Month: October 2008

Long-time readers of this blog will remember that, during the writer’s strike I wound up chatting with Ron Howard for about an hour while walking the picket line (even gave him a newly minted galley copy of “Tigerheart.”) We didn’t discuss politics all that much, although he did make “Frost/Nixon” sound interesting (and the trailer I just saw the other day made it a must-see if it wasn’t already). Recently he put up an ad for Obama featuring him, Andy Griffith and a convention friend of the David family, Henry Winkler, that I thought was an absolute must-see. So see it.

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Back in July, the David family had breakfast during Shore Leave convention with George Takei and Brad Altman, and naturally we discussed the upcoming wedding. They were talking about how they’d had to whittle the invite list from several thousand to two hundred. And I had to ask the question that I”m sure you would have asked: “Are you inviting Shatner?”

“Yes,” said Brad, nodding firmly, and George agreed, adding, “I think it’s time to let the past go.” They could not have been more definitive: the olive branch was being extended, bygones allowed to be bygones, hatchets being buried and every other cliche you’d care to roll out.

The result? The invite, which was sent to Shatner’s manager, was never forwarded to Shatner for whatever reason, and now a video Shatner released in which he excoriates George is getting all kinds of media play.

“George came out. Who cares?” asks Shatner in the video. The answer to that, of course, is the opponents of gay marriage who are circulating e-mails and fliers filled with baseless scare tactics in order to try and push through Proposition 8. A Proposition that would make sure joyous days such as the one Kath and I shared with George, Brad and a couple hundred guests–which could have included William Shatner–will never occur again for anyone who’s gay in California. Those bigots, those jerks, those killjoys…they’re the ones who care, Mr. Shatner.

So that answers your questions: The questions of why George Takei didn’t invite you (he did) and who cares that George is gay (those who want to push through Prop 8). So here’s my question to you:

What are you going to do about it?

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John McCain was so punchy that he got up in front of a crowd in Western Pennsylvania and accidentally said that he agreed with comments allegedly put forward by others that Western Pennsylvania is filled with racists.

And all I could picture was the Doctor standing toward the back of the rally and saying quietly to reporters within earshot, “Don’t you think he looks tired?”

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When I first posted my essay on “McCainism,” noting the McCarthyesque vibe from the McCain campaign, some folks here claimed that Jon Stewart’s likening McCain to Frankenstein–inadvertently unleashing a monster he couldn’t control–was far more apt.

On last night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart drew parallels between the latest speeches and comments from the McCain campaign, not to mention a mid-West congresswoman, that had a definite McCarthyesque tint to it that didn’t even involve terrorism: instead it centered around real Americans versus, you know, people like me, who live in (or near) cities and aren’t voting for McCain. You know: unAmericans.

Now to be wholly fair, I watched the full video of the Congresswoman who stated that the media should launch an investigation into who in Congress might be, y’know, unAmerican. And I tend to blame her interviewer, Chris Matthews, who basically strung together stuff that she didn’t say, acted like she said it, and then hammered her until she blurted out something stupid. She was thrashing about in the deep end and Matthews tossed her an anvil for a flotation device. Still, McCain’s team seems to be moving beyond this whole notion that there are two Americas (Linda Ellerbe pointed out that red states/blue states is entirely a media construction) and floating the notion that those who aren’t with them aren’t part of “real America.”

Apparently I’m not a real American. And if you’re not voting for John McCain, why…neither are you.

Apparently the question has been asked and answered: No sense of decency at all.

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On today’s edition of “Meet the Press,” during which time Colin Powell dealt a body blow to the McCain campaign by endorsing Barack Obama, Powell made a brilliant observation that, frankly, I wish had occurred to me.

He commented on how people in the GOP party (he wasn’t talking about McCain per se, but the party in general) kept accusing Obama of being a Muslim. And he said the first and obvious answer is that Obama is a Christian and always has been. But the better and more appropriate answer should be–so what if he were? Why should some seven year old American kid who aspires to be president and happens to be Muslim be receiving the message that, because of his religion, he can forget about it? And Powell went on to describe a photograph he saw of a military grave with a mourning mother, and there wasn’t a cross or a star of David on the soldier’s tombstone, but instead the crescent of the Muslim. What does it say about this country, Powell wondered, that that kind of message is being sent out? That young Muslims can fight and die for this country but never be involved in running it.

It’s even more striking when one considers that back in 1960, JFK being Catholic was a HUGE deal because people contended that a Catholic shouldn’t be president because he’d be taking marching orders from the Vatican. One only hopes that forty years from now we’ll look back on the notion that a Muslim can never be president with the same “isn’t that a silly idea” attitude that we now look back on the thought that a Catholic–or for that matter, a black man–couldn’t ever be President.

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