Where it All Started

I'm going to be in Pittsburgh this weekend from Friday to Sunday (very brief... too brief) and I'm really insanely excited about it. The city is a symbol of so much to me. It's my first weekend stay since I moved in 2005 for law school.

Before I moved to Pittsburgh, I was floundering. I was gay and out (very unusual in my tiny hometown--which meant very few gay friends, which contributed to a feeling of isolation); working at a job that I was pretty good at, but where I was probably in over my head; not in school; living with my mom in her one bedroom apartment. Going nowhere.

I met a guy at a Memorial Day picnic in Pittsburgh when I was 21, and within six weeks, I had quit my job at home, got a job at an Applebee's in Pittsburgh, packed up my life in Clarion, and moved. Everything that I possessed fit in my car. One trip. I didn't have a bed for weeks. But I started to be proactive and stop taking things as they came. I learned to accept the young adult angst. And I started to build my life.

It was tough learning who I was. It still is, and I'm nowhere near finished. But Pittsburgh is where I learned how to learn.

Heading back now, after four years (save for a brief stopover last December) is really an unusual feeling. I don't know what it will feel like to walk Pitt's campus, and to see the skyline in the evening. It will be oddly emotional. Actually, I'm not sure if it would be more odd to be emotional or to not be emotional. But one thing's for sure: I wouldn't be who I was without Pittsburgh... and I can't wait to be back where this crazy journey started.

The Wit and Wisdom of BF

JZ: It's funny that the president is sort of like the last god on earth right? Like, no one cares about the pope.

NYer, WTF?

I like to think of myself as a transplanted cosmopolitan sort, always ready to smirk at some martini wit. Among said wittiness are the cartoons from the New Yorker. I usually think I get these cartoons, I smile just a skosh, maybe mutter a "heh," and move on.

But I am completely at a loss with this cartoon. (I tried forever to link it, but I gave up.)

Can anyone tell me what's so funny about this? Seriously? Am I that dense? Is this high-brow wit? Or is it just so completely out there that the editors thought they would throw it in and see what people make of it? I'm fully prepared to be humbled, so tell tell tell.

Oh, and I was reading this article by Jeffrey Rosen about Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings when I stumbled across the cartoon. Interesting and worth a read. The modern Supreme Court confirmation process post-Bork won't ever be worth anything.

Sotomayor Day 3

Same as Day 2. Same questions, same answers, same same same.

Just confirm her and get this over with. I'm bored.

(I'll of course be listening to every minute of today's testimony, just like yesterday and the day before and the day before).

Sotomayor Day 2

Today was Sotomayor's first day of answering questions from the Judiciary Committee, and I think she came off very well. She was articulate, thorough, relatively forthcoming and obviously intelligent (if pretty nervous).

I think, though, that she didn't answer the Ricci questions sufficiently. Sotomayor was on a panel of three judges that heard the Ricci appeal, which involved a question of "reverse discrimination." Instead of writing a detailed opinion in the case, the Sotomayor panel simply released a three-paragraph unsigned opinion affirming the lower court. Sotomayor subsequently voted to deny rehearing the case in banc (by the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals). The vote to rehear failed by one vote. If Sotomayor had changed her vote, the whole Second Circuit would have heard the case and, presumably, released a full opinion on the merits.

I don't think she explained (1.) the summary opinion affirming the lower court; or (2.) voting to deny rehearing. The case was important, reaching questions of first impression on the Second Circuit. Aside from the fact that she should have written an opinion, or else voted to send the case to the full circuit, she didn't really explain why she didn't take either step. She said that Second Circuit precedent compelled her decision, but that doesn't adequately explain why there actually was no Second Circuit decision either by the three-judge panel or the full circuit. I feel like there should have been.

I also hated how Lindsey Graham turned into an undergraduate speechwriting professor in his own mind. Sotomayor doesn't need to be told how to give a speech, which wasn't as bad as everyone is trying to make it seem (wise Latina), nor does she need to be lectured to by a pompous senator about what's appropriate for a judge to speak about. But I guess that's how these confirmation hearings go.

Anyway, I really enjoyed listening to her give substantive responses. She clearly knows what she's talking about, and I think she would be a fantastic addition to the Court. She strikes me as a humble person who would bring a much-needed diversity of background to the Court. And yes, that's a good thing.

Sotomayor Day 1

I streamed much of the first day of the Sotomayor hearings in my office today. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wins the award for most realistic Republican on the Judiciary Committee. He told Sotomayor that her confirmation was essentially a given as long as she didn't choke, and he hinted that because he thought presidents deserve deference regarding their judicial picks, he might be a Yes vote. (I agree with him. If I were in the Senate, I would have voted at least for Roberts, and maybe for Alito.)

Other Republicans spent the afternoon telling Sotomayor how she is a bigot and a racist and that her biases might be too much to overlook when deciding how to cast their vote--this in front of her mother who worked two jobs to put food on the table.

But here's the thing. The Democrats have 58 active senators right now, excluding Byrd and Kennedy. That is enough to secure confirmation. I understood the reasoning behind the bluster about opposing her nomination in the build up to today's hearing: to raise money for conservative interest groups (even at the expense of sacrificing some Hispanic support for the GOP). But I don't see why they persist now that the moment is at hand. She's in, guys. Bullying her today in front of the cameras and in front of her family was incredibly self-defeating, and it made her look even more sympathetic than she already did.

A Numbered List About Bruno

Ok. Bruno. Shallower observations first.

1. As a lot of people have noted, Bruno's premise is much like Borat. Crazy foreigner infiltrates middle America and exposes their latent (or blatant) prejudices. Sacha Baron Cohen is of course a fantastic character actor, and I'm sorry to anyone who talks to me on a regular basis, but I'll be saying things like"Schting" and "und" for a very long while.

2. SBC is also pretty hot in this movie. He definitely has been hitting the gym, and he has a fabulous gay coif--although the highlight patterns leaves something to be desired. It's amazing that this is the same guy who played Borat. It's a complete transformation (which was probably necessary since Borat was such a hit).

3. A lot of this film seemed staged. I know the same was true in Borat, but there were a few times when you could totally tell everyone was in on it. I really don't like faux-candid things.

Alright.

4. I have a feeling that SBC is going to need to do something else if he's going to make another movie. Borat was hilarious, but Bruno borrowed a lot of set-ups and plot devices from it. I still laughed, but not quite as hard (more on this later). A third movie doing essentially the same thing would be too much. It's like that Simpsons episode when Bart was the "I didn't do it" kid. Hilarious for a while, and then one day Krusty slams the door in his face. If there's a next time, I'm Krusty.

5. This movie made me cringe a lot more than I thought I would, and not necessarily in a good way. I think some cringe movies can be fantastic. (Did anyone see The Aristocrats? Jesus.) But here, a lot of the time the cringe-inducing set up was just uncomfortable for everyone. Without spoiling too much, the hunting scene made me want to die. I wanted to disappear into my chair. I get that SBC likes to get bigoted people to reveal their bigotry in an organic way, but I actually felt sympathy for some of these guys. I think some people have the potential to be hostile to gay people if the right buttons are pushed, but would otherwise have a live-and-let-live philosophy. That was sort of my sense with a lot of these set ups: guys who weren't proactively homophobic, but who got to the point where their little homophobic ember was fanned too much. That isn't to excuse homophobia, but maybe to understand it a little better.

(Spoiler here if you haven't seen it)

6. And here's where I get really uncomfortable. Tied into the last point, at the end of the film there is a ridiculous wrestling scene where Bruno and his assistant start making out and PG-13ing each other in the ring in front of an obviously clueless redneck audience. People in the audience start yelling "fag" and throwing beer, food, and, at one point, a chair into the ring. By the end of the scene, Bruno and the assistant are covered in garbage and the people remaining in the audience seem like they're ready to lynch. People were banging on the cage, screaming epithets, trying to inflict harm.

Their reaction was vicious, and it was chilling, and it focused me on where gay people stand in 2009. We're making remarkable progress in a lot of areas (no thanks to our president). But when a group of people react the way they did to the sight of two gay guys making out, it really demonstrates how far we have to go to win hearts and minds, as the Honorable George W. Bush would say.

The typical response is to say that well, duh, no one expects to see simulated fellatio when they go to a wrestling match. I get that. But if it were anything else unexpected, I don't think there would have been such a violent overreaction. It struck me as cathartic, freed of the bounds of politically correct behavior and embracing their inner Glenn Beck. Those poor straight white male Christians have had it rough lately.

7. So, was Bruno good or bad for the gays? I don't know. I know the conventional wisdom for Borat was that it was generally a net positive for the Jewish community to expose anti-Semitism, in however sophisticated a way. I guess you can spin Bruno the same way for the LGBT community. Maybe Bruno is beneficial in showing the kinds of ridiculous provocations that get the people most likely to exhibit anti-gay violence, to actually exhibit anti-gay violence. On the other hand, maybe inflaming anti-gay passions--even among the few people not in on the joke--just to make Sacha Baron Cohen a fast few million isn't necessarily the most responsible thing to do in this political climate.

Or maybe Bruno is just a silly movie not worth all of these pixels. But it's definitely worth seeing--if for no other reason than to be able to talk about it around the water cooler. Good movies have been in short supply this summer.

8. Speaking of film this year, I saw a preview for an alien sci-fi movie called District 9, and I'm totally going to see it. The website is amazing too. Check it out. (Don't even get me started on alien movies. I'll die.)

My Favorite Christ

I absolutely LOVE this (via TBogg). I hope Sarah Palin never ever goes away.

Lots to say about her, but I'm skating out of work right now. More later, p'raps.

To the Citizens of Brookline, MA

I hereby declare a moratorium on people standing around with clipboards in the middle of Coolidge Corner sidewalks begging me to take just a minute to declare my support for safe drinking water, "the environment," the DNC, LaRouche, pandas, "the children," or anything else that's just an excuse to put me on your lame mailing list.

And if you team up to force me to walk through a gauntlet of two or more clipboard-wielding ideologues--casting away all plausibility of my pretending not to see you--the penalty shall be summary execution.

This moratorium goes into effect immediately.

Thank you.