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Coming Out: Jodie Foster At Golden Globes Proves Humanity Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

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Jodie Foster, the intensely private 50-year old award-winning actress whose silver screen career spans 47 years, Sunday night at the Golden Globes proved humanity, intelligence, independence, strength, and charm are in the eye of the beholder.

Watch: Jodie Foster Comes Out As ‘Private Person’ In Controversial Golden Globes Speech

Foster’s speech, delivered for receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award — tying as the youngest person ever to be so honored — was praised and panned by Hollywood insiders and outsiders, professional and amateur critics, and activists and Average Joes alike.

Foster was celebrated and chastised for coming out as a lesbian and for not, for choosing to retain her privacy in possibly the most-public place on earth, as she, in a highly-complex and sometimes confusing tear-jerker, both reveled in and revealed her secrets.

“There is no way I could ever stand here without acknowledging one of the deepest loves of my life, my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life. My confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most-beloved BFF of 20 years, Cydney Bernard. Thank you Cyd. I am so proud of our modern family, our amazing sons Charlie and Kit, who are my reason to breathe, and to evolve, my blood and soul.”

Foster clearly and repeatedly announced she is single, and a lesbian; a very lonely lady who likes ladies.

“So when I’m here being all confessional, I guess I just have a sudden urge to say something that I’ve never really been able to air in public. So, a declaration… that I’m a little nervous about, but maybe not quite as nervous as my publicist right now, huh Jennifer? But you know, I’m just gonna put it out there, right? Loud and proud, right? So I’m gonna need your support on this. I am… single. Yes I am, I am single.”

And while it’s not the first time she’s announced her love of women, it’s maybe the first time she’s shared her obviously deep loneliness.

“I hope you guys weren’t hoping this would be a big coming out speech tonight, because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age. In those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, co-workers, and then gradually, proudly to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now apparently, I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a prime time reality show. You guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child.”

The Hollywood crowd at the Golden Globes understood. Tears filled many eyes in that room Sunday night, but across America’s living rooms and social media hangouts, a different response emerged, at least from some.

Anger. Ownership. Expectation. Frustration. And complete misunderstanding.

Bret Easton Ellis (BretEastonEllis) on Twitter

If an actor’s job is to create emotion — the right emotion — in her audience, Foster both failed and succeeded, for the ones who understood her message clearly are those who don’t judge, who have learned to love and accept and to be grateful. And it was to them she spoke.

Some people are angry at Jodie Foster for not coming out last night, or for not coming out clearly enough, or for coming out reluctantly, or for suggesting there might or should be shame attached, or even for saying, “I came out a thousand years ago.”

But just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so are understanding, acceptance, love, intelligence, charm, wit, elegance, independence, and strength.

Foster exhibited all that and more as she elicited tears, perhaps especially from the controversial Mel Gibson, her friend.

If Mel Gibson, known for his homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, can watch Jodie Foster come out and reveal herself to the world, and cry like a proud parent, natch, guardian, why are so many LGBT activists so angry?

Sure, it would be great if every gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender celebrity, politician, scientist, CEO, entrepreneur, teacher, and other leaders all came out and became role models and inspirations for our LGBTQ youth, who desperately need them.

And yes, those who have achieved celebrity status have an obligation to give back to their community, in some way.

But the LGBT equality movement needs to remind itself why we’re here. We exist to further acceptance and love, to help others embrace the uniqueness of our own special beings, to provide support and solace, to achieve equality for all. “To know us is to love us,” we often say.

Sadly for a surprising some, not last night, when we revealed a dark side in response to one of our own.

If we attack instead of embrace Jodie Foster for her “lifestyle choices,” i.e. for how she chooses to live her life: in private, how are we different from, how are we any better that the anti-gay religious right?

If we, as a community, can’t treat one of our own — one who has never embarrassed us or disrespected us, who never created scandal or shame for our community — with love, honor, and respect, how can we expect the same in return from the rest of the nation?

There are far too many problems in this world. Children are dying. People are hurting. Families are being torn apart. Loving couples cannot marry. People and animals are starving to death. The planet is warming at an ever-increasingly alarming rate. Women are shamed trying to exercise their rights, and made ashamed to acknowledge they were raped. Smart and deserving kids cannot afford to go to college, while local school boards insist on teaching creationism as science and David Barton as history. Christian warriors are indoctrinating children into becoming Christian warriors. The Pope says gay marriage will cause the end of humanity and Uganda wants to impose the death penalty on people for the “crime” of being gay. The PATRIOT Act is alive but the Violence Against Women Act is dead. Lunatics in America are buying guns, semi-automatic assault rifles, and ammunition at an increasingly faster rate every month, while 34 men, women, and children are shot to death every single day. Even now, it’s nearly impossible for many to get affordable health care, as the nation is engulfed in a flu epidemic. Fox News is literally making people more stupid than if they watched no TV at all. LGBTQ people are being fired from their jobs, beaten in the streets, and bullied on the playgrounds, simply because they are LGBTQ people. The federal government is bullying people like Aaron Swartz, literally to death, and killing innocent civilians, including children, halfway around the world with unmanned drones. The Catholic Church has never been fully prosecuted for raping children, Wall Street bankers have never been fully prosecuted for robbing homeowners, and the Bush administration has never been prosecuted at all for war crimes and for lying about WMD. The GOP and the Tea Party want to make abortion illegal, same-sex marriage illegal, education, voting rights, and health care harder to obtain, cut Medicare, Social Security, equal access to the Internet, enshrine torture and discrimination into our constitution, deport all the “illegals,” expand “Stand Your Ground” and concealed carry laws, and bomb Iran as a first resort.

Instead of setting ourselves up as the celebrity conformity cops, let’s harvest, share, and celebrate the gifts and achievements within our community.

There are far too many problems in this world. Surely Jodie Foster is not one of them. As an amazing, diverse, beautiful, intelligent, independent, strong community, let’s not be one either.

 

Transcript of Foster’s speech via Vulture. 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube

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News

‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

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The county clerk for Ingham County, Michigan blasted Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump after the ex-president’s daughter-in-law bragged the RNC will have people to “physically handle” voters’ ballots in polling locations across the country this November.

“We now have the ability at the RNC not just to have poll watchers, people standing in polling locations, but people who can physically handle the ballots,” Trump told Newsmax host Eric Bolling this week, as NCRM reported.

“Will these people, will they be allowed to physically handle the ballots as well, Lara?” Bolling asked.

“Yup,” Trump replied.

Marc Elias, the top Democratic elections attorney who won 63 of the 64 lawsuits filed by the Donald Trump campaign in the 2020 election cycle (the one he did not win was later overturned), corrected Lara Trump.

READ MORE: ‘I Hope You Find Happiness’: Moskowitz Trolls Comer Over Impeachment Fail

“Poll observers are NEVER permitted to touch ballots. She is suggesting the RNC will infiltrate election offices,” Elias warned on Wednesday.

Barb Byrum, a former Michigan Democratic state representative with a law degree and a local hardware store, is the Ingham County Clerk, and thus the chief elections official for her county. She slammed Lara Trump and warned her the RNC had better not try to touch any ballots in her jurisdiction.

“I watched your video, and it’s riveting stuff. But if you think you’ll be touching ballots in my state, you’ve got another thing coming,” Byrum told Trump in response to the Newsmax interview.

“First and foremost, precinct workers, clerks, and voters are the only people authorized to touch ballots. For example, I am the County Clerk, and I interact with exactly one voted ballot: My own,” Byrum wrote, launching a lengthy series of social media posts educating Trump.

“Election inspectors are hired by local clerks in Michigan and we hire Democrats and Republicans to work in our polling places. We’re required by law to do so,” she continued. “In large cities and townships, the local clerks train those workers. In smaller cities and townships, that responsibility falls to County Clerks, like me.”

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

She explained, “precinct workers swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Michigan.”

“Among the provisions in the Michigan Constitution is the right to a secret ballot for our voters,” she added.

Byrum also educated Trump on her inaccurate representation of the consent decree, which was lifted by a court, not a judge’s death, as Lara Trump had claimed.

“It’s important for folks to understand what you’re talking about: The end of a consent decree that was keeping the RNC from intimidating and suppressing voters (especially in minority-majority areas).”

“With that now gone, you’re hoping for the RNC to step up their game and get people that you train to do god-knows what into the polling places.”

Byrum also warned Trump: “If election inspectors are found to be disrupting the process of an orderly election OR going outside their duties, local clerks are within their rights to dismiss them immediately.”

“So if you intend to train these 100,000 workers to do anything but their sacred constitutional obligation, they’ll find themselves on the curb faster than you can say ‘election interference.'”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

 

 

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OPINION

‘I Hope You Find Happiness’: Moskowitz Trolls Comer Over Impeachment Fail

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U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) is mocking House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Comer over a CNN report revealing the embattled Kentucky Republican who has been alleging without proof President Joe Biden is the head of a vast multi-million dollar criminal bribery and influence-peddling conspiracy, has given up trying to impeach the leader of the free world.

CNN on Wednesday had reported, “after 15 months of coming up short in proving some of his biggest claims against the president, Comer recently approached one of his Republican colleagues and made a blunt admission: He was ready to be ‘done with’ the impeachment inquiry into Biden.” The news network described Chairman Comer as “frustrated” and his investigation as “at a dead end.”

One GOP lawmaker told CNN, “Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out.”

“He is fed up,” the Republican added.

Despite the Chairman’s alleged remarks, “a House Oversight Committee spokesperson maintains that ‘the impeachment inquiry is ongoing and impeachment is 100% still on the table.'”

RELATED: ‘Used by the Russians’: Moskowitz Mocks Comer’s Biden Impeachment Failure

Last week, Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) got into a shouting match with Chairman Comer, with the Maryland Democrat saying, “You have not identified a single crime – what is the crime that you want to impeach Joe Biden for and keep this nonsense going?” and Comer replying, “You’re about to find out.”

Before those heated remarks, Congressman Raskin chided Comer, humorously threatening to invite Rep. Moskowitz to return to the hearing.

Congressman Moskowitz appears to be the only member of the House Oversight Committee who has ever made a motion to call for a vote on impeaching President Biden, which he did last month, although he did it to ridicule Chairman Comer.

It appears the Moskowitz-Comer “bromance” may be over.

Wednesday afternoon Congressman Moskowitz, whose sarcasm is becoming well-known, used it to ridicule Chairman Comer.

“I was hoping our breakup would never become public,” he declared. “We had such a great thing while it lasted James. I will miss the time we spent together. I will miss our conversations. I will miss the pet names you gave me. I only wish you the best and hope you find happiness.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

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OPINION

‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

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The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case centered on the question, can the federal government require states with strict abortion bans to allow physicians to perform abortions in emergency situations, specifically when the woman’s health, but not her life, is in danger?

The 1986 federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), signed into law by Republican President Ronald Reagan, says it can. The State of Idaho on Wednesday argued it cannot.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, The Washington Post’s Kim Bellware reported, “made a clear delineation between Idaho law and what EMTALA provides.”

“In Idaho, doctors have to shut their eyes to everything except death,” Prelogar said, according to Bellware. “Whereas under EMTALA, you’re supposed to be thinking about things like, ‘Is she about to lose her fertility? Is her uterus going to become incredibly scarred because of the bleeding? Is she about to undergo the possibility of kidney failure?’ ”

READ MORE: Gag Order Breach? Trump Targeted Cohen in Taped Interview Hours Before Contempt Hearing

Attorney Imani Gandy, an award-winning journalist and Editor-at-Large for Rewire News Group, highlighted an issue central to the case.

“The issue of medical judgment vs. good faith judgment is a huge one because different states have different standards of judgment,” she writes. “If a doctor exercises their judgment, another doctor expert witness at trial could question that. That’s a BIG problem here. That’s why doctors are afraid to provide abortions. They may have an overzealous prosecutor come behind them and disagree.”

Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito appeared to draw the most fire from legal experts, as his questioning suggested “fetal personhood” should be the law, which it is not.

“Justice Alito is trying to import fetal personhood into federal statutory law by suggesting federal law might well prohibit hospitals from providing abortions as emergency stabilizing care,” observed Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

Paraphrasing Justice Alito, Kreis writes: “Alito: How can the federal government restrict what Idaho criminalizes simply because hospitals in Idaho have accepted federal funds?”

Appearing to answer that question, Georgia State University College of Law professor of law and Constitutional scholar Eric Segall wrote: “Our Constitution unequivocally allows the federal gov’t to offer the states money with conditions attached no matter how invasive b/c states can always say no. The conservative justices’ hostility to the spending power is based only on politics and values not text or history.”

Professor Segall also served up some of the strongest criticism of the right-wing justice.

READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

He wrote that Justice Alito “is basically making it clear he doesn’t care if pregnant women live or die as long as the fetus lives.”

Earlier Wednesday morning Segall had issued a warning: “Trigger alert: In about 20 minutes several of the conservative justices are going to show very clearly that that they care much more about fetuses than women suffering major pregnancy complications which is their way of owning the libs which is grotesque.”

Later, predicting “Alito is going to dissent,” Segall wrote: “Alito is dripping arrogance and condescension…in a case involving life, death, and medical emergencies. He has no bottom.”

Taking a broader view of the case, NYU professor of law Melissa Murray issued a strong warning: “The EMTALA case, Moyle v. US, hasn’t received as much attention as the mifepristone case, but it is huge. Not only implicates access to emergency medical procedures (like abortion in cases of miscarriage), but the broader question of federal law supremacy.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

 

 

 

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