Really Rosie. I have decidedly mixed feelings
about Rosie O"Donnell. On the one hand, it's great that she's
coming out. With her legions of television fans (her soon-to-end
talkfest averages 2.8 million viewer per day), it's one more sign
of the new "homonormative" world, as the queer theoristic critics
of "heteronormality" might say. On the other hand, there's the
hypocrisy issue -- including her fierce support for limiting legal
gun ownership (excluding her own armed bodyguards, naturally). And,
of course, all that insipid cooing over Tom Cruise a while back. On
the other hand (yea, that's three; I can count) it's wonderful that
she's speaking out against Florida's cruel and destructive ban on
adoptions by gay couples -- many of whom have seen their foster
children torn away from the only homes where those kids were every
loved. Rosie, an adoptive (and foster) parent herself, has a home
in Miami, so the issue touches her directly.
Even on the Cruise cooing, Rosie may have turned it around for me.
As reported by Jeannie Williams in a Feb. 27 USA
Today piece, she had this to say: ""Oh, but you were lying,"
the gay Nazis say. "You said you liked Tom Cruise." I said I wanted
him to mow my lawn and bring me a lemonade. I never said I wanted
(to perform a sex act on him)."
Hmmm. I just don't buy that Rosie's Cruisy comments per Tom
Terrific weren't meant to come across as girlish infatuation of the
straight kind, while her show was still aiming for Top Gun ratings.
On the other hand (yeah, yeah), it was quite bold of Rosie
to take on "the gay Nazis" who demand lock-step homo-uniformity, so
maybe there's hope for her after all?
RINOplastic. If, as appears likely, Dick
Riordan, the former Los Angeles mayor and liberal Republican, loses
the California GOP gubernatorial nomination on Tuesday to more
conservative stalwart Bill Simon Jr., look for the pundits to
proclaim that the Republicans just couldn't bring themselves to
vote for a guy who's pro-choice (on abortion, not schools) and
pro-gay rights. The pundits, as usual, will be wrong. The
nomination has been Riordan's to lose, and he just may, mainly
because he didn't have a response as to why he would support and
contribute to liberal DEMOCRATS such as current Governor Gray Davis
and Senator Diane Feinstein. As the
Washington Times put it on March 4, "Even Republican centrists
have quipped that Mr. Riordan has more big-name Democrats he counts
as friends than does National Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe
-- and has given more in campaign contributions to left-wing
Democrats."
Now, it's one thing to be a RINO (that's "Republican in Name
Only"), as conservative GOPpers dub those in their party who tend
to vote left of center on most issues. But it's a step beyond that
to be a RINO for whom the label really isn't hyberbole. Gay
Republicans risk alienating their fellows in the party by embracing
anti-Republican Republicans (a la Jim Jeffords); the better, albeit
more challengng strategy is to get real Republicans to be more
gay-inclusive and forgoing electoral alliances with "progressives"
on the left.