heroes

I have a few sci fi related posts and some writing posts half written, and so much gets said about the 9/11 attacks on every anniversary that I wasn’t sure I wanted to add to the pile on. But so much of what is said is used to justify discrimination, oppression, and bigotry, so I shouldn’t be silent when I could counter some of that. We, as a nation, learned the wrong lessons from 9/11. The terrorists won—because we have given up many freedoms for an illusion of security. The massive waste of time and money that is the modern airport screening process doesn’t guarantee that there will be no more attacks; at best those measures reduce the probability of certain types of attacks by an infinitesimal fraction of a percent. We used the attacks as a pretext to invade a country that had nothing to do with them (Iraq), in the process kicking off a sequence of events which made it super easy for radical terrorist groups to recruit thousands of people who would otherwise have been peacefully living their lives. We have been bogged down in Afghanistan, a country the previously bogged down the British for decades in unwinnable war, and then the Russians for more decades in an equally unwinnable war, and now, 17-fucking-years later we are similarly bogged down with no achievable objectives and an eternally-changed timeline for getting out.

We’ve spent trillions of dollars (let alone the thousands of military personnel killed or maimed in the process) an accomplished nothing more than radicalizing who knows how many people who would otherwise might have been allies.

Meanwhile, we have ignored and inadequately responded to other disasters closer to home: Hurricane Maria Killed More People Than Katrina and 9/11 Combined: Harvard Study “4,645 people probably died after Hurricane Maria struck the island last September.” We continue to act as if 9/11 was the worst disaster ever to hit this country, while we ignore the pain and suffering of the American citizens in Puerto Rico. We should be ashamed.

If we are going to talk about 9/11, we should talk about some of the heroes: Remembering 9/11 Hero Mark Bingham Mark Bingham, a 6’4″ tall gay man who had the nickname “Bear Trap” was one of the passengers of United Flight 93 who stormed the cockpit of their pilot, preventing the hijackers from crashing the plane into the intended fourth target that day. Mark and the other passengers died as the plane crashed into a field, instead.

Read about the other, often erased, queer heroes here: The Stories of 9/11’s LGBTQ Heroes.

Why I hate hay fever reason #6502

September 10, 2018lifeautumn, hay fever, personal, Weatherfontfolly

“Wait, I'm going to sneeze.” — “Wait, I’m going to sneeze.”

Some people will be surprised that I’m writing about hay fever when it is practically autumn. Well, this is one of the reasons my hay fever is so annoying. I have a moderate-to-severe allergic reaction to every pollen, spore, and mold that the allergists test for, and in the mild climate west of the Cascade Mountains, that means hay fever season runs from about mid-Febbruary to approximately mid-December every year.

We’ve had a significant shift in the weather this weekend. In the middle of last week we had one day where the temperature creeped above 80º in some places. All this week, the daily highs are forecast to be in the lower to mid-60s, plus rain every day.

I absolutely love this kind of weather.

Unfortunately, one of the “features” of my hay fever is that my sinuses react most harshly to changes. If a new species that hasn’t been the predominant pollen-contributor in a while ramps up production, my sinuses go bananas. If the weather changes, whether from damp and cool to dry and hot or the other direction, then it’s all congestion and running nose and red itchy eyes for a couple of days.

So, while I should be ecstatic that I had to pull the lightweight jacket out of the backpack (where it gets carried most of the summer in case we have rain) to wear for the trip in to work, I am instead sniffly and sneezing and miserable.

Pass me that box of kleenex, please?

Weekend Update 9/8/2018: Clap louder…

September 8, 2018newsart, artist, news, wingnutfontfolly

I forgot that I had meant to post this image with yesterday’s Friday Five to go along with Russ Heath’s obituary. Here’s an even better tribute (with many examples of his comics art) than the one I linked to yesterday: Russ Heath (29 September 1926 – 23 August 2018, USA).

In other news…

There was a video clip circulating around the web of a young man in a plaid shirt being removed from the crowd at Trump’s rally, with various comments along the lines of, “if you don’t clap loud enough, Dear Leader has you taken care of.” Well, it appears that the true isn’t that far off: Meet The Trump Rally’s “Plaid Shirt Guy”. Turns he was a Billings High School student that had applied for tickets to the rally. He insists he wasn’t trying to make fun of the rally. But as the story notes, reporters saw staffers looking at pictures of the teens (who weren’t clapping very often) visible behind the Cadet Bonespur. They were pulled out of the crowd by staffers, taken to a back room where police checked their ID, and eventually escorted them out of the building.

I want to repeat that: police escorted three high school students out of the building because they weren’t clapping as enthusiastically as others in the crowd.

In their interviews, the kids insist they didn’t feel mistreated. I’m sorry, but being escorted out of a public event by police because you have a puzzled expression on your face in the video feed behind the president is mistreatment.

Also, I note that one of the teens says in the interview that as everyone was seated, they were all instructed that they needed to clap often and enthusiastically, and make sure that they smile a lot.

Wow. Just, wow.

Friday Five (stuff hits the fan edition)

September 7, 2018bloggingfriday, friday five, friday links, links, newsfontfolly

Pastor tells parents to shun their gay children to ‘show the love of Christ’
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/09/pastor-tells-parents-shun-gay-children-show-love-christ/

It’s Friday! We have arrived at the first Friday in September, the month in which superior people are born. Where, or where has the year gone?

I meant to do another simple Friday Five this week, just five stories and no more. But then things happened. A lot of things, and the Constitutional crises are just piling up. There was also a lot of interesting science news and other cool stories, so there are several sets of five links below.

Which brings us to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, the top five science stories, five stories about things falling apart, five stories about people behaving badly, five videos, and notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).

Videos!

SNEAKIN’ AROUND (Dolly Parton & Burt Reynolds) ~ The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas 1982:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Smokey And The Bandit Theme ( East Bound And Down ) by Jerry Reed:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Boogie Nights clip (1997):

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Cannonball Run Outtakes:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Calvin Harris, Sam Smith – Promises (Official Video):

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Confessions of an absent-minded misplacer, part 2

September 5, 2018lifeforgetfulness, life, Memoryfontfolly

I lose things all the time. I wind up spending an embarrassing amount of time searching for misplaced eyeglasses, or the mug of coffee I had just a minute ago, or the bookmark I was using and I just want to set the book down long enough to get some more coffee, or the headphones I was wearing five minutes ago. So I’ll be retracing my steps, trying to remember what I did and was thinking about. I used to constantly lose my keys and wallet, and only slightly less often my badgeholder with my bus pass. And of course my phone. I was logging into Find My Phone at least twice a week to make the phone ping so I could find it. Now I have tiles attached to the keyring, badgeholder, and wallet. I can use an app on my phone to ping them. If I misplace the phone, I usually have my watch on and can use it to ping the phone, but I have also used the feature of the tiles where you can squeeze it’s button to make the phone you usually use to track them play the Find My Phone tone.

Misplacing things while moving around the house doing things is one category of lost possessions, but it isn’t the only one. No, far worse are those times when one I have to say the phrase, “I remember thqt last time I was using it I said to myself, ‘I need to put this somewhere that I won’t forget…’” Because I only utter that phrase after I have looked in the places where I thought I had put it way and now I can’t find it.

Part of it is about how my brain categorizes things. Let’s say I’m looking for the spray bottle with the stain remover in it. I’m putting my shirt in the hamper, and notice that I’ve spilled food on it earlier in the day, so I want to spray the stain with the soapy stuff before tossing it in the hamper in hopes of preventing a stain. And I go to the hall closet where the laundry detergent is, expecting to find the bottle there, but it isn’t there. And it isn’t in the bedroom by the hamper where I probably used it last time. This means that at some point while I was doing something completely unrelated to laundry, I noticed the spray bottle out where it shouldn’t be, and instead of putting it in the hall closet, I put is somewhere else. It might be in the cabinet under the bathroom sink, for instance, because a lot of soap-like things are kept there. Or I might have put it in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, because a lot of cleaning supplies are there.

Why not back to the closet? Because I probably found the bottle where it didn’t belong while I was in the middle of another task. And I didn’t want to lose track of the other task, but I also wanted to put the bottle away, and my silly brain instead up popping up with the location of the closet where the laundry detergent is, suggested some other place where other cleaning things are.

Maybe.

Or maybe the task I was in the middle of was getting ready for work and get out the door, and the next thing I had meant to do was assemble my lunch, so I carried the bottle with me as I go to assemble my lunch. Assembling the lunch involves getting some things out of the pantry. When I got into the pantry I reached for soup=in-a-cup, which involves opening a box and selecting one of the cups and realized I was still holding the bottle of stain remover so I set it on the lower pantry shelf to free up my hand and get the soup, then walk back out into the kitchen to get on with lunch. And because that lower shelf has a lot of bottles of varying sizes and a variety of colors of labels, and the pantry is only dimly lit, it just blended in and neither of us noticed it for two weeks.

But yes, one other time I found it under the bathroom sink. Another time under the kitchen sink. Both of those were found the same day I noticed it missing. The time it was left in the pantry it took longer.

Then there is the topic of important papers. Maybe I have a folder of instructions from the doctor for a procedure scheduled a couple of months out. I read through it all once, but I’ll need to consult it again a few days before, because I had dietary restrictions the day before. So it needs to be put away somewhere where it is out of the way, but I will find it when I need to.

So I take it into the computer room and I put it in a standing sorter near my desk where a bunch of other important papers are. Or at least, that’s what I thought I did, but of course when I go looking again it isn’t there. So if I didn’t put it there, where else did I put it? The drawers under the stand-up thing where a lot of other papers are? Maybe. Or maybe the bin where the bills to pay are kept. That’s a pile of papers I go through frequently and I always know where it is, so maybe that’s where I put it. Or maybe it’s in the filebox where a bunch of other important papers are kept… or…

So I spend a couple hours searching everywhere I can think of, and it’s getting late and I just resign myself to having to call the doctor’s office the next morning before I go to work. I begin the going to bed routine and I grab my nighttime meds… and that’s when I notice a familiar-looking folder stuck behind all the prescription bottles and vitamin bottles and the blood pressure thing and so forth. There wedged in besides the receipts from the pharmacy that I save so that every few months I can scan them in and fill out the only form and get re-imbursed for the co-pays.

I put it with other papers that I save, all right. And they’re even medical papers! But somehow making that decision got mangled in my memory as the location in the computer room.

It made sense at the time, but darned if I’ll remember a week afterward…

Listen, buddy, there is no pumpkin in pumpkin spice, and if you don’t like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and such in your food or beverage, then don’t order it…

September 4, 2018lifelife, people, seasons, spicesfontfolly

“I think people who hate on pumpkin spice but praise bacon are hypocrites. The only difference is that bacon is seen as 'manly' and pumpkin spice is seen as 'girly.' Both groups want to put it on everything, but only one gets shamed for it.” — “I think people who hate on pumpkin spice but praise bacon are hypocrites. The only difference is that bacon is seen as ‘manly’ and pumpkin spice is seen as ‘girly.’ Both groups want to put it on everything, but only one gets shamed for it.”

I love bacon. I love a good martini. I love nice olives. I love a my husband’s homemade chicken soup¹. I like sampling different kinds of winter ales/holiday beers. I love cooking a big pot of chili to eat while watching a football game. I love the many variants of Earl Grey tea. I love coffee. I love beef stroganoff (both making it and eating it). I love sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, pear and ginger pie, or any homemade fruit pie even though I can almost never eat pies any more. I love lamb stew. I love my husband’s solstice cake². I love homemade vanilla and the many wonderful things I can make with it. I love cooking veal scallopini (and not just because when I open a bottle of wine to cook with I need to drink the rest of the bottle). I love very rare steak. I love a nice Old Fashioned made with really good bourbon. I also love a lot of what some people call froo-froo cocktails. I love homemade ginger bread.

And yes, sometimes, I like to spice things with a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspace, and cloves. Because those spices tastes incredibly delicious on many foods.

As autumn approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, we see the unveiling of the many snarky and condescending memes and social media posts about pumpkin spice. And one of the things that really amuses me about them are the large number of them who seem to think that the drinks and foods and such are pumpkin flavored.

Pumpkin spice lattes do not taste like pumpkin. They taste like coffee, steamed milk, and cinnamon. It’s not pumpkin, guys, it’s pumpkin spice, specifically, the spices that are traditionally used in pumpkin pie. It’s spices—you know, those substances whose entire existence in our culture is to be added in small quantities to various edible things to make them taste better? It isn’t something weird or new-fangled or unnatural. They are spices.

If you don’t happen to like cinnamon and so forth, that’s fine. But there is no reason to go hating or shaming other people who do. And I find it particularly irritating when I see it being done by the kinds of guys who are really into craft beers, or who want bacon on everything, or who buy up the various winter ales/holiday beers as soon as they show up in stores. All of these foods and beverages are things that some people really like, other people could take or leave, and other people dislike. It’s no big deal.

I know that you don’t think you’re being an asshole. You think your clever meme about guys dressing up in pumpkins to attract the ladies is funny. I totally get it. There are foods and drinks that I despise, and sometimes I describe my dislike for them in rather extreme terms⁴. But just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean that it is inherently inferior to other things.

But your hating on pumpkin spice and your shaming of people who like it? That totally makes you an asshole. If you make fun of other people for liking cinnamon, you are a douche, an idiot, an asshole, and a petty insecure hypocrite.

You don’t have to buy any of the pumpkin spice things on the market. Their existence neither hurts you nor causes you harm. So chill. Relax. Let it go and stop hating on some spices. Unless you like being known widely as a prick.

Footnotes:

1. He makes the most amazing soup. One time when word got out that he was making chicken soup for a writing meeting we were hosting, one pair of friends changed their travel plans so they can attend for the soup. That’s how good it is.

2. It’s a cake he invented when he was tired of people always hating on fruit cake, so he concocted a way to turn pineapple, apricots, figs, and a bunch of fruit into a puree and then cook it in a way that people think they are just eating fluffy golden sponge cake. One year he made a bunch of them that we served at our Christmas party, took to some other people’s gatherings, and he took two into his work. The cakes were so good, that two of the people at his workplace got into a literal fist fight over the last slice of the cake. And the company instituted a rule that Michael couldn’t bring in home baked good any more, for fear it would happen again³.

3. Just more proof that I am the luckiest person in the world, because that amazing man is my husband!

4. For instance, raisins. I hate them⁵. I often call them Satanic Fruit.

5. Seriously, they taste so vile that I almost vomit with I get some in my mouth. It took several years to get to the point where I could stop that reaction and just find a napkin to put the the stuff in⁶.

6. And I have a history of this. When I was a toddler, the doctor wasn’t happy with some of my blood tests, and told my mom to feed me something like an ounce of raisins a day for nutritional purposes. My poor mom tried. I violently spit them out, cried, pushed her hands away, et cetera. She tried hiding them in other foods, soaking them in water, soaking rhem in apple juice, cooking them in various ways, and so forth. And every time I spit out the raisins. I would eat the other stuff around them, but I spit out the raisins again and again. Finally, Mom called the doctor’s office to say that I absolutely refused to eat the raisins. They started listing other foods that would take care of the nutritional deficiency they were worried about. When they got way down on the list and mentioned liver, Mom interrupted: “Liver! Why didn’t you say so, he loves liver!⁷” And she hung up the phone and headed to the store.

7. She knew I loved liver because my dad also liked liver, so just about every pay day they would splurge on some liver and Mom would cook up a mess of liver and onions for my dad. And at some point Dad offered me some and I gobbled it down and wanted more⁸.

8. I know lots of people hate liver, and that’s fine. May taste buds are different from yours. Raisins probably don’t make you gag because your taste buds are different. That’s okay. You can have my share of the world raisin supply. I’ll take your share of the world liver supply. We’ll all be happy, right?

Of the dead, speak nothing but truth… or, I refuse to whitewash this sepulcher

September 3, 2018newshistory, politics, republicans, rightwing, wingnutsfontfolly

This was a John McCain campaign ad, approved by him, run by his campaign. Many times. Do not call him the savior of the Affordable Care Act. — This was a John McCain campaign ad, approved by him, run by his campaign. Many times. “Leading the fight to stop Obamacare.” Do not call him the savior of the Affordable Care Act.

Lots of people repeat the very bad translation of an ancient proverb, thinking that it is rude or crass to say anything in the slightest bit negative about someone who has died. But that isn’t what the proverb actually meant in the original language. It didn’t say never say bad things about the dead, what it actually said was, “Of the dead, speak nothing but truth.” Don’t tell lies about the dead, but there is nothing wrong with saying truthful things that are less than flattering.

So, I am not here to say false things about John McCain, I am here to speak truth, a truth that absolutely contradicts most of the stuff people are trying to say about him.

First of all, he was not a maverick. He was not a loose cannon who stood up to President Trump. He said some things that condemned some of Trump’s worst lies and distortions and most hateful statements, and then he turned around and in every case except two, voted in favor of the evil, hateful laws that Trump wanted and the corrupt unqualified people Trump nominated.

And this is something that McCain did for his entire political career. At certain strategic moments he would verbally disagree with some of the most extreme statements of his fellow Republicans, but then nine times out of ten he voted in favor of the very policies that people think he opposed.

As an example of this theme, let’s look at the Affordable Care Act, often called “ObamaCare” (though a more accurate name would be RomenyCare, because it was virtually identical to the health care system that Mitt Romney signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts). Many people like to focus on McCain’s dramatic vote against the attempted repeal after Trump took office. First, this ignores the more than 50 times that McCain voted to repeal the law during the six years prior to Cadet Bonespur occupying the White House. McCain opposed it when it was initially proposed. He voted to repeal it more than 50 times. He bragged about voting to repeal it. He mentioned his opposition to it in numerous re-election campaign ads. He fundraised for both his re-election campaign and multiple Political Action Committees on his pledge to repeal it. For a bit more than six years McCain was opposed to Obamacare.

There are people who try to spin his decision to switch sides and stop the repeal of Obamacare are the result of newfound compassion due to his own health care crisis. First, is statement when he cast the vote doesn’t support that interpretation. He said he was opposed to repealing it without going through proper hearings about the impact of the repeal.

And think about what was going on. His own constituents (and thousands of other people outside Arizona) were calling his office and begging him to spare their lives. Voters were begging for the health care coverage of their loves ones. They were begging. And they had been for some time. Every time the Republicans had brought up repeal before, the devastating cost, including the tens of thousands of people who would die needlessly because of the repeal in the first few years was explained. They had the facts and figures. They knew what it meant.

And John drew it out dramatically until the last moment, swooping in with maximum press attention to save the day.

It was the moral equivalent of holding a gun to head head of someone’s sick grandmother or child saying, “It would be a shame if something happened to them,” then pulling the gun away at the last moment and saying, “All right, I won’t kill you today.”

And he expected to be treated like a hero for doing not pulling the trigger.

The primary way that a senator influences policy is with their vote. And if you look at John McCain’s voting record, it does not paint a picture of a hero. He opposed gay rights at every opportunity. He voted against adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes for anti-discrimination laws and hate crimes. He voted against the federal government recognizing civil unions or marriage of queer people if states enacted it. He voted against allowing queer people to service opening in the military. None of those votes makes him a maverick among Republicans. And it shows a clear bias against my rights under the law.

Another way a senator can influence the policy is decided which party to caucus with. No matter what party the senator belongs to or was elected under, they can choose to caucus with either party. Doing so changes who makes decisions about what is voted on and when. If John McCain had truly been opposed to Trump’s policies, he could had caucused with the democrats. It would only have taken three Republican senators doing that to stop most of Trump’s agenda in its tracks. That would have been the actions of an independent-minded senator putting loyalty to the country ahead of party.

He didn’t do that. Despite the fact that many constituents were writing and calling his office and begging him to do so.

John McCain served his country for most of his adult life. He served in the Navy as a pilot during the Vietnam War until he was shot down and capture. He spent a long time in a prisoner of war camp and was tortured. I don’t dispute his service or his patriotism displayed at that time. I’m not one of the crackpots who try to claim he was a war criminal or traitor because of some of his actions to being tortured.

While he had been a prisoner of war, his wife had been in a horrific car accident. She was required 26 surgeries over a six month period to recover. Once she was able to leave the hospital, she needed assistance to walk, but she resumed caring for their three children. Six years after returning from Vietnam, McCain started an affair with a much younger (and wealthy) woman. He divorced his wife, moved to Arizona, married the younger woman, and then started campaigning for Congress. It has always amazed me how the party that embraced the Moral Majority and calls itself the Family Values party embraces men who cheat on their wives, leave those wives for the younger women, and insist that the men are honorable and upstanding men.

Yeah, life is complicated and people are imperfect. I’m not saying that he was a monster. But he wasn’t a hero in his political life. He voted for and enabled racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic policies. He enabled a corrupt and probably treasonous administration to push this country a long way toward being a fascist autocracy. And he wasn’t a hero in his personal life. He was a man. Not a great man, merely a man.

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like unto whitewashed sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
—Matthew 23:27

John McCain giving a thumbs up. The words: “I got my healthcare! Good luck affording yours” over the image. — (click to embiggen)

Three-day Weekend Update: Words and Images

September 2, 2018newsnews, politics, religious right, wingnutsfontfolly

I frequently save memes, cartoons, and the like to use as an illustration for a blog post or Friday Five. I always gather a lot more than I can actually use, so every now and then I share some the I didn’t use.

“Two people you should never trust: A religious leader who tells you how to vote, and a politician who tells you how to pray.” — Very important advice to remember. (Click to embiggen)

“1. 92 year old former President working for free to make the world a better place. 2. A cult leader charging the US $3million a weekend so he can golf.” — Jimmy Carter remains one of my heroes. Even though he lost the re-election, I’m still proud that the first time I voted in a Presidential election it was for Carter. If only he had won that time, the world would be a better place… And in case I’m not being clear, Ronald Reagan pushed the Republican party harder to racism, misogyny, and sectarianism than it had been, setting the stage for Trumpism. (Click to embiggen)

A rich man standing on a literal mountain of money points aa finger accusingliy at a woman on the ground holding a sign the says “Raise the minimum wage.” Rich man is yelling “Your greed is hurting the economy.” — It is truly frightening how not just the rich, but most everyone else, has forgotten that the secret to financial success for a corporation and the nation it inhabits is to insure that the workers can afford to buy all those goods and services the corporations are selling. (Click to embiggen)

Breaking News: Aliens announce this morning that they will NOT pay from Trump's Space Force. — Sometimes the stupidity of Cadet Bonespur is mind boggling… (Click to embiggen)

Cartoon of Trump holding a hammer and standing near Jesus, nailed to a cross. Trump says, “I don't like loser.” — I wish I could be surprised at how thoroughly the religious right has embraced an evil, hateful, lying, cheater traitor. But I grew up in that community, and racism is a fundamental part of that culture. (Click to embiggen)

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” — Speaking of misusing religion… (click to embiggen)

Man holding sign which reads “Southern Hospitality means welcoming immigrants.” — …and so do the teaching so Christ and the underlying principle of the U.S.A. (Click to embiggen)

And to try to end on a more happy note… (Click to embiggen)

Friday Five (back to basics edition)

August 31, 2018bloggingfriday, friday links, links, newsfontfolly

It’s Friday! The fifth Friday in August. Wow!

I was very tempted, since this is a fifth Friday, to do five sets of five types of stories. Except that the last several weeks I’ve been doing between two and four sets of five links, which is really stretching the concept. It’s also anti-thetical to the reason I switched from calling my weekly round up “Friday Links” and starting calling it “Friday Five.” Yes, I have bookmarked a bunch of news stories this week, but making myself narrow it down to only five stories and five videos means I spend a lot less time prepping this post than I used to.

Which brings us to the Friday Five: the top five (IMHO) stories of the week, the top five videos, notable obituaries (plus my blog posts).

Stories of the Week:

Medieval gaming board clue to lost monastery.

The Alternative Nobel Prize in Literature Shortlist Is Here.

The desert snail at once awoke and found himself famous.

DNA Tests Quietly Reinforce Terrible and Scientifically Inaccurate Concepts of “Ethnicity”.

Queens has more languages than anywhere in the world — here’s where they’re found.

In Memoriam:

Miriam Nelson, 98, Golden Age Dancer and Choreographer, Dies.

Fredd Wayne, Who Played Benjamin Franklin on ‘Bewitched,’ Dies at 93.

In Memoriam Dieter Thomas Heck.

Neil Simon, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, dies at 91.

Things I wrote:

A great man died this weekend… farewell, Neil Simon.