Connect with us

Fill The Void

Published

on

Sarah Palin got it right.

Well, just one thing: Palin knows how to fill a void. Who else was able to upstage two solid weeks of 24/7 Michael Jackson media coverage? From the moment she announced she was resigning as Governor of Alaska, she started making new headlines all over again, giving more interviews, releasing more statements, turning the weeks after Fourth of July into Palinpalooza.

From the moment John McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate last year, she worked hard to dominate headlines every day. Lord knows every “You betcha” hit YouTube – and every mistake and mis-characterization hit Mainstream America. Palin’s antics polarized the nation, but we knew everything she said and did. For better or for worse, Palin was the story. And for better or for worse, Palin remains a story. Like the Michael Jackson story on Larry King, it seems Palin will be forever with us.

The year is more than half over. Summer is half over. Legislatures are winding down, or are done. The fun flurry of whack-a-mole marriage equality news is gone. And with it, our ability to move our agenda forward, at least in the hearts and minds of average, ordinary citizens. There’s a void in the media and only a crisis – or leadership – will grab it.

It’s time for us to take the lead and run with it.

We know that with heightened awareness of our issues comes heightened support for our issues. The American people are good people, many of whom simply don’t know us, and don’t know enough about us to care about us. That’s why we need to stay in the headlines: to keep our message clear and consistent.

Have no doubt: The Religious Right will take over the conversation through Labor Day, if we let them.

Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, in an apparent Vulcan mind-meld with GOP Chair Michael Steele, just announced the creation of the “Faith and Freedom Coalition,” that claims to be “younger, hipper, less strident and more inclusive.” Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage is working hard with a new PAC in New York, and there’s an extended effort that’s making headway to repeal gay marriage in Maine. And the Values Voters Summit – an annual bigot fest, exactly two months away – is gearing up with a promise of a new assault on same-sex marriage.

In short, it’s the infamous “kinder, gentler bigotry” we’ve come to expect from the Religious Right and our opponents.

Despite a torrent of lies from Republican Congress members who labeled the Mathew Shepard Act, the “Thought Crimes Act,” and from groups like “Faith 2 Action,” which labeled it, “The Pedophile Protection Act,” the Senate late last night approved the bill. But the Religious Right may still get their way, as a threat looms by President Obama to veto the Military Appropriations bill the Shepard bill is attached to.

So let’s be honest: There will be little else happening in the LGBTQ rights arena until fall, and without a plan of action the chances of us keeping Mainstream America’s focus on gay rights through the summer are slim.

Let us not be deterred. We must take advantage of the opportunity this hazy lull provides!

Let’s look at some events that dominated headlines last August:

* The actor David Duchovny went into rehab for sex-addiction.
* Madonna and Michael Jackson celebrated their 50th birthdays.
* Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party nomination for President.
* Some Hallmark stores refused to sell same-sex greeting cards. The American Family Association also protested the free-market selling of those same-sex greeting cards.
* Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi wed in California – before Prop 8 passed in November.

Surely we can do more to get our message out this time around? The challenge is simple: Fill this media void with positive LGBTQ stories between now and Labor Day, until the regular political and legislative cycle resumes its natural course and we can move our message forward through political actions. Let’s keep the importance of our struggle in the eyes of our neighbors and fellow citizens. Let’s continue our national conversation on gay rights. Let’s help all Americans realize that we are their neighbors, their co-workers, their friends.

Politicians and pundits may take August off (remember George W. Bush’s extended August vacations?) but the American people – especially given this year’s economy – can’t afford to. Those who still have jobs can’t afford to go away. And we can’t afford to let our message slide – or our guard down.

The opportunity is ripe! Let’s fill the void of summer with positive messages that resonate with America. Let’s look to the Prop 8 lessons we learned too late. Let’s make it our mission to show America who we are. Lord knows Palin’s legacy of innanity will out-live her. And Lord knows we have a better message, a more honest message, a more important message than Sarah Palin did. Let’s spend the rest of summer working as hard as she did to help show America that the “real America” includes LGBTQ Americans, too.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

Published

14 hours ago

on

April 22, 2024

By

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2020 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

Continue Reading

News

‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Published

17 hours ago

on

April 22, 2024

By

MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

Continue Reading

News

‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

Published

19 hours ago

on

April 22, 2024

By

Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

READ MORE: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him

“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.