The purpose? Um…okay, well, you see, he would lure her into a room full of dildos and then, well, uh, he’s standing up for women?
The document discusses the potential fallout from the operation.
“If they pursue this as you are a creep, you should play it up with them initially only to reveal that the tape was made beforehand confirming this was a gag,” the document states. “If they [CNN] admit it was a gag, you should release the footage and focus on the fact they got punked, and make sure to emphasize Abbie’s name and overall status to help burden her career with this video, incident and her bad judgment in pursuing you so aggressively.”
Finally, “if they go on the attack, you should point out the hypocrisy in CNN using the inherent sexuality of these women to sell viewers and for ratings, passing up more esteemed and respectable journalists who aren’t bubble-headed bleach blondes and keep the focus on CNN.”
The sad part? Despite literally making no sense whatever, it would have worked to drive a media narrative.
1And did a voice from a Tea Party rally come: 2“I will take down the lamed-stream media, from treetop to root, a corrupted branch; 3my sunglasses and blazer do not scream “douchemonster”. 4It is not the destruction of all I seek, only of my enemies, but I must be forthright. 5I assume all are my enemies, and will pay 100,000 gold pieces to whomever can verify that information. 6Look around at my followers, their plenty and their strength. 7Especially those three black people.” 8Currently checking on the identity of those three black people, but at least one is a police officer.
As I’ve looked over the reams of blog posts about the Journolist “controversy” (just Google the name if you’re unfamiliar with it) one thing keeps standing out: the conservative obsession with all the Jews on the list.
From the American Spectator to Free Republic, there’s an underlying conservative obsession with the Jews running Journolist, and therefore the media. The Bookworm post I linked above goes into further detail:
What’s also disturbing for me about the Journolist is the fact that so many of its members have Jewish names. You’ll notice my careful phrasing there. I don’t know if they’re actually Jewish or not. I don’t know if those who are Jewish actually practice the religion. And of those who practice the religion, I don’t know whether they practice the religion in a way that has traditional religious resonance, or is just the Jewish liberal bow to Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and the Sabbath candles. As to the latter group, assuming it existed on the Journolist, it’s easy to claim religion when you just go through the rituals. It’s a little harder when you try to align your Torah with the Democratic handbook and the Alinsky rules for living.
Look at all the Jews! Well, I don’t know how many of them are real Jews and how many are Jew-blood infiltrators. Either way, though…Jews.
Instapundit, of course, links to this, but focuses on the fact that Journolist is somehow composed of Jew-hating Jews who really like Oliver Stone, because of all their anti-Jew Jewishness.
Part of it is that a certain (and prevailing) conservative definition of anti-Semitism begins and ends with criticism of Israel - and by begins, I mean, begins at the point that you disagree with them in any way about Israel, American foreign policy towards Israel, or the particular shade of blue on the Israeli flag. The other part of it is that this same definition of anti-Semitism is often itself inherently anti-Semitic. As we see with the Journolist theories, it’s perfectly fine to theorize about secret cabals of powerful Jews out to pervert good Christian morals…so long as you can lump in a few other Jewish people and say that your Jewish conspiracy is actually aimed at your preferred set of chosen people.
The most important lesson to come from Journolist isn’t that a few hundred liberals talked to each other over e-mail. It’s that this simple and otherwise routine act of people in a given field discussing related issues with each other has taken on the specter of a religiously-motivated conspiracy to do…something evil, although we’re not quite sure what.
Sarah Palin releases a web video in which she pays women to dress like bears and pretend to maul socialism or something.
Cable news covers it ad nauseum, and justifies its coverage by saying everyone’s talking about it, even though “everyone” literally only means the people who are talking about how much everyone else is talking about it. The discussion of the discussion is then discussed on Politico, which then uses the completely self-referential dialogue to point out how Sarah Palin is rehabilitating her image and winning the day.
Andrew Breitbart has offered $100,000 for the entire archive of JournoList, which is totally awesome, because I would really love to see him shell out that much money to be completely disappointed.
As a testament to just how enthrallingly conspiratorial JournoList was, I at this moment have over 500 unread JList threads in my GMail. This is not because the people on it were boring or unintelligent, but because I tended not to open requests for contact information for people I didn’t know, or look at job postings for jobs I couldn’t take, or get into baseball threads, or read a lot of the article/post pimping that took place.
But really, what this is about is that the list, unseen, is a fertile ground for the imaginings of nutjobs. Breitbart finds it the “holy grail of liberal media bias”; PowerLine wants to find the “collusion” that occurred on the list, because what it makes sense for 400 independent professional writers to do is to explicitly make blood pacts over and over again about not covering stories; Gateway Pundit and his commenters have decided that it was mainly Keith Olbermann and Katie Couric conspiring with each other, and wouldn’t mind destroying the lives of every person on the list; Dan Riehl reveals that he pissily quit a righty listserv because he got his fee-fees hurt, but it was totally different because that listserv was strictly dedicated to its mission; IowaHawk has decided that it was a listserv of 14-year-old girls, because liberals are so gay.
The secret power of JournoList is not in anything it did - as Ezra points out, it was too large to accomplish any of the secret and terrible things it’s alleged to be behind - but instead that the right has so internalized its own narratives of victimization and righteousness that the very act of people in the same industry talking to each other is a betrayal not just of their professional responsibility, but of the very principles of America itself.
Breitbart, if he ever got the archive (which is doubtful), would almost certainly use it to ruin someone’s career. Not because that person said anything that was career ruining, but because he or she committed the grave sin of being liberal. The conservative response to JList is largely about fear of the unknown, the same way an insecure significant other tries to break into their partner’s e-mail to make sure no cheating is occurring, or a little brother steals his older sister’s diary only to find out she’s mainly making lists of which colleges she’s thinking of applying to and constantly redoing the math to see when she can afford the used Honda Civic she’s had her eye on.
JournoList is far less interesting and far less influential than any conservative critic thinks. But because it involves those they despise doing things they can’t see, it is prima facie evidence of every terrible thing they’ve ever thought about liberals and journalists. This isn’t to even mention the irony of Breitbart using unseen (and, let’s be honest, nonexistent) evidence for an assertion he desperately wants to believe about liberal media collusion after spending months bitching about not being able to find video of black Representatives being called niggers.
Oh well, off to convince Wolf Blitzer to call Bobby Jindal a droopy-faced shitbag. And then to have lots of gay sex with him while watching Dear John. Channing Tatum is such a dreamy hunk of man-meat.
I added this to the softball photo post, but it deserves its own entry. I’ve been offline a lot (don’t ask), but I found a few moments to post thoughts on the matter.
Ben Smith at The Politico reports that one of Kagan’s friends finally decided to put an end to the speculation.
“I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight,” said Sarah Walzer, Kagan’s roommate in law school and a close friend since then. “She dated men when we were in law school, we talked aboutmen—who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago – and she just didn’t find the right person.”
...The result has been an awkward dilemma for the traditional media, for whom reporting about homosexuality has always been considered to be off limits. Reporters and bloggers have debated, publicly and privately, the propriety of asking whether Kagan is gay. But Walzer – who has spoken regularly to the press this week – said that in a series of interviews with reporters she had been asked only obliquely about the nominee’s “social life.”
And that traditional media dilemma has been the most interesting thing to hear about, since Walzer confirms that the MSM has clearly been probing and dancing around the question with Kagan’s friends, but never asking about it directly. It points out the obvious—too many reporters/editors are squeamish because, when it comes down to it, they believe that asking about the personal life of someone they think may be gay is crossing some sort of line of propriety. A line that, of course, doesn’t exist when the person is straight.
Being gay is not bad, nor is it only about SEX, kinds of sex acts, etc. Is there mass MSM cognitive dissonance going on? Honest to god, how many times have we heard more gory details than we care to know about heterosexual newsmakers and their kinks, sex acts and accounts of adultery? Can we say, um,
John Edwards
? I didn’t see the media running from that one. They only kept a lid on it until it was confirmed, then then the reporting burst like a dam.
No media outlet could justify that inquiring about what one does in the bedroom is appropriate to ask a SCOTUS nominee, but if there are rumors floating around about whether one is or isn’t gay, why wouldn’t you want to ask that to clear the air?
That’s just asking about a demographic (and an official one in 2010 as one can indicate on the census whether you have a same-sex partner), such as religion, race, region of birth —all things that have been discussed widely as Kagan is being compared to sitting justices.
This is where some cultural growth is in order—printing a 17-year-old photo of Elena Kagan playing softball is juvenile. That photo was selected for a reason; it wasn’t random. Just ask, people.
I will say that the open secondary discussion—that if Kagan did identify as a lesbian privately but was closeted publicly could be a problem in some quarters of the LGBT community was interesting and healthy to have. What I saw less of is rumination of whether a straight ally would feel a need to be closeted in any way. I don’t think so, but in this political climate, a SCOTUS nominee should be prepared to be asked about views on LGBT rights, given cases are winding their way to the Supreme Court. Now, given the theatre that these nominations have turned into, the press is unlikely to get much of an answer other than to look through prior public statements or rulings, but we culturally have to get over the reluctance to “go there.”
Obviously the right wing was looking for a more salacious story about Kagan’s sex life to tie to any “pro-homosexual” views or opinions, but I seriously doubt a declaration of her heterosexuality will cause the fringe to pipe down. Again, watching how the MSM acts, paired with some of the squeamishness about sexual orientation by the left in this matter is a better barometer of whether LGBT issues are truly understood, and whether it does affect public political support (note, not personal support) when the game gets tough on legislation. It can explain why you see calls to backburner human rights legislation, and the WH bus driving over us because it may impact, say, midterm elections.
Blogging from me this week might be sparse, since I’m going to SXSW for the music portion—-I do intend to update with thoughts from the always thought-provoking festival that tends to foreground what’s going to be trendy. With the concept of trends on the mind, though, I want to comment on this research on Twitter that was being reported in tones ranging from sad to dire. (Which sort of surprised me, since it just reinforces prior research on who uses Twitter how much.) Only 21% of Twitter uses are “active”, defined with a floor that’s way too low as having at least 10 followers, 10 followees, and having tweeted 10 times. Considering how many people like myself are on it all damn day, tweeting our heads off (I’ve tweeted over 4,900 times), I’m going to guess that the people who are really, truly active on Twitter are an even smaller group than that.
This is treated as terrible news, because it means Twitter users aren’t “social”, whatever that means. But it’s actually the sort of news you should expect. Online life differs from offline life in some ways, but not that much. And spheres of influence are an aspect of online life that is simply replicating offline life. Remember that whole cool part of The Tipping Point where Malcolm Gladwell talked about how certain trends start with a few people and then radiate out rapidly once adopted by those people who are highly influential on a whole lot of people? That sort of thing is happening online. A few people exert outsized influence, and most people like it that way. Because it creates order and trust. If everyone out there was just firing on all cylinders at once, generating content with no filters, the information overload would paralyze us. I think a system where a relatively small percentage of people on Twitter carry the weight of pushing out information on it all day—-and having other people move that information with retweets and replies—-is a fine system. It evolved that way because it’s working for people.
I suppose the fear is that people aren’t using it for back-and-forth conversations, but instead are using it to create a multi-layered news and information aggregator, one where you can rapidly customize your feed to find out exactly what certain people are thinking and talking about—-and not what others are thinking or talking about. But back and forth conversations on Twitter can get dull really fast. It’s just not good for that. It’s a lot better for agenda-setting. I suppose the fact that some people are hugely influential and most people have little influence is supposed to worry us, but I’m pretty sanguine about it. The people who don’t try to set the agenda do influence the system, because they decide who will in fact set the agenda by giving them attention. They decide who they trust or find interesting by following them and retweeting their tweets, and that helps other people decide who they trust, and the people who get that trust put in them are just saying stuff that people are interested in, so what’s the harm? It’s really how human systems work.
And so what if people link a lot? They usually say something useful about the link, and often that’s all you need. It’s great that influential people can exert their influence efficiently, I say. Better yet, it seems Twitter is encouraging specialization. People who start getting a lot of followers generally have an idea of what their followers care about, and they start to speak to that subject more and more, and in the process, become more proficient and better aggregators and disseminators. And their audiences benefit from their growing expertise.
I don’t see a downside. Facebook’s interface seems better equipped for maintaining daily contact with your friends than Twitter, which reads more like an endless stream of information. And that people aren’t keeping regular, meaningful contact with dozens of people a day doesn’t bother me. We don’t have the time or cognitive space to regard that many people at all points in time like intimates. But if we have casual information and trend-setting content streaming at us from specialized sources, everyone gets a little of what they want. I think it’s working out great. And if Twitter wants to make money at this, they might consider working with the needs of the users they have, instead of being upset that we aren’t doing a “better” job of using their service as they originally envisioned.
It’s just time to do some fun, mindless chatting about commercials. Most are forgettable, and a lot of them are memorable. The ones I remember most are usually paired with interesting music or visuals that are compelling, and of course, are funny.
Many times, favorite commercials tend to be ones we remember from childhood, or nowadays, are targeted. I think what’s pretty interesting is how marketing has changed over the years—it’s obviously more sophisticated in some ways, more annoying in other ways—obvious manipulation, screaming pitchmen/women, and the godawful commercials for local businesses.
Anyway, here’s a couple that I’m fond of.
Present day: The Kia Sorrento commercial “Joyride Dream,” which debuted on the Super Bowl (though I didn’t see it then), with the stuffed animals coming to life and enjoying the wild life—bowling, Vegas, and the one that cracks me up—the monkey getting a sewn-on “Mom” tattoo. The music: The Heavy’s “How You Like Me Now.”
Going back a few years…I love this video, um, commercial for The Gap (“Khaki Soul”) from back in 1997, when the stars aligned to bring landmark music video director Hype Williams together with Bill Withers’ song “Lovely Day” and a multi-racial, joyful bunch of dancers in a tight 30-second spot that makes me wish that we were really a post-racial society. It seemed closer then than now. There’s a great write up about the video and the Gap campaign here.
OK, really going back—1969. This one was memorable because I saw it so many times as a kid and laughed every single time. Clearly I was easily amused.
OK - head on over to YouTube and share your favorites in the comments.
Now this is what I’m talking about when it comes to the crazies on the right—the fire-breathing man of manufactured tears, Glenn Beck, telling people what they need to do about their church-going habits.
On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that “social justice,” the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a “code word” for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice.
“I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”
So all those ministers and priests that marched for equal rights for blacks back in the day were Nazis? WTF? I know Glenn thinks his sheeple are dim, but damn, he’s lowering the bar WAY down. Politics Daily has the audio.
***
In a double-dip of insanity from the land of Beck, here is one of his advertisers, Survival Seed Bank, hawking “survival seeds” as a defense against “emerging totalitarianism.” (Protect your keyboards) Media Matters:
There’s nothing wrong with a business that serves some kind of demand in the marketplace, but it goes without saying that fearmongering about economic collapse followed by food shortages and citing World Net Daily for “strong evidence” is big time black helicopter stuff.
Since I’ve been doing the mind-numbing work of unpacking my stuff and putting it away, I’ve been watching a lot more internet video than usual, because I can just prop up the laptop and hit “play” while I put stuff away. And so I saw and laughed at the above “Daily Show” video, and was pleased to see Jezebel pick it up. It’s certainly not a faux feminist approach to the subject—-that is embodied by the “hey she’s a lady” supporters of Sarah Palin—-but I’d say that this was an instance of genuine feminist rage, if channeled through genial Jon Stewart. The issue at hand is the way that Gretchen Carlson of “Fox and Friends” acts on the show, which is basically that she plays a bimbo who is baffled by big words like “ignoramus”. But as the “Daily Show” researchers discovered, Carlson was not actually born yesterday, but is well-educated and almost certainly very smart. She only plays a bimbo on TV.
The schtick serves two purposes. First of all, by playing the bimbo, Carlson can advance opinions in the full concern troll space: Gee whiz, I just don’t want to ask these hard questions, but that Mr. Obama sure seems dangerous, doesn’t he? The other reason is straight up wingnut pandering. Wingnuts like their bimbos, I guess. When women play dumb, order is restored to the universe, and fragile wingnut male egos aren’t disturbed. That’s no surprise, of course, but what is a surprise is the increasingly prevalent wingnut practice of giving the women playing bimbo roles that command real authority. Carlson isn’t being Carrie Prejean, giggling and stupiding around in a bikini, in order to demonstrate that she’s never taken a moment in her entire life to think for herself. Fox News pretends to be a real news channel, and therefore Carlson is pretending to be a real news anchor. That amount of professional authority already betrays the bimbo hopes and dreams of the target audience, you’d think. To really establish proper gender roles, you’d think they’d simply not give women these jobs.
But they actually have to, and it’s because of feminism. We’ve made overt sexism just shameful enough that even conservatives want to avoid the label. Of course, they don’t want to do it by avoiding actual sexism. So this is the compromise we’re seeing: women promoted to wingnut welfare jobs that would only go to men if feminists hadn’t put the conservative establishment’s back against the wall on this. But in order to get those jobs, the women still have to adhere to gross stereotypes of women, so that the audience can fool themselves into thinking that just because women have power doesn’t mean things have really changed. And, as the Sarah Palin example shows, there’s a narrative forming about how the only women who really deserve power are the ones who adhere as closely as possible to this bimbo ideal, as if power is a reward that is passed out to compliant women, no different than a beauty queen’s crown and sash.
I’m torn about whether this John F. Harris article is terrible. On the one hand, it’s like a hall of mirrors…of stupid. It’s a reporter discussing all the things that he and his ilk could be saying about Obama…but aren’t yet. Harris proposes 7 narratives that Obama hopes doesn’t catch on, which, technically makes sense - I certainly hope that one of seven largely contradictory and largely unsupported narratives based largely on insider gossip and what seems like random interactions with people who may or may not be in the Obama Administration. The narratives are:
1.) He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money
2.) Too much Leonard Nimoy
3.) That’s the Chicago Way
4.) He’s a pushover
5.) He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe
6.) President Pelosi
7.) He’s in love with the man in the mirror
So, Obama is a too-logical, frivolous narcissist who bullies people around as they push him over (particularly Nancy Pelosi), and he also hates America. QED.
What Harris wants this to demonstrate is the terrible position Obama has found himself in, having frittered away all of his goodwill with
the American people
the Washington press corps. What this actually demonstrates is that the Washington press corps literally makes shit up, and that covering the leader of the free world allows ample opportunity to take one interaction, one event, and spin it into the very definition of a presidency simply by focusing on it ad nauseum. The reason the media is so distrusted is precisely this - Harris has written what’s little more than an effective holdup note, letting Obama know that if he steps out of line there’s a myriad of ways in which he will be made to pay.
There should be some shame on Harris’ part for writing a story that’s basically admitting his job is sitting around throwing darts at a board, deciding what inane shit he wants to say today. However, I’m pretty sure he’ll be on MSNBC all day tomorrow, discussing the serious and deep import of all the ways in which Obama is losing at everything. And the best part is that it actually helps to cover up the actual issues with the Obama Administration, because Spock jokes are so much more fun to repeat for 16 hours a day on cable news.
The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness - a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention - even if out of context.
As we’re well aware by now, when conservatives put Sarah Palin and sexism in the same sentence, it’s about 98% certain that the result will be utterly nonsensical.
The photo she’s referring to was a part of an August 2009 Runner’s World pictorial, taken when she was Governor of Alaska, after she had run for Vice President and likely right about the time she decided to resign and begin her current career path of running around places being Sarah Palin. The problem with crying “sexism” about Newsweek’s use of this picture is that it’s photo she took for calculated appeal being used to show her calculated political appeal.
If you’re a politician, you don’t trip and fall into the feature article and photo spread in a nationwide magazine. No governor of a state and former vice presidential candidate stands up in front of a professional photographer with an American flag draped over a chair…just because.
Her own attack on Newsweek belies the complete inanity of her offense. “The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness - a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.” So, even as you get angry because they took your Runner’s World photo which is completely and totally unrelated to your political persona, you make sure everyone knows how deeply concerned you are about our nation’s fitness. Because that’s just a thing you do.
It’s hard to argue the sexism of others when you’re portrayed exactly as you yourself chose to be portrayed. If there is one thing that Sarah Palin controls, it’s the motherfucking several-hour-long photo shoots she signs herself up for. But she does know the word “sexism”, so she might as well use it. Tomorrow’s word? Perpendicular.
When you’re on the road (dealing with big ups and downs on life’s roller coaster), this kind of hilarious flaming horsecrap is entertaining.
If only I had the juice (and cash) of sick, bloviating, untethered-from-reality-and-the truth Glenn Beck! The New York Times Opinionator Tobin Harshaw compares my call to shut down the gAyTM to the radical, racist, bigoted diatribes of Glenn Beck. His reasoning?
”We know that hard-line conservatives are riled up. But so are hard-left Democrats and their gay allies.”
“Let’s just say that a little leaked email proves LGBTs are seen as the easy gAyTM to the DNC that can be manipulated, ignored, and pickpocketed as mob rule strips us of civil rights without a finger being lifted to help at the eleventh hour,” adds the influential gay blogger Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend. “It’s worse - stripping resources at the time of need.”
She offers a call to arms along the lines of MoveOn’s:
I don’t know about you, but at the very least, it’s a peek at the kind the two-timing that goes on in national politics with constituencies they find “troublesome” or a perceived “liability” (save the $$$, of course). The difference is that the peek inside makes you realize how easily you’ve been had …
Shut the gAyTM down; only give directly to candidates and organizations you believe are truly working in your best interest. Not a penny to the DNC; it’s the only leverage you have as an average citizen. The big donors in our community have to take a stand on this kind of nonsense, otherwise, they are enabling this kind of treatment of our community. It’s party-building at our expense each and every time …
Pam, you may not like to hear it, but that last line could just as easily have come from Glenn Beck. Just goes to show: it may be entertaining to watch your enemies rip themselves apart, but you might just want to keep an eye on the guy to your left.
WTF? It’s time to lay down the crack pipe, Tobin. Let’s see, how do you equate a call for spending one’s donation dollars wisely and directly to a candidate that supports your issues to, say, riling up teabaggers to show up in DC waving racist/Nazi signs with the President’s image, calling for a revolution, stoking the fears and anxieties of the working class who are losing their jobs and homes because of the massive f*ckups of the last eight years by the man who took off in the helicopter this January as the crowds cheered “Na na na na…hey hey hey…goodbye.” Please.
At least the folks in the comments had a good time shredding the comparison. A snippet below the fold.
Question for Jake Tapper: doesn’t the White House, as a normal matter of course, issue press credentials which require the holder to be a part of a legitimate news organization, and as a part of that process, hasn’t the White House been engaged in the process of determining what is and isn’t a legitimate news organization for decades?
I understand that this is supposed to be hard-hitting news, but perhaps a man sitting in a small room with selected reporters from news organizations around the world who underwent Secret Service screening should not be attacking the insidious opinioneering of the White House on what constitutes a news organization.
No media outlet could justify that inquiring about what one does in the bedroom is appropriate to ask a SCOTUS nominee, but if there are rumors floating around about whether one is or isn’t gay, why wouldn’t you want to ask that to clear the air?
Apologies to Chris Clarke for stealing his joke.
Now this is what I’m talking about when it comes to the crazies on the right—the fire-breathing man of manufactured tears, Glenn Beck, telling people what they need to do about their church-going habits.
I’m torn about whether 
Sarah Palin is just full of piss and vinegar about 
”We know that hard-line conservatives are riled up. But so are hard-left Democrats and their gay allies.”