Exclusive: Famous Writer Del Shores Endorses Obama. ‘I’ve Got His Back.’
In our exclusive interview, Del Shores, of “Sordid Lives” and “Queer as Folk” fame, tells guest author Jeremy Stubbs he’s endorsing President Obama: “I’ve got his back.”
Del Shores is a busy man. His latest movie, “Blues for Willadean,” has been screening in L.A. and takes on the serious subject of spousal abuse and violence while still providing some of his well known southern comedy. It stars the always engaging Beth Grant, Dale Dickey of “True Blood,” and Octavia Spencer in the first movie following her Academy Award winning performance in “The Help.”
I could feel over the phone his excitement about the screening as he spoke with me about the recent attempts in Texas to block his famous play “Sordid Lives” from going into production. Despite a warm welcome from fans — since 1987 — of his plays, movies, and his production of such shows as “Queer as Folk,” Shores’ work still gets met with strong resistance in places like the Deep South. Has it ever stopped the refreshingly outspoken Del Shores? Not for one second.
READ: Art Imitates Life In A Small Texas Town’s Fight Against ‘Sordid Lives’
“You know what I think?,†he says as we jump right into what felt like a conversation you might have with a neighbor or friend. “That play is about love and acceptance. These people have just refused to enlighten themselves over the years, hiding behind a few scriptures to feel their own hatred. They try to call it offensive or complain because it has the f-word or whatever, but what they are doing is hiding behind their own homophobia.”
“I would like all those people that tried to block the show to come out to the Wimberley Players for the preview so we can have a civil conversation about censorship,” Shores continued. “I’d especially like to talk to the ones that made all those comments and have never even read the play,†he tells me in his message to the very vocal minority who threatened to pull funding from the Wimberly Players playhouse. “If they won’t do that, and they to come out to picket, then bring a camera. I am the son of a Southern Baptist preacher and I will go toe-to-toe with them on scripture. There are gay people in anti-gay states like Texas and North Carolina, where they voted hate into their constitution, that need to know that there are others fighting on their behalf.”
Mr. Shores is also scheduled to appear at nearby Texas State University to speak with playwriting students, LGBT groups on campus, and perform sections of his one man shows on November 8. The show will be followed by a meet and greet and will be hosted by the university’s Honors College, where an LGBT studies program has just begun earlier this year.
Del Shores’ work often includes such subjects as religion, family, and LGBT issues. It all pours onto the page at once after the characters have brewed in his mind like he mentions they are now for his next play, already titled, “This Side of Crazy.”
“I always tell people I’m just this side of crazy,” he jokes. “I just don’t tell them which side I’m on.”
Del Shores is a native of Texas, a well-known Republican stronghold in the upcoming election, and he will be in the state on election night. “I feel good about it,” he tells me. “I was talking to a relative lately who said Obama hasn’t been able to get us out of this debt and fix our problems. There’s something lost when it comes to these people’s expectations. It’s going to take longer, and in my opinion there is one big elephant in the room that hasn’t gone away. His name is George W. Bush.â€
“As you might assume, I’m for Obama,” Shores tells me. “What he said about marriage equality was just fantastic. I’ve got his back.”
“I do get political in Naked. Sordid. Reality, also,” he continues. “I talk about Newt Gingrich and Victoria Jackson. The audiences have really been responding to her and the part about Kirk Cameron. They are some of the biggest hypocrites and haters towards the gay community.”
In addition to politics, Shores’ most recent show discusses his divorce, being single again, and his real Aunt Sissy, who is a favorite of his characters among his fans. Sharing how he is looking forward to performing at Texas State University he tells me, “I love playing the South. It’s like group therapy. I start off with one twisted story that no one has been able to top yet. It really is my hope audiences will walk away laughing and forgetting about everything else for a while. If they also walk away thinking just a little bit, then that’s an added bonus.”
Before hanging up we shared the last of many laughs throughout our conversation. It was a bit of laughter through tears after we both got choked up when he allowed me to share with him a cherished memory, from a summer in Alabama at age fourteen, of watching his first movie with my late grandmother. It was the same kind of heartfelt moment we see often in his shows and movies. It indicated to me that when we watch his work we are truly seeing his heart, his humanity, and that he is very much enjoying his true to life characters right along with us.
“Blues for Willadean” premieres at Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, CA this weekend.
Images of Del Shores by Bryan Putnam (top) and Alan Mercer (center).
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Guest author Jeremy Stubbs credits his parents for his twisted sense of humor. He currently lives just outside of Austin, Texas with his wonderful partner and their pesky cat. When he’s not working to pay the bills he is photographing and writing about the world around him.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
