Steve Who?: Pam's House Blend

Showing posts with label Pam's House Blend. Show all posts

Friday, January 7, 2011

Spaulding and LaVictoire Get It Wrong on McCain's DADT "Flip-Flop"

This is a story that was blown way out of proportion last night in the queer blogosphere, with bloggers like Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend proclaiming the Senator John McCain had "flip-flopped" in his opposition to the repeal of DADT. Lez Get Real's Bridgette LaVictoire titled her post on the story, "In Flip-Flop, John McCain Supports DADT Repeal"

Each of these two bloggers, whom I respect very much, got it totally wrong with this story. So what's all the flap about? Senator Scrotum Face appeared on Fox Business Report Thursday, where host Don Imus asked him about the repeal of DADT. His response was:

"I think I have to do everything I can to make sure that the impact on the morale, retention, recruitment and battle effectiveness of the military is minimized as much as possible. It is a law and I have to do whatever I can to help the men and women who are serving, particularly in combat, cope with this new situation. I will do everything I can to make it work."

Nowhere in this statement does it say, "I've changed my mind", "I was wrong" or "I support repeal of DADT." What it does say, to anyone who passed the Reading Comprehension part of their 4th Grade final exam, is that McCain still believes the new policy is harmful and that our troops need to be protected from the gay Bogey Men and Women who are out to rape them in the latrine.

Why is this such a big deal? Pam's House Blend and Lez Get Real each have tens of thousands of daily readers who rely on them to get their daily dose of LGBT news and information. Each of the sites now have a team of regular contributors made up of some of the top queer activists and journalists in the business. There is just no excuse to get something so simple so wrong. Yet last night these two tweeted and FaceBooked for hours their inaccurate calling out of McCain for something he didn't say and certainly didn't mean.

Why is this such a big deal to me? Because one of the things I've noticed about posting to social media sites is that people only read the headlines before they make up their minds about a story and post a comment about it. They don't bother to read the full story. That's the unfortunate state of affairs in blogging these days. If you're looking to boost your readership, your story title has to be catchy enough to grab the web surfer's attention, but compelling enough to get them to stop and click the link to read the full post.

However, if you are the one writing the story, you have to get past the 140 characters, do the research and go the extra mile to get it right, or you end up embarrassing yourself like Spaulding and LaVictoire have done.

Ladies, I admire and respect you both, but you were soooo wrong on this one. Shame on you.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

LGBT Bloggers Up in Arms over CNN's Gay Conversion Therapy Segment

It seems like everybody but me is up in arms over a segment that CNN's Kyra Phillips did Tuesday morning, called "Can Homosexuality be Cured?". The piece discussed the subject of whether gays and lesbians can be made straight by conversion therapy. The panel included so-called experts in the field from both side of the argument, but interestingly enough, none of them were gay, or should I say "still" gay.

Everyone, from Joe Jervis at Joe.My.God to Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend and my friends at the Bilerico Project are really pissed off about this story. But the best take on all of this hooplah came from my buddy Lyndon Evans at "Focus on the Rainbow" (FOR), in his piece called "CNN’s Big Fail Or Just More Overreaction From LGBT Bloggers?"

Lyndon and I have a sort of a mutual admiration society going on. We read each others stuff and share comments with each other. Lyndon and I don't always agree on everything, but we do agree that sometimes bloggers sensationalize stories and feign outrage in order to get attention. Granted, we all do it from time to time, but it seems like the more famous a blogger becomes, the more often this phenomenon occurs.

I have to be honest, I didn't watch the segment yesterday. I was getting ready for work and when I heard the lead in, it sounded like I'd heard all of this before. Here's the comment I left on FOR:

Well, Lyndon, I guess I did something most people wouldn’t think of doing this morning when I heard the intro to this piece on CNN. I ignored it. Yes, that’s right. When I saw that something I might find offensive was about to be aired on TV, I changed the channel.

Kyra’s intro was intentionally — and quite obviously — scripted to be provocative and to spark interest in a story that’s been done to death and by much better journalists. And having seen way too many of these reports over the years, I knew immediately what it was about, that nothing new could possibly be learned by watching it and I chose not to waste my time.
I may not have generated any new hits to my site by feigning offense, but, honestly, there were far more interesting things to write about today. I live in Virginia for Christ’s sake! McDonnell is going insane again and pissing off the gays, the blacks and even the white supremacists. Virginia’s Bigot in Chief is a queer blogger’s gold mine! Who cares about what CNN does in the dullest time slot of their broadcast day? Had there been an aftershock in California, a plane crash or a baby in a well, the piece never would have been aired.

Now, don't get me wrong, I admire the hard work that Pam, Joe, the folks at Bilerico and all the others do and how hard they work. But I think that when you become the "go-to" person on all things queer, (Pam and Bilerico's Bil Browning now also blog for the Huffington Post) there is a certain self-expectation. That is to say that when you achieve a certain level of success and recognition, you have to keep topping yourself in order to keep the spotlight and grow within your field. You have to raise the bar for yourself or people stop paying attention. It becomes easy to fall into the trap of reacting in a way that is expected of you, but may not be a genuine reflection of what's really going on.

As I wrote in my comments on Lyndon's site, we have a bigot in the state house here in Virginia and his lackey Cooch is rolling back decades of progress in civil rights. IMHO, it's much ado about nothing. I've got more important things to think about.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

HRC's Joe Solmonese finally gets it "...our time is now"

With the entire city of Washington, DC consumed with passing and/or blocking health care reform for the past year it's become abundantly clear to many in the LGBT community that very few, if any, of the promises made to us by President Obama during his campaign were going to be kept.

We were fortunate last year to see the passage of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act.But when we pushed for Washington to move forward on repealing "The Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), we were told by Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese and other dyed in the wool gay Democrats to slow down and be patient. The "slow and steady" crowd told the rest of us we were whining like spoiled brats demanding instant gratification and that we didn't understand the political process. Solmonese even told us to wait until after Obama's second term before we assess his record.

As Washington insiders, Joe and his crowd where awfully short-sighted not to see that the president was spending so much political capital on health care reform, that there would be precious little left to advance LGBT rights. They ignored the growing nationwide discontent with the Democrats, who squandered their super-majority over the last year and accomplished virtually nothing. They didn't seem to understand until this week that the mid-term elections would mean a reshuffling of the balance of power in DC. They didn't see the window of opportunity slamming shut... until now.

A couple of weeks ago I reported on the "blog swarm", a coalition of LGBT bloggers, including John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, Pam Spaudling of "Pam's House Blend", Bil Browning of The Bilerico Project, Joe Jervis of Joe.My.God, Andy Towle of TowleRoad on several others, that was formed in order to put pressure on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to use its influence in Washington to push the president and congress to move more quickly on repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" this year. As expected, HRC initially poo-pooed the gay net roots and again called for patience.

Pam Spaulding attended the HRC Carolinas Gala fundraiser in Raleigh, NC Saturday night. Guest speakers included Clay Aiken and Meredith Baxter, but the real show stopper turned out to be Joe Solmonese himself, who made some bold pronouncements that appear to signal a reversal in strategy for the nation's largest LGBT advocacy organization.

Pam reports that Solmonese made the following four promises to the crowd:

1. "We are going to eliminate the tax that you pay on domestic partner benefits. We're going to get rid of that this year at long last."

2. "We are going to extend domestic partnerships to federal employees."

3. "We are going to get people living with HIV/AIDS treatment much earlier if they are on public assistance."

4. "And finally, finally this year we are going to bring down the discriminatory policy known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'...once and for all."

Solmonese added, "I also get that there is a drumbeat coming from our community to put more pressure on, to make more demands of the President and members of Congress to get it done this year because who knows what's going to happen at the mid-term elections and frankly they are right and our time is now."

I'm not quite sure how Joe can make such grandiose promises, but it should be interesting to see how all of this plays out. The year-long Pentagon study on repeal of DADT hasn't even begun yet and there has been no timetable put forth for full repeal. Solmonese has a habit of making grand pronouncements only to reverse himself weeks later. I'm glad he's finally gotten on board, but I can't help but wonder for how long.

The following video of Joe Solmonese's speech at the HRC Gala is courtesy of Pam's House Blend:

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

LGBT Bloggers Receive Courage Award in NYC

In an award ceremony last night in New York, bloggers Pam Spaulding (Pam's House Blend), Bil Browning (The Bilerico Project), Joe Jervis (Joe.My.God) and Andy Towle (Towleroad) received the 2009 Courage Award from the NYC Anti-Violence Project for calling attention to anti-LGBT violence.

Congratulations to four of my favorite bloggers who inspire me daily. Their work has not only kept our community informed and motivated, but has caught the attention of the haters as well, who regularly monitor their posts.

Pictured from right to left, Pam Spaulding, Andy Towle, Bil Browning and Joe Jervis.

Joe.My.God posted a story on Monday about an incident involving a comment on his site that questioned whether the fight for LGBT Rights was on the verge of becoming violent. Joseph LaBarbera of the Liberty Counsel has filed a complaint with the FBI over the comment

Pam's House Blend has full coverage of last night's Courage Awards ceremony.