Saturday, November 29, 2008

When did we arrive?

I have been so obsessed with the battle against Proposition 8 that I forgot to notice the clear signs around me. We are winning the war.

Gay people are now assuming positions of greater power and visibility (or more likely, people in positions of greater power and visibility are finally coming out).

One we are very proud of is Rachel Maddow, the new MSNBC cohost. Her keen wit and refreshingly un-bimboesque charisma have at times outrated both Larry King and her own mentor Keith Olberman in prime time. She has been dismissed and ridiculed variously as "chirpy gay liberal" by the Financial Times, "Ooh, Lesbians! Yummy!" by John Gibson, and (naturally) "lesbian Air America host" by Fox News. High praise from wingnuts. They are right to be worried. Sharp as a wasp stinger, Rachel Maddow's CV includes a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994, the prestigious John Gardner Fellowship, a Rhodes Scholarship in 1995, and a D. Phil. in political science from Lincoln College, Oxford University.

Another hero is Anderson Cooper, great grandson of the famed Cornelius Vanderbilt II and the very popular and telegenic host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360°. He has the distinction of having both gone to Yale and having interned (or been interned?) at the Central Intelligence Agency (twice!). For more about his qualifications, see here. I will just dwell on his courage in interviewing (almost naked) someone even better looking than he is without clothes on, Olympic swimmer and medal winner Michael Phelps. The video speaks for itself.

Forgive the double standard. I couldn't find a near-naked video of Rachel Maddow.

1 comment:

bjkeefe said...

Glad to see you've found some reason for cheer.

A bit of technical trivia, for you to consider or discard: I read most blogs these days through a feed reader, as do many other people. One drawback to this approach is that not every non-textural component of every blog post comes through. There is no indication in my feed reader of an embedded video in this post, for example (apart from your words referring to it).

Some embedded video comes through -- YouTube, for example. I have a feeling that one difference is that YouTube embeds are not done through an IFRAME.

(I use Bloglines, so I'm speaking from that perspective. There may be better feed readers out there, but I've never summoned up the energy to try.)

Anyway, you may want to keep this in mind. I try always to put in a alternate video link under the embedded video for this reason (e.g.). Of course, I am often obsessive about unimportant details.