It Doesn’t Matter Nate Silver Is Gay. It Matters America Knows He Is.
var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Nate Silver is gay, in case you didn’t know. Until yesterday, practically no one did. Silver is the incredibly accurate statistician who gave President Obama a 91.6% probability of winning re-election on Election Day, and gave right wing pundits and prognosticators such angst for the months leading up to the election they created an entire new system of poll reading — that, like most everything the right does, was totally wrong.
Silver, author of the bestselling book, The Signal and the Noise, has not been totally wrong. In fact, he’s been almost totally right. Silver’s statistical model ultimately predicted President Obama would win the White House with an a weighted probability average of about 315 electoral votes — with 332 the most likely scenario — and 50.9% of the popular vote. Obama won 332 electoral college votes and 50.6% of the popular vote. Perhaps more important, Silver’s model predicted the vote correctly in all 50 states. In 2008, Silver correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states and all 36 Senate races.
“I’ve always felt like something of an outsider,” Nate Silver tells Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer, a liberal British newspaper. “I’ve always had friends, but I’ve always come from an outside point of view. I think that’s important. If you grow up gay, or in a household that’s agnostic, when most people are religious, then from the get-go, you are saying that there are things that the majority of society believes that I don’t believe.â€
Cadwalladr, who in her extensive profile of the 34-year old superstar, published in the U.S. at The Raw Story, notes, “Silver is gay,” and writes:
“What made you more of a misfit, I ask, being gay or a geek?”
“Probably the numbers stuff since I had that from when I was six.”
Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight, is published at The New York Times, but Silver is not a Times employee; instead, he licenses his award-winning blog to the Old Grey Lady.
Silver, a total nerd and geek in the best possible meaning of the words, was named by Time magazine one of The World’s 100 Most Influential People in 2009. Despite all this, Silver has had to bear his share of anti-gay attacks, even when most of the world didn’t know he was gay.
On October 25, when the right was in total freak-out mode over Silver having given President Obama a 71% chance of winning re-election, the right’s new wunderkind, Dean Chambers, aka Mr. Unskewed Polls, wrote:
Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice that sounds almost exactly like the “Mr. New Castrati” voice used by Rush Limbaugh on his program. In fact, Silver could easily be the poster child for the New Castrati in both image and sound. Nate Silver, like most liberal and leftist celebrities and favorites, might be of average intelligence but is surely not the genius he’s made out to be.
Silver responded, indirectly, two days later, via Twitter:
Unskewedpolls argument: Nate Silver seems kinda gay + ??? = Romney landslide!examiner.com/article/the-fa…
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 27, 2012
Chambers later removed the graf and apologized, but not before Gawker, who noted Chambers’ numbers are “generated in the same way that a kid turns an F into an A by drawing an extra bar down the right side of it,” had some fun:
Nate Silver, the famed statistician behind the FiveThirtyEight election forecast blog at the New York Times, is wrong. And gay. At least according to the more virulent elements of right-wing media. That he’s wrong is only confirmed by his gayness, just as surely as his gayness is the source of his wrongness. Nate Silver is a tautology of being queer as hell about everything.
Hardcore conservatism’s loathing of science has lurked around GOP politics for so long that its easy to forget how nasty it is. Over 40 years, that disdain has slid from “pointy-headed intellectuals” to something very like a jock slapping a math book out of a kid’s hands and saying, “NICE NUMBERS, FAG.” But this is what you do when you can’t crunch the numbers yourself or when they will not save you. You shoot the messenger.
…
Don’t you get it? Nate Silver is wrong, because Nate Silver sounds like a goddamn queer.
So, why does it matter that Silver is gay?
Four years ago, when I began The New Civil Rights Movement, anyone’s coming out was viewed as big news. If an actor at the Oscars, Emmys, or even Tonys acknowledged their same-sex partner, or even commented on marriage equality, blogs lit up and Twitter cheered. Today, if we ran a similar story, it would be met with yawns.
Times have changed, and for the better.
But not necessarily for kids.
Kids need role models.
That geeky, nerdy gay fifth grader needs to know there are geeky, nerdy successful and respected adults. That nine-year old girl who knows she’s different from other girls, needs to know there are lesbians like her and one of them just became a U.S. Senator.
And the school yard bullies who beat the crap out of geeky, nerdy gay fifth graders need to know that the gay kids they’re beating up today may well grow up to be revered statisticians.
It doesn’t matter that Nate Silver is gay. It matters that people who don’t like or respect gay people — or who even hate gay people — people who think we’re immoral and a danger to society, know that Nate Silver is gay.
And that should help them start to change their perception.
It doesn’t matter that Nate Silver is gay. But it matters people know because there are lawmakers who want to ban same-sex marriage. And religious leaders and pundits who want to criminalize our relationships. And presidential candidates who want to take away our right to visit our loved ones in the hospital. And schoolyard bullies who cut gay boys’ hair — who grow up to be presidential candidates who want to take away our right to visit our loved ones in the hospital.
America is changing, because people know we’re not going away.
It doesn’t matter that Nate Silver is gay. It matters that America knows he is. And it matters that people know you are. Because when they know we’re here, they know that can’t hurt us anymore. They have lost the ability to stop us from marrying and raising families and serving in the military and in Congress and running businesses and living our lives.
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Image by randy stewart via Wikimedia
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to describe more accurately Silver’s statistical model prediction of the electoral college results.
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U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, is under fire after praising University of Mississippi students, some wearing American flag outfits, mocking a Black woman protester by making monkey sounds and shouting, “lock her up.”
“Counter-protestors at the University of Mississippi made racist remarks — including monkey noises and comparisons to Lizzo — towards a Black woman who was part of a planned protest against the war in Gaza,” Los Angeles Magazine reported Friday.
Collins, who tried to defund Vice President Kamala Harris’ Office in November, declared his support for the counter-protesters at “Ole Miss,” as the University is called.
“Ole Miss taking care of business,” he wrote on social media, atop the video (below).
The counter-protesters, as evidenced in the video, appear to be mostly white.
A large number of users on the social media platform X responded, accusing the Congressman and the counter-protesters of racism.
“When is the inevitable ‘I don’t have a racist bone in my body’ tweet coming,” wondered Rewire News Group editor-at-large Imani Gandy.
“Which part is your favorite, Mike?” asked Fred Wellman, the former executive director of The Lincoln Project. “Is it the white kid acting like a monkey at the black woman or the white security guy acting like she’s a threat? I’m trying to figure out which flavor of racism has you all excited the most?”
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Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo responded to the Georgia GOP congressman, “Thanks for confirming you’re a massive racist piece of sh*t.”
Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman wrote: “Rep. Mike Collins, R-Georgia, praises a video showing a University of Mississippi frat boy dancing like a monkey and making monkey noises near a Black woman student who was protesting for Palestine while other frat boys chant ‘lock her up.'”
In a separate post describing a separate video taken of the same group Pittman wrote: “Frat bros at @OleMiss chant, ‘Lizzo! Lizzo!’ and shout, ‘F**k you fatass, f**k you b*tch’ at a Black woman who was protesting for Palestine. Do people really think these counterprotestors are doing it to support Jews?”
Journalist John Harwood did not mince words, writing, “Congressman proud of the racism.”
“Okay, Mike. We get it,” wrote podcast host, documentary director, and author W. Kamau Bell. “You want to be famous for being a racist. Fine. I’ll help you become a famous racist. You’re welcome.”
The original video is here.
See Rep. Collins’ post and the video below or at this link.
Caution: the video is disturbing.
Ole Miss taking care of business. pic.twitter.com/JiL9hs2pHz
— Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) May 3, 2024
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Amid more damning revelations from her soon-to-be released book, embattled South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem will head to Mar-a-Lago this weekend as ex-president Donald Trump auditions potential vice presidential picks in front of high-dollar donors. Noem was also slated to attend a Republican fundraiser in Colorado this weekend but it was canceled over alleged safety concerns after news broke she had bragged about shooting her 14-month old dog.
While Noem’s shooting to death of her wirehaired pointer, Cricket, which she detailed in the book, is still making headlines overnight a new revelation made news: Noem falsely claims in her book she met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
A spokesperson for Noem “seemed to concede that the Kim story was false Thursday night,” and notified her publisher, Politico’s Ryan Lizza reported in his exclusive.
But less noticed appears to be the actual text of Noem’s false story, in which she brands children she ministered in church “little tyrants,” and compared them to the murderous North Korean dictator.
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“Through my tenure on the House Armed Services Committee,” Noem wrote, according to Politico, “I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders. I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”
CNBC reported this week Trump “will mingle with potential vice presidential running mates and wealthy Republican donors at the Republican National Committee’s spring donor retreat. The meetings are likely to act as informal tryouts for a short list of politicos in the running to join the Trump ticket.”
The list of Republican “special guests” includes U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, and J.D. Vance, Rep. Elise Stefanik, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
Also expected to attend are House Speaker Mike Johnson, U.S. Reps. Byron Donalds of Florida and Wesley Hunt of Texas, former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and other elected Republicans along with RNC co-chair Lara Trump.
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NBC News, which says Rep. Donalds is also under consideration, on Friday added there will be “a fundraising retreat that could serve as a screening session” for potential vice presidential running mates.
Meanwhile, the Jefferson County, Colorado Republican Party chair announced a fundraising dinner Noem was slated to attend was canceled after threats were made, The Denver Post reports.
“We understood there was a planned organized protest outside of the hotel, led by Progress Now,” Nancy Pallozzi said. “I felt that our event would be negatively impacted, and we could not take the risk that those who made threats would cause physical harm.”
Over the weekend independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke at a fundraiser for a far-right anti-government group in Erie County, New York – a slice of the country that had a large proportion of residents arrested and charged for crimes related to the January 6 insurrection. Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and vaccine denialist, increasingly is embracing the far-right.
“That group, Constitutional Coalition of New York State, has founders who not only have ties to Donald Trump but are also connected to the stop-the-steal movement through their activist network, which includes groups that had a presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” The Daily Beast reported Friday. “It’s yet another instance of Kennedy—who is mounting one of the most well-funded third-party presidential threats in decades—serving as a peculiar bridge between his own anti-establishment movement and Trump’s.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the Constitutional Coalition of New York State (CCNYS) on its page of anti-government groups. Political Research Associates, which detailed the high proportion of January 6 residents arrested and charged, included the Constitutional Coalition of New York State in its February report on “The Rise of the Far Right in Western New York.”
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“If you don’t think the government is lying to you, you’re not paying attention,” Kennedy told attendees at the CCNYS fundraiser, The Buffalo News reports.
“CCNYS founders Nick and Nancie Orticelli are also affiliated with the Watchmen, a nearby militia who Nick has encouraged his social media followers to join. The Watchmen had several members at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and one member, Pete Harding, is still facing charges for violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds,” The Daily Beast noted. “Nancie Orticelli has also hosted the Watchmen’s founder, Charles Pellien, on her weekly radio show on several occasions.”
One of Kennedy’s goals in traveling to New York was to get on the ballot for the November presidential election. Various polls show him taking votes from both President Joe Biden and ex-president Donald Trump, but Kennedy currently has only qualified to be on the ballot in three states, Utah, Michigan and Hawaii, the newspaper reported.
But The Washington Post on Thursday reported The American Independent Party of California, which has a history of “far-right ties,” and “backed segregationist and former Alabama governor George Wallace in 1968, nominated Kennedy for president.”
Kennedy “said this week that he has qualified to be on the ballot in California and will accept the nomination of the American Independent Party, which has a history of associating itself with far-right figures and individuals who have expressed racist views.”
Some news reports and RFK Jr. himself say the Trump campaign was actively courting Kennedy, attempting to convince him to consider being the ex-president’s 2024 vice presidential running mate.
“That MAGA dalliance with Kennedy could be coming back to bite the Trump campaign, some Republicans close to the former president worry,” The Daily Beast also reported.
“’They can only blame themselves,’ a Trump-aligned strategist told The Daily Beast, requesting anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations about the risk Kennedy poses, ‘because they cozied up to him and thought it was funny.’”
Watch WIVBTV’s report on Kennedy’s trip to New York below or at this link.
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