Fascists and friends

Lately, the rightwing has been demonstrating that there’s another word they don’t understand at all: Fascism. They use it as a general epithet against LGBT people, even though they clearly have no idea what it means—or do they?

One definition of fascism that I can freely quote is this:

“A political regime, having totalitarian aspirations, ideologically based on a relationship between business and the centralized government, business-and-government control of the market place, repression of criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or religion above individual rights. Originally only applied (usually capitalized) to Benito Mussolini's Italy.”

That’s a fairly typical definition, and it’s clearly not even remotely true of LGBT people: We are not the government or big business, let alone a union of the two, nor do we control either, nor do we have a leader to form a cult around (or, actually, even a group…), nor do we exalt the state above individual rights.

What the radical right anti-gay industry is doing—much as they do with their bible, actually—is picking and choosing the parts they like and ignoring the rest. The radical right is actually merely using the word as a way to highlight their paranoid persecution fantasies, in which they think they’re “victims” of “bullying” or “homofascism” because of their religious beliefs. It’s not just a paranoid delusion, of course: It’s also a deliberate lie.

The radical right anti-gay industry believes that if they can portray themselves as “victims” and LGBT people as violent, aggressive bullies, they can stop progress on LGBT human and civil rights generally, and the freedom to marry in particular. This is why they’re pushing the "fascist" slur so furiously: They know it’s nonsense, but there’s no more dramatic symbol of repression than Nazi Germany, so the anti-gay industry is trying to make ordinary Americans think of LGBT people as modern-day Nazis.

The radical right has been using this terminology for a while now, but with a recent noticeable increase in frequency. The resignation of Brendon Eich as CEO of Mozilla unleashed a flood of abuse from the radical right: They called us “fascists”, “homofasicsts”, the “Gaystapo”, among other related slurs (a few examples are on Joe.My.God.).

The prize so far for the most deranged and unhinged attack goes to BamBam, who wrote recently (http://bit.ly/1mTdSsR) that LGBT people are “homofascists” and the “Gaystapo” because we’re “hell-bent on criminalizing Christianity”, and that we’re “a radical, hateful, intolerant, obnoxious, fascist, evil and power-crazed group of sex-obsessed anarchists who demand that we all affirmatively celebrate their deviant and self-destructive sexual sins.” Glory! Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!

Seriously, even though it was clearly an unhinged rant, this guy (who has often made bigoted slurs against LGBT people) tells us exactly why he and the anti-gay industry are pushing this hatred so hard:

“Sadly, many people, even many Christians, think that I and others are using hyperbole when we refer to this sexual anarchist ‘LGBT’ movement as ‘homofascist’ or the ‘Gaystapo.’ I hope you’ll think again. It’s time to wake up and smell the impending anti-Christian persecution. It’s fully at hand.”

I rolled my eyes so hard at that pile of bovine excrement that I could see the back of my head. But he wasn’t done with rhetorical excess or thickly laying on Nazi-references:

“Christians, buckle up. Your whole world is about to change. The Rainbowshirts are emboldened and they’ve broken out the long knives. They smell blood in the water. I’ve often said that these folks want those who speak Biblical truth [sic] about human sexuality and legitimate marriage [sic] either 1) dead, 2) imprisoned or, if they can have neither of these, 3) marginalized to the point where they can’t even support their families. Check No. 3 of f the list. I guess they’re working backwards.”

What BamBam was saying there is that Nazi Gays (the “Rainbowshirts”) are coming to kill “Christians” like him. Well, maybe just lock them up. Well, maybe just make sure they can’t make millions of dollars from trying to deny LGBT people their civil and human rights a living. Because on BamBam’s planet, one guy forced to quit is exactly the same as killing him! Pay attention, sheeple!

I quote at length from this lunatic because what he said is typical of what other bigots in the anti-gay industry are saying: They’re ALL using the same extreme rhetoric. Here’s another one:

"It is time for the rest of us to wake up. Tolerating the same-sex movement has been a very bad idea. You cannot tolerate what undermines democracy and ultimately destroys society. The same-sex lobby are the new Nazis. Their strategy consists simply in intimidating possible opponents. The vicious campaign against Brendan Eich is ultimately directed not only against him, but it sends a message to anybody who has not yet submitted to the dogma of same-sex bigotry: we will go after you, and we will destroy you.”

There’s also the Indiana preacher who declared that “Adolf Hitler's 'Race Of Super Gay Male Soldiers' Is Taking Over America”. Apparently, we want all Christians dead, their heads on the wall. Or… something.

If these people seem too crackpot to be taken seriously, consider this: They’re all bringing up fascist imagery all the time. A lie repeated often enough becomes truth: It doesn’t matter that some of these people are clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic: If they keep repeating the “Gaystapo” slur enough, normal Americans will start to think there’s “an element of truth” in it—well, that’s what the radical right anti-gay industry’s plan and hope, anyway.

There is so much irony in the far right’s meltdown over Mozilla, but, obviously, that would all be lost on them. But let’s start with this: They boycott all the time! I recently defended their right to boycott when I said: “I fully support the right of people to boycott whoever they want for whatever reason they want—political, religious, cultural, aesthetic, their reason doesn’t matter, but their freedom to make that choice does.”

Ah, that pesky word freedom again! To the radical right, it’s something they alone get to define and in such a way that it applies only to themselves, exclusively. The graphic at the top of this post is from the Facebook Page of “Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian” (a long-running parody of far-right “Christian” fanatics in the USA). It humorously points out the harsh reality of the far-right’s position on boycotts, something I mentioned last week, and highlighted when I quoted Joe.My.God.

The hypocrisy of the radical right is breathtaking: They accuse LGBT people of “fascism” when so many of their tactics and goals clearly really are fascist-like: They dehumanise LGBT people by deliberately spreading lies and disinformation about us, they want to criminalise us (and not just in the usual way: over the years some of them have even talked about putting us in concentration camps, too). Even so, I don’t actually call our opponents “fascists” because doing so would contribute nothing to the debate.

Our side merely wants the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that our adversaries demand for themselves. The difference is, we’re not demanding that our adversaries surrender theirs, no matter what paranoid delusions they may preach in their propaganda. Our side is working to make society free and open for all citizens to live their lives equally—including LGBT people and radical right “Christians”. When we say all people are equal, we really mean it—unlike our adversaries.

So, if radical right “Christians” want to call me a “fascist” because I stand up for freedom, liberty and equality for all people, then so be it. But that’s MISTER fascist to them! I’m making fun of them, of course, but it gets at an essential truth: Our political discourse is debased when people loosely throw around incorrectly used words as a way to demean, dehumanise and disrespect opponents.

It’s extremely unlikely that the radical right anti-gay industry will ever become friends with LGBT people, but being adversaries doesn’t mean we have to be enemies. They should grow up and stop using “fascist” when they so clearly don’t understand what it means. See, I prefer to think that’s the case, and not that they’re misusing it on purpose, because that would make them evil and malevolent. I really don’t want to use strong words casually—unlike our friends on the radical right.

Buying politicians made easy

The video above is a parody ad, making fun of the recent US Supreme Court's ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, which further hands power to oligarchs and plutocrats. It makes a good point.

When the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations are people, they also declared the corporation “people” are more equal than real people, because they could engage in unlimited spending in election campaigns. While super rich individuals could technically do this, too, they were prevented from donating to as many politicians as they wanted to. McCutcheon changed that by allowing individuals to donate to as many political candidates and parties as they want, up to the maximum for each one.

So, a mega rich person can now donate the maximum amount allowed by law to all Congressional candidates of a certain political party, for example. If they also have a corporation that spends unlimited amounts in campaigns, it means that the super-rich have unprecedented opportunities to influence the outcome of elections, and in ways that ordinary people could never hope to match.

Taken together, Citizens United and McCutcheon mark an unprecented shift in power in the US, away form ordinary citizens and toward the oligarchs and plutocrats. They also create the near certainty of corruption as the the oligarchs and plutocrats and plutocrats effectively “buy” members of Congress to enact legislation favourable to them.

Many people have contempt for the US Congress because of the influence that Big Money and Big Corporations already have; I’m saying it’s going to get a whole lot worse.

The solution, ultimately, is to amend the US Constitution to overturn both Citizens United and McCutcheon. But how likely is that to happen with the deck stacked so strongly in favour of the very folks that such a constitutional amendment would seek to rein in? Is it even be possible to amend the Constitution with so much money and power opposed to that happening? Anything’s possible, but I think it’ll be a long, difficult and entirely uphill struggle, if it happens at all.

So, in the meantime, we can mock the oligarchs and plutocrats and the inevitable corruption that’s coming. It’s not enough, of course; I just hope that it’s not the only reaction to the decline of American democracy that can happen.

The group behind this video, Represent.US, has another video (link goes to YouTube) that explains the McCutcheon ruling in detail.

Looking back out the Windows

This week, Microsoft ended support for its Windows XP operating system. As a kind of a parting gift, they released this video on the story behind their “Bliss” default desktop photo. I think it’s interesting.

Like a lot of people, I always assumed the photo was fake—or, at least, a real photo Photoshopped to make a fake reality. Turns out, I was wrong: It’s a real photo, and not Photoshopped. Instead, it’s by professional photographer, Charles O'Rear. This is yet another example of why we should always challenge our assumptions.

I think that this also shows that professional photographers can take amazing photographs, and those who learned their art in the pre-digital era (and the “Bliss” photo was taken in 1996) maybe have something special that digital-only photographers, well, do differently (I don’t want to seem to cast aspersions on digital, since everything I do is digital!). Old-school photographers could create their artworks without the need for digital effects. Us amateurs, of course, would usually be lost without digital tools and effects. Which is why you’ll never see any of MY photos become ubiquitous.

Actually, this photo is sort of the definition of ubiquitous. Charles O’Rear said in the video, “Anybody now, from age 15 on, for the rest of their life, will remember this photograph.” He said people will go through their lives, then one day, decades from now, they’ll see the photo and they won’t remember where they saw it, but they’ll remember it. I think he’s right.

I think it’s always good to know the story behind the ubiquitous things in our lives.

Olive store-bought, thanks

It’s olive harvest time at our house! I’m not serious, but it looks like maybe I should be soon.

The photo above is of a few olives I picked up off our deck this afternoon. I’ve thoughtfully provided points of reference, a NZ ten cent piece and a measuring tape (both metric and Imperial!). They’re clearly not huge olives—but they’re getting bigger over time.

When I wrote about our “olive harvest” last year, it was mocking. Even then, though, I admitted that our two trees “may have produced more and I just never saw them”. Maybe that was foreshadowing.

This year, the trees have produced a lot of olives that I just swept away. The photo shows a portion of what I’ve found most mornings. It’s getting to the point where I’m thinking that maybe I should actually read up on all this, find out how to harvest olives and what to do once I have. Maybe.

On the other hand, I’m no gardener, let alone farmer, and even the idea of trying to manage olive production may be a bit beyond my capabilities. And yet, a challenges IS interesting…

For now, I’ll continue to buy my olives from the store. But in the years ahead, who knows? Seems like next year I’ll have to do something with all the olives—beyond merely blogging about them, that is.

Fancy new airplane

Air New Zealand has unveiled their Boeing 787-9, and it’s a beautiful plane. I suppose I would say that, of course, for a lot of reasons.

More than a decade ago, Boeing recruited airline passengers to be part of their "World Design Team" for their new plane, and I signed up. I don't know how much stock they put on what we said, but it at least meant that we were kept up to date with the development of the plane that became the Dreamliner (in 2005, we were asked to vote for our favourite name; I didn't pick "Dreamliner", though I can't remember what I DID pick—it was a long time ago!). I also advocated for more legroom.

Air New Zealand’s plane will be the first 787-9 to enter service (they’ll take delivery in July and it will begin service in October). The plane has greater range and capacity than the earlier 787 models to enter service.

The black paint was something of a novelty when it was first introduced, with critics saying that heat would be a problem. But Air New Zealand found that it turned out to be a non-issue, which is good: I think it makes the plane look stunning. I should note that the other nine 787-9s will be painted white with a black tail.

The only black plane I can ever remember seeing before Air New Zealand started painting their planes black was many, many years ago, when I lived in Chicago. A few times when I flew from O’Hare I saw a plane that I presume was Hugh Heffner’s—painted black with the Playboy bunny on the tail.

So, I’ve been “part” of the process that led to the Dreamliner, and Air New Zealand is my favourite airline, and that may make it may seem obvious that I’d like Air New Zealand’s new plane. But it’s the look of the plane that appeals to me, not its heritage or owners. Sometimes, looks do matter—even 13,000 metres in the sky.

Back to Standard Time

Last night New Zealand went back to Standard Time (NZST). I never paid much attention to these time changes until I moved to New Zealand. Time zones can matter a lot to expats.

The video above is and older one from one of may favourite YouTube explainers, ‪CGP Grey. The video explains Saving Saving Time and some of the many problems with it. It think it’s interesting.

I’ve never been too bothered by the clock changes, unlike so many other people I know. The autumn one doesn't bother me, maybe, because of the “extra hour” of sleep. Pushing the clock forward, like in Spring, is supposed to be relatively easy for people—well, some people, anyway.

The main problem I have with the clock changes is that it makes it harder to work out what time it is in another part of the world, like meeting up on Skype with a friend or family member in the USA, for example. I'd never be able to keep track of time in different parts of the world if I didn't have software to do it for me.

This year could have been harder than usual: I was up late working several nights the past week, but last night I went to bed at a relatively early 11pm and got my eight hours—more, actually, because of the time change. So, I felt remarkably rested this morning.

We also had some family visiting us this weekend, an impromptu thing. That was really nice. And I finished my work, which is even better. It was a very good weekend, indeed.

I wonder how I’ll feel tomorrow…

Jake is 7

Today is our puppy Jake’s Seventh Birthday. The photo above is of him this afternoon in a typical pose, sitting in my chair and looking outside. I think he may have been a bit sick of the fuss by the time I took the photos.

This year is a bit different than previous birthdays, because it’s the first one without his blood brother Doyle, who died last year. We’d always meant to arrange a “play date” for the boys, but never got around to it. A sister came for Doyle, then one for Jake (and then another…), and, well, as is the way with humans, time just slipped away. We’ll always regret that the boys were never re-united.

We humans always live our lives as if we’re immortal, even though we know we aren’t. Furbabies have much shorter lives, more often than not, than we do, so we especially need to savour every day we have with them.

I can honestly say that I do that. There’s not a single day that goes by that they don't get my complete attention, even if only to watch them sleep. I talk to them all day long, and sometimes I even sing to them—something that, with their superior hearing, I’m sure they really wish I wouldn’t do. Or, maybe that’s just me.

The point is, we have interactions every day, and they never for a moment have to feel anything but loved, cared for and wanted. Doyle had that, too, and his passing reinforced my determination to be IN every day we have with our furbabies.

I was thinking today about how Jake is unlike any other dog I’ve shared my life with: He’s not a one-person dog, but treats Nigel and me the same. Well, not exactly the same: When I leave the house he goes spare, and, according to Nigel, he sits by the window and watches until I return. He doesn’t do that with Nigel, because I’m here. At night, Jake will lie next to Nigel and he can cuddle Jake for hours; me, I’m lucky if Jake will let me cuddle him for 30 seconds (not really an exaggeration, either). He’ll ask me to get him his breakfast and dinner, and he’ll ask Nigel for his evening treat. If he’s hurt or frightened, he’ll usually run to Nigel first. He likes to jump up in my lap when I’m at my desk, but he never does that with Nigel. All of which is part of his charm as well as his individuality.

Meanwhile, Jake’s adopted sister Sunny’s birthday is in three months, and his other adopted sister Bella’s birthday is three months after that. They're all worth celebrating, whether they take any notice or not.

The photo below is of Jake enduring ever more photos. I had to mark his special day, after all.

Happy Birthday, Jake!

Related posts:
Jake is 6
Jake turns 5
Jake is four
Jake turns three
Jake’s Birthday 2-day
Jake is one year old!
A new arrival

Awesome response

Honey Maid launched an ad campaign called “This Is Wholesome”. One commercial in the series included two gay dads. Wingnuts’ heads exploded—and now Honey Maid has responded with the video above.

The original commercial (below) was pretty good as a positive, feel-good ad, treating gay families as another form of family, so I could easily guess what Nabisco, the maker of Honey Maid, would be in for. The radical right didn’t disappoint me: They demanded that their fellow bigots bombard Nabisco with messages, and the bigots obliged. But in the video response from Honey Maid, they say the supportive and positive messages they received outnumbered the bad ones ten times over. THAT is awesome.

I’ve said repeatedly that love always defeats hate, but sometimes it takes a long time to do so. In this case, at least, we’ve seen it happen much faster. Which is why the response above appeals to me so much: Symbolically turning hate into love.

The fact that some people still become enraged at depictions of gay families shows how far we still have to go. I bet they also got hate mail because of their interracial couple, too, though I suspect not nearly as many as about the current obsession of the far right, LGBT people. This may be the 21st century, but that doesn’t mean that hatred and bigotry have gone away—YET. The positive outcome this time helps rekindle my fires of hope for a while longer.

The ad that started all this:



New Zealand readers can buy Honey Maid Graham Crackers from Martha’s Backyard in Auckland.

New day, new poll

We’re seeing a lot of opinion polling lately, today’s being a Roy Morgan poll, which showed Labour and the Greens together taking the lead from National. Contrary to popular belief, these polls give us a lot of information—but this far out from an election, they have to be viewed with some caution.

The Roy Morgan Poll found that while the Greens were down to 13%, Labour’s rise to 32% means that together they’re sitting on 45%, ahead of National’s 43%, which was a 2.5% drop for National. As pollster Gary Morgan put it, “It appears the scandal around Justice Minister Judith Collins is continuing to dent support for National.”

Support for the minor parties is up in most cases, and if today’s polls were the election result, one or more minor parties would determine who forms government.

Working out what all of this means for the make-up of the new Parliament—and so, who forms Government—is tricky. Most of the major news organisations make a lot of assumptions about parties winning electorate seats, but what matters is the percentage of the Party Vote each party gets, because that’s what determines the make-up of Parliament.

So, taking these poll results, and assuming the parties win the same number of electorate seats they currently hold (about which, more in a minute), I used elections.org.nz’s MMP Seat Allocation Calculator to come up with this rough break down: It would be a 121 seat Parliament, with Labour having 39 seats and the Greens 16, for a total of 55 (a minimum of 61 seats would be needed to form government in this scenario), though they’d probably also have the support of the Mana Party (1 MP), for a total of 56.

The National Party would have 53 seats and its current coalition partners, the Act Party and United Future, would have one each, for a total of 55. If the Maori Party won all three seats it currently holds, they would get 3 MPs (and cause an overhang). If the Maori Party continued in coalition with National, that block would have 58 seats—not enough to form government, either.

So, in this scenario, Winston Peters’ New Zealand First Party and its 7 seats would determine who formed Government—either Labour or National.

We can play with different scenarios all we want, and what I’ve shown is only one possible scenario. Electorate seats change all the time, and it’s likely that seats will change between the major parties, and there also could be changes with minor parties. Does that affect anything?

Technically, no, in the sense that the Party Vote determines the make-up of Parliament. However, it could determine if there’s an overhang. For example, let’s assume that Labour wins two of the Maori Party’s 3 seats. That would eliminate the overhang, but also reduce the National-led block by 1 seat and increase the Labour/Greens-led block by one, making it a little easier for Labour to form government.

However, if John Key does a deal with the Colin Craig Conservative Party, gifting Colin one of National’s seats (the same sort of seal National does with Act), it would do National no good: They would have the same number of seats they had without Colin but with the Maori Party—and still not have enough to form Government. Even if the Maori Party managed to hold all three of the seats it now holds, too, Key would still only have 59 seats in a Parliament with an overhang—again, unable to form government without a deal with Winston.

There’s also significant resistance (even among National voters) to Key doing a deal with Colin, and it’s entirely possible that if he did one, it would drive swing voters to Labour—maybe even enough for them to comfortably form government.

These poll results will not be the final result of the election, we can be certain of that. No poll can predict what will happen on election day several months from now, of course, so these numbers will need constant review.

All polls are merely snapshots of what likely voters thought during the time the poll was taken. Different things in the news can change the results of future polls either way. That necessary caution in mind, I think all of this is fascinating—and fun.

And, I very much like this snapshot.

Worth Quoting: Joe Jervis

Joe Jervis

I read the blog of Joe Jervis, Joe.My.God., every day. I often link to Joe’s posts, or use them as a starting point for my own posts. Today he said something that I must quote in full.

Maggie Gallagher, the former head of the anti-gay group I always call the National Organization for Man/Lady Only Marriage, wrote an opinion piece about the Mozilla boycott and, as Joe observed, it showed her suffering from amnesia. Joe wrote:

Amnesiac Maggie doesn't seem to remember that one week ago today dozens of leading evangelicals threatened the livelihood of World Vision's CEO when he (briefly) agreed to hire legally married gay people. Also wiped from Maggie's mental hard drive are memories of the Christian calls to boycott Chick-Fil-A that erupted earlier this month when CEO Dan Cathy announced that he was shutting up forever about gay marriage. Gone too, apparently, are any recollections from just a couple of weeks ago when pretty much every leading anti-gay crackpot called for a boycott of Guinness beer. Those frantic emails from One Million Moms with their literally weekly demands to boycott everything from snack products to salad dressing? Deleted. Didn't happen. Perhaps most interesting is that Maggie's convenient amnesia has also fogged over the fact that the very organization she once headed is still calling for boycotts of Starbucks and General Mills.

REMINDER: When anti-gay and Christian groups call for nationwide boycotts, that is a righteous use of the free market in order to preserve morality, marriage, family, and the American way. But when LGBT groups or citizens use or threaten the use of a boycott, THAT is homofascist intimidation, intolerance, bullying, a stifling of religious liberty, and an attempt to deny the freedom of speech. And don't you forget it. [emphasis and links were in the original]

Well, said—I couldn’t possibly agree more. Joe states more directly what I was getting at in my own post on the Mozilla boycott.

Note: I deleted from the quoted material links to the Starbucks and General Mills boycott pages because they go to an anti-gay site, but they are on the original post on JMG.

Tall People Problems

The video above is something I originally ran across last year, a few days after it was posted to YouTube. I re-found it because of a recent post.

When I first spotted the video, I intended to post it right away, but I forgot and it languished in last year’s Drafts folder—until this week. When I again began using Safari web browser this weekend (because of what I posted on Saturday), it showed me what it considers “top pages”, and that included the YouTube page for the video. Shows how little I’d used Safari over the past seven months.

The reason I liked the video in the first place is that I can identify with many of the things it depicts; I’m no giant, but I’m tall enough to have problems from time to time. This video is an extension of a post on their site from February last year (I especially identify with number 32). So, this is similar—video based on a much earlier post—to a BuzzFeed video on logo design that I shared a couple weeks ago. Must be a thing they do and I never noticed.

At any rate, I meant to share the video when it was new, but only recently rediscovered it by accident, and all because of a political stand. Blogging can be a strange thing.

I support NZ Labour

Labour Candidate Richard Hills and Labour List MP Darien Fenton.

The fact that I support the New Zealand Labour Party isn’t news—I often mention that. But now I really support Labour, and I couldn’t be more excited.

Today, my friend Richard Hills, who I’ve mentioned several times, was confirmed as the Labour Party candidate for Parliament in the Northcote Electorate. For the first time in about a decade, I’m taking part in an election campaign, to help Richard and the NZ Labour Party win the election.

When I became a NZ Permanent Resident (June 16, 1999), I immediately registered to vote, because all NZ citizens and Permanent Residents are required to register to vote (voting itself is optional). In November of that year, NZ had a General Election, and I decided to take part.

I volunteered for the campaign of Labour Candidate Ann Hartley, chiefly doing things like delivering literature and scrutineering on Election Day. Ann won. After that, I took part in the Northcote Labour organisation, and helped Ann win re-election in the 2002 General Election (mostly doing the same stuff I did in 1999).

The following year, we moved to Paeroa, where we lived during the 2005 General Election campaign. I created the ads for the Labour Party candidate in that electorate and organised publication of the ads on his behalf, and I also accompanied the candidate from time to time.

When we returned to Auckland the following year, I didn’t get around to getting involved in Labour again, so I basically sat out the 2008 and 2011 campaigns (though I voted Labour, of course). I got to know Richard after he was elected as member of the Kapatiki Local Board of Auckland Council in 2010 (I voted for him).

In the years since, I’ve gotten to know Richard far better than any other politician I’ve known. When he was running for re-election to the Kaipatiki Local Board last year, I said:

“I’ve come to know [Richard] as one of the most upbeat and positive people in politics. He’s been a tireless advocate for the Kaipatiki Local Board area, as well as for youth. What’s impressed me in particular is that when opponents have been, um, unhelpful, he’s stayed focused on progress and moving the community—and Auckland in general—forward. I’m sure there are times that he didn’t feel all that positive about what opponents were doing, but he didn’t let that affect his overall positivity.”

His positivity is reflected in his inclusiveness: As a member of the local board, he’s worked with people throughout the community, and that’s something he’ll continue to do as a Member of Parliament. His main areas of focus are Youth, Transport and Housing, all issues that are important in this electorate and the country as a whole.

A major obstacle that Labour faced in the last two elections is the large number of Labour supporters who didn’t vote. As a Millennial, Richard’s able to reach out to his fellow younger voters. But Richard also has worked extensively with the many and diverse communities that make up this electorate, which, he notes, pretty much mirrors Auckland’s multi-cultural makeup. Many of those communities—Pasifika and Maori in particular—also tend to have large numbers of non-voters.

Richard has also gathered together a diverse group of supporters and volunteers to help him maximise the Labour vote. I’m proud to say that I’m part of that team, taking on the role of campaign manager. But we’re not hierarchical, as that sounds—we’re a team. Most of my role will be to assist Richard on some of the behind-the-scenes tasks so that he can focus on being the candidate, and to make sure that all his campaign team knows what’s going on.

I’m proud to be helping to elect Richard Hills and increase Labour’s Party Vote in this electorate. We have a great candidate, a great team working for him and a great message to present to voters. It will be a very exciting six months!

I took the photo above shortly after Richard was confirmed as our candidate. With him is Darien Fenton, a Labour List MP whose office is in this electorate. She’s also Labour’s Transport Spokesperson.

Goodbye, Mozilla

Do people have the right to make value judgements about products/services they'll use based on who is leading a big organisation or company? Apparently, it depends which side you’re on.

Brendan Eich, new CEO of Mozilla, said on his personal blog that his donation supporting California's anti-gay Proposition 8 is irrelevant. I don’t agree.

When the head of a fast-food chicken joint made strongly-worded anti-gay statements, and was found to have given large donations to organisations working full-time against the civil and human rights of LGBT people (our freedom to marry in particular), our side felt that it was best to not give the chicken joint any of our money so he couldn’t use it against us. There wasn’t really a boycott as such.

Nevertheless, our adversaries said we were “bullies”, “fascists” and “the Gaystapo”, and they launched a stunt in which they flocked to the chicken joint to “support” the head of the company. Their stunt was very successful, if measured by media attention. It should be noted, however, that those same people are now condemning the head of that chicken joint for saying he and his company will now keep out of politics.

Here’s the thing: When our side urges boycotts of companies that are actively anti-gay, the rightwing always accuses us of being vicious (ironic, considering the vicious anti-gay rhetoric they use…). However, when they urge boycotts because a group supports LGBT rights, or marriage equality in particular, that’s holy and righteous and wonderful. Hypocrisy, much?

One wingnut site maintains a list of companies to be boycotted because they supposedly support marriage equality (though they provided NO evidence in support of that assertion). They are: "Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Blue Cross Blue Shield, CBS, eBay, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, Guiness [sic] Beer, Heineken Beer, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, McGraw-Hill, Microsoft, Nike, Sam Addams [sic] Beer, Starbucks, Thomson Reuters, Twitter, Viacom, Walt Disney Company, Xerox and Zynga." (Because I have a long-standing policy of never linking to a wingnut site, to access the list, copy and paste this link: http://bit.ly/1pxfENp).

That list includes Sam Adams Brewery and Guinness (I corrected the wingnut site’s bad spelling) are probably on the list merely because of their recent withdrawal of their sponsorship of St. Patrick’s Day Parades in the US over their refusal to allow LGBT people to participate. Other companies not on the list that have faced boycotts by anti-gay groups include McDonald’s, Ford Motor Company, Hallmark Cards, Chilli’s, and many more.

Most notoriously, for more than three years anti-gay groups boycotted Home Depot because of the company’s support for the civil and human rights of their LGBT employees and customers. While the boycott was, of course, a spectacular failure, they blatantly lied and claimed victory.

So, what we see here is a long history of the anti-gay rightwing urging boycotts of companies that to varying degrees support LGBT people and our civil and human rights, but if our side proposes a boycott of companies that oppose us, we’re the ones being evil?

This is, at it’s core, the message that Eich is selling in his post: His support for an anti-gay political campaign is irrelevant and we should all get over it, just as we should pay no attention to the anti-gay record of companies. Eich is perfectly free to donate money to prevent our legal equality, but if we object, tough.

I fully support the right of people to boycott whoever they want for whatever reason they want—political, religious, cultural, aesthetic, their reason doesn’t matter, but their freedom to make that choice does. Let me be specific: If anti-gay activists want to boycott companies that support the civil and human rights of LGBT people, they should do so. Similarly, if an LGBT person or straight ally wants to boycott a company because of its anti-gay political activities, they should do so. And if someone wants to dump Firefox and other Mozilla products because its CEO donated money to prevent legal equality for LGBT people in California (specifically by taking away their legal right to marry), that, too, is their right.

I think boycotts are stupid because they almost never accomplish their goals, a few high-profile successes notwithstanding. Funnily enough, for anti-gay people, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to find major companies that don’t support the civil and human rights of LGBT people.

I wrote about boycotts last year, and said: “Personally, I prefer to ‘buycott’, that is, to go out of my way to support businesses that support the issues I care about instead of boycotting the ones that oppose those issues.” So, generally speaking, I don’t participate in boycotts as much as I try to support businesses whose values most closely align with my own.

However, no person or business is perfect: Even companies that are supportive of the civil and human rights of LGBT people could be “bad” or “wrong” (from my perspective) on any number of other issues. There are also plenty of perfectly good reasons to use a web browser other than Firefox, reasons that have nothing to do with the politics of its CEO.

Even so, all people have the right to make purchasing decisions based on their own personal values, and to choose one company or organisation over another based on those personal values. Whether Eich likes it or not, that includes the fact that people have the right to make personal decisions about use of Mozilla products based on Eich’s political views.

Staff at Mozilla have called on Eich to resign. That, too is their right.

In an open letter to Eich, Owen Thomas writes that Eich’s assertion that his political donation against the civil and human rights of LGBT people was a private matter was “[disingenuous] and beneath a leader of [his] stature.” He urges Eich to apologise and to make an equal-sized contribution to a pro-LGBT organisation.

This gets at the heart of the issue: What Eich thinks about LGBT people and our freedom to marry is irrelevant. Although this raises questions about his fairness toward LGBT employees, his opinions are mainly his business, not ours. But he gave money to stop our civil and human rights by taking away the freedom to marry, and, in so doing, he took a loud and public stand against us. He’s perfectly free to do that, of course—but he’s not exempt from the consequences. Apparently, he feels that those who disagree with him, or who were victims of the passage of Proposition 8, have no right to be upset with him, and certainly no right to “vote with their feet” rather than support a guy who took a very public stand against LGBT people, or the organisation that made him its head.

Bullocks.

If gay people don’t stand up for ourselves, who will? We must always be firm that trying to take away the civil and human rights of LGBT people is never okay, and that means we’re under no obligation to support people—or their organisations—who have taken an anti-gay stand.

As I said, I support the right of people to make their own decisions in matters like this, but as for me, I’m dumping Firefox until and unless Eich makes this right or resigns. I really have no choice; the choice now is his alone.

The unsent letter

There are distinct advantages in the “unsent letter” technique, chiefly, keeping one from saying regrettable things, online especially. I’ve used it a lot lately.

Earlier this week, Kelly Sedinger (aka Jaquandor) shared an article on his blog, Byzantium’s Shores. The article he linked to, “The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter” by Maria Konnikova, talks about both the brake and catharsis provided by writing an unsent letter (or unposted online comment). Kelly summed up the article well when he wrote:

“…an interesting hypothesis as to why the Internet is so often a cesspool of spittle-flecked rage. It's not just that it's easy to post angry missives online, it's that the very ease of doing so negates the intended catharsis of writing them in the first place.”

Of course, I’ve talked about this sort of restraint here on this blog. Last year, I talked about out-of-control mockery, and a month earlier, I wrote:

“It’s not that I don’t have things I want to say, it’s that I have things I don’t want to publish. Very different things.”

That hasn’t changed since—actually, it has: The number of posts I start and then abandon—even after having spent hours on them—has continued to rise. I often decide that wherever the angry or negative post has ended up is not a place I want to be, and not a thing I want on this blog.

Three years ago, I talked about my “Two-day Rule” for blogging:

“If I see something I want to comment on, especially something that pisses me off or otherwise riles me up, I try to wait until the second day (or longer) before I write a post.”

This is basically the “unsent letter” trick by another name, but whatever it’s called, it works. It turns out, there’s a lot of stuff that interests me besides the stuff that make me angry. It’s much easier to write about pop culture, history, whatever, if my time isn’t spent firing off angry rants.

On the other hand, the fact that sometimes I spend hours on an angry post that never gets out of my drafts folder means that I often have little energy for writing some other post for that day. I think that’s an acceptable compromise. I’m doing my part to make the Internet a tiny bit more civil, but I still get to vent about whatever’s made me angry—even though no one but me will ever see it.

I wish more people would at least try to restrain themselves before dashing off an angry retort.

Tip o’ the Hat to Roger Green who emailed me the link to the Byzantium’s Shores post; these days I don’t have time to read as many blogs as I’d like and I often miss out on posts like that.

FIRST KISS - Gay Version from NZ

Last night, just before I turned off the computer for the night, I saw the video above. It’s a gay version of the Internet sensation, FIRST KISS.

The video was created by New Zealand safer sex education group Love Your Condom (Note: not all material on their site is worksafe). They talk about the making of the video on their blog.

I think that this version is better than the original because it feels authentic. I’m sure that’s partly because I know that most of the participants in the original were actors and/or models, but, whatever the reason, this one just feels real to me.

I think it’s kind of funny that I first heard about the video—made by a New Zealand organisation—from an Australian gay news site, the Star Observer. It was later picked-up by various gay sites in the USA, and now it’s going viral. As it should.

From time to time a New Zealand video goes viral, which is always fun, but also a little surreal: Most of the time, the world ignores us as the Dutch did at the Nuclear Security Summit. Viral videos are probably more entertaining, anyway.

Gotta cut loose

This video amused me. Not in a guffaw sort of way, but in an “yeah, I’m getting older and I like to see my life reflected,” kind of way. I’m sharing it because, well, Kevin Bacon.

Kevin Bacon was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on March 21 (USA time), in part to promote the 30th anniversary of Bacon’s film, Footloose, among other things. The set-up was that Jimmy announced that The Tonight Show had banned dancing, then Kevin Bacon breaks the rules with his entrance.

I thought it was kind of funny, but even more so that a 55-year-old Kevin Bacon was, in some ways, reprising his role in the film. Kevin's about six months older than me, and I certainly could not do any of the moves he did.

We don’t get The Tonight Show in New Zealand, so I have no idea how the rest of the show was. But this part made me smile. Your mileage may vary—Arthur’s Law, and all that.

This video has been all over the Internet, and I can’t remember where I saw it first.

More real

Cartoons often portray reality in a way that, sometimes, reality can’t. Think of political cartoons v. journalism, for example. Cartoons can help make the truth clearer.

The video above is a cartoon by Mark Fiore in which he takes on the sudden amnesia of the USA’s anti-gay industry and its attempt to export their anti-gay bigotry around the world, Uganda in particular. The bigots got what they wanted, then when the world expressed revulsion, the bigots pretended to be shocked and surprised.

Fiore said in the YouTube description:

“Since Uganda's anti-gay law was signed recently, it's been amusing (and maddening) to watch various religious right characters scurry for cover. When nobody was watching, the holier-than-thou set have been visiting Uganda preaching their extreme anti-gay views. Now that people are appalled at Uganda's life-in-prison-for-homosexuals law, the ‘evangelical’ right-wing preachers are laying low or rewriting history.”

The players in the anti-gay industry may attempt to re-write history, and pretend that they weren’t exporting anti-gay hatred when that’s exactly what they were doing, but they have a small problem: In the 21st Century, it’s easy to fact-check: We know when someone is lying.

Cartoons like this one portray reality uniquely, making truth accessible in a way that straightforward news reporting doesn’t; maybe it can’t. I think that anything that helps ordinary people to understand the true nature of the leaders of the anti-gay industry, and their actual role in exporting anti-gay hatred, is a good thing. It’s also a far greater service to humanity than those bigots will ever be.

Tip o' the Hat to: Joe.My.God.

Weekend Diversion: Top 10 Misheard Lyrics

In the midst of a YouTube spiral, I recently came across the video above. I enjoyed it, and I learned a new word. What more can you ask?

The video is from watchmojo.com, which specialises in this sort of thing. The YouTube description said:

“…we count down our picks for the 5 most popular mondegreens, and as a bonus, we suggest 5 clips that would be hilarious if we could rewrite the lyrics.…”

Wait, what? Mondegreens? Turns out mondegreen is a neologism created just for this sort of thing. And it’s a needed word, I think.

However, the mondegreens in this video are not ones that affected me, though I’d heard about some of them. Here's my biggest one: In 1975, Elton John released a song called “Island Girl”, which went number one in the USA. The following year, Elton said he was bisexual. So, some time after that I was with friends (especially Jason, who can verify this) and we heard the song. “That’s rather inconsistent, isn’t it?” I asked. My friends were confused. I thought the lytic was “I like girls”. I was mistaken.

We all mishear lyrics, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes it’s our fault (not paying enough attention), and sometimes it’s the artist’s fault (they mumble). But however it comes about, it’s harmless. Best we laugh at ourselves and move on.

And, one day, we’ll all mishear again.

Internet Wading: Month Day

From time to time I post links to interesting things I’ve seen on the Internet. Well, I’ve decided to make that a monthly thing, and this is the first one.

In the past, I posted them whenever I thought of it, but the plan now is to post them on the 21st of the month. Why? Because that’s my month day, of course.

The term comes from my friend Jason and his family, but, curiously, he’s never actually explained it on his blog—surely a future topic for him! Basically, it’s the day of the month that’s the same as your birthday. I just thought that if I was going to pick an arbitrary day, why not pick one that I might actually remember? Big ask, I know.

So, here are a few things I noticed after my last Internet Wading post:

When Director Harold Ramis died, there was one unusual reaction published by Salon: “Baby boomer humor’s big lie: Ghostbusters and Caddyshack really liberated Reagan and Wall Street”. Okay, then. So—I shouldn’t have laughed?

Maybe more more usefully, Huffington Post offered, “The 8 Life Lessons I Learned From '70s TV Shows”. It’s actually not quite as completely silly as it sounds.

Talking about pop culture makes me hungry. Luckily, the New Zealand Herald told me the “Pretzel burger coming to NZ”. No idea what came of it, but pretzels aren’t popular in New Zealand, so…

I also saw important food advice: “Here’s mathematical proof that you should always order a bigger pizza”. Now THAT is important to know!

“Why cats really purr” was certainly an interesting title. “It's not just their way of expressing pleasure. Purring has benefited cats over the course of their evolution.” And dogs get some equal time on this blog: “Humans and Dogs Use Same Brain Area to Get Others' Emotions.”

Speaking of communication, there’s “Some Everyday Words That Meant Really Different Things to Early American Colonists”. Language use in the USA has continued to change, of course. Check out, “122 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently”.

Charlie Jane Anders asks, “Does anybody read books the right way any more?”

Most of our communication is more personal. In one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen on the Internet, a father, Kevin Conboy, posted the text messages he shared with his son, Ian, on December 13, 2013—when Arapahoe High School was under lockdown because 18 year old Karl Pierson had started shooting in the school. The most poignant part for me was when the dad texts, “I am here and will be here. Until I have you.” If more dads were like him, this world would be a much, much better place.

Parisian mayoral candidate Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet proposed a bold plan for abandoned stations on the Métro system. The center-right candidate, known as NKM to her supporters, said these “phantom” stations should be reclaimed for the city's residents: “Paris's Abandoned Métro Stations, Reimagined as Theaters and Pools”. Pretty awesome.

How to Determine If Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions.

Country music is slowly becoming more gay-friendly. Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland gave an interview recently when she released her new solo album, That Girl. She talked about why she’s popular with gay fans and also said she doesn’t get flak for being a staunch straight ally of gay people. Meanwhile, like Nettles, Grammy Award winning country artist and songwriter Kacey Musgraves tries to “keep it real”. She doesn’t shy away from themes that are gay-positive. Times are changing. Slowly.

And that’s this month’s sampling of things I thought were interesting, but that never made it into a blog posts of their own. Now I can start collecting stuff for the next Month Day post.

Shorn again

Yesterday, I took the dogs for a grooming. For a change I didn’t wait a bit too long, so their cut isn’t severe. That’s really nice.

The photo above is the before, the photo below is the after. See? Not a whole lot of difference, which is as it should be—yay, me! I’m a good daddy!

Their appointment was at 9am yesterday, and I braved Auckland traffic to get them there (the alternative was tonight or the weekend, neither of which was workable). They told me it would be two hours—normally it’s four. I wasn’t quite sure what to do—I had plans all mapped out—so I flushed my plans and went to a local café for breakfast.

I arrived back a little before they were ready, but I didn't mind waiting. They looked great and were happy to see me in the “why the hell did you leave us here” kind of way. Like usual.

I’m glad I actually made it before their fur got matted—this time. With a little luck, I won’t need to take them again until spring, or just before. This is a good thing for all concerned.

The furbabies would agree.

That man, that failure

I’m not going to say much of anything about the elderly hate merchant who just died. It’s clearly not out of respect for him or his family, but because he’s not worthy of attention.

The truth is, I almost pity him: Imagine living a whole life built on nothing but hatred and causing division, and then dying a despised person. If this was all because he lived his life suffering from profound mental illness that was never treated, that IS a shame. If that’s not the case, how sad that it looks as if it was the case.

But that doesn’t change the simple reality that he died as he lived: A complete irrelevance. Despite all the pain and suffering he inflicted on innocent people through his political stunts in his long history, he accomplished absolutely nothing. He died a complete and utter failure, despised by people all over the political spectrum.

He wasn’t irrelevant merely because he was an utter failure, but because he wasn’t in any way unique: The dead guy merely said out loud what the anti-gay industry thinks. While the activists in the anti-gay industry have long tried to wrap their bigotry in a cloak of respectability (the latest one called “religious freedom”), they have in their more honest moments admitted that they want gay people locked up, too. And, let’s be real here: What’s their entire reason for being if not to take away the civil and human rights of LGBT people? The dead guy crudely, offensively and sickeningly demanded out loud what the professional anti-gay industry won’t say out loud but nevertheless is trying to achieve.

So, a bad man is dead, and that’s a good thing. I’ll certainly never forgive what he did in life, but, like everyone else, I’ll easily forget him. That’s just another indicator of what a complete failure he was.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Update: Rachel Maddow did a sort of anti-obituary (link goes to YouTube), and, like me, she also pointedly didn’t mention the dead guy’s name. I don’t know what her reason was, but mine was that I think that among the most insulting things one can do is to deliberately ignore the name of a dead person, as if they never existed. As a bonus, this post also won’t show up in searches.

Rachel makes the point that by being so truly vile and offensive, the dead guy actually helped the cause of gay rights. Silver lining, that. It’s also the reason some on the radical right thought the cult must have been a liberal fake-out. I think they were just embarrassed to see someone say out loud what they said more privately, and to put a public face on anti-gay religious bigotry so that everyone could see it for what it is.

Key Coincidence

When John Key wanted to do a special deal with SkyCity Casino, the Problem Gambling Foundation (PGF) raised alarms. Now Key’s government has cut virtually all funding to the group. Coincidence?

The deal was always bad for New Zealand, and for a lot of reasons, but Key and his National/Act-led Government dismissed all objections. Now it appears John Key is getting his revenge, and even Peter Dunne didn't entirely dismiss that as being true.

So far, National Party supporters are claiming that the PGF used government money to, in the colourful words that Tory attack dog Tau Henare Tweeted, “bag the hand that feeds them”. Later, after calling a critic a “tard” (Tau is such a charming man, isn’t he? Total class, that one—John Key must be so proud to have him in caucus!), he claimed that he meant PGF should not get “money to criticize.”

Here’s the problem with the Tory spin: It’s wrong and stupid. PGF’s mission is to help problem gamblers, yes, but it also raises awareness of the issue and tries to reduce risk and minimise harm. If the government—led by any party—is about to do something that in their professional opinion will increase risk and harm, they have an obligation to speak up, just as ANY other government-funded agency would be expected to do. So, why is this one so special, so offensive to Tories?

This deal was close to John Key's heart, but he got significant opposition to the deal from non-partisan community groups, and not just his political opponents. Many questions were raised about the ethics and even legality of the deal. So, when PGF raised alarms, it gave added legitimacy to the opposition to the deal, and that had to be punished. John Key simply ignores criticism from all other groups that have opposed government policy, but TGF stirred up more trouble for John Key and National/Act than any others ever have.

So, was the de-funding of the Problem Gambling Foundation political retribution from John Key and his National/Act-led government? You bet.

Update: On Public Address, Russell Brown looks at the many issues this raises and points out that PGF “doesn’t lobby on the public dollar – that part of its work is privately funded.”

Update 2: Peter Dunne has had a change of heart. Earlier he said that PGF's defunding had "nothing to do" with its opposition to the SkyCity deal "as far as I'm aware." At around 11:40am he Tweeted, "Claims Problem Gambling Foundation funding cut because of its opposition to Sky City deal are wilful lies spread with malice". So, how did he suddenly become "aware of" what the situation is? Did his boss John Key have a quiet word with him? After such a huge flipflop, how can we trust any of them to be completely truthful?

‘Kiwi by heart’

A woman who describes herself as “an American by birth, but a Kiwi by heart” was made an Honorary Member of the Order of New Zealand today [VIDEO] for her work in helping to preserve our national emblem, the kiwi.

Kathy Brader has been at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo Bird House since 1986. That zoo was the first institution outside of New Zealand to hatch a kiwi, something only five zoos outside of New Zealand have ever done successfully. Under Brader, the Zoo successfully hatched and raised six kiwi.

Brader is also given credit for her role in creating the United States’ only “Meet a Kiwi” program at the National Zoo, which allows visitors to observe kiwi up close. When Nigel and went to National Zoo with Jason many years ago, we happened to be there when the “Meet a Kiwi” was taking place, which was kind of a surreal experience. And, yes, we joked that people could meet us.

Her recognition is only honorary because some US citizens are barred from accepting foreign honours and titles under Article 1, section 9, Clause 8 of the US Constitution, which says in part: “No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” National Zoo, as part of the Smithsonian Institution, is administered by the US federal government, which means this constitutional ban applies to its employees, particularly senior staff.

Interestingly, there’s no ban on private US citizens accepting a foreign title as long as they don’t swear allegiance to a foreign power, which can in some circumstances cost a person their US citizenship. In 1810, the 11th Congress passed and submitted to the states what would have been the 13th Amendment, called the Titles of Nobility Amendment (TONA). It would have stripped US citizenship from any citizen who accepted a title of nobility from a foreign country. The amendment wasn’t ratified by enough US states to become part of the Constitution, however, since it had no expiry date, it technically could still be added, unlikely as that is.

It’s actually common for countries to bestow honorary versions of their awards to foreigners. It probably has to do with not stepping on the toes of other countries, or something.

In any case, being honorary doesn’t make it any less of a big deal, really. It also sounds like it was worthy recognition.

Photo of Kathy Brader above is by Mehgan Murphy, Smithsonian’s National Zoo, 2008. It's released under a Creative Commons License.

Politics, it seems

Between work and some projects around the house, I’ve been pretty busy lately—too busy to blog. Because of it, I’ve noticed something interesting: Politics, it seems, is what people read the most on this blog.

Now, I can’t say I’m totally surprised about that—it’s what I’m most passionate about, after all. But I didn’t expect to see such a huge difference between page views of my political posts as compared to my non-political posts.

It’s not just any politics, either, but US politics, particularly posts about the rightwing and especially about anti-gay rightwing politics. However, the even larger lesson is the importance of daily—or, at least, regular—blogging. Folks may still view a post they’re not interested in because they’re used to stopping by regularly, but if there’s no post for several days, they get out of the habit.

There are a couple qualifiers: First, this is a couple weeks, and they may not be typical. Second, my previous weeks could also have been atypical, and this recent past may actually be more typical. This is why it’s always a bad idea to draw too many conclusions from a limited data set: There’s not enough information.

If I look at long-term data, politics actually may not be the thing readers are most interested in. Consider my top five most-viewed posts of all-time according to Blogger):

1. Spammers stumped me – 22 November 2012. With nearly 43,000 pageviews, I bet that the title drew hits from spambots, which were the subject of that post. Completely non-political.
2. Rhetoric matters – 11 January 2012 About anti-gay bigots complaints about the use of the word gay.
3. Things you miss and then find – 1 April 2010. This was my first post about Martha’s Backyard, an Auckland store that carries American food products. I’ve published more posts about it since. Completely non-political.
4. I cannot say more – 11 May 2012. A post of a video by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell demolishing an anti-gay bigot’s rhetoric.
5. The version before – December 8, 2010. A post of a video that inspired another video I’d posted earlier. Completely non-political.

Four of the top five NZ blogs that choose to be ranked on Open Parachute are expressly political blogs that sometimes post other things. Mine’s about whatever I find interesting at the moment, and very often that’s something political.

All of which is basically a “huh!” kind of thing for me; I don’t pay much attention to website stats, and even when I do, I don’t let it influence what I post. Part of the reason is that long-term stats tell me that popular topics change over time, so there’s no point second-guessing myself. Besides, I’m clearly not that organised.

Even so, I’ll be posting more about politics in the weeks ahead: The USA and New Zealand both have elections this year, so I’m sure to have things to say and, anyway, it interests me. Politics, it seems, is what keep me coming back to this blog, too.

Progress or sacrilege?

Does everything that can be changed have to be? Or is change always a good thing? Should old favourites be re-done for modern times?

The video above is a new “teaser trailer” for a Peanuts movie from Fox, due out next year. The characters are all 3D. My first reaction was, as one of my pals said on Twitter, “Always thought my 2D Peanuts friends had enough depth (especially Linus)”.

The reality for me is that most of the appeal of the old cartoons is that they’re old: They’re part of my childhood and youth, mainly, so it represents a kind of nostalgia. But I also think 2-D cartoons have a kind of charm as well as an expressiveness that’s often missing from computer-generated cartoons. 3-D animated films (like Toy Story, Shrek, Up, Monsters, Inc., etc.) are often very entertaining—but are they really cartoons if no ink was ever used?

There was similar pushback when TV (mostly) started colourising old black and white movies. Purists condemned what they thought of as desecration, while others said it made the films more accessible to younger audiences. However, a purist could turn off the colour and watch the film in black and white if they wanted to—you can’t 2-D a 3-D movie.

I know I’m not actually the target demographic for this film (or for much of anything else in popular entertainment, if we’re honest), so maybe what I think doesn't matter. And maybe this film will actually be good in 3-D—maybe even great. I have a cautiously open mind about it.

But I do think that sometimes we don’t need to change things just because we can, and we don’t need to “fix things that aren’t broken”. We’ll find out next year whether this is one of those times or not.

St Patrick’s Day

I’ve never been a big fan of St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not Irish (well, possibly a little), and as I got older I thought it was all over-the-top. But, is it an American invention?

The US Embassy in Ireland made the video above, “5 Ways Americans Invented St. Patrick's Day” as a kind of light-hearted look at the American influence on St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Was it intended to be a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun? Some people clearly don’t think so.

Comments on the YouTube page included the declarative, like “Obviously a joke just not funny,” through to the appalled: “This is so obnoxious I can't believe it is real. As an American, I find this embarrassing.” And there was the mixed-bag criticism: “This is utterly cringeworthy. St. Patrick's Day is nothing but a booze-fuelled mess anyway. Nice to see Dublin is the only place in Ireland that is relevant, apparently.”

One comment (link takes you to the YouTube page of the video) was more accurate, however:

“Americans did not invent Saint Patrick's Day, which is an ancient Christian feast day, they just invented deeply tacky celebrations with an excess of lurid green elements (tolerable shades do exist) and inappropriate Scottish kilts (which Irish people do not wear), fake leprechaun outfits (leprechauns do not wear green) and fake-coloured quasi-‘red’ beards (leprechauns do not have red hair). It is noteworthy how leprechauns are never seen any more; they have been shamed into deeper reclusiveness than ever.

“It is all a typical emigrants' descendants' phony and embarrassing misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the parent culture. And many Irish people in Ireland are stupid enough to reproduce the tackier elements with misplaced enthusiasm, especially in recent years by dressing up in those nasty, fake ‘leprechaun’ outfits. Why could we not have a classy cultural celebration? It is our national day, yet in Ireland we have blindly embraced ignorant American shabbiness and hideous solecisms. Shame on us.

“The Irish Times skewered this one with the headline: ‘Americans invented St Patrick’s Day, claim Americans’."

Obviously Americans didn’t invent St. Patrick’s DAY and I certainly didn’t think the video was claiming that. Instead, the video was claiming that Americans created the over-the-top public celebration of it. Given how often Americans do that (Halloween, anyone?), I think there’s a lot of truth to THAT claim.

My parents enjoyed St Patrick’s Day. My mother liked to think she had Irish ancestry (although, to date, we haven’t found any), and wore green. My dad wore a green tie. He also often made corned beef and cabbage. My parents usually had a few whiskeys. My dad probably told somewhat crude or ribald jokes with a fake Irish accent (he actually was pretty good at imitating accents). I just watched, mostly—though I did like the corned beef and cabbage.

As a kid, I used to wear a green shirt on St. Patrick’s Day, and our primary school teachers often had some sort of activity. I don’t remember any of them using the opportunity to teach us anything about Ireland, or even about Irish immigrants to the USA, which was a huge missed opportunity, in my opinion.

By high school, I was already pretty much over it all, but I remember one thing vividly: Our school librarian used to wear an orange shirt on St. Patrick’s Day because, he said, he was Protestant. He never tried to explain anything more. At the time, I thought he was a bit of a dick, but later—when I read about the history of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland (which were raging at the time) and the significance of orange (and the Orange Order) in that turbulent time, I came to realise he was actually being a bit of a jerk.

Personally, I don’t see any harm in all the current St Patrick’s Day nonsense: If people enjoy it then they should enjoy it. None of my business. Just don’t expect me to join in all that over-the-top green-beer-soaked hoopla, no matter who invented it.

Update: The Huffington Post covers this, too.

Weekend Diversion: Logo design

Above is a BuzzFeed video published on March 11. It’s an interesting look at famous logos, and the sometimes-subtle messages included. I think it’s interesting, even when we don’t notice.

However, when I watched the video I thought it sounded awfully familiar. It turns out, on April 2, 2012, BuzzFeed posted “Great Logos With A Secret Meaning”, which covered this same ground, but with more logos. Maybe everything old is new again,

In any case, I think it’s interesting to see what designers have done with big name logos, and why. Analysing the choices they made can help the rest of us as we struggle with designing logos for somewhat smaller organisations.

A logo is, of course, a graphic emblem used to represent a company or organisation. Modern logos are said to have begun in the 1870s, When Bass registered their red triangle. But logos as a concept date back much farther than that. They also have much in common with the heraldic crests once used by knights and nobles to identify each other on the battlefield.

In New Zealand, one only has to add the trademark symbol ("™") to have legal protection for a logo or trademark. However, for full protection, here as elsewhere, it’s best to register the mark, which gives the owner the right to use the registered symbol, “®”. Registering a logo gives the highest level of legal protection, but it’s not invincible. For example, if a company can prove they used a substantially similar mark before the registration, they may be able to have the newer mark de-registered.

Companies spend a lot of money to develop and promote their logos to make it easy for customers to recognise them quickly. I use this to my advantage: I take logos for banks, power companies and so on, and tape them to the tabs of the filing folders where I keep statements. That way, I can visually scan the files and find the folder I’m looking for without having to read each one. Thanks, logo designers!

This post is kind of a follow-up to my previous Weekend Diversion, “The History of Typography”. Logo design is another area of graphic design where typography is important, even when we don’t even notice.

Related:

Top ten logos gone wrong
The Latest Victims In Famous Logo Rebrands

Lusi in disguise

I don’t always remember to follow-up things I’ve posted about, so here’s one now: Cyclone Lusi was no big deal for Auckland. In fact, it wasn’t as bad as some ordinary storms.

Lusi was deadly when it hit Vanuatu, but by the time it reached New Zealand it was downgraded to a category 2. Yesterday it was classified as a tropical depression.

We had almost no rain. We did get some very strong gusts of wind, but this was actually a good thing: It would've been very muggy without it. We also had no damage to speak of, apart from some leaves and rubbish blowing around, that sort of thing.

So, not a big deal for Auckland at all. This is good.

Weather is still largely unpredictable, at least, specifics of weather are—like, if a certain thing will happen or not. This leads people to become complacent about weather warnings, assuming a predicted storm won’t happen.

I’m a little more cautious. I know that no cyclone over the past 18 years that I’ve been in New Zealand has caused trouble for Auckland—in fact, various weather bombs have been far worse, like the one that damaged our house, or the one a year later which was bad, but didn’t damage our house.

But what if one day there's storm that's as bad as they predict—or worse? Our “Get Thru” kit will see us, well, through. It’s always good to be prepared for emergencies, whether they ever happen or not.

Next time, the cyclone may not come disguised as a really windy day; next time it could be a very big deal.

Things change, don’t then do

The video above, part of an episode of the classic TV show Maude, aired on December 3, 1977 during the last season of the show. “The Gay Bar” deals with the opening of a gay bar in their town, Tuckahoe, New York. Liberal icon Maude isn’t at all upset by it, of course, but her conservative foil Arthur Harmon wants it closed down.

This was the way things were in 1977. It was still socially acceptable to be anti-gay, however, things were starting to turn and those who were loudly, blindly anti-gay were often seen as characters who deserved to be ridiculed.

A few years later, the AIDS epidemic changed everything. The level of official oppression of LGBT people increased, and anti-gay people weren’t ridiculed by the mainstream—they again were the mainstream.

I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Imagine how much further along we’d be if AIDS had never happened!” I’m not one of those people, at least, not totally.

To be sure, if AIDS had never happened, gay people would have had an easier time with social and political progress, but I’m not convinced that we’d necessarily be any farther along the road to social and legal equality than we are now. Crisis creates urgency, which unleashes strength of purpose and determination and energy that is usually lacking when there’s no urgency.

I realise that I may very well think this because of the way history has unfolded. African Americans didn’t move from slavery to full and equal citizens (to the extent they’ve achieved that…) without struggle. Similarly, governments didn’t jump from oppressing and criminalising gay people to allowing us to marry.

Yes, societies DO evolve given time: Western societies no longer accept the idea that women are property or subservient in all matters to their fathers and then their husbands. We don’t accept the idea that one human can own another. But none of this happened just because society woke up one day and decided to change. Instead, people demanded change, preached it, lived it—and too often suffered for it.

So, if we want society to change and evolve, sometimes it needs a little shove. Women around the world demanded the right to vote for decades before they actually won it. African Americans demanded equality for decades—around two century’s worth, actually—before laws started to change. Women, and then LGBT people, pushed for equality, building on all these earlier struggles and using many of the same tactics.

And then AIDS came along. Our adversaries became emboldened, seeing an opportunity to turn back the clock and re-institutionalise oppression of LGBT people. They had a lot of successes—at first.

But then we started fighting back. At first, we were fighting for our very lives, and the lives of our friends and family, but then again for our civil and human rights. We were determined to prevent losing the gains we’d achieved, and we eventually prevailed.

As the hysteria of the early AIDS years subsided, we were there, pushing for progress. By the 1990s, things were again moving forward. I believe that a large part of the successes we had at that time is directly attributable to the urgent organising we needed to do because of the anti-gay hysteria of the early AIDS years. But as the urgency faded, so did the energy—and the progress slowed.

In 1993, it looked like Hawaii was about to legalise marriage for same-gender couples. Our rightwing adversaries again organised against us, building their activism (and extensive fundraising) on stopping marriage equality. This lead to the infamous Defense [sic] of Marriage Act (1996). Within a decade, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman saw an opportunity to exploit this rightwing fervour as a way to increase votes for Republicans.

As with the rightwing political reaction to AIDS, we were caught off guard by the rightwing’s juggernaut to stop marriage equality. They focused on state battles because they knew it would be much harder for our side to fight effectively in battles all over the country, but it was also a logical move for them, since a Constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality was dead—thanks to the Defense [sic] of Marriage Act they’d fought for. A state-by-state campaign also gave them more opportunities to raise money, of course.

The anti-gay rightwing activists had an unbroken string of victories in referenda between 2000 and 2009, but that year was their final victory (North Carolina’s 2012 referendum is irrelevant, since only about a third of voters bothered to vote in the referendum; guaranteeing a low turnout by holding the referendum on a weird date was part of anti-gay politicians’ strategy to ensure it would pass).

There’s no doubt that the anti-gay industry held off equality for LGBT Americans for about a decade—two, if you count the politics of the AIDS years. They were strong, organised, extremely well-funded—and not very nice people. Increasingly it became clear that the radical right was motivated by anti-gay animus. That’s when they began to lose.

Apart from the aberration of North Carolina, the anti-gay industry hasn’t had a single victory since 2009. They even lost in the Indiana legislature, which the spokesbigot for one leading anti-gay hate group arrogantly asserted was a sure victory for them. They’re now also losing every court challenge. Even their new tactic of hiding their anti-gay animus in a cloak of religious respectability (as in Arizona) hasn’t worked, instead unleashing strong opposition from all sides—left AND right.

All of which shows how far the US has come: It’s much less socially acceptable to be anti-gay than it was in 1977. In 2014, the only ones who are anti-gay activists are also political extremists, and no one likes or admires them.

I’m sure that social progress can happen without the urgency that a crisis creates, but I also think that sometimes a crisis can galvanise “the good guys” and unleash new energy that, ultimately, forces things to move forward faster than would have happened without a crisis. History has shown that as crises wain, we become complacent, and again become vulnerable to issues our adversaries creatively exploit against us. However, we’re getting closer and closer to achieving legal equality for LGBT people, which gives our far-rightwing adversaries very little room to attack us. That is a very good thing, indeed.

All of which may sound as if I’m giving some sort of backhanded credit to the anti-gay industry that cost us so much time and money. I definitely am not. I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive them for what they’ve done, though I’ll certainly forget (unlike them—they’ll wallow forever in their defeat and bitterness).

I’d so much rather that these crises had never happened: We lost far too many good people to AIDS. Fighting the rightwing’s exploitation of the disease for their political and financial gain only made things worse.


What we have also seen in all this is that the rightwing clearly didn’t learn anything from the political wars they waged against us—but we did. We’re never going back, no matter what the Arthur Harmons of the world may think.

The excerpt in the video above is part one of three. Part two is the main part of the episode, and part three, which is very short, contains the final joke of the episode. The links go to YouTube. This post was inspired by a friend's post today on Facebook, and another friend's comment on it.

Modern Family Message for Australian Marriage Equality

This video is a good message for the Australian government to hurry up an enact marriage equality. There’s even a shout out to New Zealand.

From the video description on YouTube:

Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family send a message to Australia's law makers about marriage equality. To stop waiting for marriage equality, start here.

We need more people speaking out to get Australia moving. History—and the Australian people—are waiting for Tony Abbott's government to catch up to them.

Oppressive (The best gay possible) Slow Mix

And now, a slow mix version of the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of Panti Bliss’ “Noble Call” speech, with a relevant video on top of it. I think this one is really good. Not that you care what I think, nor should you, but there it is, all the same.

As I said the other day, anything that helps spread the message is fine with me.

Via Joe.My.God.