The Political Whore

Influential gay publisher Mark Segal of the Philadelphia Gay News writes:

In a year that the political twists, turns and ups and downs have been more thrilling then a ride at Great Adventure or Disney World, and a year that is witnessing the most historical presidential election since Abraham Lincoln, can there be any more surprises? Absolutely. Amazingly, it’s a place you wouldn’t expect change: the Republican Party and the choice for John McCain’s running mate.

…

For McCain, at 72, choosing another white Republican man as his running mate would not look like change and might simply be waiting for the Democrat nominee to make a false move. He has no choice but take the
initiative and be bold in his choice for vice president. But how to embrace change without alienating the Republican base? Can he pick a V.P. nominee that can bring victory in one of the Republican must-win states and has solid Republican credentials?

Yes, if he chooses the popular Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Crist ran for governor as a lifelong bachelor, with numerous articles and radio talk show openly questioning persistent rumors that he was gay.

As even Segal points out, Crist has consistently and directly denied being gay. But the possibility of having even a closeted gay VP candidate is just too much for Segal to ignore:

There is no doubt that Crist will be on McCain’s short list. With the rumors still flying, can he make it beyond the short list?

There are more reasons why he should than not. McCain has a strategic choice to make once he has the Republican nomination: play to the conservative base in his party who really don’t like him or try to pick up independents and Democrats displeased with their own party’s choice. The only chance McCain has to shake up the race is to make a bold choice — pick a running mate that is popular, from the South and a state he needs to win, who looks like the new breed of political change candidate and brings buzz to his side of the race. In this instance, the gay rumors actually work in Crist’s favor. Those rumors have been tried and tested over the years, and his denial still stands. If brought up, it would be seen as a dirty trick of the Democrats, politics as usual. As for the Republicans, they have proven in the past that as long as you deny you’re gay and it can’t be proven, they’ll believe you. And to toss them a bone, Republican favorite Jeb Bush endorsed Crist.

(photo: Crist in Israel with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, courtesy of US House of Representatives)

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From CL intern Jason Kushner:

Racing downtown to a Tampa City Hall conference room before coffee and amid stormy weather warnings isn’t normal hump-day protocol at the Creative Loafing Intern Affairs Desk. But Mayor Pam Iorio had called for an informal budget meeting with key staff  and members of the Tampa City Council, so Florida’s Sunshine Law allowed us local media to sit in. As Council members John Dingfelder and Charlie Miranda shuffled in to join Gwen Miller, Tom Scott, Linda Saul Sena and Mary Mulhern, Iorio waited along with Revenue and Finance Director Bonnie Wise to outline 2008’s post-Amendment 1 budget.

Her message was optimistic: Tampa will fare better than many cities during this period of economic downturn and property tax cutting mania. By creatively transferring a portion of spending from smaller capital projects to operating funds, the city plans to eliminate $8.9 million from a possible $16.8 million deficit without further stressing public services such as parks and recreation. For example, shifting the city’s “Clean City” program to the Solid Waste Department alone could save up to $3.2 million (albeit by increasing garbage fees by 2.2 percent to cover those news costs, rather than increasing property taxes).

“It’s gonna take a lot more than Amendment I to stop us from making progress,” Iorio said.

Of course, progress is subjective. Dingfelder clearly disagreed with some elements of Iorio’s approach. He favored retaining about 100 threatened janitorial and security jobs slated for elimination-by-outsourcing by reducing a $15 million  plan for a new Curtis Hixon Park downtown.

Iorio diffused Dingfelder’s confrontational inquiries and suggestions by reminding the Councilman that he could reflect his opinion when it comes time to vote on the contracts for the Hixon Park or outsourcing agreements for the janitorial and security jobs. He continually fired back with extended sighs and eye-rolling. It was, no doubt, jolting for the politically naïve to witness tangible friction in such an intrinsically mannered environment. Iorio and Dingfelder exchanged arguments, cameras rolled and press pens scribbled until Wise emerged from the Mayor’s corner with concrete figures that torpedoed one of Dingfelder’s fiscal proposals.

Meanwhile, resident old-timer Miranda diplomatically took everybody on a nostalgic tour of Tampa’s previous developments (Channelside, the elimination of the “skid row” label from Franklin Street, etc.). His simple declaration: “This is like putting together a puzzle…some pieces are still missing.”

Final budget numbers typically aren’t available until the late summer as the city adopts its 2008-2009 spending plan by Oct. 1. The Tampa City Council agreed to meet with Iorio again in three weeks to look at other parts of next year’s budget.
(photo credit: Wayne Garcia) 

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“You stay away from me!”

• Civic pride: Tampa is mentioned on the Today show! I’m not from here: The subject was a Hillsborough County Sheriff caught on tape dumping a disabled man out of his wheelchair and onto the floor.
• Obama and McCain pile up the wins.
• A reporter asks Hillary why she hasn’t released her tax returns and she responds: “Sen. Obama has some questions to answer about his dealings with one of his largest contributors Exelon, a big nuclear power company; apparently he cut some deals behind closed doors to protect them from full disclosure of the nuclear industry.” Does this answer mean that a) Hillary believes that if she released her tax returns any questionable dealings Obama has had will pale in comparison; b) It’s nothing but negative attacks from from here on out; c) the reporter took the quote out of context, or d) this is the sound of the Clinton campaign imploding?
• Poetic justice? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates slips, falls, breaks his shoulder and is taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
• Roger Clemens goes before congress, probably lying his injected ass off in the process.
• Spielberg quits his gig as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics after complaints about China by human rights groups.
• From blow-hard to blowback: Rush Limbaugh battles the right.
• The Force is strong with these animators.

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The other shoe might drop today as Mayor Pam Iorio has advertised that she’s holding “an informal budget meeting with key staff and members of Tampa City Council” this morning. I’ll be there, fortified by a large cup of decaf.

It raises the question, however, that if she is going to discuss deeper cuts in city budgets and services, what should those be?

My first suggestion would be the millions that are poured into city propaganda on the Government Access Channel. Take everything except coverage of the City Council and other important boards off the air. I realize that much of the funding for these feel-good municipal shows comes from cable franchise fees (translated: taxes on cable television consumers) that are limited in terms of what they can be spent on, but it would make an excellent statement about redefining city priorities. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties and St. Petersburg could follow suit, saving cable taxpayers millions.

Government access television is a $6 million enterprise at the five largest local governments, or at least it was in 2004 when I first wrote about this propaganda machine and its endless supply of cash.

UPDATE at 11:30 a.m.: Trusted CL intern Jason Kushner went along with me and he will have a blog post upcoming about the news from City Hall, which was, overall, not earthshaking as Pam Iorio said things are bad but not bad enough to lay off city workers en masse or cut deeply into services in next year’s budget.

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The latest scourge on college campuses: Google addiction.

• Glad that 2007 is behind us: GM.
• The Senate completely ignores the rights of American citizens and passes telecom immunity.
• The Oracle of Omaha to the rescue.
• Two CBS reporters are missing and believed kidnapped in Iraq.
• Now that the writers strike is over, what about the viewers?
• Even Jesus pisses off his parents every now and again.
• Is America addicted to porn? If you’re reading this page after spankin’ it to PornTube.com, you already know.
• Stop the presses! “Healthy Lifestyle is Secret to Longer Life.” So, no more mainlining lard while on a crack binge?

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OK, so I lied. I am not a Sports Illustrated kinda guy and can’t recall ever looking through its famous swimsuit issue. But the cover came flying across the PRnewswire just now, and I couldn’t resist:

CREDIT: Raphael Mazzucco/Sports Illustrated. (PRNewsFoto/Sports Illustrated)

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He seems concerned that some folks in the media have declared a “so-called winner:”

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As Florida careens toward a November date with straight-marriage-protectin’ destiny, I’m intrigued by a question posed by a high schooler to Karl Rove as he spoke to a New England prep school yesterday. (An event combining a day at a New England prep school AND a speech by Der Rover, how in the hell did I NOT make the roadie up for that?!? But I digress …) Here’s the account from Think Progress:

During his controversial speech at New England prep school Choate Rosemary Hall yesterday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove was challenged by a student “to explain how giving gay people the right to marry would endanger other people.” Rove dodged answering her at first, saying that the issue “should be resolved by a legislature or a referendum, not a court.” But the student, Choate senior Marla Spivak, continued to press him:

Spivak kept pressing. “You never actually answered, how does it threaten anyone?” she asked.

Rove asked, what’s the compelling reason to throw out 5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage as between a man and a woman?

What, Spivak countered, was the compelling reason for society to allow interracial relationships when they had once been outlawed.

The Spivak-Rover tit-for-tat (he said tit, heh heh) went on for a bit longer, but the central question remains:

“What’s so wrong about gay people getting married?” I’ll even allow it to be turned backwards for consideration: “What exact societal ills would banning gay marriage solve?  What specific good would come of it in Tampa Bay, for instance? Would our traffic move better? Would we have less crime? Would our environment be miraculously cleaned, or developers decide to stop paving the state with suburbia?”

(Full disclosure: I am a straight married man; my editor at CL is a gay married man.)

Brendan McLaughlin of Flashpoint had opposing sides on this issue on his show this past Sunday, and his blog details the shit he caught from some viewers who thought he was improperly injecting his personal bias into the discussion:

The flurry of comments on the gay marriage amendment discussion on Flashpoint included several requests that I keep my opinions to myself. My first reaction is, “…and deprive the citizenry of my wisdom and unerring judgment? Never!”  On further consideration, I realize that any expression of bias in my role as a moderator is fair game for dissection. So let’s pull out the scalpel.

You can catch the two segments from Flashpoint on streamed video here, just use the pulldown menu to go to Flashpoint and choose segments 1 & 2 from Feb. 10.

McLaughlin, who anchors the 6  & 11 newscasts on ABC Action News in Tampa Bay and who frequently suffers from lapses of judgment that result in me appearing on Flashpoint,  acknowledged that his objective role as an anchor changes for the Sunday political talk show. He also admits that he has no problem showing his opinion on issues that are “so wrong-headed.” Like banning gay marriage.

One of his blog commenters agreed:

That Gay couples seek to marry is not an attack on marriage. If anything it is an ENDORSEMENT of marriage, an acknowledgment that it far better to encourage couples toward monogamy and commitment, rather than relegating them to lives of loneliness and promiscuity.

Ask any Straight couple why they choose to marry. Their answer will not be, “We want to get married so that we can have sex and make babies!” That would be absurd, since couples do not need to marry to make babies, nor is the desire to make babies a prerequisite for obtaining a marriage license.

No, the reason couples choose to marry is to make a solemn declaration, before friends and family members, that they wish to make a commitment to one another’s happiness, health, and well-being, to the exclusion of all others. Those friends and family members will subsequently act as a force of encouragement for that couple to hold fast to their vows.

THAT’S what makes marriage a good thing. Gay couples recognize that and support that. And those that want to prohibit Gay couples from marrying do so only because they don’t want to allow Gay couples the opportunity to PROVE that they are up to the task.

So I will come back to my central question: What’s so wrong with gay marriage that we have to ban it in our state constitution?

(And if you are opposed to the amendment banning gay marriage, then you might want to check this website that has the names and addresses of the 600,000+ registered Florida voters who signed the petition to put it on the ballot and ask your friends and neighbors listed there the same question. Do it in a nice, friendly manner, maybe bake a nice coffee cake and take it over to their house, you know the drill. We’ll cotton to no violence here at PoHo blog.)

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And I ask this question because of this part of the Florida Baptist Witness news story on a group of anti-Darwinians (22 of ‘em, count them) who signed a letter to the state Board of Education requesting it not to include the word “eee-voh-LOO-shun” in the state public school science curriculum. Opponent Kim Kendall of suburban Jacksonville was quoted saying:

“There have been public hearings that were abruptly canceled; there were no press releases issued for the hearings that were scheduled or for the canceled hearings. The [Internet] survey was just too complicated and difficult to navigate for even a sophisticated user like myself.”

I mean, most of us can figure out the Internet, even the tricky parts of it (like how to delete your Facebook account.)

The new standards aren’t that different from the old ones, but do use the word evolution. One instance:

BIG IDEA 15: Diversity and Evolution of Living Organisms
A. Evolution is the organizing principle of life science.
B. Evolution is supported by multiple forms of evidence.
C. Natural Selection is a primary mechanism leading to change over time in organisms.

Well, that seems pretty straightforward. All three items are scientifically valid, as far as we know right now or may ever know. Opponents, however, want to strip such ideas out of the standards and leave wiggle room for other non-scientific explanations, including creationism and Intelligent Design. They say Darwin’s theory of evolution has too many holes in it. The only problem is that science, as a whole, doesn’t buy their argument, and science gets to decide what is appropriate for science. As I wrote about two years ago, researchers trying to bolster the hypothesis behind Intelligent Design (that all living creatures demonstrate evidence not of evolutionary changes being the driving force behind their existence but the telltale signs of the hand of an intelligent Creator) might one day succeed and move it from hypothesis to scientific theory. But that day doesn’t seem near, given the utter lack of scientific progress to date by some very determined researchers who believe that hypothesis.

The Florida Board of Education is holding its final public hearing on this issue today as I write. Updates later on what went on, but just in watching the (crappily) streamed version, I heard a lot of opponents talking about allowing competing ideas to challenge accepted scientific notions. What they don’t get is that is already going on; any scientist or researcher is free to pursue studies and examinations questioning evolution theory, and that goes on all the time. Those discussions, however, are for the scientific world to sort out, through peer-reviewed publications and rigorous testing of assumptions, new ideas, old ideas, hypotheses and theories. Teaching evolution in school doesn’t change that ongoing scientific process; it strengthens it as students learn the leading theory for how our natural world is organized and how it came about. They learn the scientific process, just as they learn faith in church or at home or in the woods gathered around a pentagram with shadowy demons dancing in the green fire.

Those children could grow up one day to be the ones who find the answer that overturns Darwin and finds out just exactly how we did come to be, scientifically speaking.

Then again, they may not.

(photo credits and copyright info here.)

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Once Chief Brody, always Chief Brody.