Goodbye, boys; I’m under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up the fight! Don’t surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers. But those money powers deserve a place at the table and we should give them half of what they want, if not all of it. Let’s not be partisan, okay boys!
- Mother Jones
Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off… Unless you want me to, then, fine, have it your way.
- Fannie Lou Hamer
The biggest mistake sometimes is to play things very safe in this life and end up being moral failures. But as a Democrat, that’s what you do.
- Dorothy Day
One hundred years ago, conservatives argued against my grandparents getting married on the grounds that they were from different religions. The conservatives quoted the ancient Bible and rested their case on a 3,459 year old essay: “Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.”
Thankfully, my grandparents’ love won the fight.
Forty-two years ago, conservatives argued against some people in my parent’s generation getting married on the grounds that the couple in love were from different races. The conservatives again quoted the ancient Bible in legal court opinions:
“Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix.” - Judge Bazile, Caroline County, VA, 1965.
Thankfully, Mildred and Richard Loving won the fight. I didn’t marry a white person and nobody gave us guff.
Today, conservatives argue against some people in my generation getting married on the grounds that the couple in love is from the same sex. The conservatives quote the same tired fire and brimstone from the ancient Bible: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” Bill O’Reilly said.
I don’t doubt that we will win our fight soon. But I’m just so goddamned tired of fighting the same fight over and over again against the same conservative forces. Will this country never grow up?
UPDATE:
Dear Bill O’Reilly,
You say, “Will it end with a box turtle?” If the turtle pays $36, takes a blood test, is a legal resident of the state, has a legal birth certificate, a social security number, is over 18 years of age, found to be of sound mind, and signs his name with black ink on a civil marriage certificate before the county clerk’s officer and a witness… then, well, yes.
Kisses,
Fred
The LA Times reports that Stephen Colbert is “thrilled” to hear a majority of conservatives don’t know that he’s making fun of them. A recent Ohio State University study confirmed what I long suspected. But that’s only half the story. The second part of this story is an example of how stupid our media is.
Rebecca Ascher-Walsh writes in The LA Times:
Perhaps his most public gaffe was his 2006 performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, where a stunned audience listened to him reel off lines about then-President Bush such as, “Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.”
Gaffe?
That wasn’t a gaffe! It was on purpose, lady. It was indescribably brave. That wasn’t a gaffe, that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen on Television in my entire life.
Colbert mocked George Bush and the assembled media to their faces. That neither butt of his joke laughed at themselves or each other doesn’t make it a gaffe, it only makes it better.
When Colbert delivered his well-crafted monologue of vicious, bitter mockery, directly to the objects of his scorn, his fans cheered for him. There’s three possibilities for this writer’s use of the word ‘gaffe.’
1. She doesn’t know what a gaffe is.
NOTE: (A gaffe is when Sarah Palin mixes up DesMoines and Davenport Iowa, calling one the other. OTOH, it’s not a gaffe when Sarah Palin doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is — that’s called stupidity.)
2. The LATimes editors are still peeved about Colbert’s mockery, and so as to delegitimize the truth of Colbert’s attack, they dismiss his monologue as some sort of near-miss performance.
3. The writer just might be as confused about Colbert as the subjects of the Ohio State University study, because nobody who actually understands Colbert’s act can possibly think this this is a gaffe:
Stephen Colbert at White House Correspondents Dinner
We’re registering people to vote. No I’m not from Mississippi. State’s rights? – I see your point.
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place … if the majority does not include several votes from the political party that lost the last elections, that is.
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies. Very powerful enemies who have purchased slaves, today known as “United States Senators” and these men don’t have to do anything they don’t want to do. Like “change”, for instance. They do what their masters tell them. Like good slaves.
- Robert F. Kennedy
When one comes to think of it, there are no such things as divine, immutable, or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim on them. Provided, of course that the state you live in will allow it, and if a filibuster-proof majority of the Senate agrees with you having those rights, and if the corporations that employ you or provide vital services to you which you depend on for life also think that you should have those rights, then, yes, sure, you can have them.”
- Helen Keller, 1940
