dagblog - Comments for "Why It's Hard to Smear Jason Collins (and Not as Easy to Smear Keynes)"

I'm willing to bet that this

Michael Maiello — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:27:00 +0000

I'm willing to bet that this would be the ultimate test for a lot of people. They're okay making generalizations but make them tell somebody that they know and like that they shouldn't have their rights.

Too many people are still

Elusive Trope — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:56:23 +0000

In reply to Why It's Hard to Smear Jason Collins (and Not as Easy to Smear Keynes)

Too many people are still quick to believe bad things about homosexuals. But lots of influential and powerful people are actually reluctant to believe bad things about Jason Collins personally, because they know and like him.

During the 2004 elections and the use of gay marriage as a wedge issue, NPR ran a story about people's changing and unchanging views of gay marriage. One of the people they interviewed stated that while she was in favor of allowing gays to marry, her husband was dead set against it. Then she went on to explain that their neighbors were a long-time lesbian couple, and that her husband was quite fond of them as neighbors. One day she asked him if he thought their neighbors should be allowed to get married. Without hesitation, he said he thought they should be able to.

Well that reassures me, the

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:18:04 +0000

In reply to Andrew Sullivan assures us

Well that reassures me, the frequent nut-job and hair-on-fire Sully finds it in his heart to forgive Fergy. All is well in the universe.

(of course I wonder if I've crossed the line by thinking that maybe the Chinese look at time and the future different because their religion doesn't have a cataclysmic rapture/burning planet/2nd coming, just maintained Dao past the horizon. Wrong wrong wrong - everyone looks at things the same, must not discriminate, must not speculate)

That's absolutely right.

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:02:43 +0000

In reply to Andrew Sullivan assures us

That's absolutely right. Ferguson has social capital in spades, and people in his network are quick to forgive him.

That explains why he feels licensed to say dumb, mean things. When you're officially smart, you don't have to bother actually thinking. But that's no excuse.

Andrew Sullivan assures us

Donal — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:52:22 +0000

In reply to Why It's Hard to Smear Jason Collins (and Not as Easy to Smear Keynes)

Andrew Sullivan assures us that Ferguson is not actually a homophobe and accepts his apology. Ferguson has his people, too, and it seems that the blogging media is just as willing as the MSM to close ranks.

I expect Howard Kurtz to be

tmccarthy0 — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:03:06 +0000

In reply to Why It's Hard to Smear Jason Collins (and Not as Easy to Smear Keynes)

I expect Howard Kurtz to be an idiot, but I didn't expect him to completely lie about the column Jason Collins wrote! He obviously didn't read it like any typical internet troll, he heard people talking about the column and he ran with that. It's pretty clear.

Ferguson is the same, it's fox news trollery, he thinks that shtick works everywhere, unfortunately for him, he didn't seem to realize that serious people don't want to hear one line cheap shots, they want serious analysis, something that Ferguson is no longer able to produce because he's infected with Ailesspeak. It's too bad, and his apology was better than the Kurtz apology, but for a supposedly serious professor, a Tisch scholar... to act like a god damned Ailesspeak troll, sheesh... WTF? Stunning.

Kurtz was a guy pretending to

Richard Day — Tue, 07 May 2013 04:59:12 +0000

In reply to Why It's Hard to Smear Jason Collins (and Not as Easy to Smear Keynes)

Kurtz was a guy pretending to award Pinocchios on cable.

And I would pick him up at the Beast from time to time but I noticed the last few months he was publishing less and less at this site.

And he was one of these guys who would maintain that the Left misstated things as often as the Right.

The Beast kind of made things easy for me; I sure the hell aint goin over to this other site he has been working at. It seems to me he was kind of shirking his duties at the Beast--a two timer as it were.

And I aint goin to waste my time at CNN looking for him either.

He really is just another pompous prick who pretends to know more than he knows.

Anyway good essay.

I missed this entire gay guffaw until the Beast dropped him overnight!

Thanks, Michael. I think this

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 07 May 2013 04:00:53 +0000

In reply to Ferguson is a glib tool and

Thanks, Michael. I think this addition

I would add to that -- people don't always know, or they don't always know what they know.

is very true. For both partners in such a relationship.

Ferguson is a glib tool and

Michael Maiello — Tue, 07 May 2013 03:54:16 +0000

In reply to Why It's Hard to Smear Jason Collins (and Not as Easy to Smear Keynes)

Ferguson is a glib tool and this is just another example.

Kurtz, as you say, is a hack. That he's been allowed to criticize others in the media and been anointed some sort of watch dog is emblematic of how far the media has fallen.

What really bothers me about the Kurtz criticism is that it's BS even if true. Well, you nailed it better than I could:

"It's a classic anti-gay smear: gays are called dishonest because they've been in the closet, as if the source of dishonesty was not the institution of the closet itself, and the sometimes brutal social penalties for open gayness, but something intrinsic about gayness itself. Force a bunch of people to lie about their sexuality, denounce them as liars if they actually start telling the truth, and then claim that the people you've stigmatized deserve to be stigmatized because they're all naturally dishonest. The only logic here is a social logic, through which nearly any charge will stick to the despised group."

I would add to that -- people don't always know, or they don't always know what they know. That's Rumsfeldian, sure. But whether you think sexuality is a matter of choice, genetics or a combination of both -- understanding it, knowing it and embracing it is a process. Or, to put it another way, I have a lot of gay male friends who have had very satisfying sex with women and I know a lot of lesbian women who have had the same with men.

And, Hell... I was once a Republican.

People change. People find themselves. Throughout history there have been men and women who have had, and even enjoyed, heterosexual marriages, but who find at a certain point that they prefer something else. This is not honest or dishonest. It is life. Life is more complicated than honest or not.