Bad members of Congress are trying to sell the Internet to the telecom companies

Should this surprise anyway? Read this, and do what Matt says. Schnell. Read More......

Lawsuit says Defense Department is violating the privacy of millions of high school kids

Big surprise there. Read More......

Senate GOP forced to take on oil companies as gas prices soar

You always hurt the one you love.

Even the Republicans can no longer defend their filthy-rich friends in the oil industry as they milk the American public to death. Read More......

Equality Forum now lying about Jeff Gannon's attendance at conference in Philly next week

UPDATE: I just found the email dated 3 days ago in which Malcolm Lazin, the executive director of the Equality Forum, says he agrees with Pam and me about our concerns regarding the panel. So how is it that I'm the bad guy when the conference's own executive director shares my concerns? Oh the tangled Web we weave...
----------------

I just received a statement issued by the organizers of next week's Philadelphia gay conference. The release is a response to my announcement that I will not be sitting on a panel with Jeff Gannon (nor will top lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding). The press release shows that the organization running the event, the Equality Forum, is now outright lying about the entire debacle.

Too bad I have our email correspondence and will be publishing excerpts below.

But before we get into that, why is it that gay organizations always find themselves attacking the people who try to help the community, and defending the homophobic plagiarizing whores? Just food for thought...

Here is the statement just issued by one of the conference organizers:

Statement from Equality Forum re: John Aravosis

Equality Forum annually presents the largest annual national and international symposium on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights, among other national projects.

For Equality Forum 2006, our Board of Directors unanimously chose to focus on the growing influence of GLBT blogs on mainstream news media at the 9th annual National Media Panel.

One of the biggest stories last year related to this topic was the online investigation of a White House correspondent named Jeff Gannon. GLBT bloggers led by John Aravosis questioned his journalistic experience, identity and personal history. Subsequent mainstream media attention led to Gannon’s eviction from the White House.

This was not the only related story from the past year. GLBT bloggers rallied around a Tennessee teenager sent to an ex-gay camp by his parents; pressured Microsoft and Ford not to give in to threats of boycotts by religious conservatives; exposed the executions of two gay Iranian teenagers; and more. These stories were covered by mainstream journalists only after GLBT bloggers publicized these stories.

Equality Forum’s goal is to have balanced programming which explores unique opinions and engages its participants. Equality Forum invited both Jeff Gannon and John Aravosis to participate on the panel. Both knew that the other was invited.

The 9th annual National Media Panel was not intended to solely be a debate between Aravosis and Gannon. To broaden the scope of the panel, Equality Forum invited Pam Spaulding, an African-American lesbian blogger, and Anne Gordon, Managing Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who could represent the mainstream media’s view of GLBT blogs. As in the prior eight National Media Panels, each panelist is given time at the beginning of the panel to discuss issues of their choosing. The panel concludes with audience questions to either a specific panelist, several panelists or the entire panel. The questions are not pre-screened.

Professor Katherine Sender was selected to moderate the panel. Professor Sender is a respected faculty member at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a well-regarded past moderator of the National Media Panel.

After Professor Sender contacted the panelists about the program structure, Mr. Aravosis objected to the inclusion of other topics besides Jeff Gannon.

That's an outright lie, more later.

Equality Forum does not dictate the content of programming nor censor any panelist’s opinion. It is the responsibility of a moderator to remain objective and give each panelist the opportunity to express his or her views, and to include a range of important issues. Mr. Aravosis wanted to control the content of the overall panel. When no compromise could be achieved, Mr. Aravosis elected not to participate.

The annual Equality Forum presents programming with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints. The panels are designed to facilitate open and informative communication.

--
Mike LaMonaca
Program Director
Equality Forum
www.equalityforum.com

Okay, let's get into this.

1. What happened to Pam Spaulding? Or don't the views of African-American lesbians matter to the Equality Forum? How did this suddenly become me versus Gannon when Pam, another invited panelist, who just happens to be the number one lesbian political blogger in the country, voiced the same concerns as me and has also pulled off the panel? Or is Pam just a girl, and a black one at that, so she doesn't count?

Or is it easier for Equality Forum to lie to the public and paint this as "Aravosis wanted to control the overall content of the panel," when in fact another prominent panelist raised the same concerns and has now backed out, proving this wasn't about "Aravosis" at all?

2. Did you notice how Equality Forum admits Jeff Gannon was added to the panel to "balance" me? How is Jeff Gannon, plagiarizing homophobic man-whore the conservative counterpart to me? If that isn't the Equality Forum trying to legitimate and give credibility to Gannon, I don't know what is. Not to mention, sane gay conservatives should be outraged that the Equality Forum thinks Jeff Gannon is your mascot.

3. The crux of the Equality Forum's argument is the following:

"Mr. Aravosis objected to the inclusion of other topics besides Jeff Gannon."

Powerful stuff, if it were true.

In fact, the issue wasn't the inclusion of other topics besides Jeff Gannon, the issue was that the panel was ONLY going to focus on other non-GannonGate related topics. I'd have been happy to have other non-Gannon topics along with a GannonGate topic, and said so - see my emails below.

Here is what the Annenberg professor wanted us to discuss:

I would like us to focus on such overarching questions as: in what ways has blogging changed how we think about GLBT media? What does blogging add to public discussion of sexuality? What rights and responsibilities do bloggers have in writing about GLBT issues? How should we encourage the audience to think about blogging? In order to focus the conversation, please come prepared to talk for about five minutes about an example of blogging (yours or others) as it relates to GLBT civil rights/identity/media. The more concrete illustration of these relationships the better.

Note what I wrote her back in response:

I have a serious problem with [Gannon] on the panel if his issue isn't one of the main points of discussion.

I then again reiterated that "Gannon's story [needs to be] one of the major points of discussion on this panel."

And in yet another email I wrote to the conference organizer, I made clear that GannonGate should be ONE OF SEVERAL issues discussed at the panel, including non-GannonGate issue (though, honestly, it's not clear what Gannon's gay expertise is at all beyond his own scandal - the man doesn't even claim to be gay!):

I said I had no problem [Gannon] being added [to the panel] because it seemed rather obvious that his issue would be one of the major points we'd be discussing.

Again, the issue here is whether GannonGate would be included at all as one of the main issues the panel would be discussing. No one ever said it had to be the ONLY issue discussed, and for the Equality Forum to suggest otherwise is an outright, and quite troubling, lie.

4. How am I the bad guy here if the Equality Forum's own executive director told me by email that he embraced Pam's and my concerns about the moderator refusing to add GannonGate as a topic?



(Katherine is the Annenberg school moderator.) So much for Aravosis trying to control the panel. The conference's own executive director said I was right.

The real question is why the Equality Forum believes that Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert) is an expert on blogging when he's been running a blog of zero influence for only a year? What does Jeff Gannon even know of the gay community, when Gannon himself says he's not even gay? And how is Gannon, someone whose own writings (and I use the term "own writings" loosely) are terribly homophobic, in any way a valid voice on any panel at a gay conference? Had the Equality Forum wanted a gay conservative blogger, there are many - and even a few who aren't themselves homophobes. So why exactly did the Equality Forum pick Jeff Gannon for this panel, since his sexual exploits aren't the expertise they were looking for?

For a little more on Jeff Gannon's credentials for speaking at the conference as a real journalist, read this from Vanity Fair:

Among the prime offenders, he says, have been "radical gay activists," whom he accuses of "hyper-hysterical homosexual hypocrisy." Frustrated over the success of the amendments banning same-sex marriage, which has been blamed for John Kerry's loss, they were directing their rage at Gannon, he believes. "People like me are a threat to them because there are things that are more important to me than sexual issues," he says. "That's their whole world. It isn't my whole world. The people who flew those planes on 9/11 couldn't have cared less about the sexuality of any of the people they killed." Gannon refuses to discuss his own sexual orientation, though he quotes approvingly from a column by Ann Coulter, who wrote, "Unlike [former New York Times executive editor Howell] Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on television and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights."

"I fit no stereotype of what a conservative is," he says. "I'm sure that someone somewhere out there thinks I'm a self-loathing racist homophobe, but I'm none of these things." Some of his fiercest gay detractors had even come on to him, he claims, shedding their convictions "like a sweater on a hot day." He says he'd put the issue of gay marriage to a vote and that he would go with whatever the majority decided....

Aravosis insists that by aligning himself with homophobes, by giving anti-gay crusaders disproportionate space in his stories (in a piece on the legality of gay marriage, he devoted 3 paragraphs to proponents and 20 to those opposed) and by filling those stories with code (calling gays "homosexual," appending a "radical" or "practicing" before the term and an "agenda" or "activist" after) Gannon had ceded any right to his privacy. That Gannon went back and forth in his stories, Aravosis says, sometimes writing a bit more evenhandedly on gays, may show how conflicted he is about his sexuality, a point with which one of Gannon's friends agrees. "If I talk to Jeff about a lot of gay issues, he freaks—he can't go there," says the man. "Jeff never stood in front of the mirror, he doesn't think he's part of the gay community, and he doesn't think what he's done affects the gay community. The guy at the end of American Beauty—that's Jeff. He can't come to terms with who he is."

Yes, this is the guy the Equality Forum is busy defending as a real journalist, a real savant on gay issues, a real gay American. Read More......

Blog reader survey results are out

Chris Bowers dissects them here.

In a nutshell? You're extremely well-educated well-off guys with a bit of a gut. Read More......

US House passes legislation protecting the privacy of your phone records

Now that's pretty damn cool.

The House yesterday passed a bill designed to protect the privacy of telephone numbers -- legislation that was introduced early this year after publicity generated in part by a blogger....

As reported in my Feb. 14 column, the push to protect phone records had languished until early this year. After John Aravosis of Americablog read an article about the issue, he decided to make cell-phone privacy a pet cause.

Aravosis first bought his own records to prove a point, then he bought the records of someone who mattered: 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark. That ploy generated lots of publicity and jumpstarted the issue in Congress....

Read More......

Open Thread

Busy day. Lots to discuss. Read More......

CNN reporting that Rove is meeting with special prosecutor today

Think Progress has the details. Read More......

GOP candidate for Ohio Governor releases Social Security records

One Columbus, OH report is saying there were millions of records released by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's office "accidentally." The Ohio GOP is battling countless corruption scandals after years of unchallenged rule and you know what they say about absolute power and corruption.

Voter lists are crucial to political parties. They give campaign workers an efficient way to target potential supporters. The lists usually consist of the names of registered voters, their addresses, their party affiliation, and whether that person voted in the last election.

Social security numbers aren't supposed to be revealed.

But they have been because of a mistake by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's campaign.

This is the second time this year private information has been compromised by Mr. Blackwell's office. In March, a link on the Secretary of State's website revealed hundreds of Social Security numbers listed on public documents.

Read More......

I canceled my appearance on the upcoming panel with Gannon/Guckert, the homophobic White House Republican prostitute accused of plagiarism

(Below is a longer explanation of what transpired over the past five days. But I wanted to mention this now, since Atrios had posted that Gannon/Guckert and I were going to be on a panel next week.)

We WERE going to be on a panel, but the panel moderator, who works at the Annenberg School, isn't interested in the Gannon issue being one of the main topics we discuss on the panel - i.e., she wants to have Gannon on the panel as an actual expert blogger and gay rights savant! the moderator literally told me that rather than have the panel devolve into a discussion about the Gannon issue, she'd rather have Gannon and me talk about ex-gay conversion therapy. And what pray tell is Gannon's expertise on ex-gay conversion? That he may have once charged an ex-gay $200 an hour?

Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend (see the link for Pam's explanation of what transpired) and I simply could not lend our names to helping giving Gannon credibility as an authentic gay journalist and civil rights pundit - as though somehow Gannon is the respectable conservative counterpart to our blogs and our voices - so we both pulled off the panel last night after five days of begging the moderator and the conference organizers to give the people what they want - a panel discussion about the Gannon affair from last year, or at least making the Gannon issue one of the main issues the panel would discuss. The response we got from the panel moderator was that we could certainly mention Gannon in our introduction or our responses to any question. Gee, that's swell of you.

It's the National Press Club all over again. Somehow the fact that Gannon was exposed as a $200/hour hooker while writing homophobic articles for some far-right religious-right suck-up rag now establishes him as a credible journalist when he wasn't before. He's been accused repeatedly of plagiarism and has yet to prove otherwise. Why not put the Washington Post ex-blogger, the one who had to quit because of his serial plagiarism, on a panel and get his expert advice on journalistic research and ethics?

Pam and I agreed to be on this panel knowing full well that Gannon was going to be on it. Some of you, and some of my friends privately, didn't like that fact. Still, I defended the decision because I "knew" - ha! - that a panel about gay blogging with me and Gannon on it was going to clearly address the Gannon affair as one of the key issues to be discussed, and that would permit me to call Jeff/James on his bull. In my wildest dreams I never imagined anyone with an once of journalist blood in them could ever consider Gannon a serious blogger, journalist, or gay rights sage. That is simply sick, and neither Pam nor I will have any part of it.

(Note: I'm not speaking for Pam, she can explain her own view on her own blog, but we have been in touch and I know Pam shares my concerns and that's why she too has withdrawn from the panel.)

Finally, I really need to address one thing. The man running the entire show in Philly next week just sent Pam and me an email suggesting that we were "hiding behind our computers" by canceling our appearance on the panel, as if Pam and I are afraid of Jeff Gannon.

Putting aside the fact that Pam and I had agreed months ago to appear with Gannon, so there obviously wasn't any fear on our parts, I do have to admit I was nervous about one thing.

Whether Jeff would sock me with a bill for $200 after the debate was over.

(PS Pam dropped a couple of hundred bucks on her plane ticket to Philly. She tells me she's gonna go to Philly anyway, even though she's not speaking on the panel anymore. Perhaps some of you could donate a little love to Pam to thank her for her courageous stand.) Read More......

The letter heard literally 'round the world

My friend Jeffy Whitty wrote an open letter to Jay Leno recently. It was about Leno's penchant for making girly-man fag jokes on the air. Jeff wrote the letter because Leno ticked him off. Little did he know that the letter would make its way around the Internet so many times that he nows doing CNN interviews about it.

Pretty cool stuff. And an amazing example of what one person can do.

Even more interesting, Jeff didn't have to speak out. In fact, it was in his interes NOT to speak out. Jeff is a playwright. He wrote the book, as it's called, to the hit Broadway musical "Avenue Q," and he even won a Tony for it. Jay Leno, like Oprah, is someone you really DON'T want to tick off.

Didn't stop Jeff. Very cool.

Here are a few snippets from Jeff's letter - please do read the entire thing, and email it to some friends.

Dear Mr. Leno,

My name is Jeff Whitty. I live in New York City. I'm a playwright and the author of "Avenue Q", which is a musical currently running on Broadway.

I've been watching your show a bit, and I'd like to make an observation:

When you think of gay people, it's funny. They're funny folks. They wear leather. They like Judy Garland. They like disco music. They're sort of like Stepin Fetchit as channeled by Richard Simmons.

Gay people, to you, are great material.

Mr. Leno, let me share with you my view of gay people:

When I think of gay people, I think of the gay news anchor who took a tire iron to the head several times when he was vacationing in St. Maarten's. I think of my friend who was visiting Hamburger Mary's, a gay restaurant in Las Vegas, when a bigot threw a smoke bomb filled with toxic chemicals into the restaurant, leaving the staff and gay clientele coughing, puking, and running in terror. I think of visiting my gay friends at their house in the country, sitting outside for dinner, and hearing, within hundreds of feet of where we sat, taunting voices yelling "Faggots." I think of hugging my boyfriend goodbye for the day on 8th Avenue in Manhattan, and being mocked and taunted by passing high school students.

When I think of gay people, I think of suicide. I think of a countless list of people who took their own lives because the world was so toxically hostile to them. Because of the deathly climate of the closet, we will never be able to count them. You think gay people are great material. I think of a silent holocaust that continues to this day. I think of a silent holocaust that is perpetuated by people like you, who seek to minimize us and make fun of us and who I suspect really, fundamentally wish we would just go away....

Read More......

Bush needs a GOP Congress or he's really screwed

Bush's ability to further destroy America depends on a GOP-controlled Congress:

President Bush is not on the ballot in November, but he might as well be. Republican losses could make an already difficult situation in Congress almost untenable for him.

If his party loses control of one, or both chambers of Congress, the next two years could be a political nightmare for Bush and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill.

It will be a national nightmare if Bush remains unchecked until 2009. The only way to control him is to change control of Congress. The White House knows this. That's why Karl Rove is going to get really, really ugly this year -- even uglier than usual.

Instead of waiting around for the GOP attacks, the Dems. need to take the offensive. Attack first. Out Rove Rove. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Bush looked like he was coming unglued while giving that oil speech yesterday. Lying has become standard operating procedure for the Prez. But, even for him, it must have been hard to pretend that he was going to get tough on his oil buddies.

And, I still hate Comcast. They suck. Read More......

Another "Surprise" Visit to Iraq

This time it's Condi and Rummy . Incompetence times two. That should whip Iraq in to shape. Read More......

DaimlerChrysler joins the ethanol madness

Besides changing the subject of fuel dependency and gluttony, why all of the talk about ethanol like it is some kind of savior for the nation? It costs more to produce, requires massive government subsidies to corporate farmers and uses more fossil fuels to even be produced in the first place. So what's to like about that? I'm all for fuel efficiency (a scandalous thought for the GOP) and helping alternative energies but ethanol? Let's move on and get serious about a real energy program. Read More......

Kenny-boy blames the media

Yep, right out of the GOP handbook. Who would have guessed that he was such good friends with Bush? He didn't seem to shy away from the media drooling over him and Enron before the collapse but somehow good ol' Kenny forgot that it works both ways.

So what ever happened to that $2,000,000 per year payout insurance plan that he has? That would be the plan that is completely protected from bankruptcy, courtesy of friends in Congress. If only those investors had such a fall back position. Read More......

The sad state of healthcare in the US

I guess as long as the Big Pharma and GOP special interests are raking in the mega bucks, it's OK. Any change would be socialist, naturally. Healthy workers are such a nuisance.

• More than 40% of middle income Americans went without insurance
• Above 40% was only 28% in 2001!!
  
• 20% of working adults paying off medical debt
• 60% of uninsured adults with chronic illnesses skip medicine because they can't afford it

"The jump in uninsured among those with modest incomes is alarming, particularly at a time when our economy has been improving," said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, who helped write the study.

"For an uninsured person who is unlucky enough to get sick, it is easy to see how quickly they can fall into a downward spiral of debt, forgone care, and poorer health," Sara Collins, Commonwealth Fund senior program officer, said in a statement.

Read More......

Another open thread

And I'm off to bed. Read More......

We hate Comcast open thread

Joe is hating Comcast right about now, so we're commiserating with him. The tech guy lied to him, and he's on dial-up right now. Sad Joe. Read More......