Peter J. Gomes

I first encountered Rev. Gomes in Stephen Fry's book about his travels in America. Fry was obviously captivated by the flamboyant Harvard professor and communicated the feeling to me. As Fry put it, "You're obviously gay, but many people don't know that you are also openly black." He died the other day.

Thanx to bookslut

Manly men

If there’s one thing conservatives love more than posing like they’re tough guys with guns, it’s squealing and hiding behind the couch, trembling in fear at the “thugs” and “socialists” that crowd their imaginary worlds

Amanda Marcotte

Also, water is wet

Donald Rumsfeld is a liar.

Thanx to Oliver Willis

Not as squamous as you think.

H.P. Lovecraft's word count

Thanx to Tor.com

Not afraid of showbiz

Bristol Palin is "writing" a book (for HarperCollins [Murdoch], of course). Gina Barreca thinks it will be a new Twilight. No. Twilight without the imagination.

Thanx to Chronicle

Punishing the weapon

We can't get at the Malefactors of Great Wealth (that's one of the perqs of being a Malefactor of Great Wealth) so we ban TSA agents from our restaurants* and tell telemarketers to behave hermaphroditically.** At a higher level we ask actors why they appeared in some particularly awful movie. Michael Caine replies honestly: "I made it because they paid me a lot of money."

Thanx to Ta-Nehisi Coates

*Or maybe not. Thanx, firecat
**Brown, Fredric. "Politeness."

Not their issue

If there were such an entity as "the Black community," it would not be stupid enough to think that the most important thing is protection from same-sex marriage.

Thanx to Ta-Nehisi Coates

Newspaper of Record

A son of the NY Times royal family found a union member who doesn't like Wisconsin's government unions. Except it wasn't a union member and he got the guy's name wrong. You can't win them all.

Thanx to Mercury Rising.

Looks aren't everything

Jed Hartman asks, "Is it important to you to Be Funny?"

As you may have guessed, Yes.

Communoislamofascist menace on our doorstep

As you might expect from a country with civilized socialized medicine and same-sex marriage, Canada is denying Fox News a chance to do up there what it does here, on the flimsy pretext that news stations are not supposed to make up shit all the time.

Thanx to womzilla (in person)

Hazel Rowley (1951-2011)

Hazel Rowley wrote excellent bios of Christina Stead and Richard Wright, and told of two particularly odd couples, Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt and Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir

Thanx to bookslut