Letter to the Editor

Romney is backing a new bill to keep uppity queers from getting hitched, and the PAC supporting it is called Vote on Marriage. Because, you see, they want to put civil rights to a vote. I’m not really opposed to the voting– any law in this country and in this state is a combination of judges, lawmakers, and people, and fighting about stuff is how it gets resolved. But the fact is, they don’t want you to vote “on” marriage. They want you to vote against marriage for some people. They want you to vote for hate. My concern is less over whether it’s voted on, adjudicated, or legislated over, and more over whether the just decision is made.

As always, in situations like this, I return to the standup-comedian approach, because humor is how many people deal best with things that make us uncomfortable, and the gayness does make people uncomfortable. Hence the slogans like “I approve of gay marriage if both chicks are hot.” So I sent this letter to Romney and a similar one to the Globe, reiterating themes from previous letters I’ve sent to both of them.

You may be appealing to social conservatives by opposing gay marriage, but you are certainly not doing any favors to economic conservatives that voted for you. Legalizing gay marriage has brought a great financial gift to Massachusets: gay weddings. Happy couples and their celebrations have helped to boost the economy through wedding gifts, hotel stays, party hall rentals, and catering expenditures. In addition, a reputation for tolerance attracts creative and innovative people who will fuel the future economic success of our commonwealth.

Banning gay marriage would drive gay couples to Vermont and Canada for their weddings, taking dollars out of local pockets both straight and gay. If we increase regulation of the wedding industry at the risk of harming the economy, we will prevent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from competing with Canada on a level playing field to host the gala weddings of the coming century.

Media Bias, Horrible Situations

Or, What’s the matter with Kansas? In which some guy runs a dingy women’s health clinic in the inner city (a.k.a. abortion clinic, since too few people go for actual preventive medicine or birth control), and gets accused of all sorts of horrible things by his employees, and loses his license.

Right wing media reports: HE EATS BABIES

The local free weekly provides a nuanced (a.k.a. “unread”) take: A bad doctor in a bad clinic becomes a straw man for the anti-choice crowd to push way too much regulation onto one particular procedure. The mainstream media mostly ignores it. What I want to know is, when is my health-care provider going to start offering discount prices on Wednesdays?

Anger, revised

This article is the culmination of many years of astrotuf lobbying by captains of destructive and corrupt industries. It highlights as the work of a man whose job it has been to assemble fake public-interest groups that make tobacco look good, to undermine the public welfare, to make powerful titans appear to be sympathetic grandmothers, to paint as corrupt the defenders of the defenseless.

The article is very well written, but it fails to actively point out corruption and unethical behavior. I expect the paper of record to point out lies and deceptions, not merely to note that certain people disagree with the Creation Science Group’s assertion that the earth is flat, the Citizens for Wonderful Things position paper on the idea that tobacco is a healthful tonic for nerves, or the Mountebanks and Patent Medicine Manufacturers of America press release on the subject of laudanum as a remedy for neurasthenia.

Again with the recurring themes

Gay romance novels are starting to take off. I wonder if Mary Cheney’s Memoir will be as taut as the abs and pecs of gay gay gay bla bla bla. Market data: “According to Romance Writers of America, the Houston-based professional association, which has 9,400 members, romance novels are read by 51 million people each year and account for 49 percent of paperback sales. In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, sales of romance novels totaled $1.41 billion.”

If you’re willing to pay for the Albuquerque Journal you can read an article here about how rents keep dropping as Californian investors are flooding the area’s investment-property market. (I remember bumper stickers in Colorado complaining about folks coming over from the coast and yuppifying everything. They said “Don’t Californicate Colorado.”)

See also NYT on the global housing bubble amd on increasing price resistance and a slowdown in the NYC market.

Thx to Fleck for the tip on the real estate, and to the inestimable Bookdwarf for the romance novel article.

Reviews

Quick summaries of the novel Bangkok 8 make it sound like a trashy mystery but it’s so much more. I mean, yeah, there’s prostitution, drugs, gem smuggling, and of course murder. But there’s also buddhism, the conflict between east and west, and pretty balanced explorations of the society in which the prostitution, drugs, gem smuggling, murder, and international intrigue take place. Highly recommended.

My Musical Education

So, I’m driving back from the land of Vomitola (A.K.A. Lowell, A.K.A. “Factory town turned loft-condo-ville”) and I heard Something for the Weekend by the Super Furry Animals playing on WMBR (one of two good music stations in Boston– the other being WERS). I’m pretty sure I’d heard the song before, but I hadn’t known the title or the name of the band– I thought Super Furry Animals were some kind of jam band or something, but no. So, I found a song I like by listening to the radio. How long has it been since that happened to you?

So anyway I go to look up the name of the song to check the lyrics and come across violent slash fiction apparently related to a BBC TV show of the same name. EW EW EW EW.

And then the next day, at the gym, the Alien Ant Farm cover of Smooth Criminal came on the sports-club Muzak. It’s a good cover and a brilliant video and hey that’s fun. Nice work, boys.

Deeply Cynical Exercise

Scandal! A publisher has been paying a media outlet for consideration in a soft-news segment about their product category!

I mean, sure, it’s profoundly unethical, especially given that the “punters” aren’t told about the fees. This all began with co-op ads, where a retailer and a manufacturer split advertising costs– say, a music publisher giving out posters to a record store, or a beer distributor giving out neon signs– and moved into things like book publishers paying Borders a million dollars to put a particular item at the front of the store. Or, say, Unwrapped, on the Food Network, where the food manufacturers actually provide the vast majority of the show’s footage, (and likely the entire production budget).

Yay ethics! Bring on the B-Roll! Bring out the payola! I want me some kickbacks!