Common Decency Is No Homophobic

From: Gay Patriot

It seems a truism of contemporary political discourse today that if a liberal pundit or Democratic politician can’t defend his actions, he will accuse his critics of harboring prejudices against a particular minority group.

As most of you know, on Tuesday, a blogger at Wonkette, a left-of-center website, posted a piece “attacking Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome baby Trig on his birthday.” The blogger also suggested that Palin’s husband Todd slept with their daughter. In response, several advertisers, including Papa John’s pizza, pulled their ad from the site.

Now, Ace reports that the folks at Wonkette are accusing the pizza place of animus against gay people:

In a tweet, Wonkette announces that their former advertiser, Papa John’s, is not only “shitty,” but “homophobic.” Clarification/Correction: The tweet was by “Wonkette” and not necessarily Ken Layne, as I first assumed. Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s some other shrieking ninny. I don’t know who does their tweeting.
Homophobic = not giving gays a pass on every nasty thing they say or do. That is the only possible definition of the word he can be using to get to this conclusion.
The site was just as gay when Papa John’s was advertising on it before. The only difference is that they posted that nasty Trig post.

It’s not anti-gay to hold someone to account for crossing a certain line. And Wonkette went way over the line in mocking the child of a prominent conservative leader reviled on the left. As would a conservative blogger who mocked the president’s children — or the children of any Democratic politician. It’s one thing to criticize Sarah Palin and take issue with her ideas, it’s quite another to attack her children.


It is telling that they’re now playing the anti-gay card. Their critics have won the argument. Instead of conceding the point and acknowledging their error, they choose to personalize the matter. They just can’t let the right win. But, here it’s not the right that’s “won”, but common decency that’s won out.


Reminding us that even hard-nosed political operatives are human beings who love their children, Jim Geraghty explains:

Now, regular readers of this newsletter know that derision and mockery of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are pretty much standard fare. In their professional lives, Axelrod cynically exploited a way-too-friendly media to elect a fundamentally unprepared man to be president; if Rahm Emanuel were not protected by the “D” after his name, the table-stabbing, fish-sending anecdotes would be cited as evidence of him being a raving maniac, not merely a passionate, foul-mouthed operator.
But in those moments, you can see two men, working long hours and away from their loved ones and wondering if they’re making a mistake and sacrificing what matters most. They’re fathers and husbands. Human. With vulnerabilities and regrets and doubts. Somewhere in Chicago, there are children who miss their dads, kids who have never given you or me any reason to dislike them.

What’s striking about this is that we have people – quite a few people, I increasingly suspect – in the political world whose entire interaction is based on sticking it to the other side. This is what matters most to them. Vengeance, or lashing out, against their political foes is preeminent in their hierarchy of values, outranking everything.

Read the whole thing.