Does President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage extend to the courage to defend gay Afghans and Pakistanis targeted by his illegal assassinations by drone?
Don’t Ask, Don’t Fire
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
7 Comments. Leave new
Maybe running on empty a bit here with this cartoon? Does it really take ‘extra courage’ to defend or target gay a-rabs targeted for illegal assassination? It is probably not a consideration once you have decided to illegally kill people, huh? Still – I would probably guess that it takes ‘extra courage’ to be totally negative all the time for you – but maybe not – that’s how you try to beg for money, isn’t it?
Now that you’ve thoroughly beaten the gay marriage dead horse, it’s time for an OWS cartoon about the long winter of body cavity searches.
Be careful, rikster—you’re catching me in a particularly nasty mood today.
The point here is, how weird it is to stand up for relatively trivial rights (like marriage) while denying fundamental rights (not to be killed).
As for you, John, I’ll assume you are willing to submit to body cavity searches at will. Hell, some people pay good money for that. But it’s a big issue, one that exposes the system, and well worth pointing (repeated) attention to.
Considering that the senators, representatives, and President that actually signed the Civil Rights Act into law didn’t get anything close to the kinds of accolades Obama is giving for saying something politically convenient that costs him no political capital and gains him support, the idea that Rall has spent too long on this is pretty much bullshit. And this is ignoring the fact that we already have authoritarians kissing Dear Leader’s feet as added context — check out Greenwald’s bit on Andrew Sullivan for a particularly unmanning example. This isn’t an issue about gay people, this is an issue concerning authoritarianism: failures are diminished, and the smallest successes, or most dramatic non-successes, are glorified.
The victory here was for gay activists of all sorts whose efforts managed to move the country so far out of the gutter that not senators, not a president, but the American people themselves are for a basic civil right even in a time of celebrated fascism. Kleptocrats have always found civil liberties to be more advantageous than not, anyway (see, again, the Civil Rights Movement: once the economic gains of exploting blacks diminished, top-down opposition to civil rights decreased). That people who happily advocate the torture and murder of brown people may yet pause before discriminating against gays is something; not the best, but something, and even a little righteousness is still righteousness.
Their success has fuck-all to do with Obama.
Ted,
Is the woman in the right corner of the drawing carrying a wedding present? (I hope it’s a toaster.)
But I will question the “trivial” nature of marriage. Ernie brings Bert to the hospital, gasping for breath, the doctors take him into the exam room. After about an hour, a doctor will come out. “Omigod! How is he?” cries Ernie.
“Are you a relative?”
“I’m his life partner! Don’t you watch PBS? We’ve been living together for years!”
“I can only speak about his condition to a family member.”
“Can I see him?”
“No. Only family members are allowed in.”
“Wait, I have the power of attorney for medical crises right here!”
“You’ll have to wait until I check with legal on this, and I’m very busy right now.”
(Five hours later.)
“Mr. Erby?”
“Close enough. How’s Bert?”
“I’m sorry. He died three hours ago. If it’s any comfort, he kept asking where you were.”
Once the gays get weddings, it’ll be one more nail in the coffin of the religious fundies in this country. Really, what else do they have as a rallying cry? Communism? Intelligent Design? They’re running out of hate-squares to jump to.
@ alex Gay people bitch about trivial issues and some of us would even pay good money to have our body cavities searched. Who needs religion to hate people like that?
@ Ted We totally get that you think it would be better for Obama to continue to cynically oppose gay marriage than for him to cynically favor it.
Regarding strip searches: The Supremes say that they’re legal, so the options are limited. The Supremes could overrule themselves (don’t hold your breath) or the congress could do something about it (don’t hold your breath). Oops, I forgot mic-check revolution. That might do it, but I hope you weren’t counting on gay people to join the revolt. They’re too busy paying for body cavity searches.
Some posters on this thread seem to want to limit satire to the objectively demonstrable. Keep ’em coming, Ted !…
Henri