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Some things to think about…

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This is from my old friend, David Mixner:

  • -If you’re a minority and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates you’re a "token hire."
    -If you’re a conservative and you’re selected for a job over more qualified candidates you’re a "game changer."
  • -Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America.
    -White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."
  • -If you name you kid Barack you’re "unpatriotic."
    -Name your kid Track, you’re "colorful."
  • -If you’re a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you’re an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
    -But if you’re a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you’re spunky.
  • -If you’re a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you "First dog."
    -If you’re a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you "beautiful" and "courageous."
  • -If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
    -If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
  • -If you kill an endangered species, you’re an excellent hunter.
    -If you have an abortion you’re not a Christian, you’re a murderer (forget about if it happens while being date raped.)
  • -If you grow up in Hawaii you’re "exotic."
    -Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re the quintessential "American story."
  • -If you’re a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you’re "reckless."
    -A Republican who doesn’t fully vet is a "maverick."
  • – If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an "arrogant celebrity".
    -If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are "energizing the base".
  • -If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are "presumptuous".
    -If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a "shoot from the hip" maverick.
  • -If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are "an elitist-out of touch" with the real America.
    – If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of Annapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a "hero."
  • – If you strategize and manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign defeating more tenured politicians, you are an "empty suit".
    -If you were a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an "experienced executive".
  • -If you go to a largely African American south side Chicago church, your beliefs are "extremist".
    – If you believe in creationism, don’t believe global warming is affected by human activity, and see the Iraq invasion as "a mission from God", you are "strongly principled".
  • -If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years and raised 2 beautiful daughters, you’re "risky".
    -If you left your wife after cheating on her with a rich heiress, whom you married the next month, you’re a Christian.
  • -If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 3 years in the United States Senate representing a state of almost 13 million people, sponsoring 129 bills and cosponsoring 545 bills, and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you are "inexperienced".
  • -If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, have traveled to 3 foreign countries, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska National Guard of 4,000 members, you are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia then you’ve got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket.

…you know….just askin’…

Community, Culture, Current Affairs, Debanuj DasGupta, Friends, Gay History, History, Homophobia, Men, Politics

This Body Bears History! Notes on Surviving 9/11

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Sf_pride I had almost forgotten that today is the seventh anniversary of 9/11. I generally tend to make time to watch the morning news, before I get lost in the world of queer and migration theory. Somehow this morning my body was just not up for watching the news! It was like subconsciously, I did not want to remind myself of those dark days after 9/11. As a brown, materially challenged, Queer, immigrant building a household with another brown-poor-Queer immigrant, surviving the days after 9/11 was nothing short than an act of tremendous of courage, and building collective resistance against an increasingly securitized state.

"Debanuj, wake up! the twin towers have fallen!" David’s voice yelled on the answering machine. Tired from a long night of canvassing in suburban Long Island, I lazily answered the phone, in complete disbelief. "How could it happen? We just saw them last night?" I cried. The first thing that flashed across my mind was "My green-card application is fucked!". Frantically I dialed work, asking how much was in my paycheck for the last two weeks. Because there was no way in hell, as a brown fag, I would canvass in Long Island after the forced castration of collective US consciousness. Only a few months ago several day-laborers were brutally bashed by racist white men in Long Island.

The days that followed were days of intense pain, confusion and desperation. Several of our Pakistani friends were attacked on the streets, about eight Queer and trans-gender South-Asian’s (including myself) were beaten up in New York City. Our household, went from a being a dual income household to a single income household. We ate one heavy meal a day, sometimes we would cook community meals in our house, and silently eat, with fear imprinted on our foreheads. Very soon these community gatherings became rife, places to exchange survival tips, notes on what to do if the FBI came knocking on your door, and, most of all, festive with cheap liquor, Salsa and Bhangra music. As we drank, and danced away our fears and pain, in our small but firm ways we announced to each other our zeal to fight and survive!

Several stories have been told about the brave firefighters, our nation’s heroes, and even of the domestic partners of gay bankers who died in the twin towers. Yet, very little is talked about the undocumented Bangladeshi cooks of Windows to the World, or the Mexican women janitors, whose babies were found by their neighbors days after 9/11 lying alone in their Queen’s apartment. Very, little is talked about a neurotic, diseased, intellectual and his sexy, smart Queer friend, who in spite of the fear, anger, pain and bitterness continued their attempts of community building with their meager income, at their uptown Manhattan residence.

Our bodies do not fit the defined parameters of nation-citizenship-sacrifice and war!

Our bodies cross gender, class and national boundaries.

Our bodies lie at the intersections of poverty, queerness, shades of brown, black and yellow in this "land of the free and mighty".

Our bodies inhabit spaces that fall through the cracks of security-states and biometric regimes.

Inherent in our bodies, lie the strong, silent current that disrupts tropes of domination ever day!

Our Bodies, this body of mine bears history!

Ancestors, Arts, Bo Young, Community, Culture, Current Affairs, Entertainment, Friends, Gay History, History, Humor, Radical Faerie

Pearls Over Shanghai

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Dear Lovers of the Sublime and the Ridiculous,


Cockettes Sunday night I saw the Thrillpeddlers, a young and gorgeous San Francisco theater company, perform a revival of the Cockettes’ wacky, sweet "Oriental" musical Pearls Over Shanghai in repertory with Charles Ludlam’s Jack in the Beanstalk.  Both were great.  Pearls was  beautiful.   Fayetta Hauser and Billy Bowers’  created a  visual feast.   It’s not by chance The Cockettes documentary is being screened at the Jeu de Paume for Paris fashion week later in the month with docs about Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.

Scrumbly Koldewyn’s music is lush and gorgeous.  Chris Tanner made a guest appearance to sing Jaded Lady and word has it that Justin Bond will sing it Wednesday.   The show is a surrealist dreamscape that belongs in performanace at MoMA or the Whitney.  The Thrillpeddlers have done 1969 proud.

So come on out for the FINAL PERFORMANCES.

Theodora__limbo_lounge_flyer_small TONITE, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER  9 at  8 p.m., Charles Busch’s THEODORA, SHE BITCH OF BYZANTIUM and the Thrillpeddlers’ BLUE HOUR VARIETY ACTS

Pearls WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 at 8  p.m., the Cockettes’ PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI and Charles Ludlam’s JACK AND THE BEANSTALK


45 BLEEKER THEATER @ Lafayette and Bleeker.

PASS THE WORD.  Tickets are $15 each and well worth it.
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Liar Liar Pants On Fire…

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Pantsfire For all the talk of "liberal media" it’s interesting to note the half truths and flat out lies the media and commentariat let go by, unchallenged:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere." She also accepted the money and used it for other purposes.

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She’s been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply … She’s responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply. I’m entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain’s phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she’s no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She’s the commander of the Alaska National Guard. … She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska’s national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor’s election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

___

Debanuj DasGupta

Notes on Sarah Palin’s speech.

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Ph2008090304282 Sarah Palin, a self proclaimed hockey mom, gave a fierce speech to a raving crowd at the Republican convention tonight. I might not agree with her, but this gal is a tough cookie.

In her speech she compared the job of a community organizer with that of a mayor of a small town (making an obvious dig at Barack Obama), and reminded us that the difference lay in the fact that, the job of a mayor had responsibilities. As a long time community organizer across two continents,I beg to differ Sarah! Community organizers carry the responsibilities of saving the lives and jobs of their communities, which are ravaged by neo-liberal regimes. The basic principles of which she laid out in her speech. She framed the act of governmental disinvestment in social services as the brave act of shrinking "Big Government", but as an anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-environment candidate, has no qualms over  government legislating rules of the very terms of family law, procreation and a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her.

Palin would have us believe that her family is just like every other family, and sometimes beyond the scrutiny of the media and the public when it comes to her pregnant teen daughter. In fact the face of families across the US and the world has always been changing! there has never been "one kind of family". According to latest US Census statistics, single parent families, mixed immigration status families, mixed generation families are on the rise currently. While Republicans call the job of providing needy families, much needed relief as "welfare dole," they have no shame in doling out millions of dollars in "corporate subsidies." Some family value that is!

In reference to the face of an ever-changing global geo-politics, Palin called upon American citizens to rally behind Jon McCain’s anti-Russia, anti-China lopsided rhetoric reminiscent of the Cold-War era. Unfortunately, with unprecedented global flows of capital, goods and labor across boundaries, that rhetoric of nation-state and war, falls short in today’s realities.

Finally, her continuous reference to "small town USA" vs the "cosmopolitan urban USA" is a way of pandering to the conservative white small town and suburban US. Recent statistics and images of immigrants marching down the Market Streets of small town America, indicate larger percentages of labor migration to small farming towns and industrial suburbs. As Latino immigrants, and Queers move out of big cities and begin to change the face of small town US, the last bastion of "pure white Americana" is trembling with fear. Thus we see myriad, local zoning codes and tenancy laws, immigration raids, policing of public parks, as an attempt to regain control over what was otherwise "pure, straight, white-American territory." If any attempt to critique her can be leveled as "sexist", then how is separating immigrant mothers from their children during inhumane immigration raids and denying us the tools to protect our own bodies "sound public policies"?

Conservative, white, America constructs poor-brown-immigrant-Queers as the "other." They fail to recognize that, within the context of the fast gloablizing village we live in, they are the "other." A very racist, imperialist, profoundly anti-humane other. The fear of the crumbling prowess of the US empire is being marketed to us as the "brave act of war, privatization, security culture and tax cuts for the wealthy." Truly brave acts are being committed everyday, by people who cross hazardous, impervious, national borders, to flee from poverty, persecution and war.

Truly brave acts are being committed every day by largely Latino farm workers across the US, who continue to grow the crops we eat, and get paid in pennies.

Truly brave acts are being committed every day by Queer school teachers, who are daring to challenge homophobia and the meltdown of the public school system.

Truly brave acts are being committed every day by poor transgender and homeless people of color, who in spite of their daily hardships, are organizing to have access to jobs and shelter.

In the end all I have to say to you Sarah Palin, "You might be a tough, white, middle class, heteronormative hockey mom, but I am a hell of a bitchy ass, brown Queen!"

So BRING IT ON!

(photo from Getty Images and The Washington Post)

Current Affairs

Sarah Who?

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Sarahpalinvogue It’s kind of a "Sarah Who? Moment," but interestingly, there are reports that while she opposes same-sex marriage, she has stated that she has Gay friends and is receptive to Gay and Lesbian concerns about discrimination. When the previous administration did not implement same-sex benefits, Palin complied with a state Supreme Court order and signed them into law.

She supported a democratic advisory vote from the public on whether there should be a constitutional amendment on the matter. Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on Gay marriage, in 1998, along with Hawaii.

Palin’s first veto was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from granting benefits to Gay state employees and their partners. In effect, her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto occurred after Palin consulted with Alaska’s attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation. That would be the "good news." Here’s some other things to chew on:

  • She was elected Alaska’s governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has zero foreign policy experience.
  • Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest…or slutty daughters with hunky high school hockey players.
  • She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000.
  • Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.
  • She’s doesn’t think humans are the cause of climate change.
  • She’s solidly in line with John McCain’s "Big Oil first" energy policy. She’s pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won’t be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species. She was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.
  • The annual budget of the city of which she was most recenly mayor is about half of the Los Angeles LGBT Community Center.
  • How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.

Let’s be clear: Sarah Palin is another in a parade of Republican party distractions from issues and problems to keep the electorate confused and distracted from real ideas and facts. But just for the Grunt_sarahpalin1sake of  discussion, can anyone imagine what the Republican pundits would be saying, for example, if Barack Obama or Michele Obama had ever, even ever-so-slightly, and way back in their "wasted youth," suggested that, perhaps Hawaii ought to consider seceding from the United States (as Ms. Palin’s one-time affiliation with the Alaska Independence Party suggests…OK so maybe it was only her husband…)? Does anyone think that Obamas’s loyalty to the country might be, shall we say, questioned? I’m just askin’.

And honestly, who cares about the daughter’s pregnancy…except insofar as Palin and McCain are against sex education and promoting "abstinence only." How’s that working for you, Sarah? Bristol? And while the Republican party hacks are quick to excoriate anyone who even suggests this might have some policy implications, they’re more than happy to use it to advance their own anti-choice positions.

And that "Bridge to nowhere" and her "thanks but no thanks"? Yes, she said no to the bridge…but she still took the money. Ms. "I Don’t Do Earmarks"? Ha!

According to the Seattle Times:

Just this year, she sent to Sen. Ted. Stevens, R-Alaska, a proposal for 31 earmarks totaling $197 million — more, per person, than any other state.

Her presidential running mate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., does not sponsor earmarks, calling the practice of doling out favors, often with scant oversight, "disgraceful."

Some of Palin’s requests were for science research, such as $499,900 to assess halibut harvesting; others for lighting village airports in the Alaskan bush, where small planes and gravel runways may be the primary link to the outside world.

Palin’s requests to Congress came at a time of huge federal deficits, while Alaska state revenue was soaring due to rising oil prices and a major tax increase on oil production that Palin signed into law in late 2007.

As a result, Alaska this year was in such a money-flushed condition — with no state income tax or sales tax and total state revenues of $10 billion, double the previous year’s — that Palin gained legislative approval for $1,200 cash payments to every Alaskan.

In addition, each Alaska resident gets an annual dividend check, about $2,000 this year, from Alaska’s oil-wealth savings account, known as the Permanent Fund, now fattened to more than $35 billion.

The state also has been able to tap into a gusher of federal money as its Republican congressional delegation rose in seniority and clout.

In 1996, when Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla, a city of about 8,000 some 40 miles north of Anchorage, she did not take part in the earmark process. But by 2000, into her second term, the city had hired a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, Steven Silver, a former aide to Stevens, then the ultimate rainmaker as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"She was hungry for earmarks just like everybody else," said Larry Persily, who worked at the Alaska state office in Washington, D.C., until earlier this year. "Everyone was feeding at the trough."

Debanuj DasGupta

Notes on Barack Obama’s speech.

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Feature570 Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of 85,000 at the Invesco Stadium, and millions more watched him intently on TV tonight. The two of us (Carl and I) sat glued to the TV, carefully listening to every word that this brilliant man uttered.

I come from a long history of skepticism towards party politics, especially as an immigrant who is unable to vote, I exert my cultural citizenship by choosing to invigorate social justice movements. Carl, a mid thirties white banker, has grown to become an independent. Yet both of us absolutely liked his speech. We are waiting to see if he will prove his words by following up with solid action!

As a Queer immigrant, I was touched when he spoke about the right of our loved ones to visit us in hospitals. He said separating mothers from their children (an obvious reference to ICE raids) is unacceptable and in-humane. He talked about reducing un-wanted pregnancies. Most of all as he fiercely reminded us the indomitable spirit of the American society for ingenuity and creativity, I was reminded as to why twelve years ago I packed my bags and escaped to the US seeking freedom and better economic opportunities.

However, we live in very difficult times inside the US and globally. Globalization and neo-liberalism has fundamentally altered the economic landscapes of nation-states. The income gap between the rich and poor is at its highest, infant mortality rates in inner-city USA is higher than developing nations, farmworkers across the globe are steeped in debt, and developing nations are ever more so in debt to the World Bank.

At the heart of neo-liberal social ethics is the principle of "personal responsibility", that even the Democratic Party embraces, and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama every so often refer to in their speech. I am not opposed to the idea of responsibility. What I am opposed to is the government shrugging its responsibility towards the most vulnerable communities in our societies. While Barack very aptly referred to the dialectics between collective and individual responsibility, time will only show us if him and the Democrats will put up a good fight to save and fix social safety nets for all citizens and immigrants.

In conclusion I would like us to remember that under Obama and Biden (if elected)  we will live in  a softer imperialist-core. Our task as gender,sexuality, social justice and human rights activist is to continually hold all politicians, no matter how inspiring their speeches are, to be accountable to our needs. By needs I mean not just recognition of our diverse identities and relationships, but an actual redistribution of resources in a way, that enables all of us to achieve our best. That’s the social contract we agree upon when we call ourselves a "civil society".

Tonight, I will sleep ever more inspired to continue fighting for comprehensive immigration reform, universal access to health-care in the US, a science based HIV prevention plan in the US and globally, and for debts of developing countries to be forgiven. And most of all to hold our elected officials accountable, if needed to be challenged on issues that are dear to me.

Building Connections & Community for Gay Men since 1989