This stuff is just getting too wierd.

So what you’re saying is there are hypocrits in politics…and queer ones at that…

NO! Say it ain’t so!!

We can disagree with Mr. Goode´s positions on gay rights and also with earmarks motivated by cronyism. But this does not strike me as hypocrisy in the same sense of double standards that are imposed on the public: holding others to standards of sexual conduct to which one does not hold oneself - e.g. Spitzer´s prosecution of prositutes, Vitter, Foley, Rev. Ted Haggard, etc. Is the hypocrisy is from an anti-gay politician´s now supporting pro-gay art (why complain about that? maybe his mind is opening, esp. as he has professional and friendly relationships with gays or lesbians?) or a gay person´s serving as press secretary to a politician who votes against equality for gays? I am just not sure that harsh condemnation for hypocrisy is warranted.

Okay, yes, there is a delightful irony in an anti-gay bigot being eaten alive by the right for something unrelated to being a bigot, but it sounds as though you are trying to make this story be about some sort of hypocrisy by Goode.

I’m not getting it. I can see how the hypocrisy charge works if it were aimed at Duncan, in the fairly common but entirely valid “how can you work for someone who opposes your rights?” way.  Actually, since it doesn’t sound as though he is in the closet (and appearing in gay/bi themed movies wouldn’t be a great way to stay there if he was), it’s pretty clean. If not hypocrite, at least asshole.

And a general ripping of earmarks and pork might be appropriate. I thought we liked government support of the arts. I thought I would see in the story that the theater that got the earmarks was a porn palace or something, but it doesn’t seem to be.

Reading the articles, it sounds as though the earmark went to revamping the theater, not making the film. If there are genuine questions about that, then investigate away.

But on the face of it, it sounds more like it is a story about the assholery of the investigators claiming that no elected official can have any contact of any positive nature with anything associated with anyone gay. Not sure how that becomes a story about another Republican caught with his pants down.

Anyone who scores a zero with HRC is far from a hero (or even a decent person) in my book. But this one feels like a real reach. Or perhaps more accurately, I think there is a story here, but not the one you seem to be hinting at.

The anti-gay angle seems more along the “how can your wife be opposed to gay rights and still have her hair done by Mr. Bruce? Hypocrite!”  Well, yes, but not anywhere in the “wide stance” neighborhood. There is, unfortunately, not a lot that is inherently hypocritical in the “he runs a nice theater, we just want him in the closet” worldview. It sucks, it is homophobic, and all that. Even if he opposes job protections and states that every employer should have the right to fire people for being gay, unless he is demanding mandatory firings for all gays everywhere, I don’t see it.

What am I missing?

Cross-posted with Luke. Pretty much agree with him.

Now I’ve heard of Mike Stark twice and I am doubly unimpressed.  The first time was the attempt in 2006 to accost senatorial candidate George Allen with the question, “Did you spit on your first wife?”  This leading question, according to a letter by Stark, referred to allegations in Allen’s divorce 25 years earlier.

Now this story, the effect of which will be negligible on Goode, is most likely to cause the loss of job of Lincoln Duncan. 

Somehow the aspiration to be the Matt Drudge of the left does not seem to me to be a noble one.