Prez in Gay Flip Flop Flap

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The headline is tongue-in-cheek. Last night, that’s what I predicted the New York Post’s headline would be. I had to put myself in the mindset of an alliterative Murdoch-paid wingnut headline author.  Instead, the Post went with a Travolta massage story. 

Yesterday, I wrote, 

Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place here. If he follows his head and comes out in support of same-sex marriage, he risks alienating a huge swath of the electorate – especially those in swing states. This is all about independent and undecided voters, and a vicious campaign based on a selective, phony reliance on obscure Biblical passages ensures that the homophobic drive to oppose same-sex marriage will continue to be strong, and risk Obama’s re-election. 

Unfortunately, this is the perfect opportunity for Obama to led on this particular issue. It’s a great chance for him to give one of those barn-burner, epic, historical speeches he’s known for where he appeals to people’s decency and common sense to try and change minds. 

Later that same day, President Obama said that he had come around to the opinion that, in his opinion, gay couples should be able to get married. This was a shift from his previous opinion – that civil unions would do the trick.  As we learned during the debate in New York over same sex marriage, civil unions don’t do the trick very much at all. 

I’ve seen lots of reaction over Obama’s change of opinion. Some Republicans accuse him of flip-flopping.  But that only works when the politician has changed his view to something safe.  I don’t think this is safe at all – I think it’s risky. This is not a poll-driven thing – this came up unexpectedly thanks to Joe Biden’s appearance on Meet the Press last weekend. The White House took only a few days to get its act together on it.  Mitt Romney reaffirmed his position that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, thus further alienating a particular population – something the Republican field (including Swiss-American Michele Bachmann) had been doing throughout this campaign. 

But it’s clear that Romney is a bit irked by the attention Obama’s getting. 

 

Some Republicans quip that Obama has become – at long last – a clone of Dick Cheney.  For Republicans, that would be valid were it true that Cheney’s view was the mainstream Republican position, but it isn’t.  But even though Obama’s statement in support of same sex marriage didn’t come right out and advocate for any change in legislation – state or federal – it’s a pretty big deal. And it’s quite risky. 

But one thing it might do for Obama is reignite youthful enthusiasm for his re-election. The acceptance of same sex marriage isn’t just geographical or philosophical – it’s generational. 

I don’t know whether Taibbi’s right about this race being a yawn-fest. At the very least, it’ll be fun to watch the Republicans begrudgingly fall behind one-size-fits-all Romney, and I’m sure the attacks on Obama will be as ridiculous as they will be ubiquitous. But Obama has many vulnerabilities, and it will be a test of Romney’s … “managerial” bona fides to see how he exploits that. 

Same-Sex Marriage as Civil Right (UPDATED)

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The Obama administration is floating trial balloons about same-sex marriage, but won’t just come out and endorse it. As a supporter of same-sex marriage, this is distressing to me, but being wishy-washy and floating trial balloons is a distinct improvement over the Romney camp’s outright refusal to consider the matter. What we’re learning is that attitudes toward same-sex marriage are evolving, reflecting Obama’s purported evolution on the matter. 

Except for Iowa, only northeastern states and territories (D.C.) recognize same-sex unions, while thirty states (!) have outright banned them – including North Carolina just yesterday. 

Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place here. If he follows his head and comes out in support of same-sex marriage, he risks alienating a huge swath of the electorate – especially those in swing states. This is all about independent and undecided voters, and a vicious campaign based on a selective, phony reliance on obscure Biblical passages ensures that the homophobic drive to oppose same-sex marriage will continue to be strong, and risk Obama’s re-election. 

Unfortunately, this is the perfect opportunity for Obama to led on this particular issue. It’s a great chance for him to give one of those barn-burner, epic, historical speeches he’s known for where he appeals to people’s decency and common sense to try and change minds. 

The bans on same-sex marriage that are based on referenda should all be challenged in federal court as unconstitutional denials of fundamental civil rights. This isn’t a state issue, either. Loving v. Virginia, which banned state anti-miscegenation laws, held that marriage can indeed be a federal issue, and our Constitution doesn’t permit states to deny rights to its citizens based on majority vote. 

After all, had we asked North Carolina in the 1950s what its citizens (well, the ones who had paid the racist poll tax – abolished by Constitutional Amendment in 1964) thought about Black kids attending integrated schools or the abolition of “separate but equal” accommodation for “coloreds”, there’d also have likely been a withholding of fundamental civil rights. 

One lawsuit over California’s Proposition 8 appears headed for Supreme Court review which, if it strikes down the result of that legislation, would apply not just in the 9th Circuit, but throughout the country. Perhaps this is what Obama is waiting for, but it’s a missed opportunity to lead on the civil rights issue of our time. 

UPDATE: Apparently, President Obama has personally come out in favor of same-sex marriage, although his statement falls short of outright advocacy for any sort of policy or federal legislation to codify it. 

An Evening With Guy Delisle

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Last week, I met Guy Delisle. 

His name may mean nothing to you, and his work is somewhat obscure and not as well-known as it should be, but I went way out of my way to attend an “Evening With” event held under the auspices of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival at a Toronto movie theater. It included a Q & A, a screening of a documentary called “The Delisle Chronicles“, and a book signing, courtesy of Toronto’s The Beguiling. 

Guy Delisle with UT Professor Nick Mount in Toronto May 3, 2012

My father first introduced me to Delisle’s work, when he gave me a copy of Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea as a Christmas gift. I was instantly hooked. Sure, I read comic books when I was a kid, graduating through to graphic novels when Art Spiegelman’s Maus was released in the early 90s, which showed a wide audience that comics didn’t have to be all fantasy and superheroes, but I wasn’t an aficionado by any stretch. What I am is a fan of travelogues, insightful, concise, observational writing, and countries so closed off from the rest of the world that they’re all but forbidden to visit.  Delisle’s bibliography is here, and his YouTube videos are here (including a small snippet from Delisle’s visit with a Bedouin family, which is discussed in his newest book). 

I’ve read and re-read Pyongyang many times, and have also read his other travelogues, the Burma Chronicles and Shenzhen . I enjoy tracking how Delisle’s maturation took him from doing animation gigs in eastern Asia as a single man, to accompanying his wife (with kid) to Burma for a year as part of her job with Doctors Without Borders. 

A few years ago, his wife’s work took them to Jerusalem for a year. They lived in Arab East Jerusalem, and his wife’s work took her to Gaza during a particularly tense period. Jerusalem is Delisle’s most ambitious travelogue work to date, and is broken up into chapters featuring particular observations he had during each month of their stay. 

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=buffalopundit-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1770460713&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

During his talk, Delisle explained how the character he uses for himself isn’t fully fleshed out, and represents only a portion of his personality. But he also noted that, except for North Korea, he went into each country as neutrally as he could. He had no preconceived notions of the situation on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, but in his own inimitable way, he explains what a horrible place it is, filled with both earnest and terrible people who all essentially practice some religious variant based on the same foundation, yet can’t figure out a reasonable way to co-exist. 

He is torn when confronted with the shopping options at a nearby settlement, but relents when he sees Arabs shopping there, as well. He’s astonished by the separation of Jews and Arabs in Hebron, where each population – unable or unwilling simply to coexist – clings to its particular victimization through past massacres by the other. 

Delisle left Canada about 25 years ago, and lives now with his wife and two children in the South of France. His wife has left her job with Doctors Without Borders, and they have no plans to live in any other third world or strife-ridden countries in the near future. To some degree, then, Jerusalem isn’t just something of an epic, but a coda. Delisle has taken to fatherhood and in his own self-deprecating, insightful way, has begun using that as a theme in his newer works.  During the Q and A I had asked him, now that they weren’t going on any extended third world stays, whether he might do a memoir of his pre-Shenzhen life.  He’s got an interesting story – kid from Quebec City goes to Toronto to learn animation, drops out to work for a Montreal studio and becomes an accomplished animator and accidental cartoonist. He said he did not, and that he was focusing instead on his life as a dad. 

Delisle signs my copy of "Jerusalem"

As for new books, there’s Louis à la plage, and Louis au ski, and I’m sure his younger daughter, Alice, will become the subject of a book or two, as well. He’s also started a series called “Bad Dad” with several entries at his website (in French, click on the images to see the full strip: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6).  

Delisle’s work isn’t as well-known in the US as it is in Canada, but he just concluded a month-long book tour of North America.  Through following his blog of his time in Jerusalem, I knew a book was in the works, and that I would buy it, but it never occurred to me that I might actually get to meet him, much less do so in a small audience and get there early enough to get a second-row seat. To say I geeked out over the whole thing would be an understatement. 

As I stood in line to have my books signed, a woman came by to tell us that Delisle would sign them all, but he’d draw a picture only in one. A picture. As the line moved along, I watched him look at which book people presented to him for drawings, and he would commence to draw characters from that particular book – a Burmese general for Burma Chronicles, Captain Sin from Pyongyang, or perhaps a rabbi or his daughter, Alice, for Jerusalem. 

When my turn came, I presented a new copy of Jerusalem for him, and he drew his own character: 

I didn’t get some supporting character – I got the protagonist himself. We chatted briefly, and when I mentioned I came up from Buffalo especially for this event, he joked, “but I was just in Buffalo last week!”  I mentioned the story about my dad buying Pyongyang for me, and he remarked, “oh, your father is a comics fan”, and I replied, “not really, but he’s a fan of books about communist countries, since he emigrated from one in the 60s”.  We then talked about certain parts of the book that were typical for any communist economy – like the Yangkaggdo Hotel‘s “Restaurant No. 1” and “No. 2” which were essentially identical to each other, and to the “No. 3” which was undergoing renovations until the last few days of his stay, and when it opened it was just like the other two. We both laughed. He was done signing the other books I had, and like that, the event was over, and I walked out into a monsoon.

Announcement: Archived Posts UPDATED

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Chris and I wrote for WNYMedia.net between about 2005 and November 2011, when we moved here to Artvoice. After we left, WNYMedia have gone through some changes, one of which rendered our archives unsearchable, difficult to find and access, and, unfortunately, useless. That’s six years’ worth of work that we couldn’t access. 

I occasionally like to write about issues that are chronic problems, or revisit ideas or decisions or plans that have come up in the past. That’s been impossible since late November.  But on top of that, it sucks to be unable to access six years’ worth of my own work – my own belongings – in any meaningful or logical way. 

That changes today. Chris, Brian Castner (whose Doubleday book “The Long Walk” will be published July 10th) , and I retained the services of Chris Van Patten to take a database backup of our entire WNYMedia archive (including images, but not including embedded video) into a chronological and searchable blog. So, if you’re looking for any old articles, head over to www.buffalorecord.com, the repository of my blog posts from 2005 – 2011. 

(I’m told the redirect via buffalorecord.com might not be fully operational for everyone yet. In the meantime, follow this link.)

And Yet, Here You Stand

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A little over a week ago, Jack Reese, an Ogden, Utah high school student committed suicide. He was gay and a victim of homophobic harassment. But if you read about him, he was just a regular teenager – he liked to draw, was interested in Japan, had a boyfriend, and liked to play XBox. Because his sexuality was different from others’, did that justify harassment, assault, or battery that was so pervasive that it drove him to hurt himself? 

In a great editorial, the Salt Lake City Tribune wrote that people’s attitudes about LGBT youth need to change for this harassment – and its sometimes tragic results – to stop. But that’s not all – 

They learn from legislators who refuse to extend civil rights to gays and lesbians that “those people” are not as valuable as straight people.

The country is beginning to come to terms with the notion that homosexual Americans are still Americans, regardless of their sexual identity. Their rights aren’t diminished or ended based on whom they love. It doesn’t matter, frankly, whether you know that homosexuality is hard-wired in the brain, or you still think it’s a “choice” – no one should be discriminated against or harassed to the point of suicide. 

The Tribune’s editorial cartoonist, Pat Bagley, created this, which perfectly encapsulates the way humanity typically demonizes things that are “different” before acceptance sets in.  Sometimes, it’s a change that takes millenia. Homophobia is among the last forms of hate and discrimination that is acceptable to large swaths of the American population.  It’s changing, but not quickly enough. 

Disrespect Your Opponents, Town, Selves

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A few weeks ago, a story hit about a black family being all-but run out of Buffalo’s Lovejoy neighborhood. 

This week, we have the Clarence Middle School girls’ lacrosse team suspended and punished for apparently hurling some ethnic/racial slurs at their opponents during a lacrosse game against Sweet Home. While there seems to be an allegation and multiple denials, we’ll never know precisely what was said or by whom.  

In fact, I’ve heard from kids who attend the Middle School that it was Sweet Home kids who were calling Clarence girls – some of whom on the lacrosse team are Black – names. Based on that, perhaps Sweet Home should also suspend its team. 

Both events are absolutely deplorable. This sort of behavior – this sort of thinking – is completely unacceptable and inexcusable in 2012 America. The Lovejoy harassers of the Coopers operate under the same hateful mindset as a girl who would yell “ni**er!” at any opponent in a game. I know we can never be free from racial animus, but it’s important to point it out and criticize it when it happens. 

Kids aren’t born racist; it’s something they learn from their parents and their peers. These incidents remind us that racial animus and ignorance transcend geography, wealth, and class. 

But in comparing the Lovejoy incident and this Clarence story, there are two stark differences – in the community response to hatred.  While neighbors and politicians in Lovejoy went out of their way to downplay the abuse of the Coopers, and try to pin as much blame on the victims as possible, the Clarence school administration immediately punished the lacrosse team. Although no one admitted to having hurled racial epithets at the team from Sweet Home, the Clarence school superintendent said, “[w]e determined there is evidence to believe that the allegations have merit.” 

A four-game suspension isn’t the end of the world. It isn’t jail or a school suspension. It’s a time out, during which these girls will learn that it’s completely inappropriate – even when engaged in two-sided trash talking – to call someone a “ni**er” under any circumstances. Or any racial epithet, for that matter.  These girls aren’t even in high school, and they’re learning a very important lesson about what is and is not acceptable in a civilized society. If we’re going to take this seriously, then let’s take it seriously. 

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