US authorities have released footage which shows an Arkansas police officer pleading for his life before he was fatally shot during an incident last year.
Footage captured by a dashboard camera in the police vehicle shows how the tragic events unfolded during a routine stop in April 2011.
Trumann police officer Jonathan Schmidt and his colleague Corey Overstreet pulled over a car on suspicion of it being uninsured. The driver was handcuffed and questioned. Mr Schmidt then opened the rear left door to the vehicle where Jerry Lard was sitting. Lard opened fire on the officer, shooting at his face.
He then ran from the car, continuing to shoot at the two officers as he yelled, "What you got b----?"
In the 20-minute long video, Mr Schmidt can be heard pleading with Lard off-camera: "Please don't shoot me. Please don't shoot me again."
The madman who gunned down Sikh worshippers blew his own brains out after he was blasted in the gut by a crack-shot Wisconsin cop, the FBI said yesterday.RTWT.
“I’ve seen the video — it was an amazing shot. And thank goodness,” FBI Special Agent Teresa Carlson said.
The unidentified Oak Creek officer hit racist Wade Michael Page in the stomach, “thereby neutralizing the threat,” Carlson said.
“Subsequent to that wound, it appears that Page died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”
Cops first thought the 40-year-old white supremacist was killed in a hail of police bullets after he murdered six Sikh temple members and wounded two others.
But video of a portion of Sunday’s bloodbath shows Page killing himself with a Springfield Armory 9mm semiautomatic he’d bought about a week before the rampage. Carlson said she didn’t know if the cop’s shot would have been enough to kill Page, who had pumped up to nine rounds into Brooklyn-born Oak Creek Police Lt. Brian Murphy.
Murphy is up and walking around his hospital room as he continues to make a miraculous recovery, Carlson said.
The feds are developing theories but may never know for sure why the hard-drinking, unemployed US Army veteran chose to attack total strangers in a holy place.
“We’re trying to piece together, and eventually we will piece together, as much as we can,” said Steven Conley, assistant agent in charge of national security for the FBI in Milwaukee.
The whispering over Mitt Romney's choice of a running mate is getting louder, and along with it we are being treated to the sotto voce angst of the GOP establishment: Whatever else Mitt does, he wouldn't dare pick Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, would he?Pawlenty and Portman? Meh. Rubio would be exciting, but so too would Ryan. I'd personally love a wonky running-mate. We could use some serious discussions about things.
Too risky, goes the Beltway chorus. His selection would make Medicare and the House budget the issue, not the economy. The 42-year-old is too young, too wonky, too, you know, serious. Beneath it all you can hear the murmurs of the ultimate Washington insult—that Mr. Ryan is too dangerous because he thinks politics is about things that matter. That dude really believes in something, and we certainly can't have that.
All of which highly recommend him for the job.
We have nothing against the other men Mr. Romney is said to be still closely considering. Tim Pawlenty twice won the governorship of Minnesota, the second time in the horrible GOP year of 2006. His working-class roots and middle American values would counter the stereotype of Mr. Romney as too rich and disconnected to average concerns. The media would say he's another middle-aged white male, just like Mitt, but he'd certainly be a safe, mature choice.
Ohio Senator Rob Portman is well respected nearly everywhere for his thoughtful, disciplined brand of conservative politics....
Marco Rubio would be a somewhat riskier choice given that he is new to the national scene and has less Washington experience. But he's a tea party favorite who would energize the GOP base while also signaling Mr. Romney's outreach to Hispanic voters...
Team Obama knows that the hollow man from 2008 is a real candidate now, and that he is not a particularly good one. They have seen him up close more than the rest of us have, and they know that he is an ideologue incapable of real leadership. But they have to keep him in power to keep themselves in power.Plus, at Power Line, "HAS THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN FINALLY GONE TOO FAR?"
The “Mitt killed my wife!” ad isn’t about truth. Bill Burton & co did enough research to find Mr. Joe Soptic. They did enough research to craft an ad from the man’s sad story. They did enough research to know that Mrs. Soptic died seven years after Romney left Bain, they know that Bain tried to save GST, and they know that an Obama bundler was the person who ultimately shut GST down. They did the research, they brought the ad forward, and they know more than any of the fact-checkers know, that the ad is a lie.
And they don’t care.
The ad is out there. The uninformed are seeing it in their facebook feeds, twinned up with the latest from MoveOn or whichever smear group is running in parallel today. People will see the ad, and most of them will not see the CNN, PolitiFact or Washington Post fact-checks that declare the ad a total fraud. Out in the wild, the ad is intended do its job of toxifying Romney just enough to peel off a few of his voters and ramp up hate for him among Obama’s voters. That’s the point of the ad, not to tell anything that’s true, but just to stir the pot, sully Romney and depress his potential vote.
As I wrote yesterday, we’re dealing with something in the Obama campaign that we haven’t seen much at the top of American life, except in the worst moments of the Clinton era. We’re dealing with a president who is entirely without any sense of ethics, honor or morals. He has lived a lie for most if not all of his life, hiding his true political convictions in gauzy language that makes him appear reasonable and moderate. Having lived a lie, what’s one more lie, in the service of keeping himself in power? What’s one more lie if, in Obama’s mind, it accomplishes the “good” of keeping Romney out of power?
The danger for the Obama camp is that they risk going over a tipping point...
Wine bottles featuring Adolf Hitler on the label have been called "offensive" after complaints from US tourists in the Italian city of Garda.Continue reading.
Michael Hirsch, a lawyer from Philadelphia, complained to local media after he found a supermarket near his hotel was stocking wine bottles with Hitler in various poses and another bottle featuring an image of Pope John Paul II.
"It is very shocking and startling to us," Mr Hirsch told The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. "We would think of it as neo-Nazism It makes you wonder about the sympathies of the local people."
One bottle features Hitler with his arm raised in the Nazi, another is labelled 'Mein Kampf" and another was labelled "Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" (one people, one empire, one Fuhrer), Mr Hirsch said.
Local prosecutors said they have opened an inquiry into the sale of the wine bottles.
What if not winning a gold medal in the Olympics meant being cast out of society and forced into a labor camp when you returned home from London?Continue reading.
Such is the fate awaiting some North Korean athletes who fail to bring home medals. Adding insult to injury, the athletes are actually forced into training at a young age by the Communist Party’s Sports Committee.
While North Koreans are dedicating their wins to their “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-un, the fear of failure terrifyingly fuels the drive to win.
Medal winners will return home to prize money, cars, and other lavish gifts as the government demonstrates its appreciation for illuminating North Korea positively on the world stage. Gold medalist Kim Un-Guk, who set an Olympic record in 62-kilogram weightlifting this year, said he “won first place because the shining Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un gave me power and courage,” according to ABC News.
LONDON — As Australia’s Sally Pearson sailed over hurdle after hurdle Tuesday, a crowd of 80,000 at Olympic Stadium erupted in a roar, but she said she could not hear a thing.RTWT.
It was like she was racing the 100-meter hurdles by herself, churning her legs in silence as the finish line grew near. So when she turned to see Dawn Harper of the United States next to her as they crossed the finish, it startled her.
“Wow, she’s really close,” Pearson recalled thinking. “Did she come first?”
Deep down, though, Pearson said she knew the gold medal was hers. And she was right. She saw her name pop up on the scoreboard and collapsed to the track that was moist with rain, sobbed and let the moment sink in.
“I’ve got every title now that I’ve ever wanted to win,” she said.
Pearson set an Olympic record with her time of 12.35 seconds, and Harper was right behind her in 12.37 to win the silver medal. Kellie Wells of the United States, who finished in 12.48 seconds, won the bronze. Lolo Jones, also of the United States, was fourth.
The president’s ‘Romney Hood’ strategy is clever, but his argument for raising taxes on the rich is a social-justice ‘fairness’ one rather than an economic one—which Americans may see as socialism.
As he escalates his class war re-election campaign, President Obama has taken to calling Mitt Romney's economic plan "Robin Hood in reverse" or "Romney Hood." The charge is that even though Mr. Romney is proposing to cut tax rates for everybody across the board, Mr. Romney will finance this by imposing a tax increase on the middle class. His evidence is a single study by the Tax Policy Center, a liberal think tank that has long opposed cutting income tax rates.Continue reading.
The political left always says Daddy Warbucks gets all the tax-cut money. So this is hardly news, except that the media are treating this joint Brookings Institution and Urban Institute analysis as if it's nonpartisan gospel. In fact, it's a highly ideological tract based on false assumptions, incomplete data and dishonest analysis. In other words, it is custom made for the Obama campaign.
By the way, even the Tax Policy Center admits that "we do not score Governor Romney's plan directly as certain components of his plan are not specified in sufficient detail." But no matter, the study plows ahead to analyze features of the Romney plan that aren't even in it.
Troops, jets kill terrorists, destroy armored cars after Sinai attack that killed 16 Egyptian border guards. Earlier, armed men, security forces clashed at Sinai checkpoints.
LONDON -- It was a historic Olympics for the U.S. gymnastics team and a puzzling one. Just ask Aly Raisman. On the final day of competition, Raisman, the team captain and its most consistent performer, overshadowed Gabby Douglas, the star, and Jordyn Wieber, the star-crossed.More at that top link.
For Raisman, who will leave with three medals, the most of any U.S. gymnast, these Games were a jumble of emotions.
There was joy: Raisman became the first U.S. woman to win a gold in floor exercise after she performed what she called the best routine of her life Tuesday, to the music of "Hava Nagila."
"To have it be at the Olympic Games, in the finals, is just really amazing and just a dream come true," she said. "That's what you work for your whole life." This, after the U.S. won the team gold for the first time since 1996.
.@rsmccain, I know you're digging water polo, but I'll tell ya, Russia's Aliya Mustafina was sweet on uneven bars.#Olympics
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 7, 2012
Marvin Hamlisch, the stage and film composer who created the memorable songs for "A Chorus Line," has died at 68. The composer died on Monday in Los Angeles after collapsing from a brief illness, his family said in a statement.
One of the most decorated composers in entertainment, Hamlisch had won a Tony Award, three Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Hamlisch was still active just weeks ago. In his role as lead conductor of the Pasadena Pops, he conducted a July 21 concert at the Los Angeles Arboretum with Michael Feinstein....
In Hollywood, Hamlisch wrote music for the movies "The Way We Were," "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Sophie's Choice." In recent years, he teamed with director Steven Soderbergh on "The Informant!" and the upcoming "Behind the Candelabra," a biopic of Liberace.
LONDON — In the end, the most hyped Olympian was also the most alone.Continue reading.
Lolo Jones finished the 100-meter hurdles in a desperate lunge, stood by the finish line staring up at an Olympic Stadium scoreboard that registered a fourth-place finish and then slowly walked away.
She didn't stick around to congratulate the two medal-winning Americans, both of whom had questioned her enormous pre-race publicity. She didn't hang out to schmooze with fans who have increasingly questioned her sincerity. The cloudy and cool London skies broke into a steady drizzle as she walked into a tunnel and fought back tears.
"I guess all the people who were talking about me, they can have their night and laugh about me," she said.
It's a nasty business, this Olympic star-making machine. These athletes have one chance every four years to rake in the real gold, the endorsement and appearance money that helps compensate them for years of training. Most agree they would be fools to turn down that chance to capitalize on their success and enhance the quality of their often budget-strained lives.
Yet when Olympic athletes seek and embrace this publicity, they are criticized unless they have the medals to back it up. We chuckle at a guy like Terrell Owens working the system even though he has never won a Super Bowl, but heaven forbid an Olympian does the same thing, and shame on that Olympian if she is a woman.
In the middle of this double standard is where Lolo Jones found herself awkwardly standing Tuesday after, once again, her performance did not back up her buzz.
"I'm really disappointed in myself, and I felt like I let a lot of people down," she said, fighting back tears. "I just feel like a big disappointment."
The way she was viewed by many, anything less than a gold medal followed by a marriage proposal from Tim Tebow followed by a pole dance would have been a disappointment.
Jones entered these Olympics as a Time magazine cover girl, a partially nude ESPN model and Jay Leno's guest. She was an empathetic figure after losing a gold medal in 2008 in Bejing when she hit the penultimate hurdle in the final. She was an embraceable figure after sharing a background that include living in a Des Moines Salvation Army church basement. And, of course, to many she was a sexy figure with her good looks and openness that included talking about her virginity at age 30.
Put it another way: This was the only Olympian who went on national television and wondered about asking Tebow for a date...
Needless to say, the MSM and left-blogosphere have concluded the shooter was a white supremacist/neo-Nazi based on tattoos and being a former member of what they describe as a “skinhead” band — which they then obscenely generalize to be “right-wing,” a way of trying to link him to the political right. This is the age-old tactic. If Page was a white supremacist/neo-Nazi/skinhead, then he stood against everything the political right stands for.That's not a problem, per se, to locate Page on the "far-right." Conservatives routinely use the term "far-left" in referring to hardcore progressive radicals and neo-communists. The left-right ideological spectrum has been used that way for over 200 years, since the French National Assembly --- after the toppling of the Ancien Régime --- arrayed political factions from the radicals (on the left) to the reactionaries (on the right). While folks can question that seating arrangement as arbitrary and historically isolated (time-bound), nevertheless since then talk of modern political ideology has employed that left-right axis.
The "Leninist compromise" created a federal system that granted political-administrative recognition and the symbols of nationhood to a number of national groups (whose historical homelands now became nominally sovereign republics within the U.S.S.R.) and committed itself to the development of their national languages and cultures. At the same time, it was built around a highly centralized and increasingly authoritarian party organization imbued with a radically internationalist ideology.Notice the stress at the last paragraph on the priority of Russian dominance as the key to Soviet nationalities policy. But that's more a political development more than an ideological one. The Soviets, for example, sought to assimilate Jews not as a religious group but as a national one. The Soviets even tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a Jewish national homeland within the Soviet Union, called the Jewish Autonomous Province (Oblast). In Russia today the entity is known as the Jewish Autonomous Region.
A fundamental tension was thus built into the Soviet system from its very origins: the federal structure offered an organizational framework and political legitimacy for the protection and advancement of the interests of national groups, but at the same time Soviet ideology anticipated the ultimate dissolution of national attachments and loyalties and sought the creation of an integrated political and economic community based on universal Soviet citizenship. What balance to strike between these two orientations has remained an enduring dilemma in Soviet politics.
The Stalin era was marked by a dramatic shift toward greater centralization, cultural Russification and the repression of non-Russian national elites. The rights of republics and autonomous regions were whittled away, their boundaries arbitrarily redrawn, and the populations of some liquidated or forcibly resettled during World War II, as in the cases of Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechen-Ingush, Volga Germans and Meskhetian Georgians. National histories were rewritten to emphasize the progressive character of Russian imperialism, and criticism of Great Russian chauvinism came to an end. Central economic ministries treated the entire territory of the U.S.S.R. as a single complex, establishing new industries and relocating workers without concern for republic boundaries. The cultivation of national languages and cultures was replaced by a process of Sovietization that was sometimes indistinguishable from Russification. The imperial features of the Soviet system were further strengthened during World War II with the forcible annexation of the Baltic states, the western Ukraine and Byelorussia, and part of Moldavia.
Fascism ... was a new invention created afresh for the era of mass politics. It sought to appeal mainly to the emotions by the use of ritual, carefully stage-managed ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric. The role programs and doctrine play in it is, on closer inspection, fundamentally unlike the role they play in conservatism, liberalism, and socialism. Fascism does not rest explicitly upon an elaborated philosophicalsystem, but rather upon popular feelings about master races, their unjust lot, and their rightful predominance over inferior peoples. It has not beengiven intellectual underpinnings by any system builder, like Marx, or by any major critical intelligence, like Mill, Burke, or Tocqueville.The emphasis on collective salvation is key to fascism, as it's an ideology that fetishizes the state. And in that sense, in contemporary American politics, it's the hard-left that venerates the state over the individual. The left romanticizes state power, and the natural tendency of that ideology is to suppress deviations from the approved collective program. We see it time and again, in the neo-statist programs of the Obama administration and in the social policy fascism of the left's homosexual rights agenda. You can't step out of line. Further, that strain on the left departs radically from the constitutional liberalism (libertarianism) of the tea party.
In a way utterly unlike the classical “isms," the rightness of fascism does not depend on the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name.Fascism is “true" insofar as it helps fulfill the destiny of a chosen race or people or blood, locked with other peoples in a Darwinian struggle, and notin the light of some abstract and universal reason. The first fascists were entirely frank about this.
We [Fascists] don’t think ideology is a problem that is resolved in such a way that truth is seated on a throne. But, in that case, does fighting for an ideology mean fighting for mere appearances? No doubt, unless one considers it according to its unique and efficacious psychological-historical value. The truth of an ideology lies in its capacity to set in motion our capacity for ideals and action. Its truth is absolute insofar as,living within us, it suffices to exhaust those capacities [A. Bertele].The truth was whatever permitted the new fascist man (and woman) to dominate others, and whatever made the chosen people triumph.Fascism rested not upon the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion related toromanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise denied romanticism’sexaltation of unfettered personal creativity.
The fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of politics that they would experiencesensually: the warmth of belonging to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power; the excitement of participating in a vast collective enterprise; the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings, and of sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill of domination. Fascism’s deliberate replacement of reasoned debate with immediate sensual experience transformed politics as the exiled German cultural critic Walter Benjamin was the first to point out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate fascist aesthetic experience,Benjamin warned in 1936, was war.
WIL WHEATON, The Geek Who Hates? Just ask Sheldon Cooper.Jimmie has a few tweets explaining things.
UPDATE: WTF? The Sundries Shack is now showing “account suspended.”
The Department of Homeland Security warned us about the likes of Wade Michael Page, the alleged gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc.WaPo even embeds the report at that piece. And that trash report was widely condemned at the time, as bad research and abject political trash. Notice how it's sure coming in handy now.
In an April 2009 report , entitled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” DHS warned that “lone wolves . . . embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.” It went on to say that “white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers warning efforts.” And it noted that military expertise and knowledge made lone wolves especially dangerous.
I have covered DHS for many years and am quite familiar with past assessments they and the FBI have done on animal rights terrorists and environmental terrorists. But those past reports have always been very specific in identifying the exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorism, i.e., the ALF, ELF, and Stop Huntingdon wackos who have engaged in physical harassment, arson, vandalism, and worse against pharmaceutical companies, farms, labs, and university researchers.The issue isn't so much that there's are far-right reactionary ideologies. It's the double standard that progressives employ to destroy the American right by falsely equating libertarian-conservatives with the 20th century racist ideologies of pre-WWII Europe.
By contrast, the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.
In Obama land, there are no coincidences. It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs (check this one out comparing the Tea Party movement to the Weather Underground!) and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.
She's always been one to jump on the latest diet bandwagon, whether its working up a sweat at bootcamp or promoting a slimming shake.Great pictures at the link. My wife even likes 'em!
But Kim Kardashian's latest get in shape plan is an invention all of her own - the 'sex diet'.
As the reality star showed off her beach ready curves in Miami it emerged that she had honed them with the help of boyfriend Kanye West.
When the Democratic Party announced that Bill Clinton would deliver a prime-time speech at its convention in early Septem ber, convention head Antonio Villaraigosa left no doubt as to why.Continue reading.
"President Clinton oversaw the longest economic expansion in U.S. history," he said, "pursuing many of the same policies that President Obama is proposing and implementing today."
That's a message Obama has been delivering himself — repeatedly — at campaign stops as he tries to make an argument for a second term amid a historically sluggish economic recovery.
"Just like their theories have been tested and didn't work," he said, "my theories have been tested. The last time they were tried was by a guy named Bill Clinton. And we created 23 million new jobs, went from deficits to surplus."
But a review of the record shows that Obama's policies — enacted or proposed — bear little resemblance to those adopted by Clinton during his eight years.
Here's a rundown...
As good as it feels to have politicians telling Chick-Fil-A to get lost, it's actually not okay bit.ly/MMeAUo#p2#lgbt
— Evan Hurst (@EvanHurst) July 26, 2012
@evanhurst What became of this honest post about the Boston and Chicago elected officials bad response to chickfila?#disappeardapointed
— J. Casper (@repsac3) July 28, 2012
@evanhurst Would love a copy, thanks. Reader commentary below--both 4 & against--was good, too. Pulling it was BAD, imo. Tell the bosses.
— J. Casper (@repsac3) July 29, 2012
@evanhurst Just occurred to me you may need an e-mail address to pass along the Chickfila article: repsac3blogs@gmail.com Thanks again...
— J. Casper (@repsac3) July 29, 2012
@evanhurst It's been over 24 hours, so I wanted to be sure you saw the response tweet: Yes, I'd love a copy. repsac3blogs@gmail.com
— J. Casper (@repsac3) July 30, 2012
@evanhurst So... should I assume you've changed your mind about sending me a copy of the CfA post, or have you just been busy?
— J. Casper (@repsac3) August 1, 2012
@evanhurst Still hoping you'll send me that ChickfilA article, if you're not too busy... You did offer... repsac3blogs@gmail.com
— J. Casper (@repsac3) August 2, 2012
@evanhurst I'm guessing you changed your mind about sending me a copy of the disappeared CfA post. Little disappointed about that, but --->
— J. Casper (@repsac3) August 3, 2012
@evanhurst ---> VERY disappointed that you refused to answer my tweets for the last 3-4 days and just say so. Dig your writing, still, but..
— J. Casper (@repsac3) August 3, 2012
@evanhurst then consider my bad thoughts about you (expressed and otherwise) rescinded. Look forward to reading it again...
— J. Casper (@repsac3) August 4, 2012
@evanhurst Just a reminder: Chick-fil-A post to repsac3blogs@gmail.com Thank you.
— J. Casper (@repsac3) August 6, 2012
I’ll leave the vulgar politicization of this evil massacre to others. The usual suspects are in full-blown Blame Righty Syndrome mode. They are as ghoulish and galling as the disgusting Westboro publicity hounds.And right on cue, No More Mr. Nice Blog smears conservatives for the actions of a purported neo-Nazi, from the comments:
Unfortunately, a la McVeigh at al., the MSM won't for the most part draw the connection between this killer on the one hand, and the whole hate-thy-political/cultural/religious/racial-enemy toxicity that has permeated the Right's rhetoric for decades, on the other hand. I personally think the connection is indisputable and glaringly obvious, but so what?That is disgusting.
Neat how#WI shooting called "domestic terrorism" so soon. After Ft. Hood we were told by DHS that it wasn't terrorism just "isolated" case.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 6, 2012
Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother’s biological children, I was the only child who experienced childhood without my father being around.Continue reading.
After my mother’s partner’s children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died at the age of 53. I was 19. In other words, I was the only child who experienced life under “gay parenting” as that term is understood today.
Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.
Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.
My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms.
Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models. They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures. These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.
I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers. As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily. Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home. Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.
It is unfortunate that this man had been ill-served by his upbringing. I find myself discussing with same-sex marriage advocates about the issues of gender and how men and women are just not fungible. The advocates all fall back on that any differences between the sexes are “social constructs” nothing more. Even when I have brought up the fact that there have been widely different societies throughout history, but the male/female paradigm has remained constant (even if the numbers of partners within a marriage has not) … I actually got the jaw-dropping response that all that proved was “millennium of bigotry.”Well, you're not supposed to deviate from the accepted narrative.
Same-sex couples regardless of legal status, do commit and do have children. They will not do their off-spring any favors in buying into the myth that gender can be ignored.
I remember the day I was at Harrods, ordering white carpet for John and Yoko. It was to be specially made from natural unbleached wool on extra large looms in China. Another day, on a trip to town, I found white marble Empire mantelpieces.Continue reading.
One of my favourite finds was a Queen Anne Chinoiserie desk for John. In their bathroom, they wanted a gigantic circular tub. We considered willow-pattern antique toilets, but settled on modern.
John wanted a bed like a turntable for Tittenhurst, their Berkshire mansion, so we ordered a circular one. An army of people was established to accomplish all these and 1,000 other tasks.
I lived with Yoko and Lennon for four years; an insider witnessing their love affair and the break-up of The Beatles. I can still see the vivid cast that surrounded them: the stars, charlatans, groupies, politicians, sycophants, lawyers and hippies.
It was a time of absolute freedom, a time when everything changed. The world was turning on, tuning in and dropping out, and all to the beat of rock ’n’ roll....
I had an ongoing problem with heroin, needing it daily, but now I had to find it for John and Yoko too. I took the train into London every day to look for work and buy heroin for myself and for them.
Meanwhile, they were moving into Tittenhurst Park, their new 85-acre estate in Ascot with its mansion framed by lawns, stately trees and great walls of rhododendrons, camellias and azaleas.
By late 1969, John and Yoko spent most of their time in bed. They slept, ate, had sex, worked the phones, read the post, planned their next outing, and whatever else that made up their day. I would drop by to discuss what was going on or whatever needed their attention.
John was invariably sitting cross-legged on the bed strumming his acoustic guitar while Yoko took the lead in discussions. You always felt that Yoko and John had discussed things before you arrived and decided on what Yoko would say, while John appeared to be lost in his guitar...
SYRIAN regime warplanes have pounded rebel positions in second city Aleppo ahead of a threatened ground assault by more than 20,000 troops assembled around the commercial capital.
Iran appealed for help from governments with ties to the Syrian opposition in securing the release of 48 of its nationals seized from a bus in Damascus, as an Arabic news channel aired footage it said was of the Iranians in the hands of rebel captors who charged that their hostages were Revolutionary Guards.More at Telegraph UK, "Syria: battle lines drawn in Aleppo with 'main course' still to come."
A senior security official said Syria's army had completed its deployment of reinforcements to Aleppo, ready for a decisive showdown.
"The war is likely to be long, because there will have to be street battles in order to get rid of the terrorists," the source told AFP, declining to be named.
"All the reinforcements have arrived and they are surrounding the city," he said. "The army is ready to launch its offensive, but is awaiting orders."
