Tweet
There has been quite a response to the Town Hall on Thursday, and I thought I’d point you to some of the related coverage.
First, the full audio is now available on Mike Signorile’s blog.
A blow-by-blow liveblog of it is up at Daily Kos
* David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement:
Why is it at every turn, Solmonese makes a concerted effort to bend over backwards and applaud Obama for things like appointing “the highest-ranking openly gay person of any administration in history,” (which is nice, but doesn’t stop DADT discharges or let me marry.) Joe’s own letter to Obama a year ago June, while firm, has certainly not delivered any results.) Why is Solmonese working so hard to defend Obama’s performance?Here’s a little fact I learned during my twenty-five years in business. Think about your own experience and you’ll recognize its truth: Poor performers stick together. Excellent performers stick together. Not all the time, but look around your workplace, or think about life in college or high school.
* Over at DC Agenda, Kevin Naff unleashes this editorial, “HRC, Solmonese in the hot seat,” that cannot be missed. A snippet:
There were plenty of barbs sent Solmonese’s way, including a pointed question from Get Equal’s Robin McGehee, who asked if Solmonese and HRC’s David Smith would resign if key LGBT legislative priorities are not achieved this year. Solmonese responded that his continued employment is up to the HRC board. (Note from Pam -Joe has apparently opened the door for the LGBT community to give the board independent feedback on his performance)…As for Solmonese, he and his organization often sound out of touch with the average LGBT person. There is a palpable and growing anger with President Obama and the Democrats in Congress and HRC would be wise to recognize it and respond appropriately. Solmonese, for example, should have apologized for the Griffin rally – it was a sorry exercise in star-fuckery that had no place in the serious debate over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a law that has destroyed the careers of 13,000 brave American service members.
More below the fold.Reactions
* Jason Bellini filed this report at The Advocate. Excellent report. Jason’s delivery is a hoot in all of the right ways.
***
Unrelated to the town hall, but connected to the GetEqual action, and general LGBT frustration with the Obama admin, Marc Ambinder weighed in with what can only be described as a damage control piece for the administration. Basically the Cliff Notes version is that the Obama White House is doing everything right, and the uppity gays are paranoid, impatient and too pushy. I’ve heard of drinking the Kool-Aid, but this is mainlining it.
Messina and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel are also accused of slow-walking the repeal strategy because they’re worried about culture wars. That is, they allegedly urged Congressional Democrats not to add language repealing DADT into the defense appropriations bill, and they counseled President Obama not to issue an executive order unilaterally ending the ban.There is no mystery here. Repealing DADT is very popular. There is no political downside. So the argument that Messina and Emanuel think there’d be a political downside is untenable. And Obama has said that he wants gays integrated into the military in the right way — in a way that builds on a foundation of legitimacy that only the Pentagon brass can create. And the time frame for repealing the ban was determined on the basis of what Sec. Gates and Adm. Mullen need in order to build that legitimacy.
Have you stopped laughing at the shite yet? John Aravosis blows this nonsense out of the water with Gay Netroots spooks Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina.
No one thinks there’s a conspiracy against gays in the White House, a phrase that Ambinder uses repeatedly (apparently in an effort to diminish gay critics of Messina and the President as kooky (a common tactic used by this White House against progressive critics, and it’s sad, as it’s the tacky kind of thing George Bush would do)). What we think, what we know, is that gay and lesbian Americans aren’t that important to this President. So his staff can refer to our civil rights, our struggle for equality and acceptance, our efforts to realize the American dream, as some sort of not-very-important inconvenience that we should be embarrassed to even be mentioning in polite company.Bottom line is that this President promised us repeatedly that he was going to repeal DADT, repeal DOMA, and pass ENDA. And he specifically promised to get DADT repealed this year. His current plan, however, is to ignore the last two, and push off the former until a time when it can’t pass.
We’re not conspiracy theorists, but we’re not stupid either.
4 Comments
Embedded Autoplay video/audio clips……BAD!
EYE ON THE PRIZE…
1. Really disappointd to see people still wasting time workin’ the useless “HRC Is Worse Than Obama” agenda. Ya ready for some new definitions of “insanity”? Here’s #1: still believing after YEARS of dissing HRC, after the “Blog Swarm,” after y’all confronted their current head head-on…that they are going to change.
TRUST ME! This is in no way a defense of HRC. It is an attack on both the self-delusion that anyone is going to succeed in forcing them to change their MO and that even if you could that THAT is what the problem is, what we need to repeal DADT and pass ENDA and UAFA. Still arguing over HRC as the window closes on the possibility of those things happening is like wasting time arguing over whose fault it was the Titanic hit the iceberg. The ship is going down, kids!
2. Insanity definition #2: I’ve realized something in the past few days: some people, no matter how much they criticize him, just can’t admit to themselves that Obama has turned out to be for LGBTS just another craven, lying politician so they have to find someone else to blame for his failings. Some will recall that was, in fact, one of the earliest explicit excuses excreted by charter Obambots: it’s not Him-it’s all those Clintonistas he was tricked into hiring. They’re manipulating him, keeping him from being the Messiah he really is. Why he’d stretch forth his rod and part the antigay waters if it weren’t for their evil agenda.
Almost as quickly, we were told: it’s not Him, it’s HRC who is simply giving him bad advice. If He was getting good advice, why, of course, He’d be doing the right thing! And that meme has grown into a monstrous myth: HE’s not responsible for HIS actions.
Fast forward to Marc Ambinder’s disingenuous defense yesterday, which included the phony assertion that Messina is simply following Obama’s belief that repeal can’t/shouldn’t happen “while we’re fighting two wars” when Obama has repeatedly said we can and should; as recently as last October’s HRC dinner.But the larger point is that his whole article is based on a dysfunctional mindset he’s exhibited before, and, though they’ve yet to recognize it, is SHARED BY some of those who are flaming him.
You see, it’s not just the Obama administration Ambinder is defending but the institution itself. Yesterday, and often before, it’s been Obama, but….wait for it…he defended George Bush the same way. Here’s what brilliant civil rights attorney, author, and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald [who happens to be gay] wrote about Ambinder last fall when it was revealed that those Ambinder had once viciously attacked for accusing the Bush Reich of using phony terror alerts to manipulate the public were right.
So now Ambinder is defending Obama and his reports re DADT repeal the same way: they couldn’t possibly being doing anything dishonest like claiming to be for repeal while simultaneously authorizing Gates to intimidate Congress into slow walking it do death. And anyone who disagrees is a conspiracy theorist.
And, again, some of Ambinder’s critics today are suffering from simply a variation of his refusal to believe Obama Inc. could be the source of the failure rather than the childlike pawn of a Rasputian HRC. HRC wasn’t blamed for failure to lift the ban in 1993. Clinton was. While criticized for many other things, HRC wasn’t denounced for failure to get DADT repealed during the previous 8-yr administration. Bush was. Why is Obama given a pass, and sole responsibility passed to HRC? Is there a bit of subconcious racist paternalism going on?
FACT: Whatever has happened since, whatever subsequent meetings they’ve wrongly been excluded from, reps of SLDN [gay vets Rear Adm. Alan Steinman, Capt. Joan Darrah, DADT victim David Hall, nongays Rear Adm. Jamie Barnett (Ret), and MCPO Vince Patton, (Ret)] MET WITH OBAMA’S TRANSITION TEAM A WEEK BEFORE THE INAUGRUAL the Inaugural and spelled out what to do about repeal and how…including not reappointing Bush appointee and longtime repeal opponent Gates and inserting repeal into last year’s DEFAUTH.
Steinman
Darrah
Hall
Barnett
Patton
Is SLDN to blame for Obama not doing what they asked? NO!
Is there ANY evidence Obama WOULD do what so many assume HRC is NOT telling Messina he should? NO, again!
So let’s drop the disingenuous and ineffective anti-HRC agenda and focus on where the buck stops..and it ain’t at Joe Solmonese’s desk.
Ambinder didn’t want to see the evidence about Bush; blaming “conspiracy theorists” with “gut hatred” for Bush for their accusations. Now he doesn’t want to see the evidence about Obama; and is blaming gay “conspiracy theorists” for not seeing, as he claims, that it’s not Obama but Gates & Mullen who have created the delay…as if those men could do anything so high profile without the full knowledge and permission of their boss.
Too many gays still don’t want to see the evidence that Obama is playing them like a violin even as they complain about the music. Time and again, they’ve forgiven him for other betrayals, from McClurkingate to Warrengate, and they’ve become like the betrayed lover who just can’t believe it’s happened again, who is willingly caught in the trap of, “if I let go now, everything I’ve invested in this relationship will have been for nothing-I will have failed!” So they look for someone else to blame for their lover’s behavior. He’s been seduced, misled into betrayal by another man…and his name is Joe.
Seriously, how much longer must this self-defeating self-delusion go on?
Yes, with only weeks left to repeal DADT, it IS an either/or situation. Either people can invest their time and energy and efforts into continuing to demonize “the other man,” or they can go after the man who courted us, promised us the moon and the stars if we’d only choose him, repeatedly smile fucked us, then betrayed us again and again while trying to distract us from those betrayals with day-old cookies and cheap flowers, and is now treating US like we’re the one who’s betrayed HIM.
Oh PleaseNot holding our national orgs to account is bullshit. And HRC is the worst among them, sucking money out of our communities for their cocktail parties and having absolutely NOTHING to show for it.
HRC HAS frittered away the rights of Transpeople to make passing these bills more palatable. After all, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad, right? Unless you are #4.
So if we are PISSED at HRC for sucking local money and returning extremely little value in return, thereby HAMPERING the work we need to do in our own communities, then yes, we have every right to shout from the rooftops that if you want to be more effective, don’t give your money to HRC. Give locally or give to another org that has some sort of successful track record in looking out for the interests of EVERYONE in the LGBT community. And THAT my friend, DOES stop at Solmonese’s desk.
And you assume we don’t realize we are being played by the administration? Have you bothered reading any of the dozens of posts and comments discussing closing the GayTM because of lack of action in congress and the White House?
Not a defense of HRC? You sure could have fooled me.
You must have missed all the times I’ve endorsed closing the GayTM.
Really, dear, don’t take your obsessive-compulsive HRC rage out on me. All you’ve done is prove my point…pivoting back to making them the subject, making them LGBT Public Enemy #1 when the worst that can be said about them in the CURRENT discussion is that they’re an accomplice to Obama’s crimes.
WHERE did I encourage people NOT to hold “our national orgs to account”; where did I encourage anyone to keep giving money to HRC or any other org? HOW is it that, just like Obama, those individuals who continue to aren’t responsible for THEIR actions?
It’s NOT MY fault people have [and others continue to] believe them, any more than it’s MY fault people were fooled by Obama.
What I did say, and your kneejerk rant has offered no evidence to the contrary, is that what is MOST important in the next few weeks is focusing on the person who holds all the power re DADT [and probably ENDA]…which is EXACTLY what SLDN’s Aubrey Sarvis said in response to Joe Solmonese’s assertion that we should focus on the six Senators key to DADT repeal: some of those six will not support repeal no matter what WE do [or what HRC does]. ONLY the President can get them to act.