Rick is leaving TNR for fairer shores, and he knocks one out of the park as he goes. I wish I'd written this, it's damn good.

Please excuse the blunt language. From here forward, to avoid the ugly words, I'll refer to it as "FNB politics." With little to show the electorate in 2008--after six years of uninterrupted control--besides sub-standard care from a privatized workforce at Walter Reed Hospital, thrice-married "family values" presidential candidates, and a boom in home foreclosures, the conservative base's 2008 strategy has begun to emerge: Weaken the major Democratic opponents by making their image unpalatable to the public.

Ann Coulter might have been the one to use the precise word aloud. But the effort to discredit John Edwards as not really a man began soon after he came to national prominence as John Kerry's running mate. And the endeavor fits into a running conservative pattern--one Ann Coulter's most important patron, Roger Ailes of Fox News, knows perfectly well. In The Selling of the President, Joe McGinniss relates an episode where Richard Nixon's set dressers had the candidate in front of a turquoise curtain. Ailes, Nixon's detail-obsessed TV guru, had a conniption. "Nixon wouldn't look right unless he was carrying a pocketbook," he grumbled, ordering the curtains replaced by wood panels with "clean, solid, masculine lines." Read more…

One of the reasons my online nym is "dyke" is because by using that word proudly and publically, I take away the power of homophobes to use it against me. Coulter has once again accomplished her mission, and has everyone talking about her use of the term "faggot" to slur Edwards. People on the left are decrying her, again, for being an eliminationist extremist, and unrepentent fascist, and rightly suggesting that the way to use this outburst of hers is to chain it to those Republicans who praise her. Mitt "I hate faggots too!" Romney introduced Coulter at this event, and said that he "liked her." She has also endorsed him. So from now on, never refer to Romney without also attaching some term relating to his homophobic friends, OK?

Quiddity has a great post up with the conservative response. Oh, look at the pearl clutching. "Ann was a bad, bad girl. We're so upset." No, they're not. I know it, you know it. Because if they were at all interested in stopping homophobia, they wouldn't be supporting the party that has introduced bill after bill for the express purpose of denying me my civil rights. They wouldn't endorse politicians who whip up theocratic bases with the boogeyman of the homosexual. They would speak out about incidents of gay-bashing and inequality in the work place, in our laws, in our culture. Winger pundits never bother to "defend" queers until one of their own has gone a tad too far, and threatened to upset favorable political conditions. Their supposed concern is little more than calculation, mixed with a the need to keep a hand in the pockets of rich, closeted Republican donors.

Speaking of the closet, let's take a closer look at Bareback Andy, and his supposed awakening at the CPAC hate-fest: Read more…